Maine Bird List
View allAll Photos Tagged supplement
.
My 2019-2023 tours album is here:
www.flickr.com/gp/jenslpz/SKf0o8040w
My bird album is here:
www.flickr.com/gp/jenslpz/1240SmAXK4
My nature album is here:
www.flickr.com/gp/jenslpz/27PwYUERX2
My Canon EOS R / R5 / R6 album is here:
www.flickr.com/gp/jenslpz/bgkttsBw35
Kleiber (Sitta europaea) - Eurasian nuthatches
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber_(Art)
Der Kleiber (Sitta europaea) ist eine Vogelart aus der Familie der Kleiber.
Name
Der Name bezieht sich darauf, dass der Kleiber den Eingang von Bruthöhlen anderer Vögel, zum Beispiel die von Spechten, mit Lehm verklebt, um sie selbst zu nutzen. Der Begriff „Kleiber“ stammt aus dem Mittelhochdeutschen und bezeichnete Handwerker, die Lehmwände erstellten. Um die Höhle vor dem Zugriff von Mardern oder Krähen zu schützen, „mauern“ die Kleiber den Eingang zu ihren Bruthöhlen mit einer Mischung aus Lehm und Speichel so weit zu, dass sie gerade durchpassen. Der Kleiber wird auch „Spechtmeise“ genannt, da seine Lebensweise und sein Aussehen an beide Vögel – Spechte und Meisen – erinnert.
Ein Kleiber hat gerade die Bruthöhle, deren Eingang mit Lehm verkleinert wurde, verlassen
Merkmale
Der Kleiber erreicht eine Körperlänge von 12 bis 14,5 Zentimetern. Der Körper ist gedrungen mit großem Kopf, sehr kurzem Hals und kurzem Schwanz. Der Schnabel ist lang, spitz und grau gefärbt. Die Oberseite des Gefieders ist blaugrau und die Unterseite je nach Unterart weiß bis ockerfarbig oder rostrot gefärbt. Auf den immer rotbraun gefärbten Oberschwanzdecken sind große, weiße Flecken. Der Kleiber hat einen schwarzen Augenstreifen. Die Wangen und die Kehle sind weiß. Die Iris ist schwarz und die Beine sind orangegelb.
Stimme
Der Kleiber ist sehr ruffreudig und laut, daher ist er meistens als erster anhand seiner Stimme zu bemerken. Er hat ein umfangreiches Repertoire. Bei der Nahrungssuche ruft er einen scharf und spitz, etwa wie „zit“ klingenden Kontaktruf. Bei Erregung ruft er den kräftigen, lauten und etwa wie „twett“ klingenden Warnruf. Dieser wird oft in schnellen, kurzen Folgen mit kurzen Pausen zwischen mehreren Folgen gerufen.
Der Gesang besteht aus mehreren, lauten Strophen unterschiedlichen Typs, die von einer erhöhten Sitzwarte aus vorgetragen werden. Meist sind es langsame Folgen gleicher Pfeiftöne, die etwas an- oder absteigen können, etwa wie „wuih wuih wuih wuih...“ oder „wiiü wiiü wiiü wiiü“. Manche Varianten der Strophen können auch schnell, klar und trillernd, etwa wie „wiwiwiwiwiwi“, oder langsamer und rhythmischer gereiht, wie „djüdjüDJÜ djüdjüDJÜ“, klingen.
.
Eurasian nuthatch
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_nuthatch
The Eurasian nuthatch or wood nuthatch (Sitta europaea) is a small passerine bird found throughout the Palearctic and in Europe, where its name is the nuthatch. Like other nuthatches, it is a short-tailed bird with a long bill, blue-grey upperparts and a black eye-stripe. It is a vocal bird with a repeated loud dwip call. There are more than 20 subspecies in three main groups; birds in the west of the range have orange-buff underparts and a white throat, those in Russia have whitish underparts, and those in the east have a similar appearance to European birds, but lack the white throat.
Its preferred habitat is mature deciduous or mixed woodland with large, old trees, preferably oak. Pairs hold permanent territories, and nest in tree holes, usually old woodpecker nests, but sometimes natural cavities. If the entrance to the hole is too large, the female plasters it with mud to reduce its size, and often coats the inside of the cavity too. The 6–9 red-speckled white eggs are laid on a deep base of pine or other wood chips.
The Eurasian nuthatch eats mainly insects, particularly caterpillars and beetles, although in autumn and winter its diet is supplemented with nuts and seeds. The young are fed mainly on insects, with some seeds, food items mainly being found on tree trunks and large branches. The nuthatch can forage when descending trees head first, as well as when climbing. It readily visits bird tables, eating fatty man-made food items as well as seeds. It is an inveterate hoarder, storing food year-round. Its main natural predator is the Eurasian sparrowhawk.
Fragmentation of woodland can lead to local losses of breeding birds, but the species' range is still expanding. It has a large population and huge breeding area, and is therefore classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as being of least concern.
RSPB Bird Hide Llyn Vyrnwy Llanwddyn Oswestry Wales
What3Words
///boils.weeks.acrobatic
The Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus) is a small, lively songbird in the finch family (Fringillidae), known for its acrobatic feeding style and vibrant yellow-green plumage.
Key Characteristics
Appearance:
Males are distinctive with a bright yellow breast, black crown, and a small black bib. Females and juveniles are more subdued, appearing grey-green with heavy dark streaking on their undersides and no black cap. Both sexes have prominent yellow wing bars and a deeply forked tail with yellow sides.
Size:
They are very small, typically 11–12.5 cm long with a wingspan of 20–23 cm.
Diet:
Primarily granivorous, they specialize in extracting seeds from conifers (like spruce), alder, and birch trees. In spring, they may supplement their diet with insects to provide protein for their chicks.
Behavior:
Siskins are highly social and often form compact, mobile flocks, sometimes mixing with redpolls. They are famous for their agility, frequently hanging upside-down to reach seeds.
Habitat and Distribution
Range:
They are widespread across Europe and Asia (Eurosiberia) and parts of North Africa.
Habitat:
They favor coniferous and mixed woodlands, particularly those with spruce, pine, or alder trees.
Movement:
While some southern populations are residents, northern birds are migratory. They exhibit "irruptive" behavior, where large numbers may migrate south unpredictably if seed crops fail in their northern range.
Breeding and Lifecycle
Nesting:
Females build small, neat nests high in conifer trees using twigs, moss, and lichen, lined with hair or feathers.
Reproduction:
They typically lay 3–5 eggs and can raise up to two broods per year between April and July.
Conservation Status:
The species is currently classified as Least Concern by the IUCN, with a stable global population estimated between 24 and 46 million mature individuals.
Garden Interaction
In the UK and other parts of Europe, siskins have become more common garden visitors, especially in late winter when natural food supplies dwindle. They are particularly attracted to niger seeds, sunflower hearts, and peanuts in mesh feeders.
One more supplement to the “Trip to Eastern Thailand and Cambodia 2024.” Two photos were merged to get this image.
The sanctuary of Angkor Wat has a concentric square plan consisting of three levels. This photo is taken from within the southeastern corner of the first level.
The second level has tower-like structures at the four corners as you see in the front right and the one under restoration in the far left. The third level also has tower-like prangs at the four corners, and the central prang.
Angkor Wat is a perfectly geometric construction.
Ladybower was built between 1935 and 1943 by the Derwent Valley Water Board to supplement the other two reservoirs in supplying the water needs of the East Midlands. It took a further two years to fill (1945). The dam differs from the Howden Reservoir and Derwent Reservoir in that it is a clay-cored earth embankment, and not a solid masonry dam. Below the dam is a cut-off trench 180 feet (55 m) deep and 6 feet (1.8 m) wide filled with concrete, stretching 500 feet (150 m) into the hills each side, to stop water leaking round the dam. The dam wall was built by Richard Baillie and Sons, a Scottish company. The two viaducts, Ashopton and Ladybower, needed to carry the trunk roads over the reservoir were built by the London firm of Holloways, using a steel frame clad in concrete. The project was delayed when the Second World War broke out in 1939, making labour and raw materials scarce. But construction was continued due to the strategic importance of maintaining supplies. King George VI, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth, formally opened the reservoir on 25 September 1945.
During the 1990s the wall was raised and strengthened to reduce the risk of over-topping in a major flood. The original dam wall contains 100,000 tons of concrete, over one million tons of earth and 100,000 tons of clay for the core. The upstream face is stone faced. Materials were brought to the site on the Derwent Valley Water Board's own branch line and their sidings off the main line in the Hope Valley.
The dam's design is unusual in having two totally enclosed bellmouth overflows (locally named the "plugholes") at the side of the wall. These are stone and of 80 feet (24 m) diameter with outlets of 15 feet (4.6 m) diameter. Each discharges via its own valve house at the base of the dam. The overflows originally had walkways around them but they were dismantled many years ago. The bell mouths are often completely out of the water and are only rarely submerged, often after heavy rainfall or flooding.
“The construction of beams
brings the fruition of dreams.
The casting of steel
makes your fantasy real…”
Read this post on a little virtual keyhole ☂
Love and sparkles,
Dea
What I assume to be KN33 heads south down the former WV Secondary, aiming for a turn at Deep Water down the former Virginian towards Elmore. KNWA uses NS run thru power most often and supplements the climb up from Deep Water with their second hand SD60 models. This is the rear 4 units out of six, giving a soft push past the load out at Mammoth. This load originated at Quincy, located right at the east end of Dickinson Yard outside of Charleston, WV.
The going starts to get tough in the next 7 miles.
Nutritional supplements are not a substitute
for a nutritionally balanced diet.
(Deepak Chopra)
Looking close... on Friday! - REFLECTION on BLACK BACKGROUND
(photo by Freya, edit by me)
Thanks for views, faves and comments!
This patch of light shining on the whole food vitamins and supplements I take each day fascinated me. Seeing this reminded me it has been such a challenging, painful, intense, lonely journey to get to this point. I’ve also experienced some growth, support, light and a tiny glimpse of life slowly returning. As I tried to heal and recover I was led down a path that involved psychiatric medications that only made things worse for me and prevented me from growing, recovering, and healing (which eventually I courageously discontinued three years ago). And while I’m still struggling a lot I reached a point that I’ve learned the importance of caring for myself in healthy ways—among many things, one way I do this is through these whole food vitamins and supplements.
I went for a nice ride on the e-trike today and saw this little scene. We have many little herds of cattle around us, but this one got a special treat. We have a local business here in Mount Gambier that makes delicious sweet and savoury scrolls, but when they don't sell on the day when they are at their freshest, they sometimes get donated to the cows who thoroughly enjoy their occasional sweet treat! Although the "delivery guy" had just dropped these scrolls over the fence, the cows would not come closer while I was there, possibly due to my day-glo safety jacket, but as soon as I left, the scrolls were quickly devoured and enjoyed!
It was finally a nice day for a ride after all the gale force winds we have had, but it also brought out the magpies. I had my first series of swoops for the season!
First trip out with the new 16mm ultra wide lens on the full frame RP body. A nice and very light weight lens to use!
Hummingbirds love nectar from flowers, but will come to the feeders as long as the sugar water is clean and fresh.
These RAW photos were taken while lying on my back, looking up with my camera, under the hummingbird feeder hanging from the corner of the screened-in porch. I only cropped them.
Hummingbirds love nectar from flowers, but will come to the feeders as long as the sugar water is clean and fresh.
These RAW photos were taken while lying on my back, looking up with my camera, under the hummingbird feeder hanging from the corner of the screened-in porch. I only cropped them.
For more information about Ruby-throated hummingbirds that visit my garden, please click here:
“The construction of beams
brings the fruition of dreams.
The casting of steel
makes your fantasy real…”
Read this post on a little virtual keyhole ☂
Love and sparkles,
Dea
This is a top-to-bottom pano, inspired by MJ Northern's bikini stitching technique. With a rented 24mm PC-E I was able to try out MJ's technique on a subject that needed it. This is an exposure fusion of 2 images, with a SB-800 thru Gary Fong lightsphere CR to spotlight the drawers. Cropped to 4:5 aspect ratio.
365: The 2018 Edition-Artificial Light
We went shopping at Indian Creed Farm today and they have this enormous porch on the front of their main building. This is where the produce is set out for sale. Because it's so big it blocks out the sun and they have supplemental light to help the patrons see their produce.
Taken at Rough Meadows in Rowley, Massachusetts, here's another Soldier Beetle photographed using a stronger supplemental lens than the one used for an earlier Soldier Beetle Pic. On the day of our visit these beetles were everywhere, making up for the scarcity of spiders that I had hoped to shoot. They're fairly easy to work with because once on a blossom they go to work chewing the bits they dine on, with limited movement. Bees are tougher to work with because of the almost frenetic way they move about... often flying away just as you frame an image.
Taken with a Nikon D3500, Nikkor-H 85mm f/1.8, an Iscorama anamorphic lens (1968 version), on the 85mm, and the objective from a junk Soligor 90-230mm zoom lens reverse mounted on the Isco.
Lighting was provided by a Nikon SB-20 speedlight flashed through a diffuser made from a plastic bowl that comes in a Healthy Choice frozen dinner.
DSC-3645R-WS
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her family home after receiving an invitation to motor down to Wiltshire from 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. Whilst he visits his mother, who has caught a chill in the cold winter weather, Lettice is playing the part of a dutiful daughter and visiting her parents too, even though both are in excellent health. This is her last visit to Glynes before coming down to stay over the Christmas and New Year period.
We find ourselves in the very grand and elegant drawing room of Glynes with its gilt Louis and Palladian style furnishings where the family Christmas tree is being decorated by Lettice and her elder sister Lally’s two children. Alerted to her younger sister’s visit, Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally), who is heavily pregnant and due to give birth in a few months, has come down to stay with her parents and eldest brother Leslie to coincide with Lettice’s visit. Although they have never been particularly close, with six years difference between them, Lally is filled with the Christmas spirit this year and has arrived with a conciliatory approach as she tries to build more of a relationship with Lettice now that she is older.
Lally finds it too difficult at this advanced stage in her pregnancy to join her children and Lettice decorating the tall fir tree cut from the Chetwynd estate, so she reclines on the Louis settee, toying with a fold-out family photograph album draped across her pregnant belly and watches the others as they unpack beautiful glass baubles, satin bows, garlands and glittering tinsel from old boxes.
“You always were the artistic one Lettice,” Lally remarks as her sister hangs a golden glass bauble on an upper bough of the tree where the children can’t reach with the aid of Viscount Wrexham’s library steps. “You have the knack for decorating the tree and making it look so beautiful.”
“That’s very kind of you to say so, Lally.” Lettice smiles thinly. “Oh no Harrold, not that bauble,” she directs her seven year old nephew as he tries to hand her a shiny red glass ball. “Grandmamma always likes the tree in here to be decorated with gold to match the furniture.”
“She only insists on that because she is so proud of the furnishings in here.” Lally pipes up from the settee. “Having been given as part of her marriage settlement by Grandfather Piers.”
“I didn’t know that, Lally!” Lettice gasps.
“Oh yes. She told me that when she and I sat in here the day that Pappa settled my dowery with Lord Lanchenbury in the library.”
“No wonder she was always scolding us if it even looked like a stray shoe was going to work its way onto the upholstery.”
“Yes,” Lally chuckles looking down over the photo album and her protuberant belly wrapped tightly in russet georgette with Art Nouveau embroidery, to her silk lisle clad feet resting on the settee’s cushioned seat. “At least I’ve taken my wretched shoes off.” She wriggles her toes as she glances down at her louis heeled deep red slippers standing on the carpet. “Not that I may be able to get them back on again. Pregnancy always makes my feet swell.”
Harrold looks thoughtfully at the red bauble in his hand and then glances with excitement at its matching decorations still in the dusty and battered old boxes. “Does that mean there is going to be a second Christmas tree this year, Auntie Tice?”
Lettice chuckles and leans down, tousling Harrold’s blonde hair. “No darling, but we used to have two trees decorated every year before the war. One in here like this, and a much bigger one in the entrance hall. That’s why there are so many decorations in these boxes.” She looks thoughtfully at the boxes and their contents strewn about on the carpet. “Poor Bramley. I should really have told him only to unpack the gold decorations. He has so much to do as it is these days.”
“Yes, poor Bramley. It’s not easy managing a house like this on reduced staff numbers. Mind you, it looks like the decorations are all jumbled together anyway.” Lally muses, looking at the photograph album resting on her stomach as her mind drifts away to the past. “Do you remember those wonderful pre-war Christmases we used to have, Lettice?”
“Oh yes, when we had more servants to help decorate both trees.”
“And all of us too. You were always the one who knew best when it came to decorating, but Leslie, Lionel and I tried to do our bit.”
“However did you cope before I was born?” Lettice asks cheekily.
Lally looks at the photos of past Chetwynds, gazing out from prettily decorated round and square holes with sepia eyes. “I wonder,” she asks as she looks. “Who this one will look like when they are born.” She glances up at her son, sifting through a Gossages Dry Soap crate looking for a correctly coloured Christmas ball to give to his aunt. “Harrold looks so much like Pappa.”
“Well,” Lettice says thoughtfully, tugging at a recalcitrant piece of tinsel. “He or she may look more like his or her father than a Chetwynd.”
“Like Charles!” Lally scoffs. “Oh, I don’t think so, Lettice. I’m convinced that the Lanchenbury genes are recessive.”
“Who do I look like Auntie Tice?” Annabelle, Lettice’s five year old niece, asks from her place decorating the boughs around the foot of the Christmas tree.
“You look like a beautiful princess, darling,” Lettice confirms bountifully, giving her an earnest look.
“Oh!” the little girl exclaims and smiles proudly. “Did you hear that, Harrold? You look like old Grandpappa, and I look like a pretty princess!” She pirouettes prettily about on the spot, her fuchsia coloured skirts billowing around her.
“I don’t look like an old man!” Harrold counters angrily as he reaches up to his aunt clutching two gold baubles.
“No Harrold, you don’t,” Lally placates from the settee. “But you look like Grandpappa did when he was young, and he was very handsome when he was young.”
Harrold smiles, pleased that he doesn’t look like an old white haired man with a beard, and he turns his back on his teasing sister, who is still spinning about gleefully as she imagines herself to be a fine lady.
“Remember when the villagers used to come up to the front door singing carols on Christmas Eve,” Lally continues on her nostalgic journey of pre-war Christmases. “Mamma and Pappa would invite them in to warm themselves by the fire in the entrance hall and enjoy the big Christmas tree all covered in tinsel, baubles and lighted candles.”
“Pappa still gets Bramley to bring out snifters of brandy for them whilst they warm themselves by the fire,” Lettice accepts an appropriately gold bauble from her nephew. “But you’re right, some of magic has gone out of that now that there is no longer a Christmas tree in the hall.”
“Do you think we could ask Grandpappa to get us one this year, Auntie Tice?” Harrold asks, looking up at Lettice hopefully.
“Oh I think it’s a bit late now, darling.” Lettice explains kindly. “There is a heavy snow outside and ground his hard. We don’t want the gardeners all catching colds for Christmas, now do we?” Harrold shakes his head solemnly and Lettice tousles his hair again good naturedly before suggesting, “Maybe next year. We’ll ask Grandpappa later. Alright?”
“Alright Auntie.” he replies.
“Good boy.” Lettice whispers with a gentle smile, accepting the second bauble from her nephew.
“Remember the fun we always had as children getting dressed up for Mamma and Pappa’s fancy dress Hunt Ball?” Lally asks her sister. “Mamma was always the queen of the ball. And you used to like being a faerie with a tinsel crown and a silver wand.”
“I’m going as a faerie this year,” pipes up Annabelle proudly.
“Is that so, darling?” Lettice asks her with a munificent smile.
She nods emphatically. “Nanny is making my dress.”
“Yes,” Lettice chuckles wistfully. “Nanny Webb must have spent hours making our outfits, sewing stars onto my dress and making me gossamer wings. You liked to go as Columbine*, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but my outfit was bought from Clarkson’s** London. So was Lionel’s Pierrot*** costume.”
“What did Leslie go as? For the moment I don’t remember.”
“Leslie is just like Pappa. He hated fancy dress. Being older than us, he told me that fancy dress was for children, and he used to go in his hunting pinks****, just like Pappa.”
“Oh yes. Now I remember. I still love fancy dress parties.” Lettice responds. “I’m coming as Cinderella to the Hunt Ball this year, which is most apt considering that Mamma wants to marry me off.”
“Who’s on the offing?”
“Jonty Hastings,”
“Not Howling Hastings?”
Lettice nods. “The very one!” She and her sister both giggle childishly.
“Who else?” Lally asks with bated breath.
“Tarquin Howard, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes,”
“He’s an old man!” Lally laughs.
“Nicholas Ayers.” Lettice continues to list.
“He’s an invert*****!” Lally scoffs, then quickly raises her hand to her mouth as she glances with alarm at the children. She heaves a sigh of relief as they seem too involved in decorating the lower branches of the tree to pay attention to her and ask her what an invert is. “Mamma may as well marry you to Gerald Bruton then.”
“Ah, but Gerald is the spare you see, not that Mamma knows what we do about him, and anyway, the Brutons don’t have the money that the Ayres do.”
“True.” Lally hurries on. “Who else, Lettice?”
“Selwyn Spencely, Edward Lambley, Septimius Faversham and Oliver Edgars. I know there are others, but I can’t for the life of me think whom.”
“Goodness! Mamma really is pulling out all the stops this year to make the ball a grand occasion. I don’t think we’ve had that many eligible men in attendance since 1912!”
Lettice gives her elder sister a withering look.
“Will one of those men be your prince, Auntie Tice?” asks Annabelle seriously, gazing up at her aunt. “You are coming as Cinderella to the ball after all, and Cinderella met her prince there.”
“Only if I lose a slipper at the ball, darling.”
“Oh,” Lally huffs as she glances at the baby Jesus statue in the manger from the nativity scene to stand beneath the tree with all the Christmas gifts. “I think I shall be glad to be in confinement for this year’s ball. I could only come dressed as a whale thanks to this one.” She lays a hand caringly upon her swollen stomach.
“A whale!” giggles Annabelle.
“Now that would be funny, Mummy.” chuckles Harrold as he walks over to his mother and places his hand on top of hers. “I should like to see you dance with Daddy dressed as a whale.”
“You must suggest it to him when we go home at the end of the week, darling. Shall I wear a grey satin tea gown then?” Lally smiles as Harrold nods enthusiastically. Looking back to Lettice as she affixes a shimmering bow to the tree she says to her, “I don’t know how you do it, Lettice. After children, and the war, I just don’t have the energy for fancy dress any more.”
“Oh, don’t you start lording your happy marriage to Charles and your children over me, Lally!” Lettice’s footsteps clatter angrily as she descends the library steps and stalks forcefully across the carpet to look for a particular decoration in one of the boxes. Thrusting her hands violently through the contents of one particular box she continues, “I won’t have it! Mamma has been insufferable since I got here, reminding me at every opportunity that I’m not getting any younger, and that you were married by the time you were my age. And then there is all her scheming, inviting every eligible gentleman of good breeding and money to the Hunt Ball for me to be paraded before!”
Sensing the change in mood in the room, Annabelle scuttles away from Lettice and the Christmas tree and cowers by her mother’s side, whilst Harrold places both hands on top of this mother’s instinctively protecting her and the baby from his aunt’s sudden displeasure.
“Please don’t be angry, Aunty Tice,” Annabelle says, her voice cracking as tears well in her eyes. “I don’t like it when you’re angry with Mummy.”
“And it is Christmas,” Harrold adds, looking in concern at Lettice on her knees, scattering colourful glass balls across the drawing room carpet angrily. “No-one should be cross or upset at Christmas, Auntie Tice.”
“Oh!” Lettice looks up from where she is with sad tears, that moments ago had been angry ones, brimming in her eyes. “Oh how clumsy of me. Auntie Tice is sorry my darlings. You’re quite right Harrold. No-one should be cross at Christmas.” She holds out her arms to them and pouts. “Forgive me? Please?”
Harrold walks cautiously over and falls into her arms, which wrap around him tightly as she closes her eyes and puts her head on his shoulders.
“See,” Lally whispers to Annabelle standing at her shoulder. “Auntie Tice isn’t cross anymore. Don’t you think you might go and give her a cuddle?” She looks back to her sister and son embracing and adds more loudly, even though she knows and intends that Lettice should hear every word. “I’m sure that would make her feel even better.”
Tentatively, and with a gentle push from her mother, Anabelle totters forward to where Lettice embraces her too.
“I know, Lettice,” Lally remarks softly. “That when you were a teenager, we really didn’t get along very well.” Lettice looks up defensively, but Lally raises a finger to her lips to silence her sister’s protests so she can continue. “And we have probably never really been that close because of the difference in years between us. However, contrary to what your opinion of me may be, I’m not your enemy, you know?”
“I know,” Lettice murmurs. “It’s just Mamma and her attitudes towards the decisions I’ve made. They make me so cross, Lally.”
“Well, you might not know this,” Lally continues. “In fact, in view of your sudden outburst, I’m quite certain you don’t.”
“Know what, Lally?”
“Mamma always lords your glamorous life in London over me whenever she can, telling me who of this country’s great and good you’ve been socialising with or decorating for, and showing me photos of you in the Tattler, not that I haven’t already seen them for myself.”
“She doesn’t!” Lettice bursts in shock.
“She does,” Lally concurs with a nod. “And she does it because both of us are closer to Pappa than to her.”
“No!”
“Of course that’s the reason. Mamma has always had a jealous streak in her.”
“Well, I never.” Lettice gasps.
“Now you know that her criticism goes both ways. She thinks her secret is safe because she enjoys playing us off against one another, and what’s worse is, I think she actually enjoys creating a divide between us.”
“Lally!”
“It’s true, Lettice. I think in her own perverse way, she hopes that one of us will turn to her one day, rather than Pappa.” She lowers her lids and shakes her head in resigned disbelief. “I don’t quite know why.”
“Oh I’m sorry, Lally.”
“I’m sorry too Lettice.” Lally acknowledges warmly. “So, what say you and I, with this knowledge, ignore Mamma’s criticisms this Christmas, and maybe get to be better friends as adults than we perhaps were as children.”
“Just to spite Mamma?”
“Well, no,” Lally explains. “To help us better understand and support one another. Of course, if it happens to irritate Mamma, then all the better. Truth be told, I’m actually quite proud to have such a successful and glamourous sister.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Lettice says humbly as she blushes with embarrassment and pride.
“A thank you is usual when one is paid a compliment.” Lally adds helpfully with a smile.
“Thank you, Lally.” Lettice says.
“You’re welcome, my glamorous little sister.” Lally answers.
*Columbine is a theatrical character that originated about 1530 in Italian commedia dell'arte as a saucy and adroit servant girl; her Italian name means “Little Dove.”
**Clarkson’s Theatrical Costumier and Wig Maker was located at 41 to 43 Wardour Street in Leicester Square. As theatrical costumier to the Royal Family, Willy Clarkson was born in 1861. He took over his father’s business in 1878 and became highly successful. He provided costumes and wigs for famous actors and actresses of the Victorian and Edwardian era, including Sir Henry Irving, Lillie Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt and for productions by Queen Victoria's family. It was claimed that Will Clarkson created a disguise for the murderer Doctor Crippen. Rumoured to be homosexual, a public lavatory in Soho was known as 'Clarkson's Cottage'.
***Pierrot is a character from the Italian commedia dell'arte. A simpleminded and honest servant, he is usually a young and personable valet. One of the comic servants, or zanni, Pierrot functioned in the commedia as an unsuccessful lover of Columbine and a victim of the pranks of his fellow comedians.
****Hunting pinks is the name given to the traditional scarlet jacket and related attire worn by fox-hunters.
*****An invert is a term coined and popularly used in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries to describe a homosexual.
This year the Flickr Friends Melbourne Group have decided to have a monthly challenge which is submitted on the 5th of every month. This month’s theme is “Christmas”, which was chosen by Beverley. Both Beverley and I share a common love of Christmas, which is a magical time that brings us both great joy, so this scene, using a selection of my large miniatures collection including some very special pieces was a delight for me to spend a few hours creating and photographing.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The Chetwynd Christmas tree, beautifully decorated by Lettice, Harold and Annabelle with garlands, tinsel, bows golden baubles and topped by a sparking gold star is a 1:12 artisan piece. It was hand made by husband and wife artististic team Margie and Mike Balough who own Serendipity Miniatures in Newcomerstown, Ohio.
The gold Christmas garland that graces the fireplace to the right of the photo is a hand made artisan miniature also, and was supplied by the Doll House Shoppe in Tinley Park, Illinois.
The red and green boxes containing hand painted Christmas ornaments were hand made and decorated by artists of Crooked Mile Cottage in America. The silver, red and gold tinsel garlands, and the painted red, yellow, green, gold and silver single baubles that litter the floor, tumble from the boxes and the single one left on the library steps come from various online miniature stockists in Australia and England through E-Bay. The miniature nativity pieces of Jesus in the manger, Mary, Joseph and the Christmas star standing on the carpet in front of the Gossages Dry Soap crate come from an E-Bay stockist of miniatures in Sydney.
The pair of louis heel red slippers comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House in the United Kingdom. They are made of metal.
