Running For Scissors

Lady Mutton is proving to be more elusive than I had first thought, so I'll keep her for a future post. I'm also still thinking about doing a writing blog, and messing around with a few I've created in Blogger (oh, and working on Some Fiction, too, incidentally). And writing some stuff for money, elsewhere. In other words, lots going on. And so many as-usual apologies for not responding to comments Like I Should. Thank you all who comment - you are witty and wonderful, and much appreciated!

And now for something completely retro...But first, a tricky question: What is the connection between scissors and Pard Dog Food?

The answer? If you use these scissors to cut the labels off of Pard cans, you can send them in (the labels, not the cans) and get some beautiful scissors back! Quick, ladies. Hurry! Run for scissors. Not with scissors. No, don't do that.

But wait...if you need the scissors to get the scissors, how does this great cycle of gifts-from-cans ever begin? Perhaps it has no beginning and no ending, like the great Circle of Life. Or perhaps you use the scissors you already have. But if you already have scissors - why do you want more scissors?

Oh, that's easy. Just look at the cartoon lady up at the top. She is saying "So perfect for gifts, I ordered three!" So not only are you in perfect harmony with the Great Circle of Life, your Christmas present dilemmas have been solved in April.

Lady Mutton's American Soothing Syrup

The Illustrated London Almanac, 1869

Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was a very popular, very dangerous opium-laden syrup sold through the 19th century as a children's medication. But Mrs. Winslow was not the only lady selling opiates for the masses. Mrs. Winslow's syrup was sold from 1849 into the 1930s, but Mrs. Johnson, in England - nicknamed Lady Mutton in the Regency era, for reasons you will learn at the end of this post - had been selling her medicine for decades before Mrs. Winslow ever thought of putting syrup into bottles.

In 1873 an advertisement for Mrs. Johnson's American Soothing Syrup stated that there were a "number of cheap preparations that have lately been forced upon the public by parties jealous of the great success of the Original" which "contained no narcotic nor any dangerous ingredient whatever [italics are Mrs. Johnson's] while opiates are the foundation of all the recent imitations."

Mrs. Johnson's Syrup had been advertised in Britain as early as the 1810s. It was probably the "American Soothing Syrup" that is mentioned by John R. Strachan in Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period (2007, p. 60). He writes that the Regency-era advertisement played upon mothers' anxieties about their children's teething, and the illnesses that might follow from teething: in particular, convulsions, measles and what the 1810 advertisement called "chill-cough." The same American Soothing Syrup was also advertised in 1827 (see here) as being not only a "healing Balm for assuaging misery and anguish" but as a means of telling whether sovereigns were good or bad by dunking the coins in the syrup (which would put me off trying it, even in 1827).

Whitaker's Almanac, 1848

Yet even in the 1820s, some people were aware that the American Soothing Syrup was a dangerous fraud, full of opiates. In a book called The Family Oracle of Health (1824) the author writes about

...another piece of American humbug, which goes by the name of the "American Soothing Syrup," and which is puffed off in the usual way by sweet Mrs. Johnson, of the City road, well known by the alias of Lady Mutton, she being, or having been, in the practice as we are well informed of making presents of genuine grass-fed haunches to mercenary preachers, and others who sell themselves to sermonize and expatiate in public and private, on the miraculous virtues of the soothing syrup.

So what was in sweet Mrs. Johnson's Syrup? In 1824 the Book of Health stated that American Soothing Syrup contained "simple syrup*, tincture of opium and alum, colored either with saffron or alkanet-root" (p. 104). And according to Isaac G. Briggs' Epilepsy, Hysteria and Neurasthenia (1921, p. 13), it contained "spirits of salt, common salt and honey" - as well as large quantities of opiates, in direct contradiction (what a surprise!) of her advertisements.

Part Two: More about Lady Mutton and her American Soothing Syrup. I've found a few more rather amazing tidbits, but need another post to tell you about them.

*A plain syrup of sugar and water, unflavored.

Aunt Lizzie's Fabulous Glasses

from The Illustrated London Almanac, 1869

I've been the family genealogist for a long time - on and off since my teens. And I've done plenty of family trees for everyone, from big wall charts to quick scratch-pad sketches to show someone a line of descent. Someday I'll really have to do a family tree showing all my ancestors wearing eyeglasses. There's a long history in my family of wearing glasses. My parents both wore glasses. My maternal grandmother had hers on in her formal portrait in 1926: dark dress, gorgeous hair,  pearls - and wire framed glasses. And her grandmother wore green tinted glasses to protect her eyes - I don't know why exactly, but the family story was that she had had some illness or accident that weakened them back in the 1850s, when she was in her 20s.

