The Sad Story of Successful Sylvia Fordyce

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 are not at Cavendish Mews. We are not even in London. Instead, we are north of the capital, in the little Essex village of Belchamp St Paul*. Lettice met the world famous British concert pianist, Sylvia Fordyce last week at a private audience after a performance at the Royal Albert Hall**. Sylvia is the long-time friend of Lettice’s fiancée, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes and his widowed sister Clementine (known preferably now by the more cosmopolitan Clemance) Pontefract, the latter of whom Sylvia has known since they were both eighteen. Lettice, Sir John and Clemance were invited to join Sylvia in her dressing room after her Schumann and Brahms concert. After a brief chat with Sir John (whom she refers to as Nettie, using the nickname only his closest friends use) and Clemance, Sylvia had her personal secretary, Atlanta, show them out so that she could discuss “business” with Lettice. Anxious that like so many others, Sylvia would try to talk Lettice out of marrying Sir John, who is old enough to be her father and known for his dalliances with pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger, Lettice was surprised when Sylvia admitted that when she said that she wanted to discuss business, that was what she genuinely meant. Sylvia owns a small country property on which she had a secluded little house she calls ‘The Nest’ built not so long ago: a house she had decorated by society interior designer Syrie Maugham***. However, unhappy with Mrs. Maugham’s passion for shades of white, Sylvia wants Lettice to inject some colour into her drawing room by painting a feature wall for her. Thus, she invited Lettice to motor up to Essex with her for an overnight stay at the conclusion of her concert series at The Hall to see the room for herself, and perhaps get some ideas as to what and how she might paint it.

 

After agreeing to take Sylvia’s commission of a painted mural, Lettice and Sylvia are dining in Half Moon****, the Eighteenth Century public house in Belchamp St Paul where they sit in comfortable wooden seats either side of the large stone fireplace enjoying an apéritif before sitting down to dinner. The public house is decorated in the tasteful version of traditional country kitchen style which is fashionable, with comfortable mismatched cottage style chairs clustered around tables, throw rugs on the flagstone floor and a liberal scattering of silver knick-knacks along the fireplace mantle. Small clusters of local farmers populate the room, mostly gathered around the bar, and Lettice and Sylvia are the only women except for the publican’s wife who is kept busy pulling pints behind the bar. They are made even more conspicuous by Sylvia’s choice of outfit. She wears a pair of Oxford bags*****, accessorised stylishly with a pair of black patent leather heels, and a smart white silk blouse with a cross over frill. Released from beneath her over-sized brown velvet cloche, which hangs alongside her luxuriously thick half-length mink fur coat on a peg near the front door, Sylvia’s black dyed sharp bob sits neatly about her angular face. She wears no necklace or earrings, and her face is caked with a thick layer of white makeup. Her red painted lips the only colour afforded her in her entire outfit.

 

Sitting in her seat with a port and lemonade in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Sylvia observes as Lettice appraises her with alert eyes. “A penny for your thoughts, Lettice darling?” she asks.

 

“Hhhmm…” Lettice murmurs before sitting up more straightly in her seat, suddenly aware that she has been caught staring. “Oh! I was just pondering about you, Sylvia darling.”

 

“About me? Really?” Sylvia queries, arching a well-manicured eyebrow over her eye as she lifts her cigarette to her lips and draws upon it. “Why?”

 

“Well,” Lettice begins. “I was just thinking. If I am to paint a mural for you, Sylvia. I should very much like to know you a little better, so that I can paint something that truly reflects you, and your personality.”

 

“I’ve told you a little bit about my chequered past Lettice darling,” Sylvia replies, blowing a cloud of billowing smoke out of her mouth as she does. “I am a pianist, and was long before I was, unhappily married.”

 

“Yes, I know that Sylvia,” Lettice replies, sipping her own port and lemonade, screwing her eyes up thoughtfully as she examines Sylvia. “But I can’t help but feel that you are like an onion, with many layers, and that what you have shared is but the first of those.”

 

“How very intriguing.”

 

Lettice notices Sylvia shift ever so slightly in her seat, the movement suggesting discomfort at Lettice’s observations of her. “Perceptive I’d say, judging by your response, Sylvia darling.” Lettice corrects. “The woman who is before me is extremely talented, very forthright, fiercely independent, and is obviously used to getting what she wants. She sits fearlessly in a country pub, quite unruffled by the aghast stares and exclamations she gets from the men around her because she wears trousers just as they do.” Lettice watches as Sylvia smiles self-consciously as she brushes the knee of her right leg crossed over her left with her elegant left hand bearing its single aquamarine and diamond cocktail ring. Lettice is sure that beneath the mask of white makeup, Sylvia is blushing. “Who is Sylvia Fordyce?” Lettice asks.

