Restaurant on the Beach in the city of NIce on the French riviera. taken with a smartphone

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 at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her family home after receiving a strongly worded instruction from her father by telegram to visit without delay or procrastination. Lettice usually enjoys her trips to her childhood home, yet she has a sense of foreboding about this visit. Lettice has a strained relationship with her mother at the best of times as the two have differing views about the world and the role that women have to play in it, and whilst she is her father’s undeniable favourite, she fears that some of her more recent choices of clients might have put her out of favour with him. Thus, she heaved a sigh of relief upon her arrival at the house to find that her father and brother were elsewhere on the property on estate business and her mother was in the village attending to her charitable work. Left to her own devices until luncheon, Lettice spent the intervening time in her favourite room in the whole house, her father’s library, where she perused many of his volumes on architecture and design, drawing inspiration for her own interior designs.

 

Now we find ourselves in the grand and imposing formal dining room of Glynes, with its elegant Georgian furniture and its hand painted Eighteenth Century wallpaper featuring birds and flowers. Old masters and family portraits look down from gilded frames upon the diners. Viscount Wrexham sits at the head of the table, with his wife, Lady Sadie, to his left and Lettice to his right, all at one end of the Chippendale dining table. Despite the roaring fire in the hearth, Lettice shivers with a chill she feels in the room as Bramley the butler serves cream of cauliflower soup to the trio from a rose painted Rosenthal tureen.

 

“Is Leslie not joining us for luncheon, Pappa?” Lettice enquires after her eldest brother, noting the fact that the table is only set for three.

 

“Leslie still has unfinished business with the tenants down at Meadowdale Farm, Lettice.” her father replies sternly.

 

Lettice glances around the room, not engaging her mother’s intense gaze as she sits opposite her. She notices Lady Sadie’s hair is starting to gain streaks of silver amongst her blonde Edwardian set waves. Her mother toys brittlely with the two strands of pearls at her throat, a tell-tale sign that there is unpleasantness brewing.

 

“What lovely delphiniums, Mamma,” Lettice remarks as her gaze falls upon the tall purple blooms in the fluted Victorian cranberry glass vase on the table. “And in autumn. I don’t know how you manage to do it.”

 

“Yes.” She smiles thinly. “The hothouses are such a blessing as the weather turns colder and fresh flowers become scarce.”

 

“Thank you Bramley,” the Viscount says commandingly. “You may come and collect the plates in a quarter of an hour. I shall pour the wine myself.”

 

The butler looks startled by his master’s pronouncement as he readies himself to take his usual place by the sideboard where he has placed the tureen alongside two bottles of wine. However, he knows better than to contradict the Viscount. “Very good, My Lord.” He backs away, shooing Moira the maid who has taken to assisting wait table at luncheon on informal occasions since the war with his flapping fingers. The two disappear through the door that connects the dining room to the butler’s pantry.

 

“Why do I have the feeling of being ambushed?” Lettice clips.

 

“Lettice!” Lady Sadie gasps, glancing anxiously towards the door the servants have retreated behind.

 

The trio sit in awkward silence for a minute or so, allowing the servants to hopefully be out of earshot, listening to the quiet tick of the clock on the mantle and the crackle of the fire. None pick up their silver spoons to eat the steaming soup.

 

“Margot and Dickie’s wedding plans appear to be coming along well according to Lucie de Virre.” Lady Sadie remarks with false joviality as she picks up the jug of cold cream which she adds to her soup to temper it. “I am told that younger son of Sir Bruton has a remarkable job of making her wedding dress considering that he isn’t formally trained.”

 

As if his wife’s words have broken some spell, Viscount Wrexham picks up his spoon and starts to eat in silence.

 

“Well, as you know, Gerald’s mother is a very good needlewoman,” Lettice replies, picking up her own spoon and plunging it into the thick white soup. “I’m sure she taught him some tricks about embroidery.”

 

“Perhaps you could take a leaf from his book, Lettice.” suggests Lady Sadie.

 

“Ha!” Viscount Wrexham bursts, the sound echoing about the lofty dining room. Noticing the angry look his wife casts him, he clears his throat before apologising, “I beg your pardon.”

 

The conversation falters awkwardly after that and for a few moments the three people quietly eat their soup.

 

“Oh!” Viscount Wrexham exclaims suddenly. “The wine!” He pushes his chair back, the feet scraping noisily against the floor. Walking to the sideboard he picks up the bottle of red. “The Saint Germaine Bordeaux,” he muses, looking down at the label. “A good choice, Bramley.”

 

“So,” Lettice continues as her father comes back to the table and pours the wine. “Your letter said it was urgent. What did I need to come down here from London for in such a hurry that I had to cancel dinner plans at the Savoy this evening?”

 

As though not having heard her, the Viscount places the bottle in front of him, sits and continues eating his soup without speaking.

 

“Well tell her Cosmo!” Lady Sadie hisses, flapping her right hand at him, making the diamonds in her rings sparkle in the light.

 

Viscount Wrexham remains silent and takes another mouthful of soup.

 

“Very well then,” Lady Sadie mutters irritably. “If you won’t, then I will!”

 

Lady Sadie reaches into the left pocket of the light grey cardigan she has over her powder blue day dress and withdraws a letter. Unfolding it, she runs her long fingers across the lines until she reaches the part she wants. Clearing her throat she reads, annunciating each word in an especially clipped tone as she quotes, “It has come to our attention that your daughter, Lettice,” She looks up momentarily and glares at her youngest child. “Has recently taken up decorating the home of an American woman, a Miss Wanetta Ward. Discreet enquiries have revealed to me that she is a woman of questionable background who has recently come to London where she has commenced work as an actress.” The last word Lady Sadie spits out distastefully before folding the letter back into quarters and depositing it back into her pocket. “Do you deny it, Lettice?”

 

“Who’s been telling tales?” Lettice asks calmly, leaving her spoon in the bowl.

 

“An actress, Lettice! Really!” Lady Sadie admonishes.

 

“A moving picture actress, not a theatre actress, Mamma.” Lettice elaborates. “Now who’s been blabbing?”

 

“That doesn’t make it any better, Lettice!” her mother responds in a disgusted tone. “You might just as well say you’re decorating for a…”

 

“Sadie!” the Viscount breaks his silence, dropping his spoon with a clatter.

 

“Who?” Lettice repeats, glaring at her mother, who shrinks in her seat under her intense glare. "Who has been telling tales?"

 

Looking around awkwardly she finally replies, “Gwendolyn!”

 

“The Duchess?” Lettice gasps incredulously. “But the last time I saw her she as good as told me that she was never going to speak to you again.”

 

“Well,” Lady Sadie defends. “I managed to rebuild my bridges somewhat, no thanks to you after you and your father,” She glances at her husband with a chiding look. “Caused such a rift between her and I.”

 

“That venomous old trout!” Lettice utters, flabbergasted at the revelation.

 

“Lettice!” Viscount Wrexham barks angrily. “That’s no way to speak about your Mother’s cousin!”

 

“Lettice,” her mother continues. “Did your father not have a conversation with you a few months ago about decorating for your own class, if you must insist upon embarking upon this interior design nonsense?”

 

“He did, Mamma. However,” Lettice replies, but demurs. “I didn’t necessarily agree.”

 

“Oh Lettice!” Lady Sadie sighs exasperatedly. “Was it not bad enough that you decorated the home of that Hatchett woman, that you must now decorate this woman’s interiors? It is most inappropriate!”

 

“It’s true my girl,” her father adds a little more kindly, turning to her. “Just think how it makes the family look.”

 

“Oh, stop being so soft on her Cosmo!” Lady Sadie exclaims. “You’re always too indulgent with her.” She chuckles in an ironic fashion. “And just look where it has landed us. For shame Lettice!”

 

“Mr. Hatchett is a member of parliament now, you know Mamma.” Lettice answers back bravely.

 

“He’s not a lord though, is he?” Lady Sadie responds hotly.

 

“Well, you should be pleased with my next interior design commission. It’s for the Marquess of Taunton. I’ve been asked by Dickie and Margot to decorate some of the principal rooms of their house in Penance.”

 

Lettice settles back in her seat and resumes eating her soup docilely, refusing to engage her mother’s hostile stare across the table.

 

“Yes, Lucie de Virre told me.” Lady Sadie remains silent for a few tense moments before continuing, “However, it would please me even more, Lettice, if you simply stopped all this ridiculous interior design business folly of yours and settled down and got married!” She pulls a lace edged monogrammed handkerchief from her cardigan sleeve and blows her nose before dabbing her eyes.

 

“Now, don’t go upsetting yourself, Sadie,” Viscount Wrexham says softly, reaching out a consoling hand and placing it on her forearm.

 

Shying away from his touch as if being burned, his wife clings to the edge of the dining table, causing her knuckles to turn white. Thrusting her chair back forcefully, she abruptly stands up and pulls herself up to her full height in a haughty fashion. “Talk to her Cosmo!” she sniffs. “Goodness knows I can’t!” She looks over at Lettice who in turn looks away from her and concentrates on the purple delphiniums. “Make her see sense! She isn’t getting any younger! You’re twenty-one now, Lettice. Lally was married to Charles by the time she was your age and carrying his first child.”

 

“Oh that’s just what you’d like, wouldn’t you Mamma? You’d like to see me siring sons to some dull old peer in the country somewhere, rather than living the life that I want to lead!”

 

“Lettice!” Viscount Wrexham’s thunderous boom stuns both women into momentary silence. “That’s no way to speak to your Mother! Apologise! At once!”

 

Lettice drops her head before looking up again and saying earnestly, “I’m sorry Mamma.” Then she adds, “It’s just the world is changing now. It isn’t the same as it was before the war when Lally was married. And I don’t want a life like Lally has.”

 

“Oh, I can’t abide this conversation any longer! I’m going upstairs!” Lady Sadie storms. “Cosmo, would you have Cook send the remainder of luncheon up on a tray to my room, please.”

 

“Of course, Sadie.” he demurs.

 

Lady Sadie marches across the room, her footsteps pounding with pent up frustration against the parquetry floor of the dining room. Opening the door, even she with all her breeding cannot help but slam it behind her as she leaves the room.

 

The pair sit in silence again for a few minutes, neither finishing their cream of cauliflower soup, which has now gone cold in their bowls.

 

“Was this American actress the one you came down here to research oriental antiquities for?” Viscount Wrexham breaks the silence, looking at his daughter.

 

Lettice remains silent.

 

“Was it?” The brooding look clouding the older man’s face scares the young girl sitting adjunct to him.

 

Lettice shrugs. “Yes.”

 

“You lied to me, my dear girl!” the older man gives his daughter a hurt look. “How could you lie to me, of all people? Me, who has always tried to support and defend you.” He sinks back into his seat, deflated. “How could you lie to me?”

 

“I didn’t lie, Pappa! I told you that I had a potential new client who was an American who had been living in Shanghai. None of those things were a lie.”

 

“Then what did you do, if you neglected to tell me that she was an actress.”

 

“I was being selective with the facts I shared.”

 

“Don’t be impertinent, Lettice!” Viscount Wrexham snaps back. “You didn’t tell me the whole truth, and you hurt me!”

 

“I’m sorry, Pappa.”

 

“So am I, Lettice. Not only have you broken my trust, but now your Mother will be in a bad mood for the rest of the day, and that bodes an ill wind for all of us.”

 

Poking his head around the butler’s pantry door, Bramley asks tentatively, “Shall I clear the plates now, My Lord?”

 

“Thank you Bramley.” As the butler starts to collect the bowls of unfinished soup, the Viscount adds. “And Bramley, could you have Cook take the rest of her ladyship’s luncheon up to her room on a tray. She has one of her heads.”

 

“Certainly, My Lord.”

 

After the butler leaves, Viscount Wrexham turns to his wayward daughter and says in a conciliatory tone, “I do know that what you say is true, Lettice. I understand that the world has changed since the war. However, you could make things just a little easier for all of us.”

 

“By doing what, Pappa?” she asks with a defensive look. “By doing what you and Mamma want and throw my business away, settle down to a boring life with someone and have a brood of children like Lally. Aren’t three grandchildren enough for you?”

 

“Now that isn’t fair, my girl.” he chides her. “Your Mother and I just want what’s best for you.”

 

“Don’t you think I should be the one to decide that?”

 

“But you’re so young.”

 

“Mamma evidently doesn’t think so.”

 

“You don’t know how the world works.”

 

“I know more than you think!”

 

“Listen Lettice, I shan’t command you to stop designing interiors, partially because I know you enjoy doing it, and I can’t bear to see you unhappy.” He pauses, a pitying look in his eyes. “But moreover, because I know you’d keep doing it just to spite me if I did.”

 

Lettice chuckles quietly, a cheeky smile gracing her lips. She is not surprised at how well her father knows her.

 

“That isn’t funny, Lettice.” he admonishes. “It’s a commentary on your wilfulness.”

 

Lettice stops smiling immediately and casts her eyes down into her lap where she screws up the fine linen napkin between her fingers.

 

“However,” Viscount Wrexham continues with a wagging finger, admonishing her laughter. “I’d be grateful if you would please heed my advice if you’d be so good as to take it from your own Father, and design for a few more reputable people. Then it wouldn’t gall your mother quite so much, and she wouldn’t be so quarrelsome with you, or me. You don’t have to decorate for all great and good of the land, but a few minor members of the gentry on your books wouldn’t go astray.”

 

“Anything else?” Lettice asks contritely through sad eyes as she realises for the first time that perhaps her choices cause her father some level of difficulty in the relationship he has with her mother too.

 

“Yes,” he adds. “Can you please make more of an effort at the Hunt Ball after Christmas.”

 

“Whatever do you mean, Pappa? I always make an effort! I love the ball and put a lot of effort into my costume for it.”

 

“I don’t mean your damnable fancy dress costume, Lettice.” he sighs. “Please don’t be obtuse. You have intelligence. It doesn’t become you to play the dunce. Even though your Mother will never admit to it, she knows how many young men were killed in the war. She knows that so many names will no longer appear on her list of invitations. However, not everyone came back maimed and damaged. Your Mother is planning a really dazzling Hunt Ball this year, and I don’t want it spoilt for her.”

 

“Well?” Lettice asks.

 

“She… err,” he clears his throat awkwardly. “She has already made some discreet enquiries about inviting some eligible young bachelors for you.”

 

Lettice rolls her eyes. “Oh Pappa!”

 

“No, Lettice!” he cautions as he settles back in his chair. “It will do you some good to socialise with some charming, handsome and socially suitable eligible young men of marriageable age. Think of it as atonement for not being completely honest with me.”

 

“But Pappa…”

 

“No, Lettice! Atonement is what it is. A lesson in humility as you bow to your old fashioned parents’ wishes. Of course, your Mother and I would prefer for you to marry an older man, after all I am a few years senior to her and in spite of some minor differences, our marriage has been a happy and successful one. However, you yourself have said that times have changed, and we must adapt to those changes, so if the men we introduce you to are more your own age, so be it.”

 

“That’s not what I meant by changing times, Pappa.”

 

“I know Lettice, but nevertheless consider this a concession from us, and please make an effort to dance with and charm them. It will please your Mother and I very much.” He looks earnestly at her. “Please?”

 

“Alright Pappa,” she acquiesces. “But only to please you.”

 

“Thank you Lettice.” Viscount Wrexham’s shoulders relax and he releases a pent up breath in relief. “And who knows, perhaps you will enjoy yourself with one, enough to marry him.”

 

“Don’t press me too hard, Pappa.” Lettice warns.

 

Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class country house domestic scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Chippendale dining room table and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

The table is set correctly for a three course Edwardian luncheon, using cutlery and glassware from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The cutlery set is made of polished metal. The crockery is made by an unknown English company and each piece has been gilded by hand and features a rose pattern on it. There is a matching lidded soup tureen and bowls standing on the small demi-lune table in the background. This dinner set I have built up over time by buying individual or odd pieces through various online auctions. The linen napkins and napkin rings were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The silver cruet set, which peeps from behind Lettice’s glasses, has been made with great attention to detail, and comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The fluted cranberry glass vase on the right hand edge of the photo, was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements, the very realistic looking purple delphiniums are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.

 

The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. On its mantlepiece stand two 1950s Limoges vases. Both are stamped with a small green Limoges mark to the bottom. These treasures I found in an overcrowded cabinet at the Mill Markets in Geelong. Also standing on the mantlepiece are two miniature diecast lead Meissen figurines: the Lady with the Canary and the Gentleman with the Butterfly, hand painted and gilded by me. There is also a dome anniversary clock in the middle of the mantlepiece which I bought the same day that I bought the fireplace.

 

To the left of the photo stands an artisan bonheur de jour (French lady's writing desk). A gift from my Mother when I was in my twenties, she had obtained this beautiful piece from an antique auction. Made in the 1950s of brass it is very heavy. It is set with hand-painted enamel panels featuring Rococo images. Originally part of a larger set featuring a table and chairs, or maybe a settee as well, individual pieces from these hand-painted sets are highly collectable and much sought after. I never knew this until the advent of E-Bay!

 

The Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery in the background was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

All the paintings around the Glynes dining room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.

Wickham Place is the London home of Lord and Lady Southgate, their children and staff. Located in fashionable Belgravia it is a fine Georgian terrace house.

 

Tonight, we are in the magnificent and opulent formal dining room of Wickham Place. There is a second, more intimate dining room used for smaller and less formal occasions, so this is known as the ‘Golden Dining Room’ by both the family upstairs and the downstairs staff because of its beautiful golden damask wallpaper and for the number of gilded frames around the room from which the Southgate ancestors look out with glazed painted gazes.

 

Lord and Lady Southgate are entertaining the United States Ambassador to England, Mr. Whitelaw Reid*. As a fellow American, Her Ladyship has invited a number of her friends from across the Atlantic Ocean who now live in London society like she does. This includes Viscount and Viscountess Astor** who arrived late, not an uncommon occurrence when Lady Astor is attending any function. Now, with the American style hors d’oeuvres prepared by Mrs. Bradley the Cook consumed and aperitifs drunk in the reception room, everyone has taken their seats around the long Chippendale dining table as Withers the Butler and the Wickham Place footmen prepare to serve from the Queen Anne sideboard, burgundy and Mrs. Bradley’s boeuf pressé (pressed beef) with horseradish duchesse potatoes and greens.

 

As it is a formal occasion, and the company quite exalted, this evening the Southgate golden candelabra, expertly polished by Withers, have been placed down the table and the gilt white Paragon dinner service is in use. These are complimented by a profusion of golden rose blooms cascading from beautiful glass vases placed intermittently down the table. These have drawn the attention of Lady Astor, a keen horticulturist and floral arranger.

 

“You know Vera,” she remarks. “I must compliment you on your beautiful floral arrangements this evening.”

 

“Thank you, Nancy.” Lady Southgate replies, smiling proudly. “That’s a great compliment coming from you. The floral bounty from the greenhouses at Cliveden never cease to delight us when we visit.”

 

“That’s Copcutt***. He’s a genius decorator. Did you have them sent up from Buckinghamshire?”

 

“I did have the roses sent up from our own greenhouses in Avendale Park, but Cecily and I arranged them here.”

 

“Oh that was very good of you to involve your sister-in-law.”

 

“I needn’t have bothered,” Lady Southgate looks disapprovingly down the table towards her husband’s youngest sister, who sits uncomfortably between two handsome young men who try to no avail to engage with her. “It was quite obvious she wasn’t interested. She thrust a handful of roses into a vase, breaking several stems and ruining some perfectly good blooms in the process before crying off with one of her headaches.”

 

“Yes,” Lady Astor replies wistfully, also sighting Cecily Southgate ignoring the entreaties of the two eligible young bachelors by staring steely down into her plate. “She is somewhat of a reluctant debutante, isn’t she?”

 

“Reluctant,” Lady Southgate scoffs. “Recalcitrant is more like it.”

 

“It can’t have been easy for her, Vera. Cecily,” Lady Astor sighs. “Well, she isn’t exactly the greatest beauty in London, and her mother is still renown for her beauty and intelligence.”

 

“Don’t I know it. You know Richard allows Lydia to have her own suite of rooms here so she can still do the round during The Season.”

 

“Well, she is his mother, and you have to admit that she really is too vivacious, witty and beautiful to retire to live a quiet life in Buckinghamshire. It must be hard for Cecily to always be in her mother’s shadow.”

 

“But that’s why I brought Cecily up to London from Avendale Park: to get her away from her mother. How can I help her blossom if Lydia just follows her, or worse proceeds her? As the current Lady Southgate, I was going to present her at court last Season.”

 

“But of course, Lydia had her own way, and presented her daughter herself.”

 

“Apparently her pedigree, even as the Dowager Southgate is better than mine as a ‘Dollar Princess’.”

 

“Don’t worry Vera. ‘Dollar Princesses’ outnumber those with Lydia’s pedigree in London society these days. Just look at me!”

 

“I’d lock Lydia in the Dower House at Avendale Park if I could.” Lady Southgate mutters quietly, grateful that her husband sits at the opposite end of the table to her and therefore cannot hear her over the polite dinner chatter and the sound of cutlery against crockery.

 

“Most of us would like to lock up our mother-in-laws,” Lady Astor chuckles. “Especially when they are as ageless and charming as Lydia.”

 

“Nevertheless, I think I’ve created a monster, bringing Cecily up from Buckinghamshire and allowing her to stay at Wickham Place whenever she wants.”

 

“I thought we were in agreement that your mother-in-law is already a monster.”

 

“No, I don’t mean Lydia. I mean Cecily.”

 

“Cecily?” Lady Astor looks aghast at Lady Southgate. “Whatever do you mean, Vera?”

 

“Well, by bringing her to London, Cecily has done more than just the season.”

 

“What has she done?”

 

“I think she’s befriended some suffragettes. I found a copy of ‘Votes for Women’ in her parlour last week.”

 

“Well, good for Cecily.”

 

“Nancy!” Lady Southgate looks askance at her friend.

