The Shackletons Make A Home

Long before Mr. Blandings built his dream house, Elizabeth and Robert Shackleton set out on similar path with their Adventures in Home-Making. As best as I can tell, their house sat somewhere in upstate New York, as they are always mentioning items they bought there, though they often mention items from other far away places, like Pennsylvania! Published in 1922, the book takes you on a virtual room-by-room tour of fixing up and decorating.

After looking around for their dream house, the Shackletons paid $10,000 for this house, barns and eleven acres.

Upon seeing the house they remarked that the, "outward ugliness gave us pause."

The barn would later be painted and stone columns added.

Time marches on...

...and the ugly house becomes a home. While the Shackletons are more than happy to tell us what they paid at the outset, the book is rather lacking on such details as how long it took for their transformation and what their additional costs were. In the section on the bedrooms we are told:

"It was surprising that there were quite so many changes to make as we found necessary; ordinarily, the home-maker would not find, in a house that was finally to fit his ideas, quite so much that needed altering; but that we did find so much to do, both outside and in, will the better show that any one who loves his home and aims to make it comfortable to his ideas can freely alter and transform and successfully meet innumerable obstacles with simple expedients. It is an excellent idea, and worthy of repetition, that luck may be counted upon as one of the resources of the confident home-maker."

Yes, the writing is a bit purple, and run on, but it is quite charming. After reading and re-reading, I am still not sure of the exact bedroom count in the house. I must say, however, that I am hoping, as a "confident home-maker," that luck will always be on my side.

One of joys of old books is finding that special something tucked or written inside. (Generally, I loath anything scribbled inside a book, but I am giving this a pass, largely because they though enough to quote poetry, especially poetry that I love.) On the front free endpaper was this drawing, a quote from William Butler Yeats and a list, one might assume, of the people giving this book as a gift.


The quote is from one of my favorite Yeats poems. As a child, Yeats' father read to him from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, and the impact of those early readings can be seen here.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Ah, to live alone in a bee-loud glade...

Etiquette Wednesday

Your Manners Are Showing, written by that the perky young writer and illustrator Betty Betz will provide your teen-ager with the "bright and breezy low-down on dates, popularity, clothes, jobs, parents, smoking, money, table manners, parties, and dozens of other vital teenage matters."

According to the jacket blurb, Betty Betz is the noted teen-age authority. Written in 1946, this slim volume is aimed at the teenager out there who is treading the murky undercurrent of etiquette. Aided by Anne Clark, who whipped up some nifty little verses to explain various tips along the way, there is nothing the budding teen-ager won't know. It would seem that along with a profound desire to learn manners, teenagers just love to read poetry. Like this one:

Just now the words you'd like to write
Are "dearest, darling, my life's light."
Suppose that in five years or ten
He reads your note aloud -- What then?

While it might have been 1949, one can see that etiquette has many universals. It would be easy enough to update these verses for today's teen-age, like this one:

Just now the words you'd like to tweet
Are, "Send me some photos, topless."
When you meet a prospective employer, My Sweet
You may find yourself jobless.

The previous owner of this book seemed to be having a bit of trouble with conversation and dating as she made a few notes in these particular chapters. She needed to show a bit more animation in her face and concentrate more on the other party. Her temper was also of great concern. Under the following quote is neatly written, "copy this line ten times." The line:

"Be pretty if you can, witty if you must
-- and pleasant if it kills you."

Words to live by.

Restoration Hardware

I just picked up the new Restoration Hardware catalogue or Source Book/Magalog/Catalog "we're not quite sure what to call it" as Gary Friedman, Chairman and Co-CEO, we're not quite sure what to call him, puts it.

The mailman is not speaking to me. This catalogue, all 616 pages of it, is already stirring up controversy. And that might just be the point. Keep an eye out for your haggard mail person as he/she starts dragging these behemoths to your mail slot.

Famous Food Friday -- Colleen McCullough

People often joke that EVERYONE has a a book in them, well it is not a far stretch (especially if you read Famous Food Friday) to assume that EVERYONE has a cookbook in them. Today we are... Cooking With Colleen McCullough.

McCullough was a literary sensation in the late 1970's and 1980's after producing an rather large and rambling novel about Australia entitled: The Thorn Birds. It was ostensibly about a priest waging battle between his love of God and his love of all things female. It was all the rage and in 1983 it was turned into a rambling mini-series.


I came to write about this cookbook, not because of Colleen McCullough but because of Barbara Stanwyck .



Recently I saw an interview with the new "IT" girl, Brit Marling,


who said the actress she most wanted to be like was Barbara Stanwyck . A few days later, I saw Barbara Stanwyck in Annie Oakley.



Then, I was moving something in a desk and I ran across the Barbara Stanwyck Christmas Ornament, my BFF, Beverly gave me. Then I remembered The Thorn Birds, largely because of Barbara Stanwyck, who had a hot sex scene with a naked Richard Chamberlain. It was quite scandalous at the time. And that, my dear readers, is how we got to to Colleen McCullough's cookbook but, as always, I digress...



