Her friends are all gone for the summer. I guess it's just her and that teen idol.

~Nelonie A. Crelencia ©2009

 

| lancelonie photography © All Rights Reserved. DO NOT COPY. |

  

*EXPLORED*

The beautiful pewter tableware in the Dining room at The Habitation.

 

The Port-Royal National Historic Site is a National Historic Site of Canada located on the north bank of the Annapolis Basin in the community of Port Royal,Nova Scotia. This National Historic Site is the location of the Habitation at Port-Royal.

 

The Habitation at Port-Royal was established by France in 1605 and was that nation's first successful settlement in North America. Port-Royal served as the capital of Acadia until its destruction by British military forces in 1613. France relocated the settlement and capital 8 km (5.0 mi) upstream and to the south bank of the Annapolis River; the site of the present-day town of Annapolis Royal.

On our diningtable, another "Orange Gerbera"

 

Canon 70D with EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

 

FalconEyes SKK-2150D flash set

Falcon Eyes Silver/Gold umbrella, Westcott Silver umbrella.

 

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On our diningtable, "Orange Gerbera"

 

Canon 70D with EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

 

FalconEyes SKK-2150D flash set

Falcon Eyes Silver/Gold umbrella, Westcott Silver umbrella.

 

IMG_6961ddp

The Dining Table at Chatsworth, laid for a Christmas feast.

 

The "mischievous mice" from the children's story are helping themselves to the cheese in the comment below.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.

 

John F. Kennedy

 

"beauty on the diningtable", Anemone

 

Canon 70D with EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

 

Falcon Eyes SKK-2150D flash set with Elinchrom Gold umbrella

 

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The dining room at Blickling Hall, the magnificent Jacobean country house, with the 18th century table set for Christmas lunch.

 

In today's austere and straitened times, it's hard to imagine that at one time this was the 'norm' for gentrified families across the British Isles – and, of course, in some cases it still is.

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 we are in Lettice’s chic, dining room, which stands adjunct to her equally stylish drawing room. She has decorated it in a restrained Art Deco style with a smattering of antique pieces. It is also a place where she has showcased some prized pieces from the Portman Gallery in Soho including paintings, her silver drinks set and her beloved statue of the ‘Modern Woman’ who presides over the proceedings from the sideboard.

 

Lettice is hosting a luncheon for her future sister-in-law Arabella Tyrwhitt who will soon marry her eldest brother Leslie. As Arabella has no sisters, and her mother is too unwell at present to travel up to London from Wiltshire, Lettice has taken it upon herself to help Arabella shop and select a suitable trousseau. So, she has brought her to London to stay in Cavendish Mews, rather than opening up the Tyrwhitt’s Georgian townhouse in Curzon Street for a week, so from there she can take Arabella shopping in all the best shops in the West End, and take her to her old childhood chum and best friend Gerald Bruton’s couturier in Grosvenor Street for her wedding dress. Lettice has invited a few of her friends from her Embassy Club coterie whom Arabella met there the other night. Lettice has asked her best girlfriend, the recently married Margot Channon and one of her other dear friends Minnie Palmerston. As both ladies are married, Lettice is hoping they may be able to shed some light on what life is like as a married woman with Arabella whilst also sharing in an afternoon of delicious food and delightful gossip.

 

“Oh Gerald will make you the most wonderful wedding dress, Bella,” Margot enthuses to Arabella. “Believe me! He made me the most stylish gown for my wedding last year. You’ll be the talk of the Wiltshire downs.”

 

“I think your mother is a wonderful sport letting Lettice help you pick your wedding gown, Bella.” exclaims Minnie. “My mother wouldn’t let me choose so much as a button without her say so, and my wedding dress wasn’t anywhere near as modern and fashionable as I would have liked. It wasn’t even made by the couturier I wanted! I had to settle for old fashioned Lucille*.”

 

“Well,” Arabella says a little awkwardly. “My mother, err, she isn’t all that well at present, you see.”

 

“So,” Lettice quickly pitches in to avoid Arabella any awkward explanations. “I’m doing Lady Tyrwhitt the biggest favour whilst she is indisposed, by hosting Bella here in my flat and taking her shopping.” Arabella smiles in relief at her future sister-in-law who sits to her right at the head of the table. “I mean, what’s the point in opening up their London townhouse for just a few days when Bella is welcome here at any time?”

 

“And where everything is so lovely and welcoming.” Arabella says gratefully.

 

“Hhmm… that’s most sensible, Lettice.” Minnie says.

 

“And this way, I can take Bella to places like the Embassy Club whilst she’s up here, as well as take her frock shopping.” Lettice giggles with a wink at Bella. “I can show here what she’s missing being stuck in dull old Wiltshire.”

 

“Oh, it’s not as dull as all that, Tice,” Arabella remarks, her face flushing with mild embarrassment as she feels so unworldly in comparison to Lettice and her smart London friends. “After all, we have cattle shows, garden parties and…”

 

“Cattle shows!” baulks Margot, her left hand pressing over her mouth in horror, her diamond engagement ring glinting under the light of the dining room. “How beastly! I do hope that there aren’t any cattle shows I have to go on Cornwall! I should dislike that intensely.”

 

“I agree!” nods Minnie, her green glass chandelier earrings bobbing about as they dangle from her lobes.

 

“You both grew up in London, so of course a cattle show is beastly to you two,” Lettice replies. “But Bella and I both grew up in the country, so we are used to life there. Cattle shows are part of county social life.”

 

“If I had to go and look at beastly… well beasts, in order to meet eligible men,” Minnie says with an air of distaste as she wrinkles her nose. “I think I’d rather stay single.”

 

“Good job the closest thing you’ve come to the countryside is Hyde Park on a summer’s day then isn’t it, Minnie?” retorts Lettice with a playful smile.

 

“I quite enjoy the county social round,” Arabella admits with a shy smile. “And whilst I’m so grateful for you taking me to nightspots around London, Tice, I don’t think I’ll ever be a nightclub kind of girl.”

 

“Poor darling,” Lettice teases her good naturedly as she speaks out to her other friends at the table. “She doesn’t know yet how deliciously addictive nightclubs can be.”

 

“We’ll fix that,” giggles Margot, reaching out a hand across the table, past the central floral arrangement of lightly fragrant white roses in a glass bowl and enveloping Arabella’s smaller hand with her own. “Don’t you worry about that Lettice.”

 

Picking up her thoughts on life in Wiltshire, Bella adds, “Wiltshire isn’t quite the ends of the earth socially. Don’t forget, we do have balls and parties to go to there, like your mother’s glittering Hunt Ball.”

 

“Yes,” titters Minnie. “Where Lettice met that dishy Selwyn Spencely!”

 

Margot joins in with Minnie’s girlish peals.

 

“Oh do stop you two!” Lettice says with a playful wave of her hand. “I’ve only had to opportunity to have luncheon with him once thus far since the ball.”

 

“But you are planning to see him again, aren’t you Tice?” asks Arabella.

 

“Of course she is,” teases Margot with a wag of her bejewelled finger. “You can see it written all over her face!”

 

“Lettice!” Minnie cries, pointing her her elegant finger at her friend across the table. “You’re holding out on us. You’ve arranged to see him again, haven’t you?”

 

“Lettice!” gasps Margot. “Not fair! Spill the beans at once!”

 

“Well,” Lettice admits. “He did ring me this morning.”

 

“And?” Margot and Minnie ask, their breath baited with excitement.

 

“And we’ve arranged to have luncheon again after Bella returns home to Wiltshire.”

 

Margot and Minnie squeal and clap with delight, gushing forth congratulations as though Lettice had just announced her engagement to Selwyn.

 

“I hope you aren’t putting off seeing him just because I’m here, Tice.” Bella says quietly, a guilty look crossing her pretty face.

 

“Not at all, Bella!” Lettice reaches over and squeezes Arabella’s hand comfortingly. “He telephoned whilst you were in the bathroom this morning. You are my guest and as such, you have my undivided attention. Mr. Selwyn Spencely can wait a few days.”

 

“Well, they do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.” remarks Margot. “It certainly did for Dickie and I.”

 

“Where are you going, Lettice?” asks Minnie eagerly.

 

“I’ll tell you where, but not what day.” Lettice agrees. “The last thing I want is for you and Charles to be sitting, goggle eyed at the next table.”

 

“As if I would!” Minnie gasps, pressing a hand dramatically to her chest.

 

“As if you wouldn’t, more like!” Lettice retorts.

 

“Well,” Minnie looks across an Margot guiltily. “Yes, we would.”

 

The pair giggle conspiratorially.

 

“So where?” Minnie asks.

 

“The Café Royal.**”

 

“Oh how deliciously luxurious, Lettice darling!” Margot enthuses.

 

“I shall have Charles book us a table there every night for the fortnight after Bella leaves.” giggles Minnie teasingly, but her wink to Lettice assures her that she won’t.

 

“Oh Minnie!” Margot laughs. “You are awful!”

 

Just as Margot and Minnie break into more girlish titters, Edith, Lettice’s maid, emerges from the kitchen through the green baize door and walks towards the table with a tray on which she carries four of her home made orange curd tarts.

 

“Ah! What good timing!” Lettice claps her hands. “Edith, you are a brick! Ladies, dessert!”

 

Edith bobs a curtsey to her mistress and begins to serve the desserts to her guests first by carefully holding the tray on an angle to Arabella’s left, so she may easily help herself to one without the whole tray tipping forward and the tarts spilling onto the polished parquetry dining room floor.

 

“Thank you for that roast beef luncheon, Edith,” Arabella remarks as she selects the tart closest to her. “It was quite delicious.”

 

“You’re welcome, Miss Tyrwhitt.” Edith murmurs in reply, her face flushing with pleasure at the compliment.