 

Sylvia sighs heavily and shifts in her seat again. “Sylvia Fordyce is a confection of my own making. Talented, I shan’t deny. However, the woman who is so independent has not always been so. The woman you say gets what she wants has often been deprived of the most basic of human needs. The woman you say who wears trousers fearlessly, unafraid has been anything but in her past. Sylvia Fordyce is an enigma you shouldn’t even attempt to understand her, Lettice darling.”

 

“But how can I paint a mural for a, and I use your words Sylvia, a concoction or an enigma? I need to know a little more about the backstory of Miss Sylvia Fordyce if I am to take her commission on.”

 

“Is that a request, Lettice darling?” Sylvia asks.

 

“What do you think?” Lettice replies, sipping her drink.

 

“I’d say not.” Sylvia replies definitely, taking another deep draw on her cigarette. Blowing out smoke she takes another sip of her own drink before continuing, “And if I refuse?” Her right eyebrow goes up again, warily.

 

“I have other potential clients ready to fill my diary, Sylvia darling. I go to see Dolly Hatchett at her new residence in Queen Anne’s Gate******* next week.”

 

“Dolly Hatchett.” Sylvia’s dark eyes grow wide. “As in the wife of Charles Hatchett, the MP for Tower Hamlets***? That Dolly Hatchett?”

 

“The same.” Lettice affirms with a smirk.

 

“Well, you are full of surprises.” Sylvia emits a low growling laugh. “Fancy you decorating for a Labour MP. Your Conservative parents must be furious!”

 

“They were when I did my first interior designs for her house in Sussex, but now they don’t comment on my choice of clients any more.”

 

“That’s because your star appears to be on the rise, Lettice darling. Features in Country Life*********, Tatler********** and The Lady*********** is a sure sign of success, my dear.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“You know, you say that I’m used to getting my own way, and you’re right, but I think you’re far more used to getting yours, Lettice darling.” Sylvia points her finger with her manicured nail at Lettice.

 

“Perhaps Sylvia.” Lettice concedes. “So if that is true, my demand stands. I’d like to know a little more about you, so that I can create something beautiful that truly reflects you.”

 

“My story is a long one, Lettice.” Sylvia deflects.

 

“The night is young. We aren’t dining until eight. There is plenty of time.”

 

“It’s not a particularly happy story to enjoy before dinner.” Sylvia warns.

 

“I suspect that it isn’t. No woman can be as forthright as you are in a world of men without having to fight for your place in it. You wear your battle scars like a badge of honour.”

 

“A world of men.” Sylvia muses as she draws on her cigarette, making the paper crackle quietly as she does.

 

“I’m finding it to be the same, if it’s of any consolation.” Lettice admits. “I’m so often dismissed as the pretty viscount’s daughter who dabbles in design.”

 

“Hardly a cause for solace, Lettice.” Sylvia sighs, blowing out another plume of greyish white cigarette smoke thoughtfully. “Rather a tragedy really. Still, you have good lineage where independence and determination are concerned. You’ve probably been told this before by others, but you remind me very much of your aunt Eglantyne.”

 

“Aunt Egg?.” Lettice replies in surprise. “I didn’t know you were acquainted with her.”

 

“Oh yes,” Sylvia nods. “Being artists, albeit different types, she being a ceramicist and I being a musician, we do cross paths from time to time. She, Nettie and I used to meet at Gladys Caxton’s literary and artistic salons when she was still Gladys Chambers: if you can call a rather raucous and drunken gathering at her brother’s flat in Bloomsbury a ‘salon’.” Sylvia’s growling laugh burbles from deep within her, up her throat and out of her mouth.

 

“Well as it happens I have been told that I am like my Aunt Egg before,” Lettice replies proudly. “So, since you have started, why don’t you tell me a little more about yourself, Sylvia.”

 

“Is this the only way I will secure your commitment to paint a mural on my drawing room wall at The Nest, Lettice?” When Lettice doesn’t answer, Sylvia adds, “You drive a hard bargain, my dear.”

 

“It will be worth your while, Sylvia darling, I promise.”

 

“Very well,” Sylvia sighs. “But only under one condition.” When Lettice nods her ascent, she goes on. “You must not speak about what I am about to tell you with anyone except Nettie or Clemmie.” Sylvia says dourly, referring to Sir John Nettleford-Hughes, using his pet name used only by his closest friends from his younger days. “They are the only two people who know the truth of my history, and I only trust you with it because you are marrying Nettie.”

 

“I can be discreet.” Lettice assures her.

 

“I’m sure you can be, Lettice Darling. Very well.” Sylvia groans. She extinguishes her cigarette in the black ashtray on the table next to her glass and then withdraws another Craven “A” cigarettes*********** from her bright red and white packet, lighting it with a match. She puffs out a small burst of acrid smoke from between her teeth. “Where shall I begin?”