 

“Oh pity the poor girl, Vera. If she can’t win a heart or a husband, perhaps she can win the vote. I am very supportive of women’s suffrage. In fact, if I’m being honest, I would love to be a Member of Parliament myself.”

 

“Nancy! Politics! Really? You shock me.”

 

“Yes Vera. Why should Waldorf and Richard have all the fun and affect the decisions that impact us? Well, well. I’m already seeing Cecily in a better light.”

 

*Mr. Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, newspaper editor and writer. He was appointed the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St, James’ by Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. He served in this role, including during the William Howard Taft administration, until his death in 1912.

 

**Waldorf Astor, Second Viscount Astor and his wife Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor were American-born members of the British aristocracy and were also British politicians. Lady Astor although not the first woman elected to the British parliament, was the first woman elected to take her seat there. Both were members of parliament at different times for Plymouth.

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a monthly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme, or a selection of themes to choose from or combine is provided on the 5th of every month, and the image is to be posted on the 5th of the following month.

 

The themes for February are “lost treasures”, “on a tabletop” and “old gold”.

 

I decided to submit this photo because it features items on a tabletop, including some beautiful old gold roses, but more so because this upper-class domestic scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood, and was shot on my own dining room tabletop!

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The Chippendale dining room table and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

The table is set correctly for a five course Edwardian dinner, using cutlery, crockery and glassware from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The plates have been gilded by hand and the cutlery set is made of polished metal. The linen napkins and napkin rings were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The silver cruet set, which peeps from behind the yellow roses, has been made with great attention to detail, and comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The gold candelabras on the table and the mantlepiece ate also 1:12 artisan pieces that I was given as a teenager. The gold roses are hand-made, and the bowl they sit in is made of hand blown and decorated glass. They also come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.

 

The sideboard that can be seen laden with lidded tureens, bottles of wine and Mrs. Bradley’s boeuf pressé is of Queen Anne design. It was given to me when I was six. It has three opening drawers with proper drawer pulls and each is lined with red velvet.

 

On the sideboard there are additional pieces of the hand gilded dinner set made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, silver lidded tureens from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, and bottles of wine and a decanter made from real glass by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The plate of beef I have had since I was a teenager when I bought it from a dollhouse specialist. The vase on the sideboard and on the pedestal by the fireplace are beautifully hand made by the Doll House Emporium.

 

To the left of the vase on the sideboard stands a very special sterling silver 1:12 artisan made sugar castor. The sugar castor is 1 ½ centimetres in height and half a centimetre in diameter. Its finial actually comes apart like its life size equivalent. The finial unscrews from the body so it can be filled. I am told that icing sugar can pass through the holes in the finial, but I have chosen not to try this party trick myself. A sugar castor was used in Edwardian times to shake sugar onto fruits and desserts.

 

The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster.

 

All the paintings of the Southgate ancestors around the room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States.

 

The flocked wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend who encouraged me to use it as wallpaper for my 1:12 miniature tableaux.

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, long forgotten, of a great beauty.

 

Now we find ourselves in ‘Chi an Treth’s’ Regency breakfast room with views through the French doors, overlooking the wild coast on a remarkably sunny day for this time of year. Dickie, Margot and Gerald are all seated around the table in their pyjamas and robes enjoying breakfast, some with more gusto than others, as Lettice stumbles into the room and joins them at the table.

 

“All hail the discoverer of lost treasures and the solver of mysteries!” cries Dickie dramatically as he doffs an invisible hat towards his friend.

 

“Oh!” gasps Gerald, raising his right hand gingerly to his temple. “Must you be so loud Dickie? Is he always like this in the mornings, Margot darling?”

 

“He is, Gerald,” Margot sighs from her seat opposite him at the breakfast table as she takes a slice of thinly sliced toast and spreads marmalade across it with as little noise as possible.

 

“Morning Dickie!” Lettice returns Dickie’s welcome, walking up to him and placing a kiss firmly on the top of his head amidst his sleep tousled sandy hair. “Good morning, Margot. Good morning, Gerald.” Stumbling down the room and reaching her seat at the table opposite Dickie she picks up her glass tumbler and then turns to Gerald to adds. “It could be worse.”

 

“What could be?” Gerald asks, taking the pot from Margot’s outstretched hand and proceeding to plop a generous spoonful of marmalade on his own toast slices.

 

“Dickie’s frightfully jolly morning personality trait.” she replies, walking back the way she came to the sideboard, where she helps herself to orange juice. “His cousin, the Earl McCrea, plays the bagpipes every morning to wake the guests when he’s on his Scottish estate.”

 

“How frightful,” Gerald winces at the thought before continuing in a withering voice. “After a night of champagne like we had last night, that’s the last thing I should want.”

 

“Apparently the Prince of Wales quite likes it though**** when he visits.” Margot adds. “Coffee, Lettice darling?”

  

“Tea,” Lettice replies laconically before turning her attention to the lidded chaffing dishes on the sideboard. Lifting one, she quickly drops it when she sees and smells what lies beneath it with a loud clatter that elicits a groan from Gerald, Margot and herself.

 

“Mrs. Trevethan’s kedgeree,” Margot remarks without looking up as she pours tea from a silver teapot into Lettice’s teacup.

 

“Ugh,” mutters Lettice.

 

“It takes some getting used to.” adds Margot.

 

“Is an acquired taste, I’d say.” observes Gerald wryly, looking about the plates at the table. “Since no-one appears to be having any.”

 

“I think my stomach will settle for a boiled egg and an apple.” Lettice places her glass of orange juice gingerly on the tabletop and reaches across to grab an apple from the glass comport in the centre of the table. She then sits before reaching for an egg from the cruet proffered by Margot.

 

“Freshly boiled by Mrs. Trevethan.” Margot says with a smile.

 

“What’s taking that woman so long to bring me a bloody aspirin?” quips Gerald.

 

“God how much did we drink last night?” Lettice asks.

 

“Before, or after you found the Winterhalter*****?” Dickie asks.

 

“That explains why my head is fit for cracking, just like an egg, this morning then.” Lettice rubs her own temples and winces. “I think I could do with a couple of aspirin too.”

 

“Surely they have heard of aspirin down here.” Gerald grumbles, his train of thought about his own sore head undisturbed by the conversation around him.

 

“It is only Cornwall, Gerald darling,” Margot gives him an aghast look. “Not the middle of the Sahara Desert or the Antarctic, you know.”

 

“I might have more luck getting some aspirin in the Sahara.”

 

“Now Gerald, there’s no need to be cantankerous, just because your hangover is purportedly worse than ours.” Margot quips.

 

“Was Mrs. Trevethan cross with the mess, we,” Lettice pauses, blushes and corrects herself. “I… made last night in the storeroom?”

 

“Not at all, dear girl!” Dickie pipes up cheerily, deliberately hitting his own egg with gusto to break the shell, eliciting a scowl from Gerald which he returns with a teasing smile. “Margot and Gerald did a capital job of tidying most of the mess up, and I think the old dear is rather pleased to have people to look after again.”

 

“She can’t care that much about us if it takes this long to fetch me an aspirin.”

 

“Oh do shut up, Gerald old boy,” Dickie barks, surprising even himself at the sudden change to his usual affable self. Taking a few deep breaths, he looks across the coffee pot, teacups and marmalade pot to his friend and continues in laboured syllables. “Look, we all need the bloody aspirins this morning, and they will get here when Mrs. Trevethan gets them to us. Alright, old boy?”

 

Gerald shrinks back in his seat, whilst both Margot and Lettice smirk at one another.

 

“I do like your bed jacket, Lettice darling.” Margot remarks. “It suits you. Did Gerald make it for you?”

 

“This?” Lettice pulls on the burnt orange brocade of her jacket, making the marabou feather trim quiver prettily about her pale face. “No. I actually bought this at Marshall and Snelgrove’s****** because I saw it and I liked the colour.”

 

“And what shall we do today?” Dickie asks the table, casting Gerald a warning look that makes Gerald think twice about saying that his head feels too poorly to do anything.

 

“Well,” Lettice remarks, turning around in her seat to peer through the French doors across the lawn and the windswept tree line. “It’s a fine day today. It might be nice to take advantage of the good weather and go exploring down along the cove.” She turns back. “That’s if no-one else has any other more appealing ideas of course.”

 

Margot smiles and starts nodding. “That sounds splendid, Lettice darling! You could bring your paints with you. There’s a rather nice vista featuring an old lighthouse that I know you would enjoy painting.”

 

“Capital idea, old girl!” Dickie agrees. “The bracing sea breeze will be a perfect way to dust off the fuzzy heads from last night.”

 

Gerald quietly sinks further back in his seat but says nothing.

 

At that moment, the door to the breakfast room creaks open and Mrs. Trevethan shuffles in, wearing the same rather tatty apron over another old fashioned Edwardian print dress of a rather muddy brown colour, carrying a silver tray on which she has several tumblers and a small jar of aspirin. When her eyes fall upon Lettice, she smiles broadly. “Metten daa******* Miss Chetwynd.” she says, dropping a bob curtsey.

 

“Good morning Mrs Trevethan.” Lettice replies.

 

The old woman shuffles across the room and around the oval breakfast table where she removes a glass and the jar of tablets and deposits them in front of Gerald. “Your aspirins, sir.”

 

Dickie gives him a knowing smile, and Gerald mutters a thank you in reply.

 

“I am sorry about the mess we made last night, Mrs, Trevethan.” Lettice apologises to the old Cornish woman as she places a glass tumbler on the table before her, feeling the heat of a fresh blush rising up her throat and into her cheeks as she speaks. “It really was an accident.”

 

“Oh!” scoffs the woman with a dismissive wave of her hand as if shooing a sand fly away. “That’s quite alright. It’s nice to have young people, any people, about the house again after so long. You did make a fine mess, but you cleaned it up pretty well.”

 

“Oh, that was Margot and Gerald’s doing, not mine.” she looks sheepishly to her two friends at either side of her at the table as she sips her orange juice. “I was quite shaken by the whole incident.”

 

“Well, that was quite a pile of things you brought down,” Mrs. Trevethan laughs as she looks down upon the slight girl before her. “Especially for one your size! But look at what hidden treasure you uncovered with it!”

 

“That’s true, Lettice old girl!” Dickie remarks. “If it weren’t for you, that Winterhalter might have sat there another century, evading would-be treasure hunters.”

 

“If it’s a Winterhalter, Dickie,” tempers Lettice. “It may not be. It may not be her.”

 

“Who?” Gerald asks, perplexed, passing Lettice the aspirin bottle after taking out two tablets for himself. “Winterhalter was a man.”

 

“The captain’s lost love of course, Gerald!” scoffs Lettice. “Don’t be dim.”

 

“Sorry, it’s the hangover.”

 

“Oh that’s Miss Rosevear in the painting,” Mrs. Trevethan remarks. “There is no doubt of that.”

 

Lettice eyes the old Cornish woman up and down. Even with her weather-beaten face and white hair indicating that she is of an advanced age, a quick calculation in her still slightly muffled head suggests that she cannot be so old as to have known the lady when the portrait was painted.

 

Mrs. Trevethan starts laughing again as she observes the changes on Lettice’s face, betraying her thoughts. “No dear, I’m not that old, but I still knew Miss Rosevear when I was young, and she was older, and even then, she was still a beauty. It’s her face make no mistake.”

 

“Really Mrs. Trevethan?” Margot gasps, sitting forward in her chair, her half finished cup of coffee held aloft as she sits in the older woman’s thrall. “How?”

 

“What was she like?” Lettice adds excitedly.

 

“Is there truth to the legend?” Dickie asks.

 

“Well, Mrs. Channon, I was a maid for the Rosevears when I was a girl and first went into service.” The old woman’s eyes develop a far away sheen as she reminisces. “Mr. Rosevear had a beautiful old manor about half-way between here and Truro. Burnt down now of course, but you can still see the ruins from the train, if you know where to look. There’s even an old halt******** where the house used to be: Rosevear Halt. My first ride on a train was taken from Rosevear Halt up to London when I was taken with a few of the other maids to clean Mr. Rosevear’s rented London house for the Season.”

 

“And Miss Rosevear?” Lettice asks with trepidation, hoping to glean information about the mysterious beauty in the painting and from the legend.

 

“Oh, Miss Elowen was the youngest of the three Rosevear daughters. They were all beautiful, but she was the loveliest, in my opinion anyway. She could dance and play the spinet, and she had a voice that could have charmed the angels from the heavens.” A wistful look crosses her face. “And she was blithe, or had been before my time at the house, I was told by some of the other maids. Her elder sisters were far more serious than she: set upon always wearing the most fashionable clothing and focussing upon good marriages, whereas the youngest Miss Rosevear, she just took life as it came to her without complaint. Although, she always had an air of sadness about her when I knew her.”

 

“Without complaint? What happened to her, Mrs. Trevethan?” Dickie asks, swept up in the tale as much as his wife and Lettice. “Why didn’t she marry my ancestor of sorts, the captain?”

 

“I don’t rightly know, sir, why she didn’t marry him. As I said, this all happened before my time with the Rosevears, but there were others amongst the older household staff who were witness to what happened, so I have some inkling. I think Mr. Rosevear took against the captain because,” Mrs. Trevethan pauses, lowering her eyes as she speaks. “And you’ll pardon me for speaking out of turn, sir.”

 

“Yes,” replies Dickie. “Go on.”

 

“Well, I think he took against the captain because he wasn’t a legitimate son of the Marquis of Taunton. The Rosevears were an old family you see, and well respected in the district. It might not have looked proper for someone of her family’s standing to marry the illegitimate son of the Marquis, even if he was a naval hero and well set up by his father. However,” She pauses again. “I don’t think things would have gone so badly for him, if it wasn’t for the other two Miss Rosevears.”

 

“What do you mean, Mrs, Trevethan?” asks Margot.

 

“Well, I said that Miss Elowen was the prettiest of all three, and I stand by that. Even when she was in her forties when I first met her, she had a look that could stop idle chatter in a room. Her two sisters weren’t so fortunate, and their looks had begun to fade by the time she met the captain, may God rest his soul. Miss Doryty, the eldest was ten years her little sister’s senior, and for all her plotting and planning for a good marriage, a good marriage never found her, nor her sister, Miss Bersaba. Miss Doryty was her father’s favourite as to look at one, you would like to see the other in appearance and temperament. I think she took against the captain because her little sister was likely to marry before her two siblings and Miss Doryty wasn’t going to have that any more than Miss Bersaba was. Miss Doryty was the eldest and felt it her right to marry first, and Miss Bersaba wanted Miss Doryty married off so that then she could get wed herself. Even when I worked for the Rosevears, both ladies still talked about her would-be suitors up in London, yet not a one ever materialised, and I never knew of them ever going to London. Miss Doryty always was bitter, and a bully. I think she swayed her father’s opinion on the captain. I also know, because I heard her say it often enough within my earshot, that she was of the opinion that it was Miss Elowen’s responsibility as the youngest daughter to care for her father and unmarried sisters into their dotage, since their mother had been in the churchyard many a year already.”

 

“And did she?” Lettice asks sadly, her hand rising to her mouth in upset.

 

“Like I said, Miss Chetwynd, Miss Elowen took whatever life dealt her with forbearance. She never complained, even though her sisters obviously treated her in a lesser way than they should their own kin.”

 

“And, she never married?” asks Margot.

 

“None of the Miss Rosevears did, Mrs. Channon. They lived alone in the Big House. I was still in service there after Mr. Rosevear died. The ladies continued to do good deeds in the district, and they used the house for tombolas and fetes to raise money for the poor. Then I met and married Mr. Trevethan and I had to leave the Rosevears’ service. I heard from friends who stayed on after I’d gone, that the house slowly fell into disrepair, but I was in Penzance with my own family, so I never went back to see for myself.”

 

“And you say there was a fire at the house?” Dickie asks.

 

“There was, sir.”

 

“How did it start, do you know?” continues Dickie.

 

“I couldn’t say for certain sir, but I’d imagine it started from a fallen log. The Rosevears had ever so many fireplaces without fireguards. It's why I won’t have Mr. Trevethan light a fire in any of the fireplaces here that don’t have fireguards. All you need is for a smouldering log to fall on a carpet, and before you know it… whoosh!” The old woman gesticulates dramatically interpreting the way of wild flames.

 

“And did Miss Rosevear die in the fire?” Margot asks. “How thrilling if she did.”

 

“And you say I love dramatics,” Gerald grumbles, looking at Dickie.

 

“What a terrible thing to say, my love.” Dickie looks at his wife with horrified eyes.

 

“Oh yes, but wouldn’t it be terrifically romantic?” gushes Margot in reply.

 

“None of the Rosevears died it the fire, Mrs. Channon. In fact, no one died in it, thank God! But the family lost a great deal of standing with the loss of the Big House and all its contents, and the sisters moved to Truro and lived in much reduced circumstances, I’m told. And that’s where they died. I don’t know who died first, Miss Bersaba or Miss Doryty, but my friend who used to help char for them after they moved to Truro said that the two elder sisters health declined dramatically, and Miss Elowen fulfilled the destiny predicted by her eldest sister, and she spent her life looking after her sisters.”

 

“Do you know if, after her sisters died, whether Elowen ever saw the captain again, Mrs. Trevethan?” Lettice asks tentatively.

 

“I can’t say for certain, Miss Chetwynd,” the old woman replies. “But almost certainly no, to my knowledge. Taking care of her sisters, Miss Rosevear became something of a recluse in Truro, and after Miss Doryty and Miss Bersaba had joined their parents in the churchyard, it was too late for Miss Elowen. She was set in her ways and lived as she had for many a year prior, alone and hidden from the world. The captain too. Mr. Trevethan and I only served him for about five years before he died, and he never left the property once during that time. He barely left the house. And I’d lived in Penzance my whole married life and we all knew about the sea captain in the house on the hill by the cove, and I never once heard of him coming to town. So, miss, I’d say he was much the same, a recluse. And so ends my tale.”

 

“Well, “ Dickie announces, releasing a pent up breath he didn’t realise he had been holding on to. “Thank you so much for sharing it with us, Mrs. Trevethan. I shall know who to come to the next time I want to know anything about local history.”

 

“I should be getting back now, sir. I have to reorganise that storeroom, and then there’s lunch to prepare.”

 

“Oh, we’ve decided to go down to the cove today so Miss Chetwynd can paint the landscape.” Margot announces with a smile. “Could you pack us a picnic luncheon to take with us, rather than having us eat it here, Mrs. Trevethan?”

 

“Oh, pur dha********* Mrs. Channon.” replies Mrs. Trevethan before dropping a quick bob curtsey and shuffling out through the breakfast room door again.

 

“Well, what a tragic tale!” enthuses Margot, taking up a slice of marmalade covered toast and taking a bite.

 

“Not so much tragic as just sad, my love.” Dickie replies.

 

“I say again,” Gerald grumbles. “You say I’m the one who loves drama.”

 

“Well you do, Gerald,” Lettice chimes in, stirring extra sugar into her almost forgotten cup of tea. “And we love you for it.” She assures him. “But I happen to agree with Margot. It is a tragic tale, more so than just sad. Sad is too… too…”

 

“Insipid?” Gerald offers.

 

“Thank you, Gerald. Yes, too insipid a word for it. The loss of youth and true love makes this a tragic tale.”

 

Dickie chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, I wouldn’t doubt that there was a little bit of wax lyrical about Mrs. Trevethan’s version of the story, as it would be with any local legend. However, what I think is important about the story is that it tells us exactly who the lady is in the Winterhalter painting. It gives us provenance, which makes it all the more valuable.”

 

“If it’s a Winterhalter, Dickie!” Lettice reminds him again. “It may not be.”

 

“Well, whether it is or it isn’t,” Margot adds in. “All this talk won’t get us out into this unseasonable sunshine and down to the cove so Lettice can paint the lighthouse. Let’s finish up breakfast and get ready to go out.”

 

*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.

 

****As a youth the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII and then Duke of Windsor) became a proficient player of the highland bagpipe, being taught by William Ross and Henry Forsyth. He frequently, until his later years, played a tune round the table after dinner, sometimes wearing a white kilt. He was also known to wake the guests at his house on the Windsor Great Park, Fort Belvedere, with a rousing rendition of a tune on the bagpipes.

 

*****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).

 

******Marshall & Snelgrove was an up-market department store on the north side of Oxford Street, London, on the corner with Vere Street founded by James Marshall. The company became part of the Debenhams group.

 

*******“Metten daa” is Cornish for “good morning”.

 

********A halt, in railway parlance in the Commonwealth of Nations and Ireland, is a small station, usually unstaffed or with very few staff, and with few or no facilities. A halt station is a type of stop where any train carrying a passenger is scheduled to stop for a given period of time. In Edwardian times it was not unusual for wealthy families with large houses close to the railway line to have their own halt stop for visiting guests or mail and other deliveries.

 

*********”Pur dha” is Cornish for “very good”.

 

Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, even though the food looks quite edible, this upper-class Regency country house domestic scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Royal Doulton style tea set featuring roses on the breakfast table came from a miniature dollhouse specialist on E-Bay, whilst the silver teapot on the left hand size of the picture comes from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom, as does the jam pot to the right of the toast rack. The toast rack, egg cruet set, cruet set and coffee pot were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The eggs and the toast slices come from miniature dollhouse specialists on E-Bay. The apples in comport on the centre of the table are very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The comport in which they stand is spun of real glass and was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England as is the glass of orange juice on the table, the jug of orange juice and the bunch of roses on the sideboard at the back of the photograph. The remaining empty glass tumblers are all hand made of spun glass and came from a high street dolls’ specialist when I was a teenager.

 

The Queen Anne dining table, chairs and Regency sideboard were all given to me as birthday and Christmas presents when I was a child.

 

The fireplace in the background of the photo comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The two candelabra on it were made by Warwick Miniatures, and the Georgian Revival clock on the mantlepiece is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England. The vases came from a miniatures specialist on E-Bay.

 

All the paintings around the drawing room in their gilded or black frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

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.

