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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“You sound just like Gladys.” Minnie says.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“She seems quite lovely, Lettice darling.”

 

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

 

“How does Lady Sadie feel about her usurper?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“What do you mean?”

 

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

 

“Like a mansion flat?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Oh, of course.” Minnie agrees.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Oh no! Not another one Minnie?”

 

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

 

“Oh Minnie!” Lettice shakes her head dolefully.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Nine.” Minnie replies with a guilty gulp.

 

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

 

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

 

“Will I what, Minnie?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

  

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

  

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Sir Winston Churchill

British politician (1874 - 1965)

  

Fox Lake, Wisconsin

070813

  

© Copyright 2013 MEA Images, Merle E. Arbeen, All Rights Reserved. If you would like to copy this, please feel free to contact me through my FlickrMail, Facebook, or Yahoo email account. Thank you.

 

***************

This photograph has achieved the following highest awards:

 

Super Six, The Academy

 

InfiniteXposure, Level 7 VIOLET, (19)

 

Frame It! Level 5 (5)

 

Challenge Club Champion

 

DSLR Autofocus, Hall of Fame (5)

 

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.

 

After a busy morning working at her desk, writing a list of some final tweaks to her friend Margot Channon’s interior designs for her Regency country house ‘Chi an Treth’, Lettice prepares to curl up in one of her armchairs and enjoy her latest library book from Boots*, a new romance, when the telephone rings noisily on the occasional table beside her.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Edith, Lettice’s maid, is putting glassware back into the cocktail cabinet in the adjoining dining room and looks up anxiously. “That infernal contraption!” she mutters to herself. Edith hates answering the telephone. It’s one of the few jobs in her position that she wishes she didn’t have to do. Whenever she has to answer it, which is quite often considering how frequently her mistress is out and about, there is usually some uppity caller at the other end of the phone, whose toffee-nosed accent only seems to sharpen when they realise they are speaking to ‘the hired help’ as they abruptly demand Lettice’s whereabouts.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“Oh pooh!” Lettice cries. “And just as I was getting comfortable.”

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“This had better not be Mr. Fulton telling me that the lorry of furnishings and hangings and papers bound for ‘Chi an Treth’ has broken down between London and Penzance.” she grumbles.

 

The silver and Bakelite telephone continues to trill loudly as Lettice brushes herself down and picks up the receiver.

 

“Mayfair 432,” she answers without the slightest trace of irritation in her very best telephone voice.

 

The line crackles for a moment before a clipped, upper-class male voice drifts down the line to the receiver at Lettice’s ear. “May I speak to Miss Chetwynd, please.”

 

“Yes, this is Miss Chetwynd speaking,” Lettice replies.

 

“Darling!” the unfamiliar male voice exclaims.

 

Lettice reddens at the familiarity of the term and nearly drops the receiver in shock. “May I ask who is calling, please?”

 

“Darling Lettice, it’s me,” the stranger on the end of the line says with a chuckle. When there is silence in response, he adds, “It’s Selwyn.”

 

“Oh Selwyn!” Lettice gasps in sudden recognition, and sits up abruptly in her seat, her face going from trepidation to a beaming smile, her eyes sparking with happiness.

 

Edith in the dining room, having put the glasses back into the cocktail cabinet makes to go, but Lettice waves her free left hand excitedly and beckons her maid over. Edith sighs but walks over reluctantly. As soon as she is within reach, Lettice reaches out and clasps her hand, encouraging her to stay, and refusing to let her go. She sighs again. Looking around the room she feels awkward as she overhears whisps of the conversation. She would much rather return to the kitchen and start cleaning the lidded serving dishes with Silvo silver paste, which is what she would be doing if her mistress hadn’t grabbed her as if her life depended on it.

 

“Darling Lettice, I’m going to be up in London for a few days.” Selwyn announces cheerily.

 

“When, Selwyn?” Lettice asks, almost too afraid to breathe.

 

“Next week,” he elucidates. “Tuesday and Wednesday. I have the designs of a house I’ve been commissioned to build for an artist couple in Hampstead.”

 

“How thrilling, Selwyn!” Lettice’s grip tightens around both the telephone receiver and Edith’s hand.

 

“Yes.” he says with a light laugh. “They’re quite progressive with their desires for designs on a new home. I was rather chuffed when they asked me to design it for them. So, I thought I’d also run a few errands whilst I’m in town. I’ll be staying at the Saville Club** whilst I’m up from the country.”

 

“Oh, so you’ll be quite close by then!” Lettice looks excitedly up at Edith, who awkwardly tries to evade her mistress’ eyes.

 

“Indeed yes. Just around the corner, really. I didn’t want Mummy and Daddy to open the London house just for a few days”

 

“No, I suppose that is wise.”

 

“And I was thinking that whilst I was in town, we might fulfil those plans that we made at the Hunt Ball.

 

“Plans Selwyn?” Lettice queries, a smile teasing up Lettice’s pale and full pink lips.

 

Edith cannot help herself and turns her head back and stares, open mouthed, in astonishment at her mistress’ obvious attempt to be coy. Ever since she returned from Wiltshire after the Hunt Ball Lettice has done nothing but talk about the handsome young Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, who was an old childhood friend whom she hadn’t seen in years. The way she spoke, the man danced like a dream and swept her off her feet that evening. Edith narrows her eyes and shakes her head at Lettice.

 

“Don’t you remember, darling girl, or had you had too much champagne?” His light-hearted chuckle emanates from his end of the line. “We planned to catch up when I was next in town if you were free.” He pauses for a moment and aside from a faint crackle down the line there is a palpable silence tinged with excitement and anticipation. “That is, assuming you’d still like to, of course, Lettice darling.”

 

Lettice pauses for a moment, giving her maid’s hand another squeeze before swallowing. “Oh yes, I should like that very much, Selwyn.” She winks at her maid cheekily. “What days did you say you would be in town again?”

 

“Tuesday and Wednesday. I was hoping you might be free for luncheon, or perhaps a cocktail?”

 

Lettice takes a deep breath before replying, “Well, I’ll just have to consult my diary. I’ve just sent some furniture down to Penzance for the house down there I’ve ben commissioned to redecorate.”

 

“Oh yes, I remember: your friends, the Channons.”

 

“You do have a good memory, Selwyn.”

 

“Well,” he pauses and chuckles, only this time a little awkwardly. “There are quite a few things I remember about you at the Hunt Ball.”

 

Lettice smile broadens on her lips as she feels a flush fill her cheeks and redden her neck. “And we still have so much to catch up on about what we’ve been doing over the last fifteen years since we were children together.”

 

“Yes,” Selwyn replies. “So, are you free on Tuesday or Wednesday, my dear Lettice?”

 

“Well, let me just check my diary, Selwyn.”

 

Lettice deposits the receiver on the surface of the black japanned table next to her novel and her cooling cup of tea. She reaches out and snatched as Edith’s other hand handing limply by her side and squeezes it as tightly as the other. She cannot help herself and let’s a quick little squeak escape her lips as she smiles up at her maid, who for all her attempts to be discreet cannot help but smile back. Lettice waits for a few more moments. Finally, when she thinks enough time has passed, she releases Edith’s left hand. The maid flicks her fingers back and forth, making sure the circulation her mistress cut off is restored to her digits.

 

Picking up the receiver Lettice says, “You happen to be in luck, Mr. Spencely. I am free for luncheon on Wednesday.”

 

“Oh hoorah!” Selwyn exclaims in delight. “Marvellous! I thought we might go to the Hotel Cecil*** for luncheon.”

 

“Oh no!” Lettice protests in return. “Everyone I know will be there!”

 

“You’d rather go to the Lyons Corner House**** on Tottenham Court Road?” Selwyn laughs good naturedly. “I’m sure no-one would know us there.”

 

Lettice sighs. “It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you, Selwyn.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“I’m sure you’ll think me mad, but I can assure you that Mater has spies in her friends and their friends and acquaintances, who are only too happy to report what her youngest wayward daughter and her flatter friends are up to. I know I wouldn’t enjoy luncheon with you if I was forever wondering whether someone was watching us and planning on reporting every thing we do and every word we utter back to her before the day is out.”

 

This time when Selwyn laughs, it is a big, jolly guffaw.

 

“Don’t laugh at me, Selwyn, please! I know I sound quite mad, but it’s true.”

 

“Oh I’m sorry, Lettice darling. I know you aren’t mad. My mother does exactly the same and keeps tabs on all her children, so I know what it’s like. Now, if you told me that the potted palms in the Cecil reported back to your mother, well then, I would have to question your mental state.”

 

This time the pair of them laugh together, Lettice’s filled with relief.

 

“So, if the Cecil isn’t suitable this time, where do you suggest, my dear?”

 

Lettice thinks for a moment. “What about the Metropole*****?”

 

“I can’t say I’ve been there since the war.”

 

“Oh it’s very luxurious and the food is divine. I went there not long ago with a client of mine.”

 

“And it’s safe from your Mother’s spies?”

 

“Well,” Lettice admits. “Nowhere is that impenetrable, however we are less likely to find ladies dining there as we would at the Cecil, and those that are, are probably more inclined to be interested in politics and affairs of state rather than who is dining around them.”

 

“I’ll see if I can book us a discreet table, then, my darling girl.”

 

“If you would, Selwyn.”

 

“Shall we say one o’clock then, my angel?”

 

“Yes.” Lettice agrees. “Your angel…” she ruminates.

 

“I’m sorry Lettice. I didn’t mean to be so intimate,” Selwyn stutters hurriedly. “I apologise.”

 

“Oh please don’t, Selwyn!” Lettice assures him. “I was just thinking how lovely that sounds: to be your angel.”

 

“So, shall we say one then on Wednesday,” he pauses. “My angel?”

 

“Yes, one o’clock in the foyer of the Metropole Hotel. I shall see you then.”

 

“And I shall be counting the minutes until then, my angel.”

 

“Goodbye, dear Selwyn. Until then.”

 

“Goodbye my angel, until then.”

 

Lettice replaces the Bakelite receiver into the chrome cradle of the telephone.

 

“Well!” Lettice gasps with excitement. “You’ll never guess who that was, Edith!”

 

“I’m quite sure I couldn’t say, Miss.” Edith says with a downwards, disapproving look, hating having to be subjected to her mistress’ private telephone call.

 

“It was Selwyn Spencely! You’ll never guess what’s he’s gone and done, Edith!”

 

“I’m positive I’d never guess, Miss.” Edith replies, casting her eyes to the white painted ceiling.

 

“He’s taking me to luncheon at the Metropole on Wednesday!”

 

Lettice screams and jumps up and down, her long string of glass bugle beads jangling about in front of her as she wraps her arms dramatically around Edith’s neck and starts spinning her around. Edith stumbles and breaks away from her giddy mistress.

 

“Miss! Miss!” she chides. “Calm yourself and stop that jumping, or I’ll have Mrs. Clifford’s maid from downstairs up here in a trice, complaining about the light fixtures shaking, or plaster dust ending up in old Mrs. Clifford’s lunch.”

 

“Oh pooh old Mrs. Clifford and her luncheon!” Lettice laughs as she reaches out for her maid and starts dancing around with her again. “I’m gong to have luncheon on Wednesday with dreamy Selwyn Spencely, the most eligible and handsome young man in London!”

 

*Boots the chemist was established in 1849, by John Boot. After his father's death in 1860, Jesse Boot, aged 10, helped his mother run the family's herbal medicine shop in Nottingham, which was incorporated as Boot and Co. Ltd in 1883, becoming Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd in 1888. In 1920, Jesse Boot sold the company to the American United Drug Company. However, because of deteriorating economic circumstances in North America Boots was sold back into British hands in 1933. The grandson of the founder, John Boot, who inherited the title Baron Trent from his father, headed the company. The Boots Pure Drug Company name was changed to The Boots Company Limited in 1971. Between 1898 and 1966, many branches of Boots incorporated a lending library department, known as Boots Book-Lovers' Library.

 

**The Savile Club is a traditional London gentlemen's club founded in 1868, many of whose members have a common interest in the arts. Located in fashionable and historically significant Mayfair, its membership, past and present, include many prominent names.

 

***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.

 

****Built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London, J. Lyons and Company opened their first teashop in Piccadilly in 1894. From 1909 they developed this into a chain of teashops. The waitresses that worked in them were commonly known as Nippies as they were forever on their feet, nipping in and out of serving tables. The company also ran high class restaurants, founding the Trocadero in 1895, and hotels including the Strand Palace, opened in 1909, the Regent Palace, opened in 1915, and the Cumberland Hotel, opened in 1933, all in London. The last Lyon’s Corner House, in the Strand closed in 1977.

 

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

 

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.

 

The vase of yellow roses and lilies on the Art Deco occasional table is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

Lettice’s tea cup and saucer is part of a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era.

 

Lettice’s romantic novel is a 1:12 size miniature 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. This novel is one of the rarer exceptions and it has been designed not to be opened. Nevertheless, the cover is beautifully illustrated. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. To the left of the photograph is a Chippendale cabinet which has been hand decorated with chinoiserie designs. It also features very ornate metalwork hinges and locks. 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 we are in Lettice’s chic, dining room, which stands adjunct to her equally stylish drawing room. She has decorated it in a restrained Art Deco style with a smattering of antique pieces. It is also a place where she has showcased some prized pieces from the Portman Gallery in Soho including paintings, her silver drinks set and her beloved statue of the ‘Modern Woman’ who presides over the proceedings from the sideboard.

 

“Luncheon is served, Miss.” Edith, Lettice’s maid, announces in a brave voice, disguising her nerves cooking for Lettice’s father the Sixth Viscount of Wrexham as she drops a respectful curtsey on the threshold between the dining room and the drawing room.

 

“What’s that?” Viscount Wrexham pipes as he sits up in the Art Deco tub chair by the fire that he has been comfortably installed in for the last hour and a half.

 

“Luncheon, Pappa.” Lettice replies. “Thank you, Edith.”

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith replies. She bobs another quick curtsey and wastes no time scurrying back through the green baize door into the relative safety of the kitchen.

 

“Shall we go through, Pappa?” Lettice asks with a happy smile and an indicating gesture.

 

The Viscount and his daughter stand up and stroll into the dining room, leaving their empty aperitif glasses on the low coffee table. Lettice takes her place as hostess at the head of the table, whilst her father takes his place to her left.

 

“What’s this?” the Viscount burbles discontentedly as he looks across the black japanned Art Deco table.

 

“It looks like luncheon to me, Pappa.” Lettice replies sweetly, aware that her answer will irritate her father. “Edith’s roast chicken. How delicious.”

 

“I can see that Lettice.” Viscount Wrexham growls. “Don’t be obtuse!”

 

“Then be more specific, Pappa.”

 

“To be more specific. Why did that lazy girl just leave it in the middle of the table. Girl! Girl!” he bellows towards the door. “Come here, girl!”

 

“Pappa!” Lettice exclaims.

 

Edith hurries back through the door with a harried look on her face. “Yes, Your Lordship?” She makes a quick bob curtsey and gazes down at her fingers folded neatly in front of her.

 

The Viscount glares firstly at her, then turns silently to glare at the food causing offence on the table.

 

“Thank you Edith,” Lettice says apologetically in a soothing tone. “His Lordship was mistaken. You may return to your duties.”

 

“What? I…” the older man splutters, turning his offended gaze to his daughter.

 

“Pappa.” Lettice places her elegant hand with its manicured nails over her father’s bigger hand and waits until Edith has slipped back through the green baize door like a shadow. “Papa. You’re in London now, not in Wiltshire: in my flat, not in Glynes*. This is luncheon, à la London. And in London, in my flat, we serve ourselves luncheon on informal occasions. Would you carve?” She proffers the carving cutlery to her disgruntled father.

 

“Well, I suppose someone must, since you see fit to deprive us of a butler,” he mutters.

 

“Pappa, look around you. I live in a flat, not a mansion. I don’t need a butler. Edith does very well as a cook and maid-of-all-work. And I’d like to keep her, so please stop terrorising her by bellowing at her.”

 

“What about for a dinner party! Don’t tell me you insult your guests as you do your poor Father by forcing them to serve themselves. You’ll never have a single client if you do.”

 

“No Pappa,” Lettice sighs in an exasperated fashion. “Edith can wait table as good as any butler.”

 

“Ptah! What nonsense! A girl waiting table. It’s like the war all over again.”

 

“Or,” Lettice speaks over her father forcefully to prevent a tirade coming from his lips. “If needs be, I hire extra staff from a domestic agency in Westminster Mamma put me in touch with. It’s the same agency she uses when you both come up to London from Glynes.” She spoons some boiled vegetables onto her plate next to the piece of roast chicken her father placed on it. “Thinking of which, it was lovely of Mamma to send up some orange roses from Glynes.”

 

“Yes, your Mother has done particularly well with the roses in the greenhouses at Glynes this year. They have protected the blooms from the Wiltshire cold and provided a profusion of flowers.”

 

“They are beautiful.” Lettice smiles as she looks at the fiery orange blooms in the tall cut crystal vase on the table before her.

 

“Well, your Mother and I both agree that this London flat of yours, like so much of London, lacks colour. It’s all black and white, just like those Bioscopes** you young people so adore.”

 

“Nonsense Pappa! My flat has lots of colour. Just look at the art on my walls.”

 

“Finger paintings!” he snorts derisively as he takes a bite of his chicken. “Your Mother and I agree about that too. Not to mention,” the Viscount pauses, deposits his cutlery onto his plate and turns in his seat to look behind him at the statue of the bronze woman reclining, yet gazing straight at him with a steely gaze. “Ahem.”

 

“It’s called modern art, Pappa. And she is divine: the embodiment of the New Woman in bronze. Anyway, thankfully my clients happen to like my choice of ‘finger paintings’ and modern sculpture from the Portland Gallery.”

 

“Aah, yes well,” the Viscount clears his throat and dabs the edges of his mouth with his blue linen napkin. “Thinking of clients. That brings me to the purpose of my visit.”

 

“Of course. There has to be a reason beyond visiting your beloved youngest daughter just to see to her welfare.”

 

“Now, don’t be like that Lettice.” He wags a finger admonishingly at her. “Many is the time I’ve come up to town just to have the pleasure of your company over luncheon at Claridge’s. No. No, your Mother, heard from… a friend, ahem.” The older man clears his throat awkwardly. “That you designed some interiors for the wife of that banker, Hatchett: the chorus girl.”

 

Lettice purposefully lowers her fork. Picking up her glass of red wine she replies, “I did Pappa. What of it?”

 

“Oh Lettice! Your poor mother and I were hoping that it was just a rumour.”

 

“Well why shouldn’t I design interiors for her? I’m an interior designer and she needed some rooms redesigning.”

 

“Lettice! You know perfectly well why. I shouldn’t have to spell it out for you. You aren’t a child anymore. You know your position in society. Be an interior designer by all means, but at least stick to your own class and be a society interior designer, my dear.”

 

“That doesn’t pay the bills, Pappa.”

 

The Viscount looks askance at his daughter. “For shame, Lettice!”

 

“Pappa, I’m a businesswoman now. I must talk about money. At least the Hatchett’s paid for my services.”

 

“You’re of age now Lettice, and I pay you a damn good allowance that should more than cover your expenses, and maybe even extend to getting a decent butler rather than a maid. Frocks, even the ones you like, can’t be that costly, surely.”

