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 following Lettice’s maid, Edith, who together with her beau, local grocery delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, have wended their way north-east from Cavendish Mews on their Sunday off, through neighbouring Soho to the Lyons Corner House* on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. As always, the flagship restaurant on the first floor is a hive of activity with all the white linen covered tables occupied by Londoners indulging in the treat of a Lyon’s luncheon or early afternoon tea. Between the tightly packed tables, the Lyons waitresses, known as Nippies**, live up to their name and nip in and out, showing diners to empty tables, taking orders, placing food on tables and clearing and resetting them after diners have left. The cavernous space with its fashionable Art Deco wallpapers and light fixtures and dark Queen Anne English style furnishing is alive with colour, movement and the burbling noises of hundreds of chattering voices, the sound of cutlery against crockery and the clink of crockery and glassware fills the air brightly.
Amidst all the comings and goings, Edith and Frank sit at a table for two just adjunct to one of the glass fronted cabinets filled with delicious cakes on display, engrossed in a conversation over the film that they have just seen together in an East Ham cinema.
“Oh I did enjoy ‘The Notorious Mrs. Carrick’***, Frank.” Edith enthuses. “That Cameron Carr**** is such a handsome film star!” she sighs.
“Hey!” splutters Frank as he deposits his teacup back into its saucer. “I would hope you only have eyes for me, Edith Watsford, and not some flicker of light up on a screen at the Premier in East Ham*****.”
“Are you jealous, Frank Leadbetter?” Edith laughs, her amused giggles blending in with the vociferous chatting going on around them.
“Certainly not!” Frank retorts blusteringly, stiffening in his seat. “Don’t talk such rubbish!”
“I declare, you are!” Edith giggles.
“Am not!”
“You are, Frank, and don’t pretend you aren’t.” she teases. “I can tell when you are, and your flushing cheeks give you away.”
“Oh really?” Frank gasps, raising his hands to his cheeks and pressing his palms into them to hide the rising colour in his face.
“Oh Frank!” Edith continues to chuckle. “You know you have nothing to worry about. Those film stars are just matinee idols******. They aren’t flesh and blood like you are. They are…” She pauses for a moment to think of the right words. “They are creatures made of stardust and dreams.” She gesticulates waving her hands elegantly through the air between them. “They aren’t real. I’m just like most girls, Frank. I like the moving pictures for their fantasy and their escapism into another world, far away from the hand graft of our everyday lives.”
“Well, so long as you don’t become like those crazy girls who scream hysterically in the street about that Rudolph Valentino*******, making a scene, and fools of themselves.” Franks says with distain.
“As if I would, Frank!” Edith retorts, lifting her cup of tea to her lips. “You know me well enough to know I’d never do anything like that! If anything, Miss Lettice or some of her flapper friends strike me as being more inclined to behave like that, and even then Miss Lettice would only do it just to shock her parents.”
“Well, she does influence you,” Frank replies sagely. “Even if you don’t know it.”
“Oh, don’t talk such rubbish, Frank.” Edith scoffs with a wave of her hand. “It is true that I admire Miss Lettice - it makes it easier to work for her that I do – but I would never let her influence me like that! She already tries to fill my head with ideas about my place in this new post-war world, but I’m not prepared to be quite as revolutionary as she would have me be.”
Their conversation is interrupted by a Nippie carrying a blue and white china plate on which some dainty triangle sandwiches are prettily arranged and garnished with parsley sprigs. “Tongue and jelly sandwiches********.” she announces cheerily over the hubbub of chatter around them before lowing the plate onto the empty space on the white linen covered tablecloth between their plates and teacups.
“Thank you, Miss.” Edith says politely to the Nippie, who’s grateful smile brightens her slightly tired looking visage beneath her stiff linen cap. After the Nippie leaves, Edith turns her attention back to Frank and adds, “I was always taught that ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ go a long way, in this world, and that you should always thank anyone who is serving you, whether it is a shop girl, or a Nippie.” She slips her starched linen napkin out from underneath her knife and shakes it out before draping it across her lap. “And my Mum taught me that by the way, not Miss Lettice.” she continues, as she makes a selection from the sandwiches on the plate, removing the top one from the stack.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Edith.” Frank says as he shakes out his own napkin and places it across his lap before selecting a sandwich for himself. “I’ve always admired you for your manners and how polite and kind you are to others. Your mother taught you well.”
