The Belles of the Kitchen

“Belles of the Kitchen” (NYPL Digital Gallery)

The Belles of the Kitchen was a play written by Mrs. Field, the aunt of the Vokes Family of actors – three sisters, a brother and an adopted brother who toured to great acclaim in the 1870s and 1880s.

Rosina Vokes (1854-1894) grew up in London, the daughter of Frederick, a costumier, and Sarah Vokes. The entire Vokes family acted: Rosina and her siblings Frederick, Victoria and Jessie. They had all loved to sing and dance from an early age and were encouraged to go into acting. Mrs. Field took the four Vokes children to Plymouth and there they “were taught elocution and stage action.” Rosina was only four when she went to Plymouth.

Library of Congress

Mrs. Field had been a music teacher, and seems to have had many connections in the theatrical world. She arranged for the children to join a “pantomime troupe” and it was in this troupe that they became well known as the Vokes Family. But they wanted to act, not do pantomimes – so Mrs. Field wrote “The Belles of the Kitchen” for them to appear in.

“The Belles” was first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in 1870, and to great acclaim in New York in 1872. They returned to New York with the play two years later, too. When the Vokes Family appeared in Toronto,Canada, one critic described the sisters as “Victoria, demure and dignified; Jessie, elegant and aristocratic; Rosina, merry and mischievous…with a sprightliness and vivacity all her own.” Rosina returned to America in 1885 with her own troupe, also with great success. Sadly, she died aged 40 in 1894.

What was the play like? It was a musical comedy – with plenty of dancing involved. I suspect that it was a fairly typical vaudeville production, enlivened by the charm and talent of the Vokes sisters (and of the brothers’ dancing – one critic seemed mesmerized by their legs, for some reason). I wasn’t able to find a synopsis of the play. I’d also like to know more about Mrs. Field, the playwright, but she doesn’t tend to be credited with writing the play. If and when I do find out more, I’ll come back to this post and let you know.

Sources

“Amusements: Last Night’s Incidents,” New York Times, January 6, 1874 [Vokes Family in Belles, at Niblo's Theater]
“Music and the Drama,” The Canadian Monthly and National Review (Volume 10, 1876), p. 184.
Welch, Deshler. “Rosina Vokes’ Life,”  The Theatre (Volume 2, 1887)  p. 352.

Rosina Vokes at Answers.com

Sheet music from Belles of the Kitchen at the Library of Congress
Vokes family in the 1881 UK census (confirmed by Victoria Vokes’ birth record here)

Victorian House Calls

A doctor in the 19th century may not have had a hospital uniform to wear as a symbol of his profession, but he would have had other ways of letting people know exactly who he or she was. These ranged from the white lab coat to special vehicles and bags. Lab coats were first worn in the 19th century. They were worn by  doctors and scientists when in laboratories, and gradually came to be worn in hospitals as well. Lab coats were well known by 1897, when an anonymous MIT junior wrote in the student publication Technique:

I ardently struggled with clothes-bags and coat-hooks
As into my lab. coat I struggled pell-mell,
Then rushed to my locker and broke many test-tubes,
And thought that I’d rather by far be in h-ll.

If you were a doctor making house calls you would not wear a lab coat, but street clothes. Nowadays, there is quite a range of scrub sets for doctors and other medical personnel to wear as a means of keeping things and people sterile and safe; but scrubs were not developed until the 1940s. The first use of sterile attire came during the 1918 epidemic, when  medical staff began to wear gauze masks and rubber gloves.

Before scrubs, there were other things made specially for those in medicine – such as special carriages. The Physician’s Basket Phaeton was “just the vehicle a physician requires.” Of course you did need to add a horse to pull it (the horse was not included!).The phaeton was an open carriage named for Phaeton, son of the Greek god Helios. Phaeton took his father’s fiery carriage out for a spin and set the earth ablaze in the process. The Physician’s Basket Phaeton was much safer than this!

And when the doctor was riding out, he or she would want a bag to carry supplies in. The “elegant satchels” and the Solid Buggy Case at left were ideal. They do look really heavy to carry, though – don’t they? Like suitcases. Good thing the doctor had that phaeton and wasn’t walking.

