1800s – Page 2 – Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories

Posted on January 2, 2019January 12, 2022 by TracyC

The Court of the Stone Children

The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron, 1973.

Nina and her parents have recently moved to San Francisco from Nevada. Nina doesn’t like living in the city, but the move was necessary because her father has been ill and in need of a job. Still, Nina misses her friends, and her parents don’t understand how difficult Nina has found it to make friends in their new home.

One of the most popular girls, Marion Charles, nicknamed Marnychuck, and her friends like to tease Nina at every opportunity. Nina doesn’t think that she even wants to try to be friends with them because hanging out at Marnychuck’s house would mean always having to be on her guard about every little thing she says, knowing that they would twist every innocent comment she makes into some sort of joke so they could laugh at her. They could never be friends because there would be no way that Nina could ever open up to them about anything. (Sadly, I know the type all too well.) For example, one day, while the girls are walking home from school, they start talking about things they want to be when they grow up. Nina says that she wants to be “something in a museum,” momentarily forgetting the word “curator”, until a boy nearby helpfully supplies the word. Of course, Marnychuck and her friends ignore the helpful word and just laugh about “something in a museum” as they walk away.

However, the boy who was listening turns out to be genuinely curious about why Nina wants to work in a museum, saying that it sounds like an unusual ambition. Nina tells him that, until she had come to San Francisco, she’d never been in a big museum before, and she describes how the one in the park impressed her. She used to work in a small one in her home town. The boy understands the way she feels and shares her love of the past. He tells her about Mam’zelle Henry, a local woman who owns a private museum called the French Museum.

Nina visits the French Museum and loves the rooms with old-fashioned furniture. They give her a strange feeling of timelessness, and before she knows it, she finds herself in a room with another young girl who says, “I knew you’d come.” Nina isn’t sure who this mysterious girl is, but she asks her to come back another time.

When Nina returns to the museum the next day to return an umbrella that she borrowed from Mrs. Staynes, the registrar at the museum, she speaks to the girl again in the museum courtyard. The courtyard is full of stone statues of children, and the girl tells Nina that when she was young, she used to wish that they would come to life. The girl’s name is Dominique, although she says that people usually call her Domi. The two girls begin talking about their lives, although Domi oddly talks about her past in the present tense. Domi tells Nina about her emotionally-distant grandmother and her loving father, who was imprisoned and shot. The news of Domi’s father being shot comes as a shock to Nina. Domi tells Nina that, after her father was (“is”) imprisoned and shot, she had a dream about Nina in which her father said that Nina would help them. Domi also says that the rooms at the museum are from her home in France, which was taken apart to be “modernized”and some of the pieces were sent to the museum. Nina finds Domi’s story confusing, but Domi says that they will talk more later.

Nina meets up with the boy who introduced her to the museum, whose name is Gil, at the cottage of Auguste, who lives on the museum property. As she talks with the two of them and Mrs. Staynes, Mrs. Staynes brings up the subject of the ring that Nina saw Domi wearing and which also appears in a painting in the museum. Earlier, Mrs. Staynes had told Nina that she couldn’t possibly have seen anyone wearing that ring, and Mrs. Staynes now explains that the reason why is that she owns the ring herself. At first, Nina thinks that she must own a ring which is similar to Domi’s, since the two of them couldn’t have the same ring,but then, it turns out that the cat that Domi said was hers also belongs to Auguste.

The answer, as Nina discovers the next time she meets Dominique, is that Domi is a ghost. Mrs. Staynes does own Domi’s ring now because Domi died a long time ago. Nina faints when Domi’s hand goes right through hers. When Nina recovers, Domi is gone, and Mam’zelle Henry gives her a ride home. The two of them bond as they discuss Nina’s ambition to become a curator.

Mam’zelle lets Nina borrow a journal that she found in the garden that belonged to Odile Chrysostome in 1802. Odile was one of the names of the stone statues in the courtyard, according to Dominique, and Nina learns that the others are also named after members of the Chrysostome family. The people at the museum say that they don’t know which of the statues is supposed to have which name, but thanks to Dominique, Nina does.

Gil becomes Nina’s first friend her own age, and he’s been working on a project involving time. Someday, he wants to write a book about the concept of time. Time is important because Domi needs Nina’s help to resolve problems that occurred in the past.

Domi was young during the time of Napoleon. Her mother had died in childbirth along with Domi’s younger sibling. After her mother died, her grandmother moved into the house to oversee things and help care for Domi. However, Domi’s father had protested some of Napoleon’s policies of conquest, and it led to his downfall. One day, Domi discovered her father’s valet,Maurice, murdered in her father’s bedroom. She had thought that her father was there the night before, having returned from being away for a time, but he was nowhere to be found. A short time later, her father was charged with conspiring against Napoleon and executed. Domi knows that her father was innocent of the charges, and she suspects that Maurice was killed because he knew something important, but she needs Nina’s help to find the missing pieces. Domi knows that Mrs. Staynes is working on a book about her father’s life, and she doesn’t want the false accusations against him to be printed.

This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I thought that the book started out a little slowly. It takes quite a while before Nina discovers that the boy’s name is Gil or learns anything about him, and it’s about halfway through the book before Nina learns that Domi is a ghost, although there are hints before it. I knew that Domi was from the past, although I thought at first that she might be a time traveler of some kind. Even after Nina learns that Domi is a ghost, it takes a while before Domi tells Nina her full story and what she really needs her to do. The first part of the book dragged a little for me, and I was a little confused at first about why Odile’s diary was so important, but it turns out to contain the vital clues that Domi needs. Domi’s father was with the Chrysostome family at the time that he supposedly murdered his valet and was conspiring against Napoleon. There is a piece of physical evidence that proves it, and finding it convinces Mrs. Staynes to change her book.