“And your parents and grandmother taught you well… Francis.” Edith adds Frank’s proper name at the end of the sentence cheekily, teasing him.
“I wish Gran had never let that slip.” Frank mutters begrudgingly. “I’m Frank now. No-one at the trades union will take me seriously if I’m called Francis.”
“Oh, I’m only teasing, Frank.” Edith reaches out her right hand and grasps his left as it rests on the tablecloth next to his plate. She smiles in an assuring way towards Frank.
Edith takes a bite of her sandwich, enjoying the soft white bread and the spiced meat as she rolls it around her mouth, and sighs contentedly.
“Oh, and thinking of the trade unions, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, Edith.” Frank remarks as he chews on a mouthful his sandwich.
Edith swallows her mouthful of sandwich hard and picks up her teacup. Sipping her tea she remarks, “That sounds very serious, Frank.”
Frank looks earnestly at Edith. “Well, I suppose it is, Edith.”
Replacing her cup into its saucer, Edith smiles sweetly at Frank. “What is it then, Frank?”
Frank reaches inside the inner breast pocket of his tweed jacket and withdraws an advertising leaflet. Slightly dogeared, he hands it over the table to Edith.
“What’s this then?” She glances at the colourful brochure. On its cover is a stylised drawing of a Tutorbethan style********* two storey house with a tiled pitched roof set amidst an idyllic and lush English cottage garden. “Metro-Land, price twopence.” she reads the golden yellow wording on a dark brown background in a vignette at the bottom of the booklet.
“How would you like to live there, Edith?” Frank asks, his voice breathy with excitement.
Edith looks up from the brochure with wide and startled eyes. “Have you broken the bank at Monte Carlo********** Frank?” she laughs. “We couldn’t afford to live in a house like this, even with my extra four shillings a month as part of our combined wages! I won’t be earning a proper wage after we get married*********** don’t forget, Frank.” she cautions. “Where is this anyway?” She flicks the pamphlet open. “Chalk Hill Estate.”
“For around five shillings a week, we could rent a nice little two-up two-down************ semi************* just like that, in the Chalk Hill Estate: maybe a little bit more if we want one that’s furnished.”
“You’re dreaming, Frank. We can’t afford this.” she scoffs as she runs her hand over the brightly coloured cover. “This is for the aspiring middle-classes, not for the likes of us.”
“Ah, but that’s where your reckoning is wrong, Edith.” Frank replies, picking up his cup and taking a sip of his milky tea. “You see, when I was at the trades union meeting the other week, I met up with my friend Richard, and well, he told me that there might be an opening or two in one of the new grocers shops being built in places like the Chalk Hill, Grange and Cedars Estates for an assistant manager position, which would lead eventually to a position where I’d be running my own corner grocer. Even as an assistant manager, I’d be earning a decent wage: we might be lower middle-class dare I suggest it.” Frank smiles proudly. “Richard gave me that pamphlet.”
“So where are these Metroland************** estates then, Frank?”
“Well, they are these new London suburbs being built north-west of London: Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex.”
“Buckinghamshire?” Edith splutters, nearly choking on the mouthful of tea she has just drunk. “But that’s where Miss Lettice’s married sister lives! That’s miles away! It’s the country!”
“Well not any more it isn’t Edith.” Frank assures her. “It’s all being subdivided now and served by the Metropolitan Railway. They are the ones who are developing it.”
“But I don’t want to move to Buckinghamshire, Frank!”
“It’s not so bad, Edith. The Chalk Hill, Grange and Cedars Estates are all being built along the railway line not too far from Wembley Park, so you’d be able to visit your parents easily, and they’d be able to come and visit us too. In fact, you’d be closer to them than you are at Cavendish Mews. We’d live in a nice little house behind the shop, with all the mod-cons like indoor plumbing and electricity, just like Miss Lettice’s flat at Cavendish Mews.”
