Narcissa’s Ring: More Mulholland

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I did not plan to post about Rosa Mulholland so soon on the heels of my most recent post (found here if you missed it just last week and the first one about her books here), where I zipped through a number of her works, mostly early, that I had read. However, Narcissa’s Ring, was a recent acquisition and a later work which kind of knocked me off my chair. As it happens, I was also lucky to find an internet site with a number of her books – including The Daughter in Possession: The Story of a Great Temptation. Both of these interesting works were published originally in 1915 and’16 respectively and they are worth note and comment while they remain fresh in my mind.

Before I get to them, a heads up about where I found The Daughter in Possession which I had not even seen copies or mention of for sale or otherwise. A site I have used occasionally in the past called Internet Archive (find it here) turns out to have a number of these hard to find volumes available for reading online. The did not come up in a general search for her books initially and it wasn’t until I thought to look there that I found them. This is very good news!

The somewhat bad news is that it is not the easiest site to read a long book on – I have had trouble saving them to my “account” although perhaps it is just most easily done on a computer rather than a phone or iPad. I am still working that out. Actual volumes are scanned for every page which is a charming way to read them – inscriptions and all in some cases. It also means if the volume was illustrated (which these virtually all were) you get those too. I am thrilled to be able to offer a place where some of these are available online, not to mention for free.

As far as I can tell, the Internet Archive exists out of California and I have not attempted to tap it for the many, many other categories it lists (everything from television shows to Russian literature). Of course I am curious about film and assume that, like the books, the films archived there may not show up in more general internet searches although may for specific books. I will need to send them a contribution as they have done great work in making some really obscure volumes available.

I had not in fact had I heard of Narcissa’s Ring either until I stumbled across a copy on eBay for sale here in the US. (I search for new ones online on a regular basis and eBay seems to pop for one periodically. The shipping from the UK where many of these reside makes the cost untenable.) It is the real find. In 1916 Mulholland was 71 years old and from reading this she may have in a sense been at the height of her prowess as a writer. While the style remains the same and some of her favorite tropes (romance, class divisions, astronomy) remain intact she goes for a full on sort of mystery in this now favorite novel.

As the story opens we find a young Russian teen with a penchant for chemistry in London, before long he is shifted to her favored locale of Ireland, but not for long as he is chasing clues to rescue his father from a life sentence for murder in Moscow. The search leads him to a certain perfume found in an antique ring – the sort which might have also stored poison but instead house a bit of sponge or other substance scent would be added to and worn. The scent in the ring never dissipates. It has a cabochon of glowing red stone on it – one that takes on an almost supernatural glow in certain lights. (Two stones to engage your imagination above.)

Mulholland leads us on a most wonderful chase through Britain, a sojourn in Egypt and ultimately the Moscow of the day. Because Mulholland is writing about these places as they are being experienced at the dawn of the 20th century there is a more than usual time capsule quality to her record of what these places were like at the time – not so much with her usual eye to recording what she knows may soon drift away in her native Ireland, but with more of a sense of the here and now in these places.

*This slightly cheesy version kept coming up in my searches. The stone is really beyond the beyond!*

I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the intricate plot but am here to say that it is a corker and I would have to put it at the top of my list of her books!

It also left me wandering the internet looking at these rings – presumably there was one in particular which must have inspired her. The concept goes way back to the Middle Ages and all sorts of examples still abound. As for glowing fire stones there are many – from fire opals exotic agates.

Immediately on the heels of Narcissa’s Ring I was able to hop back a year for The Daughter in Possession: The Story of a Great Temptation. (It’s a bit of a title, right?) This is an interesting lead into Narcissa’s Ring if you are considering her oeuvre as a whole because there is a developing sense of mystery and plot in this novel which is a prelude to the other.

*Illustration from the online version of The Daughter in Possession.*

The Daughter starts off with a favorite baby rescued after shipwreck set up (see Marcella Grace for another example) but turns into a multi-faceted plot following several lives as they set off together in one place and diverge wildly before all coming back. Like Narcissa’s Ring, locations in Ireland are briefly paid tribute to but the majority of the book takes place in London and then Europe, largely France which is a bit of a surprise. (There is an interlude in Toledo and sometimes I feel like we are treated to a travel log of her globetrotting.)

We have a narrator for part of the story who is a bit unreliable, and we don’t quite know how the ending will or won’t surprise us. Like Narcissa’s Ring the trip is definitely worth the journey here. I would not rate it quite as highly but must say that she was going full throttle with her writing powers at the end of her life and seems to have only continued to improve.

The next one slated for reading, A Girl’s Ideal (1905), appears to start in the United States but will likely shift to Ireland shortly. (It is also available via the Internet Archive.) It is not clear to me that she ever made it to this country and her nascent description is a bit barren. This one is a you inherit a large fortune if you agree to marry this fellow you don’t yet know story!