 

Edith moves on and serves Minnie and then Margot, before finally coming back to Lettice who selects the one remaining tart from the tray. Ensuring that everyone has a replenished drink, Edith retreats to the kitchen, allowing the four ladies to carry on their conversation undisturbed by her presence.

 

“This looks delicious, Lettice darling.” remarks Margot as she looks down at the tart before her, the pastry a pale golden colour, a twist of candied orange and a dollop of whipped cream decorating its top.

 

“Yes,” concurs Minnie. “You’re so lucky Lettice. I don’t know how you manage to find such good staff in London.”

 

“I told you, Minnie. Mater gave me the telephone number of an excellent agency. That’s where I got Edith from. I’ll give it to you.”

 

“Oh,” Minnie sulks. “I think even if I employed the most perfectly qualified maid, I’d do something to muck the whole arrangement up. I usually do.”

 

“Good heavens, whatever are you talking about, Minnie?” Lettice exclaims.

 

“She’s only saying that because of her dining room faux pas.” Margot elucidates as she picks up her spoon and fork to commence eating her tart.

 

“What dining room faux pas?” Lettice asks.

 

Minnie looks around Lettice’s dining room at the restrained black japanned furnishings, white Art Deco wallpaper and elegant decorations. “I should just have done what Margot did and engaged you to decorate it for me.” she remarks as she picks up her own spoon and fork and begins to disseminate her dessert.

 

“What dining room faux pas?” Lettice asks again.

 

“At least you have taste, Lettice, unlike me.” Minnie continues uninterrupted.

 

“Nonsense Minnie darling, you have one of the most tasteful and fashionable wardrobes in London!” Margot counters.

 

“Well, it obviously doesn’t extend to my ability as an interior decorator.” Minnie grumbles back as she stabs her tart with her fork.

 

“Minnie, what dining room faux pas?” Lettice asks again, the smallest lilt in her raised voice betraying her frustration at being ignored.

 

“Well, you know how Charles’ grandfather left us the house in St John’s Wood?” Minnie asks.

 

“Yes,” Lettice says, laying aside her spoon and fork, leaving her trat untasted as she looks intently into the green eyes of her redheaded friend.

 

“When we moved in, it was full of all of old Lady Arundel’s ghastly furniture. Charles’ grandfather hadn’t done a single thing to update the place, so it was all dusty of festoons and potted palms.”

 

“So pre-war Edwardian!” adds Margot just before she pops the daintiest piece of tart into her mouth, smiling as she tastes it.

 

“Charles says to me when I complain about how dark and cluttered it is: ‘Minnie darling, why don’t you redecorate’. So of course I thought to myself that if you could do it so effortlessly, why couldn’t I?”

 

“I wouldn’t say effortlessly, Minnie darling.” Lettice corrects her friend. “Anyway, do go on. I’m all ears.”

 

“Well, I was delighted! My first real project as a wife, making a comfortable home for my husband. I asked Charles what room I should start with, and he suggested the dining room. After all, bringing potential business partners home to his dead grandmother’s fusty old dining room wouldn’t look very good, would it?”

 

“Indeed not, Minnie darling.” Lettice agrees, her lids lowering slightly as she concentrates on her friend’s story.

 

“He said that perhaps rather than throw out Lady Arundel’s dining table, I might start by picking some papers that went well with the dark furniture and red velvet seats, but would match our wonderful modern paintings which we hung in place of the muddy oils that were in there.”

 

“You could see where the old paintings had been by the non-faded patches of red flocked wallpaper.” Margot titters.

 

“That sounds ghastly,” Lettice remarks. “How sensible Charles was to suggest the walls first. Then you can decide what your new dining room furnishings will be once you are ready, and there’s no rush to fling out what you have at present.”

 

“Very well observed, Lettice darling.” Margot agrees.

 

“So where is the faux pas in that, then?” asks Lettice, looking across the roses of the centrepiece at her two friends in a perplexed fashion.

 

“The faux pas is what I chose!” pouts Minnie. “I’d started off so well too. I had the old black marble fireplace torn out and replaced with a lovely new surround.”

 

“Very streamline and modern,” Margot agrees, taking another mouthful of tart.

 

“Oh yes!” Minnie exclaims. “Quite to die for. Then I went to Jeffrey and Company*** looking for papers. It’s where my mother got our wallpapers for our homes when I was growing up.”

 

“Mine too.” affirmed Margot.

 

“And the assistant showed me the most divine poppies pattern on a geometric background. I thought to myself that being red, the poppies were a perfect choice for the walls.”

 

“It sounds perfect to me, Minnie darling.” Lettice says. “I still don’t see where the faux pas is?”

 

“You haven’t seen it on the walls.” Margot remarks half under her breath, looking apologetically at Minnie.

 

“No, it’s true Margot.” Minnie admits defeatedly with a sigh. “It sounds wonderful, but it looks positively awful!”

 

“Oh I wouldn’t have said that,” Margot counters. “It is rather busy and rather draws attention away from your paintings, but it isn’t awful.”

 

“Well Charles thinks it is! He says it’s like eating in a Maida Vale**** dining room! He doesn’t even want to eat in there now, and he certainly won’t bring any potential business partners around for dinner. He’s rather take them to his club!” Minnie whines. She drops her cutlery with a clatter onto the black japanned dining room table’s surface and hurriedly snatches her napkin from her lap. Carefully she dabs at the corners of her eyes.

 

“Oh Minnie!” Margot says, quickly getting up from her seat, dropping her own napkin on the seat of her chair and walking around to her friend where she wraps her arms around her shoulders comfortingly.

 

“Minnie darling. Please don’t cry.” Lettice gasps, standing up in her seat.

 

“You have modern wallpaper, but it doesn’t feel like Maida Vale in here.” Minnie says tearfully, thrusting her arms around in wild gesticulations.

 

Discreetly, Arabella moves Minnie’s half empty champagne flute out of her immediate reach to avoid any adding any drama with the spilling of drinks or shattering of glass to what is already an uncomfortable enough situation with the young woman sobbing in her seat whilst being comforted by her friends. Quietly Arabella wonders if the hot rush of London life with all its drama is all that good for the constitution if people behave this way over luncheon tables in the capital, and she secretly longs to retreat to the safety of her much quieter home of Garstanton Park back in Wiltshire.

 

“Do you need the smelling salts, Miss?” Edith, who unnoticed with Minnie’s loud crying and moaning, has slipped back into the dining room from the kitchen.

 

“What?” Lettice turns and registers her maid’s presence. “Ahh, no. No thank you Edith. Mrs. Palmerston is just having another one of her momentary dramas.”

 

“I am not!” bursts out Minnie, causing her already flushed face to go even redder as another barrage of tears and moaning escapes her shuddering frame.

 

“Of course you are, Minnie darling.” Lettice counters calmly in a good natured way. Turning back to her anxious maid she adds, “It will be over in a minute. Thank you, Edith.”

 

“Very good Miss.” Edith replies bewilderingly with raised eyebrows and an almost imperceptible shake of her head as she looks again at Mrs. Palmerston, red faced and weeping in her chair, her bare arms being rubbed by Mrs. Channon who coos and whispers quietly into her ears.

 

“Minnie has always been highly strung.” Lettice quietly assures Arabella whom she notices is looking particularly uncomfortable in her seat. “It will pass in a moment, and then we’ll get on with luncheon.”

 

After a few minutes of weeping, Minnie finally calms down, and both Lettice and Margot return to their seats to finish their desserts, all three behaving as if Minnie’s outburst had never occurred, and that such behaviour was not only understandable, but perfectly normal. Arabella, with her head down, eyes focussed squarely upon her half eaten tart says nothing and follows suit. For a few moments, nothing breaks the silence but the sound of cutlery scraping against crockery.

 

“I know, Minnie darling,” Lettice breaks the embargo on speaking cheerfully. “Why don’t I come and look at your dining room.”

 

“Oh would you?” exclaims Minnie with a sigh of relief. “Could you? Oh! That would be marvellous! What a brick you are, Lettice.” Then she pauses, her sudden happy energy draining away just as quickly. “But you can’t.” She shakes her head. “You’re redecorating Margot’s.”

 

Arabella unconsciously holds her breath, waiting for Minnie to start crying again.

 

“Well, yes I am,” Lettice agrees. “But there’s no reason why I can’t have two clients at once.”

 

“She’s not actually doing anything at ‘Chi an Treth’ at present,” Margot says, picking up her wine glass and draining it. “Are you Lettice darling?”

 

“Well I can’t right now, you see Minnie.” Lettice elucidates. “Funnily enough I’m waiting for Margot’s wallpapers to be printed by Jeffrey and Company, but they won’t be ready for a few weeks. So I can come and have a look, maybe make some recommendation for you and Charles to consider. Then if you’re happy, I can commence work after I’ve finished Margot’s.”

 

“Oh, but what about Bella? You’re helping her shop for her trousseau.” Minnie protests.

 

“I can assure you, I don’t need any help shopping for clothes.” Arabella says, releasing her pent-up breath. “Tice has pointed me in the direction of Oxford Street, so I can take myself there.”

 

“As it happens, we’re visiting Gerald on Thursday for Bella’s first consultation for her wedding dress. Why don’t I come on Thursday for luncheon whilst Bella and Gerald consult? She doesn’t need me to help her decide what she wants. She already has a good idea, don’t you Bella?”

 

Arabella nods emphatically.

 

“Well Thursday is cook’s afternoon off, but if you think you could cope with some sandwiches.” Minnie says hopefully.

 

“That’s settled then!” Lettice says with a sigh.

 

Suddenly the mood in the room lightens and spontaneous conversation begins to bubble about Lettice’s dining table again as Margot and Minnie ask Arabella about her plans for her wedding dress.

