Category: 1900-1949

Categories
1900-1949 1950-1999

Unforgiven – An Epigram, 1955

The Weekend Book, 1955

A little epigram by Colin Ellis that amused me from The Weekend Book, 1955 edition (but written in the 1930s):

A little digging reveals there was a companion epigram:

Unforgivable
With Peter I refuse to dine:
His jokes are older than his wine.

Colin Ellis had one of those properly varied, illustrious lives that people used to have – he was a poet in his youth, but went on to become Director of Home-Grown Cereals at the Ministry of Food during the Second World War, held various public offices in Leicestershire, was a historian and archeologist, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and an author.

Apparently a Leicestershire man to the core, I rather enjoy another of his poems on the subject, from 1932 – Living in the Midlands. I might have been born 80 years later than Mr Ellis, but I still recognise this bucolic nostalgia (although in my case, it’s for the farms, orchards and oast houses of Kent and my girlhood).

Living in the Midlands

When men offer thanks for the bounties
That they in their boyhood have known
When poets are praising their counties
What ought I to say of my own?

Its highways are crowded with lorries
And buses encumber its lanes;
Its hills are used chiefly as quarries,
Its rivers used chiefly as drains.

The country is all over-ridden
By townsmen, ill-mannered and proud
And beauty, unless it is hidden
Is trampled to death by the crowd

Disforested, featureless, faded-
Describe me a place if you can
Where Man was by Nature less aided
Or Nature less aided by Man.

And yet though I keep in subjection
My heart, as a rule, to my head,
I still feel a sneaking affection
For ___________*, where I was bred.

For still, here and there, is a village,
Where factories have not been planned,
There still are some acres of tillage,
Some old men still work on the land.

And how can I help but remember
The Midsummer meadows of hay,
The stubbles dew-drenched in September,
The buttercups golden in May?

For we who seek out and discover
The charms of my county can be
As proud as a plain woman’s lover
Of beauties the world does not see.

*Shall we say “Middleshire”? (Author’s note)

Categories
1900-1949

An Absurdity of Plurals, 1938

Animal collective nouns, The Weekend Book, 1938

Who came up with the pluralisations of animals? When and, also, why? They are gloriously poetic but useless – you can hardly use most of them in real life without looking like a self-satisfaction of tossers.

And whoever invented “A Singular of Boars” is just taking the piss.

Animal collective nouns, The Weekend Book, 1938
Animal collective nouns, The Weekend Book, 1938
Categories
1900-1949 Music

Golden Slumbers, 1938 and 1969

The Weekend Book, 1938

I was an enormous Beatles fan as a teenager (well, I still am). In fact, they’re the reason I live in Liverpool now. I came up here for a University Open Day twenty-two years ago, spent all of ten minutes in the history department, then took the rest of the day off to look for another kind of history – old Beatles haunts around the city.

I remember reading about how their song Golden Slumbers from the 1969 album Abbey Road came about. Paul McCartney was saying he had seen a music book at his dad’s house with a old song of that name in it. He liked the title and, as he couldn’t read music to find out how the tune went, he wrote his own melody instead.

This is the original, from The Weekend Book, 1938. As you can see, Paul kept part of the lyric mostly intact.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4spkG8LizyE

 

Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink

Vintage recipes – Something for the Squeak End, 1938

The Weekend Book, 1938

It’s the last hoorah of summer, it’s the weekend, and it’s probably raining. But if you’re planning some time in the great outdoors, here’s some advice on camping cookery and gathering wild food from the 1938 Weekend Book:

I can’t emphasise strongly enough – DON’T MAKE YOUR OWN MICE IN HONEY. That way madness lies.

Also remember “Don’t cook and attempt to eat young bracken shoots because the Japanese do. What suits the hardy races of the extreme East may not suit you.”

Can’t help thinking not only how delicious the breakfast section sounds, but how different the reality would be just a couple of years later.

I have The Weekend Book in two editions, one from 1938 and one from 1955 and I find it interesting to compare the changes between the two. 1938 seems a much more hedonistic time – by 1955 the joys of tobacco are expunged, the first aid section stops looking like the contents of Doctor Dee’s cabinet and turns into something recognisable to us, and most importantly, people apparently don’t eat mice in honey anymore. (That’s unborn mice in honey incidentally. Surely that can’t have been genuinely popular outside of the vendor in The Life of Brian’s wares?)

Categories
1900-1949 Games

Friday Fun – A Game of Days, 1938

Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938

Another parlour game from “Titbits Book of Wrinkles”, 1938.

Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Vintage Recipes – Hydropathic Pudding, 1902

Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902

Hydropathic Pudding is today’s title, but it was really a toss up between that and “Life’s too short to clean a currant”.

