The Traveling Tea Shop (11 page)

As predicted, Ravenna skips breakfast. Well, when your stomach is that concave, I’m guessing you’ve got to be pretty selective about which days you choose to eat.

In a bid to redress the balance, I partake of a double portion. And then it falls to me to chivvy her up.

“You need to be dressed in five minutes,” I tell her as I re-enter the beach house.

“I am dressed!” she protests.

“Cut-off denim shorts with pockets hanging lower than the fraying hem do not a mansion tour outfit make,” I tut under my breath.

“Do you know that the women who summered here in Newport’s heyday used to change up to seven times a day?”

She looks back at me. “Is that a hint?”

“They had a breakfast outfit, another for lunch, tea, dinner—and of course tennis and swimming have their particulars. Even walking required an oversized feather bonnet. And that’s all before we get into the dozens of one-of-a-kind ball gowns commissioned for each season,” I rattle on.

“So you think I should change?”

“Well,” I grimace. “We may not be dining with the Astors, but I think a level of respect would be nice.”

“Such as?” she huffs impatiently.

“Do you have any dresses?”

She holds up two options.

“Any dresses not made out of T-shirt material bearing offensive language?”

The only F-word on this trip should be frosting.

We end up with a compromise—my white broderie anglaise skirt worn as a strapless dress with a studded belt and clompy black boots.

I’d do anything to drag a comb through the straggles of her half-up, half-down hair, but I don’t want to push my luck.

I myself opt for a tea dress, which instantly meets with Gracie’s approval.

“My mother had a frock with just the same print,” she says as she inspects the apricot chintz. “Is this vintage?”

“Vintage style,” I tell her. “I was spoiled for choice in my twenties, but now I can only fit into the beaded cardis—I can’t believe how teeny-tiny the waists were back then.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something about that,” Gracie motions for us to get into the car. “This fashion curator once explained to me that the reason historical displays of clothes are dominated by petite sizes is that those were the garments that tended to survive intact, whereas the larger sizes were easier to alter to accommodate new trends, and then typically passed on to someone a little more slender. So it’s not just that everyone back then was a Skinny Minnie, like madam here.” She gives Ravenna a pinch.

I expect her granddaughter to twist away in a sulk, but she seems more than content to be called skinny.

Weaving back along Ocean Drive, Gracie and I again marvel at the view while Pamela seems as switched off as Ravenna.

“Everything all right?” I try to be discreet with my inquiry.

“Yes, yes, I’m just going over this afternoon’s recipes in my mind.”

Something tells me she’s had a nasty missive from her husband this morning, or perhaps his lawyer. What a grim state of affairs. At least my breakups didn’t involve any costly paperwork. Perhaps there is an upside to having thoroughly insubstantial relationships after all.

•   •   •

“Here we are!” Gracie announces our return to Marble House.

As we step into the lobby, we find ourselves swamped by a swirling honeypot of streaky caramel marble—Alva Vanderbilt said that an interior of pure white (to match the exterior) would have too closely resembled a mausoleum, whereas this warmer hue “catches the sunlight by day and electric sparkles by night.” I rather like the idea of “electric sparkles.” I suppose electricity was still considered something of a magical phenomenon back in 1892.

“Now that is some chandelier!” Pamela tilts her head back to take in the gold-trimmed glass box that bears more than a passing resemblance to Cinderella’s carriage. “I wouldn’t want to be standing here if that came loose.”

“But what a way to go!” I sigh. “Flattened by a Vanderbilt light fixture.”

Gracie beckons us into the Gold Salon, accented with mythological figures and bulbous cherubs, its walls coated in 22-karat gold.

“A gilded room for a gilded age!”

Just as our eyes are adjusting to the Vegas-Versace glitz, she directs us into a small medieval church, with sofas.

“This, believe it or not, was their family room.”

Every window is stained glass, every surface piled with dusty, fusty religious tomes; all that’s missing is a pulpit. Alva’s daughter Consuelo declared it melancholy and depressing.

“It
is
melancholy and depressing,” Ravenna confirms.

“This is where her husband-to-be proposed.”

“What kind of fool would pick a room like this?”

“An English fool,” I reply. “Remember me telling you about the
Downton
connection? Consuelo was the Cora of the hour. And the man proposing was the Duke of Marlborough.”

“As in Blenheim Palace?”

“As in Blenheim Palace.”

“Consuelo described the proposal setting as ‘propitious to sacrifice.’”

“So she wasn’t thrilled about the marriage?”

“Not at all. She was in love with someone else, but Alva said she would have no qualms about shooting the rival if Consuelo tried running away with him.”

I see Gracie telepathically conveying to Pamela that she would be more than happy to do away with Eon, should she personally not have the stomach for the job.

