Ushaw College (formally St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw), is a former Catholic seminary near the village of Ushaw Moor, County Durham, England, which is now a heritage and cultural tourist attraction. The college is known for its Georgian and Victorian Gothic architecture and listed nineteenth-century chapels. The college now hosts a programme of art exhibitions, music and theatre events, alongside tearooms and a café.

 

It was founded in 1808 by scholars from the English College, Douai, who had fled France after the French Revolution. Ushaw College was affiliated with Durham University from 1968 and was the principal Roman Catholic seminary for the training of Catholic priests in the north of England.

 

In 2011, the seminary closed, due to the shortage of vocations. It reopened as a visitor attraction, marketed as Ushaw: Historic House, Chapels & Gardens in late 2014 and, as of 2019, receives around 50,000 visitors a year. The County Durham Music Service and Durham University Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring are based at the college and buildings at the college are also used by Durham University Business School.

 

The English College, Douai was founded in 1568 but was forced to leave France in 1795 following the French Revolution. Part of the college settled temporarily at Crook Hall near Lanchester, northwest of Durham. In 1804 Bishop William Gibson began to build at Ushaw Moor, four miles west of Durham. These buildings, designed by James Taylor, were opened as St Cuthbert's College in 1808. There was a steady expansion during the nineteenth century with new buildings put up to cater for the expanding number of clerical and secular students. In 1847, the newly built chapel, designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was opened. This was followed by the Big Library and Exhibition Hall designed by Joseph Hansom, 1849–1851. The Junior House, designed by Peter Paul Pugin, was added in 1859. St Cuthbert's Chapel, designed by Dunn and Hansom, was opened in 1884, replacing AWN Pugin's 1847 chapel which the seminary had outgrown. The Refectory was designed and built by E. W. Pugin. The final development came in the early 1960s with the opening of a new East wing, providing additional classrooms and single bedrooms for 75 students. The main college buildings are Grade II listed, the College Chapel is Grade II* and the Chapel of St Michael is Grade I.

 

Although independent, Ushaw College had a close working relationship with Durham University. The college became a Licensed Hall of Residence of the University of Durham in 1968. It was independent of the university but offered courses validated by the university, and both Church and lay students studied at the college. The Junior House closed in 1972, its younger students being transferred to St Joseph's College, Up Holland in Lancashire.

 

In 2002, the college rejected a report from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that it should merge with St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham. However, in October 2010 it was announced that the college would close in 2011 due to the shortage of vocations in the Roman Catholic Church, and that the site might be sold. Following a detailed feasibility study by the college's Trustees and Durham University, and with support from Durham County Council and English Heritage, it was announced in January 2012 that Durham Business School would temporarily relocate to the college during rebuilding of the school's buildings in Durham. This was seen as the first step in a long-term education-based vision for the site.

 

The university also agreed to catalogue and archive the Ushaw library and inventory the other collections to ensure their preservation and specialist conservation, with a view to creating a proposed Ushaw Centre for Catholic Scholarship and Heritage. In March 2019, an uncatalogued early charter of King John was found in the library manuscript collection.

 

In 2017, Durham University announced plans to develop an international residential research library at Ushaw College, with the aim of attracting scholars from around the world to work on the collections of Ushaw, Durham University and Durham Cathedral. The university has also confirmed that it has extended the agreement to lease the east wing of the college (used by the Business School) to 2027. The college is also used for numerous musical events and for the Ushaw Lecture Series, organised by the university's Centre for Catholic Studies.

 

In 2018, Durham University's Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) moved into the east wing of the college, previously used by the Business School.

 

The college armorial bearings are "Per pale dexter Argent a Cross Gules on a Canton Azure a Cross of St Cuthbert proper sinister impaling Allen Argent three Rabbits couchant in pale Sable."

 

Various emblems on shield represent the college's history and foundation, for example:-

 

Three coneys are from the family coat of arms of William Allen, the founder of English College, Douai. See Three hares.

The small cross of St Cuthbert represents the college's patron saint (it is modelled on St Cuthbert's own pectoral cross, which is kept in the Treasury at Durham Cathedral).

The large cross of St George honours the English Roman Catholic Martyrs.

 

Alumni

Clergy

 

Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman – first Archbishop of Westminster

Francis Cardinal Bourne – Archbishop of Westminster

Arthur Cardinal Hinsley – Archbishop of Westminster

William Cardinal Godfrey – Archbishop of Westminster

John Carmel Cardinal Heenan – Archbishop of Westminster

Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val y Zulueta – Cardinal Secretary of State

Charles Petre Eyre – Archbishop of Glasgow.

Louis Charles Casartelli – 4th Bishop of Salford

Hugh Lindsay – 10th Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle

James Chadwick – 2nd Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle

Alexander Goss – Bishop of Liverpool

Thomas Grant – Bishop of Southwark

Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury

John Lingard – author of The History Of England, From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII

Bernard Łubieński - Redemptorist missionary priest

John Furniss – English Roman Catholic priest, known for his mission to children

James Nugent – Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Liverpool

Nicholas Rigby – English Roman Catholic priest and author of The Real Doctrine of the Church on Scripture

Constantine Scollen – Irish Roman Catholic missionary priest and outstanding linguist in Canada in the mid- to late 19th century and author of Thirty Years among the Indians of the Northwest

Paul Swarbrick - Bishop of Lancaster

Philip Moger - Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark

Lay

 

George Goldie – nineteenth-century ecclesiastical architect

Edward Goldie – nineteenth- and twentieth-century ecclesiastical architect

Alexander Martin Sullivan – Irish lawyer and defence counsel in the trial of Roger Casement

Charles Napier Hemy – artist and Royal Academician

Francis Thompson – English poet

Joseph Gillow – author of Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Roman Catholics

William Shee – first Roman Catholic to sit as a judge in England and Wales since the Reformation

Francis Joseph Sloane (aka Francesco Giuseppe Sloane) - born 1794, died October 23, 1871, tutor at Ushaw and lifelong friend of Nicolas (later Cardinal) Wiseman, responsible for reviving the Montecatini Val di Cecina copper mine, which was the largest in Europe

Paul Goggins – Labour Member of Parliament for Wythenshawe and Sale East and junior minister in the Northern Ireland Office.

Joseph Scott – attorney in Los Angeles, founder of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, vice-president of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915)

A.J. Hartley bestselling novelist and Shakespeare scholar

Lafcadio Hearn (also known as Koizumi Yakumo) – author, best known for his books about Japan

Francis Petre - prominent New Zealand-born architect designed the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Christchurch

Peter Paul Pugin – English architect

James Joseph Foy – Ontario Attorney General and political figure

Myles William Patrick O'Reilly – Roman Catholic soldier and politician

Archibald Matthias Dunn – Roman Catholic ecclesiastical architect

Joe Tasker - Himalayan climber

Charles Bruzon – Gibraltarian government minister and curate

List of presidents

1794–1810 Thomas Eyre

1811–1828 John Gillow

1828–1833 Thomas Youens

1833–1836 John Briggs

1836–1837 Thomas Youens

1837–1863 Charles Newsham

1863–1876 Robert Tate

1876–1877 Francis Wilkinson

1877–1878 James Chadwick

1878–1885 William Wrennall

1885–1886 William Dunderdale

1886–1890 James Lennon

1890–1909 Thomas Wilkinson

1909–1910 Joseph Corbishley

1910–1934 William Brown

1934–1950 Charles Corbishley

1950–1967 Paul Grant

1967–1977 Philip Loftus

1977–1984 Peter Cookson

1984–1991 Peter Walton

1991–1997 Richard Atherton

1997–2003 James O’Keefe

2003–2008 Terence Drainey

2008–2011 John Marsland

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

 

Lettice is nursing a broken heart. Her beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, has been sent to Durban for a year by his mother, the Duchess of Walmsford, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wants to end so that she can marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Lettice returned home to Glynes to lick her wounds, however it only served to make matters worse as she grew even more morose. It was from the most unlikely of candidates, her mother Lady Sadie, with whom Lettice has always had a fraught relationship, that Lettice received the best advice, which was to stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with her life and wait patiently for Selwyn’s eventual return. Since then, Lettice has been trying to follow her mother’s advice and has thrown herself into the merry dance of London’s social round of dinners, dances and balls. However, even she could only keep this up for so long, and on New Year’s Eve, her sister, Lally, suggested that she spend a few extra weeks resting and recuperating with her in Buckinghamshire before returning to London and trying to get on with her life. Lettice happily agreed, however her rest cure ended abruptly with a letter from her Aunt Egg in London, summoned Lettice back to the capital and into society in general. Through her social connections, Aunt Egg has contrived an invitation for Lettice and her married Embassy Club coterie friends Dickie and Margot Channon, to an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party of Sir John and Lady Caxton, who are very well known amongst the smarter bohemian set of London society for their amusing weekend parties at their Scottish country estate and enjoyable literary evenings in their Belgravia townhouse. Lady Gladys is a successful authoress in her own right and writes under the nom de plume of Madeline St John, so they attract a mixture of witty writers and artists mostly.

 

Now we find ourselves in the cosy and cluttered, old fashioned Art and Crafts decorated drawing room of Gossington, the Scottish Baronial style English Art and Crafts castle near the hamlet of Kershopefoot in Cumberland belonging to Sir John and Lady Gladys, where Lettice, Margot and Dickie have joined their hosts along with a few stragglers who arrived on a later train to Carlisle who were chauffeured to the house from the railway station there.

 

Lady Gladys stands by one of the full length windows looking out at the countryside beyond. Her face crumples up as she stares at the roiling and dark clouds in the sky. She pats her finger waved grey hair anxiously, as though trying to protect it from being spoiled by the rain she perceives is coming, “Looks like the weather is on the turn, John.”

 

“What’s that, Gladys?” her husband pipes up, glancing over the top of his book from his Savonarola chair by the crackling fire.

 

“I said it’s starting to cloud over.” she replies in a slightly louder voice, turning to face him so he can hear her more clearly. “I do hope that it doesn’t rain on Pheobe and the other ramblers.”

 

“I’m sure they can all shelter in a barn somewhere.” he replies. “It will be a new and novel experience for some of them.”

 

Snorts and muffles giggles come from a few of the guests sitting about the room enjoying indoor pursuits.

 

Sir John looks over at the clusters of heads lowered together and chuckles good-naturedly as he remarks, “Don’t get so self-righteous you lot!” He closes his book. “I bet it would be a new and novel experience for most of you too!”

 

Lady Gladys wanders across the room, toying with the long string of pearls about her neck and takes a seat, just as Lettice appears at the door of the drawing room.

 

“Oh, do come in Lettice,” Lady Gladys says warmly from a corner of the Knole sofa* upholstered in William Morris’** ‘Strawberry Thief’ fabric. “Come and sit with me.” She softly pats the cushion next to her, the action emitting a small cloud of dust motes.

 

“Thank you Lady Caxton.” Lettice replies as she walks across the room, squeezing between the clusters of chairs and occasional tables, some occupied by the late arriving guests, including Dickie and Margot, playing a range of parlour games on offer from the Gossington games cupboard.

 

“Ah!” the hostess wags her finger admonishing at Lettice. “I might be older than your mother, my dear, but here, we are egalitarian. We are all on a first name basis. I am Gladys and Sir John is just, John. Hmmm?”

 

“Very well, thank you, Gladys.” Lettice replies awkwardly, a little startled by this revelation, as she sits on the opposite end of the sofa, closest to the fire.

 

“Gladys is an old Fabian*** from before you were born, Lettice.” Sir John adds with a kindly wink from his seat opposite her.

 

“Not so much of the old, thank you John!” Gladys remarks, pretending to be offended. “Remember, I’m younger than you.”

 

“That doesn’t say much when you compare yourself to all these youngsters!” He waves his hand about the room.

 

“That’s why I like young people,” Gladys smiles indulgently at Lettice, directing her comment to her rather than her husband. “They help keep me young with their talk of nightclubs, the latest shows and the like.”

 

“More like it gives you fodder for your next novel, Gladys.” He looks lovingly at his wife, a mischievous glint in his sparkling blue eyes and a cheeky smile playing across his lips. “Writing vicariously through others.”

 

“It pays to keep up to date with the latest trends, John. I don’t want to fall out of fashion.”

 

“I don’t think your novels will ever fall out of fashion, Lady… err, Gladys.” Lettice remarks magnanimously.

 

“You’re a flatterer, that’s for certain!” Lady Gladys chuckles. “You’ll get on. I shall graciously accept your compliment.” Her pale, wrinkled face stills for a moment as a far away look glazes over her eyes. “We none of us think we will fall out of fashion, but we do, in one way or another – especially as we get older. Take this room for example. Decorated in what was once the height of fashion. Would you decorate your home in this way, my dear Lettice?”

 

From her vantage point, Lettice gazes around the room. Looking at the William Morris ‘Strawberry Thief’ pattern on the sofa, woven carpet and the Morris ‘Poppies’ wallpaper, Lettice estimates the room, like most around the grey stone castle, were decorated in the late Nineteenth Century during the heyday of the Arts and Crafts Movement. A hotch-potch of furnishings that jostle comfortably for space suggests a period of prosperity driven acquisition over the ensuing years up until the Great War, yet each piece is of high quality and well made, implying her hosts’ dedication to the arts, as do the ornaments that cover surfaces around the room, all of which are beautiful and handmade. Old paintings of Scottish landscapes remind Lettice of Sir John’s proud heritage, whilst the large number of books tell her of Lady Caxton’s literary pursuits and success.

 

“Oh, I think it’s charming,” Lettice replies. “You obviously have an eye for fine workmanship and artistry.”

 

“But?” Lady Gladys picks up Lettice’s unspoken thought.

 

“But no, I wouldn’t decorate my home like this.”

 

“That’s the correct answer, Lettice.” Lady Gladys replies kindly. “And, if I were your age, I wouldn’t either. It’s fusty and old fashioned.”

 

“It is lovely though, and all my modern ideas would look out of place in a room like this. You need to have older things here, not what is fashionable and up-to-date. It would look out of place.”

 

“Tea, Lettice?” Gladys leans forward towards the low beautifully hand embroidered footstool before her and picks up an empty cup. “Or would you prefer coffee?”

 

“Oh, tea will be fine Lady Cax… err, I mean, Gladys.” She chuckles awkwardly at such familiarity with people she barely knows. “White and one sugar, please.”

 

“Good. I’ve never been one for coffee myself.” Lady Gladys pours tea from the silver pot into the cup over the sugar, and adds a slosh of milk, before she passes it to Lettice to stir. “I do hope you found your room to be satisfactory, Lettice.”

 

“It’s lovely. Thank you. I shall feel like Sleeping Beauty when I retire.”

 

“Hhmmm,” Gladys smiles understandingly. “Yes. I thought you’d like the décor in there.”

 

“The Art Nouveau wallpaper is lovely. It is William Morris, like in here, is it not?”

 

“Yes,” Lady Gladys remarks with a surprised lilt in her voice. “How clever of you to notice. It’s ‘Sweet Briar’, so your reference to Briar Rose is most apt, my dear.”

 

“My Aunt Eglantine has it in her bedroom in Chelsea. She loves William Morris too.”

 

“And you, Lettice? Do you like William Morris?” Lady Gladys asks.

 

“I like a mixture of old and new, Lad… Gladys. I think a well placed antique on a modern table adds elegance, and I think a William Morris cushion,” She pulls the cushion from behind her back and looks at it thoughtfully. “Could look splendid as an accent on a plain coloured settee.”

 

“How is Eglantine?” Sir John asks, changing the subject as he takes a sip of his own cup of tea.

 

“I didn’t know you were acquainted with my Aunt, Sir John, until my aunt told me of my invitation to this weekend.”

 

“Just John, my dear.” he corrects Lettice politely, causing her to blush. “Remember the old Fabian in the room.” He nods at his wife. “And yes, Gladys and I have similar artistic and literary pursuits to her, so we know Eglantyne quite well.”

 

“I have some of her pieces,” Lady Gladys remarks proudly and indicates firstly to two dainty pots of hand painted petunias on the mantlepiece, which are part of Eglantyne’s pre-war work, and then to a pedestal next to a very full bookcase, where one of Lettice’s aunt’s more modern pottery pieces sits. “She is a wonderful ceramicist and artist. She can create such beautiful sinuous lines in pottery. It really is remarkable.”

 

“She doesn’t do that so much now,” Lettice remarks.

 

“That’s a pity.” Lady Gladys replies a little sadly. “It’s a shame to waste such a gift.”

 

“Her arthritis slows her somewhat when it comes to ceramics, and she is seldom happy with the results. She’s following different pursuits these days.”

 

“She paints now, doesn’t she?” Sir Caxton asks.

 

“She does… John. She’s currently painting a piece for the Royal Academy.”

 

“Excellent! We shall look forward to seeing that, shan’t we Gladys?”

 

“Oh indeed, John. And of course, she has her embroidery.” Lady Gladys adds.

 

Lettice laughs softly. “I fear sometimes that if I sit still in her drawing room for long enough, one day she might embroider me.”

 

A thunderclap breaks outside. It’s noise echoes through the atmosphere inside, sending a collective shiver through the guests in the room.

 

“I told you, John. Pheobe and the others are sure to get rained upon now.” She glances around the high wing of the Knole sofa to the window. Looking back at Lettice, she picks up her own teacup and tops it up with tea from the pot before continuing, “Pheobe, our niece and ward, has taken all the other young guests for the weekend on a ramble about the estate to help everyone work up an appetite for dinner. I do hope they will be back soon, especially now that it’s going to pour.”

 

“I bet they all went to the pub in the village for a lark.” Dickie remarks from where he sits. “And they are quite cosy and warm in there. They’ll be back when they are good and ready.”

 

“You may be right, young Dickie!” Sir John chortles.

 

“I’m puzzled,” Lettice says, her face crumpling up in thought. “As to why you asked me here for the weekend.”

 

“Puzzled, my dear?” Lady Gladys asks.

 

“Yes. I must confess I was very surprised to receive your kind invitation – delighted, but surprised. I mean, we’ve never met as far as I’m aware. Is it because of your connection to my aunt?”

 

“Well, that does have a little to do with it, Lettice,” Sir John explains. “You are your aunt’s favourite niece…”

 

“She says that to all of us Si… err, John.”

 

“Well, be that as it may, she has spoken to us about you and your talents over many years, particularly since you have come of age. However, Gladys and I keep our own eye on the artistic scene in London, so your name has been mentioned to us a number of times on different occasions.”

 

“Really?” Lettice asks in astonishment.

 

“Oh yes,” adds Lady Gladys. “Surely you must know that you’re gaining quite a reputation now, for your stylish interior designs.”

 

“Especially after that article in Country Life, showing the work you did for Margot and Dickie,” Sir John nods in the direction of the couple, ensconced together on an Art Nouveau sofa, happily playing cards. “It looked wonderful! So fresh and elegant with all those clean lines that are so fashionable now.”

 

“We did so want to finally meet you, dear Lettice.” Lady Gladys adds.

 

“Well,” Lettice blushes. “I’m very flattered, and honoured to be invited to Gossington. Your weekend parties are famous for being filled with fun and enjoyment.”

 

“Then I hope we shall not disappoint, dear Lettice.” Sir John beams.

 

“I’m sure with the return of the others, you won’t be starved for wit and aristocratic intelligentsia.” Lady Gladys adds. “Your aunt tells us that you can be quite witty yourself, and you obviously have intelligence amongst other attributes.”

 

Lettice notices a look exchanged between her two hosts but can’t read what it means.

 

“Ahem, Lettice,” Sir John clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m afraid that Gladys and I have a confession to make.”

 

“A confession?”

 

“Yes,” Lady Gladys explains. “I’m afraid that we’ve invited you here with an ulterior motive, my dear.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Not that we aren’t delighted to have you here for your charm, beauty and obvious intelligence.” Sir John assures her with hands raised in defence.

 

“Yes.” Lady Gladys soothes in agreement with her husband. “As I said before, we’ve heard such great things about your interior designs, so you are under no obligation to agree to our request.”

 

Lettice suddenly looks about the room again, her eyes darting anxiously from surface to cluttered surface as she makes a calculated assumption. Her eyes grow wide and her cheeks pale. “You’re your request, La… Gladys?”

 

“Gladys my dear, you’ll scare the poor girl! She’ll think we want her to redecorate this old pile of stones from the cellar to the battlements.”

 

“Oh no!” Lady Gladys assures Lettice. “We don’t want you to redecorate our home! No, I have far too many treasures here to ever think of parting with. Good heavens no!”

 

“Then what?” Lettice asks cautiously.

 

“Well, it’s Pheobe.” Lady Gladys explains. “She’s moving to London. Now that she’s of age, she has decided to pursue a career in garden design, and she’s been accepted to a school in Regent’s Park associated to the Royal Academy, so she’ll be in London more often than she has been.”

 

Lettice looks on, puzzled and unsure as to how she can be of service to her hosts’ ward. “You want me to decorate her rooms in your London townhouse?”

 

“Oh no my dear!” Sir John defends. “Like here, our London house is very much an Arts and Crafts relic.”

 

“No. Pheobe’s father, my youngest brother Reginald, was part of the civil service in India before the war.” Lady Gladys continues. “He and Pheobe’s mother, Marjorie, died of cholera out there.”

 

“Oh, I am sorry.” Lettice says sadly, putting her hand to her chest.

 

“Thank you my dear. My brother bought a pied-à-terre**** in Bloomsbury for when they were in London.”

 

“Gladys actually lived in it when she worked as my secretary before she married me.” Sir John adds.

 

“Yes.” Lady Gladys acknowledges. “Anyway, when Reginald died, he bequeathed his pied-à-terre to his only surviving child, Pheobe. It was to be held in trust for her by us until she came of age. Now she is of age, we’re giving her the flat to live in. It will be more efficient, as when we go to London, we take staff from here, and when we aren’t in London, there is only a caretaker looking after the house. Pheobe can manage the flat without the need for any live-in staff, and she can finally have some independence from us, which I suspect she craves.”

 

“The flat hasn’t been redecorated since Reginal and Marjorie lived there.” Sir John adds.

 

“It’s so old fashioned.” Lady Gladys agrees. “It isn’t good for Pheobe to live in a flat surrounded by the ghosts of parents she hardly even knew. You’ll be sitting next to her at dinner tonight, and dear Nettie, who has some considerable sway with Pheobe. We’ve suggested that Pheobe talk to you herself. We’ll obviously foot any bills if she likes your ideas, which we’re quite sure she will. Will you consider it, my dear Lettice? It would be such a great favour to us, and to Pheobe of course.”

 

“Well, I’ll certainly consider it, Gladys.” Lettice replies.

 

“Splendid! Splendid!” Lady Gladys claps her hands in delight. “I knew you’d be open to the idea!”

 

*The original Knole Settee (also known as the Knole Sofa) is a couch chair that was made in the 17th century, probably around 1640. It is housed at Knole in Kent, a house owned by the Sackville-West family since 1605 but now in the care of the National Trust. It was originally used not as a comfortable sofa but as a formal throne-like seat on which an aristocrat or monarch would have sat to receive visitors. It was wide enough that a monarch and consort could be seated side by side. As of 2021, it is kept at Knole House in a transparent case.

 

**William Morris (24th of March 1834 – 3rd of October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he helped win acceptance of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain. In 1861, Morris founded the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others, which became highly fashionable and much in demand. The firm profoundly influenced interior decoration throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows. In 1875, he assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Knole Sofa covered in William Morris’ ‘Strawberry Thief’ pattern comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The cushions on it, and on the Savonarola chair opposite also feature the Morris ‘Strawberry Thief’ pattern in 1:12 size, and came from an American seller on E-Bay. The Savonarola chairs are made by high-end miniature furniture manufacturer JBM Miniatures.

 

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

 

The small round footstool in front of Sir John’s Savonarola chair has been hand embroidered as well, and was acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the united Kingdom.

 

The silver tea and coffee set on the large embroidered footstool, consisting of milk jug, sugar bowl coffee pot and teapot come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The silver tray upon which they stand also comes from Warwick Miniatures. The four dainty floral teacups with gilt edging scattered about the room are part of a larger tea set that I acquired from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The books on the table to the left of the photograph between the two Savonarola chairs are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. They are novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. These books are amongst the rarer exceptions that have been designed not to be opened. Nevertheless, the covers are copies of real Victorian bindings. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s books and magazines are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The wonderfully detailed red and white chess set in the foreground of the photograph came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. The set came in its own hand crafted compartmented wooden box with a working sliding lid which can be seen just in front of the Pig-a-Back and Ludo game boxes. The chess game is set up correctly with a match in progress. I wonder who will win? The table on which the chess game is being played comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, whilst the two red velvet seated chairs drawn up to it, I acquired from an auction some years ago. The pieces date from the 1970s and are very well made.

 

The box of Ludo and Pig-a-Back are both 1:12 artisan pieces, produced authentically to scale with great attention to detail by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

Sir John and Lady Gladys’ 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. Only one, the larger square frame at the back, leaning against the tall blue vase on the left-hand side of the mantle is sterling silver. I t was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.

 

The two small vases of primroses on the mantle are delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature ornaments made and painted by hand by ceramicist Ann Dalton.

 

The two dark blue double handled gilt vases with floral banding at either end of the mantlepiece, I have had since I was a child. I was given them as a birthday gift when I was nine.

 

The two tall blue glazed jugs featuring irises at either end of the fireplace came from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, as did the brown glazed jug on the tall pedestal in the corner of the room next to the bookcase.

 

The grey marble French barrel clock on the mantlepiece is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England.

 

The Georgian style fireplace with its heavy wooden surround and deep mantle in the background was made by Town Hall Miniatures supplied through Melody Jane’s Dolls’ House Suppliers in the United Kingdom.

 

The glass fronted bookcase is a replica of a bookcase belonging to Abraham Lincoln and is part of the Lincoln Collection, made and distributed in America.

 

Lady Gladys’ book collection inside the glass fronted bookcase are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Ken Blythe was famous in miniature collectors’ circles mostly for the miniature books that he made: all being authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. Each book is a 1:12 replica of a life sized volume with an authentic cover. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make these miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago and through his estate courtesy of the generosity of his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The paintings hanging on the walls are all 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States. The wallpaper is William Morris’ ‘Poppies’ pattern, featuring stylised Art Nouveau poppies. William Morris papers and fabrics were popular in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period before the Great War.

 

The miniature Arts and Crafts rug on the floor is made by hand by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney.

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.

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All Saints Church, Evesham, is a historical gem nestled within the remnants of the once-grand Evesham Abbey. Its origins trace back to the 12th century, a time when the Norman Romanesque style was prevalent. The church's western doorway, with its characteristic rounded arch, is a testament to this early period.

 

The 14th century saw the addition of the northern transept, a Gothic architectural element that contrasts with the earlier Norman style. However, the most significant transformation occurred in the 15th century when the church was extensively rebuilt in the Perpendicular Gothic style. This period marked a time of great architectural ambition, and All Saints Church became an impressive example of this style.

 

The 16th century brought a period of both prosperity and decline for Evesham. Abbot Lichfield, the last Abbot of Evesham, commissioned a chantry chapel to house his tomb. This magnificent structure is a highlight of the church's interior. However, the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII led to the destruction of much of Evesham Abbey. Only the bell tower, a testament to the abbey's grandeur, remains.

 

The 19th century saw a revival of interest in Gothic architecture, and All Saints Church was extensively restored by the renowned architect Frederick Preedy. Preedy's work transformed the church's interior, adding stunning stained glass windows and other decorative elements.

 

Today, All Saints Church stands as a poignant reminder of Evesham's rich history. Its architectural diversity, from the Norman Romanesque to the Perpendicular Gothic, reflects the changing tastes and styles of centuries past. The church's proximity to the ruins of Evesham Abbey offers visitors a unique opportunity to explore the town's medieval heritage.

