Comfort Reads, Part 2

We last talked about comfort reads here a couple of years ago…and hoo boy, if ever a topic should be discussed again, it’s that one. And right now.

I keep track of the books I’ve read on LibraryThing, a wonderful book cataloguing site that I’ve been a member of for nearly ten years now.* It had been a good reading year up till late March—I’d read several new books at a fairly brisk clip. And then—well, you know what happened. So what did I do?

I read Georgette Heyer, of course. I pounded back Sylvester and Frederica and The Unknown Ajax and Devil’s Cub and The Quiet Gentleman one after another, with scarce a pause in between. And it helped—it truly did. So I ventured into some new-to-me books again, prompted by a generous deal from Tor Books, and jumped into a series that’s received a lot of love in the book world but is perhaps one that NineteenTeen readers aren’t quite expecting to hear about here…but if you at all like science fiction (and yes, I do—very much!) you HAVE to read the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells, beginning with All Systems Red..

Yes, you read that correctly. The Murderbot Diaries.

While that sounds dreadfully…icky and not at all comforting, this series of novellas qualifies as just that. Yes, it has all the usual trappings of science fiction—interstellar space travel, asteroid mining, robots and AIs and cyborgs, shady planetary surveyors. But it also has Murderbot, a cyborg security unit who is deeply, unabashedly, addicted to the future’s equivalent of Netflix. And a cyborg addicted to story somehow comes across as much more human than machine. If you’re at all a science fiction reader, you should give these books a try.

So that’s my comfort reading for the month. What are you reading that’s helping you through these troubling times?**

*And if you’re interested in checking LibraryThing out, accounts are now free for members to catalogue unlimited books. I tell you, this site has more than once kept me from buying second copies of books I’d forgotten I already owned. Of course, being a member has also meant I’ve bought a lot of books based on the recommendations of friends, so it’s probably a wash. 😊

 
**And by the way—hugs, my friends.

Retro Read: Meet Mrs. Fish

Summertime, and the livin’ is...well, in early twentieth century Newport, Rhode Island, it was crazily, ostentatiously over-the-top! Here’s a summertime blast from the past appropriate for the warm, hazy days of August (though it’s feeling kind of Septemberish on Cape Cod just now) and as a gear-up to Evergreen’s release in November. Enjoy!

 

One of the most interesting people I’ve “met” over the course of doing research for my non-nineteenth century book is Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, known as “Mamie” to her friends. Mamie Fish, along with her frenemies Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and Tessie Oelrichs, was one of THE leaders of Gilded Age society in New York and Newport—in fact, they were known as the Great Triumvirate.

She was born in 1855 to a prosperous but not particularly wealthy or socially prominent family. But little Marion (as she was christened), despite her lack of connections, married well—her childhood neighbor and sweetheart, Stuyvesant Fish, scion of an important and wealthy family. Mr. Fish was no rich idler; despite his inheritance, he worked his way up through the ranks to become president of the Illinois Central Railroad. He and Mamie were, unusually for their time and class, a devoted couple; even during the height of the social season, at least once a week Mamie made sure they dined alone at home together, usually on Mr. Fish’s favorite corned beef and cabbage. She was also an involved and loving mother to their three children, all of whom turned out shockingly normal.

If Mamie were to summarized in one word, that word would probably be "feisty". Though not a beauty nor very well-educated (it was said that she could barely read and sign her name), she made up for these defects with a quick intelligence and an even quicker wit. Born today, I could see her in politics or in entertainment; but the only career open to a woman of her class at the turn of the twentieth century was social lioness, and Mamie went for it with a vengeance. She was utterly fearless, and alas, tactless…and yet it became almost something of a badge of honor to have been insulted (and in one case, run over repeatedly) by Mrs. Fish.

She came to “power” as the former queen of society, Mrs. Astor (of The Four Hundred fame) was winding down her social career. But society had changed since Mrs. Astor’s heyday, and Mamie fitted the new freer, faster pace of society to a T. She flouted convention and never paid social calls, left parties she found boring (usually loudly announcing the fact), and went to bed if she found her own parties had grown dull. In fact, she often seemed to dislike entertaining, and once announced to her guests, “Make yourselves perfectly at home, and believe me, there is no one who wishes you were there more than I do!” To a collection of ladies arrived for a luncheon in their newest Parisian couture, she said, “Here you all are, older faces and younger clothes.”