 

“You have said several times that you don’t pick the right men to love, and that you married unwisely,” Lettice begins tentatively, leaning forward over the large arch of stones of the fireplace. “Why don’t you start there?”

 

“To answer that question, my dear, we must go back even further to my childhood.”

 

“I’m listening.”

 

She settles back in her seat like a true performer: a storyteller before her enthralled audience. “My father was a haberdasher: Fordyce Fabrics along Uxbridge Road in Shepard’s Bush. We lived in a smart Queen Anne Revival house************ in Bedford Park************* with a bay window overlooking a neat garden and the street beyond - my parents and I with our cook, parlour maid and my nanny. My childhood was happy. My father always said that he had thread flowing through his veins, and he must have been right for two reasons: firstly, his haberdashery was very successful and secondly it can’t have been blood flowing to his heart, because he had a heart attack and died when I was just seven. It was then that my mother discovered why my father had no family to speak of. He was descended from a line of Huguenot************** weavers who fled France in the late Seventeenth Century*********** and set up business in Spitalfields****************. His real surname was Forvace, but he changed it to Fordice to overcome prejudice against foreigners – even though he was born in England along with many previous generations of the Forvace family – and build his business. His Forvace relations never forgave my father for changing his name, and they disowned him. My widowed mother was quite fragile mentally, and she certainly had no head for business, and she sold Fordyce Fabrics whilst still well and truly in mourning for my father to some swindlers at a grossly undervalued price. This led us before too long to be living in genteel impecuniousness.”

 

“That must have been hard for you, Sylvia.”

 

“It was. I was young and I didn’t fully understand why my nanny had to go. She was the first, and my mother learned rudimentary domestic skills from our cook before she too left along with our parlour maid. My mother began to sell some of our nicer possessions that might fetch a decent price at the pawnbrokers, but that could only go so far. Eventually my mother was forced to reach out for help to her only surviving close relation, her brother, my Uncle Ninian*****************, who was a wealthy, yet mean spirited, moneylender. Uncle Ninian never approved of my mother’s marriage to my father, feeling that she had married beneath her station, so whilst he did what he considered to be his Christian duty by providing for us, it wasn’t an easy life he made for us. My mother and I managed to get by with most of our house shut off to save on heating and lighting, her cooking our meals and a daily woman****************** who came in to help her when she needed it. We didn’t have money spare for treats like the annual trips to the seaside at Bournemouth, or new toys for birthdays and Christmas for me, like we did when my father was alive. Indeed, we were in such penury that as I grew out of my clothes as I became a young lady, my mother, who was a good seamstress, had to alter some of her own dresses for me to wear. I was always the ridicule of the other children at school because of my old fashioned and odd clothes, and I was only too pleased to leave school when I was fifteen.”

 

“How awful!” Lettice remarks as she sips some more of her port and lemonade. “However, one thing puzzles me, Sylvia darling.”

 

“And what’s that, Lettice darling?”

 

“Well, if you were in such straitened circumstances, how is it you came to be living with the von Nyssens, in Charlottenburg and attending the Universität der Künste, Berlin******************* when you met John’s sister? Clemance told me that is how you two met.”

 

“It’s true, Clemmie and I did meet because we were both staying with the von Nyssens, in Charlottenburg, and I was attending the Universität der Künste where I was studying piano. Going back to my rather unhappy childhood, my one consolation was my mother’s ability to play the piano. We had a very nice upright piano******************** which my mother loved to play, and thus it was never pawned by her, and her playing never cost us a penny. She was a very good pianist, and I imagine that it is from her that I have my aptitude for playing the instrument. My mother may not have had a mind for business, nor been very good at cooking, but she could use her piano playing skills to help bring in a little bit of extra money for us which we always seemed so sorely in need of to keep the bailiffs from the door. Living in Bedford Park, there were plenty of parents full of pretentions who wished for their bored and untalented children to learn to play the piano, so my mother gave lessons five mornings and three afternoons a week. She also tutored me most evenings, and what she discovered was that I had an aptitude that she felt, if nurtured properly, could make me into a concert pianist. Thus, one Saturday, she quite literally sewed me into her very best brown velvet dress and took me off to my Uncle Ninian’s house in Belsize Park. I must have looked ridiculous in a time of tightly fitting sleeves, sweeping hems with trains and cape like ornamentations over the bust and shoulder, sitting at my uncle’s piano dressed in tightly corseted velvet gown that was too short for me with old fashioned gigot sleeves*********************. However, Uncle Ninian saw beyond my ill fitting and old fashioned garb as he listened to me play a Mozart sonata. He agreed with my mother, that with my aptitude, under the right tutelage, I could perhaps make something of myself as a pianist. Thus, with his money behind me, I ended up at the von Nyssens and I met Clemmie. She became my first real friend I had had in years. She didn’t care that we came from such different backgrounds and upbringings, and she still doesn’t. We have stayed friends ever since, even if time passes by and we don’t see one another for long periods.”