[Phaeton image is from Leonard's Illustrated Medical Scientific Journal (1889)]

Lavender Provender

My planters will hold a lot of lavender!

I have never been much of a gardener, but someday that is all going to change. I love fresh herbs, especially things like lavender and lemon verbena, and when I was very young someone gave me a planting kit with seeds and a bunch of tiny little plastic containers. And I tried to grow them, really I did. Only I was in a highrise apartment building and my room faced north onto a dark courtyard and…well, you can imagine how well that worked out.

Now I actually have a backyard, so all I need is a few outdoor commercial planters to put my future herbs in. Oh, and some seeds and seedlings, of course. And some gardening books! Planters are excellent for herbs, vegetable, flowers and small trees because they protect them from diseases in the soil, and from weeds. You can adjust the amount of sunlight and water they get, too. You can even shelter them on the porch when the weather gets wild. They can be small containers, of course, not commercial planters – in fact, I will probably start out small.

Lavender field in Tasmania

Having said that, a commercial planter would hold plenty of lavender, which would suit me fine. I love lavender anything – the color lavender, Yardley’s lavender soap, the lavender skin cream I got on a trip to Belgium in 1989 (it was so amazing!), lavender honey, the background of this post – you name it. Maybe I will have two or three large commercial planters with different kinds of lavender, who knows! But then we will need a bigger back yard, I suppose.

What will we do with all this lavender? Dry some for sachets, of course. We can make our own lotion, oil and candles. And we can make treats like  lavender ice cream. We can even make some unusual candy. Here is a mid-Victorian recipe for lavender sweets:

Lavender Lozenges

Fourteen pounds of powdered sugar, one quart of gum, half an ounce of Mitcham oil of lavender. These are mostly colored with a faint blue or deep pink, and cut out with a fluted cutter or other shapes to fancy.

[from Henry Weatherley, A Treatise in the Art of Boiling Sugar, Crystallizing, Lozenge-Making, Comfits, Gum Goods an d Other Processes for Confectionery, Etc., 1865, p. 107]

Henry Weathersley omits any directions for mixing or cooking the ingredients (Victorian cookery and household guide writers often did this). He does tell us just how to color them and cut them out though, in case we actually figured out how to make the stuff.

[Images from Wikipedia]

A Pink Abomination

Pink, but quite nice really (The Bottle Depot)

Toothpaste and tooth powders were first made my the ancient Egyptians, but it was only in the late 18th, and increasingly in the 19th century, that they started appearing in various fancy flavors such as honey, cherry,orange and areca nut (betel). Toothpaste ingredients included chalk or salt, and sometimes bits of old toasted bread “blackened in the fire, reduced to powder and…mixed with a little honey and a few drops of essence of peppermint”* – not the sort of thing that would make your teeth clean!

In 1879 The Living Age told the story of an fictional inventor whose tricks were probably pretty close to those employed in some Victorian advertising:

1887 ad – will not go mouldy (in theory, anyway) as is “Climate Proof”

A tooth-paste had grown mouldy upon the counters of a score of chemists. The inventor, in an access of despair, sent a pot to the Princess of Wales, and then printed forty thousand labels calling his pink abomination the “Royal Sandringham Tooth-Paste” as used by H.R.H.” What followed? The tooth-paste thus relabeled found a thousand purchasers, and in an incredibly short space of time the inventor was rich enough to fill a column of the Times with testimonials, all proving that until the Sandringham tooth-paste came into use there never was known in England such a thing as a really white set of teeth. Why did the public buy this tooth-paste?…It likes to buy what royalty buys. [The Living Age, vol. 142, 1879 p. 256]

And of course we do still like to buy things because celebrities wear them, eat or drink them, or lose weight using them. The closest thing I found to the imaginary Royal Sandringham Toothpaste was Gabriels’ Royal Tooth Powder, made in the 1870s and 1880s in England. But the Gabriels’ ads were rather terse and didn’t have any testimonials or amusing illustrations, unfortunately. Their tooth preparations were not pink abominations, it seems.

