From Chez Moi Brunswick

"Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment." ~ Jean de la Bruyere

  

In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, an even bigger quake has also hit Chile. It was even stronger (at 8.8 magnitude) than that of the Haiti tremor and was reported to have actually shifted the Earth's axis. And yet one wonders why the news on Chile has been sporadic and shortlived. We may not fully realize the extent of devastation this quake has wrought but it is a fact that many were affected. And many need help. Aftershocks are still felt even at this time.

 

Donations from various sources to Chile has not been forthcoming, if not slow. If you are moved to help a brother in need, please remember Chile in your prayers. Maybe even forego a cup of espresso or latte and share with those who need it more. The cost of a cup may just be a blessing for someone in Chile today.

 

If you would like more information on Chile's tragedy, you can contact: ldeep dreamsI beg your solidarity to Chile ¡¡¡¡ here on flickr

 

Photos of Chile can be found here

 

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I've had so many generous people give me old film cameras, I haven't had the chance to try them all. By chance I pulled this one off the shelf and loaded a roll of film into it and man do I love this little thing. Old Miranda camera (1959), a company that went out of business long ago but the cameras they put out were ahead of their time.

 

Miranda S | Soligor 35mm f2.8 | Ultrafine bulk loaded

 

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

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews. We have travelled east across London, through Bloomsbury, past the Smithfield Meat Markets, beyond the Petticoat Lane Markets* frequented by Lettice’s maid, Edith, through the East End boroughs of Bethnal Green and Bow, to the 1880s housing development of Upton Park. It is here that Frank’s closest and only surviving relation lives: his elderly Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish. Edith and Frank have just become officially engaged after Frank proposed to Edith in the middle of a photography studio in Clapham Junction on Wednesday, a carefully planned ruse with his friend who works at the studio, where Frank presented Edith with a dainty silver ring her bought from a jewellers in Lavender Hill** Edith wasted no time telling her parents, Ada and George, that day, but the pair of them decided to tell Mrs. McTavish together on their Sunday off.

 

Getting out at Upton Park railway station, the pair exit the polychromatic red and brown brick Victorian railway station with its ornate finials and elegant quoining walking out into the bright summer sunshine. The glare of natural light after being in the London underground blinds them momentarily. Before them the busy high street shopping precinct of Green Street stretches in either direction to their left and right, the noisy thoroughfare chocked with a mixture of chugging motor cars, lorries and the occasional double decker electrical tram. Even horse drawn carts with placid plodding old work horses unperturbed by the belching of their mechanical usurpers join the melee of trundling traffic going in either direction. People bustle past them on the footpath, going about their Sunday business cheerily, many off to the nearby Queens Road Market.

 

“Come on.” Frank says comfortingly as he sees his fiancée’s nervous face, grasping Edith’s hand. “Cross with me and you’ll be safe.”

 

Taking his proffered hand gratefully, Edith takes a deep breath as the pair cross the busy thoroughfare of Green Street, weaving their way through the traffic. Reaching the other side safely, the pair head west a short distance before turning down the elm tree lined Kings Road, which is flanked to either side with identical polychromatic cream and red brick two storey Victorian terraces with grey or painted stone dressings. As Edith looks at their façades over the top of their low brick fences, familiar to her now, each one with a small bay with two windows downstairs and two upstairs, a recessed porch and front door with a window above that, she remembers how the first time she walked down Kings Road with Frank beneath the shade of the elm trees, she noticed the slight flutter of several sets of lace curtains in the downstairs and imagined the owners eyeing her with suspicion. Now she has been down Kings Road so many times with Frank and been introduced to so many of them, she knows the names of some of the suburban housewives peering out from the comfort of their front rooms.

 

“Hullo Mrs. McClintock!” Edith says brightly, waving to a woman standing at her window in a floral sprigged patterned dress who waves back cheerfully in recognition of Edith.

 

“Remember how nervous you were the first time we came to see Gran?” Franks asks Edith, putting his arm comfortingly around her and drawing her to him.

 

“How could I ever forget that?” Edith replies with a chuckle that is a mixture of both relief and nervousness as she remembers. “I was sure that Upton Park was going to be full of grand houses, and your Gran was going to be some grand Victorian lady, like old Mrs. Hounslow, my parents’ landlady, all dressed in black with lace trimmings.

 

“That makes me laugh.” Frank guffaws. “Gran was quite chuffed about being presumed to be a high-and-mighty matron!”

 

Edith sighs and allows herself to fall into Frank’s protective embrace and press against his side as they walk. The familiar scent of him: a mixture of soap and the grocery shop, is comforting and familiar to her now.

 

“I told you that you had nothing to worry about, and that Gran was as nervous as you. Not that she’d ever tell me.”

 

“And you were right, Frank.” Edith sighs. “Thank goodness!”

 

They stop in front of a terrace behind a low brick wall just the same as all the others, its front door painted black and a small patch of lawn, devoid of any other vegetation filling the space between the street and the house.

 

“Come on then, Edith.” Frank says with a winning smile. “Let’s go tell Gran our good news.”

 

After walking through the unlocked main door and walking down the black and white lino lined hallway of the terrace, the couple let themselves into Mrs. McTavish’s ground floor flat and walk into her kitchen, a cosy room dominated by a big black range and featuring a dresser that is stuffed with all manner of mismatched decorative china and a panoply of cooking items, just like Edith’s mother’s Welsh dresser in Harlesden. The walls are covered with cream coloured wallpaper featuring dainty floral sprigs. Several framed embroideries hang around the room and a cuckoo clock ticks contentedly to the left of the range. A rug covers the flagstone floor before the hearth. A round table covered in a pretty lace tablecloth has several mismatched chairs and stools drawn up to it. On the table itself stands a healthy looking aspidistra which obviously benefits from the sun as it filters through the lace curtains at the large kitchen window. Just like her mother’s table when guests come to call, a selection of decorative blue and white crockery has been set out, ready for use. A shop bought Dundee Cake***, still with its ornamental Scottish tartan ribbon wrapped around it, sits on a plate. A sewing work table with a sagging floral bag for storage beneath it stands open, its compartments filled with needles, thread, wool, buttons and everything a sewer and knitter needs. And there, in her usual place in her very old and worn brown leather wingback chair sits Frank’s Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish.

 

“Och my bairns!” Mrs. McTavish enthuses in delight when she receives the exciting news from the happy pair, her voice thick with her Scottish brogue. “Och! I’m so happy for you!”

 

Sitting in her old, worn leather wingback chair with the tartan rug draped over the back, the old Scottish woman with her wrinkled face, reaches out and grasps Edith’s hands as the younger woman crouches down before Mrs. McTavish. Edith can see her eyes, buried amid a myriad of wrinkles sparkling with tears of joy.

 

Edith squeezes Mrs. McTavish’s thin and gnarled fingers tightly. “I knew you’d be happy for us, Mrs. McTavish.” She says with a beaming smile.

 

“Och! How could I not be?” the old woman chortles back. “I’m getting my greatest wish.” She looks across to her grandson as he fiddles with her white china kettle, placing it next to the hob on her old black coal consuming range, and smiles lovingly. “My Francis is getting wed, at last! And not before time, I might add, Edith dearie!” She glances back at Edith and says in a staged whisper quite loud enough for Frank to hear, “I’ve been telling Francis for months to propose to you!”

 

“Oh Gran!” Frank gasps with embarrassment as he turns from the range to face his grandmother. “How many times must I ask you to call me Frank. I’m Frank now, not Francis!”

 

“Och! What onsense!” the old Scottish woman says sharply, leaning forward in her seat and slapping her grandson’s forearm lightly. “You’ll always be Francis to me, my little bairn! It was the name your mither**** and faither***** gave you when you were baptised, so Francis you’ll be.”

 

Frank rolls his eyes at Edith, who tries to stifle her girlish giggle as she does. “Francis is a girl’s name, not a boy’s one.”

 

“Nonsense bairn!” Mrs. McTavish says again. “Must I keep reminding you about Francis Drake the great Elizabethan explorer? Hhmm? He was no lady!”

 

“And must I keep reminding you, Gran, that we don’t live in Elizabethan times.” Frank retorts with a shake of his head.

 

“That’s enough cheek from you, my bairn!” Mrs. McTavish replies with another gentle slap. “This is your Gran you’re talking to.”

 

“Yes Francis.” Edith says with a cheeky smile. “Be polite and respect your elders.”

 

“You keep out of this, my girl!” Frank laughs, wagging a finger at his fiancée, looking lovingly at her.

 

“Och! Ignore him, the silly bairn! You’re a good girl, Edith dearie.” Mrs. McTavish says happily. “You’ll be such a good influence on him.”

 

“I’d like to think that we are both a good influence on one another, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith replies. “Frank and I believe in an equal partnership. Don’t we Frank?”

 

“We do, Edith.” he answers simply.

 

“Just so, dearie.” Mrs. McTavish agrees. “So it was with my husband and I, and Francis’ parents too.”

 

“So, you’ve been telling Frank to propose to me for a while have you?” Edith asks, standing up from before the old woman, picking up a bright brass tea canister and a teaspoon from the small pedestal table drawn up to Mrs. McTavish’s chair and handing them to Frank.

 

“Aye, that I have dearie.” the old Scotswoman replies. “But he just kept fobbing me off, telling me some nonsense that it just wasn’t quite the right time.”

 

“He said the same thing to me a number of times, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith laughs. “We had the most beastly argument about it the day we went up the Elephant****** to do some window shopping.”

 

“And I was right.” Frank replies with a tone of justification in his voice. “It wasn’t the right time then, as it happens.” He opens the canister and spoons in fresh tealeaves into the china pot.

 

“Remember to add an extra scoop for the pot, bairn*******.” Mrs. McTavish reminds her grandson.

 

“How many times have I made tea for us in my life, Gran?” Frank laughs lightly. “If I don’t know that by now, after all these years and the many pots I’ve brewed, then I never will.”

 

“Just making sure, bairn.” Mrs. McTavish nestles back into the padded back of her chair. Then she thinks for a moment, her eyes flicking as she sits forward again. “And don’t stir that pot with…”

 

“I know, Gran, with the handle*****.” Frank replies. “It’s bad luck.”

 

“Aye! That it is, bairn.” The old woman turns to Edith. “Once the tea is made, you must stir it with the bowl of the spoon, Edith dearie, and not the handle, or it will be nothing but strive for you when you get wed!” She nods emphatically with a stern mouth that has retracted to nothing but a think line across her old, weatherworn face.

 

“I’d already partially paid of your silver ring, Edith and had it engraved that afternoon we spent up the Elephant.” Frank goes on, picking up the conversation about the timing of his proposal to Edith. “I wanted to give it to you when I proposed, so it really wasn’t the right time to do it. I just wanted everything to be perfect for you.”

 

“I know that now, Frank.” Edith assures him. “And it was perfect. It was perfectly wonderful, and it is a day I shall always remember for the rest of my life!” She sighs happily.

 

“I should hope you would, Edith.” Frank answers with a good natured chuckle as he returns the canister to his grandmother’s table. “After all, it isn’t every day that you get a photographic portrait sitting and a proposal all in the one day!”

 

“I’ll say Frank.” Edith looks down fondly upon her new silver ring, gleaming on her ring finger.

 

Edith has decided not to tell Lettice of her engagement, only announcing it once she and Frank have set a date for the wedding, a decision her mother, Ada, is very much in agreement with, worrying that the engagement may make Lettice see Edith as a liability rather than the valued maid-of-all-work that she currently is. To stop the ring from getting damaged by the hard work she does, during the week Edith has taken up wearing it on a small chain around her neck, but every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday she has off, Edith slips it back onto her ring finger proudly once she is out of sight of Cavendish Mews.

 

“I’m still sorry that it is only silver, dear Edith.” Frank goes on as he fills the teapot with boiling water from Mrs. McTavish’s gleaming copper kettle.

 

“I keep telling you, Francis,” she emphasises Frank’s real name as she speaks, indicating that this the point she is about to make, she does not want to again. “That a silver ring is good enough for me. In fact, it’s more than enough. I wasn’t expecting an engagement ring at all.”

 

“Well,” Frank blushes. “All the same, you shall have a gold wedding ring. Edith can wear Mum’s wedding ring, can’t she Gran?” He turns and looks hopefully at his grandmother as she sits in her chair. “You still have it, don’t you?”

 

“Och!” the old woman scoffs dismissively. “Well of course I do, bairn!” She hooks her thin, wrinkled fingers into the lace collar of the white blouse and fishes out a small golden chain about her neck, upon which hang two golden rings. “Your mither’s and your faither’s.” She smiles. “Better than lying and going to waste in the ground, bairn. Edith can wear your mither’s, whilst you can wear your faither’s, and that way they remain the pair that they are.”

 

“Oh Mrs. McTavish!” Edith gasps. “I couldn’t…”

 

However, the old woman holds up a hand, stopping Edith from speaking any more.

 

“Help me will you, Edith dearie.” She indicates with gesticulations that she cannot unfasten the clasp of the chain by herself with her old hands. “And Francis.” She holds out a pretty knitted tea cosy that was sitting on the arm of her chair to her grandson. “Cosy!”

 

“Thanks Gran!” Frank says gratefully, slipping it over the teapot.

 

Obediently, Edith walks up to Mrs. McTavish, and with the dexterity of her nimble fingers, unfastens the clasp of the chain. The old Scottish woman holds up her right hand to catch the two rings in her palm as Edith carefully lowers the chain.

 

“Good girl.” Mrs. McTavish says with a sigh, looking at the two golden rings which gleam warmly in the light filtering through the kitchen window.

 

“Mrs. McTavish…” Edith begins again, only to be silenced by the old woman’s raised palm again.

 

“Mum and Dad would want us to have them and use them, Edith.” Frank assures her, as he swirls the cosy covered teapot in his hands before filling the dainty blue and white floral cup next to his grandmother with brackish red tea. “They’ll be looking down from above on our wedding day and smiling.”

 

“I don’t know, Frank.” Edith answers in a doubtful voice.

 

“You know, when Francis’ parents were taken by the Spanish Influenza,” Mrs. McTavish begins, looking earnestly at Edith. “I was broken hearted. Aye, I was.”

 

“Oh I can only imagine, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

“Eileen was my only daughter, and she and Bernard were a fine couple.” The old woman’s eyes mist up a little as she continues, glistening with unshed tears that threaten to spill from her lids. “They would want these rings to have a continued life, and I’m sure they couldn’t have wished for a happier one than that of their Francis and his new wife.” She reaches out her left hand and squeezes Edith’s clasped hands. “It’s just a natural progression of their rings’ lives. So, no arguing, Edith dearie.” Blinking back her tears she smiles, albeit a little morosely. “Alright?”

 

“Alright Mrs. McTavish.” Edith acquiesces quietly.

 

“Och!” the Scottish woman scoffs again. “We’re going to have to do something about that too!”

 

“About what, Mrs. McTavish?” Edith asks.

 

“Yes Gran, about what?” Frank echoes as he takes the top over to the round dining table and fills his and Edith’s cups with tea.

 

“All this Mrs. McTavish business!” she replies, shaking her hands in front of her as if shooing away her name. “Mrs. McTavish this. Mrs. McTavish that. You can’t very well go on calling me Mrs. McTavish, Edith dearie, now you’re marrying my Francis.”

 

“That’s a good point, Gran.” Frank opines. “I hadn’t really considered that.”

 

“Well, luckily,” the old woman says sagely. “I did!”

 

“You’ll be a part of the Leadbetter family, Edith.” Frank says. “It’s true, you can’t go on calling Gran, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

“Well, I’ve been calling you Mrs. McTavish… err… Mrs. McTavish,” Edith replies apologetically. “Because that that was what Frank and I decided upon on that first day I met you.”

 

“We did and all!” Frank laughs. “In the hallway, just out there, before we came in.”

 

“I can’t call you Nyree, even though it’s such a lovely name, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith says. “It wouldn’t be right. You’re more senior than I am. It isn’t respectable.”

 

“Och what rubbish!” Mrs. McTavish replies, swatting the air at Edith’s remark. “Of course you can. And no-one has called me Nyree for a long time. Not really since my husband died in 1912, so it would be quite nice to be called that again.”

 

“No,” Edith insists. “It wouldn’t be right.”

 

The trio fall into silence for a few moments whilst they contemplate the question at hand. Only the quiet ticking of the cuckoo clock hanging on the wall by the range and the crackle of the range itself breaking the quiet as it settles thickly about them.

 

“Why not Gran, then, Edith?” Frank finally says, breaking the silence. “Like I do. What do you think, Gran?”

 

“Aye!” Mrs. McTavish agrees with a smile broadening on her face. “That’s a grand idea, Francis. You’re more than just a pretty face, my sweet bairn.”

 

“Thank you Gran.” he says with pride, for once not minding her calling him by his real name.

 

“Do you think you could call me, Gran, Edith dearie?” Mrs. McTavish asks Edith.

 

“Well,” Edith contemplates the suggestion. “I’ll have to get used to it, and I might not always do it to start off with.” She sighs. “Habits can be hard. However, I’d love to… Gran.”

 

A cosy kitchen this may be, but it is not quite what it seems, for it is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Dominating the room is the large kitchen range which is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water). The fringing hanging from the mantle is actually a beautiful scalloped ribbon that was given to me one Christmas time by a very close friend of mine.

 

Mrs. McTavish’s intentionally worn leather wingback chair and the sewing table are both 1:12 artisan miniatures. The inside of the sewing table is particularly well made and detailed with a removable tray made up of multiple compartments. Beneath it, the floral fabric lines the underside and opens up into a central bag. Both pieces come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. The sewing items which sit on its top also came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop and various online specialists on E-Bay. The tartan rug draped over the back of the chair I have had since I was about six. It came with a blanket rocker miniature I was given for my sixth birthday.

 

The sewing basket that you can see on the floor next to the pedestal table I bought from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house furnishings. It is an artisan miniature and contains pieces of embroidery and embroidery threads.

 

On the small pedestal table next to Mrs. McTavish’s chair comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop, as does the bright tea caddy, the blue and white china teacup and saucer and the spoon rest on its top. The spoon comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

On the wall just behind Mrs. McTavish’s chair hangs a hand painted cuckoo clock. It has been made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

The tea cosy on the arm of Mrs. McTavish’s chair, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot on the side of the range, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in the United Kingdom, as does the copper kettle on the hob.

 

The coal scuttle, containing real coal is a beautiful example of canal barge ware from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Narrow boat painting, or canal art is a traditional British folk art. This highly decorative folk art once adorned the working narrow boats of the inland waterways of Britain. Canal ware, barge ware, or gift ware, are used to describe decorated trinkets, and household items, rather than the decorated narrow boats.

 

In the background you can see Mrs. McTavish’s dark wood dresser cluttered with decorative china. I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

 

The rug on the floor comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

Bagan - Myanmar

 

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Basically, the substantial gather amount is achievable with pure passion n love heart in photography and not necessary be filty rich nor famous to help me accomplish raising my long yearning photography career, a sucking heavy expense that been schedules down my photography making journey had inevitably, some circumstances had badly fall short behind racing with time and inability to fulfill as quickly in near future consolidating good fund .

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Last but not least, a photography journey of life time for a trip to explore South Island of New Zealand and Africa.

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Great Ocean Drive- the 12 Apostle's

 

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There is water in our river, now. The same time fishes and fisher men!

This is a view of the kitchen at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, a Sikh house of worship, in Delhi, India.

Run entirely by volunteers, as an act of astounding generosity and charity, this Gurdwara serves free meals to anyone who wants them, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The kitchen, or "langar", here feeds between 30,000 to 40,000 people daily and over 100,000 people during religious holidays.

 

true Love, Joy and Generosity of Spirit ~ this is how she looked at me! and at everyOne

 

my mom, the most wholly beautiful human being being i've ever known

 

she was my closest friend throughout this lifetime and i was her's.

 

 

frances ruth cox wimberly ehrman

 

2/22/22 ~ 7/5/13 in hawai'i, 7/6/13 everywhere else on the earth

 

 

with our lululight ~ shine on my Love

 

 

 

≈ ♡ ≈

 

 

 

posting this now even though there is so much more to say of her.. through pictures and words ... yet am mute ..

crushed with sorrow.. though also in acceptance .. for the shattering, wounding events that transpired for us in

these days since the morning of my (our) birthday.

 

(what transpired is explained a bit first in comments here ... then here

though you would have to click on "see more comments" a few times with those posts)

 

 

am here because i need to say thank You dear hearttribe for keeping us in your hearts with Lovelight *

 

 

 

 

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. Proverbs 11

 

All my photos are copyrighted. Please do not use them for any purpose, including on blogs, without my express permission.

Day 266. The morning after the night before. After an overnight stop in London a quick dash across town to catch the train home. They seem to be constantly changing the sculpture on this spot. The current one is by Damien Hirst.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-33440475

Paul generously tackled the task of editing photos, so I thought I'd share the fruits of his labor too! Here's an upload for anyone interested who might've missed Paul's original post (same picture). I'd also like to take a moment to thank Paul and Max! Paul was a real trooper in heading this collaborative. I was initially quite hesitant to commit (as I don't usually build Sci-fi), but Paul convinced me it'd be fun and boy was he right! Watching this SHIP evolve was truly a fantastic experience. And I have both Max and Paul to thank for being patient with me. Building the middle section and attempting to mesh their two styles, while maintaining my own, was a fun challenge! They were good sports, putting up with my bazillions of questions, confusions, and sending me helpful sketches/pictures!

 

As was stated in our initial posts, you can plan on seeing this at BW 2014 if we don't get too ambitious about swooshing it. We considered throwing it off a roof, sky diving with it (yeah, that wasn't realistically gonna' happen), and we actually had a video planned too, but this chap somehow entered our minds and extracted our idea!! As the saying goes, great minds think alike. Good show Jacob, you beat us to it!

 

Thanks for stopping by and Soli Deo Gloria!

 

[EDIT]: SWOOSH!!!

View On Black

 

pour Fredaniane, and his "mood" ... :-))

 

explored! Oct 29, 2008 #32 :-D

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 and his wife, Arabella. Lettice has been summoned to her old family home after an abrupt morning telephone call from her father, following the publication of an article in the publication, Country Life* featuring her interior designs for friends Margot and Dickie Channon’s Cornwall Regency country house ‘Chi an Treth’.

 

As Lettice elegantly alighted from the London train at Glynes village railway station, there on the platform amid the dissipating steam of the departing train and the smattering of visitors or return travellers to the village, stood Harris, the Chetwynd’s family chauffer. Dressed in his smart grey uniform, he took Lettice’s portmanteau, hastily packed in London by Edith her maid, and umbrella and walked out through the station’s small waiting room and booking office, leading Lettice to where the Chetwynd’s 1912 Daimler awaited her on the village’s main thoroughfare. As they drove through the centre of the village, Harris told Lettice through the glass partition from the front seat, that her article in Country Life* had caused quite a sensation below stairs. Quietly, Lettice smiled proudly to herself as she settled back more comfortably into the car’s maroon upholstery. Lettice is undeniably her father’s favourite child, but she 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. She only hopes as she nears her family home, that Lady Sadie, who does not particularly approve of her venture into interior design, will be proud of her achievement this time.

 

As the Daimler purrs up the gravel driveway and stops out the front of Glynes, Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler, steps through the front door followed by Marsen, the liveried first footman. Marsden silently opens the door of the Daimler for Lettice and helps her step out before fetching her luggage.

 

“Welcome home, My Lady,” Bramley greets her with an open smile. “What a pleasure it is to see you looking so well.”

 

“Thank you Bramley,” she replies with a satisfied smile as she looks up at the classical columned portico of her beloved childhood home basking in the spring sunshine. “It’s always good to be home.”

 

“How was the train journey from London, My Lady?” Bramley asks Lettice as he falls in step a few paces behind her.

 

“Oh, quite pleasant, thank you Bramley. I have my novel to while away the time.”

 

“We were all pleased and proud to see your name in print in Her Ladyship’s copy of Country Life.”

 

“Oh, thank you, Bramley. That’s very kind of you to say. I take it that is why I have been summoned here today.”

 

The butler clears his throat a little awkwardly and looks seriously at Lettice. “I couldn’t say, My Lady, however they are expecting you, in the drawing room.” The statement is said with the gravitas that befits one of the country house’s finest rooms.

 

Lettice’s face falls. “Do I have time to refresh myself.” She peels off her gloves as she walks through the marble floored vestibule and into the lofty Adam style hall of Glynes. The familiar scent of old wood, tapestries and carpets welcomes her home.

 

“I was asked to show you into the drawing room immediately upon your arrival, My Lady,” Bramley says as Marsden closes the front doors and then the vestibule doors behind them. “Her Ladyship insisted, and His Lordship didn’t contradict her.”

 

“Oh. Do I sense an air of disquiet, Bramley?” Lettice asks, handing the butler her red fox collar and then shrugging off her russet three quarter length coat into his waiting white glove clad hands.

 

“Well My Lady, may I just say that your article caused somewhat of a stir both above and below stairs.” He accepts Lettice’s elegant picture hat of russet felt ornamented with pheasant feathers.

 

“Yes, so Harris told me. Good or bad above stairs, Bramley?”

 

“I think,” the older manservant contemplates. “Mixed, might be the best answer to that, My Lady.”

 

“Meaning?”

 

“Well, His Lordship, and Master Leslie were thrilled, as was the young Mrs. Chetwynd. However, as you know, My Lady, Her Ladyship has particular ideas as to your future.” He cocks an eyebrow and gives her a knowing look. “She’s had them planned since the day you were born, and you know she dislikes it when her plans go awry.”

 

“Oh.” Lettice says with a disappointed lilt in her answer. “Well, thank you Bramley,” she gives him a sad, yet grateful smile. “You are a brick for warning me.” She brushes down the front of her flounced floral sprigged spring frock, sighs and says with a sigh, “Then I best get this over with, hadn’t I?”

 

“I don’t see an alternative, My Lady.”

 

“Then don’t worry, I’ll show myself into the drawing room. I should imagine this will only be an overnight stay.”

 

Without waiting for a reply, Lettice turns on her heel and walks down the corridor, her louis heels clicking along the parquetry flooring, echoing off the walls decorated with gilt framed portraits of the Chetwynd ancestors, their dogs, horses and paintings of views of the estate. She stops before the pair of beautiful walnut double doors that open onto the drawing room, grasps one of the gilded foliate handles, turns it and steps in.

 

The very grand and elegant drawing room of Glynes with its grand dimensions, high ceiling and gilt Louis and Palladian style furnishings has always been one of Lettice’s favourite rooms in the house. It is from here that she developed her love for collecting fine Limoges porcelain to emulate the collection amassed by her great, great paternal grandmother Lady Georgiana Chetwynd. No matter what time of day, the room is always light and airy thanks to its large full-length windows and beautiful golden yellow Georgian wallpaper decorated in a pattern of delicate blossoms and paper lanterns which seems almost to exude warmth and golden illumination. Whilst decorated with many generations of conspicuous consumption, it is not overly cluttered and it does not have the suffocating feel of Lady Sadie’s morning room, which she loathes, and it smells familiarly of a mixture of fresh air, bees wax polish and just a waft of roses. Glancing around, Lettice can see the latter comes from two vases of roses – one white bunch and one golden yellow cluster – both in elegant porcelain vases. The room is silent, save for the quiet ticking of several clocks set about polished surfaces, the hiss of dusty wood as it burns and the muffled twitter of birds in the bushes outside the drawing room windows. And there, by the grand crackling fire, her parents sit in what she hopes to be companionable silence.

 

Lady Sadie sits in her usual armchair next to the fire, dressed in a grey woollen skirt, a burnt orange silk blouse and a matching cardigan with her everyday double strand pearls about her neck. With her wavy white hair framing her face in an old fashioned style she looks not unlike Queen Mary, as she sips tea from one of the floral tea cups from her favourite Royal Doulton set, lost in her own thoughts as she stares out through the satin brocade curtain framed windows. The Viscount on the other hand is sitting opposite his wife in the high backed gilded salon chair embroidered in petit point tapestry by his mother. Dressed in his usual country tweeds worn when going about the estate, Lettice notices that he is immersed in the very copy of Country Life that her interiors feature. Between them, tea and coffee in silver pots stand on a small black japanned chinoiserie occasional table along with the round silver biscuit sachet that has once been Lady Sadie’s mother’s.

 

“Well, here I am.” Lettice announces with false joviality, alerting both her parents to her presence as she closes the door behind her.

 

“Lettice!” the Viscount exclaims, jumping up from his seat, slightly crumpling the pages of the Country Life between his right fingers as he lets his hands fall to his side. “My dear girl!” He beams at her proudly. Thrusting out the magazine in front of him as if trying to prove a point, he continues. “What a surprise, eh?” He indicates to the article about ‘Chai an Treth’, which he was reading, as Lettice suspected.

 

“Pappa!”

 

Lettice hurries into the room, steps between the gilt upholstered chairs that are part of the Louis Quartzose salon suite that had been included in her mother’s dowery when she married her father and falls happily into the loving arms of the Viscount who smells comfortingly of fresh air and grass as he envelopes her.

 

“Don’t gush, Cosmo!” Lady Sadie chides, giving her husband a withering look of distain as she sips her tea with a crispness, passing judgement like usual over her husband and youngest daughter’s emotional relationship, which she unable to fathom.

 

“Hullo Mamma.” Lettice reluctantly removes herself from her father’s welcoming embrace and walks over to her mother, who places her teacup aside and tilts her head so that Lettice can give her an air kiss on both cheeks, their skin barely touching in the transaction.

 

“Help yourself to tea and biscuits.” Lady Sadie pronounces, indicating with a sharp nod to the low tea table upon which sits a third, unused, teacup and saucer nestled amongst the other tea things. “Mrs. Casterton has made her custard creams this week.”

 

“Thank you, Mamma.” Lettice sees a selection of vanilla and chocolate cream biscuits on a plate already as she helps herself to tea from the small round sterling silver pot, polished to a gleaming sheen by Bramley or the head parlour maid. She takes up one each of the two varieties of custard creams, ignoring the look of criticism from her mother by doing so, depositing them onto her saucer. She then settles down on the settee, closest to her father and puts her cup on the table next to her.

 

“My dear girl! My dear girl!” the Viscount repeats in a delighted voice as he tosses the copy of Country Life with the crumpling sound of paper onto the top of a pile of newspapers and periodicals atop a petite point footstool. “Exemplifying a comfortable mixture of old and new to create a welcoming and contemporary room, sympathetic to the original features.” he paraphrases one of Lettice’s favourite lines in Henry Tipping’s** article, giving away that this was hardly the first time he has read the article since the magazine arrived at Glynes. “What wonderful praise from Mr. Tipping.”

 

“Oh, do stop, Cosmo!” pleads Lady Sadie from her seat on the other side of the fireplace, toying with the pearls at her throat. “Gushing is so unbecoming,” She glares critically at her husband. “Especially from a man of your age. It’s emasculating.”

 

Lettice gives her mother a wounded glance before quickly looking at her father, however he bares a steeliness in his jaw.

 

“Why shouldn’t I gush, Sadie?” he replies in defence of himself and his daughter, looking over his shoulder at Lady Sadie, determination giving his voice strength. “This is our child we are talking about,” He turns back and smiles with unbridled delight at Lettice, his eyes glittering with pride. “And I’m damn proud that Lettice has her name in print in a periodical such as Country Life, even if you are less so.”

 

“I don’t know whether I am pleased at all, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie eyes her daughter. “I’d rather see your name printed in the society pages next to a certain eligible duke’s son’s name, Lettice.” she adds dryly as she picks up a custard cream and gingerly nibbles at it as though it might contain rat bait. “Then, I’d gush.”

 

“Mamma!” Lettice manages to utter in a strangulated fashion as disappointment at her mother’s reaction to the article grips her like a cold pair of hands around her throat.

 

“It’s your duty to marry, Lettice, and marry well. You know this.” Lady Sadie lectures in reply haughtily. “We’ve had this conversation time and time again. You don’t want to be a burden on poor Leslie when your father dies, do you?” She nibbles some more at the biscuit clutched between her fingers.

 

“Oh Sadie!” the Viscount gasps. “Don’t be crabby. You must concede that you are proud that one of the leading authorities on architecture and interior design in Britain has spoken so highly of our daughter’s work.”

 

The older woman pulls a face, cleaning mushy biscuit remains from her gums, but doesn’t dignify the statement with an answer.

 

“Can’t you be just a little happy for me, Mamma?” Lettice pleads as she reaches out and grasps her father’s bigger hand for comfort and support. “Just this once?”

 

“I’ll be happy when I see you married off.” She picks up her cup and saucer and takes a sip of tea. “Is it not bad enough that I have one wayward child? Perhaps I had better pack you off to British East Africa too.”

 

“Tipping said Lettice is a very capable interior designer.” the Viscount defends his favourite child. “And the photos prove that.”

 

“Capable!” Lady Sadie scoffs with a nod of disgusted acknowledgement of the magazine lying beyond the tea table. “The room looks barren – positively starved of furnishings and character. How can that be capable interior design? There is practically nothing in it, to design!”

 

“But paired back is the new style now, Mamma. People don’t want…”

 

“What?” Lady Sadie snaps, the fine bone china cup clattering in its saucer.

 

“Well they don’t necessarily want all this.” Lettice gesticulates around her, almost apologetically, to the furnishings around them. “People want cleaner lines these days, to better reflect their more modern lives.”

 

“So your father and I are old hat?” Lady Sadie quips. “Is that what you’re saying, Lettice?”

 

“No, of course not Mamma. I love you and Pappa, and Glynes is classically beautiful. You do a wonderful job at maintaining the elegance of the house. I did retain some of the original décor of Margot and Dickie’s house as part of my refurbishment, even though Margot told me to fling it all out. Mr. Tipping calls it ‘Modern Classical Revival Style’. You and Pappa taught me to always respect a house’s history, and that is what I did, whilst giving Margot the more modern look she wants.”

 

“Pshaw! That girl hasn’t an ounce of taste. Her family have always been new money.” remarks Lady Sadie dismissively. “You can always tell the difference between the old and the new. True breeding will always win out.”

 

“Margot is my friend Mamma! Please don’t say such hurtful things.”

 

“Well, whatever you may think of Lettice’s choice in friends, Sadie, you cannot deny the credit she has brought to the family name by being associated with the Marquis of Taunton.” retorts the Viscount.

 

“Only by association with this interior design folly nonsense of hers, Cosmo.” She flaps her bejewelled hand at her daughter, the lace trimmed handkerchief partially stuffed up the left sleeve of her knitted silk cardigan dancing about wildly with every movement. “At least you were good enough to have your name and business published in a respectable periodical, Lettice.” she concedes begrudgingly.

 

“Well, I’m proud of you, Lettice my girl, and there’s a fact.” He turns again and stares with a hard look at his wife before pronouncing, “And so too is your brother and Arabella, and the Tyrwhitts. Your mother is just bitter because she wasn’t the one who was able to announce the news to the whole village.”

 

“You had no right not to tell me about this article, Lettice!” Lady Sadie grumbles as she cradles her cup and saucer in her lap in a wounded fashion, whilst foisting angry and resentful looks at her daughter. “None at all! I hadn’t even had an opportunity to open the magazine and peruse it before I had the Miss Evanses up here, unannounced, crowing about your name in print in Country Life and how proud I must feel.”

 

Lettice cannot help but smile at the thought of her mother being assailed by the two twittering spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house in the village. The pair are known for their love of gossip, and even more for their voracity at spreading it, as they attempt to fill their lives which they obviously feel are lacking in drama and excitement. The chagrin Lady Sadie must have felt would have been palpable.

 

“Don’t you dare smile at my humiliation, you wicked girl! I had to pretend, Lettice! Pretend to those two awful old women, fawning and toadying the way they do, that I had read the article, and there it sat, unopened on my bonheur de jour***, completely untouched.”

 

“I only wanted it to be a surprise, Mamma.”

 

“Well, it certainly was that.” The woman’s eyes flame with anger. “I had feign that I was only being a tease when I showed such surprise to the Miss Evanses about your name in that article. Luckily the two were more interested in their own delight at their association to you than my genuine surprise that they believed me.” She turns her head away from her husband and daughter and adds uncharitably, “Stupid creatures.”

 

“Now don’t be bitter, Sadie.” the Viscount chides his wife. “Bitterness doesn’t become a lady of any age.”

 

“I’m not bitter!” spits Lady Sadie hotly with a harsh laugh of disbelief.

 

“Yes, you are.” her husband retorts with a gentle laugh of his own. “The more you defend yourself, the more evident it is, Sadie. You are just upset that the Miss Evanses had done a successful job of spreading the news through the village before you had the chance to do so yourself. They took the wind out of your sails. Lettice meant it to be a delightful surprise, and it was, my dear girl.”

 

“She didn’t consider the consequences.”

 

“The petty rivalry between her somewhat misguided mother, who should know better, and two old village crones, should hardly be a concern of one of London’s newest and brightest interior designers, Sadie.”

 

“Well, shouldn’t I have the opportunity to boast about my own daughter, Cosmo?”

 

“Aha! There!” the Viscount crows triumphantly. “So, you are proud of Lettice then.”

 

Lady Sadie thrusts her cup noisily onto the side table and stands up, brushing biscuit crumbs from her lap with angry sweeps onto the Chinese silk carpet at her feet. “You do talk a lot of nonsense, Cosmo.” She mutters brittlely. “I need to go and attend to something. So, if you will please excuse me.” She prepares to leave, but then adds as an afterthought, “But when I come back, I hope you two will have finished your character assassination of me.”

 

Lettice and her father watch Lady Sadie stalk towards the door with her nose in the air.

 

“I just hope that the Duchess doesn’t read that article, Lettice.” Lady Sadie says with a meanness in her angry voice. “I very much doubt she would like a daughter in trade. I hope you realise that this little stunt of yours could have ruined the best match you’ll ever get.”

 

The older woman opens the door and walks out into the corridor.

 

“Just ignore your mother.” the Viscount waves his hand before his wife as if erasing her presence as the door slams behind her, making both he and his youngest daughter wince. “She really is just jealous of those two silly old spinsters because they were gossiping about you in the village before she was able to do so.”

 

“I just wanted it to be a lovely surprise for you and her, Pappa.” Lettice pleads with wide and concerned eyes welling with tears.

 

“I know, my girl. I know.” He takes his handkerchief from his inside pocket and passes it to Lettice, who dabs at her eyes.

 

“I even organised with Mr. Tipping for Mamma to get her edition early,” Lettice sniffs. “But I suppose the mail delivery let me down.”

 

“Well,” her father shrugs. “Any general worth his wait in salt**** will tell you that the very best laid plans can go awry.” He smiles at her consolingly. “Your mother is contrary at the best of times. She’ll never admit that she is happy with any success that isn’t of her own making. Why on earth you seek her approval, I don’t know.” he adds in exasperation. “Do you deliberately wish to punish yourself, dear girl?”

 

Lettice sighs and sniffs. “I just hope that one day she will be proud of me. I feel like I’ve always disappointed her.”

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Twenty-three, Pappa.”

 

“Then you are old enough to know that no matter how hard you try, your mother will never admit to you that she is proud of you. If you do end up marring young Spencely, I doubt even then that she will willingly admit to being proud of you.”

 

“You’re right, Pappa. I should know better. You know that Lally told me the Christmas before last that Mamma lords the perfection of her married life over me, whilst lording the glamour of my life over her.”

 

“Quite so.” the Viscount admits. “I always told your mother that playing that game would do her no god in the end.” He laughs sadly. “But you know your mother. She won’t be told anything. I’m glad that your sister told you what’s what. Sadie hasn’t that power over you any more, now that you know the truth, Lettice.”

 

“But why does she do it?”

 

“Like I said, your mother is sadly misguided. Whether you believe me or not, it isn’t done out of spite.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“She does it to try and get you to both emulate the good things in the other. She wants Lally to be ambitious like you. The truth is I don’t think she ever really approved of the match between Lally and Lanchenbury.”

 

“But Lally and Charles are very happy together.”

 

“I know, Lettice. I know.” He pats her hands. “I think she considers him to be a little below the expectations she had for her eldest daughter, coming from a good and wealthy, but relatively socially insignificant family. That’s why she aspires for you through the marriage bed, dear girl.”

 

“But marriage isn’t all I aspire to, Pappa.”

 

“I know that too, and both your mother and I know how decimated the options are for young ladies in the wake of the war, your mother probably far better than I. But you must forgive us for wanting you to fill the role we expect you to fill, and for us hoping that it is a financial and socially ambitious match you make.” He sighs wearily. “Although with the way the world is changing, that seems to be becoming a less likely thing. I’m only grateful your brother made me modernise the estate. Goodness knows if we would have survived this post-war world of ours, and even now, I wonder whether we actually will.”

 

“Don’t say that Pappa.”

 

“Whatever happens, don’t let your mother upset you, and don’t let her spoil your triumph. I repeat, your brother, Arabella, the whole district is so proud of you, and I’m sure that all your friends, and young Spencely are equally proud to know you.”

 

“Alright Pappa,” Lettice sighs as her father places a consoling hand on her shoulder and rubs it lovingly. “I won’t.”

 

“That’s my girl. Now, I’m sure your mother has gone to arrange luncheon for Lady Edgar, the vicar and any number of other members of the great and good of the county, all of whom she will be singing your praises to – not that she will tell you that.” The Viscount winks conspiratorially at Lettice. “So, what’s say you and I go and have luncheon at the Dower House with Leslie and Arabella? I know they would love to see you and congratulate you.”

 

“Thank you Pappa!”

 

Lettice and her father embrace, and the pair remain in position for a few minutes, enjoying the intimacy without the criticism of Lady Sadie.

 

*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.

 

**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.

 

***A bonheur de jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers around 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable. Decorated on all sides, it was designed to sit in the middle of a room so that it could be admired from any angle.

 

****Although these days we commonly say that someone is worth their weight in gold, to say that someone is “worth one’s salt,” is the more traditional saying. Its meaning is the same. It’s a statement that acknowledges that they are competent, deserving, and – to put it simply – worthwhile. The phrase itself is thought to be rooted in Ancient Rome where soldiers were sometimes paid with salt or given an allowance to purchase salt. Similarly, if a person uses the phrase “worth its weight in salt,” to describe an object, they are expressing that they think the item is worth the price they paid or that it otherwise holds immense value to them.

 

This grand Georgian interior may appear like something out of a historical stately country house, but it is in fact part of my 1:12 miniatures collection and includes items from my childhood, as well as those I have collected as an adult.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The gilt Louis Quatorze chair and sofa, the black japanned chinoiserie tea table and the gilt swan round tables table are made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

The gilt high backed salon chair is also made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq, but what is particularly special about it is that it has been covered in antique Austrian floral micro petite point by V.H. Miniatures in the United Kingdom, which makes this a one-of-a-kind piece. The artisan who made this says that as one of her hobbies, she enjoys visiting old National Trust Houses in the hope of getting some inspiration to help her create new and exciting miniatures. She saw some beautiful petit point chairs a few years ago in one of the big houses in Derbyshire and then found exquisitely detailed petit point that was fine enough for 1:12 scale projects.

 

The Palladian console tables at the back to either side of the fireplace, with their golden caryatids and marble was commissioned by me from American miniature artisan Peter Cluff. Peter specialises in making authentic and very realistic high quality 1:12 miniatures that reflect his interest in Georgian interior design. His work is highly sought after by miniature collectors worldwide. This pair of tables are one-of-a-kind and very special to me.

 

The elegant ornaments that decorate the surfaces of the Chetwynd’s palatial drawing room very much reflect the Eighteenth Century spirit of the room.

 

On the centre of the mantlepiece stands a Rococo carriage clock that has been hand painted and gilded with incredible attention to detail by British 1:12 miniature artisan, Victoria Fasken. The clock is flanked by a porcelain pots of yellow, white and blue petunias which have been hand made and painted by 1:12 miniature ceramicist Ann Dalton. At either end of mantle stand a pair of Staffordshire sheep which have been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys. If you look closely, you will see that the sheep actually have smiles on their faces!

 

Two more larger example of Ann Dalton’s petunia posies stand on the Peter Cluff Palladian console tables. The one on the left is flanked by two mid Victorian (circa 1850) hand painted child’s tea set pieces. The sugar bowl and milk jug have been painted to imitate Sèvres porcelain. The right table features examples of pieces from a 1950s Limoges miniature tea set which I have had since I was a teenager. Each piece is individually stamped on its base with a green Limoges stamp. The vase containing the yellow roses is also a Limoges miniature from the 1950s.

 

The silver tea and coffee set and silver biscuit sachet on the central chinoiserie tea table, have been made with great attention to detail, and come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The wonderful selection of biscuits on offer were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The gilt edged floral teacups and plate on the table come from a miniatures specialist stockist on E-Bay. The blue and white vase the white roses stand in comes from Melody Jane’s Dolls House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.

 

The white and yellow roses are also made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The copy of Country Life sitting on the footstool which is a lynchpin of this chapter was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1923 edition of Country Life. The 1:12 miniature copy of ‘The Mirror’ beneath it is made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

The hand embroidered pedestal fire screen may be adjusted up or down and was acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.

 

All the paintings around the Glynes drawing 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 of Chinese lanterns from the 1770s.

 

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

 

The Persian rug on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company in the United Kingdom.

Осло, Норвегия

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

 

Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her old family home for the wedding of Leslie to Arabella, the daughter of their neighbours, Lord Sherbourne and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt. She has come a few days earlier than the other family members who are coming to stay at Glynes for the significant event.

 

Alighting from the London train at Glynes village railway station, Lettice is quickly swept away to the house by Harris, the chauffer, in the Chetwynd’s 1912 Daimler. As the Daimler purrs up the gravel driveway, Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler, steps through the front door followed by Marsen, the liveried first footman. Descending the stairs Marsden pads across the crunching gravel and opens the door of the Daimler for Lettice.

 

“Welcome home, My Lady,” Bramley greets her with an open smile as she walks up the steps to the front door. “What a pleasure it is to see you back again.”

 

“Thank you Bramley,” she replies with a satisfied smile and a sigh as she looks up at the classical columned portico of her beloved childhood home basking in the weakening autumnal sunshine of the late morning. “It’s good to be home.”

 

She sweeps into the lofty classical Adam style entrance hall of Glynes where she waits for Bramley to accept her gloves, her fox fur stole and her grey travelling coat.

 

“How was the train journey from London, My Lady?” Bramley asks Lettice as helps her shirk her coat from her shoulders, revealing a smart silvery grey frock with a sailor collar, a double rope of perfect pearls given to her by her parents as a coming of age birthday gift about her neck.

 

“Oh, quite pleasant, thank you Bramley.”

 

“Her Ladyship is expecting you in the morning room.”

 

“I’ll just go upstairs and freshen up first.” Lettice points to her escape route up the stairs to her bedroom up on the third floor of the mansion.

 

“Very good My Lady. However… I should…” Bramley adds with a touch of hesitation. Sighing he continues, “Master Lionel has arrived home from British East Africa*.”

 

Lettice feels all the happiness she felt moments ago at returning to her childhood home for the wonderful occasion of her eldest brother’s wedding dissipate at the mere mention of her other brother’s name. Her face falls and the sparkle in her eyes is extinguished by a darkness. “Oh.” she mumbles, as she deposits her gloves in Bramley’s open and expectant hand.

 

“I… I thought you were better pre-warned, My Lady.” Bramley says dourly. “Her Ladyship has been anxious awaiting your arrival. She will wan….”

 

As if on cue, one of the double doors to the morning room just down the passageway opens with a squeak of door handles, the pop of a lock and the rasp of old wood.

 

“Ahh, Lettice!” Lady Sadie’s head crowned with her well-coiffed grey hair pops around the panelled door and smiles rather forcefully.

 

The older woman slips out the door, closing it quietly behind her before marching brusquely down the hall towards her daughter, the louis heels of her shoes clipping loudly on the parquetry floor beneath her.

 

“Thank god you’re here at last!” she sighs quietly with relief as she reaches her daughter’s side and places a hand heavily upon her forearm. “I thought you would never get here! I simply don’t think I can cope alone much longer with both your brother and Eglantine together in the same room.” She breathes heavily, as if her heart is under a major strain. “You must come and rescue me, at once.”

 

“But I was about to…” Lettice begins, gesticulating to the stairs.

 

“At once!” Lady Sadie demurs commandingly.

 

“Shall I bring some fresh tea, Your Ladyship?” Bramley asks.

 

“I’d prefer a dubonnet and gin at this moment.” Lady Sadie sighs, much to the surprise of both her unflappable faithful retainer and her daughter, both of whom exchange astonished glances. “My nerves are positively shot with Lionel and Eglantine to entertain all my own,” She looks accusingly at her daughter, as if she were responsible for the train arrival times from London. “And your father and brother conveniently nowhere in sight.”

 

“They’ll be out on estate business, Mamma.” Lettice chides her mother gently, as she unpins her hat from her head and passes it to the butler.

 

“It’s more convenience if you ask me.” She sniffs and stiffens, a steely haughtiness hardening the few softened edges of her face. “Considering the time of day, tea will have to suffice. Yes, Bramley. A fresh pot if you would, and some more biscuits if you can manage it.” Turning to Lettice she adds, “Your aunt always did have an over indulged sweet tooth, even during the war when we were on rations, and it seems that your brother has developed an unhealthy love of sugar during his time in Nairobi.”

 

“Very good, Your Ladyship.” Bramley says as he discreetly retreats with Lettice’s hat.

 

Wrapping her arm through Lettice’s, Lady Sadie forcefully guides her daughter towards the closed morning room door. “I know Emmery usually takes care of you when you are here, Lettice, but your Aunt Gladys’ maid has caught the flu, at the most inconvenient of times. So, Eglantine has graciously offered to share her maid with you.”

 

“Oh Mamma!” Lettice exclaims exasperatedly, her stomach tightening as they draw closer to the door. “I really don’t need a lady’s maid. I’m quite independent in London you know. It is 1922 after all – nearly 1923.”

 

“Now, now!” Lady Sadie scolds. “I can’t have idle servants’ gossip below stairs. What would the maids from the other guests think if their hostess’ daughter declines the use of a lady’s maid? Next, they’ll be calling you a bluestocking**!” Lettice rolls her eyes. “No!” Lady Sadie pressed her right hand firmly over Lettice’s left one. “We’ll just make up an excuse that your maid was taken ill too. In saying that, I can’t believe that Eglantine brought that awful girl!”

 

“Who, Lise?” Lettice queries, referring to her aunt’s lady’s maid by her first name. When Lady Sadie nods, she continues, “I’ve always found Lise to be very sweet and obliging.”

 

“It’s not her manner I mind,” the older woman lowers her voice. “It’s her cultural heritage that offends me.”

 

“Oh Mamma! How many times must you be told? Lise, just like Augusta and Clotilde, are Swiss, not German.”

 

“Swiss, German, it matters not! They are still foreign!” Lady Sadie snaps. “Eglantine always was contrary. Why on earth she had to have a foreigner when a good English lady’s maid would have been perfectly comparable is beyond my comprehension.”

 

“Well perhaps it’s…” Lettice begins, but her retort is cut short as her mother depresses the door handle to the morning room and pushes it open.”

 

“Here she is!” Lady Sadie announces brightly with false bonhomie to the guests sitting in her chairs. “Lettice is here at last!”

 

The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of her continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of Glynes’ hothouse flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother Lady Sadie’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent which is ever present in the air.

 

“Well, if it isn’t my favourite nice!” Eglantine, known by all the Chetwnd children by the affectionate diminutive name of ‘Aunt Egg’, exclaims as she sits regally in the straight-backed chair next to Sadie’s soft upholstered wingback chair.

 

When she was young, Eglantine had Titian red hair that fell in wavy tresses about her pale face, making her a popular muse amongst the Pre-Raphaelites she mixed with. With the passing years, her red hair has retreated almost entirely behind silver grey, save for the occasional streak of washed out reddish orange, yet she still wears it as she did when it was at its fiery best, sweeping softly about her almond shaped face, tied in a loose chignon at the back of her neck, held in place by an ornate tortoiseshell comb. Sitting with perfect posture in her chair with her arms resting lightly on the arms, she looks positively regal. Large chandelier earrings containing sparking diamonds hang from her lobes whilst strings of pearls and bright beads cascade down the front of her usual uniform of a lose Delphos dress** that does not require her to wear a corset of any kind, and a silk fringed cardigan, both in strikingly beautiful shades of sea blue.

 

“Hullo Aunt Egg.” Lettice replies as she walks over to her aunt’s seated figure and kisses her first on one proffered cheek and then the other as her aunt’s elegant, yet gnarled fingers covered in rings reach up and clench her forearms firmly. “I keep saying that I’m sure you say that to Lally and all our female cousins.”

 

“And I keep telling you that you will never know until after I’m gone.” her aunt laughs raspily in reply. “For then the truth will be known through the disbursement of my jewels. To my favourite, or favourites, go the spoils!”

 

“Oh Aunt Egg!” Lettice scoffs. “You really mustn’t talk like that.”

 

“Eglantine always talks like that.” mutters Lady Sadie disapprovingly as she resumes her own seat.

 

“I wish I was six feet under when I can’t even smoke one of my Sobranies****.” Eglantine quips sulkily. “But your mother won’t let me smoke in here.”

 

“It’s undignified for a lady to smoke in public.” Sadie defends.

 

“I thought that we were in private, dear Sadie.”

 

“Don’t be so literal Eglantine, or are you being obtuse on purpose?” Sadie asks. Eglantine smiles mischievously behind one of her hands at the rise she has gained from her detested sister-in-law. “It’s undignified for a lady to smoke. Anyway, this is my house, so I should be allowed to make the rules.”

 

“Hullo Lettuce Leaf!” comes a male voice to Lettice’s right, its well-modulated tones dripping with a mixture of mirth, mischief and malice.