“My life became that of a prisoner with my mother and governess as my wardens,” Consuelo concluded in her memoir.

This motif is heavily reinforced upstairs in the nineteen-year-old’s bedroom. Aside from the fact that she was not allowed a single personal item (everything, right down to her vanity set, was hand-picked and positioned by her mother), her bed is like some kind of regal cell. I have never seen chunkier posts on a four-poster, hefty as tree trunks and carved with leafy flourishes, like Renaissance-style totem poles. Between each hang dark claret curtains—ready to be drawn and thus completely enclose Consuelo.

“God, I don’t know why her mother didn’t just have done with it and chain her up!”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, but she had to wear this awful contraption for her posture—a steel rod up her back that was strapped at her waist, shoulders and forehead.”

“What?”

“Suddenly your mum doesn’t seem such an ogre, does she?”

Ravenna gives a little snort.

I don’t know if it was the result of the contraption, but Consuelo had an extraordinarily long, swan-like neck, and was considered one of Newport’s great beauties. I can see it in her face, but the neck? You don’t often hear men saying, “Cor, check out the neck on that!” Although you might if you’d seen Consuelo at the time: judging from her portrait, the Kayan tribeswomen of Burma have got nothing on her.

“Not how you’d decorate a teenager’s room?” I ask Ravenna.

She doesn’t give me much in the way of a reply, just a look of general disgust. There’s certainly none of the fresh aquas and cobalt blues that might typify a coastal view room today. Not that you can see much of the view since the windows are so heavily shrouded with fabric. I wonder how many times Consuelo drew back the netting and wished herself free?

“The most ironic thing,” Gracie follows my gaze down to the Chinese Tea House at the end of the lawn, “is that Alva later held women’s suffrage rallies down there—she was a huge campaigner for women’s rights.”

“But she just didn’t want her daughter to have any?”

“Well, it’s funny: she thought that the most empowering thing she could do for her daughter was to elevate her to duchess status, so she could be a person of influence and make her own choices.”

“Strange way to go about it.”

“Listen to this quote.” Ravenna appears to be rather taken with Consuelo’s highbrow put-downs: “‘There was in my mother’s love of me something of the creative spirit of an artist—it was her wish to produce me as a finished specimen framed in a perfect setting.’”

Ravenna fixes her mother with a “sound familiar?” stare and then strops off.

Pamela sighs. “Doesn’t every mother dress up their daughter in pretty things when they are little? She says I treated her like a doll. I didn’t, did I, Mum?”

“She used to love all that pink froth, as well you know. She’s only embarrassed in retrospect, because it doesn’t fit with her new image,” Gracie bristles, adding, “You just happen to have a lot more photographic evidence because you were featured in so many magazines.”

“She says I shouldn’t have had her in the pictures with me, that I was exploiting her.”

“Yes, because it’s positively criminal to want a professional portrait of yourself and your child. Shall we move on to Alva’s bedroom?”

Yes please.

•   •   •

We steel ourselves for something even more dark and austere, but instead we’re greeted by a shimmering vision in lilac silk, festooned, flounced and ruched within an inch of its life. The carved ivory bed is set on a platform with such elaborate drapery at its head that the only appropriate nightcap would be a tiara. Facing the bed is a desk of purple marble with a writing set, though with that view, the only thing you could effectively pen is a Barbara Cartland novel.

“Wow!”

“I love this,” Gracie beams.

“What do you think?” I ask Ravenna.

“It’s a bit matchy-matchy.”

To say the least. The chairs, the chaise, the footstools are all the same lilac hue.

Quite spectacular, nonetheless. It’s just a shame you can’t take photos; I’d love to send this to Krista, make out it’s my hotel room.

“Who’s the woman on the ceiling?”

Ravenna is referring to a soft-focus beauty in a toga reclining amid the clouds.

“Athena,” Gracie replies. “Goddess of wisdom and war.”

“Aren’t those two things mutually exclusive?” I ask.

She smiles. “Apparently the painting was removed from a Venetian palazzo, shipped to Newport and glued above the bed so Alva could feel inspired every morning as she awoke.”

“Hmm,” Pamela pulls a face. “The first picture I see every morning is me at my fattest taped to the fridge, so I reach for the Special K instead of the bacon.”

“So you’re focusing on a visual of what you
don’t
want to be,” I observe.

“Not very aspirational, when you put it like that,” she admits.

“Move toward your dreams, not away from your problems.” I quote one of the postcards I have pinned above my desk.

Ravenna rolls her eyes and moves on to the next room.

I look back at Athena and wonder whose image I might glue to my ceiling when I get home? Oprah probably. And Pink, because she’s one of those “live out loud” people. And she always seems to be laughing. I want to laugh more.