With her friend (some called him her “court jester”) Harry Lehr, Mamie did her best to shake things up. Parties became even more elaborate and costly and outrageously themed. When an enemy of Mamie’s failed to invite her to a party given in honor of the Tsar’s brother, Mamie threw her own for the Tsar himself and stole away all her rival’s guests, eager to meet the Tsar…who turned out to be Harry in disguise. It was a huge hit, and the following day the Tsar’s brother told Mamie he wished he’d been there, too. On another occasion they threw a party for the mysterious Prince del Drago of Corsica…and the guests who arrived eager to rub shoulders with royalty found that the distinguished Prince was a monkey in evening dress. Yet when she invited Marie Dressler to entertain her guests at a party, the actress sat down to dinner first with Mamie as an equal—unheard of in that day and age. She enjoyed lambasting the snobbishness of society; her mansion in Newport boasted no marble panels or stained glass windows bought from French chateaux or Italian palazzi, but was built in Colonial Revival style and furnished with American art and antiques.

I can’t help thinking there’s something a little sad about Mamie—poorly educated, her obvious brains and wit wasted in parties and dinners--yet what other outlet did she have? I think this accounts for some of her outrageousness and her poking-holes-from-the-inside attitude. I also think that sometimes, she just couldn’t stop herself, as when her friend Alva Belmont came to her and angrily said, “I hear that you have been telling everyone that I look like a frog!” (which she rather did, if you look at her portraits…) Mamie demurred: “No, no…not a frog! A toad, my pet, a toad!”

Still Here, Part 4

In celebration of finishing my WWI set story, I'm presenting another set of ads for products and companies that are, remarkably, still here after nearly (or in some cases, more than) a hundred years:

I use it on appliances, not white shoes, but Bon Ami evidently didn’t scratch then, either (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917):

Those seem awfully pointy for men's shoes, don't you think? Florsheim Shoes (The Literary Digest, December 1, 1917):

If you didn't can those berries the way you were supposed to, might as well eat cake! Crisco (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917):

For cooking and desserts, yeah, sure.  For eggless mayonnaise...no. Just no. Carnation Milk (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917):

Ham, ham, ham, ham. Armour Ham (The Delineator, May 1917):

Thank heavens typhoid and cholera are no longer words frequently seen in product advertising. Lifebuoy Soap (Harper’s Weekly, February 22, 1902):

What I would like to know is just what tests the United States Patent Office ran to prove the board's "efficacy!" Ouija Board (Metropolitan, June 1917):

I love this one. It begins with INFECTION in large, ominous letters...discusses killing multiple types of bugs, assures us that it isn't poisonous, and ends by suggesting consumers write for a free fairy story book.  Uh huh. Black Flag Insect Powder (The Delineator, May 1917):

Still Here...

In this age of constantly changing fad and fashion in the world of consumer goods, it’s pretty interesting to note just how many companies and products are anything but a fad, and are indeed chugging along after nearly a hundred years. We’ve already seen how long-lived a brand Keds are...and here are a few others, from my collection of vintage magazines:

This one’s just gorgeous! Palmolive Soap, from McCall’s Magazine, June 1917:

Cookies never go out of style: Nabisco Sugar Wafers, from Harper’s Weekly, February 22, 1902:

Who knew that Vaseline came in different flavors? (McCall’s Magazine, January 1909):

Ermegerd! Jell-O!! (McCall’s Magazine, October 1910)

Eveready Batteries, before the Energizer Bunny: (Collier’s Magazine, July 28, 1917)

Ivory Soap (McCall’s Magazine, August 1910):

Coke, back when it still had small amounts of a now-controlled substance as an ingredient: (McCall’s Magazine, June 1917):

Even mattresses (McCall’s Magazine, October 1910):

This one, however, totally wins...from La Belle Assemblee, February, 1811...for Pears’s Soap!

Any products here you still use?  Do you wish their ads still looked like these?

Not the Nineteenth Century...and Not Ackermann's Repository

This January finds me doing something I don’t usually do—namely, working on a couple of projects at once. One of those projects is a story set in the United States in 1917, just as the country has entered World War I on the Allies’ side.

Now, the cool thing about working on a story set in the 20th century is that there’s even more of a wealth of research material than there is for the 19th, my beloved Ackermann’s notwithstanding. My favorite research medium for details of everyday life in other times is magazines. As with any historical source, one has to be careful. Magazines often portray life in an idealized manner—how their readers want to see themselves and their lives rather than how they really are. But even so, they’re a rich source of the kind of details of everyday life that it’s hard to find elsewhere.