 

Tonight however, we have headed north-west from Cavendish Mews, across Marylebone, past Regent’s Park, the London Zoo and Lords Cricket Ground to the affluent and leafy residential streets of nearby St. John’s Wood. It is here that Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie friends Minnie Palmerston and her husband Charles reside in a neatly painted two storey early Victorian townhouse on Acacia Road that formerly belonged to Charles Palmerston’s maternal grandparents, Lord and Lady Arundel. Lettice was commissioned to redecorate their dining room, after Minnie decided to have a go at it herself with disastrous results. Now with the room freshly painted and papered, and the furniture expertly curated and arranged by Lettice, all of Minnie’s dining room faux pas is forgotten, and the Palmerstons are hosting a dinner for Lettice as a thank you. They have also invited another of their 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, to even up the numbers.

 

As Siobhan, the Palmerston’s Irish maid, serves roast beef with vegetables to the quartet, Lettice regales her friends with the story of her recent visit to Glynes, her family home in Wiltshire.

 

“And what was the reception like?” Minnie asks as she picks up her glass of wine.

 

“Well,” Lettice explains. “Pater was absolutely delighted with Henry Tipping’s* editorial about my redecoration of Dickie and Margot’s in Country Life**. When I arrived, he was sitting in the drawing room reading it, would you believe?”

 

“Oh, he wasn’t, was he Lettice darling?” Minnie laughs, making her diamond chandelier earrings jostle and sparkle in the light of the candelabra in the middle of the dining table.

 

“How perfectly droll!” Charles remarks from his seat beside his wife, accepting the gravy boat proffered to him by Lettice who is sitting opposite him.

 

“He told me how he couldn’t be prouder of me.” Lettice goes on.

 

“Well, that’s a turn up for the books, isn’t it!” Minnie exclaims, clapping her white evening glove clad hands.

 

“Oh, I think Pater has always believed in my abilities, deep down inside.”

 

“Well he’s always been supportive of your aunt’s artistic pursuits,” Gerald adds as he slices the pieces of beef on his plate. “Hasn’t he Lettice?”

 

“He has, Gerald. And besides, I am his favourite.”

 

“Even if you do say so yourself,” Gerald chortles before popping a morsel of meat into his mouth and sighing with delight.

 

“Will that be all, Madam?” Sobhan asks her mistress politely as there is a break in the conversation.

 

Minnie looks across the black japanned surface of her dining table at her white gilt dinner plates stacked with steaming slices of beef, chunks of golden potato and pumpkin, steamed cauliflower and shiny green peas. “I think so Siobhan. Thank you. We’ll ring if we need anything further.”

 

“Very good, Madam.” The maid retreats through the door to the left of the fireplace.

 

“Well, I must say that Minnie and I are as pleased as punch to have a room decorated by a woman written up in Country Life.” Charles says proudly.

 

“Do you really like it, Charles?” Lettice asks with a sparkle in her eyes.

 

“Oh yes I do. It’s smashing! Really it is. You’ve dragged it from the Nineteenth Century into now in a very striking, elegant and fashionable way.”

 

“What a lovely compliment, Charles.” Lettice says, blushing.

 

“Unlike your wife’s valiant attempts.” Minnie grumbles, dabbing the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “Which only made this room appear like a Maida Vale***** dining room.”

 

“I’ll never live that slur down, will I my poppet, even if it is true?”

 

“Never my love.” Minnie smiles back. “However, I have to agree with you. You had the vision Lettice. I could never have done this, and you prevented me from changing or swaying your vision, and I’m so very glad that you did.”

 

“Yes, at least my paintings don’t get lost against the papering on the walls,” remarks Charles. “And the whole scheme makes the room look bigger, less cluttered and more classical.”

 

“You’re a wonder, Lettice darling!” Minnie enthuses. “No question!”

 

“The fact that our dining room has been redecorated by one of the most fashionable society interior designers will certainly give us something interesting to talk about whenever we throw a dinner party.” Charles continues, addressing Lettice.

 

“And it will finally give me a topic to brighten the dinner table with,” Minnie adds brightly. “At least for a while. Which is so much more palatable than all that dull talk of your boring bankers and their equally tedious wives.”

 

“Those boring bankers, as you call them,” Charles addresses his wife. “Are my work colleagues and friends, my poppet.”

 

“Well I can’t help it if you have simply the most boring and tiresome friends in the whole of London,” Minnie replies with a pretty shrug of her shoulders. “Now can I, Charles darling?” She turns to Lettice. “Boring banking, stocks and shares.”

 

“That boring banking I do, and those stocks and shares help pay for all this, Minnie.” Charles counters, waving his knife around the newly appointed room. “And keeps you comfortably in stockings and fans.”

 

“He has a point, Minnie darling.” Lettice concedes.

 

“Well, at least they get used for something useful and interesting.” Minnie then faces ahead of her to Gerald. “It is simply too dreary for words.”

 

“Oh Minnie!” Gerald laughs. “You really are quite something. I’m amazed she can keep a civil tongue in her head when she is surrounded by your friends, Charles.”

 

“I have to threaten her with divorce.” Charles jokes as he takes a piece of roast potato and pops it in his mouth, smiling cheekily at his wife as he chews.

 

“Oh Charles!” Minnie gasps. “You are simply too beastly for words. Anyway, enough about your boring friends! No one wants to hear about them! What about your mother, Lettice? Was she as thrilled as your father was about the Country Life editorial?”

 

“You’ve never met Sadie before.” remarks Gerald sagely as he rolls his eyes. “She is seldom thrilled by anything.”

 

“Oh surely not, Gerald darling! She would have to be pleased that her youngest daughter is being haled a success.” Minnie retorts.

 

“Your idea of success and Sadie’s are quite different, Minnie darling.” Gerald replies.

 

Minnie turns to her friend with questioning eyes shimmering with concern, her lower lip hanging open slightly in anticipation as she waits for her to speak.

 

“Well, she conceded that if I must be written about, at least it was in a periodical that is respectable.” Lettice explains a little deflatedly.

 

“No!” Minnie gasps.

 

“I’m quite sure Sadie will be entertaining all the great and good of the county, lording the story over each and every one of them.” Gerald adds.

 

“Not that she will tell me.”

 

“Perhaps not.” Gerald counters. “But I’m sure Bella or Leslie will.”

 

“That’s terrible!” Minnie exclaims. “How can your own mother not be proud of you, Lettice darling?”

 

“Oh, dare say in her heart of hearts she may be a little pleased.”

 

“But she’ll never admit it.” adds Gerald.

 

“Especially to me.”

 

“And the Viscount is far too loyal to his wife to give the game away.”

 

“So what did she say, besides that she was satisfied that at least you’d been written about in an appropriate periodical?” Charles asks.

 

“Not much else,” Lettice answers. “Other than to remind me that whilst this little foray into interior design may have reaped me a small snippet of momentary notoriety, I should not forget my true duty to my family and society.”

 

“And what’s that then?” Minnie asks.

 

“To get married of course.” Gerald elucidates for his friend. “Sadie doesn’t think anything should come between Lettice and a good marriage prospect.”

 

“I was hoping that with Elizabeth*** marrying the Duke of York that it might deflect Mater from her determination to advance my marriage prospects, but it seems to have done quite the opposite, and all she wanted to do when I was down in Wiltshire visiting them, was to discuss my budding relationship with Selwyn.”

 

“And how is the budding relationship with the future Duke of Walmsford?” Minnie asks, her green eyes widening at even the smallest amount of gossip.

 

“You are incorrigible, Minnie!” Lettice exclaims. “You’d be the last person I’d confide in about the state of my love life.”

 

“Oh don’t be such a spoil sport!” Minnie bounces up and down in her high backed red and gold Art Deco black japanned dining chair. “I’m sure you held out on me about Elizabeth marrying the Duke of York when I asked you whether she was going to marry the Prince of Wales.”

 

Lettice does not reply, instead concentrating on cutting a slice of beef on her plate.

 

“Maybe she did, my poppet,” Charles remarks. “Because what Lettice says is true. I love you dearly, but there is no denying you are a frightful gossip.”

 

“Charles!” Minnie looks wounded, but then gives the game away as she smiles guilty at her husband. “You are a beast, Charles Palmerston! Goodness knows why I married you?”

 

“It obviously wasn’t for all my boring and tedious friends,” Charles chortled good-naturedly. “So it must be for my good looks and charming manners.” He takes her right hand in his left one and raises it to his lips and kisses it tenderly.

 

“Oh you!” Minnie blusters, flushing pink at his gesture before flapping at him with her napkin. Turning back to Lettice she says, “You can’t hold out on me about your relationship with Selwyn, Lettice darling! Not with me, one of your dearest friends!” She presses her elegantly manicured fingers to her chest over her heart overdramatically. “Tell me something: any little titbit to make me happy!” She pouts. “Please!”

 

“You know she’ll wear you down if you don’t, Lettice darling.” Charles sighs. “She’ll be at you all night, like a kitten with a catnip mouse.”

 

“Oh very well, Minnie.” Lettice acquiesces. “Although I must confess there isn’t much to tell.”

 

“Do I sense a dwindling in the ardour you have for Selwyn?” Minnie asks, genuinely concerned for her friend, but equally driven by the intrigue of gossip about her.

 

“Not exactly.” Lettice says a little awkwardly. “I had dinner with Selwyn at Simpson’s**** the other week.” She pauses, unsure what to disclose or even how to say it. “And we had…”

 

“An argument?” Minnie prompts.

 

“Not an argument exactly. More of a disagreement.”

 

“Over what, Lettice darling?”

 

“Over his mother.”

 

Sitting next to her, Gerald remains silent and focuses on cutting a potato into quarters.

 

“His mother?” Minnie queries. “The Duchess of Walmsford doesn’t approve of you, Lettice darling?”

 

“She can hardly disapprove of me if she hasn’t even met me yet. That’s what we had our disagreement over.”

 

Gerald continues to focus on cutting up the food on his plate.

 

“I want to meet her. I think I should meet her, now that Selwyn and I are more serious about pursuing our relationship. Yet he seems to show a strange reluctance to introducing the two of us, and it’s gnawing at me.”

 

“You’ve only really known one another for a short while, Lettice darling.” Charles reflects.

 

“You sound just like him, Charles. We’ve known each other over a year now.”

 

“But how often have you seen one another over that time, between his busy schedule and yours? Maybe a dozen times or so.” When Lettice nods, Charles continues. “Well then, it’s still early days yet. Why roil the calm waters of your budding relationship with the irritation of relations?”

 

“That was his argument, Charles.”

 

“Well, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.” Charles concludes. “Don’t you think so, Gerald?”

 

“Me?” Gerald asks, raising his head from his plate.

 

“Don’t you agree, Gerald?” Charles asks again.

 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.” he lies. “What am I agreeing to, Charles?”

 

“Oh it doesn’t matter, old bean.” Charles answers dismissively.

 

“Are you alright, Gerald?” Minnie asks from opposite him. “You’ve gone pale all of a sudden. Don’t tell me you don’t like the roast beef?”

 

“What?” Gerald looks down into his plate again. “Oh no, no, Minnie. The meal is delicious. Positively scrumptious.” he assures her. He is relieved when he sees the defensive look in Minnie’s green eyes dissipate. He continues, “No, I’m just a bit preoccupied with orders for frocks for the Royal Wedding. Lettice’s isn’t the only outfit I am making for the occasion.”

 

“So business is looking up for you too, old bean?” Charles pipes up. “Jolly good!”

 

Gerald sighs with relief as his ploy to steer the conversation away from Lettice’s and Selwyn’s relationship succeeds. Yet as he talks animatedly about the frocks he is making for other society ladies attending the royal wedding, his eyes and this thoughts drift to his best friend.

 

Although she is smiling and as animated as he is on the outside, Gerald worries that behind the gaiety of her recent success, Lettice is worried about her relationship with Selwyn. Gerald has tried in an oblique way to warn Lettice not to look solely to Selwyn for romance, so as not to be accused of interfering in her private affairs. Even as her best friend, Gerald knows there are only so many lines that he can cross before he is deemed as meddling where he shouldn’t and risks his friendship with her. Hearing Lettice talk about Selwyn’s mother, he worries that the reason Selwyn is reluctant to introduce her to his mother, the Duchess, is because she has plans for her son’s marriage that don’t include Lettice. Whilst he predicted this, and even voiced his opinion to Lettice’s mother, it was ill received by her. Gerald knows it will be even less warmly welcomed by Lettice if it comes from him, when in fact it should come from Selwyn. Yet he worries whether he is doing the right thing or not by not saying anything. He doesn’t want to lose the close relationship wit his best friend, yet at the same time he wonders whether it would be better to risk it to save her heart. Would she forgive him in the long run and come to understand that any pain he inflicted was offset by the pain she was spared had she not known Gerald’s feelings.

 

*Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.

 

**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.

 

***Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was known at the beginning of 1923 when this story is set, went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". He proposed again in 1922 after Elizabeth was part of his sister, Mary the Princess Royal’s, wedding party, but she refused him again. On Saturday, January 13th, 1923, Prince Albert went for a walk with Elizabeth at the Bowes-Lyon home at St Paul’s, Walden Bury and proposed for a third and final time. This time she said yes. The wedding took place on April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey.

 

*****After a modest start in 1828 as a smoking room and soon afterwards as a coffee house, Simpson's-in-the-Strand achieved a dual fame, around 1850, for its traditional English food, particularly roast meats, and also as the most important venue in Britain for chess in the Nineteenth Century. Chess ceased to be a feature after Simpson's was bought by the Savoy Hotel group of companies at the end of the Nineteenth Century, but as a purveyor of traditional English food, Simpson's has remained a celebrated dining venue throughout the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-First Century. P.G. Wodehouse called it "a restful temple of food"

 

This 1920s Art Deco dining room with its table set for fur may look real to you, but it is in fact made up of 1:12 miniatures from my own miniatures collection, including some pieces from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The dining table is correctly set for a four course Edwardian dinner partially ended, with the first course already concluded using cutlery, from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The delicious looking roast dinner on the dinner plates and on the console in the background have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. All the wine and water glasses I have had since I was a teenager. I bought them from a high street stockist that specialised in dolls’ houses and doll house miniatures. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The water carafe and the wine carafe on the console in the background were bought at the same time. The white porcelain salt and pepper shakers have been gilded by hand and also came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The three prong Art Deco style candelabra in the console is an artisan piece made of sterling silver. Although unsigned, the piece was made in England by an unknown artist.

 

The black japanned high backed chairs with their stylised Art Deco fabric upholstery came from a seller on E-Bay. The black japanned dining table and console in the background were made by Town Hall Miniatures. The tall stands that flank the fireplace were made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. The vases of flowers on the stands are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

The Streamline Moderne pottery tile fireplace surround and the Art Deco green electric fireplace I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom. On the mantle of the fireplace stands a miniature artisan hand painted Art Deco statue on a “marble” plinth. Made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality of the detail in their pieces, it is a 1:12 copy of the “Theban Dancer” sculpture created by Claire-Jeanne-Roberte Colinet in 1925. The tall statues standing at either end of the console table are also made by Warwick Miniatures and were hand painted by me.

 

The paintings around the room are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States.

 

The stylised metallic red dioxide floral wallpaper was paper given to me by a friend who encouraged me to use it in my miniature tableaux.

Although all the rooms of the Rone - Empire installation exhibition are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. As a well proportioned and elegant space, it runs over half of the original Burnham Beeches floor plan. It features two long tables covered in a Miss Havisham like feast of a trove of found dinner table objects from silverware and glassware to empty oyster shells and vases of grasses and feathers.

 

The Dining Room installation I personally found especially confronting. In 1982, I visited Burnham Beeches when it was a smart and select hotel and had Devonshire tea in the dining room at a table alongside the full length windows overlooking the terraces below. I was shocked to see a room I remember appointed with thick carpets and tables covered in gleaming silver and white napery, strewn with dust and leaves, and adorned with Miss Havisham's feast of found dining objects.

 

Melbourne based street artist Rone (Tyrone Wright) used the decaying glory of the 1933 Harry Norris designed Streamline Moderne mansion, Burnham Beeches in the Dandenong Ranges' Sherbrooke, between March the 6th and April 22nd to create an immersive hybrid art space for his latest installation exhibition; "Empire".

 

"Empire" combined a mixture of many different elements including art, sound, light, scent, found objects, botanic designs, objects from nature and music especially composed for the project by Nick Batterham. The Burnham Beeches project re-imagines and re-interprets the spirit of one of Victoria’s landmark mansions, seldom seen by the public and not accessed since the mid 1980s. According to Rone - Empire website; "viewers are invited to consider what remains - the unseen cultural, social, artistic and spiritual heritage which produces intangible meaning."

 

Rone was invited by the current owner of Burnham Beeches, restaurateur Shannon Bennett, to exhibit "Empire" during a six week interim period before renovations commence to convert the heritage listed mansion into a select six star hotel.

 

Rone initially imagined the mansion to be in a state of dereliction, but found instead that it was a stripped back blank canvas for him to create his own version of how he thought it should look. Therefore, almost all the decay is in fact of Rone's creation from grasses in the Games Room which 'grow' next to a rotting billiards table, to the damp patches, water staining and smoke damage on the ceilings. Nests of leaves fill some spaces, whilst tree branches and in one case an entire avenue of boughs sprout from walls and ceilings. Especially designed Art Deco wallpaper created in Rone's studio has been installed on the walls before being distressed and damaged. The rooms have been adorned with furnishings and objects that might once have graced the twelve original rooms of Burnham Beeches: bulbulous club sofas, half round Art Deco tables, tarnished silverware and their canteen, mirrored smoke stands of chrome and Bakelite, glass lamps, English dinner services, a glass drinks trolley, photos of people long forgotten in time, walnut veneer dressing tables reflecting the installation sometimes in triplicate, old wire beadsteads, luggage, shelves of books, an Underwood typewriter, a John Broadwood and Sons of London grand piano and even a Kriesler radiogramme. All these objects were then covered in a thick sheet or light sprinkling of 'dust' made of many different things including coffee grinds and talcum powder, creating a sensation for the senses. Burnham Beeches resonated with a ghostly sense of its former grandeur, with a whiff of bittersweet romance.

 

Throughout the twelve rooms, magnificent and beautifully haunting floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall portraits of Australian actress Lily Sullivan, star of the Foxtel re-make of Picnic at Hanging Rock, appear. Larger than life, each portrait is created in different colours, helping to create seasonal shifts as you move from room to room.

 

Although all the rooms are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. The Study is the other. It features walls of books covered with a portrait of Lily Sullivan, and the entire room is partially submerged in a lake of black water with the occasional red oak leaf floating across its glassy surface.

 

I feel very honoured and privileged to be amongst the far too few people fortunate enough to have seen Rone's "Empire", as like the seasons, it is ephemeral, and it will already have been dismantled. Rone's idea is that, like his street art, things he creates don't last forever, and that made the project exciting. I hope that my photographs do justice to, and adequately share as much as is possible of this amazing installation with you.

 

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.

 

This morning however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her family home as her parents hosted their first Hunt Ball since 1914 last night. Lady Sadie was determined that not only would it be the event of the 1922 county season, but also that it would be a successful entrée for her youngest daughter, still single at twenty-one years of age, to meet a number of eligible and marriageable men. Whilst Lettice enjoys dancing, parties and balls, she was less enthusiastic about the idea of the ball being used as a marriage market than her parents were. Yet Lady Sadie seems to have gotten her wish as Lettice and latecomer Selwyn Spencely seemed to hit it off last night, and spent much of the latter part of the evening together.

 

Whilst the fancy dress Hunt Ball is now over, there are still traces of its presence and as Lettice walks down the stairs of the lofty Adam style entrance hall. She can hear the sweep of brooms and the click of glassware coming through the open door of the ballroom as several servants laugh and chatter as they restore the grand room back to its pristine condition and shroud its gilded furnishings, crystal chandeliers and paintings in dust sheets again before closing its doors. As she reaches the base of the stairs, the faint waft of a mixture of perfumes greets her, rather like ghost of the party goers, long since gone and many like her mother, probably still abed as they recover from the excesses of the occasion, making their presence known. As she walks into the Glynes dining room with its Georgian wallpapers and furnishings, all signs that it had been used for a very lavish buffet the previous evening are gone, except one again for the faint whiff of a foreign perfume or the hit of roast beef in the air.

 

“Good morning Pappa,” Lettice says politely, walking over to her father who sits in his usual place at the head of the table reading the newspapers sent down from London on the milk train* and expertly ironed** by Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler.

 

“Err… ahem… morning.” he mutters distractedly in reply, shaking the Daily Mirror with a crisp crack as Lettice plants a kiss on the top of his head.

 

“Good morning Leslie,” she says to her brother, who sits in his mother’s seat at the dining table to the left of their father with his back to the warmth of the fireplace. “How are you this morning?”

 

“I dare say the same as you, Tice.” he replies tiredly, taking a sip of orange juice. “Thank god for aspirin is all I’ll say.”

 

Lettice smiles indulgently across at her brother as she sits opposite him at the table. “Was that Arabella Tyrwhitt I saw you dancing with repeatedly last night?”

 

“It was,” he replies, hitting the top of his boiled egg sharply three times and cracking the shell. “You’re observant.”

 

“I didn’t know that you and Arabella had reached an understanding.” She pours some tea into her dainty rose patterned teacup from the silver teapot on the tabletop before her.

 

“Well, you’re so busy with your new interior designer life up in London now, you wouldn’t know what happens down here in dull old Wiltshire, would you?” He carefully peels the shell off the top of his egg.

 

“Are you goading me, Leslie?”

 

“Me? Goad you? How could you even think such a thing?” An overly expressive amateur dramatic wrist placed to his forehead tells Lettice that Leslie is far from being serious. “Not at all, Tice.” He smiles as the white of his egg is revealed, untainted by eggshell pieces. “Arabella and I reached an understanding last year.”

