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From The Bookman.

My mental file on Cosmo Hamilton, up until recently, read something like this: brother-in-law of C. Aubrey Smith, wrote Who Cares?, not really named Cosmo Hamilton. I’d read other things about him — that he was a playwright, that he wasn’t actually C. Aubrey Smith’s brother-in-law for very long, etc., but those were the ones that stuck. And now I have something new to add: he took himself very, very seriously, or so The Rustle of Silk leads me to conclude. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing The Rustle of Silk leads me to conclude.

So. This is what The Rustle of Silk is about: Lola Breezy is in love with a politician named Fallaray. Her life’s ambition is to be his mistress

Lola is descended from a French courtesan called Madame de Brézé, but Brézé became Breezy, and the shop in Battersea where the Breezys live has been owned by their family for several generations.

Fallaray is super serious, and kind of intense — he’s got that whole “one honest man” thing going on — and he has a very attractive profile. He also has a wife, Lady Feodorovna — Feo for short — who is as English as her name is not, and married him on the basis of the profile and his tennis skills. They live on separate sides of the same house, Fallaray being all serious and idealistic, and Lady Feo leading a gang of eccentric aristocrats and wearing a lot of peculiar clothing.

Mostly the book is about how Lola kind of stalks Fallaray, but it’s also about politics, and the aftermath of World War I, and Lady Feo’s empty, pointless life.

The first item on Lola’s stalkerish agenda is becoming Lady Feo’s lady’s maid. This is helpful in two ways: it lets her get closer to Fallaray, and hanging out with Lady Feo and her friends helps her learn to behave like a lady. Also, Feo gives her some clothes she doesn’t want, and Lola wears them out around town on her nights off, pretending to be a war widow named — of course — Madame de Brézé. Eventually she manages to invite herself to a country house with gardens adjoining Fallaray’s and they meet and begin an affair.

Lola’s aim has always been to make Fallaray’s lonely life easier, and to strengthen him for his political work, but after meeting her, he decides he wants to leave politics altogether. It’s weird, because part of him knows that he’s just infatuated with her and hopes that eventually he’ll get to know her better and fall in love with her properly, but that’s mentioned once and never addressed again, and all of a sudden he’s going to Feo and asking for a divorce so that he can marry Lola and telling her that if he dies first he’ll wait for her before “crossing the bridge” or something.

Oddly enough, no one wants Fallaray to divorce Feo. Lola and Feo and Fallaray’s friend Lytham band together to convince him that it’s a bad idea, and he should continue his political career. Lola only ever planned on being his mistress, and Feo and Lytham seem to think that’s a good idea, so I’m not sure why Lola and Fallaray end up promising to see each other again when they’re dead, but that’s what happens. And then Lola goes home to the shop and works for her parents and starts hanging out again with her first and nicest suitor, budding poet Ernest Treadwell.

It was a pretty confusing ending, but it did explain the sense of impending tragedy that runs through the entire book. A little bit anyway.

Honestly, though, the Lola/Fallaray storyline doesn&