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 travelled a short distance west from Cavendish Mews, skirting Hyde Park, around Hyde Park Corner, through Knightsbridge past the Brompton Road and Harrods with its ornate terracotta façade, past the great round Roman amphitheatre inspired Royal Albert Hall that was built in honour of Queen Victoria’s late husband prince Albert in 1861, past Kensington Palace, to Holland Park. It is here, in a cream painted stucco three storey Nineteenth Century townhouse with a wrought and cast iron glazed canopy over the steps and front door, flanked by two storey canted bay windows to each side with Corinthian pilasters, that we find ourselves. Lettice has come to the elegant and gracious home of her widowed future sister-in-law, Clementine (known preferably now by the more cosmopolitan Clemance) Pontefract.
Lettice is engaged to Clemance’s elder brother, Sir John Nettleford Hughes. Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John, according to London society gossip enjoys dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a aftermath of the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate belonging to her parents, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Although she did not become engaged to him then, Lettice did reacquaint herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by mutual friends Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate in 1924. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again later that year at the Portland Gallery’s autumn show in Soho, where she found him yet again to be a pleasant and attentive companion for much of the evening. Sir John also made a proposition to her that night: he offered her his hand in marriage should she ever need it. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them. When Lettice’s understanding with Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, fell apart, Lettice agreed to Sir John’s proposal.
Even though Lettice is twenty-four now, as an unmarried young lady, she still must be discreet as to how often she sees her future husband unaccompanied, so as not to sully her reputation. Therefore, Clemance has arranged an afternoon tea for Lettice and Sir John at her elegant Holland Park home where she can be seen, for societal purposes, as a chaperone for Lettice. Clemance’s drawing room is elegantly appointed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of her continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. Clusters of floral chintz chairs and sofas are placed around the room in small conversational clutches, whilst elegant French antiques, collected by her and her late husband Harrison during their years living in France, stand around the walls. The room is papered in pale pink Georgian style wallpaper and hung with Eighteenth Century pastoral scenes in gilded frames, whilst the floor is parquet. The room smells of freshly arranged hothouse flowers, and a canary twitters in a cage.
The trio are discussing over a tea of chocolate sponge served with cream and strawberries, Lettice’s recent acceptance of world famous British concert pianist, Sylvia Fordyce’s commission to create a feature wall in the drawing room of ‘The Nest’, Sylvia’s discreet country retreat in Essex, which Lettice visited last week. Sylvia is the long-time friend of Sir John and Clemance, and the pair introduced Lettice to Sylvia at a private audience after a Schumann and Brahms piano concert. After a brief chat with Sir John and Clemance, Sylvia had her personal secretary show them out so that she could discuss “business” with Lettice. Anxious that like so many others, Sylvia would try to talk Lettice out of marrying Sir John, Lettice was surprised when Sylvia admitted that when she said that she wanted to discuss business, that was what she genuinely meant. Sylvia invited Lettice to motor up to Essex with her for an overnight stay at ‘The Nest’ upon the conclusion of her concert series to see the room for herself, and perhaps get some ideas as to what and how she might paint it.
“So,” Sir John says as he sips his tea from one of Clemance’s gilded Art Nouveau patterned Royal Doulton cups. “You’re taking Sylvia’s commission on then, Lettice my dear.”
“I am, John.” Lettice agrees, sitting alongside her fiancée on the low backed and comfortable flounced floral chintz sofa.
“Oh hoorah!” Clemance exclaims from her own matching armchair opposite, clapping her hands in delight, the action startling the little canary in its cane cage on the pedestal table next to her, causing it to flutter from its perch and twitter loudly in fright. “Oh!” Clemance puts her hands to her mouth as she turns and looks at her little pet. “Oh I’m sorry Josette!” she says in an apologetic tone to the bird, who flutters back to its perch and utters a sharp and shrill cheep at her. “Poor dear creature.”
“Who?” Sir John asks. “Sylvia?”