*Lippincott’s Magazine (vol. 18, 1876, p. 125).

A Great Exhibition of Cake

NYPL

We’re going to go to a Victorian wedding today, and it’s all because of the cake.

Very perky!

Behold the incredible bridal cake of Lord Edward Fitzalan Howard (1818-1883) and Miss Augusta Talbot, who were married in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. Well, and this cake certainly is a Great Exhibition in itself, so the timing was perfect. This cake is as frouffy and frilly as a satin ball gown straight out of Godey’s Lady’s Book. And it also has several flags and pseudo-Grecian nymphs and cherubs posing around it.
My favorite part of this creation is the little dogs (or lions, but they look more like dogs to me) in crowns sitting down at the bottom. The one in the front has quite a perky expression.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a fruitcake because that’s what a traditional English wedding cake would have been. When I got married this is what we had, fruitcake with white and lavender icing. It was really good  – even though I am iffy in general about fruitcake (partly because I am revisiting some 60s fruitcake ads for upcoming posts).

Google Books

An 1871 book called The Gentleman’s Table Guide tells us what would have been served at the wedding breakfast with the bridal cake – soups, hot and cold entrees and a large variety of other sweet things including pastries and ice creams. The full menu is over on the left (and has given me several future post ideas).

Can you imagine how nerve-wracking it would have been to actually cut the Howard wedding cake? How would you even begin? (If I had been Miss Talbot, I would have sent it down to the kitchen and let them worry about it). Would you have to dismantle all those columns first? Are the statues made of sugar or did they get reused for someone else’s wedding cake? And if they were edible, who got the pieces with bonus nymphs and/or roses? Because we all know that the pieces with frosting decorations are the absolute best pieces of cake to get.

The Phantom Raisin Seeder Of Old Philadelphia Town

Welcome to the second installment of the meme from yesterday, courtesy of Preston at Me and the Blue Skies.

Here are three places: one where I have lived, one I went to on vacation and one I want to go and visit right now (hint: it isn’t the post office, the mall or the subway!).

The first place is Philadelphia. So here is the Philadelphia Raisin Seeder – for all your raisin-seeding needs. It was patented in 1897, here’s the link if you must know more. And you would not believe how many other patents there are for raisin seeders in the 1890s! I think I may have stumbled on some strange socio-culinary issue here. Future post on the history blog, perhaps.

I lived near here, a long time ago, quite near. Near Philadelphia, that is. Not the raisin seeder.

And I wasn’t all that enterprising.

Next we have a place I went once on holiday. Not bath as in the bathtub, though that can be a vacation. Of sorts. No – Bath, England.

We went to a bookstore. I think. And on the way there we saw the outside of the famous Bath Baths. And there was a nice cup of tea involved at some point too (it is always, always a nice cup of tea in England). Now that’s intrepid traveling. Add in a youth hostel and a camera shot of a full moon, and you’ve got yourself a Lonely Planet episode!

Please note in the 1930s guidebook ad, on the right, that if you do go to Bath, and have more exciting adventures than we did – you can get an actual chess piece to move things for you. Get it? Moving things around like in the game of chess. Mind you, if they move your furniture the way I play chess, you’d end up without anything to sit on.

Now finally, here’s where I want to go. Nobody said it had to be in 2008. I’m going to Switzerland in 1913 for a restorative vacation. And believe me, they would know how to look after people from the future who were exhausted yet overstimulated by mall muzak and brightly lit racks of DVDs in Best Buy and being packed into the subway like a – well, like a raisin in a Philadelphia Raisin Seeder.

Now this is my kind of place!

Private Suites With Bath and Dressing Rooms. Absolute tranquility secured by double passages. Most beautiful views of lake and mountains! Most Modern Sanitary and Ventilating arrangements.

Oh good. I want to be well ventilated!

But wait…what is all this about “daily concerts by the Milan Orchestra” -? Somehow this does not fit in with the absolute tranquility.

I may have to have a word with the manager.

