big gut with sides spilling over armrest

with rectangular wave-guide running from dish mount on left to spacecraft on right and passing through central 2-axis gimbal (for rotating from launch storage to deployment and pointing).

 

The various parts have Serial Number 003 and 004, so I wonder if it's a flight spare (Viking 1 and 2 landed successfully on Mars in 1976, the first craft to do so).

 

From NASA Facts: Viking Mission to Mars: "The main orbiter communications system was a two-way, S-band, high-rate radio link providing Earth command, radio tracking and science and engineering data return. This link used either a steerable 1.5-meter (59-inch) dish high-gain antenna or an omni-direc- tional low-gain antenna, both of them on the orbiter. The low-gain antenna was used to send and receive near Earth, and the high-gain antenna was used as the orbiter journeyed farther from Earth.

 

S-band transmission rates varied from 8.3 or 33.3 bits per second for engineering data to 2,000 to 16,000 bits per second for lander and orbiter science data.

Relay from the lander was achieved through an antenna mounted on the outer edge of a solar panel. It was activated before separation and received from the lander through separation, entry, landing and surface operations. The bit rate during entry and landing was 4,000 bits per second; landed rate was 16,000 bits per second.

 

Data were stored aboard the orbiter on two eight- track digital tape recorders. Seven tracks were used for picture data and the eighth track for infrared data or relayed lander data. Each recorder could store 640 million bits.

 

Data collected by the orbiter, including lander data, were converted into digital form by the flight data subsystem and routed to the communications subsystem for transmission or to the tape recorders for storage."

 

Part of the Future Ventures’ 🚀 Space Collection.

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. Instead, 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, and through the 1880s housing development of Upton Park, to East Ham. It is here that we have followed Edith and her beau, grocery delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, to the Premier Super Cinema**, where the pair are treating themselves to one of their favourite Sunday pleasures: a feature film with a newsreel and cartoon before the main event.

 

Even though spring is finally in the air, it is cold out on the streets of London today, with a biting cold wind, so the warmth of the cinema’s foyer is a welcome respite from the weather outside after the journey up the High Street from the East Ham railway station. The foyer is brightly lit and cheerful. The cinema, renovated in 1922, isn’t called a picture palace for nothing, and no expense was spared with thick red wall-to-wall carpets covering the floors and brightly coloured up-to-date Art Deco wallpaper covering the walls, upon which the latest films are advertised in glamourous and colourful posters. Throughout the space, button backed*** armchairs and settees are arranged in intimate clutches around small tables, allowing patrons like Edith and Frank to await the commencement of their session in comfort. It is at one of these clusters that Edith sits patiently in her black three-quarter length coat and black dyed straw cloche decorated with lilac satin roses and black feathers, with her green leather handbag at her feet as she awaits her beau.

 

“Here we are then,” Frank says cheerfully. “Tea for my best girl.” He places two utilitarian white cups in saucers from the nearby cinema kiosk on the table that he and Edith are occupying in front of a vase of fresh, fragrant flowers. He takes his seat opposite her, enjoying the luxury of his plush seat as he does. “And,” He fishes into his coat pocket withdrawing a purple box and presents it to his sweetheart with a flourish. “A box of Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates****!”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith exclaims in delight, her cheeks flushing red as she speaks. “You are good to me.”

 

“Nothing too good for my best girl!” Frank assures her.

 

Edith smiles 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 with reverence.

 

“You’re being very solicitous today, Frank.” Edith remarks as she picks up her teacup, staring at Frank as she takes a sip of hot, milky tea from her cup.

 

“Am I?” Frank replies in a question, his voice full of nonchalance as he picks up his own cup.

 

“You are, Frank.” Edith opines. “You know you are.”

 

“How so, Edith?”

 

“Well for a start, you agreed to come and see ‘Peter Pan’*****.” Edith replies, placing her cup back into her saucer.

 

“I like ‘Peter Pan’, Edith!” Frank retorts. “I have read the book, I’ll have you know.”

 

“Yes, but when you may have one of your last chances to see the ‘Thief of Bagdad’****** with swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, and you demur to my choice...” Edith does not complete her sentence, but stares across at her sweetheart.

 

“Oh fie the ‘Thief of Bagdad’!” Frank scoffs. “It will still be running here for a week or two yet. We can see it next Sunday.” He waves Edith’s repark away with a dismissive hand. “Anyway, I chose the last film we saw, ‘Chu-Chin-Chow’*******, and that had enough swashbuckling with villain Abou Hassan being stabbed by Zharat and his forty thieves done away with.”

 

Edith looks sceptically at Frank. “And this box of chocolates on top of our slap-up tea at Lyon’s Corner House******** in Tottenham Court Road?”

 

“What?” Frank retorts with incredulity. “Can’t a chap spoil his girl once in a while?”

 

“Oh, please don’t misunderstand me, Frank!” Edith quickly pipes up with a smile. “I’m not complaining!”

 

“I should hope you wouldn’t be.”

 

“But I can’t help being a little bit suspicious.” Edith arches her eyebrow over her right eye and purses her pretty pale lips.

 

“Well I like that!” Frank answers back, folding his arms akimbo across his chest in defence.

 

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I went to see a clairvoyant the week before last, would it, Frank?” Edith fishes. “And that I didn’t see you last Sunday, because you had to take care of your granny?”

 

“Clairvoyant? What clairvoyant, Edith?” Frank asks, pleading innocence.

 

“Oh come on Frank!” Edith laughs. “You know Mrs. Boothby loves a gossip!” she goes on, mentioning Lettice’s charwoman********* who comes to help Edith with all the hard graft around Cavendish Mews a few days a week. “You can’t imagine us not talking, Frank.”

 

Ignoring her gentle chuckle, Frank continues to decry his irreproachability. “I don’t know what you and Mrs. Boothby talked about.”

 

“She told me that she saw you Tuesday week ago, the same day I went to see Madame Fortuna the clairvoyant in Swiss Cottage**********, and she told you that I was going to see her. There’s no use trying to say she didn’t, because I know that for all her tall tales and gilding of the lily***********, Mrs. Boothby wouldn’t do that with a story about you.”

 

Frank unfolds his arms and picks up his teacup, taking a sip of tea. “Alright, so I did meet her that day, Edith, and yes, she told me that you were going to see a clairvoyant, although her description of her was perhaps a little bit less kind than that.”

 

“Oh yes.” Edith chuckles. “She told me that it was a lot of mumbo-jumbo too, Frank.”

 

“Well, I don’t know if I’d disagree with her, Edith.” Frank says in concern, cocking an eyebrow. “You know I am a believer in facts, not fiction.”

 

“Well, I happen to be a believer in Madame Fortuna, and what she had to say.” Edith replies defiantly. “Which I don’t believe to be fiction.”

 

“And what else did Mrs. Boothby disclose about our meeting in Binney Street, Edith?” Frank asks.

 

“Oh, not so very much, Frank.” Edith replies with a smirk. “Just that you were out delivering groceries when she saw you.”

 

“And?” Frank queries.

 

Edith sighs. “And that she told you how distracted I’ve been about not having a commitment from you about getting married.”

 

“Which is utter pish-posh************, Edith, and well you know it.” Frank says seriously. “You know I’m committed to marrying you. You’re the only girl for me.”

 

“I know that, Frank. But Mrs. Boothby also said that you should be a bit more demonstrative with your dedication.”

 

“I doubt Mrs. Boothby would have used either the word ‘demonstrative’ or ‘dedication’.” Frank laughs.

 

“Maybe not, Frank.” Edith concurs, chuckling as well. “But she made the point clear, as I’m sure she did with you, Frank.”

 

“Indeed, she did.”

 

“So, this is you being more demonstrative of your dedication to me.” Edith says with a smile, toying with the box of chocolates, turning the pretty packaging over in her careworn hands.

 

Frank thinks for a moment ruminating over in his mind as to whether to tell his sweetheart about Mrs. Boothby’s suggestion that he get on with asking Edith’s parents for their daughter’s hand in marriage, which he did do last Sunday on his afternoon off: a visit which resulted in both George and Ada Watsford readily agreeing to the match. Then he thinks otherwise. Frank may not yet be able to afford a gold wedding band like those which he and Edith saw in the window of Schwar and Company************* along Walworth Road in the South London suburb of Elephant and Castle************** a bit over a month ago, but he has almost finished paying off a silver ring intended for Edith at a smart jewellers shop along Lavender Hill***************, not far from his boarding house in Clapham Junction. Although simple, Frank is having his and Edith’s names engraved on the inside of the band, along with the year 1925. He still wants to surprise Edith with his proposal and the ring, so he decides not to say anything about visiting her parents, knowing that after his conversation with them, that they will not steal Frank’s thunder and give the game away, although it will be far harder for Ada, who is very close to her daughter.

 

Frank raises his hands. “Guilty as charged, Edith.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith exclaims, a smile of delight breaking out across her lips. “You really are sweet!”

 

Edith reaches out her hand to him across the polished wooden surface of the pedestal table. Frank stretches out his own hand and allows her to enmesh her fingers with his and squeeze them. The action is only small, but so intimate and full of emotion that Frank takes great comfort from it. Even though Edith does not know his grand plans yet, he knows that everything is alright between the two of them now, and any doubts Edith may have had about his commitment to her have been dispelled by his actions, Mrs. Boothby’s consoling words with Edith at cavendish Mews, whatever prediction Madame Fortuna the clairvoyant made, or most likely a mixture of all of these things. Frank smiles reassuringly across at his sweetheart, who returns his smile wholeheartedly.

 

“I keep telling you, Edith.” Frank murmurs as his cheeks colour. “You’re not only my best girl, you’re my only girl.” He returns her gentle squeeze with one of his own.

 

“Well, just you keep telling me that, Frank.” Edith replies softly, looking across at Frank with loving eyes a-glitter with emotion. “I may know it, but I’ll never tire of hearing it.”

 

“With pleasure, Edith, my best and only girl.” Frank answers.

 

Just then, the double doors near to them open and with the voluble burble of cheerful chatter, people begin to file out the door in pairs or small groups. Edith and Frank watch the passing parade of mostly women and a smattering of men in their Sunday best as they exit the cinema auditorium, all murmuring about the film they have just seen. As the crowd thins to a trickle with the stragglers leaving the theatre and the vociferous burble of voices dissipates, Frank turns to Edith.

 

“By the by, what did the clairvoyant, madame whatshername tell you, anyway?”

 

“Never you mind, Frank Leadbetter!” Edith replies with an air of mystery as she stands up, snatching up the box of chocolates as she does. “She told me the truth. That’s all you have to worry about.”

 

Frank gets up and follows Edith as they join the crowd of chattering cinema goers as they go into the brightly lit auditorium, and make their way to their plush red velvet seats.

 

Inside the theatre a fug of cigarette smoke fills the auditorium, a mixture of that created by the previous audience and a few new patrons who just start to light up before the house lights go down. The space is filled with the faint traces of various perfumes, which mix with the stronger traces of cigarettes, fried food, and body odour. Around them quiet chatter and the occasional burst of a cough or a laugh resound. It feels cosy and safe. At the front of the theatre, in a pit below the screen, a middle aged woman whom they have come to recognise by sight from their many trips to the Premier Super Cinema, appears dressed in an old fashioned Edwardian gown with an equally outmoded upswept hairdo that went out of fashion before the war. She starts to play the upright piano with enthusiasm, dramatically banging out palm court music for the audience before the beginning of the newsreel.

 

Settling in their plush red velvet seats in the middle of the auditorium, Frank winds his arm around Edith’s shoulder. “I love you, my best girl.”

 

Behind them the projector whirrs to life as the lights dim. Suddenly the screen is illuminated in blinding, brilliant white as the pianist in the pit below the screen starts to play the playful opening bars to the music to accompany Peter Pan.

 

“I love you too, Frank Leadbetter.” Edith replies as she opens her box of Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates and proffers the open end to Frank so that he may help himself to one of the delicious, foil wrapped chocolates inside.

 

*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.

 

**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.

 

***Button back upholstered furniture contains buttons embedded in the back of the sofa or chair, which are pulled tightly against the leather creating a shallow dimple effect. This is sometimes known as button tufting.

 

****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.

 

*****Peter Pan is a 1924 American silent fantasy adventure film released by Paramount Pictures, the first film adaptation of the 1904 play by J. M. Barrie. It was directed by Herbert Brenon and starred Betty Bronson as Peter Pan, Ernest Torrence as Captain Hook, Mary Brian as Wendy, Virginia Browne Faire as Tinker Bell, Esther Ralston as Mrs. Darling, and Anna May Wong as the Indian princess Tiger Lily. The film was seen by Walt Disney and inspired him to create his company's 1953 animated adaptation. The film was celebrated at the time for its innovative use of special effects (mainly to show Tinker Bell) according to Disney's 45th anniversary video of their adaptation of Peter Pan. In 2000, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

 

******The Thief of Bagdad is a 1924 American silent adventure film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Douglas Fairbanks, and written by Achmed Abdullah and Lotta Woods. Freely adapted from One Thousand and One Nights, it tells the story of a thief who falls in love with the daughter of the Caliph of Baghdad. In 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"

 

*******Chu-Chin-Chow is a 1923 British-German silent adventure film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Betty Blythe, Herbert Langley, and Randle Ayrton. Abou Hassan and his forty thieves descend on a small Arabian town on the wedding day of Omar and the beautiful Zharat and kidnap them. Abou sells Zahrat to Kasim Baba, the miser and money lender of Bagdad, while posing as Prince Constantine. Later, Abou poses as the wealthy Chinese prince Chu-Chin-Chow, and bids on Zahrat when she is placed at auction. She pierces his disguise and exposes him. He robs the other bidders of their wealth and escapes with Zahrat. Promising that she will live among untold wealth, he sets her free. After she finds Omar, Abou takes them to his treasure cave, making good on his promise. Ali Baba, brother of Kasim, accidentally discovers the cave and helps himself to the treasure. He then goes for aid to free Zahrat. Kasim, led by his greed, also comes to the cave but is captured and killed by Abou. Zahrat, now free, returns to Bagdad. Ali Baba gives a great feast. Abou appears as a merchant with forty jugs of oil, in which are hidden his forty thieves. Zahrat discovers the deception and, assisted by a powerful slave, they get rid of the hidden thieves. Left alone, Abou is denounced and the multitude turn on him. Cornered, he is stabbed by Zahrat who then returns to her village and finds happiness with Omar.

 

********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.

 

*********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.

 

**********Swiss Cottage is an area in the London Borough of Camden. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and includes Swiss Cottage tube station. Swiss Cottage lies north-northwest of Charing Cross. The area was named after a public house in the centre of it, known as "Ye Olde Swiss Cottage".

 

***********The term “gilding the lily” came about as a mistaken version of a line from King John, which was “to gild refined gold, to paint the lily.”, and means to adorn unnecessarily something that is already beautiful or perfect.

 

************Pish-posh is a phrase used in British slang to express disagreement or to say that something is nonsense. The exact origin of this phrase is not precisely documented, but it is considered a colloquial and informal expression that has been in use for many years. It is often used to express scepticism or disagreement in a light hearted manner.

 

*************Established in 1838 by Andreas Schwar who was a clock and watch maker from Baden in Germany, Schwar and Company on Walworth Road in Elephant and Castle was a watchmaker and jewellers that is still a stalwart of the area today. The shop still retains its original Victorian shopfront with its rounded plate glass windows.

 

**************The London suburb of Elephant and Castle, south of the Thames, past Lambeth was known as "the Piccadilly Circus of South London" because it was such a busy shopping precinct. When you went shopping there, it was commonly referred to by Londoners, but South Londoners in particular, as “going up the Elephant”.

 

***************Lavender Hill is a bustling high street serving residents of Clapham Junction, Battersea and beyond. Until the mid Nineteenth Century, Battersea was predominantly a rural area with lavender and asparagus crops cultivated in local market gardens. Hence, it’s widely thought that Lavender Hill was named after Lavender Hall, built in the late Eighteenth Century, where lavender grew on the north side of the hill.

 

This beautiful Art Deco cinema interior is not all it appears to be, for it is made up entirely with pieces from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Edith’s green leather handbag I acquired as part of a larger collection of 1:12 artisan 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.

 

The pedestal table , vase of flowers, white teacups and saucers and two flounced red velvet chairs all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House in the United Kingdom, whilst the dainty box of Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates, which has been beautifully printed, on the table’s surface, comes from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The chrome Art Deco smoker’s stand in the foreground is a Shackman miniature from the 1970s and is quite rare. I bought it from a dealer in America via E-Bay. The black ashtray inside it is an artisan piece, the bowl of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there). The match box in the stand was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

The Art Deco pedestal stand in the foreground has been made by the high end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq, whilst the vase of flowers on it comes from Falcon Miniatures in the United States, who are well known for their realistic and high quality miniatures.

 

The posters around the cinema walls were all sourced by me and reproduced in high quality colour and print.

 

The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, who did so in the hope that I would find a use for it in the “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

 

The thick and bright red carpet is in fact a placemat which I appropriated in the late 1970s to use as a carpet for my growing miniatures collection. Luckily, I was never asked to return it, and the rest of the set is long gone!

Prior to October, 2017, the only experiences I had in the state of Michigan were a few retreats in Adrian, some trips to the airport in Detroit and occasional railfanning around Monroe, not far from Toledo.

 

Last fall, I journeyed the furthest north I've been into the state when I chased Pere Marquette 1225 on an excursion from Alma to Owosso. After spending some time in Owosso, I ventured over to Durand to check out the Canadian National main line, meeting up with some local railfans who were more than willing to show me around the area.

 

Later in the day, we learned of an eastbound train approaching Durand, which would turn south onto the Holly Sub, headed for Pontiac. We relocated to the small community of Gaines, south of Durand, where a set of old signals still stood. Led by a pair of SD70M-2s, train Q116 passes the old searchlight signal in Gaines on a blustery cold fall evening. These signals were removed a few months later, replaced with PTC equipped ones.

Some people might consider “Heaven” to be unlimited Double-stuffed Oreo’s and milk without gaining an ounce. For me, it is perpetual autumn in Allegany State Park.

 

Allegany State Park, NY. October 9, 2015.

 

Sycamore Seeds

2019 Gospel Song Video With Lyrics "What the Young Must Pursue" | Christian Music Video | www.holyspiritspeaks.org/videos/what-the-young-must-pursue/

I

Prejudiced eyes and deceit are not what the youth should have.

Awful and destructive ways are not how the youth should act.

They should have aspirations, ardently strive to advance,

not lose heart over their prospects,

keep faith in life, the future.

Youth should have resolve in discernment, seeking justice and the truth.

Pursue all things beautiful,

gain reality of positive things.

Be responsible towards life.

You must not take this lightly. You must not take this lightly.

II

Youth should persist in the path of truth,

thus expend their lives for God.

They should not lack the truth,

nor harbor falseness, unrighteousness.

They should take the proper stance.

They shouldn’t just drift along.

They should dare to sacrifice, fight for justice and the truth.

Youth should have resolve in discernment, seeking justice and the truth.

Pursue all things beautiful,

gain reality of positive things.

Be responsible towards life.

You must not take this lightly. You must not take this lightly.

III

Young people should not give in to oppression of dark force.

They must have the courage to change the meaning of their lives.

Young people shouldn’t resign themselves to adversity,

they should be open and frank, forgive fellow believers.

Youth should have resolve in discernment, seeking justice and the truth.

Pursue all things beautiful,

gain reality of positive things.

Be responsible towards life.

You must not take this lightly. You must not take this lightly.

from Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs

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Image Source: The Church of Almighty God

   

Day hiking with the Ricoh GR III.

Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, that is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture and AT&T Plaza are located on top of Park Grill, between the Chase Promenade and McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink. Constructed between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture is nicknamed "The Bean" because of its shape, a name Kapoor initially disliked, but later grew fond of. Kapoor himself even uses this title when referring to his work. Made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It measures 33 by 66 by 42 feet (10 by 20 by 13 m), and weighs 110 short tons (100 t; 98 long tons).

