Category Archives: Cotsen Curatorial

Take Your Choice:  Mezzotints of Naughty and Nice Girls after Thomas Spence Duché

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A favorite subject in the  eighteenth-century was the parallel lives of a pair of boys whose lives diverged after childhood and went in radically different directions.   Probably the most famous one was William Hogarth’s Industry and Idleness (1747), a narrative in twelve engravings about two apprentices, one who rose to be Lord Mayor of London, the other hung as a murderer.

Because girls do not figure so often in stories of this kind (leading much more circumscribed lives than boys), Cotsen was delighted to acquire a pair of mezzotints contrasting the exemplary behavior of an industrious and an idle girl after Thomas Spence Duché, a pupil of Benjamin West who moved from Philadelphia to London during the American Revolution.   They were published by the London printseller Benjamin Beale Evans.

Thomas Lovegood (an imaginary name if there ever were one), dedicates the first engraving “To all sweet tempered industrious & obedient children.”  A perfect example of such a girl is shown seated to the right of a table, holding open the crisp pages of the writing book to show her beautiful copies of round hand italic capitals.  Tight blonde ringlets frame her sweet, mild face and the sheer dress is arranged gracefully over her lap and modestly closed knees. The caption,   “Who would not be GOOD to look so lovely?”  holds out the promise that exemplary behavior will make beauty to bloom, and as we all know, all things come to a fine-looking girl with agreeable manners.

Badness, on the other hand, is always supposed to put on an unattractive face, so Mr. Lovechild has dedicated the second print “To all pouting lazy illtempered lying & disobedient children.”   This little miss certainly embodies all those disagreeable traits.  The wretched girl wears the same dress as the other one but sits in an ungainly and immodest pose, skirt rumpled, knees akimbo. Her book, open to the pictures, has the tell-tale sign of neglect, folded and creased pages.  Next to the book is a switch, which has probably been applied to her bottom The engraver is one Henry Birch, which Richard Earlom used as a pseudonym, but context suggests was a joke.  She stares out of the picture at the viewer while one hand plays with the tousled, messy hair on her temple.  “Who would be NAUGHTY to look so ugly?”  asks the title. Around her neck is a string threaded through a leather strip reading “Lyar.”  She is crowned with a dunce’s cap.  She ought to look ashamed for being publicly humiliated this way, but she doesn’t look particularly sorry for whatever it was she did to deserve this punishment.

Miss Sulky is not wearing the tall cone made of paper associated with schoolroom shaming of pupil or master.  Hers is a truly magnificent specimen, modelled on the cap and bells traditionally worn by Folly on the left of the cut below. (Minerva is seated to the right, holding out a book to the boy, who has to chose between the two of them.)  I have no idea what the meaning of symbols above the label on which “Dunce” is printed might be.St. Nicholas’ Day has already flown past, but there’s still time to clean up your act before Christmas Eve.  Which little girl will you remember?  Whose example will you take to heart?

Turducken on the Menu at “The House that Jack Built”: How a Rhyme and a Recipe Crossed Paths in 1707

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A platter of turducken can substitute for the traditional turkey on the groaning Thanksgiving table.   This elaborate dish made famous by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme consists of a boned chicken inside in a boned duck inside a boned turkey, the empty spaces crammed with figs, bread stuffing, or a sausage force meat and the whole roasted until glistening brown.

For those of you who are wondering what on earth this has to do with a nursery rhyme, don’t sign off yet, because I can vouch for my credentials as a rhyme finder.  Before the publication of James Orchard Halliwell’s The Nursery Rhymes of England (1840), I swear that the ditties are more likely to be found in bawdy plays, descriptions of rambles around London, and nasty political satires than anthologies for children, which are not especially numerous before 1860.   Lowlifes and servants are more likely to repeat them than ladies and gentlemen.

I made this discovery trying to verify Iona and Peter Opie’s claim in the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes that the earliest printed appearance of “The House that Jack Built” was in Nurse Truelove’s New-Year’s-Gift (1750).  Being a long accumulative rhyme, different searches using various combinations of distinctive words had to be run. Nothing new had turned up on previous attempts, but this time  a 1707 translation of the Spanish novel Estevanillo Gonzales, the Most Arch and Comical of Scoundrels, popped up and I thought it was a really promising hit. Indeed it was!

In one of his escapades, the hero was hired on the strength of his assurance that he was the best cook in the army.  Here is the passage where he gives the recipe for “Imperial Stuffed Meat,” a more elaborate version of turducken, explaining to his audience:

It is just like the Tale the Children tell of, This is the Stick that Beat the Dog, the Dog that bit the Cat, the Cat that kill’d the Mouse, the Mouse that eat the Malt, the Malt that lay in the House that Jack Built; for this Egg is in the Pidgeon, the Pidgeon is to be put into a Partridge, the Partridge into a Pheasant, the Pheasant into a Pullet, the Pullet into a Capon, the Capon into a Turkey, the Turkey into a Kid, the Kid into a Sheep, the Sheep into a Calf, and the Calf into a Cow, all these Creatures are to be Pull’d, Flea’d [i.e. flayed], and Larded, except the Cow, which is to have her Hide on, and as they are thrust one into another like a Nest of Boxes.A dish fit for an emperor’s coronation after four hours’ roasting in a covered trench, brags Estevanillo.   The 1707 recipe is rather similar to the one called the “Roti sans pareil” in the 1807 Almanach des gourmands, cited by today’s foodies as the earliest reference.  But curiously enough, the 1707 edition was the only one of all the reprints I found elsewhere to include the reference to “The House that Jack Built”…