 

Cringing at the use of her abhorred childhood nickname, Lettice turns her head, to where her brother, Lionel’s reclining form lies amidst the overstuffed confines of their mother’s floral chaise lounge, where he flips rather languidly through a more recent copy of Lady Sadie’s Elite Styles*****. He looks up at her and purses his thin lips in what Lettice can only presume is his version of a mean smile, but looks more like he just smelt fresh horse droppings.

 

“Lionel.” Lettice says laconically in a peevish tone, returning his steely gaze of her with her own.

 

“Your brother has just been regaling us with wild tales of his horse breeding in British East Africa,” Eglantine remarks cheerfully, blissfully unaware of the animosity radiating already between the two siblings. “Haven’t you, my darling boy!” She lets go of Lettice and reaches over to her nephew’s hand, which he proffers to her so she can grasp it lovingly.

 

Lettice casts her eyes critically over her brother. His looks have changed over the three years of his exile to Kenya after fathering illegitimate children to not one, but two of the Glynes maids and the dullard daughter of one of their father’s tenant farmers in the space of one year. He has lost the softness of entitlement that he had, replaced now by a more muscular ranginess created through the exertions of breeding horses on a high altitude stud on the slopes of the Aberdare Range******. The African sun has bleached his sandy tresses blonde, a change made even more noticeable by the golden sunbathed pallor of his face. Yet for all these changes, Lionel still has blue eyes as cold as chips of ice, full of hatred, and a mean and malevolent smile beneath his equally mean little strip pencil moustache as he looks at her with barely contained detestation. Lettice shudders and looks away.

 

“It looks as though the Kenyan climate agrees with you, Lionel,” Lettice concedes. “You look remarkably well.”

 

“I am well, my dear little sister.” he replies in a rather bored tone. “The sun is glorious out there: full and rich, not like the weak version shining here.”

 

“Sit here, Lettice my dear.” Eglantine insists, standing up, snatching up her Royal Doulton rose decorated teacup and gliding around the table on which sits the remains of morning tea.

 

“Oh no, Aunt Egg.” Lettice protests. “I’ll be quite fine…”

 

“Nonsense, my dear.” Eglantine settles into the ornate Victorian salon chair of unidentifiable style opposite, the hem of her gown pooling around her feet like a cascade of water. “Your mother and I have had all morning to chat with Lionel. You two are the closest in age, and besides, you haven’t seen each other in three years, so I’m sure you have a lot to catch up on.”

 

Just at that moment there is a discreet knock at the door.

 

“Come.” calls out Lady Sadie commandingly from her throne by the cracking fire.

 

The door is opened by Moira, one of the Chetwynd’s maids who has taken to assisting wait table at breakfast and luncheon on informal occasions since the war, who walks into the morning room holding the door open for Bramley, who steps across the threshold carrying a silver salver on which stand a fresh pot of tea and coffee, milk, sugar and a cup matching the others already being used for Lettice.

 

“You had better have brought more of those biscuits, Bramley!” Lionel snaps at the butler, carelessly tossing the magazine he had in his thin hands aside onto the floral pouffe that acts as a barrier between he and his sister, the magazine clipping his cup, which rattles emptily as it jostles in its saucer. “A man needs to eat!”

 

“Yes Sir.” Bramley replies obsequiously, politely ignoring Lionel’s rudeness as he carefully slides the tray, on which stands a plate of fresh colourful cream biscuits, onto the round central table as Moira picks up the tray of used tea implements to take away.

 

As Moira straightens up, Lionel catches her eye and gives her a conspiratorial wink, making the maid smirk and colour flood her cheeks. Although not noticed by Lady Sadie or Eglantine who are now engaged in a conversation about flowers for the wedding, Lettice’s sharp eye doesn’t miss the silent exchange between the two, and as Moira curtseys to her mistress, Lettice makes a mental note to have a word with the Chetwynd’s housekeeper, Mrs. Casterton, later, and remind her to have her warn not only Moira, but all the new maids on the staff about her brother’s roué ways.

 

“I see you haven’t changed, Lionel.” Lettice remarks dryly as she takes her seat next to her abhorred brother, glancing meaningfully between him and the retreating figure of Moira.

 

“Evidently neither have you, Lettuce Leaf.” Lionel smirks with unbridled delight as his sister cringes yet again at the mention of her nickname. “You always were the Chetwynd with the sharpest eye. I should have aimed better at you with my slingshot when I was eight and you were six.” He shuffles forward on the chaise and snatches three biscuits greedily from the gilt edged plate before shuffling back with them, tossing two carelessly onto his saucer with a clatter and placing the remaining one to his lips. “If I’d had a sharper eye, I’d have had better aim. If I’d had better aim, I could have blinded you like I wanted to. If I’d blinded you, in one eye at least, it would have saved me a lot of trouble later in life, and banishment to the wilds of Africa.”

 

“You always were cruel to me,” Lettice mutters bitterly with a shiver as she remembers the sharp pain of the stone at it hit her temple and imbedded itself into her flesh. “To all of us, really. Lally, even Leslie,” She reaches up and rubs the spot where a faint scar still remains from the gash left by the stone shot from her brother’s catapult. “But cruellest of all to me. You savoured every hurt you could inflict on me.”

 

“Survival of the fittest, my dear Lettuce Leaf.” He bites meaningfully into the biscuit, growling menacingly, imitating a wild beast tearing at the flesh of its kill.

 

“You’re a brute, Lionel.” Lettice looks away in disgust. She reaches out and takes up the teacup Bramley brought her and pours tea into her cup.

 

“Top me up, Lettuce Leaf!” Lionel pipes up loudly.

 

“Oh!” gasps Eglantine from across the table. “I haven’t heard you called that for years, Lettice.” She chortles happily. “Haven’t you two grown out of calling each other childhood nicknames?” she remarks good naturedly, picking up her cup.

 

“Evidently not, Aunt Egg.” Lettice replies with false good humour.

 

From her wingback chair Sadie quickly glances with concern at her two youngest children before turning back to Eglantine and answering her question.

 

Lettice deposits her cup on the table between she and her mother and then reaches for the teapot. She leans over towards her brother, who indicates with lowered lids and a commanding nod towards his empty cup, however she ignores his lofty silent demand and hovers with the pot’s spout over Lionel’s groin.

 

“You wouldn’t dare.” Lionel snarls viscously as he glances with irritation at his sister.

 

“Oh, wouldn’t I?” She tilts the pot slightly, making Lionel flinch and squirm on the chaise in an attempt to avoid any hot tea hitting and burning him in such a sensitive area. Seeing his reaction, she smiles and returns the pot to an upright position in her hand. “I’m not the frightened little girl you said goodbye to here three years ago, Lionel.” she warns him quietly. “I live independently in London now, and I’m a lot more worldly than I was.”

 

“Slut!” he hisses.

 

His insult slices Lettice to the bone, but steeling herself, she remains poised and unflinching as she tilts the pot down again, this time allowing the smallest amount of hot tea to escape the spout. It splatters onto a cream coloured rose printed on the fabric of the chaise and is quickly absorbed. “Is that the kind of parlance fashionable in Nairobi these days?” she asks mockingly in a falsely sweet tone.

 

“I’ll tell you what I do know, my dear little sister, having been a damn good racehorse breeder these last three years.”

 

“And what’s that Lionel?” Lettice proceeds to pour tea into her brother’s empty cup.

 

“I can tell that you’re still a stupid little filly who needs a good siring from a stallion.” He gently grinds his groin back and forth, representing the act.

 

Unflinching, Lettice replies breezily, “Oh, so you’ve learned about animal husbandry whilst you’ve been away. Good.” She leans closer to Lionel. “But your use of that language and vulgar and unnecessary demonstration just makes me feel even more disgusted by you.” She screws up her nose in distaste and looks down upon him.

 

Undeterred, determined not to be outdone and to inflict hurt on his little sister, Lionel continues, “Mater told me that here you are at twenty-two and you’re still an old maid, despite her attempts to get you married off.”

 

“In case you’ve forgotten Lionel, there has been a war, and a whole generation of men far better than you have been wiped out.”

 

“Mater would happily foist you off onto any unwitting fool of a man, war cripple or otherwise that would have you. However, it appears that there are no takers: not even a shellshock victim or a blind veteran. If that’s what you call living an independent life, I pity you, Lettuce Leaf - shrivelled and dried up old Lettuce Leaf, trodden on and soiled, Lettuce Leaf.”

 

“I have a good life in London, I’ll have you know, Lionel. I run my own business now.”

 

“Oh yes, Mater told me that you’re pursuing this little interior design charade of yours to fill the gap that no husband will fill.”

 

“And I happen to be very good at what I do.” Lettice speaks determinedly over her brother’s hurtful words.

 

“If you say so, dear.” Lionel sneers. “Pass me the milk and the sugar.”

 

“I’ve been very successful” Lettice passes him the sugar bowl.

 

“Going to snitch to Pater and Mater again, are you, you little worm?” Lionel shakes his head as he hands the sucrier back to his sister. “Just like you did three years ago.”

 

“If I think there is a necessity, Lionel.” Lettice remarks as she returns the sugar bowl and takes up the milk jug. Leaning down in a pretence of adding milk to his tea, she quietly whispers to Lionel, “Have I cause to do so?”

 

“What?” Lionel snorts derisively as he takes the jug roughly from her. “With that little filly?” He glances to the door through which Moira exited with Bramley. “Fear not, my plucky little sister. My tastes have changed since I was forced to leave here.”

 

“Somehow I doubt that.” Lettice scoffs. “A leopard, his spots and all that.”

 

“No, I have, I assure you. I prefer mares now. The quality is better.”

 

“What are you insinuating, Lionel?”

 

“Well, despite Pater’s attempt to punish me for my dalliances: for the sewing of my wild oats,” Lettice looks away in abhorrence yet again as Lionel reaches down and rubs his inner thigh lasciviously. “He’s actually landed me in heaven on earth by sending me to Kenya.”

 

“Heaven?”

 

“Yes. The Muthaiga Club******* is full of hedonistic aristocrats, adventurers and elite colonial ex-pats,”

 

“No wonder you feel at home there.”

 

“Whose wives,” Lionel continues. “Are very bored in their husbands’ lengthy absences,” He hands her back the milk jug. “And their tiring presences. And unlike silly little fillies like the Moiras of this world, the mares know how not to get in the family way.”

 

“You sicken me, Lionel.” Lettice spits quietly.

 

In spite of her apparent engagement with Eglantine in conversation, Lady Sadie is keenly aware of the trouble brewing between er two children on the other side of the table, and her pale face crumples with concern.

 

“Nairobi is a veritable hotbed of drug taking and adultery,” Lionel goes on unabated. “Where promiscuity is de rigueur, little sister.” He smiles smugly as he takes a sip of his tea. “I was even taught a few things by the wife of a British peer who happens to be a good friend of Pater’s from his club!”

 

“Have you absolutely no shame?” Lettice asks in revulsion.

 

“Ahh, but that’s the good thing about Kenya. No-one has any need for shame there. Promiscuity and sexual prowess are badges of honour.”

 

“Then I’m sure you can’t wait to get back to your debauched lifestyle.”

 

“When I’m surrounded by British piety and hypocrisy here, my oath I am.”

 

“What are you two saying over there?” Lady Sadie pipes up nervously as she holds her cup and saucer in her lap.

 

“Oh, I was just asking Lionel when he has to go back to Kenya.” Lettice replies, looking gratefully to her mother for once.

 

“But he’s only just arrived, Lettice my dear!” chuckles Eglantine. “Surely you can’t want him to leave.”

 

“Oh it isn’t that, Eglantine,” Lady Sadie assures her sister-in-law. “It’s just that with the long journey both from British East Africa and back, he’ll have been away from the stud a good while, so he can only really stay until just after the wedding.”

 

“Oh really, Lionel?” Eglantine asks with a pout. “Can’t you even stay until Christmas? I don’t think we’ve had a Christmas with all you children under one roof since before the war.”

 

Knowing that his father, with whom he has a very strained relationship since being exiled in shame, only let him come back for Leslie and Arabella’s wedding for appearances’ sake, Lionel keeps up the pretence for his aunt’s sake and adds as he settles back into the scalloped back of the chaise, “Sorry Aunt Egg, but Mater is right. I’ll have been away from the farm for more than a month and a half by the time I get back.”

 

“But surely you have a steward you can leave in charge of the horse stud whilst you’re away.”

 

“Oh, I do, Aunt Egg.” Lionel agrees. “Capital chap too. Most capable.” He gazes down into his teacup. “However, it doesn’t pay to be away for too long. Kenya is full of treasure hunters and people on the make. I won’t let my stud suffer to line the pockets of, or up the prospects of, another man.”

 

“You always were competitive, even as child, my dear Lionel.” Eglantine smiles, shaking her head indulgently.

 

“Thinking of which, the Limru races will be coming up, not to mention the Kenya Derby******** so I have to be back for them!”

 

“Oooh!” Lettice sighs, raising her hand to her temple. “I think all this talk of wild Kenya is getting a bit much for me after my journey down from London.” She stands abruptly. “Would you all forgive me. I think I’d like to go to my room and lie down. I’m sure I’ll feel better after a short snooze and a freshen up.”

 

“Oh yes, do go up, Lettice.” Lady Sadie says soothingly, the look in her eyes betraying the fact that she knows how difficult it is for Lettice to even be in the same room as her brother. “It will be an hour or so before luncheon, so plenty of time to rest and recuperate. By that time your father and Leslie will be back from their estate rounds.” Turning to Eglantine she addresses her, “Eglantine, why don’t you and Lionel take a stroll around the gardens. I can’t stop you from smoking out of doors, and I’m sure Lionel would be happy to escort you.”

 

Lettice retreats, sighing with relief as she pulls the door of the morning room shut behind her, blocking out the hubbub of chatter. As she starts to retreat down the corridor, back to the main staircase, the door opens behind her and Lady Sadie slips out.

 

She scuttles up to her daughter. For the first time today, Lettice notices how pale and drawn her mother looks. Her pallor isn’t helped by her choice of a burnt orange coloured blouse, yet Lettice sees the dark circles under her eyes.

 

“Thank you for that, Lettice. I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

 

Lettice is stunned by her mother’s gracious acknowledgement and more so her thanks.

 

“Don’t worry,” Lady Sadie continues. “He’ll be gone the day after the wedding.” She heaves a shuddering sigh.

 

“If I don’t murder him before then.” Lettice seethes angrily.

 

“Well, if you do, I’ll help you bury his body in the rose garden.” Lady Sadie remarks with a smirk in a rare show of humour. “Your father has seen to it that Lionel will leave on Thursday, threating to cut him off without a bean if he doesn’t go quickly and quietly. Goodness knows the total of Lionel’s chits from the Muthaiga Club your father could practically re-roof this place with.”

 

“He’s just the same Mamma.” Lettice says with exasperation. “He hasn’t changed at all. In fact, I think he’s worse than before he left. He’s so full of bravado and priggish male privilege.”

 

“I’ve already told Mrs. Casterton to keep a sharp eye on all the maids whilst he’s here.”

 

“That won’t be easy with Leslie and Bella’s wedding to host, Mamma. You’d be better to tell her to warn all the girls to be on their guard.”

 

“Hhhmmm…” Lady Sadie considers. “Very sensible, Lettice. We’ll make you a suitable chatelaine of your own fine house, yet.”

 

“Oh Mamma!” Lettice sighs.

 

“Only until Thursday.” the older woman repeats.

 

“Only until Thursday.” Lettice confirms in reply.

 

*The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, commonly known as British Kenya or British East Africa, was part of the British Empire in Africa. It was established when the former East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a British Crown colony in 1920. Technically, the "Colony of Kenya" referred to the interior lands, while a 16 km (10 mi) coastal strip, nominally on lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar, was the "Protectorate of Kenya", but the two were controlled as a single administrative unit. The colony came to an end in 1963 when an ethnic Kenyan majority government was elected for the first time and eventually declared independence as the Republic of Kenya.

 

**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.

 

***The Delphos gown is a finely pleated silk dress first created in about 1907 by French designer Henriette Negrin and her husband, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. They produced the gowns until about 1950. It was inspired by, and named after, a classical Greek statue, the Charioteer of Delphi. It was championed by more artistic women who did not wish to conform to society’s constraints and wear a tightly fitting corset.

 

****The Balkan Sobranie tobacco business was established in London in 1879 by Albert Weinberg (born in Romania in 1849), whose naturalisation papers dated 1886 confirm his nationality and show that he had emigrated to England in the 1870s at a time when hand-made cigarettes in the eastern European and Russian tradition were becoming fashionable in Europe. Sobranie is one of the oldest cigarette brands in the world. Throughout its existence, Sobranie was marketed as the definition of luxury in the tobacco industry, being adopted as the official provider of many European royal houses and elites around the world including the Imperial Court of Russia and the royal courts of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Spain, Romania, and Greece. Premium brands include the multi-coloured Sobranie Cocktail and the black and gold Sobranie Black Russian.

 

*****Elite Styles was one of the many glossy monthly magazines aimed at leisured middle and upper-class women, describing and illustrating the popular fashions of the era.

 

******The Aberdare Range (formerly the Sattima Range) is a one hundred mile long mountain range of upland, north of Kenya's capital Nairobi with an average elevation of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty feet. It straddles across the counties of Nyandarua, Nyeri, Muranga, Kiambu and Laikipia.

 

*******The Muthaiga Club is a club in Nairobi. It is located in the suburb of Muthaiga, about fifteen minutes’ drive from the city centre. The Muthaiga Country Club opened on New Year's Eve in 1913, and became a gathering place for the colonial British settlers in British East Africa, which later became in 1920, the Colony of Kenya.

 

********The annual Kenya Derby has been held since 1914, originally at Kenya’s principal racecourse in Kariokor, near Nairobi’s centre until 1954 when it was moved to the newly erected Ngong Racecourse.

 

Cluttered with paintings, photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s morning room with its Georgian and Victorian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection including pieces from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The silver tea set and silver galleried tray on the central 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 gilt edged floral teacups, saucers and plates around the morning room come from a miniatures specialist stockist on E-Bay. The wonderful selection of biscuits on offer were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The Elite Styles and Delineator magazines from 1922 sitting on the end of the chaise lounge and the floral pouffe were made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States.

 

Lady Sadie’s morning room is furnished mostly with pieces from high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. Lady Sadie’s cream wingback armchair is a Chippendale piece, whilst the gilt decorated mahogany tables are Regency style, as is the straight backed chair with unpadded arms. The ornate mahogany corner chair is high Victorian in style. The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. The china cabinet to the left-hand side is Georgian revival and is lined with green velvet and fitted with glass shelves and a glass panelled door. The cream coloured footstool with gold tasselling came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The floral chaise lounge and footstool I acquired from a miniatures specialist stockist on E-Bay.

 

The china cabinet is full of miniature pieces of Limoges porcelain that were made in the 1950s. Pieces include a milk jug, three sugar bowls and two lidded powder bowls. Also 1950s Limoges porcelain is the vase on the far left of the photo on the Regency table holding pink roses. The roses themselves are handmade miniatures that come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The fluted squat cranberry glass vase on the table to the right of the photo is an artisan miniature made of hand blown glass which also came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. Made of polymer clay that are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements, the very realistic looking red and white tulips are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The tiny gilt cherub statue I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street stockist who specialised in dolls houses and doll house miniatures. Being only a centimetre in height and half a centimetre in diameter it has never been lost, even though I have moved a number of times in my life since its acquisition.

 

The plaster fireplace comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom as well, and the fire screen and fire pokers come from the same high street stockist who specialised in dolls houses and doll house miniatures as the cherub statue. I have also had these pieces since I was a teenager. The Royal Doulton style figurines on top the fireplace, are from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland and have been hand painted by me. The figurines are identifiable as particular Royal Doulton figurines from the 1920s and 1930s.

 

The Chetwynd’s family photos seen on Lady Sadie’s desk, the mantlepiece and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.

 

The two books about flower growing on Lady Sadie’s desk are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. He also made the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The painting of the Georgian family above the fireplace comes from Amber’s Miniatures in the United States, whilst the two silhouette portraits come from Lady Mile Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The painting of the lady in the gold frame wedged up in the corner of the room surrounded by photos is made by Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The Persian rugs on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company 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.

 

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 an invitation to motor down to Wiltshire from her 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. His family, the Brutons, are neighbours to the Cheywynds with their properties sharing boundaries. That is how Gerald and Lettice came to be such good friends. However, whilst both families are landed gentry with lineage going back centuries, unlike Lettice’s family, Gerald’s live in a much smaller baronial manor house and are in much more straitened circumstances. Whilst he visits his mother, who has caught a chill in the cold winter weather, Lettice is playing the part of a dutiful daughter and visiting her parents too, even though both are in excellent health. This is her last visit to Glynes before coming down to stay over the Christmas and New Year period.

 

We find ourselves in the very grand and elegant drawing room of Glynes with its gilt Louis and Palladian style furnishings where the family Christmas tree is being decorated by Lettice and her elder sister Lally’s two children. Alerted to her younger sister’s visit, Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally), who is heavily pregnant and due to give birth in a few months, has come down to stay with her parents and eldest brother Leslie to coincide with Lettice’s visit. Although they have never been particularly close, with six years difference between them, Lally is filled with the Christmas spirit this year and has arrived with a conciliatory approach as she tries to build more of a relationship with Lettice now that she is older.

 

Lally finds it too difficult at this advanced stage in her pregnancy to join her children and Lettice decorating the tall fir tree cut from the Chetwynd estate, so she reclines on the Louis settee, toying with a fold-out family photograph album draped across her pregnant belly and watches the others as they unpack beautiful glass baubles, satin bows, garlands and glittering tinsel from old boxes.

 

“You always were the artistic one Lettice,” Lally remarks as her sister hangs a golden glass bauble on an upper bough of the tree where the children can’t reach with the aid of Viscount Wrexham’s library steps. “You have the knack for decorating the tree and making it look so beautiful.”

 

“That’s very kind of you to say so, Lally.” Lettice smiles thinly. “Oh no Harrold, not that bauble,” she directs her seven year old nephew as he tries to hand her a shiny red glass ball. “Grandmamma always likes the tree in here to be decorated with gold to match the furniture.”

 

“She only insists on that because she is so proud of the furnishings in here.” Lally pipes up from the settee. “Having been given as part of her marriage settlement by Grandfather Piers.”

 

“I didn’t know that, Lally!” Lettice gasps.

 

“Oh yes. She told me that when she and I sat in here the day that Pappa settled my dowery with Lord Lanchenbury in the library.”

 

“No wonder she was always scolding us if it even looked like a stray shoe was going to work its way onto the upholstery.”

 

“Yes,” Lally chuckles looking down over the photo album and her protuberant belly wrapped tightly in russet georgette with Art Nouveau embroidery, to her silk lisle clad feet resting on the settee’s cushioned seat. “At least I’ve taken my wretched shoes off.” She wriggles her toes as she glances down at her louis heeled deep red slippers standing on the carpet. “Not that I may be able to get them back on again. Pregnancy always makes my feet swell.”

 

Harrold looks thoughtfully at the red bauble in his hand and then glances with excitement at its matching decorations still in the dusty and battered old boxes. “Does that mean there is going to be a second Christmas tree this year, Auntie Tice?”

 

Lettice chuckles and leans down, tousling Harrold’s blonde hair. “No darling, but we used to have two trees decorated every year before the war. One in here like this, and a much bigger one in the entrance hall. That’s why there are so many decorations in these boxes.” She looks thoughtfully at the boxes and their contents strewn about on the carpet. “Poor Bramley. I should really have told him only to unpack the gold decorations. He has so much to do as it is these days.”

 

“Yes, poor Bramley. It’s not easy managing a house like this on reduced staff numbers. Mind you, it looks like the decorations are all jumbled together anyway.” Lally muses, looking at the photograph album resting on her stomach as her mind drifts away to the past. “Do you remember those wonderful pre-war Christmases we used to have, Lettice?”

 

“Oh yes, when we had more servants to help decorate both trees.”

 

“And all of us too. You were always the one who knew best when it came to decorating, but Leslie, Lionel and I tried to do our bit.”

 

“However did you cope before I was born?” Lettice asks cheekily.

 

Lally looks at the photos of past Chetwynds, gazing out from prettily decorated round and square holes with sepia eyes. “I wonder,” she asks as she looks. “Who this one will look like when they are born.” She glances up at her son, sifting through a Gossages Dry Soap crate looking for a correctly coloured Christmas ball to give to his aunt. “Harrold looks so much like Pappa.”

 

“Well,” Lettice says thoughtfully, tugging at a recalcitrant piece of tinsel. “He or she may look more like his or her father than a Chetwynd.”

 

“Like Charles!” Lally scoffs. “Oh, I don’t think so, Lettice. I’m convinced that the Lanchenbury genes are recessive.”

 

“Who do I look like Auntie Tice?” Annabelle, Lettice’s five year old niece, asks from her place decorating the boughs around the foot of the Christmas tree.

 

“You look like a beautiful princess, darling,” Lettice confirms bountifully, giving her an earnest look.

 

“Oh!” the little girl exclaims and smiles proudly. “Did you hear that, Harrold? You look like old Grandpappa, and I look like a pretty princess!” She pirouettes prettily about on the spot, her fuchsia coloured skirts billowing around her.

 

“I don’t look like an old man!” Harrold counters angrily as he reaches up to his aunt clutching two gold baubles.

 

“No Harrold, you don’t,” Lally placates from the settee. “But you look like Grandpappa did when he was young, and he was very handsome when he was young.”

 

Harrold smiles, pleased that he doesn’t look like an old white haired man with a beard, and he turns his back on his teasing sister, who is still spinning about gleefully as she imagines herself to be a fine lady.

 

“Remember when the villagers used to come up to the front door singing carols on Christmas Eve,” Lally continues on her nostalgic journey of pre-war Christmases. “Mamma and Pappa would invite them in to warm themselves by the fire in the entrance hall and enjoy the big Christmas tree all covered in tinsel, baubles and lighted candles.”

 

“Pappa still gets Bramley to bring out snifters of brandy for them whilst they warm themselves by the fire,” Lettice accepts an appropriately gold bauble from her nephew. “But you’re right, some of magic has gone out of that now that there is no longer a Christmas tree in the hall.”

 

“Do you think we could ask Grandpappa to get us one this year, Auntie Tice?” Harrold asks, looking up at Lettice hopefully.

 

“Oh I think it’s a bit late now, darling.” Lettice explains kindly. “There is a heavy snow outside and ground his hard. We don’t want the gardeners all catching colds for Christmas, now do we?” Harrold shakes his head solemnly and Lettice tousles his hair again good naturedly before suggesting, “Maybe next year. We’ll ask Grandpappa later. Alright?”

 

“Alright Auntie.” he replies.

 

“Good boy.” Lettice whispers with a gentle smile, accepting the second bauble from her nephew.

 

“Remember the fun we always had as children getting dressed up for Mamma and Pappa’s fancy dress Hunt Ball?” Lally asks her sister. “Mamma was always the queen of the ball. And you used to like being a faerie with a tinsel crown and a silver wand.”

 

“I’m going as a faerie this year,” pipes up Annabelle proudly.

 

“Is that so, darling?” Lettice asks her with a munificent smile.

 

She nods emphatically. “Nanny is making my dress.”

 

“Yes,” Lettice chuckles wistfully. “Nanny Webb must have spent hours making our outfits, sewing stars onto my dress and making me gossamer wings. You liked to go as Columbine*, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes, but my outfit was bought from Clarkson’s** London. So was Lionel’s Pierrot*** costume.”

 

“What did Leslie go as? For the moment I don’t remember.”

 

“Leslie is just like Pappa. He hated fancy dress. Being older than us, he told me that fancy dress was for children, and he used to go in his hunting pinks****, just like Pappa.”

 

“Oh yes. Now I remember. I still love fancy dress parties.” Lettice responds. “I’m coming as Cinderella to the Hunt Ball this year, which is most apt considering that Mamma wants to marry me off.”

 

“Who’s on the offing?”

 

“Jonty Hastings,”

 

“Not Howling Hastings?”

 

Lettice nods. “The very one!” She and her sister both giggle childishly.

 

“Who else?” Lally asks with bated breath.

 

“Tarquin Howard, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes,”

 

“He’s an old man!” Lally laughs.

 

“Nicholas Ayers.” Lettice continues to list.

 

“He’s an invert*****!” Lally scoffs, then quickly raises her hand to her mouth as she glances with alarm at the children. She heaves a sigh of relief as they seem too involved in decorating the lower branches of the tree to pay attention to her and ask her what an invert is. “Mamma may as well marry you to Gerald Bruton then.”

 

“Ah, but Gerald is the spare you see, not that Mamma knows what we do about him, and anyway, the Brutons don’t have the money that the Ayres do.”

 

“True.” Lally hurries on. “Who else, Lettice?”

 

“Selwyn Spencely, Edward Lambley, Septimius Faversham and Oliver Edgars. I know there are others, but I can’t for the life of me think whom.”

 

“Goodness! Mamma really is pulling out all the stops this year to make the ball a grand occasion. I don’t think we’ve had that many eligible men in attendance since 1912!”

 

Lettice gives her elder sister a withering look.

 

“Will one of those men be your prince, Auntie Tice?” asks Annabelle seriously, gazing up at her aunt. “You are coming as Cinderella to the ball after all, and Cinderella met her prince there.”

 

“Only if I lose a slipper at the ball, darling.”

 

“Oh,” Lally huffs as she glances at the baby Jesus statue in the manger from the nativity scene to stand beneath the tree with all the Christmas gifts. “I think I shall be glad to be in confinement for this year’s ball. I could only come dressed as a whale thanks to this one.” She lays a hand caringly upon her swollen stomach.

 

“A whale!” giggles Annabelle.

 

“Now that would be funny, Mummy.” chuckles Harrold as he walks over to his mother and places his hand on top of hers. “I should like to see you dance with Daddy dressed as a whale.”

 

“You must suggest it to him when we go home at the end of the week, darling. Shall I wear a grey satin tea gown then?” Lally smiles as Harrold nods enthusiastically. Looking back to Lettice as she affixes a shimmering bow to the tree she says to her, “I don’t know how you do it, Lettice. After children, and the war, I just don’t have the energy for fancy dress any more.”

 

“Oh, don’t you start lording your happy marriage to Charles and your children over me, Lally!” Lettice’s footsteps clatter angrily as she descends the library steps and stalks forcefully across the carpet to look for a particular decoration in one of the boxes. Thrusting her hands violently through the contents of one particular box she continues, “I won’t have it! Mamma has been insufferable since I got here, reminding me at every opportunity that I’m not getting any younger, and that you were married by the time you were my age. And then there is all her scheming, inviting every eligible gentleman of good breeding and money to the Hunt Ball for me to be paraded before!”

 

Sensing the change in mood in the room, Annabelle scuttles away from Lettice and the Christmas tree and cowers by her mother’s side, whilst Harrold places both hands on top of this mother’s instinctively protecting her and the baby from his aunt’s sudden displeasure.

 

“Please don’t be angry, Aunty Tice,” Annabelle says, her voice cracking as tears well in her eyes. “I don’t like it when you’re angry with Mummy.”

 

“And it is Christmas,” Harrold adds, looking in concern at Lettice on her knees, scattering colourful glass balls across the drawing room carpet angrily. “No-one should be cross or upset at Christmas, Auntie Tice.”

 

“Oh!” Lettice looks up from where she is with sad tears, that moments ago had been angry ones, brimming in her eyes. “Oh how clumsy of me. Auntie Tice is sorry my darlings. You’re quite right Harrold. No-one should be cross at Christmas.” She holds out her arms to them and pouts. “Forgive me? Please?”

 

Harrold walks cautiously over and falls into her arms, which wrap around him tightly as she closes her eyes and puts her head on his shoulders.

 

“See,” Lally whispers to Annabelle standing at her shoulder. “Auntie Tice isn’t cross anymore. Don’t you think you might go and give her a cuddle?” She looks back to her sister and son embracing and adds more loudly, even though she knows and intends that Lettice should hear every word. “I’m sure that would make her feel even better.”

 

Tentatively, and with a gentle push from her mother, Anabelle totters forward to where Lettice embraces her too.

 

“I know, Lettice,” Lally remarks softly. “That when you were a teenager, we really didn’t get along very well.” Lettice looks up defensively, but Lally raises a finger to her lips to silence her sister’s protests so she can continue. “And we have probably never really been that close because of the difference in years between us. However, contrary to what your opinion of me may be, I’m not your enemy, you know?”

 

“I know,” Lettice murmurs. “It’s just Mamma and her attitudes towards the decisions I’ve made. They make me so cross, Lally.”

 

“Well, you might not know this,” Lally continues. “In fact, in view of your sudden outburst, I’m quite certain you don’t.”

 

“Know what, Lally?”

 

“Mamma always lords your glamorous life in London over me whenever she can, telling me who of this country’s great and good you’ve been socialising with or decorating for, and showing me photos of you in the Tattler, not that I haven’t already seen them for myself.”

 

“She doesn’t!” Lettice bursts in shock.

 

“She does,” Lally concurs with a nod. “And she does it because both of us are closer to Pappa than to her.”

 

“No!”

 

“Of course that’s the reason. Mamma has always had a jealous streak in her.”

 

“Well, I never.” Lettice gasps.

 

“Now you know that her criticism goes both ways. She thinks her secret is safe because she enjoys playing us off against one another, and what’s worse is, I think she actually enjoys creating a divide between us.”

 

“Lally!”

 

“It’s true, Lettice. I think in her own perverse way, she hopes that one of us will turn to her one day, rather than Pappa.” She lowers her lids and shakes her head in resigned disbelief. “I don’t quite know why.”

 

“Oh I’m sorry, Lally.”

 

“I’m sorry too Lettice.” Lally acknowledges warmly. “So, what say you and I, with this knowledge, ignore Mamma’s criticisms this Christmas, and maybe get to be better friends as adults than we perhaps were as children.”

 

“Just to spite Mamma?”

 

“Well, no,” Lally explains. “To help us better understand and support one another. Of course, if it happens to irritate Mamma, then all the better. Truth be told, I’m actually quite proud to have such a successful and glamourous sister.”

 

“I don’t know what to say.” Lettice says humbly as she blushes with embarrassment and pride.

 

“A thank you is usual when one is paid a compliment.” Lally adds helpfully with a smile.

 

“Thank you, Lally.” Lettice says.

 

“You’re welcome, my glamorous little sister.” Lally answers.

 

*Columbine is a theatrical character that originated about 1530 in Italian commedia dell'arte as a saucy and adroit servant girl; her Italian name means “Little Dove.”

 

**Clarkson’s Theatrical Costumier and Wig Maker was located at 41 to 43 Wardour Street in Leicester Square. As theatrical costumier to the Royal Family, Willy Clarkson was born in 1861. He took over his father’s business in 1878 and became highly successful. He provided costumes and wigs for famous actors and actresses of the Victorian and Edwardian era, including Sir Henry Irving, Lillie Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt and for productions by Queen Victoria's family. It was claimed that Will Clarkson created a disguise for the murderer Doctor Crippen. Rumoured to be homosexual, a public lavatory in Soho was known as 'Clarkson's Cottage'.

 

***Pierrot is a character from the Italian commedia dell'arte. A simpleminded and honest servant, he is usually a young and personable valet. One of the comic servants, or zanni, Pierrot functioned in the commedia as an unsuccessful lover of Columbine and a victim of the pranks of his fellow comedians.

 

****Hunting pinks is the name given to the traditional scarlet jacket and related attire worn by fox-hunters.

 

*****An invert is a term coined and popularly used in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries to describe a homosexual.

 

This year the Flickr Friends Melbourne Group have decided to have a monthly challenge which is submitted on the 5th of every month. This month’s theme is “Christmas”, which was chosen by Beverley. Both Beverley and I share a common love of Christmas, which is a magical time that brings us both great joy, so this scene, using a selection of my large miniatures collection including some very special pieces was a delight for me to spend a few hours creating and photographing.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Chetwynd Christmas tree, beautifully decorated by Lettice, Harold and Annabelle with garlands, tinsel, bows golden baubles and topped by a sparking gold star is a 1:12 artisan piece. It was hand made by husband and wife artististic team Margie and Mike Balough who own Serendipity Miniatures in Newcomerstown, Ohio.

 

The gold Christmas garland that graces the fireplace to the right of the photo is a hand made artisan miniature also, and was supplied by the Doll House Shoppe in Tinley Park, Illinois.

 

The red and green boxes containing hand painted Christmas ornaments were hand made and decorated by artists of Crooked Mile Cottage in America. The silver, red and gold tinsel garlands, and the painted red, yellow, green, gold and silver single baubles that litter the floor, tumble from the boxes and the single one left on the library steps come from various online miniature stockists in Australia and England through E-Bay. The miniature nativity pieces of Jesus in the manger, Mary, Joseph and the Christmas star standing on the carpet in front of the Gossages Dry Soap crate come from an E-Bay stockist of miniatures in Sydney.

 

The pair of louis heel red slippers comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House in the United Kingdom. They are made of metal.

 

The fold out concertina Edwardian photo album draped across the gilt Louis settee, the brown photo album with gilt lettering on the end table to the left of the settee and the pile of photos stacked on top of the red photo album are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside a photo album that he has made. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into the album, it has a front and back cover and a concertina of ten coloured pages, and it measure twenty millimetres in height and ten millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books and photo albums are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

The red and the blue photo albums also open and contain black pages suitable to stick miniature photographs to. They are fastened closed with a ribbon. They came from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The Palladian console table behind the library steps, with its two golden caryatids and marble top, is one of a pair that were commissioned by me from American miniature artisan Peter Cluff. Peter specialises in making authentic and very realistic high quality 1:12 miniatures that reflect his interest in Georgian interior design. His work is highly sought after by miniature collectors worldwide. This pair of tables are one-of-a-kind and very special to me.

 

The gilt footstool upon which the red photo album and pile of photographs sit is made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq, but what is particularly special about it is that it has been covered in antique Austrian floral micro petite point by V.H. Miniatures in the United Kingdom, which also makes this a one-of-a-kind piece. The artisan who made this says that as one of her hobbies, she enjoys visiting old National Trust Houses in the hope of getting some inspiration to help her create new and exciting miniatures. She saw some beautiful petit point chairs a few years ago in one of the big houses in Derbyshire and then found exquisitely detailed petit point that was fine enough for 1:12 scale projects.

 

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 elegant ornaments that decorate the surfaces of the Chetwynd’s palatial drawing room very much reflect the Eighteenth Century spirit of the room.

 

On the centre of the mantlepiece stands a Rococo carriage clock that has been hand painted and gilded with incredible attention to detail by British 1:12 miniature artisan, Victoria Fasken. To the left of the clock is a porcelain pot of yellow and blue petunias which has been hand made and painted by 1:12 miniature ceramicist Ann Dalton. To the left of the vase of petunias is a Staffordshire sheep – one of a pair – which have been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys. If you look closely, you will see that the sheep actually has a smile on its face!

 

Another, larger example of Ann Dalton’s petunia posies stands on the Peter Cluff Palladian console table and is flanked by two mid Victorian (circa 1850) hand painted child’s tea set pieces. The sugar bowl and milk jug have been painted to imitate Sèvres porcelain.

 

On the bombe chest behind the Louis settee stand a selection of 1950s Limoges miniature tea set pieces which I have had since I was a teenager. Each piece is individually stamped on its base with a green Limoges stamp. Also on the bombe chest sit two Georgian tea caddies which come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. In the centre of these pieces stands a sterling silver three prong candelabra made by an unknown artisan. They have actually fashioned a putti (cherub) holding the stem of the candelabra. The candles that came with it are also 1:12 artisan pieces and are actually made of wax.

 

The three piece Louis XV suite of settee and two armchairs was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, JBM.

 

The library steps are made by an unknown artisan, but have been hand made and was supplied by Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery you can just see behind the Christmas tree was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

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

 

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

 

The Persian rug on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company 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.

 

Today however we are not in Lettice’s flat. Instead, we have followed Lettice south-west, through the neighbouring borough of Belgravia to the smart London suburb of Pimlico and its rows of cream and white painted Regency terraces. There, in a smart red brick Edwardian set of three storey flats on Rochester Row, is the residence of Lettice’s latest client, recently arrived American film actress Wanetta Ward. It is here that Lettice adds the remaining finishing touches to her redecoration of what was once a tired and dated interior.

 

Knocking loudly on the front door of the flat, Gerald turns the knob and finds the door opens, just as Lettice said it would. “Lettice?” he calls.

 

“Gerald, is that you?” comes Lettice’s voice from somewhere deep within the flat.

 

Gerald gasps as he steps across the threshold into the central hallway of the Pimlico flat. He looks about in delight at the beautiful gilded Japanese inspired wallpaper, stylish oriental furniture and sparking chandeliers, all of which are reflected in several long, bevelled mirrors which trick the eye into thinking the vestibule is more spacious than it actually is. “I say, Lettuce Leaf,” he utters in a rapturous voice. “This is divine!”

 

A soft thump against his thigh breaks his reverie. Looking down he finds the culprit: a long round white embossed satin bolster lies at his feet on the carpet. He stoops to pick it up.

 

“Stop calling me that, Gerald!” Lettice stands in the doorway to his right, her arms stretched across the frame, arrayed in a smart pale yellow day dress with a lowered waist and handkerchief point hem of his own making. “You know I don’t like it.”

 

“I know, but I just can’t help it darling! You always rise to the bait.”

 

“You’re just lucky I only hit you with a bolster, Gerald!” She wags her lightly bejewelled finger at him in a mock warning as she smiles at her old childhood friend.

 

“And you’re just lucky I didn’t drop the parcel you asked me to pick up from your flat.” He holds up a parcel wrapped up in brown paper, tied with string. “By the way, you look as divine as your interiors, darling.”

 

“In your design, of course, Gerald.”

 

“Of course! That’s why you look so divine, Lettice darling!”

 

“Of course!” She saunters over, her louis heels sinking into the luxurious oriental rug that covers most of the vestibule floor. “May I have my parcel, please Gerald?” She holds out her hands towards the package.

 

With a sigh of mock frustration, he hands it to her. “Anything else, milady?” He makes an exaggerated bow before her, like a toadying courtier or servant.

 

“Yes, you can make yourself useful by picking up that errant bolster and follow me.”

 

“You deserve this and a good deal more for bossing me about!” Gerald playfully picks up the bolster and thwacks it through the air before it lightly connects with Lettice’s lower back, making her squeal. “I come to your aid yet again, as you forget a vital finishing touch for your interior designs.”

 

Lettice giggles as she turns back to her friend and kittenishly tugs on the bolster, which he tussles back. “I know Gerald! I can’t believe how scatterbrained I was to leave this,” She holds the parcel aloft, hanging from her elegant fingers by the bow of string on the top. “Behind at Cavendish Mews! There has just been so much to organise with this interior design. I’m so pleased that there was a telephone booth I could use on the corner. The telephone has arrived here but hasn’t been collected to the exchange yet.”

 

“And isn’t it lucky that my fortunes seem to be changing with the orders from Mrs. Middle-of-the-Road-Middle-Class Hatchett and her friends paying for the installation of a telephone, finally, in my frock shop.”

 

“All the more reason not to deride Mrs. Hatchett, or her friends.”

 

“And,” Gerald speaks over his friend, determined not to be scolded again about his names for Mrs. Hatchett by her. “Wasn’t it lucky that I was in Grosvenor Street to take your urgent call.”

 

“It was!” she enthuses in a joking way.

 

“And the fact that I just happen to have the Morris*…”

 

She cuts his sentence off by saying with a broad smile, “Is the icing on the cake, Gerald darling! You are such a brick! Now, be honest, you’ve been longing to see this interior. You’ve been dropping hints like briquettes for the last week!”

 

Gerald ignores her good-natured dig at his nosiness. “Of course! I’m always interested in what my dearest friend is doing to build up her business.” Looking around again, a feeling of concern clouds his face. “I just hope this one pays, unlike some duchesses I could mention. This looks rather luxurious and therefore, costly I suspect.”

 

“Don’t worry Gerald, this nouveau riche parvenu is far more forthcoming with regular cheques to cover the costs, and never a quibble over price.”

 

“That’s a mercy! I suppose there is that reliability about the middle-classes. Mr. Hatchett always settles my account without complaint, or procrastination. Indeed, all her friends’ husbands do.” He looks again at the brown paper parcel in Lettice’s hand. “I see that comes from Ada May Wong. What’s inside.”

 

“Come with me, darling Gerald, on the beginning of your tour of Miss Ward’s flat,” she beckons to her friend with a seductive, curling finger and a smile. “And all will be revealed.”

 

Gerald follows Lettice through a boudoir, which true to her designs was a fantasy of oriental brocade and gilded black japanned furniture, and into a smaller anti-room off it.

 

“Miss Wanetta Ward’s dressing room.” Lettice announces, depositing the box on a small rosewood side table and spreading her arms expansively.

 

“Oh darling!” Gerald enthuses breathlessly as she looks about the small room.

 

Beautiful gold wallpaper embossed with large flowers and leaves entwining cover the walls, whilst a thick Chinese rug covers the parquetry floor. Around the room are furnishings of different eras and cultures, which in the wrong arrangement might jar, but under Lettice’s deft hand fit elegantly together. Chinese Screens and oriental furniture sit alongside select black japanned French chinoiserie pieces from the Eighteenth Century. White French brocade that matches the bolster Gerald holds are draped across a Japanese chaise lounge. Satsuma and cloisonné vases stand atop early Nineteenth Century papier-mâché tables and stands.

 

“So, you like it then?” Lettice asks her friend.

 

“It’s like being in some sort of divine genie’s bottle!” Gerald exclaims as he places the bolster on the daybed where it obviously belongs and clasps his hands in ecstasies, his eyes illuminated by exhilaration at the sight. “This is wonderful!”

 

“And not too gauche or showy?”

 

Gerald walks up to the chinoiserie dressing table and runs his hands along its slightly raised pie crust edge, admiring the fine painting of oriental scenes beneath the crystal perfume bottles and the gold dressing table set. “You know, when you suggested using gold wallpaper, I must confess I did cringe a little inside. It sounds rather gauche, but I also thought that might suit an up-and-coming film actress.”

 

“I remember you telling me so.” Lettice acknowledges.

 

“However, I must now admit that this is not at all what I was expecting. It’s decadent yes, but not showy. It’s elegant and ever so luxurious.” He traces a pattern of a large daisy’s petal in the raised embossing of the wallpaper. “This must have cost a fortune, Lettice!”

 

“There is a reason why this is the only room decorated with this paper, Gerald.”

 

“So, what’s in the box that is the finishing touch for in here?” Gerald asks, looking around. “As far as I can tell, there isn’t anything lacking.” He looks at the silvered statue of a Chinese woman holding a child on the right-hand back corner of the dressing table, her face and the child’s head nuzzled into his mother’s neck reflected in the black and gilt looking glass. “It seems you’re even providing Miss Ward with dressing table accessories.”

 

“Ah, yes,” Lettice remarks as she takes a pair of scissors and cuts the string on the parcel. “Well, that was Miss Ward’s request, not mine. She wanted a dressing table set to match the dressing room. She says that she will keep her existing set in her dressing room at Islington Studios**. The bottles of perfume she had sent over the other day. Which brings me to what’s in the parcel!”

 

Lettice removed the brown paper wrapping, the paper tearing noisily. Opening the box inside, she rummages through layers of soft whispering tissue paper and withdraws a large, lidded bowl with an exotic bird on the lid and a pattern of flowers around the bowl.

 

“It’s Cantonese Famille Rose,” she explains to her friend. “And it will serve as Miss Ward’s new container for her trademark bead and pearl necklaces.”

 

She walks across the small space to the dressing table and places it on the back left-hand corner. Standing back, she sighs with satisfaction, pleased with her placement of it.

 

“Now, let me give you a tour of the rest of the flat, Gerald.” Lettice says happily.

 

“Oh!” her companion remarks suddenly, a hand rising to his mouth anxiously. “I almost forgot!”

 

“Forgot what, Gerald?”

 

“This.” Gerald reaches into the pocket of his black coat and withdraws a small buff coloured envelope which he hands over to Lettice. “Edith gave it to me to give to you since I was coming over here. She thought it might be important.”

 

Lettice looks quizzically at the envelope. “A telegram?”

 

“Apparently, it arrived a quarter of an hour after you left this morning.”

 

Lettice uses the sharp blade of the scissors to slice the thin paper of the envelope. Her face changes first to concentration as she reads the message inside, and then a look of concern clouds her pretty features as she digests what it says.

 

“Not bad news, I trust.”

 

“It’s from the Pater.” Lettice replies simply as she holds it out for Gerald to read.

 

“Lettice,” Gerald reads. “Come to Glynes*** without delay. Prepare to stay overnight. Do not procrastinate. Father…”

 

“I wonder what he wants?” Lettice ponders, gnawing on her painted thumbnail as she accepts the telegram back with her free hand.

 

“Only your father would use a word like procrastinate in a telegram. It must be important if he wants you to go down without delay.” Gerald ruminates.

 

“And we were going to the Café Royal**** for dinner tonight!” Lettice whines.

 

“I’m the one who should be complaining, darling. After all you are my meal ticket there! Don’t worry, the Café Royal will still be here when you get back from Wiltshire, whatever happens down there. I’ll be waiting here too. I’d offer to drive you down tomorrow, but I have several dress fittings booked for tomorrow, including one for Margot’s wedding dress.”

 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Lettice flaps Gerald’s offer away with her hand. “I’ll take the train and have Harris pick me up from the railway station in the village.” She folds the telegram back up again and slips it back into the envelope before depositing it into one of the discreet pockets Gerald had designed on the front of her dress. “Come, let’s not let this spoil the occasion.” She smiles bravely at her friend, although he can still see the concern clouding her eyes. “Let me give you a guided tour of the rest of the flat.”

 

“Lead the way!” Gerald replies, adding extra joviality to his statement, even though he knows that it sounds false.

 

The pair leave Miss Ward’s dressing room as Lettice begins to show Gerald around the other rooms.

 

*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.

 

**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.

 

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

 

****The 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.

 

Luxurious it may be, but this upper-class interior is not all that it seems, for it is made up entirely of items from my 1:12 miniatures collection. Some of the pieces I have had since I was a child, whilst others I have acquired in the subsequent years from specialist doll house stockists and online artisans and retailers.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The beautiful black japanned and gilded chinoiserie dressing table which is hand decorated with on its surface with an oriental scene, was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

On the dressing table’s surface there is a gilt pewter dressing table set consisting of comb, hairbrushes and hand mirror, the latter featuring a real piece of mirror set into it. This set was given to me as a gift one Christmas when I was around seven years old. These small pieces have survived the tests of time and survived without being lost, even though they are tiny.

 

There is a selection of sparkling perfume bottles on Wanetta’s dressing table too, which are handmade by an English artisan for the Little Green Workshop. Made of cut coloured crystals set in a gilt metal frames or using vintage cut glass beads they look so elegant and terribly luxurious.

 

The Cantonese Famille Rose export ware lidded jar I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street dolls house specialty shop. It has been hand painted and decorated, although I am not sure as to whom the artist is that created it. Famille rose, (French: “rose family”) group of Chinese porcelain wares characterized by decoration painted in opaque overglaze rose colours, chiefly shades of pink and carmine. These colours were known to the Chinese as yangcai (“foreign colours”) because they were first introduced from Europe (about 1685).

 

The stylised silvered statue of a Chinese woman carrying her child is an unusual 1:12 artisan figurine, which I acquired along with a range of other metal statues from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The looking glass hanging on the wall, whilst appearing to be joined to the Bespaq chinoiserie table, is another piece from my childhood. It is actually a small pink plastic framed looking glass. The handle broke off long ago, and I painted in black and gilded it to give it a Regency look. I think it matches the table very nicely, as I’m sure Lettice would have thought too!

 

The blue and gold vase featuring lilac coloured wisteria on the far left of the photo is really a small Satsuma export ware vase from the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century. It is four centimetres in height and was the first piece of Satsuma ware I ever owned. I have had it since I was eight. Satsuma ware (薩摩焼, Satsuma-yaki) is a type of Japanese pottery originally from Satsuma Province, southern Kyūshū. Today, it can be divided into two distinct categories: the original plain dark clay early Satsuma (古薩摩, Ko-Satsuma) made in Satsuma from around 1600, and the elaborately decorated export Satsuma (京薩摩, Kyō-Satsuma) ivory-bodied pieces which began to be produced in the nineteenth century in various Japanese cities. By adapting their gilded polychromatic enamel overglaze designs to appeal to the tastes of western consumers, manufacturers of the latter made Satsuma ware one of the most recognized and profitable export products of the Meiji period.

 

The oxblood cloisonné vase with floral panels to the left of the dressing table I bought, along with its pair, from the Camberwell Market in Melbourne many years ago. The elderly woman who sold them to me said that her father had bought them in Peking before he left there in the 1920s. She believed they were containers for opium. The stoppers with tiny, long spoons which she said she remembered as a child had long since gone missing. Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects. In recent centuries, vitreous enamel has been used, and inlays of cut gemstones, glass and other materials were also used during older periods. The resulting objects can also be called cloisonné. The decoration is formed by first adding compartments (cloisons in French) to the metal object by soldering or affixing silver or gold wires or thin strips placed on their edges. These remain visible in the finished piece, separating the different compartments of the enamel or inlays, which are often of several colours. Cloisonné enamel objects are worked on with enamel powder made into a paste, which then needs to be fired in a kiln. The Japanese produced large quantities from the mid Nineteenth Century, of very high technical quality cloisonné. In Japan cloisonné enamels are known as shippō-yaki (七宝焼). Early centres of cloisonné were Nagoya during the Owari Domain. Companies of renown were the Ando Cloisonné Company. Later centres of renown were Edo and Kyoto. In Kyoto Namikawa became one of the leading companies of Japanese cloisonné.

