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“Who is Rosa Lewis? Why, Rosa Lewis is the most extraordinary woman and she’s had the most extraordinary history. She began life as a scullery maid and became one of the greatest cooks in England – a friend of the King as well as his cook; a friend too of the Kaiser and of all the Lords, Ladies, Dukes, Earls and politicians and authors – and everybody else you can think of including dogs, cats and policemen. In fact, all the great London world knows Rosa Lewis – and a good bit of the American world too.”

This was the answer American journalist Mary Lawton received from a male friend when she first asked about Rosa Lewis in the 1920s. The reply inspired her to track down and interview Rosa about her life. Her account was published in 1925 as a book, reportedly recording Rosa’s life story in her own inimitable ‘cockney sparrow’ style. Rosa later vehemently renounced the accuracy of the story, but the basic framework of her well documented life up to that point is correct and many of her colourful comments are, at the very least, typical of the indomitable, spirited, society cook and raffish Edwardian hostess identity, that she cultivated and came to inhabit so completely as she grew older.

Rosa was actually born in Leyton, Essex, rather than within the sound of Bow Bells, in September 1867. Her father, William Ovenden, was a watchmaker and undertaker – an extravagant and pre-occupied man – and Rosa paints her mother, Eliza, as a timid dependent figure. Rosa was the fifth of nine children, a very self-contained and fiercely independent child, who repeatedly challenged her older brothers’ dominance and was regularly thrashed by them for doing so. She recalled how ‘I thought it was all so dreadful for my mother to be dependent on my brothers, and for men to talk all the time about what they did to support the family, it being their duty as well as their privilege.’ The experience left her with a determination to be able to support herself and to avoid having children because they only lead to disappointment and poverty. As a child, she ‘used to pray to be a boy and woke up every morning hoping that the miracle had happened.’

In fact her ambition to support herself and her mother came true rather sooner than she expected, since she left the local board school and was placed in service as a scullery maid at the age of 12. Four years later her hard work earned her a place in the kitchens of Sheen House, Mortlake, home of the exiled comte de Paris and his family. She began to realise that cooking was a skill that could earn her both money and recognition, so she spent hours in the kitchen learning from the other staff and perfecting new techniques that she taught herself with endless practice. Her efforts paid off when she rose through the kitchen ranks to cook, and wealthy, society guests at Sheen House complimented her dinners. The most important of these was the Prince of Wales, later Edward IV, who became a lifelong patron and admirer of both her work and personality. Society hostesses took care to employ her whenever he was an expected guest and she created stunning dishes for royal functions.

In 1887 she embarked on her career as a freelance society cook and caterer, going out to cook in some of the greatest houses in the country. Lady Randolph Churchill was the first to employ her, followed by the Savilles, and the Asquiths. Her reputation and her society contacts, many of whom became personal friends grew, until by 1897 at the age of 30 she was ‘the most unusual, successful, socially acceptable caterer’ in England. This remarkable ascent from scullery maid to society cook had not been without some heavy costs however. In 1893 Rosa married the exotically named butler, Excelsior Tyrel Chiney Lewis ‘for business reasons’. In her bluff way she later claimed that ‘I don’t know why I married, but I just did, and then forgot all about it, which is generally not the case at first’. But the most accepted explanation is that two of her male society clients ‘arranged’ the marriage to set the couple up in a house at Eaton Terrace which had rooms that they could use to conduct extra-marital liaisons in. In any event Rosa found marriage stifling and soon became ‘bored to death’ cooking and cleaning for one man. She ‘wanted to live with human beings – lots of them, not just one man and sticks of furniture.’ The solution, both personally and financially, was for Rosa to return to her catering business, but this just aggravated Lewis‘sense of inferiority and caused him to become hugely jealous of all her male clients. He increasingly drowned his sorrows in drink, but when his bossy sister moved in to ‘help’ it was the final straw for Rosa, who removed herself to a small property of her own.

In 1902 she purchased the lease on the fashionable Cavendish Hotel, in Jermyn Street (not far from Addidi’s current offices) for £5,000. She said she hoped it would be something for Lewis to do for himself while she continued catering. Under his management the hotel lost money - she suspected fraud - and his drunkenness drove away custom. Rosa (in her own mind at least) ‘separated’ from Lewis, but never officially divorced. She also had him declared bankrupt owing debts of £5,000. According to her own principles of independence and determination to owe nothing, she then began to take on more work, do all her own shopping at Convent Garden at dawn and reduce what she ate to a minimum in order to pay him back every penny of the debt. She not only succeeded in doing that on her own, but built up her hotel business as she did so.

