Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
This morning 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 as her parents hosted their first Hunt Ball since 1914 last night. Lady Sadie was determined that not only would it be the event of the 1922 county season, but also that it would be a successful entrée for her youngest daughter, still single at twenty-one years of age, to meet a number of eligible and marriageable men. Whilst Lettice enjoys dancing, parties and balls, she was less enthusiastic about the idea of the ball being used as a marriage market than her parents were. Yet Lady Sadie seems to have gotten her wish as Lettice and latecomer Selwyn Spencely seemed to hit it off last night, and spent much of the latter part of the evening together.
Whilst the fancy dress Hunt Ball is now over, there are still traces of its presence and as Lettice walks down the stairs of the lofty Adam style entrance hall. She can hear the sweep of brooms and the click of glassware coming through the open door of the ballroom as several servants laugh and chatter as they restore the grand room back to its pristine condition and shroud its gilded furnishings, crystal chandeliers and paintings in dust sheets again before closing its doors. As she reaches the base of the stairs, the faint waft of a mixture of perfumes greets her, rather like ghost of the party goers, long since gone and many like her mother, probably still abed as they recover from the excesses of the occasion, making their presence known. As she walks into the Glynes dining room with its Georgian wallpapers and furnishings, all signs that it had been used for a very lavish buffet the previous evening are gone, except one again for the faint whiff of a foreign perfume or the hit of roast beef in the air.
“Good morning Pappa,” Lettice says politely, walking over to her father who sits in his usual place at the head of the table reading the newspapers sent down from London on the milk train* and expertly ironed** by Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler.
“Err… ahem… morning.” he mutters distractedly in reply, shaking the Daily Mirror with a crisp crack as Lettice plants a kiss on the top of his head.
“Good morning Leslie,” she says to her brother, who sits in his mother’s seat at the dining table to the left of their father with his back to the warmth of the fireplace. “How are you this morning?”
“I dare say the same as you, Tice.” he replies tiredly, taking a sip of orange juice. “Thank god for aspirin is all I’ll say.”
Lettice smiles indulgently across at her brother as she sits opposite him at the table. “Was that Arabella Tyrwhitt I saw you dancing with repeatedly last night?”
“It was,” he replies, hitting the top of his boiled egg sharply three times and cracking the shell. “You’re observant.”
“I didn’t know that you and Arabella had reached an understanding.” She pours some tea into her dainty rose patterned teacup from the silver teapot on the tabletop before her.
“Well, you’re so busy with your new interior designer life up in London now, you wouldn’t know what happens down here in dull old Wiltshire, would you?” He carefully peels the shell off the top of his egg.
“Are you goading me, Leslie?”
“Me? Goad you? How could you even think such a thing?” An overly expressive amateur dramatic wrist placed to his forehead tells Lettice that Leslie is far from being serious. “Not at all, Tice.” He smiles as the white of his egg is revealed, untainted by eggshell pieces. “Arabella and I reached an understanding last year.”
“Not a bad sort, the elder Tyrwhitt girl,” comes the Viscount’s voice from behind the screen of the newspaper, indicating that even though he is unsociably reading and hiding behind the Daily Mirror, he is still aware of the conversation between his eldest and youngest children washing around him. “She has her head screwed on properly: knows her way around horses, has a head for farming and can judge a cattle show. She’ll make a fine chatelaine of Glynes one day.” With a crack of paper, he lowers the London tabloid and eyeballs his daughter. “Don’t tell your mother I said that, or I shall never hear the end of it.”
“No Pappa,” Lettice replies, a giggle escaping her lips as the paper rises again and she catches the cheeky look on her brother’s face. “What’s new in the world today then, Pappa.”
“Haugdahl broke the land speed record in Florida***, apparently,” the Viscount replies. “One hundred and eighty miles per hour they say.”
“Goodness!” Leslie exclaims. “Imagine travelling at that speed! It must be exhilarating.”
“Thinking of converting the Saunderson**** are you, Leslie?” Lettice teases her brother. “You’ll have England’s, no the world’s fastest tractor!” She giggles at the thought, for which she is rewarded with a withering look from him.
“Oh, “ her father continues, a serious lilt in his voice. “And His Royal Highness was seen at that club,” He almost spits the word out. “Of yours.”
“The Embassy Club is hardly mine, Pappa.” Lettice defends.
“Well, it’s bad enough you go there in the first place.” he mutters admonishingly. “Women going to nightclubs.”
“I go there too, Pappa,” Leslie comes to his sister’s defence chivalrously. He then rather spoils the attempt by adding rather weakly, “Sometimes.”
“Yes, well,” his father huffs. “You don’t live in London to have all the temptations of the city flaunted before you.”
“You make London sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah, Pappa!” Lettice scoffs.
“Well it isn’t exactly…” he hesitates as he hears the handle of the dining room door turn.
The door opens and Moira, the maid who has taken to assisting wait table at breakfast and luncheon on informal occasions since the war, walks through the door with a silver salver on which she carries a boiled egg in a silver egg cup and some toast slices housed in a silver rack. “Your egg and toast, Miss.” she says politely as she lowers the tray and allows Lettice to pick up her egg and the toast rack. Turning to the Viscount she asks with deference, “Can I get you anything else, Sir?”