 

Kapoor's design was inspired by liquid mercury and the sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate's 12-foot (3.7 m) high arch. On the underside is the "omphalos" (Greek for "navel"), a concave chamber that warps and multiplies reflections. The sculpture builds upon many of Kapoor's artistic themes, and it is popular with tourists as a photo-taking opportunity for its unique reflective properties.

 

The sculpture was the result of a design competition. After Kapoor's design was chosen, numerous technological concerns regarding the design's construction and assembly arose, in addition to concerns regarding the sculpture's upkeep and maintenance. Various experts were consulted, some of whom believed the design could not be implemented. Eventually, a feasible method was found, but the sculpture's construction fell behind schedule. It was unveiled in an incomplete form during the Millennium Park grand opening celebration in 2004, before being concealed again while it was completed. Cloud Gate was formally dedicated on May 15, 2006, and has since gained considerable popularity, both domestically and internationally.

 

Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor, CBE, RA (born 12 March 1954) is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art. Born in Mumbai, Kapoor attended the elite all-boys Indian boarding school The Doon School, before moving to the UK to begin his art training at Hornsey College of Art and, later, Chelsea School of Art and Design.

 

His notable public sculptures include Cloud Gate (2006, also known as "The Bean") in Chicago's Millennium Park; Sky Mirror, exhibited at the Rockefeller Center in New York City in 2006 and Kensington Gardens in London in 2010; Temenos, at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough; Leviathan, at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011; and ArcelorMittal Orbit, commissioned as a permanent artwork for London's Olympic Park and completed in 2012. In 2017, Kapoor designed the statuette for the 2018 Brit Awards.

 

An image of Kapoor features in the British cultural icons section of the newly designed British passport in 2015. In 2016, he was announced as a recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace.

 

Kapoor has received several distinctions and prizes, such as the Premio Duemila Prize at the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, the Turner Prize in 1991, the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2012, a knighthood in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to visual arts, an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Oxford in 2014. and the 2017 Genesis Prize for "being one of the most influential and innovative artists of his generation and for his many years of advocacy for refugees and displaced people".

 

Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The park, opened in 2004 and intended to celebrate the third millennium, is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a 24.5-acre (9.9 ha) section of northwestern Grant Park. Featuring a variety of public art, outdoor spaces and venues, the park is bounded by Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive. In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and in the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million annual visitors.

 

Planning of the park, situated in an area occupied by parkland, the Illinois Central rail yards, and parking lots, began in October 1997. Construction began in October 1998, and Millennium Park was opened in a ceremony on July 16, 2004, four years behind schedule. The three-day opening celebrations were attended by some 300,000 people and included an inaugural concert by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus. The park has received awards for its accessibility and green design. Millennium Park has free admission, and features the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the Lurie Garden, and various other attractions. The park is connected by the BP Pedestrian Bridge and the Nichols Bridgeway to other parts of Grant Park. Because the park sits atop parking garages, the commuter rail Millennium Station and rail lines, it is considered the world's largest rooftop garden. In 2015, the park became the location of the city's annual Christmas tree lighting.

 

Some observers consider Millennium Park the city's most important project since the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It far exceeded its originally proposed budget of $150 million. The final cost of $475 million was borne by Chicago taxpayers and private donors. The city paid $270 million; private donors paid the rest, and assumed roughly half of the financial responsibility for the cost overruns. The construction delays and cost overruns were attributed to poor planning, many design changes, and cronyism. Many critics have praised the completed park.

 

From 1852 until 1997, the Illinois Central Railroad owned a right of way between downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan, in the area that became Grant Park and used it for railroad tracks. In 1871, Union Base-Ball Grounds was built on part of the site that became Millennium Park; the Chicago White Stockings played home games there until the grounds were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. Lake Front Park, the White Stockings' new ball grounds, was built in 1878 with a short right field due to the railroad tracks. The grounds were improved and the seating capacity was doubled in 1883, but the team had to move after the season ended the next year, as the federal government had given the city the land "with the stipulation that no commercial venture could use it". Daniel Burnham planned Grant Park around the Illinois Central Railroad property in his 1909 Plan of Chicago. Between 1917 and 1953, a prominent semicircle of paired Greek Doric-style columns (called a peristyle) was placed in this area of Grant Park (partially recreated in the new Millennium Park). In 1997, when the city gained airspace rights over the tracks, it decided to build a parking facility over them in the northwestern corner of Grant Park. Eventually, the city realized that a grand civic amenity might lure private dollars in a way that a municipal improvement such as ordinary parking structure would not, and thus began the effort to create Millennium Park. The park was originally planned under the name Lakefront Millennium Park.

 

The park was conceived as a 16-acre (6.5 ha) landscape-covered bridge over an underground parking structure to be built on top of the Metra/Illinois Central Railroad tracks in Grant Park. The parks overall design was by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and gradually additional architects and artists such as Frank Gehry and Thomas Beeby were incorporated into the plan. Sponsors were sought by invitation only.

 

In February 1999, the city announced it was negotiating with Frank Gehry to design a proscenium arch and orchestra enclosure for a bandshell, as well as a pedestrian bridge crossing Columbus Drive, and that it was seeking donors to cover his work. At the time, the Chicago Tribune dubbed Gehry "the hottest architect in the universe"[19] in reference to the acclaim for his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and they noted the designs would not include Mayor Richard M. Daley's trademarks, such as wrought iron and seasonal flower boxes. Millennium Park project manager Edward Uhlir said "Frank is just the cutting edge of the next century of architecture," and noted that no other architect was being sought. Gehry was approached several times by Skidmore architect Adrian Smith on behalf of the city. His hesitance and refusal to accept the commission was overcome by Cindy Pritzker, the philanthropist, who had developed a relationship with the architect when he won the Pritzker Prize in 1989. According to John H. Bryan, who led fund-raising for the park, Pritzker enticed Gehry in face-to-face discussions, using a $15 million funding commitment toward the bandshell's creation. Having Gehry get involved helped the city realize its vision of having modern themes in the park; upon rumors of his involvement the Chicago Sun-Times proclaimed "Perhaps the future has arrived", while the Chicago Tribune noted that "The most celebrated architect in the world may soon have a chance to bring Chicago into the 21st Century".

 

Plans for the park were officially announced in March 1998 and construction began in September of that year. Initial construction was under the auspices of the Chicago Department of Transportation, because the project bridges the railroad tracks. However, as the project grew and expanded, its broad variety of features and amenities outside the scope of the field of transportation placed it under the jurisdiction of the city's Public Buildings Commission.

 

In April 1999, the city announced that the Pritzker family had donated $15 million to fund Gehry's bandshell and an additional nine donors committed $10 million. The day of this announcement, Gehry agreed to the design request. In November, when his design was unveiled, Gehry said the bridge design was preliminary and not well-conceived because funding for it was not committed. The need to fund a bridge to span the eight-lane Columbus Drive was evident, but some planning for the park was delayed in anticipation of details on the redesign of Soldier Field. In January 2000, the city announced plans to expand the park to include features that became Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the McDonald's Cycle Center, and the BP Pedestrian Bridge. Later that month, Gehry unveiled his new winding design for the bridge.

 

Mayor Daley's influence was key in getting corporate and individual sponsors to pay for much of the park. Bryan, the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Sara Lee Corporation who spearheaded the fundraising, says that sponsorship was by invitation and no one refused the opportunity to be a sponsor. One Time magazine writer describes the park as the crowning achievement for Mayor Daley, while another suggests the park's cost and time overages were examples of the city's mismanagement. The July 16–18, 2004, opening ceremony was sponsored by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

 

The community around Millennium Park has become one of the most fashionable and desired residential addresses in Chicago. In 2006, Forbes named the park's 60602 zip code as the hottest in terms of price appreciation in the country, with upscale buildings such as The Heritage at Millennium Park (130 N. Garland) leading the way for other buildings, such as Waterview Tower, The Legacy and Joffrey Tower. The median sale price for residential real estate was $710,000 in 2005 according to Forbes, also ranking it on the list of most expensive zip codes. The park has been credited with increasing residential real estate values by $100 per square foot ($1,076 per m2).

 

Millennium Park is a portion of the 319-acre (129.1 ha) Grant Park, known as the "front lawn" of downtown Chicago, and has four major artistic highlights: the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, and the Lurie Garden. Millennium Park is successful as a public art venue in part due to the grand scale of each piece and the open spaces for display. A showcase for postmodern architecture, it also features the McCormick Tribune Ice Skating Rink, the BP Pedestrian Bridge, the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Wrigley Square, the McDonald's Cycle Center, the Exelon Pavilions, the AT&T Plaza, the Boeing Galleries, the Chase Promenade, and the Nichols Bridgeway.

 

Millennium Park is considered one of the largest green roofs in the world, having been constructed on top of a railroad yard and large parking garages. The park, which is known for being user friendly, has a very rigorous cleaning schedule with many areas being swept, wiped down or cleaned multiple times a day. Although the park was unveiled in July 2004, some features opened earlier, and upgrades continued for some time afterwards. Along with the cultural features above ground (described below) the park has its own 2218-space parking garage

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

big, heavy, and all out front - showing off after a heavy feeding

Graham Greene - The 3rd Man

Bantam Books 797, 1950

Cover: movie tie-in photo - Valli and Joseph Cotten

 

One of my personal all-time favourite movies!

 

Thirty-six years ago today, on April 25th, 1976, filmmaker Carol Reed passed away. One of the greatest directors ever to come out of the U.K., Reed started out as an actor, but gained fame as a writer-director in the late 1930s and 1940s.

Reed's undisputed masterpiece is "The Third Man," a 1949 film noir based on a screenplay by the great British writer Graham Greene. The film involves a writer of Westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who comes to post-war Vienna after being promised a job by his childhood friend Harry Lime. On arriving, he discovers that Lime had seemingly been killed shortly beforehand. However, he soon finds out, through investigating with Lime's girlfriend Anna (Alida Valli) that his old pal had been stealing and diluting penicillin from military hospitals, leading to the death of children, and that Lime (indelibly played by Orson Welles) is still alive.

 

The film is frequently named as among the greatest ever made: the British Film Institute called it the greatest ever film from the U.K. in 1999, and the AFI labelled it the 57th best American film the year before (it was co-produced by Britain's Alexander Korda and America's David O. Selznick, hence the dual parentage). It's such a key part of Austrian culture that there's an entire museum in Vienna dedicated solely to the film. And rightfully so: it's rich, funny, thrilling and impeccably made and acted, feeling as fresh today as it must have in 1949. To commemorate the anniversary of Reed's passing, you'll find below five things that you may not know about the director's greatest achievement.

 

1.Graham Greene originally gave it a happier ending, while Carol Reed was forced to change the film for U.S. audiences.

The film was always intended to be a screenplay first and foremost, but Greene (a novelist and former spy best known at the time for his 1938 novel "Brighton Rock," made into an acclaimed film in 1947 starring Richard Attenborough) wrote the story in prose as a novella first. There's a number of differences -- Holly Martins was called Rollo in the novella, both he and Harry were British rather than American, and the whole thing is narrated by Major Calloway, the part played by Trevor Howard in the film. But the biggest difference comes in the ending: Greene wanted a happy ending, with Holly (or Rollo) and Anna reunited, while Reed, and even producer David O. Selznick, a famous advocate of happy endings, believed that Anna should shun him. That being said, Reed didn't get his own way on everything. For the U.S. release, Selznick removed the opening narration (which is performed by the director himself), and cut eleven minutes of scenes, mostly to make Holly more heroic, and less of an alcoholic. Reed's cut has subsequently been restored for home video releases.

 

2. We might have seen a version of the film starring Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant.

It's hard to imagine a version of the film without Orson Welles in what's arguably his most iconic role (or indeed, without Joseph Cotten as the lead), but as ever, that wasn't necessarily the original plan. Reed's original choice for Holly Martins was James Stewart, but producer David O. Selznick had Joseph Cotten under contract, and insisted on using him. Ironically, Selznick objected to Reed's choice of Cotten's long-time collaborator Orson Welles to play Harry Lime, a character who Greene had based on legendary spy Kim Philby, who'd been his superior in the British Special Intelligence Service during the war, and who, in 1963, would turn out to be a long-time Soviet agent. Selznick called Welles "box office poison" for the part, and pursued Cary Grant instead. Reed got his way, but Grant would become a frequent visitor to the set -- the actor was filming "I Was A Male War Bride" on the next-door stage at Shepperton.

 

3. Anton Karas, composer of the famous theme & score, was an unknown performer in a Vienna wine bar when Reed found him.

Even those who've never seen the film will likely have heard its famous theme, part of the seminal score by Austrian musician Anton Karas, who used only a zither to perform it. Karas had been a complete unknown beforehand; he performed in a Heuringer (an Austrian wine-tavern), and was heard by Reed at a production party. Reed immediately asked him to his hotel room to record demos, and when shooting wrapped, invited him to London to write and record the score. On the film's release, "The Harry Lime Theme" became an enormous hit with the record selling an unprecedented 500,000 copies by the end of 1949, and on release in the U.S. the following year, it topped the Billboard chart for eleven weeks. Even today, it crops up in unlikely places: it can be heard in a bar in Vin Diesel actioner "xXx," and The Lonely Island sampled aspects of the score for one of their earliest tracks, "Stork Patrol" (see below).

 

4. The shoot was a rocky one: Welles went A.W.O.L before shooting, and Reed became dependent on speed to keep to his schedule.

Welles was a man not short on ego, and initially proved to be something of a nightmare on the shoot, travelling in Europe as the film was meant to shoot, and arriving two weeks late. Even then, he refused to shoot the sewer scenes on location, forcing Reed to use body doubles (including assistant director Guy Hamilton, who'd later make his name helming Bond movies like "Goldfinger") and to rebuild the sewer as a set in Shepperton, back in the U.K.. Welles calmed down once the shoot was underway, and enjoyed playing Lime, and while rumors that he ghost-directed persisted, they are patently false, though he did contribute the famous "cuckoo clock" speech. But Welles wasn't the only headache that the director had to contend with. Reed was shooting three units simultaneously to keep on schedule, and became hooked on Dexedrine (or speed) to help him pull his 20-hour days, which perhaps helps to explain the brilliantly skewed visual style of the film. That being said, not everyone was enamored of the dutch angles. Reed's friend, director William Wyler, sent him a spirit level, with the droll note attached "Carol, next time you make a picture, just put this on top of the camera, will you?"

 

5. Welles would play Harry Lime again in a prequel radio series, which in turn would inspire his own film "Mr. Arkadin."

The film was a bona-fide hit (the biggest of 1949 in the U.K.), and unsurprisingly, it would go on to other mediums. As was often the practice at the time, a radio adaptation aired soon after, with Cotten (but not Welles) reprising his role, while in 1959, a British TV series aired also called the "The Third Man," starring Michael Rennie ("The Day The Earth Stood Still") as a watered-down version of Lime, now a Robin Hood-like art dealer. But perhaps the most significant adaptation was the radio series "The Adventures of Harry Lime" -- "The Lives of Harry Lime" in the U.S. -- which produced 55 episodes in 1951 and 1952. It showcased Lime's adventures before Vienna, and featured Welles returning to the role he made famous. The polymath even wrote a number of episodes, one of which, "Man Of Mystery," served as the source material for his own film "Mr. Arkadin," which Welles called his "biggest disaster" after it was re-edited by the producers. The original radio version, along with a number of others, is included on the Criterion Collection versions of "The Third Man" and "Mr. Arkadin" (which is presented in three different cuts).

In 1859, John Brown, an abolitionist attempted to incite a slave revolt in the United States by raiding the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Brown sought support from Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglass, as well as the large community of former slaves in Canada West by speaking at a church in Chatham. Ultimatly he gained a force of only twenty-two men and while saw initial success would be defeated by a company of US Marines. The church where Brown spoke, First Baptist Church, still stands in Chatham, Ontario today.

 

Mamiya m645 - Mamiya-Sekor C 35mm 1:3.5 N - Ilford FP4+ @ ASA-100

Kodak D-23 (Stock) 6:00 @ 20C

Meter: Pentax Spotmeter V

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC

February 2010

Italian postcard by C.C.M., no. 16, presented in Belgium by NV Victoria, Brussels, no. 638. Photo: Universal International.

 

Dominican film actress María Montez (1912-1951) gained fame and popularity as a tempestuous Latino beauty in Hollywood movies of the 1940s. In a series of exotic adventures filmed in Technicolor, she starred as Arabian princesses, jungle goddesses, and highborn gypsies, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling jewels. Over her career, ‘The Queen of Technicolor’ appeared in 26 films, of which five were made in Europe.

 

Maria Montez was born Maria Africa Gracia Vidal in Barahona, the Dominican Republic in 1912. She was one of ten children born to Isidoro Gracía, and his wife Teresa Vidal. Her father was a textile exporter and the Honorary Vice Consul of Spain in the Dominican Republic. Despite what several sources write, Montez lived the first 27 years of her life in the Dominican Republic. In 1932 she married William G. McFeeters, a wealthy banker who served in the British army. In 1939 they divorced and Maria moved to New York City, where she worked as a model. She was discovered by a Universal talent scout and left for Hollywood. One of her first films for Universal was the Science Fiction comedy The Invisible Woman (A. Edward Sutherland, 1940) in which she had a bit part as a model. In the B-Western Boss of Bullion City (Ray Taylor, 1940) starring Johnny Mack Brown, Montez was the female lead. It was the first time she played a leading role and was the only one of her film roles where she speaks some Spanish. South of Tahiti (George Waggner, 1941) with Brian Donlevy and Broderick Crawford, helped to launch her as a pin-up star. Her beauty soon made her the centrepiece of Universal's Technicolor costume adventures. Her most frequent costar was Jon Hall, who some critics claimed was prettier and better built than she was. Their joint films were the big hit Arabian Nights (John Rawlins, 1942) with Sabu, White Savage (Arthur Lubin, 1943), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Arthur Lubin, 1944) with Turhan Bey, the camp classic Cobra Woman (Robert Siodmak, 1944), Gypsy Wildcat (Roy William Neil, 1944), and Sudan (John Rawlins, 1945). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “A 24-hour-a-day star, Ms. Montez was famous for her spectacular entrances at nightclubs and social functions; once, when her arrival at the Universal commissary failed to attract notice, she turned her heel and left the room, returning moments later with a huge entourage and accompanying loud noises.” ‘The Caribbean Cyclone’ often quarreled with her directors and went on suspension for refusing the lead in the Western Frontier Gal (Charles Lamont, 1945). Her role was taken by Yvonne de Carlo who had become a similar sort of star and began to supplant Montez's position at the studio. Montez then appeared in the sepia-toned swashbuckler The Exile (Max Ophüls, 1947) starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and the Technicolor Western Pirates of Monterey (Alfred L. Werker, 1947) with Rod Cameron. It was to be her last film for Universal.

