Being a wife in the 1890s equals scrubbing the floor, according to Gold Dust Washing Powder. That Eight Hour Man is no captain of industry, or else his Fourteen Hour Wife would have a fleet of housemaids and they’d have to do the scrubbing.

As for me, there’s no powder in the world – gold-dust-enhanced or not – that would save me any time. Never mind strength or patience. I don’t know how much money it’d save either, but as soon as I’d saved enough I’d be off in my time machine looking for a Swiffer to take back to 1895.

The wording of this also implies (to me anyway) that she’s only a wife for fourteen hours. As soon as she clocks off, she turns into the Ten Hour Floozy. Now that sounds like fun! I’d like to see an ad featuring her.

Fewer tricks when you treat ‘em with Sun Maid Raisins, huh?

These children are probably not all that thrilled, not really. Like Junie B. Jones, they are thinking that they did not say “trick or fruit,”* did they? But they will pretend for the camera. They’ll come back and toilet paper the house later.

Having said that, the clown boy does look like he’s dropping the raisins back into the bowl. Doesn’t he? The tiger, too – he’s about to drop them back in, too. And the girl is only smiling because she decided to hang back and wait until they get to the next house, where there’s probably some candy corn, at least.

There’s a particularly funny bit in the sidebar, you can see it better here, where they are pushing raisins for the grownups, too. Set out some bowls of raisins, folks, because

Perhaps you’re having an adult-type party yourself!

What does that even mean, an “adult-type” party? If this adult-type person is going to have to keep answering the constant ding-donging of trick-or-treaters, I’ll need something more festive than Sun-Maid  to sustain me: a chocolate martini would be ideal, I think. Straight up, hold the raisins, please.

*This is my favorite line from the classic holiday tale Junie B. Jones, First Grader: Boo…And I MEAN IT!

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)

Sue: Come in, Jeannie, come right in! Let me take your – no, wait. Before I take your hat and coat – no, don’t sit down! I must show you my bathroom.

Jeannie: Actually I only came over to ask if I could possibly borrow a cup of sugar. I really need to get going to pick up little Jimmy at school and -

Sue: It’s right down the hall. Come on! You simply must see what I’ve done in here.

Jeannie: Err…oh, I really had rather not…

Sue: Don’t be silly, I’ve redecorated! Look! Green. Everything is green. I’ve even got a green dress on to celebrate, see?

Jeannie: Well, yes. It is green all right.

Sue: Tell me that isn’t a stunning improvement!

Jeannie: Oh, err…yes. It is! What a stunning improvement. Now I really must be -

Sue: See the rug, and the green wallpaper and the little green jars. And the toilet seat cover, look at that! It’s called a Pearl Seat, apparently.

Jeannie: Goodness me. Yes. Never mind about the sugar. I’ll – I’ll see you later.

Sue: I can’t stop peeking in. Oh – bye dear. If you run into anyone we know – just send them right over, all right?

[This 1947 ad is from the cornucopia of ephemeral wonder that is  LiveJournal Vintage Ads.]

I love coffee, no matter what. Even if my usual cup is full of instant, I am glad it is there. But once a week we go out for café lattes, and this is an amazing treat. Also expensive. Also full of the kind of caffeine that keeps me up all night, googly-eyed and cranky (such a great combination!). So we’ve been looking for a home coffee machine, my dear spouse and I. One that can make us special coffees, caffeine-calibrated and delicious. Ones that don’t get cold when you drive them home to drink on the back porch. Well, now I know just what I want. If you love coffeehouse coffee or cocoa on a cold crisp autumn day like today – or iced cappuccinos in the summer (I know I do) – I know just what we both need: the NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto.

Wikipedia

The NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto is a one-cup coffee machine that makes everything from Caffe Lungo (espresso with twice as much water as a regular espresso) to Latte Macchiato (espresso with milk) to Mochas and Chococino (otherwise known as frothy, amazing hot chocolate). You use special capsules of 100% Arabica coffee and you can adjust the froth levels, temperature and strength of your drink. I would always go for maximum froth to make a lovely crema layer. The Dolce Gusto’s 15 bar pressure pump will create this with no trouble. The 15 bar pump is crucial because a regular coffee machine only has 1 or 2 bars of pressure. And the temperature can be as hot or icy as you like. It is the only coffee machine around that will make hot or iced drinks, so you can enjoy it all year round.

