Tag: books

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

When Sue Began to Cook

VintageJenny
Illustration from When Sue Began to Cook

On a rainy, dreary November afternoon, Sue complains to her mother that there’s nothing to do. Her brother is at a friend’s house, As for her best friend Ruth Ann — well, she cries all the time now that her mother has been sent away for her health. This is the beginning of When Sue Began to Cook, the last book in the Bettina storybook trilogy by Louise Bennett Weaver.

The complete title of the book is When Sue Began to Cook with Bettina’s Best Recipes. Bettina’s Best Recipes became the brand name of a whole line of cookbooks in the 1920s. Bettina was an authority on cakes and cookies, desserts, sandwiches, and salads. And each topic found its way into one of the Bettina’s Best Recipes cookbooks.

Like all the Bettina books, Sue’s story begins with some really bad poetry:

To every other little maid
Who longs to learn like Sue,
But feels a tiny bit afraid
It’s all too hard to do,
To all the little girls who sigh,
“I need a simple book
To help me!” “Here it is!” we cry,
When Sue Began to Cook

Dedication, When Sue Began to Cook, Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron

Bettina suggests that Sue invite Ruth Ann over for weekly cooking lessons. Then Bettina will teach them both to cook. The plan will occupy Sue at the same time that it gives Ruth Ann something to think about besides her sick mother. (In 1924 when the book was written, Ruth Ann’s mother probably has tuberculosis and was sent to Arizona for the dry air in hopes that it would cure her. The book, however, never says.)

Sue loves the idea, and runs to tell Ruth Ann about the new Saturday plans. The girls’ story unfolds from the notes that Sue keeps after each cooking session. Here are her notes from the first day:

I found Ruth Ann crying, as usual, but it didn’t take her long, after she heard about the Cooking Class, to hustle into a clean dress and hurry over. And oh, the cookies were delicious! 

I intended to save mine for dinner tonight, but of course Robin and Ted came in perfectly ravenous and teased so hard that I had to give them ten or twelve apiece and that doesn’t leave many for Father when he comes. But how proud he’ll be to try his daughter’s first cookies. That is, the first ones I’ve made entirely alone, even to lighting the oven and washing the dishes afterwards.

When Sue Began to Cook, page 14.

As a first recipe, Sue and Ruth Ann make Cocoa Drop Cookies. Then the next week they start at the beginning and learn to make Frizzled Beef over Toast. This recipe is known regionally under many different names in the United States. Chipped beef, SOS, and S—- on a Shingle are but three of the ways people refer to this dish.

Each week Sue and Ruth Ann tackle a new recipe or cooking method, and they build a nice repertoire of recipes through the year. A winter Wheat Cereal with Dates progresses to gingerbread. Then spring brings Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes. The heat of summer brings recipes for Vanilla Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce, Fruit Sherbet, and a Fruit Gelatin. Then the autumn rolls around again, with its traditional Twenties recipes for doughnuts, peanut brittle, and popcorn balls.

In Chapter 52, the last week of the year’s lessons. the girls present a party for their friends. They cook an entire meal from recipes in the book, and proudly present the fruits of their yearlong course.

When Sue Began to Cook makes a good beginning cookbook for teens interested in cooking history, for cookbook collectors, and for people who want to learn to cook simple recipes. Currently this book is unavailable in any free downloadable format, so you’ll have to search out a 1924 copy yourself.

If you’re new to the world of Bettina cookbooks, I wrote about the first one in the post A Cookbook Worth Reading.

Print Recipe

Cocoa Drop Cookies

Taken from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, cookies, Twenties

Ingredients

  • ½ cup lard Mother says butter makes them too rich.
  • 1 cup light brown sugar No lumps, remember!
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 tbsp water
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2⅓ cups flour
  • 4 tbsp cocoa Leveled off with a knife blade.
  • 2½ tsp baking powder Leveled off with a knife, too. This is important.
  • ¼ tsp salt All good cookies have salt in them.

