A Lazy Afternoon Spent on the Beach

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 however we have left the hustle and bustle of London, travelling southwest to a stretch of windswept coastline just a short drive the pretty Cornish town of Penzance. Here, friends of Lettice, newlyweds Margot and Dickie Channon, have been gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton. Margot, encouraged by her father Lord de Virre who will foot the bill, has commissioned Lettice to redecorate a few of the principal rooms of ‘Chi an Treth’. In the lead up to the wedding, Lord de Virre has spent a great deal of money making the Regency house habitable after many years of sitting empty and bringing it up to the Twentieth Century standards his daughter expects, paying for electrification, replumbing, and a connection to the Penzance telephone exchange. Now, with their honeymoon over, Dickie and Margot have finally taken possession of their country house gift and have invited Lettice to come and spend a Friday to Monday with them so that she might view the rooms Margot wants redecorating for herself and perhaps start formulating some ideas as to how modernise their old fashioned décor. As Lettice is unable to drive and therefore does not own a car, Margot and Dickie have extended the weekend invitation to one of their other Embassy Club coterie, Lettice’s old childhood chum, Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy who has tried to gain some independence from his family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street. Gerald owns a Morris*, so he can motor both Lettice and himself down from London on Friday and back again on Monday. After the retirement of the housekeeper, Mrs. Trevethan, from the main house to the gatekeeper’s cottage the previous evening, the quartet of Bright Young Things** played a spirited game of sardines*** and in doing so, potentially solved the romantic mystery of ‘Chi an Treth’ after discovering a boxed up painting purportedly by the artist Winterhalter****, long forgotten, and of a great beauty.

 

Now we find ourselves out in the elements, along ‘Chi an Treth’s’ own stretch of wild coast on a remarkably sunny day for this time of year. Dickie, Margot, Gerald and Lettice all headed out after breakfast to allow the bracing sea air help to clear their heads, addled by too much champagne the previous evening. Lettice suggested it and Margot added that there were some vistas that Lettice might enjoy painting. So, Lettice packed up her folio and her watercolours and has just finished painting a view of an old lighthouse standing on a rocky outcrop whilst Margot, Dickie and Gerald all fossick for seashells and other treasures washed up into ‘Chi an Treth’s’ own little cove.

 

“Incoming!” cries Gerald as a warning as he collapses dramatically onto the sand next to Lettice, sending a spray of golden granules up into the air.

 

“Oh Gerald! Must you?” cries Lettice in exasperation with an anguished expression, gently wiping sand off her watercolour of the lighthouse.

 

“Oh, what’s wrong my little Lettuce Leaf?” Gerald teases, pinching her dainty chin between his right thumb and forefinger.

 

“Don’t call me that, Gerald!” she scolds, her face crumpling even more. “We aren’t four anymore and you know how much I detest it.”

 

“Then tell me what’s wrong, darling.”

 

Lettice takes a deep breath of bracing sea air and looks around her. In the distance along the sparkling water’s edge, Margot and Dickie walk arm in arm, a pair of silhouetted lovers with their heads buried together conspiratorially, the conversation too distant to hear, but their body language giving a clue as to the sweet nothings and giggles being shared between them. The sun shines in the partly cloudy sky overhead and gulls caw and screech as they sail on the breeze, looking for food.

 

“Oh it’s just my head, Gerald, that’s all.”

 

“Ah-ah!” he tuts, wagging a warning finger at her. “You had no pity for me at breakfast.”

 

“That’s because you were being a sulky pillock this morning.”

 

“I had every right to be!” Gerald defends, settling back on his elbows into the soft dry sand. “I had a sore head. I still do.”

 

“You were rude about Mrs. Trevethan again,” Lettice points out. “Which was unfair. I don’t know why you’ve set against her. She’s a harmless old woman.”

 

“I think she’s a Cornish witch, and she has you in her thrall, especially after that story about the Rosevear sisters this morning.”

 

“Oh wasn’t it thrilling, Gerald?” gushes Lettice. “So romantic and tragic.”

 

“If a bit fanciful,” Gerald replies with doubt in his voice. “Like any local piece of folklore.”

 

“Well, I thought it was beautifully sad, even if you don’t.”

 

“Oh, I’m just saying that you should take what that old woman says with a grain of sand, is all, darling.”

 

“Don’t you mean a grain of salt, Gerald?” Lettice asks, looking across at her friend.

