Full dress

I was determined to get that petticoat finished in time to take it to last night's rehearsal along with the dress; and I did, even though 'twas brillig and I was still hemming madly. I do, however, have a little confession to make about that petticoat; let it serve as an object lesson in why you should never make anything in a mad rush. The layers are in the wrong order.

This does not actually matter. The net is deliberately cut a comfortable amount shorter than the other two layers, so it won't show whatever happens. The trimming on the main fabric is intended to show, but the fabric is so light and my stitching is so neat that nobody is going to be able to tell it's the wrong way round from any distance at all. But I did originally intend to sandwich the net between the main fabric and the lining... and I was in so much of a hurry that when I tacked the two gathered layers onto the lining, I put them on the wrong way round. I noticed once I'd started tacking, but by that time some of the gathers had come un-knotted (I always do double rows of gathers and knot the ends into place to keep the length correct), so if I'd taken out the tacking and turned it round I'd have had to re-gather part of it, and I was pretty sure I didn't have time. And, indeed, I wouldn't have done. I finished it with only about an hour and a half to spare before the rehearsal, in which there were several other things I needed to do, including, crucially, eat.

But it's done, and now I don't have to think about costuming till the next play (in which I've made it clear that I'm not going to have a role, not even one that just requires reading, because rehearsals take a lot of time, and the script-monkeying and costuming on their own are plenty). And, since everyone else has been bringing costumes for quite a while and now Alice has got her full one, I thought it was about time I joined in; so last night I did actually show up as Lewis Carroll.

For a Victorian bloke, Lewis Carroll is surprisingly easy. He was habitually clean-shaven. I was expecting to have to find myself a beard, or, at the very least, a magnificent pair of sideburns (it would not have been the first time I've worn those; Ardsley Wooster required them, and I made my own pair). But no, he did not go in for the whole Victorian facial hair thing in the least, so if you find a photo of him you get quite an Oscar Wilde kind of vibe. Wavy hair and all.

I do not have wavy hair, but that's fine, because I also don't go out without a hat, and being Lewis Carroll is not going to alter that. I had been vaguely wondering what kind of hat he ought to wear (probably not the Terry Pratchett fedora, which is a truly fine hat but highly anachronistic); and then I got the answer almost by accident during a conversation with d'Artagnan. You see, there is a certain place where I have to go by a pseudonym; nothing sinister or untoward, but it's just that a particular person has got some very odd ideas into their head, and so I have to be someone else in order to keep a third party out of undeserved trouble. And I was talking about this with d'Artagnan and saying that I would very much like to be able to retire [X] and go by my own name. He agreed that this would be a great thing, but felt that, in the meantime, [X] should have their own hat.

That was such a d'Artagnan thing to say, and it also helped immensely. I don't quite understand why it should, but somehow it just feels much less terrible to be obliged to be [X] part of the time if [X] has a hat. And I decided that the particular kind of hat [X] needed was a straw boater...

...which would, of course, also be perfect for Lewis Carroll.

Of course, he needs a bit more than that. There's nothing I can really do about the trousers because of Sibyl (she potentially needs rapid emergency access at any time, so I can't wear formal trousers, much as I'd love to); on the other hand I am playing Mr Carroll from my mobility scooter, so the midriff area is not going to be very obvious, and my regular trousers are at least black and presentable. He also has a white shirt with cuff links, and, since I have a genuine Victorian pair, those are obviously the ones to wear. (They're green, so they probably contain arsenic, but since the pigment is mixed into the glass I don't feel unduly worried.) And then he has a bow tie; an ascot would also have worked, but what we normally think of as a standard tie these days didn't really come into fashion until the beginning of the 20th century, and even then it took quite a long time to catch on to the extent that it overshadowed other forms of neckwear. Anyway, I own a bow tie but not an ascot, and I'm not sure how to tie an ascot in any case, so a bow tie it is.

The shirt, sadly, is not quite right, but I no longer have my Mr Wooster shirt so there's no help for that. Victorian shirts had detachable collars and cuffs, and they fastened with studs rather than buttons. However, it is at least white (they did not go a whole bundle on coloured shirts - those did exist, but class distinction also existed, in a very big way, and if you were upper or middle class you wore a white shirt or else), and it has the cuff links, so it's not terrible.

Anyway, it's just as well I did show up in costume or I'd have been the only one who didn't. We appear not to be the sort of company who do dress rehearsals, as such. We just kind of add props and pieces of costume organically as rehearsals proceed. It's coming along nicely; people are remembering their lines a lot better, and the acting as a whole has gone up a level. At least a level, to be honest. Alice in particular is a whole lot better.

The performance is on 21 June. I'm finally starting to think we'll actually be ready!