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 southeast of Lettice’s flat at the Savoy Hotel*, where a lavish wedding breakfast** is being held for two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things who have just been married at St. Mark’s Church, North Audley Street***: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and the newly minted Margot Channon, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre.
“Cheers to you, dear Gerald.” Lettice remarks, raising her glass of glittering golden champagne to her friend.
“To me?” Gerald almost chokes on his last mouthful of cheese as he dabs at his mouth daintily with a fine damask napkin. “Whatever for, Lettuce…” He pauses mid nickname as he remembers they are not alone. As if pretending to clear his throat of water cracker biscuit crumbs he coughs. “Ahem… Lettice. Why me? Why not the bride and groom? This is,” He waves his hand about expansively. “After all, for them.”
“Oh, there will be plenty of that shortly with the dreaded speeches.” Lettice smiles, grateful that Gerald didn’t call her by her abhorred nickname within public earshot. “No, this is your moment too, as well as theirs.”
“I don’t see how you’ve come to that conclusion my dear. This isn’t my wedding.”
“Well no, it isn’t Gerald, not in name,” she indicates languidly over to Margot sitting at the bridal table next to Dickie, beaming with such happiness and looking radiant. “But it is your wedding gown that is on show today. And Margot is the perfect mannequin to show it off.”
“Do you really like it, Lettice?” Gerald barely dares to ask in a whisper, leaning forward his eyes sparkling with hope. “You aren’t just saying that because you’re my oldest and dearest chum?”
“Like it, Gerald?” Lettice stares at Gerald in amazement. “That daring asymmetrical hemline of satin and tulle, the cap sleeves, the boat neckline and that divine embroidery I’ve seen you work on for months: I absolutely love it! Margot will be the bride of the Season.”
“Do you really think so, darling?”
“You mark my words, Gerald. Just look at all the photographers outside St. Mark’s, waiting for a chance to capture the bride on the steps!” She thinks back to the last hour where the burst of flashbulbs that went off as Dickie and Margot stepped out of the chapel doors was blinding. “She’ll be in every society page up and down the country, in your dress, darling! A Gerald Bruton original.”
“Gosh! That is a rather thrilling thought.” Gerald smiles proudly as he tugs awkwardly at his collar.
A Savoy waiter discreetly reaches forth with white gloved hands and clears away the white gilt cheese plates and cheese and fruit knives.
“Thrilling? I’ll say Gerald! This will truly be the making of you, my clever darling. Cheers!”
Lettice raises her glass towards Gerald again, who this time lifts his own in return, the clink drowned out by the sounds of a string quartet playing salon music, vociferous chatter, and the scrape of silver against crockery as the wedding guests around them finish their cheese and fruit before desserts are served.
“Just think of all the future young brides here who will each want a frock equally as exquisite as Margot’s.” Lettice remarks before taking a sip of champagne. “Designed by you, of course darling.”
“Of course, darling!”
Sipping his own champagne, Gerald looks around the private dining room of the Savoy with its gold flocked wallpaper, gilt mirrors and Edwardian style Rococo inspired furnishings. Around the tables decorated with champagne and gold roses in crystal vases, several clusters of young women chat conspiratorially with heads as closely together as their picture hats will allow. He notices one group at a nearby table where a girl, caught pointing by his gaze, is indicating to him. She smiles shyly and quickly lowers her hand. He smiles broadly in return and raises his glass to her in acknowledgement. She takes up her own glass in return.
“See,” Lettice remarks proudly as she places a comforting hand upon her friend’s forearm. “You will have blushing brides-to-be and their mothers flocking to you before the fortnight is out.”
“Just the same, I don’t think the Marchioness of Taunton approved.” Gerald adds. “She did look rather grim throughout the ceremony as she watched Dickie and Margot get married.”