 

“So that’s how you became a concert pianist then?” Lettice asks.

 

“Oh no my dear!” Sylvia laughs, blowing out another plume of acrid cigarette smoke. “It takes much more than an expensive musical education to become a concert pianist.”

 

“Oh yes, of course,” Lettice blushes with embarrassment at her rather naïve remark. “You would have had to work hard to gain a place in an orchestra.”

 

“Far more than that, Lettice, I needed the right connections. When my period at the Universität der Künste, Berlin came to an end and I left the von Nyssens, three years after Clemmie had gone back to London, rather than go home to Bedford Park as I presumed was going to happen, when I arrived back in the capital, I was instead taken to Belsize Park, back to my Uncle Ninian’s ghastly dark house. I wasn’t allowed even to see my mother, whom I had been corresponding with regularly whilst I was in Germany.” When Lettice’s face twists in a questioning way, Sylvia draws on her cigarette and goes on. “My Uncle Ninian‘s memory was long, and he still blamed his sister for marrying beneath her station for love. Thanks to Uncle Ninian’s investment in me, not only had I come back to London an accomplished pianist, but a cultured, elegant and fashionably dressed and pretty young woman. Uncle Ninian considered himself the creator of this silk purse from a sow’s ear, and he didn’t wish my mother to influence my chances of a good and advantageous marriage with her talk of romance. So, I became a prisoner in his home. He hired a companion for me who was far more a gaoler than a companion. She was a spinster who wore nothing but black and looked like a ghoul as she hung in the background wherever I went. She slept in the same room as me, and on the rare occasions I was allowed to go out when I wasn’t with Uncle Ninian, she had to accompany me. The only time I was ever free of her was when I was in the company Uncle Ninian. I wrote to my mother: copious piteous letters begging her to come and rescue me from their clutches, but she never replied.”

 

“Your letters were being intercepted?” Lettice asks knowingly.

 

“They were.” Sylvia nods sadly. “Not a one reached her as I was to later find out. I imagine they ended up on Uncle Ninian’s study fire and were turned to ashes in the grate. Once I was settled into my new prison of a home, Uncle Ninian began a regime of hosting dinner parties to which he invited older single men of his acquaintance: bankers mostly. Not a one was under forty, whilst I was twenty-three. My instructions were to play the piano for them, dressed in an array of sumptuous evening gowns and decked out in jewels Uncle Ninian would give my gaoler companion before each one of these awful evenings, and then take away again at the end of the night. I was to charm them into wanting to marry me, and I had no problem doing that.”

 

“And that is how you met your boorish and brutish brigadier?”

 

“No, my dear Lettice. Things were not that simple. My room at Uncle Ninian’s quickly filled with the cloying scent of hothouse flowers as bouquets and marriage proposals arrived. However, what Uncle Ninian hadn’t counted on was my friendship with Clemmie. When we were in Germany together, as young women of the same age, she opened my eyes to the stories in the romance novels she read, and she and Nettie’s parents had been a love match. I wasn’t going to settle for anything less, and I loathed all the old men paraded before me. Being trapped at Uncle Ninian’s, always on show at his soirées, I began to resent my ability to play the piano so well as the old leches he invited ogled me and pawed at me, all with the complicit agreement of Uncle Ninian. So, I began to play badly on purpose. However, I discovered that the only difference that made was with Uncle Ninian’s temperament. He started scolding me, and when that failed to change my attitude, he started to slap me and push me to the ground before proceeding to kick me, leaving my legs bruised.”

 

“That’s so terrible, dear Sylvia.”

 

“I did warn you that my tale was not a happy one, Lettice.” Sylvia cautions. “However, Uncle Ninian was smart. He kicked me where no-one would see my bruises, so the proof of his abuse, never surfaced. I do firmly believe that it is a mixture of his abuse and the pawing of those men during those years that has made me attracted to the wrong kind of man, and always older men,” She coughs awkwardly. “Well, mostly. However, Uncle Ninian’s mistreatment of me also taught me to be strong, to be forthright and not give in. I refused to accept a single proposal, and before too long, word spread about Ninian’s beautiful and talented, yet recalcitrant and intractable niece, and acceptances to his little dinner parties began to dwindle. Angry with me as he always was by that time, he finally played his trump card. He told me that he would give one more dinner party, and that I would accept one of the marriage proposals that came about as a result of it. If I failed to do so, he threatened to cut off my mother without a penny. I knew she couldn’t live on the pittance she earned from giving piano lessons in Bedford Park, so I agreed, under the one condition that I was allowed to see her.”

 

“Did your uncle agree?”

