• MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
FORTIFIED by V.E. day and the Whitsun recess, I have had the courage to perform a duty which I have long evaded and postponed. I have taken stock of my wardrobe. The pain which this examination was bound to cause me was mitigated by the intense interest of the social and physical phenomena which it disclosed. I recalled how, at the outset of this war, and when clothes coupons were first introduced, a member of His Majesty's Government had expressed himself optimistically regarding the durability of our respective wardrobes. " You will remember," he said to me, " how in the last war reliable neutrals who visited Berlin used to tell us that what struck them most was the extreme shabbi- ness of all those Germans who were not in uniform and who were obliged, once they had run out of their pre-war suitings and foot- wear, to fall back upon erzatz boots and trousers made of thick paper and nettle-fibre. Such stories struck me as unconvincing at the time. For, after all, nearly every politician or civil servant possesses at least four suits, and with the minimum of care these can be made to outlast even .a ten-years' war." I was not wholly comforted by these remarks, knowing all too well that such care as I was able to devote to my own wardrobe has always been, and will always be, below the minimum. I expressed my doubts. " Well, I at least," he said with arrogance and presumption, " am perfectly certain that even if this war lasts till 1947 you will see no signs of shabbiness in my apparel." The irritating thing is that this particular politician has proved correct in his forecast. To this day his boots and suitings are as neat, as polished, as un- ruffled as they were in 7939. For many years I also, by various permutations and stratagems, was able to keep the head of my wardrobe above water. But now that V.E. day has come and gone, I have been obliged to admit defeat ; and what is interesting about it all is that my defeat has not been wholly due to congenital un- tidiness, but to the strange simultaneity with which my clothes have abandoned the struggle.
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In going through my wardrobe I have observed that it consists almost wholly of remnants in an identical state of disintegration. This strikes me as strange. One would have supposed that the suit which I discarded after Stresa would have been more dilapidated thah that which in the dark days of Munich I laid aside ; one would have imagined that the arrant cowboy shirts which I pur- chased in New Mexico in 1929 would have appeared more elderly than the stripling shirts which I acquired in Clifford Street in 1938. But things have not turned out in just that way. All my clothes, of whatever vintage, maintained a high level of neatness and durability until July of last year ; and then suddenly, in some wild Gadarene rush, they all disintegrated simul- taneously and identically within the space of a week. Every.single item in my wardrobe from that moment began to display diver- sionist activities ; shirts which had without a murmur withstood the phoney war, the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain, the blitz and the surrender of Singapore, started after D-day to split from top to bottom with a sharp sigh of utter weariness. Suits which year upon year had lolled upon the benches of the House of Commons with the glow of health upon their shining surfaces started last summer to gape from simultaneous seams. And shoes which during our finest hour remained, with but slight outside assistance, resilient and almost intact, began, as if at some hidden word of command, to split in what I believe are called their
uppers with regimental conformity. * * * *
Strangest of all these phenomena of wardrobe conduct is the behaviour adopted during these five years of war by pyjamas. I can distinguish three distinct phases in the conduct of my pyjamas. The first phase of disintegration was what might be called the replacement phase, during which period I was able for quite a long tune to maintain an outward show of decency, either by patching those that were still living from pieces of those which were demon-
suably dead, or by adopting the more diverting method of wearing the trousers from one suit with the top piece of another. That happy and, as it now seems, luxurious period lasted for about two years. It was succeeded by the second phase, the reticulated phase, when my pyjamas ceased to be a united whole, but assumed the form of netting or lacework. And to my distress this phase, since D-Day, has been succeeded by a third phase, the ticker-tape phase, during which my pyjamas have ceased to resemble nets or lace- work and have assumed the form of pendant strips, such as might be worn by some zany in a morality play. This phase is uncom- fortable, and I am aware that when winter comes this year the spring of 1946 will seem very far behind. A serving officer, recently returned from the Central Mediterranean Force, was, in fact, so touched by my predicament that he offered to give me a roll of figured cotton which he had bought at Lagos and on which some Manchester cotton mill had imprinted a pattern of enormous yellow pineapples upon a background of blue. It may well be that this cold and garish material is well adapted to the needs of a Gold Coast maiden ; an elderly politician should, however, take great pains not to render himself gratuitously ridiculous ; and I shall have, for two years or more, to stick to ticker-tape.
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What I find so humiliating—nay, so degrading—about this sudden disintegration of my wardrobe is that it imposes upon me all manner of subterfuges, dissimulations and lies, since, although by immense application I am able to maintain some semblance of decency in my outward vesture, the tatters which it conceals underneath are truly deplorable. I ought, I know, to feel that the engine-room waste which my underclothes have now become are honourable badges of endurance. I ought, I know, to regard them as proofs and symbols of my own coupon-mindedness, of my horror of any- thing which might savour of a black market. I ought to murmur to myself the lines: " Sail on, proud ship, thy battered hull pro- claims thy place in war." I ought to do these things ; but I do not What is so lamentable is that, although poor, I have not ceased to be proud. What is truly disgraceful is that, when visiting the houses of the rich and great, or even when keeping an appointment with my doctor, I take with me or wear those isolated remnants of my wardrobe which have still survived the storm. I do, in fact, possess one or two remaining garments which I employ as Schaustiick, or sample of pastidistinction, and which I wear on occasions when cir- cumstances ob ige me to disclose the horrors underneath. How many of my. readers, I wonder, indulge in similar duplicity? Or is it that I, having on the one hand but little leisure, and being on the other hand by nature clumsy and impatient, do, in fact, cause to my wardrobe more daily damage than is caused to the clothes of other citizens, and that I do not apply myself with sufficient assiduity to the tasks of maintenance and repair? I do not know. All I know is that when I dress myself these days the picture pre- sented does not in any way suggest Bond Street or Savile Row ; it suggests The colonnades at Bruges under which old ladies with cushions and bobbins weave patterns of string.
* * * * In my despair at this situation, in my resentment of the squalor, discomfort and duplicity which it entails, I appealed for words of hope and encouragement to a leading pundit of the Board of Trade. I had hoped that he would assure me that only for a few months longer would I have to endure this ticker-tape existence. But not at all. He adopted the " blood and sweat and tears" attitude. He told me that even when our spinning capacity could be materially increased there would still be a prolonged shortage of the things one wears underneath. I foresee that by 7947 all that I shall have left to wear will be my Defence MedaL Gladly will I submit to this nudity, gladly even will I don the pineapples of Lagos, if I feel that thereby I can contribute in any manner to our export trade or release to the unhappy Europeans one square inch of warmth to cover their despair.
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