Victorian Fly-Cages

Napomyza lateralis

Loretta reports:

From the Annals of Obscurity:

Mr. Bumble sat in the workhouse parlour, with his eyes moodily fixed on the cheerless grate, whence, as it was summer time, no brighter gleam proceeded, than the reflection of certain sickly rays of the sun, which were sent back from its cold and shining surface. A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought; and, as the heedless insects hovered round the gaudy network, Mr. Bumble would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy shadow overspread his countenance. Mr. Bumble was meditating; it might be that the insects brought to mind, some painful passage in his own past life.—Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Behold me gazing ceilingward. Fly-cage? Paper fly-cage? Apparently, I’d happened upon one of those numerous 19th century articles, like ticket porters, that were once a necessity and part of everyday life, and now extinct. The fly-cage wasn't an easy thing to track down, and I'm grateful to Lonely Planet for guiding me.

According to the Dickensian these fly-cages "were usually made of coloured perforated paper folded into globular or bell-shaped forms suspended from the ceiling. They were not intended for "cages" but as places in which flies could settle so that their buzzing should not be an annoyance."—the Dickensian Vols 46-47; Dickens Fellowship, 1949

Apparently, however, it wasn’t just to stop the annoying buzzing, but the annoying fly specks on ceilings and walls.

Point Lace Fly-Cage

“Every cottager who has hung the gaudy-coloured paper “fly-cages” in his room, to prevent his clean whitewashed roof and walls from being dirtied by common house-flies, has practically availed himself of the attraction which bright colours have for even these non-flower-loving insects.”—John Ellor Taylor, Flowers: Their Origin, Shapes, Perfumes, and Colours 1878

Though I've so far found no lovely colored illustrations of the paper fly-cages, Cassell's Household Guide, Volume 2 1869 explains how to make one.

If you’d like something more elaborate (though some of us would wonder why), you can also crochet one. Yes, you read correctly. You can crochet your own fly-cage. Mrs Jane Weaver provides instructions in the Peterson Magazine of 1858.

Pendant Fly-Cage

Links to better illustrations of the paper fly-cage will be warmly welcomed.

Images: Napomyza lateralis; Point lace fly cage, from Cassell's household guide, Volume 2 1869; Pendant fly-cage from the Peterson Magazine, Volumes 33-34



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Friday Video: 18th Century Dining

Loretta reports:

As I’ve pointed out in a previous blog post, the dinner table of the late 1700s and early 1800s looked very different from our own, with a large number of dishes, both sweet and savory, presented at the same time.

This video gives a nice, three-dimensional view of what was on the table, as well as short explanations of the dishes. Also, I think you'll enjoy curator Ivan Day’s dry wit.

If the macaroni and cheese surprises you (as it did some commenters), you might want to check out Susan’s blog post on the subject.  Also, as she explains in this blog post, the governor of Virginia would have been eating in the same fashion as his aristocratic counterparts in London.

YouTube Video: English Taste: The Art of Dining in 18th Century England with curator Ivan Day
Image is a still from the video.
Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be. To watch the video, please click on the title to this post (which will take you to our blog) or the video title (which will take you to YouTube).

A Duke's Household

Morris, Woburn Abbey 1866

Loretta reports:

In A Duke in Shining Armor, my heroine says, “It’s good to be a duke.”

Though dukes, by and large, are nothing like as numerous or as attractive as we paint them in romance novels (as I describe at RT Book Reviews), and any number have fallen on hard times in the past and present, things were not so bad for the 11th Duke of Bedford.

Reading Lucy Lethbridge’s Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times, I came upon this:

“At Woburn Abbey, the eleventh Duke of Bedford maintained until his death in 1940 not only a household of at least sixty indoor servants to attend solely to his wife and himself, but two separate, fully staffed residences in Belgrave Square, including four cars and eight chauffeurs; the Woburn parlourmaids were all Amazonian at over five foot ten, as had always been the Bedfords’ stipulation.”