One of Nina’s strengths is her power of imagination, and she helps Mrs. Staynes not only to see the truth about Domi’s father but to see him as a living, breathing person. Before, Mrs. Staynes’ book was mostly facts with little sense of the feelings of the living people behind it, but Nina’s discoveries and imagination help breathe life into the work. At the end of the book, the past remains unchanged (Domi’s life and that of her father are what they were before), but having the truth known gives Domi peace. Nina also makes peace with her new life in San Francisco, having discovered new opportunities and friends there as well as a nicer apartment for her family to live in.

Posted on August 15, 2018January 19, 2019 by TracyC

If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island

If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island by Ellen Levine, 1993.

Like other books in this series, this book explains about a part of American history using a series of questions and answers. Each section of the book starts with a different question about what it was like to come to America as an immigrant in the past and what happened when they reached Ellis Island, one of the main ports of entry into the United States around the turn of the 20^th century, just off the coast of New York City, such as, “Would everyone in your family come together?”, “What did people bring with them?”, and “What did the legal inspectors do?” Then, the book answers each of the questions.

The questions and answers start by describing what the journey to America was like from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Typically, families would come to the United States in stages: the father of a family (or perhaps one of the older children) would make the trip first, find a job in the United States and start saving money to prepare for rest of the family to come. Depending on the family’s individual circumstances, it might be years before all the members completed the immigration process and reunited in America.

People traveled by ship in those days, and an often-forgotten part of their journey was even reaching the port the ship to America would be leaving from. Depending on the starting point of the journey and the travel arrangements each family was able to make, getting to the port might involve crossing borders between other countries, adding another layer of legal difficulties to the journey.

There was also the knowledge that they might be turned away once they arrived at Ellis Island. One of the chief concerns at the time was illness. The inspectors at Ellis Island checked immigrants for signs of infectious diseases, and the ship companies knew that if their passengers were turned away because of the fear of disease, they would be required to pay for the return voyage themselves. To help ensure that their passengers would not arrive with a disease, they would conduct their own health checks before the ship ever left port, looking for signs of illness, giving the passengers vaccines, and disinfecting things. They were particularly afraid of passengers with lice because lice can spread typhus, which is deadly. They would often cut the passengers’ hair or comb it very carefully.

The treatment passengers on ships received depended largely on their class of passage. First and second-class passengers received the best rooms and the best food, and when they arrived in New York (assuming that was their destination), they didn’t even have to go to Ellis Island at all; the immigration inspectors would inspect first and second-class passengers on board the ship. Only steerage passengers (“third class”, the cheapest possible method of travel, used by the poorest people, the largest group) would have to get off the ship for processing at Ellis Island.

The processing center at Ellis Island wasn’t just a building; it was an entire complex. The Great Hall alone was large enough to contain hundreds of people at a time, and when it was full of immigrants there were so many languages being spoken at once (sometimes as many as 30 different languages) that some people described it as sounding like the Tower of Babel. There were also dormitories that could house more than a thousand people, a hospital for the sick, a post office, banks where people could change their cash for American money, a restaurant to feed everyone (with two kitchens, one kosher and one regular), a railroad ticket office where immigrants who would be moving on from New York could make their travel arrangements, and much more. Some people called Ellis Island the “Island of Tears” because the arrival there after a long journey was an emotional experience and many immigrants were worried that they might be sent back if they couldn’t answer the inspectors’ questions to their satisfaction. At the end of the Great Hall, there was a large staircase that came to be known as the Staircase of Separation. Everyone had to go down this staircase after their examination by the inspectors. At the bottom, they would go their separate ways, depending on their travel plans or whether they had passed inspection. People who turned to the right were heading to the railroad ticket office. People turning to the left were heading to the Manhattan ferry. People who went straight were heading to the detention rooms because they hadn’t passed the inspection.

As I mentioned before, the inspectors were very concerned about people who showed signs of serious diseases. One of the first things that would happen during inspection was a brief examination by the Ellis Island doctors. Because of the massive amount of people who had to be processed, this examination lasted only a few minutes, during which the doctor would quickly check for very specific symptoms and signs of possible illness. If they didn’t see anything obviously wrong, such as red eyes (possible sign of eye infection, although for some, it was just because they’d been crying), difficulty in breathing, or lice, they would let the people pass. If the doctors thought that they saw something that might be sign of illness, they would write a letter in chalk on the person’s clothes and send them on to be examined more thoroughly by another doctor. Getting one of these letters didn’t always mean rejection. If the other doctor decided that the first doctor was mistaken or that the person’s symptoms weren’t serious, they would still be allowed into the country. Sometimes, if a person was ill but had a curable disease, they would be kept in the hospital on Ellis Island until they were better. If the doctors weren’t quite sure if a person was ill or not, they might keep the person in the dormitories for a few days and then check them again after they had a chance to rest. The people who were sent back on the ship were ones who had diseases that were incurable or seriously contagious. (It sounds heartless, but they were trying to head off deadly epidemics. During the 1800s, large cities like New York sometimes suffered serious epidemics of deadly diseases because of the sudden influx of new people who were living in overly-crowded conditions with relatively poor sanitation. By preventing people with signs of serious diseases from joining the rest of the population, they were hoping to head off new epidemics and save lives.)