 

While working in Hollywood, Maria Montez met French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. They married in 1943 at Montez's home in Beverly Hills. Aumont had to leave a few days after their wedding to serve in the Free French Forces fighting against Nazi Germany during World War II. At the end of the war, the couple had a daughter, Maria Christina (also known as actress Tina Aumont), born in Hollywood in 1946. The couple starred together in the American adventure film Siren of Atlantis (Gregg G. Tallas, 1949), produced by United Artists. It was the first movie Montez made after leaving Universal Pictures. By then, her career in the United States began to wane due to audiences' changing tastes in films. Montez and Aumont then moved to a home in Suresnes, a western suburb of Paris. In France, Montez appeared in several films and the play L'Ile Heureuse (The happy island), written by her husband. Her first French film was Hans le marin/Wicked City (François Villiers, 1949) with Jean-Pierre Aumont and Lilli Palmer. It was a success in Europe. She then played the sadistic manager of a circus show, who uses her attractiveness to seduce men and force them to do dangerous acrobatic acts in Portrait d'un assassin/Portrait of an Assassin (Bernard-Roland, 1949). One of her victims was played by Erich von Stroheim. She also wrote three books, two of which were published, as well as penning a number of poems. In Italy, she starred in the Italian-American co-production. Il Ladro di Venezia/The Thief of Venice (John Brahm, 1950) with another former Universal contract star, Paul Christian a.k.a. Paul Hubschmid. Her last film was the Italian adventure film La vendetta del corsaro/Revenge of the Pirates (Primo Zeglio, 1951). At only 39, Maria Montez died in Suresnes, France in 1951 after apparently suffering a heart attack and drowning in her bath. She was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris where her tombstone gives her amended year of birth (1918), not the actual year of birth (1912). Shortly after her death, a street in the city of Barahona, Montez's birthplace, was named in her honour. In 1996, the city of Barahona opened the Aeropuerto Internacional María Montez (María Montez International Airport) in her honour.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Gain =60

Shutter 23.84ms

ROI 800x640

Focal length = 4650mm

FPS average 41

Best 25% of 3,000 frames

Seeing conditions = above average

 

CPC800XLT

ASI120MC-S

Shorty 2X Barlow

In the 1920s, matching sets began to gain popularity. This dress is made in the iconic drop-waist style of the decade. The coat is a style known as a "clutch coat," as the wearer would hold it shut; the buttons are nonfunctional. The ensemble is unified by Fleur-de-lis appliqués.

A matching dress and coat. The dress lis mainly of a ribbed burnt orange cloth and matching chiffon, lined fully with white silk. The unlined coat is of a lightweight, subtly ribbed black silk. Both garments have matching fleur-de-lis appliqués in the opposite color edged with black beads.

A.) The dress is in the boxy, drop-waist style so particular to the 1920s. To embellish the straight silhouette, accordion pleated panels define the hips. The only shaping of the garment are two large knife pleats that do not diminish the straight form. It closes center front with snaps, overlaid with decorative covered buttons. The neckline is a subtle curved V. The sleeves are cut in a subtle bishop style, the bottom 2/3 of which are chiffon. The sleeves end at the wrist with a cuff closing with snaps and decorated with covered buttons.

B.) This "clutch coat" hangs open at center front, fronts bordered neck to hem with black buttons. The coat folds back into labels, lined with contrasting orange cloth. It has a small rectangular stand-up collar. The sleeves are cut widening at the cuff with a large slit at the wrist, decorated with black buttons.

A) OL 37"; B) OL 45 1/2".

ACC# 81.295

See more vintage apparel at flic.kr/s/aHskTjUcgr. Described & mounted by Clare Barnett.

(Photo credit - Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums).

There was a stunningly colorful sunset in West Michigan last night.

 

I was able to capture it at my favorite "sunset tree" in Gaines Township.

'Pizza pies' that is!

Melbourne has gained international notoriety for its diverse range of street art and associated subcultures. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, much of the city's disaffected youth were influenced by the graffiti of New York, which subsequently became popular in Melbourne's inner suburbs, and along suburban railway and tram lines.

and growing double chin too

A gainer is like a backflip but whilst running forward

 

Ficon dolls Ga-in

Gains Township, Michigan Public Safety Department 2011 Ford Crown Victoria.

As of September, Hull had gained another new liveried MAN E300 from Mansfield which is the only one which isn't ex pronto? This once carried a Diamond Jubilee bumper (from 2012) and was a regular on the pronto, but was never branded for it. I did ride this up to Boothferry and it was very cold, i won't lie. It wasn't great, i was shaking- it was that cold. It wasn't like i turned up in a shirt and shorts as well.

 

Seen at it's Boothferry Estate is recently repainted 22778, A MAN E300 new to Mansfield in 2009 not really allocated to anything, this has since transferred to Hull for use on local routes.

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.

 

Whilst her mistress is enjoying a Christmas and New Year visit with her parents at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, Edith, Lettice’s maid is using her time before Lettice returns to give the flat a thorough dusting and clean along with the help of Mrs. Boothby, the charwoman* who comes to help Edith with all the harder jobs around the flat. Whilst Mrs. Boothby tackles the makeup stains in Lettice’s bathroom, Edith has borrowed a small ladder from Robert, the Cavendish Mews’ residential handyman, and is dusting the crystal chandelier in the dining room. She gaily hums ‘The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers’** which she had enjoyed listening to on New Year’s Eve after Frank brought a gramophone around to her parents’ house in Harlesden where they held a small party. The trade union friend Frank borrowed the gramophone from also supplied a whole range of wonderful shellac records which everyone at the party took turns selecting from to play. Thanks to his generosity, Edith and Frank had danced their way around her parent’s kitchen, foxtrotting into 1925. She smiles as she remembers the highlight of spending so much time with Frank that evening, even if her parents and friends were right there with them. She’s also glad that, thanks to Mrs. Boothby’s wise counsel, she has reconciled with the idea that if Frank is offered a job as a manager or assistant manager of a grocers in one of the new Metroland*** suburbs being bult in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex, as his wife, she will join him. As she runs a damp cloth over the pendeloques**** and festoons***** of crystal, she wonders, and quietly hopes that Frank will propose to her in 1925.

 

“’Ere Edith dearie,” Mrs. Boothby calls from the dining room floor below. “Whatchoo ‘ummin’ so cheerfully ‘bout?” She utters one of her deep fruity, phlegm filled coughs a she speaks. “Finkin’ ‘bout Frank was you?”

 

“Never you mind what I was thinking about, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith answers back, feeling the hotness of a blush rising up her neck and filling her face.

 

“Aye! Aye!” Mrs. Boothby points a gnarled and bony, careworn finger at Edith’s blushing figure up the ladder. “So, you was finkin’ of ‘im!”

 

Edith sighs. “I just wish I knew when he was going to propose, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Ahh! ‘E will, dearie, when ‘e’s good and ready! You’ll see!”

 

“I think I need one of those clairvoyants I see adverting discreetly in the newspapers.” Edith mutters. “They’ll give me the answers I seek.”

 

“Ahh me! Always in a rush ain’t you?”

 

“What do you mean, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Just sit back and enjoy the expectation, Edith dearie! That’s the best part of bein’ in love!” the old Cockney says with another fruity cough before sighing deeply. “What it is to be young an’ in love.”

 

“Oh, you do talk some rot sometimes, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith scoffs dismissively, her face growing redder. “I’ll have you know that I was simply humming to pass the time more pleasurably.” she continues, trying to cover up Mrs. Boothby’s correct assessment of her thoughts. “Cleaning chandeliers is no easy job, you know.”

 

“Try cleaning Miss Lettice’s barfroom!” the old Cockney char exclaims, arching her back, and rubbing the base of her spine, the opening of her lungs eliciting a few more heavy coughs. “Lawd knows what’s in that muck Miss Lettice wears on ‘er face, but it marks the porcelain good ‘n’ proppa. I only cleaned in there wiv Vim****** a bit before Christmas! Whatchee done, slappin’ that stuff on ‘er pretty face for, anyroad?”

 

“Miss Lettice had a few parties to attend before Christmas, Mrs. Boothby, especially those American Carters’ Thanksgiving Christmas ball in Park Lane*******.”

 

“Were it fancy dress then, this party of ‘ers?” Mrs. Boothby asks.

 

“No, just a formal ball, although by all accounts there was quite a to do. Why do you ask, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Well, I just fought, what wiv all them red an’ black marks on ‘er vanity, she must ‘ave slapped on a lot of makeup an’ gone in fancy dress.” Mrs. Boothby opines.

 

“Yes!” Edith giggles girlishly. “As a clown!”

 

The two women begin laughing, a little at first, then their peals growing more raucous until Mrs. Boothby starts coughing again. Doubling over as her whole wiry body is wracked with coughing, she struggles to catch her breath.

 

Edith scrambles down the ladder. “Let me get you some water.” she exclaims, rushing through the green baize door to the kitchen before Mrs. Boothby can try to say anything. She returns a few moments later with a tumbler of water. “Here!” She thrusts the glass into the old woman’s shaking hand. “Drink this.”

 

“Fank… you… Edith… dearie.” Mrs. Boothby manages to say in a horse whisper between coughs as she gratefully lifts the glass to her dry lips and gulps the water shakily, pausing every now and then to elicit another heavy cough.

 

“Come,” Edith says kindly. “Sit yourself down here.” She pulls out one of the black japanned dining chairs from the oblong table.

 

“But.. Miss Lettice…” the old woman gasps.

 

“Miss Lettice isn’t here to worry about you sitting on one of her precious dining chairs, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith assures her. “And besides,” She guides the old woman carefully down onto the white satin cushioned seat. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, even if she did know.”

 

The old woman settles against the wooden slats of the chair’s back and slowly catches her breath.

 

“That’s it.” Edith says soothingly, crouched before the old woman, rubbing the top of Mrs. Boothby’s hand lightly with her fingers. “Take a few deep breaths.” When the old Cockney coughs heavily a few more times, Edith pushes the glass across the black polished surface of the table. “Drink some more water, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Fanks.” Mrs. Boothby huffs.

 

Once she has finished the glass, Edith returns to the kitchen to refill it, commanding Mrs. Boothby to remain seated in her absence. When she returns with the tumbler full of fresh water again, Mrs. Boothby asks, “So what ‘appened?”

 

“What do you mean, Mrs. Boothby? “ Edith asks, taking the seat at the top of the table, diagonally across from the old Cockney charwoman. “We were taking and then, you just started coughing.”

 

“Not me, ya berk********.” Mrs. Boothby says raspily. “Miss Lettice!”

 

“What do you mean, Miss Lettice?”

 

“You said there was much ado at that fancy American party Miss Lettice went to.” Mrs. Boothby elucidates. “What ‘appened?”

 

“Well,” Edith says with a shaky intake of breath. “It was all over the newspapers the next day.”

 

“What was, Edith dearie?”

 

“Well, the hostess, Mrs. Georgie Carter used to be not so well off before she married Mr. Carter. I remember once Miss Lettice asked me to box up a few bits and pieces from her wardrobe she’d barely worn, or decided she didn’t like, and when Mrs. Carter, when she was still Miss Kitson-Fahey that is, came around for luncheon, Miss Lettice told her that she was going to give the box to charity and would Miss Kitson-Fahey please get rid of it for her.”

 

“So?”

 

“So, of course the clothes were really meant for Miss Kitson-Fahey to wear. Miss Kitson-Fahey and Miss Lettice were around the same size you see, and her clothes, even her everyday ones, were a bit shabby and old fashioned, and the next time she came to luncheon she was wearing some of them, only with the buttons changed or a new trim on them to try and disguise where they came from originally.” Edith nods. “And Miss Lettice never said anything to her.”

 

“But what’s that got to do wiv the party, Edith Dearie?”

 

“Well, now that Miss Kitson-Fahey is Mrs. Georgie Carter, well, she’s richer than Croesus********* isn’t she? So, when she wants anything now, she just gets it. And she decided that all the Bright Young Things********** like Miss Lettice at the party, should go on a scavenger hunt.”

 

“A what?” Mrs. Boothby asks.

 

“A scavenger hunt, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies. “You know, where the host or hostess of a party makes up a list of items and then their guests have to go and find them. Bert and I used to play it at each other’s birthday parties when we were little, with our friends and the local children who we invited. Mum would make a list of things that would be easily found, like a currant bun, because we were having them for birthday tea, or some flowers that grew in the garden, a peg from the laundry basket, or a certain toy, and we’d break off into groups and try and bring back as many things on the list Mum gave us as we could.”

 

“Sounds daft to me.” Mrs. Boothby grumbles.

 

“Well, Mrs. Carter’s list must have been daft because people from the party were caught all over London in the early morning doing ridiculous things. Two men from the party, drunk as lords*********** according to the newspapers, were arrested trying to get across to Duck Island************ in St James Park to steal swan feathers. Another party guest was detained for being a public nuisance after she tried to scale the wall at Buckingham Palace in order to steal the wellies************* of the King’s head gardener, and Tallulah Bankhead************** the American actress appearing in the West End was cautioned after she was caught trying to steal a sheep from a poor distressed farmer in the wee hours as he drove his flock up New Bridge Street to the Smithfield Markets!”

 

“What?” Mrs. Boothby’s eyes grow wide. “Daft that is! What people want to do, goin’ ‘round getting’ into trouble wiv Bobbies*************** an’ bovverin’ good law-abidin’ folk like that for?”

 

“For a lark, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith exclaims. “They were all things on Mrs. Carter’s scavenger hunt list.”

 

“What? A live sheep?” Mrs. Boothby scoffs.

 

“And swan feathers and wellies from the King’s gardener.”

 

“I ‘ope Miss Lettice didn’t go in for none of that silliness.”

 

“Well, I can’t say she didn’t, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith admits with a downward gaze. “But at least she had the sense not to end up in the newspapers like Ms. Bankhead or the others did. She got in very late that evening, or should I say early in morning after the party, because I was already up and having my breakfast when she came stumbling in through the front door with her sister Mrs. Lanchenbury, wearing a bobby’s helmet!”

 

“No!” gasps Mrs. Boothby, causing her to cough again.

 

“Drink some more water, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith insists before going on. “Miss Lettice handed me the helmet from her head when I walked into the entrance hall, and told me to dispose of it as I saw fit, as she and Mrs. Lanchenbury had no further need of it. Then they both giggled and stumbled away into Miss Lettice’s bedroom, where I found them a few hours later, fast asleep, still fully dressed, lying across her bed!” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what other mischiefs they had been up to, but Miss Lettice’s grey crêpe romain**************** frock was covered in marks and stains, some of which I can’t get out.”

 

“Well, if she flings it out, you can salvage some bits off it, I’m sure, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says comfortingly.

 

“Oh, I intend to, if she does.” Edith agrees with a shallow but emphatic nod. “Which I think she will do.”

 

“You’ll make me and your mum proud, dearie!”

 

“Waste not, want not.”

 

“Exactly! And the bobby’s ‘at?” Mrs. Boothby croaks. “Whatchoo do wiv that then?”

 

“Well, I decided I couldn’t put it in our dustbins, in case anyone found it there! I didn’t want the household involved, and I certainly didn’t want to be incriminated,”

 

“So?”

 

“So I put it in Mrs. Clifford’s dustbin downstairs instead. Myra was fit to be tied when she found it. I heard her scream all the way up the tradesman’s stairwell. Next thing I knew, she was on my threshold, helmet in hand, thumping on the door, causing quite a scene!”

 

“I ‘ope you gave ‘er what for!”

 

“I opened the door, and when she accused Miss Lettice of putting it in her mistress’ dustbin, I told her that Miss Lettice was sleeping and had been since she came home from the party, so she couldn’t have put it in there, and could she please be quiet so Miss Lettice and Mrs. Lanchenbury could sleep undisturbed.” Edith then adds with a smug smile, “And I wasn’t lying. Miss Lettice didn’t put it in her dustbin.”

 

The two women chuckle heartily together over the incident.

 

“That Myra’s a toffee-nosed snob of a maid, anyway,” Mrs. Boothby smiles.

 

“Just like Mrs. Clifford.” Edith opines.

 

“It couldn’t ‘ve ‘appened to a nicer person. She’s no…”

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

The telephone in the drawing room starts ringing, stopping Mrs. Boothby mid sentence.

 

Edith looks through the double doors into the adjoining drawing room. “That infernal contraption!” she mutters.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“They ain’t goin’ away, you know, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby remarks sagely. “Miss Lettice ain’t the only one wiv one of them fings in their ‘omes. They’s even turnin’ up on the streets nah, in red booths*****************, you know?”

 

Edith gets up from the table, and leaving Mrs. Boothby where she sits with her half emptied tumbler of water, walks into the drawing room and up to the black japanned occasional table upon which the silver and Bakelite telephone continues to trill loudly.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“I should knock you over, next time I’m dusting. Let’s hear you ring then, infernal contraption!”

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“I can answer it for you, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby offers, knowing that Edith will never accept her offer. “If you like.”

 

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 uppity accent only seems to intensify when they realise they are speaking to ‘the hired help’ as they abruptly demand Lettice’s whereabouts.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“Come on now Edith!” she tells herself, smoothing her suddenly clammy hands down the apron covering her print morning dress. “It’s only a machine, and the person at the other end can’t hurt you, even if they are angry that you aren’t her.”

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“Mayfair 432, the Honourable Miss Lettice Chetwynd’s residence.” Edith answers with a slight quiver to her voice. 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 female voice speaks down the line. “Oh Mrs. Hatchett, how do you do. What a pleasant surprise! Yes, this is Edith, Miss Chetwynd’s maid.” She smiles and her anxiety dissipates.

 

Lettice decorated some of the principal rooms of Mrs. Hatchett’s house, ‘The Gables’ in Rotherfield and Mark Cross in Sussex, in 1921. Even though Mrs. Hatchett is a little overbearing, it is only because she is enthusiastic. Edith likes her because Mrs. Hatchett, being a banker cum Labour politician’s wife, and formerly a London West End actress, has not been born with a pedigree that finds talking to the staff offensive, like so many other callers on Lettice’s telephone.

 

Edith listens. “No. No, I’m afraid that Miss Chetwynd isn’t at home, Mrs. Hatchett.” She listens to the disappointed response. “She’s still with her family in Wiltshire.” She listens. “Yes, I can have her telephone you in Sussex. I’m quite sure Miss Chetwynd still has…” Mrs. Hatchett cuts Edith short and she listens again. “Queen Anne’s Gate******************? Really? Oh congratulations, Mrs. Hatchett.” Edith listens again. “Oh! Oh well I’m quite sure she would delighted to do that for you, but not being privy to her diary, I shall have to get her to telephone you.” She listens again. “Yes, I’d just take it down. One moment whilst I fetch a pencil and paper, Mrs. Hatchett.” Edith puts the receiver down on the table next to the telephone base and brushes her clammy palms down her apron for a second time. The then picks up the pencil atop the pad of paper that Lettice left for her to jot any messages on from the lower tier of the table. Picking up the receiver in her left hand she stands poised with pencil in hand to write and says, “I’m ready for your message now Mrs. Hatchett. Please go ahead. She writes a message based on Mrs. Hatchett’s response. “Yes. Yes, I’ll make sure Miss Chetwynd receives your message when she returns from the country. Very good. Good day Mrs. Hatchett.”

 

Edith hangs up the receiver and sighs with relief. “Damn infernal contraption!” she mutters as she glares at the telephone shining brightly under the light of the electrified chandelier above.

 

“See!” Mrs. Boothby says from her place at the dining room table. “That weren’t so bad, were it, Edith dearie?”

 

“That’s only because it was Mrs. Hatchett, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith sighs. “She’s lovely in comparison to some of those toffee-nosed ladies and duchesses who telephone here.”

 

“Ain’t she the wife of Charlie Hatchett the politician?”

 

“That’s right, Mrs. Boothby. Mr. Hatchett is a Labour MP, and was part of Mr. MacDonald’s government last year.”

 

“E’s the MP for Tower ‘Amlets*******************, and that includes me!” Mrs. Boothby says excitedly. “Fancy that! Cor! What a small world. Eh?”

 

“Mr. and Mrs. Hatchett have just taken possession of a townhouse in Queen Anne’s Gate,” Edith says, perusing the note she has written down on the pad for Lettice. “And she wants Miss Lettice to redecorate the drawing room for her.”

 

“Queen Anne’s Gate, you say?” Mrs. Boothby says. When Edith nods in confirmation, the old Cockney woman eyes her sharply before going on, “It ain’t right that.” She mutters as she shakes her head.

 

“What’s not right, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks.

 

“That ain’t!” the old Cockney woman protests. “That fancy new ‘ouse in Queen Anne’s Gate!”

 

“Well, I suppose Mr. Hatchett needs to be close to the Houses of Parliament.”

 

“Nah, e’s supposed to be a Labour MP, ain’t ‘e?”