 

“To his credit, yes, Uncle Ninian was momentarily possessed by a skerrick of human kindness and it was arranged that I would be allowed to meet my mother for a half hour beneath the boughs of Shakespeare’s Tree********************** on Primrose Hill*********************** one Sunday afternoon in spring, escorted by him and my ghoulish gaoler companion.”

 

“And how did you find her?”

 

“She looked a lot older, and thinner, sadder, and generally genteelly tatty and unfashionable. I don’t think she owned a newer dress than those she had before my father had died even then. Nevertheless, her eyes sparkled and she smiled proudly when she saw what a beautiful young woman I had become since she had taken me to Uncle Ninian’s. It was at that meeting that I discovered that my mother had not received one of my letters since my return to London. Uncle Ninian told my mother about the ultimatum he had set for me. Before my companion, who was far stronger than her rangy figure portrayed, dragged my mother in one direction screaming, whilst I was dragged calling out to her back to our carriage by Uncle Ninian, my mother implored me not to comply and to live my life as I wanted, on my own terms. However, the hollow look of her underfed face haunted me in the nights after our assignation. I couldn’t bear to think of her cast out of our home in Bedford Park, a place of happy memories for her. It was the last vestige of the happy life she had once had, left to her. I couldn’t risk her losing that!”

 

“So you agreed to your uncle’s demands?”

 

“Yes, I complied to Uncle Ninian’s ultimatum, Lettice. However, what I didn’t know, couldn’t have known, was that by doing so, I began my slow escape into the freedom of the life I have today. By the time Uncle Ninian gave that final dinner party, all the wealthy bankers had long since dropped off, having no interest in a wilful girl like me, however pretty I may have been. Thus there were only older businessmen trying to build their profiles up in attendance, and rather than the dozens that were there initially, there were less than half a dozen in attendance that night. That left my pickings rather slim. However, one man amongst them dressed in white tie and tails wore his with particular flair. Although his hair was white, it theatrically long, rather in the style of the Pre Raphaelites************************. He turned out to be my saviour, or so, in my foolish girlhood, I thought.”

 

“Who was he?” Lettice breathes, enthralled.

 

“Josiah Pembroke was a theatrical agent: not a good one as it turned out, and I ended up being the only successful act, actually the only act at all, upon his books, and with no thanks or imput from him, but on the night of Uncle Ninian’s final dinner party he exuded success, and unlike any of the other men at those ghastly soirées , he was the only one who didn’t ogle me or try to caress my hands, or more. He was genuinely interested in my playing, and he obviously saw in me his theatre ticket stub to a life of wealth and comfort. A marriage proposal came and I accepted. We were married at St Peter's Church, Belsize Park************************* with only my mother and Uncle Ninian as witnesses.”

 

“But I thought you said that you married Marmaduke Piggott, a brigadier in the British army, Sylvia.”

 

“And so I was, but he was not my first husband. Josiah Pembroke was. The lack of wedding guests should have been a warning to me, but I was so anxious to flee the prison of Uncle Ninian’s house that I didn’t realise that I could be going from a frying pan into a fire. Josiah had no booked acts. He had no acts at all, and as I quickly discovered, all his friends were rather fey young men, many with what appeared to be rather dubious backgrounds, and all who regarded me with mistrusting eyes as they pulled my new husband out the door in the early evening into the London night, not returning from their escapades until the early morning light. And rather than the beautiful home, Josiah promised me, we ended up living in a rather squalid flat in Bloomsbury. Spending my nights alone in my bed, and my days with a crochety and grumpy man in a run-down flat where I had to do everything for us, including the cooking and the cleaning was not what I’d envisaged my marriage to be, nor what Josiah had promised Uncle Ninian. However, I did finally have my freedom, and it was because of where we lived that I ended up reacquainting myself with Clemmie and I met Nettie. The flat was not far from Gladys Caxton, then Gladys Chambers’ pied-à-terre**************************, and Gladys being Gladys, befriended everybody in the neighbourhood and she invited us to her ‘salons’. Whilst Josaiah was busy doing whatever he was doing with his friends in the dark London nights, with my new freedoms due to my neglectful husband, I began to become a known personality at different artistic parties throughout Chelsea. Soon I was performing, and I learned to love playing the piano again. I also learned about romantic love from men to whom I was attracted, and since my own husband was absent from my bed, I found love and companionship in the arms of other men. My mother’s final words to me, for they were her final as she died of bronchial pneumonia*************************** six months after I was married, reminded me to live my life as I wanted, and so I did.”

 

“And Josaiah didn’t care?”