 

The Chinese folding screen to the left of the photo I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was. Reflected in the mirror is a matching screen with different patterns on it, in this case vases of stylised Japanese flowers, which I recently acquired through a seller on E-Bay.

 

Also reflected in the mirror is a wooden Chinese dragon chair. It is one of a pair, which together with their matching low table I found in a little shop in Singapore whilst I was holiday there. They are beautifully carved from cherrywood.

 

The gold embossed 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 travelled twenty-five miles west of London into Berkshire to the picturesque town of Ascot, where the Ascot Racecourse is. The town, built up along meandering roads, is made up mostly of large red brick mansions nestled discreetly amidst well established manicured gardens behind trimmed hedges and closed gates. It is here that Lettice has come to meet a prospective new client: Mrs. Evelyn Hawarden, wife of fabric manufacturer Joseph Hawarden. Hawarden Fabrics have been embraced by the British public since first appearing on the market in 1919, for their quality and affordability, and have proved especially popular amidst the working classes who want colour and something better than what they have had in the post-war boom of optimism, including Lettice’s maid, Edith, who made her friend Hilda a new dance frock using some Hawarden Fabrics russet art silk*. This has raised the Hawarden’s expectations and Mr. Hawarden has recently acquired ‘The Briars’, a red brick Georgian mansion in Ascot that is more suitable for he and his wife’s new social standing.

 

Against her usual practices, Lettice has foregone the initial meeting she would have had at Cavendish Mews after Mrs. Hawarden explained that she was simply too busy with her new house to come down to Mayfair, and implored Lettice to consider coming up to Ascot for the day. As she rides the train through the rolling green countryside of Berkshire, Lettice cannot help but wonder whether her agreement to Mrs. Hawarden’s demands is against her better judgement. Since the publication of the interiors she completed for her friends and fellow members of her Embassy Club coterie, Dickie and Margot Channon, in the magazine, Country Life**, Lettice’s expertise as an interior designer has suddenly been in great demand after Henry Tipping*** described her as having a “tasteful Modern Classical Revival Style”. She has already had to decline several hopeful clients whose wishes for new interiors do not appeal to her own sense of design. Yet here she is, travelling to see a woman who has shown to be somewhat bombastic at her insistence that Lettice visit her, rather than the other way around, at a house that she knows nothing about beyond the fact that it is a recent acquisition of Mr. Hawarden. As she distractedly turns the page of “Whose Body?”**** in her lap, having only taken in half of Dorothy L. Sayers words as she contemplates her journey, Lettice feels an unease in her stomach.

 

As requested, when the steam of the train carrying Lettice and a great number of people attending the Ascot Races from London to Ascot railway station cleared, there stood Mrs. Hawarden’s chauffer, dressed in a smart grey uniform and cap, ready to take her to ‘The Briars’. As the Worsley drove up the long and slightly rutted driveway boarded by clipped yew hedges, she prepared for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised when the car pulled into a wide carriage turning circle before a rather lovely two-storey red brick Georgian mansion with two white painted sash windows either side of a porticoed front door and five matching windows spread evenly across the façade of the upper floor. Assisted to alight by the chauffer, Lettice notes looking up at the façade before her that whilst the house is nowhere near as large or as fine as her own palatial Georgian childhood home of Glynes*****, it does have graceful and elegant country charm which makes her feel more at ease with what may lie within its walls.

 

Striding across the crunching white gravel driveway with the footsteps of the daughter of a Viscount to the front door, it is opened by a maid dressed in her black moire afternoon uniform accessorised with an ornamental lace apron, cuffs and matching cap. Whilst she may look the part, Lettice notes critically that the maid only takes her pea green travelling coat, leaving her holding her matching green stub ended parasol as she shows her into the drawing room, where Lettice is told by the maid that she is expected.

 

Entering the room Lettice is greeted by a fug of greyish blue cigarette smoke that hangs like a pall in the atmosphere. Beneath a round table in the middle of the room, a small whorl of reddish brown fur in a plaited basket bares its teeth and growls.

 

“Yat-See! Don’t growl at the guest! My dear Miss Chetwynd!” enthusiastically exclaims a female voice with a thick Mancunian accent Lettice recognises as Mrs. Hawarden’s. “Here you are at last!”

 

Rising from her place nestled into a very comfortable white upholstered sofa, Mrs Evelyn Hawarden appears to be in her mid thirties, and therefore much younger than her voice portrayed when she telephoned Lettice’s flat. With red hennaed hair set about her rounded face in soft Marcel waves****** she looks quite pert and pretty. Although dressed in a similar style to her mother, Lady Sadie, in a tweed calf length skirt, a flounced white silk blouse and a silk cardigan – the classic uniform of a relaxed country lady – Mrs. Hawarden cannot disguise her more aspiring middle-class origins, for she wears a little too much powder on her nose and sports a pair of round rouge marks on her cheeks that Lady Sadie would never entertain on her own face. Mrs. Hawarden’s hair is perhaps a little too obviously coloured, and she wears four strands of creamy white pearls about her neck, rather than the customary two worn informally. Even as she stands, she tugs awkwardly at her skirt, implying that this is not what she is used to wearing. Nevertheless, she has a pleasant smile and the sparkle in her brown eyes is a jolly one.

 

“How do you do, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies.

 

“Please pardon my pet Pekingese, Yat-See, for growling.” The hostess indicates to the bristling bundle of fur with wary black currant eyes. “He’s rather protective of his Mummy, don’t you know.” Mrs. Hawarden’s painted face falls when she notices Lettice still clutching her parasol. She glances between it and Lettice’s face. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Miss Chetwynd!” she exclaims apologetically. “Please just put your things down there.” She indicates with an open hand to the corner of a second cream sofa opposite the one she has been sitting on. “Barbara is new to being a maid. The house didn’t come with staff I’m afraid, and being new to the area ourselves, well, I think we’re seen as a rather unknown quantity, so getting help hasn’t been all that easy.”

 

“Oh it’s quite alright,” Lettice assures her hostess, gingerly lowering her parasol as Yat-See starts to growl again from his basket, and leans it against the soft edge of the sofa and deposits her handbag onto its seat. “I know how hard it can be to find good servants. I’m only grateful that I live in a flat and have requirements only for one maid.”

 

“Oh yes, I spoke to her the first time I telephoned you at Cavendish Mews. She seemed very efficient and was quick to get my details so that you could return my telephone call.”

 

“Thankfully Edith is a very capable maid, although I think you may have mistaken her efficiency for haste. Sadly, she has no love of the telephone and thinks it quite an unnatural contraption.” Lettice chuckles indulgently.

 

“What a load of rot!” blusters a burbling male Mancunian voice from behind a wall of newspaper, the utterance accompanied by clouds and curlicues of white cigarette smoke.

 

Yat-See immediately starts to bark in answer to the voice.

 

“Yat-see!” scolds Mrs. Hawarden. “Hush, or I’ll get Barbara to come and take you to the kitchen, which is where naughty boys go!”

 

Silently Lettice wishes her hostess would do just that. The dog seems to understand that he is being scolded and falls silent, but he continues to watch Lettice with his dark and suspicious eyes. Taking her gaze away from the pampered Pekingese and looking to the sofa behind her hostess, Lettice is suddenly made aware that she and Mrs. Hawarden are not the only two people in the room. The newspaper lowers to reveal a middle aged man, probably a little bit older than his wife, in a smart London suit, with slick black hair and a handsome mature face.

 

“Miss Chetwynd, may I present my husband, Mr. Joseph Hawarden, proprietor of Hawarden’s Fabrics.” Mrs. Hawarden says proudly, clasping her hands together.

 

“I say, how do you do, Miss Chetwynd!” Mr. Hawarden says, not getting up from his seat, but reaching forward and extending his hand to his guest. “Jolly glad to have you here. Evelyn’s done nothing but talk about your skills and what she wants you to do here, for the last few weeks. She was most impressed with your interiors in ‘Country Life’.” he adds, glancing across to the inlaid round top of the table between the two sofas upon which sit a collection of newspapers, magazines and periodicals, including the copy of ‘Country Life’ featuring the interiors for ‘Chi an Treth’.

 

Lettice extends her own hand and allows it to be shaken in a rather heavy and businesslike fashion by the industrialist. “How do you do, Mr. Hawarden. I’m delighted to be here,” She glances at Mrs. Hawarden. “Although I wasn’t expecting you to be here for this meeting.”

 

“Oh, Joseph just happens to be home this afternoon, Miss Chetwynd.” laughs Mrs. Hawarden a little awkwardly. “It isn’t by design. I’ll be the one making the decisions.”

 

“Yes,” agrees Mr. Hawarden, leaning forward and snatching a dainty teacup decorated with blue roses from the table and taking a rather large gulp from it, the cup’s rim disappearing beneath his finely manicured thick black moustache. “This interiors business is more Evelyn’s department than mine. My fabrics are fashion, not furniture fabrics.” He chortles good-naturedly. “But since I’ll be the one footing the bills, you should give me an estimate of your costs.”

 

“Oh,” Lettice begins a little nervously. “I shouldn’t think we’ll be discussing that today, Mr. Hawarden.”

 

“What?” he scoffs. “No costs today?”

 

“I shouldn’t think so.” Lettice assures him. “Today is really, just about consultation. I would usually have conducted it at my premises in Mayfair,” She momentarily looks at Mrs. Hawarden again before returning to the industrialist. “However, your wife was insistent that she didn’t have the time to come down. Today is about discussing what Mrs. Hawarden hopes to do with the interiors of ‘The Briars’.”

 

“I see,” Mr. Hawarden replies, tapping his nose knowingly with his right hand, still clutching the smoking end of his cigarette. “You’re a smart businesswoman, Miss Chetwynd. Best lull Evelyn into a sense of security, so then you can unleash the bills on me, eh?”

 

“Oh no…” stammers Lettice. “I don’t mean… I mean it would…”

 

The man bursts out laughing, his fulsome guffaws intermixing with the slightly more timid and higher pitched giggle of his wife.

 

“Don’t listen to Joseph, Miss Chetwynd,” Mrs. Hawarden assures her guest. “He’s just trying to be funny, within his limited ability of being a boring businessman.” She rolls her eyes at her husband, who smiles back sheepishly at her before putting up the paper again. “He doesn’t mean what he says, Miss Chetwynd.” Indicating to the sofa again she continues, “Please have a seat, won’t you.” She walks up to the table. “Barbara may not know what to do with an umbrella, Miss Chetwynd, but she does make a fine cup of tea. When Johnston went to pick you up from the railway station, I had her brew us up a pot. May I interest you?” She picks up third, as of yet unused, china teacup and a pretty sleek silver Art Deco teapot. “Or would you prefer coffee?”

 

“Oh no, tea will be most satisfactory,” Lettice replies as she sinks into the comfortable enveloping upholstery of the sofa next to her handbag. “Thank you, Mrs. Hawarden.”

 

As Mrs. Hawarden fixes her tea, Lettice tries to ignore the hostile stare of Yat-See and glances around the well lit drawing room flooded with light from one of the ground floor windows she had spied upon her arrival. Tastefully appointed, the room features what looks like original Eighteenth Century hand painted wallpaper, which whilst dulled somewhat from many decades of warm wood fires, and perhaps more recently cigarette smoke – she glances at Mr. Hawarden as he sits, absorbed in his newspaper once more, his cigarette smouldering between his right index and middle finger poking around the edge of the newsprint – it still shows off lovely rich hues. Some of the furnishings are possibly original to the room too, such as a small demilune table to the left of the fireplace and the inlaid round table between the two sofas, but the room has been overlaid with other styles over time. The cream damask sofas are obviously pre-war, but perhaps not much more than a decade old. Paintings of different eras and styles hang on the walls in an easy comfort of familiarity. The objects scattered about the surfaces of the room suggest an eclectic, yet restrained hand: silver candlesticks, tall vases, decorative bowls, Meissen figurines and two pretty ‘cottage orneé’ pastille burners******* on the mantle.

 

Lettice gratefully accepts the cup of tea proffered by her hostess. “So, you were saying that you are newcomers to Ascot, Mrs. Hawarden?”

 

“Yes,” Mrs. Hawarden replies, subconsciously reaching up to her strands of pearls and worrying them at the mention of them being newly arrived. “My husband and I are from Manchester originally, as I’m sure you can tell from our accents.” Lettice politely sips her tea and doesn’t remark upon either of their thick accents which are so different to those born in the south of England. “We only recently acquired ‘The Briars’ so that my husband can be closer to his new fabric factory in Croydon and to his London office, and I have been craving the space and fresh air of the south.” The woman opens a small silver cigarette case on the table, offers one to Lettice, who politely declines with s small shake of her head, and then takes out a thin cigarette for herself and lights it. Walking across the carpet she tosses the spent match into the grate as she leans against the fireplace.

 

“Indeed.” muses Lettice as she watches Mrs. Hawarden take a long drag on her cigarette before blowing out a plume of bluish grey acrid smoke into the air between she and Lettice.

 

Yat-See suddenly picks himself out of his basket, making Lettice flinch and her cup rattle in its saucer as she fears he is about to attack her legs. Yet he pads across the Chinese rug and sits in front of his mistress protectively keeping guard to protect her from the stranger in the drawing room.

 

“And this place was up for sale, and I fell in love with it instantly, didn’t I Joseph?”

 

“Indeed, you did, Evelyn.” agrees her husband without looking up from his newspaper.

 

“So, we bought it: lock, stock and barrel.”

 

“Then the furnishings aren’t yours, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice asks, gesturing to their surrounds as she places her teacup on the small Georgian pedestal table at her right.

 

“No. Oh no!” Mrs, Hawarden replies, evidently wishing to distance herself from the elegant, yet comfortably lived in country house style. “Not at all Miss Chetwynd! That’s why I couldn’t come down to Mayfair to meet you like you had originally suggested. We’re only freshly moved in, and I’m still trying to find my feet here. I haven’t even had time to unpack my photos from our Manchester house yet.”

 

“Yet you already know that you want to redecorate, Mrs. Hawarden,” Lettice queries. “Even though you are only newly minted here?”

 

“Goodness yes, Miss Chetwynd!” exclaims the hostess, blowing out another cloud of smoke as she speaks. She bends down and strokes her dog on the head, his black eyes closing in pleasure ar her touch. With a slight groan she stretches back into an upright position. “These,” she gesticulates with a languid hand around her. “Are the interiors of a dead woman.”

 

“A dead woman?” Lettice queries again in concern.

 

“Yes. You see we bought ‘The Briars’ from the descendants of the last occupier. Alice… Alice… Oh, what was her name, Joseph? Moynahan?”

 

“Mainwaring, Evelyn my dear.” Mr. Hawarden looks up from his paper to his wife. “Alice Mainwaring.”

 

“Yes!” Mrs. Hawarden claps her hands, sending a tumble of ashes cascading through the air where they land in Yat-See’s red dioxide coat and on the dark slate hearth surrounding the fireplace. “That’s it! Alice Mainwaring. Her widowed aunt or some such lived here alone and died a few years ago, and she didn’t want to hold onto the place.”

 

“Humph!” mutters Mr. Hawarden. “More like she couldn’t afford to hold onto the place, owing to these bloody awful rates of Income Tax******** the Government dare to charge us all now. Mind you, she put a good face on it, I’ll say that.”

 

Yat-See starts barking again.

 

“Yat-See!” scolds Mrs. Hawarden again. “She didn’t even want the old family paintings.”

 

“I doubt she could afford to keep them, Evelyn my dear, even if she’d wanted to.” Her husband counters. “I would have offered her less for the place if she’d taken them.”

 

“Anyway, whatever the circumstances, I felt the house could do with a little,” Mrs. Hawarden weaves her hand dramatically through the air as if holding a magic wand. “Sprucing up********.”

 

“Sprucing up?” Lettice queries again, looking uncertainly at Mrs. Hawarden.

 

“Yes!” Mrs. Hawarden says with a sigh, sending two plumes of smoke rushing from her nostrils. “Brighten it up a bit and make it a bit more,” She pauses whilst she thinks of the right word she is seeking. “Modern.”

 

“And you are expecting furnishings from Manchester, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice asks.

 

“Good lord no!” the hostess exclaims. “The furniture from our Audenshaw house is even worse than these bits of sticks. Yat-See, our clothes, my photos and a few bits and bobs are about all we wanted to bring from there. Isn’t that right, Joseph?”

 

“Quite, my dear Evelyn. Quite.”

 

“No.” She smiles with smug pleasure. “We’ve left that life behind, and now we plan to make a new start here.”

 

“You do know,” Lettice remarks tentatively. “That some people would be quite happy, if acquiring a country house and its contents in its entirety, to leave it all in situ.”

 

“Ahh.” Mrs. Hawarden says with a wagging bejewelled finger and a knowing smile at Lettice. “But Joseph and I aren’t just anyone. That’s why as soon as I saw your article, I knew I wanted your expertise to help me bring life back into this poor old house.” She slaps the mantlepiece with the palm of her hand. “I read in Country Life that the rooms of the Channon’s house were a bit dark, so you lightened it.”

 

“Well, yes,” Lettice agrees hesitantly. “I did, but the house really was rather damp being built by the sea, and awfully neglected after having stood empty for many years. This house appears to be in much better condition and is far cosier than ‘Chi an Treth’ was, Mrs. Hawarden.”

 

“And,” Mrs. Hawarden continues, appearing not to have heard Lettice’s protestations. “I also read that some of the statues you used to furnish the house came from the Portland Gallery in Mayfair.”

 

“They did, Mrs. Hawarden, but I…”

 

“And I just love the modernity of some of the art in there. I’m currently in the process of acquiring some nice new modern artworks from several London galleries, although not The Portland, to hang in place of some of these rather drab daubs.” she indicates to the classical oil painting of a landscape hanging above the fireplace behind her.

 

Lettice glances sadly at the small, rather pretty late Nineteenth Century oil painting of a mother and daughter gathering flowers just to the right of the fireplace, silently apologising to the possible former owner of the house.

 

“Actually, Evelyn my dear, I think you’ll find, I’m acquiring them.” remarks Mr. Hawarden rather definitely.

 

“Don’t be bore, dear Joseph.” Mrs. Hawarden retorts kindly. “Yes, it’s true, you may be putting up the money for them, but we both know that of the two of us, I’m the one with the real artistic vision.”

 

“If you say so, Evelyn.” Mr. Hawarden returns to his paper.

 

Lettice looks sadly around her at the well appointed and comfortable room. In her mind, she can’t see anything wrong with it, other than perhaps the hostile presence of Yat-See, and sadly he cannot be papered over. The room’s décor has grown with the house, mellowed and softened into a comfortable semi-formal Edwardian country house interior over the decades since its original construction, not entirely dissimilar to that of her brother Leslie’s new home with his wife in the Dower House at Glynes, only not quite so old, it having been built in the 1850s. A queasiness begins to roil about in the pit of her stomach. Yat-See seems to pick up on it and quietly growls at Lettice again, until he receives a small nudge on the bottom by the dainty toe of Mrs. Hawarden’s brown leather shoe.

 

“You do know that my style is Modern Classical Revival, don’t you, Mrs, Hawarden?” Lettice explains politely. “I do not believe in flinging everything out and replacing it with something new.”

 

“Yes of course I know, Miss Chetwynd.” Mrs, Hawarden smiles. “I’m not suggesting we ‘fling it all out’ as you say. I’d be happy if you felt it worth repurposing a few sticks of furniture. I believe you did repaint a demilune table, not unlike this one,” She reaches behind her and pats the surface of the table Lettice had noticed before. “For Mrs. Channon. You could do the same here, if you like. I’m happy to be led by you, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“Well,” Lettice says. “Really, I should be the one who is led by you, Mrs. Hawarden. Perhaps you could suggest to me what you were thinking and we’ll… work from there. Shall we?” She takes a small sip of her tea. “What do you envisage, Mrs. Hawarden?”

 

The woman looks around her, humming and hawing as she screws up her mouth in concentration.

 

“Well, for a start, if I’m going to have new paintings hanging in here, I’ll need new wallpaper. How old do you think this paper is, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“I would say it is probably Eighteenth Century.” Lettice says with concern. “You do realise that it’s probably hand painted. My parents have similar at our home in Wilt…”

 

“Well there you go!” interrupts Mrs. Hawarden. “That explains why it’s so dull and dreary! No: new paper for new paintings. Definitely!” the Pekingese starts barking animatedly. “See, even my beloved little boy agrees, don’t you darling?” She blows him a kiss. “Maybe something geometric?” She looks questioningly at Lettice who simply smiles up politely at her from her place on the sofa but says nothing. She casts her eyes around the room. “And of course these dreadful settees will have to go!”

 

Lettice quietly cringes at the use of the word ‘settee’, giving away Mr. Hawarden’s aspiring middle-class origins**********.

 

“Pity Evelyn my dear,” her husband pipes up. “I quite like these. They really are rather nice and comfy.” He starts bouncing up and down slightly in his seat, making the springs inside the sofa protest quietly beneath the white damask upholstery which makes Yat-See start quietly growling again.

 

“No! I want something more streamlined,” Mrs, Hawarden insists. “Rather like Mrs. Channon’s settees I think.”

 

A discreet knock on the drawing room door interrupts Mrs. Hawarden’s thoughts and makes Yat-See yap loudly as he scurries over to the door.

 

“Yes.” she calls out imperiously.

 

Barbara, the maid who had opened the door to Lettice upon her arrival and shown her into the drawing room opens the door and steps in, almost stepping on the dog, who barks savagely at the poor domestic.

 

“Yat-See! Hush darling! Yes Barbara?”

 

“Begging your pardon, mum, but lunch is ready.” The maid bobs a curtsey. “You said I ought to tell you when it was ready, and Cook is serving up now.”

 

“Yes, yes,” mutters Mrs. Hawarden dismissively with a final puff of smoke, dropping her cigarette butt into the grate next to the spent match. “Thank you, Barbara.”

 

The maid bobs another curtsey and turns to go.

 

“Oh Barbara!” Mrs. Hawarden calls after her gaily.

 

“Yes, mum?” the maid asks.

 

“Barbara, next time we are receiving guests and they are carrying an umbrella,” Mrs. Hawarden adeptly snatches up Lettice’s green umbrella from the floor and holds it out to her maid in a smooth movement. “Make sure you put it in the receptacle that it was designed to be inserted into.”

 

“Mum?” the maid asks queryingly, reaching tentatively out and accepting the umbrella.

 

“Put it in the hallstand, Barbara, with the other umbrellas.”

 

“Oh, yes mum!” Barbara apologises and bobs another curtsey, first at her mistress and then at Lettice, before quickly withdrawing.

 

Lettice silently cringes slightly again at witnessing the public beration of the poor, inexperienced maid, however mild it was.

 

“Well!” gasps Mrs. Hawarden, snatching up her beloved dog from the floor with a swoop. “Shall we go through then, Miss Chetwynd? I’m sure after your trip up from London, you must be starving.”

 

“Oh, yes.” Lettice lies brightly, depositing the teacup and saucer back onto the small Georgian occasional pedestal table and standing up. She eyes the dog warily as he hangs from his owner’s left arm.

 

“Good! Good!” her hostess replies, clapping her hands with delight. “That’s just as well. I’ve asked Cook to prepare a lovely lamb roast. You love titbits from the table, don’t you Yat-See?” She rubs her dog’s forehead lovingly before she winds her right arm through Lettice’s left. “Please, let me show you the way. Just wait until you see the dining room! It’s yellow!” She cringes. “Positively gruesome! I shall be very keen to hear your thoughts around what we can do about that.”

 

Mrs. Hawarden gently, yet at the same time forcefully, guides Lettice to the door from whence the maid came.

 

“Are you coming my dear?” Mrs, Hawarden calls to her husband over her shoulder.

 

“Yes, of course Evelyn!” Mr. Hawarden deposits the newspaper on the sofa cushions and extinguishes his cigarette in the ashtray on the table and follows the figure of his wife and Lettice arm-in-arm. “I shouldn’t wish to miss one of Cook’s wonderful roasts!”

 

As Lettice is guided down the hallway by her hostess, she senses what feels like a boulder in the very pit of her stomach. For the first time ever, she has a potential client with whom she is completely at odds with aesthetically, and she isn’t quite sure how she is going to explain her difference in opinions to the insistent Mrs. Hawarden diplomatically.

 

*The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.

 

**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.

 

***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.

 

****Whose Body? is a 1923 mystery novel by English crime writer and poet Dorothy L. Sayers. It was her debut novel, and the book in which she introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey.

 

*****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 and his wife Arabella.

 

******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. For those women who had longer hair, it was common to tie the hair at the nape of the neck and pin it above the ear with a stylish hair pin or flower. One famous wearer was American entertainer, Josephine Baker.

 

*******The Industrial Revolution in England caused a migration of people into the big cities in search of better wages and better working conditions. For the working class often this resulted in overcrowding in their housing conditions. There was poor sanitation and smells could be appalling. Pastille burners, sometimes called ‘cottage orneés’ were a way of combating these odours by burning pastilles of aromatic substances, which emitted sweet scented perfume into the room. They were made of porcelain or silver for the upper classes and by the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, pottery burners were bought by the middle and lower classes. They were modelled as cottages with a removable thatched roof, tollhouses, dovecotes decorated with flowers and by the 1830s the cottages had open windows so they became night lights as well. By 1840 designs for pastille burners included Chinese temples, Swiss cottages and turreted castles, all of which appealed to the Victorian taste. Pastille burners remained popular for all classes until 1870 when improvements to sanitary conditions were made.

 

*******In order to repay the expenditures made by the British during the Great War, like had been occurring since the Napoleonic Wars, the government increased Income Tax. The standard rate of income tax, which was six per cent in 1914, stood at thirty per cent in 1918. As a result of this, income tax rates amongst the wealthy were maintained at a high level, far in excess of those charged in the years before the war, making the management of estates very difficult if they were not productive, and many properties with stately homes left the ownership of their original families for the first time in generations, sold more often to wealthy industrialists or in the post-war era, wealthy Americans wishing for their own slice of British aristocratic history.

 

*********The verb spruce up means “to make neat or smart in appearance,” and it first appeared in English around the end of the 1500s.

 

**********Before, and even after the Second World War, a great deal could be attained about a person’s social origins by what language and terminology they used in class-conscious Britain by the use of ‘”U and non-U English” as popularised by upper class English author, Nancy Mitford when she published a glossary of terms in an article “The English Aristocracy” published by Stephen Spender in his magazine “encounter” in 1954. There are many examples in her glossary, amongst which are the word “sofa” which is a U (upper class) word, versus “settee” or “couch” which are a non-U (aspiring middle-class) words. Whilst quite outdated today, it gives an insight into how easily someone could betray their humbler origins by something as simple as a single word.

 

This comfortable country house drawing room interior may appear like something out of a historical stately country house, or a copy of ‘Country Life’, but it is in fact part of my 1:12 miniatures collection and includes items from my childhood, as well as those I have collected as an adult.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. The peacock fire screen and gilt fire tools I bought at the same time as the fireplace. Standing on the mantlepiece of the fireplace are two miniature diecast lead Meissen figurines: the Lady with the Canary and the Gentleman with the Butterfly, manufactured by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. They have been hand painted by me. Next to them on the mantlepiece are two silver candlesticks from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Also on the mantlepiece are two pottery cottage orneé pastille burners which have been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys. The dainty gilded clock is also made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland.

 

The two tall vases of flowers on the demilune tables flanking the fireplace are made by Falcon Miniatures, who are renown for the realism and detail in their miniatures.

 

The bowl decorated with fruit on the table on the left hand side of the fireplace was hand decorated by British artisan Rachael Maundy. The one on the right is a hand painted artisan miniature fluted bowl.

 

The two white damask sofas were supplied by Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The round table, an artisan miniature with a marquetry inlaid top, also came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop, as did the small pedestal table next to the right hand sofa.

 

Lettice’s green handbag is also a hand-made artisan piece of soft green leather, made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures. Her furled umbrella is a 1:12 artisan piece made of hand painted wood, metal and satin.

 

The silver Art Deco tea and coffee pots and square tray on the round table were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland. The blue rose tea set came from a miniatures stockist on E-Bay. The Elite Styles magazine from 1923 sitting on the table was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States. The 1:12 miniature copies of ‘The Times’, ‘The Mirror’ and the ‘Daily Express’, are made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The copy of ‘Country Life’ sitting on the table was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1923 edition of ‘Country Life’. The vase of red roses in the foreground was made by Falcon Miniatures.

 

All the paintings around ‘The Briars’ drawing room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.

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 it is Tuesday, and we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve. 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 select a suitable trousseau. So, she has brought her to London to stay in Cavendish Mews, so from there she can take Arabella shopping in all the best shops in the West End, and take her to her best friend Gerald Bruton’s couturier in Grosvenor Street for her wedding dress. Edith is busy, rushing about the room between the stove and the deal kitchen table in the centre of the room, banging copper pots and porcelain serving dishes alike as she starts to serve the luncheon of a roast beef with vegetables and gravy.

 

“Lawd!” exclaims Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman* who comes on Tuesdays and every third Thursday to do the hard jobs. Her eyes drifting to the white painted ceiling above as she struggles through the door leading from the kitchen to the hallway carrying her tin bucket and mop, she asks, “Ow many’s in there to make that kinda racket?”

 

“Shh!” Edith gasps, raising her left index finger to her lips whilst she holds a cleaver in her right. “Mrs. Boothby please.” she hisses. “They’ll hear you.”

 

As a raucous peal of girlish laughter erupts from behind the green baize door that leads from the kitchen to the dining room, the old Cockney looks sceptically at Edith. “I doubt that deary. All they ‘ear is their bloody selves.”

 

“Here, let me help you with that,” Edith says kindly as she takes a few steps over to Mrs. Boothby and grasps the handle of the bucket, her skin brushing against the far more careworn hands of the older woman.

 

“Ta dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says in relief.

 

The pair awkwardly manoeuvre the bucket of dirty water over to the white enamel sink and hoist it up onto the draining board with a concerted effort.

 

“I can take it from ‘ere, dearie.” the old woman says thankfully.

 

Edith steps back to the deal kitchen table where she starts to slice the roast beef she has just taken from the oven into thick medallions. As the cleaver cuts into the juicy browned flesh, revealing the soft pink inside, steam arises from it, teasing the maid with its delicious smell. She sighs quietly as she closes her eyes for a moment and hopes that there will be some remnants of the been from the noisy luncheon going in in the dining room.

 

“There are four of them, Mrs. Boothby: Miss Lettice, Miss Tyrwhitt, Mrs. Palmerston and Mrs. Channon, so hopefully there will be some leftover beef for us. If there is, I can pack half up for you to take home if you like.”

 

The old woman sniffs the delicious aroma drifting about the kitchen appreciatively as she tips the dirty grey water down the sink. “Oh ta, dearie!” she says enthusiastically. “I’d like that. I can ‘ave beef sandwiches when I go to Lady Landscome’s tomorra.”

 

“Doesn’t Lady Landscome feed you, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith looks across the kitchen at the old woman in shock.

 

“Well, she tells ‘er cook Mrs. Appleby to feed me, but the old trout’s so snooty like ‘er mistress that she don’t fink I deserve much more than bread ‘n drippin’, rather than the real food she serves ovvers on the staff. I’s just the old char what comes up from Poplar to do all the dirty and ‘ard jobs she and the over maid won’t do.”

 

“That’s awful, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says in outrage.

 

“Your old mistress, Mrs. Plaistow’s cook is no better to my friend Jackie.”

 

“Yes, but Mrs. Plaistow’s a mean old thing who keeps a close eye on the accounts, Mrs. Boothby. Cook only served meat to us once a week, occasionally twice if we were lucky, and it was never good stuff. I got a better feed at home with Mum and Dad than I ever did at Mrs. Plaistow’s.” She sighs as she begins to transfer the medallions of beef onto the white porcelain serving platter. “I feel very lucky to work for a lady like Miss Lettice.”

 

“She’s not a bad ‘un, far as mistresses go.” Mrs. Boothby agrees. “Certainly, compared to the likes of your Mrs. Plaistow.”

 

“I can’t say I’ve had a lot of experience of mistresses, Mrs. Boothby, but I think just about anyone would be better than her!”

 

“Oh I wouldn’t bet on that, Edith dearie. There’s plenty as bad as ‘er, or worse, let me tell you. An’ that Miss Tyrwhitt ain’t too bad neither.” She nods sagely. “She said ta to me today for washin’ the floors when she walked into the ‘allway, and she apologised for walkin’ across the clean floor. Nice surprise that was. What she stayin’ ‘ere for anyway?”

 

“Miss Tyrwhitt has come up from Wiltshire, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Ain’t Wiltshire where Miss Lettice is from?”

 

“Yes. Miss Tyrwhitt lives on the neighbouring estate to Miss Lettice. They grew up together, and she’s going to marry Miss Lettice’s eldest brother, the future Viscount Wrexham. That’s why she’s here. Miss Tyrwhitt doesn’t have any sisters, only brothers, so Miss Lettice has brought her up to London to take her to Mr. Bruton’s frock shop in Soho to get a wedding dress and other things for her trousseau.”

 

“If the girl comes from a good family like Miss Lettice, shouldn’t she ‘ave ‘er own ‘ouse to stay in?”

 

“I think her parents have a house in Curzon Street**, but I think they might think it a bit of a waste to open it up and engage servants just for Miss Tyrwhitt for a few weeks. Apparently, her mother is poorly, so she hasn’t come up to London. Besides, I think Miss Lettice enjoys having a house guest, especially one as nice as Miss Tyrwhitt.”

 

“Well, I ‘ope she don’t become a snooty up-‘erself woman when she becomes viscountess or whatever and lose ‘er nice manners.”

 

“Yes, she apologised to me too last night when she and Miss Lettice went out to the Embassy Club and she left clothes strewn across the bed which I had to put back in the wardrobe.” Edith smiles to herself as she places the last medallion on the platter. “Not that I mind. Those dresses of hers are so beautiful, all covered in lace and beads.”

 

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Boothby says with a cocked eyebrow as she rests her left arm on the edge of the bucket as she rights it. “Did you try any of ‘em on then, dearie?”

 

“Good heavens no!” Edith blushes before falling silent.

 

“But?” the old Cockney presses.

 

“But I must confess, I did hold one or two up against me as I stood in front of the mirror, before I put them back in the wardrobe.”

 

“I see.” chuckles the old woman knowingly.

 

“Well, a girl has a right to dream, doesn’t she Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks as she turns from the table and steps over to the stove where she withdraws a pot from its top.

 

“Course you do, Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby assures her younger friend as she steps aside, making room for Edith as she uses the lid of the copper saucepan to drain the sliced green beans inside. “A pretty girl like you, what’s steppin’ out wiv a nice chap like Frank Leadbetter deserves to know what ‘er weddin’ dress might look like.”

 

Bustling back to the table, Edith begins scooping the beans onto the platter beside the beef, just as another burst of female laughter emanates from the dining room. “Oh it’s hardly a dream of a wedding dress, Mrs. Boothby.” She lowers the saucepan onto the cutting board as she thinks. “At least not yet. We’ve only been walking out together for a little while now.”

 

“Don’t cha want to marry ‘im?”

 

“Well, I hardly know yet, do I? Once I get to know Frank a bit better, then I’ll decide whether I marry him or not, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“So, what was you thinkin’ as you paraded before the mirror like a princess, then?” Mrs. Boothby asks. “If you wasn’t thinkin’ about your weddin’ dress.”

 

Edith turns and puts the empty saucepan back on the stove and picks up a copper skillet in which mushrooms are frying in butter. “Well, I was just thinking about how beautiful it would be to wear one of those dresses to the Hammersmith Palais***.”

 

“Ahh, so you was bein’ Cinderella then, was you?”

 

Edith nods a little guiltily.

 

“You’d look quite a picture, I’d imagine, dearie. But I fink you’d look a picture in your own frocks. Your Ma taught you well. Youse quite good wiv the needle ‘n thread.”

 

Edith scatters mushrooms and butter sauce atop the beans. “Compared with those dresses, my frocks are so ordinary, Mrs. Boothby. It’s a wonder Frank wants to take me dancing.”

 

“Nah! Don’t talk such rubbish!” Mrs. Boothby strides across the room and grasps Edith by the shoulders. “There’s an old sayin’ that clothes make the man.”

 

“Yes, I’ve heard it.” Edith says, her head downcast.

 

“But it don’t say nuffink ‘bout a woman though, do it?”

 

“What do you mean, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“What I mean is, youse as pretty as a picture in your maid’s uniform, so just imagine ‘ow much more beautiful you look in one of your own frocks. You wear the frock: it don’t wear you! ‘Old your ‘ead ‘igh my girl, just like what I do when that nasty Mrs. Appleby feed me bread ‘n drippin’ ‘cause she finks I ain’t worth more than that. You are beautiful, just like Cinderella was, and if I know Frank even a little bit, I know ‘e’d be proud to take you dancin’ at the ‘Ammersmith Palais no matter what cha was wearin’!”

 

“Oh you’re right, Mrs. Boothby. I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. I have a lot to be thankful for.” She steps away from Mrs. Boothby and turns her back on her, busying herself stirring a small pot on the stove before removing it from the flame gas ring.

 

“Course you do, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby watches Edith pour thick brown gravy into a blue and white gravy boat. “An’ youse as much right to dream as what anyone else does, but just remember to ‘ang onto reality, cos dreams we wake up from, but reality’s ‘ere to stay.” She smiles at Edith, who looks her in the eye and smiles back.

 

“You’re right Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Course I am, dearie. I’s always right, even if others don’t fink I am. Youse got some ideas from Miss Tyrwhitt’s frocks, and as I said youse a dab ‘and wiv a needle ‘n thread. Why don’t cha make your own frock to go dancin’ in. Frank’d be mighty proud to go dancin’ wiv a girl what made ‘er own fashionable fancy dancin’ frock.”

 

“That’s a good idea, Mrs. Boothby. I might just do that.”

 

“That’s my girl!” Mrs. Boothby says, grasping Edith’s chin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand lovingly.

 

Another volley of laughter breaks into their friendly moment.

 

“Well, thinking of reality, I’d best serve luncheon before Miss Lettice thinks to poke her nose in here.” Edith sighs. “I have enough trouble keeping her out of my kitchen as it is.”

 

*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.

 

**Curzon Street is a beautiful street lined with Georgian houses in Mayfair, where amongst other famous people, novelist Nancy Mitford (then Mrs. Peter Rodd) lived.

 

***The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

This busy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

On Edith’s deal table is a panoply of things as she readies luncheon for Lettice and her guests. The mahogany stained serving tray, the gravy boat of gravy, the chopping board, napkins and cutlery all came from an English stockist of 1:12 artisan miniatures whom I found on E-Bay. The sliced roast beef, beans and mushrooms on a white platter, which look almost good enough to eat, I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street shop that specialised in dolls, doll houses and doll house miniatures. The cleaver comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures Shop in the United Kingdom. The jars of herbs are also 1:12 miniatures, made of real glass with real cork stoppers in them. I have had them since I was a teenager too.

 

To the left of the tray is a box of Queen’s Gravy Salt. Queen’s Gravy Salt is a British brand, and this box is an Edwardian design. Gravy Salt is a simple product it is solid gravy browning and is used to add colour and flavour to soups stews and gravy - and has been used by generations of cooks and caterers. It is an artisan miniature made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England

 

In front of the Queen’s Gravy Salt to the far bottom left of the picture is one of Edith’s Cornishware cannisters. Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.

 

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

 

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

 

The Deftware cups, saucers and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which sits on the dresser that can be seen just to the right of shot. Also on the dresser sits a rolling pin, and some more pieces of Cornishware including bowls and another canister.

 

Of course, no kitchen would be complete without some kitchen pantry staples of the 1920s, so also on the dresser you will see a tin of Lyall’s Golden Treacle, a tin of Peter Leech and Sons Golden Syrup and a box of Lyon’s Tea. All three were made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. In 1859 Henry Tate went into partnership with John Wright, a sugar refiner based at Manesty Lane, Liverpool. Their partnership ended in 1869 and John’s two sons, Alfred and Edwin joined the business forming Henry Tate and Sons. A new refinery in Love Lane, Liverpool was opened in 1872. In 1921 Henry Tate and Sons and Abram Lyle and Sons merged, between them refining around fifty percent of the UK’s sugar. A tactical merger, this new company would then become a coherent force on the sugar market in anticipation of competition from foreign sugar returning to its pre-war strength. Tate and Lyle are perhaps best known for producing Lyle’s Golden Syrup and Lyle’s Golden Treacle. Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War. Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J. Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in Britain, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J. Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England.

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 northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying an unexpected call on her beloved parents whilst her mistress is away visiting her own parents in Wiltshire. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. Usually even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door, Edith can smell the familiar scent of a mixture of Lifebuoy Soap, Borax and Robin’s Starch, which means her mother is washing the laundry of others wealthier than she in the terrace’s kitchen at the rear of the house. Yet with her father’s promotion, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now, and today, rather than soap and starch greeting her on the street, she can hear familiar laughter.

 

“Mum!” Edith calls out cheerily as she opens the unlocked front door and walks in. “Mum, it’s me! Is that Bert with you?”

 

She takes a deep breath and holds it with anticipation as she runs down the narrow corridor with excited footsteps past the front room and down into the kitchen, which serves as the heart of Edith’s parent’s home. Bursting through the kitchen door she beams and gasps with delight, for there at Ada’s old and worn round kitchen table sits her mother and her brother Bert. Edith’s little brother works aboard the SS Demosthenes as a dining saloon steward, sailing between England and Australia. Australia was where Bert spent Christmas 1922, so he wasn’t with his family for Christmas. Yet now, just like in the postcard he sent from Queensland showing a bird called a kookaburra inside the shape of the great southern continent surrounded by yellow wattle flowers, he is home on shore leave.

 

“Bert!” Edith gasps in delight. “You’re home!”

 

“Hullo Edith!” Bert says with an equally happy smile as he leaps out of the comfortable Windsor chair usually inhabited by their father and enfolds his sister in an embracing hug.

 

“Oh Bert.” Edith presses herself against her brother, the comforting smell of their mother’s lux soap flakes filling her nostrils. Pressing her hands against his hips, she breaks their embrace and pushes herself back. “Let me look at you then!”

 

Although a year younger than his sister, Bert is taller than Edith now, after a final growth spurt when he was in his late teens. Dressed in one of their mother’s home knitted jumpers and a pair of grey flannel trousers his skin looks sun kissed after spending a few days ashore in Melbourne during the height of summer in the southern hemisphere before sailing back, and the sun has given his sandy blonde hair some natural highlights.

 

“The sea air agrees with you, Bert.”

 

“More likely the Australian sun!” Ada remarks as she picks herself up out of her own chair with a slight groan. “Just look at those colourful cheeks and those freckles.” She waves her hand at her son lovingly. “We don’t usually see them until high summer.”

 

“Hullo Mum!” Edith walks up and embraces her mother. ‘How are you?”

 

“Oh, I’m grand now our Bert is home, and you are too, Edith love.” Ada says in reply, a broad smile gracing her lips and a happy brilliance in her brown eyes. “Now, put that basket down and have a seat. I’ll pop the kettle on and brew us a fresh pot.” She begins to bustle around the great blacklead range and moves the heavy kettle onto the hob. Turning back to the table she picks up the beautiful, glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid, which Edith bought for her from the Caledonian Market**, and makes a grand sweeping gesture to show Edith it’s presence. “See Edith, a special occasion calls for the use of my special teapot.”

 

“Any day should be a special enough day for you to use that pretty teapot that Edith gave you, Mum.” Bert says, sitting back down at the table.

 

“That’s what I tell her!” Edith agrees.

 

“But then it wouldn’t be a special teapot any more, would it?” Ada says, stepping behind Bert and going to the small tough sink the corner of the kitchen where she turns the squeaky taps and rinses out the pot. “No. It’s a special teapot for special occasions.” She takes up the yellow tea towel with red stitching that hangs over a metal rail above the range and dries the pot. “I used it on Christmas Day didn’t I, Edith love?”

 

“Yes,” Edith agrees. “But you haven’t used it a day since then.”

 

“That’s because there hasn’t been a special occasion worthy of using it,” Ada defends. “Until Bert came home, that is.” She gently squeezes her son’s left shoulder.

 

“I give up!” Edith throws her hands in the air. She shucks off her black three quarter length coat and hangs it on a hook by the back door. She then places her hat on one of the carved knobs of the ladderback chair drawn up to the table next to her mother’s usual seat.

 

“Oh I told you, Edith!” Ada chides. “Don’t put your pretty hat there, love.” She walks over to the Welsh dresser that dominates one wall of the crowded kitchen and pulls out the battered tea cannister. “It might get damaged. Such a pretty hat should sit on the table where it’s safe. You know Edith made that, don’t you Bert?”

 

“Yes, I do, Mum.” Bert acknowledges cheerfully. “Our Edith is the cleverest girl I know.”

 

“I keep saying Mum, the hat’s nothing special. And besides, I didn’t make it. It came from Petticoat Lane***, just like my coat, and it’s not new. I simply decorated the hat with bits and bobs I picked up from a Whitechapel haberdasher Miss Lettice’s char****, Mrs. Boothby, told me about.”

 

“Well, homemade or not, it’s still too pretty to hang there.”

 

“It’s my hat, Mum. I always hang it there and it’s always fine, and I promise you, it’ll be fine there today.”

 

“Well, suit yourself, love. You’re an adult now, just the same as Bert.” Ada remarks dismissively but looks at her daughter doubtfully as she scoops out some black dried tea leaves and puts the heaped spoonfuls into the pot. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

 

“So,” Bert sinks back into his seat and toys with his teacup decorated with pink roses, slowly turning it in its saucer. “What’s the gossip with you then, Edith? How’s your Frank then? Mum says that she and Dad haven’t met him yet.”

 

“It’s become quite the mute point.” Ada remarks as she turns back from the dresser and folds her arms akimbo, frowning at her daughter.

 

“And I hope,” Edith defends herself, challenging her mother’s steely stare. “That she told you why.”

 

“I did!” Ada says crisply.

 

“Word is you’re meeting his mum soon, Edith.” Bert says excitedly.

 

“Well, not his mum. His parents died of the Spanish Flu, but I’m meeting his Granny, who is a bit like his surrogate mum.”

 

“That’s nerve wracking.” Bert replies.

 

“I know! I’m so nervous.” Edith confides, lowing her voice as she leans across the table conspiratorially and reaches for the battered McVitie and Price biscuit tin.

 

“That’s why I can’t get a girl to come home here.” Frank says with a wink and slight indicating nod to their mother. “Imagine meeting Mum.” He lifts the lid off the tin for his sister and lets her make her selection. “They’re all too scared of her.”

 

“Cheeky!” Ada says, laughing good naturedly and swatting her son with the tea towel. “Any girl would be lucky to have me as a prospective mother-in-law.” She shuffles her shoulders and tilts her head upwards as her face forms into a dignified expression. “Or boy.” she adds with undisguised meaning and importance.

 

“So, me and Frank are just fine, thanks Bert. We’re just tickety-boo.*****!” Edith tells her brother before popping a biscuit into her mouth.

 

“Tickety-boo!” Bert enthuses. “You are up on all the latest small talk and phrases, living with your Miss Chetwynd up in Mayfair.”

 

“She comes home with new phrases all the time.” Ada places the freshly refilled cottage ware teapot down on the table between them all. “Goodness knows I can’t keep up with her. It’s the influence of all those fine ladies and gentlemen and moving picture stars that frequent Mis Chetwynd’s flat.”

 

“Moving picture stars? Really” Bert asks excitedly.

 

“Oh Bert!” Edith scoffs, flapping her hand playfully at him. “I only answer the door to them, or serve them tea. And Miss Lettice has only had one moving picture star to tea since I’ve been there: Wanetta Ward.” She sighs. “She’s so beautiful! She works for Gainsborough Pictures******. You’re more likely to have a longer conversation with a moving picture star on board your ship as a dining saloon steward, Bert, than ever I will at Miss Lettice’s.”

 

“I doubt that. There aren’t that many moving picture stars sailing between Australia and home, well none that I know of. Although they are mad for moving pictures over there. There are picture houses everywhere, and they even make their own films there, just like here.”

 

“Anyway, I’m not the interesting one, Bert.” Edith says, seeing a way to turn the conversation to her brother and his news. “You are. Tell me about life on the ship this voyage.”

 

A short while later over tea and biscuits, Edith is brought up to date with Bert’s latest adventures on board his ship, and the interesting people he has served as a first-class saloon steward.

 

“Oh!” Ada suddenly gasps. “Bert! Aren’t you going to give Edith her present?”

 

“Present?” Edith asks with a querying look to her brother.

 

“Yes, Edith love. Don’t you remember Bert wrote it in his last postcard to us?”

 

Edith casts her mind back a few weeks to when her mother showed her the postcard Bert had sent from Australia.

 

“Right you are Mum!” Bert agrees. “So Edith, on Christmas Day, the Second Officer, Mr. Collins, organised a trip for we lads and some of the girls on the ship’s staff who were away from home for Christmas and that were at a loose end. A lot found their own amusements in Melbourne. It’s such a big and vibrant city, full of fun things to do. But about twenty of us didn’t have anywhere to go, so we said yes.”

 

“What did you do, Bert? What had Mr. Collins organised?” Edith asks in suspense.

 

“Well, Mr. Collins was born in Melbourne. Well no, actually he was born a few hours outside of Melbourne in the country at a place called Yarra Glen. It’s quite famous and lots of toffs go there to holiday, not that was where Mr. Collins took us.” Bert quickly adds, seeing the excitement in his sister’s face. “No, Mr. Collins was born on a farm out there – something they call a cattle station – and he took us all out there for a picnic on his parent’s station.”

 

“But a station is a railway station.” Edith mutters, shaking her head, her face crumpling in disbelief.

 

“Well in Australia there are railway stations and cattle station, which are big farms. So, Mr. Collins packed us all into a railway carriage at Flinders Street Railway Station and off we went. We left at ten in the morning and we didn’t get to the railway station at the Yarra Glen until nearly midday.”

 

“Was it hot?” Edith asks. “You always say Australia is hot around this time of year.”

 

“Well it was, but it was alright because we opened up our window in our carriage and poked our heads out so we could look at the passing countryside, so we had a nice breeze. The countryside is so different to here. It’s all yellow grasses and funny trees with washed out leaves: no real greenery at all so to speak, but it’s still really beautiful in its own way.”

 

“Hmph!” Ada snorts from her chair. “Nothing beats the Kentish countryside for beauty.”

 

“Well I guess beauty is a subjective thing, Mum.” Bert goes on, “Mr. Collins was telling us on the train trip down that sometimes travelling artists set up camp on his parent’s property just so that they can paint the landscape.”

 

“Fancy that, Frank!” Edith enthuses. “Did you like it?”

 

“Oh yes! It’s very pretty, in a foreign kind of way. Not many flowers. But we saw jumping kangaroos from the train on the trip down. They sat in the grass and watched us pass, and then some of them just up and jumped away. They can move very quickly when they jump. Anyway, we finally pulled into Yarra Glen. We had to wait whilst a big party of toffs and all their mountains of luggage were taken care of and packed up into cars. Mr. Collins says that there is a famous opera singer who lives out there, named Nellie Melba*******.”

 

“I’ve heard nellie Melba sing before!” Ada exclaims, dropping her pink and yellow floral teacup into her saucer and clapping her hands.

 

“You have, Mum?” Edith asks, the look of lack of comprehension on her face matching her brother’s as they both look to her.

 

“Well, not live of course!” Ada says, taking up her cup of tea before continuing. “But once when I was at Mrs. Hounslow’s, I heard her sing. She was playing records on her gramophone, and I asked who it was, and she invited me to stand in her parlour and listen to her recording of Nellie Melba sing ‘Ave Maria’.” Her children pull a face at the mention of their landlady, the rich and odious old widow whom they both grew up hearing about regularly, and seeing on the rare occasions she would deign to stop by to collect their rent in person, rather than her rent collector. “Now don’t be like that, children! Mrs. Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.”

 

“And neither you, nor she will ever let us forget it.” Bert drones, rolling his eyes.

 

“Now I won’t have a bad word said about her, Bert.” Ada wags her finger admonishingly at her son. “She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings over the years, especially during the war when things were hard. You should be grateful to her. We all should be.”

 

“Pshaw!” Edith raises her eyes to the ceiling above. “Enough about old Widow Hounslow! Go on with your story, Bert.”

 

“Well,” Bert continues. “Miss Melba must have been home and hosting a big house party, but once they were all packed off, we were ushered to a charabanc******** which took us out to Mr. Collins’ family farm. Once we got to the house – which they call a homestead – Mrs. Collins, Mr, Collins’ mum, had picnic baskets for us, full of delicious sandwiches and pies and cakes. There was even beer and stout for us to drink. When Mr. Collins lead us away from the house to where we were to take our picnic, he took us to a place where there was a stream, so we could dunk the bottles of beer and stout into it to keep them warm. We tethered them to the bank with string he gave us. And so, we sat under these big trees with white bark and ate and drank and had a jolly time of it, all at Mr. Collin’s expense.”

 

“That was nice of him, Bert.” Edith remarks.

 

“It was! We were ever so grateful. He had brought a cricket bat and stumps from the house with him, so we played some cricket after luncheon until it got too warm, and then we sang Christmas carols.”

  

“It must have felt odd, singing Christmas carols in the summer sunshine.”

 

“Not really Edith.” Bert replies. “Christmas is Christmas all over the world, no matter what the weather, if you are in high spirits.”

 

“And the gift?” Ada says, patting her son’s arm as a reminder.

