The Surprising Life Of Constance Spry BY SUE SHEPHARD, MACMILLAN, $56.99.
In the early 1900s, enigmatic Englishwoman Constance Spry, a young health lecturer, travelled the Irish countryside in a caravan preaching hygiene and sanitation to poor families.
Cheery “Connie” in her elegant attire was as loved by urchin children as she would be feted in the ’30s by artistic icons photographer Cecil Beaton, set designer Oliver Messel and the painter Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein), with whom Spry had a protracted love affair. This solid biography shows how Connie’s childhood passion for wild flowers and a chance meeting with a ’20s showman blossomed into an unusual profession.
Her signature flower and wedding shop, and flower school in London’s fashionable Mayfair became legendary, and she styled two royal weddings and a coronation. Yet what is most fascinating is that even in this marginal world of petals and petticoats, Connie was ahead of her time and the first to experiment with cabbage roses and cherry tomatoes as innovative table decoration.
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