The first known game between two black teams was held in September 1860, at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, when the Weeksville of New York beat the Colored Union Club 11–0. During the period of Reconstruction, black ball teams popped up all over the Eastern Seaboard, comprising of ex-soldiers and officers, and teams like the Jamaica Monitor Club, Albany Bachelors, Philadelphia Excelsiors and Chicago Uniques played each other and any other team that would play against them. Soon, Philadelphia, with an African-American population of 22,000, became a mecca for black baseball, where two former cricket players, James H. Francis and Francis Wood, formed the Pythian Base Ball Club, which was promoted by legendary ballplayer and civil rights activist Octavius Catto. Segregation barred the black ball teams from joining the National Association of Base Ball Players, and they were dependent upon semi-pro white teams to keep in condition and make a living, but “Blackball” thrived despite these hardships.

Pioneer baseball players included Bud Fowler (pitcher) and Moses Fleetwood Walker (catcher), the latter of whom was the first African-American to play in the major leagues. The first black professional baseball team was formed in 1885, when Walter Cook, a white businessman from Trenton, NJ, spotted the Babylon Black Panthers, a team formed by waiters and porters employed by the Argyle Hotel in Babylon, New York, and became their manager. He renamed the team the “Cuban Giants” to attract white baseball fans (since oddly enough, non-Americans of African descent were more acceptable to American society), and their success led to the formation of the Southern League of Base Ballists (comprising of ten teams: the Memphis Eclipse, the Georgia Champions of Atlanta, the Savannah Broads, the Memphis Eurekas, the Savannah Lafayettes, the Charleston Fultons, the Jacksonville Athletics, the New Orleans Unions, the Florida Clippers of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Macedonias). Though this league lasted only one year, the National Colored Base Ball League was formed in 1887, and under the leadership of Walter S. Brown of Pittsburgh, the NCBBL was “granted official minor league status and thus ‘protection’ under the major league-led National Agreement.”

Thought the NCBBL also failed, the six teams–Baltimore Lord Baltimores, Boston Resolutes, Louisville Falls Citys, New York Gorhams, Philadelphia Pythians, and Pittsburgh Keystones–played a decent season, and despite the existence of two defunct black baseball leagues, the ball players soldiered on. The Cuban Giants remained successful, and copycat teams sprang up immediately, the most prominent being the Cuban X-Giants, a splinter and a powerhouse team who played ten seasons around 1900. Many teams and leagues rose and fell by the turn-of-the-century, but black baseball reached preeminence under Rube Foster, the Cuban X-Giants star pitcher, who helped the team defeat the Philadelphia Giants, a black ball team formed in 1902 by Sol White, white sportswriter H. Walter Schlichter, and Harry Smith, sports editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, a black newspaper. These two teams battled for supremacy in “blackball” during the first decade of the 20th century, and Rube Foster began to pull together the makings of a black baseball league by black ball players, for black ball players. By 1920, the Golden Age of black baseball began, and up until the 1940s, African-American baseball teams played games and world series just as exciting, skilled, and lucrative as the segregated major leagues.

Further Reading:
Sol White’s History of Colored Baseball with Other Documents on the Early Black Game, 1886-1936
Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams by Robert Peterson
Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution by Neil Lanctot

Websites:
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
Negro League Baseball eMuseum
Black Baseball in Hartford, Conn
The Cuban Giants

To Have and To Hold, by Mary Johnston, was the bestselling book of 1900, and it’s not hard to see why — it’s awesome. It’s the same sort of book as Janice Meredith: adventure, American colonial history, etc. To Have and To Hold just has more pirates and, I don’t know, general craziness. I kind of love it.

To Have and to Hold is set in the early years of the Virginia colony, and follows the fortunes of Captain Ralph Percy, one of the earliest settlers. He’s not wealthy and he’s not politically important and he’s not a real historical figure, but he’s friends with all of those who are. For example: at the beginning of the book, Pocahontas has been dead for three years. Percy remembers her fondly, is best friends with her widower John Rolfe, and respects her brother Nantauquas more than any of the other members of the Powhatan tribe. Although — well, that’s not saying much. Percy has a high opinion of the Indians’ cunning, but a low opinion of their honor.

