Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve, where she is taking possession of her latest order from Willison’s Grocers, delivered by Mr. Willison’s boy, Frank Leadbeater.
“Tinned apricots, tinned pears,” Edith marks off the items written on her list that she telephoned through to Mr. Willison’s on Thursday morning. “Plum jam, Bovril.” She places a tick next to each with a crisp mark from her pencil, the sound of it scratching across the page’s surface. “Tinned cherries. Where are the tinned cherries, Frank?” Edith asks anxiously.
“They’re right here, Miss Edith,” he remarks, delving noisly into the box of groceries between the flour and Lyon’s tea, withdrawing a small tin of My Lady tinned cherries. “Just as you ordered.”
“Oh thank goodness!” Edith sighs, placing a hand on her chest, from which she releases the breath she has been holding.
“Everything is just as you ordered and selected and packed with extra care by yours truly!” Frank pats himself with his cycling cap on the chest as he puffs it out proudly through his rust coloured knitted vest.
“Oh, get on with you, Frank!” Edith scoffs with a mild chuckle, glancing up at his charming, if slightly gormless grin before continuing her inventory of items.
“It’s true Miss Edith!” he replies, holding his cap against his heart rather melodramatically. “I swear. I packed them up myself. As his most trusted member of staff, Mr. Willison lets me do things like that as well as the deliveries.”
“I thought you were the only person he employed, Frank.” Edith remarks without looking up from her list ticking.
“Yes,” the delivery boy coughs and blusters, colouring a little at the remark. “Yes well, it is true that I am his only employee, but Mrs. Willison does do the books and his daughter helps out on Saturdays. But I am his most trusted employee, and I’m working my way up the rungs.”
“What rungs, Frank? You’re the delivery boy. What is there beyond that? Mr. Willison isn’t going to hand his family business to his delivery boy to run.”
“Well no, not yet he isn’t, but I’m doing more and more around the shop when I’m not out on my delivery round, so I’m learning about things over time.”
“Things! What things?”
“Well, Mr, Willison let me help display goods in his front window the other day. Soon I will be able to add visual merchandiser to my list of skills.”
“You’ll add what?” Edith laughs, her hand flying to her mouth as she does to try and muffle it.
“Hey, it’s not funny Miss Edith!” Frank looks forlorn and crestfallen across at the chuckling maid. “Visual merchandising. It’s just a fancy term we use for window dressing.”
“Oh, do we now?” Edith cocks an eyebrow at him. “Very fancy indeed.”
“You may laugh now, my girl,” Frank wags a finger in a playful way at Edith. “But one day you’ll say that you knew me when.”
“When you have your own grocers?” Edith sounds doubtful as she speaks.
“Well, I could do. Others have. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Oh I don’t mind you having dreams, Frank.” she assures him. “Miss Lettice tells me the same.”
The delivery boy’s ears pick up and leaning a little bit closer to Edith he asks, “So what’s your dream then, Miss Edith, since mine is so laughable?”
“My dream?” she put her hand to her chest, taken aback that anyone should be so forward, least of all the man who delivers groceries from the local up-market grocers. “My dream is to…” Then she glances up at the kitchen clock ticking solemnly away on the eau-de-nil painted wall. “Shouldn’t you be out delivering groceries to your next customer, Frank?”
“Old Lady Basting’s cook can wait for her delivery a little while longer,” Frank asserts. “She never has a kind word for me anyway. It’s always ‘stop cluttering up the area with your bike, Frank’. Anyway, she’s terrible at paying her bills. I don’t know why Mr. Willison keeps her as a customer when she always waits for reminders before paying.”
“Well, a customer is a customer, Frank, even a late paying one. Quite a lot of cooks of titled families around here do the same. It’s almost like it’s expected that they don’t have to pay on time.”
“Expected?”
“You know: their right. Their right not to pay on time because that would be acknowledging that money makes business revolve.”
“Well it does, Miss Edith.”
“I know that Frank, and you know that, but families like Miss Lettice’s, they never like talking about money. It’s almost as if it’s dirty.”
“I imagine when you have so much money you never have to worry about it, why would you talk about it?”
“I suppose so Frank. Well, that’s it.” She smiles and puts down her notepad with a satisfied sigh. “That’s everything.”
“Course it is, Miss Edith. I told you I packed it myself, and Frank Leadbetter won’t ever let you down.”
“Well, since you’re whiling away some time, Frank, do you fancy a cup of tea then?” Edith asks with a shy smile.
“Oh, thank you!” Replies the young man. “Only if it isn’t too much trouble, mind you.”
“Oh it’s no trouble. I’m going to have one myself before I pack all this away,” she waves her hand expansively at the piles of groceries. “I can fetch two cups as easily as I can one.”
“I shan’t say no then, Miss Edith.” Frank agrees readily. “Cycling groceries around Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico is thirsty work.”
