Saturday Mornings: A Housekeeping Story

June 28, 2022June 11, 2022 VintageJenny

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.

Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting

March 22, 2022March 12, 2022 VintageJenny

Mary Frances needs to learn all kinds of skills. She needs to learn to cook, clean, sew, knit, crochet, garden. Her world is full of learning! Mary Frances stars in an entire series of instruction books, beginning with a cookbook in 1912. In The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book she learns to knit and crochet. She makes clothes for her doll along the way. Her teachers are the Knitting People, a delightful set of tools that come to life and tell Mary Frances exactly how things should be done.

In the pages of The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book we meet Knit and Knack the knitting needles, Crow Shay the crochet hook, and Yarn Baby, a yarn doll. These characters, along with their friends, show Mary Frances the ropes of creating with yarn. She makes doll clothes, a baby doll’s set, and a few things for herself. And you can find patterns for all of these in the book. Because The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book was published in 1918, the last set of patterns is from the Red Cross. A flyer of knitted articles for World War I soldiers gives Mary Frances experience with adult-size clothing.

Two baby dolls dressed in hand made outfits. One wears a blue cape, mittens, and matching knitted booties, while the other wears a pink sweater, bonnet, and matching booties. — Dress your baby dolls in the finest handmade outfits.

Note: This is a book of its time. It may contain outdated references or illustrations, like most books from 1900-1930.

One Adventure After Another

By the time Mary Frances graduates to knitting and crocheting, she’s much older than the little girl who started the series with a cookbook. She’s had adventures with the Kitchen People when she learned to cook. The Thimble People taught her to sew. She learned the basics of housekeeping from the Doll People. And in her last adventure before she learns to knit, she meets the Garden People. Her knitting and crocheting book is more advanced than any of the other books. It contains more projects and less chatter. The story line still exists, but it’s not as all-encompassing as the story you find in the Mary Frances Sewing Book.

When the story opens, Mary Frances is accosted by her great aunt Maria, who is, of course, a paragon of the textile arts and cannot believe that Mary Frances doesn’t know how to knit or crochet. She offers to teach her, and Mary Frances says that she’s been wanting to learn for the longest time. Then Mary Frances remembers how Aunt Maria taught her father to knit, and how much he hated it.

She sits down with her knitting bag after her aunt scurries away, and wishes that helpful fairies like the Thimble People could teach her to knit and crochet. Crow Shay the hook begins to talk to her, and she realizes that real help waits for her after all.

Learning from the Pros

She endures one lesson with Aunt Maria before her aunt is whisked away by a family emergency. Mary Frances finds herself alone with her brother, talking knitting needles, and Katie, the household cook.

This gives Mary Frances the freedom she needs to concentrate on the lessons from the knitting needles and crochet hook. With their help she creates a doll’s wardrobe. A little over the first half of the book teaches crochet. Then the chapters switch to knitting instruction. Black and white photographs from 1918 show how to form the stitches.

A blonde doll ready for the outdoors. She wears a dark blue velvet coat and matching hat, a knitted shawl or scarf over the coat, and a fringed muff hangs from her neck. — Mary Marie ready for a day on the town

Illustrations throughout the book show how the finished articles should look. In the original book several color pages show the progress of a sixteen inch doll’s wardrobe. Mary Marie, the doll, received a complete handmade wardrobe in the sewing book, but now she needs coats and hats, shopping bags and mufflers. The book even gives instructions for an aviator doll outfit and a Teddy Bear Suit. The suit looks like a WWI army uniform, but teddy bear suits were actually one-piece sitcot jumpsuits. WWI airplane pilots wore them. So although it’s quite cute with its trousers, jacket, and tam, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be, or why it’s called a Teddy Bear Suit.

A young teen girl in 1916-1917 wears a long hip length knitted jacket with a wide belt. — Mary Frances can even knit herself a fashionable sweater.

Read It For Yourself

Whether you’ve wanted to learn knitting and crochet like Mary Frances, or you’d like a romp through a century-old instruction book for children, you might enjoy this book. Download The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book from the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. And let the yarn adventures begin.

If you enjoy vintage knit and crochet projects, you might like this Twenties Crochet Wrist Bag or this 1950s Knit Potholder.

