The Making of Home Read online

  ‘and 31 snuffers’: Crowley, Invention of Comfort, pp. 113, 137. Crowley thinks that ‘there is virtually no evidence’ for the use of rushlights in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North America. He acknowledges that others, including Monta Lee Dakin, ‘Brilliant with Lighting’ (Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University, 1983), think otherwise. With the reservation that candlewood and other woods were used to supplement candles, I agree with Crowley; candlestick statistics: Crowley, Invention of Comfort, p. 137; Lord Botetourt’s household: ibid., p. 138.

  ‘could see every body’: ‘splendid’ party: Crowley, Invention of Comfort, p. 138; ‘was so well lighted’: Garrett, At Home, p. 160.

  ‘outweigh this liability’: manufacture of paraffin: Bowers, Lengthening the Day, pp. 27, 30, 33.

  ‘protect their furniture’: drawbacks of oil lamps: Alice Taylor, Quench the Lamp (Dingle, Brandon, 1990), pp. 180ff.; ‘They went out’: cited in Nylander, Our Own Snug Fireside, pp. 112–13; lamp rugs: ibid., pp. 112–13.

  ‘a similar rate’: access to gas in Britain: Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, p. 112.

  ‘late as the 1960s’: outdoor electric lighting: Bowers, Lengthening the Day, pp. 18–80, 130; Hilaire Belloc, ‘The Benefits which the Electric Light Confers on us, especially at night’, cited in ibid., pp. 160–61; coverage of the electric grid: ibid., p. 162.

  ‘brighter lighting’: footnote: Garrett, At Home, p. 39–40; ‘dancing a jig’: Catharine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon & Webb, 1841), cited in ibid., p. 39.

  ‘fabric of the house’: electric light switches: Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, pp. 67–8.

  ‘represented were not’: Amerika zu Haus: Greg Castillo, ‘The American “Fat Kitchen” in Europe: Postwar Domestic Modernity and Marshall Plan Strategies of Enchantment’, Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, eds, Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2009), pp. 33–57.

  7. THE HOME NETWORK

  ‘30–45 minutes’: bakehouses: Nancy Cox, ‘“A Flesh pott, or a Brasse pott or a pott to boile in”: Changes in Metal and Fuel Technology in the Early Modern Period and the Implications for Cooking’, Moira Donald and Linda Hurcombe, eds, Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000), pp. 145ff.

  ‘a small fireplace’: open-fire cooking: Susan Strasser: ‘Enlarged Human Existence?’, Sarah Fenstermaker Berk, ed., Women and Household Labor (Beverly Hills, Sage, 1980), p. 36.

  ‘twentieth century’: Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home, or, Principles of Domestic Science (New York, J. B. Ford & Co., 1869), p. 34.

  ‘anything like it’: Wilder, The Little House Books, vol. 2, p. 278.

  ‘heard of Mrs Beecher’: limitations of Hoosier Kitchen: Wilson, Consider the Fork, p. 349.

  ‘dining room and kitchen’: spread of American efficiency experts to Europe: Lawrence-Zúñiga, ‘Material Conditions of Family Life’, Kertzer and Barbagli, History of the European Family, vol. 3, pp. 16–17.

  ‘cooking and storage’: politics: Reagin, Sweeping the Nation, pp. 80, 84, 86; Bauhaus: Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York, Oxford University Press), 1948, pp. 522–3.

  ‘the near dark’: this and the previous paragraph on the Frankfurt kitchen are drawn from Martina Hessler, ‘The Frankfurt Kitchen: The Model of Modernity and the “Madness” of Traditional Users, 1926 to 1933’, Oldenziel and Zachmann, Cold War Kitchen, pp. 163–77; Lawrence-Zúñiga, ‘Material Conditions of Family Life’, Kertzer and Barbagli, History of the European Family, vol. 3, pp. 16–17, 19; Reagin, Sweeping the Nation, pp. 80, 86.

  ‘cold running water’: lack of equipment: Strasser, ‘Englarged Human Existence?’, Berk, Women and Household Labor, p. 41; reduction in cooking and cleaning time: Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York, Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 18, 27; running water: Ruth Schwartz Cowan, ‘Coal Stoves and Clean Sinks: Housework between 1890 and 1930’, Foy and Schlereth, American Home Life, pp. 211ff., 220.

  ‘but unhygienic’: floor sand: Garrett, At Home, p. 75; ‘boughten’ broom: Wilder, The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 476; dust becomes dirt: Bushman, Refinement of America, p. 265; insects: Suellen Hoy, Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York, Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 10–11.

  ‘applied in the past’: footnote: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and cited by James Crail, ‘Body and Soil’, Artnet, http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/books/croak/summer-reading-6-18-12.asp, accessed 1 April 2013.