But my favorite glasses-wearing ancestors are two great great aunts, sisters named Augusta and Lizzie. They were New York girls of the 1890s. Augusta was handsome and serious, and wore her eyeglasses in her formal wedding portrait. Dark haired and elegant, her wire framed glasses enhance the image of her as a young woman who notices (and makes note of) everything.

And then there's Lizzie. Here she is posing in 1897 with her poetry book (I feel sure that it must be a poetry book), a thoughtful expression - and some fabulous wire-framed glasses. Here is a woman who really, really loved her glasses, because she obviously gave the photo set-up plenty of thought (check out the lamp on the left - the lampshade even matches her sleeves). I think that Lizzie's glasses were some sort of prescription eyeglasses for reading that fancy poetry book. I depend on my glasses for reading (and everything else), too. And like Lizzie, I like wearing them very much.

You can save money when you next order glasses if you go over to GlassesUSA.com - just use the code Blog10 for a coupon worth 10% off. And not only that, but you can buy one pair worth at least $80 and get a lovely free sunglasses upgrade worth $29.95 with the code FreeTint. If only my glasses-loving Great Great Aunt Lizzie had been able to do this in the 1890s! I'm sure she would have enjoyed having a few extra pairs of glasses, and saving money, too.

More Truth Than Poultry

Popular Mechanics, May 1929

Dear Mr. Lamon of the National Poultry Institute:

I certainly would like a Big Money-Making Opportunity right NOW. So when you said in your ad that there was one waiting right in my very own backyard, I got up from my desk and raced to the kitchen window and looked out at the backyard, scanning it so eagerly! I was so excited, because it isn't every day that a Big Money Making Opportunity just shows up and starts hanging around our yard.

But all I saw out there was a couple of squirrels fighting over an old Saltine, and the Christmas tree that someone tossed in front of our front walk in February and the garbage men wouldn't take it, so we had to put it in the back.

I don't think the squirrels or that dried up little pine tree was what you meant, though.

Now that I have read some more of your ad I see that you are proposing that we raise some chickens out there. And that in our spare time we can make a few extra thousand dollars a year. That does sound good, Mr. Lamon. However, when you say "no matter where you live - city, town or country" - have you really thought that through? I don't know about Washington, D.C. (District of Chickens!) but in most cities, sir, they frown upon turning urban backyards  into chicken runs. I think there are even some municipal laws to that effect. And so no matter how emphatically and sternly you point to the chickens that happen to be in front of you, I will have to decline your incredible offer.

Sincerely yours, Lidian

P.S. I couldn't help noticing that you are semi-disembodied. And I know that this happens in old ads sometimes. I just -  trust that this has nothing to do with those chickens...Although that would explain why you look really grumpy, even though you are making such amazing profits.

Burning to Make a Sale

 California bungalow

Suppose that you were in Los Angeles, shopping around for a good real estate deal, in the spring of 1914 - almost a hundred years ago. There were plenty of nice houses going up - especially California bungalows, which I really like. These are big, substantial houses with one or one and a half stories, big front porches; often they are Arts and Crafts style, which I love. There is a green California bungalow in my neighborhood that I have my eye on, though it's never for sale.  You never know, though. Maybe someday.

Popular Mechanics, March 1914

Now imagine we're back in LA in 1914, checking out the real estate market, when - say, what's that smoke? What in world is going on? Imagine how surprised you'd be - just like I was when I came upon this little piece in Popular Mechanics - to see what one enterprising real estate agent (with a strange imagination!) was getting up to to attract buyers. He wasn't just aiming to light a metaphorical fire under would-be buyers. He actually set a new, unoccupied house on fire. Literally.
 
How was this allowed? Why did the people feel good about buying lots when they saw one of the houses going up in smoke? I tried to find out more for you, I really did. But so far: nothing. I'll keep this story in mind though, and I'll let you know if I find out anything more.

Now even though this seems to have inspired the crowd that gathered 'round to buy from this agent, nowadays there are much much better ways of attracting attention. Rather than using smoke to attract a crowd, you can use - oh, how about a telephone? Agents who know what is the mojo dialer can make lots of calls easily. (Speaking of mojo, did you know that it originally meant a magic spell or charm, and was first used as a slang term in the US in 1926? Some dictionaries say that it was derived from the West African language Fulani, in which the word moco'o meant medicine man.)

Just by using the phone, an agent can tell clients all about which houses are for sale, and even about financial things like REITs (or Real Estate Investment Trusts). This is just so much better than making a bonfire out of a bungalow.