The Vintage Bookshelf · Vintage Entertainment

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

August 3, 2021June 30, 2021 VintageJenny

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

Motor Maids School Days

March 9, 2021March 7, 2021 VintageJenny

Bille Campbell is an individual. The year is 1911 and in Motor Maids School Days she decides to attend school for the year in West Haven, since her father will be working in Russia for the year and she is motherless. She stays with an elder cousin, Helen Campbell. Spinster Helen acts as both chaperone and guide to Billie. West Haven is a seaside town, filled with seaports, strange people, and high school hijinks. Fifteen year old Billie drives up to the school in her own bright red motorcar, which becomes the centerpiece for many adventures to come.

Frontspiece illustration of Motor Maids School Days, 1911. One girl sits in a window while another one stands facing her. The standing girl says "You will simply become an outcast in West Haven, and I advise you to think the matter over."

This book is the first in the very short Motor Maids series for teen girls. My copy belonged to my grandmother, and she loved it enough after receiving it sometime around age fourteen to keep it for the next 65 years.

Turn of the Century Culture

And there’s a lot to love with this book. To begin with, it starts off a six-book series which leads the Motor Maids far away from the sleepy seaport town of West Haven. Motor Maids School Days is a look into the culture of the early 1900s. Yes, it’s fiction. But it also tackles topics that most of us only read about in passing. Or those cultural artifacts we see in an old photo and wonder what happened.

For one thing, the book explains high school girls’ clubs. The high school sophomore class of girls at West Haven High School is divided into two groups: The Mystic Seven and the Blue Birds. The Blue Birds consists of all the girls not in the Mystic Seven. Seventeen of the girls join the Blue Birds. Reading carefully shows the ebb and flow of interaction between the two clubs, as the book talks about get-togethers, outings, and overnights.

Class systems

School Days also talks a lot about the class system of 1900 – 1915. Some families are in, and others are out – merely based on their financial position within the town. It contains characters who are “haves” as well as those who are “have nots,” and weaves them nicely through the pages of the novel. Sometimes you feel like you get to know supporting characters better than you do the protagonist Billie. Elinor Butler introduces us to her seafaring family, and Mary Price shows us life with her mother’s tearoom.

You also read about vintage fashion and how it reflected social status. For someone fascinated by the fashions of 1910-1915, this could be worth reading the book on its own. Ulsters, veils, wraps, and dresses all take their place as part of the story.

Wrapped up in all this vintage detail you discover a mystery. Billie and her friends find themselves involved in a bizarre cat and mouse game, avoiding people whose names they don’t know as they attempt to unravel the threads that lead to an answer.

Signs of the Times

Because the book appeared in 1911, it contains outdated terms and ideas. One of the girls in the story is overweight, and although she appears in several of the stories and is a general favorite of everyone, they still tease her. Even though West Haven sits as a port town, with ships arriving with cargo from everywhere, some of the visiting characters have unflattering descriptions. These serve to increase suspense in the novel, and perhaps that is how they were intended, but at times they seem odd, especially on this fourth or fifth reading of the novel. And of course, because of the time period, servants are sometimes identified by race.

Who was Katherine Stokes?

Also a sign of the times, a lengthy search turned up nothing about the author. The book’s publisher, Hurst & Company, specialized in series books by the time the Motor Maids books released, and the company folded in 1919. If Hurst managed to stay in business, we might have even more Motor Maids books to read. Katherine Stokes, the author, appears nowhere. Only six books carry her name in any search and these are the Motor Maids books. Katherine may have been a pen name for an author or committee that churned out series books.

With absolutely no evidence to support this, I also suggest that she may have been a real person. Katherine Stokes might have taught seventh grade in Hartford, Connecticut. A Katherine Stokes appears in the Hartford school listings for the years before and after the Motor Maids books were published. A seventh grade teacher stood in a perfect position to write a series about independent teenagers. This Katherine was single, and she rented rooms and houses through this entire period, so she probably had the time to devote to constructing six books. This, however, is complete conjecture. If anyone has information on Katherine Stokes the author, I would love to know her story.

Get Your Copy

You too can read Motor Maids School Days. One of the great things about these older books is that they are freely available. This bodes well for readers who love turn of the century fiction. You can download a copy from the Internet Archive here, or you can download it or read it online at Project Gutenberg, here. Download a free Kindle version from Amazon. Amazon also sells reprints. If you want an original 1911 copy, and your grandmother or great-grandmother doesn’t have one, try eBay.