Colleen McCullough set out to be a doctor, but dermatitis kept her from scrubbing in as a physician, so she turned her interests to neurophysiology. While studying, she had a professor, Jean Easthope. The pair became friends and quickly began cooking together. They proved to be an unlikely, yet interesting mix. McCullough was raised in a meat-and-potatoes household while Easthope was raised by vegetarian parents.

The book is filled with archival prints, drawings and photographs, including a rather lovely kangaroo hunt (unless, of course, you are the kangaroo).


I was quite dismayed that the book failed to include a single kangaroo recipe. Since humans are a bit on the squeamish side and would rather eat pork than pig, venison than deer, so, an attempt was made recently to develop a "people" friendly culinary term for kangaroo. The winner is... "Australus." If you see"Australus" steak on the menu, you will no longer be in the dark.

Since we had no kangaroo, we immediately went to the chocolate. Even kangaroo, sorry, Australus, would be great if just smothered it in this lovely sauce.

Chocolate Rum Sauce

225 g (8 oz) dark chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons rum

Melt the chocolate and butter together in the top of a double boiler, stir well, and add the rum, stirring again.

As long as we are rambling...

The joy (as well as the curse) of our new technology may well be that we never lose anything. When you snort milk out your nose in the junior high lunch room, chances are it will end up on YouTube. Forever. FOREVER. Every dumbass thing one does, things that used to be forgotten, are now immortalized for better or worse.

The good news is, one no longer has to watch 8 hours of The Thorn Birds to see the naughty bit with Richard Chamberlain and Barbara Stanwyck .

Happy Birthday Sandra

Bowery 1, (2004) Sandra Walker, RI

Today is my dear friend, Sandra Walker's birthday. She is 35... or is it 95? I get those two confused.
Anyway...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Sandra

An Artist Named Dora

One of our favorite authors here at Lucindaville is Marjorie Hillis. We didn't know much about her, but have always loved her books. Most were written in the 1930's and were guidebooks for women. They are remarkably funny and and continue to be relevant for women, even today. That is probably why several different publishers are reprinting her books. Recently, we ran across an article about Hillis by Joanna Scutts. We were ever so happy to find out more about Hillis.

In 1938, Hillis wrote a poetry sequence about seven working women entitled, Work Ends At Nightfall. The poems are a bit overwrought and I must say that I have read them all. What is striking about this book is the artwork. There are two line drawings of each of the characters by and artist called Dora. Again, I have nothing about the artist known as "Dora." What I will tell you is that the illustrations are stunning. There is something so evocative about these simple line drawings that keep me coming back to them. If you recognise Dora give us the scoop!

Edith Wharton

Edith Newbold Jones, 1870 by Edward Harrison May

I have a picture research job and recently came across this gem. One always thinks of the formidable Edith Wharton as, well... the formidable Edith Wharton.

Edward Harrison May was a British-born artist working in Paris. This portrait of the young Edith was painted during a six-year family sojourn in Europe.

It just goes to show, we were all young once.

Famous Food Friday -- Beverley Nichols

Last year Lucindaville (and Cookbook Of The Day) offered up a Famous Food Friday about Beverley Nichols and we are doing it again.

When last we were cooking with Beverely Nichols, we were pondering his "found" cookbook, In an Eighteenth Century Kitchen. This was the cookbook Nichols wrote about in A Thatched Roof. After his success with Down The Garden Path, the first and probably best known, or should I say, remembered of Nichols' books, he chose to undertake a similar culinary adventure which would become Down the Kitchen Sink. Nichols knew as little about cooking and he once did about gardening and I am sure he thought if could master gardening, why not cooking.



This is, however, Beverely Nichols, so an actual cookbook is not exactly what is presented. Even Nichols admits to this:

"This is supposed to be a cookery v book, but I suspect that it will turn out to be something rather different. True, it contains a number of Gaskin's own recipes, which, after his death, I found interlarded among the pages of the cookery books that he had collected over the years. these were sometimes scribbled over with mysterious comments on the guest who were to partake of them, such as 'No crab for Lady F'. I cannot remember any Lady F in my life, nor why she should have been denied this delicacy."

The "Gaskin" mentioned is Reginald Arthur Gaskin who was Nichols manservant for 40 years. When the writer, P.G. Woodhouse visited Nichols and was served by Gaskin, he remarked that Gaskin was, "the perfect Jeeves." While it is said that Woodhouse based his character on a butler he employed for research, Eugene Robinson, it comes as no surprise that Jeeves' Christian name is revealed in 1971 to be "Reginald" but then... Bertie was based on an earlier character named Reggie Pepper... but I digress....

Beverely Nichols, Reginald Gaskin and Nichols gardener, Oldfield.