 

*Lucile – Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon was a leading British fashion designer in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries who use the professional name Lucile. She was the originator of the “mannequin parade”, a pre-cursor to the modern fashion parade, and is reported to have been the person to first use the word “chic” which she then popularised. Lucile is also infamous for escaping the Titanic in a lifeboat designed for forty occupants with her husband and secretary and only nine other people aboard, seven being crew members. When hemlines rose after the war, her fortunes reversed as she couldn’t change with the times, always wanting to use too much fabric on gowns that were too long and too fussy and pre-war.

 

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

 

***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.

 

****Although today quite an affluent suburb of London, in 1922 when this scene is set, Maida Vale was more of an up-and-coming middle-class area owing to its proximity to the more up market St John’s Wood to its west. It has many late Victorian and Edwardian blocks of mansion flats. Charles’ remark that he felt like he was in a Maida Vale dining room was not meant to be taken as a compliment considering they live in St John’s Wood.

 

Lettice’s fashionable Mayfair flat dining room is perhaps a little different to what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures I have collected over time.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The orange curd tarts with their twist of orange atop each are made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The empty wine glasses and the glass bowl in the centre of the table are also 1:12 artisan miniatures all made of hand spun and blown glass. They too are made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. The vase is especially fine. If you look closely you will see that it is decorated with flower patterns made up of fine threads of glass. The cream roses in the vase were also hand made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. The Art Deco dinner set is part of a much larger set I acquired from a dollhouse suppliers in Shanghai, as is the cutlery set. The champagne flutes that are filled with glittering golden yellow champagne were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The candlesticks were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

In the background on the console table stand some of Lettice’s precious artisan purchases from the Portland Gallery in Soho. The silver drinks set is made by artisan Clare Bell at the Clare Bell Brass Works in Maine, in the United States. Each goblet is only one centimetre in height and the decanter at the far end is two- and three-quarter centimetres with the stopper inserted. Lettice’s Art Deco ‘Modern Woman’ figure is actually called ‘Christianne’ and was made and hand painted by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland. ‘Christianne’ is based on several Art Deco statues and is typical of bronze and marble statues created at that time for the luxury market in the buoyant 1920s.

 

Lettice’s dining room is furnished with Town Hall Miniatures furniture, which is renown for their quality. The only exceptions to the room is the Chippendale chinoiserie carver chair (the edge of which just visible on the far left-hand side of the photo) which was made by J.B.M. Miniatures.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug hand made by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, Australia. The paintings on the walls are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States. The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

This was the moment I realised this 50mm lens had a lot going for it

we're here in our domesticity

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ud/22808011

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 at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand*, near Covent Garden and the theatre district of London’s West End. Here, amidst the thoroughly English surrounds of wooden panelling, beautifully executed watercolours of British landscapes and floral arrangements in muted colours, men in white waistcoats and women a-glitter with jewels are ushered into the dining room where they are seated in high backed chairs around tables dressed in crisp white tablecloths and set with sparkling silver and gilt china. The large room is very heavily populated with theatre patrons enjoying a meal before a show and therefore it is full of vociferous conversation, boisterous laughter, the clink of glasses and the scrape of cutlery against crockery as the diners enjoy the traditional English repast that Simpson’s is famous for. Seated at a table for two along the periphery of the main dining room, Lettice and Selwyn are served their roast beef dinner by a carver. Lettice is being taken to dinner by Selwyn to celebrate the successful completion of his very first architectural commission: a modest house built in the northern London suburb of Highgate built for a merchant and his wife. Lettice has her own reason to celebrate too, but has yet to elaborate upon it with Selwyn.

 

“I do so like Simpson’s.” Lettice remarks as the carver places a plate of steaming roast beef and vegetables in front of her. Glancing around her, she admires the two watercolours on the wall behind her and the jolly arrangement of yellow asters and purple and yellow pansies on the small console to her right.

 

“I’m glad you approve.” Selwyn laughs, smiling at his companion.

 

“I’m always put in mind of Mr. Wilcox whenever it’s mentioned, or I come here.”

 

“Who is Mr. Wilcox?” Selwyn asks, his handsome features showing the signs of deep thought.

 

“Oh,” Lettice laughs and flaps her hand, the jewels on her fingers winking gaily in the light. “No-one. Well, no one real, that is.” she clarifies. “Mr. Wilcox is a character in E. M. Forster’s novel, ‘Howard’s End’**, who thoroughly approves of Simpson’s because it is so thoroughly English and respectable, just like him.”

 

“I can’t say I’ve read that novel, or anything by him.” Selwyn admits as the carver places his serving of roast beef and vegetables before him. “My head has been too buried in books on architecture.” Selwyn reaches into the breast pocket of his white dinner vest and takes out a few coins which he slips discreetly to the man in the crisp white uniform and chef’s hat.

 

“Thank you, Your Grace,” the carver says, tapping the brim of his hat in deference to the Duke of Walmsford’s son before placing the roast beef, selection of vegetables in tureens and gravy onto the crisp white linen tabletop, and then wheeling his carving trolley away.

 

Lettice giggles as she picks up the gravy boat and pours steaming thick and rich dark reddish brown gravy over her dinner.

 

“Well, what’s so funny, my Angel?” Selwyn asks with a querying look as he accepts the gravy boat from Lettice’s outstretched hands and pours some on his own meal.

 

“Oh you are just like Mr. Wilcox.”

 

“You know,” He picks up his silver cutlery. “And please pardon me for saying this, but I didn’t take you for reading much more than romance novels.”

 

“Oh!” Lettice laughs in mild outrage. “Thank you very much, Selwyn!”

 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Selwyn defends himself, dropping his knife and fork with a clatter onto the fluted gilt edged white dinner plate.

 

“Then what do you mean?” Lettice asks, trying to remain serious as she looks into the worried face of her dinner companion, which makes her want to reach out and stroke his cheek affectionately and smile.

 

“I… I merely meant that most ladies of your background have had very little education, or inclination to want to read anything more than romance novels.”

 

“Well,” Lettice admits. “I must confess that I do quite enjoy romance novels, and I wouldn’t be as well read if it weren’t for Margot.”

 

“Aha!” Selwyn laughs, popping some carrots smeared in gravy into his mouth.

 

“But,” Lettice quickly adds in her defence. “I’ll have you know that my father is a great believer in the education of ladies, and so was my grandfather, and I applied myself when I studied, and I enjoyed it.”

 

“It shows my Angel,” Selwyn assures her. “You are far more interesting than any other lady I’ve met in polite society, most of whom haven’t an original thought in their heads.”

 

“I take after my Aunt Egg, who learned Greek amongst other languages, which served her well when she decided to go there to study ancient art. Although Mater insisted that I not go to a girl’s school, so I would not become a bluestocking*** and thereby spoil my marriage prospects by demonstrating…”

 

“That’s what I was implying,” Selwyn interrupts in desperate defence of his incorrect assumptions about Lettice. “Most girls I have met either feign a lack of intelligence, or more often genuinely are dim witted. Admittedly, it’s not really their fault. With mothers like yours, who believe that the only position for a girl of good breeding is that of marriage, they seldom get educated well, and their brains sit idle.”

 

“Well, I have a brain, and I know how to use it. Pater and Aunt Egg drummed into me the importance of intelligence as well as good manners and looks in women of society.”

 

“Well, there are a great many ladies whom I have met who could take a leaf out of your book. I know you have a mind of your own, my Angel,” Selwyn purrs. “And that’s one of the many attributes about you that I like. Having a conversation with you about art, or my passion of architecture, is so refreshing in comparison to speaking about floral arrangements or the weather, as I shall soon have to when I start escorting my cousin Pamela for the London Season.”

 

Lettice cannot help but shudder silently at the mention of Selwyn’s cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers, for she is immediately reminded of what Sir John Nettleford-Hughes said to her at the society wedding of her friend Priscilla Kitson-Fahey to American Georgie Carter in November. He pointed out to her that Selwyn’s mother, Lady Zinnia, plans to match Selwyn and Pamela. From his point of view, it was already a fait accompli.

 

“I like my cousin,” Selwyn carries on, not noticing the bristle pulsating through Lettice. “But like so many of the other debutantes of 1923, she is lacking interests beyond the marriage market and social gossip and intrigues. You, on the other hand, my Angel, are well informed, and have your own opinions.”

 

“Well, you can thank Pater for instilling that in me. He hired some very intelligent governesses to school my sister and I in far more than embroidery, floral arranging and polite conversation.”

 

“And I’m jolly glad of it, my darling.”

 

“And Aunt Egg told me that I should never be afraid to express my opinion, however different, so long as it is artfully couched.”

 

“I like the sound of your Aunt Egg.”

 

“I don’t think your mother would approve of her, nor of me having a brain, Selwyn. Would she? I’m sure she would prefer you to marry one of those twittering and decorous debutantes.” She tries her luck. “Like your cousin Pamela, perhaps?”

 

“Oh, come now, Lettice darling!” Selwyn replies. If she has thrown a bone, he isn’t taking it as he rests the heels of his hands on the edge of the white linen tablecloth, clutching his cutlery. He chews his mouthful of roast beef before continuing. “That isn’t fair, even to Zinnia. She’s a very intelligent woman herself, with quite a capacity for witty conversation about all manner of topics, and she reads voraciously on many subjects.”

 

“I was talking to Leslie about what his impressions of your mother were when I went down to Glynes**** for his wedding in November.”

 

“Were you now?” Selwyn’s eyebrows arch with surprise over his widening eyes.

 

“Yes,” Lettice smirks, taking a mouthful of roast potato drizzled in gravy which falls apart on her tongue. Chewing her food, she feels emboldened, and sighs contentedly as she wonders whether Sir John was just spitting sour grapes because she prefers Selwyn’s company rather than his. Finishing her mouthful she elucidates, “Leslie is a few years older than us, and of course, I only remember her as that angry woman in black who pulled you away after we’d played in the hedgerows.”

