Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve. It is early morning, which is always Edith’s favourite time of day, for before Lettice arises, she can get a lot of her household chores done without interruption and without interrupting her mistress. With the airing, dusting and straightening of the flat’s main rooms done, as the clock nears eight, Edith can focus on preparing Lettice’s breakfast.
If Lettice were at her family home in Wiltshire, as an unmarried lady she would not be permitted to have breakfast in bed, that luxury reserved for married women like her mother only. However, in London, and under her own roof, no such stricture applies, so Edith sets about preparing her mistress’ breakfast tray. Sighing with satisfaction as she takes in a breath of cool morning air through the open window, the young maid stands at the deal pine kitchen table and places a pretty floral edged plate, and egg cup onto the dark wooden tray where they join a sliver salt shaker and pepper pot. She listens to the chirp of birds as she turns around and goes to the kitchen’s cutlery drawer and withdraws two spoons and a knife which she adds to the tray. Morning is the only time she really hears the birds, as within an hour, the streets around Cavendish Mews will be busy with the splutter of motor cars and the chug of buses and their noise will drown out the pretty songs of the birds who make their homes between the chimney pots and in the gardens of the surrounding Mayfair houses.
The sound of the brass kettle boiling on the stove breaks into her consciousness, and Edith turns and takes it off the hob. She picks up a small brass pan and adds water from the kettle and covers it with a lid and places it over an unlit burner.
Going to the meat safe near the back door Edith withdraws one of the bottles of milk left at the back door of the flat by the milkman even before she was out of bed, and a white carboard box with blue writing on it that proudly advertises eggs from Alexander Auld, by appointment to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. “Why on earth the Prince of Wales needs eggs from Aberdeen in Scotland is beyond me.” she mutters to herself as she lifts the lid and takes out a pristine white egg from the box. “Eggs are eggs. They all taste the same, no matter where they come from.” Her beau Frank Leadbetter, who is the delivery boy for Mr. Willison the local grocers, told her that if the Prince of Wales wanted Scottish eggs, who were they to question it, and always adds that she should feel lucky to eat eggs from the same farm that the Prince’s eggs come from. She shakes her head as she takes the egg over to the stove and puts it into the pot of freshly boiled water.
Returning to the table she pours creamy white milk into a jug that matches the egg cup and plate and places it on the tray. She picks up the jar of Golden Shred Orange Marmalade* and scoops orange jewel like gelatinous preserve from the jar and deposits it into a silver preserve pot. “Blast!” Edith mutters as a stray drop falls from her spoon and lands on the left cuff of her blue and white striped morning uniform where it seeps and bleeds into the fabric. Scraping what hasn’t been absorbed into the pot, she goes to the sink, runs the cold water tap and soaks a cleaning cloth under the clear stream before sponging the mark before it sets. Returning to the table, shaking her left arm half in irritation and half in a pointless effort to dry her now damp cuff, she puts the lid on the preserve pot.
She returns to the stove and takes up the kettle and pours hot water over the scoops of Lyon’s** tealeaves in the bottom of the floral patterned teapot that matches the rest of the crockery on the tray. With a satisfying clink, she drops the lid into the hole in the top.
“Oh my giddy aunt! The post!” Edith gasps, putting both her hands to her head. “I’d forget my head sometimes if it weren’t screwed on.”
Snatching up the slice of white bread she has freshly cut from the loaf on the table, she puts it in the gleaming silver toaster and takes up the letters and the magazine that have been delivered with the first post of the day.*** Edith goes through what is there.
“Looks like a formal invitation to something.” she murmurs as she holds up to the light one larger envelope of a higher quality than two others, which from the addresses she notes are from tradesmen, and tries to peer through the thick creamy white envelope. “I wonder if it’s an invitation to a ball, now that the Season has started up. Whose I wonder?”