“Oh, pooh the Marchioness!” Lettice counters, looking to Margot’s mother-in-law who sits stiffly by her husband’s side wearing an old fashioned looking picture hat adorned with large silk flowers that perfectly match the powder blue shade of her very conservative and rather dowdy dress, a look of general distain on her sharp features as she looks down her nose at the happy wedding guests in her view. “I think she would look grim no matter what. Before the war, it was Harry who was heir apparent, not Dickie. I’m sure she imagined the heir to the Taunton title marrying someone more fitting than the daughter of a trade bought title like Lord de Virre. However, the dowery that that he brings to the marriage will be welcome in the Taunton coffers, I’m sure.”
“Lettice!” Gerald looks around him nervously, hoping that none of the other guests heard his friend speak so candidly about something that is commonly known, but seldom raised, especially somewhere so public.
“Lord de Virre told me so himself.” Lettice admits.
“Lady de Virre confided in me too,” Gerald adds quickly in an effort to change the subject. “That Vogue have asked for copies of the studio wedding photographs.”
“Well, that is exciting, Gerald! Your first appearance in Vogue!” Lettice enthuses. “The first of many, I’m sure. And today is Tuesday, so some of Margot and Dickie’s wealth is bound to rub off on you.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Well, you know the old rhyme, ‘marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth’**** and so on.”
“I didn’t take you for believing in such superstitious nonsense, Lettice.” Gerald cocks an eyebrow in surprise at her.
“Oh I don’t,” she flaps the thought away as if it were cigarette smoke with her elegantly bejewelled hand. “But it was always a rhyme I remember Nanny Webb singing to me, no doubt under the Mater’s influence.”
Lettice looks over to the table where her parents sit. Lady Sadie is engrossed in a conversation over an arrangement of golden yellow roses with a grey haired old dowager wearing several strings of pearls about her neck and a haughty look of distain on her face as she catches Lettice’s eye. Lettice cringes.
“Is Sadie playing matchmaker with Lady Faversham?” Gerald asks discreetly, looking in the same direction as Lettice.
“Scheming more like.” Lettice mutters. “Do you know she has asked Sir John Nettleford-Hughes to the Hunt Ball after Christmas as a potential suitor for me?” Lettice screws up her nose.
“Sir John Nettleford-Hughes! Isn’t he in his mid-fifties?”
“More like his sixties!”
“Well, he’ll be in good company with Lady Faversham’s unmarried eldest son.”
“She doesn’t have an unmarried son too, does she?” Lettice’s eyes grow wide and her face pales at the thought, until she sees the cheeky smile on Gerald’s face as he raises his napkin to his lips attempting to hide it. “Oh you!” she hisses, slapping his wrist playfully and smiling.
“At least I made you smile.” Gerald says kindly.
“You will come to the Hunt Ball, won’t you darling?” Lettice’s squeeze of her friend’s left wrist highlighting the desperation of her plea.
“If we’re invited. The Brutons of leaky roofed Bruton Hall don’t have the panache of Sir John Nettleford-Hughes, not to mention the bank balance.”
“Of course you’ll be invited!” Lettice replies in outrage. “It’s traditional. Why you’re practically family being our neighbours. I’ll invite you all if Mater doesn’t: you, your mother, your brother and your father! You must come and rescue me from all the horrors Mater is planning to invite.”
“As a penniless spare to the heir, who earns his living making frocks for his financial betters: I’m hardly a suitable match for you to dance with at the ball, Lettice.” He smiles assuringly at his friend across the table and then places his own right hand over hers as it rests across his left wrist. “Who else am I protecting you from the attentions of?”
“Jonty Hastings.”
“Good god! Howling Hastings! I haven’t seen him since we were in the nursery. Didn’t we used to lock him in the airing cupboard at Bruton Hall?” Gerald asks mischievously.
“I’d forgotten that!” Lettice muffles her laughs with her napkin. ‘I think that’s why we gave him that nickname.”
“I think that might be the reason why we haven’t seen him since we were children.” Gerald chuckles. “Who else is Sadie pulling out of mothballs for you?”
The discreet gloved hands of the Savoy waiter places a blackberry tart topped with clotted cream, garnished with thinly sliced citrus in front of Lettice and Gerald.