Best of all, your coffee can be exactly as you like. This is perfect for me with regards to caffeine – as I said earlier, it affects me a lot. I would be able to enjoy fabulous lattes any time of day, yet still get to sleep at night. And I would want to try every coffee variant you can make with the Dolce Gusto, because I have only ever had lattes. What can I say, I find Starbucks et al very confusing. But I’d love to experiment at home and become a real expert.

The Dolce Gusto is sleek and modern looking, too – an asset to any kitchen counter. It comes in four designer colors: red, white, black and titanium (which is silvery). I’m thinking white or titanium would look best in our kitchen which is mostly white with wooden counters. I can dream, can’t I, as I slurp my instant and write this?

You can be your own professional barista with the NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto. I know that I want to be. If you go check out some of the reviews at Divine.ca, you will see that I am not alone in this. So the NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto is truly at the top of my wish list for the holiday season. And if I get one before Christmas, I promise to make Santa a nice big decaf cappuccino with a lovely Christmas tree drawn in the foam, and a homemade biscotti on the side. He won’t even have to leave a tip in my barista tip jar.

I am known, in my family, for getting up from the table in the middle of dinner to go look up a word in the dictionary. Often it is the same Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology that my mother used to consult when she needed to look up a word we were using in conversation at dinner many years ago (so you can see where I got it from!). My family are kind and tolerant, and they like word history too, so they just smile when they hear me say “let me just look that up” and go off to the bookshelves in the next room.

Now, with Discovering Words in the Kitchen – a wonderful little culinary etymological dictionary – I can have my words and eat them (or rather, eat my dinner) too. Walker’s introduction is a concise and helpful history of dining in Britain through the ages. The rest of the book is divided into sections dealing with all manner of ingredients – fruits, vegetables, cereals and so on – as well as with a few common dishes such as the omelette. The omelette (to give you an example of the things you can learn from this book) is either a variation of the Old French oeufs mêlés (mixed eggs) or possibly  from the Medieval French alumette (from the Latin for “thin layer” or “sword blade”). Kitchen implements, cupboard ingredients and general cooking terms are also covered.

So now I keep Discovering Words in the Kitchen right in the kitchen and instead of simmering (originally simpering, but also possibly from the Germanic root sim meaning to hum) when I need to drop a bit of word history into the conversational soup (Old English soppe, something in which soppets or suppets – toasted bits of bread – were dunked) – I will be able to stay in my chair and refer to this informative and very enjoyable book. This will please everyone here at home except one of the cats, who feels that she ought to have a place at the table, and takes my seat every time I leave it.

Note: Shire Books was kind enough to send this book to me for free (as well as several other titles that I’ll be reviewing in the future) – but as always the opinions expressed are totally my own.

Amateur intrepid detectives at a woman’s college, some mysterious goings-on at the lockers
and a fascinating, rather sympathetic villain: all elements of an amazing true story from 1913 worthy of an American Dorothy Sayers.

Barnard College was (and still is) an all-female college, associated with Columbia University, in upper Manhattan; it was founded in 1889. The Teachers’ College and Arts Building at Barnard had a problem in the winter of 1913. There was a mysterious thief who was stealing things out of the school lockers. But instead of hiring an outside, male detective to scope things out, the students decided to form a detective patrol themselves. Some of the women made rounds outside the buildings, and some staked out the locker areas. They blended into the everyday crowds of Barnard students. They were patient, too. It took them a full 30 days to find a suspect. Two of the detectives, Margaret Byrnes and Dorothy Fitch, both from Queens, told the court that they had watched the suspect try six different lockers before they reported her to school authorities and “sent to the West 125th Street Police Station for a policeman.”