 

“Not a bad sort, the elder Tyrwhitt girl,” comes the Viscount’s voice from behind the screen of the newspaper, indicating that even though he is unsociably reading and hiding behind the Daily Mirror, he is still aware of the conversation between his eldest and youngest children washing around him. “She has her head screwed on properly: knows her way around horses, has a head for farming and can judge a cattle show. She’ll make a fine chatelaine of Glynes one day.” With a crack of paper, he lowers the London tabloid and eyeballs his daughter. “Don’t tell your mother I said that, or I shall never hear the end of it.”

 

“No Pappa,” Lettice replies, a giggle escaping her lips as the paper rises again and she catches the cheeky look on her brother’s face. “What’s new in the world today then, Pappa.”

 

“Haugdahl broke the land speed record in Florida***, apparently,” the Viscount replies. “One hundred and eighty miles per hour they say.”

 

“Goodness!” Leslie exclaims. “Imagine travelling at that speed! It must be exhilarating.”

 

“Thinking of converting the Saunderson**** are you, Leslie?” Lettice teases her brother. “You’ll have England’s, no the world’s fastest tractor!” She giggles at the thought, for which she is rewarded with a withering look from him.

 

“Oh, “ her father continues, a serious lilt in his voice. “And His Royal Highness was seen at that club,” He almost spits the word out. “Of yours.”

 

“The Embassy Club is hardly mine, Pappa.” Lettice defends.

 

“Well, it’s bad enough you go there in the first place.” he mutters admonishingly. “Women going to nightclubs.”

 

“I go there too, Pappa,” Leslie comes to his sister’s defence chivalrously. He then rather spoils the attempt by adding rather weakly, “Sometimes.”

 

“Yes, well,” his father huffs. “You don’t live in London to have all the temptations of the city flaunted before you.”

 

“You make London sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah, Pappa!” Lettice scoffs.

 

“Well it isn’t exactly…” he hesitates as he hears the handle of the dining room door turn.

 

The door opens and Moira, the maid who has taken to assisting wait table at breakfast and luncheon on informal occasions since the war, walks through the door with a silver salver on which she carries a boiled egg in a silver egg cup and some toast slices housed in a silver rack. “Your egg and toast, Miss.” she says politely as she lowers the tray and allows Lettice to pick up her egg and the toast rack. Turning to the Viscount she asks with deference, “Can I get you anything else, Sir?”

 

The Viscount slams down his paper with a thwack on the table, disturbing the neatly placed cutlery on his plate with an unnerving rattle. “Get away with your wittering, girl!” he blusters angrily. “When I want something, I’ll ask Bramley for it!”

 

Lettice catches the maid’s startled eye with her gaze, and narrowing her own eyes slightly, she gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head at her.

 

“No… no Sir,” Moira stammers. “Err… I mean yes, Sir.” She quickly bobs and curtsey and scurries back out the door she came through.

 

“Oh you shouldn’t terrorise the poor girl, Father,” Leslie says, giving his father an imploring look. “You know how hard it is to keep servants these days. She’s so devoted. We’re lucky to have her.”

 

“I agree Leslie,” Lettice adds. “Edith wouldn’t put up with that from me. She knows her rights.”

 

“Servants rights,” the Viscount sneers. “What utter rubbish. She gets food, board, uniform and wages. What more does she need?”

 

“A less disagreeable master,” Leslie replies.

 

“Damnable girl!” the Viscount blasts in reply. “She aught not to be waiting table at all! Where’s Bramley? Nothing has been the same since the bloody war!”

 

“You know why she’s waiting table, Pappa,” Lettice soothes. Reaching across she picks up the silver coffee pot and fills her father’s cup. “Things aren’t like they were before the war. We don’t have all the male servants we used to.”

 

“Well Bramley should be here to serve me! Why do I pay handsomely for a butler if he isn’t here to wait table at breakfast?”

 

“He’s busy keeping this old pile of bricks and plaster functioning. We can’t always have Bramley or Marsden waiting table, Father,” Leslie adds hopefully. “Especially not on informal occasions.”

 

“Oh I wish I could be like Mamma, and have breakfast in bed,” Lettice sighs, picking up the butter knife and smearing a small amount of creamy pale yellow butter from the home farm onto a triangle of toast before adding a dollop of homemade raspberry jam from the preserve pot.

 

“As soon as you become Mrs. Selwyn Spencely, you can.*****” Leslie replies from across the table.

 

“Oh, don’t you start!” Lettice groans. “I haven’t even started my breakfast yet.”

 

“Now, now, my darling girl,” Viscount Wrexham says, folding his paper in two and placing it flat on the table. “Don’t be coy.” He adds a dash of milk from the dainty floral breakfast set milk jug to his coffee and stirs it. “Spit it out! It seems last night was more of a success than you would care to admit to. How are things between you and young Spencely, eh?” He winks conspiratorially at his daughter, all thoughts of Moira’s irritating presence vanished from his mind.

 

“Oh Pappa! You’re as bad as Mamma!” She rolls her eyes and looks down, focusing upon spreading the rich red jam full of seeds across her toast with her knife. “Why do I feel like I’m about to be interrogated. There really is nothing to report.”

 

“Not according to what I saw, Tice.” Leslie remarks. “You two seemed to hit it off very nicely.”

 

“I thought you were too busy with Arabella to notice anyone else, Leslie.”

 

“We weren’t that unobservant.” Leslie sists back in his Chippendale dining chair and folds his arms comfortably across his stomach, a satisfied look upon his face. “Arabella and I could hardly fail to notice when our Cinderella of the ball fell for the most handsome and eligible prince in the room.”

 

“Oh, you do talk such rubbish, Leslie!” Lettice flaps her linen napkin at him.

 

“Well, it seems everyone in the ballroom last night was aware of the movements of you two. You and Selwyn will be the chief source of gossip at every breakfast table in Wiltshire and all the neighbouring counties this morning.”

 

“You do over exaggerate things Leslie.” Lettice replies dismissively.

 

“Well, I thought you and young Spencely seemed quite cosy, my dear,” her father adds, taking a sip of his coffee. “And I don’t usually notice such things. Don’t tell me your mother and I were wrong.”

 

“We just talked Pappa,” Lettice cries exasperatedly, dropping her knife onto her plate with a clatter. “As Leslie pointed out, we were hardly afforded any privacy to do anything more than that, with everyone evidently watching us.”

 

“Not that you noticed that yourself, of course,” Leslie proffers with a cheeky glint in his eye. “Making cow eyes****** like a teenage girl with a crush.”

 

“Oh do shut up, Leslie!” Lettice answers back grumpily, placing her arms akimbo as she feels her face heat as it colours with an embarrassed blush.

 

“So, it did go well with you and young Spencely, then?” the Viscount asks hopefully, excitement giving his eyes an extra sparkle of life.

 

“We just talked, Pappa.” Lettice reiterates. “About what we remembered of playing together as children, about how grumpy his mother was the last time we saw each other.”

 

“Oooh!” hoots the Viscount. “Lady Zinnia was fit to be tied every time her precious Spencely went home looking like he had been dragged backwards through a hedgerow.”

 

“That’s probably because he had been, if I remember anything about Tice at that age.” Leslie chortles.

 

“I call that frightfully unfair, Leslie! Lionel used to play with us too.”

 

“And what else did you talk about?” the Viscount asks, determined not to let the conversation stray away from his focus. He sits further forward in his chair and stares at his daughter with an expectant look.

 

“Oh I don’t know, Pappa. We talked about what we’ve done over the ensuing years since we last saw each other. That’s all.”

 

“He’s an architect, isn’t he, Tice?” Leslie asks.

 

“He is.”

 

“Well that sounds like a match made in heaven then,” Leslie claps his hands delightedly. “He can design the houses and you can decorate them. Perfect!”

 

“Until he becomes Duke, and Lettice the Duchess,” Viscount Wrexham adds with unbridled pleasure.

 

“Have you chosen my wedding dress yet, Pappa?” Lettice spits hotly.

 

“What?” He looks at her oddly. “Oh, no. I’ll leave that sort of women’s work to your mother, dear girl.” He waves his hand dismissively.

 

“I don’t think Tice was being literal, Father,” Leslie elucidates hopefully. “She was making a point.”

 

“What? What point?”

 

“I know you and Mamma want me to be married, Pappa,” Lettice begins.

 

“The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned if we’re talking about young Spencely.” agrees the Viscount. “He’s a splendid catch for you.”

 

Ignoring his remark, Lettice carries on, “But I will manage this in my own way, mind you. I don’t want you and especially not Mamma interfering.”

 

“Interfering?” the Viscount splutters.

 

“Interfering!” Lettice affirms strongly.

 

“So,” the older man replies, smiling with satisfaction. “Things did go well then.”

 

“We’ve agreed that we might, just might Pappa, catch up when he’s next in London and free to do so. Perhaps we will have dinner together or see a show.”

 

“I say!” the Viscount chortles, rubbing his hands together with glee. “Today will be a good day. Your mother will be over the moon with delight!”

 

“Unless Gerald Bruton’s rancourous remarks last night really have upset her.” Pipes up Leslie.

 

“Gerald?” gasps Lettice.

 

“What’s young Bruton said now?” the Viscount asks his son, his happy expression clouding over with concern.

 

“I don’t quite know,” Leslie admits with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “She refused to say. Whatever it was, it made her positively furious.”

 

The Viscount looks defeatedly at Lettice, “Well, then I hope for all our sakes that Spencely sees how perfect you are, Lettice, and that romance does blossom. It will be better for all of us if your mother is placated, and I couldn’t think of a better way to do it than your potential marriage.”

 

*A milk train was a very early morning, often pre-dawn, train that traditionally transported milk, stopping at many stops and private halts to pick up milk in churns from farming districts. The milk train also carried other good including newspapers from London and even the occasional passenger anxious to get somewhere extremely early.

 

**It was a common occurrence in large and medium-sized houses that employed staff for the butler or chief parlour maid to iron the newspapers. The task of butlers ironing newspapers is not as silly as it sounds. Butlers were not ironing out creases, but were using the hot iron to dry the ink so that the paper could be easily read without the reader's ending up with smudged fingers and black hands, a common problem with newspapers in the Victorian and Edwardian ages.

 

***Sprint car driver Sig Haugdahl and officials of the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) reported that he had broken the record for fastest speed on land and had reached 180 miles per hour on the 7th of April 1922 whilst driving a 250 horse power car at the Daytona Beach Road Course in Florida. The claim of a new record had not been timed by the American Automobile Association and was not accepted because it was unverifiable. Remarkably, Haugdahl's claimed speed of 180 miles per hour was forty five percent faster than the official record of 124.09 miles per hour set by Lydston Hornsted on June the 24th, 1914, in a 200 horse power car.

 

****Saunderson, based near Bedford was Britain’s only large-scale tractor maker at the time of the Great War.

 

*****Before the Second World War, if you were a married Lady, it was customary for you to have your breakfast in bed, because you supposedly don't have to socialise to find a husband. Unmarried women were expected to dine with the men at the breakfast table, especially on the occasion where an unmarried lady was a guest at a house party, as it gave her exposure to the unmarried men in a more relaxed atmosphere and without the need for a chaperone.

 

******Making cow eyes is an expression for looking coy or docile yet clearly intending that the person looked at will find the looker attractive.

 

Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class country house domestic scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Chippendale dining room table and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

The table is littered with breakfast items. The Glynes pretty floral breakfast crockery is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The toast rack, egg cups, cruet set tea and coffee pots were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The eggs and the toast slices come from miniature dollhouse specialists on E-Bay. The butter in the glass butter dish has been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The glassware on the table, the jug of orange juice on the small demi-lune table in the background and the cranberry glass vase on the dining table are all from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each piece is hand blown using real glass. The cutlery set is made of polished metal. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements, the very realistic looking purple and pink tulips are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.

 

The 1:12 miniature copy of ‘The Mirror’, is made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. On its mantlepiece stand two 1950s Limoges vases. Both are stamped with a small green Limoges mark to the bottom. These treasures I found in an overcrowded cabinet at the Mill Markets in Geelong. Also standing on the mantlepiece are two miniature diecast lead Meissen figurines: the Lady with the Canary and the Gentleman with the Butterfly, hand painted and gilded by me. There is also a dome anniversary clock in the middle of the mantlepiece which I bought the same day that I bought the fireplace. The vases contain hand made roses made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

To the left of the photo stands an artisan bonheur de jour (French lady's writing desk). A gift from my Mother when I was in my twenties, she had obtained this beautiful piece from an antique auction. Made in the 1950s of brass it is very heavy. It is set with hand-painted enamel panels featuring Rococo images. Originally part of a larger set featuring a table and chairs, or maybe a settee as well, individual pieces from these hand-painted sets are highly collectable and much sought after. I never knew this until the advent of E-Bay!

 

The Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery in the background was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

All the paintings around the Glynes dining room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.

How did the medieval European elites (say, top 0.1%) used to dine? Here is an interpretation.

 

November 2020, Miami, Florida.

Alternative for Our Daily Challenge ... coffee

 

I enjoy a puzzle with my morning coffee ... and I prefer a Cappuccino! This cup is an OP-shop purchase and it came in very handy today.

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 headed south-west across London, away from Cavendish Mews and Mayfair, over Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the comfortably affluent Kensington High Street. Here, amidst the two and three storey buildings that line either side of the street stands the elegant Edwardian department store of Derry and Toms*. It is in the café on the top floor, beneath the ornate ceiling with its central domed light well, that Lettice has an assignation with one of her Embassy Club coterie of bright young things**, her dear friend Margot. Margot recently married another of the Embassy Club coterie, Dickie Channon. The newlyweds 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’. It is to discuss her ideas for redecoration that Lettice is meeting the newly minted Mrs. Channon for afternoon tea.

 

The pair sit in a cosy nook at a quiet table for two laid with fine white napery, gilt edged china, glinting silverware and gleaming glassware. The hubbub of quiet and polite, predominantly female, chatter drifts around them, for the spacious café is filled with Edwardian matrons and their daughters or other well-heeled young women all enjoying a fine repast. Many have been shopping in the departments on the floors below their feet. The chatter is punctuated with the sound of cutlery quietly tapping crockery and the clink of glasses as they enjoy what the Derry and Toms Café has to offer.

 

“Oh, how heavenly, Margot darling!” Lettice sighs as a decadent blackberry tart of glistening fruit topped with a dollop of rich fluffy white cream is deposited in front of both of them by a waitress dressed in a black uniform with a pretty white lace cap and apron.

 

“Have you truly never been here for afternoon tea, Lettice darling?” Margot asks as the waitress makes a discreet retreat from the table.

 

“Never.” Lettice acknowledges, shaking out her napkin and draping it across her lap.

 

“I’ve been coming here ever since I was a child. Mummy used to bring me here as a treat after we’d been shopping downstairs.” Margot smiles at the memory. “That was back when Mummy was fun to be with. Not like now. Where did your mother take you shopping in London?”

 

“Mater?” Lettice looks queryingly at her friend as she takes up the silver sugar basket from the tray before them and spoons a teaspoon of sugar into her empty cup. “She never took me shopping in London.”

 

“Never?” Margot asks, shocked.

 

“Never. You know she hates London. That’s why she seldom comes here, unless she can’t avoid it.” She replaces the sugar basket on the tray with a clunk. “No Mater always orders anything she wants through the Army and Navy Stores*** and has it shipped from Victoria Station on the railways.”

 

“Let me pour, darling.” Margot says, reaching for the silver teapot which stands behind the coffee pot, out of Lettice’s range. As she pours tea into her friend’s cup, she asks, “Didn’t you tell me you used to come to London and stay with an aunt who was an artist?”

 

“I did.” Lettice smiles warmly as she remembers the occasional London holiday. “Dear Aunt Eggy lives in Little Venice****.”

 

“Well that’s just across the park,” Margot points in the general direction of Kensington and Hyde Parks as she replaces the teapot on the tray.

 

“Well, Aunt Egg never brought me here.” Lettice says smiling, taking up the milk jug and adding a dash of milk to her tea. “No, she is a Pontings***** shopper, and that is where we went for afternoon tea, although usually we went to have tea with one of her many fellow artists or literary friends instead.”

 

“Your mother would have hated her doing that with you.”

 

“Oh she did. She loathes Aunt Egg’s bohemian lifestyle and artistic friends.”

 

“Which is all the more reason why you love her, and her friends,” Margot chuckles conspiratorially..

 

“Indeed I do, Margot darling!” Lettice joins her friend’s chuckles with her own gentle, slightly naughty laughter.

 

“Well, since it was always the House of Value that you used to take tea at,” Margot announces, picking up her own cup of coffee and taking a sip from it. “You’ll find afternoon tea here a great treat.”

 

“I do hope so.” Lettice says as she breaks the pasty of her tart with her knife and fork. It gives way easily, a tumble of blackberries spilling forth, staining the white porcelain of the plate as it does. She lets out a small squeak of pleasure as she takes her first mouthful of luscious blackberries, thin sweet pastry and cream. “Oh this is truly divine, Margot darling!” she enthuses as her eyes drift up towards the ornately painted ceiling above.

 

“I told you,” Margot replies with self-satisfaction, breaking the pastry of her own tart. “Now, how was the Hunt Ball? I’m so sorry we couldn’t make it after all. The Marquis and Marchioness take precedence I’m afraid.”

 

“How was dinner with your new in-laws?” Lettice asks, dabbing the edge of her mouth with her napkin, dislodging a few crumbs that scatter down into the folds of her floral crepe de chiné frock.

 

“Ghastly!” Margot admits. “Positively ghastly! I don’t know how they can live in that awful, dark and drafty pile of old rubble.”

 

“Cold, was it?”

 

“Frightfully. All high ceilings and not a decent fire to be had in any of the hearths, not even in our bedroom. No wonder my mother-in-law always looks so grim. That’s what comes of living in a beastly old mausoleum! Her face must be permanently frozen like that because of the north wind blowing through her overstuffed and dark drawing room.” The pair chuckle together at the thought of it. “I’m so glad that Daddy had ‘Chi an Treth’ electrified. You should see all the stains on the ceilings of Taunton Castle from the chandeliers and gasoliers******. Dickie will have to pay for electrification when he becomes the Marquis, and get some proper heating and new plumbing, or we shan’t live there. I mean, who would want to live there when you have a perfectly divine little flat in Pimlico.?” Margot pauses mid thought. “Hang on! This wasn’t supposed to be a conversation about me or dreary old Taunton Castle. I asked you about the Hunt Ball.”

 

“Well actually, you asked me here to talk about the design ideas I have for ‘Chi an Treth’,” Lettice corrects her friend.

 

“And to talk about the Hunt Ball,” Margot counters.

 

“Oh well,” Lettice says, looking down demurely into her lap with a smirk on her face as her cheeks blanch with slight embarrassment. “Since you ask, it was actually much better than I thought it was going to be, what with the likes of Sir John Nettleford-Hughes,” Lettice cringes at the mention of his name. “And Howley Hastings on parade.”

 

“Who?” Margot asks, her eyes widening.

 

“Oh that’s just what Gerald and I call Jonty Hastings. As children we locked him in the linen press of Gerald’s house and he howled frightfully to be let out.” Lettice giggles at the thought. “The name just sort of stuck.”

 

“And?” Margot asks with excitement, holding her fork of blackberry tart midway between her mouth and her plate. “What happened then, if it wasn’t Sir John or Howling Hastings.”

 

“Howley Hastings.” Lettice corrects her friend. “I ended up meeting Selwyn Spencely, whom I also haven’t seen since we were children.”

 

“Oh I’ve met him at one of Dickie’s friend’s parties.” Margot announces. “He’s an architect, at least until he takes over from his father as the Duke of Walmsford! I say, he’s quite dishy, darling!”

 

“He is.” Lettice agrees primly before taking another bite of her tart.

 

“Oh you are an awful tease, Lettuce darling!” Margot drops her fork back onto her plate with a small clatter. “What happened with him then?”

 

“Well, nothing much really, Margot darling. I mean, we could hardly do anything much, what with half the county staring at us, not to mention Mater, whom I didn’t dare look at for fear of seeing her anxious look as she watched us like a hawk from her gilded chair. Her sense of excitement was palpable, even from her respectable distance. I could almost feel her breath hot on the back of my neck.”

 

“How ghastly.”

 

“True.” Lettice agrees, picking up her cup of tea and taking a sip. “What isn’t ghastly is that we’ve agreed to meet here in town, the next time he’s up in London.”

 

“And when will that be?” Margot gasps, hanging on Lettice’s every word.

 

“I don’t quite know, but its sure to be soon. He has my telephone number, so he’ll give me a tinkle when he does.”

 

“I say!” Margot enthuses with a burst of soft clapping. “How absolutely thrilling, darling!”

 

“You’re as bad as Mater and Pater, Margot!” Lettice scolds her friend with a tempering hand. “We just said that we’d meet, that’s all.”

 

“Oh I know,” Margot admits with a guilty look beneath her stylish new russet cloche hat. “But it’s a start. Marriage really is heavenly, Lettice darling. I just want you to be as happy as me!”

 

“It’s only ‘heavenly’, as you put it, if you marry the right man, like you married Dickie. I don’t know if Selwyn is the right man for me yet.”

 

“Well then,” Margot says matter-of-factly as she takes a sip of her coffee from her gilt edged cup. “Best you meet him again soon and make up your mind.”

 

“Now,” Lettice says in a very businesslike tone. “Whilst we’re on the subject of making up minds, I’d like to share my thoughts on what your ‘Chi an Treth’ drawing room might look like.”

 

“Oh very well, Lettice darling.” Margot says with a deflated sigh, replacing her cup in its saucer. “Only if there isn’t any more to tell.”

 

“About Selwyn?”

 

“Well, who else, darling?” Margot replies, exasperated. “You wouldn’t hold out on your very own best friend, would you?”

 

“Of course I wouldn’t hold out on you, darling!” Lettice raises her elegant hand to her throat in mock shock. “How could you even say such a thing.” Then she smiles, to prove to Margot that she isn’t offended. “But there really is nothing else to tell.”

 

“But you will tell me, when there is, won’t you?”

 

“The very moment,” Lettice agrees. Then she pauses and thinks before correcting herself, “Well, perhaps not the very moment, but shortly thereafter.”

