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 northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying her usual weekly call on her beloved parents. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. Usually even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door, Edith can smell the familiar scent of a mixture of Lifebuoy Soap, Borax and Robin’s Starch, which means her mother is washing the laundry of others wealthier than she in the terrace’s kitchen at the rear of the house. Yet with her father’s promotion in 1922, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now. The money she makes from this endeavour she uses for housekeeping to make she and George’s life a little more comfortable, but she is able to hold a little back as pin money* to indulge in one of her joys, collecting pretty china ornaments to decorate their home with.
We are in Ada’s front parlour, which is where most of her decorative porcelain finds from different shops, fairs and markets around London are proudly displayed. With busy stylised floral wallpaper and every surface cluttered with ornaments, it can only be described as Victorian in style and it is an example of conscious consumption, rather than qualitative consumption, to demonstrate how prosperous the Watsford family is. Like many others of its kind in Harlesden and elsewhere in London, it is the room least used in the house, reserved for when special guests like the parish minister or wealthy old widow Mrs. Hounslow pay a call. Yet in spite of that, the front parlour’s clutter needs cleaning and dusting, and Edith is helping her mother do so today, all the while regaling her with the story about Lettice’s newest gadget, the wireless.
“Oh Mum!” Edith gushes enthusiastically, waving her dust cloth around animatedly. “It was amazing! It’s like having a whole band inside a little box!”
“As good as listening to the brass bands that play in the rotunda at King Edward VII’s Park**, Edith love?” Ada asks in amazement.
“Every bit as good as them, or the ones in Regent Park, Mum.”
“Well I never!” Ada pauses dusting a brightly painted bust of Queen Victoria on the parlour’s sideboard with her feather duster as she contemplates such a contraption. “Fancy that! A band in a box!” she gasps. “And you say it isn’t run by electricity then, Edith love?”
“No, it has a battery inside. That’s why it’s called a wireless, Mum.”
“Well, what won’t they think of next!”
“And the British Broadcasting Company*** plays news as well as music, every day.”
“Even on Sundays?”
“Even on Sundays, Mum. Miss Lettice says that I’m allowed to listen to it when I’m dusting the drawing room.”
“That’s very generous of Miss Chetwynd, Edith. I hope you said thank you to her.”
“Oh I did, Mum, but,” Edith pauses for a moment before continuing on a little more disappointedly. “Well, the broadcasts aren’t usually playing when I’m cleaning in there as it’s far too early. They only broadcast for a few hours a day, but Mr. Spencely, that’s Miss Lettice’s chap, says that will change once the wireless catches on. Besides, I don’t see why I can’t listen to it when Miss Lettice is out visiting or down in Wiltshire. What’s the harm?”
“Lucky Miss Chetwynd, and lucky you then, Edith love.”
“I didn’t think I’d take to it at first. We have enough contraptions in the flat, what with that awful telephone thing ringing away loudly day and night like the devil that it is.” Edith nods dourly.
“Well, those telephone contraptions are unnatural!” Ada frowns disapprovingly.
“That’s what I say, Mum.”
“Who needs a machine to talk into when it’s every bit as easy to send a postcard**** to convey your message? Not that it will because it’s just a toy for the toffs,” Ada scoffs. “But were that telephone thing ever to catch on, it would do our poor mailmen out of jobs.”
Edith looks across at where her mother, having picked up the feather duster, is cleaning again. As well as the bust of Queen Victoria there are commemorative plates marking the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902 and King George V and Queen Mary in 1911, as well as a plate featuring King Edward VII which was present from her Aunt Maude to her mother when she took a holiday to Folkstone. “I wonder what she would think of it?”
“Who?” Ada asks, pausing and looking across at her daughter, dusting cloth in hand over the tea table.
“The old Queen, Mum. I wonder what she’d make of the wireless.”
“I wonder what the old Queen would make about a lot of things from the Twentieth Century.” Ada replies. “The world has changed so much, even in the last twenty-two years since she has been gone, god rest her soul. There’s motorcars and lorries replacing horse drawn carriages and carts, and electricity being used more often and by more people these days.”