“No, Nettie!” Clemance replies using Sir John’s pet name used only by Clemance and his closest friends from his younger days, picking up her own delicate teacup and turning her attentions back to her brother and his fiancée. “Not Sylvia. And don’t be obtuse.” She gives John a peevish look. “There’s nothing poor about Sylvia. No, I was referring to poor Josette.” She indicates with her bejewelled hand in a sweeping gesture to her bird. “I don’t think the poor little creature coped very well with the travel from Paris to London, and she is still trying to adjust to life in Holland Park. I’ve consulted my book of canaries and caged birds,” She pats a blue tooled leather volume with the image of three gilded canaries and the title pressed into the cover atop a stack of books next to the cage. “But all their suggestions on settling birds into new homes seem not to work. The only thing that does seem to work is when I play the piano: Chopin mostly. But for the most part since our arrival in London, Josette sounds so disgruntled.”
As if she knows she is being spoken of, the canary utters another angry tweet, causing Lettice and Sir John to glance at one another and share a conspiratorial smile.
“Perhaps you should play something for Josette now, Clemmie.” Sir John chuckles, his smile broadening, nodding to Clemance’s beautiful maple grand piano with its lid held open filling a corner of her spacious drawing room.
“We might enjoy that too, Clemance.” Lettice adds cheekily, her shoulders quivering with her own laughter.
“Oh you two!” Clemance says, flapping her hand at the pair on the sofa opposite her. “You’re as bad as each other, thinking I’m a mad old woman, fussing after my little bird!”
“Well, you must confess, Clemmie darling,” Sir John opines to his sister. “It is a little odd, fretting so much over a little thing like that.” He now nods to the chirping bird in the cage.
“The only thing odd is your lack of affection for animals, Nettie.” Clemance replies, groaning as she places her hands on the round arms of her chair and pushes herself up and out of the comfortable seat that over the years of owning it, has moulded to her shape. “But then again, you’ve never been an animal lover, have you Nettie darling?”
“I call that jolly unfair, Clemmie!” Sir John protests. “I loved the dogs we had when we were growing up.”
“Not as much as I did.” Clemance retorts, grasping the single strand of pearls draped down the front of her wisteria patterned crêpe de chine day frock. “You and Mother were always kicking them out of the way.”
“John!” Lettice exclaims, depositing her own teacup onto the low maple occasional table in front of her with a clatter and turning in her seat to look at her fiancée with startled eyes. “You didn’t?”
“Well, they got in the way.” Sir John defends himself. “They were always under foot. And to correct dear Clemmie’s memory of our childhood, which has become clouded and skewed with the passing decades, I didn’t kick them. Mother did, but I didn’t.”
“What would you call it then?” Clemance asks.
“I nudged them with my foot, and encouraged them to move, which they always did.”
“Well,” Lettice adds with determination. “I certainly hope you won’t be encouraging our dogs to move that way when we’re married.”
“Are we getting dogs, Lettice darling?” Sir John asks with arched eyebrows.
“Indeed we are!” Lettice replies with a steeliness in her voice. “A house is not a home without dogs.”
“Then why don’t you have a dog now, if you love them so slavishly?” Sir John queries, taking another slice of chocolate sponge from the cake plate on the table and depositing it onto his own plate. He looks to his fiancée. “More cake?”
“Err, no thank you, John darling.” Lettice shakes her head at the offer. “Anyway, Cavendish Mews is hardly the place for a dog, really, unless it was a small dog.” Lettice explains. “It’s too small, and dogs, even little ones, need space to run around,” She looks at Sir John pointedly. “So that they don’t get under foot. They need nature, and London is in short supply of that.”
“There are plenty of parks, Lettice,” Clemance says with an expansive wave that causes her draped sleeve to flutter prettily through the air before settling again. “You could take your dog to one of them.”
“Or one of the squares around Mayfair.” Sir John adds.
“No.” Lettice disagrees. “Those places are for dogs on leashes. No dog can roam around freely when at the end of a leash.”