 

“Well, she obviously left a lasting impression on you!” Selwyn chortles.

 

“But it isn’t a fair one, is it?” she asks rhetorically. “So, I asked Leslie what he remembered of her from time they spent together in the drawing room whilst you and I were tucked up in bed in the nursery.”

 

“And what was Leslie’s impression of Zinnia?”

 

“That, as you say, she is a witty woman, and that she liked to hold men in her thrall with her beauty, wit and intelligence.”

 

“Well, he’s quite right about that.”

 

“But that she didn’t much like other ladies for company, especially intelligent ones who might draw the gentlemen’s attention away from her glittering orbit.”

 

Selwyn chews his mouthful of dinner and concentrates on his dinner plate with downcast, contemplative eyes. He swallows but remains silent for a moment longer as he mulls over his own thoughts.

 

After a few moments of silence, Lettice airs an unspoken thought that has been ruminating about her head ever since Selwyn mentioned her. “You know, I’d love to meet Zinnia.”

 

Selwyn chuckles but looks down darkly into his glass of red wine. “But you have met her, Lettice darling. You just said so yourself. She was that angry woman yelling at you as I was dragged from the hedgerows of your father’s estate.”

 

“I know, but that doesn’t count! We were children. No, I’ve heard of her certainly over the years, but now that I’ve become reacquainted with you as an adult, and now that we are being serious with one another.” She pauses. “We are being serious with one another, aren’t we Selwyn?”

 

“Of course we are, Lettice.” Selwyn replies, unable to keep his irritation at her question out of his voice. “You know we are.” Falling back into silence, he runs his tongue around the inside of his cheek as he retreats back into his own inner most thoughts.

 

“Then I’d so very much like to meet her. You have met my toadying mother. Why shouldn’t I meet yours?”

 

“Be careful what you wish for, my Angel.” he cautions.

 

“What do you mean, Selwyn darling?”

 

Selwyn doesn’t answer straight away. He absently fiddles with the silver salt shaker from the cruet set in front of him, rolling its bulbous form about in his palm, as if considering whether it will give him an answer of some kind.

 

“Selwyn?” Lettice asks, leaning over and putting a hand on her companion’s broad shoulder.

 

“Just that you may not like her when you meet her.” He shrugs. “That’s all. Toadying is certainly not a word I would associate with Zinnia on any given day, that’s for certain.”

 

“Or you might be implying she might not like me.” Lettice remarks downheartedly. “Is that it?”

 

Softening his tone, Selwyn assures her, “I like you, and I’m sure she will too. You will get to meet her soon enough, Lettice darling. I promise. But not yet.” He suddenly snaps out of his contemplations and starts to cut a piece off his roast beef, slicing into the juicy flesh with sharp jabs of his knife. “We have plenty of time for all that. Let’s just enjoy us for now, and be content with that.”

 

“Oh of course, Selwyn darling,” Lettice stammers. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean, now.”

 

“I know you didn’t may angel.” He sees the look of concern she is giving him as she stiffens and sits back in her straight backed chair, afraid that she has offended him. “I just like it being just us for now, without the complication of Zinnia.”

 

“Is she complicated?”

 

“More than you’ll ever know, my angel. Aren’t most mothers?”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“Anyway, enough about Zinnia! I don’t want this evening to be about Zinnia! I want it to be about us. So not another word about her. Alright?” When Lettice nods shallowly, he continues, “I’m here to celebrate the success of Mr. and Mrs. Musgrave of Highgate being happy with their newly completed home.”

 

“Oh yes! Your first architectural commission completed and received with great success!” Lettice enthuses. “Let’s raise a toast to that.” She picks up her glass of red wine, which gleams under the diffused light of the chandeliers in Simpson’s dining room. “Cheers to you Selwyn, and your ongoing success.”

 

Their glasses clink cheerily.

 

“And what of Bruton?”

 

“Oh, Gerald is doing very well!” Lettice assures Selwyn, returning her glass to the tabletop. “His couture business is really starting to flourish.”

 

“It’s a bit of rum business*****, a chap making frocks for ladies, isn’t it?” Selwyn screws up his nose in a mixture of a lack of comprehension and distaste.

 

“It’s what he’s good at,” Lettice tugs at the peacock blue ruched satin sleeve of her evening gown as proof, feeling proud to wear one of her friend’s designs. “And he’s hardly the first couturier who’s a man, is he, Selwyn Darling?”

 

“I suppose not. Zinnia does buy frocks from the house of Worth******, and he was a man.”

 

“Exactly.” Lettice soothes. “And who would know what suits a lady better than a man?”

 

“Yes, and I must say,” Selwyn says, looking his companion up and down appreciatively in her shimmering evening gown covered in matching peacock blue bugle beads. “You do look positively ravishing in his creation.”

 

“Thank you, Selwyn.” Lettice murmurs, her face flushing at the compliment.

 

“We never see him at the club any more. I think the last time I saw him was the night I met you at your parents’ Hunt Ball, and that was almost a year ago.”

 

“Oh well,” Lettice blusters awkwardly, thinking quickly as to what excuse she can give for her dearest friend. She knows how dire Gerald’s finances are, partially as a result of his father’s pecuniary restraints, and she suspects that this fact is likely the reason why Gerald doesn’t attend his club any longer, even if he is still a member. Even small outlays at his club could tilt him the wrong way financially. However she also knows that this is a fact not widely known, and it would embarrass him so much were it to become public knowledge, especially courtesy of her, his best friend. “Running a business, especially in its infancy like Gerald’s and mine, can take time, a great deal of time as a matter of fact.”

 

“But you have time, my Angel, to spend time with me.” He eyes her. “Are you covering for Bruton?”

 

Lettice’s face suddenly drains of colour at Selwyn’s question. “No… no, I.”

 

Lowering his voice again, Selwyn asks, “He hasn’t taken after his brother and found himself an unsuitable girl, has he?”

 

Lettice releases the breath she has held momentarily in her chest and sighs.

 

“I know Gerald wouldn’t go for a local publican’s daughter, like Roland did, but being artistic like he is, I could imagine him with a chorus girl, and I know if news of that ever got back to Old Man Bruton, there would be fireworks, and it would be a bloody******* time for Bruton. Poor chap!”

 

“No, no, Selwyn darling!” Lettice replies with genuine relief. “I can assure you,” And as she puts her hand to her thumping heart, she knows she speaks the truth. “Gerald hasn’t taken up with a chorus girl. He genuinely is busy with his couture business. Establishing oneself, as you know only too well, isn’t easy, even for a duke’s son, much less a lower member of the aristocracy without the social profile. And my business is ticking along quite nicely now, so I don’t need to put in as much effort as Gerald does.”

 

“But how selfish of me, my Angel!” Selwyn exclaims, putting his glass down abruptly and looking to his companion. “What a prig I’m being, aggrandising myself and bringing up Bruton, when you said that you had something to celebrate tonight too. What is it?”

 

“Oh, it’s nothing like you’ve done, by finishing a house for someone.” Lettice says, flapping her hand dismissively.

 

“Well, what is it, Lettice darling?” Selwyn insists. “Tell me!”

 

Lettice looks down at her plate for a moment and then remarks rather offhandedly, “It was only that I had a telephone call from Henry Tipping******** the other day, and received confirmation that my interior for Dickie and Margot Channon’s Cornwall house ‘Chi an Treth’ will be featured in an upcoming edition of Country Life.”

 

“Oh may Angel!” Selwyn exclaims. “That’s wonderful!” He leans over and kisses her affectionately, albeit with the reserve that is expected between two unmarried people whilst dining in a public place, but with no less genuine delight for her. “That’s certainly more than nothing, and is something also worth celebrating!” I say, let’s raise a toast to you.” He picks up his glass of red wine again. “Cheers to you Lettice, and may the article bring you lots of recognition and new business.”

 

The pair clink glasses yet again and smile at one another.

 

*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"

 

**Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. Howards End is considered by many to be Forster's masterpiece. The book was conceived in June 1908 and worked on throughout the following year; it was completed in July 1910

 

***The term bluestocking was applied to any of a group of women who in mid Eighteenth Century England held “conversations” to which they invited men of letters and members of the aristocracy with literary interests. The word over the passing centuries has come to be applied derisively to a woman who affects literary or learned interests.

 

****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.

 

*****Rum is a British slang word that means odd (in a negative way) or disreputable.

 

******Charles Frederick Worth was an English fashion designer who founded the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. He is considered by many fashion historians to be the father of haute couture. Worth is also credited with revolutionising the business of fashion. Established in Paris in 1858, his fashion salon soon attracted European royalty, and where they led monied society followed. An innovative designer, he adapted 19th-century dress to make it more suited to everyday life, with some changes said to be at the request of his most prestigious client Empress Eugénie. He was the first to replace the fashion dolls with live models in order to promote his garments to clients, and to sew branded labels into his clothing; almost all clients visited his salon for a consultation and fitting – thereby turning the House of Worth into a society meeting point. By the end of his career, his fashion house employed 1,200 people and its impact on fashion taste was far-reaching.

 

*******The old fashioned British term “looking bloody” was a way of indicating how dour or serious a person or occasion looks.

 

********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.

 

Comfortable, cosy and terribly English, the interior of Simpson’s-in-the-Strand may look real to you, but it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

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, the bowls of vegetables, roast potatoes, boat of gravy and Yorkshire puddings and on the tabletop 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. The red wine glasses bought them from a miniatures stockist on E-Bay. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The silver cruet set in the middle of the table 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 silver meat cover you can just see in the background to the left of the photo also comes from Warwick Miniatures.

 

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 Queen Anne dining chairs were all given to me as a Christmas present when I was around the same age.

