The Great Silence (28 page)

During the war she discovered the versatility of jersey cloth as used by stable lads for shirts for training sessions, and began to make sweaters and waistless dresses for women from the same supple fabric. The ornate Edwardian costume that according to a scornful Chanel had ‘stifled the body’s architecture’ started to disappear. Chanel was after ‘moral honesty’ in the way women presented themselves. She had gauged the time for voicing these feelings to perfection. Thousands of women across Europe were feeling the same way. ‘Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence’, she said, ‘but of those who have already taken possession of their future.’

The flamboyant colours of Paul Poiret’s pre-war designs and the theatricality of Bakst’s influential costumes for the Ballets Russes suddenly seemed tawdry and overdone. Chanel declared their bright colours ‘impossible’. They made her feel physically ill. She pledged to dress women in black. White and black, she felt, have an ‘absolute beauty’. Women dressed for a ball in monochrome or pale colours stood out as ‘the only ones you see’. And black, the colour of mourning, had always been the colour adopted both by rich and poor when in grief. Chanel’s use of black with its attendant contribution to the blurring of class barriers through clothes was undeniable. She chose to accentuate an elegant neck rather than covering up fat legs, she lowered the back of a dress, redirecting attention from a sagging bottom. A look of luxury was achievable through the severity of simplicity. Expensive poverty was the aim. She dared to suggest that clothes themselves had ceased to matter and that it was the individual who counted.

She cut her hair short ‘because it annoyed me’. Everyone cut off their hair in imitation. She designed fur coats from rabbit rather than mink. Warmth became available to rich and poor alike and within the simplicity there was an elegance of style that had a mass appeal. Secretaries on both sides of the Channel hugged their high-necked coats around them. The British aristocracy came to Paris to be close to the source of inspiration. The non-French-speaking Duchess of Portland arrived to shop, braving all language problems with a label stitched into the lining of her coat stating ‘Je suis la Duchesse de Portland. En cas d’accident m’apporter au Ritz Hotel’. As hem lengths rose and flowerpot hats moulded themselves to the side of the head, a voluntary simplification of clothing spread across a wide spectrum of society.

Disapproval that had stirrings in the Women’s Institute’s own house magazine,
Home and County
, was voiced in the publication of a letter about the old-fashioned use of feathers from rare foreign birds of paradise. The correspondent estimated that it took the death or wounding of ten of these young exotic birds to create a hat. Before the war a staggering death cull of 300,000 albatrosses had been recorded in one single raid, as well as the sale of the skins of 162,750 blue and chestnut Smyrnian kingfishers and 152,000 ospreys.
H. J. Massingham, the celebrated naturalist, who was tireless in writing about and campaigning for the preservation of the old rural way of life, as well as founder of’the Plumage Bill Group’, begged for the practice to be halted and for members of Women’s Institutes all over the country to demand from the Board of Trade the introduction of a Plumage Bill.

An advertisement addressing ‘The New Poor’ suggested ways the Sloane Street store Del Cot might help with cheaper fabrics and economic use of materials. Clearly the widespread use of secondhand clothes had prompted the advertisement. A retrenching in flashiness and consumption was mirrored by economic necessity even among the very rich. A popular ‘Exclusive Dress Salon’ in Buckingham Palace Road offered ‘little worn models bought from society ladies’. Customers were assured that the first-floor windows were not visible from the street so all fear of being spotted in such an establishment by a friend or, heaven forbid, the donor of the dress herself was eliminated.

Despite a growing disbelief in the spiritual tenets around which the Christmas story was built, the run-up to Christmas was becoming increasingly frantic. Many families were looking forward to their first Christmas together for five years; the delays involved in demobilisation had meant that a huge number of soldiers had not reached their homes in time for the preceding Christmas. At the beginning of the month, on 2 December, a huge gale reaching speeds of 70 miles per hour tore through London and the Home Counties. A personal column advertisement from a demobilised soldier offered his £200 savings for a lodge or cottage ‘whereby he may earn his living by writing poetry’, thus giving him the best Christmas present imaginable.