The story begins when Percy, mostly unwillingly, takes part in a sort of mail-order bride arrangement and ends up married to a young woman who is clearly more than she professes herself to be. How much more isn’t clear until the arrival by ship, some weeks later, of my Lord Carnal, the King’s favorite. He reveals that she is Lady Jocelyn Leigh, a ward of the King. The King wanted her to marry my Lord Carnal, but she hated him, and so she ran away. And it’s hard to blame her, because my Lord Carnal isn’t very nice, and Captain Percy is, and clearly she will eventually fall in love with her husband. But first, adventures!

Many weeks of everyone pretending they don’t know very well that Ralph and Jocelyn are going to be sent back to England to have their marriage annulled culminate in the couple escaping in a tiny boat. They mean to go alone, but they end up with three additional passengers:

• Ralph’s servant Diccon, with whom he has an extremely prickly relationship owing to that one time when Diccon tried to kill him.
• Jeremy Sparrow, minister, former Shakespearean actor, and good-natured hulking giant, who has appointed himself Ralph’s new best friend.
• Somewhat inconveniently, my Lord Carnal.

Fortunately they manage to leave behind my Lord Carnal’s sidekick, an Italian doctor who is much given to a) lurking, and b) poisoning people.

Then: shipwreck, pirates, a makeshift courtroom scene, jail, lots of Indians, and an assortment of atmospheric descriptions of scenery.

There’s enough plot for, like, three different adventure novels here, but none of it feels gratuitous, or hastily tacked-on. Except perhaps the end. Ralph Percy really doesn’t like Indians.  And I like the characters, too. Jocelyn should be profoundly irritating, and sometimes she is, but in a human kind of way, rather than a tying herself into knots in order to obey the constraints of the story kind of way. And Ralph Percy is lovely and self-deprecating and heroic, and while Jeremy Sparrow comes out of nowhere and all of a sudden everyone is like, “Oh yeah, I remember seeing you in Twelfth Night,”, I don’t mind, because being a pious minister and a big, burly adventurer at the same time is tough, and he makes it work. I’m less enthused about the villains. My Lord Carnal is disappointingly one-sided, and I can’t really see the point of his creepy Italian poisoner sidekick. But I loved how they all — minus the creepy Italian poisoner — went off on piratey adventures together.

I started this book thinking it was going to be a miserable slog, but once I got a few chapters in, I couldn’t put it down. It’s nice to be able to agree with all of those book-buyers of 1900.

Read To Have and to Hold at Project Gutenberg.

Visit Melody’s blog, Redeeming Qualities for more vintage reviews and commentary!

Also important was a rider’s posture, position of the legs in the side-saddle, and the position of the hands whilst holding the reins.

Riding astride was considered rather scandalous in the 1900s, but by the end of the decade, it was grudgingly accepted–as was the use of breeches only–as necessary for sports such as polo, as well as rides across “uncivilized” terrain, such as the American West, or the far-flung corners of the British Empire.

Further Reading:
Riding and Driving for Women by Belle Beach (1912)
Side-Saddle Lady Museum

Mock Oyster Soup
1 bunch salsify
1 pint milk
1 quart water
1 sliced onion
1 bay leaf
1 tbs butter
1 tbs flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Scrape the salsify; throw it at once into cold water to prevent discoloration; ; cut it into slices about half an inch thick; throw these into a kettle, with the water, onion, and bay leaf; cook slowly half an hour. Put the milk in a double boiler; add the butter and flour, rubbed together; stir until the milk is thick and smooth. Then add it to the salsify and water in the saucepan; add the seasonings, and serve with oyster crackers.

