Kathleen Marple Kalb's Blog, page 26

THE LOVELY FALL FASHIONS

Even now, when it’s a major fashion statement to put on actual pants, people still care about new clothes for fall. In the Gilded Age, the fall fashions were every bit as much of a thing as they are now…even if for a much smaller group of people.
In the poorest households, it was enough to have an outfit to wear and one to wash, but even a little bit further up the scale, new (at least new-to-you) clothes were important for autumn. Part of that was the change in the weather; in many heavily populated areas, especially in the U.S., autumn was the start of the cold part of the year. So everyone had to put on more clothing.
For better-off folks, autumn meant much more than going down to the secondhand store and picking up a few serviceable woolen pieces to fend off the chill. It often meant major wardrobe changes, and not just for the grownups. Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder will remember all of the talk of hand-me-downs in her books, and that was the rule for most large families. It would never occur to anyone to waste perfectly good clothes or shoes when there was a younger sibling who could wear them perfectly well – if not happily.
As for the adults, the further you moved up the economic scale, the more modish those new fall fashions became. Men’s clothes evolved less quickly than women’s, and even a dapper fellow might well keep his suits and coats for a few years – or more. A gent who could afford it, though, would at least have some sharp new shirts, and likely more, depending on how much he cared about such things.
Women, then as now, mostly had to care. A lady with any pretentions to status was expected to show up, if not in the latest modes, certainly in reasonably new and fashionable clothing. In the 1890s, with the waxing and waning of the leg-o-mutton sleeves and the up-and-down movement of the corset waist, that often meant major changes. But not necessarily entirely new clothes: those puffy sleeves could be cut down, and the hat re-trimmed in the new season’s colors. Surviving clothing shows plenty of signs of alteration, suggesting that many women (or their lady’s maids) kept up with style, even if they couldn’t afford full-out new wardrobes.
For someone like our opera diva Ella Shane, far closer to the top of the social spectrum than the bottom, fall definitely means new clothes. In A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, she doesn’t have a lot of chances to wear them, since she’s on stage in doublet and hose most of the time. But, on several occasions, she happily sports a new violet velvet hat and takes exactly the sort of pleasure any fashionable female would. (Unless it’s her newspaper reporter friend Hetty, who has a deep grudge against hats because she’s been forced to write about them so much!)
We do get to see Ella in one lovely new dress: a lavender velvet evening gown with silver embroidery. She wears it for a pivotal after-show event…and a visiting friend is very impressed indeed. Because that, of course, is the other fun of the fall fashions: wearing them for an appreciative audience!

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YOU ARE WHO YOU SAY YOU ARE

“Google him.”
How many times have you said that to a friend about a new acquaintance, business connection or potential date?
Even before Google, there were databases, ways to quickly check out a person and at least find out if they were who they said they were…and hadn’t done anything terrible.
But what did people do before computerized records?
For centuries, letters of introduction were one big way to get a start in a new place. You’d have a (hopefully prominent) acquaintance write a letter to their equally prominent friend in your new town, telling them what a great person you are. It was a good way to get off on the right foot. Even now, many of us will ask a friend or mentor to make a few introductions – these days by email or phone – when we’re moving or starting a different job.
By the nineteenth century, reliable records of births, deaths and criminal proceedings were being kept, of course, but accessing them was neither fast nor easy. Letters of introduction were still a very common practice, and with improved communication, it was a lot tougher for someone to bluff their way in without getting caught. Not that it didn’t still happen.
Scammers were thick on the ground wherever there was money to be made and people willing to believe a good story. The very social mobility and change that made the Gilded Age such a fascinating time opened up plenty of chances for opportunists. More than one well off woman (and man) ended up losing their fortune to a suitor who seemed appropriate in every way…and turned out to be a clever criminal.
So, when a fine gentleman claiming to be Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, walks into Ella Shane’s rehearsal studio one spring morning, she doesn’t just accept him at face value. She takes careful note of his clothes, which are good, but neither fancy nor especially new. She watches his behavior, observing that he’s a decently trained fencer – if not as good as she is – which suggests an upper-class background. And she listens to his accent, mostly the expected crisp London diction. But something about his consonants concerns her.
And anything strange might be a suggestion of very big trouble.
No surprise, then, that later in the day, she reaches for one of the few references that might help: Debrett’s Peerage. It’s a book that lists all of the titled families in Britain, and their members. Ella bought her copy as preparation for her first tour in London, so she would know who she was dealing with – and how to address them. Flipping through the book, she quickly establishes that there is indeed a Dukedom of Leith, that the current incumbent is Gilbert Saint Aubyn, and that he’s the right age.
More, his domain (which, of course, exists only in the pages of the Ella books) is in the North of England. Now, she has an explanation for that odd accent – he’s a Northerner, a border lord. There’s a great deal of history and intrigue associated with the border lords, but that’s a post for another day. What matters now is that Ella was able to check him out enough to feel relatively comfortable.
Not that she fully trusts him right away…and not that she doesn’t have a few doubts later on. Ella is nobody’s fool…not even a hot Duke’s.

