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 very far from Cavendish Mews, and in fact far from London. Taking advantage of their employers’ attendance of an amusing Friday to Monday country house party in Scotland, Lettice’s maid, Edith, and her best friend Hilda, the maid of Lettice’s married Embassy Club coterie friends Dickie and Margot Channon, with permission, have arranged to take a weekend trip to Manchester where they are staying for Friday and Saturday nights, before returning to London on Sunday so that they are ready to receive their employers upon their return on Monday. Both maids landed upon the idea to visit their friend Queenie on the Saturday. She lives in the village of Alderley Edge, just outside of Manchester, which is easily accessible via the railway, allowing them to take tea with her at a small tearoom in the pretty Cheshire village.
Queenie, Edith and Hilda all used to work together for Mrs. Plaistow, the rather mean wife of a manufacturing magnate who has a Regency terrace in Pimlico. Queenie was the cheerful head parlour maid, so both Edith and Hilda as younger and less experienced lower housemaids, fell under her instruction. Queenie chucked her position at Mrs. Plaistow’s a few years ago and took a new position as a maid for two elderly spinster sisters in Cheshire to be closer to her mother, who lives in Manchester. Still in touch with Edith, Queenie writes regularly, sharing stories of her life in the big old Victorian villa she now calls home, half of which is shut up because one of the two sisters is an invalid whilst the other is in frail condition and finds it hard to access the upper floors.
However, life for Queenie proved to be not as bright as her letters indicated, and all three maids were made to feel unwelcome at Mrs. Chase’s Tearooms in Alderley Edge because of their working class backgrounds by the snobbish proprietor and equally class conscious patrons, and Queenie revealed more sad stories after they left Mrs. Chase’s establishment, leaving both her friends aghast.
Now we find ourselves back in Manchester along Deansgate* where after returning to the city from Chester by railway, Edith and Hilda are taking advantage of their free time before dinner at their cheap, but respectable, hotel for single and travelling women, by taking in a few more of the sights of Manchester and are currently shopping at a beautiful manchester and linen shop along the ground floor of a tall four storey building towards the north end of Deansgate.
The soft linens covering the surfaces of tables and counters, as well as hanging from the walls of the shop serve as a buffer against the noisy sounds outside the large plate glass windows as heavy foot traffic fills the pavement of Deansgate, and electric trams** rattle noisily along the thoroughfare, their sound mixing in with the chug of motorcars and buses and the vociferous sound of human chatter. The smell of freshly laundered linen filling the air of the establishment, and keeping out the miasma of mechanical motorcar and lorry fumes, reminds Edith of her mother, who is a laundress, and of the kitchen of her family home in Harlesden where she does all the ironing on the big, round kitchen table. Extra protection from the acrid fumes outside is provided by the fragrance of fresh flowers which stand about in pretty vases on the surfaces of tables and chests of drawers, adding a bright shock of colour to the otherwise mostly snowy white surrounds of the establishment.
“This is nice, Edith.” Hilda remarks, picking up a dainty lace doily from a round table covered with a long lace tablecloth which is covered in napery and dollies, all arranged around a squat blue and white vase filled with brightly coloured pansies. “You could add this to your glory box***.”
“Hhhmmm…” Edith mutters distractedly, glancing up from where she thumbs a bunch of crisply pressed white sheets.
“For your glory box, Edith.” Hilda says again.
Edith considers the dainty piece of diamond shaped intricate lace in her best friend’s sausage like fingers. “No, I don’t think so, Hilda. Mum has already acquired a whole lot of beautiful lace doilies for me from flea markets.”
“Yes, but just imagine having something new like this.” Hilda enthuses. “No one has ever used it before.”
“If they’ll take my grubby maid’s wage here.” Edith mutters sulkily, releasing the sheet from between her index finger and thumb.
“Here, here!” Hilda exclaims, carefully replacing the doily amidst the pieces carefully arranged for display on the table and hurries over to her friend. “You mustn’t talk like that, Edith.” She winds her arms around her friend’s back and squeezes her upper arms beneath her plum coloured coat comfortingly.
“Why not?” Edith asks grumpily. “It’s how I feel.”
“And here I was thinking I was the one most put out by Mrs. Chase’s snobbery and that of her snooty customers.”
Edith sighs with frustration. “Evidently not, Hilda.” She runs her fingers over the knobbly woven lacework of a tablecloth that has been rolled up and stacked on top of the sheets she was considering for potential purchase.