“Well, would you believe it?”

“What’s that?” I look back at Pamela, now getting into her guidebook.

“After all that badgering of her daughter to marry a man she didn’t love, Alva was the first woman in Newport to get a divorce.”

“Really?”

“Yes! She said she wanted to set an example and give other women the courage—to be like a female knight rescuing other women.”

“I wonder how her daughter felt about that?”

“Well she got a divorce too! Admittedly after twenty-eight years of dutiful marriage. Oh gosh.”

“What?”

Pamela gives Gracie a queasy look. “Even after Consuelo divorced him, the duke still received a payment of two and a half million dollars, every year until he died!”

Gracie squeezes her daughter’s hand. “Whatever it costs, it will be worth every penny to be free of that man.”

I know they’re talking about Brian now.

“He wants the house,” I hear her whisper.

“I thought he would. Let him have it; it’s only filled with memories of him anyway. Better to have a fresh start.”

“I’m too old for a fresh start,” Pamela’s voice wobbles.

“Nonsense, it’ll do you good. You’re just tired now, that’s all. Good things are coming, I just know it.”

She puts her arm around her daughter and guides her onward. Mothers. Always thinking they know what’s best for their children. Some a tad more proactively than others.

And so to the foodie side of things, the reason we’re here.

We hurry through the Salon Russe dining room because a) Gracie already told us about “service
à la russe
” last night, and b) the walls are the color of uncooked meat.

They call it “rose marble” but it really does look like a mix of bloodied and browning steak.

“How very unpalatable,” Pamela shudders as we scurry on to the kitchens.

“This is where you’d be, Mum,” Ravenna smirks as we descend the staircase. “Down in the servants’ quarters.”

“I wouldn’t mind a bit,” Pamela enthuses as we step into a spacious kitchen flooded with sunlight from two sets of French windows. “Look at this place! It’s just beautiful!”

Even I have to admit, this is a very good-looking setup. There’s a row of black cast-iron ovens along one wall, a huge wooden preparation table in the middle and, hung above it, I count twenty-six gleaming copper pots and pans.

“Now that’s a lot of cookware.” I step closer. “I love how the lids have long handles too—doesn’t that make sense, so you don’t get scalded with steam when you check on the contents.”

“I can’t believe they’re letting us cook here this afternoon!” Pamela looks brimming over with wonder as she takes in all the mansion-sized details from yesteryear—the hatbox-size cake tins, the sink you could take a bath in, and what looks like a two-person rolling pin.

“Is this for real?” Ravenna, meanwhile, is in the scullery, pointing to an off-white tea set with hand-painted blue lettering spelling out the words
Votes for Women
.

I peer more closely at the china. It really is a very striking design. Funny to think they were into slogans and branding back in 1909, when Alva first kicked off her women’s suffrage campaign.

“It seems unfathomable that there was ever a time when women
didn’t
get to vote,” I note.

“Well, even the president at the time said that ‘sensible and responsible women’ don’t
want
to vote!”

“Are you serious?” I scoff. “Attitudes like that make me fume!”

“It was the same way for Alva,” Gracie chuckles at my flush of injustice. “Even as a child she was chasing down equality—riding her horse bareback, punching boys in Sunday school. She said, ‘The life of a boy with its excitement and adventure had my entire devotion.’”

She points to the relevant section in the guidebook. Apparently Alva wasn’t considered ladylike enough to play with the other Newport daughters, and the boys taunted her saying she couldn’t keep up with them because she was “just a girl.” This ignited such a rage in her that she determined to show them exactly what she was capable of.

“I was a law unto myself,” Alva said. “What more could one desire?”

Wow. I love that! Funny how my opinion of her has altered during the course of the tour—initially I dismissed her as an overbearing control freak, but then I hear this and I’m full of admiration for her feisty, pioneering spirit.

“And, for the record,” Gracie concludes, “Consuelo did ultimately marry for love (to a French aviator) so I guess all’s well that ends well.”

That is good to know. I wonder if mother and daughter made up in later life? Something tells me Pamela is wondering the same.

“If these walls could talk, eh?” She smiles at me.

We pause for a moment, as if we might hear an echo from the past if we listen closely enough, but instead we hear Eminem’s “The Monster.”

“It’s Eon,” Ravenna scrambles for her phone. “I’ll catch you up at the tea house!”

“Here we go again!” Pamela winces.

“She’s always particularly spiteful to her mother after she’s spoken to that idiot boy,” Gracie explains.

“Really?”

Pamela concedes a nod before turning away.

“I think he eggs her on,” Gracie opines.

“But why?” I want to know.

She shrugs. “All part of his controlling games, I suppose.”