 

“He is. Mrs. Boothby. I just said so. Didn’t you hear me?”

 

“And that’s the workers’ party, ain’t it?”

 

“Yes, Mrs. Boothby, or so Frank tells me.”

 

“Well, Mr. ‘Atchett ain’t no lord like some of them uvver politicians.” Mrs. Boothby opines before taking another sip of water. “‘E says e’s just an ordinary man, like us, Edith dearie.”

 

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d say Mr. Hatchett was quite like us, Mrs. Boothby, even if he does.” Edith scoffs lightly as she replaces the pad and pencil back on the lower shelf of the table on which the telephone stands. “He’s a banker, or rather he was before he became a politician. That doesn’t make him a lord, but it puts him a rung or two above you and I, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Well ‘e said ‘e was just an ‘ard workin’ man, like anyone else.” Mr. Boothby crumples up her nose in disgust. “But I don’t fink it’s right for ‘im to say that if ‘e’s goin’ to live in Queen Anne’s Gate in a fancy big ‘ouse like them lawds, even if it is decorated by Miss Lettice, and yet some of ‘is constituents is the poorest people in the land!”

 

Edith laughs loudly. “Are you suggesting he and Mrs. Hatchett should live in an ordinary two-up two-down******************** like my parents?”

 

“That’d be a step up for me!” Mrs. Boothby retorts. “I only got two rooms for Ken ‘n’ me, and the privvy’s a shared one dahwn the end of the rookery*********************.”

 

“Somehow, no matter how egalitarian she is, I don’t think Mrs. Hatchett would like to live in a semi-detached********************** villa in Metroland*********************** like Frank and I hope to someday.” Edith shakes her head. “And I think Mr. Hatchett is a man of pretensions, so I’m sure he won’t want to live in even the best rooms available in Poplar. Queen Anne’s Gate is so close to the Palace of Westminster that it will be very handy for Mr. Hatchett to get to the House easily, and I’m sure Mrs. Hatchett will be entertaining dignitaries quite a lot as an MP’s wife.”

 

“Well,” Mrs. Boothby mutters. “I’ll be ‘avin words wiv Mr. I’m-just-the-same-as-you-‘Atchett, next time I sees ‘im out there campaignin’! I shall give ‘im a good piece of mind! Lyin’ like that to poor folk like me who can’t even ‘ave their own private privy! It’s a scandal, that is!”

 

“Yes,” Edith giggles. “Almost as scandalous as Mrs. Carter’s scavenger hunt.”

 

*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.

 

**’The Parade of the Tin Soldiers’, also known as ‘The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers’, is an instrumental musical character piece, in the form of a popular jaunty march, written by German composer Leon Jessel, in 1897. In 1922, the instrumental version of ‘The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers’ was a hit single performed by Carl Fenton's Orchestra. Hit versions were also recorded by the Vincent Lopez Orchestra in 1922 and by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra in 1923.

 

***Metroland is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the Twentieth Century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway company was in the privileged position of being allowed to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE). The term "Metroland" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.

 

****The hanging crystals on a chandelier are called pendeloques, sometimes spelled pendalogues. They can also be referred to simply as prisms.

 

*****The clusters of crystal trimmings which hang down from the chandelier in a basket are known as a festoon. These can be a few strands or many clusters. Another name for them is a garland.

 

******Vim was a common cleaning agent, used in any Edwardian household. Vim scouring powder was created by William Hesketh Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme) and introduced to the market in 1904. It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight.

 

*******Park Lane is a dual carriageway road in the City of Westminster in Central London. It is part of the London Inner Ring Road and runs from Hyde Park Corner in the south to Marble Arch in the north. It separates Hyde Park to the west from Mayfair to the east. The road was originally a simple country lane on the boundary of Hyde Park, separated by a brick wall. Aristocratic properties appeared during the late 18th century, including Breadalbane House, Somerset House, and Londonderry House. The road grew in popularity during the 19th century after improvements to Hyde Park Corner and more affordable views of the park, which attracted the nouveau riche to the street and led to it becoming one of the most fashionable roads to live on in London. Notable residents included the 1st Duke of Westminster's residence at Grosvenor House, the Dukes of Somerset at Somerset House, and the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli at No. 93. Other historic properties include Dorchester House, Brook House and Dudley House. In the 20th century, Park Lane became well known for its luxury hotels, particularly The Dorchester, completed in 1931, which became closely associated with eminent writers and international film stars. Flats and shops began appearing on the road, including penthouse flats. Several buildings suffered damage during World War II, yet the road still attracted significant development, including the Park Lane Hotel and the London Hilton on Park Lane, and several sports car garages. A number of properties on the road today are owned by some of the wealthiest businessmen from the Middle East and Asia.

 

********The full phrase Berkeley (or Berkshire) hunt has been shortened to "berk," which has become a milder slang word of its own, but was originally used by Cockneys. Berk means idiot, as in "you're being a berk."

 

*********This term to be richer to Croesus, implies great wealth, and alludes to Croesus, the legendary King of Lydia and supposedly the richest man on earth. The simile was first recorded in English in 1577.

 

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

 

***********The idiom "to be drunk as a lord" is a somewhat humorous and old-fashioned expression that is used to describe someone who is extremely drunk. The origin of this phrase likely dates back to a time when the British aristocracy, often referred to as "lords," were known for their heavy drinking habits and lavish banquets.

 

************Originally built in St James Royal Park in 1665 on the site of a duck decoy, the island is both a sanctuary and a breeding ground for the collection of wildfowl and other birds. There are approximately seventeen species of bird regularly breed in the park, including mute swans and a resident colony of pelicans. Duck Island also houses the water treatment facilities and pumps for the lake and fountain.

 

*************The term Wellington boot comes from Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who instructed his shoemaker to create the boot by modifying the design of the Hessian boot. The terms gumboot and rubber boot are both derived from the rubber modern Wellington boots are made from, with the term "gum" coming from gum rubber.

 

**************Tallulah Bankhead was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's ‘Lifeboat’. In 1923, she made her debut on the London stage at Wyndham's Theatre. She appeared in over a dozen plays in London over the next eight years, most famously in ‘The Dancers’ and at the Lyric as Jerry Lamar in Avery Hopwood's ‘The Gold Diggers’. Her fame as an actress was ensured in 1924 when she played Amy in Sidney Howard's ‘They Knew What They Wanted’. The show won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. Whilst living in London, Bankhead became one of the members of Cecil Beaton’s coterie of hedonistic Bright Young Things. She also had a brief but successful career on radio later in life and made appearances on television.

 

***************The term “bobby” is not now widely used in Britain to describe the police (except by the police, who still commonly use it to refer to themselves), though it can occur with a mixture of affection and slight irony in the phrase "village bobby", referring to the local community police officer. However, it was very common in mid 1920s London. It is derived from Robert Peel (Bobby being the usual nickname for Robert), the founder of the Metropolitan Police.

 

****************Crêpe romain is a lightweight semi-sheer luxury fabric, originally of silk with a dull lustre and a wrinkled texture.

 

*****************The first standard public telephone kiosk introduced by the United Kingdom Post Office was produced in concrete in 1921 and was designated K1 (Kiosk No.1). The Post Office had taken over almost all of the country's telephone network in 1912. The red telephone box K1 (Kiosk No.2), was the result of a competition in 1924 to design a kiosk that would be acceptable to the London Metropolitan Boroughs which had hitherto resisted the Post Office's effort to erect K1 kiosks on their streets.

 

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

 

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

 

********************Two-up two-down is a type of small house with two rooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. There are many types of terraced houses in the United Kingdom, and these are among the most modest. The first two-up two-down terraces were built in the 1870s, but the concept of them made up the backbone of the Metroland suburban expansions of the 1920s with streets lined with rows of two-up two-down semi-detached houses in Mock Tudor, Jacobethan, Arts and Crafts and inter-war Art Deco styles bastardised from the aesthetic styles created by the likes of English Arts and Crafts Movement designers like William Morris and Charles Voysey.

 

*********************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.

 

**********************A semi-detached house (known more commonly simply as a semi) is a house joined to another house on one side only by a common wall.

 

***********************Metroland is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the Twentieth Century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway company was in the privileged position of being allowed to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE). The term "Metroland" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.

 

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:

 

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.

 

Edith’s feather duster, lying on the table, I made myself using fledgling feathers (very spring) which I picked up off the lawn one day thinking they would come in handy in my miniatures collection sometime. I bound them with thread to the handle which is made from a fancy ended toothpick!

 

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 Art Deco tub chair upholstered in white embossed fabric is made of black japanned wood and has a removable cushion, just like its life sized equivalent.

 

The Chinese folding screen in the background 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.

 

In front of the screen on a pedestal table stands a miniature cloisonné vase from the early Twentieth Century which I also bought when I was a child. It came from a curios shop. 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.

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. Instead, we are just a short distance away in London’s busy shopping precinct on Oxford Street, where amidst the throng of London’s middle-class housewives and upper-class ladies shopping for amusement, two maids – Edith who is Lettice’s maid and her best friend Hilda who is the maid for Lettice’s friends Margot and Dickie Channon - are enjoying the pleasures of window shopping under the wide canvas awnings of Selfridges on their day off. The usually busy footpath outside the enormous department store with London’s biggest plate glass windows seems even busier today as the noisily chattering crowds are swelled by visitors who have come in from the outer suburbs of London and the surrounding counties which are slowly being enveloped into the heaving, expanding metropolis to do a little bit of early Christmas shopping. However the two maids don’t mind, as the noisy burbling crowds around them and the awnings above them help protect them from the wintery wind as it blows down Oxford Street, wending its way around chugging auto busses, noisy belching automobiles and horse drawn carts that choke the busy thoroughfare. Already Edith is noticing that the shops are busier than usual, and even though Christmas is still a good few weeks away, there are signs of Christmas cheer with bright and gaudy tinsel garlands and stars cut from metallic paper hanging in shop windows and gracing shop counters. Around them, the vociferous collective chatter of shoppers mixes with the sound of noisy automobiles and chugging double decker busses as they trundle along Oxford Street.

 

The pair meander in front of a window which is crowded with clusters of small children with their noses pressed to the glass, their harried mothers or frustrated nannies trying desperately to get them to come away. Peering over the top of the children’s heads, they see it is a window full of wonderful toys: teddy bears*, tin soldiers, brightly painted wooden castles and forts, games, blocks and books.

 

“I’ve just thought of something! Come on, Hilda!” Edith says to her friend. “Let’s go inside.”

 

“Oh no!” Hilda bemoans. “Not to the Selfridges toy department again, Edith! Remember the last time we went in there in the lead up to Christmas? It will bedlam!”

 

As if on cue, a little girl in a cream knitted pixie bonnet** and matching cardigan releases a piercing shriek of protest as she is drawn away from Selfridges toy filled window by her rangy black clad nanny who mutters something about no nonsense as she does.

 

“No, silly!” Edith replies. “The book department. I think they will have a wider range of children’s books in the book department.”

 

“Well, only if it isn’t full of nasty little jam grabbers!” Hilda replies cautiously, looking askance at the children around her. “If it is, I’m leaving you and heading straight for the perfumery.”

 

“Alright Hilda.” Edith giggles, her pert nose curling slightly upwards as she does. “Come on.”

 

The pair enter Selfridge’s grand department store by one of the three revolving doors and are immediately enveloped by the wonderful scent of dozens of perfumes from the nearby perfumery counters.

 

“Couldn’t we just visit the perfumery first?” Hilda asks.

 

“You’re every bit as bad as the children you moan about, Hilda! I promise we’ll come back here after we’ve visited the book department.” Edith insists.

 

“Oh, alright Edith!” Hilda sighs.

 

“Think of it as a reward for coming with me.” Edith winks cheekily at Hilda and leads her towards the banks of lifts with their smart liveried female lift attendants***.

 

Stepping out onto the floor for the book department, Hilda breathes a sigh of relief, for unlike she imagines the toy department to be, the space is quiet and well ordered. As she and Edith walk towards the main body of the department, away from the central balconied atrium, she shudders as a high pitched scream of a child echoes from the toy department several storeys above and pierces her consciousness.

 

“Come on, old thing,” Edith says comfortingly, wrapping her arm through her best friend’s. “I promise I won’t force you to go up to the toy department.”

 

“Just as well I trust you, Edith.” Hilda replies squeezing her friend’s hand in return.

 

“Anyway,” Edith goes on with a broad smile. “I thought with your love of reading, you’d enjoy the book department more.”

 

“And you’d be right!” Hilda chortles.

 

The two young women walk along the thickly carpeted aisles. Around them stand sturdy shelves of all sizes covered in books, magazines, newspapers and periodicals. Some only stand as high as shoulder height, with shelves tilted slightly upwards from waist height, allowing easier access to titles for customers, whilst other shelves are much higher with rows of spines, or on some shelves the covers of the books on display. Central tables are weighed down with the latest novels like E. M. Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’****, ‘The Deductions of Colonel Gore’***** by Lynn Brock and Edith Wharton’s ‘Old New York’******, stacked in piles like precarious houses or cards. More valuable and larger books full of beautifully printed lithographs sit open on wide shelves inside glass fronted and topped cabinets, allowing customers the ability to peruse before asking to see them properly. Tops of cabinets share space with more novels and the occasional potted aspidistra, and small chairs and stools are discreetly secreted amongst the shelves and tables, allowing a customer to stop, sit and read a little of title before deciding whether to purchase it or not. Cosy and comfortable, the books muffle the burbling sounds of the departments beyond them and the whole space is flooded with light from lamps above, and through the large frosted glass windows that face out onto Oxford Street, making the Selfridges book department a very pleasant pace to shop.

 

“I thought you were a convert to a bookshop in Charring Cross that Miss Lettice frequents.” Hilda remarks, pausing and picking up a copy of ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’******* by Agatha Christie, and perusing the cover which shows a stylishly dressed woman in a fur trimmed green coat and matching cloche observing a man in an orange suit and a railway conductor looking for signs of life in what she can only assume to be the man mentioned in the title on the edge of an underground railway platform. She deposits the title back as Edith tugs at her arm, encouraging her to continue their exploration of the shelves, cabinets and tables around them.

 

“Whilst Mr. Mayhew******** does a splendid job of supplying copies of Agatha Christie novels with slightly soiled covers at a discounted rate for me to give to Dad, I don’t think he stocks the kind of book I want today.”

 

“What are you looking for, anyway, Edith?”

 

“I told you before, children’s books, Hilda.”

 

“Yes, but what kind of children’s books? Adventure books? Picture books?”

 

“I’ll know them when I see them.” Edith says excitedly. “Come on!”

 

“Who are you buying them for?” Hilda asks. “You don’t know any children that I know of.”

 

“They are for…” Edith pauses mid-sentence and thinks before she speaks. Having become a good friend of Lettice’s charwoman*********, Mrs. Boothby, she has had the rare pleasure of meeting the old Cockney woman’s son, Ken, a forty-four year old man who is a simple and gentle giant with the aptitude of a six year old. Mrs. Boothby’s words ring in her ears about how it is easier for her not to mention that she has a son, not because she is ashamed of him, but because not everyone would understand her wanting to keep and raise a child with such difficulties. She knows that for all her love of gossip, in this matter Mrs. Boothby requires the utmost discretion and has been brave in taking Edith into her into her confidence by introducing her to Ken. Even though she knows that Hilda is every bit as discreet and trustworthy as she is, Edith cannot let it slip who the books are for. “For Mrs. Boothby’s grandchildren.” Edith fabricates. “Remember, Hilda? I bought them some Beatrix Potter books two Christmases ago.”

 

“Oh yes: I remember!” Hilda replies. “How could I forget that trip upstairs?” She casts her eyes to the white painted plaster ceiling above, imaging the horrors of the toy department crowded with excited children in toy heaven escorted by their frazzled parents. She pauses. “You know, even though I’m sure she shares confidences with me that she shares with you, Edith, Mrs. Boothby never talks about her family around me.” She stops, unlinks her arm from Edith’s and places her hands on her hips. “And nor has she ever invited me to her house for a slap-up tea!”

 

“There’s no need to get jealous, Hilda.” Edith replies calmly. “It’s hardly tea with Queen Mary.” she deflects. “It’s just a bit of toast and jam in Mrs. Boothby’s tiny two room tenement. It’s basic and clean, which is certainly more than can be said for the street outside.” She then adds to further discourage Hilda from pursuing the matter, “And she does go on and on and on about her grandchildren. You know what she’s like.”

 

“Oh yes,” Hilda agrees, her stance and facial expression softening into neutrality. “She can talk ‘till the cows come home**********, can old Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Especially when she’s gossiping.” Edith laughs.

 

Edith feels pangs of guilt, not telling the truth to her best friend, but she assuages the feeling, knowing that it is being done for the greater good. She makes a mental note to make a point of telling Mrs. Boothby how trustworthy Hilda is, and what a good keeper of secrets she is, the next time she is at Cavendish Mews.

 

Edith continues to peruse the shelves until she finally comes across the children’s section.

 

“Here we are!” Edith says, spying a beautiful arrangement of colourful books on a round table in the middle of a brightly woven rug. “This is the sort of thing I’m after! Something colourful and bright, and not what you might see in Poplar.”

 

In front of them stand a selection of beautifully illustrated books by Walter Crane***********. A selection of folk and faerie tales stand alongside an alphabet book, a painting book and various others. All have colourful covers with elegant graphics on them.

 

“Oh! I remember these!” Hilda gasps, following her friend. “Mum used to bring them home from the library for my sisters and brothers and me when we were all little. They were called Toy Books************. Mum taught us our letters from this one.” She takes up ‘An Alphabet of Old Friends’ and cradles it in her arms. “I doubt any poor child in Poplar would have books as pretty as these: poor mites!”

 

“All the more reason to buy one then. Just look at the lovely illustrations!” Edith enthuses as she opens a copy of ‘The Frog Prince’ and sees a double page illustration of the little green hero of the story sitting on a fine damask tablecloth before the princess dressed in gold. Her father the king sists at the head of the table and scolds his daughter for making a promise to the frog that she didn’t intend to keep. The colours are bright and jewel like and the designs rich with interesting patterns and designs. “I wonder which one he… err they, would like?” Edith ponders aloud as she puts down ‘The Frog Prince’ and takes up a copy of ‘Beauty and the Beast’.

 

“I’m sure her grandchildren would be happy to have any of them, Edith.” Hilda remarks. “I know I would if I were a young child this book was made for.”

 

Edith doesn’t reply, keeping her silence about for whom the children’s picture book is really for.

 

“What about this one?” Hilda picks up ‘Walter Crane’s Painting Book’. “They could paint the pictures.” she suggests as she flicks through the pages where Walter Crane’s detailed illustrations are simply line drawings, allowing a child to paint the colours for themselves to match the complete matching colour illustrations printed on the opposite page. “I’m sure Mrs. Boothby could find them some watercolours, or better yet, you could buy them some, Edith.”

 

“It’s a lovely idea Edith, but he… err… they aren’t really painters.”

 

“How queer they sound!” Hilda exclaims. “Not like painting? When we were children, my sisters and I used to be mad about painting.”

 

“Well not everyone’s an artist like you are, Hilda.” Edith remarks in reply.

 

“I bet they really do like to paint,” Hilda goes on. “Only Mrs. Boothby is so used to cleaning for others, that she wants to keep her own house spic-and-span.”

 

“Well, she does like to keep her house tidy.” Edith agrees. “She calls it a clean haven from the outside world, and she isn’t half wrong. But I don’t think she would stop them painting, if that’s what they wanted to do. She loves children, even ones that aren’t her own kin.”

 

Edith looks at a few more of the titles, admiring the finely printed illustrations before finally settling upon one.

 

“I loved the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ when I was a girl.” Edith remarks. “Such a happy ending,” Her voice takes on a wistful air as she continues, “And proof that there is a handsome prince behind even the most unlikely of beasts.”

 

“Well, it’s a good lesson to teach children.” Hilda opines.