Crackers
Celery
Olives

Mock Turkey
1 pint breadcrumbs
1 pint mixed nuts
1 pint boiled rice
6 hard-boiled eggs
3 raw eggs
1 tbs grated onion
1 tbs salt
1 tsp pepper

Put the breadcrumbs in a saucepan with a pint of water; cook for a few minutes; add the hard-boiled eggs, chopped; take saucepan from the fire and add the nuts (a mixture of peanuts and pine nuts is best), and the rice. When this is well mixed, add the raw eggs, slightly beaten. Form this into the shape of a turkey, reserving a portion for the legs and the wings. Take a tablespoon of the mixture in your hand and press it into the shape of a leg; put a piece of dry macaroni into it for the bone and fasten it to the turkey. Brush the turkey with butter and bake for one hour. Serve with cranberry sauce.

Sauce Soubise
Peel and cut in slices three large onions. Put them into a saucepan with one ounce of butter, cover, and simmer gently about three-quarters of an hour; the onions must be colored. When tender and soft, add a tablespoonful of flour, mix and press through a colander. Add one gill of stock and one gill of cream, stir continually until it boils. Add a half teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper, a grating of nutmeg and it is ready to serve.

Cranberry Jelly
Canned Peas
Sweet Potatoes

Thanksgiving Pie

Mock Mince Pie
1 cup seeded raisins, chopped fine
1 egg
2/3 cup molasses
1/2 cup cider or grape juice
4 Uneeda biscuits
1/2 cup washed currants
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shredded citron
1 tbs vinegar
Juice and rind one lemon

Roll the crackers, put them in a bowl, and add all of the fruit. Beat the egg until light, add the molasses, grape juice or cider, sugar and lemon. Mix, and, if you like, add a half teaspoon of cinnamon.

Pie Crust
2 tbs nut butter
1 pint flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup ice water

Rub the nut butter into the flour, add the salt, and gradually the ice water; the crust must not be too wet. Roll this out as you would other pastry. Line a pie-tin; put in the mock mince meat, cover with an upper crust; bake 45 minutes in a moderate oven.

Coffee

From The Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1896):

Oyster Soup
Crisp Crackers

Celery
Salted Almonds

Roast Turkey
Cranberry Jelly

Mashed Potatoes
Onions in Cream
Squash

Chicken Pie.
Fruit Pudding
Sterling Sauce

Mince, Apple, and Squash Pie
Neapolitan Ice Cream
Fancy Cakes

Fruit
Nuts and Raisins
Bonbons

Crackers
Cheese

Cafe Noir

From The Delmonico Cook Book (1890):

Shrewsbury Oysters
Giblet à l’Ecoissaise
Mortadella
Celery
Codfish, Egg sauce
Lamb chops à la Robinson
Croquettes of Macaroni
Curry of Chicken à l’Espagnole
Mushrooms on Toast
Punch en Surprise
Roast Turkey, Cranberry sauce
Celery Salad
Mince Pie
Strachino Cheese
Coffee

“We think of clothing as being cheap and disposable,” said exhibit curator Jessica Urick, the society’s textile preservationist. “In this time period, clothing was more of an art.”

This gown designed by founding father of couture fashion Charles Frederick Worth was worn by Ella King, who lived at the Kingscote mansion in Newport in the mid 1800s. An intern from the University of Rhode Island’s graduate textile program spent close to 80 hours restoring its beaded sash.

The exhibition explores all aspects of the dressmaking process. Among the highlights are gowns worn by Ella King of Kingscote and Ellen French, the first wife of Alfred Vanderbilt of The Breakers. A circa 1880 gown by Paris designer Charles Frederick Worth will be displayed completely inside-out, allowing visitors a rare opportunity to view its elaborate internal construction. The exhibition includes ten dresses plus various accessories.

The well-to-do Gilded Age woman had several options when purchasing clothing. She could commission garments from private seamstresses, or purchase read-to-wear items from department stores and boutiques. But the pinnacle of high-end shopping was the Parisian haute couture house, which created fashion that was as costly and expertly-crafted as fine art.
The Parisian houses of couture, which were supplied with expensive silk crafted predominately in nearby Lyon, France, rarely created entirely custom pieces. Instead, ladies met with the designer, though more often a “vendeuse” (salesperson) and selected from a group of designs that were then customized with fabrics and detailing and fitted to the customer’s measurements.

