An American critic who read the manuscript of this book condemned it as ‘too English’. It is intensely English, despite the fact that most of its action takes place in wildly foreign places and that it is written in an idiomatic, uncalculated manner the very antithesis of ‘Mandarin’ stylishness. It rejoices the heart of fellow Englishmen, and should at least illuminate those who have any curiosity about the odd character of our Kingdom. It exemplifies the essential traditional (some, not I, will say deplorable) amateurism of the English. For more than two hundred years now Englishmen have been wandering about the world for their amusement, suspect everywhere as government agents, to the great embarrassment of our officials. The Scotch endured great hardships in the cause of commerce; the French in the cause of either power or evangelism. The English only have half (and wholly) killed themselves in order to get away from England. Mr Newby is the latest, but, I pray, not the last, of a whimsical tradition. And in his writing he has all the marks of his not entirely absurd antecedents. The understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited; finally in his formal self-effacement in the presence of the specialist (with the essential reserve of unexpressed self-respect) which concludes, almost too abruptly, this beguiling narrative – in all these qualities Mr Newby has delighted the heart of a man whose travelling days are done and who sees, all too often, his countrymen represented abroad by other, new and (dammit) lower types.
Dear reader, if you have any softness left for the idiosyncrasies of our rough island race, fall to and enjoy this characteristic artifact.
EVELYN WAUGH
1959
CHAPTER ONE Life of a Salesman
With all the lights on and the door shut to protect us from the hellish draught that blew up the backstairs, the fitting-room was like an oven with mirrors. There were four of us jammed in it: Hyde-Clarke, the designer; Milly, a very contemporary model girl with none of the normal protuberances; the sour-looking fitter in whose workroom the dress was being made; and Newby.
Things were not going well. It was the week before the showing of the 1956 Spring Collection, a time when the vendeuses crouched behind their little cream and gold desks, doodling furiously, and the Directors swooped through the vast empty showrooms switching off lights in a frenzy of economy, plunging whole wings into darkness. It was a time of endless fittings, the girls in the workrooms working late. The corset-makers, embroiderers, furriers, milliners, tailors, skirt-makers and matchers all involved in disasters and overcoming them – but by now slightly insane.
This particular dress was a disaster that no one was going to overcome. Its real name, the one on the progress board on the wall of the fitting-room, pinned up with a little flag and a cutting of the material, was Royal Yacht, but by general consent we all called it Grand Guignol.
I held a docket on which all the components used in its construction were written down as they were called up from the stockroom. The list already covered an entire sheet. It was not only a hideous dress; it was soaking up money like a sponge.
‘How very odd. According to the docket Grand Guignol’s got nine zips in it. Surely there must be some mistake.’
Hyde-Clarke was squatting on his haunches ramming pins into Grand Guignol like a riveter.
‘This dress is DOOMED. I know it’s doomed. BOTHER, I’ve swallowed a pin! Pins, quickly, pins.’
The fitter, a thin woman like a wardress at the Old Bailey and with the same look of indifference to human suffering, extended a bony wrist with a velvet pin-cushion strapped to it like a watch. He took three and jabbed them malevolently into the material; Milly swore fearfully.
‘Mind where you’re putting those … pins. What d’you think I am – a bloody yoga?’
‘You MUST stand still, dear; undulation will get you nowhere,’ Hyde-Clarke said.
He stood up breathing heavily and lit a cigarette. There was a long silence broken only by the fitter who was grinding her teeth.
‘What do you think of it now, Mr Newby?’ he said. ‘It’s you who have to sell it.’
‘Much worse, Mr Hyde-Clarke.’ (We took a certain ironic pleasure in calling one another Mister.) ‘Like one of those flagpoles they put up in the Mall when the Queen comes home.’
‘I don’t agree. I think she looks like a Druid in it; one of those terribly runny-nosed old men dressed in sheets at an Eisteddfod. How much has it cost up to now?’
I told him.
‘Breathe OUT, dear. Perhaps you’ll look better without any air. I must say there’s nothing more gruesome than white jersey when it goes wrong.’ ‘Dear’ breathed out and the dress fell down to her ankles. She folded her arms across her shoulders and gazed despairingly at the ceiling so that the whites of her eyes showed.
‘There’s no need to behave like a SLUT,’ said Hyde-Clarke. He was already putting on his covert coat. ‘We’ll try again at two. I am going to luncheon.’ He turned to me. ‘Are you coming?’ he said.
We went to ‘luncheon’. In speech Hyde-Clarke was a stickler in the use of certain Edwardianisms, so that beer and sandwiches in a pub became ‘luncheon’ and a journey in his dilapidated sports car ‘travel by motor’.
Today was a sandwich day. As we battled our way up Mount Street through a blizzard, I screeched in his ear that I was abandoning the fashion industry.
‘I saw the directors this morning.’
‘Oh, what did they say?’
‘That they were keeping me on for the time being but that they make no promises for the future.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That I had just had a book accepted for publication and that I am staying on for the time being but I make no promises for the future.’
‘It isn’t true, is it? I can hardly visualize you writing anything.’
‘That’s what the publishers said, originally. Now I want to go on an expedition.’
‘Aren’t you rather old?’
‘I’m just as old here as on an expedition. You can’t imagine anything more rigorous than this, can you? In another couple of years I’ll be dyeing my hair.’
‘In another couple of years you won’t have any to dye,’ said Hyde-Clarke.
On the way back from ‘luncheon’, while Hyde-Clarke bought some Scotch ribs in a fashionable butcher’s shop, I went into the Post Office in Mount Street and sent a cable to Hugh Carless, a friend of mine at the British Embassy, Rio de Janeiro.
CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?
It had taken me ten years to discover what everyone connected with it had been telling me all along, that the Fashion Industry was not for me.
CHAPTER TWO Death of a Salesman
The rehearsal was set for four o’clock on Tuesday. At eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning I was called to the telephone. It was the London agent of one of the great New York stores.
‘Miss Candlemass is coming to see your Collection this afternoon.’
‘We’re only having the rehearsal this afternoon. The opening’s tomorrow.’
‘Miss