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CHARMED, I'M SURE

Every few years, some jewelry company succeeds in convincing the style experts that charm bracelets are “back,” and the cycle of ads and articles begins as if they’d gone somewhere. The truth is, charm bracelets never really go away, and some people are always wearing any enjoying them because they’re such a wonderful way to keep and cherish memories.
Remnants of charm bracelets have been found in prehistoric sites, and the ancient Assyrians and others wore strings of various amulets. Back then, it was a charm in the magical sense: a thing intended to protect you from some kind of harm.
While the magical meaning faded with time, the idea of wearing something in an easily visible place to carry an important memory or message is a very popular one, so the idea never really faded away, even if it took different forms, depending on fashion.
Modern charm bracelet fans can thank – guess who? – Queen Victoria, for making them really popular. Pictures of the Grandmother of Europe from various stages of her life clearly show several of them, some that were mementoes from her beloved Albert, and others of her constantly growing family. Of course, if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for everyone else…and ladies quickly adopted the fashion.
At that time, it was very much an upper-class vogue. Most people would not have had the money for innumerable little trinkets – and a working woman would never have been comfortable wearing all of those jingling bits on her wrist while she scrubbed or typed, never mind what would have happened in a factory. So simply owning a charm bracelet marked you as woman of a particular class.
That’s probably one of the reasons Ella Shane prizes hers. While she definitely does not like fancy jewels, finding them wasteful and at least somewhat less than respectable, she definitely does love the collection of mementoes around her wrist. It’s a very proper way for her to announce that she is now a lady of means and substance, and she’s quite proud of it.
Like any woman who collects charms, she also loves what they represent. Many of hers are pieces that recall roles she’s played over the years, tracking her successful career. But not all. She also has pieces from friends and family marking special milestones, like her friend Marie’s wedding, as well as gifts from friends over the years.
Charms were, and are, a thoughtful and meaningful gift to a woman who collects them. They were also one of the very few gifts a man could give a woman that was considered respectable. Though charms are undoubtedly jewelry items, because of their tiny size, relatively low value, and the fact that they are also respectable gifts among family and friends, a gentleman could give one to a lady in perfect propriety.
So there’s plenty in play when Ella’s new friend the Duke clasps her bracelet for her after a performance about a third of the way through A FATAL FINALE. It reminds him of who and what she is, but he also sees that the charms show that she cares about more than music. If there’s a little bit of a spark when is fingers touch her wrist, too, no one’s going to say anything.
No spoilers, but there’s a very real possibility that Ella may need to find room for another charm…or two…in the future.


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WHO WEARS THE PANTS?