Each fashion house was backed by a huge staff that filled hundreds of orders per week. Most important were the seamstresses, who spent hundreds or even thousands of hours hand-stitching each unique garment. These designer garments could range in cost from $100 to $500-the equivalent of approximately $3,000 to $13,000 in today’s currency.

The exhibit is curated by Urick, and will be on display in the Lesley Bogert Crawford costume galleries on the 2nd floor of Rosecliff through November 19. Admission to the exhibit is included with any Rosecliff tour ticket.

Museum of Childhood: Edwardian Lives

Daisy, Countess of Warwick

by Victoria Fishburn

Imagine a beautiful woman from Edwardian England who married an Earl, became mistress to the Prince of Wales and astonished Society by standing as a Labour candidate for Parliament. Such a woman was Daisy, Countess of Warwick. Her words, written in two memoirs and countless other books, are still quoted by most historians of the period. In her youth, she was famous for her looks. Cartes-de-visites with her likeness were bought by those who followed the ‘Professional Beauties’, society women whose beauty was admired amongst all classes. Her friend Elinor Glyn referred to her as an ‘It girl’. The fair, curvaceous heiress hit London Society in the 1880s but, although she was painted by Sargent and sculpted by Rodin, her beauty was only part of the reason that she was famous in her lifetime. Even today, her name is widely recognized. This is largely because the life that she led followed so unconventional a path. Despite having good looks, a fortune, a lasting marriage and nine successful years as mistress to the Prince of Wales behind her, she embarked upon a radical life as a social reformer.

My interest in her was sparked by the sheer unlikeliness of her character. She leaves a confusing legacy: an heiress, a Countess and a landowner and yet she signed up to the socialist ideal of land nationalization and tried to give her house away. She had the love of the Prince and yet she pestered him with her ideas for reform. Hugely extravagant, she spent lavishly on entertaining her guests, whilst supporting reforms to help the poor and downtrodden. She stood for a parliamentary seat as a candidate for the Labour party but appeared on political platforms dressed in pearls and furs. Daisy’s life was marked out as unusual from the age of three when she inherited the estates of her grandfather, her father having already died.

The self-confidence and determined independence that characterized her approach to life, started early. She rode dangerous racehorses from her stepfather’s stable, she went to the theatre with Disraeli and, most shockingly, she thwarted the plans of Queen Victoria to marry her to the youngest Prince, her haemophiliac son, Leopold. Brookie was a good catch as heir to the Earl of Warwick but did not have the cachet of a Prince. Young, active and gorgeous she swept all before her as she reveled in her position as Lady Brooke. Having produced a son for her husband, infidelity was accepted in the aristocratic circles in which she moved, as long as affairs were conducted according to that all-important quality of the age: discretion. Daisy threw parties, she bought dresses from Paris by the great French designers, Charles Worth and Doucet, she had lovers and she hunted. But the same impulsiveness that she brought to the hunting field made her indiscreet.

Her reputation was first tarnished by a reckless letter she wrote to her lover, Lord Charles Beresford, berating him for his wife’s pregnancy. The affair foundered at the insult to his wife and recognizing the dire threat of ruin to her reputation, Daisy fled into the arms of the Prince. She entertained Bertie and his friends, first at her own Essex estate and subsequently at Warwick Castle, inherited by her husband Lord Brooke in 1893. Her years as royal mistress should have made her reputation unassailable but even then she was criticized for her indiscreet gossip: a gambling deal involving the Prince of Wales, earned her the nickname, ‘Babbling Brooke’. But both Bertie and Brookie were devoted to her and put up with a great deal. Brookie wrote that he would rather have been married to Daisy ‘with all her peccadilloes’ than to any other woman in the world. They remained married until his death.

Like so many who lavishly entertained their future King, Daisy was extravagant and, what had seemed a great fortune, diminished to the point when she had to sell many of her possessions and property. Her most ignominious episode came about because of debt. After the death of Edward VII, she attempted to raise money by the sale of his love letters to her, offering them, at a price, to George V. The royal advisers were not moved to help her, despite the fact that she had never had the financial benefits and protection given to some of Edward’s other mistresses. She was threatened with an injunction and forced to give the letters to the King. Kept secret at the time, this affair emerged in the 1960s in a book by Theo Lang called ‘My Darling Daisy’ – the affectionate address used by the Prince of Wales in his letters. The name stuck.