Instructions

  • Mother had us each put the lard in a nice round-bottomed yellow bowl and cream it. (That means mash it down with a big spoon until it is very soft.) And then add the sugar and keep on creaming until the mixture looked all one color. Then we broke the eggs into a little dish and added them one by one to the sugar mixture. (Mother said to break and add them one by one so as to be very sure they were good.) Then we kept on stirring with the big holey spoon for two whole minutes. Then we added the water and the vanilla.
  • We put a little more than two and one-third cups of flour through the flour sifter and after it had been sifted once, we measured it out and took exactly two and one-third cups of it. Then we put it back in the empty sifter and added the cocoa, the baking powder and the salt. We sifted them through twice all together.
  • (Mother says we must always be very sure about the level spoonful. She had us take a knife and level the filled spoons off very carefully. This is important.)
  • We dumped the flour mixture into the bowl with the other things, and stirred just enough to be sure everything was well mixed.
  • Then we each greased our cooky-sheet with a clean piece of paper that had been dipped in a little lard. (Several pie pans will do instead, Mother says.) Then we took up a little of the cooky-dough on the end of the mixing spoon and scraped it oiff on the cooky-sheet with a knife. (She told us to be sure these little cooky mounds weren't too large; they oughtn't to be more than an inch across.) We dropped these bits of dough about three inches apart on the greased sheet and flattened each of them down a little with a knife that had just been dipped in warm water.
  • Then we baked the cookies in a moderate oven for about fifteen minutes. [Moderate oven: 350-375º F] Mother had us light the oven a few minutes ahead of time, and then turn it down so it wouldn't be too hot when the cookies were put in.
  • Chocolate or cocoa cookies burn easily, she said, so we looked at them often. Sometimes those on the edge of the pan got done first and had to be removed carefully and slipped onto another flat pan to cool. All our cookies couldn't be baked at once, so we kept the dough in a cool place (not near the stove!) until the oven was ready again.
  • As soon as the cookies were all finished and cool, we each packed them carefully away in a stone jar.

Notes

This recipe is taken directly from When Sue Began to Cook, copyright 1924, by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron.
The Vintage Bookshelf

Saturday Mornings: A Housekeeping Story

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Saturday Mornings, a storybook manual from 1906.

The book sat wedged between two other volumes at the used bookstore. With a worn spine that was unreadable, the book looked forgotten and forlorn. That’s when I decided that regardless what its pages contained, Saturday Mornings needed to come home with me. I gently pulled the book from the shelf, opened it, and realized I’d found a treasure. Saturday Mornings was a housekeeping story.

Written by Caroline French Benton in 1906, Saturday Mornings is instructional, but uses a story to get its point across. Like many of its competitors through 1919, the book explains how to complete tasks within the framework of a story. I’ve always loved these books and have several in my collection. This one is actually titled Saturday Mornings: A Little Girl’s Experiments and Discoveries, or How Margaret Learned to Keep House.

I recently found it on my bookshelf again, nestled between a few vintage cookbooks. I decided it was time for an airing, to use an old housekeeping term.

The Book’s Story

Saturday Mornings began as a series of articles in Good Housekeeping magazine in 1905. Titled “Margaret’s Saturday Mornings,” each article became a chapter of the book, with a little more added. The articles were edited a bit before their final form. I found that words changed between the Good Housekeeping article and the printed book. Fun became delightful. A list of bathroom tasks was shortened to clean the grates and other things. Overall, however, the book and the articles remained almost the same.

Margaret’s journey begins at the Christmas Tree, where she finds everything she needs to run a household tied to the branches. In addition, a small red book nestles among the branches. Its title is Saturday Mornings, and it holds everything she needs to begin her adventure in housekeeping.

Throughout subsequent chapters Margaret learns the best way to keep a kitchen fire alive, and set and serve various meals in the dining room. She learns about laundry and linen, bedrooms and bathrooms. The last short chapter takes Margaret through an entire day’s work, where she showcases everything she knows.

Looking over the pages, some housekeeping tasks remain the same over 100 years later. Others, however, changed quite a bit. We no longer clean anything with gasoline, for instance. It was used to cut deep grime and for other tasks, but I couldn’t imagine wetting a cloth with gasoline to clean anything. Of course, in 1906 your choices for cleaners included ammonia, vinegar, cake soap, and other similar chemicals. Since fiberglass tubs and electric clothes washers stood far in the distance, the materials used to clean these items were unheard of as well.

Caroline French Benton wrote many other articles and books on the home and the women’s sphere. Her most well known book is probably A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl in 1905, although she went on to write about women’s clubs, motherhood, and thrifty lifestyles.

Read it Yourself

You can find a copy of Saturday Mornings, a housekeeping story, at Project Gutenberg, and download it in several formats or read it online.

If the history of housekeeping interests you, you will enjoy this book. In fact, you might also like Never Done: A History of American Housework by Susan Strasser. (Amazon link).

And if you enjoy stories of youth from 1905-1915, you might enjoy this post on the Motor Maids School Days, where Billie and her car find friends and solve a mystery.

Poems from the Pages · The Magazine Rack · The Vintage Bookshelf

Twenty Books Worth Reading… in 1921

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The other day I stumbled upon an article called Twenty Books Worth Reading. It caught my eye, since I’m always looking for new vintage literature to read. I’m reproducing the list of twenty books worth reading here, along with links to online copies for each title.

As we close one year and start another (I write this at the end of December), it’s helpful to look forward to the new year. I don’t go as far as making a resolution, but I do think through the coming months. What do I want to accomplish? What do I want to learn? What new skill do I want to master this coming year?

