MoCCA Fest

Pam’s Pictorama Post: This is an interesting year for me to focus on MoCCA, the annual comic con manisfestation of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) now it its 24th year. I think Kim and I have been going to this comics fest since its early days at the Puck Building downtown. From there it bounced a bit and had homes at various locations including the Armory, Chelsea and now the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street. Sponsored by The Society of Illustrators (which probably deserves its own post covering its august history), MoCCA is an annual March event by which we tell the comics calendar here in New York City. Over time it has grown like topsy and there was a moment yesterday afternoon when I literally couldn’t move in the gathered crowd!

This year was a bit special for Deitch Studio because Kim’s new book, How I Make Comics, is being previewed there with advanced copies, a talk and signings. We are so excited to see the book at long last! So we had a bit more of a purpose there than our more usual ramblings.

*Kim and Bill kicking off the talk and Bill’s copy of Kim’s new book here.*

However, the road to it was complicated this year and in part I write because I think you’ve had some hurried Pictorama posts on recent weekends. To start at the beginning, as snow buried New York repeatedly in March Kim and I weren’t doing our morning walk to work – not surprisingly, it was lousy walking. (I wrote about those walks not long ago here.) He’d had some pain and walking seemed to aliviate it, however without it, about a month ago we realized that he was having increased pain – and, alarmingly, trouble walking at all. A trip to the ER followed three Saturdays ago, and it turns out he had a severely herniated disc.

It was clear that surgery was in the offing – eschewing actual emergency surgery, we started on the bumpy road which led us to an operation last Thursday (micro surgery – I’d only considered this on animals via work oddly enough), although some issues kept him in the jug until a week ago today. (I liked the hospital okay enough although I think our animal hospital is much nicer – I’d much rather go there!)

*This was one of those rarified items that turned up – never saw this before!*

In general surgery seems to have been a great success. He’s walking much better, improving daily, although he needs to develop some muscle for any distance again. No bending, lifting or twisting – we seem to be good about the lifting but the bending and twisting, well…he tries. Most importantly for all involved, he was back in his work chair for pretty much full days starting on Monday – he’s made his halfway through the next book already and has a full head of steam.

*Kim’s messier (even) than usual work table and area shown here – as shown at the slide show yesterday.*

All this to say, it’s been a busy time on the ground here at Deitch Studio and we were on a deadline with MoCCA kicking off the book yesterday. I’m pleased to say it was a great day and really much fun. John Kelly of Dummyzine fame (@dummyzine) invited Kim to sit at his table for part of the day, joining Bob Camp of Ren and Stimpy fame. John is working on a long interview with Kim for Dummy which we look forward to coming out later this year.

*Mark Newgarden, John and Kim looking over some of John’s rare Deitch items.*

At lunchtime our friend and comics historian Bill Kartalopoulos (@kartalopoulos) did a great interview with Kim which covered process (what fun to see one of Kim’s pages go from rough pencils to a tight lay out and then to an inked page through the miracle of Powerpoint), but also delved into some family history which plays out in How I Make Comics. He spent some time on my favorite story in the collection, The Two Maries, about Kim’s mom and grandmother hitchhiking from Denver to LA in 1939.

*A young and very pretty Marie Deitch (nee Billingsley) shown here.* *I knew her in later years and was very fond of her.*

Yours truly and Pam’s Pictorama got a shout out as well – thank you Bill! And we were so pleased to see how many folks showed up for the talk – a thank you to those of you who made it.

Then it was over to the Fantagraphics table (Kim’s longstanding publisher and a big presence at the con) to sign advanced copies of the book and meeting folks which is always fun. I get to see some early, rare appearances of Kim’s work in volumes people have collected and want him to sign. Amazing! This fan girl is thrilled!

We’re back today for more – if you are around say hello! Kim is signing from 1-2:00 today and otherwise we will spend some time back with John and his other guests. I will man the box of original art for sale so come on by – and back to more traditional Pictorama next week!

Birthday Bits

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I know I did a sort of a birthday tease yesterday and I promise I will get to a birthday gift review soon, but first I have a few other birthday bits I acquired and tales of a day downtown as Manhattans mountains of snow finally started to melt around us. Luckily, despite temperatures hitting almost 40 degrees, the melt remained slow and rivers did not actually form in the streets, at corners here the way they will. My feet are so tired of wearing and walking long distances in boots! I had sneakers on and luckily we weren’t washed away. It was Valentine’s Day and the warmest day in months so all of Manhattan was out and about.

*Perhaps a dubious purchase of the day, see below.*

We started at Forbidden Planet. Kim has been looking for reprints of classic DC comics and wanted to see if they had anything to feed the kitty on this score. He’s been buying them in NJ at Jay & Bob’s Secret Stash in Red Bank but has pretty much come to the end of the line of their stock. Can’t seem to find them online – in case folks have suggestions.

*Inside Forbidden Planet – I’ve never been in this location before.*

As we headed east we discovered a tiny new store on East 9th Street called Pillow Cat Books (328 East 9th Street, or online here). It is tiny and was quite crowded when we got there, almost so much I debated if we could go in. With a name like that I had to try however. Finally, it thinned out though and so we did and eventually it emptied to the point where we could see things and eventually buy something.

Several shelves of vintage books of all sorts are along one wall but maddeningly high and virtually out of reach. A few attempts did show them to be extremely pricey so we gave up on much trying. Algonquin Cat with illustrations by Hilary Knight of Eloise fame piqued my interest although it was in a locked cabinet, so I didn’t get to have a look. I do see that recent reprints of it are very affordable. I suspect this was an earlier edition. I may take a flyer on it out of curiosity, even not having seen it. I do not need a first edition.

*The old books were on the top shelves!*

While there, I did however buy a Kit-Cat Klock (aka Felix) clock. Now you might be surprised that I don’t have one and I have had a few in the past, all have suffered one fate or another. The Kit Cat Klock was introduced in 1932 by the Allied Clock Company, created by Earl Arnault and designed by Clifford Stone. These clocks have in some ways come a long way from their 1930’s roots when they were made of metal rather than plastic, minus the later addition of whiskers and bowtie. Still, they are remarkably similar to the original.