 

Suitably satisfied, Margot settles back into her white padded seat. “Very well, we can talk about ‘Chi an Treth’ then.”

 

“Finally,” Lettice breathes a sigh of relief, inhaling the sweet fragrance of the pretty pink roses in the vase on the table.

 

“Well, what were your thoughts?” Margot asks.

 

“I was thinking, since you want the rooms to be lighter, that perhaps we might paper the walls with the same wallpaper as I have in my flat. It lightened up Cavendish Mews no end.”

 

“Oh yes, Lettice darling! That would be wonderful. And of course I want all modern furnishings, with a sofa in eau de nil.” Margot says with delight. Waving her hand dismissively she adds, “Get rid of all that ghastly dark old fashioned furniture and replace it with clean, bright lines.”

 

“But some of that furniture really is quite suitable with clean lines, Margot darling. I really think…”

 

“No!” Margot folds her arms akimbo. “I won’t have that ghastly old furniture, when Daddy can buy me perfectly good new pieces. I want it to be modern and up-to-date, just like our London flat. Goodness knows enough of the house will have that ghastly dark furniture in it, but not my drawing room or dining room. I want light and brightness.”

 

“Very well Margot. Brightness and light are what you shall have.”

 

“Miss Rosevear will look splendid hanging in her gilded frame on the wall of the drawing room with your white wallpaper as a backdrop.”

 

“Oh, so she is staying at ‘Chi an Treth’ then?”

 

“Well of course.” Margot replies, her forehead crumpling. “I mean, we brought her back to London with us, but Dickie has only sent her off for authentication, not to be sold. Where else would she go, but back to her home where she belongs?”

 

“Oh I am glad to hear that, Margot.” Lettice smiles. “Now, about carpets. I thought green and blue like the ocean.”

 

The pair settle back in their seats and discuss animatedly the plans Lettice has for ‘Chi an Treth’, their happy chatter blending with the other female conversation about the Derry and Toms Café, both happy in each other’s company and enthusiastic about their topic of conversation.

 

*Derry and Toms was a smart London department store that was founded in 1860 in Kensington High Street. In 1930 a new three storey store was built in Art Deco style, and it was famous for its Roof Garden which opened in 1938. In 1973 the store was closed and became home to Big Biba, which closed in 1975. The site was developed into smaller stores and offices.

 

**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.

 

***Army and Navy Stores was a department store group in the United Kingdom, which originated as a co-operative society for military officers and their families during the nineteenth century. The society became a limited liability company in the 1930s and purchased multiple independent department stores during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1973, the Army and Navy Stores group was acquired by House of Fraser. In 2005, the remaining Army and Navy stores (the flagship store located on Victoria Street in London and stores in Camberley, and Chichester) were refurbished and re-branded under the House of Fraser nameplate. House of Fraser itself was acquired by Icelandic investment company, Baugur Group, in late 2006, and then by Sports Direct on the 10 August 2018.

 

****Little Venice is a district in West London, England, around the junction of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, the Regent's Canal, and the entrance to Paddington Basin. The junction forms a triangular shape basin. Many of the buildings in the vicinity are Regency white painted stucco terraced town houses and taller blocks (mansions) in the same style.

 

*****Pontings was a department store based in Kensington High Street, London and operated from 1863 to 1970. Pontings started out as a small drapery business by Thomas Ponting. Between 1899 and 1901, Pontings replaced their old premises on Kensington High Street with a new building designed by Arthur Sykes, which was completed in two stages and cost them £14,000. The new building had a large basement and four storeys above. Between 1906 and 1908, Kensington Railway Station was rebuilt, and as part of the development a new arcade was built. The Ponting family also purchased many Kensington properties which were later used for rental income throughout the 20th century, netting the family a small fortune. Pontings also purchased the whole of the western side of the arcade before construction had started. However, the expansion of the business and the building programme had seen the company over-extend itself, and in December 1906, Pontings sadly went into liquidation. John Barker and Co., a fellow Kensington department store, purchased the business for £84,000 in April 1907. Pontings continued to operate under its own name with its own buying team and had its own distinctive image, labelling itself as the House of Value. After the First World War, John Barker & Co. expanded, buying the department store between the Barkers store and Pontings, Derry and Toms, in 1920, and also purchasing the freehold of the Pontings site for a total of £78,000. Barkers also added a cafe on Wright's Lane run by its catering subsidiary the Zeeta Company, and refurbished the store in 1923. Pontings finally closed its doors in 1970 after a massive sell off of all its stock. After a short spell as the Kensington Super Store the Ponting’s main building was redeveloped between 1976 and 1978.

 

******A gasolier is a chandelier with gas burners rather than light bulbs or candles.

 

For anyone who follows my photostream, you will know that I collect and photograph 1:12 size miniatures, so although it may not necessarily look like it, but this elegant café scene is actually made 1:12 size artisan miniatures from my collection, including a few items from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The silver galleried tray, tea pot, milk jug and sugar basket in the foreground are made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The coffee pot with its ornate handle and engraved body is one of three antique Colonial Craftsman pots I acquired from a seller on E-Bay.

 

The gilt edged cups, saucers and plates I acquired when I was a teenager from a high street doll house miniatures specialist. They are part of a complete tea set. The glasses, which are hand blown glass were acquired at the same time.

 

The berry tarts with their whipped cream toppings, which look good enough to eat, were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The pink roses were also made by them. The porcelain vase in which they stand was made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures.

  

The two chairs are made by the high-end miniature furniture manufacturer, Bespaq.

 

The floral paintings hanging in their gilt frames I acquired from two different sellers on E-Bay.

 

The patterned wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, with the purpose that it be used in the “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

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 in Lettice’s flat. Instead, we are in central London, near the palace of Westminster and the Thames embankment at the very stylish Metropole Hotel*, where Lettice’s latest client, American film actress Wanetta Ward is living whilst her Edwardian Pimlico flat is redecorated by Lettice. We find ourselves in the busy dining room of the hotel where the gentle burble of voices fills the room and mixes with the sound of silver cutlery against the blue banded gilt hotel crockery, the clink of glasses raised and the strains of popular Edwardian music from the small palm court quartet playing discreetly by a white painted pillar. Surrounded by suited politicians and a smattering of older women, Lettice and Miss Ward sit at a table for two where a splendid selection of sweet and savory afternoon tea has been presented to them on a fluted glass cake stand by a smartly dressed waiter.

 

“Isn’t this fun?” Miss Ward giggles delightedly, looking at the delicacies placed before them. “Taking afternoon tea in London. What a wonderfully British thing to do. I’ve really taken to enjoying this rather quaint observance.” Pouring coffee from a silver coffee pot with an ebonised handle into her cup, she takes a sip. “Ugh!” she exclaims as she shudders and pulls a face. “Which is more than I can say for this sludge you British call coffee.” With a look of distain, she deposits the cup back into its saucer with a loud clatter. “No one makes coffee like we do back home.”

 

“Perhaps you might care for tea?” Lettice remarks quietly and diplomatically, indicating to the silver teapot beside her. “We’re very well known for our excellent tea.”

 

“Ugh!” Miss Ward says again, only this time without the melodrama of face pulling. “I think I’ll stick to the sludge, if it’s all the same to you, darling. You people might have conquered India and her tea plantations, but no-one makes tea like they do in Shanghai.” She sighs. “It’s almost an art form.”

 

“Perhaps we should have had cocktails then.”

 

“Now you’re talking, darling girl.”

 

“Only it might be frowned upon – two ladies alone, sitting and drinking in a hotel dining room.”

 

“See,” Miss Ward remarks in a deflated tone. “It’s like I told you when we met at my flat. You British are all a bunch of stuffed shirts**.” Looking around at the table of older gentlemen next to them, enjoying a fine repast as well as some good quality claret from a faceted glass decanter, she adds somewhat conspiratorially with a flick of her eyes, “And they don’t get much more stuffed that this bunch of politicians.”

 

“Are you always so frank, Miss Ward?”

 

“I’m American, darling. We’re known for our frankness as much as you are known for your diplomacy. I’d be letting the home side down if I wasn’t, especially whilst on foreign soil. Anyway,” she continues as a burst of guffaws come from the table as the gentlemen laugh at something one of them said. “I think they have been here for most of the afternoon, and that isn’t their first bottle. They aren’t going to pay enough attention to either of us to care what we two ladies are saying. I think they are happy if our secret women’s business stays secret. Don’t you agree Miss Chetwynd?”

 

Lettice discreetly looks over at them, noticing their florid faces and slightly rheumy eyes. “Yes, most probably.”

 

“In spite of the sludge they pass off as coffee here, I can say that afternoon tea at the Metropole is delicious.” The American woman picks up the cake stand and holds it aloft before Lettice for her to select a petit four. “Here! Try one.”

 

“I haven’t been here since before the war.” Lettice remarks, choosing a ham and tomato savoury before gazing around the room at the elegant Georgian revival furnishings, the restrained Regency stripe wallpaper, the watercolours of stately British homes in gilt frames and the white linen covered tables with stylish floral arrangements on each.

 

“Has it improved?”

 

“In looks, undoubtedly. It used to be very Victorian: lots of flocked wallpaper, dark furniture and red velvet. No, this is much brighter and more pleasant. The food however,” Lettice glances at the pretty petit four on her plate. “Is yet to be tested.” She picks up her cup and sips her tea. “Do you have your first script from Islington Studios*** yet, Miss Ward?”

 

“Oh I do, darling!” Miss Ward’s eyes grow wide and glisten with excitement. “The film is called ‘After the Ball is Over’. It’s a bit of a Cinderella story. A beautiful girl, despised by her haughty stepmother and stepsister wins the heart of a local lord, all set against the beautiful English countryside.” She picks an egg and lettuce savoury from the cake stand and takes a larger than polite bite from it before depositing the remains on her own plate.

 

“And are you the heroine?”

 

“Good heavens, no!” Miss Ward nearly chokes on her mouthful of egg and pastry. Placing the back of her hand to her mouth rather than her napkin, she coughs roughly, finishes her mouthful and then adds, “I’d rather die than play the heroine! They are always such insipid characters.” She pulls a face and then clears her throat of the last remaining crumbs. “No, I’m playing the stepsister, who uses her womanly wiles to charm the local lord in the first place.” She lowers her kohl lined eyes and smiles seductively. “She’s much more fun as a character, as are all mistresses and villainesses. Just think about the faerie tales you read when you were a girl. What a dull life Snow White or Cinderella would have led were it not for their wicked stepmothers.”

 

“I’d never considered that.” Lettice takes a small bite from her savoury.

 

“Trust me, I may not win the hearts of the audience, but I’ll be more memorable for playing the baddie than I ever would be for playing the helpless heroine.”

 

“How shockingly cynical, Miss Ward.”

 

“Cynical yes,” The American looks thoughtfully towards the ceiling for a moment before continuing, “But also truthful.”

 

“Well,” Lettice says a little reluctantly. “Thinking of truth, you haven’t invited me to afternoon tea just so I can enjoy the selection of sweet and savoury petit fours.” She withdraws her folio from beside her seat and places it on the table.

 

“Ahh!” Miss Ward’s green eyes sparkle with excitement. “The designs for my flat! I finally get to see them!” She rubs her elegant hands with their painted fingernails together gleefully.

 

“Now first, your boudoir.” Lettice withdraws a small pencil and watercolour sketch.

 

The sight of the picture makes Miss Ward gasp with delight as she stretches out her fingers to clutch the drawing. Bringing it closer to her, her painted lips curl up in pleasure.

 

“I thought a treatment of gold embellishment and brocade on black japanned furnishings might give a sense of luxury. I have kept the white ceiling, and white linens for the bed, but as you can see I’ve included some elements of red to bring that exotic oriental feel to the room you so wanted.”

 

“Delicious darling girl!” Miss Ward enthuses. “I have to admit, you were right when you said that white wouldn’t be boring if you used it. It helps balance the intensity of the black, red and gold.”

 

“I’m pleased you approve, Miss Ward.”

 

“Oh I do!” She hands the drawing back to Lettice. “What else?”

 

Lettice shows her a few more sketches showing her designs for the dressing room and the vestibule until she finally reaches the two for the drawing room and dining room. She places them on top of her folio, the pools of garish colour standing out against the white linen of the tablecloth and the buff of her folio.

 

“I remembered you telling me how much you like yellow, Miss Ward, but try as I might, I remain unconvinced that yellow walls are a suitable choice.” The American glances first at the drawings and then at Lettice but says nothing. “The colour is bold, and I know you wanted boldness,” Lettice continues. “But since we are being truthful, this strikes me as showy and déclassé.”

 

“Déclassé, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Inferior and lacking in the class and elegance of the other rooms’ schemes.”

 

Miss Ward leans forward and picks up the drawing room painting, scrutinising it through narrowed eyes. Dropping it back down, she picks up her coffee cup and takes a sip before asking with a shrug, “Alright, so what do you suggest then?”

 

“Well, it’s funny you should be holding your cup while you ask, Miss Ward.” Lettice observes astutely.

 

“My coffee cup?” Miss Ward holds the cup in front of her and screws up her nose in bewilderment. “You want to paint the walls coffee coloured?”

 

“Oh no, Miss Ward,” Lettice cannot help but allow a small chuckle of relief escape her lips. “No, I was referring more to the outside, which is blue with a gold trim. Here, let me show you what I mean.” She reaches inside her folio and withdraws a piece of wallpaper featuring a geometric fan design in rich navy blue with gold detailing. “I thought we might paper the walls instead, with this.” She holds it out to her client. “It’s very luxurious, and it makes a bold statement, but with elegance. I thought with a suitable array of yellow venetian glass and some pale yellow oriental ceramics, this would both compliment any yellow you add to the room, and give you that glamour and sophistication you desire.”

 

Lettice doesn’t realise it, but she holds her breath as the American picks up the piece of wallpaper and moves it around so that the gold outlines of the fans are caught in the light of the chandeliers above. The pair sit in silence - Lettice in anxiety and Miss Ward in contemplation – whilst the sounds of the busy dining room wash about them.

 

“Pure genius!” Miss Ward declares, dropping the wallpaper dramatically atop Lettice’s sketches.

 

“You approve then, Miss Ward?” Lettice asks with relief.

 

“Approve? I love it, darling girl!” She lifts her savoury to her mouth and takes another large bite.

 

“I’m so pleased Miss Ward.”

 

“Oh it will be a sensation, darling! Cocktails surrounded by golden fans! How delicious.” She replies with her mouth half full of egg, lettuce and pastry. She rubs her fingers together, depositing the crumbs clinging to them onto her plate. “And it will compliment my yellow portrait so well, you clever girl.”

 

“Your, yellow portrait, Miss Ward?” Lettice queries, her head on an angle.

 

“Yes, didn’t I tell you?”

 

“Ahh, no.”

 

“Well, I had my portrait painted whilst I was in Shanghai, draped in beautiful yellow oriental shawls. It’s really quite striking,” she declares picking up the remnants of her savoury. “Even if I do say so myself.”

 

“For above the fireplace?”

 

“Oh no! My Italian landscape will go there.”

 

“Your Italian landscape?”

 

“Yes, I bought it off a bankrupt merchant in Shanghai trying to get back home to the States along with a few other nice paintings.”

 

“How many paintings do you have, Miss Ward?”

 

She contemplates and then silently starts counting, mouthing the numbers and counting on her fingers. “Eleven or so. My beloved brother had them packed up and sent over. They should be arriving from Shanghai in Southampton next week. I’ll get them sent directly to the flat. I’ll leave it up to you darling girl to decide as to where they hang.”

 

“You are full of surprises, Miss Ward.” Lettice remarks with a sigh, picking up her teacup and taking a sip from it.

 

“Evidently, so are you,” the American replies, indicating with her eyes to the wallpaper. “I wasn’t expecting anything as modern and glamourous as that in London!”

 

Smiling, Lettice says, “We aim to please, Miss Ward.”

 

*Now known as the Corinthia Hotel, the Metropole Hotel is located at the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall Place in central London on a triangular site between the Thames Embankment and Trafalgar Square. Built in 1883 it functioned as an hotel between 1885 until World War I when, located so close to the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall, it was requisitioned by the government. It reopened after the war with a luxurious new interior and continued to operate until 1936 when the government requisitioned it again whilst they redeveloped buildings at Whitehall Gardens. They kept using it in the lead up to the Second World War. After the war it continued to be used by government departments until 2004. In 2007 it reopened as the luxurious Corinthia Hotel.

 

**The phrase “stuffed shirt” refers to a person who is pompous, inflexible or conservative.

 

***Islington Studios, often known as Gainsborough Studios, were a British film studio located on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in Shoreditch, London which began operation in 1919. By 1920 they had a two stage studio. It is here that Alfred Hitchcock made his entrée into films.

 

An afternoon tea like this would be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate each sweet or savoury petit four on the cake plate, you would still come away hungry. This is because they, like everything in this scene are 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau:

 

The savoury petite fours on the lower tier of the cake stand and the sweet ones on the upper tier have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. Each petit four is only five millimetres in diameter and between five and eight millimetres in height! The selection includes egg and lettuce, ham and tomato, Beluga caviar, salmon and cucumber and egg, tomato and cucumber savouries and iced cupcakes for the sweet petit fours.

 

The blue banded hotel crockery has been made exclusively for Doll House Suppliers in England. Each piece is fashioned by hand and painted by hand. Made to the highest quality standards each piece of porcelain is very thin and fine. If you look closely, you might even notice the facets cut into the milk jug. Several pieces of the same service appear on the table in the background and the tiered sideboard to the left of the table.

 

The fluted glass cake stand, the glass vase on Lettice and Miss Ward’s table and the red roses in it were all made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The cake stand and the vase have been hand blown and in the case of the stand, hand tinted. The teapot is made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The coffee pot with its ornate handle and engraved body is one of three antique Colonial Craftsman pots I acquired from a seller on E-Bay. The two matching pots are on the sideboard in the background. Lettice’s folio was made by British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Lettice’s interior design paintings are 1920s designs. They are sourced from reference material particular to Art Deco interior design in Britain in the 1920s.

 

The Chippendale dining room chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

On the table in the background luncheons of fish and salad and spaghetti bolognaise are waiting to be eaten. The fish and salad plates are made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures and the plates of spaghetti bolognaise are made by Frances Knight. The vases of flowers on the table and on the stands are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium. The three plant stands are made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq, whilst the sideboard is made by high-end miniature furniture maker JBM.

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.

 

Tonight, however we are south of the Thames in the London district of Rotherhithe, where, surrounded by old warehouses, right on the southern foreshore of the Thames, stands the Angel*, a little red brick pub which is always busy, but tonight is exceptionally so, for it is New Year’s Eve 1922.

 

The pub’s comfortable old Victorian décor is festooned with chains of brightly coloured paper, no doubt made by hand by the publican and his family as Edith had created such cheap home made decorations for her own family home in Harlesden for Christmas. Everywhere there is noise and chatter as patrons fill chairs and benches, lean against the bar, or fill the linoleum covered floor space. A hundred conversations, cries of excitement and laughter mix with the clink of glasses, the thud of bottles and the scrape of chairs in one vociferous noise. A fug of acrid greyish white cigarette smoke hangs in the charged air as midnight approaches. Nestled into a cosy nook near the crackling fireplace, Edith, Lettice’s maid, sits alongside her beau, Frank Leadbetter, a delivery boy for Willison’s Grocers, the grocer’s closest to Lettice’s Mayfair flat. The Angel has an interesting mix of patrons, from local workers to more artistic types, as well as a small party of Bright Young Things** shunning the bright lights and nightclubs of London’s West End, at least before midnight, as they enjoy an evening of slumming*** which no doubt they will use to regale their friends with stories about their evening later. It is with these rather noisy people that Edith and Frank share a table, the group taking up majority of it with glasses of wine and champagne, bottles of beer and packets of fashionable Craven “A” cigarettes****. Being much quieter than their table companions, enjoying the delights of freshly made hot chips delivered in to the pub from a local fish and chippery, Edith and Frank don’t tend to be included by the boisterous slum visitors who prefer the colour of equally noisy local characters, except when there is a singalong.

 

Cheering at the conclusion of a boisterous final verse of ‘The Laughing Policeman’***** the group of upper-class people nod their heads in recognition at Frank and Edith before returning to the conversation they were having with a local dock worker before the latest spontaneous singalong began.

 

“It’s a funny sort of place, this, isn’t it Frank?” Edith asks, picking up her glass of port and lemon and sipping it.

 

“Funny, Edith?” Frank queries, cocking his eyebrow questioningly before taking a sip of his own dark ale.

 

“Well, I mean look around at the people here.” She eyes a pair of painters, their occupation evident from the paint splatters on their rather shabby black coats and paint smeared rags hanging limply from their pockets. Then she glances at the young lady in the party sharing the table with them, her fashionable oriental silk frock, and the marcelling****** in her glossy chestnut coloured hair, accessories by a pair of diamond star pins, making her look more suited to her mistress’ drawing room than a Rotherhithe pub. “This isn’t your standard pub crowd, at least not in any of the pubs up around where I’m from.”

 

“Don’t you like it?” Frank asks anxiously, a tinge of hurt in his voice as speaks.

 

Edith looks into Frank’s concerned face and then reaches out her hand and places it lovingly over his, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Of course I like it, Frank. I like anywhere where I’m with you.”

 

“Oh, that’s a relief!” Frank sinks back into the round open balloon back of the red velvet upholstered chair he is sitting on, the tension in his shoulders visibly dissipating as he does. “I’d hate to take my girl somewhere she didn’t like or feel comfortable in.”

 

“Oh no. I like it just fine. The crowd is unusual is all. What made you pick here, Frank? I thought you might have taken me to the Old Crown******* up Islington way.”

 

“Well, you know how I’ve been trying to better myself by attending lectures and the like on art?” When Edith nods as she picks up a hot chip from the diminishing steaming pile of golden fingers he continues. “Well, I ran into a couple of artists, and they told me that Augustus John******** comes here sometimes.”