Tavern Trip

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Yesterday on a whim Kim and I spent the Independence Day holiday in a remarkably patriotic way with a trip to the Fraunces Tavern museum in lower Manhattan. This important Revolutionary War landmark, where George Washington said farewell to his troops, is tucked among towering modern edifices, near the water and Wall Street. Kim just finished Washington Irving’s biography of Washington and it occurred to me that neither of us had ever been before.

*Waiting in line out front for it to open.*

The Tavern remains a restaurant and pub (I don’t believe it has operated continuously as there was information about a renovation and restoration at one time in one of the exhibits) and, unsure if it would be the holiday destination for many, I made a lunch reservation in one of the several dining rooms just to be safe. We had a 12:45 reservation which turned out to be about right to see the museum first.

*Funny little display in the front wall of the building near where we waited on line.*

Luckily it was a glorious day and we hopped on a ferry running along the East River and took it all the way to Wall Street from 90th Street, convenient to our Yorkville neighborhood here. July 4 is one of those holidays when Manhattan generally empties out and aside from some tourists, there is a group of us left to our devices here and that was represented by folks who were lined up to take this local ferry to the beach, biking or like activities. The result was a fairly full but not crowded ferry ride. (I became enamored of the ferry system, running up and down the east side, to Queens, Brooklyn and even New Jersey during Covid and have written about my introduction to the longer on to Jersey here .)

A snippet of the ferry in the East River about to go under, I think, the Manhattan bridge.

It was fun to travel to the museum by water rather than subway, a period appropriate way as the water would have frequently been used for transport in the 18th century. It was also a fraction of travel time – although the wait was longer than for a train and this was exacerbated by the mercurial holiday schedule it seemed to be on.

The museum is just a few blocks from the ferry terminal although Google lead us on a bit of a roundabout merry chase in an attempt to use maps. I think in part the problem is with so many tall buildings that reception is iffy there and the map would not reload properly. Anyway, we arrived as a small parade of folks in period clothes seemed to be wrapping up. (I overhead that they were here from Virginia but I am not sure if I caught the broader reason for their costumed attendance there.)

*The Dingle Wiskey Bar, closed, but where we waited for the museum to open. Woman in 18th century dress using her cellphone a bit of a bonus here.*

For those of you who don’t know the city, downtown Manhattan is entirely different than the rest of the island. As the area that was first built up, the streets are tiny and narrow. Because it is now the seat of commerce and business, enormous towers have risen and largely block the light from the clutches of tiny, historic buildings. I cannot imagine living or working in the area – it would be like living in an entirely different city. Unlike the rest of the city, lower Manhattan is not on a grid and hence the need for a map to find your way among unfamiliar and twisting streets.

*A block or so of historic buildings approaching the museum’s block.*

Even for all of that, we arrived early for the noon opening of the museum. There was a line outside but that was really just waiting for it to open – it did not have a persistent line throughout the day although they seemed largely booked for dining.

We were herded into one of the bar spaces to wait which gave us a chance to study that room a bit. There are, I believe, six different dining and drinking spaces (although there was a private dining area which may be a seventh – I lost count.) I was unable to figure out if the configuration was based on the original layout – many small rooms being typical of such an early building. There is evidently a piano bar occupying the fourth, top floor, but it was not open and we didn’t get to see it.

*Another view of the Dingle Wiskey Bar.*

The museum commences on the second floor which, in its day, would have also been serving spaces. It is not clear to me that this edifice was anything other than an eatery so perhaps all the floors were dining areas. (It isn’t clear that Mr. Fraunces or subsequent others lived there. It seems that in Washington’s day it was open day and night so my guess is he did live on the premises.) A large room on the second floor is said to be where Washington addressed his troops – it seems too small for that leaving us wondering how that worked. A firsthand account of the event is on display but also written on wall text for easy reading.

*Arguably the reason we were there – said to be the space where Washington address his troops.*

*A later rendering of the event on display.*

The tavern was also used to house some of the governmental staff during that first Presidential term which was served in New York and not Washington DC. I think it housed foreign relations and another arm of government I have forgotten. There is a small special exhibit about the discussion of the British evacuating New York and the trails that were held for traitors to the American cause.

In culinary history, the restaurant is known as being among the first to have a la carte table services while others still only offered family style meals at large tables. As mentioned above, it was also open 24 hours a day – all making it a bit ground breaking in that sense.

*Not surprisingly, images of Washington and ephemera abound on virtually every surface.*

While the second floor has the one period room (also where you pay admission, usually $10 but only $1 yesterday for the holiday, a small shop there as well) and an exhibition space. The third floor are the larger galleries and a room set up auditorium style. (They were actually preparing for a lecture later that afternoon.) The exhibitions are largely reproductions of documents and a smattering of items. The old maps were of interest and some of the letters (the original of Hale’s last letter before he was captured and executed as a spy) are available to be read more easily online with a QR code.