According to the 13th Duke, (who sounds like a pip, and whose books I intend to read):

“‘Guests never travelled with your suitcase, that was not considered the thing to do. It had to come in another car, so you had a chauffeur and a footman with yourself, and a chauffeur and a footman with the suitcase, with another four to meet you. Eight people involved in moving one person from London to Woburn.’”

11th Duke of Bedford in Coronation Robes

While other noble families changed or economized as the times demanded, the Bedfords continued in the lavish late Victorian/Edwardian style until 1940. “The [11th] Duke always started meals with his own cup of beef consommé and a plate of raw vegetables served to him on a three-tiered dumb-waiter. The Duchess’s secretary-companion had her own quarters that included a cook and a maid.” The duke’s mistress had her own rooms with her own staff—on the premises, I assume?

Apparently, the 11th Duke of Bedford is also responsible for the grey squirrel invasion of England.

Images: Woburn Abbey, from Francis Orpen Morris, The County Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland 1866; 11th Duke of  Beford in Coronation Robes, Photo credit: Middlesex Guildhall Art Collection.

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Dickens and the Cratchit Family's Christmas Pudding

Mrs. Cratchit by Arthur Rackham

Loretta reports:

I haven’t yet seen the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, but no one needs another movie to associate Charles Dickens with the holiday, thanks to his story, A Christmas Carol.

This past summer, while in London, I spent a few hours touring the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street. Among many items claiming my attention was the kitchen, because we Nerdy History Girls are always curious about everyday life. This house, which reflects the author’s lifestyle when he was just beginning to be famous, is very much a middle-class household, considerably upscale from that of Mr. Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit.

I offer some images from the kitchen, and leave you to imagine the process of making a Christmas pudding, even in this comfortable household. Then, please imagine what it might have been like for Mrs. Cratchit in her humbler abode. As a museum sign pointed out, “The Cratchit family had only one small pudding, but in a household such as 48 Doughty Street, there were often many spare puddings, cooked and stored for use at other celebrations throughout the year. Filled with spirits, old ale and spices, the puddings were well preserved on larder shelves and were even believed to improve in taste as they aged.”

Yes, that's the kitchen sink

But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses— to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough 1 Suppose it should break in turning out ! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding ! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly —with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding ! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up.
—“A Christmas Carol,” from The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume 13

Hedgehogs used for insect control

Photos of Charles Dickens Museum copyright © Loretta Chekani 2017
Illustration of Mrs. Cratchit carrying in the pudding by Arthur Rackham for 1915 edition.
Please click on images to enlarge.

Who Really Invented Potato Chips?

Loretta reports:

You find out the darndest things in the darndest places. I recently found a clipping stuck in my trusty computer-side notebook, from a “Violet Days” comic strip by Chris Monroe that appeared in Funny Times of May 2016. In it she pointed out a myth about the creation of potato chips (that would be crisps, to British readers). Naturally, I had to investigate.

I started, as anybody would, by Googling “potato chips origin.” And there, as is the case with many myths, one finds numerous sites citing a tale that happens not to be supported by historical evidence. Several sites declare one George Crum as the inventor, in 1853, and there’s a long, charming story—which very often is a clue to a historical myth—of his inventing them by accident, due to aggravation by an annoying customer.

In fact, a recipe appeared as early as 1817 in Dr. William Kitchiner's Apicius Redivivus; or, the Cook’s Oracle. In other words, our Regency heroes and heroines might have had a bad potato chip habit, just like some of us who shall remain nameless who write this blog post.

Potato Chip Recipe 1817

As Ms. Monroe pointed out in her comic, the recipe also appeared in The Virginia House-Wife in 1827, and Shilling Cookery for the People by Alexis Soyer in 1845, and continued to appear in edition after edition of the Cook’s Oracle. If you compare the clippings from the earlier and later editions of the Cook’s Oracle, you’ll notice a slight change in method, which allowed for even thinner, crispier crisps. You’ll also notice lard, which will cause many readers to grimace. Again, there’s some misinformation about lard. For one thing, it shouldn’t be confused with the vegetable shortening that comes in those familiar cans. Well, familiar to those of us who grew up in the last century. For another, it turns out to be not nearly as unhealthy as had been assumed for decades. And it does make superior pastry, among other delights.

