Generosity in bestowing gifts upon others.

My very good friend, Bob, died last night in St Pauls Hospital.

 

Bob lived with a lot of pain and disability yet he was upbeat and funny. He had 1001 corny jokes and a memory fit to remember them. He was generous, caring and a super good cook.

 

Bob will be terribly missed by his wife, Karen, and the rest of his close family. There are so many more people who loved him including, I'm sure, his medical team.

 

Rest well dear friend.

Shwedagon at Yangon- Myanmar

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

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. .

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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.

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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 .

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Great Ocean Drive- the 12 Apostle's

 

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Shwedagon - Yangon

 

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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PictionID:45820464 - Catalog:14_020026 - Title:Atlas Centaur 4 Details: Aerial View of AC 4 Tanking Test; Pad 36A Date: 10/27/1964 - Filename:14_020026.tif - - - - Image from the Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection. The processing, cataloging and digitization of these images has been made possible by a generous National Historical Publications and Records grant from the National Archives and Records Administration---Please Tag these images so that the information can be permanently stored with the digital file.---Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum

Letter generously translated by Nettenscheider; addressed to a Herr Pet. Niessen in Mönchengladbach, the author sends his regards. Photogr. Gerhard Mertens, Aachen. Postage cancelled in Aachen on 7.8.1914.

 

Landwehrmänner in Aachen shortly after the outbreak of war. The men are wearing "161" on their shoulder straps, however their ages tell us they're not the 20 year olds from 10. Rheinisches Inf-Rgt Nr. 161.

 

At the outset of the First World War, every man in Germany between 17 and 45 years of age is required to perform his mandatory military service. During these 28 years, the Germans can be assigned to different categories. Firstly there is the active service of two or three years for each 20-year-old man, which is then followed by a "reserve" for five or six years. The men are then assigned to the Landwehr, where they remain until the age of 39, with less regular exercises. Finally, the last category, the Landsturm, includes all men between 17 and 45 years of age who do not enter into any of the above categories.

On backpacking trip to climb Mt. Langley in the Eastern Sierra's, this guy came upon us at about 13,000 feet. First time in my 15 years of backpacking I had ever seen these in the wild. Wow! He was not afraid of us, eventually he got within about 50 feet us. Unfortunately those closer shots did not come out, as the sun was behind him, totally underexposing the shot(s). A magnificant animal.

making friends

Roma, Italy.

Macro photo of tooth wheel mechanism with imprinted RECEIVE, GIVE concept words

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

 

Today Lettice’s oldest childhood chum, Gerald Bruton is visiting. Although also a member of the aristocracy Gerald’s fate is very different to Lettice’s. He has been forced to gain some independence from his rather impecunious family in order to make a living. Luckily his artistic abilities have led him to designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street, a business which, after promotion from Lettice and several commissions from high profile and influential society ladies, is finally beginning to turn a profit. The two are taking tea from Lettice’s beautiful and avant-garde Royal Doulton Falling Leaves tea set whilst they wait for Edith, Lettice’s maid, to prepare a light cold luncheon for them. Across the low black japanned coffee table between them is spread a long papyrus* scroll featuring beautiful and wonderfully colourful Egyptian hieroglyphic writing and images. Arriving in a wooden box also marked with hieroglyphs, it is one of two Lettice has in her possession.

 

“There really are remarkable, Lettice darling!” Gerald enthuses as he runs his hands with reverence across the fine fibrous paper. “And in such condition for something so ancient.”

 

Lettice looks across the table at her friend and laughs loudly.

 

“What’s so funny?” Gerald asks in innocent surprise, glancing up from the scroll at Lettice.

 

“Oh Gerald, you silly thing!” Lettice giggles, raising a dainty hand with prettily manicured nails to her smiling lips. “This isn’t a real Egyptian papyrus scroll! I know some of my clients can afford to have real papyri on their walls, but this is a very well executed imitation!”

 

“An imitation?” Gerald’s eyes grow wide. When Lettice nods, he goes on, “Well, it certainly is an excellent copy, I’d never have known.”

 

“It came from Lancelot de Vries antiques and curios shop in the Portobello Road**.” Lettice elucidates.

 

“Ahh,” Gerald murmurs, settling back in the comfortable white upholstered rounded back of Lettice’s tub armchair. “That explains it then. No wonder it’s so good. Old Lottie,” He casually uses a female nickname*** instead of the antique dealer’s real name, indicating that he knows Mr. de Vries well. “Is so incredibly talented that he could have made a successful career out of forging old masters, if he hadn’t decided to tow the straight and narrow and become an antiques and objet d'art dealer.”

 

“Gerald!” Lettice gasps.

 

“It’s true! Just look at the quality in this piece.” He waves his hand expansively towards the unfurled scroll. “I could have sworn it was the genuine article.”

 

“Well, I don’t know about you, Gerald darling, but I don’t fancy spending the money on a real papyrus scroll from ancient Egypt just to hang on a wall until this Tutmaina**** craze ends.”

 

“So, this isn’t for you then, Lettice darling?”

 

“No. I’m taking this on approval from Mr. de Vries, who just received a shipment of them. He’s selling them in his shop. They race out the door quicker than you can say knife, apparently. I’m going to show these to Mrs. Hatchett and see whether she would like an Egyptian themed reception room.”

 

“Knowing Dolly Hatchett as well as I do, and knowing just how much she admires you and your taste,” Gerald opines. “I think something more oriental,” He waves his hands around Lettice’s drawing room, indicating to her Chinoiserie furniture, her Japanese screen and her Chinese ceramics. “Will appeal to her more.”

 

“But she gave be carte blanche to decorate her suite of rooms as I see fit, Gerald.”

 

“Then why are you asking her for her opinion?” Gerald looks at his best friend with a knowing look. He doesn’t wait for a reply from her. “I’ll tell you why. Because you know that even though she made you that promise, she will want to be consulted. This is a bigger project than ‘The Gables,” He refers to the Hatchetts’ Sussex house in Rotherfield and Mark Cross which Lettice partially redecorated in 1922. “This is all about promoting Charles Hatchett’s power and influence as an MP. Dolly won’t want to set a foot wrong. She knows she can’t afford to as much for her own sake as for Charles’. She has been a social pariah, relegated as the pretty flibbertigibbet Gaiety Girl***** from the chorus line of ‘Chu-Chin-Chow’****** who dared to look beyond her class and marry a successful banker with political aspirations. Now she is a successful MP’s wife, so she needs to show that she has impeccable taste, even if the taste really isn’t her own.”

 

Lettice sighs heavily. “You’re right Gerald darling. It’s true”

 

“Of course I’m right.” Gerald picks up his cup of tea and takes a sip from it. “However, I also know that as such an arbiter of what is fashionable, if you told Dolly Hatchett that you wanted to paint her reception room violent purple with green polka dots because it was the height of fashion, she’d let you, even if she hated it.”

 

“You know I would never do that to anyone, Gerald darling.” Lettice takes up her own cup of tea from the edge of the table which houses her telephone and a vase of fresh red roses from her fiancée, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.

 

“I know.” he assures her.

 

The movement near to them, brings Gerald’s attention to the roses. Nodding at them, he asks, “Are those from your intended?”

 

Lettice looks at the fat blooms with their rich red velvety petals which are dispersed with fluffy white pompoms of Gypsophila****** and considers them, as if seeing them for the first time. “Yes.” she replies rather flatly.

 

Old enough to be her father, Lettice is engaged to be married to wealthy Sir John Nettleford-Huges. His engagement to Lettice came as something of a surprise to London society as he was always considered to be a confirmed old bachelor, and according to whispered upper-class gossip intended to remain so, so that he might continue to enjoy his dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. After an abrupt ending to her understanding with Selwyn Spencely, son and heir to the title Duke of Walmsford, Lettice in a moment of both weakness and resolve, agreed to the proposal of marriage proffered to her by Sir John. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them.

 

“What of them?” Lettice goes on.

 

“Oh nothing.” Gerald remarks dismissively with an air of laissez-faire********. “I was just wondering.”

 

“I’ve known you all my life, Gerrald darling.” Lettice shakes her head and looks seriously at her best friend. “You were doing more than wondering. What is it? Come on. Spit it out!”

 

“Well, it’s just that when I was visiting Cyril at Hattie’s recently, Hattie showed me a book that had belonged to her mother. It’s called Floral Symbolica*********. She thought I might like to read it because it discusses the meaning of flowers, so that when I gave Cyril a bouquet of blooms, it would express my love for him.”

 

“And?” Lettice smiles.

 

“Well, dark red roses like those, are supposed to represent a more sophisticated and serious affection than a bright red rose, expressing eternal love, loyalty, and a heartfelt devotion.”

 

“And?”

 

“Oh look!” Gerald sighs sadly. “There’s no nice way for me to tell you this, but Cyril is friends with Paula Young, who I know is your intended’s latest conquest.”

 

Lettice’s heart begins to race at the mention of the young and pretty West End actress’ name. With a slight tremor, she lowers her teacup back into its saucer. “I know that too, Gerald darling. You know I do. John has been very forthright and honest about that facet of his life, and I know he won’t stop.”

 

“Well, Cyril knows about it too, and of course he knows through me that you and Sir John are engaged to be married.”

 

Lettice gulps as a shudder runs through her and she feels the blood drain from her face. “But how does he know about Miss Young and John?”

 

“Through Miss Young herself, I assume. From what Cyril’s mentioned about her, she is something of a parvenu, and she is rather indiscreet about her discretions. He told me as much the other night when I stayed with him at Hattie’s.”

 

“Oh no!” Lettice gasps, raising her hands to her cheeks which suddenly feel hot to the touch as they fill with embarrassed colour. “But Cyril is coming to Sylvia’s weekend house party now, and so are John and I! Oh Gerald!” Tears well in her eyes and threaten to spill over.

 

Gerald immediately thrusts his cup noisily back into its saucer and leaps up with sudden urgency. He scuttles around the low coffee table and wraps his arms around Lettice, pulling her to his chest as the tears start to spill from her sparkling blue eyes.

 

“Don’t worry, dear Lettice.” Gerald assures her. “I’ve spoken to him. I’ve told Cyril in no uncertain terms that he can’t mention that he knows anything about Sir John’s and Miss Young’s liaison to anyone, especially at the party, and that he is to keep mum**********.”

 

“Oh Gerald!” Lettice sobs. “John promised me that he would never do anything to shame me in public as far as his…” She intakes a large gulp of air. “His dalliances.”

 

“Well,” Gerald says in defence of Sir John, gently chuckling sadly as he strokes Lettice’s back comfortingly through her French blue cardigan***********. “I suppose he doesn’t imagine that you would ever know a poor West End musician who just happens to be a friend of sorts with his latest flame.”

 

Lettice sniffs and pulls a clean and freshly laundered lace trimmed handkerchief from the left-hand sleeve of her cardigan and dabs at her eyes and nose, as Gerald crouches down in front of her, so that he can look her squarely in the face.

 

“He won’t, will he?” She sniffs again.

 

“Cyril?” Gerald asks. When Lettice nods shallowly he goes on, “No of course he won’t. I know that he may not be the most discreet of people, but I really have made it perfectly clear to him how important it is that he doesn’t let on about any of it. For all his faults, he likes you very much, Lettice, and he’d never want to embarrass or hurt you.”

 

“Well, if you’re sure.” Lettice gulps again.

 

“Of course I am, Lettuce Leaf!” he replies, using his childhood nickname for her, which he knows she hates, in order to try and break her moment of worry by introducing a note of levity.

 

“Don’t call me that Gerald! You know how I hate it!” she replies.

 

“That’s better.” Gerald smiles. “Now dry those eyes. Luncheon will be ready soon, and you don’t want to sit at the table all red and puffy eyed, do you?”

 

Just at that moment, Lettice’s Bakelite************ and chrome telephone starts to ring and jangle on the small side table next to her.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Both Lettice and Gerald glance with startled eyes at it in alarm, as though it has overheard their conversation and has an opinion of its own to express.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Lettice sniffs and takes a deep intake of breath. “I suppose it would be rather awful of me to expect Edith to answer the telephone when I’m right alongside it, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Beastly, Lettice darling!” Gerald replies.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“You know how she feels about that ‘infernal contraption’,” Gerald goes on quoting Lettice’s maid’s name for the telephone. “If you must irritate her, please do so after she’s served us luncheon. I don’t know about you, but I can barely boil a kettle, never mind cook a meal.”

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Gerald pauses and considers something. “Then again, maybe you should make her answer it. She might get so upset by having to do so, that she’ll hand in her notice.”

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Lettice sniffs again and dabs her eyes for good measure as she goes to lift the receiver.

 

“And, if she does give notice,” Gerald quickly adds as Lettice grasps the receiver. “I’ll hire Edith as a seamstress for my atelier. Her talents as a needlewoman are wasted here.”

 

“Not a chance!” Lettice replies defiantly. “She’s coming with me, not going with you.”

 

BBBBRRR…

 

Lettice picks up the handset out of its gleaming chrome cradle mid ring, causing the shrill jingle of the telephone to stop and quickly peter out.

 

“Mayfair 432,” Lettice announces in clearly enunciated syllables.

 

As Gerald returns to his tub chair, he can hear a deep male voice resonate from somewhere down the line, recognising them as Sir John’s tones, not that he can make out the words. The shock of knowing the man he and Lettice were just talking about is on the other end of the telephone call makes him freeze for a moment as a shiver runs up his spine.

 

“John darling!” Lettice exclaims almost a little too jovially. “How are you?” She listens to the response. “Oh, that’s good. Are we still having dinner at Le Bienvenue************* tonight?” She listens again. “Oh hoorah. Jolly good.” Sir John’s voice speaks again at the other end of the line, his tone serious. At length he pauses. “Oh no! Oh, poor Clemance. I must pay a call upon her then and do some sick visiting.” Sir John speaks up urgently. “Oh very well John. I won’t.” He speaks again. “No of course, John darling. You’re quite right. I don’t want to get sick before Sylvia’s party. I’ll telephone the Regent Street Flower Box directly and arrange for Monsieur Blanchet to send her a lovely bunch of flowers to brighten her day. You know Gerald and I were just talking about the meaning of flowers, John darling.” Sir John speaks again. “Yes. Yes, he’s here. We’re about to have luncheon, so I can’t speak for too long.” Lettice listens again. “Yes… yes… what about the party?” Sir John’s voice drones on, too indistinctly for Gerald to hear anything, and he feigns that he is not paying attention by looking down at his well manicured nails and rubbing them as if trying to buff them with the pads of his fingers on the opposite hand. “Oh.” Lettice sighs and her shoulders slump. “You want to ask her then do you?” Sir John speaks again. “Oh you did, John dear?” He mumbles something else. “She did? That was very kind of Sylvia to consider me like that.” There is more indistinct chatter at the other end of the telephone line. “Well,” Lettice tries to muffle a resigned sigh. “Well, if you feel you must, then I suppose you must.” Sir John’s voice seems to perk a little and he sounds less dour. “No. No, I don’t mind. Of course I don’t, especially if it will make you happy, dear John.” Gerald can see a light dim in her eyes. “Very well. Alright…” she falters for a moment and gulps. “I’ll see you at eight then.” she adds a little too brightly. “Yes, goodbye then.”

 

Lettice hangs the handset back on the cradle, the action causing the telephone to utter a single echoing ting as she does. She stares ahead of her, but her look is blank, suggesting that she sees nothing.

 

“What was that all about?” Gerald asks in concern as he looks at Lettice’s suddenly wan face.

 

“It was just John.” Lettice replies flatly.

 

“Yes, I could gather that, Lettice darling. What did he say?”

 

“Clemance is sick in bed with a nasty head cold. The doctor has told her to stay abed and keep warm to avoid it going to her lungs, so she won’t be coming to ‘The Nest’ now.”

 

“Oh, that is a pity. I was so looking forward to meeting Sir John’s sister. You speak of Mrs. Pontefract so highly.”

 

“So now, since Clemance isn’t coming,” Lettice continues, speaking as though she hasn’t heard Gerald talk. “He’s decided to invite Paula Young to come and spend the weekend with us.”

 

“What?” Gerald sits bolt upright in his seat.

 

“Yes. He asked Sylvia if she would mind, since she knows about his affair with Miss Young, and he feels that the rarified artistic company in attendance will be quite fine with his little arrangement of having both his fiancée and his mistress in the same house at the same time.”

 

“And what did Sylvia say to that?”

 

“Well, Sylvia is a bit of a free spirit when it comes to the sanctity of marriage, and matters of love and lust. She said she didn’t mind if he did ask Miss Young to join him, but only under the proviso that John asked me and got my permission first.”

 

“Which you evidently granted.” Gerald replies in breathless disbelief.

 

“I did.” Lettice replies flatly.

 

“You could have said no, Lettice. You should have said no!”

 

“Oh, how could I, Gerald darling?”

 

“Very simply.” he replies, folding his arms akimbo over his muted toned Fair Isle jumper************** and looking sternly at his best friend. “No darling, I’m sorry but you can’t invite that trollop*************** you share your bed with most nights to Miss Fordyce’s party.”

 

“I can’t Gerald darling.” Lettice defends.

 

“Well, I think you can. Just telephone him back right now. Where is he? Belgravia? His club?”

 

“He’s at home in Belgravia.”

 

“Well then, telephone him immediately and just tell him you’ve had a change of heart, and that no, Miss Young can’t come to the party at ‘The Nest’.”

 

“It’s not that simple, Gerald darling.” Lettice tries to explain, attempting to speak whilst using all her power to prevent herself from crying again. “This engagement is complex. John doesn’t want jealousy in his relationships. He certainly doesn’t want a jealous wife. He told me from the start that he has no intention of desisting from his dalliances, and that if I said yes to his proposal, I must accept him on those terms. He’ll be furious if I tell him no, now. It will be like me flying in the face of everything I agreed to when I said yes to him.”

 

“You don’t actually have to go through with it, you know, Lettice darling?”

 

“What? Going to stay with Sylvia at ‘The Nest’? I can’t Gerald darling! She’s throwing this party to show off her new feature wall. I’m her guest of honour. I can’t possibly withdraw so late in the piece, and with no real reason to decline. It would be rude, and undignified.”

 

“No, Lettice!” Gerald replies dourly. “I mean, you don’t have to go through with the marriage to Sir John. You are perfectly entitled to break it off, if you feel so inclined.”

 

“And risk the fury of Mater?” Lettice looks at Gerald in alarm and shakes her head vehemently. “No thank you! I think I’d rather put up with a hundred Miss Youngs than Mater in a black mood over my lack of securing an eligible husband! All the time she is investing in wedding plans. If it is all for naught, she will be fit to be tied! She sent me a clipping from the Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser**************** a few weeks ago.”

 

“Why? What did it say?”

 

“Jonty Hastings is getting married.”

 

“Howley Hastings is getting married?” Gerald guffaws, using the childhood nickname given Jonty Hastings by he, Lettice and the other children of the big houses in the district who used to play with him, because of his propensity to cry whenever he was teased about anything. “Who’d want to marry Howley Hastings?”

 

“Sarah Frobisher apparently, according to the article.” Lettice replies.

 

“Sarah Frobisher? Sarah Frobisher?” Gerald ruminates, rolling the name around his mouth and off his tongue as he considers where he has heard that name before. “Wasn’t she that rather horsey looking niece of the Miss Evanses?” He refers to the two elderly genteel gossipy spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house, in Glynes village at the foot of Lettice’s and his family estates in Wiltshire. “You know, the gawky one with protruding teeth and spectacles who always laughed nervously whenever a boy spoke to her. Her father was in trade*****************. Yes, the Frobisher Clothing Mills in Trowbridge.”

 

“Yes, I think that’s her.”

 

“Well, those two deserve each other then, if you ask me, if she’s still as gawky now as she was when we were children. They can dance the Wibbly Wobbly Walk***************** together into the happily ever after, and good riddance to them both.”

 

“Oh! That’s cruel, Gerald. Don’t be beastly!” Lettice chides her best friend sharply. “You aren’t a spiteful person.”

 

“Well,” Gerald mumbles contritely. “You have to admit that Howley can’t dance. Think about your poor trampled feet the last time you had to dance with him. Why on earth did Sadie send you a clipping about Howley marrying that Frobisher creature?”

 

“I think to highlight the fact that another one of the few eligible bachelors she was able to find to invite to her 1922 husband hunting Hunt Ball for me is no longer eligible. Pickings are slim.”

 

“All I am saying, Lettice darling,” Gerald goes on kindly. “Is that, slim pickings or not, if you’re not going to be happy in the end, I happen to think that marrying Sir John is a mistake. An unhappy and loveless marriage isn’t worth it.”

 

“Now don’t you start too, Gerald!” Lettice quips. “I have enough problems with Margot and Dickie trying to dissuade me from marrying John. Even Cilla seems lukewarm about the idea, and John’s almost like an honourary uncle to her.”

 

“I’m not!” Gerald defends, holding up his palms. “I only said ‘if’. If has a great deal of meaning and implication for such a tiny word, you know. For example: if however, you think you will be happy with your lot in life with Sir John, marry him. As I have said to you before, I cannot even marry the person I love.”

 

“Oh yes, how foolish of me.” Lettice replies. “Forgive me for wallowing.”

 

“There is nothing to forgive, Lettice darling. You’re my best friend! I only want you to be happy.”

 

“Thank you, Gerald darling.” Lettice replies gratefully. “Meanwhile, now you can tell your Cyril that he won’t need to bite his tongue and keep his own counsel quite so much, if Miss Young is going to be at ‘The Nest’. John will be all over her, I’m sure. And if he isn’t, from what I can gather from John, she certainly will be.”

 

“Well,” Gerald sighs. “That will certainly enliven what is already going to be a rather lively weekend, I suspect.”

 

At that moment, Edith walks into the drawing room.

 

“Luncheon is served, Miss.” she announces with a bob curtsey.

 

“Thank you, Edith.” Lettice says gratefully.

 

“Yes, thank you Edith.” Gerald adds. “It’s good of you to feed me at such short notice.”

 

“Oh, it’s no trouble, Sir.” Edith replies with a beaming smile, thankful at Gerald’s recognition of her efforts. “It’s always a pleasure to have you at Cavendish Mews.”

 

As Lettice and Gerald both stand, and Edith turns to go, Gerald stops her. “By the way, Edith?”

 

“Yes Sir?” she asks, stopping and looking back at him.

 

“How’s your sewing going?”

 

“My sewing, Sir?” Edith asks, perplexed.

 

“Gerald!” Lettice cautions her friend.

 

“Yes, your frock making. Have you made anything new lately?”

 

“Oh,” Edith replies with a happy sigh and a smile. “It’s going well, thank you for asking, Sir, especially since Mrs. Boothby’s so…” She quickly swallows the word son, as she isn’t sure whether Lettice knows that the old Cockney charwoman****************** who comes to Cavendish Mews from Poplar every few days to help Edith with the harder housekeeping jobs, has a son, never mind a disabled one. “Found me a sewing machine. Now I don’t have to go to my Mum’s to do any sewing or alterations. I can do them here in my room.”

 

“Very good Edith. And have you made anything lately?” Gerald persists. “A new frock, perhaps?”

 

“Oh no, Sir.” Edith replies. “But I did make myself a lovely new white blouse with a Peter Pan collar******************* and black buttons a month ago now. I wear it on my days off quite a bit at the moment.”

 

“Well,” Lettice says breezily with a sigh. “That’s all very interesting, Edith, but Mr. Bruton and I have held you up and away from your chores long enough. You may go. We can serve ourselves since it’s just a casual cold luncheon for two today, so there is no need for you to wait table.”

 

“Yes, Miss. Very good, Miss.” Edith bobs another curtsey and scuttles away through the adjoining dining room and disappears through the green baize door that leads to the service area of the flat.

 

“Spoil sport.” Gerald mutters.

 

“I told you, Gerald.” Lettice repeats. “Edith isn’t for turning. When I get married, she’ll be coming with me.”

 

“I don’t think she’ll fancy being buried in the Wiltshire Downs, Lettice darling.”

 

“Perhaps not, Gerald darling, but I think she’ll quite enjoy an elevated position as housekeeper of John’s and my Belgravia townhouse after I become Lady Nettleford-Hughes.”

 

“You are positively Machiavellian sometimes, Lettice darling.” Gerald concedes in defeat as he proffers Lettice his arm.

 

The two walk out of the Cavendish Mews drawing room and into the dining room, where a cold luncheon of galantine of fowl******************** with a fresh garden salad await them on the dining room table.

 

*Papyrus paper is called papyrus, named after the Cyperus papyrus plant from which it is made. The word "papyrus" itself refers to both the plant and the writing material created from its stems. Documents written on this material are also referred to as papyri.

 

**Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill, London, is a world-famous street market known for its antiques, vintage clothing, and diverse food stalls. It's one of London's oldest markets, dating back to the Nineteenth Century. The market stretches along Portobello Road, from Westbourne Grove to Golborne Road, and is particularly vibrant on Saturdays.

 

***Historically, queer slang emerged as a way for queer people to communicate discreetly, forming a sense of community and shared identity. Using female names or terms could be a way to signal belonging within this coded language. It was also used for protection, allowing homosexual men to talk about one another discreetly in public without the implication of homosexuality and the repercussions that came with it as a criminal act.

 

****Tutmania was a worldwide media frenzy and cultural obsession that followed the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and his team, sparking a popular fad for ancient Egyptian art, design, and culture in the Western world and a resurgence of national pride in Egypt itself. Egyptian motifs appeared on clothes, jewellery, hairstyles, fabrics, furniture and in architecture, and it helped solidify the Art Deco movement of design with its clean lines. The discovery of the tomb itself was one of the most significant archaeological finds of the Twentieth Century, made the previously lesser-known pharaoh one of the most famous figures in history.

 

*****Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes.

 

******‘Chu Chin Chow’ is a musical comedy written, produced and directed by Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, based on the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It was the most popular show in London’s West End during the Great War. It premiered at His Majesty’s Theatre in London on the 3rd of August 1916 and ran for 2,238 performances, a record number that stood for nearly forty years!

 

*******Gypsophila, known commonly as Baby’s Breath, is a genus of flowering plants in the carnation family. They are native to Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. Turkey has a particularly high diversity of Gypsophila, with about thirty-five endemic species. Some Gypsophila are introduced species in other regions.

 

********Laissez-faire is the policy of leaving things to take their own course, without interfering.

 

*********‘Floral Symbolica; or, The Language and Sentiment of Flowers’ is a book written by John Ingram, published in London in 1870 by Frederick Warne and Co. who are perhaps best known for publishing the books of Beatrix Potter. ‘Flora Symbolica; or, The language and Sentiment of Flowers’ includes meanings of many species of flowers, both domestic and exotic, as well as floral poetry, original and selected. It contains a colour frontispiece and fifteen colour plates, printed in colours by Terry. John Henry Ingram (November the 16th, 1842 – February the 12th, 1916) was an English biographer and editor with a special interest in Edgar Allan Poe. Ingram was born at 29 City Road, Finsbury Square, Middlesex, and died at Brighton, England. His family lived at Stoke Newington, recollections of which appear in Poe's works. J. H. Ingram dedicated himself to the resurrection of Poe's reputation, maligned by the dubious memoirs of Rufus Wilmot Griswold; he published the first reliable biography of the author and a four-volume collection of his works.

 

**********We usually associate the term “to keep mum” with the Second World War, when it was a byline used on posters to dissuade gossip and the inadvertent sharing of vitally confidential for the war effort with fifth-columnists. However, the word "mum" meaning to be silent, not to speak, first appeared in William Langland's Fourteenth Century poem Piers Plowman, though the full phrase "mum's the word" gained popularity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. The word itself is onomatopoeic, derived from the "mmm" sound made by a closed mouth.

 

***********French blue is a sophisticated, deep blue colour that is characterized by its muted quality, subtle violet or grey undertones, and a rich, smoky depth, reminiscent of classical French design, the Mediterranean sky, or the deep blue uniforms of historical French soldiers.

 

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

 

*************Le Bienvenue is the former name of L'Escargot, which is London's oldest French restaurant. Georges Gaudin opened Le Bienvenue at the bottom of Greek Street in Soho in 1896. He became famous for serving snails, and was reportedly the first in England to do so. Le Bienvenue even featured a snail farm in its basement, a unique talking point for customers. In 1927, two years after this story is set, Gaudin moved to larger premises at 48 Greek Street, the current location, in a Georgian townhouse built in 1741 which was once the private residence of the Duke of Portland and a pastoral getaway in what was then a rural part of London. When he moved, patrons of the restaurant encouraged him to rename it after his most popular dish, leading to the name L'Escargot.

 

**************Fair Isle is a traditional knitting style used to create patterns with multiple colours. It is named after Fair Isle, one of the Shetland Islands. Fair Isle knitting gained popularity when the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) wore Fair Isle jumpers in public in 1921. Traditional Fair Isle patterns have a limited palette of five or so colours, use only two colours per row, are worked in the round, and limit the length of a run of any particular colour.

 

***************The term "trollop" was introduced in the early 1600s, with the earliest known evidence of its use appearing in the writings of George Wither in 1615. The term, a noun, was already established in the English language by that time.