The fold out concertina Edwardian photo album draped across the gilt Louis settee, the brown photo album with gilt lettering on the end table to the left of the settee and the pile of photos stacked on top of the red photo album are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside a photo album that he has made. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into the album, it has a front and back cover and a concertina of ten coloured pages, and it measure twenty millimetres in height and ten millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books and photo albums are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!
The red and the blue photo albums also open and contain black pages suitable to stick miniature photographs to. They are fastened closed with a ribbon. They came from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The Palladian console table behind the library steps, with its two golden caryatids and marble top, is one of a pair that were commissioned by me from American miniature artisan Peter Cluff. Peter specialises in making authentic and very realistic high quality 1:12 miniatures that reflect his interest in Georgian interior design. His work is highly sought after by miniature collectors worldwide. This pair of tables are one-of-a-kind and very special to me.
The gilt footstool upon which the red photo album and pile of photographs sit 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 also 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.
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 elegant ornaments that decorate the surfaces of the Chetwynd’s palatial drawing room very much reflect the Eighteenth Century spirit of the room.
On the centre of the mantlepiece stands a Rococo carriage clock that has been hand painted and gilded with incredible attention to detail by British 1:12 miniature artisan, Victoria Fasken. To the left of the clock is a porcelain pot of yellow and blue petunias which has been hand made and painted by 1:12 miniature ceramicist Ann Dalton. To the left of the vase of petunias is a Staffordshire sheep – one of a pair – which have been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys. If you look closely, you will see that the sheep actually has a smile on its face!
Another, larger example of Ann Dalton’s petunia posies stands on the Peter Cluff Palladian console table and is flanked by two mid Victorian (circa 1850) hand painted child’s tea set pieces. The sugar bowl and milk jug have been painted to imitate Sèvres porcelain.
On the bombe chest behind the Louis settee stand a selection of 1950s Limoges miniature tea set pieces which I have had since I was a teenager. Each piece is individually stamped on its base with a green Limoges stamp. Also on the bombe chest sit two Georgian tea caddies which come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. In the centre of these pieces stands a sterling silver three prong candelabra made by an unknown artisan. They have actually fashioned a putti (cherub) holding the stem of the candelabra. The candles that came with it are also 1:12 artisan pieces and are actually made of wax.
The three piece Louis XV suite of settee and two armchairs was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, JBM.
The library steps are made by an unknown artisan, but have been hand made and was supplied by Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.
The Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery you can just see behind the Christmas tree was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.
All the paintings around the Glynes drawing room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and V.H. Miniatures in the United Kingdom, and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper of Chinese lanterns from the 1770s.
The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster.
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 we are in Lettice’s drawing room where Edith, Lettice’s maid, has just shown in Lettice’s new milliner and friend of Gerald’s, Miss Harriet Milford. The orphaned daughter of a solicitor with little formal education, Harriet has taken in theatrical lodgers to earn a living, but more importantly for Lettice, has taken up millinery semi-professionally to give her some pin money*. As Harriet made Lettice a fetching picture hat for her brother Leslie’s wedding in November, Lettice commissioned her to make a new millinery creation for her for the wedding of Lettice’s friend Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon** who is marrying the Duke of York*** in a few days.
Although dressed in a fawn coloured three quarter length morning frock that makes up in functionality what it lacks in fashion, Lettice’s pretty visitor does not seem to feel self-conscious or at all ill at ease in her stylish surroundings as she takes them in with an observant eye. Lettice indicates with an open hand to the chair opposite her own and Harriet elegantly takes a seat and places the rather large round white cardboard hatbox that she brought into the drawing room with her onto the green and gold satin Chippendale stool next to her chair.
“It really was very good of you to come to me, Miss Milford.” Lettice says gratefully as she sinks down into her round Art Deco tub chair.
“It’s my pleasure, Miss Chetwynd,” Harriet replies as she smiles across at her hostess. “I’m just trying to demonstrate a little of that professionalism you spoke of when you commissioned me to make the hat.”
“Oh I can assure you, Miss Milford,” Lettice chortles as she pushes the copy of Vogue that she had been reading to the edge of the black japanned coffee table. “You will quickly gain the patronage of every one of Madame Gwendolyn’s clients if you personally deliver every one of your millinery creations to their new owners. Goodness knows she won’t.”
“Oh dear!” Harriet exclaims, raising her bare hands to her cheeks as she blushes. “Have I made another faux pas? I do beg your pardon.”
“Oh not at all, Miss Milford.” Lettice assures her soothingly. “No, your personalised service, if this is something you are prepared to do for your clients, will put you streets ahead of your competition, I assure you.”
“Well,” Harriet breathes a sigh of relief, her shoulders loosening. “Thank goodness for that! Mind you, you are a bit of a special client, Miss Chetwynd.”
“Me?” Lettice asks, raising her well manicured hand to her chest. “How is it that I, of all people, should garner such favour?”
At that moment, Edith enters the drawing room carrying a silver tray which holds Lettice’s elegant Art Deco tea service. Bobbing a courtesy, she unpacks a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl and two teacups and saucers onto the cleared surface of the coffee table. Assured by Lettice that if she needs anything further she will ring, Edith bobs a second curtsey and leaves.
“Oh, I do so, miss having a parlour maid.” Harriet sighs as she watches Edith’s retreating figure leave the room. “They do make life so much easier when entertaining.”
“Oh yes!” Lettice enthuses. “Edith is such a brick. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Sadly, I suspect that either my father, or more likely I, was swindled by the other gentlemen in father’s partnership. I can’t imagine him dying and leaving me in such an impecunious situation that I can’t even afford to have a maid-of-all work. When Father was alive we had a cook, a tweeny and a parlour maid.”
“Then your belated father’s partners are no gentlemen, if you don’t mind me saying, my dear Miss Milford.”
“Indeed I don’t. They are however solicitors and lawyers, and I must confess that much of what they spoke to me about in the days following Father’s funeral bamboozled me.”
“Well, I’m hardly surprised by that, Miss Milford. You’re certainly a smart woman, and capable too, but legalise, well,” Lettice tuts and shakes her head. “That is quite another language indeed, and one peddled by a certain type of lawyer and solicitor to swindle, rather than assist those in a less fortunate situation.”
“Evidently I may be smart, but I’m not capable of keeping a neat home.” Harriet admits. “And that’s why you are a rather special client, Miss Chetwynd. I didn’t want to subject you to the indignity of having you collect your hat from my front parlour, which I will confess is still just as untidy as the last time you saw it. I just don’t seem to be able to keep on top of the housework along with all the other duties of running a boarding house, not that my tenants are particularly handy with a mop, dustpan or broom either.”
Lettice feels a pang of guilt as Harriet speaks, and she remembers the conversation she had not a few short weeks ago in this very room wit Gerald about the shoddy way in which she treated the young lady the last time they met.
“Yes, well about that, Miss Milford.” Lettice begins, the words catching awkwardly in her throat as she speaks.
“About what, Miss Chetwynd?” Harriet asks, looking up with innocent eyes to her hostess sitting across the black japanned coffee table.
“Look, I don’t know how else to say this, but I think I was rather unjust to you when we last saw one another. I shouldn’t have been so critical of your housekeeping skills.”
“No! No, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet defends her. “You did right to upbraid me. I need to be told things that will impact or restrict the success I strive for.”
“No. I was wrong for being quite so critical, Miss Milford. It didn’t come from a place of kindness or good will. It was ungallant of me, and I was unjust to you.”
“Did Gerry put you up to this?” Harriet asks warily.
“Yes… well no… well yes and no.”
Harriet huffs and smacks the top of the hatbox in her lap in frustration. “Goodness, I can’t trust him, can I? Just because I said…”
Lettice’s hands held out, palms facing outwards silence Harriet.
“Please, Miss Milford, don’t be cross with Gerald.” Lettice pleads. “He did the right thing by pulling me up and admonishing me. You see, Gerald and I are like brother and sister, and he knows me far too well, and what my propensities can be, especially when I feel threatened.”
“Threatened? Miss Chetwynd..”
“That last time I saw you, I behaved like a prig. I was overly critical. In fact, if I’m being truthful, which I am now going to be, even though I suspect you may despise me after the fact, I was looking to find fault, in even the smallest of trivialities.”
“But why, Miss Chetwynd?”
“Because I felt threatened by you.” Lettice looks guiltily across at Harriet. “Because I felt jealous of you, and your relationship with Gerald. I wanted to prove myself to be better than you.” She looks down sadly into her lap. “And in doing so, I made myself look worse than you, in Gerald’s eyes.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true, Miss Chetwynd.”
“I can assure you it is, Miss Milford. You know how adroit our Gerald is. He told me that from your account, which I’m sure was kinder than I deserve, that I sounded pompous, and I know that I was being pompous and mean spirited and far worse.”
“Because you are jealous of me?”
Lettice nods remorsefully.
“But I thought we had all that out already, Miss Chetwynd, the day you collected the hat I made you for your brother’s wedding last year. I told you the last thing I want to do is intrude on your friendship with Gerry, nor usurp you in his affections. I promise you, I’m not a threat.”
“I know, but even though I said I believed you, I lied. I didn’t believe you, and I unjustly wanted to find fault in you and punish you for what I now know, and in truth probably knew then, to be for no good reason. I was being spiteful.” She looks directly into Harriet’s placid face. “And I know now that I was very wrong to do that, and that I hurt you in the process, Miss Milford, intentionally. And I sincerely apologise.”
A silence falls heavily between the two of them.
“I believe, Miss Milford that now is the time for you to behave like the leading ladies who sometimes hang off the arms of your theatrical boarders, and make a scene by throwing a fit before storming out.”
Harriet laughs, a burst of genuine delight cascading from her pretty pert lips. “Oh Miss Chetwynd, you overestimate both my ability for and enjoyment of melodramas. I am very far from theatrical, so there will be no fits of temper, at least not from me, a fact for which you may be grateful.”
“You are far nicer to me than I deserve, Miss Milford. I’ve been a beast, and here you are, as smiling and civilised as ever.”
“My Father once told me that in his profession as a lawyer, you see the very best and the very worst in human nature, and that when you are faced with the latter, you should always channel the former so that you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I don’t know if I wholly agree with his holier than thou approach, but then again, he was a man of very black and white opinions, however in spite of all you have told me, Miss Chetwynd, you haven’t diminished in my esteem.”
“Then I really don’t deserve to know you, for you must surely be a saint.”
“Not at all, Miss Chetwynd. I may not admire you for your misjudgement of me, but I admire your truth and honesty, even if it took a nudge from Gerry for you to be so. You told me that we would never be bosom friends****, and nor do I want you to be one. However, I do honestly think that I can gain a great deal from you. As I noted, we both are trying to establish names for ourselves, albeit in different areas, and as women in a male dominated world, I think I would value your dispassionate and truthful opinion as I make my way in it.” She pauses. “That is if you can move on from this silly and unfounded jealously, Miss Chetwynd.”
“I think I could manage that.”
“Good!” Harriet sighs. “Well, now that we have that bit of business out of the way, perhaps we might move on to the business that I came here today to transact.” She pats the top of the plain cardboard hatbox and cocks an eyebrow at Lettice.
“I’ll just ring for Edith to fetch the hatstand from my dressing table.”
A short while later, with the hatstand fetched, Harriet presents Lettice with the hatbox.
“Me, Miss Milford?”
“I think that since this is your hat, you should have the honour of unveiling it, Miss Chetwynd.”
“And if I don’t like it?” Lettice asks earnestly, looking into her companion’s placidly smiling face.
“I don’t think we need to worry about that occurring, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet’s lips curl up just a little bit more at the edges of her mouth as she speaks.
“Good.” Lettice agrees. “It’s vital as a woman in business to believe in your product.”
“See, Miss Chetwynd,” Harriet says. “Such wise advice from one businesswoman to another.”
Lettice lifts the lid off the round hatbox and drops it at her feet. Faced with a froth of white tissue paper, she carefully unfolds it, the paper whispering noisily beneath her fingers. She delves her fingers in until she feels the firmness of a satin covered brim beneath her hand, and grasping it, she foists the hat free, the tissue paper cascading to the ground around her. Lettice casts the hatbox aside and places the hat on the hatstand. With her left index finger and thumb pinching her chin, she contemplates the hat with a considered look, sighing with satisfaction.
“A deeply crowned hat with a wide, poke style brim.” Harriet gesticulates around the hat’s edges without actually touching it. “Stiffened of course.” she adds. “I know I had suggested from the outset that it should be made of apricot felt, but really for a Royal wedding, I felt satin was called for. And, as we discussed, I have edged it with the thinnest trim of white lace and ornamented the crown with creamy orange taffeta roses and ribbons. What do you think, Miss Chetwynd?”
“Honestly, Miss Milford,” Lettice replies. “I think it is perfect!”
“I’m so pleased you think so, Miss Chetwynd.” Harriet replies with a proud smile.
*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.
**Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was known at the beginning of 1923 when this story is set, went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". He proposed again in 1922 after Elizabeth was part of his sister, Mary the Princess Royal’s, wedding party, but she refused him again. On Saturday, January 13th, 1923, Prince Albert went for a walk with Elizabeth at the Bowes-Lyon home at St Paul’s, Walden Bury and proposed for a third and final time. This time she said yes. The wedding took place on April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey.
***Prince Albert, Duke of York, known by the diminutive “Bertie” to the family and close friends, was the second son of George V. Not only did Bertie propose to Elizabeth in 1921, but also in March 1922 after she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert’s sister, Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles. Elizabeth refused him a second time, yet undaunted Bertie pursued the girl who had stolen his heart. Finally, in January 1923 she agreed to marry him in spite of her misgivings about royal life.
****The term bosom friend is recorded as far back as the late Sixteenth Century. In those days, the bosom referred to the chest as the seat of deep emotions, though now the word usually means a woman's “chest.” A bosom friend, then, is one you might share these deep feelings with or have deep feelings for.
Contrary to popular belief, fashion at the beginning of the Roaring 20s did not feature the iconic cloche hat as a commonly worn head covering. Although invented by French milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, the cloche hat did not start to gain popularity until 1922, so even though this story is set in that year, picture hats, a hangover from the pre-war years, were still de rigueur in fashionable society and whilst Lettice is fashionable, she and many other fashionable women still wore the more romantic picture hat. This included Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen of Great Britain and Queen Mother, and she maintained her romantic style all her life using soft colours and often wide brimmed hats. Although nowhere near as wide, heavy, voluminous or as ornate as the hats worn by women between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the Great War, the picture hats of the 1920s were still wide brimmed, although they were generally made of straw or some lightweight fabric and were decorated with a more restrained touch.
This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Central to our story, the beautiful hat made by Harriet with it’s soft peach colour, romantic wide brim and soft satin rose trim. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. The maker of this hat is unknown, but it is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The hat stand the hat rests on is also part of Marilyn Bickel’s collection.
The Vogue magazine from 1923 sitting on the coffee table reflects the prevailing style for romantic hats and soft colours of the time and was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States. Lettice’s tea set is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era.
Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chairs are of black japanned wood and have removable cushions, just like their life sized examples. To the left of the fireplace is a Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair of black japanned wood which has been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the legs and inside the bureau. The Hepplewhite chair has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven. To the right of the fireplace is a Chippendale cabinet which has also been decorated with chinoiserie designs. It also features very ornate metalwork hinges and locks.
On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame.
The fireplace is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace which is flanked by brass accessories including an ash brush with real bristles.
On the left hand side of the mantle is an Art Deco metal clock hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken.
In the middle of the mantle is a miniature artisan hand painted Art Deco statue on a “marble” plinth. Made by Warwick Miniatures in England, it is a 1:12 copy of the “Theban Dancer” sculpture created by Claire-Jeanne-Roberte Colinet in 1925.
The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug, and the geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying an unexpected call on her beloved parents whilst her mistress is away visiting her own parents in Wiltshire. 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, and today, rather than soap and starch greeting her on the street, she can hear familiar laughter.
“Mum!” Edith calls out cheerily as she opens the unlocked front door and walks in. “Mum, it’s me! Is that Bert with you?”
She takes a deep breath and holds it with anticipation as she runs down the narrow corridor with excited footsteps past the front room and down into the kitchen, which serves as the heart of Edith’s parent’s home. Bursting through the kitchen door she beams and gasps with delight, for there at Ada’s old and worn round kitchen table sits her mother and her brother Bert. Edith’s little brother works aboard the SS Demosthenes as a dining saloon steward, sailing between England and Australia. Australia was where Bert spent Christmas 1922, so he wasn’t with his family for Christmas. Yet now, just like in the postcard he sent from Queensland showing a bird called a kookaburra inside the shape of the great southern continent surrounded by yellow wattle flowers, he is home on shore leave.
“Bert!” Edith gasps in delight. “You’re home!”
“Hullo Edith!” Bert says with an equally happy smile as he leaps out of the comfortable Windsor chair usually inhabited by their father and enfolds his sister in an embracing hug.
“Oh Bert.” Edith presses herself against her brother, the comforting smell of their mother’s lux soap flakes filling her nostrils. Pressing her hands against his hips, she breaks their embrace and pushes herself back. “Let me look at you then!”
Although a year younger than his sister, Bert is taller than Edith now, after a final growth spurt when he was in his late teens. Dressed in one of their mother’s home knitted jumpers and a pair of grey flannel trousers his skin looks sun kissed after spending a few days ashore in Melbourne during the height of summer in the southern hemisphere before sailing back, and the sun has given his sandy blonde hair some natural highlights.
“The sea air agrees with you, Bert.”
“More likely the Australian sun!” Ada remarks as she picks herself up out of her own chair with a slight groan. “Just look at those colourful cheeks and those freckles.” She waves her hand at her son lovingly. “We don’t usually see them until high summer.”
“Hullo Mum!” Edith walks up and embraces her mother. ‘How are you?”
“Oh, I’m grand now our Bert is home, and you are too, Edith love.” Ada says in reply, a broad smile gracing her lips and a happy brilliance in her brown eyes. “Now, put that basket down and have a seat. I’ll pop the kettle on and brew us a fresh pot.” She begins to bustle around the great blacklead range and moves the heavy kettle onto the hob. Turning back to the table she picks up the beautiful, glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid, which Edith bought for her from the Caledonian Market**, and makes a grand sweeping gesture to show Edith it’s presence. “See Edith, a special occasion calls for the use of my special teapot.”
“Any day should be a special enough day for you to use that pretty teapot that Edith gave you, Mum.” Bert says, sitting back down at the table.
“That’s what I tell her!” Edith agrees.
“But then it wouldn’t be a special teapot any more, would it?” Ada says, stepping behind Bert and going to the small tough sink the corner of the kitchen where she turns the squeaky taps and rinses out the pot. “No. It’s a special teapot for special occasions.” She takes up the yellow tea towel with red stitching that hangs over a metal rail above the range and dries the pot. “I used it on Christmas Day didn’t I, Edith love?”
“Yes,” Edith agrees. “But you haven’t used it a day since then.”
“That’s because there hasn’t been a special occasion worthy of using it,” Ada defends. “Until Bert came home, that is.” She gently squeezes her son’s left shoulder.
“I give up!” Edith throws her hands in the air. She shucks off her black three quarter length coat and hangs it on a hook by the back door. She then places her hat on one of the carved knobs of the ladderback chair drawn up to the table next to her mother’s usual seat.
“Oh I told you, Edith!” Ada chides. “Don’t put your pretty hat there, love.” She walks over to the Welsh dresser that dominates one wall of the crowded kitchen and pulls out the battered tea cannister. “It might get damaged. Such a pretty hat should sit on the table where it’s safe. You know Edith made that, don’t you Bert?”
“Yes, I do, Mum.” Bert acknowledges cheerfully. “Our Edith is the cleverest girl I know.”
“I keep saying Mum, the hat’s nothing special. And besides, I didn’t make it. It came from Petticoat Lane***, just like my coat, and it’s not new. I simply decorated the hat with bits and bobs I picked up from a Whitechapel haberdasher Miss Lettice’s char****, Mrs. Boothby, told me about.”
“Well, homemade or not, it’s still too pretty to hang there.”
“It’s my hat, Mum. I always hang it there and it’s always fine, and I promise you, it’ll be fine there today.”
“Well, suit yourself, love. You’re an adult now, just the same as Bert.” Ada remarks dismissively but looks at her daughter doubtfully as she scoops out some black dried tea leaves and puts the heaped spoonfuls into the pot. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“So,” Bert sinks back into his seat and toys with his teacup decorated with pink roses, slowly turning it in its saucer. “What’s the gossip with you then, Edith? How’s your Frank then? Mum says that she and Dad haven’t met him yet.”
“It’s become quite the mute point.” Ada remarks as she turns back from the dresser and folds her arms akimbo, frowning at her daughter.
“And I hope,” Edith defends herself, challenging her mother’s steely stare. “That she told you why.”
“I did!” Ada says crisply.
“Word is you’re meeting his mum soon, Edith.” Bert says excitedly.
“Well, not his mum. His parents died of the Spanish Flu, but I’m meeting his Granny, who is a bit like his surrogate mum.”
“That’s nerve wracking.” Bert replies.
“I know! I’m so nervous.” Edith confides, lowing her voice as she leans across the table conspiratorially and reaches for the battered McVitie and Price biscuit tin.
“That’s why I can’t get a girl to come home here.” Frank says with a wink and slight indicating nod to their mother. “Imagine meeting Mum.” He lifts the lid off the tin for his sister and lets her make her selection. “They’re all too scared of her.”
“Cheeky!” Ada says, laughing good naturedly and swatting her son with the tea towel. “Any girl would be lucky to have me as a prospective mother-in-law.” She shuffles her shoulders and tilts her head upwards as her face forms into a dignified expression. “Or boy.” she adds with undisguised meaning and importance.
“So, me and Frank are just fine, thanks Bert. We’re just tickety-boo.*****!” Edith tells her brother before popping a biscuit into her mouth.
“Tickety-boo!” Bert enthuses. “You are up on all the latest small talk and phrases, living with your Miss Chetwynd up in Mayfair.”
“She comes home with new phrases all the time.” Ada places the freshly refilled cottage ware teapot down on the table between them all. “Goodness knows I can’t keep up with her. It’s the influence of all those fine ladies and gentlemen and moving picture stars that frequent Mis Chetwynd’s flat.”
“Moving picture stars? Really” Bert asks excitedly.
“Oh Bert!” Edith scoffs, flapping her hand playfully at him. “I only answer the door to them, or serve them tea. And Miss Lettice has only had one moving picture star to tea since I’ve been there: Wanetta Ward.” She sighs. “She’s so beautiful! She works for Gainsborough Pictures******. You’re more likely to have a longer conversation with a moving picture star on board your ship as a dining saloon steward, Bert, than ever I will at Miss Lettice’s.”
“I doubt that. There aren’t that many moving picture stars sailing between Australia and home, well none that I know of. Although they are mad for moving pictures over there. There are picture houses everywhere, and they even make their own films there, just like here.”
“Anyway, I’m not the interesting one, Bert.” Edith says, seeing a way to turn the conversation to her brother and his news. “You are. Tell me about life on the ship this voyage.”
A short while later over tea and biscuits, Edith is brought up to date with Bert’s latest adventures on board his ship, and the interesting people he has served as a first-class saloon steward.
“Oh!” Ada suddenly gasps. “Bert! Aren’t you going to give Edith her present?”
“Present?” Edith asks with a querying look to her brother.
“Yes, Edith love. Don’t you remember Bert wrote it in his last postcard to us?”
Edith casts her mind back a few weeks to when her mother showed her the postcard Bert had sent from Australia.
“Right you are Mum!” Bert agrees. “So Edith, on Christmas Day, the Second Officer, Mr. Collins, organised a trip for we lads and some of the girls on the ship’s staff who were away from home for Christmas and that were at a loose end. A lot found their own amusements in Melbourne. It’s such a big and vibrant city, full of fun things to do. But about twenty of us didn’t have anywhere to go, so we said yes.”
“What did you do, Bert? What had Mr. Collins organised?” Edith asks in suspense.
“Well, Mr. Collins was born in Melbourne. Well no, actually he was born a few hours outside of Melbourne in the country at a place called Yarra Glen. It’s quite famous and lots of toffs go there to holiday, not that was where Mr. Collins took us.” Bert quickly adds, seeing the excitement in his sister’s face. “No, Mr. Collins was born on a farm out there – something they call a cattle station – and he took us all out there for a picnic on his parent’s station.”
“But a station is a railway station.” Edith mutters, shaking her head, her face crumpling in disbelief.
“Well in Australia there are railway stations and cattle station, which are big farms. So, Mr. Collins packed us all into a railway carriage at Flinders Street Railway Station and off we went. We left at ten in the morning and we didn’t get to the railway station at the Yarra Glen until nearly midday.”
“Was it hot?” Edith asks. “You always say Australia is hot around this time of year.”
“Well it was, but it was alright because we opened up our window in our carriage and poked our heads out so we could look at the passing countryside, so we had a nice breeze. The countryside is so different to here. It’s all yellow grasses and funny trees with washed out leaves: no real greenery at all so to speak, but it’s still really beautiful in its own way.”
“Hmph!” Ada snorts from her chair. “Nothing beats the Kentish countryside for beauty.”
“Well I guess beauty is a subjective thing, Mum.” Bert goes on, “Mr. Collins was telling us on the train trip down that sometimes travelling artists set up camp on his parent’s property just so that they can paint the landscape.”
“Fancy that, Frank!” Edith enthuses. “Did you like it?”
“Oh yes! It’s very pretty, in a foreign kind of way. Not many flowers. But we saw jumping kangaroos from the train on the trip down. They sat in the grass and watched us pass, and then some of them just up and jumped away. They can move very quickly when they jump. Anyway, we finally pulled into Yarra Glen. We had to wait whilst a big party of toffs and all their mountains of luggage were taken care of and packed up into cars. Mr. Collins says that there is a famous opera singer who lives out there, named Nellie Melba*******.”
“I’ve heard nellie Melba sing before!” Ada exclaims, dropping her pink and yellow floral teacup into her saucer and clapping her hands.
“You have, Mum?” Edith asks, the look of lack of comprehension on her face matching her brother’s as they both look to her.
“Well, not live of course!” Ada says, taking up her cup of tea before continuing. “But once when I was at Mrs. Hounslow’s, I heard her sing. She was playing records on her gramophone, and I asked who it was, and she invited me to stand in her parlour and listen to her recording of Nellie Melba sing ‘Ave Maria’.” Her children pull a face at the mention of their landlady, the rich and odious old widow whom they both 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. “Now don’t be like that, children! Mrs. Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.”
“And neither you, nor she will ever let us forget it.” Bert drones, rolling his eyes.
“Now I won’t have a bad word said about her, Bert.” Ada wags her finger admonishingly at her son. “She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings over the years, especially during the war when things were hard. You should be grateful to her. We all should be.”
“Pshaw!” Edith raises her eyes to the ceiling above. “Enough about old Widow Hounslow! Go on with your story, Bert.”
“Well,” Bert continues. “Miss Melba must have been home and hosting a big house party, but once they were all packed off, we were ushered to a charabanc******** which took us out to Mr. Collins’ family farm. Once we got to the house – which they call a homestead – Mrs. Collins, Mr, Collins’ mum, had picnic baskets for us, full of delicious sandwiches and pies and cakes. There was even beer and stout for us to drink. When Mr. Collins lead us away from the house to where we were to take our picnic, he took us to a place where there was a stream, so we could dunk the bottles of beer and stout into it to keep them warm. We tethered them to the bank with string he gave us. And so, we sat under these big trees with white bark and ate and drank and had a jolly time of it, all at Mr. Collin’s expense.”
“That was nice of him, Bert.” Edith remarks.
“It was! We were ever so grateful. He had brought a cricket bat and stumps from the house with him, so we played some cricket after luncheon until it got too warm, and then we sang Christmas carols.”
“It must have felt odd, singing Christmas carols in the summer sunshine.”
“Not really Edith.” Bert replies. “Christmas is Christmas all over the world, no matter what the weather, if you are in high spirits.”
“And the gift?” Ada says, patting her son’s arm as a reminder.
“So, when we were walking back from out picnic by the stream, I was carrying one of the picnic baskets, and I noticed what a pretty painted lid it had. When we arrived back at the homestead, I asked Mr. Collins’ mother about it. It turns out that Mr. Collin’s brother and his wife live on the property as well. She cooks for the farmhands and helps keep house for old Mrs. Collins, and she also makes picnic baskets from the reeds growing around the stream we used to keep our beer and stout warm. Her husband carves the lids and she paints them, and she sells them in Yarra Glen.” Bert reaches under the table and pushing his seat backwards, he stands up and places a picnic basket on the table. “So this is for you. It’s the picnic basket I brought back to the house, and then brought all the way from Australia for you. A belated Merry Christmas, big sister.”
Edith gasps and raises her hands to her mouth as a smile fills her face. The beautiful picnic hamper sitting proudly on the table has woven pale reed sides and two hinged lids on the top, both painted with stylised leaves and creamy yellow daisies.
“Oh Bert!” Edith gasps, as tears well in her eyes. “Oh it’s lovely!” She gets up and hurries over to her brother and embraces him. “Thank you so much!”
“I’m so glad you like it, Edith.” Bert replies. “I got more than a bit of ribbing from the other chaps on the sailing home. They took up calling me ‘Basket Bert’.”