“You mustn’t let this afternoon spoil our holiday.” Hilda insists, giving Edith’s shoulders another squeeze, before releasing her and moving alongside her at the table covered in table linen. She looks her friend squarely in the face. “Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. Yes, that nasty Mrs. Chase, or whatever her name was, was a nasty snob. But you said yourself that in a big city like London or Manchester, we can blend in with everyone else, and no-one knows who we are, or what we do for a living. You’re money’s every bit as good here as some mill owner’s wife or manchester merchant.” She nods seriously.
“Oh you’re right.” Edith sighs again. “I don’t mean to be out of sorts, but it’s more than the snobbery that’s gotten to me, Hilda. It’s the other business Queenie mentioned that really upset me the most.”
Edith’s mind drifts back to the charming Cheshire village of Alderley Edge where she and Hilda had had cream teas at Mrs. Chase’s Tearooms. After hurriedly finishing their scones and tea, scoffing them in less than ladylike gulps, the three friends had retreated to the relative safety of the street, where the late winter air around them felt warmer than the atmosphere of the tearooms. Following Queenie as she walked down the high street towards the Victorian villa owned by her employers, the Miss Bradleys, Hilda and Edith remained in awkward silence as they waited for their friend to explain why they had been made to feel so unwelcome in Mrs. Chase’s. The wide street, lined with neat Victorian and Edwardian double story shops, many built of red brick with slate roofs and Mock Tudor gabling, was relatively empty, with only a handful of smartly dressed people going about their business and a smattering of automobiles and lorries trundling past them in either direction, their chugging more noticeable in a village setting than in the busy streets of London where such noises are constant.
“At least no-one can make us feel second rate here on the footpath.” Hilda had said. ‘We have just as much right to be here as anyone else.”
Finally, Queenie stopped walking and sank down onto a public bench near the kerbside. She apologised to her two friends for spoiling their visit. “I should have insisted that I come to Manchester and meet you there. It’s just that when I received your postcard****, Edith, you and Hilda had arranged everything so nicely. You’d obviously worked out the railway schedules so you knew what time you would arrive and which train to take to get back to Manchester at a reasonable hour, so I just thought I’d take you to the only tearooms I know of that are nice in Alderley Edge. I didn’t want to spoil your plans.”
Queenie went on to explain that whilst Alderley Edge was a beautiful village, living in such a small community was different to living in a big city like London, which afforded anonymity. In her new home, everyone knew who Queenie was, and that she was the maid-of-all-work to the Miss Bradleys, and dining in the same establishment as a maid did not sit well with the snobbish mistresses of the neighbourhood who frequented Mrs. Chase’s Tearooms as well.
“You really need to leave here, if this is how things are, with everyone knowing who you are and judging you unfairly for it. Edith said to Queenie in concern. “Come back to London. There are plenty of jobs for parlour maids. With your experience, you could have the pick of the lot.”
“Well, it is true that I am currently looking for a new situation.” Queenie admitted. “However, it has its own complications, and I’m not looking to come back to London. I want to stay in Manchester, so I can be closer to Mum.”
“What complications?” Hilda queried from her seat beside her friend on the bench.
“Well, I haven’t told either of you, but old Miss Ida, the infirm Miss Bradley, had a fall and died about two months ago.” Queenie elucidated. “She hit her head on the patterned tiles in the hallway. She must have been trying to go upstairs in the night, although goodness knows why. Her mind seemed to have been slipping in the months prior. She was always looking for things she thought she’d lost, and at odd times of the night. It was almost as if she couldn’t rest until she’d found what she wanted. And she called me Nellie too, which Miss Florence told me was the name of their maid when their father was still alive, and she’s been buried in the churchyard many a winter. Once I caught Miss Ida trying to go out of doors at three in the morning, dressed only in her nightdress and bedcap, barefoot and raving that she would be late for school!”
“School?” Edith asked with wide eyes.
“Like I said, she was losing her mind, and I think Miss Florence knew it, because she instructed their lawyers to summon their nephew, Mr. Skellern to come and stop for a while. He’s been staying with us ever since just before Miss Ida died, but unlike the Miss Bradleys, he’s not a nice person. He’s haughty, demanding, and more of a snob than the ladies in Mrs. Chase’s, if you can believe that.” She paused for a moment, contemplating whether to continue. “He never calls me by my name: as if calling me Queenie, like I was christened, is too lowering for him. He calls me ‘girl’ instead. ‘Girl come here!’ ‘Girl, do that.’ ‘Get out of this room at once girl.’ ‘Do as I say, girl, and don’t question me.‘ And he’s accused me of trying to thieve from the sisters, which I’d never do!”