I find them very cheerful and the new design has the advantage of functioning while sitting on a shelf without the tail, if you are so inclined. (In my experience the tail is the weak part of the operation, and I believe in the older design the clock didn’t work without it swinging.) I always had it on a wall in the kitchen and I may return to that location – I like a clock in the kitchen although now there’s the microwave. Anyway, I purchased the classic black option – as interesting as the other colors were. My former brother in-law was scared of Felix clocks in the way some people are afraid of clowns. I never understood it but was concerned back in the day when I thought he might come to the apartment.

*House puss by the front door at Pillow Cat Books.*

Meanwhile, a pleasantly plump tabby cat of the establishment sat by the front door, enduring a certain amount of attention. I think there was sign on the front door which warned of his mercurial temperament. He deigned to receive a few head scritches on our way out.

*The back area at the Rare Book Room – it is tantalizingly close, but we may not paw through it. Sigh. Always sure great treasures are hidden there!*

After swinging further east and discovering that nothing we wanted to poke into was open, we hit Alabaster Books on Fourth Avenue. We’ve purchased books there although not recently. Years ago and for many years they had a lovely calico cat I liked to visit. While there I did note and contemplate an illustrated children’s book by Rumor Godden (who wrote Black Narcissus), but curious as I was about the writing, I didn’t care for the illustrations.

*The view from my perch at the Rare Book Room.*

Next up and always a favorite was the Rare Book Room at the Strand. They tend to move their small selection of random fiction around and I had to go looking for it again. Luckily they now have it perched next to some comfy chairs which allowed for better looking while seated low. Last year that shelf revealed Maisie’s Sister by Rosa Mulholland which set off a year of tracking down and reading those books. (Posts about them can be found here and here.) I brought home two books, one more promising than the other, The Wild Ruthvens by Curtis Yorke, and (the less promising Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall by Charles Major. Curtis Yorke is evidently the nom de plume for a prolific Scottish writer, Susan Rowley Richmond Lee. Perhaps more to come on her in future posts.

*Valentine view of the bar at Old Town yesterday.*

*Pulled this off the internet – nice to admire their neon sign!*

We rounded off the afternoon with lunch at the Old Town Bar on 18th Street. Kim had a veggie burger and I had a rather notable grilled cheese with mushrooms on pumpernickel – which they noted was a personal favorite of former governor Pataki. That notwithstanding, it was a memorable grilled cheese and plate of fries. While many stores were jam-packed, we were pleasantly surprised to find the bar a quiet and half-filled interlude by two in the afternoon.

Still Young

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: The year is still young enough flash this New Year card, found in the pile on my desk back here in our New York HQ at Deitch Studio. We made the trek back, cats tucked unhappily in their carriers, a few days ago, this past Wednesday. A food delivery (love ya Fresh Direct) will arrive in a bit. After spending the morning with you all here at Pictorama, I will finish unpacking us, break down a bunch of boxes that we moved art supplies and food in, and life will slowly resume its Manhattan manifestation until the summer when the whole crew will decamp again. I will of course be in New Jersey periodically looking in on the Jersey Five (cats) and continuing my efforts to convert Peaches to a pet-able house cat.

Like almost everyone around me, I have started the New Year with a bad cold which is hanging on tenaciously. Meanwhile, Blackie seems a bit morose which leaves us scratching our heads – we know he doesn’t miss the other cats there. Was his spot on a chair in the sun that nice? Or under another chair and near a heat vent? He’s eating but carrying an expression of world weariness. He hisses at Cookie as if he never met her before – something he does when we return to the apartment.

Okay, onto the postcard! I don’t know how I missed this brilliant card when piling up ones for New Jersey, but I did and I cannot wait a whole year to share it. This one has weirdly wonderful all over it. It wasn’t cheap but it was among some items I considered a bit of a bargain when purchased last fall.

I am a longstanding sucker for a good moon face and this one certainly qualifies; I could not ask for better. What really kills me is the weird little skirt-wearing body they have attached it too. (Is the moon a woman?) Weird nebulous feet on sort of fat baby-esque legs and the amorphous body is finished off with hands that look like they belong to yet something else. That moon head just floats though and is more substantial so at first you don’t put it together with the body, but then you do and chuckle!

The cheeky cherubs, in the arms of the moon, have a champagne bottle, held by one while the other toasts (or is it offering the glass to the moon?) with a glass full of bubbly. Dark clouds fill an even darker blue green sky behind them. Because it is dark it is hard to see but this card is lightly embossed, the cherubs in the highest relief but the clouds are gently shaped too, the moon’s dress also in low relief giving it texture. It wishes us A Happy New Year at the bottom in an Arts and Crafts writing so decorative it takes a minute to read it.

*Back of card – what is the aunt’s name?*

This card is postmarked on December 30, 1907, from somewhere in Pennsylvania; the town is illegible. To the best of my ability to read the brown ink script it says: Hello! Auntie: – How you feeling by this time red’d your letter this morning am very glad your roommate studys [sic] harmony once in a while. Your niece Ethel. It is address to Miss Grace Mangst, Warrin. Ohio D.M.J. No maker mark is in evidence on the card – which is too bad because these folks had something going on. I don’t usually hang seasonal cards but this one’s a gem.

Of course the big 2026 news here at Deitch Studio is Kim’s book, How I Make Comics is coming out in April. It is on pre-order – find it here. We find ourselves already deeply immersed in how to help launch this book. In the service of promoting it, I am toying with doing a podcast where Kim and I will talk about the origins of the stories and his history in comics. As I have previously with other intimidating projects (I know nothing about recording and editing), I share this with you all to help keep me honest about working on it. However, I am also asking you to weigh in on the idea. Is it a good one? Will folks listen? Or should I keep to my tip tap typing? Please weigh in below or leave a comment.

Rosa Mulholland: Part One

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: If yesterday was devoted to a bit of what we’ve been watching here at Deitch Studio, today I will spend some time on what I have been reading. You may remember that as part of a much belated birthday celebration spent wandering around downtown with Kim, I purchased a rather beautifully bound volume by Rosa Mulholland with the intention of reading it. That volume, Our Sister Maisie, turned out to be an interesting sort of a point in her career to stumble onto and, written when she was 66 years old, it seems to have been one of her most popular books.