Potato Chips Recipe 1831

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The Amazing Angle Lamp

Loretta reports:

As well as going under the Mound House of Estero Island, I entered the house itself, which has been lovingly restored to one of its earlier incarnations. Indoors included an immense bathroom (from a later period), which holds some fascinating exhibits for both children and adults.

But what caught my Nerdy History Girl attention was the lamp in the restored living room. A guide told me it’s an Angle Lamp, and showed me an old advertisement for it. Turns out this was a well-known type of kerosene lamp, which was around for quite a long time, and whose advertisements appeared in numerous periodicals.

Many of us tend to assume that, as soon as a new lighting invention came along, the old ones went away. But of course not. Just as today, we don’t always have the latest model refrigerator, people in the past, for the most part, kept their stuff until it didn’t work anymore and couldn’t be fixed. I exclude, naturally, the people who always have to have the latest thing, because they were around too, needing the most up-to-date caves, I’ll bet.

Angle Lamp 1907 ad

With lighting, it’s not necessarily a matter of making things last, though this is part of the story. People continued to use older types of lighting because the newfangled inventions were either suspect, e.g., for safety reasons, or simply for practical reasons. Thus gas began lighting the streets of London long before it lit private houses. In between, it blew up some buildings. Electric utilities came into being in the early 1880s, but it was a while before they became ubiquitous. And it was another while before many people deemed electric light safe, healthy, and/or not hideous.

You can read more ads and some fascinating claims (e.g., white light causes blindness!) via these links
The Mayflower, Volume 20, Issues 10-12 1904
 
The Medical Brief 1899

Watson’s magazine Vol 6 (1906)

Floral Life Vol 5-6 (1907)
—and many more by simply Googling "Angle Lamp"

Advertisement Image
American Monthly Review of Reviews Vol 36 (1907)

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London in October in 1826

Loretta reports:

I discovered Peter George Patmore’s Mirror of the Months through Hone’s Every-day Book, which quoted from the excerpt below. Rather more readable than many writers of the time, Patmore vividly describes the sights and sounds of England, town and country, during each month of the year. He offers some insights into society—with lower case as well as capital S—as well as painting some charming domestic scenes, like this one. Anybody who’s been in London in the autumn will relate, I’m sure.

“But has London no one positive merit in October, then? Yes; one it has, which half redeems all its delinquencies. In October, Fires have fairly gained possession of their places, and even greet us on coming down to breakfast in the morning. Of all the discomforts of that most comfortless period of the London year which is neither winter nor summer, the most unequivocal is that of its being too cold to be without a fire, and not cold enough to have one. At a season of this kind, to enter an English sitting-room, the very ideal of snugness and comfort in all other respects, but with a great gaping hiatus in one side of it, which makes it look like a pleasant face deprived of its best feature, is not to be thought of without feeling chilly. And as to filling up the deficiency by a set of polished fireirons, standing sentry beside a pile of dead coals imprisoned behind a row of glittering bars,—this, instead of mending the matter, makes it worse; inasmuch as it is better to look into an empty coffin, than to see the dead face of a friend in it. At the season in question, especially in the evening, one feels in a perpetual perplexity, whether to go out or stay at home; sit down or walk about; read, write, cast accounts, or call for the candle and go to bed. But let the fire be lighted, and all uncertainty is at an end, and we (or even one) may do any or all of these with equal satisfaction. In short, light but the fire, and you bring the Winter in at once; and what are twenty Summers, with all their sunshine (when they are gone), to one Winter, with its indoor sunshine of a sea-coal fire?”

Images from Ackermann's Repository.
Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  

Friday Video: Cooking 101 for the 20th century

Loretta reports:

Someone recently told me that the height of gourmet dining early in his adult life was Trout Almondine, and that reminded me of going to fancy restaurants decades ago, where it did indeed star on the menu.

Most of what’s in the film is strange to me, but then, I did grow up in an immigrant household, in New England, and wasn’t exposed to much of the food that my husband, for instance, grew up with in the South. Of course, watching some of our cooking shows today, the people in the film likely would have been equally puzzled.

