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[ zerkalo ]OldChaise Lounge Persian Edition - Zerkalo Mainstore
.:CORAƵ♥Ɲ: ❣ EXCLUSIVE...Tattoo MIA ❣ INKsanity Event
This one is dedicated to my neighbour who allows me to use his dock as a vantage point for photographing the sunrise at Keefer Lake. His dock has almost a 270 degree view north-east to south-west whereas our dock is in a small bay and faces south - south west. He will recognize the subject whereas it may be a puzzle for others. :) Thank you neighbour!
- Keefer Lake, Ontario, Canada -
We recently did the tourist thing in the local town of Hershey. Part of our package trip was to make our own candy bar, so of course, Ms. Jane got a special one just for her.
Nikon D850 & Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 (non VR) @ f/7 w/ an SB-800 and a Gary Fong Lightsphere
Wet Leg is always going to be one of the catchiest bands in the known universe. If aliens were to come down from a galaxy far away right now, I would distract them with a few Wet Leg songs and buy us all some time while we danced and bonded. Then, the aliens would ask, "Can you explain the meaning of this term 'chaise lounge'" and I would point them to the most comfortable seating on Earth and they would put their super high technology weapons down and lounge there for the rest of their lives.
And that is how I would save the world with the help of Wet Leg's self titled album.
If you can listen to this and not dance, you might be a malfunctioning android. Just saying....
wetleg.bandcamp.com/album/wet-leg
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I made these cupcakes for a bit of fun and because I was inspired by the chaise lounge that belongs to Kylie Lamberts daughter. These are butter cupcakes with butter cream and fondant. The cupcases are made of fondant also as I couldn't get any decent ones here. Everything ecxept the foil I used for the mirror is edible!
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Buy my gear:
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Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
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Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
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Buy my gear:
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Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm STM Lens
Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
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Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
35mm lens: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM
50mm lens: Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
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My camera backpack: Lowepro ProTactic BP 450 AW II
My Tripod Manfrotto Befree GT XPRO Aluminum
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Buy my gear:
Best Beginner Mirrorless Camera
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Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm STM Lens
Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
35mm lens: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM
50mm lens: Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
85mm lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
70-200 zoom lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM
Canon Mount Ring Adapter EF - RF
My camera backpack: Lowepro ProTactic BP 450 AW II
My Tripod Manfrotto Befree GT XPRO Aluminum
DJI Ronin-SC Pro Camera Stabilizer Gimbal
128GB memory card: SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I
256GB memory card: SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I
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Buy my gear:
Best Beginner Mirrorless Camera
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Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm STM Lens
Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
35mm lens: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM
50mm lens: Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
85mm lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
70-200 zoom lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM
Canon Mount Ring Adapter EF - RF
My camera backpack: Lowepro ProTactic BP 450 AW II
My Tripod Manfrotto Befree GT XPRO Aluminum
DJI Ronin-SC Pro Camera Stabilizer Gimbal
128GB memory card: SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I
256GB memory card: SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I
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Buy my gear:
Best Beginner Mirrorless Camera
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Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm STM Lens
Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
35mm lens: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM
50mm lens: Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
85mm lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
70-200 zoom lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM
Canon Mount Ring Adapter EF - RF
My camera backpack: Lowepro ProTactic BP 450 AW II
My Tripod Manfrotto Befree GT XPRO Aluminum
DJI Ronin-SC Pro Camera Stabilizer Gimbal
128GB memory card: SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I
256GB memory card: SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I
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Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 & Premiere Elements 2021 [PC Online code]
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Buy my gear:
Best Beginner Mirrorless Camera
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Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm STM Lens
Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
35mm lens: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM
50mm lens: Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
85mm lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
70-200 zoom lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM
Canon Mount Ring Adapter EF - RF
My camera backpack: Lowepro ProTactic BP 450 AW II
My Tripod Manfrotto Befree GT XPRO Aluminum
DJI Ronin-SC Pro Camera Stabilizer Gimbal
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Well, at least I'm laughing, and if I can make just one person laugh, well, then I'm doing better than Tony Danza.
And here's the original.
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icemanphotos © 2020, All Rights Reserved. Do not use without a permission, please.
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Buy my gear:
Best Beginner Mirrorless Camera
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Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm STM Lens
Wide angle lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
Astrophotography lens: Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
Macro lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro
35mm lens: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM
50mm lens: Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM Art
85mm lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
70-200 zoom lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM
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My camera backpack: Lowepro ProTactic BP 450 AW II
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Emma Green in the studio today with Rob Bates and Jann Wassell and a black fibre optic brush from lightpaintingbrushes.com Thanks for a great shoot today, was good to get waving lights again, although after 4 hours I'm worn out!
Our one brief 15 minutes actually laying on the beach in front of the hotel. Lounging is rather boring!
The perfect parlor set if the Duchess comes to tea! Using the styles of the late victorian era, the contrasting patterns used in this set are delightful to the eye. See more at www.debsminis.com
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Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her old family home for the wedding of Leslie to Arabella, the daughter of their neighbours, Lord Sherbourne and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt. She has come a few days earlier than the other family members who are coming to stay at Glynes for the significant event.
Alighting from the London train at Glynes village railway station, Lettice is quickly swept away to the house by Harris, the chauffer, in the Chetwynd’s 1912 Daimler. As the Daimler purrs up the gravel driveway, Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler, steps through the front door followed by Marsen, the liveried first footman. Descending the stairs Marsden pads across the crunching gravel and opens the door of the Daimler for Lettice.
“Welcome home, My Lady,” Bramley greets her with an open smile as she walks up the steps to the front door. “What a pleasure it is to see you back again.”
“Thank you Bramley,” she replies with a satisfied smile and a sigh as she looks up at the classical columned portico of her beloved childhood home basking in the weakening autumnal sunshine of the late morning. “It’s good to be home.”
She sweeps into the lofty classical Adam style entrance hall of Glynes where she waits for Bramley to accept her gloves, her fox fur stole and her grey travelling coat.
“How was the train journey from London, My Lady?” Bramley asks Lettice as helps her shirk her coat from her shoulders, revealing a smart silvery grey frock with a sailor collar, a double rope of perfect pearls given to her by her parents as a coming of age birthday gift about her neck.
“Oh, quite pleasant, thank you Bramley.”
“Her Ladyship is expecting you in the morning room.”
“I’ll just go upstairs and freshen up first.” Lettice points to her escape route up the stairs to her bedroom up on the third floor of the mansion.
“Very good My Lady. However… I should…” Bramley adds with a touch of hesitation. Sighing he continues, “Master Lionel has arrived home from British East Africa*.”
Lettice feels all the happiness she felt moments ago at returning to her childhood home for the wonderful occasion of her eldest brother’s wedding dissipate at the mere mention of her other brother’s name. Her face falls and the sparkle in her eyes is extinguished by a darkness. “Oh.” she mumbles, as she deposits her gloves in Bramley’s open and expectant hand.
“I… I thought you were better pre-warned, My Lady.” Bramley says dourly. “Her Ladyship has been anxious awaiting your arrival. She will wan….”
As if on cue, one of the double doors to the morning room just down the passageway opens with a squeak of door handles, the pop of a lock and the rasp of old wood.
“Ahh, Lettice!” Lady Sadie’s head crowned with her well-coiffed grey hair pops around the panelled door and smiles rather forcefully.
The older woman slips out the door, closing it quietly behind her before marching brusquely down the hall towards her daughter, the louis heels of her shoes clipping loudly on the parquetry floor beneath her.
“Thank god you’re here at last!” she sighs quietly with relief as she reaches her daughter’s side and places a hand heavily upon her forearm. “I thought you would never get here! I simply don’t think I can cope alone much longer with both your brother and Eglantine together in the same room.” She breathes heavily, as if her heart is under a major strain. “You must come and rescue me, at once.”