Between the Cake and New York City

Last weekend we went to brunch in Manhattan. And now it's time for dessert. One that you may have thought New Yorkers can't make! But all things are possible with the help of Baker's Chocolate. Listen to the sad tale of Janet, Bill's hapless girlfriend, (bigger size here), from a 1937 ad:

...Bill's from the West and he'd made up his mind that New York girls were artificial.

(Artificial is code for "can't make me a big old chocolate cake whenever I bang on the table and demand baked goods.")

...He said "Sure! New York girls can dance - and hang on subway straps - and swim - and drive in traffic - but what I want to know is, can they cook? Show me just one who can make a really good chocolate cake!"

Janet, are you sure you want to marry this guy? He does not appreciate us New York girls, does he? I'd like to know if he could hang on a subway strap, swim, and drive in traffic all at once!

Anyway, Janet decides to Show That Man and bake a "perfectly gorgeous-looking cake" and "just bowl him over." But guess what? It was a flop, all pale and pasty. Kind of like Bill, come to think of it. But Janet sends her mother "an S.O.S. to tell me what I'd done wrong."

Big version here

It would be an understatement as flat as Janet's flopped cake to say that her mother is anxious to see her get hitched. Because she sends Janet a telegram! Telegrams were for, you know, extremely important news back then. Matters of life and death. Not matters of cake. Why didn't Mother tell Janet about Baker's Chocolate before she left home if it was such a Big Deal? And how does Mother know Janet's little New York kitchenette oven isn't on the fritz? But Mother just knows that the problem was those melted brown Crayolas (or something) that Janet used when she realized she was all out of chocolate.

Next thing you know, Janet's getting married and looking forward to a lifetime of hand-feeding chocolate cake to a guy who probably still doesn't like New York girls. Or using cutlery by himself. Good work, Janet.

A Clean Sweep

Popular Mechanics, January 1911

I'd never been so grateful for carpet technology as I was when I read an 1890 account of how people cleaned them back then. The Bissell carpet sweeper had been around since the 1880s, but most people still beat the dirt out of their rugs. So let's imagine that there was no modern carpet cleaning in New Jersey (or anywhere else, for that matter); it's 1890, and we are looking at our filthy carpets and wondering what to do.

If you lived in a city you'd hire carpet beaters to come and deal with them. But if you had a backyard or a "grass field" - you were in for a day of hard work. Oh, and in addition to the outdoor space, you were going to need four men to do the heavy lifting. The London Lady (a formidable-sounding anonymous writer in an 1890 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine) probably just ordered a few of the neighbors (or hapless passersby) to "come along now, quickly!" and grab a corner of the carpet:

Proceed by taking the carpet up, fold it and carry it to a grass field. Let four men beat it with hazel or withey [willow] rods four or five feet long...Beat the carpet well, then drag along the grass, face downward [the carpet, not you]; now reverse and drag along the grass; beat and drag again. 

Then the four men each were to take a corner of the carpet and shake it. But you were not done yet! The four men would have sneaked off before you ordered them to beat any more carpets, and it was time for you to roll up your sleeves.  You had to rinse some tea leaves in water, sprinkle them over the carpet, and then brush the carpet. Or maybe you wanted to wash the carpet after it was beaten. In that case you would rub it with a flannel dipped in a solution of ox gall (a slightly fancier way of saying bile from cows) and hot water. This does not sound like fun.

Now by the 1910s, there were all sorts of fancy vacuum cleaners, like the one on the right that cleaned up all sorts of dirt and that "a child or delicate woman operates easily." The woman in the ad still looks a bit grim, though, don't you think? She would appreciate modern ways of getting carpets free not only of dirt and dust (and cat hair, and road salt, and what-the-heck-is-thats) but also would be cheered by things like mold removal NJ or water damage NJ. How happy she would look, free from pushing that wheelbarrow-with-a-bag. And free from even thinking of scrubbing carpets with ox gall. I know I would be, too.

A Manhattan Brunch

 An old New York custom? Maybe they mean serving meals on city maps. Yeah, just try finding your way up to the Guggenheim after you've spilled orange juice and pecan topping all over the Upper East Side.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a Manhattan brunch. As imagined by the American Can Company, which happened to be in Manhattan. Does this give them culinary street cred? Um, not really. Check out the recipes here and here. And I think you'll agree that corned beef hash from a can with an egg on top is not typical of a fancy Waldorf breakfast. Same goes for coffee cake made with peach baby puree. Or, indeed, anything that from a recipe book called Quick Trick Cooking (you can order that with the coupon at bottom right).
 

Rossini: Ready for brunch!