 

****************The Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser is weekly newspaper which serves the towns of west Wiltshire, including Trowbridge. Printed in Trowbridge it was established in 1854 by Benjamin Lansdown, as The Trowbridge and Wiltshire Advertiser. Benjamin was born in Trowbridge and was the son of a woollen mill employee but this was not the path he wished to follow and he was apprenticed as a printer alongside Mr John Sweet. He bought a hard press and second-hand typewriter before starting his own newspaper, along with establishing his own stationery shop in Silver Street around 1860. He moved the business into 15 Duke Street around 1876. Duke Street became home to the impressive R. Hoe & Co printing press that allowed printers to use continuous rolls of paper, instead of individual sheets, to speed up the process and countless copies of the newspaper rolled off the press at Duke Street for many years. The newspaper was based there for more than one hundred years and the business remained within the Lansdown family for generations until it was finally sold in the early 1960s. Over the years in had various names including The Trowbridge and North Wiltshire Advertiser from 1860 until 1880, The Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser from 1880 until 1949, The Wiltshire Times between 1950 and 1962 and The Wiltshire Times & News between 1962 and 1963. It then became known as the Wiltshire Times – the banner it holds today. In 2019, the Wiltshire Times and its sister paper the Gazette & Herald moved to offices on the White Horse Business Park in North Bradley, stating that its Duke Street building was no longer fit for purpose. These offices later closed in 2020 as the three Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns struck. The Wiltshire times is still serving the local community both in a paper and an online format with a small team of journalists who passionately believe in the value of good trusted journalism and providing in-depth local news coverage.

 

****************The term to be “in trade” most commonly means engaging in commercial activity, such as regularly buying, selling, or offering goods or services as part of a business. It can also refer to the goods themselves (stock-in-trade) kept by a business for sale, or a characteristic skill or behaviour consistently used in a particular line of work. Used as a slur by the British upper-classes, “in trade” implied that because a man had to work for his living, even if he was a steel magnate or something equally successful, he was not as good as, and would never be a gentleman, who traditionally did not work to earn money. Money and money talk was considered vulgar by the upper-classes. A man who was “in trade” would never marry the daughter of an aristocrat or member of the landed gentry.

 

*****************‘They All Walk the Wibbly Wobbly Walk’ is a song written by Paul Pelham and J. P. Long sung by the famous British music hall performer Mark Sheridan in 1912. It was a song often sung during the Great War, and associated by the British general public with the survivors of the conflict who trembled due to shell shock or had misshapen walks thanks to injuries inflicted upon them.

 

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

 

********************A galantine of fowl is a traditional French cold dish made from a deboned fowl, typically chicken, which is stuffed with a forcemeat (a mixture of ground meats and other ingredients), then rolled into a cylindrical shape, and poached in stock. It is served cold, often coated in a clear, gelatinous aspic, and can be elaborately decorated with ingredients like pistachios, truffles, and vegetables.

 

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.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The boxed and unboxed Egyptian papyrus scrolls you see on Lettice’s black japanned coffee table are 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Famed for his books, Ken Blythe also made other miniature artisan pieces from paper, including these scrolls, which can be fully wound out to reveal Egyptian hieroglyphics. To make a pieces as authentic as this makes them true artisan pieces. Most of the Ken Blythe books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words of the titles, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. 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 a great many pieces from his daughter from his estate. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

Lettice’s tea set sitting on the coffee table is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era called “Falling Leaves”.

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!" ~ Dorothy

 

Collaborative Painting by Lydia and Jeannie

 

Foreground figures and car painted by Lydia and background photo-painting by me.

 

Lydia's Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/33904170@N00/

 

This image is the result of a playful and fun collaboration with my Flickr friend Lydia, a talented artist. I was delighted when Lydia suggested we play together, as I've enjoyed seeing her collaborations with other amazing artists on her photostream.

 

Lydia is so creative. She paints amazing, fanciful, magical characters and landscapes using her iPad. I am always particularly amazed at how well she creates mood and atmosphere with her keen understanding of light and shadows. She also creates animated short videos using her own painted images and even arranges her own soundtrack music to her videos using Garageband; she writes poetry and stories; she paints book covers for friends writing novels. And she loves to learn new things and hone new skills, which she generously shares with others, taking the time to make and post informative tutorials (for example, tutorials on how to draw specific things like an eye, or a certain type of hair). I always enjoy seeing what she will come up with next.

 

For our collaboration, I chose a landscape image, which I then photo-painted and passed off to Lydia to do with what she would. Lydia's creatively wild and wonderful imagination is always at work! And this painting is the result of our collaboration!

 

Thanks, Lydia, for your wonderful art. And thanks for playing with me!

 

At the further extremity of a narrow, deep cavern in the rock, whose length appeared much extended by the perspective and the nature of the light by which it was seen, was seated the scout, holding a blazing knot of pine. The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance and forest attire, lending an air of romantic wildness to the aspect of an individual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have exhibited the peculiarities of a man remarkable for the strangeness of his dress, the iron-like inflexibility of his frame, and the singular compound of quick, vigilant sagacity, and of exquisite simplicity, that by turns usurped the possession of his muscular features. At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The travelers anxiously regarded the upright, flexible figure of the young Mohican, graceful and unrestrained in the attitudes and movements of nature. Though his person was more than usually screened by a green and fringed hunting-shirt, like that of the white man, there was no concealment to his dark, glancing, fearless eye, alike terrible and calm; the bold outline of his high, haughty features, pure in their native red; or to the dignified elevation of his receding forehead, together with all the finest proportions of a noble head, bared to the generous scalping tuft. - James Fenimore Cooper

Letter generously translated by Immanuel Voigt; penned on 29.1.1918 in Schoneberg, the author sends his parents a photograph of "English tank in Berlin".

 

The British Mk IV male tank "Fray Bentos II" (8091) on display in Berlin after being captured at Cambrai in November 1917. Afterwards, it would be dismantled for mechanical inspection and study.

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’s beloved parents, George and Ada live in their small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street. Although very far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, the Harlesden terrace has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her younger brother, Bert. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. With Bert, on shore leave from his job as a first-class saloon steward aboard the SS Demosthenes* for a short while, Ada is organising a special Sunday meal to celebrate her two children being home in London at the same time, and Edith and her beau, Mayfair grocer’s boy, Frank Leadbetter, are to join George, Ada and Bert. We find ourselves in the heart of the Watsford’s family home, Ada’s cosy kitchen at the back of the terrace, where Ada’s worn round kitchen table is covered with vegetables, pots and pans as preparations are underway. Ada’s blouse sleeves are rolled up, and one of her worn aprons is wrapped around her waist over her cotton print dress. Her skin glistens with sweat from the heat radiating from the old blacklead range which is stoked and ready to be used to cook.

 

“Come on Bert!” Ada encourages her son as she wipes her damp forehead with the back of her left hand and glances over her shoulder from the range where her large old kettle is close to boiling and spies him sitting at the kitchen table in the ladderback chair usually occupied by Edith.

 

Bert, dressed in his navy blue Sunday best trousers, matching blue vest and shirt with his own sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sits quietly in front of a wooden chopping board, scratched from many years of Ada’s kitchen knife’s blade cutting things upon it, contemplating what he is doing as he carefully tries to remove the peel from the potato in his hands in one piece.

 

Ada’s face clouds and crumples as she spies her gleaming saucepan sitting next to him on the tabletop, still half empty. “You aren’t half slow at peeling those potatoes, love.”

 

“You can’t rush perfection, Mum.” Bert replies as he carefully slides the blade of the knife under the creamy yellow potato peel with his right hand as he turns it in his left.

 

“I’m not after perfection, love.” Ada replies, huffing a frustrated sigh through her nostrils, as she turns away from the range, crossing her arms akimbo across her chest, trying not to lose her patience with her beloved youngest child. “I just want my potatoes and carrots peeled before it’s time to serve tea. “Look!” she points first to the board and then to the small white bowl to Bert’s right. You’ve still got those potatoes and those carrots to peel!”

 

“What do you call them?” Bert indicates with a nod at a smaller saucepan in front of him with eight round, thick slices of carrot lining its base.

 

“Those aren’t enough carrots for the five of us, Bert!” Ada exclaims in horror. “I need at least another four peeling and slicing and in that pot!”

 

“Well, you could have done them if you hadn’t shelled Dad’s peas and used those dried peas** I brought you back all the way from Australia.”

 

“I bet you they don’t taste any different to British dried peas.” Ada sniffs.

 

“You’ll never know unless you try them, Mum.” Bert remarks in reply.

 

“Dried peas from a shop indeed!” Ada scoffs derisively as she glances at the offending package of dried peas in their box next to her blue and white jug containing Bisto Gravy Powder***. “That’s lazy that is, especially when your dad brings home fresh garden peas for us to enjoy from the allotment. I can dry my own peas. I don’t need shop bought ones.”

 

“It’s no lazier than you making gravy with Bisto’s Gravy Powder, Mum.” Bert remarks, smiling proudly as he carefully removes the knife from the potato with a complete peeling hanging from it.

 

“That’s not true! We’ve been having Bisto’s gravy on Sundays all your life and it never did you any harm.” Ada defends herself. Reaching across the table she tugs on her son’s left ear playfully. “And don’t be so cheeky to your mum!” she adds with a smirk, indicating that she’s not really cross with him over his remark. “Where are your manners?”

 

“Sorry Mum.” Bert apologises.

 

“I’ll give you ‘sorry mum’ in a minute if you don’t crack on with those potatoes and carrots.” Ada turns back to the range and taking a thick yellow cloth from the railing just under the mantle, uses it to pick up the kettle by its handle. With a slight groan at is heaviness, she lifts it up and pours hot water into the blue and white grape patterned jug on the table, containing several heaped spoonsful of gravy powder.

 

“I still don’t understand why you have to boil the potatoes, considering you’re going to roast them, Mum.” Bert casts the perfect peeling into a small bucket on the floor at the left side of his chair that his mother uses for kitchen scraps for his father to take to the allotment for compost.

 

“Lord, I don’t know how you hold onto a job working in the kitchens of that ship if you don’t know anything about cooking, Bert.” Ada remarks, rolling her eyes as she returns the kettle to the stove.

 

“It’s not a kitchen, Mum,” Bert corrects his mother as he takes up another potato and begins to slowly peel it. “It’s called a galley on a ship. Besides, I’m not employed to work in the galley, I’m a steward, employed to serve the food in the first-class dining saloon, on the right side of the galley doors,” A smug smile crosses his face as he speaks. “Thank you very much!”

 

“Oh well, pardon me, Your Highness!” Ada mocks her son, poking her nose in the air as she speaks. “I bet some of those cooks get paid better than you do, Bert, love.” she retorts, bringing her son sharply back down to earth from his lofty delusions of grandeur. “An army marches on its stomach**** and it is no different for that big ship of yours. You wouldn’t have a job serving meals if there was no-one to make them, would you now? I can’t imagine your fine first-class ladies getting their hands dirty making their own meals, any more than I can imagine Edith’s Miss Chetwynd. Can you?”

 

Bert doesn’t answer his mother’s rhetorical questions but instead concentrates on his careful peeling.

 

“I don’t know why you want to try and get the peelings off in one go, love.” Ada stirs the gravy in the jug. “It’s all just bound for your dad’s compost heap, long bits or short!”

 

“It’s a game, Mum.” Bert explains. “You know, fun?”

 

“You have a peculiar idea of fun, Bert!” Ada retorts, screwing up her nose.

 

“A skill then.”

 

“A better skill would be to learn how to cook, Bert love!” Ada keeps stirring the gravy. “Think how much you could impress a young lady if you could help her a bit around the kitchen.”

 

“Ha!” Bert laughs. “Only a lazy one, Mum, like Alice Dunn.”

 

“That’s no way to speak about our Vicar’s daughter*****, Bert!” Ada cries aghast as she stops stirring the contents of the jug for a moment.

 

“But it’s true, Mum.” Bert defends as he continues to peel the potato. “The Vicar Dunn has a housekeeper that cooks for them and all. Alice told me when I first met her. She lorded it over me.”

 

“Well, you were all younger and sillier then.” Ada puts her hands on her hips. “And the reason why the Vicar Dunn and his family have a housekeeper who cooks for them is because…”

 

“They’re rich!” Bert pipes up.

 

“Ha!” It’s Ada’s turn to laugh. “I’ve never heard of a wealthy vicar before.”

 

“Well, they’re certainly better off that we are.”

 

“Your dad and I have done well enough between the two of us. You haven’t ever wanted for much, Bert Watsford, and that’s a fact!” Before her son can interject again, Ada goes on, “What I was going to say about the housekeeper at the vicarage is that the Dunns have her because the Vicar and Mrs. Dunn, and young Alice, are busy doing good deeds around the parish all the time. Why just the other week, Mrs. Dunn and Alice held a jumble sale at All Souls****** Parish Hall to raise funds for farthing breakfasts******* for the poor children in the parishes of the East End who can’t even afford bread and margarine.” She takes up the spoon in the jug again and continues stirring the instant gravy vigorously to break up the lumps of powder. “You never went to school without a good breakfast, nor came home to an empty pantry!” She nods affirmatively. “Oh, by the way, Alice was asking after your welfare and when you were next on shore leave when I saw her at the jumble sale.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure.” Bert says noncommittally, raising his eyebrows as he keeps peeling.

 

“If you ask me, I think Alice Dunn has taken a shine to you, Bert love.”

 

“Get away with you Mum!” Bert laughs before his face suddenly falls. “Oh blast!”

 

“Language, Bert!” Ada chides her son sternly. “You may work on a ship, but that doesn’t mean you have to cuss like a sailor********.”

 

“But look what you made me do, Mum!” Bert holds up the broken piece of potato peeling forlornly.

 

“That’s still no call for you to use foul language, love.” Ada replies, shaking her head in concern. “That’s not how your dad and I raised you. Besides,” She nods at the peeling as Bert drops it in the bucket. “Like I said before, it all goes into your dad’s compost, no matter how long or short the peeling is, and if you ask me, the shorter the peelings, the more potatoes and carrots you’ll peel.”

 

“So why do you boil the potatoes first if you’re going to roast them in the pan with the chicken anyway?” Bert asks as he takes up peeling the rest of the potato, speeding up now that he has broken the peel and showering the chopping board with shorter lengths of it.

 

“Because,” Ada explains as she peers into the jug and moves the spoon about, looking for lumps hidden deep within in the dark brown gravy mix. “Boiling potatoes for a bit before roasting them helps them have a crispier outside and a fluffier inside.”

 

“Sounds daft to me.” Bert replies, puffing out his cheeks.

 

“Daft sounding or not, it works, you mark my words.” Ada wags a finger at Bert. “And the starch from the potatoes will help thicken this gravy when I put it over the chicken and vegetables to roast.”

 

“I believe you, Mum.” Bert says with a sunny smile. “I’ve never had a cause to complain about a single one of your roasts in my whole life.”

 

“I should think you wouldn’t, Bert love!”

 

“So why are we having a special roast for tea today, anyway?”

 

“Well it’s a Sunday********** for a start, Bert love.”

 

“Yes, but this is a special one, Mum. Why?”

 

“Well, it isn’t every day I have my son and daughter together for a Sunday tea.” Ada replies. “You haven’t been on shore leave since Christmas. Edith is bringing Frank with her today too, so I want a nice tea for us all.”

 

“Do you think Frank is going to propose to Edith today, Mum?” Bert asks excitedly.

 

Ada sighs as she folds over the lid of the Bisto Gravy Powder box and takes it and the packet of dried Australian peas her son gave her as a gift and puts them out of the way on a shelf of the old, dark Welsh dresser that dominates her kitchen. “Oh, I doubt it love. Your dad and I were rather hoping that he’d propose on Easter Sunday when we had a picnic together at Roundwood Park***********, but he didn’t then, so I doubt he will today.” She turns back, shaking her head. Leaning against the edge of the dresser she observes a cheeky smile grace her son’s face as he finishes peeling the potato and drops it into her saucepan. She crosses her arms again. “And don’t you be smart and go placing the cat amongst the pigeons************ by asking about it, either.”

 

Bert gazes across at his mother with big doe eyes, feigning innocence. “Me, Mum?”

 

“You Bert!” She gives her son a warning look. “And don’t pretend that you weren’t thinking of asking. I know you were. So I’m asking you nicely, not to.” She eyes her son with a serious look. “Edith’s only just settled herself down and accepted that she just has to be patient and wait for Frank to ask when he’s good and ready.”

 

“What do you mean, Mum?”

 

“Well,” Ada tucks a stray damp strand of mousy brown hair streaked with silver grey that has fallen loose from the chignon at the base of her neck behind her ear distractedly. “Edith and Frank had the fiercest argument about it when they went up the Elephant************* not too long ago. I think it was their first proper falling out since they started stepping out together.”

 

“They patched things up, evidently?”

 

“Oh yes!” Ada agrees. “At the end of the day it wasn’t too much for them to overcome. Even so, your silly big sister was so spooked by it that she went and wasted some of her hard-earned wages that she should be saving on seeing some tea leaf reader************** she found in the newspapers.” She shakes her head. “Between your sister putting her faith in charlatans and you cussing like a sailor,”

 

“I never!”

 

“You did!” Ada shakes her head. “I don’t know what to think of the pair of you?”

 

“I’m alright, Mum.” Bert assures his mother, turning back to his chopping board and taking up a carrot which he begins to peel with quick, downward strokes. “Anyway, you wrote in your last letter that you and Dad had given Frank your blessing for him to ask Edith to marry him, so things must still be serious between them.”

 

“So we have, Bert love.” Ada walks back to the table. “But if there is one thing I have learned about Frank Leadbetter since I first met him, it’s that he doesn’t take a step like this lightly. He’ll want it to be the perfect setting when he asks Edith to marry him, and somehow, I suspect sitting around a Watsford family Sunday roast in my kitchen with his future in-laws is not where he has in mind to do it.”

 

“So when will he do it, Mum?”

 

“When he’s good and ready, Bert love, and not before.” Ada shakes her head. “And he doesn’t need any goading from you.”

 

“I won’t Mum.”

 

“And Edith could do without any embarrassment from her beloved, but cheeky little brother. Alright?”

 

“Alright Mum! I promise I won’t ask about when they’re getting married. I won’t even elude to it.”

 

“Good boy.” Ada coos. “But don’t worry,” She reaches out and ruffles her son’s hair lovingly with an indulgent smile. “I’ll write to you if you’re away when he does.”

 

“Oh Mum!” Bert drops the knife and carrot onto the chopping board and shoos his mother’s hands away as he tries to straighten and smooth his wavy sandy blonde locks. “Don’t do that! I’m going down the Royal Oak*************** after tea. I can’t go with my hair all messed up.”

 

“Oh good!” Ada replies. “You can take your dad with you. He could do with a pint down at the Royal Oak, and I could do with an evening without him under my feet.”

 

“Here, Ada love, can you fasten my tie for me? I’m all thumbs today.” George’s voice asks as he bustles into Ada’s kitchen through the hallway door leading from the front part of the house, tugging on his new cobalt blue cardigan knitted for him by Ada, as he adjusts it to sit straight down his front. A pale blue tie hangs undone trailing to either side of him from beneath one of his Sunday best starched detachable collars****************. “Where am I going?

 

“No Mum!” Bert cries.

 

Ada walks up to her husband as he stands next to the kitchen table. Running her sweat slicked palms and fingers down her apron, she peers at her husband’s collar and loose tie. She pulls the wider length to give more metreage and expertly begins creating a four-in-hand knot***************** with her husband’s tie. Ignoring her son’s protestations, Ada says, “Bert was just telling me that he’s going down the Royal Oak after tea today.”

 

“Mum no!” Bert says again imploringly.

 

Seemingly ignorant and deaf to his plaintive cries, Ada turns back to her son and adds, “Once Edith and Frank have left, of course, I should hope!”

 

“Of course I won’t go before they go, Mum!”

 

“Good!” Turning her attention back to her husband’s tie, Ada continues her expert knotting of it at the apex of the collar she has starched many times over, over the last few years. “And I just said that Bert could take you with him. You haven’t seen George or Agnes Whitehead for ages.”

 

“No Mum!” Bert says again, awkwardly.

 

“Stand still George and stop squirming.” Ada softly chides her husband. “I have enough to do as it is, what with the tea to prepare, and Bert muddle-puddling****************** with the potatoes and carrots, without you moving as I try and fasten your tie.”

 

“Sorry Ada love.” George apologises. “I just struggle with this particular collar.” He reaches up and runs the index finger of his left hand underneath the collar. “It’s so stiff and uncomfortable.”

 

Ada slaps it away sharply. “This is your Sunday best collar that I slaved, starched and sweated over for you, George!”

 

“Yes I know!” George returns his finger to the tight gap between the flesh of his throat and the collar, quickly snatching it away before his wife can slap it again. “I don’t see why I have to wear this confounded collar today, anyway. Why couldn’t I just wear one of my ordinary collars? It’s not like we’re going to a wedding today.” His eyes suddenly grow wide. “Or do we have something to celebrate that you know about, and I don’t?”

 

“Now don’t you start!” Ada replies, pushing the ends of George’s neatly fastened tie back into his hands. “I’ve just told Bert not to throw the cat amongst the pigeons.” She wags a finger at him. “Don’t you do it either, please.” She looks him sternly in the eye.

 

“I promise, I won’t!” George replies, stuffing the ends of his tie beneath his cardigan.

 

“I just want today to be lovely since both Bert and Edith are home, and Frank is coming too.” Ada explains. “I’ll go upstairs and put on my best bib and tucker******************* shortly.” She then quickly switches her attention back to her son. “And what do you mean, ‘no’, Bert?” Ada queries.

 

Bert squirms in his seat as he falls under the scrutinising gaze of his mother. “Well, I’m going out with Conlin Campbell down at the Royal Oak tonight, you see, Mum.” he explains with a strained voice, mentioning his friend of the same age as him who grew up in Harlesden with both Edith and Bert and went to sea with Bert when he took his first seafaring job. “He’s on shore leave too, and we’re catching up with a few of our old friends.”

 

“Well, I don’t see why that matters.” Ada retorts. “Your dad knows Conlin Campbell, and the other boys you knew growing up as well. You all get along. It’ll be good for him.”

 

“Oh Ada!” George replies with a knowing chuckle, smoothing the front of his tie down.

 

“What George?”

 

“Bert doesn’t want his old dad tagging along when…” His eyes glint with mischief from within the wrinkles of flesh around them.

 

“When what, George?” Ada persists.

 

“When there are also ladies joining he and Conlin Campbell.” He chuckles playfully again.

 

Ada’s gaze swings back to her son. “Is this true, Bert?” she asks with incredulity. “You didn’t mention any of the girls were joining you this evening.”

 

“Well,” Bert shrinks in his seat. “You… you didn’t ask… specifically… Mum.”

 

Ada eyes her son. “Very well. Now I’m asking. Who else is joining you at the Royal Oak this evening, Bert?”

 

“Only Jeannie Duttson and Alice Dunn, Mum.” Bert splutters, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment as he speaks, making George chuckle again. “No-one special.”

 

“I told you, Alice Dunn was asking after you!” Ada crows triumphantly, clapping her hands. “Didn’t I?”

 

“Alice was only being polite, Mum! She fancies Conlin, not me, and I certainly don’t fancy Alice Dunn.” Bert reddens further. “But I do rather fancy Jeannie Duttson.”

 

“Any blind man could tell that at New Year!” George laughs loudly.

 

“Dad!” Bert cringes.

 

“I didn’t!” Ada remarks in surprise.

 

“You were too busy playing gracious hostess, Mrs. Watsford.” George says, bowing melodramatically before his wife.

 

“Jeannie Duttson!” Ada breathes. “Well fancy that!”

 

“She’s a good sort, is Jeannie Duttson,” George opines.

 

“She is!” Ada agrees with a beaming smile. “Jeannie has a good head on her shoulders, just what Bert needs!”

 

“And she’s pretty.” George winks cheekily at his son.

 

“She’s got herself a nice little job as a typist at Drummond’s Solicitors up on the High Street.” Ada goes on.

 

“Oh yes! With… with…” George clicks his fingers as he tries to remember the name of the last of Edith’s old school chums who came to celebrate at the Watsford’s on New Year’s Eve.

 

“Katy Bramall.” Bert replies.

 

“That’s it, Bert!” George says with a satisfied sigh. “Clever boy. Katy Bramall.”

 

“Katy’s stepping out with a supervisor from the Holborn exchange********************.” Bert goes on.

 

“Is she now?” George replies with little interest. “Bully for her*********************!” Returning the conversation to Bert’s potential budding relationship with Jeannie, he addresses his wife. “Bert could do far worse than the likes of Jeannie Duttson, like that flibbertigibbet, Alice Dunn.”

 

“Oh George!” Ada chides her husband, scoffing. “Alice is lovely!”

 

“She’s an idle gossip, just like her mother.” George retorts. “No, let Conlin Campbell have her if he so pleases. You’ve picked the right young lady out of those two, Bert my boy.”

 

“So, when’s the big day then?” Ada asks Bert jokingly.

 

“Oh Mum!” he replies, smiling sheepishly. “Isn’t one potential wedding enough for this family?”

 

*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.

 

**Believe it or not, but dried peas have been a part of the British diet for a very long time, dating back to the start of agriculture in Britain, approximately 6,000 years ago. Evidence suggests peas were one of the earliest crops cultivated in Britain, along with wheat, barley, and broad beans. The practice of drying peas to preserve them also dates back to this period, with green or yellow split peas being boiled to create mushy peas or pease pudding. While the exact date of their introduction to England is difficult to pinpoint, it's clear that dried peas were a staple food source in the Middle Ages, and later became popular dishes like mushy peas. The Carlin pea, a specific variety of dried pea, is known to have been eaten in northern England since the Twelfth Century. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the preference shifted towards fresh, green peas, often referred to as "garden peas". However, dried peas continued to be a part of the British culinary landscape, particularly in regional dishes and later in the Twentieth Century in fish-and-chip shops. By the mid 1920s, when this story is set, dried peas were readily available in branded packages at local grocers.

 

***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.

 

****The phrase "an army marches on its stomach" means that the supply of food is essential for a military campaign's success. It highlights the crucial role of logistics, specifically ensuring that soldiers have adequate provisions to stay healthy and strong while on the move. In essence, the saying emphasizes that a well-fed army is a capable army. Without sufficient sustenance, soldiers would be weakened, unable to march long distances or engage effectively in battle. This proverb is often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who understood the importance of logistics in his military campaigns.

 

*****The vicar of All Souls Parish Church in Harlesden between 1918 and 1927 was Ernest Arnold Dunn. Whilst I cannot find any details about his family life, I’d like to think that he was a happily married man of god and could well have had a daughter named Alice who no doubt played the organ in church on Sundays.

 

******The parish of All Souls, Harlesden, was formed in 1875 from Willesden, Acton, St John's, Kensal Green, and Hammersmith. Mission services had been held by the curate of St Mary's, Willesden, at Harlesden institute from 1858. The parish church at Station Road, Harlesden, was built and consecrated in 1879. The town centre church is a remarkable brick octagon designed by E.J. Tarver. Originally there was a nave which was extended in 1890 but demolished in 1970.

 

*******A "farthing breakfast" was a cheap meal, typically offered by organizations like The Salvation Army, the Church of England and other religious institutions and charities to children in need, for a farthing (the smallest coin in the British monetary system). A farthing breakfast generally consisted of a slice of bread with jam or margarine, often with cocoa to drink.

 

********The phrase "swear like a sailor" is a common idiom that has been used for a long time to describe someone who uses a lot of curse words or swear words. It is rooted in the stereotype of sailors, who have historically been known for their colorful and sometimes crude language. The term "sailor" in this context doesn't necessarily refer to someone who works on a ship, but rather to the characteristics associated with seafaring life, such as a reputation for being boorish and using foul language.

 

*********Parboiling potatoes before roasting is a common and recommended technique for achieving a crispy exterior and fluffy interior. Parboiling helps to soften the potatoes and create a starchy slurry, which contributes to the formation of a crispy crust during roasting.

 

**********The Sunday roast is a deeply ingrained British tradition, typically featuring a roasted meat dish, usually beef, but in less well-off families, like the Watsfords, chicken or another cheaper meat would suffice, along with a variety of sides like Yorkshire pudding, roasted vegetables, and gravy. This meal is often enjoyed as a family gathering after a Sunday church service, with roots tracing back to the Fifteenth Century in the British Isles.

 

***********Roundwood Park takes its name from Roundwood House, an Elizabethan-style mansion built in Harlesden for Lord Decies in around 1836. In 1892 Willesden Local Board, conscious of a need for a recreation ground in expanding Harlesden, started the process of buying the land for what is now Roundwood Park. Roundwood Park was built in 1893, designed by Oliver Claude Robson. He was allocated nine thousand pounds to lay out the park. He put in five miles of drains, and planted an additional fourteen and a half thousand trees and shrubs. This took quite a long time as he used local unemployed labour for this work in preference to contractors. Mr. Robson had been the Surveyor of the Willesden Local Board since 1875. As an engineer, he was responsible for many major works in Willesden including sewerage and roads. The fine main gates and railings were made in 1895 by Messrs. Tickner & Partington at the Vulcan Works, Harrow Road, Kensal Rise. An elegant lodge house was built to house the gardener; greenhouses erected to supply new flowers, and paths constructed, running upward to the focal point-an elegant bandstand on the top of the hill. The redbrick lodge was in the Victorian Elizabethan style, with ornamented chimney-breasts. It is currently occupied by council employees although the green houses have been demolished. For many years Roundwood Park was home to the Willesden Show. Owners of pets of many types, flowers and vegetables, and even 'bonny babies' would compete for prizes in large canvas tents. Art and crafts were shown, and demonstrations of dog-handling, sheep-shearing, parachuting and trick motorcycling given.

