Spots, or Two Hundred and Two Cleansers (1906) is an obvious sequel to May Southworth’s 101 Epicurean Thrills series, with the same format and internal design as the cookbooks throughout. However, this book was not compiled by Southworth, but instead by Clarice T. Courvoisier. In 1906, Clarice was thirty-four years old and newly married. It’s unknown how she was commissioned to write the book, but a reasonable guess is that Southworth and Courvoisier knew each other socially.
The book includes cures for all the stains you would expect: soot, grass, wine, blood, etc. However, Courvoisier assumes your cleaning closet contains many items no longer kept there today, including turpentine, gasoline, kerosene, benzine, muriatic acid, sulphuric acid, oxalic acid, hypochloride of lime, sal-volatile (ammonium carbonate in alcohol), powdered pipe-clay, and powdered whiting (chalk dust). She also assumes you’ll be needing to clean your stuffed animals (“brush the specimen with a clothes-brush, then warm some bran, stirring it to prevent burning, and rub it into the fur three or four times, then brush it all out”), ostrich plumes (“they may be held over fumes of sulphur, which will clean and curl them. It must be done out of doors”), and violins (“wash with soap and water, or dip a piece of soft silk in paraffin oil and rub. Cleanse the interior with dry rice).”
Perhaps unnecessarily for a book about cleansers—“a handy volume for the housewife,” says the 1911 Impressions Annual catalog—Spots was still given the usual Paul Elder treatment, with at least two bindings and at least three different cover states (see photos). The “Housewife Edition” was issued in paper wraps with a matching envelope, while the “Tomoye Edition” was bound in hand-finished, flexible suede calf for $2. (Who buys a book about cleaning products in hand-finished, flexible suede?) The smart money is on Spencer Wright as the cover design artist, given that he designed the covers for 101 Epicurean Thrills, but I have no confirmation of this.
Clarice Towne was born on 17 November 1872 in Petaluma, California, the sixth of seven children of Smith Darius Towne, a druggist, and Amanda Henrietta Munday. Both her parents came to Petaluma from Missouri in the 1850s and were reckoned two of the city’s pioneers. Clarice’s obituary notes that she was educated in Petaluma and “was one the of the members of the social set.”
Clarice married art dealer Ephraim Benoit Courvoisier in San Francisco on 3 September 1905. It was her first marriage, but his third; their daughter Alice was born in 1908. The marriage ended in divorce, and Clarice later remarried a man named Courtney. (Ephraim Courvoisier would go on to marry two more women, for a total of five wives.) Clarice died on 5 November 1930 in Los Angeles, and is buried in the Towne family plot in Petaluma.
