From the New England Kitchen of Heloise Frost

I probably bring too many things made of paper home from estate sales.  But paper is one of the ways we record important things; paper helps tell the story of our lives.

Case in point: a small box of greeting cards I picked up at a sale earlier this year. 

The box is labeled

NEW ENGLAND 

NOTES

with

Traditional Recipes

From the New England Kitchen

of Heloise Frost

 Inside was a set of blank greeting cards. 

And a set of different recipes, one for each card.

You fold a recipe and tuck it into a slot cut into the front of the blank card.

The inside of the card opens to reveal a space to write a personal note.

  
I suspect these cards date back to the early 1950s. That's when a couple of cookbooks were published under the name of Heloise Frost.  One was called Early American Recipes and the other, A World of Good Eating.

I wasn't able to find out anything about Heloise Frost, save that she was a New England author who lived in an 1809 house in New Hampshire. (She was not the same "Heloise" who's famous for writing a syndicated newspaper household advice column, Hints from Heloise.)

The illustrations for Early American Recipes were by another New Englander, artist Barbara Corrigan, and it appears that the designs on my vintage greeting cards were by Corrigan as well.  She was a well-known and respected New England artist, who illustrated books and also drew for the children's magazine Highlights.

Here are some of the recipes from the greeting card set.

I don't have a copy of either of Heloise Frost's cookbooks, but their legacy lives on, online.  Cookbook collector The Culinary Cellar has blogged about her:

http://theculinarycellar.com/a-world-of-food-from-a-1950s-new-england-kitchen/

Copies of Frost's two books are readily available from online sellers, from $5 to $50 and more.

Here's an article on artist Barbara Corrigan:

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/go/ahead-of-her-time/article_3efbb2f6-e901-5ab8-b1b1-f6bf0fa0ed3b.html

Remembering Peggy Fortnum and Paddington Bear

Another legendary children's book illustrator has passed away. Peggy Fortnum, who along with author Michael Bond, first brought Paddington Bear to life in the book series, died recently at the age of 96.  

I hope you were fortunate enough to have read the Paddington books when you were a child. If not, find them and read them today. 

Here's the Guardian's obituary of Peggy Fortnum, with lots of pictures:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/apr/04/peggy-fortnum-obituary

And here's my original blog post about Paddington, from 2014.

Finding Paddington

Whenever I visit London, the very first thing I do is stop to say hello to an old friend.  

We take the train from Heathrow Airport to Paddington Station, and then I find the statue of Paddington Bear.  I sit with him for a moment while I collect my thoughts, and watch parents bring small children by to pat his nose and take pictures with him.

Statue of Paddington Bear, Paddington Station,
London, England, Europe, The World

I hope you're already familiar with Paddington, the beloved small brown bear from Darkest Peru, portrayed in a series of books by author Michael Bond.  (I won't call them "children's books" because the best children's books are really for grownups too.)  If not, I think you'll enjoy them.

I first met Paddington and his gentle adventures as a child, when my mom read the stories to us aloud.  Mom, a child of the radio drama age, really knew how to read aloud: she took her time, did all the voices, and showed us the pictures as they appeared in the text.  

Mr. Gruber and Paddington share cocoa for their elevenses,
in More About Paddington.  Illustration by Peggy Fortnum.

Bond, a cameraman at the BBC, was inspired to write the first story,A Bear Called Paddington, after he bought a small plush bear left alone on a shelf at Selfridge's department store as a last-minute Christmas present for his wife. His story became the first Paddington book, published in 1958.

The Paddington.com website has archived an interview with Michael Bond, who said:

"The great advantage of having a bear as a central character is that he can combine the innocence of a child with the sophistication of an adult...

"He gets involved in everyday situations. He has a strong sense of right and wrong and doesn't take kindly to the red tape bureaucracy of the sillier rules and regulations with which we humans surround ourselves. As a bear he gets away with things. Paddington is humanised, but he couldn't possibly be 'human'. It just wouldn't work."

The website also notes:

The Paddington books have sold more than thirty-five million copies worldwide and have been translated into over forty languages, including Latin.

In 1997 Michael Bond was awarded an OBE for services to children’s literature. He is still writing and lives in London, not far from Paddington Station where it all began.

Even though the books are loved by millions of children and people who used to be children around the world, many more first met Paddington as a plush toy.  Paddington.com reports:

The very first Paddington bear soft toy was designed in the UK by a lady called Shirley Clarkson. She made it as a Christmas present for her children, Joanna and Jeremy Clarkson (who was to go on to become a world famous motoring journalist). So many people admired Shirley’s Paddington that she started to make some more until her company, Gabrielle Designs and was granted an official licence to sell them in the UK in 1972....

[Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson and Paddington Bear.  Now there's an odd couple, personality-wise.]

...Meanwhile, Paddington’s popularity was beginning to grow outside the UK and in 1975 the US company Eden Toys acquired the licence to make and sell Paddington bears throughout the rest of the world.

There have been dozens of other licensed Paddington items since then.  Every so often I find a plush Paddington Bear at an estate sale, in gently-loved condition. Here's a plush version of Paddington created by Eden Toys:

At another estate sale, I found a boxed set of paperback Paddington books.

Paddington's  appearance has morphed several times over the years, but to my mind the way he originally looked is still the best.  The illustrations by Peggy Fortnum perfectly complement the gentle nature of the original stories.  Here's another example from More About Paddington:

You can see what a very small bear Paddington was:

In this chapter, Paddington has never before experienced Christmas in England, and the Brown family members are concerned that he might try to play Father Christmas by coming down their chimney.

As you may have heard, Paddington has been made into a major motion picture for this holiday season, starring some of Britain's greatest actors (Hugh Bonneville, Peter Capaldi, Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent, for starters) as the humans in the story.  

I think the best way to first experience Paddington is to read the book, or even better, have someone read it to you.  The chapters in the books lend themselves nicely to reading each story a bit at a time.

You don't know someone who would read aloud to you? Here's a link to a nice long audio sample of the inimitable Stephen Fry reading a passage from A Bear Called Paddington:
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Literature/European-Classics/A-Bear-Called-Paddington/23142

_________________________________________

Here's a link to the movie section of the official Paddington website: http://www.paddington.com/gb/the-movie/

Paddington has starred in several different versions of his story in the UK.  You can watch some of Paddington's adventures on YouTube.  Stop-motion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cD0rtuWpso&index=18&list=PLWJa48pm3noa-CVm1nZMEZUHcQTH795Pm

And animated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzxJ3mqIFAE