Laura Freeman loves Kate Chopin’s ode to idling, “A Pair of Silk Stockings”, newly reissued by Penguin

THREE WEEKS UNTIL the General Election and judging by the nation’s book-buying habits we are leaning, if not lurching, to the left. Copies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are selling like hot communist cakes.

Nearly 300,000 of Penguin’s Little Black Classics – eighty miniature books marking the publishing house’s eightieth birthday – have been sold since their launch in February. There is Charles Darwin on butterflies, Dante on Hell and Charles Dickens on The Great Winglebury Duel. The millionth little black book has just been printed.

The most popular title by some way is The Communist Manifesto which is selling around 1,700 copies a week. It is even being stocked in Tesco.

What a tediously energetic title to chose from the eighty. Struggle, work, seize the means of production!

The eighty pence would be far better spent on Kate Chopin’s ode to idling: A Pair of Silk Stockings.

In this exquisitely written short story, a harried mother is given an afternoon’s reprieve. Mrs Sommers, a cash-strapped, time-poor, hard-working mother of four (an election manifesto’s model citizen) finds herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. The amount may sound modest, but the Louisiana-born Kate Chopin wrote her short stories for American Vogue in the 1890s when fifteen dollars went rather further than they do today.

Mrs Sommers knows the money should be spent wisely. New shoes for Janie, new shirts for the boys to replace their patched ones, a sailor hat for Mag – and enough left over for new stockings. ‘What darning that would save for a while!,’ she remarks.

She sets out for the shops firm of purpose, though a little faint and hungry. She has been so busy preparing lunch for the children she has forgotten to eat herself.

Arriving at the stocking counter, she rests her ungloved hand on the display of ‘soft, sheeny luxurious’ silks in light blue and lavender. She inspects each pair as if it were a diamond tiara. She leaves with a very small parcel and immediately retires to the ladies’ waiting room to change her old cotton stockings for a new silk pair.

She abandons her shopping list, indeed abandons the ‘laborious and fatiguing function’ of thinking.

She tries on new shoes – polished, pointy-tipped boots –  and models kid gloves in the glove department. She buys two high-priced magazines and strolls through town displaying their titles. ‘Her stockings and boots and well fitting gloves had worked marvels in her bearing,’ write Chopin.

Feeling hungry, Mrs Sommers stops at a restaurant with tables of spotless damask, shining crystal and soft-stepping waiters. She orders half-a-dozen Blue-Point oysters, a plump chop with cress, a crème-frappé, a glass of wine and a small cup of black coffee. She reads her magazines, eats her oysters and wriggles her toes with pleasure inside the silk stockings.

On a whim she buys a ticket to the matinee at the theatre next door where her neighbour shares her box of candy. When the music fades, it is like a dream has ended. Mrs Sommers waits on the corner for a cable car to take her home to darning, washing, patching and cooking for four children.

It has been a perfect afternoon. Dawdling in shops, lingering over coffee, whiling away time with sweets and a play. Plans abandoned, duties forgotten. An Idler’s Manifesto.

A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin is published by Penguin, 80p.

Laura Freeman is a freelance writer and occasional idler www.laurasfreeman.com @LauraSFreeman