Putting it down she then notices that the magazine that has been delivered is Country Life**** which Lettice does not subscribe to. “That’s odd.” She screws up her face and ponders the magazine featuring the grand colonnaded Georgian façade of a country house with its mistress descending its stairs on the cover. Then gasping with excitement, Edith remembers overhearing her mistress saying something about an interior she completed recently. Friends of Lettice, Margot and Dickie Channon, were gifted a Recency country “cottage residence” called ‘Chi an Treth’ (Cornish for ‘beach house’) in Penzance as a wedding gift by the groom’s father, the Marquess of Taunton when the pair were married in October 1921. Margot in her desire to turn ‘Chi an Treth’ from a dark Regency house to a more modern country house flooded with light, commissioned Lettice to help redecorate some of the principal rooms in a lighter and more contemporary style, befitting a modern couple like the Channons. Lettice decamped to Penzance for a week where she oversaw the painting and papering of ‘Chi an Treth’s’ drawing room, dining room and main reception room, before fitting the rooms out with a lorryload of new and repurposed furnishings, artwork and objets d’arte that she had sent down weeks prior to her arrival from her London warehouse. With the rooms redecorated under Lettice’s adept hands where once there was dark red paint, modern white geometric wallpaper hangs, and where formal, uncomfortable and old fashioned furnishings sat, more modern pieces dispersed by a select few original items give the rooms a lighter, more relaxed and more contemporary 1920s country house feel. The redecoration came to the attention of Dickie’s friend Henry Tipping***** who as well as being Dickie’s chum is also the Architectural Editor of Country Life, and after viewing it, he arranged for it to be featured in the magazine.
Opening the magazine, Edith flits through the different editorials before coming across the one about ‘Chi an Treth’ towards the middle. As she reads and looks at the many photographs of her mistress’ beautiful interior, her neutral face comes to life and she smiles as her eyes glisten. “Oh-ho!” she chortles, her cheeks reddening. “This will be thumb in the eye****** for Miss Lettice’s mother. She won’t be able to be dismissive of her decorating now.”
It is only as she is drinking in the beauty of Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s fashionable looking drawing rom that Edith realises that she has been so absorbed in reading the article that she didn’t hear the toast pop. Turning her head, she sees the slice poking its golden brown top out of the gleaming silvered toaster. Reluctantly putting the copy of Country Life down, she goes and picks up the toast with her right thumb and forefinger and brings it back to Lettice’s breakfast tray where she puts it on the plate. Adding a teacup and saucer in a matching pattern to the plate, egg cup and jug, she returns to the stove and removes the perfectly four minute boiled egg from the pot with a slotted spoon, and deposits it in the egg cup.
Placing the teapot onto the tray, she slips the letters into the pocket on the front of her apron, puts the copy of Country Life under her left arm and picks up the breakfast tray.
“Today is the day.” Edith says aloud with a smile as she pushes at the bottom of the door leading from the kitchen into the flat’s hallway with the toe of her shoe. “The day that Miss Lettice’s work is properly recognised is here. She is going to be so pleased.”
*Golden Shred orange marmalade still exists today and is a common household brand both in Britain and Australia. They are produced by Robertson’s. Robertson's Golden Shred recipe perfected since 1874 is a clear and tangy orange marmalade, which according to their modern day jars is “perfect for Paddington’s marmalade sandwiches”. Robertson's marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.
**Unlike today where mail is delivered on a daily or even sometimes only every few days basis, there were several deliveries done a day when this story is set. At the height of the postcard mania in 1903, London residents could have as many as twelve separate visits from the mailman. By 1923 it had been scaled back somewhat, but in London it would not be unusual to receive post three or four times a day.
*** Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in the UK, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England. Lyons Tea was a major advertiser in the early decades of RTÉ Television, featuring the "Lyons minstrels" and coupon-based prize competitions.
****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.
******I am unsure of the origins of the saying “to shove a thumb in one’s eye”, but its meaning is to open someone’s eyes to the obvious, but not necessarily in a welcome way.
This domestic scene may not be all that it appears, for it is made up completely of items from my 1:12 miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The copy of Country Life sitting on the table that is the lynchpin of this chapter was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1923 edition of Country Life.
The panoply of things required by Edith to make Lettice’s breakfast that cover her deal kitchen table come from various different suppliers. The lacquered wooden breakfast tray and the pretty breakfast crockery came from specialist stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The box of eggs in the background comes from Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The slice of toast on the plate comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom. The bottle of milk in the background comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, as do the pieces of cutlery. The jar of Golden Shred marmalade in the foreground comes Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire as does the box of Lyon’s Tea in the background. The sliced load of bread comes from Polly’s Pantry Miniatures. The lidded silver preserve pot comes from Smallskale Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The silver salt and pepper shakers are part of a larger cruet set made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality of the detail in their pieces.
Edith’s Windsor chair in the background is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.
To the left of the sink is the food safe with a mop leaning against it. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvinised wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.
