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 and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum living room of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood. Edith, Lettice’s maid, is visiting her Cockney friend and co-worker on a rather impromptu visit, much to the surprise of the old char when she answered the timid knock on her door on a Saturday morning and found Edith standing on her stoop, out of breath, visibly distressed and awash with tears. The old woman quickly ushered her young friend inside with a protective arm wrapped around her, peering over her shoulder with a steely gaze as she observed the number of neighbours taking an unwelcome interest in the rather well dressed stranger at her door. “Youse right gawking there, Golda Friedmann?” she called out angrily to one of her neighbours, a Jewish busybody who lives at the end of her rookery**, causing the woman wrapped in the bright paisley shawl to turn away in shame at having been caught out staring at business that wasn’t her own.
Settled at the kitchen table, Mrs. Boothby has divested Edith of her smart black straw cloche decorated with feathers and satin roses and her three-quarter length black coat, and seated her comfortably in a chair by the warm old fashioned blacklead stove whilst she busies herself about her simple, yet clean, kitchen. She puts out a gilt edged blue and white cake plate on the surface of her scrubbed deal pine kitchen table, on which she carefully arranges a selection of biscuits from her pretty biscuit tin decorated with Art Nouveau ladies. The plate sits between two dainty blue floral tea cups, a sugar bowl and milk jug, whilst a Brown Betty*** sits to the side, steam snaking from her spout.
“Nah Edith dearie,” Mrs. Boothby says with concern, sinking with a groan down into her ladderback chair adjunct to Edith. “What’s all the commotion then?” She looks the young maid squarely in the face, a kindly look on her worn and wrinkled face. “Tell me why youse come to see me outta the blue like this on a Staurday? Are you alright? Is it something to do wiv your young Frank Leadbetter then? ‘As ‘e wound up in some trouble or other wiv them Bolshevik types ‘e ‘angs around wiv?”
“Oh it isn’t me, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies in an upset fashion as she tries to catch her breath. “Nor Frank. He’s fine. We’re fine.” Her breath rasps as her breathing slowly starts to settle down. “It’s Miss Lettice!”
“Miss Lettice?”
“Yes, Mrs. Boothby. It’s really quite distressing.” Edith pulls out a little embroidered handkerchief from the sleeve of her lace trimmed blouse and sniffs as she dabs her eyes with it with a shaky hand.
“Nah, nah!” the old Cockney char says. “Youse not makin’ no sense, Edith dearie. What’s ‘appened to Miss Lettice? She been in an accident or somefink?”
“No, Mrs. Boothby. Well yes… Well no, not that kind of accident.”
“Youse confusin’ me, dearie. Let’s get you a nice cup of Rosie-Lee**** and then youse can start from the beginnin’.” Mrs. Boothby lifts up the well worn Brown Betty pot and pours a slug of brackish, well steeped tea into Edith’s dainty floral cup, before adding some to her own. “I’ll let ya add your own milk ‘n sugar, dearie.” She pauses for a moment and looks across at Edith with worry in her eyes. “Although considerin’ the state yer in, I fink a couple of sugars might be in order.”
“You may well be right, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies with a sigh, picking up the elegant Regency blue and white sugar bowl, adding two heaped spoonsful of sugar to her tea and stirring it vigorously.
“That’s it, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says kindly. “Nah, ‘ere’s the milk.” She passes her a jug decorated with blue grapes and accepts the sugar bowl in return.
Whilst Edith adds milk to her tea, Mrs, Boothby adds two heaped spoons of sugar to her own from the sugar bowl, not to offset any shock, but simply because she has a sweet tooth.
“’Elp yerself to some biscuits, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby indicates with a nod to the selection she put out on the cake plate. “I’ve plenty more in ‘ere.” She taps the biscuit tin at her left with her gnarled and careworn hand with its bulbous knuckles. “Bad news is always betta on a full stomach, I find.”
“Oh I couldn’t right now, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith assures her hostess. “But perhaps in a little bit, once I’ve caught my breath and had some tea.” She lifts the cup to her mouth and gingerly takes a sip of the sweet strong tea, sighing contentedly as the hot liquid reaches her tongue and the flavour hits her tastebuds
“As you like, Edith dearie. Nah, I ‘ope ya don’t mind, but I’m dying for a fag! I was just about ta ‘ave one when you arrived.” Without waiting for a reply, Mrs Boothby starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag sitting on the table 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 of her fruity coughs, dropping the match into a black ashtray full of used cigarette butts that also sits on the table. Mrs. Boothby settles back comfortably in her ladderback chair with her cigarette in one hand and reaches out, snatching up a chocolate biscuit with the other. Blowing out a plume of blue smoke that tumbles through the air around them, the old woman continues. “Nah, what’s ‘appened to our Miss Lettice then, that’s got you in such a state, Edith dearie. Start at the beginnin’, nice and slow like, so I can keep up.”