“Rather like a bird in a cage.” Sir John looks at Clemance.
Josette tweets loudly again.
“I’ll have you know that Josette was free to fly throughout Harrison’s and my Paris apartment.” Clemance defends herself again.
“No doubt making a mess wherever it flew.” Sir John shudders at the thought of bird droppings being discovered around the room.
“She,” Clemance says pointedly. “Didn’t make a great deal of mess, any more than she does now.” She folds her arms akimbo in defiance and determination. “And once Josette is settled here, I will allow her out of her cage for a few hours each day, but not yet. She’s too flighty at the moment. She’s as likely to fly out of the nearest open window at present, given half the chance.” She looks indulgently at her canary, who chirps and twitters before pecking lightly at a little silver bell attached to one of the bars of the cage.
“You know larks don’t sing when in cages, don’t you Clemmie darling?” Sir John asks his sister, smiling cheekily.
Placing her hands on her hips and leaning forward over the table towards her elder brother, Clemance goes on, “My we are full of trivia today, Nettie darling.” She smiles, showing that she is not angry with her brother, and that the lively banter between the two of them is quite normal. “As it happens, I do know that little gem of a fact. Luckily, Josette isn’t a lark. She’s a canary.”
“Oh enough of that, you two.” Lettice interrupts. “Please play us something on the piano, Clemance.”
“Very well my dear Lettice,” Clemance agrees, moving around the embroidered footstool in front of her chair and gliding between the pedestal table used for Josette’s cage and the rounded arm of the sofa. “But I must warn you that I am no Sylvia Fordyce.”
“I’m not expecting such perfection from any mere mortal, dear Clemance.” Lettice assures her with a laugh.
Taking a seat on the stool at the piano, Clemance turns to her twittering canary and asks, “So, what shall it be, Josette: a Chopin Polonaise, Mazurka or Nocturn?” When the bird utters a louder chirp when she says the word Mazurka, Clemance continues. “Very good, Josette. A Mazurka it is.
As Clemance noisily ruffles through her well-worn sheet music on the piano’s music rack whilst Josette seems to chirp orders at her, Sir John turns back to Lettice. Depositing his plate of half-eaten slice of cake back onto the table he takes her delicate hands in his, enfolding them gently in his own smooth ones. The intimacy of the act still comes as a surprise to Lettice who jumps a little. When Sir John reacts by retracting a little, Lettice apologises to her fiancée for her jumpiness, claiming that she is still trying to get used to the idea of them being engaged. This seems to appease Sir John, and he smiles at Lettice with his blue eyes.
“You’ll get used to it soon enough, my dear.” Sir John assures Lettice.
“Will I?” Lettice asks, unable to keep an edge of anxiousness out of her voice.
“Of course you will, Lettice darling,” he replies. His smile develops a remorseful tinge. “In time.” He squeezes her hands. “You’ll see.”
“Yes,” Lettice agrees with a dismissive snort and a beaming smile. “Of course I will.”
“We are going to make a good partnership, Lettice: you and I.”
“Is that all, John?” Lettice asks, looking earnestly at Sir John.
“I’m a successful businessman, Lettice,” Sir John replies with a quizzical look. “And you a budding businesswoman in a world of men. What more do we need?”
Lettice remains silent for a moment, contemplating her fiancée’s statement before swallowing the lump in her throat and uttering awkwardly. “Love?”
“Now Lettice,” Sir John says seriously in a lowered tone, making sure that Clemance cannot overhear them as she scrambles through her sheets of music. “Love can be quite overrated.”
“But I…” Lettice begins.
Sir John releases Lettice’s hand and raises his right hand, placing a finger to her lightly painted lips as he shushes her. “I blame the obsession the general populace have with moving pictures now for the focus on love matches nowadays. Love can make things complicated. You saw this with how things ended with your young Spencely.”
“Or it can make you happy.” She falls silent for a moment before murmuring almost inaudibly, “I was happy with Selwyn.”