“But I was about to…” Lettice begins, gesticulating to the stairs.
“At once!” Lady Sadie demurs commandingly.
“Shall I bring some fresh tea, Your Ladyship?” Bramley asks.
“I’d prefer a dubonnet and gin at this moment.” Lady Sadie sighs, much to the surprise of both her unflappable faithful retainer and her daughter, both of whom exchange astonished glances. “My nerves are positively shot with Lionel and Eglantine to entertain all my own,” She looks accusingly at her daughter, as if she were responsible for the train arrival times from London. “And your father and brother conveniently nowhere in sight.”
“They’ll be out on estate business, Mamma.” Lettice chides her mother gently, as she unpins her hat from her head and passes it to the butler.
“It’s more convenience if you ask me.” She sniffs and stiffens, a steely haughtiness hardening the few softened edges of her face. “Considering the time of day, tea will have to suffice. Yes, Bramley. A fresh pot if you would, and some more biscuits if you can manage it.” Turning to Lettice she adds, “Your aunt always did have an over indulged sweet tooth, even during the war when we were on rations, and it seems that your brother has developed an unhealthy love of sugar during his time in Nairobi.”
“Very good, Your Ladyship.” Bramley says as he discreetly retreats with Lettice’s hat.
Wrapping her arm through Lettice’s, Lady Sadie forcefully guides her daughter towards the closed morning room door. “I know Emmery usually takes care of you when you are here, Lettice, but your Aunt Gladys’ maid has caught the flu, at the most inconvenient of times. So, Eglantine has graciously offered to share her maid with you.”
“Oh Mamma!” Lettice exclaims exasperatedly, her stomach tightening as they draw closer to the door. “I really don’t need a lady’s maid. I’m quite independent in London you know. It is 1922 after all – nearly 1923.”
“Now, now!” Lady Sadie scolds. “I can’t have idle servants’ gossip below stairs. What would the maids from the other guests think if their hostess’ daughter declines the use of a lady’s maid? Next, they’ll be calling you a bluestocking**!” Lettice rolls her eyes. “No!” Lady Sadie pressed her right hand firmly over Lettice’s left one. “We’ll just make up an excuse that your maid was taken ill too. In saying that, I can’t believe that Eglantine brought that awful girl!”
“Who, Lise?” Lettice queries, referring to her aunt’s lady’s maid by her first name. When Lady Sadie nods, she continues, “I’ve always found Lise to be very sweet and obliging.”
“It’s not her manner I mind,” the older woman lowers her voice. “It’s her cultural heritage that offends me.”
“Oh Mamma! How many times must you be told? Lise, just like Augusta and Clotilde, are Swiss, not German.”
“Swiss, German, it matters not! They are still foreign!” Lady Sadie snaps. “Eglantine always was contrary. Why on earth she had to have a foreigner when a good English lady’s maid would have been perfectly comparable is beyond my comprehension.”
“Well perhaps it’s…” Lettice begins, but her retort is cut short as her mother depresses the door handle to the morning room and pushes it open.”
“Here she is!” Lady Sadie announces brightly with false bonhomie to the guests sitting in her chairs. “Lettice is here at last!”
The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of her continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of Glynes’ hothouse flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother Lady Sadie’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent which is ever present in the air.
“Well, if it isn’t my favourite nice!” Eglantine, known by all the Chetwnd children by the affectionate diminutive name of ‘Aunt Egg’, exclaims as she sits regally in the straight-backed chair next to Sadie’s soft upholstered wingback chair.
When she was young, Eglantine had Titian red hair that fell in wavy tresses about her pale face, making her a popular muse amongst the Pre-Raphaelites she mixed with. With the passing years, her red hair has retreated almost entirely behind silver grey, save for the occasional streak of washed out reddish orange, yet she still wears it as she did when it was at its fiery best, sweeping softly about her almond shaped face, tied in a loose chignon at the back of her neck, held in place by an ornate tortoiseshell comb. Sitting with perfect posture in her chair with her arms resting lightly on the arms, she looks positively regal. Large chandelier earrings containing sparking diamonds hang from her lobes whilst strings of pearls and bright beads cascade down the front of her usual uniform of a lose Delphos dress** that does not require her to wear a corset of any kind, and a silk fringed cardigan, both in strikingly beautiful shades of sea blue.
“Hullo Aunt Egg.” Lettice replies as she walks over to her aunt’s seated figure and kisses her first on one proffered cheek and then the other as her aunt’s elegant, yet gnarled fingers covered in rings reach up and clench her forearms firmly. “I keep saying that I’m sure you say that to Lally and all our female cousins.”
“And I keep telling you that you will never know until after I’m gone.” her aunt laughs raspily in reply. “For then the truth will be known through the disbursement of my jewels. To my favourite, or favourites, go the spoils!”
“Oh Aunt Egg!” Lettice scoffs. “You really mustn’t talk like that.”
“Eglantine always talks like that.” mutters Lady Sadie disapprovingly as she resumes her own seat.
“I wish I was six feet under when I can’t even smoke one of my Sobranies****.” Eglantine quips sulkily. “But your mother won’t let me smoke in here.”
“It’s undignified for a lady to smoke in public.” Sadie defends.
“I thought that we were in private, dear Sadie.”
“Don’t be so literal Eglantine, or are you being obtuse on purpose?” Sadie asks. Eglantine smiles mischievously behind one of her hands at the rise she has gained from her detested sister-in-law. “It’s undignified for a lady to smoke. Anyway, this is my house, so I should be allowed to make the rules.”
“Hullo Lettuce Leaf!” comes a male voice to Lettice’s right, its well-modulated tones dripping with a mixture of mirth, mischief and malice.
Cringing at the use of her abhorred childhood nickname, Lettice turns her head, to where her brother, Lionel’s reclining form lies amidst the overstuffed confines of their mother’s floral chaise lounge, where he flips rather languidly through a more recent copy of Lady Sadie’s Elite Styles*****. He looks up at her and purses his thin lips in what Lettice can only presume is his version of a mean smile, but looks more like he just smelt fresh horse droppings.
“Lionel.” Lettice says laconically in a peevish tone, returning his steely gaze of her with her own.
“Your brother has just been regaling us with wild tales of his horse breeding in British East Africa,” Eglantine remarks cheerfully, blissfully unaware of the animosity radiating already between the two siblings. “Haven’t you, my darling boy!” She lets go of Lettice and reaches over to her nephew’s hand, which he proffers to her so she can grasp it lovingly.
Lettice casts her eyes critically over her brother. His looks have changed over the three years of his exile to Kenya after fathering illegitimate children to not one, but two of the Glynes maids and the dullard daughter of one of their father’s tenant farmers in the space of one year. He has lost the softness of entitlement that he had, replaced now by a more muscular ranginess created through the exertions of breeding horses on a high altitude stud on the slopes of the Aberdare Range******. The African sun has bleached his sandy tresses blonde, a change made even more noticeable by the golden sunbathed pallor of his face. Yet for all these changes, Lionel still has blue eyes as cold as chips of ice, full of hatred, and a mean and malevolent smile beneath his equally mean little strip pencil moustache as he looks at her with barely contained detestation. Lettice shudders and looks away.
“It looks as though the Kenyan climate agrees with you, Lionel,” Lettice concedes. “You look remarkably well.”
“I am well, my dear little sister.” he replies in a rather bored tone. “The sun is glorious out there: full and rich, not like the weak version shining here.”
“Sit here, Lettice my dear.” Eglantine insists, standing up, snatching up her Royal Doulton rose decorated teacup and gliding around the table on which sits the remains of morning tea.