So I’ve accumulated a tidy stack of back-issues of several magazines from the summer of 1917. Mostly they’re magazines that would have appealed to a female audience: I’ve got issues of McCall’s Magazine, Today’s Housewife, The Modern Priscilla (lots of needlework patterns), Women’s World, The Delineator, Ladies’ World, Needlecraft, Collier’s, The Literary Digest, and The Independent. The Delineator is an especial delight with very high production values and many pages of fashions for each month, many in color (hmmm, I sense a Fashion Forecast for 1917 coming up....) Most of them have short stories or serialized stories, and I’ve enjoyed reading some of these. But most of all, I think I love the ads. Especially this one, from the July 1917 issue of McCall's Magazine:

The text reads:

They bow to you--discriminatingly well-dressed American woman! It is a new name--one which we will make it worth your while to remember. In your mind we would have you associate the name with all that is fine in workmanship and all that is graceful in shoes.

Keds for you will cover all daytime occasions--home wear; golf; tennis and all other outside games; for ordinary walking or "hikes"; for yachting and riding wear; and plenty of other styles just as prettily suitable for wear with morning frocks and daintiest house gowns, at home or on the country-club porch.

She travels many miles a day--the woman going about her household duties; but she is perfectly content to walk on the journey of loving service when she wears a shoe as pretty as it is comfortable. These trim Keds sum up excellence in their flexibility, durability, and delightful comfort--qualities very desirable to active feet.

The tops of Keds are of the firmest and finest of cool canvas, giving these shoes full elastic support. Then they have rubber soles which make them delightfully flexible and durable. No shoes are more comfortable or prettier for warm-weather wear.

Ask at your shoe shop to be shown Keds. They mean style, service and economy for all the family--styles for husband and kiddies included.

Yes, Keds were introduced to the world in the summer of 1917. I totally had to have my heroine wearing a pair of her new, deliciously lightweight shoes in their honor...and who would have guessed that the Keds brand has been around for nearly a hundred years? By the way, check out the fashions in the illustration: oh, those risque bathing suits!

I’ll be featuring more ads in future posts...including the shocking truth about ladies’ blouses. Stay tuned!

Nineteenth Century Today: All's Fair in Puyallup

Our new State Fair in Puyallup starts today.  Yes, the massive, impressive, stupendous Puyallup Fair is now officially Washington's State Fair.  Having grown up not too far from it, I'm inordinately proud.  And though it started in 1900, just after the nineteenth century and on another continent from our beloved England, I thought it worthy of comment.

The Puyallup Valley runs from Mt. Rainier down to Commencement Bay in Tacoma, following the path of the glacier-fed Puyallup River.  The area has been growing crops since it was settled in the 1850s and was home to the Puyallup Tribe before that.  In 1900, local residents banded together to charter a "Valley Fair" to showcase area agriculture, horticulture, dairies, stock raising, mining, and manufacturing.  The small fair, which ran for three days, cost each family a dollar to attend.

But what really put the Puyallup Fair on the map was horse racing.  In 1901, the fair expanded to include a race track and was held over four days.  That original race track was used until 1977.  So many people came from far and wide that in 1902 the fair added parking lots for the jalopies. From there, the fair continued to expand, to more days, more acreage, more activities affecting more people in more areas.  In 1913, it became the Western Washington Fair, but even when I was born more than four decades later, everyone still called it "the Puyallup."

Attendance in 1922 was at 130,000, which skyrocketed to nearly 400,000 by the late 1930s.  Sadly, the federal government commandeered the fairgrounds for much of World War II.  It served as a camp for an army unit, then a relocation center for Japanese-Americans, and finally home to a Signal Service Battalion.  The grounds were closed until 1946, but it has continued its momentous growth since then, with attendance now in the millions.

One of the mainstays of the Fair was Fisher scones, fresh made and dripping with raspberry jam.  That tradition started in 1915 and continues today.  Another tradition was lost in a fire in 1970.  That was a ride called The Old Mill Stream, where couples could ride on boats through a shadowed waterway that included vistas from exotic locations.  It was all terribly romantic, except for the last scene.  All you saw was the back end of a donkey that kicked out at the boat.  It was supposed to drive the girl squealing into her boyfriend's arms. Though I was in elementary school, I loved that ride!  I couldn't wait until I had a boyfriend to throw myself at. All's fair in love, after all.