British Airways Boeing 757-236 G BIKO lifting off at Edinburgh (EGPH), with their ''Worlds best Offer" on tickets at the time 1988.

All images available for licensing via me. I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database with thousands of hand-picked images of dogs, cats, as well as horses, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

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Two visitors of the Senso-ji temple offer a prayer at the entrance of the Kannondo, the main hall of the temple, under another huge chochin, the traditional paper lantern. The second gate of the temple complex, the Hozo-mon, can be seen in the background, behind the smoke rising from the incense burner at the entrance to the Kannon-do. The Hozōmon ("Treasure-House Gate"), whose latest iteration from 1964 was built using flame-resistant materials, houses in its upper story many of Sensō-ji's treasures, which include a copy of the Lotus Sutra that is designated a Japanese National Treasure and the Issai-kyō, a complete collection of Buddhist scriptures that has been designated an Important Cultural Property.

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.

Elite gymnastics offers good quality Girl Gymnastics Leotards in Tyne and Wear, UK. Our leotards are made from durable and high quality material providing flexibility. These leotards are lightweight, highly breathable and a suitable choice for athletes who need an ultra-soft and comfy fabric.For more details visit www.elitegymnastics.co.uk/ervy-atria-leotard-kiwi.html

 

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.

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Best Package Enterprise Co., Ltd

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Beitun District, Taichung, Taiwan

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The interior of the Avalon Deep Sea Rescue Vehicle. Over the Labor Day weekend, tours were offered through the "submarine" in Morro Bay. The gentleman on the right is the tour guide. Interesting vehicle, but pretty cramped quarters...

 

From Wikipedia: "DSRV-2 Avalon is a Mystic class Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle that is rated to dive up to 5000 feet (1500 m). The submarine was acquired in response to the loss of the USS Thresher so that the Navy would have a way to rescue submarine crews trapped far beneath the ocean surface.

 

Avalon was launched in 1971. The submarine, intended to be air transportable, was 50 feet (15 m) long, 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter, and weighed 37 tons. The sub was capable of descending to 5,000 feet (1,500 m) below the surface and could carry 24 passengers at a time in addition to her crew. The sub was stationed at North Island Naval Station in San Diego and was never required to conduct an actual rescue operation. Avalon was decommissioned in 2000. The submarine may be donated to the Naval Undersea Museum. DSRV 2 Avalon is currently sitting in a parking lot in Morro Bay,Ca. She will be on display in a small Museum and should be open for tours as of May 2014. Location is N 35º 22.202 W 120º 51.309."

  

amazing...

--

on the back of the postcard:

NEW YORK CITY

A view of this world-famous skyline was dominated by the twin towers of the World Trade Center, wich reached 1,350 feet into the sky. New York, New York

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

 

Tonight however it is New Year’s Eve 1924, and we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid is celebrating the end of 1924 and the beginning of 1925 with her beloved parents, George and Ada. 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 her brother, Bert, on shore leave from his job as a first-class saloon steward aboard the SS Demosthenes* for New Year’s Eve, George has decided to host a small New Year’s Eve gathering 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 and the smart and select cocktail parties she likes to host, the Harlesden terrace is a cosy and welcoming venue for such a party. Not being alone on shore leave, Bert has invited two of his fellow saloon stewards from the Demosthenes to join him for the evening’s revels: Conlin Campbell who grew up in Harlesden with both Edith and Bert and went to sea with Bert when he took his first seafaring job, and Irish lad, Martin Gallagher. Of course, Edith has invited her beau, grocer’s boy, Frank Leadbetter, to join them, and to even up the numbers of young women, Edith has arranged for old school friends Katy Bramall, Jeannie Duttson and Alice Dunn to join them too. For their part, George and Ada have invited Mr. and Mrs. Pyecroft to spend new year in the rarified surrounds of Ada’s front parlour, whilst the young ones enjoy being raucous in the kitchen. Ernie Pyecroft is the local Harlesden ironmonger** and he and George have bonded over their love of growing marrows at the local allotment, where they both have a plot. Ada went to school with Lilian Pyecroft and it is through this connection that the Watsfords and the Pyecrofts are such good friends. Sadly, Mr. and Mrs. Pyecroft lost both their sons in the Great War, and their daughter died of the Spanish Flu during the epidemic in 1918, so being alone now, George and Ada make sure they always spend New Year’s Eve together. However the divide between the generations has been broken down by Fank, who has brought with him a gramophone and a selection of popular music records that he has borrowed from a trade unionist friend of his for the evening, which has persuaded George, Ada and the Pyecrots to join the young ones in the kitchen, where after dinner they have enjoyed an evening of celebratory drinking and dancing. Lettice, having heard of the New Year’s Eve party, bestowed two bottles of champagne upon Edith as a Christmas gift, whilst Frank obtained two bottles of wine from his chum who runs little Italian restaurant up the Islington***. Bert has spent some of his wages on buying bottles of stout and ale from a local publican, and Mrs. Pyecroft has brought a bottle of her homemade elderflower wine.

 

We find ourselves in the heart of the Watsford’s family home, Ada’s cosy kitchen at the back of the terrace, where everyone except for Frank and Edith are busying themselves donning coats, hats, scarves and gloves as they prepare to ring in the new year underneath the nearby Harlesden High Street Jubilee Clock Tower**** with its four gas lamps and drinking fountain. Noisily they cheerfully chat and laugh over the musical strains of ‘I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General’***** which they have all ended up in fits of laughter over several times across the course of the party, after trying without success to sing all the tongue twisting lyrics correctly.

 

“I say Bert,” remarks Martin over the top of the jolly music on the gramophone. “You never told us your sister was such a beauty.”

 

“What?” Bert asks as he buttons up his heavy grey woollen overcoat.

 

“Your sister, Bert.” Martin replies, nodding in Edith’s direction and indicating to her with a half drunk glass of stout in his hand.

 

Bert looks up from fastening his coat and looks as Edith stands in front of Frank as he sits in her usual ladderback chair. Her hand rests on the edge of the festive cloth covered kitchen table where they had eaten their splendid New Year’s Eve roast chicken dinner cooked up by Ada earlier in the evening, which is now is littered with a selection of records in their paper sleeves. Dressed in a pretty pale pink cotton voile****** dress trimmed with matching linen that she made herself, she wears her long hair in a chignon at the back of her neck and has styled her blonde hair at the front into soft waves around her face, which are held in place with a fashionable pink bandeau******* made of pink ribbon. Being her sister, Bert has never really noticed how striking Edith is, yet as she stands, gazing seriously into Frank’s face, he sees that even without applying makeup, and without the aid of the expensive clothes and jewellery he sees many of the first class passengers in the dining saloon of his ship wear, she looks both elegant and beautiful. She catches Bert staring at her and smiles as she lifts the glass of champagne she holds in her right hand to her lips. Her smile beams like a beacon.

 

“Yes, she’s an English rose alright!” adds Conlin, shrugging on his coat. “Peaches and cream skin and pretty blonde hair.”

 

“Aye. Everyone loves a blonde.” Martin adds, agreeing with his friend.

 

“And what am I then?” pipes up Alice Dunn’s voice plaintively as she looks to Conlin, with whom she’s been spending most of New Year’s Eve, either sitting next to him around the Watsford’s table or dancing in his arms to the music from the gramophone around the crowded kitchen.

 

“You, my dear Alice, are the Vicar’s daughter********,” Conlin replies matter-of-factly, as if his statement answers her question.

 

“So what if I am?” she replies with a shrug, winding her scarf around her neck carefully, so as not to mess her own arrangement of soft, mousy blonde waves that she has held in place by a pale blue ribbon bandeau of her own.

 

“It means my dear Alice,” Conlin continues, sweeping an arm around her waist, making her squeal girlishly. “That however much fun you are, you come with a clergyman as a father-in-law for any prospective suitor, and that, can only spell trouble for me.”

 

“And who says I’m looking for a suitor, Conlin Campbell?” Alice answers smugly. “Least of all you!”

 

“All girls are looking for a suitor, Alice.” Bert opines. “Even you! Just look at Edith over there. She’s got Frank, so she’s happy.” He raises his voice slightly over the cacophony of excited voices around him as he leans on the kitchen table in an effort to catch his sister’s attention. “In fact, she and Frank are so happy in one another’s company, the pair of them don’t even want to ring the new year around the Jubilee Clock with the rest of us!”

 

“Oh get along with you, Bert!” Edith replies, as both she and Frank turn their attentions to her brother. “Go and yell your lungs out around the clock with the rest of them. I’m done with all that! I’ll be much happier here with Frank where it’s quieter.”

 

“See?” Bert says, raising his hands.

 

“Lucky blighter.” murmurs Martin.

 

“Now you just keep your eyes off our Edith, young Martin!” Ada’s voice suddenly interrupts the young people’s conversation, her voice light, yet tinged with a seriousness. “She’s Frank’s sweetheart, not yours.” She taps him on the forearm.

 

“Yes Mrs. Watsford.” Martin replies apologetically.

 

“Luckily not all of us want to be Little Polly Flinders and sit home amongst the cinders*********, Martin!” laughs Katy. “Some of us are modern girls, aren’t we Alice?”

 

“Indeed we are,” Alice agrees in a solicitous voice as she winds her arm through Conlin’s.

 

“And we want to go out and have some fun!” giggles Jeannie, who cheekily squashes Bert’s hat on his head, encouraging him to get ready to go out. “So, hurry up, Bert Watsford! Goodness knows how anyone gets fed in the dining room of your ship when you’ve always been such a slowpoke!” She prods Bert in the ribs as she speaks, making him exclaim in surprise.

 

“We say the same, Jeannie,” Conlin agrees, squeezing Alice’s arm with his own as he draws her closer to him. “But Martin and I keep him on time, don’t we Martin?”

 

“Aye, we do that.” Martin concurs.

 

“We just have to wait for Mum and Dad and the Pyecrofts.” Bert defends himself against his friends and shipmates light hearted teasing.

 

“Well, I’m ready.” Ada replies, squashing her red velvet hat with springs of dried flowers around the brim onto her head.

 

“And we’re here too!” George announces, walking into the room with Lilian and Earnest Pyecroft, all three wrapped up in their coats and hats, ready to go out with the others to cheer in the new year around Harlesden’s Jubilee Clock Tower.

 

“Right! Let’s go then!” Jeannie exclaims excitedly.

 

“Will you like to lead the way, Ernie and Lilian?” George asks with a sweeping gesture towards the door.

 

“Come Lilian my dear.” Mr. Pyecroft says, chivalrously offering his wife his hand. “Shall we?”

 

“Rather!” Mrs. Pyecroft answers, taking his proffered hand with her right as she pulls the small fox fur collar at her throat a little tighter around her neck. “What a marvellous way to end a jolly good knees up, George.”

 

“Glad you’ve enjoyed it, Lilian.” George replies with pleasure.

 

Lead by Mr. and Mrs. Pyecroft, Martin and Katy, Conlin and Alice, Bert and Jeannie and George and Ada begin to drift noisily out of the kitchen, all full of good spirits and laughter.

 

“You know you have to kiss me when the clock strikes twelve, Conlin,” Alice says as the pair of them follow Martin and Katy through the door leading from the Watsford’s kitchen to the scullery and then out the back door.

 

“I promise to kiss those organ playing hands of yours, Alice Dunn.” he replies with a chuckle.

 

“I should hope you’ll kiss me on the lips, Conlin Campbell!” she replies indignantly.

 

“Only if you’re lucky.” his retort rewarding him with a kittenish slap to his upper left arm from Alice.

 

“Are you quite sure you don’t want to come and shout in the new year with the rest of us?” Bert asks his sister and Frank as he moves towards the frosted and stained glass paned door that leads to the scullery with Jeannie on his arm. “It will be ripping fun.”

 

“No thank you, Bert.” Frank replies steadfastly. He raises his hands and grasps Edith’s forearms affectionately. “I’ll be fine here with Edith.”

 

“You go on and cheer the new year in for me, Bert.” Edith assures her brother.

 

“It won’t be the same without you, Edith.” Bert says a little imploringly.

 

“Oh Bert!” Ada scoffs. “It won’t be the last new year that you are on shore leave.” She gives his shoulder a shallow swipe at his silliness. “Come along with you.” She starts to steer her son towards the door.

 

“Are you so blind, Bert, that you can’t see that Edith and Frank would much rather celebrate the new year together, and alone,” Jeannie emphasises the last two words as she speaks.

 

“Yes, let’s give the lovebirds a little privacy.” George agrees, winking at his daughter conspiratorially, making both she and Frank blush at his remark.

 

“Come on! Let’s go, or it will be midnight, and we won’t have reached the Jubilee Clock!” Jeannie urges Bert.

 

“Alright then.” Bert shrugs, allowing himself to be steered out the kitchen door. “I say!” he calls to Edith and Frank over his shoulder. “You won’t play ‘There’s Life in the Old Girl Yet’********** before we get back, will you?”

 

“We won’t be gone that long, Bert!” Jeannie insists in a hiss.

 

“We promise.” Edith assures her brother with a comforting smile.

 

As Jeannie, Ada and George bustle Bert out the back door, he stops on the threshold and says to Jeannie, “You go on ahead. I just want to have a quick word with Mum and Dad. We’ll catch up in a minute.” He gives her a gentle push.

 

“You always were such a slowpoke, Bert.” Jeannie teases again. She smiles as she wags her finger at him warningly. “Don’t be too long, or you really will miss midnight, and I’ll be disappointed if you do.”

 

“I promise I won’t, Jeannie.” he assures her, shooing her away.

 

“What’s all this about then, Bert?” George says seriously as they stand in the streak light cast through the chink in the curtains at the kitchen window and watch Jeannie’s hat covered head disappear out the back gate and into the alleyway that runs between the Watsford’s terrace and the terrace backing onto the next street.

 

“Sorry Dad.” Bert apologises. “I just wanted to ask, whilst we’re alone and no-one else is in earshot, but is everything alright between Edith and Frank?”

 

“What do you mean, Bert?” Ada asks.

 

“Has Frank actually proposed yet?” Bert asks with concern.

 

“Well, no. Not as such yet, that I know of, anyway. Ada?”

 

“Edith hasn’t said anything to me, Bert.” Ada answers, her breath spilling out in a cloud of white vapour in the cold of the winter’s night. “I mean, there is an understanding between the two of them. They are both just saving up a bit more money so that they can set up house together before they formalise anything.”

 

“But we are expecting some kind of announcement in the new year, Bert.” George assures his son. “Quite soon as a matter of fact.”

 

“Frank is a good lad,” Ada goes on. “He’d ask your Dad for permission before he formally proposes to your sister.”

 

“What’s all this about, Bert?” George asks, his face clouding with concern.

 

“Well,” Bert says, lowering his gaze and shifting a loose stone across the paving stone beneath the sole of his right boot. “It’s just I had this feeling.”

 

“Feeling? What feeling?” George persists.

 

“Tonight, when they were together, there just seems to be something between them.” Bert says a little uncertainly. “Something awkward.”

 

“I felt that too!” hisses Ada quietly. “On Christmas Day when Frank and old Mrs. McTavish came here.”

 

“I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Bert goes on.

 

“I can’t either, but Edith’s said nothing to me, and she usually tells me most things.” Ada adds.

 

“But not everything.” Bert says dourly.

 

“Look, I’m sure it’s nothing for either of you to worry about.” George assures them, winding an arm around each of them and placing a knitted glove clad hand on their shoulders.

 

“Perhaps that’s why they wanted to stay behind whilst the rest of us went out.” Bert goes on, his eyes brightening.

 

“Perhaps lad,” George agrees. “But if it is, it is none of our affair. So, let’s go and cheer in the new year and leave them to it. Eh?”

 

With a firm hand, George steers his wife and son towards the open gate at the rear of the courtyard.

 

In the Watsford’s kitchen, with the departure of everyone else, a stillness settles in. Edith removes the needle from the gramophone record of the ‘H.M.S. Pinafore selection’ performed by the Court Symphony Orchestra, which has reached its conclusion. The stylus had been sending a soft hissing noise through the copper-plated morning glory horn of the gramophone as the needle remained locked into the groove of the recording. She carefully lifts the record from the gramophone player and slides the shiny black shellack record back into its slip case which rustles as she does.

 

“Gosh!” Frank opines from his seat. “You don’t notice how noisy everyone is until they are gone, do you?”

 

Edith smiles and chuckles. “Bert and his friends are always loud, and Katy, Jeannie and Alice are such giggling girties*********** when they get together.”

 

“Still, they are all very nice,” Frank adds. “And very welcoming. You brother has been so solicitous to me this evening, offering me his stout.”

 

“And Katy dancing with you to try and make Conlin Campbell jealous.” Edith smiles.

 

“Is that her game, then?”

 

“Yes,” Edith laughs. “Although I don’t think it worked. I think Conlin was only happy to leave you in the arms of Katy and more to the point, her two left feet.”

 

“Yes,” Frank admits, sighing as he does. “She wasn’t exactly light on her feet when we danced to ‘Lady Be Good’************.”

 

“No, I could see that.” giggles Edith. “It was rather funny seeing the two of you dance.”

 

“For you, maybe!”

 

“It was… Francis.” Edith adds Frank’s proper name at the end of the sentence cheekily, teasing him.

 

“I wish Gran had never let that slip.” Frank mutters begrudgingly again, as he has several times in the past. “I’m Frank now. No-one at the trades union will take me seriously if I’m called Francis.”

 

“Still, it was awfully good of you to bring the gramophone and records tonight, Frank.” Edith waves her hand across the selection of records on the kitchen table next to the gramophone.

 

“Well, really it’s my friend Richard from the Trade Unionists that we have to thank. He’s spending the new year in Wales with friends, and they already have a gramophone up there, so he didn’t need his.”

 

“Then thank you to Richard of the Trades Union for lending them, but thank you to you, Frank, for being kind enough to bring them with you tonight.” Edith replies. “It certainly made for a much livelier party.”

 

“Well, I’m glad, Edith.”

 

“And it brough Mum and Dad and Mr. and Mrs. Pyecroft down from the front room.”

 

“I’m glad for that too.”

 

The pair fall silent, with only the deep ticking of the kitchen clock on the wall, the crackle from the coal range and the occasional distant squeal or cheer from a new year reveller in the darkened streets outside to break the quiet as it settles down around them. Edith pulls her mother’s Windsor chair up towards Frank so that she can sit opposite him, and once she has settled down comfortably into it, she toys absentmindedly with Frank’s fingers and he lets her.

 

“Frank, there is actually something important I want to talk to you about.” Edith says at length, her head lowered so Frank can’t read her expression as she speaks. “And that’s why I wanted us to stay behind whilst the others went on to the Jubilee Clock to ring in the new year.”

 

“I thought it might have been something like that.” Frank says seriously.

 

“Well, I just think that this needs saying before midnight, so that we can go into 1925 clear in our understanding.”

 

“Oh!” Frank gasps. “That does sound jolly serious, Edith.”

 

“It is serious, Frank.” Ediths head shoots up and she looks at him earnestly.

 

“Oh my!” Frank’s shoulders slump. “Best get it out then, Edith.” He turns and looks at the clock. “There are only a few minutes left in the old year, before the new one starts.”

 

“Well… Frank…” Edith wraps her fingers around Frank’s and holds them tightly in a still grasp as she heaves a heavy sigh. “I’ve been giving this some serious thought.”

 

“Should I be worried, Edith?”

 

“What?” Edith queries, shaking her head. “No. No, Frank. No.”

 

“That’s a relief.” It is Frank’s turn to sigh.

 

“Please Frank,” Edith pleads. “Just hear me out and don’t interrupt for a moment.”

 

When Frank nods shallowly and stares at her intensely with his loving eyes, Edith goes on.

 

“I’ve been thinking about that proposal you made to me that Sunday in the Corner House************* up Tottenham Court Road.”

 

“What proposal, Edith?” Frank blasts. “I haven’t actually proposed marriage yet.” Then he adds hurriedly, “Not that I won’t,” He pauses. “So long as you still want to marry me, Edith.”

 

“Frank!” Edith exclaims in frustration. “You don’t make things easy sometimes! I asked you not to interrupt me.”

 

“Oh! Sorry Edith. I won’t interrupt again.”

 

Edith shakes her head and sighs deeply again as she tries to recollect her thoughts.

 

“So, I thought long and hard about what you said that day. I won’t lie, Frank.” She looks him squarely in the face. “The idea of moving to the country from the city frightened me. In fact, it still does, if I’m being completely honest. I’ve only ever known the city you see.”

 

Realising what she is talking about, Frank longs to speak, and to take his sweetheart into his arms and comfort her, but he thinks better of it, understanding that Edith needs to speak her piece. So, he simply sits in his seat, leaning forward and giving her his full attention.

 

“But now I see that you are only trying to do the best by me, well by both of us really. After that afternoon, I went down to see Mrs. Boothby, and it was she who made me realise that if you and I do go and live in Metroland************** after we are married, it wouldn’t be so bad.” Edith takes a deep breath. “So, I guess what I’m saying, Frank, is that if the opportunity arises after we’re married, for a better position in Chalk Hill or wherever, I’ll go with you.”

 

“Oh Edith!” Frank gasps, standing up.

 

Edith stands too, and they both embrace lovingly.

 

“I knew the idea upset you, Edith, but not as much as it obviously has!” Frank exclaims. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“It’s alright, Frank. I didn’t want to let you see how much it did, because I could see how much it meant to you. You only want a better paying job to help support me, and our family if God grants us one, and a better life for us all. I can see that now.”

 

“Well,” Frank holds Edith at arm’s length, beaming from ear to ear. “God bless Mrs. Boothby for helping you see that, and bless you for being so brave and courageous, my down dear Edith! I must be the luckiest man in the world to have you, Edith Watsford!”

 

“And I must be the luckiest girl.” Edith murmurs in return,

 

“I mean, a job hasn’t turned up yet, and it may not, but if it does, I promise you that you won’t regret it.”

 

The pair embrace again, even more deeply this time.

 

“I better not, Frank Leadbetter!” Edith says with a laugh. “I hope wherever you take me, I will be close to a cinema. I don’t want to miss out on the latest Wanetta Ward film, just because we are living in Metroland.”

 

“I promise you won’t miss out, dear Edith!” Frank assures her.

 

Suddenly there is the distant chime of clocks striking midnight and cheers going up.

 

“Listen!” Edith exclaims. “It’s midnight! Happy New Year, Frank.”

 

“Happy 1925 Edith.” Frank replies.

 

And with that, the two press their lips together in the first kiss between them for 1925, the new year suddenly full of possibility, trepidation and excitement.

 

*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.

 

**An ironmonger is the old fashioned term for someone who sells items, tools and equipment for use in homes and gardens: what today we would call a hardware shop. Ironmongery stems from the forges of blacksmiths and the workshops of woodworkers. Ironmongery can refer to a wide variety of metal items, including door handles, cabinet knobs, window fittings, hinges, locks, and latches. It can also refer to larger items, such as metal gates and railings. By the 1920s when this story is set, the ironmonger may also have sold cast iron cookware and crockery for the kitchen and even packets of seeds for the nation of British gardeners, as quoted by the Scot, Adam Smith.

 

***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 cast iron Jubilee Clock has remained a Harlesden landmark since its erection at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. It is ornate, decorated with dolphins, armorial bearings, a fluted circular column with spirals, shields of arms and swags. When it was built, it featured four ornate gas lit lamps sprouting from its column and two drinking fountains with taps and bowls at its base. It also featured a weathervane on its top. During the late Twentieth Century elements were removed, including the lanterns and the fountain bowls. In 1997 the clock was restored without these elements, but plans are underway to restore of the weathervane and recreation of the original four circular lanterns to the clock and the two fountains.

 

*****“I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” (often referred to as the "Major-General's Song" or "Modern Major-General's Song") is a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera “The Pirates of Penzance”. It has been called the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan patter song. The piece is difficult to perform because of the fast pace and tongue-twisting nature of the lyrics.

 

******Voile is a lightweight, plain woven fabric usually made from 100% cotton or cotton blend. It has the higher thread count than most cotton fabrics, which results in a silky soft hand. Voile fabric is a perfect dressmaking option for summer because it is lightweight, breathable and semi-sheer.

 

*******A bandeau is a narrow band of ribbon, velvet, or similar, worn round the head. They were often accessorised with jewels, imitation flowers, feathers and other trimmings in the 1920s when they were at the height of their popularity.

 

********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.

 

*********‘Little Polly Flinders’, is an English nursery rhyme which emerged in the early 1800s. Charles Dibdin, a talented English poet, is said to have composed this delightful ditty. The rhyme spins the tale of a young girl who, one fine morning, wakes up early and adorns her hair with roses. The rhyme was likely concocted as a cautionary tale and a relatable experience for young children. The primary message of the rhyme is to inspire a sense of responsibility, discipline, and order. It cautions against the consequences of neglecting one's duties, such as ruining one's garments. In the mid Nineteenth Century, the song's fame grew tremendously, frequently acting as a helpful aid for instructing children in reading and writing which is why the friends of the Watsford’s children would have known it so well.

 

**********‘There’s Life in the Old Girl Yet’ is a song that was very popular in Britain in 1924. With music and lyrics by Noël Coward the song comes from the 1923 London West End musical, ‘London Calling’ and was popularised by English singer and comic character actor Maisie Gay.

 

***********A “giggling girty” means a girl who laughs a great deal. The term was turned into a popular song in America by the “original radio girl” Vaughn DeLeath. The term has generally fallen out of fashion because the name Gertrude is equally out of favour today.

 

************‘Lady Be Good’ is a foxtrot from the Broadway musical ‘Lady Be Good’ written by George Gershwin, released in 1924.

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The wonderful nickel plated ‘morning glory horn’ portable gramophone, complete with His Master’s Voice labelling, is a 1:12 miniature artisan piece made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. It arrived in a similarly labelled 1:12 packing box along with the box of RCA Victor records that you can see peeping out of their box to the right of the gramophone. The gramophone has a rotating crank and a position adjustable horn.

 

The records scattered across Ada’s kitchen table at the front of the gramophone are all made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Known for his authentic recreation of books, most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the wonderful gramophone records you see here. Each record is correctly labelled to match its dust cover, and can be removed from its sleeve. Each record sleeve is authentically recreated just like its life-sized equivalent, right down to its creasing and curling corners. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make them all miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The bottle of champagne is a 1:12 size artisan miniature made of glass by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The champagne glasses on the table are hand-made 1:12 artisan miniature pieces made from blown glass, acquired from Karen Ladybug Miniatures. The glass and bottles of ale are also :12 artisan miniature pieces made from blown glass, acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The tablecloth is actually a piece of bright cotton print that was tied around the lid of a jar of home made peach and rhubarb jam that I was given a few years ago.

 

The paper chains festooning Ada’s kitchen I made myself using very thinly cut paper. It was a fiddly job to do, but I think it adds festive cheer and realism to this scene, as fancy Christmas decorations would have been beyond the budget of Edith’s parents, and homemade paper chains were common in households before the advent of cheap mass manufactured Christmas decorations.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

You will also notice on the shelves of the dresser a few of the common groceries a household like the Watsfords’ may have had: Bisto gravy powder, Ty-Phoo tea and Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their 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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

stories reaching into space.

concrete, wire, book pages

 

Offerte.

Geschichten ragen in den Raum.

Beton, Draht, Buchseiten.