*Volume I purchased as a belated birthday gift to myself in March at The Strand.*

Her biography is interesting when considering her stories which deal a lot with the position of women in terms of money and livelihood at the time which she documents and considers. The daughter of a prominent doctor she came from a fairly well to do Irish family in Dublin. Other she first dabbled in painting (I have seen no evidence of it) she turned her hand to writing early and began trying to get published in her teens, including a novel at 15. One of the most interesting pieces of the tale is that early publication of her work caught the eye of an elderly Charles Dickens who not only encourage her but published her in one of his magazines and in a compilation with one of his own stories.

He bet on a good horse. She was very prolific with a list of upward of forty publications, mostly novels, to her credit. She wrote under at least three names I can find, Rosa Mulholland, Rosa Gilbert and very early on, Ruth Murray and seem to have published until a few years before her death and there was a healthy reprinting of her work which continues into the 1940’s. Gilbert is her married name – she married at the age of 50 to a well-known historian, Sir Thomas Gilbert, 12 years her senior. By marriage she therefore became Lady Gilbert.

Rosa Mulholland in the only image I can find.

If any of her writing was used for films I cannot find any evidence of it. I want to say that her books while very popular in Ireland and Great Britain they appear to have been less known here in the US. Really though the only evidence I have of that is that used contemporary copies of her books are mostly available in Britain.

Much like some of the other women authors I have written about previously (for starters, the adult novels of Francis Hodgson Burnett which can be found here, one about Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey here and an earlier one on Edna Ferber here) she is writing about the changing values and culture evolving around women’s emerging role in the late 19th and into the 20th century. Of the above mentioned authors, Francis Hodgson Burnett writes a bit about the other side of the Atlantic and especially the influence of the more forward Americans who visit there – generally very wealthy ones at that. Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey also writes about Britain but is poised a bit later.

*A pretty if damaged volume for sale. I am waiting for a less expensive but equally beautiful volume.*

Mulholland therefore is a bit unique in her entirely Irish perspective and generally a bit earlier than the women above. She recognizes that there is a problem where women’s only option for survival is the money their family could supply in the form of a life-long bit of capital to earn and be spent down and the marriage they make. Therefore nascent attempts to work among them are plot points – smart and ambitious women (much like herself we have to assume) are trying to break the mold either because they have been left with no money or are a simmering genius whose talent must find an outlet.

For all of that and knowing of her own life she can be a bit hard on these women – perhaps as society at the time was and it was the feeling of the day. I have read three of her books to date and in Our Sister Maisie there is a younger sister who yearns to be an architect – much like the young Mulholland she even has some of her designs used when she is teenager. Against all odds she makes it to architecture school and, although it is a bit unclear, drops out just before completion to marry her wealthy and wonderful heart’s desire.

*I don’t have this one yet either but great title and nice opening page.*

In a later volume, Twin Sisters, An Irish Tale published in 1913 she has a female character who, in charge of her late husband’s estate (it is thought of as her managing it for her son – as if she wasn’t also living off it in the meanwhile) invests aggressively in the stock market and makes but ultimately loses much of the fortune. She is criticized as having had no business trying to do the work of a man. But women like her are frequently left to their own devices and the heroine of the story arrives, along with her twin sister, in Britain from Spain as the wards of a family friend they never met. Penniless, the woman charitably agrees to help launch them into society and make agreeable marriages for them. Our girl Pipa isn’t having it though and takes work in an apple orchard in the country instead. Although she is roundly criticized for this, she is our heroine so needless to say she does the right thing – but of course she will end up with her best mate as well.

*I’m also holding out for this illustrated version of this volume.*

Mulholland’s books are a bit harder to track down than what I have enjoyed in recent years where there has been aplenty available online and in inexpensive used volumes. Rosa Muholland’s books tend to be beautifully bound, illustrated, volumes that are being sold at a premium because of that and despite the fact that there is not much demand to read them. Why more are not available electronically I cannot quite figure out. Perhaps she is just a bit early for for most people – or if the basis of those collections is based on American libraries and universities she may just not be in the right purview.

*Clearly it would be a pity not to read this one in a beautiful illustrated volume like this one as well! Not in my collection – yet!*

All this to say that while between the acquisition of physical volumes of her books, I grabbed one of her earlier works online and that was interesting and The Late Miss Hollingford was the story of hers, serialized in a magazine, that caught Dickens’s eye. Her descriptive powers were in greater force in her early writing, although her descriptions of the Irish country and seaside are also wonderful in Our Sister Maisie. The descriptions of the farm this young woman goes to live on are just cozy and great. (Yes, another orphaned girl-woman sent off to live with folks she hardly knows – this time her parents, who she barely knew, died of a fever in India leaving her a sufficient income although in reverse this time she is sent to live with people who don’t have money. The father was the perpetrator of a pyramid scheme and those seemed to be rampant at this time – I know the from the de Vaizey books among others!)

*Illustration from the Late Miss Hollingford which I read electronically but with illustrations via Project Gutenberg.*

I suspect there will be more to come on Ms. Mulholland and her writing as I am wading into the depths. I also suspect that Abe Books and others can expect to be seeing a whole lot of my pocket change in the near future. Stay tuned.

Belated Birthday Fare

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: As those in the New York area know, it was a freakishly warm day here yesterday, topping out around 80 degrees. As a result the denizens of this metropolis poured onto the streets in wrinkled summer garb (or simply lack thereof) all white bellied and sleepy like a city of Rip Van Winkles. Kim and I entered the fray and spent the day hunting small Pam pleasures as is our program for my birthday.

A February birthday girl, this year I was bedeviled first by Kim’s Covid, followed by my own – and then a distressing string of funerals and memorials, plus one wedding! The MoCA comics festival thrown in too. All this to say, yesterday was our first day in a long time when we were left to our own devices.