The Viscount slams down his paper with a thwack on the table, disturbing the neatly placed cutlery on his plate with an unnerving rattle. “Get away with your wittering, girl!” he blusters angrily. “When I want something, I’ll ask Bramley for it!”
Lettice catches the maid’s startled eye with her gaze, and narrowing her own eyes slightly, she gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head at her.
“No… no Sir,” Moira stammers. “Err… I mean yes, Sir.” She quickly bobs and curtsey and scurries back out the door she came through.
“Oh you shouldn’t terrorise the poor girl, Father,” Leslie says, giving his father an imploring look. “You know how hard it is to keep servants these days. She’s so devoted. We’re lucky to have her.”
“I agree Leslie,” Lettice adds. “Edith wouldn’t put up with that from me. She knows her rights.”
“Servants rights,” the Viscount sneers. “What utter rubbish. She gets food, board, uniform and wages. What more does she need?”
“A less disagreeable master,” Leslie replies.
“Damnable girl!” the Viscount blasts in reply. “She aught not to be waiting table at all! Where’s Bramley? Nothing has been the same since the bloody war!”
“You know why she’s waiting table, Pappa,” Lettice soothes. Reaching across she picks up the silver coffee pot and fills her father’s cup. “Things aren’t like they were before the war. We don’t have all the male servants we used to.”
“Well Bramley should be here to serve me! Why do I pay handsomely for a butler if he isn’t here to wait table at breakfast?”
“He’s busy keeping this old pile of bricks and plaster functioning. We can’t always have Bramley or Marsden waiting table, Father,” Leslie adds hopefully. “Especially not on informal occasions.”
“Oh I wish I could be like Mamma, and have breakfast in bed,” Lettice sighs, picking up the butter knife and smearing a small amount of creamy pale yellow butter from the home farm onto a triangle of toast before adding a dollop of homemade raspberry jam from the preserve pot.
“As soon as you become Mrs. Selwyn Spencely, you can.*****” Leslie replies from across the table.
“Oh, don’t you start!” Lettice groans. “I haven’t even started my breakfast yet.”
“Now, now, my darling girl,” Viscount Wrexham says, folding his paper in two and placing it flat on the table. “Don’t be coy.” He adds a dash of milk from the dainty floral breakfast set milk jug to his coffee and stirs it. “Spit it out! It seems last night was more of a success than you would care to admit to. How are things between you and young Spencely, eh?” He winks conspiratorially at his daughter, all thoughts of Moira’s irritating presence vanished from his mind.
“Oh Pappa! You’re as bad as Mamma!” She rolls her eyes and looks down, focusing upon spreading the rich red jam full of seeds across her toast with her knife. “Why do I feel like I’m about to be interrogated. There really is nothing to report.”
“Not according to what I saw, Tice.” Leslie remarks. “You two seemed to hit it off very nicely.”
“I thought you were too busy with Arabella to notice anyone else, Leslie.”
“We weren’t that unobservant.” Leslie sists back in his Chippendale dining chair and folds his arms comfortably across his stomach, a satisfied look upon his face. “Arabella and I could hardly fail to notice when our Cinderella of the ball fell for the most handsome and eligible prince in the room.”
“Oh, you do talk such rubbish, Leslie!” Lettice flaps her linen napkin at him.
“Well, it seems everyone in the ballroom last night was aware of the movements of you two. You and Selwyn will be the chief source of gossip at every breakfast table in Wiltshire and all the neighbouring counties this morning.”
“You do over exaggerate things Leslie.” Lettice replies dismissively.
“Well, I thought you and young Spencely seemed quite cosy, my dear,” her father adds, taking a sip of his coffee. “And I don’t usually notice such things. Don’t tell me your mother and I were wrong.”
“We just talked Pappa,” Lettice cries exasperatedly, dropping her knife onto her plate with a clatter. “As Leslie pointed out, we were hardly afforded any privacy to do anything more than that, with everyone evidently watching us.”
“Not that you noticed that yourself, of course,” Leslie proffers with a cheeky glint in his eye. “Making cow eyes****** like a teenage girl with a crush.”
“Oh do shut up, Leslie!” Lettice answers back grumpily, placing her arms akimbo as she feels her face heat as it colours with an embarrassed blush.
“So, it did go well with you and young Spencely, then?” the Viscount asks hopefully, excitement giving his eyes an extra sparkle of life.
“We just talked, Pappa.” Lettice reiterates. “About what we remembered of playing together as children, about how grumpy his mother was the last time we saw each other.”
“Oooh!” hoots the Viscount. “Lady Zinnia was fit to be tied every time her precious Spencely went home looking like he had been dragged backwards through a hedgerow.”
“That’s probably because he had been, if I remember anything about Tice at that age.” Leslie chortles.
“I call that frightfully unfair, Leslie! Lionel used to play with us too.”