 

“So, when we were walking back from out picnic by the stream, I was carrying one of the picnic baskets, and I noticed what a pretty painted lid it had. When we arrived back at the homestead, I asked Mr. Collins’ mother about it. It turns out that Mr. Collin’s brother and his wife live on the property as well. She cooks for the farmhands and helps keep house for old Mrs. Collins, and she also makes picnic baskets from the reeds growing around the stream we used to keep our beer and stout warm. Her husband carves the lids and she paints them, and she sells them in Yarra Glen.” Bert reaches under the table and pushing his seat backwards, he stands up and places a picnic basket on the table. “So this is for you. It’s the picnic basket I brought back to the house, and then brought all the way from Australia for you. A belated Merry Christmas, big sister.”

 

Edith gasps and raises her hands to her mouth as a smile fills her face. The beautiful picnic hamper sitting proudly on the table has woven pale reed sides and two hinged lids on the top, both painted with stylised leaves and creamy yellow daisies.

 

“Oh Bert!” Edith gasps, as tears well in her eyes. “Oh it’s lovely!” She gets up and hurries over to her brother and embraces him. “Thank you so much!”

 

“I’m so glad you like it, Edith.” Bert replies. “I got more than a bit of ribbing from the other chaps on the sailing home. They took up calling me ‘Basket Bert’.”

 

“Oh they didn’t, Bert?” Edith cries. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Nothing for you be sorry for, Edith, but I afraid that I think it will stick,” Frank adds. “However it’s worth it, if you like the basket. I thought if things were still going well with Frank, you two might use it to go on a picnic in summer.”

 

“Oh, I will Bert!” Edith replies as she runs her hand along the thin and elegant handle. “It’s wonderful! Thank you so much!”

 

*The SS Demosthenes was a British steam ocean liner and refrigerated cargo ship which ran scheduled services between London and Australia via Cape Town. It stopped at ports including those in Sydney and Melbourne. She was launched in 1911 in Ireland for the Aberdeen Line and scrapped in 1931 in England. In the First World War she was an Allied troop ship.

 

**The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

***Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

****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.

 

*****Believed to date from British colonial rule in India, and related to the Hindi expression “tickee babu”, meaning something like “everything's alright, sir”, “tickety-boo” means “everything is fine”. It was a common slang phrase that was popular in the 1920s.

 

******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.

 

*******Dame Nellie Melba was an Australian operatic lyric coloratura soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town. Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. She succeeded in London and Paris. Her repertoire was small; in her whole career she sang no more than 25 roles and was closely identified with only ten. She was known for her performances in French and Italian opera, but sang little German opera. She returned to Australia frequently during the Twentieth Century, singing in opera and concerts, and had a house, “Coombe Cottage” built for her in the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne.

 

********A charabanc or "char-à-banc" is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early motor coach, usually open-topped, more common in Britain, but also found in places like Australia during the early part of the Twentieth Century. It has benched seats arranged in rows, looking forward, commonly used for large parties, whether as public conveyances or for excursions.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The central focus of our story, sitting on Ada’s table, is the wicker picnic basket that Bert brought home for Edith. In truth it is not Australian made, but was made by an unknown miniature artisan in America. The floral patterns on the top have been hand painted. The hinged lids lift, just like a real hamper, so things can be put inside.

 

In front of the basket stands Ada’s cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched rood and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

Surrounding the cottage ware teapot are non-matching teacups, saucers, a milk jug and sugar bowl, all of which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

 

Sitting on the table in the foreground is a McVitie and Price’s Small Petite Beurre Biscuits tin, containing a selection of different biscuits. The biscuits were made by hand of polymer 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. McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and some Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

Robert Andrew Macfie sugar refiner was the first person to use the term term Golden Syrup in 1840, a product made by his factory, the Macfie sugar refinery, in Liverpool. He also produced black treacle.

 

P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.

 

The American based Heinz food processing company, famous for its Baked Beans, 57 varieties of soups and tinend spaghetti opened a factory in Harlesden in 1919, providing a great deal of employment for the locals who were not already employed at McVitie and Price.

 

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published A Popular Treatise on Tea as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He set his own criteria for the new brand. The name had to be distinctive and unlike others, it had to be a name that would trip off the tongue and it had to be one that would be protected by registration. The name Typhoo comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”. Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside. The Moreton site is also the location of Burton's Foods and Manor Bakeries factories. Typhoo has been owned since July 2021 by British private-equity firm Zetland Capital. It was previously owned by Apeejay Surrendra Group of India.

 

The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.

 

Oxo is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube, and the company now also markets chicken and other flavour cubes, including versions with Chinese and Indian spices. The cubes are broken up and used as flavouring in meals or gravy or dissolved into boiling water to produce a bouillon. Oxo produced their first cubes in 1910 and further increased Oxo's popularity.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

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.

 

With a loud buzz, the electric doorbell announces the unexpected arrival of someone at the front door. Putting down the piece of table silver she is polishing, Edith, Lettice’s maid, goes to answer the front door, all the while wondering who is calling. Lettice usually advises Edith of any clients, existing or potential, who may be visiting, particularly because Edith needs to make sure that there are cakes and biscuits in the pantry to offer to them. Walking across the thick Chinese silk rug in the flat’s hallway, she can hear her mistress speaking animatedly on the telephone to a representative of Jeffrey and Company* from whom she is ordering papers for the dining room of her friend Minnie Palmerston. Lettice agreed to redecorate it before Christmas after Minnie asked her to, and work is now underway.

 

Edith opens the door to the dashing figure of Selwyn Spencely, the only son of the Duke of Walmsford, whom Lettice has been stepping out with, when their busy social diaries allow, since meeting him at her parent’s Hunt Ball last year. In his hands he holds a thick bunch of roses, a usual accessory every time he crosses the Cavendish Mews threshold.

 

“Good day, Edith. Is Miss Chetwynd home?”

 

“Mr. Spencely!” she gasps in surprise. “This is an unexpected pleasure. Yes, do come in.” She closes the front door and shuts out the cold January in the process. “It’s freezing out there. She’s just speaking with someone on the telephone in the drawing room, Sir, but I’ll announce you’re here.”

 

Shrugging out of his thick and expertly cut navy blue barathea coat, damp around the shoulders and down the back due the downpour outside, he lets it fall into Edith’s waiting arms. “Oh, don’t bother, Edith. I know my way. But if you could put these in some water for Miss Chetwynd.” He hands her the deep red roses which release a sweet fragrance as he does.

 

“Of course, Sir.” Edith replies, dropping a curtsey to her mistress’ guest.

 

As she turns to go, Selwyn calls after her, “Oh Edith! There will be a man with a large package knocking at the servants’ entrance shortly. When he does, just show him into the drawing room, will you?”

 

“Well yes, Sir.” Edith answers, her brow furrowing slightly. “But I…”

 

“It’s a surprise for Miss Chetwynd,” Selwyn interrupts her, giving her a winning smile and ending the conversation.

 

“Now just to confirm, it is the red dioxide metallic you are ordering, not the gold. Is that right?” Lettice asks in clearly enunciated tones down the telephone receiver as she sits at her Hepplewhite desk. “I don’t want the gold. It is rather expensive paper, and I’d hate for you to make a costly error.” She listens to the representative of Jeffrey and Company at the other end as he assures her that he has the correct details for her order. “Very well. And you’ll let me know when it arrives?” She listens again. “Very good. Good afternoon then.”

 

Lettice hangs up the receiver of the telephone with a half frustrated and half relieved sigh. In response the telephone utters a muffled ting of its bell as she hangs up. She begins scribbling notes in her black leather notebook with her silver fountain pen and with a rasp of nib against paper, she crosses off several things from her list for Minnie Palmerston’s dining room redecoration.

 

“I do like to see my favourite society interior designer, hard at work.” Selwyn pronounces, announcing his presence.

 

“Selwyn!” Lettice spins around in her chair, her eyes wide with shock as she sees him comfortably settled in one of her round white upholstered ebonised wood tub chairs. “What on earth are you doing here?” She self consciously pats the side of her elegantly marcelled** blonde hair and brushes her manicured fingers across the Peter Pan collar*** of her navy blue frock. “I wasn’t expecting you. What a delightful surprise!”

 

“Yes, your charming little maid was saying just the same thing not a moment ago when she answered the door to me.” Selwyn says, rising to his feet as Lettice rises to hers. “I just happened to be in the neighbourhood, and I thought I’d pop in, just on the off chance that you were here, to see how you are, my Angel. After all, I haven’t seen you since before Christmas.” He smiles warmly at his sweetheart who blushes prettily under his observant eye. “So I wanted to wish you all the very best for the season.”

 

“Oh yes!” Lettice breathes. “Happy 1923, Selwyn darling!” She stands up. “Are you stopping for long?”

 

“For a little while, my Angel.” he replies with an amused smile.

 

“Shall I ring for tea then?”

 

“Tea would be capital, my Angel. Thank you.”

 

Lettice depresses the servant’s call bell by the fireplace which she can hear echoing distantly in the kitchen. Edith appears moments later carrying a bulbous white vase containing the red roses Selwyn brough for Lettice as a gift.

 

“Oh Selwyn!” Lettice gasps. “Are these from you?” When he nods in acknowledgement, she adds. “They’re gorgeous!”

 

“Where would you like them, Miss?” she asks.

 

“Oh, on the telephone table, I think, Edith.” Lettice pronounces, as she picks up the telephone from her desk and walks it across the room, dragging the flex behind her, back to where it belongs.

 

“Very good, Miss.” Edith busily removes the vase of slightly withered yellow lilies and roses that were sitting on the table and replaces them with the roses. Picking up the other vase from where she placed it in the polished parquet floor she remarks, “There’s plenty of life left in these. I’ll pick through them and rearrange them in a smaller vase for you.”

 

“Oh no, you keep them, Edith. It will help brighten the kitchen up.” Lettice replies.

 

“That’s very kind of you, Miss. Thank you.”

 

“Oh, and could you please bring us some tea.”

 

“Yes Miss,” Edith answers with a bob curtsey. “Oh, and Mr. Spencely, that gentleman you mentioned is here. He’s in the kitchen at present. Shall I send him through?”

 

“Man? What man?” Lettice asks, glancing first at Edith and then at Selwyn.

 

“Yes, if you would, Edith. Thank you.”

 

“What man, Selwyn?” Lettice repeats to her beau as Edith retreats through the dining room and disappears through the green baize door into the service part of the flat.

 

Selwyn’s smile grows broader. “All will be revealed shortly, my Angel.” he assures her calmly.

 

The door Edith walked through opens and a workman carrying a large cardboard box steps across its threshold. Dressed in a flat cap damp from the rain outside and taupe coloured apron over a thick dark woollen jumper and black trousers, his face is florid with exertion as he breathes heavily and walks slowly.

 

“Ahh, put it down over here,” Selwyn commands as the deliveryman nears them, pointing with an indicating finger to the floor next to the table where Edith put the roses.

 

“You might ‘ave warned me I was goin’ ta have ta climb four flights of stairs with this, Guv!” the man huffs as he lowers the box onto the floor. He groans as he returns to an upright position and removes his cap. Withdrawing a grubby white kerchief from his pocket he wipes his brow before returning his cap to his head. He dabs his face with his kerchief as he inhales and exhales with laboured, rasping breaths.

 

“Good heavens!” Lettice gasps. “What on earth is in that box that’s so heavy?”

 

“Oh it’s not that ‘eavy, Mum,” the deliveryman pants. “If youse only takin’ it from room ta room.” He wipes the back of his neck with his kerchief. “Only if youse ‘oistin’ it up four flights of stairs!”

 

Selwyn ignores the deliveryman’s protestations as his focuses his attentions solely on Lettice. “I promised you when I had to withdraw from accompanying you to Priscilla’s wedding, that I was going to make it up to you, and this,” He taps the top of the box. “Is it!”

 

“What on earth is it?” Lettice asks with excitement and intrigue.

 

The red faced workman opens the box lid and delves into its interior. Newspaper scrunches noisily as he withdraws a shining lump of burnished brass with three fine finials which he places with a heavy laboured huff onto the telephone console.

 

“It’s a wireless, my Angel!” Selwyn says with a sweeping gesture towards the apparatus gleaming under the light of the chandelier overhead. “Merry Christmas, happy New Year,” He pauses. “And I’m sorry, all in one!”

 

“A wireless!” Lettice gasps. “Oh Selwyn, darling!” She jumps up from her seat next to the wireless and runs around the black japanned coffee table, throwing her arms around his neck. She looks over at the gleaming piece of new machinery with three knobs on the front below an ornamental piece of fretwork protecting some mesh fabric behind it. “How generous! I love it, darling!” She breaks away from Selwyn, her face suddenly clouding. “Oh, don’t you need a licence to have a radio?”

 

“The gent’s already paid fur it, Mum.” the workman says, reaching into the front pocket of his apron and withdrawing a slightly crumpled envelope. “Ten shillin’s, paid for through the General Post Office****.” He hands her the envelope.

 

“Ten shillings!” Lettice looks at Selwyn aghast. “On top of the apparatus itself. It must have cost a fortune!”

 

“Oh, it does, Mum!” the workman begins before being silenced by a sweeping gesture and a steely look from Selwyn. “Sorry, Guv.” He falls silent.

 

Turning back to Lettice, Selwyn continues, “It’s worth it to provide some pleasure to you, my Angel.”

 

“Oh Selwyn darling! You are a brick!” Lettice exhales in delight as she feels his hands pull her closer to him and kisses the top of her head tenderly. “But how does it operate?”

 

“Our good man here can tell you that better than I can, my darling.” Selwyn replies.

 

“Oh its really quite easy, Mum.” the workman assures Lettice. “It runs on a battery, oh, but just be careful! It’s an acid battery,” He points to his apron where his knees are. “So just watch yerself when youse moves it. Better youse ‘n yer maid move it togevva, side by side like, than youse on yer own, Mum.” He adds. “Turn it on ‘n off wiv this knob.” He points to the button on the left-hand side. “Turn the volume up or down wiv this knob.” He turns the button left and right. “And use the middle one to tune the wireless in.”

 

“Tune it in?” Lettice asks.

 

“Yes, Mum. ‘Ere I’ll show yer.” He leans down and turns the left knob to the right and it releases a satisfyingly crisp click. “We’ll just wait for the valves to warm up.” Slowly a quiet crackle begins behind the mesh. “This ‘ere’s the speaker, Mum.” He points to the fretwork covered mesh at the top of the wireless. “Sound‘ll come outta ‘ere.” he continues, feeling the need to clarify.

 

Just as Edith walks into the drawing room with a silver tray laden with tea things, the wireless releases a strangulated roar, making a juddering cacophony of discordant racket.

 

“Good heavens what’s that awful noise?” the young maid gasps, her eyes wide in horror as she allows the tray to clatter roughly onto the surface of the coffee table.

 

“It’s just the wireless warming up, Edith.” Selwyn assures her in a calm voice. “Do stay and watch this marvel of the modern age.”

 

“Marvel of the modern age!” Edith scoffs. “That infernal contraption is more than enough,” She glares at the shiny silver and black Bakelite***** telephone. “Without us having more gadgets around here.”

 

“Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Edith.” Lettice chides her maid mildly over the sound of the wireless static.

 

“This, my dear Edith,” Selwyn pronounces with a satisfied sigh. “Is the sign of the new age! Soon everyone will have one of these.”

 

“Heaven help us all then!” Edith rolls her eyes.

 

“And like I says, yer tune it wiv this knob, Mum.”

 

The workman starts to slowly turn the knob to the right, and as he does, the static sounds change, growing momentarily louder and then softer, and then slowly the discordant cacophony of harsh sounds starts to dissipate as music begins to be heard in its place. Very quickly the static is gone and the strains of violins and piano stream through the wireless speaker as ‘Londonderry Air’****** plays.

 

“Well, I never!” gasps Edith. “Its like having your own private band to play for you in that little box!”

 

“That it is, Miss.” agrees the workman.

 

“Oh, it’s wonderful, Selwyn darling!” Lettice exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck before kissing him with delight on the cheek.

 

And just for a little while, Lettice, Selwyn, Edith and the workman all stand and look at the shiny new wireless, enjoying the beautiful music drifting from its speaker.

 

The introduction of a radio, or a wireless as it was then known as, is the first real change we have seen to Lettice’s drawing room since we first met her two years ago, and in many ways it represents the spirit of change that the 1920s have become synonymous with. The British Broadcasting Company, as the BBC was originally called, was formed on the 18th of October 1922 by a group of leading wireless manufacturers including Marconi. Daily broadcasting by the BBC began in Marconi's London studio, 2LO, in the Strand, on November the 14th, 1922. John Reith, a thirty-three-year-old Scottish engineer, was appointed General Manager of the BBC at the end of 1922. Following the closure of numerous amateur stations, the BBC started its first daily radio service in London – 2LO. After much argument, news was supplied by an agency, and music drama and “talks” filled the airwaves for only a few hours a day. It wasn't long before radio could be heard across the nation, especially when radio stations were set up outside of London, like on the 6th of March when the BBC first broadcast from Glasgow via station 5SC.

 

*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 Company’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.

 

**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. For those women who had longer hair, it was common to tie the hair at the nape of the neck and pin it above the ear with a stylish hair pin or flower. One famous wearer was American entertainer, Josephine Baker.

 

***A Peter Pan collar is a style of clothing collar, flat in design with rounded corners. It is named after the collar of Maude Adams's costume in her 1905 role as Peter Pan, although similar styles had been worn before this date. Peter Pan collars were particularly fashionable during the 1920s and 1930s.

 

****With the advent of radio, as of the 18th of January, 1923, the Postmaster General granted the BBC a licence to broadcast. A licence fee of ten shillings was charged per wireless set sold, purchased through the General Post Office. Amateur wireless enthusiasts avoided paying the licence by making their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets.

 

*****Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

******The "Londonderry Air" is an Irish air that originated in County Londonderry. It is popular among the North American Irish diaspora and is well known throughout the world. The tune is played as the victory sporting anthem of Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games. The song "Danny Boy" uses the tune, with a set of lyrics written in the early Twentieth Century.

 

This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, including items from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Central to our story, the brass wireless, which is remarkably heavy for its size, comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Supplies in the United Kingdom.

 

Lettice’s tea set is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era. The green tinted glass comport on the coffee table , spun from real glass, is also from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.

 

In front of the telephone sits a paperback novel from the late 1920s created by miniature British artisan, Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make these books miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The vase of red roses on the Art Deco occasional table is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The black japanned wooden chair is a Chippendale design and has been upholstered with modern and stylish Art Deco fabric. The mirror backed back japanned china cabinet is Chippendale too. On its glass shelves sit pieces of miniature Limoges porcelain including jugs, teacups and saucers, many of which I have had since I was a child.

 

To the left of the Chippendale chair stands a blanc de chine Chinese porcelain vase, and next to it, a Chinese screen. The Chinese folding screen I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.

 

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.

MOL Generosity (IMO: 953216) is a container ship registered and sailing under the flag of Liberia. Her gross tonnage is 59,176. She was built in 2012 by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, Samho. Her overall length (loa) is 275.07 m, and her beam is 40.04 m. Her container capacity is 5,605 teu. She is operated by Peter Doehle Schiffahrts-KG of Hamburg.

 

I photographed the MOL Generosity on her approach to berth at Fremantle Port on 12 September 2016.

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.

So generous of this critter to sit for a portrait. It looks ready to take on some Japanese city in a science fiction film with lots of fx.

 

People ask me, "What's going on in that prehistoric reptile brain?" Then I realize they're not talking about the animal in the photo...

 

I don’t hold grudges. I kick butt and keep moving.

— Dorothy Allison’s Aunt Dot

 

Journalism grade image.

 

Source: 3,500x1,500 8-bit JPeG file.

 

Please do not copy this image for any purpose.

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 have not strayed far from Cavendish Mews and are still in Mayfair, but are far enough away in her mind that Lettice has chosen to take a taxi, hailed for her by her maid Edith from the nearby square, to Bond Street where the premises of the Portland Gallery stand. She is sharing the taxi with her friend Minnie Palmerston, a banker’s wife whom she met at the Embassy Club, which is also on Bond Street. Minnie decided to attempt to redecorate her own dining room with disastrous results, so she has enlisted the assistance of Lettice, who has already established a colour palette and has ordered wall hangings and fabric for new dining chairs, to repair the damage she has done. As the taxi pulls up to the kerb, Lettice and Minnie both peer through the window at the impressive three storey Victorian building with Portland stone facings, which is where the gallery takes its name from. The ground floor part of the façade has been modernised in more recent times, and now sports magnificent plate glass windows through which passers by may look at the beautiful objets d’art artfully presented in them. Currently one window is full of brilliantly painted pottery which reminds Lettice of her Aunt Eglantine’s works, whilst the other has a single modernist statue of white marble set up against a rich black velvet curtain, bathed in light from a spotlight, giving it a very dramatic look.

 

“That’ll be four and six, mum.” the taxi driver says through the glass divider between the driver’s compartment and the passenger carriage as he leans back in his seat. Stretching his arm across the seat he tips his cap in deference to the well dressed ladies swathed in fox furs and stylish hats in the black leather back seat.

 

After paying the taxi fare for them both, Minnie encourages Lettice to alight from the taxi first. As they spill from its door, they are both mid laugh over an amusing story about a mutual acquaintance that Minnie shared with Lettice.

 

Minnie remarks excitedly as the taxi chugs away belching out fumes, “And thinking of gossip, I read in the newspapers that your friend Elizabeth* is going to be the Princess of Wales**.”

 

“You’re such a gossip, Minnie darling.” Lettice chides her friend mildly as she guides them both across the busy footpath and towards the door. “You’d be the last person I’d share Elizabeth’s confidences with.”

 

“So she has…”

 

“If she had shared any with me!” Lettice quickly extinguishes Minnie’s burrowing for gossip with a definite statement in serious and well modulated tones. “As it is, I haven’t seen her since she went to spend Christmas at St Paul’s, Walden Bury. Now come along. We are here to pick objets d’art for your dining room, not prattle about idle gossip.”

 

“You’re such a spoil sport!” Minnie sulks.

 

“I’m not when it comes to interior design.” Lettice assures her. “Now let’s find something to go with those wonderful paintings of your husband’s.”

 

Lettice ushers Minnie through the full length plate glass doors on which the Portland Galleries’ name is written in elegant gilt font along with the words ‘by appointment only’ printed underneath in the same hand. As the door closes behind them, shutting out the sound of noisy automobiles and chugging busses and the clatter of footsteps on the pavement and the chatter of shoppers, the air about them changes. In the crisp and cool silence of the gallery the ladies’ heels click across the black and white marble floor.

 

“Now, I’ve ordered wall hangings from Jeffrey and Company*** to deck out the dining room. It’s metallic and red dioxide in colour,” Lettice enthuses, suddenly aware of how her well modulated tones bounce off the hard surfaces and objects on display in the gallery. “It’s so striking, I know you’re just going to love it.”

 

“Hhhmmm,” Minnie muses in a non-committal fashion as her eye flits around the red painted gallery hung with paintings and populated with tables, cabinets and pillars upon which stand different sculptures and other artistic pieces.

 

“The wallpaper, Minnie,” Lettice sighs in exasperation, misunderstanding Minnie. “I’ve ordered it. Goodness, I do wish you’d concentrate for more than five minutes for a change.”

 

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that, Lettice darling.”

 

“About what?”

 

“About the wall hangings Lettice darling.” Minnie purrs. “I’m wondering whether we shouldn’t reconsider how the dining room is to be furbished.”

 

“Reconsider, Minnie?” Lettice looks with shocked and wide eyes at her friend. “What on earth do you mean, reconsider?”

 

“Well, I was just wondering whether it mightn’t be better to have gold wallpaper instead.”

 

“Gold wallpaper?”

 

“You know darling, to represent the golden sands of Egypt.” Minnie says with a dramatic air, raising her right hand to her forehead, her eyes drifting upwards in the affected stance of a silent film star. “Everyone I know is going positively wild over anything Egyptian after the discovery of that boy king’s tomb****. Simply mad for it, darling! All of Charles’ frightfully boring banking friends can talk of nothing else, and nor can their wives.” She giggles. “They’ve finally got something interesting to talk about.”

 

“But we’re here today, Minnie darling, to pick ornaments to decorate the room with. The papers are already ordered at great expense.” Lettice looks with concern at her friend. “You can’t go and change your mind now.”

 

“Of course I can, Lettice darling!” Minnie scoffs with a wave of her maroon coloured leather glove clad hand. “Charles is footing the bill. He’ll pay for whatever you ask, carte blanche.” She cocks one of her well manicured eyebrows over her glittering eye. “He’s convinced that anything you choose will be a patch on anything I’ve done thus far, which in reality probably isn’t too far from the truth.”

 

“Exactly!” Lettice retorts. “And I’ve chosen red dioxide as the colour for the dining room, not gold.”

 

“But gold would be so fashionable, Lettice darling!” Minnie insists. “So now!”

 

“And it might just as quickly be yesterday, tomorrow.” Lettice retorts, irritated at little by the fickle nature of her friend. “I’m trying to help you come up with a dining room that won’t need redecorating for a while.”

 

“But I…”

 

Lettice silences Minnie by holding up her navy glove clad hands in protestation. “I promise that it will be modern and fashionable, and yet timeless too.” She plays her trump card knowingly. “Don’t you trust me, Minnie darling?” She gazes at her friend with dewy eyes. “After all, you did ask me to redecorate the room for you. Don’t you trust my judgement any more?”

 

“Oh… oh no!” Minnie stutters in reply. “No! Of course I do. Your taste is excellent. Of course, you’re right.”

 

“Then metallic red dioxide wallpaper it will be.” Lettice says with a satisfied sigh.

 

“Well, I’ll settle for some rather exotic looking Egyptian statues then,” Minnie says. “Like that one you have on your mantle.”

 

“My ‘Theban Dancer’***** do you mean?”

 

“Yes, yes! She’s the one!” Minnie enthuses. “Or that daringly modern one you have on your dining room sideboard.”

 

“Well, they both came from the Portland Gallery, so I’m sure we can find some beautiful examples to suit you here.” Lettice assures her as she entwines her arm with her friend. “Come on, let’s see what there is.”

 

“Ah! Miss Chetwynd!” a mature frock coated man greets Lettice with a broad smile. Taking her hand, he kisses it affectionately, yet with respect. “How do you do.”

 

“Mr. Chilvers!” Lettice greets the smartly dressed man with a warm smile and the familiarity of the regular client that she is. “How do you do.”

 

“And to what do we owe this great pleasure of your visit today, Miss Chetwynd?” Mr. Chilvers asks obsequiously, releasing Lettice’s fingers and clasping his hands together in front of him.

 

Born Grand Duke Pytor Chikvilazde in the Russian seaside resort town of Odessa, the patrician gallery owner with the beautifully manicured and curled handlebar moustache fled Russia after the Revolution, escaping aboard the battleship HMS Marlborough****** from Yalta in 1919 along with the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and other members of the former, deposed Russian Imperial Family. Arriving a in London later that year after going via Constantinople and Genoa, the Russian emigree was far more fortunate than others around him on the London docks, possessing valuable jewels smuggled out of Russia in the lining of his coat. Changing his name to the more palatable Peter Chilvers, he sold most of the jewels he had, shunned his Russian heritage, honed his English accent and manners, to reinvent himself as the very British owner of an art gallery in Bond Street, thus enabling him to continue what he enjoyed most about being Grand Duke Pytor Chikvilazde and enjoy a thriving arts scene. As one of his more high profile customers, Mr. Chilvers happily fawns over Lettice, delighted that she chooses to patronise his very exclusive gallery for pieces to decorate the interiors of her clients’ homes with.

 

“Mr. Chilvers, this is my friend Minnie Palmerston. I’m redecorating her St John’s Wood dining room. Minnie, this is Mr Chilvers. He owns and runs the Portland Gallery.”

 

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Mr. Chilvers raises Minnie’s hand to his lips and kisses it, all the while admiring the beautiful redhead with striking green eyes, swathed in maroon and draped in red fox furs.

 

“Minnie’s taken rather a shine to my ‘Theban Dancer’ and my ‘Modern Woman’, Mr. Chilvers,” Lettice explains. “Perhaps you can show us something of a similar vein?”

 

“It would be my pleasure, Miss Chetwynd, Miss Palmerston,” Mr. Chilvers croons. “Right this way. I think I might have just the thing.”

 

“He’s the gallery owner,” Lettice whispers to her friend behind her hand. “He always thinks he has something.” She pauses. “Although to be fair, this is an amazing gallery and he often does.”

 

Minnie looks at Lettice with a hopeful smile.

 

Indicating for them to follow him with an open palm gesture, Mr. Chilvers leads the ladies through the gallery.

 

The rich red walls are hung with all kinds of modern paintings, many not dissimilar to those that grace the walls of Minnie and Charles’ dining room. Lettice’s own drawing room paintings come from the gallery. Dour street scenes and vibrant abstract still lives hang alongside dynamic portraits. Most of the furnishings are black japanned wood and made in a very stark, yet stylish way, so as not to distract from the artworks that sit upon their surfaces. Hand painted pottery in bright colours and ornate spun glass pieces sit upon tables and buffets and inside mirrored cabinets whilst statues stand proudly on pillars and stands. The air is rich with the fragrance of ornate floral arrangements strategically set about the gallery as colourful foils to compliment various artworks. Everywhere there is colour and interest.

 

“What kind of display are you looking for, ladies?” Mr. Chilvers asks as Lettice and Minnie follow in his sweetly spiced eau de cologne wake.

 

Minnie looks alarmingly at Lettice, who quickly answers for them both, “I have two rather tall pillars that will stand either side of an existing new tile fireplace. I also have a simple black japanned sideboard.”

 

“Is there a mantle on the fireplace?” the gallery owner asks as they walk.

 

“A small central recess only, Mr. Chilvers.” Lettice says knowledgably, much to Minnie’s surprise, for even as the owner of the fireplace she has never so much as considered whether it has a mantle or not.

 

“And the specifics of the room?” Mr. Chilvers asks, running his index finger along the edge of a display table as he does, rubbing his clean thumb and forefinger together and releasing a satisfied sigh as he does.

 

“It’s my dining room.” Minnie begins. “I tried to do the redecoration myself but…”

 

Lettice quickly places a forbidding arm across Minnie’s chest, silencing her. Minnie glances at her friend whose eyes widen as she shakes her head to indicate that the gallery owner doesn’t need to know about Minnie’s decorative disasters.

 

“The room,” Lettice says smoothly over the top of her friend. “Is in an early Victorian townhouse, so it has high ceilings and is tall rather than wide. I have metallic red dioxide papers embossed with leaves and flowers on order from Jeffrey and Company. Mr. and Mrs. Palmerston are devotees of modern art, Mr. Chilvers, so the paper, whilst striking, is really there to support their paintings already chosen for the room.”

 

“Always the arbiter of smart and select taste, Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Chilvers replies with a smile as he glances back at the two ladies and tweaks his moustache. “So, something tall, perhaps, with some gilding?”

 

“Quite so, Mr. Chilvers.” Lettice agrees.

 

“And nothing too ornate, of course.” he adds.

 

“Indeed no, Mr. Chilvers.” Lettice concurs.

 

“You are very fortunate in your choice of interior designer, Mrs. Palmerston.” He turns back and keeps walking. “Too many women with too much time on their hands take it upon themselves to redecorate rooms, creating a disastrous and gauche pale imitation of what they have seen elsewhere, which simply doesn’t suit their homes.”

 

Minnie’s eyes grow wide as she glances at Lettice in alarm. Lettice silently raises he finger to her lips to indicate that she hasn’t said anything about Minnie’s attempt to redecorate her dining room herself, which makes Minnie sigh with relief.

 

“Rather like creating a Maida Vale dining room in St John’s Wood, would you say, Mr. Chilvers?” Minnie asks a little nervously.

 

“Quite so, Mrs. Palmerston. Well said.” he agrees as his pace slows. “I do so dislike bored ladies like that. I have no time for artless women who dabble in art, and I won’t have them in my gallery.”

 

“Oh!” Minnie bluffs with false joviality. “Oh, my husband and I quite agree with you. There is nothing worse than a poorly decorated room, Mr. Chilvers, full of tasteless tatt.” She is so grateful that the imposing gallery owner has his back to her so that he cannot see the colour of her face betraying the truth of Minnie’s experience.

 

“Indeed, Mrs. Palmerston,” he agrees. “But that is something you won’t have to suffer under the skilled artistic eye and adept hands of Miss Chetwynd. She has found the profession that suits and showcases her skills admirably.”

 

“Yes,” Minnie says, blushing deeper and smiling coyly. “I’ve seen the work she has done to the home of friends of ours.”

 

“Ah,” Mr. Chilvers purrs as they reach a corner of the gallery. He stops in front of a beautiful, and unusually, round flame wood cabinet on a large pedestal. “I think, ladies, you might find something to your liking in here.” He opens up the doors and turns to the two ladies. “A selection of modern sculpture and some of my finest Venetian glass*******. There are also some rather fetching sculptures to either side.” he adds with a wave of his elegant hand. “Well, I’ll leave you to discuss your choices with your client, Miss Chetwynd. I do hope, Mrs. Palmerston, that you will find something to please you.”

 

The two ladies watch him sweep away before turning to the cabinet.

 

“Thank you for not telling Mr. Chilvers about my… you know.” Minnie starts gesticulating wildly.

 

“You nearly gave the game up yourself, Minnie.” Lettice chides her friend kindly in a conspiratorial whisper. “Mr. Chilvers is a frightful snob. It’s almost like he comes from the highest echelons of some European aristocracy, and yet even with Leslie’s help I’ve been unable to trace him prior to opening this gallery in 1920. He’s quite the mystery! And,” she adds. “He doesn’t let just anyone shop here, even by appointment.”

 

“Which would explain why Charles and I have never been here.” Minnie replies.

 

“Indeed. Well, I think Mr. Chilvers would refuse Charles automatically on face value. Being a banker, I think he would consider him far too gauche and newly minted for his establishment.”

 

“Oh.” Minnie casts her eyes downwards.

 

“Don’t do that, Minnie darling!” Lettice puts a comforting arm around her friend. “You are a good person, and so is Charles.” She rubs Minnie’s arm. “Don’t worry about Mr. Chilvers snobbery. I can already tell that he likes you. I knew he would admire you for your striking fiery red tresses and stunning green eyes. He finds you intriguing.”

 

“He does?”

 

“Yes. He didn’t even acknowledge poor Margot on the one occasion I brought her here.”

 

“But she’s richer and better connected than I am.”

 

“Sshhh!” Lettice shushes her friend with a finger to her lips. “He obviously doesn’t think so.”

 

“It’s a funny way to run a business, I must say.” Minnie says as she picks up a beautiful glass comport of aqua blue and toys with it in her hands, feeling the cool material between her fingers.

 

“Mr. Chilvers seems to rise above all that, which is why I think he is from a very aristocratic European family. Italian perhaps?” She picks up a tall Venetian glass vase with amber decoration around its base, holding it up as if it serves as proof as to Mr. Chilver’s lineage.

 

“With a name like Chilvers, he can hardly be Italian, Lettice darling!” Minnie replaces the comport on the shelf.

 

“Oh, you can be so dense sometimes, Minnie darling!” Lettice giggles. “You don’t imagine that Chilvers is his real name, do you?”

 

“Well…” Minnie gulps.

 

“Of course it’s not! If he’s an Italian prince, or count, he probably has a real family name of Chiavaroli or Chiodini.” Lettice giggles girlishly as the syllables roll around like a foreign language in her mouth. “Anyway, going back to what I was saying before, if through being connected with me, you receive a foray into the joys of exclusive shopping here, I know you will find many a fine piece to ornament your home with. Once Mr. Chilvers knows you have taste.”

 

“He hasn’t seen the disaster I made of my dining room.” Minnie blurts out, interrupting her friend.

 

“And he doesn’t have to know about it.” Lettice soothes quietly. “Just keep mum.”

 

“Yes!” Minnie sighs. “Me and my big mouth. One day you won’t be around, and I’ll get myself into real trouble.”

 

“Well, luckily I was here, Minnie darling.” Lettice says with a smile. “Anyway, once Mr. Chilvers knows you, he’ll forgive you if you bring Charles: especially if Charles brings an open chequebook.”

 

“Do you think he might be Russian?” Minnie asks quietly, looking discreetly over her shoulder to Mr. Chilvers as he sits at his black japanned desk in the middle of the gallery, scribbling notes into a ledger.

 

“Who?” Lettice asks, wide eyed as she removes the copy of the ‘Theban Dancer’ from the middle shelf of the cabinet and considers whether it will fit onto the recess of Minnie’s dining room fireplace.

 

“Mr. Chilvers, of course, Lettice darling! Now who’s being dense?”

 

“Good heavens no!” Lettice scoffs. “He’s English is far too good and his manners too impeccable to be a Russian emigree. Have you ever met any? They can be quite horrible and so terribly haughty, even if they are now all as poor as church mice.” She too looks over to Mr. Chilvers, who either doesn’t know he is being scrutinised, or is far too polite to acknowledge it. “No, he’s Italian, I’m sure of it.” She sighs as she admires his dark hair, pale skin, and sharp cheekbones. “Now, this isn’t helping us pick any pieces for your dining room, Minnie darling. I was thinking that the ‘Theban Dancer’ you like might just fit on the small recess on your fireplace. Do you really like her enough to want her? Is she exotic enough for your current tastes?”

 

The two women begin to look earnestly at the objects around them to select pieces for Minnie’s dining room, and all the while, Mr. Chilvers writes in his ledger, the nib of his fountain pen scratching across the surface of the page, his ears ever alert to every whisper of conversation in his gallery, but his eyes remaining downcast out of deference for Lettice, one of his favourite customers.

 

*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.

 

**In early January 1923 a newspaper ran a gossip item that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was soon to be engaged to Prince Albert the Duke of York’s elder brother, the Prince of Wales – a story that reportedly annoyed her. Rumour has it that part of Elizabeth’s hesitance to marry Albert was due to her being in love with David – the loftier “catch” – however, these stories are highly unlikely and probably have more to do with trying to explain her later hatred for Wallis Simpson. More likely, she knew that the story meant more pressure for her to make up her mind about Albert and she knew the rumour would wound him

 

***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 Company’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.

 

****On the 4th of November 1922, English archaeologist Howard Carter and his men discovered the entrance to the boy king, Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, sparking a worldwide interest in all things Egyptian. The craze he started became known as Tutmania, and it inspired everything from the architecture of public building and private houses alike to interior design and fashion. Famously at the time, socialite Dolores Denis Denison applied one of the earliest examples of getting the media of the day to pay attention to her because of her dress by arriving at the prestigious private view of the King Tut Exhibition in London, dressed as an Egyptian mummy complete in a golden sarcophagus and had to be carried inside by her driver and a hired man. Although it started before the discovery of the tomb, the Art Deco movement was greatly influenced by Egyptian style. Many of the iconic decorative symbols we associate with the movement today came about because of Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

 

*****The exquisite sculpture “Theban Dancer” was cast by the esteemed Belgian-French sculptor Claire Jeanne Roberte Colinet, and is one of the most recognised figures representing the exoticism and frenetic energy and movement of the 1920s. Cast in the 1920s, the “Theban Dancer” is gilt and enamelled bronze, usually sitting upon a marble plinth.

 

******In 1919, King George V sent the HMS Marlborough to rescue his Aunt the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna after the urging of his mother Queen Dowager Alexandra. On the 5th of April 1919, the HMS Marlborough arrived in Sevastopol before proceeding to Yalta the following day. The ship took Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and other members of the former, deposed Russian Imperial Family including Grand Duke Nicholas and Prince Felix Yusupov aboard in Yalta on the evening of the 7th. The Empress refused to leave unless the British also evacuated wounded and sick soldiers, along with any civilians that also wanted to escape the advancing Bolsheviks. The Russian entourage aboard Marlborough numbered some 80 people, including forty four members of the Royal Family and nobility, with a number of governesses, nurses, maids and manservants, plus several hundred cases of luggage

 

*******Venetian glass is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well as gilding, enamel, or engraving. Production has been concentrated on the Venetian island of Murano since the Thirteenth Century. Today Murano is known for its art glass, but it has a long history of innovations in glassmaking in addition to its artistic fame - and was Europe's major centre for luxury glass from the High Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance. During the Fifteenth Century, Murano glassmakers created cristallo—which was almost transparent and considered the finest glass in the world. Murano glassmakers also developed a white-coloured glass (milk glass called lattimo) that looked like porcelain. They later became Europe's finest makers of mirrors.

 

Whilst this up-market London gallery interior complete with artisan pieces may appear real to you, it is in fact made up completely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces I have had since I was a teenager.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

On the top shelf of the round Art Deco display cabinet are a selection of 1:12 artisan glass pieces. Each one is made from real blown glass and is decorated with spun glass patterning in a different colour. They all come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

On the middle shelf is 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. She is flanked by two hand coloured spun glass comports. These I have had since I was a teenager. I acquired them from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house miniatures.

 

The New Woman Art Deco statue on the bottom shelf of the cabinet is a hand painted 1:12 artisan pewter miniature also from Warwick Miniatures Ireland. She is named “Christianne”, and she also comes in a more risqué form as a nude.

 

The very striking round mirror backed mahogany Art Deco cabinet is made by high end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. It comes from their Swanson range. The two pedestals either side of it were also made by Bespaq.

 

The two statues on the pedestals are 1:12 artisan miniatures also from Warwick Miniatures Ireland, however they have been had painted by me.

 

The black console table and the table in the foreground were made by Town Hall Miniatures.

 

The two porcelain vases on the console table have been hand painted and came from an online miniatures specialist on E-Bay. The glass comport is a 1:12 artisan glass piece made from real blown glass and is hand tinted. It comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The paintings on the wall come from Amber’s Miniatures in the United States.

 

The vase of flowers in the foreground is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

The Clarice Cliff style Art Deco tea set and tray on the table in the foreground have been hand painted and came from an online miniatures specialist 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.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews, although we are still in Mayfair, moving a few streets away to Hill Street, where Edith, Lettice’s maid, and her beau, grocery boy Frank Leadbetter, are visiting Edith’s friend and fellow maid Hilda. It is a beautiful, sunny Sunday and Sundays all three have as days off from their jobs as domestic servants and delivery boy. Taking advantage of this, all three are going to spend the afternoon at Hammersmith Palias de Danse*. As usual, Frank collects Edith from Cavendish Mews and the pair then go to the home of Lettice’s married friends Margot and Dickie Channon, where Hilda works as a live-in maid.

 

Being Hilda’s day off, her employers usually decamp for the day, and today they are visiting their friend Priscilla who recently married American dry goods heir Georgie Carter. The pair have just returned to London from their honeymoon which took in much of Europe before visiting Georgie’s family in Philadelphia. The quartet will dine at the Café Royal**, doubtless at the expense of Georgie since the Channons seem perpetually to have financial difficulties, but as a result, the Channons have invited the Carters back to their Hill Street flat for after supper coffee, which means that Hilda must do one of her most hated jobs: grind coffee beans to make real coffee for Georgie Carter, who is particular about his American style coffee. We find the trio in the kitchen of the Hill Street flat, the ladies’ dancing frocks and Frank’s suit at odds with their surrounds as Hilda grinds the coffee beans sitting in a white china bowl in the large wooden and brass coffee grinder. By preparing the coffee, ready to make before she goes out, it will be easy to serve when her employers and their guests return after dinner, and the beans will still be fresh enough for Georgie’s liking.

 

“You know,” Frank remarks as he stands at Edith’s elbow and watches Hilda turn the handle of the coffee grinder with gusto. “I don’t see why they can’t just drink Camp Coffee*** like the rest of us.”

 

“Oh Frank!” gasps Edith, looking up at her beau and patting his hand with her own as he squeezes her left shoulder lovingly. “You know perfectly well why not, Frank. Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s friend, Mr. Carter is an American gentleman, and just like Miss Wanetta Ward the American moving picture star, he doesn’t like British coffee.”

 

“What rot!” Frank scoffs at the suggestion. “There’s nothing wrong with British coffee! If British coffee isn’t to Mr. Carter’s taste, let him have tea then, and save poor Hilda the effort of having to grind up coffee beans for his lordship.” He slips off the jacket of his smart Sunday blue suit, revealing his crisp white shirt, red tie and smart navy blue vest. He drapes it over the back of the Windsor chair Edith sits in. “Come on old girl,” he says to Hilda as he moves around the deal pine kitchen table. “Give me a go then. Give your arms a chance to recuperate before we go dancing.”

 

“You’re such a Socialist, Frank Leadbetter.” pipes up Hilda as with a grunt, she pushes the handle of the grinder mechanism over a particularly recalcitrant coffee bean.

 

“What?” gasps Frank as he takes over grinding from the grateful maid. “I thought you’d come to my defence, Hilda, especially as I’m being so chivalrous as to grind coffee beans for you.”

 

“Oh I am grateful, Frank, ever so.” Hilda replies, rubbing her aching forearms with her fat, sausage like fingers. “But just because you are being gallant, doesn’t mean I can’t call you a Socialist.”

 

“Because a hard working man like me thinks I’m every bit as good as this friend of your Mr. and Mrs. Channon, I’m now a Socialist?” Frank asks in an appalled voice. “You’re as bad as Edith’s mum.” He nods in his sweetheart’s direction.

 

“Mum thinks Frank might be a Communist.” Edith explains. “Even though we’ve both told her that he isn’t.”

 

“Handsome is as handsome does.” remarks Hilda with a cheeky smile as she glances at Frank winding the red knob topped brass handle of the grinder.

 

“I’m neither, I’ll have you know, Hilda Clerkenwell!” Frank retorts. “I’d prefer to think of myself as more of a progressive thinker when it comes to the rights and privileges of the working man,” He looks poignantly at Hilda. “And woman.”

 

“Same thing.” Hilda retorts matter-of-factly as she starts to straighten the russet grosgrain bandeau**** embellished with gold sequins which has slipped askew whilst she has been grinding coffee beans.

 

“Pardon my ignorance,” Edith begins gingerly. “But what exactly is a Socialist?”

 

“Socialism is a political movement that wants to reform various economic and social systems, transferring them to social ownership as opposed to private ownership.” remarks Hilda as she runs her hands down the back of her hair.

 

“Well done, Hilda!” Frank congratulates her.

 

“You sound surprised, Frank.” Hilda says with a cheeky smile. “Don’t they have smart girls where you come from, present company excluded, Edith!” Hilda adds hurriedly so as not to offend her best friend.”

 

“Oh, you know I’m not very political,” Edith assures Hilda, yet at the same time self consciously toys with her blonde waves as she speaks.

 

“I must confess, Hilda, I am a little surprised.” Frank admits. “I don’t know many girls who are interested in social rights and can give explanations so eloquently.”

 

“I’m so sorry Frank!” Edith defends herself. “I know you’ve tried to teach me, but I can’t help it. I get confused between this ist and the other ist. They all seem the same to me.” She blushes with mild embarrassment at her own ignorance.

 

“No, no, Edith!” Frank assures her as he stops grinding the coffee beans and reaches out his left hand, clasping her right one as it rests on the tabletop and squeezes it reassuringly. “This isn’t a criticism of you! It was a compliment to Hilda. You’re wonderful, and there are things that you understand and are far better at than me.”

 

“Than both of us, Edith.” adds Hilda quickly, the look of concern about her friend taking umbrage clear on her round face.

 

“Yes, inconsequential things.” Edith mumbles in a deflated tone.

 

“No, not at all.” Frank reassures her soothingly as he takes up grinding coffee again. “What good am I to myself if I can’t cook a meal to feed myself.”

 

“And for all my love of reading, Edith, you know I can’t sew a stitch.” Hilda appends. “I could never have made this beautiful frock.” She grasps the edge of the strap of her russet coloured art satin***** dress as she speaks. “Not in a million years. We’re all good at different things, and no-one could say you weren’t smart, Edith.”

 

“That’s right.” Frank concurs, smiling at his sweetheart. “One of the reasons why I’ve always admired you is because you aren’t some silly giggling Gertie****** like some of the housemaids I’ve known. You aren’t turned by just a handsome face, and your head isn’t filled with moving picture stars and nothing else.”

 

“Well, I do like moving picture stars, Frank.” Edith confesses.

 

“Oh I know, Edith, and I love you for that too.” Frank reassures her. “But it’s not all that is in there. You have a good head on your shoulders.”

 

“And a wise one too.” Hilda interjects. “How often do I ask you for advice? I’ve always asked you for your opinion on things for as long as we’ve been friends.”

 

“You are clever, and insightful, and you want a better life for yourself too, and that’s why I really love you. We want the same things from life.” Frank says in a soft and soothing tone full of love as he gazes at Edith. “You are very pretty, and no-one can deny that – not even you,” He holds out an admonishing finger as Edith goes to refute his remark. “But beauty, however glorious will fade. Just look at our Dowager Queen Mother*******. When beauty fades, wit and intelligence remain, and you have both of those qualities in spades, Edith.”

 

“Oh Frank.” Edith breathes softly. “You aren’t ashamed of me then?”

 

“Of course I’m not Edith! How could I ever be ashamed of you? I’m as proud as punch******** to step out with you! You’re my best girl.”

 

Frank winds the gleaming brass coffee grinder handle a few more times before stopping. He pulls out the drawer at the bottom and as he does, the rich aroma of freshly ground coffee beans fills the air around them, wafting up his, Edith and Hilda’s nostrils. He sighs with satisfaction at a job well done.

 

“Good enough for his American lordship?” Frank asks Hilda.

 

She peers into the drawer. “Good enough.” she acknowledges with another of her cheeky smirks, nodding affirmatively.

 

“I still think he could jolly well grind his own, you know, Hilda!” Frank opines.

 

“Socialist.” she laughs in reply as she walks around Frank, withdraws the drawer of ground coffee and knocks the contents into the small, worn Delftware coffee cannister with careful taps, so as not to spill and waste any of the hard-won grinds.

 

“I bet you, your Wanetta Ward doesn’t grind her own coffee, Edith.” Frank goes on as he walks back around to Edith and slips his jacket on again.

 

“I bet you she does, Frank!” Edith counters.

 

“What? A moving picture star grinding her own coffee? I don’t believe it!”

 

“Miss Ward is a very unorthodox person, Frank, even for an American.” she assures him. “I think she might surprise you if you ever get the pleasure of meeting her one day.”

 

“Maybe.” Frank says doubtfully. “Well now that coffee is ground, we should really get going.” He runs his hands around the back of his jacket collar to make sure it is sitting straight. “The Hammersmith Palais waits for no-one, not even those who slave for undeserving Americans.” He laughs good heartedly. “Shall we go?”

 

“Oh yes!” enthuses Edith as Frank chivalrously pulls out her chair for her as she stands up. “I’ll fetch our coats.”

 

With her pretty blue floral sprigged frock swirling about her figure, Edith hurries over to the pegs by the door where Frank’s, Hilda’s and her own coat and hats hang. She moves lightly across the floor, practicing her dance steps as she goes, silently moving to the music she hears the band playing in her head.

 

“I really wonder why I bother sometimes.” Hilda says despondently as she pulls her brown coat on over the top of the luxurious man-made silk frock that Edith made for her and decorated with lace trimming and small bursts of sequins.

 

“Like I said,” Frank mutters. “He should settle for Camp Coffee like the rest of us, or have tea.”

 

“Not grinding coffee, Frank!” Hilda scoffs in reply. “I mean go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais week after week. What’s the point?”

 

“What do you mean, Hilda?” Edith asks gently, slipping her arms into her own black three-quarter length coat as Frank holds to open for her.

 

“I mean why do I bother going dancing when no man at the Palais ever looks at me, even in this beautiful new frock you made me, Edith.” She picks up the lace trimmed hem of her dance dress and lifts it despondently.

 

Edith and Frank both glance anxiously at one another for a moment. Both know they are thinking exactly the same thing. What Hilda says is true. Whenever the three of them go to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse there are always far more women in attendance than men. The Great War decimated the male population, and almost drove an entire generation of young men into extinction. Sadly, this means that more and more women are finding themselves without a gentleman to step out with, and are deemed surplus to needs by society. In spite of any of his faults, Edith knows how lucky she is to have a young man like Frank. Even the attentions of pretty girls are less in demand with fewer men in circulation desiring their company. Unlike Edith, Hilda is a little on the plump side, enjoying the indulgence of sticky buns from the bakers and an extra serving of Victoria Sponge at the Lyons Corner Shop********* at the top of Tottenham Court Road. Her face is friendly, with soft brown eyes and a warm smile, but she isn’t pretty. Even with the judicious application of a little powder and rouge acquired from the make-up counter of Selfridges********** her skin lacks the fresh gleam that Edith has, and for as long as she has known her, Edith has always found Hilda to have a very pale complexion. When the three of them do go dancing, Frank is often the only man she dances with when he partners her around the dancefloor, and more often than not, Hilda ends up taking the part of the man, dancing with any number of other neglected wallflowers, just to ward of the tedium of waiting for someone to ask her to dance. The plight, for plight it was, of women like Hilda was all too common, in the post-war world of the 1920s.

 

“Perhaps you’re looking in the wrong place, Hilda.” Frank says.

 

“What do mean, Frank?”

 

“Well, a girl with brains like you needs a man who will stimulate her mentally. Perhaps you might find the man of your dreams at a library.”

 

“A library!” Hilda’s mind conjures up images of pale bookish young men in glasses with phlegmatic characters who would much rather shake her hand limply and discuss the benefits of Socialism, rather than sweep her off her feet romantically.

 

“Not at all helpful, Frank!” hisses Edith as she watches her best friend’s face fall.

 

“I was only joking.” Frank shrugs apologetically, unsure what to say.

 

Edith hurries over and wraps her arm around Hilda’s slumping shoulders consolingly. “A faint heart never won a fair lady, Hilda.” She pulls Hilda to her lovingly. Hilda looks up at her friend sadly, yet thoughtfully. “And I think it works the same in reverse.”