Old Good Things is chock-a-block full of antique fixtures and a lot of brass. My dad was a utter sucker for brass fixtures and I can only imagine he would have come home with one of these. My father’s daughter, I too was tempted…

I started our itinerary with a stop at an antique and architectural salvage store, way over on the westside of midtown called Old Good Things which I have been curious about. (Their website can be found here.) I follow these folks on Instagram and while what they offer is generally just too large for my living situation but I have always wanted to visit the store. I do fantasize about replacing bathroom fixtures, maybe a fireplace mantel in NJ and light fixtures as well, and it sends me musing. There is much wonderful furniture, with an emphasis on wooden cabinets of drawers which is one of my own forms of kryptonite, hard to resist. Still, these are very large pieces for the most part and I live in small spaces.

*Two intriguing standing lamps that had just come into stock. They are being rewired so I have a minute to think about investing in them.*

Notably there were a few rather comfy and wonderful leather arm chairs but all I could see were happy cat claws so I moved along. These two standing lamps which just came into stock and had yet to be rewired were of interest – we could use a standing lamp here in the New York apartment and the weird sort of jadeite on one interests me. They were pricey but I will consider them. A good standing lamp is hard to find.

Then we headed downtown for what I considered the main event – the Metropolitan Postcard Club show and sale. I have not been to one since before Covid when they used to take place on 57th Street at a rundown Howard Johnson’s hotel near 8th Avenue. It was then a much larger affair, easily 3-4 times the size of the group yesterday. However, this just meant I burrowed a bit deeper and a very patient Kim joined me in sorting through boxes of cat postcards, with a few of New Jersey thrown in for good luck.

It was held at a pleasant, small and essentially non-descript church in the West Village called the Church of the Village. About a dozen dealers had a large circle of tables and it was quiet enough that you could sit and patiently go through the labeled boxes. I flashed a picture of yesterday’s Felix card on a few dealers to see if they had ever had any go through their hands. One looked quite stunned and said no, the other gave me a knowing look and said he might have one at home. I gave him my card.

I left the show lighter in dollars but happily heavy in cards and I will commence a liberal dissemination of them here in the coming weeks. It was well passed lunchtime and our tummies called so we wandered over to the Old Town Bar on 18th Street. I had a craving for an old establishment and this fit the bill perfectly. We’d eaten upstairs not that long ago but for lunch were seated at a table in the back.

*My view of the main room at lunch yesterday.* *I would like to be there when it is quiet enough to go around the room and read what is on all the walls.*

After lunch we made a quick trip to Blick so I could buy some watercolor brushes and paper. My friend Eileen (@EileenTravell) gave me a very lovely birthday gift of a nifty watercolor set for my birthday and I hope to commence playing with them soon.

*Thank you again Eileen! I hope to make some use of these.*

The next real stop of the day was The Strand bookstore. Our original thought was that we would just pop in to look in used fiction. (Kim looking for Dumas and I for someone named Carol Brink. We just saw a somewhat obscure Barbara Stanwyck 1953 film based on a Brink novel called Stopever. The films was renamed All I Desire, and directed by Douglas Sirk. It is masterful film making and visually stunning, like many of his films although this one in black and white and not the signature saturated color. A good TCM write up of the film, with spoilers, can be found here.) We came up empty handed on both scores but decided to head up to the Rare Book Room.

*We’ll see if this acquisition is more than good looking on the outside.*

Kim and I more or less nibble at the edges of the Rare Book Room. We aren’t interested in the signed first editions, but instead make our way to a few bookcases of more or less random old books. I have scored several items at this venue, including some that lead me further down the path of interesting authors or series. Despite the name, some of these volumes are very affordable.

*Very competent illustrations by someone named G. Demain Hammond R.I.*

However, I did pay up a bit for the book I bought yesterday. Shown here, it is a very pretty looking, illustrated volume which helps its cause. It actually may not need any help. I looked up the author, Rosa Mulholland, and she appears to be quite interesting. She was an Irish writer, very prolific and also wrote under the name of Rosa Gilbert, her married name – aka Lady Gilbert. Rosa appears to have worked the side of the street of fiction I like so maybe more about her to come over time as well.

*A frequent stop either to or from The Strand.*

We wrapped up with a quick look in Alabaster Bookshop around the corner from The Strand. Still checking for Dumas and coming up empty handed. I like Alabaster although they focus more on recent books and art volumes and I feel like I haven’t bought anything there in a while. I always check their kids and juvenile books, but it is a somewhat diminished section. I always remember that had a charmingly grumpy calico cat I saw grow from kittenhood on there. Her ghost still wafts through and I miss her.

That was it, a wrap on another birthday, perhaps all the better for the wait this year.

Part 2: Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey Cont.

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Apologies in advance for anyone who was peevish that yesterday was a book-ish post as I am going to wrap up (at least for now) my thoughts on Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey today as she continues to be my reading material of choice. (Yesterday’s post is here.)

I will confess I went for a long fallow period of not reading much and just one off books here and there when I was. Kim powers through all sorts of long and short term reading projects, both for his own edification and for things related to work, so I am jealous when I am without one too. However, I am there with the best when I find a rabbit hole to go down and therefore here we are today.

*From Wikipedia and the only image of her I can find.*

Mrs. G de HV as I like to call her, is fading from consciousness and seems to have barely been rescued for the digital age. If we are to look at the remaining availability of her published volumes, we have to assume that the Pixie books I wrote about yesterday were among her most popular, with a few other titles that seem to stand out. She wrote upwards of 32 books (I say upwards because Wikipedia does not always have every book published by an author although they do a good job of it) and clearly there were short stories. There is a collection of them mentioned as published in 1918. The list of her publications runs from 1897 to 1918, ending with that collection of stories. However, if I really want to read the widest swath of her work I will need to dig some. I would say about half is available online or for sale as antique volumes or occasional reprint.

*From “Tom and Some Other Girls”, 1901.*

Born Jessie Bell in 1857 as one in a melee of seven children (four brothers, two sisters) she was the daughter of a Scottish insurance broker. Her place of birth was Liverpool. She first married Henry Mansergh, a cotton broker, and published her first volumes under the name Jessie Mansergh. They had a daughter, Gwyneth Alice, in 1886. Mansergh was an addict which seems to have contributed to his early death. Reading between the lines so to speak, one wonders what part her early writing played in supporting them.

