Th think that Miss Climpson should have been in The Nine Tailors

[Jemima232]

Miss Climpson did not appear in this book.

The purpose of this thread is to examine why this oversight occurred.

The Chalet School books may be mentioned if people wish.

What was Ruth Rendell's objection to the wedding-night shag in BH?

I didn't think it was all that unlikely - apart from Bunter being able to hear them.

I know Bunter wrote to his mother - but surely he didn't spend all night doing so?

@MercifulHour

Uncle Paul Delagardie was a dissipated old soak.

And yes - that bit of the book where he boasts to the Dowager Duchess about having taught Peter how to be a stallion in bed was excruciating in the extreme.

I bet DLS refused to have the French passages translated in the first edition of the book. That would be just like her.

She apparently had an argument with her publishers regarding the translation of the letter Denis Cathcart wrote to Simone Vonderaa in Clouds of Witness.

I mean it was the crux of the book - the reason why Gerald was innocent.

But don't allow uneducated readers the privilege of understanding it. They shouldn't aspire to reading DLS if they are incapable or translating a bit of French.

I have been pondering (since I re-read the episode last night) the high-handedness of Peter in purchasing two tickets for a continental trip to throw the press off the scent regarding his imminent honeymoon. He sends the reservations to Miss Climpson to pass on to the/a ‘tubercular accountant and wife living in reduced circumstances’.

Just imagine the recipients’ dazed panic. The rush to shop for a suitable wardrobe! Shutting up the house. (I don’t remember the couple from whichever previous book they were in but ) presumably they had at least a maid to inform, care of dog or cat to arrange, family and friends who’d need an explanation. What if the man needed medical equipment for the trip? What if they weren’t accustomed to travel and were terrified?

I’m pretty sure if Mrs Tubercular Accountant had posted a thread about it the word ‘controlling’ would have been explored with regard to ther beautiful benefactor.

Harriet does the same with some concert tickets too.

I assume Miss Climpson would have dealt tactfully with the honeymoon tickets.

I think our reaction to Bunter hearing the wedding night shag reflects our social class and experience. Peter would have been used from birth to live in servants and living his whole life with them being present or near at lots of intimate moments. Bunter packing Harriet’s pants was cringy to us and to Harriet, but would have been quite normal for him in the absence of a ladies maid. Another nod to Harriet’s middle class ness!
Jill Paton Walsh deals with the ladies maid issue quite well in Thrones, Dominations.

Sorry- this is a hobby horse of mine!

I think there’s an interesting contrast between DLS’s sympathetic portrayal of Harriet negotiating the class issues when we are definitely all supposed to be on Harriet’s side, and Beryl Muspratt in Brideshead- who we are definitely not supposed to find sympathetic. We’re even invited to laugh at her name. Bridey says “You must understand that Beryl is a woman of strict Catholic principle, fortified by the prejudices of the middle classes.”......

I do get slightly annoyed when the otherwise adorable Dowager Duchess's response to Peter handing on the tickets to Miss Climpson for the tubercular couple in 'reduced circumstances' is to wonder how one reduces one's circumstances. I get that her malapropisms and confusions about poorer people (like what tailor she should recommend to Harriet as she has no idea what a novelist might earn) are part of her charm, but it is a very usual expression, certainly for that time period, and fairly self-evident..?

I've vaguely assumed, though, that the 'reduced circumstances' imply that the couple in question have fallen on hard times because of his illness, and therefore possibly have the requisite clothes/savoir-faire for a rather grand European holiday from their more prosperous past?

Especially as the context is the Dowager Duchess's attempts to understand the finances/issues/temperament of a middle-class rural doctor's daughter who is a well-known novelist marrying into the aristocracy.

I've never read the JPW sequels, but I am always a bit faced by the DD casually saying that P and H will need eight servants in their London house, along with Bunter and a capable housekeeper.

I could see, I suppose, a cook and a parlour maid, but ten servants for two people in the 1930s, when one of them has just been living solo in a flat with presumably a cleaner/charwoman! Would Harriet who likes clothes, but is not unduly concerned with her appearance even want a lady's maid, apart from it meaning Bunter doesn't have to pack her pants every time they travel?

For later stuff actually written by DLS, see The Wimsey Papers, published in The Spectator 1939/40. You have to register to read them on the Spectator archive site, but you get a month free, which should be long enough. (They may also be available as pdfs on other sites) archive.spectator.co.uk/article/24th-november-1939/8/wimsey-papers-ii

It’s all a matter of degree, isn’t it? You could argue that Honoria actually wondering what Harriet could afford shows huge sensitivity- can you imagine It even crossing Helen’s mind? The bit that annoys me is the financial arrangements made for the Parkers - to make sure that on the surface at least, Mary doesn’t have any more money than Charles..