*Fewer actual ancient bits are on display than anticipated, but this very old desk/chair was one.*

The physical space is a mishmash of period styles and bits. For example, the enormous original plank floors are only in the smallest area with a mix of wooden floors from different periods throughout. Early wallpaper is noted to be from an indeterminant early but later period. Ceilings are low and rooms are intimate – fireplaces in all the original rooms. However obviously the space has been renovated, constructed and reconstructed to make it (somewhat) accessible and work for modern displays.

*It was easy to locate where we reside, about halfway down this map, given the islands and waterfront outline.*

The displays, as mentioned, are a bit ricky ticky, if you need sophistication you will be disappointed. However, the museum appears to have a robust program of lectures, symposium and especially family activities and while it certainly attracts tourists it is clearly also a part of its community for those who live in the area. (Events around period games, quilts and story time are scheduled for the remainder of July.) I got the feeling that for some folks it is a regular neighborhood hang for food and drink.

With that I would say the same about the food establishments. There are programs of live music most evenings and at least one of the bars is for walk ins only. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the prices are not touristy gouge-y, but actually quite average for New York City. I made a reservation through Open Table online and we were put in a long bar space in the front of the building. The other large dining room, running along the side of the building, is somewhat more formal.

Incongruously perhaps, soft rock music circa the 1990’s played (loud but not hideously so) in the bar space we occupied for lunch. Kim had a burger and fries and I had a blackened salmon sandwich with sweet potato fries. Kim had one of a number of non-alcohlic beers and I had a large (very good) extremely local Frances Tavern pale ale. While I was very tempted by the idea of a sticky toffee pudding (I generally cannot resist that description) I decided to be good and allow for the possibility of an ice cream later.

*Holiday themed celebrants at the bar restaurant where we ate lunch.*

The ice cream never materialized. After leaving Fraunces Tavern we attempted a visit to the nearby Seaport Museum but they had (mysteriously) opted to be closed for the Fourth. Our day ended with ferry mishaps as they decided to run the last ferry earlier than published and police barricades (anticipating crowds along the waterfront for the fireworks which wouldn’t start for many hours) kept us from hopping on the final one. So the day ended on the 4 train speeding uptown and ultimately a happy collapse in air conditioning and with cats as the conclusion to our holiday adventure.

Rosa Mulholland Part Two: Searching for the Sweet Spot

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Several weeks ago I embarked on reading a new late 19th-early 20th century author, Rosa Mulholland, and wrote a post about her that can be read here. I’ve subsequently read several more books and thought I would update you a bit on my findings. (Recovering from mouth surgeries has given me much reading time – in addition to these books I polished off at least as many contemporary novels!)

For those just tuning in, Mulholland (who also wrote under the name Gilbert) was a prolific Irish writer of the late 19th to early 20th century. Many of these volumes, virtually all illustrated fairly profusely, are beautiful old editions which is what attracted me when I bought the first volume.

I have read several more since I last reported and found one I cannot seem to get into, but more about that in a bit. Terry, Or, She Ought to Have Been a Boy, was one of the few books I was able to find and read online. It was published in 1902 and is a novella that seems to have been a sort of chapter book for older children, or one that could be read to them.

I didn’t love it – for me it felt like it never quite got all the way off the ground. It is about a very obstreperous and wildly undisciplined little girl and her brother who tags along with her exploits. Said children are left with an infirm grandmother who leaves their care largely to a housekeeper. A lot of chaos ensues. Terry is a Rosa Mulholland-type character as a child who we never get to follow into adulthood.

*Not my copy as I read it online. Pretty though!*

Hettie Gray: Or Nobody’s Bairn (1883) is short novel, also available online and I gather there is a reprint that is widely available. This is a more interesting story where Hettie is a foundling (of high birth of course) who literally washes up ashore and is taken in by a poor village couple. As a small child (with a bit of a wild streak) she is found one day by a wealthy woman who literally scoops her up and takes her off. She spoils her terribly and makes her into a bit of a wretch and then the wealthy woman promptly dies leaving Hettie largely friendless. We watch her original good nature re-emerge under adversity.

Mulholland has a few ongoing fascinations she returns to again and again in her writing – one is strong willed women and the difficulties they have fitting into the narrow society of the time (they are generally somewhat tamed but that will also pays off in other ways), and another is class structure. These two things play together as evidently to be poor and strong willed is seen as one thing but to be rich and strong willed another.

*I don’t own this one yet, but there seems to be a fair amount of noise about it so am looking for it (1895).*

The best of this lot was Cynthia’s Bonnet Shop (1900) and it is for me Mulland at her best. (I did purchase one of the first editions as shown here, but had to settle for one that is quite tatty in order ot make it more affordable!)

Although some of the usual tropes are present, Cynthia is part of a fatherless but otherwise large and intact family which is a nice switch. There is the requisite wealthy (but unpleasant and selfish) relative who inadvertently sets Cynthia on the path to establishing her own bonnet shop. There is a mysterious benefactor. Her London shop becomes wildly popular. Romances for the sisters ensue but skew some with a patent Mulholland, I love him but I think he loves you not me so I’ll step aside, bit of plot. It is a pleasantly long read and the characterization of the two older sisters is great and good fun.