While I was certain that hers was a pen name of a type that was often adopted at the time, I learned that no, her second husband was indeed George de Horne Vaizey. She meets him while on a cruise which was a prize awarded for one of her short stories. They marry in ’98 and have a son, also named George, who goes on to be a writer. Sadly her own life ends as an invalid, confined to bed for many years. She dies in 1917 at about age 60 (her precise date of birth unknown) and therefore the final volume is posthumous.

Jessie uses her own life as whole cloth for her fiction. Large dynamic families, addiction, illness abound in her pages. Therefore, I have to assume that her evolving views on marriage and the relationships between men and women was also explored on her pages. If you’ve followed my previous musings on women writings of the early 20th century, you know that I found that even the juveniles such as The Radio Girls and Automobile Girls were gently ever pushing the line forward for what was permissible and acceptable for young women. (Some posts on those books here and here.)

Interesting to find Mrs. G de HV who is a bit earlier still than those authors and for me a logical forerunner of some. The line for women, the options they had in society for supporting themselves, is still more nascent although shifting all the time. An ongoing theme she explores is the unmarried middle class woman and her lack of options. I’ve already encountered several books where due to various circumstances the heroine is in some way prohibited or unable to marry and is faced with the issue of how to live their lives, preferably not just dependent on family. She seems to walk a narrow line – clearly a woman married to a man of means is the safest port in the storm.

She also confronts the daily reality of marriage – the idea that you are joining up with a mate who you will continue to make conversation with daily for decades. (I have often said that knowing that I would never be bored talking to Kim helped ensure a good union for us!) The sheer difficulty and exhaustion of running a house and caring for a family.

*From “Lady of the Basement Flat”, 1917.*

I am going to skip forward to An Unknown Lover, a novel published in 1913. (Some spoiler alerts ahead for those who care.) The author sets herself some unusual tasks. We have a heroine, Katrine, in her late twenties who has spent most of the last decade caring for her older brother who was widowed shortly after marrying. There are rarely effective parents in her books – adult children have either lost them or they are on the sidelines for some reason. I can’t even remember why they weren’t present to stop this hot mess of a situation – dead and forgotten in this case.

Anyway, both characters are beginning to chafe at the situation. The heroine opines on having all the responsibilities of housekeeping without the partnership of a true mate. She is also painfully aware that she is dependent on her brother for her keep, which comes to a hard point when he decides to remarry. She has no marketable skills and living in a small hamlet no prospects of marriage which is more or less what she is trained for. As a literary challenge, our author has placed an epistolary relationship through part of the book, which moves the storyline along. At first it seemed a bit awkward, but it grew on me. Despite some flaws and maybe questionable decisions, it is to date my favorite of her novels.

*Love this title and looking forward to this one. Published in 1908.*

De Horne Vaizey has beloved tropes – I’ve noted before a preponderance of gray eyed heroines, some have golden eyes as an alternative. An odd one seems to be a fondness for shipwrecks – I believe I may be up to three in her oeuvre to date. An interesting tidbit, while researching this post I came across the following in an Internet Archive version of An Unknown Lover which actually photographs the pages of a hard copy of the novel and included this forward below:

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Lest I should be credited with making literary material out of a disaster still painfully fresh in the minds of readers on both sides of the Atlantic, I should like to record the following rather striking coincidence.

On the fourteenth of April last, I was engaged in writing the description of the collision at sea in which the heroine of the present book plays a part; and after some deliberation as to the most forceful word to employ, wrote the sentence which originally ran as follows: —

”Mercifully it is not one person in many thousands who is called upon to endure so titanic an experience. …”

A few hours later my husband returned home and told me of the news which had that day thrilled the world — the foundering of the steamship Titanic on her maiden voyage.

Many weeks passed by before I could bring myself to continue the narrative.

Hampstead.

Jessie de Horne Vaizey.

Somehow she pulls out two parallel love stories and details the personal growth of Katrine as she makes some rather bold leaps forward to attain a measure of happiness and independence, gently breaking with at least some of society’s conventions.

Sadly Jessie de Horn Vaizey doesn’t live quite long enough to see the shift which occurs even in the early 20’s for women. At six or so volumes I have barely scratched the surface and if it is interesting enough I promise more to come.

Pixie and Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey: Part One

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: It has been a very long time indeed since I have posted about a writer or books I have been reading. That is in part because the last year did not lend itself to reading. Helping during my
mother’s last illness and the months that followed, ultimately leading to my changing jobs at the end of the year, certainly there were books, but reading was sporadic. Love or hate my book posts, books are back and today kicks off an interest in Mrs. de Horne Vaizey, nee Jessie Bell, later Mrs. Henry Mansergh and finally Mrs. de Horne Vaizey.

Pictorama readers of long-standing know that in recent years (especially during the at home pandemic years) I chased down the writings of numerous authors including all the Judy Bolton mysteries (a post about those can be found here) and strolled through the collected works of several women who were writing short stories and novels that depicted the emerging woman in the US and Britain at the dawn of the 20th century.

These included the adult novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett (in several parts, but it all starts here),
the (glorious) short stories and novels of Edna Ferber (here) and the various series books including the Red Cross Girls, Ruth Fielding books and the many volumes of my beloved Campfire Girls. (Starting here, here and here if you are game.)

You might remember that my birthday this year turned into a day of poking around bookstores downtown, including The Strand’s re-opened rare book room. I picked up a copy of More About Pixie, the second volume in a three novel series by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey (Mrs. GdeHV for my purposes going forward)

I was able to find the first volume of the books about Pixie online, Pixie O’Shaughnessy, with relative ease on my old friend Project Gutenberg. (All three volumes mentioned here are available on this free online resource as well as some others, although beyond these books only about half of her publications seem to be readily available. Many volumes of her work are also available at the Internet Archive.) I have largely been able to download illustrated versions of the books which I urge you to try to do as some of the illustrations are very good. (Oddly I can’t seem to open and share them here and show what I was able to find otherwise. I will add that the blog site isn’t actually allowing me to add images today so I apologize for the largely un-illustrated post!)