 

The vase of flowers in the background I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The wood panelling in the background is real, as I shot this scene on the wood panelled mantle of my drawing room. The paintings hanging from the wooden panels come from an online stockist on E-Bay.

Seen in our local branch of BHS.

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 is finally having her first assignation with the eldest son of the Duke of Walmsford, Selwyn Spencely after he telephoned her last week. After she hung up the receiver on the cradle, Lettice was beside herself with joy, causing somewhat of a kerfuffle with her downstairs neighbour, Mrs. Clifford after her jumping up and down caused the lady’s pendant lamps to rattle and sway from the ceiling above. Since then, Lettice has spent hours of her life over the ensuing days going through her wardrobes, trying on outfit after outfit, much to the irritation of her maid, Edith, who has to pick up after her. In a whirl of excitement and nerves, Lettice has gone from deciding to wear pale pink organdie, to navy serge, then to peach and rose carmine satin, to black velvet with white brocade trim. Yet now, as she shrugs her coat from her shoulders into the waiting arms of the liveried cloak room attendant of the Metropole, Lettice knows that her choice of a soft pale blue summery calf length dress with lace inserts accessories by a blue satin sash and her simple double strand of perfectly matched pearls is the perfect choice. The colour suits her creamy skin and blonde chignon, and the outfit is understated elegance, so she appears fashionable and presentable, yet doesn’t appear to be trying to hard to impress. Breathing deeply to keep the butterflies in her stomach at bay she immediately sees her companion for luncheon lounging nonchalantly against a white painted pillar.

 

“Darling Lettice!” Selwyn exclaims as he strides purposefully across the busy lobby of the Metropole. “You look positively ravishing.”

 

Lettice smiles as she sees the glint of delight in his blue eyes as he raises her cream glove clad right hand to his lips and chivalrously kisses it. “Thank you, Selwyn.” she replies, lowering her lids as she feels a slight flush fill her cheeks at the sensation of his lips pressing through the thin, soft kid of her glove. “That’s very kind of you to say so.”

 

“I’ve secured us a discreet table for two, just as you requested, my angel.” He proffers a crooked arm to her. “Shall we?”

 

Lettice smiles at his words, enjoying the sound of his cultured voice call her by a pet name. She carefully winds her own arm though his and the two stroll blithely across the foyer, unaware of the mild interest that she and Selwyn create as a handsome couple.

 

“Good afternoon Miss Chetwynd,” the maître d of the Metropole restaurant says as he looks down the list of reservations for luncheon. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” Ticking the entry off the reservation list he takes up two menus. “Right this way, Your Grace.”

 

He leads the couple through the busy dining room of the hotel where the gentle burble of voices fills the lofty space 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.

 

“Your Grace.” Lettice says in a lofty fashion, giggling as she makes a joking bob curtsey to Selwyn as they follow the maître d.

 

Selwyn scoffs and rolls his eyes up to the ornately plastered ceiling above. “You know it’s only because of Daddy**.”

 

“I know,” Lettice giggles again. “But isn’t it a scream: ‘Your Grace’.”

 

“I’m not ‘Your Grace’ to you, my angel,” he smiles in return. “Just Selwyn will be fine.”

 

“As you wish, Just Selwyn.”

 

The crisply uniformed maître d stops before a small table for two surrounded by tables of suited politicians and a smattering of older, rather tweedy women. He withdraws a dainty Chippendale style chair from the table and Lettice takes a seat. The older man expertly pushes the chair in with her as she settles before the crisp white linen covered table.

 

“Does this table suit you, Lettice darling?” Selwyn asks a little nervously. “Discreet enough for you?”

 

“Oh yes, thank you Selwyn.” Lettice replies as she observes all the diners around them, busily involved in their own discussions with never a thought for the two of them, although she does notice an older couple at a table a short distance away observing them discreetly. The woman turns to her husband, indicating something about Lettice’s wide brimmed pale blue hat, judging by her gesticulation and his withering glance in response.

 

“Could that be one of your mother’s spies?” Selwyn asks, breaking into her quiet thoughts.

 

“What?” Lettice gasps. “Where?”

 

“There.” Selwyn gestures towards a potted palm, the fronds trembling with the movement of a passing waiter carrying two plates of roast beef to a nearby table scurrying past.

 

“Oh Selwyn!” Lettice slaps his hand kittenishly. “You are awful! Don’t be a tease and startle me like that.” She smiles as she returns to perusing her menu. “You know my mother’s spies are everywhere.”

 

“As are Lady Zinnia’s.” he replies.

 

Selwyn looks around the room taking in the Georgian revival furnishings, the restrained Regency stripe wallpaper, the watercolours of stately British homes in gilt frames as much as his architect’s eye pays close attention to the restrained fluted columns, ornately plastered ceilings and general layout of the room. “It’s so thoroughly English, don’t you think?” he concludes as he picks up the menu to peruse it.

 

“Oh,” Lettice says a little deflated as she lowers her menu. “You’d prefer something a little more, European? Should we have dined at a French restaurant?”

 

“Oh no Lettice darling,” he assures her with a defending hand. “I was just remarking. As I think I told you on the telephone, I haven’t been here since before the war, and I think the décor is much improved. It’s so much lighter and free of that ghastly old Victorian look.”

 

“I was saying the same thing to Miss Wanetta Ward the last time I came here.” Lettice remarks.

 

“Wanetta Ward? Isn’t she the moving picture star?” Selwyn looks over the top of his menu at his luncheon companion.

 

“The very one!” Lettice elucidates. “Do you ever go?”

 

“To the kinema***? No.” He shakes his head vehemently. “Do you?”

 

“No, I don’t either, but Miss Ward insists that I must experience it some day. Not that Mater or Pater would approve if I ever worked up the gumption to go.”

 

“Surely you don’t need to tell them if you do go.”

 

“Are you encouraging me to be devious, Selwyn?”

 

“No,” Selwyn laughs, his eyebrows lifting over his sparking blue eyes. “I’m simply suggesting that you are of age, and your own person with your own life in London, whilst they live their lives in far away Wiltshire. You can go to kinema if you wish. No-one need see you. In saying that, my parents feel the same about it, especially Mummy. She is very much against what she calls ‘painted women who are a poor and cheap copy of great art, moving about overdramatically on screen’.”

 

“I’ll be sure not to tell Miss Ward your mother’s opinion of her the next time I see her.”

 

“My mother’s opinion is entirely uneducated, Lettice, I assure you. After all, like both you and I, she has never actually seen a moving picture before.”

 

“Well, considering that both my maid and my charwoman*** go to the pictures, I very much doubt that I ever will.” Lettice concludes. “How would it be if I sat next to them? Besides, I have heard picture theatres called fleapits***** before, which sounds none too promising when compared with a lovely evening at Covent Garden.”

 

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Selwyn announces, changing the subject. “But I rather like the look of the roast beef with Yorkshire pudding for luncheon. What will you have?”

 

Lettice looks disappointedly at her menu. “When I came here with Miss Ward, we shared a rather magnificent selection of savories and little deadlies******, but I suppose they must reserve them for afternoon tea, here.”

 

“Fear not!” Selwyn says, giving Lettice a beaming smile. He carefully catches the eye of the maître d and summons him with an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

 

“How may I serve Your Grace?” the maître d asks with a respectful bow as he approaches the table.

 

“Look here, my companion Miss Chetwynd had some sweet and savoury petit fours when she last came here and speaks very highly of them. I’d taken a fancy to trying them for myself, so might we have a selection for two, please?”

 

“Well Your Grace,” the maître d begins apologetically. “They are from our afternoon tea menu.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure you could have word to your chefs, especially to please such a charming guest.” He gestures with an open hand to Lettice as she sits rather awkwardly holding her menu, her eyes wide as she listens to Selwyn direct the manager of the restaurant. “It would please her,” He then plays his trump card with a polite, yet firm and businesslike smile that forms across his lips like a darkened crease. “Both of us really, if you could perhaps see about furnishing us with a selection from your afternoon tea menu.”

 

“Well I…” stammers the maître d, but catching the slight shift in Selwyn’s eyes and the twitch at the corner of his mouth he swallows what he was going to say. “Certainly, Your Grace.”

 

“Good man!” Selwyn replies, his eyes and his smile brightening. “And some tea I think, wouldn’t you agree, Lettice my dear?”

 

“Oh, oh… yes.” Lettice agrees with an awkward smile of her own.

 

As the uniformed manager scuttles away, shoulders hunched, with Selwyn’s request, Lettice says, “Oh you shouldn’t have done that, Selwyn. Poor man.”

 

“What? Are you telling me that you are displeased that you are getting what you desire for luncheon, even though it doesn’t appear on the menu?”

 

“Well, no.” Lettice admits sheepishly.

 

“See, there are advantages to having luncheon with a ‘Your Grace’.” He gives her a conspiratorial smile.

 

“You do enjoy getting your way, don’t you Selwyn?”

 

He doesn’t reply but continues to smile enigmatically back at her.

 

Soon a splendid selection of sweet petit fours and large and fluffy fruit scones with butter, jam and cream has been presented to them on a fluted glass cake stand by a the maître d along with a pot of piping hot tea in a blue and gilt edged banded teapot.

 

“So,” Selwyn says as he drops a large dollop of thick white cream onto half a fruit scone. “At the Hunt Ball we spent a lot of time talking about our childhoods and what has happened to me over the ensuing years,” He shakes a last drop off the silver spoon. “Yet I feel that you are at an unfair advantage, as you shared barely anything about yourself al evening.”

 

“Aahh,” Lettice replies as she spreads some raspberry jam on her two halves of fruit scones with her knife. “My mother taught me the finer points about being a gracious hostess. She told me that I must never bore my guests with trifling talk about myself. What I have to say or what I do is of little or no consequence. The best way to keep a gentleman happy is to occupy him with talk about himself.”

