The Surprising Life of Constance Spry Page 22
That Christmas Flowers in House and Garden reached number three in the bestseller list and several journals published admiring reviews. According to Homes and Gardens: ‘There could hardly be a garden lover who would not derive both pleasure and profit from this book dealing with the decorative aspect of every kind of plant, annual and herbaceous, as well as shrubs, roses and water plants.’ The Daily Telegraph declared it ‘altogether a unique and delightful book by one of the most famous flower artists’.
In November that year Violet Henson wrote a review in Harper’s Bazaar, which helped to spread Connie’s fame beyond England: ‘She instructs with the lavishness of a true artist. All [readers’] preconceived ideas on class-consciousness in flowers will be changed as well. One has only to look at the lovely line and form of the group of kale leaves to realize that the humble kitchen garden can hold its own with the aristocrats of the hothouses.’ As a result, America clamoured for a share of the new Spry flowers and Connie accepted an invitation to go to New York to give two lectures on flower decorating. She had no doubt heard many colourful tales of American life from Syrie Maugham who at various times had shops in New York and Chicago, and her London-based American clients said they told everyone about her and her wonderful flowers when they went back home.
The tour was part of a fund-raising campaign for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and was probably arranged through Phyllis Moore and the Botanic Gardens in Dublin. In her foreword to Flowers in House and Garden Lady Moore had observed that in America flower arranging had ‘long reached a position of perfection’, much thought and time being spent on it. The great spring shows of New York, Boston and Philadelphia held popular competitions; details of background, lighting and containers were studied with great care. Connie amazed her audiences with her slides of common English blackberries mingling with hothouse roses, and shocked them with her combined use of cultivated and wild materials. The lectures proved so successful that she was immediately asked to do a nationwide tour under the auspices of the Garden Clubs of America.
These clubs, as Connie was soon to discover, were rather different from English garden clubs: their members were predominantly women and meetings were primarily social rather than horticultural. Few members owned sizeable gardens, most having backyards or a front lawn, and only a few undertook any real gardening activities. Unlike England, America was not a nation of gardeners. Garden club members held coffee mornings to raise funds for landscape preservation, for the greening of city streets and for the conservation of old houses. They loved gardens and flowers and made regular seasonal visits to the most famous national gardens. However, what really excited these ladies were their lavish, stylized arrangements of flowers and house-plants in the home, in which they took enormous pride. American flower shows, so praised by Lady Moore, were about the art of flower arranging mostly with the use of commercially grown material. There were a number of famous names in the field: in San Diego, Gregory Conway was taking America by storm with his luxuriant and interesting but formal arrangements, while in New York there was a famous Japanese arranger called Madame Oria. Connie had her own views on ikebana and Japanese flower arranging – beautiful but quite unsuited to English homes.
As the leading exponent of the English art of flower arranging, Connie was fêted and admired wherever she travelled. America seemed to have fallen in love with her and, for a while, the feeling was mutual.
But this first trip to the US was made in November, so she did not see any spring shows or any gardens of special merit. Nonetheless, in her travels across the eastern and southern states she made frequent notes on whatever she could see growing in the cold winter months. As well as lecturing, she appeared on radio shows and as guest of honour at social events. She was particularly interested in the food and drink and noted in Texas a café brûlé heavily laced with both rum and cognac – ‘so warming to the vitals’ – while in Kentucky she had spiced tea with cinnamon and cloves, ‘perfect for a cold and frosty day’. One evening in Oregon, when she was feeling rather homesick, she attended a grand dinner party and immediately felt transported back home: the rooms were exquisitely furnished with English antiques, the women were dressed in the latest Paris fashions and the food was deliciously European. At one point a long loaf was brought in, very light in texture, ‘as indeed is most American bread – hot, crisp and sliced’. Each slice had been thickly spread with garlic butter and baked for a few moments. It was her first taste of garlic bread. She thoroughly enjoyed it and was much amused when the ladies subsequently repaired to the bathroom to administer mouthwash.