 

************The saying "to put the cat among the pigeons" is a British idiom that means to cause a disturbance or controversy, often by introducing something that is unexpected or unwanted. It refers to the commotion that would occur if a cat were to enter a group of pigeons, as the pigeons would likely become frightened and scattered. The phrase's origins are thought to be linked to a popular pastime in colonial India, where people would place a wild cat in a pen with pigeons and bet on how many birds the cat would catch with one swipe. This activity would naturally cause a great deal of commotion and disturbance among the pigeons. Over time, the phrase evolved to describe any situation where something is done that is likely to cause a stir or a lot of fuss. It implies that the action will disrupt things and lead to a reaction, often negative, from those involved.

 

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

 

**************Tea leaf reading, also known as tasseography, is a form of divination that involves interpreting the patterns and shapes of tea leaves left in a cup after the tea has been consumed.

 

***************Located at 95 High Street, Harlesden, the Royal Oak Tavern and Railway Hotel, as it was originally known, was built circa 1880 when Harlesden was at its boom as a smart middle-class London suburb, replacing a building on the site from 1757. The two-storey building featured Venetian blinds and a huge gaslight outside. This in turn was replaced by today’s 1892 re-build. Designed in the baroque style, it is four-storeys in height, built of red brick with stone banding and features a lot of ornate stone detailing. The Royal Oak still features its original 1892 tiles in the hallway, which depicts a Parliamentarian trooper hunting for King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. King Charles hid in an oak tree, hence the name Royal Oak. Between 1914 and 1926, the pub was licenced by Mr. George Whitehead, (thus Ada’s mention of George and Mrs. Whitehead in her conversation with her husband and son).

 

****************Removable or detachable collars were shirt collars designed to be separate from the shirt itself and fastened with studs or other mechanisms. They were popular in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, primarily among men who wore white shirts as part of their business or formal attire.

 

*****************The four-in-hand knot is a classic and simple necktie knot, popular in Britain since the 1850s, known for its ease of tying and slightly asymmetrical appearance. It's a versatile knot that can be worn for various occasions, from casual to formal.

 

******************Muddle-puddling is an old-fashioned term for dallying and taking your time.

 

*******************"Best bib and tucker" is an old-fashioned expression meaning one's finest or most formal clothes. It refers to putting on one's best outfit, often for a special occasion. While the phrase itself is used now, the items "bib" and "tucker" are less common in everyday clothing. A "bib" was a frill or ornamental piece at the front of a man's shirt, and a "tucker" was a decorative piece of lace or fabric that covered the neck and shoulders of a woman.

 

********************Before 1927 when there was a shift to automatic “Director” telephone exchanges, London had numerous manual exchanges, each with a specific These exchanges were operated by human operators who connected calls manually. This included HOL for the Holborn Exchange, which was also the first to be converted to a “Director” exchange, followed by others like Bishopgate and Sloane.

 

*********************The phrase “bully for someone” was usually used to express admiration of approval, but is often used ironically, especially when you do not think that someone has done anything special but they want you to praise them.

 

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 things in preparation for her special Sunday roast.

 

On the chopping board and the table you will see potatoes and carrots. There are more in the small white bowl and on the table. They, the onion and the shallots come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, England. 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. Ada’s lovely shiny saucepans complete with peas, potatoes and carrots in them come from 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 floral gravy boat containing gravy was also made by her. The blue and white grape patterned jug comes from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. The box of Bisto Gravy Powder, Ideal Finest Dried Peas and Oxo stock cube box were made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire with great detail paid to the packaging.

 

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

 

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

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table and the ladderback chair, 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 rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and bread bin 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. 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 jar of Marmite and a jar of Bovril which were also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

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.

 

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

 

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 however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden visiting the home of Edith’s, Lettice’s maid, beloved parents. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her younger brother Bert all their young lives. Since her father’s promotion in 1922, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now. The money she makes from this endeavour she uses for housekeeping to make she and George’s life a little more comfortable, but she is able to hold back a little back as pin money* to indulge in one of her joys, collecting pretty china ornaments to decorate their home with.

 

We are in Ada’s front parlour, which is where most of her decorative porcelain finds from different shops, fairs and flea markets around London are proudly displayed. With busy stylised floral wallpaper and every surface cluttered with ornaments, it can only be described as highly Victorian in style, and it is an example of conscious consumption, rather than qualitative consumption, to demonstrate how prosperous the Watsford family is, especially now that George holds the management position that he does. Like many others of its kind in Harlesden and elsewhere in London, it is the room least used in the house, reserved for when special guests like the parish minister or wealthy old widow and the Watsford’s landlady, Mrs. Hounslow, pay a call. However today’s special guest is not either the minister, nor Mrs. Hounslow. It is Frank Leadbetter, Edith’s beau, who has arranged to visit Edith’s parents on his own, as he has a very important question to ask of them both.

 

Dressed in his Sunday best suit, Frank sits awkwardly in one of two Victorian high backed barley twist chairs. The combination of the formality of his suit and the hard and uncomfortable horsehair upholstery of the chair encourage Frank to sit with a ramrod stiff back in his seat. He looks awkwardly around the room, allowing his gaze to flit in a desultory fashion around the unfamiliar surrounds of the Watsford’s formal front parlour. Cluttering the surface of an old Victorian sideboard and an ornate whatnot, the cold stares of Queen Victoria, Edward VII, Queen Alexandra and the current King George V and Queen Mary stare out from the glazed surfaces of plates and other objects celebrating coronations and jubilees, whilst on the mantle, flanked by pretty statues of castles and churches, younger versions of George and Ada in sepia pose formally with Edith as a little girl and Bert as a baby, gazing out from brass frames with blank stares. Frank coughs awkwardly and nervously tugs at his stiff collar, feeling hot even though there is no fire going in the small grate of the fireplace.

 

“Now, now, young Frank!” George booms good naturedly from the one comfortable seat in the room, an old armchair with thick red velvet button back** upholstery. “No need to be nervous, me lad!”

 

“Oh, you don’t know why I’m here, Mr. Watsford.” Frank replies, running his right index finger nervously around the inside of his collar.

 

George chuckles. “I think I can guess, Frank.”

 

Frank gazes down at Ada’s dainty best blue floral china tea set on the lace draped octagonal table set between the cluster of chairs. A selection of McVitie’s*** biscuits brought home by George from the nearby factory sit in a fluted glass dish.

 

“Will Mrs. Watsford be long, do you think, Mr. Watsford?”

 

“I shouldn’t think so, Frank. She’s only gone to boil the kettle and fill the pot.”

 

As if knowing that she was being spoken about, Ada sweeps through the door of the parlour, holding aloft the glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid that Edith bought for her as a gift from the Caledonian Markets****. “Here we are then,” she says with a heightened level of exuberance. “Tea for three!” She carefully places the teapot in the centre of the tea table.

 

“Perfect timing, Ada love.” George replies, and without waiting, reaches across the void between him and the tea table and snatches up a biscuit.

 

“George!” she chides. “Where are your manners?” She looks askance at her husband, who settles back in his seat, quite unperturbed by his wife’s scolding. “Guests first.” She sweeps her hand across the table towards the biscuits as she lowers herself precariously onto the edge of the other high backed barley twist chair. “Frank?”

 

“Err… umm…” Frank stutters. “Ahh, no… no thank you, Mrs. Watsford. I… I’m not hungry.”

 

“Oh well, more for us then, Ada love.” George says cheerfully through a biscuit filled mouth, stretching out his hand to the glass dish again.

 

“George!” Ada cries, slapping her husband’s hand sharply, the sound echoing around the cluttered parlour.

 

George retreats in his seat, recoiling and rubbing his chastised hand rather like a dog nurses a limp paw.

 

“Shall I be mother then*****?” Ada asks rhetorically as she automatically picks up the milk jug. “You take milk, don’t you Frank?”

 

“Err… yes, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank replies as she slops some milk into his cup before adding a dash to her husband’s and her own.

 

“And sugar?”

 

“Err.. two please, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

“Ahh, a sweet tooth after my own heart.” Ada replies with an indulgent smile, putting two heaped teaspoons of sugar into Frank’s cup before adding one to George’s and two to her own. “Now!” she sighs, taking up the cottage ware teapot pouring tea into the cups. “You wanted to talk to us, Frank?”

 

“Well…” Frank begins.

 

“You know it feels jolly funny having you here Frank, but not Edith.” Ada interrupts the young man even as he begins. “I’m quite used to you coming with Edith now.”

 

“Well, you know… I… I really wanted this to be a conversation that I had alone with you and Mr. Watsford,” Frank indicates to George, still licking his wounds. “Mrs. Watsford. So, I asked Hilda to take Edith out shopping today.”

 

“And she isn’t missing you, Frank?” Ada queries, as she replaces the pot in the middle of the tea table.

 

“Err…” Frank blushers, heaving and puffing his cheeks out. “Well, I told Edith a bit of a tall tale. I said that I had to help Giuseppe, my chum with his restaurant in the Islington****** today.”

 

“Oh yes,” Ada remarks with a tone of distaste as she hands George his cup of tea. “Giuseppe. He was your Italian friend who gave you the wine that we shared that first time we met, wasn’t he?”

 

Frank blushes red at the painful memory of that first rather awkward Sunday luncheon he had at the Watsfords’ when he and Ada had had a disagreement about some of his beliefs about life. “Yes.”

 

“My, my.” Ada takes up her own cup of tea and cradles it in her lap as she smiles to herself. “Such subterfuge to be alone with us.”

 

“You might not enjoy poor Frank’s discomfort quite so readily, Ada.” George pipes up from his seat as he sips his tea, tempering his wife.

 

“I was merely asking a question, George love.” Ada replies with a smug smile.

 

“No you weren’t, and you know it.” George retorts. “You were bringing up difficult memories of that awkward first tea we all had together, when you know perfectly well that we have all come a long way from there.” He gives his wife a doleful look. “Stop raking over old coals that don’t need to be raked over.”

 

“I agree, George.” Ada replies calmly. “We have come a long way; however, I was merely reminding Frank that in spite of that, we still have some concerns about his philosophies about life.”

 

“You have concerns, Ada love. I don’t.”

 

“Well one of us has to, if Frank has come here asking for Edith’s hand.” Ada turns her attentions to their young guest. “That is why you are here, isn’t it, Frank?”

 

“Well… I…” Frank stammers.

 

“Of course it is, Ada love. Frank?” George asks, sitting up in his seat.

 

“Well yes, Mr. Watsford. That’s what I came for. I came to formally ask for Edith’s hand in marriage.”

 

George leaps from his seat, dropping his half drunk cup of tea into the tea table noisily, sloshing tea into the saucer in his haste, before he bustles around the small black japanned cane table on which a vase of flowers stands before patting Frank on the back. “Of course! Of course! We’d be delighted, wouldn’t we Ada?” He turns and beams at his wife before turning quickly back to Frank without waiting for a reply. “What took you so long, Frank my boy?”

 

“Well Mr. Watsford, I know Edith and I have been stepping out for a while now,” Frank explains, sighing with relief and smiling at George’s exuberant acceptance of his request for Edith’s hand. “But I wanted to have a few things in place before I asked you.”

 

“Jolly good! Jolly good!” George chuckles delightedly. “Have you got a ring yet?”

 

“I’m not quite there yet, Mr. Watsford, but I’m getting there. I… I also wanted to assure you that my intentions are genuine. I… I love Edith and I don’t want anyone else.”

 

“Well, of course you don’t, lad!” George puffs, rubbing the young man’s right shoulder comfortingly. “We knew the moment we saw you together, that you two were made for each other, didn’t we Ada?”

 

Ada doesn’t reply immediately.

 

“Oh, this is wonderful, Frank!” George shakes Frank’s hands, barely able to contain his joy. “Welcome to the family!”

 

“Now just hang on for a moment.” Ada’s voice cuts in, slicing the joy with its sharp edge. “Let’s not rush into this without a few clarifying things first.”

 

“What?” George asks. He snorts preposterously. “Whatever do mean, Ada love? Frank’s just said his intentions are good. I don’t need anything more than that.”

 

“Well I do.” Ada replies calmly.

 

“What… what is… is it, Mrs. Watsford?” Frank asks, his voice quavering with nerves.

 

“Now, if you’d both just sit down for a moment,” Ada says, replacing her cup on the table, indicating for the two men to resume their seats.

 

Deflated, both Frank and George return to their respective seats.

 

“Now, Frank,” Ada starts, leaning forward in her seat. “I would just like to say that in principle, I am as pleased as my husband is that you’re asking for Edith’s hand in marriage.”

 

“Then Ada…?” George begins, but his wife silences him by holding up the palm of her hand to him.

 

She goes on. “I’d already had words with Edith about the two of you eloping.”

 

“Oh I’d never do that to you, Mr. Watsford or my Gran, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures her, looking earnestly into her unreadable face.

 

“Yes, I’m glad to hear it, as it confirms what Edith said, which was the same as you.” Ada turns to her husband. “Prospects?”

 

George looks quizzically at his wife. “Prospects?”

 

“Yes, prospects!” Ada’s eyes grow wide as she looks knowingly at him. She lowers her voice and whispers, “Remember, we discussed this?” When he looks uncomprehendingly at her again, she adds in a hiss, “When I said you’d go all doolally******* over Frank’s proposal, which you have?”

 

“Oh!” George pipes up. “Oh yes!” He sits up in his seat and turns to Frank. “Now young man, Both you and Edith have told us that you’re trying to improve your lot in life.” Ada scoffs from her seat. Ignoring her, he asks, “What are your prospects for Edith, once you’re married?”

 

“Well, it is true that I am trying to improve my circumstances. It’s one of the reasons why I have held off asking for Ediths hand until now. Like I said, I wanted to get a few things in place before I did.”

 

“Such as?” George’s bushy eyebrow arches over his right eye as he asks.

 

“Well, as you both know, I’ve been doing extra duties at Mr. Willison’s to build up my skills. I don’t want to be a delivery boy all my life.”

 

“No of course not, lad!” George pipes up.

 

“George!” Ada exclaims. “Let the boy finish. I want to hear what he has to say, not you.”

 

“Err… no, of course not.” George blusters. “Go on, Frank.”

 

“Well, I’ve been doing a bit of window dressing and arranging of products for Mr. Willison. I’ve also been taking a correspondence course on bookkeeping, which Edith doesn’t know about.”

 

“Why not?” Ada snaps.

 

“Because I wanted to complete it first and show that I’ve applied the skills before I told her: rather like a surprise, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

“Alright Frank.” Ada softens. “And have you?”

 

“Well, it’s a bit hard to get Mrs. Willison to relinquish anything about the shop’s books, but I did manage to do a bit of bookkeeping earlier this month when she was poorly and in bed. Technically she gave the task to her daughter, Miss Henrietta, but she wanted to do other things in her spare time, so it was reasonably easy to convince her to give it over to me to do, and Mrs. Willison did admit that I did a good job of it.”

 

“Well that’s something, isn’t it Ada?”

 

Ada nods in agreement with her husband, but keeps looking at Frank with an observant stare.

 

Frank continues. “And I’ve been tapped on the shoulder by friends of mine who are part of a trades union.” An uncomfortable look begins to cloud Ada’s features at the mention of unions. “And they tell me that soon there might be an opening or two in one of the suburban grocers for an assistant manager position, which would lead eventually to a position where I’d be running my own corner grocer.”

 

“In Metroland********?” George splutters. “My daughter all the way out there?”

 

“It’s not so bad, Mr. Watsford. The Chalk Hill, Grange and Cedars Estates are all built along the railway line not too far from Wembley Park, so Edith would be able to visit you easily, and you’d be able to come and visit us too. We’d live in a nice little flat above the shop with indoor plumbing and all electrified.” Ada tuts at the mention of electricity, but Frank continues to paint a vision of his and Edith’s rosy future. “The children we have, your grandchildren can grow up attending local schools and getting lots of fresh air.”

 

“Well, since you put it like that, I guess it’s not so bad, is it Ada?”

 

“Well,” Ada purses her lips. “I’m sure that Edith has told you that I hold no faith in that newfangled electricity, but living in Cavendish Mews she seems to have become a convert.”

 

“And a lovely new estate is far healthier for any children that we have, Mrs. Watsford. It’s far better than living in a house in Clapham Junction.”

 

“And how much will this flat of yours cost?” Ada asks seriously.

 

“Around five shillings a week for a two-up two down******** semi********* in the Chalk Hill Estate, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank says, gaining strength in his convictions, filling his voice with a new boldness and surety. “And, if we were to live in a flat above the grocers’ shop, it would be even less, and we’d still have all the modern conveniences like hot and cold running water and an inside privy.”

 

“Nothing wrong with an outdoor privy.” remarks George.

 

“Nothing wrong with an indoor one, either, Mr. Watsford. I only the best for Edith and our children.”

 

“Alright, young Frank.” George backs down.

 

“Now, going back to what I had eluded to before, Frank,” Ada continues. “You’re a good lad, Frank Leadbetter, and I can see that by your thoughtfulness and your manners. I know you love our Edith, and you obviously treat her very well…”

 

“As she deserves, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures her.

 

“I know, Frank.” Ada tempers him. “However, the vehemence with which you spurn your new ideas around is still a bit frightening to me.”

 

“Oh, there’s nothing to be frightened of Mrs. Watsford.”

 

“But these labour unions of yours…” Ada’s voice trails off.

 

“I can assure you, Mrs. Watsford, the unions aren’t bad, and I am not a Communist.” Frank defends himself. “As I said just before, I only want the best for Edith and for the family I hope we will have together. I just want a better world for all of us, and the unions will help with that. However, I swear that I’m not associated with any of those militant factions that popped up after the Russian Revolution. I believe in peaceable actions, discussion and compromise.” Frank looks earnestly at Ada. “I would never put Edith in any danger. I’m a hard working man who just wants a good future. Some of the finer details of it may be different to yours and Mr. Watsford’s, Mrs. Watsford, but at the end of the day, our ideals are the same, and whatever I do, Edith and her wellbeing is central in everything I do, and everything I have planned.”

 

Ada sighs and smiles. “Alright Frank. So long as she is, I can only give you my blessing too.”

 

“Oh thank you, Mrs. Watsford!” Frank exclaims, standing up and walking over to Ada who rises from her seat and embraces Frank kindly.

 

“Good lad!” George says, standing up as well and beaming over his wife’s shoulder, winking at Frank.

 

He reaches down and snatches up two more biscuits from the fluted glass bowl on the tea table.

 

“George!” Ada scolds, not quick enough to catch him this time.

 

He smiles back at her gormlessly.

 

“At this rate I’m going to have to let out that vest of yours, George Wastford!” Ada remarks.

 

George turns to Frank. “Are you sure you want the joy of these moments of wedded bliss, Frank my boy?” he asks jokingly.

 

*Originating in Seventeenth Century England, the term pin money first meant “an allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for her personal expenditures. Married women, who typically lacked other sources of spending money, tended to view an allowance as something quite desirable. By the Twentieth Century, the term had come to mean a small sum of money, whether an allowance or earned, for spending on inessentials, separate and in addition to the housekeeping money a wife might have to spend.

 

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

 

***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.

 

****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.

 

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

 

******The Italian quarter of London, known commonly today as “Little Italy” is an Italian ethnic enclave in London. Little Italy’s core historical borders are usually placed at Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue - the Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell spans Camden Borough and Islington Borough. Saffron Hill and St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church fall within the Camden side. However, even though this was the traditional enclave for Italians, immigrants moved elsewhere in London, bleeding into areas like Islington and Soho where they established bars, cafes and restaurants which sold Italian cuisine and wines.

 

*******Doolally is British and Irish slang for a person who is eccentric or has gone mad. It originated in the military.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

This cluttered and old fashioned, yet cosy front parlour may look realistic to you, however it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

You may think that by 1926 when this story is set, that homes would have been more modern and less Victorian, and many were. However, there were a lot of people during this era who grew up and established their homes during the reign of Queen Victoria and did not want to update their homes, or could not afford to do so, so an interior like this would not have been uncommon in the 1920s and even in the lead up to and during the Second World War.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The old fashioned high backed Victorian chairs with their barley twist detailing and brass casters were made by Town Hall Miniatures

 

Ada’s collection of commemorative plates of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902 and the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911 on the sideboard and the whatnot are all made by the British miniature artist Rachel Munday. The plate of Edward VIII on the far left is a piece of souvenir ware from around 1905 and is made of very finely pressed tin.

 

The bust of Queen Victoria was 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 Victorian Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) vase in the centre of the fireplace has been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys.

 

The Watsford family photos on the mantlepiece are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from various suppliers, but all are metal.

 

The church and castle statues at either end of the fireplace are made of resin and are hand painted. They came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

Sitting on the central pedestal table is the cottage ware teapot Edith gave her mother as a gift a few years ago. 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.

 

Also on the table, the glass dish of biscuits is an artisan piece. The bowl is made from real glass with the biscuits attached and hand painted. It came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The teacups, milk jug and sugar bowl also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.

 

Ada’s wicker sewing basket, sitting closed to show off its pretty florally decorated top, has knitting needles sticking out of it. The basket was hand made by Mrs. Denton of Muffin Lodge in the United Kingdom.

 

The fireplace, the whatnot, the central pedestal table, the embroidered footstool by the fireplace, the brass fire irons and the ornate black japanned cane table on which Ada’s sewing box stand also came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.

 

The sideboard is a piece I bought as part of a larger drawing room suite of dolls house furniture from a department store when I was a teenager.

 

The collection of floral vases on the bottom two tiers of the whatnot came from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay.

 

The vase of flowers are all beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium and inserted into a real, hand blown glass vase.

 

The little white vase in the forefront of the photo is mid Victorian and would once have been part of a tiny doll’s tea service. It is Parian Ware. Parian Ware is a type of biscuit porcelain imitating marble. It was developed around 1845 by the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Mintons, and named after Paros, the Greek island renowned for its fine-textured, white Parian marble, used since antiquity for sculpture. I have had it since I was about ten years old.

 

The ‘home sweet home’ embroidery and the painting on the wall come from online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures, as does the Art Nouveau vase on the left hand side of the picture.

24 carat.

Letter generously translated by xiphophilos; penned by Unteroffizier Jakob Dös and addressed to Jakob Kloos in Schwabenheim. Soldatenbrief I.R. 68. Postage cancelled 20.1.1916 (25. Reserve Division).

 

Argonne Forest ca. 1916, troops unload mail bags onto a small, narrow-gauge railway station dubbed „Mudraplatz“ after General Bruno von Mudra.

Generous wrap worked in Garter Stitch in bias knitting

Brief note on reverse generously translated by xiphophilos; the author writes the photograph was taken on New Year's Day 1918 near Verdun.

 

Veterans of the fighting in the Carpathian Mountains, these fellows wear the distinctive Karpatenkorps-Abzeichen on their caps.

 

The Karpaten-Korps was a German formation subordinate to the Austro-Hungarian 7th Army, which at that time was led by Archduke Karl, the later Austrian Emperor. Their role was to support the Austro-Hungarian forces against the Russians in the Hungarian Carpathians from August 1916 onward.

 

antique-photos.com/en/unidatabase/german-empire/458-karpa...

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

 

Today however, we are south-east of Cavendish Mews, past the British Museum with its classically colonnaded entrance, and beyond Sir Christopher Wren’s architectural masterpiece of St Pauls Cathedral, past Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London started. Within sight of the towering monument to the Great Fire of London* with its golden orb atop its Doric column we find ourselves in the south-east corner of the City of London borough in Lower Thames Street near the Billingsgate Dock at the Old Billingsgate Fish Market**. Here we find Edith, Lettice’s maid, who has travelled here with her beau, shop grocer’s boy and sometimes window dresser for grocer Mr. Walter Willison in Binney Street, Mayfair on their Sunday afternoon off. Edith and Frank have been stepping out together for some time now, and hope to make their arrangement formal soon with an official engagement announcement, and they enjoy spending their Sundays off together. In this case, Edith is mixing business with pleasure. She and Frank have come to enjoy watching the hustle and bustle of the market and have some fresh seafood as a Sunday luncheon treat, but Edith also needs to buy some fresh oysters to serve as hors d'oeuvres for the dinner party Lettice is hosting this evening for a group of her Embassy Club coterie friends - fashion designer Gerald Bruton who lives in nearby Soho and married couple Dickie and Margot Channon who live just around the corner from Cavendish Mews in a flat on Hill Street.

 

Clutching her green leather purse and small wicker basket hooked over her left arm close to her, Edith tries to make herself as unobtrusive as possible to the constant barrage of foot traffic passing through the narrow aisle she stands on the edge of. Old Billingsgate Fish Market is a bustling centre of activity, even though the pre-dawn hours of the handling of fresh catches, and the presence of casual workers and porters has passed. The market is a hive of activity with workers unloading crates, merchants selling their goods, people seeking casual work and the hoteliers, restaurant owners, housewives and maids, like herself, of London buying fish for Sunday luncheon or dinner, or for a meal in the week ahead. Outside the old Victorian market with its ornate cast iron columns, the streets are choked with lorries and horse drawn carts loaded with full and empty crates stamped with different fishmonger names, whilst between them people move precariously in the squashed spaces, coming and going. The sound of blasting horns from impatient drivers, the whinny of horses, the chug of engines, the clop of horses’ hooves, the calls of workmen and the general chatter of people adds to the multi sonorous cacophony of merchants calling out their wares and customers talking, heavy booted footsteps, the slap of fish flesh being tossed about and the rustle of newsprint and butchers’ paper as parcels are wrapped up and handed over into eager hands. The smell of the fish is strong and permeates Edith’s nose, but she doesn’t mind, as fresh fish has always been a treat that she associates with Good Friday fish dinners*** at home with her parents in Harlesden in the north-west of London.

 

Edith moves and presses herself further back against the edge of a wooden counter belonging to a stallholder as a Billingsgate porter walks past wearing his wood and tarred leather bobbin**** atop his head, upon which he balances fourteen round wicker baskets. She looks agog at the towering pile of baskets, amazed at how casual and cheerful the porter seems as he stops in front of another porter who only has two boxes balanced on his head. The latter lights two cigarettes in his mouth, dropping the match onto the water slicked concrete floor where it is immediately extinguished, and then withdraws one cigarette and offers it to the other porter, who smiles gratefully and thanks him as he takes it, and they chat away casually beneath the cast iron girders of the fish market’s roof.

 

“You’re starting to look like the fish being sold here, Edith.” Frank’s familiar voice says light heartedly, slicing through the noisy clamour around Edith.

 

Frank appears before Edith from behind the bulk of rather pudgy fishmonger in a fish blood and gut stained white coverall dustcoat wearing rather incongruously, a rather smart sleek black felt trilby***** hat. In each hand Frank has a sturdy newspaper wrapped parcel.

 

“Don’t be rude, Frank Leadbetter!” Edith responds, releasing the pent-up breath she didn’t realise she had been holding as she waited for her beau to return to her side.

 

“Well I’m sorry, Edith,” Frank apologises. “But you do! A slack mouth and eyes agog makes you look very fish like.”

 

“Oh! Much obliged!” Edith says sarcastically, making a mock bob curtsey. Loosening her hands from where she has them tightly wrapped around her arms, she playfully slaps her sweetheart’s upper arm. “Thank you very much!”

 

“You know me, Edith. I speak plainly, and I speak as I find.” Frank says as he adjusts the parcel in his left hand.

 

“Well maybe you shouldn’t when it comes to how you perceive my look.” Edith remarks a little peevishly. “Especially if it is an unflattering one. My Mum always says that if you can’t say anything nice, then you are best to say nothing at all.” She nods seriously.

 

“Does that mean that when you ask me whether you look pretty in your latest homemade frock you plan to wear to the Hammersmith Palais******, I should say yes, you do?”

 

“Don’t be cheeky!” Edith slaps Frank playfully again before accepting one of the parcels from him, feeling the warmth of it against her palm through her ecru lace gloves. “And anyway,” she adds. “If I want an honest opinion about my looks, I’ll seek out Hilda, thank you very much.”

 

“For a favourable opinion, more like!” snorts Frank. “Hilda doesn’t know the first thing about fashion, or care, and you know it. She’s not the least bit interested in that stuff. The only reason why she even wears anything remotely fashionable is because you give it to her, or insist she buys it.”

 

“Hilda’s not that bad, Frank.”

 

Frank doesn’t answer, but gives her a doubtful look, followed by one of his endearing gormless grins as he starts to tear at the newspaper of his own parcel.

 

“You took your time,” Edith opines as she starts to tear at her own parcel. “That isn’t because you went and bought some jellied eels******* for us to eat, is it?”

 

“As if I’d put cold jellied eels in with hot chips!” Frank replies with incredulity, pulling back the last of the newspaper and holding out the pile of steaming hot golden chips in his palm for Edith to see. Before he can react, Edith reaches forward and like one of the many scavenging seagulls around the fish market and Billingsgate Dock, she snatches one of his chips between her right index finger and thumb. “Here!” Frank blasts. “Now who’s being cheeky?”