 

“Josiah was too busy with his own shadowy and sordid life to pay much attention to me in the end, and nor did he care. To be honest, I have no idea why he married me since contrary to my initial thoughts, he didn’t take advantage of my talents to make money. Perhaps all he wanted was to have a woman to do for him that he didn’t have to pay: cooking his meals and washing his clothes. As I now know, my first husband was queer, my dear Lettice: as queer as his friends with the mistrusting eyes he went out carousing and rutting with, God knows where every night. I suppose they were jealous of me, and anxious that I should not spoil the rhythm and fun of their lives. Little did they know that they had nothing to fear from a girl like me who knew nothing about their way of existence. Within four years of our wedding day, Josiah Pembroke was dead. His body was found, bloodied and beaten to a pulp in the rather dark arches and passages of Adelphi Terrace****************************: a victim of foul play whether at the hands of the drunks and down-and-outs you still can find there, or as a result of an assignation gone wrong.”

 

“I’m truly sorry, Sylvia.”

 

“Oh I’m not, Lettice!” Sylvia laughs throatily before pausing. “Oh, forgive me my dear! I’ve shocked you. I’m sorry. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t wish to appear glib. I’m not happy that my first husband died, but like Brigadier Marmaduke Piggott’s death concluding my second ill-fated marriage, Josaiah Pembroke’s passing was the best thing for my first. I suddenly found myself a widow and as far as I was concerned, unfettered. Orphaned, with no family to speak of, as I wasn’t going back to Uncle Ninian’s in Belsize Park under any circumstances, for the first time in my life I was unconstrained and I could begin to do as my mother had implored me to do. I had rediscovered my love of the piano, and I was very good at playing it. I was young and pretty, and I knew it. This made me… now how do my American friends coin it?” Sylvia ponders for a moment. “I was… marketable. With Nettie and Clemmie’s help, I soon found the wonderful agent I still have now, an impresario who had me performing to packed houses firstly around Britain and then throughout Europe. Like now, it was a happy period of my life. I had freedom. I had money. I was independently wealthy. I married Marmaduke in 1911 not because I was obliged to, but because I thought, once again foolishly, that all women should marry if given the opportunity. You’d have thought that I’d have learned my lesson, wouldn’t you? However, by then I was in my early forties, so I was too old to have children – not that I wanted any – but that was a moot point between Marmaduke and I, and it spelled the beginning of our rocky and unhappy marriage. He drank, and God knows I did too, and still do.” Sylvia lifts her glass. “He was abusive, so I fought back by having affairs with equally unsuitable and usually married men, as tends to be my penchant. It’s taken me more than half a century of living, a controlling uncle and two abysmal marriages to work out that the only person I can truly rely upon is myself and as that is the case, I shall do as I please. Thus, how you come to find me the forthright and fiercely independent woman that I am. No more shall I be reliant upon a man, except for my own pleasures, even the ill-fated ones. My story may be a sad one, but please don’t feel sorry for me. In some ways, I am stronger than I might have been had my story been different, and as I said before, I am the happiest now that I have ever been. Whilst I may no longer be young or beautiful, I have my freedom, and I am independent and able to make my own decisions. I still have my talent, and enjoy playing the piano more now than I ever have. My select group of real friends, which I hope will now include you, Lettice darling, enrichen my life, which is a full and satisfied one.”

 

“Thank you Sylvia.” Lettice says after a few moments. “I certainly wasn’t expecting a story like yours, but I’m so grateful you’ve told me. It’s given me far more of an insight into you, and it will enable me to paint the right kind of mural for you.” Her eyes sparkle in the low light of the public house. “Something that inspires freedom, I think.”

 

“Excellent.” Sylvia purrs contentedly. “I like the sound of that.”

 

*Belchamp St Paul is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, England. The village is five miles west of Sudbury, Suffolk, and 23 miles northeast of the county town, Chelmsford.

 

**The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington in London, built in the style of an ancient amphitheatre. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941.

 

***Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.

 

****The Half Moon Inn is a pretty thatched tavern overlooking Belchamp St Paul’s village green. With low beams and an old log fire it maintains most of the original features of the current Georgian era building. Originally built in the early Sixteenth Century, The Half Moon has been at the centre of Belchamp St Paul village life for more than four hundred years.

 

*****Oxford bags were a loose-fitting baggy form of trousers favoured by members of the University of Oxford, especially undergraduates, in England from the mid-1920s to around the 1950s. The style had a more general influence outside the university, including in America, but has been somewhat out of fashion since then. It is sometimes said that the style originated from a ban in 1924 on the wearing of plus fours by Oxford (and Cambridge) undergraduates at lectures. The bagginess allegedly allowed plus fours to be hidden underneath – but the argument is undermined by the fact that the trousers (especially in the early years) were not sufficiently voluminous for this to be done with any success. The original trousers were 22–23 inches (56–58 cm) in circumference at the bottoms but became increasingly larger to 44 inches (110 cm) or more, possibly due to a misunderstanding of the measurement as the width rather than circumference.