“My parents did well enough without it, your grandparents too, didn’t they Lettice? I warned you from the start that my… ahem.” Sir John clears his throat before continuing. “My desires in that regard are complex. You know this. Rest assured Lettice my dear, that I have the greatest of respect for you as a human being, and fondness too.”
“Is that all, John?” Lettice whispers.
“Perhaps love may come in time, but you cannot, and must not, expect it,” Sir John replies remorsefully. “For I cannot promise it you, Lettice. At the moment, that is reserved for the West End actress Paula Young, until some other little slip of a thing usurps her, and that will happen. Already she is getting cloying and tiresome, so I think it is time to jump ship. You won’t want to be like Paula, full of expectations that are unrealistic which get dashed along with her heart. You know what a broken heart feels like, don’t you? Settle for deep respect and fondness.”
“But I…” Lettice begins, but is silenced by her future sister-in-law.
“Here we are, Josette.” Clemance says from the piano. “You like this one, so I hope our guests do too.”
Clemance begins playing the opening bars of Chopin’s Mazurka, Op 17. No. 4.* The soft, gentle notes of the classical piece echoing from beneath the soundboard seem to echo Lettice’s feelings deep within her chest: a mixture of nervousness and a certain amount of sadness. Clemance’s fingers of both hands move gracefully across the keyboard, bringing the music to life, the tune evidently pleasing Josette as she trills happily from her cage, eyeing her mistress though dark beady eyes.
“So tell me, Lettice darling,” Sir John says brightly, adeptly changing the subject as he snatches his plate of half-eaten cake off the table again and settles back into the cosy comfort of the overstuffed Edwardian sofa. “What exactly is Sylvia’s commission?”
Lettice is surprised by how easily Sir John can change, from doting fiancée to cool businessman, from serious and intense to exuding good humour and bonhomie as he is now as he lounges back on the sofa eating chocolate sponge cake with cream and strawberries, exuding every confidence, and it makes her wonder who she is really marrying. Perhaps Sir John is right. Love can complicate things, but it seems that her fiancée is intricate and impenetrable enough as it is.
“Oh yes!” calls Clemance from the piano as she keeps playing. “Do tell us, Lettice darling. Knowing Sylvia, it’s sure to be something dynamic.”
Lettice clears her throat awkwardly as she retrieves her cup of tea from the table and cradles it in her hands. “Well,” she begins, adding a false, bright joviality to her voice as she speaks. “It’s really to undo some work by Syrie Maugham**.”
“Oh!” chortles Sir John. “That will set the cat amongst the pigeons***!”
“So typically Sylvia,” Clemance agrees with a laugh of her own.
“Sylvia always enjoyed being controversial, didn’t she Clemmie, even when you first met as young ladies?”
“For as long as I’ve known her, Nettie.”
“What is she having you do, Lettice darling?” Sir John asks, intrigued, his empty fork paused midway between his mouth and his lap.
“Well, she had Syrie Maugham decorate her drawing room at ‘The Nest’.” Lettice begins.
“Oh, that’s her little country retreat, isn’t it?” Clemance asks.
“Yes, it is.” Lettice concurs. “It’s in Essex, just outside of Belchamp St Paul****. I went to stay there so I could see the room for myself.”
“Lucky you, Lettice darling.” Clemance remarks. “I haven’t been invited yet.”
“Be fair, Clemmie darling, you’ve not been back in the country all that long,” Sir John defends Sylvia. “And it has only been a few weeks since Sylvia saw you. She said she’d invite you when she came back from her tour of the provinces that her agent has arranged for her.”
Clemance stops playing the piano and turns around on her stool to catch the eye of her brother. “That’s so typically you, Nettie darling!” She shakes her head, smiling indulgently.
“What have I said now?” Sir John asks, pleading innocence.
“You hear what you want to hear, not necessarily what is said, a trait you also picked up from Mother.” Clemance replies. “Sylvia said she’d look me up in the book*****, not invite me to ‘The Nest’! Truthfully, I don’t know anyone, other than you Lettice, who has been there and can vouch for its existence.” She turns back around and picks up where she left off playing, causing Josette to chirp happily in appreciation.