 

“Pappa, it’s not so much about the money. It’s about the success of my business. I want to do something with my life. I can’t be a successful interior designer if I provide my services at no fee. I’d be a sham!”

 

“Well what about that cousin of your Mother’s in Fitzroy Square? Cousin Gwendolyn wasn’t it?”

 

“Pappa, the Duchess of Whitby still hasn’t paid me a third of what she owes for the redesign of her small reception room. I’ve sent her two reminders which she has politely ignored. She is never at home when I visit, and she is evasive to say the least over the telephone.”

 

“Oh.” the Viscount looks down at his plate. “Well… well, I’ll talk to your Mother about talking to Gwendolyn about that.”

 

“It would be even better if you did Pappa.” Lettice raises her glass of claret. “She is more inclined to listen to you, as head of the Chetwynd household.”

 

“Oh, very well Lettice.” he sighs and clinks glasses with his daughter.

 

“Thank you Pappa!” She leans over and pecks her father on the cheek, sending a flush of colour across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “You are a brick!”

 

The two continue to eat their luncheon from Lettice’s gilt blue and white Royal Doulton dinner set in an avant garde Art Deco pattern. For a short while the companionable silence is only broken by the sound of cutlery against crockery.

 

“Your Mother is right. I never could say no to you, Lettice.”

 

“You have to have a favourite Pappa.” Lettice smiles happily. “Why shouldn’t it be me?”

 

“It should be Leslie, as my son and heir.”

 

“Oh, he’s Mamma’s favourite.” Lettice flaps the remark away with a flick of her left hand. “We all know that. We’ve always known that.”

 

“Well Lettice, as I said before. Just remember your position in society. Your Mother and I, we’re prepared to tolerate your wish to dabble in this business folly of yours before you settle down and get married, but please be a society interior designer and design for your own class. Be discerning with your choice of clients. Hmmm?” He smiles hopefully at his daughter.

 

“We’ll see Pappa.” Lettice replies, a smile dancing on her lips as she sips her glass of claret.

 

*Glynes is the home of the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire.

 

** The Bioscope is an early term for what became by the mid 1920s a motion-picture theatre or cinema. The Bioscope was a hand-driven projector with a low-watt bulb placed behind the reel. Originally a Bioscope show was a music hall and fairground attraction. Mary Pickford was the original Bioscope Girl, so named because of the Bioscope films she starred in during the Great War and early 1920s.

 

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 tableaux include:

 

The roast chicken, tureens of vegetables and the gravy boat of gravy on the table all came from an English stockist of 1:12 artisan miniatures whom I found on E-Bay. They all look almost good enough to eat. The 1:12 artisan bottle of Pinot Noir is made from glass and the winery on the label is a real winery in France. The bottle was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The wine and water glasses, carafe of water and the vase are all 1:12 artisan miniatures too, made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The vase is especially fine. If you look closely you will see that it is decorated with lattices of fine threads of glass to give it a faceted Art Deco look. The orange roses in the vase were also hand made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. The Art Deco dinner set is part of a much larger set I acquired from a dollhouse suppliers in Shanghai.

 

In the background on the console table stand some of Lettice’s precious artisan purchases from the Portland Gallery in Soho. The pair of candelabra at either end of the sideboard are sterling silver artisan miniatures from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in England. The silver drinks set, 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, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. ‘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 and the Art Deco cocktail cabinet (the edge of which just visible on the far right-hand side of the photo) which were 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.

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

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying an unexpected call on her parents whilst her mistress is away enjoying the distractions of the London Season. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. Even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door, Edith can smell the familiar scent of a mixture of Lifebuoy Soap, Borax and Robin’s Starch, which means her mother is washing the laundry of others wealthier than she in the terrace’s kitchen at the rear of the house.

 

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

 

“Edith!” Ada gasps in delighted surprise, glancing up to the door leading from the hallway into the kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting you. What a lovely surprise!”

 

Ada rises from her chair at the worn kitchen table and embraces her daughter lovingly. Holding her at arm’s length, she admires her three-quarter length black coat and purple rose and black feather decorated straw hat. “Look at you, my darling girl.” The older woman self-consciously pushes loose strands of her mousey brown hair back behind her ears. Chuckling awkwardly, she remarks with a downwards glance. “You’re far too fancy for the likes of us now, Edith.”

 

“Don’t talk nonsense, Mum!” Edith dismisses her mother’s comment with a flap of her hand. "My coat came from a Petticoat Lane* second-hand clothes stall. I picked it up dead cheap and remodelled it myself.”

 

“Taking after your old Mum then?” Ada remarks with a hint of pride.

 

“You taught me everything I know about sewing, Mum, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

 

The joyful smile suddenly fades from Ada’s face as it clouds in concern. “But it’s Tuesday today. You don’t have Tuesdays off. Is everything alright, love?”

 

“It’s fine, Mum.” Edith assures her mother, placing a calming hand on her mother’s shoulder with one hand as she places her basket on the crowded kitchen table with the other. “Miss Lettice has gone to stay with friends on the Isle of Wight for Cowes Week**, so I thought I’d pop in and visit since I have a bit of free time whilst she’s away.”

 

“Oh! That’s alright then!” the older woman sighs with relief, fanning herself as she lowers herself back into her seat.

 

Feeling the stuffiness in the room from the lighted range and the moisture from the steaming tubs of washing, Edith takes off her coat and hangs it on a hook by the back door. She then places her hat on one of the carved knobs of the ladderback chair drawn up to the table next to her mother’s usual seat.

 

“Oh don’t put it there, love.” Ada chides. “It might get damaged. Such a pretty hat should sit on the table where it’s safe.”

 

“It’s nothing special, Mum. This came from Petticoat Lane too, and it’s not new. I decorated the hat with bits and bobs I picked up from a Whitechapel haberdasher Miss Lettice’s char***, Mrs. Boothby, told me about.”

 

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

 

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

 

“Well, suit yourself, love. Anyway, your timing is perfect. I just filled Brown Betty****. Grab yourself a cup and bring over the biscuit tin. Your Dad will be home for lunch soon. He’ll be glad to see you.”

 

Edith walks over to the big, dark Welsh dresser that dominates one side of the tiny kitchen and picks up a pretty floral teacup and saucer from among the mismatched crockery on its shelves: one of her mother’s many market finds that helped to bring elegance and beauty to Edith’s childhood home. She looks fondly at the battered McVitie and Price’s tin. “How’s Dad?”

 

“Oh, things are looking up for him.” Ada says proudly as she flips open her large sewing basket and fossicks through it looking for a spool of brightly coloured blue cotton thread.

 

“Oh?” Edith queries.

 

“Yes, there’s talk of him being made a line manager. Isn’t that a turn up for the books?”

 

“Oh Mum! That’s wonderful news.” The younger woman enthuses as she puts the empty teacup, saucer and biscuit tin on the table and sits down next to her mother. “You might be finally able to pack all this in.” She waves her hand about the kitchen at the tubs of washing, drying laundry and pressed linens.

 

“Oh I don’t know about that, Edith. Anyway, I have built up a good reputation over the years.”

 

“Yes,” Edith remarks scornfully. “For charging too little for the excellent work you do.” She looks over, past her mother, to a neat pile of lace edged linens. “What’s that you’re doing now, Mum?”

 

“Oh it’s just some work for Mrs. Hounslow. She wants her new sheets and pillowcases monogrammed.”

 

“And how much are you, not being paid, for that, Mum?” Edith emphasises.

 

“Oh Edith! Mrs. Hounslow’s a widow.”

 

“I know, Mum. I’ve grown up hearing about how Mrs. Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War. But I’ve never heard of her scraping for a penny for a scrap to eat. And where are those pretty lace trimmed sheets from?”

 

“Bishop’s in the High Street.”

 

“See! No second-hand sheets for old Widow Hounslow!”

 

“Now I won’t have a bad word said about her, Edith.” Ada wags her finger admonishingly at her daughter before selecting a needle from the red cotton lined lid of her basket and threads it. “She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings over the years. You should be grateful to her.”

 

“Pshaw!” Edith raises her eyes to the ceiling above. “I wish you’d let me help out more, Mum. I live in, so I don’t have the expenses of lodgings, and Miss Lettice pays me well.”

 

“Now, I won’t hear of it, Edith.” Ada raises her palms to her daughter, still clutching the threaded needle between her right index finger and thumb. “You earned that money with hard work at Miss Chetwynd’s. You pay enough to help keep us as it is.”

 

“But Mum,” Edith pours tea into her mother’s and then her own teacup. “If Dad does get this better job at McVitie’s, and I paid you a bit more of my wage, you probably really could give up washing, sewing and mending for the likes of Mrs. Hounslow.”

 

“And then what would I do, Edith?” The older woman adds a dash of milk to her tea.

 

“Well, you might like to put your feet up for a bit or buy a few nice new things for around here. Get rid of our battered old breadbin and those cannisters.” She points to the offending worn white enamel green trimmed pieces on the dresser.

 

“Oh, so we’re not grand enough then, Miss Edith?” Ada says in mock offence as she looks down her nose at her daughter and she raises herself and sits a little more erectly in her seat. “I love my breadbin thank you very much. That was a wedding gift from your Aunt Maude.”

 

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Edith replies, shaking her head exasperatedly. Adding milk and sugar to her own tea she continues, “I just want you to have nice things, Mum: things like those I have at Miss Lettice’s.”

 

“I’m so pleased you like it there, love.” Ada places a careworn hand lovingly on top of her daughter’s.

 

“Oh Mum, it’s so much better than Mrs. Plaistow’s was. It’s so much smaller than their townhouse, and I don’t have to traipse up and down stairs all day. There’s a gas stove, so I don’t have to fetch coal in or blacklead grates. Even if there were, Miss Lettice has Mrs. Boothby do all the hard graft I used to have to do at the Plaistow’s.”

 

“And Miss Chetwynd? She’s still being good to you?”

 

“Yes Mum.” Edith takes a sip of her tea. “I still haven’t broken her of the habit of just waltzing into the kitchen whenever she feels like it, rather than ringing the bell.”

 

“And her, a lord’s daughter.” Ada tuts, shaking her head.

 

“Well, a Viscount’s daughter at any rate.”

 

“You think she’d know better.”

 

“I’m sure she’s different when she goes home to Wiltshire. It does sound like a very grand house.”

 

“So much grander than here, Edith.”

 

“Now don’t start again, Mum. You know I didn’t mean anything by what I said before. Anyway. I have a something for you, but I shan’t give it to you if you’re going to be contrary!” Edith teases.

 

“Contrary indeed!” Ada snorts derisively.

 

Edith takes a bulky parcel wrapped in cream butcher’s paper tied up with brightly coloured string from her basket and places it carefully on the table before her mother.

 

“Well what is it?” Ada asks in surprise.

 

“Why don’t you open it, Mum, and find out.” Edith replies playfully in return.

 

With trembling fingers Ada tugs at the knot in the string. Loosening it causes the protective layer of paper to fall noisily away to reveal a beautiful, glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid.

 

“Oh Edith, love!” gasps Ada. “It’s beautiful!”

 

“Since you won’t let me give you more money, I may as well buy you some nice things Mum!”

 

“Oh this must have cost a fortune!” Ada appraises the paintwork on the pot. “For shame, Edith! You shouldn’t have spent your money on me.”

 

“Nonsense Mum! I bought this at the Caledonian Markets***** where it was so reasonably priced as it was on its own and didn’t have the milk jug and sugar bowl to match. Do you like it?”

 

“Like it, Edith? Oh, I love it!” Ada hugs her daughter, batting her eyelids as she attempts to keep back the tears of appreciation and joy.

 

“Good! Then we can have tea out of this, rather than old Brown Betty!”

 

“What?” Ada cries. “Oh no, I can’t well do that! This teapot is far too nice to use everyday! There’s nothing wrong with Brown Betty. Brown Betty was your Great Grandma’s!” She runs her hand lovingly over the handle of the pot. “No, I’ll keep this pot for good. I’ll take it up to the parlour and we’ll use it on Christmas Day, when you and your brother are home.”

 

“Oh Mum!” Edith sighs, shaking her head in loving despair at her mother who beams with delight at her new present.

 

*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.

 

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

 

***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.

 

****A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

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

 

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

 

Sitting atop a stack of neatly folded 1:12 size linens sits Ada’s wicker sewing basket. Sitting open it has needles stuck into the padded lid, whilst inside it are a tape measure, knitting needles, balls of wool, reels of cotton and a pair of shears. All the items and the basket, except for the shears, are hand made by Mrs. Denton of Muffin Lodge in the United Kingdom. The taupe knitting on the two long pins that serve as knitting needles is properly knitted and cast on. The shears with black handles in the basket open and close. Made of metal, they came from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom. The blue cotton reel and silver sewing scissors come from an E-Bay stockist of miniatures based in the United Kingdom.

 

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

 

Also on Ada’s table in the foreground there are several packets of Edwardian cleaning and laundry brands that were in common use in the early Twentieth Century in every household, rich or poor. These are Sunlight Soap, Robin’s Starch, Jumbo Blue and Imp Washer Soap. All these packets were made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884 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.

 

Before the invention of aerosol spray starch, the product of choice in many homes of all classes was Robin starch. Robin Starch was a stiff white powder like cornflour to which water had to be added. When you made up the solution, it was gloopy, sticky with powdery lumps, just like wallpaper paste or grout. The garment was immersed evenly in that mixture and then it had to be smoothed out. All the stubborn starchy lumps had to be dissolved until they were eliminated – a metal spoon was good for bashing at the lumps to break them down. Robins Starch was produced by Reckitt and Sons who were a leading British manufacturer of household products, notably starch, black lead, laundry blue, and household polish. They also produced Jumbo Blue, which was a whitener added to a wash to help delay the yellowing effect of older cotton. Rekitt and Sons were based in Kingston upon Hull. Isaac Reckitt began business in Hull in 1840, and his business became a private company Isaac Reckitt and Sons in 1879, and a public company in 1888. The company expanded through the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. It merged with a major competitor in the starch market J. and J. Colman in 1938 to form Reckitt and Colman.

 

Imp Washer Soap was manufactured by T. H. Harris and Sons Limited, a soap manufacturers, tallow melters and bone boiler. Introduced after the Great War, Imp Washer Soap was a cheaper alternative to the more popular brands like Sunlight, Hudsons and Lifebuoy soaps. Imp Washer Soap was advertised as a free lathering and economical cleaner. T. H. Harris and Sons Limited also sold Mazo soap energiser which purported to improve the quality of cleaning power of existing soaps.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

“Good things aren’t supposed to just fall into your lap. God is very generous, but He expects you to do your part first.” - AH

 

www.keepinspiring.me/audrey-hepburn-quotes/

 

Audrey Hepburn - Restyled, Repainted and Re-Rooted by artist Noel Cruz of ncruz.com/ in a diorama by Regent Miniatures and featured are animals by Mr. Z! Mr. Z Animal Model MRZ036 FC005 1/6 Felis Black White Domesticus Cat& 1/6 Mr.Z Animal Model MRZ027-003 Japanese Shiba Inu W/Replaceable Heads Figure.

 

Audrey is also featured in the 1Sixth Winter Hardbound Edition available in Hardback/imagewrap or paperback cover. Also as a PDF or eBook.

 

Order here: www.blurb.com/b/9320555-1sixth

 

eBook: www.blurb.com/b/9320555-1sixth?ebook=690084

 

Photos by Steve McKinnis of stevemckinnis.com

Cabarceno Wildlife park outside Santander is a spacious park with fairly generous enclosures for a range of European and world animals. The location itself is also interesting having once been a quarry, but includes many weird rock formations. We spent a good full day on site.

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

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying a call on her parents on her day off. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith.

 

Edith is sitting at her usual perch on a tall ladderback chair drawn up to the round table, worn and scarred by years of heavy use, that dominates the cluttered, old fashioned kitchen, as Ada prepares a Christmas cake whilst her daughter regales her with tales from Cavendish Mews, her unusually liberated upper-class employer and her eccentric coterie of friends.

 

“And then he just swept me up, right where I stood,” Edith explains. “And spun me around in the most awkward waltz I think I’ve ever danced, Mum!”

 

“What? With the roses still in his arms?” Ada stops stirring the thick, shiny mixture in her large white mixing bowl as she looks at her daughter with incredulity.

 

“And the champagne!” Edith giggles, raising her hand to her mouth as she does.

 

“Well!” the older woman gasps. “I’d never expect such odd behaviour from a gentleman! You did say he’s a proper gentleman?” she queries as an afterthought.

 

“Oh yes, Mum!” Edith assures her. “Mr. Brunton is a proper gentleman: rather theatrical and prone to posturing, but a gentleman, nevertheless. He and Miss Lettice grew up together on neighbouring estates in Wiltshire. His father is a sir or lord or some such.”

 

“Well, that’s alright then.” Ada sighs and starts stirring the sticky mixture with her big metal spoon again. “Mind you, there are plenty who claim to be gentlemen with their smart clothes and silvery tongues who are nothing of the sort.” She pauses again withdrawing the spoon from her mixture and pointing it at her daughter, the mixture dripping off it back into the bowl as she wags it at Edith. “Don’t you ever let your head get turned by one of those toffs, Edith. Whether he’s a gentleman or not, he’s still just a man under it all, and well, we all know that men are always out to chase pretty girls.” She lowers her eyes as a blush flushes her face with embarrassment. “And once he gets what he wants, he’ll drop you like a hot potato fresh from the oven. No gentleman ever married a maid so far as I can tell, ‘cept in those romance books you read.”

 

“Oh Mum! You don’t have to worry about me being around Mr. Bruton.” Edith starts spinning the well worn enamel canister marked ‘flour’ distractedly. “He’s far more interested in the frocks he makes for debutantes and going out to dinner with Miss Lettice than to take an interest in me. I’m just the maid who serves drinks and dinner and hangs his coat.”

 

“But I do worry about you Edith. You’re still only a young girl. Working on your own for a flapper,” She utters the last word with some distaste. “And living under her roof, well, you could be exposed anything for all I know! Now, I do know Miss Chetwynd is good to you, and pays you well, and I’m glad of that. Nevertheless, those flappers seem eccentric and always full of odd ideas and up to mischief.”

 

“Oh, that’s just what you read in the newspapers, Mum. I think the columnists of those stories sensationalise the tales they tell to try and sell more copies.”

 

“Nevertheless, sensationalist or not, those writers have to base some things on truth, so it can’t all be porky pies*!”

 

“Well, you read the articles from The Tattler that I gave you, showing all the photos from Miss Lettice’s cocktail party for Mr. and Mrs. Channon, didn’t you Mum?” When Ada nods her head affirmatively, Edith continues. “Well, that was all true, so you know that whilst Miss Lettice and her friends might be a bit eccentric, she’s still a respectable lady, as well as a flapper.”

 

Ada frowns and shakes her head a little, giving her daughter a questioning look as she observes her sitting across the table from her. “Stop playing with my cannisters and make yourself useful, Edith. I need some more fruit in this Christmas cake batter. Will you cut me some orange and lemon slices, please?”

 

“Yes Mum.”