In Kent, young Mary Beale, who had been so frightened by the hedge-hoiking false arm of Tom Noakes, was still waiting for her father’s return. Her parents Dorothy and Os had married in 1916 while Dorothy was still in mourning for her mother who had recently died of breast cancer. On her wedding day Dorothy had worn a grey silk dress and a black hat. They had honeymooned over one weekend in a boarding house on the south coast and then Os had returned
immediately to the front. They were deeply in love, and Dorothy missed her new husband dreadfully. In the spring of 1918, Dorothy had persuaded her sister-in-law Joan to accompany her on a reckless journey across the Channel and down to the south of France to meet Os. He too had been missing her and made the journey from Italy where he was stationed. Joan had turned an alarming colour with the motion of the Channel waves but Dorothy had assured her family that they would come to no harm. Privately, Dorothy did not care what happened as long as she could be guaranteed that Os would be waiting for her at the other end.

But when the Great War was nearly over, Os had been given no choice in the decision to send him to Russia to join the White Army in their fight against the Bolsheviks. Dorothy had no idea when he would return. Desperately disappointed, she felt more impatience than sadness. Unlike others she at least knew he would be coming back, even if once again it would not be in time for Christmas.

A lingering sense of the incompleteness of family life was backed up by fear of a return of the flu epidemic. Ovaltine continued to run advertisements reminding the public that ‘the bodily and mental efforts that maintained the will to win were not exercised without a serious depletion of national health. Lowered vitality, diminished reserves of strength, exhaustion of nerve, brain and body and debility are some of the prevalent symptoms of post-war reaction ... Ovaltine is the supreme nourisher for worn cells.’

But for those in the mood to celebrate - and many were - the shops and magazines gradually began to fill up with suggestions for Christmas presents. Oxford Street was bustling again with still black-coated shoppers, and butchers’ shop windows had become invisible behind the packed rows of rabbits and turkeys hanging suspended by their feet outside. The opportunity to spend money had been denied for several years to those who had any and people were making up for lost time. Indeed the
Lady
magazine reported on
II
December that ‘Christmas shopping is in full swing and never were shops more attractive or their display of gifts more temptingly charming’.

Among the ideas highlighted by Dickens & Jones department store as ideal gifts for ladies were a crêpe de Chine boudoir cap which
came in a choice of colours including sky, pink, ivory or mauve. Mourning dress and in particular the black crape manufactured by Courtaulds had so long dominated the shops, but by 1919 the demand had dwindled and Courtaulds’ profits had not fallen so low since 1914. For the fashionable woman about to enter a new decade there could be nothing more desirable than a pot of Unwin & Albert’s liquid kohl, ‘an oriental preparation for darkening the eyebrows and eyelashes’ which achieved the much sought after Egyptian look. Make-up might come in handy for the households that were going to indulge in amateur dramatics. Black wax could be used for ‘character’ roles to make teeth disappear while some chemists were selling burnt cork as ‘ideal for negro and minstrel parts’. Arthur’s fur store had plenty of stock of the new skunk and opossum coats.

Women readers of the
Sketch
were invited to visit Madame Barrie’s corset shop at 72 Baker Street where a new model of stays called ‘Joie de Vivre’ was on sale which promised to give ‘a new figure as well as hope to numberless women’. Madame Barrie cautioned her customers to remember that ‘there is nothing so unbecoming as a figure which is flat where the stick-outs ought to be and stick-outs where the flat should be’. The Joie de Vivre was adaptable for wear on the golf links, the hockey field or in the ballroom, and came garlanded with ‘wee silk roses and forget-me-nots’.

In the early December edition of
Vogue
a helpful Christmas present list was divided by category. A debutante would undoubtedly enjoy a blue Moroccan writing case, inspiring even the most exhausted partygoer to write her thank-you letters promptly. The hostess would be delighted to receive an afternoon tea set or a cake basket, and
Vogue
could guarantee a husband’s gratitude for a cigarette case complete with matches, a bridge set or a new Austin Sunbeam, in which he might invite house guests to join him on a motor tour of his extensive country estate.