“So, what doesn’t Sylvia like about Mrs. Maugham’s designs, Lettice?” Sir John asks. “She would have paid a pretty penny****** for her services, and no doubt she will be doing the same with yours, or at least I hope she will.”
“She doesn’t appreciate Syrie Maugham’s over reliance on white, and,” Lettice sighs. “I must confess I understand why. The drawing room doesn’t seem to reflect Sylvia at all.”
“And what does she want you to do, Lettice?” Sir John asks again.
“To paint a feature wall for her, reflecting more of her personality and passion.”
“Oh hoorah!” Clemance says as the music comes to a gentle end which is softly applauded by both Lettice and Sir John. “I’m sure that will look wonderful!”
Clemance stands and steps away from the piano. Josette twitters cheerfully in her cage now and seems far more content. Clemance smiles at her pet. “That’s cheered you up, hasn’t it, Josette?” she asks. As if replying, the canary utters a peal of happy twittering notes. Turning to Sir John and Lettice, she goes on, “See, I told you my piano playing would make her less irritable.”
“Indeed you did!” her brother replies in mild surprise. “Proof that music hath charms to soothe the savage beast*******.”
“I’d hardly call a canary a ‘savage beast’, John.” Lettice opines.
“That’s because you’ve never been bitten by her sharp beak,” Sir John wags his fork at Lettice. ‘Like I have.”
“What are you going to paint on Sylvia’s walls, Lettice?” Clemance asks, resuming her seat in her comfortable floral armchair.
“I thought I might take inspiration from some wonderful pieces of blue and white china she has in the drawing room of ‘The Nest’.”
“I’m sensing a pattern here, Lettice darling.” Sir John remarks from his corner of the sofa. “After what you did for dear Adelinda.” He references the ‘Pagoda Room’, a small room in ‘Arkwright Bury’, the Wiltshire home of his and Clemance’s nephew, Alisdair Gifford and his Australian wife Adelinda. Sir John encouraged Lettice to take up the commission of his nephew and redecorate the room in Eighteenth century chinoiserie style to act as a backdrop for Adelinda’s collection of fine blue and white china: a commission that gained Lettice a favourable review in Country Life******** by Henry Tipping*********.
“Not at all, John.” Lettice replies with certainty. This is something very new and different. For Mr. Gifford…”
“Oh Alisdair, please!” Sir John retorts. “After all, you will be family once we are married.”
“Very well John, Alisdair’s redecoration, it was mimicking what had once hung on the walls. What Sylvia wants is something truly unique to her, and her alone. I thought I would take inspiration from some of Sylvia’s blue and white porcelain and paint a pattern of white on blue perhaps, rather than blue on white, with a gilded element.”
“That sounds rather exciting, and daring!” Clemance enthuses, sitting forward in her seat.
“That’s what Sylvia said.” Lettice agrees.
“What do you think you might paint for her then?” Sir John asks.
“At first I was going to paint something from the garden: flowers, or leaves perhaps,” Lettice explains. “Then I thought of feathers, which she really liked the idea of. I became more convinced after we had dinner that night that feathers are the right choice.”
“And why is that, Lettice darling?” Clemance asks.
“Well you see, Sylvia told me her story over dinner.” Lettice glances seriously, first at Sir John and then at Clemance. “Her whole story, which she says really only you two know.”
“So, she told you about her father and mother?” Clemance asks.
Lettice nods. “Yes, that her father died young, and that her mother couldn’t cope and needed to reach out to her brother, Ninian**********.”
“And what did she tell you about her time with her Uncle Ninian?” Clemance asks, her eyes wary as she looks at Lettice.
“She told me that he recognised in her what her mother also did, that she had the talent to be an accomplished pianist, but in order to do that, her mother needed Ninian’s money and connections.”