 

Edith sighs with satisfaction as she pops the chip into her mouth, lowering her lids with delight as she feels the hot mass of flavoursome potato and batter fill her senses as she chews it. Swallowing she says, ignoring her sweetheart’s remark, “That’s just as well then, because I keep telling you, the best jellied eels come out of the Whitechapel eel, pie and mash house******** in Petticoat Lane********.”

 

“Says you, Edith.” Frank retorts as he watches Edith with beady eyes as she opens her own parcel of hot chips wrapped in newspaper*********, looking for an opportunity to steal a steaming hot chip from her. “There I must disagree with you. The best jellied eels come from right here in the Old Billingsgate Fish Market.”

 

“Have you ever tried the eels at Mrs. Cooke’s**********, Frank?”

 

“No, but I don’t need to,” Frank says with a smirk, as he quickly snatches two chips from atop Edith’s pile. He hurriedly stuffs them into his mouth and gobbles them up greedily, smiling as Edith’s eyes grow wide in surprise before she gives him a forgiving smile that tells him that his sweetheart isn’t really cross with him for taking two of her chips. Swallowing hard with a loud gulp that makes his Adam’s apple bounce up his throat above the line of his stiffened shirt collar*********** and tie, he goes on, “Because the jellied eels here are the best.” He looks at her defiantly. “Have you ever had jellied eels from here, Edith?”

 

“Well no,” Edith answers. Her look becomes defiant as she parrots Frank. “But then again, I don’t need to, since Mrs. Cooke’s jellied eels are the best. We should go there some time.”

 

“I’d rather save my pennies and take you for a proper, slap-up, meal at my chum Giuseppe’s little Italian restaurant up the Islington in Little Italy************, Edith.”

 

“So you said, that first afternoon I introduced you to my Mum and Dad,” remarks Edith as she picks up another hot chip daintily between her thumb and forefinger. “And subsequently, but you’ve yet to take me.”

 

“Well, we’ll have to remedy that,” Frank replies as he takes up three of his own chips with the fingers of his right hand. “And soon.”

 

“I’d like that Frank.” Edith opines with a smile.

 

The pair chuckle good naturedly and much away on their hot chips for a moment in companionable silence whilst around them the hustle and bustle of the fish market continues. “Watch out lad!” a serious voice booms behind Frank, startling him and making him jump. Stepping aside he lets a burly looking porter in a grubby ochre coloured dustcoat with short sleeves over the top of a navy woollen cable knit jumper ease past. The porter pushes a trolley loaded up with long wooden crates stencilled ‘Fleetwood Fish Merchants Association’************* in black lettering stamped crudely against the roughly planed planks of wood making up each box. He is closely followed by a much thinner, more nervous and better dressed older gentleman with a wrinkled face, dressed in a suit and bowler hat, with a silver fob chain************** hanging heavily from his black waistcoat. “There’s a cart waiting outside on Lower Thames Street.” The older man directs with a waving finger that the porter cannot see behind his broad back. As he passes, Frank thinks that with his nose in the air and a superior look on his face, the better dressed man has the appearance and stance of a butler or manservant of some kind. “Be careful with those!” the older man mutters irritably. “They are going to be served at Her Ladyship’s dinner tonight.” Frank nods at Edith with a knowing wink, understanding that she has thought the same of the older man as she sums him up as he passes. “I’m sure ‘er laydeeship and ‘er guests won’t taste no diff’rence wiv these fish once they’ve been fried up good n’ proper, whevva they’s been jostled ‘bout a bit or not.” the porter replies in his Cockney accent with a mirth filled chuckle. “Insolent man!” the toffee nosed butler mutters indignantly in reply. Edith and Frank chuckle again.

 

“So,” Edith says, returning to their earlier topic of conversation. “Where were you then, if you weren’t fetching me the famously good, but not as good as Mrs. Cooke’s, Old Billingsgate Fish Market jellied eels, then Frank?”

 

“What?” Frank asks before looking down and stuffing another claw full of greasy chips into his mouth.

 

“Where were you, Frank?” Edith reiterates, indicating at Frank with the chip she has just picked up.

 

“Gosh! Look at that one then!” Frank mutters through a mouth of half chewed hot potato and batter as he points to another porter in the middle distance who is parting the milling crowd of customers as he walks with four crates atop his bobbin. “How they don’t get a headache carrying those boxes on their heads, I’ll never know! My head’s sore just looking at him. Don’t you agree, Edith?”

 

Edith gives her beau a peculiar look. “You’re being remarkably mysterious, Frank.” Her brow crumples. “Are you doing it on purpose?”

 

“I’m not being mysterious!” Frank says with a disbelieving laugh.

 

“Then stop changing the subject. Where were you?” Edith persists.

 

Frank sighs. “Haven’t you ever heard of a queue before, Edith?” he answers.

 

“Yes, but there is a fish and chippery just over there,” Edith points through the sea of moving people around them to a stallholder selling hot chips and battered fish packaged up in newspaper to the milling crowd. “And you were gone a lot longer than it took for people to get served over there, Frank. And people were queuing.” She takes the chip and slips it into her own mouth, chewing it as she looks expectantly at Frank, awaiting an explanation.

 

“Well, these aren’t just any old chips you know.”

 

Edith pulls a doubtful face, her pretty face screwing up dubiously. “Surely you aren’t going to tell me that these hot chips are better than any others served by any of the other fish and chippery stalls here?”

 

“Now you know that some hot chips are better than others, Edith,” Frank continues, shaking his head. “And he’s the best there is in the Old Billingsgate Fish Market. Says it’s his batter that makes all the difference.” He taps his nose knowingly. “Trust me.”

 

“Well, they are good,” Edith agrees. “But I still don’t believe you, Frank Leadbetter, and,” she adds. “I still think that you are being mysterious, and are up to something.”

 

“I’m not up to anything, Edith!”

 

“I hope you aren’t thinking of proposing to me here in the middle of the busy fish market!”

 

Frank coughs and splutters, spitting out a few pieces of partially masticated chip pulp, which flies through the air, before handing a short distance away on the ground where it is promptly squashed unknowingly onto the wet concrete floor by the old fashioned pre-war Edwardian boot of an older looking housewife in a black three quarter length coat and matching cloche hat with a steely look of determination on her face as she trudges forth with her wicker basket in the crook of her arm. He muffles his barrage of coughs with the back of his right hand, before delving into his trouser pocket and withdrawing a crumpled white handkerchief.

 

Whilst he recovers his breath, Edith remarks with a smile, “Well, I’ll take that as a no, then.”

 

“Are you so desperate… to marry me… Edith Watsford,” Frank huffs as he tries to answer his sweetheart whilst still catching his breath and swallowing gulps of fishy air. “That you’d have… have me propose to you in a busy fish market?” When Edith giggles, he goes on, “I wouldn’t call Old Billingsgate the most romantic of rendezvous to propose marriage in, even if there would be a gawking crowd of onlookers if I bent down on one knee and proposed to you here and now.”

 

Edith chuckles again. “I suppose you’re right, Frank. And, I wouldn’t want you to propose to me here.”

 

“Well, I’m glad we have that point settled then.” Frank sighs with a nod.

 

“Just imagine the stories we’d tell the children on our anniversary when they ask where you proposed, Frank!” Edith chuckles. “Oh, your dad proposed to me in the middle of the Old Billingsgate Fish Market. It was the most romantic moment of my life!”

 

Frank chuckles. “I imagine that!”

 

“But you still haven’t told me why you took so long to come back with the chips, Frank.”

 

“But I have, Edith!” Frank says with exasperation. “I told you, it was the queues. Sidney had the best fish and chips to be had in Old Billingsgate. You have to be patient.”

 

Edith eats another two chips as her greatly reduce pile disappears. “You’re a terrible liar, Frank.”

 

Frank sighs in vexation as he finishes the last of his chips and bunches the greasy paper together in a ball in his hands. “How do you know I’m not telling the truth?”

 

Edith chuckles. “That’s my secret, Frank.”

 

“That’s jolly unfair, Edith!” Frank bemoans, looking imploringly at Edith with large, doleful blue eyes.

 

“Oh alright! I’ll tell you, Frank.” Edith accedes.

 

“Jolly good Edith.”

 

“But I’m not giving away all my secrets.” she adds. “I need to have some advantages as your future wife.”

 

“How?” Frank persists. “How do you know that I’m lying? Tell me!”

 

“We’ve been stepping out together for quite some time now, dear Frank.” Edith says kindly. “So, I’ve had plenty of time to observe you. When you don’t want to tell the truth, you have a habit of pretending you haven’t heard what was said, and trying to change the subject too quickly.” She shakes her head and smiles. “Besides, you won’t look me in the eye when you are telling a lie.”

 

Frank huffs. “Oh alright! Alright! I just ran into a friend when I went to buy us hot chips.” He looks Edith squarely in the eyes with an earnest look as he speaks. “We were chatting.”

 

“That’s better!” Edith smiles. “Now I know you are telling me the truth. What friend?”

 

“Well, he’s one of the chaps who lodges at my boarding house, actually. John Simpkin. But he’s a friend too.”

 

“What, here?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well that just shows you, doesn’t it?”

 

“Shows me what, Edith?”

 

“How even in a large city like London, you can still bump into friends in the most unlikely of places.”

 

Frank holds out his hand as Edith finishes the last of her hot chips. He screws up her newspaper into a ball as she hands it to him. He walks to a nearby dustbin and drops both his and her used greasy papers into it before wandering back over to her.

 

“Well, shall we go and get your Miss Lettice her dozen oysters for tonight’s dinner, then?”

 

“Yes!” Edith says, taking her beau’s proffered arm, with a smile. “I’d like that, Mr. Leadbetter. Do you know who sells the best oysters here by chance?”

 

“Right this way, Miss Watsford.” Frank replies, as slowly the pair of sweethearts meld into the slowly moving crowd, jostling for space beneath the cast iron girders of the Old Billingsgate Fish Market.

 

*The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known simply as the Monument, is a fluted Doric column, situated near the northern end of London Bridge. Commemorating the Great Fire of London, it stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, two hundred and two feet in height and two hundred and two feet west of the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started on the 2nd of September 1666. Constructed between 1671 and 1677, it was built on the site of St Margaret, New Fish Street, the first church to be destroyed by the Great Fire. Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, marks the point near Smithfield where the fire was stopped. The Monument comprises a Doric column built of Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of fire. It was designed by Robert Hooke. Its height marks its distance from the site of the shop of Thomas Farriner (or Farynor), the king's baker, where the blaze began. The viewing platform near the top of the Monument is reached by a narrow winding staircase of three hundred and eleven steps. A mesh cage was added in the mid Nineteenth Century to prevent people jumping to the ground, after six people died by suicide there between 1788 and 1842.

 

**In the 1920s when this story is set, the Old Billingsgate Fish Market was located on Lower Thames Street in the City of London, near the River Thames. It was a bustling riverside market, famous for being the largest fish market in the United Kingdom. The market was housed in a Victorian building that had been constructed in 1876. The first Billingsgate Market building was constructed on Lower Thames Street in 1850 by the builder John Jay, and the fish market was moved off the streets into its new riverside building. This was demolished in around 1873 and replaced by an arcaded market hall designed by City architect Horace Jones and built by John Mowlem and Co., and even though it was a new building, it was still known as the “Old Billingsgate Fish Market”. The building still stands on the site today although it no longer houses a market. In 1982, the fish market itself was relocated to a new site on the Isle of Dogs in the East End. The 1875 building was then refurbished by architect Richard Rogers, originally to provide office accommodation. Now used as an events venue, it remains a major London landmark.

 

***Eating fish on Good Friday is a tradition rooted in religious customs, specifically within Christianity. Many Christians abstain from eating meat on Good Friday, which is the day they commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and fish is often consumed as an alternative. This practice stems from the idea that fish are cold-blooded and therefore distinct from the "flesh" of warm-blooded animals, making them acceptable to eat during periods of abstinence from meat.

 

****Billingsgate fish porters used specially designed hats, often referred to as "bobbins," to help them balance baskets and boxes on their heads. These hats, typically made from wood and tarred leather, featured a flat, hardened top that provided a stable platform for the cargo. This design allowed porters to carry large, rectangular boxes or stacks of round baskets of fish with relative ease and efficiency.

 

*****The trilby hat was invented in 1895, during the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's novel "Trilby". The hat gained popularity as a fashion item after the play's debut in London, and was named after the novel's main character.

 

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

 

*******Jellied eels is a traditional English dish that originated in the Eighteenth Century, primarily in the East End of London. The dish consists of chopped eels boiled in a spiced stock that is allowed to cool and set, forming a jelly. It is usually served cold. Eels were historically a cheap, nutritious and readily available food source for the people of London; European eels were once so common in the Thames that nets were set as far upriver as London itself, and eels became a staple for London's poor.

 

********The earliest known eel, pie and mash houses opened in London in the Eighteenth Century, and the oldest surviving shop, M.Manze in Peckham, has been open since 1902. At the end of the Second World War, there were around one hundred eel, pie and mash houses in London. In 1995, there were 87. In the present day, there are relatively few eel, pie and mash shops left as Londoners’ tastes change, although jellied eels are sold in some of London’s delicatessens and supermarkets for those who fancy the experience of jellied eels at home.

 

********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.

 

*********Fish and chips were traditionally wrapped in newspaper as a way to keep them warm and absorb excess grease, while also being a readily available and inexpensive packaging material. However, this practice is now largely discontinued due to hygiene concerns, with the potential for ink from the newspaper to leach into the food.

 

**********F. Cooke is a well-known name in London's pie and mash scene, with a history rooted in East London. While there isn't a specific F. Cooke shop currently in Whitechapel, their history is closely tied to the area and they are one of the oldest pie and mash establishments, originally founded in East London. F. Cooke's has a strong reputation for traditional pie and mash, including eel pies, and is known for its family-run business and classic recipes.

 

***********Removable or detachable collars were shirt collars designed to be separate from the shirt itself and fastened with studs or other mechanisms. They were popular in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, primarily among men who wore white shirts as part of their business or formal attire.

 

************The Italian quarter of London, known commonly today as “Little Italy” is an Italian ethnic enclave in London. Little Italy’s core historical borders are usually placed at Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue - the Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell spans Camden Borough and Islington Borough. Saffron Hill and St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church fall within the Camden side. However, even though this was the traditional enclave for Italians, immigrants moved elsewhere in London, bleeding into areas like Islington and Soho where they established bars, cafes and restaurants which sold Italian cuisine and wines.

 

*************The Fleetwood Fish Merchants Association (FFMA) is a group in Fleetwood, the fishing town in Lancashire, focused on the fish and seafood processing industry. Established in the late Nineteenth Century, the Fleetwood Fish Merchants Association helps to represent the community of smaller fisheries and fishermen in and around Fleetwood, helping to supply fresh fish to Londoners.

 

**************A fob chain, also known as an Albert chain, is a decorative chain, originally designed for pocket watches, that typically features a T-bar or dog clip on one end to attach to the watch and often includes a fob (ornament or charm) on the other end.

 

This may look like a corner of the busy Old Billingsgate Market to you, with its wooden crates and pallets of fish, but the truth is that this scene is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for un this tableau include:

 

The pallet of fish on ice in the centre of the image comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The fish and all the ice is completely removable, and if you have noticed ice cubes inside some of the wine and champagne coolers in some of my past images from this series, I can tell you that the same ice cubes have been used.

 

Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. Edith’s small wicker basket is another miniature from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.

 

Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the two servings of golden hot chips on the bench were made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.

 

The boxes you see around the fish stall came from a specialist stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay. They have been aged and weathered on purpose.

 

The leaves of lettuce sticking out of the top box on the left are artisan made of very thin sheets of clay and are beautifully detailed. I acquired them from an auction house some twenty years ago as part of a lot made up of miniature artisan food.

 

The brick wall at the back is a very special piece, and one of my more recent additions to my miniatures collection. Made painstakingly by hand, this was made by my very dear Flickr friend and artist Kim Hagar (www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/), she surprised me with this amazing piece entitled “Wall” as a Christmas gift, with the intention that I use it in my miniatures photos. Each brick has been individually cut and then worn to give texture before being stuck to the backing board and then painted. She has created several floors in the same way for some of her own miniature projects which you can see in her “In Miniature” album here: www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/albums/721777203007...

 

The advertising posters stuck on the brick wall are all 1:12 size replicas of real advertisements for Rinso, Gold Flake cigarettes, Hartley’s Table Jellies, Hovis Bread and Bisto Gravy from the 1920s. They have been printed with quality and high attention to detail on thick card. I acquired them all from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

Rinso, was a brand of laundry soap and detergent, which was first introduced in the early Twentieth Century by the chemist Robert Spear Hudson (who also invented Hudson’s Soap). In 1908, Lever Brothers acquired R.S. Hudson, including the Rinso brand. Lever Brothers introduced Rinso to the United States in 1918, marking it as one of the first mass-marketed soap powders. Rinso gaining popularity as a replacement for bar soap. Rinso gained popularity for its effectiveness in cleaning clothes and was widely advertised, even sponsoring popular radio programs. While initially successful, Rinso eventually faced declining sales due to competition from newer detergents like Tide in the 1950s. In the mid-1960s, Rinso was rebranded as "Sunshine Rinso" but sales did not improve. By the mid-1970s, Rinso was removed from store shelves, though Rinso Blue, a liquid detergent, remained available in the US until the late 1980s.

 

W.D. and H.O. Wills, a prominent tobacco company, introduced Gold Flake cigarettes around 1901. The brand became known for its marketing tactics, including the use of cigarette cards to encourage collectability and brand loyalty. At this time, the dangers of smoking were not yet widely known, and cigarette companies were able to advertise and promote their products freely. Over time, Gold Flake adapted its marketing and messaging. While maintaining its association with high quality and a premium feel, the brand expanded its target audience to include youth and lower socioeconomic classes. The messaging also evolved from emphasizing a "gracious" lifestyle to celebrating life experiences. ITC Limited launched the Gold Flake brand in India in the 1970s. The brand was initially positioned as a premium cigarette, targeting the affluent adult male segment of the population. It was associated with a lifestyle of respectability and aspiration. Gold Flake remains a widely sold cigarette brand in India, available in various forms like plain, filtered, and lights. The brand's history reflects the changing landscape of the tobacco industry, including evolving marketing strategies and growing awareness of the health risks associated with smoking.

 

Hartley's is a British brand of marmalades, jams and jellies. Hartley's products are manufactured at Histon, Cambridgeshire. Hartley's was a grocers founded by the entrepreneur Sir William Pickles Hartley in Colne which is now in the borough of Pendle, Lancashire. In 1871, a supplier failed to deliver a consignment of jam, so William made his own and packaged it in his own design earthenware pots. It sold well, and in 1874, the business moved to Bootle, near Liverpool, and marmalade and jelly was also produced. In 1884, the business was incorporated as William Hartley & Sons Limited and in 1886, it moved to Aintree, Liverpool where a new factory was built. Two years after the new factory had been opened in Aintree, Hartley constructed a purpose built village for the key employees in his company. The village was designed by Leek based father and son architects William Sugden and William Larner Sugden after they had won an architectural competition. The village had a total of forty nine houses, which surrounded a central bowling green, and later expansion took the total number of houses to seventy one. Within the village, all of the streets were named after ingredients in jam, including Sugar Street, Red Currant Court and Cherry Row. A second factory in Bermondsey, South London opened in 1901, supplied with pots and jars in its early decades from a facility in Rutherglen, Scotland acquired in 1898. With production having moved to Cambridgeshire in the 1960s, the Bermondsey factory was later converted into luxury apartments in 2003. The Hartley Village in Aintree was made a conservation area in 2011. In 2020, Hartley's No Added Sugar Apple Jelly Pot won the Lausanne Index Prize - Bronze Award.

 

Hovis Ltd is a British company that produces flour, yeast and bread. Founded in Stoke-on-Trent, it began mass-production in Macclesfield in 1886. The Hovis process was patented on the 6th of October 1887 by Richard "Stoney" Smith, and S. Fitton and Sons Ltd developed the brand, milling the flour and selling it along with Hovis-branded baking tins to other bakers. The name was coined in 1890 by London student Herbert Grime in a national competition set by S. Fitton and Sons Ltd to find a trading name for their patent flour which was rich in wheat germ. Grime won twenty-five pounds when he coined the word from the Latin phrase hominis vis, "the strength of man". The company became the Hovis Bread Flour Company Limited in 1898. When the abundance of certain B vitamins in wheatgerm was reported in 1924, Hovis increased in popularity.

 

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.

Not to be outdone by high society ladies who host events, I always try to give that extra 110% at our yearly Memorial Day party. Seen here is a thoughtful arrangement of tampons and maxi pads for our lady friends, quickly dubbed "The Menstrual Garden" - by one of the guys at the party.

Letter on reverse (below) generously translated by xiphophilos: authored on 25.6.1916 in Iseghem Belgium.

 

Pleasingly, Kraftradfahrer Max Eichler wears the elusive motorcyclist's badge on his collar. Similar to the Kraftfahrer badge, photographic examples of these yellow metal badges are quite scarce.

 

Motorcycles were generally used to deliver dispatches and messages between headquarters and were more often than not, restricted to rear echelon operations.

 

_____________________________________________

Notes:

 

Vorschrift: Nr.636

 

Seine Majestät der Kaiser und König haben zu bestimmen geruht, da0 die Kraftradfahrer die Uniformen der Kraftfahrtruppen tragen. Zur Unterscheidung von diesen führen sie auf dem schwarzen Spiegel der Lederröcke an Stelle des Kraftwagenabzeichen ein Kraftrad nach der Allerhöchst genehmigten Probe. Die Inspektion des Kraftfahrtwesens hat das Weitere zu veranlassen.

 

Berlin, den 13.August 1915

Kriegsministerium

In Vertretung v. Wandel

Lumbini | Nepal

Nicole Eisenman’s new sculpture, ‘Love or Generosity’, has jbeen installed outside the New Amsterdam Courthouse. Gender-fluid, and featureless save for a bulbous nose, with mussed hair and chubby hands,this one is a real giant, , about 5 metres high, and it seems taller because of the implied height of its bent posture; at full height it would be twice that size. The formal choice of the bent posture is ingenious, and allows the figure to serve as an intermediary between the large scale of the 10-storey courthouse and the much smaller, human scale. The height of the building is gestured to in the giant’s latent height, while its attention, and therefore ours, is directed to its palm, which, full of intriguing objects, is at our eye level. (humourinthearts.com/2021/05/07/nicole-eisenmans-love-or-g...)

  

*

 

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

 

"Maya Angelou"

 

*

 

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

 

"Mother Teresa"

 

*

 

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

 

"Khalil Gibran"

 

*

 

P.S. This is from a collaborative photo-shooting session with a very dear friend of mine a week ago ... we had such a great fun ..

 

Love ya Nanooo <3

‎Matthew 6 - Giving to the Needy

 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

 

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

 

Macro Monday project – 03/25/13

“6 (six)”

One of the greatest blessings in my life is an insanely generous and loving family.

 

My brother, Ronnie, went WAY overboard for Christmas and bought me a new Nikon D70s.

 

All I have to do in return is fill his house with photos. Not a bad deal. :D

 

Thanks buddy - Love ya!

  

We just got our tickets and exited the Richardson Station to note this arrival. We nailed a few of the steamup shots and gooned Henry when it came time to enter the yards through the depot. I already spied that the Rico vestibule business car brings up the rear. I just had to shoot the remaining standard gauge D&RGW (Dangerous & Rapidly Growing Worse) #683 Consolidation, officially a C28 or Consolidation with 28,000 pounds of tractive effort standing at the station. A consolidation engine configuration has two pilot wheels and eight drivers, 1 and four a side. The pilot wheel help buide a road engine into curves on the line. Made by Baldwin in September 1890, #11207, as D&RG 583, Class 113. It became D&RGW 683, Class C-28, in 1924. Bob Richardson of station name, was the original who bought old mountain railroad gear and stored them at his railroad motel in Alamosa, Colorado until he got the chance to start the Museum in Golden. It was he who lent me the only original of the D,L&NW photo, comment. I think he had railroads running in his veins. But for the tenacity of one man... The collection seems to expand regularly.

 

Be aware that as you exit the depot right here, you will see the separate, new CRRM library building where many researchers have poured over the books that would entail a king's ransom to procure. It's right behind me right here. Real foamers better figure on allotting serious time to that building. I have already read many of the valuable tomes to Mac Poor's "DSP&PRR" that no money can buy now and the "Colorado Midland" masterpiece. I even read the engineer's warning to the new kid fireman to never stick his head out of the cab while crossing the bridge over the Colorado (Grand) River at Aspen, Colorado. Suffice it to say it's wise to listen to your elders. Research is best done across these station tracks, even if only for engineers' warnings.

 

Eddie and I spaced the Christmas Steamup this year but he found there was a "Black on Track" costume event upcoming. He really wanted to see this steam up. We are REALLY waiting for the RSG #20 to return for a steamup. Donate generously at the CRRM.That day will be shoulder to shoulder at the Colorado Railroad Museum; keep an eye on upcoming events on their web site. Outlanders could target Colorado trips with the expectations of hitting an event here in Golden. The entire yard is accessible during weekdays. Someone will have already been here from your home town and/or country. These are the takes everyone is foaming at the mouth to see.

 

Outrageous light here for the bold early steam, IMHO. Steam is a winner in winter but the wind made it a blustery day. Are you ready for some steam? The first excursion was not quite full but is building on this blustery Saturday morning runby. The re-enactors are busy putting on a show now that we took our ride.

  

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

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews. Instead, we have travelled east across London, through Bloomsbury, past the Smithfield Meat Markets, beyond the Petticoat Lane Markets* frequented by Lettice’s maid, Edith, through the East End boroughs of Bethnal Green and Bow, and through the 1880s housing development of Upton Park, to East Ham. It is here that we have followed Edith and her beau, grocery delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, to the Premier Super Cinema**, where the pair are treating themselves to one of their favourite Sunday pleasures: a feature film with a newsreel and cartoon before the main event.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Edith smiles as she looks at the beautifully decorated box featuring a lady with cascading auburn hair highlighted with gold ribbons, a creamy face and décollétage sporting a frothy white gown and gold necklace. She traces the embossed gold lettering on the box’s lid with reverence.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“How so, Edith?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“I should hope you wouldn’t be.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“And?” Frank queries.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Indeed, she did.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

****Starting in the Edwardian era, confectioners began to design attractive looking boxes for their chocolate selections so that they could sell confectionary at a premium, as the boxes were often beautifully designed and well made so that they might be kept as a keepsake. A war erupted in Britain between the major confectioners to try and dominate what was already a competitive market. You might recognise the shade of purple of the box as being Cadbury purple, and if you did, you would be correct, although this range was not marketed as Cadbury’s, but rather Gainsborough’s, paying tribute to the market town of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where Rose Bothers manufactured and supplied machines that wrapped chocolates. The Rose Brothers are the people for whom Cadbury’s Roses chocolates are named.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

********J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Edith’s green leather handbag I acquired as part of a larger collection of 1:12 artisan miniature hats, bags and accessories I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The umbrella comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Mike's from Detroit and I met him while I was out doing some street shooting with some other photographers a couple of weeks ago. We had walked up to the Bean to wait for someone else so I walked around looking for something interesting to shoot while we waited.

 

I spotted Mike and his son, Patrick, poised by a tripod and you know that I can never resist shooting another photographer! So I took a couple of shots of the two of them and continued to move in closer when they didn't notice or acknowledge me. I finally got close enough to say hello. We started talking about photographing the Bean and I mentioned that I wanted to get some ND filters and do some long exposure daytime shots of the Bean. Mike said that he had an ND filter in his bag and very kindly said that I was welcome to use it. I thanked him but said that I didn't have my tripod with me. He then offered me use of his tripod and he began to take his own camera off. So I accepted his generous and thoughtful offer and took a few shots.

 

We talked more and I found out that Mike was here for the weekend from Detroit with his wife and son. His wife was out doing some Christmas shopping while Mike and Patrick went shooting. Mike works for the FBI and is a well-geared hobbiest photographer. We talked about what we like to shoot and I explained my 100 Strangers project and asked him if he'd be one of my strangers.

 

Thank you, Mike, for the kind loan of your equipment and for being number 17 in my 100 Strangers Project. It was wonderful to meet you. I will definitely be contacting you about shooting up in Detroit sometime soon.

 

Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at 100 Strangers Flickr Group

 

Sleeper-cabbed ERF B series TBC620X laid-up since retirement

I've posted a photo of this stone before....but I'm posting this anyway. It looks quite different all bright and in color. I love what Portra does with these tones. Also, I just love this stone.

 

Oakwood Cemetery/ Austin, TX

 

Mamiya 645 Pro TL / Sekor 80 1.9 / Portra 160

 

You know you wanna like me on Facebook!

  

Prints I Tumblr I Twitter I Instagram I Website

  

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’s beloved parents, George and Ada live in their small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street. Although very far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, the Harlesden terrace has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her younger brother, Bert who is a first-class dining saloon steward aboard the SS Demosthenes* and has recently returned to service after a week of shore leave. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. Even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door and doorstep scrubbed cleanly first thing that morning by Ada, 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 laundry and 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!”

 

“I’m in the kitchen Edith, love!” Ada calls back in delight.

 

“Of course you are, Mum.” Edith laughs, walking through the door leading from the hallway and the front half of the terrace and its staircase leading upstairs, and into Ada’s kitchen. “Where else would you be?”