Welcome to statehood, Puyallup Fair!

Not the Nineteenth Century: Alva Vanderbilt Belmont

Time for another entry in my Not the Nineteenth Century series!

In January I told you about a lady named Mrs. Fish who, along with two friends, was one of the premier leaders of fashionable New York society in the early 20th century. Today we will meet the second member of that triumvirate.

Alva Smith was not a native New Yorker but a southern girl, born in Alabama in 1853. Her family summered in Newport, RI while it was still a bastion of the old New England aristocracy, and spent the Civil War years in France, where little Alva attended school and acquired a fondness for all things French. However, the war was not kind to her father’s business prospects, and when the family returned to the United States and settled in New York City, it was in such reduced circumstances that the family nearly had to take in boarders to make ends meet. The death of her mother in 1869, when Alva was sixteen, turned her into “mother” to her two younger sisters, and she decided that it would be up to her to restore the family fortunes and take care of her sisters by marrying well. And what Alva decided upon usually took place: she was an extraordinarily tenacious person, as well as being both intelligent and spirited.

Alva accordingly restored the family fortunes by marrying the extremely wealthy William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of “Commodore” Vanderbilt, in 1875. She and “Willy K” had three children—Consuelo, William junior, and Harold. But her husband had his own interests, and Alva eventually turned to two things: social climbing, and building.

The Vanderbilts were “new money”, and as such not in the inner circle of society reigned over by Mrs. Caroline Astor (a.k.a. “the” Mrs. Astor). Alva changed this by building an enormous family home on 5th Avenue and then holding what promised to be the most glittering ball of the season…and not inviting Mrs. Astor or her daughter, who was pining to attend. Wanting to please her daughter, Mrs. Astor consented to call on Mrs. Vanderbilt…and after that, Alva’s place in society was guaranteed.

In 1895, after building several enormous houses with her husband’s money, including the astonishing Marble House in Newport (pictured above) and multiple mansions on Long Island, Alva sued him for divorce and promptly married one of her ex-husband’s best friends, Oliver Belmont. That same year she maneuvered and browbeat her daughter Consuelo into marrying the Duke of Marlborough (they too would have an unhappy marriage ending in divorce), and embarked happily on renovating and rebuilding her new husband’s homes and building them a new New York mansion. With the retirement of her former nemesis, Mrs. Astor, from the social scene, she moved into place with Mamie Fish and Tess Oelrichs as the leaders of New York society.

But the loss of her second husband in 1909 left Alva at somewhat loose ends…until she decided to pursue her growing interest in women’s suffrage. With her usual energy Alva embraced the suffrage movement and poured money and effort into working to secure the vote for women. She helped found several suffrage groups as well as what would today be called political action groups, and was co-founder of the National Women’s Party, of which she remained president for her lifetime. She even held a suffrage conference at Marble House, much to the bemusement of her society friends, and had a special set of china imprinted with the slogan "Votes for Women" made for the occasion.

After the First World War Alva spent an increasing amount of time in her beloved France, especially after Consuelo received her divorce and remarried a French war hero and aviation expert. She continued to build, remodeling a 15th century chateau, right until her death in 1933.

What do you think of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont? I don’t get the impression that she was probably the easiest person to live with (as her daughter and first husband might attest), but she was certainly a pioneer and a powerful woman ahead of her time.

Not the Nineteenth Century: Meet Mrs. Fish

One of the most interesting people I’ve “met” over the course of doing research for my non-nineteenth century book is Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, known as “Mamie” to her friends. Mamie Fish, along with her frenemies Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and Tessie Oelrichs, was one of THE leaders of Gilded Age society in New York and Newport—in fact, they were known as the Great Triumvirate.

She was born in 1855 to a prosperous, but not particularly wealthy or socially prominent family. But little Marion (as she was christened), despite her lack of connections, married well—her childhood neighbor and sweetheart, Stuyvesant Fish, scion of an important and wealthy family. Mr. Fish was no rich idler; despite his inheritance, he worked his way up through the ranks to become president of the Illinois Central Railroad. He and Mamie were, unusually for their time and class, a devoted couple; at least once a week Mamie made sure they dined alone at home together, usually on Mr. Fish’s favorite corned beef and cabbage. She was also an involved and loving mother to their three children, all of whom turned out shockingly normal.