...It's all very well to make fun, but maybe they really did serve some kind of corned beef hash with an egg plopped on top, at the Waldorf. You don't really know (I said to myself as I was writing the above) do you? So I did a little looking around. The answer: the American Can Company folks never had breakfast at the Waldorf. Now on the modern-day Waldorf menu you can have Corned Beef Hash as a "Breakfast Addition" - but it isn't a showpiece dish with the egg and everything. An 1896 Waldorf breakfast menu shows plenty of egg dishes - like Eggs Meyerbeer (eggs with lamb kidneys) -   And a breakfast menu from 1907 shows corned beef hash as a side dish - not up with the fancy Eggs Rossini (eggs with chicken livers and mushrooms). See, the American Can Company should have whipped up an egg dish named for a composer - Eggs Gershwin perhaps? And they can use the score of Let 'Em Eat Cake (with the word cake crossed out and eggs written in) as a tablecloth.

Calculating Wheels of Fortune

A Pascaline, signed by you-know-who

Well, it's tax season, isn't it - and we're all having a good time with budgets and receipts and all kinds of fun math. And when you're working on those taxes, think for a moment of the teenage math whiz who invented the first mechanical calculator. Yes, 17th century mathematician and all-around Clever Fellow Blaise Pascal invented what he modestly called the Pascaline in 1642 - at age nineteen.

The very first modern calculator, with push buttons, was the 1902 Dalton Adding Machine. I don't think Mr. Dalton autographed any of those, though.

Popular Mechanics, March 1906

There were other people inventing calculators, too. And it's a good thing that we don't have to sit at that spinning wheel budget calculator from 1906, over on the left, in order to get the finances done. For one thing, that just isn't going to fit in my living room. And for another, I've read the description about seventeen times and I'm still not sure what you're supposed to do with all the bands of celluoid and whatnot. Do you think people actually used this sort of thing?

Popular Mechanics, May 1909

And then there's the pocket sized wheel - they liked circular calculators back in the good old days, I guess. Meet Chandler's Adding and Subtracting Scale, which you could buy for a dollar in 1909. It was the cutting edge budgeting tool for "mechanical engineers, draughtsmen, students, electrical engineers, civil engineers, machinists [and] shopkeepers." It did come in a "handsome leather case," which is nice. And I suppose it would help you balance your checkbook and so on. But I'm still glad there are easier ways to figure out your financial life now.

Still, maybe I could make room for the spinning-wheel calculator somewhere on the back porch. I could do the taxes and spin some wool at the same time!

The Artful Ice Cream

Shire Books

Ivan Day's charming and mouth-watering history of ice cream - a link is under the cover image on the left- has opened my eyes to the amazing world of Victorian ice cream. Even though the very first written recipes for "iced cream" date from the 17th century, it really was the Victorians who transformed this favorite dessert into High Art.

The Royal English and Foreign Confectioner (1862)

For example, did you know that in the 19th century, at a fancy dinner, you might be served an incredible trompe l'oeil (literally "trick of the eye" - meaning something made to look like something else) ice cream in the shape of  a roast joint of beef surrounded by champagne bottles (all done in ice creams, mind you) -  or a huge filigreed fruit basket - or even the Taj Mahal? Day's book is illustrated with some incredible pictures from cookery books, and even photographs of Victorian ice cream molds. Day has included photographs of some modern recreations of Victorian trompe d'oeil ice creams - and they really are lovely.

Agnes Marshall, inventor of an ice cream freezer in the 1880s, had some good recipes - her Sultan Pudding, for example, was made of vanilla and maraschino cherry ice cream, with Turkish Delight decorations, and was shaped like a mosque. "Ideal for ball suppers," she noted (and I have made a note of the same, if I ever give one of these). Or perhaps you'd prefer ice cream in the shape of asparagus stalks tied with a ribbon? Miss Marshall can do that, too.

Ice Cream, of course, continues on to the 20th century, to ice cream carts and ice cream popsicles and cones, all lavishly illustrated, all fascinating. But it is the Victorian ice creams that I like the best. Not just the shapes, but the flavors, too: orange flower, chestnut, almond macaroon, tea, apricot, damson plum. Even the odd 17th century flavor of parmesan cheese was still made then. Day includes the parmesan recipe along with a few others, at the end of the book, in case you'd like to try it.  I think I'll try the other 17th century iced cream favorite, burnt almond, instead.

Ice Cream by Ivan Day
Shire Library, 2011 (64 pp.)

[Here's the disclosure part: Shire Books kindly sent a free copy of Ice Cream to me, but all the opinions above are my own.]