One of the more controversial parts of the examination was when they tested people for possible mental problems. They wanted to make sure that they were mentally fit enough to find work, but the problem was that the tests designed by people who didn’t take cultural differences into account when they designed them. The parts where they asked people to do simple arithmetic problems or to demonstrate that they could read, count backwards, or match up sets of similar drawings were pretty straight-forward. However, sometimes they were shown a picture and asked to describe what was happening in the picture, and the immigrants gave the inspectors some surprising interpretations because it turns out that some experiences aren’t quite as universal as some people think. For example, one picture was of some children digging a hole with a dead rabbit lying nearby. It was supposed to depict children burying a dead pet. But, some people view rabbits more as food than pets, and some immigrants said that the children were doing their chores because why shouldn’t the children work in the garden (the digging) after hunting a rabbit for dinner? Fiorello La Guardia, himself from an immigrant family, an interpreter on Ellis Island and later, mayor of New York, particularly despised tests like these because the people who designed them and administered them were trying to test the minds of others without any real idea about what their lives had been like or how their minds actually worked.

The inspectors’ examinations in general weren’t always reliable because they were often hurried (dealing with so many people in a limited amount of time) and because the interpreters weren’t always accurate, which brings us to the question of why people’s names were sometimes changed at Ellis Island. Sometimes, it was intentional. Some immigrants thought that they would be more likely to be accepted by the inspectors if they had short, easy-to-pronounce names, so they would purposely give them shorter versions of their names. There was some basis for this belief because, if an inspector didn’t understand a long, unfamiliar name, they wouldn’t have much time to figure it out and so would either take their best guess at the what the name should be, shorten it when they wrote it down, or give up altogether and write a much shorter name instead. For example, when they processed Jewish people from Russia, the inspectors often ran into difficulties in understanding their last names and would sometimes just write down “Cohen” or “Levine”, no matter what the original name really was. Sometimes, name changes were just an honest mistake because the inspector didn’t know how a name was really spelled (I can speak from personal experience because my family’s last name wasn’t always spelled like it is now, and when they found out that it had been changed, it was just too much trouble to fix it) or because they had misinterpreted something that the immigrant said. One of my favorite examples of this was a young man who tried to explain to the inspector that he was an orphan (“yosem” in Yiddish). The inspector dutifully wrote his last name as Josem.

The pictures in the book are paintings based on original photographs of immigrants and Ellis Island. (See Immigrant Kids to compare some of the pictures.)

The book also contains some further information about the lives of immigrants once they arrived in America (Immigrant Kids goes into a lot more detail), the attitudes of Americans toward immigrants at the time (varied but with strong strains of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, and general anti-immigrant attitudes during the 1800s), and the contributions of immigrants to American society. I actually bought this book as a souvenir on a visit to Ellis Island years ago.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on August 13, 2018January 19, 2019 by TracyC · 1 Comment

Immigrant Kids

Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman, 1980.

One of the best parts about this book is the pictures. The preface of the book specifically talks about photography at the turn of the 20^th century, how cameras were still fairly new technology but growing in popularity. Cameras that were small enough to be held in a person’s hands were an 1880s innovation, and the book mentions that small cameras like that were known as “detective cameras” because they were small enough that they could be used to take pictures without the subjects noticing. Over time, it became easier for amateurs to learn to use cameras, and it became more common for people to take pictures of their ordinary, everyday lives. Pictures like these open up a window on the past. The pictures in this book are of children whose families had only recently arrived in America from countries around the world. The photographer for many of these pictures was Jacob A. Riis, a journalist in New York City who wanted to document the living conditions of poor immigrants. He published a book called How the Other Half Lives in 1890, in which you can see more of his work. Other pictures in this book are by Lewis Hine, who is known for his photographs of child laborers. They are not the only photographers whose work appears in this book, but they are the most famous.

The book is divided into sections, covering different aspects of the lives of immigrant children. In the chapter called Coming Over, the author describes what the journey to America was like. One of the primary motivations for people to come to America around the turn of the century was money and employment opportunities. If a family had little money and little or no chance of getting better jobs in their home country, they would decide to try their luck somewhere else. Because most of the immigrant families were poor, it was common for families to immigrate gradually. Often, the father of the family would come first, find a job, start establishing a life and home for his family, and eventually send for his wife and children when he’d saved enough money. The actual journey was by ship, often in “steerage,” the cheapest form of passage available, in cramped rooms in the ship’s hold.

Although the journey could be harrowing, one of the most nerve-wracking parts was the immigrant processing that took place at immigrant ports like Ellis Island. There were routine questions that immigrants were expected to answer and exams for them to take, and if the questioners weren’t satisfied, the immigrants could be sent back to the country they came from. Doctors would examine the immigrants to evaluate their health and look for signs of possible mental defects. They were particularly concerned about signs of infectious diseases. Sometimes, it was difficult for immigrants to answer all the questions because of language barriers and the immigrants’ own nerves at being interrogated. If an immigrant seemed too agitated, the examiners would typically let them rest for a while before trying again.

The other chapters in the book are At Home, At School, At Work, and At Play, which give more details about the lives of immigrant children as their families settled in America. They often settled in large cities because those were where the most employment opportunities were to be found. Because they didn’t speak much English and needed help learning how things worked in America, such as how to find jobs and places to live and how laws worked, they tended to settle in neighborhoods with others from similar backgrounds who could help them. That is why, even to this day, there are certain areas of large cities, such as New York, Boston, or Chicago, which are known for people of a particular nationality (like the Irish neighborhood, the Jewish neighborhood, Chinatowns, etc.). New arrivals often joined friends or relatives who had already been living in the US for a while, seeking help in getting themselves established. These ethnic neighborhoods were located in poor parts of town because the people there didn’t have much money. People lived in small, crowded apartments called tenements, sharing water and toilet facilities with other families because the apartments were not provided with individual facilities. However, once these groups of immigrant families became established, they remained established for a long time, and they gave these neighborhoods their own distinctive style.