One of those lists, of course, includes the list of books that I want to read. My To Be Read list is taller than I am, yet I can always find a new or old title worth delving into. With that in mind, I offer this list.

Twenty books worth reading

Some of these titles you will recognize. Most, however, you probably will not. I was unaware until writing this of a very popular Canadian author named Frederick Niven. He goes on my reading list for this year. I hope you will find at least one book to treasure from this list. Perhaps you will become reacquainted with an old friend.

The books include ten fiction books and ten nonfiction titles.

The fiction books

  • Miss Lulu Bett. Zona Gale. A story of a modern Cinderella, this book became a play during the winter of 1920. Zona Gale won a Pulitzer for the play version of her story. Read it at Project Gutenberg: Miss Lulu Bett.
  • Main Street. Sinclair Lewis. The story of Carol Kennicott and the town Gopher Prairie, Main Street became a best-selling commentary on small town life. You can Read Main Street at Google Books.
  • Alice Adams. Booth Tarkington. Perhaps best known for his novels Penrod and The Magnificent Ambersons, this new book received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1922. Not only did Alice Adams receive a Pulitzer, but it was made into a movie. Twice. Read Alice Adams at Project Gutenberg.
  • The Golden Answer. Sylvia Chatfield Bates. This started as a serial in the magazine Woman’s Home Companion. You can read The Golden Answer at Google Books.
  • The Brimming Cup. Dorothy Canfield Fisher. An older married woman falls in love with another man. Known in juvenile reading circles for her novel Understood Betsy, Fisher was named by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the ten most influential women of her time in the United States. Read The Brimming Cup at Project Gutenberg.
  • Seed of the Sun. Wallace Irwin. This one is thinly veiled propaganda. You might want to read it with your blood pressure meds handy, if you have any. It seems to be a fictionalized tirade against Japanese immigrants on the West Coast of the United States. The original reviewer even used the term propaganda in his writeup. I couldn’t get through the first chapter. Read Seed of the Sun at your own risk, available at Google Books.
  • The Mysterious Rider. Zane Grey. Ah, now we are back in familiar territory. A Zane Grey western tale. Take a ride down the trail with The Mysterious Rider at Project Gutenberg.
  • Guns of the Gods. Talbot Mundy. This is a tale of India, the story of Princess Yasmini and her first love affair. Find Guns of the Gods at Project Gutenberg.
  • How Many Cards?. Isabel Ostrander. This is a detective story. Ostrander wrote many detective stories. If you like this one, you may like the others as well. Read How Many Cards? at Google Books.
  • A Tale That Is Told. Frederick Niven. This is a tale about the children of a Scottish minister, told by his son. Niven was a very popular Canadian writer, as I mentioned before. You can find A Tale That Is Told at the Internet Archive.

Nonfiction titles

  • Travels and Adventures of Raphael Pumpelly. Raphael Pumpelly, ed. by O.S. Rice. This is an abridged version of Pumpelly’s autobiography, reworked for teen and young adult readers. Pumpelly was a mining engineer, geologist, archaeologist, and explorer. Quite a bit to fit into one lifetime! Read it yourself at Google Books. Travels and Adventures of Raphael Pumpelly.
  • Roads to Childhood. Annie Carroll Moore. This book, written by a New York City children’s librarian, discusses good books for children. You can get a copy of Roads to Childhood from Google Books.
  • Health for the Growing Child. William R. P. Emerson, M.D. This is a book that discusses underweight and underfed children, a common enough problem in the early Twenties that Emerson wrote a book about it. Emerson was a pediatric specialist and faculty member of Dartmouth, and when he wrote this volume he was probably a faculty member at Tufts University. I could not find a copy of this book anywhere, but the next year Emerson published Nutrition and Growth in Children, which may be an expanded version of the earlier title. Find it at the Internet Archive. Nutrition and Growth in Children.
  • The Autobiography of Margot Asquith. Margot Asquith was a wit, a countess, a British socialite, and married to the (then) current British Prime Minister. According to the reviewer, “she writes often in questionable taste, but seldom if ever is she insincere.” This one goes on my to-read stack. You can find it at Project Gutenberg, in a two-volumes-in-one compilation. The Autobiography of Margot Asquith.
  • Margaret Fuller: A Psychological Biography. Katharine Anthony. Anthony was a college-level math teacher who was interested in both biography and psychology. She combined the two to write several “psychological biographies,” which were either celebrated or panned by the press. You can read Margaret Fuller: A Psychological Biography yourself at the Internet Archive.
  • The Famous Mrs. Fair, and Other Plays. James Forbes. The other two plays in this compilation are The Chorus Lady and The Show Shop. The Famous Mrs. Fair saw stage time as well as a movie adaptation in 1923. Obtain The Famous Mrs. Fair from Google Books.
  • The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. Bertrand Russell. Russell was a British mathematician, philosopher, and pacifist. He wrote more than 60 books. In this one, he puts forth his thoughts about visiting Russia and seeing the beginning of Russian Communism. Read The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism at Project Gutenberg.
  • The Evolution of Sinn Fein. Robert Mitchell Henry. Henry was a professor at Queen’s University, Belfast. The year of 1921 brought Ireland’s struggle for independence to the newspapers of the United States. Sinn Fein was (and is) a political party within Ireland. This book would find interest in those who had read about Ireland’s cause. You can read The Evolution of Sinn Fein at Google Books.
  • San Cristóbal de la Habana. Joseph Hergesheimer. San Cristóbal de la Habana is the original name for Havana, Cuba. This book is a travelogue of Hergesheimer’s trip, filled with luscious descriptions of what he saw. Read San Cristóbal de la Habana from Project Gutenberg.
  • Scenario Writing Today. Grace Lytton. Want to know how movie scripts were written in the Twenties? Look no further than Scenario Writing Today, a book about how to write scripts. Retrieve your copy of Scenario Writing Today from Google Books.