I wonder how many of these food ideas traveled from Britain to the U.S. or vice versa. I also wonder how many of us dress to cook in the style of the woman in the first segment. But I do lust for her jewelry. And her dress. And the mid-century dishware.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

E.B. White on White & Brown Eggs

Loretta reports:

I’m writing this while up in Blue Hill, Maine, in a local library, where works of E.B. White, who lived not far from where I'm hanging out on a cloudy day, stand on shelves in a lovely room focused on the area and its many talented residents and long-time visitors.

The essay, written in 1971, touches on something we history nerds constantly encounter in our research: attempts by visitors to explain the natives. Just because the writer is highly regarded, well-read, and observant, doesn’t mean he/she has a clue.

In this excerpt from a slightly longer essay, "Riposte" (which I highly recommend), Mr. White takes up the Englishman J.B. Priestley’s comments in the New York Times about eggs in the U.S.

~~~

In America [Priestley] says, “brown eggs are despised, sold off cheaply, perhaps sometimes thrown away.” Well now. In New England, where I live and which is part of America, the brown egg, far from being despised, is king. The Boston market is a brown-egg market.
“The Americans, well outside the ghettos,” writes Mr. Priestley, “despise brown eggs just because they do seem closer to nature. White eggs are much better, especially if they are to be given to precious children, because their very whiteness suggests hygiene and purity.” My goodness. Granting that an Englishman is entitled to his reflective moments, and being myself well outside the ghettos, I suspect there is a more plausible explanation for the popularity of the white egg in America. I ascribe the whole business to a busy little female—the White Leghorn hen. She is nervous, she is flighty, she is the greatest egg machine on two legs, and it just happens that she lays a white egg. She’s never too distracted to do her job. A Leghorn hen, if she were on her way to a fire, would pause long enough to lay an egg. This endears her to the poultrymen of America, who are out to produce the greatest number of eggs fro the least money paid out for feed. Result: much of America, apart from New England, is flooded with white eggs.

 Image: White Leghorns, courtesy Wikipedia

Before Refrigerators: The Ice House

Ice House 1817

Loretta reports:

Ice houses weren’t as rare in England as the excerpt from Ackermann's Repository for June 1817 makes one believe. Neither were baths, for that matter. And London did have its share of both. In the 17th century, King Charles II had not only one, but six ice houses built, including one for his mistress the Duchess of Cleveland.* You can read more about ice houses here, here, and here.

Photo of Duchess of Cleveland’s ice house scanned from Christopher Symon Sykes's Private Palaces.

Ice House Described

Ice House Described

*If you'd like to learn more about this remarkable woman, I highly recommend Susan Holloway Scott's (aka the other NHG) Royal Harlot.

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Friday Video: Food Shopping Tips for 1950

Interior, Marden-Abbott Store
Strawbery Banke Museum

Loretta reports:

Today's video called to me because I grew up living behind the shop, that is to say, behind a small Mom and Pop store. In those days, what today we’d call a convenience store was "the corner store," which Worcesterites called a spa—and no, I have no idea why.

The main articles on offer at our place were canned goods, bread, milk, soda, cigarettes, and penny candy—and then, a few years after the store opened, there was a snack bar, too, which became very popular. In any case, neither our shop nor even the supermarkets, as they were then, were anything like today's mega-super-duper-supermarkets. A tangerine was about as exotic as things got in the produce aisle.

Though my parents set up shop a decade or so later than today’s video, we girls learned these same shopping principles, at home and in Home Economics classes. No, the boys weren’t taught, although, if the video offers a clue, they could have used the lessons.

Image: Interior of Marden-Abbott Store (WWII era)  at Strawbery Bank Museum, courtesy me.

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Friday Video: Washing a 17thc. Royal Tapestry

Isabella reporting,

Housekeeping in a royal palace is a bit more complicated than a quick run-around with the vacuum. Priceless furnishings and artwork require special treatment that is often complicated, costly, and technologically challenging.

The tapestries that were hung on the walls of Hampton Court Palace not only displayed the wealth and power of the royal family, but also helped keep back the drafts in the vast (and largely unheated) rooms of the Palace. Over the centuries, the tapestries also attracted dust and dirt that had diminished their visual impact and stressed their fibers. But how do you clean a tapestry that's as large as a small house?