 

“You don’t believe that do, my angel?”

 

“Not at all, but I found it to be a very useful tactic at the Hunt Ball when I was paraded before and forced to dance with a seemingly endless array of eligible young men. It saved me having to do most of the talking.”

 

“I hope you didn’t feel forced to dance with me, Lettice darling.” Selwyn picks up his teacup and takes a sip of tea. “After all you did dance quite a bit with me.”

 

“You know I didn’t mind, Selwyn.” She pauses, her knife in mid-air. “Or I hope you didn’t think that.”

 

“I suppose a healthy level of scepticism helps when you are an eligible bachelor who happens to be the heir to a duchy and a sizeable private income. Such things can make a man attractive to many a woman.”

 

“Not me, Selwyn. I am after all a woman of independent means, and I have my own successful interior design business.”

 

“Ah, now that is interesting.” he remarks. “How is it that the daughter of a viscount with her own private income, a girl from a good family, can have her own business? It surely isn’t the done thing.”

 

“Well, I think if circumstances were different, I shouldn’t be able to.”

 

“Circumstances?”

 

“Well for a start, I am the youngest daughter. My elder sister, Lallage, is married and has thankfully done her bit for her husband’s family by producing an heir, and given our parents the welcome distraction of grandchildren, thus alleviating me of such a burden.”

 

“She and Lanchenbury just had another child recently didn’t they?”

 

“My, you are well informed. Yes, Lally and Charles had another son in February, so now my sister has provided not only an heir, but a spare as well.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “Secondly, and perhaps what works most in my favour is that I am my father’s favourite child. If it were up to my mother, I should have been married and dispatched off by the end of the first Season after the war. But Pater enjoys indulging his little girl, and I know just how to keep him continuing to do so, and keeping Mater and her ideas at bay just enough.”

 

“And how do you achieve this miracle, my angel?”

 

“I decorate mostly for the great and the good of this fair isle,”

 

“I don’t think I’d call a moving picture star a member of the great and good!” laughs Selwyn heartily.

 

“Yes, well…” Lettice blushes and casts her eyes down into her lap sheepishly. “I did rather get in trouble for that, but only because my mother’s awful cousin Gwendolyn, the Duchess of Whitby, told tales behind my back. Anyway, I design and decorate mostly for people my parents approve of, and I play my part socially and pretend to be interested in the things my mother wants for me.”

 

“Like marriage?”

 

“Like marriage.”

 

“So, if you aren’t interested in marriage, why are we having luncheon then, my angel?”

 

“I never said I wouldn’t get married someday, Selwyn,” Lettice defends with a coy smile. “I just want to do it in my own fashion, and I believe that marriage should begin with love. If I am to get married to a man I love, I need to know him first.” She pauses again and stares firmly into her companion’s sparkling blue eyes. “I’m sure you agree.”

 

“I’m quite sure my mother, Lady Zinnia, wouldn’t agree with you and your modern ideas about marriage.”

 

“Any more than my own mother does. When I told her that I wanted to do this my own way, by arranging to meet you myself she told me ‘marriages are made by mothers, you silly girl’.”

 

“And you don’t agree with that?” he asks almost unsurely.

 

“Would I be here if I did, Selwyn?” Lettice takes up the bowl of cream and begins to drop some on her scones.

 

Selwyn starts chuckling in a relieved fashion, consciously trying to smother his smile with his left hand, a hold and ruby signet ring glinting in the diffused light cast from the chandeliers above. He settles back more comfortably in his seat, observing his female companion as she stops what she is doing and puts down both the spoon and bowl of cream self-consciously.

 

“What? What is it Selwyn? What have I done?”

 

“You haven’t done anything other than be you, my angel, and that is a great blessed relief.”

 

“Relief?” Lettice’s left hand clutches at the two warm strands of creamy pearls at her throat.

 

“Yes,” Selwyn elucidates, sitting forward again and reaching out his hand, encapsulating Lettice’s smaller right hand as it rests on the white linen tablecloth. “You see, I was worried that it was a mixture of champagne and the romance of the Hunt Ball that made you so attractive. You were so naturally charming.”

 

Lettice bursts out laughing, the joyous peal mixing with the vociferous noise around them. “I was dressed as Cinderella in an Eighteenth Century gown and wig. I’d hardly call that natural, Selwyn.”

 

“Aahh, but you were my darling, beneath all that. I must confess that when I suggested luncheon today it was with a little of that healthy scepticism that I came here.”

 

“But I don’t need your income, Selwyn, I have my own.”

 

“But you do have a scheming mother, and many a mother like Lady Sadie want their daughters to marry a fine title, especially one that they may have desired for themselves. A Duchess is a step up from a Countess, I’m sure you agree.”

 

“Oh I don’t care…”

 

“Shh, my angel,” Selwyn squeezes her hand beneath his. “I know. However, that also makes you a rather exceptional girl, so I’m glad that my misgivings were misplaced. I’m pleased to hear that you’re in no rush to get married, and that you have set yourself some expectations and rules as to how you wish to live. Perhaps you were born at just the right time to manage as a woman in this new post-war era.”

 

“Please don’t tell Mater that,” Lettice says, lowering her spare hand from worrying her pearls. “She’ll be fit to be tied.”

 

“I promise I shan’t say a word to Lady Sadie, or my own mother. Both are cut from the same cloth in that respect.” He releases her hand and settles back in his chair. Picking up a scone he takes a bite. After swallowing his mouthful and wiping his mouth with his serviette he continues, “Now, do tell me about your latest piece of interior design. I should like to know more about it.”

 

Lettice sighs as she feels the nervous tickles in her stomach finally start to dissipate as she settles back in her own seat and starts to tell him about ‘Chi an Treth’ the Regency house in Penzance that belongs to her friends, the newly married Dickie and Margot Channon.

 

*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 title of Duke sits at the top of the British peerage. A Duke is called “Duke” or “Your Grace” by his social equals, and is called only “Your Grace” by commoners. A Duke’s eldest son bears his courtesy title, whilst any younger children are known as Lords and Ladies.

 

***In the early days of moving pictures, films were known by many names. The word “cinema” derives from “kinema” which was an early Twentieth Century shortened version of “kinematograph”, which was an early apparatus for showing films.

 

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

 

*****Early cinemas were often derisively referred to as “fleapits”, however the name given them was for very good reason. As cheap entertainment for the masses, with entry costing a paltry amount, early moving picture theatres often had problems with fleas infesting themselves on patrons who were free of them from those who had them. This was especially common in poorer areas where scruffier cinemas did not employ cleanliness as a high priority. Even as late as the 1960s, some filthy picture houses employed the spraying of children with DDT when they came en masse to watch the Saturday Morning Westerns!

 

******Little deadlies is an old fashioned term for little sweet cakes like petit fours.

 

An afternoon tea like this would be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate each sweet petit four or scone 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 sweet petite fours on the lower tier of the cake stand and the scones on the upper tier and on Lettice and Selwyn’s plates 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 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 and the steam hole in the teapot.

 

The fluted glass cake stand, the glass vase on Lettice and Selwyn’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 red roses in the vase are also made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.

 

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.

 

The vases of flowers on the stands in the background 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. The paintings come from an online stockist on E-Bay.

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 east of Cavendish Mews, down through St James’, past Trafalgar Square and down The Strand to one of London’s most luxurious and fashionable hotels, The Savoy*, where, surrounded by mahogany and rich red velvet, gilded paintings and extravagant floral displays, Lettice is having dinner with the son of the Duke of Walmsford, Selwyn Spencely. The pair have made valiant attempts to pursue a romantic relationship since meeting at Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie’s, Hunt Ball the previous year. Yet things haven’t been easy, their relationship moving in fits and starts, partially due to the invisible, yet very strong influence of Selwyn’s mother, Lady Zinnia, the current Duchess of Walmsford. Although Lettice has no solid proof of it, she is quite sure that Lady Zinnia does not think her a suitable match for her eldest son and heir. From what she has been told, Lettice also believes that Lady Zinnia is matchmaking Selwyn with his cousin Pamela Fox-Chavers. In an effort to see what her potential rival for Selwyn’s affections is like, Lettice organised an ‘accidental’ meeting of she, Pamela and Selwyn at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Great Spring Show** a few weeks ago. As a result of this meeting, Selwyn has finally agreed to explain to Lettice his evident reluctance to introduce her to his mother as a potentially suitable match. Yet as she walks beneath the grand new Art Deco portico of the Savoy and the front doors are opened for her by liveried doormen, Lettice is amazed that surrounded by so many fashionable people, Selwyn thinks the Savoy dining room is the place to have a discreet dinner, especially after they have been very discreet about their relationship for the past year.

 

Lettice is ushered into the grand dining room of the Savoy, a space brilliantly illuminated by dozens of glittering electrified chandeliers cascading down like fountains from the high ceiling above. Beneath the sparkling light, men in white waistcoats and women a-glitter with jewels and bugle bead embroidered frocks are ushered into the dining room where they are seated in high backed mahogany and red velvet chairs around tables dressed in crisp white tablecloths and set with sparkling silver and gilt china. The large room is very heavily populated with theatre patrons enjoying a meal before a show and London society out for an evening. The space is full of vociferous conversation, boisterous laughter, the clink of glasses and the scrape of cutlery against crockery as the diners enjoy the magnificent repast served to them from the hotel’s famous kitchens. Above it all, the notes of the latest dance music from the band can be heard as they entertain diners and dancers who fill the parquet dance floor.

 

A smartly uniformed waiter escorts Lettice to a table for two in the midst of the grand dining salon, where Selwyn, dressed in smart white tie stands and greets Lettice.

 

“My Angel!” he gasps, admiring her as she stands before him in a champagne coloured silk crepe gown decorated with sequins with a matching bandeau set amidst her Marcelled** hair. “Don’t you look ravishing!”

