When Paris was the laundry capital of the civilised world
PAUL JOHNSON
Writing about the colour of doves last week reminded me that, when I was 17 and an Oxford freshman in 1946, my passionate desire was to possess a three-piece flannel suit in dove-grey, as worn by Sebastian Flyte in the novel evetyone was then reading. But I had no money, and no clothes coupons either. •So I never got it, In those days the cynosure of the sartorially trendy was the shop of Hall Brothers in Oxford High Street, rich in silk and velvet waistcoats, then sported by the wealthier undergraduates and some of the smarter young dons, like the late Hugh Trevor-Roper. Cousin Jasper, giving advice 'as head of the family' to his junior cousin Charles Ryder, strongly recommended a London tailor: 'You get better cut and longer credit.' Such counsel was no good to me, for credit was unobtainable and your bank would bounce your cheques the second you were overdrawn by even £5. (I am amazed at newspaper reports of 'students' going down today owing £21,000 — how do they contrive to borrow so much?) I don't recall what I actually wore in those drab days. Ken Tynan had a plum-coloured suit made of curtain material, and another of billiard cloth. My best garment was a swanky hacking-jacket bought from a penniless Irish peer for £3 (this at a time when I could have had a fine Gainsborough watercolour for £17.10, but was forced to turn it down for lack of cash). The dons were a threadbare collection on the whole, though Maurice Bowra tried to cut a figure and David Cecil still had some prewar suits from Huntsman. My tutor, A.J.P. Taylor, said, 'Three-piece suits from Savile Row are unacceptable emblems of the ruling class. On the other hand, tweed jackets and flannel bags are the garb of rootless bohemians. Corduroy is a time-honoured cloth of the rural plebs, so I get my tailor to make me corduroy suits — and very comfortable they are.' C.S. Lewis dressed like a farmer in tweedy stuff, perhaps from Ulster. Professor Tolkien wore sables, like Hamlet, enlivened by chalk marks. The best-dressed man in Oxford was Kenneth Clark, lecturer on `Tintorer and aumbrandf. Lord Halifax, the university chancellor, when he came up to officiate, wore black jacket and waistcoat and striped trousers. So did Mr Churchill on a visit, and Sir Stafford Cripps: it was standard parliamentary sumptuary then. Even better dressed than '1‹: was Sir Oswald Mosley, who was briefly and furtively among us to address the Corporate Club at the House.
By the time I emerged from the army I was
sick of dressing up. In Paris I hit on a formula of three-piece suits in charcoal-grey for weekdays, and Harris tweed at the weekend, pour epater les francais. I kept this up until I ceased to attend an office at all in the 1970s, wearing the greys until they were white at the seams. I had the three-piece Harrises made with plustwos as well as trousers for Highland hill-walking, though for serious climbing I wore breeches of Bedford cord, the strongest material on earth. I still have a pair, somewhere, for they never wear out. Indeed I dislike intensely throwing away clothes. My habitual wear is trousers and pullovers with dark-blue shirts of rough material like denim, but I often have to put on a white shirt and suit in the evening. I have a lot of suits, accumulated over the past 30 years or so, perhaps a score. Some I have never worn, others I am not allowed to wear, Various dark or midnight-blue suits are put out for me to don. My only vanity is to sport satin ties in plain gold or champagne to match my hair. It is true that I have a selection of velvet jackets, including one in light sapphire blue that I have dared to wear only once, But I am in no way dressy like Peregrine Worsthome, A.A. Gill or Tom Stoppard who (though in no sense vain) has a passion for scarves of gossamer lightness and incredible expense.
Simplicity and comfort form the axis of my sartorial code. Fastidiousness leads to profusion of garments, and so to indecision and time-consumption. Royals tend to fuss too much about what they wear. It is pathetic to think that George V and his eldest son were on such bad terms that, when together, the only safe subject was clothes — crease discipline, button-strategy, tie-knotting and the right outfit to take tea with a peer's widow below the rank of marchioness. Even so, the monarch was liable to a paroxysm of rage when the subject of the Windsor Knot — the Prince of Wales's unique contribution to civilisation — came up. I occasionally used to see the Duke of Windsor, with his earwig wife, in Paris salons, and he was always fingering his tie nervously. I notice that Prince Charles does the same. He, too, is fastidious to a fault. Poor Princess Diana told me that one morning she happened to be in his dressing-room when he was taking sartorial decisions. He did not like any of the shirts his valet had put out. So he rang the bell. The valet appeared. 'I don't like these shirts.' The valet took them away, crossed the room and put out some more, When he had gone, she said, 'Why couldn't you have crossed the room yourself to choose your shirt, instead of summoning that wretched man?' He replied, gritting his teeth, 'He's paid to do it.' This was rather like George IV ringing his bell in the middle of the night to ask his page the time. though a large turnip-watch hung by his bedside.
Coloured clothes ill become men. Not until I met Hugh Gaitskell did I understand the point of Lord Curzon's remark, 'Gentlemen never wear brown.' Gaitskell had a fatal taste for brown pinstripes which looked as though they came from the Fifty-Shilling Tailor. However, it must be said that brown can be worn by a gent. Look at Wright of Derby's marvellous fulllength of Sir Brooke Boothby lying in the woods in lightly browned fustian. However, black is safer. I always think that Harold Pinter's outfits, in which black, whether polo-necked sweater or suit, is predominant, are the perfect uniform for a left-wing playwright with a message of doom to deliver. Charles Lamb always wore black, with a touch of white at the neck and wrists. Many people thought he must be a clergyman or a Quaker, until he began tossing back the noggins of gin and puffing his pipe furiously. People think the English introduced uniform and monochrome dress in the 19th century, but the facts tell a different tale: of egregiousness, rather. Shelley always wore a schoolboy's jacket, what used to be called a bumfreezer. Byron abolished the compulsory neckcloth and had arrow shirt-collars. Tennyson brought back the cloak. It was a Cabinet minister who invented that short coat known as a spencer. A variety of it. a seaman's reefer jacket, was worn by Pugin, who had enormous pockets made so that he could carry monstrances or folios bought on his Continental tours.
When laying down standards for modern dress, Beau Brummell did not insist on uniformity, though he rightly argued that black was the hue for a man who wanted to look smart. His real point was the saliency of a daily or twice-daily change of shirt. 'Clean linen, and plenty of it,' was his maxim. 'And country washing,' he added. The last point was a mystery to me until our gardener, who is a London historian, produced a little book on the neighbourhood north of Notting Hill. In Brummell's day, and for long after, Kensal New Town was the centre of the family-laundry business. There were more than 200 households which took in dirty clothes, drying them in the long strips of garden attached to their cottages. This counted as country washing. All that is clear. But why did Max Beerbohm's brother, regarded as ultradandy, send his linen to be washed in Paris?
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