“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Hilda and Edith in their friend’s defence.
“I caught him counting the silverware one afternoon, and he accused me of stealing a carving set with silver collars that belonged to his great uncle, the Miss Bradley’s father, which I had never seen. I had to go to Miss Florence in her bed to plead my case, and she cleared up the matter with Mr. Skellern.”
“How did she do that?” Hilda asked.
“She told him that the set he mentioned, which Mr. Skellern had only ever seen in a photo taken of Mr. Bradley before he was even born, had been given away as a donation for a charity auction to raise money for wounded Boer War soldiers, years before I ever came to work for the Miss Bradleys.”
“That’s awful!” Edith cried in horror at Queenie’s story.
“What’s worse is that,” Queenie blushed red as she spoke the next words. “You implied in Mrs. Chase’s that I might have been with child, which I’m not,” She put up her careworn hands in defence of herself. “But only because luck’s a fortune.”
“Did Mr. Skellern try and take advantage of you?” Edith asked Queenie anxiously.
Queenie confirmed Edith’s worst fears with a shallow nod. “In the library. I was dusting the books, at his instruction, and was up the library steps. He tried to get his hands up under my skirt, and my camiknickers***** from John Lewis****** down, but I fought him off.”
“That’s disgusting!” Hilda burst hotly. “Good for you, Queenie!”
“Yes, but Mr. Skellern took offence to my refusal of his advances, and now I’m concerned that he’s trying to put his aunt into a convalescent home. He keeps threatening to dismiss me without a reference, and I’ve only been saved from that disaster by Miss Florence’s presence. Miss Florence won’t hear a bad word said about her nephew, nor will she contemplate writing me a reference because as far as she is concerned, she isn’t leaving her home, and I’ve been very happy within the employ of she and her sister. So, I’m trying to find a job as a hotel chambermaid in Manchester.”
“A chambermaid, Queenie?” Hilda asked in horror.
“They are less picky about references, and the pay’s better.” Queenie admitted a little guiltily.
“But you may be assaulted by a man like Mr. Skellern, Queenie!” Edith gasped. “You’ve heard the stories.”
“I don’t have many other options without a reference from Miss Florence. Thus is the plight of a poor, humble parlour maid. I could do far worse than be a hotel chambermaid, Edith.” Queenie cocked her eyebrow knowingly. “I’ve been told by more than Mr. Skellern that I’m pretty.”
“Don’t even consider it, Queenie!” Hilda shuddered. “Please!”
“Not all men are like Mr. Skellern.” Queenie replied with a cheeky glint in her eyes. “There have to be nice, wealthy men out there, who are just waiting to meet their Cinderella and sweep her from the ashes.”
The subtle clearing of a male throat near to her interrupts Edith’s reminisces about the conversation she and Hild had with Queenie in Alerley Edge earlier in the day. She gasps and looks to her left.
“I’m so sorry, madam.” a suited man says politely in an educated Mancunian accent. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s quite alright.” Hilda replies for her friend.
“I was just wondering whether there was anything I could assist you with, today, ladies.” he goes on.
“Ladies?” Edith pulls a face and nods at Hilda. “Well!”
“It isn’t often we get two such well dressed visitors from London in our humble establishment. You are from London, aren’t you, ladies?”
“Indeed we are!” Hilda answers for she and Edith in surprise.
“It’s your accents.” the floor walker goes on, answering Hilda’s unspoken question. “You’re either from London, or perhaps Cheshire?”
“London, most definitely.” Edith affirms.
“Then is there anything I can show you two London ladies that might be of interest?” he asks politely.
“See, I told you,” Hilda hisses to her best friend. “They aren’t all like Mrs. Chase and her cronies.”
Edith smiles at her friend before addressing the male assistant. “I was wondering what you had in the way of napkins, but not white ones. I’m rather partial to ecru or yellow.”
“Well, as you may have seen on the table over there,” he indicates with a sweeping, open palmed gesture to the round table where Hilda had found the dainty diamond shaped doily. “We do have some rather pretty mats with a yellow embroidered trim, and some rather fetching yellow napkins.” He reaches under the counter, out of sight of Edith and Hilda, and withdraws several placemats and napkins neatly folded and pressed into triangles. “Perhaps these might be of interest.”