Meanwhile the Savoy Hotel, within easy reach of the jewellers of Bond Street, had offered a Christmas shopping service to its discerning and busy clientele, employing a Cambridge undergraduate to choose individually appropriate gifts. Her brief from one guest included a must-have pair of emerald earrings costing £700. Another departing guest left his toothbrush in his room but sent the shopping
service department a telegram with instructions for the safe return of the brush.

The
Lady
magazine was always ready with suggestions for those readers who might have a little spare time on their hands while the servants were busy preparing the Christmas feast. For example a Christmas table might be transformed ‘by a scarlet linen cloth with a strip of wide lace insertion let in down the centre, and underneath a piece of bright green satin showing through the lace’. Small sprigs of holly would complete the look. If this did not appeal, why not join in the
Lady
’s own mince pie competition? Sybil in the
Lady
’s editorial office would be glad to consider all entries. A prize of a guinea would be awarded to the one that in Sybil’s opinion proved the most succulent.

Meanwhile
Vogue
had not forgotten the lady of the house who had suffered financially in the war and had been left with a reduced domestic staff. She would surely find a vacuum cleaner useful as well as an artificial fuchsia plant to brighten her mood in her new circumstances. For the literary friend
Vogue
recommended Virginia Woolf’s interesting essay on Kew Gardens as well as a special edition in a gold cover of T. S. Eliot’s new volume of poetry. Well-off consumers could reassure themselves that the less fortunate were not forgotten over the festive period when they read in the society pages that the Duchess of Albany (wearing black satin and a large black hat with touches of gold) had opened the Christmas sale for the Crippled Children’s Homes, in association with the Children’s Union of the Waifs and Strays Society. Sometimes life seemed little different from before the war. The rich remained rich and the poor and disabled had little hope of change.

However, for the readers of the
Lady
small but troubling differences in post-war behaviour had not gone unnoticed. The magazine regretted for instance the demise of the excellent traditional St George and the Dragon sketches that children would perform on village porches in exchange for a few pence before ‘we were plunged into the Great War’. Nowadays, the children simply contented themselves with singing a carol or two at the door, and the
Lady
tutted that ‘these young folk take little pride in their efforts and it is hard to deny that they are out to snatch coppers the quickest and easiest
way.’ The children may have been forgiven a little cynicism of their own if they had been aware that owing to the unavailability of the male version, Queen Mary’s Hospital in the East End had this year received a visit from Mother Christmas.

A week before Christmas, on 18 December, there was a national tragedy. A pre-Christmas trip to Paris planned by the flying hero of the summer, Sir John Alcock, was a light skip in comparison with the marathon journey he had made earlier in the year. He had agreed to deliver a new amphibian plane in time for a demonstration at an aeronautical show in Paris, but there was thick fog in France that day and twenty-five miles from Rouen Alcock lost his bearings. The farmer in whose field the plane crash-landed was able to identify the dead pilot only from an engraving on his diamond-studded wrist-watch. The whole world was shocked. ‘Alcock’s death was a true sacrifice for humanity,’ said his friend and former co-pilot Arthur Brown on hearing of Alcock’s death.

Talk both in and out of the retail trade was of another tragic accident. In October 1918 Coco Chanel’s lover Boy Capel had married a widowed English aristocrat, Lady Diana Wyndham, who became pregnant with his child. But the child was not to grow up knowing her father. Capel was killed in a motor accident four days before the 1919 Christmas and left an emptiness and sadness in Chanel from which, at the age of 37, she did not expect to recover. She knew she was now quite incapable of happiness on a personal level. Her work became all consuming.

Christmas was not turning out to be the flawless holiday of prewar memory, but the ritual of a Sandringham Christmas, an occasion that had always been observed with tradition and opulence, remained quite unchanged. It starred as usual one of the upper servants disguised as the royal family’s personal Father Christmas in a red coat, black patent leather boots and a flowing white beard, followed by dinner where sweet-smelling roses filled silver bowls, and scarlet crackers were scattered along the crystal-glittering table. The festival to celebrate the birth of the Saviour resembled, according to the Prince of Wales, ‘Dickens in a Cartier setting’. But none of this luxury did anything to dispel the feelings of panic and despair that
occupied the Prince of Wales at the thought of his imminent separation from his girlfriend.