“Quite right, my dear.” Clemance nods. “It is through her Uncle Ninian that Sylvia and I met.”
“She told me the same story you did, that you were both staying at the von Nyssens, in Charlottenburg: you to be finished and she to attend the Universität der Künste***********.”
“And what did she tell you about when she came back to England after her period at the Universität der Künste came to an end?” Sir John asks quietly from his seat, his plate now discarded and all his attention upon his fiancée.
“Everything I think.” Lettice replies matter-of-factly. “That her Uncle Ninian basically held her captive, trying to recoup the money he invested in her by marrying her off to one of his wealthy friends. She told me that he was controlling of everything in her life, and that she wasn’t even allowed to see her mother again, except one last time on Primrose Hill************. That was one of the reasons why I decided that I would paint feathers for her on her wall.” Lettice’s voice lowers and saddens as she opines, “It seems to me that Sylvia was rather like a bird in a cage during that period of her life: on display and never granted her freedom, yet unlike a lark, she did have to sing, or rather perform and play the piano for all her would-be suitors.”
“That’s a very apt summation.” Clemance says sadly. “That was a hard time for Sylvia, and of course being sequestered as she was by her uncle, I had no idea what had happened to her.”
“But then she broke free, and managed to forge a life of her own,” Lettice adds more cheerfully. “And that is also why I want to paint feathers for her, as a symbol of the freedom she has now, and the heights to which she has risen in her career.”
“So, Sylvia told you about the Brigadier then.” Clemance says.
“Oh, she told me about Brigadier Piggott the night we met at the Royal Albert Hall*************, but whilst I was staying with her in Essex, she also told me about her first husband, Mr. Pembroke, the impresario, who turned out to be a wastrel and…” She pauses as she thinks how best to coin the fact that Sylvia disclosed her first husband’s homosexuality to her. “And other things.” she finally concludes. “And how he was a victim of foul play.”
“I see.” Sir John says dourly.
“So, she has told you everything, then.” Clemance concludes.
“I only think she entrusted me and took me into her confidence because I am marrying you, John.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t imagine that would be the only reason, Lettice darling,” Sir John replies, clearing his throat and sitting up in his seat, all the comfort and languor in his stance gone as he is reminded of the serious and sad business of Sylvia Fordyce’s life. “But it probably helped.”
“Sylvia is very good at keeping her own counsel, Lettice.” Clemance adds. “After those terrible few years with her Uncle Ninian, I think Sylvia is apt at managing everything about her life by herself. She neither needs to seek advice, nor share anything about her life with anyone else if she chooses not to. She is fiercely independent.”
“Thus, why I want to paint feathers for her, Clemance.”
“I think that Ninian also has a great deal to answer for Sylvia’s poor choice in men. I think being thrust in front of much older men as a jeune fille à marrier************** whom she didn’t love created a perverse sense of what a marriage was like for her, certainly if the Brigadier was anything to go by. We never met her first husband. He never came to any of Gladys’ parties where we reacquainted ourselves.”
“Oh!” Clemance gasps. “Oh thinking of marriages, and perhaps to not too subtly turn our attention and conversation away from the sad early life of Sylvia Fordyce, I have some magazines I’d like to give you to peruse, Lettice.” She gets up again with another groan. “It will help give you some ideas about what your trousseau*************** might look like: not that I don’t think you wouldn’t know, being the fashionable Bright Young Thing**************** you are, with friends like Gerald Bruton to dress you.” She sighs. “But food for thought. Have you spoken to your mother yet, about me helping you pick your trousseau, my dear?”
“Not yet, Clemance, but I doubt there will be any issues with her handing the reigns entirely over to you.” Lettice replies breezily. “Sadie hates London and only comes up here when she absolutely has to.”
Clemance takes the few steps across from her seat to Lettice. She places a hand lightly on Lettice’s shoulder. “Well, she might feel differently helping her youngest daughter to choose her trousseau. I know I would.” Her blue eyes suddenly become a little cloudy and lose their brightness as she speaks. “Best you ask her before you agree.”