“And what else did you talk about?” the Viscount asks, determined not to let the conversation stray away from his focus. He sits further forward in his chair and stares at his daughter with an expectant look.
“Oh I don’t know, Pappa. We talked about what we’ve done over the ensuing years since we last saw each other. That’s all.”
“He’s an architect, isn’t he, Tice?” Leslie asks.
“He is.”
“Well that sounds like a match made in heaven then,” Leslie claps his hands delightedly. “He can design the houses and you can decorate them. Perfect!”
“Until he becomes Duke, and Lettice the Duchess,” Viscount Wrexham adds with unbridled pleasure.
“Have you chosen my wedding dress yet, Pappa?” Lettice spits hotly.
“What?” He looks at her oddly. “Oh, no. I’ll leave that sort of women’s work to your mother, dear girl.” He waves his hand dismissively.
“I don’t think Tice was being literal, Father,” Leslie elucidates hopefully. “She was making a point.”
“What? What point?”
“I know you and Mamma want me to be married, Pappa,” Lettice begins.
“The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned if we’re talking about young Spencely.” agrees the Viscount. “He’s a splendid catch for you.”
Ignoring his remark, Lettice carries on, “But I will manage this in my own way, mind you. I don’t want you and especially not Mamma interfering.”
“Interfering?” the Viscount splutters.
“Interfering!” Lettice affirms strongly.
“So,” the older man replies, smiling with satisfaction. “Things did go well then.”
“We’ve agreed that we might, just might Pappa, catch up when he’s next in London and free to do so. Perhaps we will have dinner together or see a show.”
“I say!” the Viscount chortles, rubbing his hands together with glee. “Today will be a good day. Your mother will be over the moon with delight!”
“Unless Gerald Bruton’s rancourous remarks last night really have upset her.” Pipes up Leslie.
“Gerald?” gasps Lettice.
“What’s young Bruton said now?” the Viscount asks his son, his happy expression clouding over with concern.
“I don’t quite know,” Leslie admits with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “She refused to say. Whatever it was, it made her positively furious.”
The Viscount looks defeatedly at Lettice, “Well, then I hope for all our sakes that Spencely sees how perfect you are, Lettice, and that romance does blossom. It will be better for all of us if your mother is placated, and I couldn’t think of a better way to do it than your potential marriage.”
*A milk train was a very early morning, often pre-dawn, train that traditionally transported milk, stopping at many stops and private halts to pick up milk in churns from farming districts. The milk train also carried other good including newspapers from London and even the occasional passenger anxious to get somewhere extremely early.
**It was a common occurrence in large and medium-sized houses that employed staff for the butler or chief parlour maid to iron the newspapers. The task of butlers ironing newspapers is not as silly as it sounds. Butlers were not ironing out creases, but were using the hot iron to dry the ink so that the paper could be easily read without the reader's ending up with smudged fingers and black hands, a common problem with newspapers in the Victorian and Edwardian ages.
***Sprint car driver Sig Haugdahl and officials of the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) reported that he had broken the record for fastest speed on land and had reached 180 miles per hour on the 7th of April 1922 whilst driving a 250 horse power car at the Daytona Beach Road Course in Florida. The claim of a new record had not been timed by the American Automobile Association and was not accepted because it was unverifiable. Remarkably, Haugdahl's claimed speed of 180 miles per hour was forty five percent faster than the official record of 124.09 miles per hour set by Lydston Hornsted on June the 24th, 1914, in a 200 horse power car.
****Saunderson, based near Bedford was Britain’s only large-scale tractor maker at the time of the Great War.
*****Before the Second World War, if you were a married Lady, it was customary for you to have your breakfast in bed, because you supposedly don't have to socialise to find a husband. Unmarried women were expected to dine with the men at the breakfast table, especially on the occasion where an unmarried lady was a guest at a house party, as it gave her exposure to the unmarried men in a more relaxed atmosphere and without the need for a chaperone.
******Making cow eyes is an expression for looking coy or docile yet clearly intending that the person looked at will find the looker attractive.
Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class 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 Chippendale dining room table and matching chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.
The table is littered with breakfast items. The Glynes pretty floral breakfast crockery is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The toast rack, egg cups, cruet set tea and coffee pots 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 butter in the glass butter dish has been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The glassware on the table, the jug of orange juice on the small demi-lune table in the background and the cranberry glass vase on the dining table are all from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each piece is hand blown using real glass. The cutlery set is made of polished metal. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements, the very realistic looking purple and pink tulips are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.
The 1:12 miniature copy of ‘The Mirror’, is made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
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 vases contain hand made roses made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
To the left of the photo stands an artisan bonheur de jour (French lady's writing desk). A gift from my Mother when I was in my twenties, she had obtained this beautiful piece from an antique auction. Made in the 1950s of brass it is very heavy. It is set with hand-painted enamel panels featuring Rococo images. Originally part of a larger set featuring a table and chairs, or maybe a settee as well, individual pieces from these hand-painted sets are highly collectable and much sought after. I never knew this until the advent of E-Bay!
The Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery in the background was made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq.
All the paintings around the Glynes dining room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.