 

Edith obeys her mother and dutifully gets up from her seat, yet the way she rises appears different to Ada’s sharp observation to the way she used to stand up. It seems elegant, yet affected somehow, with sloping shoulders and a languid head. Every week she notices small changes in Edith: a broader vocabulary and a general improvement in the smartness of her appearance which she likes, yet also an independent boldness and a questioning manner that she thinks unseemly in a young girl, especially one in service. Ada quietly wonders whether her daughter’s current employer will spoil her for any other position Edith may wish to acquire in the future. Edith’s last position with Mrs. Plaistow in Pimlico might have been harder work for a lesser wage, but at least she didn’t come home on her day off with her head turned by the glamour of American moving picture stars and society ladies who have influence over their futures. Girls like Edith have few choices in life, and Ada hopes her daughter doesn’t forget it.

 

“Anyway, enough about me, Mum,” Edith stands at the chopping board next to her mother, takes up Ada’s kitchen knife and starts to slice thin slivers from an orange. “What news of Bert? Have you heard from him?”

 

“Yes, your brother sent a postcard from Melbourne. It’s just up on the mantle.” Ada motions to the shelf above the kitchen range. “Read it.”

 

“It’s hard to imagine Bert on the other side of the world.”

 

“I’m just glad he’s only working as a steward on a passenger liner now, rather than in the navy, and that we aren’t at war anymore.”

 

“Oh I’m glad of that too, Mum.” Edith falls silent as she thinks of her own lost love, Bert the postman, and then quickly blinks away the tears briming in her eyes that threaten to spill over.

 

Determined not to be caught crying, Edith turns and wipes her hands, sticky with orange juice, on the yellow tea towel hanging from the rail beneath the mantle before picking up a postcard featuring a painted photograph of the Federal Parliament House in Melbourne**. She turns it over and reads aloud, “Leaving Melbourne on the Demonsthenes*** on Wednesday. First class dining saloon.” Edith looks over at her mother and smiles. “First class dining saloon! That’s a step up for Bert, Mum!” she remarks before continuing to read aloud. “Sailing home via Capetown. Arrive London twenty third of December.”

 

“Yes, he’ll be back in time for Christmas!” Ada beams as she dips her finger into the mix in the bowl, removing it and tasting the Christmas cake batter. She considers the flavour for a moment before shaking some cinnamon from the red box in front of her into the bowl. “Your Dad and I are so happy! We’ll have our Christmas present.”

 

“And what’s that, Mum?” Edith replaces the postcard on the mantle before turning back to the chopping board where she continues to cut thin slivers of orange.

 

“Having you both home for Christmas, of course!” Ada replies happily.

 

“So, you can use the cottage ware teapot I bought you from the Caledonian Markets****, then Mum.” Edith remarks playfully.

 

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Edith.” the older woman defends as she empties a tin of preserved red cherries into her Christmas cake batter. “It’s much too good to use.”

 

“But you promised, Mum!” Edith whines.

 

“I most certainly did not, Edith!” Ada retorts scoffingly.

 

“Yes you did, Mum!” her daughter responds. “Right here in this very kitchen, the day I gave it to you!” Edith stops cutting the orange, puts down the knife and folds her arms akimbo. “You told me that you’d use it on Christmas Day when Bert and I were home.”

 

Ada stops mixing the batter, puts her hands on her ample hips and stares at her daughter. “Your memory is far too good for remembering incidental things, Edith!”

 

Edith smiles. “I know, Mum.” She picks up a few slices of orange an continues, “Oranges?”

 

*Porky pies is Cockney rhyming slang for lies.

 

**Located on Spring Street on the edge of the Hoddle Grid, Melbourne’s Parliament House’s grand colonnaded front dominates the vista up Bourke Street. Designed by British Army officer and Colonial Engineer, Commissioner of Public Works and politician in colonial Victoria, Major-General Hon. Charles Pasley, construction began in 1855, and the first stage was officially opened the following year, with various sections completed over the following decades; it has never been completed, and the planned dome is one of the most well known unbuilt features of Melbourne. Between 1901 and 1927, it served as the meeting place of the Parliament of Australia, during the period when Melbourne was the temporary national capital.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Ada’s kitchen table is covered with most of the ingredients needed to make a Christmas cake: red cherries, orange and lemon peel, raisins, flour, baking powder, brandy, cinnamon, eggs and sugar.

 

The bowl of Christmas cake batter, complete with red cherries, was made by hand of polymer clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.

 

On the chopping board and the table you will see two lemons and four oranges. The lemons and oranges are vintage 1:12 artisan pieces that have come from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in England. The attention to detail on these is amazing! You will see the stubs in the skin were the stalk once attached them to the tree, but even more amazing is that, if you look very closely, you will see the rough pitting that you find in the skins of real oranges and lemons! The orange and lemon slices on the chopping board come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, England. The orange slices in particular are so small and so fine. They are cut from long canes like some boiled sweets are but are much smaller in size!

 

The kitchen knife on the chopping board with its inlaid handle and sharpened blade comes from English miniatures specialist Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniature store.

 

The rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters, which match the bread tin on the Welsh dresser in the background, are painted in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces also came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The tin of My Lady red cherries came from Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom, as does the tin of Bird’s Golden Raising Powder (an old name for baking powder). Bird’s were best known for making custard and Bird’s Custard is still a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange. Bird’s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird’s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.

 

The Tate and Lyall sugar packet was acquired from Jonesy’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. In 1859 Henry Tate went into partnership with John Wright, a sugar refiner based at Manesty Lane, Liverpool. Their partnership ended in 1869 and John’s two sons, Alfred and Edwin joined the business forming Henry Tate and Sons. A new refinery in Love Lane, Liverpool was opened in 1872. In 1921 Henry Tate and Sons and Abram Lyle and Sons merged, between them refining around fifty percent of the UK’s sugar. A tactical merger, this new company would then become a coherent force on the sugar market in anticipation of competition from foreign sugar returning to its pre-war strength. Tate and Lyle are perhaps best known for producing Lyle’s Golden Syrup and Lyle’s Golden Treacle.

 

The eggs in the bowl with the whisk are 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail which I have had since I acquired them as a teenager from a high street stockist.

 

The box of cinnamon was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table and the Windsor chair, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom and the worn Art Deco tea canister and bread box that match the canisters on the table. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a box of Typhoo Tea, a box of Bisto Gravy, a jar of Marmite, a jar of Bovril and some Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published ‘A Popular Treatise on Tea’ as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He named in Typhoo Tea. The name Typhoo comes from the Chinese word for "doctor". Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral peninsula of Cheshire. Typhoo Tea is still a household name in Britain to this day.

 

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

 

Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar, and as cubes and granules. Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Today we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve, where she is taking possession of her latest order from Willison’s Grocers, delivered by Mr. Willison’s boy, Frank Leadbeater.

 

“Tinned apricots, tinned pears,” Edith marks off the items written on her list that she telephoned through to Mr. Willison’s on Thursday morning. “Plum jam, Bovril.” She places a tick next to each with a crisp mark from her pencil, the sound of it scratching across the page’s surface. “Tinned cherries. Where are the tinned cherries, Frank?” Edith asks anxiously.

 

“They’re right here, Miss Edith,” he remarks, delving noisly into the box of groceries between the flour and Lyon’s tea, withdrawing a small tin of My Lady tinned cherries. “Just as you ordered.”

 

“Oh thank goodness!” Edith sighs, placing a hand on her chest, from which she releases the breath she has been holding.

 

“Everything is just as you ordered and selected and packed with extra care by yours truly!” Frank pats himself with his cycling cap on the chest as he puffs it out proudly through his rust coloured knitted vest.

 

“Oh, get on with you, Frank!” Edith scoffs with a mild chuckle, glancing up at his charming, if slightly gormless grin before continuing her inventory of items.

 

“It’s true Miss Edith!” he replies, holding his cap against his heart rather melodramatically. “I swear. I packed them up myself. As his most trusted member of staff, Mr. Willison lets me do things like that as well as the deliveries.”

 

“I thought you were the only person he employed, Frank.” Edith remarks without looking up from her list ticking.

 

“Yes,” the delivery boy coughs and blusters, colouring a little at the remark. “Yes well, it is true that I am his only employee, but Mrs. Willison does do the books and his daughter helps out on Saturdays. But I am his most trusted employee, and I’m working my way up the rungs.”

 

“What rungs, Frank? You’re the delivery boy. What is there beyond that? Mr. Willison isn’t going to hand his family business to his delivery boy to run.”

 

“Well no, not yet he isn’t, but I’m doing more and more around the shop when I’m not out on my delivery round, so I’m learning about things over time.”

 

“Things! What things?”

 

“Well, Mr, Willison let me help display goods in his front window the other day. Soon I will be able to add visual merchandiser to my list of skills.”

 

“You’ll add what?” Edith laughs, her hand flying to her mouth as she does to try and muffle it.

 

“Hey, it’s not funny Miss Edith!” Frank looks forlorn and crestfallen across at the chuckling maid. “Visual merchandising. It’s just a fancy term we use for window dressing.”

 

“Oh, do we now?” Edith cocks an eyebrow at him. “Very fancy indeed.”

 

“You may laugh now, my girl,” Frank wags a finger in a playful way at Edith. “But one day you’ll say that you knew me when.”

 

“When you have your own grocers?” Edith sounds doubtful as she speaks.

 

“Well, I could do. Others have. Why shouldn’t I?”

 

“Oh I don’t mind you having dreams, Frank.” she assures him. “Miss Lettice tells me the same.”

 

The delivery boy’s ears pick up and leaning a little bit closer to Edith he asks, “So what’s your dream then, Miss Edith, since mine is so laughable?”

 

“My dream?” she put her hand to her chest, taken aback that anyone should be so forward, least of all the man who delivers groceries from the local up-market grocers. “My dream is to…” Then she glances up at the kitchen clock ticking solemnly away on the eau-de-nil painted wall. “Shouldn’t you be out delivering groceries to your next customer, Frank?”

 

“Old Lady Basting’s cook can wait for her delivery a little while longer,” Frank asserts. “She never has a kind word for me anyway. It’s always ‘stop cluttering up the area with your bike, Frank’. Anyway, she’s terrible at paying her bills. I don’t know why Mr. Willison keeps her as a customer when she always waits for reminders before paying.”

 

“Well, a customer is a customer, Frank, even a late paying one. Quite a lot of cooks of titled families around here do the same. It’s almost like it’s expected that they don’t have to pay on time.”

 

“Expected?”

 

“You know: their right. Their right not to pay on time because that would be acknowledging that money makes business revolve.”

 

“Well it does, Miss Edith.”

 

“I know that Frank, and you know that, but families like Miss Lettice’s, they never like talking about money. It’s almost as if it’s dirty.”

 

“I imagine when you have so much money you never have to worry about it, why would you talk about it?”

 

“I suppose so Frank. Well, that’s it.” She smiles and puts down her notepad with a satisfied sigh. “That’s everything.”

 

“Course it is, Miss Edith. I told you I packed it myself, and Frank Leadbetter won’t ever let you down.”

 

“Well, since you’re whiling away some time, Frank, do you fancy a cup of tea then?” Edith asks with a shy smile.

 

“Oh, thank you!” Replies the young man. “Only if it isn’t too much trouble, mind you.”

 

“Oh it’s no trouble. I’m going to have one myself before I pack all this away,” she waves her hand expansively at the piles of groceries. “I can fetch two cups as easily as I can one.”

 

“I shan’t say no then, Miss Edith.” Frank agrees readily. “Cycling groceries around Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico is thirsty work.”

 

Edith goes to the dresser and fetches out two Delftware cups and saucers, the sugar bowl and milk jug which she arranges on the end of the table not covered in grocery items. She places the kettle on the stovetop and lights it with one of the matches from the red and white Webb Matches box that Frank has just brought. Then she scuttles across the black and white linoleum floor with the jug to the food safe where she fills it with a splash of milk, before bringing it back to the table.

 

“One of those Huntly and Palmers* chocolate dessert biscuits wouldn’t go astray with it.” Frank says reaching down to the elegantly decorated buttercup yellow and bluish grey tin.

 

“Ah-ah!” Edith slaps Frank’s hand away before he can remove the lid. “Those aren’t for you Frank, any more than they are me! I’ve got some leftover Family Assorted in the biscuit barrel. You can settle for one of them, if you deign, Mr. Leadbetter, Greengrocer to the best families in Mayfair.” She giggles girlishly and her smile towards him is returned with a beaming smile of his own.

 

“So, Miss Edith,” Frank asks with a cheeky smile as he leans over the box. “What is it you’re making me for my tea?”

 

“You, Frank Leadbetter?” she laughs in amazement. “You have quite some cheek today, don’t you?”

 

“Alright then, if it isn’t for me, what and who are these groceries for?”

 

“What and for whom, Frank.” Edith corrects him kindly.

 

“Is that what your dream is? To teach people how to speak properly, like that chap in Pygmalion** then? What’s his name?”

 

“Higgins, Henry Higgins.” Edith replies. “And no, I don’t. And stop fishing for information not freely given.” She gives his nose a playful squeeze as she crosses her arms akimbo and waits for the kettle to boil. “No, most of this is for a special dinner party Miss Lettice is throwing for friends from Buenos Aires who have come to see the wedding of Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles***. They want summer pudding,” She tuts scornfully. “In the middle of winter!”

 

“Thus, all the tinned fruits.”

 

“Since I cannot move the seasons to those of the southern hemisphere, yes.”

 

Edith hears the kettle on the stove boiling and pours hot water into the white teapot sitting on the server shelf attached to the right of the stove. Placing the knitted cosy over its top, she moves it to the table. She looks Frank Leadbetter up and down as she does. He stands there, leaning against the deal kitchen table, dressed in dark trousers, a white shirt that could do with a decent pressing, his rust coloured knitted vest and a Brunswick green tie****. She looks at his face. He’s quite handsome really, now she looks at him, with fresh rosy cheeks, wind tousled sandy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes.

 

“You know what Mrs. Boothby said to me, Frank?” Edith chuckles, picking up the pot and swirling the tea in it before pouring some into both cups.

 

“No!” Frank replies, accepting one cup. “What?”

 

“She thought that I was sweet on you, and that we might be stepping out together.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes really! That’s what she thought. She let it slip a month or so ago.”

 

Frank adds a heaped teaspoon full of sugar to his tea and stirs it thoughtfully. “Is that such a terrible idea?”

 

“What?” Edith asks.

 

“Us,” He indicates with a wagging finger between Edith and himself. “You and me, I mean, stepping out.”

 

“Well,” Edith feels a blush rising up her throat and flooding her cheeks. “No. Not at all, Frank. I was just saying that Mrs. Boothby thought we were, when we aren’t.” She looks away from Frank’s expectant face and spoons sugar into her own tea. “I hadn’t really given it much thought.”

 

“Ahh, but you have given it some consideration, then?”

 

Edith keeps quiet a moment and thinks with eyes downcast. “A little bit, in passing I suppose.”

 

“And what if we were, Edith?” Surprised by the sudden dropping of her title in a very familiar address, Edith glances back at Frank who looks at her in earnest. “Walking out together, I mean. Would that be agreeable to you?”

 

“Are you asking me to walk out with you, Frank Leadbetter?” Edith gasps.

 

“Well, yes, I suppose I am.” Frank chuckles awkwardly, his face colouring with his own blush of embarrassment. “Only if you’re agreeable to it of course.”

 

“Yes,” Edith smiles. “Yes, I’m agreeable to that, Frank.”

 

“You are?” Frank’s eyes widen in disbelief as his mouth slackens slightly.

 

“For a man so sure of his prospects, you seem surprised, Frank.”

 

“Oh well,” he stumbles. “Its not… I mean… I mean I am. I… I just didn’t think you… well… you know being here and all…”

 

“It’s aright Frank. I was only teasing.” replies Edith kindly. “You don’t need to explain.”

 

“And Miss Chetwynd doesn’t…”

 

“Oh no, Frank! As long as my work isn’t interfered with, Miss Lettice won’t mind. She’s a very kind and modern thinking mistress, Unlike Mrs. Plaistow.”

 

“I remember that was where I first set eyes on you, Edith, at her terrace in Pimlico.”

 

“Do you Frank?”

 

“I do.” Frank smiles proudly.

 

The two chuckle and shyly keep glancing at one another before looking away and burying themselves in their cups of tea awkwardly.

 

“Your day off is Wednesday, isn’t it?” Frank asks eventually.

 

“It is, Frank, how observant of you to notice,”

 

“Well, it pays to take note of things in my profession. You just never know when it might come in handy.” He taps the side of his nose knowingly.

 

“Only, I go and help my Mum on my day off.” Edith explains.

 

“Oh,” Frank says defeatedly, then thinks for a moment and adds. “Well, I work Wednesday anyway.”

 

“What days don’t you work, Frank?”

 

“Well, I don’t work Sundays. So, I’m free after church services are over.”

 

Edith laughs, “Well that works rather well then, as I have Sundays free until four.”

 

Frank joins Edith’s laughter. “Sunday it is then!”

 

The pair fall into an awkward silence again.

 

“So, where would you like to go, Edith?” asks Frank eventually, shattering the quiet punctuated only by the swinging pendulum of the wall clock.

 

“Well,” Edith replies after a few moments. “Miss Lettice’s client, Wanetta Ward is starring in a new moving picture called ‘After the Ball is Over’ at the Premier in East Ham*****. We could go and see that.”

 

“Sounds brilliant, Edith!”

 

Edith smiles shyly and blushes again, a sparkle shining in her eyes. “Yes, it does rather.”

 

* Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time, and as a dessert biscuit.

 

**Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. Written in 1912, it premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on the 16th of October 1913 and was first presented in English on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.

 

***Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897 – 1965), was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the sister of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She married Viscount Lascelles on the 28th of February 1922 in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. The bride was only 24 years old, whilst the groom was 39. There is much conjecture that the marriage was an unhappy one, but their children dispute this and say it was a very happy marriage based upon mutual respect. The wedding was filmed by Pathé News and was the first royal wedding to be featured in fashion magazines, including Vogue.

 

****In pre World War II times, it was unusual for even the most low paid male workers like delivery men to dress in a shirt, jacket, vest and tie. It represented respectability and the drive for upward mobility in a class conscious society. It is where the term “white collar job” comes from.

 

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

 

This domestic scene may not be all that it appears, for it is made up completely of items from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

All of Edith’s groceries are 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail as regards the labels of different foods. Some are still household names today. So many of these tins of various foods would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. They come from various different suppliers including Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom, Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom, Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The cardboard box branded with the name Sunlight Soap and the paper shopping bag also come from Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar, and as cubes and granules. Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite.

 

Bird’s were best known for making custard and Bird’s Custard is still a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange. They also made Bird’s Golden Raising Powder – their brand of baking powder. Bird’s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird’s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.