 

“And who is he?” Edith asks before popping the hot chip into her mouth.

 

“Blimey Edith! I can see I’m going to have to take you to a few art galleries in the New Year!” Frank shakes his head.

 

“I’d like that, Frank.” Edith admits, swallowing.

 

“Augustus John just happens to be one of the best known artists in England!”

 

“I’m so proud of you trying to better yourself and learn things, Frank. I want to keep making you proud as your girl.”

 

“Oh you do, Edith. You know I’m proud of you too. You’re bettering yourself by learning about fine things at Miss Chetwynd’s.”

 

“Yes, but learning to say luncheon or dinner rather than tea isn’t the same thing as learning about art.”

 

“Now, now! I won’t have you talking yourself down, Edith. You’re my girl and I’m proud of you. We’ll go to some galleries on our afternoons off when the spring comes next year.”

 

“Thinking of the New Year,” Edith says. “Mum and Dad talked about you coming over for dinner one night. I want you to meet them. They want to meet you too.”

 

“And they will, Edith love.” Frank apologises. “I just want to do things the right way.”

 

“I know you do, Frank.” Edith looks down into her lap, brushing a few crumbs of golden chip batter off her black coat distractedly. “I told them that too. I told them that you want me to meet your Granny first, and then he’ll meet you.”

 

“And so you will, and then I will.”

 

“When Frank? I’m starting to see comparisons between Miss Lettice and me.”

 

“What do you mean, Edith?”

 

“Well, I don’t like to gossip, you know, but I can’t help overhearing things.” She looks at Frank guiltily. “And well, she talks with Mrs. Channon about wanting to meet Mr. Spencely’s mother, who sounds like a real dragon to me, just to make things formal like. A sign of intention she and Mrs. Channon call it.”

 

“But we’re formal, Edith. You know my intentions clear enough. You heard me tell you I love you at the Premier Super Cinema********** just a few weeks ago.” He reaches over and wraps his hands around her forearms. He looks at her suddenly forlorn face and slumping shoulders. “And you told me the same. What could be more formal than that?”

 

“Meeting your Granny, Frank. I know she means so much to you.”

 

“Well, she’s the only person I have left after Mum and Dad died of the Spanish Flu, and what with my brother getting killed in France, and him being unmarried and all.”

 

“Then why can’t I meet her, Frank? Don’t tell me that she’s a dragon like Mr. Spencely’s mum.”

 

“Oh no, she’s the loveliest woman, my Granny is.”

 

“Then she wouldn’t approve of me? I’m not good enough for her grandson? Is that it?”

 

“Of course not Edith.” He shakes her gently, as if trying to shake some sense into his sweetheart.

 

The fashionable upper-class girl suddenly bursts into a peal of laughter that pierces the air around her like shattering glass, momentarily distracting the young couple. “Oh you are too funny, Charlie Boy!” she says in elegantly modulated, yet slightly slurred, tones to the dock worker as her male companions join in her laughter cheerily. She turns and plonks down her glass of champagne a little clumsily as her constant drinking starts to have an impact on her faculties. Lunging across the table to grab one of the packets of cigarettes scattered across it, she suddenly notices the quiet young couple at the other end of the table. “Gasper, darlings?” she asks, her kohl lined eyes widening seductively as he holds out the open Craven “A” packet to them, the tan coloured cork ends jutting out through the torn red and white paper and silver foil packaging. When they shake their heads warily at her, she merely shrugs. “Help yourself if you change your mind.” She smiles lopsidedly at them, her red lipstick bleeding into her skin around the edges of her painted lips. “They aren’t really mine to offer, but I know Andrew won’t mind. He’s got plenty at home back in St John’s Wood. Don’t you darling?” She turns back to her party and drapes an arm languidly around one of the young men in her party who lets his own hand stray to her bottom cheeks where he fondles her unashamedly through the thin silk of her dress. Neither turn back to see the look of shock on both Edith and Frank’s faces.

 

Turning back to Edith, Frank continues, “Granny will love you, Edith – just like I do!”

 

“Then why aren’t I meeting her yet, Frank?” Tears begin to well in her eyes.

 

“Well, you were partially right, Edith.” Frank admits.

 

“About which part?”

 

“Well, she’s a bit protective of me, you see.” He looks earnestly into Edith’s eyes. “You can’t blame her, can you? If like she is to me, I am her only close living relation, she is always going to scrutinise any girl I show an interest in – not that there have been many,” he adds quickly. “And certainly none as serious as I am with you, Edith.”

 

“Well if you say that she’ll like me, what’s the problem, Frank?”

 

“Look I only told her about you recently, when we both knew we were sure about our feelings for one another. She isn’t upset, but Granny is a bit jealous of no longer being my best girl any longer. Once she’s adjusted herself to the idea, I can ask you around for tea at her house in Upton Park.”

 

“And when will that be, Frank?” Edith asks sulkily.

 

“Oh only a few weeks away, Edith. She’s already starting to come around to the idea, but I think now she knows about you and how serious I am about you, she just wanted what will probably be our last Christmas alone to be.. well, just us. It gives her a chance to deal with being usurped.”

 

“Usurped? What’s that mean, Frank?”

 

“It means to take the place of someone.” Frank replies proudly.

 

The gratified look on his face makes Edith chuckle and her concerns are broken.

 

“That’s my girl.”

 

Frank leans further forward in his chair and wraps his arms around Edith, pulling her to him. He can smell the comforting scent of fresh laundering and soap flakes in her coat as he buries his head into the nape of her neck and nuzzles her gently. He feels her arms tighten around his middle. After a few minutes the pair slowly break apart again and resume their seats properly.

 

“So, what else do you want to do this year, Edith?” Frank smiles.

 

“Well, besides going to a few galleries, and,” she pauses for effect. “Meet your Granny,”

 

“I promise Edith! Just a few weeks from now you’ll be sitting in her kitchen in Upton Park and you won’t be able to get away. I swear!”

 

“Then I was thinking again about having my hair bobbed.”

 

“Oh no, Edith love!” Frank reaches out a hand which he lovingly runs along the chignon at the back of her neck poking out from beneath her black straw cloche decorated with purple silk roses and black feathers. “Not your beautiful hair.”

 

“Oh it’s easy for you to say, Frank. You aren’t wearing it all day, every day. It gets awfully hot when I’m cooking and cleaning at Miss Lettice’s, and it takes ages to wash and dry.”

 

“Well, don’t do anything rash just yet. Meet my Granny first before you decide to bob your hair.”

 

“Doesn’t she approve of girls with bobbed hair then?”

 

“She gets all her fashion tips from Queen Mary, Edith!” Frank laughs. “Of course she doesn’t approve of bobbed hair!”

 

“Then I won’t,” Edith promises. The she adds the caveat, “Just yet.”

 

“That’s my girl!”

 

“Just yet, Frank.” she cautions again. “I have a feeling that nineteen twenty-three is going to be a year of change.”

 

“What gives you that idea, Edith?”

 

“I don’t know.” Edith admits. “But I just have this feeling.”

 

“Well, I don’t want things to change too much.”

 

“But I thought you were all about improvement and betterment, Frank.”

 

“And so I am.”

 

“Well improvement and betterment are just different words for change.”

 

“Well, as long as your feelings for me don’t change.” Frank says with a hopeful look.

 

“As if they would, Frank!”

 

“’Ere! Shurrup you lot!” the publican suddenly shouts loudly from the bar over the top of all the hubbub of human chatter. “It’s nearly midnight!”

 

Edith and Frank stand up and join everyone else in the Angel pub as they start the countdown to midnight. As Big Ben strikes, clusters of cheers can be heard momentarily in the distance across the inky black Thames before they are consumed by the cheers of the people around them as they begin to jump up and down and embrace one another.

 

“Happy nineteen twenty-three!” Frank yells, embracing Edith in his arms.

 

“Happy nineteen twenty-three!” Edith echoes as she sinks against his chest clad in a thick knitted vest and grey worsted wool jacket.

 

As a young woman begins to play the first few notes of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the old upright piano in the bar, Edith and Frank begin to sing along with everyone else, joining hands with each other and the people immediately around them.

 

*The Angel, one of the oldest Rotherhithe pubs, is now in splendid isolation in front of the remains of Edward III's mansion on the Thames Path at the western edge of Rotherhithe. The site was first used when the Bermondsey Abbey monks used to brew beer which they sold to pilgrims. It is located at 24 Rotherhithe St, opposite Execution Dock in Wapping. It has two storeys, plus an attic. It is built of multi-coloured stock brick with a stucco cornice and blocking course. The ground floor frontage is made of wood. There is an area of segmental arches on the first floor with sash windows, and it is topped by a low pitched slate roof. Its Thames frontage has an unusual weatherboarded gallery on wooden posts. The interior is divided by wooden panels into five small rooms. In the early 20th Century its reputation and location attracted local artists including Augustus John and James Abbott McNeil Whistler. In the 1940s and 50s it became a popular destination for celebrities including Laurel and Hardy. Today its customers are local residents, tourists and people walking the Thames Path.

 

**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.

 

***The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word “slumming” to 1884. It applies to a phenomenon called slum tourism, poverty tourism or ghetto tourism which involves wealthy people visiting impoverished areas of cities. Originally focused on the slums and ghettos of London and Manhattan in the Nineteenth Century, in London people visited slum neighbourhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation – a phenomenon which caused great offence to the locals, since they seldom if ever gained from the ogling of their social superiors who were there for the spectacle rather than philanthropic reasons, the spoils going to the tour operators. By 1884 wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighbourhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives". Sadly, slum tourism still exists today and is now prominent in South Africa, India, Brazil, Kenya, Philippines, Russia and the United States.

 

****Craven A (stylised as Craven "A") is a British brand of cigarette, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco under some of its subsidiaries; it was originally created by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 and made by them until its merger into 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. The year of release of the Craven "A" brand coincided with the well-publicised death of the 4th Earl of Craven in a yachting accident on the 10th of July 1921. It was the first machine-made cork-tipped cigarette, and it became a household name in over one hundred and twenty countries with the slogan "Will Not Affect Your Throat".

 

*****’The Laughing Policeman’ is a music hall song recorded by British artist Charles Penrose, published under the pseudonym Charles Jolly in 1922, making it one of the most popular songs of 1922 in Britain. It is an adaptation of ‘The Laughing Song’ by American singer George W. Johnson with the same tune and form but different subject matter, first recorded in 1890. Charles Penrose used the melody of "The Laughing Song" as well as the same hook of using laughter in the chorus, but changed the lyrics to be about a policeman, and recorded it under the title of ‘The Laughing Policeman’. The composition of the song is, however, credited entirely to Billie Grey, a pseudonym of Penrose's second wife Mabel. The song describes a fat jolly policeman who cannot stop laughing and has a chorus in which the sound of laughter is made in a sustained semi musical way by the singer. It is thought that the character of the Laughing Policeman was inspired by real-life police officer PC John 'Tubby' Stephens, a popular figure in Leicester.

 

******Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women's hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut.

 

*******The Old Crown is a pub built on the corner of Hornsey Lane and Highgate Hill in the north London suburb of Highgate, opposite Highgate Cemetery. Established in 1821 on the steepest part of Highgate Hill, the current building dates from 1908 and features a very ornate and pretty façade including a corner turret with a green tower. The Old Crown closed its doors in 2018 to become a restaurant/bar called Tourian Lounge, where food and drink were still served, but not in an old English pub style. A century after our story is set in 2022, it is Brendan the Navigator, a self-styled gastropub with live music.

 

********Augustus John (1878 – 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John. Although known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits. Those of his two wives and his children were regarded as among his best. By the 1920s when this story is set, John was Britain's leading portrait painter. John painted many distinguished contemporaries, including T. E. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Lady Gregory, Tallulah Bankhead, George Bernard Shaw, the cellist Guilhermina Suggia, the Marchesa Casati and Elizabeth Bibesco.

 

**********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

This jolly festive New year celebratory scene may not appear to be all it appears at first, for it is in fat made up of 1:12 scale miniatures from my large miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the serving of golden hot chips on the table were made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. Made from real glass with great attention to detail on the labels, the bottles of ale come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom, as does the glass of dark ale, also made of glass. The glass of golden champagne is made of real glass and comes from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The two glasses of port and lemon in the low glasses come from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The packets of Craven “A” cigarettes come from Shephard’s Miniatures in the UK. Great attention has been paid to the labelling which makes them clearly identifiable and specific to the time between the 1920s and the late 1940s. Made of cut clear crystals set in a silver metal frames the square silver ashtray is made by an English artisan for the Little Green Workshop. It is filled with “ash” and even has a tiny cigarette sitting on its lip. 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! Also made by an artisan, only an Indian one, the black ashtray also features miniature cigarettes, although all of them are affixed within the ashtray. The other glasses on the table and the carafe are all made of clear glass and were acquired from a high street stockist of miniatures when I was a young teenager.

 

The table on which all these items stand is a Queen Anne lamp table which I was given for my seventh birthday. It is one of the very first miniature pieces of furniture I was ever given as a child.

 

The fireplace surround in the background comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Supplies in the United Kingdom.

 

On the mantle stand more glasses acquired from a high street stockist of miniatures when I was a young teenager. There is also a bottle of beer from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop and a bottle of champagne from Karen Ladybug Miniatures.

 

The Staffordshire hound and fox and the “Dieu et Mon Droit” (God and My Right) vase on the mantle have all been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys.

 

The parlour palm in the background comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The colourful paper chains were made by me.

 

The two chairs I acquired from a deceased estate as part of a larger collection of miniatures. They date from the 1970s.

 

The wood panelling in the background is real, as I shot this scene on the wood panelled mantle of my drawing room.

My wonderful Husband offered up this yummy peppermint drink with candy cane one evening this week. Awesome!!

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ud/22808011

Daniel Barter Photography on Facebook

 

My Website

 

This weekend, I came across a quite novel derelict inn. Which to it's great credit had a bizarre mix of modern and antique interiors. Themed dinning has never looked this good.

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 southeast of Lettice’s flat at the Savoy Hotel*, where a lavish wedding breakfast** is being held for two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things who have just been married at St. Mark’s Church, North Audley Street***: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and the newly minted Margot Channon, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre.

 

“Cheers to you, dear Gerald.” Lettice remarks, raising her glass of glittering golden champagne to her friend.

 

“To me?” Gerald almost chokes on his last mouthful of cheese as he dabs at his mouth daintily with a fine damask napkin. “Whatever for, Lettuce…” He pauses mid nickname as he remembers they are not alone. As if pretending to clear his throat of water cracker biscuit crumbs he coughs. “Ahem… Lettice. Why me? Why not the bride and groom? This is,” He waves his hand about expansively. “After all, for them.”

 

“Oh, there will be plenty of that shortly with the dreaded speeches.” Lettice smiles, grateful that Gerald didn’t call her by her abhorred nickname within public earshot. “No, this is your moment too, as well as theirs.”

 

“I don’t see how you’ve come to that conclusion my dear. This isn’t my wedding.”

 

“Well no, it isn’t Gerald, not in name,” she indicates languidly over to Margot sitting at the bridal table next to Dickie, beaming with such happiness and looking radiant. “But it is your wedding gown that is on show today. And Margot is the perfect mannequin to show it off.”

 

“Do you really like it, Lettice?” Gerald barely dares to ask in a whisper, leaning forward his eyes sparkling with hope. “You aren’t just saying that because you’re my oldest and dearest chum?”

 

“Like it, Gerald?” Lettice stares at Gerald in amazement. “That daring asymmetrical hemline of satin and tulle, the cap sleeves, the boat neckline and that divine embroidery I’ve seen you work on for months: I absolutely love it! Margot will be the bride of the Season.”

 

“Do you really think so, darling?”

 

“You mark my words, Gerald. Just look at all the photographers outside St. Mark’s, waiting for a chance to capture the bride on the steps!” She thinks back to the last hour where the burst of flashbulbs that went off as Dickie and Margot stepped out of the chapel doors was blinding. “She’ll be in every society page up and down the country, in your dress, darling! A Gerald Bruton original.”

 

“Gosh! That is a rather thrilling thought.” Gerald smiles proudly as he tugs awkwardly at his collar.

 

A Savoy waiter discreetly reaches forth with white gloved hands and clears away the white gilt cheese plates and cheese and fruit knives.

 

“Thrilling? I’ll say Gerald! This will truly be the making of you, my clever darling. Cheers!”

 

Lettice raises her glass towards Gerald again, who this time lifts his own in return, the clink drowned out by the sounds of a string quartet playing salon music, vociferous chatter, and the scrape of silver against crockery as the wedding guests around them finish their cheese and fruit before desserts are served.

 

“Just think of all the future young brides here who will each want a frock equally as exquisite as Margot’s.” Lettice remarks before taking a sip of champagne. “Designed by you, of course darling.”

 

“Of course, darling!”

 

Sipping his own champagne, Gerald looks around the private dining room of the Savoy with its gold flocked wallpaper, gilt mirrors and Edwardian style Rococo inspired furnishings. Around the tables decorated with champagne and gold roses in crystal vases, several clusters of young women chat conspiratorially with heads as closely together as their picture hats will allow. He notices one group at a nearby table where a girl, caught pointing by his gaze, is indicating to him. She smiles shyly and quickly lowers her hand. He smiles broadly in return and raises his glass to her in acknowledgement. She takes up her own glass in return.

 

“See,” Lettice remarks proudly as she places a comforting hand upon her friend’s forearm. “You will have blushing brides-to-be and their mothers flocking to you before the fortnight is out.”

 

“Just the same, I don’t think the Marchioness of Taunton approved.” Gerald adds. “She did look rather grim throughout the ceremony as she watched Dickie and Margot get married.”

 

“Oh, pooh the Marchioness!” Lettice counters, looking to Margot’s mother-in-law who sits stiffly by her husband’s side wearing an old fashioned looking picture hat adorned with large silk flowers that perfectly match the powder blue shade of her very conservative and rather dowdy dress, a look of general distain on her sharp features as she looks down her nose at the happy wedding guests in her view. “I think she would look grim no matter what. Before the war, it was Harry who was heir apparent, not Dickie. I’m sure she imagined the heir to the Taunton title marrying someone more fitting than the daughter of a trade bought title like Lord de Virre. However, the dowery that that he brings to the marriage will be welcome in the Taunton coffers, I’m sure.”

 

“Lettice!” Gerald looks around him nervously, hoping that none of the other guests heard his friend speak so candidly about something that is commonly known, but seldom raised, especially somewhere so public.

 

“Lord de Virre told me so himself.” Lettice admits.

 

“Lady de Virre confided in me too,” Gerald adds quickly in an effort to change the subject. “That Vogue have asked for copies of the studio wedding photographs.”

 

“Well, that is exciting, Gerald! Your first appearance in Vogue!” Lettice enthuses. “The first of many, I’m sure. And today is Tuesday, so some of Margot and Dickie’s wealth is bound to rub off on you.”

 

“Whatever do you mean?”

 

“Well, you know the old rhyme, ‘marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth’**** and so on.”

 

“I didn’t take you for believing in such superstitious nonsense, Lettice.” Gerald cocks an eyebrow in surprise at her.

 

“Oh I don’t,” she flaps the thought away as if it were cigarette smoke with her elegantly bejewelled hand. “But it was always a rhyme I remember Nanny Webb singing to me, no doubt under the Mater’s influence.”

 

Lettice looks over to the table where her parents sit. Lady Sadie is engrossed in a conversation over an arrangement of golden yellow roses with a grey haired old dowager wearing several strings of pearls about her neck and a haughty look of distain on her face as she catches Lettice’s eye. Lettice cringes.

 

“Is Sadie playing matchmaker with Lady Faversham?” Gerald asks discreetly, looking in the same direction as Lettice.

 

“Scheming more like.” Lettice mutters. “Do you know she has asked Sir John Nettleford-Hughes to the Hunt Ball after Christmas as a potential suitor for me?” Lettice screws up her nose.

 

“Sir John Nettleford-Hughes! Isn’t he in his mid-fifties?”

 

“More like his sixties!”

 

“Well, he’ll be in good company with Lady Faversham’s unmarried eldest son.”

 

“She doesn’t have an unmarried son too, does she?” Lettice’s eyes grow wide and her face pales at the thought, until she sees the cheeky smile on Gerald’s face as he raises his napkin to his lips attempting to hide it. “Oh you!” she hisses, slapping his wrist playfully and smiling.

 

“At least I made you smile.” Gerald says kindly.

 

“You will come to the Hunt Ball, won’t you darling?” Lettice’s squeeze of her friend’s left wrist highlighting the desperation of her plea.

 

“If we’re invited. The Brutons of leaky roofed Bruton Hall don’t have the panache of Sir John Nettleford-Hughes, not to mention the bank balance.”

 

“Of course you’ll be invited!” Lettice replies in outrage. “It’s traditional. Why you’re practically family being our neighbours. I’ll invite you all if Mater doesn’t: you, your mother, your brother and your father! You must come and rescue me from all the horrors Mater is planning to invite.”

 

“As a penniless spare to the heir, who earns his living making frocks for his financial betters: I’m hardly a suitable match for you to dance with at the ball, Lettice.” He smiles assuringly at his friend across the table and then places his own right hand over hers as it rests across his left wrist. “Who else am I protecting you from the attentions of?”

 

“Jonty Hastings.”

 

“Good god! Howling Hastings! I haven’t seen him since we were in the nursery. Didn’t we used to lock him in the airing cupboard at Bruton Hall?” Gerald asks mischievously.

 

“I’d forgotten that!” Lettice muffles her laughs with her napkin. ‘I think that’s why we gave him that nickname.”

 

“I think that might be the reason why we haven’t seen him since we were children.” Gerald chuckles. “Who else is Sadie pulling out of mothballs for you?”

 

The discreet gloved hands of the Savoy waiter places a blackberry tart topped with clotted cream, garnished with thinly sliced citrus in front of Lettice and Gerald.

 

“Tarquin Howard, Edward Lambley, Selwyn Spencely.” Lettice elucidates after the waiter withdraws.