This first volume is a wonderful depiction of life in Ireland in the waning days of the 19th century. Written in 1902 it is a bit earlier than the copious volumes of my earlier reading I mention above. The impoverished, motherless (a recent loss) family resides in a dilapidated castle which becomes a sort of
character in the book, as does the backdrop of the small Irish town they reside in.

Pixie is a young child still at the start of this book – she is not a physically attractive youngster (this is an oddly defining characteristic that stays with her; her looks do not improve with age), however she has such an outspoken and winning personality that she always everyone’s favorite. To make up for her physical limitations as a beauty, she has two lavishly beautiful sisters (Mrs. GdeHV is a little obsessed with her heroines having gray eyes, they all do), Bridgie and Esmerelda, and attractive brothers in the bargain.
The funds are scraped together to send Pixie off to a private school in London and her adventures there make up the second half or so of the volume. (Esmerelda is hot tempered and so extravagantly stunning that she is somewhat done away with at the close of volume one.)

Written a year later, volume two, the one I picked up at The Strand More About Pixie, takes an interesting turn. It is in fact not so much more about Pixie, as the story is actually told by a young woman neighbor, a
recovering invalid, who lives on the street in London where the family decamps to at the start of this volume. Her encounters with the O’Shaughnessy family include Pixie, but in reality it focuses more on her friendship with one of the older sisters, Bridgie, who plays mother to the clan. Pixie does reassert
herself in the latter part of this volume, but it is Bridgie and the neighbor girl, Sylvia, and their friendship that is at the heart of the book.

Much of the book concerns the slow recovery of Sylvia (an illness which is given no name but has even affected her bones as they gravely consider needing to amputate her foot) who is another motherless child (life of mother’s was evidently cheap), living with an aunt while her father is away in India. (Mrs.
GdeHV likes to send men to India and bring them back after many years. To date I have barely been in India with her books, but wouldn’t be surprised if we end up there one of these days.)

It isn’t until 1914 that the final volume of the three is published, The Love Affairs of Pixie. Our prolific author has penned at least 17 volumes between these so it is a more mature writer who writes this novel. It interests me that she decided to turn her hand back to a now fully adult Pixie who returns as the heroine and focus of this story. Much of this story brings Pixie and the reader back to Esmerelda and Ireland, although the Ireland of this book is less lovingly described. Pixie remains unattractive on the face of things and in fact the book opens with her own discovery of this and is a theme throughout, but the pluckiness and good heartedness of Pixie has her as a sought after mate who (spoiler alert) finds her mate at the close of this volume.

Mrs. GdeHV clearly liked to assign herself challenges to keep things interesting. These are not formulaic series books (not that there’s anything wrong with those!), but instead you can see her making choices and setting up approaches to keep things different and interesting. I’ll cover more of her biography tomorrow, a sort of sad tale despite being a very prolific writer. She must have been popular in her time, but sadly volumes appear to be hard to find and I know she wrote short stories but none of those have turned up yet. However, I have only just begun my research so undoubtedly more to come.

The Antique Cat

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I always like to look at old children’s books and juvenile fiction given the opportunity. Pictorama readers know that I enjoy early chapter books that would be called young adult fiction today. (There are the posts devoted to girl detective Judy Bolton, Honey Bunch and of course several devoted to The Camp Fire Girls, Red Cross and Ranch Girls. A smattering of those can be found here, here and here or search the site for books.) And I have written about some of my childhood favorites, including one illustrated by the great Garth Williams called Push Kitty (post here) which reminds me a bit of this volume. Still, it is rare that a true children’s book that I had no prior knowledge of zooms into a place in my heart as this one has. It is great for kids but a winner for the cat lovers too.

*The illustrated cover which my copy does not have.*

I stumbled across this title while searching for information on another one on Goodreads. The description was appealing and on a whim I purchased a (much) used library copy, sans cover and with a heavily taped spine, (stamped throughout as from the School of the Japanese Martyrs, Leavenworth, Minnesota!) for a nominal amount. With an unexpected trip to my mom in New Jersey and other pressing life matters I didn’t have a chance to read it until last night and it is a gem! I can only say I am sorry I didn’t know it when I was a kid, it would have been a favorite in rotation and my parents would have loved it too.

*Solomon in the store window at night entertaining passersby.*

The story is a simple one – a skinny stray (all black) cat is taken in by the owner of an antiques shop. It is told from the cat’s point of view and he has some simple adventures – most involve his love of eating fish – and all ends well with him installed as the beloved master and mascot of the establishment. An antique store makes for an interesting setting for cat adventures – while fear of breaking fragile items is mentioned, claw paws and scratching are not. However his nemesis ultimately is an antique doll who receives too much of his mistress’s attention and affection. Fortunately his human loves him above all else and forgives some minor feline transgressions.

The all black protagonist of our story, Solomon (we are not told how he acquired his moniker), looks like my own Blackie and the early drawings of him as a street cat sadly corresponding to our boy recovering (shaved and thin) from his recent stint of illness. (No mention of black cats and bad luck are mentioned and Bradbury gets points for me with this.) Solomon progresses to shining glory although I guess some of his battle scars around the ears and whatnot remain as badges of feline honor.

I easily could have found this book as a child. The copyright in this edition, the first, is 1945. It was published by The John Winston Company of Philadelphia and Toronto and the copyright notes that it was also copyrighted in Great Britain (Dominions and Possessions as well) and in the Philippines. It was written by Bianca Bradbury with drawings credited to Diana Thorne and Connie Moran.

Bradbury was born in New Milford, Connecticut in 1908. A brief online bio outlines that as a young wife she published verse and short pieces in magazines and eventually, after her sons were born her worked morphed into children’s books and ultimately into young adult chapter books. She evidently wrote realistically about the issues of the day for kids in those later books, not balking at difficult subjects. This book and that bio intrigues me enough to look into some of her other books. (One Kitten Too Many may be where I start, but I will look for the longer ones as e-publications perhaps.) She was prolific and wrote 46 books in her 40 year career.