Well, we know Ella Shane does. And in 1899, she’s one of the very rare women who’s ever seen in anything but a floor-length skirt away from the beach or bicycle. For the time, that is a Very Big Deal.
There are still plenty of women alive now who can remember when they weren’t allowed to go into spiffy restaurants in a trouser suit. Even I remember someone telling my mother never to dress me in pants again for services at the (admittedly very conservative) church we briefly attended when I was a kid. Let’s just say her response was unholy.
It’s pretty simple: for centuries, pants were what men wore. Of course, there’s a lot of symbolism and cultural weight associated with that, going all the way back to the Bible, where there are verses inveighing against women wearing men’s attire and vice versa. Though, really, in the ancient world, often the only real difference between a man’s garment and a woman’s was color, or possibly length.
And that gets us to the other big issue with pants: practicality. In trousers, men can move and run and do all kinds of things that are much tougher in a skirt. Especially a very long one with layers of petticoats. As long as women have been working, they’ve been working around their clothes, usually tucking the skirts up so they can move easily.
The first time women made a serious effort at wearing pants, in 1851, what quickly became known as the Bloomer Costume was pretty much laughed out of the room, even though the very impressive Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early adopter. And, honestly, whether by 1850s or 2020s standards, the costume, a long tunic over big puffy pants, does look pretty silly. But it was a try.
What women DID quickly realize was that while they didn’t want to make people giggle while they walked down the street, they sure did enjoy having a little freedom to move. So, by the late 1800s, bloomers and split skirts were a key part of female “sports costumes,” and many women wore them. These were still loose and modest, and often accompanied by thick stockings, even at the beach, so that no one would see too much of one’s “limbs” as seriously Victorian Victorians might say instead of the vulgar “legs.”
Legs, at least the female variety, were not something the Victorians got to see very often. Even ballerinas wore longish tutus, not the little fluffy thigh-length ones we often see now. The only women who showed a lot of leg were chorus girls, and that’s one of the big reasons people made assumptions about them.
So all of that’s in the room when Ella Shane takes the stage in breeches or doublet and (gasp!) hose. She’s not just appropriating the masculine prerogatives of wearing pants, running around and sword fighting; she’s also displaying her very fit body in a way that almost no other respectable woman of the time would be comfortable doing.
Which is why Ella is so aggressively respectable. A few readers have found that odd, wondered why someone as unpretentious and kind as Ella is so very hung up on appropriate behavior. She has to be. Every day of her life is a fight to be seen as a lady and not a chorus girl, simply due to the nature of her work. And all because she wears the pants.

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WE NEED TO TALK...ABOUT OPERA

What’s your mental picture of an opera singer? Probably not Ella Shane, a sleek, appealing woman in her 30s dressed in a doublet and hose, with a sword at her belt, playing a very credible Romeo or King Edward V. Well, Ella’s the one you’ll meet in my books…and she’s a far more accurate Gilded Age diva than the Muppet Show caricature of a zaftig lady with an iron bra and horned helmet.
Despite the best efforts of the Met and other companies to widen the audience, for an awful lot of folks, opera is still a fancy, elite form. Part of that is the simple fact that many iconic pieces are in foreign languages. You can thank my beloved Beverly Sills for popularizing supertitles, which provide live translation. But even with that, you’re still asking folks to go watch people sing their little hearts out in a language they don’t speak for three hours. It can be a stretch.
Not in 1899. While opera wasn’t as wildly popular as it had been in the earlier Jenny Lind era, it was still something ordinary people followed, enjoyed and attended. The gossip columnists don’t just watch Ella because they like her hats; divas were stars of today’s movie or TV magnitude.
And before film or airwaves, those stars brought the show to the audience. The Ella Shane Opera Company tours regularly, on a circuit including large cities like Boston and Philadelphia, and occasionally taking the long trip to San Francisco. They’re part of a huge and vibrant industry of traveling companies and theatre circuits, from small to large, across the country.
It’s hard to imagine now, but most medium-sized towns had theatres, and traveling companies came through with the melodrama of the day. Opera companies traveled too, and played to sizeable audiences, not just in large cities. While opera singers were indeed perceived as practicing a difficult and elevated art, they were offering those performances to the same wide audiences as lighter fare.
Live performance is an event to us, even –- maybe especially -- in 2020. To people who never saw any other kind of performance, it must have been awe-inspiring, truly magical. Stagecraft and special effects weren’t at 21st century level, but they were very good, and no traveling production was complete without at least one good spectacle. Patrons expected a good show for their time and money – and successful companies made sure they got it.
It’s worth noting here that audiences would also be a lot more familiar with the material and background of the productions. Remember, most operas began as popular entertainment, and became iconic over time. Plus, people read a lot more Shakespeare and classical history – and what we think of as nineteenth-century literature was the book on somebody’s nightstand. So they don’t look at Romeo and Juliet, or Richard III the same way we do.
All of this to say, whether Ella’s on the road, or bringing out a new opera at home in New York -- as she will be in A FATAL FIRST NIGHT next spring! – she’s a star, and a popular draw.
My advice: don’t think of Ella as Renee Fleming, no disrespect intended. Think of her as James Gandolfini: a brilliantly talented performer known for a popular and iconic role, and a pretty terrific New Yorker. You’ll be much closer to the truth…even if Ella would disapprove of Mr. Soprano’s vocabulary!

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YOU WANT ME TO WEAR what?

