In Serious Vein by Laura Morland
Author: Laura Morland
Publisher: Adrian Coates
Source book: What Did it Mean? by Angela Thirkell (Barsetshire #23)
Although we meet the gifted authoress (her description not mine) in Angela Thirkell’s very first Barsetshire novel (published in 1933), it’s another 20 books or so before we are given a title for any of Mrs Morland’s oevre.
In Serious Vein is about a Russian who tries to give Madame Koska, the fashionable dressmaker, an injection so that he can steal her new season’s models, but he won’t get away with it.
One of Mrs Morland’s books has been dramatised with considerable success. Its central scene being the workroom of the famous Madame Koska, where a minion of a rival firm got taken on as a bodice hand, and made notes on advance season models. But a judgement fell upon her when, in the handsome traveller for a French silk manufacturer, she recognised the lover she had robbed and left some years ago. How he also recognised her, the struggle in his breast between love and duty, how the honour of the dressmaking world got the upper hand, how he denounced her to Madame Koska, how Madame forgave her, how the mannequins struck (or as we say these days: went on strike) half an hour before Madame’s spring opening, how the minion went on and wore forty-eight frocks with such ravishingly grace that Madame Koska took £5,000 worth of orders in that afternoon alone: all this is too long and improbable to relate.
And then, there’s another book where Madame Koska’s best tailor turned out, very improbably indeed, to be an Austrian Grand Duke, fallen on hard times, but this did not stop him pressing his suit on Madame.
In Never Too Late, in which Lord Crosse (or Cross - Angela Thirkell’s books are very badly edited and characters don’t always have the same name) almost proposes to Mrs Morland, and she refuses him before he has a chance to try again, we discover that her first ever book was Dressmakers in Danger. But we never get any clue to the plot.
However, a Madame Koska plot where the Indian Ranee asks if she can come as a mannequin for a few weeks and turns out to be a Russian agent in disguise happened to be one of the late Lady Crosse’s (or Cross’s) favourite books. She read it when she was ill and particularly enjoyed the part where Ghandi’s agent disguises himself as a Russian agent and tries to kidnap the Russian agent who is disguised as the Indian Ranee and Madame Koska locks them both in the stockroom and they try to set fire to it but the wonderful detective knew they were going to do it so he had sprayed everything in the stockroom with a secret preparation that stops things getting burnt and luckily they both shoot each other [and if you think all that sounds improbable I think you are probably right], but sadly we don’t know the title of this book so cannot order it from Amazon or indeed any reputable book shop.
In Love At All Ages, the Duchess of Towers says she simply loves Mrs Morland’s Madame Koska books. Especially the one where the detective can’t find the clue to the Noseless Horror and Madame Koska knows the Horror must be hiding in the coal-cellar with his face blacked so that no one can see him ....and then Madame Koska finds footprints at the top of the cellar stairs, and they are bloody too... says young Giles Pomfret: “It’s just hectic”. Don’t let’s forget The Mannequin Mystery which Mrs Halliday kindly puts in Sister Heath’s bedroom when she comes to nurse Mr Halliday. Sister Heath is a great one for reading and she always reads Mrs Morland’s books, but believe it or not The Mannequin Mystery is new to her and she knows she will thoroughly enjoy it. Mrs Halliday has given the new Mrs Morland to Sister Heath, but she has kept the new Lisa Bedale for herself.
And finally in Three Score and Ten, the very last Barsetshire book, Roddy Wicklow tells us how much he loves Madame Koska books. There was one about a beautiful mannequin who spoke German like a native, and she’d just married a man in the 8th Army, so she got a job on Rommel’s household staff - never ask me how - and spied out all the secrets of the Afrika Corps. Wow! Who knew there was so much peril in the fashion industry?
Meanwhile, Mrs Morland is pondering the final chapters of her latest book, Death by Microdot. She hasn’t discovered how to rescue the beautiful mannequin from the clutches of the villainous salesman, who was fleeing from the police in a stolen motor car with his captive and the incriminating book of samples.
Also by Mrs Morland Horror in the Hat Shop (sorry - no plot is available for our delectation and delight).
Mrs Morland was also always threatening to write a book called Why I Hate My Children. Which she certainly did not. She took up writing in order to pay for her four sons’ expensive education, and somehow never stopped. Mind you, characters in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire are always reading Madame Koska novels and telling each other about the plots so we know they would all be tremendously disappointed if Mrs Morland were to retire.
However, under the nom de plume Esme Porlock (quite a nice man, but a one book man), Mrs Morland wrote a book, a Life of Molly Bangs, heavily, I imagine, based on Angela Thirkell’s own biography of Harriette Wilson.
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| Thanks to Vogue UK and Getty Images for both images |
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