“Oh they didn’t, Bert?” Edith cries. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you be sorry for, Edith, but I afraid that I think it will stick,” Frank adds. “However it’s worth it, if you like the basket. I thought if things were still going well with Frank, you two might use it to go on a picnic in summer.”
“Oh, I will Bert!” Edith replies as she runs her hand along the thin and elegant handle. “It’s wonderful! Thank you so much!”
*The SS Demosthenes was a British steam ocean liner and refrigerated cargo ship which ran scheduled services between London and Australia via Cape Town. It stopped at ports including those in Sydney and Melbourne. She was launched in 1911 in Ireland for the Aberdeen Line and scrapped in 1931 in England. In the First World War she was an Allied troop ship.
**The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.
***Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
****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.
*****Believed to date from British colonial rule in India, and related to the Hindi expression “tickee babu”, meaning something like “everything's alright, sir”, “tickety-boo” means “everything is fine”. It was a common slang phrase that was popular in the 1920s.
******Islington Studios, often known as Gainsborough Studios, were a British film studio located on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in Shoreditch, London which began operation in 1919. By 1920 they had a two stage studio. It is here that Alfred Hitchcock made his entrée into films.
*******Dame Nellie Melba was an Australian operatic lyric coloratura soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town. Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. She succeeded in London and Paris. Her repertoire was small; in her whole career she sang no more than 25 roles and was closely identified with only ten. She was known for her performances in French and Italian opera, but sang little German opera. She returned to Australia frequently during the Twentieth Century, singing in opera and concerts, and had a house, “Coombe Cottage” built for her in the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne.
********A charabanc or "char-à-banc" is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early motor coach, usually open-topped, more common in Britain, but also found in places like Australia during the early part of the Twentieth Century. It has benched seats arranged in rows, looking forward, commonly used for large parties, whether as public conveyances or for excursions.
This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The central focus of our story, sitting on Ada’s table, is the wicker picnic basket that Bert brought home for Edith. In truth it is not Australian made, but was made by an unknown miniature artisan in America. The floral patterns on the top have been hand painted. The hinged lids lift, just like a real hamper, so things can be put inside.
In front of the basket stands Ada’s cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched rood and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.
Surrounding the cottage ware teapot are non-matching teacups, saucers, a milk jug and sugar bowl, all of which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Sitting on the table in the foreground is a McVitie and Price’s Small Petite Beurre Biscuits tin, containing a selection of different biscuits. The biscuits were made by hand of polymer clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.
Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and some Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.
Robert Andrew Macfie sugar refiner was the first person to use the term term Golden Syrup in 1840, a product made by his factory, the Macfie sugar refinery, in Liverpool. He also produced black treacle.
P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.
The American based Heinz food processing company, famous for its Baked Beans, 57 varieties of soups and tinend spaghetti opened a factory in Harlesden in 1919, providing a great deal of employment for the locals who were not already employed at McVitie and Price.
Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.
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.
The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.
Oxo is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube, and the company now also markets chicken and other flavour cubes, including versions with Chinese and Indian spices. The cubes are broken up and used as flavouring in meals or gravy or dissolved into boiling water to produce a bouillon. Oxo produced their first cubes in 1910 and further increased Oxo's popularity.
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).
Spokesmodels for client Supplement-IT.com. They developed a vitamin supplement for IT professionals.
See the video here www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpaDlwlVhVU
Strobist:2 bare sb600's for BG illumination left and right rear. Sb800 shoot thru umbrella high camera right. Sb800 in 17" SB low camera left. Triggered by PW's processed in LR.
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.
With a loud buzz, the electric doorbell announces the unexpected arrival of someone at the front door. Putting down the piece of table silver she is polishing, Edith, Lettice’s maid, goes to answer the front door, all the while wondering who is calling. Lettice usually advises Edith of any clients, existing or potential, who may be visiting, particularly because Edith needs to make sure that there are cakes and biscuits in the pantry to offer to them. Walking across the thick Chinese silk rug in the flat’s hallway, she can hear her mistress speaking animatedly on the telephone to a representative of Jeffrey and Company* from whom she is ordering papers for the dining room of her friend Minnie Palmerston. Lettice agreed to redecorate it before Christmas after Minnie asked her to, and work is now underway.
Edith opens the door to the dashing figure of Selwyn Spencely, the only son of the Duke of Walmsford, whom Lettice has been stepping out with, when their busy social diaries allow, since meeting him at her parent’s Hunt Ball last year. In his hands he holds a thick bunch of roses, a usual accessory every time he crosses the Cavendish Mews threshold.
“Good day, Edith. Is Miss Chetwynd home?”
“Mr. Spencely!” she gasps in surprise. “This is an unexpected pleasure. Yes, do come in.” She closes the front door and shuts out the cold January in the process. “It’s freezing out there. She’s just speaking with someone on the telephone in the drawing room, Sir, but I’ll announce you’re here.”
Shrugging out of his thick and expertly cut navy blue barathea coat, damp around the shoulders and down the back due the downpour outside, he lets it fall into Edith’s waiting arms. “Oh, don’t bother, Edith. I know my way. But if you could put these in some water for Miss Chetwynd.” He hands her the deep red roses which release a sweet fragrance as he does.
“Of course, Sir.” Edith replies, dropping a curtsey to her mistress’ guest.
As she turns to go, Selwyn calls after her, “Oh Edith! There will be a man with a large package knocking at the servants’ entrance shortly. When he does, just show him into the drawing room, will you?”
“Well yes, Sir.” Edith answers, her brow furrowing slightly. “But I…”
“It’s a surprise for Miss Chetwynd,” Selwyn interrupts her, giving her a winning smile and ending the conversation.
“Now just to confirm, it is the red dioxide metallic you are ordering, not the gold. Is that right?” Lettice asks in clearly enunciated tones down the telephone receiver as she sits at her Hepplewhite desk. “I don’t want the gold. It is rather expensive paper, and I’d hate for you to make a costly error.” She listens to the representative of Jeffrey and Company at the other end as he assures her that he has the correct details for her order. “Very well. And you’ll let me know when it arrives?” She listens again. “Very good. Good afternoon then.”
Lettice hangs up the receiver of the telephone with a half frustrated and half relieved sigh. In response the telephone utters a muffled ting of its bell as she hangs up. She begins scribbling notes in her black leather notebook with her silver fountain pen and with a rasp of nib against paper, she crosses off several things from her list for Minnie Palmerston’s dining room redecoration.
“I do like to see my favourite society interior designer, hard at work.” Selwyn pronounces, announcing his presence.
“Selwyn!” Lettice spins around in her chair, her eyes wide with shock as she sees him comfortably settled in one of her round white upholstered ebonised wood tub chairs. “What on earth are you doing here?” She self consciously pats the side of her elegantly marcelled** blonde hair and brushes her manicured fingers across the Peter Pan collar*** of her navy blue frock. “I wasn’t expecting you. What a delightful surprise!”
“Yes, your charming little maid was saying just the same thing not a moment ago when she answered the door to me.” Selwyn says, rising to his feet as Lettice rises to hers. “I just happened to be in the neighbourhood, and I thought I’d pop in, just on the off chance that you were here, to see how you are, my Angel. After all, I haven’t seen you since before Christmas.” He smiles warmly at his sweetheart who blushes prettily under his observant eye. “So I wanted to wish you all the very best for the season.”
“Oh yes!” Lettice breathes. “Happy 1923, Selwyn darling!” She stands up. “Are you stopping for long?”
“For a little while, my Angel.” he replies with an amused smile.
“Shall I ring for tea then?”
“Tea would be capital, my Angel. Thank you.”
Lettice depresses the servant’s call bell by the fireplace which she can hear echoing distantly in the kitchen. Edith appears moments later carrying a bulbous white vase containing the red roses Selwyn brough for Lettice as a gift.
“Oh Selwyn!” Lettice gasps. “Are these from you?” When he nods in acknowledgement, she adds. “They’re gorgeous!”
“Where would you like them, Miss?” she asks.
“Oh, on the telephone table, I think, Edith.” Lettice pronounces, as she picks up the telephone from her desk and walks it across the room, dragging the flex behind her, back to where it belongs.
“Very good, Miss.” Edith busily removes the vase of slightly withered yellow lilies and roses that were sitting on the table and replaces them with the roses. Picking up the other vase from where she placed it in the polished parquet floor she remarks, “There’s plenty of life left in these. I’ll pick through them and rearrange them in a smaller vase for you.”
“Oh no, you keep them, Edith. It will help brighten the kitchen up.” Lettice replies.
“That’s very kind of you, Miss. Thank you.”
“Oh, and could you please bring us some tea.”
“Yes Miss,” Edith answers with a bob curtsey. “Oh, and Mr. Spencely, that gentleman you mentioned is here. He’s in the kitchen at present. Shall I send him through?”
“Man? What man?” Lettice asks, glancing first at Edith and then at Selwyn.
“Yes, if you would, Edith. Thank you.”
“What man, Selwyn?” Lettice repeats to her beau as Edith retreats through the dining room and disappears through the green baize door into the service part of the flat.
Selwyn’s smile grows broader. “All will be revealed shortly, my Angel.” he assures her calmly.
The door Edith walked through opens and a workman carrying a large cardboard box steps across its threshold. Dressed in a flat cap damp from the rain outside and taupe coloured apron over a thick dark woollen jumper and black trousers, his face is florid with exertion as he breathes heavily and walks slowly.
“Ahh, put it down over here,” Selwyn commands as the deliveryman nears them, pointing with an indicating finger to the floor next to the table where Edith put the roses.
“You might ‘ave warned me I was goin’ ta have ta climb four flights of stairs with this, Guv!” the man huffs as he lowers the box onto the floor. He groans as he returns to an upright position and removes his cap. Withdrawing a grubby white kerchief from his pocket he wipes his brow before returning his cap to his head. He dabs his face with his kerchief as he inhales and exhales with laboured, rasping breaths.
“Good heavens!” Lettice gasps. “What on earth is in that box that’s so heavy?”
“Oh it’s not that ‘eavy, Mum,” the deliveryman pants. “If youse only takin’ it from room ta room.” He wipes the back of his neck with his kerchief. “Only if youse ‘oistin’ it up four flights of stairs!”
Selwyn ignores the deliveryman’s protestations as his focuses his attentions solely on Lettice. “I promised you when I had to withdraw from accompanying you to Priscilla’s wedding, that I was going to make it up to you, and this,” He taps the top of the box. “Is it!”
“What on earth is it?” Lettice asks with excitement and intrigue.
The red faced workman opens the box lid and delves into its interior. Newspaper scrunches noisily as he withdraws a shining lump of burnished brass with three fine finials which he places with a heavy laboured huff onto the telephone console.
“It’s a wireless, my Angel!” Selwyn says with a sweeping gesture towards the apparatus gleaming under the light of the chandelier overhead. “Merry Christmas, happy New Year,” He pauses. “And I’m sorry, all in one!”
“A wireless!” Lettice gasps. “Oh Selwyn, darling!” She jumps up from her seat next to the wireless and runs around the black japanned coffee table, throwing her arms around his neck. She looks over at the gleaming piece of new machinery with three knobs on the front below an ornamental piece of fretwork protecting some mesh fabric behind it. “How generous! I love it, darling!” She breaks away from Selwyn, her face suddenly clouding. “Oh, don’t you need a licence to have a radio?”
“The gent’s already paid fur it, Mum.” the workman says, reaching into the front pocket of his apron and withdrawing a slightly crumpled envelope. “Ten shillin’s, paid for through the General Post Office****.” He hands her the envelope.
“Ten shillings!” Lettice looks at Selwyn aghast. “On top of the apparatus itself. It must have cost a fortune!”
“Oh, it does, Mum!” the workman begins before being silenced by a sweeping gesture and a steely look from Selwyn. “Sorry, Guv.” He falls silent.
Turning back to Lettice, Selwyn continues, “It’s worth it to provide some pleasure to you, my Angel.”
“Oh Selwyn darling! You are a brick!” Lettice exhales in delight as she feels his hands pull her closer to him and kisses the top of her head tenderly. “But how does it operate?”
“Our good man here can tell you that better than I can, my darling.” Selwyn replies.
“Oh its really quite easy, Mum.” the workman assures Lettice. “It runs on a battery, oh, but just be careful! It’s an acid battery,” He points to his apron where his knees are. “So just watch yerself when youse moves it. Better youse ‘n yer maid move it togevva, side by side like, than youse on yer own, Mum.” He adds. “Turn it on ‘n off wiv this knob.” He points to the button on the left-hand side. “Turn the volume up or down wiv this knob.” He turns the button left and right. “And use the middle one to tune the wireless in.”
“Tune it in?” Lettice asks.
“Yes, Mum. ‘Ere I’ll show yer.” He leans down and turns the left knob to the right and it releases a satisfyingly crisp click. “We’ll just wait for the valves to warm up.” Slowly a quiet crackle begins behind the mesh. “This ‘ere’s the speaker, Mum.” He points to the fretwork covered mesh at the top of the wireless. “Sound‘ll come outta ‘ere.” he continues, feeling the need to clarify.
Just as Edith walks into the drawing room with a silver tray laden with tea things, the wireless releases a strangulated roar, making a juddering cacophony of discordant racket.
“Good heavens what’s that awful noise?” the young maid gasps, her eyes wide in horror as she allows the tray to clatter roughly onto the surface of the coffee table.
“It’s just the wireless warming up, Edith.” Selwyn assures her in a calm voice. “Do stay and watch this marvel of the modern age.”
“Marvel of the modern age!” Edith scoffs. “That infernal contraption is more than enough,” She glares at the shiny silver and black Bakelite***** telephone. “Without us having more gadgets around here.”
“Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Edith.” Lettice chides her maid mildly over the sound of the wireless static.
“This, my dear Edith,” Selwyn pronounces with a satisfied sigh. “Is the sign of the new age! Soon everyone will have one of these.”
“Heaven help us all then!” Edith rolls her eyes.
“And like I says, yer tune it wiv this knob, Mum.”
The workman starts to slowly turn the knob to the right, and as he does, the static sounds change, growing momentarily louder and then softer, and then slowly the discordant cacophony of harsh sounds starts to dissipate as music begins to be heard in its place. Very quickly the static is gone and the strains of violins and piano stream through the wireless speaker as ‘Londonderry Air’****** plays.
“Well, I never!” gasps Edith. “Its like having your own private band to play for you in that little box!”
“That it is, Miss.” agrees the workman.
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Selwyn darling!” Lettice exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck before kissing him with delight on the cheek.
And just for a little while, Lettice, Selwyn, Edith and the workman all stand and look at the shiny new wireless, enjoying the beautiful music drifting from its speaker.
The introduction of a radio, or a wireless as it was then known as, is the first real change we have seen to Lettice’s drawing room since we first met her two years ago, and in many ways it represents the spirit of change that the 1920s have become synonymous with. The British Broadcasting Company, as the BBC was originally called, was formed on the 18th of October 1922 by a group of leading wireless manufacturers including Marconi. Daily broadcasting by the BBC began in Marconi's London studio, 2LO, in the Strand, on November the 14th, 1922. John Reith, a thirty-three-year-old Scottish engineer, was appointed General Manager of the BBC at the end of 1922. Following the closure of numerous amateur stations, the BBC started its first daily radio service in London – 2LO. After much argument, news was supplied by an agency, and music drama and “talks” filled the airwaves for only a few hours a day. It wasn't long before radio could be heard across the nation, especially when radio stations were set up outside of London, like on the 6th of March when the BBC first broadcast from Glasgow via station 5SC.
*Jeffrey and Company was an English producer of fine wallpapers that operated between 1836 and the mid 1930s. Based at 64 Essex Road in London, the firm worked with a variety of designers who were active in the aesthetic and arts and crafts movements, such as E.W. Godwin, William Morris, and Walter Crane. Jeffrey and Company’s success is often credited to Metford Warner, who became the company’s chief proprietor in 1871. Under his direction the firm became one of the most lucrative and influential wallpaper manufacturers in Europe. The company clarified that wallpaper should not be reserved for use solely in mansions, but should be available for rooms in the homes of the emerging upper-middle class.
**Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women's hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut. For those women who had longer hair, it was common to tie the hair at the nape of the neck and pin it above the ear with a stylish hair pin or flower. One famous wearer was American entertainer, Josephine Baker.
***A Peter Pan collar is a style of clothing collar, flat in design with rounded corners. It is named after the collar of Maude Adams's costume in her 1905 role as Peter Pan, although similar styles had been worn before this date. Peter Pan collars were particularly fashionable during the 1920s and 1930s.
****With the advent of radio, as of the 18th of January, 1923, the Postmaster General granted the BBC a licence to broadcast. A licence fee of ten shillings was charged per wireless set sold, purchased through the General Post Office. Amateur wireless enthusiasts avoided paying the licence by making their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets.
*****Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.
******The "Londonderry Air" is an Irish air that originated in County Londonderry. It is popular among the North American Irish diaspora and is well known throughout the world. The tune is played as the victory sporting anthem of Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games. The song "Danny Boy" uses the tune, with a set of lyrics written in the early Twentieth Century.
This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, including items from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Central to our story, the brass wireless, which is remarkably heavy for its size, comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Supplies in the United Kingdom.
Lettice’s tea set is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era. The green tinted glass comport on the coffee table , spun from real glass, is also from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.
In front of the telephone sits a paperback novel from the late 1920s created by miniature British 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 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 these books 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 vase of red roses on the Art Deco occasional table is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.
Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The black japanned wooden chair is a Chippendale design and has been upholstered with modern and stylish Art Deco fabric. The mirror backed back japanned china cabinet is Chippendale too. On its glass shelves sit pieces of miniature Limoges porcelain including jugs, teacups and saucers, many of which I have had since I was a child.
To the left of the Chippendale chair stands a blanc de chine Chinese porcelain vase, and next to it, a Chinese screen. The Chinese folding screen I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.
The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we have left the hustle and bustle of London, travelling southwest to a stretch of windswept coastline just a short drive the pretty Cornish town of Penzance. Here, friends of Lettice, newlyweds Margot and Dickie Channon, have been gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton. Margot, encouraged by her father Lord de Virre who will foot the bill, has commissioned Lettice to redecorate a few of the principal rooms of ‘Chi an Treth’. In the lead up to the wedding, Lord de Virre has spent a great deal of money making the Regency house habitable after many years of sitting empty and bringing it up to the Twentieth Century standards his daughter expects, paying for electrification, replumbing, and a connection to the Penzance telephone exchange. Now, with their honeymoon over, Dickie and Margot have finally taken possession of their country house gift and have invited Lettice to come and spend a Friday to Monday with them so that she might view the rooms Margot wants redecorating for herself and perhaps start formulating some ideas as to how modernise their old fashioned décor. As Lettice is unable to drive and therefore does not own a car, Margot and Dickie have extended the weekend invitation to one of their other Embassy Club coterie, Lettice’s 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. Gerald owns a Morris*, so he can motor both Lettice and himself down from London on Friday and back again on Monday.
As the Morris drove slowly up the rather uneven and potholed driveway running through a wild and unkempt looking park that must once have been a landscaped garden, both Lettice and Gerald were taken aback by the house standing on the crest of an undulating hill overlooking a cove. When described as a Regency “cottage residence”, the pair were expecting a modest single storey house of maybe eight to ten rooms with a thatch roof, not the sprawling double storey residence of white stucco featuring arched French doors and windows with sea views, a wraparound cast iron verandah and high pitched slate tiled roof with at least a dozen chimneys.
Now settled in ‘Chi an Treth’s’ drawing room, Lettice looks about her, taking in the stripped back, slightly austere and very formal furnishings.
“I say old bean,” Gerald addresses Dickie from his seat next to Lettice on the rather hard and uncomfortable red velvet settee. “If this is what your father calls a ‘cottage residence’, no wonder you jumped at the chance to take it.”
“Apparently the Prince Regent** coined the term ‘cottage residence’ when he had Royal Lodge built at Windsor,” Dickie explains cheerily from his place standing before the crackling fire, leaning comfortably against the mantle. “And of course my ancestors being the ambitious breed they were, set about building a ‘cottage’ to rival it.”
“Was it built for a previous Marquess of Taunton?” Lettice asks with interest.
“Heavens no, darling!” their host replies, raising his hands animatedly. “It was built back around 1816 for one of the second Marquess’ bastard sons, who served as a ship’s captain and returned from fighting the Frenchies a decorated war hero.” Dickie points to two portraits at the end of the room, either side of a Regency sideboard.
“That would explain the maritime theme running through the art in here.” Lettice points casually to several paintings of ships also hanging about the walls.
“Aren’t they ghastly, Lettice darling?” Margot hisses as she glances around at the oils in their heavy frames. “We need some femininity in this old place, don’t you think?” She giggles rather girlishly as she gives her friend a wink. “Daddy has promised me the pretty Georgian girl in the gold dress that hangs in my bedroom in Hans Crescent. I think it could look lovely in here.”
“If you please, my love!” Dickie chides his new wife sweetly, giving her a knowing look.
“Oh, so sorry my love!” she replies, putting her dainty fingers to her cheeky smile.
“As the Marquess’ prolific illegitimate progeny were well known up and down the coast of Cornwall and beyond,” Dickie continues his potted history of the house. “And what with him being a hero of the Napoleonic wars, his father, my ancestor the second Marquess, thought it best to set him up in a fine house of his own.”
“That was far enough away from the family seat.” Gerald adds.
“That was far enough away from the Marchioness, more like!” Dickie corrects. “Last thing you want to do is rub your good lady wife’s nose into the fruits spawned from the sewing of your wild oats.”
Margot looks across at her husband from her armchair with a look of mock consternation. “I do hope, my sweet, that I’m not to be confronted with any illegitimate offspring when I’m Marchioness of Taunton.”
“Certainly not my love. The Marquess’s wife, Georgette, was fierce by all accounts, but she’d be a pussy cat compared to your fierceness, Margot.”
“I should think so.” Margot smiles with satisfaction.
“Anyway,” Dickie adds with a roguish smile. “I made sure I did away with any illegitimate offspring I had, prior to marrying you.”
The four friends laugh at Dickie’s quick, witty response, just as the door to the drawing room is forced open by a heavy boot, startling them all.
Looking to the door as it creaks open noisily on its hinges, an old woman with a wind weathered face with her unruly wiry white hair tied loosely in a bun, wearing a rather tatty apron over an old fashioned Edwardian print dress, walks in carrying a tea tray. Although weighed down heavily with a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, four cups and saucers and a glass plate of biscuits, the rather frail looking old woman seems unbothered by its weight, although her bones crack noisily and disconcertingly as she lowers the tray onto the low occasional table between the settee and armchairs.
“Oh, thank you Mrs. Trevethan.” Margot acknowledges the old woman.
“Omlowenhewgh agas boes!***” the elderly woman replies in a gravelly voice, groaning as she stretches back into an upright position.
“Yes… Yes, thank you Mrs. Trevethan.” Margot replies in an unsure tone, giving Lettice a gentle shrug and a quizzical look which her friend returns. “I’ll pour the tea myself I think.”
“Pur dha****.” she answers rather gruffly before retreating back the way she came with shuffling footsteps.
“What did she say?” Lettice asks Dickie once the door to the drawing room has closed and the old woman’s footfalls drift away, mingling with the distant sound of the ocean outside.
“Why look at me, old girl?” Dickie replies with a sheepish smile and a shrug as big as his wife’s.
“Because your Cornish, Dickie.” Lettice replies.
“Only by birth darling!” he defends with a cocked eyebrow and a mild look of distain.
“But it’s your heritage, Dickie.” counters Lettice disappointedly. “You’re supposed to know these things.”
“You know I went to Eaton, where they beat any hint of Cornish out of me my father and mother hadn’t already chased away prior to me going there.”
“It sounded like swearing to me,” Gerald adds in disgust, screwing up his nose. “Local dialect. So guttural.”
“Like ‘be gone you city folk, back from whence you came’?” Margot giggles.
“And who’d blame her?” Dickie pipes up. “After all, she and Mr. Trevethan have had run of this place ever since the old sea captain died. I mean, this place was supposed to be for Harry…”
“God bless Harry.” Margot, Lettice and Gerald all say in unison with momentarily downcast eyes.
“But of course, he never lived to be married and be given this place as a wedding gift, so Mr. and Mrs. Trevethan have been looking after the place for around four decades I’d reckon, give or take a few years.”
“So, there is a Mr. Trevethan then?” Lettice asks.
“Oh yes,” Dickie elucidates as he moves from the fireplace and takes his seat in the other vacant armchair. “He’s the gardener and odd job man.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the whole house doesn’t fall down around our ears.” Gerald remarks disparagingly. “Getting the Morris safely over those potholes in your driveway was no mean feat, old bean.”
“They’re old, dear chap.” Dickie defends his housekeeper and gardener kindly. “Be fair. They’ve done a pretty good job of caretaking the old place, considering.”
“Poor chap.” mutters Gerald. “Looking at that old harridans’ haggard old face every day.”
“Oh Gerald!” gasps Lettice, leaning over and slapping his wrist playfully. “You are awful sometimes! For all you know, she was the beauty of Penzance when she and Mr. Trevethan were first courting. And,” she adds loftily. “I’ll have you know that I think the Cornish dialect sounds very beautiful,” She takes a dramatic breath as she considers her thoughts. “Rather like an exotic language full of magic.”
“You’ve been reading too much King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.” Gerald cheekily criticises his friend’s reading habits lightly.
“Oh, thinking of which, I have a new novel for you, Lettice darling! It’s called ‘Joanna Godden’***** by Sheila Kaye-Smith. I’ve just finished it.” Margot takes up a volume from the round Regency side table next to her and passes it across to Lettice’s outstretched hands. “It’s a drama set in Kent. I’m sure you’ll like it. Now, shall I be mother?******” she asks, assuming her appropriate role of hostess as she reaches for and sets out the Royal Doulton teacups, a wedding gift from relations, and takes up the silver teapot, also a wedding gift. Expertly she pours the tea and then hands the cups first to her guests and then to her husband before picking up her own.
“I hope that old harridan didn’t spit in the tea.” Gerald looks uneasily at the cup of reddish tea he holds in his hands. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Oh Gerald,” Lettice tuts, shaking her head in mock disapproval before chuckling light heartedly. “You do like to dramatise, don’t you?”
“If you announce her intentions like that,” Margot adds. “I’m sure she will, since she has the habit of listening at the keyhole.” She smiles cheekily as she finishes her sentence and settles back in her armchair.
“What?” Gerald splutters, depositing his cup rather clumsily and nosily on the Regency occasional table at his left elbow and looking over his shoulder to the door.
Margot, Dickie and Lettice all burst out laughing.
“Oh Gerald,” Lettice says gaily through her mirthful giggles. “You’re always so easy to bait.”
Gerald looks at his friends, smiling at his distress. “Oh!” He swivels back around again and tries to settle as comfortably as possible into the hard back of the settee. “I see.” He takes up his cup and glowers into it as he stirs it with his teaspoon, his pride evidently wounded at his friends’ friendly joke.
Lettice takes up her own cup of tea, adding sugar and milk to it and stirring, before selecting a small jam fancy from the glass dish of biscuits. Munching the biscuit she gazes about the room again, appraising the mostly Regency era furnishings of good quality with a few examples of lesser well made early Victorian pieces, the maritime oil paintings, the worn and faded Persian carpet across the floor and the vibrantly painted red walls, deciding that as well as formal, the room has a very masculine feel about it. “It’s really quite an elegant room, you know.” she remarks. “It has good bones.”
“Oh don’t look too closely at our less elegant damp patches or cracks to those so-called good bones, darling girl.” Dickie replies.
“Nor the chips to the paintwork and plaster or the marks we can’t quite account for.” Margot adds with a sigh. “I think I’d have been happy for Daddy to commission Edwin Lutyens******* to demolish this pile of mouldering bricks and build us a new country house.”
“Margot! What a beastly thing to say!” Lettice clasps the bugle beads at her throat in shock. “To demolish all this history, only to replace it with a mock version thereof. Why it is sheer sacrilege to even say it!”
“Blame it on my Industrial Revolution new money heritage,” Margot defends her statement. “Unlike you darling, with your ancestry going back hundreds of years and your romance for everything old.”
“I can’t see any damp patches, Dickie, or cracks.” Lettice addresses her male host again.
“That’s because it’s so dark in here,” Margot explains. “Even on an unseasonably sunny day like today, the red walls and the red velvet furnishings camouflage the blemishes.”
“All the more reason not to change the décor then, dear girl.” remarks Gerald as his gingerly sips his tea, still not entirely convinced of Mrs. Trevethan’s actions prior to the tea being deposited on the table.
“No! No, Gerald!” Margot counters. “That’s why I need you Lettice darling, and your vision. I want the place lightened up, smartened up and made more comfortable.”
“Those chairs are rather beautiful,” observes Lettice, indicating to the armchairs in which her host and hostess sit, admiring their ormolu mounted arms, sturdy legs and red velvet cushions.