Lettice sighs heavily. “Yes Clemance, I will, I promise, when I next go home to Glynes*****************.”
“Good girl.” Clemance squeezes Lettice’s shoulder and then wends her way between the furnishings of the drawing room and walks out the door.
In her cage, Josette flits about in desultory fashion, clinging first to one of the bars of her cage and then landing on the perch and winging, before flying up to peck at the silver bell. As she does, a single pale yellow feather falls from her tail. Blown by the wind created by Josette’s flight, the feather glides soundlessly out of the cage between the bars and lands on the tabletop, next to a round sterling silver box with a raised lid that Clemance uses for birdseed. As Josette lands on the floor of the cage, the feather is blown off the table and it drifts down, landing on the parquet floor of the drawing room.
Noticing it fall, Lettice puts her teacup aside and stands up before talking over to the table and dropping down to pick the feather up off the floor. She envelops it in her left hand as she stands up. She pauses before the cage’s bars and looks at Josette. The little canary seems to look back at her with her alert black eyes. She twitters and sings. “Hullo Josette.” Lettice says quietly. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you.”
Josette continues to fly about her cage, twittering and singing, whilst Lettice watches her antics, momentarily mesmerised.
“I do hope you don’t feel like her.” Sir John’s voice drifts into her consciousness.
“What?” Lettice asks distractedly, spinning around to face her fiancée, who has returned to his languorous stance, leaning back into the soft upholstery and nest of cushions of the sofa. His arms are draped over the left arm of the sofa and across its back. Once again, he exudes the confidence of male privilege that his sex, class and enormous wealth bestows with every languid breath, wearing it every bit as well as the smart and well-cut Jermyn Street****************** tweed suit he is dressed in.
“Like a bird in a cage.” Sir John replies with a confident smile. “I hope you don’t feel like a bird in a cage, like you feel that Sylvia did when she got married to Josiah Pembroke. This fine marriage of ours is going to benefit us both, albeit in different ways. I will still be able to enjoy my dalliances with Paula and her like, and you, my dear Lettice, will be afforded the luxury of independence that few women of our class can enjoy.”
*Mazurkas, Op. 17. is a set of four mazurkas for solo piano by Frédéric Chopin, composed in 1832–1833 and published in 1834.
**Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.
***If you put the cat among the pigeons or set the cat among the pigeons, you cause fierce argument or discussion by doing or saying something. The idiom comes from colonial India, where a popular pastime was to put a wild cat in a pen with pigeons. Bets would be made on how many birds the cat would bring down with one paw-swipe. The period of the British colonisation of India may have introduced this concept, and hence the phrase to the English language.
****Belchamp St Paul is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, England. The village is five miles west of Sudbury, Suffolk, and 23 miles northeast of the county town, Chelmsford.
*****In the 1920s, being listed in “the book” meant being listed in the telephone directory.
******The origin of the idiom “a pretty penny” dates back to the Sixteenth Century. The word “pretty” in this context does not refer to beauty but rather to a considerable or substantial amount. This phrase is used to describe something that is expensive or costs a significant amount of money.
*******“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.” is the famous line uttered by a character in William Congreve's 1697 play “The Mourning Bride”. The meaning for “Music soothe the savage breast” quote can be interpreted as chest or heart. That is likely what William was referring to when he wrote his playwright. Still, as time went by, people began to incorrectly use the quote in numerous instances. As it is today, the phrase is misquoted wrongly in many places. The literal meaning of the incorrect quote is in reference to the power of music. Whoever began to misquote the phrase, wanted to say that music has the power to soothe even the most savage beast in the world. In a way, even though the quote is incorrect, it does make some sense. That’s because breast – as it was used back then – referred to feelings, emotions and heart.
******** Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
*********Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.
**********Ninian is a Christian saint, first mentioned in the 8th century as being an early missionary among the Pictish peoples of what is now Scotland. Whilst the meaning of Ninian is uncertain, it may have links to the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word naomh, meaning “saint,” “holy,” or “sacred.”