People have been swimming for hundreds of years. They’ve only been doing it in cute little outfits for a couple centuries. Yep. For most of human civilization, your bathing suit and your birthday suit were the same thing. Oh, folks might grab a loincloth if they were feeling especially modest (or inadequate) but that was about it.
This worked, in part, because people weren’t really swimming laps. They were “bathing,” most of the time, going for a healthful dip in the ocean, lake, or mineral spring, and almost always in sex-segregated groups so nobody had to look at anything they didn’t want to see – or be seen in a way they didn’t want to be.
Eventually, modesty started to be more of a thing, even when taking the waters. Especially for women. The first female swimsuit was a thing called a “bathing gown,” exactly what it sounds like: a big ol’ nightgown-ish thing that covered you from neck to wrists and ankles, sometimes in thick wool, so that you could get your nice dip without showing anything interesting.
While the women were thrashing around in soggy wool, it won’t surprise you to know that the guys were still frolicking naked. Or maybe leaving their breeches on. (Until at least the early 18th century, a lot of men didn’t bother with boxers or briefs, but just tucked the very long end of a shirt around everything. Sorry – that’s one of those things you can’t un-know!)
But by the 1800s, bathing was starting to become a bigger deal, and often a touristy one. As beach days became more fun, people became a lot less interested in partaking either in wet wool tents or naked to the world. So enterprising designers started coming up with various “bathing costumes.” Soon, when you hopped in your bathing machine – see last week’s post for more on that – you could leave your street clothes and put on something that would let you actually move around in the water.
That did NOT mean you were allowed to surrender standards of modesty. If you were a lady, chances were pretty good that your bathing suit started with big thick wool stockings, topped with shorts or a split skirt, and a tunic over that. Until the very end of the 19th century, the tunic had sleeves, and there wasn’t much actual skin showing. Not comfortable…but pretty sensible in a world before good sunscreen.
The guys, as usual, had a good bit more leeway. No stockings for them. And we got to see their manly arms a long time before the ladies freed the elbow. Men’s swimsuits moved much close to the baggy union suit underwear that most of them were wearing on dry land…only in bright colors, and often with a tunic top. Just like only the most adventurous fellas wear the teensy ones now (and only a very few of them should!) there were men who were a lot more comfortable out there with a tunic over any sensitive spots.
And this time – the pearl-clutchers were right. You start with a swimsuit of a long-sleeve tunic over a skirt over stockings…and the first thing you know, things happen. By the end of the 19th century, a lot of women had ditched the stockings – do YOU want to wrap your legs in soggy wool knit? – and cut off the sleeves. Soon, they’d be borrowing the union suit idea from the boys – and the guys would get rid of their shirts.
Major upgrade if you ask me.
Just no teensy ones, please, fellas!

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COME IN, THE WATER'S FINE!

Swimming at the beach is one of the few things that’s still pretty simple in our Covid-complicated time. You just put on a swimsuit and walk down to the water, slowly wading in until you’re comfortable with the temperature, maybe splashing around a bit with the partner, friends and/or kids, and eventually going in as deep as you like.
It was a whole lot more elaborate in the nineteenth century. If you were an even relatively respectable lady, you were taking a bathing machine into the water. Queen Victoria’s bathing machine went on display a few years ago, and they’ve turned up in a lot of recent historical productions. They sound elaborate, because they were: little shacks on wheels where ladies (and sometimes gentlemen) took off their street clothes and put on bathing suits, if any, before the machine was wheeled out into the deeper water.
Once you were out there, you took the little steps from the back down into the water. Well, unless you happened to have a particularly unkind “dipper.” Basically the matron of the bathing machine, she was responsible for getting you safely and modestly into the water and back to dry land and respectability. Some of them weren’t above giving shy ladies a healthy shove into the water.
Which would NOT have felt good. We’re talking about the ocean or a big lake, remember, not the lovely heated indoor pools that modern wimps like me prefer. If you’ve ever jumped or been thrown into a natural body of water, it’s pretty chilly, even on a really hot day. There’s a pond at the dam in my Western Pennsylvania hometown that pretty much explains why I vastly prefer man-made swimming holes, thank you!
But our respectable ladies had no real choice. If you wanted to enjoy the health benefits (not to mention the fun) of sea-bathing, you were stuck with the machine and the dipper…and hope she was in a good mood. Once in the water up to your neck you could paddle around to your heart’s content. If you were at a ladies’ only beach, you didn’t even have to worry about the boys roughhousing, the way they’ve done since the first two cavemen wandered into the water together.
Speaking of the fellows. I bet you’re still wondering about that “bathing suit, if any” comment back there. Yup. For a long time, the guys bathed in their birthday suits, and by themselves. Ladies, of course, didn’t want to look at that (or so they’d have you believe) and stayed delicately away, leaving the boys their own beaches for naked frolics of whatever sort.
Eventually, somebody figured out that it might be fun for everybody to share the beach, and the boys decided that they were willing to put on a few clothes for the privilege of enjoying some female companionship with their surf and sand. That was the beginning of the end of the bathing machine. If you’re willing to allow a man to see you in the water, you’re probably not going to care much longer about whether he sees you getting into it.
Besides, people of all genders were starting to realize that swimsuits were comfortable and fun…and that a lot of their fellow bathers are pretty nice to look at when they’re not covered in layer upon layer of heavy cotton and wool.
Wondering about those bathing suits? Good. We’re taking a look at them next week!