 

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

 

S.P.C. is an Australian brand that still exists to this day. In 1917 a group of fruit growers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley decided to form a cooperative which they named the Shepperton Fruit Preserving Company. The company began operations in February 1918, canning pears, peaches and nectarines under the brand name of S.P.C. On the 31st of January 1918 the manager of the Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company announced that canning would begin on the following Tuesday and that the operation would require one hundred and fifty girls or women and thirty men. In the wake of the Great War, it was hoped that “the launch of this new industry must revive drooping energies” and improve the economic circumstances of the region. The company began to pay annual bonuses to grower-shareholders by 1929, and the plant was updated and expanded. The success of S.P.C. was inextricably linked with the progress of the town and the wider Goulburn Valley region. In 1936 the company packed twelve million cans and was the largest fruit cannery in the British empire. Through the Second World War the company boomed. The product range was expanded to include additional fruits, jam, baked beans and tinned spaghetti and production reached more than forty-three million cans a year in the 1970s. From financial difficulties caused by the 1980s recession, SPC returned once more to profitability, merging with Ardmona and buying rival company Henry Jones IXL. S.P.C. was acquired by Coca Cola Amatil in 2005 and in 2019 sold to a private equity group known as Shepparton Partners Collective.

 

Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War.

 

Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884. It was created by William Hesketh Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme). 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.

 

Webb matches were manufactured by the match firm Bryant and May. Bryant and May was a British company created in the mid Nineteenth Century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant and May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant and May Factory in Melbourne, and owned match factories in other parts of the world. Formed in 1843 by two Quakers, William Bryant and Francis May, Bryant and May survived as an independent company for over seventy years, but went through a series of mergers with other match companies and later with consumer products companies. The registered trade name Bryant amd May still exists and it is owned by the Swedish Match Company, as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant and May group.

  

Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in the UK, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England. Lyons Tea was a major advertiser in the early decades of RTÉ Television, featuring the "Lyons minstrels" and coupon-based prize competitions.

 

The Dry Fork Milling Company, which produced Dry Fork Flour was based in Dry Fork Virginia. They were well known for producing cornmeal. They were still producing cornmeal and flour into the 1950s. Today, part of the old mill buildings are used as a reception centre.

 

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

 

To the left of the sink is the food safe with a mop leaning against it. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvinised wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.

2017 one photo each day

2017 weekly alphabet challenge - generous. These lovely flowers are always generous with the way they keep flowering.

Flickr Lounge weekly theme photographer's choice.

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 is Tuesday and we are in the kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve, except on Tuesdays, every third Thursday of the month and occasionally after a big party. That is when Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman*, comes from her home in Poplar to do all the hard jobs. Edith is grateful that unlike her previous positions, she does not have to scrub the black and quite chequered kitchen linoleum, nor polish the parquetry floors, not do her most hated job, black lead the stovetop. Mrs. Boothby does them all without complaint, with reliability and to a very high standard. She is also very handy on cleaning and washing up duty with Edith after one of Lettice’s extravagant cocktail parties. There is only one drawback with Mrs. Boothby, and that is her morning ritual.

 

Setting out her things for baking, Edith hears the familiar sounds of Mrs. Boothby as she climbs the service stairs of Cavendish Mews: her footfall in her low heeled shoes that she proudly tells Edith came ‘practically new from Petticoat Lane’ and the fruity cough that comes from deep within her wiry little body.

 

“Morning dearie!” Mrs. Boothby calls cheerily as she comes through the servants’ entrance door into the kitchen.

 

“Morning Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies as she gathers canisters from the dresser.

 

“Baking already dearie?” the older woman asks, eying the ingredients as they start to fill the deal kitchen table in the middle of the room. “I’m not late am I?”

 

“No, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies with a sigh as she spreads the items out sparsely and then turns to get a few thigs she doesn’t need for the baking to clutter the end of the table. “Just making an early start.”

 

“Well, just let me rest me weary bones a minute before you start, Edith love!” Mrs. Boothby bustles over to the corner of the table not yet occupied by clutter and drops her beaded bag territorially with a thud before moving the Windsor backed chair to the warm spot between the stove and the table. “I’m parched after me trip up from Poplar! Should’ve seen the traffic at Tottenham Court Road this mornin’! Quite bunged up it was! Now, I’ll just sit ‘ere and ‘ave a reviving cup of Rosie-Lee** and a fag before I get started.”

 

Edith, with her back to Mrs. Boothby, shudders almost imperceptibly. How she hates the older woman’s habit of smoking indoors. When she lived with her parents, neither smoked in the house. Her mother didn’t smoke at all: it would have been unladylike to do so, and her father only smoked a pipe when he went down to the local pub.

 

“Got the kettle on dearie?” Mrs. Boothby’s query breaks into Edith’s happy memories of her parents.

 

“Err… there’s tea in the pot, Mrs. Boothby,” she replies distractedly, indicating to the pot on the table covered with a pretty knitted cosy.

 

“Oh! Splendid!” Mrs. Boothby enthuses as she takes a Delftware cup and saucer off the dresser.

 

“Although it may be a bit stewed,” Edith adds as afterthought.

 

“Oh I don’t mind a good, strong Rosie-Lee. If I can stick a spoon up in it, all the betta! Got any of them nice ‘Untley and Palmer breakfast biscuits to go wiv me Rosie-Lee?”

 

Sighing because she knows it will hold up her baking, Edith can do little to refuse the old char as she has no doubt that the sprightly eyed woman has already spied the tin on the bench. Reaching over, she hands it to Mrs. Boothby’s welcoming hands.

 

“Ta!” she says. “Lovely.” She pours herself a cup of tea, sticks a biscuit between her teeth and then starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she reaches over to the deal dresser and grabs the silver and cut glass ash tray Edith washed last night which she has yet to return to the drawing room where it is kept for guests who smoke. Lighting her cigarette with a satisfied sigh and one more of her fruity coughs, Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in the Windsor chair with her cigarette in one hand and the biscuit in the other.

 

Edith resigns herself, as she does every morning that the char comes in, to Mrs. Boothby’s morning ritual. And she tells herself, as she does every morning that the char comes in, that the sooner it begins, the sooner the ritual will be over, and then Mrs. Boothby will do all the unpleasant jobs she doesn’t have to do. Smelling the miasma of cigarette smoke and noticing the fine grey curls start to permeate the air, the maid crinkles up her nose in disgust. She casually goes over to the kitchen window and opens it.

 

“Lawd dearie!” Mrs. Boothby gasps. “Now don’t go openin’ that damn window! I’ll catch me death, so ‘elp me I will!”

 

Edith lowers the sash again, quietly and without complaint, knowing there is no arguing with Mrs. Boothby. She sighs again but thinks there will be plenty of time to air the kitchen after the char has gone into the drawing room to polish the floors.

 

Looking disconcertedly at Edith, the older woman remarks, “Are you sure you was born ‘ere in London and not in Scotland, dearie? Lawd I ain’t never met a girl so intent on cold London air! It’s un’ealthy it is! They’s fumes out there wot will kill you, y’know?”

 

*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.

 

**Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a weekly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme chosen by a member of the group each week, and the image is to be posted on the Monday of the week.

 

This week the theme, “up-close/macro” was chosen by Andrew, ajhaysom.

 

I thought another scene using some of my 1:12 miniature collection would be a perfect choice for macro photography, however I have deliberately chosen a photograph that contains the smallest miniature I have as the centre not only of my photo, but also my narrative: a single cigarette with a red burning tip. The cigarette is a tiny five millimetres long and just one millimetre wide! Made of paper, I have to be so careful that it doesn’t get lost when I use it!

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The tea cosy, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in England.

 

The Huntley and Palmer’s Breakfast Biscuit tin containing a replica selection of biscuits is also a 1:12 artisan piece. Huntley & Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world\'s first global brands and ran what was once the world\'s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley & Son and Huntley & Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time. The design on the tin is Edwardian, and was so popular that it carried on through the 1920s. Other biscuit varieties had similar patterned tins in different colour ranges to aid those who were unable to, or couldn’t, read!

 

Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length.

 

Spilling from her bag are her Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The ashtray is also an artisan piece, made of cut clear crystals set in a silver metal frame. The tray has black ash in it, and the 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (no it isn’t affixed there) came with it. Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player\'s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today\'s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player\'s and two thirds of these were branded as Player\'s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player\'s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player\'s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands "Player" and "John Player Special" are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company). Swan Vestas is a brand name for a popular brand of \'strike-anywhere\' matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline ‘the smoker\'s match’ although this has been replaced by the prefix ‘the original’ on the current packaging. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced \'Swan wax matches\'. These were superseded by later versions including \'Swan White Pine Vestas\' from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened \'Swan Vestas\' in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s \'Swan Vestas\' had become \'Britain\'s best-selling match\'.

 

The Deftware cup, saucer and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which sits on the dresser that can be seen just to the right of shot.

 

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

 

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

I have 19 ruruko at the moment but she is not one of them.

Thanks to Petworks for the generosity to let us touch her to change the pose to take photos!! I enjoyed shooting her🎵 :-)

A really generous man

  

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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.

 

It is the day after Lettice’s exclusive buffet supper party for two of her Embassy Club coterie of bright young things who are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. The soirée in their honour was a glittering success and will go down as one of the events of the 1921 London Season according to the Tattler’s society pages correspondent who busily scribbled notes about all the great and good of the land who were present and what they were wearing, whilst a photographer from the London magazine captured the guests in all their glittering finery.

 

The day has been spent setting the Mayfair flat back to rights and Lettice’s maid, Edith, with the help of Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman* and one of Mrs. Boothby’s friends, Jackie, have swept and polished, scrubbed and cleaned, whilst Gunter and Company’s** men have restored the furnishings to where they were before the drawing room was turned into a ballroom and the dining room into a buffet.

 

It's after midnight in the up-to-date modern kitchen and silence envelops the flat. Outside only the occasional drone of a taxi dropping late night revellers home, or the hiss of two fighting cats somewhere on the moonlight rooftops outside breaks the evening quiet. Edith has washed all the glasses, crockery and silverware from dinner and after such a busy day of work she should be tired and sleeping soundly like Lettice is, but instead she is still full of excitement from the previous evening as she sits at the deal kitchen table and thinks about all the beautiful people to whom she served drinks.

 

Her mistress looked beautiful in a powder blue silk georgette gown designed by her childhood friend Gerald Bruton who has his own dress shop in Grosvenor Street. Margot wore a stunning low waisted gown of silver satin. However, it was another guest at the party, Lady Diana Cooper *** who really caught Edith’s eye. With a neat, short chignon of waves and curls woven around a bandeau of diamonds, she wore a stunning blue gown of layer upon diaphanous layer of handkerchief point Lanvin blue silk taffeta which Edith knows from her mistress’ cast-off fashion magazines to be a ‘robe de style’**** with a full skirt supported by a wire hoop underneath the fabric. Pinned to the waist was a large pink satin rose with a slightly smaller one sewn to the right shoulder.

 

“Oh,” Edith sighs as she picks up a jam fancy biscuit from the Delftware plate in front of her and takes a bite. “How I should love to be reminded of that gown forever.”

 

As she munches on the biscuit and takes a sip of tea from her teacup, Edith suddenly has an idea. One of her pleasures in her spare time is to collect articles on the latest styles of clothes and hair from Lettice’s old magazines and paste them into scrapbooks. Her current scrapbook has a blank first page which she has kept for something special. Now she knows what that something special is.

 

Slipping quietly out into the drawing room of the flat, Edith fossicks carefully through the Chippendale gilded black japanned chinoiserie cabinet next to the fireplace and withdraws her mistress’ box of watercolours which she takes back to the kitchen. Going into her own little bedroom off the kitchen she withdraws a pack of coloured pencils from her chest of drawers and snatches up her scrapbook from its surface where it sits upright behind her sewing box, leaning against the floral papered wall. Returning to the kitchen she sets everything out on the table.

 

“Come on now girl,” Edith mutters encouragingly to herself as she takes up a grey lead pencil. “Let’s put that memory of yours to the test and see if we can’t get it out on paper.”

 

The pencil tip scratches across the paper as Edith’s hand moves deftly over the page. She starts to hum ‘After the Ball is Over’*****. Soon the figure of a woman emerges on the page with a short chignon dancing gaily with one arm out and another crossed over her chest. The room remains silent except for the tick of the clock, Edith’s soft humming and the sound of pencil against paper as the dress quickly takes form, with its cascades of layers billowing out over the model’s legs, the gown daringly showing her calves, just as Viscountess Norwich had when she danced with her handsome husband and other friends at the party.

 

“Not bad,” Edith says as she finishes her sketch. “Not bad at all. Now for some colour.”

 

She goes to the kitchen cupboard where she keeps the old Victorian jugs that Lettice uses for water when she is doing watercolour sketching and withdraws the smallest jug. Filling it with some water she goes back to her seat. She looks guiltily at her mistress’ watercolours resting atop the scrapbook.

 

“Well,” Edith reasons. “My schoolteachers all said I had artistic flair.” She sighs. “And if I were as lucky as Miss Lettice, I’d have had a tutor to teach me art, or maybe even have gone to the Slade School of Fine Art. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me using her paints just this one time.”

 

She releases a sigh of pleasure as she mixes the vibrant robin’s egg blue shade of the gown and begins to paint her sketched figure. The colour lightens as she reaches the hem, matching the stockings on her model. Adding more colour to the pool of blue she then defines the shoes. Rinsing the brush in the jug she waits until the blue paint is dry before adding the rose madder of the silk rose on the shoulder and sleeve, and blonde hair to match her own shade to her figure. Making notes about Lettice’s party in the margins around the edge of her picture, Edith waits until the watercolour is dry. Taking up her colour pencils she adds detail, highlights of colour and shading to her sketch, totally oblivious of the time as the hands on the kitchen clock pass one o’clock, all the while humming happily away.

 

“There!” Edith remarks at last, satisfied with her creation. “Perhaps I could give Mr. Bruton a run for his money.” She chuckles to herself at the thought. “Now I shall have Lady Cooper’s gown forever.”

 

As she starts to pack up the watercolours, pencils, sketchbook and tea things she continues to hum ‘After the Ball is Over’, her body swaying to the tune as she imagines herself dancing at a party in the beautiful gown she had just created from memory on paper.

 

*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.

 

**Gunter and Company were London caterers and ball furnishers with shops in Berkley Square, Sloane Street, Lowndes Street and New Bond Street. They began as Gunter’s Tea Shop at 7 and 8 Berley Square 1757 where it remained until 1956 as the business grew and opened different premises. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Gunter's became a fashionable light eatery in Mayfair, notable for its ices and sorbets. Gunter's was considered to be the wedding cake makers du jour and in 1889, made the bride cake for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Louise of Wales. Even after the tea shop finally closed, the catering business carried on until the mid 1970s.

 

***Born Lady Diana Manners, Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Cooper, Viscountess Norwich was an English aristocrat who was a famously glamorous social figure in London and Paris. As a young woman, she moved in a celebrated group of intellectuals known as the Coterie, most of whom were killed in the First World War. She married Duff Cooper in 1919. In her prime, she had the widespread reputation as the most beautiful young woman in England, and appeared in countless profiles, photographs and articles in newspapers and magazines. She was a film actress in the early 1920s and both she and her husband were very good friends with Edward VIII and were guests of his on a 1936 yacht cruise of the Adriatic which famously caused his affair with Wallis Simpson to become public knowledge.

 

****The ‘robe de style’ was introduced by French couturier Jeanne Lanvin around 1915. It consisted of a basque bodice with a broad neckline and an oval bouffant skirt supported by built in wire hoops. Reminiscent of the Spanish infanta-style dresses of the Seventeenth Century and the panniered robe à la française of the Eighteenth Century they were made of fabric in a solid colour, particularly a deep shade of robin’s egg blue which became known as Lanvin blue, and were ornamented with concentrated bursts of embroidery, ribbons or ornamental silk flowers.

 

*****’After the Ball is Over’ was a popular 1891 song written by Charles K. Harris.

 

Believe it or not Edith’s sketch and her scrapbook as well as all the items around them are perhaps not quite as they appear, for all of them are 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Edith’s scrapbook is a 1:12 size miniature 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 this wonderful scrapbook from the 1920s which contains sketches, photographs and article clippings. Even the paper has been given the appearance of wrinkling as happens when glue is applied to cheap pulp paper. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this scrapbook, it contains twelve double sided pages of scrapbook articles, pictures, sketches and photographs and measures forty millimetres in height and thirty millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

The watercolour paint set, brushes, and Limoges style jugs (two of a set of three) come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House. So too do the pencils, which are one millimetre wide and two centimetres long.

 

The Huntley and Palmer’s Family Circle Biscuits tin containing a replica selection of biscuits is also a 1:12 artisan piece. Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time. The design on the tin originates from the 1920s, but continued much later due to its popularity. The biscuits on the plate are 1:12 scale artisan pieces. The jam fancy is made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, whilst the chocolate chip biscuit has been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.

 

The tea cosy, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in England.

 

The Deftware cup, saucer and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which I acquired from a private collection of 1:12 miniatures in Holland.

When my son introduced me to flickr in April and I went out and bought a camera, I had no idea what the balance of the year would bring : a new passion, a new way of looking at the world and documenting it, a flickr addiction that borders on insanity :-) and on-line flickr friendships that proved to be constant, supportive, affectionate, inspiring, steadfast and true. I am blessed to know each & every one of you. Your beautiful photographs inspire me and your generosity of spirit touches my heart daily. Thank you. Happy New Year everyone!

explore # 280. Many thanks to you all for your comments & faves.

  

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.

 

After a busy morning working at her desk, painting some interior designs for the Duchess of Whitby, Lettice prepares to curl up in one of her armchairs and enjoy her latest library book from Boots, a thrilling mystery, when the telephone rings noisily on the occasional table beside her.

 

“Oh blast!” Lettice cries. “And just as I was getting comfortable.”

 

The silver and Bakelite telephone continues to trill loudly as Lettice brushes herself down and picks up the receiver.

 

“Mayfair 432,” she answers without the slightest trace of irritation in her very best telephone voice. A distant female voice speaks down the line. “Oh Mrs. Hatchett, how do you do. Yes, this is Miss Chetwynd speaking.” She listens. “You’d like me to visit your home in Sussex? Next Thursday? Well Mrs Hatchett, I am rather in demand at the moment, and it is after all, the Season, which makes it doubly difficult.” She listens to more simpering words coming down the line. “Let me just check my diary.”

 

Lettice deposits the receiver next to the telephone. She reaches across to the low table before her and helps herself to a sip of tea and a nibble of one of the biscuits Edith has brought her. She then flicks a few pages in her new novel. Finally, when she thinks enough time has passed, she reaches across past the telephone and picks up her leather-bound diary which is fastened with an ornate silver clip. Taking up her silver pen, she flicks to next Thursday, knowing full well that it is free. She puts a star next to the Friday to Monday country party inked in for the following day. She will have plenty of time to get down to Sussex by train to visit Mrs Hatchett’s parochial manor house and back again to London to then travel the next day to Worcestershire for the weekend party.

 

Picking up the receiver she says, “You’re lucky Mrs. Hatchett. Thursday is the only day I have free in my diary for next week.”

 

She smiles like a Cheshire cat as she listens to Mrs. Hatchett’s enthusiastic response.

 

“Now, if you’d just remind me of your address is Sussex please, Mrs. Hatchett.” She jots it in her diary. “And you will ensure your driver picks me up from Rotherfield and Mark Cross*?” She listens to Mrs. Hatchett’s reassurances. “Splendid! Shall we say one o’clock then?” She listens. “Yes? Very good. Yes… yes, I shall see you then. Good morning Mrs. Hatchett.”

