I made Mrs. Darling’s Lemon Pie the day I neglected to send my child to school. Perhaps it was mid-pandemic brain or the fact that my work was closed for President’s Day. Maybe it was the general February Frustrations. In any case, we were all in the house, again (still?), and I longed for something to fascinate me. Fascinate me, but for a small chunk of time, because a fragmented schedule is all I’ve got.
I’d snapped a picture of Mrs. Darling’s Lemon Pie recipe a few weeks prior while at work at the Derry Public Library. It comes from a Receipt Register circa 1889 which was a recipe compilation created by the ladies of the Derry Depot. Their intention was to sell it and raise money to erect the chapel of St. Luke’s Church. I walk past St. Luke’s church five days a week, particularly admiring the glow of its stained glass windows on Tuesday nights when I get out at 8. The people of the Depot were obviously successful in their endeavor.
I went back to the recipe book multiple times before I snapped the picture, pulling it from the museum collection over the period of a few weeks. Just to look. Then look again. Then look a little closer. For me, opening this old book of recipes, and searching for clues of a life left on paper, is like opening a window into the past. Only with this experiment, since we’ll look at genealogical records, it’s more like opening a window into her house, not just her time period, setting our elbows on the frame and getting personal. “So…how did you die?”
But before death, there was pie. And that’s where I started.
The Pie
This particular recipe fascinates me for a few reasons. First, someone took the time to scribble it down post-publication of the original content, which is printed, not handwritten. Second, the matter of fact instructions leaves a lot of trust in the interpreter. And finally, although it’s basically a lemon meringue, it doesn’t call for sugar…. though Mrs. Hawthorne’s lemon pie, just one page back, has sugar and eggs in spades. Why not? I wondered. Was it left out by the recorder? Intentionally not included to keep it healthier? Perhaps it had it been written in the left margin and separated by age and use? Or was it a pie for when sugar was lacking?
I didn’t know, but Instagram voted on this one, so I made this one. Not Mrs. Hawthorne’s lemon pie. Not Mrs. Bean’s cracker pudding. This one.
I should be up front, since you may be here about food. I’m not fancy. I don’t make a great pie crust. I habitually neglect to take the teabag out of my tea and distrust people who like the stuff weak. I enjoy the burn of microplaned garlic on cucumbers. Wine is fine in a mason jar. So is a gin and tonic. I’m an inadvertent plate smasher and generally clumsy around the kitchen. In other words, I’m not refined. Or really even skilled. The instructions that Mrs. Darling left me were, well, meant for a housewife who knew what she was doing.
So it comes as no surprise that my first attempt failed badly…I burned the outer crust, broke the meringue, made a sloppy custard. And without the sugar, the lemon executed an unpleasant one-two punch to the taste buds.
Then again, on a not so great day, the house began to smell like lemons and butter, and the yolks brought such a rich yellow to the custard I couldn’t help but notice it looked like a little puddle of sunlight had landed on the counter.
The second try went a bit better. Admittedly, the kid had gone to bed. The house was quieter. I went in more confident and casual. I pulled the pie crust before it turned golden. She said heaping tablespoon of corn starch. I scooped a small mountain. The custard thickened beautifully. I tossed a bit of sugar in here and there, because I had it…..and knew it would take the edge off. I whipped the meringue just until shiny, and while it wasn’t perfect, it browned to a lovely gold in just 10 minutes in the 350 degree oven.
When I bit into it the second time it was like eating sunshine. Bright and very likely to make you smile at the end of a long day… though still suffering under the weight of its tartness. If I were to rename it, I’d add that. Mrs. Darling’s Tart Lemon Pie.
But I’m not here to make stuff up.
Sour or not, I went off to the archives to open that window into the past just a bit more. To find Mrs. Darling…and find her, I did.
Mrs. Darling
When I first saw “Mrs. Darling’s Lemon Pie,” I imagined a housewife in a yellow dress carrying a pie in a basket, perhaps greeting a neighbor with a smile. It’s funny what our imaginations do with a few suggestive words. In fact, Mrs. Laura A. Darling was a boarding house mistress turned shoe-stitcher with an orange cat named Ikey.
Mrs. Darling was born Laura Perkins in 1853. Her father, Spencer Perkins, was a “Cattle Slaughterer,” her mother Martha (Williams) Perkins, kept house. They lived in Old Town Maine, defined by its Abenaki history and roaring Penobscot River. By the age of 17, Laura had married 28 year old James P. Darling. James was a veteran of the Civil War and had fought with the 5th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment. By 1880, they had moved to Concord, NH and were living in a boarding house kept by one Mrs. Kate A. Shud.