“Will you look at these dinky china cups!” Pamela clearly wants to change the subject. “You’d need twenty to make up a Grande at Starbucks!”

I’m noticing something of a pattern here. Gracie brings things to a boil then Pamela whips the pot from the stove before anything bubbles over. I wonder if it’s necessary for Gracie to try and trigger a change in Pamela’s life—she could be on the verge of cracking up of her own accord. I mean, how much peacekeeping can one person perform? She’s been doing it with her husband for years, then her daughter, all the while trying to get her mother to pipe down.

Still, if ever you were going to rock the boat, Newport is the place to do it.

•   •   •

After perusing the cabinets of hand-painted china and elegantly fanciful teapots, including one silver genie’s lamp specifically designed for hot chocolate, it’s a massive comedown when we cross the back lawn to the Chinese Tea House and discover paper plates and polystyrene cups.

“Dear me!” Gracie tuts. “You’d think they could at least offer a basic mug.”

“So disappointing.” I share her dismay as I take in the help-yourself tea bags and hot-water dispensers.

“Let me see what I can do.”

“Mum, no!” Pamela implores. “Leave it.”

But Gracie has already latched on to that bone.

She has a point. This is such a one-of-a-kind setting: a Chinese pagoda with dusty jade roofing, red columns and a black lacquered base, set in the grounds of a Versailles-inspired mansion overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s worthy of a ten-tiered cake stand, but instead everything is prepackaged and heaped in a basket.

“Does a cookie
ever
look appealing when it’s coated in cling-film?” I query.

“At least the crisps are fairly local,” Pamela says, holding up a bag of Cape Cod Sea Salt & Vinegar.

I shake my head. Never mind the hungry poor at the Seaman’s Institute, the privileged classes have gone horribly awry here.

“Can you imagine if you took this over as a concession, how amazing the afternoon teas would be?”

“Oh, I’d have a field day!” Pamela’s imagination is immediately sparked. “I’d source as many recipes from the original time period, and maybe go a bit contrary—Coffee Cake for a tea room?” she ponders. “And I rather like the idea of something bright but simple like jam tarts. And lemon curd ones. Maybe add in something with a Chinese flair to reflect the surroundings?”

“You could do fortune cookies but have quotes from Consuelo!” I laugh. “Perhaps throw in an Election Day cake—you know, to represent the votes.”

Pamela chuckles. “And the centerpiece would be a mansion-sized Marble Cake!”

“Is it difficult,” I ask, “to get that swirly effect?”

“Not really, you just split the cake mixture, add cocoa powder to one half and then spoon it into the pan in alternate dollops.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, then you take a skewer and whirl it around a couple of times.”

“That’s so cool!”

“You can actually do any color combination you like. And any number of colors.”

“So you could do a cake to match every marbled room here?”

“You could indeed.”

“I’m back!” Gracie clinks through the doorway carrying three sets of cups and saucers.

“Please tell me you didn’t take these out of the cabinets,” Pamela blanches as she sees the “Votes for Women” design.

Gracie rolls her eyes. “They sell them at the gift shop.”

“Really?” I brighten.

“And you bought them just so we didn’t have to drink out of a paper cup?”

“Oh please,” she tuts at her daughter. “How many times are we going to get the chance to have tea together in the grounds of a Newport mansion?”

“They will make for a better photo,” I admit.

“And they make a lovely keepsake.”

“Oh they do!” I coo.

Gracie hands me my set. I couldn’t be happier and quickly decant my steaming beverage. (Has to be green tea in a Chinese Tea Room.)

“Why don’t we get a picture of all three of us together?” Gracie suggests.

We position ourselves on the pagoda steps, surrounded by the Chinese dragons and curly maned lions and do two poses—one ladylike with little fingers cocked, then another raising our cups with a rallying cry.

At which point Ravenna, who has tracked us down, decides to make a sharp left and pretend she doesn’t know us. Suits us fine.

“What a position!” Pamela sighs as she strays to the edge of the terrace and gazes out at the mansion-studded coastline. “Is this the Cliff Walk you were talking about?” she asks as she spies the pathway below.

Gracie and I didn’t make it this far, so I’m eager to take a look as well. It’s certainly dicier here—a jumble of big gray rocks to navigate—but oh that view when you look back across the glinting water, all the way to Easton’s Beach.

As Pamela follows the flutterings of a white butterfly, you can almost see the tension leaving her body. Gracie and I keep quiet, willing her to absorb the abundance of well-being.

“This place makes you feel so dignified somehow,” she says as she tilts her face to the sun. “Almost as if nothing bad could find you here!”

“Ready to go?” Ravenna appears on cue.

Gracie and I exchange a look, “
Almost
.”