 

“At least they are more our age,” Gerald says hopefully. “And Selwyn is dishy to boot.”

 

“Oh, you’re as bad as Mater!” Lettice flicks her napkin at him as she prepares to take a mouthful of her tart. “Can you believe she actually offered to show me his photograph in one of her magazines?”

 

“Well, I shouldn’t have minded that.” Gerald replies, uttering a satisfied sigh as he tastes the delicious dessert before him.

 

“Better you than me, Gerald. Do you know what else Mater said to me?”

 

Gerald looks questioningly to her, waiting for Lettice to continue.

 

“She said that Dickie and Margot only asked me to decorate their country house because they are my friends.”

 

“Well, they are, Lettice.”

 

“Yes, but she implied that my decorating isn’t good enough for anyone to put up with unless they are my friends.”

 

“She only said that to make you pack it all in so she can marry you off more easily, like she did your sister. But you and I know better.” Gerald says comfortingly. He picks up his champagne glass again and points it towards Lettice’s. “Pick up your glass, darling.”

 

Lettice looks questioningly at her friend as she wraps her fingers around the stem of her glass.

 

“Here’s to your success.” Gerald says, clinking her glass. “To the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd, successful society interior designer, and the best friend I could ever ask for!”

 

Lettice laughs, awarding Gerald with her beautiful smile.

 

*The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first luxury hotel in Britain, introducing electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners.

 

**A wedding breakfast is a feast given to the newlyweds and guests after the wedding, making it equivalent to a wedding reception that serves a meal. The phrase is still used in British English, as opposed to the description of reception, which is American in derivation. Before the beginning of the Twentieth Century they were traditionally held in the morning, but this fashion began to change after the Great War when they became a luncheon. Regardless of when it was, a wedding breakfast in no way looked like a typical breakfast, with fine savoury food and sweet cakes being served. Wedding breakfasts were at their most lavish in the Edwardian era through to the Second World War.

 

***St. Mark’s Church Mayfair, is a Grade I listed building, in the heart of London's Mayfair district, on North Audley Street. St Mark's was built between 1825 and 1828 as a response to the shortage of churches in the area. The population in Mayfair had grown with the demand for town houses by the aristocracy and the wealthy, as they moved in from the country. The building was constructed in the Greek revival style to the designs of John Peter Gandy. In 1878 the architect Arthur Blomfield made significant changes to the church, adding a timber roof, and introducing Gothic style features. The thirty-four feet (ten metre) façade, together with the elegant porch, is known as one of the finest in London. Being in Mayfair, it was a popular place for the weddings of aristocratic families. It was deconsecrated in 1974, and today it is used as a mixed use venue.

 

****In the first few decades of the Twentieth Century, up until the Second World War, it was customary to hold weddings on weekdays. An old folk rhyme that many of the people at that time would have known went: “Marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all, Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday for no luck at all”. It would have been considered bad luck to get married on a Saturday, and bad form to marry on a Sunday.

 

This upper-class gustatory scene, with fare such as you could expect from the Savoy, is not what you may first imagine, for it is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The Chippendale dining room table and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

The table is set correctly for an Edwardian dinner, using cutlery, crockery and glassware from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The plates have been gilded by hand and the cutlery set is made of polished metal. The napkin rings were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom, as was the champagne flute that is filled with glittering golden yellow champagne. The silver cruet set, which peeps from behind the yellow roses, has been made with great attention to detail, and comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The gold candelabra on the table is also a 1:12 artisan piece that I was given as a teenager. The gold roses are hand-made, and the bowl they sit in is made of hand blown and decorated glass. They also come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, as do the blackberry tarts which look real and good enough to eat!

 

The sugar castor on the table is 1 ½ centimetres in height and half a centimetre in diameter. Its finial actually comes apart like its life size equivalent. The finial unscrews from the body so it can be filled. I am told that icing sugar can pass through the holes in the finial, but I have chosen not to try this party trick myself. A sugar castor was used in Edwardian times to shake sugar onto fruits and desserts.

i have a thing for veehickles, even if it's a dusty old toy found in a canadian antique shop.

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 headed north-west from Cavendish Mews, across Marylebone, past Regent’s Park, the London Zoo and Lords Cricket Ground to the affluent and leafy residential streets of nearby St. John’s Wood. It is here that Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie friends Minnie Palmerston and her husband Charles reside in a neatly painted two storey early Victorian townhouse on Acacia Road that formerly belonged to Charles Palmerston’s maternal grandparents, Lord and Lady Arundel.

 

Having taken her future sister-in-law, Arabella Tyrwhitt, to her old childhood chum and best friend Gerald Bruton’s couturier in Grosvenor Street Soho for her initial wedding dress consultation, Lettice has left the two together to discuss designs whilst she visits Minnie in St John’s Wood. Minnie, a highly strung socialite, has redecorated her dining room in a style not to her husband’s taste, or so she was told by Minnie over a luncheon Lettice hosted for Arabella last week. Known for her melodrama, Lettice quietly ponders whether it really is as awful as Minnie implies as she pays the taxi driver the fare from Soho to St John’s Wood and alights the blue vehicle onto the street.

 

The day is bright and sunny, and the street is quiet with only the occasional bark of a dog and the distant rumble of traffic from busy Finchley Road in the distance as Lettice strides across the road and walks up the eight steps that lead up to Minnie’s black painted front door. She depresses the doorbell which echoes through the long hallway inside and waits. Moments later, there is the thud of Minnie’s hurried footsteps as she flings open the door dramatically.

 

“Lettice darling!” she cries, standing in the doorway in a beautiful may green day dress which compliments her red hair and green eyes, with cascades of green and black bugle beads tumbling down the front. “Come in! Come in!” she beckons her friend with enthusiastic waves which make the green, black and gold bangles on her wrist jangle noisily.

 

“Minnie.” Lettice leans in for a whispery kiss on the cheek as she steps across the threshold and follows Minnie’s indications and steps into a drawing room off the hallway, the room filled with diffused light from a large twelve pane window that looks out onto the street. Looking around her, she quickly takes in the overstuffed cream satin settees, nests of occasional tables, clusters of pictures in gilt frames in every conceivable space on the William Morris style papered walls and the potted parlour palms. “Oh yes,” she remarks as she removes her green gloves. “I do see what you mean. Very Edwardian.”

 

“Isn’t it ghastly, Lettice darling?” Minnie asks as she steps into the drawing room. “Here let me take your, umbrella, coat and hat.” She helps her friend shrug off her forest green coat and takes her rather artistic beret with its long tassel. “I think Lady Arundel could walk in here and not find a thing out of place!”

 

“It could be worse,” Lettice remarks, looking up at the crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling high above. “It could be decorated in high Victorian style and lit with gasoliers*.”

 

“True darling.” Minnie calls from the hallway where she hangs up Lettice’s things on a heavy Victorian coatrack. “But you have yet to see my dining room faux pas.”

 

“Now Minnie, no matter what I say, I want no histrionics today like we had over luncheon last week,” Lettice chides her friend with a wagging finger. “Poor Bella didn’t know where to look.”

 

“Oh I am sorry.” Minnie apologises. “Coming from the country, she probably isn’t used to our London ways.”

 

“Your emotional outbursts have nothing whatsoever to do with London ways, so don’t go foisting it off.” Lettice replies, cocking one of her delicately plucked eyebrows at her friend.

 

“You sound just like Gladys.” Minnie says.

 

“Well, I hope I’m not as shrill sounding as her,” Lettice replies with a chuckle.

 

“And how is the beautiful bride-to-be?”

 

“Happily ensconced with Gerald in his Soho atelier, no doubt talking about all the finer details of the dream wedding frock I have already heard about from dear Bella.”

 

“She seems quite lovely, Lettice darling.”

 

“Oh, I adore Bella.” Lettice agrees with a wave of her hand. “Given we grew up running in and out of each other’s houses, living on neighbouring properties, it was inevitable that she would marry one of my brothers, or Lally or I marry one of Bella’s brothers. I’m just glad that it wasn’t the latter. All Bella’s brothers, whilst charming, take after their grandfather, and he was not a handsome man. Bella has her mother’s delicate and pretty genes and she and Leslie are well suited. They both love the country, and as you know from luncheon last week, Bella likes the county social round. As Pater says, Bella will one day make a wonderful chatelaine of Glynes**, supporting Leslie as a dutiful wife, hosting important county social functions like the Hunt Ball, opening fetes and awarding prizes at cattle shows.”

 

“How does Lady Sadie feel about her usurper?”

 

“Oh Mater loves Bella as much as we all do.” Lettice replies breezily. “Of course, Pater doesn’t dare express his appreciation quite so volubly in front of Mater, but I’m sure she is silently thinking the same thing, not that she would ever share that with any of us. No, the problem will be if Pater decides to pop his mortal clogs before she does. I don’t know how happy she will be to hand over the mantle of lady of the manor to her daughter-in-law, even if she does love her.”

 

“Well, let’s hope we don’t have to worry about that for a good while yet.” Minnie says soothingly.

 

“Indeed yes!” agrees Lettice. “Now, show me this dread dining room of yours, Minnie darling. I’m famished, and I’m intrigued to see just how much of a faux pas it really is.”

 

“Come right this way, interior decorator to all the great and good of this great country of ours,” Minnie says rather grandly as she walks towards a door that leads from the drawing room to the next room. Suddenly she pauses, clasping the brass doorknob in her hand and turns back to Lettice who has trailed behind her. “Prepare yourself my dear for l’horreur!” And she flings the door open.

 

Minnie and Lettice walk into the townhouse’s dining room, which like the adjoining drawing room has a high ceiling. Lettice is surprised that after the grandeur of the drawing room, it’s a much smaller room, perhaps more suited for intimate dining rather than a large banquet. She glances around and quickly takes in the mixture of old and new. An Edwardian dining setting in Queen Anne style fills the majority of the space, whilst a late Victorian sideboard and spare carver chairs press against the wall. To either side of the new Art Deco gas fireplace stand two modern stands on which sit rather old fashioned urns. Modernist paintings in bold colours hang on the walls, but Lettice can barely see them for the bold wallpaper of red poppies against a black background with green and white geometric patterns.

 

“Oh I see.” Lettice remarks, neither enthusiastically nor critically, but in a rather neutral way.

 

Lettice walks around the dining table on which stands a Georgian Revival tea set with steam snaking from the spot of the pot, a small carafe of water and glassware, crockery and cutlery for two at the head of the table. She stands before the Streamline Moderne fireplace surround and runs an elegant hand over one of the bold red blooms, feeling the slightly raised pattern. She sighs as she contemplates what she sees.

 

“Do you think it looks like something out of Maida Vale, Lettice darling?” Minnie asks hesitantly.

 

For a moment, Lettice doesn’t answer as she traces one of the green lines towards the gilt edge of a frame holding a painting of a tiger. “Tyger Tyger burning bright***,” she murmurs the beginning of the William Blake poem.

 

“Yes,” Minnie acknowledges her friend with a sigh of pleasure. “He’s rather glorious, isn’t he?”

 

“He is,” Lettice agrees. “However his gloriousness is diminished somewhat by the wallpaper which draws away attention from him, and the red fox.” She points to a larger canvas hanging over the sideboard.

 

“So you do think it’s middle-class Maida Vale then.” Minnie pronounces in a downhearted fashion.

 

“No, I don’t.” Lettice clarifies, turning around and placing a comforting hand on the slumped left shoulder of her friend. “And I think it was very unkind of Charles to say so. The wallpaper is beautiful, Minnie. It just doesn’t suit this room.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, this is quite an intimate room: taller with these high ceilings, rather than wide. This wallpaper would suit a longer room with low ceilings, where expanses of this pattern could be exposed uninterrupted.”

 

“Like a mansion flat?”

 

“Exactly, Minnie! I did something similar for the moving picture actress, Wanetta Ward last year. She had a long, exposed wall and the bold pattern I used worked beautifully. And this wallpaer does nothing to show off yours and Charles’ beautiful paintings. It detracts rather than enhances. The paintings and the wallpaper vie for attention. Think about the National Gallery, or the Tate Gallery****. When you see pictures hanging on the wall, what do you notice about the surrounding to the painting?”

 

Minnie thinks for a moment, screwing up her pert nose with its dusting of freckles. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever actually noticed the walls, Lettice darling.”

 

“Correct again, Minnie. No-one thinks about the walls because you’re not meant to. Your focus is meant to be on the paintings.”

 

“So you think I should strip the walls and paint them? Is that what you’re saying?”

 

“Well, you could, Minnie.” Lettice replies. “Or you could paint the walls and decorate the upper edge with a nice frieze paper.”

 

“Then it really would look like Maida Vale.” Minnie argues. “Only people who can’t afford wallpaper get friezes hung.”

 

Lettice considers her friend’s remark for a moment. “Mmm… yes, you’re quite right Minnie. Well, Jeffrey and Company***** do stock a range of beautiful papers in vibrant colours with pattern embossed into them. They look very luxurious.”

 

“Oh!” Minnie clasps her hands in delight. “I do like the sound of that! What colour would suit this room do you think?”

 

“Oh I should imagine a nice warm red or orange to go with this.” Lettice taps the top of the tiled fireplace surround. “And that colour range would also compliment your polished floors.”

 

“And I could get black japanned furniture like you, Lettice darling! I do like your chairs.”

 

“Oh no.” Lettice shakes her head. “Black japanned furniture is fine, but not my chairs. They are far too low for this room. You need an equivalent high backed chair.” She reaches out and pats one of the dining chairs. “Lady Arundel chose these well as they echo the height of the room. Perhaps if you had something high backed padded with a complimentary fabric to the paper: say red or orange.”

 

“Oh Lettice you are so clever!” enthuses Minnie. “When can you start.”

 

“Don’t you want to ask Charles before you go spending his money on redecorating, Minnie?” Lettice laughs. “Surely he’ll want a say.”

 

“Oh Charles told me today when I reminded him that you were coming for luncheon before he left for the office, that he’ll happily pay for anything you recommend, or better yet your services. So you don’t need to worry on that account.”

 

“Well, I would have to finish Dickie and Margot’s.” Lettice tempers.

 

“Oh, of course.” Minnie agrees.

 

“Well, I don’t have another redecorating assignment after them, so let me contemplate it.”

 

“I’ll go and get luncheon whilst you contemplate.” Minnie exclaims with a clap of her hands before scuttling away through a second door to the left of the fireplace.

 

With her exuberant friend gone, Lettice looks around the dining room, contemplating what she has suggested, picturing what embossed wallpaper in a rich red or vibrant orange would look like as a backdrop for the paintings. “Pity.” she muses as she again runs her hands over the stylised poppies in the pattern on the wall. Turning around she looks across the room. “Sorry Lady Arundel,” she remarks, tapping the top of the nearest dining chair again. “But it looks like your granddaughter-in-law wants to modernise.

 

“I’m afraid it’s Cook’s afternoon off today,” Minnie says apologetically as she walks back through the door through which she went, carrying a tray of tomato, ham and cucumber sandwiches. “So we’ll have to settle for these.” Looking down at the plate of appetising sandwich triangles as she places them on the dining table’s surface she adds. “I do hope she remembered not to make tongue****** ones. She should remember that I can’t stand cold tongue.”

 

Lettice peers at the fillings of bright red tomato, vivid green cucumber, and pink ham. “I think we’ll be safe.”

 

“Well, there’s half a trifle left over for dessert just in case they aren’t nice.” Minnie adds hopefully.

 

Lettice is suddenly struck by something. “Minnie?” she asks. “Minnie, why are you carrying the tray? And come to think of it, why did you answer the door? Where is Gladys?”

 

Minnie blushes, her pale skin and smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose reddening. “She handed in her immediate notice the week before last.”

 

“Oh no! Not another one Minnie?”

 

“She said she couldn’t work for a woman who had such histrionics as I do, and she’s gone back to Manchester.”

 

“Oh Minnie!” Lettice shakes her head dolefully.

 

“See! I told you, you sounded like Gladys, Lettice. I’ve been getting by with the tweeny*******, but Cook grumbles, so I can’t keep pinching her. That’s why I’m so grateful you gave me that telephone number for that domestic employment agency in Westminster. I’ve a new maid starting next week. Her name’s Siobhan, so I figured that she can’t complain about my histrionics as she’d be used to them, being Irish.”

 

“Well, let’s hope so Minnie.” Lettice chuckles as she pulls out her dining chair and takes her seat. “I can’t keep up with the revolving door of maids that come in and out of this house. How long have you been here for now?”

 

“Seven months or thereabout.” Minnie replies vaguely as she takes her own seat in the chair at the head of the dining table.

 

“And how many maids have you had in that time?”

 

“Nine.” Minnie replies with a guilty gulp.

 

“No wonder Charles feels his club is better suited to entertain prospective business associates.” Lettice shakes her head disapprovingly. “A tweeny waiting table.”

 

“Well hopefully, with Siobhan starting next week, and you agreeing to redecorate my dining room faux pas,” She looks around the room with glittering, excited eyes, as she imagines the possibilities. “Charles will be happy to start entertaining here.” She pauses and thinks for a moment. “You will won’t you?”

 

“Will I what, Minnie?”

 

“You will redecorate my dining room, won’t you?”

 

Lettice reaches around Minnie’s teacup and squeezes her friend’s hand comfortingly. “Of course I will. I’ll come up with some ideas of what I think might suit this room and then I’ll show you and Charles. Charles has to have some input, even if he has told you that you that I have carte blanche when it comes to redecorating.”

 

*A gasolier is a chandelier with gas burners rather than light bulbs or candles.

 

**Glynes is the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie.

 

***”The Tyger” is a poem by English poet William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his “Songs of Experience” collection and rising to prominence in the romantic period of the mid Nineteenth Century. The poem explores and questions Christian religious paradigms prevalent in late 18th century and early 19th century England, discussing God's intention and motivation for creating both the tiger and the lamb. Tiger is written as Tyger in the poem as William Blake favoured old English spellings.

  

****In 1892 the site of a former prison, the Millbank Penitentiary, was chosen for the new National Gallery of British Art, which would be under the Directorship of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. The prison, used as the departure point for sending convicts to Australia, had been demolished in 1890. Sidney R.J. Smith was chosen as the architect for the new gallery. His design is the core building that we see today, a grand porticoed entranceway and central dome which resembles a temple. The statue of Britannia with a lion and a unicorn on top of the pediment at the Millbank entrance emphasised its function as a gallery of British art. The gallery opened its doors to the public in 1897, displaying 245 works in eight rooms from British artists dating back to 1790. In 1932, the gallery officially adopted the name Tate Gallery, by which it had popularly been known as since its opening. In 1937, the new Duveen Sculpture Galleries opened. Funded by Lord Duveen and designed by John Russell Pope, Romaine-Walker and Gilbert Jenkins, these two 300 feet long barrel-vaulted galleries were the first public galleries in England designed specifically for the display of sculpture. By this point, electric lighting had also been installed in all the rooms enabling the gallery to stay open until 5pm whatever the weather. In 1955, Tate Gallery became wholly independent from the National Gallery.

  

*****Jeffrey and Company was an English producer of fine wallpapers that operated between 1836 and the mid 1930s. Based at 64 Essex Road in London, the firm worked with a variety of designers who were active in the aesthetic and arts and crafts movements, such as E.W. Godwin, William Morris, and Walter Crane. Jeffrey and Cmpany’s success is often credited to Metford Warner, who became the company’s chief proprietor in 1871. Under his direction the firm became one of the most lucrative and influential wallpaper manufacturers in Europe. The company clarified that wallpaper should not be reserved for use solely in mansions, but should be available for rooms in the homes of the emerging upper-middle class.

  

******Beef tongue (also known as neat's tongue or ox tongue) is a cut of beef made of the tongue of a cow. It can be boiled, pickled, roasted or braised in sauce. It is found in many national cuisines, and is used for taco fillings in Mexico and for open-faced sandwiches in the United States.

 

*******A tweeny is a between maid, who works in the kitchen as well as above stairs, assisting at least two other members of a domestic staff.

 

This rather bright dining room is perhaps a little different to what you might think, for it is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection, some pieces from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Queen Anne dining table, chairs and sideboard were all given to me as birthday and Christmas presents when I was a child.

 

The three prong Art Deco style candelabra in the sideboard is an artisan piece made of sterling silver. Although unsigned, the piece was made in England by an unknown artist. The vase of flowers to the left of the candelabra is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium. The carafe to the right of the candelabra is another artisan piece made of hand spun glass. I acquired it as a teenager from a high street dollhouse stockist.

 

The ornately hand painted ginger jar is one of a pair and comes from Melody Jane Dollhouse Suppliers in Britain. The tall stand on which the ginger jar stands was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

The paintings on the walls are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States. The stylised floral and geometric shape Art Deco wallpaper is a real Art Deco design which I have sourced and had printed in high quality onto A3 sheets of paper.

 

On the dining table the tray of sandwiches are made of polymer clay. Made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight they are very realistic with even the bread slices having a bread like consistency look. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The water carafe came from the same high street stockist as the carafe on the sideboard. The Art Deco dinner set is part of a much larger set I acquired from a dollhouse suppliers in Shanghai. The Georgian Revival silver tea set on its tray I acquired from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The Streamline Moderne pottery tile fireplace surround I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.

Food tables.

after a number of drinks .... distortion ...

in my Diner Series and Distortion Series ; Pic # 1 ...

 

Taken Dec 30, 2016

Thanks for your visits, faves, invites and comments ... (c)rebfoto

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission.

© rogerperriss@aol.com All rights reserved

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 at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her old family home for the wedding of Leslie to Arabella, the daughter of their neighbours, Lord Sherbourne and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt. Today is the big day, and earlier in the morning Lettice was amongst the guests to watch her brother and his now wife exchange vows at the chapel in Glynes village. Now the wedding guests have repaired to the grand country house where the couple’s wedding breakfast* is being held in the Glynes grand dining room.

 

“I say, Sadie has been busy!” exclaims Gerald as he walks through the doors of the dining room.