 

Ada is standing at her worn kitchen table, whose battle scars of many years of food preparation and the occasional indelible marks left by Edith and Bert during their years attending the local school, are hidden today, covered by a mixture of snowy white linen and laced trimmed Manchester, as well as stacks of cheerfully patterned tea towels. A large wicker basket sits squatly in an unceremonious way on the worn seat of Ada’s Windsor chair, from which yet to be pressed laundry spills. In spite of the kitchen window and the back door being open, providing some much needed fresh summer air, Ada’s kitchen is still hot and humid. Between the heat given off by the huge blacklead coal range that dominates one whole wall of the small terrace kitchen on which several irons stand warming in readiness for use, and the heat given off my the iron she is using now, Ada has a shiny sheen of sweat on her face and her bare lower arms, exposed beneath her rolled up sleeves. Her cheeks are flushed, and the strands of mousy brown hair streaked with silver that have come lose from the chignon at the back of the nape of her neck hang limply with sweat around her face and ears.

 

“How are you Edith, love?” Ada asks, stepping towards her daughter and embracing her lovingly in a sweaty hug that momentarily makes Edith’s floral sprigged summer frock cling to her back under the pressing of her mother’s slicked arms. Holding her at arm’s length, Ada admires Edith’s flounced home-made frock with its fashionable gypsy girdle** affixed with a small bunch of imitation silk violas and her usual purple rose and black feather decorated straw hat. “You look well, 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 to the fabric she is mid-way through ironing. “Any news yet?”

 

“Not yet, Mum.” Edith says as she places her green leather handbag and small wicker basket on the table and hangs her hat on one of the carved knobs of the ladderback chair drawn up to the table next to her mother’s place. “But I’m satisfied it will come when the time is right.”

 

“And it will, love. It will.” Ada assures herself as much as Edith as she downplays the importance of the engagement everyone in the Watsford family are hoping for.

 

Edith has been stepping out seriously with Mayfair grocer’s delivery boy and occasional window dresser, Frank Leadbetter for a few years now, and even though Edith has pressed, and Frank has sought out permission from both George and Ada to ask for Edith’s hand in marriage, the proposal has yet to materialise. However, as everyone has become acutely aware, Frank cannot be pressed into doing something he is not ready to do yet. No-one doubts his commitment to Edith, but they also know that Frank wants to propose in just the right way, at just the right time.

 

“Shall I pop the kettle on, Mum?” Edith asks hopefully, not waiting for a response as she slips past her mother and over to the range where she checks how full the kettle is, and finding it three quarters empty. “You look quite done in***.”

 

“Oh yes please, Edith love.” Ada sighs gratefully. “I’ve been so busy what with this week’s laundry, including the linens whilst Bert was staying here last week on shore leave, that I hadn’t even thought about a tea, and I am patched.”

 

“Here! Sit yourself down here, Mum.” Edith says kindly, moving the laundry basket off Ada’s chair and placing it on the flagstone kitchen floor, before dragging the chair across the floor and gently encouraging her mother to sit, which she does with a groan, partially from the ache in her lower back from having been bent so long across the table and partially out of gratitude to her caring daughter. Edith glances scornfully at a pair of white linen long bloomers**** with fine laced hems hanging unceremoniously from the basket. “And whose are these, Mum?” she asks, almost accusationally, holding up one frilly laced leg.

 

Ada sighs tiredly. “You know perfectly well whose they are, Edith.”

 

“Old Widow Hounslow!” Edith thrusts the leg of the freshly laundered underwear back into the basket with undisguised disgust. “I might have known.” She stands and wanders over to the rudimentary trough sink built up on two stacks of leftover red bricks that didn’t make it into the kitchen floor and turns the squeaking tap to fill the kettle.

 

“I know your feelings towards Mrs. Hounslow, Edith, and you know mine. Mrs. Hounslow is a venerated widow and an upstanding member of the community.”

 

“I know, Mum. Bert and I have grown up hearing about how old Widow Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.” Edith scoffs as the water pressure, so much lower than that at Cavendish Mews, slowly fills the beaten and stained old metal kettle beloved by her mother. “But an upstanding member of the community?” She snorts derisively. “She might do more for her tenants like you.” She looks with a critical eye around the kitchen whose walls, even with Ada’s regular scrubbing with sugar soap*****, shows the many years of grease and grime upon the ceiling and upper walls where she can’t reach. “I mean it takes forever to even fill the kettle for a tea. There’s no pressure in this water.”

 

“Now, now, Edith!” Ada chides her daughter mildly. “We’re lucky to have running water at all, you know. And don’t forget that if it were not for Mrs. Hounslow, your dad wouldn’t have a plot to go and visit and grow his precious marrows in.”

 

Edith cannot help but smile indulgently at the thought of her beloved father and his endless pursuit to try and grow the best marrows and win first prize at the Willesden Show******, breaking her bitter thoughts about her parent’s mean and penny-pinching landlady and her own former employer, Mrs. Hounslow.

 

“You know I won’t have a bad word said about her, Edith.” Ada wags her finger admonishingly at her daughter from her seat as she reaches down and pulls up Mrs. Hounslow’s bloomers and worries the fine lace hems with her careworn fingers distractedly. “She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings over the years.”

 

“Pshaw!” Edith raises her eyes to the stained ceiling above. “All of which she’s taken back over the years, and more besides, by increasing the rents and doing nothing around the place to justify it.” She turns off the tap, the brass piping ratting and clunking noisily as she does.

 

Edith cocks her ears and catches the faint waft of a jaunty tune being played on a piano in the distance through the open window, over the sound of young children playing in the street and the low purr of a lone passing motorcar. “That’s the ‘Georgie Porgie’ foxtrot********.” she remarks in surprise.

 

“Yes.” Ada remarks. “Mr. and Mrs. Felton finally saved enough money to buy a rather nice second-hand Broadwood********** piano from Mr. Rosenberg’s Loan Office*********** in Kensal Green for Vera to play on.”

 

“Vera sounds quite accomplished, Mum.”

 

“Well, she was taught by the Vicar Dunn’s daughter, Alice**********, and she’s had plenty of time to hone her own skills on the organ at All Souls*********** every Sunday for the last eight years. It’s rather nice to have music to iron to on occasion.”

 

“So, the Felton’s are moving up in the world it seems, what with the introduction of a piano to their front parlour************, even if it is a second-hand one, and a daughter to play it well.” Edith remarks as she carries the filled, heavy kettle back to the range and puts it atop the hob.

 

Ada goes on, “It certainly seems so. Mrs. Felton was telling me when we were waiting to be served at Mr. Champman’s butchery that Mr. Felton has received a promotion at the bank. He’s a manager of some kind now. Don’t ask me the specifics, please!” Ada pleads raising her hands. “It all got lost on me the way she went on and on about it.”

 

“They’ll be too grand for the likes of us soon, Mum.” Edith chuckles as she steps past her seated mother over to the big, dark Welsh dresser that dominates one side of the tiny kitchen and picks up two pretty floral teacups and saucers 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.

 

“There’s nothing shabby about my front parlour, nor our family Edith Watsord!” Ada retorts defensively. “Your dad might not be a manager in a bank, but he’s a line manager at the factory, and that’s an achievement we should all feel proud of.”

 

“Of course, Mum.” Edith lovingly kisses her mother on the head before reaching out and grabbing the battered McVitie and Price’s tin. “How’s Dad?”

  

“Ahh, you know your dad. He’s fine. Work at the factory is good. He’s got a good team of workers apparently, and they are investing in some new fancy machinery of some kind to help make the production line run more smoothly which will probably make things easier for your dad, and so long as I can pack him off to the allotment at least for a few hours on the weekend, and he can keep out from under my feet doing his beloved Sunday Express crossword*************, I’m happy.”

 

“That’s good, Mum.”

 

“Now, thinking of going up in the world, there was quite a to-do at poor Mrs. Hounslow’s.” Ada goes on as Edith slides the biscuit tin between a half-ironed red and white chequered gingham cleaning cloth and the slightly yellowish thin piece of cotton Ada uses atop some of the more delicate pieces she has to press with the iron.

 

“Not that woman again,” Edith opines, with another roll of her eyes as she fetches down her mother’s worn old glazed Brown Betty************** from the shelf. “Must we?”

 

“Well, it’s not so much Mrs. Hounslow, Edith love, as Trixy.” Ada goes on, referencing the rather timid and mouselike creature Edith trained up to be Mrs. Hounslow’s maid-of-all-work before she left for her next position at Mrs. Plaistow’s in Pimlico.

 

“What’s happened to Trixie?” Edith asks anxiously, turning and looking at her mother. “She isn’t hurt, is she?”

 

“No!” Ada chortles in response. “Far from it, Edith love!”

 

Edith stops what she is doing and slips onto the ladderback chair next to her mother and listens as Ada goes on.

 

“Of course, I was expecting Trixie yesterday to deliver Mrs. Hounslow’s laundry for me to do as she usually does on Tuesdays, but instead of her usual tentative rap on my door, there was a much sharper knock, and one I well recognised.”

 

“Who was it, Mum?”

 

“It was Mr. Stilgoe the rent man.”

 

“But you’ve already paid this month’s rent, haven’t you Mum?”

 

“Course I have.” Ada scoffs dismissively. “I was very surprised to see Mr. Stilgoe standing there with Mrs. Hounslow’s washing in its usual bag which he passed to me rather sheepishly.”

 

“So where was Trixie?” Edith asks with excited interest.

 

“Well, I asked Mr. Stilgoe the same, after I got over my initial shock of seeing him at my back door on a non-rent day with his arms full of Mrs. Hounslow’s dirty laundry. It turns out that Trixie: that timid, mousy milksop***************slip of a girl has only gone and given notice to Mrs. Hounslow with immediate effect after getting herself a better paying job as a shop girl at Gamages****************.”

 

“Gamages!” Edith gasps in amazement. “Well! Fancy that! Jolly good for Trixie! I never knew she had it in her!”

 

“Nor did any of us, least of all poor Mrs. Hounslow, who’s had to go and stay at a hotel in Bournemouth for the summer now to recover from the shock, whilst she tries to employ a new maid.”

 

Edith bristles as she listens to her mother refer to the mean old widow as ‘poor’. Mrs. Hounslow’s comfortable Victorian terrace lacked nothing for its owner, the dark, cluttered and overstuffed interiors maintained to her exacting standards as she crept around the house with a pair of white cotton gloves always stuffed into the pocket of her dress, which she would pull out at a moment’s notice to run along a surface she thought not cleaned properly, calling Edith loudly by name from wherever she stood, holding up an accusing dusty glove glad finger to her maid in silent rebuke, before indicating to the underside of a stair banister of the bottom of an ornately carved credenza before thrusting both gloves into Edith’s hand and marching off imperiously without a word. The old widow was always quick to find fault in anything Edith did, even when she had done it correctly. She remembers the many nights she went to bed in the dark and draughty attic up under the eaves of Mrs. Hounslow’s high pitched roof, where any pretence of comfort was completely dispensed with, her stomach growling after her meagre supper of watery broth with few limp pieces of cabbage and some slices of carrot in it. That was all she could muster for her supper after Mrs. Hounslow had dined on a fine repast and then forbade Edith from eating any of the leftovers, which Edith would then be obliged to serve the following day to the old widow who would greedily devour them for luncheon in the grand dining room. Her hands tremble in her lap beneath the table as she remembers her experiences there.

 

“Poor old Widow Hounslow nothing!” Edith snaps.

 

“Edith!” Ada gasps, hurt in her voice.

 

“I’m sorry Mum, I know you will only speak highly of her, and as your landlady, I can understand a little as to why you would be so deferential to her.” Edith breathes deeply as she looks down at the tabletop. “But you didn’t live with her like I did, so you have no idea how hard it is to work for her, and in what shabby conditions she keeps her maid’s room. I used to sleep on a straw mattress, Mum – a straw mattress that was goodness knows how old, that I had to try and bolster up with old rags and cast-offs that old Widow Hounslow told me to throw out. There were no curtains at the window: nothing to keep the draughts out, except the scraps of old newsprint I used to stuff into the gaps around the window frame, and the old flour sack I had to tack up over the window, which old Widow Hounslow promptly tore down when she did an ‘inspection of my room’ because she accused me of stealing her silver grape scissors*****************, which were sitting downstairs in her nice, cosy and warm drawing room exactly where she had left them the whole time, and she knew it. She even withheld some of my meagre wages to pay for the tacks and sackcloth I’d ‘stolen’ from her. Working yourself to the bone from sunup to sundown, day in and day out, only to be starved, accused of thievery, treated no better than a slave and paid a pittance for it, that mean old woman would test the patience of a saint, Mum, and I for one hope she doesn’t ever get another maid. It’s no less than she deserves!”

 

“It can’t have been all that bad, Edith, surely!” Ada replies aghast.

 

“There are always two sides to every story, Mum.” Edith replies, standing up and visibly shaking as she snatches up the Brown Betty from the table’s surface and walks over to the range where she stands, waiting for the kettle to boil, the water inside it reflecting her own temper. “And that’s old Widow Hounslow’s other side. She may do charitable things like help raise money for farthing breakfasts******************, but if charity begins at home*******************, she’s the most uncharitable person I know to people under her own roof in her employ, and that’s a fact.”

 

Ada blanches. “I’m sorry Edith.” she apologises, ringing her hands as she looks at her daughter’s trembling back. “I really didn’t know.”

 

“Of course you didn’t.” Edith spits bitterly. “Old Widow Hounslow has most people fooled.” Her voice softens. “I just wish you’d listened to me all those times when I said I wanted to come home.”

 

“I didn’t know, Edith love. I just thought, being your first job as a live-in maid, that you were homesick. I was trying to toughen you up by refusing to let you come home. Eventually they stopped.”

 

“That’s because I gave up asking, Mum.” Edith murmurs.

 

“I thought your stories were,” Ada shrugs. “Well, faerie tales and girlish fantasies, made up to make me feel guilty for making you go there. And I did feel guilty, Edith love.” She stands up and steps over behind her daughter and presses herself lovingly against her back, placing her hands gingerly around Edith’s waist and rests her head upon her left shoulder, pulling her closer to her. “I missed having you around, and if you’d been a bit more academically inclined at school, we might have gotten you a job working in an office, like Jeannie Dutton’s parents did at Drummond’s Solicitors and kept you home, but you were so good at the domestic arts, and seemed to enjoy them, and being a domestic is a good steady job, and nothing to be ashamed of.”

 

“Oh, I’m not ashamed, Mum.” Edith murmurs softly. “And I’m not angry with you for not bringing me home. I learned to be more independent and what I could expect from some houses, like Mrs. Plaistow’s. I’m just disappointed that things worked out the way they did in that respect. I think of Miss Lettice and how nice she is an employer, when compared to Mrs. Plaistow or old Widow Hounslow.”

 

“Well, times were a bit different back during the war when I placed you with Mrs. Hounslow, Edith love. I was only doing what I thought was best.”

 

“I know Mum.”

 

“And even now with the ‘servant problem’******************** your dad and I read about in the newspapers, I doubt that you would often get an employer as nice and easy to work for as Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“That’s true, Mum. Hilda doesn’t have the easiest time of it, working for the Channons, and Miss Lettice does go away an awful lot. She’s even off to the country this weekend with Mr. Bruton to decorate the house of Sylvia Fordyce the concert pianist, so I can visit you after Frank and I have been to the pictures on Sunday, as Miss Lettice isn’t expected back until Monday, or even Tuesday next week.”

 

“Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely if you could hear Miss Fordyce play, Edith love.” Ada sighs.

 

“Well, that might be a bit hard, Mum, since unlike the Felton’s, Miss Lettice doesn’t have a piano at Cavendish Mews. I think she hates playing the piano, because she was forced to learn it as a child, but wasn’t very good at it.”

 

Sensing safer ground on which to tread, Ada resumes her seat and asks casually, “So how have things been at Cavendish Mews?”

 

Edith pours hot water into the Brown Betty before returning it to the table to let it steep, surrounded by tea implements and ironing before sitting back down herself.

 

“Well, I actually cooked lunch for Miss Lettice’s mum, the Viscountess, Lady Sadie, the other day.”

 

“That’s a turn up for the books, Edith love.” Ada smiles. “Cooking for a Viscountess!”

 

“Oh Mum, I was so nervous. I was looking through my cookbooks of fancy dishes, and even wondered if I might not order in something readily prepared from the Harrods Meat Hall*********************, when Miss Lettice told me that just some roast beef with Yorkshire pudds and vegetables, served with gravy, would be fine.”

 

“Really, Edith love?” Ada asks in surprise. “A roast and vegetables for a lady as distinguished as Lettice’s mum?”

 

“Evidently, the Viscountess is very much like the Viscount in that respect. They like good old fashioned plain country cooking, none of the fancy stuff Miss Lettice and her friends all like. Remember I roasted some chicken for the Viscount a few years ago?”

 

Ada nods. “So, what’s she like, the Viscountess then?”

 

“Well, she was as much of a surprise to me as the meal I served to her was.” Edith admits. “The way that Miss Lettice described her, I was expecting her to be difficult and bark orders at me, like the Viscount did.”

 

“But you told me, that Miss Chetwynd told you, that he doesn’t like women serving at table, and that’s why the Viscount was gruff with you. I imagine the Viscountess, managing her own household, might be more tolerant of that considering how hard it is to get any servants now, let alone ones as conscientious as you, Edith love.”

 

“Well, you could have bowled me over with a feather*********************, Mum. When I came in to clear the dinner plates away after Miss Lettice rang, the Viscountess actually stopped me as I was clearing her place and told me what a delicious meal it was, and how grateful she was to see the household run so well by me.”

 

“Goodness! That is high praise!” Ada gasps. “Miss Chetwynd must sing your praises to her mum then.”

 

“And not only that, Mum, but I was expecting the Viscountess to be some snooty woman with her nose stuck in the air, dripping in diamonds and sitting around haughtily in a tiara, but she was nothing like that.”

 

“What was she like then, Edith love?”

 

“Well not only was she lovely and polite, saying thank you to me when I took her hat and fox fur stole when she arrived, and when I served her at the table, but she also looked far more… well, it’s hard to explain.” Edith thinks for a moment. “I thought she’d have some fancy dress on with a train, and it probably was very expensive, and cost more than what I’d earn in a year, but it was a simple dress which was cream with flowers sprigged on it. She did have diamond rings on her fingers, but only a strand of double pearls at her throat and her hair was pure white and set in a simple and elegant style of fashionable finger waves***********************. Nothing overly grand. She was just simple and elegant.”

 

“I’m not surprised that the Viscountess was older than you probably expected. Don’t forget that Miss Chetwynd is she and the Viscount’s youngest child. There are three older siblings.”

 

“It wasn’t just that, Mum. It was just that she seemed so, so nice and, ordinary - in an upper-class way of course. She wasn’t at all what I was expecting, quite the opposite in fact, to all the stories Miss Lettice has shared about her. She wasn’t demanding or snappy, and she was just so appreciative. She even pressed a small gratuity into my hands after she had collected her hat and fur tippet from me and was preparing to leave.”

 

“Well, it just shows you doesn’t it, Edith love?” Ada asks.

 

“Shows me what, Mum?”

 

“Well, just as you said about Mrs. Hounslow before, there is always another side to the story. The same goes for the Viscountess. Now you know you have nothing to be frightened of, the next time she comes to visit.”

 

*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.

 

**A gypsy girdle became a popular feature of women’s dresses from the mid 1920s, consisting of a wide sash fastened over the hips. It was gathered vertically at the centre front where it was often accented by a fashionable rhinestone, or real jewel, brooch or a mirror image clasp.

 

***"Quite done in" means very tired or exhausted. It's an informal expression indicating a state of extreme fatigue.

 

****Bloomers are a type of loose-fitting, voluminous underwear, historically worn by women. They are typically gathered at the knee or ankle and can be worn under skirts or dresses. While once a symbol of women's rights and a practical alternative to restrictive undergarments, they have also become a fashion statement and a popular choice for comfort and style. Bloomers gained popularity in the mid Nineteenth Century, championed by feminist reformer Amelia Bloomer as a more comfortable and practical alternative to the heavily layered and restrictive clothing of the time.

 

*****Sugar soap is a cleaning solution, often in powder or liquid form, used for preparing surfaces before painting or for general cleaning, particularly of walls, kitchens, and bathrooms. Despite its name, it contains no actual sugar. It's known for its ability to cut through grease and grime, making it ideal for removing dirt, nicotine stains, and old wallpaper paste residue.

 

******The “Willesden Show” was an annual event that celebrated growing fresh vegetables and flowers, with prizes. The show also hosted livestock and pets, with dog-handling, sheep shearing, as well as arts and crafts, and even 'bonny babies' would compete for prizes in large canvas tents. The show later became the “Brent Show” after the Willesden Borough merged with Wembley in 1965.

 

********"The Sensational European Novelty Georgie Porgie: Fox-Trot Song" was a popular song written by famous English pianist and composers Billy Mayerl and Gerald "Gee" Paul's adaptation of the Georgie Porgie nursery rhyme, published in 1924 by T. B. Harms & Francis, Day, & Hunter, Incorporated.

 

**********Broadwood and Sons, a renowned English piano manufacturer, was established in 1728 by Burkat Shudi, initially as a harpsichord maker. John Broadwood, who joined the firm and married Shudi's daughter, eventually took over the business in 1773 after Shudi's death. Broadwood and Sons played a significant role in the development and popularization of the piano, particularly the grand piano. The company has a long history of crafting instruments for the British monarchy and notable musicians. After Zumpe's introduction of the square piano in 1763, Broadwood began experimenting with piano designs, eventually developing his own grand piano in 1777. John Broadwood, along with Robert Stodart and Americus Backers, is credited with the development of the English action for pianos. In 1783, Broadwood patented the piano pedal. By 1784, the company was producing more pianos than harpsichords. Throughout the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Broadwood and Sons continued to innovate, including developments in string tension and the introduction of the upright piano. While piano manufacturing faced challenges in the Twentieth Century, Broadwood has maintained its reputation for high-quality instruments and restoration services. The company moved piano production to a factory in Norway in 2003 before returning to England.

 

**********Pawnbrokers were nothing unusual in towns large and small up and down Britain, or indeed across Europe, with their universal pawnbrokers' symbol of three golden balls suspended from a bar, which may be indirectly attributed to the Medici family of Florence, Italy, owing to its symbolic meaning in heraldry. Operated as a source of short-term loans, using personal property as collateral, customers would pawn items like clothing, jewellery, and household goods, receiving a loan and a pawn ticket. The items were held for a set period (often a year and a week) as security, and if the loan and interest were repaid, the items were returned. Upscale pawnshops began to appear in the early Twentieth Century, often referred to as "loan offices", since the term "pawn shop" had a very negative historical reputation at this point. Some of these so-called loan offices were even located in the upper floors of office buildings to offer a certain level of discretion. These "loan offices" often lent to upper-classes often white-collar individuals, including doctors, lawyers and bankers, as well as more colourful individuals like high-rolling gamblers who had incurred debts they could not pay. They often accepted higher value merchandise in exchange for short-term loans. These objects included wine collections, quality jewellery, large diamonds, fine art, larger pieces of furniture (including pianos) and even motorcars in some extreme examples of "high-end loan offices".

 

**********The vicar of All Souls Parish Church in Harlesden between 1918 and 1927 was Ernest Arnold Dunn. Whilst I cannot find any details about his family life, I’d like to think that he was a happily married man of god and could well have had a daughter named Alice who no doubt played the organ in church on Sundays.

 

***********The parish of All Souls, Harlesden, was formed in 1875 from Willesden, Acton, St John's, Kensal Green, and Hammersmith. Mission services had been held by the curate of St Mary's, Willesden, at Harlesden institute from 1858. The parish church at Station Road, Harlesden, was built and consecrated in 1879. The town centre church is a remarkable brick octagon designed by E.J. Tarver. Originally there was a nave which was extended in 1890 but demolished in 1970.

 

************In Victorian and Edwardian times, having a piano in a middle-class home was considered highly important, often seen as a symbol of social status and respectability, as well as a source of entertainment and education.

 

*************The Sundy Express became the first newspaper to publish a crossword in November 1924.

 

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

 

***************In British slang, "milksop" refers to a weak or ineffectual youth, usually but not always, a male. It's a term used to describe someone who lacks courage, spirit, or determination.

 

****************Gamages began life in 1878 in a rented watch repair shop and, after quickly becoming a success amongst its customers, was established as a London institution. It was founded by Albert Walter Gamage, who soon bought out his partner, Frank Spain. In time it was to grow large enough to take up most of the block in which it was situated, it was unusual in that its premises were away from the main Oxford Street shopping area, being at 118–126 Holborn, close to Holborn Circus, on the edge of the City of London . Gamages also ran a successful mail-order business. Many of those who were children at the time remember Gamages because of its unparallelled stock of toys of the day, and the Gamages catalogue, which was a well-loved gift during the autumn, in time for Christmas present requests to be made. One of the store's main attractions was a large model railway which alternated between a day and night scene by the use of lighting. The railway was provided by a man called Bertram Otto who was German by birth. It received many thousands of visitors every Christmas. Gamages had many departments - a much larger number than modern department stores. There was a substantial hardware department on the ground floor which included specialist motor parts and car seat cover sections. There was a photographic department, and camping, pets, toys and sporting departments, the latter selling shotguns. The toy department was extensive and there were substantial fashion, furniture and carpeting departments and in latter years a small food supermarket. During World War I, Gamages manufactured the Leach trench catapult. Gamages was an extremely successful and profitable store. In 1968 a second store was opened in the Liberty Shopping Centre in Romford, Essex. This had a relatively short life as the whole company was taken over by Jeffrey Sterling's Sterling Guarantee Trust in 1970 and the Romford site was sold off to British Home Stores in 1971. The Holborn site closed in March 1972 and there is now no trace of the store to be seen. Gamages reopened in the old Waring and Gillows store in Oxford Street but this venture was short-lived and closed in 1972.

 

*****************Grape scissors, also known as grape shears, are small, specialised scissors designed for cutting grapes from a bunch, particularly for use at the dining table. They are not meant for cutting the thicker stalks of the bunch but rather for neatly snipping off smaller portions of grapes for individual serving.

 

******************A "farthing breakfast" was a cheap meal, typically offered by organizations like The Salvation Army, the Church of England and other religious institutions and charities to children in need, for a farthing (the smallest coin in the British monetary system). A farthing breakfast generally consisted of a slice of bread with jam or margarine, often with cocoa to drink.

 

*******************The proverb "Charity begins at home" suggests that one should prioritize the needs of their family and close community before extending help to others. While the exact origin is debated, it's widely attributed to Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, published in 1642. However, the concept of prioritizing one's immediate circle is much older, appearing in various forms in ancient Greek and biblical texts.

 

********************The "servant problem" refers to the persistent difficulty in finding and retaining domestic servants, a challenge that plagued many households, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This issue arose from a combination of factors, including changing social attitudes, the increasing availability of other employment opportunities for women, and the demanding nature of domestic work itself.

 

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

 

*********************The idiom "you could have knocked me over with a feather" is used to express extreme surprise or astonishment. It implies that the person is so shocked or taken aback that even something as light as a feather could knock them down. The phrase is an exaggeration used to emphasize the intensity of the emotion. The origin of the phrase is not definitively known, but it likely stems from the idea that a feather is incredibly light and easily blown away by even the slightest breeze. Therefore, if something as insubstantial as a feather could knock someone over, it would indicate that they are incredibly fragile or weak due to being overwhelmed by shock or surprise.

 

**********************Finger waving is a vintage hairstyle technique where hair is styled into S-shaped waves, traditionally using fingers and a comb, often with setting lotion or gel to retain its shape. Waving lotion was traditionally made using karaya gum, and Indian produced vegetable gum. This style, popular in the 1920s and 30s, was known for its elegant and sophisticated look. It involves shaping the hair into waves by pinching and forming ridges with fingers and a comb, while the hair is wet or dampened.

 

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:

 

Sitting on the table is an old fashioned metal iron that would have been heated on the stove to warm it before use. The tiny gilt edged teacup, made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, would have been sued by Ada to splash water onto the crinkles in fabric to create steam to draw out any creases in the fabric in the ways before steam iron technology. The first commercially available steam iron was introduced in 1926 by a New York company called Eldec, but it wasn't a commercial success and would have been well in excess of the means at Ada’s disposal to buy one. While electric irons with temperature control existed in the 1920s, Eldec's steam iron was the first of its kind in terms of combining steam and electricity for ironing. Both the iron and the teacup came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. Around and in front of the iron 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 also came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop. The different stacks of fabrics and linens all came from different online stockists of 1:12 miniatures via E-Bay.

 

Also 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 is a packet of Robin’s Starch, made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. 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. 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.

 

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 which includes Edith’s green leather handbag.

 

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 acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop. 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 Ty-Phoo tea. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Mrs. Hounslow’s lace trimmed, old fashioned Victorian bloomers were acquired through Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

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).

Every little helps...

 

I shot this for the Macro Mondays group theme of Generosity: 21/03/2011.

 

~FlickrIT~ | ~Lightbox~

 

St. Matthew Catholic Church Charlotte. NC. Sunday July 27th 2008. A gym full of food shows the love of our church for the world.