“Not that you have it here, Mum.” Edith adds cheekily, pointing to the three burner gasolier overhead.
“I should hope not! It’s unnatural, just like the telephone.” Her eyes grow wide. “I’ll stick with what I know, thank you very much.”
“Well, I use electricity at Miss Lettice’s, and I did at Mrs. Plaistow’s, and it hasn’t done me any harm.”
“So you think!” Ada wags the feather duster at her daughter, a shower of dust motes flying angrily from her agitation, tumbling through the air of the parlour between them. “You don’t know yet. Some of these things take time to show any ill effects.” She sighs. “But I hope for your sake, not. But going back to the old Queen and the music in a box, I’d like to think she’d like it.”
“Do you think, Mum? She was such an old lady.”
“She wasn’t always an old lady, you know, Edith love! Like all of us, she was young once, too.”
“It’s hard to believe.”
“That’s because you were still a babe in nappies, not even one, when she died, so all you know are images of her late in life. Even when I was young, the Queen was still a distant figure, although she was popular around the time of her Diamond Jubilee. But you listen to my Grandma, your Great Grandma, and she’d tell you different. Before her husband died, the Queen was ever so interested in new things. She used to take the train, when it was new and experimental, all over the country, and she took up photography when it was new. So why shouldn’t she have been interested in the wireless box. Tell me, is it easy to operate?”
“Oh yes Mum!” Edith assures her mother. “There is a knob to turn it on or off, a knob to adjust the volume, and a knob to tune it in, but once you have the radio station, you don’t need to tune it again. It does make a nasty noise when you first turn it on, but that’s only because it has valves inside and they have tow arm up. That only takes a minute or two, and then you have beautiful music, or news reports or whatever.”
“Well, it does sound splendid, Edith love.”
“Frank says that eventually everyone will have a wireless.”
“Does he now, Edith love?” Ada says with a snort and a doubtful smile.
“He does, Mum!”
“He sounds like a bit of a dreamer, does your Frank.” Ada replies. “Not that there is anything wrong with having dreams, mind you. We all have to dream of something.”
“Yes but Frank says that now is the time for the working man, and woman too.”
“I say, Edith love,” Ada asks in a worried voice. “He’s not one of those Communists is he? You know, overthrow the King and government and create anarchy like they did in Russia with the poor Tsar?”
“No Mum!” Edith laughs. “Like I’d step out with a Communist. No, Frank just thinks with all the new inventions being developed, wages increasing and things getting a bit more affordable for everyone, that it’s a better time to be a working person.”
“Well, I have to agree that things are getting better for us as working people. We live better quality lives, but I don’t think it is ‘our time’ as you say he says. This wireless thing may be wonderful, but it’s a rich man’s toy, just like the telephone contraption.”
“He believes in the emancipation of women, Mum.” Edith adds hopefully.
“Ahh, now on that point I think your Frank and I agree. Which is more than can be said for her.” Ada taps the crown on the bust of Queen Victoria. “I’m glad your Frank believes in the vote for all of us. Let’s hope it happens in both our lifetimes.*****”
The two ladies carry on dusting in silence for a short while before Ada asks, “Thinking of Frank, are you any closer to meeting his grandmother?”
“I did mention it to Frank when we went down to the Angel down in Rotherhithe on New Year’s Eve, Mum.”
“And what did he say, Edith love?”
“Well, he told me that he’s told her about me.”
“That’s good.”
“He says that she might be a bit jealous of me usurping her.”
“Usurping her? What on earth does that mean, Edith love?” Ada asks in alarm. “It sounds like you’re trying to hurt her!”
“It means to take the place of someone.” Edith replies proudly. “Frank taught me that.”
“Did he indeed.” Ada cocks an eyebrow.
“Anyway, once she’s adjusted herself to the idea of me being in Frank’s life, he’ll ask me around for tea at her house in Upton Park.”
“And when’s that likely to be?” Ada asks with concern.
“In a few weeks Frank says.” Edith replies brightly. “She’s apparently already starting to come around to the idea.”
