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 twenty-five miles west of London into Berkshire to the picturesque town of Ascot, where the Ascot Racecourse is. The town, built up along meandering roads, is made up mostly of large red brick mansions nestled discreetly amidst well established manicured gardens behind trimmed hedges and closed gates. It is here that Lettice is visiting Mrs. Evelyn Hawarden, wife of fabric manufacturer Joseph Hawarden, who hopes to engage Lettice to redecorate ‘The Briars’, a red brick Georgian mansion in Ascot recently acquired by Mr. Hawarden, allowing he and his wife to relocate from Manchester to what they both consider to be a more suitable residence for their newly acquired social standing. Hawarden Fabrics have been embraced by the British public since first appearing on the market in 1919, for their quality and affordability, and have proved especially popular amidst the working classes who want colour and something better than what they have had in the post-war boom of optimism, including Lettice’s maid, Edith, who made her friend Hilda a new dance frock using some Hawarden Fabrics russet art silk*. This has raised the Hawarden’s social expectations.
Against her usual practices, Lettice forewent the initial meeting she would usually have had at Cavendish Mews with Mrs. Hawarden after the woman explained that she was simply too busy with her new house to come down to Mayfair, and implored Lettice to consider coming up to Ascot for the day, entreating her with a roast luncheon at the house. Upon arriving at ‘The Briars’, Lettice quickly had her attention drawn to Mrs. Hawarden’s overbearing nature and rather vulgar taste. ‘The Briars’ interiors are made up of the perfect blend of many generations of conscious consumption, culminating in an elegant country house style that others have paid Lettice and other interior designers to create. Yet Mrs. Hawarden seems determined to destroy all that: replacing hand painted Georgian wallpapers with bland oatmeal coloured hangings, disposing if beautiful old paintings in order to hang an expensive, yet uninspiring, modern art collection, and exchanging the soft lines of comfortable country house furnishings with the angular modernity that better suits a compact London flat like Cavendish Mews rather than a Georgian mansion like ‘The Briars’. Whenever Lettice suggested something to the contrary of Mrs. Hawarden, her voice was quickly drowned out by the Mancunian woman’s strident tones, or the loud yapping of her savage pet Pekinese, Yat-See. As she rode the train home to London through the rolling green countryside of Berkshire, Lettice sensed a growing unease as what felt like a boulder began to form in the very pit of her stomach. For the first time in her career as a society interior designer, she had a potential client with whom she was completely at odds with aesthetically. Now, as she takes the train again from Victoria Station to Ascot, that feeling of unease returns and Lettice isn’t quite sure how she is going to explain her difference in opinions and decline the commission of the insistent Mrs. Hawarden.
As like the first time she visited, Mrs. Hawarden’s chauffer, dressed in a smart grey uniform and cap, stood ready on the platform to escort her to ‘The Briars’. As the Worsley drove up the long and rutted driveway boarded by clipped yew hedges, Lettice’s feelings of unease only intensified. Her heart sank as the car pulled up before the lovely two-storey red brick Georgian mansion, for there beneath the portico over the front door stood Mrs. Hawarden in her ill-suited tweeds, clutching Yat-See who growled menacingly as Lettice was assisted to alight from the car by the chauffer.
Now we find ourselves in the dining room of ‘The Briars’, another lovely room with original Georgian wallpaper and fine furnishings that Mrs. Hawarden has plans for Lettice to redecorate in a more contemporary style. The Hawarden’s maid, Barbara, has set down a splendid roast luncheon before both ladies as they sit either side of the dining table which is set with the dinner service of the previous owner of ‘The Briars’, a widowed lady of gentility and refinement, and a large vase of roses, freshly cut from the garden outside by Mrs. Hawarden herself.
“I thought that since you enjoyed Cook’s roast so much last time, I’d have her serve it again.” enthuses Mrs. Hawarden. “And you like Cook’s roast too, don’t you Yat-See.” She addresses her red dioxide coloured Pekingese sitting in her lap lovingly, who in turn ignores his owner and stares fiercely at Lettice through his black button eyes and growls. “Yat-See! Don’t be such a naughty boy towards our guest, or you shan’t get any scraps from Mummy’s plate.”