 

“Yes! I’ll buy this one.” Edith decides. She picks it up and cradles it to her chest lovingly. “It will make a lovely Christmas gift!”

 

“That’s very good of you, Edith.” Hilda acknowledges.

 

“Oh, it’s the least I can do Hilda. Mrs. Boothby’s become such a good friend to me since we first met. She was genuinely happy for me when I told her that I received an increase to my wages, and yet I bet you she didn’t get an increase from Miss Lettice for all the hard graft she does around Cavendish Mews.”

 

“And she works jolly hard for every penny she earns, too.” Hilda adds.

 

“That she does, so if I can bring her grandchildren some cheer this Christmas, I’ll be only too happy.”

 

“You put me to shame, Edith.” Hilda says guiltily.

 

“What are you talking about, Hilda?”

 

“Well, you’re so generous, thinking of others this Christmas.”

 

“Oh! You’re doing your bit for the less fortunate this Christmas, aren’t you Hilda? You’re knitting for Mrs. Minkin’s knitting circle’s Christmas drive for the needy.”

 

“Pshaw!” Hilda scoffs. “I don’t know how grateful the poor of Poplar and Whitechapel will be to have one of my knitted pairs of socks or scarves, not when you compare it to the knitting done by Mrs. Minkin, Miss Woolencroft, old Ma Badel or Mrs. Minkin’s lovely young nice, Katya Levi. Now she can knit beautifully, can Kayta! It must run though Mrs. Minkin’s family.”

 

“I’m sure that whatever the poor of Poplar and Whitechapel receive thanks to your knitting group’s industry will be gratefully received, Hilda, and that includes your contributions.”

 

“With the stitches I drop, there are a few small holes in a few pairs of socks, even before they’re worn, and my lack of tension control does mean my scarves are a bit…” Hilda pauses to think of the right word. “Uneven.”

 

“Well, dropped stitches and slight differences in tension or not, you’re still helping those who can’t help themselves this Christmas, and I’m sure they’ll be very grateful, Hilda.” Edith insists with a broad smile.

 

“I suppose so.” Hilda mutters, hanging her head.

 

“I know so, Hilda,” Edith replies encouragingly, giving her friend a friendly squeeze of the forearm. “Your knitting is getting better and better, the more you practice. Just remember that not that long ago, you couldn’t knit at all. Now look at you: knitting socks and scarves! I hope you’ve knitted me a Christmas present Hilda.”

 

Hilda blushes as she replies, “I have. I only hope that you’ll like it.”

 

“I shall love it, Hilda!”

 

“Even with a dropped stitch or two?” Hilda asks doubtfully.

 

“Most definitely, Hilda! It will be original that way.” Edith adds brightly. “No-one else will have what I have with stitches dropped in the same place.”

 

“You’re far to kind to me, Edith.”

 

“Seriously though, Hilda, I know I will love it, because you will have made it for me with love.” Edith enthuses. “Be proud of what you’ve achieved and how far you’ve come with your knitting.”

 

“Thank you, Edith!” Hilda gives her friend a grateful hug, which is reciprocated by Edith. “You’re the best friend a girl ever had, you know.”

 

“Well then, you must be the best friend I’ll ever have, because I know you’d do the same to buck me up when I’m feeling low.”

 

“You never have low spirits, Edith.”

 

“Well,” Edith ponders. “You always make sure that you include me in your intellectual conversations you have with Frank, and you explain things to me that I don’t understand in such a way that I don’t feel ignorant or stupid.”

 

“You aren’t ignorant, or stupid, Edith!” Hilda bursts. “You’re very smart.”

 

“Well, I don’t feel quite as smart as I think I should be sometimes, stepping out with a man as intelligent as Frank is. But you’ve helped me learn about things that are important to him, like labour rights and things of that sort. So, you help me too, just as I help you.”

 

“Alright Edith!” Hilda demurs, smiling broadly as she does. “I agree. I help you, and you help me, in equal measures, in different ways.”

 

“That’s it, Hilda!”

 

“Come on then, Edith. Best you buy that book for Mrs. Boothby’s grandchildren before someone else comes along and buys it.”

 

“You’re right Hilda!” Edith giggles.

 

“You’ll make their Christmas with that.” Hilda nods at the book, still clutched to Edith’s chest.

 

“I hope so.” Edith replies quietly, smiling shyly, thinking of Ken’s gormless grin when he sees her and imagining him giggling in delight and wonder at the beautiful illustrations in the book she now holds.

 

The pair of young women wend their way through the aisles of books again to the glass topped counter in front of a large mahogany shelf full of books

 

“May I help you, Miss?” asks a young shopgirl next to the register, who smiles at them cheerfully, her simple black moiré dress brightened with a pretty scarf featuring bright Art Deco patterns from the accessories department downstairs, and her rich chestnut coloured hair set in glossy and cascading, fashionable Marcel waves*************.

 

“How much is this, please?” Edith asks.

 

“Three and six, Miss.” the shopgirl replies with a smile, showing off her perfect pearly teeth as she glances at the book in Edith’s hands.

 

“A bit more than the sixpence they used to cost.” Hilda whispers in Edith’s ear. “Or free on loan from the library, like my Mum got them. You’ll spoil those grandchildren of Mrs. Boothby’s.”

 

“I hope so, Hilda.” Edith replies quietly as she blushes.

 

“A lovely gift for birthday, or perhaps for Christmas, if I may say so, Miss.” the shop girl says cheerfully. “It’s good to get in and do a spot of early Christmas shopping.”

 

“That’s the idea.” Edith replies, smiling pleasurably as she hands the book over to the girl behind the counter and fishes out her purse from her green leather handbag.

 

“The shops down Oxford Street are already starting to get busier, now that it’s December.” the shop girl goes on brightly. “People are suddenly realising that Christmas is just around the corner, really.”

 

*Developed apparently simultaneously by toymakers Morris Michtom in America and Richard Steiff under his aunt Margarete Steiff's company in Germany in the early Twentieth Century, the teddy bear, purportedly named after American President Theodore Roosevelt, became a popular children's toy very quickly, and by 1922 when this story is set, a staple of many children’s nursery toys.

 

**A pixie bonnet is a knitted bonnet usually worn by babies and small children which covers the whole of their head and is fastened under the chin. Adapted from more traditional styles of baby bonnets and introduced in the early 1920s, they quickly became popular with parents as suitable headwear for their young children as they protected the heads of babies with little to no hair from the cold, and were easily made using knitting patterns distributed through women’s periodicals.

 

***Harry Gordon Selfridge believed in women’s emancipation. When the Great War broke out in 1914 and many of his male lift attendants went off to fight, he allowed women to fill their roles, as well as many other roles formerly filled by men in his department store. When hostilities with Germany ended in 1918, many young men didn’t return, having made the ultimate sacrifice for King and country, which meant a scarcity of men. The female lift attendants had proven so popular during the war years that Harry Gordon Selfridge made them a permanent fixture in his department store, much to the shock of many shoppers. However, like most things, he used his choice to his advantage, advertising not only its uniqueness in the department stores along Oxford and Regent Streets, but also wooing the millions of emancipated women who were happy to shop under the roof of such an enlightened man in what was then a very patriarchal society dominated by men. By the 1924 when this story is set, his female lift attendants wore a smart livery of frock coats, breeches and caps in Selfridges colours.

 

****A Passage to India is a 1924 novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Mr. Cyril Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Adela Quested. During a trip to the fictitious Marabar Caves (modelled on the Barabar Caves of Bihar), Adela thinks she finds herself alone with Dr. Aziz in one of the caves (when in fact he is in an entirely different cave; whether the attacker is real or a reaction to the cave is ambiguous), and subsequently panics and flees; it is assumed that Dr. Aziz has attempted to assault her. Aziz's trial, and its run-up and aftermath, bring to a boil the common racial tensions and prejudices between Indians and the British during the colonial era.

 

*****The Deductions of Colonel Gore is a 1924 detective novel by the Irish-born writer Lynn Brock. It was the first in his series of seven novels featuring the character of Colonel Wyckham Gore. Gore enjoyed popularity during the early stages of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. t was also published under the alternative title ‘The Barrington Mystery’. Colonel Gore gives a Masai knife as a wedding present to Barbara Lethbridge. When he returns to England the following year he finds she stands accused or murder, as the knife has been plunged into a blackmailer Barrington with whom she is involved. Against his better instincts Gore takes on the role of amateur detective in order to clear her name.

 

******‘Old New York’ is a collection of four novellas by Edith Wharton, revolving around upper-class New York City society in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. The novellas are not directly interconnected, though certain fictional characters appear in more than one story. The New York of these stories is the same as the New York of ‘The Age of Innocence” (which had been successfully published in 1920), from which several fictional characters have spilled over into these stories. The observation of the manners and morals of Nineteenth Century New York upper-class society is directly reminiscent of ‘The Age of Innocence’, but these novellas are shaped more as character studies than as a full-blown novel. Some characters who overlap among these four stories and ‘The Age of Innocence’: Mrs. (Catherine) Manson Mingott, Sillerton Jackson, Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, Henry Van der Luyden. Other families and institutions also appear in more than one place among this extended set of New York stories.

 

******* ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’ is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by The Bodley Head on 22 August 1924 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The character Colonel Race is introduced in this novel. Anne Beddingfeld is on her own and ready for adventures when one comes her way. She sees a man die in a tube station and picks up a piece of paper dropped nearby. The message on the paper leads her to South Africa as she fits more pieces of the puzzle together about the death she witnessed. There is a murder in England the next day, and the murderer attempts to kill her on the ship en route to Cape Town.

 

********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.

 

*********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.

 

**********Meaning for a long time, the origin of the phrase “till the cows come home” comes from the practice of cows returning to their shelters at some indefinite point, usually at a slow, languid pace.

 

***********Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later Nineteenth Century. Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. He was part of the Arts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children's books, ceramic tiles, wallpapers and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the international socialist movement.

 

************In 1863, the engraver and printer Edmund Evans commissioned Walter Crane to produce a set of designs for a potential book series. This was the period of greater mechanisation in publishing, and that this was often used as an excuse to neglect design. Walter Crane wrote: “The books for babies, current at that time (about 1865 to 1870) of the cheaper sort called toy books were not very inspiriting. These were generally careless and unimaginative woodcuts, very casually coloured by hand, dabs of pink and emerald green being laid on across faces with a somewhat reckless aim.” Edmund Evans believed paper picture books could be greatly improved and still sold for sixpence if printed in sufficient quantity. Walter Crane and Edmund Evans gradually transformed the toy book into a sophisticated art form using a variety of technical, intellectual and aesthetic means. Advances in the use of wood engravings for colour printing made it possible for Evans to accurately print Crane’s designs in a wide range of sophisticated colours. Crane’s designs were printed by Evans for the publisher Frederick Warne in a Sixpenny Toybook series, bound in pale yellow rather than white. In 1867 Crane began designing toy books for George Routledge. Over the next ten years, he illustrated thirty-seven of these toy books, which would become the most popular children’s books of the day.

 

*************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.

 

These books might be the kind of children’s book you may like to give someone you love for Christmas, but if you do, they may need a magnifying glass, for these are all artisan pieces as part of my extensive 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The books on display here, and in the shelves behind are all 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, this selection of books designed by the prolific children’s illustrator, Walter Crane and two (Abroad and London Town) by this father Thomas Crane. I bought these on purpose because I have loved Walter Crane’s and Thomas Crane’s work ever since I was a child, and I have real life-size first editions of many of these books including, Abroad, London Town, A Masque of Days, Beauty and the Beast, the Hind in the Wood, Cinderella’s Picture Book and The Frog Prince, the latter of which stands open, showing an illustration from the book. 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 them all 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 round display table on which the books stand tilts like a real loo table, and is an artisan miniature from an unknown maker with a marquetry inlaid top, which came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom.

Der Kern von M42

Aufgenommen mit einer ASI290mmc und 35nm H-Alpha Filter

100 x 5s bei Gain200 Gamma 50.

Optik war ein 6"/850mm Newton

auf iOptron CEM60 ohne Guiding

Ich wollte sehen wie viel Details man im Kern sehen kann.

Leider konnte ich nicht mehr Bilder aufnehmen...ein Baum war im Weg.

Aber das hole ich sicher nach.

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Riley Gaines speaking with attendees at the 2023 Pastors Summit hosted by Turning Point Faith at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.

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 north-east across London, away from Cavendish Mews and Mayfair, over Paddington and past Lisson Grove to the comfortably affluent suburb of Little Venice with its cream painted Regency terraces and railing surrounded public parks. Here in Clifton Gardens Lettice’s maiden Aunt Eglantine, affectionately known as Aunt Egg by her nieces and nephews, lives in a beautiful four storey house that is part of a terrace of twelve. Eglantine Chetwynd is Viscount Wrexham’s younger sister, and as well as being unmarried, is an artist and ceramicist of some acclaim. Originally a member of the Pre-Raphaelites* in England, these days she flits through artistic and bohemian circles and when not at home in her spacious and light filled studio at the rear of her garden, can be found mixing with mostly younger artistic friends in Chelsea. Her unmarried status, outlandish choice of friends and rather reformist and unusual dress sense shocks Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, and attracts her derision. In addition, she draws Sadie’s ire, as Aunt Egg has always received far more affection and preferential treatment from her children. Viscount Wrexham on the other hand adores his artistic little sister, and has always made sure that she can live the lifestyle she chooses and create art.

 

Before going into luncheon, Lettice is taking tea with her favourite aunt in her wonderfully overcluttered drawing room, which unlike most other houses in the terrace where the drawing room is located in the front and overlooks the street, is nestled at the back of the house, overlooking the beautiful and slightly rambunctious rear garden and studio. It is just another example of Lettice’s aunt flouting the conventions women like Lady Sadie cling to. The room is overstuffed with an eclectic collection of bric-à-brac. Antique vases and ornamental plates jostle for space with pieces of Eglantyne’s own work and that of her artistic friends on whatnots and occasional tables, across the mantle and throughout several glass fronted china cabinets. Every surface is cluttered to over capacity. As Lettice picks up the fine blue and gilt cup of tea proffered by her aunt, she cannot help but feel sorry for Augusta, Eglantine’s Swiss head parlour maid and Clotilde, the second parlour maid, who must feel that their endless dusting is futile, for no sooner would they have finished a room than they would have to start again since dust would have settled where they began. In addition to being a fine ceramicist, Eglantyne is also an expert embroiderer, and her works appear on embroidered cushions, footstools and even a pole fire screen to Lettice’s left as she settles back into a rather ornate corner chair that Eglantyne always saves for guests.

 

“So, how did you find Gossington, Lettice?” Eglantine asks as she sips tea from her own gilt edged teacup.

 

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. Large blue glass droplets hang from her ears, glowing in the diffused light filtering through the lace curtains that frame the window overlooking the garden. The earrings match the sparkling blue bead necklace about her neck that cascades over the top of her usual uniform of a lose Delphos dress** that does not require her to wear a corset of any kind.

 

“Oh it was splendid, Aunt Egg.” Lettice enthuses from her seat. “The Caxtons really are a fascinating and rather eccentric pair.”

 

“Yes,” muses Eglantine with a smile. “That’s why I like them, and always have. I knew you would too.”

 

“I didn’t know you were acquainted with them, and certainly not well enough to obtain an invitation for me, and Margot and Dickie.”

 

“Well, I didn’t want your first visit to Gossington be one you entered into by yourself. Whilst I know you can hold you own socially, my dear, I sometimes feel the first visit to Gossington can be a bit daunting if you are on your own, especially with so many witty young writers and poets in Gladys’ circle. I’ve heard and witnessed her houseguests saying the wrong thing in front of a wit, and before you know it, they become the butt end of witticisms all weekend, which can become rather tiresome after the first evening if you are subject to them.”

 

“Well, luckily nothing like that happened on my visit to me, Margot or Dickie: in fact no-one really.”

 

“It must have been a more sedate weekend then.” Eglantyne remarks sagely. “No Cecil or Noël then, I take it?”

 

“Cecil?” Lettice queries, before thinking again. “Cecil, Beaton***? Noël Coward****?”

 

“Yes.” Eglantyne remarks nonchalantly as she tugs at the edges of her soft pink silk knitted cardigan’s tassel ties to loosen it around her waist. “I do love them both dearly, and they’re terribly fun and awfully clever, but their wit, Noël’s especially, can be quite cutting. Noël’s planning to put out a new show later this year after his success in America and here with ‘The Young Idea’*****. It’s called ‘The Maelstrom’ or ‘The Vortex’****** or some such thing. It’s about a relationship between a son and his vain and aging mother.” She rolls her eyes. “Which could be really rather tedious, with two actors quipping at one another over three acts, except he’s decided to make the mother character a promiscuous creature with an extramarital affair at the heart of the play, and throw in some drug abuse just for a bit of spice, which should make it a roaring success, and an entertaining evening at the theatre, or at least we all hope so.”

 

“No, they weren’t there.” Lettice admits. “I would have loved it if Noël Coward was though. Gerald would have been green with envy. He has a fascination with him.”

 

“Well, I’m hardly surprised by that.” Eglantyne replies, looking her niece squarely in the face, giving her a knowing look. “They have so much in common, as he does with Cecil.” She cocks an eyebrow and moved her head slightly.

 

“Aunt Egg!” Lettice gasps, raising her hand to her throat, where she clasps at the dainty string of pearls she wears as she feels a flush of embarrassment begin to work its way up her neck and to her cheeks.

 

“Surely you aren’t shocked, my dear?” Eglantyne says, before carefully placing her cup back on to the galleried silver tray on her petit point embroidered footstool, on which the teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl stand. “When you’ve moved in the artistic circles I have, you learn very quickly that love comes in many forms – not just between a man and woman.”

 

“I am shocked, Aunt Egg.” Lettice admits, smoothing the crepe skirt of the eau de nil frock she is wearing. “I’ve always told Gerald to be so careful.”

 

“Oh, come dear: a man running a frock shop! It may be all well and good in Paris, but not in London, my dear!”

 

“There’s Norman Hartnell*******.” Lettice counters.

 

“Exactly!” replies Eglantyne with a knowing nod. “Anyway, however discreet Gerald may be, I have it on very good authority from acquaintances of mine in Chelsea, that he has been seen at select gatherings of like-minded souls with a rather talented and handsome young West End clarinettist on his arm.”

 

“Who told you about Gerald and Cyril?”

 

“Never you mind, Lettice my dear. I’m not giving up two of my very best sources of delicious London society gossip to you, just so you can go and tell them to keep mum! I want to know all the ins and outs of what is going on, especially about people I know. I need my little indulgences, since I cannot be everywhere as I’d like to be, and I am no longer quite the topic of drawing room conversation any more as my star fades. Even my art is now seen as Fin de Siècle********, rather than à la mode********* by the newer generation of artists, in spite of my best efforts to try new things and keep ahead of the trends.” She sighs. “I fear it is a lost cause. We all of us will fall out of fashion one day.” She pauses and considers something for a moment. “Goodness! I’m starting to sound like the mother in Noël’s new play. If I didn’t know he’d based her on Grace Forster**********, I might assume he had done so on me!” She reaches out and grasps Lettice’s bare forearm near her elbow and squeezes it comfortingly. “Don’t worry, I won’t speak out-of-turn about our dear Gerald. I know he’s your best chum from childhood days, and I love him almost as much as you do. His secret is perfectly safe with me.”

 

“Well, I’m grateful for that.” Lettice sighs. “I do worry about Gerald. I have known about his inclinations for a long time now, and I’ve met Cyril several times, but Cyril is more flamboyant and open about who he is than Gerald is.”

 

“Don’t worry. The gossip stemmed from a perfectly safe source, and as I said, they have only been seen together as a couple at select parties where such inclinations are not uncommon.” Eglantyne releases a satisfied sigh, indicating the conclusion of that particular conversation. “Now, thinking about acquaintances, and going back to your original question about my acquaintance with the Caxtons: I’ve known Gladys for longer than I’ve known John. I knew her when she had published her first Madeline St John novel. What she writes is ghastly romantic drivel in my opinion, and I was horrified to find you reading her romance novels, Lettice.”