 

“The whole household has been busy.” corrects Lettice as she walks proudly on his arm. “I could barely get a cup of tea, a slice of toast and a scraping of jam for breakfast,” she moans. “Which I had to take in my room because in here was out-of-bounds.”

 

The Glynes dining room, a large space, has been transformed into an indoor winter garden with tributes to the house’s gardeners with hothouse flower arrangements everywhere. Cascades of soft lilac wisteria, white blossom and pastel roses spill from vases on the mantlepiece and from jardinières on stands placed around the walls. The usual dining table used by the Chetwynds for dinners and banquets has been transformed into the bridal table, whilst several other smaller oblong tables have been brought in to serve as places for the other wedding breakfast guests. Each table is covered in crisp snowy white linen tablecloths taken from the Glynes great Elizabethan oak linen chests and pressed by housekeeper Mrs. Casterton’s staff, and upon their surfaces fine gilt white china, glassware and silver gleam, with each place setting carefully arranged by Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler and Marsden, the first footman. Each table is graced with more fresh floral arrangements created by Lady Sadie herself and the parlour maid Emmery, whom the Countess has discovered has an aptitude for flower arranging. On the bridal table stands a grand three-tier wedding fruitcake made by Mrs. Honeychurch, the Chetwynd’s cook, its white royal icing edges decorated with pale yellow icing swirls and golden orange sugar roses.

 

“They look so happy,” Gerald remarks as they walk in front of the bridal table where Leslie and Isabella sit before the cake.

 

“I think Bella’s is your best wedding frock yet, Gerald.”

 

“Oh, do you really think so, Lettice?”

 

“I do.” she concurs proudly as they pass the bride and groom, admiring the creamy white satin boat neck of Bella’s wedding gown, trimmed with accents of antique lace, a gift to Isabella from Lady Sadie, taken from her own wedding dress.

 

‘Well, Bella was perfect to fit.” The pair move around to the table adjunct to the bridal table where they take their places. “She already had her ideas, which, unlike some women I see, were good ones, and I just had to bring them to life. She’s never has been a girl into fuss, and let’s be honest, she has so much natural beauty that no matter what I made for her would look wonderful on her.”

 

“And of course, I love my outfit too, Gerald.” Lettice smooths the pale buttery yellow crêpe of her frock which matches the pretty rose decorated wide brimmed straw hat made for her by Gerald’s friend Harriet.

 

“I should hope you do!” Gerald replies as he settles himself into his Chippendale style dining chair.

 

The pair watch as the country wedding guests, a mixture of family from both the Chetwynd and the Tyrwhitt clans, county society, guests from London and a smattering of local village folk, leisurely wend their way to their places, each marked with a handwritten card in Lady Sadie’s elegant copperplate script.

 

“I must say Lettice darling, I am grateful that you managed to convince Sadie to lift her embargo on me after the Hunt Ball and allow me to come.” Gerald remarks as he and Lettice nod at two of her distant spinster cousins from Guernsey as they make their way around them to their place much further down the table Lettice and Gerald are near the head of.

 

“Oh don’t thank me, Gerald.” Lettice replies. “Thank Leslie. He’s the one who confronted Mater and said that if he had to have cousins Eurphronia and Ethelreda from Guernsey,” She nods to the two rather horsey looking ladies now taking their places at the far end of the table. “Whom we haven’t seen nor heard from since Lally was married, then he and Bella were entitled to invite whichever guests they wanted, without question. And of course that included you.”

 

“Gosh! I must thank Leslie later then.”

 

“I still don’t know,” Lettice queries. “What was it you said to Mater that night of Hunt Ball that set her so against you. I’ve never known her to take against anyone so vehemently, except perhaps Aunt Egg.”

 

Gerald blushes, remembering the altercation he had with Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, at the ball. In a slightly inebriated state he told her that neither she nor Lettice had any sway over Selwyn Spencely’s choice of a wife, any more than Selwyn did himself, explaining that it was his mother, the Duchess of Mumford, Lady Zinnia, who would choose a wife for him. “I keep telling you, darling girl. I really don’t remember,” he replies awkwardly, covering his tracks as best as he can. “If you remember, I was rather tight** that night on your father’s champagne.”

 

“And I hope you will do so again today.” Lettice says cheekily, picking up the freshly poured glass of champagne set at her place just prior to her arrival.

 

“Try and stop me, darling!” Gerald picks up his glass and the two clink their glasses together in a conspiratorial toast.

 

“Lettice! Lettice stop that!” hisses her father, the Viscount, from his seat next to his wife at the bridal table, flapping his hand at her in an effort to gain her attention and growing red faced in the process. “Not until I make my speech.”

 

Lettice rolls her eyes and shakes her head, and like two admonished children, she and Gerald return their glasses, untouched, to their places with lowered heads.

 

“I am glad that Aunt Isobel was well enough to see Bella get married.” Lettice says with a satisfied sigh.

 

“Yes, I am too.” Gerald looks over the top of the wedding cake to see Isabella’s mother, whom they all call ‘Aunt Isobel’ despite her not being a blood relation, smiling proudly next to her husband, Sherbourne, as she looks down the table to her daughter and new son-in-law. “The radiotherapy*** seems to be having a positive impact on her health. Although evidently not enough for the Tyrwhitts to host the wedding breakfast.” he notes a little critically.

 

“Well, Mater thought it might tire poor Aunt Isobel out to arrange the wedding breakfast by herself, so she offered, and Isobel was probably too unwell at the time to refuse her.”

 

“Who would dare contradict Sadie’s wishes? Look, she is positively in her element, playing Lady Bountiful****, lording herself over all her minions, the great and good of the county.” Gerald says, nodding to Lettice’s beaming mother swathed in romantic soft pink floral silk de chiné wearing a floppy picture hat covered in satin roses in a matching shade.

 

“I do think Uncle Sherbourne looks rather tired though, don’t you Gerald?”

 

“Well, it isn’t every day that one loses one’s only daughter,” Gerald says dismissively. “He’s probably had a few sleepless nights worrying about her dowery and whether she has made the right decision.”

 

“Gerald!” Lettice slaps her friend playfully with her pale yellow kid gloves. “You surely can’t be suggesting that Leslie is a cad!” she laughs.

 

He chuckles in return and flashes her a beaming smile.

 

Returning her gloves to her lap, she glances up and over to where her eldest brother sits proudly in his morning suit gazing with fondness and laughing with his bride. Glowing can be the only adjective suitable to describe Leslie and Isabella as they radiate happiness.

 

“You must feel a little jealous,” Lettice remarks discreetly as she observes a slightly wistful look in her dear friend’s eyes as he too observes the happy couple.

 

“Of the sanctity of marriage?” Gerald scoffs with a dismissive snort. “Pray save me from that hell, Lettice darling!”

 

“You know what I mean, Gerald,” Lettice retorts. “Now that you’ve finally met someone.” she adds in a hushed tone.

 

Lettice bore witness to an exchange of affection between Gerald and a young oboe player named Cyril whilst visiting Gerald’s friend Harriet in Putney recently. As well as making hats, Harriet runs a boarding house for theatrical gentlemen where Cyril resides, and it is through her that Gerald met the handsome young musician.

 

“I hardly think we are at the marriage stage yet, Lettice darling.” Gerald whispers sagely. “Not that we could, mind you. We’ve only recently met. Anyway,” He glances meaningfully again at Leslie. “What’s the point in wishing for something you know you cannot have.”

 

Lettice reaches across to Gerald’s lap beneath the crisp white linen tablecloth and places her hand atop her friend’s, giving it a consoling squeeze. She sometimes forgets how her friend pined for many years with unrequited love for her eldest brother. Gerald has no more chance of marrying Cyril even if he does return Gerald’s affections, and Lettice can only imagine how careful her friend needs to be to avoid the authorities punishing him with imprisonment with hard labour just for loving another man.

 

“I wish Selwyn was here.” Lettice continues softly, casting her eyes down into her lap as she feels the sting of tears.

 

“What?” Gerald asks with a melodramatic gasp, quickly noticing Lettice’s sudden rush of emotion and trying to keep her from crying in front of her family and the rest of the county’s and the village’s society. “Am I not good enough for you as your squire?” He pouts at her and bats his long, dark eyelashes.

 

Lettice cannot help but let out a burst of laughter at his sad puppy dog face. “Oh Gerald! You know I don’t man that.”

 

“I know.” he says with a melancholy smile.

 

“You’re so good to me.”

 

“Agreed.” he nods. He then proceeds to add as a joking after thought, “Far better than you deserve.”

 

When Lettice laughs a little sadly, Gerald returns Lettice’s squeeze comfortingly. “I know you want Selwyn here. However,” he adds seriously. “You know it would be improper for him to be at such an intimate family occasion as your guest unless there has been a formal intention of marriage.”

 

“I know.” Lettice sighs.

 

“And Selwyn hasn’t made any such overtures, has he?”

 

Lettice looks down again. “Not yet.” she mumbles glumly.

 

“Well then. You shall simply have to settle for me, Lettice darling. I know I’m a poor second, and probably not even that. However, I will just have to do.”

 

“And you do splendidly, Gerald darling. You always know how to pick my spirits up when I’m feeling glum.”

 

“Isn’t that what best friends and chums of old are supposed to do?”

 

“Exactly right, Gerald.” Lettice replies, withdrawing her hands and discreetly dabbing the corners of her eyes with her pale yellow kid gloves. “What a pair we are, Gerald.” She sniffs. “Both of us crying for what we cannot have.”

 

“Don’t worry, everyone will think you are crying tears of joy for the happy couple, and that is how it should be. But don’t make a habit of blubbing when there is no conceivable reason to be crying, will you?”

 

“How do you do it, Gerald darling?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Not break down and cry, sometimes?”

 

“Well, aren’t men supposed to be the superior race?” Gerald asks, mockingly. “It’s always a stiff upper lip and all that, don’t you know?” He smiles sadly at his friend and companion. “I suppose the truth of the matter is that Father probably beat it out of me as a child. I knew if I blubbed at the wrong time, I was in for a thrashing, or Roland would tell Father I was blubbing, so I was in for a thrashing, so I kept it hidden until I was alone.”

 

“I’m sorry Gerald.” Lettice mutters.

 

“Oh don’t be, Lettice darling. This is a wedding for heaven’s sake. Were supposed to be happy, not sad. No,” Gerald continues with a stoic sniff. “I’m happy for them and wish them well. Truly I do. It was inevitable really. They have always been destined to be together. Bella and Leslie are well suited for one another. They are both country folk. She loves riding and is interested in animal husbandry and all that awfully dirty estate business.” He waves his free left hand dismissively with a look of disgust at the thought of pigs in their muddy styes. “Whereas what I find best about the country is when we leave it to go back to the comfort and bright lights of London.”

 

“Don’t even mention animal husbandry, Gerald!” Lettice gasps, a shudder of revulsion running through her as she remembers the conversation she and her hated older brother Lionel had in Lady Sadie’s morning room a few days ago, when he spoke of women as fillies and mares, waiting to be sired by stallions.

 

“Oh, sorry Lettice darling!” Gerald apologises with a sombre glance at her. “I forgot.”

 

“I certainly can’t, even though I want to.”

 

“I knew things must have been looking bloody***** for you here when you sent that note across to me asking me to meet you at the Folly****** after dinner.”

 

“I can barely stand to even be in the same room as Lionel.” Lettice bristles as she looks across the Glynes dining room to the table set up on the opposite side of the bridal table, where her brother Lionel sits between their Aunt Eglantine, their father’s beloved younger sister, and Aunt Gladys, their mother’s parsimonious widowed elder sister. Emboldened by his imminent departure back to his place of exile in Kenya, he doesn’t even try and disguise his boredom at whatever the self-absorbed Gladys is saying to him.

 

“How can Aunt Egg stand to sit next to him?” Gerald asks.

 

“Because she doesn’t know about Lionel’s fathering of three illegitimate children in 1918.” Lettice elucidates quietly. “Lally and I joke openly about being Aunt Egg’s favourite niece depending upon the way the wind blows, but when it comes to her favourite nephew, there is no doubt as to who it is.”

 

“But why?” Gerald’s eyes grow wide in surprise. “I mean, she’s so lovely, artistic, and kind. And Lionel…” He shudders. “Lionel is such a… a…”

 

“A beast, Gerald?” She shrugs. “I guess there is no accounting for taste sometimes, even in our families. No, it would break her heart if she really knew what Lionel was like.”

 

“But that’s not fair to Leslie.”

 

“Oh, but Leslie is complicit in the subterfuge, Gerald. He’s so good and kind himself that he doesn’t want Aunt Egg upset by the truth. Besides, if she was upset, then Pater would be upset, and if he was upset, we all would be in for a beastly time.”

 

“How do you all do it?”

 

“Luckily Aunt Egg is safely ensconced with her own life in London, and with Lionel in Kenya, he’s barely ever mentioned. And if Aunt Egg does ask after him, we always glaze all the beastliness over with tales of derring-do******* from his sporadic letters to Mater and Pater, or what we’ve heard from friends who have passed through Nairobi and seen him.”

 

“I have to say that the Viscount and Sadie don’t seem too concerned about having him here.” Gerald observes as he glances in the direction of Lettice’s father and mother.

 

“Oh don’t be fooled,” Lettice elucidates as she glances at the smiling face of her father and her mother as she proudly plays mother-of-the-groom and gracious hostess to all the guests. “It’s all bravado: a show for Bella and the wedding guests. No-one wants to see a monster like Lionel spoil Bella and Leslie’s big day, except perhaps Lionel of course.”

 

“He always was unscrupulous.”

 

“Well, the last three years in exile certainly haven’t tempered his feelings of resentment and anger towards all of us, me especially.”

 

“But it was his own foolish philandering that got him banished to Africa.”

 

“Lionel doesn’t see it that way. As usual, he thinks that if I hadn’t told Mater and Pater about,” Lettice blushes at the thought. “About his indiscretion with Nelly, then those with Margaret and that poor simpleton Dora wouldn’t have come out and he would have gotten away with it.”

 

“It seems to me he did get away with it, and lightly.” Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper he adds. “Banishment and the absolution for three illegitimate children, all paid for by your father. It’s a rather splendid deal if you ask me. He could have done far worse.”

 

“Lionel doesn’t think so, and we’re all sick of his digs and barbs which he inflicts on us every chance he gets. Pater and Mater have been on pins and needles ever since Lionel arrived. I had to speak to Mrs. Casterton about cautioning the maids, and I still had to warn Moira, whom I caught making cow eyes******* at him.”

 

“That would certainly have encouraged him, the cad.”

 

“I’m sure it did, even though he swears to me that he’s only interested in older women now, and married ones at that.”

 

“Good god!” Gerald rolls his eyes and then stares harshly at Lionel who remains bored between his two aunts, totally unaware that he is being spoken of and scrutinised. “Can he get any more rakish?”

 

“Lally refused to come and stay as she finds him so abhorrent, and she doesn’t want the children exposed to his wickedness.”

 

“He wouldn’t…” Gerald scarlessly dares to speak the words. “Well, Lionel wouldn’t hurt the little dears, would he?”

 

“With Lionel,” Lettice shrugs. “You never can quite tell what his scheming and perverse little mind is planning next.” She sighs heavily. “That’s half the problem. Just when you think you have him worked out, and know his next move, he does something unexpected that throws you.”

 

“And the unexpected from Lionel is always nasty.” says Gerald wearily, remembering how horrible Lionel was to him as a little boy.

 

“Always. He’s so unpredictable, except in his predictability of being mean, nasty, spiteful or hurtful.”

 

“Well, he’ll be on board a train back to London tomorrow morning.” Gerald says with a sigh of relief. “When does he set sail?”

 

“The Walmer Castle******** leaves Southampton for Cape Town on Friday, and not a moment too soon with Lionel on board, if you ask me.”

 

The hubbub of the light chatter of the guests filling the dining room is suddenly shattered by the sharp and repetitious rap of metal against glass, silencing everyone as heads turn towards the bridal table, where Lettice’s father, Viscount Wrexham has raised himself to his feet, tapping his crystal champagne flute with a silver knife.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could ask you all to take your places please,” the Viscount calls out loudly with his booming orator’s voice, usually reserved for the House of Lords. “As host for today’s wedding breakfast, I would just like to say a few words as the first course is served.”

 

Lettice and Gerald settle back into their seats as the Viscount commences his welcome speech to the assembled guests, all of whom pay attention to him, except for his eldest son Leslie and his new bride Isabella, who only have eyes for one another as they sit, smiling at one another in the centre of the bridal table.

 

*A wedding breakfast is a feast given to the newlyweds and guests after the wedding, making it equivalent to a wedding reception that serves a meal. The phrase is still used in British English, as opposed to the description of reception, which is American in derivation. Before the beginning of the Twentieth Century they were traditionally held in the morning, but this fashion began to change after the Great War when they became a luncheon. Regardless of when it was, a wedding breakfast in no way looked like a typical breakfast, with fine savoury food and sweet cakes being served. Wedding breakfasts were at their most lavish in the Edwardian era through to the Second World War.

 

**’Tight’ is an old fashioned upper-class euphemism for drunk.

 

**By the 1920s radiotherapy was well developed with the use of X-rays and radium. There was an increasing realisation of the importance of accurately measuring the dose of radiation and this was hampered by the lack of good apparatus. The science of radiobiology was still in its infancy and increasing knowledge of the biology of cancer and the effects of radiation on normal and pathological tissues made an enormous difference to treatment. Treatment planning began in this period with the use of multiple external beams. The X-ray tubes were also developing with replacement of the earlier gas tubes with the modern Coolidge hot-cathode vacuum tubes. The voltage that the tubes operated at also increased and it became possible to practice ‘deep X-ray treatment’ at 250 kV. Sir Stanford Cade published his influential book “Treatment of Cancer by Radium” in 1928 and this was one of the last major books on radiotherapy that was written by a surgeon.

 

****The old fashioned British term “looking bloody” was a way of indicating how dour or serious a person or occasion looks.

 

*****Lady Bountiful is a term used to describe a woman who engages in ostentatious acts of charity to impress others, and was often used in Edwardian times by titled ladies to describe themselves when conducting their charity or ministering works.

 

******In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of usual garden buildings.

 

*******The phrase derring-do comes from Middle English, dorring don meant simply "daring to do." The phrase was misprinted as derrynge do in a 15th-century work by poet John Lydgate, and Edmund Spenser took it up from there. A glossary to Spenser's work defined it as "manhood and chevalrie.") Literary author Sir Walter Scott and others brought the noun into modern use.

 

********The RMS Walmer Castle was a passenger ship for Union-Castle Line, launched on the 6th of July 1901 and completed on the 20th of February 1902. The British government requisitioned her in 1917 and she then served as a troop ship in the North Atlantic. She returned to mercantile service, including sailings between Southampton and Cape Town after the war. She was scrapped in 1932.

 

Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class country house wedding is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Chippendale dining room bridal table - covered by a fine linen tablecloth - and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

In centre stage on the bridal table stands a three tier wedding cake covered in white icing, decorated with yellow swirls of icing and orange roses. The cake is made entirely of plaster, and I have had it since I was given it for a Christmas gift when I was seven.

 

The bridal table is set correctly for a five course Edwardian wedding breakfast, using cutlery and glassware from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The cutlery set is made of polished metal. The crockery is made by an unknown English company and each piece has been gilded by hand. The linen napkins and napkin rings were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The Georgian silver water jug in front of the floral arrangement and the cruet set which peeps from behind it, have been made with great attention to detail, and come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The flower arrangement on the table in the gilt double handled vase comes from M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures.

 

The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. On its mantlepiece stand two 1950s Limoges vases. Both are stamped with a small green Limoges mark to the bottom. These treasures I found in an overcrowded cabinet at the Mill Markets in Geelong. Also standing on the mantlepiece are two miniature diecast lead Meissen figurines: the Lady with the Canary and the Gentleman with the Butterfly, hand painted and gilded by me. There is also a dome anniversary clock in the middle of the mantlepiece which I bought the same day that I bought the fireplace.

 

The pink and white roses in the Limoges vases were made by hand by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, whilst the larger floral arrangements of roses and cascading wisteria to either side of the fireplace come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom.

 

To the left of the photo stands a demilune table upon which stands a wine cooler also made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland. The bottle of Deutz and Geldermann champagne in it is an artisan miniature and made of glass and has real foil wrapped around its neck. It was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The other bottles of wine, also made of glass with great attention to their lables, come from Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures.

 

All the paintings around the Glynes dining room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.

Maxine will have to look elsewhere for something to do.

On our diningtable, "French Ranunculus"

 

Canon 70D with EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

 

Falcon Eyes SKK-2150D flash set

Jinbei Diffusion jumbo umbrella, Jinbei White umbrella.

 

IMG_7525ddp

These were the beautiful centrepieces on the dinner tables.

Blogged about here:

pubdolls.blogspot.com/2011/03/playing-with-light.html

Sony Alpha 7 II (2015, 24MP)

Sigma 70-200mm F/2.8 APO EX HSM

  

Kodak Gold 200

Pentax KX

Another beauty on our diningtable, Anemone coronaria "De Caen"

 

nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemoon

 

Canon 70D with EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

 

FalconEyes SKK-2150D flash set

Jinbei Diffusion jumbo umbrella, Falcon Eyes Diffusion umbrella

 

Coverphoto 28/02/2018 " www.flickr.com/groups/a_secret_world /"

  

IMG_7345ddp

 

More of the "mischievous mice", from the children's story, helping themselves to the feast at Chatsworth.

 

Another shot in the comment below.

See also:

 

– 2019

... well past midnight, and in the house is all quiet...

 

long exposure... scene only lit by windows lights

hal.red/0wYe1J

 

Images for download without watermark!

{film} The lamp and curtains were left by the previous owner, and it's taking us a little longer to find replacement curtains than we would have liked. Still, the house now feels like a home. More photos will be coming when that beautiful winter light returns to Portland.

 

This is better on black.

DuPont House, interior, Winterthur, Delaware

The Giant Houseplant Takeover at RHS Wisley

A dining table at Berkeley Castle.