 

Seeing a way to make amends for his ill-timed joke, Frank pipes up, “That’s exactly right, Hilda. Edith wouldn’t have been anywhere near as attractive to me if she hadn’t had a bit of pluck.”

 

“And you look splendid in the dance frock I made for you, Hilda,” Edith adds. “Really you do.”

 

“Do you really think so, Edith?” Hilda asks, looking at her friend.

 

“Of course I do! I’m a professional seamstress, and you are my best friend. I wouldn’t make something that didn’t suit you!”

 

“No, no of course not.” Hilda replies.

 

“And didn’t Mrs. Minkin say that russet satin would suit your colourings?”

 

“She did.”

 

“Well then,” Edith replies matter-of-factly. “There is nothing more to be said.”

 

“That’s right.” agrees Frank, and without further ado, he sweeps Hilda into his arms.

 

With the ease of a natural dancer, Frank begins to waltz his partner carefully across the black and white chequered linoleum floor of the Channon’s kitchen, guiding her around the kitchen table and the chairs gathered around it, past the black and white stove and the dresser cluttered with crockery and provisions.

 

“Oh Frank!” Hilda says, laughing joyously as she allows herself to be swept away. “You really are a one!”

 

Edith smiles as she sees a light return to her best friend’s eyes, and a smile appear upon her pert lips. She considers herself so fortunate not just because she has a chap to step out with, but because Frank is so kind and considerate. Not just any man would understand or appreciate Edith’s wish to include Hilda in their excursions to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, and not every man would be as willing to take a turn with her on the dancefloor, as has been proven. Then again, Frank is no ordinary man, and as time goes on and she gets to know him better, the more she is becoming aware that her sweetheart is a very special man indeed. She laughs as Frank dips Hilda, making her squeal in delight, before raising her up again and restoring her to her feet.

 

“There!” Frank says with a huff as he catches his breath. “Now that your feet are suitably warmed up, you’re ready to go, Miss Clerkenwell. We’ll have no more talk of you not wanting to come dancing with us.”

 

“Today might be the day you meet someone, Hilda. Don’t give up on the chance.” Edith enthuses.

 

“Oh alright you two!” Hilda acquiesces. “I give up. Let’s go then.”

 

“That’s the spirit, Hilda!” Frank says. “That pluck will win you a fine and handsome gentleman with a brain that you deserve.”

 

“I can hardly battle both of you, can I?” Hilda laughs as she carefully places her floppy brimmed brown velvet and copper faille poke-style bonnet decorated with a beige rose and leaves atop her head.

 

The three friends walk out of the kitchen door that leads out onto the flat’s back stairs and begin to descend to the street. Hilda locks the door behind her and the coffee grinder and the as of yet to be ground coffee beans sit on the table, ready for when she returns later that day to serve to Margot, Dickie and their friends Priscilla and Georgie Carter.

 

*The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

**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.

 

***Camp Coffee is a concentrated syrup which is flavoured with coffee and chicory, first produced in 1876 by Paterson & Sons Ltd, in Glasgow. In 1974, Dennis Jenks merged his business with Paterson to form Paterson Jenks plc. In 1984, Paterson Jenks plc was bought by McCormick & Company. Legend has it (mainly due to the picture on the label) that Camp Coffee was originally developed as an instant coffee for military use. The label is classical in tone, drawing on the romance of the British Raj. It includes a drawing of a seated Gordon Highlander (supposedly Major General Sir Hector MacDonald) being served by a Sikh soldier holding a tray with a bottle of essence and jug of hot water. They are in front of a tent, at the apex of which flies a flag bearing the drink's slogan, "Ready Aye Ready". A later version of the label, introduced in the mid-20th century, removed the tray from the picture, thus removing the infinite bottles element and was seen as an attempt to avoid the connotation that the Sikh was a servant, although he was still shown waiting while the kilted Scottish soldier sipped his coffee. The current version, introduced in 2006, depicts the Sikh as a soldier, now sitting beside the Scottish soldier, and with a cup and saucer of his own. Camp Coffee is an item of British nostalgia, because many remember it from their childhood. It is still a popular ingredient for home bakers making coffee-flavoured cake and coffee-flavoured buttercream. In late 1975, Camp Coffee temporarily became a popular alternative to instant coffee in the UK, after the price of coffee doubled due to shortages caused by heavy frosts in Brazil.

 

****A bandeau is a narrow band of fabric worn round the head to hold the hair in position. Although bandeaus existed long before the 1920s, there was a resurgence in popularity for embroidered grosgrain ribbons to be worn around the head across the forehead in the 1920s, and they are synonymous with 1920s flapper fashion.

 

*****The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.

 

******Although obscure as to its origin, the term “giggling Gertie” is of English derivation and was often used in a derisive way to describe silly children and young people, usually girls, who were deemed as being flippant and foolish.

 

*******Queen Alexandra was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from the twenty-second of January 1901 to the sixth of May 1910 as the wife of King-Emperor Edward VII. Daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, at the age of sixteen Alexandra was chosen as the future wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the son and heir apparent of Queen Victoria. When she arrived in England she was famed for her beauty and her style of dress and bearing were copied by fashion-conscious women. From Edward's death, Alexandra was queen mother, being a dowager queen and the mother of the reigning monarch. Alexandra retained a youthful appearance into her senior years, but during the Great War her age caught up with her. She took to wearing elaborate veils and heavy makeup, which was described by gossips as having her face "enamelled".

 

********Although today we tend to say as “pleased as punch”, the Victorian term actually began as “proud as punch”. This expression refers to the Punch and Judy puppet character. Punch's name comes from Punchinello, an Italian puppet with similar characteristics. In Punch and Judy shows, the grotesque Punch is portrayed as self-satisfied and pleased with his evil actions.

 

*********J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

********** Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of upscale department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited, part of the Selfridges Group of department stores. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1908. Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr. was an American-British retail magnate who founded the London-based department store. His twenty year leadership of Selfridge’s led to his becoming one of the most respected and wealthy retail magnates in the United Kingdom. He was known as the 'Earl of Oxford Street'.

 

***********Faille is a type of cloth with flat ribs, often made in silk. It has a softer texture than grosgrain, with heavier and wider cords or ribs. Weft yarns are heavier than warp, and it is manufactured in plain weaving. It was especially popular in the Nineteenth Century, and its popularity, although somewhat dwindling, did carry through into the early decades of the Twentieth Century.

 

This cosy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

On Hilda’s deal table stands her coffee grinder with its brass handle, wooden base and drawer, and red knobs. It comes from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The little Delftware canister and the white china bowl also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The coffee beans in the bowl are really black carraway seeds. The vase of flowers comes from an online shop on E-Bay.

 

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

 

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

Generously hopped with Amarillo, Ella and NZ Motueka hops, this hard hitting powerhouse boasts lively lemon and lime tones, floral and spicy notes and background hints of peach and apricot.

Yangon - Shwedagon

 

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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.

 

As the Morris drove slowly up the rather uneven and potholed driveway running through a wild and unkempt looking park that must once have been a landscaped garden, both Lettice and Gerald were taken aback by the house standing on the crest of an undulating hill overlooking a cove. When described as a Regency “cottage residence”, the pair were expecting a modest single storey house of maybe eight to ten rooms with a thatch roof, not the sprawling double storey residence of white stucco featuring arched French doors and windows with sea views, a wraparound cast iron verandah and high pitched slate tiled roof with at least a dozen chimneys.

 

Now settled in ‘Chi an Treth’s’ drawing room, Lettice looks about her, taking in the stripped back, slightly austere and very formal furnishings.

 

“I say old bean,” Gerald addresses Dickie from his seat next to Lettice on the rather hard and uncomfortable red velvet settee. “If this is what your father calls a ‘cottage residence’, no wonder you jumped at the chance to take it.”

 

“Apparently the Prince Regent** coined the term ‘cottage residence’ when he had Royal Lodge built at Windsor,” Dickie explains cheerily from his place standing before the crackling fire, leaning comfortably against the mantle. “And of course my ancestors being the ambitious breed they were, set about building a ‘cottage’ to rival it.”

 

“Was it built for a previous Marquess of Taunton?” Lettice asks with interest.

 

“Heavens no, darling!” their host replies, raising his hands animatedly. “It was built back around 1816 for one of the second Marquess’ bastard sons, who served as a ship’s captain and returned from fighting the Frenchies a decorated war hero.” Dickie points to two portraits at the end of the room, either side of a Regency sideboard.

 

“That would explain the maritime theme running through the art in here.” Lettice points casually to several paintings of ships also hanging about the walls.

 

“Aren’t they ghastly, Lettice darling?” Margot hisses as she glances around at the oils in their heavy frames. “We need some femininity in this old place, don’t you think?” She giggles rather girlishly as she gives her friend a wink. “Daddy has promised me the pretty Georgian girl in the gold dress that hangs in my bedroom in Hans Crescent. I think it could look lovely in here.”

 

“If you please, my love!” Dickie chides his new wife sweetly, giving her a knowing look.

 

“Oh, so sorry my love!” she replies, putting her dainty fingers to her cheeky smile.

 

“As the Marquess’ prolific illegitimate progeny were well known up and down the coast of Cornwall and beyond,” Dickie continues his potted history of the house. “And what with him being a hero of the Napoleonic wars, his father, my ancestor the second Marquess, thought it best to set him up in a fine house of his own.”

 

“That was far enough away from the family seat.” Gerald adds.

 

“That was far enough away from the Marchioness, more like!” Dickie corrects. “Last thing you want to do is rub your good lady wife’s nose into the fruits spawned from the sewing of your wild oats.”

 

Margot looks across at her husband from her armchair with a look of mock consternation. “I do hope, my sweet, that I’m not to be confronted with any illegitimate offspring when I’m Marchioness of Taunton.”

 

“Certainly not my love. The Marquess’s wife, Georgette, was fierce by all accounts, but she’d be a pussy cat compared to your fierceness, Margot.”

 

“I should think so.” Margot smiles with satisfaction.

 

“Anyway,” Dickie adds with a roguish smile. “I made sure I did away with any illegitimate offspring I had, prior to marrying you.”

 

The four friends laugh at Dickie’s quick, witty response, just as the door to the drawing room is forced open by a heavy boot, startling them all.

 

Looking to the door as it creaks open noisily on its hinges, an old woman with a wind weathered face with her unruly wiry white hair tied loosely in a bun, wearing a rather tatty apron over an old fashioned Edwardian print dress, walks in carrying a tea tray. Although weighed down heavily with a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, four cups and saucers and a glass plate of biscuits, the rather frail looking old woman seems unbothered by its weight, although her bones crack noisily and disconcertingly as she lowers the tray onto the low occasional table between the settee and armchairs.

 

“Oh, thank you Mrs. Trevethan.” Margot acknowledges the old woman.

 

“Omlowenhewgh agas boes!***” the elderly woman replies in a gravelly voice, groaning as she stretches back into an upright position.

 

“Yes… Yes, thank you Mrs. Trevethan.” Margot replies in an unsure tone, giving Lettice a gentle shrug and a quizzical look which her friend returns. “I’ll pour the tea myself I think.”

 

“Pur dha****.” she answers rather gruffly before retreating back the way she came with shuffling footsteps.

 

“What did she say?” Lettice asks Dickie once the door to the drawing room has closed and the old woman’s footfalls drift away, mingling with the distant sound of the ocean outside.

 

“Why look at me, old girl?” Dickie replies with a sheepish smile and a shrug as big as his wife’s.

 

“Because your Cornish, Dickie.” Lettice replies.

 

“Only by birth darling!” he defends with a cocked eyebrow and a mild look of distain.

 

“But it’s your heritage, Dickie.” counters Lettice disappointedly. “You’re supposed to know these things.”

 

“You know I went to Eaton, where they beat any hint of Cornish out of me my father and mother hadn’t already chased away prior to me going there.”

 

“It sounded like swearing to me,” Gerald adds in disgust, screwing up his nose. “Local dialect. So guttural.”

 

“Like ‘be gone you city folk, back from whence you came’?” Margot giggles.

 

“And who’d blame her?” Dickie pipes up. “After all, she and Mr. Trevethan have had run of this place ever since the old sea captain died. I mean, this place was supposed to be for Harry…”

 

“God bless Harry.” Margot, Lettice and Gerald all say in unison with momentarily downcast eyes.

 

“But of course, he never lived to be married and be given this place as a wedding gift, so Mr. and Mrs. Trevethan have been looking after the place for around four decades I’d reckon, give or take a few years.”

 

“So, there is a Mr. Trevethan then?” Lettice asks.

 

“Oh yes,” Dickie elucidates as he moves from the fireplace and takes his seat in the other vacant armchair. “He’s the gardener and odd job man.”

 

“Well, if that’s the case, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the whole house doesn’t fall down around our ears.” Gerald remarks disparagingly. “Getting the Morris safely over those potholes in your driveway was no mean feat, old bean.”

 

“They’re old, dear chap.” Dickie defends his housekeeper and gardener kindly. “Be fair. They’ve done a pretty good job of caretaking the old place, considering.”

 

“Poor chap.” mutters Gerald. “Looking at that old harridans’ haggard old face every day.”

 

“Oh Gerald!” gasps Lettice, leaning over and slapping his wrist playfully. “You are awful sometimes! For all you know, she was the beauty of Penzance when she and Mr. Trevethan were first courting. And,” she adds loftily. “I’ll have you know that I think the Cornish dialect sounds very beautiful,” She takes a dramatic breath as she considers her thoughts. “Rather like an exotic language full of magic.”

 

“You’ve been reading too much King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.” Gerald cheekily criticises his friend’s reading habits lightly.

 

“Oh, thinking of which, I have a new novel for you, Lettice darling! It’s called ‘Joanna Godden’***** by Sheila Kaye-Smith. I’ve just finished it.” Margot takes up a volume from the round Regency side table next to her and passes it across to Lettice’s outstretched hands. “It’s a drama set in Kent. I’m sure you’ll like it. Now, shall I be mother?******” she asks, assuming her appropriate role of hostess as she reaches for and sets out the Royal Doulton teacups, a wedding gift from relations, and takes up the silver teapot, also a wedding gift. Expertly she pours the tea and then hands the cups first to her guests and then to her husband before picking up her own.

 

“I hope that old harridan didn’t spit in the tea.” Gerald looks uneasily at the cup of reddish tea he holds in his hands. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

 

“Oh Gerald,” Lettice tuts, shaking her head in mock disapproval before chuckling light heartedly. “You do like to dramatise, don’t you?”

 

“If you announce her intentions like that,” Margot adds. “I’m sure she will, since she has the habit of listening at the keyhole.” She smiles cheekily as she finishes her sentence and settles back in her armchair.

 

“What?” Gerald splutters, depositing his cup rather clumsily and nosily on the Regency occasional table at his left elbow and looking over his shoulder to the door.

 

Margot, Dickie and Lettice all burst out laughing.

 

“Oh Gerald,” Lettice says gaily through her mirthful giggles. “You’re always so easy to bait.”

 

Gerald looks at his friends, smiling at his distress. “Oh!” He swivels back around again and tries to settle as comfortably as possible into the hard back of the settee. “I see.” He takes up his cup and glowers into it as he stirs it with his teaspoon, his pride evidently wounded at his friends’ friendly joke.

 

Lettice takes up her own cup of tea, adding sugar and milk to it and stirring, before selecting a small jam fancy from the glass dish of biscuits. Munching the biscuit she gazes about the room again, appraising the mostly Regency era furnishings of good quality with a few examples of lesser well made early Victorian pieces, the maritime oil paintings, the worn and faded Persian carpet across the floor and the vibrantly painted red walls, deciding that as well as formal, the room has a very masculine feel about it. “It’s really quite an elegant room, you know.” she remarks. “It has good bones.”

 

“Oh don’t look too closely at our less elegant damp patches or cracks to those so-called good bones, darling girl.” Dickie replies.

 

“Nor the chips to the paintwork and plaster or the marks we can’t quite account for.” Margot adds with a sigh. “I think I’d have been happy for Daddy to commission Edwin Lutyens******* to demolish this pile of mouldering bricks and build us a new country house.”

 

“Margot! What a beastly thing to say!” Lettice clasps the bugle beads at her throat in shock. “To demolish all this history, only to replace it with a mock version thereof. Why it is sheer sacrilege to even say it!”

 

“Blame it on my Industrial Revolution new money heritage,” Margot defends her statement. “Unlike you darling, with your ancestry going back hundreds of years and your romance for everything old.”

 

“I can’t see any damp patches, Dickie, or cracks.” Lettice addresses her male host again.

 

“That’s because it’s so dark in here,” Margot explains. “Even on an unseasonably sunny day like today, the red walls and the red velvet furnishings camouflage the blemishes.”

 

“All the more reason not to change the décor then, dear girl.” remarks Gerald as his gingerly sips his tea, still not entirely convinced of Mrs. Trevethan’s actions prior to the tea being deposited on the table.

 

“No! No, Gerald!” Margot counters. “That’s why I need you Lettice darling, and your vision. I want the place lightened up, smartened up and made more comfortable.”

 

“Those chairs are rather beautiful,” observes Lettice, indicating to the armchairs in which her host and hostess sit, admiring their ormolu mounted arms, sturdy legs and red velvet cushions.

 

“These things!” Margot scoffs, looking down at the seat beneath her. “They are so uncomfortable!” She rubs her lower back in an effort to demonstrate how lumpy and hard they are. “I can’t wait to banish them to the hallway. I can’t possibly sit pleasurably in these, or on that,” She indicates to the settee upon which Lettice and Gerald sit. “And read a book. They aren’t designed for comfort. No, what we want, and need is some soft, modern comfort in here to make life here more pleasurable for us and our guests. I want to sit in here and enjoy the afternoon sun streaming through those from the luxury of a new settee, or invite guests to snuggle into plush new armchairs.”

 

“Margot does have a point, Lettice darling.” Gerald adds, looking mournfully at Lettice as he bounces gingerly on his half of the settee, the flattened velvet seat barely yielding to his moving form.

 

Lettice looks around again. “There are no portraits of women in here, nor children.”

 

“That’s because there aren’t any, anywhere in the house.” Margot replies.

 

“What?” Lettice queries.

 

“The captain was a confirmed old bachelor all his life.” adds Dickie.

 

“But he looks quite dashing in his naval uniform,” Lettice observes. “Surely with his successful career, looks and a house like this to boot, he must have had every eligible woman in Cornwall dashing to knock down his door.”

 

“Even Mrs. Trevethan’s mother, who no doubt was even more beautiful than her daughter at the time the captain was looking for a bride.” Gerald chuckles, his response rewarded with a withering look from Lettice.

 

“He may well have been a desirous prospect, Lettice darling,” Dickie agrees. “But he remained unmarried all his life, and he lived to a great age.”

 

“There is a rumour,” adds Margot, leaning forward conspiratorially for dramatic effect. “That there was a sweetheart: a local lady of good breeding and family. However, her father didn’t approve of an illegitimate son-in-law, even if he did have a successful naval career and a grand new residence. We don’t know whether she was coerced, or if she really didn’t love him, but whatever the cause, she refused him. They say that her refusal of his marriage proposal broke his heart, and he swore then and there that he would never marry.”

 

“Oh how romantic!” Lettice enthuses.

 

“There is also talk in the family,” Dickie adds. “That there is a lost portrait of her.”

 

“A lost portrait?” breathes Lettice excitedly.

 

“Yes, by Winterhalter******* no less.” Margot explains.

 

“Oh how thrilling!” Lettice gasps, clutching her beads with exhilaration this time.

 

“Have you found it yet, old bean?” Gerald asks.

 

“No! Of course not,” replies Dickie. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be a lost portrait, would it? Do try to keep up old chap!”

 

“Not that I haven’t gone sneaking around the house looking for it atop cupboards and at the back of wardrobes.” Margot adds eagerly.

 

“That’s undoubtedly because that cussing old harridan Mrs. Trevethan and her husband probably stole it as soon as the captain had taken his last breath,” explains Gerald. “And now it hangs over their drawing room fireplace in the gatekeeper’s lodge.”

 

“Don’t talk nonsense, Gerald!” scoffs Dickie. “The Trevethans are a kindly pair, if perhaps a little rough and eccentric for our tastes. They love this house as much as we…” He glances at his wife before correcting himself. “Well, as much as I, do. No, we just haven’t found it yet. We may never find it because it might have been taken by someone else long ago, destroyed by the old captain himself in a fit of emotional rage…”

 

“Or,” adds Margot. “It could simply be a Channon family legend.”

 

“Exactly.” agrees Dickie with a satisfied sigh as he reaches over and takes up a chocolate biscuit, taking a large bite out of it. “It wouldn’t be the first if it is.”

 

“I know!” Lettice pipes up with a cheeky smile on her face. “Let’s play sardines******** together tonight, and then one of us might stumble across it in the most unlikely of hiding places.”

 

*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 Prince Regent, later George IV, was king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from the death of his father, King George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later. He had already been serving as Prince Regent since 5 February 1811, during his father's final mental illness. It is from him that we derive the Regency period in architecture, fashion and design.

 

***”Omlowenhewgh agas boes” is Cornish for “bon appetit”.

 

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

 

*****‘Joanna Godden’ is a 1921 novel by British writer Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887 – 1956). It is a drama set amongst the sheep farmers of Romney Marsh in Kent.

 

******The meaning of the very British term “shall I be mother” is “shall I pour the tea?”

 

*******Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869 – 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings, and was one of the architects of choice for the British upper classes between the two World Wars.

 

********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).

 

********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.

 

This beautiful Regency interior with its smart furnishings may not be all that it seems, for it is made up entirely with miniatures from my collection, including a number of pieces that I have had since I was a child.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The two walnut Regency armchairs with their red velvet seats and ormolu mounts are made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. So too are the two round occasional tables that flank the settee and one of the armchairs.

 

The round walnut coffee table was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Creal miniatures.

 

The red velvet mahogany settee, the Regency sideboard and the two non matching mahogany and red velvet chairs at the far end of the room I have had since I was around six or seven, having been given them as either birthday or Christmas gifts.

 

The irises in the vase on the sideboard are very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The vase in which it stands is spun of real glass and was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The detail in this Art Deco vase is especially fine. If you look closely, you will see that it is decorated with fine latticework.

 

Also made of real glass are the decanters of whiskey and port and the cranberry glass soda syphon also made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The white roses behind the syphon are also from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, as is the glass plate of biscuits you can see on the coffee table.

 

The two novels on the occasional table next to the armchair come from Shepherds Miniatures in England, whilst the wedding photo in the silver frame is a real photo, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frame comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in England.

 

On the occasional table beside the settee stands a miniature 1950s lidded powder bowl which I have had since I was a teenager. It is stamped on its base with a green Limoges stamp indicating the era.

 

The Royal Doulton style tea set featuring roses on the coffee table came from a miniature dollhouse specialist on E-Bay, whilst the silver teapot comes from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The silver Regency tea caddy (lettice’s wedding gift to Margot and Dickie if you follow the “Life at Cavendish Mews” series), the slender candlestick and the tall two handled vase on the mantle were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

The British newspapers that sit in a haphazard stack on the footstool in the foreground of the picture are 1:12 size copies of ‘The Mirror’, the ‘Daily Express’ and ‘The Tattler’ made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. There is also a copy of ‘Country Life’ which was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1921 edition of ‘Country Life’.

 

The plaster fireplace to the right of the photo comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

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.

 

The Persian rug on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company 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.

 

Today however, we are following Edith, Lettice’s maid, as she heads east of Mayfair, to a place far removed from the elegance and gentility of Lettice’s flat, in London’s East End. As a young woman, Edith is very interested in fashion, particularly now that she is stepping out with Mr. Willison the grocer’s delivery boy, Frank Leadbetter. Luckily like most young girls of her class, her mother has taught Edith how to sew her own clothes and she has become an accomplished dressmaker, having successfully made frocks from scratch for herself, or altered cheaper existing second-hand pieces to make them more fashionable by letting out waistlines and taking up hems. Thanks to Lettice’s Cockney charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, who lives in nearby Poplar, Edith now has a wonderful haberdasher in Whitechapel, which she goes to on occasion on her days off when she needs something for one of her many sewing projects as she slowly adds to and updates her wardrobe. Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashery is just a short walk from Petticoat Lane**, where Edith often picks up bargains from one of the many second-hand clothes stalls. Today she is visiting Mrs. Minkin with her friend and fellow maid, Hilda, who works for Edith’s former employer, Mrs. Plaistow and has Thursdays free until four o’clock.

 

“Cor, you are so lucky Edith,” remarks Hilda as the two friends stand at Mrs. Minkin’s cluttered, but well ordered shop counter. “Your Miss Lettice seems never to be home. Weekend parties and all that.”

 

“Are you complaining, Hilda?” Edith asks her friend as she gazes around the floor to ceiling shelves full of ribbons and bobbins, corsetry, elastics tapers, and fabrics and breathes in the smell of fabrics, and the cloves and lavender used by Mrs. Minkel to keep the moths at bay.

 

“Oh no!” Hilda defends with a shake of her head. “I’m so happy that you’ve got spare time in her absence to catch up with me, Edith. I just wish I had such luxury. You remember what it was like. I’m lucky if Mr. and Mrs. Plaistow go to Bournemouth for a fortnight in high summer, and even then, I get penalised by being paid board wages*** since they take Cook with them.”

 

“Miss Lettice has only gone down to Wiltshire for the weekend, Hilda,” Edith confirms, toying with a reel of pale blue cotton she plans to buy along with a reel of yellow and a reel of red cotton. “She’ll be back on Monday, so it would hardly be worth putting me on board wages.”

 

“She never does though, does she? Not even for Christmas when she goes home, and you go to your parents?”

 

“Well, no.” Edith admits, dropping her head as her face flushes with embarrassment. She knows how much better off she is with Lettice than in her old position as a parlour maid alongside Hilda at Mrs. Plaistow’s in Pimlico. Mrs. Plaistow is a hard employer, and very mean, whereas Lettice is the opposite, and she knows that she is very spoilt in her position as live-in domestic for a woman who is not at home almost as often as she is. “But,” she counters. “When Miss Lettice does come back, she’ll be bringing her future sister-in-law with her, and then I’ll be busy picking up after two flappers rather than one, and she often entertains when she has guests, so I’ll have my work cut out for me between cleaning and cooking for the pair of them.”

 

“Still, it’s not the same.” Hilda grumbles. “Even if you do have to work hard, it’s not like the hard graft I have to suffer under Mrs. Plaistow. Did I tell you that Queenie chucked in her position?”

 

“No!” Edith gasps, remembering Mrs. Plaistow’s cheerful head parlour maid who was kind and friendly to both her and Hilda. “She was always so lovely. You’ll miss her.”

 

“Will I ever.” Hilda agrees. “She’s gone home to Manchester, well to Cheshire actually. Said she’s done with the big lights of London now, and she wants to be closer to her mum now that she’s getting on a bit.”

 

“That’s nice for her.”

 

“That’s what she said, but I think she really found a new position to get away from Mrs. Plaistow and all her mean ways.”

 

“What’s her new position?”

 

“She’s working as a maid in Alderley Edge for two old spinster sisters who live in a big old Victorian villa left to them by their father who owned a cotton mill. She wrote to me a few weeks ago after she settled in. She told me that the old ladies don’t go out much as one of them is an invalid, and they seldom entertain. Half the house is shut up because it’s too hard for them to use it. There’s a cook, a gardener cum odd job man, and like you a char comes in to do the hard jobs, so she’s finding it much easier. She writes that she can even take the train in to Manchester on her afternoons off to go shopping and see her old mum.”

 

“That sounds perfect. Does that mean you’ll become the head parlour maid now, Hilda?”

 

Hilda cocks an eyebrow at her friend and snorts with derision. “Don’t make me laugh. This is Mrs. Plaistow we’re talking about.”

 

“Yes, but you seem the most obvious choice to fill Queenie’s spot.” Edith says cheerily. “You’ve been there for what, three years now?” Hilda nods in agreement to Edith’s question. “So, you’d be perfect.”

 

This time it is Hilda’s head that sinks between her shoulders in a defeated fashion, the pale brown knit of her cardigan suddenly hanging lose over her plump frame as she hunches forward slightly.

 

“Of course you would, Hilda!” Edith assures her friend, placing a comforting hand on her forearm.

 

“Mrs. Plaistow doesn’t think so. She says I need more experience.”

 

“Oh what rubbish!” Edith cries, the outrage and indignation for her friend’s plight palpable in her voice. “Three years is more than enough experience!”

 

“She’s gone and hired a new girl after putting an advertisement in The Lady****. Her name’s Agnes.”

 

Both girls look at one another, screw up their face at the name, mutter their disapproval and then burst into girlish laughter as they chuckle over the faces each other pulled in their shared disgust. It is then that Edith has a momentary pang of loss as she remembers the nights she and Hilda used to share in their tiny attic room at the top of Mrs. Plaistow’s tall Pimlico townhouse. It might have been cold with no heating to be had, but all the girlish silliness and fun they had made up for the lack of warmth: talking about the handsome soldiers they met on their shared days off, discussing what their weddings would be like – each being the other’s bridesmaid – and constant discussions about what was fashionable to wear.

 

“Mrs. Plaistow’s just being her usual penny-pinching self.” Edith remarks. “She just doesn’t want to increase your wages and pay you what you’re really worth. I bet she hired this Agnes at a lesser wage than Queenie got, and even then, I don’t think Queenie was paid her worth.”

 

“Probably not.” Hilda says in return.

 

“I don’t know why you put up with her, Hilda. There are plenty of jobs going for parlour maids. I got out and look at me now. I’ve overheard Miss Lettice talk about something called ‘the servant problem’ with some of her married lady friends, where people cannot find quality domestics like us unless they can provide good working conditions. That’s why my wage at Miss Lettice’s is higher than it was at Mrs. Plaistow’s, and why I have a nice bedroom of my own with central heating and a comfy armchair to sit in.”

 

“And Miss Lettice is a nice mistress.” Hilda adds. “Who’s away half the time.”

 

“And Miss Lettice is nice mistress.” Edith agrees. “I can always give you the details of the agency in Westminster that I registered myself with, which led Miss Lettice to me. It has a very good clientele.”

 

“I don’t think a duchess will pay any better than Mrs. Plaistow will.” remarks Hilda disparagingly. “Anyway, I’ve been making enquiries on my days off, not today of course, and putting my name about Westminster and St. James’, so who knows.”

 

“Well, the offer is there if you fancy.” Edith begins.

 

“Here we are, Edit, my dear!” Mrs. Minkin chortles cheerily, breaking the girls’ conversation as she appears through the door leading from her storeroom, a bolt of pretty blue floral cotton across her ample arms. “Mr. Minkin needs to keep to buying fabric and leave it to me to arrange it in my own back room.” She wags a pudgy finger decorated with a few sparkling gold rings warningly as she places the fabric down in front of the gleaming cash register. “It was hidden, but now it is found Edit my dear.”

 

A refugee from Odessa as a result of a pogrom***** in 1905, Mrs. Minkin’s Russian accent, still thick after nearly twenty years of living in London’s East End, muffles the h at the end of Edith’s name, making the young girl smile, for it is an endearing quality. Edith likes the Jewess proprietor with her old fashioned upswept hairdo and frilly Edwardian lace jabot running down the front of her blouse, held in place by a beautiful cameo – a gift from her equally beloved and irritating Mr. Minkin. She always has a smile and a kind word for Edith, and her generosity towards her has found Edith discover extra spools of coloured cottons or curls of pretty ribbons and other notions****** in the lining of her parcel when she unpacks it at Cavendish Mews. Mrs. Minkin always insists when Edith mentions it, that she wished all her life that she had had a daughter, but all she ever had were sons, so Edith is like a surrogate daughter to her, and as a result she gets to reap the small benefits of her largess, at least until one of her sons finally makes her happy and brings home a girl she approves of.

 

“Thank you, Mrs. Minkin.” Edith says.

 

“Have you seen the latest edition of Weldon’s*******, Edit my dear?” the older woman asks as she jots down the fabric price in pencil on a notepad by the register. “There’s a very nice pattern for a frock with side and back flounces in it.”

 

“That’s what this fabric is for!” Edith says excitedly. “I think it will make a lovely summer frock.”

 

“I thought so.” Mrs. Minkin says with a wink. “I’m getting to know my Edit’s style. No?”

 

Edith nods shyly in agreement.

 

“Now, anything else, Edit my dear?”

 

“I’ll take these three cottons too please, Mrs. Minkin.” Edith places her hands over the spools and rolls them forward across the glass topped counter.

 

“Of course, Edit my dear.” the older woman chortles. “Some buttons too?” She indicates with the sweeping open handed gesture of a proud merchandiser to a tray of beautifully coloured glass, Bakelite and resin buttons expertly laid out next to the till.

 

“Oh,” Edith glances down at them quickly. “No thank you Mrs. Minkin. I have some buttons at home in my button jar.”

 

“Nonsense!” she scoffs in reply, expertly flicking through the cards of buttons. “A new dress must have new buttons.” She withdraws a set of six faceted Art Deco glass buttons that perfectly match the blue of the flowers on the fabric Edith is buying. “You take these as a gift from me. Yes?”

 

“Oh, but Mrs. Minkin!” Edith begins to protest, but she is silenced by the Jewess’ wagging finger.

 

“I’ll just fold them in here with the dress fabric.” She announces as if nothing were more normal. “You take them home with you and when you have made the frock, you wear it in here for me so I can see my buttons.”

 

Then just as she is slipping the buttons into a fold in the patterned cotton, a contemplative look runs across her face. She glances at Edith and then shifts her head. “You know what would go nicely with this fabric?” she asks rhetorically as she deposits the cloth onto a pile of brown paper next to the register and leans back. Stretching her arms over a basket of various brightly coloured and patterned fabric rolls she plucks a hat stand from behind her on which sits a beautiful straw hat decorated with a brightly coloured striped ribbon and some dainty fabric flowers in the palest shade of blue and golden red. “This.” She places it on the counter between herself and the two maids, smiling proudly as though the hat were a beautiful baby.

 

“Oh Edith!” gasps Hilda. “Isn’t it lovely?”

 

“Oh yes it is.” agrees Edith.

 

“And with your blonde hair it would be perfect.” Hilda adds enthusiastically.

 

“Your friend has a good eye.” Mrs. Minkin pipes up, nodding in agreement at Hilda, blessing her with a magnanimous smile. “It would suit you very nicely.”

 

“Oh no, Mrs. Minkin.” Edith protests.

 

“Now, I can’t give it away,” the Jewess answers, squeezing her doughy chin between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand as she contemplates the pretty bow and flowers. “But for you, my dear Edit, I sell it for twelve and six.”

 

“Twelve and six!” gasps Edith. “Oh Mrs. Minkin, even at that generous price I could never afford it.” She gingerly reaches out and toys with one of the fabric blooms as it sits tantalisingly on the hat’s brim.

 

“Ahh,” sighs the older woman as she reaches over, picks up the hat stand and hat with a groan and returns it to the display top of the mahogany drawers behind her. “Pity. Your friend its right. It really would suit you.”

 

“I’m only a maid, Mrs. Minkin,” Edith reminds her. “And whilst I might get paid more generously than some,” She dares to glance momentarily at Hilda who does not return her gaze, distracting herself looking through a basket of balls of wool. “I’m afraid it’s Petticoat Lane for me, where I can buy a straw hat cheaply and decorate it myself with ribbons from here.”

 

“And you’ll do a beautiful job of it I’m sure, Edit my dear.” Mrs. Minkin replies consolingly. “Just remember to echo the colours on your new frock. Yes?”

 

“Alright Mrs. Minkin. I will.”

 

“Good girl.” Mrs. Minkin purrs.

 

Just as the older woman turns back to the two girls, Edith notices for the first time a small square box displayed next to the hat. The cover features the caricature of a woman in profile with a fashionable Eaton crop******** wearing a pearl necklace reaching into her handbag. “May-Fayre Handkerchiefs,” she reads aloud softly.

 

“Oh, I just received a delivery of them.” Mrs. Minkin reaches down and pulls open one of the drawers and withdraws another box. “They’re British made, and very good quality. Look.” She points proudly to some red writing on the face of the box. “The colours are guaranteed permanent.”

 

“Hankies?” Hilda queries. “You don’t need hankies, Edith. You’ve got loads of them.”

 

“Not for me, Hilda: for Mum,” Edith explains. “For Christmas.”

 

“But it’s summer. That’s months away!” Hilda splutters.

 

“I know, but I don’t see why I can’t do a spot of early Christmas shopping.” Edith defends her actions. “It will save me having to join the crowds desperately looking for gifts in December. How much are they Mrs. Minkin?”

 

“They’re three shillings and ninepence.” Mrs. Minkin replies. “You’re a sensible girl, Edit my dear. You shop for bargains, and you look for gifts all year round. What a pity you aren’t Jewish. You’d make a good wife for my Gideon.”

 

“No thank you, Mrs. Minkin,” Edith laughs. “No matchmaking for me.”

  

“Never mind.” Mrs. Minkin chuckles, joining in Edith’s good-natured laughing as she carefully folds brown paper around Edith’s fabric, buttons, box of handkerchiefs and spools of cotton.

 

“Besides,” Edith adds. “I already have a chap I’m walking out with. I can’t very well walk out with two, can I?”

 

“Well, a clever girl like you must have dozens of young men vying for her attentions, I’m sure.” The older woman ties Edith’s purchases up with some twine which she expertly trims with a pair of sharp shears.

 

“I wouldn’t say dozens. Anyway, just one will do me fine, Mrs. Minkin.”

 

“Now, the fabric is six shillings,” the proprietoress mutters, half to herself. “And the handkerchiefs three shillings and ninepence. With the three cottons, that comes to ten shillings exactly.” She enters the price into the register which clunks and groans noisily before the bright ting of a bell heralds the opening of the cash drawer at the bottom.

 

Edith opens her green leather handbag and pulls out her small black coin purse and carefully counts out the correct money in her palm. “Cheaper than a new straw hat.” She hands it over to Mrs. Minkin, who carefully puts it in the various denomination drawers of the till before pushing the cash drawer closed.

 

“Right you are Edit my dear. There you are.” Mrs. Minkin says cheerfully as she hands over Edith’s brown paper wrapped package bound with twine. “Now, what may I hep you with, my dear?” She turns her attention to Hilda.

 

“Me?” Hilda gulps, pressing the fingers of her right hand to her chest. “Oh, I’ve just come to keep my friend company. I don’t sew.”

 

“What?” The older woman’s eyes grow wide as she looks the rather dowdy brunette in the brown cardigan up and down appraisingly. “Not sew? What girl cannot sew?”

 

“Well I can’t,” Hilda replies. “And that’s a fact.”

 

“Foyl meydl*********!” gasps the Jewess aghast, her hand clasping the cameo at her throat. “All girls should know how to sew, even if badly.” She folds her arms akimbo over her large chest, a critical look on her face. “No goy********** will want to marry you if you can’t sew, my dear! Edit my dear,” She turns her attention away from Hilda momentarily. “You need to take your friend in hand and teach her how to sew.” She turns back to Hilda. “Your friend can show you. She knows how to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Eh?”

 

Hilda looks in terror at Edith, who bursts out laughing at her friend’s horrified face. Wrapping her arm comfortingly around her friend, Edith assures Mrs. Minkin that she will take Hilda under her wing. Winking conspiratorially at Hilda so that the proprietoress cannot see, she ushers her friend out of the haberdashery and back out onto the busy Whitechapel street outside with a cheery goodbye to Mrs. Minkin.

 

*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.

 

**Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

***Board wages were monies paid in lieu of meals and were paid in addition to a servant’s normal salary. Often servants were paid board wages when their employer went on holiday, or to London for the season, leaving them behind with no cook t prepare their meals. Some employers paid their servants fair board wages, however most didn’t, and servants often found themselves out of pocket fending for themselves, rather than having meals provided within the household.

 

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

 

*****Pogroms in the Russian Empire were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that began in the Nineteenth Century. Pogroms began to occur after Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815. The 1905 pogrom against Jews in Odessa was the most serious pogrom of the period, with reports of up to 2,500 Jews killed. Jews fled Russia, some ending up in London’s east end, which had a reasonably large Jewish community, particularly associated with clothing manufacturing.

 

******In sewing and haberdashery, notions are small objects or accessories, including items that are sewn or otherwise attached to a finished article, such as buttons, snaps, and collar stays. Notions also include the small tools used in sewing, such as needles, thread, pins, marking pens, elastic, and seam rippers.

 

*******Created by British industrial chemist and journalist Walter Weldon Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was the first ‘home weeklies’ magazine which supplied dressmaking patterns. Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was first published in 1875 and continued until 1954 when it ceased publication.

 

********The Eton crop is a type of very short, slicked-down crop hairstyle for women. It became popular during the 1920s because it was ideal to showcase the shape of cloche hats. It was worn by Josephine Baker, among others. The name derives from its similarity to a hairstyle allegedly popular with schoolboys at Eton.

 

*********”Foy meydl” is Yiddish for “lazy girl”.

 

**********”Goy” is Yiddish for a gentile, non-Jew.

 

Mrs. Minkin’s cluttered haberdashers with its bright wallpaper and assortment of notions is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The pretty straw picture hat on the left, decorated with a real fabric ribbon and artificial flowers is an artisan piece and was acquired through Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders miniature shop in the United Kingdom. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. In this case, the straw hat was made by a British artisan. In complete contrast, the hat on the right with its restrained decoration is a mass manufactured hat and came from Melody Jane’s Doll House in the United Kingdom. Contrary to popular belief, fashion at the beginning of the Roaring 20s did not feature the iconic cloche hat as a commonly worn head covering. Although invented by French milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, the cloche hat did not start to gain popularity until 1922, so even though this story is set in that year, picture hats, a hangover from the pre-war years, were still de rigueur in fashionable society even after this. Although nowhere near as wide, heavy, voluminous or as ornate as the hats worn by women between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the Great War, the picture hats of the 1920s were still wide brimmed, although they were generally made of straw or some lightweight fabric and were decorated with a more restrained touch.

 

The May-Fayre handkerchief box and the lisle hose box sitting directly behind it come from Shepard’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, who have a dizzying array of packaging pieces from the late 1800s to the 1970s. The Warner Brothers corset box behind them and the corset box sitting on the second shelf to the left were made meticulously by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The box of Wizard tapes on the top shelf to the left and the pink corsetry box on the bottom shelf to the left I acquired from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel as part of a larger collection of 1:12 artisan miniature hats, gloves, accessories and haberdashery goods. Edith’s green leather handbag also comes from Marilyn Bickel’s collection.

 

The jewellery stand, complete with jewellery comes from a 1:12 miniature supplier in Queensland. The round mirror, which pivots, and features a real piece of mirror was a complimentary gift from the same seller.

 

The basket in the midground to the right, filled with embroidery items is a 1:12 miniature I have had since I was a teenager. I acquired it from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house accessories.

 

The Superior Quality buttons on cards in the foreground next to the cash register are in truth tiny beads. They, along with basket of rolled fabrics in the left midground, the spools of cottons and the balls of wool in the basket on the right all come from various online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures.

 

The brightly shining cash register was supplied by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom.

 

The mahogany stained chest of drawers on which the hats, jewellery, mirror and boxes stand I have had since I was around ten years old.

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.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid’s, parents live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. Whilst far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, the Harlesden terrace has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her brother, Bert.

 

Having recently met Mrs. McTavish, the grandmother of Frank Leadbetter, Edith’s young beau, Edith has now arranged for Frank to join her for a Sunday roast with her parents, so that they might finally meet. Wishing to make the right impression, Frank arrived on the doorstep of the Watsfords dressed in his Sunday best suit, and presented Ada with a bunch of beautiful yellow roses and George with a bottle of French red wine. Frank has not been the only one wishing to make a good impression, with Ada scrubbing her home from top to bottom in the days leading up to the visit.

 

The kitchen has always been the heart of Edith’s family home, and today it has a particularly special feel about it. Ada had pulled out one of her best table cloths which now adorns the round kitchen table, hiding its worn surface and the best blue and white china and gilded dinner service is being used today. Ada has even conceded to Edith’s constant reminders that she promised to use the pretty Price Washington ‘Ye Old Cottage’ teapot that Edith bought her.

 

The kitchen is filled with the rich smells of roasted ham and pumpkin, boiled potatoes and vegetables, gravy warming over the grate and the faint fruity aroma of one of Ada’s cherry tarts as it sits waiting to be served for dessert on the dresser’s pull out extension.

 

“It’s a pleasure to finally have you at our table on a Sunday after all this time, Frank.” Ada says welcomingly from her seat in the high backed Windsor chair in front of the kitchen range, smiling across the round kitchen table at their guest.

 

“It’s a great pleasure to be here and to meet you too Mrs. Watsford,” Frank answers, before quickly looking to his right and adding, “And of course you too, Mr. Watsford.”

 

“Yes,” adds George. “All we ever seem to hear from our Edith these days is ‘Frank and I did this’ or ‘Frank said that’, and we wondered when we were going to get to meet you.”

 

“Dad!” admonishes Edith hotly, her cheeks flushing with colour at her father’s direct remark.

 

Frank looks to his sweetheart and smiles at her, silently indicating that what her father said was fine with him. “I am sorry we haven’t met sooner, but I am a stickler for doing things properly.”

 

“Yes, so Edith told us.” Ada answers.

 

“So, she may have told you that I wanted her to meet my family first. Sadly, my parents aren’t alive any longer, but I still have my maternal grandmother, who had more than a hand in my upbringing. I needed to ease her into the idea that I have a sweetheart, you see. It has just been she and I since 1919. I didn’t want to upset our routine, so I slowly introduced the idea of Edith being my sweetheart to her before finally introducing them.”

 

“Edith tells us that the introduction to Mrs. Mc… Tavish, is it?” Ada begins querying. When Frank nods, she continues. “That her introduction to Mrs. McTavish went very well.”

 

“It did indeed. In fact, it went even better than I’d hoped.” Frank enthuses. “You must both be very proud of Edith.”

 

Edith blushes again and looks down into her napkin draped across her lap.

 

‘And now they’ve met,” Frank continues. “It means that we could meet.”

 

“Well,” Ada says kindly. “I think that’s very respectful of you, considering your grandmother’s feelings like that.”

 

“I’m sure Edith would do the same, were she in a similar position, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank replies with a slight blush of his own now gracing his usually pale cheeks.

 

“And thank you again for the lovely roses, Frank.” Ada adds, glancing at the bunch of fat yellow roses on the table that Frank presented to her upon his and Edith’s arrival at the Watsford family home.

 

“Oh, and the wine.” Edith points to the bottle of red wine also sitting on the table.

 

“I’m not really a wine drinker myself,” George remarks. “More of stout man, me.” He taps the reddish brown earthenware jug next to him comfortingly.

 

“It doesn’t matter, George.” Ada admonishes her husband. “It was very thoughtful of you, Frank. I’m sure you make your grandmother as proud as Edith makes us.” Yet even as she speaks, Ada looks distrustfully at the bottle of red wine with its fancy label decorated with garlands and writing in a foreign language. “And where did you find this wine, Frank?”

 

“I did make sure to ask Edith whether you were teetotal, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures Ada. “If you disapprove, I’ll take it away. I meant no disrespect.”

 

“Oh it’s not that, Frank. We just aren’t used to it is all. As my husband says, we don’t often have a cause to have wine in this house.”

 

“I don’t think we’ve ever had wine in the house.” George adds.

 

“Oh, when Mum was alive and used to make elderflower or blackberry wine, I always had a small demijohn*** of them on the dresser.” Ada corrects him. “Not that there was ever a great deal in the house.”

 

“I don’t remember that,” George chortles. “But then again,” he adds, raising his bushy eyebrows. “There are a good many things I don’t remember these days.”

 

“Well, I’m afraid this didn’t come from my Granny.” Frank apologises. “But she doesn’t make wine.”

 

“No, but she does make very pretty lace, Mum.” Edith turns to Frank. “So where did you get it from Frank?” she asks. “I don’t remember Mr. Willison being a wine merchant.”

 

“Well, that’s because he’s not. This is a bottle of French wine which comes from a chum of mine who runs a little Italian restaurant up the Islington****.” Frank looks at Edith and smiles. “I’ll take you there one day, Edith, for a very special dinner of home-made spaghetti.”

 

“I’d like that, Frank.” Edith beams.

 

“A French wine from an Italian restaurant?” George queries.

 

“Giuseppe, my chum, serves wine from different countries with his meals, and I asked him what might be best to have.” Frank explains. “And he sold me this bottle.”

 

Ada picks up her tumbler of wine, sniffing at its red liquified contents rather suspiciously before taking her first tentative sip. Swallowing the wine, she isn’t quite sure whether she likes it or not as it glides down her throat. She can taste the fruitiness of it, but it is matched by an acidity that surprises her. It doesn’t taste like the blackberry wine she remembers her mother making. “Once again, it’s very thoughtful of you to give us such a… treat.” Returning her tumbler to the table she discreetly pushes it away from her place at the table, hoping that Frank won’t notice or take offence.

 

“Mum has always said that good manners are the hallmark of a gentleman.” Edith adds with a smile and a nod towards er mother, knowing that Frank has made a good impression with her by the simple gesture of a gift.

 

“And so they are.” Ada nods.

 

“Yellow roses are the universal symbol of friendship.” Frank explains. “And I do sincerely hope that we will be friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watsford.” he adds hopefully, the statement rewarded by a kind smile from both of Edith’s parents.

 

“Where did you learn that from, Frank?” Ada asks.

 

“I came across an old book at the Caledonian Markets* Mrs. Watsford, called, ‘Floral Symbolica’** which lists the meaning of ever so many flowers.”

 

“That sounds very fancy.” George remarks. “Floral… floral sym… what?”

 

“Symbolica, Mr. Watsford.” Frank confirms.

 

“Frank’s a big reader, Dad.” Edith announces, attracting her father’s attention to common ground between the two of them.

 

“What else do you read then, Frank?” George asks with interest. “Besides books of flowers, that is.”

 

“I read lots of things, Mr. Watsford.” Frank replies proudly. “Anything to improve my mind.”

 

“Well, I wish you’d help improve Edith’s mind. She seems only to be interested in romance novels.” George teases his daughter cheekily.

 

“That’s not true, Dad!” Edith gasps, taking her father’s bait far too easily. “I read lots of different things, not just romance novels.”

 

“What do you like to read, Sir?” Frank asks helpfully in an effort to save his sweetheart further embarrassment and character assassination at her father’s hands.

 

“I probably don’t read things you’d like, Frank. I prefer to read for escapism. A good story that grabs me is what I like, like those Fu Manchu***** mystery books, or that new female mystery writer. What’s her name?” He clicks his fingers as he tries to recall her name. “Help me, will you Edith. The woman who wrote ‘The Secret Adversary’ and ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’.”

 

“Christie.” Frank pipes up.

 

“That’s it!” George sighs with relief. “Agatha Christie******. Thank you Frank. Do you read her books too?”

 

“No, I’m afraid I’m not much of a mystery reader myself, Mr. Watsford.”

 

“No, you don’t strike me as a murder mystery type, Frank.” George muses as he eyes the serious young man in his Sunday best suit up and down. “You seem to be a more studious type.” He shrugs. “Pity, she writes ripping good yarns.”

 

“And you’re a delivery lad I believe?” Ada asks, turning the subject more towards knowing more about Frank’s prospects as a potential suitor for her daughter.

 

“That’s right, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank replies proudly, sitting a little straighter in his seat at the table. “I work for Willison’s the Grocers in Mayfair, and I do deliveries around the neighbourhood.”

 

“But he’s doing more than just deliveries now, Dad.” Edith pipes up a little anxiously, seeing the creases in her father’s serious face.

 

“Yes!” Frank adds. “Mr. Willison has taken me under his wing so to speak and is teaching me about displaying goods in the window and the like.”

 

“It’s called visual merchandising.” Edith explains.

 

“Is it now?” Ada remarks, pursing her lips in distrust and raising her eyebrows. “Such fancy words. Our Edith is always coming home with fancy words from your neck of the woods these days.”

 

“Good for you, Lad!” George booms. “Mrs. Watsford here,” He glances beyond the bunch of yellow roses at his wife. “Is perhaps a little less at ease with the idea of bettering yourself than Edith and I are.”

 

“I wouldn’t say that, George.” Ada defends herself. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with a young man improving his lots in life.”

 

“But?” George asks, picking up on the silent second half of his wife’s statement.

 

“But I think that there is such a thing as aspiring too high. There is a class structure that has done us well for time long before I was born.”

 

“For some of us, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank pipes up.

 

Edith’s eyes grow wide as she realises that the conversation over Sunday luncheon is suddenly careening swiftly towards a topic that Frank feels very passionately about, but also one that rattles her mother. She worries that Frank’s enthusiasm might not be so well received by either of her parents. However, even as she thinks these thoughts, it is already too late as Frank opens his mouth and continues.

 

“Now is the time for the working man, and working woman too, to rise up and be better than the lot in life we’ve been dealt, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

Edith watches the almost imperceptible shifts in her mother’s features as they steels and harden.

 

“You may be happy with your place in life, but I for one want to do better. I don’t want to be a grocer’s boy forever. I want to do better, so that I can afford to give Edith a good home.”

 

“Do you plan to own your own grocer’s, lad?” George asks with an air of impossibility.

 

“Maybe, Mr. Watsford. I don’t see why I shouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t try. I have a lot of dreams you see, and ideas for the future.”

 

Ada takes a mouthful of ham, swallowing stiffly as she answers, “Yes, I’ve heard a great deal about your ideas from Edith, Frank.”

 

“I can assure you, Mrs. Watsford, that I am not a Communist.” Frank defends himself, having heard from Edith about her mother’s concerns. “I just want a better world for Edith, for me, for my children.”