“These things!” Margot scoffs, looking down at the seat beneath her. “They are so uncomfortable!” She rubs her lower back in an effort to demonstrate how lumpy and hard they are. “I can’t wait to banish them to the hallway. I can’t possibly sit pleasurably in these, or on that,” She indicates to the settee upon which Lettice and Gerald sit. “And read a book. They aren’t designed for comfort. No, what we want, and need is some soft, modern comfort in here to make life here more pleasurable for us and our guests. I want to sit in here and enjoy the afternoon sun streaming through those from the luxury of a new settee, or invite guests to snuggle into plush new armchairs.”
“Margot does have a point, Lettice darling.” Gerald adds, looking mournfully at Lettice as he bounces gingerly on his half of the settee, the flattened velvet seat barely yielding to his moving form.
Lettice looks around again. “There are no portraits of women in here, nor children.”
“That’s because there aren’t any, anywhere in the house.” Margot replies.
“What?” Lettice queries.
“The captain was a confirmed old bachelor all his life.” adds Dickie.
“But he looks quite dashing in his naval uniform,” Lettice observes. “Surely with his successful career, looks and a house like this to boot, he must have had every eligible woman in Cornwall dashing to knock down his door.”
“Even Mrs. Trevethan’s mother, who no doubt was even more beautiful than her daughter at the time the captain was looking for a bride.” Gerald chuckles, his response rewarded with a withering look from Lettice.
“He may well have been a desirous prospect, Lettice darling,” Dickie agrees. “But he remained unmarried all his life, and he lived to a great age.”
“There is a rumour,” adds Margot, leaning forward conspiratorially for dramatic effect. “That there was a sweetheart: a local lady of good breeding and family. However, her father didn’t approve of an illegitimate son-in-law, even if he did have a successful naval career and a grand new residence. We don’t know whether she was coerced, or if she really didn’t love him, but whatever the cause, she refused him. They say that her refusal of his marriage proposal broke his heart, and he swore then and there that he would never marry.”
“Oh how romantic!” Lettice enthuses.
“There is also talk in the family,” Dickie adds. “That there is a lost portrait of her.”
“A lost portrait?” breathes Lettice excitedly.
“Yes, by Winterhalter******* no less.” Margot explains.
“Oh how thrilling!” Lettice gasps, clutching her beads with exhilaration this time.
“Have you found it yet, old bean?” Gerald asks.
“No! Of course not,” replies Dickie. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be a lost portrait, would it? Do try to keep up old chap!”
“Not that I haven’t gone sneaking around the house looking for it atop cupboards and at the back of wardrobes.” Margot adds eagerly.
“That’s undoubtedly because that cussing old harridan Mrs. Trevethan and her husband probably stole it as soon as the captain had taken his last breath,” explains Gerald. “And now it hangs over their drawing room fireplace in the gatekeeper’s lodge.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Gerald!” scoffs Dickie. “The Trevethans are a kindly pair, if perhaps a little rough and eccentric for our tastes. They love this house as much as we…” He glances at his wife before correcting himself. “Well, as much as I, do. No, we just haven’t found it yet. We may never find it because it might have been taken by someone else long ago, destroyed by the old captain himself in a fit of emotional rage…”
“Or,” adds Margot. “It could simply be a Channon family legend.”
“Exactly.” agrees Dickie with a satisfied sigh as he reaches over and takes up a chocolate biscuit, taking a large bite out of it. “It wouldn’t be the first if it is.”
“I know!” Lettice pipes up with a cheeky smile on her face. “Let’s play sardines******** together tonight, and then one of us might stumble across it in the most unlikely of hiding places.”
*Morris Motors Limited was a privately owned British motor vehicle manufacturing company established in 1919. With a reputation for producing high-quality cars and a policy of cutting prices, Morris's business continued to grow and increase its share of the British market. By 1926 its production represented forty-two per cent of British car manufacturing. Amongst their more popular range was the Morris Cowley which included a four-seat tourer which was first released in 1920.
**The Prince Regent, later George IV, was king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from the death of his father, King George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later. He had already been serving as Prince Regent since 5 February 1811, during his father's final mental illness. It is from him that we derive the Regency period in architecture, fashion and design.
***”Omlowenhewgh agas boes” is Cornish for “bon appetit”.
*****“Pur dha” is Cornish for “very good”.
*****‘Joanna Godden’ is a 1921 novel by British writer Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887 – 1956). It is a drama set amongst the sheep farmers of Romney Marsh in Kent.
******The meaning of the very British term “shall I be mother” is “shall I pour the tea?”
*******Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869 – 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings, and was one of the architects of choice for the British upper classes between the two World Wars.
********Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805 – 1873) was a German painter and lithographer, known for his flattering portraits of royalty and upper-class society in the mid-19th century. His name has become associated with fashionable court portraiture. Among his best known works are Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855) and the portraits he made of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1865).
********Sardines is an active game that is played like hide and go seek — only in reverse! One person hides, and everyone else searches for the hidden person. Whenever a person finds the hidden person, they quietly join them in their hiding spot. There is no winner of the game. The last person to join the sardines will be the hider in the next round. Sardines was a very popular game in the 1920s and 1930s played by houseguests in rambling old country houses where there were unusual, unknown and creative places to hide.
This beautiful Regency interior with its smart furnishings may not be all that it seems, for it is made up entirely with miniatures from my collection, including a number of pieces that I have had since I was a child.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The two walnut Regency armchairs with their red velvet seats and ormolu mounts are made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. So too are the two round occasional tables that flank the settee and one of the armchairs.
The round walnut coffee table was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Creal miniatures.
The red velvet mahogany settee, the Regency sideboard and the two non matching mahogany and red velvet chairs at the far end of the room I have had since I was around six or seven, having been given them as either birthday or Christmas gifts.
The irises in the vase on the sideboard are very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The vase in which it stands is spun of real glass and was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The detail in this Art Deco vase is especially fine. If you look closely, you will see that it is decorated with fine latticework.
Also made of real glass are the decanters of whiskey and port and the cranberry glass soda syphon also made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The white roses behind the syphon are also from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, as is the glass plate of biscuits you can see on the coffee table.
The two novels on the occasional table next to the armchair come from Shepherds Miniatures in England, whilst the wedding photo in the silver frame is a real photo, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frame comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in England.
On the occasional table beside the settee stands a miniature 1950s lidded powder bowl which I have had since I was a teenager. It is stamped on its base with a green Limoges stamp indicating the era.
The Royal Doulton style tea set featuring roses on the coffee table came from a miniature dollhouse specialist on E-Bay, whilst the silver teapot comes from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The silver Regency tea caddy (lettice’s wedding gift to Margot and Dickie if you follow the “Life at Cavendish Mews” series), the slender candlestick and the tall two handled vase on the mantle were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.
The British newspapers that sit in a haphazard stack on the footstool in the foreground of the picture are 1:12 size copies of ‘The Mirror’, the ‘Daily Express’ and ‘The Tattler’ made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. There is also a copy of ‘Country Life’ which was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1921 edition of ‘Country Life’.
The plaster fireplace to the right of the photo comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.
All the paintings around the drawing room in their gilded or black frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
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 however, we are just a short distance from Cavendish Mews, at Mr. Willison’s grocers’ shop. Willison’s Grocers in Mayfair is where Lettice has an account, and it is from here that Edith, Lettice's maid, orders her groceries for the Cavendish Mews flat, except on special occasions like the soirée that Lettice threw for Dickie and Margot Channon’s engagement, when professional London caterers are used. Mr. Willison prides himself in having a genteel, upper-class clientele including the households of many titled aristocrats who have houses and flats in the neighbourhood, and he makes sure that his shop is always tidy, his shelves well stocked with anything the cook of a duke or duchess may want, and staff who are polite and mannerly to all his important customers. The latter is not too difficult, for aside from himself, Mrs. Willison does his books, his daughter Henrietta helps on Saturdays and sometimes after she has finished school, which means Mr. Willison technically only employs one member of staff: Frank Leadbetter his delivery boy who carries orders about Mayfair on the bicycle provided for him by Mr. Willison. He also collects payments for accounts which are not settled in his Binney Street shop whilst on his rounds.
Lettice’s maid, Edith, is stepping out with Frank, and to date since he rather awkwardly suggested the idea to her in the kitchen of the Cavendish Mews flat, the pair has spent every Sunday afternoon together, going to see the latest moving pictures at the Premier in East Ham*, dancing at the Hammersmith Palais or walking in one of London’s many parks. They even spent Easter Monday at the fair held on Hampstead Heath***. Whilst Lettice is away in Cornwall selecting furniture from Dickie and Margot’s Penzance country house, ‘Chi an Treth’, to be re-purposed, Edith is taking advantage of a little more free time and has come to Willison’s Grocers under the pre-text of running an errand in the hope of seeing Frank. The bell rings cheerily as she opens the plate glass door with Mr. Willison’s name painted in neat gilt lettering upon it. Stepping across the threshold she immediately smells the mixture of comforting smells of fresh fruits, vegetables and flour, permeated by the delicious scent of the brightly coloured boiled sweets coming from the large cork stoppered jars on the shop counter. The sounds of the busy street outside die away, muffled by shelves lined with any number of tinned goods and signs advertising everything from Lyon’s Tea**** to Bovril*****.
“Miss Watsford!” exclaims Mr. Willison’s wife as she peers up from her spot behind the end of the return counter near the door where she sits doing her husband’s accounts. “We don’t often have the pleasure.”
Edith looks up, unnerved, at the proprietor’s wife and bookkeeper, her upswept hairstyle as old fashioned as her high necked starched shirtwaister****** blouse down the front of which runs a long string of faceted bluish black beads. “Yes,” Edith smiles awkwardly. “I… I have, err… that is to say I forgot to give Fr… err, Mr. Leadbeater my grocery list when he visited the other day.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Willison queries. “I could have sworn that we had it.” She starts fussing through a pile of papers distractedly. “That isn’t like you Miss Watsford. You’re usually so well organised.”
“Well,” Edith thinks quickly. “It… it isn’t really the list. It’s just that I left a few things off. Miss Chetwynd… well, you see she fancies…”
“Oh, well give me the additions, Miss Watsford,” Mrs. Willison thrusts out her hand efficiently, the frothy white lace of her sleeve dancing around her wrist. “And I’ll see to it that they are added to your next delivery. We don’t want the Honourable Miss Chetwynd to go without, now do we?”
With a shaky hand Edith reluctantly hands over her list of a few extra provisions that aren’t really required, especially with her mistress being away for a few days. As she does, she glances around the cluttered and dim shop hopefully.
“Will there be anything else, Miss Watsford?” Mrs. Willison asks curtly.
“Err… yes.” Edith stammers, but falls silent as she continues to look in desperation around the shop.
Mrs. Willison suspiciously eyes the slender and pretty domestic through her pince-nez*******. She scrutinises Edith’s fashionable plum coloured frock with the pretty lace collar. The hem of the skirt is following the current style and sits higher than any of Mrs. Willison’s own dresses and it reveals Edith’s shapely stockinged calves. She wears her black straw cloche decorated with purple silk roses and black feathers over her neatly pinned chignon. “Is that a few frock, Miss Watsford?” the grocer’s wife continues.
“Ahh, yes it is, Mrs. Willison. I made it myself from scratch with a dress pattern from Fashion for All********,” Edith replies proudly, giving a little twirl that sends her calf length skirt flaring out prettily, and Mrs. Willison’s eyebrows arching with disapproval as the young girl reveals even more of her legs as she does. “Do you like it?”
“You seem a little dressed up to run an errand here, Miss Watsford.” Mrs. Willison says with bristling disapprobation.
“Well, I… I err… I do have some letters to post too, Mrs. Willison,” Edith withdraws two letters from her wicker basket and holds them up in her lilac glove clad hand.
“Well, we mustn’t keep you from your errand, now must we, Miss Watsford? Now what else did you require before you leave?” the older woman emphasises the last word in her sentence to make clear her opinion about young girls cluttering up her husband’s shop.
“An apple.” Edith says, suddenly struck with inspiration. “I’d like an apple for the journey, Mrs. Willison.”
“Very good, Miss Watsford.” the older woman starts to move off her stool. “I’ll fetch…”
“No need, Mrs. Willison!” Frank’s cheerful voice pipes up as he appears from behind a display of tinned goods. “I’ll take care of Miss Watsford. That’s what I’m here for. You just stay right there Mrs. Willison. Right this way, Miss Watsford.” He ushers her with a sweeping gesture towards the boxes of fresh fruit displayed near the cash register.
“Oh Fran…” Edith catches herself uttering Frank’s given name, quickly correcting herself. “Err… thank you, Mr. Leadbetter.”
Mrs. Willison lowers herself back into her seat, all the while eyeing the pair of young people critically as they move across the shop floor together, their heads boughed conspiratorially close, a sense of overfamiliarity about their body language. She frowns, the folds and furrows of her brow eventuated. Then she sighs and returns to the numbers in her ledger.
“What are you doing here, Edith?” Frank whispers to his sweetheart quietly, yet with evident delight in his voice.
“Miss Lettice is away down in Cornwall on business, so I thought I’d stop in on my way through in the hope of seeing you, Frank.” She glances momentarily over her shoulder. “Then Mrs. Willison greeted me. I thought I was going to get stuck with the disapproving old trout and not see you.”
“The weather looks good for Sunday, Edith. It’s supposed to be sunny. Shall we go to Regent’s Park and feed the ducks if it is?”
“Oh, yes!” Edith clasps her hands in delight, her gloves muffling the sound. “Maybe there will be a band playing in the rotunda.”
“If there is, I’ll hire us a couple of deck chairs and we can listen to them play all afternoon in the sunshine.”
“That sounds wonderful, Frank.”
“Well,” pronounces Frank loudly as the stand over the wooden tray of red and golden yellow apples. “This looks like a nice juicy one, Miss Watsford.”
“Yes,” Edith replies in equally clear tones. “I think I’ll have that one, Mr. Leadbeater.”
“Very good, Miss Watsford. I’ll pop it into a paper bag for you.”
“Oh, don’t bother Fr… Mr. Leadbeater. I’ll put it in my basket.”
Frank takes the apple and walks back around the counter to the gleaming brass cash register surrounded by jars of boiled sweets. “That will be tuppence please, Miss Watsford.” He enters the tally into the noisy register, causing the cash draw to spring open with a clunk and the rattle of coins rubbing against one another with the movement.
Edith hooks her umbrella over the edge of the counter, pulls off her gloves and fishes around in her green handbag before withdrawing her small leather coin purse from which she takes out tuppence which she hands over to Frank.
“Here,” Frank says after he deposits her money and pushes the drawer of the register closed. He slides a small purple and gold box discreetly across the counter.
Edith gasps as she looks at the beautifully decorated box featuring a lady with cascading auburn hair highlighted with gold ribbons, a creamy face and décollétage sporting a frothy white gown and gold necklace. She traces the embossed gold lettering on the box’s lid. “Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates!”
“Can’t have my girl come all this way to see me and not come away with a gift.” Frank whispers with a beaming smile dancing across his face.
“Seeing you is gift enough, Frank.” Edith blushes.
“Ahem!” Mrs. Willison clears her throat from the other end of the shop. “Will they be going on the Honourable Miss Chetwynd’s account, Frank?” she asks with a severe look directly at her husband’s employee.
“Um… no Mrs. Willison. Don’t worry. I’ll be paying for them.” Frank announces loudly. Bending his head closer to Edith, he whispers, “I can see why Mr. Willison has her in here when he isn’t. You can’t get away with anything without her knowing: ghastly old trout.”
Edith giggles as she puts the small box of chocolates and the apple into her basket. “I’ll save them for Sunday.” she says with a smile. “We can share them whilst we listen to the band from our deckchairs.”
Frank smile broadens even more. “Righty-ho, Edith.”
“Righty-ho, Frank.”
“Well, as I was saying, Miss Watsford,” Mrs. Willison pronounces from her stool. “We mustn’t keep you from your errands. I’m sure you have a lot to do, and it is almost midday already.”
“Yes indeed, Mrs. Willison.” Edith agrees, unable to keep the reluctance out of her voice. “I really should be getting along. Well, goodbye Mr. Leadbeater. Thank you for your assistance.” She then lowers her voice as she says, “See you Sunday.”
Both Frank and Mrs. Willison watch as the young lady leaves the shop the way she came, by the front door, a spring in her step and a satisfied smile on her face, her basket, umbrella and handbag slung over her arm.
“Frank!”
Frank cringes as Mrs. Willison calls his name. Turning around he sees her striding with purpose behind the counter towards him, wending her way through the obstacle course of stacks of tins and jars of produce, hessian sacks of fresh vegetables and fruits and boxes of bottles.
“Yes, Mrs Willison?”
“Frank,” she says disappointingly. “I can’t stop you from stepping out with a girl in your own time,” She comes to a halt before him, domineering over him with her topknot, her arms akimbo. “And I’d say the Honourable Miss Chetwynd is foolishly modern enough to let you take her maid out on Sundays.” She looks at him with disapproving eyes. “However, I’d be much obliged if you kept your dalliances to your own time, and kindly keep them out of my husband’s establishment during business hours!”
“Yes Mrs. Willison!” Frank replies, sighing gratefully, now knowing that he isn’t going to be given notice for chatting with Edith during work hours.
“And I’ll make an adjustment to your wages this week for the chocolates.” she adds crisply.
“Yes Mrs. Willison.” Frank nods before hurrying away back to the stock room.
*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.
**The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.
***Hampstead Heath (locally known simply as the Heath) is a large, ancient London heath, covering 320 hectares (790 acres). This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London Clay. The heath is rambling and hilly, embracing ponds, recent and ancient woodlands, a lido, playgrounds, and a training track, and it adjoins the former stately home of Kenwood House and its estate. The south-east part of the heath is Parliament Hill, from which the view over London is protected by law.
****Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J. Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in Britain, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J. Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England.
*****Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite.
******A shirtwaister is a woman's dress with a seam at the waist, its bodice incorporating a collar and button fastening in the style of a shirt which gained popularity with women entering the workforce to do clerical work in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.
*******Pince-nez is a style of glasses, popular in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, that are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, "to pinch", and nez, "nose".
********”Fashion for All” was one of the many women’s magazines that were published in the exuberant inter-war years which were aimed at young girls who were looking to better their chances of finding a husband through beauty and fashion. As most working-class girls could only imagine buying fashionable frocks from high street shops, there was a great appetite for dressmaking patterns so they could dress fashionably at a fraction of the cost, by making their own dresses using skills they learned at home.
This cluttered, yet cheerful Edwardian shop 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 the conclusion of our story is the dainty box of Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates. This beautifully printed confectionary box comes from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Starting in the Edwardian era, confectioners began to design attractive looking boxes for their chocolate selections so that they could sell confectionary at a premium, as the boxes were often beautifully designed and well made so that they might be kept as a keepsake. A war erupted in Britain between the major confectioners to try and dominate what was already a competitive market. You might recognise the shade of purple of the box as being Cadbury purple, and if you did, you would be correct, although this range was not marketed as Cadbury’s, but rather Gainsborough’s, paying tribute to the market town of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where Rose Bothers manufactured and supplied machines that wrapped chocolates. The Rose Brothers are the people for whom Cadbury’s Roses chocolates are named.
Also on the shop counter is an apple which is very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay it is made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The brightly shining cash register, probably polished by Frank, was supplied by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The cylindrical jars, made of real spun glass with proper removable cork stoppers which contain “sweets” I acquired as a teenager from an auction as part of a larger lot of miniature items. Edith’s lilac coloured gloves are made of real kid leather and along with the envelopes are artisan pieces that I acquired from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Edith’s green leather handbag I acquired as part of a larger collection of 1:12 artistan miniature hats, bags and accessories I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The umbrella comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Suppliers in the United Kingdom. Edith’s basket I acquired as part of a larger lot of 1:12 miniatures from an E-Bay seller in America.
The packed shelves you can see in the background is in fact a Welsh dresser that I have had since I was a child, which I have repurposed for this shot. You can see the dresser more clearly in other images used in this series when Edith visits her parent’s home in Harlesden. The shelves themselves are full of 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail as regards the labels of different foods. Some are still household names today. So many of these packets and tins of various foods would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. They come from various different suppliers including Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom, Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom, Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Items on the shelves include: Tate and Lyall Golden Syrup, Lyall’s Golden Treacle, Peter Leech and Sons Golden Syrup, P.C. Flett and Company jams, Golden Shred and Silver Shred Marmalades, Chiver’s Jelly Crystals, Rowtree’s Table Jelly, Bird’s Custard Powder, Bird’s Blancmange Powder, Coleman’s Mustard, Queen’s Gravy Salts, Bisto Gravy Powder, Huntly and Palmers biscuits, Lyon’s Tea and Typhoo Tea.
In 1859 Henry Tate went into partnership with John Wright, a sugar refiner based at Manesty Lane, Liverpool. Their partnership ended in 1869 and John’s two sons, Alfred and Edwin joined the business forming Henry Tate and Sons. A new refinery in Love Lane, Liverpool was opened in 1872. In 1921 Henry Tate and Sons and Abram Lyle and Sons merged, between them refining around fifty percent of the UK’s sugar. A tactical merger, this new company would then become a coherent force on the sugar market in anticipation of competition from foreign sugar returning to its pre-war strength. Tate and Lyle are perhaps best known for producing Lyle’s Golden Syrup and Lyle’s Golden Treacle.
Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War.
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.
Golden Shred orange marmalade and Silver Shred lime marmalade still exist today and are common household brands both in Britain and Australia. They are produced by Robertson’s. Robertson’s Golden Shred recipe perfected since 1874 is a clear and tangy orange marmalade, which according to their modern day jars is “perfect for Paddington’s marmalade sandwiches”. Robertson’s Silver Shred is a clear, tangy, lemon flavoured shredded marmalade. Robertson’s marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.
Chivers is an Irish brand of jams and preserves. For a large part of the Twentieth Century Chivers and Sons was Britain's leading preserves manufacturer. Originally market gardeners in Cambridgeshire in 1873 after an exceptional harvest, Stephen Chivers entrepreneurial sons convinced their father to let them make their first batch of jam in a barn off Milton Road, Impington. By 1875 the Victoria Works had been opened next to Histon railway station to improve the manufacture of jam and they produced stone jars containing two, four or six pounds of jam, with glass jars first used in 1885. In around 1885 they had 150 employees. Over the next decade they added marmalade to their offering which allowed them to employ year-round staff, rather than seasonal workers at harvest time. This was followed by their clear dessert jelly (1889), and then lemonade, mincemeat, custard powder, and Christmas puddings. By 1896 the family owned 500 acres of orchards. They began selling their products in cans in 1895, and the rapid growth in demand was overseen by Charles Lack, their chief engineer, who developed the most efficient canning machinery in Europe and by the end of the century Chivers had become one of the largest manufacturers of preserves in the world. He later added a variety of machines for sorting, can making, vacuum-caps and sterilisation that helped retain Chivers' advantage over its rivals well into the Twentieth Century. By the turn of the century the factory was entirely self-sufficient, growing all its own fruit, and supplying its own water and electricity. The factory made its own cans, but also contained a sawmill, blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, paint shop, builders and basket makers. On the 14th of March 1901 the company was registered as S. Chivers and Sons. By 1939 there were over 3,000 full-time employees, with offices in East Anglia as well as additional factories in Montrose, Newry and Huntingdon, and the company owned almost 8,000 acres of farms. The company's farms were each run independently, and grew cereal and raised pedigree livestock as well as the fruit for which they were known.
Founded by Henry Isaac Rowntree in Castlegate in York in 1862, Rowntree's developed strong associations with Quaker philanthropy. Throughout much of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, it was one of the big three confectionery manufacturers in the United Kingdom, alongside Cadbury and Fry, both also founded by Quakers. In 1981, Rowntree's received the Queen's Award for Enterprise for outstanding contribution to international trade. In 1988, when the company was acquired by Nestlé, it was the fourth-largest confectionery manufacturer in the world. The Rowntree brand continues to be used to market Nestlé's jelly sweet brands, such as Fruit Pastilles and Fruit Gums, and is still based in York.
Bird’s were best known for making custard and Bird’s Custard is still a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange. They also made Bird’s Golden Raising Powder – their brand of baking powder. Bird’s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird’s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.
Queen’s Gravy Salt is a British brand and this box is an Edwardian design. Gravy Salt is a simple product it is solid gravy browning and is used to add colour and flavour to soups stews and gravy - and has been used by generations of cooks and caterers.
The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.
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.
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.
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 left the hustle and bustle of London, travelling southwest to a stretch of windswept coastline just a short drive the pretty Cornish town of Penzance. Here, friends of Lettice, newlyweds Margot and Dickie Channon, have been gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton. Margot, encouraged by her father Lord de Virre who will foot the bill, has commissioned Lettice to redecorate a few of the principal rooms of ‘Chi an Treth’. In the lead up to the wedding, Lord de Virre has spent a great deal of money making the Regency house habitable after many years of sitting empty and bringing it up to the Twentieth Century standards his daughter expects, paying for electrification, replumbing, and a connection to the Penzance telephone exchange. Now, with their honeymoon over, Dickie and Margot have finally taken possession of their country house gift and have invited Lettice to come and spend a Friday to Monday with them so that she might view the rooms Margot wants redecorating for herself and perhaps start formulating some ideas as to how modernise their old fashioned décor. As Lettice is unable to drive and therefore does not own a car, Margot and Dickie have extended the weekend invitation to one of their other Embassy Club coterie, Lettice’s 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. Gerald owns a Morris*, so he can motor both Lettice and himself down from London on Friday and back again on Monday. After the retirement of the housekeeper, Mrs. Trevethan, from the main house to the gatekeeper’s cottage the previous evening, the quartet of Bright Young Things** played a spirited game of sardines*** and in doing so, potentially solved the romantic mystery of ‘Chi an Treth’ after discovering a boxed up painting, long forgotten, of a great beauty.
Now we find ourselves in ‘Chi an Treth’s’ Regency breakfast room with views through the French doors, overlooking the wild coast on a remarkably sunny day for this time of year. Dickie, Margot and Gerald are all seated around the table in their pyjamas and robes enjoying breakfast, some with more gusto than others, as Lettice stumbles into the room and joins them at the table.
“All hail the discoverer of lost treasures and the solver of mysteries!” cries Dickie dramatically as he doffs an invisible hat towards his friend.
“Oh!” gasps Gerald, raising his right hand gingerly to his temple. “Must you be so loud Dickie? Is he always like this in the mornings, Margot darling?”
“He is, Gerald,” Margot sighs from her seat opposite him at the breakfast table as she takes a slice of thinly sliced toast and spreads marmalade across it with as little noise as possible.
“Morning Dickie!” Lettice returns Dickie’s welcome, walking up to him and placing a kiss firmly on the top of his head amidst his sleep tousled sandy hair. “Good morning, Margot. Good morning, Gerald.” Stumbling down the room and reaching her seat at the table opposite Dickie she picks up her glass tumbler and then turns to Gerald to adds. “It could be worse.”
“What could be?” Gerald asks, taking the pot from Margot’s outstretched hand and proceeding to plop a generous spoonful of marmalade on his own toast slices.
“Dickie’s frightfully jolly morning personality trait.” she replies, walking back the way she came to the sideboard, where she helps herself to orange juice. “His cousin, the Earl McCrea, plays the bagpipes every morning to wake the guests when he’s on his Scottish estate.”
“How frightful,” Gerald winces at the thought before continuing in a withering voice. “After a night of champagne like we had last night, that’s the last thing I should want.”
“Apparently the Prince of Wales quite likes it though**** when he visits.” Margot adds. “Coffee, Lettice darling?”
“Tea,” Lettice replies laconically before turning her attention to the lidded chaffing dishes on the sideboard. Lifting one, she quickly drops it when she sees and smells what lies beneath it with a loud clatter that elicits a groan from Gerald, Margot and herself.
“Mrs. Trevethan’s kedgeree,” Margot remarks without looking up as she pours tea from a silver teapot into Lettice’s teacup.
“Ugh,” mutters Lettice.
“It takes some getting used to.” adds Margot.
“Is an acquired taste, I’d say.” observes Gerald wryly, looking about the plates at the table. “Since no-one appears to be having any.”
“I think my stomach will settle for a boiled egg and an apple.” Lettice places her glass of orange juice gingerly on the tabletop and reaches across to grab an apple from the glass comport in the centre of the table. She then sits before reaching for an egg from the cruet proffered by Margot.
“Freshly boiled by Mrs. Trevethan.” Margot says with a smile.
“What’s taking that woman so long to bring me a bloody aspirin?” quips Gerald.
“God how much did we drink last night?” Lettice asks.
“Before, or after you found the Winterhalter*****?” Dickie asks.
“That explains why my head is fit for cracking, just like an egg, this morning then.” Lettice rubs her own temples and winces. “I think I could do with a couple of aspirin too.”
“Surely they have heard of aspirin down here.” Gerald grumbles, his train of thought about his own sore head undisturbed by the conversation around him.
“It is only Cornwall, Gerald darling,” Margot gives him an aghast look. “Not the middle of the Sahara Desert or the Antarctic, you know.”
“I might have more luck getting some aspirin in the Sahara.”
“Now Gerald, there’s no need to be cantankerous, just because your hangover is purportedly worse than ours.” Margot quips.
“Was Mrs. Trevethan cross with the mess, we,” Lettice pauses, blushes and corrects herself. “I… made last night in the storeroom?”
