#And I missed both toddy and onyx :(((((( man.

[3point14a]

hello guys, it's your boy here to say I didn't make an onyx gift because all the time online I spent today was at the storage room of my workplace which DOES have internet. I don't expect to be forgiven of course /j

[hysydney]

Now you see it, now you see it again

Pt 9: …of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Fabrics for women’s clothes became elaborate during the ‘20s. With the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in the early part of the decade, enthusiasm for Egyptian art influenced  patterns on fabrics, and the use of beading, sequins and crystals.  Accessories reflected the impact of egyptology as well, such as snake bracelets worn on the upper arm. The growing awareness too of Chinese and Japanese culture was reflected in fashion, with kimono inspired stylings, prolific use of colour, and embroidered silks (note to self - chinoiserie coat next).

Phryne wears the autumnal-toned jacket in several episodes over the first two seasons. It has both Egyptian and Japanese influences and is distinctly of the era. 

For Essie Davis, it was one of her favourite Phryne Fisher pieces:

Another one of my favourite costumes is what I wore on the very first day of filming - to meet Murdoch Foyle (Phryne’s younger sister’s murderer) in jail. It was black silk pants with a little black top in sheer black chiffon with beading and a fantastic antique short-sleeved jacket in an orange, gold and black design that reminds me of a Margaret Preston painting.  I’ve worn it on a few occasions through both series, right up to the Christmas episode...

Some deco wallpaper on either side of the autumnal jacket echoing the influences of the time:

The jacket is a black kimono-style, worn open, with wonderfully wide short, bell-shaped sleeves. Heavily embellished with gold, silver and bronze brocade and metallic thread work, it has bold scallop and papyrus motifs, and is lined with pale green silk.  Phryne wears it with black pants and sheer black blouse, jet beads and green or onyx drop earrings, and black beret when outdoors. 

Anything with such autumnal colours summons images of the most anthologised poem (so I read) in the English language - Keats’ To Autumn.

Keats’ autumn is a time of late warmth and plenty, despite its hovering on the threshold of winter’s desolation.  

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 

It celebrates the beauty of shortening days, of late blooms, of brown fields, of the last lingering touches of the sun before everyone retreats to their fires and hot toddies.  Autumn is not, according to Keats, a time to think bitterly on the passing of time but to the seasonal cycle which softens the edges of winter’s approach. In time, spring will come again, the fields will grow again, and the birdsong will return. There is acceptance of progress and change.

Phryne’s jacket not only acknowledges distinctly autumnal tones, but the episodes in which it features reflect Keats’ theme of valuing letting go and looking forward.

The jacket makes its first appearance in Death by Miss Adventure (S1 Ep10) when Phryne is at home, in the midst of investigating a gruesome murder at a local factory.  She breezes into the kitchen where she receives the morning’s mail.

Her mood changes dramatically as she reads the letter from Murdoch Foyle, something she does in the privacy of her boudoir.

’Miss Fisher, I realise you have taken steps to ensure I remain at His Majesty’s pleasure indefinitely. We did not end our last meeting on the best of terms, but I write in the hope that you will agree to meet with me. You want the truth, above all else, and I want my freedom. So I have a proposition that may be of mutual advantage. 

Yours, Murdoch Foyle.’ Phryne blames herself for Janey’s disappearance, seeing only endless winter in the circumstances surrounding it, unless she can make a deal with Murdoch Foyle to understand what happened. 

When Keats thinks about the flowers of spring and summer, he’s thinking about the seeds that are being dropped to bloom next year, and not what happened last year. 

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees …

Phryne has an incredible ability to mask her feelings, to disguise pain, to turn around and behave divergently.  Superficially, to those around her, there has been no painful reminder of the past that continues to gnaw at the core of her being. And this is how she behaves immediately after reading Foyle’s proposal. She dons beret and sunglasses and heads back to the murder scene, where she engages in light banter with Jack.  He discourages her involvement in the case, she doesn’t share her placement of Dot inside the factory.

Jack: You again, Miss Fisher. What are you doing here? 

Phryne: I was just passing. 

Jack: I see the threat of a trespass charge hasn’t discouraged you. 

Phryne: If I were easily discouraged, you would have frightened me off on our first crime scene. 

Jack: OUR first crime scene? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you agreed to leave this one to the police. 

Phryne: You’re never wrong, Inspector. Just a little behind the times. Roderick Gaskin won’t be pursuing this complaint. 

Jack: Ah! If you’re good, I’ll keep you informed. 

Phryne: Give my regards to the tea lady.

Her parting comment gives us a gorgeous view of the jacket and accessories.

The death at the factory has both professional and personal connections for Mac. Whilst she shares the professional, she doesn’t share the personal.  This complicates the conversation Jack and Phryne have with her later.

Delicious pairing of autumnal colours, non?

And this is despite Phryne’s sharing her receipt of Murdoch Foyle’s letter with her friend. The external setting for this conversation provides a beautiful contrast to the autumnal colours of the coat - autumn and the anticipation of new growth, new greenery. Keats would approve.

Phryne: Murdoch Foyle wrote to me. 

Mac: Why? Has he confessed? 

Phryne: No. But he has a proposition. He wants me to visit him at the jail. 

Mac: Tell me you’re not going. 

Phryne: Perhaps he wants to tell the truth about what happened to Janey. 

Mac: Or perhaps he’s just toying with you. The man is evil. You’ve made sure he’s locked up. Now just forget he ever existed. Stay away from him, Phryne. Mac advises her, like Keats, to look forward rather than back.  

This is a time too where Mac could have shared her own anguish with Phryne as her oldest friend, that she has lost a lover in Daisy Murphy, not only a patient at the factory. But she doesn’t. Despite her advice to Phryne in relation to Foyle, she harbours her own wintery discontent.  