The Parkers are interesting -- why is Harriet expected to marry in to a giant London aristopad with ten servants when she marries Peter, while Lady Mary ends up living in a modest-sounding flat and appears to lead an essentially middle-class life after she marries Charles? Is it so important that Woman Adopts Man's Lifestyle?

Mary has always been a bit of a rebel- within carefully defined parameters! A comfortable middle class life would suit her,with the nice cushion of the Denver dosh behind her just in case. And of course a man’s pride has to be respected........

And Harriet, like DLS, had experienced not being sure she could pay the rent, so probably wouldn’t say no to the aristopad.....

Various posters have touched on the cost of clothes - and also on the need to have 'suitable' clothes for polite society.

This blog is American, but still relevant - and really interesting: 25dollarvintage.blogspot.com/2010/10/1930s-trousseau_28.html

About clothes from 1930, it's perhaps four or five years too early for Harriet's wedding, but the writer makes a very good point about how 1930s clothes were invested in, and meant to last for years. The first bridal trousseau featured on the blog is for a comfortably-off middle class woman (aimed at readers of Good Housekeeping magazine, and a bit aspirational, then as now, but still indicative). Harriet might have been spending that sort of money on clothes as a successful novelist.

Later today, I'll try to see whether I can find an example of a young, rich noblewoman's trousseau, for comparison.

Presumably Harriet is thinking along these lines when she orders whatever it is she orders just after the trousseau conversation with the DD -- is it something like two dozen white silk shirts?

But Harriet spent every penny she had -and some she didn’t- on the wedding, the Donne palimpsest(she wrote some articles to pay for that) and the silk shirts as a present for Peter. She asked Peter about money in Busman ‘s because she was broke and hadn’t paid her secretary (I think)

Yup, two dozen silk shirts from Burlington Arcade! I remember being (favoured MN word) agog when I first read that. Even at my richest, as a youngish City professional, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life bought more than two items of clothing at a time.

As regards the eight servants - it would probably have been impossible to keep a huge London house both comfortable and ready to receive grand visitors, in the absence of washing machines and dishwashers and roombas, with all those enormous, flouncy clothes, without hot and cold running servants.

The silk shirts were for her, weren’t they? She wouldn’t be buying Peter clothes. (Or did you mistype?)

Oh, I assumed the silk shirts were for Harriet!

I do enjoy the DD's thoughts about thinking Jane Eyre was a bit of a party pooper for insisting on black and grey school ma'am attire rather than the dazzling silk trousseau Mr 'Bigamy' Rochester wants to endow her with.

But the London house to be is rented, isn't it? Peter's been living in aristobachelor quarters on Piccadilly, and there's some reference to how someone is leaving their house and Peter and Harriet will be taking it. Pesumably it would be perfectly possible not to rent somewhere quite so gigantic, so as not to require an entire servants' hall-full of staff, purely because P is now married, especially if they're regularly spending long weekends at Tallboys?

I think I'd have been far more appalled by being so overwhelmingly outnumbered by my domestics than by other aspects of vast wealth. It's certainly difficult to get used to live-in staff if you've not grown up with them, I think.

“ I was so sure the silk shirts were for him- it was just after she has agreed to have megabucks settled on her so she bought them for cash as a gesture. I’ll have to go and read it again. I don’t think there were women’s shops in Burlington Arcade then, were there?

Minimum servants that would probably be thought necessary for the younger son of a duke (at least by his mother - Peter and Harriet might well have been happy with fewer)
Cook
Kitchenmaid
Parlourmaid
Upper housemaid
Under-housemaid
'Tweeny'
Lady's maid
Probably some kind of footman to help Bunter if he was combining the roles of butler & valet to LP
Later there would probably have been a nurserymaid too.

@florascotia2 Love your couplet:
'The Englishwoman is so refined
She has no front and no behind.'

It reminds me of DLS's catty remark about the Duchess at the party which Dian de Momerie gatecrashed:

"She thanked Providence that at forty-five she still kept her figure – as indeed she did, having been remarkably flat on both aspects the whole of her life."
This was after the Dowager Duchess had 'said something rather acid about her spine', but Helen considered she was 'showing the exact number of vertebrae the occasion demanded'

And yet they seem to have lived in Talboys perennially, with Bunter as the only servant (apart from occasional nurses etc. for the three boys.)

We never find out what happens to the luxo-pad the Dowager has filled with servants for them.

Oh, RustyBear you have reminded me suddenly and forcefully of Murder Must Advertise.

Maybe, just maybe, her best book. DLS had been at Bensons as a copywriter and was considered to be very good at it.

Injecting herself as Miss Meteyard was very clever. And I regret to confess that I fell in love with Mr. Tallboy and cried when Peter send him on his way to be murdered.

I think they are in the London house when the first boy is born.