***********The Universität der Künste, Berlin (Berlin College of Music) ranks as one of the largest educational music institutes in Europe, rich in content and quality. It dates back to the Royal (later State) Academy of Music, founded under the aegis of the violinist Joseph Joachim, a friend of Brahms, in 1869. From the date of its foundation under directors Joseph Joachim, Hermann Kretzschmar, Franz Schreker and Georg Schünemann, it has been one of the leading academies of music in the German-speaking countries. Composers such as Max Bruch, Engelbert Humperdinck and Paul Hindemith, performers such as Artur Schnabel, Wanda Landowska, Carl Flesch and Emanuel Feuermann, and academics such as Philipp Spitta, Curt Sachs, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Kurt Singer taught there. Prominent teachers later included the two directors Boris Blacher and Helmut Roloff, and the composer Dieter Schnebel.
************Like Regent's Park, the park area of Primrose Hill was once part of a great chase, appropriated by Henry VIII. Primrose Hill, with its clear rounded skyline, was purchased from Eton College in 1841 to extend the parkland available to the poor people of north London for open air recreation. At one time Primrose Hill was a place where duels were fought and prize-fights took place. The hill has always had a somewhat lively reputation, with Mother Shipton making threatening prophesies about what would happen if the city sprawl was allowed to encroach on its boundaries. At the top of the hill is one of the six protected viewpoints in London. The summit is almost sixty-three metres above sea level and the trees are kept low so as not to obscure the view. In winter, Hampstead can be seen to the north east. The summit features a York stone edging with a William Blake inscription, it reads: “I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill.”
*************The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington in London, built in the style of an ancient amphitheatre. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941.
**************A jeune fille à marier was a marriageable young woman, the French term used in fashionable circles and the upper-classes of Edwardian society before the Second World War.
***************A trousseau refers to the wardrobe and belongings of a bride, including her wedding dress or similar clothing such as day and evening dresses.
****************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.
*****************Glynes is 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.
******************Jermyn Street is a one-way street in the St James's area of the City of Westminster in London. It is to the south of, parallel, and adjacent to Piccadilly. Jermyn Street is known as a street for high end gentlemen's clothing retailers and bespoke tailors in the West End.
This upper-class drawing room may appear real to you, but it is in fact made up of 1:12 miniature pieces from my extensive collection, including items from my old childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The copy of the “Book of Canaries and Caged Birds” on display here is a 1:12 size miniature 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. In this case, although the book’s interiors are beautiful, so too is the cover, and I couldn’t resist displaying it for you to see. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. In this case, the “Book of Canaries and Caged Birds”, written by W.A. Blackston, W. Swayland and A.F. Wiener was published by Cassel in London in the 1880s with 56 full colour chromolithographs, which are replicated inside this volume in 1:12 scale. To produce something in such detail makes this a true artisan piece. The books directly behind the “Book of Canaries and Caged Birds” are also Ken Blythe’s work, but are of the type that are not designed to be opened. 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 gilt Art Nouveau teacup in front of the book, featuring a copy of a Royal Doulton leaves pattern, comes from a larger tea set which has been hand decorated by beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The tiny silver container with its removable lid was made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces.
The wicker cage with the bird on its perch I acquired through an online stockist on E-Bay.
The wooden pedestal table is made from beautiful golden walnut and is an unsigned artisan piece that I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.
In the background you can see Clemance’s grand piano which I have had since I was about ten years of age. It is made from walnut. The footstool has several sheets of music on it which were made by Ken Blythe. The sofa in the background to the left of the photo is part of a Marie Antionette suite with pretty floral upholstery which has been made by the high-end miniatures manufacturer, Creal.
All the paintings around Clemance’s drawing room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces made by V.H. Miniatures in the United Kingdom, and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of late Victorian paper from the 1880s.
The Persian rug on the floor has been woven by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, Australia.