Mulholland notably also has a thing for astronomy. This is the second book (My Sister Maisie being the other) that has a story line about a woman who aspires to being an astronomer. I have to imagine that it either was a personal interest of hers or she was close to a woman who was or wanted to be one. That is another quality of these novels – the women are striving for something but consistently fall short of achieving in the man’s world. I assume this was a factor of the time and place. Mulholland is several decades earlier than let’s say Francis Hodgson Burnett (I wrote about her adult fiction which I enjoyed immensely in a post here). Europe was behind the US in progress for women and I would guess Ireland a bit further behind still. People looking at Suffragettes more than a bit askance as they emerge there.

*Another I don’t have but am interested in (1905).*

The final book for today, Marcella Grace, An Irish Novel (1886), is a plot that is devoted entirely to class distinction and the inflammatory politics of Ireland at the time. As someone without a lot of background in the political history of Ireland I am not equipped to comment on the position she takes. It is clear that she is leaving some room for a dissenting view (some sympathy for the downtrodden who took the paths of taking up arms) although for all of that they are the evil forces who drive this particular plot forward. This does make for a different book and I appreciate that as she could start to feel a bit repetitive. However, while I enjoyed it I cannot say it was an absolute favorite.

There is one on my bedside pile that I have been unable to penetrate, Father Tim (1910). Unsurprisingly it is about a priest in Ireland. I’m not saying I won’t end up reading it but I have not yet been able to really engage with it. Perhaps the fact that it seems to be written from a man’s point of view isn’t working for me. If I manage to read it I will report.

I’m not sure looking this over that I have precisely found the sweet spot in her writing. I want to say that 1900 seems to be a high water mark, but Terry, Or, She Ought to Have Been a Boy is shortly into the 20th century and was less promising. (I think I have to be careful to avoid these books meant for children – not true of all authors but for me it may be for her.)

I have one more hardcover book in the house to read, Narcissa’s Ring, 1916. I have been acquiring them as they become available. They are more widely available in Britain but the postage to ship a book is so outrageous it puts most of them out of reach. Given what I wrote about in the earlier post and this one, a true sweet spot has not yet emerged.

Attached?

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I find myself at a perch that used to be most familiar, Kim’s computer at the foot of his long drawing table. It is a somewhat superior spot to my usual view of a bookcase at my desk/work table behind where he is seated (even as I write, working away on this Saturday morning). This is one of those “slice of life here at Pictorama” posts.

Back at the commencement of Covid in March of ’20, a very basic beast of a laptop that I had purchased for work went into daily use at home for the next almost three years. (I have written several posts about that work from home period. A few can be read here and here.) That rather anonymous laptop died a slow death after taking a beating during those Covid years. I was very fond of it by then but it had developed the unfortunate habit of locking itself periodically a habit which it could not be broken of. Intervention made it meltdown completely. Rather than take another clunky Jazz at Lincoln Center owned laptop I purchased my own.

*Early Covid desk set up with work laptop here.*

I turned to a friend who has helped us with computer issues in the past and asked him to find me the lightest laptop possible. At time, January of ’23, my job at the animal hospital wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye yet and I assumed I would return to my domestic and international travel for Jazz at Lincoln Center and lugging a heavy laptop was exhausting. Bernie found me the lightest little laptop in the world – barely weighing more than my elderly iPad and keyboard at four pounds it is a basic but very usable little fellow. Although the travel has largely been to and from New Jersey, I never regret how very light it is, tucked into a bad or suitcase.

It was rebuilt and happened to also come in this sort of pretty rose gold color. It cost me $378. Since it was now my own computer once set up at my work space I migrated to it for everything and left my weekend morning perch at this one, where I had spent many a Saturday and Sunday writing to you all. There were adjustments to be made – most significantly a very small screen, the price of such a small, light laptop. Nonetheless, it has gotten me through many trips to New Jersey and has been my cheerful morning companion daily since its purchase.

*Blackie as a hard working home office cat during Covid.*

At first I missed sitting in this spot a bit. Looking at Kim rather than at the back of his head as we chat. I get to look out the window from here too. I am though, as I have opined before, very much a creature of habit so my routine has been upset and it leaves me out of sorts.

It is odd to me how attached we sometimes become to these anonymous bits of equipment we spend our days with. Not all of them mind you – some I have happily sent into oblivion. I have not been one much to name them or humanize them, but we spend time with them and unthinkingly store things on them we want to keep. We understand that they are always temporary but periodically we get caught. I don’t have a lot on the hard drive of that computer I don’t have elsewhere but it would be inconvenient to lose it.