She developed the Cavendish hotel into a replica Edwardian country house and acted the role of perfect hostess, so that guests felt they were invited to a (slightly raffish) house party. Later some of her regular clients, such as Lord Ribblesdale and Sir William Eden took permanent rooms there and became regular clients. Eden wrote about how he looked forward to seeing her smiling face again at each visit, and she was known as a kind and generous employer. Rosa’s personal enjoyment of her work was evident. ‘I have never wanted to amass a fortune in a single year’, she explained in 1924:
‘I would rather be twenty years doing it, because doing it is as much a pleasure as having it, and while you are making your fortune and earning your living you are making your friends. Every client I have ever worked for is my friend, and will be to the end... I owe all the pleasures of my life to them.’

Not surprisingly, the hotel flourished as the favoured society destination and ‘home from home’ in London. She hosted parties and provided accommodation for distinguished English families and American millionaires. She bought property on either side so that the hotel enclosed its own courtyard garden, and decorated the rooms lavishly. She had an eye for good publicity too; famously furnishing the lavish ‘Elinor Glyn’ room to reflect that author’s infamous heroine - a Balkan Queen who received her lovers on a tiger skin – in her best-selling novel Three Weeks. Rosa developed her catering business until she had a small army of smartly dressed trainee undercooks in her kitchens where she prepared all the food and then travelled out to the smartest venues, which now included official dinners for government dinners as well as private functions, accompanied by her team of helpers. Her cooking exploits were widely recorded in the press, she was called in to lead and judge a national competition to find the best Englishwoman cook, and the Daily Mail began publishing her recipes.

The Edwardian whirl of grand scale entertaining came to a sudden end with the outbreak of the first World Ward. Rosa threw herself into the war effort by turning the Cavendish into ‘a social first aid centre’ for servicemen, rich or poor. Her usual modus operandi was to invite them to stay as guests and then omit to charge them, or to provide food and drink and find the wealthiest officer to foot the bill. Thousands of ‘her boys’ as she called them, could testify to her Robin Hood like generosity. But the hotel lost money and she had only two helpers as ‘staff’ so guests were often expected to ‘muck in’ with the cooking. After the war the now shabby hotel was Rosa’s sole focus and she began to retreat into its comforting Edwardian surroundings, to hide from the rapid social changes occurring around her. She hired the seamstress Edith Jeffrey, who became her lifelong friend and business partner at the hotel, to help refurbish the interior fabrics. She also bought two new properties - Castle Rock at Cowes and The Homestead in Sussex – which she decorated in her usual style and let out to large house parties. There is little doubt that Rosa was more than content with her lifestyle. In 1925 she claimed that she had no regrets, ‘no ambitions that I have not satisfied – no wish that I cannot or could not achieve.’

The social world that Rosa loved and flourished in however, began to disappear in the 1930s. She did encourage a new crowd of ‘bright young things’ who flourished briefly, but although she once more played generous hostess to servicemen during World War 2 she had far fewer resources with which to do so and the hotel began to decline. Rosa herself, remained ‘a permanent unchanging Edwardian’, continuing to dress in the Edwardian style and refusing to update the hotel’s furnishings. Her famous cockney wit and her outspoken, sometimes abrasive style of speech became more pronounced as she aged as did her consumption of champagne. In 1944 her health declined and she had to stay in a nursing home. She eventually returned to the hotel to live out her final years, nursed devotedly by Edith Jeffrey, and died there in 1952. The streets around St James were closed for her funeral, which was a moving event attended by many major public figures.

Asked what she thought of Rosa Lewis, when she published her story in 1925, Mary Lawton replied: ‘Of course I loved Rosa Lewis, who could help it? .... She charmed me as she has always charmed everyone. Witty, amusing, gay, kind, shrewd, natural, and ... always unafraid. I think of her as the most courageous person I have ever known.’ Rosa Lewis was also a supremely talented chef, a very successful hotelier and businesswoman, extremely wealthy and delighted to be generous with her money where she could.