“Not at all, dear girl!” Dickie pipes up cheerily, deliberately hitting his own egg with gusto to break the shell, eliciting a scowl from Gerald which he returns with a teasing smile. “Margot and Gerald did a capital job of tidying most of the mess up, and I think the old dear is rather pleased to have people to look after again.”
“She can’t care that much about us if it takes this long to fetch me an aspirin.”
“Oh do shut up, Gerald old boy,” Dickie barks, surprising even himself at the sudden change to his usual affable self. Taking a few deep breaths, he looks across the coffee pot, teacups and marmalade pot to his friend and continues in laboured syllables. “Look, we all need the bloody aspirins this morning, and they will get here when Mrs. Trevethan gets them to us. Alright, old boy?”
Gerald shrinks back in his seat, whilst both Margot and Lettice smirk at one another.
“I do like your bed jacket, Lettice darling.” Margot remarks. “It suits you. Did Gerald make it for you?”
“This?” Lettice pulls on the burnt orange brocade of her jacket, making the marabou feather trim quiver prettily about her pale face. “No. I actually bought this at Marshall and Snelgrove’s****** because I saw it and I liked the colour.”
“And what shall we do today?” Dickie asks the table, casting Gerald a warning look that makes Gerald think twice about saying that his head feels too poorly to do anything.
“Well,” Lettice remarks, turning around in her seat to peer through the French doors across the lawn and the windswept tree line. “It’s a fine day today. It might be nice to take advantage of the good weather and go exploring down along the cove.” She turns back. “That’s if no-one else has any other more appealing ideas of course.”
Margot smiles and starts nodding. “That sounds splendid, Lettice darling! You could bring your paints with you. There’s a rather nice vista featuring an old lighthouse that I know you would enjoy painting.”
“Capital idea, old girl!” Dickie agrees. “The bracing sea breeze will be a perfect way to dust off the fuzzy heads from last night.”
Gerald quietly sinks further back in his seat but says nothing.
At that moment, the door to the breakfast room creaks open and Mrs. Trevethan shuffles in, wearing the same rather tatty apron over another old fashioned Edwardian print dress of a rather muddy brown colour, carrying a silver tray on which she has several tumblers and a small jar of aspirin. When her eyes fall upon Lettice, she smiles broadly. “Metten daa******* Miss Chetwynd.” she says, dropping a bob curtsey.
“Good morning Mrs Trevethan.” Lettice replies.
The old woman shuffles across the room and around the oval breakfast table where she removes a glass and the jar of tablets and deposits them in front of Gerald. “Your aspirins, sir.”
Dickie gives him a knowing smile, and Gerald mutters a thank you in reply.
“I am sorry about the mess we made last night, Mrs, Trevethan.” Lettice apologises to the old Cornish woman as she places a glass tumbler on the table before her, feeling the heat of a fresh blush rising up her throat and into her cheeks as she speaks. “It really was an accident.”
“Oh!” scoffs the woman with a dismissive wave of her hand as if shooing a sand fly away. “That’s quite alright. It’s nice to have young people, any people, about the house again after so long. You did make a fine mess, but you cleaned it up pretty well.”
“Oh, that was Margot and Gerald’s doing, not mine.” she looks sheepishly to her two friends at either side of her at the table as she sips her orange juice. “I was quite shaken by the whole incident.”
“Well, that was quite a pile of things you brought down,” Mrs. Trevethan laughs as she looks down upon the slight girl before her. “Especially for one your size! But look at what hidden treasure you uncovered with it!”
“That’s true, Lettice old girl!” Dickie remarks. “If it weren’t for you, that Winterhalter might have sat there another century, evading would-be treasure hunters.”
“If it’s a Winterhalter, Dickie,” tempers Lettice. “It may not be. It may not be her.”
“Who?” Gerald asks, perplexed, passing Lettice the aspirin bottle after taking out two tablets for himself. “Winterhalter was a man.”
“The captain’s lost love of course, Gerald!” scoffs Lettice. “Don’t be dim.”
“Sorry, it’s the hangover.”
“Oh that’s Miss Rosevear in the painting,” Mrs. Trevethan remarks. “There is no doubt of that.”
Lettice eyes the old Cornish woman up and down. Even with her weather-beaten face and white hair indicating that she is of an advanced age, a quick calculation in her still slightly muffled head suggests that she cannot be so old as to have known the lady when the portrait was painted.
Mrs. Trevethan starts laughing again as she observes the changes on Lettice’s face, betraying her thoughts. “No dear, I’m not that old, but I still knew Miss Rosevear when I was young, and she was older, and even then, she was still a beauty. It’s her face make no mistake.”
“Really Mrs. Trevethan?” Margot gasps, sitting forward in her chair, her half finished cup of coffee held aloft as she sits in the older woman’s thrall. “How?”
“What was she like?” Lettice adds excitedly.
“Is there truth to the legend?” Dickie asks.
“Well, Mrs. Channon, I was a maid for the Rosevears when I was a girl and first went into service.” The old woman’s eyes develop a far away sheen as she reminisces. “Mr. Rosevear had a beautiful old manor about half-way between here and Truro. Burnt down now of course, but you can still see the ruins from the train, if you know where to look. There’s even an old halt******** where the house used to be: Rosevear Halt. My first ride on a train was taken from Rosevear Halt up to London when I was taken with a few of the other maids to clean Mr. Rosevear’s rented London house for the Season.”
“And Miss Rosevear?” Lettice asks with trepidation, hoping to glean information about the mysterious beauty in the painting and from the legend.
“Oh, Miss Elowen was the youngest of the three Rosevear daughters. They were all beautiful, but she was the loveliest, in my opinion anyway. She could dance and play the spinet, and she had a voice that could have charmed the angels from the heavens.” A wistful look crosses her face. “And she was blithe, or had been before my time at the house, I was told by some of the other maids. Her elder sisters were far more serious than she: set upon always wearing the most fashionable clothing and focussing upon good marriages, whereas the youngest Miss Rosevear, she just took life as it came to her without complaint. Although, she always had an air of sadness about her when I knew her.”
“Without complaint? What happened to her, Mrs. Trevethan?” Dickie asks, swept up in the tale as much as his wife and Lettice. “Why didn’t she marry my ancestor of sorts, the captain?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir, why she didn’t marry him. As I said, this all happened before my time with the Rosevears, but there were others amongst the older household staff who were witness to what happened, so I have some inkling. I think Mr. Rosevear took against the captain because,” Mrs. Trevethan pauses, lowering her eyes as she speaks. “And you’ll pardon me for speaking out of turn, sir.”
“Yes,” replies Dickie. “Go on.”
“Well, I think he took against the captain because he wasn’t a legitimate son of the Marquis of Taunton. The Rosevears were an old family you see, and well respected in the district. It might not have looked proper for someone of her family’s standing to marry the illegitimate son of the Marquis, even if he was a naval hero and well set up by his father. However,” She pauses again. “I don’t think things would have gone so badly for him, if it wasn’t for the other two Miss Rosevears.”
“What do you mean, Mrs, Trevethan?” asks Margot.
“Well, I said that Miss Elowen was the prettiest of all three, and I stand by that. Even when she was in her forties when I first met her, she had a look that could stop idle chatter in a room. Her two sisters weren’t so fortunate, and their looks had begun to fade by the time she met the captain, may God rest his soul. Miss Doryty, the eldest was ten years her little sister’s senior, and for all her plotting and planning for a good marriage, a good marriage never found her, nor her sister, Miss Bersaba. Miss Doryty was her father’s favourite as to look at one, you would like to see the other in appearance and temperament. I think she took against the captain because her little sister was likely to marry before her two siblings and Miss Doryty wasn’t going to have that any more than Miss Bersaba was. Miss Doryty was the eldest and felt it her right to marry first, and Miss Bersaba wanted Miss Doryty married off so that then she could get wed herself. Even when I worked for the Rosevears, both ladies still talked about her would-be suitors up in London, yet not a one ever materialised, and I never knew of them ever going to London. Miss Doryty always was bitter, and a bully. I think she swayed her father’s opinion on the captain. I also know, because I heard her say it often enough within my earshot, that she was of the opinion that it was Miss Elowen’s responsibility as the youngest daughter to care for her father and unmarried sisters into their dotage, since their mother had been in the churchyard many a year already.”
“And did she?” Lettice asks sadly, her hand rising to her mouth in upset.
“Like I said, Miss Chetwynd, Miss Elowen took whatever life dealt her with forbearance. She never complained, even though her sisters obviously treated her in a lesser way than they should their own kin.”
“And, she never married?” asks Margot.
“None of the Miss Rosevears did, Mrs. Channon. They lived alone in the Big House. I was still in service there after Mr. Rosevear died. The ladies continued to do good deeds in the district, and they used the house for tombolas and fetes to raise money for the poor. Then I met and married Mr. Trevethan and I had to leave the Rosevears’ service. I heard from friends who stayed on after I’d gone, that the house slowly fell into disrepair, but I was in Penzance with my own family, so I never went back to see for myself.”
“And you say there was a fire at the house?” Dickie asks.
“There was, sir.”
“How did it start, do you know?” continues Dickie.
“I couldn’t say for certain sir, but I’d imagine it started from a fallen log. The Rosevears had ever so many fireplaces without fireguards. It's why I won’t have Mr. Trevethan light a fire in any of the fireplaces here that don’t have fireguards. All you need is for a smouldering log to fall on a carpet, and before you know it… whoosh!” The old woman gesticulates dramatically interpreting the way of wild flames.
“And did Miss Rosevear die in the fire?” Margot asks. “How thrilling if she did.”
“And you say I love dramatics,” Gerald grumbles, looking at Dickie.
“What a terrible thing to say, my love.” Dickie looks at his wife with horrified eyes.
“Oh yes, but wouldn’t it be terrifically romantic?” gushes Margot in reply.
“None of the Rosevears died it the fire, Mrs. Channon. In fact, no one died in it, thank God! But the family lost a great deal of standing with the loss of the Big House and all its contents, and the sisters moved to Truro and lived in much reduced circumstances, I’m told. And that’s where they died. I don’t know who died first, Miss Bersaba or Miss Doryty, but my friend who used to help char for them after they moved to Truro said that the two elder sisters health declined dramatically, and Miss Elowen fulfilled the destiny predicted by her eldest sister, and she spent her life looking after her sisters.”
“Do you know if, after her sisters died, whether Elowen ever saw the captain again, Mrs. Trevethan?” Lettice asks tentatively.
“I can’t say for certain, Miss Chetwynd,” the old woman replies. “But almost certainly no, to my knowledge. Taking care of her sisters, Miss Rosevear became something of a recluse in Truro, and after Miss Doryty and Miss Bersaba had joined their parents in the churchyard, it was too late for Miss Elowen. She was set in her ways and lived as she had for many a year prior, alone and hidden from the world. The captain too. Mr. Trevethan and I only served him for about five years before he died, and he never left the property once during that time. He barely left the house. And I’d lived in Penzance my whole married life and we all knew about the sea captain in the house on the hill by the cove, and I never once heard of him coming to town. So, miss, I’d say he was much the same, a recluse. And so ends my tale.”
“Well, “ Dickie announces, releasing a pent up breath he didn’t realise he had been holding on to. “Thank you so much for sharing it with us, Mrs. Trevethan. I shall know who to come to the next time I want to know anything about local history.”
“I should be getting back now, sir. I have to reorganise that storeroom, and then there’s lunch to prepare.”
“Oh, we’ve decided to go down to the cove today so Miss Chetwynd can paint the landscape.” Margot announces with a smile. “Could you pack us a picnic luncheon to take with us, rather than having us eat it here, Mrs. Trevethan?”
“Oh, pur dha********* Mrs. Channon.” replies Mrs. Trevethan before dropping a quick bob curtsey and shuffling out through the breakfast room door again.
“Well, what a tragic tale!” enthuses Margot, taking up a slice of marmalade covered toast and taking a bite.
“Not so much tragic as just sad, my love.” Dickie replies.
“I say again,” Gerald grumbles. “You say I’m the one who loves drama.”
“Well you do, Gerald,” Lettice chimes in, stirring extra sugar into her almost forgotten cup of tea. “And we love you for it.” She assures him. “But I happen to agree with Margot. It is a tragic tale, more so than just sad. Sad is too… too…”
“Insipid?” Gerald offers.
“Thank you, Gerald. Yes, too insipid a word for it. The loss of youth and true love makes this a tragic tale.”
Dickie chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, I wouldn’t doubt that there was a little bit of wax lyrical about Mrs. Trevethan’s version of the story, as it would be with any local legend. However, what I think is important about the story is that it tells us exactly who the lady is in the Winterhalter painting. It gives us provenance, which makes it all the more valuable.”
“If it’s a Winterhalter, Dickie!” Lettice reminds him again. “It may not be.”
“Well, whether it is or it isn’t,” Margot adds in. “All this talk won’t get us out into this unseasonable sunshine and down to the cove so Lettice can paint the lighthouse. Let’s finish up breakfast and get ready to go out.”
*Morris Motors Limited was a privately owned British motor vehicle manufacturing company established in 1919. With a reputation for producing high-quality cars and a policy of cutting prices, Morris's business continued to grow and increase its share of the British market. By 1926 its production represented forty-two per cent of British car manufacturing. Amongst their more popular range was the Morris Cowley which included a four-seat tourer which was first released in 1920.
**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.
***Sardines is an active game that is played like hide and go seek — only in reverse! One person hides, and everyone else searches for the hidden person. Whenever a person finds the hidden person, they quietly join them in their hiding spot. There is no winner of the game. The last person to join the sardines will be the hider in the next round. Sardines was a very popular game in the 1920s and 1930s played by houseguests in rambling old country houses where there were unusual, unknown and creative places to hide.
****As a youth the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII and then Duke of Windsor) became a proficient player of the highland bagpipe, being taught by William Ross and Henry Forsyth. He frequently, until his later years, played a tune round the table after dinner, sometimes wearing a white kilt. He was also known to wake the guests at his house on the Windsor Great Park, Fort Belvedere, with a rousing rendition of a tune on the bagpipes.
*****Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805 – 1873) was a German painter and lithographer, known for his flattering portraits of royalty and upper-class society in the mid-19th century. His name has become associated with fashionable court portraiture. Among his best known works are Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855) and the portraits he made of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1865).
******Marshall & Snelgrove was an up-market department store on the north side of Oxford Street, London, on the corner with Vere Street founded by James Marshall. The company became part of the Debenhams group.
*******“Metten daa” is Cornish for “good morning”.
********A halt, in railway parlance in the Commonwealth of Nations and Ireland, is a small station, usually unstaffed or with very few staff, and with few or no facilities. A halt station is a type of stop where any train carrying a passenger is scheduled to stop for a given period of time. In Edwardian times it was not unusual for wealthy families with large houses close to the railway line to have their own halt stop for visiting guests or mail and other deliveries.
*********”Pur dha” is Cornish for “very good”.
Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, even though the food looks quite edible, this upper-class Regency country house domestic 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 Royal Doulton style tea set featuring roses on the breakfast table came from a miniature dollhouse specialist on E-Bay, whilst the silver teapot on the left hand size of the picture comes from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom, as does the jam pot to the right of the toast rack. The toast rack, egg cruet set, cruet set and coffee pot were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The eggs and the toast slices come from miniature dollhouse specialists on E-Bay. The apples in comport on the centre of the table are very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The comport in which they stand is spun of real glass and was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England as is the glass of orange juice on the table, the jug of orange juice and the bunch of roses on the sideboard at the back of the photograph. The remaining empty glass tumblers are all hand made of spun glass and came from a high street dolls’ specialist when I was a teenager.
The Queen Anne dining table, chairs and Regency sideboard were all given to me as birthday and Christmas presents when I was a child.
The fireplace in the background of the photo comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom. The two candelabra on it were made by Warwick Miniatures, and the Georgian Revival clock on the mantlepiece is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England. The vases came from a miniatures specialist on E-Bay.
All the paintings around the drawing room in their gilded or black frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and Marie Makes Miniatures 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.
Tonight, however we are south of the Thames in the London district of Rotherhithe, where, surrounded by old warehouses, right on the southern foreshore of the Thames, stands the Angel*, a little red brick pub which is always busy, but tonight is exceptionally so, for it is New Year’s Eve 1922.
The pub’s comfortable old Victorian décor is festooned with chains of brightly coloured paper, no doubt made by hand by the publican and his family as Edith had created such cheap home made decorations for her own family home in Harlesden for Christmas. Everywhere there is noise and chatter as patrons fill chairs and benches, lean against the bar, or fill the linoleum covered floor space. A hundred conversations, cries of excitement and laughter mix with the clink of glasses, the thud of bottles and the scrape of chairs in one vociferous noise. A fug of acrid greyish white cigarette smoke hangs in the charged air as midnight approaches. Nestled into a cosy nook near the crackling fireplace, Edith, Lettice’s maid, sits alongside her beau, Frank Leadbetter, a delivery boy for Willison’s Grocers, the grocer’s closest to Lettice’s Mayfair flat. The Angel has an interesting mix of patrons, from local workers to more artistic types, as well as a small party of Bright Young Things** shunning the bright lights and nightclubs of London’s West End, at least before midnight, as they enjoy an evening of slumming*** which no doubt they will use to regale their friends with stories about their evening later. It is with these rather noisy people that Edith and Frank share a table, the group taking up majority of it with glasses of wine and champagne, bottles of beer and packets of fashionable Craven “A” cigarettes****. Being much quieter than their table companions, enjoying the delights of freshly made hot chips delivered in to the pub from a local fish and chippery, Edith and Frank don’t tend to be included by the boisterous slum visitors who prefer the colour of equally noisy local characters, except when there is a singalong.
Cheering at the conclusion of a boisterous final verse of ‘The Laughing Policeman’***** the group of upper-class people nod their heads in recognition at Frank and Edith before returning to the conversation they were having with a local dock worker before the latest spontaneous singalong began.
“It’s a funny sort of place, this, isn’t it Frank?” Edith asks, picking up her glass of port and lemon and sipping it.
“Funny, Edith?” Frank queries, cocking his eyebrow questioningly before taking a sip of his own dark ale.
“Well, I mean look around at the people here.” She eyes a pair of painters, their occupation evident from the paint splatters on their rather shabby black coats and paint smeared rags hanging limply from their pockets. Then she glances at the young lady in the party sharing the table with them, her fashionable oriental silk frock, and the marcelling****** in her glossy chestnut coloured hair, accessories by a pair of diamond star pins, making her look more suited to her mistress’ drawing room than a Rotherhithe pub. “This isn’t your standard pub crowd, at least not in any of the pubs up around where I’m from.”
“Don’t you like it?” Frank asks anxiously, a tinge of hurt in his voice as speaks.
Edith looks into Frank’s concerned face and then reaches out her hand and places it lovingly over his, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Of course I like it, Frank. I like anywhere where I’m with you.”
“Oh, that’s a relief!” Frank sinks back into the round open balloon back of the red velvet upholstered chair he is sitting on, the tension in his shoulders visibly dissipating as he does. “I’d hate to take my girl somewhere she didn’t like or feel comfortable in.”
“Oh no. I like it just fine. The crowd is unusual is all. What made you pick here, Frank? I thought you might have taken me to the Old Crown******* up Islington way.”
“Well, you know how I’ve been trying to better myself by attending lectures and the like on art?” When Edith nods as she picks up a hot chip from the diminishing steaming pile of golden fingers he continues. “Well, I ran into a couple of artists, and they told me that Augustus John******** comes here sometimes.”
“And who is he?” Edith asks before popping the hot chip into her mouth.
“Blimey Edith! I can see I’m going to have to take you to a few art galleries in the New Year!” Frank shakes his head.
“I’d like that, Frank.” Edith admits, swallowing.
“Augustus John just happens to be one of the best known artists in England!”
“I’m so proud of you trying to better yourself and learn things, Frank. I want to keep making you proud as your girl.”
“Oh you do, Edith. You know I’m proud of you too. You’re bettering yourself by learning about fine things at Miss Chetwynd’s.”
“Yes, but learning to say luncheon or dinner rather than tea isn’t the same thing as learning about art.”
“Now, now! I won’t have you talking yourself down, Edith. You’re my girl and I’m proud of you. We’ll go to some galleries on our afternoons off when the spring comes next year.”
“Thinking of the New Year,” Edith says. “Mum and Dad talked about you coming over for dinner one night. I want you to meet them. They want to meet you too.”
“And they will, Edith love.” Frank apologises. “I just want to do things the right way.”
“I know you do, Frank.” Edith looks down into her lap, brushing a few crumbs of golden chip batter off her black coat distractedly. “I told them that too. I told them that you want me to meet your Granny first, and then he’ll meet you.”
“And so you will, and then I will.”
“When Frank? I’m starting to see comparisons between Miss Lettice and me.”
“What do you mean, Edith?”
“Well, I don’t like to gossip, you know, but I can’t help overhearing things.” She looks at Frank guiltily. “And well, she talks with Mrs. Channon about wanting to meet Mr. Spencely’s mother, who sounds like a real dragon to me, just to make things formal like. A sign of intention she and Mrs. Channon call it.”
“But we’re formal, Edith. You know my intentions clear enough. You heard me tell you I love you at the Premier Super Cinema********** just a few weeks ago.” He reaches over and wraps his hands around her forearms. He looks at her suddenly forlorn face and slumping shoulders. “And you told me the same. What could be more formal than that?”
“Meeting your Granny, Frank. I know she means so much to you.”
“Well, she’s the only person I have left after Mum and Dad died of the Spanish Flu, and what with my brother getting killed in France, and him being unmarried and all.”
“Then why can’t I meet her, Frank? Don’t tell me that she’s a dragon like Mr. Spencely’s mum.”
“Oh no, she’s the loveliest woman, my Granny is.”
“Then she wouldn’t approve of me? I’m not good enough for her grandson? Is that it?”
“Of course not Edith.” He shakes her gently, as if trying to shake some sense into his sweetheart.
The fashionable upper-class girl suddenly bursts into a peal of laughter that pierces the air around her like shattering glass, momentarily distracting the young couple. “Oh you are too funny, Charlie Boy!” she says in elegantly modulated, yet slightly slurred, tones to the dock worker as her male companions join in her laughter cheerily. She turns and plonks down her glass of champagne a little clumsily as her constant drinking starts to have an impact on her faculties. Lunging across the table to grab one of the packets of cigarettes scattered across it, she suddenly notices the quiet young couple at the other end of the table. “Gasper, darlings?” she asks, her kohl lined eyes widening seductively as he holds out the open Craven “A” packet to them, the tan coloured cork ends jutting out through the torn red and white paper and silver foil packaging. When they shake their heads warily at her, she merely shrugs. “Help yourself if you change your mind.” She smiles lopsidedly at them, her red lipstick bleeding into her skin around the edges of her painted lips. “They aren’t really mine to offer, but I know Andrew won’t mind. He’s got plenty at home back in St John’s Wood. Don’t you darling?” She turns back to her party and drapes an arm languidly around one of the young men in her party who lets his own hand stray to her bottom cheeks where he fondles her unashamedly through the thin silk of her dress. Neither turn back to see the look of shock on both Edith and Frank’s faces.
Turning back to Edith, Frank continues, “Granny will love you, Edith – just like I do!”
“Then why aren’t I meeting her yet, Frank?” Tears begin to well in her eyes.
“Well, you were partially right, Edith.” Frank admits.
“About which part?”
“Well, she’s a bit protective of me, you see.” He looks earnestly into Edith’s eyes. “You can’t blame her, can you? If like she is to me, I am her only close living relation, she is always going to scrutinise any girl I show an interest in – not that there have been many,” he adds quickly. “And certainly none as serious as I am with you, Edith.”
“Well if you say that she’ll like me, what’s the problem, Frank?”
“Look I only told her about you recently, when we both knew we were sure about our feelings for one another. She isn’t upset, but Granny is a bit jealous of no longer being my best girl any longer. Once she’s adjusted herself to the idea, I can ask you around for tea at her house in Upton Park.”
“And when will that be, Frank?” Edith asks sulkily.
“Oh only a few weeks away, Edith. She’s already starting to come around to the idea, but I think now she knows about you and how serious I am about you, she just wanted what will probably be our last Christmas alone to be.. well, just us. It gives her a chance to deal with being usurped.”
“Usurped? What’s that mean, Frank?”
“It means to take the place of someone.” Frank replies proudly.
The gratified look on his face makes Edith chuckle and her concerns are broken.
“That’s my girl.”
Frank leans further forward in his chair and wraps his arms around Edith, pulling her to him. He can smell the comforting scent of fresh laundering and soap flakes in her coat as he buries his head into the nape of her neck and nuzzles her gently. He feels her arms tighten around his middle. After a few minutes the pair slowly break apart again and resume their seats properly.
“So, what else do you want to do this year, Edith?” Frank smiles.
“Well, besides going to a few galleries, and,” she pauses for effect. “Meet your Granny,”
“I promise Edith! Just a few weeks from now you’ll be sitting in her kitchen in Upton Park and you won’t be able to get away. I swear!”
“Then I was thinking again about having my hair bobbed.”
“Oh no, Edith love!” Frank reaches out a hand which he lovingly runs along the chignon at the back of her neck poking out from beneath her black straw cloche decorated with purple silk roses and black feathers. “Not your beautiful hair.”
“Oh it’s easy for you to say, Frank. You aren’t wearing it all day, every day. It gets awfully hot when I’m cooking and cleaning at Miss Lettice’s, and it takes ages to wash and dry.”
“Well, don’t do anything rash just yet. Meet my Granny first before you decide to bob your hair.”
“Doesn’t she approve of girls with bobbed hair then?”
“She gets all her fashion tips from Queen Mary, Edith!” Frank laughs. “Of course she doesn’t approve of bobbed hair!”
“Then I won’t,” Edith promises. The she adds the caveat, “Just yet.”
“That’s my girl!”
“Just yet, Frank.” she cautions again. “I have a feeling that nineteen twenty-three is going to be a year of change.”
“What gives you that idea, Edith?”
“I don’t know.” Edith admits. “But I just have this feeling.”
“Well, I don’t want things to change too much.”
“But I thought you were all about improvement and betterment, Frank.”
“And so I am.”
“Well improvement and betterment are just different words for change.”
“Well, as long as your feelings for me don’t change.” Frank says with a hopeful look.
“As if they would, Frank!”
“’Ere! Shurrup you lot!” the publican suddenly shouts loudly from the bar over the top of all the hubbub of human chatter. “It’s nearly midnight!”
Edith and Frank stand up and join everyone else in the Angel pub as they start the countdown to midnight. As Big Ben strikes, clusters of cheers can be heard momentarily in the distance across the inky black Thames before they are consumed by the cheers of the people around them as they begin to jump up and down and embrace one another.
“Happy nineteen twenty-three!” Frank yells, embracing Edith in his arms.
“Happy nineteen twenty-three!” Edith echoes as she sinks against his chest clad in a thick knitted vest and grey worsted wool jacket.
As a young woman begins to play the first few notes of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the old upright piano in the bar, Edith and Frank begin to sing along with everyone else, joining hands with each other and the people immediately around them.
*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 20th 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 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 Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word “slumming” to 1884. It applies to a phenomenon called slum tourism, poverty tourism or ghetto tourism which involves wealthy people visiting impoverished areas of cities. Originally focused on the slums and ghettos of London and Manhattan in the Nineteenth Century, in London people visited slum neighbourhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation – a phenomenon which caused great offence to the locals, since they seldom if ever gained from the ogling of their social superiors who were there for the spectacle rather than philanthropic reasons, the spoils going to the tour operators. By 1884 wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighbourhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives". Sadly, slum tourism still exists today and is now prominent in South Africa, India, Brazil, Kenya, Philippines, Russia and the United States.
****Craven A (stylised as Craven "A") is a British brand of cigarette, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco under some of its subsidiaries; it was originally created by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 and made by them until its merger into Rothmans International in 1972, who then produced the brand until Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999. The cigarette brand is named after the third Earl of Craven, after the "Craven Mixture", a tobacco blend formulated for the 3rd Earl in the 1860s by tobacconist Don José Joaquin Carreras. The year of release of the Craven "A" brand coincided with the well-publicised death of the 4th Earl of Craven in a yachting accident on the 10th of July 1921. It was the first machine-made cork-tipped cigarette, and it became a household name in over one hundred and twenty countries with the slogan "Will Not Affect Your Throat".
*****’The Laughing Policeman’ is a music hall song recorded by British artist Charles Penrose, published under the pseudonym Charles Jolly in 1922, making it one of the most popular songs of 1922 in Britain. It is an adaptation of ‘The Laughing Song’ by American singer George W. Johnson with the same tune and form but different subject matter, first recorded in 1890. Charles Penrose used the melody of "The Laughing Song" as well as the same hook of using laughter in the chorus, but changed the lyrics to be about a policeman, and recorded it under the title of ‘The Laughing Policeman’. The composition of the song is, however, credited entirely to Billie Grey, a pseudonym of Penrose's second wife Mabel. The song describes a fat jolly policeman who cannot stop laughing and has a chorus in which the sound of laughter is made in a sustained semi musical way by the singer. It is thought that the character of the Laughing Policeman was inspired by real-life police officer PC John 'Tubby' Stephens, a popular figure in Leicester.
******Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women's hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut.