 

“Thank you, Selwyn.” Lettice purrs in pleasure as she allows the waiter to carefully slide the seat of the chair beneath her as she sits. “That’s very kind of you to say so.” She gracefully tugs at her elbow length white evening gloves.

 

Sparkling golden French champagne is poured into their crystal flutes from a bottle sitting in a silver cooler on the linen covered table by their obsequious waiter. The expansive menu is consulted with Lettice selecting Pied de Veau*** and Selwyn choosing Cambridge Sausages**** both dishes served with a light Salade Romaine*****. Polite conversation is exchanged between the two. Lettice is given congratulations on the great success of the publication of her article in ‘Country Life’******, which Selwyn has finally seen. Selwyn is asked how Pamela’s coming out ball went. The pair dance elegantly around the true reason they are there.

 

It is only when a large silver salver of cheeses is put down and they are served Vol-au-Vent de Volaille à la Royale******* on the stylish gilt edged white plates of the Savoy that Lettice finally plucks up the courage to start the conversation that they have been trying to avoid.

 

Cutting a small piece of flaky golden pastry and spearing it with a piece of tenderly cooked chicken and a head of mushroom Lettice inserts it into her mouth and sighs with delight.

 

“There is nothing nicer than dinner at the Savoy, is there my Angel?” Selwyn addresses his dinner partner.

 

“Indeed no,” Lettice agrees after swallowing her dainty mouthful. “However, I must confess that I was surprised that you chose the Savoy dining room for us to meet. It’s the most indiscreet place to have a discreet dinner.” She deposits her polished silver cutlery onto the slightly scalloped edge of her plate. “We’ve been so careful up until now, choosing places where we are less likely to garner attention. Here we sit amongst all the most fashionable people of London society. There are bound to be friends of both your parents and mine who will see us sitting here together at a table for two.” She glances around at the bejewel decorated ladies looking like exotic birds in their brightly coloured frocks and feathers and their smartly attired male companions. “There are even photographers here this evening.”

 

“I know my Angel.” Selwyn replies matter-of-factly before putting a small amount of his own vol-au-vent into his mouth.

 

“Whilst I know my mother won’t mind seeing my name associated with yours, or a picture of the two of us together at the Savoy,” She glances nervously at Selwyn as he serenely chews his second course. “I thought we were trying to avoid Zinnia’s attention.”

 

Selwyn finishes his mouthful and then takes a slip of champagne before elucidating somewhat mysteriously. “A change of plans, my Angel.”

 

“A change of plans, Selwyn?” Lettice queries, running her white evening glove clad fingers over the pearls at her throat as she worries them. “What does that mean? I don’t understand.”

 

“You and I have had some rather awkward conversations over my refusal to introduce you to Zinnia, haven’t we, Lettice?”

 

“We have, darling Selwyn. And I thought that was what we were going to talk about this evening.”

 

“And so we will, but I also want this evening to be a statement of intention.”

 

“A statement of intention?” Lettice’s heart suddenly starts to beat faster as she licks her lips.

 

“Yes. . I invited you here this evening because it is one of the most fashionably public places to be seen. I want people to see us together this evening, my darling, whether it be Zinnia’s spies amongst us, or just the general citizenry of society. I also thought that since there is a rather ripping band playing tonight, that you and I might cut a rug******** a bit later and that perhaps we might get photographed. Zinnia won’t want to meet you, unless your presence is waved in front of her like a red rag to a bull.”

 

“I’m not sure I like that term when used in conjunction with your mother, Selwyn darling.” Lettice says warily.

 

“But it’s true. For all her forthrightness and ferocity, Zinnia is very good at playing ostriches when she wishes, and pretending not to see things she doesn’t want to see.” Selwyn explains before taking another sip of champagne. “I should have done this earlier, like when we agreed that I would escort you to your friend Priscilla’s wedding in November last year. However, I wasn’t man enough to stand up to her. Now I want to make a statement about you, about us,” He reaches out and places his pale and elegant right hand bearing a small signet ring over Lettice’s evening glove clad left hand, staring Lettice directly in the eye. “And I need Zinnia to sit up and take notice.”

 

Lettice picks up her champagne flute in her right hand and quickly sips as small amount of the effervescent beverage to whet her suddenly dry throat. She considers what Selwyn has just said along with other things people have said to her about Selwyn and Lady Zinnia over the last year since she reacquainted herself with Selwyn.

 

“The day I attended Priscilla’s wedding without you,” Lettice begins. “I met Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.”

 

“Sir John!” Selwyn scoffs, releasing Lettice’s hand, leaving a warm patch that Lettice can still feel through the thin fabric of her white glove. “He’s one of Zinnia’s cronies. I’m quite sure that they had,” Selwyn pauses whilst he finds the right word. “An understanding, shall we say, when they were both younger.” He looks at Lettice again. “I hope I didn’t shock you, my Angel.”

 

“Not at all, Selwyn darling.” Lettice assures him. “After all, I am twenty-three now, and a lady who has set forth into the world.”

 

“I’m glad my Angel. I’d never want to shock you with something like that.”

 

“It doesn’t shock me, Selwyn darling, but it would explain some things he said to me that day when I was cornered by him.”

 

“Cornered?”

 

“Yes. I now think he deliberately sought me out and cornered me so he could tell me what he did.”

 

“What did Sir John say?” Selwyn queries.

 

“I didn’t really pay that much attention to it,” Lettice begins, glancing down at her partially eaten vol-au-vent. “At least not at first. I thought he was just spitting venom at me because I spurned his affections the evening of Mater’s Hunt Ball when I met you.”

 

“What did he say?” Selwyn presses anxiously.

 

“When I explained your absence as my escort – he only knew because he is related to Cilla’s mother and she had been crowing to him about your attendance at the wedding – he laughed when I said that you were at Clendon********* meeting Pamela. He said it was not a coincidence that you were forced to cancel your own plans in preference for spending time with your cousin. He said that your mother had orchestrated it.”

 

“And so she had, my Angel.” Selwyn conforms. “And that is why I said that I should have been more of a man and stood up to Zinnia at that time. However,” He releases a pent up breath which he exhales shudderingly. “Zinnia is not someone to cross, especially when she is determined, or in a foul mood, of which she was both.”

 

“Sir John said that even though we had been discreet about spending time together, that your mother already knew about our assignations.”

 

“I would imagine him to be quite correct.”

 

“I accused him of telling her, but he denied it.”

 

“I would doubt that even as a crony of Zinnia, he would have had the pleasure of breaking the news of your existence as a potential future daughter-in-law to her. Zinnia’s talons reach far and wide, and her spies exist in some of the most unlikely places. What else did Sir John have to say?”

 

“He said that your mother is the one who would undoubtedly arrange your marriage to suit her own wishes. He implied that I ought not tip my cap at you since you were not free to make your own decision when it came to the subject of marriage. He said that even your father wouldn’t cross your mother on that front.”

 

Selwyn chuckles sadly. “Sir John is well informed.”

 

“So it’s true then?”

 

“What is, darling?”

 

“That you aren’t free to marry.”

 

“No, of course not. Not even Zinnia with all her bluster can force me to marry someone I don’t want to.”

 

Lettice releases a breath she didn’t even realise she was holding in her chest beneath the silk crepe and sparkling beading of her gown.

 

“However, Zinnia and my Uncle Bertrand have their own plans as regards Pammy and her relationship to me, and they are both applying pressure to both of us.”

 

“Sir John said that too.” Lettice utters deflatedly.

 

“I should like to point out, my Angel, that I was not aware as to the plans and plotting afoot for Pammy and I when I met you again at your mother’s ball.” Selwyn assures Lettice. “I didn’t even know about it in the lead up to Priscilla’s wedding. It was only that weekend at Clendon when I was first reintroduced to Pammy and I inadvertently overheard snippets of private conversations Zinnia and my uncle that I realised that they had been hatching their plot to bind us into a marriage of convenience to bind our families closer together for almost as long as Pammy has been alive.”

 

“So this wasn’t something new, then?”

 

“It was to me, Lettice darling, but not to them. Do you remember I told you at the Great Spring Show that my real aunt, Bertrand’s first wife, Miranda, was a bolter**********?”

 

“Yes Selwyn.”

 

“And that he fled to America and that was where he met Rosalind?”

 

“Yes Selwyn.”

 

“Well, the reason why he fled to New York was because the failure of his marriage to Miranda and her desertion of him led to quite a scandal. The scandal clung to Pammy, long after Miranda was gone, and I think after a he married Rosalind, being connected to an element of scandal herself, being a divorcée, she hatched the plan with Uncle Bertrand and Zinnia with Pammy’s social well being at heart.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, I mean that from the outside, there is nothing unusual or untoward about two distant cousins marrying. The fact that the Spencely and Fox-Chavers happen to be two very distinguished and wealthy old families who would doubtless look to intermarry across the generations also throws off any whiff of scandal.”

 

“Are you saying they planned to marry you two so that Pamela would be untarnished by her mother’s actions?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But how is the child responsible for her mother’s sins, Selwyn?”

 

“You know as well as I do, coming from a family as old and well established as your own, Lettice, that scandal sticks like glue.”

 

“Then why throw a ball for Pamela? Why introduce her to society?”

 

“Because as the next Duke of Walmsford, it is only fitting that I should marry a suitable girl from a suitable family who has been presented in society. Certain families won’t allow their daughters to socialise with poor Pammy, and I’m quite sure that whilst they send their eligible sons, just as many would never countenance a marriage between them and Pammy.”

 

“So if Pamela marries well, into a family who would welcome her, she is absolved of any wrongdoings of her mother. There is no whiff of scandal and she rises above reproach.”

 

“Exactly.” Selwyn sighs. “Clever girl.”