School was often difficult for new arrivals because the children had to learn English before they could study other subjects. There were some special English language learning classes for them at larger schools with enough demand for them. At smaller schools which didn’t have these classes, they often had help from other children who had arrived in America earlier and could act as translators. They were also frequently put into classes for children who were younger than they were, studying easy subjects, until they had learned enough English to move up to classes with children their own age.

Typically, immigrant children aimed to stay in school until they were fourteen years old because that was the age when they could officially get full-time work. However, because their families were poor, the children might have to leave school early to find jobs and help their families make ends meet. The book describes how rules were frequently bent or broken because the laws were not well-enforced, and children often worked at younger ages, even under harsh conditions. For immigrant children, the most important education was that which taught practical, vocational skills that would help them find jobs quickly. Some agencies, like the Children’s Aid Society (known for the Orphan Trains), would help them with vocational training.

However, immigrant children still like to play. Boys and girls usually played separately. Boys frequently played games like baseball in the street, or stickball, which was a variant that could be played in smaller spaces. In stickball, the “bat” was a stick or the handle of an old broom, and the ball was rubber and allowed to bounce before it was hit. Girls would play other games, like “potsy,” which was a version of hopscotch.

Because of the lessons they were taught in schools and because the immigrant children mixed with children outside of their immigrant groups in school, the children absorbed the local culture and became Americanized faster than their parents. Many of them experienced the feelings of being torn between their parents’ traditions and wanting to fit in with society around them.

In each of the chapters in the book, there are anecdotes from people who had arrived in the US as children around the turn of the century, telling stories about different aspects of their lives.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on August 8, 2018January 19, 2019 by TracyC

Lyddie

Lyddie by Katherine Paterson, 1991.

The year is 1843. Thirteen-year-old Lyddie’s father left home to go West and seek his fortune, and he hasn’t been heard of since. Lyddie helps her mother to take care of their farm in Vermont and the younger children, but they are very poor, and her mother has given up hope of their father returning home. The children’s aunt and uncle, Clarissa and Judah live nearby, but they are of little help, full of fire-and-brimstone talk. Lyddie and her brother Charlie, who is ten, more often turn to their Quaker neighbors, the Stevenses, for help. They are kinder than their aunt and uncle, although their mother disapproves of them for being abolitionists and, in her mind, heathens. Lyddie and Charlie are just grateful for their help. Because of their mother’s depression at the loss of their father, she pays little attention to the things that her children do to keep the farm going and the family together.

However, when a bear enters their house and eats the oatmeal that Lyddie was preparing, their mother, primed by Clarissa’s and Judah’s talk of signs of the end times and such, goes into a panic and sure that the world is going to end. Lyddie and Charlie let her go with their younger sisters to stay with Aunt Clarissa and Uncle Judah while they continue managing the farm as best they can. However, even though their mother sees that the world doesn’t end, she decides that she’s going to hire Lyddie out as a maid at the Cutlers’ tavern and Charlie to work at the mill because the family has too many debts and they will have to rent out their fields and animals.

Luke Stevens, the youngest of the Stevens sons, although much older than Lyddie and Charlie, gives them a ride to their new homes and employment at the mill and the tavern and promises to keep an eye on their house while they’re away. Lyddie is lonely and unhappy working at the tavern, badly missing the family farm and her siblings, especially Charlie. Then, one day, a woman visiting the tavern mentions that she’s one of the factory girls from Lowell, Massachusetts. The woman tells Lyddie that she seems like a good worker and that she could earn a good wage in the factories herself. At first, Lyddie doesn’t believe what the woman says that girls can earn there.

When Lyddie is allowed a brief visit home to her family’s farm, she discovers that Luke Stevens has been allowing a runaway slave to hide there. Lyddie isn’t sure what she thinks of it at first. Ezekial, the fugitive, frightens her because she has never met a black man before, and she knows that if she were to turn him in, there would be a handsome reward that could solve her family’s money problems. However, Ezekial seems to understand the situation that her family is in without her father. Although Lyddie and Charlie are not technically slaves, they have become a kind of indentured servant because of their family’s debts. Ezekial is a father himself, hoping to send for his family when he has found a safe place for them. Lyddie still wonders if her own father is alive, perhaps hoping to send for his family when he can. Having come to a better understanding of Ezekial, she knows that she can’t turn him in, even for the reward money.

Her talks with Ezekial make Lyddie understand that working in the tavern won’t solve her problems, though. As a maid there, she basically works all day for her room and board and has nothing else to show for it. Mrs. Cutler just sends a little money to her mother now and then and even then, she doesn’t always bother, and her mother is in little position to insist on proper wages, making Lyddie little better than a slave. Mrs. Cutler cares nothing about Lyddie or her family’s welfare, just trying to get as much labor out of her for as little as she can. Lyddie finally makes up her mind to seek factory employment in Lowell, Massachusetts, seeing it as her only chance to earn some real wages.

