Well here we are back in the shop and we are ordering fancy cloths from the traveller's bunches. Well I am just looking on. The cloths are mainly the business suit variety, well toned, quietly confident having an aura of assurance. The shades, for that is what they were, just shades with some chalk stripe and herringbone and Prince of Wales checks, will be considered in greater detail in next week's post. When we came to a bunch of louder stripes, only one was chosen, for the Count.
The Count was a valued client who bought two suits a year from us. One was quietly business like and one was boldly striped. Both were double breasted. The bold suit was in subdued colours but broadly striped and had an air of, if not belligerence, at least self righteous indignation. He was on the portly side and exuded a faint aroma of cigars and was accompanied by a tall, thin young man with floppy blonde hair. The remaining feature was his method of payment. He paid by a Coutts & Co. cheque which he produced singly from an oyster silk envelope purse which hung around his neck beneath his jacket on a silken cord: altogether most memorable.
Most of the clients appeared to be rather portly. Certainly the ageing members of the clergy who graced the establishment had an air of settled peace and calm and waistlines that certainly did not reflect fasting and abstinence. However the odd bishop did seem to be made of sterner stuff and was usually accompanied by a young and quite athletic looking young priest.
It was the arrival of a visiting bishop to be measured in the fitting room which occasioned the banishment of Tommy Venn. Tommy was an excellent bespoke vest(waistcoat) maker who worked on the fourth floor with a group of journeymen tailors. He often came in to buttonhole the odd vest by hand. This is an art involving gimp, a kind of wirelike cord and fine silk twist. The gimp held the shape of the buttonhole and the silk twist was used to sew it in place. I have never seen it done by hand by anyone else. He was the master.
Tommy was a small man with a long body and short bow legs. He spoke with a west country accent and given the name Venn, maybe hailed from Dorset. I seem to remember there was a Diggory Venn in The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. However looking at gravestone records for the family name Venn by far the most entries are from suffolk and and only a few from somerset.
He was in his late seventies, had been a tailor in the army and as a result of some event at that time had shed all his hair owing to alopecia . There was not a tuft or whisp just a shiny pink dome. He always wore a hat outside. Inside off it went with a scratch of his head. He then sat cross legged on the bench and worked at his buttonholing. He was not swift or deft but quietly accomplished and the result was always immaculate. He complained that his eyes were going and he would have to retire even though he seemed to me to sew without looking. He was a fund of coarse tales and even coarser language.
With the bishop in the fitting room he had to be banished to the basement. He would then appear three minutes later saying the light was too dim, dump his work on the bench and in his words "bugger off". Then there would be a phone call upstairs when the coast was clear and back he would come, slide on the bench and finish the job.
The last I heard of him was in an accident. He was running to catch a bus which suddenly stopped and he landed on the back of it. He was concussed and, I think, died soon after. He was eighty years old. He remains in my memory to this day, a gnome like figure, folded on the bench, engrossed in the stitches, muttering gentle obscenities under his breath but always with a wink and a grin to me and an eye cast on the boss.
JL Feb 18 09:58
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