 

“I don’t read them any more, thanks to Margot, who has broadened my reading range considerably from Madeline St John romances.”

 

“Well thank goodness for Margot Channon!” Eglantine breathes a sigh of relief. “Jolly good show, Margot. I never thought of her as a great reader of anything outside the society and fashion pages of the newspapers.”

 

“Oh, she’s a great reader, Aunt Egg. But my maid likes to read Madeline St John novels. She was positively beside herself with excitement when she found out I was meeting her favourite authoress.

 

“Well, I don’t know if I approve any more of your maid reading such romances than I do you, but whatever I may or may not think of the good of Gladys’ novels, they obviously have a broad appeal. Anyway, after her moderate success with her initial books, she met John, and then she became a patron to the arts thanks to the Caxton brewery money. She even bought more than her fair share of some of my ceramic pieces. Simply because she could, and she could promote my work.”

 

“I know, Aunt Egg. She showed me.”

 

“Anyway, it was really just by a stroke of good fortune that you received your invitation at just the right time.”

 

“Not according to Lally, Aunt Egg. She was put out because it rather spoiled the plans she had for us whilst I was staying with her at Dorrington House, and I think she was a little hurt that she wasn’t included in the invitation to Gossington, but Margot and Dickie were.”

 

“That might explain why she was so short with me when I telephoned Buckinghamshire last week to ask after her wellbeing and that of the children in Charles’ absence. Well,” She sighs in an exasperated fashion. “I cannot extend the largess of someone else any more than I already did to wrangle you and the Channons an invitation.” Eglantyne takes another sip of her tea. “It actually came about because Glady telephoned me a few weeks before Christmas. She was vying for an introduction to you after reading the article about you in Country Life. As you now know, her niece Phoebe has come into property here in London, and Gladys felt Phoebe needed a push to redecorate and make the place more her own, rather than simply adding a layer to her parent’s designs.” She pauses again. “I take it you did accept Glady’s commission.”

 

“Gladys is a little hard to refuse, Aunt Egg.” Lettice admits, before taking another sip from her cup. “She would have worn me down at length if I had said no.”

 

“Oh yes, that’s Gladys!” Eglantyne chortles, making the faceted bugle beads tumbling down the front of her sea green Delphos gown jangle about, glinting prettily. “She wears everyone down eventually.”

 

“But as it was, she didn’t have to, and I said yes.”

 

“Good for you, Lettice. It will be healthy for you to be working and creative. It will take your mind off all this Selwyn Spencely business. I take it you haven’t heard from him?” When Lettice bites her lower lip and shakes her head, Eglantyne continues. “Pity. I always thought him more of a man and would stand up to his bullying mother. She always did ride roughshod in everything she did when she was younger.”

 

“I wouldn’t dare go against lady Zinnia’s wishes, Aunt Egg. She’s positively terrifying.”

 

“You do realise that this is potentially your new mother-in-law if all goes according to your wishes for you and Selwyn, Lettice?”

 

“Of course!” Lettice replies. Then she pauses and her face clouds over. “Mind you, I hadn’t really considered the concept any more than an abstracted and distant idea until you just mentioned it. That is a rather frightening thought, especially if she doesn’t particularly like me.”

 

“Zinnia doesn’t like most women, Lettice, especially ones whom she perceives as a threat to her, or her well laid plans. You are young and pretty, and far more fashionable than she is. You are intelligent and often challenge the world and your place in it, as you should. However, like me, Zinnia’s star is fading as she gets older. She won’t always wield this power she currently has over Selwyn, especially if he comes back from Durban in a year feeling the same as when he left. You told me that Zinnia had agreed that Selwyn could marry you if he felt inclined upon his return.”

 

Lettice nods in response to her aunt’s statement, which comes across as more of a question.

 

“And you still love him?”

 

“Aunt Egg!” Lettice gasps. “How can you even ask?”

 

“You are young, my dear. When I was your age, I was forever changing my mind about all sorts of things: what to do, where to go, what to wear.”

 

“Well, Selwyn isn’t a Sunday best hat, subject to the fickle of fashion, Aunt Egg.”

 

“Just so, my dear. So long as you are sure.”

 

“I am, Aunt Egg.” Lettice replies with a steeliness in her voice. “Most definitely.”

 

The two ladies fall into a companionable silence for a short while, momentarily distracted by their own private thoughts. Between them on the mantle, Eglantyne’s gilt Georgian carriage clock marks the passing of the minutes with gentle ticks that echo between the two women, the sound absorbed by all the soft furnishings and knick-knacks around the room.

 

“Aunt Egg?” Lettice ventures tentatively at length.

 

“Yes, my dear?”

 

“What did you mean by Gladys wearing everyone down?”

 

“Just that my dear. Gladys has always had the power to pester people into submission.” Eglantyne laughs. “Why do you ask?”

 

“Well, it’s a few things, really. To begin with it was something Sir John said.”

 

“John?”

 

“Oh, not her husband, Sir John – Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.”

 

“Good heavens!” Eglantyne gasps. “Was he there? Nasty old lecher. I still can’t believe Sadie invited him to that matchmaking ball she held for you, when she knows as much about his reputation as a womaniser as I do.”

 

“He was there, Aunt Egg, and he was actually very nice to me throughout the weekend, and not the least predatorial.”

 

“Will wonders never cease? Does he have an ulterior motive?”

 

“Not that I’m aware of, Aunt Egg.”

 

“Well, just mind yourself around him, my dear Lettice. I’m no prude like your mother, but I do know that he isn’t a man with whom you can let down your guard. Always be on alert with him.”

 

“Yes, Aunt Egg.”

 

“Good girl. Of course, I should hardly be surprised that he was talking about Gladys. It’s no secret that when Gladys was still Gladys Chambers, she and Sir John Nettleford-Huges were an item. Then she met Sir John Caxton, and that ended the affair. You did know that, didn’t you Lettice?”

 

“Not before Sir John arrived late to dinner on our first evening at Gossington. But then Gladys told us a few stories about their time together over the course of the weekend.” Lettice blushes as she remembers the tale Lady Gladys told the company at dinner of Sir John eating fruit from the small of her back.

 

“Yes, I’m sure she did.” Eglantyne’s mouth narrows in distaste. “Her taste in men was always questionable prior to her meeting her husband. Anyway, what did Sir John Nettleford-Hughes have to say that would trouble you, my dear?”

 

“Well, he said Gladys usually wears people down to her way of thinking in the end.”

 

“And why does that concern you, Lettice? Are you worried that Gladys is going to insist on making changes Phoebe or you don’t like? I can assure you that she adores her niece. Phoebe is the daughter Gladys never planned to have, but also the child Gladys didn’t know could bring her so much joy and fulfilment in her life, as a parent.”

 

“I don’t doubt that, Aunt Egg, but it does seem to me that there is an ulterior motive to Gladys wanting Phoebe’s flat redecorated.”

 

“An ulterior motive, Lettice?”

 

“Yes.” Lettice sighs. “I think Gladys sees her dead brother and sister-in-law as some kind of threat to her happy life with Phoebe.”

 

“Threat?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“That’s a very grave allegation, my dear Lettice.” Eglantyne says with concern. “What proof do you have to support your suspicions.”

 

“Nothing solid, only circumstantial anecdotes.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“Well, when she talks about her deceased brother and sister-in-law in front of Phoebe, or even to Phoebe, she refers to them as ‘Reginald and Marjory’, not ‘your mother and father’ or ‘Phoebe’s parents’.”

 

Eglantyne pinches the inside of her right cheek between her teeth as she considers Lettice’s observation. “Well, it probably helps keep the waters from getting muddy. The Chambers died out in India when Phoebe was still very young. I would imagine that Gladys and John are more like parents to Phoebe than Reginald and Marjory were.”

 

“Yes, but nevertheless, they are her parents.” Lettice counters.

 

“That’s true. But Gladys referring to them as she naturally would by their first names is no reason to see her feeling threatened by their memory, Lettice.” Eglantyne cautions with a wagging finger from which clings a large amethyst ring which sparkles in the light of the drawing room.

 

“But this brings me back to my concerns about what Sir John Nettleford-Huges said, which culminates with what you said just a moment ago. If Pheobe really is the child that Gladys never had, nor knew she wanted, but that subsequent to her discovery of the joy of parenthood Gladys’ narrative with Pheobe is for her to look upon Gladys more as a mother than her own mother, then she would naturally want to put an emotional distance between Phobe and the memory of her own mother. I think she is deliberately trying to eradicate the memory of Reginald and Marjory from Pheobe’s mind.”

 

“I really do think you are overdramatising things, Lettice my dear.” Eglantyne insists. “Gladys loves Phoebe. Why on earth would she want to banish her precious memories of her parents, who were taken far too soon?”

 

“Because she sees them as a threat to the legitimacy of her rearing of Phoebe.”

 

“But how can two dead people threaten what Gladys and John did, stepping in to take care of Phoebe as their ward?”

 

“Nothing, but that doesn’t mean that Gladys doesn’t think it. People can be irrational, Aunt Egg.”

 

“The only person I am thinking may be a little irrational at present, I’m sorry to say, is you, my dear.”

 

“But Gladys doesn’t have anything nice to say about her brother or sister-in-law. She is very dismissive of their memory, and she is openly disparaging in her remarks about Marjory.”

 

“Well, it is true that Gladys always felt that Reginald could have married someone grander than Marjory, who was just a middle-class solicitor’s daughter from Swiss Cottage***********. But really, Lettice, how does this dislike of Reginald’s choice in wife manifest itself as a threat to Gladys?”

 

“Well, when I was taking to Phoebe about redecorating her parent’s Bloomsbury flat, she seemed quite uninspired by the idea. She seems perfectly happy to leave things as they are, whereas it is Gladys who seems intent on redecorating every part of the flat, and in so doing remove any memory of her brother and his wife. She is quite enthusiastic about it, as a matter-of-fact.”

 

“Look, Lettice,” Eglantyne says, leaning forward in her wing backed chair and looking her niece earnestly in the face. “You’ve met Phoebe now. You know how fey she is.”

 

“Yes, that’s an apt description of her, Aunt Egg. My thoughts were that she has a very other worldly way about her.”

 

“Exactly, Lettice. So, you also know that she isn’t like Gladys. She doesn’t express her opinions readily.”

 

“I’ll say. It was hard enough to squeeze a colour choice to redecorate the flat with out of her.”

 

“And that’s why Gladys came to me, asking for your services. She is concerned that Phoebe is so disinterested in anything beyond her studies in horticulture that she will never redecorate the flat. She thought that being closer to Phoebe’s age, you might be able to make some headway where she, being so much older, has failed.”

 

“But would it be so bad for Phoebe to leave things the way they are in Bloomsbury, if the arrangement in existence suits her?”

 

“If Sadie had given you a fully furnished flat, would you have left it decorated in the way she gave it to you, Lettice?”

 

“Of course not!” Lettice scoffs.

 

“Exactly!”

 

“But that’s because I am an interior designer, and I have my own independent ideas about what my home should look like.”

 

“Of course you do.” Eglantyne soothes. “So, think for a moment. Even with her backwards ways of thinking, has Sadie ever tried to stop you from redecorating your own flat at Cavendish Mews?”

 

“Well, no.” Lettice says. “But what does that have to do with Gladys and Phoebe?”

 

“Sadie wouldn’t stop you from having some independence and would allow you to express your own opinions in style at the very least. Perhaps Gladys is trying to instil the same streak of independence in Phoebe, which is obviously so sorely lacking in her.” She tuts. “Consider that, my dear, before you go accusing Gladys of wishing to wipe away the memory of her brother and sister-in-law. Now.” The older woman gets to her feet with a groan. “I must see what is happening with luncheon.” She groans again as she rubs the small of her back. “Augusta is very good, but like me, she has been slowing down a little bit as of late. We’re all getting older. Please excuse me, my dear.”

 

Lettice sits in her chair and contemplates what her aunt has said as she watches the woman love elegantly around china cabinets the sofa and occasional tables as she wends her way to the drawing room door. What Eglantine says is true, but at the same time, Lettice cannot help but feel that her own judgement of the situation is somehow more in line with the truth of the matter. Lady Gladys has agreed to arrange a time, when she is back in London promoting her latest romance novel, to take Lettice to view Phoebe’s Bloomsbury flat, and she wonders what that occasion will be like.

 

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

 

**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.

 

***Cecil Beaton was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as an Oscar winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. Although he had relationships with women including actress Greta Garbo, he was a well-known homosexual.

 

****Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise". He too was a well-known homosexual, even though it was taboo in England for much of his life.

 

*****’The Young Idea’, subtitled ‘A comedy of youth in three acts’, is an early play by Noël Coward, written in 1921 and first produced the following year. After a pre-London provincial tour it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 60 performances from 1 February 1923, and is one of Noel Coward’s first commercial successes, albeit moderate. The play portrays the successful manoeuvring by two young adults to prise their father away from his unsympathetic second wife and reunite him with his first wife, their mother.

 

******’The Vortex’ is a play in three acts by the English writer and actor Noël Coward. The play depicts the sexual vanity of a rich, ageing beauty, her troubled relationship with her adult son, and drug abuse in British society circles after the First World War. The son's cocaine habit is seen by many critics as a metaphor for homosexuality, then taboo in Britain. Despite, or because of, its scandalous content for the time, the play was Coward's first great commercial success. The play premiered in November 1924 in London and played in three theatres until June 1925, followed by a British tour and a New York production in 1925 and 1926. It has enjoyed several revivals and a film adaptation.

 

*******Norman Hartnell was a leading British fashion designer, best known for his work for the ladies of the royal family. Hartnell gained the Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) in 1940, and Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Princess Beatrice also wore a dress designed for Queen Elizabeth II by Hartnell for her wedding in 2020. He worked unsuccessfully for two London designers, including Lucile (Lady Duff Gordon), whom he sued for damages when several of his drawings appeared unattributed in her weekly fashion column in the London Daily Sketch. He eventually opened his own business at 10 Bruton Street, Mayfair in 1923, with the financial help of his father and first business colleague, his sister Phyllis. In the mid-1950s, Hartnell reached the peak of his fame and the business employed some 500 people together with many others in the ancillary businesses. Hartnell never married, but enjoyed a discreet and quiet life at a time when homosexual relations between men were illegal.

 

********Fin de Siècle is a French phrase meaning 'end of century' and is applied specifically as a historical term to the end of the nineteenth century and even more specifically to decade of 1890s.

 

*********The term à la mode, meaning fashionable comes from the French and means literally "according to the fashion".

 

**********Grace Forster was the elegant mother of Noël Coward’s friend Stewart Forster. Grace was talking to a young admirer, when a young woman within earshot of Noël and Stewart said, "Will you look at that old hag over there with the young man in tow; she's old enough to be his mother". Forster paid no attention, and Coward immediately went across and embraced Grace, as a silent rebuke to the young woman who had made the remark. The episode led him to consider how a "mother–young son–young lover triangle" might be the basis of a play. Thus ‘The Vortex’ synopsis was born.

 

***********Swiss Cottage is an area of Hampstead in the Borough of Camden in London. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and includes Swiss Cottage tube station. Swiss Cottage lies three and a quarter miles northwest of Charing Cross. The area was named after a public house in the centre of it, known as "Ye Olde Swiss Cottage". Once developed, Swiss Cottage was always a well-to-do suburb of middle and upper middle-class citizens in better professions.

 

This lovely tea set might look like something your mother or grandmother used, but this set is a bit different, for like everything around it, it is part of my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Aunt Egg's dainty tea set on the embroidered footstool is made of white metal by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The set has been hand painted by artisan miniaturist Victoria Fasken.

 

The footstool on which the tea set stands 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 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 fireplace and its ornate overmantle is a “Kensignton” model also made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. The peacock feather fire screen, brass fire tools and ornate brass fender come from various online 1:12 miniature suppliers.

 

The round hand embroidered footstool at the left of the photograph acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, as was the 1:12 artisan miniature sewing box on the small black japanned table in the background

 

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

make-up: Kim Reyes

hair: Shawn Bundy

 

strobist info: sb800 + rayflash high center, sb800 + umbrella low center far behind camera low power, sb800 + gridspot lowest power camera left on bg, triggered by sc28 cord.

this was right on the coast of alabama

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012),[1] known by her stage name, Donna Sommer, later Donna Summer, was an American singer and songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, she was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach #1 on the United States Billboard album chart and charted four number-one singles in the United States within a 13-month period. Summer has reportedly sold over 100 million records, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJI_3qtsaE

 

Click on the images twice see the large un re-sized versions of the photos.

Tide on its way out at Yachats Ocean. Yachats, Oregon USA

Still wearing a towel

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 just a short distance from Cavendish Mews, in the artistic and bohemian suburb of Bloomsbury, where Lettice is visiting the pied-à-terre* of Phoebe Chambers, niece and ward of Lady Gladys Caxton. Through her social connections, Lettice’s Aunt Egg contrived an invitation for Lettice to an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Caxton, who are very well known amongst the smarter bohemian set of London society for their weekend parties at their Scottish country estate, Gossington, and enjoyable literary evenings in their Belgravia townhouse. Lady Gladys is a successful authoress in her own right and writes under the nom de plume of Madeline St John. Over the course of the weekend, Lettice was coerced into accepting Lady Glady’s request that she redecorate Phoebe’s small London flat. Phoebe, upon coming of age inherited the flat, which had belonged to her parents, Reginald and Marjorie Chambers, who died out in India when Phoebe was still a little girl. The flat was held in trust by Lady Gladys until her ward came of age. When Phoebe decided to pursue a career in garden design and was accepted by a school in London closely associated with the Royal Society, she started living part time in Bloomsbury. Lady Gladys feels that the flat is too old fashioned and outdated for a young girl like Phoebe. When Lettice agreed to take on the commission, Lady Gladys said she would arrange a time for Lettice to inspect the flat the next time Lady Gladys was in London. Now the day has arrived.

 

Having heard from Lady Gladys over the course of the weekend party in Gossington that Phoebe’s pied-à-terre had been shut up for years and was in a somewhat neglected state of affairs, she expected it to be not unlike the study she recently saw at Arkwright Bury in Wiltshire, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gifford: a room which she has also agreed to redecorate. However, unlike the musty, dust filled and forgotten study, shut up and stuffed with an odd assortment of bits and pieces and boxes of junk, Lettice is pleasantly surprised to find Pheobe’s flat remarkably cosy. Although too small for her own liking and tastes, Lettice can see how a small flat like this would suit an independent girl like Pheobe. It has one bedroom with an adjoining dressing room, a small kitchenette and a bathroom in addition to the drawing room she stands in now. Traces of the studious and serious Phoebe are everywhere with piles of books stacked on footstools and occasional tables and a cluttered desk buried under books and notes from her studies. The general feel of the flat is comfortable, studious clutter, and whilst Lettice cannot deny that the pre-war furnishings are a little outdated, they seem to be perfectly functional for Pheobe, who appears far more concerned about and focussed upon reading her collection of horticulture books and referring to her notes written in a neat hand, rather than the pattern or design of the sofa or chairs upon which she perches.

 

“So these are your friends from your horticulture course, Pheobe?” Lettice asks as she stands before the small coal fireplace that heats the drawing room and stares at the unframed photographs on its narrow mantle shelf which jostle for space with one another and packets of flower seeds. When Phoebe nods shallowly in a timid manner, Lettice takes a moment to look more closely at them. They are women of around Lettice’s age, all different sizes and shapes as they pose on a pier in an undisclosed seaside town, in front of a formal building which Lettice assumes is likely to be the Royal Horticulture Society and a final one where four girls pose in their bathing costumes at a lido. Phoebe is not amongst their number, Lettice observes. “You aren’t with them, Pheobe?”