“That all sounds splendid, Frank, but the country!”
“They aren’t the country. They are called the ‘new suburbs’. Anyway, don’t forget that Harlesden was once a country area too. You’ve heard your mother tell stories about how she and your grandparents lived on a farm when she was growing up.”
Edith contemplates what Frank says for a moment. “Well, I think they might have lived a bit further out than Harlesden, then Frank.”
“But even so, Edith, Harlesden was a rural area once. Anyway, if I were running a corner grocer, or even being an assistant manager of one to begin with, we would be right in the heart of the shopping strip, so you wouldn’t be far from anything.”
“I remember what Queenie told Hilda and I about life in a country village, and I saw it for myself,” Edith tempers, remembering the trip that she and her best friend took to visit their friend and fellow housemaid, Queenie, in Alderley Edge in Cheshire. “Everyone there knows everyone else’s business, and the ladies there were all horribly snobbish and mean to Queenie, and were equally snobbish to Hilda and I once they knew that we were maids – not that there’s anything wrong with being a humble domestic.”
“Of course there isn’t, Edith. However, Alderley Edge is different to one of these estates, Edith.” Frank assures her.
“I don’t see how, Frank.”
“Well, Alderley Edge was a village and an old one at that, and Cheshire has some very fancy people living in it. These estates like Chalk Hill,” He points to the leaflet hanging limply in Edith’s hand. “Are new. There are no existing big families with fancy titles and histories and all that. There’s no pecking order. It would be made up of working people – yes, many middle-class families looking to solve their housing problems, but aspiring working people like us, too. It would be far more…” He thinks for a moment. “Egalitarian.”
“And what does that mean, Frank?” Edith spits.
“Well, it’s a belief, a belief based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.”
“Hhhmmm…” Edith contemplates. “Well, we’ll see about that. That all sounds fine in theory, but in my experience there are people who look down on other people everywhere, like nasty old Widow Hounslow,” She utters the name of her parent’s doughy landlady with distaste. “In Harlesden. I think people wanting to start new lives and lord that fact over others might live in these new paradise suburbs of yours, Frank.”
“Oh now don’t be like that, Edith! You sound like your mother when you talk like that.”
“Well, you can hardly blame me, Frank. This,” She hands the pamphlet back to Frank with an air of distain. “Is a big change you’re suggesting we make.”
Frank accepts the thin booklet and slips it somewhat reluctantly back into his inner breast pocket. “But just think, we could have a lovely home together: a real home with a little garden.”
“Dad has an allotment.” Edith defends.
“I know, but imagine a proper garden for the children to run around and play in. The children we have, Edith, can grow up attending local schools and getting lots of fresh air. There would be no pea-soupers*************** for them to suffer through.”
Edith considers the great clouds of thick, dense fog enveloping the streets of London and seeping into the corners of even places as fine as Cavendish Mews during the winter months, and how everyone coughs badly during them and in their aftermath.
“Well that’s true.” she admits begrudgingly. “But…”
“And if we lived in a little house like this,” Frank pats his jacket where the pamphlet now resides. “We’d have room for Hilda or Queenie to come and stay. Wouldn’t that be nice.”
“Very nice Frank.” Edith replies a little disbelievingly. “But what about your Gran?”
“What about her, Edith?”
“Well, if we moved to one of these new Metroland estates of yours, we’d be closer to my parents, but further away from Upton Park, and your Gran is older than my parents are.”
“Oh!” Frank dismisses. “Gran will be fine with it. She’s been telling me that I should get out of London if I can for years now. Don’t forget that before she married my grandfather, Gran lived in a little Scottish village. London is the only big city she has ever lived in, and she still doesn’t like it even to this day.”
“But what about when she gets older, Frank? She’s already infirm now.”
“Well,” Frank admits a little sheepishly. “I’ve been thinking about that too.”
“And?”
“And I was thinking that she might come to live with us when the time came that she couldn’t be on her own any more, since we’d have a bit more room with a house of our own.”