Life in Lowell turns out not to be as glamorous as the woman she met at the tavern made it sound, although the wages are definitely better. The company that owns the fiber mill where Lyddie gets a job has all sorts of rules and regulations for the girls who work there, even ones that intrude on their personal lives outside of work. Anxious to give the impression that all of their workers are of good moral disposition, they insist that the girls attend church on Sundays. Lyddie never had the money to pay pew fees back home, so she is unaccustomed to going to church, but finds that other girls in her position tend to go to Methodist churches, where there are no pew fees, saving their precious wages. Lyddie, who never had much time for schooling when she and her brother were trying to keep the farm going, has trouble understanding all of the terms of the employment contract that she signs but signs it anyway. Her employment turns out to be an education that changes Lyddie’s life, although not in all the ways that she had hoped.

Like Mrs. Cutler, the bosses at the factory have little real care for their workers, trying to get as much work out of them as they can for the least amount of pay they have to give them. The work is hard and the hours are long, but Lyddie keeps at it because the pay is the best she’s ever had and she is starting to save up for her family’s future. The poor working conditions contribute to health problems among the girls, and some of them petition for better working hours, but Lyddie is reluctant to do so because girls who are dismissed “dishonorably” from the factory are blacklisted all over town, and she fears not only risking the loss of her job but the potential to find a new one.

Through her interactions with the other girls and young women at the factory, Lyddie also develops into a young woman. She had previously wished that she’d been born a boy instead because a boy would have a better chance of running her family’s farm, but she comes to realize that there are opportunities out in the world for young women who are willing and able to go out and seek them. In Lowell, Lyddie gets a taste for literature through the books that her friend Betsy reads to her and acquires more lady-like behavior by watching the lady-like Amelia. Neither of them plan on working at the factory forever, and their ambitions, to get married or continue their education, cause Lyddie to consider what she really wants for her own future. Through the difficulties she encounters and everything she learns while facing them, Lyddie really becomes her own woman.

In the end, Lyddie is unable to save her family’s farm and reunite their family there. Her mother dies, and her father’s whereabouts are still unknown, so her uncle sells the farm to pay the debts. However, Charlie and her younger sister Rachel are provided for, the Stevenses decide that they will purchase the farm themselves, and Lyddie becomes reconciled to the loss of the farm through her new vision of the future. She is unfairly discharged from the factory after she catches an overseer molesting another girl and stops him because he blackens her name in retaliation. But, by then, Lyddie has acquired some money and new confidence in herself, and she begins making other plans for her future, which may include both further education and the possibility of marriage. One thing that she knows for certain is that, whatever she does with her life, she wants to move forward as her own, independent person.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on August 6, 2018January 19, 2019 by TracyC

The Traitor’s Gate

The Traitor’s Gate by Avi, 2007.

The story is set in London, in 1849. Fourteen-year-old John Huffam lives with his parents and sister and their servant, Brigit and attends a school taught by a former military man who acts like he is still in the army and teaches them little beyond discipline and what army life would be like.

Then, one day, John is called home suddenly because of a family emergency. His family has fallen on hard times, and his father is in debt, so the family’s belongings are being confiscated. His father is summoned to appear in court, and if he cannot find the money to pay his debt, he will have to go to debtors’ prison. John’s father is shocked because he doesn’t actually owe any money to the man who is trying to call in the debt, Finnegan O’Doul.

In spite of this, John and the rest of the Huffam family must spend the night in the bailiff’s sponging house, the Halfmoon Inn. There, John’s father again promises John that there is no debt between himself and Mr. O’Doul. He even says that he doesn’t really know O’Doul, although John doubts him. It seems like his father has had dealings of some kind with the man that he wants to keep secret.

John’s father, Wesley Huffam, was originally from a fairly well-off family, but all the family’s money ended up going to a great-aunt instead of to him (possibly because it became obvious to his relatives that he had little skill at handling money in the first place). John’s father is resentful toward the great-aunt, Euphemia Huffam, for inheriting when he thinks that, as a man, he should have been first in line for the family’s money. However, with this enormous (although possibly false) debt hanging over his head, he may be forced to appeal to Great-Aunt Euphemia for help. He persuades John to go and visit Great-Aunt Euphemia on his behalf, since he is not allowed to leave the sponging house for now and the past quarrels between him and his aunt would make it unlikely that his aunt would want to see him. John is beginning to realize that there are pieces of his father’s life and their family’s past that have been kept from him, and he doesn’t like the idea that his father has been deceiving him, but with their family in such a desperate situation, he agrees to visit Great-Aunt Euphemia.

The bailiff, John’s mother, and Brigid all agree that John is going to have to be instrumental in solving their family’s problems. Of all the people in his family, he is the most practical, in spite of his young age. His father is an impractical man, stuck in a vision of his family’s former glory (and his aunt’s current money, which he does not share in) that doesn’t fit their current circumstances. John’s mother thinks that her husband’s job as a clerk for the Naval Ordinance Office doesn’t provide enough money for the family to live on, even though he earns more than twice what typical London tradesmen of the time do. The real problem is that the family doesn’t live within its means (it is eventually revealed that Wesley Huffam has been withholding money from his family that he uses for gambling), and John’s father’s snobbish attitude because he thinks of his family as being more grand than the commoners around them alienates people who might otherwise be friends and help them. John knows that he’s young, and he’s not completely sure what he can do to help his family, but he knows that there is no other option but to try. In the process, he learns quite a lot about life, himself, the people in his family, and the wider issues in the world around him, including some political intrigue that hits uncomfortably close to home.

