Mrs. Boothby’s Morning Ritual

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today is Tuesday and we are in the kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve, except on Tuesdays, every third Thursday of the month and occasionally after a big party. That is when Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman*, comes from her home in Poplar to do all the hard jobs. Edith is grateful that unlike her previous positions, she does not have to scrub the black and quite chequered kitchen linoleum, nor polish the parquetry floors, not do her most hated job, black lead the stovetop. Mrs. Boothby does them all without complaint, with reliability and to a very high standard. She is also very handy on cleaning and washing up duty with Edith after one of Lettice’s extravagant cocktail parties. There is only one drawback with Mrs. Boothby, and that is her morning ritual.

 

Setting out her things for baking, Edith hears the familiar sounds of Mrs. Boothby as she climbs the service stairs of Cavendish Mews: her footfall in her low heeled shoes that she proudly tells Edith came ‘practically new from Petticoat Lane’ and the fruity cough that comes from deep within her wiry little body.

 

“Morning dearie!” Mrs. Boothby calls cheerily as she comes through the servants’ entrance door into the kitchen.

 

“Morning Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies as she gathers canisters from the dresser.

 

“Baking already dearie?” the older woman asks, eying the ingredients as they start to fill the deal kitchen table in the middle of the room. “I’m not late am I?”

 

“No, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies with a sigh as she spreads the items out sparsely and then turns to get a few thigs she doesn’t need for the baking to clutter the end of the table. “Just making an early start.”

 

“Well, just let me rest me weary bones a minute before you start, Edith love!” Mrs. Boothby bustles over to the corner of the table not yet occupied by clutter and drops her beaded bag territorially with a thud before moving the Windsor backed chair to the warm spot between the stove and the table. “I’m parched after me trip up from Poplar! Should’ve seen the traffic at Tottenham Court Road this mornin’! Quite bunged up it was! Now, I’ll just sit ‘ere and ‘ave a reviving cup of Rosie-Lee** and a fag before I get started.”

 

Edith, with her back to Mrs. Boothby, shudders almost imperceptibly. How she hates the older woman’s habit of smoking indoors. When she lived with her parents, neither smoked in the house. Her mother didn’t smoke at all: it would have been unladylike to do so, and her father only smoked a pipe when he went down to the local pub.

 

“Got the kettle on dearie?” Mrs. Boothby’s query breaks into Edith’s happy memories of her parents.

 

“Err… there’s tea in the pot, Mrs. Boothby,” she replies distractedly, indicating to the pot on the table covered with a pretty knitted cosy.

 

“Oh! Splendid!” Mrs. Boothby enthuses as she takes a Delftware cup and saucer off the dresser.

 

“Although it may be a bit stewed,” Edith adds as afterthought.

 

“Oh I don’t mind a good, strong Rosie-Lee. If I can stick a spoon up in it, all the betta! Got any of them nice ‘Untley and Palmer breakfast biscuits to go wiv me Rosie-Lee?”

 

Sighing because she knows it will hold up her baking, Edith can do little to refuse the old char as she has no doubt that the sprightly eyed woman has already spied the tin on the bench. Reaching over, she hands it to Mrs. Boothby’s welcoming hands.

 

“Ta!” she says. “Lovely.” She pours herself a cup of tea, sticks a biscuit between her teeth and then starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she reaches over to the deal dresser and grabs the silver and cut glass ash tray Edith washed last night which she has yet to return to the drawing room where it is kept for guests who smoke. Lighting her cigarette with a satisfied sigh and one more of her fruity coughs, Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in the Windsor chair with her cigarette in one hand and the biscuit in the other.

 

Edith resigns herself, as she does every morning that the char comes in, to Mrs. Boothby’s morning ritual. And she tells herself, as she does every morning that the char comes in, that the sooner it begins, the sooner the ritual will be over, and then Mrs. Boothby will do all the unpleasant jobs she doesn’t have to do. Smelling the miasma of cigarette smoke and noticing the fine grey curls start to permeate the air, the maid crinkles up her nose in disgust. She casually goes over to the kitchen window and opens it.

 

“Lawd dearie!” Mrs. Boothby gasps. “Now don’t go openin’ that damn window! I’ll catch me death, so ‘elp me I will!”

 

Edith lowers the sash again, quietly and without complaint, knowing there is no arguing with Mrs. Boothby. She sighs again but thinks there will be plenty of time to air the kitchen after the char has gone into the drawing room to polish the floors.

 

Looking disconcertedly at Edith, the older woman remarks, “Are you sure you was born ‘ere in London and not in Scotland, dearie? Lawd I ain’t never met a girl so intent on cold London air! It’s un’ealthy it is! They’s fumes out there wot will kill you, y’know?”

 

*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

**Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a weekly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme chosen by a member of the group each week, and the image is to be posted on the Monday of the week.

 

This week the theme, “up-close/macro” was chosen by Andrew, ajhaysom.

 

I thought another scene using some of my 1:12 miniature collection would be a perfect choice for macro photography, however I have deliberately chosen a photograph that contains the smallest miniature I have as the centre not only of my photo, but also my narrative: a single cigarette with a red burning tip. The cigarette is a tiny five millimetres long and just one millimetre wide! Made of paper, I have to be so careful that it doesn’t get lost when I use it!

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The tea cosy, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in England.

 

The Huntley and Palmer’s Breakfast Biscuit tin containing a replica selection of biscuits is also a 1:12 artisan piece. Huntley & Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world\'s first global brands and ran what was once the world\'s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley & Son and Huntley & Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time. The design on the tin is Edwardian, and was so popular that it carried on through the 1920s. Other biscuit varieties had similar patterned tins in different colour ranges to aid those who were unable to, or couldn’t, read!

 

Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length.

 

Spilling from her bag are her Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The ashtray is also an artisan piece, made of cut clear crystals set in a silver metal frame. The tray has black ash in it, and the 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (no it isn’t affixed there) came with it. Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player\'s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today\'s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player\'s and two thirds of these were branded as Player\'s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player\'s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player\'s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands "Player" and "John Player Special" are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company). Swan Vestas is a brand name for a popular brand of \'strike-anywhere\' matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline ‘the smoker\'s match’ although this has been replaced by the prefix ‘the original’ on the current packaging. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced \'Swan wax matches\'. These were superseded by later versions including \'Swan White Pine Vestas\' from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened \'Swan Vestas\' in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s \'Swan Vestas\' had become \'Britain\'s best-selling match\'.

 

The Deftware cup, saucer and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which sits on the dresser that can be seen just to the right of shot.

 

Edith’s Windsor chair is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.

 

In the background you can see a very modern and up-to-date 1920s gas stove. It would have been expensive to instal at the time, and it would have been the cook’s or maid’s pleasure to cook on and in. It would have included a thermostat for perfect cooking and without the need of coal, it was much cleaner to feed, use and clean. It is not unlike those made by the Roper Stove Company in the 1920s. The Roper Stove Company previously named the Florence-Wehrle Company among other names, was founded in 1883. Located in Newark, Ohio, the company was once the largest stove producer in the world. Today, the Roper Stove Company is a brand of Whirlpool.

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