****

The Philadelphia ad is from my pals at Duke University. They don’t know me, but they are my pals! The other two images are from guidebooks that were lying around here. And today’s lousy-pun-in-the-title is explained over here.

And tomorrow, the final meme installment: 4 Weird Retro Jobs!

A Bottle Of Odors

Here’s a weird little scene. I think this is a mother and daughter. The daughter is talking fast, sounds defensive. She probably wasn’t supposed to send fifty cents to Lundborg’s for a frivolous perfume price list. She was supposed to buy some thing sensible, like cotton thread or wool underwear. Or donate it to the Ladies’ Aid Society. Or something. Not this nonsense where you douse yourself with essence of Alpine Violet!

“Everybody says that Lundborg’s is the best. And everybody is right.” Peer pressure! You just know the mother is going to say “And if everybody said that they were going to do the can-can in the middle of Madison Avenue, would you do that, too?”

She probably would, you know. Check out that fancy sharp little parasol. Mamma had better watch what she says!

And to top it off young missy says that she is going out to buy “a large bottle of one of the odors” right now – going right back outside, she isn’t even going to put that parasol down.

That seals the deal all right. What a brilliant ad copywriter! A bottle of odors – yes, we are all going to be putting that on the top of our shopping lists!

Advertisement from the mid-1880s, from Harper’s Weekly.

Beard and Circuses

Eureka! You too can escape the sideshow life with help from the amazing Mr. Dorenwend of Toronto – purveyor of the “Eureka” Hair Destroyer.

That is quite a before picture. Isn’t that Ulysses Grant in a fancy dress? What’s he doing up in Canada, anyway!

If I were Mr. Dorenwend’s PR person I would advise him not to use the tag line “A Quick Shave” though, it implies that the Eureka stuff isn’t quite strong enough without a little follow up with a razor.

For more Dorenwend amusement, see Madame Boudoir and friend here.

Beard and Circuses

Eureka! You too can escape the sideshow life with help from the amazing Mr. Dorenwend of Toronto – purveyor of the “Eureka” Hair Destroyer.

That is quite a before picture. Isn’t that Ulysses Grant in a fancy dress? What’s he doing up in Canada, anyway!

If I were Mr. Dorenwend’s PR person I would advise him not to use the tag line “A Quick Shave” though, it implies that the Eureka stuff isn’t quite strong enough without a little follow up with a razor.

For more Dorenwend amusement, see Madame Boudoir and friend here.

Madame Boudoir Guarantees (and Sees) All

t was hard being a glamorous lady in the 1880s (well, it’s hard to be in any era, I think – but let’s just say the 1880s because that’s when these ads were around), what with the tight-lacing and the endless layers of clothing in the middle of summer, and buttoning your boots with button-hooks.

But today, let’s talk about how you, the fashion plate of the 1880s, want hair on your head, but not so much growing out of your chin.

Fortunately the Ladies’ Journal had advertisers ready to help with both issues. First, the fabulously-named Madame Boudoir wanted to assist with your “superfluous hair.” And unlike her competitors’ preparations, hers would not have the reverse effect of “destroying your face.” Err…what were those other folks putting in their depilatories? Never mind, I don’t really want to know…

I am sure that Madame Boudoir could help with all kinds of problems, with a name like that. She should have had an advice column, or manufactured lingerie. Or perhaps she could predict the future – she could use Mr Dorenwend’s wig stand as a crystal ball!

Speaking of which…we need to think about a gorgeous wig for the top of your head. And for your wiggy needs we have Mr. Dorenwend (who made so many other things I am going to write a series on him for my history blog this fall – also he was tangentially involved in a murder trial in Toronto, as a witness, which really is a story for that other blog)…

It’s good for everybody, that wig on the stand! I especially love how Dorenwend’s is a Paris Hair Works, even though:

(a) The Dorenwends were originally from Germany,

(b) The Hair Works were in Canada,

(c) But not in Paris, Ontario.

Madame Boudoir was clearly aiming for a French effect, with a name like that. Perhaps she was the mastermind behind this. Speaking of face-destroying.