 

Lettice hangs up the receiver and squeals with delight.

 

“Edith! Edith!” she calls.

 

Her maid scurries in, frustrated that her mistress insists of screaming through the flat rather than pressing the servants’ bell next to the fireplace. “Can I help you, Miss?”

 

“Oh Edith!” Lettice gasps, leaping up from her seat and clasping her hands in delight. “Such good news!”

 

“Yes Miss?” Edith asks, waiting to hear more.

 

“Your cake did the trick!”

 

“My cake, Miss?” Edith does not understand.

 

“Yes, yes! Your mother’s chocolate cake recipe, for Mrs. Hatchett. Remember?”

 

“Oh that cake!” Edith thinks to herself how many cakes she has made since the rather loud and somewhat gauche Mrs. Hatchett, wife of a banker, sat in Lettice’s drawing room, enthusing over her host’s taste and style. “Very good, Miss.”

 

“It’s splendid Edith. Mrs. Hatchett wants me to visit her next Thursday to look about her home to then propose some interior design ideas!” She throws her arms around Edith’s neck, much to the other woman’s consternation as she stiffens awkwardly at the overfamiliarity.

 

“I best fetch you the Bluebell timetable then, Miss.” Edith mutters, slipping from her mistress’ grasp.

 

“Edith,” Lettice called after her.

 

“Yes, Miss?”

 

“You’re such a brick!”

 

“Yes, Miss!”

 

Lettice sinks back down into her round tub armchair, picks up her book and sighs happily.

 

*The village of Rotherfield in East Sussex had a railway station open there on September 1st 1880. It was renamed Rotherfield and Mark Cross on November 11th 1901. It was never a busy railway station with only light traffic boarding to London, partly due to an inconvenient location. The station was finally closed on June 14th 1965.

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a weekly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme chosen by a member of the group each week, and the image is to be posted on the Monday of the week.

 

This week the theme, “connections/connected” was chosen by David, DaveSPN.

 

I have taken a slightly different perspective on the theme, but I hope that this telephone, which kept people connected in the 1920s and keep them equally connected today. This upper-class domestic scene is different to what you may think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919.

 

The vase of red roses on the Art Deco occasional table and the glass vase of pink roses on the right-hand side of the mantlepiece are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

Lettice’s tea set is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era. The biscuits are also artisan miniatures from a specialist stockist of food stuffs. He has a dizzying array of meals which is always growing, and all are made entirely or put together by hand.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chairs are of black japanned wood and have removable cushions, just like their life sized examples. To the left of the fireplace is a Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair of black japanned wood which has been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the legs and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven. To the right of the fireplace is a Chippendale cabinet which has also been decorated with chinoiserie designs. It also features very ornate metalwork hinges and locks.

 

On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame.

 

The fireplace is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace which is flanked by brass accessories including an ash brush with real bristles.

 

On the left hand side of the mantle is an Art Deco metal clock hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken.

 

In the middle of the mantle is a miniature artisan hand painted Art Deco statue on a “marble” plinth. Made by Warwick Miniatures in England, it is a 1:12 copy of the “Theban Dancer” sculpture created by Claire-Jeanne-Roberte Colinet in 1925.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug, and the geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

 

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

 

It's a quarter past eight and Lettice is still happy asleep in her bed, buried beneath a thick and soft counterpane of embroidered oriental satin brocade, whilst the rest of Mayfair is slowly awakening in the houses and flats around her. Her peaceful slumbers are rudely interrupted by a peremptory knock on her boudoir door.

 

“Morning Miss.” Edith, Lettice’s maid, says brightly as she pops her head around the white painted panelled door as she opens it.

 

Lettice grunts – a most unladylike reaction – as she starts to wake up, disorientated, wondering for just a moment where she is before realising that she is in her own bed in Cavendish Mews. Sitting up in bed she winces as Edith draws the curtains back along their railing, flooding the room with a light, which whilst anaemic, is still painful to her eyes as the adjust.

 

“It looks like it’s going to be a showery and overcast day today, Miss.” Edith says with seriousness as she looks out of the window onto the street below. “None too good for that charity event you are going to today.”

 

“Charity event?” Lettice queries, rubbing the sleep from her sore eyes and exhaling through her nose. “What,” She yawns, not bothering to stifle it and stretches her arms. “What charity event, Edith?”

 

“That theatrical one you are going to with Mr. Bruton in Regent’s Park, Miss.” Edith replies, walking across the floor of her mistress’ bedroom, snatching discarded lingerie and stockings from the floor as she goes as she opens the door to the adjoining bathroom.

 

“Oh that!” Lettice answers. “The Theatrical Garden Party isn’t until next week, Edith.”

 

“Oh, I thought it was today, Miss.” The maid lifts the upholstered lid on a wicker laundry basket just inside the bathroom door and deposits Lettice’s lacy undergarments and stockings into it. “I must have my weeks confused.” She emerges and goes to one of Lettice’s polished wardrobes where she withdraws a pale pink bed jacket trimmed in marabou feathers from its wooden hanger.

 

“No, the Actors’ Orphanage Garden Party* is definitely next week, Edith,” Lettice says aloud to assure herself as much as her maid as she allows Edith to drape the bed jacket around her shoulders. She sighs and looks out at the grey day that peeps through the window. “Thank goodness. We’d hate for it to be a wash-out. Last year drew such crowds.”

 

Edith goes back to the open bedroom door and disappears momentarily into the hallway before returning with Lettice’s breakfast tray.

 

Punching and fluffing her pillows behind her to her satisfaction, Lettice nestles into her nest as she sits up properly in bed and allows her maid to place the tray across her lap. She looks down approvingly at the slice of golden toast in the middle of the pretty floral plate, the egg in the matching egg cup and the pot of tea with steam rising from the spout. She goes to lift the lid of the silver preserve pot.

 

“Marmalade, Miss.” Edith elucidates.

 

“Very good, Edith.”

 

“You… err… finished the last of the Glynes plum and raspberry conserve yesterday, Miss.”

 

“Did I?” Lettice remarks, withdrawing her napkin from underneath the plate and draping it across her front. “Oh well, all good things must come to an end, mustn’t they, Edith?”

 

“I couldn’t say, Miss.” Edith replies, her mouth forming into a slim line on her face as she keeps quiet about what she considers to be an extravagant amount of jam that Lettice applies to her toast every morning. In her opinion her mistress may as well forgo the toast altogether and eat the jam directly from the pot with a spoon. “The marmalade is shop bought, Miss.”

 

“Is it? Oh well, never mind.” Lettice answers as she takes up a spoon and begins to dollop the rich gelatinous golden orange marmalade onto her slice of toast. “I’ll fetch some more conserve from Mater and Pater next time I’m back in Wiltshire.” She takes the knife and spreads the thick layer across the toast before cutting the slice in half with crunching strokes. “Any post yet, Edith?”

 

“Some tradesmen’s correspondence and a larger envelope without a return address on it, Miss.”

 

“That will be a begging letter,” Lettice points the knife at her maid, slicing the air with it. “Put them on my desk will you. I’ll see to them when I get up.”

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith bobs a curtsey and goes to withdraw, yet just as she is about to close the bedroom door she glances at something on the console table outside. “Oh, and there is this, Miss, which I should think you’ll want to see.”

 

Lettice looks down the length of the room to where Edith holds up a copy of Country Life** in the doorway. She gasps. “Oh hoorah! Bring it here this instant, Edith!” She holds out her arms, twiddling her fingers anxiously.

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith bobs a curtsey and brings the crisp magazine to her mistress’ bedside.

 

“What page is it on, Edith?” Lettice asks, grasping the folded pages from her maid and opening it before her, over the top of her breakfast tray.

 

“I couldn’t say, Miss.” Edith replies, her intonation reflecting the mild outrage she feels at being asked such a question. “As if I would go through your personal mail, Miss.” Even though she has done just as Lettice has suggested and found and skimmed the article on Lettice’s redecoration of ‘Chi an Treth’, there is no need for her to know.

 

“Oh of course you haven’t, Edith. I’m sorry” Lettice apologises, lowering the magazine and looking up at her maid with remorse in her blue eyes. “Forgive me?”

 

“Of course, Miss.”

 

“I’m so grateful to have a maid who doesn’t pry.”

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith answers with a smug smile. “Will that be all, Miss.”

 

“Yes, yes, Edith!” Lettice answers with a dismissive flip of her right hand as she lets go of half the copy of Country Life which drapes across her breakfast, narrowly avoiding being smeared with marmalade. “I should be finished in about a half hour and then you can clean up.”

 

“Very good, Miss.”

 

Once Edith has retreated and closed the door behind her, Lettice foists the breakfast tray from her lap onto the empty left half of the bed, the crockery and cutlery protesting noisily at being thrust so forcefully from her. Drawing her knees up, she rests the latest edition of Country Life on her thighs and turns to the contents page, scanning the list of articles and editorials. “Aha!” she gasps triumphantly upon finding it.

 

Flipping through the pages past other houses of note quicky, the paper rustles beneath her fingers until she reaches the editorial she wants. Taking a deep breath she begins to read quietly aloud to herself, “Country homes and gardens old and new. ‘Chi an Treth’, Cornwall, the seat of Mr. R. Channon.” She skims the first section of the editorial which explains how Dickie and Margot were gifted their country house, but pauses at the first two photographs beneath it. She smiles with satisfaction at the first one which shows the top of the demi-lune table that she painted by hand and then worried wasn’t going to meet Margot’s approval. The image beside it shows the stylish mirror topped Art Deco console table she installed beneath the portrait of the beautiful and tragic Miss Rosevear, flanked by two statues she acquired from Mr. Chilvers at the Portland Gallery. “A perfect balance of old and new.” she reads aloud from the caption below the photograph before allowing herself to release the pent-up breath she has been holding in her chest. Those few words consisting of twenty-six characters is enough to tell her that anything else she reads in Henry Tipping’s*** article will be sure to be favourable about her interior designs for the Channon’s Regency country house.

 

Looking across the gutter between the left-hand page and the right she reads, “in the capable hands of Miss Lettice Chetwynd, who has applied her tasteful Modern Classical Revival style.”

 

Lettice’s eyes stray to the large photograph of Dickie and Margot’s redecorated drawing room. She chuckles to herself, the action causing the corners of her mouth to curl up in a smile as she remembers her conversation with Margot in the week following the Country Life photo shoot at ‘Chi an Treth’. Margot complained bitterly about having to tidy the place up for Mr. Tipping and his crew, even though it was her housekeeper, Mrs. Trevethan, who really did the tidying up. Margot moaned about having to hide her novels like skeletons in the closet, and how Mr. Tipping tinkered around the rooms, moving small things like clocks and photos, whilst removing others for what he called photographic effect. Margot said that when it came to shifting Dickie’s pile of newspapers from the pouffe by the fireplace, his friendship with Mr. Tipping nearly came to an end. Gifted with a sense of drama, Lettice knew that Margot was over exaggerating this point, but she could imagine that having a photography crew traipsing through your newly decorated rooms would be somewhat of an inconvenience and more than a little irritating. Margot did however concede that the Country Life crew brought a magnificent array of flowers which they filled every conceivable space with when photographing, and then left behind for her pleasure upon their decampment.

 

“Miss Chetwynd’s treatment of the drawing room exemplifies a comfortable mixture of old and new furnishings to create a welcoming and contemporary room that is sympathetic to the original features.” Lettice reads. Dropping the pages onto her thighs, she smiles with unbridled delight at the complimentary way with which Mr. Tipping describes her interiors.

 

“Wait until Mater reads this,” she thinks smugly, remembering her request of the Country Life office to supply an advanced copy of the magazine to her parent’s home as well as her own once it was published. “Now she will have to take my interior decorating business seriously.”

 

As if on cue, the black and silver Bakelite telephone by her bedside begins to trill noisily. She looks at it, her eyes alive with excitement. Usually, it is Edith’s job to answer the telephone, one of her most hated duties in her position as Lettice’s maid. Lettice is amused by her hatred of ‘that infernal contraption’. However, today after reading what she has in the Country Life article about ‘Chi an Treth’ she feels magnanimous and picks up the receiver on the third shrill ring.

 

“Mayfair 432,” she answers with a happy lilt in her voice. A distant deep male voice speaks down the line. “Pappa! What an unexpected pleasure at this time of the morning. I would have thought you’d be out on estate business with Leslie at this time.” She smiles to herself and bites the inside of her lower lip in excitement and anticipation. “I do hope nothing is wrong, Pappa.” she adds cheekily. She listens. “Oh really? Did she? Whatever was the matter for Mamma to call you to her boudoir like that?” She listens again, her eyes crinkling at the corners in sheer delight as she listens, luxuriating in her moment of triumph. “Oh that!” She laughs feigning nonchalance as she curls the spiral cord of the telephone receiver around her left index finger. “You know Pappa, with all the excitement of preparing for Elizabeth’s**** up and coming wedding to the Duke of York and decorating Charles and Minnie Palmerston’s dining room, you know I had quite forgotten all about it.” She listens again. “Yes, yes, I had. I mean, it was so long ago when I decorated Dickie and Margot’s. You and Mamma did approve of me doing it considering that Dickie is the Marquess of Taunton’s son, didn’t you?” she asks teasingly. Her father’s voice, disembodied somewhere between London and Wiltshire booms bombastically down the line. “Well yes I can, Pappa. I’ll have to check my diary, but I think I could arrange to come down to Glynes at short notice,” She pauses. “Only that suits you, of course.” She listens again. “Yes, yes very well. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve booked a ticket which train I’ll be on.” There is more male burbling along the line. “Alright. Goodbye Pappa. I’ll see you soon.” She hangs up the phone.

 

There is a quiet knock at the bedroom door.

 

“Is everything alright, Miss?” Edith opens it and pops her head around.

 

“So much for a maid who doesn’t pry.” Lettice says with arched eyebrows, making Edith blush at the remark. “Yes, everything is fine, but,” She throws the comforter back and swivels herself around on the mattress, revealing her white lace brassier beneath her open bed jacket and her silk crepe de chine step ins as she stretches her legs out of the bed. “There has been a change of plans. I shall have to forego breakfast this morning. I need you to pack me an overnight valise, Edith. I’m off to Glynes for an evening stay. I just need to ring the Victoria Station booking office and arrange a ticket.”

 

“To Glynes, Miss!” Edith gasps. “Whatever for?”

 

Holding up the copy of Country Life, Lettice says, still with arched eyebrows, and a knowing, but not unfriendly smile. “I think you know only too well, Edith.”

 

*The Actors' Orphanage was started in 1896 and established as the Actors' Orphanage Fund in 1912. The fund continues but the orphanage closed in 1958. The charity was started in 1896 by "Kittie" Carson and Mrs Clement Scott. The first building was in Croydon. It was established as the Actors' Orphanage Fund in 1912. In 1915 the Orphanage moved to Langley Hall at Langley (was in Buckinghamshire - now in Berkshire). The orphanage was both a home and a school to approximately sixty children. At ages fifteen to seventeen pupils sat the School Leaving Certificate of Cambridge University and if ten subjects were taken, to Matriculation. Over the years many from the theatrical profession gave time and money to the running of the Orphanage. They also threw large garden parties in Regents Park with rides and entertainment from famous people in the theatrical profession to help raise funds. These events were highly patronised, drawing the biggest crowds between 1920 and 1925. Past presidents of the Orphanage included Sir Gerald du Maurier, Noël Coward, Laurence Olivier and Richard Attenborough.

 

**Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.

 

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

 

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

 

This editorial from the pages of country life complete with photographs may look real to you, but if you look carefully at the elegantly appointed drawing room with its modish Art Deco furnishings you will find that they are made up with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in the photographs in this article include:

 

On the coffee table sits a rounded bowl made from hand spun glass, which has been made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The ornamental glass bon-bon dish and other glass vases are also made from hand spun glass and were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, as are all the roses in the photographs.

 

The Statue of the nude Art Nouveau woman on the right-hand pedestal to the right at the back is based on a real statue and is made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. It has been hand painted by me.

 

The glass topped demilune table in the background is a hand made miniature artisan piece, which sadly is unsigned. On its surface, made of real glass are decanters of whiskey and port and a cranberry glass soda syphon made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The silver Regency tea caddy is made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland.

 

The wedding photo in the silver frame on the mantlepiece and the photos in frames on the demilune table behind the armchair are real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frame comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers.

 

The Georgian style demilune table behind and to the right of the armchair is an artisan miniature from Lady Mile Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Painted white and then aged, it has been hand painted with a Georgian style design on its surface.

 

The copy of Country Life on the pouffe was made by me.

 

The eau-de-nil suite consisting of armchairs, sofa and pouffe are all made of excellent quality fabric, and are very well made, as is the coffee table with its small drawer beneath the tabletop. All these pieces were made as a set by high-end miniatures manufacturer Jiayi Miniatures.

 

The Regency gilt swan pedestals and round tables are made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

The fireplace is made of plaster, and comes from Kathleen Knight’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The stylised Art Deco fire screen is made using thinly laser cut wood, made by Pat’s Miniatures in England.

 

The paintings around the ‘Chi an Treth’ drawing room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by V.H. Miniatures and Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom and geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series. The Geometrically patterned Art Deco carpet on the floor comes from a miniatures specialist store on E-Bay.

Disclaimer: The contents of this chapter include very sensitive subject matter involving of death of family and the PTSD that comes with it and may be triggering to some individuals.

 

...

 

Vincent lifted his gaze from the picture and leaned his head back against the pillow propped up behind him and closed his eyes. Right now, he was very grateful to his cousin and her bhang concoctions. If not for that, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get through this today. Honestly he was still uncertain if he still actually could do this.

But as Vincent settled in, a slight smile drew upon his lips as he began to speak as he let him go back four years ago. And as he did, Aiden relaxed more beside him and listened to his story.

"I suppose this story began with my promotion to Captaincy. My uncle is very much a generous man as much as he is proud. He threw a ball to celebrate me. After all, I was the son he never had and it was expected of us. I was to greet and receive endless congratulations by many Captains and their wives, several Lords and Ladies and the worst ones of all." There was a dramatic pause. "Marriage-minded mothers and their daughters."

Vincent actually shuddered which made Aiden laugh softly. But at the same time, it put Vincent in a somewhat new perspective for him: Vincent was not just any ship's captain. He came from a wealthy family; perhaps even possibly related to a Lord or Lady! He supposed he should have realized that last week when Vincent mentioned being required to attend a huge event such as the coming masquerade ball.

"So a couple of hours into my endless parade of greetings and congratulations I happened upon a conversation of a small group discussing horror novels."

"Sounds like something you could get into."

"Indeed. Shh."

"Sorry."

"As I approached, the main speaker turned out to be a woman elaborating about a book she'd read. It turned out to be by the same author who wrote the book you gave me. Her audience had been quite shocked as she spun the summarized tale of how a scorned witch took bloody revenge on all those who'd wronged her. And trust me, it was absolutely tame compared to the novel itself. No one seemed to know what to say. And so when I announced that I knew the novel she was speaking of and that I'd enjoyed it, myself, she'd turned in excitement with such a brilliant smile. She promptly took my arm and, I quote, 'Now HERE'S someone worth talking to! Hello, good Sir, my name is Miss Emily Fenton. It's a pleasure to meet you. Shall we grab some lemonade together?' And as I escorted her away she mentioned the party had been dull until I arrived and that I was right on time."