The books as a whole

I was surprised I located every one of these titles without much effort. If you would prefer a printed copy, I noticed that almost every one of them appeared available in reprints from Amazon or your favorite reprint seller. Some of them, though, may only be worth one read to you.

Of course, these are all books of their time. They may contain material we find offensive today. They may also have factual information which later proved incorrect. Such is the hazard of reading 100 year old books. Much of the content, however, should be excellent. After all, several of these books became movies, and two received Pulitzer prizes.

Overall, they give a good look at the literature and nonfiction scene of 1921. This not only tells you what people were reading in the early Twenties, but also how they thought about things.

If you would like to add a twenty-first book to your list of twenty books worth reading, I suggest Daddy Long-legs, by Jean Webster. Although it dates a bit earlier than 1921, readers were definitely reading this book in the early Twenties as well.

I wish you happy reading.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Vintage Entertainment

A Dickens Ghost Story

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Wikimedia Commons image of the frontispiece from The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain by Charles Dickens. A man sits in front of a fire while a ghost stands behind him, leaning forward. A wide border of demons and angels surrounds the image.
Frontispiece from The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain by Charles Dickens. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Not that ghost story. Not A Christmas Carol, which we love dearly but have heard, and seen, and read over and over again. No, this is a Dickens ghost story different from that one.

Charles Dickens, you see, wrote many ghost stories. Not just one. And he wrote five tales specifically for Christmas. In today’s tale the two intersect. For The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, by Charles Dickens, is both a Christmas tale and a ghost story. What could be better?

Mr. Redlaw is a chemist and renowned instructor. Well loved and much respected, he lives with secret sorrows he cannot dispel. Painful memories of the past accost him constantly.

A spirit visits him and offers to remove the sorrows and memories which plague him. No more shall he find himself weighed down by the past that he cannot change.

Redlaw agrees to the transaction. For it is a transaction: he will pass the same forgetting to all he meets. Of course, it comes with some very unintended consequences for both Redlaw and those in his community circle.

Beyond the story

This is a story about the importance of community. About the importance of memory. And it’s a story about the incredible influence we have, good or ill, on the people around us.

It’s also a story about Christmas. A story about the joy and closeness that Christmastime should bring. And it’s a story about redemption.

Dickens does a beautiful job, as always of bringing to life the world that is 1850 London. This story includes four different social classes, perhaps more. Chemist Redlaw shows us the educated, intellectual Londoner. Milly and her husband William introduce us to the Victorian servant class. They work for their living attending to the chemist, but they appear a different class than the failed newspaperman on the corner or the street waif that Milly feeds and shelters from compassion.

Read it yourself

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain would be a great tale to tell around the Christmas fire. This Dickens ghost story brings home the importance of family and connection, even more than A Christmas Carol.

You can find it as a free read on Google Books and Amazon’s Kindle. If you want a hard copy for your book shelves, you can locate several different editions at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or your favorite bookseller.

The Vintage Bookshelf

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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An image of the sheet music for Trail of the Lonesome Pines, 1913
Sheet music for the song derived from the novel. Date: 1913. Image: Wikimedia Commons

This month I’m reading a bestseller about a civil engineer and a mountain girl. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, by John Fox Jr., is a tale of the Appalachian mountains of the Virginia/Kentucky border before the coal mines and before the railroad. Published in 1908, it became a bestselling novel. In 1912 The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was adapted into a Broadway play and the book was republished. Project Gutenberg offers the 1912 version for free reading.