Meanwhile, in other news, I have been fighting the good fight with a problem in my mouth for well over a year. Several surgeries and the most recent ending in (very) painful failure. This happened earlier this week. After the unexpected surgery I came home and fell into bed for several hours. When I finally woke up sufficiently at the end of the day to spend a half hour answering the most urgent work emails, I sat down at the computer and signed on and…a black screen. I shut it down and tried again. And again.

I do question, if I need to buy another laptop – would I buy a rebuilt inexpensive one again? I mean, I got my money’s worth in a sense. It is rebuilt so it makes it seem less disposable although as I probe I am not sure if that is true. I am open to suggestions and thoughts on this one.

Therefore, immediately following the writing of this off to the Geek Squad or u break it we fix it for a long morning of waiting and paying. The good news is that the pain in my mouth has started to abate which improves my mood for this venture considerably.

Two Is Company

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Oh the poor rejected lover kitty! His beloved caroling away with her paramour. So sad! Is she truly fickle? Did they etch their initials together previously in this tree trunk? Or are those the initials of the lovers he he walking by? Or was the affection all on his side? It was not meant to be.

Our third wheel is in a strange stance – partial fight and somewhat flight as the bottom half of him already seems to be walking away while the top half looks back. He wears a nice bow, unlike the singing lover, although Miss Kitty has a red collar on. The cat couple only have eyes for each other so they don’t even see him behind the tree – alas. I’m fairly sure that the toad stools growing at the base of the tree are symbolic. (Danger, poison and no less than Existential Dread according to the internet.)

This card has an embossed quality and was never mailed, nothing is written on the back. It was produced by Souvenir Postcards of New York and Berlin. I assume it was riding the crest of the Wain-esque cat craze of the post-Victorian era. Although anthropomorphic like his these cats are less pointedly satirical. Not sure who you’d send this card to where they wouldn’t feel like you were making some sort of point or message.

This card points to the whisp-o-will nature of cat affection and, shall we say, coupling of felines. I have limited personal experience of this beyond one cat, Winkie, that managed to evade our window of spaying post-adoption slip out and find a tabby with whom she had a brief liaison resulting in four kittens.

*My sister Loren holding the mysterious Miss Winkie.*

In retrospect, it is hard to associate those kittens with her as she made short shrift of her affiliation with them. We kept them, two gray, a tabby and a orange tiger. They became: Ping and Pong, Tigger, and Squash. Ping was a smart female and Pong a (very) dopey male. Tigger was a nice and very pretty tabby who sadly wandered off, was found once and did it again. (Our cats were free range in those days.)

Meanwhile Squash turned out to be a pale long drink of an orange cat – so long it was like he had an extra vertebrae or two. As a result would often sit on his haunches, like a human on the couch or in an armchair, comfortably bent completely in two. (My brother Edward once declared of Squash, Survives but never thrives, which seemed pointedly accurate. I have to admit that I have no memory of when Squash passed out of our lives as I wasn’t living home at the time but neither do I remember the report.)

Squash was in most other ways a rather undistinguished fellow living quietly in a multitude of cat personalities. (The kitten event had swelled the family total to unforeseen highs!) However, his distinguishing characteristic was his affection for one of the other cats. He was the rare cat in that house who would seek out another and sleep with his arms around him.

Peaches, one of the Jersey Five of cats, hates everyone (man and beast) it would seem, except the elderly cat Milty. She stealthily climbs up on a chair and curls up asleep with him. Milty, whose precise age is not known to me but a rough calculation has around 20, is largely the benevolent figurehead of senior male in that house. He likes to have a brief go at every dish of food as it is put down but otherwise he’s pretty chill.

*Peaches, left, with the ever patient Milty.*

Meanwhile, the role of senior cat largely belongs to the four year old enormous all black male, Beauregard or Beau. That said Blackie, of the visiting New York cats, believes himself to be senior cat when we are in NJ. Beau will take a certain amount of that since B doesn’t eat with them which would probably cause the imminent collapse of that small kingdom.

There are occasional blow ups and one took place last summer while I was on a call with the two Board Chairs from work. That said, if you are going to have a cat fight explosion while on an important work call its good that you work for an animal hospital. They are very forgiving about animal interruptions on zoom.

*Blackie, looking entirely black since we can’t see the white star on his chest.*

Going back to Winkie, who was a very smart little polydactyl calico cat. Having produced said kittens (in my parent’s closet, the carpet was never quite the same) and caring for them a scant amount of time she pretended that she had no memory of them nor where they came from and generally treated them with a superior attitude and disgust as interlopers we’d wished on her one day. Such is the attitude of cats.

A Striking Cat

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: This is a pretty odd piece I purchased recently from a dealer in Britain via Instagram. (See last week’s post which can be found here for the other piece I purchased at the same sale, @oldstockantiques or www.oldstockantiques.co.uk.) It was listed as a match striker.

This auction went sort of fast and furious (and also very slow in another way which I expounded on last week) without much chance to really study each object. I mean you could look at it or buy it but not really both because it would be gone by the time you looked at it – or so it seemed.