“It sounds like this house of yours that you imagine for us might be made of elastic, Frank,” Edith snorts with mild amusement and disbelief. “What with our children, my parents, Hilda and Queenie visiting, and now you Gran coming to live with us. Where will everyone fit? Someone will have to sleep in the inside privy!”
“We’d make it work, Edith.” Frank assures her. “Together.”
“Well, it’s a lot to consider, Frank.” Edith says after taking a few minutes to chew another mouthful of sandwich, the bread, tongue and jelly suddenly heavy in her mouth and stomach.
“But you will consider it, Edith?” Frank asks, the hopeful lilt in his voice echoing the optimistic glint in his bright blue eyes and anticipative stance as he sits across from his sweetheart.
“Metroland.” Edith utters.
“Our future… in Metroland.”
Edith sighs heavily. “You have rather sprung this on me, Frank.”
“Well, I hadn’t even considered the idea until Richard mentioned it to me at the trade unions meeting.”
“It’s a lot for me to consider, Frank. It means a major shift in where I’d envisaged us living after we were married, and how we would live.”
“Oh, me too, Edith. The most I’d hoped for was to take a position as a buyer or merchandiser at another grocer, maybe one south of the Thames.”
“So, you have to give me time to warm to the idea.”
“I don’t see what’s to warm to, Edith. Imagine our live…”
Edith holds up her worn right hand to silence Frank’s immediate defence of his idea. “You know me, Frank. I’m not as enthused as you are about new ideas. You have to give me time, or this will never work.”
Frank smiles as he settles back more comfortably in his seat and picks up the remains of a triangle of tongue and jelly sandwich. “I’ll wait for as long as you need to be convinced that our future in Metroland will be for the best, Edith.” He takes a bite of the sandwich in his hand. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m marrying you tomorrow and whisking you away to Buckinghamshire.”
“And you won’t be, Frank Leadbetter.” Edith cautions him. “Just the other side of Wembley is one thing. Buckinghamshire is quite another.”
Edith picks up her teacup and takes a sip of her tea.
*J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.
**The name 'Nippies' was adopted for the Lyons waitresses after a competition to rename them from the old fashioned 'Gladys' moniker - rejected suggestions included ‘Sybil-at-your-service’, ‘Miss Nimble’, Miss Natty’ and 'Speedwell'. The waitresses each wore a starched cap with a red ‘L’ embroidered in the centre and a black alpaca dress with a double row of pearl buttons.
***”The Notorious Mrs. Carrick” is a 1924 British silent crime film directed by George Ridgwell and starring Cameron Carr, A.B. Imeson and Gordon Hopkirk. It was an adaptation of the novel Pools of the Past by Charles Proctor. The film was made by Britain's largest film company of the era Stoll Pictures. It was released in July 1924.
****Cameron Carr was an English actor of the silent era, born in 1876, he died in 1944. He made many films between 1918 and the early 1930s. Then like many stars of the silent era, the advent of talking pictures put an end to his career in films as he found the transition to talkies to difficult. He starred as the lead actor, of the 1924 silent film, “The Notorious Mrs. Carrick”, playing Mr. Carrick.
*****The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.
******A matinee idol is a handsome actor, admired for his good looks.
*******Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella was born in May 1895, and was known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik. Valentino was a sex symbol of the 1920s, known in Hollywood as the "Latin Lover" (a title invented for him by Hollywood moguls), the "Great Lover", or simply Valentino. His early death at the age of 31 in 1926 caused mass hysteria among his fans, further cementing his place in early cinematic history as a cultural film icon. In spite of his appeal to women of the 1920s, it is now believed that Valentino was gay, or at the very least bisexual, with relationships with actress Pola Negri and actor Ramón Novarro in addition to his second wife Natacha Rambova. Despite claims of him being a “Latin Lover”, his first marriage to lesbian actress Alla Nazimova was never consummated.