I was completely unaware of this book before I started to research needlework patterns. However, the Lonesome Pine motif appears quite often in crochet and embroidery through the 1920s. It even became the subject of a song. You can see the sheet music in the illustration. Wondering about this flurry of interest, I began a search and ended up at this title. If The Trail of the Lonesome Pine caught the imagination of the United States through the Twenties, I wanted to know why. So I read it.

This is a tale of an engineer who has big dreams of progress and advancement. He came from the north, hoping to build up a town and make his fortune from coal mining in the region. While looking at the lay of the land, he meets a girl named June. June is sturdy and unschooled, but wise in mountain culture. Although the book repeatedly calls her “little girl,” the narrator also comments that many mountain girls would be married by her age. So she begins the book a teenager and comes to maturity throughout the tale.

Whirling around this story is a longstanding feud between the Tollivers and the Falins, supposedly started over a child’s jeers during a game of marbles. But no one really seems to know. All they remember is the clan hatred. June is a Tolliver, and her relationship with Jack the engineer complicates things.

At the same time that the book describes the possibilities for coal mining, metal refining, and railroads, it extols the beauty of the land. Jack names the local flora for June as they walk through the hills. The paragraphs describing native flowers and birds appeal to the senses much like Gene Stratton Porter’s descriptions in The Harvester. Amongst the wildness of nature stands the Lonesome Pine, the only one of its kind in the area. It sees Jack and June’s first meeting, and it witnesses their relationship as it changes.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine appears often on Appalachian literature reading lists. John Fox Jr., who lived in the Kentucky area he writes about, actually wrote many more short stories and novels about Appalachian life and culture between 1895 and 1920. If you love Trail, you might enjoy others as well.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Vintage Entertainment

Frankenstein: A Vintage Horror Book

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Image from 1840 edition of Frankenstein, a vintage horror book.
Original engraving from Frankenstein. Wikimedia Commons.

This is October, the month of darkening days, rainy skies, and spooky shadows. In honor of that, this month I’m reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a vintage horror book. If the concept of horror concerns you, be assured that this is not Stephen King. It’s not even equivalent to Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote in the 1830s and 40s.

A brooding scientist. The girl he left behind. The mother he adored. Pelting rain and icy winters. His best friend. These all come together in Frankenstein, weaving a tale of creation and a tale of regret.

Connecting with the past

Reading an antique book like this connects you with the past in a unique way. You aren’t only reading about the past, you are joining others in reading it. In the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s people picked up Frankenstein and enjoyed it for the first time. Or maybe for the second time. Or the third. You can share in their enjoyment of the book, in much the same way they enjoyed it. For they too were reading of a time long past, in a book they considered a classic.

So what would it have been like to sit in a poodle skirt at the local soda fountain, dreaming over Frankenstein –– but quickly, because the book was due by the end of the week! Thankfully, it’s not too long, and you could probably finish this next chapter in the time it takes you to slowly drain your carbonated drink. Or going back further, how thankful would you be that the local Carnegie library had a copy of Frankenstein on the shelves this very month, when you needed to read it in the 1930s, in the middle of the Depression? If the weather’s nice, you could sit on the front porch and read a chapter or two while you wait for the ice man in his wagon. He’s due on Thursday afternoons, you know.

Back to the present

If you’ve never read Frankenstein, I encourage you to give it a try. This book isn’t Victorian. It predates Victorian life by 20 years. Even though it was written in 1817, getting caught up in the action and flow of the story proves easy.

None of the chapters take too long to read, and it’s relatively short. The book opens with a series of letters from a ship, and the story unfolds from there. Mary Shelley revised the book several times between 1817 and its 1840 printing. You can see some of her revisions in the Chapter 7 manuscript page below. The version we read is usually the 1840 revision.

Image from Mary Shelley's handwritten manuscript for Frankenstein. Wikimedia commons image.
A handwritten manuscript page from Frankenstein. Wikimedia Commons.

Novel vs. reputation

Before this month I’d never read Frankenstein. I assumed that what everyone said about the novel was true. “Frankenstein was a terrible monster, named for his creator, did horrible things, yada yada yada.” Except, that’s not correct. None of it is actually true.

If I told you why the general knowledge and consensus about the novel is false, it would give away too much of the story. So I won’t. You’ll have to find out by reading the book or by Googling the answers. They’re out there in abundance.

One thing I wasn’t prepared for in Frankenstein was Shelley’s glorious descriptions of nature and the characters’ response to it. She describes mountains and lakes, snow and ice, autumn and spring in terms that drew me far into the novel. Very much a Romantic description, nature itself functions as a character in the novel. It evokes responses in the people who interact with it.