 

“Considering we’re on the Cornish coast,” He picks up a fistful of sand and allows it to pour from his enclosed fingers like an hourglass. “I think sand is more appropriate.” He smiles at Lettice.

 

“Oh you!” She gives him a friendly push before sinking back a little into her sand pillow.

 

Gerald sits up and looks at Lettice’s painting as it leans against her emerald green leather folio with its golden brown marbled lined interior. “I say,” he remarks, looking out across the water to the lighthouse and comparing the watercolour with the real view. “This is really rather good, Lettice.”

 

“You sound surprised, Gerald.” she replies. “You’re the one who keeps telling me I could do worse than apply for the Slade School of Art*****.”

 

“And so you could.”

 

“Oh, I don’t think I want to go to all that bother.” She yawns quietly, not bothering to cover her mouth as she lolls back against the sand. “Besides, I also don’t want some tutor telling me how to paint. Painting is an individual and unique experience, not to be dictated to by others who think they know better.” She looks at Gerald, who is watching her intently, listening to every word she says. “And now my interiors business is finally taking off.”

 

“Until Sadie marries you off at the Hunt Ball.”

 

Lettice’s eyes narrow. “I should throw sand in your face for that remark!” she quips.

 

“But you won’t, because you love your Gerry-werry to much to hurt him,” Gerald replies in a babyish voice. Clearing his throat, he then continues in a normal tone, “Plus you don’t want to get on my bad side and find yourself stuck in the wilds of Cornwall when I refuse to motor you back to London.”

 

“I don’t know,” Lettice muses, looking up into the blue sky spattered with fast moving white roiling clouds. “There could be worse places to find myself stuck.”

 

“Like ‘Uddersfield,” remarks Gerald in a mock Yorkshire brogue.

 

“Like Huddersfield,” agrees Lettice with a laugh. “After all, Cornwall is the home of the legend of King Arthur.”

 

“You’d miss London too much, darling. All the latest west end shows, the dinners in Soho,” Gerald looks seriously at Lettice. “The fabulous frocks from Grosvenor Street. Somehow Lettice, I don’t think the Penzance Repertory, Mrs. Cornwall’s Ye Olde Arthurian Teashop and her side line in dressmaking can complete with The Palladium******, The Café Royal******* and…”

 

“And your frocks!” Lettice scoffs, completing his sentence for him.

 

“Exactly.” Gerald replies with a satisfied sigh.

 

“You really are an awful snob, Gerald.”

 

“Thank you darling.” he sighs with satisfaction. “When you are as well lineaged as I am, yet practically destitute, what is there left to be but a snob? Anyway,” he adds, leaning over and picking up Lettice’s painting and glancing at the others carefully tucked into her portfolio’s interior. “All I was saying was that I think you should consider painting murals as part of your interior designs. Other designers do, and you have the talent, which some of them don’t.”

 

“Maybe,” Lettice muses with a sigh, repossessing her painting and putting it back next to her watercolours.

 

The pair sit back in companionable silence for a little while, basking in the dappled sunlight with their eyes closed until Lettice breaks it.

 

“Do you really think it’s a Winterhalter?” She gazes back over to Dickie and Margot, now ambling slowly back across the beach towards she and Gerald.

 

“Well,” Gerald sighs, sitting up and following Lettice’s gaze. “Dickie certainly seems to think so: especially after that story spun by that old Cornish witch about the young and beautiful Miss Rosevear.”

 

“And tragic,” Lettice adds.

 

“And tragic.” Gerald concedes.

 

“I do wish he wouldn’t get his hopes up. He’ll be crushed if it turns out not to be.”

 

“Too late, darling. I’d say all Dickie sees when he looks into the face of the younger Miss Rosevear are the pound signs.”

 

“Surely you don’t mean?” Lettice begins, turning to her friend with wide eyes.

 

“Obtain a young heiress, or sell a great master.” Gerald replies prosaically.

 

“But Margot is an heiress. Just look at all the money Lord de Virre has spent on fixing up ‘Chi an Treth’. Electrifying such an old house wouldn’t have been cheap, never mind the plumbing and the telephone.”

 

“Since when have you ever known Dickie to live within his, or someone else’s means, darling? He’s just like his father, or my father for that matter. None of them can live within their means, and as soon as they get hold of any money, it’s spent. Margot may have brought a sizeable dowery, but its not enough to line the empty vaults of the Marquess.”

 

“But Dickie said only this morning after breakfast that he would bring it back with them to London to take to Bonhams******** for authentication by an expert.”