This wonderful short video shows how textile conservators tackled the task of washing February, one of the largest Mortlake tapestries in the Palace's collection. The wash bath was specially built for the tapestries, using de-ionised (soft) water, a custom detergent mixture, and the most gentle of touches. For more about conserving the tapestries, see the Palace's website here.

Washing Up Correctly in 1854

Still Life: Tea Set

Loretta reports:

Washing Up Instructions

Many centuries ago, when I was in school, we had Home Economics classes. That is to say, the girls did. The boys had Shop. I’m not sure what our process was at home. Mainly I remember regarding all household chores as loathsome wastes of valuable time I could have spent reading.

I do remember that the Home Ec method involved more or less the same order of events as in the Victorian-era approach. Otherwise, though, Godey's advice seems to modern eyes rather slapdash, not to mention unhygienic.

And so it’s a good example of a world that hadn’t yet caught onto BACTERIA, let alone grown hysterical about the little critters. The Victorians didn’t have hot water on tap, either, or instantly-dissolving dish cleaning liquids, or the host of other allegedly labor-saving devices available to us.

I’ve read elsewhere of cleaning rugs and other items with used tea leaves, a method I haven’t tried, but I’m thinking of experimenting with certain bottles and decanters.

Image: Jean-Étienne Liotard, Still Life: Tea Set (circa 1781-83), courtesy Getty Center via Wikimedia Commons.
Text from Godey’s Magazine, November 1854

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Dinner in the Early 1800s: What & How To Serve

Loretta reports:

When I came upon the listing of courses, I’ll admit I was a little daunted, even though I’ve encountered far more elaborate 19th C menus. But when I saw the map of the table setting,* I wondered where the people were supposed to fit.

In any case, as the advice makes plain, the courses depend on what the host can afford as well as who the guests are.

Advice

Fancy Menu

Table Map

Simpler menu

Map for simpler menu

 *You'll notice that the table settings don’t match the September menu. This is because The Female’s Friend didn’t provide settings for every month. However, the 1811 London Art of Cookery  table setting for a simpler September menu comes close.

Black & white images courtesy Google Books.
Photograph of table setting at Victoria & Albert Museum courtesy me.

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From the Archives: Useful & Necessary: The Bourdaloue

Continuing our week of reposts....This post was one of my first (from 2010!) but it continues to be among the most popular as well. 

Isabella reporting:

Most modern museum-goers who spot these two porcelain vessels in a display case would assume they were serving pieces. They're certainly pretty enough for an elegant 18th c. table, especially the one with the family crest on the side.

But necessity has always been the mother of invention, and often of design that's both handsome and useful, too. Consider the spreading hoops of an 18th c. lady, draped with yards and yards of costly silk petticoats, and then consider maneuvering all that yardage each time nature called.

There was a solution. These are two examples of bourdaloues, chamber pots designed specifically for women. With the assistance of a lady's maid, they could be slipped beneath skirts and petticoats, employed while standing, and then discretely carried away. Other versions were more utilitarian and fashioned of tin or leather, and intended to make long journeys by carriages bearable. Even when skirts shrank in size towards the end of 18th c., the bourdaloue was deemed too practical an item to abandon, and they remained in use throughout the Victorian era.

Where did the name come from? Legend says the name was taken from a celebrated 17th c. French Jesuit priest named Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), whose sermons were so infamously long that ladies came to church prepared. Not many historians accept this explanation. Even given that people were more frank about bodily needs in the past than they are now, it's very doubtful a well-bred French lady would relieve herself in her pew. Though no one now seems to know for certain, it's likely to be either something garbled in translation, or one more sly English insult aimed at the French.

Top: Bourdaloue. Made by Andrew Stevenson Factory, Cobridge, Staffordshire, England; 1816-30.
Below: Bourdaloue with lid. Made in Jingdezhen, China; 1790-1820.
Both from the collections of Winterthur Museum & Country Estate

Dining in July 1815

The Greengrocer

Loretta reports:

From The Epicure’s Almanack July Alimentary Calendar:

~~~

The heats of the season now impose the necessity of occasionally substituting a light vegetable diet for the more solid gratification of animal food ... Cauliflowers, artichokes, green-peas, French-beans, Windsor* and other garden beans, frequently form a conspicuous part of the family dinner, to which butcher’s meat, in moderate quantities, may be said to serve merely as an auxiliary stimulant. Ham, bacon, and tongues, as well as ducks and geese, are the most seasonable viands for this purpose ... On festive occasions venison and turtle retain their pre-eminent station at the tables of the opulent, where also the fawn ... forms an elegant dish, when roasted whole and served up with rich gravy. Veal, having now been fed on milk, in its richest state, is peculiarly fine and well flavoured; but care should be taken that it be delivered fresh to the cook, as it is more liable to suffer from the heat of the weather and from flies than any other kind of meat. Ragouts of sweetbreads, oxpalates, lambs’ bits, fat livers, and cocks’-combs, are among the light dishes introduced at superior tables; where also various preparations of curry afford a delectable repast to those who have acquired a taste for this Indian diet.
 ...
 ... a plenteous and varied dessert presents itself at this season; consisting of pines, melons, peaches, cherries, grapes, currants, gooseberries and raspberries, as well as early apples and pears. Fruit is certainly most salubrious in hot weather; but, if the opinion be well founded that it does most good when taken before dinner, the dessert ought to take place of that spurious meal called lunch, which, being usually made of animal food, too often banishes the appetite irrecoverably for the day.

~~~

*broad beans

Excerpted from The Epicure's Almanack: Eating and Drinking in Regency London (The Original 1815 Guidebook).

Image: James Pollard, The Greengrocer (ca 1819) courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

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A Rare Creamware Water Cistern

Loretta reports:
Another object that caught my eye during my visit to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta was this 18th century water cistern.

Like the tea party I showed previously, this is the sort of thing that can easily make its way into a story.  While the objects are interesting and beautiful in themselves, and their workmanship delights and impresses, they also help us visualize a bygone world, helping writers bring a scene to life and nerdy history persons do a bit of time traveling.

You can get another view of this cistern as well as learn more about it here.




Water Cistern and Cover, 1790-1795.  Cream –colored earthenware.  Leeds Pottery (Leeds, England), maker.  Purchase in memory of Frances Floyd Cocke, 2009.6a-b.  High Museum of Art.

 Clicking on the image will enlarge it.

Friday Video: The King's Chocolate Kitchen

Loretta reports:

Those enduring this particularly ghastly winter may want to make a cup of hot chocolate and settle in to watch this short video.  But I hope chocolate and/or history lovers everywhere will enjoy this story about the loving recreation of ... yes, the king’s own chocolate kitchen at Hampton Court Palace.

The photo of of an early 18th century chocolate pot in the Victoria & Albert Museum was taken by Valerie McGlinchey.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

A Cottage for Two Ladies in 1817

1817 cottage

Loretta reports:

Readers enduring vile winter weather may enjoy this bit of escapism—a cottage in a pretty, rural setting.  Given our various posts about servants, it’s interesting to read of two ladies needing three female servants and one gardener.  Would you have expected more or fewer servants?
—Ackermann’s Repository 1817

Cottage description

 

 Images courtesy Philadelphia Art Museum via Internet Archive.

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No smoking in the house, please

Mongolfier patent smoke conductor

Loretta reports:

It’s been cold in New England, unusually so in stretches, and sometimes including snow—well before it ought to be here!  No wonder then that, preoccupied with keeping warm, I found myself admiring yet another early 19th century heating device. 

The trick then—as it often is these days for people who use their fireplaces and wood stoves—is making the smoke go someplace that isn’t the house interior.

Please note the comparison of London and Parisian fireplaces.

Smoke conductor description

 

Description part 2

 Images courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library, via Internet Archive.

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