 

The parishioners of St. Matthew again came together to help the poor. The 6th annual Haiti Food drive ran from June 28th through July 27th. Pledging to raise 100,000 pounds of food to help the ultra poor in Haiti, St Matthew was just shy of it's goal as of the morning mass. By the end of the day we had exceeded our goal. The food provided will help feed this mission of about 200 people for 4 months.

 

St Matthew Catholic Church , which is located in South Charlotte just off I-485 at Rea Road, is no stranger to helping the poor. A vibrant ministry, full of opportunities to serve God, has a place you can serve also. See their website for details www.stmatthewcatholic.org/

 

The beneficiary of this particular drive is the Missionaries of the Poor, one of my personal favorites. Viewers of EWTN are familiar with this Christlike ministry, feeding the poor and sick around the world. Fr Richard HoLung and Friends serve God in a mighty way and he personally invites you to join him in his work. You can contact him or make donations directly at www.missionariesofthepoor.org/index.htm

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 she is at home in her drawing room, entertaining her old childhood chum Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy whose family, unlike Lettice’s, are in straitened circumstances owing to Gerald’s father, Lord Bruton, refusing to modernise and move with the times. Gerald has gained some independence from his family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street. His atelier has received some favourable reviews over the last few years and his couturier is finally starting to turn a profit thanks to an expanding clientele.

 

“Well,” Gerald exclaims as he languidly sinks back into the rounded back of one of Lettice’s white upholstered Art Deco tub armchairs. “Who’d ever have imagined you working for Dolly Hatchett again?”

 

Lettice has recently agreed to redecorate the first floor principle rooms of the newly acquired Queen Anne’s Gate* townhouse of Dolly Hatchett, wife of the Labour MP for Tower Hamlets**, Charles Hatchett. Lettice decorated their Sussex home, ‘The Gables’ in picturesque country style in 1921, much to her parent’s horror, firstly because Mrs. Hatchett was a chorus girl before becoming Charles Hatchett’s wife, and secondly because Mr. Hatchett was aspiring to be a Labor politician at the time.

 

“Whatever do you mean, Gerald darling?” Lettice asks.

 

“I always thought I was going to be the only one out of the two of us courting Mrs. Middling-Mediocre-Middle-Class for business!” Gerald replies with arched eyebrows.

 

“Mrs. Hatchett came to me, thank you Gerald,” Lettice corrects. “Not the other way around. And I see you are still being as much of a snob towards poor Mrs. Hatchett as you were when I first introduced you. You have a great deal to thank Mrs. Hatchett for.”

 

“I’m only teasing, Lettuce Leaf!” Gerald counters with a smirk as he uses Lettice’s hated childhood nickname.

 

“Don’t call me that Gerald! You know how much I hate it! “ scowls Lettice. “We aren’t five anymore.”

 

“I know! You are far too easy to tease, Lettuce Leaf!” Gerald persists, eliciting a shudder from Lettice. “Anyway, I know I owe a great deal of my success to Dolly Hatchett. She may only have been middling middle-class when you introduced us, but her circle of influence now has brought in more than a few high profile and wealthy clients for me to dress.”

 

“Aha!” Lettice crows.

 

“However, what surprises me is that you are taking her on again after all that bloodiness*** with your family, what with Chalie Hatchett being a Labor MP and all that, darling.”

 

“Well, Mater and Pater don’t actually know about it yet.” Lettice admits guiltily, casting her eyes downwards demurely for a moment as her face flushes with embarrassment.

 

“Oh!” Gerald opines, cupping his face in his hands and pulling a dramatic face like Munch’s ‘The Scream’****

 

“But I will!” Lettice hurriedly adds.

 

“I thought you were in the bad books with your parents enough as it is, what with your engagement to scandalously lecherous Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.”

 

For nearly a year Lettice had been patiently awaiting the return of her then beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, after being sent to Durban by his mother, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wanted to end so that she could marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Having been made aware by Lady Zinnia in October 1924 that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice had been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he had become engaged to the daughter of a Kenyan diamond mine owner whilst in Durban. Fleeing Lady Zinnia’s Park Lane mansion, Lettice paid a call upon Sir John Nettleford-Hughes. Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John, according to London society gossip enjoys a string of dalliances with pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a aftermath of the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate belonging to her parents, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Selwyn rescued Lettice from the horror of having to entertain him, and Sir John left the ball early in a disgruntled mood with a much younger partygoer. Lettice reacquainted herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate, Gossington. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again at the Portland Gallery’s 1924 autumn show in Soho, where she found him yet again to be a pleasant and attentive companion for much of the evening. Sir John also made a proposition to her that night: he offered her his hand in marriage should she ever need it. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them. Turning up unannounced on his doorstep, she agreed to his proposal after explaining that the understanding between she and Selwyn was concluded. In an effort to be discreet, at Lettice’s insistence, they did not make their engagement public until the New Year. When Sir John and Lettice announced their engagement in the palatial Glynes drawing room before Lettice’s parents, the Viscount and Lady Sadie the Countess, Lettice’s elder brother Leslie and his wife Arabella, and the Viscount’s sister Eglantyne (known by all the Chetwynd children affectionally as Aunt Egg), it was received somewhat awkwardly by the Viscount initially, until Lettice assured him that her choice to marry Sir John has nothing to do with undue influence or mistaken motivations. The rest of the family were equally ambivalent, or even hostilely against the marriage.

 

“Now don’t tell me that you’ve turned against me now too, Gerald darling!” Lettice mewls as she sits forward in her seat. “Oh you can’t! You just can’t! What with Mater and Pater being lukewarm about my engagement at best, Lally being so beastly about the wedding, and Aunt Egg being totally against the idea, I need someone in my corner! Even Margot and Dickie aren’t keen on my marriage to John. Please Gerald!”

 

“Calm yourself Lettuce Leaf!” Gerald replies, sitting forward in his seat, raising his hands in both a defensive and an assuring gesture. “Of course I’m not turning against you! Don’t overreact and jump to conclusions. We have enough drama queens***** at Hattie’s.” He remarks coolly, mentioning the boarding house full of theatrical homosexuals, including his own West End oboist lover Cyril, run by his friend Harriet Milford. “You’re my best friend, and keeper of all my deepest and darkest confidences.” He coughs awkwardly. “Well, most of them anyway. You know I can’t even marry my lover, so how can I possibly stand piously in judgement over your choices?”

 

“You do judge me though, don’t you Gerald.” Lettice counters. “Be honest.”

 

“I can’t say that the path you’ve chosen to take with Sir John is one I’d have intended for you, Lettice darling.” he admits. “I would much rather have seen you happily in a love match and married to Selwyn Spencely, rather than in a marriage of convenience that is more like a business proposal with Sir John. You know I’ve never been keen on Sir John because of his reputation as a philanderer with a string of Gaiety Girls****** in his wake. However, since Selwyn surprised us all by breaking his well fashioned mould of being a decent and respectable chap by deserting you for a diamond mine owner’s daughter, I can hardly blame you for seeking affection elsewhere.” He looks earnestly at his friend across the low black japanned coffee table. “I just want you to be happy, Lettice darling. That’s all. If you say you can be happy with Sir John, then I’ll support you.”

 

“Oh, thank you darling!” Lettice sighs, releasing the pent-up breath she has been unaware of holding on to. “That means the world to me. I will be happy with Sir John.” she assures her friend. “At least he has made sure that I’m going in with my eyes open.”

 

“That’s good.” Gerald opines.

 

“And he has said that he will allow me to break our engagement if I so choose to do.”

 

“That’s even better and very magnanimous of him, although in saying that, it is usually the lady’s prerogative to break her engagement if she so chooses.”

 

“Well, I’m not going to, am I?” Lettice asks rhetorically. “But going to back to my parents and Mrs. Hatchett,” she remarks, carefully steering the conversation back to safer territory. “I don’t think they’ll particularly like it, but since my interior design business has become such a success, I hardly think they can object to her.”

 

“Don’t you believe it, Lettice darling.” Gerald remarks doubtfully. “Sadie will make her opinions clear.”

 

“I’m not so sure she will now.” Lettice counters confidently. “And even if she does, Dolly Hatchett is hardly the awkward, mousy and unsure wife of a banker we met in 1921. I think you’ve done wonders transforming her into the suitable wife successful MP for Towers Hamlets, Charles Hatchett, needs.”

 

“They say that ‘clothes maketh the man’, so why not the woman?” Gerald replies, settling back into his chair. “The power of clothes can be transformative.”

 

“I agree, Gerald darling. She’s so self-assured and self-possessed now. I was really remarkably surprised when we met again! She is transformed.”

 

“Oh she is still little Dolly Hatchett the chorus girl from Chu Chin Chow******* under the layers of crêpe de chiné, satin and velvet, Lettice darling.”

 

Lettice laughs. “She said the very same thing to me when I saw her.”

 

“All the same, transformation or not, I don’t think Sadie will like you taking Dolly Hatchett on as a client again. In Sadie’s eyes she is still, and always will be, a little social climbing parvenu. The fact she is on the wrong side of politics only makes her existence in your life, however transient, all the worse. I think the only sin you could commit that could possibly be worse would be to take on Wanetta Ward the American moving picture actress again.”

 

“Well, luckily for me then, Miss Ward is currently on a break from the Gainsborough Studios******** filming schedule and is in America.”

 

“I thought she was estranged from her parents.”

 

“She hasn’t gone to see her parents. The bright lights of Los Angeles and the American motion picture industry have wooed her. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of those new Hollywood moving picture studios doesn’t offer her a contract.”

 

“Big enough to break the one she has with Gainsborough?”

 

“I can imagine it. You’ve seen her, darling. She is a moving picture star, and if Edith is anything to go by, the kinema********* public will follow her, no matter where she goes, and that means they can make more money with her potential.”

 

“Hhhmmm…” Gerald purrs.

 

“What?” Lettice asks.

 

“Maybe I was wrong about you, Lettice darling?”

 

“Me?” Lettice raises a hand to her throat. “How?”

 

“Well, listening to the way you are talking so openly about money, maybe you are better suited to a marriage of convenience and business arrangement with Sir John, rather than a love match with Selwyn. I can’t imagine the despicable Duchess, Lady Zinna, approving of you speaking so candidly about money!”

 

“Oh pooh Lady Zinnia!” Lettice replies defiantly, flapping her hand at Gerald as if trying to sweep the phantom of the Duchess of Walmsford away. “I won’t have her name spoken here!”

 

However, as Lettice settles back in her seat, smiling, there is a sadness in the corners of her painted lips. Selwyn’s rejection of her by breaking her engagement, and the way she was told with glee and unbridled delight by his mother still hurts her deeply, and for all her bravado with her marriage of convenience with Sir John, like Gerald, she too would have preferred a love match with Selwyn Spencely to a business arrangement with Sir John in her heart of hearts. She sniffs and sighs quietly to herself as she ponders the thought of her upcoming marriage. Whilst she and Sir John haven’t set a date yet, the engagement has been announced in The Times and it won’t be too long before they will have to choose a day, or at the very least a month for their wedding. Long engagements are less popular in the class of Sir John and Lettice’s parents than they are in the middle and lower classes where money must be saved and households arranged.

 

“Thinking of Edith,” Gerald interrupts Lettice’s thoughts. “Where has she gotten to? I thought she was supposed to be making us some tea.”

 

Lettice glances up at the brightly painted clock on the mantle and looks at the sunflower yellow face as it reads ten past eleven. “Goodness, I was so lost in our conversation, I’d completely forgotten our elevenses!”

 

“Well, my stomach certainly hasn’t.” Gerald replies, stroking the pale blue pin stripped cream flannel of his double breasted summer suit stretched over his stomach. “I’m hoping Edith has some of her home made sponge cake for us as a treat. I say Lettice darling, do you think she might?”

 

“I couldn’t say.” Lettice remarks, standing up and sauntering over to the servant’s call bell next to the fireplace and depressing it purposefully, eliciting the hollow tinkling of a bell in the service area of the flat.

 

“Let’s hope so, then.” Gerald replies.

 

“I have to say that’s a rather bold pattern you’re wearing, Gerald.” Lettice remarks, returning to her seat and smoothing the peach, red, blue-grey and black floral pattered silk georgette of her skirt fastidiously across her knee.

 

“Why thank you darling!” Sitting up more straightly in his seat, Gerald smooths his own suit proudly. “American.” he admits with a knowing smile. “I acquired it from a contact of mine in the rag trade********** who traverses the Trans-Atlantic*********** and picked it up in New York. It’s rather fetching, isn’t it?”

 

“Very.” Lettice concurs before adding with an air of desperation. “You will still make my wedding frock won’t you, Gerald darling, even if you don’t altogether approve of my marriage to John?”

 

“Well of course I will, Lettice. Business is business.”

 

“Is that all I am Gerald?” Lettice scoffs jokingly.

 

“And you’re my best friend!” Gerald adds with a cheeky grin and a mischievous glint in his eye. “But I’m not the one you should be asking or talking to about this. Sadie will be the one who will organise your trousseau************ for you.”

 

“Yes, John’s sister Clemance asked me if I’ve spoken to Mater about the idea of her taking over the job of helping me organise and shop for my trousseau.”

 

“Which is why I worry that you are already in enough trouble with this marriage of yours, and your wish for your future sister-in-law to help organise it rather than Sadie, without adding me making your wedding frock and Dolly Hatchett to the mix.”

 

“I’m sure Mater won’t mind if Clemance takes on the job of arranging my trousseau.” Lettice replies with a dismissive wave. “You know how much she hates London at the best of times.”

 

“Yes, but she does rather love clothes, Lettice darling, except mine of course. I’m too close to you and therefore by proxy her, for Sadie to countenance me dressing you for your wedding day.”

 

“She didn’t mind you making Bella’s wedding frock.” Lettice quips.

 

“No, Lady Isobel didn’t mind me making Bella’s wedding frock, Lettice.” He gives his friend a knowing look. “You really need to stop dragging your dainty little heels and put your plan into action if you want to have some say over your wedding clothes. You can’t keep procrastinating. You have to talk to Sadie about it, and soon.” He nods sagely.

 

“I know.” Lettice sighs. “I just dread…”

 

However Lettice is cut off mid-sentence by the appearance of her maid, Edith as she staggers through the green baize door leading from the service part of the flat into the dining room. She and Gerald watch, mesmerised, from the comfort of their seats as Edith slowly traverses the dining room and into the adjoining drawing room, carefully carrying not a tea tray as they expected, but a large and heavy looking wooden crate.

 

“Beg pardon, Miss.” Edith says with a groan, placing the box a little unceremoniously upon the black japanned coffee table. “I know I was meant to be serving tea for you and Mr. Bruton, but this package just arrived for you.”

 

“Oh pooh the tea, Edith!” Gerald says excitedly, his hunger momentarily forgotten as he leans forward and inspects the box with great interest.

 

“Who is it from?” Lettice asks, unable to contain her own excitement as she leans forward in her own seat.

 

“I couldn’t say Miss.” Edith replies curtly, giving her mistress a doubtful look. “The deliveryman simply said that I was to give the box to you in person, and to give you this.” She withdraws a pale blue envelope from her morning uniform cotton apron pocket and hands it to Lettice, before withdrawing Lettice’s silver letter opener and handing it to her as well.

 

“I say! How thrilling!” Gerald enthuses. “A present, and a big one! Perhaps from your fiancée, since he is not adverse to giving you rather lovely and expensive gifts?” he adds hopefully as he refers to the rather large Picasso painting of ‘The Lovers’ that Sir John recently gave Lettice as an engagement gift to his bride-to-be.

 

“Well, I hardly think this is a Picasso.” Lettice remarks, nodding in the direction of the crate, as she slips the blade of the letter opener under the lip of the envelope and slides it along the top of the letter deftly, the paper making a sharp tearing sound as she does.

 

“No, but it could be something equally wonderful, like a piece of Eighteenth Century porcelain.” Gerald adds. “Let’s be a little imaginative, Lettice darling!”

 

Lettice withdraws the letter from the sliced open envelope.

 

“Will that be all, Miss?” Edith asks.

 

“Oh yes,” Lettice says distractedly, waving her hand dismissively at Edith as she focuses on the contents of the letter. “Just the tea, if you could manage it, thank you, Edith.”

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith bobs a curtsey and turns to go.

 

“I don’t suppose you happen to have one of your rather delicious and decadent sponge cakes on then offing, do you Edith?” Gerald asks hopefully.

 

“I might, sir.” Edith answers with a wry smile.

 

“Oh hoorah!” Gerald says, clapping his hands with delight. “How ripping!”

 

As Edith retreats to the kitchen through the green baize door, Lettice read the letter.

 

“Who is this intriguing package from, Lettice darling?” Gerald asks. “I’m simply dying to know!”

 

“It’s from my new client.” Lettice replies as she scans the letter’s contents.

 

“Well I must say!” Gerald responds with outrage. “I never get any gifts from Dolly Hatchett for making her frocks!”

 

“No, not Mrs. Hatchett,” Lettice replies, her brow crumpling as she speaks. “Another client I have agreed to take the commission of.”

 

“Another client. Who?”

 

Lettice uses the edge of the letter opener to prise open the lid of the wooden crate. Placing it aside, a froth of white tissue paper suddenly cascades forth freed from the confines of its prison. Lettice’s gaze immediately falls upon the neck of a bottle.

 

“A bottle of good quality German Mozelle!” Gerald exclaims as Lettice withdraws the bottle and a single dainty wine glass from amidst the paper.

 

“How very thoughtful of her.” Lettice muses with a smile as she puts the bottle and glass onto the surface of the coffee table.

 

Gerald delves into the paper which scrunches crisply beneath his touch as he withdraws a rather lovely vase of hand painted blue and white china.

 

“Is this a gift from your Mrs. Clifford of Arkwright Bury?” Gerald asks.

 

“No, this is from Sylvia Fordyce.” Lettice answers.

 

Gerald falls silent for a moment and looks down at the vase in his hands. “Sylvia Fordyce? As in Sylvia Fordyce the concert pianist?”

 

“The very one, Gerald darling.” Lettice replies. “I’ve taken on a commission to paint a feature wall for her.”

 

“Well, you are full of surprises today, Lettice darling!” Gerald says, placing the vase on the table next to the sleek green bottle of Mozelle. “Rather like a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat. How on earth did that come about?”

 

“Well Sylvia is a friend of John’s, well more of Clemance’s than John’s really, but she wanted to meet me, and she asked me to paint a feature wall for her at her country home. She took me there a few weeks ago.”

 

“My goodness!” Gerald repeats. “You are the lucky one, Lettice! She’s famous for being quite a private person.”

 

“I know, darling.” Lettice purrs in reply with a confident smile. “I’m very honoured. She has a lovely house, and she had Syrie Maugham************* decorate it for her, but Sylvia isn’t happy with the amount of white she used in her colour scheme, and she wants me to inject a bit of colour with a hand painted feature wall.”

 

“Well that’s even more of a compliment to you, Lettice darling, if Sylvia Fordyce wants you to undo something Syrie Maugham has done.”

 

“I agree, Gerald darling.” Lettice continues to purr as she withdraws the lid of one of Sylvia’s ginger jars from the mantlepiece of ‘The Nest’s’ drawing room from amidst the froth of white paper. Placing it carefully on the top of the paper she goes on, “I decided to take some inspiration from her blue and white porcelain, and asked if she would lend me a few pieces whilst she was on tour.” She delves back into the box and withdraws the hand painted blue and white coffee pot and milk jug from the set she drank from at ‘The Nest’, its gilded edges gleaming under the light of the chandelier above. “And this is them.”

 

“And the wine?” Gerald queries.

 

“A gift to,” Lettice withdraws the letter again and scans it. “‘Help with my artistic and creative flow’.” she reads aloud.

 

“Well this is a delicious turn of events for you, Lettice darling!” Gerald remarks. “A commission from Sylvia Fordyce! Fancy that!”

 

“Yes, and hopefully this commission, plus the promise of a favouable review in The Lady************** as assured by Sylvia, might soften the blows of me wanting to control the acquisition of my own trousseau.”

 

“And decorating for Dolly Hatchett.” Gerald adds.

 

“Well,” Lettice sighs, sinking back into her seat, swinging the letter about in her hand. “I might wait until after I get back from Paris and the ‘Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes’*************** before I drop that tiny social briquette, Gerald darling.”

 

“Very wise!” Gerald replies, tapping his nose knowingly. “I can’t wait to get back to Hattie’s and tell Charles Dunnage your news!”

 

“And why is that, Gerald darling? Why would one of Harriet Milford’s theatrical lodgers possibly be interested in my titbit of news?”

 

“Because, Lettice darling, he is a great fan of Sylvia Fordyce. He’ll be fit to be tied and will burst his corset stays when he hears that I’ve touched items that belong to Sylvia Fordyce.”

 

“Oh Gerald darling!” Lettice titters. “The very idea of Charles Dunnage wearing a corset!”

 

“But he does, Lettice darling! He’s so pompous about being a ‘thespian of the Shakespearean age’ and so vain about his looks that he really does wear one to smother his paunch, as he also has a distinct weak spot for anything sweet from Hattie’s kitchen, as you’ve seen.”

 

Lettice and Gerald both burst out laughing, enjoying the moment of their close friendship where they share anything with one another.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

****‘The Scream’ is a composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is ‘Skrik’ (Scream), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is ‘Der Schrei der Natur‘ (The Scream of Nature). The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images in art, seen as symbolizing the anxiety of the human condition. Munch's work, including The Scream, had a formative influence on the Expressionist movement.

 

*****You may be surprised to learn that the term “drama queen”, so commonly used today to refer to someone who reacts to situations in an exaggerated or overly emotional way, dates back to 1923 where it was first referenced in the Washington Post.

 

******Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes.

 

*******‘Chu Chin Chow’ is a musical comedy written, produced and directed by Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, based on the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It was the most popular show in London’s West End during the Great War. It premiered at His Majesty’s Theatre in London on the 3rd of August 1916 and ran for 2,238 performances, a record number that stood for nearly forty years!

 

********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.

 

*********Kinema is an early spelling of the word cinema, and was commonly used throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s when it changed to cinema.

 

**********The slang term “rag trade”, referring to the garment, clothing, or fashion industry, first appeared in common usage between 1835 and 1845, but really began in the Eighteenth Century to describe the sale of rags or second-hand clothes.

 

***********A transatlantic cruise involves sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, typically between Europe and North America, offering a unique travel experience with several days at sea to relax and enjoy the ship's amenities. In the 1920s there were many big shipping lines like Britain’s Cunard and the White Star Line, as well as smaller companies such as the French Line, who traversed the Atlantic with luxury ocean liners, appealing to the wealthy and up-and-coming middle-classes for comfortable business and travel options, and to the lower classes who were still immigrating, albeit in much smaller numbers as a result of immigrant caps, from Europe and Britain to America.

 

************A trousseau is a word used to describe the clothes, linen, and other belongings collected by a bride for her marriage. For an upper-class bride, it would refer only to her clothing, including her wedding frock.

 

*************Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.

 

**************The Lady is one of Britain's longest-running women's magazines. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. It is particularly notable for its classified advertisements for domestic service and child care; it also has extensive listings of holiday properties.

 

***************The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts was a specialized exhibition held in Paris, from April the 29th (the day after it was inaugurated in a private ceremony by the President of France) to October the 25th, 1925. It was designed by the French government to highlight the new modern style of architecture, interior decoration, furniture, glass, jewelry and other decorative arts in Europe and throughout the world. Many ideas of the international avant-garde in the fields of architecture and applied arts were presented for the first time at the exposition. The event took place between the esplanade of Les Invalides and the entrances of the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, and on both banks of the Seine. There were fifteen thousand exhibitors from twenty different countries, and it was visited by sixteen million people during its seven-month run. The modern style presented at the exposition later became known as “Art Deco”, after the exposition's name.

 

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.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The green bottle of Mozelle on the coffee table is an artisan miniature made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire with careful attention paid to the lable, which is a genuine Mozelle wine lable from Germany. The wine glass is spun from real glass too and is also an artisan miniature. It is part of a set of six which I acquired from a high street stockist of dolls and dolls house miniatures when I was a young teenager. The letter opener is made of silver and is an artisan miniature made by the Little Green Workshop who specialise in high-end artisan miniature pieces. The blue and white vase on the coffee table and the blue and white gilt ginger jar in the crate come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. The tiny blue and white coffee pot and creamer are part of a complete set, all of which are hand painted and come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House shop as well. The crate, which I purchased from an E-Bay seller in the United Kingdom.

 

The letter that you see on Lettice’s coffee table is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Famed for his books, Ken Blythe also made other miniature artisan pieces from paper, including this letter, which is contained inside an envelope which even has a postmark. The letter itself, whilst deliberately not in focus in this photo is written in a tiny legible hand! To make a piece as small and authentic as this makes it a true artisan piece. Most of the Ken Blythe books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words of the titles, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The green glass comport on the coffee table is an artisan miniature made from hand spun glass and acquired from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The very realistic red rose floral arrangement to the right of the photo has been made by hand by the Doll House Emporium in America who specialise in high end miniatures. The faceted glass vase on the mantlepiece is an artisan miniature made from real glass. It comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The tulips in the vase are very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature from Melody Jane’s Dolls House Suppliers in England. The telephone is 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.

 

Lettice’s black leather diary with the silver clasp was also made by the Little Green Workshop in the United Kingdom. The pencils on top of it are 1:12 miniature as well, acquired from Melody Jane Dolls’ House Suppliers, and each is only one millimetre wide and two centimetres long.

 

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 Hepplewhite chair 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.

 

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

 

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 east of Cavendish Mews and South of the Thames, past Lambeth to what is known as "the Piccadilly Circus of South London" the busy shopping precinct of Elephant and Castle. It is here that Edith, Lettice’s maid, and her sweetheart, grocer’s boy, Frank Leadbetter, have come for a wander and window shop together. With Lettice still staying with her family at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, Edith has a little more free time than usual, so she and Frank are taking advantage of the opportunity to spend a little bit of extra time together. Edith also wants to visit Elephant and Castle because there are so many shops in close proximity of one another, and unlike many of the retailers north of the Thames, the prices of goods are cheaper. As she plans for a future with Frank, Edith now has her eye on household goods. Emerging from the Elephant and Castle Underground Railway Station, the young couple pass the grand domed and turreted edifice of the Elephant and Castle Estate Building* built of red brick with Portland stone dressings and granite columns, and slowly wander up Walworth Road, a busy thoroughfare congested in both directions with all forms of traffic. The road is lined with two and three storey Victorian terraces with shops all along the street level, many covered by canvas awnings, with red and white ‘blood and bandages’** pointed arches and bay windows on the floors above. The footpaths on both sides of the road are busy with chattering shoppers and browsers: couples like them, mothers and their children, well-to-do suburban housewives and gentlemen in overcoats and hats, all bustling and milling about, walking in and out of establishments and admiring the goods proudly on display in the shop windows.

 

As they walk along Walworth Road, dark clouds roil overhead, swirling about, obscuring the light and tumbling over themselves as the weather takes a turn for the worst.

 

“Looks like the weather is making a turn for the worst.” Frank remarks, looking up and squinting at the threatening sky overhead.

 

“Looks like you’re right!” Edith agrees, grabbing hold of the hem of her plum coloured skirt and black three-quarter length winter coat as a sudden gust of cold wind snatches them and whips at them. “A real storm is brewing.”

 

As Edith and Frank snuggle closer together as they walk along the footpath, hugging the shop windows and doorways they pass, they watch as people hurry along the pavement around them in either direction, their heads bowed down into their collars, or their trilbies and cloches pulled low over their heads to protect them from the wind as their hurried footsteps scurry along the slick paving stones already wettened by an earlier shower. Umbrellas start to appear at the ready in glove glad hands amidst the bags of shopping being carried. Newspapers and other light pieces of rubbish tumble and dance down the footpaths, gaily skipping past them or wheeling and diving amidst the traffic of the noisy thoroughfare skipping between chugging motor cars, lorries and the constant stream of double decker electrical trams and the occasional horse drawn cart with placid plodding old work horses unperturbed by the belching of their mechanical usurpers or the inclement weather.

 

As a large drop of rain strikes Edith’s shoulder, she unfurls her rather battered old black umbrella. “I don’t know if this will survive the storm, Frank.” she admits.

 

“Come on!” Frank hisses. “Let’s take shelter over there!” He points a little further along the Walworth Road to a white and russet striped awning hanging over a brightly illuminated window of a two storey Victorian building.

 

The pair dash along the footpath, joining the game of dodging other pedestrians until they reach their destination, just as a clap of thunder erupts noisily from above, the sound unleashing a torrent of rain. Edith gasps and draws closer to Frank as the heavy downpour hammers the paving stones, splashing off them and splattering Edith’s best pair of black kid cross strap shoes and tan toned stocking clad legs exposed from beneath the hem of her coat. The wind blows the ruffled edges of the awning, sending a shower of droplets hanging from its hem into the air, however in spite of that, the awning provides enough shelter for them to keep relatively dry.

 

A middle aged man in a camel coloured overcoat and white polka dot blue scarf taking shelter with them tips his trilby politely at Frank and Edith when they catch his eye. “Lovely weather for ducks.***” he remarks with a gentle smile.

 

“Yes indeed!” Frank agrees and Edith nods her consensus.

 

“I think this is one of the best places to be, if one must be caught out of doors in weather like this.” the middle aged man opines, to which both Edith and Frank nod in acknowledgement.