*Solomon thinking back on his stray cat compatriots!*

Meanwhile, Diana Thorne gets top illustrator billing here and she deserves it. Her cat illustrations are perfect. It seems she is best known for her illustrations of dogs (these seem to be well known and collected), but she certainly lived amongst cats as the poses are spot on for us cat lovers. Her illustrations are pitch perfect and absolutely put the story over. While her illustrations and drawings are widely available on the internet, there is little biographical information about her. It seems, oddly, that she was either born in Odessa, Ukraine, or as she was later to claim, on a ranch in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1895 (d. 1965) – her love and knowledge of animals would argue some time on a ranch I think. Her work is collected in numerous museums in the United States and Great Britain including the Smithsonian.

The other illustrator credited, Connie Moran, seems to have teamed up with Thorne on a number of similar illustrated children’s books. I can only assume that Thorne was only interested in the animals and left the humans (and in this case some antique furniture) to Moran. She is from Chicago, born in 1898 and dies in 1964 so she and Thorne are contemporaries. Her illustrations are, for me, more commonplace and would be forgettable without the Thorne cats among them.

The Antique Cat is much shorter than May Sarton’s The Fur Person, (you can find that post here), but reminds me of it in tone and the way it is told from the cat’s perspective. It is a very worthy entry into cat related literature and certainly deserves a place in the Pam’s Pictorama library.

*Blackie this morning. Hopefully on the road to recovery.*

Red Cross Girls!

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I think I will always look back on this year and a half (heading into two year) period as my plucky young woman literary fiesta. It probably isn’t a coincidence that this, difficult period of time has made these stories of achievement under great duress appealing. Working my way through the work of author Margaret Vandercook in particular has been wonderful and these books have contributed to a longer reading project which builds on the changing role of women during the first part of the 20th century. Nursing on the front lines during the war, even driving ambulances there, was an enormous departure for young American women and according to these books they also lead the way for young European women to do the same.

As long-standing readers know, I started my journey with Margaret Vandercook via her many volumes of Camp Fire Girls books, took on the somewhat more raucous Ranch Girls next and am now investigating and celebrating the ten volumes devoted to the Red Cross Girls. (Some of those prior posts can be found here, here and here.)

I came across an obit for Marjorie Vandercook clipped from an unknown, undated source – very little information seems to survive on her and this is the first obit I stumbled onto. It doesn’t supply much information, but I include it here for anyone else who might find it of interest. *Of course they lead with her husband’s accomplishments and barely touch on her own contribution!*

My first question was, did young women really do this? I mean did young women volunteer and head out to Europe to work with the Red Cross? Seems a bit crazy and it’s a bit hard to say. Obviously Red Cross nurses served in Europe during WWI, about 300 lost their lives working on the front lines. It isn’t clear what qualifications were expect however and if young women who had “a nursing course” or even less experience actually went over such as our heroines did, is hard to track down. Nurses, it seems for the most part, were from working class or rural backgrounds although some were indeed from affluent families, a mix like we have in volume one. So let’s assume that the role of our heroines is relatively realistic for starters.

*Via witness2fashion.com as noted above.*

Certainly the war that was being described was more or less torn from the headlines of the day since these books were published starting in 1915. Four women start out from New York City on a ship heading to Europe. Their first adventures and a few plot points that will reach several volumes occur onboard ship before making landing in Britain which is their first stop before nursing wounded British soldiers in France. (Vandercook must have had several of these books outlined to some degree, dropping in opportunities to come back and layer on plot in future volumes.)

I wondered how Vandercook would handle the sheer horror of nursing on the front lines with the sort of story line she generally develops and I report that she does an admirable job of it. Admirably, somehow she neither downplays the dangers and horrors of war, nor does she dwell too much on the gore. Of course the tales of valor are overblown, but after all these are fictional volumes for younger readers.

Plucky indeed these young women are too. While the Campfire Girls had an interesting creed and much ceremony, the Ranch Girls just had a sense of the wild west where they had their origin. The Red Cross girls fall somewhere in the middle – there is a code for behavior and there are references to their need, like soldiers, to follow orders and fall in with the greater good for the whole. It would seem there is a creed – whether it had a basis in reality or not I cannot really say, but I would imagine that the spirit was there at a minimum although it isn’t as codified, nor as lore filled, as that of The Campfire Girls.

It is interesting to be reminded that the Red Cross nurses and doctors were of course technically neutral by definition. The United States would not enter the war until 1917 and the ethos of the Red Cross was (is) apolitical. However, these were stories going out to an American readership and the clear lines of sympathy for the British and French soldiers and a fear of the Germans is evident.

As of the volume I am currently finishing – The Red Cross Girls with the Italian Army – the fifth and published in May of 1918, there is no mention of the influenza epidemic which would certainly take headlines later that year although I assume will find its way into subsequent volumes. The first four volumes form a story arc and the fifth, harder to obtain as an e-book, seems to mostly to be tying up some loose ends and perhaps planting some new plots for the remaining second half of the series. The United States will be entering the war soon, presumably in the next volume.

*September 1915: A group of nurses at Hamworth Hall which is serving as a Red Cross Hospital during WW1. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)* *via Time magazine.*

I am reminded that we are reading these books with the benefit of historical hindsight. Marjorie Vandercook had no way of knowing that it wouldn’t be be that many years before the world was back at war, barely a generation, and the fictional futures she thought she was securing for her heroines would perhaps be less than untroubled. It is hard not to read them knowing of the tumult of the political upheavals of Russia and that the sons of this generation would be the soldiers of that next enormous war.

The first three volumes of the not quite five I have thus consumed, were the most compelling with The Red Cross Girls in Belgium being my favorite. I found the novel concerning their time in Russia, The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army, a bit hair raising actually. What on earth were they thinking going to Russia? How did they even get there? Of course you should read it, but I am warning you, it puts you a bit on the edge of your seat.

*This may be the only accessible volume from the second half of the series, but you know I will try to ferret them out!*

As alluded to above, the first four volumes were easily available on Project Gutenberg as free e-books. After a bit of searching I located the current volume on the Internet Archive site. While they e-books don’t seem to be technically downloadable they are still easily read online and they have bailed me out on obscure volumes before. I think I will have some trouble acquiring the remaining volumes of the series which seem to follow the American army through other parts of Europe and then home. With any luck, I will be able to report on those in subsequent posts.