 

 

******Queen Anne’s Gate is a street in Westminster, London. Many of the buildings are Grade I listed, known for their Queen Anne architecture. Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner described the Gate’s early Eighteenth Century houses as “the best of their kind in London.” The street’s proximity to the Palace of Westminster made it a popular residential area for politicians.

 

*******The London constituency of Tower Hamlets includes such areas and historic towns as (roughly from west to east) Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Wapping, Shadwell, Mile End, Stepney, Limehouse, Old Ford, Bow, Bromley, Poplar, and the Isle of Dogs (with Millwall, the West India Docks, and Cubitt Town), making it a majority working class constituency in 1925 when this story is set. Tower Hamlets included some of the worst slums and societal issues of inequality and poverty in England at that time.

 

********Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.

 

*********Tatler was introduced on the 3rd of July 1901, by Clement Shorter, publisher of The Sphere. It was named after the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. Originally sold occasionally as The Tatler and for some time a weekly publication, it had a subtitle varying on "an illustrated journal of society and the drama". It contained news and pictures of high society balls, charity events, race meetings, shooting parties, fashion and gossip, with cartoons by "The Tout" and H. M. Bateman.

 

**********The Lady is one of Britain's longest-running women's magazines. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. It is particularly notable for its classified advertisements for domestic service and child care; it also has extensive listings of holiday properties.

 

***********Craven A (stylized as Craven "A") is a British brand of cigarettes, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco. Originally founded and produced by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 until merging with Rothmans International in 1972, who then produced the brand until Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999. The cigarette brand is named after the third Earl of Craven, after the "Craven Mixture", a tobacco blend formulated for the 3rd Earl in the 1860s by tobacconist Don José Joaquin Carreras.

 

************British Queen Anne Revival architecture, also known as Domestic Revival, is a style of building using red brick, white woodwork, and an eclectic mixture of decorative features, that became popular in the 1870s, both for houses and for larger buildings such as offices, hotels, and town halls. It was popularised by Norman Shaw (1831–1912) and George Devey (1820–1886).

 

*************Bedford Park is a suburban development in Chiswick, begun in 1875 under the direction of Jonathan Carr, with many large houses in British Queen Anne Revival style by Norman Shaw and other leading Victorian era architects including Edward William Godwin, Edward John May, Henry Wilson, and Maurice Bingham Adams. Its architecture is characterised by red brick with an eclectic mixture of features, such as tile-hung walls, gables in varying shapes, balconies, bay windows, terracotta and rubbed brick decorations, pediments, elaborate chimneys, and balustrades painted white. The estate's main roads converge on its public buildings, namely its church, St Michael and All Angels; its club, its inn, The Tabard, and next door its shop, the Bedford Park Stores; and its Chiswick School of Art. Bedford Park has been described as the world's first garden suburb, creating a model of apparent informality emulated around the world. It became extremely fashionable in the 1880s, attracting artists including the poet and dramatist W. B. Yeats, the actor William Terriss, the actress Florence Farr, the playwright Arthur Wing Pinero and the painter Camille Pissarro to live on the estate. It appeared in the works of G. K. Chesterton and John Buchan, and was gently mocked in the St James's Gazette.

 

**************The Huguenots were Protestants who fled France and Wallonia (southern Belgium) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century due to religious persecution during the European Wars of Religion. After the English Reformation, England was seen as a safe place for refugees.

 

***************After the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day in Paris in 1572, when over ten thousand Huguenot Protestants were murdered, many fled to England. A second, larger, wave of Huguenots fled from France in the 1680s when King Louis XIV revoked a previous royal edict protecting Protestants from religious persecution and they were again attacked. Many Huguenots had difficult and dangerous journeys, escaping France and crossing to England by sea.

 

****************Many Huguenot Protestants upon arriving in England after their dangerous journey, set up in London, in Spitalfields, the City, Clerkenwell, Soho, Greenwich, Marylebone and Wandsworth.

 

*****************Ninian is a Christian saint, first mentioned in the 8th century as being an early missionary among the Pictish peoples of what is now Scotland. Whilst the meaning of Ninian is uncertain, it may have links to the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word naomh, meaning “saint,” “holy,” or “sacred.”

 

******************A “daily woman”, 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.

 

*******************The Universität der Künste, Berlin (Berlin College of Music) ranks as one of the largest educational music institutes in Europe, rich in content and quality. It dates back to the Royal (later State) Academy of Music, founded under the aegis of the violinist Joseph Joachim, a friend of Brahms, in 1869. From the date of its foundation under directors Joseph Joachim, Hermann Kretzschmar, Franz Schreker and Georg Schünemann, it has been one of the leading academies of music in the German-speaking countries. Composers such as Max Bruch, Engelbert Humperdinck and Paul Hindemith, performers such as Artur Schnabel, Wanda Landowska, Carl Flesch and Emanuel Feuermann, and academics such as Philipp Spitta, Curt Sachs, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Kurt Singer taught there. Prominent teachers later included the two directors Boris Blacher and Helmut Roloff, and the composer Dieter Schnebel.