 

“And that’s admirable, Frank.” Ada counters. “And I don’t disagree with you. Aspiring to a better life is good. I just think a little less radically than you do, and you’ll forgive me for saying this, but as a person who has had more years on this earth than you have, Frank, I don’t think my opinions are less valid, in spite of their lack of ambition for change.”

 

An uncomfortable silence falls over the table.

 

“Oh I’m sorry, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank says after a moment, dabbing the edge of is mouth with his napkin. “I didn’t mean to cause any offence. Edith tells me that when I get passionate about something, I talk before I think. I apologise for shooting off my mouth.”

 

“That’s alright lad.” George replies soothingly, covering over his wife’s stony silence. “It’s good to feel strongly and want change: a better future for yourself. Ada and I,” He places his bigger hand comfortingly and in a sign of solidarity over his wife’s as she still holds her fork, resting her wrist on the table. “Well, you’ll probably laugh at our old fashioned ideas, but we’ve made positive changes for ourselves and our children in our own, more quiet ways.”

 

“Sorry Mr. Watsford.” Frank sighs. “It’s not the first time my mouth has gotten me in trouble.”

 

“It’s alright, Frank.” Ada says quietly, releasing the handle of her fork and entwining her fingers with those of her husband. “I like you, in spite of the fact that you and I may not entirely agree with the way the world should be or how we go about making it a better place, but I just can’t help worrying about our Edith being with you and your revolutionary ideas.”

 

“Mum!” Edith gasps, raining her hands to her mouth.

 

“I’m sorry, Edith,” Ada says. “But I have to say my peace. I do worry about you. As a mother you do worry, about all your children.”

 

“I promise you that I won’t ever put Edith in harm’s way, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank swears earnestly.

 

“Not intentionally, I know, Frank, but what about unintentionally?” Ada says. “You’re a good lad, and I can see that by your thoughtfulness and your manners. You obviously treat Edith very well. However, the vehemence with which you spurn your new ideas around is frightening to me.” She looks at Edith seriously and continues earnestly. “You’re of age now, Edith love, and I can’t stop you from stepping out with Frank here. You can make your own decisions as to whether he is the right young man for you.”

 

“Oh he is, Mum! I promise you!” Edith pipes up, looking deep into her mother’s serious face.

 

“I suppose I’m just a bit like your granny was with our Edith, Frank. I need to get accustomed to you.” She looks at the plump yellow rose blooms. “George and I accept your offer of friendship, and we hope that you won’t feel too awkward after today to join us for Sunday tea again.”

 

“Oh I assure you Mrs. Watsford, I’d be delighted.”

 

“Good. But in extending the warm hand of friendship, I’d be obliged if you would perhaps temper your more modern and revolutionary ideas, whilst I get used to you, Frank.”

 

All four diners spend a few minutes quietly eating their dinner, with only the scrape of cutlery against crockery to break the silence.

 

As Edith chews her mouthful of boiled potato, she finds it hard to swallow, and when she finally does, she feels it slide down her throat and land heavily in the pit of her stomach. She glances across at Frank to her right, but he doesn’t look up from his plate as he puts a sliver of orange roast pumpkin in his mouth. She had warned Frank to try and curtail his passionate ideas before her parents, but realises now that to ask him to do so is to deny him one of the most important things in his life. She worries whether Frank and her mother will ever see eye-to-eye on things.

 

“So, enough about changing the world,” George says at length, breaking the silence. “What football team do you support then, young Frank?”

 

Edith smiles gratefully at her father, who winks at her over the rim of his glass as she takes a swig of ale.

 

“West Ham United, Sir.” Frank says proudly.

 

“Good lad!” George chortles. “See, he’s not all bad, Ada!”

 

“You must be as excited as me about West Ham playing Bolton at the inaugural Empire Stadium******* match that’s coming up then, Mr. Watsford.” Frank says, also smiling gratefully at George for being the peacemaker and easing the tension in the room.

 

“Oh we all are, lad!” agrees George. “Would that I could get tickets for the match, but being the opening of the stadium, tickets are hard to come by.”

 

“If they finish it in time.” Frank remarks. “There isn’t long to go now, and yet from what I’ve read, it’s nowhere near done yet.”

 

“Now, now, lad!” George admonishes Frank good naturedly, wagging his fork with a speared piece of cauliflower on it. “Have a bit of faith in British construction. That stadium is going to be the centrepiece of the British Empire Exhibition. No full blooded British man is going to let the Empire down by not competing it.”

 

“Yes, you’re quite right, Sir.” Frank agrees.

 

As the mood at the table lifts and shifts a little, Edith is suddenly heartened by the possibility that maybe Frank might win approval from both her parents in the end, if Frank can win her father over. Her father’s opinion matters a great deal to her mother. She slices her knife through another boiled potato on her plate and sighs quietly, knowing that whilst this first meeting of Frank and her parents was not all that she had hoped for, all is not lost and some bridges have been built.

 

*The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

**’Floral Symbolica; or, The Language and Sentiment of Flowers’ is a book written by John Ingram, published in London in 1870 by Frederick Warne and Co. who are perhaps best known for publishing the books of Beatrix Potter. ‘Flora Symbolica; or, The language and Sentiment of Flowers includes meanings of many species of flowers, both domestic and exotic, as well as floral poetry, original and selected. It contains a colour frontispiece and fifteen colour plates, printed in colours by Terry. John Henry Ingram (November the 16th, 1842 – February the 12th, 1916) was an English biographer and editor with a special interest in Edgar Allan Poe. Ingram was born at 29 City Road, Finsbury Square, Middlesex, and died at Brighton, England. His family lived at Stoke Newington, recollections of which appear in Poe's works. J. H. Ingram dedicated himself to the resurrection of Poe's reputation, maligned by the dubious memoirs of Rufus Wilmot Griswold; he published the first reliable biography of the author and a four-volume collection of his works.

 

***A demijohn originally referred to any glass vessel with a large body and small neck, enclosed in wickerwork. The word presumably comes from the French dame-jeanne, literally "Lady Jane", as a popular appellation; this word is first attested in France in the Seventeenth century. Demijohns are primarily used for transporting liquids, often water or chemicals. They are also used for in-home fermentation of beverages, often beer or wine.

 

****The Italian quarter of London, known commonly today as “Little Italy” is an Italian ethnic enclave in London. Little Italy’s core historical borders are usually placed at Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue - the Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell spans Camden Borough and Islington Borough. Saffron Hill and St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church fall within the Camden side. However, even though this was the traditional enclave for Italians, immigrants moved elsewhere in London, bleeding into areas like Islington and Soho where they established bars, cafes and restaurants which sold Italian cuisine and wines.

 

*****’The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu’ was a 1913 novel by prolific writer Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward under the non-deplume Sax Rohmer that portrayed Chinese as opium fiends, thugs, murders and villains. His supervillain Fu-Manchu proved so popular that he wrote a whole series of sequels featuring the odious character between 1914 ad 1917 and then again from 1933 until 1959. The image of "Orientals" invading Western nations became the foundation of Rohmer's commercial success, being able to sell twenty million copies of his books in his lifetime.

 

******By 1923 when this story is set, detective mystery fiction writer Agatha Christie had already written two successful novels, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ published by The Bodley Head in 1921, which introduced the world to her fictional detective Hercule Poirot, and ‘The Secret Adversary’ also published by The Bodley Head, in 1922, which introduced characters Tommy and Tuppence. In May of 1923, Agatha Christie would release her second novel featuring Hercule Poirot: ‘The Murder on the Links’ which would retail in London bookshops for seven shillings and sixpence.

 

*******Originally known as Empire Stadium, London’s Wembley Stadium was built to serve as the centerpiece of the British Empire Exhibition. It took a total of three hundred days to construct the stadium at a cost of £750,000. The stadium was completed on the 23rd of April 1923, only a few days before the first football match, between the Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, was to take place at the stadium. This first match was the 1923 FA Cup final, which later became known as the White Horse final. The stadium's first turf was cut by King George V, and it was first opened to the public on 28 April 1923. Much of Humphry Repton's original Wembley Park landscape was transformed in 1922 and 1923 during preparations for the British Empire Exhibition. First known as the "British Empire Exhibition Stadium" or simply the "Empire Stadium", it was built by Sir Robert McAlpine for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 (extended to 1925).

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

On the table the roast ham dinner that really does look good enough to eat is 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 gravy boat of gravy is also Frances Knight’s work. The knife sitting alongside the ham comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom. The blue and white crockery on the table I have bought as individual from several online sellers on E-Bay. I imagine that whole sets were once sold, but now I can only find them piecemeal. The cutlery and the glasses (which are made from real glass) I bought as a teenager from a high street dollhouse suppliers. The pottery ale jug comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in England. The glass of ale comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The salt and pepper shakers come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The 1:12 artisan bottle of Bordeaux, made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, is made from glass and the winery on the label is a real winery in France. The vase of yellow roses came from a 1:12 miniatures stockist on E-Bay. The tablecloth is actually a piece of an old worn sheet that was destined for the dustbin.

  

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and a jar of S.P.C. peaches. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, except the jar of S.P.C. peaches which comes from Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom. All of them have great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

Robert Andrew Macfie sugar refiner was the first person to use the term term Golden Syrup in 1840, a product made by his factory, the Macfie sugar refinery, in Liverpool. He also produced black treacle.

 

P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.

 

The American based Heinz food processing company, famous for its Baked Beans, 57 varieties of soups and tinend spaghetti opened a factory in Harlesden in 1919, providing a great deal of employment for the locals who were not already employed at McVitie and Price.

 

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published A Popular Treatise on Tea as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He set his own criteria for the new brand. The name had to be distinctive and unlike others, it had to be a name that would trip off the tongue and it had to be one that would be protected by registration. The name Typhoo comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”. Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside. The Moreton site is also the location of Burton's Foods and Manor Bakeries factories. Typhoo has been owned since July 2021 by British private-equity firm Zetland Capital. It was previously owned by Apeejay Surrendra Group of India.

 

S.P.C. is an Australian brand that still exists to this day. In 1917 a group of fruit growers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley decided to form a cooperative which they named the Shepperton Fruit Preserving Company. The company began operations in February 1918, canning pears, peaches and nectarines under the brand name of S.P.C. On the 31st of January 1918 the manager of the Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company announced that canning would begin on the following Tuesday and that the operation would require one hundred and fifty girls or women and thirty men. In the wake of the Great War, it was hoped that “the launch of this new industry must revive drooping energies” and improve the economic circumstances of the region. The company began to pay annual bonuses to grower-shareholders by 1929, and the plant was updated and expanded. The success of S.P.C. was inextricably linked with the progress of the town and the wider Goulburn Valley region. In 1936 the company packed twelve million cans and was the largest fruit cannery in the British empire. Through the Second World War the company boomed. The product range was expanded to include additional fruits, jam, baked beans and tinned spaghetti and production reached more than forty-three million cans a year in the 1970s. From financial difficulties caused by the 1980s recession, SPC returned once more to profitability, merging with Ardmona and buying rival company Henry Jones IXL. S.P.C. was acquired by Coca Cola Amatil in 2005 and in 2019 sold to a private equity group known as Shepparton Partners Collective.

 

Also on the dresser on the pull out drawer is a cherry tart made by Frances Knight. Next to it stands a cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched roof and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

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.

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 south of the Thames in the middle-class London suburb of Putney in the front room of a red brick Edwardian villa in Hazelwood Road, where Lettice has come to see her childhood chum Gerald’s friend, Harriet Milford. The orphaned daughter of a solicitor with little formal education, Harriet has taken in theatrical lodgers to earn a living, but more importantly for Lettice, has taken up millinery semi-professionally to give her some pin money*. As Harriet made Lettice a fetching picture hat for her brother Leslie’s wedding in November, Lettice thought that Harriet might benefit as much from her patronage as Lettice herself will by commissioning a new millinery creation for the wedding of Lettice’s friend Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon** who is marrying the Duke of York*** in a few months.

 

As the taxi she has taken from Mayfair putters away down the street, Lettice pushes on the black painted wrought iron gate flanked by two capped red brick pillars. It protests shrilly with the squeal of hinges as she opens it. She sighs and walks up the garden path snaking across a well clipped lawn. Lettice can hear the notes of an oboe being played as she walks.

 

“Coo-ee, Lettice darling!” comes a bright, rather effeminate call from above as the oboe music abruptly stops. Shading her eyes from the sun as she looks up, and peers to the roofline where she can see Cyril, one of Harriet’s theatrical lodgers, leaning out of his open oriel bedroom window above, waving madly. “Hattie! Hattie, Lettice is here!” he calls down over his shoulder. As well as being Harriet’s tenant, it has also come to light in more recent times that he is Gerald’s younger lover, and Lettice worries about Cyril’s indiscretion at being a homosexual, in comparison to Gerald who is very appropriately circumspect about his inclinations.

 

Without replying, she smiles and waves weakly in an understated way, embarrassed at being called to from above like a butcher’s boy or some other domestic. She glances around to make sure no-one has seen the interaction, not that there would be anyone she would likely know or run into in her upper-class circles in middle-class Hazelwood Road, Putney.

 

She goes to depress the doorbell next to the front door, but as she does, it is flung open exuberantly by Harriet, her mousy brown hair framing her pretty face, her bright print frock covered by a white cotton pinny, looking rather like the maids Lettice is used to answering doors for her, rather than mistress of the house she is about to enter. “How do you do, Miss Chetwynd!” she says brightly.

 

“Miss Milford.” Lettice replies with a pinched smile and a curt not of her head.

 

“Lord love Cyril, eh?” Harriet beams, glancing up, wincing into the unusually sunny sky above. “Who needs a doorbell when you can have an oboist trumpet your arrival. Right, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Err, quite.” Lettice says awkwardly.

 

“Right this way Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet says with a genuine smile of pleasure at receiving Lettice. “Well, you know the way.” she adds, flinging open the first door on the left side of the hallway and indicating with an extended arm for Lettice to enter her parlour cum salon. “I’ve got the kettle on already, and you can be the first to sample my freshly made fruitcake.”

 

“The second, actually, Hattie.” a rather deep and drooping male voice annunciates clearly. From behind Harriet’s shoulder, a mature man with white hair and an impressive, expertly waxed handlebar moustache appears dressed in full evening attire with a top hat in his hand. “I just appropriated a slice from the kitchen table on my way out. Good of you to cut it for me in anticipation of my expedient departure.”

 

“Oh you cheeky boy!” Harriet slaps the older gentleman on the forearm playfully. “Without even so much as a by-your leave!”

 

Eyeing Lettice standing in the hallway dressed in her powder blue three quarter length coat and matching hat with a large arctic fox fur wrapped around her neck and draped down her front, the man asks, “And who have we here Hattie, my dear? An ingénue come to steal away the hearts of your bevvy of lead actors?”

 

“No lady will ever steal your heart away!” she scoffs.

 

“Never a truer word was spoken, my dear.” He puts a hand to his mouth. “But a great thespian can put on a convincing act.”

 

“Miss Chetwynd, may I present Mr. Charles Dunnage.” Harriet announces. “Charles, this is the Honourable Miss Lettice Chetwynd.”

 

“The honour,” Charles replies. “Is all mine, dear lady.” Taking up Lettice’s kid glove clad hand in his own white evening glove clad ones, he raises it dramatically to his lips and kisses it.

 

“Oh, get away with you, Charles!” Harriet laughs. “We don’t want Miss Chetwynd thinking she’s entered a home for retired theatrical lunatics.” She turns to Lettice. “Sorry, Miss Chetwynd. Charles is a Shakespearean actor at the Old Vic****. I…”

 

“How many times must I tell you, Hattie!” Charles huffs irritably, suddenly animating his shoulders, making them rise and fall with every syllable. “I’m a thespian,” He emphasises the word with reverence. “Not an actor.” He spits the last word out like an insult. “He’s an actor.” He points upwards with his cane to the plastered ceiling above, where the sound of Cyril’s oboe playing can be heard. “Only true thespians can perform the works of the Great Bard. Anyone can be an actor, and anyone is!” He arches his eyebrows, causing her brow to furrow in folds of pale white flesh.

 

The oboe playing stops. “I can hear you, you know, Charlie Boy!” Cyril calls down from above.

 

Charles shudders. “Like I was saying, my dears,” he pronounces loudly so that Cyril can hear. “Anyone can be an actor, however only some of us have the strength of character to be a thespian!” Looking at Lettice he continues conspiratorially in a more moderately toned voice. “My dear Miss Chetwynd, I suggest you flee this den of iniquity and retreat to the salubrious surrounds from whence you came, before you are swept into the maelstrom of actors that pass through this door.”

 

Stunned into silence by his dramatic and verbose statement, Lettice can only look the older man in the face with wide eyes and a closed mouth.

 

“Oh get on with you, Charles,” Harriet laughs good naturedly. “Or you’ll be late for rehearsals. You don’t want to miss your train. When shall I be expecting you?”

 

“I’ll be home around eleven, my dear, but don’t feel you have to wait up. I have my latch key.” He reached into his pocket and pulls out a key tied to a russet coloured ribbon which he dangles from his finger.

 

“Right you are then, Charles. See you later then.”

 

And with a bow, the older man dons his top hat and sweeps down the garden path, his black evening cape billowing behind him.

 

“You must really think I run a theatrical madhouse, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet says apologetically with a shake of her head as both women watch Charles slip out the gate. “Please do go in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a jiffy***** with tea and what cake is left that Charles hasn’t yet consumed.”

 

Stepping across the threshold of the room, Lettice’s critical eye again glances around the front parlour of the Putney villa, which doubles as Harriet’s sewing room and show room for her hats. She crinkles her nose in distaste. She finds the room’s middle-class chintzy décor an affront to her up-to-date interior design sensitivities, with its flouncy floral Edwardian sofa and roomy armchair by the fire, a pouffe hand embroidered by Harriet’s deceased mother and the busy Edwardian floral wallpaper covered with a mixture of cheap botanical prints and quaint English country scenes, all in gaudy gilded plaster frames. Yet what makes it even worse is that it seems that no attempt has been made to tidy the room in spite of Lettice and Gerald’s constant nagging of Harriet to present her hats in an orderly space. Harriet’s concertina sewing box on casters still stands cascaded open next to the armchair, threads, embroidery silks, buttons and ribbons pouring from its compartments like entrails. Hats in different stages of being made up and decorated lie about on furniture or on the floor in a haphazard way along with baskets of millinery provisions. The brightly patterned rug is littered with spools of cotton, scissors, ribbon, artificial flowers and dogeared copies of Weldon’s****** magazines. Lettice usually sits on the rather lumpy and sagging overstuffed sofa, but today that is an impossibility, with the seats covered in cardboard hat boxs spewing forth a froth of white tissue paper and hats stacked upon them. She sighs irritably and remains standing amidst the chaos of the room, unable to take a seat.

 

“I really am grateful that you’ve come back to see me again, Miss Chetwynd!” Harriet gushes as she steps across the threshold into the parlour carrying her wooden tray on which stand tea things for two and a silver platter with several slices of dark fruitcake on it. “You were true to your word, telling people at your brother’s wedding about who made your hat, and I’ve already had an order from a Mrs. Minchinbury and her sister, Miss Rentoul.”

 

Harriet unloads the teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl onto a small hexagonal Indian table, and whilst balancing the tray on the edge of her deceased father’s former chess table, she pushes aside cotton threads, ribbons, a tape measure and a pair of scissors in the shape of a stork with her elbow to make room for the teacups and the tray of fruitcake slices, which Lettice notices rest upon a pretty lace doily.

 

“Ahh yes, they are my second cousins on my mother’s side.” Lettice says.

 

“And a Miss Eglantine Chetwynd from Little Venice, who I believe is your aunt.”

 

“She is, Miss Milford.” Lettice smiles.

 

“Please do sit down, Miss Chetwynd,” Harriet says as she leans the tray against the flounced edge of the sofa. “There’s no need to stand on ceremony here.”

 

“I’d be happy to, if only I had a place to sit, Miss Milford.” Lettice remarks crisply.

 

“Oh!” Harriet’s eyes grow wide. “Sorry, Miss Chetwynd,” she mutters apologetically as she quickly whisks a tangle of ribbons off the salon chair she uses when at her sewing machine onto the floor and draws it up to the Indian and chess tables. “I know you and Gerry keep telling me, but, well as you can see, I still haven’t had an opportunity to tidy up in here yet. I just don’t seem to get the time.”

 

“It’s of no consequence, Miss Milford, so long as I can sit.” Lettice lies as she perches on the salon chair and hangs her crocodile skin handbag over its arm. “And I would imagine my Aunt Egg would have rather enjoyed the chaos of your theatrical household.”

 

“She did, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet admits with a shy smile and a nod.

 

“Shall I be mother******* then, Miss Milford?” Lettice asks poignantly staring at the teapot.

 

“Oh no, Miss Chetwynd,” Harriet springs from her own seat in the overstuffed armchair. “I’ll do it.”

 

Resuming her line of conversation whilst Harriet pours tea into the two pre-war Edwardian style cups, Lettice says, “Of course Aunt Egg would like this because she is an artist. However the likes of my cousins, or some of the finer people, even more exalted and refined, you may yet encounter doubtless wouldn’t approve,” She waves her hand around her. “Of all this.”

 

“Well, Gerry tells me that I should give this place up and move to your side of the river.”

 

“Gerald’s suggestion is quite a prudent one, Miss Milford.” Lettice replies, taking her teacup and saucer and placing them on the closed lid of the top layer of Harriet’s concertina sewing box.

 

“But I can’t afford that,” Harriet admits as she resumes her own seat. “At least not until I know my hat making can support me.”

 

“Then I strongly suggest that you take Gerald’s and my advice and make the time to tidy up in here.” Lettice takes a sip of tea. “Not to be unkind, Miss Milford, but it’s slovenly, and if you want to be taken seriously as a milliner, you need to present a professional front. Surely there is an equally light and spacious room upstairs you can use as a workroom.”

 

“You’re quite right, Miss Chetwynd. That wasn’t unkind at all. It’s the truth,” She looks guiltily at Lettice. “And I know it. I’ll do better. I promise.”

 

“I should hope so, Miss Milford, for I have a commission for you, and if you take it up, which I hope you will,” Lettice pauses for a moment for impact. “It could lead to many more commissions from much finer people than my second cousins.”

 

“I’ll be delighted to accept, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet says, moving forward slightly on her chair, her teacup and saucer perched on her knee, help in place by her hand. “What do you wish to commission?”

 

“Before I tell you, do I have your solemn promise of secrecy, at least for the time being?”

 

“Yes of course, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet’s brow furrows with concern. “What on earth is it you want?”

 

“My friend, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, is going to marry the Duke of York in a few months.”

 

“But the papers say she is supposed to marry the Prince of Wales********.”

 

“It’s not been officially announced yet,” Lettice interrupts Harriet’s spurt of unfounded gossip. “But it will be very shortly, that she will marry the Duke of York.” Her eyes widen a she nods at Harriet, making her statement of fact clear. “And I need a hat for the occasion, Miss Milford, but not that one.” She points to a hat of straw decorated with garlands of lace ribbons and faux flowers around its wide brim sitting in a hat stand on Harriet’s appropriated work table. “Who on earth is that for? It looks like something the Miss Evanses would wear to one of my mother’s tombolas.”

 

“Well, I’m not sure who the Miss Evanses are, Miss Chetwynd, but this hat is meant for Mrs. Leonowens who lives down the street. Her granddaughter is getting married next Wednesday. She was very particular about what kind of hat she wanted, and its trimmings.” Looking critically at the hat she adds. “I suppose she is a little old fashioned in her taste,” She shrugs. “But that’s what she wanted.”

 

“Well, I’m very relieved to hear you say that your Mrs. Leonowens decided what was to go on that hat, and not you.” Lettice says with a sigh of relief. “After the beautiful creation you made for me for Leslie’s wedding, I consider you to have more than an ounce of good taste,” Looking again around her critically she adds. “In clothing and hats at any rate.”

 

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Miss Chetwynd,” Harriet says somewhat warily, yet with a smile. “I take it that Gerry is going to design your frock for the royal wedding?”

 

“He is, Miss Milford. Although even I am still a little unclear of the exact date, I believe the wedding will be in late April or early May at Westminster Abbey, so a spring wedding. Gerald thinks that as Lady Elizabeth is quite romantic, and loves pastel colours, that I should wear peach floral crêpe de chine, which I’ve agreed to. What do you propose, Miss Milford?”

 

“Well, Gerry and I can chat more about this when he visits Cyril later in the week,” Harriet pauses. “I take it I can talk to Gerry about this? I’m not sworn to secrecy from him, am I?”

 

“Oh no, Miss Milford! Gerald knows Lady Elizabeth too, so he knows her news and will doubtless be on the guest list too.”

 

“Oh, that’s a relief!”

 

“But not Cyril, even if he and Gerald are…”

 

“Friends, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Friends, Miss Milford, you mustn’t mention why you are making this hat for me, at last until after the official announcement of the engagement is made in the newspapers. I do not wish to be the source of more gossip. I know Lady Elizabeth is very irritated by the current rumours.”

 

“I doubt Cyril will care to ask why I’m making a hat for you, Miss Chetwynd, but if he asks, I shall make up an excuse. Now, if your friend Lady Elizabeth is romantic, and looking at her pictures in the papers, in keeping with your friend’s style and something that would suit you as well, I suggest a deeply crowned hat with a wide, poke style brim.” She gesticulates around her own head how wide the brim would be and how it would sit. “Stiffened of course.” she adds. She looks at Lettice’s expectant face. “Made of apricot felt, edged with the thinnest trim of white lace I think and ornamented with pink and orange taffeta roses. What do you think, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“That sounds quite splendid, Miss Milford!” Lettice says, returning her cup to her saucer and sitting back in her chair. “Yes, do it!”

 

“Splendid, Miss Chetwynd! It will be subtle and yet striking as well.” Harriet remarks. “You might even outshine the bride.” She giggles girlishly.

 

“I do hope not, Miss Milford.” Lettice replies, albeit with a slight smile.

 

“But secretly, you wouldn’t mind it if you did.” Harriet responds with a knowing look. “A slice of cake, Miss Chetwynd?” She holds out the silver tray on which lay four slices of rich, dark fruitcake with a thin layer of white marzipan icing.

 

Lettice saves herself from having to reply by putting the piece of cake to her lips and taking a bite of it, allowing the moist sliver to fall apart in her mouth.

 

*Originating in Seventeenth Century England, the term pin money first meant “an allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for her personal expenditures. Married women, who typically lacked other sources of spending money, tended to view an allowance as something quite desirable. By the Twentieth Century, the term had come to mean a small sum of money, whether an allowance or earned, for spending on inessentials, separate and in addition to the housekeeping money a wife might have to spend.

 

**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.

 

***Prince Albert, Duke of York, known by the diminutive “Bertie” to the family and close friends, was the second son of George V. Not only did Bertie propose to Elizabeth in 1921, but also in March 1922 after she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert’s sister, Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles. Elizabeth refused him a second time, yet undaunted Bertie pursued the girl who had stolen his heart. Finally, in January 1923 she agreed to marry him in spite of her misgivings about royal life.

 

****The Old Vic theatre in the London borough of Lambeth was formerly the home of a theatre company that became the nucleus of the National Theatre. The company’s theatre building opened in 1818 as the Royal Coburg and produced mostly popular melodramas. In 1833 it was redecorated and renamed the Royal Victoria and became popularly known as the Old Vic. Between 1880 and 1912, under the management of Emma Cons, a social reformer, the Old Vic was transformed into a temperance amusement hall known as the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern, where musical concerts and scenes from Shakespeare and opera were performed. Lilian Baylis, Emma Cons’s niece, assumed management of the theatre in 1912 and two years later presented the initial regular Shakespeare season. By 1918 the Old Vic was established as the only permanent Shakespearean theatre in London, and by 1923 all of Shakespeare’s plays had been performed there. The Old Vic grew in stature during the 1920s and ’30s under directors such as Andrew Leigh, Harcourt Williams, and Tyrone Guthrie.

 

*****The expression in a jiffy was in use as early as 1780. It is a colloquial English expression for “in a short amount of time.” The origins of jiffy are unknown, though there are theories. One suggestion is that it comes from British thieves’ slang for “lightning,” hence very fast. An early instance appears in 1780 edition of Town and Country Magazine: “Most of the limbs of the law do every thing in a jiffy”.

 

******Created by British industrial chemist and journalist Walter Weldon Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was the first ‘home weeklies’ magazine which supplied dressmaking patterns. Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was first published in 1875 and continued until 1954 when it ceased publication.

 

*******The meaning of the very British term “shall I be mother” is “shall I pour the tea?”

 

********In early January 1923 a newspaper ran a gossip item that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was soon to be engaged to Prince Albert the Duke of York’s elder brother, the Prince of Wales – a story that reportedly annoyed her. Rumour has it that part of Elizabeth’s hesitance to marry Albert was due to her being in love with David – the loftier “catch” – however, these stories are highly unlikely and probably have more to do with trying to explain her later hatred for Wallis Simpson. More likely, she knew that the story meant more pressure for her to make up her mind about Albert and she knew the rumour would wound him.

 

This rather cluttered and chaotic scene of a drawing room cum workroom may look real to you, but believe it or not, it is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. The natural straw hat with white lace ribbon trim and faux flower garlands on the table was made by an unknown artisan in the United Kingdom and was sold through Doreen Jeffrey’s Small Wonders miniatures shop.

 

The concertina sewing box on casters which you can see spilling forth its contents is an artisan miniature made by an unknown artist in England. It comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the in the United Kingdom. All the box’s contents including spools of ribbons, threads scissors and buttons on cards came with the work box. The box can completely expand or contract, just like its life-sized equivalent.

 

The black japanned fire screen in the background, the black metal fire tools and the potted plants and their stands all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop.

 

Harriet’s family photos seen cluttering the mantlepiece in the background are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each.

 

The porcelain clock on the mantlepiece is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The pot of yellow and blue petunias and the ornamental swan figurine on the mantlepiece have been hand made and painted by 1:12 miniature ceramicist Ann Dalton.

 

The tilt chess table I bought from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, whilst the Indian hexagonal table comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The Edwardian tea set and plate of fruit cake slices on its surface come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop, as do the spools of threads, the silver sewing scissors in the shape of a stork and the spool of ribbon. The skeins of pink and blue thread I have had since I was a teenager, when I acquired the from a high street doll house miniature specialist shop.

 

The sewing basket that you can see on the floor just behind the chess table I bought from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house furnishings. It is an artisan miniature and contains pieces of embroidery and embroidery threads.

 

The floral chintz chair is made by J.B.M. miniatures who specialise in well made pieces of miniature furniture made to exacting standards.

 

The Chinese carpet beneath the furniture is hand made by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, Australia.

 

The Edwardian mantlepiece is made of moulded plaster and was acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The paintings and prints on the walls all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House 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.

 

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.

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 letter to visit without delay or procrastination. Over luncheon, Lettice was berated by her parents for her recent decision to decorate the home of the upcoming film actress, Wanetta Ward. 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 receiving complaints about her choice of clients, Lettice was also scolded by mother for making herself unsuitable for any young man who might present as an eligible prospect. Although Lettice is undeniably her father’s favourite child, even he has been less than receptive to her recent choices of clients, which has put her a little out of favour with him. After Lady Sadie stormed out of the dining room over one of Lettice’s remarks, Viscount Wrexham implored his headstrong youngest daughter to try and make an effort with her mother, which is something she has been mulling over during her overnight stay.

 

Now Lettice stands in the grand Robert Adam decorated marble and plaster entrance hall of her family home as she prepares to take her leave. Outside on the gravel driveway, Harris the chauffer has the Chetwynd’s 1912 Daimler ready to drive her to the Glynes village railway station for the one fifteen to London. She has bid farewell to her brother Leslie and her father. Now there is just one final member of the family whom she needs to say goodbye to.

 

“Thank you Marsden.” Lettice remarks to the liveried first footman as he carries the last of Lettice’s luggage out to the Daimler.

 

“I hope you have a safe journey back to London, My Lady.” Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler remarks as he walks into the entrance hall to see Lettice off.

 

“Thank you, Bramley,” Lettice replies. “Oh, I’m glad you are here. Do you know where my Mother might be?”

 

Considering her question, the old butler looks to the upper levels and ceiling of the hall before replying knowingly. “Well, it is still mid-morning according to Her Ladyship, so I would imagine that she will be in the morning room. Shall I go and see, My Lady?”

 

“No thank you Bramley. You have more than enough to do I’m sure, managing this old pile of bricks, without doing that for me. I’m perfectly capable of seeking her out for myself.”

 

Turning on her heel, Lettice walks away from the butler, her louis heels echoing off the marble tiles around the entrance hall in her wake.

 

“Mamma?” Lettice trills with false cheer as she knocks with dread on the walnut door to the morning room.

 

When there is no reply to her call, she considers two possibilities: either her mother is still in a funk with her and not speaking to her after the scene in the dining room yesterday, or she isn’t in the morning room at all. Both are as likely as each other. Taking a deep breath, she turns the handle and opens the door, calling her mother again as she does so.

 

The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother her mother’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent. Lady Sadie is nowhere to be seen but cannot have been gone long judging by her floral wake.

 

Walking over to the Eighteenth Century bonheur de jour* that stands cosily in a corner of the room, Lettice snorts quietly with derision as she looks at the baby photograph of Leslie, her eldest brother, which stands in pride of place in a big silver frame on the desk’s serpentine top, along with a significantly smaller double frame featuring late Nineteenth Century younger incarnations of her parents. Lettice, her sister Lally and brother Lionel have been relegated to a lesser hanging space on the wall, as befits the children seen as less important by their mother. Everything has always been about Leslie as far as their mother is concerned, and always has been for as long as Lettice can remember.

 

Lettice runs her fingers idly over several books sitting open on the desk’s writing space. There is a costume catalogue from London and a book on Eighteenth Century hairstyles. “Making plans for the Hunt Ball.” Lettice muses with a smile. It is then that she notices a much thicker book below the costume catalogue which has a familiar looking worn brown leather cover with a gilt tooled inlay. Moving the catalogue Lettice finds a copy of Debrett’s**

 

“Oh Mamma!” she exhales with disappointment as she shakes her head.

 

As she picks it up, she dislodges a partially written letter in her mother’s elegant copperplate hand from beneath it. Lettice knows she shouldn’t read it but can’t help herself as she scans the thick white paper embossed with the Wrexham coat of arms. Its contents make her face go from its usual creamy pallor to red with frustration.

 

“Ahh! Lettice!” Lady Sadie’s crisp intonation slices the silence as she walks into the morning room and discovers her daughter standing over her desk. “Heading back to London, are we?” she continues cheerily as she observes her daughter dressed in her powder blue travelling coat, matching hat and arctic fox fur stole. She smiles as she indicates to the desk’s surface. “I’m making plans for my outfit for the Hunt Ball. I thought I might come as Britannia this year.”

 

Lettice doesn’t answer her mother immediately as she continues to stare down at the letter next to her mother’s silver pen and bottle of ink. Remembering her father’s request, she draws upon her inner strength to try and remain civil as she finally acknowledges, “How appropriate that you should come as the all-conquering female warrior.”

 

“Lettice?” Lady Sadie remarks quizzically.

 

“Perhaps you might like to reconsider your choice of costume and come as my faerie godmother, since I’m coming as Cinderella.”

 

“Oh, now that’s a splendid idea! Although I don’t…”

 

“Or better yet, come as cupid instead!” Lettice interrupts her mother hotly, anger seething through her clipped tones as she tries to keep her temper.

 

“Now you’re just being foolish, Lettice,” Lady Sadie replies as she walks towards her daughter, the cheerful look on her face fading quickly as she notices the uncovered copy of Debrett’s on her desk’s surface.

 

“Not at all, Mamma! I think it’s most apt considering what you are trying to do.”

 

“Trying to do? What on earth are you talking about Lettice?” the older woman chuckles awkwardly, her face reddening a little as she reaches her bejewelled right hand up to the elegant strand of collar length pearls at her throat.

 

Lettice picks up the letter, dangling it like an unspoken accusation between herself and her mother before looking down at it and reading aloud, “My dear Lillie, we haven’t seen you at Glynes for so long. Won’t you, Marmaduke and Jonty consider coming to the Hunt Ball this year? Do you remember how much Jonty and my youngest, Lettice, used to enjoy playing together here as children? I’m sure that now that they are both grown, they should be reacquainted with one another.” She lowers her hand and drops the letter on top of the edition of Debrett’s like a piece of rubbish before looking up at her mother, giving her a cool stare.

 

“It isn’t ladylike to read other people’s correspondence, Lettice!” Lady Sadie quips as she marches up to her desk and snatches the letter away from Lettice’s reach, lest her daughter should cast it into the fire cracking peaceably in the grate.

 

“Is it ladylike to arrange the lives of two strangers without discussing it?”

 

“It has long been the prerogative of mothers to arrange their children’s marriages.” The older woman defends herself. “And you and Jonty Hastings aren’t strangers, Lettice. You and he…”

 

“Haven’t seen each other since we were about six years old, when we played in the hedgerows together and had tea in the nursery with Nanny Webb after she had washed the mud off us!”

 

“Well, all the better for the two of you to become reacquainted then, as I’m suggesting to his mother.” She runs her fingers along the edges of the letter in her hands defiantly. “And I am going to send this letter, Lettice,” Her voice gathers a steely tone of determination. “Whether you like it, or lump it.”

 

“Yes, Pappa told me after you,” she pauses for a moment to consider her words carefully. “Left, us at luncheon yesterday, that you had been making some discreet enquiries about inviting some eligible young bachelors for me to the ball this year.”

 

“And so I have, Lettice.” Lady Sadie sniffs. “Since you seem incapable of finding yourself a suitable match even after your successful debut London Season, I have taken it upon myself to do some…”

 

“Matchmaking, Mamma?”

 

“Arranging, Lettice. Tarquin Howard, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes…”

 

“Sir John is as old as the hills!” Lettice splutters in disbelief. “You surely can’t imagine I’d consider him a likely prospect!”

 

“Sir John is an excellent match, Lettice. You can hardly fail to see how advantageous it would be to marry him.”

 

“Once I look past the twenty five, no more, years age difference. No, better he be chased by some social climbing American woman looking for an entrée into the society pages. Perhaps I should ask Miss Ward to the ball. I’m sure she would love to meet Sir John.”

 

Lady Sadie’s already pale face drains of any last colour at the thought of an American moving picture star walking into her well planned ball. “Well, if you won’t countenance Sir John, I’ve also invited Edward Lambley and Selwyn Spencely.”

 

“Selwyn Spencely?” Lettice laughs. “The guest list just gets more and more implausable.”

 

“What’s so implausible about Selwyn Spencely, Lettice? The Spencelys are a very good family. Selwyn has a generous income which will only increase when he eventually takes his father’s place as the next Viscount Markham. He inherited a house in Belgravia from his grandfather when he came of age, so you two can continue to live in London until you become chatelaine of Markham Park.”

 

“Can you hear yourself, Mamma?” Lettice cries as she raises her arms in exasperation, any good will she tried to muster for her Mother quickly dissipating. “Do you want to pick what wedding gown I am to wear too?” Lettice laughs again. “Selwyn and I haven’t laid eyes on each other for almost as long as Jonty and I.”

 

“Well, he’s grown into a very handsome young man, Lettice. I’ve seen his photograph in The Lady.” Her mother bustles across the end of the floral chaise where a pile of well fingered magazines sit. “Look, I can show you.”

 

“Oh, please don’t Mamma!” Lettice throws her hands up in protest. “Please don’t add insult to injury.”

 

Lady Sadie turns around, a hurt look on her face. “How can you say that to me, Lettice? I’m only trying to do right by you, by securing a suitable and advantageous marriage for you.”

 

“But what about love, Mamma?” Lettice sighs. “What if I don’t wish to marry at all? What if I am happy just running my interior design business.”

 

“Oh what nonsense, Lettice! The younger generation are so tiresome. All this talk of love! I blame those moving pictures your Ward woman stars in that you and your friends all flock to slavishly! Your Father and I had our marriage arranged. We weren’t in love.” She emphasises the last two words with a withering tone. “We’d only even met a handful of times before we were married. Love came naturally in time, and look how happy we are.” She smiles smugly with self satisfaction. “And as for your business, you aren’t Syrie Maugham***, Lettice. You’ve always been told, from an early age, that your duty as a daughter of a member of this great and noble family, even as the youngest daughter, is to marry and marry well.” She sinks onto the chaise. “This foolishness about interior design,” She flaps her glittering fingers distractedly at Lettice. “Will have to end when you get married. Whether it be Jonty, Nicolas or Selwyn, you’ll have to give it up. No respectable man of position and good breeding will have his wife working as a decorator! He’d be ashamed!”

 

At her mother’s harsh words, Lettice abandons any attempt to try and make an effort with her. She looks up to the ornate white painted plaster ceiling and crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the room as she clenches her hands into fists. “Well,” she looks angrily at her mother. “We wouldn’t want my future husband to be ashamed of my success, now would we?”

 

“What success, Lettice?” her mother scoffs. “You were only able to decorate Gwendolyn’s small drawing room because I asked her to allow you to do it.”

 

“I’ve plenty of clients now, no thanks to you, Mamma!”

 

“Dickie and Margot don’t count, dear,” Lady Sadie replies dismissively as she fingers the edges of a copy of the Tattler distractedly. “They are your friends. Of course they were going to ask you to decorate their house.”

 

Lettice gasps as though her mother just punched all the air out of her chest. She stands, silent for a moment, her face flushing with embarrassment and anger. “You’ve always been so cruel to me Mamma, ever since I was little.”

 

“And you’ve always been so stubborn and obstinate, ever since you were a child! Goodness knows what I did to deserve a wilful daughter. Lally was so lovely and pliable, and certainly no trouble to marry off.” She folds her hands neatly in her lap over her immaculately pressed tweed skirt and looks up at her daughter. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Lettice, but someone has to make you see sense. Goodness knows your Father can’t, what with him wound around your little finger! You will have to marry eventually, Lettice, and preferably soon. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s what is expected of you, and as I said yesterday, you aren’t getting any younger, and you certainly don’t want to be left stuck on the shelf. Just think of the shame it would bring you.”

 

“More think of the shame it would bring you, Mamma.” Lettice spits bitterly. “To have a daughter who is a spinster, an old maid, and in trade to boot!”

 

“Now there is no need to be overtly nasty, Lettice.” Lady Sadie mutters brittlely. “It’s unbecoming.”

 

A little gilt clock on an occasional table chimes one o’clock prettily.

 

“Mamma, however much I would love to sit here and share bitter quips and barbs with you all day over a pot of tea, I really do have to leave!” Lettice says with finality. “I have a train to catch. Gerald and I have a reservation at the Café Royal**** tonight.” She walks over to her mother, bends down and goes to kiss her cheek, but the older woman stiffens as she averts her daughter’s touch. Lettice sighs as she raises herself up again. “I’ll see you in a week for Dickie and Margot’s wedding and then after that for Bonfire Night*****.”

 

“Hopefully you’ll have come to your senses about marriage and this ridiculous designing business by then.”

 

Lettice raises her head proudly and takes a deep breath before turning away from her mother and walks with a purposeful stride across the room. “No I won’t, Mamma.” she says defiantly. As she opens the door to leave the morning room, she turns back to the figure of her mother sitting facing away from her towards the fire. “Pappa asked me to make an effort at the Hunt Ball, and I will. I will dance and flirt with whomever you throw in my general direction, be they old, blind or bandy-legged.” She sees her mother’s shoulders stiffen, indicating silently that she is listening, even if she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she is. “However, be under no pretence Mamma. I am doing it for him, and not you.”

 

“Lettice…” Lady Sadie’s voice cracks.

 

“And,” Lettice cuts her off sharply. “No matter who I dance with, or charm, I will not marry any of them. Goodbye Mamma.”

 

Lettice closes the door quietly behind her and walks back down the hallway to the entrance hall. She walks through the front doors with her head aloof, and steps into the back of the waiting Daimler. Marsden closes its door and Harris starts the engine. The chauffer can sense the tension seething through his passenger as she huffs and puffs in the spacious rear cabin, dabbing her nose daintily with a lace edged handkerchief, so he remains quiet as he steers the car down the sweeping driveway. As the car pulls away from Glynes basking in the early afternoon autumnal sun, Lettice can almost feel two sets of eyes on her back: one pair from her father looking sadly out from the library and the other her mother’s peering critically from behind the morning room curtains.

 

*A bonheur de jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers around 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable. Decorated on all sides, it was designed to sit in the middle of a room so that it could be admired from any angle.

 

**The first edition of Debrett's Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, containing an Account of all the Peers, 2 vols., was published in May 1802, with plates of arms, a second edition appeared in September 1802, a third in June 1803, a fourth in 1805, a fifth in 1806, a sixth in 1808, a seventh in 1809, an eighth in 1812, a ninth in 1814, a tenth in 1816, an eleventh in 1817, a twelfth in 1819, a thirteenth in 1820, a fourteenth in 1822, a fifteenth in 1823, which was the last edition edited by Debrett, and not published until after his death. The next edition came out in 1825. The first edition of The Baronetage of England, containing their Descent and Present State, by John Debrett, 2 vols., appeared in 1808. Today, Debrett's is a British professional coaching company, publisher and authority on etiquette and behaviour. It was founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The company takes its name from its founder, John Debrett.

 

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

 

****The 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.

 

****Guy Fawkes Day, also called Bonfire Night, British observance, celebrated on November the fifth, commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Guy Fawkes and his group members acted in protest to the continued persecution of the English Catholics. Today Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in the United Kingdom, and in a number of countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, with parades, fireworks, bonfires, and food. Straw effigies of Fawkes are tossed on the bonfire, as are—in more recent years in some places—those of contemporary political figures. Traditionally, children carried these effigies, called “Guys,” through the streets in the days leading up to Guy Fawkes Day and asked passersby for “a penny for the guy,” often reciting rhymes associated with the occasion, the best known of which dates from the Eighteenth Century.

 

Cluttered with paintings, photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s morning room with its Georgian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The books on Lady Sadie’s desks are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside two of the books he has made. One of the books is a French catalogue of fancy dress costumes from the late Nineteenth Century, and the other is a book of Georgian hairstyes. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into these volumes, each book contains twelve double sided pages of illustrations and they measure thirty-three millimetres in height and width and are only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. The 1908 Debrett’s Peerage book is also made by Ken Blythe, but does not open. He also made the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk and the stamps you can see next to the ink bottle. The stamps are 2 millimetres by two millimetres each! Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

On the desk is a 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottle and a silver pen, both made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles is made from a tiny faceted crystal bead and has a sterling silver bottom and lid.

 

The Chetwynd’s family photos seen on the desk and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.

 

The vase of primroses in the middle of the desk is a delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature made and painted by hand by Ann Dalton.

 

The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design, made by Bespaq. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.

 

The wallpaper is a copy of an Eighteenth Century blossom pattern.

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, we are in the little maid’s room off the Cavendish Mews kitchen, which serves as Edith, Lettice’s maid’s, bedroom. The room is very comfortable and more spacious than the attic she shared with her friend and fellow maid, Hilda, in her last position. The room is papered with floral sprigged wallpaper, and whilst there is no carpet, unlike Lettice’s bedroom, there are rugs laid over the stained floorboards. The room is big enough for Edith to have a comfortable armchair and tea table as well as her bed, a chest of drawers and a small wardrobe. Best of all, the room has central heating, so it is always warm and cosy on cold nights.

 

Edith has returned to Cavendish Mews after spending Christmas with her family in Harlesden and New Year with her beau Frank at a pub in Rotherhithe, arriving a few days ahead of Lettice who will shortly return from her own Christmas holiday spent with her family at their country estate, Glynes, in Wiltshire. Edith is luxuriating in the silence of the flat with no Lettice present. Although not overly demanding and a very good mistress to work for, Edith always knows when Lettice is home, sensing her presence in the soft clip of her footfall on the parquetry floor, the distant sound of her favourite or latest American records on the gramophone, the waft of her expensive French perfumes about the rooms of the flat, the peal of her laughter as she giggles over tea or cocktails with visiting friends or the jangle of the servants call bells bouncing about in the kitchen near the back door. For now, it is just Edith with only the tick of the clocks about the house and the distant burble of late night traffic along Bond Street to disturb her quiet.

 

She sighs and takes a sip of tea from the Delftware teacup, part of the kitchen set she uses and places it back on the tea table next to the pot, covered with a cosy knitted for her by her mother three years ago as a Christmas gift. She glances around the room at her possessions. In comparison to her mistress, what she has amassed is meagre to say the least, but she is very happy with her own personal touches about her little bedroom. Her hat, a second hand black straw cloche she came by at Petticoat Lane* decorated with bits and bobs she picked up from her Whitechapel haberdasher Mrs. Minkin, sits on her hat stand, also acquired from Petticoat Lane, on one end of the dark chest of drawers. Her lacquered sewing box, a gift from her mother when she first left home to go into service, sits at the other. Behind it is wedged her latest scrapbook that she fills with newspaper articles about fashion, films and the advances of women. Next to the sewing box sit the latest editions to her library, three romance novels from Lettice as a Christmas gift. Next to her hat stand, her collection of hat pins, and next to that, the brass framed portrait photo of she and her parents taken at a professional photographic studio in the Harlesden High Street. If she squints and concentrates hard, Edith can just remember the occasion, with her pressed into her Sunday best white pinny with lace, made for her by her mother, and starched by her too, being a laundress. The needlepoint home sweet home Edith made hangs on the wall in a simple wooden frame above the drawers. Her eyes return to the chest of drawers’ highly polished surface where the eau de nil Bakelite**dressing table set from Boots***, a gift from Lettice the previous Christmas, sits and then she sees the face of Bert, her first love, gazing out at her. Although he is sitting stiffly and was possibly ill at ease dressed in his Sunday best when the photograph was taken, it cannot hide the kindness in his eyes, or the cheeky smirk that plays at the corners of his mouth.

 

“I wonder if it’s time.” Edith muses quietly to herself, taking another sip of tea.

 

Edith’s young man was the local postman in Harlesden, and that was how Edith first met him, delivering mail in her street. The Watsfords, Edith’s family, never had much post, but Bert would always find an excuse to stop if he saw her in that last year before the war before she had her first live-in post as a maid and was still living at home. She was fourteen and he was eighteen, and Edith’s parents, George and Ada, said they were both too young to be tethering themselves to one another, what with all their lives ahead of them. Bert’s mother wasn’t too keen on him courting a laundress’ daughter about to go out into service either. She had expectations of Bert. She always felt that being employed in a steady job with the post office, he could make a successful career for himself, and could do better than a local girl with a father who baked biscuits at the McVitie and Price factory and a mother who laundered clothes for those more fortunate than she. But they didn’t mind what their parents said. They loved each other. What might have been, Edith was never to find out, for then the war broke out, and Bert took the King’s shilling****, like so many young men his age, and he died at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

 

“I think you’d like Frank,” Edith addresses Bert’s photograph. “He’s a hard worker, just like you were, and he rides a bike too.” She smiles. “He thinks he’s on the make, and maybe he is. He’s certainly trying to improve and better himself, and me too if he has his way. He wants to take me to an art gallery or two this year. He told me so on New Year’s Eve when we were down at The Angel by the Thames. Can you imagine me going and looking at paintings in a big gallery? I can’t, any more than I can imagine you doing it, Bert, but I’m willing to give it a go for him.”

 

She sits and thinks for a while, recalling moments spent with Frank on their days together.

 

Edith chuckles to herself again. “Last summer when the weather was fine, Frank and me, we would sometimes go to Hyde Park on our Sundays off rather than going to the pictures up in West Ham, and listen to the brass bands play in the rotunda. Frank paid for our deckchairs – he’s a gentleman like that you can rest assured – and we’d sit and listen to them play.” She sighs. “Oh it was grand! The sun shining warm on my face and only the distant burble of the traffic to even remind me that I was in London. And then on the way home, we’d stop and listen to the speakers***** if Frank thought they had anything decent to say. I bet you can’t imagine little me, your sweet and gentle Edith, listening to political speeches. If you had kept your head down over there in France, I might never have. We were never into politics, you and I, were we, Bert?” She takes another sip of her tea. “Not that we really knew each other all that well. We were both so young and probably really still finding out who we were ourselves, never mind each other.” She sighs more deeply as she ruminates. “The truth is that quite a lot of it goes over my head, Bert, but Frank takes the time to explain things to me so that I can understand it too. Frank is quite a political chap really, and he says that I should show an interest too. I asked him why, when I don’t even have the vote******, but he says it won’t always be the way it is now. He says that now is the time for the working man, and woman. He believes in the emancipation of women. There you go, Bert! That’s a big word for me isn’t it? Emancipation!” She smiles proudly. “It means to be set free from social or political restrictions.”

 

Edith stands up and wanders over to Bert’s photograph and picks it up. The Bakelite feels cool in her hands as she traces the moulded edges of the frame.

 

“I wonder if you’d come back from the war whether you would have come back a changed man, Bert, and whether we’d even still be together. Would I have been enough for you? Would you be a man like Frank, not that he went to the war. Being the same age as me, he just missed out on being old enough to enlist. Would you have come back different? So many did. I mean some came back with the most awful injuries you can imagine, and then there were the injuries you couldn’t see, which doctors are still considering.” She looks into Bert’s frozen face. “Mental damage, I mean – something the doctors are now calling shellshock. But for all of them, there were plenty of men who weren’t hurt in the war, and they all seem to want change. They haven’t gone back to their old jobs as footmen or other domestic staff or working on farms. Women too. Women who worked in the munitions factories during the war. Canary Girls, they called them, because their skin turned yellow from building the shells. They all want better jobs, better pay and better standards of living. Would you have joined their ranks, I wonder, and would I have been there to support you? I just did what Mum told me to do and went into domestic service proper, and I tell you what, Bert, with less men there to do the jobs in big houses, the work falls to women, and there are fewer of us too. Older staff mutter about women waiting at table and answering doors nowadays, because there are fewer footmen and butlers, but there are fewer parlour maids and kitchen maids too. I’ve read in the newspapers that it is called, ‘the servant problem’. I still keep scrapbooks, Bert, but the things I paste in them are different these days. There is less about Royal Family and more about fashion and the pictures, and ladies doing things they’ve never done before. Have I changed? Would you like the Edith Watsford I am today, I wonder?”