She was given many labels in her life: Professional Beauty, It girl, Babbling Brooke and My Darling Daisy but, before the end of her life, the Countess of Warwick was known by another, and very unlikely, name: the Socialist Countess. At a time when many Edwardians were clinging to the vestiges of a glamorous Society life which was to end with the First World War, Daisy was again stepping out of the mould. Her kind nature and sympathy with those suffering hardship, had inspired her to many philanthropic actions over the years. She had started a home for cripples and a needlework school for rural girls with a shop to sell their work. She funded a secondary school and championed the cause of women’s education by establishing a training college for women. When her days as royal mistress were behind her, she became interested in the rising Socialist movement. Philanthropy turned to Socialism by 1904, when she joined the Social Democratic Foundation. It perplexed her society friends that she should join the highly unfashionable world of trade unionists and socialists. But Daisy had changed. She was no longer interested in Society, her friends now encompassed many fellow Socialists: George Bernard Shaw, H.G.Wells and Gustav Holst were amongst them.

Bravely independent, Daisy increased her literary output in order to make some money. Although never an author of the calibre of Shaw or Wells, it is through her writing that Daisy Warwick maintains her hold on posterity. Between 1898 and 1934, twelve books came out under her name, the first a book on gardens. The subjects were varied: essays on Socialism; a short biography of the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris; a well-respected history of Warwick Castle; a book of essays on the First World War and two substantial books of memoirs. She edited and wrote introductions or essays for a further eight books. Daisy sailed to America in 1912, to give a lecture tour in New York and Washington: the newspapers were full of the outfits she wore and were more interested in society gossip than the socialism she wanted to preach. Back home she contributed articles to London newspapers and the Daily Sketch commissioned her as an advice columnist and editor of their womens’ page. This astonishing literary output kept her name in the public eye.

In 1923, Daisy Warwick stood as a candidate for the Labour Party for the parliamentary seat of Warwick and Leamington. Her opponent was her relation, and later Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. But the overdressed Countess of Warwick, who owed money to many of those who might have supported her, was shunned and, ignominiously, beaten into third place. With this result, she left parliamentary ambitions behind her although she continued to support the Labour Party. In the late 1920s she tried to give her house in Essex away, first to the Labour Party and, when that failed, to the Trade Union Congress. Ironically, it was the fact that she was a Countess and a symbol of privilege that caused the rejection of her offer. Disillusioned with socialism, she retreated back to her home and an old age concerned with the welfare of animals.

Daisy Warwick’s seventy-eight years had been eventful: from her birth as a beautiful and privileged heiress to an old age where looks, money and society friends had all gone. But her name lives on today and this is where her literary output has extended her fame. She is a valuable source for most historians of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. Theo Aronson in The King in Love, Stanley Weintraub in Edward, King in Waiting, Henry Vane in Affair of State, Leo McKinstry in his recent biography of Rosebery, Andrew Roberts in Salisbury: Victorian Titan and Anthony Allfrey in Edward VII and his Jewish Court are just some of the many historians who use Daisy’s insights taken from her memoirs and other writings.

Victoria Fishburn is presently writing a biography on Daisy, Countess of Warwick and can be contacted by email: victoria [at] fishburns [dot] co [dot] uk.

The “black 400″ of Washington consisted of fewer than a hundred families out of a black population of 75,000 in 1900, and centered around the family of Blanche K. Bruce, an ex-slave and former Mississippi Senator who served in Congress from 1875 to 1881, who was also the first Black American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate. Bruce was born in Virginia to a black woman and a white man, who may have been their master. Fortunately, his slave master took an interest in Bruce and he was permitted to share lessons with the master’s son. In later years, Bruce shared that his life as a slave in Virginia, and later in Mississippi and Missouri, was in fact no different from that of his white peers. In 1850, Bruce moved to Missouri after becoming a printer’s apprentice and from there he escaped to Kansas and declared his freedom. After the Union Army rejected his application to fight in the Civil War, Bruce taught school and attended Oberlin College in Ohio for two years and from there, he went to work as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River. In 1864, he moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he established a school for blacks.