 

Lettice takes a larger than usual gulp of champagne as she allows the thoughts just formed from their conversation to sink in. “And how does Pamela feel about this? Does she even know that she is being matched with you, Selwyn?”

 

“Yes she does,” Selwyn explains. “Although I was the one who told her. However, like me, she has no desire to see us to get married. She barely knows me, and both of us treat each other like siblings rather than potential romantic marriage prospects.”

 

“Does she know why your mother, aunt and uncle hatched this plan?”

 

“Well,” Selwyn replies uncertainly. “She knows her mother deserted Uncle Bertrand, but I don’t think she realises that Miranda’s legacy to her is a tainted one, and I’m quite sure she doesn’t know about some of the other debutante’s families attitudes towards her because of Miranda’s actions.”

 

“So what is she to do, if no decent bachelor will have her, and you won’t marry her?”

 

“I didn’t say that no eligible bachelors would consider marriage with Pammy, Angel, only some.” Selwyn says with a smile. “And half of those who won’t marry her would only have wanted to marry her for her money.”

 

“You sound as if you know something.” Lettice remarks, giving her dinner partner a perplexed look.

 

“Oh I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, my Angel.” he replies mysteriously.

 

“So, what would you say then, Selwyn darling?” Lettice prods.

 

“I’d go so far as to say that being the happy and pretty young thing that she is, Pammy is in no short supply of admirers whose families would overlook her mother’s status as a bolter.”

 

“Because they want to marry her for her Fox-Chavers money?”

 

“Well, there are a few of those, I’ll admit,” Selwyn agrees. “But that is why her dear cousin Selwyn is escorting her to all these rather tedious London Season occasions. I can keep those wolves away. However even if we discount them, there are still a few rather decent chaps who are vying for Pammy’s attentions.”

 

“Are there any that Pamela is interested in?” Lettice asks hopefully.

 

“As a matter of fact there are two young prospects whom she is quite keen on, or so she confides in me.”

 

“Oh that’s wonderful, Selwyn!” Lettice deposits her glass on the linen covered surface of the table and claps her hands in delight, beaming with a smile of happy relief. The her face falls. “But then, what are we all to do? Hasn’t your mother charged you with chaperoning Pamela throughout the Season?”

 

“Well, that was the other reason why I decided to bring you to the Savoy, my Angel.” Selwyn remarks. “We need to be seen together about town, and the best way to do that is to be seen at the functions and places that will be popular because they are part of the London Season, like cricket matches at Lords, and the Henley Regatta************.”

 

“And the Goodwood races!” adds Lettice with enthusiasm. “And Cowes week************!”

 

“That’s the spirit, my Angel!” Selwyn encourages her with equal enthusiasm. “Zinnia has charged me with chaperoning Pammy for her own end, but we will use the Season to thwart her with our own ends in mind.”

 

“Oh Selwyn, how clever you are! What a darling you are!”

 

Just at that time, the waiter who served them their vol-au-vents and player of cheese approaches the table. Noticing their half eaten meals and their cutlery sitting idle, he tentatively asks, “Shall I clear now, Your Grace?”

 

“If you would fetch us clean plates and cutlery for the cheese.” Selwyn replies. “Which I think we shall enjoy after a turn on the dancefloor. Don’t you agree, my Angel?” He stands up, pushing his chair back and offering Lettice his hand.

 

“I do indeed, Selwyn darling!” Lettice pulls her napkin from her lap and drops it on the tabletop.

 

The waiter pulls out Lettice’s chair, and taking Selwyn’s hand, Lettice allows him to lead her proudly across the dining room of the Savoy. Pairs of eyes note the handsome young couple and lips whisper behind glove clad hands and fans as remarks are made as to who they are and that they appear to be together as a couple, yet for the first time since the night of her mother’s Hunt ball, Lettice doesn’t care what people are thinking or saying. She feels light, as though floating on a cloud, and as she falls comfortably into Selwyn’s strong arms and they begin to sway to the music, she feels proud to be with Selwyn: the man she is falling in love with, and who intends to marry her.

 

*The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London. 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 hotel in Britain to introduce 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. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel. The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has two hundred and sixty seven guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.

 

**May 20 1913 saw the first Royal Horticultural Society flower show at Chelsea. What we know today as the Chelsea Flower Show was originally known as the Great Spring Show. The first shows were three day events held within a single marquee. The King and Queen did not attend in 1913, but the King's Mother, Queen Alexandra, attended with two of her children. The only garden to win a gold medal before the war was also in 1913 and was awarded to a rock garden created by John Wood of Boston Spa. In 1919, the Government demanded that the Royal Horticultural Society pay an entertainment tax for the show – with resources already strained, it threatened the future of the Chelsea Flower Show. Thankfully, this was wavered once the Royal Horticultural Society convinced the Government that the show had educational benefit and in 1920 a special tent was erected to house scientific exhibits. Whilst the original shows were housed within one tent, the provision of tents increased after the Great War ended. A tent for roses appeared and between 1920 and 1934, there was a tent for pictures, scientific exhibits and displays of garden design. Society garden parties began to be held, and soon the Royal Horticultural Society’s Great Spring Show became a fixture of the London social calendar in May, attended by society ladies and their debutante daughters, the occasion used to parade the latter by the former. The Chelsea Flower Show, though not so exclusive today, is still a part of the London Season.

 

***Pied de Veau is a dish of calves feet served in a thick creamy chicken sauce, often served with carrots and onions.

 

****Cambridge Sausages are made from coarse ground lean and fatty pork with binder (rice in some receipts) and a heavy admixture of sweet spices such as mace, ginger and nutmeg, linked, in medium skins.

 

*****Salade Romaine is a salad made of Romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, parmesan cheese, and a delicious olive garden dressing.

 

******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.

 

*******Vol-au-Vent de Volaille à la Royale is a dish of sliced chicken with mushroom and quenelles cooked in a cream sauce served in a puff pastry casing. The Savoy’s kitchens were famous for their deliciously light and tasty vol-au-vent selections, with 1920s menus often containing a selection of four to six varieties as plats du jour.

 

********The term “cutting a rug” emerged in the 1920s from American culture and became common parlance on both sides of the Atlantic by the 1930s. It came about because of African American couples doing the Lindy Hop (also known as the Jitterbug). This was vigorous, highly athletic dancing that when done continuously in one area made the carpet appear as though it was “cut” or “gashed”. Selwyn using this language would have been at the front of the latest fashion for exciting youthful language from America.

 

*********Clendon is the family seat of the Duke and Duchess of Walmsford in Buckinghamshire.

 

**********A Bolter is old British slang for a woman who ended her marriage by running away with another man.

 

***********The Henley Royal regatta is a leisurely “river carnival” on the Thames. It was at heart a rowing race, first staged in 1839 for amateur oarsmen, but soon became another fixture on the London social calendar. Boating clubs competed, and were not exclusively British, and the event was well known for its American element. Evenings were capped by boat parties and punts, the air filled with military brass bands and illuminated by Chinese lanterns. Dress codes were very strict: men in collars, ties and jackets (garishly bright ties and socks were de rigueur in the 1920s) and crisp summer frocks, matching hats and parasols for the ladies.

 

************Cowes Week is one of the longest-running regular regattas in the world, and a fixture of the London Season. With forty daily sailing races, up to one thousand boats, and eight thousand competitors ranging from Olympic and world-class professionals to weekend sailors, it is the largest sailing regatta of its kind in the world. Having started in 1826, the event is held in August each year on the Solent (the area of water between southern England and the Isle of Wight made tricky by strong double tides). It is focussed on the small town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

 

This splendid array of cheeses on the table would doubtless be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate each cheese and biscuit on this silver tray, you would still come away hungry. This is because they, like everything in this scene, are in reality 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau:

 

The silver tray of biscuits 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. The cheeses and the vol-au-vents come from Beautifully handmade Miniatures in Kettering, as do the two slightly scalloped white gilt plates and the wonderful golden yellow roses in the vase on the table. The cutlery I acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The silver champagne cooler on the table is made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The bottle of champagne itself is hand made from glass and is an artisan miniature made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The bottle is De Rochegré champagne, identified by the careful attention paid to recreating the label in 1:12 scale. The two glasses of sparkling champagne are made of real glass and were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The two red velvet upholstered high back chairs I have had since I was six years old. They were a birthday present given to me by my grandparents.

 

The painting in the background in its gilded frame is a 1:12 artisan piece made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States.

 

The red wallpaper is beautiful artisan paper given to me by a friend, who has encouraged me to use a selection of papers she has given me throughout the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

Terriers are always great party animals... this one tried to wolf the roast last time I saw her!

On the diningtable, "Celosia"

 

Canon 70D with EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

 

FalconEyes SKK-2150D flash set

Jinbei Diffusion jumbo umbrella and Falcon Eyes Diffusion umbrella.

 

IMG_5397ddp

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.

Thank you for Explore : )

 

...how often do we say " you & me " instead of " me & you "...."you" standing here not only for our loved ones but also for people other than "us"....

...how often do we show understanding for other people's problems instead of judging...

...how often are we compassionate towards other people's missfortunes...

...how often do we look inside ourselves and take care of our own imperfections, before pointing the finger to the ones of others...

...how often do we simply stay q u i e t just to l i s t e n....

 

...too much talking is a defense mechanism against taking responsibility for who we really are, accepting ourselves despite and with our imperfections and being brave enough to actually grow by taking action.

Food tables.

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.

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

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.

 

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.

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.

 

More of the "mischievous mice", from the children's story, helping themselves to the feast at Chatsworth.

 

Another shot in the comment below.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

KAZZA - MéditerranéenCollection - DiningTable - (HW) exclusive SL

- copy/mod - table animation - set land impact 28li - tysm♥

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/KAZZA/102/186/22

#secondlifedecor #secondlife #happyweekendsl #slmetaverso