The Camp Fire Girls at Top ‘o the World

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Another pastime that will remind me of our long Covid year will be discovering and tearing my way through a large swath of Camp Fire Girls novels. While my past reading obsessions included all the adult fiction of Francis Hodgson Burnett (discussed in one of several posts here), the short works and then novels of Edna Ferber (found here), and Judy Bolton Girl Detective (first of two posts here) saw me through the sleepless nights during the early months of the pandemic, it will be The Camp Fire Girls that will bring back memories of recent months.

Illustration from The Camp Fire Girls at Driftwood Heights – none of the illustrations in this series is worthy of note!

I will never think of sitting in the ER at Lenox Hill Hospital waiting for a hand surgeon to work on my broken fingers on Memorial Day without also thinking about The Camp Fire Girls at Driftwood Heights, which I read on my phone throughout that long afternoon.

Reading about these plucky young heroines who are endlessly resourceful while constantly poking at the confines of what a respectable young woman could be at the dawn of the 20th century has provided the right stuff for managing through our own trying times.

I have been tackling this reading project in as organized a way as the acquisition of these aged books allows – most are at or just beyond the centennial of their having been penned, after all. I have been fortunate to find the lion’s share available for free on Project Gutenberg or other free, or virtually free, platforms. (Walmart e-books anyone? Internet Archive.com?) The book I am pulling out today is an exception and in an effort to lay down some tracks for a future reader with the same endeavor in mind I am making some notes here. It had to be purchased in its original form, busted spine, and a bit dear.

This series of books is nothing short of sprawling in scope. There seem to be maybe three main authors (and other lesser entries) over several decades. In an effort to follow story lines I have taken one author, Margaret Vandercook and read all under her name, and then all under her alternate nom de plume, Margaret Love Sanderson. When I have written previously about these novels (oh gosh, here, here and here) it was all the Vandercook novels – which I will label a superior group. I was very sorry to finish reading them and even after two generations of Camp Fire Girls, I could have happily stuck around for a third. They are her earliest efforts and I think she took what she learned about pacing and applied it to the latter series – these teens grow up much more slowly.

The series which I believe she intended to wrap up with one more volume, ends with the primary heroine, Bettina, leaving off the life of Washington debutante to follow settlement house work on Manhattan’s upper east side. These books play constantly with the shifting roles of women and forcefully promotes the interaction between the wealthy and the poor in associations and ways that were clearly still controversial at the time of writing. I would have liked to cap the series with a final book and the last two and my most beloved characters settled with their choice of mate and set on the path of their adult lives, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Alas! (Wikipedia sites her as the author of 21 books in the series – /i have found about two thirds – where are the others?)

I actually run (now walk0 past the East Side Settlement House most mornings! This was where Bettina was learning settlement work in the final volume of that series.

Margaret was so prolific I cannot imagine how she had time to eat or sleep between about 1915 and 1921, let alone raise her son alone after her husband died. While pounding out these volumes at an astounding rate, it appears she kept at least three other robust series underway The Red Cross Girls, The Ranch Girls, and contributed to The Girl Scout series as well. I would very much like to get to the roots of her story, but I don’t see anything beyond bare bones in my searches to date. After this frenzy of work in the teens and into the early twenties, she seems to have stopped writing novels, done some magazine work and disappeared, although living until 1958. Re-married? Other pen names?

To further confuse the reader, Margaret had certain character names which she used constantly. Bettys and Mollys (as well as Mollies and Pollys) proliferate. I include lists of the books by story lines I have followed below in the hope that it might prove helpful to someone in the future. I wonder how even she kept it all straight.

The Camp Fire Girls at Top ‘o the World (a great title, right?) is an outlier. Published in 1916 (my volume sweetly inscribed for Christmas of 1918) it introduces a new set of characters (Mollie Wren is our girl and she is of the from a poor, large family model, but with great Camp Fire Girl grit), who are gathered rather randomly from all over the country for a summer at the farm of authoress Julia Allen – not sure it is made clear where, but somewhere called Lakewood, most likely in Wisconsin.

It is a somewhat plot heavy volume – Margaret S. didn’t shy away from plot! A stray Russian girl from a New York factory is thrown into the mix (this isn’t her first Russian immigrant girl character, which makes me think it was part of the culture at the time – my own grandparents showing up on these shores as young adults in those years), a Southern belle and a wealthy New York niece who is a bit older and more sophisticated than the others. Dialect is rendered liberally and sometimes painfully around the Russian girl and Southerner. I won’t give more of the plot than this, but it is an enjoyable ride.

It would appear that this is the only volume produced for these characters and for whatever reason it seems to be an isolated volume. This probably explains its relative scarcity. I would love to find a way to donate this and another hard to find volume (The Camp Fire Girls in Merrie England) somewhere to have them scanned and made available for other completists like myself. Give a shout if you are acquainted with the process.

A sadly insipid frontispiece from The Campfire Girls at Top ‘o the World.

In closing a quick shout out to Jennifer White at whose wonderful eBay guide list to these books can be found at her blog Series Books for Girls and who kindly answered a burning question I had about a missing volume mentioned at the close of The Camp Fire Girls at Drift at Driftwood Heights – The Camp Fire Girls at Sweetwater Ranch – which is a ghost volume that, never published. Her blog Series Books for Girls contains some all important lists including one that appears to be the complete list for the Margaret Love Sanderson books above. The list below is from Wikipedia and is for the Margaret Vandercook ones. (Please note that Wikipedia has the order wrong on the last two volumes – it is correct as below.)

‘The Camp Fire Girls Books by Margaret Vandercook

The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill (1913)
The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows (1913)
The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World (1914)
The Camp Fire Girls Across the Seas (1914)
The Camp Fire Girls’ Careers (1915)
The Camp Fire Girls in After Years (1915)
The Camp Fire Girls on the Edge of the Desert (1917)
The Camp Fire Girls at the End of the Trail (1917)
The Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines (1918)
The Camp Fire Girls on the Field of Honor (1918)
The Camp Fire Girls in Glorious France (1919)
The Camp Fire Girls in Merrie England (1920)
The Camp Fire Girls at Half Moon Lake (1921)
The Camp Fire Girls by the Blue Lagoon (1921)