You get the idea of Gaskin's demeanor. After forty years, when Gaskin died, Nichols found himself in his kitchen alone searching for something to eat. Nichols takes it upon himself to write a cookery book, but it becomes more of dining book filled with interesting people including but not limited to: Noel Coward, Oliver Messel, and William Randolph Hearst. His stories are wonderfully gossipy filled with dish and food.

Clearly, some of the recipes are unique to Nichols. This unnamed recipe is on Nichols "heard" about. It is by far the strangest recipe, and one you should replicate at your own risk.

Silver Chicken

I had to invent this title for this recipe does no appear in any cookery book which I have yet encountered.

You take the largest capon you can buy. It must be a whooper.

You then rinse 6 or 8 silver spoons or forks in hot water. Only silver will do; silver plate would be worse than useless.

Now, taking a firm grip of the chicken, push the silver up its behind. As if this were not enough humiliation, follow it with two heaped tablespoonful of ground ginger. All this sounds extremely sadistic but it is no more so than keeping the poor thing cramped in a cage for the whole of its unnatural life.

Having maltreated the chicken in this manner, bring a large saucepan of slightly salted water to a boil, put in the chicken, add 6 carrots and 6 medium sized onions, cram on the lid, and boil at the gallop for precisely 5 minutes.

Turn off the gas, lift up the saucepan, transport to the larder, and leave to cool overnight.

On the following morning you must be prepared for a shock. When you lift the chicken out and drain off the water, and remove the spoons and forks, you will find that they have all gone black. Do not be alarmed. A good soaking in any of the modern silver-cleaning preparations will restore them, though this may take rather longer than usual.

A chicken prepared in this manner tastes quite different from any chicken you have ever had before, unless you are at least sixty years old, and can recall the days of your youth, when a chicken really was a chicken, and not a synthetic Robot bird, reared by Robots for the mechanical digestion of other Robots. Apart from the taste, it can be carved in delicate slices, instead of falling to pieces in the manner of the average boiled chicken of today.

I cannot think of a better dinner companion than Beverely Nichols. When you try this recipe, do send us a photo -- or the chicken and the silverware!

Celia Fiennes

Bifrons Park and Canterbury
"Canterbury opens to view 6 miles distant,
by the advantage of a high hill."

Celia Fiennes traveled through England on horseback, riding side-saddle. Born in 1662, she never married and took great relish in traveling. Her travels were concentrated in her native England where she is the first woman to visit every county in England. Fiennes had a great interest in the architecture of her day and visited many of the stately homes in the country side. In fact, she saw many of the finest houses of the Baroque period as they were being built and landscaped. Here are just a few.

Hampton Court Palace
"There is two broad gravell walks runns aslant
like two wings from the first garden."



Wilton
"The Gardens are very fine, with many gravel walkes
with grass squaires set with fine brass and stone statues."

Althorp
"The front appear'd like a Princes Court of brick and stone very fine,
with a large Parke wall'd in of good extent."

Wollaton Hall
"On the Leads you have a very fine prospect...
you see Thomas Willoughbys fine house[Wollaton Hall]
on the other side of town."

In December 1998 a monument commemorating the 300th anniversary of Celia Fiennes' Great Journey was unveiled.

The Celia Fiennes Waymark

Penguin's English Journeys reprinted Celia Fiennes' Through England on a Side-saddle and Christopher Morris first compiled her journals in 1947. They have been reprinted in numerous editions since. Celia Fiennes died in 1741.

School Then and Now

1995 Graduating Class. Nora, second row on the end.

Kids went back to school this week here in West Virginia. All the ads for school supplies and new clothes made me think of one of my favorite possessions. It is the 1911 Yearbook from Manson High School in Manson, Iowa.

My father's family was from Iowa. He was born after his brother's and sister were grown, an accidental baby. My parents were older when they had me, so I never met my grandparents. My father's aunt's and uncle's were mostly gone when I was born. I knew my great-aunt, Nora for a brief period, but she was quite formidable, approaching 100 and still the most fun a kid could ever want.

Nora, in the middle.

She attended Manson High and was in the class of 1895. She went back to Manson to teach. Later she traveled by horseback as Superintendent of Schools in Montana.



There is much discussion about the failure of American schools. today. It is interesting to look back and see what high school was like in 1911. To graduate from Manson High, your four years of study included:

Four years of English

Four years of Latin

Two years of German

Algebra, Geometry, Advanced Arithmetic and Physics

English history, Ancient Greek and Roman history, U.S. history, Civics, and Economics

Botany, Geography, and Book-keeping.

In addition all pupils were given vocal music and spelling.

And when they said vocal music, they meant all out, costumed operettas and pageants.

Rhetoricals were required for graduation. One had to be able to stand before one's peers and speak cogently on various topics of the day. I am sorry Nora is not around to give remedial classes in rhetoric to our politicians.

And in their free time, they played sports, long before Title IX.

I am quite sure that the average student at the finest institutions of higher learning who receives a Master Degree in 2011 would not be able to graduate from Manson High. Nor would they have the ability to construct their own costume for the operetta. Time marches on...