Read it yourself

Get your hands on a copy of Frankenstein and enjoy it this autumn as readers have for nearly 200 years. Although Frankenstein is a vintage horror book, its lost none of its appeal. True, the horror genre reads much differently today than it did in the nineteenth century. However, that’s one of the reasons we seek out these books, right?

You can read Frankenstein at Project Gutenberg. Or get a paperback or Kindle copy from Amazon. Really, if you want a copy with pages to turn, you should be able to find it at your favorite bookseller. It’s a classic.

Watch the movie

Versions of Frankenstein appeared in the movies several times. In 1931, Boris Karloff starred in Frankenstein. A version was released in 2011. Even Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein in 1948.

If you want to see the very first Frankenstein movie, it’s this 1910 silent by Thomas Edison Productions. The film only lasts a little over twelve minutes, so the suspense will be over quickly.

However you partake of it, enjoy your time with Frankenstein, vintage horror at its earliest.

This one not your thing?

If the idea of Frankenstein really doesn’t thrill you, perhaps you’ll enjoy this writeup on Steps in Time, an autobiography by dancer Fred Astaire.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Vintage Entertainment

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

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Illustration from 1901 book Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. A woman and teenage boy stand by a window. She has her arm around him. They look out the window together.
Original illustration from Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 1901.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch is a cheerful body who gives her daughters geography names like Asia, Australia, and Europena. She lives in the Cabbage Patch, a run-down neighborhood near a railroad track in Louisville. Mrs. Wiggs lives with her five children in a house that’s the pride of the neighborhood because it has a real tin roof. Of course, one of the boys made it from flat tin cans, but it sure sounds nice when it rains!

The story of Mrs. Wiggs is a story of hope in the face of abject poverty. She is ever hopeful and most things turn out all right. She tends to see the world a bit through rose-colored glasses, however. Her memories of her deceased husband, for example, differ quite sharply from both her children’s memories and from reality.

It’s also a story of the progressive social movement of the late Nineteenth century. Mrs. Wiggs is befriended by a wealthy young woman who spends much of her time in the Cabbage Patch. Besides delivering food baskets, this young reformer gives encouragement and comfort at the same time that she learns a few things about herself.

Mrs. Wiggs is a story of class distinction –– if you read this book, expect to see outdated and offensive terminology more than twice. I think the story could stand as well without it, but I wasn’t writing the book through the lens of 1901. I’m looking at it more than 100 years later. And time changes things.

Upon its publication Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was very popular. In fact, even though it was published in 1901, new copies were still being sold in 1926. The book was later republished in 1961 and sold as a children’s book by Whitman. What made Whitman think this was a children’s book, I have no idea. I first read Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch as a ten year old when someone gave me a used copy of that Whitman printing.

Read it for yourself

This book is more a novella than a novel. It takes only a couple hours to read. In fact, it was such a quick read that I sought out two separate copies to make sure they were complete. They are. You can read or download it at Project Gutenberg or you can download the book in PDF, text, or epub formats from the Library of Congress. Or, if you like, you can purchase a reprint from your favorite bookseller.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was written by a regional author, Alice Caldwell Hegen Rice. Born in Kentucky, she visited an area in Louisville that revealed to her the life of the underprivileged. That trip became the basis for her book.

Rice went on to publish several books. You can find ten of her works on Project Gutenberg if they interest you.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was made into four different movies as well as a stage play. Here’s a link to the 1919 silent version on Youtube. Normally a movie like this would have music with it. Perhaps a solo piano player or even a small group of musicians. However, this one is truly silent.

If Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch isn’t your thing, you might like The Harvester or Motor Maids School Days. All three take place in the same ten-year span or so, and they are all very different reads.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Vintage Entertainment

The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter

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Red book cover. Title: The Harvester, by Gene Stratton-Porter.

David Langston is known by many names. His best friend, surgeon Dr. Carey, calls him “David.” To others in the area he’s known as Medicine Man, Harvester, and even That Lazy One. The other farmers call him lazy because he raises no large crops on his land. Instead, he tends to the herbs that made medicines in 1900. He grows them, harvests them, and sells them to Chicago for a nice profit. You have just discovered The Harvester, a 1911 book by Gene Stratton-Porter.

Twenty-six year old Langston enjoys a good life. His bank account is sufficient for his needs, and his needs are few. David takes his job and his life seriously. Each spring he re-evaluates his life and work at the arrival of the first bluebird of Spring. He lets his trusted dog Balshazzar decide for him, and this year brings a surprise. Then he experiences a dream –– or was it a vision? –– that changes everything. He immediately sets about the business of updating his little cabin so it will be fit for two.

Illustration from book The Harvester. A man sits on the front steps of his house looking out over the water. A woman appears in the mist.
The Harvester sees his Dream Girl.