“Oh no, Aunt Egg.” Lettice protests. “I’ll be quite fine…”
“Nonsense, my dear.” Eglantine settles into the ornate Victorian salon chair of unidentifiable style opposite, the hem of her gown pooling around her feet like a cascade of water. “Your mother and I have had all morning to chat with Lionel. You two are the closest in age, and besides, you haven’t seen each other in three years, so I’m sure you have a lot to catch up on.”
Just at that moment there is a discreet knock at the door.
“Come.” calls out Lady Sadie commandingly from her throne by the cracking fire.
The door is opened by Moira, one of the Chetwynd’s maids who has taken to assisting wait table at breakfast and luncheon on informal occasions since the war, who walks into the morning room holding the door open for Bramley, who steps across the threshold carrying a silver salver on which stand a fresh pot of tea and coffee, milk, sugar and a cup matching the others already being used for Lettice.
“You had better have brought more of those biscuits, Bramley!” Lionel snaps at the butler, carelessly tossing the magazine he had in his thin hands aside onto the floral pouffe that acts as a barrier between he and his sister, the magazine clipping his cup, which rattles emptily as it jostles in its saucer. “A man needs to eat!”
“Yes Sir.” Bramley replies obsequiously, politely ignoring Lionel’s rudeness as he carefully slides the tray, on which stands a plate of fresh colourful cream biscuits, onto the round central table as Moira picks up the tray of used tea implements to take away.
As Moira straightens up, Lionel catches her eye and gives her a conspiratorial wink, making the maid smirk and colour flood her cheeks. Although not noticed by Lady Sadie or Eglantine who are now engaged in a conversation about flowers for the wedding, Lettice’s sharp eye doesn’t miss the silent exchange between the two, and as Moira curtseys to her mistress, Lettice makes a mental note to have a word with the Chetwynd’s housekeeper, Mrs. Casterton, later, and remind her to have her warn not only Moira, but all the new maids on the staff about her brother’s roué ways.
“I see you haven’t changed, Lionel.” Lettice remarks dryly as she takes her seat next to her abhorred brother, glancing meaningfully between him and the retreating figure of Moira.
“Evidently neither have you, Lettuce Leaf.” Lionel smirks with unbridled delight as his sister cringes yet again at the mention of her nickname. “You always were the Chetwynd with the sharpest eye. I should have aimed better at you with my slingshot when I was eight and you were six.” He shuffles forward on the chaise and snatches three biscuits greedily from the gilt edged plate before shuffling back with them, tossing two carelessly onto his saucer with a clatter and placing the remaining one to his lips. “If I’d had a sharper eye, I’d have had better aim. If I’d had better aim, I could have blinded you like I wanted to. If I’d blinded you, in one eye at least, it would have saved me a lot of trouble later in life, and banishment to the wilds of Africa.”
“You always were cruel to me,” Lettice mutters bitterly with a shiver as she remembers the sharp pain of the stone at it hit her temple and imbedded itself into her flesh. “To all of us, really. Lally, even Leslie,” She reaches up and rubs the spot where a faint scar still remains from the gash left by the stone shot from her brother’s catapult. “But cruellest of all to me. You savoured every hurt you could inflict on me.”
“Survival of the fittest, my dear Lettuce Leaf.” He bites meaningfully into the biscuit, growling menacingly, imitating a wild beast tearing at the flesh of its kill.
“You’re a brute, Lionel.” Lettice looks away in disgust. She reaches out and takes up the teacup Bramley brought her and pours tea into her cup.
“Top me up, Lettuce Leaf!” Lionel pipes up loudly.
“Oh!” gasps Eglantine from across the table. “I haven’t heard you called that for years, Lettice.” She chortles happily. “Haven’t you two grown out of calling each other childhood nicknames?” she remarks good naturedly, picking up her cup.
“Evidently not, Aunt Egg.” Lettice replies with false good humour.
From her wingback chair Sadie quickly glances with concern at her two youngest children before turning back to Eglantine and answering her question.
Lettice deposits her cup on the table between she and her mother and then reaches for the teapot. She leans over towards her brother, who indicates with lowered lids and a commanding nod towards his empty cup, however she ignores his lofty silent demand and hovers with the pot’s spout over Lionel’s groin.
“You wouldn’t dare.” Lionel snarls viscously as he glances with irritation at his sister.
“Oh, wouldn’t I?” She tilts the pot slightly, making Lionel flinch and squirm on the chaise in an attempt to avoid any hot tea hitting and burning him in such a sensitive area. Seeing his reaction, she smiles and returns the pot to an upright position in her hand. “I’m not the frightened little girl you said goodbye to here three years ago, Lionel.” she warns him quietly. “I live independently in London now, and I’m a lot more worldly than I was.”
“Slut!” he hisses.
His insult slices Lettice to the bone, but steeling herself, she remains poised and unflinching as she tilts the pot down again, this time allowing the smallest amount of hot tea to escape the spout. It splatters onto a cream coloured rose printed on the fabric of the chaise and is quickly absorbed. “Is that the kind of parlance fashionable in Nairobi these days?” she asks mockingly in a falsely sweet tone.
“I’ll tell you what I do know, my dear little sister, having been a damn good racehorse breeder these last three years.”
“And what’s that Lionel?” Lettice proceeds to pour tea into her brother’s empty cup.
“I can tell that you’re still a stupid little filly who needs a good siring from a stallion.” He gently grinds his groin back and forth, representing the act.
Unflinching, Lettice replies breezily, “Oh, so you’ve learned about animal husbandry whilst you’ve been away. Good.” She leans closer to Lionel. “But your use of that language and vulgar and unnecessary demonstration just makes me feel even more disgusted by you.” She screws up her nose in distaste and looks down upon him.
Undeterred, determined not to be outdone and to inflict hurt on his little sister, Lionel continues, “Mater told me that here you are at twenty-two and you’re still an old maid, despite her attempts to get you married off.”
“In case you’ve forgotten Lionel, there has been a war, and a whole generation of men far better than you have been wiped out.”
“Mater would happily foist you off onto any unwitting fool of a man, war cripple or otherwise that would have you. However, it appears that there are no takers: not even a shellshock victim or a blind veteran. If that’s what you call living an independent life, I pity you, Lettuce Leaf - shrivelled and dried up old Lettuce Leaf, trodden on and soiled, Lettuce Leaf.”
“I have a good life in London, I’ll have you know, Lionel. I run my own business now.”
“Oh yes, Mater told me that you’re pursuing this little interior design charade of yours to fill the gap that no husband will fill.”
“And I happen to be very good at what I do.” Lettice speaks determinedly over her brother’s hurtful words.
“If you say so, dear.” Lionel sneers. “Pass me the milk and the sugar.”
“I’ve been very successful” Lettice passes him the sugar bowl.
“Going to snitch to Pater and Mater again, are you, you little worm?” Lionel shakes his head as he hands the sucrier back to his sister. “Just like you did three years ago.”
“If I think there is a necessity, Lionel.” Lettice remarks as she returns the sugar bowl and takes up the milk jug. Leaning down in a pretence of adding milk to his tea, she quietly whispers to Lionel, “Have I cause to do so?”
“What?” Lionel snorts derisively as he takes the jug roughly from her. “With that little filly?” He glances to the door through which Moira exited with Bramley. “Fear not, my plucky little sister. My tastes have changed since I was forced to leave here.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Lettice scoffs. “A leopard, his spots and all that.”
“No, I have, I assure you. I prefer mares now. The quality is better.”
“What are you insinuating, Lionel?”