All images available for licensing via me. I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database with thousands of hand-picked images of dogs, cats, as well as horses, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

For licensing and commission requests: info{at}elkevogelsang.com -

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

When she was young, Eglantine had Titian red hair that fell in wavy tresses about her pale face, making her a popular muse amongst the Pre-Raphaelites she mixed with. With the passing years, her red hair has retreated almost entirely behind silver grey, save for the occasional streak of washed out reddish orange, yet she still wears it as she did when it was at its fiery best, sweeping softly about her almond shaped face, tied in a loose chignon at the back of her neck. Large blue glass droplets hang from her ears, glowing in the diffused light filtering through the lace curtains that frame the window overlooking the garden. The earrings match the sparkling blue bead necklace about her neck that cascades over the top of her usual uniform of a lose Delphos dress** that does not require her to wear a corset of any kind.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Who told you about Gerald and Cyril?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“I know, Aunt Egg. She showed me.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“And you still love him?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Aunt Egg?” Lettice ventures tentatively at length.

 

“Yes, my dear?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“John?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Not that I’m aware of, Aunt Egg.”

 

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

 

“Yes, Aunt Egg.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“An ulterior motive, Lettice?”

 

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

 

“Threat?”

 

“Yes.”

 

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

 

“Nothing solid, only circumstantial anecdotes.”

 

“Such as?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Of course not!” Lettice scoffs.

 

“Exactly!”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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.

 

This evening, we have not strayed far from Cavendish Mews and are still in Mayfair, but due to a constant barrage of rain, Lettice has chosen to take a taxi, hailed for her by her maid Edith from the nearby square, to Bond Street where the premises of the Portland Gallery stand. Tonight, Lettice has been invited to the exclusive opening night of the Portland Gallery’s autumn show: a very special occasion indeed, with attendance only offered to an exclusive group of artists, patrons of the arts and special customers, like Lettice to view the very latest finds by the gallery owner, Mr. Chilvers. The gallery has been closed for the last fortnight with its thick velvet curtains drawn, excluding the inquisitive eyes and goggling glances of the foot traffic walking up and down Bond Street. As the taxi pulls up to the kerb, Lettice peers through the partially fogged up and raindrop spattered window at the impressive three storey Victorian building with Portland stone facings, which is where the gallery takes its name from. The ground floor part of the façade has been modernised in more recent times, and its magnificent plate glass windows are illuminated by brilliant light from within as guests wander about, admiring the objets d’art artfully presented in them.

 

“That’ll be four and six, mum.” the taxi driver says through the glass divider between the driver’s compartment and the passenger carriage as he leans back in his seat. Stretching his arm across the seat he tips his cap in deference to the well dressed lady swathed in arctic fox furs wearing a beaded bandeau across her stylishly coiffured blonde hair in the black leather back seat.

 

After paying the taxi fare, Lettice opens the door and unfurls a rather lovely Nile green umbrella that closely matches the fabric of her frock beneath her fur coat and alights onto the wet pavement outside. She elegantly walks the few paces over to the full-length plate-glass doors on which the Portland Gallery’s name is written in elegant gilt font along with the words ‘by appointment only’ printed underneath in the same hand. The door is opened by a liveried footman who welcomes her by name to the gallery, accepting her invitation as she steps across the threshold. “Good evening. Welcome to the Portland Gallery’s autumn show, Miss Chetwynd.” He bows as he indicates for her to step inside the crowded gallery.

 

“May I take your fur, madam?” a second liveried footman asks politely, holding up his white glove clad hands at her shoulder height, ready to accept her fox as she shucks out of it elegantly, revealing the gold sequin spangled panels running down the front of her drop waisted frock. He then takes her umbrella and carefully hangs both inside a discreet coat cupboard nearby.

 

As the door closes behind her, the quiet London street outside is forgotten as Lettice is swept up into the electrifying atmosphere of the Portland Gallery’s latest show of new and avant-garde art. The burble of vociferous, excited chatter fills her ears. Her eyes flit around the red painted gallery hung with paintings and populated with tables, cabinets and pillars upon which stand different sculptures and other artistic pieces. Everywhere the cream of London’s artistic and bohemian set and wealthy members of the upper classes mill about in small clutches remarking on the works around her. As she smiles and waves a black elbow length glove clan hand at an acquaintance from the Embassy Club, she knows it won’t be long before she sees her Aunt Eglantyne, an artist of some note in her own right, amid the bright and colourful crowd of guests, no doubt arrayed in a Delphos gown* of a dazzling shade with a cascade of precious jewels tumbling down her front and a turban adorned with a spray of jewels and an aigrette** enveloping her red hennaed hair. She sniffs the air, which is filled with a fug of different perfumes and cigarette smoke to see if she can catch a whiff of the exotic scent of her aunt’s Balkan Black Russian Sobranies***. Grasping a coupe of glittering champagne from a silver tray carried around by a maid dressed in typical black moiré with an ornamental lace apron with matching cuffs and headdress, Lettice takes a deep breath and steps into the fray.

 

She smiles and pauses to chat with friends and acquaintances she knows through her well-connected aunt or her own associations as she slowly works her way around the room, admiring the artworks. She wends her way through the assembled guests, smiling occasionally to some and waving to others. She stops to speak to art critic P. G. Konody****, laughing lightly as he dismisses a Post-Impressionist painting they stand before as “unintelligible” before she excuses herself and moves on. She sees her aunt, dressed just as she imagined, in animated conversation with a diminutive woman with bobbed hair and waves to her, her indication acknowledged by a smile of recognition and a gaze that implies that she will catch up with Lettice once she extricates herself from her current conversation. Moving on, Lettice brushes against artist Frank Brangwyn*****. When he turns, she stops and asks with interest about his latest biblical etchings and how he feels they will be received by critics such as Mr. Konody. Wending her way still further through the meandering gathering of guests, she stops again and converses with New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins****** about her explorations into painting fabric designs. “My Aunt Eglantyne is also looking at creating in fabric, Miss Hodkins, but she is looking more at weaving after being inspired by the native carpets she saw on a trip to South America.” Lettice remarks. “She has even bought herself a large loom that she has had installed at her studio.”

 

“Ahh, Miss Chetwynd! There you are!” comes a male voice, cutting through the hubbub of chatter with its well enunciated syllables.

 

“Mr. Chilvers!” Lettice greets a smartly dressed man with a warm smile and the familiarity of the regular client that she is. “How do you do.”

 

Born Grand Duke Pytor Chikvilazde in the Russian seaside resort town of Odessa, the patrician gallery owner with his beautifully manicured and curled handlebar moustache fled Russia after the Revolution, escaping aboard the battleship HMS Marlborough******* from Yalta in 1919 along with the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and other members of the former, deposed Russian Imperial Family. Arriving in London later that year after going via Constantinople and Genoa, the Russian emigree was far more fortunate than others around him on the London docks, possessing valuable jewels smuggled out of Russia in the lining of his coat. Changing his name to the more palatable Peter Chilvers, he sold most of the jewels he had, shunned his Russian heritage, and honed his English accent and manners, to reinvent himself as the very British owner of an art gallery in Bond Street, thus enabling him to continue what he enjoyed most about being Grand Duke Pytor Chikvilazde and participate in the thriving arts scene in his new homeland.

 

“How do you do, Miss Chetwynd. What a pleasure to have you at my little gallery’s autumn showing, even if autumn is yet to arrive.” He takes up her hand and kisses it, perhaps one of the few Russian – and definitely not British – traits he still has.

 

“Well, I think with the rain outside and the cooling temperatures, it feels much more autumnal to me out there, so I think your autumn showing is well timed, Mr. Chilvers.”

 

“I hope then, Miss Chetwynd, that you are enjoying the sparkling champagne, the glittering company.” He nods in Miss Hodgkins’ direction, acknowledging her. “And the art, of course.”

 

“Of course, Mr. Chilvers.” Lettice replies with a smile, flattered by his attentions.

 

“Now, if I can extract you from the charms of Miss Hodgkins’ company, Miss Chetwynd, there is something in particular in my latest show that I should like to draw you attention to.”

 

Lettice and Mr. Chilvers excuse themselves from Miss Hodgkins’ presence and slowly wend their way through the milling clusters of party attendees, many turning heads, craning their necks or glancing surreptitiously and with a little jealousy at Mr. Chilvers to see which guest in particular has his undivided attention. The pair stop on the black and white marble floor before one if the gallery’s fireplaces,

 

“Is that?” Lettice begins as she stares up at the striking painting hanging above the mantle lined with pottery and glass.

 

“A Picasso?” Mr. Chilvers chortles with smug delight, rather like a child who has just won a game, completing Lettice’s unfinished question. “Yes, it is.”

 

Lettice admires the bold colours and energetic strokes of thickly layered paint on the canvas. Angular lines pick out the faces and torsos of two figures. Eyes, noses, hands, two thin lines making up a mouth. Fragmented, distorted and distracted the image radiates intimacy as much as it does boldness: a hand resting on a shoulder, the pair of figures’ heads drawn closely together, both with eyes downcast.

 

“It’s called, ‘Lovers’.” Mr. Chilvers goes on. “It’s part of his latest Cubist******** pieces.”

 

“It’s remarkable!” Lettice breathes with awe.

 

“I knew you’d like it, Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Chilvers purrs. “Well, I’ll just leave you to contemplate Mr. Picasso’s new work, Miss Chetwynd. Come and find me if you’d like ‘Lovers’.” He smiles at Lettice’s transfixed face before silently gilding away and rejoining a nearby group of his guests where he begins chatting animatedly.

 

Lettice is still staring up at the intricacies of the brushwork in the painting when she hears her name being called by another male voice. “Lettice!” Turning her head away from the artwork she finds Sir John Nettleford-Hughes at her right shoulder.

 

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 time 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, 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. Luckily Selwyn Spencely, the handsome eldest son of the Duke of Walmsford, 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, a baronial Art and Crafts castle near the hamlet of Kershopefoot in Cumberland. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable.

 

“Sir John!” Lettice gasps.

 

“Now, now!” he chides her. “Come Lettice. We are friends now, are we not?”

 

“Indeed we are.”

 

“Then enough of this ‘Sir John’ business. John will be quite satisfactory.”

 

Lettice laughs with embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry, John, but old habits and all that, don’t you know?” He smiles indulgently at her. Lettice blushes under his gaze as she goes on, “I… I wasn’t expecting to see you here this evening.”

 

“No?” he toys.

 

“No, I didn’t think a modernist exhibition like this would appeal to you, John. I’ve always assumed you to be more of a classical art appreciator.”

 

Sir John sighs a little tiredly. “Well, it’s true, I am a more classically inclined when it comes to art appreciation. I’ve just been taking to Ethel Walker********* over there about a portrait she has exhibited here, and I can’t say I particularly like it, much less abstractions like this.” He indicates to the Picasso above the fireplace. “Which looks unintelligible to me.”

 

Lettice laughs. “You sound like dear Mr. Konody over there.” She indicates to the art critic, now in conversation with two society matrons dripping in diamond and pearls over a clutch of pottery pieces by Bernard Leach**********. Turning back to the painting above the fireplace, Lettice continues, “So if you don’t like this style of art, then it begs the question, what are you doing here, John?”

 

“That’s easy, Lettice: Carter money.”

 

“Carter money?” Lettice queries.

 

This time it is Sir John who chuckles as he looks upon Lettice’s non comprehension with amusement. “I’m here with Priscilla.” he elucidates.

 

“Cilla?” Lettice queries again, at the mention of her Embassy Club coterie friend, now married to wealthy American Georgie Carter.

 

“Yes. Her husband’s department store money has opened the doors of the Portland Gallery to her, but whilst he is happy to foot the bill for anything that takes her fancy this evening, Georgie has cried off accompanying Priscila this evening after conveniently coming down with a sudden head cold, which I am no doubt sure will evaporate by breakfast tomorrow. So, as the honourary token uncle, I’m stepping in as chaperone for the evening.”

 

“Oh poor John.” Lettice puts a hand up to her mouth to obscure her smile and muffle the mirth in her voice.

 

“Oh I wouldn’t say it’s all that bad.” Sir John replies. “Whilst the art brings me little enjoyment, I do have the pleasure of your company as a result of Mr. Chilver’s little show. And,” He lifts his coupe of bubbling champagne. “The man does have fine taste in champagne.”

 

“Indeed.” Lettice agrees, raising her glass to Sir John’s where they clink together.

 

The pair walk together away from the Picasso painting and move towards the clutch of pieces by Bernard Leech. Lettice glances back over her shoulder at the painting one final time.

 

“Now, whilst this pottery isn’t my cup of tea either,” Sir John remarks, indicating to the brown glazed pottery jugs decorated with naïve images of animals and plants. ‘At least I know what they are.”

 

Lettice laughs. “Well, that’s a start, John. Cilla and I will make a modern art appreciator of you yet.”

 

“Don’t even try, Lettice.” he scoffs with a roll of his eyes. “Now, thinking of pottery, I am sure you will do a splendid job at Arkwright Bury. Adelina will adore the room you redecorate for her, and I know how excited Alisdair is about it. he’s told me that it will look quite marvellous! Thank you for taking it on.”

 

“Oh no, thank you for suggesting it to me at Gossington. Your nephew and Mrs. Grifford are delightful people.”

 

“I knew you’d like them, Lettice. And I believe Alisdair’s godfather, Henry Tipping************ will write another favourable article about you in Country Life************.”

 

“Apparently so, so long as Mrs. Gifford likes the room and keeps it.”

 

“I’m sure she will, Lettice. I just hope theis little job of decorating Adelina’s blue and white china room will be a good distraction for you.”

 

Lettice sighs heavily. “It will be, John. I’ve been throwing myself into my interior design work, so as not to think about Selwyn’s absence.”

 

“So, have you heard anything from young Spencely since he’s been banished to Durban, Lettice?” Sir John asks.

 

“No, I haven’t.” Lettice sighs heavily again.

 

“That’s a pity, but I’m hardly surprised. Based upon what you told me about the bargain he struck with his mother, I wouldn’t imagine he’d dare.”

 

“Have you heard anything from him at all, John?”

 

“Me? Why should I have heard anything?”

 

“Well, it’s just,” Lettice tries to keep the hopeful lilt out of her voice as she speaks. “You mentioned him, is all. I thought that perhaps you might have heard from him.”

 

“We don’t really move in the same circles, Lettice. Don’t forget that I’m a bit older than you two. I’m more inclined to be a contemporary of Zinnia,” Sir John continues, referencing Selwyn’s mother, the Duchess of Walmsford, by name. Seeing Lettice’s eyes suddenly grow wide he quickly adds, “Not that I am friends with her, I assure you Lettice. She’s a venomous viper, as you know, and I’ve every wish to avoid being in her orbit. And,” he adds. “I’m certainly not one of her spies, if you are at all concerned, Lettice.”

 

Lettice releases a pent up breath caught in her throat in a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad to hear it, John. After the revelation that Lady Zinnia knew about Selwyn and I, long before we even attempted to draw attention to our relationship, I’m not sure who to trust.”

 

“Well, I did try to warn you at Priscilla’s wedding, Lettice.”

 

“I know you did, John.” Lettice concedes, glancing down into her half empty glass. “I just didn’t want to listen.”

 

“Who ever wants to listen to advice they don’t want to hear, my dear?”

 

“No-one, I suppose.”

 

“Have patience, Lettice. I may not be friends with Zinnia, but I know enough about her, not to cross her, so don’t be too hard on young Spencely for doing the same, and keep your faith. If I know anything about Zinnia, it’s that she will have spies keeping an eye on everything her son does, even in far away Durban, and no doubt she is paying someone to steam open every letter he sends, and another person to read every scrap of correspondence he writes or reads, to make sure he isn’t trying to sneak a message to you, or you him.”

 

“Do you really think so, John? I’ve been hoping against hope, and I know my friends have too, that Selwyn would get a message to me somehow. However, to date I’ve had nothing, and I’m starting to lose hope. I do worry that a year apart may lead him to think less of me, or not at all.”

 

“Don’t, Lettice. Zinnia separated the two of you to try and break your bond, but if you can stay strong, you’ll win out over her scheming. She’d like nothing better than to catch Spencley sneaking you a letter, because then by way of her agreement with him, she could legitimately force him to marry someone else. He’s playing the long game, with you as the prize, I’m sure.”

 

“Do you really think so, John?”

 

“I do, Lettice.”

 

“Well, I must confess, you’re probably one of the last people I would have expected to hear that from.”

 

“As I said to you at Gossington, I was jealous that you’d had your head turned by Spencely, but I’m over that now. Jealousy in a single older man is equally as abhorrent in an older eligible bachelor as it is in a younger unmarried lady.” He gulps the last of his champagne. “However, in saying that, if anything should happen to cause your romance to Spencely fall through, don’t forget that I’m still here as an interested party.”

 

“Is there something you know that I don’t, John?”

 

“No.” Sir John replies breezily. “I’m only saying that if anything happens.”

 

Lettice pauses, straightens and stiffens as her eyes grow wide. For a moment she doesn’t say anything. “Is that a proposal, John?”

 

Sir John’s eyes flit about the crowded gallery as he considers his response before replying. “Hhhmmm… of sorts, I suppose.” He smiles enigmatically. “I’m not suggesting that I am trying to vie for your affections, Lettice. You are obviously in love with young Spencely, and I don’t wish to come between you two, or try to dissuade you from pursuing a relationship with him.”

 

“Then what are you proposing?”

 

“All I’m offering is an alternate choice, should your plans fall through for any reason. Just keep me in mind.”

 

Lettice lowers her gaze to the image of an owl etched into the side of a pottery jug with a long spout as she contemplates what Sir John has said. “But you’re,” She lowers her voice. “You’re a philanderer, John.”

 

“I’d never propose a conventional marriage, my dear Lettice, however let’s just say that if you married me, I’d pay for and let you hang a daub like that,” he indicates with a dismissive wave to the Picasso painting. “Wherever you like in any of our houses, if you let me take my enjoyment where I like it and not complain.”

 

He squeezes her glove clad upper arm discreetly. His touch makes the champagne in her mouth taste bitter.

 

“However,” he continues. “Don’t consider it now, consider it, only if the time should ever come - and I do mean, if.”

 

“Consider what, Uncle John?” Priscilla’s voice rings out as, dressed in a striking red frock with pearls cascading down her front she sidles up next to Sir John and Lettice. Wealth suits Priscilla, Lettice decides as she takes in the transformed figure of her friend who was once so poor that she discreetly took a typing course so as to take in secretarial work to help keep debt collectors at bay from she and her widowed mother’s door.

 

“I was just telling Miss Chetwynd to,” He pauses for a moment, unable to think of something to say to Priscilla instead of the truth..

 

“Sir John,” Lettice quickly fills in the awkward gap, reverting to formal terms like Sir John did in front of her friend to avoid any unnecessary gossip spread by Priscilla. “Was just telling me to think carefully and consider before making a decision as to whether I buy that Picasso.” She points to the painting above the fireplace.

 

Priscilla looks at the Picasso. “Oh Uncle John!” she exclaims in exasperation. Turning back to Lettice she continues, “I shouldn’t listen to him, Lettice, if I were you. He’s frightfully conservative when it comes to art: a real old stick-in-the-mud. I think it’s thrilling and so avant-garde, just like you. If you like it, buy it, that’s what I say, before someone else does! What is money for, if not to spend?” She giggles girlishly.

 

“I’ll consider all my options.” Lettice says with a smile.

 

“You’ll never guess what I’ve just gone and done!” Priscilla says, bursting with excitement as she changes the subject.

 

“I’m sure I’d never guess, Cilla.” Lettice replies. “Tell us.”

 

“Well, you see that woman in the brown dress over there.” She points to a woman with brown hair tied in a loose chignon at the base of her neck in a chocolate velvet dress.

 

“Ethel Walker, do you mean?” Lettice asks.

 

“Oh, you know her then.” Priscilla says, crestfallen.

 

“She’s quite a well known artist, Cilla darling.” Lettice soothes her friend’s ego. “That’s one of the reasons why she is at this soirée this evening.”

 

“What about her?” asks Sir John, his interest piqued.

 

“Well,” Priscilla pipes up again. “I’ve just agreed to sit for her. She walked right up to me and said she thought I had an interesting face, and she wants to paint me, even though we’d not even been introduced. It was all awfully thrilling.” She pauses for a moment before going on, “Although she told me I had to come bare faced*************,” She bites her lipstick coated lower lip, coloured almost the same shade of striking red as her frock. “As she wants to paint a portrait of who I really am.”

 

“Well, that’s a great honour, Cilla darling.” Lettice says. “Ethel Walker doesn’t paint anyone she doesn’t want to. Come let’s celebrate this wonderful announcement with some fresh champagne, shall we?”

 

As Lettice walks away arm in arm with Priscilla, she glances back over her shoulder at the Picasso painting of ‘Lovers’, and Sir John Nettleford-Hughes, smiling mysteriously and saluting her with his own empty glass: two potential male influences in her future life to consider.

 

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

 

**The term aigrette refers to the tufted crest or head-plumes of the egret, used for adorning a headdress – most popular in the Edwardian eras between the turn on the Twentieth Century and the Second World War. The word may also identify any similar ornament, in gems.

 

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

 

****Paul George Konody was a Hungarian-born, London-based art critic and historian, who wrote for several London newspapers, as well as writing numerous books and articles on noted artists and collections, with a focus on the Renaissance.

 

*****Sir Frank Brangwyn was born in Bruges, Belgium and was a self taught artist, save for some instruction from his architect father. He is best known for his murals and large easel paintings on heroic and biblical themes. His first prints were wood engravings and he later trained as a commercial wood engraver. Around 1900 he began etching, producing over three hundred works by 1926. His larger etchings attracted some criticism for their deeply bitten and liberally inked plates. His smaller works were considered more successful, particularly those set figures against an architectural background. He was knighted in 1941.

 

******Frances Mary Hodgkins was a New Zealand painter chiefly of landscape and still life, and for a short period was a designer of textiles. She was born and raised in New Zealand, but spent most of her working life in England.

 

*******In 1919, King George V sent the HMS Marlborough to rescue his Aunt the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna after the urging of his mother Queen Dowager Alexandra. On the 5th of April 1919, the HMS Marlborough arrived in Sevastopol before proceeding to Yalta the following day. The ship took Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and other members of the former, deposed Russian Imperial Family including Grand Duke Nicholas and Prince Felix Yusupov aboard in Yalta on the evening of the 7th. The Empress refused to leave unless the British also evacuated wounded and sick soldiers, along with any civilians that also wanted to escape the advancing Bolsheviks. The Russian entourage aboard Marlborough numbered some eighty people, including forty four members of the Royal Family and nobility, with a number of governesses, nurses, maids and manservants, plus several hundred cases of luggage.

 

********Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted.

 

*********Dame Ethel Walker was a Scottish painter of portraits, flower-pieces, sea-pieces and decorative compositions. From 1936, Walker was a member of The London Group. Her work displays the influence of Impressionism, Puvis de Chavannes, Gauguin and Asian art.

 

**********Bernard Howell Leach was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery".

 

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

 

*************Ethel Walker was disapproving of cosmetics, and was known to rebuke women in public on account of their makeup. She required her models to remove lipstick and nail polish before entering her studio in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. A friend of hers recollected of her, “She executed commissions when she liked the look of the would-be sitters but before painting her women she would say ‘Take that filthy stuff off your lips’ for, always faithful to the motif, she could not tolerate the sudden assault of red upon an eye so sensitive to tone”.

 

Whilst this up-market London gallery interior complete with artisan pieces may appear real to you, it is in fact made up completely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection. This tableau is particularly special because almost everything you can see is a handmade artisan miniature piece.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Central to our story, the “Lovers” painting by Picasso is a 1:12 miniature painted by hand in the style of Picasso by miniature artist Mandy Dawkins of Miniature Dreams in Thrapston. The frame was handmade by her husband John Dawkins.

 

The painting hanging to the left of the photograph is also a hand painted artisan picture. Created by miniature artist Ann Hall, it is a copy of “Place du Théâtre Francois, Paris” by Pissarro. The two pen and watercolour images hanging to the right of the photograph are by miniature artist R. Humphreys. I acquired these through Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The jug and bowl on the fireplace mantle had been hand fashioned and painted by an unknown miniature artisan ceramicist, whilst the four bottles are hand blown by another unknown miniature artisan, as is the ship in the glass bottle on the stand to the left of the fireplace. The bottles came from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdon, whilst the jug and bowl I acquired from a private collector of miniatures selling their collection on E-Bay.

 

The rather lovely soapstone container on the pedestal to the right of the fireplace is Eighteenth Century Chinese, and was rescued from a wreck in the South China Sea.

 

The painted and glazed jugs and vases on the black japanned table in the foreground are all handmade miniature artisan pieces made by an unknown potter. They were acquired from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The glass vases in unusual shapes on the black japanned table are in reality some beautiful glass bugle beads. Between 1923 and 1939, these beads and millions like them were produced from a very successful workshop on the outskirts of Toruń in northern Poland (then Pomerania) and sent to fashion houses both locally and in cities like Prague, Vienna and Paris. Then, with the coming of Hitler's invasion of Poland and the Second World War, the owners of the workshop closed their doors. They took the beads they had in the workshop and buried them in boxes in the ground beneath the floor of the workshop and then fled, hoping to return to reclaim them some day. And so the beads remained buried beneath the flagstones throughout the Second World War when the workshop was razed, and beyond during the re-building of post-war Poland. Although still in possession of the land on which the workshop had stood, the owners and their descendants never returned to Toruń to claim them, and the beads became a thing of legend. Nearly seventy years later, descendants of the original owners returned to Toruń to live, and decided to see if there was any truth to the stories of 'buried treasure'. Much to their astonishment and delight, what they uncovered beneath the flagstones were thirty great boxes, still well preserved in the earth, of 1920s and 1930s glass bugle beads! A selection of these beads came into my possession through the mother of my goddaughters and her mother, who are extremely close friends of mine and who are artists of Polish decent directly related to the owners of the Toruń workshop.

 

The two pedestals either side of the fireplace were made by the high end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

The black ladderback chairs and the table in the foreground were made by Town Hall Miniatures.

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Brooklyn

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

 

Today however we are following Lettice’s maid, Edith, who together with her beau, local grocery delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, have wended their way north-east from Cavendish Mews on their Sunday off, through neighbouring Soho to the Lyons Corner House* on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. As always, the flagship restaurant on the first floor is a hive of activity with all the white linen covered tables occupied by Londoners indulging in the treat of a Lyon’s luncheon or early afternoon tea. Between the tightly packed tables, the Lyons waitresses, known as Nippies**, live up to their name and nip in and out, showing diners to empty tables, taking orders, placing food on tables and clearing and resetting them after diners have left. The cavernous space with its fashionable Art Deco wallpapers and light fixtures and dark Queen Anne English style furnishing is alive with colour, movement and the burbling noises of hundreds of chattering voices, the sound of cutlery against crockery and the clink of crockery and glassware fills the air brightly.

 

Amidst all the comings and goings, Edith and Frank sit at a table for two just adjunct to one of the glass fronted cabinets filled with delicious cakes on display, engrossed in a conversation over the film that they have just seen together in an East Ham cinema.

 

“Oh I did enjoy ‘The Notorious Mrs. Carrick’***, Frank.” Edith enthuses. “That Cameron Carr**** is such a handsome film star!” she sighs.

 

“Hey!” splutters Frank as he deposits his teacup back into its saucer. “I would hope you only have eyes for me, Edith Watsford, and not some flicker of light up on a screen at the Premier in East Ham*****.”

 

“Are you jealous, Frank Leadbetter?” Edith laughs, her amused giggles blending in with the vociferous chatting going on around them.

 

“Certainly not!” Frank retorts blusteringly, stiffening in his seat. “Don’t talk such rubbish!”

 

“I declare, you are!” Edith giggles.

 

“Am not!”

 

“You are, Frank, and don’t pretend you aren’t.” she teases. “I can tell when you are, and your flushing cheeks give you away.”

 

“Oh really?” Frank gasps, raising his hands to his cheeks and pressing his palms into them to hide the rising colour in his face.