 

“You mark my words, darling,” Gerald taps his nose in a knowing way with a sad smile. “The moment Dickie gets confirmation that it is a Winterhalter, Miss Rosevear’s fate will be sealed and she will never return to ‘Chi an Treth’.”

 

“Oh that is sad!” Lettice remarks.

 

“What’s sad, darling?” Marot asks, collapsing onto the picnic rug next to Lettice, weighed down by the picnic basket carefully packed by Mrs. Trevethan earlier in the day.

 

“Oh, nothing Margot.” she replies with a false joviality in her voice.

 

“We were just saying that it’s a shame we have to return to London tomorrow.” Gerald quickly chimes in, saving Lettice any embarrassment at trying to think of a story on the fly.

 

“Well, you can always come back,” Margot says with a friendly smile. “I’m so glad this place has cast its spell on you two, like it has on Dickie and I.”

 

“You can come and go as you please,” Dickie adds. “Treat the place as your own. You know there’s a train from London to Penzance, Lettice. You can always come down and Mr. Trevethan can pick you up from the station in the pony trap.”

 

“Anyway Lettice,” Margot continues. “You’ll have to come back soon to begin the redesigns to the drawing room, dining room and the reception hall. Have you had any ideas yet? I can’t wait to hang Miss Rosevear in her rightful place in my newly painted and papered, modern, drawing room.”

 

“Yes, of course, Margot darling.” Lettice says with a painted smile on her lips as she looks over at Dickie and wonders whether Gerald’s wry observation of his motives is correct.

 

*Morris Motors Limited was a privately owned British motor vehicle manufacturing company established in 1919. With a reputation for producing high-quality cars and a policy of cutting prices, Morris's business continued to grow and increase its share of the British market. By 1926 its production represented forty-two per cent of British car manufacturing. Amongst their more popular range was the Morris Cowley which included a four-seat tourer which was first released in 1920.

 

**The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.

 

***Sardines is an active game that is played like hide and go seek — only in reverse! One person hides, and everyone else searches for the hidden person. Whenever a person finds the hidden person, they quietly join them in their hiding spot. There is no winner of the game. The last person to join the sardines will be the hider in the next round. Sardines was a very popular game in the 1920s and 1930s played by houseguests in rambling old country houses where there were unusual, unknown and creative places to hide.

 

****Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805 – 1873) was a German painter and lithographer, known for his flattering portraits of royalty and upper-class society in the mid-19th century. His name has become associated with fashionable court portraiture. Among his best known works are Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855) and the portraits he made of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1865).

 

*****Established by lawyers and philanthropist Felix Slade in 1868, Slade School of Fine Art is the art school of University College London and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the United Kingdom’s top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as a department of University College London's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Two of its most important periods were immediately before, and immediately after, the turn of the twentieth century. It had such students as Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer.

 

******Located on Argyll Street, London, in the famous area of Soho the London Palladium Theatre started life as The Palladium in 1910. The theatre holds 2,286 seats. Of the roster of stars who have played there, many have televised performances. Between 1955 and 1969 Sunday Night at the London Palladium was held at the venue, which was produced for the ITV network. The show included a performance by The Beatles on 13 October 1963. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the increasingly hysterical interest in the band. Whilst the theatre has a resident show, it is also able to host one-off performances, such as concerts, TV specials and Christmas pantomimes. It has hosted the Royal Variety Performance forty-three times, most recently in 2019. In March 2020, the venue closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on the theatre industry, but reopened over four months later on 1 August 2020.

 

*******The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.

 

********Established in 1793, Bonhams is a privately owned international auction house and one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. It was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son & Neale.

 

Beautiful as it may be, this picturesque pastime on the beach may not be all it seems, for it is in fact made up of miniatures from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Renown in miniature collectors’ circles for making miniature books that you can actually read, the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe did not make books exclusively. He also made other small pieces like this artist’s portfolio. He did several different types of portfolios including this nautically themed one which contains four watercolour paintings which slip in and out of their marbled paper housing. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make these miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago and through his estate courtesy of the generosity of his daughter and son-in-law. This was the first piece I bought from his estate. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The box of watercolours, paint brushes and black paint box all come rom Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.

 

The shells scattered about on the sand are miniature shells I have collected from Apollo Bay and Brighton Beach over various visits with friends.

 

The sand that is spread about is in actual fact Très Or Sucre Or (golden sugar) imported from France which was a gift to me from a dear friend a few years ago. Too beautiful to stir into tea, I have used it numerous times for different photographic purposes.

Done