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NOT SO DAISY FRESH

Summer really starts to stink in mid-August, at least in the U.S., and so does everyone living through it. Even now, there’s little or no deodorant that can stand up to yard work in a 110-degree heat index. Or, let’s be honest, just walking from the air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned room and back again.
But at least we have modern ways to deal with the sweat.
In the late 19th century, there weren’t a lot of effective deodorants, but there was a strong new emphasis on cleanliness. Particularly for the ladies.
August must have been pretty miserable.
Breathable cotton clothes only get you so far if you’re wearing several layers of them. Even with the help of dress shields, which were exactly what they sound like: half-moon-shaped (usually) fabric things that were sewn into the appropriate place in your top, there would still be a lot of sweat out there. Dress shields also came in rubber, but I, for one, don’t even want to imagine what it must have been like to have a chunk of damp rubber stuck to my underarm in 90-degree weather.
And all of that before things started to, shall we say, smell less than daisy-fresh.
The first commercial deodorant, a thick cream with the enchanting name of “Mum,” as in “keep it mum,” was invented in 1888. But it would be decades before people just picked up a stick of something the way we do now. Most folks made or bought some kind of concoction that included perfume to mask the scent of sweat, alum to dry it – and often, an ingredient to discourage the bacteria that make sweat stink.
Terrifyingly, at least some home recipes included carbolic acid. That was a popular disinfectant at the time…not to mention a really good way to get a chemical burn if you used too much of it. Let’s hope most people didn’t.
If you didn’t want to risk a DIY, chances were pretty good your local druggist would have something useful. At the time, local pharmacies made all kinds of concoctions in-house, from patent remedies to cosmetics, and your friendly neighborhood druggist almost certainly had a better handle on how much carbolic acid was too much!
The format of your deodorant wasn’t nearly as set as it is now. Most of us are used to sticks, and the occasional roll-on or crystal. But the roll-on wasn’t invented until the 1950s (inspired by the ballpoint pen, of all things!), and the deodorant itself could have been anything from a thick cream to a thin liquid.
No matter what it was, it was pretty messy to put on by our standards. You’d have to rub in the cream, or use a swab to wipe the liquid on the appropriate spot. Powders were also popular for women, and those aren’t known for staying in one place.
Still, it was all better than reeking. And at worst, if you ended up smelling of lavender, carbolic acid, and sweat, people would know that you did make a good effort. That, for our respectable Victorians, was at least as important as whether you actually succeeded in stamping out the stink.
Cleanliness, after all, was next to godliness…and there’s a reason why all of those old horror stories dwell on the foul stench of demons! (They could have used some Mum!)