Although Lettice has always loved and grown up with dogs, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, would never have countenanced having any family pet present in the dining room, much less sitting on her lap when she dines, as seems to be Mrs. Hawarden’s habit, considering she did the same when Lettice last visited. Lettice cringes silently as her hostess tears at a stray rag of roast beef on her plate with her red painted fingernails and proceeds to feed it to Yat-See who gulps it down greedily after a mere moment’s deliberation and sniffing.
“Ugh,” the Mancunian woman continues as she wipes her greasy fingers on her damask napkin, also belonging to the former occupier of ‘The Briars’. “I cannot wait until this room is no longer bilious yellow.”
“You do realise, Mrs. Hawarden, that the papers in here are likely to be near original Georgian hand painted hangings, like those in the drawing room.” Lettice ventures gingerly as she picks up her own cutlery and cuts into a beautifully golden Yorkshire pudding on her plate. “They really are quite inspiring.”
“Oh you are too, too droll, Miss Chetwynd!” Mrs. Hawarden replies as she laughs loudly. “The only thing that this ghastly paper inspires me to do is throw up.” She laughs loudly again.
Lettice shudders at the subject of being sick being raised at the dinner table just as they are about to commence eating.
“You know,” continues Mrs. Hawarden as she lifts a large slice of roast beef to her lips. “I was almost beginning to think that you were avoiding me, Miss Chetwynd.”
As her hostess envelops the meat between her red painted lips Lettice remembers how upset her maid, Edith, was at having to answer the telephone whenever it rang in case it was Mrs. Hawarden, who had taken to telephoning Cavendish Mews nearly every day, and sometimes several times a day. It became such a problem that Lettice even asked Edith to lie and tell the overbearing woman that she wasn’t at home, even when she was, and on Edith’s day off, she simply didn’t answer the telephone at all, even if it meant that the calls of people she did want to hear from went unanswered.
“Then I heard from your maid,” Mrs. Hawarden continues, masticating quite loudly between her rounded northern syllables. “Ada is it?”
“Edith.”
“That’s it! Edith! Yes, Edith told me your uncle passed on, which of course explained your long absence. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Lettice silently notes the use of the words ‘passed on’, giving away Mr. Hawarden’s aspiring middle-class origins** that she is so desperate to shake off. Politely ignoring it she replies, “Thank you Mrs. Hawarden.”
“Was it expected, Miss Chetwynd?” Mrs. Hawarden continues, cutting enthusiastically through a potato she has speared with the tines of her fork.
“Actually no. It was quite the opposite, Mrs. Hawarden. It is my Aunt Isobel who has always suffered ill health, so my Uncle’s death was quite unexpected.”
“It must have come as quite a shock then.”
“Yes, quite.” Lettice replies in a tight-lipped fashion, feeling uncomfortable talking about her private family affairs with a relative stranger.
“Well, that’s over now, thankfully, and you’ve probably had plenty of time to think about what I propose to do to ‘The Briars’. I simply cannot wait to hear what your thoughts on redecorating these fusty old fashioned rooms are.”
“Well I…” Lettice looks sadly around her at the well appointed and comfortable room, which like the drawing room she was asked to comment on last time, seems perfectly fine as it is in her mind. The room’s décor has grown with the house, mellowed and softened from a formal Georgian interior into a comfortable semi-formal Edwardian country house interior over the decades since its original construction. The queasiness roiling in the pit of her stomach makes the light piece of Yorkshire pudding she has just swallowed feel like a stone rolling about. Yat-See seems to pick up on her hesitancy and quietly growls at Lettice again from across the table.
“Yat-See!” scolds Mrs, Hawarden as she taps his head lightly. “Now, now Miss Chetwynd, there is no need to be shy.” She chortles. “I know you’re a modern designer.”
“A Modern Classical Revival interior designer, actually,” Lettice corrects her hostess. “As you may recall, Mrs. Hawarden.”
“Well it’s the modern I’m more interested in rather than the classical, Miss Chetwynd. The more modern the better.”