“Well, it all started last night when Miss Lettice went out to the Savoy***** to have a celebratory birthday dinner with Mr. Spencely.”
“That’s Miss Lettice’s fancy man, ain’t it?” Mrs. Boothby asks, blowing out a plume of curling acrid grey smoke.
“Yes, he’s a duke, or rather going to be a duke someday.” Edith takes another, slightly deeper sip of tea. “I helped Miss Lettice pick a beautiful frock for the evening. She was so nervous about everything being just perfect for Mr. Spencely’s birthday that she couldn’t decide for herself and wanted my opinion. With my help she settled upon a nice green georgette frock with gold beaded panels over the skirt. Wrapped up in one of her furs, with Mr. Spencely’s present nicely wrapped under her arm, I bundled her into the taxi I had hailed from the stand down on the square and then with Miss Lettice gone, I settled down to a pleasurably quiet evening on my own in with my latest copy of Photoplay******.”
“And then what ‘appened?” Mrs. Boothby asks, chewing loudly through a large mouthful of biscuit.
“Well, not an hour later as I sat in the kitchen reading about Gloria Swanson’s new film ‘Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife’******, I heard the front door fly open and then slam closed. It gave me such a shock!” She puts her hand to her heart. “I hurried into the hallway, just in time to see Miss Lettice disappearing into her room, still in her gown but without her fur, crying as if her heart were breaking.”
“She ‘asn’t broken up wiv ‘er fancy man the duke, ‘as she, dearie?”
“Well, here’s the thing, Mrs. Boothby. I followed Miss Lettice into her boudoir, and there she was, pulling out her valise from her dressing room. She was in a terrible state! All her beautiful makeup was running down her face from the tears she was crying. She was muttering and talking to herself in a most distressed state, and she was shaking like a fir tree. I think she must have walked, or more likely run from the Savoy judging by how heavily she was breathing, and looking at the state of her shoes. The toes were all scuffed and marked and the heels are ruined.”
“So what ‘appened then, Edith?”
“Well, I walked up to her and I grasped her by the shoulders. It was almost as though until that moment, she hadn’t even noticed I was there. She started babbling on to me about how she had to pack to go to home to Wiltshire right away, and how she was going to catch a train from Victoria railway station that very night, although it was hard to make any real sense of what she was saying. She started sentences but didn’t finish them, or started part way through, and she was so breathless that half her words were lost anyway. I tried to calm her and had her sit down on her bed. I offered to pack her valise for her, and whilst I did, I asked her what had happened.”
“And?” Mrs. Boothby asks, her cigarette burning down almost to the butt as she holds it half way between her lips and the ashtray as she hangs on every word Edith says.
“Well, it turns out that when she got to dinner, Mr. Spencely’s mother, Lady Zinnia was there instead of Mr. Spencely himself!”
“No!” Mrs. Boothby takes a long drag on her cigarette, the paper crackling as she does.
“Yes,” Edith replies, taking another sip of the restorative tea. “Aand she told Miss Lettice that she had packed Mr. Spencely off to South Africa!”
“South Africa?” Mrs. Boothby queries, her question becoming a cloud of grey cigarette smoke, tumbling through the air. “Whyever ‘as she done that then?”
“Well, Miss Lettice confided in me that she and Mr. Spencely suspected that Lady Zinnia and Mr. Spencely’s uncle wanted to marry him off to the uncle’s daughter, his cousin who is one of this year’s debutantes, and that neither of them wanted Miss Lettice to be stepping out with Mr. Spencely. In fact, from what I can gather, I don’t think that horrible Lady Zinnia likes Miss Lettice at all, even though she hasn’t seen Miss Lettice since she was a little girl!”
“What cheek!” mutters Mrs. Boothby, stamping out her cigarette indignantly into the ashtray as though she were squashing the titled lady herself. “Miss Lettice is a very fine lady: much nicer than some of them uvver muckety-mucks I’s got ta deal wiv up the West End! What business is it of that woman who ‘er son wants to step out wiv?”
“Exactly, Mrs. Boothby, but you know how obsessed those old aristocratic families can be about their sons and heirs marrying the right daughters of the right families.”
Mrs. Boothby releases another fruity cough in a disgusted response.
“Anyway, she told Miss Lettice that she has sent Mr. Spencely away to South Africa for a year, just so she could break them up! Isn’t that frightful?”
“Awful!” spits Mrs. Boothby hotly before popping the rest of her biscuit into her mouth.
“Miss Lettice isn’t even allowed to write to Mr. Spencely.”
“Not at all?” the old Cockney char manages to utter through her mouthful of biscuit, spraying a smattering of biscuit crumbs onto her lap and the floor.