*Deansgate is one of Manchester’s oldest thoroughfares. In Roman times its route passed close to the Roman fort of Mamucium and led from the River Medlock where there was a ford and the road to Deva (now Chester). Part of it was called Aldport Lane from Saxon times. (Aldport was the Saxon name for Castlefield). Until the 1730s the area was rural but became built up after the development of a quay on the river. The road is named after the lost River Dene, which may have flowed along the Hanging Ditch connecting the River Irk to the River Irwell at the street's northern end. ‘Gate’ derives from the Norse gata, meaning way. By the late Nineteenth Century Deansgate was an area of varied uses: its northern end had shopping and substantial office buildings while further south were slums and a working-class area around St John's Church.
**In the first half of the Twentieth Century, Deansgate was a route for trams operated by the Manchester Corporation Tramways, and subsequently carried numerous bus services when the trams were decommissioned.
***A hope chest, also called dowry chest, cedar chest, trousseau chest, or glory box is a piece of furniture once commonly used by unmarried young women to collect items, such as clothing and household linen, in anticipation of married life.
****One hundred years ago, postcards were the most common and easiest way to communicate with loved ones not only across countries whilst on holidays, but across neighbourhoods on a daily basis with the minutiae of life on them. This is because unlike today where mail is delivered on a daily basis, there were several deliveries done a day. At the height of the postcard mania in 1903, London residents could have as many as twelve separate visits from the mailman.
*****A camiknicker is a one piece form of lingerie which comprises a camisole top, and loose French Knicker style bottom. They are normally loose fitting enabling the wearer to step into them although some feature poppers or buttons at one side to give a more fitted look or a self tie belt to accentuate the wearer’s figure.
******John Lewis opened a drapery shop at 132 Oxford Street, London, in 1864. Born in Shepton Mallet in Somerset in 1836, he had been apprenticed at fourteen to a linen draper in Wells. He came to London in 1856 and worked as a salesman for Peter Robinson, an Oxford Street draper, rising to be his silk buyer. In 1864, he declined Robinson's offer of a partnership, and rented his own premises on the north side of Oxford Street, on part of the site now occupied by the department store which bears his name. There he sold silk and woollen cloth and haberdashery. His retailing philosophy was to buy good quality merchandise and sell it at a modest mark up. Although he carried a wide range of merchandise, he was less concerned about displaying it and never advertised it. His skill lay in sourcing the goods he sold, and most mornings he would go to the City of London, accompanied by a man with a hand barrow. Later he would make trips to Paris to buy silks. It is said that in 1905 John Lewis walked from Oxford Street to Sloane Square with twenty £1000 notes in his pocket and bought the Peter Jones department store. Sales at Peter Jones had been falling since 1902 and its new owner failed to reverse the trend. In 1914 he handed control of the store to his son Spedan. Lewis was regarded as an autocratic employer, prone to dismissing staff arbitrarily. The stores had difficulty retaining staff (there was a strike in 1920) and performed poorly compared to his rivals such as Whiteleys, Gorringes and Owen Owen. His management style led to conflict with his sons who disagreed with his business methods. It was only after his death that the company was transformed into the John Lewis Partnership, a worker co-operative. By the 1920s, when this story is set, there were John Lewis stores up and down Britain, including in Manchester. Today located in the Trafford Centre, John Lewis Manchester is one of the largest department stores in Europe, carrying half a million product lines.
This may look like a wonderful array of linens you might like to lay upon your table, but you might need a smaller surface for them, as this whole scene is made up of 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection including pieces I have had since I was a child.
Fun thing to look for in this tableau include:
All the lace around the shop come from different places, including: Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, and Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. There are also a few miniature artisan pieces from private collectors and there are even a few life size lace doilies cleverly disguised in this scene. The two lace doilies on the central table in the midground I have had since I was a child, and were acquired from a high street specialist shop who stocked 1:12 size miniatures. The placemats with their hand sewn gold trim and the lemon yellow napkins I acquired along with an artisan picnic basket from America. The lace tablecloth on the round central table is in reality a small lace doily that I bought from an antique shop in Inglewood in provincial Victoria. The dainty floral edged piece hanging on the wall at the back to the far left also came from there. The blue and yellow embroidered floral cloth in the foreground is an old hand embroidered doily from the 1920s that I have had in my possession for a long time. The starched sheets tied with ribbon on the table in the foreground and the clothes horse you can just see the edge of to the left of the photo come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.
All the floral arrangements come from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
Edith’s green handbag and Hilda’s brown one are handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The black umbrella came from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