  ‘out of windows’: Charles II: Sophie Gee, Making Waste: Leftovers and the Eighteenth-Century Imagination (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 6–7; Dutch legislation: Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, p. 378.

  ‘the animal warmth’: chamber-pots: Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, p. 115; city dwellers’ shock: ibid., p. 117; courtyard farms in Skåne, spinning groups in Dalarna: Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, pp. 158, 179–80. I am grateful to Frank Wynne for the information on the different acidities of male and female urine.

  ‘and quality’: La Rochefoucauld: cited in Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, p. 115.

  ‘was very different’: architectural treatises: DeJean, The Age of Comfort, pp. 73, 71 cites these examples, but she has more faith in their existence than I do.

  ‘wait at street pumps’: water pipes: Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, p. 28.

  ‘even more, at 8d’: Manchester: ibid., pp. 28–31; water prices: ibid., p. 18.

  ‘after World War II’: Philadelphia: Thomas J. Schlereth, ‘Conduits and conduct: Home Utilities in Victorian America, 1876–1915’, Foy and Schlereth, American Home Life, pp. 226–7; rural supply: Hoy, Chasing Dirt, p. 15.

  ‘remove the dirt’: lack of sewage systems: Larkin, Reshaping of Everyday Life, pp. 159, 161; Muncie: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, p. 27. This famous sociological study looked at the town of Muncie, Indiana, in 1925, using data for comparison from 1890. In 1885, the town had been an agricultural county seat with 6,000 people; by 1920 it had grown to 35,000. There were several industries, including glass, metal and automotive. The nearest big city was nearly 100 kilometres away, with a train link but no ‘hard-surface roads for motoring’ when the study was undertaken. A weakness of the study is that although 2 per cent of the population was ‘foreign-born’, and 6 per cent black, it nevertheless focused on white, native-born residents.

  ‘on their shoulders’: North Carolina: Strasser, ‘Enlarged Human Existence?’, Berk, Women and Household Labor, p. 43.

  ‘be disposed of’: pump queues: Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, p. 12, mentions Gateshead, where lines averaged three hours; estimate of rainwater butt capacity: ibid., p. 8; historic data: ibid., p. 14; contemporary water usage rates for 2006/7 in England and Wales: ‘Water and the Environment: International Comparisons of Domestic Per Capita Consumption’, Reference: L219/B5/6000/025b (Bristol, Environment Agency, 2008), http://a0768b4a8a31e106d8b0-50dc802554eb38a24458b98ff72d550b.r19.cf3.rackcdn.com/geho0809bqtd-e-e.pdf, accessed online 7 November 2013. I have omitted North American contemporary usage, where more extreme climate, and therefore air-conditioning, frequently doubles UK figures, and makes it a less useful comparator for historic data.

  ‘the 1950s began’: Muncie: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, p. 97; Scotland: Sarti, Europe at Home, p. 114; Ireland: Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, p. 32. She adds that while 70 per cent (England and Wales) and 67 per cent (Scotland) were said to have access to piped water by 1944, even then it may be that street standpipes were the ‘pipes’ many of these people were using.

  ‘had no bathroom’: Muncie: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, p. 256.

  ‘American Standard company’: washing becoming private: Larkin, Reshaping of Everyday Life, p
p. 163–4; bathroom suite: Schlereth, Victorian America, pp. 128–9.

  ‘dangerous wiring’: British guide: S. Stephens Hellyer, The Plumber and Sanitary Houses: A Practical Treatise on the Principles of Internal Plumbing Work … (London, B. T. Batsford, 1877), p. v.

  ‘put in prison’: John Ratcliffe: Cohn, Palace or Poorhouse, pp. 6, 7–8; German child: cited in Reagin, Sweeping the Nation, p. 38.

  ‘super-consumption of restraint’: banketjestukken: Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, p. 160.

  ‘living with it’: moral dimension of consumer goods: Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 19.

  ‘hygiene and thrift’: respectable and not-respectable households: this point is made by Leonore Davidoff, ‘The Rationalization of Housework’, Diana Leonard Barker and Sheila Allen, eds, Dependence and Exploitation in Work and Marriage (London, Longman, 1976), p. 140. The judgement is passed, almost unconsciously, in James Littlejohn, Westrigg: The Sociology of a Cheviot Parish (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 123.

  ‘two in battle’: life expectancy figures: Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 8; US soldiers’ deaths by disease: Hoy, Chasing Dirt, p. 58.

  ‘domestically produced health’: housewives’ responsibility for health: Mokyr, ‘Why “More Work for Mother”?’, p.22.

  ‘fruit and vegetables’: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, pp. 156–7 cite the advertisement that promised to cure ‘spring sickness’ and ‘sluggishness’, and they list the Midwestern winter diet, which I have supplemented with the diet of the rest of the USA, as well as northern Europe. The remaining diseases come from late-nineteenth-century advertisements for Pabst Malt Beef Extract, Clarke’s Blood Mixture and, of course, Morison’s Pills.