Both men chuckled softly and Aiden thought to himself that Vincent's wife must have been a very interesting woman. He was very amused that Vincent imitated an enthusiastic young woman's voice quite well.

"She really turned my world upside down. I remember thinking to myself, how did I not notice her before? As it turned out, she was a visiting cousin of an acquaintance of the family. I remember the details of her eyes, those little flecks of green that encircled her iris. How she smelled of lilies which happened to be her favorite flower. She had this sly smile which was so full of mischief and had the most twisted sense of humor which I adored. But you'd never know the depth of her by looking at her. Oh, she would smile and act as a lady should be in public. Well....mostly. She was sharp, witty, and very well-read. She was a scholar and loved to delve into book after book. But her mind and the things that would come out of her mouth! And she'd do it with a straight face too! And you'd never see it coming!"

And Vincent was laughing! Aiden grinned and he listened, painting this picture in his head of the eventual Mrs. Emily Dubois. She seemed quite the character! She sounded like someone Vincent could easily get along with and clearly did.

Vincent's laughter quickly settled and he licked his lips before reaching for the cup of bhang tea beside him and drained the rest of it. He knew by the end of this, he was going to need it in his system. It had been a couple of years since he'd really talked about any of this. The last time had been to Damien and it hadn't given him as much closure as he'd have liked. Of course, Damien had been there to witness the majority of it all and hadn't needed explanations. He'd simply been there as a shoulder for Vincent to lean on. Sure, talking to Damien HAD helped and eventually he was able to get through each day again but...something about this time was different. He was able to let it flow differently this time as he got to tell the actual whole story to someone for the first time. It felt good to finally talk about it.

"You have to know something about me. Well, about who I was. I was married to my career. I loved everything about my life in the sky and had everything I wanted. I had no need for marriage at the time. I was young; only twenty-three. I wasn't expected to look for a wife for several years and even so I didn't have to. I was a captain! I could live my life completely in the air if I wanted to! And it was what I did want. My thirst for knowledge paired beautifully with my love of travel and I could chart any course and go anywhere and learn anything I wanted when I wanted. I knew what my life would be. That was until I met Emily.

"I hadn't realized how much sharing the joys of sharing one's life with another person could be until I found myself in her presence nearly every day. She was a fascinating woman and very knowledgeable and well read. She was always happy to hear about places and things I've seen. In turn, I was happy to listen to her talk about her novels and things she'd learned in her studies and we shared deep, intellectual conversations. We became fast friends, but I knew it was more than that. I found myself waking every day with her in my thoughts. She had quickly become someone I had to keep in my life and she seemed to fit perfectly somehow. I felt alive in a new, different way.

"Of course it was perfectly possible for me to have a wife and live my life too. After all, I had grown up watching the love between my uncle and aunt and they had married young as well. My uncle was gone most of the time; home during Summers and occasionally throughout the year for important holidays and still does it to this day. And every time they are together, you can see the love and happiness they share together. It's as clear as day. And they are more in love than the day they married. And even then, I knew it. So I knew I could make it work with Emily if she were willing. Of course, fate would have it that I found out that Emily was due to return home and would be leaving the capitol the following week. It would be a long time before we would see each other in person. After all, she didn't live in a major port and I was due to start my first trip as captain soon. I was expecting to subject myself to written correspondence with her. But when I saw that forlorn look in her eyes and how she admitted that she'd miss seeing my face? Well, what else could I do but ask her to marry me?"

Vincent blinked and tears slid down his cheeks in memory of Emily as he saw her in her bridal gown and how she'd glowed that day. "We were happy. I knew my life would be perfect. Emily understood me and the expectations of my life. No, we wouldn't be together every day but we'd see each other more often than if she was going back to her hometown. She was happy and eager to get our lives started together. She'd made friends with my cousins and had her own cousin in town as well. She'd have a happy life here and once we had children, her days would be more joyful. She was looking forward to becoming a mother one day."

How wonderful Vincent made it seem! Of course, Aiden knew how this story would end. But it was important, he realized, for Vincent to talk about this...about her and their life. Something told him he'd not told this story before. Not like this. Aiden felt his heart go out to Vincent and he continued to listen to Vincent's story.

"As you can imagine, it was a very short engagement and a small wedding. I'd gotten us a place big enough for us and a little one for when we were ready. With all the excitement of a ball held in my honor, wooing my lady, and becoming a husband, I'd taken time off from work for quite some time. But it was time for me to get back into the swing of life and provide for my wife and our home together. So the day finally came where Damien and I were to set off for our first cargo trip on Leon's Claw. And that's when she gave me this."

Vincent leaned over and reached for the compass and brought it to his lap and opened it up. He held it along with the picture frame and just stared for a long moment. Aiden gazed at the compass over Vincent's shoulder with new appreciation. He'd noticed the slight smoothness of the spots where Vincent's fingers had rubbed it when he'd repaired it a few months ago. It was a well loved piece to have so much wear in such a short amount of time. And he'd certainly not forgotten Vincent's distraught expression when it had broken.

"'Though pleas`d to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way,'" * Vincent recited the inscription inside the compass. "She said that it was to help me remember to stay my course; to seek to enjoy life and all it has to offer and to always help me find my way home. She was worried I'd find it silly and corny but I loved her for it."

"It was a thoughtful gift."

"It really is. I was touched."

Vincent closed the compass and held it tight in his hand for a long moment. He licked his lips and then glanced up at Aiden who gave him a small encouraging smile. But Vincent saw that something was off about Aiden and how he was smiling. A small part of him wanted to turn and reassure Aiden...but what was there to reassure him about? He wasn't sure what was wrong but he just seemed a little...despondent. Perhaps it was because he knew it was a sad story? Or was there something else bothering him?

"So what happened next?" Aiden inquired softly, not realizing that Vincent was reading him so well. Vincent gazed at him for another long moment, blinking a couple of times as he allowed himself to tuck this mental inquiry about Aiden away to think about later.

"What happened next? Well, I started my new life as Captain. I felt like I was living my best life! I was having a grand time with one of my best friends and got to live my dream every day. It was everything I hoped it would be. Though, I admit that for somewhat selfish reasons, we didn't stray too far from home." Vincent chuckled slightly to himself which drew a small smirk from Aiden. "Damien was pretty annoyed with me, I think. I had made him wait and wait while I courted my wife and then we were only gone not even a full two months before we came home again. And that's when I found out that I was to become a father." Aiden could see the joy through the sadness and tears that were forming in Vincent's eyes.

"Six months or so later my daughter was born: Lily. She...she had my eyes and hair and her mother's nose and mouth. Lily was so small but she was healthy and perfect. She was my pride and joy." The tears spilled down Vincent's face as he let out a soft sob and yet he still managed a bittersweet smile as he gazed up at Aiden. "I wish I could show you...she was so beautiful and sweet. She never cried and loved being held. I never realized that I could be that happy. And then...then much too soon it was time for me to go."

And here Vincent's smile faded and he drew his knees up a little and his shoulders sunk. His gaze returned to the photograph. Aiden knew what was going to happen next. This was where Vincent's world would be ripped from him.

"There had been talk of illness in neighboring countries with major air and sea ports. In my line of work, I was at risk but it wasn't like I could stop with a family to provide for. And we lived in a city of massive commerce. She was scared of never seeing me again but I still chose to go."

Beside him, Aiden felt his heart suddenly clench even worse. He remembered all too well when that happened just over three years ago. There had been rumors and people were scared. But it never seemed to come and people began to wonder if maybe it was just a hoax. Then suddenly it hit with ferocity everywhere that had air and sea ports, rumored to have come thanks to commerce and the critters that resided on the ships. Aiden's hometown was a city of commerce and sure enough it had claimed many lives there including that of his own mother who was prone to illness more easily than others.

"It was the hardest farewell I'd ever had to make," Vincent continued painfully. "I kissed my wife and baby and went on my way." Vincent inhaled deeply and let it out sharply before swallowing hard and gave a small nod. Aiden had a feeling he was having to push himself to keep talking at this point.

"Then 'this,'" Vincent grumbled and gestured aggressively towards his blind and damaged eye, "happened." He inhaled slowly and deeply through his nostrils as fresh tears began to pool in his eyes. "While Damien and I were recovering, news came that the capitol had been ravaged by the illness; especially in the poorer parts of town. I prayed that my family would be safe, all of them. But then that's when I got the letter from Emily. Our little Lily was sick, but it had been dated a couple of weeks earlier! I wanted to get home right away but no one was flying or sailing out; especially to the capitol. And, of course, mail was not getting out nearly as quickly anymore.

"We weren't far from here but it wasn't close at all if you traveled on land. And, of course, Leon's Claw needed repairs and Damien had suffered a severe trauma with losing his arm saving me. I was stuck! It took a week to get the proper repairs done so I could fly home myself. Thankfully Damien was fitted for his arm and I could get home to my wife and daughter! I prayed to whatever powers may be that Lily would be okay. I STILL hadn't heard from anyone even though I'd sent letters! Not Emily, my cousins, nor my aunt. Nothing. All I knew was my baby was sick! And when we arrived at the capitol, my cousin Abigail was waiting for me. I knew it the moment I saw it was her waiting there for me; not Emily. I was too late!"

At this point, Vincent was just letting it all out. Now that he was talking and crying, he just couldn't seem to stop! Aiden felt like he couldn't breathe as his heart kept breaking more and more for Vincent.

"It wasn't only my little Lily that I'd lost! I'd lost Emily, too! Emily died the day before I arrived home and Lily three days before! It's not fair! I lost them BOTH!!! Lily and Emily died ALONE while I was stuck two cities away! I wasn't there with them! She asked me to stay but I didn't! What kind of a man am I?! I should have stayed!"

Aiden cried silently beside Vincent as he gazed at the distraught man. What could he say? What could he do? What could possibly console Vincent with something as heartbreaking as this?

So this was why Vincent had spoken to him the way he had when they had met, Aiden realized. He was remembering as he repaired the compass Vincent had spoken to him about Aiden's convictions and determination to leave home. Vincent had tried to convince him that it would be better to stay home with his family. But Aiden had been determined that he wanted this. The feelings and reasonings that Aiden had come back with that had apparently convinced Vincent to hire him seemed like they would be something the late Emily would have encouraged. And quite possibly, it seemed, Vincent had seen a bit of himself in Aiden at the time.

Aiden swallowed hard as the realizations hit him. It took him a minute but he finally got his thoughts together before he spoke softly.

"But at least you have that final memory of them. Of kissing them goodbye and-"

"NO! I DON'T! Just...don't even! You have NO idea!"

Aiden had jumped at Vincent's strangled, sudden outburst! Then Vincent suddenly gave a wrenched sob as he pressed his hands to his face and sobbed even harsher than Aiden had heard thus far. Seconds later, he wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them quite painfully towards his chest. In his agonized state of being, as well as the intoxication from the bhang, Vincent didn't care about the physical pain flaring to life in his abdomen! Aiden wanted to stop him but right now he didn't dare say or do anything as he stared wide eyed at Vincent.

"You just don't know, Aiden!" Lifting his gaze, he stared up into Aiden's eyes desperately. Aiden had the impression that Vincent was almost pleading with him to understand.

"I wanted to remember them forever like that. Of my wife's smile and my daughter looking so perfect in her arms as I kissed them farewell. I would have that memory and all our happy memories to sustain me. I felt like I was in a daze as I made my way home. Then that's...that's when..."

Vincent closed his eyes and tears slid down his cheeks as the memory came back so painful and fresh as if it happened just yesterday. When he opened them, he was gazing back at Aiden and continued, this time his voice more calm but every bit as heart-wrenching as he said in a near whisper, "I came home as their bodies were being carried out of the building and tossed onto the cart with the other corpses. And the workers they...they just were talking so casually about them and the way they tossed their bodies onto the pile I- I just-"

And he cut himself off and buried his face in his knees and sobbed. He found that he just couldn't stop. Beside him, Aiden sat in shock as all this unfolded. Vincent was inconsolable, but he needed this. Who knew how long he'd kept this torment inside? Surely, he'd never broken down like this before! This seemed too fresh. Aiden wasn't sure what to say to any of that. What could someone say to that?

"And every time I sleep, the dreams always end the same way! I kiss them goodbye and then I see their corpses like that! EVERY! TIME! And I know how alone she was! How miserable and scared she must have been! I should have been there with them! What did I do to deserve this?! I don't want to do this anymore, Aiden! I should have died with them! I don't want to be here anymore! I want to die but I'm too much of a coward to end it all myself!"

And suddenly Vincent was wrapped in the warmth of Aiden's strong embrace before he was gently but firmly held close.

"Shh...shh..."

"Let go!"

At first Vincent started to push him off, but as he felt Aiden's hand come to cup the back of his head, he felt all his walls break down as he allowed himself to lean against Aiden's chest and actually clung to his shirt. The sobs came all over again, but this time they just did not stop coming. Aiden simply held him and pressed his nose and lips to the top of Vincent's head and closed his eyes. He didn't know what else to do but let him get it all out.

Some time had passed. Neither man had paid attention to the time, but eventually Vincent's sobs quieted and he hiccupped as he just leaned against Aiden in a quiet daze as he came down from all that. Aiden gently slid his hand down and rubbed Vincent's back. He wasn't in a hurry to let Vincent out of his arms right now. Once Vincent's breathing was back to normal, Aiden lifted his head and pressed his chin gently atop his head.

"I'm glad you're here, Vincent," he told him softly. "I'd miss you terribly if you were gone."

"Bet you wouldn't miss days like this."

"I'd not be anywhere else."

"You can't really mean that."

"Look at me."

And Vincent did. He sniffed and lifted his head from Aiden's chest and gazed up into his eyes. In a slightly bold move, Aiden reached up and gently brushed away Vincent's tears before stating calmly, "I'd not be anywhere else but here. I will always be here no matter what; whether that be a shoulder to lean on or-... or if you need a poking to lighten up and laugh once in a while. You are important to me, Vincent. You're my best friend."

Vincent's eyes widened and he felt his stomach flutter to life with butterflies. Aiden must truly feel strongly about their bond! Of course, Vincent knew of friendships like this. He had a small group of people he trusted and he was so thankful that Aiden was part of that circle now. And he had to admit that he loved that Aiden could speak his thoughts so freely with him and threw caution and vulnerability to the wind. And Vincent felt like he could as well and it felt liberating each and every time. He felt more free to do so around Aiden than...well, he couldn't even remember!

"You're one of my closest friends too. I'm lucky to have you in my corner, Aiden. I don't know what I did to deserve you. but thank you."

"Of course. I'll always have your back. Always."

Aiden wanted to tell Vincent the truth of his romantic feelings. He truly did. However, he knew that right now was not the time for it; especially not after Vincent's awful breakdown over his dearly missed wife. And as for Aiden, when he'd asked Vincent to talk about Emily, he hadn't expected to compare himself to her the way he unintentionally had. It was hard not to feel a touch of doubt considering he wanted to win Vincent's heart, himself. Aiden and Emily were quite different people. Would Vincent even want him, a man? Would he be open to finding love again to begin with?

Aiden still had every intention of wooing Vincent and telling him the truth one day. He just needed to go about things differently now that he understood how deeply Vincent was hurting.

However, Vincent still needed him as his friend, so romance was not an option right now, but perhaps one day, Aiden thought. He'd just have to be part of his life and hopefully one day things would work out so that Vincent would come to feel he needed Aiden the same way that Aiden needed him.

A very short time later once Vincent was more settled, Aiden released him from his arms and they moved back into the positions they had been in before Bernadette's departure. Vincent was grateful for Aiden's help shifting around before the young man settled in, himself. Vincent had wrenched his body around during his breakdown and now his ribs ached badly. Though thankfully soon after, he wasn't even paying attention to anything else but his new book as his body settled down from all the excitement and the pain became more bearable again.

When Bernadette returned from her errands, she found the men where she'd left them: content and happy beside each other with Vincent nose-deep into his book and Aiden scribbling in his notebook. And she thought silently to herself with a smile, 'Is it just me or are they sitting closer than before?'

At one point very soon after, Vincent needed a moment of privacy to use the bedpan. But as soon as he was done and the bedpan cleaned? Well Aiden was back on the bed beside his best friend and enjoying his company. But what really gave Aiden a reason to smile was when Vincent actually refrained from opening his book and turned to ask Aiden what he was doing in his notebook.

"I'm designing upgrades for Pete!"

"Pete?"

"Pete the Spider Lantern! You met him already."

"Wait. Are you talking about that lantern that came with you to find me?"

"That's the one!"

And that was when Aiden launched into an explanation about Pete and showed him the sketches he'd made of Pete with little added parts to enhance him. Vincent had almost forgotten about the lantern that had come to the tower with Aiden. He remembered now that Aiden had come back from one of his shopping trips a while back with the lantern and declared that he had a project he wanted to work on with it. That was the last Vincent had seen or heard of it until last week when Aiden came to rescue him with it as at his side.

A couple of minutes later there was a knock at the front door to which Bernadette went to answer it. She wasn't expecting anyone else today so who could it be? Surely, not Damien. It was Aiden's turn this evening to babysit Vincent with her tonight. However, it DID turn out to be Damien after all and in his arms were two bags of groceries!

"Damien! We weren't expecting you but thank you! You're spoiling us." She grinned up at him and closed the door behind him.

"You're welcome. And what do you mean? I'm helping out with dressings tonight, remember?"

"Oh!" She paused as she reached to help with the groceries as she thought about it, arms outstretched. "Wait...are you sure?"

At that second, there was a burst of laughter from the other room that belonged to Aiden. Damien glanced towards the room then looked back at Bernadette with a slight smirk and handed her both bags and replied, "Of course I am! You must be tired. Don't worry, Bernie. I'm sure you'll be able to catch up on rest soon." Damien patted her on the shoulder and turned to head towards the bedroom to see what was going on in there.

Bernadette blinked and stood there with the bags of groceries as she stared at his departing backside. She opened her mouth then closed it before looking at the weighty bags in her arms. Feeling a bit confused and a touch irritated, she turned and made her way towards the kitchen and grumbled, "Asshole."

Then a moment later...

"What do you think you're doing?!"

Aiden jumped and blinked as he looked up and around to see who shouted. It was Damien at the door and he looked pretty upset! Why was Damien here anyway? Today was his day off, wasn't it? Aiden opened his mouth but beside him, Vincent was faster to respond with a slightly stern tone, "What's the problem?"

Damien kept his eyes on Aiden and elaborated, "You shouldn't be on the bed! What if Vincent gets hurt worse because of your jostling!"

"Damien, I'm fine!" Vincent cut in before Aiden could even respond and rolled his eyes with a chuckle. "Relax! Here, have some bhang tea."

"I don't want tea!"

Damien scowled and folded his arms over his chest as he glared at the two of them. Vincent narrowed his eyes at Damien and sat up a bit straighter and gave him an even stare. Beside him, Aiden shrank where he sat. He wasn't going to get in the middle of this.

"What's really the problem?"

"I already told you!"

"No, you didn't but fine. Do you trust me?"