“Not even a postcard, Mrs. Boothby, and he isn’t allowed to write to her either, nor talk on that infernal contraption the telephone.”
“Does they even ‘ave telephones in them out-of-the-way places like South Africa?” asks Mrs. Boothby.
“Oh I’m sure they probably do these days, Mrs. Boothby, after all it is the Twentieth Century, but even so, Miss Lettice isn’t allowed to talk to Mr. Spencely even if they do have them: not for the whole year. Lady Zinnia said that she doesn’t want her son marrying for love.”
“’Ow cold ‘earted she must be, not lettin’ ‘er son marry the Miss Lettice if ‘e loves her!”
“Lady Zinnia said that if Mr. Spencely comes back from South Africa in a year and he tells her that he still loves Miss Lettice, she will let her and Mr. Spencely get married, but that if he doesn’t, that he’ll agree to marry his cousin the debutante.”
“What?”
“Yes that’s right!” Edith puts down her cup. “Mr. Spencely will marry the woman that Lady Zinnia and his uncle want him to marry if he doesn’t feel the same about Miss Lettice.” She picks up her cup again and takes another sip. “And a year is such a long time to wait!”
“Oh it certainly is, ‘specially if youse can’t even write a letter to one annuva. Oh what an ‘orrible fing for that Lady Zinnia to do! She sounds like a right piece of work, she does!” Mrs. Boothby crosses her bony arms as she sists back in her seat. “I’d like to get my ‘ands on ‘er, so I could wring ‘er neck! Pity she ‘as such a pretty name. My old Dad used ta grow zinnias in a pot by the back door. Lovely fings they was too: all bright and colourful.”
“Well Lady Zinnia certainly doesn’t take after her namesake, Mrs. Boothby. She’s horrible! It was awful to see Miss Lettice so upset like that.”
“What did you do then, Edith dearie?”
“Well, I packed Miss Lettice’s valise for her, made her a nice calming cup of cocoa, and then she took a taxi to Victoria Station. As far as I know, she’s gone home to Wiltshire to nurse her poor broken heart.”
“No wonder you was so upset when youse turned up ‘ere unannounced.” Mrs. Boothby says, shaking her head in pity at the young girl.
“Oh I’m sorry Mrs. Boothby, but I didn’t know who else to turn to who knows Miss Lettice! I just feel so… so very helpless.”
“Nah, nah, dearie,” Mrs. Boothby reaches across the table and gives Edith’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Youse done the best for ‘er, by doin’ what she wants and takin’ good care of ‘er when she can’t do it ‘erself.” She smiles kindly at the young girl across the table from her. “You’re a good girl, Edith, and that’s no mistake.” The old woman settles back in her seat again. “Did she say when she’s comin’ ‘ome?”
“Well, she’s gone home, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Nah! I mean, comin’ ‘ome ta London?”
“No, she didn’t say. I suppose she’ll send word when she’s ready. A few days, maybe? A week? I don’t know what else to do, except wait.”
“Well, that’s all you can do, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby raises her hands expansively. “It’s all any of us can do. Just wait, and be there when Miss Lettice needs us, just like youse done for ‘er last night.”
“Oh I just feel so helpless, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith’s eyes start to well with unshed tears again. “To see her beautiful blue eyes so dull and sad, and surrounded by smeared kohl******* like that was horrible. She was so unhappy, and that made me so sad.”
“I know, dearie, but youse just got ta get on wiv fings. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if ‘er old mum dahn the country was tellin’ ‘er the same fing right this very minute.”
“I don’t think you know Lady Sadie, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says doubtfully.
“I may not, Edith, but I do know mums. I certainly should do, bein’ one meself. And I can tell youse that any mum will tell their broken’earted daughter ta pick ‘erself up and get on wiv life. The sky ain’t fallen in, ‘though it’s cloudy out there today ‘n all. So Miss Lettice will shed a few tears, and then she’ll realise that there is life worth livin’ out there, even wiv a sore and sorry ‘eart.” Mrs. Boothby pauses, withdraws another cigarette paper and rolls herself another cigarette. As she lights it she asks, “Did she say what she were gonna do?”
“Who, Mrs. Boothby?”
“Lawd child!” the old char rolls her eyes to the smoke and coal yellowed ceiling above. “Miss Lettice of course! Did she say whevva she was gonna wait for ‘im?”
“She did say to me last night that she loves Mr. Spencely, and even though it’s hard, she’d be willing to wait for him.” Edith sips gingerly at her tea as she contemplates the idea of waiting for Frank for a year without any contact between either of them. She quickly banishes the idea as she blinks away tears. “Mind you, a year is such a long time to wait.”
“Ahh,” Mrs. Boothby utters as she releases another heavy cough. “You only fink that cos yer a young’n. When youse get a bit older, you’ll come to realise that a year can fly by in the blink of an eye.”