*******The Old Crown is a pub built on the corner of Hornsey Lane and Highgate Hill in the north London suburb of Highgate, opposite Highgate Cemetery. Established in 1821 on the steepest part of Highgate Hill, the current building dates from 1908 and features a very ornate and pretty façade including a corner turret with a green tower. The Old Crown closed its doors in 2018 to become a restaurant/bar called Tourian Lounge, where food and drink were still served, but not in an old English pub style. A century after our story is set in 2022, it is Brendan the Navigator, a self-styled gastropub with live music.
********Augustus John (1878 – 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John. Although known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits. Those of his two wives and his children were regarded as among his best. By the 1920s when this story is set, John was Britain's leading portrait painter. John painted many distinguished contemporaries, including T. E. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Lady Gregory, Tallulah Bankhead, George Bernard Shaw, the cellist Guilhermina Suggia, the Marchesa Casati and Elizabeth Bibesco.
**********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.
This jolly festive New year celebratory scene may not appear to be all it appears at first, for it is in fat made up of 1:12 scale miniatures from my large miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the serving of golden hot chips on the table were made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. Made from real glass with great attention to detail on the labels, the bottles of ale come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom, as does the glass of dark ale, also made of glass. The glass of golden champagne is made of real glass and comes from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The two glasses of port and lemon in the low glasses come from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The packets of Craven “A” cigarettes come from Shephard’s Miniatures in the UK. Great attention has been paid to the labelling which makes them clearly identifiable and specific to the time between the 1920s and the late 1940s. Made of cut clear crystals set in a silver metal frames the square silver ashtray is made by an English artisan for the Little Green Workshop. It is filled with “ash” and even has a tiny cigarette sitting on its lip. The cigarette is a tiny five millimetres long and just one millimetre wide! Made of paper, I have to be so careful that it doesn’t get lost when I use it! Also made by an artisan, only an Indian one, the black ashtray also features miniature cigarettes, although all of them are affixed within the ashtray. The other glasses on the table and the carafe are all made of clear glass and were acquired from a high street stockist of miniatures when I was a young teenager.
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 fireplace surround in the background comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Supplies in the United Kingdom.
On the mantle stand more glasses acquired from a high street stockist of miniatures when I was a young teenager. There is also a bottle of beer from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop and a bottle of champagne from Karen Ladybug Miniatures.
The Staffordshire hound and fox and the “Dieu et Mon Droit” (God and My Right) vase on the mantle have all been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys.
The parlour palm in the background comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.
The colourful paper chains were made by me.
The two chairs I acquired from a deceased estate as part of a larger collection of miniatures. They date from the 1970s.
The wood panelling in the background is real, as I shot this scene on the wood panelled mantle of my drawing room.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets, laneways and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. On Tuesday Mrs. Boothby, Lettice’s charwoman*, discovered that Edith, Lettice’s maid, didn’t have a sewing machine when the Cockney cleaner found the young maid cutting out the pieces for a new frock. Mrs. Boothby made overtures towards Edith, inviting her to her home in Poplar in London’s East End with an air of mystery, saying she might be able to help her with her predicament of a sewing machine.
Friends of Lettice, newlyweds Margot and Dickie Channon, have been gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) in Penzance as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton. Margot in her desire to turn ‘Chi an Treth’ from a dark Regency house to a more modern country house flooded with light, has commissioned Lettice to help redecorate some of the rooms in a lighter and more modern style, befitting a modern couple like the Channons. Lettice has decamped to Penzance for a week where she is overseeing the painting and papering of ‘Chi an Treth’s’ drawing room, dining room and main reception room, before fitting it out with a lorryload of new and repurposed furnishings, artwork and objets d’arte that she has had sent down weeks prior to her arrival. In her mistress’ absence, Edith has more free time on her hands, and so she was able to agree to Mrs. Boothby’s mysterious invitation. Even though she is happy with her current arrangement to take any items she wants to sew home to her parent’s house in Harlesden, where she can use her mother’s Singer** sewing machine on her days off. The opportunity of gaining access to a sewing machine of her own is too good for Edith to refuse.
Now the two women walk through the narrow streets of Poplar, passing along walkways, some concrete, some made of wooden planks and some just dirt, between tenements of two and three stories high. The streets they traverse are dim with the weakening afternoon light from the autumn sky blocked out by the overhanging upper floors of the buildings and the strings of laundry hanging limply along lines between them. Although Edith is not unfamiliar with the part of Whitechapel around Petticoat Lane*** where she shops for second hand clothes to alter and for haberdashery to do them, she still feels nervous in the unfamiliar maze of streets that Mrs. Boothby is guiding her down, and she sticks closely next to or directly behind the old Cockney char. The air is filled with a mixture of strong odours: paraffin oil, boiled cabbage and fried food intermixed with the pervasive stench of damp and unwashed bodies and clothes. Self-consciously, Edith pulls her three quarter length coat more tightly around her in an effort to protect herself from the stench.
“Below!” comes a Cockney female voice from above as a sash window groans in protest as it is opened.
“Ere! Look out, Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims, grabbing Edith by the arm and roughly pulling the maid out of the way, thrusting her behind her.
A moment later the air is filled with the harsh sound of slops splattering against the concrete path, and a pool of dirty liquid stains the concrete a dark muddy brown as it slowly dribbles down into a shallow drain that runs down the middle of the laneway.
“Wouldn’t want your nice clothes to get spoilt nah, would we dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says as she turns and smiles into Edith’s startled face.
“Was that?” Edith begins but doesn’t finish her question as she peers at the puddle draining away, leaving lumps on the path.
“I shouldn’t look too closely if I were you, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says kindly in a matter-of-fact way. “If you ‘ave to ask, you’re better off not knowin’. That’s my opinion, anyway. Come on. Not much further nah.”
“You… you will take me home, won’t you Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks a little nervously as they continue their progress down the lane which she notices is getting narrower and darker as they go.
“Course I will, dearie! You can rely on old Ida Boothby. I know these streets like the back of my ‘and. Youse perfectly safe wiv me.”
The laneway ends suddenly, and Edith is blinded for a moment by bright sunlight as they step out into a rookery**** with two storey Victorian tenements of grey stone and red brick either side of a concrete courtyard with a narrow drain running down its centre. The original builders or owners of the tenements obviously have meant for the sad buildings to be at least a little homely, with shutters painted a Brunswick green hanging to either side of the ground floor windows. Looking up, Edith notices several window boxes of brightly coloured geraniums and other flowers suspended from some of the upper floor windowsills. Women of different ages walk in and out of the open front doors, or sit in them on stools doing mending, knitting or peeling potatoes, all chatting to one another, whilst children skip and play on the concrete of the courtyard.
“Welcome to Merrybrook Place,” Mrs. Boothby says with a hint of pride in her voice. “My ‘ome. Though Lawd knows why they called it that. I ain’t never seen no brook, merry or otherwise, runnin’ dahn ‘ere, unless it’s the slops from the privvies dahn the end.” She points to the end of the rookery where, overlooked by some older tenements of brick and wooden shingling most likely from the early Nineteenth Century, a couple of ramshackle privies stand. “So just watch your step, Edith dearie. We don’t want you steppin’ your nice shoes in nuffink nasty.” She gives her a warm smile. “Come on.”
As they start walking up the rookery, one woman wrapped in a paisley shawl stands in her doorway staring at Edith with undisguised curiosity and perhaps a little jealousy as she casts her critical gaze over her simple, yet smart, black coat and dyed straw hat decorated with silk flowers and feathers.
“Wanna paint a picture Mrs. Friedmann?” Mrs. Boothby calls out hotly to her, challenging her open stare with a defensive one of her own. “Might last you longer, your royal ‘ighness!” She makes a mock over exaggerated curtsey towards her, hitching up the hem of her workday skirts.
The woman tilts her head up slightly, sniffs in disgust and looks down her nose with spite at both Edith and the Cockney charwoman before muttering something in a language Edith doesn’t need to speak to understand. Turning on her heel, the woman slams her door sharply behind her, the noise echoing off the hard surfaces of the court.
“Who was that, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks nervously.
“Lawd love you dearie,” chortles Mrs. Boothby, the action resulting on one of her fruity hacking coughs that seem remarkably loud from such a diminutive figure. “That’s that nasty local Yid***** matchmaker what I told you ‘bout.” Raising her voice she continues, speaking loudly at the closed door. “Golda Friedmann goes around wiv ‘er nose in the air wrapped up in that fancy paisley shawl actin’ like she was the Queen of Russia ‘erself. But she ain’t! She’s no better than the rest of us.”
As Mrs. Boothby trudges on up the rookery another doorway opens and an old woman with a figure that shows many years of childbirth steps out, dressed in a black skirt and an old fashioned but pretty floral print Edwardian high necked blouse. “Afternoon Ida.”
“Oh! Afternoon Lil!” Mrs. Boothby replies. “Oh Lil! I got somefink in ‘ere for you.” She opens up her capacious blue beaded bag and fossicks around making the beads rattle before withdrawing a couple of thin pieces of soap, one bar a bright buttercup yellow, a second pink and the last white. “’Ere. For the kiddies.”
“Oh fanks ever so, Ida!” the other woman replies, gratefully accepting the pieces of soap in her careworn hands.
“Edith,” Mrs. Boothby calls. “This ‘ere is my neighbour, Mrs. Conway.” A couple of cheeky little faces with sallow cheeks, but bright eyes, poke out from behind Mrs. Conway’s skirts and smile up shyly at Edith with curiosity. “Hullo kiddies.” Mrs. Boothby says to them. “Nah sweeties from me today. Sorry. Mrs. Conway, this ‘ere is Miss Watsford, what works for one of my ladies up in Mayfair.”
“Oh ‘ow do you do?” Mrs. Conway says, wiping her hands down her skirts before reaching out a hand to Edith.
“How do you do, Mrs. Conway.” Edith replies with a gentle smile, taking her hand, and feeling her rough flesh rub against her own as the old woman’s bony fingers entwine hers.
“Well, must be getting on, Lil,” Mrs. Boothby says. “Ta-ta.”
“Ta-ra, Ida. Ta-ra Miss Watsford.” Mrs. Conway replies before turning back and shooing the children inside good naturedly.
“Goodbye Mrs, Conway. It was nice to meet you.” Edith says.
At the next door, one painted Brunswick green like the shutters, Mrs. Boothby stops and takes out a large string of keys from her bag and promptly finds the one for her own front door. As the key engages with the lock the door groans in protest as it slowly opens. The old woman says, “Just stand ‘ere in the doorway, Edith dearie, while I’ll open the curtains.”
She disappears into the gloom, which vanishes a moment later as with a flourish, she flings back some heavy red velvet curtains, flooding the room with light from the front window. It takes a moment for Edith’s eyes to adjust as the old Cockney woman stands for a moment in the pool of light, so brilliant after the gloom, surrounded by a floating army of illuminated dust motes tumbling over one another in the air. As her eyes adjust, Edith discerns things within the tenement front room: a kitchen table not too unlike her own at Cavendish Mews, a couple of sturdy ladderback chairs, an old fashioned black leaded stove and a sink in the corner.
“Close the door behind you and come on in, dearie. The ‘ouse is still warmish from this mornin’.” Mrs. Boothby says kindly as she tosses her beaded handbag carelessly onto the table where it lands with a thud and the jangle of beads. “Take a seat and I’ll get the range goin’ and pop the kettle on for a nice cup of Rosie-Lee******! I dunno ‘bout you, but I’m parched.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies as she closes the door.
Shutting out the unpleasant mixture of odours outside with the closing of the door, Edith is comforted by the smells of carbolic soap and lavender. Looking about she notices a couple of little muslin bags hanging from the curtains.
“Good. Nah, give me your ‘at ‘n coat and I’ll ‘ang them up.” Mrs. Boothby says. Noticing Edith’s gaze upon the pouches she explains. “Lavender to ‘elp keep the moths and the smells from the privy at bay.”
“Oh.” Edith replies laconically.
As Mrs. Boothby hangs up Edith’s coat and hat as well as her own on a hook behind the door and then bustles about stoking up the embers of the fire left in the stove, Edith says, “Mrs. Conway seems like a nice person to have as your neighbour, Mrs. Boothby.”
“She’s a good un, that one. She takes care of all the little kiddies round ‘n ‘bout while their parents is at work.” Mrs. Boothby throws some coal into the stove and shoves it with a poker. “She’s got an ‘eart of gold she does. I owe ‘er a lot. She does ‘er best by them kiddies. Gives ‘em a meal made outta what she can, which for some might be the only meal they get. And she gives ‘em a good bath too when she can. That’s why I give ‘er the left over soap ends from the ‘ouses I go to.”
“Oh I’m sorry Mrs. Boothby. I always take Miss Lettice’s soap ends to Mum to grate up and make soap flakes from for washing.”
“Ahh, don’t worry dearie. I gets plenty from some of the other ‘ouses I go to. Some of ‘em even throws out bars of soap what’s been barely used cos they get cracked and they don’t like the look of ‘em no more. Some of them ladies up the West End don’t know just ‘ow lucky they is to ‘ave as many bars of soap as they like. Nah, you keep takin’ Miss Lettice’s ends to your mum. So long as they’s bein’ used, I’m ‘appy. Waste not, want not, I always say.”
With nothing to do whilst the older woman goes about filling the large kettle with water from the sink in the corner of the room, Edith has more time to look at her surroundings. The floor is made of wooden boards whilst the walls are covered in a rather dark green wallpaper featuring old fashioned Art Nouveau patterns. The house must one have had owners or tenants with grander pretentions than Mrs. Boothby for the stove is jutting out of a much larger fireplace surround, which although chipped and badly discoloured from years of coal dust, cooking and cigarette smoke, is marble. However, it is the profusion of ornaments around the small room that catches the young girl’s eye. Along the mantle of the original fireplace stand a piece of Staffordshire, a prettily painted cow creamer, a jug in the shape of a duck coming out of an egg and a teapot in the shape of Queen Victoria. Turning around behind her to where Mrs. Boothby gathers a pretty blue and white china teapot, some cups, saucers and a sugar bowl, she sees a large dresser that is cluttered with more decorative plates, teapots, jugs, tins and a cheese dish in the shape of a cottage.
“Not what you was expectin’ I’ll warrant.” Mrs, Boothby remarks with a knowing chuckle that causes her to emit yet another of her throaty coughs.
“Oh no Mrs. Boothby!” Edith replies, blushing with shame at being caught out staring about her so shamelessly. “I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I mean… I had no expectations.”
“Well, it’s nuffink special, but this is my ‘aven of calm and cleanliness away from the dirty world out there.” She points through the window where, when Edith turns her head, she can see several scrawny children playing marbles on the concrete of the courtyard. “And it’s ‘ome to me.”
“Oh yes, it’s lovely and clean and cheerful, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith assures her hostess. “No, I was just admiring all your pretty crockery. It reminds me of my Mum’s kitchen, actually. She is always collecting pretty china and pottery.”
“Well, who was it what told you to go dahn to the Caledonian Markets******* to buy a gift for your mum?” the old woman says with a cheeky wink. “Me that who!” She pokes her chest proudly, before coughing heavily again.
“So did you get all these from the Caledonian Markets then, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks, looking around again.
“Well, most, but not all. I got meself an art gallery from the Caledonian Markets, for when I washes the dishes.” She points to two cheap prints of classic paintings in equally cheap wooden frames hanging on the walls above the little sink. “Better than starin’ at a blank wall, even if it’s covered in wallpaper. Course, some a them ladies up the West End is awfully wasteful wiv much more than soap, and just like them soap ends, I get my share. Somethin’ a bit old fashioned or got a tiny chip in it and they’s throwin’ it out like it was a piece of rubbish, so I offer ta take it. Take that nice cow up there,” She points to the cow creamer on the mantle. “The lid got lost somewhere, so the lady from Belgravia what owned it told ‘er maid to throw it out, so I said I’d take it instead. That,” She points to the Staffordshire statue. “Was one of a pair, what the uvver ‘alf got broken, so it was being chucked, so I took it. I don’t care if it don’t ‘ave the uvver ‘alf. I like it as it is. It’s pretty. The Queen Victoria teapot was getting’ chucked out just ‘cos the old Queen died, and King Bertie was takin’ ‘er place. Well, I wasn’t ‘avin’ none of that. Poor old Queen! I said I’d ‘ave it if no-one else wanted it. And this teapot,” She withdraws the pretty blue and white china teapot from atop the stove. “This was just bein’ thrown out ‘cos it’s old and they’s no bits of the set left but this. But there ain’t nuffink wrong wiv it, and it must be at least a ‘undred years old!”
Mrs. Boothby pulls out a gilt edged blue and white cake plate which she puts on the table along with the tea cups, sugar bowl and milk jug. She then goes to the dresser and pulls down a pretty tin decorated with Art Nouveau ladies from which she takes several pieces of shortbread, which she places on the cake plate.
“That’s very lovely, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith points to a teapot in the shape of a rabbit sitting in a watering can. “It looks rather like Peter Rabbit.”
“Ahh… my Ken loves that too.” Edith’s ears prick at the mention of someone named Ken, but she doesn’t have time to ask who he is before Mrs. Boothby continues, “That bunny rabbit teapot is one of the few pieces I got what ‘as a sad story what goes wiv it. Poor lady what I cleaned for up in St. James’, it were ‘er baby’s, from the nursery, you know?” Edith nods in understanding. “Well, ‘e died. ‘E was a weak little mite ‘e were, ever since ‘e was born, and my poor lady was so upset when ‘e died that she got rid of everyfink in the nursery. She didn’t want nuffink to remind her of that little baby. So, I brought it ‘ome wiv me.” She sighs. “Well, the kettle’s boiled now, so ‘ow about a cup of Rosie-Lee, dearie?”
A short while later, Edith and Mrs. Boothby are seated around Mrs. Boothby’s kitchen table with the elegant Regency teapot, some blue and white china cups and the plate of shortbreads before them.
“Oh I tell you Edith dearie, I’m dying for a fag!” Mrs Boothby says. She starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she lights it with a satisfied sigh and one more of her fruity coughs, dropping the match into a black ashtray that sits on the table full of cigarette butts. Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in her ladderback chair with her cigarette in one hand and reaches out, taking up a shortbread biscuit with the other. Blowing out a plume of blue smoke that tumbles through the air around them, the old woman continues. “Nah, about this sewin’ machine. My Ken’ll be ‘ome soon, I ‘ope. ‘E’s a bit late today.”
“Mrs. Boothby, who is Ken?” Edith asks with a questioning look on her face.
Just as Mrs. Boothby is about to answer her, she gasps as she hears a rather loud and jolly whistle.
“Well, speak of the devil, ‘ere ‘e comes nah!”
The front door of the tenement flies open and the space is instantly filled by the bulk of a big man in a flat cap with a large parcel wrapped in newspaper tied with twine under his right arm.
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**The Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of consumer sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac M. Singer with New York lawyer Edward C. Clark. Best known for its sewing machines, it was renamed Singer Manufacturing Company in 1865, then the Singer Company in 1963. In 1867, the Singer Company decided that the demand for their sewing machines in the United Kingdom was sufficiently high to open a local factory in Glasgow on John Street. The Vice President of Singer, George Ross McKenzie selected Glasgow because of its iron making industries, cheap labour, and shipping capabilities. Demand for sewing machines outstripped production at the new plant and by 1873, a new larger factory was completed on James Street, Bridgeton. By that point, Singer employed over two thousand people in Scotland, but they still could not produce enough machines. In 1882 the company purchased forty-six acres of farmland in Clydebank and built an even bigger factory. With nearly a million square feet of space and almost seven thousand employees, it was possible to produce on average 13,000 machines a week, making it the largest sewing machine factory in the world. The Clydebank factory was so productive that in 1905, the U.S. Singer Company set up and registered the Singer Manufacturing Company Ltd. in the United Kingdom.
***Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
****A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
*****The word Yid is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang. When pronounced in such a way that it rhymes with did by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'. It is uncertain when the word began to be used in a pejorative sense by non-Jews, but some believe it started in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century when there was a large population of Jews and Yiddish speakers concentrated in East London, gaining popularity in the 1930s when Oswald Mosley developed a strong following in the East End of London.
******Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
*******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.
I would just like to point out that I wrote this story some weeks ago, long before The Queen became ill and well before her passing. However it seems apt that this story of all, which I planned weeks ago to upload today as part of the Chetwyn Mews narrative, mentions the passing of The Queen (albeit Queen Victoria). I wish to dedicate this image and chapter to our own Queen of past and glorious times Queen Elizabeth II (1926 – 2022). Long did she reign over us, happy and glorious. God bless The Queen.
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.
Mrs. Boothby’s beloved collection of ornaments come from various different sources. The Staffordshire cow (one of a pair) and the cow creamer that stand on the mantlepiece have been hand made and painted by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys. If you look closely, you will see that the Staffordshire cow actually has a smile on its face! Although you can’t notice it in the photo, the cow creamer has its own removable lid which is minute in size! The duck coming from the egg jug on the mantle, the rooster jug, the cottage ware butter dish, Peter Rabbit in the watering can tea pot and the cottage ware teapot to its right on the dresser were all made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson. All the pieces are authentic replicas of real pieces made by different china companies. For example, the cottage ware teapot 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 Queen Victoria teapot on the mantlepiece and the teapot on the dresser to the left of the Peter Rabbit teapot come from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. All the other plates on the dresser came from various online miniature stockists through E-Bay, as do the teapot, plate and cups on Mrs. Boothby’s kitchen table.
Mrs. Boothby’s picture gallery in the corner of the room come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.
Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag on the table is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length. It came from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
Spilling from her bag are her Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The 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’.
The meagre foodstuffs on Mrs. Boothby’s shelf represent items not unusually found in poorer households across Britain. Before the Second World War, the British populace consumed far more sugar than we do today, partially for the poor because it was cheap and helped give people energy when their diets were lacking good nutritious foods. Therefore finding a tin of treacle, some preserved fruit or jam, and no fresh fruits or vegetables was not an unusual sight in a lower class home. All the tined foodstuffs, with the exception of the tin of S.P.C. peaches, are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans. The S.P.C. tin of peaches comes from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom. 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 rather worn and beaten looking enamelled bread bin and colander in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green, which have been aged on purpose, are artisan pieces I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes, the kettle and the Brown Betty teapot I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia. A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.
The black Victorian era stove and the ladderback chair on the left of the table and the small table directly behind it are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child. The ladderback chair on the right came from a deceased estate of a miniatures collector in Sydney. The Welsh dresser came from Babette’s Miniatures, who have been making miniature dolls’ furnishings since the late Eighteenth Century. The dresser has plate grooves in it to hold plates in place, just like a real dresser would.
The grey marbleised fireplace behind the stove and the trough sink in the corner of the kitchen come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The green wallpaper is an authentic replica of real Art Nouveau wallpaper from the first decade of the Twentieth Century which I have printed onto paper. The floorboards are a print of a photo taken of some floorboards that I scaled to 1:12 size to try and maintain a realistic look.
Here are several add-on lenses and their home-made adapters for mounting on my Nikon 105mm f/2.5 AI-S lens. I keep an inventory of damaged filters for scavenging rings to make a variety of adapters for working with a number of primary lenses.
On the left is an RMS thread to 52mm adapter, shown fitted with a Gaertner 80 mm microscope objective. Below is an unmounted 60mm. Their knurled mounting "position" rings have been color coded with a marker for quick reference... red = very short working distance, blue = longer working distance. The mounted objective / aluminum disc (fitted with a 52mm ring), is ready to be mounted on the front of the 105mm with the Gaertner objective facing the subject.
At top center is an adapter made from empty 58mm filter rings, and a Zeiss Microscope "dove-tail" accessory adapter (silver ribbed screw). The adapter is shown fitted with a Voss 75mm enlarging lens, below is an unmounted Laminex 90mm. An enlarging lens is screwed into a lens mounting ring locked in place by the silver knob, its aperture always at its widest setting... to minimize vignetting. This mounting ring remains locked in place allowing for quick changing of a number of enlarging lenses. The short stack of empty rings on the right is screwed onto the lens adapter just above the red ring, serving as a spacer to prevent the enlarging lens from contacting the Nikon 105mm objective, the adapter being mounted with the enlarging lens facing the camera.
Both adapters have threaded rings that face the subject, for mounting a home-made frozen dinner bowl flash diffuser fitted with an empty Raynox UAC 2000 snap on lens mount adapter.
These lenses provide very good magnification when used on the 105mm, which is always used focused at infinity to provide the greatest working distance.
DSC-9298
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 followed Lettice southwest from her home, across St James’ Park to Hans Crescent in Belgravia, where the smart Edwardian four storey red brick and mock Tudor London home of the de Virre family stands. Two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. Lettice is visiting the home of the bride, which is a hive of activity in the lead up to the forthcoming nuptials.
Unusually, Lettice is ushered into the hall of the townhouse by a new maid rather than the de Virre’s butler, Mr. Geraldton. The maid is nervous and seems unsure of herself as she takes Lettice’s name and leads her up to the first floor to the gold drawing room where Lettice is informed the bride-to-be and her mother are.
“Miss Lettice Chetwynd, ma’am,” the maid mutters quickly before retreating back through the door and disappearing down the hallway.
“Lettice!” Margot gasps in delight, looking up from the cup of tea she holds in her lap.
“Oh Lettice!” Lady de Virre sighs. “Thank goodness! I might finally be able to speak to someone who has some sense.”
“What ever do you mean Lady de Virre?” Lettice asks, standing before her friend and her mother.
“I mean,” Lady de Virre suddenly falters as she sees Lettice clasping her green parasol with a black leather handle in her glove clad hand. “Oh. You aren’t stopping?” Her disappointment is palpable.
“Oh no, Lady de Virre! I mean, yes, Lady de Virre!” Lettice assures her hostess. “I came to see Margot, and of course you, although I can’t stay for too long. I have a potential client coming for afternoon tea.”
“Oh! That sounds exciting,” Margot enthuses. “Who?”
“Then if you are staying for tea: I assume you will stay for tea?” Lettice nods in assent to Lady de Virre’s question. “Why are you still holding your parasol?”
“Oh, the maid who answered the door didn’t take it, but really its…”
“Oh! That stupid, stupid girl!” mutters the older woman. “Can she never do anything right?” She picks herself up, out of the walnut salon chair she is comfortably sitting in and charges past Lettice to the door of the drawing room.
“Here Lettice, come sit by me,” Margot pats the gold brocade fabric next to her on the comfortable settee. “I could do with your support,” She giggles conspiratorially. “And your distraction.”
“Pegeen! Pegeen!” Lady de Virre calls shrilly down the hallway.
“Mummy, must you do that? You’re going to give me a headache,” Margot puts her cup on the low table before her and rubs her temples with her fingers. “Not that she hasn’t already.” she whispers to Lettice. “Mummy is really boring me to tears today. Who would ever have thought anyone could suck the joy and delight of organising a wedding? Lists of this, lists of that. Who will get offended sitting next to whom? And don’t get me started on my wedding dress.”
“I thought Gerald was designing it.”
“He is, but Mummy is trying to convince me that Lucile is a better choice.”
“Oh no, Margot. How dreadfully dull!”
Lady de Virre stalks back across the room, snatching Lettice’s parasol from where she has placed it leaning against the settee beside her and resumes her seat.
“Rather.” Margot replies to Lettice’s remark whilst glancing at her mother’s bristling figure.
A moment later the same nervous, mousy maid who let Lettice in appears through the door.
“You called, ma’am?”
“Pegeen, would you kindly take this,” Lady de Virre thrusts Lettice’s parasol towards the maid, the pointy end aimed dangerously at the young girl’s chest rather like a rifle in the titled lady’s hand. “And put it in the receptacle for which it was intended.”
“Ma’am?” The Irish maid looks alarmed, and glances awkwardly at Margot and Lettice installed comfortably on either end of the settee.
“She means, put it in the umbrella stand in the hallway, Pegeen.” Margot elucidates.
“Well why didn’t she say so?” Pegeen mutters as she grasps the offending end of the parasol which her mistress then releases from her steely grasp.
“And bring a third cup for Miss Chetwynd!” Lady de Virre bristles irritably.
The room falls silent until Pegeen closes the door behind her and her footsteps recede down the hallway.
“Oh it really is too tiresome!” huffs Margot’s mother.
“What is, Lady de Virre?” asks Lettice.
“Trying to find good staff in London. They all seem to be Irish halfwits these days, or girls who don’t know their place. I blame the war you know. Girls working in factories! Who would ever have thought?” Lettice and Margot glance at one another and try not to laugh. “Do you have the same problem, Lettice?”
“No, Lady de Virre.” Lettice smirks. “I have a very capable maid, and a charwoman, both of whom suit me very nicely.”
“Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” the older woman mutters sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
“I do have the card for the domestics agency in St James’ that I used to find my maid, if you’d like Lady de Virre.”
“Ah! You see Margot. Just as I was saying! Here is a girl who speaks sense and isn’t a flibbertigibbet like you.”
“Oh Mummy!”
“Ah, where is Mr. Geraldton, Lady de Virre?”
“He’s gone to Bournemouth.” Margot explains.