 

“I prefer to take photographs.” Pheobe mumbles.

 

“Do you like photography, Pheobe?”

 

Pheobe nods shallowly again, and then mutters, “I prefer plants.”

 

Lettice smiles as she turns back to the photographs and goes on gingerly, so as not to frighten the mousey Pheobe, “Well, all your friends look like quite a jolly crew. Do you get along well with them all?” Phoebe doesn’t reply, but nods quickly again, causing the halo of blonde wispy curls around her face to bounce about and take on a lithe and lively life of their own.

 

“Here we are then!” comes Lady Glady’s booming voice cheerfully as she sails into the cluttered room, a sweep of lavender, lace and winking diamonds and faceted glass beads. “Tea for three.” She deposits a galleried silver tray topped with tea making paraphernalia onto an ornately decorated Edwardian tea table of mahogany standing between two armchairs upholstered in peach floral brocade and an upright backed chair upholstered in cream satin. “I can still find the tea things, even after not having lived here for more than a decade,” She looks pointedly at Pheobe. “Which just confirms my suspicions.”

 

“And what suspicions are those, Lady Gladys?” Lettice asks.

 

“Ah-ah!” the older woman wags her finger admonishing at Lettice. “We may not be at Gossington, my dear, but remember that I am still a Fabian**, and Fabianism is not bound by walls. We are egalitarian, Lettice. We are all on a first name basis.”

 

“Sorry,” Lettice apologises, lowering her head in admonishment. “Old habits die hard, Gladys.”

 

“Never mind, dear.” Lady Gladys reaches out and rubs Lettice’s shoulder comfortingly.

 

“What suspicions were you referring to, Auntie Gladys?” Phoebe asks, uttering the most words Lettice has heard her say since she and Lady Gladys arrived.

 

“The suspicion, Pheobe dear,” The older woman raises one of her diamond ring encrusted hands up to her niece’s face and tugs gently on her chin, teasingly. “And don’t call me Auntie. You know I don’t like it!” she scolds.

 

“No Gladys.” Pheobe replies, lowering her head.

 

“The suspicion is, Pheobe, that this flat is more of a mausoleum to Reginald and Marjorie’s memory, rather than a place for you to live in.”

 

“Where things were left by my parents makes sense to me, Gladys.”

 

“Well, be that as it may,” Lady Gladys says with a serious look clouding her jowly face. “It’s unhealthy to live in the shadows of two people who have been dead for many, many years.”

 

Lettice glances anxiously at Pheobe, who in Lettice’s experience has only shown a demonstrative concern for her parents’ memories beyond her interest in plants. The way her aunt speaks about Pheobe’s parents, she worries the poor, fey girl will start to cry. However, to her surprise, she remains stoic and silent, her gaze falling to the polished floorboards and worn Indian carpet beneath her.

 

Lady Gladys glances up with a critical gaze at the two photographic studio portraits in oval frames hanging to either side of the fireplace. “Don’t you agree, Lettice?”

 

“Me?” Lettice gulps, not wishing to come between the older woman, her niece and the ghosts of both their pasts which are so complexly entwined. “Well I…”

 

However, before Lettice has to try and stumble her way through a stuttered response, Lady Gladys gasps, “The cake! I forgot the cake! It’s still in the kitchenette. We can’t have tea and not have cake, can we?” She asks rhetorically. She quickly sweeps out of the room again with heavy, clumping footsteps.

 

“I only call her Auntie when Gladys is being especially frustrating.” Phoebe whispers, her mouth ends perking up in a tentative smile. “Which is quite often, really.”

 

“Pheobe!” Lettice finds herself surprised that Phoebe can muster that much pluck to rebel against her domineering aunt.

 

“She hates me calling her Auntie because she thinks it ages her, and there are few things Gladys hates more than being reminded that she is old.”

 

“Phoebe!” Lettice gasps again, startled by the girl’s sudden daring streak.

 

“That’s why, aside from Nettie and a very select few others, Gladys won’t entertain anyone her own age. The last thing she wants is to become irrelevant.”

 

“Oh, she isn’t that vain, surely, Pheobe.”

 

Phoebe is about to counter Lettice’s remark when Lady Gladys strides back into the drawing room.

 

“Here we are then, my dears! Since I only pay my London housekeeper to keep house, and Mrs. Brookhurst is very particular about sticking to the assigned specifics designated in her role, Harrod’s finest comes to the rescue!” She places a beautifully light and golden Victoria sponge oozing jam and cream onto the tea table next to the pink Art Nouveau floral teapot.

 

“Not bake it yourself, Gladys?” Phoebe remarks saucily, glancing cheekily at Lettice from below her fluttering blonde lashes.

 

“I may have lived here once, Phoebe, but I wouldn’t remember how to use that old range in there.” Lady Gladys defends. “Besides, you know my opinion on household chores.” She looks at Lettice and goes on with a bright smile. “It is my opinion, which is to the contrary of what is written in story books, that cooking and cleaning are a guaranteed way to quash beauty, charm and wit in women. It’s why you’ll never see any of my heroines scrubbing pots and pans or dusting mantlepieces. I’ve yet to see a maid who, after a few years of service, doesn’t look as drab as an old worn bedsheet washed and put through the mangle one too many times.” She sinks onto an armchair dramatically. “My main readership consists of middle-class housewives and I suspect more than a few domestics. None of them want to read about a girl who skivvies away just like them. They want escape from the dull everyday through glamour, excitement and romance.”

 

“My maid reads your novels, Gladys. She was positively thrilled when she saw your name on the invitation to the weekend we had at Gossington.”

 

“Well, I must sign a spare copy of one of my latest novels for her when the redecoration is done, Lettice. Would she like that?”

 

“Oh I’m sure she’d love that, Gladys. Thank you.” Lettice replies with a smile as she takes a seat in a remarkably comfortable straight backed chair. “Thinking of Edith, she is only a plain cook, so I too, find Harrod’s Food Hall and catering service to be of great service.”

 

Lady Gladys nods in appreciation. “Not poured the tea yet, Pheobe?” she remarks critically as she watches her niece drape herself like a falling leaf into the armchair opposite the tea table and withdraw a black pencil marking the page in a large botanical studies book on roses before lowering her head towards it to read.

 

“You may be adverse to housework, Auntie Gladys, but you’re far better at playing hostess than me.” Phoebe responds with a tired sigh without looking up from the page.

 

“Don’t call me that, Phoebe.” Lady Gladys snaps irritably. “Anyway, you’d be far more adept at hosting, if you’d only try and make an effort to play the host a little, dear.”

 

Phoebe pointedly ignores her aunt’s whining protestations and runs the point of her pencil underneath a sentence in the description of a red dogwood rose, demonstrating how ardent her studies are.

 

“Very well then.” Lady Gladys says with a huff of irritation. “Shall I be mother*** then?”

 

Without waiting for a reply, Lady Gladys takes up a cup and pours in some strong tea before handing the cup to Lettice. She indicates with a sweeping gesture to the milk jug and sugar bowl, implying that Lettice should help herself. After pouring tea for Phoebe and herself, she slices the Victoria sponge, her knife gliding through the layers of soft cake, jam and cream.

 

As Lettice carefully pushes a pile of books so as not to topple them, to clear some space on the table to the left of her elbow to place her plate, Lady Gladys opines, “I do wish you’d made a little room for us, Phoebe dear. All these piles of books are most difficult to navigate. You knew we were coming today.”

 

“In case you don’t remember, Gladys,” Phoebe mutters testily from her book. “There isn’t any more room.”

 

“A lesser person might think you didn’t want us here, dear.” Lady Gladys goes on, a slightly hurt and clearly annoyed tone to her voice as she speaks.

 

Phoebe sighs as she reluctantly withdraws her head from the book she is studying. “As you well know, I’ve been busy attending my garden design classes, and besides, this arrangement suits me very well. Why should I change it?”

 

“Humph!” snorts Lady Gladys, frowning. She turns her attentions away from her niece, who has already returned her nose to her book, and focuses instead on Lettice. “Now, thinking of arrangements: my dear Lettice, what do you think? It’s a rather poky little place, isn’t it, and shabby?” She sighs. “But, it was Reginald and Marjorie’s intention to bequeath it to Phoebe.”

 

“Well,” Lettice begins, feeling rather awkward when being faced with Lady Glady’s overt criticism of the flat that belonged to her brother and sister-in-law. “I think it’s quite compact and charming.”

 

“Compact!” Lady Gladys snorts derisively. “Charming! Come, come, Lettice. There is no need for your diplomacy here, my dear. Let’s be honest: it’s old and shabby, and most things need flinging out into the street, and replacing with something newer, fresher and more stylish.”

 

“Oh, I wouldn’t be that dramatic, Gladys.” Lettice retorts.

 

“Nonsense, Lettice! The dustbin is where most of this old tatt should go. Out with the old, and in with the new. Eh?”

 

“Well, what do you think, Pheobe?”

 

When Pheobe’s head doesn’t rise from her book, and her wispy blonde curls continue to obscure her face, Lady Gladys goes on. “It’s no use trying to engage her my dear Lettice. Goodness knows I’ve tried.” She raises her voice and annunciates each syllable even more clearly than she was already doing with round vowels and clipped tones. “Pheobe could test the patience of a saint! She can hear us perfectly well, but as Phoebe seems to have abrogated her involvement in redecorating the flat, I see that like most things outside her life as a landscape gardener, I shall have to step in and fill her place and make the decisions, like usual.”

 

“I said I was happy with repainting the flat green. Isn’t that enough?” Phoebe grumbles, almost in a resigned whisper. “I’d rather the flat wasn’t disturbed whilst I’m studying for my latest round of horticulture exams.”

 

“Don’t worry, Phoebe dear.” Lady Gladys says with a dismissive wave of her bejewelled fingers. “We’ll organise it all to take place when there is a hiatus in your studies. Now,” She claps her hands and looks about her gleefully, like a small child with a shiny new toy, with sparkling eyes. “I think these can go for a start.” She starts bouncing up and down on her seat, the springs groaning in protest as dust motes emitted from the old armchair tumble and fly through the air around her. “Nasty old Edwardian things. Marjorie chose them of course, even though my dear Reginald wanted something a bit more up-to-date and fashionable. She always was frightfully dull and conservative, my sister-in-law.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure they are quite comfortable, Gladys.” Lettice begins. “With a little bit of respringing and some new fab…”

 

Lady Gladys stops Lettice speaking by holding up her hand in protest. “No, no! I won’t hear of these awful things being kept. They represent everything vulgar in Marjorie’s middling middle-class taste. No, fling them out!”

 

Lettice glances at Phoebe again, but the girl makes no move to interject.

 

“Didn’t I read about an eau de nil sofa and chairs in the Country Life article about your redecoration of the Channons house, Lettice?” Lady Gladys goes on unabated.

 

“Err… yes.” Lettice replies warily.

 

“Good. Then we’ll have an eau de nil suite here too. Quite fashionable and up-to-date! Excellent! Excellent!” Gladys toys excitedly with the violet faceted beads draped around her neck and down her front. “Now, of course being the bookish girl that she is, we’ll need something better than this rather haphazard arrangement,” She waves her hands about at the precariously balanced towers of books about the drawing room. “For her library.” She looks around. “There!” She points to a lovely old, stylised Art Nouveau china cabinet full of pretty Edwardian floral porcelain cups and saucers. “We’ll replace that monstrosity of the last decade with a new era bookcase. What do you say, Lettice?”

 

“Well perhaps we should…” Lettice begins as she turns once more to Pheobe’s halo of blonde curls.

 

“Don’t delegate decisions to Pheobe when I’m asking the question, Lettice!” Lady Gladys snaps sharply, causing Lettice to shudder involuntarily at the tone of her quip. “She’s clearly demonstrated that she isn’t interested, so I’m the one making decisions.”

 

“Of course, Gladys.” Lettice answers in quiet deference to the dominating woman. “A more modern bookshelf will be perfect there.”

 

“Splendid! Splendid!” Lady Gladys replies, rubbing her fingers together in glee. “I knew you’d see it my way, my dear. Everyone does,” She pauses. “Eventually.” She picks up her plate and scoops off a slice of cake with her fork and eats it. As Lady Gladys chews, her powdered and rouged cheeks expanding and contracting and her painted lips moving around rhythmically, Lettice can almost see the thoughts in her head as she glances around. Swallowing she eyes the two photographs to either side of the fireplace.

 

Following her gaze, Lettice quick says, “I have a great fondness for family photographs, Gladys. I think we should keep the photos of your brother and sister-in-law where they are in the new scheme. They are, after all,” She looks imploringly at Pheobe’s gently bobbing head, but she does not look up from the printed page. “Phoebe’s parents.”

 

“Yes of course, Lettice. Very good. Then there is that.” She points to the pretty Georgian desk in the corner of the room. “That desk was my brother’s, and is an old family heirloom. I’ll take that.”

 

Pheobe’s head suddenly shoots up from her books. “But that’s mine, Gladys. It was Father’s.”

 

Lady Gladys looks across at her niece with cool eyes. “I know it was dear.” She pauses for a moment and makes a show of sighing heavily for dramatic effect before continuing. “And I didn’t want to tell you this, but he really did want to leave it to me. I’ve just left it here out of ease. I’ll have it moved to the Belgravia when the redecoration starts.”

 

“But I thought you said that Mother and Father left me the flat and all its contents.” Phoebe exclaims, sitting upright in her seat, suddenly very alert and aware of everything going on around her, any appearance of nonchalance gone.

 

“Well, they did, dear.” Lady Gladys replies.

 

“Then it stays here, where it belongs.” Phoebe insists, a sudden anxiousness in her voice as she glances between Lettice and her aunt with startled eyes.

 

“But Reginald really did want me to have it, Phoebe dear.” Lady Gladys insists.

 

“But that’s the most poignant thing I have to remind me of Father.” Phoebe tries to protest.

 

“It was my father’s, and his father’s before him, and his before that, Pheobe. It should come to me, by rights. Don’t be selfish.”

 

“But… but I love it.” Tears begin to fill Pheobe’s pale blue eyes, making them sparkle and glitter. “It was… Father’s.”

 

“I see now, I should have removed it before you became attached to it,” Lady Gladys remarks, settling back comfortably into the armchair she seems so much to dislike and takes another scoop of cake, popping it into her mouth.

 

Lettice sees her moment to interject and pipes up, “I’m sure I could easily accommodate such a pretty and classical piece of furniture into my designs, Gladys. My style is Classical Revivalist, after all.”

 

“The desk is mine!” Lady Gladys commands in a sharp and raised voice that indicates she is not to be crossed on this matter, a few pieces of sponge not yet consumed flying from her mouth and through the air, landing in half chewed wet globs on the carpet. “This is not your concern, Lettice.” She forces a chuckle. “With all due respect of course.” She swivels her head back to her niece. “You heard Lettice. You will have your parents’ portraits retained as part of the redecoration. What could be more poignant than that?”

 

“But I…” Phoebe begins meekly.

 

“Don’t worry, Phoebe dear. Lettice will get you a much nicer, and bigger new desk as part of the design.” She sharply turns her head back to Lettice and eyes her with a hard stare. “Won’t you, Lettice?”

 

Lettice hears the undisguised warning in the older lady’s bristling tone of voice. “Yes, yes of course I will, Pheobe.” She answers brightly with a smile, but failing to obscure her awkwardness and regret as she utters the words which she does not want to air.

 

“That’s settled then.” Lady Gladys says with a smile, confirming the end to that particular part of the conversation about décor. “You’ll soon forget it, Pheobe dear. After all, until you came of age, you didn’t even know any of this existed.” She glances around the small drawing room of the flat. “And anyway, you’ll get it back when I die. Now, about curtains and carpets,” she adds, quickly changing the subject. “I think we’ll have new ones in more contemporary patterns, in shades of green, perhaps with a touch of blue or yellow, Lettice.”

 

“Yes, of course, Gladys.” Lettice answers in a deflated tone.

 

As Lady Gladys continues to talk unabated about her vision for the flat’s redecoration, Lettice listens in silence, occasionally nodding her polite ascent, even though the words just wash around her like the distant drone of London traffic. After meeting Lady Gladys at Gossington, Lettice had her suspicions that she had an underlying ulterior motive to her request for Lettice to redecorate the flat: to eradicate the presence of her deceased brother and sister-in-law from the place, and perhaps make them even more of a distant memory to Phoebe, who has spent more of her life growing up with Lady Gladys and her husband, than her parents. Although she could not pin it specifically to anything she had said or done, Lettice fancied that having raised Phoebe, Lady Gladys sees the memory of her dead brother and his wife as a threatening spectre in Pheobe’s and her own life. Now she knows her suspicions to be well founded, and clearly out in the open as Lady Gladys strips away almost every reminder of her brother and sister-in-law as she shares her wishes about the redecoration of the flat. She feels sick to her stomach as she glances over at Phoebe, who up until now has shown little emotion, as silent tears well in her eyes and spill down her pale cheeks.

 

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

 

**The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fabian Society was also historically related to radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition.

 

***The meaning of the very British term “shall I be mother” is “shall I pour the tea?”

 

This rather ramshackle drawing room of the studious Phoebe Chambers may look real to you, but in fact it is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Phoebe’s drawing room has a very studious look thanks to the many 1:12 size miniature books 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 one of the books he has made as it lies open on a footstool in the foreground, the page bookmarked by a pencil. It is a book of botanical prints by the renown botanical illustrator Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840). To give you an idea of the work that has gone into his volumes, the book contains fifty double sided pages of illustrations and text. 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. He also made the packets of seeds seen on the mantlepiece and the bureau in the background, which once again are copies of real packets of Webbs seeds. 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!

 

The floral Edwardian style armchairs are made by JaiYi miniatures, who are a high quality miniature furniture manufacturer, whilst the ornate Victorian tea table on which the tea set stands and the Art Nouveau china cabinet in the background were made by Bespaq miniatures, who are another high quality miniature furniture manufacturer. The two highly lacquered occasional tables in the mid and foreground I bought from a high street dolls’ house supplier when I was twelve. The dainty fringed footstool in the foreground with its tiny rose and leaf pattern ribbon trim was hand made and upholstered by a miniatures artisan in England. The armchair in the foreground with its serpentine arms I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The floral tea set on the tea table, I acquired through an online stockist on E-Bay, whilst the silver galleried tray comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The Victoria sponge (named after Queen Victoria) on the tea table and the slices of it on the plates on the occasional tables are made by Polly’s Pantry Miniatures in America.

 

The Georgian revival bureau to the left of the picture comes from Town Hall Miniatures. Made to very high standards, each drawer opens and closes. On the writing surface of the bureau sit miniature ink bottles and a quill pen made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles are made from a tiny faceted crystal beads and feature sterling silver bottoms and lids. The pencils on the bureau, acquired from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers are 1:12 miniature as well, and are only one millimetre wide and two centimetres long. The French dome clock bookended by Ken Blythe volumes on top of the bureau is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England.

 

The wonderful Carlton Ware Rouge Royale jardiniere (featuring real asparagus fern fronds from my own garden) comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

Phoebe’s photos of her student friends on the mantlepiece are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The photos of Phoebe’s parents in the gilded round frames come from Melody Jane’s Doll’s House Suppliers in the United Kingdom. The floral picture in the round frame came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The china tea set in the cabinet in the background I sourced through a miniatures supplier in Australia, whilst the silver pieces came from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland.

 

The oriental rug is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug and has been machine woven.

You should always remember that there are different kinds of body building supplements and some of them are illegal, such as anabolic steroids. You should never take anabolic steroids as a muscle enhancer and as a body building supplement because it can have severe negative side effects, such as increasing the risks of heart diseases and overdose can lead to muscle atrophy, and in some cases, it can lead to death.

 

You should always keep in mind that you should only use body building supplements that are natural and that is naturally found in the body. One such body building supplements that you can use and one that is perfectly legal is called creatine. Creatine is normally produced by the liver, pancreas, and kidneys. However, only a small amount reaches the muscle tissues. Creatine supplements can maximize the supply of creatines in your muscles.