Since she was a small girl, Connie had always been passionately keen on Christmas – all the business of the preparations and decorating the house. She was in Colonial Williamsburg as Christmas approached. Most of middle-class America had adopted Victorian traditions but Williamsburg was determined to do the festival in the grandest possible style. The previous year, the wife of the Governor of Virginia had called on Mrs Louise Fisher, an ‘ardent gardener’ and keen flower arranger, to help. A stickler for historical accuracy, Mrs Fisher searched the Library of Congress archives for inspiring pictures of decorations from times past. She came up with sculpted cornucopias of fruits, flowers and vegetables by sculptors such as Luca della Robbia and the English woodcarver Grinling Gibbons. The society ladies of Old Williamsburg vied with each other to create a prize-winning ‘della Robbia’ wreath, while the district’s Christmas style was widely imitated across America’s East Coast.
Mrs Fisher invited Connie to visit and admire the festive wintry scene: the streets and houses, front doors and windows, lamp posts and fences were smothered in greenery or swathed in highly wrought and often fantastic wreaths, with sprays or swags of leaves, fruits and berries all artfully wired together. Connie had never been keen on dried flowers, except naturally dried seedpods, and any form of dyeing or artificial colouring, tinsel and tawdry painted aluminium baubles – which she called ‘plumbing’ – were most definitely out. But she loved the use of natural locally gathered material and, though she thought it all rather excessive, she was both amused and enchanted. She politely reserved judgement and enquired whether the birds and squirrels ate the free supply of food.
Just before leaving New York for Christmas at home, Connie was invited to meet a group of wealthy society hostesses including Josephine Forrestal, whose husband was Secretary of the Navy, and Mrs Ogden Mills, wife of the Secretary of the Treasury. Both told Connie how much they admired her work and that they longed for her to have a shop in New York. It was already the in thing to have flowers arranged in the Constance Spry style, so a shop was the obvious next step. With her name, they gushed, it would be hugely successful. What this coterie of rich ladies wanted was not profit, but rather the realization of some vaguely conceived idea that with Connie’s help they could revolutionize the American home and garden. Such a shop, they envisaged, would be a ‘fountain whence her influence would flow’. It is not quite clear what they thought was wrong with the American home and garden as it then was, only that as leaders of genteel society they were best suited to influence such changes as might be deemed necessary.
Always susceptible to flattery and persuasion, particularly if it involved doing something new and exciting, Connie listened to the ladies’ ideas with enthusiasm. Pleased with her positive response, they outlined their plans: they would fund the shop, set up the business and pay the staff wages. Connie would receive a small number of shares and a generous percentage of the profits. In return she would give her name to the shop and send her London staff to train their American counterparts. She would also be required to be in the shop personally for five months of the winter season, from October to April, returning to London for the summer.
Connie was overwhelmed. It seemed a dream offer, a fresh horizon to conquer. She threw caution to the wind and ecstatically accepted, on the spot, without consulting Shav, the other directors, or the staff who might be expected to come to New York. Like most of her big adv
entures, she did not think it through. It was enough that she had fallen in love with America, with wealthy Americans and with their free-and-easy warm-heartedness. She was greatly impressed by the similarities she perceived but blinkered to the differences between the culture and climate of the two countries.
Back in England for Christmas, Connie regaled everyone with her ‘wonderful news’. It was not received with much enthusiasm. The directors of the business were busy with the South Audley Street lawsuit. Shav tried to warn Connie that the name was too valuable to hand to a business over which she would have no control. But she brushed all objections aside. Dazzled by her new American friends, by the generosity of their ‘business offer’, she thought that giving her name (even though it was not, strictly speaking, hers) was the least she could do in return.
There was no time to lose. Connie was on a roll and nothing and no one could slow her down or stop her headlong rush into this new adventure. The Americans sent over Patricia Easterbrook, a dynamic young Australian with knowledge of American floristry who spent the summer of 1938 in South Audley Street learning the Spry technique. Connie was expected to send a decorator and a florist for six months to train the American staff. There was no lack of volunteers, and Sheila McQueen (formerly Young) was disappointed not to be chosen because she was too young. Instead Margaret Watson, who had trained at Broadlands and Swanley College, was sent as decorator and Ivy Pierotti, or ‘Pierrot’, the ‘cheerful little cockney with magical fingers and an empty head’, was sent as the florist.