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REST YOUR NERVES, DEAR

Yes, by 1899, science had a pretty good understanding of human anatomy. No, they didn’t know how all of the parts worked together…especially if they happened to be in a female body. So when Ella Shane’s physician, the very modern-minded Dr. Edith Silver, tells her to rest her nerves for a few days after a nasty shock in A FATAL FINALE, it’s actually more of an inside joke between them than anything else. Ella knows her doc is really just trying to get her to slow down for a day or two before her next arduous tour…and not really suggesting that she’s a poor delicate thing best confined to the fainting couch.
Far too many other doctors would have meant it seriously.
At the time, most of the medical thought about women came from men, because even though a growing number of women were fighting their way into the medical profession, they were still a tiny minority. And many of those women, like Dr. Silver, were far too busy doing good work with their patients to have time to write Important Thoughts, even assuming there was a journal that would accept them from a female. Bad enough that a few women somehow slipped through medical school…surely there’s no need to actually acknowledge their existence!
And the menfolk had a very specific view of women and their capabilities. Mainly that women were built to have children, and all of their “vital energies” should be focused and saved for the purpose. That’s how you get people (men) seriously suggesting that girls shouldn’t read for too long…and goofy things like the half-court basketball game that survived into the 1990s. That’s not a misprint – it’s the NINETEEN-nineties.
All in the name of energy conservation. A particular kind of energy conservation.
Women, the theory went, were delicate little bundles of nerves, who had to stay calm and rested so that they’d be ready for their real job: incubating the next generation. Even in 1899, some people – and not just female people – were starting to think that sounded like what Ella’s reporter pal Hetty would call “absolute hogwash.” If only because none of these alleged experts seemed to be too concerned about the fragile nerves of the women who cleaned their houses, watched their children and washed their linens.
And even in 1899, plenty of folks could tell that they were women too.
Still, there was no doubt that some of the ladies were prone to nerves and fainting. Or at least that some of the ladies seemed to be on the couch in a lace-trimmed heap rather frequently. We might suggest it was a gambit: using the only power they had to get what they wanted. But it certainly happened enough for most folks to have a clear picture of a dainty woman on her chaise, “resting her nerves,” or perhaps plotting her next move.
So really, when Dr. Silver tells Ella to rest her nerves, yes, it’s a little bit of a joke, but it’s a lot more whistling in the dark. They both know that the world, and many of the men in it, have a particular view of women and what they’re here for…and that Ella’s going to be out there fighting it again. Just as soon as she gets a good rest.

HISTORY ON THE ROCKS

Unless you’ve spent the last week in Australia (lucky you!) you’ve probably been going through a lot of cold drinks lately. Whether your jam is lemonade, iced tea, seltzer or slushy, with or without a little adult kick, chances are pretty good that you’ve been using plenty of ice in recent days. And if you’re a history nerd like me, you might have wondered how people got their ice before the days of a good fridge with an icemaker.
Like so many other things we take for granted -- say, comfortable beds, indoor plumbing, and more than one outfit to wear -- iced drinks have been around for centuries, for the top end of society. The ancient Romans used snow from the mountains to cool their wine, and visitors to the Ottoman Empire were very impressed to be welcomed with what we’d recognize as slushies. But unless you had the money and power to force other humans to drag that ice to your house, you were going to be very happy with the water from the local spring, or the bottom of the well –- which was actually pretty refreshing on a summer day, as long as you drank it right away.
It wasn’t until the early 1800s when a New England businessman named Frederick Tudor figured out how to keep ice cold for shipping, and started selling it to wealthy British folks in the Caribbean. Soon, a whole lot of other people realized that having ice was a great idea, and it became a major industry. As it grew, it became more accessible and affordable to the masses.
Ice harvesting was big in New England, the Great Lakes, and anywhere that got cold enough for thick layers of ice to form on bodies of water. It won’t surprise you to know that Norway was one of the other big producers!
Harvesting ice was exactly what it sounds like. In the dead of winter, when the ice on a lake, river or pond was as thick as it would get, crews would go in and saw it out in massive blocks, then load it into ice houses, to keep it covered in straw and other insulation until it could be shipped, usually by barge.
By the mid-19th century, the ice industry had moved well past the wealthiest, and many homes had some minimal refrigeration. Grandma calls the fridge an icebox because that’s the word her mother used – and Great-Grandma probably did grow up with one.
Great-Grandma, and her friends, relied on those ice boxes to keep dairy products and some other things cool, and certainly, if your Great-Grandma was anything like mine, enjoyed the occasional drink “on the rocks.”
Iceboxes were common enough that when the winter wasn’t cold enough in Maine or Minnesota, there would be shortages, known as “ice famines.” It happened often enough that some companies went out of business, and speculators ruined themselves trying to take advantage of the following years. But ice had become an essential household item, and the daily visit from the ice wagon was a fixture of comfortable home life (just like the milkman) into the 1920s at least.
Reliable electric refrigeration finally did what ice famines couldn’t, and superseded the old icebox. But the next time you get a cold drink, take a good look at those ice cubes – and maybe add a splash of something in honor of Great-Grandma and her pal the ice wagon.