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith continues to chuckle. “You know you have nothing to worry about. Those film stars are just matinee idols******. They aren’t flesh and blood like you are. They are…” She pauses for a moment to think of the right words. “They are creatures made of stardust and dreams.” She gesticulates waving her hands elegantly through the air between them. “They aren’t real. I’m just like most girls, Frank. I like the moving pictures for their fantasy and their escapism into another world, far away from the hand graft of our everyday lives.”

 

“Well, so long as you don’t become like those crazy girls who scream hysterically in the street about that Rudolph Valentino*******, making a scene, and fools of themselves.” Franks says with distain.

 

“As if I would, Frank!” Edith retorts, lifting her cup of tea to her lips. “You know me well enough to know I’d never do anything like that! If anything, Miss Lettice or some of her flapper friends strike me as being more inclined to behave like that, and even then Miss Lettice would only do it just to shock her parents.”

 

“Well, she does influence you,” Frank replies sagely. “Even if you don’t know it.”

 

“Oh, don’t talk such rubbish, Frank.” Edith scoffs with a wave of her hand. “It is true that I admire Miss Lettice - it makes it easier to work for her that I do – but I would never let her influence me like that! She already tries to fill my head with ideas about my place in this new post-war world, but I’m not prepared to be quite as revolutionary as she would have me be.”

 

Their conversation is interrupted by a Nippie carrying a blue and white china plate on which some dainty triangle sandwiches are prettily arranged and garnished with parsley sprigs. “Tongue and jelly sandwiches********.” she announces cheerily over the hubbub of chatter around them before lowing the plate onto the empty space on the white linen covered tablecloth between their plates and teacups.

 

“Thank you, Miss.” Edith says politely to the Nippie, who’s grateful smile brightens her slightly tired looking visage beneath her stiff linen cap. After the Nippie leaves, Edith turns her attention back to Frank and adds, “I was always taught that ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ go a long way, in this world, and that you should always thank anyone who is serving you, whether it is a shop girl, or a Nippie.” She slips her starched linen napkin out from underneath her knife and shakes it out before draping it across her lap. “And my Mum taught me that by the way, not Miss Lettice.” she continues, as she makes a selection from the sandwiches on the plate, removing the top one from the stack.

 

“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Edith.” Frank says as he shakes out his own napkin and places it across his lap before selecting a sandwich for himself. “I’ve always admired you for your manners and how polite and kind you are to others. Your mother taught you well.”

 

“And your parents and grandmother taught you well… Francis.” Edith adds Frank’s proper name at the end of the sentence cheekily, teasing him.

 

“I wish Gran had never let that slip.” Frank mutters begrudgingly. “I’m Frank now. No-one at the trades union will take me seriously if I’m called Francis.”

 

“Oh, I’m only teasing, Frank.” Edith reaches out her right hand and grasps his left as it rests on the tablecloth next to his plate. She smiles in an assuring way towards Frank.

 

Edith takes a bite of her sandwich, enjoying the soft white bread and the spiced meat as she rolls it around her mouth, and sighs contentedly.

 

“Oh, and thinking of the trade unions, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, Edith.” Frank remarks as he chews on a mouthful his sandwich.

 

Edith swallows her mouthful of sandwich hard and picks up her teacup. Sipping her tea she remarks, “That sounds very serious, Frank.”

 

Frank looks earnestly at Edith. “Well, I suppose it is, Edith.”

 

Replacing her cup into its saucer, Edith smiles sweetly at Frank. “What is it then, Frank?”

 

Frank reaches inside the inner breast pocket of his tweed jacket and withdraws an advertising leaflet. Slightly dogeared, he hands it over the table to Edith.

 

“What’s this then?” She glances at the colourful brochure. On its cover is a stylised drawing of a Tutorbethan style********* two storey house with a tiled pitched roof set amidst an idyllic and lush English cottage garden. “Metro-Land, price twopence.” she reads the golden yellow wording on a dark brown background in a vignette at the bottom of the booklet.

 

“How would you like to live there, Edith?” Frank asks, his voice breathy with excitement.

 

Edith looks up from the brochure with wide and startled eyes. “Have you broken the bank at Monte Carlo********** Frank?” she laughs. “We couldn’t afford to live in a house like this, even with my extra four shillings a month as part of our combined wages! I won’t be earning a proper wage after we get married*********** don’t forget, Frank.” she cautions. “Where is this anyway?” She flicks the pamphlet open. “Chalk Hill Estate.”

 

“For around five shillings a week, we could rent a nice little two-up two-down************ semi************* just like that, in the Chalk Hill Estate: maybe a little bit more if we want one that’s furnished.”

 

“You’re dreaming, Frank. We can’t afford this.” she scoffs as she runs her hand over the brightly coloured cover. “This is for the aspiring middle-classes, not for the likes of us.”

 

“Ah, but that’s where your reckoning is wrong, Edith.” Frank replies, picking up his cup and taking a sip of his milky tea. “You see, when I was at the trades union meeting the other week, I met up with my friend Richard, and well, he told me that there might be an opening or two in one of the new grocers shops being built in places like the Chalk Hill, Grange and Cedars Estates for an assistant manager position, which would lead eventually to a position where I’d be running my own corner grocer. Even as an assistant manager, I’d be earning a decent wage: we might be lower middle-class dare I suggest it.” Frank smiles proudly. “Richard gave me that pamphlet.”

 

“So where are these Metroland************** estates then, Frank?”

 

“Well, they are these new London suburbs being built north-west of London: Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex.”

 

“Buckinghamshire?” Edith splutters, nearly choking on the mouthful of tea she has just drunk. “But that’s where Miss Lettice’s married sister lives! That’s miles away! It’s the country!”

 

“Well not any more it isn’t Edith.” Frank assures her. “It’s all being subdivided now and served by the Metropolitan Railway. They are the ones who are developing it.”

 

“But I don’t want to move to Buckinghamshire, Frank!”

 

“It’s not so bad, Edith. The Chalk Hill, Grange and Cedars Estates are all being built along the railway line not too far from Wembley Park, so you’d be able to visit your parents easily, and they’d be able to come and visit us too. In fact, you’d be closer to them than you are at Cavendish Mews. We’d live in a nice little house behind the shop, with all the mod-cons like indoor plumbing and electricity, just like Miss Lettice’s flat at Cavendish Mews.”

 

“That all sounds splendid, Frank, but the country!”

 

“They aren’t the country. They are called the ‘new suburbs’. Anyway, don’t forget that Harlesden was once a country area too. You’ve heard your mother tell stories about how she and your grandparents lived on a farm when she was growing up.”

 

Edith contemplates what Frank says for a moment. “Well, I think they might have lived a bit further out than Harlesden, then Frank.”

 

“But even so, Edith, Harlesden was a rural area once. Anyway, if I were running a corner grocer, or even being an assistant manager of one to begin with, we would be right in the heart of the shopping strip, so you wouldn’t be far from anything.”

 

“I remember what Queenie told Hilda and I about life in a country village, and I saw it for myself,” Edith tempers, remembering the trip that she and her best friend took to visit their friend and fellow housemaid, Queenie, in Alderley Edge in Cheshire. “Everyone there knows everyone else’s business, and the ladies there were all horribly snobbish and mean to Queenie, and were equally snobbish to Hilda and I once they knew that we were maids – not that there’s anything wrong with being a humble domestic.”

 

“Of course there isn’t, Edith. However, Alderley Edge is different to one of these estates, Edith.” Frank assures her.

 

“I don’t see how, Frank.”

 

“Well, Alderley Edge was a village and an old one at that, and Cheshire has some very fancy people living in it. These estates like Chalk Hill,” He points to the leaflet hanging limply in Edith’s hand. “Are new. There are no existing big families with fancy titles and histories and all that. There’s no pecking order. It would be made up of working people – yes, many middle-class families looking to solve their housing problems, but aspiring working people like us, too. It would be far more…” He thinks for a moment. “Egalitarian.”

 

“And what does that mean, Frank?” Edith spits.

 

“Well, it’s a belief, a belief based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.”

 

“Hhhmmm…” Edith contemplates. “Well, we’ll see about that. That all sounds fine in theory, but in my experience there are people who look down on other people everywhere, like nasty old Widow Hounslow,” She utters the name of her parent’s doughy landlady with distaste. “In Harlesden. I think people wanting to start new lives and lord that fact over others might live in these new paradise suburbs of yours, Frank.”

 

“Oh now don’t be like that, Edith! You sound like your mother when you talk like that.”

 

“Well, you can hardly blame me, Frank. This,” She hands the pamphlet back to Frank with an air of distain. “Is a big change you’re suggesting we make.”

 

Frank accepts the thin booklet and slips it somewhat reluctantly back into his inner breast pocket. “But just think, we could have a lovely home together: a real home with a little garden.”

 

“Dad has an allotment.” Edith defends.

 

“I know, but imagine a proper garden for the children to run around and play in. The children we have, Edith, can grow up attending local schools and getting lots of fresh air. There would be no pea-soupers*************** for them to suffer through.”

 

Edith considers the great clouds of thick, dense fog enveloping the streets of London and seeping into the corners of even places as fine as Cavendish Mews during the winter months, and how everyone coughs badly during them and in their aftermath.

 

“Well that’s true.” she admits begrudgingly. “But…”

 

“And if we lived in a little house like this,” Frank pats his jacket where the pamphlet now resides. “We’d have room for Hilda or Queenie to come and stay. Wouldn’t that be nice.”

 

“Very nice Frank.” Edith replies a little disbelievingly. “But what about your Gran?”

 

“What about her, Edith?”

 

“Well, if we moved to one of these new Metroland estates of yours, we’d be closer to my parents, but further away from Upton Park, and your Gran is older than my parents are.”

 

“Oh!” Frank dismisses. “Gran will be fine with it. She’s been telling me that I should get out of London if I can for years now. Don’t forget that before she married my grandfather, Gran lived in a little Scottish village. London is the only big city she has ever lived in, and she still doesn’t like it even to this day.”

 

“But what about when she gets older, Frank? She’s already infirm now.”

 

“Well,” Frank admits a little sheepishly. “I’ve been thinking about that too.”

 

“And?”

 

“And I was thinking that she might come to live with us when the time came that she couldn’t be on her own any more, since we’d have a bit more room with a house of our own.”

 

“It sounds like this house of yours that you imagine for us might be made of elastic, Frank,” Edith snorts with mild amusement and disbelief. “What with our children, my parents, Hilda and Queenie visiting, and now you Gran coming to live with us. Where will everyone fit? Someone will have to sleep in the inside privy!”

 

“We’d make it work, Edith.” Frank assures her. “Together.”

 

“Well, it’s a lot to consider, Frank.” Edith says after taking a few minutes to chew another mouthful of sandwich, the bread, tongue and jelly suddenly heavy in her mouth and stomach.

 

“But you will consider it, Edith?” Frank asks, the hopeful lilt in his voice echoing the optimistic glint in his bright blue eyes and anticipative stance as he sits across from his sweetheart.

 

“Metroland.” Edith utters.

 

“Our future… in Metroland.”

 

Edith sighs heavily. “You have rather sprung this on me, Frank.”

 

“Well, I hadn’t even considered the idea until Richard mentioned it to me at the trade unions meeting.”

 

“It’s a lot for me to consider, Frank. It means a major shift in where I’d envisaged us living after we were married, and how we would live.”

 

“Oh, me too, Edith. The most I’d hoped for was to take a position as a buyer or merchandiser at another grocer, maybe one south of the Thames.”

 

“So, you have to give me time to warm to the idea.”

 

“I don’t see what’s to warm to, Edith. Imagine our live…”

 

Edith holds up her worn right hand to silence Frank’s immediate defence of his idea. “You know me, Frank. I’m not as enthused as you are about new ideas. You have to give me time, or this will never work.”

 

Frank smiles as he settles back more comfortably in his seat and picks up the remains of a triangle of tongue and jelly sandwich. “I’ll wait for as long as you need to be convinced that our future in Metroland will be for the best, Edith.” He takes a bite of the sandwich in his hand. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m marrying you tomorrow and whisking you away to Buckinghamshire.”

 

“And you won’t be, Frank Leadbetter.” Edith cautions him. “Just the other side of Wembley is one thing. Buckinghamshire is quite another.”

 

Edith picks up her teacup and takes a sip of her tea.

 

*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.

 

**The name 'Nippies' was adopted for the Lyons waitresses after a competition to rename them from the old fashioned 'Gladys' moniker - rejected suggestions included ‘Sybil-at-your-service’, ‘Miss Nimble’, Miss Natty’ and 'Speedwell'. The waitresses each wore a starched cap with a red ‘L’ embroidered in the centre and a black alpaca dress with a double row of pearl buttons.

 

***”The Notorious Mrs. Carrick” is a 1924 British silent crime film directed by George Ridgwell and starring Cameron Carr, A.B. Imeson and Gordon Hopkirk. It was an adaptation of the novel Pools of the Past by Charles Proctor. The film was made by Britain's largest film company of the era Stoll Pictures. It was released in July 1924.

 

****Cameron Carr was an English actor of the silent era, born in 1876, he died in 1944. He made many films between 1918 and the early 1930s. Then like many stars of the silent era, the advent of talking pictures put an end to his career in films as he found the transition to talkies to difficult. He starred as the lead actor, of the 1924 silent film, “The Notorious Mrs. Carrick”, playing Mr. Carrick.

 

*****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.

 

******A matinee idol is a handsome actor, admired for his good looks.

 

*******Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella was born in May 1895, and was known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik. Valentino was a sex symbol of the 1920s, known in Hollywood as the "Latin Lover" (a title invented for him by Hollywood moguls), the "Great Lover", or simply Valentino. His early death at the age of 31 in 1926 caused mass hysteria among his fans, further cementing his place in early cinematic history as a cultural film icon. In spite of his appeal to women of the 1920s, it is now believed that Valentino was gay, or at the very least bisexual, with relationships with actress Pola Negri and actor Ramón Novarro in addition to his second wife Natacha Rambova. Despite claims of him being a “Latin Lover”, his first marriage to lesbian actress Alla Nazimova was never consummated.

 

********Tongue and jelly is a gelatinous food made from braided calves tongues, boiled with onions, celery, cloves, herbs, brandy and sugar which is then preserved in gelatine. Back in the 1920s, it is more likely that aspic would have been used, rather than gelatine. It was a very popular savoury topping on picnic sandwiches in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

 

*********Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in Britain, first manifested in domestic architecture in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in reality it usually took the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that had survived into the Tudor period. Tudorbethan is a subset of Tudor Revival architecture that eliminated some of the more complex aspects of Jacobethan in favour of more domestic styles of "Merrie England", which were cosier and quaint. It was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.

 

**********"The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" (originally titled "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo") is a popular British music hall song published in 1891 by Fred Gilbert, a theatrical agent who had begun to write comic songs as a sideline some twenty years previously.[1] The song was popularised by singer and comedian Charles Coborn. Coborn wrote in his 1928 autobiography that to the best of his recollection he first sang the song in 'the latter part of 1891.'[6] An advertisement in a London newspaper suggests, however, that he first performed it in public in mid-February 1892. The song remained popular from the 1890s until the late 1940s, and is still referenced in popular culture today. Coborn, then aged 82, performed the song in both English and French in the 1934 British film “Say It with Flowers”.

 

***********Prior to and even after the Second World War, there was a ‘marriage bar’ in place. Introduced into legislation, the bar banned the employment of married women as permanent employees, which in essence meant that once a woman was married, no matter how employable she was, became unemployable, leaving husbands to be the main breadwinner for the family. This meant that working women needed to save as much money as they could before marriage, and often took in casual work, such as mending, sewing or laundry for a pittance at home to help bring in additional income and help to make ends meet. The marriage bar wasn’t lifted until the very late 1960s.

 

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

 

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

 

***************A term originating in Nineteenth Century Britain, a pea soup fog is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused by air pollution that contains soot particulates and the poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. It refers to the thick, dense fog that is so thick that it appears to be the color and consistency of pea soup. Pea-soupers were particularly common in large industrial cities like Manchester and Liverpool and populous cities like London where there were lots of coal fires either for industry and manufacturing, or for household heating. The last really big pea-souper in London happened in December 1952. At least three and a half to four thousand people died of acute bronchitis. However, in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, where the concentration of manufacturing was higher, they continued well beyond that.

 

An afternoon tea made up with tea and a selection of triangle sandwiches like this would be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate everything you can see here on the table in and in the display case in the background, you would still come away hungry. This is because they, like everything in this scene are 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau:

 

The plate of sandwiches in the centre of the table was made by an unknown artisan and was acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The coffee pot with its ornate handle and engraved body is one of three antique Colonial Craftsman pots I also acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop, as is the silver tray on which they stand. The milk jug and sugar bowl are made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The Lyons Corner House crockery is made by the Dolls’ House emporium and was acquired from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The J. Lyons & Co. Ltd. tariff in the foreground is a copy of a 1920s example that I made myself by reducing it in size and printing it. 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.

 

The table on which all these items stand is a Queen Anne lamp table which I was given for my seventh birthday. It is one of the very first miniature pieces of furniture I was ever given as a child. The Queen Anne dining chairs were all given to me as a Christmas present when I was around the same age.

 

In the background is a display case of cakes. The Victoria sponge (named after Queen Victoria) on the cake stand is made by Polly’s Pantry Miniatures in America. Whilst the cupcakes have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. All the cakes in the display cabinet came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The glass and metal cake stands and the glass cloche came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The glass cake stands are hand blown artisan pieces. The shiny brass cash register also comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.

 

The wood and glass display cabinet and the bright brass cash register I obtained from a seller of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.

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

 

For nearly a year Lettice has been patiently awaiting the return of her 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. Now Lettice has been made aware by Lady Zinnia that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice has been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he has 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 are not making their engagement public until the new year: after the dust about Selwyn’s break of his and Lettice’s engagement settles. So, Lettice and Sir John have gone on about their separate lives, but in the lead up to Christmas they invariably ended up running into one another at the last mad rush of parties before everyone who hadn’t already, decamped to the country to celebrate Christmas.

 

Today 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 visiting her family home for Christmas. She motored down to Wiltshire with her old childhood chum, Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy who has tried to gain some independence from his family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street. His family, the Brutons, are neighbours to the Cheywynds with their properties sharing boundaries. That is how Gerald and Lettice came to be such good friends. However, whilst both families are landed gentry with lineage going back centuries, unlike Lettice’s family, Gerald’s live in a much smaller baronial manor house and are in much more straitened circumstances.

 

It is Christmas morning 1924, and we find ourselves in the very grand and elegant drawing room of Glynes with its gilt Louis and Palladian style furnishings where the extended Chetwynd family is gathered around the splendidly decked out Christmas tree. Present are the Viscount and his wife, Lady Sadie, Leslie and Arabella, Lettice’s elder sister Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally), her children, Lettice’s nephews and niece, Harrold, Annabelle and Piers, the children’s rather crisply starched nanny, and this year, Arabella’s mother, Lady Isobel and her brother, Nigel, Lord Tyrwhitt who have come the short distance from the neighbouring property adjoining the Glynes estate to the south, Garstanton Park, the grand Gothic Victorian home of the Tyrwhitts. The only members of the family not present are lally’s husband Charles and the Viscount’s sister, Eglantyne (known affectionately by the Viscount’s children as Aunt Egg) who have gone to enjoy the elicit pleasure of a cigarette together. Lady Sadie does not approve of men smoking indoors, much less her emancipated sister-in-law, so she will not counternance either of them smoking in her drawing room, even on Christmas Day. None of the family’s faithful retainers are present, as the tradition is that servants are given Christmas Day off after breakfast until the late afternoon, when they return and prepare to serve the family’s Christmas dinner in the Glynes dining room.

 

“Oh I am glad that Pater invited Nigel and Aunt Isobel over here for Christmas.” Lettice says with a smile as she watches Nigel help clear space on the Chinese silk drawing room carpet for he and Lettice’s nephew Harrold to play.

 

Last year Lord Sherbourne Tyrwhitt died suddenly, thrusting his wife, Lady Isobel into the role of widowed dowager and catapulting his unprepared eldest son, Nigel, into the title of Lord Tyrwhitt, and the position as a lord of the manor, one that Nigel felt quite ready for.

 

“Well, with just the two of them rolling around that big, empty and cold mausoleum over the knoll,” Leslie replies, referring to Garstanton Park as he waves his hands in the house’s general direction. “And Bella here with me, it only stood to reason. Bella can be with her mother,” He looks lovingly over at his wife who sits at the feet of her mother, Lady Isobel, resting her head on her knee like a child and smiling contentedly as the pair of them watch Nigel play with Lally’s children, Lady Isobel unconsciously stroking Bella’s raven waves. “And besides, Garstanton Park is too full of sadness for them to actually enjoy Christmas there this year. Better they be here with us where there is plenty of cheer and the sound of children’s laughter to distract them.”

 

“Agreed, Leslie. And we do have fun every year, don’t we?”

 

“I always look forward to you and Lally coming home for Christmas every year.” He sips coffee from the dainty gilt demitasse in his hand.

 

“What, even now that you have a beautiful and captivating wife on your arm, Leslie?” Lettice asks in mild disbelief.

 

“Of course I do! I mean, Bella is my wife, but you are my sisters, and that makes your homecoming pretty special, Tice.”

 

“Oh, don’t let Bella hear you say that too loudly, Leslie.” Lettice giggles. “She’ll get jealous.”

 

“I say Tice old girl,” Leslie remarks quietly with a solicitous tone as he takes a seat beside his little sister on one of the elegant gilt upholstered Louis Quinze drawing room sofas, cradling his cup of coffee. “I hope you won’t mind me saying this.”

 

“If you start off the conversation like that,” Lettice replies warily. “I shouldn’t wonder if I won’t.” Her pretty blue eyes widen over the edge of her own larger cup as she takes a sip of tea.

 

“I was only going to say that I think you’re being remarkably brave and stoic about all that rather beastly business with Selwyn Spencely.” Leslie admits, giving his sister a guilty sideways glance.

 

“Oh that!” Lettice replies, lowering her teacup into its saucer and waving her hand dismissively.

 

“Now don’t be like that, Tice.” Leslie chides. “In this case, despite whatever advice Mamma may give you as a jeune fille à marier*, false modesty doesn’t suit you. I may be a little biased,” He blushes as he speaks. “But I just want you to know that I think Spencely is a fool to let you go like that. He hardly needs the money that will accompany this diamond heiress into their marriage.”

 

“Kitty Avendale.” Lettice interrupts, uttering the name of the only child of Australian adventurer and thrill seeker turned Kenyan diamond mine owner, Richard Avendale, which was linked to her former fiancée.

 

“Whatever her name is, I wish Spencely no joy from the marriage.” Leslie spits hotly.

 

“Shh, shh,” Lettice hushes her brother calmly, placing a hand on his left forearm and giving it a gentle squeeze. “You don’t mean that Leslie. I know you don’t.”

 

“Oh don’t I?” Leslie mutters.

 

“Of course you don’t, Leslie.” Lettice replies resolutely. “You are my kind and gallant eldest brother, and therefore far too good hearted to wish him ill like that. I certainly don’t want Selwyn to be unhappy with his choice of a wife. He has enough to deal with, what with his horrible mother, whom he doesn’t have a choice not to have.” She sighs. “Anyway Leslie, it doesn’t matter now.” she adds, unable to quite hide the sadness in her voice, or the half-hearted smile on her lips. “It is all in the past.”

 

“Well, all the same I think Spencely is a cad and a bounder, so there it is! I’ve said it now.”

 

“Then let us say no more about it, Leslie.” Lettice holds up one of her elegant hands delicately in an effort to put the matter to bed. “After all, it is Christmas, and Christmas is supposed to be about kindness and good will to all men, is it not?”

 

“I suppose so.” Leslie agrees begrudgingly. “Still, I do think that after your initial reactions when that harridan of a mother of his sent Spencely away, you’ve been remarkably calm and good about it all.”

 

Like she did with her sister a few weeks before, Lettice longs to confide in her elder brother about her recent secret engagement to Sir John Nettleford-Hughes. Of all her siblings, Leslie is the one she feels closest to, in spite of the fact that he is the eldest and she the youngest child of the Viscount and Lady Sadie. Leslie has always been her protector, especially when it came to their brother Lionel and his ceaseless teasing and tormenting of Lettice when they were children, and he is the one who understands her the best. However, she also knows that like her sister and the rest of her family, Leslie would consider her sudden engagement on the heels of Selwyn’s abandonment of her a rash reaction. Unlike Lally, Leslie doesn’t entirely dislike Sir John, but he is well aware that he is a philanderer and does have a penchant for younger women, having witnessed Sir John leave Lady Sadie’s 1922 Hunt ball with a much younger female party guest on his arm after Lettice spurned his romantic overtures. Lettice suspects that if Leslie knew about her secret engagement, he would pressure her to break it off, and at the moment she is still too emotionally fragile and raw from Lady Zinnia’s revelations that she would not be able to refuse him. She knows, deep in her broken heart, that her reasoning behind keeping her engagement a secret until after the dust settles on her break with Selwyn is wise and sound, so once again she keeps her own counsel and remains silent on the matter of her engagement.

 

“In fact,” Leslie goes on, not noticing his sister’s deeply ponderous look as she carefully turns her head and looks at the beautifully decorated Chetwynd family Christmas tree covered in gold baubles and tinsel. “I’d go so far as to say you have been rather sporting about all this.”

 

“Well,” She takes a deep breath. “As I was saying to Lally a fortnight ago when she came to stay with me in London, it was never a definite thing that Selwyn was going to come back to me after a year. And with Selwyn’s absence for that long, I didn’t feel this ending quite so acutely, as I did his departure.”

 

As Lettice takes another sip of her tea, she is amazed by how quickly she has become accustomed to lying about her true feelings for Selwyn and his abandonment of their engagement. Her mother, Lady Sadie, sitting across from her in her usual position in the armchair closest to the drawing room fireplace, has schooled her well.

 

“Now, I’d like that to be an end of the matter, Leslie.” Lettice goes on steadfastly.

 

“Well…”

 

“At least for today, Leslie.” Lettice implores. “It is Christmas Day after all, and I want it to be happy one for the children – for us all.”

 

“Alright, Tice old girl.”

 

“Good, Leslie, old chap.” Lettice replies gratefully.

 

Lettice turns her attention to the tumble of beautiful new toys and brightly coloured discarded Christmas wrapping that litters the floor around the gaily decorated Christmas tree. Amidst it all, Lally’s children and Nigel play with their new toys. Lettice’s eldest nephew, Harrold, guides his smart new racing motorcar over the terrain of books, boxes and gold wrapping with Nigel’s assistance, whilst Annabelle, Lettice’s niece, picks out characters to play with in her new puppet theatre. She smiles with delight as she takes up one of Little Red Riding Hood carrying a basket, frozen forever in a skipping motion. Piers, Lettice’s youngest nephew, at the age of two, is still very much more interested in the colourful and noisy Christmas paper, which he crinkles up with glee, although Lettice has noticed that he is developing an affinity for the large brown mohair plush bear with the big red bow that his mother and father gave him for Christmas.

 

“You win again, Tice my dear.” Lally remarks as she stalks across from the tea table where she has just poured herself a fresh cup of coffee.

 

“What on earth do you mean, Lally?” Lettice asks, looking up at her sister, still dressed, as they all are, in a suitably sombre outfit worn to the Glynes Church of England Christmas service a short while ago. They will all change shortly into lighter and happier outfits before luncheon in the dining room.

 

“That of course,” Lally nods in the direction of the puppet theatre. “Aunt Tice may not live with us, Leslie, but she knows how to win my children over in a trice.”

 

“Oh Lally!” Lettice says dismissively. “That’s not true! Look how much Piers loves the bear you… err Father Christmas… gave him.”

 

“That’s only because he is still too young and remains immune to your charming gifts.” Lally laughs. “He still prefers the boxes they come in.”

 

“Come now, Master Piers,” Charles and Lally’s nanny fusses as she scurries over from her place standing next to the Christmas tree, watching the children like a benevolent angel in her uniform of a black moiré dress and a white apron. She tries to take a piece of metallic pink Christmas wrapping from his tight grasp as he tears it. “Give that to me. Give that to Nanny.” she cajoles.

 

Lettice, Leslie and Lally all watch with concern as little Piers’ face screws up and suddenly starts to redden with anger as his nanny tugs at the paper.

 

“It’s alright, Nanny dear.” Lally says swiftly, quick to avoid the potential of a two year old’s tantrum in the Glynes drawing room on Christmas Day.

 

“But Madam!” Nanny exclaims, a disgruntled look crossing her face as she feels undermined by Lally.

 

“He’s not doing any harm, Nanny. Let him play with the paper if he fancies it. At least it keeps him quiet, and my father,” Lally points to the Viscount’s slumped figure nestled into the corner of another of the Louis Quinze sofas. “Is having a morning snooze. Let him do so in peace, please Nanny.”

 

“Oh! Very good, Madam.” Nanny replies with frustration, retreating to her place, muttering as she does so.

 

“Well done, Lally, old girl!” Leslie says with approval.

 

“Ahh, ahh.” Lally cautions her brother light heartedly. “Less of the old thank you.” She self-consciously pats her sandy blonde hair streaked with grey, still set, albeit not as smartly as it had been, in a style similar to that which the fashionable London West End hairdresser had set it a few weeks beforehand when she stayed at Lettice’s cavendish Mews flat.

 

“It’s all this new small talk, Lettice brings with her from London,” Leslie defends himself. “It’s ‘old boy this’ and ‘old girl that’. It’s… it’s catching to we provincial county folk!”

 

“I say!” Lettice pouts. “That’s jolly unfair, Leslie, blaming me for your choices of language,” She pauses and then adds for effect, “Old boy.”

 

Lally gives her brother a sceptical look and shakes her head slightly.

 

“Poor Pater.” Lettice sighs, nodding in her father’s direction. “Playing Father Christmas seems to have worn him out this year.”

 

“Well, he’s not getting any younger.” Lally opines. “None of us are.”

 

“I think Pappa’s tiredness has more to do with Reverend Arbuthnot’s dreary and long Christmas sermon this morning.” Leslie suggests. “Than his age.”

 

“Oh yes, he did go on rather, didn’t he!” Lettice exclaims, raising her hand to her mouth covering what started as an imitation yawn, but then turned into a real one. “I thought he would never finish.”

 

“Well, isn’t that what the Reverend is supposed to do, Tice?” Leslie asks. “Pontificate I mean.”

 

“You’re only defending him because he married you and Bella.” Lettice retorts.

 

“Well, pontification to excess is not a quality I greatly admire in our Reverend Arbuthnot.” Lally opines in a definite tone. “I think I might have screamed if I heard him say ‘love thy neighbour this Christmas Day’ one more time.”

 

“I should have liked to have seen that!” Lettice giggles. “Imagine Reverend Arbuthnot’s face!”

 

“It might have woken up a few of the parishioners.” Lesley laughs before sipping some more coffee from his cup.

 

“Including Pater.” Lettice adds.

 

“Well, Mamma managed to stay awake throughout the sermon this morning,” Lally remarks. “And she doesn’t usually rise before ten o’clock. Yet look at her now, bright as button.”

 

The three siblings look at their mother who, dressed in a smart navy blue and pink floral patterned georgette frock with a lace collar, sits and speaks earnestly with her granddaughter, twisting her long ropes of pearls cascading down her front in her hands as Annabelle discusses which characters are best to have in her puppet show cast.

 

“Well, to be fair, it was Pappa who did the hosting of the carol singers last night in the hall.” Leslie says.

 

“What rubbish!” Lally scoffs. “We all went in and hosted them. With Mrs. Maingot leading the carollers and riding high on the crest of success of her latest Christmas panto,” She rolls her eyes sarcastically. “We could hardly leave her for Pappa to manage alone.”

 

“She can talk for hours without taking a breath.” Lettice agrees. “In fact, I don’t think she would even notice if everyone walked out of the hall and she was on her own, she’s so self-obsessed.” She turns to her brother. “Now she’s a pontificator if ever there was one!” She gives him a knowing look and nods.

 

“I think Bramley enjoyed giving out the snifters of brandy to all the carollers.” Lally adds, referring to the Chetwynd’s faithful butler. “Just like he did in the old days.”

 

“By the way,” Leslie asks. “Do you know who decided to revive the tradition of having the second Christmas tree in the entrance hall?”

 

“What does it matter, Leslie?” Lettice asks.

 

“Well, it’s just that Pappa stopped doing it the year after the war broke out, and I didn’t authorise it.”

 

“Do you need to authorise it?” Lally queries, arching her expertly plucked eyebrow as she looks to her sister. “It is just a tree after all.”

 

“I’m just saying, it does create a bit of a mess.”

 

“I’m sure that Bramley, or more likely Moira as head parlour maid, sweep up the dropped needles and dried candlewax, Leslie, not you.” Lally laughs.

 

“And now the word has spread that its back again, all the village make a pilgrimage to see it every Christmas now, which means we’re forever hosting groups of visitors in dribs and drabs nearly every night in the last few weeks before Christmas. Even with their beastly head colds, the Miss Evanses trudged up from the village.” Leslie adds, mentioning the two genteel busybody spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house, in Glynes village. “Snuffling and coughing all over the place.”

 

“Well aren’t we full of Christmas cheer, dear brother?” Lally remarks sarcastically.

 

“Didn’t you hear Reverent Arbuthnot’s sermon this morning?” Lettice adds cheekily with a smirk. “Love thy neighbour this Christmas, brother dear.”

 

“Now don’t you start!” Leslie replies, wagging a finger warningly at his sister, but the happy glint in his eyes betrays the fact that he isn’t really cross with her.

 

“As a matter of fact, I think, I did.” Lally says.

 

“Did what?” Leslie asks.

 

“Revived the Christmas tradition of the second tree in the hall. I mentioned it to Pappa after Harrold asked me about the red glass baubles amidst the Christmas decorations.”

 

“No, we both did, Lally.” Lettice defends her sister. “After Harrod asked us about the decorations a few Christmases ago. What, 1922?”

 

“No,” Lally corrects. “It was 1921, because we were talking about the Hunt Ball Mamma threw for you in 1922.”

 

“That’s right! It was 1921. Anyway, regardless of when we mentioned it, I for one am not unhappy about the resurrection of that particular Christmas tradition at Glynes.” Lettice nods. “I think it looks wonderful in the hall, all sparkling with tinsel and glass baubles and lighted candles, greeting guests and family alike. It’s good to bring some joy and cheer to the villagers, even the Miss Evanses and Mrs. Maingot.”

 

“I agree, Tice.” Lally adds with a smile. “It seems to me like the world is finally coming out of the shadows of the war, so we should do our part to make the world bright, especially at Christmas.”

 

“In fact,” Lettice giggles. “You could make the world even brighter, and have no candle wax for Moira to scrub off the marble floors if you bought those electric faerie lights Lally and I saw in Selfridge’s windows a few weeks ago.”

 

“You can’t have Little-Bo-Peep and Little Red Riding Hood in the same play, Belle!” Harrold’s voice complains, his whining tones piercing the siblings’ conversation.

 

“Yes! Yes, Sadie my dear.” the Viscount mutters with a snort, awoken from his slumber by his grandson’s cries.

 

“Why not, Harrold?” Annabelle cries petulantly.

 

“Because you just can’t, Belle!” Harrold spits back.

 

“Harrold!” Lally exclaims.

 

“Says who?” asks Annabelle, folding her arms akimbo and pouting.

 

“It’s ‘says whom’, Annabelle dear.” Lady Sadie, always the instructress, corrects her granddaughter from her seat.

 

“Says whom, then?” Annabelle glowers at her elder brother.

 

“Harrold!” Lally says again.

 

“Well it’s true Mummy!” Harrold retorts. “They come from different stories. Tell her!”

 

“Harrold that’s not the point.” Lally says sternly. “Now apologise to your sister.”

 

“But I…”

 

“Harrold Cosmo Lanchenbury!” Lally says sternly, using her son’s middle name, given in honour of his grandfather, the Viscount. “Apologise to your sister at once.”

 

“Shall I take him upstairs to the school room, Madam?” Nanny pipes up with eagerness from the shadows cast by the shimmeringly beautiful Christmas tree.

 

“No!” Lally snaps with steely resolve, causing the older woman to shudder slightly at the sharp rebuke from her employer. Lally recovers herself immediately and continues in a softer voice. “No, thank you, Nanny. That won’t be necessary.” She looks at her son seriously. “Harrold is old enough to know when he has spoken out of turn, and gentlemanly enough,” She emphasises the last two words as she speaks. “To know when to apologise.”

 

“What’s this?” Aunt Egg asks she and Lally’s husband, Charles, walk back into the Glynes drawing room after finishing their cigarettes in the library.

 

“Lally darling?” Charles asks, taking in the scene with his son standing next to the Christmas tree amidst piles of presents, red faced next to his sister who is obviously upset, whilst Lally stands over them and the rest of the family look at him from their respective seats. There is a tenseness in the air. “What is it? What’s going on?”

 

“Nothing that I can’t manage Charles.” Lally replies calmly. “It’s fine.”

 

“It doesn’t appear fine to me, darling.” Charles replies in concern.

 

“Harrold and Annabelle were just having the fiercest argument, Charles dear,” Lady Sadie adds a little nervously. “Weren’t you, my lambs? And Harrold was just about to apologise to his sister.”

 

On cue, Piers, who until this time had been happily playing without compliant by himself releases a loud and unhappy bellow.

 

“Oh. Take Piers up to the nursery, Nanny.” Lally hisses in frustration.

 

“Yes Madam!” Nanny says smiling with satisfaction as she scuttles and fusses her way noisily through the presents and wrapping to where Piers sits. She coos as she picks him up, sweeping him into her arms and carries the snivelling child towards the drawing room door.

 

“Come here my lambs,” Lady Sadie says, opening her arms and encouraging the two remaining children to come over to her as she sits on the edge of her gilt chair. “That’s it.” She envelops them, winding an arm around each of them as she guides them to stand facing one another to either side of her. “Now, look at Grandmamma, both of you.” Both children lift their lolling heads and downcast eyes and gaze into their grandmother’s face. “You know that Christmas is a time of traditions, don’t you?” Both the children nod, Harrold slowly and Annabelle more animatedly. “We have a plum pudding today, which Mrs. Casterton makes for us every year on the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity*** with thirteen ingredients which represent Christ and the twelve apostles.”

 

“Yes Grandmamma.” Annabelle answers sweetly. “You and and Mrs. Casterton let us stir it.”

 

“That’s right, Annabelle.” Lady Sadie goes on. “You stir it east to west to honour the Magi****, and that is part of the tradition too.” She sighs deeply. “And you know that you receive gifts, as we all do, just as the Christ Child did when he received gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the Magi. That’s a tradition too.”

 

“Yes Grandmamma.” the children murmur, their voices the only things to break the silence of the room except for the quiet ticking of the clocks on the mantle and sideboard, the contented crackle of the fire in the grate and the distant wailing of Piers down the hall as Nanny takes him upstairs.

 

“And the carol singers come and join us in the hall just out there on Christmas Eve,” Lady Sadie points one of her diamond adorned gnarled fingers to the doorway which Nanny slipped out through with Piers in her arms moments ago. “And we sing beneath the Christmas tree. You restarted that tradition Harrold. Do you remember?”

 

Harrold nods. “Mummy says that Grandpappa stopped it when the war broke out, Grandmamma.”

 

“And so I did, Harrold my boy.” the Viscount concurs from his corner of the sofa. “But you restarted it, and by Jove we all enjoy it, don’t we?”

 

“Yes Grandpappa.” Harrold replies.

 

“And Mrs. Maingot delights us every year with a new Christmas pantomime.” Lady Sadie goes on, her words resulting in a smattering of stifled sniggers and quiet gasps of horror from the adults around her, all of whom witnessed the embarrassing scene of Mr. Lewis the church verger reprising his role Dame Trott***** in Christmas 1924’s performance of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ in the Glynes village hall a few nights ago. “You enjoy them don’t you, my lambs, because they are magical?” When both children nod affirmatively, Lady Sadie beams and rubs their backs kindly. “And every year, Harrold, she mixes up all the characters to make the pantomime as magical as she can, and that includes breaking a few rules and taking characters from some stories to add to the one she and the Glynes Village Players are performing.” She pauses for a moment and then looks at her grandson. “So, young man, when your sister says that she wants to put Little Red Riding Hood and Little-Bo-Peep into the same play she is performing with her lovely new puppet theatre, she is entitled to do so. Don’t you think so?”

 

“I suppose so, Grandmamma.” Harrold says somewhat begrudgingly.

 

“Now, correct me if my observations are wrong, Harrold, but could it be that you are just a teensy bit jealous that your sister is making all these plans for her grand play and not including you too?”

 

“Maybe, Grandmamma.” he replies very quietly.

 

“More than maybe, young man!” Lady Sadie withdraws her right arm from around her grandson and squeezes his chin, which is fast losing the fat of childhood as he starts to grow older. “Grandmamma knows your heart better than you do; I think.” She chuckles. “Now, I have a proposition for the two of you children.” She claps her hands together animatedly. “Annabelle, if Harrold apologises to you, will you let him help you put together your play?”

 

“Oh yes Grandmamma.” Annabelle exclaims, crouching down slightly before rising up on her toes in a gesture of pride and happiness. “I’d love that!”

 

“And Harrold, would you like to help Annabelle put on her play for all of us?” Lady Sadie asks her grandson.

 

“Yes Grandmamma.” he affirms with a beaming smile.

 

“Then apologise to her, and you can both get on with it then!” the old woman says matter-of-factly. “It will be no time at all before we go in for Christmas luncheon, and I for one, want a show before I do.”

 

Harrold apologises to his sister immediately, and as if a magic spell has been cast, the two siblings hurry back to the puppet theatre and begin pulling out as many of the characters that came with it as they can find amidst the paper and other presents, giggling and chatting as if nothing had ever been awry between them.

 

“There!” Lady Sadie says to her startled family around her as she rises from her seat with a dignified nod. “Crisis averted! Peace is restored. Merry Christmas to all, and good will to all men.”

 

“Mamma!” Lally gasps as her elderly mother starts to walk proudly and purposefully across the drawing room carpet.

 

“What, Lalage?”

 

“Well, you amaze me, Mamma.” she says in surprise. “I never realised that you were such a consummate diplomat!”

 

“Yes, I suppose my diplomacy skills are a little wasted here.” Lady Sadie replies with a sigh a she looks around at all the awestruck faces watching her. Then with a very straight face as she goes on, “I should have married the Viceroy of India whilst I had the chance, but I married your father instead, so that’s an end to it.” She walks through the audience of her family, all with eyes agog and mouths hanging slack as she moves amongst them. “Now, after that crisis aversion, I think I might be entitled to a glass of sherry. Charles!”

 

“Sadie?” her son-in-law queries.

 

“A sherry for me, if you please.” She pauses. “But just a small one, mind you.”

 

“Yes Sadie.”

 

Lady Sadie turns back to her three children present in her house this Christmas. “Anyone would think I’d never managed a squabble between siblings at Christmas before. I’ll have you know that when you three were little, even without the eager and willing assistance of your dreaded brother, you all used to fight and argue on Christmas Day!” She points her finger at them, her diamond and sapphire ring glittering as she does. “And that was a Glynes Christmas tradition too!”

 

“Mamma!” Lettice gasps in surprise.

 

Lady Sadie accepts the proffered small glass of sherry from her son-in-law. “Now, if you would all excuse me. I’m going to take my sherry upstairs and have a little lie down before luncheon. Your father isn’t the only one who found Reverend Arbuthnot’s Christmas sermon a little tiring this morning. If one of you would kindly send Baxter up to me when the children are ready to show their play, and I’ll come back down after she helps me change for luncheon.”

 

And without so much as a glance back at her surprised family, Lady Sadie walks out the door of the drawing room, smiling with amusement as she does.

 

*A jeune fille à marier was a marriageable young woman, the French term used in fashionable circles and the upper-classes of Edwardian society before the Second World War.

 

**A pantomime (shortened to “panto”) is a theatrical entertainment, mainly for children, which involves music, topical jokes, and slapstick comedy and is based on a fairy tale or nursery story, usually produced around Christmas.

 

***Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar, and the Sunday of Pentecost in Eastern Christianity. Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

****The Magi are also known as the Three Wise Men or the Three Kings, who are the distinguished foreigners who visit Jesus after his birth, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh in homage to him.

 

*****Dame Trott is the long suffering mother of Jack in the Christmas pantomime of Jack and the Beanstalk. She is outrageous, brash and loud, and traditionally played by a man in drag.

  

This fun Christmas tableau full of festive presents and wrapping may not appear to be all you think it is as first, for it is made up of pieces out of my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The books unwrapped for Christmas here are all 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the wonderful puppet theatre you see here. The theatre includes scenery like cottages, hills and trees, three different backdrops and over a dozen characters including Little Red Riding Hood, the Big bad Wolf, Little-Bo-Peep, Cinderella, Prince Charming and the Faerie Godmother from Cinderella, Jemima Puddle Duck and Mother Goose. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make them all miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The beautiful teddy bear with his sweet face and red bow, the boxed doll, the toy motor car and the knights jousting all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The lead knights have been painstakingly painted by hand with incredible detail and attention paid to their livery.

 

The Chetwynd Christmas tree in the background, beautifully decorated with garlands, tinsel, bows and golden baubles is a 1:12 artisan piece. It was hand made by husband and wife artistic team Margie and Mike Balough who own Serendipity Miniatures in Newcomerstown, Ohio. Margie and Mike Balough also made all the beautifully wrapped Christmas gifts gathered around its base.

 

The discarded pink and gold Christmas wrapping on the carpet of the drawing room are in reality foil wrappers from miniature Haigh’s Chocolate Easter Eggs.

 

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

 

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

 

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

.:FlowerDreams:.Destiny - type B bronze (99L offer)

Until Sunday midniggh (7th Feb)

 

blog

ovhorrizon.blogspot.jp/2016/02/flowerdreams-new99loffer.html

This is a scanned print from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints,20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jims, on behalf of Jims wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my owns prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate . It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jims wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

  

It was the development of our second generation website with its photo gallery located quite cleverly on Flickr, rather than making our own site unwieldy, that led me to start uploading photos to Flickr. It was initially for my own and historic company photos but with unlimited storage and reasonable upload speeds I soon started uploading other stuff. Scanning one of Jims photos was a random choice one winters evening, initially very slow and time consuming I nevertheless stuck with it and things just snowballed. It was obvious that there are a lot of people interested in this type of thing. I can now scan and edit in Photoshop in a minute or so per print. Out of over 30,000 images on Flickr I have around 3500 of Jims photos. I don’t promote myself on Flickr – at all! So my viewing figures grow organically, without using the mutual favourite awarding etc. that is endemic on Flickr. The statistics tell me that travel (I don’t do porn) is the most popular genre. My travel photos, particularly later stuff receive far more views than transport. The transport stuff will hit a ceiling and then build very slowly over time, with lots of people coming back to them again and again. Travel of course is far more inclusive but there is an unbelievable amount out there, far more than the 1980’s UK transport stuff. The travel and landscape photos have pushed the views past 12 million, with a current average of around 40,000 views a day, peaking with an upload from a new destination at around 90,000 views. I recall being excited with a 100 views.

 

My reasons for buying the collection were mixed. On the one hand it was a unique snapshot of the transport industry, predominantly in the north of England, from around 1980 onwards. This was my patch and my era. I passed my Class One a few days after my 21st birthday in 1980 and spent the next 17 years being a Jack the Lad on the road, waving at and crossing paths with many of the wagons that Jim photographed, in fact my owns wagons are in the mix. Jim did travel to Scotland extensively and into the Southern Hemisphere a number of times hence there is a broad range of material in his collection. I knew I wouldn’t get a chance like it again. On the other hand the reason I gave up hauling scrap around the North of England in a Foden eight wheeler was the diagnosis of an incurable form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the age of 38, although a low grade cancer I was already a widower with four young children and I was looking at an uncertain future and it terrified me. I wasn’t remotely ill but was treated with Chemotherapy, again, I wasn’t ill and didn’t need time off work. The shock however brought me to my senses and I came off the road, I joined the normal world, up at 6.30 not 4.30am. I didn’t realise it at the time but I had closed the door on my wagon driving days. I was worried that, at some point, I wouldn’t be able to work physically hard, bearing in mind the family business is a scrap yard – a physical sort of environment. I had it in my mind that there was a possibility that I could use my own and Jims photos to supplement my income, I had four kids to feed and I knew there wouldn’t be any family financial support – it’s not that sort of family. I still have the NHL although thankfully you wouldn’t know it. This type of thing is now considered treatable – not curable- after around forty endoscopies, a 100 stomach biopsies, bone marrow samples and endless scans of different types, I may well get to die of old age, not cancer. It was discovered almost by accident at the time, not illness on my part, and long may it stay that way! The lack of illness made the shock all the greater though.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jims work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC's - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet.

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jims photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

None of my photographs are free to use – without my permission - only free to view! If you breach my copyright you are stealing what is mine and if I find out, I will pursue the case until you rectify the situation. Arguments that attempt to justify copyright theft are just excuses for theft from people with little or no understanding of copyright law – or more frequently- deliberate, selective, misinterpretation of the law – to suit their own ends. I have never knowingly refused a reasonable request, I don’t join groups but am quite happy for people to add photos to groups. I dislike exchanging long and time consuming emails – I prefer to talk on the phone, being the opposite of anti-social in person, you can’t shut me up. I am generally speaking an anti-social, social networker, I just don’t have the time for it, in fact, I joke that I am going to start a social network for internet anti-social people, you’ll just register your name and that’s it – no networking and endless mindless twaddle. Face-less Book? The antidote to Facebook. I like to get out and chat to people face to face and welcome customers with an interest in photography in to my office to chat on a regular basis. I also print – and give- A4 prints to many of the drivers that visit our yard. I photograph wagons and plant that I come into contact with in a day’s work I don’t go looking to photograph them in my free time. Wagons are a necessary evil in my life these days and they cost me money – every day! For the extensive story and history of JB Schofield &sons Ltd look here; www.jbschofieldandsons.co.uk/

 

So far photography remains a hobby, and I refuse any offers to turn it into a business, the regulations surrounding scrap and transport and the running of the yard keep me occupied most of the time. In my free time I cycle hard for fitness, walk hard for pleasure, fitness, and the challenge, take photos for pleasure and the challenge, edit them because I have to, and lastly, drink wine because I want to. There isn't time for another business. The kids are now adults and all of them work for me, and with me, another challenge.

 

A woman rests next to a collection of small clay Buddha statues, left as offerings at the Mt. Misen Hondo (Main Hall). This is where Kukai (Kobo Daishi), the founder of Shingon Buddhism, accomplished 100 days “Gumonji” training, after returning to Japan from China, in search of a spiritual place. He named Mt. Misen after Mt. Shumisen in China, similar in shape. Still, he chose Mt. Koya to establish Shingon Buddhism, where according to the myth he found the Vajra trident (Shanko, a Shingon Buddhist ritual item) he threw from the port of Mingzhou while departing in 806 from Tang, China, lodged in a pine tree.

Sola d'Engordany, Engordany, E-E, Andorra city, the center, Andorra, Pyrenees - (c) Lutz Meyer

 

More Engordany & Escaldes-Engordany E-E: Follow the group links at right side.

.......

 

About this image:

* Half frame format 3x2 image

* Usage: Large format prints optional

* Motive is suitable as symbol pic

* "Andorra authentic" edition (20 years 2004-2024)

* "Andorra camis & rutes" active collection

* Advanced metadata functionality on dynamic websites or apps

* for large metadata-controlled business collections: photo-archives, travel agencies, tourism editiorials

 

We offer 200.000+ photos of Andorra and North of Spain. 20.000+ visable here at Flickr. Its the largest professional image catalog of Andorra: all regions, all cities and villages, all times, all seasons, all weather(s). Consistent for additional advanced programming. For smartphones and web-db. REAL TIME!

 

It's based on GeoCoded stock-photo images and metadata with 4-5 languages. Prepared for easy systematic organising of very large image portfolios with advanced online / print-publishing as "Culture-GIS" (Geographic Info System).

 

More information about usage, tips, how-to, conditions: www.flickr.com/people/lutzmeyer/. Get quality, data consistency, stable organisation and PR environments: Professional stockphotos for exciting stories - docu, tales, mystic.

 

Ask for licence! lutz(at)lutz-meyer.com

 

(c) Lutz Meyer, all rights reserved. Do not use this photo without license.

Temple offered by Egypt to Spain to thank them for the help in the reconstruction of the Abou Simbel temple.

This nice old building is in Madrid

  

© All rights reserved

  

This attractive young lady offers some perspective to the size of this radio controlled hydroplane. It measures 50 inches in length, 24 inches in width, 10 inches high at the engine, and 17 inches from the bottom of the rudder to the top of the tail fin. It is powered by a custom gas-burning air-cooled V8 engine designed and built by Mr. Storoz in the mid 1950’s. The engine measures about 11 inches long, 8 inches wide, and six inches high, has a bore of about 1-1/8 inch and a stroke of about 7/8 inch making the total capacity 7.2 cubic inches. It is equipped with a radio controlled throttle and spark advance and sports a chain drive to the prop shaft.

 

John was a tool and die maker for the auto industry in the Detroit area and began this project in 1954. First he fabricated the patterns and molds and cast the crankcase in his home shop; he spent about three years designing and machining the parts necessary to finish the engine. We believe he started to design and build the hydro in 1958 and he completed the entire project in 1961. Mr. Storoz fabricated everything except the spark plugs, fasteners, sprockets and chain, and the radio control unit.

 

See More Model Boat Engines at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157641089388694/

 

See More V8 engines at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/albums/72157663468409191

 

See Our Model Engine Collection at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets/72157602933346098/

 

Visit Our Photo Sets at: www.flickr.com/photos/15794235@N06/sets

 

Courtesy of Paul and Paula Knapp

Miniature Engineering Museum

www.engine-museum.com</a

 

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

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, and her best friend and fellow maid-of-all-work, Hilda are visiting Edith’s beloved parents for a few hours on their Sunday off before going on to join Edith’s beau, grocer’s boy, Frank Leadbetter, for a late afternoon showing of ‘Claude Duval’* at the nearby Willesden Hippodrome**. 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.

 

We find ourselves in the heart of the Watsford’s family home, Ada’s cosy kitchen at the back of the terrace. Ada is holding court, standing at her worn round kitchen table as she gives Hilda an impromptu lesson in baking as she rolls out some pale biscuit dough with her trusty old wooden rolling pin which had belonged to her mother before her. Her daughter and Hilda sit at the table on tall ladderback chairs to either side of her, Edith with a bowl of creamy white marzipan icing in front of her, and Hilda with a bowl of green icing next to her. A plate of iced biscuits sits in the middle of the table between the three of them. As Ada shares her baking wisdom with Hilda, the girls ice and decorate the biscuits Ada has already baked in the oven of her range. George sits in his comfortable Windsor chair next to the warm range and listens with half an ear as he reads the newspaper.

 

“And then all you have to do is roll the pastry out flat on a liberally floured board like this Hilda love. Dust the top with a bit more flour before rolling it out, and coat your rolling pin with plenty flour too to prevent it from sticking or tearing the dough as you roll it out. Oh, and make sure your biscuit cutters are nicely floured,” Ada instructs Hilda who watches her with rapt attention as Ada takes her silver metal Christmas tree biscuit cutter and pushes it with a gentle press into the dough rolled out before her. “And that will ensure that your biscuit comes out nice and cleanly.” She takes her kitchen knife and deftly slips it between her board and the dough and removes a bit of the dough around the bottom of the Christmas tree shape on the outside of the cutter and then slides the knife under the tree shape to support the bottom of her freshly made biscuit and withdraws it. Placing it to the side of her wooden board closest to Hilda, Ada removes the biscuit cutter to reveal a cleanly cut and perfectly shaped Christmas tree shaped biscuit. “See.”

 

“Goodness Mrs. W.!” Hilda gasps. “You make it look so simple!”

 

Hilda quickly scribbles Ada’s words of wisdom down using a pencil in the little notebook she brought with her in her handbag for just that purpose.

 

“It is that simple, Hilda love.” Ada says with satisfaction, looking down at her biscuit next to her rolled out dough, before beaming brightly at her daughter’s best friend.

 

“Mum always makes things look easy, Hilda.” Edith says as she carefully lathers some white icing onto a golden brown baked Christmas tree biscuit. “She uses really simple, failproof recipes, and that’s what makes her cooking so good.”

 

“Did you teach Edith all her plain cooking skills, Mrs. W.?” Hilda asks.

 

“Well, most of them, Hilda love, but once she had mastered the basics,” Ada dusts her hands with flour and then rubs another biscuit cutter, this one in the shape of bell. “Edith could adapt what I’d taught her and make up her own recipes easily enough, and learn other people’s recipes.”

 

“I wish I’d had a mum like you, Mrs. W.” Hilda remarks. “Oh, not that my Mum is mean or nasty or anything!” she adds quickly. “But she’s not a good cook like you are, so when Edith found me the job with Mr. and Mrs. Channon as their maid-of-all-work, I wasn’t prepared to cook. I didn’t really know how to cook, even plain cooking.”

 

“Yes, but look how far you’ve come since then!” Edith replies encouragingly, looking earnestly at her friend.

 

“Only thanks to you, Edith, teaching me your mum’s basic recipes.” Hilda insists.

 

“Well, I’m glad that Edith’s being a help to you, Hilda love.” Ada remarks.

 

“I’m just glad that Mr. and Mrs. Channon dine out a lot, and use Harrods catering department for any fancy dinners at home. I’m sure I couldn’t serve your recipes for beef stew and shepherd’s pie that Edith taught me, Mrs. W., to any of their fine friends that they have over for dinner parties.”

 

“Edith’s quite a dab hand in the kitchen,” Ada remarks. “Although,” she adds as she eyes her daughter critically as she starts to move the icing she has plopped onto the biscuit base across the surface of it with her spatula to smooth it. “She’s not the best at icing biscuits just yet.”

 

“What Mum?” Edith exclaims.

 

“Well look, Edith love!” Ada chides, slapping her palms together, sending forth a shower of light white motes flour. “You’ve added far too much icing onto that biscuit! Here!” She reaches across and takes both the biscuit and the spatula from her daughter and scrapes the icing back into the bowl. She smiles as she looks at her daughter. “Now watch how much of the icing I scoop up on the end of the spatula.” She dips the flat blade into the bowl and scoops up a small amount of creamy white icing and carefully spreads it with zig-zag strokes across the biscuit from the wider bottom up to the top. “See.” She holds the biscuit up so both Edith and Hilda can observe. “A smaller amount is much easier to work with. And if you don’t have enough, you can always scoop up a tiny scraping more to finish it off.” She smiles as she easily moves the icing around to the edge of the biscuit. “There.”

 

“Thanks awfully, Mum!” Edith says gratefully, accepting the iced biscuit and the spatula back.

 

“Now you decorate it with those pretty silver sugar balls, Edith love.” Ada directs her daughter. “You’re far better at that than me.” She turns to Hilda. “Edith has more patience for that kind of thing than I do. She got that from her dad.”

 

“She did, that!” George pipes up from his comfortable seat drawn up to the old kitchen range as it radiates heat. He lowers his copy of The Sunday Express*** which crumples nosily as he does so. “Some things in this world need patience, like growing marrows.”

 

“I need patience to deal with you, George Watsford!” Ada says, turning around and placing her still floured hands on her ample hips and giving her husband a dubious look.

 

“Growing marrows, Mr. W.?” Hilda queries.

 

“Oh, ignore him, Hilda!” Edith giggles. “Dad’s mad keen about his marrows, even when he can’t grow them as well as Mr. Johnston does.”

 

“You watch, oh-she-of-little-faith,” George nods in his daughter’s direction and gives her a serious look. “Mr. Pyecroft and I are going work out what’s in his fertiliser and grow a marrow bigger than he’s ever seen! You mark my words!”

 

“Yes Dad!” Edith replies, rolling her eyes and giving her best friend across the table a cheeky smile as she giggles.

 

“I’ll have no talk of fertiliser in my kitchen, George,” Ada says. “And that’s a fact!” Pointing to the Sunday Express open across his lap she adds, “Back to your crossword****.”

 

“With pleasure,” George remarks, coughing and clearing his throat as he lifts the paper back up again, obscuring his face from the three women around the kitchen table.

 

“Now Hilda love, you try icing a biscuit too.” Ada encourages, nodding at the large white bowl of green icing at Hilda’s right. “Do it the same way you just saw me do it. Just take up a bit of icing on the end of your spatula and smear it across left to right as you work your way up the biscuit.”

 

“Alright Mrs. W., I’ll try.” Hilda replies as she picks up a Christmas tree biscuit from the baked but undecorated stack of festively shaped biscuits on her left.

 

“You saw how much I scooped up on the end of the spatula, so you know now how not to overload it.” She watches carefully as Hilda dips her spatula into the bowl of peppermint green icing and coats it with a small amount of icing. “Good love. Good!” she approves as Hilda begins to smear the icing across the surface of a biscuit. “Edith and I will make a baker of you yet.”

 

“Oh I don’t know about that Mrs. W.” Hilda says doubtfully.

 

“Yes we will, Hilda.” Edith replies encouragingly. “We’ll have you baking cakes in no time!”

 

“And then, you’ll have every hungry young man come pounding on your door, Hilda love, you mark my words.” George says from behind the newspaper. “And you’ll never be short of handsome young suitors.”

 

“Mr. W!” Hilda blushes at George’s remark.

 

“Dad!” Edith exclaims.

 

“I’m just stating the truth, Edith love.” George replies as he lowers the newspaper again. Closing it and folding it in half, he slips his pen into his argyle check printed***** brown, white and burnt orange vest. He drops the paper on the hearth beside his chair and stands up. He takes a few steps across the flagstones to the kitchen table and stands next to his wife. Wrapping his arm lovingly around her shoulder he tells his daughter and her friend, “Your mum wouldn’t have been nearly as attractive the day I met her at that picnic in Roundwood Park****** organised by the Vicar, if she hadn’t been carrying a tin of her best biscuits at the time. She knows the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” He leans forward and reaches across the table, snatching up a decorated Christmas tree biscuit and scoffing half of it into his mouth before anyone can stop him.

 

“George!” Ada slaps her husband’s shirt clad forearm. “We’ll have no biscuits for Christmas Day, between you eating my biscuits and Edith eating the icing!” she scolds with a good natured chuckle. “Now back to your newspaper this minute,” She picks up her flour dusted rolling pin in her right hand and starts lightly slapping her open left hand palm warningly and eyes her husband. “Before I bar you from my kitchen and banish you to the front parlour.”

 

“What?” George exclaims. “With no fire up there in the grate! I’ll freeze!”

 

“It would serve you right, for pinching one of my biscuits! But since it’s so close to Christmas, and I’m full of festive cheer today, I’ll give you a reprieve. Back to your crossword, Mr. W.,” Ada says warningly, using Hilda’s shortened version of their surname, but saying it with a slight smirk to show that she isn’t really cross with him. “Right this minute, or you’ll be out in the cold!”

 

“Yes Mrs. W.!” George replies, munching contentedly on his mouthful of biscuit, holding the green iced trunk and lower branches of his stolen biscuit in his right hand.

 

“That’s very good, Hilda love.” Ada says, returning her attention to Hilda and looking at her biscuit, as George settles back down in his chair and takes up his newspaper again.

 

“Thanks awfully, Mrs. W.!” Hilda says with a smile as her face blanches at Ada’s praise.

 

“Oh! That looks beautiful, Edith love!” Ada exclaims looking at the pretty pattern of silver balls her daughter has made on the surface of her own white icing clad biscuit. “It looks too good to eat.”

 

“Almost!” Goerge pipes up from behind the Sunday Express again.

 

“Crossword!” Ada warns him.

 

Ada settles back into her rhythm of stamping out biscuits from her flattened dough: first a bell, then another Christmas tree, then a heart which she knows Edith is most looking forward to decorating for Frank for Christmas. She smiles with pleasure as she presses the heart cutter down lightly into the slightly resistant pillow like dough. The Watsford’s kitchen will once again be busy this Christmas with George and Ada’s seafaring son and Edith’s younger brother, Bert, on shore leave for the second year in a row just in time for Christmas, and Frank Leadbetter and his Scottish grandmother, old Mrs. McTavish, around their kitchen table. Ada’s elder sister, Maud, offered to host the Watsfords at the crowded little terrace in nearby Willesen that she shares with her husband Sydney and their five children, Harry, William, Ann, Nelly and Constance, but Ada declined. The two-up two-down******* Victorian terrace house isn’t much larger than the Watsford’s own Harlesden terrace and can barely fit Maud and her family, with Harry and William sleeping in the skillion roofed******** enclosed back verandah which serves as their narrow and draughty bedroom. So, with Frank and Mrs. McTavish to include in the number of guests for Christmas Day, Ada thought better of her sister’s kind offer. She, George, Edith and Bert will visit Maud and her family on Boxing Day instead, which is traditionally when the two families get together.

 

“Are all these biscuits for Christmas Day, Mrs. W.?” Hilda asks, breaking into Ada’s consciousness.

 

“Deary me, no, Hilda love!” Ada exclaims, raising her flour dusted hands in protest. “I always make tins of my homemade biscuits to give as gifts every Christmas.”

 

“That’s a good idea, Mrs. W.!” Hilda remarks. “Everyone enjoys a nice homemade biscuit or two with their tea, whoever they are, don’t they?”

 

“I for one, find one of Ada’s biscuits with tea to be one of life’s pleasures.” George remarks from behind the newspaper. Ada and the girls listen as he pops the last of his stolen biscuit in his mouth and munches on it noisily, sighing as he does.

 

“Well, play your cards right, and behave yourself, George,” Ada replies. “And you may have one with your tea when Hilda, Edith and I have finished.”

 

“No-one says no to a tin of Mum’s homemade biscuits.” Edith adds as she slips her spatula into her bowl of white icing and withdraws a much smaller amount of icing this time before starting on decorating a heart shaped biscuit from her pile.

 

“Much better amount, Edith love.” Ada nods approvingly.

 

“Will we have enough biscuits to give some to Frank and Mrs. McTavish on Christmas Day?” Edith asks.

 

“Didn’t we last year, Edith love?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“So we will again this year, then.”

 

“That’s good, Mum. Thank you.”

 

“That’s alright, love. Although I know you’re only asking me because you just want to give Frank all the heart shaped biscuits you bake and decorate.” Ada smiles indulgently. “Don’t you, Edith love?”

 

Edith gasps and flushes at her mother’s wry observation. “Oh no, Mum!” she defends herself, but then adds, “Well, not all the heart biscuits, at any rate.”

 

“Aha!” Ada clucks. “I better make a few extra hearts then, hadn’t I?”

 

“It’s a shame you can’t come for Christmas too, Hilda!” Edith says. “Think what fun we’d all have playing charades********* after our Christmas dinner!”

 

“Oh thank you Edith,” Hilda replies. “That would be ever so much fun, but you’ve scarcely got enough room around this table for your family and Frank and his gran, never mind me.”

 

“We always have room at our table on Christmas Day for any waif or stray at a loose end.” George says, lowing the paper and looking earnestly at Hilda. “Isn’t that right, Ada?”

 

“George is right, Hilda.” Ada presses out a final gingerbread man biscuit and slips it along with the others on a battered old baking tray, ready for the hot oven behind her. She looks at Hilda and gives her a friendly smile. “You’d be very welcome.”

 

“Oh, it’s kind of you, Mrs. W., but I can’t even though I’d like to.”

 

“Well, I imagine you’ll want to be with your own family on Christmas Day, anyway.” Ada remarks as she picks up the tray of unbaked biscuits, turns around and walks over to the range where she opens the door of the baking oven with the aid of a protective tea towel and slips the tray into its glowing interior.

 

“Oh it isn’t that, Mum. Hilda will be in Shropshire with Mr. and Mrs. Channon on Christmas Day, pretending to Mrs. Channon’s lady’s maid again, to help her save face.”

 

“What’s that, Hilda love? Christmas with strangers, so far away?”

 

“Mr. and Mrs. Channon are hardly strangers, Mrs. W.,” Hilda answers. “And I don’t really mind.”

 

Edith smiles over the table at her friend decorating her biscuit with a random smattering of silver balls, rather than a carefully arranged pattern like her. “At least you’ll know all the quirks about how the Lancravens’ house works this year, and how you’re supposed to behave, where you’re supposed to sit, and what name you’ll have to answer to.”

 

“Edith’s is right, Mrs. W..” Hilda explains. “Mr. and Mrs. Channon and Mr. Channon’s parents the Marquis and Marchioness of Taunton have been invited to spend Christmas and New Year again this year at Lady Lancraven’s country house in Shropshire. We went there last Christmas. Lady Lancraven invites them so they can enjoy the foxhunt she hosts on Boxing Day. I have to go and pretend to be Mrs. Channon’s lady’s maid, as everyone else who stays has a lady’s maid, or a valet if you’re a man.”

 

“They call Hilda ‘Channon’ because she is Mrs. Channon’s maid.” Edith giggles.

 

“Yes, that’s how it is in those old country houses.” Ada says knowingly. “It’s a most peculiar tradition. Just as peculiar as the idea that men and women riding horses to chase after a fox is seen as sporting! How anyone can hurt a poor little fox and hunt it down’s beyond me.” Ada mutters shaking her head as she returns to the table from the oven.

 

“It’s what they do, Ada love,” George says, lowing his paper again. “And they’ve been doing it for generations. It’s a rum business**********, and that’s a fact, but,” He shrugs. “There’ll be no changing them now.”

 

“Luckily I don’t have to go to that part of the Christmas and New Year celebrations, Mr. W., but I do have to say that as servants, Lady Lancraven lets us have a bit of fun at Christmas. There is even a servants’ ball*********** held for us on Twelfth Night************.”

 

“I remember the servant’s ball at the big house my Mum used to work in back when I was still a little girl.” Ada says wistfully. “I was allowed to stay up late as a treat and go with Mum to the party, so long as I sat in the corner and kept out of trouble. Oh, the music was grand!” She sighs deeply as she remembers. “There was an upright piano in the servant’s hall which one of the men played, and someone else played the fiddle, and of course everyone sang back in those days with no wireless to listen to for entertainment. The master and mistress of the house would come down for a short while and he would dance with the housekeeper and she with the butler.”

 

“It’s the same at Lady Lancraven’s, although there’ll be no Lord Lancraven this year, since she’s a widow now.”

 

“The Merry Widow,” Edith giggles. “Is what the society pages call her.”

 

“Edith!” Ada chides.

 

“I’m only quoting what they say in the newspapers, Mum.”

 

“You’re quoting idle and wicked gossip, young lady,” Ada wags her finger at Edith. “And you know I can’t abide nasty gossip, even if someone thinks it worthy to print in the newspapers.”

 

“No Mum.” Edith mutters apologetically.

 

“As I remember it,” Ada remarks, shifting the conversation back to her own childhood memories of her life when Harlesden was still semi-rural************. “The Master and Mistress always found it a bit awkward, dancing and mixing with the servants, and they never stayed for long, but this was when the old Queen was still on the throne, and times were a bit different and more formal then.”

 

“Well, Lord and Lady Lancraven didn’t stay for long either, Mrs. W., but some of the younger guests upstairs who had come to stay for Twelfth Night festivities last year came down and joined us. It was rather a lark!”

 

“I hope none of those young men from upstairs tried to take advantage of you, Hilda!”

 

“No, just a leering footman.” Edith remarks, remembering her friend talk about Lady Lancraven’s presumptuous first footman who winked at Hilda and flirted with her last year.

 

“What’s that?” Ada queries.

 

“It’s alright, Mrs. W.. I have protection when I go there. The other reason why Mrs. Channon accepted the Lancravens’ invitation last year, and this year again, is because my elder sister, Emily, is Lady Lancraven’s lady’s maid, so it means I get to spend Christmas and New Year with her.”

 

“Oh that must be nice for you, Hilda love, especially since you’ll be so far from home.” Ada remarks as she begins pulling all the excess pieces of dough together and re-forming it into a ball to roll out again.

 

“And this year, because my sister explained that I was going up there again as Mrs. Channon’s lady’s maid, she asked Lady Lancraven if she could invite our Mum and bring her up from London by train and have her stay for Christmas and New Year, and she said yes!”

 

“Won’t your dad mind, Hilda love?” Ada asks. “He’ll be lonely at Christmas without your mum for company.”

 

Both girls stop decorating their biscuits and an awkward silence falls across the table.

 

“No Mrs. W.,” Hilda finally says. “My Dad was killed in the Great War, out in France, you see.”

 

“Oh!” Ada raises her hands to her cheeks, feeling the heat of an awkward blush beneath her fingers. “Oh I’m sorry love. I… I didn’t know.”

 

“It’s alright, Mrs. W.. I never told you.” Hilda replies. “Anyway, it’s Mum who gets lonely, what with Ronnie on the other side of the world for work, and Emily and me in service.”

 

“No doubt the fare up to Shropshire is at your sister’s expense.” George remarks dourly, tutting as he changes the subject slightly and shakes the newspaper noisily.

 

“No Mr. W.!” Hilda replies as she slides her decorated biscuit onto the white porcelain plate in the centre of the kitchen table. “Lady Lancraven’s not like that at all! She’s ever so nice, and generous too. She’s so nice in fact that she’s footing the cost of the railway ticket for Mum from London to Shropshire and back home again after Twelfth Night.”

 

“Well, that is a turn up for the books, Hilda love.” George remarks with a smile.

 

“It will be so lovely to have both Mum and Emily and me together for a few days at Christmas, even if Emily and I will still have to work. We’ll have fun when we’re not.”

 

“Couse you will, Hilda love.” Ada agrees.

 

“Well, we might not be a grand country house, Hilda, but we’re going to have ever so much fun right here on New Year’s Eve.” Edith enthuses.

 

“You aren’t going back to the **************Angel in Rotherhithe with Frank like the last two years, then, Edith?” Hilda asks.

 

“Why would they do that, Hilda love,” George asks. “When they can have a better time of it right here?”

 

“Dad’s decided that he wants to have a knees up right here, Hilda, especially since Bert is going to be home on shore leave for both Christmas and New Year this year. Bert is inviting some of his chums from the Demosthenes*************** who are also on shore leave and staying in London.”

 

“I hope his friends aren’t going to be too rough and rowdy.” Ada says with concern as she kneads the dough.

 

“Of course they won’t be, Ada love!” George tuts from his chair. “He’s working in the rarified surrounds of the Demosthenes’ first-class dining saloon, not her boiler room.”

 

“Well, rarified or not, I bet there are plenty of rowdy lads working in the first-class dining saloon, George.” Ada scoffs as she picks up her rolling pin and begins to roll out the lightly dusted ball of leftover dough into another, flat circle.

 

“Well I’m inviting some of my old chums from school,” Edith assures her mother calmly as she starts to ice a biscuit in the shape of a jolly, round snowman. “And that includes Alice Dunn****************, so Bert’s friends will just have to behave, Mum.”

 

“See, Ada love,” George opines. “Invite the Vicar’s daughter, and they’ll be sure to behave.”

 

“Pshaw!” Ada scoffs, flapping her hand, shooing away her husband’s remark flippantly. “With a bottle of champagne promised to Edith by Miss Chetwynd as a New year gift,” She stops rolling out the dough, turns and looks at her husband with a cocked eyebrow and a doubtful look. “I hardly think so.”

 

“Well, we’ll only be a few footsteps away, up in the front parlour with Mr. and Mrs. Pyecroft, Ada love, so I doubt there will be too many shenanigans going on.”

 

“I should hope not!” Ada goes back to rolling out the dough. “Shenanigans indeed!”

 

“It’s going to be so much fun!” Edith says. “I do wish you could come!”

 

“It’ll be more fun if Frank comes through with that gramophone he keeps promising.” George says.

 

“Oh, you know Frank, Dad.” Edith defends her beau steadfastly. “If he says he’ll do something, he does it.”

 

“That he does, Edith love.” her father agrees.

 

“A gramophone, Edith?” Hilda gasps. “How ripping!”

 

“Yes. Frank says he knows someone from the trades union with a gramophone. His friend will be away over Christmas, so he said that Frank could borrow it for New Year’s Eve. Apparently he had all the latest records.”

 

“That will make your New Year’s Eve, Edith! Do you remember that day we went down Oxford Street and went into His Master’s Voice***************** and you convinced me to come inside with you, so we could enjoy the elicit delight of listening to records we were never going to buy?”

 

“Faint heart never won fair lady, Hilda.” Edith giggles.

 

“That’s right!” Hilda exclaims. “That’s what you told me before you dragged me in there.”

 

“I hardly dragged you, Hilda.” Edith retorts. “You wanted to listen to Paul Whiteman.”

 

“And I did!” Hilda giggles with delight.

 

“Perhaps it’s more Edith and her girlfriends we need to worry about rather than Bert and his shipmates on New Year’s Eve, Ada love.” George ventures with a conspiratorial smile and a wink at his daughter.

 

*’Claude Duval’ is a 1924 British silent adventure film directed by George A. Cooper and starring Nigel Barrie, Fay Compton and Hugh Miller. It is based on the historical story of Claude Duval, the French highwayman in Restoration England who worked in the service of exiled royalists who returned to England under King Charles II.

 

**The Willesden Empire Hippodrome Theatre was confusingly located in Harlesden, although it was not too far from Willesden Junction Railway Station in this west London inner city district. It was opened by Walter Gibbons as a music hall/variety theatre in September 1907. In 1908, the name was shortened to Willesden Hippodrome Theatre. Designed by noted theatre architect Frank Matcham, seating was provided for 864 in the orchestra stalls and pit, 517 in the circle and 602 in the gallery. It had a forty feet wide proscenium, a thirty feet deep stage and eight dressing rooms. It was taken over by Sydney Bernstein’s Granada Theatres Ltd. chain from the third of September 1927 and after some reconstruction was re-opened on the twelfth of September 1927 with a programme policy of cine/variety. From March 1928 it was managed by the Denman/Gaumont group, but was not successful and went back to live theatre use from 28th January 1929. It was closed in May 1930, and was taken over by Associated British Cinemas in August 1930. Now running films only, it operated as a cinema until September 1938. It then re-opened as a music hall/variety theatre, with films shown on Sundays, when live performances were prohibited. The Willesden Hippodrome Theatre was destroyed by German bombs in August/September 1940. The remains of the building stood on the High Street for many years, becoming an unofficial playground for local children, who trespassed onto the property. The remains were demolished in 1957.

 

***The Daily Express is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. It was first published as a broadsheet in London in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson. Its sister paper, the Sunday Express, was launched in 1918. Under the ownership of Lord Beaverbrook, the Express rose to become the newspaper with the largest circulation in the world, going from two million in the 1930s to four million in the 1940s.

 

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

 

*****An argyle pattern features overlapping diamonds with intersecting diagonal lines on top of the diamonds. They are traditionally knit, not woven, using an intarsia technique. The pattern was named after the Seventeenth Century tartan of Clan Campbell of Argyll in western Scotland.

 

******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 theVulcan 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.

 

*******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 skillion roof, sometimes called a shed or lean-to roof, is distinguished by a single, sloping plane extending from one side of the house to the other.

 

*********Charades is a word guessing game where one player has to act out a word or action without speaking and other players have to guess what the action is. It's a fun game that's popular around the world at parties, and was traditionally a game often played on Christmas Day after luncheon or dinner by people of all classes.

 

**********The word “rum” can sometimes be used as an alternative to odd or peculiar, such as: “it's a rum business, certainly”.

 

***********The servants’ ball has had a long tradition in the country house estates of Britain and only really died out with the onset of the Second World War. They were a cultural melting pot where popular music of the day would be performed alongside traditional country dance tunes. Throughout the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth, these balls were commonplace in large country homes.

 

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

 

*************It may be built up and suburban today, but Harlesden was just a few big houses and farms until 1840 when the railway was built. Irish immigrants escaping famine in the 1840s came to Harlesden to build canals and railways. Harlesden grew slowly, but by the 1870s and 1880s, when Ada would have been a girl, streets of small houses for railway workers, laundries and bakeries started to appear and the area slowly transformed from rural to suburban. The land around Harlesden Green, for the most part, was owned by the College of All Souls, Oxford, which was later to give its name to the Harlesden Parish Church.

 

**************The Angel, one of the oldest Rotherhithe pubs, is now in splendid isolation in front of the remains of Edward III's mansion on the Thames Path at the western edge of Rotherhithe. The site was first used when the Bermondsey Abbey monks used to brew beer which they sold to pilgrims. It is located at 24 Rotherhithe St, opposite Execution Dock in Wapping. It has two storeys, plus an attic. It is built of multi-coloured stock brick with a stucco cornice and blocking course. The ground floor frontage is made of wood. There is an area of segmental arches on the first floor with sash windows, and it is topped by a low pitched slate roof. Its Thames frontage has an unusual weatherboarded gallery on wooden posts. The interior is divided by wooden panels into five small rooms. In the early Twentieth Century its reputation and location attracted local artists including Augustus John and James Abbott McNeil Whistler. In the 1940s and 50s it became a popular destination for celebrities including Laurel and Hardy. Today its customers are local residents, tourists and people walking the Thames Path.

 

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

 

****************The 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 Gramophone Company, who used the brand of Nipper the dog listening to a gramophone, opened the first His Master’s Voice (HMV) shop in London’s busy shopping precinct at 363 Oxford Street in Mayfair on the 20th of July 1921. The master of ceremonies was British composer Sir Edward Elgar. The shop still remains in the possession of more recently financially embattled HMV and it is colloquially known as the ‘home of music since 1921’

 

This cheerful festive 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:

 

Central to our story are the delicious looking plate of iced and decorated Christmas biscuits, which is a miniature artisan piece gifted to me by my dear Flickr friend and artist Kim Hagar (www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/), who surprised me with it last Christmas. The silver miniature biscuit cutters, all of which have handles and raised edges, just like their life-sized counterpart, are also from her. I have been anxious to use these in a scene, but of course being festively themed, they have had to wait until now.

 

The flour and dough covered wooden board with its flour dusted rolling pin is also an artisan miniature which I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. Aged on purpose, the rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters for flour and sugar, made in typical domestic Art Deco design and painted in the popular kitchen colours of the 1920s are artisan pieces I also acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop. The glass jar of sugar with its cork stopper and the silver spoon sticking out of the flour cannister also come from there.

 

The two bowls of icing you can just see to the left and right of the photo are also 1:12 artisan miniatures that I acquired from former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her food looks so real! Frances Knight’s work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.

 

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

 

Ada’s worn kitchen table I have had since I was a child of seven or eight.

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

 

Today however, we are south of the Thames in the middle-class London suburb of Putney in the front room of a red brick Edwardian villa in Hazelwood Road, which belongs to Lettice’s childhood chum Gerald’s friend, Harriet Milford. The orphaned daughter of a solicitor with little formal education, Harriet has taken in theatrical lodgers to earn a living, and millinery semi-professionally to give her some pin money*, but her business has taken off substantially thanks to Lettice introducing her to a couple of her friends, who have spread the word about Harriet’s skill. The front parlour of the Putney villa, which doubles as Harriet’s sewing room and show room for her hats, is even more of a jumble than usual, for not only is the room’s middle-class chintzy décor covered with Harriet’s hats and sewing paraphernalia, but today it is festooned with hand made paper chains in bright colours, and a beautifully made fruit cake with an expertly created royal icing surface dotted with cherries sits on a raised cake plate in the middle of the tea table, for today Harriet is hosting a party for Gerald’s birthday.

 

“Happy birthday, Dinah darling!” Cyril, Gerald’s West End oboist lover exclaimed with delight as Harriet walked into the front room carrying the wonderful cake and placed it on what was her deceased father’s tilt top chess table, which now serves as her tea table.

 

The party is small, attended only by those whom Gerald trusts will keep his illegal homosexual relationship** with Cyril a secret, namely Lettice, Harriet and the couple of other homosexual men who board beneath Harriet’s roof: actors Charles Dunnage, Bartholemew Harrison, Leonard Arbuthnot and Arthur Bradley, the latter of whom today is appearing in drag as his alter ego, Beatrice. Upon Gerald and Lettice’s arrival by taxi from across the Thames, Harriet cried that she did not have the champagne requisite to celebrate the occasion, only to be shushed by Gerald and Cyril, who then revealed that they had been stealthily stashing bottles for the party under Cyril’s bed every time Gerald came over to visit and spend the evening. When Harriet decried that she had no champagne flutes, her concerns were hushed again by her theatrical borders who assured her that if all of them were used to drinking wine, brandy, gin and cocktails from her teacups, then they would be equally suitable for champagne. And thus, the teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl Harriet had prepared for a more sedate party were set aside, and the champagne poured into the teacups as the party began. Lettice smiled quietly to herself at this rather unorthodox arrangement as she quietly sipped her champagne from a gilt edged Royal Doulton cup, but quietly reminded herself that very little in Harriet’s Putney household was orthodox. Well wishes and gifts were given to Gerald, and the cake cut and served by Harriet before a series of party pieces were performed by the theatrical members of the group, much to the delight of Harriet, Lettice and Gerald. As a Shakespearean actor, Charles performed a monologue from Hamlet, whilst Bartholomew quite literally pulled a bunch of flowers for Gerald out of his top hat as he performed magic tricks. Leonard and Beatrice sang bawdy music hall songs, before Cyril concluded the formal performances by playing a piece of music on his oboe he composed for Gerald, his efforts rewarded with applause from the assembled company, tears from Lettice and Harriet and kisses of love from Gerald. Then Gerald brought down his portable gramophone and selection of records, also kept hidden in Cyril’s bedroom for the party, and everyone took turns dancing across Harriet’s worn old parlour carpet.

 

Now, with the evening creeping in as the sun sets in the west, whilst more than half of the champagne has been drunk and the cake eaten, the festive atmosphere of the occasion is still very much present as the gentlemen of the party continue to choose tunes to dance to between telling funny stories of life in the theatre, before they have to set off for their respective theatres in London’s West End to either act, sing or play music and Lettice and the birthday boy go and have dinner at the Café Royal***: Lettice’s birthday treat for Gerald. Harriet and Lettice sit off to the side on Harriet’s sofa, sipping champagne from their teacups, the pair making rather an odd pair with Lettice dressed in one of Gerald’s beautifully designed evening frocks, whilst Harriet wears a pretty, but far more casual and obviously less expensive day frock.

 

“Why do they do that?” Lettice asks Harriet as Cyril calls out to Gerald, using the name Dinah to address him.

 

“Do what, Miss Chetwynd?” Harriet queries.

 

“Why do they call each other by ladies’ names, instead of calling each other by their proper names? Cyril is Cilla. Gerald is Dinah. I… I don’t understand, Miss Milford.”

 

“Well, Cilla is obviously the female equivalent of Cyril.”

 

“I have a friend whose name really is Cilla.” Lettice answers. “Well, Priscilla actually.” She takes a gentle sip of warming champagne from her teacup.

 

“And I guess, Dinah,” Harriet thinks. “Might be derived from Geraldine. You know, Geraldine, Dina, Dinah.” She shrugs. “I’m only supposing. Perhaps you might ask him.”

 

Lettice’s face crumples with irritation. “But why do they insist on doing that, is what I want to know, Miss Milford.”

 

“You don’t know, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Know what?”

 

“It’s for protection.”

 

“Protection? How does calling one another by female names protect them? It only draws attention to them, if you ask me. It sounds utterly ridiculous!” Lettice scoffs. “Grown men calling each other by ladies’ names! And I get criticized by my parents for some of the turns of phrase I use! Whatever next?”

 

“It may sound like silly, Miss Chetwynd, but it’s actually very smart,” Harriet explains. “And it’s been done by men like Cyril and Gerry for generations. They might call themselves Cilla instead of Cyril, or Dinah rather than Gerry, or even Aunt Sally instead of Charles,” She nods in the direction of Charles Dunnage. “In private, but they don’t do it in public, or rather they do, but surreptitiously.”

 

“I think you’re just making me more confused, Miss Milford.” Lettice laughs, shaking her head. “Then again, it might be the third glass of champagne,” She holds up her half empty teacup. “That stultifies my thinking.”

 

“Then let me explain.” Harriet says kindly.

 

“Please do, Miss Milford.” A peal of squealing laughter and claps of applause from Cyril as he watches Beatrice being dipped in a sweeping tango movement by Leonard momentarily distracts both ladies before Lettice turns back to Harriet. “I’m all ears.”

 

“Well, when you are queer, as my gentlemen lodgers are, you have to be careful what you say and to whom. It may be safe here at Hazelwood Road, but out there,” Harriet waves her hand towards the closed chintz curtains covering the front window sheltering the party guests from prying eyes. “Even a whiff of gossip, can land a man, even a real gentleman like Gerald, on the wrong side of the law.”

 

“Don’t I know it, Miss Milford.” Lettice shudders. “Just the thought of Gerald being dragged up before a magistrate, much less being sent to prison to serve a sentence with hard labour, terrifies me.”

 

“If it assuages your fears at all, it does me too, Miss Chetwynd,” Harriet assures her. “And whilst I quite enjoy having the theatrical household I have, and feel perfectly safe amongst my all-male coterie of lodgers, I don’t exactly fly a flag advertising that they are all queer.” She pauses casting Lettice a wary glance. “We all of us have to be discreet, and when I say we, I mean us, and them as well.” She points to Gerald and the other gentlemen milling around her tea table with teacups or silvers of cake in their hands.

 

“You seem very well versed in all of this, Miss Milford.” Lettice observes.

 

“It helps when you have the clientele I do in my boarding house, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet says knowingly. “I learned things I never knew, and I discovered that I have the capacity to learn a great deal, very quickly.” She pauses and takes a draught of champagne from her cup. “Something my own father never gave me much credit for.”

 

“I’m sorry you didn’t have a father like I have, Miss Milford.” Lettice remarks sadly. “I was very fortunate that Pater, unlike Mater, is not blinkered about the education or place of women in society.”

 

“I am too.” Harriet sighs. “But then again, if I had had a better education, or found myself in different circumstances, I might never have known any of these fine gentlemen.”

 

“Or ladies.” Lettice adds as she watches Arthur as Beatrice spin like a whirling dervish, his spangled frock, a pre-war Edwardian tea dress built more for his bulky size, modified and updated with a shorter hemline, spinning around him in sparkling Napoleon blue. “So, how is using female aliases discreet, Miss Milford?”

 

“It means that when they go out and meet up at pubs, even friendly saloon bars**** in the West End like The Packenham***** that might be a safer haven for queer men, they can still talk more freely about one another and not be implicated.”

 

“Implicated? By whom?”

 

“Themselves,” Harriet sighs. “Each other: whether on purpose or by accident. Pubs are frequented by undercover constabulary ready to arrest a poor man under suspicion of a criminal act: men who will break easily under hard fists being pummelled relentlessly into them in a prison cell at the local police station.”

 

“Surely they wouldn’t implicate one another, Miss Milford.”

 

“Oh, wouldn’t they just, Miss Chetwynd? Queens can be very nasty and catty, especially in the theatrical industry. Some have gone to great lengths to get rid of their competition if they are vying for a role they want.” Harriet sees Lettice’s eyes grow wide as she turns her head slightly to stare at Gerald and his friends. She quickly clarifies, “None of my borders would of course, Miss Chetwnd!”

 

“Of course not, Miss Milford!”

 

“I want a peaceable kingdom. Anyway, if they refer to one another as Cilla or Dinah, Beatrice or Aunt Sally, they can get away with talking freely about one another, and even a sharp eared undercover member of the constabulary cannot pick them up on suspicion of an inverted nature******. So if Gerry were silly enough to say after a few too many pints at The Packenham, that he was coming home to Cilla – not that he would Miss Chetwynd – then no-one could accuse him of sharing a bed with Cyril.”

 

“I should certainly hope that he wouldn’t!” A look of concern crosses Lettice’s face.

 

“No, he wouldn’t.” Harriet sighs and look up at Cyril, who is engaged in a telling a story that has engaged his male companion audience, flapping his arms around in wild gesticulations as he giggles. “But Cyril on the other hand.” She cocks her eyebrow over her right eye.

 

“He isn’t as discreet as Gerald is.” Lettuce finishes Harriet’s unstated thought and then takes a gulp of her champagne, which suddenly tastes bitter and acidic as it tumbles down her throat.

 

“No, he isn’t.” Harriet agrees. “But at least if his lips are slick with drink, and he says that Dinah’s coming over to stay, his friends at the bar with know who he is referring to, but his foes, like the undercover constable, won’t.”

 

Lettice turns in her seat on the overstuffed chintz fabric sofa to face Harriet. “May I be frank, Miss Milford?”

 

“Goodness!” Harriet gasps. “It sounds like we might need a top up to our refreshments.” She opines, glancing at Lettice’s empty cup cradled in her elegantly manicured hand. Harriet looks up. “Charles! Charles!” She calls.

 

The mature actor with white hair and an impressive, expertly waxed handlebar moustache dressed resplendently in full evening attire looks away from Cyril and his story. When Harriet holds her own nearly empty teacup slightly aloft before her, he understands her meaning, nods and snatches up the open bottle of champagne next to Gerald’s partially eaten birthday cake and walks over to Lettice and Harriet with it, his bearing noble and elegant.

 

“And what are you two lovely wallflowers talking about over here in the shadows?” Charles asks as he bends and politely pours champagne into Lettice’s proffered cup. “Something deliciously salacious? Come whisper it into your Aunt Sally’s ear.” He then pours champagne into Harriet’s cup. “I’m sure there is nothing she hasn’t heard yet that would shock her.”

 

“No,” Harriet laughs. “It’s more likely the other way around.”

 

“Never a truer word was spoken, dear Hattie.” Charles finishes pouring and straightens up. “I warned you, Miss Chetwynd, the first time we met. Do you remember?”

 

“I can’t say I do, Mr. Dunnage.” Lettice replies. “Remind me. What did you warn me of?”

 

“When I first met you in the hallway of this very house, just out there, I told you to flee, Miss Chetwynd! To flee!” he says in his deep, booming actor’s voice as he sweeps his arms out dramatically, as though shooing Lady Macbeth’s unwanted spirit from the room. “I said for you to flee this den of iniquity and retreat to the salubrious surrounds from whence you came, before you were swept up into the maelstrom of actors that pass through Hattie’s welcoming doors, and whisked into these immoral and improper parties.” He sighs and smiles down at her cheekily. “However, I see that you failed to heed my timely words of warning and now it is too late.” He pauses for affect. “You Miss Chetwynd, my beauteous lady, are doomed to become one of the bohemian oddities of Hazelwood Road, for there is no going back now.”

 

“Perhaps I enjoy being a bohemian oddity, Mr. Dunnage.” Lettice answers him.

 

“Then you are welcome, dear lady.” he replies, taking up her hand and kissing it like a queen.

 

“Oh, get away with you, Charles!” Harriet slaps the older gentleman on the forearm playfully. “You’ll drive Miss Chetwynd away with your superlatives and theatricalities! Once an actor, always an actor!”

 

“How many times must I tell you, Hattie?” Charles bemoans irritably, suddenly animating his shoulders, making them rise and fall with every syllable. “I’m a thespian,” He emphasises the word with reverence. “Not an actor! Why must you insult me so, and throw me into the lot with those who are mere actors?” He spits the last two words out like an insult.

 

“But you just said there was a maelstrom of actors who flowed through Miss Milford’s door, Mr. Dunnage.” Lettice opines. “Didn’t you?”

 

Charles’ eyes grow wide and his cheeks puff in and out with surprise at being caught out by his own words. “Well, never mind if I did.” he blusters. “But even if I did, I am right. There are many actors in our little den of iniquity, but there are very few thespians like me.” He draws himself up to his full height and places a hand dramatically against his chest. Cyrill’s pealing laughter bursts forth again commenting with perfect comic timing on Charles’ stance, even though his laughter is really directed at something Gerald has whispered in his ear. “He’s an actor.” Charles points to Cyril. “Melodramatic, and amusing, yes, but never up to the standards of the Old Vic*******. Only true thespians can perform the works of the Great Bard. Anyone can be an actor, and anyone is!” He arches his eyebrows, causing her brow to furrow in folds of pale white flesh.

 

“I can hear you, Aunt Sally!” Cyril calls across the room. “Your booming old thespian voice betrays you, dear heart. Stop discussing me with monstrously jealous green eyes, and come back here this instant!”

 

“Or we’ll christen you an old masher********,” giggles Gerald, his champagne glass half aloft. “And ruin your reputation at The Bunch of Grapes*********.”

 

“Go on, Aunt Sally!” Harriet refers to Charles by his female alias, shooing him with anxious waves of her hand. “You don’t want your reputation as a gentleman’s man ruined. Anyway,” she assures him as his face falls. ‘We’re only discussing women’s business, and nothing of interest to you. Off you trot.”

 

Charles turns dolefully and slips away, back to the circle of men around the tea table covered in tea things.

 

“I’m so sorry, Miss Chetwynd. I ought to have fetched the champagne myself. I should have known we would have been subject to one of Charles’ dramatic conversations. Please forgive me.” She smooths down her skirt across her knee nervously as she returns her attention to Lettice. “Now, you were saying?”

 

“Please, don’t apologise, Miss Milford. In fact, Cyril’s response to Mr. Dunnage’s display of theatricality only cements my concerns.”

 

“Concerns, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“I’ve already spoken to Gerald about this, and not in a nasty way. My dearest wish is for Gerald’s happiness, and I know that Cyril does make him happy: his bouts of melancholy are far less than they were before he met Cyril.”

 

“But?”

 

“Cyril’s lack of discretion scares me, Miss Milford.” Lettice confides. “I’ve made Gerald promise to be discreet and asked him to ensure that Cyril is as discreet as possible about who he is and their relationship.”

 

“Oh, Cyril’s only behaving outrageously because he’s here, Miss Chetwynd, and he can be himself. He isn’t anywhere near as flamboyant when he’s out in the world.”

 

“How do you know, Miss Milford? It seems to me that a few glasses, or rather teacups, of champagne loosens his tongue and enhances his…” Lettice pauses as she contemplates the correct word to describe Cyril’s current animated state. “His theatricality, shall we say.”

 

“It’s a shrewd observation, Miss Chetwynd, but I can assure you that I’ve been to a few saloon bars with Cyril and Gerry before, and he’s never done anything frightfully overt to betray himself.”

 

“Then I’m sure that Cyril was on his best behaviour, and even if he weren’t, I know Gerald well enough to know that he would have kept him in line.”

 

“Pardon me for saying this, Miss Chetwynd, and with the greatest of respect, but you weren’t there. You may know Gerry far better than me, being childhood chums and all, but I know Cyril better than you do. He can take care of himself and steer clear of trouble. He grew up in Cambridge. He’d have had to watch is p’s and q’s there.”

 

“Cambridge is hardly a market town, Miss Milford. It’s a university city, and to be fair, I know at least one or two sons of family friends who are members of Gerald and Cyril’s theatrical set who have sailed through the hallowed halls of both Oxford and Cambridge, and I’m not talking about the study halls.” Lettice sighs. “I can’t help but worry. I don’t want anything untoward to happen to Gerald,” She sighs more deeply. “Or Cyril for that matter.”

 

“It’s only natural that you should worry, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet reaches out and places a comforting hand on Lettice’s knee: an overly familiar gesture that makes Lettice – unused to such shows of affection from a person she does not know that well – feel a little awkward. “But no matter what happens, Cyril and Gerry will always have a safe haven here.”

 

Sensing her unease, Harriet withdraws her hand somewhat reluctantly from Lettice’s knees as she finds a common bond between she and Lettice to try and bridge the gap that she so badly wants to cross.

 

The two women fall into a thoughtful silence that is at odds with the bright music from the gramophone and the theatrical noise that bursts like bubbles around them, as momentarily they allow themselves to become lost in their own deeper thoughts and concerns.

 

“But this won’t last forever, Miss Milford,” Lettice says at length, breaking their silence. “Will it?”

 

“Whatever do you mean, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Well look,” She waves her hand expansively around Harriet’s untidy front room cum millinery studio. “Dare I say it, but your home is more madcap and untidy than it was when I first met you.”

 

“I have tried to tidy up, Miss Chetwynd, truly I have.” Harriet defends herself, a little hurt that Lettice insists on bringing up the state of general untidiness of her home life yet again.

 

“Oh I don’t mean that, Miss Milford.” Lettice soothes. “I’m not here to tell you whether you should or shouldn’t have an untidy studio. I’ve said my peace. It’s not up to me as to how you choose to live.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“I meant the fact that you can’t keep this up for too much longer. You can’t continue to live here, run your business, and run a boarding house at the same time. I can understand that when your father died suddenly, due to his poor opinion about women’s education and blinkered idea as to your place in the world, he left you with little choice but to turn his home into a boarding house in order to keep the roof over your head. However, now that I’ve given you a helping hand to start off with by introducing you to a few influential new clients, your skills as a highly talented milliner are becoming better known and speak for themselves. That’s only going to increase, just like Gerald’s atelier. Gerald tells me that your orders for hats are rapidly increasing. You can barely keep the two businesses reconciled, can you?”

 

“Well,” Harriet agrees begrudgingly. “I can’t lie. It is getting harder to fit all the cooking, laundering, washing and tidying up around here around my customer appointments and the time I spend making my hats, especially in the lead up to Ascot. I’d love to have a housekeeper again, but I can’t quite afford one, at least not yet, and I don’t want to put up the rents.”

 

“What you really need is a full-time landlady to run the boarding house, but I know, you can’t afford it. I’m not telling you out of spite, but rather as a friendly piece of advice that soon – maybe not tomorrow or the next day – but soon, you’re going to have to decide where your future lies. Is it as a landlady of a theatrical boarding house, or a successful milliner? I know which one I would choose.” Lettice pauses. “However, the path I would choose for you would involve you giving this up and perhaps moving to more appropriate lodgings that don’t involve you being the landlady, but rather the keeper of your own atelier.”

 

“But then what will become of Charles, and Cyril, or Gerald.”

 

“They will have to make their own way in the world, and that is why I worry.” Lettice admits. “Gerald hasn’t enough money yet either, to give he and Cyril a safe home where they can live together, away from prying eyes and the more unkind people of this world. I hope he does one day, and I’m sure he will. However, now he needs to pour any profits he makes back into his Grosvenor Street atelier in order to make it bigger and better. Until he can set up that home, because for all his good intentions an oboist like Cyril will never be able to afford to buy a home, Gerald and he will have to find a safe way through the world.”

 

“I don’t want to think about that, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet says bitterly as she turns away from Lettice, as if trying to shy away from the truth.

 

“I know you don’t, Miss Milford.” Lettice says kindly. She raises he hand to Harriet’s shoulder and then quickly retracts it before she touches it, returning it to nursing her teacup. “But how can you stop a stone from rolling after it gains momentum.”

 

“Maybe you shouldn’t have given me an introduction to your aunt and her friends.” Harriet mutters.

 

“Nonsense, Miss Milford!” Lettice chides. “Now if I ever meant to cause harm to you, then that is exactly how I would have behaved. I may not have liked you very much when we first met, Miss Milford. You know that I foolishly saw you as a threat to Gerald’s and my friendship, when in fact you were no such thing. However, whilst we will never be bosom friends********, I don’t dislike you so much as to prevent you from developing your potential. You are a talented milliner, Miss Milford, and you know it, and now the world is starting to see what Gerald saw in you when he first met you, and what I have benefited from as a result. You can’t deny that millinery brings you pleasure. Enjoy it and embrace it. However, like anything else that you, or I, enjoy, there are sacrifices that we need to make – as I said before, maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.”

 

“Come on! Come on you two!” Gerald’s gleeful and animated voice interrupts the women’s conversation. “This is meant to be my birthday party!”

 

“And so it is, Gerry.” Harriet says with false joviality.

 

“Then if it is my birthday, I get to decide what we do.” He claps his hands. “You two look far too serious, like a pair of old countesses at a debutante ball, bitter and sad.”

 

“We’re not sad, Gerald!” Lettice balks. “We’re just being introspective.”

 

“Oh pooh introspection Lettuce Lea…”

 

“Ahh.. ahh, Mr. Buttons!” Lettice quickly interrupts Gerald from saying her hated childhood nickname, using the nasty name given him by Lady Gladys Caxton at her book reading at Selfridges, wagging a warning finger at him.

 

As Gerald hears Cyril giggle behind him, he counters, “Oh pooh melodramatic Madeline St John, queen of the mushy romance novella, and pooh you! We’re going to play a game!”

 

“What shall we play then?” Harriet asks as Charles takes away her cup and helps her to her feet, whilst Gerald does the same with Lettice.

 

“We’re going to play Cats and Dogs***********!” he says with delight as he withdraws a deck of cards from his tailcoat breast pocket. “We have enough time for a game before Cilla and Aunt Sally are due at their respective theatres, and Lettice and I dine at the Café Royal.”

 

*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.

 

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

 

***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.

 

*****Some pubs and bars were “friendly” places (as much as a publican and his staff would tolerate in those days) for lesbians, queer men and more sexually bohemian society in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Francis Downes Ommanney was a well known Antarctic explorer who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, yet what was less well known about him was that he was a homosexual. In 1966 he published his autobiography ‘The River Bank’ which contains a very interesting account of gay pubs in the 1920s. In it he talks about the social hierarchy of pubs and what happened when class lines were ignored: “There were several bars, a saloon and a public bar as a matter of course, but there might also be others, like the lounge, the private bar and sometimes the ladies’ bar. In the saloon, where I think bitter beer was about 8d. a pint, the surroundings were distinctly more classy than in the public where the same beer was only 4d. or 4d. a pint. There were sofas and tables with ash-trays and there might be a tinny piano, though this was rare in the West End… The public bar often had sawdust on the floor to absorb the beer swills, spittoons and a generally spartan, poverty-stricken air so that the patrons might feels themselves a step or two lower down the ladder than their neighbours in the saloon. I usually patronised the saloon because once or twice in the public bar the proprietor had looked at me in a meaningful manner and said severely, ‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the saloon bar, sir?’ And I had immediately felt guilty as though I were there for a nefarious purpose, as perhaps I was…” He describes one of his more favourite haunts, the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street: “Perhaps the liveliest of all the bars I frequented was the Fitzroy Tavern in Soho which had an atmosphere as close to that of a Paris boite in its earthy gaiety as it was possible to achieve in London. It was frequented by an extraordinary collection of bohemians, dope addicts (very sinister in those days but nothing, apparently, now), lesbians, queers and oddities of all sorts. It was always full of soldiers and sailors, especially the latter, who always love the free-and-easy, pick-up atmosphere of a joint anywhere in the world.”

 

******Variously called the Pakenham Arms, Pakenham Hotel or Pakenham Tavern, this pub in Knightsbridge, popular with guardsmen from the Household Cavalry was a well-known gay haunt. It stood on the corner of Raphael Street and Knightsbridge Green, and was originally a country house. It was enlarged and converted into a Hotel and Tavern at a cost of over three thousand pounds by the builder Edward Nangle, who became its first licensee in 1847. It was demolished in the 1950s to build Caltex House, but a replacement pub, Tattersall’s, was included in the development.

 

*******An invert is a term coined and popularly used in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries to describe a homosexual. Sexual inversion is a theory of homosexuality popular primarily in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century. Sexual inversion was believed to be an inborn reversal of gender traits: male inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally female pursuits and dress and vice versa.

 

********The Old Vic theatre in the London borough of Lambeth was formerly the home of a theatre company that became the nucleus of the National Theatre. The company’s theatre building opened in 1818 as the Royal Coburg and produced mostly popular melodramas. In 1833 it was redecorated and renamed the Royal Victoria and became popularly known as the Old Vic. Between 1880 and 1912, under the management of Emma Cons, a social reformer, the Old Vic was transformed into a temperance amusement hall known as the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern, where musical concerts and scenes from Shakespeare and opera were performed. Lilian Baylis, Emma Cons’s niece, assumed management of the theatre in 1912 and two years later presented the initial regular Shakespeare season. By 1918 the Old Vic was established as the only permanent Shakespearean theatre in London, and by 1923 all of Shakespeare’s plays had been performed there. The Old Vic grew in stature during the 1920s and ’30s under directors such as Andrew Leigh, Harcourt Williams, and Tyrone Guthrie.

 

*********Derving from American English a masher is a slang term for a man who makes unwanted advances, particularly sexual ones, towards women not acquainted with him, especially in public places.

 

**********Frequented by sailors, and known as a homosexual haunt, the Bunch of Grapes was located at 45 Strand, St Martin in the Fields. Originally called the Craven Coffee House in 1822, this pub was later renamed the Bunch of Grapes and continued to trade until 1928 when it finally closed its doors. It never reopened and was demolished after the Second World War in 1945.

 

***********The term bosom friend is recorded as far back as the late Sixteenth Century. In those days, the bosom referred to the chest as the seat of deep emotions, though now the word usually means a woman's “chest.” A bosom friend, then, is one you might share these deep feelings with or have deep feelings for.

 

************In the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, the game “dogs and cats” was in vogue. All that is required is a deck of playing cards and even numbers of guests to make two teams. The host of the party hides the cards around the house. They can be hidden inside of magazines, books, vases, drawers, biscuit barrels- just about anywhere really, but hopefully not in bedrooms or any other private spaces! The party guests have team captains that split off into two teams- the “dogs” and the “cats’. The goal for the dogs is to find all of the black cards, and the cats have to find all of the red ones. It is the team captain’s responsibility to gather all of their team’s cards. If a member of the dog team finds a black card, they have to bark loudly until their captain gets to them, and the cats have to meow. If a guest finds a card of the opposite team, they can quietly put it back, or choose an even more difficult hiding place. The game is over when one of the teams gets their half of the deck completed. One can only imagine that this game fell out of vogue after too many incidents when players tore a house apart looking for cards, or perhaps discovered something that was better left a secret about their host!

 

This rather cluttered and chaotic scene of a drawing room cum workroom decked out for a party, may look real to you, but believe it or not, it is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Harriet’s beautiful birthday fruitcake the Edwardian tea set and the plate for the biscuits come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The enamel handled knife comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small World in the United Kingdom. The bottle of Deutz and Geldermann champagne. It is an artisan miniatures and made of glass and has real foil wrapped around its neck. It was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The various biscuits on the plate are all hand made and come from either Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering or were made 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 wrapped present comes from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay.