Meanwhile, Connie continued to fire everyone in London with her enthusiasm and pour out her impatience in daily letters to Mrs Mills in New York. The American ladies duly formed their incorporated company, appointed Josephine Forrestal as president and bought ‘charming but tucked away’ premises at 62 East 54th Street. An architect was commissioned to convert and decorate the shop – a pretty ground-floor showroom with an English bow-window at the front and a fresh-flower work-room and storage iceboxes at the rear. It was to be all white, with a few ‘bits and pieces’ from Syrie Maugham’s New York shop. On the second floor were more elegantly furnished showrooms, then several more work-rooms on the third floor for painting and waxing the flowers for the artificial arrangements, for making potpourri and Christmas decorations of wreaths, sprigs and kissing-boughs.
Earlier in the summer Josephine Forrestal had brilliantly solved the need for both an experienced decorator and a source of cut flowers. Her friend Adele Lovett, passionate gardener and wife of a prominent banker, owned a 24-acre estate called Pending at Locust Valley on Long Island. Her hobby was making towering pillar and pedestal flower arrangements with a Flemish inspiration to suit her high-ceilinged rooms. They were created with a Spry-like lavishness of line and a disregard of convention and rule. She used material from her huge, partly wild garden, with its long flower borders, generous vegetable garden, flower meadows and orchard. Strangely, Adele had not heard of Connie or her ideas but Josephine Forrestal persuaded her that she was the only person in America whose approach to flower arrangement was the same as Mrs Spry’s. Furthermore, Adele possessed not only a special knowledge of American horticulture but a garden that could supply most of the flowers needed for the shop. She agreed to start work immediately, without pay, and prepare and plan the shop in advance of Connie’s return in late summer.
Soon after her arrival, Connie went to see Adele’s gardens and was very impressed. Adele was equally charmed by Connie: ‘She was a small, round cheerful person with enormous vitality, a delicious sense of humour, warmth, and exquisite manners. She was, besides, incredibly capable, imaginative, practical and talented.’ They toured the big picking garden with masses of flowering and berried shrubs, the vegetable garden surrounded by four large herb borders; the orchard with peach, apple and pear trees, and the big meadow full of grasses and wild flowers. Connie was staggered by the sheer size and abundance of the plant material. She was particularly interested in so many plants not available in England; everywhere she looked she found new and unusual things.
Early in September Margaret Watson and Pierrot arrived in New York and were installed with Connie in a hotel near the shop. Every moment of the day and much of the night were busy. As soon as the paint had dried, they got down to teaching the American staff and preparing for the opening. Adele recorded:
Mrs Spry taught us to make all the things she needed: potpourri, pomander balls, Christmas ornaments glittered with gold or silver. She showed us how to mount the skeletonized magnolia leaves which came in packages of single leaves from the wholesalers; these were wired on to twigs and branches to make lovely frail sand-colored boughs, to mix with her dried flower arrangements, or to use instead of fresh greens in her flower bouquets. We learned to paint and wax and wire the artificial paper flowers that were her specialty, and to make her giant fresh cabbage roses and enormous carnations, that became the rage, for corsages.
These last were cannibalized from a dozen flowers wired together, and would seem to have been one of several lapses from Connie’s own rules. Perhaps because wiring and artificiality were so successful in American flower decorations she felt it necessary to compromise her own taste and standards.
Christmas, however, was an entirely different matter. On her return from her first visit to New York Connie had burst into Flo Standfast’s ‘Arts’ work-room and declared, ‘I’ve found the most marvellous stuff, my dears, you’ve never seen anything like it!’ It was Scotch tape, which immediately transformed the huge task the Arts team faced every Christmas. Connie was never happier than when sitting on the first floor at South Audley Street chatting to the girls in ‘the Arts’, twisting up bits of wire and velvet and silver tissue to produce some exquisite object no one else could have thought of, her ideas flowing inexhaustibly. She loved the new materials such as cellophanes and plastics, and tried out the decorative possibilities of everything she could lay her hands on. She painted evergreens with gum and glitter to give the delicate effect of hoarfrost, and designed her own ‘baubles’.