But who is she, this Dream Girl? And where can he find her? While he searches he tends to his acres of plants, harvesting one to cure this ailment and another to cure that one. As the reader, you walk with him through the paths. You hear the birds call, see the calm of the pond, and hear the babble of the creek.

Gene Stratton-Porter, naturalist

Part of the charm of The Harvester is that it was written by a naturalist. Gene Stratton Porter was a regional writer who told stories about the Limberlost Swamp area of northern Indiana. She also documented its native moths, plants, and birds in various nature studies.

Title page of The Harvester. White page bordered by double black lines. Text: By Gene Stratton-Porter. Author of A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, etc. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs. New York, Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers.

Long one of my favorite books, reading The Harvester again was a joy. Although the story takes place through all the seasons over a year’s span, I always think of The Harvester as a spring/summer book. Perhaps it’s because the action opens with the arrival of the first bluebird of spring and follows from there.

Is The Harvester high literature? No; very little published in 1910-1912 was. However, many of these books provided good reading. The Harvester remains a charming read more than 100 years after its writing. If you want a book to curl up with, whether your companion is a glass of iced tea under a tree or a mug of hot cocoa by the fire, The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter is one of the best companions I know.

A book of its time

Like many of the books I write about each month, Gene Stratton-Porter’s The Harvester is a book of its time. For one thing, you may find some of the word spellings odd. You’ll know them when you see them. I don’t know whether this was regional spelling, the time period. or something else that made Stratton-Porter attach strange endings to some of her words.

You may find controlling characters, small-minded characters, and fearful women. Or you may not. One thing you will find: an author who believed that she and the women around her had something to offer her world. She wrote about it, and she lived it through her books, nature studies, short stories, articles, and photography. If you haven’t discovered Gene Stratton-Porter before now, you are in for a woodsy treat.

Read it yourself

You can find a copy of The Harvester at Project Gutenberg, The Internet Archive, and Google Books. If you’d like a physical copy, they are available in both hard and paperback reprint from your favorite bookstore.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Uncategorized · Vintage Entertainment

Daddy-Long-Legs: novel and commentary

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Cover of Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
Cover of the original release.

Jerusha Abbott has a problem. She is about to age out of the orphanage where she’s spent her entire life. As far as she knows she’s never been anywhere else. The orphan home’s director even gave her name to her: Jerusha was out of the Bible, and Abbott from the telephone directory.

Thus begins the story of Jerusha “Judy” Abbott. She learns that her college board and tuition will be covered by one of the orphan home Trustees. Her main requirements are to work hard and to send her benefactor a letter every month. There’s only one problem. She doesn’t know his name.

The orphanage director tells Jerusha to address her letters to Mr. John Smith. Jerusha saw the man’s shadow in passing on Trustee Visiting Day, so she knows he is tall. She names her new friend Daddy-Long-Legs.

A commentary in the novel

This month I’m reading Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster. She was Mark Twain’s grand-niece. This book is an epistolary novel, meaning that its action unfolds one letter after another. An enduring favorite, this is my fourth time reading it. One of the things I love about Daddy-Long-Legs is that it is a sweet novel, but also a commentary on the world it portrays.

Daddy-Long-Legs tells the story of Jerusha growing up and experiencing the world. We see her world only through her letters to her benefactor. But the book also tells much more. Beyond the mysterious millionaire and his protégé, the book speaks of the frustrations and culture of its time. Jerusha reaches adulthood, but she cannot vote. The book’s publication date is 1912, and women didn’t vote until the presidential election of 1920. That’s eight years away from the world of Jean Webster.

Jerusha marvels at her roommates who grew up in luxury. Then she contrasts it to her own upbringing, and the differences become apparent. She muses on the social class differences in her world, and gives us a look at the very poor. She has a dream of social progress and of making her own way, but to see if she succeeds at either you will have to read the book.

Webster uses Daddy-Long-Legs to discuss the current (1912) place of women in society and life. In this, Daddy-Long-Legs is both novel and social commentary. Because the subjects come from Jerusha as she discovers life, the topics seem natural and not preachy. For that reason alone the book is worth the time to read it. Webster wrote other books, including a sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, but this is her best known.

Because the book dates from 1912, it contains conventions and ideas of its time. However, I was surprised at how forward-thinking it was in several areas. You can enjoy Daddy-Long-Legs as a novel, as social commentary, or as both.

Experience it yourself

Daddy-Long-Legs saw several movie adaptations, beginning with the 1919 Mary Pickford version you can watch on YouTube here. In 1955 Fred Astaire starred in Daddy-Long-Legs, but the Astaire version differs considerably from the book. If you are an Astaire fan, read the book first. It will only a take a few hours.