A Sofa Bed In the Trees

1871 advertisement (Wikipedia)

If you were to visit Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1884, and it was a hot day, you might want to go out just north of the city to visit a 45 year old gentleman called Mr. Hayward, who was a respectable Pension Office clerk. But here was a man with a different lifestyle indeed: he lived in a tree house. A New York Times reporter went off to check out this unusual domicile in April 1884, being "desirous of ascertaining what could induce a man to build himself a residence in a tree."

Mr. Hayward explained that ever since contracting some unnamed disease in the Civil War, he needed to keep cool in the summer. So in 1883, he put up a tent in his back yard. But then he worried that a "tramp" would steal it, or that it would leak during a good rain. So he stuck the tent in a tree on Mount Pleasant*, having first got permission (they don't say from who). Well, he didn't stop at a tent: he built a whole tree house: a 12 by 7 1/2 foot platform built between two large trees, an A frame, and a tent over the whole thing. Instead of a sleeping bag, Mr. Hayward enjoyed the comfort of one of the modern sofa beds (modern for then, of course) such as you see on the left in the 1871 ad. Not quite as comfortable as the modern beds of today, which as you can see, are wide and sleek-looking, just right for an airy contemporary bedroom - but better than real camping, wouldn't you say?

Rock Creek Park (Wikipedia)

Mr. Hayward had some more modern furniture up in his tree house, too: a nice carpet, a wooden chest, a wash-stand, a rocking chair, a looking glass and even an oil stove (for warmth, not to cook on - he ate his meals at an obliging neighbor's). Over the door he had the American flag and an engraving of General Ulysses S. Grant. He called the place Airy Castle, and stayed there all year round (hence the oil stove, for winter). When the Times man interviewed him, Mr. Hayward had just bought some land nearby, also on Mount Pleasant, and was about to start building Airy Castle 2.0 - this time in an "octagon shape."

I will try and find out some more about Mr. Hayward and his tree castles and when I do, I'll come back and tell you some more about him (and them). I like to think of him up in a tree, lounging on his tufted, incongruously fancy Victorian sofa bed, listening to the wind and "the birds singing all around me."

[Source: "A House in the Tree Tops," New York Times, April 20, 1884.]

*Mount Pleasant is now a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. - it was a "streetcar suburb" back in the 1880s, and it's also home to Rock Creek Park (not founded until 1890), where I imagine the trees for the tree house were located. The article refers to the slopes of an actual Mount Pleasant, which must be one of the "wooded hills" mentioned in the National Park Service link above.

Viking Sandwiches

Life, Jun. 24, 1940

So this is how I come up with posts, on Days Like This (pretty much every day, but whatever). I go on to Google Books advanced search and type in the first couple of words that come to mind. Free association and all that. My, how creative. But also not, because I'm maybe half asleep and the things that spring to mind can be awfully strange. For example: the ad on your right. I found it because I have an ad bookmarked for next Christmas about "clever, sparkling, tasty" candy cane ornaments. P.S., they are not especially clever or sparkling. The Clever Candy Cane ad caught my eye because I am so NOT feeling clever or sparkling. Are you smarter than a candy cane? Not today I'm not!

So I went off to look for other non-holiday things that were described as clever or sparkling. Which led me to a line in an article in the June 24, 1940 edition of Life. The article was no good at all for Kitchen Retro. But then I found this (the bigger version is here). How can you resist this! It is truly the ad that Has It All:

- Relationship advice: Just shove a plate of salami at a guy and he's yours forever!

- A play on words (this must be the Clever Part): These delicious Cold Cuts are Short Cuts to a man's heart. Pure poetry.

- Modern innovation: "Visking" Casings! This, of course, is the Sparkling Part. They sound like something Leif Ericson took with him on long sea voyages to wrap daggers in. And they probably are about as tough. If I was not so lazy I would possibly try to expand on this hilariousness...I know! I can add a clip of the Monty Python Vikings who love Spam, at the end. That might work.

- Inane grinning retro people: Bonus points if the guy looks like Zeppo Marx. Check!

- And the optional but always fun Revolting Item touted as something really delicious. Bonus points if there is some suggestiveness involved: May I point out the Cottage Butts* in the ad? There you go.

- Oh, and quotation marks that give the whole ad a slightly sinister, Twilight Zoned feeling. Yes, we have those too! "Visking" Casings. What are they really trying to say?

- One more plus: these here things come from CHICAGO!

Also, I just wrote a freelance thing about German sausages. There are hundreds of kinds, you know. But I don't believe any of them have Visking Casings. Or even Viking Casings. Now I just need a title, I guess. Today I'm going for the slightly odd kind. Sparkling and clever, no (not so tasty either, really). But the kind that people will see (hi, Google!) and think: what in the world is that about? I hope.

* This is a kind of pork roast, I gather.