 

Riley Gaines speaking with attendees at the 2023 Young Women's Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.

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, Lettice is entertaining 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, in the dining room of her Cavendish Mews flat: a room equally elegantly appointed with striking black japanned Art Deco furnishings intermixed with a select few Eighteenth Century antiques. The room is heady with the thick perfume of roses brought back from Glynes, the Chetwynd’s palatial Georgian family estate in Wiltshire, from where Lettice has recently returned after visiting a neighbour of sorts of her parents, Mr. Alisdair Gifford who wishes Lettice to decorate a room for his Australian wife Adelina, to house her collection of blue and white china. A bowl full of delicate white blooms graces the black japanned dining table as a centrepiece, whilst a smaller vase of red roses sits on the sideboard at the feet of Lettice’s ‘Modern Woman’ statue, acquired from the nearby Portland Gallery in Bond Street. Silver and crystal glassware sparkle in the light cast by both candlelight and electric light. The pair of old friends have just finished a course of Suprême de Volaille Jeanette: a fillet of chicken served with a rich white roux creamy sauce, ordered from Harrod’s Meat and Fish Hall* and warmed up and finished off by Edith, Lettice’s maid, in the Cavendish Mews kitchen. Gerald returns to the table with two small glasses of port after filling them from a bottle of liqueur in Lettice’s cocktail cabinet in the corner of the room just as Edith steps across the threshold of the dining room carrying a silver tray laden with three types of cheese and an assortment of biscuits, wafers and crackers.

 

“About time, Edith.” Lettice mutters irritably as Edith approaches and slides the tray gently onto the dining table. “Careful! Don’t scratch the table’s surface.”

 

“I’m sorry, Miss.” Edith says as she blushes, a lack of understanding filling her face. “I… I didn’t realise I was scratching it.”

 

“Well, you haven’t, Edith,” she snaps back. “But you need to be more careful!”

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith bobs a curtsey, a wounded look on her usually bright face.

 

Glancing between Lettice toying distractedly with the rope of pearls about her neck looking anywhere but at either her maid or himself, and the poor embarrassed domestic, Gerald pipes up, “There’s nothing to apologise for, Edith. There’s no harm done. Miss Chetwynd is just a bit tired and overwrought. Aren’t you Lettice darling?”

 

When Lettice doesn’t answer, whether because she hasn’t heard Gerald as she gets lost in her own thoughts, or because she knows that she is in the wrong, admonishing her maid like that for no reason, Gerald adds, “The Suprême de Volaille Jeanette was delicious. Thank you.” He then gently indicates with a movement of his kind eyes and a swift sweeping gesture of his hand that she should go.

 

“Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir.” Edith replies as she bobs a second curtsey and quickly scuttles back through the green baize door leading from the diming room back into the service area of the flat.

 

“You don’t seem yourself at all, Lettice darling!” Gerald says in concern once he estimates that Edith is out of earshot. “Upbraiding Edith like that, and for no good reason. She didn’t mark the table. You’ve been in a funk ever since you came back from Wiltshire.” He pauses momentarily and reconsiders. “Actually no, you’ve been like this for a little while before that.” He looks at her knowingly. “What’s the matter with you, darling?”

 

“Oh I’m sorry.” Lettice sighs.

 

“It’s not me you should be sorry to.”

 

“I’ll apologise to Edith a little bit later. I’ll let her settle down first.”

 

“Well, I should hope you will.” Gerald takes a sip and cocks his eyebrow over his eye as he stares at Lettice. “Alright, out with it! What’s the matter, then?”

 

“Looking at me the way you are, can’t you guess, Gerald darling?”

 

“It’s that rather awful Fabian** charlatan, Gladys, isn’t it?” Gerald replies. As he does, he shudders as he remembers the awful snub Lady Gladys gave him.

 

Through her social connections, Lettice’s Aunt Egg contrived an invitation for Lettice to an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Caxton, who are very well known amongst the smarter bohemian set of London society for their weekend parties at their Scottish country estate, Gossington, and enjoyable literary evenings in their Belgravia townhouse. Lady Gladys is a successful authoress in her own right and writes under the nom de plume of Madeline St John. Over the course of the weekend, Lettice was coerced into accepting Lady Glady’s request that she redecorate the Bloomsbury flat of her ward, Phoebe Chambers. When Lettice agreed to take on the commission, Lady Gladys said she would arrange a time for Lettice to inspect the flat the next time Lady Gladys was in London. The day it happened, Lettice was invited to hear Lady Gladys give a reading from her latest romance novel ‘Miranda’ at its launch in the Selfridge’s book department. Wanting company, and thinking he might enjoy the outing, Lettice invited Gerald to join her. When Lady Gladys met Gerald, she took an instant dislike to him and snubbed him, calling him ‘Mister Buttons’ much to his chagrin.

 

“Well done, Gerald darling.” Lettice replies sulkily, toying idly with her own glass.

 

“So, what’s the trouble with Gladys now?” Gerald asks. “Come on, tell me all the ghastly details.”

 

“What’s the point, Gerald darling? It won’t make one iota of difference.” Her shoulders slump forward as she speaks.

 

“You don’t know that.” Gerald counters. “If nothing else, it will probably make you feel better just talking about it, and hopefully by unblocking the frustrations you so obviously feel, you’ll be a bit kinder to poor Edith.” He gives her a hopefully glance.

 

“I know. Edith didn’t deserve my ire.”

 

“Especially when she didn’t do anything wrong. It would be a shame to lose such a good maid. Good servants like Edith are hard to come by.”

 

“I know, Gerald! I know!”

 

“If I could afford to employ her full time as a seamstress, I would. However I can only afford Molly to do some piecework for me a few days a week at the moment. But once my atelier expands, you’d better watch out. I’ll poach her.”

 

“Edith?”

 

“Yes of course, darling. Who else?”

 

“As a seamstress? Why?”

 

“Good heavens! Haven’t you noticed how smartly turned out she is when she’s not in uniform and is going out?” Gerald asks with incredulity. When Lettice shakes her head coyly he continues, “For a woman who has an eye for detail, you can be very unobservant sometimes. Edith, like most working girls, makes her own clothes, I’d imagine from patterns in one of those cheap women’s magazines directed towards middle-class housewives I see flapping in the breeze at newspaper kiosks. However, unlike a great many of them, she obviously has a natural aptitude for sewing. That’s why I’d take her on as a seamstress.”

 

“I must confess, I’ve never really noticed what Edith wears. She’s just…” Lettice isn’t quite sure how to phrase it. “She’s just there.”

 

“Well, one day she may not be,” Gerald warns before taking another sip of liqueur. “And then you’ll be in trouble trying to find her like as a replacement. Anyway,” he coughs. “I’m not going to pinch her from you just yet. Now, what’s the problem with Gladys?”

 

Lettice lets out a very heavy sigh. “Oh, she’s awful, Gerald darling: positively frightful. She rings me nearly every day, or sometimes several times a day, hounding me! I’m starting to make Edith answer the telephone more often now, because I’m terrified that it will be Gladys.”

 

“Well, we all know how much dear Edith hates the telephone.”

 

“Well, usually that would be true, but she knows that Gladys is Madeline St John, and I’ve told her that Gladys promises to give her a few signed copies of her books one of these days, so she doesn’t seem to mind when it’s her. Gladys seems to have that common touch with her.”

 

“Common is right.” quips Gerald. “Low-class gutter novelist works her way into the upper echelons by way of an advantageous marriage.”

 

“Gerald!” Lettice gasps

 

“It’s true Lettice, and you must know it by now, even if you didn’t know it before.”

 

“Well, whatever she may or may not be, Gerald, I just can’t talk to her directly. I need a moment to gird my loins*** before I take on the unpleasant task of talking to her, or perhaps a more appropriate description would be, being spoken to by her, at considerable length.”

 

“You haven’t corrupted poor Edith and coerced her into telling little white lies for you when Gladys does ring and say that you’re out.”

 

“No!” Lettice gives Gerald a guilty side glance. “Well not yet anyway.” she corrects. “I’ve thought about doing it, and it’s a very tempting idea. However, I know how much Edith already hates answering the telephone, and being such a despicably honest girl, I think asking her to fib for me, especially to her favourite romance writer, might be just a bridge too far for her.”

 

“Damn the goodness of your maid, Lettice darling.” Gerald replies jokingly with a cheeky smile causing his mouth to turn up impishly, as he cuts a slice of cheese and puts it on a water cracker wafer, before lifting it to his lips.

 

“Oh you’re no help!” Lettuce swats at her best friend irritably. “You make me feel guilty for even countenancing such a thought.”

 

“Well, someone has to try and keep you honest in this sinful city, darling.” he jokes again. “Mummy would never forgive me if I didn’t try and keep you as virtuous as possible.”

 

“I’d believe that of Aunt Gwen.” Lettice agrees. “On the other hand, Mater is convinced that you’re the root of the destruction of her precious, obsequious youngest daughter.”

 

“Sadie is wiser and more observant than I’ve ever given her credit for.” Gerald murmurs in surprise. “I should be more charitable to her in future as regards her intellect.”

 

“That I should like to see.” Lettice giggles, a smile breaking across her lips and brightening her face, dispelling some of the gloom.

 

“That you will never see.” Gerald replies firmly. “That’s better. At least I made you laugh.”

 

“You always make me laugh, darling Gerald.” Lettice reaches across the table and grasps his hand lovingly, winding her fingers around his bigger fisted hand. “You are the best and most supportive friend I could ever hope to have.”

 

“Jolly good, my dear. Now, besides telephoning far too often, what else is the trouble with Gladys?” Gerald presses.

 

“Well, she seems to want to be in control of everything in relation to Pheobe’s Bloomsbury pied-à-terre redecoration.”

 

“Isn’t Gladys footing the bill, Lettice darling?”

 

“Well yes, she is.”

 

“Then it seems to me that she has every right to be involved in the decision making that goes on, particularly as you’ve told me that Phoebe shows a lack of interest in the whole project.”

 

“Yes, but what Gladys is doing is taking over. I don’t think she’d even engage my services if I didn’t have the contacts in the painting, papering and furnishing business she needs. I have no chance to exercise any of my own judgement. Anything I do has to be checked by her: the paint tint for the walls, the staining of the floorboards, the fabric for the furnishings. And she has demonstrated that she has no real interest in my ideas.”

 

“Hhhmmm…” Gerald begins, chewing his mouthful of cheese and biscuit thoughtfully before continuing. “That does sound a trifle tiresome.”

 

“A trifle tiresome? Gerald, you always were the master of understatement.”

 

“I see no reason to panic. She is the client exercising her rights. And since she is the one paying for your services, indulge her in her necessity to be consulted on all facets of the redecoration.”

 

“Oh I’m doing that. Against my better judgement, I’m having floral chintz draperies hung in the drawing room and bedroom because that’s what she wants.”

 

“Good heavens!” Gerald exclaims, nearly choking on a fresh mouthful of cheese and wafer biscuit. “You, selecting chintz as part of your décor decisions?”

 

“My point exactly. It isn’t me that’s decided that, it’s Gladys who has. You know how much I loathe chintz at the best of times.” Lettice shudders at the thought. “I tried hinting at some plain green hangings instead as a very nice alternative, but like anything else where I try my best to negotiate for Phoebe, I am barked at and told in no uncertain terms that I will do no such thing.”

 

“Negotiate for Phoebe?”

 

“Yes, now that I’m well and truly wound up in what you rightly called Gladys’ sticky spiderweb, I’m beginning to see things for what they truly are.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“For a start, I don’t think Phoebe is disinterested in the renovations to her pied-à-terre at all. I’ve seen with my own eyes now, how whenever Pheobe expresses an opinion contrary to that of Gladys, Gladys quickly snuffs out any dissention. As far as Gladys is concerned, her choice is not only the best and right choice, but the only choice to make. Pheobe wants to keep some of her parents’ belongings in the flat, but Gladys won’t hear of it! She wants a clean sweep! I suggest a compromise, but Gladys dismisses it. So, the colours to go on the walls, the furnishings, the fabrics, even the hideous chintz curtains have all been decided upon and approved by Gladys, and Phoebe doesn’t even get a chance to express an opinion. Phoebe isn’t disinterested, she’s simply overruled and completely smothered by Gladys’ overbearing nature.”

 

“Delicious.” Gerald murmurs as he leans his elbows on the black japanned surface of the dining table and leans forward conspiratorially.

 

“It’s not delicious at all!” Lettice splutters. “It’s a frightful state of affairs!”

 

“Well, in truth, that really does sound bloody*****, Lettice darling!”

 

“Like I said, it’s a dreadful state of affairs! I feel as if I am betraying not only poor Pheobe, but the memory of her dead parents in favour of a domineering woman whom no-one it seems can stand up to.”

 

“Have you tried her husband, Sir John?”

 

“He kowtows to her wishes as much as anyone else. I now understand why he has such a dogged look upon his face. I thought it was just age.”

 

“When in fact it was just Gladys?”

 

“Indeed! And what’s even worse is that Gladys is wearing me down now too. It’s just easier to agree to everything she says, and not even attempt a compromise in Phoebe’s favour.”

 

“Well, whilst I know you don’t like the situation, from my own personal experience of dealing with difficult clients, I can say that the path of least resistance is sometimes the best. Do you remember that frock I made for Sophie Munro, the American shipping magnate’s daughter?”

 

Lettice considers Gerald’s question for a moment. “Yes, I think I do. Wasn’t it pale pink with blue trimming?”

 

“Indeed it was, Lettice darling: pink linen with blue trim, with a bias cut drape over one sleeve and a flounced skirt. Poor Sophie has an… ahem…” Gerald clears his throat rather awkwardly as he thinks of the correct phrase. “A rather Rubenesque figure, and the flounced skirt was perhaps less flattering than something with long pleats, which was I had suggested to Mrs. Munro.”

 

“But Mrs. Munro was like Gladys?”

 

“She was, darling, and she wouldn’t hear a word of it. A flounced skirt was what Mrs. Munro wanted, and a flounced skirt was what Sophie received, and she flounced her way back to America, where I’m sure her rather voluptuous derrière will be commented upon by every young eligible man on Long Island, for all the wrong reasons. However, I did it, and I cut ties with Mrs. Munro because now that my atelier is finally turning a modest profit, I can. I don’t need recommendations from her, but I do need her to be happy so that she will at least speak favourably of me, rather than say disparaging things. The same goes for you. Do what Gladys wants and then be done with her. Do it as quickly as possible, then the pain will be over, and she will praise you to boot.”

 

“I can’t help but feel badly for Phoebe though, Gerald.”

 

“I know you do, and I feel sorry for poor Sophie Munro being laughed at behind her back by young cads as she tries to be beguiling with a large derrière, but there you have it. You cannot be responsible to solve the relationship between mother and daughter.”

 

“Aunt and ward.” Lettice corrects.

 

“It equates to the same.” Gerald counters. “You are a businesswoman, Lettice, not an agony aunt******.”

 

“Well, you’re a businessman, and you seem to be a good agony aunt to me.”

 

Gerald and Lettice chuckle before Gerald replies, “Indeed I am, but I’m also a friend. You aren’t friends with Pheobe, and even if you were, you still wouldn’t be able to solve Gladys’ overbearing personality. She is who she is, and Pheobe has to learn how to make her way through life with it. Perhaps you will afford her a little freedom from Gladys by redecorating her pied-à-terre, so she can escape from under Glady’s overbearing shadow, even if the redecoration is not quite as Phoebe would have it. Even then, Phoebe will probably add her own personal touches to her new home over time. It’s only natural that she should.”

 

“Oh,” Lettice sighs heavily. “I suppose you’re right, Gerald.”

 

“Of course I’m right, Lettice darling. I’m always right.” he adds jokingly.

 

“Now don’t you start!” Lettice replies wearily before smiling as she recognises Gerald’s remark as a jest, teasing about Lady Gladys’ overbearing personality.

 

“Well, it sounds like you need a bit of cheering up, Lettice darling,” Gerald goes on as he places another slice of cheese on a biscuit.

 

“I could indeed, Gerald darling!”

 

“Well then, if you are a good girl, and apologise to Edith like I told you, like Cinderella you shall go to the ball!”

 

“Oh you do talk in riddles sometimes, Gerald darling! What on earth do you mean?”

 

“My birthday!” Gerald beams. “Come join me at Hattie’s down in Putney for my birthday!”

 

“You’re having your birthday at Hattie’s?” Lettice queries, her voice rising in surprise. “I thought we were going to the Café Royal****** to celebrate: my treat!”

 

“Now, now, be calm, Lettice darling! We are, but Hattie wants to throw a party for me on my birthday at Putney with Cyril, Charlie Dunnage and a few of the other chaps she has living with her in the house, so we’ll do that first, and then go to dinner at the Café Royal: your treat.”

 

“Well…” Lettice says warily. Her stomach flips every time Gerald mentions his lover, Cyril, an oboist who plays at various theatres in the West End and lives in the Putney home of Gerald’s friend Harriet Milford, who has turned her residence into a boarding house for theatrical homosexual men, not because she is in any way jealous of their relationship, but because she knows that Gerald being a homosexual carries great consequences should he be caught in flagrante with Cyril. Homosexuality is illegal******** and carries heavy penalties including prison sentences with hard labour, not to mention the shame and social ostracization that would follow any untoward revelations. It would mean the end of his fashion house and all his dreams.

 

Gerald misinterprets the look on his best friend’s face as being misgivings about the party. “Oh come on Lettice! Every time I’ve been spending the night with Cyril down in Putney, which has been quite a lot lately,” he confesses with a shy, yet happy smile. “I’ve been sneaking one or two bottles of champagne into his room, which he’s been stashing under the bed, so there will be plenty to drink, and Hattie is making me a birthday cake, so it will be a rather jolly party. You aren’t still imagining Hattie to be a usurper to you in my affections, are you Lettuce Leaf?”

 

“Don’t call me that Gerald! You know how I hate it!” scowls Lettice. “I’ll call you Mr. Buttons!” She threatens.

 

“You can call me what you like, Lettice darling, only please say you’ll come! You’re my best and oldest chum! It would make me so happy!”

 

“Oh very well, Gerald. Of course I’ll come.”

 

“Jolly good show, Lettice darling!” Gerald enthuses. “We’ll have a whizz of a time!”

 

*Harrod’s Meat and Fish Hall (the predecessor to today’s food hall) was opened in 1903. There was nothing like it in London at the time. It’s interior, conceived by Yorkshire Arts and Crafts ceramicist and artist William Neatby, was elaborately decorated from floor to ceiling with beautiful Art Nouveau tiles made by Royal Doulton, and a glass roof that flooded the space with light. Completed in nine weeks it featured ornate frieze tiles displaying pastoral scenes of sheep and fish, as well as colourful glazed tiles. By the 1920s, when this scene is set, the Meat and Fish Hall was at its zenith with so much produce on display and available to wealthy patrons that you could barely see the interior.

 

**The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fabian Society was also historically related to radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition.

 

***To gird one’s loins: to prepare oneself to deal with a difficult or stressful situation, is likely a Hebraism, often used in the King James Bible (e.g., 2 Kings 4:29). Literally referred to the need to strap a belt around one's waist, i.e. when getting up, in order to avoid the cloak falling off; or otherwise before battle, to unimpede the legs for running.

 

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

 

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

 

******An agony aunt is a person, usually a woman, who gives advice to people with personal problems, especially in a regular magazine or newspaper article.

 

*******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.

 

********Prior to 1967 with the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over 21, homosexuality in England was illegal, and in the 1920s when this story is set, carried heavy penalties including prison sentences with hard labour. The law was not changed for Scotland until 1980, or for Northern Ireland until 1982.

 

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 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 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 are made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. 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 plates are part of a much larger set I acquired from a dollhouse suppliers in Shanghai. The cutlery set came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. 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.