Phryne remains in her autumnal outfit to confront Foyle, torn between the advice from Mac to move on, and from Mr Butler to persevere.  

Foyle sees opportunity, expressed in Keatsian terms, as the prospect of future summers:

Foyle: Tell me, what kind of evening is it?

Phryne: One that you’ll never see.

Foyle: Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I think you might be prepared to help me see the sunshine again.

Phryne is rent.  She wants resolution, she wants the knowledge that only Foyle can provide, but she wants justice too - justice for her sister, absolution for the guilt she unjustifiably feels.

Foyle lays down his terms making his bargain in relation to the passage of time and human mortality.

Foyle: My time is precious, Miss Fisher. We both have something the other desires. What if I told you what happened to your sister? … Ohh. I do have something you want after all. 

Phryne: What would that cost?

Foyle: My freedom. You rescind your objection to my parole and I will tell you everything.

Phryne: You’d come straight back here.

Foyle: Not if I’m innocent.

Phryne: There’s only one way out of here for you. Confess what you did to my sister and hang for it. Otherwise, stay here and rot in hell.

Foyle: My day of resurrection will come, Phryne Fisher, whether you help me or not. 

Stalemate. And a hint of what’s to come. Foyle then fades into the mists of the prison as Phryne moves onwards, outwards, to the sunshine.

And just to complete the seasonal cycle in this episode, we have the beautiful scene where Phryne reveals her true feelings to the one person she absolutely trusts and to whom she is more open than to anyone else. Jack is reassuring, affirming, appropriately by an open fire, with the bronze surrounds glowing in the firelight:

Jack: I’m not going to ask what you plan to do, because I already know. 

Phryne: How? 

Jack: I had a telephone call this afternoon from the Governor of City Gaol. 

Phryne: You are well connected. 

Jack: He told me you paid Murdoch Foyle a visit. 

Phryne: He offered me a deal. Information about Janey’s death. 

Jack: In exchange for…? 

Phryne: Securing his release. 

Jack: I hope you’re not asking for my help. 

Phryne: But I am. Tell me not to place myself above the law. Not to let a killer loose because I want the truth. Tell me there’s a greater good than my own need to know. 

Jack: You never listen to me, anyway. 

Phryne: Humour me. 

Jack: You know what to do.

The jacket reappears, briefly, in S2 Ep2, Death Comes Knocking.  Phryne wears it for the first seance she hosts on behalf of her Aunt Prudence. 

In this episode too, we have those being locked in the past, scouring years gone by for answers, unable to move on.

Freddy Ashmead is trying to regain memories of the end of a battle at Pozières’ where Aunt Pru’s godson, Roland, was killed.  Freddy is endeavouring to move forward, but cannot. He, like those to whom Keats appeals, is in anguish:

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? 

Aunt Pru arranges the seance to assist Freddy discover the past and accept a bravery award for his actions.  It does little apart from disturbing him further.

The jacket here not only reflects autumnal tones and the need for those involved in the search for answers to progress, but its tones are reminiscent of WW1 battlefields and diggers’ khaki uniforms.

And could it be that someone else is, again, dressed to tone?

The jacket appears finally in a transition to winter, in the Season 2 finale, Murder under the Mistletoe.  Again there are unresolved conflicts from the past that haunt the present.   Cold and snow shroud death and sorrow linked to an old mining accident that killed many men and lead to the murder of a child.

Phryne’s jacket blends beautifully with the mantlepiece decked with Christmas stockings, including one for Laurie, a young boy supposedly lost in the mine tragedy.  Memories and their significance not only surround the mine accident but people and relationships resulting from it. Maintaining links to the past or moving on are in counterpoint.

Phryne: Who's Laurie? 

Aunt Prudence: Len always hung a stocking for poor Laurie. He was a little boy. The mine's youngest victim. 

Phryne: A child died that day? 

Aunt P: He begged his father to let him go with him for a Christmas treat. I can assure you, if Edward had known that he was there, he would not have allowed it. 

Vera: Neither would I. 

Phryne: Did nobody else survive the cave-in? 

Aunt P: Please, Phryne! It's why Nicholas and I wish to sell the land and the mine - to erase those dreadful memories. 

Vera: Erase the memories? As if Isobel and I could ever forget Mitch. Of course not. I-I'm so sorry... 

Isobel: If you didn't want to forget Dad, why did you marry Nicholas? 

Moments later and Vera’s wail is heard upstairs and Phryne, Mac and Dot contemplate her death by statue.  Then a knock at the door...

Phryne opens it to Hugh and our Jack as drifts of snow float across the autumnal colours.  The force  is just in time to be with them. (!)

In considering the motive for Vera’s death, the significance of the evidence -  the statue of Rodin’s kiss and a love poem by Wordsworth - provides clues.

Jack: So either one of them could have set up the trip-wire.

Phryne: Nicholas could have found the poem and murdered Vera for revenge. 

Jack: And Quentin murdered her because of... thwarted love? 

Phryne: That would do it, especially if it's been thwarted long enough. 

An exchange of knowing looks when it comes to extended frustrated phrack:

And just to prolong the trope, still in teamed autumnal tones, Jack and Phryne practice a little thwarting of their own:

Jack: I don't want anyone taking chances, so lock your door. 

Phryne: But, Jack, if I lock my door, nobody could get in. 

Jack: It's too great a risk, Miss Fisher. Lock it tight. Goodnight.

The final lines of Keats’ poem are particularly moving as he entreats the reader to consider the music of autumn rather than wish for the songs of spring.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 

He describes the music of the birds’ songs as they leave for their winter migration. In Keats’ final verse there is an understated sense of inevitable loss but an acceptance too of the human condition. 

And could it be more apt for our pair?

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.