 

Edith runs her hands over Bert’s face, forever young, forever captured with that slight hint of smile and sparkle in his eyes.

 

“Frank wants me to meet his granny, Bert. His parents died of the Spanish Flu after the war, and he only has his granny now. I’d like to meet her, but at the same time I’m terrified. I’m not frightened of her, in fact I want to meet her.” She takes a deep sigh. “No, what I’m frightened of is the significance of meeting her, and what that meeting means. Mum and Dad have been crying out to meet Frank. They wanted him to come and join us in Harlesden for Christmas dinner, since my brother was at sea on Christmas Day, but I told them that Frank wants to do things correctly, which means I meet his family first and then he can meet mine. Meeting Frank’s granny means that I will have to let go of you, and I can’t really ask you how you feel about that. When you died, Mum just told me to get on with things, and not to worry about the past. Now I’m doing that. I didn’t think I’d ever find someone to love again, Bert, but I do love Frank. If I’m honest, now I’m older and know myself and the world a bit better, I might love Frank even more than I loved you. I was only fourteen after all, and didn’t really know much about love, other than what I’d read in romance novels.” She looks at the brightly coloured paper cover of one of the novels Lettice gave her for Christmas. “I still read them, but I know that what appears in those pages isn’t necessarily really love. I don’t expect a man to sweep me into his arms and confess his undying love for me. No, a mutual understanding and agreement about where we are going in life is what love is, or part of it anyway. Just look at Mum and Dad. Not that I don’t want a bit of romance along the way, and Frank is a good kisser. I’m sure he’d be happy to do a little more than kiss if I let him, but Mum told me not to let that happen until after I get a ring on my finger. By meeting Frank’s granny, Bert, it means it’s a big step closer to getting that ring on my finger. It means that I’m serious about him, and he me. It means that we are sure we want to be together and get married.”

 

Tears well in Edith’s eyes, even as she speaks.

 

“If I have to leave you behind in order to move on with Frank, would you let me, Bert? Would you be happy for me? Would you wish me well? Would you wish us well?”

 

Carefully Edith moves the latches on the back of the frame holding Bert’s image in place. She feels the backing come away and fall slightly into her fingers. The glass tilts, reflecting back a ghostly image of herself across Bert’s smiling face. She realises that no matter how she feels about Bert, there will never be a photograph of the two of them together. She thinks of her friend Hilda, who now works for Lettice’s friends Margot and Dickie Channon in a flat within walking distance of Lettice’s flat. Hilda longs to meet a man whom she can step out with the way Edith and Frank have been ding for almost a year now, yet she has no prospects. There are far fewer men to choose from than before the war, and plenty more women vying for interest in those who have returned from the conflict. Edith considers herself lucky to have such an opportunity with Frank. Perhaps the time for change has come.

 

Gently she slips her fingers between the photograph and the glass. She withdraws Bert’s photograph.

 

“If I’m serious about Frank, Bert, which I am, I can’t keep carrying you around in my purse, or in a picture frame. It’s not fair to Frank, or to me really. But, I’ll always carry a little of you in my heart.”

 

She opens one of the small top drawers of the chest of drawers, which squeaks on its rungs as it is pulled out. A waft of lavender from a small muslin sachet inside drifts up to her nose. She slips Frank’s photo underneath a stack of clean pressed handkerchiefs and then closes the drawer firmly. She opens the next drawer and places the frame into the empty space.

 

“I’ll take you out again when I have a photo of Frank to put in you.” she assures the frame as she closes the drawer again.

 

*Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

**Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

***Boots the chemist was established in 1849, by John Boot. After his father's death in 1860, Jesse Boot, aged 10, helped his mother run the family's herbal medicine shop in Nottingham, which was incorporated as Boot and Co. Ltd in 1883, becoming Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd in 1888. In 1920, Jesse Boot sold the company to the American United Drug Company. However, because of deteriorating economic circumstances in North America Boots was sold back into British hands in 1933. The grandson of the founder, John Boot, who inherited the title Baron Trent from his father, headed the company. The Boots Pure Drug Company name was changed to The Boots Company Limited in 1971. Between 1898 and 1966, many branches of Boots incorporated a lending library department, known as Boots Book-Lovers' Library.

 

****To take the King’s shilling means to enlist in the army. The saying derives from a shilling whose acceptance by a recruit from a recruiting officer constituted until 1879 a binding enlistment in the British army —used when the British monarch is a king.

 

*****A Speakers' Corner is an area where open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed. The original and best known is in the northeast corner of Hyde Park in London. Historically there were a number of other areas designated as Speakers' Corners in other parks in London, such as Lincoln's Inn Fields, Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Kennington Park, and Victoria Park. Areas for Speakers' Corners have been established in other countries and elsewhere in Britain. Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers' Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police intervene only when they receive a complaint.

 

******It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that women over the age of twenty-one were able to vote in Britain and women finally achieved the same voting rights as men.

 

This cosy room may be a nice place to keep warm on a winter’s night, but what you may not be aware of is that it is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The eau-de-nil dressing table set on Edith’s chest of drawers, which has been made with incredible detail to make it as realistic as possible, is a Chrysnbon Miniature set. The mirror even contains a real piece of reflective mirror. Judy Berman founded Chrysnbon Miniatures in the 1970’s. She created affordable miniature furniture kits patterned off of her own full-size antiques collection. She then added a complete line of accessories to compliment the furniture. The style of furniture and accessories reflect the turn-of-the-century furnishings of a typical early American home. At the time, collectible miniatures were expensive because they were mostly individually crafted.

 

The photo of Bert in the eau-de-nil frame and the family portrait in the brass frame on the chest of drawers are real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The brass frame comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers.

 

Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The hat stand it sits on also comes from her.

 

To the right of Edith’s hat is an ornamental green jar filled with hatpins. The jar is made from a single large glass Art Deco bead, whilst each hatpin is made from either a nickel or brass plate pin with beads for ornamental heads. They were made by Karen Lady Bug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

Edith’s scrapbook wedged behind her sewing box is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe, as are the three novels you can see on the surface of Edith’s chest of drawers. Most of the books I own that Ken has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. When open, you will find the scarpbook contains sketches, photographs and article clippings. Even the paper has been given the appearance of wrinkling as happens when glue is applied to cheap pulp paper. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this scrapbook, it contains twelve double sided pages of scrapbook articles, pictures, sketches and photographs and measures forty millimetres in height and thirty millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The sewing box, the ‘home sweet home’ embroidery and the pencil all come from various online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures. The franked postcard in the foreground on the tea table comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

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

 

The Deftware cup, saucer and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which I acquired from a private collection of 1:12 miniatures in Holland.

 

Edith’s armchair is upholstered in blue chintz, and is made to the highest quality standards by J.B.M. Miniatures. The back and seat cushions come off the body of the armchair, just like a real piece of furniture.

 

The chest of drawers I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from the toy section of a large city department store.

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 the little maid’s room off the Cavendish Mews kitchen, which serves as Edith, Lettice’s maid’s, bedroom. The room is very comfortable and more spacious than the attic she shared with her friend and fellow maid, Hilda, in her last position. The room is papered with floral sprigged wallpaper, and whilst there is no carpet, unlike Lettice’s bedroom, there are rugs laid over the stained floorboards. The room is big enough for Edith to have a comfortable armchair and tea table as well as her bed, a chest of drawers and a small wardrobe. Best of all, the room has central heating, so it is always warm and cosy on cold nights.

 

Friends of Lettice, newlyweds Margot and Dickie Channon, have been gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) in Penzance as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton. Margot in her desire to turn ‘Chi an Treth’ from a dark Regency house to a more modern country house flooded with light, has commissioned Lettice to help redecorate some of the rooms in a lighter and more modern style, befitting a modern couple like the Channons. Lettice has decamped to Penzance for a week where she is overseeing the painting and papering of ‘Chi an Treth’s’ drawing room, dining room and main reception room, before fitting it out with a lorryload of new and repurposed furnishings, artwork and objets d’arte that she has had sent down weeks prior to her arrival. In her mistress’ absence, Edith has more free time on her hands, and so she is spending the morning pleasurably laying out some new fabric that she recently bought from a haberdasher’s in Whitechapel and cutting out the pieces for a new frock she has been wanting to make for a few weeks, but hasn’t had the time to do so before now owing to Lettice having her future sister-in-law as a houseguest.

 

Today is Tuesday and on Tuesdays, every third Thursday of the month and occasionally after a big party, Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman*, comes from her home in Poplar to do all the hard jobs.

 

Edith is so emersed in running her hands joyfully over the soft cotton fabric featuring sprigs of pretty blue flowers that she doesn’t hear the familiar sounds of Mrs. Boothby as she climbs the service stairs of Cavendish Mews: her footfall in her low heeled shoes that she proudly tells Edith came ‘practically new from Petticoat Lane**’, nor the fruity cough that comes from deep within her wiry little body.

 

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

 

“Oh, morning Mrs. Boothby,” Edith calls in reply through her bedroom door. “I’m in here.”

 

The old Cockney woman’s head appears around the doorframe, her wiry grey hair hidden beneath a dark blue cloche hat, another purchase from Petticoat Lane, which frames her heavily wrinkled face. “Aye! Aye!” she says good naturedly with a cheery smile. “What ‘ave we ‘ere then? Whilst the cat’s away.”

 

Edith’s face flushes with embarrassment at Mrs. Boothby’s remark.

 

“Oh I’m only teasin’, dearie!” the old woman laughs, emitting another fruity cough from deep within her lungs as she does so. “What’s that what you’re doin’ then?”

 

“Well, with Miss Lettice being away,” Edith replies a little coyly. “I have a bit more free time, so I thought I’d make the most of it and cut out the pattern for a new frock I’m making. I was hoping to have it finished in time for summer, for when Frank and I went walking in Hyde Park, but I suppose Autumn is as good as summer for a new frock.”

 

“Course it is, dearie!” Mrs. Boothby concurs. She bends down with a groan and picks up a copy of Weldon’s*** Dressmaker magazine off the floor by the foot of Lettice’s armchair and looks at the four smart outfits on the front cover. “Any time’s the perfect time for a new frock if you ask me – ‘specially when someone is as pretty as you! What a picture you’ll look steppin’ out with Frank Ledbetter in that pretty pattern.” She scruitinises the fabric, admiring the blue flowers interwoven with stems and leaves in olive green on a cream background. “That come from Mrs. Minkin’s then?”

 

“It does, Mrs. Boothby,” beams Edith. “I can’t thank you enough for telling me about her. She’s a much better haberdasher than the old one I used to use in Holborn.”

 

“I should fink she would be,” Mrs. Boothby replies loftily with an appreciative nod. “We East Enders know better ‘n anyone ‘bout how to sew and patch a dress, and turn a silk purse from a sow’s ear, ‘cause that’s all we get.”

 

“Mrs. Minkin is so generous. Look. She gave me these buttons as a gift.” She withdraws a card of six faceted Art Deco glass buttons and wafts them in front of the old charwoman.

 

“Aye. She’s a gooden, that one. Not all Russian Yids**** is like that Golda Friedman what goes round my rookery***** wiv ‘er nose in the air like she was the Queen of Russia ‘erself. Mrs. Minkin’s taken a shine to you, that’s for certain. Tried to marry you off to one of her sons yet, ‘as she?”

 

Edith blushes again. “Well, she did, until I explained to her that I was stepping out with Frank.”

 

“Well, them Yids tend to marry uvver Yids anyways, so I s’pose it don’t matter that much. She’ll still treat you like ‘er surrogate daughter ‘til one of ‘em marries, and even then, she’ll probably still treat you special ‘cause youse so nice to ‘er, ‘cause you’re such a good girl.”

 

“Oh I don’t know about that, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith scoffs. “I just treat people as I’d like to be treated. Isn’t that what we all learned in Sunday School.”

 

“I’m not much of a church goer myself, but that’s one rule I do know and agree wiv, dearie. Nah, thinkin’ of treatin’ folk, I ain’t ‘alf parched after me trip up from Poplar this mornin!”

 

“Was the traffic bad again, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Bad? You should’ve seen the traffic at Tottenham Court Road, dearie! Quite bunged up it was! Nah, ‘ow about a nice reviving cup of Rosie-Lee*****, eh?”

 

“Oh, of course, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says cheerily, pushing herself up off her knees and standing up.

 

A short while later, Edith and Mrs. Boothby are seated around Edith’s deal table which dominates the floorspace of the Cavendish Mews kitchen.

 

“Ta!” Mrs Boothby says. “Lovely.” She accepts the cup of tea proffered to her by Edith, and sticks a biscuit from the Hunley and Palmers******* tin on the table between her teeth and then starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she reaches over to the deal dresser and grabs the black pottery ash tray Edith keeps for her. Lighting her cigarette with a satisfied sigh and one more of her fruity coughs, Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in the Windsor chair she sits in with her cigarette in one hand and the biscuit in the other.

 

Edith shudders almost imperceptibly. She hates the older woman’s habit of smoking indoors. When she lived with her parents, neither smoked in the house. Her mother didn’t smoke at all: it would have been unladylike to do so, and her father only smoked a pipe when he went down to the local pub. Nevertheless, she knows this is Mrs. Boothby’s morning ritual, and for all the hard work that the old woman does around the flat, Edith cannot deny her one of her few pleasures.

 

“I do like a nice ‘Untley and Palmer******* breakfast biscuit to go wiv me Rosie-Lee?” Mrs. Boothby sighs as she munches loudly on the biscuit, spilling a shower of golden brown crumbs into her lap as she speaks.

 

“I’m glad Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies genuinely pleased as she pours herself a cup of tea.

 

“So dearie,” Mrs. Boothby queries. “Gonna whip your frock up on the sewin’ machine this afternoon are you?”

 

“This afternoon?” Edith looks questioning at Mrs. Boothby.

 

“Yes dearie, nah that you ‘ave the time on your ‘ands. Are you gonna stitch it up on your sewin’ machine?”

 

“Oh, I don’t have a sewing machine, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith adds sugar and milk to her tea and stirs her cup.

 

“Not got a sewin’ machine, dearie?” Mrs. Boothby draws deeply on her cigarette.

 

“No, Mrs. Boothby. There has never been one here, ever since I came to Cavendish Mews. No, I’ll take the cut pieces down to Mum’s when I visit her later in the week. She has a little Singer******** treadle that I can use.”

 

“Can you buy yourself one?”

 

“At forty pounds? I hardly think so!”

 

“You could get one through hire purchase********.”

 

“If I can’t afford one of Mrs. Minkin’s dressed hats, how can I possibly afford a sewing machine, even on hire purchase, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Well, can’t Miss Lettice buy you one then, dearie?” A plume of bluish grey smoke bursts forth in a tumbling cloud from the old woman’s mouth as she speaks.

 

Edith shakes her head as she selects a biscuit from the tin. “There’s no call for it, Mrs. Boothby. I seldom have to do any mending. Miss Lettice has Mr. Bruton mend any clothes for her. If she tears one of her stockings she simply goes and orders a new pair. The same can be said for any other article of clothing Mr. Bruton doesn’t make for her.”

 

“Lawd, to be that rich that I could toss a torn pair of stockings in the dustbin and buy a new pair wivvout thinkin’ twice!”

 

“I know. It seems like a wicked extravagance to me too, but I suppose Miss Lettice has always lived her life like that.”

 

“Yes,” Mrs. Boothby nods sagely as she slurps her tea loudly. “The ‘aves and ‘ave nots.”

 

“And any repairs required to the linen are done by the commercial laundry we use. No, I’ll take the pieces down to Mum’s and I can spend the afternoon there and sew it up then. She won’t mind.”

 

“Course she won’t mind, dearie. I just fink it’s a shame you don’t ‘ave your own sewin’ machine to make your own frocks on.”

 

“I get by well enough Mrs. Boothby, and Mum knows that if she ever wants to give up using it, I’ll have her Singer.”

 

The old charwoman nods and contemplates as she looks at Edith over the top of her own tea cup through the curtain of blueish grey cigarette smoke as she sips her tea.

 

An hour and a half later when Mrs. Boothby has finished scrubbing the bathroom, washing the kitchen linoleum and polishing the drawing room and dining room floors, she pops her head around Edith’s bedroom door again, where the young maid kneels laying out crisp white tissue paper patterns that she pins to the fabric before cutting them out with her shears. “Well, I’ll be off then, Edith dearie! I’ll see you Thursday.”

 

Edith looks up, her shears clasped in her right hand. “Yes, see you Thursday Mrs. Boothby. Even if I go down to Mum’s on Thursday, I’ll still be here in the morning to let you in.”

 

“Alright dearie. I’ll do Miss Lettice’s bedroom floor and the ‘allways on Thursday, and I’ll do the black leading. I’ll ‘elp you turn Miss Lettice’s mattress too, like we talked about.”

 

“Very good Mrs. Boothby.”

 

Mrs. Boothby looks down across Edith’s little chamber and takes in the Weldon’s and Lady’s World Fancy Workbook********** magazines scattered across the floor, Edith’s precious lacquered sewing box, a gift from her mother, from which spill knitting needles, spools of thread, pins and a tape measure, cards of buttons from Mrs, Minkin’s Haberdashery, her shears and the patterns for several fashionable frocks. The old Cockney sighs.

 

“Is anything wrong Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks, her own face filling with concern as she stares up into the thought filled face of the older woman.

 

“Well, I was just thinkin’ dearie.” She squeezes her pointy chin between her thumb and index finger thoughtfully.

 

“Yes, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“’Ow long is Miss Lettice away for?”

 

“At least until mid next week. She’s gone to redecorate Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s house down in Penzance and she is staying for an extra day or two afterwards to gauge their happiness with her designs and organise any changes. I think Mr. Bruton will be going down too at the end, as he is supposed to be bringing her back up to London in his motor.”

 

“So she’ll still be gone on Friday?”

 

“I certainly expect so. Why do you ask, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Well, I was just thinkin’ dearie, that I might ‘ave a solution for your sewin’ machine problem. Can you come dahn to my ‘ouse in Poplar on Friday afternoon when I finish work about midday?”

 

“I suppose so, Mrs. Boothby.” the young girl replies, rather perplexed. “But why?”

 

“Oh, never you mind nah, dearie. Give me a few days to see if I can’t sort somethin’ out. I’ll come pick you up about ‘alf twelve from ‘ere. Alright dearie?” She smiles broadly at Edith, showing her badly nicotine stained teeth, but the smile is a kindly one.

 

“Very well, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies with her own bemused smile. “I’ll be ready. What do I need to bring.”

 

“Oh just yourself, dearie. Nuffink more. Well, ta-ta then dearie. Till Friday.” And the old woman shuffles out, her familiar footfall announcing her departure.

 

*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.

 

**Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

***Created by British industrial chemist and journalist Walter Weldon Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was the first ‘home weeklies’ magazine which supplied dressmaking patterns. Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was first published in 1875 and continued until 1954 when it ceased publication.

 

****The word Yid is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang. When pronounced in such a way that it rhymes with did by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'. It is uncertain when the word began to be used in a pejorative sense by non-Jews, but some believe it started in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century when there was a large population of Jews and Yiddish speakers concentrated in East London, gaining popularity in the 1930s when Oswald Mosley developed a strong following in the East End of London.

 

*****A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.

 

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

 

*******Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time.

 

********The Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of consumer sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac M. Singer with New York lawyer Edward C. Clark. Best known for its sewing machines, it was renamed Singer Manufacturing Company in 1865, then the Singer Company in 1963. In 1867, the Singer Company decided that the demand for their sewing machines in the United Kingdom was sufficiently high to open a local factory in Glasgow on John Street. The Vice President of Singer, George Ross McKenzie selected Glasgow because of its iron making industries, cheap labour, and shipping capabilities. Demand for sewing machines outstripped production at the new plant and by 1873, a new larger factory was completed on James Street, Bridgeton. By that point, Singer employed over two thousand people in Scotland, but they still could not produce enough machines. In 1882 the company purchased forty-six acres of farmland in Clydebank and built an even bigger factory. With nearly a million square feet of space and almost seven thousand employees, it was possible to produce on average 13,000 machines a week, making it the largest sewing machine factory in the world. The Clydebank factory was so productive that in 1905, the U.S. Singer Company set up and registered the Singer Manufacturing Company Ltd. in the United Kingdom.

 

*********The hire purchase agreement was developed in Britain in the Nineteenth Century to allow customers with a cash shortage to make an expensive purchase they otherwise would have to delay or forgo. These contracts are most commonly used for items such as automobiles and high-value electrical goods where the purchasers are unable to pay for the goods directly. However in the 1920s and 1930s, they were also available for furnishings such as lounge suites and bedroom suites.

 

**********Published by Horace Marshall and Son of London since the 1850s, the Lady’s World Fancy Work Book, like Weldon’s, was a magazine which supplied dressmaking knitting, crochet and embroidery patterns. It was published quarterly on the first of the month in January, April, July and October.

 

This cheerful and busy domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The copies of Weldon’s Dressmaker and the Lady’s World Fancy Work Book are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. In this case, the magazines are non-opening, however what might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s books and magazines are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The Superior Quality buttons on cards are in truth tiny beads. They, along with the spool of cotton in the foreground, the sewing box, the spools of cottons pincushion, tape measure, silver embroidery scissors and the knitting needles in it all come from various online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures.

 

The patterns for three afternoon dresses are genuine 1922 modes and come from Chic Parisien Beaux-Arts de Modes and are modes 386, 387 and 388.

 

The shears with black handles on the fabric open and close. Made of metal, they came from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The fabric is real, and is a small corner of a few metres I acquired to have made into a shirt. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the pattern.

 

The corner of Edith’s armchair that can be seen in the top of the photo is upholstered in blue chintz, and is made to the highest quality standards by J.B.M. Miniatures. The back and seat cushions come off the body of the armchair, just like a real piece of furniture.

 

The floorboards are a print of a photo taken of some floorboards that I scaled to 1:12 size to try and maintain a realistic look.

... for n0cturne, generous artist and truly loyal friend!!! ... muchas gracias, colega!!!

 

... discover n0cturne: www.flickr.com/photos/23293986@N06/

 

... salud, buenas luces y muchas gracias!!! ... lento, muy lento!!! ................................ xo♥ox ...

 

... health, good lighta and thanks a lot!!! ......... slow, very slow!!! ............................... xo♥ox ...

 

... Music: "Sugar Craft" (Mekeski, Martin & Wood) remixed by Yuka Honda ............... enjoy it!!!

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEV2OlYBc9U

 

... mejor si pulsas "L" / ... better is you press "L"

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 a short distance south-east across London, away from Cavendish Mews and Mayfair, over the Regency houses and squares of Belgravia to the artistic upper-class suburb of Chelsea, where Lettice and her dear friend and fellow Embassy Club coterie member, Margot Channon, are attending the Royal Horticultural Society’s 1923 Great Spring Show*. Concerned about her beau, Selwyn Spencely’s, true affections for her, and worried about the threat his cousin and 1923 debutante, Pamela Fox-Chavers, poses to her own potential romantic plans with Selwyn, Lettice has concocted a ruse to spy on Pamela whom Selwyn is escorting to various functions throughout the Season as a favour to his mother, Lady Zinnia, whom Lettice suspects of arranging a match between the two cousins. This includes the Great Spring Show. To avoid looking obvious, Lettice has wrangled Margot to accompany her, even though she has her own misgivings about attending the show after being paraded about there by her own mother before the war as a young debutante. We find ourselves in one of the tents of the Great Spring Show where a grand display of floral arrangements are on show on tables around the pink and white striped canvas walls for the admiration of the society matrons and their daughters as they walk about the space in one of the mainstays of London’s 1923 Season. The cloying fragrance of hothouse flowers mixed with the scent of perfumes of all the women present hangs like a fug in the air, and mixed with a small amount of sweat owing to the closeness of the crowd within the tent the combination is so strong that it is almost visible. Beneath hundreds of pairs of court heels and a smattering of brogues, the grass of the lawns is trampled to a flat matted mass of brownish green blades.

 

“I hope you know that I feel positively nauseous being here,“ Margot whispers in Lettice’s ear over the top of the vociferous burbling of the women’s voices around them as they slowly went their way through the close gathering of people.

 

Margot looks nervously about her. The tent is populated with a large crowd of society ladies and a smattering of gentlemen. Just as she had predicted, the pair are surrounded by anxious mothers and daughters perambulating slowly about: the mothers showing off their marriageable daughters, dressed in the latest season fashions. Even as Margot catches passing glimpses of some of them, she knows that not all these young jeune fille à marier** are going to find husbands in the marriage market decimated by the Great War. She spots an ill-at-ease young girl of around seventeen or eighteen being reluctantly paraded around in a chartreuse satin day dress by her apprehensive birdlike mother. The colour doesn’t suit the poor girl and only makes her unhealthy pallor all the more evident, and the boxy square neckline and fashionable low waistline show how hefty she is beneath the frock as she clumps awkwardly across the trampled lawns in scuffed white court heels and bunching white lisle stockings. Margot feels sorry for her, knowing exactly how she feels, having done exactly the same thing just prior to the war with her own aspiring mother, Lady de Virre. Some of the older society matrons give the girl withering and dismissive glances as she stumbles in her mother’s wake, and Margot knows that she is doomed to failure in the marriage bed of the London Season, and will no doubt set sail, still unmarried, for India in the next year or so, where standards are not so high, and marriageable men more plentiful and less picky.

 

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this, Lettice darling.” Margot hisses quietly, squeezing Lettice’s arm.

 

Lettice, walking alongside her, stops in her tracks and looks her friend squarely in the face. “Because you love me, of course,” she says matter-of-factly. “And you wouldn’t want me to face this barrage of female hostility alone.” She hooks her arm through Margot’s and the pair begin their slow navigation through the clumps of other women, looking about at the sporadic smattering of male faces to see whether they can see Selwyn amongst them. “Anyway,” Lettice continues. “I’m the one who should dread this more than you, Margot darling. You’re a married lady. Yet even with you on my arm, as a single woman in her twenties, I could still be seen as a threat by the mothers of the 1923 debutantes being paraded about here, especially if I am seen in the company of the Duke of Walmford’s son.”

 

Lettice looks past the parvenues wearing too much jewellery and just too bright a shade of frock trying too hard to blend in and not be ill at ease with their new money and the doughy and haughty society matrons as they pass judgement on those who fall within the prison of their gazes from beneath their new spring millinery. Occasionally she spots a male face: a young man in a smart new spring straw boater and a blue or a white blazer, but none is the face she wants to see. They are all fashionably clean shaven like Selwyn, but too young, or without his dark hair colour. She sighs with irritation.

 

“Where is he?” Lettice mutters.

 

Suddenly her view is blocked by a wall of rather muddy sage green georgette decorated with matching sage green beads in panels of somewhat outmoded Art Nouveau style.

 

“Why Miss Chertwynd, what an unexpected pleasure!”

 

Lettice smiles benignly, attempting to hide her dismay. As a staple of the London Season, she had expected to run into ladies she knew at the Great Spring Show, but she never imagined it would be Geraldine Evans, the elder of the two spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house in the village of Glynes on her father’s Wiltshire estate.

 

“Henrietta!” the elder of the Miss Evanses calls out in delight, beckoning someone with an ecru lace glove clan finger. “Henrietta, look who I’ve found!”

 

Henrietta, the second of the spinster Miss Evanses suddenly appears through the crowd in an equally old fashioned Edwardian style ankle length gown of the pre-war era, leaning on a matching parasol whose end pierces the well-trodden ground beneath her.

 

“Why Miss Chetwynd!” the younger of the Miss Evanses exclaims with surprise, her face breaking into a happy smile. “Such an unexpected pleasure.”

 

“How do you do, Miss Evans, Miss Evans,” Lettice acknowledges them both with a curt nod. She glances at the two old women, who must be in their seventies at least, both dressed in their faded pre-war Edwardian splendour, their equally old fashioned whale bone S-bend corsets*** forcing their breasts into giant monobosoms down which strands of opera length pearls cascade. Wearing toques with feather aigrettes jutting out of them atop their waved white hair they look like older versions of Queen Mary. “What a pleasant surprise.”

 

“You were amongst the last of the people we expected to run into here, Miss Chetwynd.” the elder Miss Evans remarks. “Don’t you agree Henrietta?”

 

“Indeed Geraldine!” acknowledges her sister with a crackling voice that sounds like crisp autumn leaves underfoot. “Quite the least likely.”

 

“Well,” Lettice chuckles a little awkwardly. “I must confess that I am equally surprised at running into you two here.”

 

“Oh,” the elder of the Miss Evanses remarks with a dismissive sweep of her hand, a waft of Yardley’s Old English Lavender teasing Lettice’s nose as she does. “It’s one of the few pleasures of the Season that we enjoy and allow ourselves these days.”

 

“As two ladies long past their bloom of youth.” the younger Miss Evans twitters as she looks at the younger ladies around them. “Unlike you, Miss Chetwynd, and your...” She looks querying at Margot’s slightly startled face with raised eyebrows.

 

“Oh how very remiss of me!” Lettice apologises. “Miss Evans, Miss Evans, may I introduce Mrs. Richard Channon, daughter-in-law to Marquis and Marchioness of Taunton. Margot darling, may I introduce the Miss Evanses: acquaintances of mine who live in Glynes village in Wiltshire.”

 

“How do you do, Mrs. Channon.” the two old ladies twitter with gravitas, raising their glove clad hands to their mouths in delight.

 

“How do you do, ladies.” Margot replies, not quite able to keep the bemused smile off her painted red lips as she observes Lettice’s awkwardness at being caught conversing with these two old, dowdy and rather faded looking women amidst the smart ladies of London society.

 

“We didn’t know you enjoyed flowers.” the elder Miss Evans observes. “Are you perhaps accompanying Her Ladyship?” She stretches her jowly neck like a tortoise and looks around with unbridled excitement with her trembling head to see if she can spot Lady Sadie anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

 

“No, I’m afraid my mother isn’t here today, Miss Evans.” Lettice apologises. “I imagine she is at home in Wiltshire, which I must confess is where I expected you would be also. However, if you ask my mother, she will be the very first person to tell you that I am the only one of my siblings who shares her love of flowers. I often help her plan the plantings for the parterre at Glynes.”

 

“Well!” the younger of the Miss Evanses gasps. “Being the creative and artistic soul you are, of course you are interested in flowers. How could you not be? You take so after your dear aunt, Miss Eglantine, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“Oh, is Miss Eglantine here with you today?” the elder Miss Evans queries, stretching her neck again.

 

“No, Miss Evans.” Lettice assures them. “I’m afraid that my aunt prefers some of the smaller, lesser known garden shows at this time of the year. She’s not one for all this show. No, I’m here to admire the flowers with my friend Mrs. Channon.”

 

“We did see pictures of you in the society pages of the newspaper, Miss Chetwynd,” the younger Miss Evans remarks in a total change of subject. “At the wedding of our new Duchess of York****. It was quite a thrill, wasn’t it Geraldine?” she concludes with a shy and rather foolishly girlish smile as she blushes beneath her dusting of pale face powder.

 

“Indeed yes, Henrietta.” agrees her sister. “Having been so long outside of fashionable society, it is always a delight to see a person of our acquaintance in the social pages.”

 

“And were you wearing one of Master Bruton’s outfits, Miss Chetwynd?” the younger sister asks. Without giving Lettice a chance to answer she adds, “And is your frock today also designed by Master Bruton, Miss Chetwynd?” She points her finger rather rudely at Lettice’s chest, as she looks Lettice up and down through the silver rimmed lorgnette she has tied by a navy blue ribbon to her wrist.

 

“Master Bruton?” Margot queries with a quizzical look at Lettice.

 

“Gerald.” Lettice quickly elucidates before acknowledging to the Miss Evanses that her flouncy frock of georgette in the palest of peach is indeed made by him.

 

As the Miss Evanses engage conversation with Margot, Lettice is suddenly struck by the unpleasant feeling that she is being watched, or perhaps more precisely, scrutinised. The crackling voices of the Miss Evanses and Margot’s well elocuted vowels die away as she turns and looks over her left shoulder. A mature woman dressed in a strikingly simple French blue frock with a layered calf length hem overlaid with a magnificent and thick arctic fox fur stole stands perfectly still, staring imperiously at Lettice from beneath the wide brim of a matching Navy blue felt hat. Pale and slender she is glacially beautiful, her dark and intense stillness at odds with the bright pastel blur of the women milling around her. Her thin lips are depressed into a disapproving line and her sharp and high cheekbones add to her steeliness. Her dark sloe blue eyes pierce Lettice to the core with a vehement dislike, as though she were an insect that must be exterminated.

 

“I imagine Master Bruton will soon be designing Miss Chetwnd’s own wedding frock.” the younger of the Miss Evanses announces rather vulgarly with another ungainly girlish twitter.

 

“Are you alright, Lettice darling?” Margot asks, reaching her hand up at touching her friend’s shoulder.

 

“What?” Lettice asks in surprise, spinning back around as Margot interrupts the hold of the mysterious woman’s gaze on her.

 

“I asked if you are feeling alright, Lettice darling.” Margot repeats, a worried look bleeding across her pretty face.

 

“I say, you do look rather pale all of a sudden, my dear Miss Chetwynd.” the older of the Miss Evanses says with concern.

 

“Oh,” Lettice replies, fanning herself with her glove clad hand as she feels the intense gazes of Margot and the two Miss Evanses. “Oh yes.” She looks back over her shoulder, but like a phantom, the mysterious woman in French blue is gone, leaving no trace of her presence. Turning back, she continues rather distractedly, “I think I’m just a little overcome by all the people in here.”

 

“Yes, well, it is rather close in here, Miss Chetwynd.” the younger Miss Evans remarks as she looks about at all the women and a few men milling around them.

 

“If you don’t mind, ladies,” Margot addresses the Miss Evanses. “I think I might take Miss Chetwynd outside the enclosure for a spot of air.”

 

“Oh yes! Do! Do Mrs. Channon.” the two Miss Evanses cluck away in concern.

 

“Well, goodbye Miss Evans, Miss Evans,” Margot says as she carefully starts to guide Lettice away. “It has been a pleasure making your acquaintance.” she lies.

 

As Margot leads Lettice away from the effusive pair of old women she leans into Lettice. “I say, well played Lettice darling.” she mutters conspiratorially. “I don’t know how you do that, but making yourself go pale like that worked a treat to get us away from that pair of wittering old biddies. I feared we’d never escape their vulturous clutches.” She squeezes Lettice’s inner arm as they walk. “Do you always have to pull a fit like that to escape them, darling?”

 

“Only sometimes.” Lettice remarks a little unsteadily, glancing nervously around her to see if she can catch another glimpse of the woman in dark blue as they move through the crush of floral scented women dressed in silk georgette and cotton chintz in pretty pastel colours.

 

The very next moment Lettice runs into the chest of a navy blue blazer which smells familiarly of Taylor’s sandalwood eau de cologne.

 

“Lettice!” Selwyn’s voice exclaims from somewhere above the brim of her straw picture hat.

 

Looking up, Lettice stares into the surprised face of her beau and smiles with relief. “Selwyn!”

 

“Angel, what on earth are you doing here?” Selwyn asks, grasping Lettice by the shoulders, looking around a little nervously as he does. “I didn’t think this was your type of occasion.”

 

“Oh it’s not, Your Grace.” Margot drops a small respectful curtsey. “Lettice has kindly agreed to accompany me in the absence of my husband.” explains Margot at Lettice’s arm. Stretching out her own hand encased in a burgundy leather glove to him like a queen she introduces herself. “How do you do, Your Grace, I’m Mrs. Richard Channon.” She smiles widely at him with her red painted lips.

 

“Yes, I think I recognise your face from the newspapers after your wedding, Mrs. Channon. How do you do.” Selwyn says, taking her proffered hand and kissing it. “And please, no ‘Your Graces’ since you are such a close friend of Miss Chetwynd. Just Mr. Spencely will do.”

 

“Thank you, Your Grac… err I mean, Mr. Spencely.” she corrects herself. “And you must be Pamela Fox-Chavers.” Margot continues, drawing Lettice’s attention to the shy young lady standing silently at Selwyn’s side, her arm linked with his. “How do you do. I’m Mrs. Richard Channon.”

 

Lettice looks across at Pamela who stares back at Lettice with a large pair of kind, pale blue eyes from beneath the stiffened lace brim of her hat. Framed by strawberry blonde waves of soft lustrous hair affixed in a chignon at the back of her neck, Pamela’s skin is like peaches and cream. Lettice takes in her beautifully cut frock of pale pink and blue satin adorned with lace appliqué and tiny bouquets of ornamental pink roses, and immediately identifies it as once of Lucile’s***** ‘Dream Dresses’*****. The young debutante of seventeen smiles at Lettice with the sweet and innocent face of an ingenue.

 

“Good heavens!” Pamela gasps. “How on earth did you know who I am, Mrs. Channon? I’m only just out!”

 

“I saw your photograph in the newspapers,” Margot says in reply. “From Queen Charlotte’s Ball******.”

 

“Pamela,” Selwyn says a little awkwardly. “May I introduce, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd. Lettice, may I present my cousin, the Honourable Pamela Fox-Chavers.”

 

“Oh, no introduction is necessary, Selwyn!” Pamela says with a shy smile. “I’d know you anywhere, Miss Chetwynd. It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you. Your face is always in the society pages, oh and you too Mrs. Channon.” she adds quickly when she sees the slightly perturbed look on Margot’s perfectly made up face. “Selwyn’s always talking about you, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“Pammy!” Selwyn chides his young cousin gently, looking down at her with serious eyes as he flushes red with embarrassment.

 

Smiling cheekily, Margot explains, “I was just taking Lettice outside for a breath of fresh air. It’s awfully cloying in here with so many people about.”

 

“Lettice my angel,” Selwyn gasps quietly, gazing into her face with concerned eyes. “Are you alright?”

 

“I’ll be fine, Selwyn.” she assures him with a dismissive wave. “I just need some fresh air is all.”

 

“And maybe a little something to eat.” Margot adds, cocking an eyebrow at Selwyn meaningfully.

 

“Oh they’re serving Devonshire teas in the next tent, Mrs. Channon.” pipes up Pamela. “Shall we all go and have some? Then we can get better acquainted.” She looks with excited eyes to Lettice before turning back to Selwyn. “Can we Selwyn?” she begs like a young child wanting a treat, tugging on her cousin’s arm. “Please!”

 

“What a capital idea, Miss Fox-Chavers.” Margot replies with an indulgent smile of gratitude. “I think some Devonshire tea sounds like a very civilised way for us to all get to know one another better. Don’t you agree, Mr. Spencely?”

 

*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.

 

**A jeune fille à marier was a marriageable young woman, the French term used in fashionable circles and the upper-classes of Edwardian society before the Second World War.

 

***Created by a specific style of corset popular between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the outbreak of the Great War, the S-bend is characterized by a rounded, forward leaning torso with hips pushed back. This shape earned the silhouette its name; in profile, it looks similar to a tilted letter S.

 

****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.

 

*****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.

 

******Lucile aimed to make an art of beautiful dressing, and her ‘Dream Dresses’ were faerie tale creations of shimmering silks, gossamer laces, and delicate rainbows of ribbons in soft pastel shades. Influenced by her early designs for lingerie and tea gowns, Lucile’s dresses, which she also referred to as “Gowns of Emotion” were given suitably romantic name, like “Happiness”.

 

*******The Queen Charlotte's Ball is an annual British debutante ball. The ball was founded in 1780 by George III as a birthday celebration in honour of his wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, for whom the ball is named. Debutantes were presented and made to curtsey to a large birthday cake in honour of Queen Charlotte. The Queen Charlotte's Ball originally served as a fundraiser for the Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital. The annual ball continued after Queen Charlotte's death in 1818, but was criticised by the British royal family in the 1950s and 1960s and folded in 1976. It was revived in the Twenty First Century by Jennie Hallam-Peel, a former debutante, who shifted its focus from entering high society to teaching business skills, networking, and etiquette, and fundraising for charities.

 

This wonderful display of floral arrangements in a marquee may not be all that you suppose it to be, for in fact it is made up entirely of pieces from my 1:12 size miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

All the floral arrangements that you see here come from various suppliers, including Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, the Doll House Emporium, Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and the Falcon Company, all of whom specialise in high quality, realistic 1:12 miniatures, and they are well known for their floral arrangements. There are also several examples of artisan floral arrangements, made by unknown artists.

 

The white and pink striped wall of the marquee is in truth one of my hand tailored business shirts which I spread across a cardboard backing. I think it looks quite effective. Don’t you?

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

 

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.

 

Concerned about her beau, Selwyn Spencely’s, true affections for her, and worried about the threat his cousin and 1923 debutante, Pamela Fox-Chavers, posed to her own potential romantic plans with Selwyn, Lettice concocted a ruse to spy on Pamela and Selwyn at the Royal Horticultural Society’s 1923 Great Spring Show*. As luck would have it, Lettice ran into Pamela and Selwyn, quite literally in the latter’s case, and they ended up having tea together. Whilst not the appropriate place to talk about Selwyn’s mother, Lady Zinnia, whom Lettice suspects of arranging a match between Selwyn and Pamela, who are cousins, Selwyn has agreed to organise a dinner with Lettice where they can talk openly about the future of their relationship and the interference of Lady Zinnia. However, whilst Lettice waits for the dinner to be arranged, she has a wonderful distraction to take her mind off things.

 

That is why today we are far from London, returning to Wiltshire, where Lettice grew up at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie and his new wife Arabella. However, we are not at Glynes, but rather in Glynes Village at the local village hall where a much loved annual tradition is taking place. Every year the village have a summer fête, run by the local women and overseen by Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, to help raise money for a worthy cause in the village. The summer fête is one of the highlights of the village and country calendar as it always includes a flower show, a cake stand, stalls run by local famers’ wives selling homemade produce, games of hoopla, a coconut shy, a tombola and a jumble sale, a white elephant stall and a fortune teller – who is always local haberdasher Mrs. Maginot who has a theatrical bent and manages the Glynes theatrical players as well as her shop in the village high street. All the stalls and entertainments are held either in the village hall or the grounds surrounding it. Not only do the citizens of the village involve themselves in the fête, but also the gentry, and there is always much excitement when matriarch of the Brutons, Lady Gwyneth – Gerald’s mother, and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt – Arabella’s mother, attend. Neither lady have been well over the last few years with Lady Gwyneth suffering a spate of bronchial infections and Lady Isobel receiving treatment for cancer, so it is a rare treat to have both in attendance. This year’s summer fête is a special one for Arabella in particular, for as the newly minted Mrs. Leslie Chetwynd, she now joins the effort to help run the Glynes summer fête for the first time and has been given the second-hand clothing stall to run as part of the jumble sale.

 

The Glynes village hall is a hive of activity, and the cavernous space resounds with running footsteps, voluble chatter from the mostly female gathering, hammering and children’s laughter and tears as they run riot around the adults as they set up their stalls. Mr. Lovegrove, who runs the village shop, climbs a ladder which is held by the elderly church verger Mr. Lewis and affixes the brightly coloured Union Jacks and bunting that have been used every year since the King’s Coronation in 1911 around the walls. Lady Sadie casts a critical eye over the white elephant stall, rearranging items to put what she considers the best quality items on more prominent display, whilst removing a select few pieces which she thinks unsuitable for sale, which she passes to Newman, her ladies maid, to dispose of. Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler arranges and categorises books for the second-hand book stall, perhaps spending a little too much time perusing some of the titles. Mrs. Elliott who runs the Women’s Institute manages the influx of local women bringing in cakes with regimental efficiency. And amongst all the noise, activity and excitement, Arabella busies herself unpacking boxes of old clothes and tries her best to make her trestle an attractive addition to the summer fête. Lettice perches on an old bentwood chair, offering suggestions to her sister-in-law whilst pulling faces as she lifts up various donations before depositing them in disgust where they had been beforehand.

 

“Here we are then,” Gerald announces as he walks across the busy floor of the hall bearing a wooden tray containing several teacups and a plate of cupcakes from the refreshments stand, narrowly avoiding Mrs. Lovegrove’s two youngest children as they chase one another around his legs. The sound of his jolly call and his footsteps joining all the other cacophony of setting up going on around him. “Refreshments for the hard workers,” he looks at Arabella. “And the not-so-hard-workers.” he looks at Lettice.

 

“Don’t be cheeky!” Lettice says to him with a hard stare, letting a limp stocking fall from her hand and collapse into a wrinkled pool on the trestle table’s surface.

 

Gerald puts the three tea cups down where he can find a surface on Arabella’s trestle table, followed by a long blue and gilt edged platter on which sit three very festive cupcakes featuring Union Jacks made of marzipan sticking out of white clouds of icing.

 

“Mrs. Casterton’s special cupcakes.” he announces proudly with a beaming smile.

 

“How on earth did you get those, Gerald?” gasps Lettice in surprise, eyeing the dainty cakes greedily. “Mrs. Casterton hasn’t let me take food from her kitchen since I started dining at the table with the rest of the family, never mind pinch anything from her stall for the fundraiser!”

 

“It helps when you aren’t her employer’s indulged youngest child.” Gerald says, tapping his nose knowingly.

 

“I was not an indulged child!” Lettice defends, raising her hand to the boat neckline of her frock and grasping her single strand of creamy white pearls hanging about her neck. “You were more indulged by Aunt Gwen than I ever was by Mater or Pater.”

 

“Oh, just ignore him, Tice!” laughs Arabella from her place behind the trestle. “You know Gerald has always had the ability to charm anything from anyone when he wants to.”

 

“That’s true,” Lettice replies, eyeing Gerald with a cocked eyebrow and a bemused smile as she picks up her magenta and gilt rimmed cup and sips her tea. “I had forgotten that.”

 

“What can I say?” laughs Gerald proudly with a shrug of his shoulders.

 

“It’s not so much what you can say as what you can do, Gerald.” mutters Arabella with a frustrated sigh.

 

“I am at your service, my lady?” Gerald replies, making a sweeping bow before Arabella and Lettice, who both laugh at his jester like action.

 

“Be careful what you promise, Gerald.” giggles Lettice.

 

“Bella would never expect too much from me, Lettice.” Gerald retorts with a smile. “She’s known me all her life and she knows what my limitations are.”

 

“Well, I was hoping you could help me by working some magic on my second hand clothing stall.” Arabella remarks with another frustrated sigh as she tugs at the old fashioned shirtwaister** blouse with yellowing lace about the collar. “I’ve tried and tried all morning, but nothing I seem to do helps make anything look more modern and more attractive to buy.”

 

Lettice and Gerald look around at Arabella’s stall. The shirtwaister outfit with its pretty, albeit slightly marked, lace, tweed skirt and leather belt with a smart, yet old fashioned Art Nouveau buckle really is the most attractive piece that she has on display. Around it on the surface of her trestle are a jumble of yellowing linen napkins complete with tarnished napkin rings, a selection of embroidered, tatted*** and crocheted doilies, mismatched pairs of leather and lace gloves and several rather worn looking hats that are really only suitable for gardening now, rather than being worn to church services on Sunday.

 

“I warned you Gerald.” Lettice says with a knowing wink.

 

“Don’t you remember how much we all felt sorry for whomever ran the second-hand clothing stall at the fête each year as children, Bella?” Gerald asks.

 

“It was always the short straw.” Lettice adds.

 

“Yes, being stuck under the piercing stare of His Majesty.” Gerald indicates to the portrait of King George V, dating back to the pre-war years when the King still had colour in his hair.

 

“The worst stall to have because none of the villagers ever seem to have anything nice or remotely fashionable to donate, even for a good cause like new books for the village school.” Lettice picks up a pretty primrose yellow napkin. “These are nice at least.”

 

“Except there are only three of them.” points out Arabella with a disappointed air. “I can’t seem to find a fourth.” She picks up a red dyed straw hat in the vain hope that it will be there, even though she has searched beneath it three times already. “And I’ve looked everywhere.”

 

“Tea for two, perhaps?” Gerald suggests hopefully as he picks up his own teacup and takes a sip of tea.

 

“Oh, you two are no help!” scoffs Arabella. “I’ve a right mind to stick you both with these!” She grasps a pair of knitting needles complete with some rather dreadfully made rows of incomplete knitting and a ball of wool and thrusts them through the air between she, Lettice, and Gerald. “They’ll get you working.”

 

“Even if they do, Bella, we aren’t miracle workers.” remarks Gerald.

 

All three of them laugh good heartedly.

 

“Oh I must make the best of it,” Arabella sighs resignedly as she tugs at the left leg-of-mutton sleeve**** of the shirtwaister. “After all, this is my first year as Leslie’s wife, and the first jumble sale I am actively helping to run to help raise funds for the village. I must make this stall a success no matter what.” The steely determination in her voice surprises her as she speaks. “I’m a Chetwynd now, and I can’t disappoint the villagers with a poor show.”

 

“Nor Mater.” adds Lettice, taking another sip of tea.

 

“No indeed!” agrees Gerald. “Lady Sadie will be judging you from afar, Bella, rest assured. If your stall isn’t a great success, you’ll hear about it.”

 

“In a dozen little quips.” Lettice adds.

 

“More like a hundred.” corrects Gerald.

 

“Tearing delicately phrased strips off you.” agrees Lettice.

 

“Inflicting as much pain for as long as possible.” adds Gerald with seriousness.

 

“Oh stop, Gerald!” laughs Arabella. “She isn’t anywhere near as much of a dragon as you and Tice paint her to be.”

 

“You’ve only been married to the family for a little while now,” Lettice counters, looking at her sister-in-law over the magenta and gilt painted rim of her cup. “And you and Leslie have your own lives and are left pretty much to your own devices down in the Glynes Dower House from what I can gather. We’ll give you a little while longer to find out the truth about your wicked mother-in-law.” She smiles cheekily.

 

“I have grown up alongside you, going in and out of your house, Tice,” Arabella replies with a dismissive wave of her hand. “So it’s not like Sadie is an unknown quantity to me.”

 

“But you’ve never been a recipient of her acerbic tongue either, I’ll wager.” adds Gerald dourly. “You’re far too sweet and compliant a young daughter-in-law for that, but both Lettice and I have.”

 

“I still don’t know,” Lettice queries, turning her attention to Gerald. “What was it you said to Mater that night of Hunt Ball that set her so against you, Gerald? I’ve never known her to take against anyone so vehemently, except perhaps poor Aunt Egg who can never do any right in her eyes.”

 

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

 

“Well,” Arabella says with a sigh. “I’m determined not to incur her wrath, even though I’m sure it’s nowhere near as awful as you two suggest.”

 

“Oh-oh!” Gerald mutters under his breath to Lettice. “In coming.”

 

“Oh no.” moans Lettice quietly in return behind the painted smile she places on her face as she, Gerald and Arabella are suddenly set upon by the Miss Evanses, the two spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house in the village.

 

The trio smile benignly as the two sisters twitter to one another in crackling voices that sound like crisp autumn leaves underfoot as they approach them.

 

“Well, twice in as many weeks, Miss Chetwynd!” exclaims the younger of the Miss Evanses in delight, a joyous smile spreading across her dry, unpainted lips. “Last week at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Great Spring Show, and now here! How very blessed we are to see you again.”

 

“How do you do, Miss Evans, Miss Evans,” Lettice acknowledges them both with a curt nod from her seat. She glances at the two old women, who must be in their seventies at least, both dressed in a similar style to when she saw them last week at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Great Spring Show, in floral gowns of pre-war Edwardian era length, their equally old fashioned whale bone S-bend corsets****** forcing their breasts into giant monobosoms down which sautoirs******* of glittering Edwardian style beads on gold chains cascade. Wearing toques with feather aigrettes jutting out of them atop their waved white hair they look like older versions of Queen Mary.

 

“I’m afraid you are a little early for the jumble sale, Miss Evans and Miss Evans,” Arabella remarks sweetly. “We are still setting up.”

 

“Oh, thank you! We know, Mrs. Chetwynd.” twitters the elder of the Miss Evanses, surprising Arabella a little as she still gets used to being referred to by her new married name. “I was just remarking to Henrietta this very morning over breakfast that we do so much look forward to the village fête every year.”

 

“Yes, it’s a nice way for us to be able to support the local community in our own small way, isn’t that right Geraldine?” enthuses her sister, raising her white lace glove clad hand to her wrinkled and dry mouth as she giggles in a rather unseemly girlish way.

 

“Indeed yes, Henrietta. It is to aid the school this year, is it not?”

 

“It is Miss Evans.” Arabella confirms. “To help buy new books for the children.”

 

“A very fine cause, I must say,” the younger of the Miss Evanses remarks indulgently. “Helping the young ones to read and develop their fertile minds. Rather like gardening, wouldn’t you say?”

 

“It is not even remotely like gardening!” quips her sister. “Stop talking such nonsense Henrietta.”

 

“We shall of course be glad of your patronage when the jumble sale opens in an hour.” Arabella quickly says in an effort to diffuse any unpleasantness between the two spinster sisters, at the same time emphasising the time the sale begins.

 

“Well,” adds the elder of the Miss Evanses seriously. “We shall of course come and spend a few shillings and pence when it opens officially, but…”

 

“Oh!” interrupts the younger of the Miss Evanses. “Is your frock designed by Master Bruton, Miss Chetwynd?” She addresses Gerald in the old fashioned deference of the village and county folk when addressing the children of the bigger aristocratic houses.