Stalling for time, Lettice looks again around the room and it is then that she notices a new painting hanging over the sideboard on which stand the roast, some lidded tureens of vegetables, bottles of champagne and a vase of red roses. Enclosed in an ornate gilded frame, the painting hangs in place of a rather dark, but charming Victorian English oil of a local landscape, and could not be any more at odds with the rest of the room’s décor. Looking out from the frame, an angular shepherdess dressed in pale pink toying with her equally pink crook lolls against a young man in red pantaloons and white stockings reading from a book which only covers part of his bulging chest which is revealed through an open shirt executed in a mustard colour. The pair sit on a stylised bank of grass dotted with flowers, whilst behind them an equally stylised sky of blue littered with fluffy clouds drifts by. Whilst not an unpleasant painting within itself, and obviously well executed by the artist, it nonetheless looks so awkward and incredibly out of place hanging between an Edwardian watercolour of London and another country scene painted in oils, and against the yellow and white foliate wallpaper of the Eighteenth Century.
Noticing her eyes focussing on the painting, Mrs. Hawarden follows Lettice’s gaze. “Oh, were you just admiring my new acquisition, Miss Chetwynd?” she asks with swelling pride. “Isn’t it divine? Bucolic charm meets modernity! I just had it shipped from the Forsythe Gallery, a most darling little place in Soho, this week. I don’t think the owner wanted to part with it, but a nice fat cheque from Mr. Hawarden soon put short shrift to that attitude.”
Lettice suddenly smiles in a bemused fashion as the sick feeling in her stomach begins to lessen as an idea forms in her mind.
Having not observed the change in Lettice’s attitude, the Mancunian woman goes on unabated, “I think it’s so much nicer than that awful daub that was hanging there before. Do you remember it, Miss Chetwynd? It was a rather dark painting of a mill and an Oxford hay wagon***.”
“Yes, I remember it Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies, the smile creeping a little further across her lips. “It was quite charming as I recall it.”
“Charming? You thought it was charming, Miss Chetwynd?” the older woman asks with a hesitancy in her voice, self-consciously reaching up to the strings of pearls about her neck and worrying them with her fingers as she looks to Lettice.
“Why yes, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies, her voice becoming a little more bold. “Where did you hang it instead?”
“Hang it?” Mrs. Hawarden stutters in shocked reply. “Why no-where, Miss Chetwynd. I gave it to Barbara to put in the dustbin, but I suspect she has taken a fancy to it and probably took it home to her family.”
“Oh, that is a pity, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice says. “I much prefer it to your new painting. Your new painting can’t possibly stay in here. It really won’t suit.”
“It… it won’t, Miss Chetwynd?” stammers Mrs. Hawarden in surprise.
“Oh no!” Lettice exclaims, shaking her head. “I’ll find something more classically suitable, Mrs. Hawarden. Leave it to me.”
“Well, Miss Chetwynd, if you will recall, it’s modern that I’m really looking to capitalise on in our new designs for the drawing room, dining room and entrance hall, not classical. Now, whilst we are thinking of paintings,” she adds in a quavering voice quickly in an effort to stop Lettice saying anything further to disquiet her. “I was actually hoping you might be able to get me some paintings from the Portland Gallery in Bond Street, Miss Chetwynd. ”
Mrs. Hawarden’s protestations drift away in Lettice’s mind as she thinks back to the conversation she had with her sister, Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally) at her Buckinghamshire home the week beforehand during a stay to keep her sister company for a few days after their ‘Uncle’, Lord Sherbourne Tyrwhitt’s funeral, whilst Lally’s husband and children were away. The subject of declining to accept Mrs. Hawarden’s commission to decorate ‘The Briars’ came up on conversation over a luncheon of pork pie and potato au gratin. Lettice had expressed her concerns over how she is going to explain her difference in opinions to the insistent Mrs. Hawarden and thereby decline her patronage. Lally suggested a ploy successfully used by her husband and father-in-law. “Show her that she is too modern for you, and convince her that you are too classical and old fashioned for her. Once the doubt is planted in her mind, it will quickly take root.” was her sage advice. Lettice felt the idea had merit, but it wasn’t until she saw Mrs. Hawarden’s latest artistic acquisition that she worked out a way to plant that seed of doubt in her woman’s mind. Now with every answer she gives, Lettice can hear the doubt growing in Mrs. Hawarden’s voice.
