A Useful Man.

I expect that a number of my (female) readers may find the concept of a ‘Useful Man’ amusing. I have no intention of participating in that debate, no matter how hysterical. I have my own private thoughts on the matter, which will remain just that – private.

Once upon a time, for those in need of their services, a Useful Man could be purchased. The price was ‘thirty or forty dollars a month.’ The time was the early 1900’s. The place was America (but no doubt the Brits had their own equally useful men.)

This fascinating information was gleaned from Millionaire Households and their Domestic Economy, with hints upon Fine Living, a wonderfully useful book written by Mary Elizabeth Carter in 1909.

What sort of person is this ‘useful man’ retained by Millionaire Households? According to the book he ‘needs an angelic disposition to get along, and deserves canonization as a saint when his earthly probation is over.’ This is clear from the job description, which is summed up by the following ominous sentences: ‘his individual duties are many and varied, his odd jobs legion. They usually comprise what no one else can or will do’, and ‘he is the universal pack-horse of the house.’ He must be an early riser, as ‘unless he is up betimes he can never get through with his ante-breakfast work,’ for ‘he must perform a large proportion of them [his duties] before the family are astir.’ The physical requirements are ‘a cast-iron back with arms and hands of steel.’ Oh! And, like most important servants, he was expected to remain unmarried, lest he develop other priorities.

The detailed breakdown of work of this angelic and useful man (hereinafter also called ‘the exhausted man’) takes up thirteen pages of this book. I hereby give you my succinct summary.

• His regular duties comprise window and sidewalk, piazza and balcony cleaning, the vestibule in a town house,
• the getting up of wood and coal for kitchen, laundry, and for all open fires over the entire establishment,
• trunk lifting, ice breaking and carrying, bedroom supplies of cold water at night,
• boot and shoe polishing,
• running upon errands.
• He may be required to lend a hand in turning the laundry mangle when the maids are doing plain things, because the mangle requires a strong and muscular arm.
• Of course the useful man must be an expert scrubber. Often the tiled floors of the lower hall fall to his charge.
• At odd times he is called to the pantry to assist in washing costly engraved crystal, cut glass, and priceless Sevres.
• He carries the garbage from the pantry to the outside can.
• In some houses he is obliged to …don a braided coat decorated with gold buttons, scarlet waist- coat, velvet knee-breeches, silk stockings, patent-leather pumps with gold buckles, immaculate linen and white gloves, and thus arrayed ascend to the main hall or to the dining-room there to lengthen the line of liveried men, and perform a part in the society's endless drama … and help usher into the house the world of wealthy and fashionable people.
• Fires form an important part of the useful man’s service.
• In a summer home where guests are constantly coming and going, the handling of baggage is a labor in itself.
• temporary repairing or tinkering when the carpenter is not on hand.

Luckily for us, this gem of a book also contains some recipes, and I have chosen one as the recipe for the day. Note that the sum mentioned here would represent 2-3 days wages for the Useful Man.


A Three Dollar Recipe for Waffles.
Thick sweet cream 1 quart.
Sweet milk 1 pint.
Flour, sifted, 1 quart.
Baking-powder ½ teaspoonful.
Salt ¼ teaspoonful.
Sugar 1 teaspoonful.
Eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, 6.
Throw together milk, sugar, and salt. Beat yolks of eggs and add cream and well-whisked whites stiff. Beat well and add milk, etc. Mix the baking-powder through the flour before stirring all together. The mixture should be a thick batter. Bake in well-buttered, hot waffle-irons.


Quotation for the Day.
I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
Henry David Thoreau.

The last king of America.

June 4 ...

George III was the last king of America, and his birthday was this day in 1738 (although to His Highness, it was May 24, but the change to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 moved his birthday eleven days.) As was befitting, his birthday was celebrated all over his Empire, including no doubt, in the American colonies. At home, on his twenty-fifth birthday in 1763, his young wife Charlotte (whom he had met for the first time on their wedding day eighteen months before) planned a surprise party at the new home he had just bought for her (which we know as now as Buckingham Palace).

The party was held two days after his birthday. Most of the royal family attended, the music was by Handel, and the supper consisted of a hundred cold dishes and an ‘illuminated dessert’. If history contains any details of this fascinating illuminated dessert, then I have not found them, which is immensely sad as it sounds amazing.

You have two days to prepare for the anniversary of this party for the last king of America, and if you are an American Royalist you may wish to do just that. I have chosen three right royal cold dishes, leaving the remaining 97 to you to find. The recipes are from The London Cook, by William Gelleroy, “Late Cook to her Grace the Duchess of Argyle, and now to the Right Hon, Sir Samuel Fludyer Bart., Lord Mayor of the City of London”, published year before the party (1762).

To pickle Salmon.
Take two quarts of good vinegar, half an ounce of black pepper, and as much Jamaica pepper; cloves and mace, of each a quarter of an ounce, near a pound of salt; bruis the spice grossly, and put all these to a small quantity of water, put just enough to cover your fish; cut the fish round, three or four pieces, according to the size of the salmon, and when the liquor boils, put in your fish, boil it well; then take the fish out of the pickle, and let it cool; and when it is cold put in your fish into the barrel or stein that you keep it in, strewing some spice and bay-leaves between every piece of fish; let the pickle cool, and skim off the fat, and when the pickle is quite cold, pour it on your fish, and cover it very close.

Lemon Salad.
Take the lemons and cut them into halves, and when you have taken out the meat, lay the rinds in water twelve hours; then take them out and cut the rinds thus [drawing of spiral cut]; boil them in water till they are tender; take them out and dry them; then take a pound of loaf sugar, putting to it as much white-wine vinegar, and boil it a little; then take it off, and when it is cold put it in the pot to your peels; they will be ready to eat in five or six days; it is a pretty salad.

The Floating Island, a pretty Dish for the Middle of a Table at a Second Course, or for Supper.
Take a soop-dish, according to the size and quantity you would make, but a pretty deep glass dish is best, and set it on a China dish; first take a quart of the thickest cream you can get, make it pretty sweet with fine sugar, pour in a gill of sack, grate the yellow rhind of a lemmon in, and mill the cream till it is all of a thick froth, then as carefully as you can pour the thin froth into a dish; take a French role (roll) or as many as you want, cut it as thin as you can, play a layer of that as light as possible on the cream, then a layer of currant jelly, then a thin layer of role, and then hartshorn jelly, then French role, and over that whip you froth with you saved off the cream very well milled up, and lay at the top as high as you can heap it; and as for the rim of the dish, set it round with fruit or sweet-meats, according to your fancy. This looks very pretty in the middle of a table with candles round it, and you make make it of as many different colours as you fancy, and according to what jellies and jams or sweet-meats you have, or at the bottom of the dish you may put the thickest cream you can tet, but that is as you fancy.
N.B To make this dish look pretty, stick on some perfumed cockle-shells, which will make it look like a rock.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Not enough butter.

Quotation for the Day …

One cannot have too large a party. Jane Austen.