Not to say I wouldn’t have purchased this little fellow either way. I like him and he gave the cats a bit of a fright this morning with his miniature arched back silhouette while I was carrying it around. First Blackie raised an eyebrow but Cookie had a full on stare down and sniff fest with it. We never got to an all out hiss though. With all the black cat objects in the house few are close enough to cat size and in the war making position to attract their ire.

*And the back. Look at this little slab of marble!*

Anyway, there are some disparate aspects to this little fellow. His overall weight and marble stand make me think of something I would have found in my grandmother’s house. She had many little jade ashtrays and pin dishes (no one smoked) on marble stands like this. Sadly I have none to share as my mom wasn’t a huge fan of ashtrays.

In the lower right corner (ours, not his) is a little groove I assume is for actually striking a match – I could use this as I am the person who always burns themselves when I strike a match!

He (she?) is a solid cast iron and as mentioned above, even marble aside, is weighty. The fur is nicely delineated and a careful look reveal tiny teeth in the open (hissing) mouth. There is that nice big red bow. He stands on toe defined feet. The paint is a bit chipped but overall in good condition.

*They are only glowing red because they are reflecting the cover on my phone! Still, I like the effect.*

There are two unexpectedly odd aspects to this piece. The first are the rhinestone eyes! I assume they are original and I can imagine that they would flash a bit in the light but there is something utterly unexpected about them. They do glint and glitter.

The other thing is the strange hole showed in the top. Did people drop the matches in there? Or maybe it just held a few? Not like it could have held a lot of them. There is not evidence that there was ever anything additional that went in that opening. I am somewhat stymied.

*C & B in the sun this morning. The fake cat forgotton.*

However, this item seems like an ideal denizen of the Pam’s Pictorama Collection here at Deitch Studio and I’m pleased it transversed the Atlantic to rest here.

Townsend & Co., Newcastle

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: This was part of a much anticipated Instagram online auction that occurred last weekend. It was via a British dealer, @oldstockantiques, who had recently purchased a collection of cat related items belonging to a woman in her 90’s. (It wasn’t clear if this was an estate sale or just her divesting.)

So, after calculating the time difference, I set myself up with multiple devices for bidding. The terms of the auction required that you message the dealer for each item as it went up and this meant that I spent about an hour and 45 minutes to get through the listing of a dozen items or less. Even with my multiple devices and refreshing my feed constantly I have to report that I lost many more times than won. I can’t figure out if somehow my internet connection to England took longer or if my internet in general a tad slower than someone else’s because I will moving as fast as I could. (I’m sure you can imagine, knowing of my profound dedication to the Pictorama collection, my extraordinary frustration. However, @oldstockantiques remained patient with me and a shout out to him!)

The one that got away! Victorian cat mirror.

Nonetheless, I purchased one item (future post) and then at the end of the auction asked if there was anything unsold and I threw this lovely green cat pin dish in for good measure. Above I have shared a Victorian cat mirror that got away – alas! My bank account is happy but I am very sad.

Perhaps this little fellow didn’t sell because he has a large repair down his middle. There is nothing further to identify or edify on the back, although there are three small feet to secure it on a surface. The repair does not especially bother me and the green color is absolutely seductive. However, one of the most interesting things is that I posted about very similar dishes, cast in metal, in one of my nascent blog posts back in 2014 which can be found here. Those were purchased for a freakishly minimal amount on eBay while wandering through cat advertising items and reside on my dresser, bulging with rings, today.

*Identified on the back as Corbin Lock Company, Canada. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.*

While the metal duo are advertising Canadian Corbin Locks (the name is on the back), this little fellow belongs on the other side of the ocean where he boasted the virtue of Townsend & Co., New Castle. It took me a bit of time to sort through a number of companies and options before landing on Townsend & Co. Newcastle-on-Tyne, makers of fine china at the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century. (While references to it abound around items being sold, no history of the company is readily available.) I cannot be sure and I do not find another dish like this one, at least not attributable to them. (I haven’t found one advertising for anything of this vintage or precise style.) Feel free to poke holes in my theory!

Townsend & Co. did make advertising pin dishes like this one and Google tells me notably made them for a 1929 North East Coast Industries Exhibition in conjunction with a company called Mailing. The trail goes a bit cold at that point.

*On sale at Etsy at the time of posting.* *This one has rhinestone eyes!*

Meanwhile, there is now a fascination for me in the question of this mold. In casting around on the internet I saw it referred to as an old French mold, although I have yet to see specific evidence of that myself. I have seen the old metal ones both with other advertising and without any advertising – sometimes billed as ashtrays like the one on Etsy here. They are not identical – there is a slight morph – but surprisingly similar.

Below is an example of a similar mold in use by a Japanese ceramist currently. The persistence of the image is amazing across probably at least 100 years.