“Oh the Portland gallery isn’t my preference for art, Mrs. Hawarden,” Lettice replies sweetly, slicing through the beef on her plate.
“It.. it isn’t, Miss Chetwynd?” Mrs. Hawarden queries. “But I read in the Country Life**** that you used statues from the Portland Gallery.”
“Oh those?” Lettice says with a sheepish laugh. “Yes, well, they were Mr. Channon’s already you see. He was the one who specifically wanted to use the gallery for those art pieces, so it really was his doing, not mine. The Portland Gallery is a bit too modern for my tastes, Mrs. Hawarden. I can however see how Mr. Tipping’s***** article may have inadvertently misled you in thinking that it was my choice.”
“Yes, well…” gulps the older woman awkwardly as the colour starts to drain from her face. “I… I was rather hoping that you might be able to give me a foray into the Portland Gallery, Miss Chetwynd.”
“Well,” Lettice says as she raises a small morsel of meat to her lips. “That would really be up to Mr. Chilvers, the owner, Mrs. Hawarden, not me. Perhaps if you spoke to Mr. Chilvers.” she adds helpfully with a gentle smile before taking the mouthful from her fork.
“I did try that, Miss Chetwynd, but he did seem awfully pressed for time.” the older woman replies, making up excuses, blushing as she speaks.
“Well, never mind. I have some lovely Regency bronzes I’m sure you will like, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies after swallowing her mouthful. She picks up her glass of champagne. “Of course, you will have to come down to London and visit my warehouse. Then I can show you some of the pieces I had in mind to install here as part of the redecoration.”
Yat-See starts growling again, barring his sharp little white teeth, and staring at her with hostility with his sparking currant eyes, but for the first time Lettice doesn’t feel intimidated by him. Unusually, Mrs. Hawarden doesn’t tell him off for growling.
“I say, are you feeling alright, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice asks, placing her knife and fork against the gilt edge of her plate. “You do look a little pale all of a sudden.”
“Oh, do I, Miss Chetwynd?” the older woman replies, putting her hands to her cheeks.
The pair fall into an awkward silence, broken only by the muffled ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway outside the open dining room door and the occasional twitter of birds in the garden beyond the sash window. Neither eat any more of their roast beef luncheon, which slowly grows cold and congeals on their plates.
“I say,” Mrs. Hawarden says at length, breaking the silence. “I must confess that I am feeling a little unwell all of a sudden, Miss Chetwynd. Would you mind terribly if I went upstairs and laid down.” She snatches Yat-See from her lap as she abruptly stands up, her Georgian dining chair’s feet juddering across the well-worn carpet beneath her.
“Oh yes!” Lettice rises to her feet also. “Yes of course, Mrs. Hawarden.”
“Barbara can show you out after you’ve had your luncheon and arrange for Johnston to return you to the railway station. I feel like a terrible hostess, but I really feel that I must go and lie down. I have a history of awful, debilitating headaches that can come on quite suddenly.” she lies as she thinks of an excuse to leave and reconsider her choice of interior designer.
“Shall I call Barbara to see you to your room, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice moves towards the servants bell next to the fireplace.
“No, please don’t bother, Miss Chetwynd.” She hoists the somewhat startled Yat-See up underneath her right arm like a clutch purse. “I’ll be fine.”
“Well then, I will bid you a good afternoon, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice says pleasantly.
“Yes, goodbye Miss Chetwynd.” Mrs. Hawarden replies very definitely.