********Tongue and jelly is a gelatinous food made from braided calves tongues, boiled with onions, celery, cloves, herbs, brandy and sugar which is then preserved in gelatine. Back in the 1920s, it is more likely that aspic would have been used, rather than gelatine. It was a very popular savoury topping on picnic sandwiches in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
*********Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in Britain, first manifested in domestic architecture in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in reality it usually took the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that had survived into the Tudor period. Tudorbethan is a subset of Tudor Revival architecture that eliminated some of the more complex aspects of Jacobethan in favour of more domestic styles of "Merrie England", which were cosier and quaint. It was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.
**********"The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" (originally titled "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo") is a popular British music hall song published in 1891 by Fred Gilbert, a theatrical agent who had begun to write comic songs as a sideline some twenty years previously.[1] The song was popularised by singer and comedian Charles Coborn. Coborn wrote in his 1928 autobiography that to the best of his recollection he first sang the song in 'the latter part of 1891.'[6] An advertisement in a London newspaper suggests, however, that he first performed it in public in mid-February 1892. The song remained popular from the 1890s until the late 1940s, and is still referenced in popular culture today. Coborn, then aged 82, performed the song in both English and French in the 1934 British film “Say It with Flowers”.
***********Prior to and even after the Second World War, there was a ‘marriage bar’ in place. Introduced into legislation, the bar banned the employment of married women as permanent employees, which in essence meant that once a woman was married, no matter how employable she was, became unemployable, leaving husbands to be the main breadwinner for the family. This meant that working women needed to save as much money as they could before marriage, and often took in casual work, such as mending, sewing or laundry for a pittance at home to help bring in additional income and help to make ends meet. The marriage bar wasn’t lifted until the very late 1960s.
************Two-up two-down is a type of small house with two rooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. There are many types of terraced houses in the United Kingdom, and these are among the most modest. The first two-up two-down terraces were built in the 1870s, but the concept of them made up the backbone of the Metroland suburban expansions of the 1920s with streets lined with rows of two-up two-down semi-detached houses in Mock Tudor, Jacobethan, Arts and Crafts and inter-war Art Deco styles bastardised from the aesthetic styles created by the likes of English Arts and Crafts Movement designers like William Morris and Charles Voysey.
*************A semi-detached house (known more commonly simply as a semi) is a house joined to another house on one side only by a common wall.
**************Metroland is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the Twentieth Century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway company was in the privileged position of being allowed to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE). The term "Metroland" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.
***************A term originating in Nineteenth Century Britain, a pea soup fog is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused by air pollution that contains soot particulates and the poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. It refers to the thick, dense fog that is so thick that it appears to be the color and consistency of pea soup. Pea-soupers were particularly common in large industrial cities like Manchester and Liverpool and populous cities like London where there were lots of coal fires either for industry and manufacturing, or for household heating. The last really big pea-souper in London happened in December 1952. At least three and a half to four thousand people died of acute bronchitis. However, in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, where the concentration of manufacturing was higher, they continued well beyond that.
An afternoon tea made up with tea and a selection of triangle sandwiches like this would be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate everything you can see here on the table in and in the display case in the background, you would still come away hungry. This is because they, like everything in this scene are 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau:
The plate of sandwiches in the centre of the table was made by an unknown artisan and was acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The coffee pot with its ornate handle and engraved body is one of three antique Colonial Craftsman pots I also acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop, as is the silver tray on which they stand. The milk jug and sugar bowl are made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The Lyons Corner House crockery is made by the Dolls’ House emporium and was acquired from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The J. Lyons & Co. Ltd. tariff in the foreground is a copy of a 1920s example that I made myself by reducing it in size and printing it. Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The table on which all these items stand is a Queen Anne lamp table which I was given for my seventh birthday. It is one of the very first miniature pieces of furniture I was ever given as a child. The Queen Anne dining chairs were all given to me as a Christmas present when I was around the same age.
In the background is a display case of cakes. The Victoria sponge (named after Queen Victoria) on the cake stand is made by Polly’s Pantry Miniatures in America. Whilst the cupcakes 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. All the cakes in the display cabinet came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The glass and metal cake stands and the glass cloche came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The glass cake stands are hand blown artisan pieces. The shiny brass cash register also comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.
The wood and glass display cabinet and the bright brass cash register I obtained from a seller of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