“Well, despite Pater’s attempt to punish me for my dalliances: for the sewing of my wild oats,” Lettice looks away in abhorrence yet again as Lionel reaches down and rubs his inner thigh lasciviously. “He’s actually landed me in heaven on earth by sending me to Kenya.”
“Heaven?”
“Yes. The Muthaiga Club******* is full of hedonistic aristocrats, adventurers and elite colonial ex-pats,”
“No wonder you feel at home there.”
“Whose wives,” Lionel continues. “Are very bored in their husbands’ lengthy absences,” He hands her back the milk jug. “And their tiring presences. And unlike silly little fillies like the Moiras of this world, the mares know how not to get in the family way.”
“You sicken me, Lionel.” Lettice spits quietly.
In spite of her apparent engagement with Eglantine in conversation, Lady Sadie is keenly aware of the trouble brewing between er two children on the other side of the table, and her pale face crumples with concern.
“Nairobi is a veritable hotbed of drug taking and adultery,” Lionel goes on unabated. “Where promiscuity is de rigueur, little sister.” He smiles smugly as he takes a sip of his tea. “I was even taught a few things by the wife of a British peer who happens to be a good friend of Pater’s from his club!”
“Have you absolutely no shame?” Lettice asks in revulsion.
“Ahh, but that’s the good thing about Kenya. No-one has any need for shame there. Promiscuity and sexual prowess are badges of honour.”
“Then I’m sure you can’t wait to get back to your debauched lifestyle.”
“When I’m surrounded by British piety and hypocrisy here, my oath I am.”
“What are you two saying over there?” Lady Sadie pipes up nervously as she holds her cup and saucer in her lap.
“Oh, I was just asking Lionel when he has to go back to Kenya.” Lettice replies, looking gratefully to her mother for once.
“But he’s only just arrived, Lettice my dear!” chuckles Eglantine. “Surely you can’t want him to leave.”
“Oh it isn’t that, Eglantine,” Lady Sadie assures her sister-in-law. “It’s just that with the long journey both from British East Africa and back, he’ll have been away from the stud a good while, so he can only really stay until just after the wedding.”
“Oh really, Lionel?” Eglantine asks with a pout. “Can’t you even stay until Christmas? I don’t think we’ve had a Christmas with all you children under one roof since before the war.”
Knowing that his father, with whom he has a very strained relationship since being exiled in shame, only let him come back for Leslie and Arabella’s wedding for appearances’ sake, Lionel keeps up the pretence for his aunt’s sake and adds as he settles back into the scalloped back of the chaise, “Sorry Aunt Egg, but Mater is right. I’ll have been away from the farm for more than a month and a half by the time I get back.”
“But surely you have a steward you can leave in charge of the horse stud whilst you’re away.”
“Oh, I do, Aunt Egg.” Lionel agrees. “Capital chap too. Most capable.” He gazes down into his teacup. “However, it doesn’t pay to be away for too long. Kenya is full of treasure hunters and people on the make. I won’t let my stud suffer to line the pockets of, or up the prospects of, another man.”
“You always were competitive, even as child, my dear Lionel.” Eglantine smiles, shaking her head indulgently.
“Thinking of which, the Limru races will be coming up, not to mention the Kenya Derby******** so I have to be back for them!”
“Oooh!” Lettice sighs, raising her hand to her temple. “I think all this talk of wild Kenya is getting a bit much for me after my journey down from London.” She stands abruptly. “Would you all forgive me. I think I’d like to go to my room and lie down. I’m sure I’ll feel better after a short snooze and a freshen up.”
“Oh yes, do go up, Lettice.” Lady Sadie says soothingly, the look in her eyes betraying the fact that she knows how difficult it is for Lettice to even be in the same room as her brother. “It will be an hour or so before luncheon, so plenty of time to rest and recuperate. By that time your father and Leslie will be back from their estate rounds.” Turning to Eglantine she addresses her, “Eglantine, why don’t you and Lionel take a stroll around the gardens. I can’t stop you from smoking out of doors, and I’m sure Lionel would be happy to escort you.”
Lettice retreats, sighing with relief as she pulls the door of the morning room shut behind her, blocking out the hubbub of chatter. As she starts to retreat down the corridor, back to the main staircase, the door opens behind her and Lady Sadie slips out.
She scuttles up to her daughter. For the first time today, Lettice notices how pale and drawn her mother looks. Her pallor isn’t helped by her choice of a burnt orange coloured blouse, yet Lettice sees the dark circles under her eyes.
“Thank you for that, Lettice. I know that wasn’t easy for you.”
Lettice is stunned by her mother’s gracious acknowledgement and more so her thanks.
“Don’t worry,” Lady Sadie continues. “He’ll be gone the day after the wedding.” She heaves a shuddering sigh.
“If I don’t murder him before then.” Lettice seethes angrily.
“Well, if you do, I’ll help you bury his body in the rose garden.” Lady Sadie remarks with a smirk in a rare show of humour. “Your father has seen to it that Lionel will leave on Thursday, threating to cut him off without a bean if he doesn’t go quickly and quietly. Goodness knows the total of Lionel’s chits from the Muthaiga Club your father could practically re-roof this place with.”
“He’s just the same Mamma.” Lettice says with exasperation. “He hasn’t changed at all. In fact, I think he’s worse than before he left. He’s so full of bravado and priggish male privilege.”
“I’ve already told Mrs. Casterton to keep a sharp eye on all the maids whilst he’s here.”
“That won’t be easy with Leslie and Bella’s wedding to host, Mamma. You’d be better to tell her to warn all the girls to be on their guard.”
“Hhhmmm…” Lady Sadie considers. “Very sensible, Lettice. We’ll make you a suitable chatelaine of your own fine house, yet.”
“Oh Mamma!” Lettice sighs.
“Only until Thursday.” the older woman repeats.
“Only until Thursday.” Lettice confirms in reply.
*The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, commonly known as British Kenya or British East Africa, was part of the British Empire in Africa. It was established when the former East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a British Crown colony in 1920. Technically, the "Colony of Kenya" referred to the interior lands, while a 16 km (10 mi) coastal strip, nominally on lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar, was the "Protectorate of Kenya", but the two were controlled as a single administrative unit. The colony came to an end in 1963 when an ethnic Kenyan majority government was elected for the first time and eventually declared independence as the Republic of Kenya.
**The term bluestocking was applied to any of a group of women who in mid Eighteenth Century England held “conversations” to which they invited men of letters and members of the aristocracy with literary interests. The word over the passing centuries has come to be applied derisively to a woman who affects literary or learned interests.
***The Delphos gown is a finely pleated silk dress first created in about 1907 by French designer Henriette Negrin and her husband, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. They produced the gowns until about 1950. It was inspired by, and named after, a classical Greek statue, the Charioteer of Delphi. It was championed by more artistic women who did not wish to conform to society’s constraints and wear a tightly fitting corset.
****The Balkan Sobranie tobacco business was established in London in 1879 by Albert Weinberg (born in Romania in 1849), whose naturalisation papers dated 1886 confirm his nationality and show that he had emigrated to England in the 1870s at a time when hand-made cigarettes in the eastern European and Russian tradition were becoming fashionable in Europe. Sobranie is one of the oldest cigarette brands in the world. Throughout its existence, Sobranie was marketed as the definition of luxury in the tobacco industry, being adopted as the official provider of many European royal houses and elites around the world including the Imperial Court of Russia and the royal courts of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Spain, Romania, and Greece. Premium brands include the multi-coloured Sobranie Cocktail and the black and gold Sobranie Black Russian.
*****Elite Styles was one of the many glossy monthly magazines aimed at leisured middle and upper-class women, describing and illustrating the popular fashions of the era.