During Reconstruction, Bruce became a wealthy landowner in the Mississippi Delta. He was appointed to the positions of Tallahatchie County registrar of voters and tax assessor before winning an election for sheriff in Bolivar County. He later was elected to other county positions, including tax collector and supervisor of education, while he also edited a local newspaper. He rose rapidly in Republican Party ranks and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874. Bruce’s arrival in Washington aroused much comment: he was relatively young, cultured and handsome. Even those who resented his presence in Congress could not find fault with his innate dignity, elegant manners and shrewd political judgment. When he married Josephine Beall Willson of Philadelphia in 1878, they set Washington society–both black and white–ablaze, most noticeably because Josephine Bruce was very light-skinned, wealthy, very highly educated and beautiful. During Bruce’s residence in the District, he and Josephine entertained lavishly, taking as full a part in official Washington society as possible. The Bruce’s, along with other prominent black Washingtonians such as Hiram Rhodes Revels, P.B.S. Pinchback, Josiah Settle, Robert Harlan, Norris Wright Cuney, etc, directly challenged notions about black Americans during that period.

In addition to the Bruce’s, the colored aristocracy of the nation’s capital included the Cooks, Wormleys, Syphaxes, Shadds, Franciss, Grays, Terrells, Grimkés, Pinchbacks, Purvises, Cardozos, Menards, McKinlays, Douglasses, Murrays, and especially families associated with Howard University. Each family possessed “a background of accomplishment” and positions of considerable influence within the District power structure. With the economic resources of physicians, public-school teachers and administrators, attorneys, government employees, popular caterers and certain businessmen, Howard University faculty and others within the colored aristocracy, many possessed wealth beyond comprehension for the majority of black Americans at that time. According to an observer in 1895, the wealthiest blacks were John F. Cook ($200,000), Blanche K. Bruce ($150,000), W.A.A. Wormley ($115,000), P.B.S. Pinchback ($90,000) [right], John R. Lynch ($80,000), Charles B. Purvis ($75,000), Daniel Murray ($60,000), J.H. Meriwether ($60,000), George F.T. Cook ($50,000), Furman J. Shadd ($40,000), and John R. Francis ($35,000).

A few not only owned comfortable residences in the city, but also “country places” in Maryland and Virginia. Those who did own such places escaped the summer heat by taking cottages either in the vicinity of Harper’s Ferry, or at well-known resorts such as those at Cape May and Saratoga, which had sizable “colored colonies.” In the late 1880s, Charles Douglass, son of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, purchased a tract of land on Chesapeake Bay, about five miles from the Naval Academy at Arundel-on-the-Bay, where he developed a vacation site for Washington’s black elite, and christened the place “Highland Beach.”

Despite the hardening of racial practices and the erosion of civil rights for blacks in post-Reconstruction America, the black elite held steadfast hope that blacks would achieve equality. However, this black “400″ was insulated against the hardships of Jim Crow, and many were accepted by white Washington society–several black families were listed in the 1888 issue of Elite List, a forerunner of the Social Register, a few attended white churches, and even after certain public places closed their door to blacks, they sometimes made exceptions in the case of “refined and genteel Negroes.” Because of their successes, the notion that Washington was “the colored man’s paradise” gained wide acceptance among blacks and whites anxious about the turning tide against integration and rehabilitation of the nation as Reconstruction began to die. Though the “colored aristocracy” was hampered with issues of color, refinement and social status, they did nonetheless see themselves as a “buffer” between whites and lower-class blacks; a buffer that would prove the equality and ability of black Americans in a post-Civil War society.

Further Reading:

Aristocrats of Color: 1880-1920 by Willard B. Gatewood
The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty by Lawrence Otis Graham
Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen by Philip Dray