 

“Yes, Miss Evans. Mr. Bruton,” Lettice applies gravatas to the correct reference to Gerald’s name now that he is of age. “Did design my frock.”

 

“Oh it’s ever so smart!” the younger of the sisters enthuses.

 

“Thank you, Miss Evans.” Gerald acknowledges her.

 

“And your hat?” Miss Evans points to the yellow straw hat. “Didn’t I see you wearing that at Master Leslie’s wedding to Miss Arabella?”

 

“Mrs. Chetwynd, I think you mean, Henrietta.” corrects her sister with a sharpness to her remark.

 

“Oh yes!” bristles the younger Miss Evans at her sister’s harsh correction, raising her hand to her mouth again. “Yes of course! Mrs. Chetwynd, I do apologise.”

 

“It’s quite alright, Miss Evans.” Arabella assures her. “I am still getting used to being Mrs. Chetwynd myself.”

 

“How very observant of you, Miss Evans.” Lettice addresses the younger of the siblings. “I did indeed have my hat made for Leslie and Bella’s wedding. It was made by a friend of Mr. Bruton’s, Miss Harriet Milford.”

 

“Yes, well thinking of hats, I…” begins the elder Miss Evans.

 

“Oh it’s most becoming, Miss Chetwynd.” the younger Miss Evans interrupts her sister again as she compliments Lettice in an obsequious manner, followed by another twittering giggle.

 

“I can send someone down to Holland House this afternoon after the fête with her details if you like.” Lettice replies. “The next time you’re in London, you might pay her a call.”

 

The two sisters give one another a sour look at the idea, their lips thinning and their eyes lowering as they nod to one another in unison before turning back to Lettice and Gerald.

 

“Aside from the Great Spring Show, we don’t have much call to go up to London these days, do we Henrietta?”

 

“Indeed no, Geraldine.” agrees the younger Miss Evans between pursed lips, a tinge of regret in her statement.

 

“Besides we find the services of Mrs. Maginot’s in the high street to be quite adequate.”

 

“Good lord!” gasps Gerald, causing the two spinster sisters to blush at his strong language. “Is old Mrs. Maginot still going?” He chuckles. “Fancy that!”

 

The elder Miss Evans clears her dry and raspy throat awkwardly before continuing. “For our more bucolic, and doubtlessly simple tastes, Master Bruton, we find Mrs. Maginot to be quite satisfactory.” Both sisters raise their lace gloved hands to their toques in unison, patting the runched floral cotton lovingly. “We aren’t quite as fashionable as you smart and select London folk down here in sleepy little Glynes, Master Bruton, Miss Chetwynd, but we manage to keep up appearances.”

 

“On indeed yes, Miss Evans.” Lettice replies with an amused smile. “No-one could fault you on maintaining your standards.”

 

“I imagine you will soon be designing Miss Chetwnd’s own wedding frock, Master Bruton.” the younger of the Miss Evanses announces rather vulgarly.

 

“That’s only if I let her get married, Miss Evans,” Gerald teases her indulgently. “I might like to whisk her away and lock her in a tower so that I can keep her all to myself.”

 

“After what we all saw with our own eyes at the Hunt Ball, I’m sorry Master Bruton, but I don’t think you are in the running for Miss Chetwynd’s affections!” the younger Miss Evans twittering giggle escapes her throat yet again as her eyes sparkle with delight at the very faintest whiff of any gossip.

 

“How is Mr. Spencely, Miss Chetwynd?” the elder Miss Evans asks pointedly, her scrutinising gaze studying Lettice’s face.

 

Lettice blushes at the directness of both Miss Evans’ question and her steely gaze. “Oh, he’s quite well, as far as I know, Miss Evans.” she replies awkwardly.

 

“As far as you know?” the older woman’s outraged tone betrays her surprise as she looks quizzically into Lettice’s flushed face.

 

“Well, I haven’t seen Selw… err, Mr. Spencely just as of late.”

 

“Oh?” the elder Miss Evans queries. “I thought we saw you leave the tent we were in at the Great Spring Show, on the arm of Mr. Spencely.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure it was him, Miss Chetwynd.” adds the younger Miss Evans as she raises a lace clad finger in thought. “He’s very striking and hard to mistake for someone else.”

 

Silently Lettice curses the beady eyed observation the two spinster sisters are known for. Of course, they of all people at the bustling and crowded Chelsea flower show, noticed her inadvertent stumble into Selwyn and then her departure with him. Although perfectly innocent, and accompanied by her married friend Margot Channon, and Selwyn’s cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers, she can see how easily the Miss Evanses can construe the situation to their own advantage of spreading salacious London gossip about Lettice, as daughter of the local squire, around the citizenry of Glynes village.

 

“I believe you were here for a purpose, Miss Evans.” Gerald pipes up, quickly defending his best friend from any more uncomfortable cross examination.

 

“Oh,” the elder Miss Evans replies, the disappointment at the curtailing of her attempt to gather gossip clear in both her tone of voice and the fall of her thin and pale face. “Yes.” She turns to Arabella. “I have actually come early today to see you on business, Mrs. Chetwynd.”

 

“Me, Miss Evans?” Arabella raises her hand to the scalloped collar of her blouse and toys with the arrow and heart gold and diamond broach there – a wedding gift from her husband.

 

“Yes.” replies the elder of the two sisters. “You see, when I heard that you were running the second-hand stall this year, I did feel sorry for you.”

 

“Sorry for me, Miss Evans?”

 

“Yes,” she replies, screwing up her eyes. “For as you know, there is always a poor offering of donated goods by the other villagers, and it makes for a rather sad and depressing sight amidst all this gaiety.” She gesticulates over Arabella’s trestle with a lace glove clad hand, sending forth the whiff of lavender, cloves and camphor in the process.

 

“Unless you are donating one of your lovely frocks to the sale, Master Bruton?” the younger of the Miss Evanses adds with a hopeful lilt in her voice. “I should buy it, even if it didn’t fit me.”

 

Gerald splutters and chokes on the gulp of tea he has just taken as the question is posed of him. Coughing, he deposits his cup quickly and withdraws a large white handkerchief which he uses to cover his mouth and muffle his coughs.

 

“Oh, poor Master Bruton!” exclaims the younger of the Miss Evanses as she reaches out and gently, but pointlessly, taps Gerald on the shoulder in an effort to help him. “Did you tea go down the wrong way?”

 

“I arrest my case.” her elder sister snaps giving Gerald a steely, knowing look.

 

“Now be fair, Miss Evans,” Lettice defends her friend, filled with a sudden burst of anger towards the hypocritical old woman, who despite having plenty of money of her own, only spends a few shillings at the fundraiser every year. “Gerald is still establishing himself in London! He cannot afford to give one of his frocks away when he has to pour what little profit he currently makes back into supporting and promoting his atelier.”

 

“As you like, Miss Chetwynd.” Miss Evans replies dismissively. “It is a pity though that neither Master Bruton, nor yourself could cast something Mrs. Chetwynd’s way, to help make her stall more,” She pauses momentarily as she considers the correct word. “Appealing.”

 

Lettice feels the harshness of the old woman’s rebuke, but she says nothing as she feels a flush of shame rise up her neck and fill her face.

 

“Geraldine!” her younger sister scolds her. “That’s most uncharitable of you.”

 

“Charity, my dear Henrietta, begins at home.” She looks critically at the knotted half completed knitting, the yellow and age stained linen and the mismatched gloves. “And Mrs, Chetwynd, I see that try as you might, you cannot disguise the usually dispirited efforts of the village used clothing drive this year.”

 

“Oh, well I haven’t really finished setting up yet, Miss Evans.” Arabella defends herself. “There are still some things to unpack from the boxes behind me.” She indicates to several large wooden crates stacked up behind her against the wall under the watchful gaze of the King.

 

“Which are items that doubtlessly didn’t sell last year, or the year before that have been shuffled away, only to make their annual reappearance.”

 

“Perhaps you have something appealing,” Lettice emphasises her re-use of the elder Miss Evans’ word as she tries to regain some moral standing against the older woman. “To offer at this year’s second-hand clothing stall, Miss Evans.”

 

“As a matter of fact,” the elder Miss Evans replies with a self-satisfied smile and sigh. “That is exactly why I am here.”

 

With a groaning heave, she foists the wicker basket, the handle of which she has been grasping in her bony right hand, up onto the trestle table’s surface. She opens one of the floral painted flaps and withdraws a large caramel felt Edwardian style picture hat of voluminous pre-war proportions from within the basket’s interior. The brim of the hat is trimmed with coffee and gold braid, woven into an ornate pattern whilst the crown is smothered in a magnificent display of feathers in curlicues and the brim decorated with sprigs or ornate autumnal shaded foliage and fruit.

 

“As I said, charity begins at home, so I thought I would add some style and panache to your stall, Mrs. Chetwynd, with the addition of this beautiful hat.”

 

“Oh, thank you, Miss Evans.” Arabella says with a sweet, yet slightly forced smile as the older woman tears off a smaller blue stiffed lace hat from a wooden hatstand and replaces it with her enormous millinery confection.

 

“I know it is only a hat from Mrs. Maginot, and not a London milliner,” she looks pointedly at Lettice. “But I dare say it will be more than suitable for our modest little country jumble sale.”

 

“Oh I’m sure it will be,” Arabella lies politely as she looks in dismay at the old fashioned headwear.

 

“Geraldine!” gasps her sister in disbelief. “You love that hat! I remember you had Mrs. Maginot make it for the King’s Coronation celebrations at great expense!”

 

“That’s true, Henrietta, but it just sits in a box at home these days and never gets worn anymore. It seems a shame to hide it away when it could look fetching on another’s head in church on Sunday. No-one will have anything to rival it. Not even you, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“I agree with that,” whispers Lettice discreetly into Gerald’s ear, unnoticed by either of the spinster sisters. “I’d rather die than be caught in that ghastly thing. It looks every minute of it’s age.”

 

“Just a touch Miss Havisham, don’t you think?” Gerald whispers back, causing both he and Lettice to quietly snort and stifle their giggles.

 

“Well, that really is most kind of you, Miss Evans.” Arabella says loudly and brightly with a polite nod of acknowledgement, anxious to cover up the mischievous titters from her friend and sister-in-law.

 

“It’s my pleasure.” she replies with a beatific smile. “Well, we shan’t hold you up any longer from doing your setting up of the clothes, Mrs. Chetwynd. Come along Henrietta. Let’s go and make sure Mr. Beatty has my floral arrangement in a suitably advantageous place. I’m not having it shunted to the back like last year.”

 

“Oh, yes Geraldine.” her sister replies obsequiously.

 

Lettice, Gerald and Arabella watch as the two old ladies slowly retreat and heave a shared sigh of relief.

 

Gerald deposits his cup on the trestle’s surface and walks up to the grand Edwardian hat and snatches it off the wooden stand before placing it atop his own head with a sweeping gesture. “Do you think it suits me?” he laughs.

 

Lettice and Arabella laugh so much they cannot answer.

 

“Well,” Gerald sighs, returning the hat to the stand. “Even if Hattie could make hats a hundred times more fashionable than this, maybe some local lady who is a bit behind the times will want to take this beauty home.” He arranges it carefully on the rounded block so that it shows off the autumnal themed fruit garland pinned to the wide felt brim.

 

“That’s the spirit I need, Gerald.” Arabella manages to say as she recovers from laughing at her friend’s theatrical modelling of the hat, and quietly she hopes that someone will buy the hat and everything else she has in her remit to sell, to help raise money for schoolbooks for the local village and country children that attend the Glynes Village School.

 

*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.

 

**A shirtwaister is a woman's dress with a seam at the waist, its bodice incorporating a collar and button fastening in the style of a shirt which gained popularity with women entering the workforce to do clerical work in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

 

***Tatting is a technique for handcrafting a particularly durable lace from a series of knots and loops. Tatting can be used to make lace edging as well as doilies, collars, accessories such as earrings and necklaces, and other decorative pieces.

 

****A leg of mutton sleeve is a sleeve that has a lot of fullness around the shoulder-bicep area but is fitted around the forearm and wrist. Also known as a gigot sleeve, they were popular throughout different periods of history, but in particular the first few years of the Twentieth Century.

 

*****’Tight’ is an old fashioned upper-class euphemism for drunk.

 

******Created by a specific style of corset popular between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the outbreak of the Great War, the S-bend is characterized by a rounded, forward leaning torso with hips pushed back. This shape earned the silhouette its name; in profile, it looks similar to a tilted letter S.

 

*******A Sautoir is a long necklace consisting of a fine gold chain and typically set with jewels, a style typically fashionable in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

  

Whilst this charming village fête scene may appear real to you, it is in fact part of my 1:12 miniatures collection, including items from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Perhaps the main focus of our image, the elder Miss Evans’ camel coloured wide brimmed Edwardian picture hat is made of brown felt and is trimmed with miniature coffee coloured braid. The brim is decorated with hand curled feathers, dyed to match the shade of the hat, as well as a spray of golden “grapes” and dyed flowers. Acquired from an American miniatures collector who was divesting herself of some of her collection, I am unsure who the maker was, other than it was made by an American miniature artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable.

 

The shirtwaister dummy, complete with lace blouse, tweed skirt and Art Nouveau belt attached to a lacquered wooden base, is an artisan miniature as well, once again by an unknown person. It came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The divine little patriotic cupcakes, each with a Union Jack on the top, 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. Each cupcake is only five millimetres in diameter and eight millimetres in height! The plate on which they stand and the teacups on the table are made by the Dolls House Emporium and are part of a larger sets including plates, tureens and gravy boats.

 

Miss Evans’ wicker picnic basket that can be seen peeping out near the right-hand side of the picture was made by an unknown miniature artisan in America. The floral patterns on the top have been hand painted. The hinged lids lift, just like a real hamper, so things can be put inside. When I bought it, it arrived containing the little yellow napkins folded into triangles and the hand embroidered placemats that you see on the table in the foreground.

 

The knitting needles and tiny 1:12 miniature knitting, the red woven straw hat, the doilies, the stockings and the napkins in their round metal rings all came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The elbow length grey ttravelling gloves on the table are artisan pieces made of kid leather. I acquired these from a high street dolls house specialist when I was a teenager. Amazingly, they have never been lost in any of the moves that they have made over the years are still pristinely clean.

 

The wooden boxes in the background with their Edwardian advertising labels have been purposely aged and came from The Dolls’ House Supplier in the United Kingdom.

 

The Portrait of King George V in the gilt frame in the background was created by me using a portrait of him done just before the Great War of 1914 – 1918. I also created the Union Jack bunting that is draped across the wall in the background.

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 just a short distance from Cavendish Mews, at Mr. Willison’s grocers’ shop. Willison’s Grocers in Mayfair is where Lettice has an account, and it is from here that Edith, Lettice's maid, orders her groceries for the Cavendish Mews flat, except on special occasions like the soirée that Lettice threw for Dickie and Margot Channon’s engagement, when professional London caterers are used. Mr. Willison prides himself in having a genteel, upper-class clientele including the households of many titled aristocrats who have houses and flats in the neighbourhood, and he makes sure that his shop is always tidy, his shelves well stocked with anything the cook of a duke or duchess may want, and staff who are polite and mannerly to all his important customers. The latter is not too difficult, for aside from himself, Mrs. Willison does his books, his daughter Henrietta helps on Saturdays and sometimes after she has finished school, which means Mr. Willison technically only employs one member of staff: Frank Leadbetter his delivery boy who carries orders about Mayfair on the bicycle provided for him by Mr. Willison. He also collects payments for accounts which are not settled in his Binney Street shop whilst on his rounds.

 

Lettice’s maid, Edith, is stepping out with Frank, and to date since he rather awkwardly suggested the idea to her in the kitchen of the Cavendish Mews flat, the pair has spent every Sunday afternoon together, going to see the latest moving pictures at the Premier in East Ham*, dancing at the Hammersmith Palais or walking in one of London’s many parks. They even spent Easter Monday at the fair held on Hampstead Heath***. Whilst Lettice is away in Cornwall selecting furniture from Dickie and Margot’s Penzance country house, ‘Chi an Treth’, to be re-purposed, Edith is taking advantage of a little more free time and has come to Willison’s Grocers under the pre-text of running an errand in the hope of seeing Frank. The bell rings cheerily as she opens the plate glass door with Mr. Willison’s name painted in neat gilt lettering upon it. Stepping across the threshold she immediately smells the mixture of comforting smells of fresh fruits, vegetables and flour, permeated by the delicious scent of the brightly coloured boiled sweets coming from the large cork stoppered jars on the shop counter. The sounds of the busy street outside die away, muffled by shelves lined with any number of tinned goods and signs advertising everything from Lyon’s Tea**** to Bovril*****.

 

“Miss Watsford!” exclaims Mr. Willison’s wife as she peers up from her spot behind the end of the return counter near the door where she sits doing her husband’s accounts. “We don’t often have the pleasure.”

 

Edith looks up, unnerved, at the proprietor’s wife and bookkeeper, her upswept hairstyle as old fashioned as her high necked starched shirtwaister****** blouse down the front of which runs a long string of faceted bluish black beads. “Yes,” Edith smiles awkwardly. “I… I have, err… that is to say I forgot to give Fr… err, Mr. Leadbeater my grocery list when he visited the other day.”

 

“Oh?” Mrs. Willison queries. “I could have sworn that we had it.” She starts fussing through a pile of papers distractedly. “That isn’t like you Miss Watsford. You’re usually so well organised.”

 

“Well,” Edith thinks quickly. “It… it isn’t really the list. It’s just that I left a few things off. Miss Chetwynd… well, you see she fancies…”

 

“Oh, well give me the additions, Miss Watsford,” Mrs. Willison thrusts out her hand efficiently, the frothy white lace of her sleeve dancing around her wrist. “And I’ll see to it that they are added to your next delivery. We don’t want the Honourable Miss Chetwynd to go without, now do we?”

 

With a shaky hand Edith reluctantly hands over her list of a few extra provisions that aren’t really required, especially with her mistress being away for a few days. As she does, she glances around the cluttered and dim shop hopefully.

 

“Will there be anything else, Miss Watsford?” Mrs. Willison asks curtly.

 

“Err… yes.” Edith stammers, but falls silent as she continues to look in desperation around the shop.

 

Mrs. Willison suspiciously eyes the slender and pretty domestic through her pince-nez*******. She scrutinises Edith’s fashionable plum coloured frock with the pretty lace collar. The hem of the skirt is following the current style and sits higher than any of Mrs. Willison’s own dresses and it reveals Edith’s shapely stockinged calves. She wears her black straw cloche decorated with purple silk roses and black feathers over her neatly pinned chignon. “Is that a few frock, Miss Watsford?” the grocer’s wife continues.

 

“Ahh, yes it is, Mrs. Willison. I made it myself from scratch with a dress pattern from Fashion for All********,” Edith replies proudly, giving a little twirl that sends her calf length skirt flaring out prettily, and Mrs. Willison’s eyebrows arching with disapproval as the young girl reveals even more of her legs as she does. “Do you like it?”

 

“You seem a little dressed up to run an errand here, Miss Watsford.” Mrs. Willison says with bristling disapprobation.

 

“Well, I… I err… I do have some letters to post too, Mrs. Willison,” Edith withdraws two letters from her wicker basket and holds them up in her lilac glove clad hand.

 

“Well, we mustn’t keep you from your errand, now must we, Miss Watsford? Now what else did you require before you leave?” the older woman emphasises the last word in her sentence to make clear her opinion about young girls cluttering up her husband’s shop.

 

“An apple.” Edith says, suddenly struck with inspiration. “I’d like an apple for the journey, Mrs. Willison.”

 

“Very good, Miss Watsford.” the older woman starts to move off her stool. “I’ll fetch…”

 

“No need, Mrs. Willison!” Frank’s cheerful voice pipes up as he appears from behind a display of tinned goods. “I’ll take care of Miss Watsford. That’s what I’m here for. You just stay right there Mrs. Willison. Right this way, Miss Watsford.” He ushers her with a sweeping gesture towards the boxes of fresh fruit displayed near the cash register.

 

“Oh Fran…” Edith catches herself uttering Frank’s given name, quickly correcting herself. “Err… thank you, Mr. Leadbetter.”

 

Mrs. Willison lowers herself back into her seat, all the while eyeing the pair of young people critically as they move across the shop floor together, their heads boughed conspiratorially close, a sense of overfamiliarity about their body language. She frowns, the folds and furrows of her brow eventuated. Then she sighs and returns to the numbers in her ledger.

 

“What are you doing here, Edith?” Frank whispers to his sweetheart quietly, yet with evident delight in his voice.

 

“Miss Lettice is away down in Cornwall on business, so I thought I’d stop in on my way through in the hope of seeing you, Frank.” She glances momentarily over her shoulder. “Then Mrs. Willison greeted me. I thought I was going to get stuck with the disapproving old trout and not see you.”

 

“The weather looks good for Sunday, Edith. It’s supposed to be sunny. Shall we go to Regent’s Park and feed the ducks if it is?”

 

“Oh, yes!” Edith clasps her hands in delight, her gloves muffling the sound. “Maybe there will be a band playing in the rotunda.”

 

“If there is, I’ll hire us a couple of deck chairs and we can listen to them play all afternoon in the sunshine.”

 

“That sounds wonderful, Frank.”

 

“Well,” pronounces Frank loudly as the stand over the wooden tray of red and golden yellow apples. “This looks like a nice juicy one, Miss Watsford.”

 

“Yes,” Edith replies in equally clear tones. “I think I’ll have that one, Mr. Leadbeater.”

 

“Very good, Miss Watsford. I’ll pop it into a paper bag for you.”

 

“Oh, don’t bother Fr… Mr. Leadbeater. I’ll put it in my basket.”

 

Frank takes the apple and walks back around the counter to the gleaming brass cash register surrounded by jars of boiled sweets. “That will be tuppence please, Miss Watsford.” He enters the tally into the noisy register, causing the cash draw to spring open with a clunk and the rattle of coins rubbing against one another with the movement.

 

Edith hooks her umbrella over the edge of the counter, pulls off her gloves and fishes around in her green handbag before withdrawing her small leather coin purse from which she takes out tuppence which she hands over to Frank.

 

“Here,” Frank says after he deposits her money and pushes the drawer of the register closed. He slides a small purple and gold box discreetly across the counter.

 

Edith gasps as she looks at the beautifully decorated box featuring a lady with cascading auburn hair highlighted with gold ribbons, a creamy face and décollétage sporting a frothy white gown and gold necklace. She traces the embossed gold lettering on the box’s lid. “Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates!”

 

“Can’t have my girl come all this way to see me and not come away with a gift.” Frank whispers with a beaming smile dancing across his face.

 

“Seeing you is gift enough, Frank.” Edith blushes.

 

“Ahem!” Mrs. Willison clears her throat from the other end of the shop. “Will they be going on the Honourable Miss Chetwynd’s account, Frank?” she asks with a severe look directly at her husband’s employee.

 

“Um… no Mrs. Willison. Don’t worry. I’ll be paying for them.” Frank announces loudly. Bending his head closer to Edith, he whispers, “I can see why Mr. Willison has her in here when he isn’t. You can’t get away with anything without her knowing: ghastly old trout.”

 

Edith giggles as she puts the small box of chocolates and the apple into her basket. “I’ll save them for Sunday.” she says with a smile. “We can share them whilst we listen to the band from our deckchairs.”

 

Frank smile broadens even more. “Righty-ho, Edith.”

 

“Righty-ho, Frank.”

 

“Well, as I was saying, Miss Watsford,” Mrs. Willison pronounces from her stool. “We mustn’t keep you from your errands. I’m sure you have a lot to do, and it is almost midday already.”

 

“Yes indeed, Mrs. Willison.” Edith agrees, unable to keep the reluctance out of her voice. “I really should be getting along. Well, goodbye Mr. Leadbeater. Thank you for your assistance.” She then lowers her voice as she says, “See you Sunday.”

 

Both Frank and Mrs. Willison watch as the young lady leaves the shop the way she came, by the front door, a spring in her step and a satisfied smile on her face, her basket, umbrella and handbag slung over her arm.

 

“Frank!”

 

Frank cringes as Mrs. Willison calls his name. Turning around he sees her striding with purpose behind the counter towards him, wending her way through the obstacle course of stacks of tins and jars of produce, hessian sacks of fresh vegetables and fruits and boxes of bottles.

 

“Yes, Mrs Willison?”

 

“Frank,” she says disappointingly. “I can’t stop you from stepping out with a girl in your own time,” She comes to a halt before him, domineering over him with her topknot, her arms akimbo. “And I’d say the Honourable Miss Chetwynd is foolishly modern enough to let you take her maid out on Sundays.” She looks at him with disapproving eyes. “However, I’d be much obliged if you kept your dalliances to your own time, and kindly keep them out of my husband’s establishment during business hours!”

 

“Yes Mrs. Willison!” Frank replies, sighing gratefully, now knowing that he isn’t going to be given notice for chatting with Edith during work hours.

 

“And I’ll make an adjustment to your wages this week for the chocolates.” she adds crisply.

 

“Yes Mrs. Willison.” Frank nods before hurrying away back to the stock room.

 

*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.

 

**The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

***Hampstead Heath (locally known simply as the Heath) is a large, ancient London heath, covering 320 hectares (790 acres). This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London Clay. The heath is rambling and hilly, embracing ponds, recent and ancient woodlands, a lido, playgrounds, and a training track, and it adjoins the former stately home of Kenwood House and its estate. The south-east part of the heath is Parliament Hill, from which the view over London is protected by law.

 

****Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J. Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in Britain, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J. Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England.

 

*****Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite.

 

******A shirtwaister is a woman's dress with a seam at the waist, its bodice incorporating a collar and button fastening in the style of a shirt which gained popularity with women entering the workforce to do clerical work in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

  

*******Pince-nez is a style of glasses, popular in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, that are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, "to pinch", and nez, "nose".

 

********”Fashion for All” was one of the many women’s magazines that were published in the exuberant inter-war years which were aimed at young girls who were looking to better their chances of finding a husband through beauty and fashion. As most working-class girls could only imagine buying fashionable frocks from high street shops, there was a great appetite for dressmaking patterns so they could dress fashionably at a fraction of the cost, by making their own dresses using skills they learned at home.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful Edwardian shop is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Central to the conclusion of our story is the dainty box of Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates. This beautifully printed confectionary box comes from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Starting in the Edwardian era, confectioners began to design attractive looking boxes for their chocolate selections so that they could sell confectionary at a premium, as the boxes were often beautifully designed and well made so that they might be kept as a keepsake. A war erupted in Britain between the major confectioners to try and dominate what was already a competitive market. You might recognise the shade of purple of the box as being Cadbury purple, and if you did, you would be correct, although this range was not marketed as Cadbury’s, but rather Gainsborough’s, paying tribute to the market town of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where Rose Bothers manufactured and supplied machines that wrapped chocolates. The Rose Brothers are the people for whom Cadbury’s Roses chocolates are named.

 

Also on the shop counter is an apple which is very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay it is made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The brightly shining cash register, probably polished by Frank, was supplied by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The cylindrical jars, made of real spun glass with proper removable cork stoppers which contain “sweets” I acquired as a teenager from an auction as part of a larger lot of miniature items. Edith’s lilac coloured gloves are made of real kid leather and along with the envelopes are artisan pieces that I acquired from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Edith’s green leather handbag I acquired as part of a larger collection of 1:12 artistan miniature hats, bags and accessories I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The umbrella comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom. Edith’s basket I acquired as part of a larger lot of 1:12 miniatures from an E-Bay seller in America.

 

The packed shelves you can see in the background is in fact a Welsh dresser that I have had since I was a child, which I have repurposed for this shot. You can see the dresser more clearly in other images used in this series when Edith visits her parent’s home in Harlesden. The shelves themselves are full of 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail as regards the labels of different foods. Some are still household names today. So many of these packets and tins of various foods would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. They come from various different suppliers including Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom, Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom, Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Items on the shelves include: Tate and Lyall Golden Syrup, Lyall’s Golden Treacle, Peter Leech and Sons Golden Syrup, P.C. Flett and Company jams, Golden Shred and Silver Shred Marmalades, Chiver’s Jelly Crystals, Rowtree’s Table Jelly, Bird’s Custard Powder, Bird’s Blancmange Powder, Coleman’s Mustard, Queen’s Gravy Salts, Bisto Gravy Powder, Huntly and Palmers biscuits, Lyon’s Tea and Typhoo Tea.

 

In 1859 Henry Tate went into partnership with John Wright, a sugar refiner based at Manesty Lane, Liverpool. Their partnership ended in 1869 and John’s two sons, Alfred and Edwin joined the business forming Henry Tate and Sons. A new refinery in Love Lane, Liverpool was opened in 1872. In 1921 Henry Tate and Sons and Abram Lyle and Sons merged, between them refining around fifty percent of the UK’s sugar. A tactical merger, this new company would then become a coherent force on the sugar market in anticipation of competition from foreign sugar returning to its pre-war strength. Tate and Lyle are perhaps best known for producing Lyle’s Golden Syrup and Lyle’s Golden Treacle.

 

Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War.

 

P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.

 

Golden Shred orange marmalade and Silver Shred lime marmalade still exist today and are common household brands both in Britain and Australia. They are produced by Robertson’s. Robertson’s Golden Shred recipe perfected since 1874 is a clear and tangy orange marmalade, which according to their modern day jars is “perfect for Paddington’s marmalade sandwiches”. Robertson’s Silver Shred is a clear, tangy, lemon flavoured shredded marmalade. Robertson’s marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.

 

Chivers is an Irish brand of jams and preserves. For a large part of the Twentieth Century Chivers and Sons was Britain's leading preserves manufacturer. Originally market gardeners in Cambridgeshire in 1873 after an exceptional harvest, Stephen Chivers entrepreneurial sons convinced their father to let them make their first batch of jam in a barn off Milton Road, Impington. By 1875 the Victoria Works had been opened next to Histon railway station to improve the manufacture of jam and they produced stone jars containing two, four or six pounds of jam, with glass jars first used in 1885. In around 1885 they had 150 employees. Over the next decade they added marmalade to their offering which allowed them to employ year-round staff, rather than seasonal workers at harvest time. This was followed by their clear dessert jelly (1889), and then lemonade, mincemeat, custard powder, and Christmas puddings. By 1896 the family owned 500 acres of orchards. They began selling their products in cans in 1895, and the rapid growth in demand was overseen by Charles Lack, their chief engineer, who developed the most efficient canning machinery in Europe and by the end of the century Chivers had become one of the largest manufacturers of preserves in the world. He later added a variety of machines for sorting, can making, vacuum-caps and sterilisation that helped retain Chivers' advantage over its rivals well into the Twentieth Century. By the turn of the century the factory was entirely self-sufficient, growing all its own fruit, and supplying its own water and electricity. The factory made its own cans, but also contained a sawmill, blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, paint shop, builders and basket makers. On the 14th of March 1901 the company was registered as S. Chivers and Sons. By 1939 there were over 3,000 full-time employees, with offices in East Anglia as well as additional factories in Montrose, Newry and Huntingdon, and the company owned almost 8,000 acres of farms. The company's farms were each run independently, and grew cereal and raised pedigree livestock as well as the fruit for which they were known.

 

Founded by Henry Isaac Rowntree in Castlegate in York in 1862, Rowntree's developed strong associations with Quaker philanthropy. Throughout much of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, it was one of the big three confectionery manufacturers in the United Kingdom, alongside Cadbury and Fry, both also founded by Quakers. In 1981, Rowntree's received the Queen's Award for Enterprise for outstanding contribution to international trade. In 1988, when the company was acquired by Nestlé, it was the fourth-largest confectionery manufacturer in the world. The Rowntree brand continues to be used to market Nestlé's jelly sweet brands, such as Fruit Pastilles and Fruit Gums, and is still based in York.

 

Bird’s were best known for making custard and Bird’s Custard is still a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange. They also made Bird’s Golden Raising Powder – their brand of baking powder. Bird’s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird’s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.

 

Queen’s Gravy Salt is a British brand and this box is an Edwardian design. Gravy Salt is a simple product it is solid gravy browning and is used to add colour and flavour to soups stews and gravy - and has been used by generations of cooks and caterers.

 

The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.

 

Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published A Popular Treatise on Tea as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He set his own criteria for the new brand. The name had to be distinctive and unlike others, it had to be a name that would trip off the tongue and it had to be one that would be protected by registration. The name Typhoo comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”. Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside. The Moreton site is also the location of Burton's Foods and Manor Bakeries factories. Typhoo has been owned since July 2021 by British private-equity firm Zetland Capital. It was previously owned by Apeejay Surrendra Group of India.

 

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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.

 

Lettice is sitting at her Hepplewhite desk next to the fire in her drawing room. Across it she has open a book of modern interpretations of folk art, a title that she has only recently picked up from her father’s favourite bookshop, Mahew’s* in Charing Cross Road. She has recently accepted a commission to redecorate the St. John’s Wood dining room of friends of hers, Charles and Minnie Palmerston, after Minnie papered the room in fashionable, but totally unsuitable, wallpaper. Charles and Minnie want a modern look to go with their modern art, so Lettice is hoping to gain some inspiration about wall treatments from the book. The colours and patterns she sees are beautiful, but nothing catches her eye as she flips though the pages. Suddenly her thoughts are interrupted by a noisy jangling.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

The telephone in the drawing room starts ringing.

 

Edith, Lettice’s maid looks through from the adjoining dining room where she is dusting. “That infernal contraption!” she mutters to herself.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“Oh Edith, be a brick and get that, would you.” Lettice calls sweetly to her maid, spying her through the open double doors.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“I think it would be better if you answered it, Miss.” Edith says doubtfully.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“Nonsense, it might be someone I might not want to be at home to. You answer it.” She waves her hand dismissively at the telephone and turns back to her book, before she continues to flip through it in a desultory fashion.

 

Edith walks in and up to the black japanned occasional table upon which the silver and Bakelite telephone continues to trill loudly.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“I know you don’t like it, Edith, but any household you work in will have one now, so you may as well get used to it.” Lettice says in a matter-of-fact way. “Just pick it up and answer it, Edith. “

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“I should pull your chord out next time I’m Hoovering.” Edith mutters. “Let’s hear you ring then!”

 

Edith hates answering the telephone. It’s one of the few jobs in her position as Lettice’s maid that she wishes she didn’t have to do. Whenever she has to answer it, which is quite often considering how frequently her mistress is out and about, there is usually some uppity caller at the other end of the phone, whose toffee-nosed accent only seems to sharpen when they realise they are speaking to ‘the hired help’ as they abruptly demand Lettice’s whereabouts.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Smoothing her suddenly clammy hands down the apron covering her print morning dress she answers with a slight quiver to her voice, “Mayfair 432, the Honourable Miss Lettice Chetwynd’s residence.” Her whole body clenches and she closes her eyes as she waits for the barrage of anger from some duchess or other titled lady, affronted at having to address the maid. A distant male voice speaks down the line. “Oh Mr. Spencely, how do you do. Yes, this is Edith, Miss Chetwynd’s maid.”

 

“Selwyn!” Lettice squeaks excitedly. She waves anxiously to catch Edith’s attention. “Bring it over here!” she hisses, gesticulating enthusiastically to her maid to drag the phone across the drawing room.

 

“Oh, I’m not sure, Mr. Spencley,” Edith says with a cheeky smile playfully curling up the corners of her mouth. “I’ll just check and see whether she is in.”

 

Edith walks over to Lettice’s desk slowly, swaying her hips as she goes, dragging the white and black houndstooth flex behind her.

 

“Oh you!” Lettice mouths as she takes the receiver from her maid’s hand as Edith puts the base of the telephone on the desk next to Lettice’s silver roller.

 

With her amusement over, Edith retreats quickly through the green baize door, back to the kitchen, to give her mistress the privacy she deserves.

 

“Selwyn darling!” Lettice exclaims down the receiver. “What a lovely surprise! How are you?”

 

“I’m fit as a fiddle my Angel,” Selwyn’s voice calls down the phone over the constant pop of crackling. “How are you?”

 

“Never better.”

 

“I say, I do hope I haven’t caught you at an inopportune moment.”

 

“No, no,” she assures him. “Not at all! As a matter of fact you’re a lovely distraction. I’ve just taken on a new commission to decorate my friend Minnie’s dining room, and nothing is inspiring me. Perhaps you’ll help inspire me.”

 

“Well that’s good, my Angel.” he replies, his voice crackling with static.

 

“I say, where are you, Selwyn darling? You sound rather faint. You’re not at your club, are you? This line is quite dreadful.”

 

The line falls silent for a few moments as Lettice holds her breath.

 

“I’m at Clendon**,” he finally answers laconically.

 

“Clendon?” She pauses. “You haven’t forgotten that Priscilla and Georgie’s wedding is on Wednesday***, have you? Are you going to drive down from Buckinghamshire to London?” When there is no reply to her questions, just the constant crackle of the line, Lettice asks again, “Are you sure you’re alright, Selwyn darling.”

 

“Listen my Angel, I have to tell you something.”

 

Lettice swallows awkwardly as her joyful mood at talking to Selwyn suddenly dissipates and a roiling starts twisting her stomach.

 

“I’m so sorry, Lettice darling, but I can’t attend the wedding with you like we’d planned.”

 

“What?” Lettice asks as she feels the colour drain from her face. “Not come?”

 

“No. You see, I’m afraid that Zinnia has made some alternate arrangements that I didn’t know about. My Uncle Bertrand and Aunt Rosalind, the Fox-Chavers, are visiting Clendon for a week, and they’ve brought their daughter, my cousin Pamela. She is going to debut next year, and, well, I’ve been charged by Zinnia to help chaperone Pamela in the 1923 Season. I haven’t seen her since we were children together, rather like you and I. Zinna has organised this week for us to get to know one another again, so that I can do my duty and be a good chaperone. I’m so sorry.”

 

Lettice feels the stinging in the backs of her eyes, as tears threaten to spill from her lids.

 

“Couldn’t you… couldn’t you just….”

 

“Look it’s no good, my Angel.” Selwyn cuts her off. “Zinnia has packed the week with all sorts of outings and excursions, luncheons and the like. You know there is nothing I would rather do than spend a wonderful afternoon with you, but you must understand, this is my duty. What kind of Duke will I be if I don’t fulfil my duties?”

 

As the dam breaks and the tears spill from her eyes and silently cascade down her cheeks, Lettice longs to ask Selwyn about his duty to her, but good breeding and an upbringing of etiquette doesn’t allow her to speak her unvoiced question.

 

“Of course.” she manages to utter in a strangled voice. “You must… you must do your duty to your cousin. You’re such a… such a gentleman,” The word feels hollow as she speaks it from her suddenly dry mouth. “So gallant. That’s one of the many reasons why I like you… Selwyn darling.” She tries to take a deep breath, but can only manage shallow ones, feeling as though she is wearing one of her pre-war whalebone corsets. “No wonder… Zinnia wants you to chaperone her. Who else in London society cold she trust when it comes to… to gentlemen?”

 

There is silence broken only intermittently by the crackling in the lines for a short while before Selwyn speaks again.

 

“Look, I know you’re disappointed….”

 

“It’s quite alright, Selwyn darling.” she cuts him off, glad that he is not before her now, where her face will give away the lie in her words and tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll get Gerald to escort me.”

 

The fact is that Gerald is a friend of Priscilla’s as well, and been invited to the wedding himself.

 

“Good old Bruton.” Selwyn replies with a sigh of relief. “Always so reliable.”

 

“Yes, he’s a good companion, and he… he always enjoys a good meal and some champagne at… at someone else’s expense.”

 

The words sound hollow as she speaks them down the line, even though the tone is a falsely cheerful one. Once again there is momentary silence.

 

“I promise I’ll make it up to you, my angel.” Selwyn says. “I really would rather be with you than Pamela, whom I barely know.” He sounds genuinely sad, although in her state of sudden disappointment, Lettice half wonders if she is imagining it, or willing it to be so. “As soon as this wretched week of entertaining is over, I’ll be back in London and we’ll have dinner. Simpson’s maybe?”

 

“Yes… yes that would be lovely, Selwyn darling.” She struggles to swallow. “You, you just let me know. I’m not going down to Glynes any time soon, and what with this new commission, I’ll be quite tied up here in London for ages.”

 

“That’s the spirit, my Angel!”

 

There is a whining call in the background at Selwyn’s end.

 

“Oh! That’s Zinnia!” There is a sudden urgency in his voice, almost as if he is frightened of getting caught out doing something wrong. “Look, I snuck into father’s study to make this call, and I’ve been missed. I really must go! I’ll speak to you next week, my Angel. Pip-pip****!”

 

“Pip-pip, then…” Lettice begins, yet already she is saying goodbye to nothing but dead air.

 

Deflated, Lettice hangs up the receiver in the cradle of the telephone where it makes a clunking, muffled ding. It is only then that she finally allows herself to vice her cries as she allows them to spill forth from within her, like the tears that dampen her cheeks as they run in rivulets down ger face.

 

*A. H. Mayhew was once one of many bookshops located in London’s Charring Cross Road, an area still famous today for its bookshops, perhaps most famously written about by American authoress Helene Hanff who wrote ’84, Charing Cross Road’, which later became a play and then a 1987 film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Number 56. Charing Cross Road was the home of Mayhew’s second-hand and rare bookshop. Closed after the war, their premises is now the home of Any Amount of Books bookshop.

 

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

 

***Wednesdays were the most popular days for couples to get married in the 1920s. This is due to an old English wedding superstition very popular at the time. An auspicious rhyme from English folklore rules: “Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday best of all, Thursday for losses, Friday for crosses, Saturday for no luck at all”.

 

****Pip-pip, that particularly cheery of old-fashioned British farewells, is said to have been formed in imitation of the sound made by a car horn and first came into vogue in the early 1920s after the Great War.

 

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 cluttered desk is actually covered in 1:12 size artisan miniatures and the desk itself is too. All are from my collection of miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Lettice’s Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair are beautifully and artfully made by J.B.M. miniatures. Both the bureau and chair are made of black japanned wood which have been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the arms of the chair and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven.

 

The book of folk art open on Lettice’s desk is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. It is a German edition called “Moderner Volkunst Zierat” (“Modern Folk Art Ornament”) by P. Siegel, consisting of ornament designs from the 1920s printed by the pochoir stencilling technique. You can see images of the illustrations faithfully reproduced in 1:12 size by Ken Blythe here: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2012/11/moderner-volkskunst-zie.... Most of the books I own that Ken Blythe has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside one of the books he has made. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this volume, it contains twelve double sided pages of illustrations and it measures twenty-three millimetres in height thirty three millimetres in width and is only two millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame. The latter comes from Doreen Jenkins’ Small Wonders Miniatures in England, whilst the other two come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House, also in England. The photos themselves are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.

 

Also on the desk, are some 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottles, a roller, a blotter and a letter opener, all made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles are made from tiny faceted crystal beads and have sterling silver bottoms and lids. The ink blotter is sterling silver too and has a blotter made of real black felt, cut meticulously to size to fit snugly inside the frame.

 

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.

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 Lettice is entertaining a potential new client, Miss Wanetta Ward, an American actress come to London, in her Mayfair drawing room. Lettice’s maid, Edith, is starstruck. She coyly glances at her mistress’ guest as she sets out tea and her home made Victoria sponge on the black japanned coffee table between the two comfortable tub chairs the ladies are ensconced in. Miss Ward is tall and statuesque, with striking green eyes and auburn hair fashionably cut and styled in a bob. Dressed in an orchid silk chiffon gown, her lisle clad thighs are clearly visible. Toying with a long string of pearls between her painted fingernails, she is the embodiment of the ‘new woman’: fearless, nonchalant and bold.

 

“Thank you Edith,” Lettice says with a bemused smile, her long and elegant fingers partially hiding it. “That will be all.”

 

“Oh,” Edith replies, obviously crestfallen. “Yes Miss.”

 

Edith retreats, somewhat begrudgingly back through the adjoining dining room and though the green baize door, back into the service area of Lettice’s flat.

 

“I am sorry, Miss Ward,” Lettice apologises to her guest, draped languidly across the chair opposite her. “I’m afraid my maid might be a little in awe of you.”

 

“Oh please don’t apologise, darling!” the American replies, her joyous laughter bursting forth. “I’m used to it. Poor little thing. Does she like the flicks*?”

 

Lettice ponders the answer to her guest’s question for a moment as she pours tea into her cup. “I don’t rightly know, Miss Ward. I don’t know what my maid does on her days off.”

 

“Well, I must ask her on the way out.” The American replies, adding a generous slosh of milk and two teaspoons of sugar to her tea.

 

“I do wish you’d let Edith take your hat and cane, Miss Ward.” Lettice adds, picking up her own cup.

 

“Nonsense, darling! Can’t be without my good luck charm!” She lovingly pats the pink silk flower covered hat sitting on the chinoiserie stool next to her chair, and Lettice cannot help but notice how perfectly her guest’s nail varnish matches her hat and dress.

 

“Your good luck charm?” Lettice muses. “What on earth do you mean?”

 

“No doubt you’ll think me odd, most people do when I tell them,” She twists her pearls self consciously around her fingers. “But every time I wear this hat, I always have good luck.”

 

“I must ask your permission to borrow it then Miss Ward,” Lettice moves her hand to unsuccessfully conceal her amusement. “The next time I go to the Ascot races.”

 

“See!” the American replies, sinking back in her seat feeling vindicated. “I told you that you’d think me odd!”

 

“Not at all, Miss Ward.” Lettice soothes her guest. “When you are the daughter of an old and venerable British family like I am, a certain element of hereditary oddity is de rigueur.”

 

“De rigueur?”

 

“A must, Miss Ward.”

 

“Oh, then I shan’t feel so conscious of flaunting my superstition around London.”

 

“Especially when it is such a pretty accessory too, Miss Ward.”

 

“Why thank you darling.” She flaps her long and elegant hand, batting away Lettice’s compliment. “You are just the sweetest.”

 

“Now, I believe you’ve come about redecorating your flat in Pimlico, Miss Ward?”

 

“That’s right!” She claps her hands in unabashed glee. “Well, it isn’t quite mine yet. I take possession next Thursday. Oh!” She continues, throwing up her right hand dramatically, her wrist coming to rest upon her forehead. “The place looks like a mausoleum at present! All this heavy clutter: thick velvet curtains, occasional tables covered in knick-knacks, stuffed birds beneath glass. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you my dear?” She reaches down and picks up her plate of sponge and takes a slightly larger than polite slice from it with her fork. “I just had to come and see you!”

 

Lettice smiles with pleasure, taking a sip of tea from her cup before placing it on the telephone table at her left. “So, I’m the first interior designer that you’ve visited here in London, Miss Ward?”

 

“Well, not exactly. No,” The American sits back in her seat blushing. “I did go and see Syrie Maugham**.”

 

“Oh.” Lettice frowns, unable to hide her disappointment.

 

“Oh, but I didn’t like what she suggested, darling!” Miss Ward replies quickly, assuring her host, fearful of having made a social gaffe and jeopardising her chance of having Lettice agree to decorate her flat. “All those ghastly shades of white…” The American suddenly stops mid-sentence, noticing for the first time that Lettice’s walls are papered in white and that she is sitting on a white upholstered chair. “Anyway,” She clears her throat awkwardly and looks sheepishly at Lettice. “I don’t think she approved of me.”

 

“Whyever not, Miss Ward?” Lettice asks with a tinge of pleasure in her question, feeling suddenly a little less crushed.

 

“I don’t think she approves actresses, period. She talked about forgoing worldly pleasures and went on about white representing purity.” Miss Ward shivers at the recollection. “Besides,” she continues. “I did hear that you did some redecorating for the Duchess of Whitby.”

 

“Your contacts are correct,” Lettice replies. Suspecting Miss Ward to be something of a gossip she then continues, brandishing the knowledge Lord de Virre gave her just an hour before, “What they don’t know, and this is strictly between us, you understand Miss Ward,”

 

“Oh! My lips are sealed, darling.” The American puts her finger to her lips conspiratorially as she leans forward, her excitement at the thought of a secret shared palpable.

 

“Well, I shall also soon be decorating the principal rooms of the home belonging to the eldest son of the Marquis of Taunton.”

 

“Really?” Miss Ward enthuses overdramatically. “The Marquis of Taunton! Fancy that!”

 

Lettice smiles as she picks up her plate and eats a small, ladylike portion of Victoria sponge, satisfied in the knowledge that Miss Ward has no idea who she is talking about, but being a parvenu, will quickly spread the news to those who do.

 

“Your sources of information are well informed about me, Miss Ward, and yet, I know nothing of you. Please do tell me a little bit about yourself and why it is that you wish for me to be your interior designer.”

 

“Well, that’s really why I wanted to see you, even before I saw that pious Syrie Maugham. You’re young, and bold, like me!” She looks up and off into the distance, waving her hand dramatically. “A trailblazer! I also heard that you favour oriental elements in your interior designs. I’ve just spent the last six months in the International Settlement in Shanghai you see, and I just love all those oriental designs.”

 

“Shanghai?”

 

“Yes. My brother has a club there: the Diamond Lotus Club, and I’ve been headlining there. Shanghai is so much more exciting than dull old Chicago!” she enthuses. “The clothes cost less to have made,” She grasps the hem of her skirt and squeezes the chiffon. “And the far east is so exotic and colourful.”

 

“Then forgive me for asking, but if you love it so much, why have you come to London?”

 

“Well, I loved singing in the club, but I really have my heart set on being an actress.” She takes another large mouthful of cake.

 

“Well, the West End is full of theatres, Miss Ward.”

 

“Oh, not a stage actress darling!” Miss Ward dabs at the corners of her mouth for crumbs with her beautifully painted fingers. “No, a film actress. I have a screen test at Islington Studios*** on Monday.” She tilts her head and lowers her kohl framed lids in a slightly coquettish way as though already auditioning.

 

“Well, you certainly have a great presence, Miss Ward.” Lettice says diplomatically. “I’m sure you’ll do splendidly.”

 

“Thank you, darling. I can’t disagree with you. My mother always told me that everyone knew when I entered the room, even when I was a little girl in ringlets.”

 

“Yes, I’d believe that.” Lettice smiles.

 

“And what better place for a successful film actress to entertain, than in a beautiful orientally inspired drawing room decorated by you, darling! I want bold and colourful wallpapers and carpets, oriental vases, Chinese screens.” She looks hopefully at Lettice. “So, will you take me on?”

 

“Take you on, Miss Ward?”

 

“Yes, take me on, as a client?” Her face falls suddenly, her fork of cake midway between the plate and her mouth. “Oh, please don’t tell me that you don’t approve of actresses either!”

 

“Oh, I’m not Syrie Maugham, Miss Ward.” Lettice replies, smiling cheekily. “And besides, it will irritate my Mamma no end if I have a film actress as a client.”

 

“You mean,” she gasps, clasping her hands. “You’ll agree to decorate my new flat?”

 

“Well, I’ll still need to visit you new home, and we’ll need to discuss matters further.” Lettice elaborates. “However, in principle, yes.”

 

“Oh darling! I could positively kiss you!” She drops her plate with a loud clatter on the coffee table surface and leaps up from her seat.

 

“That really won’t be necessary, Miss Ward.” Lettice assures her, raising her hands gently in defence in the face of the American’s statuesque form across the crowded table. “Just make sure that you settle my accounts promptly.”

 

“American railroad dollars good enough for you?”

 

“Only if they can be converted into British currency.” Lettice beams. “And, when you are a famous actress, I expect you to tell everyone who designed your interiors.”

 

“Oh! I’ll tell all my friends to come and see you, you darling girl! You’ll have to beat them away from the door with a hickory stick.”

 

“Indeed, Miss Ward.” Lettice takes another sip from her teacup.

 

“See!” Miss Ward replies, taking her seat again and patting the top of her pink hat. “I told you this was my lucky charm! I wore a blue beret to see Syrie Maugham.”

 

“Then today must be both our lucky days, Miss Ward.”

 

“Oh no! Enough of this ‘Miss Ward’ business. If you are to design somewhere as intimate as my boudoir, you must call me, Wanetta.”

 

*”Flicks” is an old fashioned term for a cinema film, named so for the whirring sound of the old projectors and flickering picture cast upon the silver screen.

 

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

 

***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.

 

This 1920s upper-class domestic scene is different to what you may think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures including items from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

Lettice’s tea set sitting on the coffee table is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era. The Victoria sponge (named after Queen Victoria) is made by Polly’s Pantry Miniatures in America. The green tinged bowl behind the tea set is made of glass and has been made by hand by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

Wanetta’s lucky pink hat covered in silk flowers, which you can see poking out from behind the armchair on the right is made by Miss Amelia’s Miniatures in the Canary Islands. It is an artisan miniature made just like a real hat, right down to a tag in the inside of the crown to show where the back of the hat is! 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. Miss Amelia is an exception to the rule coming from Spain, but like her American counterparts, her millinery creations are superb. Like a real fashion house, all her hats have names. This pink raw silk flower covered hat is called “Lilith”. Wanetta’s walking stick, made of ebonized wood with a real metal knob was made by the Little Green Workshop in England.

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out. The vase of yellow tiger lilies and daisies on the Art Deco occasional table is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium. The vase of roses and lilies in the tall white vase on the table to the right of the photo was also made by hand, by Falcon Miniatures who are renowned for their realistic 1:12 size miniatures.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The black japanned wooden chair is a Chippendale design and has been upholstered with modern and stylish Art Deco fabric. The mirror backed back japanned china cabinet is Chippendale too. On its glass shelves sit pieces of miniature Limoges porcelain including jugs, teacups and saucers, many of which I have had since I was a child.

 

To the left of the Chippendale chair stands a blanc de chine Chinese porcelain vase, and next to it, a Chinese screen. The Chinese folding screen I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.

 

The painting in the gilt frame is made by Amber’s Miniatures in America. The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug. 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.

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.