The Liverpool Training School of Cookery was a long established institution in Colquitt St in Liverpool City centre. It eventually turned into the Liverpool Catering College and is now part of Liverpool City College. I found a fascinating little article from 1893 on the way the School was run in an Illinois newspaper of all places, the “Western Rural and American Stockman” – http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=WRA18930304.2.20#

The School issued a thin volume of basic recipes for use in Elementary Schools, which is where I come in. I have the edition dated 1902, sponsored by Bird’s Custard (a classic brand, right there). I also own a very similar book called “The Essex Cookery Book” from 1930, so perhaps there were a few such regional variations on the theme.

Amongst the collection were the invalid recipes as were standard in cookery books of the time. Here’s an “invalid cake”, presumably designated as such because it’s fairly plain. A perk of being ill, you’ve got your own special cake at least.

But onto the Hydropathic pudding, the recipe which most caught my eye, sounding as it does like a medical treatment rather than dessert. Funny, I thought, (in Dudley Moore’s voice), the recipe only mentions “a little water” but the name of it sounds like it should be awash in the stuff. But no, this was another invalid recipe, or otherwise a health food, as the bread casing was lighter than pastry or suet-based puddings. And it was called “Hydropathic” because it was served in spas of the time.

It’s still a popular dessert now, but we now know it by the infinitely more appealing name of Summer Pudding.

And so to cleaning currants. I’m not sure how they came in 1902 but evidently they needed cleaning. Thank god this isn’t necessary now – presumably? Suddenly I’m worried, have I spent my life missing out a vital stage of food preparation? Do you all clean currants out there?

You need flour for this, water might re-hydrate them and sticky them up a bit. This does explain why currant wrinkles are sometimes a bit floury, I suppose.

Last recipe for now, and always the one I’m happiest to see in the vintage books – raspberry buns. Every old cookery book had a recipe for them, but you never see them these days. It was also the first recipe I vividly remember making in Domestic Science class and so it’s a hugely nostalgic taste for me. I think I’ll make some for a future vintage recipe blog post.

Last, but very definitely not least, this book contains Hidden Treasure. And my favourite kind as well, a scribbled recipe kept there by a previous owner. This one’s on an envelope from the Isle of Wight in 1949 and it’s for various delicious sounding caramel things:

Categories
1900-1949 Games

Friday Fun – Feeding the Blind, 1938

Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938

A game from “Titbits Book of Wrinkles”, 1938.

A game for the less athletic this week – if you can eat a trayful of chocolates in record time, you can win this one.

Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
Categories
1900-1949 Games

Friday Fun – The Hollywood Kiss, 1938

The Weekend Book, 1938

An easy little trick with matches from The Weekend Book, 1938.

The idea is to make two matches “kiss” with the “lady match” being lifted up, as if swept off her feet, Hollywood-style. Whittling legs is optional.

Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink

Vintage Recipe – Blackcurrant Tea, 1910

Blackcurrant tea

I remember reading about blackcurrant tea in old children’s books when I was a kid. I really wished that I could try it myself, it sounded so delicious. It was most famously a favourite of Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven, but despite what they seem to imply it wasn’t invented by them.

Here’s a 1910 recipe from “Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book” that I have tried:

Blackcurrant tea

3 tablespoons Blackcurrant jam
1 tablespoon sugar
Boiling water to make the whole 1 pint

Stir well, pressing the fruit.
Let it stand 1/2 hour before using any.
Strain off the liquid as required.

It comes under the heading of invalid cookery, but was also a children’s nursery drink for a treat. The taste – well, Blackcurrant cordial really. My small son is a fan, although he forgets what it’s called and asks me if he can have some of that lovely raspberry coffee.

Blackcurrant tea
Blackcurrant tea
Categories
1900-1949 Games

Friday Fun – Man-hunt, 1938

The Weekend Book, 1938

This game needs a group of people large enough to be split into two teams (to make any number of hunters and two hunted), the great outdoors and a pub lunch – what could be better?

From “The Weekend Book”, 1938.

“Outdoor active games

Man-Hunt

This is strenuous and any number can join in. It is more exciting than a paper chase, and does not litter the country with paper.
First mark out an agreed area, say six miles by one, on the map, limited by recognisable natural features, outside which the men must not go, with your starting point on one end line and a suitable pub, as your objective, in the middle of the other end line. The hunters set off later and the two men a quarter of an hour later. The hunters may not blockade the starting point nor the objective but should stretch a cordon across the area and ambush likely points in the attempt to stop the men from passing through.
You have lunch at your objective and man-hunt home. It is unsuitable for crowded suburban areas.”