Radio Script #1021

Little Talks on Common Things
October 13, 1974

While it is fresh in mind, let us have today a bit more from those issues of Godey’s Lady’s Book of the year 1849, a long 125 years ago.

In it was a letter which had been written in 1779 by George Washington to Dr. James Cochrane of New Windsor, Penn. The letter said: If I have asked Mrs. Cochrane and Mrs. Livingstone to dine with me tomorrow, but ought I not first to apprise them of the fare? As I hate deception, even where imagination only is concerned, I will let them know in advance what to expect. Needless to say, my table is large enough to hold the ladies. To say what is usually on it is more essential. Since your arrival here, we have had a ham and bacon and roasts of beef, while a small dish of greens or beans adorns the center. When the cook decides to cut a figure, we have two beef steak pies or dishes of crabs, one on each side of the center dish. Lately we have had the surpassing luck to discover that apples will make pies, and if the cook gets truly violent in his efforts, we may get one pie of apples instead of both of beef. If the ladies can put up with such entertainment and will condescend to partake of it on plates not of china, but of tin, I shall be happy to see them.

There was, in the same issue of the Lady’s Book a letter by a woman irate at the rising cost of butter. It was outrageous, she said, to have to pay 23¢ a pound for it. She wrote: “I have stopped using butter on pancakes. Molasses is cheaper.”

There was a nostalgic passage on the old time horse block, used for mounting and dismounting saddle horses. One sentence said: “Look on that primitive horse block, the sturdy relic of some old oak, think how many fashionable ladies have stepped upon it over the years.

Another paragraph has a man’s account of his first cigar. It made him so sick he never tried another.

It would be several years before that new device the camera, originally called the camera obscura, would make it possible for Brady to take his celebrated pictures on battlefields of the Civil War. But in 1849 the daguerreotype was in its heyday. An article about it in Lady’s Book said: “One business is now so flourishing that every man’s house may soon become a picture gallery. No community of any size is now without at least one daguerreotypist. Only a few years ago only the wealthy could afford likenesses of themselves and their families. Now it is hard to find a person who has not been in the operator’s hand at least once. If a painter’s sketch is the place to get a glimpse of human nature, how much more so is the daguerreotypist’ s operating room, where dozens come daily and are finished off in a few minutes. Some get so nervous in the chair that they tremble like aspens. Some are so scared that the resulting picture is enough to frighten not only their friends, but the subjects themselves.”

In 1849, one of America’s most popular writers was still living. Washington Irving had just returned from a long stay in England. He wrote for Godey an account of English rural life. In the article Irving said: “The great charm of English scenery is the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It seems associated with order, with quiet, with sober principles and long established customs. Everything seems to be the growth of the ages. The old church of remote architecture with its low, massive portal and its stained glass windows, its tombstones recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plow the fields and kneel at the same altar, the parsonage, a quiet, rectangular pile, often altered to suit successive tenants, and the green fields and hedgerows stretching far and wide. It is all homey and comfortable.

One issue of this 1849 volume has an account of Washington’s Virginia estate, Mount Vernon. It says: “The place took its name from Admiral Vernon, who presented it to Washington, who himself subsequently added to it several adjoining farms. Not far away is the plantation of a more recent president, James Monroe. The porter’s lodge at the entrance to Mount Vernon is now occupied by an old colored woman who claims to have been a servant in Washington’s family and tells many stories about him. We bought from her several canes, which she said she had made from brush cut around Washington’s tomb. On the river bank is a dry cellar originally used an an ice house. A short distance away is the old burial vault, its walls broken down and the noble cedars around it are all dying. A few years ago Washington’s remains were moved to the new vault, where they now repose in an elegant marble sarcophagus.”