******The Aberdare Range (formerly the Sattima Range) is a one hundred mile long mountain range of upland, north of Kenya's capital Nairobi with an average elevation of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty feet. It straddles across the counties of Nyandarua, Nyeri, Muranga, Kiambu and Laikipia.
*******The Muthaiga Club is a club in Nairobi. It is located in the suburb of Muthaiga, about fifteen minutes’ drive from the city centre. The Muthaiga Country Club opened on New Year's Eve in 1913, and became a gathering place for the colonial British settlers in British East Africa, which later became in 1920, the Colony of Kenya.
********The annual Kenya Derby has been held since 1914, originally at Kenya’s principal racecourse in Kariokor, near Nairobi’s centre until 1954 when it was moved to the newly erected Ngong Racecourse.
Cluttered with paintings, photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s morning room with its Georgian and Victorian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection including pieces from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The silver tea set and silver galleried tray on the central table has been made with great attention to detail, and comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The gilt edged floral teacups, saucers and plates around the morning room come from a miniatures specialist stockist on E-Bay. The wonderful selection of biscuits on offer were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The Elite Styles and Delineator magazines from 1922 sitting on the end of the chaise lounge and the floral pouffe were made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States.
Lady Sadie’s morning room is furnished mostly with pieces from high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. Lady Sadie’s cream wingback armchair is a Chippendale piece, whilst the gilt decorated mahogany tables are Regency style, as is the straight backed chair with unpadded arms. The ornate mahogany corner chair is high Victorian in style. The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. The china cabinet to the left-hand side is Georgian revival and is lined with green velvet and fitted with glass shelves and a glass panelled door. The cream coloured footstool with gold tasselling came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The floral chaise lounge and footstool I acquired from a miniatures specialist stockist on E-Bay.
The china cabinet is full of miniature pieces of Limoges porcelain that were made in the 1950s. Pieces include a milk jug, three sugar bowls and two lidded powder bowls. Also 1950s Limoges porcelain is the vase on the far left of the photo on the Regency table holding pink roses. The roses themselves are handmade miniatures that come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The fluted squat cranberry glass vase on the table to the right of the photo is an artisan miniature made of hand blown glass which also came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. Made of polymer clay that are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements, the very realistic looking red and white tulips are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The tiny gilt cherub statue I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street stockist who specialised in dolls houses and doll house miniatures. Being only a centimetre in height and half a centimetre in diameter it has never been lost, even though I have moved a number of times in my life since its acquisition.
The plaster fireplace comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom as well, and the fire screen and fire pokers come from the same high street stockist who specialised in dolls houses and doll house miniatures as the cherub statue. I have also had these pieces since I was a teenager. The Royal Doulton style figurines on top the fireplace, are from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland and have been hand painted by me. The figurines are identifiable as particular Royal Doulton figurines from the 1920s and 1930s.
The Chetwynd’s family photos seen on Lady Sadie’s desk, the mantlepiece and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.
The two books about flower growing on Lady Sadie’s desk are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. He also made the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
The painting of the Georgian family above the fireplace comes from Amber’s Miniatures in the United States, whilst the two silhouette portraits come from Lady Mile Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The painting of the lady in the gold frame wedged up in the corner of the room surrounded by photos is made by Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The Persian rugs on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company in the United Kingdom.
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This was an old plantation that had been turned into a hotel, which we visited on our tour of Barbados. I have long forgotten its name, if I ever knew it, and I can't find anything on the internet so it may be long gone by now. It was high on a hill with a lovely, commanding view.
Old scan of a 35mm slide, converted to black & white.
Salt Shed Chicago
Chicago, IL
September 10th, 2025
All photos © Joshua Mellin per the guidelines listed under "Owner settings" to the right.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her old family home for the wedding of Leslie to Arabella, the daughter of their neighbours, Lord Sherbourne and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt. Today is the big day, and as the weakening November sun rises in what is a remarkably sunny day for the bride and groom, Lettice will shortly join the guests to watch her brother and his future wife exchange vows at the chapel in Glynes village. Even now she can hear the chimes from the belfry ring across the rolling green undulations of Lettice’s father’s estate, calling the great and good of the village and the county to come and bear witness to the wedding of their future squire.
We find ourselves in Lettice’s boudoir at Glynes, a room which she considers somewhat of a time capsule now with its old fashioned Edwardian furnishings and mementoes of those halcyon pre-war summers. She hardly even considers it her room any more, so far removed is she from that giddy teenager who had crushes on her elder brothers’ friends and loved chintz covered furniture, floral wallpaper and sweet violet perfume. Lettice stands at the window of her bedroom, lolling against the dusky pink and pale green, slightly faded floral folded back curtains. Even as she stands there she can almost catch a whiff the violet perfume and hear her girlish whispers and giggles of yesteryear, like ghosts of a distant time and place. Beyond her in the great park, some stubborn traces of morning mist still loiter around a copse of trees, and the birds twitter in the topiaries and the parterre garden that lie beyond the sweeping gravel turning circle of driveway. Fingering the fine lace curtain that is always draped across the glass of her window, Lettice sighs. A pale, diffused light falls upon her face, the sunlight warming her cheeks. She closes her eyes, blocking out the cheerful golden gleam in the pale blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds tinged with pale grey and washed out ultramarine.
“Were you imagining the bells ringing for your wedding, Tice?” a voice interrupts her thoughts.
“Oh!” Lettice gasps, spinning around, dropping the curtain pulled back idly in her hands, releasing a myriad of dust motes tumbling into the sunlight streaming through the window. “Leslie! You startled me!”
“Sorry Tice.” her elder brother says, as he walks into the room.
“Look at you, my big brother,” Lettice smiles proudly. “All dressed up for his wedding day.”
“I feel ridiculously overdressed.” Leslie says, running a finger around the inside of his starched collar uncomfortably.
She walks up to Leslie and tweaks his bow tie that he has knocked awry with his fingering of his collar before taking a step back and taking in her handsome brother dressed in his new morning suit.
“You never did like dressing up for fancy occasions like Mamma’s Hunt Ball, did you, Leslie?” she asks.
“Never. Give me a tweed jacket and tie any day.”
“Oh no Leslie!” Lettice chides, not unkindly. “Not today. It’s your wedding day, and even our tenant farmers who would rather be in the comfort of their workaday clothes get dressed up for their wedding.”
“I feel…” he begins.
“Sshhh!” Lettice puts one of her elegantly manicured fingers to his lips to silence her brother. “Today isn’t really about you and your feelings, Leslie. It’s about Bella. And Bella would be so disappointed if you weren’t turned out as splendidly as you are.” She considers his appearance, as if seeing him for the first time. “You know, it’s a shame you don’t like getting dressed up. You really scrub up rather handsomely. I can see what Bella saw beneath all that tweed and houndstooth you habitually wear.”
“Need to wear, for estate business.” Leslie corrects his sister. “Imagine the distrust if I turned up at one of the estate farms or a meeting of the tenants dressed in something like this! They’d think I didn’t understand a thing about farming.”
“Well, today is not about farming.” Lettice replies kindly. “It’s about pomp and show from two of the county’s great families, and no-one does pomp quite as well as the Chetwynds and the Tyrwhitts.”
“Were you thinking about a wedding of your own just now, listening to the bells?” Leslie asks again.
“Me? No,” Lettice replies. “The bells aren’t tolling for me yet.” She brushes a stray piece of lint off his frock coat. “No,” she adds dreamily. “I was just thinking about how often before the war I used to stand at the window, longing to be in the wider world.”
“And now you’re a part of it.”
“Indeed.” Lettice muses contentedly. “I was considering how much has changed since then.”