In the next 12 years, Laura had 6 children. For much of that time, she lived in Concord, but by the mid-to-late 1880s, she was part of the Derry Depot. That’s not to be mistaken with East Derry, where the upper crust lived. The Derry Depot was down by the train station, a bustling part of town near the First Baptist Church, the cleaners and the shoe factories. From her home, Mrs. Darling would have been able to hear the Boston & Maine rolling up the track, carrying passengers from Lawrence to Manchester. She would have passed by Pillsbury’s shoe factory and attended meetings of the Pythian Sisters at Oddfellows Hall. She would have frequented Charles Bartlett’s Apothecary and likely read The Derry News.
Mrs. Darling was a busy woman.
On 23 August 1889, she held a house-warming party to celebrate the opening of Fair View House; her own boarding house. With six children and a lodging that could fit 30, I imagine Mrs. Darling had a lot to keep up with. One fun anecdote I came across was recorded in the Derry News in October of 1890. Drama: some tough “Lynnites” showed up in town, visited a saloon and then went to Fair View House where they stole an umbrella. They were pursued to the train station (by Laura’s son-in-law) where some rhowdyism ensued. Luckily “stonecutter Moore,” who was standing nearby, put an end to the situation with one well-dealt blow to the culprit. Read on for the dramatic details.
Stonecutter Moore is someone I would very much not like to take a punch from. You?
One thing I noticed during my time tracking Mrs. Darling was that she was bucking the norm in some ways. Oftentimes when you go back to the mid to late 1800s, the women are harder to find, having been absorbed by their husband’s identities. And yet, there was Mrs. Darling in the Derry Depot, more often mentioned without Mr. Darling than with. On 12 April 1895, the newspaper noted that she’d moved with her two daughters to Birch Street (both daughters were divorcees). By 1900 she was working as a shoe stitcher in one of the Derry shoe factories. No evidence of Mr. Darling in the same residence, or even the same town.
On the 10th of January 1902, The Derry News simply ran:
Mrs. Laura Darling has resigned her position in the factory and is contemplating going West.
“Derry Doings,” The Derry News (Derry, NH) 10 January 1902, p. 1, c. 6; Digital images, Derry Public Library Digital Archives (http://derry.advantage-preservation.com/ : accessed 2 February 2021)
Was she dreaming of a different life? Perhaps. The late 1800s and early 1900s seemed to be a difficult time for Mrs. Darling. In June of 1902, her cat, Ikey, went missing. One month later, her mother, whom she often visited in Haverhill, passed away.
One year later, she was divorced.
The cause of the divorce, as indicated above, was Extreme Cruelty. To put it plainly, abuse. Far be it from me to project, but do we think the divorce was maybe the end of something bad and the start of something better? I wish I knew.
After her divorce, Mrs. Darling moved up to Concord.
In 1910 she was living in the home of Charles L. Rowe on Lake Street. Both Charles and Laura had been legally divorced. He was a foreman at Granite Works and she was listed as housekeeper, but unemployed. Rowe’s grandson, Spencer Bowdwin (age 7), was also in the house with the two of them.
In July of 1914, Charles handed over a gift deed ($1) for the house to Laura–with conditions…
Transcription: … to my own use during my natural life, without impeachment of waste, and after my decease to the use of said Laura A. Darling, her heirs and assigns forever.
Provided, however, that if said Laura A. Darling shall neglect or refuse, at my request ——- to keep house for me in a house wife-ly manner, then this conveyance shall be void. The above mentioned premises are subject to a mortgage for $750- held by the Merrimack Savings Bank.
He promptly died just three months later. From that point, and perhaps to maintain the house and that mortgage, Laura worked at the worsted mill up into her sixties.
Laura Darling died on 30 June 1930 at the New Hampshire State Hospital. The NH State Hospital was a mental institution, but it’s unclear if Laura was a patient.
Did “Just visiting” mean she had recently been admitted or did it mean that she was literally visiting a friend? No obvious affiliations, such as children, were found at the State Hospital on the census taken just 3 months earlier. Perhaps one of her Pythian Sisters was there. Or perhaps she was just dropping something by. It looked to be a cardiac event.
Laura was remembered fondly in the Derry News. Reverend I.J. Enslin conducted the funeral ceremonies and the Pythian Sisters performed their services. Many flowers were sent, all of which were listed, along with a thanks from her descendants.
Laura was buried with her divorcee, James Darling, in Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry, NH. Even though she’d divorced him all the way back in 1903 they were always together in some way or another. In fact, most records and city directories post 1903 stated that Laura Darling was married–up until the death of James Darling in 1913, at which point she then reverted to widow. They were bound together–Perhaps due to 6 children. Or social stigma/norms. Or fiscal circumstance. It’s impossible for us to know from here, but we do know she was laid to rest with her abuser and her son, Dustin, who had died earlier from Hodgkin’s Disease.
His Wife. It’s right there in stone.
I hate to end on a sad note, but you know each Soulspun Kitchen story ends in death. And that’s all I’ve got on Mrs. Darling.
That and a house scented with lemons and a deep yearning to drop a train ticket West through a window to the past.
Perhaps a cup or two of sugar…just to sweeten the journey.
What would you leave Mrs. Darling if you could travel back?