That suspect was Elsie L. Schmidt, “a schoolgirl from Brooklyn,” according to the New York Times. She told the court that she had graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1905.* She lived in a boarding house in Brooklyn, on Lincoln Place. The landlords didn’t know anything about her; they said that Miss Schmidt had only been living there for a month. Elsie said that she was hoping to attend Barnard College to study German, and that she’d picked up the neckpiece by mistake while visiting the college. She said she’d been looking for an open locker – these were probably wood lockers back in 1913 – to leave it in for its owner. The Times noted that students now put locks on their lockers and maybe they even went so far as to find  lockers for sale that were extra-sturdy.

The Harlem Police Court was so impressed with the detective students’ testimony that they held Schmidt for $500 bail – a huge sum of money in 1913. When Schmidt was arrested she was carrying a large purse, empty except for a “fur neckpiece, which was said to be the property of a Barnard student.” I wish I knew what had happened to Elsie, but the New York Times does not seem to have published a follow-up (they seem to have done this a lot back a century ago, this is not the first time I’ve longed to know what happened).

It did not look good for Elsie, but I feel rather sorry for her – wandering around Barnard, wishing she was going to college there, maybe taking things to make herself feel, in some strange way, like she belonged there. Yet I also rather like those girl detectives prowling around the hallways and household arts lockers and gym lockers. And though I’ve given up fiction for the time being – it makes me want to turn this into a story of some kind.


*She was probably Elsie Louisa Schmidt, born September 15, 1892 in Brooklyn, see here.

Source: “Girl Captured By Barnard Detectives,” New York Times, March 29, 1913.

Vintage Ad Browser

This Pacesetter House of 1951 is setting the pace a little bit too fast for me. Because a fireplace is supposed to be relaxing to sit by, right? And to me, this looks a little too much like a test pattern.

I used to really like the test pattern – when I was about three. Yes, back in 1965 I used to love getting up a little bit before 6am, which was when Sunrise Semester came on, and watch the test pattern. For those of you too young to have savored this amazing visual treat, the test pattern was black and white geometric stuff that TV stations showed on your screen when they were off the air. Yes, even the TV stations used to clock off and sleep for a few hours every night, back then.

designobserver.

The test-pattern tiles aside, what also bothers me here is the grey carpeting on the ceiling. It looks like the room is standing on its head, so to speak. Maybe that’s just me, though. I wish we could see the rest of this Pacesetter house. Imagine what the bathroom tiles must be like! I love the coffee table and the sofa, though.

What do you think?

Viewlinerltd

And the best part is that traveling via The Holiday Inn Cookbook is that we won’t need an oil change or a brake job – so let’s get into the virtual Acura TL and go stay at the 1972 era Holiday Inn in west Houston! We will dine on Chestnut Shrimp in the Capri Dining Room. Note: there are no chestnuts in the Chestnut Shrimp, they are actually regular breaded and fried shrimp with – well, sliced almonds.* And with the shrimp we will have some Tart Orange Salad (yes, this is a day full of gelatin recipes here at Kitchen Retro).

Then we can frolic the night away in the Roman Club (I sense an Italian theme going on here, don’t you?). We will be only 9 miles from the Astrodome and the Port of Houston, so maybe tomorrow we can go check those out. And if we need a little Houston auto repair – well, that will be right around there too. I’m not sure whether the Houston Holiday Inn in the wonderful postcard is the one we’ll be at (there were four in Houston in 1972) but maybe we can go over there another time. It’s a bit cold for outdoor swimming pools now, anyway. 

Tart Orange Salad

Dissolve one 6-ounce package orange Jello [sic: Jell-O] in 1 cup boiling water. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar over 2 cups diced oranges and let sit for 10 minutes. Drain 1 cup crushed pineapple, but save juice. Add enough water to pineapple juice to make 1 cup and add to Jello. When Jello begins to set, add fruit and chill. Serve on crisp salad greens. Serves 6 to 8.

*No, I do not know why they are not called Sliced Almond Shrimp. And it’s Jell-O because that’s the commercial name, you have to have the dash! Yes, I care about this sort of thing. It’s all part of the glamorous life I lead. Makes me a little nutty (please pass the sliced almonds).