“His mother is quite unwell,” Lady de Virre chimes in. “Poor man! Now, perhaps you can talk some sense into my daughter, Lettice. I’m trying to get her to choose a wedding breakfast menu,” She picks up a sheath of papers from the small round tired table to her left and waves them in irritation at Margot. “Try as I might, she just won’t do it!”
“It’s not that I won’t, Mummy. I just want some time to look at them and think.” Margot looks at Lettice and rolls her eyes.
“Well we don’t have time Marguerite! The Savoy is always popular, as is Claridges.”
In the distance, a doorbell rings shrilly from somewhere below.
“Actually, Lady de Virre, that’s why I came here.”
“You’re going to throw a wedding breakfast for Marguerite and Richard?”
“Well, not exactly.” Lettice explains. “I actually came to see in Margot and Dickie would be interested in having a celebratory pre-wedding cocktail party at my flat. Would you Margot?”
“Oh really Lettice? Darling! You are a brick!” Margot enthuses. She embraces her friend and smiles broadly. “Of course we would!”
“Excellent, then I’ll,”
“S’cuse me ma’am,” Pegeen nudges open the door of the drawing room with the heel of her shoe, struggling under the weight of an enormous carboard box.
“Pegeen,” Lady de Virre gasps. “I thought I told you to bring a cup for Miss Chetwynd.”
“Can’t ma’am,” the maid replies. “Not when I’ve got this enormous box in ma hands.” She lowers it with a groan onto a vacant footstool where it lands with a thud. “Lord it ain’t half heavy ma’am.”
Lady de Virre crumples her nose in distaste as she peers at the box. “Well, what is it?”
“Don’t know ma’am. It’s for Miss de Virre.”
“Oh! It must be another wedding gift!” the older woman exclaims with an excited clap of her hands, her frustrations forgotten.
“I do hope it isn’t more linen. New parcels of it arrive every day! Gifts from unimaginative relatives!”
“It’s mighty heavy if it is linen, miss,”
“Ah! Another teacup, Pegeen!” Lady de Virre says commandingly. “Or have you already forgotten?”
“No ma’am,” Pegeen replies, looking curiously at the box. “I was just waitin’ for Miss de Virre to open her gift.”
“Out girl! And fetch a teacup for Miss Chetwynd! Now!”
The maid jumps at her mistress’ raised voice and retreats, closing the door behind her. Lettice and Margot cannot help themselves as they try to stifle giggles of mirth.
“You should be more appreciative of people’s generosity, Marguerite!” Lady de Virre wags a finger admonishingly at her daughter. “When you have your own household to manage, you’ll be grateful for every last stich of that linen.”
“Do you know, Lettice, we even received a mounted stag’s head as a gift from one of my Scottish cousins?” Margot laughs.
“No!” Lettice giggles.
“Yes! Goodness knows where we shall put it!”
“I could think of somewhere.” Lettice tries to control her peals of laughter.
“So could I!”
The pair tumble into fits of giggling.
“Oh, did you receive my gift Margo darling?” Lettice asks when she has finally composed herself enough to ask.
“Yes darling, I did, and I love it!”
“See Marguerite! I told you that you need to reply to all these cards that are mounting up!” Her mother waves her hand towards the top of the secretaire behind her, the surface of which is covered in wedding and congratulations cards.
“Oh good!” Lettice smiles.
“And we received your parent’s gift too, thank you Lettice.” Lady de Virre adds. “Marguerite will write a thank you card to them soon. Won’t you Marguerite?”
“Yes Mummy, I will! Such a beautifully modern tea set,” Margot says with a smile. “I never knew your parents knew my taste so intimately.” She winks conspiratorially at Lettice.
“Who is this gift from?” Lady de Virre asks.
Taking out a beautiful card of a young bride looking angelically at a cake, Margot scans the message inside. “Lady Ponting, whoever she is.”
“She’s the Marquess’ widowed younger sister.” Lady de Virre remarks knowingly. “You’ll need to brush up on your new family history before the wedding!”
“Yes Mummy! I know!” Margot acknowledges her mother’s sharp remark. Turning to her friend she continues, “Now that I’m marrying into the upper echelons of the aristocracy, Mummy has become a walking,” She sighs. “And talking, Debrett’s*.”
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Lady de Virre asks her daughter, looking at the box on the footstool with eyes glistening with excitement.
Margot removes the twine from around the box and opens it, a froth of white tissue paper spilling forth in soft whispers. Within the box she withdraws a delicate white china gravy boat decorated with roses with a gilt rim. Her mother reaches across the table with her bejewelled hand and seizes the piece from her. Turning it over she nods with approval.
“Hhhmm. Royal Doulton. An excellent choice.” she remarks.
“Come on Margot darling!” Lettice interrupts purposefully. “Let’s talk about your pre-wedding cocktail party before I have to go. Who would you like to invite? Gerald of course because he’s making your wedding dress.” She glances up at Lady de Virre to see whether she has heard and acknowledged her remark. “Celia, Peter, Leslie,”
At that moment, Pegeen returns with a teacup for Lettice. “Cor!” she says, eyeing the Royal Doulton china nestled amongst the cushions of white tissue paper. “If I’d known that box was full of china, I wouldn’t of bothered bringin’ another cup!”
*Debrett's is a British publisher and authority on etiquette and behaviour, founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The company takes its name from its founder, John Debrett.
Although perhaps a little cluttered and somewhat old fashioned by 1920s standards, the de Virre’s Edwardian style drawing room is very elegant and would have been typical of such a room in an established upper-class household during the inter-war period. The upper classes, whether titled or not, tended to enjoy their opulent and lavish interiors. Only the brave or modern thinker would have swept away the accumulation of antiques over the generations for the clean lined, stripped back Art Deco interiors fashionable in the new houses, flats and hotels being built around Britain and the world. This upper-class domestic scene is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:
The gold satin upholstered settee and the Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery were made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. The coffee table in the foreground is made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Creal.
On the coffee table stands a silver serving tray on which are a silver coffee and tea set, a porcelain sugar bowl and milk jug and a glass bowl featuring a selection of biscuits. The galleried silver serving tray is engraved and was made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The tea and coffee pot are also made by them. The glass bowl of biscuits was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, who specialise in 1:12 size foods and glassware with amazing realism and attention to detail. The porcelain tea set, which has two matching cups and saucers, one on the coffee table and one on the two tier Regency table, were part of a job lot of over one hundred pieces of 1:12 chinaware I bought from a seller on E-Bay. The pieces are remarkably dainty and the patterns on them are so pretty. In front of the tea set stands a wedding card of an Edwardian bride looking at a wedding cake. It is a 1:12 size replica of a real Edwardian wedding card and was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
Behind the settee stands a walnut grand piano covered in family photographs and bibelots. The piano I have had since I was around eleven years old. Like a real piano, its lid does prop open on an angle. It has a matching piano stool. The de Virre’s family photos are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from various suppliers, but all are metal. The three prong candelabra behind the photograph frames is an artisan piece of sterling silver made in Berlin and is actually only 3 centimetres in height and 3 centimetres in width. The vase of red roses on the piano is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.
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. It is covered in Edwardian wedding cards made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. On the writing surface of the bureau sit some papers also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures, and a miniature ink bottle and pen made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottle is made from a tiny faceted crystal bead and features a sterling silver bottom and lid. The pen is also sterling silver and features a tiny pearl in its end.
The floral arrangement in the farthest corner of the room is made by hand by Falcon Miniatures in America who specialise in high end miniatures. The vase of orange roses on the tall Bespaq stand to the right of the photo is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.
The paintings around the wall are all made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States, except the small gilt painting of a sailing boat in the upper left-hand corner of the photo. It was made by Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The Royal Doulton style dinner set featuring roses in the carboard box came from a miniature dollhouse specialist on E-Bay.
The miniature Persian rug in the foreground of the photo was made by hand by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, whilst the one in the back beneath the piano was hand woven by Pike, Pike and Company 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.
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 over the Christmastide and New Year period. 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 mid-morning and Lettice pads as quietly as possible across the cavernous Adam style entrance hall of Glynes, the louis heels of her shoes echoing around the space. Anxiously she looks over her shoulder down the corridor that passes the morning room, her mother’s domain where she knows Lady Sadie is right now, and where she does not wish to be drawn into. She turns to her right and walks up to a pair of beautiful walnut double doors and knocks loudly.
“Come!” comes a muffled male voice from inside.
Lettice opens the doors and walks through into the light filled library where she is greeted by the comforting smell of old books and woodsmoke. Although as masculine as the morning room is feminine, Lettice feels far more at home in her father’s library, partially because it is his domain and also because he and she both know that, with her reading extending not much further than The Lady*, Horse and Hound** or a sedate Regency romance, Lady Sadie is unlikely to disturb either of them as long as they remain within the library’s four walls. The walls of the long room are lined with floor to ceiling shelves, all full of books: thousands of volumes on so many subjects. Weak wintery sunlight drifts through the tall windows facing out to the front of the house, burnishing the polished parquetry floors in a ghostly way. The fire, another constant in the library, crackles contentedly. And there, sitting at his Chippendale desk, sits Viscount Wrexham, dealing with estate business.
“Ah! My darling girl!” the Viscount puts aside his pen, pushes his chair back over the richly woven carpet and stands.
Lettice walks down the length of the room carrying a tapestry carpet bag in shades of red wine and moss green – a piece of luggage that she used to convey her Christmas presents for the family down to Wiltshire, and the only piece that does not match any of her other elegant deep blue leather Vuitton*** luggage that accompanied her from London in Gerald’s motorcar.
“Have you a moment to spare for me, Pappa!” Lettice asks as she reaches her father’s desk.
“Yes,” the Viscount says a little wearily. “Only if it isn’t too long. Shall I ring for tea?”
When Lettice nods eagerly, the Viscount pulls the handle of the servants call bell. The Chetwynd’s faithful butler, Bramley’s, familiar footfall outside the library door precedes his knock, and he is quickly dispatched with an order for tea to be served indulgently in the Viscount’s favourite blue and white gilt Art Nouveau tea set.
Sitting opposite her father at his desk, Lettice ponders her father’s face, which looks wan, and she notices the dark circles in the sagging flesh under his eyes. “You look and sound tired, Pappa.” she states matter-of-factly. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, your brother and I have to deal with some not too pleasant business at Mile End Farm. It’s been keeping me awake at night, and I didn’t want to deal with it before Christmas.”
“What business, Pappa?”
“Estate business.” The Viscount brushes his daughter off with a dismissive wave. “Nothing you need to worry your pretty head about.”
“If it is causing you to have sleepless nights, and as the estate is our family’s, I think it is very much my business, Pappa.” Lettice presses. “Even if Leslie is to inherit it, and not me. Have you difficulties with old Farmer Cooper again?”
“Well,” the Viscount admits. “Since you insist, yes. Ever since his son died in Ypres, and his wife of influenza, he’s taken to drinking heavily, and all but given up on Mile End Farm, and I can’t have such fertile soil untilled. If Cooper doesn’t start working the farm again, Leslie and I will have no choice but to break his leasehold in favour of another farmer.”
“But Coopers have been farming Mile End Farm for generations.” Lettice protests.
“The estate is getting expensive to maintain. Taxes have increased to help pay for the war that the Kaiser dragged us into, yet the Weimar Republic won’t pay for****,” The Viscount sighs heavily. “And I can’t afford to run a charity any more, not even for the likes of Cooper, however long his family have worked our estate.”
“Charity?”
“He’s not paid his rent.”
“How in arrears is he?”
“Three months.”
“Oh my!” Lettice’s hand goes to her mouth.
“Now you see why I didn’t want to deal with this before Christmas.” The Viscount sighs sadly again. “For all his latter faults, Cooper doesn’t deserve to be given an ultimatum on Christmas Eve. But, I can’t wait any longer. I have at least three farmers I know of who would give their eye teeth to be given Mile End Farm to work, and as the future owner of the estate, Leslie needs to know how it works.”
“That’s sad, Pappa.”
“This is the new post-war world, Lettice. You know as much as anyone that the world has changed, inexorably so. If Cooper chooses to drink his life away, I can’t stop him.”
Their conversation is interrupted by the gentle knocking at the door.
“Come!” Viscount Wrexham calls commandingly again.
Bramley enters carrying a silver tray laden with the blue and white gild Art Nouveau tea things, just as requested. “Tea, My Lord.”
“Very good, Bramley.” the Viscount acknowledges the butler. “We’ll have it here, I think.” He looks to his daughter. “Yes?” To which she nods in reply.
With the tea things set up on the gilt tooled brown leather surface of the Viscount’s Chippendale desk, and Bramley discreetly retreated beyond the library doors this Viscount says, “Now, before Leslie and I pay a call on Cooper, what is it you wanted to see me about, my girl?”
“Well Pappa,” Lettice replies. “I need your advice on these.”
Lettice withdraws the four silhouettes in black ebonised frames that she bought from Mrs. Trevithick’s Treasures when working on Margot and Dickie’s house in Cornwall and places them on her father’s desk.
“And what have we here?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow as he admires the two Regency gentlemen and the Georgian lady and gentleman in black on white within the thin black frames. “Hhhmmm.” He scratches his cleanly shaven chin and ruminates quietly. “These look a little bit like something your mother has in the morning room. Wouldn’t you be better asking her?”
“Oh no, Pappa!” Lettice exclaims awkwardly and with a little too much protesting to be polite. “Mamma would only tell me what I already know about them.”
“And what do you know about them, my girl? What does your interior designer eye tell you?”
“They are silhouettes and two are Regency, or early Victorian and two are Georgian. The two gentlemen appear to be cut paper, and the Georgian couple possibly painted.”
“Where did you acquire these from, Lettice?”
“From a little curiosity shop in Cornwall when I was doing preliminary works on the redecoration of Dickie and Margot Channon’s house. I thought you might have a book on the subject?” Lettice asks hopefully.
The Viscount settles back in his seat and sips tea from his gilt edged cup, the blue and gilding glowing in the electric light of the chandelier overhead. He gazes around the shelves about them. Lettice holds her breath in anticipation of her father’s answer, not daring to speak for fear of breaking his considered concentration. Only the gentle ticking of the clock on the mantle and the quiet cracking of the fire breaking the silence.
“I think I do have a book on silhouettes here somewhere.”
He heaves himself out of his seat with a groan and dragging his library steps along the parquet floor to a section of shelves near the fireplace, he climbs up to one of the upper shelves. “I’m sure I had something up here, possibly ordered by your mother when she had a mania for collecting silhouettes that ended up in here when she grew tired of it.” He begins running his fingers along the dark vellum volumes with gilt letting and others with brightly coloured dustjackets. “Ah! Here we are!” He pulls out a blue coloured volume with gilt lettering. “The history of Silhouettes by E. Nevill Jackson*****!”
Taking the volume over to the desk, the pair begin to look through the photographic plates in the book, scanning image after image, sipping their tea as companionably they look at silhouette after beautiful silhouette.
“I’d say, looking at this,” Lettice points to an image of a gentleman in a top hat. “That the two gentlemen may be Swiss or German. See the similarity in the cut of the frock coats.”
“Very good, Lettice.” her father replies approvingly. “Well spotted, my girl. And they are thin card like these.” He indicates to the notes about how the image was created. “This would make them Biedermeier, then.”
They continue to look.
“Ahh, now this is interesting,” the Viscount announces as they reach a page featuring five very fine silhouettes. “Your Georgian couple, unlike the Biedermeier pair, appear to be Indian ink painted on paper, and look like the work of Francis Torond*******.”
“Who was Francis Torond?” Lettice asks excitedly.
“Let’s consult Ms Jackson’s biography section.” The Viscount flicks through the book. “Here we are. Francis Torond was French, but emigrated to England around 1796.” He scans the biography. “He only worked as a silhouette artist for about ten years. He painted in Indian ink on fine paper using a quill pen for fine detail. His works are usually in framed in oval turned ebonized wood or oval giltwood frames.” Lettice gasps. “And his works are often identified through trade labels. Let’s see.” The Viscount turns the picture of the Georgian lady over and using his silver letter opener, carefully prises the backing from its frame, and the pair see a very dirty paper label pasted across the back of the portrait. “There we are! Torond, number thirteen Wells Street, London. This is a Frances Torond! And I’ll wager the pair is then too!”
Outside in the entrance hall, the distant trill of the telephone can be heard ringing out anxiously.
“How much did you pay for them?” the Viscount asks, continuing to look at the portraits before him.
“Fifteen shillings each.”
“Quite the bargain then, I’d say.” the Viscount says proudly with an approving nod. “Canny girl.”
Their conversation is interrupted yet again by the gentle knocking at the library door.
“Come!” Viscount Wrexham calls commandingly again.
Bramley pokes his head around the door. “Sorry to disturb, My Lord.”
“Good heavens Bramley! Is Leslie here already?” the Viscount asks anxiously. “I’m afraid Lettice and I have quite lost track of the time. We’ve been quite engrossed in successfully solving a little mystery.”
“Ahh… no My Lord. It’s the telephone. My Lord.”
“Who is it then, Bramley?”
“It’s actually for Miss Lettice, My Lord.” the butler replies coolly in his friendly baritone voice.
“For me?” Lettice raises her hand to the pearls at her throat and toys with them.
“Yes, My Lady. It’s Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon******** ringing from St. Paul's, Walden Bury.”
“Oh well, I’ll take the telephone call in here then, Bramley.” Lettice says, walking over to the small round three legged Georgian pedestal table the old fashioned black candlestick telephone stands on. ‘That is if you don’t mind, Father.”
“Not at all.” the Viscount acquiesces.
Lettice picks up the telephone and picks up the receiver in her left hand, placing it to her ear, and speaks clearly into the round mouthpiece of the candlestick base that she holds in her right hand. “Hullo Elizabeth darling!” she exclaims happily. “What an unexpected surprise! Merry Christmas and happy New Year.” A distant female voice speaks down the line. “Oh yes! Yes, it was marvellous. Mamma wasn’t too painful. Lally, Charles and the children came up, and so did Aunt Egg, of course. And Pappa,” She glances over at her father who has resumed looking at the silhouette portraits in an effort to be discreet and not overhear his daughter’s conversation. “Gave me a wonderful book on Egyptian art. He thinks that the discovery like the boy king’s tomb by Mr. Carter********* in Egypt is going to start a new wave of Egyptomania**********.” She smirks. “How was yours?” She listens to Elizabeth’s voice. “Is he?” The voice at the other end grows more excited. “Did he really? Again?” The voice answers animatedly. “And what did you say?” Even the Viscount, however discreet with his back turned, cannot help but pick up his ears to his daughter’s conversation. “You did? Oh congratulations, Elizabeth darling!” Lettice beams with delight. “No misgivings this time, I hope?” She listens again. “Well, that is a relief! How absolutely thrilling!” She listens again. “Oh, thank you Elizabeth darling! Oh yes I’d love to!” The voice at the other end of the telephone grows more serious. “Well of course I will! How could I refuse? Well, I’ll be back in London the day after tomorrow. Gerald’s motoring us both back to town. You must come over for tea, or cocktails and tell me all about it.” The voice speaks again. “Yes, alright Elizabeth darling. Yes… yes, I shall see you then. And congratulations again! Alright. Goodbye for now!”
Lettice hangs up the receiver and squeals with delight.
“Well!” Lettice gasps with excitement. “You’ll never guess who that was, Pappa!”
“I was led to believe by Bramley that it was your friend, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.” her father says dourly.
“She won’t be Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon much longer! The Duke of York proposed for a third time, and this time she said yes!” Lettice squeals again, jumping up and down on the spot. “She’s going to become the Duchess of York!”
“Well, that is jolly news!” the Viscount replies. “I can’t wait to tell your mother! She’ll be beside herself with joy that she entertained the future Duchess of York here at the Hunt Ball last year! I might even get a few days without any quibbles from her thanks to the news. Here’s hoping, anyway.” He crosses his fingers. “I say,” he adds dourly at the end. “I do hope she knows what she’s doing, getting married to the Windsors. I can’t say I’d fancy the King and Queen as my in-laws, Queen Mary especially!”
“I suppose since this is the third time the Duke of York proposed, that she realises. She says that she has no misgivings this time. I’ll have to get Gerald to design me a new dress and get Harriet to make me a hat for the wedding.”
“When will the wedding take place?”
“Elizabeth doesn’t know yet, but I don’t imagine it will be too far away.”
“Yes, no doubt the Windsors want to secure her for the Duke and marry them quickly before she changes her mind, if this is the third proposal.”
*The Lady is one of Britain's longest-running women's magazines. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. It is particularly notable for its classified advertisements for domestic service and child care; it also has extensive listings of holiday properties.
**Horse and Hound is the oldest equestrian weekly magazine of the United Kingdom. Its first edition was published in 1884. The magazine contains horse industry news, reports from equestrian events, veterinary advice about caring for horses, and horses for sale.
***Louis Vuitton Malletier, commonly known as Louis Vuitton, is a French luxury fashion house and company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton. The label's LV monogram appears on most of its products, ranging from luxury bags and leather goods to ready-to-wear, shoes, watches, jewellery, accessories, sunglasses and books. The Louis Vuitton label was founded by Vuitton in 1854 on Rue Neuve des Capucines in Paris. Louis Vuitton started at $10,567 as a sales price. Louis Vuitton had observed that the HJ Cave Osilite trunk could be easily stacked. In 1858, Vuitton introduced his flat-topped trunks with Trianon canvas, making them lightweight and airtight. Before the introduction of Vuitton's trunks, rounded-top trunks were used, generally to promote water runoff, and thus could not be stacked. It was Vuitton's grey Trianon canvas flat trunk that allowed the ability to stack them on top of another with ease for voyages. Many other luggage makers later imitated Vuitton's style and design, but Vuitton was the choice of luggage for the rich and influential.
****In order to repay the expenditures made by the British during the Great War, like had been occurring since the Napoleonic Wars, the government increased Income Tax. The standard rate of income tax, which was six per cent in 1914, stood at thirty per cent in 1918. Following the ratification of article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of the Great War, the Central Powers were made to give war reparations to the Allied Powers. Each of the defeated powers was required to make payments in either cash or kind. Because of the financial situation in Austria, Hungary, and Turkey after the war, few to no reparations were paid and the requirements for reparations were cancelled. Bulgaria, having paid only a fraction of what was required, saw its reparation figure reduced and then cancelled. Due to the lack of reparation payments by Germany, France occupied the Ruhr in 1923 to enforce payments, causing an international crisis and hyperinflation in Germany. As a result of all of this, income tax rates amongst the wealthy were maintained at a high level, far in excess of those charged in the years before the war, making the management of estates very difficult if they were not productive.
*****“The History of Silhouettes” by Emily Neville Jackson was published by The Connoisseur, in London in 1911. The first edition has blue cloth boards with gilt lettering on the cover. It has one hundred and twenty one pages of text and bibliography with an additional seventy two plates of photographs of silhouettes. Emily Jackson was a noted collector and authority on silhouettes, especially the work of Auguste Amant Constant Fidèle Edouart, who was a French-born portrait artist who worked in England, Scotland and the United States in the Nineteenth Century who specialised in silhouette portraits.
*******Francis Torond was an accomplished and successful silhouette artist of the late Georgian and Regency periods in England. He experienced financial difficulty and decided it was not a profitable career, so sadly only worked as a profilist for a decade. He is renowned today for his exquisite conversation pieces, and also for his clare-obscur style – the technique of using light and shade in a pictorial piece of art. Born around 1743, he emigrated withhis family from France to England around 1776, settling in Westminster in London. Francis Torond painted entirely in Indian ink on fine laid paper, using a quill pen to depict detail. He was incredibly skilled in highlighting the details of clothing and the background in which his sitters were painted. China, furniture and lighting were all beautifully painted. He did not use any mechanical means to produce his silhouettes, and he advertised that he could copy any silhouette onto furniture or jewellery. He died at his St Giles home in 1812.
********Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was known at the beginning of 1923 when this story is set, went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". He proposed again in 1922 after Elizabeth was part of his sister, Mary the Princess Royal’s, wedding party, but she refused him again. On Saturday, January 13th, 1923, Prince Albert went for a walk with Elizabeth at the Bowes-Lyon home at St Paul’s, Walden Bury and proposed for a third and final time. This time she said yes. The wedding took place on April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey.
*********On the 4th of November 1922, English archaeologist Howard Carter and his men discovered the entrance to the boy king, Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. He unseals the entrance on the 16th of February 1923, discovering the most intact Egyptian burial chamber ever unearthed. It sparks a worldwide interest in all things Egyptian. The craze he started became known as Tutmania, and it inspired everything from the architecture of public building and private houses alike to interior design and fashion. Famously at the time, socialite Dolores Denis Denison applied one of the earliest examples of getting the media of the day to pay attention to her because of her dress by arriving at the prestigious private view of the King Tut Exhibition in London, dressed as an Egyptian mummy complete in a golden sarcophagus and had to be carried inside by her driver and a hired man. Although it started before the discovery of the tomb, the Art Deco movement was greatly influenced by Egyptian style. Many of the iconic decorative symbols we associate with the movement today came about because of Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
**********Egyptomania refers to a period of renewed interest in the culture of ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign in the 19th century. Napoleon was accompanied by many scientists and scholars during this Campaign, which led to a large interest after the documentation of ancient monuments in Egypt. The ancient remains had never been so thoroughly documented before and so the interest in ancient Egypt increased significantly. Jean-François Champollion deciphered the ancient hieroglyphs in 1822 by using the Rosetta Stone that was recovered by French troops in 1799 which began the study of scientific Egyptology.
Cluttered with books and art, Viscount Wrexham’s library with its Georgian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The majority of the books that you see lining the shelves of the Viscount’s library 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 the Viscount’s Chippendale 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 one of the books he has made. “The History of Silhouettes” by Emily Nevill Jackson was published by The Connoisseur, in London in 1911. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this volume and the others, the book contains thirty double sided pages of silhouette images and script and measures thirty-three millimetres in height and thirty millimetres in width and is only five millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!
The miniature silhouettes that Lettice bought in Cornwall were made by Lady Mile Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The Art Nouveau tea set I acquired from an online specialist of miniatures in E-Bay.
Also on the desk to the left stands a stuffed white owl on a branch beneath a glass cloche. A vintage miniature piece, the foliage are real dried flowers and grasses, whilst the owl is cut from white soapstone. The base is stained wood and the cloche is real glass. This I acquired along with two others featuring shells (one of which can be seen in the background) from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.
On the desk are some 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottles and a blotter on a silver salver all made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles are made from tiny faceted crystal beads and have sterling silver bottoms and lids. The ink blotter is sterling silver too and has a blotter made of real black felt, cut meticulously to size to fit snugly inside the frame.
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.
In the background you can see the book lined shelves of Viscount Wrexham’s as well as a Victorian painting of cattle in a gold frame from Amber’s Miniatures in America, and a hand painted ginger jar from Thailand which stands on a Bespaq plant stand.
The Persian rug you can just glimpse in the bottom left-hand corer of the photo was hand woven by Pike, Pike and Company 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.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
It is a few days before the wedding of Her Royal Highness, Princess Mary* to Viscount Lascelles at Westminster Abbey, to which both Lettice and her childhood friend Gerald Bruton, have been invited, amongst other friends from their Embassy Club coterie. Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy, has tried to gain some financial independence from his impecunious family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street. With some recent good press in Vogue after a wedding gown he designed for his and Lettice’s friend Margot de Virre featured, he has attained some modest success, and a few of his creations will grace female guests at the wedding. This hasn’t stopped him from making a frock of oyster satin with pearl buttons and a guipure lace** Peter Pan collar*** for Lettice to wear to the ceremony and he has just arrived at her Cavendish Mews flat with it in hand to deliver to her in person, only to discover that she is out on an errand.
“Oh Edith, is he still here?” Lettice gasps breathlessly as the front door to her flat is opened by her maid. “It took such an effort to get back here.” She places a slightly clammy glove clad hand on Edith’s shoulder as she tries to catch her breath.
“Mr. Bruton Miss?” Edith asks in surprise at her mistress’ flustered and panting state. When her question is responded to with an affirmative nod, she continues. “He’s only just arrived with your frock for the wedding, Miss. He’s in the drawing room.”
“Oh good!” Lettice sighs, quickly hurrying through the door into the drawing room without even taking off her coat or hat or depositing her parasol into the umbrella stand. “I’ll see him now.”
Edith shakes her head in puzzlement at her mistress as she watches her go, a large pink and white candy striped hat box with a green ribbon trim clutched in her arms along with her snakeskin handbag.
“Thank god you’re still here, Gerald darling!” cries Lettice, bursting into the room and charging across its length. Depositing the large round box on the black japanned coffee table along with her handbag, she drops her stub handled parasol next to her chair. Suitably freed of impediments, she embraces her friend in an enveloping hug of velvet, fur and Habanita****. “Sorry, the traffic getting back was so appalling that I gave up at Bourdon Street and ran the rest of the way!”
“You ran?” Gerald looks surprised at his dear friend. “I thought the daughter of a viscount never ran.”
“Well, they don’t,” she elucidates, shrugging off her velvet and fur coat, casting it across the room where it lands with a crumpled sigh onto a black japanned Chippendale chair. “Unless they are desperate to catch their friend before he leaves.”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I Lettuce Leaf?”
Lettice slaps him with the velvet toque she has just removed from her head. “You’re a beast, Gerald Bruton!”