“Well that is good to hear, Edith love. I respect that your Frank wants to do things properly and introduce you to his family first, but your Dad and I are most anxious to meet him, you know.”
“Patience Mum! If I can wait, you can too. It will happen soon enough.”
“Enough of your cheek, young lady!” Ada retorts playfully. “I’ve the patience of a saint managing you and your brother when you were little!”
“We weren’t that bad, were we Mum?”
“Don’t you believe it! Your brother wanted to do anything his big sister did.” Ada chuckles, looking at the two family photos on the mantlepiece: one with George and Ada and Edith and one with the three of them and Edith’s little brother, Bert. Suddenly, she gasps. “I almost forgot! I got a letter from your brother the other day. It’s on the mantle in the kitchen. Goodness knows I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on!” She taps her head lightly three times with her fist. “It says he should be home soon, and he says he’s got something for you from his travels. Come on, Edith love. It’s time we had a nice cup of tea anyway. Let’s go read it over a pot, eh? Then we’ll come back and finish the dusting.”
Edith and Ada both put down their cleaning tools and laughing and continuing to chat jovially, they walk out of the front parlour and head down the short corridor to the kitchen at the back of the house.
*Originating in Seventeenth Century England, the term pin money first meant “an allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for her personal expenditures. Married women, who typically lacked other sources of spending money, tended to view an allowance as something quite desirable. By the Twentieth Century, the term had come to mean a small sum of money, whether an allowance or earned, for spending on inessentials, separate and in addition to the housekeeping money a wife might have to spend.
**King Edward VII Park is a large park in Willesden between Uffington Road, All Souls Avenue and Doyle Gardens. It features a large recreational ground, a sports ground, a rotunda, and although now gone, had one of London’s most popular lidos, an outdoor pool, which opened in 1911, with the adjoining chalet café.
***The British Broadcasting Company, as the BBC was originally called, was formed on the 18th of October 1922 by a group of leading wireless manufacturers including Marconi. Daily broadcasting by the BBC began in Marconi's London studio, 2LO, in the Strand, on November the 14th, 1922. John Reith, a thirty-three-year-old Scottish engineer, was appointed General Manager of the BBC at the end of 1922. Following the closure of numerous amateur stations, the BBC started its first daily radio service in London – 2LO. After much argument, news was supplied by an agency, and music drama and “talks” filled the airwaves for only a few hours a day. It wasn't long before radio could be heard across the nation, especially when radio stations were set up outside of London, like on the 6th of March when the BBC first broadcast from Glasgow via station 5SC.
****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. Postcards were cheap and plentiful, and readily available, so as long as you knew how to write and how to read, it was a cost effective way of communicating your intentions. At the height of the postcard mania in 1903, London residents could have as many as twelve separate visits from the mailman in a single day, excluding Sundays. This means that people in the early Twentieth Century amassed vast collections of picture postcards which today are highly collectible depending upon their theme.
*****It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that women over the age of twenty-one were able to vote in Britain and women finally achieved the same voting rights as men.
This cluttered sideboard may look realistic to you, however it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The bust of Queen Victoria was made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. It has been hand painted by me.
The commemorative plates of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902 and the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911 are all made by the British miniature artist Rachel Munday. The plate on the far left is a piece of souvenir ware from around 1905 and is made of very finely pressed tin.
The feather duster on the parlour sideboard I made myself using fledgling feathers (very spring) which I picked up off the lawn one day thinking they would come in handy in my miniatures collection sometime. I bound them with thread to the handle which is made from a fancy ended toothpick!
The little white vase to the far right of the photo is mid Victorian and would once have been part of a tiny doll’s tea service. It is Parian Ware. Parian Ware is a type of biscuit porcelain imitating marble. It was developed around 1845 by the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Mintons, and named after Paros, the Greek island renowned for its fine-textured, white Parian marble, used since antiquity for sculpture.
The ‘home sweet home’ embroidery and the painting on the wall come from online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures, as does the Art Nouveau vase on the left hand side of the picture.
The sideboard is a piece I bought as part of a larger drawing room suite of dolls house furniture from a department store when I was a teenager.