Great-Aunt Euphemia agrees to see John when he comes to her house, but their first meeting doesn’t go very well. Great-Aunt Euphemia is ill (or says she is), and she bluntly tells John that his father was always bad with money. She is not at all surprised that he is in debt and needs her help. John gets upset at the bad things that Euphemia tells him about his father, and she gets angry when John tells her the amount of the debt. At first, John is sure that she will refuse to help them completely, but Euphemia tells him not to assume anything but that he should come back the next day. Her eventual contribution to helping John’s family in their troubles comes in the form of a job for John.

As John moves around the city, he gets the feeling that he is being followed, and he is. One of the people following him turns out to be Inspector Copperfield (or so he calls himself) from Scotland Yard. When John confronts him, the inspector seems to have a pretty good idea of the difficulty that his family is in and what John himself has been doing. John asks him why he cares, and the inspector says that John’s father is suspected of a crime and that John had better learn more about what his father has been doing and share that information with him. John doesn’t believe that his father could be a criminal, but the accusation is worrying because he knows that his father is hiding something (his gambling addiction isn’t the only secret he has).

The other person following John is a young girl in ragged clothes. The girl, who calls herself Sary the Sneak, approaches John herself, freely admitting that she’s been following him. In spite of her young age, Sarah (or Sary, as she is frequently called) lives on her own and must support herself because her mother is dead and her father was transported to Australia. People don’t often notice a young girl on the street, so sometimes people will pay her to follow someone and provide information about them. The reason why she tells John about it is because she isn’t above playing both sides of the street; sometimes, she gets the people she’s been following to pay her to provide them with information about the people who hired her to spy on them. She considers it even-handed. However, John has no money to pay her for information and finds her spying distasteful, so he doesn’t want to take her up on the offer at first.

However, John does a little spying of his own when his father sneaks away from the Halfmoon Inn, which he is not supposed to do. He follows his father to a pub called the Red Lion, where he witnesses his father gambling with money that he had claimed not to have. More than that, he sees his father arguing with a man who turns out to be O’Doul, another gambler. To John’s surprise, his teacher also shows up and seems to know O’Doul. When John later confronts his father with what he saw at the Red Lion, all his father will say is that he is carrying a fortune around in his head. Later, John overhears the bailiff speaking with someone else, an Inspector Ratchet from Scotland, saying that it appears that Wesley Huffam may be a traitor involved with spies and that the Inspector Copperfield who spoke to John earlier was an imposter, probably also a spy.

Could it be true? Is John’s father really a traitor, selling naval secrets from his job? If so, who can John trust? Conspirators seem to be around every corner, and John has the feeling that the people who are closest to him may be the biggest threats.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on August 3, 2018January 19, 2019 by TracyC

Daily Life in a Victorian House

Daily Life in a Victorian House by Laura Wilson, 1993.

The book begins by giving some background on the Victorian era, which lasted from 1838, when Victoria became Queen of England, to Queen Victoria’s death in 1901. It was a time of expansion and colonization for the British Empire. Society was becoming increasingly industrialized and urban, although there was still great inequality about who had voting rights, and there were great gaps between rich and poor people.

To explain what a typical day might be like for people living in the Victorian era, the book introduces a fictional upper middle class family, the Smiths. It explains some of the background of the Smith family and the members of the Smith household. Mr. George Smith, the head of the household, is a lawyer. His wife, Florence, does not need to work, so she spends her time overseeing the household servants, managing the household accounts (how much money is needed for household expenses such as food, clothes, and supplies), visiting friends, and shopping. Mr. Smith’s income is good enough to afford for the family to have a cook, two maids, and a nurse to look after the youngest children in the family.

The Smiths have three living children. One of their daughters died in infancy, which was sadly common for that era. The eldest boy in the family, Albert, spends most of his time away at boarding school. The two youngest children, Alice and John, are cared for by their nurse. When John is old enough, he will go away to boarding school, like Albert, but Alice will probably be tutored at home. Their parents spend surprisingly little time with them, even in the general course of a day.

There is a map of the Smiths’ house, and then the book begins explaining what each of the members of the house do at different times of the day. Each day, the servants are the first to get up because they need to light the fires to heat the house and start cleaning and making breakfast, which would be a large meal.

Something that I thought was interesting was that the cook typically purchased food from tradesmen who sold their goods door-to-door. This was also important to the maids, who are in their teens, because they worked such long hours that they really wouldn’t have had time to get away and met young men in any other way. Their suitors would likely be the young tradesmen. Of course, the young tradesmen would have met many young female servants at all of the households they visited during their daily rounds.

The maids would have spent their days cleaning, tasks that would have been more time-consuming without more modern inventions. Vacuum cleaners were invented toward the end of the era, in 1899. Cooking was also a time-consuming job, although the book does explain some innovations for the Victorian kitchen. Because Mrs. Smith had servants to do all of her cooking and cleaning for her, she never even went into her own kitchen at all. It was considered improper for a lady with servants to handle menial tasks herself, and the servants wouldn’t have welcomed her interference in their work.

I liked the sections of the book that explained about the lives of children in the Victorian era the best, although I was surprised at how little time children from well-off families would have spent with their parents. Generally, young children would see their parents in the morning for prayers and spend about an hour with their mother in the late afternoon. Other than that, they would spend most of their time in the nursery with their nurse, who would take care of them and didn’t welcome much parental interference any more than the cook would welcome the lady of the house supervising her work.

I also liked the sections about toys and games and entertainment as well as the description of what young Albert’s life would have been like at boarding school. The book also explains what life and childhood were like for less fortunate people during the Victorian era.