I believe this one is heading to New Jersey where it will likely reside in the bedroom or bathroom there. It’s cheerful green color and timeless kitty face will fit right in. And who knows where this cat will turn up next.

British Bright Lights

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I was on a bit of a role recently with press photos on eBay. (See last week’s Felix-y post here.) I had to barter over this one a bit but it seemed to fit nicely within my purview of photo interests. This came to me via a dealer in Livingston, Texas.

On the back it is identified as a photo by Underwood and Underwood a stock photo company located at 242 West 55th Street here in New York City. On a scrap of paper glued to the back, NOVEL ELECTRIC SIGNS FEATURED AT BRITISH SEASIDE RESORT. LONDON. –PHOTO SHOWS: “Mickey Mouse” and the “Dancing Kittens” in electric lights at Blackpool. There was something below it that was neatly ripped off.

The candy shown here with Felix was sometimes referred to as **Blackpool Rock**. *Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

Blackpool beach resort has been the locale of numerous Pictorama posts as a rather specific Felix wooden cut out was available for photos and even one errant donkey. (A mere sampling of posts can be found here, here and here.) Blackpool as a seaside resort goes back to the 18th century. There is what they refer to as the Blackpool Tower and Pleasure Beach which appears to be an amusement pier, probably not unlike the small one in Long Branch, NJ I grew up with but maybe larger since it was referred to as the Golden Mile as well. It reached its zenith of popularity around the time of this photo and although tourism has fallen off still exists largely intact today.

*Posing with Felix in Blackpool. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

I’m not sure who the brain child was behind this off-model Mickey and tow dancing kitties in what appear to be lederhosen and bow ties. The cats have luxurious tails that curl around and are clad in black boots. Mickey, on the other hand, while sporting an outsized bow tie had oddly small feet in some sort of white shoes.

Unfortunately the tops of Mickey’s ears are lost to the black sky behind him – Kim suggested a bit of white paint to rectify that. I am a bit surprised it wasn’t painted on for publication. I do wonder about publicizing what was so clearly a homemade Mickey in newspapers. Did the long arm of Walt reach them?

*Another Blackpool Felix photo. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

All three are decorated in round white bulbs. They drift in front of something made to look like a fence. I thought it was a real fence at first but it is dotted with lights too. Oddly enough the cat’s booted feet do not seem to have bulbs.

There is a tiny sign affixed to the bottom which says, DANGER Do not touch. I can only imagine that now it would have to be much, much bigger. There are shadows along the back fence that look strangely like black cats to me. The bulbs in the white areas of the cats and Mickey’s face look lit up under careful examination – but the lights on their pants and bows do not appear to be. Perhaps they blinked – maybe half are on and half off?

Of course my imagination goes wild with the idea of a day and an evening at Blackpool – getting my photo taken with Felix on the beach first and then seeing this at night! I am probably delightedly eating cotton candy and other junk food in the interim. A perfect day at the British seashore resort.

Buster Brown Bank

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I realize that there has been no reason to visit the history of Buster Brown in this blog. Today I will try to do him justice via this bank I purchased recently from my Texan friends, @curiositiesantique via Instagram.

For those of you too young to have owned these shoes (I barely slip into that category with a dim memory of the advertising at the shoe store when I was a tiny tot) the brief history goes pretty much as follows. Back in 1904 in an early advertising coup the nascent Buster Brown shoe company purchased the rights to an existing comic strip character created by Richard Outcault of Yellow Kid fame. Outcault was on the market selling the character and pressed them to additionally purchase the rights to the Buster’s girlfriend which they did – more about her in a minute.

*From a Heritage Auction. Not in Pictorama collection.*

Interesting to me that Outcault sold the rights to 200 companies at the Louisiana Exposition which is where the shoe company picked it up. Therefore, presumably, there are Buster Brown items or more likely advertising that does not belong to the shoe company. Clearly however the shoe company made the most of their acquisition and a long history of Buster Brown shelling for shoes begins and runs well into the middle of the 20th century and Buster Brown is virtually synonymous with shoes now.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that the cartoonist Outcault was quite the business man when it came to licensing and in 1904 was making $75,000 a year on licenses and employed a small staff to manage them. (If Google is telling me the truth this means he was a millionaire in his day.)

*Speciman 1908 hand colored Outcault Buster Brown strip.*

However, let’s get back to the shoes. The shoes were so popular that generically a kids shoes might be referred to as their Buster Browns. In addition to items like this bank there was reams of print advertising and purchase point items for stores. Midgets were employed to play Buster, in his unfortunate garb, with cheerful pit bulls enrolled to play his dog Tige. The merchandising for toys was glorious and I spied at least one stuffed Tige online that I covet already. By the time I wandered onto the shoe wearing scene in the 1960’s the merchandising boiled down to some balloons. (There is a vague memory that maybe there was something else, maybe a comic long reprinted but I don’t really remember.)

