Heinemann £14.99 pp302
The Earl of Petticoat Lane was Andrew Miller’s grandfather, Henry Freedman, and Miller’s account of his Jewish ancestors’ progress from poverty to prosperity, from East End to West End, is family history of the best sort, the subject matter vastly appealing, the writing intelligent and clear. As he takes us, with confidence and humour, through the various worlds of early 20th-century London, he reveals the courage and industriousness (as well as the high eccentricities) that the journey involved.
Miller has set himself no mean task in allowing his history such a broad sweep, for there are many stories here, layered and separated out with skill and precision. His portrayal of London’s early 20th-century East End Jewish community and its Polish and Austrian roots has a vivid eye for the right kind of detail. As he moves from the “full herring bar” of his grand-parents’ wedding reception to a scene in which Latvian and Romanian Jewish mothers dress their little daughters’ plaits with red, white and blue ribbons on Empire Day for the singing of Rule Britannia, one feels like a privileged observer in a distant land.
English and Jewish customs are fused beautifully: the local theatres’ productions of Yiddish versions of Strindberg and Shakespeare, put on to divert decent Jews from the evils of the West End, or Freedman and his wife-to-be courting in town with Henry’s poor sister Ida as chaperone and our young hero cheerfully serenading both women at once with the music-hall classic, If You Were the Only Girl in the World.
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The dodgy world of market trading between the wars is revealed in all its lurid glory. The teenage Henry pushes his barrow of underclothing and socks for miles from market to market, crying his wares among the “winkles and whelks, live and jellied eels, the kippered, chopped and pickled herrings, the cursing bagel ladies, the dead and living fowl, the dyed canaries, tame mice and bird warbler . . .” Such was the influence of the Jewish immigrants that even the Irish costermongers traded in Yiddish when required.
The precariousness of a way of life in which a few bad days could equal a family’s ruin is brought home forcefully. Hunger lurks menacingly throughout. The need for work and the desire to help his family necessitated Henry’s early withdrawal from school, despite his being awarded a full scholarship for future study. The sense of responsibility for his brothers and sisters’ economic welfare lasted all his life.
The Earl of Petticoat Lane also charts, in brief (excuse me), the history of England’s lingerie business, which was to make a rich man of Henry. This is all written, as it were, with a straight face, but makes a tantalising read. Here are details, for example, of the emergence of rayon’s cheap luxury and the clinging nature of 1920s fashions, necessitating more streamlined underpinnings. We complain now of the nanny state, but it is fascinating to learn that during the war the government actually ruled on how much trimming was or was not allowed on the nation’s smalls.
Henry’s own marketing skills were surprisingly contemporary and creative. When he was developing the Slenderella (“Fittingly Yours”) range in the 1940s, in response to the country’s longing for Hollywood glamour, he created undergarments modelled on those worn by Hedy Lamarr or Elizabeth Taylor, and used accompanying film tie-in promotional material.
Despite its sorties into different worlds, at the heart of this memoir looms the extraordinary figure of Miller’s grandfather, whom the author presents with a novelist’s sensitivity and power. Henry’s ingenuity, his thirst for success, his talent for friendship and family relationships, his compulsive letter writing, his cheerful disposition and his natural sense of self-belief are extraordinary, yet Miller gives equal weight to his few lapses. When, as a wealthy man, Henry promotes his loved and trusted chauffeur to manager of one of his underwear factories, the consequences are disastrous for all concerned. The author also tackles Henry’s middle-aged passion for a life of high society — complete with West End flat, charity balls with elephants, and hobnobbing with royalty — with the sort of understatement and good cheer that would have made his grandfather proud.
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Susie Boyt’s most recent novel is Only Human (Review £7.99). The Earl of Petticoat Lane is available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £13.49 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585