“Ahh yes, those halcyon days before the war.” Leslie sighs.
“I think before the war was the last time we were all in the house together: you, me, Lally and Lionel, Mater and Pater. One big, happy family.”
Leslie scoffs. “Is that what we were?”
“No,” Lettice admits. “Lionel has always courted trouble and caused us pain, long before he had to go to Kenya in disgrace. Do you remember how much he enjoyed teasing Lally and I when we were children?”
“Relentlessly.” Leslie sighs. “Especially you. Yet you two are the closest in age and should have been best friends. He always did have a beastly, nasty streak.”
“And you had to come and defend us.”
“Endlessly! Kenya might agree with his health, but Lionel’s still as mean and nasty now as he was then.”
“Oh yes. I’m well aware of that. We all are. Even Mater and Pater are acutely aware of it since it’s been so nice doing without it for the last few years. Who will defend me now or hold me in a special place in his heart, now that you are getting married, and I will be usurped by Bella for your affections?”
“You’ll always have a special place in my heart, mon petite soeur!” Leslie laughs. “You of all people should know that! You’re my baby sister. Eldest brothers always have special places in their hearts for their little sisters. Anyway, I thought things were going well between you and Spencely.”
“Oh they are, they are.” Lettice says distractedly.
“Then surely there is a place in his heart, a special place, just for you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Lettice says as she turns away from her brother and walks over to the floral chaise lounge on which sit her new Harriet Milford made hat, her lemon yellow gloves and her matching handbag.
“You have doubts as to Spencely’s affections, Tice?” Leslie looks to his sister in concern.
“Oh no!” she assures him. “I’m sure he’s fond of me. It’s just…”
“Yes?” Leslie’s eyebrows arch over his questioning eyes.
“It’s just that I haven’t even met his parents yet. Surely you would think if he was serious about our romance and our future together that he would introduce me to his parents.”
“Have you asked him, Tice?”
“Several times, but Selwyn always dismisses it with a wave of his hand. He says I’ll get to meet them in the fullness of time. Surely after all these months, it’s time, even if we don’t get married yet. It’s a sign of intent.”
Leslie thinks for a moment. “The Duke and Duchess of Walmford.” He ponders. “I can’t say I know anything much about them, what with being buried in estate business. The social round is more Mater’s thing than mine.”
“Oh I can read all I want to in Debrett’s*, every bit as easily as Mamma can: names, dates of birth, clubs, lineage, pedigree. That isn’t meeting someone.”
“True.”
“I just have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind, and it curdles my stomach whenever I raise the moot point between us.”
“You don’t think he’s a bounder, do you? Spencely’s never struck me as being a cad. In fact, I always thought he was rather decent when it came to the ladies, especially when you consider that London’s society ballrooms are full of men like Lionel, whose predatory advances towards the fairer sex aren’t bundled off to Nairobi for society’s greater good like Pappa and Mamma did with him.”
“For all our good.” Lettice corrects him. She looks down at the oriental carpet beneath their feet, rich and exotic, yet also sadly worn and faded in places. A troubled look crosses her pale face. “It’s not actually Selwyn that troubles me. It’s his mother.”
“Lady Zinnia?”
“Yes. Do you remember her when we, well when I was little, and they used to come here for the hunt? You are ten years older than me. I can only vaguely remember a grumpy woman in black dragging Selwyn away from me after she caught us playing in the hedgerows together. Selwyn said that he received a dreadful tongue lashing from her, and there was no puddng for him that night. What was she like?”
“Well, it’s hard to say.”
“You don’t remember her?”
“Oh I do, but then you also have all the mythology about her wrapping around her and obscuring my memories of her.”
“What mythology, Leslie?”
“Oh just that she was a beauty of the age, a glacial, imperious beauty who was born to be the Duchess of Walmsford. I remember the photos of her in Mamma’s copies of The Tatler**, The Lady***, Country Life**** and Horse and Hound*****. Except for the latter she was always dressed in the most elegant gowns, dripping in diamonds, a tiara atop her head, entertaining the country’s great and good at one of their estates or another. It clouds what you remember.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“I’m sure she did. I can’t say as I remember, but I was only a teenage boy. She wouldn’t have been interested in me. My presence would barely have even registered with her.” He takes his right hand to his chin and rubs it with his index finger as he thinks. “Although one thing I do remember quite clearly about her was her laugh.”
“Well, that’s more than I remember Leslie. I just remember this sort of dull impressionistic like face screaming at me. What was it like that you remember it?”
“It was like breaking glass: not shrill, beautiful, but cruel. Now, when I think back on those occasions as an adult and being more worldly, if you can call working on the estate worldly, I think she flirted with men at the hunt a lot.”
“But she was married to the Duke then, wasn’t she?”
“The Duke didn’t always come, for whatever reason, and when he didn’t, she flirted with all the men, married or otherwise. I suppose being friends with Alice Keppel******, she was part of King Edward’s racy Sandringham set where flirtations, and more,” He blushes self-consciously. “Were de riguer*******. I think she liked being a great beauty and having men, all sorts of powerful and influential men, in her thrall.”
“And ladies?”
“I don’t seem to remember her spending a great deal of time with the ladies when she visited us. I don’t think she was a drawing room type, like Mamma is, dunking dry biscuits in tea and gossiping over embroidery. She liked witty people, men especially. I think the company of most women bored her as I don’t think she cared for gossip, especially not county gossip which she considered parochial. I remember she liked talking about politics and art: things as a young teenager I had no head for, and if I’m honest, I still don’t. I’m just your dull parochial country squire. Give me a cattle show or hunt meet over the Houses of Parliament any day.”
“Stop that Leslie!” Lettice admonishes him with a gentle slap to his forearm. “You’re a fine man. The world isn’t made up entirely of politicians and great thinkers. Bella’s lucky to have a man as loving, kind and caring as you.” She smiles at her brother. “But go on about Lady Zinnia.”
“Lady Zinnia.” Leslie thinks. “She was clever, and she enjoyed making the men laugh. Engaging with men was almost like a sport to her. Even when we went on the foxhunt, she was out in front with the men. She was an excellent horsewoman and could keep up with the head of the pack, even though she rode side-saddle. She was spirited. Yes,” Leslie nods. “That’s a good word for her. She was spirited. Why all this sudden interest in Lady Zinnia, Tice?”
“Because I think she is the problem between Selwyn and I, or at least the obstacle to us actually getting married and being happily together.” Lettice admits. “I don’t think she likes me, or she doesn’t approve of me.”
“But you just said yourself that she’s never met you, well not since you were a child. How can you say she doesn’t like or approve of you if she’s never met you as an adult?”
“I can’t quite pinpoint it, but that’s what I sense, Leslie.”
“That’s a very grave allegation, Tice.” Leslie’s face clouds over. “What proof do you have?”
“I don’t have any, really,” Lettice admits guiltily. “But it’s just something I feel, here in the pit of my stomach. It’s like a canker, sitting there.”
“You must have more to go on than that in order to feel this way, surely Tice.”
“Well, take today for example. I asked Selwyn to come, but apparently his family is entertaining his Uncle Bertram and Aunt Rosalind, the Fox-Chavers, at their Scottish estate, Kenmarric.”
“Well to be fair, Tice, if he hasn’t made formal overtures of marriage, it’s really not appropriate for him to attend as your guest. Besides it is partridge season, Tice.”
“Yes, I know.” Lettice admits with a huff. “But it seems that whenever we seem to be making a bit of progress, plan something special beyond a dinner or a picnic, something always comes up.” She rubs a worn patch of the rug distractedly at her feet with the toe of her golden yellow leather shoe. “And it usually involves his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers.”
