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 headed north across London, away from Cavendish Mews and Mayfair, past Primrose Hill, Chalk Farm and Belsize Park to the leafy green surrounds of Hampstead Heath*, for today it is Easter Monday, and every Easter Monday or Bank Holiday a fair** is held on the Heath. The beautiful green space in northern London has been transformed from its usual lush and quiet self and it is now alive with a throng of London’s citizenry: rich and poor, young and old, lower-class and middle-class all intermingling and enjoying themselves on fairground rides, laughing at free entertainments, having their fortunes told and eating delicious holiday treats.
Seated on a park bench in a relatively quiet part of the Heath, Edith sits in the dappled sunlight of Autumn beneath a Cypress pine. The weather has been remarkably warm for this time of year, and much to her delight, today is no exception. She sighs contentedly as she removes her purple rose and black feather hand decorated straw hat from her head and allows the sun to fall upon her glossy chestnut tresses, which she has washed and tried to style in a modish way with her long hair held in a loose chignon at the back of her neck, curling softly around her ears, giving the impression of a pageboy bob. Patting the loose bun at the back of her neck where she can feel a small amount of perspiration gathering, she ponders again whether she should have her girlish length cut off in favour of the cropped style that seems to have gripped so many young women around London. Then she pictures her mother’s disappointed and disapproving face and quickly puts the idea at the back of her mind. She listens to the distant screams and cries of joyful people riding the mechanical swinging gondolas, the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round, and to the closer sounds of leaves crushed under foot and giggled intimacies as young couples find a private place in the bushes to kiss and embrace, away from the prying eyes of the throng.
“Here we are then, Edith,” comes the familiar voice of Willison’s the Grocer’s delivery boy and Edith’s new beau, Frank Leadbetter, resounding happily over the hubbub of human chatter, laughter and the distant trill of fairground music. “One serving of the best quality chips that Hampstead Heath has to offer!”
Opening her eyes, Edith looks up at her young man’s happy face smiling down at her, as he hands her a crumpled bundle of newspaper, already showing little greasy spots where the oil from the chips held within the parcel is seeping through.
“Oh, thanks Frank!” Edith replies gratefully, reaching up and taking her parcel eagerly from his outstretched hand.
Moving over on the bench to make room for him, Edith heart leaps a little in her chest as Frank slips in next to her, his thigh pressed in his Sunday best suit trousers pressed up against hers clad in her plum coloured frock. The newspaper crumples noisily as they both pull at the pages of yesterday’s London tabloids to reveal nests of golden yellow hot chips, sending forth aromatic steam that quickly permeates the air around them.
“We better eat these quick,” Frank says with a chuckle, a cheeky smile and a wink as he adjusts his straw boater with its natty striped grosgrain ribbon on his head. “Or else we’ll find ourselves with a hundred new friends we didn’t know we had.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice, Frank,” Edith replies happily. “I’m famished after all the rides we’ve been on.”
“Which was your favourite, Edith?” Frank asks, preparing to make a mental note of it as he bites into a crisp hot chip, gasping as the fluffy hot potato inside burns his tongue.
Edith doesn’t reply at first, chewing her first hot chip blissfully as she contemplates her answer. “The merry-go-round, I think.” she answers at length.
“What? Not the swinging gondola?”
“Oh no, Frank!” Edith puts her hand to her chest and quickly swallows her mouthful of hot chip. “They ride up so high! I think if I’d ever been on a boat in my life, I should be sick from it. I don’t know how my brother does it.”
“Big boats don’t ride up and down on the waves like that you know, Edith.”
“How’d you know that, Frank Leadbetter? Have you ever been on one before?”
“Well, no,” Frank admits awkwardly. “But I have been on a rowboat on the Crystal Palace boating lake.***” he adds hurriedly in an effort to defend himself. “And that didn’t ride the waves like the mechanical gondola did.”
“A rowboat’s not a big boat, Frank!” Edith scoffs with a gentle smile. “Not like the ones I’m talking about that my brother sails to Australia on. He says that for the most part they are pretty smooth, but that if they get caught in stormy weather the boat rolls about like toy boats do on a pond. They have the tables and chairs nailed down to the floor so they don’t fly about everywhere in bad weather.”
“Well, I guess he’d know better than me then.” Frank concedes. “What does your brother do on his big boat, Edith?”
“He’s a dining saloon steward.” Edith replies proudly before greedily eating another long golden hot chip. “He got promoted to first class dining steward two voyages ago. So, what with him being promoted and my Dad becoming a line manager at McVities, the Watsfords seem to be going up in the world.”
“You’ll be too fancy for the likes of me soon, Edith,” Frank laughs good naturedly.
“Oh get away with you, Frank Leadbetter!” Edith giggles, sticking him playfully in the ribs with her elbow.
The pair eat some more of their hot chips in the beautiful spring sunshine before Frank asks, “Would you ever want to go on one of those big boats, Edith?”
“Why would I, Frank?” She looks at him thoughtfully.
“Well, you know, go places.” he elucidates as he chews contemplatively on a few chips.
“Where would I go?”
“I don’t know, Paris maybe.”
“Why on earth would I go to Paris, Frank?” Edith asks, giving him a doubtful glance before eating another chip.
“Well, don’t all you girls want to go to Paris?”
Edith looks at Frank earnestly. “I don’t know about all girls, Frank, but this girl is perfectly happy keeping her feet firmly in England!” She nods emphatically. “No Paris for me, thank you very much.” She rubs her greasy fingers on the edge of her newspaper parcel. “There isn’t anything I can’t find or buy here that I should need to go to Paris to get.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that Edith, because I don’t want to be anywhere but where you are.”