 

Not really wanting to engage in conversation with the gentleman, Edith turns away from him and looks through the window of the shop whose awning they are sheltering under, and to her delight, she discovers that it is a jewellery shop. “Oh look Frank!” she gasps.

 

Turning around to join her and observe what she has seen, Frank bears witness to the beautiful sight of the display through the plate glass window on which the name Schwar & Co**** is written in ornate gilt copperplate. Unlike the cold and grey day, the window exudes warmth as light from within is reflected off beautiful pieces of gold jewellery. Stands draped with golden chains and sautoirs***** jostle for space with pads of red and blue velvet upon which are pinned brooches and bracelets, whilst in others, jewel studded rings wink and glitter coquettishly. Edith gasps as she spies first an emerald ring surrounded by diamonds, then a sapphire and diamond one. She smiles with delight. Frank points out a beautiful silk lined Travel de Nécessaire****** commenting on its ornate gold and enamel lidded jars, whilst Edith indicates to a beautifully bevelled hand mirror and brush set.

 

“Just look at those diamonds!” Edith gasps as she spies a necklace of winking, brilliant stones draped along the black velvet lined shelf of the window.

 

“I wish I could buy it for you, Edith.” Frank remarks looking at it with eyes agog as it shimmers and sparkles against the black.

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith scoffs, her greyish purple glove clad left hand coming to rest on his lower right arm affectionately. “Where would I ever wear such a thing, even if you could afford it?”

 

“Buckingham Palace!” Frank booms, with a sweeping gesture, laughing good naturedly as he does. “You could wear it the next time the King and Queen invite you to tea.”

 

Edith’s girlish giggles join Frank’s bolder chortles as they laugh over the idea of Edith, a humble domestic, being entertained at Buckingham Palace by the imperious monarchs.

 

Frank’s eyes flit from a small brooch of gold set with pearls pinned to a lace fichu******* draped over a display stand to a small selection of brooches near the front of the window: the latter gold with either pearls or amethysts set in them.

 

“That looks like Prince Albert!” Edith remarks, pointing to a large profile of a serious man carved in white against a creamy dusky pink background set in an ornate gold frame.

 

Frank looks closely at it before stating, “I think it may be.”

 

“It’s beautifully carved.” Edith observes.

 

“I’d say it’s a large cameo******** carved from agate.”

 

“You’re so knowledgeable, Frank.” Edith remarks with a sigh of admiration. “How do you know all the things you do?”

 

“I read a lot, Edith. You know that! I want to better myself, and the best way to do that is to gain knowledge.” Frank says proudly. “So, I make sure I use what little free time I have, not spent with you, being well read. There’s an old saying you know – a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing – which implies that people who are but a little informed could be dangerous and foolish, so I aim to make sure that I am more than a little informed.”

 

“I admire you for that, Frank.” Edith acknowledges her beau. “You read serious books and build up your knowledge.” She sighs with frustration. “Whereas all I seem to find the time or energy to read after a day’s hard graft are books about cooking or romance novels like those by Madeline St John.”

 

“Well, that’s good too, Edith!” Frank assures her.

 

“Not when you compare it to the things you read, and the things you know, Frank.”

 

“But as I’ve said before, Edith, we’re all good at different things, and you know how to make a cake, which is more than I know how to do! What could be more important than knowing how to feed people, Edith?” Frank says, pulling his sweetheart close to him by wrapping his right hand around her right forearm and embracing her comfortingly.

 

“Yes, but you know so many more important things, Frank: things about the world, like political and social ideas, which I know very little to nothing about. They’re more important than cake recipes, or how to mend a sagging hem.”

 

“There are plenty of politicians who think that what they say, and who they are, are important, Edith, but I can assure you that they aren’t.” Frank replies sagely.

 

“Oh, you know what I mean, Frank. I’m not very political. Not like you.” Edith remarks flippantly to Frank, yet at the same time she self-consciously toys with her blonde waves poking out from beneath her black dyed straw cloche as she speaks. “I mean, I know you’ve tried to teach me, but I can’t help it. I get confused between the parties and what they all stand for.”

 

“You aren’t alone in that, Edith.” Frank assures her. “Politicians are a breed of people who aim to bamboozle with their words.”

 

“Well, I’m relieved to hear that.” Edith admits.

 

“It doesn’t matter, Edith! You’re wonderful enough as you are, and there are things that you understand and are far better at than I’ll ever be. You might think that they are inconsequential, domestic things, but they aren’t! I’m no good to myself because I can’t cook. I have to rely on Mrs. Chapman, my landlady in Clapham to do that for me, and even if she serves me kippers, which I hate, I have to eat them, because I can’t make anything myself as an alternative. I’m lucky if I can boil the kettle for a good brew!” He chuckles light heartedly.

 

Edith chuckles along with him, feeling a little better about herself.

 

Frank looks his sweetheart earnestly in the eye. “One of the reasons why I’ve always admired you, Edith, is because you aren’t some silly giggling Gertie********* like some of the housemaids I’ve known in my time who live around Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico. You aren’t turned by just a handsome face, and your head isn’t filled with moving picture stars and nothing else.”

 

“Well, I do like moving picture stars too, Frank.” Edith confesses guiltily.

 

“Oh, I know you do, Edith, and I love you for that too.” Frank reassures her. “But it’s not all there is in there. You have a good head on your shoulders, and you’re wise for your years.” he acknowledges. “Your parents taught you well, and common sense is something a lot of people lack nowadays.”

 

“Oh thank you Frank.” Edith breathes softly, looking up lovingly into her beau’s face. “Then you aren’t ashamed of me then, just because I’m not the most political person?”

 

“I’ve said it before, but I’ll happily say it again,” Frank rubs Edith’s arm comfortingly. “Of course I’m not ashamed of you Edith, in any way! How could I ever be ashamed of you? I’m as proud as punch********** to step out with you! You’re my best girl.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith wraps her arms loving around Frank’s waist.

 

“I only wish I could afford to buy you a nice brooch like that.” He nods at an ornate gold brooch set with a single amethyst. “Purple is your colour.”

 

“You don’t have to buy me a brooch, Frank!” Edith insists in reply.

 

“I know, but I’d like to buy you one all the same. It will last longer than a box of Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates.”

 

“Mmmm,” Edith smiles and murmurs, “I like them too.”

 

“Yes, but a pretty brooch would look so nice,” Frank breaks their embrace and holds his sweetheart at arm’s length. He picks up the corner of her left coat lapel. “Pinned here for all the world to see that Frank Leadbetter loves Edith Watsford. It’s quite fashionable to wear brooches these days.”

 

“You are well informed, Frank.” Edith laughs in surprise. “And you’re right, but really, all I need is one of those on my finger on our wedding day.” She glances back into the jeweller’s window and nods at a pad of shiny gold wedding bands gleaming in the warm light cast from the lights at the top of the window.

 

“And you’ll get it, Edith,” Frank pauses. “In due course.”

 

“And when is that going to be?” Edith asks, looking seriously into her beau’s face, trying to read his expression as it causes his face to crumple.

 

“Well… well… when the time is right, Edith.”

 

“Isn’t now the right time, Frank?” she asks.

 

“Well… well of course… it could be.” Frank stammers.

 

“Could be, Frank?” Edith shudders as she feels someone walk over her grave***********. “What… is that supposed to mean?”

 

“I just mean I want the timing to be right when I ask you to marry me, Edith. That’s all.”

 

Edith doesn’t say anything straight away, but finally she gazes up at Frank and asks a little fearfully, “You do want to marry me, don’t you Frank?”

 

The question makes Frank feel like he has been punched in the stomach.

 

“Now what kind of a question is that, Edith?” He looks at Edith and sees her face drain of colour as the unshed tears welling in her eyes add a sparkle and glisten to them. “Of course I want to marry you!”

 

“Well, we’ve been stepping out for a while now, Frank, and you still haven’t asked me to marry you.”

 

“Well, I haven’t spoken to your dad yet, and asked his permission for your hand, Edith. First thing’s first you know!”

 

“I know you haven’t!” The tears that have been threatening to spill finally start: one large drop falls off her lash and lands on her left cheek, only to then be matched by one on her right.

 

“I’m just getting up the courage to ask, is all, Edith.”

 

“Well, I don’t see why you can’t ask him now. All that business with me agreeing to move to Metroland************ if you are offered an opportunity to manage a suburban grocers is done now. I’ve agreed, so I don’t see why you can’t ask. I know both Mum and Dad were a little disappointed that you didn’t ask them when you came to our New Year’s Eve party in Harlesden.”

 

“And you obviously were too.” Frank concludes Edith’s unspoken conclusion to the sentence.

 

When Edith nods shallowly, he sighs.

 

“I’m sorry Edith. I don’t mean to upset my best girl, and I know this must be difficult for you to understand, but I’m a man of principles. I want to ask your dad for your hand when I think I look most favourable.”

 

“But that time is now, Frank!” Edith retorts.

 

“Not for me it isn’t, or not just yet at least. I just want my prospects to look good enough to show that I can provide for you and be a good husband.”

 

“But they do, Frank, and you will be a good husband. Dad is very pleased with what you are doing to improve your situation at Mr. Willison’s Grocery, and even Mum is slowly coming around to your ideas of wanting to improve your lot in life. They both know that like them, you want the best for me. When will you ask them?”

 

“Soon.” Frank assures her. “But just not quite yet.”

 

“I think I need one of those clairvoyants I see adverting discreetly in the newspapers.” Edith mutters as she opens her slightly battered green leather handback and fossicks around inside it, huffing and puffing as she does. “They’ll give me the answers I seek.”

 

“No you don’t, Edith!” Frank holds her at arm’s length again whilst she dabs at her eyes with the embroidered lace handkerchief she has pulled out.

 

“You’re dragging your feet, Frank.” she snivels

 

“No I’m not, Edith. Please!”

 

“And I don’t see why. I know you want us both to save a little more money, so that we can set up house together, but just because we announce we are engaged, doesn’t mean we have to get married straight away.”

 

“Perhaps not,” Frank agrees. “But once the cat is out of the bag, well, there is always pressure put on the young couple to set a date.” He looks at her seriously. “Long engagements are not very fashionable, even when they are for all the right reasons.”

 

“Well,” Edith dabs her reddened nose. “Just don’t wait too long, Frank.”

 

“I won’t!” he assures her. “I promise. I don’t want us to quarrel over this.”

 

“Oh I don’t want to quarrel, Frank!” Edith concurs. “I’m just concerned is all.”

 

“Well you have no need to be, Edith. You’re my best girl, and eventually you will be my best bride.” He smiles broadly, albeit a little remorsefully, feeling bad for putting Edith in the position where she feels so upset about sometjing that should fill her with happiness. “I promise I will ask your dad the moment the time feels right to me.” He turns around and notices that the rain has stopped, with only showers of drips being blown from the ruffled awning edge by the wind now. They now stand alone together beneath the awning, with the man in the camel coat gone whilst they have been talking. “Look, Edith! It’s stopped raining. What’s say we go back to Lyon’s Corner House************* at the top of Tottenham Court Road for a slap up tea?” Edith manages to smile, and like the sun coming out from behind the clouds after a storm, it makes Frank glad. “I might not be able to afford a gold and amethyst brooch for you just yet, but I can at least afford that now.”

 

“Alright Frank.” Edith acquiesces with a sniff. “Let’s do that.”

 

*The Elephant and Castle Estate Building was a local landmark in the London suburb of Elephant and Castle between its construction in 1898 and when it was damaged and had to be demolished during the Blitz of the Second World War. The block of buildings was designed to cover the site of the Elephant and Castle Hotel, together with the shops adjoining. The estate formed an island amidst the busy junction of major thoroughfares, and was well known in a very conspicuous position, the headway facing the north, and having a frontage to Newington Butts and Walworth Road. The Elephant and Castle Estate Building contained a hotel. Th ground floor of the hotel was divided into a saloon, luncheon, private and public bars, and the basement had a three-table billiard-room and cellarage accommodation. On the first floor were a double table billiard-room and large dining room, whilst on the second and third floors, fourteen bedrooms and two large sitting-rooms, and on the top floor kitchen and domestic offices and four bedrooms. The rest of the large and conspicuous building was occupied by nine lock-up shops on the ground floor, with basements. The first floor was approached by a fireproof staircase from Newington Butts, and was designed for three suites of offices. The three upper floors had a fireproof staircase, approached from Walworth-road, and allowed for eight separate suites of residential flats. The building was badly damaged by bombs during the war, along with much of the area around it, and in 1965 the new Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre opened on the site.

 

**”Blood and Bandages” is an architectural style that was popular before the First World War where buildings are constructed of layers of red brick with intervening white stone dressings. Normally Portland Stone is used for the “bandages”, but in some cases white plaster rendering or tiling was popular. The rather macabre description of the late Victorian style came about as a result of people comparing the striped red and white of the buildings to the blood and bandages seen so commonly during the First World War.

 

***The expression “lovely weather for ducks” appears to have been in use from the first half of the 19th century. Given its humorous usage it may just be derived from a common reference to the common sight of ducks at ease in the rain.

 

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

 

*****A sautoir is a long necklace consisting of a fine gold chain and typically set with jewels.

 

******A Travel de Nécessaire is an old fashioned style of travelling case. Designed for both men and women they contained necessary toiletry items like brushes, mirrors, button hooks, perfume and eau de cologne bottles, and jars for cosmetics. More elaborate ones could contain such items as travelling sewing kits, notepads, ink bottles, match vestas, hair pin tubes and much more, sometimes consisting of hundreds of items.

 

*******A fichu (from the French for "thrown over") is a large, square kerchief worn by women to fill in the low neckline of a bodice. It originated in the United Kingdom in the Eighteenth Century and remained popular there and in France through the Nineteenth Century with many variations, as well as in the United States. The fichu was generally of linen fabric or fine lace and was folded diagonally into a triangle and tied, pinned, or tucked into the bodice in front. A fichu is sometimes used with a brooch to conceal the closure of a décolleté neckline. The fichu can thus be fastened in the front, or crossed over the chest.

 

********A cameo is a material that is carved with a raised relief that often depicts a profile of a face or a mythical scene. Cameos are commonly made out of shell, coral, stone, lava, or glass. Cameo jewellery has varying quality factors including the intricacy of the carving to the quality of the setting.

 

*********Although obscure as to its origin, the term “giggling Gertie” is of English derivation and was often used in a derisive way to describe silly children and young people, usually girls, who were deemed as being flippant and foolish.

 

**********Although today we tend to say as “pleased as punch”, the Victorian term which carried on through into the Edwardian era when our story is set, actually began as “proud as punch”. This expression refers to the Punch and Judy puppet character. Punch's name comes from Punchinello, an Italian puppet with similar characteristics. In Punch and Judy shows, the grotesque Punch is portrayed as self-satisfied and pleased with his evil actions.

 

***********If you suddenly shudder or shiver, for no apparent reason, it is still likely that you will say that 'someone has just walked over your grave', meaning, of course, the site of your future grave. The first known written evidence for this notion is in Jonathan Swift's Polite Conversation from 1738.

 

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

 

*************J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

This beautiful shop window display may look real to you, however, almost everything in this scene is made up with 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection, except for a few select items that just happen to fit in perfectly amongst them!

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau:

 

Central to our story, the pad of “Weekend Wedding Rings” is a small artisan piece made by an unknown artist which I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. The bras stand with the linen fichu from which the blue necklace hangs also comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop. The gold chain featuring five pointed stars which also hangs from it is one of three pieces of real jewellery I have in this tableau. It is a dainty baby’s bracelet made of nine carat gold that was mine when I was a baby. I still possess it after all these years!

 

The Victorian cameo of Prince Albert’s profile is a second piece of real jewellery and has only recently been acquired by me. Made in 1862 of shell and set in an ornate gold frame, this tiny cameo is only two centimetres in length, yet it is superbly and intricately carved with his undeniable likeness. This cameo would have been in the top range for its fine details considering its size.

 

The wooden tree of gold chains standing behind the wedding rings came from Melody Jane’s Dolls’ House Suppliers in the United Kingdom. All the chains are stuck in place along the arms of the tree.

 

Draped to the right of the cameo is a sparking “diamond” necklace made of tiny strung faceted silver beads. It, the tiny blue bead necklace hanging from the fichu in the background and the three brooches in the foreground in front of the wedding rings and cameo I acquired as part of an artisan jewellery box from a specialist doll house supplier when I was a teenager. Amongst the smallest pieces I have in my collection, the gold and pearl and gold and amethyst brooches, it is really quite amazing that they have not become lost during the many moves I have made over the passing years since I originally bought them.

 

The Christmas I was ten, I was given the Regency dressing table and a three piece gilt pewter dressing table set consisting of comb, hairbrush and hand mirror, the latter featuring a real piece of mirror set into it. The mirror and hairbrush you can see in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph. Like the necklaces and brooches, these small pieces have survived the tests of time and never been lost, even though they are tiny.

 

On the left-hand side of the display, in the background, is a glittering Travel de Nécessaire (travelling case), which is hinged, has an inlaid top and is lined with red velvet. It contains an array of beauty aides any Edwardian woman, or her lady’s maid, would have used including curling tongs (which look like scissors), various perfume bottles, pill boxes and cosmetic jars and a shoe horn as well as a sizable mirror. It has been made by an unknown English artisan. The tiered wooden jewellery box, complete with miniature jewellery, to the right-hand side of the photo in the background, I acquired from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.

 

The small gold lozenge with a leaf motif upon it that you can see in the bottom left-hand corner of the photo is the third and final piece of real jewellery in the tableau. It is a small antique locket of rose gold set with seed pearls (which you cannot see in this shot). Coming from Paris, it was made for me by a jeweller as a birthday gift from some very dear friends.

 

The white lace in the far background is a piece of real antique lace which has been hand made and came to me from a collector of haberdashery in Dorset.

Letter generously translated by xiphophilos; penned 19.10.1917 and addressed to Adolf von Dreden, Haus Uhlenhorst in Elberfeld.

 

The wreckage of a German two-seater aircraft, perhaps a DFW C.V. armed reconnaissance aircraft? A Parabellum MG 14 machine gun can be seen lying relatively intact amid the wreckage.

Generous thanks to Galileo55 for allowing me to use his high quality photo as a basis for this graphic illustration.

 

Galileos’ original photo can be viewed here. Would recommend to everyone to visit Galileos’ interesting photostream.

 

About this vehicle:

 

Dodge produced the WC-57 3/4 ton 4x4 Command Car from 1942 to 1944, part of the Dodge 3/4 ton WC series of trucks. The Command Car was used for transporting officers and for reconnaissance missions. Its distinctive profile made it a target, however, and production was soon phased out. The WC-57 differs from the WC-56 Command Reconnaissance Car in that the WC-57 was equipped with a winch and had a longer frame to accomodate it.

 

The very similar WC-58 Radio Car differed only in the provision of radio mounting racks behind the front seats and additional wiring.

 

The Olive-Drab.com Gallery has a photo of Lt. Gen. Patton with his WC-56 or WC-57 Command Car.

 

Olive Drab - www.olive-drab.com/

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Ahh me! Always in a rush ain’t you?”

 

“What do you mean, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Fanks.” Mrs. Boothby huffs.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“What do you mean, Miss Lettice?”

 

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

 

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

 

“What was, Edith dearie?”

 

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

 

“So?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“A what?” Mrs. Boothby asks.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Waste not, want not.”

 

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

 

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

 

“So?”

 

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

 

“I ‘ope you gave ‘er what for!”

 

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

 

The two women chuckle heartily together over the incident.

 

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

 

“Just like Mrs. Clifford.” Edith opines.

 

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

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

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

 

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

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

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

 

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

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

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

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

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

 

Edith hates answering the telephone. It’s one of the few jobs in her position as Lettice’s maid that she wishes she didn’t have to do. Whenever she has to answer it, which is quite often considering how frequently her mistress is out and about, there is usually some uppity caller at the other end of the phone, whose uppity accent only seems to intensify when they realise they are speaking to ‘the hired help’ as they abruptly demand Lettice’s whereabouts.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

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

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“Mayfair 432, the Honourable Miss Lettice Chetwynd’s residence.” Edith answers with a slight quiver to her voice. Her whole body clenches and she closes her eyes as she waits for the barrage of anger from some duchess or other titled lady, affronted at having to address the maid. A female voice speaks down the line. “Oh Mrs. Hatchett, how do you do. What a pleasant surprise! Yes, this is Edith, Miss Chetwynd’s maid.” She smiles and her anxiety dissipates.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

*********************A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.

 

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

 

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

 

This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures including items from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.

 

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

 

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

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chair upholstered in white embossed fabric is made of black japanned wood and has a removable cushion, just like its life sized equivalent.

 

The Chinese folding screen in the background I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.

 

In front of the screen on a pedestal table stands a miniature cloisonné vase from the early Twentieth Century which I also bought when I was a child. It came from a curios shop. Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects. In recent centuries, vitreous enamel has been used, and inlays of cut gemstones, glass and other materials were also used during older periods. The resulting objects can also be called cloisonné. The decoration is formed by first adding compartments (cloisons in French) to the metal object by soldering or affixing silver or gold wires or thin strips placed on their edges. These remain visible in the finished piece, separating the different compartments of the enamel or inlays, which are often of several colours. Cloisonné enamel objects are worked on with enamel powder made into a paste, which then needs to be fired in a kiln. The Japanese produced large quantities from the mid Nineteenth Century, of very high technical quality cloisonné. In Japan cloisonné enamels are known as shippō-yaki (七宝焼). Early centres of cloisonné were Nagoya during the Owari Domain. Companies of renown were the Ando Cloisonné Company. Later centres of renown were Edo and Kyoto. In Kyoto Namikawa became one of the leading companies of Japanese cloisonné.

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

 

Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie and his wife Arabella. Lettice is staying at her old family home for the festive season as she usually does between Christmas and Twelfth Night*. However, this year she had an extra reason for being with her family this Christmas.

 

For nearly a year Lettice had been patiently awaiting the return of her then beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, after being sent to Durban by his mother, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wanted to end so that she could marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Having been made aware by Lady Zinnia in October that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice had been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he had become engaged to the daughter of a Kenyan diamond mine owner whilst in Durban. Fleeing Lady Zinnia’s Park Lane mansion, Lettice returned to Cavendish Mews and milled over her options over a week as she reeled from the news. Then, after that week, she knew exactly what to do to resolve the issues raised by Lady Zinnia’s unwelcome news about her son. Taking extra care in her dress, she took herself off to the neighbouring upper-class London suburb of Belgravia and paid a call upon Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.

 

Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John is still a bachelor, and according to London society gossip intends to remain so, so that he might continue to enjoy his dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a aftermath of the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate belonging to her parents, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Selwyn rescued Lettice from the horror of having to entertain him, and Sir John left the ball early in a disgruntled mood with a much younger partygoer. Lettice recently reacquainted herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate, Gossington, a baronial Art and Crafts castle near the hamlet of Kershopefoot in Cumberland. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again at the Portland Gallery’s autumn show where she found him yet again to be a pleasant and attentive companion for much of the evening.

 

Sir John also made a proposition to her that night: he offered her his hand in marriage should she ever need it. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them. Turning up unannounced on his doorstep, she agreed to his proposal after explaining that the understanding between she and Selwyn was concluded. However, in an effort to be discreet, at Lettice’s insistence, they did not make their engagement public until the new year: after the dust about Selwyn’s break of his and Lettice’s engagement settled. Sir John motored across from Fontengil Park in the days following New Year and he and Lettice announced their engagement in the palatial Glynes drawing room before the Viscount and Lady Sadie the Countess, Leslie, Arabella and the Viscount’s sister Eglantyne (known by all the Chetwynd children affectionally as Aunt Egg). The announcement received somewhat awkwardly by the Viscount initially, until Lettice assured him that her choice to marry Sir John has nothing to do with undue influence, mistaken motivations, but perhaps the person most put out by the news is Aunt Egg who is not a great believer in the institution of marriage, and feels Lettice was perfectly fine as a modern unmarried woman. Lady Sadie, who Lettice thought would be thrilled by the announcement of her engagement, received the news with a somewhat muted response and she discreetly slipped away after drinking a toast to the newly engaged couple with a glass of fine champagne from the Glynes wine cellar.

 

We now find ourselves in the Glynes morning room where after noticing her prolonged absence, the Viscount has discovered his wife sitting quietly alone.

 

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

 

“I say! What are you doing in here, old girl?” the Viscount asks as she sees his wife sitting at her bonheur de jour** in the corner of the morning room. “The rest of the family is still in the drawing room, including Lally and Charles, who have returned from their visit to Bowood.***”

 

“I’m well aware of that, Cosmo. I heard them come back.” Lady Sadie says peevishly. “And less of the old, if you don’t mind.”

 

“Sorry Sadie.” the Viscount apologises. “It’s having all the young ones around and their new vernacular. It’s ‘old boy this’ and ‘old girl that’. It’s catching.”

 

“That’s alright, Cosmo, so long as it doesn’t catch on, here.” Lady Sadie replies with a cocked eyebrow.

 

“We were wondering where you’d gotten to.” the Viscount says. “I’ve opened another bottle of champagne.”

 

“Have you, dear?” Lady Sadie remarks absently.

 

“Of course I have, Sadie!” the Viscount chortles. “After all, it isn’t every day that our youngest daughter gets married.”

 

“I suppose not, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie replies rather laconically.

 

The Viscount watches his wife as she picks up a studio photograph taken in London by Bassano**** of their eldest daughter, Lally as a gangly young teenager, and Lettice as a girl of seven, both dressed in the pre-war uniform fashion of young girls: white lawn dresses with their hair tied in large satin bows. She sighs.

 

“Sir John is suggesting that we all motor over to Fontengil Park for luncheon, now that Lally and Charles are back.” the Viscount remarks awkwardly in an effort to break his wife’s unusual silence. “To celebrate the good news as it were. I thought it was rather a capital idea! Don’t you agree, Sadie?”

 

Lady Sadie doesn’t reply, instead staring deeply at the faces of her two daughters forever captured within Mr. Basanno’s lens, her look expectant, as if she were waiting for them to speak.

 

“You know, I must confess, I wasn’t too keen on him to begin with, nor the idea of he and Lettice marrying.” He looks guiltily at his wife. “I never really liked him, and always thought him a bit of an old lecher, sniffing around young women half his age, like our daughter. But Lettice assures me that she has made up her mind to marry him, and that there was no undue influence in the making of her decision.”

 

“Undue influence.” Lady Sadie muses in a deadpan voice.

 

“And now that I’ve really met him and chatted with him properly, I actually don’t mind Sir John, even if I do worry that he may be a tad old for Lettice. He’s quite a raconteur, very eloquent and worldly, and he obviously wants to make her happy. He might be just what she needs after all: a mature man who can help guide her in life, and indulge her too. He says he has no intention of stopping her career as an interior designer.”

 

Lady Sadie does not reply to her husband’s observations.

 

“Of course Eglantyne is quite against the engagement.” The Viscount chuckles. “But then, you know her opinions about marriage.”

 

Lady Sadie’s silence unnerves the Viscount as he tries desperately to fill the empty void between the pair of them.

 

“I thought I might get Harris to motor Leslie, Arabella, the grandchildren, you and I over there together.” the Viscount goes on when no opinion is forthcoming from his wife. “It might be fun for Harrold and Annabelle to come for a ride with us in the big old Daimler. Charles and Lally can go in their car with nanny and the baby.”

 

“Piers is hardly a baby anymore, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie opines as she puts down the photo of Lally and Lettice and picks up one of their eldest son, Leslie, as a boy of six in a Victorian sailor suit, with his soft blonde waves swept neatly behind his ears. “He’s two now, nearly three.” She then adds, “Won’t that be rather tiresome for Sir John’s cook, catering for us all?”

 

“We are connected to the exchange, Sadie. He can telephone ahead.”

 

“As you like.” she replies in a rather non-committal way. “Although I might cry off with one of my heads.”

 

“You don’t have one of your heads, Sadie.” the Viscount says darkly.

 

“How do you know I don’t, Cosmo. You don’t suffer them as I do.”

 

“I’ve been married to you long enough to know when you have a headache and when you don’t.” he replies. “And you certainly don’t have one now, even if you say you do.”

 

Putting down the photo of Leslie and picking up one of their second son, Lionel also in a sailor’s suit, and wearing a straw hat, Lady Sadie shudders. His look is sweet, but already at the tender age of three or four he was causing trouble, playing nasty tricks and hurting his nannies and worse, his own siblings. When Lettice was born a few years after the photograph was taken, Lady Sadie had to warn Lettice’s nurses that they were never to leave her unattended in Lionel’s presence, lest he smother her with a pillow, which he tried to do on several occasions when the nurses were slack in their observation of Lady Sadie’s rule or they were caught off guard.

 

“And of course Sir John can take Lettice over there in that topping blue Bugatti Torpedo***** of his.”

 

“Ghastly, vulgar and showy.” Lady Sadie opines. “Tearing up the country lanes as he speeds along them, so that no decent person of the county can walk them any more without fearing for their lives when he’s visiting the district.” She sniffs. “Or so I have it on good authority.”

 

She returns to her perusal of photos.

 

“I say, Sadie,” the Viscount remarks in surprise. “What’s the matter?”

 

“Whatever do you mean, Cosmo?” she asks, lifting her head from a baby photo of Leslie sitting on the corner of a button back****** sofa taken at the same time as the one she has of him leaning precariously against a rocking chair in a silver frame standing on the right side of her bonheur de jour.