Lettice watches as her hostess retreats through the dining room door with her dog and disappears. As her footsteps dissipate along the corridor and then up some stairs at the end of it, Lettice lets out a pent-up breath in relief as she takes to her seat again. She feels the house settle back comfortably around her, as like her hostess, the awkward tension leaves the room. It appears that thanks to Lally’s sage advice, Lettice has narrowly avoided the calamity of having to decorate the beautiful rooms of ‘The Briars’ against her own tasteful wishes. She glances about her once more at the elegantly appointed room. “Well, I’ve given you a stay of execution, my beauty.” she says to the empty room quietly. “I don’t quite know how long for, but at least your death knell will not come under my watch.”
Lettice rises again and depositing her serviette onto the polished tabletop next to her half-eaten luncheon, she walks across the room and rings the servants bell.
As Barbara helps Lettice on with her russet coloured travelling coat in the house’s vestibule she quietly asks, “Will we be seeing you again soon, Miss Chetwynd?”
“No,” Lettice replies as her lips, artfully reapplied with some lipstick matching the hue of her coat, grow into an exaggerated oval as she takes one final look lovingly around the cluttered hallway of ‘The Briers’. “I don’t think you will ever see me again, Barbara.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Chetwynd.” Barbara replies, handing Lettice her hook ended russet satin parasol. “But at the same time, I’ll be glad to see the house left alone. I quite like it as it is.”
“So do I, Barbara,” Lettice says with a consoling smile. “So do I.”
“Well, goodbye then, Miss Chetwynd, and a safe journey back to London.”
“Goodbye Barbara.” Lettice replies.
Then she steps across the threshold of the house and with the confident footsteps of the daughter of a Viscount, Lettice strides across the crunching white gravel driveway and allows herself to be helped into the purring Worsley waiting outside by Johnston its chauffer. As he closes the door behind her, Lettice settles into the leather upholstery and takes one last look through the door’s glass pane at lovely two-storey red brick Georgian mansion with two white painted sash windows either side of a porticoed front door and five matching windows spread evenly across the façade of the upper floor. “May you rest in unaltered tranquillity, Briars.” she says quietly.
With a rev of its engines, Johnston turns the steering wheel of the Worsley as it slowly begins its journey back down the rutted driveway and out into the township of Ascot, bound for the railway station.
*The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.
**Before, and even after the Second World War, a great deal could be attained about a person’s social origins by what language and terminology they used in class-conscious Britain by the use of ‘”U and non-U English” as popularised by upper class English author, Nancy Mitford when she published a glossary of terms in an article “The English Aristocracy” published by Stephen Spender in his magazine “encounter” in 1954. There are many examples in her glossary, amongst which are the word “died” which is a U (upper class) word, versus “passed on” which is a non-U (aspiring middle-class) words. Whilst quite outdated today, it gives an insight into how easily someone could betray their humbler origins by something as simple as a single word.
***An ‘Oxford’ hay wagon was a type of cart with an elegant arch over the rear wheels and were often painted canary yellow like many gypsy caravans. They began appearing in Buckinghamshire, over an area from the Thames to beyond Banbury. As well as being known as an ‘Oxford’ hay wagon, it collected a variety of names, including: Cotswold, Woodstock and South Midland hay wagon.
****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.
Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class country house dining room scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The Chippendale dining room table, matching dining and carver chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.
The dining table is correctly set for a two course Edwardian inter-war luncheon, using cutlery and crockery, from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The delicious looking roast dinner on the dinner plates and on the console in the background have been made in England by hand from clay 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 two glasses of sparkling champagne are made of real glass and were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. All the wine and water glasses I have had since I was a teenager. I bought them from a high street stockist that specialised in dolls’ houses and doll house miniatures. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The Georgian style candlesticks are artisan pieces made of sterling silver. Although unsigned, the pieces was made in England by an unknown artist.
The sideboard featuring fine marquetry banding and collapsible extensions at either end was made by an unknown miniature artisan. This piece I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The Georgian style silver lidded tureens, wine cooler and three prong candelabra on the sideboard’s surface I also acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The bottles of Deutz and Geldermann and De Rochegré champagne in the cooler are artisan miniatures and made of glass and some have real foil wrapped around their necks. They are made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
The very realistic floral arrangements around the room are made by hand by the Doll House Emporium in America who specialise in high end miniatures.
The three paintings on the wall came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s. The Georgian style silk carpet comes from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
