Pa Cat 's Merciless Jokes

Would anyone like to guess what on earth the picture has to do with Dunbar's Diarrhoea Mixture? And is that an alarm bell that the kitten on the right is about to pull?

I think that the consumer was meant to draw an analogy  between the condition that the Mixture was supposed to alleviate, and the distress of the kittens at having to listen to Pa Cat read out not-very-funny jokes from his Very Funny Joke Book. Pa Cat looks so pleased and so determined - and he also looks a bit like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (who would, at most, just smirk at Pa's jokes).

This card made me laugh, and I love cats (even when they are telling bad jokes - whatever sort of jokes are in that book, anyway? I really want to know!) - so here it is.

This amusing advertising card comes to you courtesy of the fabulous Images From the History of Medicine of the National Library of Medicine at Bethesda, Maryland. It was printed at Providence, Rhode Island by the Buker Press, and probably dates from the late 19th century. The picture of the Cheshire Cat is from Wikipedia.

The Inexhaustible Cow

One of the many attractions at Coney Island in the late 19th century was a tireless mechanical wooden cow which dispensed glasses of milk, served by costumed dairy maids, who unfortunately cannot been seen in this charming late-Victorian stereograph entitled "The Inexhaustible Cow."

The cow stood in a pavilion at Culver Plaza, next to the iron observation tower that had been brought there from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1878. Culver Plaza, on Surf Avenue, was named for developer Andrew R. Culver, whose Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad had its terminus there.

A glass of milk from the mechanical cow cost a nickel a glass, according to Charles Denson in Coney Island: Lost and Found (2002, p. 21). John S. Berman in Coney Island (2003, p. 16) writes that people could "bathe under the udders" of the cow at this time, too, but I am not sure how the cow would have been able to multi-task

Berman attributes the cow's installation at Coney Island to notorious local politician/police chief John Y. McKane, but the Eagle, in 1879, refers to it as "Paul Bauer's cow." Bauer was a prominent Coney Island hotel owner, whose West Brighton Hotel was one of Coney Island's largest and most luxurious accomodations. The West Brighton Casino, also owned by Bauer, was just behind the hotel.

The cow had been at Culver Plaza since at least 1879, in which year it was first mentioned in the Eagle. The Eagle also noted other pleasures at Culver Plaza in the late 1870s: sipping cream and "eating sweetmeats" at Cable's restaurant while listening to a band play, a children's merry-go-round, "magnetic machines,"a Camera Obscura and a patent weighing machine that would tell not only your weight but your age, too.

The amazing stereograph of the Inexhaustible Cow is from New York City Stereos at Antique Photographics. The modern picture of the cow, sans blanket, is from Collector's Quest, from the 2008 American Antiques Show; it was selling for $95,000 (I don't know who, if anyone, bought it, though). The picture of the iron tower is from the German version of Wikipedia. And over here, in Charles Denson's Coney Island: Lost and Found, is a great picture of the cow in its pavilion.

Also see "Coney Island" (Jul. 9, 1879, p. 6) and "Sweltering" (Jul. 14, 1880, p. 4) in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, for mentions of the cow.

******

Thanks so much to Prim Girl for the Best Blog award!

Afternoon Tea at the Claremont Inn

This beautiful inn is long gone, but in the 1930s the Claremont still stood at Riverside Drive and 125th Street, just opposite Grant's Tomb. According to Helen Worden in This Is New York (1939), you could have lunch or afternoon tea on the terrace overlooking the Hudson River, and it was a lovely place "although it lost much if its charm when the interior was altered" (p. 167).

The house was built in 1797 by the Post family.Worden writes that the Claremont stood on the site of the Battle of Harlem Heights, fought in September 1776 during the Revolution. And it was here that people gathered to watch Robert Fulton's famous steamboat make its maiden voyage down the Hudson. Worden also notes that Joseph Bonaparte, "the mournful exiled heir to the French throne," spent the final years of his life here, too.

Lossing says that among the residents of the house was Viscount Courtenay, later Earl of Devon, in the early 19th century. Worden writes that the nearby "Grave of an Amiable Child" was the grave of Courtenay's illegitimate child. However, it is the grave of St. Claire Pollock, who fell to his death off the cliffs into the Hudson in July 1797. Roadside America notes that it is one of only three private gravesites in Manhattan (the other two are Grant's Tomb and the grave of William J. Worth at Broadway and 25th Street).

The Claremont had become an inn by the early 1860s. There were lovely formal gardens with arbors and pavilions, according to Benson Lossing's The Hudson (1866), quoted in Arthur G. Adams' The Hudson (1981): "...Jones' Claremont Hotel [is] a fashionable place of resort for the pleasure-seekers who frequent the Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge roads on pleasant afternoons. At such times it is often thronged with visitors, and presents a lovely appearance."

James Rian wrote about the pleasures of dining here in 1930's Dining In New York. Although Rian writes that it was by then "the lonesomest place in New York," it was one of New York's finest French restaurants. One could have "perfect planked steak" and "the most marvelous Turtle Soup L'Anglaise" and "a special Claremont Inn interpretation of Salmon Steak en Gelee that would inspire awe in a robot." Or one could simply have profiteroles and lemonade. One dined out on the "broad ample veranda" facing the river and "watch[ed] snooty little tugs puff up and down the river, dodging in an out among a perfect maze of ferries, battleships and square-riggers in the coastal lumber service."

According to Nathan Silver in Lost New York (2000) the inn was "burned and demolished" (p. 59) by the City in 1951; Silver doesn't say why, but I suspect that there was no very good reason for the destruction of this beautiful building. They did, however, put up a commemorative tablet at Claremont Playground the following year. It hardly seems like a fair trade, though.

Photograph of the Claremont is from the NYPL Digital Gallery. Also see here at Morningside Heights.net.

Adams, Arthur G. The Hudson: A Guide to the River (New York: SUNY Press, 1981)  [he quotes the Lossing book on p. 374]
Rian, James. Dining in New York (orig. pub.1930, 2007 Rian Press reprint) p. 136.
Silver, Nathan. Lost New York (Mariner Books, 2000).
Worden, Helen. This Is New York (Doubleday and Doran, 1939).