Overall, I really liked this book. It’s a good introduction to Victorian history and life, and it does one of the things that I really wish adult books would do more often: have pictures. Pictures really are worth a thousand words, and actually showing the objects that people of this time would have used in their daily lives is far more effective than pages of lengthy descriptions of them in words only.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on March 23, 2018March 23, 2018 by TracyC

The Cuckoo Clock

The Cuckoo Clock by Mary Stolz, 1987.

Erich was a foundling, taken in by the Goddhart family as a baby after he was found on their doorstep. Frau Goddhart has a reputation for kindness, but sadly, that reputation is really all she has. She is outwardly kind, participating in local charities, only to enhance her reputation. At home, she is selfish and cruel, ruling the house with an iron fist and having tantrums when things don’t go her way. She sees Erich as an unwanted responsibility, only grudgingly raising him along with her own children because if she refused, it would ruin her reputation. Her husband is kind to Erich, but Frau Goddhart treats him more like a servant.

Erich only comes to know real love when he becomes Ula’s assistant. Ula is the town clockmaker, a master in his craft. Ula teaches Erich his craft and how to play the violin.

When Ula dies, leaving Erich his carving tools and his violin, the selfish Frau Goddhart tries to take them away, thinking that such things are too good for a mere foundling, a charity case. Before she can get these precious things, Erich runs away to seek his fortune elsewhere, but he leaves behind something that convinces the town that, although he may be the ungrateful wretch that Frau Goddhart says that he is, he has a talent that will lead him on to greater things.

One of the fascinating things about this book is the pictures, which are charming pencil drawings in a realistic style. There is also a note in the back about the unusual typeface of the book.

Posted on March 2, 2018March 8, 2018 by TracyC

Changes for Addy

American Girls

AddyChanges

Changes for Addy by Connie Porter, 1994.

Since the Civil War ended, most of Addy‘s family has managed to reunite in Philadelphia. The one person who is missing is Addy’s little sister, Esther. When Addy and her mother escaped from the plantation where they had been living as slaves, they were forced to leave Esther behind with family friends because she was too little to travel. Since the end of the war, slaves have been released from plantations, but the Walkers haven’t received any word from their friends, Auntie Lula and Uncle Solomon Morgan and don’t know where they or Esther are.

Over the past months, the Walker family has sent inquiries to various aid societies helping war victims and displaced people, asking if the Morgans or Esther have sought help from them. Finally, they get a response from the Quaker Aid Society, saying that the Morgans and Esther were at one of their camps in North Carolina. They stayed for awhile because Esther was ill, but as soon as she was well enough to travel, they were eager to move on to Philadelphia.

Addy is happy because the news means that the Morgans and Esther might already be in Philadelphia, looking for them. However, Addy’s parents are still worried because the Morgans are elderly, and from what the letter said, they were not in good health. The family makes further inquiries to see if they could be at any of the local hospitals.

Eventually, the search for the Morgans and Esther pays off when Addy finds them at a church. Uncle Solomon passed away on the journey to Philadelphia, and Esther seems unsure of who the people in her family are because she was so little the last time she saw them. Auntie Lula pressed on for Philadelphia because she wanted to make sure that Esther made it safely back to her family. Auntie Lula is in bad health herself, and she knows that she isn’t likely to live much longer, making the reunion bittersweet.

AddyChangesProclamation However, Auntie Lula does get to spend a little time with the family before her death, and she tells Addy not to be sad. People don’t always get everything they want in life, but they can take some pride in what they do accomplish. Lula and Solomon may not have gotten everything they wanted in life, not having had much time to enjoy being freed from slavery, but they did get to accomplish what was most important to them. Solomon died knowing that he was a free man, far from the plantation where he’d been a slave. Lula managed to reunite Esther with her family. From there, Lula says, she is depending on the young people, like Addy and her family, to make the most they can of their lives, hopes, and dreams.

The theme of this story is hope and the need to persevere with determination. Life has its difficulties, and not every problem can be solved. However, things can get better. After the reunion with Esther, Addy points out to her mother that Esther wasn’t walking or talking when they last saw her, and they never got to experience seeing her learn. Addy is sad at the time they’ve lost with Esther, which they can never recover. However, because of Lula and Solomon’s determination to bring Esther to them, they will have many more years to come with Esther. Addy’s mother also reminds Addy that those who love us never leave us. Auntie Lula and Uncle Solomon changed the family’s lives for the better because of the good people they were, and their memory will stay with them forever.

In the back, there is a section of historical information about the end of the Civil War, the emancipation of the slaves, and it further explains how racial issues continued into the 20th century, leading to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

AddyChangesHistorical

Posted on February 28, 2018March 8, 2018 by TracyC

Addy Saves the Day

American Girls

AddySummer

Addy Saves the Day by Connie Porter, 1994.

Now that the Civil War is over, families are looking forward to the soldiers returning home and reuniting with loved ones. Some families have been split forever because loved ones died in the war. Addy‘s family still doesn’t know what happened to her brother Sam or her little sister Esther. She and her parents have been making inquiries at various aid societies that have been helping people who were sick, injured, or displaced by the war, but so far, they haven’t received any word about Sam or Esther. To help raise more money for their search, they’ve started growing vegetables in a community garden that they can sell.