Edith goes to the dresser and fetches out two Delftware cups and saucers, the sugar bowl and milk jug which she arranges on the end of the table not covered in grocery items. She places the kettle on the stovetop and lights it with one of the matches from the red and white Webb Matches box that Frank has just brought. Then she scuttles across the black and white linoleum floor with the jug to the food safe where she fills it with a splash of milk, before bringing it back to the table.
“One of those Huntly and Palmers* chocolate dessert biscuits wouldn’t go astray with it.” Frank says reaching down to the elegantly decorated buttercup yellow and bluish grey tin.
“Ah-ah!” Edith slaps Frank’s hand away before he can remove the lid. “Those aren’t for you Frank, any more than they are me! I’ve got some leftover Family Assorted in the biscuit barrel. You can settle for one of them, if you deign, Mr. Leadbetter, Greengrocer to the best families in Mayfair.” She giggles girlishly and her smile towards him is returned with a beaming smile of his own.
“So, Miss Edith,” Frank asks with a cheeky smile as he leans over the box. “What is it you’re making me for my tea?”
“You, Frank Leadbetter?” she laughs in amazement. “You have quite some cheek today, don’t you?”
“Alright then, if it isn’t for me, what and who are these groceries for?”
“What and for whom, Frank.” Edith corrects him kindly.
“Is that what your dream is? To teach people how to speak properly, like that chap in Pygmalion** then? What’s his name?”
“Higgins, Henry Higgins.” Edith replies. “And no, I don’t. And stop fishing for information not freely given.” She gives his nose a playful squeeze as she crosses her arms akimbo and waits for the kettle to boil. “No, most of this is for a special dinner party Miss Lettice is throwing for friends from Buenos Aires who have come to see the wedding of Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles***. They want summer pudding,” She tuts scornfully. “In the middle of winter!”
“Thus, all the tinned fruits.”
“Since I cannot move the seasons to those of the southern hemisphere, yes.”
Edith hears the kettle on the stove boiling and pours hot water into the white teapot sitting on the server shelf attached to the right of the stove. Placing the knitted cosy over its top, she moves it to the table. She looks Frank Leadbetter up and down as she does. He stands there, leaning against the deal kitchen table, dressed in dark trousers, a white shirt that could do with a decent pressing, his rust coloured knitted vest and a Brunswick green tie****. She looks at his face. He’s quite handsome really, now she looks at him, with fresh rosy cheeks, wind tousled sandy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes.
“You know what Mrs. Boothby said to me, Frank?” Edith chuckles, picking up the pot and swirling the tea in it before pouring some into both cups.
“No!” Frank replies, accepting one cup. “What?”
“She thought that I was sweet on you, and that we might be stepping out together.”
“Really?”
“Yes really! That’s what she thought. She let it slip a month or so ago.”
Frank adds a heaped teaspoon full of sugar to his tea and stirs it thoughtfully. “Is that such a terrible idea?”
“What?” Edith asks.
“Us,” He indicates with a wagging finger between Edith and himself. “You and me, I mean, stepping out.”
“Well,” Edith feels a blush rising up her throat and flooding her cheeks. “No. Not at all, Frank. I was just saying that Mrs. Boothby thought we were, when we aren’t.” She looks away from Frank’s expectant face and spoons sugar into her own tea. “I hadn’t really given it much thought.”
“Ahh, but you have given it some consideration, then?”
Edith keeps quiet a moment and thinks with eyes downcast. “A little bit, in passing I suppose.”
“And what if we were, Edith?” Surprised by the sudden dropping of her title in a very familiar address, Edith glances back at Frank who looks at her in earnest. “Walking out together, I mean. Would that be agreeable to you?”
“Are you asking me to walk out with you, Frank Leadbetter?” Edith gasps.
“Well, yes, I suppose I am.” Frank chuckles awkwardly, his face colouring with his own blush of embarrassment. “Only if you’re agreeable to it of course.”
“Yes,” Edith smiles. “Yes, I’m agreeable to that, Frank.”
“You are?” Frank’s eyes widen in disbelief as his mouth slackens slightly.
“For a man so sure of his prospects, you seem surprised, Frank.”
“Oh well,” he stumbles. “Its not… I mean… I mean I am. I… I just didn’t think you… well… you know being here and all…”
“It’s aright Frank. I was only teasing.” replies Edith kindly. “You don’t need to explain.”
“And Miss Chetwynd doesn’t…”
“Oh no, Frank! As long as my work isn’t interfered with, Miss Lettice won’t mind. She’s a very kind and modern thinking mistress, Unlike Mrs. Plaistow.”
“I remember that was where I first set eyes on you, Edith, at her terrace in Pimlico.”
“Do you Frank?”
“I do.” Frank smiles proudly.