If Mamie were to summarized in one word, that word would probably be "feisty". Though not a beauty nor very well-educated (it was said that she could barely read and sign her name), she made up for these defects with a quick intelligence and an even quicker wit. Born today, I could see her in politics or in entertainment; but the only career open to a woman of her class at the turn of the twentieth century was social lioness, and Mamie went for it with a vengeance. She was utterly fearless, and alas, tactless…and yet it became almost something of a badge of honor to have been insulted (and in one case, run over repeatedly) by Mrs. Fish.

She came to “power” as the former queen of society, Mrs. Astor (of The Four Hundred fame) was winding down her social career. But society had changed since Mrs. Astor’s heyday, and Mamie fitted the new freer, faster pace of society to a T. She flouted convention and never paid social calls, left parties she found boring (usually loudly announcing the fact), and went to bed if she found her own parties had grown dull. In fact, she often seemed to dislike entertaining, and once announced to her guests, “Make yourselves perfectly at home, and believe me, there is no one who wishes you were there more than I do!” To a collection of ladies arrived for a luncheon in their newest Parisian couture, she said, “Here you all are, older faces and younger clothes.”

With her friend (some called him her “court jester”) Harry Lehr, Mamie did her best to shake things up. Parties became even more elaborate and costly and outrageously themed. When an enemy of Mamie’s failed to invite her to a party given in honor of the Tsar’s brother, Mamie threw her own for the Tsar himself and stole away all her rival’s guests, eager to meet the Tsar…who turned out to be Harry in disguise. It was a huge hit, and the following day the Tsar’s brother told Mamie he wished he’d been there, too. On another occasion they threw a party for the mysterious Prince del Drago of Corsica…and the guests who arrived eager to rub shoulders with royalty found that the distinguished Prince was a monkey in evening dress. Yet when she invited Marie Dressler to entertain her guests at a party, the actress sat down to dinner first with Mamie as an equal—unheard of in that day and age. She enjoyed lambasting the snobbishness of society; her mansion in Newport boasted no marble panels or stained glass windows bought from French chateax or Italian palazzi, but was built in Colonial Revival style and furnished with American art and antiques.

I can’t help thinking there’s something a little sad about Mamie—poorly educated, her obvious brains and wit wasted in parties and dinners--yet what other outlet did she have? I think this accounts for some of her outrageousness and her poking-holes-from-the-inside attitude. I also think that sometimes, she just couldn’t stop herself, as when her friend Alva Belmont came to her and angrily said, “I hear that you have been telling everyone that I look like a frog!” (which she rather did, if you look at her portraits…) Mamie demurred: “No, no…not a frog! A toad, my pet, a toad!”

Not the Nineteenth Century?!

Dear Nineteenteen Readers,

I have a confession to make.

I’ve been seeing another century.

It isn’t that I don’t love the nineteenth century truly and deeply. And it isn’t that I don’t intend to continue to read and research about it and plan future books in it (I have a new idea for another Regency-set YA that I love, but need to do some research on it first. Poor me, huh?) But lately, I must confess that…well, I’ve been writing a book set in another century. Just barely, mind you—this story is set in 1901, which really, just barely qualifies as not the nineteenth century. I mean, Queen Victoria lived until 1901—doesn’t that count for something?

And…er, well, maybe I shouldn’t say this…but this story isn’t set in England. Not one little bit of it. There aren’t even any British characters in it, though a French grandmother and an obnoxious young vicomte do make appearances. No, it’s totally set in America—remember that trip to Newport, Rhode Island Regina and I posted about last summer?--oh my goodness, please sit down! Do you want me to pat you on the back? May I get you a glass of water?

There, that’s better. I've made a clean breast of it, and hopefully we can all come to terms with it. So of course, I'll just have to share with you some of the wonderful bits of research I’ve come across in the writing of this book (which, by the way, is about two-thirds done—and no, my agent hasn’t yet started looking for a publisher for it yet). So look for the occasional non-nineteenth century, non-English post from me over the next few months, because some of this stuff is just too good to keep to myself.

But meanwhile, we'll still be firmly planted in the nineteenth century next week when Regina and I open the first Young Bluestockings meeting of the year with a look at The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee. Have you had a chance to read it yet? We hope so, and hope also that you'll be ready to talk about it. See you then, and Happy 2012 to you all!