London Lavender: An Entertainment

A novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Kent Falconer and his wife Naomi as they set up house in Primrose Terrace near Regent’s Park, meeting an assortment of London characters and observing city life with gentle wit. Through domestic episodes, Zoo visits, folk songs, and neighbors’ intrigues, the book offers a string of comic-sympathetic portraits and social asides rather than a single driving plot. The opening of the novel shows Kent and Naomi leaving his old rooms for a new lodging near Regent’s Park, run by the refined but fussy Packer twins and aided by Mrs. Wiles, whose husband is head keeper of the ape house at the Zoo. Kent befriends the Wileses (and an orangutan named Barbara), sketches his daily Zoo rounds, and, at Naomi’s urging to find useful work, becomes honorary secretary to a folk-song society—pausing to celebrate the freshness of old English tunes and to insert a poignant tale about a device that replays past telephone calls to a grieving lover. Their fellow lodgers emerge: the impulsively kind Mr. Lacey (who defends a one‑legged organ‑grinder), a cinema man, a mysterious recluse, and a fastidious young Socialist; Kent also endures a smoky political salon where a party fixer holds forth. A windfall inheritance then jolts the Wileses into uneasy “gentility,” souring their simple contentment, while the top-floor Socialist outlines his school talks aimed at awakening privileged boys to the labor that underpins their comfort.