*Buster Brown and Tige in front of a shoe store. The copy of this photo is credited to Mel Birnkrant’s collection although a few exist online.*

The shoes had Buster and Tige inside, under your heel and I remember the jingle from early tv in a high pitched voice, I’m Buster Brown and I live in a shoe, that’s my dog Tige and he lives there too.

*Buster Brown Shoes sign located in Thomasville, Georgia. It can be found on North Broad Street.*

So to my surprise, I learned today that as above Buster Brown had a girlfriend (huh), and her name was Mary Jane – and that is how women’s shoes with the single strap were named Mary Janes and are still known by that term today.

*Real Buster Brown Mary Janes. Can be yours on Etsy at the time of publication.*

As for this bank, it stands at five or six inches. A trace of paint remains on the face and hands while the red tie remains fairly vivid. This seems to be the most common form of this bank although online I found versions in an overall green and one in red which I can’t decide if it is original or not. The face was the first to go and I can’t say I found it pristine on any of this design. Buster’s hair was painted a light brown and Tige’s mouth was also the vivid red and there were red circles around his eyes.

It is a simple bank with a screw in the bottom you would use to retrieve your saved coins. It is small so not like you were keeping a fortune in there. Kim starts to ruminate on restoring it as soon as he looks at it. Evidently it makes him itch to paint it although we know that he won’t – nor should he devote time to such projects when more creative work awaits him. (Although Kim’s next book is scheduled for release early next year he’s already deep into the one after it.)

So now that we have a first Buster Brown item we’ll see how long it is before the next wanders in the door. I am going to be looking sharp for that stuffed Tige.

You Should Have Seen That Cat

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s treat is a clear example of the curios you will come across if you consistently spend time down a given rabbit hole of collecting as I tend to. Definitely in the more interesting than good, this old press photo caught my eye recently and was on its way to me lickety split. It had found its way from the East coast to Los Angeles, but it is back home in the tri-state area again.

Its eBay listing,1936 Disney Mickey Mouse Costume Atlantic City Steel Pier Midgets Felix the Cat, was designed to catch my attention a few different ways. And really, put that way, who could resist it?

Deconstructing that amazing sentence a bit – Felix? Um, I hate to be a critic but I think they were very safe from copyright infringement on that one. It is somewhat more illuminated by the press information stored on the back. Glued to the back, in a very old fashioned type, is the following breaking news:

YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT CAT – That is about what Mickey Mouse was telling pretty Miss Betty Van Auken, New York visitor sunbathing on the Atlantic City Steel Pier. And Mickey’s girl friend Minnie Mouse listened, a little careful of Mickey around such beauty. Mickey and Minnie are members of the Steel Pier midget colony that helps to entertain guests on the ocean amusement structure. It has an index number, A16353 and it says, Ref. Dept. 7-28-36 N.E.A.

The Steel Pier seems to be the major amusement pier in Atlantic City and we will assume it has been ever thus. And while it seems sensible that this figure with Mickey was never meant to be Felix, it’s decidedly un-Minnie like as well, both mask and outfit. (And that suit looks hot for a July in Atlantic City too – she’d have been much happier in Minnie’s usual brief attire!) Mickey still looks a bit overdressed for July, but is in more traditional Mickey garb.

*Comic book publication of Stuff of Dreams, #3, cover image.*

It took a few times before the midget colony part sunk into my consciousness. Fascinating on its own, it also reminded me immediately of a story Kim did years ago, No Midgets in Midgetville which had roots in an actual town in northern NJ which is said to have originally been the winter home of a group of traveling circus midgets. (That story was published in his book, Alias the Cat which can be purchased on Amazon here or search eBay. Or you can find it in single comics under the name, Stuff of Dreams #3.)

We went and looked at the remains of the enclave of small (and occasionally tiny) houses as research for the story, an interesting morning jaunt with my ever patient father. In these days of tiny homes it is a bit hard to say how much truth was in the story, although some house did seem quite small. (The original story about it being Midgetville originated in the New York Times back in 2002 and can be found here although there are other references to the town online.) Regardless, the idea that circus performers (perhaps of all sizes) wintered there perhaps makes sense and it makes additional sense that perhaps some of those performers went no further than Atlantic City seaside for a summer gig.

*Centerfold of Midgetville, Kim Deitch, Stuff of Dreams.*

As for Miss Betty Van Auken of New York – it is hard to believe that even a veteran New Yorker showed up in Atlantic in a bathing suit, mincing along in high heels and lipstick for a day at the beach. At first I didn’t even bother googling her but it turns out that 1936 was her year. She has a Broadway role (Dodsworth) and film credits from that year, The Garden of Allah, Oasis Girl (uncredited), and a small part as a manicurist in Big Brown Eyes. The trail grows cold after that.

The weirdness of this duo continues to nag at me though. How odd to be on the seaside pier in roasting July heat, eating your cotton candy and have these two come gamboling up around you. The Stuff of Dreams indeed!