Churchill’s Little Chinoiserie Moment in his Bunker
Posted: July 13th, 2013 | 1 Comment »OK, so this is one of those occasional (actually quite regular) obscure China Rhyming posts – this time about the possibility that Churchill sat around the bunker in Whitehall throughout the Blitz being cleverer than Hitler in a silk Chinoiserie embroidered robe. Well, it’s an image conjured in the novel Orders from Berlin by Simon Tolkein (a great summer read by the way) which concerns Nazi spies in high places in Churchill’s bunker and Mi5. At one point Churchill is described considering how to defeat the Nazi’s clothed only in a red (I think) silk robe ornamented with Chinese dragons and other motifs. Can this be true!! Did Chinoiserie comfort and beauty help us defeat fascism?
Well, a quick google search reveals that Churchill did indeed wear silk robes. Churchill’s Private Secretary recalled him in the bunker in a blue silk robe of “heavily brocaded silk and snakeskin slippers”. Additionally George McKee Elsey, an aide to Harry Truman, recalled Churchill staying at the White House in 1945 in a silk robe. A few other wartime diplomats recall the silk robes too but not the specific Chinese-ness of them. Still, I like to think that Winnie plotted the defeat of Der Fuhrer shrouded in a bit of Chinoiserie as the bombs fell on London….sadly I don’t think of a photo exists of the great man draped in his silk chinois finery…and can you imagine that arse Adolf in a Chinoiserie robe!!
Swann and Edgar in Piccadilly; a department store. I bought a suit there for £8; so expensive! We didn’t have many clothes and we had no nylons unless you knew Americans. Before that I think we had stockings made of stuff called rayon. They were 1 shilling and 11 pence and if you had silk it was 2 and 11. I remember my first Christmas present from Major Jacob was 2 pairs of silk stockings and my aunt was horrified because it wasn’t proper. If she’d known him – he was the most austere – he was feared by all the young officers and by everyone else except me. He was the brightest chap in the cabinet office. General Ismay (?) was the head of the team and he became Lord Ismay. He gave me a photograph – that was me with my general in Berlin – Neville Brownjohn – that would be 1947.can you read that?