The Walkers aren’t the only family in this position, and their church has decided to hold a public fair to raise money for victims of the war and families in need. Addy and Sarah are looking forward to taking part in the fair, but they are annoyed because they’ll have to work with bossy Harriet, a snobby girl from their school. Harriet’s family is wealthier than most black families, and Harriet loves to brag about the things they have that others don’t. Although many families, like Addy’s, are worried about not knowing where their relatives are or whether they are alive or dead, Harriet brags about knowing exactly which army unit her uncle is in and what a distinguished career he has had. Harriet is eager to take part in the fair and tell the other children what to do, but her family doesn’t need any charity themselves.

Harriet tries to tell the children’s group at the church what they should do for their act at the fair, and it mainly involves her being the star of the show. However, the group decides to take Addy’s suggestion instead. They are going to make puppets out of old thread spools and put on a puppet show. They can also sell some of the puppets they make. Addy is proud that her idea was the one that the group chose because she thinks of it as a victory over snobby Harriet, but her parents remind her that the fair isn’t supposed to be a contest.

The purpose of the fair is to raise money to help people, and no one is supposed to compete with anyone. If the act for the fair is going to be a success, Addy and Harriet will have to find a way of working together to make it happen. When Harriet picks a fight with Addy while the children are making their puppets, the minister’s wife tells them that she’s going to make them work with each other at the puppet show, forcing them to sort out their differences.

It isn’t until Harriet receives some bad news that she comes to understand the pain that other families, like Addy’s, have been feeling, and Addy comes to see that, in the end, Harriet is just an ordinary person, a little girl with feelings that can be hurt. With a new understanding of each other, the girls find the motivation that they need to work together and make the fair a success. Then, when someone tries to steal their group’s hard-earned money, the two of them find a way to stop the thief and get the money back!

This is the book where Addy’s brother rejoins the family. When he was freed from slavery, he joined the Union army and lost his arm to a battle wound. He shows up at the fair and recognizes the jokes and riddles Addy tells at the puppet show as ones that he used to tell her.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about the changes taking place in American society around the time of the Civil War with increased immigration and urbanization. It describes public parks and monuments built after the war. Since this book took place in summer, it also talks about what people would do in order to cool off from the summer heat. Wealthier people would travel to resorts, but poorer people would make do with enjoying the relatively cool public parks, swimming (less so for women and girls than men and boys), and taking part in outdoor activities. In all cases, the various summer activities were still segregated by race with separate areas in public parks and sports teams for black people.

AddySummerHistorical

Posted on February 26, 2018March 8, 2018 by TracyC · 2 Comments

Happy Birthday, Addy!

American Girls

AddyBirthday

Happy Birthday, Addy! by Connie Porter, 1994.

Things are improving for Addy and her mother now that her father has finally joined them in Philadelphia. Addy’s father has found work delivering ice, so the family has been able to move to bigger rooms in a boarding house. However, making a new life for themselves in freedom still isn’t easy. Addy’s father worked as a carpenter on the plantation where they used to live, and he’d like to find steady work in carpentry, but he’s having trouble finding an employer who is willing to hire a black man.

Addy’s family might be free from slavery, but they are still not treated as equals to white people. There are places where black people can’t go and things they aren’t supposed to do, like riding on most of the city streetcars. It angers and upsets Addy, but she doesn’t know what she can do about it. She isn’t the only one who feels that way, and there’s been talk of violence in the city over it.

The boarding house where Addy’s family now lives is owned by Mr. and Mrs. Golden. Then, Mr. Golden’s elderly, blind mother moves in with them. Affectionately called M’dear, she’s a pleasant lady and tells Addy interesting stories, jokingly saying that she’s so old that she “was there the day God invented dirt.” When she asks Addy how old she is, Addy says that she’s nine but doesn’t know when her birthday is exactly. It was common for slaves not to know their birthdays because their parents couldn’t read or write and no one else thought it was important to record the dates of their births. M’dear tells her that she should claim a birthday for herself.

Addy’s parents think that choosing a birthday for herself is a good idea, and her father says that he will make ice cream for her new birthday. He has found a broken ice cream freezer that someone threw out, and he’s fixing it up for the family to use. However, Addy isn’t sure at first what day she wants to choose.

One day, M’dear is feeling poorly, and she’s out of headache medicine. Addy and Sarah offer to go get more for her. To get to the drug store, they get on board one of the streetcars that black people are allowed to ride, which can be dangerous because they have to ride on the outside. Then, the man at the drug store makes them wait until he’s served the white customers, speaking rudely to them. When they try to take the streetcar back home, there is an argument that ends with all of the black people being thrown off the streetcar. When M’dear hears about what the girls went through, she offers some wise thoughts about how people have to continue living their lives and being themselves, no matter what difficulties life throws their way.

In the end, circumstances continue to improve for Addy’s family when her father finally finds the kind of work he’s been looking for and Addy finds a special day to claim as her birthday when the end of the Civil War is finally announced.

I liked M’Dear’s message that the way people are treated doesn’t really change who they are. The black people in the story are treated badly not because of what they did so much as what other people think they are or want them to be. However, what other people think doesn’t change the nature of reality. No amount of bullying or thinking that someone else is inferior or telling them that they are inferior can actually make them be inferior. It can make things hard and unpleasant for the other person, but it will never actually change the reality of who they are, and people who think it does delude themselves. M’Dear may be blind, but she sees much more clearly that most because she understands the reality of the situation better than they do. Addy’s father has trouble finding work because he is black, but the fact that potential employers don’t like his appearance doesn’t make him any less the craftsman he is. He has all the skills he needs; he just needs someone who has the ability to notice them.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how children were raised during the Civil War with some special information about the lives of slave children. It also talks about children helped to support the war effort.

The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron, 1973.

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