 

********************In the beginning, the piano was the privilege of the aristocracy but this began to change by the mid Nineteenth Century with the rise of the middle class. With the advancement of industrialisation and improved production methods, pianos started to become more affordable for the up-and-coming bourgeoisie. When upright pianos became popular around the same time, they became commonplace in the front parlours and drawing rooms of any respectable middle-class house, and it became the expectation of middle-class children, particularly daughters to learn the piano as part of their education.

 

*********************A gigot sleeve is a sleeve that was full at the shoulder and became tightly fitted to the wrist. It was more commonly known as a leg-of-mutton sleeve.

 

**********************An oak tree, known as "Shakespeare's Tree" stands on the slope of Primrose Hill, planted in 1864 to mark the three hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. A large crowd of workmen marched through London to watch the planting ceremony in 1864. A replacement tree was re-planted in 1964.

 

***********************Like Regent's Park, the park area of Primrose Hill was once part of a great chase, appropriated by Henry VIII. Primrose Hill, with its clear rounded skyline, was purchased from Eton College in 1841 to extend the parkland available to the poor people of north London for open air recreation. At one time Primrose Hill was a place where duels were fought and prize-fights took place. The hill has always had a somewhat lively reputation, with Mother Shipton making threatening prophesies about what would happen if the city sprawl was allowed to encroach on its boundaries. At the top of the hill is one of the six protected viewpoints in London. The summit is almost sixty-three metres above sea level and the trees are kept low so as not to obscure the view. In winter, Hampstead can be seen to the north east. The summit features a York stone edging with a William Blake inscription, it reads: “I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill.”

 

************************The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" modelled in part on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse. The group sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art. They rejected what they regarded as the mechanistic approach first adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. The Brotherhood believed the classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite".

 

*************************St Peter's Church, Belsize Park is a Victorian church built in the gothic style with a clock tower. Built on Belsize Square, it was consecrated in 1859, and stands in its own garden.

 

**************************A pied-à-terre is a small flat, house, or room kept for occasional use.

 

***************************Bronchopneumonia is a subtype of pneumonia. It is the acute inflammation of the bronchi, accompanied by inflamed patches in the nearby lobules of the lungs. Bronchopneumonia. Other names. Bronchial pneumonia, bronchogenic pneumonia.

 

****************************In 1768, the Adam brothers built a very large and elegant development including a run of houses with a terrace that over-looked the river Thames in Westminster, which was much closer before the Embankment was built. It was this terrace that caused the word "terrace" to take on the meaning of a row of houses. Torn down in 1935 and replaced with the art deco New Adelphi building, it was the demolition of the Adelphi that was, at least partially, responsible for the creation of the Georgian Society in 1937. Adelphi Terrace had a series of arches and passages beneath it which functioned as wine cellars and storage space for the tenants, as well as accommodation for unfortunate down-and-outs and alcoholics before its demolition.

 

Though this may be the perfect example of an interwar public house, things are not entirely as you may suppose, for this scene is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection,.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Central to our image is a very special piece, and one of my more recent additions to my miniatures collection. Made painstakingly by hand, the fireplace was made by my very dear Flickr friend and artist Kim Hagar (www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/), who surprised me with this amazing handmade fireplace as a Christmas gift, with the intention that I use it in my miniatures photos. Each stone has been individually cut, made and then worn to give texture before being stuck to the backing board and then painted. The only real part of the fireplace is the thick wooden mantle. She has created several floors in the same way for some of her own miniature projects which you can see in her “In Miniature” album here: www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/albums/721777203007....

 

Around the fireplace stand two windsor chairs. They are both hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniatures which came from America. Unfortunately, the artists did not carve their name under the seats, but they are definitely unmarked artisan pieces. The Georgian table with the raised edge and the other pedestal table came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, as did the black painted metal fireplace fender, the brass firedogs the basket in the grate and the brass fire pokers in their stand.

 

On the table nearest the fire stands a black ashtray, which is an artisan piece, the base of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there). The packet of Craven “A” cigarettes and the Swan Vestas matchbox beneath it were made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with extreme attention paid to the packaging. The glasses of port on both tables are made from real glass. I acquired them, along with small slivers of lemon floating on their surfaces from miniature stockists on E-Bay.

 

The silverware that clutters the mantlepiece come from various different suppliers. The two Georgian style ale jugs were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The plates and the bowl at the back of the mantle are 1:12 artisan miniatures made of sterling silver by an unknown artist. They all came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The brass and wood bed warmer also comes from there. The two pairs of Staffordshire dogs and cows were hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys.

 

The brass candlesticks and ashtrays in the background come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.

Done