Amelia Edith Barr: An English Girl Who Crossed the Pond & Some Thoughts on Yorkshire Pudding

 

“I entered this incarnation on March the 29th, A.D. 1831 at the ancient town of Ulverston, Lancashire, England … I brought my soul with me – an eager soul, impatient for the loves and joys, the struggles and triumphs of the dear, unforgotten world.”

 

So wrote the late Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr of her birth into the world on this date in 1831. One of the most prolific writers of the late 19th Century, author of at least 33 novels, her name has faded in the century that has passed since her death. But what a life she lived – imagine a typical English girl, born as the Victorian Era was dawning – then making the journey to America, settling as a young wife in Galveston, Texas  just after the Civil War – a place less like England could scarcely be imagined! – and finally moving to New York for her final years.

 

Her English childhood remembrances find their way into much of her writing, I am told.  So she would have understood that:

“…in spite of unprotected poverty … ingenuity and careful cooking and buying produced a tradition of good, simple food, some of which is very much to our taste today.” – Elisabeth Ayrton, “English Provincial Cooking,” p. 62.

 

She herself wrote, in her autobiography, “All the Days of My Life”:

“Our usual fare was very plain … Breakfast was always a bowl of bread and milk boiled, and a rather thick slice of bread and butter after it. Fresh meat was sparingly given us at dinner, but we had plenty of broth, vegetables and Yorkshire pudding.”

 

Yorkshire Pudding – we all should try that at least once in our life! Here's a link to Nicky Corbishley's version: https://www.kitchensanctuary.com/perfect-yorkshire-puddings/

 

So on this day to honor Amelia Barr, I promise to add at least one of her novels to my library, as soon as I can. If I like it, there’s more where that came from.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elisabeth LeBrun: France in Turmoil Gave Us An Artist to Remember

Image
  She seemed to like self-portraits. And there is Nothing Wrong with that. Because in my opinion, self-confidence is a beautiful thing. You need it when you are a largely self-taught artist, and a woman at that – a woman working to survive in the 18 th  century, trying to keep your neck out of the guillotine of the French Revolution. Such was the life of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, born April 16, 1755. Besides, one of the best of her self-portraits, in my opinion, is a tender depiction of her with her daughter. She is smiling, slightly open-mouthed. It’s an “awe-sweet” work of art for our modern eyes. It was a scandal to her contemporaries. You didn’t depict people, especially yourself, with an open-mouthed smile, not by the rules of art in 18 th  Century France. Maybe all the people with rotten teeth resented people who had nice ones to show off. Of course, Elisabeth painted plenty of portraits of other people, including various members of royalty. She was a Royalist, certa...
Read more

Nelly Bly: Into the Darkness to Make a Difference. And a Taste of Curry

Image
  History is like a great big ball of bread dough. Every day – every second of every day – history happens. The dough ball swells as the yeast of time goes to work on it. And so no human brain can possibly contain every important date or every noteworthy person who ever lived. And there is no way that a single book – or even a shelf of encyclopedias, or these days, even a website – could cover the rise and fall of every nation and empire from the ancient Americas across to the lands of Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The classroom classics of decades ago shift and make way for newer ones. And yet, we try. We who love people and history, we try. We learn places and people and events and we labor all our lives to blow off the dust, to keep the light shining, to bail with our little buckets the sand that is constantly pouring into the hole. So Nellie Bly. That's her pen name. She was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran.  Today, May 5, is her birthday. May 5, 1864, in Cochran...
Read more

Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Image
 The little, one-time farming community of Henrietta, N.Y., is today overshadowed by nearby Rochester. But on May 20, 1825, a girl was born in Henrietta who would make a big mark in American history. Antoinette Blackwell was blessed with forward-thinking parents, who recognized her high intelligence early in her life, and encouraged her abilities. She was preaching in her local Congregational church while still a teenager.  Read that last sentence slowly and thoughtfully.  The world outside Henrietta and Rochester was not quite so tolerant. Brown would spend the rest of her life battling the obstacles of her day set up against women in church leadership -- and against women in general. Nonetheless, in 1852 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in America.  "Our sister in Christ, Antoinette L. Brown, is one of the Ministers of the New Covenant, authorized, qualified, and called by God to preach the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ," declared the Rev. Luther...
Read more