You can read Daddy-Long-Legs online at Wikisource, or download a copy from the Internet Archive.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Vintage Entertainment

Among English Hedgerows Travelogue

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A boy with a basket stands in the middle of the street in an English village. Next to him is a full cart of groceries and bags. Circa 1900, photo by Clifton Johnson.
A grocery boy stands with his cart, circa 1900.

This month I took a break from fiction and decided to dive into a book I’d heard about but never read. Among English Hedgerows, by Clifton Johnson, is a turn-of-the-century travelogue of the British byways. When I say turn of the century, I mean 1900. This book first saw publication in 1899, but it was republished through 1925 and perhaps beyond.

Clifton Johnson – Photographer, Writer, Artist

Cover of Among English Hedgerows, a travelogue by Clifton Johnson. Book is a faded green with red text and a simple red border.
Clifton Johnson wrote and provided the photography for Among English Hedgerows.

Its author, Clifton Johnson, was a photographer, writer, and illustrator. He wrote, edited, or illustrated more than 125 books in his lifetime, covering everything from children’s stories and folk tales to travel. Johnson was interested in people and their stories, and this is what shines through in the travelogue Among English Hedgerows. You meet the people he met along the way, and hear their stories.

To enhance the text, Johnson provides his own photography or illustrations. Among English Hedgerows includes only photographs scattered among his stories, but sometimes he included illustrations as well. Many of the chapters stand alone because they were first published in magazines like The New England Magazine, The Congregationalist, and The Outlook.

An old man sits reading the newspaper in an English cottage, next to a window with flowers growing in pots on the windowsill. Photo circa 1900 by Clifton Johnson.
A pensioner that Johnson met on his travels. This old guy was quite a character. Photo circa 1900.

Johnson takes us on a tour of England as it was, and he lets the people tell their own stories. How does a small town pensioner spend his days when he has nothing else to do? What does the daily schedule of a farmhand look like? What birds sing in the wood? He speaks of cricket and hotel visits, market days and mansions.

As both a photographer and a writer, Johnson brings to life the small village and the town inn (or pub). In describing traveling show caravans with their steam-powered merry-go-rounds and game booths, you want to see them yourself. He explores castles and manors, Stonehenge and churches.

Explore England with the Author

As we read his book from over 100 years on, a reader might find some of his observations intriguing. He writes of the change from oxen-drawn plows to horse-drawn plows. Then he mentions the noise created by the newfangled steam powered farm machinery. He also talks about the manpower necessary to make it go. “They are formidable affairs, and it takes five men to make a working crew.” (p.76).

Once in a while you may stumble across a passage or even a chapter that you find offensive or strange. For instance, Johnson spends an entire short chapter discussing his observations of “Gypsies.” For part of his description he relates what he has heard, but it seems that this colors his description of what he sees soon after. However, the chapter ends well. He follows a family for a bit and watches the children at play as they ride in the wagon or scamper along beside.

In a later chapter, however, Johnson provides an almost glowing description of a Traveler family who appear at a market day and sell rides to the local children. He even refers to their conveyance as a “travelling caravan.” Earlier he mentions that caravans often transport families who perform at fairs, which would make them Showman Travellers.

It’s worth noting, however, that Johnson repeats what he hears. His goal is to write down an oral history of a place, whether it is correct or not. At one point he talks to hand mowers –– men who cut hay with a scythe –– and they tell him that the day of machine grass cutters is over; more and more the hay will be cut by hand. A quick YouTube search will show you that such did not prove to be true.

Delights of the Village Fair

At one point Johnson finds himself at a festival. He says:

“But the great feature of the fair was the roundabouts or merry-go-rounds. About a dozen of them were in operation that day in Lincoln pleasure fair, and they were all as gaudy with red and gold as it was possible to make them. They ran by steam power, and the engine inside each roundabout had a steam organ attached, and every organ was piping away at a furious rate on a tune that was distressingly unlike the tunes of any of its rivals.”

Among English Hedgerows, Chapter XI.

By the time Johnson attended the fair in about 1900, steam-powered merry-go-rounds had been delighting English fair-goers for close to 40 years. However, reading it today, I was taken by this description. Imagine the noise! Between the sound of the steam engines, plus the various tunes played at once, and adding the crowd, this must have presented quite the scene.

Among English Hedgerows is a travelogue that leads you up and down the narrow lanes of English villages. It brings you into country kitchens and alongside farmers. Johnson reveals both the charm of their inhabitants as well as their sometimes narrow views.

Note: I did find mention of a suicide as I read the book. If this bothers you, skip the bottom of page 34 through page 38, and resume reading on page 39.

To read Among English Hedgerows for yourself, click here, which takes you to a Google Books version you can read or download.

If you prefer something quick and easy and fictional, take a look at this post I wrote about The Motor Maids School Days, one of my favorite vintage juvenile fiction reads ever.