The article continued: “Congress has repeatedly been petitioned to purchase Mount Vernon, but as yet with no effect. The present owners are willing to dispose of 1,500 acres, including the buildings and tombs, for about $400,000. The estate should certainly become public property and be placed under suitable supervision, and left as nearly as possible in the style it had during Washington’s lifetime. Visitors would not then be denied admittance into the house as they now are. Some have had the disappointment after having journeyed long distances to see the place where the Father of His Country resided. The mansion contains so many interesting curiosities that it certainly should be open to the public. One is the richly sculptured marble mantle piece presented to Washington by Lafayette, and the elegant sword given by Frederick the Great. Mount Vernon must indeed be made a national shrine.”

We now know that the fervent wish expressed in that article did come true. Mount Vernon is now owned by the people of the United States and is our foremost national shrine, visited annually not only by Americans, but also by people from allover the world.

As you might well suspect, the Lady’s Book had something to say about women’s clothes. Listen to what it said about caps and capes: “No unmarried lady should ever wear a morning cap. This is the sign of the young matron. If the wife cares as much for her husband’s admiration after marriage as she did before it, she will never dispense with a tasteful, coquetted cap in her morning dress. This season has seen a use of delicate Indian muslin for caps. It is often embroidered with frills. They can be simply made, requiring only a bow and strings of some bright ribbon to finish them.

“Capes should not be worn in the morning.. They are better suited for dinner or for small evening parties. They may be worn in all sizes and patterns. A favorite type is of Brussels lace with a ribbon knot. Others are made of embroidered muslin and are fastened with a brooch. When silk is used instead of lace, the color should be brilliant. ”

Of course the Lady’s Book contained many household recipes. Here is one for what was called a washing mixture: “Take 2 pounds of the best brown soap. Cut it up and put it into a clean pot, adding one quart of clear, soft water. Set it over the fire and melt it thoroughly. Then take it off the fire and stir in a tablespoon of real white-wine vinegar, two large tablespoons of hartshorn spirits and 7 large tablespoons of spirit of turpentine. Stirring the ingredients well together, put the mixture into a stone jar and cover it. When preparing to wash, nearly fill an 8 gallon tub with soft water, as hot as you can bear your hand in, and stir in two large tablespoons of your mixture. Put in as many white clothes as the water will cover. Let them soak about an hour, moving them about in the water occasionally. You will need to rub only such parts of the clothes as are very dirty. Common dirt will be washed out by the mixture. Next put into a wash kettle sufficient water to boil the clothes and add two more tablespoons of the mixture. Boil the clothes for half an hour, then take them out and throw them into a tub of cold water. Rinse them well in cold water, then put them into a second tub of cold water, slightly blued with the indigo bag. Be very careful to rinse them in two cold waters, after the first suds and after the boiling. Then wring them and hang them out. Do not put colored dresses in the general wash. It is best to devote a separate day to them alone. Each colored dress should be washed by itself and ironed as soon as it is dry. Remember that colored dresses will fade if they are left too long in the water.”

Listening to that recipe ought to make you very sure that today’s housewives should have no longing for a return to those good old days, which were anything but good as far as woman’s housework was concerned. After a woman had gone through all the details of that white wash, what did she do next? Did she go to bed and get some much needed rest? By no means. She had meals to get, beds to make, children to tend, and numerous other daily chores. And waiting for the next day was the ironing and the washing of those easily faded colored dresses.

A hundred years ago there were parties and other social gatherings, as well as afternoon calls, but most of that leisure was only for women who could afford servants, and at the time when this volume of Lady’s Book was published, the middle of the 19th century, a maid who lived in got “$2 a week and found” – meaning that, in addition to a bed in the attic, and three meals a day, her cash pay was $2 a week. So, despite much frugal living at that time, many housewives could afford at least one servant.

As a boy, it was my duty, every Monday morning before school, to take in summer by a boy’s cart, and in winter on a sled, the family wash to a woman who did it in her home about a mile from ours. On Saturday I would go and get it, a big load, all neatly washed and ironed. For the whole job that woman got one dollar a week.

Year: 1974