Edith eyes the older woman dubiously.
“I don’t ‘pect you ta believe me right nah, but one day you’ll wake up and ask yerself where that time’s gone.”
“But a whole year and not being allowed to write to one another, Mrs. Boothby?”
“Well, there is that I s’pose, but my Bill were never a writer, an’ when ‘e went off ta sea and I wouldn’t ‘ear from ‘im for months and months, it were always wonderful when ‘e come home again. In fact, it made the time we did ‘ave all the more intense. We ‘ad ta cram the love we ‘ad for one annuver into a smaller space.” The old woman scratches her wiry grey hair. “What’s that old sayin’ about absence and yer ‘eart?”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Edith replies wistfully as she stares into her half empty teacup.
“There ya go then!” Mrs. Boothby slams the table, making all the crockery and the tin rattle. “If Miss Lettice really loves ‘er fancy man, an’ ‘e loves ‘er equally, then it’s meant to be, and no amount of time or distance can change that.”
“Do you really think so, Mrs. Boothby?”
“Course I do. That fancy Lady Zinnia might think she’s bein’ smart ‘n all by splittin’ her son from Miss Lettice, but she may find it might just backfire on ‘er, and serve her bloody right, if you’ll pardon me! I also know that they says that true love conquers all.” She smiles wisely, her dark eyes glinting from amongst her wrinkles in her weathered skin. “So let’s just ‘hope to God that Miss Lettice and ‘er duke really are truly in love.”
“Well, I think they are madly in love, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Good! That’s a start then.” the old cockney woman replies positively. “Nah, best youse dry your eyes again, cos my Ken’ll be ‘ome soon for ‘is tea, an’ ‘ell be beside ‘imself if ‘e sees you blubbin’. ‘E won’t know whevva to punch the lights out of ‘er what made yer upset, or give you a big ‘ug to make you feel better.” She releases another few fruity coughs before taking another deep drag on her cigarette. “’E’s taken a shine to you ever since you gave ‘im those new Beatrix Potter books for Christmas, you know.”
*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.
**A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
***A 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.
****Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
*****The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first hotel in Britain to introduce electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel. The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has two hundred and sixty seven guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.
******Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines. It was founded in 1911 in Chicago, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded Motion Picture Story, a magazine also directed at fans. For most of its run, Photoplay was published by Macfadden Publications. In 1921 Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.
*******’Bluebeard's Eighth Wife’ is a 1923 American silent romantic comedy film produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Sam Wood and stars Gloria Swanson. The film is based on the French play ‘La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue’ by Alfred Savoir which is based on the Bluebeard tales of the Fifteenth Century. The play ran on Broadway in 1921 starring Ina Claire in the Swanson role. Mona (Swanson) marries John Brandon and immediately after discovers that she is his eighth wife. Determined that she will not be the eighth to be divorced from him, she sets out on a teaser campaign which proves very effective until Brandon tells her that she is bought and paid for. Furious, she determines to give him grounds for a divorce and is subsequently found in her room with another man. In the end, however, Brandon discovers that she really loves him and they leave for a happy honeymoon.
*******Cosmetics in the 1920s were characterized by their use to create a specific look: lips painted in the shape of a Cupid's bow, kohl-rimmed eyes, and bright cheeks brushed with bright red blush. The heavily made-up look of the 1920s was a reaction to the demure, feminine Gibson Girl of the pre-war period. In the 1920s, an international beauty culture was forged, and society increasingly focused on novelty and change. Fashion trends influenced theatre, films, literature, and art. With the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt, the fashion of kohl-rimmed eyes like Egyptian pharaohs was very popular in the early 1920s.
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.
Mrs. Boothby’s beloved collection of decorative “best” blue and white china on the kitchen table come from various online miniature stockists through E-Bay. The biscuits on the cake plate have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. They actually come in their own 1:12 miniature artisan tin, complete with appropriate labelling. The pretty Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau style, biscuit tin came as part of a job lot of miniature bits and pieces at an auction house more than twenty years ago. All the other pieces were too big for my requirements, but I bought the lot just for this tin. The Brown Betty teapot came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag 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.
Also on the table are Mrs. Boothby’s Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The black ashtray is also an artisan piece, the bae of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there). Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player’s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today’s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player’s and two thirds of these were branded as Player’s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player’s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player’s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands “Player” and “John Player Special” are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company). Swan Vestas is a brand name for a popular brand of ‘strike-anywhere’ matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline ‘the smoker’s match’ although this has been replaced by the prefix ‘the original’ on the current packaging. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced ‘Swan wax matches’. These were superseded by later versions including ‘Swan White Pine Vestas’ from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened ‘Swan Vestas’ in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s ‘Swan Vestas’ had become ‘Britain’s best-selling match’.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes and the kettle in the background I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia.
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.