"Vincent-"

"Do. You. Trust. Me?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"Then trust me when I say I am fine! I'm not fragile! And in case you haven't noticed, Damien, I can handle a little bit of jostling." Vincent sarcastically gestured towards his beaten body. Then after a moment his gaze softened and he smiled a bit as he gestured towards Aiden's notebook. "Besides, Aiden is showing me his sketches! And he brought me a present! See?"

Instead of looking at whatever Vincent was holding up, Damien's gaze shifted towards Aiden who went a deep shade of red and brought his hand up to run through his hair with a shy chuckle and smile. Damien stared at him for a long moment before turning to look at what Vincent was holding out to him impatiently. Upon seeing what it was, Damien scoffed and chuckled, "Another book. Heh. Well, isn't that nice of him?"

Aiden blinked and made a slight face as he was feeling a little offended. And honestly? A little surprised. 'Another book?' he wanted to ask. Did he not know his own supposed best friend enough to know how much he loved and valued books? Surely, he had to! But even Aiden (who didn't enjoy novels the way Vincent did either) understood and appreciated what it meant to the man. And thankfully, it seemed, Vincent was of the same mind and jumped in his defense!

"It is, in fact! Look at it! Look! See who it's by?!" Vincent exclaimed eagerly with a grin. "It just released today!" In his excitement, Vincent had already brushed aside the intensity of Damien's arrival. He was used to Damien's worrywart personality by now and wanted to show off his present!

Aiden however, hadn't brushed it off yet. He knew he'd get over it, but right now he was still feeling a little sour towards Damien. 'What's with this guy?' he wondered silently as he watched Damien approach and ruin their alone time.

Damien finally took a seat on the chair beside Vincent. Even though he was looking at Vincent and listening to what he was saying, his mind was processing what he'd happened upon and the realizations that came with it.

So, Vincent had a brand new book and he hadn't shoved Aiden out the door? Not only that, he wasn't nose deep into it like Damien was used to him doing. His experiences had always taught him that Vincent liked to be left alone while reading, especially with a new book. So, why the Hell was Aiden allowed to be here? Damien certainly wasn't allowed to be! And wasn't this the second time Aiden had brought him a gift?

...was there something else going on between them that he didn't know about?

  

* "Though pleas`d to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way." - Matthew Green

 

Inscription on the 'Madpea Compass' by MadPea which you can find on Marketplace!

 

---

 

Shout out to Stephen King and his book 'Carrie' for inspiring the book that Emily and Vincent were discussing during their meet-cute!

 

...

NEXT PART:

www.flickr.com/photos/153660805@N05/52441785152/in/datepo...

 

To start from the beginning or to read another chapter, here's the album link:

www.flickr.com/photos/153660805@N05/albums/72157717075565127

 

***Please note this is a BOY LOVE (BL/yaoi/gay) series. It is a slow burn and rated PG13!***

 

***

Special thank you to Vin Aydin Raven-Mysterious for collaborating with me on this series and co-starring as The Captain!

And a special thank you to our guest star: Khetas Nova as our spunky Emily Dubois!

  

DISCORD SERVER:

That's right! The Captain and The Engineer has a Discord Server! If you wanna join and chat with other crewmates and see what's new and happening before it gets posted to Flickr, click the link!

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***NEW!!!!***

 

The Captain and the Engineer now has a FACEBOOK PAGE! Please come Like, Follow, and join the crew! Thank you so much for all your support!

FACEBOOK PAGE:

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

 

Today however we have headed slightly north of Cavendish Mews to London’s busy shopping precinct along Oxford Street, where ladies flock to window shop, browse department stores and shops and to take tea with their friends. With the Christmas rush of 1921 behind them, the large plate glass windows have been stripped of their tinsel garlands and metallic cardboard stars, and displays are turning to the new fashions and must have possessions of 1922. Oxford Street is still busy with shoppers as Lettice walks up it dressed in a smart navy blue coat of velvet with a lustrous mink fur trim and matching hat, and the road congested with London’s signature red buses, taxis and private traffic. Yet neither the road nor the footpath are as crowded as they were when she found Edith, her maid’s, Christmas gift in Boots the Chemist, and for that she is grateful. Her louis heels click along the concrete footpath as she takes purposeful and measured footsteps towards her destination, the salon of her milliner Madame Gwendolyn which is situated above all the hubbub of shoppers and London office workers on the first floor of a tall and ornate Victorian building.

 

Lettice breathes a sigh of relief as she walks through the wood and plate glass door of the salon, simply marked with the name Gwendolyn in elegant gilt copperplate lettering, leaving behind the chug of belching double deckers, the toot of horns, the rumble of motorcar engines and the droning buzz of female chatter. The faint fragrance of a mixture of expensive scents from Madame Gewndolyn’s other clientele envelops her, dismissing the soot and fumes of the world outside as the quiet sinks in. Lettice always feels calmer in Madame’s salon, tastefully decked out in an Edwardian version of Regency with finely striped papers and upholstery.

 

“Good afternoon Miss Chetwynd,” the female receptionist greets Lettice politely in well enunciated tones, rising from her desk, showing off her smart outfit of a crisp white shirtwaister* with goffered lace detailing and a navy skirt. “Your timing, as ever, is perfect.” She smiles as she walks over and without asking, takes the coat from Lettice’s shirking shoulders.

 

“Thank you Roslyn,” Lettice acknowledges her assistance. As she goes to take Lettice’s white lace parasol, Lettice stops the young receptionist. “No thank you. I need this for my consultation.”

 

If taken aback by Lettice’s unusual refusal to relinquish her parasol, Roslyn doesn’t show it as she simply smiles politely and says, “Madame is expecting you. Please do come through.”

 

The two women walk across the polished floor of the foyer covered in expensive rugs that their feet sink into, until they stop before an inner set of double doors. Roslyn’s polite rap is greeted by a commanding “come” from the other side.

 

“Miss Chetwynd, Madame,” Roslyn announces as she opens the door inwards, leading Lettice into a salon, similarly furbished as the foyer which is filled with an array of beautiful hats elegantly on display.

 

“Ah, Miss Chetwynd,” Madame Gwendolyn says in the same clearly enunciated syllables as her receptionist, with a broad smile on her lips. “How do you do.”

 

“How do you do, Madame.” she replies as Roslyn retreats the way she came, closing the doors silently behind her.

 

Madame Gwendolyn smile broadens as she notices Lettice’s blue velvet toque with the mink trim which she made to match the coat now hanging in the wardrobe behind Roslyn’s desk in the foyer. Then it fades as her eye falls upon Lettice’s parasol in her client’s left hand. “Oh Miss Chetwynd, I’m so sorry Roslyn didn’t,” and she reaches out to take it from her hand.

 

“Oh no! No Madame,” Lettice assures the middle-aged milliner. “Roslyn went to take it from me, but I said no. We will need it for our appointment you see.”

 

“Oh,” Madame Gwendolyn’s expertly plucked and shaped brow arches ever so slightly. “Very well. Won’t you please take a seat, Miss Chetwynd.” She indicates to two Edwardian Arts and Crafts chairs carefully reupholstered in cream Regency stripe fabric to match the wallpaper hanging in the salon.

 

Lettice selects the one to her right and hangs the parasol over its arm before gracefully lowering herself into the seat and placing her snakeskin handbag at her side. As she does so, Roslyn slips back into the room bearing a tray on which sits tea making implements for one, which she carefully places on the small table next to a few recent fashion magazines, easily in Lettice’s range.

 

Once Roslyn obsequiously retreats again, Madame Gwendolyn says, “Now, I believe you may have come about a new hat for The Princess Royal’s wedding*. Is that so, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“You are well informed, Madame.” Lettice replies, glancing down at her knee as she speaks.

 

Madame Gwendolyn smiles again, taking up a leatherbound notebook. “How delightful for you to be in attendance.”

 

“Well, we are well acquainted, Madame,” Lettice answers dismissively.

 

“Of course! Of course.” the older woman replies, her back stiffening as she raises her pale and elegant hands in defence. “Now, might I enquire as to who will be making your frock for the occasion?”

 

“Yes. Mr. Gerald Bruton of Grosvenor Street.”

 

“Ah. Excellent! Excellent.” Madame replies like a toady as she jots Gerald’s name in her book. “And the fabrics, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Oyster satin with pearl buttons and a guipure lace** Peter Pan collar***.”

 

“Excellent! Excellent!” Madame Gwendolyn repeats again, noting the details down. “White gloves, or grey?”

 

“Grey.”

 

The woman closes her notebook firmly, leaving it in her lap. “Well, I’m quite sure we can make something most suitable for the royal occasion to match your ensemble.”

 

The milliner rises and puts her notebook aside. Whilst she looks about her salon for possibilities, Lettice pours herself tea from the delicate hydrangea patterned pot on the table.

 

“Now, I could easily create something similar to this, in a soft grey, Miss Chetwynd.” Madame Gwendolyn returns with a beautiful picture hat of pale pink covered in a carefully crafted whorl of ostrich feathers.

 

“Hhhmmm…” Lettice considers.

 

“Or, this could easily be adapted to match your outfit, Miss Chetwynd,” she indicates to a more cloche shaped hat of white and black dyed straw with black ribboning. “By replacing the ribbon with a grey one. I also have some delightful pearl appliques that would add a beautiful touch of royal elegance to it.”

 

“Perhaps,” Lettice replies noncommittally with her head slightly cocked.

 

As she watches Madame Gwendolyn scurry across the salon and fetch a peach coloured wide brimmed hat with a band of silk flowers about the brim with an aigrette of cream lace, her thoughts drift back to the day the previous June when she and her dear Embassy Club coterie friend Margot were walking down Oxford Street, not too far from where she sits now. They had been discussing the Islington Studios**** moving picture starlet Wanetta Ward, whom Lettice had agreed to take on as a new customer, as well as Margot’s wedding plans. Ascot Week***** was fast approaching and Selfridges had a window display featuring four rather stylish hats, every bit as comparable in quality to those being shown to her by the toadying milliner before her at a fraction of the cost. Margot had laughed at Lettice when she had suggested that perhaps she should have worn a Selfridges hat to Royal Ascot, rather than the creation Madame Gwendolyn made her. Yet her hat from Madame Gwendolyn at twelve guineas was far from a roaring success in the fashion stakes. In fact, she had heard a fashion correspondent from the Tattler whispering a little too loudly that it might even have been a little old fashioned: a touch pre-war.

 

“Miss Chetwynd? Miss Chetwynd?” Madame Gwendolyn’s somewhat urgent calls press into her consciousness, breaking Lettice’s train of thought.

 

Lettice looks up into the face of the milliner with her upswept hairdo a mixture of pre-war Edwardian style mixed with modern Marcelling******. The woman is holding up a cream straw cloche decorated with pink silk flowers and an aigrette of ostrich plumes curled in on themselves.

 

“I think this one is most becoming. Don’t you think so, Miss Chetwynd? It would frame your face and hair so well. And, for you, because it is only the reworking of the decoration,” the older woman adds with a sly smile. “A bargain if I may say so, at only nine guineas.” She smiles in an oily way as she presses the hat closer to Lettice. “What do you think, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

Lettice looks blankly at Madame Gwendolyn for a moment before replying. “What I think, Madame, is I should like to give your suggestions some consideration.”

 

The milliner’s face drops, as do her arms as she lowers the hat until it hangs loosely in front of her knees in her defeated hands. “I… I don’t understand, Miss Chetwynd.” she manages to say in startled disbelief.

 

“Oh,” Lettice replies. “Haven’t I made myself clear, Madame? I’m not entirely convinced about any of the hats you have shown me. I don’t know if any of them will match my costume and parasol. I think they all look a little…”

 

“A little?” the older woman prompts.

 

“A little old fashioned. A little pre-war was how your hat for me for Royal Ascot last year was described. I want to look my very best. After all, this is a royal wedding.” She takes a final sip of her tea and then stands, picking up her purse and parasol. “So, I should like to consider my choices before deciding whether to accept one or not.”

 

As Lettice starts to walk across the salon floor, Madame Gwendolyn stutters, “Per… perhaps Miss Chetwynd… Perhaps you’d care to suggest your own ideas. I’m very open to a client’s ide…”

 

Lettice stops and turns abruptly to the milliner, cutting her sentence off. “Madame,” she says, a definite haughtiness growing in her gait, causing her shoulders to edge back almost imperceptibly and for her neck to arch. “If I had wanted to design my own hat, I would have made it myself, rather than come to you and pay you handsomely for it.”

 

“Oh, of course not Miss Chetwynd. How very careless of me to even suggest…. Such… such a gaffe! Please forgive me.”

 

“Really Madame, there is no need to apologise like some spineless, obsequious servant. I’d simply like time to consider what you’ve shown me, versus say, what Harry Selfridge has to offer.”

 

“Mr. Selfridge?” Madame Gwendolyn ponders, her eyes widening in surprise.

 

“Yes. He has a wonderful array of hats, many Paris models in the latest styles, in his millinery department, perhaps more suited to the more modern woman of today than the,” Lettice glances back at the hats on display in the salon. “The society matron. You really should take a look, Madame. You might see where the future of hats sits.”

 

Lettice pulls open the doors of the salon and walks purposefully out into the foyer, where Roslyn is busily scanning a copy of Elite Styles, cutting out images of hats with a pair of scissors behind her desk. She quickly gets up when she sees Lettice and her employer come out.

 

“Leaving so soon, Miss Chetwynd?” she asks, and without having to wait for an answer, turns to the white painted built in wardrobe behind her, opens it and withdraws Lettice’s coat.

 

As Lettice steps back into Oxford Street and is enveloped by its discordant cacophony of noise and potpourri of smells, she sighs and walks back the way she came with the measured steps of a viscount’s daughter. As she reaches the full length plate glass windows of Selfridge’s department store, she pauses when she sees two young women around her age, both obviously typists, secretaries or some other kind of office workers, scuttle up to the windows. Dressed in smart black coats and matching small brimmed straw hats with Marcelled hair in fashionable bobs, they look the epitome of the new and independent woman. They laugh lightly and point excitedly at things they see displayed in the department store window. Then, they agree and both scurry away and through the revolving doors of Selfridges.

 

“Why should I have my hats made at Madame Gwendolyn’s, just because Mamma does?” she asks no-one in particular, her quiet utterance smothered and swept away into the noisy hubbub around her.

 

She walks to the window, only to discover that it is full of hats, advertised as newly in from Paris.

 

“Oh, why not, then?” Lettice says, straightening her shoulders with conviction.

 

She follows the two office girls and steps through the revolving doors of Selfridges department store.

 

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 in early 1922 when this story is set, picture hats, a hangover from the pre-war years, were still de rigueur in fashionable society. 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. For somewhere as socially important as Princess Mary’s 1922 wedding, a matching hat, parasol, handbag or reticule and gloves to go with a lady’s chosen frock were essential.

 

*Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897 – 1965), was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the sister of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She married Viscount Lascelles on the 28th of February 1922 in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. The bride was only 24 years old, whilst the groom was 39. There is much conjecture that the marriage was an unhappy one, but their children dispute this and say it was a very happy marriage based upon mutual respect. The wedding was filmed by Pathé News and was the first royal wedding to be featured in fashion magazines, including Vogue.

 

**Guipure lace is a delicate fabric made by twisting and braiding the threads to craft incredible designs that wows the eye. Guipure lace fabrics distinguish themselves from other types of lace by connecting the designs using bars or subtle plaits instead of setting them on a net.

 

***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.

 

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

 

*****Royal Ascot Week is the major social calendar event held in June every year at Ascot Racecourse in Berkshire. It was founded in 1711 by Queen Anne and is attended every year by the reigning British monarch and members of the Royal Family. The event is grand and showy, with men in grey morning dress and silk toppers and ladies in their best summer frocks and most elaborate hats.

 

******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.

 

This enclave of luxurious millinary may appear real to you, however it is fashioned entirely of 1:12 miniatures from my collection. Some of the items in this tableau are amongst the very first pieces I ever received as a young child.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The cream straw hat second from the left with pink roses has single stands of ostrich feathers adorning it that have been hand curled. The yellow straw hat on the far right of the photo is decorated with ornamental flowers and organza. The maker for these is unknown, but they are part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The peach coloured hat with the flowers around the brim and the net aigrette second from the right, and the pink feather covered hat on the far left of the picture came from a seller on E-Bay. The black straw hat with the yellow trim and rose reflected in the mirror and the white straw hait with the black trim in the foreground were made by Mrs. Denton of Muffin Lodge in the United Kingdom. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable.

 

The wooden hat blocks on which the hats are displayed also came from American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.

 

The dressing table set, consisting of tray, mirror and two brushes were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, but were hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken, sold through Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in England.

 

Lettice’s snakeskin handbag with its gold clasp and chain comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom. Lettice’s umbrella is a 1:12 artisan piece made of white satin and lace with a tiny cream bow. It has a hooked metal handle.

 

The Elite Styles magazine from 1922 sitting on the table was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States.

 

The blue hydrangea tea set came from a miniatures stockist on E-Bay.

 

The two Edwardian fashion plates hanging on the wall come from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in England.

 

The vintage mirror with its hand carved wooden frame was acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in England.

 

The two chairs, the tea table and the stands upon which two of the hats are displayed are all made by the high-end miniature furniture manufacturer, Bespaq.

 

The Regency sideboard I have had since I was around six or seven, having been given it as either a birthday or Christmas gift.

 

The cream Georgian pattern carpet on the floor comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in England. The Regency stripe wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, with the purpose that it be used in the “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

Thank you to Barbara Carrillo for generously explaining the two altars which she, Tito Carrillo, and Roxanna Carrillo created at the reconstructed Presidio for the Day of the Dead to honor Carrillo Family members who have died. A large one was in honor of previous generations. This smaller one was in honor of young people of the present generation who have passed.

  

Members of the Carrillo Family have been in the Tucson area for over 200 years. (It was then part of Nueva España and under the control of Spain.) Juan Antonio Carrillo was born in 1741 in Valladolid, Mexico; he later enlisted in the Spanish army near Guaymas, Mexico, and, in 1782 was transferred to the Presidio (fort) San Agustín del Tucson with the rank of Alferez Segundo. He brought his wife and three small children with him to live in the Presidio. He died during an Apache raid in 1784 and his family was compensated by the Spanish crown for the loss of his horse.

  

There are many Carrillo descendants still in southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico today. Names of the extended family include Elias, Lara, Valenzuela, Crandall, Van Alstine, Telles, Saenz, McKay, Mills, Cordova, Quihuis, Nevarez, Leon, Linn, Castro, Ward, Villa, Grijalva, Bracamonte, Montiel, Marquez, and Bartlett.

  

The Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico and throughout Latin America, and by Latinos in the U.S., by creating altars and visiting the cemetery to honor deceased loved ones. The altars display photos, candles, flowers (typically marigolds), sugar skulls, and items their loved ones used or liked (including food and drink). The intent is to invite the spirits of the loved ones to visit.

dear friends!! as the new year begins, i offer this wish from the generous fishes: that you swim fearlessly in the ocean of this life, moving fluidly and spontaneously from moment to moment... that you find friendship, well-being, and meaning on your journeys...

 

may all travelers find joy!!