“Tarquin Howard, Edward Lambley, Selwyn Spencely.” Lettice elucidates after the waiter withdraws.
“At least they are more our age,” Gerald says hopefully. “And Selwyn is dishy to boot.”
“Oh, you’re as bad as Mater!” Lettice flicks her napkin at him as she prepares to take a mouthful of her tart. “Can you believe she actually offered to show me his photograph in one of her magazines?”
“Well, I shouldn’t have minded that.” Gerald replies, uttering a satisfied sigh as he tastes the delicious dessert before him.
“Better you than me, Gerald. Do you know what else Mater said to me?”
Gerald looks questioningly to her, waiting for Lettice to continue.
“She said that Dickie and Margot only asked me to decorate their country house because they are my friends.”
“Well, they are, Lettice.”
“Yes, but she implied that my decorating isn’t good enough for anyone to put up with unless they are my friends.”
“She only said that to make you pack it all in so she can marry you off more easily, like she did your sister. But you and I know better.” Gerald says comfortingly. He picks up his champagne glass again and points it towards Lettice’s. “Pick up your glass, darling.”
Lettice looks questioningly at her friend as she wraps her fingers around the stem of her glass.
“Here’s to your success.” Gerald says, clinking her glass. “To the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd, successful society interior designer, and the best friend I could ever ask for!”
Lettice laughs, awarding Gerald with her beautiful smile.
*The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first luxury hotel in Britain, introducing electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners.
**A wedding breakfast is a feast given to the newlyweds and guests after the wedding, making it equivalent to a wedding reception that serves a meal. The phrase is still used in British English, as opposed to the description of reception, which is American in derivation. Before the beginning of the Twentieth Century they were traditionally held in the morning, but this fashion began to change after the Great War when they became a luncheon. Regardless of when it was, a wedding breakfast in no way looked like a typical breakfast, with fine savoury food and sweet cakes being served. Wedding breakfasts were at their most lavish in the Edwardian era through to the Second World War.
***St. Mark’s Church Mayfair, is a Grade I listed building, in the heart of London's Mayfair district, on North Audley Street. St Mark's was built between 1825 and 1828 as a response to the shortage of churches in the area. The population in Mayfair had grown with the demand for town houses by the aristocracy and the wealthy, as they moved in from the country. The building was constructed in the Greek revival style to the designs of John Peter Gandy. In 1878 the architect Arthur Blomfield made significant changes to the church, adding a timber roof, and introducing Gothic style features. The thirty-four feet (ten metre) façade, together with the elegant porch, is known as one of the finest in London. Being in Mayfair, it was a popular place for the weddings of aristocratic families. It was deconsecrated in 1974, and today it is used as a mixed use venue.
****In the first few decades of the Twentieth Century, up until the Second World War, it was customary to hold weddings on weekdays. An old folk rhyme that many of the people at that time would have known went: “Marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all, Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday for no luck at all”. It would have been considered bad luck to get married on a Saturday, and bad form to marry on a Sunday.
This upper-class gustatory scene, with fare such as you could expect from the Savoy, is not what you may first imagine, for it 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 tableaux include:
The Chippendale dining room table and matching 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 table is set correctly for an Edwardian dinner, using cutlery, crockery and glassware from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The plates have been gilded by hand and the cutlery set is made of polished metal. The napkin rings were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom, as was the champagne flute that is filled with glittering golden yellow champagne. The silver cruet set, which peeps from behind the yellow roses, has been made with great attention to detail, and comes from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The gold candelabra on the table is also a 1:12 artisan piece that I was given as a teenager. The gold roses are hand-made, and the bowl they sit in is made of hand blown and decorated glass. They also come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, as do the blackberry tarts which look real and good enough to eat!
The sugar castor on the table is 1 ½ centimetres in height and half a centimetre in diameter. Its finial actually comes apart like its life size equivalent. The finial unscrews from the body so it can be filled. I am told that icing sugar can pass through the holes in the finial, but I have chosen not to try this party trick myself. A sugar castor was used in Edwardian times to shake sugar onto fruits and desserts.