“What?” Gerald laughs as he dodges the flapping hat.
“You know perfectly well, what!” Lettuce scolds. “Will you never tire of calling me by my loathed childhood nickname?”
“Not as long as it peeves you, Lettuce Leaf!”
She slaps him kittenishly again. “And if it isn’t a pet peeve any longer?”
“Then you won’t care if I call you Lettuce Leaf or not.”
His response is rewarded with another few wallops from her hat until he finally begs for mercy, as both of them bust into fits of childish giggles.
“So, what is it that you so desperately needed to see me for, darling?” Gerald finally manages to ask.
Tossing the hat on top of her discarded coat, she turns back to Gerald. “This, darling.” she says with a conspiratorial smile as she pats the top of the round cardboard box which is decorated prettily with pink and green ribbons, a scrunch of frothy white lace and an artificial flower.
Gerald looks down at the box, but is singularly unimpressed by it. “A box? What do I care for a box, and more importantly, why do you, darling?”
“Oh it isn’t the box, Gerald. Don’t be dim!” Lettice laughs. “It’s what’s inside.”
“Well show me then!” He uncrosses his arms for a moment to flip his left hand at it dismissively before returning to his bemused stance with arms akimbo. “You have my attention.”
Lettice tears the lid from the box excitedly and delves into a froth of noisy, snowy white tissue paper before withdrawing a beautiful hat of straw – not quite a cloche and not quite a picture hat but something in between – decorated with a lustrous oyster coloured satin ribbon, three white feathers and a rather fetching peach coloured ornamental flower. As she lifts it out, a receipt flutters face down onto the tabletop. Gerald goes to pick it up. “No! No! No!” Lettice says, brushing his hand away before placing the hat neatly over her coiffed blonde Marcelle***** waves. Positioning herself in a rather dramatic, yet elegant pose, she asks, “What do you think, Gerald?”
“I say darling!” Gerald gasps, his hands rising to his mouth where a broad smile appears. “That’s a rather natty looking chapeau!”
“Good enough to go with your frock to Princess Mary’s wedding?”
“I should say so!” Then he pauses for a moment and ponders the cardboard packaging again. “But that isn’t a Madame Gwendolyn hatbox.”
“No, it isn’t,” Lettice replies with a smirk, but says no more as she places the hat on the tabletop next to the hatbox and the receipt, which still lies face down. Gerald quickly reaches again for the latter, but Lettice snatches it up in her own hands before he can reach it. “No! No! No!” she repeats, wagging a finger warningly at her friend.
Gerald looks at the hat again, and then at the mischievous look on Lettice’s pretty face. “Well then? Who made it? You have me intrigued.”
“Well, I’m going to create a fashion first at the royal wedding.” Lettice announces mysteriously.
“It’s a beautiful chapeau darling, but I’d hardly say that it’s a fashion first.”
Lettice holds up a finger to silence him, before then revealing the printed side of the receipt. Gerald’s eyes grow wide as he takes in the typed letters and logo at the top.
“Selfridges? You bought this hat at Selfridges?” he splutters unbelievably. “But it’s so…”
“Stylish?”
“Very à la mode! I can scarcely believe it!”
“Well, not everything Mr. Selfridge has is fit only for shop girls and typists, Gerald, contrary to what you and others may believe. He has some Parisian models exclusively for his department store. And it only cost me nine pounds, nine and sixpence! Can you believe that rogue Madame Gwendolyn was going to charge me nine pounds alone just to refurbish an existing hat of hers that she hasn’t been able to sell with some new ribbons and frou-frou?”
“Well, this is far better value for money, I must say.” Gerald picks up the hat and takes a closer look at the fine stitching around the hatband and how seamlessly the ornamental flower appears to be affixed.
“And that’s how I’m going to create a fashion first at Princess Mary’s wedding!” Lettice claps her hands in delight.
Gerald looks at her perplexed for a moment, then glances at the hat and them back into Lettice’s mirth filled face. His eyes widen again. “Surely… surely not, Lettice! You can’t!” he splutters.
“Why not Gerald?”
“It’s a royal wedding for heaven’s sake! You can’t seriously expect to wear a hat from Selfridges to a royal wedding? You’re the youngest daughter of the Viscount Wrexham!”
“No-one would actually know it was a Selfridges hat, Gerald, except you and me, oh and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon****** because I alluded to my potential plan when I saw her a few days ago.”
“Oh wonderful!” Gerald throws his hands in the air in despair. “You told one of Her Royal Highness’ bridesmaids!”
“Elizabeth won’t say anything, Gerald.” Lettice assures her friend. “Anyway, she’ll be far too busy on the day with bridesmaids duties to even see my hat, never mind pass remarks on it.”
“And what will Sadie say, when she finds out?”
“She doesn’t need to know any more than anyone else, Gerald. I’m surprised you’d even countenance the idea.” Lettice casts an astonished look at her friend. “I think I’d rather tell Her Royal Highness that it’s a Selfridges hat than tell Mater!”
“Well, she’ going to know it isn’t from Madame Gwendolyn, because it isn’t, and that’s where she gets her hats from, including the one she will be wearing to Westminster Abbey, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I’ll just tell her that I’ve found a fabulous new designer who is more representative of the modern woman.” Lettice remarks offhandedly. “Those last two words will be enough to stop her making further enquiries.”
“Imagine a Selfridges hat at a royal wedding,” chuckles Gerald. “You’ll bring the establishment down yet, Lettice darling, piece by piece, with your modern woman thoughts.”
Contrary to popular belief, fashion at the beginning of the Roaring 20s did not feature the iconic cloche hat as a commonly worn head covering. Although invented by French milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, the cloche hat did not start to gain popularity until 1922, so in early 1922 when this story is set, picture hats, a hangover from the pre-war years, were still de rigueur in fashionable society. Although nowhere near as wide, heavy, voluminous or as ornate as the hats worn by women between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the Great War, the picture hats of the 1920s were still wide brimmed, although they were generally made of straw or some lightweight fabric and were decorated with a more restrained touch. For somewhere as socially important as Princess Mary’s 1922 wedding, a matching hat, parasol, handbag or reticule and gloves to go with a lady’s chosen frock were essential.
*Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897 – 1965), was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the sister of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She married Viscount Lascelles on the 28th of February 1922 in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. The bride was only 24 years old, whilst the groom was 39. There is much conjecture that the marriage was an unhappy one, but their children dispute this and say it was a very happy marriage based upon mutual respect. The wedding was filmed by Pathé News and was the first royal wedding to be featured in fashion magazines, including Vogue.
**Guipure lace is a delicate fabric made by twisting and braiding the threads to craft incredible designs that wows the eye. Guipure lace fabrics distinguish themselves from other types of lace by connecting the designs using bars or subtle plaits instead of setting them on a net.
***A Peter Pan collar is a style of clothing collar, flat in design with rounded corners. It is named after the collar of Maude Adams's costume in her 1905 role as Peter Pan, although similar styles had been worn before this date. Peter Pan collars were particularly fashionable during the 1920s and 1930s.
****Molinard Habanita was launched in 1921. Molinard say that Habanita was the first women’s fragrance to strongly feature vetiver as an ingredient – something hitherto reserved for men, commenting that ‘Habanita’s innovative style was eagerly embraced by the garçonnes – France’s flappers – and soon became Molinard’s runaway success and an icon in the history of French perfume.’ Originally conceived as a scent for cigarettes – inserted via glass rods or to sprinkle from a sachet – women had begun sprinkling themselves with it instead, and Molinard eventually released it as a personal fragrance.
*****Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women's hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut. For those women who had longer hair, it was common to tie the hair at the nape of the neck and pin it above the ear with a stylish hair pin or flower. One famous wearer was American entertainer, Josephine Baker.
******Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon as she was known in 1922 went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to" She was one of Princess Mary’s eight bridesmaids at her 1922 wedding.
This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures including items from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Lettice’s elegant Selfridges straw hat sitting on the black japanned coffee table is decorated with an oyster satin ribbon, three feathers and an ornamental flower. The maker for this hat is unknown, but I acquitted it through Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in the United Kingdom. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism as this one is are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable.
The beautiful coloured card hatbox came from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay, whilst the receipt is a 1:12 miniature receipt, produced to exacting standards by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Lettice’s snakeskin handbag with its golden clasp and chain also comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.
Next to the telephone stands a glass vase containing blue dried flowers (although you can’t see the flowers in the photo). The vase is made of hand spun glass. These items I have had since I was a teenager when I acquired them from a high street doll and miniatures stockist.
The red elephant to the upper right-hand corner of the photo is actually a glass bead and used to be part of a necklace which fell apart long before I bought it. It and many other elephants from the necklace in red and white glass came in a box of bits I thought would make good miniature editions that I bought at a flea market some fifteen years ago.
Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The black japanned wooden chair is a Chippendale design and has been upholstered with modern and stylish Art Deco fabric. The mirror backed back japanned china cabinet is Chippendale too. On its glass shelves sit pieces of miniature Limoges porcelain including jugs, teacups and saucers, many of which I have had since I was a child.
To the left of the Chippendale chair stands a blanc de chine Chinese porcelain vase, and next to it, a Chinese screen. The Chinese folding screen I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.
The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug. The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her old family home for the wedding of Leslie to Arabella, the daughter of their neighbours, Lord Sherbourne and Lady Isobel Tyrwhitt. Today is the big day, and earlier in the morning Lettice was amongst the guests to watch her brother and his now wife exchange vows at the chapel in Glynes village. Now the wedding guests have repaired to the grand country house where the couple’s wedding breakfast* is being held in the Glynes grand dining room.
“I say, Sadie has been busy!” exclaims Gerald as he walks through the doors of the dining room.
“The whole household has been busy.” corrects Lettice as she walks proudly on his arm. “I could barely get a cup of tea, a slice of toast and a scraping of jam for breakfast,” she moans. “Which I had to take in my room because in here was out-of-bounds.”
The Glynes dining room, a large space, has been transformed into an indoor winter garden with tributes to the house’s gardeners with hothouse flower arrangements everywhere. Cascades of soft lilac wisteria, white blossom and pastel roses spill from vases on the mantlepiece and from jardinières on stands placed around the walls. The usual dining table used by the Chetwynds for dinners and banquets has been transformed into the bridal table, whilst several other smaller oblong tables have been brought in to serve as places for the other wedding breakfast guests. Each table is covered in crisp snowy white linen tablecloths taken from the Glynes great Elizabethan oak linen chests and pressed by housekeeper Mrs. Casterton’s staff, and upon their surfaces fine gilt white china, glassware and silver gleam, with each place setting carefully arranged by Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler and Marsden, the first footman. Each table is graced with more fresh floral arrangements created by Lady Sadie herself and the parlour maid Emmery, whom the Countess has discovered has an aptitude for flower arranging. On the bridal table stands a grand three-tier wedding fruitcake made by Mrs. Honeychurch, the Chetwynd’s cook, its white royal icing edges decorated with pale yellow icing swirls and golden orange sugar roses.
“They look so happy,” Gerald remarks as they walk in front of the bridal table where Leslie and Isabella sit before the cake.
“I think Bella’s is your best wedding frock yet, Gerald.”
“Oh, do you really think so, Lettice?”
“I do.” she concurs proudly as they pass the bride and groom, admiring the creamy white satin boat neck of Bella’s wedding gown, trimmed with accents of antique lace, a gift to Isabella from Lady Sadie, taken from her own wedding dress.
‘Well, Bella was perfect to fit.” The pair move around to the table adjunct to the bridal table where they take their places. “She already had her ideas, which, unlike some women I see, were good ones, and I just had to bring them to life. She’s never has been a girl into fuss, and let’s be honest, she has so much natural beauty that no matter what I made for her would look wonderful on her.”
“And of course, I love my outfit too, Gerald.” Lettice smooths the pale buttery yellow crêpe of her frock which matches the pretty rose decorated wide brimmed straw hat made for her by Gerald’s friend Harriet.
“I should hope you do!” Gerald replies as he settles himself into his Chippendale style dining chair.
The pair watch as the country wedding guests, a mixture of family from both the Chetwynd and the Tyrwhitt clans, county society, guests from London and a smattering of local village folk, leisurely wend their way to their places, each marked with a handwritten card in Lady Sadie’s elegant copperplate script.
“I must say Lettice darling, I am grateful that you managed to convince Sadie to lift her embargo on me after the Hunt Ball and allow me to come.” Gerald remarks as he and Lettice nod at two of her distant spinster cousins from Guernsey as they make their way around them to their place much further down the table Lettice and Gerald are near the head of.
“Oh don’t thank me, Gerald.” Lettice replies. “Thank Leslie. He’s the one who confronted Mater and said that if he had to have cousins Eurphronia and Ethelreda from Guernsey,” She nods to the two rather horsey looking ladies now taking their places at the far end of the table. “Whom we haven’t seen nor heard from since Lally was married, then he and Bella were entitled to invite whichever guests they wanted, without question. And of course that included you.”
“Gosh! I must thank Leslie later then.”
“I still don’t know,” Lettice queries. “What was it you said to Mater that night of Hunt Ball that set her so against you. I’ve never known her to take against anyone so vehemently, except perhaps Aunt Egg.”
Gerald blushes, remembering the altercation he had with Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, at the ball. In a slightly inebriated state he told her that neither she nor Lettice had any sway over Selwyn Spencely’s choice of a wife, any more than Selwyn did himself, explaining that it was his mother, the Duchess of Mumford, Lady Zinnia, who would choose a wife for him. “I keep telling you, darling girl. I really don’t remember,” he replies awkwardly, covering his tracks as best as he can. “If you remember, I was rather tight** that night on your father’s champagne.”
“And I hope you will do so again today.” Lettice says cheekily, picking up the freshly poured glass of champagne set at her place just prior to her arrival.
“Try and stop me, darling!” Gerald picks up his glass and the two clink their glasses together in a conspiratorial toast.
“Lettice! Lettice stop that!” hisses her father, the Viscount, from his seat next to his wife at the bridal table, flapping his hand at her in an effort to gain her attention and growing red faced in the process. “Not until I make my speech.”
Lettice rolls her eyes and shakes her head, and like two admonished children, she and Gerald return their glasses, untouched, to their places with lowered heads.
“I am glad that Aunt Isobel was well enough to see Bella get married.” Lettice says with a satisfied sigh.
“Yes, I am too.” Gerald looks over the top of the wedding cake to see Isabella’s mother, whom they all call ‘Aunt Isobel’ despite her not being a blood relation, smiling proudly next to her husband, Sherbourne, as she looks down the table to her daughter and new son-in-law. “The radiotherapy*** seems to be having a positive impact on her health. Although evidently not enough for the Tyrwhitts to host the wedding breakfast.” he notes a little critically.
“Well, Mater thought it might tire poor Aunt Isobel out to arrange the wedding breakfast by herself, so she offered, and Isobel was probably too unwell at the time to refuse her.”
“Who would dare contradict Sadie’s wishes? Look, she is positively in her element, playing Lady Bountiful****, lording herself over all her minions, the great and good of the county.” Gerald says, nodding to Lettice’s beaming mother swathed in romantic soft pink floral silk de chiné wearing a floppy picture hat covered in satin roses in a matching shade.
“I do think Uncle Sherbourne looks rather tired though, don’t you Gerald?”
“Well, it isn’t every day that one loses one’s only daughter,” Gerald says dismissively. “He’s probably had a few sleepless nights worrying about her dowery and whether she has made the right decision.”
“Gerald!” Lettice slaps her friend playfully with her pale yellow kid gloves. “You surely can’t be suggesting that Leslie is a cad!” she laughs.
He chuckles in return and flashes her a beaming smile.
Returning her gloves to her lap, she glances up and over to where her eldest brother sits proudly in his morning suit gazing with fondness and laughing with his bride. Glowing can be the only adjective suitable to describe Leslie and Isabella as they radiate happiness.
“You must feel a little jealous,” Lettice remarks discreetly as she observes a slightly wistful look in her dear friend’s eyes as he too observes the happy couple.
“Of the sanctity of marriage?” Gerald scoffs with a dismissive snort. “Pray save me from that hell, Lettice darling!”
“You know what I mean, Gerald,” Lettice retorts. “Now that you’ve finally met someone.” she adds in a hushed tone.
Lettice bore witness to an exchange of affection between Gerald and a young oboe player named Cyril whilst visiting Gerald’s friend Harriet in Putney recently. As well as making hats, Harriet runs a boarding house for theatrical gentlemen where Cyril resides, and it is through her that Gerald met the handsome young musician.
“I hardly think we are at the marriage stage yet, Lettice darling.” Gerald whispers sagely. “Not that we could, mind you. We’ve only recently met. Anyway,” He glances meaningfully again at Leslie. “What’s the point in wishing for something you know you cannot have.”
Lettice reaches across to Gerald’s lap beneath the crisp white linen tablecloth and places her hand atop her friend’s, giving it a consoling squeeze. She sometimes forgets how her friend pined for many years with unrequited love for her eldest brother. Gerald has no more chance of marrying Cyril even if he does return Gerald’s affections, and Lettice can only imagine how careful her friend needs to be to avoid the authorities punishing him with imprisonment with hard labour just for loving another man.
“I wish Selwyn was here.” Lettice continues softly, casting her eyes down into her lap as she feels the sting of tears.
“What?” Gerald asks with a melodramatic gasp, quickly noticing Lettice’s sudden rush of emotion and trying to keep her from crying in front of her family and the rest of the county’s and the village’s society. “Am I not good enough for you as your squire?” He pouts at her and bats his long, dark eyelashes.
Lettice cannot help but let out a burst of laughter at his sad puppy dog face. “Oh Gerald! You know I don’t man that.”
“I know.” he says with a melancholy smile.
“You’re so good to me.”
“Agreed.” he nods. He then proceeds to add as a joking after thought, “Far better than you deserve.”
When Lettice laughs a little sadly, Gerald returns Lettice’s squeeze comfortingly. “I know you want Selwyn here. However,” he adds seriously. “You know it would be improper for him to be at such an intimate family occasion as your guest unless there has been a formal intention of marriage.”
“I know.” Lettice sighs.
“And Selwyn hasn’t made any such overtures, has he?”
Lettice looks down again. “Not yet.” she mumbles glumly.
“Well then. You shall simply have to settle for me, Lettice darling. I know I’m a poor second, and probably not even that. However, I will just have to do.”
“And you do splendidly, Gerald darling. You always know how to pick my spirits up when I’m feeling glum.”
“Isn’t that what best friends and chums of old are supposed to do?”
“Exactly right, Gerald.” Lettice replies, withdrawing her hands and discreetly dabbing the corners of her eyes with her pale yellow kid gloves. “What a pair we are, Gerald.” She sniffs. “Both of us crying for what we cannot have.”
“Don’t worry, everyone will think you are crying tears of joy for the happy couple, and that is how it should be. But don’t make a habit of blubbing when there is no conceivable reason to be crying, will you?”
“How do you do it, Gerald darling?”
“Do what?”
“Not break down and cry, sometimes?”
“Well, aren’t men supposed to be the superior race?” Gerald asks, mockingly. “It’s always a stiff upper lip and all that, don’t you know?” He smiles sadly at his friend and companion. “I suppose the truth of the matter is that Father probably beat it out of me as a child. I knew if I blubbed at the wrong time, I was in for a thrashing, or Roland would tell Father I was blubbing, so I was in for a thrashing, so I kept it hidden until I was alone.”
“I’m sorry Gerald.” Lettice mutters.
“Oh don’t be, Lettice darling. This is a wedding for heaven’s sake. Were supposed to be happy, not sad. No,” Gerald continues with a stoic sniff. “I’m happy for them and wish them well. Truly I do. It was inevitable really. They have always been destined to be together. Bella and Leslie are well suited for one another. They are both country folk. She loves riding and is interested in animal husbandry and all that awfully dirty estate business.” He waves his free left hand dismissively with a look of disgust at the thought of pigs in their muddy styes. “Whereas what I find best about the country is when we leave it to go back to the comfort and bright lights of London.”
“Don’t even mention animal husbandry, Gerald!” Lettice gasps, a shudder of revulsion running through her as she remembers the conversation she and her hated older brother Lionel had in Lady Sadie’s morning room a few days ago, when he spoke of women as fillies and mares, waiting to be sired by stallions.
“Oh, sorry Lettice darling!” Gerald apologises with a sombre glance at her. “I forgot.”
“I certainly can’t, even though I want to.”
“I knew things must have been looking bloody***** for you here when you sent that note across to me asking me to meet you at the Folly****** after dinner.”
“I can barely stand to even be in the same room as Lionel.” Lettice bristles as she looks across the Glynes dining room to the table set up on the opposite side of the bridal table, where her brother Lionel sits between their Aunt Eglantine, their father’s beloved younger sister, and Aunt Gladys, their mother’s parsimonious widowed elder sister. Emboldened by his imminent departure back to his place of exile in Kenya, he doesn’t even try and disguise his boredom at whatever the self-absorbed Gladys is saying to him.
“How can Aunt Egg stand to sit next to him?” Gerald asks.
“Because she doesn’t know about Lionel’s fathering of three illegitimate children in 1918.” Lettice elucidates quietly. “Lally and I joke openly about being Aunt Egg’s favourite niece depending upon the way the wind blows, but when it comes to her favourite nephew, there is no doubt as to who it is.”
“But why?” Gerald’s eyes grow wide in surprise. “I mean, she’s so lovely, artistic, and kind. And Lionel…” He shudders. “Lionel is such a… a…”
“A beast, Gerald?” She shrugs. “I guess there is no accounting for taste sometimes, even in our families. No, it would break her heart if she really knew what Lionel was like.”
“But that’s not fair to Leslie.”
“Oh, but Leslie is complicit in the subterfuge, Gerald. He’s so good and kind himself that he doesn’t want Aunt Egg upset by the truth. Besides, if she was upset, then Pater would be upset, and if he was upset, we all would be in for a beastly time.”
“How do you all do it?”
“Luckily Aunt Egg is safely ensconced with her own life in London, and with Lionel in Kenya, he’s barely ever mentioned. And if Aunt Egg does ask after him, we always glaze all the beastliness over with tales of derring-do******* from his sporadic letters to Mater and Pater, or what we’ve heard from friends who have passed through Nairobi and seen him.”
“I have to say that the Viscount and Sadie don’t seem too concerned about having him here.” Gerald observes as he glances in the direction of Lettice’s father and mother.
“Oh don’t be fooled,” Lettice elucidates as she glances at the smiling face of her father and her mother as she proudly plays mother-of-the-groom and gracious hostess to all the guests. “It’s all bravado: a show for Bella and the wedding guests. No-one wants to see a monster like Lionel spoil Bella and Leslie’s big day, except perhaps Lionel of course.”
“He always was unscrupulous.”
“Well, the last three years in exile certainly haven’t tempered his feelings of resentment and anger towards all of us, me especially.”
“But it was his own foolish philandering that got him banished to Africa.”
“Lionel doesn’t see it that way. As usual, he thinks that if I hadn’t told Mater and Pater about,” Lettice blushes at the thought. “About his indiscretion with Nelly, then those with Margaret and that poor simpleton Dora wouldn’t have come out and he would have gotten away with it.”
“It seems to me he did get away with it, and lightly.” Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper he adds. “Banishment and the absolution for three illegitimate children, all paid for by your father. It’s a rather splendid deal if you ask me. He could have done far worse.”
“Lionel doesn’t think so, and we’re all sick of his digs and barbs which he inflicts on us every chance he gets. Pater and Mater have been on pins and needles ever since Lionel arrived. I had to speak to Mrs. Casterton about cautioning the maids, and I still had to warn Moira, whom I caught making cow eyes******* at him.”
“That would certainly have encouraged him, the cad.”
“I’m sure it did, even though he swears to me that he’s only interested in older women now, and married ones at that.”
“Good god!” Gerald rolls his eyes and then stares harshly at Lionel who remains bored between his two aunts, totally unaware that he is being spoken of and scrutinised. “Can he get any more rakish?”
“Lally refused to come and stay as she finds him so abhorrent, and she doesn’t want the children exposed to his wickedness.”
“He wouldn’t…” Gerald scarlessly dares to speak the words. “Well, Lionel wouldn’t hurt the little dears, would he?”
“With Lionel,” Lettice shrugs. “You never can quite tell what his scheming and perverse little mind is planning next.” She sighs heavily. “That’s half the problem. Just when you think you have him worked out, and know his next move, he does something unexpected that throws you.”
“And the unexpected from Lionel is always nasty.” says Gerald wearily, remembering how horrible Lionel was to him as a little boy.
“Always. He’s so unpredictable, except in his predictability of being mean, nasty, spiteful or hurtful.”
“Well, he’ll be on board a train back to London tomorrow morning.” Gerald says with a sigh of relief. “When does he set sail?”
“The Walmer Castle******** leaves Southampton for Cape Town on Friday, and not a moment too soon with Lionel on board, if you ask me.”
The hubbub of the light chatter of the guests filling the dining room is suddenly shattered by the sharp and repetitious rap of metal against glass, silencing everyone as heads turn towards the bridal table, where Lettice’s father, Viscount Wrexham has raised himself to his feet, tapping his crystal champagne flute with a silver knife.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could ask you all to take your places please,” the Viscount calls out loudly with his booming orator’s voice, usually reserved for the House of Lords. “As host for today’s wedding breakfast, I would just like to say a few words as the first course is served.”
Lettice and Gerald settle back into their seats as the Viscount commences his welcome speech to the assembled guests, all of whom pay attention to him, except for his eldest son Leslie and his new bride Isabella, who only have eyes for one another as they sit, smiling at one another in the centre of the bridal table.
*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.
**’Tight’ is an old fashioned upper-class euphemism for drunk.
**By the 1920s radiotherapy was well developed with the use of X-rays and radium. There was an increasing realisation of the importance of accurately measuring the dose of radiation and this was hampered by the lack of good apparatus. The science of radiobiology was still in its infancy and increasing knowledge of the biology of cancer and the effects of radiation on normal and pathological tissues made an enormous difference to treatment. Treatment planning began in this period with the use of multiple external beams. The X-ray tubes were also developing with replacement of the earlier gas tubes with the modern Coolidge hot-cathode vacuum tubes. The voltage that the tubes operated at also increased and it became possible to practice ‘deep X-ray treatment’ at 250 kV. Sir Stanford Cade published his influential book “Treatment of Cancer by Radium” in 1928 and this was one of the last major books on radiotherapy that was written by a surgeon.
****The old fashioned British term “looking bloody” was a way of indicating how dour or serious a person or occasion looks.
*****Lady Bountiful is a term used to describe a woman who engages in ostentatious acts of charity to impress others, and was often used in Edwardian times by titled ladies to describe themselves when conducting their charity or ministering works.
******In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of usual garden buildings.
*******The phrase derring-do comes from Middle English, dorring don meant simply "daring to do." The phrase was misprinted as derrynge do in a 15th-century work by poet John Lydgate, and Edmund Spenser took it up from there. A glossary to Spenser's work defined it as "manhood and chevalrie.") Literary author Sir Walter Scott and others brought the noun into modern use.
********The RMS Walmer Castle was a passenger ship for Union-Castle Line, launched on the 6th of July 1901 and completed on the 20th of February 1902. The British government requisitioned her in 1917 and she then served as a troop ship in the North Atlantic. She returned to mercantile service, including sailings between Southampton and Cape Town after the war. She was scrapped in 1932.
Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class country house wedding 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 bridal table - covered by a fine linen tablecloth - 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.
In centre stage on the bridal table stands a three tier wedding cake covered in white icing, decorated with yellow swirls of icing and orange roses. The cake is made entirely of plaster, and I have had it since I was given it for a Christmas gift when I was seven.
The bridal table is set correctly for a five course Edwardian wedding breakfast, using cutlery and glassware from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The cutlery set is made of polished metal. The crockery is made by an unknown English company and each piece has been gilded by hand. The linen napkins and napkin rings were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The Georgian silver water jug in front of the floral arrangement and the cruet set which peeps from behind it, have been made with great attention to detail, and come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The flower arrangement on the table in the gilt double handled vase comes from M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures.
The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. On its 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. 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.
The pink and white roses in the Limoges vases were made by hand by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, whilst the larger floral arrangements of roses and cascading wisteria to either side of the fireplace come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom.
To the left of the photo stands a demilune table upon which stands a wine cooler also made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland. The bottle of Deutz and Geldermann champagne in it is an artisan miniature and made of glass and has real foil wrapped around its neck. It was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The other bottles of wine, also made of glass with great attention to their lables, come from Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures.
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.
To supplement its Municipal Defense Fleet, Haelos Star Yards has introduced a line of light cruisers in addition to its larger vessels.
Smaller than its Vausi-class brother, the S-25 Savaran is designed for escort duty and light skirmishes as its primary roles. Each of its side hull trenches is home to a dual heavy turbolaser emplacement, and a single point-defence rotating turbolaser provides cover for its bridge section, which contains extensive comms equipment.
HSY intends on producing a substantial number of light cruisers, both for its own purposes as well as for sale to the various vying factions which require vessels to replenish their fleets.
—————
My first build for Star Wars Factions, after all these years. I designed this to couple with LamborghiniWaffleSauce's Factions ship, and if all goes to plan you'll be able to see them displayed together at Bricktastic in February.