 

love and best wishes,

jeanne

 

scanned, assembled and altered image, december 31, 2006

  

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

 

Today we are in her drawing room, which has taken on a festive air with a smart Christmas tree, expertly decorated by Lettice taking pride of place in the middle of the room. A collection of gaily wrapped Christmas gifts sit beneath its boughs, awaiting either for the arrival of their intended at Lettice’s invitation or to be taken to their intended by her. A garland drapes elegantly over the fireplace, the mantle of which is decorated with brightly coloured cards in the latest Art Deco style.

 

Lettice rises from her black japanned Art Deco tub armchair and goes to walk to the green baize door that leads from the dining room into the service area of her flat. She stops suddenly, remembering what Wanetta Ward said about her maid’s feelings about Wanetta walking unannounced into her kitchen, and thinks. Walking over to the fireplace, she depresses the servants’ bell, which she can hear ring in the kitchen.

 

Edith, Lettice’s maid, walks through the door, steps across the dining room and appears before her mistress. “Yes Miss?” she asks, making a bob curtsey.

 

“Edith, I’d like to have a word with you.” Lettice replies. Then, without further ado, she bends down and starts fossicking through the gifts beneath the Christmas tree.

 

“With me, Miss?” Edith suddenly looks perplexed down at her mistress’s derrière, clad in a deep blue serge skirt, as she moves parcels wrapped in brightly coloured festive metallic paper about.

 

“Yes,” Lettice glances up at her maid. “Oh, do sit down, won’t you Edith? I can’t have you standing about, cluttering up the place.”

 

The maid looks at what she calls the guest’s chair rather nervously. She feels awkward sitting down in her mistress’ presence on her white upholstered tub armchair, dressed in her black moiré uniform and lace frilled apron and cuffs. However, she knows better than to argue with her somewhat eccentric employer. “Yes Miss.” she sighs resignedly. She feels a blush warming her skin as it rises from her collar bones, up her neck and throat and to her cheeks as she timidly perches.

 

The maid watches her mistress continue her search.

 

“Ah!” Lettice’s triumphant cry is somewhat muffled as she calls from beneath the bauble decorated boughs surrounded by gaily wrapped gifts. “There it is!”

 

“What is, Miss?” Edith asks squinting to see what Lettice has. Feeling redundant perched on the edge of the armchair, she adds, “Can I be of any assistance, Miss?”

 

“No. No, Edith.” Lettice resumes her seat, placing a beautifully pink foil paper wrapped gift with a card tied expertly to it with silver satin ribbons on her lap.

 

“Then, pardon me for asking, Miss, but I do have a few things still to do before you and I go home for Christmas.” She looks hopefully at Lettice. “You said you wanted a word?”

 

“I actually have two words for you, Edith!” Lettice replies with a beaming smile, as she deposits the gift on the table and settles herself back in her tub armchair. “Merry Christmas!”

 

“For me, Miss?” Edith says in disbelief, her eyes widening with shock at the beautifully wrapped parcel between them.

 

“Yes, Edith,” Lettice replies with a sweeping gesture of her elegant manicured hand.

 

“Oh Miss!” Edith gasps. “I… I don’t know what to say?”

 

“That’s what you said, last year, however you still managed a polite thank you.” Lettice replies with a benevolent smile, smoothing down her dress.

 

“Oh yes!” Edith blushes. “Where are my manners?” She rises, drops a bob curtsey and then sinks back down onto the seat again, sitting almost imperceptibly more comfortably upon it. “Thank you, Miss.” Edith replies humbly as she withdraws the card from the satin bow of her gift.

 

Inside the envelope is nestled a rather sentimental and old fashioned card of Father Christmas, quite unlike anything Lettice has on her own mantlepiece, but a card greatly to Edith’s taste.

 

“This is your second year of working for me, Edith,” Lettice begins as Edith opens the card and reads it. “And once again you’ve been a real brick! I couldn’t have held such a wonderful soirée for Dickie and Margot without your help, and I know you hated talking to the Duchess of Whitby on the telephone.”

 

“Oh I wouldn’t say hate, Miss.” the maid defends.

 

“Edith,” Lettice looks her directly in the eye and says matter-of-factly. “If I hated talking to her on the telephone, I can only imagine what fear she must have struck into you with her icy tones, that nasty old trout!”

 

Edith bows her head but doesn’t reply, instead toying with the satin ribbon, gently working its soft presence through her careworn fingers.

 

“Well don’t just play with your gift, Edith, open it!” Lettice’s palpable excitement charges the air.

 

“Oh, it’s so beautiful. It’s almost too beautiful to unwrap, Miss.”

 

“Nonsense! Now don’t be a spoil sport! I thought long and hard about this gift for you, and I think it is perfect. However,” she adds tempering her tone. “I just want to be sure.”

 

Edith carefully unwraps the bow from the present and places the discarded ribbon on the green brocade stool next to her. The crisp sound of the foil wrapping tearing fills the air about the two women. Beneath the pretty metallic pink Edith finds a box prettily decorated with a still life of roses in a vase.

 

“Oh Miss!” Edith gasps.

 

“Well don’t stop there!” Lettice laughs. “Open it up. I was going to have them put it into a nice Art Deco patterned box, but I thought this was perhaps a little more you.”

 

“Oh, it is! The box on its own is enough of a present, Miss.” She runs her hands lovingly over the brightly painted surface

 

“Well, you may think that Edith, but I don’t. Keep going!”

 

Edith removes the box lid and finds it filled with a froth of bright blue tissue paper. Peeling back the layers she discovers the eau-de-nil Bakelite* mirror first, and then the hairbrush, followed by the shoehorn, the lidded box and then the frame.

 

“Oh Miss, I… I really don’t know what to say.” the maid says, holding the frame between her hands, looking down at its smart, slightly curved shape.

 

“Do you like them?” Lettice asks hopefully, her fingers steepled before her in anticipation.

 

“Like them?” Edith gasps. “I think they are most beautiful and stylish things I’ve ever laid eyes on!” Edith stands again. “Thank you, Miss.” She drops another quick bob curtsey.

 

“Oh I’m so pleased.” Lettice claps her hands in delight. “When I saw your picture of Bert on Armistice Day, I knew you needed a better home for him than the inner pocket of your handbag.”

 

“I don’t know what my Mum will say,” Edith begins.

 

“Well, she doesn’t need to know, does she?” Lettice interrupts. “It’s the only photo you have of him, so you best take good care of it and put it safely in the frame.” She looks at her delighted maid holding the frame for a moment. “And maybe one day there might be a new photograph of someone else to go in there, but for now, put Bert in there.”

 

“That’s very generous of you, Miss.”

 

“Not at all Edith,” Lettice flaps the compliment away with a languid hand. “You deserve it for being a brick of a maid. I’m only pleased that you like it!”

 

“Oh I do, Miss! I like it ever so much!”

 

“And you can always take the brush, mirror, and I think there’s still a comb in the box,” Lettice cranes her neck and peers into the crumpled blue tissue spilling from the box where she can see the eau-de-nil Bakelite tray peeking out. “When you go home to stay for Christmas. I’m sure your mother would appreciate seeing some of the gift I’ve given you. Just don’t mention the frame.” She smiles in a conspiring way. “That can be our little secret.” She taps the side of her nose with her finger.

 

“Yes Miss.”

 

“And is your brother going to be home for Christmas this year too?”

 

“Yes he is Miss!” Edith gushes. “His ship docks in Southampton just before Christmas. Mum got a postcard from Melbourne just the other week. He’s been a saloon steward on a ship that sailed all the way to Australia! Can you believe it, Miss?”

 

Lettice smiles indulgently at her wide eyed maid as she replies, “Goodness, that is a very long journey isn’t it? Well, it sounds like you will have a lovely Christmas with everyone reunited.”

 

“Merry Christmas, Miss.”

 

“Merry Christmas, Edith.”

 

Edith settles ever so slightly further back into the cushions of the tub chair and admires her beautiful new dressing table set.

 

*Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

This upper-class Mayfair drawing room may look very real to you, but it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The eau-de-nil dressing table set, which has been made with incredible detail to make it as realistic as possible is a Chrysnbon Miniature set. The mirror even contains a real piece of reflective mirror. Judy Berman founded Chrysnbon Miniatures in the 1970’s. She created affordable miniature furniture kits patterned off of her own full-size antiques collection. She then added a complete line of accessories to compliment the furniture. The style of furniture and accessories reflect the turn-of-the-century furnishings of a typical early American home. At the time, collectible miniatures were expensive because they were mostly individually crafted.

 

British artisan Ken Blythe was famous in miniature collectors’ circles mostly for the miniature books that he made: all being authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. However, he did not make books exclusively. He also made other small pieces like the brightly decorated box, which is actually a memory box and came filled with miniature cards, keepsakes and even legible letters in envelopes! To create something so authentic to a life sized original in such detail and so clearly, really does make these 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 and through his estate courtesy of the generosity of 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 Christmas card on the table is just one of twelve handmade traditional style Christmas cards that arrived in their own Christmas box from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in Essex.

 

The Christmas wrapping is actually foil from a small chocolate egg I ate during Easter 2021, but I think it does the job of pretending to be Christmas paper.

 

The elegantly decorated Christmas tree is a hand-made 1:12 size artisan miniature made by an artist in America. The presents beneath it come from various miniature specialist stockists in England.

 

The 1:12 miniature garland over the Art Deco fireplace was hand-made by Karen Lady Bug Miniatures in England and the 1;12 Art Deco card selection on the mantle came from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature store in England.

 

The Elite Styles magazine from 1921 sitting on the lower tray of the black japanned coffee table was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chairs are of black japanned wood and have removable cushions, just like their life sized examples. To the left of the fireplace is a Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair of black japanned wood which has been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the legs and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven. To the right of the fireplace is a Chippendale cabinet which has also been decorated with chinoiserie designs. It also features very ornate metalwork hinges and locks.

 

On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame.

 

The fireplace is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace which is flanked by brass accessories including an ash brush with real bristles.

 

On the left hand side of the mantle, behind the cards, you can just glimpse the turquoise coloured top of an Art Deco metal clock hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken.

 

In the middle of the mantle is a miniature artisan hand painted Art Deco statue on a “marble” plinth. Made by Warwick Miniatures in England, it is a 1:12 copy of the “Theban Dancer” sculpture created by Claire-Jeanne-Roberte Colinet in 1925.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug, and the geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“We do, Edith.” he answers simply.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Alright Mrs. McTavish.” Edith acquiesces quietly.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Song birds pause momentarily to scrunch on seeds left by another park patron.

Beautiful Artist at Bagan

 

Be the first to kick start your generous support and fund my production with more amazing images!

 

Currently, I'm running a crowd funding activity to initiate my personal 2016 Flickr's Project. Here, I sincerely request each and every kind hearted souls to pay some effort and attention.

 

No limitation, Any Amount and your encouraging comments are welcome.

 

Crowd funding contribution can be simply direct to my PayPal account if you really appreciate and wish my forthcoming photography project to come alive.

Please PayPal your wish amount to : men4r@yahoo.com

 

Email me or public comments below your contribution amount for good records with your comments and at final day, at random, I shall sent out my well taken care canon 6D with full box n accessory during random draw to one thankful contributor as my token of appreciation.

 

Now, I cordially invite and look forward with eagerness a strong pool of unity zealous participants in this fundermental ideology yet sustainable crowd fund raising task.

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

Honestly, with aspiration and hope, I appeal to urge on this media for a strong humanity mandate through good faith of sharing and giving generously on this particular crowd funding excercise to achieve my desire n is not just purely a dread dream , is also flickers first starter own crowds funding strength turning impossible into reality through this pratical raising method that I confidently trust it will turn fruitful from all your small effort participation, every single persistency will result consolidating piling up every little tiny bricks into an ultimate huge strong living castle.

In reality, I have trust and never look down on every single peny efforts that been contributed as helpful means, turning unrealistic dream alive is the goal in crowd funding excercise, No reason any single amount is regard to be too small when the strength of all individual wish gather to fulfill my little desire to make exist and keep alive. .

I sincerely look forward each and every participants who think alike crowds funding methodlogy works here no matter who come forwards with regardless any capital amount input be big or small , please help gather and pool raise my objective target amount as close to USD$10K or either acquisition from donation item list below:

 

1- ideally a high mega pixel Canon 5DS ( can be either new or use ok)

2- Canon 70-200mm F2.8 L IS lens ( can be either new or use ok)

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

.

My intended schedule may estimate about 1 month round trip self drive traveling down scenic Southern Island of New Zealand for completing the most captivating landscape photography and wander into the big five, the wilderness of untamed Africa nature for my project 2016 before my physical body stamina eventually drain off.

 

During the course, I also welcome sponsor's to provide daily lodging/accommodation, car rental/transportation, Fox Glacier helicopter ride and other logistic funding expenses, provide photographic camera equipments or related accessories .

Kindly forward all sponsors request terms of condition n collaboration details for discussion soon.

 

Great Ocean Drive- the 12 Apostle's

 

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Due to copyright issue, I cannot afford to offer any free image request. Pls kindly consult my sole permission to purchase n use any of my images.You can email me at : men4r@yahoo.com.

 

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Comments are appreciated, but please no more invitations on this one--I did not take the photo. My dear friend Mert is the artist on this beautiful piece.

  

FrozenBlizzard Thank you very much my friend!!

 

This beautiful picture belongs to my good and dear friend Mert, has put me as a symbol of our friendship that is strengthened each day as we share our passion for photography and the warmth of friendship in Flickr.

 

I have a tears in my eyes to see the generosity of my young friend who treats me with respect and consideration of a child.

 

A hug my esteemed colleague from Flickr. Our friendship will last forever.

 

~~♥~~

Divided reverse. Letter generously translated by xiphophilos, penned on 1 December 1917 and addressed to a Herr Edmund Happ, master shoemaker, in Markt Wald near Türkheim (Bavaria). Einheitsstempel: Bayer. Res. Pi. Komp. [Nr. 19?] Deutsche Feldpost 752. Postage cancelled the same day.

 

A2170 was on a bombing mission to Somain in Northern France on 23rd November 1917 when it was brought down by heavy AA fire near Douai. The official report states that the pilot, 2Lt R. Main had his foot blown off but landed the aircraft relatively intact before it overturned.

 

The unique white crescent insignia was allotted on 26th of August 1917. The "L" represents "B" flight.

Loved the repetition of postures and stillness between the Buddha and the boy. Dusk and candlelight.

 

**Up for auction, a 16x20 signed print of this image for Katrina Relief Auction. Please be generous, and obtain a print you love in the process!

The Generous Briton, Brant Broughton, Lincolnshire. I wonder if they offer free refillable beer?

 

24th January 2019

Instagram

Divided reverse. Letter generously translated by Nettenscheider, written in Bautzen on 3.9.1915 and addressed to a Fräulein Martha Frenzel in Hörnitz. Postage cancelled a day later in Bautzen.

 

Saxon Husaren resplendent in Feldgrau circa September 1915.

 

The boots of the Hussars were called „Tschismen“ and like the rest of their wartime uniform, they were based on the colourful peacetime uniform. Compared to regular cavalry boots, „Tschismen“ were much more fancy and adorned with white edging along the top, which formed a rosette on the front.

  

Parnassusweg 11/02/2021 13h17

I love the new artwork on the Parnassusweg.

 

Love or Generosity (2020)

Nicole Eisenman

 

The construction of the new court at Parnassusweg 280 is already well advanced, and the hearings will take place there from 1 March 2021. The American artist Nicole Eisenman created the artwork "Love or Generosity" for the new court. This artwork will be on the square at the entrance of the new court from Friday 27 November. This public square, which will play a central role in the area due to future plans for the Zuidas, is accompanied by a work of art that does justice to the building, the judiciary itself and the public.

 

The artwork "Love or Generosity" depicts a gatekeeper of the court: not a guard, but a gentle person who offers relaxation and comfort. The statue is more than five meters high, making it a good match for the new ten-storey courthouse. Despite the height of the statue, the friendly attitude of the "gatekeeper" ensures that the statue does not deter, but rather attracts and makes you curious.

 

The maker of the sculpture, Nicole Eisenman, is best known to the general (art) public for her figurative paintings in which she applies different styles, ranging from Renaissance painting to modern art. Since 2012, Eisenman has also manifested himself as a sculptor, including with presentations at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. In her work, current themes from contemporary society come to the fore, which she approaches with humor and love.

Part of large stained glass window at Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California

Generously loaned for display at the Washington Auto Show.

This was the first site I visited with the wonderfully generous Balta and I was absolutely blown away. There it was, a complex with multiple structures, its buildings with the ornate facades still mostly intact, just sitting in the jungle with not a soul around but us. I felt incredibly lucky to be able to visit and see such an an amazing site. It was a very special day.

 

Andrews ("Xkichmook Revisited") believes Xkichmook was built about 800AD. H.E.D Pollock ("The Puuc") states that "with the exception of Edifice 1, the structures at Xkichmook do not seem to be of major importance, and I should guess the site to be small to medium size" but it was certainly spectacular to me.

 

If you'd like, take a look at my infrared images and my images from Yucatan.

"Another Generosity" installation by Eero Lundén and Juulia Kauste, at the Nordic Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, by Sverre Fehn (1962).

 

Biennale Architettura 2018 / Venezia, Italy.

 

© Roberto Conte (2018)

 

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A very generous friend decided to gift their beloved friend with a custom wooden unicorn. And I had the opportunity to be in the middle of it all! This was a big undertaking, but definitely a worthwhile project! I also love surprises, so it was fun all around.

 

I learned so many things along the way while making this unicorn. It's amazing how much you don't understand something until you try to make it in 3D, lol. When it was complete, Stella almost couldn't bear to be separated from it, she seemed to have taken quite a liking to this horse :D. I think the two quite suit eachother, if I ever have the chance, I'd like to make another animal just for her; I was thinking of a little cat ;)

 

The surprise unicorn is now with its new owner!

  

Check my Etsy if you're interested in a doll of your own ♥

Photographer : Marshad AlMarshad

Follow Me: @MrshdM

www.mrshd.net

 

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Superb large country pub with generously sized lounge bar and eatery. The blackboard menu is available Wednesday to Saturday with good value meals. Sunday lunch is a carvery. Impressive games room with full size snooker table. One ale served, usually Landlord or John Smiths Cask. Located in the centre of a small remote village but with fields and woods on two sides. Function room caters for large functions e.g. Weddings. Can be difficult to find, look for signs in village. Thursday night quiz from 8.30pm. Quiet background music does not interfere with conversation. Large beer garden for finer weather.

Shot w/ my new Minolta SRT101 loaded w/ Arista 400 EDU

 

It has been a long time since I have been inspired to create, and I have been shooting for a few months now. I have been shooting pics I really really like and some I love! My boss, who has also become my friend, was so generous and gave me her grandfather's old camera. I nerded out with my photo friend about the camera and then did a ton of research.

 

So, this is my test roll with pretty cheap film. I am super happy with the photos. I got to shoot with my friend Rachel when she was in town. We met for coffee and then did a 30-minute photowalk. Then, I met up with my friend Michelle whose gorgeous portrait I shot.

 

I shot this roll in the course of a few days, and I experimented like I used to. The dreary day inspired me to fog up the lens to give a few of the pics a Noir vibe. Honestly, it feels sooo good to be shooting again!