  ‘the finished product’: ‘patriotic duty’: Charles Lathrop Pack, The War Garden Victorious (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1919), Appendix II, p. 3; ‘We Can’ poster in National Agricultural Library, USDA poster collection, https://archive.org/details/CAT31123264, accessed online 5 November 2013; food preservation: Strasser, Never Done, pp. 22–3.

  ‘days a week’: ‘the business of cleanliness’: Hoy, Chasing Dirt, pp. 140–48.

  ‘to be American’: Booker T. Washington: Hoy, Chasing Dirt, p. 89; Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1913), p. 11, cited in McHugh, American Domesticity, p. 64.

  ‘form of citizenship’: superiority of German housekeeping: Reagin, Sweeping the Nation, pp. 49, 53–5; girls’ domestic education: ibid., pp. 46–7; ‘service to the country’: Käthe Schirmacher, cited in ibid., pp. 74–5, 78.

  ‘“respectable” household’: good housekeeping connected to good citizenship: Reagin, Sweeping the Nation, pp. 9, 110–11, 118.

  ‘promoted this equation’: ‘for public use’: [no author], Yosemite: The National Parks: Shaping the System (Washington, DC, Harper’s Ferry Center, US Department of the Interior, 2004), p. 12, http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/shaping/part2.pdf, accessed 25 October 2013.

  ‘unspoiled land’: Ebenezer Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, which was reissued and retitled as Garden Cities of To-morrow (London, Swan Sonnenschein, 1902).

  ‘private spaces’: William Morris, Collected Letters of William Morris, Norman Kelvin, ed. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 3, p. 164.

  ‘at no cost’: UK government involvement: Lawrence-Zúñiga, ‘Material Conditions of Family Life’, Kertzer and Barbagli, History of the European Family, vol. 3, p. 12; US government involvement: Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York, Basic, 1992), pp. 76–7; Clark, American Family Home, p. 219.

  ‘ultimately more expensive’: William Levitt: Clark, American Family Home, pp. 218–22.

  ‘and for everyone’: flight to suburbia: Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York, Pantheon, 2003), p. 10.

  ‘produce no smoke’: Santa Fe: Nezar AlSayyad, Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism (London, Routledge, 2001), p. 12.

  ‘their suburban dreams’: heritage as fear of future: my starting point for this idea is AlSayyad, Consuming Tradition, p. 14: ‘If tradition is about the absence of choice … heritage then is the deliberate embrace of a single choice as a means of defining the past in relationship to the future.’

  CODA: NOT AT HOME

  ‘followed naturally’: Catharine Beecher’s innovations: Rybczynski, Home, p. 164.

  ‘The house is past’: Loos: cited in Christopher Reed, ed., Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture (London, Thames and Hudson, 1996), p. 9, from whom I have also borrowed the title of this chapter; Adorno: Hilde Heynen, ‘Modernity and Domesticity: Tensions and Contradictions’, Hilde Heynen and Güslüm Baydar, eds, Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture (London, Routledge, 2005), p. 2.

  ‘does humanity begin’: Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, in Selected Writings on Art and Literature, trs. P. E. Charvet (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2006), pp. 399–400; Benjamin, The Arcades Project, pp. 216, 220; Adolf Behne, Die Wiederkehr der Kunst (Nedeln, Kurt Wolff, 1973), pp. 67–8, cited in Karina van Herck, ‘“Only Where Comfort Ends, Does Humanity Begin”: On the Coldness of Avant-Garde Architecture in the Weimar Period’, Heynen and Baydar, Negotiating Domesticity, p. 123; I have amended the translation slightly.

  ‘just looked good’: Gropius: cited in Lawrence-Zúñiga, ‘Material Conditions of Family Life’, Kertzer and Barbagli, History of the European Family, vol. 3, p. 17.

  ‘ways of living’: modernists and utility: this idea is argued with great cogency in Rybczynski, Home, pp. 188–91.

  ‘the overriding desire’: Alix Rohde-Liebenau: Castillo, ‘The American “Fat Kitchen” in Europe’, Oldenziel and Zachmann, Cold War Kitchen, pp. 37, 36; open-plan living: Evans, ‘Figures, Doors and Passages’, p. 276

  ‘visible, visitable, penetrable’: Henry James, The American Scene (London, Granville, 1987), p. 119.

  ‘are made of’: the citations from Benjamin and Behne, and the ideas in these paragraphs: Heynen, ‘Modernity and Domesticity’, Heynen and Baydar, Negotiating Domesticity, pp. 1–29. I am grateful to Dr Hanna Weibye, who returned to the original German for me, and discussed the various ‘heim’s embedded in secrets and the supernatural.

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