 

“You know perfectly well.” the Viscount retorts. “Don’t be obtuse.”

 

“I’m not being obtuse, Cosmo!” Lady Sadie retorts.

 

The Viscount sighs, knowing in order to get an answer, he must play his wife’s game of teasing out the answer from her: a game he is well versed in playing after many years of marriage.

 

“You’re obviously not happy about the engagement, which I have to say surprises me. Why have you suddenly taken so much against Sir John? I thought you’d be delighted by the announcement.”

 

Lady Sadie ignores her husband’s question and picks up a large and ornate framed photograph of a wedding group taken in the early years of the Twentieth Century. It features a rather beaky looking bride in a pretty lace covered white wedding dress and a splendid black feather covered Edwardian picture hat. Her groom, dressed in his Sunday best suit with a boutonnière******* in his lapel and a derby on his head sits back in his seat, looking very proud. Around them stand various men and women in their Edwardian best, but the flat caps and mismatched jackets and trousers of the men and similarly mismatched outfits of the ladies suggest that this is not an upper-class wedding. In front of the bride a five year old Lettice stands proudly dressed as a flower girl in a white lace dress with ribbons in her hair, clutching a bouquet.

 

“Didn’t you take that photograph with your first Box Brownie********, Sadie?” the Viscount asks as he walks over and stands next to his wife and looks at the photograph.

 

“Yes, I did, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie acknowledges. “How good of you to remember.”

 

“Oh, who could forget that occasion?” the Viscount chortles sadly. “That was poor Elsie Bucknell’s wedding to that wastrel who turned her head with all his talk of being a tailor to all the great and good of Swindon, when in fact he was nothing but a con man from Manchester.”

 

“You were very good to settle the debts he left her with after he and his real wife absconded with all her money.” Sadie says, pointing at the rather pretty woman in white and a neat picture hat sitting to the groom’s right.

 

“Well, it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? As lord of manor, it was my duty to support her, poor jilted woman.”

 

“Yes, the right thing.” Lady Sadie agrees with a sigh. “You’ve always done the right thing, Cosmo.”

 

“Well, I also did encourage her to marry him when she asked my opinion of him.”

 

“You’ve not always been the best judge of character, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie remarks.

 

The Viscount laughs. “What does that say about me choosing you as my bride then, Sadie?”

 

“I did imply that your poor judgements of character only happen sometimes, not always.” She runs her fingers over the glass in front of Lettice’s smiling face. “Lettice was as pleased as punch to be the flower girl at that wedding. Do you remember?”

 

“I do believe she thought all the smiles and gushing of the adulating congregation were for her and not for Elise behind her.”

 

“I do believe you are right, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie chuckles. “Did you know that’s why they call them, ‘Flappers’?”

 

“Who dear?”

 

“The newspapers and magazines.” Lady Sadie muses. “I found out not all that long ago, from Geraldine Evans of all people, if you can believe it,” she remarks with another chuckle, mentioning the elder of two genteel spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house, in Glynes village. “She told me that they call the young girls of the Bright Young Things********* ‘Flappers’ because it refers to the fact that when they were girls and their hair was still down, it was tied by flapping ribbons or tied in pigtails that flapped.” She points to the big bow in the young Lettice’s hair.

 

“No. No, I didn’t know.” the Viscount replies a little awkwardly. “Look, what’s all this got to do wi…”

 

“Thinking of the right thing, Cosmo, I really should take this photo out of the frame, what with all the sad connotations it has, but I can’t quite bear to do it.” Lady Sadie goes on, interrupting her husband. “I’m rather proud of this photograph.”

 

“There’s no need. Elise has long since left Glynes after all the scandal, so she won’t know. Anyway, it’s a very good shot, Sadie.” her husband agrees, putting his hand around her and giving her right shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

 

“I’ve never been what you’d call artistic, like Eglantyne,” Lady Sadie says, referring to her husband’s favourite younger sibling, who is an artist of some renown in London. “Or like Lettice, but I’m not bad at taking photographs.”

 

“I think you’re a dab hand at it, Sadie my dear.” He rubs his wife’s right forearm, and bestows a kiss on her greyish white waves atop her head. “Far better than me, or Leslie. But I ask again, what’s any of this to do with Sir John, and your sudden dislike of him?”

 

“You know, you think you know what, or who your children will become,” Lady Sadie says wistfully, replacing the photograph in the frame back on the surface of her bonheur de jour. “And yet, they always surprise you.”

 

“Oh, I don’t think either Leslie or Lally have been particularly surprising.” the Viscount retorts.

 

“No?”

 

“No. As the eldest son, Leslie has turned out to be the fine heir to the Glynes estate that we always wanted. He’s responsible, and goodness knows his insight and forward thinking has prevented us from finding ourselves in the straitened circumstances that the Brutons or poor Nigel Tyrwhitt and Isobel are in now. And now that he’s married, it will only be a matter of time before he and Arabella give us a grandson to carry on the Chetwynd line and one day become the next Viscount Wrexham.” He smiles indulgently at the thought. “And Lally’s marriage to Charles Lanchenbury is all we could hope for, for her. I mean, Charles may not inherit a hereditary title from old Lanchenbury, which is a bit of a pity. But still, he’s a successful businessman and she’ll never wont for anything. She seems to rather enjoy playing lady or the manor in High Wycombe with her brood.”

 

“Oh yes.”

 

“Lionel was a surprising one.” The Viscount picks up the photograph of his second son in his Victorian sailor’s outfit and wide brimmed straw hat that his wife had held before. “Who would have imagined that behind such an angelic face lurked the depraved character of the devil incarnate?” He feels his wife shudder again at the thought of their wayward son beneath his hand. “There, there, Sadie my dear.” he coos. “The further away from us he is, the less we have to think about him,” He heaves a great sigh of regret. “Or deal with his messy affairs.”

 

“You know I received a letter from him yesterday?” Lady Sadie asks.

 

“No.”

 

“Yes,” Lady Sadie snorts derisively. “From Durban of places, would you believe?”

 

“The same as young Spencely.”

 

“Yes! Isn’t that a coincidence? It was quite a good letter actually, and the first I’ve had since Leslie’s wedding where he doesn’t implore me to ask you to bring him back here. He writes that he went to Durban to show off two of his new Thoroughbreds to a perspective buyer: some playboy horse racing son of a nouveau riche businessman. It sounds like he’s had a bit of luck, as he seems quite flush at the moment, going to nightclubs and the like down there.”

 

“Squandering his earnings on gambling, women and god knows what else, down there, I’ll warrant.” the Viscount opines gruffly.

 

“No doubt.” Lady Sadie sighs.

 

“Poor Lettice.” the Viscount adds in a softer tone, as his mind shifts to his youngest daughter’s heartbreak at the hands of Selwyn Spencely.

 

“Aahh, and then there was Lettice.” Lady Sadie remarks, taking up a round gold frame featuring a studio photograph of a beaming Lettice at age ten in a smart winter coat and large brimmed hat, full of confidence sitting before the camera. “The most surprising child of all, not least of all because she was a surprise late pregnancy for me.”

 

“Oh, Lettice is no surprise to me, Sadie.” the Viscount retorts. “I mean, Eglantyne picked her as having an artistic temperament right from the beginning, and she was right. I knew she had more brains than our Lally has, which is why I gave her all those extra lessons.”

 

“You indulged her, Cosmo!” Lady Sadie remarks. “You’ve always spoiled her. So does Eglantyne. She’s your pet, and hers too.”

 

“Every bit as much as Leslie is yours, Sadie.” He points to the silver framed portrait of Leslie.

 

“You were the one who encouraged her to start up this ridiculous interior decoration nonsense.”

 

“Well, in reality it was really Eglantyne who drew my attention to her flair for design, but I’m glad that she did. Look at the successes she has had! She runs her own business, with very few hiccups or missteps,” He momentarily remembers the kerfuffle that there was with Lettice signing a contract drawn up by Lady Gladys Caxton’s lawyers without consulting the Chetwynd family lawyers. “And she’s very good at keeping accounts.”

 

“Excellent, she’ll make the perfect bookkeeper.” Lady Sadie remarks sarcastically.

 

“It will put her in good stead for running Sir John’s households, Sadie.” the Viscount tempers. “Goodness knows he has enough of them. And she has received accolades from Henry Tipping**********, printed in Country Life********** for all to see, and that is fine feather for her cap, you must confess.”

 

“I don’t deny that.” Lady Sadie agrees somewhat reluctantly.

 

“No, I always knew Lettice would be the greatest success of all our children.” the Viscount says proudly.

 

“Did you, Cosmo?”

 

“Of course I did, Sadie. I understand her.”

 

“You!” Lady Sadie scoffs. “You may decry that you love your youngest and favourite daughter so well, Cosmo, and without a doubt, you do. However, whatever you say, you don’t understand Lettice.”

 

“And you do, Sadie?” the Viscount retorts hotly. “When she comes home to lick her wounds after Zinnia sent Selwyn away, craving comfort, you drove her from the house, telling her she needed to throw herself into the social rounds, rather than stop and miss him. Is that understanding?” He folds his arms akimbo and looks away from his wife in disgust. “No wonder she kept her engagement to Sir John a secret for the last month or so, since you suddenly seem to despise her husband-to-be: a man whom I should like to point out, you thought was perfectly suitable for her not so very long ago. Sir John may not have the title of duke, but he has a title nonetheless, and I have no doubt that his fortune is equal to that of the Duke of Walmsford.”

 

“You misunderstand me, and my motives, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie replies, hurt by his words, but also resigned to the fact that he believes them. “As always, I am portrayed like one of Mrs. Maingot’s derided pantomime villains in the Glynes Christmas play.”

 

“If the cap fits, Sadie.”

 

“See, you think I don’t understand my children, but I assure you that, aside from Lionel, I do.”

 

“Who could ever understand that child of the devil, Sadie?”

 

“Indeed, well aside from our errant black sheep, I understand the others. You love them, Cosmo, probably far more than me, but I on the other hand, understand them.”

 

“How so, Sadie?”

 

“You misalign my actions because you don’t understand them, either. When Lettice came here after Zinnia packed Selwyn off to Durban, what did you do? You gave her a place to shelter, yes, but you mollycoddled her: feeding her shortbreads and allowing her to retreat from the world.”

 

“Well, that’s what she needed, Sadie.”

 

“No. That’s where you are wrong, Cosmo. She didn’t need mollycoddling. It just made things worse. It amplified her situation and how she felt as you allowed her to spend her empty days brooding. Lettice is apt to brood, when given the opportunity. What she really needed was to be told that the sun will still rise and set, in spite of her own innermost turmoil, and what she needed was to be sent back out into the world, so that she could be distracted, and build up her resilience. That’s what she needed, Cosmo, and I helped her achieve that. And that, my dear, is what I mean by truly understanding Lettice. Believe it or not, I understand her as a young woman, and I understand what she needs.”

 

“Well, if you wanted to build resilience in her, that’s what you’ve achieved, and admirably at that. Selwyn jilts our daughter and what does she do? Rather than moping, which is what you seem to think I would have encouraged her to do, she went out and got herself engaged to one of the most eligible bachelors in the county, in England no less. Yet you don’t seem at all happy about the engagement, even though you put Sir John into the mix at the Hunt Ball that you used as a marriage market for Lettice.”

 

“Once again, Cosmo, you see your daughter, but you don’t understand her.”

 

“Then pray enlighten me, Sadie because I certainly don’t understand you right at this moment.”

 

“Lettice’s heart is breaking, and ever since she was a child, when her heart is broken, she lashes out, like when Mopsy died. Remember her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel?”

 

“How could I forget that beautiful dog. But surely you aren’t comparing her tears and tantrums as a seven year old child, to now, Sadie? There are no tears this time, no tantrums.”

 

“But that’s where you are wrong, Cosmo. This is her tantrum. It just isn’t one that exhibits itself in the same way. Lettice is trying to prove to Selwyn,” She pauses for a moment and thinks. “No, more prove to Zinna, that she isn’t defeated by whatever nasty games she is playing to break the romance between Lettice and Selwyn. She’s trying to exact revenge on them both.” Lady Sadie sighs. “But she’s going about it all wrong.”

 

“What do you mean, Sadie?” The Viscount sighs as he sinks down onto the edge of one of the morning room chairs nearest him and looks across at his wife, who sits, slumped in her own seat at her desk, looking defeated.

 

“I blame myself really for this turn of events.” Lady Sadie gulps awkwardly. “I’m almost too ashamed to admit it, but I was misaligned in some of my thinking, and wrong in my judgement, and now the results have well and truly come home to roost.”

 

“What are you talking about, Sadie?”

 

“Sir John, Cosmo.” She says simply. “When I held that Hunt Ball, I practically threw Lettice at Sir John.”

 

“Well, to assuage your fears, Sadie, that is what I meant by confirming that there were no undue influences in Lettice’s decision.” the Viscount pronounces. “I asked her whether she felt obliged to marry Sir John because you had encouraged the match, and that she feared being stuck on the shelf.” He looks meaningfully at his wife. “But she says that neither of these had any influence on her decision. She says that Sir John isn’t perfect, but that he’s a good man, and that he isn’t lying to her. As I said - as you said – Sir John may not be young, but he’s eligible and wealthy to boot. Lettice will be chatelaine of a string of fine properties, and she’ll never have to worry about going without.”

 

“But Lettice is wrong about him nor lying to her.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

Lady Sadie snatches the lace handkerchief poking out of her left sleeve opening at her wrist and dabs her nose, sniffing as she does. “Several of my friends, Lally, and even Lettice tried to warn me about him. They said that he’s a lecherous man, with a penchant for younger women, actresses in particular.”

 

“Well,” the Viscount chuckles. “Plenty of men of good standing have been known to have the odd discreet elicit affair with a Gaiety Girl*********** or two.” He then blusters. “Not myself of course!”

 

“Of course not, Cosmo.” She reaches out one of her diamond spangled hands to her husband and takes his own proffered hand. “Never you. You were always too much of a gentleman to have a liaison with another woman. As I said, you always do the right thing, Cosmo. Do you know, I do believe that is why Zinnia stopped coming to our house parties. You weren’t for conquest, no matter how much she threw herself at you. And she did, quite shamelessly.”

 

“Did she?” the Viscount asks innocently.

 

“You know she did!” Lady Sadie slaps her husband’s wrist playfully. “Now who’s being obtuse?”

 

“Well, maybe I did sense her overtures towards me, but she never stood a chance, Sadie!” the Viscount replies with an earnest look. “You were only ever going to be the one for me.”

 

“That’s sweet of you Cosmo, and I appreciate it. But, for all his pedigree and wealth, and for all his apparent care for Lettice, your judge of character of Sir John is fatally flawed my dear.”

 

“Flawed?”

 

“Sir John Nettleford-Hughes is not for our youngest daughter.” Lady Sadie goes on. “Nor any good and upstanding young lady of society. I know now that he is a philanderer: discreet yes, but not discreet enough, and no matter how many houses he has, or wealth, he will never make Lettice happy – quite the opposite in fact, I fear, even if she can’t see that in her present state of besottedness. She will become the neglected, deserted wife and the ridicule of society. And that is why I am against Sir John, and this marriage, which will be as disastrous for her as dear Elsie Bucknell’s was for her.” Sadie points to the wedding party photograph again.

 

“What?”

 

“Yes.” Lady Sadie cocks an eyebrow as she gives her husband a withering look. “His latest conquest is an up-and-coming West End actress named Paula Young. Such a nasty, common name.” she opines. “Then again, it suits a nasty and common little upstart tart of an actress!”

 

“Sadie!”

 

“Sorry Cosmo, but that’s what she is, if she allows herself to be seen in such an…” Lady Sadie shudders. “An intimate situation with a man like Sir John.”

 

“Surely there is some kind of misunderstanding: just gossip, Sadie.”

 

“Gossip yes, but verified nonetheless.” Lady Sadie answers sadly. “Though I wish to god that I could say it wasn’t. My cousin Gwendolyn was having dinner at the Café Royal************ and saw them together herself less than a week ago.”

 

“What was Gwendolyn doing at the Café Royal?”

 

“She is a duchess, Cosmo dear, or have you forgotten?”

 

“Who could ever forget that Gwendolyn is the Duchess of Whiby, Sadie? She certainly won’t let anyone forget it.”

 

“Well, she was escorting her grand-nice Barbara who debuted last year as part of the London Season, because poor Monica had influenza and was confined to bed, and she noticed Sir John and that that cheap actress at a shaded corner table.”

 

“A simple dinner between two friends., Sadie.” the Viscount tries to explain the situation away.

 

“Gwendolyn says that he was practically devouring her as he lavished her bare forearms with kisses.” Lady Sadie replies with another shudder and a look of disgust. “In public! With an actress! How vulgar, and certainly not discreet, even if at a corner table in the shadows!”

 

“Gwendolyn goes looking for gossip wherever she goes, Sadie, even in places where it isn’t.” the Viscount cautions his wife.

 

“I know, but be that as it may, Cosmo, I also have it from your own sister, Eglantyne, that many years ago, before she was married, he also had an elicit affair with that awful romance novelist Gladys Caxton, whom Lettice and you had all the trouble with not long ago.”

 

“Well you know Eglantyne doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage.” the Viscount begins.

 

“This was before any of us even knew of the understanding reached between Lettice and Sir John, Cosmo.”

 

“Well,” he chuckles in an effort to shake he sudden concerns off. “If that affair was many years ago, who cares, Sadie? It has no significance now.”

 

Lady Sadie slides open a drawer of her bonheur de jour and takes out a sheet of paper on which is written a list of names.

 

“After Gwendolyn’s revelations, I did a bit of digging myself, and these are the actresses ingénues and parvenues I was able to connect him to.”

 

“The cad!” the Viscount gasps as his widened eyes run down the list. “There must be at lest two dozen women on this list.”

 

“There are twenty-nine to be exact, Cosmo, and they are only the ones I could find and link him to.”

 

“You know I always thought that he was an old letch.” the Viscount restates his long held belief again. “I can’t deny that I’d heard the rumours too, but being unmarried I didn’t pay them much mind. And when he showed up here today, all charm, and was so solicitous to Lettice, making my little girl so happy, well...”

 

“You were swayed on your judgment of this character.” Lady Sadie says with an arched eyebrow and a knowing look.

 

“I was.” the Viscount agrees. “I was persuaded: taken in by him as a matter-of-fact! What a fool I am!”

 

“Charming people can always beguile, dear Cosmo.”

 

“I shall go into the drawing room this very minute and have it out with him!” He gets to his feet, trembling with anger and frustration as his elegant hands form into fists. “I’ll fling Sir John out on his philandering ear!”

 

Lady Sadie reaches out again to still her husband, wrapping her hand comfortingly around his wrist. “No you won’t, Cosmo.” she says calmly and matter-of-factly, gazing up at him sadly. “It would be the wrong thing to do, and you know it. And, as we have agreed, you always do the right and decent thing. It would be too embarrassing to conduct such a scene before a houseful of guests, even if they are family: for Sir John, Leslie, Arabella, Lally, Eglantyne, me, you,” She lowers her voice and adds sadly. “For Lettice.”

 

“You’re right, Sadie.” the Viscount says, still trembling with anger. “Shall I speak to Lettice?” he suggests. “Pull her aside and have a discreet word with her?”

 

“Why, Cosmo?”

 

“I could forbid her to marry him. I could threaten to cut her allowance off.”

 

Lady Sadie laughs in a sad and tired fashion. “Cosmo, what purpose would that serve? She’s already told you that she intends to go through with this marriage, and that she won’t be swayed.”

 

“Well, Lettice might come to her senses if I tell her… tell her the reasons why I’m forbidding her to marry that… that bounder!”

 

“She knows already what kind of man Sir John is, Cosmo. She was one of the people who told me that he’s a philanderer.”

 

“What?”

 

“Lettice told me herself that he has a penchant for young ladies.”

 

“Well, if she hears it from me, her own father?”

 

“You’ll only drive her deeper into his arms, Cosmo. She’s angry. She’s hurting. She’s rebelling, God help us all!” Lady Sadie says knowingly. “She’s seeking revenge. And your threat to cut off Lettice’s allowance would be meaningless if she marries Sir John. As you have duly noted already, he’s richer than Croesus*************. Besides, thanks to you and Eglantyne she also has a successful business venture to support her now.”

 

“What the devil is she playing at then?” the Viscount asks. “Is it not bad enough that we have an errant son in Lionel, that we must now have a daughter who marries a known philanderer with a penchant for young actresses, and will doubtless end up being dragged through the divorce courts as a result, casting shame on the family?”

 

“I don’t know, Cosmo, other than she is lashing out at Lady Zinnia, exacting her revenge as she sees it.”

 

The Viscount looks down at his wife sadly and ponders. “You’re being remarkably calm about all this, Sadie.”

 

“Yes,” she replies with a derisive snigger as she starts to take up some of the lose photos and file them together. “I know. Usually, it’s me having histrionics, not you. However, there is something I keep reminding myself of that brings me solace as I mull this situation over in my mind.”

 

“What on earth can bring you solace about this disastrous situation Lettice has willingly foisted upon herself?”

 

Lady Sadie looks knowingly at her husband. “One swallow does not a summer make**************, Cosmo. And an engagement, especially a hasty one, does not necessarily lead to marriage.”

 

“What are you saying, Sadie?”

 

“I’m simply saying that if a man breaks off his engagement with a lady, he’s a cad and a bounder. However, a lady is perfectly entitled to break off her engagement with a gentleman. In fact,” She smiles smugly. “It is her prerogative to do so.”

 

“Are you suggesting that we should encourage Lettice to break her engagement with Sir John?” the Viscount asks. He sighs and rubs his cleanly shaven chin. “I say! What a clever ploy, Sadie.” he muses. “Quite brilliant! Quite Machiavellian, no less!”

 

“No, I’m not saying that at all, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie quips. “You misunderstand me again.” She releases an exasperated sigh. “This is also what I mean by you not understanding Lettice. There is no talking to her right now, she’s so focussed on her own hurt and anger, and is determined to exact her own misaligned form of revenge on Selwyn and Zinnia. At the moment you could say that Sir John is made of glass and will shatter into a thousand slivers the moment she marries him and stab her to death, and she’ll still marry him to spite them, because she simply cannot see straight. She’s so angry that she won’t listen to reason.” She settles back in her seat and steeples her fingers before her as she stares off into a future only she can see. “Lettice is like a blizzard: blustery, but eventually her anger will peter out.”

 

“So you are suggesting what?”

 

“So, what I’m suggesting is that in this case, we must be patient with Lettice. We must settle ourselves in for the long game, and just watch what happens when her storm peters out.”

 

“So, in your opinion, we do nothing, then?” the Viscount blasts.

 

“For the time being, no, Cosmo.”

 

“But if we do nothing, she’ll marry the cad, and then where will we be?”

 

“I’m not convinced, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie assures her husband. “I think that if we cool our heels and let things play out, Lettice will come to her senses in the fullness of time.”

 

“You seem very sure of that, Sadie.” the Viscount says with a dubious look at his wife.

 

“I am, Cosmo.”

 

“And if you’re wrong? What then?”

 

“I’m not.” she assures him. “But if I were to be, then we shall simply have to steer her back to her senses when she is in a frame of mind that best allows us to encourage her to break off this disastrous marriage with Sir John.”

 

The Viscount shudders. “How can I have a son-in-law who’s as old as I am, or older.”

 

“Not quite, Cosmo, dear.” Lady Sadie assures him. “He’s a year and a half younger than you. I know. I did my in depth research about him before putting him forward as a potential suitor in 1922.”

 

“Evidently not in depth enough, Sadie,” He holds up the sheet of paper before he wife before screwing it up in anger and throwing it vehemently into her waste paper basket. “If Lettice is now engaged to a wealthy womaniser who carries on with actresses in public.”

 

“Don’t worry.” Lady Sadie continues to soothe in a soft voice, “We won’t have Sir John as our son-in-law. You’ll see.”

 

“Now that I know what I know,” the Viscount sighs. “I just hope you’re right, Sadie.”

 

“I usually am, Cosmo,” Lady Sadie resumes shuffling the photographs. “In the end.”

 

*Twelfth Night (also known as Epiphany Eve depending upon the tradition) is a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of the Epiphany. Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night as either the fifth of January or the sixth of January, depending on whether the counting begins on Christmas Day or the twenty-sixth of December. January the sixth is celebrated as the feast of Epiphany, which begins the Epiphanytide season.

 

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

 

***Bowood is a Grade I listed Georgian country house in Wiltshire, that has been owned for more than two hundred and fifty years by the Fitzmaurice family. The house, with interiors by Robert Adam, stands on extensive grounds which include a garden designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown. It is adjacent to the village of Derry Hill, halfway between Calne and Chippenham. The greater part of the house was demolished in 1956.

 

****Alexander Bassano was an English photographer who was a leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London. He is known for his photo of the Earl Kitchener in the Lord Kitchener Wants You army recruitment poster during the First World War and his photographs of Queen Victoria. He opened his first studio in 1850 in Regent Street. The studio then moved to Piccadilly between 1859 and 1863, to Pall Mall and then to 25 Old Bond Street in 1877 where it remained until 1921 when it moved to Dover Street. There was also a Bassano branch studio at 132 King's Road, Brighton from 1893 to 1899.

 

*****Introduced in 1922, the Type 30 was the first production Bugatti to feature an Inline-8. Nicknamed the “Torpedo” because of its similar look to the wartime munition, at the time Bugatti opted to move to a small two-litre engine to make the car more saleable, lighter and cheap. The engine capacity also made the Type 30 eligible for Grand Prix racing, which was a new direction for the marque. Despite the modest engine capacity, the power output was still remarkable thanks to the triple-valve arrangement. Also benefiting the Type 30 was good road handling, braking and steering which was common throughout the marque. The Type 30 was also the first Bugatti to have front brakes.

 

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

 

*******A boutonnière is a flower that someone wears in the buttonhole of, or fastened to, their jacket on a special occasion such as a wedding.

 

********The Brownie (or Box Brownie) was invented by Frank A. Brownell for the Eastman Kodak Company. Named after the Brownie characters popularised by the Canadian writer Palmer Cox, the camera was initially aimed at children. More than 150,000 Brownie cameras were shipped in the first year of production, and cost a mere five shillings in the United Kingdom. An improved model, called No. 2 Brownie, came in 1901, which produced larger photos, and was also a huge success. Initially marketed to children, with Kodak using them to popularise photography, it achieved broader appeal as people realised that, although very simple in design and operation, the Brownie could produce very good results under the right conditions. One of their most famous users at the time was the then Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra, who was an avid amateur photographer and helped to make the Box Brownie even more popular with the British public from all walks of life. As they were ubiquitous, many iconic shots were taken on Brownies. Jesuit priest Father Frank Browne sailed aboard the RMS Titanic between Southampton and Queenstown, taking many photographs of the ship’s interiors, passengers and crew with his Box Brownie. On the 15th of April 1912, Bernice Palmer used a Kodak Brownie 2A, Model A to photograph the iceberg that sank RMS Titanic as well as survivors hauled aboard RMS Carpathia, the ship on which Palmer was travelling. They were also taken to war by soldiers but by World War I the more compact Vest Pocket Kodak Camera as well as Kodak's Autographic Camera were the most frequently used. Another group of people that became posthumously known for their huge photo archive is the Nicholas II of Russia family, especially its four daughters who all used Box Brownie cameras.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

************Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes

 

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

 

**************The idiom “richer than Croesus” means very wealthy. This term alludes to Croesus, the legendary King of Lydia and supposedly the richest man on earth. The simile was first recorded in English in 1577.

 

**************The expression “One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy” is attributed to Aristotle (384 – 322 BC).

 

Cluttered with photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s bonheur de jour is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

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

 

The remaining unframed photographs and photograph album on Lady Sadie’s desk are a 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Ken Blythe is known for his miniature books. Most of the books crated by him that I own 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. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. The photo album, although closed, contains pages of photos in old fashioned Victorian style floral frames on every page, just like a real Victorian photo album. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the photographs. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. He also made the packets of seeds, which once again are copies of real packets of Webbs seeds and the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

The vase of primroses in the middle of the desk is a delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature made and painted by hand by Ann Dalton.

 

The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design, made by Bespaq. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.

 

The wallpaper is a copy of an Eighteenth Century blossom pattern.

Divided reverse. Letter generously translated by Nettenscheider, authored in Beverloo on 21.10.1915 and addressed to a Herr Franz Kieslich in Bochum. Einheitsstempel: 8./VI B. Jnf. Ers. Truppe Beverloo. Postage cancelled at Beverloo Truppenplatz a day later.

 

Staff from the former Belgian Army camp at Beverloo. Once occupied by the Germans, they turned it into a Truppenübungsplatz of their own, where they trained huge numbers of men before they were deployed to the Western Front.

 

As evidenced by the "B" insignia on their collars, the men serving at Beverloo appear to have had their own insignia.

   

PictionID:52728999 - Catalog:14_030119 - Title:GD/Astronautics Details: Aft Section; AC-63 Date: 1984 - Filename:14_030119.tif - Images from the Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection. The processing, cataloging and digitization of these images has been made possible by a generous National Historical Publications and Records grant from the National Archives and Records Administration---Please Tag these images so that the information can be permanently stored with the digital file.---Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum