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.

Offered in the US from model year 1997 to 2001, the Catera was a badge-engineered Opel Omega made in Rüsselsheim, Germany.

 

The advertisements for it featured supermodel Cindy Crawford speaking to an animated duck-like character anmed 'Ziggy', who lasted maybe 2 years.

 

It wasn't derided as much as GM's earlier, badge-engineered Cadillac Cimarron was, a car that was easily recognized that it had the same body as the economy Chevrolet Cavalier except with Caddy end caps. But the Catera wasn't a great seller, either, finishing its run of 5 years as a single-run model.

 

The one depicted has apparently survived and looks to be in very good condition.

Lovely house we put an offer on and was accepted...want it so bad we went a little over the asking price, even in this crummy housing market. That's still a deal in this neighborhood....we've not felt so strongly about any other house...perfect modest house in the perfect location! Built in 1962, it's 1,616 sq. ft., 3 beds, "1.75" baths, and a small swimming pool with a cool mosaic tile swordfish at the bottom. With some original features, like the bathroom tiles and the two globe lights above the front door...for us, it's so positively perfect....it's odd, but we both felt "this is the place, this is home!" Now it's the waiting game and spending money on inspections and appraisals. Already getting ahead of myself and envisioning color schemes. Keeping my fingers crossed! This will be the "before" picture! The grass and shrubs have been neglected while it's been vacant, but if all goes well, the next photos will show better. I love this house!! And the Lovebirds love the trees! It isn't ultra-modern...maybe more "contemporary ranch". This photo doesn't show it very well, as it had been a rental for several years and was not cared for very well, but not destroyed, either. Still, a great deal at a rock bottom price. Not huge, but who needs that...it's a very good floor plan..where you can get to any part without having to cross through another room. Fuck urban lofts....the tired, pretentious wanna-be's can have them.

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.

Last week, two of my friends offered to take me on a tour of the jewels of Norfolk churches. Despite having lived in either north Suffolk or Norfolk most of my life, back in those days I had no idea about churches, nor half the villages where these jewels can be found, even existed.

 

First on the list was Salle.

 

It was a grim, wet and misty morning when Sarah and Richard picked me up at the Catholic Cathedral, and so we made our way against the rush hour traffic whilst Richard tried to keep the windscreen clear as my clothes dried out causing a slight fog in the car.

 

Ss Peter and Paul seems to be in the middle of nowhere, with just two other buildings keeping it company. Salle was clearly a rich parish back in the day, as it is a huge church, serving the village and the large country house, lost to view behind trees nearby.

 

It is a church that has something for everyone: font and cover, support arm for font cover, good glass, fine memorials, two hidden chapels, painted screens and carved bosses. And so much more beside.

 

Here is what my friend Simon has to say. He likes it too.

 

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During their awesome reign over the other great teams of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool football club placed a huge sign in the changing room corridor, so that it was the last thing visiting teams saw before they walked out on to the pitch: This is ANFIELD, it warned. The name alone was enough to impress. Similarly, the cover of the guidebook here proclaims, in a single word, SALLE. Again, it suffices; the word, pronounced to rhyme with call, stands for the building. Perhaps only the name Blythburgh has the same power in all East Anglia.

 

St Peter and St Paul is big. This is accentuated by the way in which it stands almost alone in the barley fields, with only a couple of Victorian buildings and a cricket pitch for company. What an idyllic spot! And yet there is an urban quality to the building, as if this was some great city church in the middle of Norwich or Bristol. It went up in the course of the 15th century, a replacement for an earlier building on the same site, broadly contemporary with neighbouring Cawston. While Cawston was largely the work of a single family, here the building benefited from an accident of history; several very wealthy families owned manors and halls in the parish at the same time, and it so happened that the time was the greatest era of rural church building.

Among them were the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons, and some of their shields appear above the great west door, along with two mighty censing angels, characteristic of late medieval piety. A steady stream of hefty bequests meant that no expense needed to be spared, and the mighty tower with its vast bell openings was topped with battlements and pinnacles on the very eve of the Reformation.

 

As at Blythburgh, St Peter and St Paul benefited from the restraint of a late restoration, and the building as we see it now has no external Victorian additions. It is all of a piece. The porches either side are huge affairs, matching the transepts, and give the effect of a vast animal, a dragon perhaps, sprawling with erect head in the Norfolk countryside. Its tail is the chancel, in itself longer and higher than many Norfolk churches. The aisles are tall, austere, parapeted, the Perpendicular windows arcades of glass. In the porches, the vaulted ceilings are studded with bosses; the central one in the north porch depicts Christ in Majesty, sitting on a rainbow in judgement.

 

You enter the building from the west, an unusual experience in East Anglia, and your first sight is of the seven sacraments font with its tall 15th century canopy, similar to the cover at Cawston. This one is so big it is supported by a crane attached to the ringing gallery under the tower.

 

The font below is interesting because each panel is supported by an angel holding a symbol of the sacrament above - a pot of chrism oil beneath Baptism, for example. The panels themselves are simply done, and are not particularly characterful, apart from the way that Mary turns away and is comforted at the Crucifixion. This panel faces west, and then anticlockwise are the Mass (viewed sideways, as at nearby Great Witchingham), Ordination (the candidate kneeling), Baptism (a server holds the book up for the Priest to read), Confirmation (the candidate obviously a child), Penance (perhaps the most interesting panel - the penitent kneels in a shriving pew), Matrimony (the couples' hands joined by a stole, she in late 15th century dress) and finally Last Rites (the dying man on the floor under blankets as at Great Witchingham).

You can see all these panels below - click on them to enlarge them. The font step has a dedicatory inscription to John and Agnes Luce, asking for prayers for their souls. We know that John died in 1489. Perhaps the actual fabric of the building was complete by this date.

 

Beyond the font stretches the vastness of the building, the arcades gathering the eyes and leading them forward to the great east window. The chancel arch is barely there at all, just a simple high opening; but as MR James pointed out, it was never intended to be seen.The sheer bulk of the rood screen dado tells us quite how vast the rood apparatus must have been here, and the arch would have been pretty well hidden. Everything is built to scale; although everything has been cut off above the panels, probably in the late 1540s, the panels themselves are enormous, almost six feet high. As at Cawston, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine, the four Doctors of the Church, are on the doors. Either side are just two surviving paintings; to the north are Thomas and James, to the south are Philip and Bartholomew. The empty panels are a mystery; the screen stood here for a century before its destruction, so it must have been finished; and the dado seems too high to have been hidden by nave altars. And yet, it has all the appearance of never having been painted.

 

Because the building is so vast, the surviving medieval glass seems scattered, but there is actually a lot of it and some of it is very significant. Some was moved during the restoration of the early 20th century, when the hideous modern glass in the north transept was installed, and the yellow galley lozenges were thankfully replaced with clear glass in the 1970s. The images in the east window are mainly figures; old kings kneel before young princes, there are armoured men and angels, the remains of a scaly dragon. In the centre at the bottom is a perfect Trinity shield, displayed by an angel looking askance.

 

Some of the panels are now in the south transept. These include fragments of a set of the orders of angels. A kneeling figure is Thomas Brigg, donor of the transept; the scroll behind him begins Benedicat Virgo, 'Blessed Virgin'. The mother of God sits surrounded by red glory, and two women holding croziers, one of them crowned, may be St Etheldreda and St Hilda. Certainly, the crowned figure holding a cross is St Helena. You can see all these above.

 

Despite the wonders of the font, the screen and the glass, the great glory of the building for me is the set of bosses that line the roof of the chancel. They are easily missed, being very high, and need a good lens; a couple of my photos did not come out as well as I'd hoped, and so I must go back, as if I needed an excuse. There are nine altogether, the first and last set against the walls at the ends of the roof ridge, and they form a kind of rosary sequence of joyful and glorious mysteries. They start with the Annunciation in the west (see left) and then continue with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection , and the Ascension into Heaven. You can see these last eight in John Salmon's splendid photographs below.

 

There is a fine set of return stalls in the chancel. Although Salle probably never had a college of Priests, all those Masses for the dead must have provided plenty of employment, because we know that there were seven Priests here at a time when the population of the parish was barely 200. Bench ends include heads, a dragon tied up in a knot, a restored pelican in her piety, and a monkey. The misericord seats feature faces, including one that is quite extraordinary.

 

Although the roof isn't up to the glory of neighbouring Cawston, it includes lots of original angels and paintwork, including sacred monograms, and around the wallplate part of the Te Deum Laudamus and psalm 150. These particular texts seem to have provided the inspiration for many late 15th century interiors; the angels in the roof, the animals on the bench ends, the Saints on the rood screen all in harmony: Let everything that has breath Praise ye the Lord! The benches are mostly renewed now, but the pulpit is an elegant example of the 15th century, from the time when a priority began to be placed on preaching.

Curiously, it has been rather awkwardly converted into a three-decker arrangement, probably in the 18th century, with the addition of a platform and desk from a set of box pews. A large sounding board has been placed overhead. The box pews suggest that the medieval furnishings were replaced at an early date, although the replacements too have gone now.

 

Salle is one of those churches full of intriguing little details that might easily pass you by, so great is the wonder of everything around. Those two little corbel heads above the south door, for instance - what were they for? Perhaps they supported an image that could be seen from the north doorway as people entered, although not a St Christopher as the guidebook suggests, I think. There is a pretty piscina in the unfortunate north transept that has been outlined in wood, a memorial and helm above, a tall image bracket in the corner of the wall of the south transept, a floreated piscina nearby.

 

There are many brasses and brass inlays in the nave floor; one of the most interesting is a chalice brass (although the chalice is now gone) to Simon Boleyn, a Priest, who died in 1489, and to the east of it a pair of brasses to Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, great-grandparents to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Another pair of brasses are to Thomas and Katherine Rose and their eight children. Unlike many churches, Salle actually retains some of the 'missing' brasses, now locked away for safety. It would be nice to think they could eventually be reset in the floor.

One part of the building that many visitors must miss is the chapel above the north porch. There is no sign indicating it; but the doorway, at the west end of the north aisle, is always open. Inside, the vaulted roof is punctuated by spectacularly pretty bosses which you can view at close quarters. The colour is a bit fanciful, but they are fascinating, particularly the central boss of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven - how on earth did that survive the Reformation?

 

This is a tremendous building, a box of fascinating delights. What purpose does it serve now? As I said in the introduction, its size was not in response to the needs of a congregation, and as far as worship is concerned it will never be full. It remains constantly in use, however; for regular services in the chancel, sometimes for concerts and recordings, but also of course for the poshest sort of wedding, the kind only the Church of England can provide, and no doubt other elements of the core business of CofE PLC. It is easy to be cynical, but if they ensure the survival of the building, then so be it.

  

Simon Knott, June 2004

 

www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/salle/salle.htm

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.

 

Aiden knew that Fulgora's Eye was an exceedingly valuable treasure. He definitely knew that the small piece he'd broken off to sell was going to bring him a lot of money. However, he was not prepared for the vast amount of wealth that was being offered to him when Vincent reached out to the capitol's royally funded university on his behalf. By the end of negotiations (also with Vincent's help and guidance), Aiden had sold the small but sizable piece of Fulgora's Eye. He was richer than he could have ever imagined!

When he demanded incredulously to Vincent about what the Hell he was supposed to do with all that money, Vincent had to laugh. He actually offered to let Aiden store his wealth and extra Fulgora's Eye pieces in his office for safekeeping while he figured it all out. That way, he could also find a better alternative; perhaps the bank in his hometown or even the one here. By the end of the day, Aiden had kept a substantial amount to sustain himself on for a long while and put the rest (and his unused Fulgora's Eye) under lock and key in one of Vincent's safes. His generous captain had emptied it specifically for Aiden's use. Honestly, Vincent was just happy to see Aiden succeed and win in life and glad he could do something to help. He gently suggested that maybe this would be a good opportunity for Aiden to get the things he needed and had been putting off getting for himself...such as new clothes and tools; maybe something to spoil himself, too, because (according to Vincent) he deserved it.

That had been a week and a half ago.

Aiden had been sitting on the large sum of money this whole time. He kept it safely stowed away in his bolted down chest. It was as if it didn't exist...except that he kept going back and looking at it at least once a day. It was as if he were trying to convince himself that it was really there and his to do with as he pleased. He had more money saved than he knew what to do with and then some! Though, finally the time had come where he was starting to realize that it would be okay if he used some of his money.

So, finally, one morning after a hearty breakfast and dressing in a pair of fresh clothes, Aiden grabbed his money pouch then set off for a day on the town! Now that he'd been in the capital for about a month and a half, he had figured out where a lot of things were on his end of town near the docks. However, the shops and other places he wanted to visit were further into the city. He wanted to go shopping for tools of his trade, but first: wardrobe. He may as well get it out of the way! He had seen many nicer shops closer towards Vincent's part of town. He figured he'd start there since he was somewhat more familiar with that area.

Aiden wasn't really sure what he was looking for as he wandered these nicer city streets. There had been several book shops, furniture shops, and boutiques down this way. He'd even passed by the book shop from which he'd bought his present to Vincent! Though, nothing so far was sticking out at him. If he were being honest, he felt a little intimidated by most of it. He wasn't an avid reader nor did he need home goods. The boutiques didn't seem to have anything of interest and he certainly didn't need to visit a modiste! He'd seen at least three! Finally he did come across a tailor shop specifically for men but the mannequins on display's clothing looked expensive! It was today's most fashionable style and perhaps just a little more flashy than he'd seen Vincent wear when out and about on the town. Vincent HAD suggested Aiden treat himself some nicer wardrobe items. However, Aiden thought, while it was really interesting to see and look at, he couldn't get himself to go inside. He felt a little foolish imagining himself dressing nicer than his usual fare of someone of the working class.

By now, it was early afternoon and Aiden was starting to think he should grab some lunch then perhaps a carriage across town. While fashion was not his forte, tools and other crafts were. And he knew exactly where Craftsman Alley was! Maybe now that he was willing to spend some of his money, he could start putting some of his plans into action! When he'd shown Vincent his ideas for the Fulgora's Eye, he'd not had the money in his pocket. Now he did! That settled it! Lunch then Craftsman Alley! He could go clothes shopping another day! At least he went and looked, right? With that plan set in mind, Aiden turned and set off to find himself something to eat.

After a quick lunch of sweet yet tangy grilled chicken and vegetable skewers, Aiden started to head back towards the busier city square to try and find an available carriage. It was quite far to get to Craftsman Alley and he'd been walking all morning! It wasn't too busy this afternoon on the streets, though there were several people out and about. Maybe he would get lucky?

Aiden was walking up along a street, and as he did, he began to notice a lot of flyers posted up along the side wall of a large building. He slowed and glanced over and began to realize that many of them were advertisements of operas and plays; mostly old ones with new ones layered on top. Glancing around, he realized he had to be by a theater! And sure enough as he walked around the corner there was the entrance with several other flyers and posters up! He slowly moved around the corner so as not to startle the nicely dressed lady standing very close by. She happened to also be admiring the flyers. Aiden cleared his throat softly and tried not to startle her. Then he politely went to move around her with a small, "Pardon me, Miss."

The young woman turned her gaze towards Aiden as he caught her attention. With a polite smile, she stepped more off to the side and replied, "Oh no, excuse me. I didn't realize I was blocking your path."

"Not at all!"

Aiden glanced back to give a reassuring smile with full intent to keep going on about his way and look at the other posters. But then he found himself pausing a little sooner than he'd planned. She seemed strikingly familiar! Bernadette? Wait, no...it couldn't be!

He paused and turned once he was a few steps away, gazing covertly up at the poster nearby. A few seconds later he glanced back at her while trying to be sneaky about it. No, he realized, it definitely wasn't her. While her face may have resembled Bernadette, from this angle he could see she didn't have Bernadette's generously curvaceous figure nor fiery red hair. Instead she had dark, raven hair and a more slender shape to her.

Though awkwardly for Aiden, she noticed Aiden staring. Her smile faded as she glanced his way. He suddenly blushed in embarrassment as she asked a touch cautiously, "Can I help you, Sir?"

"My apologies for staring, Miss!" he told her sincerely and waved his hands in apology. "You just look like someone I know and I thought you might have been her." The young woman turned bodily to face him as she considered him for a moment before shaking her head.

"Ah no, I'm fairly certain we've never met."

"Right. I'm sorry to have disturbed you."

They smiled at each other amiably then went back to looking up at the flyers up on the wall. Aiden quickly finished observing everything before deciding to bid the young lady a good day. Though when he glanced over he saw she was smiling softly to herself as she read over some showtimes for a play currently being performed this week. He glanced up to see what she was looking at then grinned a bit and asked her casually, "Have you seen it before?"

"Hm?" she responded, blinking and glancing back at him then back to the showtimes. Then she laughed softly. "Oh, the play? I have!" Aiden smiled and said cheerfully, "I have once! Though I haven't had many opportunities to see many plays." The young lady smiled and encouraged him, "This troupe is worth seeing. They often host traveling ballets and operas as well. Oh!"

One of the workers had come out with a brand new poster and gruffly excused himself for getting in their way. Both Aiden and the lady moved out of the way and watched curiously as the new opera singer's poster was put up. And as soon as she caught sight of it, the young lady gasped and a smile lit up across her lovely face.

"Camille Callas! Vincent needs to see this! Ah, speak of the Devil..."

Aiden glanced over his shoulder as she waved to someone behind him. And much to his surprise, the very 'Vincent' she was speaking of turned out to be none other than his very own captain! Vincent was dressed nicely and not like his usual traveling self. Instead he was dressed much in style like the young lady and those suits Aiden had seen at the tailor's. And now that all signs of bruises and cuts were gone? Aiden couldn't help but think how handsome Vincent was....and how underdressed and out of place he felt in comparison. It was hard to remember that sometimes Vincent was a part of high society. Though, logically, Aiden knew Vincent didn't like it. He hadn't forgotten how much Vincent had complained the day he told Damien and him that he'd have to go to the ball. But seeing his captain like this sure made it hard to remember that...

And to make matters worse, Aiden couldn't help the knot that began to form in his stomach as his new acquaintance smiled beautifully and extended her arm out for Vincent to join her at her side. She greeted him warmly, "Welcome back, dearest. Did you find what you were looking for?"

Vincent's eyes had widened in surprise momentarily when he saw both Aiden and the young lady together. How the Hell did they know each other?! Or was this just a chance meeting? He cleared his throat a touch nervously and returned her warm smile as he joined her side.

"I did. Thank you for waiting for me," Vincent responded with gratitude. She grinned with a soft, "Of course." She didn't hesitate to gently wind her arm around his in a comfortable manner.

Vincent finally glanced at Aiden and quirked his brow with a small smirk. Then he asked with a small chuckle, "Are you SURE you're not stalking me?" Aiden couldn't help but laugh as he was accused once again of stalking Vincent!

"I'm not!" he insisted but Vincent made him laugh more by teasing, "I'm starting to question that!" Vincent felt a gentle squeeze on his arm and he glanced at the woman who was gazing up at him with a curious, quirked brow. He knew what she was wanting. He chuckled once again as he began introductions and Aiden settled from his laughter.

"My apologies," Vincent began. "This is my friend Aiden Anderson; the one I told you about aboard the ship."

"Oh, I see!" the young woman exclaimed softly with a smile as it suddenly clicked for her. Yet Aiden had no idea who she was! They were obviously VERY familiar with each other. Aiden tried not to jump to conclusions but he couldn't help it! Maybe she was Vincent's lady-friend. He did seem a little nervous upon approaching and introducing them, hadn't he?

"Aiden, let me introduce you to my eldest cousin and closest friend: Missus Abigail Watson."

Cousin...? Oh. Oh! Aiden grinned and gently took her hand in greeting as he took the liberty to really look at her. Now that Aiden was staring at them side by side it made perfect sense why he had thought she resembled Bernadette. She clearly had to be Bernadette's sister! Aiden felt silly for not realizing it sooner! Her sea colored eyes were shared by both her sister and cousin though her raven colored hair matched Vincent's. It was obvious now! That knot that had begun forming began to ease as he realized that Vincent really didn't have a lady-friend after all! Instead, he began to feel butterflies. He was meeting more of the Dubois family!

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Please, call me Abigail," Abigail told Aiden with a different kind of smile; one more grateful as he squeezed his hand. "I cannot put how I feel into words but....thank you for everything you have done for my cousin these past few weeks." Aiden blushed as he glanced back towards Vincent who had a soft rosy hint of color on his cheeks as well. Vincent's blush only darkened and his heart skipped a beat as Aiden responded to Abigail while still gazing at him, "Vincent is my best friend and my captain." Aiden's gaze slowly shifted back to her as he smiled and added, "And the pleasure is mine."

Once Aiden released her hand, she brought her hand to rest over Vincent's arm as she explained to her cousin, "We've been talking for the last couple of minutes about the theater. And look, Vincent! Camille Callas!" Vincent glanced past her to view the poster as her gaze instead shifted back towards Aiden. Ever since Vincent had joined them, she'd noticed the young man's eyes had hardly deviated from her dashing cousin...

"Well then, we'll have to make plans to come back to see her perform!" Vincent promised his cousin as she smiled in gratitude. She watched as his attention returned back to the young man beside them.

"So how are you, Aiden? What are you up to today?"

Beside him, Abigail smirked a tiny bit and shook her head and simply leaned against Vincent's side and let him talk to his friend and keenly observed their conversation.

"I'm doing fine," Aiden assured him. "I went shopping around like you suggested and I'm planning to go to Craftsman Alley next to do some shopping there. I've got a few new ideas I want to try."

"I'm not surprised! I look forward to seeing what you come up with next."

"Really?"

"Really. We'll need to get together again very soon so you can show me what you've been working on and what new ideas you have."

"I'd...I'd like that."

"Aiden," Abigail spoke up in the adorably awkward silence that followed, "how would you like to join the family for dinner tomorrow evening?" Vincent blinked and looked at his cousin in surprise. Then he went a deep shade of red as she added, "After all the wonderful things we've heard about you from Vincent, I'm sure everyone would be happy to meet you."

Vincent turned his burning face away from them; he was unable to form any sort of language as he tried to wrap his head around that she'd actually said that! Beside him, his cousin smiled at Aiden as if Vincent's adorable embarrassment weren't even happening.

Aiden was now a deep shade of red as well. Wow, this was big! He was being invited to meet Vincent's family! Had Vincent really talked about him that much? He glanced over at the obviously embarrassed Vincent then back to Abigail. "Are you sure it would be okay?"

"Absolutely," she replied with a confident smile as she ignored Vincent's tiny, pleading groan beside her. "Mama won't mind one bit and I know Bernie would be pleased to see you again. It's been a while since we've had guests over, besides Vincent. Weekend dinners are always extra special. Unfortunately, you won't be able to meet Papa yet, but please say you'll be there?"

"Well when you put it like that, how could I refuse?"

Vincent stood there helplessly as Abigail and Aiden began making arrangements without him. And, very quickly, it was done. Aiden was to meet with Vincent at his flat then travel to the Dubois house together. Vincent wasn't quite sure how this all happened, but here it was happening anyway!

The next thing he knew, he was bidding Aiden farewell until the morrow. And while this had all been utterly embarrassing, he couldn't help but feel pleased. Abigail took such a liking to Aiden that she wanted to invite him over for a weekend meal right away.

And as Vincent watched Aiden's departing backside, he felt Abigail very gently squeeze his arm and murmur suggestively, "He's rather easy on the eyes, don't you think?" Vincent quirked his brow at her then demanded, "Easy on the eyes? Bloody Hell, Abby! You realize I'm going to have to be there for the sole purpose of protecting him from Charlotte, right?"

"Oh?" she inquired with a small, amused smirk. "I would have thought a gentleman such as yourself would have been more concerned for the young Miss."

"No," he insisted firmly, "I'm certain it is Aiden who will need protection."

As he began to escort her towards the tea shop where they had planned their afternoon together, Abigail laughed softly. She had to concur with his sentiment! She was looking forward to this. Admittedly, she found herself becoming invested in seeing how tomorrow would play out.

  

---

Next Part:

www.flickr.com/photos/153660805@N05/53347067734/in/datepo...

 

To read the rest of the story, here's the album link:

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

 

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

 

Special thank you to my husband Vin (Be My Mannequin? Pose Store) for collaborating with me on this series and co-starring as The Captain!

 

This scene was taken in Second Life at Victorian London - Time Portal! When you first land, head down the main road and just as you come to the main city square, look to the right and you'll see the theater in this scene!

You can check out this AMAZING roleplay-type parcel and even rent from there! Its so realistic! Seriously! The details here are incredible!

  

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

discord.gg/qBa769TAC4

 

***NEW!!!!***

 

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

FACEBOOK PAGE:

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558531406088

 

BERRIES

Revised Description: I initially offered this lineside picture from the Easter Monday Reading diversions because I was puzzled by the highly unusual wrong-line working.

 

Thanks to Nicholas Dalton, who quoted a railway employee at Banbury (it was also reported by Radio Oxford, two days later), it turns out that the driver boarded the wrong HST at Banbury, discovered his mistake at some point down the line - possibly at Aynho Junction when he found himself being sent in the wrong direction.

 

The point at which he was allowed to stop and go back to Banbury wrong line is as yet unknown. He could have been transferred on to the right line via the crossovers just north of Aynho Jc but it would seem that delaying traffic on the Up line was less serious than on the Down line (where the signals were continuously at amber) - so that's the way he was allowed to go back same way as he came.

 

We can all chuckle about this but I went straight from the above location to Banbury station for most of the evening and as further pictures I took there will show, things at Banbury were really stretched. The station only had 2 available platforms to cope with all the extra traffic to and from Paddington. And that meant having to stable each train and then return it on another line. When I asked on the day which platform an HST would run into, I was told that the decision was made by the signalmen. With so many conflicting trains and movements, and times when both available platforms were holding HSTs, is it that big a surprise that the driver boarded the wrong one?

 

Details: 43134 at this end.

 

© Copyright Steve Banks, no unauthorised use.

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

 

I decided to sell this rare stuff from Citizen Brick, the minifigs comes from old CB day editions and the Tardis tiles were avaiable years ago on CB website.

I will sell these only if I get good offers, I'm sorry but I prefere to keep them if the best offer is not fair for me.

I will sell to the highest bidder. Please only offer if you are seriously interested on buying.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“I prefer to take photographs.” Pheobe mumbles.

 

“Do you like photography, Pheobe?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Well, what do you think, Pheobe?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Err… yes.” Lettice replies warily.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“But I…” Phoebe begins meekly.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Phoebe’s drawing room has a very studious look thanks to the many 1:12 size miniature books made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside one of the books he has made as it lies open on a footstool in the foreground, the page bookmarked by a pencil. It is a book of botanical prints by the renown botanical illustrator Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840). To give you an idea of the work that has gone into his volumes, the book contains fifty double sided pages of illustrations and text. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. He also made the packets of seeds seen on the mantlepiece and the bureau in the background, which once again are copies of real packets of Webbs seeds. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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.

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.

Offer please. I want og inflicts, combats, 2k4s etc

offer up, sharpies are almost going to be given away

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.

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

 

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

 

Lettice is away, staying with her family at Glynes, the Chetwynd’s grand Georgian Wiltshire estate, where she is visiting a neighbour of sorts of her parents, Mr. Alisdair Gifford who wishes Lettice to decorate a room for his Australian wife Adelina, to house her collection of blue and white china. Lettice’s absence allows Edith and Mrs. Boothby to tackle some of the more onerous jobs around Cavendish Mews before Lettice’s return later in the week. Whilst Mrs. Boothby has been giving the bathroom a really good going over with a scourer, Edith has climbed a stepladder, taken down all the crystal lustres of the chandeliers in the drawing room, dining room and hallway, washed them all and returned them to their freshly dusted metal frames. After a very full morning’s work, the two ladies are taking a well-deserved break in the kitchen of Cavendish Mews and sit around the deal kitchen table, enjoying a cup of tea, and the pleasant company of one another.

 

“Thank you for giving the bathroom a really good going over, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith says with a very grateful lilt to her voice as she pours some fresh tea into the old Cockney charwoman’s Delftware teacup. “I do try and keep it tidy, but… well…” Her voice trails off.

 

“Nah, don’t cha give it a second fort, Edith dearie,” Mrs. Boothby replies, blowing forth clouds of acrid pale greyish blue smoke across the tabletop covered with magazines, books and a tin of Huntley and Palmers** Empire Assorted Biscuits. “I know youse does, but what wiv all those lotions ‘n’ potions Miss Lettice uses to titivate ‘erself wiv, well, it just gets plain scummy, don’t it? I mean, what’s the point in all them fancy bottles of pink ‘n’ blue stuff wiv fancy labels if it’s all gonna go dahwn the plug ‘ole in the end, anyway?”

 

Edith smiles at Mrs. Boothby’s direct manner. Even though she has been working at Cavendish Mews, and thus Mrs. Boothby for five years now, there are still things that fly from the old woman’s mouth that surprise her.

 

“I mean all Ken and I use is a good old scrubbin’ wiv some carbolic,” Mrs. Boothby continues. “And look, ain’t I just as lovely as Miss Lettice?” She lifts her chin upwards and stretches out her arms slightly in a mock impersonation of a model. A serenely haughty look fills her heavily wrinkled face for just a moment, before she resumes her normal stance and starts laughing hard, her jolly guffaws punctuated by her fruity smoker roughened coughs.

 

“Oh Mrs. Boothby!” Edith titters. “You are a one!”

 

“’Ere! Don’t laugh, Edith dearie! That could be me on this ‘ere cover!” Mrs. Boothby laughs, carrying on the joke as she snatches up Edith’s latest copy of Home Chat from the tabletop in front of her and holds it up next to her face. “The face what sold a million copies!”

 

“Oh Mrs. Boothby!” Edith manages to splutter between laughs as tears roll down her cheeks. “You’re making my sides hurt.”

 

“Oh well, we can’t ‘ave none of that nah, can we?” the old woman says cheekily, returning the magazine to its place on top of a copy of Everylady’s Journal****. “Too much laughter eh? On ta somfink more serious. You clean all them dainty crystal drops what ‘ang off the lights then, did cha?”

 

“Oh yes, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith manages to say as she calms down and dabs the corners of her eyes with her dainty lace embroidered handkerchief. “It’s an awful job. I’m just glad Miss Lettice is away, so I can do it.”

 

“I agree. It does make it a bit easier when Miss Lettice ain’t ‘ome. You can leave a job and come back to it, ‘specially if it’s a big job, and not ‘ave to worry ‘bout pickin’ up after yerself in case she comes flouncin’ threw.”

 

“Her absence gives me a chance to think about some new menu options for my repertoire.” Edith adds, patting the covers of two cookbooks sitting just to her right. “I’m a good plain cook, but I’d like to be able to do a few fancier things too.”

 

“Nuffink wrong wiv a bit of plain cookin’, Edith dearie. That’s all I served me Bill when ‘e was alive, and ‘e nevva complained ‘bout anyfink I served ‘im up for tea.”

 

“I know Mrs. Boothby, and some the best recipes I know, I learned from Mum who is also a plain cook, but I’d just like to expand a bit. It would be nice to be able to make something fancier if Miss Lettice asks.”

 

“Well, just be careful, dearie.” The old charwoman picks up her cigarette from the black ashtray and takes a deep drag on it. “You’ll make a rod for your own back if you ain’t careful. Youse knows what them toffs can be like. Just look at poor “Ilda ‘avin’ ta grind coffee bits for Mr. Channon ev’ry mornin’ now, just cos once Mr. Carter the fancy American came visitin’ and made demands for fresh ground coffee, when Camp Coffee***** would ‘ave done just as well.” She blows out another plume of smoke and releases a few fruity phlegm filled coughs as she does. “Nah she’s gotta make it all the time, poor love.” Changing the subject after taking a slurp of her sweet hot tea, she continues, “So youse ready then, for Sunday?”

 

“Oh yes, I am!” Edith enthuses, thinking of the trip that she will be taking to Wembley to see the British Empire Exhibition****** with her beau, shop delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, her parents and brother, Bert, and Frank’s Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish, on Sunday. “I can hardly wait. It all just sounds so amazing! All different pavilions from around the world.”

 

“Frank got your tickets then?”

 

“Well, he actually gave them to me, because he’s concerned that the daughter of Mr. Willison might pinch them, just to be nasty.”

 

“She sounds like a right piece a work, dearie. Best they stay safe wiv you, ‘ere at Cavendish Mews, then.”

 

“Yes, best to be on the safe side, for Henrietta,” Edith shudders as she mentions her name. “Is quite a little madam. Mind you,” She takes up a biscuit from the tin before her and takes a satisfied bite out of it. “I did give her what for that day you and I walked up to Oxford Street together.”

 

“Whatchoo do, Edith dearie?” Mrs. Boothby asks, snatching up a biscuit for herself with her long and bony, careworn fingers of her right hand, whilst holding her smouldering cigarette aloft in her left. She leans forward, excited to catch a little bit of gossip about her younger companion and friend.

 

“Well, after you left Frank and I together…”

 

“Ah yes!” Mrs. Boothby interrupts. “No place for an old woman like me when there’s young love in the air, is there?”

 

“We didn’t exactly shoo you away, Mrs. Boothby, as I recall it.”

 

“Well, be that as it may, go on.” She takes a long drag on her hand rolled cigarette, the paper crackling as the tobacco inside burns.

 

“Well, after you left and Frank and I talked for just a little while, I noticed we were being observed by that nasty little snitch. She accused us of cavorting in the street!”

 

“Did she now, fancy fine little madam?”

 

“As if she even knew what cavorting meant.”

 

“So whatchoo do, then, Edith dearie?”

 

“Well, I told her that we weren’t, and I told her to stop spying on Frank and I, or I’d tell Miss Lettice that I wanted to take our business elsewhere, and that her father would know that she was the cause of it.”

 

The old Cockney woman bursts out laughing and claps her hands in delight, showering flakes of ash and biscuit crumbs over the table before her. “Good for you, Edith dearie! I ain’t nevva fort youse ‘ave the guts to do somefink like that!”

 

“Nor did I, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith answers slightly shakily as she puts her hand to her heaving chest where her heart beats a little faster at the memory of her altercation with Henrietta Willison. “I don’t quite know where it came from, but I did, and I’m not unhappy that I did it.”

 

“Well, I say well done, dearie. That girl sounds like a nasty bit o’ work: spyin’ on people and spoilin’ their fun by threatenin’ ta steal tickets what they done paid for. It ain’t right. Sounds like she got what was commin’ to ‘er, and there’s a fact.”

 

“All the same, I do feel a little guilty about it.”

 

“Why, Edith dearie?” Mrs. Boothby munches contentedly on the remains of her biscuit as she settles back into the rounded back of the Windsor chair she sits in.

 

“Well, part of me thinks that for all her nastiness, it’s not entirely Henrietta’s fault that she is the way that she is.”

 

“’Ow’s that then?”

 

“Well, she’s at that difficult age. I don’t know if I was overly wonderful when I was her age either. Mum always said I was in a funk, which I put down to working for nasty old Widow Hounslow at the time, but looking back, I think I was emotional. My first chap who I was sweet on, the postman, had taken the King’s shilling******* and gone off to Flander’s Fields******* and never came back.”

 

“Bless all of ‘em takers of the King’s shillin’.” Mrs. Boothby interrupts, lowering her eyes as she does so.

 

“So I was a mess of emotions.”

 

“Course you was, dearie. Any girl wiv a sweetheart in the army would ‘ave been the same.”

 

“Maybe, but I think that even if there hadn’t been a war, I’d still have been emotional. You see it wasn’t just the war: everything made me emotional, or sullen.” She stops speaking and takes a gentle sip of her tea. “Do you know what I think, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“What’s that then, dearie?”

 

“I think Henrietta is sweet on Frank, even though she’s far to young for Frank, and I think she sees me as a threat.”

 

“Nah, nah, my girl!” Mrs. Boothby defends. “Youse ain’t no threat ta nobody!”

 

“You know that, and I know that, but I think in her emotional, difficult stage of life mind, Henrietta thinks that if I went away, Frank might notice her.”

 

“Well, whevva she finks that or not, she’s still got no business stealin’ a body’s tickets what they gone and paid for ‘emselves. She got what she deserved, which I ‘ope is a big fright!” Mrs. Boothby nods seriously as she screws up her face into an even more wrinkled mass of crumpled flesh.

 

“Maybe, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Would you go frew wiv it, then: ya threat, I mean?”

 

“Well, I haven’t had to yet, but if she continues to spy on Frank and I, or cause trouble, I will tell Miss Lettice, and I don’t think she’ll take too kindly to me being bothered in my own time by the daughter of our grocers.”

 

“Well, enuf ‘bout ‘er, Edith dearie. Nah you said your dad was lookin’ forward to seein’ the trains at the hexibition.”

 

“That’s right, Mrs. Boothby. The Flying Scotsman********* in the Palace of Engineering.”

 

“Right-o. But whatchoo lookin’ forward to seein’ the most on Sunday, besides Frank’s pretty blue eyes starin’ dahwn inta yer own, eh?”

 

“Oh Mrs. Boothby!” Edith gasps, raising her hands to her cheeks as she feels them flush. As the old Cockney chuckles mischievously from her seat adjunct to Edith, the young girl perseveres as she clears her throat. “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing the Palace of Engineering too.”

 

“I nevva took you for a train lover, Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby says in surprise.

 

“Oh, it isn’t the railway exhibits I’m interested in.” Edith assures her, raising her hands defensively before her and shaking her pretty head. “No. I saw in the newspapers the designer of the Lion of Engineering********** and I read what was going to be included in the pavilion, and there will be examples of new British labour-saving devices, so I’m very keen to see them.”

 

“Is that all?” Mrs. Boothby exclaims aghast. “A whole bunch of new fancy appliances? What about all the fings from ‘round the world? That’s what I’d be interested to see!”

 

“Oh I am. They say that there will be coloured people there from some of the African nations, living right there at the exhibition, giving demonstrations of native crafts and taking part in traditional cultural events.”

 

“Yes, I read that too! Fancy that! I don’t see many coloured people, even dahwn Poplar, where we’s all mixed in togevva, ‘cept maybe a sailor or two nah and then.”

 

“And there will be elephants roaming around too, and goodness knows what else. It’s all going to be amazing, I’m sure.”

 

“Well, I look forward to ‘earing all about it from you, Edith dearie. You’ll probably be the closest I get to seein’ it, meself.”

 

Edith cradles her cup in her hands and looks thoughtfully at the old woman. “Aren’t you going to go too, Mrs. Boothby. Everyone I know is going. Hilda is going, although one of her friends from Mrs. Minkin’s knitting circle asked her before Frank and I did, so she is going with some of them in a few weeks.”

 

“Yes, she told me she was goin’, too, but not wiv you, which is a bit of a shame.”

 

“Oh, I’m just glad that she’s going, and that she has made some new friends.” Edith replies happily. “Hilda, as you know, is quite shy, and she finds it hard to make friends. I don’t think we would have been friends if we hadn’t shared a bedroom at Mrs. Plaistow’s, even if we were both under housemaids and living under the same roof.” She sighs. “Anyway, Hilda and I get to see each other all the time, especially since we live so close by now. As a matter of fact, I’m actually going over to Hill Street tonight, with Miss Lettice’s blessing, to help wait table with Hilda for Mr. and Mrs. Channon. They have some important guests from America coming to dinner this evening, and Hilda can’t manage to serve Lobster à la Newburg*********** by herself. Thus, why I have pulled out my cookbooks. I need to have my head on right if I’m to be head cook for Hilda, who is petrified of spoiling the lobster for Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s guests.”

 

“Well, I ‘ope Mr. and Mrs. Channon is payin’ you, Edith dearie, is all I’ll say. They might be ‘avin’ some fancy toffs over for a lobster tea, probably that American Mr. Carter and ‘is snobby English wife, but they’s can barely scrape by payin’ the ‘ouse’old bills. “Ilda ‘ad the wine merchants boys over at ‘Ill Street last week whilst I was there. Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Channon were genuinely out, so ‘Ilda didn’t ‘ave ta lie and say they weren’t ‘ome when they was, but it’s still pretty bad when the bailiff’s knockin’ at the door.”

 

“Yes, I heard about that from Hilda. It’s a sorry state of affairs, and that’s a fact. I don’t think Mr. or Mrs. Channon can balance a budget to save themselves. Luckily, like you and Hilda, tonight’s wages will be paid to be by Mrs. Channon’s father, Mr. de Virre, who will also be in attendance.”

 

“Just as well. ‘E never fails to pay me wages.”

 

“Anyway, you were going to tell me why you and Ken aren’t going to the British Empire Exhibition. I’m sure Ken would enjoy the amusement park. Apparently it’s the biggest in Britain.”

 

“Big ain’t necessarily best.” Mrs. Boothby concludes sagely. “And it certainly ain’t for me Ken. I’m sure you’re right. ‘E’d love the rides and the colour, but they’s too many people there, and Ken gets hoverwhelmed, ‘e does if they’s too many strangers about. Besides,” she adds with a defensive sniff. “I don’t want no-one lookin’ sideways wiv funny glances at me Ken. ‘E’s a good lad, but folks outside ‘a Polar ain’t so kind to lads like ‘im, and I won’t ‘ave no strangers pokin’ fun at ‘im niver!”

 

“Well that’s fair enough, Mrs. Boothby. Shall I buy Ken a nice souvenir from the exhibition, then, since he’s not going to go himself?”

 

“Youse spoils my lad, Edith dearie. Nah, what youse should be doin’ is savin’ your shillin’s and pence for when you set up ‘ouse wiv Frank. Youse far too generous, dearie.”

 

“Nonsense, Mrs. Boothby. I think a treat for someone as sweet as Ken is only deserving.”

 

“Well, if I can’t talk you outta it, make it somethin’ small and cheap, eh?”

 

“Alright Mrs. Boothby.” Edith laughs good naturedly. “More tea?”

 

“Like I’d evva say no to a nice cup ‘a Rosie-Lee************, dearie!”

 

Just as Edith pours the tea, a jangling ring echoes through the peaceable quiet of the kitchen.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

Edith places the knitted coy covered pot back down on the table with an irritable thud and looks aghast through the doors wedged open showing a clear view to Lettice’s dining room. Beyond it in the Cavendish Mews drawing room, the sparkling silver and Bakelite telephone rings.

 

“Oh! That infernal contraption!” she mutters to herself.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

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 toffee-nosed accent only seems to sharpen when they realise they are speaking to ‘the hired help’ as they abruptly demand Lettice’s whereabouts.

 

BBBBRRRINGGG!

 

“That will be the telephone, Miss Watsford,” Mrs. Boothby says with a cheeky smirk as she stubs out her cigarette and reaches for her tobacco and papers so that she can roll herself another one. “Best youse go see ‘oo it is, then.”

 

Edith groans as she picks herself up out of her comfortable Windsor chair and walks towards the scullery connecting the service part of the flat with Lettice’s living quarters. “I should have disconnected it from the wall the instant Miss Lettice left.” she says as she goes. “Then let’s hear it ring.”

 

“Oh! I should like to see Miss Lettice’s face if she came back and saw that!” Mrs. Boothby manages to say between her guffaws and smattering of fruity coughs as Edith disappears.

 

*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.

 

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

 

***Alfred Harmsworth founded Home Chat to compete with Home Notes. He ran the Amalgamated Press and through them he published the magazine. He founded it in 1895 and the magazine ran until 1959. It was published as a small format magazine which came out weekly. As was usual for such women's weeklies the formulation was to cover society gossip and domestic tips along with short stories, dress patterns, recipes and competitions. One of the editors was Maud Brown. She retired in 1919 and was replaced by her sister Flora. It began with a circulation of 186,000 in 1895 and finished up at 323,600 in 1959. It took a severe hit before the Second World War in circulation but had recovered before it was closed down.

 

****The Everylady’s Journal was published monthly in Australia and shipped internationally from 1911 to 1938, but began life as The New Idea: A Woman’s Journal for Australasia in 1902. The New Idea contained articles on women’s suffrage, alongside discussions about diet, sewing patterns and tips and tricks for the housewife and young lady. From 1911 The New Idea became the Everylady’s Journal. Published by T.S. Fitchett the fashion periodical changed its name to New Idea in 1938, and it is still being published to this day.

 

*****Camp Coffee is a concentrated syrup which is flavoured with coffee and chicory, first produced in 1876 by Paterson & Sons Ltd, in Glasgow. In 1974, Dennis Jenks merged his business with Paterson to form Paterson Jenks plc. In 1984, Paterson Jenks plc was bought by McCormick & Company. Legend has it (mainly due to the picture on the label) that Camp Coffee was originally developed as an instant coffee for military use. The label is classical in tone, drawing on the romance of the British Raj. It includes a drawing of a seated Gordon Highlander (supposedly Major General Sir Hector MacDonald) being served by a Sikh soldier holding a tray with a bottle of essence and jug of hot water. They are in front of a tent, at the apex of which flies a flag bearing the drink's slogan, "Ready Aye Ready". A later version of the label, introduced in the mid-20th century, removed the tray from the picture, thus removing the infinite bottles element and was seen as an attempt to avoid the connotation that the Sikh was a servant, although he was still shown waiting while the kilted Scottish soldier sipped his coffee. The current version, introduced in 2006, depicts the Sikh as a soldier, now sitting beside the Scottish soldier, and with a cup and saucer of his own. Camp Coffee is an item of British nostalgia, because many remember it from their childhood. It is still a popular ingredient for home bakers making coffee-flavoured cake and coffee-flavoured buttercream. In late 1975, Camp Coffee temporarily became a popular alternative to instant coffee in the UK, after the price of coffee doubled due to shortages caused by heavy frosts in Brazil.

 

******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.

 

*******To take the King’s shilling means to enlist in the army. The saying derives from a shilling whose acceptance by a recruit from a recruiting officer constituted until 1879 a binding enlistment in the British army —used when the British monarch is a king.

 

********The term “Flanders Fields”, used after the war to refer to the parts of France where the bloodiest battles of the Great War raged comes from "In Flanders Fields" is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, written in 1915.

 

*********No. 4472 Flying Scotsman is a LNER Class A3 4-6-2 "Pacific" steam locomotive built in 1923 for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) at Doncaster Works to a design of Nigel Gresley. It was employed on long-distance express passenger trains on the East Coast Main Line by LNER and its successors, British Railways' Eastern and North Eastern Regions, notably on The Flying Scotsman service between London King's Cross and Edinburgh Waverley after which it was named. Retired from British Railways in 1963 after covering 2.08 million miles, Flying Scotsman has been described as the world's most famous steam locomotive. It had earned considerable fame in preservation under the ownership of, successively, Alan Pegler, William McAlpine, Tony Marchington, and, since 2004, the National Railway Museum. 4472 became a flagship locomotive for the LNER, representing the company twice at the British Empire Exhibition and in 1928, hauled the inaugural non-stop Flying Scotsman service. It set two world records for steam traction, becoming the first locomotive to reach the officially authenticated speed of 100 miles per hour on the 30th of November 1934, and setting the longest non-stop run of a steam locomotive of 422 miles on the 8th of August 1989 whilst on tour in Australia.

 

**********Although largely forgotten today, British artist, sculptor and designer, Percy Metcalf had a great influence on the lives of everyday Britons and millions of people throughout the British Empire. He designed the first coinage of the Irish Free State in 1928. The first Irish coin series consisted of eight coins. The harp was chosen as the obverse. Metcalfe was chosen out of six designers as the winner of the reverse design of the Irish Free State's currency. The horse, salmon, bull, wolf-hound, hare, hen, pig and woodcock were all on different denominations of coinage that was known as the Barnyard Collection. In 1935, it was George V's jubilee, and to celebrate the occasion, a crown piece containing a new design was issued. The reverse side of the coin depicts an image of St George on a horse, rearing over a dragon. Due to its modernistic design by Metcalfe it has earned little credit from collectors. In 1936, Metcalfe designed the obverse crowned effigy of Edward VIII for overseas coinage which was approved by the King, but none was minted for circulation before Edward's abdication that December. Metcalfe was immediately assigned to produce a similar crowned portrait of King George VI for overseas use. This image was also used as part of the George Cross design in 1940. The George Cross is second in the order of wear in the United Kingdom honours system and is the highest gallantry award for civilians, as well as for members of the armed forces in actions for which purely military honours would not normally be granted. It also features on the flag of Malta in recognition of the island's bravery during the Siege of Malta in World War II. Metcalfe also designed the Great Seal of the Realm. He produced designs for coinage of several countries including Ireland and Australia. He created a portrait of King George V which was used as the obverse for coins of Australia, Canada, Fiji, Mauritius, New Zealand and Southern Rhodesia. To commemorate the extraordinary visit that George VI and Queen Elizabeth set out on to North America in 1939, three series of medallions were designed for the Royal Canadian Mint. The reverse side of the coins contained a joint profile of George VI and Queen Elizabeth, which was designed by Metcalfe. This design was also used on the British Coronation Medal of 1937. Metcalfe created a British Jubilee crown piece, which was exhibited in the Leeds College of Art in November 1946. Prior to all his coin designs, Metcalfe had taken up sculpting and designing objects as an art form at the Royal College of Art in London, and he was commissioned to create the great Lions of Industry and Engineering for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924.

 

***********Lobster Newberg (also spelled lobster Newburg or lobster Newburgh) is an American seafood dish made from lobster, butter, cream, cognac, sherry and eggs, with a secret ingredient found to be Cayenne pepper. A modern legend with no primary or early sources states that the dish was invented by Ben Wenberg, a sea captain in the fruit trade. He was said to have demonstrated the dish at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York City to the manager, Charles Delmonico, in 1876. After refinements by the chef, Charles Ranhofer, the creation was added to the restaurant's menu as Lobster à la Wenberg and it soon became very popular. The legend says that an argument between Wenberg and Charles Delmonico caused the dish to be removed from the menu. To satisfy patrons’ continued requests for it, the name was rendered in anagram as Lobster à la Newberg or Lobster Newberg.

 

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

 

This comfortable domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

Edith’s deal kitchen table is covered with lots of interesting bits and pieces. The tea cosy, which fits snugly over a white porcelain teapot, has been hand knitted in fine lemon, blue and violet wool. It comes easily off and off and can be as easily put back on as a real tea cosy on a real teapot. It comes from a specialist miniatures stockist in the United Kingdom. The Huntley and Palmer’s Breakfast Biscuit tin containing a replica selection of biscuits is also a 1:12 artisan piece. Made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight, the biscuits are incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The Deftware cups, saucers, sugar bowl and milk jug are part of a 1:12 size miniature porcelain dinner set which sits on the dresser that can be seen just to the right of shot. The vase of flowers are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium and inserted into a real, hand blown glass vase.

 

Edith’s two cookbooks are made by hand by an unknown American artisan and were acquired from an American miniature collector on E-Bay. The Everywoman Journal magazine from 1924 sitting on the table was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States, whilst the copy of Home Chat is a 1:12 miniature made by artisan Ken Blythe. I have a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my miniatures collection – books mostly. 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! Sadly, 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. As well as making books, he also made other small paper based miniatures including magazines like the copy of Home Chat. It is not designed to be opened. What might amaze you in spite of this is the fact 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 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.

 

Also on the table, sit Mrs. Boothby’s Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The black ashtray is also an artisan piece, the bae of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there). Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player’s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today’s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player’s and two thirds of these were branded as Player’s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player’s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player’s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands “Player” and “John Player Special” are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company). Swan Vestas is a brand name for a popular brand of ‘strike-anywhere’ matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline ‘the smoker’s match’ although this has been replaced by the prefix ‘the original’ on the current packaging. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced ‘Swan wax matches’. These were superseded by later versions including ‘Swan White Pine Vestas’ from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened ‘Swan Vestas’ in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s ‘Swan Vestas’ had become ‘Britain’s best-selling match’.

 

Edith’s Windsor chairs are both hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniatures which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat of either chair, but they are definitely unmarked artisan pieces.

 

The bright brass pieces hanging on the wall or standing on the stove all come from various stockists, most overseas, but the three frypans I bought from a High Street specialist in dolls and dolls’ house furnishings when I was a teenager. The spice drawers you can just see hanging on the wall to the upper right-hand corner of the photo came from the same shop as the frypans, but were bought about a year before the pans.

 

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

 

The tin bucket, mops and brooms in the corner of the kitchen all come from Beautifully handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

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.

Milang and the Murray River Boat Trade.

In 1853 the governor of SA offered a reward of £4,000 to the first river steam boat to navigate the Murray to Wentworth and beyond. Captain Francis Cadell working with William Younghusband, a close friend of the governor received the prize although Captain William Randell of Mannum reached Wentworth in his steam boat at the same time. Cadell had named his boat after the wife of the Governor, the Lady Augusta and the Governor and a small party travelled on Captain Cadell’s boat. After this financial boost Cadell went on to establish the River Murray Navigation Company based in Goolwa. Randell established his own shipping line based in Mannum. The river trade began in earnest in 1854. The prize was intercolonial transportation of goods into western NSW and southern Qld via the Darling River from Wentworth. In the 1850s there was almost no settlement in SA along the river so the money to be made was in NSW and the upper reaches of the Murray in Victoria. Randell transported flour to Echuca, for example, for overland transport from Echuca to the goldfields at Bendigo. The early river steamers and barges were manufactured along the Murray and the lakes, often at Goolwa or Mannum or in Milang. Wool was the staple product shipped down the river from NSW and the return trips took up flour, sugar, tea, pianos, furniture, engines or whatever outback stations needed. Customs duties were due at the SA/NSW/Vic border and the Qld border. Milang established a niche role for itself in the riverboat trade; it made steamers and barges, provided captains and skilled navigators and handled the bulk of supplies going up to NSW as Milang was the closest and easiest river port to Adelaide. Duranda Terrace in Milang handled 50 to 60% of all SA exports up the river. Merchants flourished here and Landseers established a large wool handling and warehousing business with offices in Morgan, Murray Bridge, Goolwa, Wentworth, Wilcannia and Mildura. But their headquarters were in Milang.

 

Albert Landseer the company founder was born in England in 1829 and was a cousin to the famous British landscape painter of the same surname. Albert studied sculpture himself but gave it up to immigrate to SA. He became the agent for Captain Cadell of Goolwa in 1856 and from that contract he expanded his business all along the river. He had ten children with his first wife and six with his second. He controlled almost all the trade through Milang and was known as the “Duke of Milang.” His business partner who contributed financial support was William Dunk. Albert Landseer died in 1906 as the river trade was starting to reduce. Landseer contributed to the district by becoming a member of parliament and was a popular local identify. Alas his four storey stone flour mill and three storey warehouse in Duranda Terrace were both demolished a long time ago. (His impressive wool store in Morgan still stands.) Landseer’s flour mill operated from around 1870 to 1890 replacing the Pavy flour mill that was established in Milang in the 1850s to supply flour for the riverboat trade. The heyday of the riverboat trade was in the 19th century. Before any railways reached western NSW almost all trade was carried on the river through SA. Railways reached western NSW and upper Victoria in the 1880s. But the river trade persisted as so many stations were situated right on the banks of the Darling River and so river transport was the easiest and cheapest right into the middle 1920s. The first jetty was constructed in Milang in 1856 to get the river trade going. It was increased in length in 1859 and again in 1869 until it was 217 metres (711 feet) long. A tram track took cargo to the end of the jetty. The great Murray flood of 1956 saw half the jetty washed away.

 

Although much of the river boat trade died away in the 1920s some services continued, especially the local steamer service across Lake Alexandrina. Once the railway from Adelaide reached Milang in 1884 a service was started to connect with the trains to take passenger and freight across the lakes to Poltalloch station, Meningie and from there overland through the Coorong to the South East and Melbourne. The paddle steamer Dispatch plied this route from 1877 between Milang and Meningie. After 1884 other vessels were also used on this route. Trade declined considerably in Milang itself after 1878 when the SA railway reached Morgan. It then became the major river port, rather than Milang.

 

Because of the river trade Milang had a thriving boat building industry. George Ross established engineering works in Milang and then branched out into boats. Ross’ major competitor was Frank Potts of Langhorne Creek who built his boats in Milang too. Potts built many of the boats used by Landseer’s company. The last boat built for Landseer was the Marion in 1897. This is the paddle steamer now in the Museum at Mannum. Another well known boat builder in Milang was C.H.F. Kruse. The register of steamers built in Milang lists:

1857The Enterprise.

1872 The Ponkaree.

1873Landseer’s floating dry dock was built and then later sold on to William Randell at Mannum in 1876.

1875The Wilcannia.

1876The Annie and the Bourke.

1877The Avoca and the Dispatch.

1878The Milang, the Elsie, the John Hart and the Victor.

1880The Mary Ann (second steamer of this name).

1891The Ada and Clara. (This was financed by the Bowmans for the lake crossing to Poltalloch Station.)

1892The Advance and the Retreat.

1897The Agnostic, the Marion and the Tarella.

1898The Etona (used by the Anglican Church for services along the Murray from Murray Bridge to Renmark.)

1911The Elsie (second steamer of this name).

Although the river trade was starting to die off in the early 20th century in 1902 the lock system was agreed upon by the states. It was mainly built to provide a constant river level free from snags in the Murray. The locks were also to control river flows in times of drought and keep the Murray navigable. The first Murray River lock was started in 1915 and finished at Blanchetown in 1922. It took another 20 years for the remaining 25 locks along the river to Albury to be completed. The final stage of this project really was the construction of the five barrages to prevent salt water from entering the lakes and Murray River. They were completed in 1940.

 

A Brief History of Milang.

The settlers of Strathalbyn were anxious to have a port near their town especially after the Wheal Ellen mine began operations in 1857. In August 1853 Captains Cadell and Randell had proved the viability of river trade. In light of this the Surveyor General Arthur Freeling ordered a township to be laid out on the shores of Lake Alexandrina near where the Bremer and Angas rivers enter the lake. A site was selected on high ground away from both river mouths. Milang was laid out by January 1854. The town had a grid pattern, like Adelaide surrounded by parklands on three sides and the lake on the other. Blocks must have sold quickly as in 1857 a private development was laid out beyond the parklands by Dr Rankine of Strathalbyn. The town name was selected from a local Aboriginal word “Millangk” which meant place of sorcery and magic. Some might argue that Milang is still a magical place!

 

Among the purchasers of the first town lots, as was to be the case in Langhorne Creek too, were the elite of Strathalbyn- the Gollans, Stirlings, Dawsons etc. Other pioneers of Milang were the Landseer family and G Chalken. Chalken owned the Lake Hotel, established in 1856 in a side street. The Pier Hotel facing the lake was built in 1857 and still stands. Landseer soon opened a general store and Post Office. He bought machinery from the original Pavy flour mill and built a new one in 1871. Around this time he also erected a large wool store and other warehouses along Duranda Terrace making him the main businessman in town. Milang blossomed overnight on the expectation of successful river trading. A South Australian Register newspaper article in 1857 described the new town thus: “Milang is becoming a very bustling little port and will shortly grow into a place of importance. Already it has two inns, a steam mill, a store of some extent, a chapel in the course of erection, a timber yard and a jetty on which there were lying on Tuesday the Symmetry twenty five tons, the Blue Jacket five tons and the Enterprise eight tons. There are now about one hundred and ten souls in the township and several hundred settlers within a radius of two or three miles. Cultivation is progressing extensively and wheat and flour are continuously shipped, and also silver and lead from Strathalbyn and the Wheal Ellen mines.” Alas Milang is no longer a bustling port or town!

 

As with most other towns the first public structures were the two hotels and the early school room in 1856. This purpose built school is still in use. The first church erected was the Church of Christ in Coxe Street in 1857. This church was enlarged in 1899 and again in 1901. By 1866 Milang had two further churches the Primitive Methodist erected in 1866 in Chapel Street and the Congregational Church erected in 1862 in Stephenson Street. The Congregational Church originally had a thatched roof and it is now the Uniting Church. The Anglican Church was not built until 1911 and its completion was financially assisted by the Dunk family. Before then Anglican services were conducted in the Institute building. Mrs Landseer laid the foundation stone of the Institute in January 1884. James Rankine of Strathalbyn opened the Institute later that year. By 1890 it was free of debt and in 1917 further additions were made to it. A District Council was formed in Milang in 1855 and the first meetings were held in nearby Belvedere. A police station opened in Milang in 1865 but Milang began to slide backwards shortly after that. The tramway to Strathalbyn in 1869 bypassed Milang despite pleas for it to travel via Milang. However they did get a rail line in 1884 to link with the Adelaide line at Sandergrove. In 1893 a butter factory opened in Milang, the Lakeside Butter Factory which exported local butter to England. It closed in 1915. It re-opened some time later and was still operating in the 1930s. The infamous shacks along the lake foreshore were built around 1948. The Milang Progress Association controlled the area until the local Council resumed control in 1967. Despite government threats to their existence the shack owners have had several reprieves and they are still there.

 

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.

balinese girl playing next to a rubbish cart loaded up with the remains of religious offerings. taken in ubud market.

 

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

 

Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie and his wife Arabella. Lettice is visiting her family home for Christmas and has stayed on to celebrate New Year’s Eve with them as well. Lettice is nursing a broken heart. Lettice’s beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, had organised a romantic dinner at the Savoy* for he and Lettice to celebrate his birthday. However, when Lettice arrived, she was confronted not with the smiling face of her beau, but the haughty and cruel spectre of his mother, the Duchess of Walmsford, Lady Zinnia. Lady Zinnia, and Selwyn’s Uncle Bertrand had been attempting to marry him off to his cousin, 1923 debutante Pamela Fox-Chavers. Lady Zinnia had, up until that moment been snubbing Lettice, so Selwyn and Lettice arranged for Lettice to attend as many London Season events as possible where Selwyn and Pamela were also in attendance so that Lettice and Selwyn could spend time together, and at the same time make their intentions so well known that Lady Zinnia wouldn’t be able to avoid Lettice any longer. Zinnia is a woman who likes intrigue and revenge, and the revenge she launched upon Lettice that evening at the Savoy was bitterly harsh and painful. With a cold and calculating smile Lady Zinna announced that she had packed Selwyn off to Durban in South Africa for a year. She made a pact with her son: if he went away for a year, a year during which he agreed neither to see, nor correspond with Lettice, if he comes back and doesn’t feel the same way about her as he did when he left, he agreed that he will marry Pamela, just as Bertrand and Lady Zinnia planned. If however, he still feels the same way about Lettice when he returns, Lady Zinnia agreed that she would concede and will allow him to marry her.

 

Leaving London by train that very evening, Lettice returned home to Glynes, where she stayed for a week, moving numbly about the familiar rooms of the grand Georgian country house, reading books from her father’s library distractedly to pass the time, whilst her father fed her, her favourite Scottish shortbreads in a vain effort to cheer her up. However, rather than assuage her broken heart, her father’s ministrations 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: keep designing interiors, keep shopping and most importantly, keep attending social functions where there are plenty of press photographers. “You may not be permitted to write to Selwyn,” Lady Sadie said wisely. ‘But Zinnia said nothing about the newspapers not writing about your plight or your feelings on your behest. Let them tell Selwyn that you still love him and are waiting for him. They get the London papers in Durban just as much as they get them here, and Zinnia won’t be able to stop a lovesick and homesick young man flipping to the society pages as he seeks solace in the faces of familiar names and faces, and thus seeing you and reading your words of commitment to him that you share through the newspaper men. Tell them that you are waiting patiently for Selwyn’s 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 in the lead up to the festive season. However, even she could only keep this up for so long, and has been welcomed home with open and loving arms by her family for Christmas and the New Year.

 

It is New Year’s Eve 1923 and Lord Wrexham and Lady Sadie are hosting a lavish dinner party in the Georgian Glynes dining room. The grand room is cosy and warm with a roaring fire blazing in the white marble fireplace decorated with garlands of greenery and red satin bows decorated with golden baubles. Lady Sadie has taken some of the best red and white roses from the Glynes hothouses and filled vases with them around the room, giving the entire room a very festive appearance. Their sweet fragrance fills the air, a constant that intermixes with the aromas of each of the eight courses of the New Year dinner prepared in the Glynes kitchen by the Chetwynd’s cook, Mrs, Carsterton and her staff. The Chippendale dining table has been extended by an extra two leaves to allow for additional guests, and under the glow of the crystal chandelier above and candelabras along the table, glassware, gilt edged crockery and silver flatware gleam in the golden light.

 

The room is filled with vociferous conversation and laughter as the guests sit around the table, the formality of Lord Wrexham and Lady Sadie at either end as prescribed in the etiquette required of grander dinners, replaced with the informality of a family dinner, with the guests sitting wherever they please, although the Viscount still presides from his favourite carver at the head of the table. Joining them, in addition to Lettice, are the Chetwynd’s eldest son and heir, Leslie, his wife Arabella, her mother, the now widowed Lady Isobel, and Arabella’s elder brother and best friend to Leslie, Nigel, the newly minted Lord Tyrwhitt. Also, at the table sits Lettice’s elder sister Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally) and her husband Charles Lanchenbury. Joining them at the Glynes dining table are the Brutons, whose estate adjoins the Glynes Estate: Lord Bruton, Lady Gweneth, their eldest son Roland, and Lettice’s best childhood chum, their second son Gerald, who like Lettice has moved to London, and designs gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street. Finally to make up the numbers at the table is the Viscount’s younger bohemian artistic sister, Eglantyne (affectionately known as Aunt Egg by her nieces and nephews).

 

Bramley, the Chetwynd’s faithful butler, assisted by Moira, one of the head parlour maids who has taken to assisting wait table at breakfast, luncheon and on informal occasions since the war, serve the third course of the evening: beautifully cooked moist roast beef with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, boiled carrots and peas. They serve the beef course, moving adeptly between the guests, who in spite of it being an informal occasion, are still dressed in full evening wear with the men in dinner jackets and white waistcoats and women a-glitter with jewels over their gowns.

 

“You know, Tice” Lally remarks to Lettice as she accepts the white gilt edged gravy boat of Mrs. Carsterton’s thick dark gravy from Lettice. “I don’t think Pappa and Mamma have thrown a New Year’s Eve dinner party since 1919.”

 

“Oh no, they did Lally,” corrects her sister kindly as she picks up her knife and fork. “It’s just you weren’t here.”

 

“When?” Lally asks, unable to keep the slight tone of offense out of her question as she drizzles gravy over her roast beef and vegetables.

 

“Two years ago,” her sister clarifies. “But you and Charles were at another party on New Year’s Eve 1921. It was much smaller too, with only Lord and Lady Bruton, Gerald and I in attendance.”

 

“Pardon me for overhearing,” Charles, Lally’s husband pipes up from his seat to the right of his wife, leaning in slightly as he speaks, champagne glass in hand. “But that was the year Father opened up Lanchenbury House for New Year for that rather… ahem!” He clears his throat awkwardly as he contemplates the correct word to use. “Artistic ball. Remember Lally?”

 

“Oh that’s right. Lord Lanchenbury threw a party in 1921. One of his rare moments largesse.” Lally remembers.

 

“Indeed yes.” her husband concurs with a scornful scoff. “Very rare.” He then returns his attention to Lettice and Lally’s Aunt Egg to his right.

 

“It was too good an opportunity for Charles and I to miss,” Lally goes on. “With him throwing open the doors of Lanchenbury house.” She muses, “I have to take my hat off to my father-in-law: it really was a rather marvellous party, full of interesting and artistic people. I’m quite sure Aunt Egg would have loved it.”

 

“Lord Lanchenbury never struck me as the artistic type, Lally.” Lettice remarks in surprise, cutting into her slice of roasted beef. “What with his serious nature, those glowering looks of his he gives us at any sign of perceived levity, and those old fashioned Victorian mutton chops of his*.”

 

“Oh he isn’t.” Lally replies assuredly picking up her own cutlery. “I think most of them were the friends of his Gaiety Girl** paramour of the moment, and her hangers-on, and their hangers on again. It really was quite bohemian.” Lally smiles as her sister suddenly blushes over her roast beef course.

 

“Lally!” Lettice gasps, glancing anxiously first at their father sitting next to her at the head of the table and then through the sparkling icicle crystal pendalogues*** of the candelabra in front of her and looks warily at their mother. Fortunately the Viscount is too busy greedily dissecting the slice of roast beef with fervour on the plate before him, and thankfully Lady Sadie seems to be engrossed in conversation with Leslie. “Really!”

 

“What?” queries her sibling with a peal of laughter. “Don’t tell me that I’ve shocked you again, Tice, with talk of my father-in-law’s penchant for a little paid companionship?”

 

“Well no.” lettice gulps. “But,” she adds, lowering her voice. “At the dinner table, Lally? In front of…” She eyes her parents. “Really? I’d hate for Pater or Mater to hear.”

 

“Oh Pater is too deaf, and Mater too self-absorbed in her own conversation.” Lally assures her sister.

 

As if on cue, her father pipes up gruffly, “What’s that Lally?”

 

Always quick with a smooth honeyed reply, Lettice’s elder sister answers, “I was just saying how good it is of you to throw a dinner party for all of us on New Year’s Eve, Pappa.”

 

“Of course it’s good of me.” her father mutters in self-satisfied reply. “Still, what’s the point of having a big, rambling old house like this if I can’t occasionally fill it with noise, laughter and Bright Young People**** according to my whims?” He reaches out his right hand and lovingly wraps it around his youngest daughter’s left hand as she lets go of her silver fork. “Eh?” He smiles beatifically at Lettice.

 

“Thank you, Pappa.” Lettice mutters as he lets go of her hand and she retrieves her fork from where it leans against the ruffled gilt edged rim of her plate. “It’s very kind of you.”

 

“Well, after the year we’ve all had, what with poor Sherbourne being gone, I felt it was important to bring us all together as a family.” He smiles at Lettice meaningfully again before resuming the dissection of his roast beef.

 

Lally looks ponderingly first at her sister, then her father and then back at her sister again. She waits a moment or two before asking in a whisper into her sister’s diamond earring bejewelled ear, “What was that all about, Tice?”

 

“I think Pater has an ulterior motive for hosting tonight, beyond the superficial idea of gathering us all together in the wake of Uncle Sherbourne’s death.” Lettice whispers in reply.

 

“Really?” Lally asks. “Do go on.”

 

“I think he also wanted to throw it for me, you see,” Lettice elucidates quietly. “To cheer me up. He paid me so much attention when I came home to Glynes after finding out what Lady Zinnia did with Selwyn to break our association.”

 

“Ahh.” Lally remarks, placing a morsel of beef and roast potato mixed with gravy on her tongue. She chews for a few moments, contemplating, before swallowing and continuing, “Well that makes sense. It’s very good of him to do it for you. Then again, you always were his favourite.”

 

“Lally!”

 

“It’s true, Tice,” Lally replies with a shrug of her shoulders. “But I bear no grudge. I was Granny Chetwynd’s favourite. We all have our favourites in life, even if it is prescribed that we aren’t supposed to.”

 

“Well, there was never any love lost between Granny Chetwynd and I. She was always so mean to me, whilst she doted on you, Lally. I think you could have spilt the contents of the whole gravy boat into the lap of a dress she bought you, and she would fuss over you.” Lettice declares. “Whereas if I spilt so much as a drop outside the rim of my plate, she’d loudly threaten to send me back to the nursery for the transgression.”

 

“Yes, I remember that, Tice. She could be horribly cutting with that acerbic tongue.”

 

“What do you mean by it being prescribed that we shouldn’t have favourites, Lally?”

 

“Oh well, as a parent, I’m constantly reminded by my friends not to have a favourite child.”

 

“But you do?” Lettice ventures gently.

 

“Of course, my dear! As my first born, and thankfully heir to appease Lord Lanchenbury, Harrold is my favourite.” A peal of joyful laughter erupts from her lips. “Surely you knew that, Tice.”

 

“No, I didn’t suspect that at all.”

 

“Well, it all evens out,” Lally replies, popping another mouthful of roast into her mouth, before continuing after swallowing, “Because Annabelle is her father’s favourite without question. Isn’t that right, my dear?” She addresses the question to her husband as she nudges him in the ribs with her elbow to get his attention.

 

“What’s that, my love?” Charles asks, leaning over to his wife.

 

“I was just telling Tice that Harrold is my favourite and Annabelle is yours, Charles.”

 

He looks almost apologetically across at Lettice. “I’m afraid it’s true, Tice. I can’t help but have a soft spot for her.”

 

Lettice laughs at her brother-in-law’s face as it softens with love for his daughter. “Whatever will you do, now that you have a third child?” She takes a sip of sparkling champagne.

 

“Oh don’t worry,” Lally pipes up. “Whilst he’s a baby, Tarquin is Nanny’s new favourite, so it all works out rather splendidly.”

 

“Quite splendidly.” agrees Charles. “And who knows, perhaps once he has formed into a forthright young man, he may even please my father enough to become his favourite.”

 

“Now let’s not wish that upon the poor baby.” Lally protests with a laugh.

 

Lettice takes a morsel of roasted potato and allows the delicious flavour to fill her mouth as she looks around her.

 

Her father sits happily at the head of the table in his favourite carver chair, enjoying playing host for his family and extended family, the pleasure clear on his face as he takes a mouthful of roast and washes it down with some red wine from his glass. To the Viscount’s left, Lady Sadie sits, dressed in a fine silk chiné gown of pastel pinks, blues and lilacs, a glass of champagne held daintily to her lips, ropes of pearls gracing her throat and tumbling down her front, as she listens to her favourite child, Leslie. Leslie in turn, the golden child, both figuratively and literally with his sandy blonde Chetwynd hair like Lettice’s, glows in the attention of his mother’s thrall as he talks about his plans for the Glynes estate for 1924.

 

To his left, Leslie’s wife, Arabella focusses upon her own mother, Lady Isobel, next to her. The recent death of Lord Sherbourne Tyrwhitt has left its mark upon Arabella and Lady Isobel. Both seem somewhat diminished as they lean their heads together, Arabella’s raven waves held with diamond clips at odds to her mother’s white ones, pinned up with pearls and gold. Lettice wonders how soon it will be before Arabella announces that she is pregnant. She knows her parents are most anxious that the pair settle down to start creating a family. On the other side of their mother, the new Lord Tyrwhitt, Nigel, sits quietly paying attention to what Lady Isobel is saying, his solicitousness towards his mother creating a pang in Lettice’s heart. She silently wonders what Nigel’s plans are for the Tyrwhitt Estate that borders that of Glynes. She knows that Nigel is trying valiantly to fill his father’s shoes, but she also knows that he is struggling to do so, particularly in light of how much in debt the new young lord finds himself. What will 1924 have in store?

 

Further down the table beyond an arrangement of Lady Sadie’s best red hothouse roses, Gerald sits. He catches Lettice glancing in his general direction, and he blows her a silent kiss as he winks conspiratorially at her. Unlike Arabella, Lady Isobel and Nigel, 1923 has been a good year for her oldest and dearest childhood chum. His small couturier in Grosvenor Street is finally starting to turn a profit, giving him the independence that he has craved since the end of the Great War, freeing him from the noose of his father’s household’s somewhat straitened financial circumstances. Whilst Gerald’s Grosvenor Street premises might still be furnished with the suite from Bruton House’s drawing room, Lettice feels it will only be a matter of time before she will be designing a new interior for him. Gerald has found new purpose in life, helping his young protégée Harriet Milford to build her millinery business in Putney, whilst at the same time pursuing a romantic interlude with one of Harriet’s boarders, the fey young oboist, Cyril. Whilst Gerald and Cyril must keep their love behind closed doors, shared only with the most trusted coterie of friends like Lettice and Harriet, Lettice is still happy that Gerald has found love at last, even if it is in in middle-class Putney.

 

Next to Gerald, at the foot of the table, his father, Lord Bruton sits, gruffly masticating his roast dinner. Even with his usual growliness, Gerald’s father seems to be in a cheerier mood this evening than Lettice has seen him in as of late. Earlier in the evening, Gerald attributed his good mood to a mixture of Lettice’s father’s largesse with his wine cellar and the successful sale of yet another parcel of the Bruton Estate, the funds raised which are finally being invested in much needed repairs to Bruton Hall’s roof. Whilst Lettice cannot not say that the Brutons have shed themselves of their penurious state of financial affairs, at least this time the money has not been frittered away by Gerald’s elder wastrel of a brother Roland, who sits opposite his brother in a state of ennui that he has no wish to hide from anyone. Doubtless he has an assignation planned with a local girl from the village, Lettice surmises.

 

To Roland’s left, his and Gerald’s mother Lady Gwenyth is also in good cheer as she twitters happily away with Aunt Egg. The two women are such opposites in some ways: Ant Egg’s angular features at odds with the soft jowly folds of Lady Gwenyth, Aunt Egg dressed in the bohemian style of one of her uncorseted Delphos dresses**** – much to the distaste of Lady Sadie – in a rich cherry red that almost matches Lady Sadie’s roses, and Lady Gwenyth arrayed in an old fashioned pre-war high necked gown of fading pastel satin. Yet they have in common the shared experience of a similar timeline, and it seems to bond them together strongly.

 

Next to Aunt Egg, Charles sips champagne quietly as he contemplates what 1924 holds for the Lanchenbury Tea business. Ever since Maison Lyonses****** at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue accepted Lord Lanchenbury’s Georgian Afternoon Tea blend to serve as their own on the beverages menu, he can’t seem to supply enough of the stuff for the tea drinking populace of London. He and Charles are looking to expand the tea export business in India, and already Lally has indicated that Charles will be setting sail for Bombay yet again in the early New Year.

 

And then next to Lettice is her elder sister, Lally. The sisters were once bitter enemies, thanks to some mischievous one-upmanship put in place by their mother, injecting poison into their relationship, but luckily for them they worked out what their mother was about and now Lettice feels closer to Lally than she has ever been.

 

“I say, Tice.” Lally says, breaking into Lettice’s deep contemplations. “Look, I know what Mater suggested you do in Selwyn’s absence.”

 

“You mean getting on with things, or trying to at any rate?” Lettice replies a little downheartedly.

 

“Yes.” Lally replies. “And you’ve done a splendid job of it from what I can gather.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“But you must surely be longing for somewhere quiet just be yourself, broken heart and al, for these next few weeks after Christmas, and New Year.”

 

“Well that’s why I’ve come home to Glynes for Christmas and New Year, Lally. I always use Glynes as a place to retreat to, broken heart or not.”

 

“Yes, but you’ll be under Mater’s watchful eye.”

 

“And Pappa’s caring ministrations.” Lettice adds.

 

“Well, Pater isn’t the only one who can provide caring ministrations, Tice.”

 

“What are you trying to ask, Lally?”

 

“Well, with Charles going back to India with Lord Lanchenbury shortly, I wondered if you wouldn’t care to come and stay with me at Dorrington House for a few weeks. We had such a jolly time of it with the children after Uncle Sherbourne’s funeral, don’t you think?”

 

“Oh!” gasps Lettice, her right hand flying to her mouth. “Oh I’d love to, Lally! Thank you!”

 

“Excellent!” Lally claps her bejewelled hands together. “That settles it then. You’ll come stay with us after we leave here in a few days, and you can just be yourself. If that’s happy then all the better, and I hope that the children and I can create a good distraction for you. However, if you just want some quiet time alone with a change in scenery, then that’s perfectly acceptable too.”

 

“Ahem!” the Viscount clears his throat noisily and having finished his own plate of roast beef and vegetables, rises to his feet, the carver chair legs scraping across the parquet dining room floor shrilly. He taps his empty water glass with his marrow scoop******* “Ladies and gentlemen, if I could ask you all for your attention please,”

 

Everyone at the table pauses their conversation and all heads turn to the head of the table.

 

“After a year full of ups and downs,” the Viscount calls out loudly with his booming orator’s voice, usually reserved for the House of Lords, glancing first at Arabella and Lady Isobel, and then at Lettice, who blushes under her father’s concerned gaze. “I would just like to take this opportunity, whilst we are all seated together, to wish everyone here present, a very happy and prosperous nineteen twenty-four. However, since Sadie’s superstitious ideas,” He glances with mock criticism at his wife before reaching out his hand to her, which she takes lovingly. “Won’t allow me to wish you a happy new year until midnight, may I instead wish everyone good health and fortunes.”

 

“Good health and fortunes!” everyone echoes as they raise their glasses and clink them together happily.

 

*After a modest start in 1828 as a smoking room and soon afterwards as a coffee house, Simpson's-in-the-Strand achieved a dual fame, around 1850, for its traditional English food, particularly roast meats, and also as the most important venue in Britain for chess in the Nineteenth Century. Chess ceased to be a feature after Simpson's was bought by the Savoy Hotel group of companies at the end of the Nineteenth Century, but as a purveyor of traditional English food, Simpson's has remained a celebrated dining venue throughout the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-First Century. P.G. Wodehouse called it "a restful temple of food"

 

**Nineteenth Century sideburns were often far more extravagant than those seen today, similar to what are now called mutton chops, but considerably more extreme. In period literature, "side whiskers" usually refers to this style, in which the whiskers hang well below the jaw line. The classic mutton chop is a type of beard in which the sideburns are grown out to the cheeks, leaving the moustache, soul patch, and chin clean-shaven. As with beards, sideburns went quickly out of fashion in the early Twentieth Century. In World War I, in order to secure a seal on a gas mask, men had to be clean-shaven; this did not affect moustaches.

 

***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.

 

****Chandelier and candelabra crystals, which can be cut and polished into various shapes and sizes, are called pendalogues, though sometimes it's spelled pendeloques. Some common cuts of pendalogue include: Octagon: has eight sides and features various shapes of facet in tandem.

 

*****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 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.

 

*******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 marrow scoop was one of a number of utensils designed to serve and eat marrow, the jelly from beef bones. The savoury fattiness of marrow was highly prized and with the refinement of table manners in the Seventeenth Century, new implements evolved for eating it more elegantly. Marrow scoops were made in large numbers in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. In Victorian Edinburgh, for example, enthusiasts met at the Marrow Bone Club and each member had a heavy silver scoop ornamented with marrow bones. The marrow scoop was made in two forms. The first was a single-ended scoop with one narrow channel and a handle; this was easier to hold. The second was the double-ended scoop, where the unequal width of the channel enabled marrow to be extracted from large and small bones. Early pieces were broader and smaller than the elegant, elongated scoops of the mid and late Eighteenth Century. In the next century they were often made to match the rest of the cutlery service.

 

Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this festive upper-class country house dinner party scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The Chippendale dining room table and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

The table is set for a lavish Edwardian dinner party of eight courses when we are just witnessing the fourth course, a meat course, as it is served, using cutlery, from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The delicious looking roast dinner on the dinner plates, and the boat of gravy on the tabletop have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The red wine glasses bought them from a miniatures stockist on E-Bay. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The white wine glasses I have had since I was a teenager. Also spun from real glass, I acquired them from a high street stockist of doll house and miniature pieces. The three prong candelabra with crystal lustres I acquired from the same shop at the same time. The glasses of champagne are also made from real glass and were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The empty champagne flutes, also made of real glass, I acquired from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. The central hand spun glass bowl containing Lady Sadie's red roses also came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, as did all the roses around the room. The two single candelabras are sterling silver artisan miniatures, and came with their own hand made beeswax candles! The silver gravy boat and the cruet set on the table have been made with great attention to detail, and comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.

 

The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. The Christmas garland hanging from it was hand made by husband and wife artistic team Margie and Mike Balough who own Serendipity Miniatures in Newcomerstown, Ohio. On the mantlepiece stand two 1950s Limoges vases. Both are stamped with a small green Limoges mark to the bottom. These treasures I found in an overcrowded cabinet at the Mill Markets in Geelong. A third vase stands on the edge of a bonheur de jour to the left of the photo. Also standing on the mantlepiece are two miniature diecast lead Meissen figurines: the Lady with the Canary and the Gentleman with the Butterfly, hand painted and gilded by me. There is also a dome anniversary clock in the middle of the mantlepiece which I bought the same day that I bought the fireplace.

 

To the left of the photo stands an artisan bonheur de jour (French lady's writing desk). A gift from my Mother when I was in my twenties, she had obtained this beautiful piece from an antique auction. Made in the 1950s of brass it is very heavy. It is set with hand-painted enamel panels featuring Rococo images. Originally part of a larger set featuring a table and chairs, or maybe a settee as well, individual pieces from these hand-painted sets are highly collectable and much sought after. I never knew this until the advent of E-Bay!

 

The Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery in the background was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.

 

All the paintings around the Glynes dining room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.

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’s, parents live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street. 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. Whilst far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, the Harlesden terrace has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her brother, Bert.

 

Whilst Edith made a wonderful impression when she met Mrs. McTavish, her young beau Frank Leadbetter’s grandmother, less can be said for Frank who whilst pleasing George, rubbed Ada the wrong way at the Sunday roast lunch Edith organised with her parents to meet Frank. Ever since then, Frank has been filled with remorse for speaking his mind a little more freely than he ought to have in front of Edith’s mother. Finally, Edith hit upon a possible solution to their problem, which is to introduce Mrs. McTavish to George and Ada. Being a kind old lady who makes lace, Edith and Frank both hope that Mrs. McTavish will be able to impress upon Ada what a nice young man Frank is, in spite of his more forward-thinking ideas, which jar with Ada’s ways of thinking, and assure her how happy he makes Edith. After careful planning, today is the day that George and Ada will meet Mrs. McTavish, over a Sunday lunch served in the Watsford’s kitchen.

 

The kitchen has always been the heart of Edith’s family home, and today it has an especially comfortable and welcoming feeling about it, just as Edith had hoped for. Ada has once again pulled out one of her best tablecloths which now adorns the round kitchen table, hiding its worn surface and the best blue and white china and gilded dinner service is being used today. At Edith’s request, because Mrs. McTavish’s teeth are too brittle to manage a roast chicken for lunch, Ada has cooked a rich and flavoursome beef stew to which she has added some of her large suet dumplings: a suitably delicious meal that is soft enough for the old Scottish lady to consume even with her weak teeth. Now the main course is over, and everyone has had their fill.

 

“Well, I hope you have all had sufficient to eat.” Ada announces, pushing her Windsor chair back across the flagstones and standing up from at her white linen draped kitchen table.

 

“Och!” exclaims Mrs. McTavish. “I’ve had plenty, thank you Mrs. Watsford.” She rubs her belly contentedly. “Thank you for cooking something I could manage with my old teeth.”

 

“It’s my pleasure, Mrs. McTavish,” Ada says with a warm smile. “My family enjoy my hearty beef stews, so it was no hardship to serve it.”

 

“Well your suet dumplings are lovely and soft, Mrs. Watsford.” the Scotswoman croons in her rolling brogue. “If you’d be willing to share the recipe, I’d like to try and make them for myself at home.”

 

“Yes, of course, Mrs. McTavish.” Ada enthuses, pleased to be able to share one of her many wonderful recipes, as she has done over the years with her daughter as she has grown up.

 

“That was a fine Sunday tea, Ada.” acknowledges her husband as he tops up his and Frank’s glasses with stout from the glazed brown pottery jug on the table.

 

“Why thank you, love.” Ada replies, blushing at the compliment as she runs her clammy hands down the front of her dress, a small outward display of nervousness known only to her family.

 

“Possibly one of your best yet, love.” George adds in an assuring fashion, noticing his wife’s action and recognising its symbolism.

 

“Yes, thank you Mrs. Watsford,” agrees Frank politely. “It was a delicious lunch, and more than enough for me. Thanks ever so!”

 

“Oh I hope you’ll have room for some of my cherry pie, Frank,” Ada says. “Edith told me you liked it so much the first time you had it here, that I made it for you again.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure I can squeeze in a slice, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures her.

 

“Thank you Mum.” smiles Edith up at her mother.

 

Edith is so grateful to her mother for all her efforts for the day. Not only was Ada easily convinced of the idea of meeting Frank’s grandmother, Mrs. McTavish, but that she readily agreed to hosting a Sunday lunch for her and produced a fine repast. Edith had helped her mother polish the silver cutlery on her Wednesday off, so it was sparkling as it sat alongside Ada’s best plates and glasses. To top it all off, Frank has bought a bunch of beautifully bright flowers on route from collecting his grandmother from her home in Upton Park to the Watsford’s home in Harlesden. Now they stood in the middle of the table in a glass bottle that serves as a good vase, a perfect centrepiece for Ada’s Sunday best table setting.

 

“Well!” Ada remarks in reply to her company’s satisfied commentary, picking up the now warm enough to touch deep pottery dish containing what little remains of her stew. “I think we might let tea settle down first and then we’ll have some pudding. What do you all say?”

 

Everyone readily agrees.

 

“Alright gentleman,” Ada addresses her husband and Frank, seated next to one another. “You have enough time for a smoke then, before I serve cherry pie. I’ll just pop it in the oven to warm.”

 

“Thanks awfully, Mrs. Watsford, but I don’t smoke.” Frank quickly explains.

 

“Ahh, but I do, Frank my lad.” pipes up George. He stands up and walks behind his wife and reaches up to the high shelf running along the top of the kitchen range and fetches down a small tin of tobacco and a pipe. “Come on, let’s you and I step out into the courtyard for a chat, man-to-man.”

 

“Dad!” Edith exclaims, looking aghast at her father. “Don’t!”

 

“Don’t worry Edith love, I don’t need to ask young Frank here’s intentions.” George chortles, his eyes glittering mischievously beneath his bushy eyebrows. “It’s quite clear he’s mad about you.”

 

“Dad!” Edith gasps again as both she and Frank blush deeply.

 

“That he is,” Mrs. McTavish agrees, reaching across to her grandson and pinching his left cheek as he sinks his head down in embarrassment. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face, my bonny bairn: no mistake.” She smiles indulgently. “Get along with you now Francis!”

 

“Oh Gran!” murmurs Frank self-consciously. “How many timed must I say, I’m Frank now, not Francis.”

 

“Och! Nonsense!” the old Scottish woman says sharply, slapping her grandson’s forearm lightly. “You’ll always be Francis to me, my little bairn!”

 

“Come on Frank my lad,” George encourages the younger man, patting him gently on the back in a friendly way. He picks up his glass of stout. “Let’s leave our womenfolk to chat, and they call you what they like and we’ll be none the wiser for it.”

 

As George, followed by a somewhat reluctant Frank casting doleful looks at Edith, walk out the back door into the rear garden, Ada says, “Edith love, would you mind clearing the table, whilst I set the table for pudding.”

 

“Yes of course, Mum!” Edith replies, leaping into action by pushing back her ladderback chair.

 

“I’m pleased to see you make your husband go outside to smoke, Mrs. Watsford.” the old Scottish woman remarks with a satisfied smile. “I don’t approve of men smoking indoors.” she adds crisply.

 

“No, something told me that I didn’t think you would, Mrs. McTavish.” Ada replies with a bemused smile, not admitting that George usually smokes his pipe in the kitchen after every meal. She and her husband had agreed the night before as they both sat by the kitchen range warming their feet, Ada darning one of George’s socks and George puffing on his pipe pleasantly, that perhaps to give the very best first impression, George should smoke outside in the back garden whilst Mrs. McTavish was visiting.

 

“ ’Nyree’, my husband used to say to me. ‘Nyree, why don’t you let me smoke indoors like other wives let their husbands do?’ I’d always say that Mither* never let Faither** smoke his pipe in the house, so why should I let him?” She nods emphatically.

 

“Nyree,” Ada remarks, turning around from the oven where she has just put her cherry pie, stacked with ripe, juicy berries to warm. “That’s a pretty Scottish name.”

 

“Och,” chuckles Mrs. McTavish. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Watsford, but it’s quite literally as far removed from Scottish as you can get.”

 

“Where does it come from then, Mrs. McTavish?” Ada puts her hands on her hips. “It sounds so lovely.”

 

“Well, my family were fishing people going back many generations, and Faither was a seaman, and he sailed to places far further than the Hebrides*** that took him from home for months at a time when I was a wee bairn. Just before I was born, he came back from what was then the newly formed Colony of New Zealand****. He met some of the local islanders who were struck by his blonde hair. Apparently, they were all dark skinned and had dark hair, so they found him rather fascinating to look at.” She chuckles. “The story he told me years later was that they called him ‘Ngaire’, which he was told by some of his shipmates, who knew more about the natives of the colony, on the return voyage that it meant ‘flaxen’. Some of them told him that they named their own blonde daughters Nyree after the name ‘Ngaire’. So, when I was born, I had blonde hair, if you can believe that now.” She gently pats her carefully set white hair that sweeps out from underneath her old fashioned lace embroidered cap in the style of her youth. “So Faither told Mither that I should be called Nyree. So, Nyree I was.”

 

“What a lovely story, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith remarks, gathering the lunch plates together.

 

“Thank you, Edith dearie. Now, what can I do to help, besides telling old stories?” asks Mrs. McTavish with a groan as she leans her wrists on the edge of the table and starts to push herself somewhat awkwardly out of her chair.

 

“You don’t have to do anything, Mrs. McTavish,” Ada assures her, encouraging the older Scottish woman to resume her seat with a settling gesture. “You are our guest. Edith and I are very used to working together around this old kitchen of ours, aren’t we love?”

 

“Yes Mum.” Edith agrees, gathering up the dinner plates into a stack, scraping any remnants of stew and dumplings onto the top plate using the cutlery as she gathers it.

 

“You’re a good lass, dearie, helping your mam like that.” Mrs. McTavish opines as she settles back comfortably into the well-worn chair usually sat in by George and Ada’s son, Bert.

 

“Oh not really, Mrs. McTavish.” Edith replies dismissively. “Any daughter would help her mum.”

 

“Och, not just any lass, bairn. There are plenty I know of, up round my way, especially those who are domestics like you, who won’t lift a finger unless they have to on their days off. Slovenly creatures!”

 

“Well, I agree with you, Mrs. McTavish. I think that’s very lazy of them, not to mention thoughtless. We all ought to do our bit. Mum made a lovely lunch for us, so it’s only right that I should help tidy up. I’ll help wash the dishes properly later, Mum,” Edith addresses her mother. “I’ll just rinse them and stack them by sink for now.”

 

“Thanks Edith love.” Ada replies gratefully. As she puts out some of her best blue and white floral china cups she addresses Mrs. McTavish. “Yes, Edith’s a good girl, even if she does use fancy words now.” She glances at her daughter. “Lunch rather than tea.” She shakes her head but smiles lovingly. “What next I ask you?” she snorts derisively.

 

“Mum!” Edith utters with an exasperated sigh but is then silenced by her mother’s raised careworn hand.

 

“And her dad and I are very proud of her, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

“Now, thinking of Edith and being proud of your bairns,” Mrs. McTavish starts. “When Edith and Francis came to visit me at Upton Park the other week to suggest this lovely gathering of our two clans, such as they are,” She clears her throat with a growl and speaks a little louder and more strongly. “They told me, Mrs. Watsford, that you and your husband were a bit concerned about some of Francis’ more,” She pauses whilst she tries to think of the right word to use. “Radical, ideas.”

 

“Mrs. McTavish!” Edith exclaims, spinning around from the trough where she is rinsing the dishes, her eyes wide with fear as to what the old Scottish woman is about to say.

 

“Now, now, my lass!” The old Scottish woman holds up her gnarled hands with their elongated fingers in defence before reaching about herself and adjusting the beautiful lace shawl draped over her shoulders that she made herself when she was younger. “I won’t have any secrets between your mam and me if we’re to be friends, which I do hope we will be.” She turns in her seat and addresses Ada as the younger woman puts out the glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid that Edith bought for her from the Caledonian Markets*****. “When your Edith and my Francis came to visit me at home, and broached the subject of me coming here for tea, they suggested that I might be a calming voice that would soothe your disquiet about my Francis and his more unusual ideas.”

 

“Did they indeed?” Ada asks with pursed lips and a cocked eyebrow, looking at her daughter’s back as she stands at the trough, dutifully rinsing dishes with such diligence that she doesn’t have to turn around and face her mother.

 

“Now, don’t be cross with them, Mrs. Watsford.” Mrs. McTavish reaches out her left hand and grasps Ada’s right in it, starting the younger woman as much by the intimate gesture she wasn’t expecting as by how cold the older woman’s hand is. “You mustn’t blame them.” She turns and looks with affection at Edith’s back. “They are young, and in love after all. When your bràmair***** is perceived less than favourably by the other’s mam or da, you can hardly blame them for wanting to smooth the waves of concern, can you?”

 

“Well, I don’t know if I approve of them telling you what my feelings are about your grandson behind my back.” Ada folds her arms akimbo.

 

“Ahh, now Mrs. Watsford,” Mrs. McTavish says soothingly. “You were young and in love once too. Don’t deny it!” She wags her finger at Ada. “I believe you met Mr. Watsford at a parish picnic.”

 

“Yes, we both worship at All Souls****** and met at a picnic in Roundwood Park*******.” Ada smiles fondly at the memory of her in her flouncy Sunday best dress and George in a smart suit and derby sitting on the lush green lawns of the park.

 

“And no doubt if your mam or da was set against Mr. Watsford, you would have done anything to convince them otherwise.” Mrs. McTavish continues.

 

“Well, I didn’t have to. George was, and still is, a model of a husband.” Ada counters quickly.

 

“That may well be true, Mrs. Watsford, and I’m happy for you.” The old Scotswoman pauses. “But you would have, if he had been less that the perfect specimen of husband that he is.” She cocks a white eyebrow as she looks earnestly at Edith’s mother.

 

“Yes, I suppose I would have, Mrs. McTavish.” Ada concedes with a sigh.

 

“So, I have come today to plead my grandson’s case with you.” Mrs. McTavish announces plainly.

 

“I’d hardly call your son’s attitudes a case that requires pleading before me, Mrs. McTavish.” Ada scoffs in surprise at the old woman’s words.

 

“Well, you’ll forgive me for seeing things from a different perspective, Mrs. Watsford.” the Scotswoman elucidates. “For you see, from where I am sitting, it seems to me that Mr. Watsford quite likes Francis. They both have a common enjoyment of reading books, even if my Francis likes reading more serious books than the murder mysteries your husband prefers. You on the other hand are judge and jury, sitting in judgement of my Francis’ ideas because they are at odds to your own.”

 

“I think I see where he gets some of his outspokenness, Mrs. McTavish.” Ada remarks before turning away from her guest at picking up a blue and white floral milk jug from the great Welsh dresser behind her.

 

“Aye. I’ll not deny it, Mrs. Watsford. His parents, my husband and I all taught Francis to speak his mind and not be afraid to do so. I suppose we all come across a little bit abrasively as a clan to some, but we all have,” She pauses and smiles sadly. “Or rather, had, quite strong personalities and opinions about things. We all believed in free speech, so long as it is respectful. Now, Francis’ faither was the one who really encouraged him to look beyond his place in life though. He was a costermonger******** down in Covent Garden, but he always wanted to provide a better life for his wife and son. If ever he was sick, just like if his wife, my daughter, Mairi,” she clarifies. “Or I were sick, we couldn’t earn a shilling. I taught Mairi to sew lace like me, but all we ever got was piecemeal work, and it’s still the same for me today. Anyway, Francis’ faither taught his son to look for more stable work with someone else and then to save his pennies and perhaps one day own his own shop, rather than be a costermonger with a cart on the streets like him. And that is why Francis is always looking to improve himself. He’s looking for an opportunity to provide a good and steady income and a good life for your Edith.”

 

Edith turns back from rinsing the dishes and holding her breath watches the two other women in the kitchen: Mrs. McTavish, pale and wrinkled wrapped up in a froth of handmade lace and her mother standing over her, a thoughtful look on her face as she listens.

 

“Well,” Ada remarks after a few moments of deliberation. “I do find your grandson’s desire to improve himself admirable, even if my own aspirations don’t stretch to such lofty heights as his own. George and I are quite comfortable and happy with our lot.”

 

“But…” Mrs. McTavish prompts.

 

“But I find some of his ideas… disconcerting.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“Such as his talking of our class being on their way up, and the upper classes coming down. Forgive me for saying it, Mrs. McTavish, but he does sound a little bit like one of those revolutionaries that we read about in the newspapers who overthrew the king of Russia back in 1918.”

 

“Och!” chortles the old Scotswoman. “My Francis is no revolutionary, I assure you. He may have his opinion, but he’s not a radical and angry young man who feels badly done by, by his social betters. He may lack some refinement when explaining what he believes, especially when he is excited and passionate about something, which he usually is.” She sighs. “But he just wants things to be bit better for him and your Edith, and for their bairns if God chooses to bless them with wee little ones.” She looks earnestly at Ada again. “Don’t tell me you didn’t want the same thing for your bairns, Mrs. Watsford, when you were younger and full of dreams?”

 

“Well of course George and I want the very best for Edith and Bert.” Ada admits. “I just have a different way of explaining it, and going about it, Mrs. McTavish.”

 

“These are different times, Mrs. Watsford.” Mrs. McTavish says matter-of-factly. “The world has just gone through the most terrible war we have ever known. Those who are left and didn’t pay the ultimate sacrifice expect, no deserve, better for fighting for King and country. We cannot deny them that wish, nor condemn them for having it. They deserve a better world in which to live, surely? If not, why did they fight?”

 

“Well, I cannot deny that.” Ada admits with a sniff. “All those poor young men we sent off, bright faced and excited, never to return.”

 

“Well then.” smiles Mrs. McTavish. “Although my grandson was too young to enlist, he, like you, Edith and I, is a survivor of the war on the home front, and it shaped our lives. Who can blame Francis for not wanting better in the aftermath of war?” She looks into Ada’s thought filled face. “Tell me, Mrs. Watsford. Do you think Edith has good sense?”

 

“Of course I do, Mrs. McTavish.” Ada retorts. “My Edith has a good head on her shoulders.”

 

“I’m glad you think so, Mrs. Watsford.” Mrs. McTavish replies. She turns her attentions to Edith, who still stands silently, leaning against the trough sink observing the interaction between her mother and Frank’s grandmother. “What do you think, Edith dearie?”

 

“Me?” Edith asks.

 

“Yes, you.” Mrs. McTavish says strongly. “Don’t you want and strive for more? Don’t you want a better life for you and my grandson?”

 

“Oh yes, Mrs. McTavish. I worked hard to get the position with Miss Lettice. She’s a much nicer mistress than wither old Widow Hounslow or Mrs. Plaistow were. I get better pay, and better working conditions. I think Frank is right. There are more possibilities in the world now, although we do have to work hard for them.”

 

“Well said, Edith dearie.” Mrs. McTavish agrees, turning back to Ada. “So you see Mrs. Watsford. I think that your Edith and my Francis are well matched. They both want a better life for themselves. They’ll do better working together than making valiant efforts separately. Francis may be a little headstrong sometimes, but Edith will keep him grounded.”

 

Ada remains silent, deep in thought at her companion’s argument.

 

“Well, have a pleaded my grandson’s case, Mrs. Watsford?” the old Scottish woman asks.

 

Just then, the kitchen door opens and George and Frank walk noisily back into the kitchen, chuckling amiably over a shared joke, comfortable in one another’s company.

 

“I say Ada!” George exclaims. “That cherry pie of yours smells delicious, love. Is it about ready for eating, do you suppose?”

 

“Yes, I think it’s just about ready.” Ada agrees. “Edith love, will you fetch the jug of cream from the pantry for me, please?”

 

“Yes Mum!” Edith replies as she goes to the narrow pantry door and peers inside for her mother’s garland trimmed jug.

 

“So, who is going to have the biggest slice of my cherry pie?” Ada asks as she places the pie on the table amidst her best china.

 

“I think that right goes to me, as head of the Watsford household.” pipes up George with confidence.

 

“I say, Mr. Watsford,” retorts Frank. “That isn’t very fair. Just because you’re head of the house, doesn’t mean you are automatically entitled to the biggest share of the pie.”

 

“That’s a rather radical thought, young Frank.” laughs George good-naturedly. “I’m not sure if I approve of it, though.”

 

“Who should get the biggest slice then, my bairn?” his grandmother asks.

 

“Oh you know my answer, Gran.” Frank replies. “I shouldn’t need to tell you.”

 

“Yes, but tell the others, dearie. They don’t know you quite as well as I. State your case as to who should get the biggest portion.”

 

“Yes,” encourages Ada. “Tell us, Frank. Who do you think should get the biggest slice of the pie?”

 

Frank looks at Ada as she stands, poised with the kitchen knife in her hand, ready to cut through the magnificent cherry pie full of ripe and colourful berries, edged with a golden crust of pastry. “Why you of course, Mrs. Watsford.” he says matter-of-factly. “You’re the one who made it for all of us. You deserve the biggest share for all your hard work.”

 

Ada considers the bright eyed young man sitting at her table. “I like your thinking, Frank.” she says at length with a smile as she cuts into the steaming pie before her.

 

*Mither is an old fashioned Scottish word for mother.

 

**Faither is an old fashioned Scottish word for father.

 

***The Hebrides is an archipelago comprising hundreds of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. Divided into the Inner and Outer Hebrides groups, they are home to rugged landscapes, fishing villages and remote Gaelic-speaking communities.

 

****What we know today as New Zealand was once the Colony of New Zealand. It was a Crown colony of the British Empire that encompassed the islands of New Zealand from 1841 to 1907. The power of the British Government was vested in the governor of New Zealand. The colony had three successive capitals: Okiato (or Old Russell) in 1841; Auckland from 1841 to 1865; and Wellington, which became the capital during the colony's reorganisation into a Dominion, and continues as the capital of New Zealand today. During the early years of British settlement, the governor had wide-ranging powers. The colony was granted self-government with the passage of the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852. The first parliament was elected in 1853, and responsible government was established in 1856. The governor was required to act on the advice of his ministers, who were responsible to the parliament. In 1907, the colony became the Dominion of New Zealand, which heralded a more explicit recognition of self-government within the British Empire.

 

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

 

*****Bràmair in Gaelic is commonly used as a term for girlfriend, boyfriend or sweetheart.

 

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

 

*******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.

 

********A costermonger is a person who traditionally sells fruit and vegetables outside from a cart rather than in a shop.

 

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

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

On the table the is a cherry tart made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The blue and white crockery on the table I have bought as individual from several online sellers on E-Bay. I imagine that whole sets were once sold, but now I can only find them piecemeal. The cutlery I bought as a teenager from a high street dollhouse suppliers. The pottery ale jug comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in England. The glass of ale comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The cottage ware teapot in the foreground was made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched roof and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics. The vase of flowers came from a 1:12 miniatures stockist on E-Bay. The tablecloth is actually a piece of an old worn sheet that was destined for the dustbin.

 

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 Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and a jar of S.P.C. peaches. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, except the jar of S.P.C. peaches which comes from Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom. All of them have great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Today however we have headed east of Cavendish Mews, down through St James’, around Trafalgar Square and up Charing Cross Road, where, near the corner of Great Newport Street, Lettice is visiting A. H. Mayhew’s*, a bookshop in the heart of London’s specialist and antiquarian bookseller district, patronised by her father, Viscount Wrexham. It is here that Lettice hopes to find the perfect present for her oldest and dearest childhood chum, Gerald Bruton. Gerald is 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. It will soon be his birthday, and Lettice is treating him to an evening at the Café Royal** in Regent Street. However, she also wants something less ephemeral than a glittering evening out to dinner for Gerald to look back on in the years ahead as he turns twenty-five. Knowing how much he loves books, but also knowing that any profits his fledgling atelier makes must be re-invested in his business rather than indulging in books, Lettice has settled upon acquiring a beautiful and unusual volume for him from amongst the many tomes housed in Mr. Mayhew’s bookshop.

 

As Lettice lingers out the front of Mr. Mayhew’s, enjoying the luxury of peering through his tall plate glass windows that proudly bear his name and advertise that he does purchase libraries of old books, knowing that whether she is lucky enough to spot the perfect gift in the window display or not, somewhere amidst the full shelves inside, there will be a wonderful book for Gerald. She releases a shuddering sigh from deep within her chest as she remembers the last time she peered through these self-same windows in October of 1923 when the book she hoped to find was to give to Selwyn as a birthday gift in an effort to further solidify her commitment to him in his eyes. Her plan was to give him the book she bought – a copy of a volume of John Nash’s*** architectural drawings including his designs for the Royal Pavilion built for the Prince Regent in Brighton, Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace – at private dinner that he had arranged for the two of them at the Savoy****. However, from there everything had gone awry. When Lettice arrived at the Savoy and was shown to the table for two Selwyn had reserved for them, she was confronted not with the smiling face of her beau, but the haughty and cruel spectre of his mother, the Duchess of Walmsford, Lady Zinnia. Lady Zinnia, and Selwyn’s Uncle Bertrand had been attempting to marry him off to his cousin, 1923 debutante Pamela Fox-Chavers. Lady Zinnia had, up until that moment been snubbing Lettice, so Selwyn and Lettice arranged for Lettice to attend as many London Season events that year as possible where Selwyn and Pamela were also in attendance so that Lettice and Selwyn could spend time together, and at the same time make their intentions so well known that Lady Zinnia wouldn’t be able to avoid Lettice any longer. What the pair hadn’t calculated for in their plans was that Lady Zinnia is a woman who likes intrigue and revenge, and the revenge she launched upon Lettice that evening at the Savoy was bitterly harsh and painful. With a cold and calculating smile Lady Zinna announced that she had packed Selwyn off to Durban in South Africa for a year. She made a pact with her son: if he went away for a year, a year during which he agreed neither to see, nor correspond with Lettice, if he comes back and doesn’t feel the same way about her as he did when he left, he agreed that he will marry Pamela, just as Bertrand and Lady Zinnia planned. If however, he still feels the same way about Lettice when he returns, Lady Zinnia agreed that she would concede and will allow him to marry her. The volumes in Mr. Mayhew’s window begin to shimmer and blur as tears begin to sting Lettice’s eyes and impair her vision.

 

“Still.” Lettice breathes bitterly as she allows her head to lower as she closes her eyes. “Still, I cannot think of Selwyn without wanting to cry.” she thinks. “What is wrong with me? Come on. Pull yourself together, girl. Don’t let Lady Zinnia win.”

 

She sniffs and sighs deeply, taking a few deep breaths as she slowly regains her composure. After a few minutes of standing in front of the shop’s window, appearing to all the passers-by to be just another keen window shopper, Lettice finally feels composed enough to enter the shop.

 

“You won’t get the better of me, Lady Zinnia,” she mutters through barred teeth. “And you won’t destroy my love of books, nor my love for my best friend.”

 

She walks up to the recessed door of the bookshop which she pushes open. A cheerful bell dings loudly above her head, announcing her presence. As the door closes behind her, it shuts out the general cacophony of noisy automobiles, chugging busses and passing shoppers’ conversations. The shop envelops her in a cozy muffled silence produced by the presence of so many shelves fully laden with the volumes of the past. She inhales deeply and savours the smell of dusty old books and pipe smoke, which comfort and assure her that she has come to a safe place that will assuage her damaged heart. The walls are lined with floor to ceiling shelves, all full of books: thousands of volumes on so many subjects. Summer sunlight pours through the tall shop windows facing out to the street, highlighting the worn Persian and Turkish carpets whose hues, once so bright, vivid and exotic, have softened with exposure to the sunlight and any number of pairs of boots and shoes of customers, who like Lettice, searched Mayhew’s shelves for the perfect book to take away with them. Dust motes, something Lettice always associates with her father’s library in Wiltshire, dance blithely through beams of sunlight before disappearing without a trace into the shadows.

 

Lettice makes her way through the shop, wandering along its narrow aisles, reaching up to touch various Moroccan leather spines embossed with gilt lettering of titles and authors, until she nears the middle of the shop, where sitting at his desk before a small coal fire, smoking his pipe, sits the bespectacled proprietor, Mr. Mayhew, in his usual uniform of jacket, vest and bowtie, carefully cataloguing volumes he has acquired from a recent country house contents auction***** he attended in Buckinghamshire, his pipe hanging from his mouth, occasionally emitting puffs of acrid grey smoke as he works. The portly, balding gentleman is so wrapped up in his work that he does not notice Lettice as she walks up to his desk.

 

“Mr. Mayhew., how do you do” Lettice says, clearing her throat, her clipped tones slicing through the thick silence of the shop.

 

“Ahh,” Mr. Mayhew sighs with delight, puffing out another small cloud of pipe smoke as he realises who is standing before him. Removing the pipe from his mouth, he peers over the top of his gold rimmed spectacles. “Why if it isn’t my favourite Wiltshire reader herself.” He takes one final pleasurable puff of his pipe before reaching behind him and putting it aside on the pipe rack sitting precariously on the little coal fire’s narrow mantle shelf.

 

“I’m almost certain that you say that to every reader whom you know well, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice rolls her eyes and smiles indulgently.

 

“Not every reader I know well come from Wiltshire though, Miss Chetwynd” the old man remarks with a chuckle, lifting himself out of the comfort of the well worn chair behind his desk, wiping his hands down the front of his thick black barathea vest.

 

“You’re just like my Aunt Egg, complimentary, but with an air of mystery.”

 

“There is no mystery to me, Miss Chetwynd.” He reaches out and takes Lettice’s dainty glove clad hand and squeezes it. “I am like,” He chuckles lightly. “An open book as it were.” He sweeps his free hand expansively around him, indicating to all the tomes lining the shelves that hedge his cluttered workspace. “I will pay a compliment to any customer who takes the time to enter my shop, appreciate my books, and speak to me with politeness: especially when they are as pretty as you, Miss Chetwynd.” He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it.

 

“Oh, Mr. Mayhew!” Lettice laughs. “You speak such sweet, honeyed words.”

 

He gasps. “I do hope, Miss Chetwynd, that you don’t consider me to be as duplicitous as Richard III.” the old man says, picking up on Lettice’s literary Shakesperean reference******.

 

“Never, Mr. Mayhew!” Lettice exclaims

 

“Very good, Miss Chetwynd,” Mr. Mayhew replies. “I would hate for you to misjudge my motivations. I didn’t establish my little bookshop simply to make money. What a ludicrous idea that any shopkeeper would set up his establishment just to make money, when he can take equal measure of profit and pleasure from his endeavours. I have a great love of books, Miss Chetwynd, as I know you do too, my dear, both the written word and the engraving,” He waves his hands expansively at the floor to ceiling bookshelves around him, filled with hundreds of volumes on all manner of subjects. “As well you know.”

 

“Indeed Mr. Mayhew. I enjoy nothing more than spending time in my father’s library at Glynes, where more than one of your own volumes sits on his shelves.”

 

“And how is His Lordship, Miss Chetwynd? I sent him a beautiful 1811 calfskin vellum******* edition of Voltaire a few weeks ago with some lovely hand tinted engravings, a marbleised cover and colourful gilt bindings.”

 

“He is well, thank you Mr. Mayhew. I saw him just a few weeks ago, although it was only a fleeting visit, so he didn’t show me your volume of Voltaire.”

 

“A fleeting visit, Miss Chetwynd?” Mr. Mayhew queries. “What a pity you didn’t tarry longer with His Lordship. You must have him show you the Voltaire next time you go home to stay, Miss Chetwynd. Really it is rather lovely. It came to me after being sold at the second Stowe House Great Sale******** in 1921. I wanted to make sure it went to the right home, and I could think of no-one better than your father to be its custodian.”

 

“I have no doubt that it is, Mr. Mayhew. However, this time I went to Wiltshire not for pleasure, but to meet a gentleman who wishes to have a room redecorated as a surprise for his wife.”

 

“So, your interior design business is going well then, Miss Chetwynd?” Mr. Mayhew queries.

 

“It is indeed, Mr. Mayhew,” Lettice affirms. “Perhaps more successful than I had ever dreamed.”

 

“Well, that is splendid news, Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Mayhew purrs rubbing his hands together. “And will you be accepting this gentleman’s commission.”

 

“Perhaps against my better judgement, I am, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice admits.

 

“Against your better judgement, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Well,” Lettice sighs. “The lady for whom this gentleman wants the room designed is his wife, and she is currently redecorating many other parts of the house. I am concerned that she won’t appreciate an interloper like me coming in and enforcing my designs upon her home. However, Mr. Gifford, the gentleman, assured me that if his wife doesn’t like it, he will accept any and all blame. So, in spite of my misgivings, I have accepted. Like Richard III, Mr. Gifford wooed me with his honeyed words.” Lettice sighs again. “In addition, he is the godson of Henry Tipping********* who has promised me a favourable review in Country Life********** if Mrs. Gifford likes the room.”

 

“Splendid! Splendid!” Mr. Mayhew says comfortingly. “We all have doubts and misgivings sometimes, Miss Chetwynd, however it sounds like a reasonable gamble.”

 

“I do hope you are right, Mr. Mayhew.”

 

“Now, what is it that I can entice you to add to your bookshelves today, Miss Chetwynd?” Mr. Mayhew steps out from behind his cluttered desk and speaks as he moves. “Something to help inspire you with this fraught new commission, perhaps?”

 

“Oh, that is a lovely idea, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice replies. “However, it isn’t me that I’ve come looking for a book for.”

 

“Then to what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“I want something for my friend, Mr. Bruton, Mr. Mayhew.”

 

“The costumier?” Mr. Mayhew queries.

 

“The couturier.” Lettice corrects the bookseller.

 

“Of course, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“He turns twenty-five next week, and I would like to find him a beautiful book on fashion for him to enjoy.”

 

“Oh.” Mr. Mayhew utters with a mixture of disappointment and concern. “Well, I’m afraid that I don’t have anything contemporary, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“Oh, I don’t want something contemporary, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice assures him. “Rather I want something that is beautifully illustrated that he might enjoy.”

 

“Well, in that case, Miss Chetwynd, I may have some things that might suit your friend Mr. Bruton. I just hope that I shan’t disappoint you, my dear Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Mayhew returns her smile.

 

“You never disappoint me, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice counters. “But you never cease to surprise me, either.” she adds with the heavy implication that she hopes he can find for her the perfect birthday present for Gerald.

 

As if she has uttered magic words to strike the old bookseller into action, Mr. Mayhew’s face animates. “Then let Mayhew’s not let you down today, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

Mr. Mayhew picks up his spectacles and puts them on the bridge of his nose again before looking around him, squinting as he considers what buried treasures are hidden amidst the tomes on the shelves in the darkened, cosy interior of his bookshop. As a proprietor who knows his stock well – almost like one would know a family – he says, “I think I might have just the thing. Please, take a seat, Miss Chetwynd.” He indicates to the chair on the opposite side of the desk to his own. “If I may beg your indulgence, I won’t be too long.”

 

“You may, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice replies.

 

The bookseller makes a small bow before he bustles off, disappearing amidst the bookshelves.

 

Lettice initially perches herself on the edge of the rather hard Arts and Crafts wooden seat and peruses Mr. Mayhew’s cluttered desk which is piled with old leather volumes, some of which speak of times long ago with their worn covers and aged pages. Then she spies a book of beautiful rose prints standing open on top of the ornate mahogany bookshelf to the left of the fireplace. Standing up, she walks over to it and gently begins turning the pages, admiring the beautiful engraved*********** illustrations.

 

“That’s a very fine copy of Redouté’s*********** Roses from the 1820s with beautiful stipple engravings************. You have exquisite taste, Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Mayhew says as he returns with several volumes in his arms.

 

“Then it is my mother who has good taste, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice replies. “I was just admiring it because I know my mother has a copy of this book in the morning room at Glynes. I think my father is a little jealous of her having it.”

 

“I would be too, Miss Chetwynd.” the old bookseller remarks as he slips the volumes with a soft thud atop the other closed books on his desk. “Now! Here we are!” Mr. Mayhew indicates to the books he has come back with. “Hopefully there is something here that Mr. Bruton will like.”

 

Lettice returns to her seat, whilst Mr. Mayhew also returns to his behind the desk. He hands her a large but slender volume with a rust coloured cover. Lettice reads on its cover in bold black printed typeface that it is a catalogue of ladies’ shoes from historical times to the present.

 

“It’s from the early 1810s, Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Mayhew says proudly. “Around the time our beloved Miss Auten penned Sense and Sensibility, so even though it speaks of history in the title, the volume itself has become a part of history.”

 

Lettice murmurs her own delight as she turns the pages and looks at beautiful engravings of dainty shoes with fine court heels: each illustration clearly showing even the finest of details of each shoe. The illustrations are arranged in colours and dates, with three slippers illustrated on every page. “Delightful!” Lettice opines.

 

“Then there is this.” Mr. Mayhew holds out another volume, this time with an aquamarine coloured cover.

 

“Revue des Chapeaux,” Lettice reads.

 

“Published during the war, this book’s pages review in brilliant pictorial detail, millinery styles between 1913 and 1917.” Mr. Mayhew says with a sigh. “The photographs really are quite stylish, as is the presentation.”

 

Lettice turns the pages, admiring the images showing each hat usually contained, but occasionally stretching out of, a circle. The black and white photographs have been partially tinted before being printed to draw attention to some of the elegant ruffles and soft fabric roses of each hat. Lettice chuckles to herself as she spies a royal blue hat with a brim significantly smaller than some of the voluminous hats her mother wore before the war, the hat’s crown dominated by a bunch of pink hyacinths. “I used to have a hat similar to this.” Lettice muses, patting her own green cloche hat self-consciously as she does, as if distracted enough to believe that she is still wearing the old fashioned pre-war hat with its whimsical bouquet of flowers sticking from it.

 

“Did you indeed, Miss Chetwynd?” Mr. Mayhew purrs.

 

“Yes.” Lettice replies, suddenly snapping out of her reverie. “I think this one, however lovely, is perhaps not quite to Gerald’s taste.”

 

“Very well Miss Chetwynd.” the bookseller says obsequiously, withdrawing the offending volume. “As you wish.” He then fumbles a little as he takes a rather thin catalogue from beneath a much larger volume. He looks carefully at Lettice before asking, “You won’t be offended by a German volume, will you?”

 

Lettice laughs. “Good heavens, no, Mr, Mayhew! You sell my father antiquarian versions of Gothe*************! As his daughter, how could I possibly be offended?”

 

“No, of course not, Miss Chetwynd. Well,” Mr. Mayhew says rather awkwardly. “Will Mr. Bruton take offence?”

 

“I doubt it, Mr. Mayhew.” Lettice replies.

 

“That’s good, because in the years of anti-German sentiment of the war, after the Lusitania’s sinking**************, I had to hide this beautiful catalogue, along with quite a number of other books which I have only just recently started returning to my post-war shelves.”

 

Lettice takes the Victorian catalogue from Mr. Mayhew’s hands and opens it.

 

“It is a catalogue of coats, furs and blouses from 1898 from a Berlin manufacturer.”

 

She flips through the fine pages beautifully illustrated with chromolithographs***************. Ladies with synched waists and protruding bosoms thanks to the influence of S-bend corsets**************** wearing feather and flower adorned hats and bonnets, show off fur tippets*****************, automobiling coats and jackets with leg-o’-mutton sleeves******************. “Beautiful!” Lettice murmurs with admiration, running her hand over one mode of a woman in a coat of deep violet with fur lapels.

 

“I thought you might like that one, Miss Chetwynd.” Mr. Mayhew says proudly. “Of course, I only show this to a very small selection of privileged clients whom I think may be interested in it.”

 

“Well thank you, Mr, Mayhew.” Lettice replies with satisfaction. “I’m most grateful you did. I think this will do nicely for Gerald.”

 

“But wait, Miss Chetwynd. I do have one more volume to show you.” He holds up a very large buff coloured volume before handing it to Lettice. “It’s not marked, but this is a volume of Art Nouveau jewellery from Paris.”

 

Lettice gasps as she turns the pages of the volume in her lap as the sinuous, feminine lines of art nouveau appear in image after image in the shape of combs and pins, necklaces, cufflinks, brooches, cravat pins, hairpins, bracelets, hatpins and tiaras: fabulous creations made of gold, silver and platinum, studded with precious and semi-precious stones. Mr. Mayhew smiles and nods as he looks at Lettice’s transfixed face.

 

“For all his love of modernity, Gerald does have a rather silly soft spot for Art Nouveau.” Lettice utters.

 

“Then might I recommend that volume, Miss Chetwynd?”

 

“Mr. Mayhew, yet again you never cease to amaze me with what you have within your shop. I think you have just found me, the perfect birthday gift for Gerald.”

 

“Splendid, Miss Chetwynd! Splendid!” Mr. Mayhew claps. “I’ll return the others then.”

 

As he begins gather up the books, Lettice adds, “I’ll take the German catalogue too.” She smiles. “It seems a shame for it to remain hidden away. I’ll give it to Gerald for Christmas!”

 

“Very good, Miss Chetwynd.” the old bookseller acknowledges.

 

As he returns from having put the other two volumes back on the shelves from where they came, Mr. Mayhew asks Lettice, “By the way, Miss Chetwynd, I meant to ask you how your young aspiring architect liked the volume of John Nash’s architectural drawings you bought him?”

 

Lettice’s face, so bright and flushed with colour, suddenly drains and falls.

 

“Oh dear!” Mr, Mayhew gasps, putting his pudgy fingers to his mouth. “Did I just drop a social briquette, my dear Miss Chetwynd?”

 

Quickly recovering herself, Lettice blusters with false joviality, “No! No, Mr. Mayhew! Not at all!”

 

“However?” the old man asks, indicating for Lettice to go on with her unspoken statement.

 

“Well,” Lettice continues. “It’s just, I don’t actually know whether he liked it or not.” Remembering the book wrapped up gaily in bright paper and decorated with a satin ribbon left abandoned on her seat at the Savoy, she continues, “Things didn’t quite eventuate the way we’d planned for my friend’s birthday. He had to leave England quite unexpectedly, and I didn’t see him that night.” She pauses. “He… he’s gone to Durban for a year or so.”

 

“Oh.” Mr. Mayhew exclaims, shocked by her statement, knowing what he does about Lettice’s attachment to Selwyn. “But he will be back, Miss Chetwynd?” He returns to his seat behind the desk and reaches for his pipe. Striking a match, he lights it and puffs away with concern on it as he looks to Lettice.

 

Lettice doesn’t reply straight away, watching the bookseller looking her earnestly in the face, awaiting a response. “I hope so.” When Mr. Mayhew’s face falls, she quickly adds, “Of course! Of course he will return, Mr. Mayhew! Of course!” She cannot countenance losing her steely resolve and breaking down in tears in Mr. Mayhew’s bookshop.

 

Sensing Lettice’s unhappiness and awkwardness, Mr. Mayhew quickly pipes up, “Well, you can give it to him when he returns, Miss Chetwynd.” He begins fumbling through the pile of books he had been cataloguing before Lettice’s arrival. “That’s the good thing about books,” he says as he rifles through the marbleised volumes with leather spines. “Unlike cakes and chocolate, they will keep.”

 

“Yes,” Lettice breathes, sighing with relief at Mr. Mayhew’s perceptiveness and kindness. “You’re quite right.”

 

“Aha!” Mr. Mayhew withdraws a volume from the pile. “Here it is.” He hands it to Lettice. “Have you ever read this?”

 

“Jane Eyre.” Lettice reads from the gilded letters on the spine. “No, Mr. Mayhew. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by the Brontë sisters.”

 

“Tut-tut, Miss Chetwynd!” Mr. Mayhew admonishes her teasingly. “You don’t know what literary treasures you have been missing out on all these years of your young life. Start with Miss Eyre. Take it from me as a gift.” He smiles.

 

“Oh, but Mr. Mayhew!” Lettice exclaims.

 

“Take it!” he sweeps her protestations aside. “I have plenty of other volumes of it on my shelves. It was just part of this lot, and I wanted it for the seven 1811 volumes of The History of Charles Grandison*******************.”

 

“But Mr. Mayhew…”

 

“You’ll be doing me a favour, Miss Chetwynd.” he assures her. “Really you will.”

 

Lettice turns the pretty volume over in her hands.

 

“Besides, I think you may just find Miss Eyre to be a little bit of an inspiration for you, Miss Chetwynd.”

 

“How so, Mr, Mayhew?”

 

“Well, Jane Eyre came to know a lot about the vicissitudes of life.”

 

*A. H. Mayhew was once one of many bookshops located in London’s Charring Cross Road, an area still famous today for its bookshops, perhaps most famously written about by American authoress Helene Hanff who wrote ’84, Charing Cross Road’, which later became a play and then a 1987 film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Number 56. Charing Cross Road was the home of Mayhew’s second-hand and rare bookshop. Closed after the war, their premises is now the home of Any Amount of Books bookshop.

 

**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.

 

***John Nash (18 January 1752 – 13 May 1835) was one of the foremost British architects of the Georgian and Regency eras, during which he was responsible for the design, in the neoclassical and picturesque styles, of many important areas of London. His designs were financed by the Prince Regent and by the era's most successful property developer, James Burton. Nash also collaborated extensively with Burton's son, Decimus Burton.

 

****The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first hotel in Britain to introduce electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel. The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has two hundred and sixty seven guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.

 

*****British and Irish country house contents auctions are usually held on site at the country house, and have been used to raise funds for their owners, usually before selling the house and estate. Such auctions include the sale of high quality antique paintings, furniture, objets d'art, tapestries, books, and other household items. Whilst auctions of estates was nothing new, by 1924 when this story is set, the sun was already setting on the glory days of the country house, and landed gentry who were asset rich but cash poor began selling off properties and their contents to pay for increased rates of income tax and death duties.

 

******In Shakespeare’s Richard III, after killing her first husband, Richard pursues Lady Anne, charming her and wearing her down until the mourning widow finally agrees to may him, only to discover that his charms are all a farce, and that in reality, he despises her, and thinks of her as mothing more than a trophy won, and to them be discarded. She opines to Queen Elizabeth:

“Even in so short a space, my woman's heart

Grossly grew captive to his honey words

And proved the subject of my own soul's curse,

Which ever since hath kept my eyes from rest;

For never yet one hour in his bed

Have I enjoy'd the golden dew of sleep,

But have been waked by his timorous dreams.”

 

*******Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin, or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellum is prepared for writing and printing on single pages, scrolls, and codices.

 

********Stowe House is a grade I listed country house in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of the private Stowe School and is owned by the Stowe House Preservation Trust. Over the years, it has been restored and maintained as one of the finest country houses in the UK. Stowe House is regularly open to the public. The house is the result of four main periods of development. Between 1677 and 1683, the architect William Cleare was commissioned by Sir Richard Temple to build the central block of the house. This building was four floors high, including the basement and attics and thirteen bays in length. From the 1720s to 1733, under Viscount Cobham, additions to the house included the Ionic North colonnaded portico by Sir John Vanburgh, as well as the re-building of the north, east and west fronts. The exterior of the house has not been significantly changed since 1779, although in the first decade of the Nineteenth Century, the Egyptian Hall was added beneath the North Portico as a secondary entrance. The house contained not one but three major libraries. Held by the aristocratic Grenville-Temple family since 1677, Reverend Luis C.F.T. Morgan-Grenville inherited Stowe House from his brother Richard G. Morgan-Grenville who died fighting at Ploegsteert Wood during the Great War in 1914. The Reverend sold Stowe House and most of its contents in 1921. The second Great Sale in October 1921, in which 3,700 lots were sold by Jackson-Stop Auctioneers.

 

*********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.

 

************Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840), was a painter and botanist from Belgium, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at the Château de Malmaison, many of which were published as large coloured stipple engravings. He was nicknamed "the Raphael of flowers" and has been called the greatest botanical illustrator of all time

 

************Stipple engraving is a technique perfected by Pierre Joseph Redouté which helped him reproduce his botanical illustrations. The medium involved engraving a copper plate with a dense grid of dots that could be modulated to convey delicate gradations of colour. Because the ink rested on the paper in miniscule dots, it did not obscure the “light” of the paper beneath the colour. After the complicated printing process was complete, the prints were hand finished in watercolour to conform to the models Redouté provided.

 

*************Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) was a German polymath and writer, who is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late Eighteenth Century to the present day. Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour.

 

*************Following the torpedoing and subsequent sinking of the British Cunard passenger liner RSM Lusitania by a German submarine (U-boat) in 1915, resulting in the loss of 1,195 deaths including many women and children, there was a wave of anti-German sentiment throughout Britain. Mobs of angry people stormed through the streets of British cities, hurling bricks through the windows of shops and restaurants with German sounding names, stealing merchandise in some cases, setting fires in others. Hotels refused rooms to people with Germanic names like Muller or Schultz, even when they could produce documents proving their British citizenship. Homes were ransacked and people driven from them, cars were vandalised, music by Mozart, Strauss and other German composers banned, German books destroyed, bottles of German Mosel smashed and according to more than one report of the day – a few mentally deficient patriots did their bit for the cause by chasing poor dachshunds down the street kicking them, or killing them!

 

***************Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints. This type of colour printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and includes all types of lithography that are printed in colour. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrome is frequently used.

 

****************Created by a specific style of corset popular between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the outbreak of the Great War, the S-bend is characterized by a rounded, forward leaning torso with hips pushed back. This shape earned the silhouette its name; in profile, it looks similar to a tilted letter S.

 

*****************A tippet is a piece of clothing worn over the shoulders in the shape of a scarf or cape. Tippets evolved in the fourteenth century from long sleeves and typically had one end hanging down to the knees. By the 1920s, tippets were usually made of fox, mink or other types of fur.

 

******************A leg-o’-mutton sleeve (also known in French as the gigot sleeve) was initially named due to its unusual shape: formed from a voluminous gathering of fabric at the upper arm that tapers to a tight fit from the elbow to the wrist. First seen in fashionable dress in the 1820s, the sleeve became popular between approximately 1825 and 1833 – but by the time Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, the overblown sleeves had completely disappeared in favour of a more subdued style. The trend returned in the 1890s, with sleeves growing in size – much to the ridicule of the media – until 1906 when the mode once again changed.

 

*******************The History of Sir Charles Grandison, commonly called Sir Charles Grandison, is an epistolary novel by English writer Samuel Richardson first published in February 1753. The book was a response to Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which parodied the morals presented in Richardson's previous novels.

 

This dark, cosy and slightly cluttered bookshop may appear real to you, but it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

All the books that you see lining the shelves of Mr. Mayhew’s bookshop are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. So too are all the books you see both open and closed on Mr. Mayhew’s desk. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside five of the books he has made. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this volume and the others, the books contain dozens of double sided pages of images and writing. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. For example, published in 1917, “Revue des Chapeaux” (the book at the front on the right) reviews in brilliant pictorial detail, millinery styles between 1913 and 1917. The pages shown in my photo may be seen photographed from the actual book and uploaded to Flickr in these two links: here ( www.flickr.com/photos/taffeta/7062767671/in/album-7215762... ) and here ( www.flickr.com/photos/taffeta/7062758273/in/album-7215762... ). The other books are also real books, including the catalogue of historical ladies’ shoes from 1812, the French book of Art Nouveau jewellery and metalwork design, the jacket catalogue from a Berlin manufacturer and the copy of Les Roses (1824) by Pierre-Joseph Redouté in the background to the upper left-hand corner of the photograph. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just a few of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

Also on the desk beneath the books are some old papers and a desk calendar which I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The Chippendale desk itself is made by Bespaq, and it has a mahogany stain and the design is taken from a real Chippendale desk. Its surface is covered in red dioxide red dioxide leather with a gilt trim. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.

 

The photos you can see in the background, all of which are all real photos, are produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from various suppliers, but all are metal.

 

The aspidistra in the blue jardiniere that can just be seen to the right of the fireplace in the background, the pipe and pipe stand, and the map also came from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The gold flocked Edwardian wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

■ Itinerant Dinosaur Exhibition which took place in September 2015 in Torrejon de Ardoz (Madrid, Spain). Besides the many life-size dinosaur replicas (some of them animatronic, even offered as rides for young children) it also featured a prehistoric tour showing the way of life of Neanderthals, an assorted fossil collection and a hosted multimedia show. All in all, very worthwhile as an educational event and extremely enjoyable to children and parents alike.

 

Pic 20 of 30: Neanderthal people in their habitat after hunting deer for food.

 

Taken handheld with my Panasonic Lumix TZ7 (ZS3) in very scarce and rapidly changing available light, which made using the small built-in flash mandatory as well as selecting ISO 200/400 in all shots for increased flash range to cater for the very large subjects.

.

 

■ Exhibición itinerante de dinosaurios que tuvo lugar en Septiembre de 2015 en Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid). Además de las muchas réplicas a tamaño real de dinosaurios de todo tipo (algunos de ellos animatrónicos, que los niños podían montar) también incluía un recorrido por la prehistoria mostrando el modo de vida de los Neandertales, una colección de fósiles variados y un espectáculo multimedia conducido por un animador. En conclusión, una exhibición muy válida como evento educativo y un gran disfrute para padres e hijos.

 

Foto 20 de 30: Hombres de Neandertal en su habitat después de cazar ciervos para comer.

 

Tomada a pulso con mi Panasonic Lumix TZ7 (ZS3) en luz ambiente muy escasa y rápidamente variable, que hizo obligatorio el uso del pequeño flash incorporado y la elección de ISO 200/400 en todas las fotos para aumentar el alcance del flash en vista del gran tamaño de los sujetos.

Miscouche, PEI

Holga

Offered in the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Consumers’ Guide for 1894.

Offers of treats didn't have the same result this time around... call it a case of pre-Doodlebops hysteria or something. Still, it was a worthy attempt... and you can really imagine little T screaming "Cheeeeeeese!" here. April 9, 2009.

SL Free & Offers in Second Life

 

mejoratuapariencia-mta.blogspot.com/2012/07/urban-styles-...

My blog: slfreeworldforall.blogspot.com/2012/07/urban-styles-3.html

 

.:* Him *:.

The Makeup & Tattoo Hunt

 

~Tableau Vivant~ / Salon de GLOW / Redgrave / :Wicked Tattoos: / * .:: deeR ::. / Ydea / +grasp+ / Phoebe's Piercings / :..SANTO..:

  

.:* Her *:.

Hair Fair 2012 / Things for Woman / One Voice Fundraiser

 

[ Al Vulo! ] / Calico Ingmann Creations! / .Insufferable Dastard .ID. / ::Modish:: / -FD- tattoo's / *RoTtEn DeFiAnCe* - [*RD*]* / [b.nuts] / SuPerBia / pr!tty / Phoebe's Piercings / [ S H O C K ] / ..::Energie::..

 

Pose: GOLA

That's if 118 takes it's E138-50 with it to Croydon (C).

 

Euro 5

ZF Ecolife 6AP 6-speed gearbox

Cummins ISBe6.7 250hp engine

ADL Trident 10.2m

ADL Enviro400

H41/26D + 25 standees

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French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès "Carboplane", no. 796.

 

During our trip to Italy, the French actress Françoise Arnoul passed away after a long illness in Paris on 20 July 2021. In the early 1950s, the cute and pretty actress was presented as the new French sex symbol. Soon she was overshadowed by the spectacular Brigitte Bardot, but Arnoul had enough talent and range to forge a decent film career for herself. Françoise Arnoul was 90.

 

Françoise Arnoul was born as Françoise Annette Marie Mathilde Gautsch in Constantine, France (now Algeria), in 1931. Her father was a general in the army, Charles Gautsch; her mother was a former stage actress, Jeanne Gradwohl, who worked before her marriage under the name of Jeanne Henry. Françoise grew up in Rabat and Casablanca, and after WWII she returned to Paris. Her mother proved to be valuable support when her daughter expressed a desire to take courses in drama. She attended the drama classes of Andree Bauer-Thérond, and made her film debut as an extra in Rendez-vous de Juillet/Rendezvous in July (Jacques Becker, 1949). Her first bigger role was in L'Épave/Sin and Desire (Willy Rozier, 1949) in which she had some undressed scenes. It made her a star overnight. She was touted as the newest French sex symbol in films like Nous irons à Paris/We Will All Go to Paris (Jean Boyer, 1950) opposite nice and attractive Philippe Lemaire. In the morally rigid 1950s, she played sexy and sensuous characters, that were also often troubled and destructive. She was the perverse femme fatale in films like the Georges Siménon adaptation Le Fruit défendu/Forbidden Fruit (Henri Verneuil, 1952) in which she seduces a country doctor played by Fernandel, La Rage au corps/Tempest in the Flesh (Ralph Habib, 1953) in which she is the unfaithful wife of Raymond Pellegrin, and especially in the wildly successful Film Noir La Chatte/The Cat (Henri Decoin, 1958) in which she played a black leather-clad resistance fighter during World War II. Arnoul made of her questioning scene by the Nazis an erotic extravaganza as she slowly removes her stockings under the officer's lecherous eyes.

 

The unusually pretty and petite Françoise Arnoul proved her talent and range in such highly regarded films as Michelangelo Antonioni’s episode film I Vinti/The Vanquished (1953), the wonderful Fernandel comedy Le Mouton à cinq pattes/The Sheep Has Five Legs (Henri Verneuil, 1954), and Jean Cocteau's Le Testament d'Orphee/The Testament of Orpheus (1960). In Jean Renoir's classic French Cancan/French Can-Can (1955), she played Nini, a young laundress from Montmartre, who conquers the Moulin Rouge with her sexy dance. In 1964, during the shooting of Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murder (Costa-Gavras, 1965), she met director Bernard Paul who would become her life partner. From 1956 till 1960, she had been married to publicity agent Georges Cravenne, the future father of the César and Mollière awards. In the following years, she focussed on assisting Paul with his first films. Together with Marina Vlady, they founded in 1968 the production company Francina, which would produce films like Dernière sortie avant Roissy/Last Exit Before Roissy (Bernard Paul, 1977). Paul died in 1980. His loss affected Francoise dearly and she had difficulty regaining a foothold in the cinema. During the 1970s, her film career had tapered off, but she appeared in Raul Ruiz’ Diálogos de exiliados/Dialogues of the Exiled (1975) and Violette & François (Jacques Rouffio, 1977) as the mother of Violette (Isabelle Adjani). She also had some success as a television actress. In the late 1990s, Françoise Arnoul returned on the screen in character roles in such films as Temps de Chien/Dog Days (Jean Marboeuf, 1996), Post coitum animal triste/Smell of Geraniums (Brigitte Roüan, 1997) and Merci pour le geste/Thanks for the Gesture (Claude Faraldo, 2000). She published her autobiography entitled 'Animal doué de Bonheur' (Animal Endowed with Happiness) in 1995. In 1997, she was the president of the jury of the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Françoise Arnoul remained active as a TV actress. In his bio at Les Gens de Cinéma, Yvan Foucart wrote: "The young vamp has given way to a blooming woman whose wonderful face radiates serenity. She kept her beautiful smile, her eyes still have the same sparkle and she kept an admirably slim silhouette. (...) So, dear Francoise, you understand why we can not forget you. And why we are still in love with you." At the age of 90, Françoise Arnoul passed away after a long illness in Paris on 20 July 2021.

 

Sources: Yvan Foucart (Les Gens de Cinéma - French), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), AlloCiné (French), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

Mid Bob Shaved Nape

Mid Bob Shaved Nape articles. Lovely Bob Hair Style Ideas ... Bob hairstyles are highly versatile and offer a timeless elegance combined with an incredible ...