The two chuckle and shyly keep glancing at one another before looking away and burying themselves in their cups of tea awkwardly.
“Your day off is Wednesday, isn’t it?” Frank asks eventually.
“It is, Frank, how observant of you to notice,”
“Well, it pays to take note of things in my profession. You just never know when it might come in handy.” He taps the side of his nose knowingly.
“Only, I go and help my Mum on my day off.” Edith explains.
“Oh,” Frank says defeatedly, then thinks for a moment and adds. “Well, I work Wednesday anyway.”
“What days don’t you work, Frank?”
“Well, I don’t work Sundays. So, I’m free after church services are over.”
Edith laughs, “Well that works rather well then, as I have Sundays free until four.”
Frank joins Edith’s laughter. “Sunday it is then!”
The pair fall into an awkward silence again.
“So, where would you like to go, Edith?” asks Frank eventually, shattering the quiet punctuated only by the swinging pendulum of the wall clock.
“Well,” Edith replies after a few moments. “Miss Lettice’s client, Wanetta Ward is starring in a new moving picture called ‘After the Ball is Over’ at the Premier in East Ham*****. We could go and see that.”
“Sounds brilliant, Edith!”
Edith smiles shyly and blushes again, a sparkle shining in her eyes. “Yes, it does rather.”
* Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time, and as a dessert biscuit.
**Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. Written in 1912, it premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on the 16th of October 1913 and was first presented in English on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.
***Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897 – 1965), was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the sister of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She married Viscount Lascelles on the 28th of February 1922 in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. The bride was only 24 years old, whilst the groom was 39. There is much conjecture that the marriage was an unhappy one, but their children dispute this and say it was a very happy marriage based upon mutual respect. The wedding was filmed by Pathé News and was the first royal wedding to be featured in fashion magazines, including Vogue.
****In pre World War II times, it was unusual for even the most low paid male workers like delivery men to dress in a shirt, jacket, vest and tie. It represented respectability and the drive for upward mobility in a class conscious society. It is where the term “white collar job” comes from.
*****The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.
This domestic scene may not be all that it appears, for it is made up completely of items from my 1:12 miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
All of Edith’s groceries are 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail as regards the labels of different foods. Some are still household names today. So many of these tins of various foods would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. They come from various different suppliers including Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom, Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom, Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The cardboard box branded with the name Sunlight Soap and the paper shopping bag also come from Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar, and as cubes and granules. Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite.
Bird’s were best known for making custard and Bird’s Custard is still a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange. They also made Bird’s Golden Raising Powder – their brand of baking powder. Bird’s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird’s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.
P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.
S.P.C. is an Australian brand that still exists to this day. In 1917 a group of fruit growers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley decided to form a cooperative which they named the Shepperton Fruit Preserving Company. The company began operations in February 1918, canning pears, peaches and nectarines under the brand name of S.P.C. On the 31st of January 1918 the manager of the Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company announced that canning would begin on the following Tuesday and that the operation would require one hundred and fifty girls or women and thirty men. In the wake of the Great War, it was hoped that “the launch of this new industry must revive drooping energies” and improve the economic circumstances of the region. The company began to pay annual bonuses to grower-shareholders by 1929, and the plant was updated and expanded. The success of S.P.C. was inextricably linked with the progress of the town and the wider Goulburn Valley region. In 1936 the company packed twelve million cans and was the largest fruit cannery in the British empire. Through the Second World War the company boomed. The product range was expanded to include additional fruits, jam, baked beans and tinned spaghetti and production reached more than forty-three million cans a year in the 1970s. From financial difficulties caused by the 1980s recession, SPC returned once more to profitability, merging with Ardmona and buying rival company Henry Jones IXL. S.P.C. was acquired by Coca Cola Amatil in 2005 and in 2019 sold to a private equity group known as Shepparton Partners Collective.
Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War.
Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884. It was created by William Hesketh Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme). It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight.
Webb matches were manufactured by the match firm Bryant and May. Bryant and May was a British company created in the mid Nineteenth Century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant and May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant and May Factory in Melbourne, and owned match factories in other parts of the world. Formed in 1843 by two Quakers, William Bryant and Francis May, Bryant and May survived as an independent company for over seventy years, but went through a series of mergers with other match companies and later with consumer products companies. The registered trade name Bryant amd May still exists and it is owned by the Swedish Match Company, as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant and May group.
Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in the UK, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England. Lyons Tea was a major advertiser in the early decades of RTÉ Television, featuring the "Lyons minstrels" and coupon-based prize competitions.
The Dry Fork Milling Company, which produced Dry Fork Flour was based in Dry Fork Virginia. They were well known for producing cornmeal. They were still producing cornmeal and flour into the 1950s. Today, part of the old mill buildings are used as a reception centre.
Edith’s Windsor chair is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.
To the left of the sink is the food safe with a mop leaning against it. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvinised wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.