 

The tilt chess table I bought from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, whilst the Indian hexagonal table comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. The natural straw hat with the green ribbon sitting on the arm of the chair was made by an unknown artisan in America.

 

The concertina sewing box on casters which you can see spilling forth its contents in the background is an artisan miniature made by an unknown artist in England. It comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the in the United Kingdom. All the box’s contents including spools of ribbons, threads scissors and buttons on cards came with the work box. The box can completely expand or contract, just like its life-sized equivalent.

 

The black japanned fire screen in the background, the black metal fire tools and the potted plants and their stands all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop.

 

Harriet’s family photos seen cluttering the mantlepiece in the background are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each.

 

The porcelain clock on the mantlepiece is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The pot of yellow and blue petunias and the ornamental swan figurine on the mantlepiece have been hand made and painted by 1:12 miniature ceramicist Ann Dalton.

 

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

 

The floral chintz chair is made by J.B.M. miniatures who specialise in well made pieces of miniature furniture made to exacting standards.

 

The paper chains festooning Harriet’s front room I made myself using very thinly cut paper. It was a fiddly job to do, but I think it adds festive cheer and realism to this scene

 

The Chinese carpet beneath the furniture is hand made by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, Australia.

 

The Edwardian mantlepiece is made of moulded plaster and was acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom as were the aspidistra and fern to their side of the fireplace and the stands they are on.

 

The paintings and prints on the walls all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House in the United Kingdom.

Muslims offer the early morning prayerEid-Ul-Fitr or the 'festival of fast breaking' at the Hamidiya Masjid, in Mumbai. Muslims across the nation celebrated Eid that marks the end of the holy month of Ramzan, after the sighting of the new crescent moon.

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

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, grew up. She is visiting her parents as she often does on her Wednesdays off. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price* biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. Usually even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door, Edith can smell the familiar scent of a mixture of Lifebuoy Soap, Borax and Robin’s Starch, which means her mother is washing the laundry of others wealthier than she in the terrace’s kitchen at the rear of the house. Yet with her father’s promotion, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now, yet even though today is not a day for laundering, there is work to be done for Ada’s next laundry day. So we find ourselves in the Watsford’s scullery at the back of the terrace behind the kitchen, which like most Victoria era homes, also serves as the wash house.

 

Like all the houses in the terrace, the Watsford’s scullery has an old square-sided ceramic sink in the corner, set on bricks, joined to the same pipe as the one directly behind the wall in the corner of the kitchen, however the small room is dominated by the large built-in washing cauldron made of bricks, set above its own wood fire furnace with a copper cauldron in its centre. The distemper on the walls of the scullery are tinted ever so slightly blue, a traditional colour for laundries, as it made whites look even whiter. Around it stand wicker baskets for laundry, a dolly-peg** and a very heavy black painted mangle*** with wooden rollers, whilst on its top a panoply of laundry items stand, including an enamelled water jug, bowls, irons, a washboard and various household laundry products. The room smells comfortingly clean: scents of soap and starch that have seeped into every fibre of the space.

 

“Hand me that bar of Hudson’s Soap**** will you, Edith love.” Ada says to her daughter as she takes an old enamelled bowl and places it with a heavy metallic clunk on the top of the old red brick copper*****. Reaching for a silver grater she says with a resigned groan, “Time to make a batch of soap flakes******.”

 

“Oh, let me do that, Mum.” Edith says kindly, grasping the smooth, rounded top of the grater, just before her mother does.

 

“Ahh…thank you love.” Ada says gratefully, sinking down onto a small, long and worn wooden stool surrounded by baskets and tubs of soiled linen.

 

“You just keep sorting old Widow Hounslow’s bloomers.” Edith says with a cheeky smirk as she pulls out a bar of Hudson’s yellow soap.

 

“Now don’t spoil your generosity by saying nasty things about poor Mrs. Hounslow.” Ada cautions her daughter with a wagging finger.

 

“Pshaw! Poor my foot.” Edith pulls a face at the mention of the Watsford’s landlady, and her former employer, the wealthy and odious old widow draped in black jet and mourning barathea******* whom she grew up hearing about regularly, and seeing on the rare occasions she would deign to stop by to collect their rent in person, rather than her rent collector.

 

“You know Mrs. Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.”

 

“And neither you, nor she will ever let any of us forget it, Mum.” Edith mutters, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

 

“Now you know I won’t have a bad word said about her, Edith.” Ada gives her daughter a warning look. “Shame on you! She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings for her washing over the years.”

 

“Which she then takes back in exorbitant rent.”

 

“Exorbitant, is it now?” Ada scoffs. “Such fancy words, Miss Edith Watsford.”

 

“It means inflated or excessive, Mum, and you know it.” Edith counters. “She charges too much for this old place and she spends nary a penny on maintaining it. Look at this poor old thing.” She taps the crumbly red brick of the laundry copper dust from its limestone dressing coming off on her fingers in a light white powder. “I bet it hasn’t been touched by old Widow Hounslow since before I was born.”

 

“That’s because she doesn’t need it.” Ada says with a smile, looking affectionately at her laundry copper. “She was well made in the first place.”

 

“Well, whether it was well made or not, there are other things around here that old Widow Hounslow could spend some of your hard-earned money on.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like fixing up the plumbing, block the draughts around the windows.” Edith begins. “Maybe even install electricity.”

 

“Now I’m not having that put in this house!” Ada gasps. “You can’t trust it. What would I do with electricity anyway?”

 

“Well, you wouldn’t have to toast bread with a toasting fork over the grate. You could have a manual electric toaster********, or an electric ‘Smoothwell’ iron*********, like we have at Cavendish Mews, for a start.”

 

“As if I could afford either one of those contraptions!” Ada jeers with a sniff. “Not that I’d want one.”

 

“Well, you could at least have an electric light in the kitchen, so you and Dad could read in comfort.”

 

“Which we do quite successfully by oil lamp, just the same as we have been doing for many years now, thank you very much.”

 

“It’s not the same, Mum.” Edith takes the bar of soap and begins to run it up and down the grater, producing the first few shavings of soap as they fall into the bottom of the enamel bowl.

 

“It’s the devil’s work, that electricity!” Ada mutters, picking up a pillowcase from a basket and moving it to an old tub sitting at her feet. “You see the sparks come flying off the wires of the trams********** that run between Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith.”

 

“You ride it, nonetheless, Mum,” Edith replies with a smirk. She stops grating and gives her mother a knowing look. “I know you do, so it’s no good trying to pretend you don’t. The world is changing, Mum.”

 

“Those soap flakes aren’t going to magically make themselves, you know,” Ada nods at Edith’s still hands holding the bar of soap and the grater over the bowl. “Electricity or not.”

 

Edith sighs resignedly as she resumes making soap flakes. “So Mum, I saw Frank the other day,”

 

“Of course you did, Edith love.” Ada laughs good naturedly as she observes her daughter’s cheeks flush with pleasure at the mention of her beau. “And how is our young Frank?”

 

“He’s quite well, Mum. He was setting up Mr. Willison’s shop window,” Edith remarks excitedly.

 

“Oh, was he now? That must have made Frank very proud, getting to do something else for Mr. Willison, and being trusted with an important job like the front window.” Ada remarks cheerfully as she looks around for her brush, having spied some dried mud on the hem of one of Mrs. Hounslow’s petticoats.

 

“Oh yes, Mum.” Edith runs the bar of soap up and down the grater, sending a flurry of dusty flakes cascading down into the bowl as she speaks. “Mr. and Mrs. Willison had gone off to see their daughter receive an award of some kind at her school, so they let Frank do the window in their absence. Visual merchandising, he calls it.”

 

“Does he now?” Ada scrubs away the dried mud, revealing a shadow of brown stain beneath it on the linen.

 

“Oh it looked ever so splendid, Mum! Packets of tea, tins of golden syrup and black treacle, jars of jam and marmalade and colourful bunting.”

 

“Sounds like our Mr. Lovegrove down the High Street could learn a thing or two from Frank.” Ada remarks, more than a little tongue in cheek, smiling with delight at how proud her daughter is of her beau’s accomplishments as she brushes a loose strand of mousy brown hair streaked with silver that has escaped her bun, behind her ear.

 

“Well, I reckon he could, and all, Mum. There was even a pyramid of biscuit tins. Of course, McVities and Price was on the top.”

 

“So I should think, Edith love.” Ada remarks seriously. “There are no finer biscuits all of England than the ones your Dad keeps his eyes on. Fit for the King they are!” She breaks her seriousness and laughs jovially. “Well, it seems your young Frank is coming up in the world of business. I’m happy for him, Edith love.”

 

“I’m happy for him too, Mum. Guess what the window display was of, Mum?”

 

Ada considers her daughter’s question, albeit not seriously, for a few moments as she rummages through a tub of sheets, silently counting the number and keeping it in her head to work out what she will charge for all the laundry later. “I’m sure I couldn’t begin to hazard a guess, Edith love.”

 

“He was doing a window to advertise the British Empire Exhibition*********** at Wembley************.”

 

“Oh yes! Your Dad and I were talking about that, just the other day.”

 

“Really Mum?” Edith stops grating soap flakes for a moment.

 

“Yes, your Dad was reading me an article about it from the newspaper, by lamplight I might add,” Ada adds in pointedly at the end. “As I was doing my darning, also by lamplight.”

 

“Yes, yes, Mum. I take your point.” Edith rolls her eyes again.

 

“Well, it all sounds rather splendid, I must say, Edith love.”

 

“I think it will be quite a spectacle,” Edith muses. “I’ve read in Miss Lettice’s newspapers that there will be fifty-six displays and pavilions from around the Empire! Imagine that!”

 

“I hope she doesn’t catch you reading those newspapers of hers, Edith love.” Ada cautions her daughter.

 

“Oh, Miss Lettice doesn’t mind.” Edith replies breezily. “In fact, she encourages me to read them after she’s finished. She says that we women should all be aware of what is going on in the world, especially working women like me.”

 

“Does she indeed? It seems to me that your Miss Chetwynd has a lot of interesting ideas about what young women like you, should or shouldn’t be doing.”

 

“Oh she does, Mum! She’s ever so modern and forward thinking.” Edith drops the grater with a clatter into the enamel bowl and holds her arms out expansively, the half grated bar of yellow soap still in her right fist. “She says that if women want to go up in the world, and be taken seriously, then we need to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world, to prove that we aren’t stupid. Miss Lettice even says it won’t be too long before women like us will have the vote.*************”

 

“Well, I’m not at all sure that I agree with all Miss Chetwynd’s ideas, and I can’t say as I particularly like your head being turned by her talk about women’s suffrage************** and the like.” Ada sighs heavily. “But then again, she is one of those young flappers your Dad and I read about in the papers, and they don’t have any respect for the likes of your father’s or my opinion.”

 

“Oh, Miss Lettice isn’t like that at all, Mum. If she were sitting here, I’m sure she’d be ever so polite and listen to what you have to say.”

 

“Chance would be a fine thing!” Ada laughs, sitting back on her stool. “A fine lady like Miss Chetwynd in my scullery!” After she finishes chortling, she goes on, “Anyway, listening is one thing, Edith love. Doing is quite another. Besides, I’m sure that between the encouragement of your Miss Chetwynd and young Frank, you’ll do just as you like, with never a thought for what I consider proper for a young lady in your position.”

 

“Mum, as I said before, the world is changing.”

 

“I arrest my case. Well, the world may be changing in some respects, but it isn’t changing here in my laundry this very minute.”

 

“Perhaps not, Mum.” Edith concedes. “But Dad believes in women’s suffrage.”

 

“Your Dad,” Ada scoffs. “Believes in women’s suffrage so long as it doesn’t affect him getting his tea, nice and hot, when he comes home for it, Edith love.”

 

“Well, thinking of the world,” Edith says brightly in an effort to steer the conversation away from things she and her mother don’t necessarily agree on. “There will be palaces for industry, and art.”

 

“Where, Edith love?”

 

“At the British Empire Exhibition, Mum! Each colony will have its own pavilion to reflect its local culture and architecture.”

 

“Oh, yes,” Ada chuckles. “It will probably be quite a thing, getting to see all the countries of the world without even having to leave London.”

 

“Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you, Mum, well you and Dad really.”

 

“What’s that, Edith love?”

 

“Well, Frank and I were talking, and we want to go and see the British Empire Exhibition,” Edith says tentatively. “And we thought, well, we were hoping, that you might like to come with us.”

 

“Oh what a lovely though, Edith love! Yes, I’m sure your Dad would love to go, and I know I would. Thank you!”

 

“Oh hoorah!” Edith drops the bar of soap on the edge of the copper and claps her soapy hands. “That will be ripping! We can all go! Frank is going to ask Granny McTavish.”

 

“Well, that will be nice, Edith love. I’m sure she’ll enjoy it, and your Dad and I would love to see her again.”

 

“We’ll make a day of it!” Edith says excitedly.

 

“How long is the British Empire Exhibition on for? I can’t remember.”

 

“It started last month, and it’s on until October.” Edith answers as she picks up the soap and grater again. “Why do you ask, Mum?”

 

“Well, I thought that maybe, if you and Frank were willing to wait, we’ll go when Bert gets his shore leave in June.”

 

“Oh.” Ediths face falls. “Oh, I’m sure Frank won’t mind.” She goes on a little less enthusiastically. “It will be lovely and summery then anyway: the best weather to enjoy all the wonders of the British Empire.”

 

“What’s the matter, Edith love?” Ada asks as she watches her daughter’s face cloud over.

 

“Do you think Bert would mind paying for his own ticket?”

 

“What a peculiar question to ask, Edith love.” Ada shakes her head. “I’m sure he won’t. What brought that out?”

 

“Well, its just that Frank and I thought we could pay for Granny McTavish, you and Dad, but I don’t know if we could stretch to paying for Bert too.”

 

“It’s good of you to buy a ticket for an old woman like Mrs. McTavish, but you mustn’t pay for us, Edith love! You Dad and I can buy our own tickets.”

 

“Oh, but Frank and I wanted to treat you.”

 

“You treat us to more than enough as it is, Edith love! Just look at that wonderful turkey you bought us for Christmas. No, you let us pay for ourselves, and save your money. You should be saving every penny of your wages that you can for when you and Frank have your own home.”

 

“Oh Mum! You’re as bad as Hilda!” Edith flaps her hand dismissively at her mother, swatting the idea of marriage away. “She keeps saying Frank will propose to me any day now.”

 

“And I shouldn’t wonder if he won’t, Edith love.” Ada replies sagely. “He obviously loves you. It’s only natural.”

 

“Well yes, but he’s not proposing yet.”

 

“But he will, Edith love, and when he does, it will be good to have some money behind you. Your Dad and I can help pay for your wedding breakfast***************, and I can help you sew your wedding dress and that of your bridesmaids, but you’ll need money to set up house together.”

 

“But Mum…”

 

“Don’t ‘but Mum’, me, my girl!” Ada wags a finger admonishingly at her daughter. “You want to talk about women’s rights? Well, it’s well within my right to say that your Dad and I will pay for our own tickets. You keep telling me that I don’t need to be doing as much laundry as I do, since your Dad got his promotion to line manager at McVities.”

 

“Well you don’t, Mum.”

 

“But that pin money**************** I make from it helps with the housekeeping, and enables me to pay for the occasional treat, like a trip to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.” Ada folds her arms akimbo and the steeliness in her jaw tells Edith that this is not a point she can win her mother over on. So that’s settled then. Your Dad and I will come, and Bert too, but we’ll pay our own way, thank you very much.”

 

“Oh, alright Mum.” Edith acquiesces.

 

“Good girl.” Ada purrs. “Are you still keeping your wages aside?”

 

“Yes Mum. I keep them in that tin you gave me for it*****************, when I went to work for old Widow Hounslow.”

 

“Good girl. You just keep putting any spare aside, and it will add up nicely, and be ready for the day that you do get married and need to set up house. Things may be changing in this world, but setting up home isn’t getting any cheaper.” Ada nods shrewdly. “You mark my words.”

 

*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.

 

**A dolly-peg, also known as a dolly-legs, peggy, or maiden, in different parts of Britain, was a contraption used in the days before washing machines to cloth in a wash-tub, dolly-tub, possing-tub or laundry copper. Appearing like a milking stool on a T-bar broomstick handle, it was sunk into the tub of clothes and boiling water and then used to move the water, laundry and soap flakes around in the tub to wash the clothes.

 

***A mangle (British) or wringer (American) is a mechanical laundry aid consisting of two rollers in a sturdy frame, connected by cogs and (in its home version) powered by a hand crank or later by electricity. While the appliance was originally used to squeeze water from wet laundry, today mangles are used to press or flatten sheets, tablecloths, kitchen towels, or clothing and other laundry.

 

****Robert Spear Hudson (1812 – 1884) was an English businessman who popularised dry soap powder. His company was very successful thanks to both an increasing demand for soap and his unprecedented levels of advertising. In 1837 he opened a shop in High Street, West Bromwich. He started making soap powder in the back of this shop by grinding the coarse bar soap of the day with a mortar and pestle. Before that people had had to make soap flakes themselves. This product became the first satisfactory and commercially successful soap powder. Despite his title of "Manufacturer of Dry Soap" he never actually manufactured soap but bought the raw soap from William Gossage of Widnes. The product was popular with his customers and the business expanded rapidly. In the 1850s he employed ten female workers in his West Bromwich factory. His business was further helped by the removal of tax on soap in 1853. In time the factory was too small and too far from the source of his soap so in 1875 he moved his main works to Bank Hall, Liverpool, and his head office to Bootle, while continuing production at West Bromwich. Eventually the business in Merseyside employed about 1,000 people and Hudson was able to further develop his flourishing export trade to Australia and New Zealand. The business flourished both because of the rapidly increasing demand for domestic soap products and because of Hudson's unprecedented levels of advertising. He arranged for striking posters to be produced by professional artists. The slogan "A little of Hudson's goes a long way" appeared on the coach that ran between Liverpool and York. Horse, steam and electric tramcars bore an advertisement saying "For Washing Clothes. Hudson's soap. For Washing Up". Hudson was joined in the business by his son Robert William who succeeded to the business on his father's death. In 1908 he sold the business to Lever Brothers who ran it as a subsidiary enterprise during which time the soap was manufactured at Crosfield's of Warrington. During this time trade names such as Rinso and Omo were introduced. The Hudson name was retained until 1935 when, during a period of rationalisation, the West Bromwich and Bank Hall works were closed.

 

*****A wash copper, copper boiler or simply copper is a wash house boiler, generally made of galvanised iron, though the best sorts are made of copper. In the inter-war years, they came in two types. The first is built into a brickwork furnace and was found in older houses. The second was the free-standing or portable type, it had an enamelled metal exterior that supported the inner can or copper. The bottom part was adapted to hold a gas burner, a high pressure oil or an ordinary wood or coal fire. Superior models could have a drawing-off tap, and a steam-escape pipe that lead into the flue. It was used for domestic laundry. Linen and cotton were placed in the copper and were boiled to whiten them. Clothes were agitated within the copper with a washing dolly, a vertical stick with either a metal cone or short wooden legs on it. After washing, the laundry was lifted out of the boiling water using the washing dolly or a similar device, and placed on a strainer resting on a laundry tub or similar container to capture the wash water and begin the drying and cooling process. The laundry was then dried with a mangle and then line-dried. Coppers could also be used in cooking, used to boil puddings such as a traditional Christmas pudding.

 

*****In the days before commercial washing machines and soap powder, soap flakes were often made by grating bars of washing soap into fine flakes. Soap flakes were used for a variety of purposes including bathing, laundering, and washing, including hair washing. Pure soap flakes were used alone or sometimes combined with other natural cleaning products such as baking soda, borax or washing soda to make a variety of more gregarious and specific cleaners. Soap flakes whilst labour intensive to make were an economical cleaning agent, and are still used today.

 

*******Barathea is a fine woollen cloth, sometimes mixed with silk or cotton, used chiefly for coats and suits. It was very popular during the Victorian era, and was often used to make widows weeds because it was good quality and would survive regular wear during the obligatory year of deep mourning and period of half mourning thereafter.

 

********With the arrival of wood and coal stoves in the 1880’s, a new toasting method was needed. This led to a tin and wire pyramid-shaped device which was the predecessor to what we know as the modern toaster. The bread was placed inside, and the device was heated on the stove. Fire was the source of heat for toasting bread until 1905 when the engineer Albert Marsh created a nickel and chromium composite, called Nichrome. Marsh’s invention was easily shaped into wires or strips and was low in electrical conductivity. Within months, other inventors were using Nichrome to produce electric toasters. The first successful version was brought out by Frank Shailor of General Electric in America in 1909. The D-12 model consisted of a cage-like device with a single heating element. It could only toast one side of the bread at once; the bread had to be flipped by hand to toast both sides. Better models soon followed, some with sliding drawers, others with mechanical ways to turn the bread, but the real innovation was the automatic pop-up toaster, conceived in 1919 by the American mechanic Charles Strite. The incorporated timer shut off the heating element and released a pop-up spring when the slice of toast was done. In 1926, the Waters-Genter Company used a redesigned version of the Strite’s toaster; it was called the “Toastmaster”. With a triple-loop logo inspired by its heating elements, it became part of the modern age of kitchen appliances. By the end of 1926 Charles Strite’s Toastmaster was available around the world, and became a standard in most upper-class and middle-class homes in Britain by the 1930s.

 

*********Originally sold in London’s Harrods department store in the early 1920s, the English Electric Premier System “Smoothwell” iron with a rubber, non-conducting handle, was supplied with its own trivet. Made in Birmingham, the ''Smoothwell Premier System'' appliance was patented as a revolutionary invention, powered by electricity. Many middle-class houses built for electricity after the war had a socket installed in the ceiling next to the light, allowing an electric iron such as the “Smoothwell” to be plugged in, allowing the modern Jazz Age housewife to iron over her kitchen table whether by day or night.

 

**********London United Tramways (LUT) began London's first electric tram service in July 1901. They electrified lines between Shepherd's Bush, Hammersmith, Acton and Kew Bridge. By 1906, ten municipal systems had been set up and by 1914 London operated the largest tram network in Europe. At their peak, over 3,000 trams carried a billion passengers a year over 366 miles of track. After the First World War tramways began to decline as the motor bus competed for passengers. By the late 1920s, the new buses offered higher standards of comfort, while the pre-war trams were shabby and in need of modernisation.

 

***********The British Empire Exhibition was a colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park, London England from 23 April to 1 November 1924 and from 9 May to 31 October 1925. In 1920 the British Government decided to site the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, on the site of the pleasure gardens created by Edward Watkin in the 1890s. A British Empire Exhibition had first been proposed in 1902, by the British Empire League, and again in 1913. The Russo-Japanese War had prevented the first plan from being developed and World War I put an end to the second, though there had been a Festival of Empire in 1911, held in part at Crystal Palace. One of the reasons for the suggestion was a sense that other powers, like America and Japan, were challenging Britain on the world stage. Despite victory in Great War, this was in some ways even truer in 1919. The country had economic problems and its naval supremacy was being challenged by two of its former allies, the United States and Japan. In 1917 Britain had committed itself eventually to leave India, which effectively signalled the end of the British Empire to anyone who thought about the consequences, while the Dominions had shown little interest in following British foreign policy since the war. It was hoped that the Exhibition would strengthen the bonds within the Empire, stimulate trade and demonstrate British greatness both abroad and at home, where the public was believed to be increasingly uninterested in Empire, preferring other distractions, such as the cinema.

 

************A purpose-built "great national sports ground", called the Empire Stadium, was built for the Exhibition at Wembley. This became Wembley Stadium. Wembley Urban District Council was opposed to the idea, as was The Times, which considered Wembley too far from Central London. The first turf for this stadium was cut, on the site of the old tower, on the 10th of January 1922. 250,000 tons of earth were then removed, and the new structure constructed within ten months, opening well before the rest of the Exhibition was ready. Designed by John William Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, and built by Sir Robert McAlpine, it could hold 125,000 people, 30,000 of them seated. The building was an unusual mix of Roman imperial and Mughal architecture. Although it incorporated a football pitch, it was not solely intended as a football stadium. Its quarter mile running track, incorporating a 220 yard straight track (the longest in the country) were seen as being at least equally important. The only standard gauge locomotive involved in the construction of the Stadium has survived, and still runs on Sir William McAlpine's private Fawley Hill railway near Henley.

 

*************In 1924 when this story is set, not every woman in Britain had the right to vote. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed which allowed women over the age of thirty who met a property qualification to vote. Although eight and a half million women met this criteria, it was only about two-thirds of the total population of women in Britain. It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that women over twenty-one were able to vote and women finally achieved the same voting rights as men. This act increased the number of women eligible to vote to fifteen million.

 

**************Suffrage refers to a person's right to vote in a political election. Voting allows members of society to take part in deciding government policies that affect them. Women's suffrage refers to the right of women to vote in an election.

 

***************A wedding breakfast is a feast given to the newlyweds and guests after the wedding, making it equivalent to a wedding reception that serves a meal. The phrase is still used in British English, as opposed to the description of reception, which is American in derivation. Before the beginning of the Twentieth Century they were traditionally held in the morning, but this fashion began to change after the Great War when they became a luncheon. Regardless of when it was, a wedding breakfast in no way looked like a typical breakfast, with fine savoury food and sweet cakes being served. Wedding breakfasts were at their most lavish in the Edwardian era through to the Second World War.

 

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

 

*****************Prior to the Second World War, working-class people didn’t use banks, which were the privilege of the upper and middle-classes. For a low paid domestic like Edith, what little she saved she would most likely keep in a tin or jar, secreted away somewhere to avoid anyone stealing what she had managed to keep aside.

 

This cheerful laundry scene is not all you may suppose it to be, for the fact is that all the items are from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in thus tableau include:

 

The red brick copper in the centre of the image is a very cleverly made 1:12 artisan miniature from an unnamed artist. Believe it of not, it is made of balsa wood and then roughened and painted to look like bricks. I acquitted it from Doreen Jeffries’ Miniature World in the United Kingdom.

 

The great wrought mangle with its real wooden rollers is made of white metal by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

The dolly-peg is an antique Victorian dollhouse miniature and it’s tub is sitting behind it. I am just lucky that something from around 1860 just happens to be the correct scale to fit with my 1:12 artisan miniatures.

 

There is a panoply of items used in pre-war laundry preparation on the white painted surface of the copper. There are two enamel rather worn and beaten looking bowls and an enamel jug 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 in the United Kingdom. The grater and the two small irons also come from there. The boxes of Borax, Hudson’s Soap and Robin’s Starch and the bottle of bleach in the green glass were made with great attention to detail on the labels 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.

 

On the little set if drawers on the wall, which came from Marie and Mick’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, stands a box of Jumbo Blue Bag and some Imp Soap, also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

Reckitt and Sons who were a leading British manufacturer of household products, notably starch, black lead, laundry blue, and household polish also produced Jumbo Blue, which was a whitener added to a wash to help delay the yellowing effect of older cotton. Rekitt and Sons were based in Kingston upon Hull. Isaac Reckitt began business in Hull in 1840, and his business became a private company Isaac Reckitt and Sons in 1879, and a public company in 1888. The company expanded through the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. It merged with a major competitor in the starch market J. and J. Colman in 1938 to form Reckitt and Colman.

 

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

 

The rusted metal washing tub that is full of white linens is an artisan miniature and comes from Amber’s Miniatures in the United States.

 

The stack of wood logs behind the mangle, used to feed the copper boiler, came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop, as does the basket hanging from the wall, the washboard and the airing rack.