The three months before Christmas became the most strenuous in the shop’s year. Parcels of Christmas decorations were sent out to clients all over the country; the very last would be put on the night train at Euston or King’s Cross on Christmas Eve. Patricia Easterbrook and Val were sent to Czechoslovakia to buy up huge quantities of handmade Christmas decorations – carved wooden angels and fruits and translucent bells – which they sent over to stock the New York shop for its opening in November 1938.
The New York storerooms were filled to bursting with all the ‘fripperies and nonsense’ that were becoming so fashionable. Connie had brought with her some vase moulds made by Flo Standfast from her own designs and they found a place in Brooklyn that could make them up for the shop. There were six designs, all finished inside with a high gloss and outside with a matt finish so that they could be tinted to suit the room in which they were to be used – another popular innovation. Connie was firing out ideas by the minute. She now insisted everyone wore a uniform: an unbleached muslin coat with a widely flaring skirt and wide sleeves, designed by Claire McCardle, one of the leading New York dress designers. They could be slipped on over day dresses and were both practical and smart.
Constance Spry Inc. opened its doors on 4 November with a grand cocktail party the night before, when most of chic New York turned up. Parking was solid all along 54th Street and street musicians did a roaring trade. Reminiscent of Atkinsons’, the bow-window framed a single dramatic group, exquisitely lit. The shop was a glittering sight packed with people sitting on the beautiful staircase and all around the gallery, looking down on the shop floor. ‘The scent of all those flowers was like heaven – and finer than any perfume worn by the ladies,’ one gentleman recalled. The staff wore their muslin coats and upswept hairdos, a novel idea among women in New York, who were still devoted to the long bob.
The press adored the ‘so-English Constance’ and her shop. The New York Herald wrote:
&nbs
p; When Nature doesn’t produce just what she wants, Mrs Spry doesn’t hesitate to create something of her own – two little trees, for instance, which stand at the entrance of the shop, made of brilliant bay leaves wired on in symmetrical rows, leaves that she brought back from Europe ‘by the yard.’ Of special interest are her winter flowers and vases of dried leaves, and magnolia leaves that have been turned into shadows by a special treatment. Milkweed pods are used in contrast with strange dried lotus and enormous pine cones in other arrangements. The new shop also contains a room for brides decorated in the mood of romance.
Another reporter wrote: ‘No one, we venture to say, will pass the shop [without stopping] for there is practically nothing that suggests the traditional American flower shop.’
In its first few weeks 62 East 54th Street became a popular meeting place for some of the smartest people in town: the flower club ladies, curious members of the press, friends from Europe passing through, new clients enquiring about a party or a wedding to be done. One day a terrible hurricane hit New York and the shop was filled with soaked customers and staff. Connie had their wet things hung around the radiators and everyone drank hot tea – ‘it was like a party all day.’ The staff always had a morning break for ‘elevenses’ with a cup of tea and a bun, and another at about 3 p.m. Connie was always there: full of the latest news and developments, always demanding more effort, always making it amusing with her delicious sense of humour – everyone adored her.
Launched, lauded and loved, Connie went home for Christmas well satisfied. She had left her staff in New York to face overwhelming pressure of work. It never occurred to her that she had compromised her own standards in flower decoration in order to please her American friends, nor that having the shop in a small out-of-the-way place in New York made even less sense in 1938 than it had in London ten years earlier; nor that two decorators and a florist were simply inadequate for a business that was as busy as South Audley Street where she employed up to seventy people. The indomitable Patricia Easterbrook drove her little American team hard. They learned there was no such thing as a normal working day: ‘funerals, big parties, weddings – whatever . . . you started as early as necessary and worked late until the job was done.’ Sometimes they surpassed themselves and produced superb Spry decorations – for all-white coming-out parties, or cream-and-gold ones with the skeletonized leaves well in evidence. For a party on the roof of the St Regis Hotel for which the host wanted pink lilies when only white could be found, white lilies were smothered in pink theatrical face powder, and no one realized.