Clothes-Pegs by Susan Scarlett

Title: Clothes-Pegs
Author: Susan Scarlett (aka Noel Streatfeild)
Publication: Furrowed Middlebrow/Dean Street Press, paperback, originally published in 1939
Genre: Fiction/Romance
Setting: London

Description: Annabel Brown is the eldest of the four Brown children and works as a seamstress at Bertna’s, an upscale dress shop in London’s Hanover Square. Money at home has been tight since her brother Alfie’s illness so she is delighted, although nervous when her employer elevates her to runaway model with a bigger salary. However, at the first fashion show, Annabel meets handsome Lord David de Bett, rumored to be nearly engaged to a spiteful debutante. As David starts taking Annabel out, she needs new clothes but her new career and spending worry her frugal and affectionate family. Equally concerning, she does not know if David is amusing himself with her so needs to safeguard her heart.

My Impression: If you mix my old favorite Mary Burchell with a cozy family story by Noel Streatfeild, this is what you get – a romance featuring the eldest daughter of the poor but honest Browns who worry about every threepence piece but take pride in what they have:

“We may have to live simply,” [Mrs. Brown] often said, “but I like to feel if the Queen walks in there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Funny that my first thought was that this is so Noel (her mothers are as cozy as her aunts are uncomfortable and we have heard her characters say similar things before) and the second that the Queen won’t be walking in again! However, when Noel wrote this book, the Queen was Elizabeth’s mother, the wife of George VI. Now that people are so used to saying “Camilla” and “Kate” I can’t help wondering if they will ever revert to saying, “Queen Camilla,” and if anyone imagines she would walk into their home!

This book is definitely a fairy tale as Annabel, nice and beautiful though she is, has nothing in common with Lord David and it is hard to understand how she could hold his interest, although easy to see his appeal when he attends a fashion show at Bertna’s with his girlfriend:

Annabel walked slowly, her eyes raking the chairs. Was he there? Then suddenly she saw him. The same amused grey eyes, with a warming look of admiration at the back of them. She had to pass on; but her heart sang. “I’ve seen him. I’ve seen him. He’s here.”

David’s nasty girlfriend, the Honorable Octavia Glaye, is part of his world and everyone expects they will marry but the spite she shows toward Annabel opens his eyes to her character (I have often wished this disillusionment and repudiation would happen when men I admired showed very poor taste in women but clearly this only occurs in fiction). In contrast, Annabel is unaware of her beauty, genuinely enjoys her new experiences, and doesn’t think of concealing anything from him. She thinks it is natural for her to be in love with him but does not expect him to reciprocate; even her friend Bernadette warns her David “has to marry one of his own kind.” Luckily, this is a Cinderella story, not an angst-ridden novel with a sad ending.  

Noel herself

I look forward to reading the other Scarlett titles that have been republished.  While I knew they existed, I guess I thought they would be disillusioning like The Whicharts, which I have avoided.  Although this was predictable, her characters have sufficient charm that I enjoyed nearly every word.  I have been working on a Streatfeild project of my own which I hope will be completed later this year.

Source: Library