“Oh Frank!” Edith blushes, raising her hand to her flushed cheek. “I think that’s the nicest thing a chap’s ever said to me before.”
“Oh,” Frank utters disappointedly. “Had a few chaps vie for your affections before, have you?” Then he smiles broadly to show that he is only teasing her.
Sticking her chin upwards in an aloof way that is as equally teasing as Frank’s cheeky smile, the young girl replies, “A lady is entitled to her secrets. Don’t go fishing for what you shouldn’t be asking for, Frank Leadbetter!”
The pair fall into silence again as they continue to eat their hot chip feast. Through the trees they hear the distant smattering of far away applause as a free entertainment of some kind comes to an end. A bell rings out indicating that someone has hit the strongman’s bell and won a prize. A child screams unhappily, no doubt as a result of either a smack for being naughty or for being pulled away begrudgingly from the entertainments by their parents. Behind them, the leaves on the Cypress pine shiver and rustle in the sunlight and a muffled pair of giggles break out, indicating the presence of young lovers in the undergrowth. Frank glances awkwardly at Edith and finds her glancing at him equally uncomfortably, yet when they see one another’s looks and lock eyes, they start laughing.
“Where would you want to go, Frank?” Edith asks at length.
“You mean, aside from the bushes with you, Edith?” he laughs in reply.
“Oh, you are awful, Frank!” Edith snatches up her green leather handbag and hits his arm playfully with it, before returning it to where it hangs from the bench’s arm beneath the brim of her straw hat. “I’m being serious.”
“So was I.” Frank retorts, blushing.
Edith smirks. “You’ll just have to wait for that, won’t you Frank? You know I’m not that kind of girl. When you’ve got a ring on my finger, then we can…” She doesn’t complete her sentence, but nods knowingly to the slightly trembling bushes about them.
“Steady on Edith! We’ve only just started walking out together.”
“Well, don’t suggest anything else then Frank, if you aren’t prepared to wait.” Edith smiles. “No, I meant where would you like to travel? Do you want to go to Paris?”
“Not me, Edith. Paris isn’t my sort of place, I don’t think.”
“Well how do you know that, if you’ve never been there?”
“Well, I know it’s full of foreigners, and I don’t hold with foreigners****. No, a nice holiday to the Lake District will suit me just fine. I told you, the only place I want to be is with you.”
“Well that suits me just fine, Frank.” Edith replies as she picks up her black straw hat and puts it back on her head. Looking down in her lap she glances at the newspaper spread out across it, now devoid of any chips, with only crumbs of batter and traces of oil smearing the print. She looks at Frank’s lap and sees that he has also finished his chip feast. “Because now that we’ve eaten our chips, I’d like to go for a stroll to walk them off. Shall we?”
Frank leans over and takes the newspaper from her lap and screws it up with his own. Standing up and doffing his straw boater with one hand, he bows and offers his hand to Edith with a winning smile. “Shall we then, Miss Watsford?”
Taking his hand and rising up, she replies, “With pleasure Mr. Leadbetter.”
“Hhhmmm…” Frank ruminates aloud. “Edith Leadbetter. That has quite a nice ring to it.”
Edith smiles at the thought as she snuggles into Frank’s side.
And leaving the newspaper balled on the seat of the wooden bench, the pair walk away arm in arm as happily as two young lovers walking out together could be, meandering back towards the fun of the Easter Monday fair on Hampstead Heath.
*Hampstead Heath (locally known simply as the Heath) is a large, ancient London heath, covering 320 hectares (790 acres). This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London Clay. The heath is rambling and hilly, embracing ponds, recent and ancient woodlands, a lido, playgrounds, and a training track, and it adjoins the former stately home of Kenwood House and its estate. The south-east part of the heath is Parliament Hill, from which the view over London is protected by law.
**Fairs have been held on Hampstead Heath since the mid 1800s, covering vast areas of East Heath to Spaniard’s Road. Before that, there had been fairs at Flask Walk in Hampstead since the 17th century, and another flourished in West End until it was shut down for rowdiness in 1820. The popularity of the fairs on the Heath exploded after 1871 when, just after the Hampstead Heath Act, the Bank Holidays Act created four public days’ rest. The Heath’s Bank Holiday fairs regularly attracted upward of 30,000 people at the August holiday, and 50,000 on Whit Mondays. Attendance records were broken when an estimated 200,000 people descended on the Heath one Easter Monday!
***Crystal Palace is an area in south London, named after the Crystal Palace Exhibition building, which stood in the area from 1854 until it was destroyed by fire in 1936. Approximately seven miles south-east of Charing Cross, it includes one of the highest points in London, at 367 feet, offering views over the capital. In the 1922 when this story is set, the Crystal Palace complex was used for exhibitions and entertainments and was still surrounded by a public park. Alongside the great wrought iron and glass structure was a large boating lake.
****The idea of being suspicious about foreigners was not an uncommon thing by people of all classes in England before the Second World War. Being the centre of the British Empire that ruled a quarter of the globe, the common ethos amongst the British people was that no-one was better than the English and foreigners with their different foods, ways of dress, customs and ideas were to be taught the British way and were viewed with suspicion and in some cases, hostility.
Although it may look life-sized to you, this idyllic scene is in fact comprised of pieces from my miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The green handbag, handmade from soft leather I also from her collection.
Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the two servings of golden hot chips on the bench were made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.
The setting for this scene is my front garden, and the tree behind the bench is a slow growing miniature conifer. I am not sure what variety it is, but it is a Cypress pine.