“I’ve not heard of her.”
“She hasn’t been presented yet. Apparently, she debuts next year. There is to be a rather grand coming out ball for her in London at the Cecil********. She’s young and pretty from what I’ve gathered.”
“Tice! Tice!” Leslie puts his hands firmly on Lettice’s sunken shoulders, squeezing them comfortingly through the lemon satin capped sleeves of the frock Gerald made for her for the wedding. She looks up into her brother’s face unhappily. “It sounds to me like you’re making something up out of… well, where there is nothing.”
“I knew you’d say that, Leslie.” Lettice pouts as she sticks her toe into the silk of the rug.
“Don’t do that, or you’ll wear a hole in it. As the future master of Glynes and all the expenses that go with it, I don’t want to have to replace the carpet unnecessarily.”
“Oh no,” Lettice stops rubbing the carpet and looks back into her brother’s face, a sudden steeliness replacing the soft and teary vulnerability in her eyes a moment ago. “I want you to promise me that when you inherit Glynes, one of the first things you will do is let me redecorate my boudoir.” She looks around her at the Eighteenth Century floral wallpaper, the heavy Art Nouveau dressing table, the chintz chaise lounge. “Mamma keeps this room as a mausoleum. It’s like by keeping it exactly as I left it before the war, the more obliging, more obsequious, less irritating, less outspoken Lettice of my teenage years will come back. But she won’t! Do you know that none of those photos on the chimneypiece, except perhaps the one of Nanny Webb and I, are my photos in here? I took all mine to London when I moved there. Mamma put these in here to fill the space. She even put that one of me as a flower girl at Lally’s wedding in pride of place on that table, just to remind me of what a dutiful daughter I was. There is nothing of me in this room now. Nothing!”
“Alright, Tice,” Leslie chuckles. “I agree. But only if you’ll put these silly ideas of Lady Zinnia trying to come between you and Spencely out of your mind.” He looks earnestly at her. “It’s not uncommon for an older male cousin to escort his younger female cousin to functions and social engagements prior to her coming out. This, what’s her name?”
“Pamela,” Lettice spits. “Pamela Fox-Chavers.”
“Pamela will benefit from knowing someone at the balls and other functions of the Season that she is to attend. As I said before, Spencely strikes me as a good egg when it comes to the ladies, so he’ll help keep her safe, advise her about the SITs and NSITs*********, and probably stop her from getting into mischief. Don’t get jealous of a girl whom you don’t even know, and whom I’m sure you’ve no reason to be jealous of. You tell me I’m handsome and smart, well,” He spins her around to face a full length cheval mirror where she can see her reflection. “Look at yourself. You are beautiful and petite. You are smart. You live your own life up in London, away from Mater and Pater, which is more than a lot of girls of your age and background have. And you have a very successful business, which you created – no-one else. Think on that the next time you go to give me a compliment. You’re the most successful of all of us. Lionel lives as a rake in disgrace in Nairobi where he can do no harm other than drink too much gin or race a few thoroughbreds that really aren’t ready to be raced. Lally is married to a nice, if dull chap, and has brought forth a few progeny to carry on Charles’ line. I’ll inherit this old pile of bricks and pray I can weather the storm and keep it all going so that one of Bella’s and my progeny can take over when I’m gone. But you, you leave a legacy of beautiful interiors that are your own distinctive style. You influence taste and fashions. You are one of those Bright Young Things********** the papers are full of, and whom the world will talk about long after I’m buried and forgotten in that churchyard.” He points out the window, across the undulating hill to where the sound of the bells is coming from.
“Do you really think that, Leslie?” Lettice asks.
“Well of course I do, Tice.” he concurs. “We all do. Well, maybe not Mamma, and certainly not Lionel. But Lally, Father, Bella and I do, so we outnumber them. Nigel, Isobel and Sherbourne too. We’re all so proud of you. Even Mamma, though she would rather eat a pound of nails than say it, must have at least some unexpressed admiration for what you do and what you’ve achieved, Tice.”
“Leslie! Leslie there you are, old boy! Come on!” Lionel’s unusually suntanned face and sun bleached sandy blonde hair poke around the frame of Lettice’s dressing room door. “Oh, morning, Lettuce Leaf.” He nods to his little sister as an afterthought.
Lettice cringes at the use of her most hated childhood nickname, which is tolerable, or even amusing on occasion when said by her best friend Gerald, but like poison spat at her when it comes from her hated sibling.
“Look I hate to break this tender moment of sibling bonding between you two up.” Their brother sneers mockingly at them from beneath his mean sun blonde pencil moustache, mischief in his cold, glinting eyes. “I mean, it really is charming and all, but I’d like to remind you Leslie, that the car is waiting downstairs and the bells toll. Listen, can’t you hear them?” Dressed in his morning suit with a boutonniere of a white rose and some Queen Anne’s lace sticking from his lapel, he poses dramatically, lolling against the doorframe, a hand held to his ear as he perks up and peers through Lettice’s window into the bright morning beyond.
“Bugger off Lionel, you pillock!” growls Leslie warningly. “You’re only here for a few days. Pray you don’t leave with broken teeth.”
“Alright!” Lionel holds up his hands in defence. “Don’t shoot, or punch me.” He sneers again. “I’m just the messenger. Mater and Pater are downstairs with your best man, Leslie, and he’s getting anxious that his sister is going to arrive at the church to get married before you two do. The olds are trying to placate him, so I’d shake a leg and get a move on, if I were you.”
Smiling smarmily, Lionel slinks away, leaving Lettice and Leslie alone again.
“Look, I have to go, but, but we’ll talk later, Tice, alright?” Leslie assures his sister.
“No we won’t,” Lettice says, smiling sadly and reaching up to her favourite brother’s boutonniere, running her fingers along the soft silken petal of the white rose buds. “Not today at any rate.” She pats his arm comfortingly. “We both may hate Lionel, but even though I’d rather eat a pound of nails than say it, he’s right. The bells are chiming, and you’re getting married. I can’t hold you up from the most important moment of your life, and Bella would never speak to me again if I did. Off you go.”
“Tice,” Leslie begins, a hundred unfinished thoughts catching in his voice.
“I’ll be alright. I have Gerald to escort me this afternoon.” She smiles as she sees a mixture of anxiety and excitement in his eyes. “Just tell Mamma I’m fixing my hat and I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Alright, Tice.” He starts to leave. “I’ll see you in the chapel then.”
“Just try and stop me,” she replies with a smile. “It isn’t every day my big brother gets married. Now go, before Nigel has an aneurism on the drawing room carpet.”
With the pattering of hurried footsteps, Leslie disappears around the frame of the door and runs down the hall.
Lettice picks up her hat and walks over to her dressing table where she withdraws one of the long hatpins in the container standing on its surface. Carefully positioning her pretty lemon yellow straw hat with organza and artificial flower decoration against her straw yellow blonde chignon and affixes it with the hatpin. She listens to the crisp sound of the pin piercing the straw of her hat and feels the pin slide through the back of her hair. She tugs the brim gently, just to make sure her millinery is firmly in place and sighs as she considers her reflection. She admires her figure, expertly encased in the pale yellow satin frock with the Peter Pan collar*********** Gerald has made for her for the wedding. The two strings of perfect graduating creamy white pearls her parents gave her for her coming of age sit across her collar bones and a corsage of white roses sits daintily on her wrist.
Satisfied, she wanders back to the window and looks down. Through the lace scrim, she can see Nigel Tyrwhitt, Leslie’s bride-to-be’s brother and his best man, walk across the gravel towards her father’s Daimler, followed closely by Leslie. The two talk, but with the window closed and being two storeys up, Lettice can’t hear what they are saying, but she catches a waft of their laughter through the glass and knows that whatever they are saying, they are very happy that Leslie is about to marry Arabella. In the distance, the Glynes Church of England chapel bells peal, beckoning guest to enter to witness the marriage of Arabella Tyrwhitt, only daughter of Lord Sherboune and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt to Leslie Cheywnd, son and heir of the Viscount and Viscountess of Wrexham, forever enmeshing two of the county’s great families.
*The first edition of Debrett's Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, containing an Account of all the Peers, 2 vols., was published in May 1802, with plates of arms, a second edition appeared in September 1802, a third in June 1803, a fourth in 1805, a fifth in 1806, a sixth in 1808, a seventh in 1809, an eighth in 1812, a ninth in 1814, a tenth in 1816, an eleventh in 1817, a twelfth in 1819, a thirteenth in 1820, a fourteenth in 1822, a fifteenth in 1823, which was the last edition edited by Debrett, and not published until after his death. The next edition came out in 1825. The first edition of The Baronetage of England, containing their Descent and Present State, by John Debrett, 2 vols., appeared in 1808. Today, Debrett's is a British professional coaching company, publisher and authority on etiquette and behaviour. It was founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The company takes its name from its founder, John Debrett.
**Tatler is a British magazine published by Condé Nast Publications focusing on fashion and lifestyle, as well as coverage of high society and politics. It is targeted towards the British upper-middle class and upper class, and those interested in society events.
***The Lady is one of Britain's longest-running women's magazines. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. The magazine was founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles (1842–1922), the maternal grandfather of the aristocratic and controversial Mitford sisters. Bowles also founded the English magazine Vanity Fair. He gave the Mitford girls' father (David Freeman-Mitford, Second Baron Redesdale) his first job: general manager of the magazine. Early contributors included Nancy Mitford and Lewis Carroll, who compiled a puzzle for the title
****Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
*****Horse and Hound is the oldest equestrian weekly magazine of the United Kingdom. Its first edition was published in 1884. The magazine contains horse industry news, reports from equestrian events, veterinary advice about caring for horses, and horses for sale.
******Alice Frederica Keppel was a British society hostess and a long-time mistress and confidante of King Edward VII. Keppel grew up at Duntreath Castle, the family seat of the Edmonstone baronets in Scotland. She was the youngest child of Mary Elizabeth, née Parsons, and Sir William Edmonstone, 4th Baronet. In 1891 she married George Keppel, an army officer, and they had two daughters. Alice Keppel became one of the best society hostesses of the Edwardian era. Her beauty, charm and discretion impressed London society and brought her to the attention of the future King Edward VII in 1898, when he was still Prince of Wales, whose mistress she remained until his death, lightening the dark moods of his later years, and holding considerable influence. Through her younger daughter, Sonia Cubitt , Alice Keppel is the great-grandmother of Queen Camilla, the former mistress and second wife of King Edward VII's great-great-grandson King Charles III.
*******In French, de rigueur means "out of strictness" or "according to strict etiquette"; one definition of our word rigor, to which rigueur is related, is "the quality of being strict, unyielding, or inflexible." In English, we tend to use de rigueur to describe a fashion or custom that is so commonplace within a context that it seems a prescribed, mandatory part of it.
********The Hotel Cecil was a grand hotel built 1890–96 between the Thames Embankment and the Strand in London, England. It was named after Cecil House, a mansion belonging to the Cecil family, which occupied the site in the Seventeenth Century. The hotel was the largest in Europe when it opened, with more than eight hundred rooms. The proprietor, Jabez Balfour, later went bankrupt and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The Royal Air Force was formed and had its first headquarters here in the former Hotel Cecil in 1918. During the 1920s, it was one of the most fashionable hotels in London and was filled with flappers and young men, representing the spirit of the Jazz Age. The hotel was largely demolished in 1930, and Shell Mex House now stands on its site.
*********SIT is the acronym for “safe in taxis” and NSIT is the acronym for “not safe in taxis”. These acronyms were used by debutantes and their mothers to refer to young men who could and couldn’t be trusted to escort a debutante home in a taxi without getting handsy. Some aristocratic mothers with daughters of a marriageable age being introduced into society kept a list of these young men and the debutantes themselves would avoid them.
**********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.
***********A Peter Pan collar is a style of clothing collar, flat in design with rounded corners. It is named after the collar of Maude Adams's costume in her 1905 role as Peter Pan, although similar styles had been worn before this date. Peter Pan collars were particularly fashionable during the 1920s and 1930s.
Contrary to popular belief, fashion at the beginning of the Roaring 20s did not feature the iconic cloche hat as a commonly worn head covering. Although invented by French milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, the cloche hat did not start to gain popularity until 1922, so even though this story is set in that year, picture hats, a hangover from the pre-war years, were still de rigueur in fashionable society and whilst Lettice is fashionable, she and many other fashionable women still wore the more romantic picture hat. Although nowhere near as wide, heavy, voluminous or as ornate as the hats worn by women between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the Great War, the picture hats of the 1920s were still wide brimmed, although they were generally made of straw or some lightweight fabric and were decorated with a more restrained touch.
This pretty and very feminine Edwardian boudoir may appear like something out of a historical house display, but it is in fact part of my 1:12 miniatures collection and includes items from my childhood, as well as those I have collected as an adult.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Lettice’s yellow straw hat decorated with ornamental flowers, fruit and organza. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. The maker of this hat is unknown, but it is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. Lettice’s lemon yellow purse is also an artisan piece and is made of kid leather which is so soft. It is trimmed with very fine braid and the purse has a clasp made from a piece of earring. The matching lemon yellow gloves are made from the same soft kid leather. They came as a set from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The floral chintz chaise lounge with its scalloped end comes from Crooked Mile Cottage miniatures in America, whilst the dainty fringed footstool with its tiny rose and leaf pattern ribbon was hand upholstered by an artisan in England.
The silver dressing table set on the dressing table, consisting of mirror, brushes and a comb, as well as the tray on which the perfume bottle stand has been made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.
On the silver tray there is a selection of sparkling perfume bottles, which are handmade by an English artisan for the Little Green Workshop. Made of cut coloured crystals set in a gilt metal frames or using vintage cut glass beads they look so elegant and terribly luxurious. The faceted pink glass perfume bottle, made from an Art Deco bead came with the dressing table, which I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop.
The dressing table chair did not come with the dressing table, although it does match nicely. Upholstered in a very fine pink satin, it was made by the high-end dolls’ house miniature furniture manufacturer, Bespaq.
The plaster fireplace and its metal grate come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The fire pokers and bellows I have had since I was a teenager and come from a high street stockist who specialised in dolls houses and doll house miniatures.
The Chetwynd family photos seen cluttering 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 frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each.
The porcelain clock on the mantlepiece is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The other vases in the room, except for the one containing the irises come from various online miniatures stockists.
Made of polymer clay that are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements, the very realistic looking blue irises are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The vase they stand in is a 1950s Limoges vase – one of a pair. Both are stamped with a small green Limoges mark to the bottom. These treasures I found in an overcrowded cabinet at the Mill Markets in Geelong. The pink roses on the dressing table and the cream roses on the round Regency occasional table come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The tall Dutch style chest of drawers to the far right of the photo was one of the first pieces of miniature furniture I ever bought for myself. I chose it as payment for several figures I made from Fimo clay for a local high street toy shop when I was eight years old. All these years later, I definitely think I got the better end of the deal!
The oriental rug is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug and has been machine woven. The wallpaper is an Eighteenth Century chinoiserie design of white camellias. All the paintings on Lettice’s boudoir walls come from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.