My recipe explorations have exposed me to a fair amount of lifestyles of the wealthy, but this week’s family really takes the cake.
Charlotte and Clifford Truesdell were known for dressing formally for dinner – Clifford in “lace collars and cuffs” and Charlotte in evening gowns, according to the Baltimore Sun Magazine in 1978.
Clifford swore that they were not putting on airs but were “attempting to uphold the dignity of man.” The Truesdells preferred formality in their lives. “It imposes order,” Sun writer Frederic Kelly paraphrased.
The couple’s Guilford home, which they called “Il Palazzetto,” was filled with walnut paneling, gold gilding, and fine art (including many nudes of Mrs. Truesdell).
Charlotte Truesdell was born Charlotte Janice Brudno in Massachussetts in 1922. She earned a mathematics degree at Cambridge Junior College before working in a lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, doing work involving radiation.
In the late 1940s, she working as a mathematician for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington when she met Clifford Truesdell (the 3rd). They married in 1951.
When they relocated to Indiana in the 1950s, Charlotte earned a master’s degree in mathematics at Indiana University.
The remainder of Charlotte’s career was spent primarily in assisting Clifford with his scholarly articles. Her calculations are cited in such famous papers as “On The Reliability Of The Membrane Theory Of Shells Of Revolution.”
Despite being an apparently talented mathematician, it was her life as a society hostess and arts patron that she would be most remembered for. In the 1960s, the Truesdells moved to Baltimore, where Clifford took a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. Soon, the Truesdell’s began to transform an unfinished home in Guilford into the extravagant “Il Palazzetto,” a ‘little palace’ filled with artisan cabinetry, antique furniture, fine art, and musical instruments.
Charlotte was an accomplished pianist. Perhaps she was also a harpsichordist. In their home, according to the Sun, were not one but two harpsichords, one of which the author noted “rest[ed] incongrously on two sawhorses.”
In addition to fine art, the couple were fans and patrons of baroque music. They held several formal invitation-only concerts in their home each year, and fed and housed traveling musicians.
Frederic Kelly’s 1978 profile of Clifford Truesdell, entitled “Professor Truesdell: Eccentric Genius,” was not 100% flattering. Several anonymous people were interviewed who were not such big fans of the Truesdells, describing the baroque music dinners as a scene where the couple held court for sycophants, who tiptoed carefully to avoid the intolerance that Clifford demonstrated for “his intellectual inferiors.” Truesdell resented the U.S. involvement in World War II and coeducation. An anonymous Johns Hopkins colleague described him as a ‘prima donna.’
The Truesdell’s loved Baltimore. Clifford described it as a place where the dignity of man was recognized and respected (???!!! – ed.). He loved that the city was large enough to have baroque musicians and fine artists, but small enough to “know them as friends.”
In the study of “Il Palazzetto,” there hung a portrait of Charlotte, painted by the Baltimore artist Joseph Shepherd. The painting rendered Judith holding aloft the severed head of
Charlotte died in 2008. Her obituary in the Baltimore Sun noted that in addition to her musical talents “she also loved to cook, and was proficient in a range of cuisines, from French to Thai.”
The recipe that Charlotte Truesdell contributed to the A.C.I.M. cookbook for “Rosamarina Sauce” is my kind of ‘fancy’, and by that I mean it was simple – although it seemed somewhat incomplete. It’s not so much of a sauce at all… Still, served atop fresh egg pasta, it was perfection. I am not sure what the Truesdell’s connection to the American Committee on Italian Migration was. One obituary for Clifford stated that “His love of Italy is illustrated by the numerous times he was in the country as a visiting lecturer.”
Doing my best to channel the Truesdell spirit, I elevated my pasta dinner with a twelve-dollar bottle of wine. Alas, my ball gown was at the cleaners that night.
Recipe:
- .125 Cup fresh rosemary, crushed
- 2 Tablespoons butter
- 2 slices pancetta
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 pinch hot red pepper flakes
- 1 Tablespoon Perorino Romano
Sauté pancetta and garlic in butter. Mash garlic and rosemary. Add to pancetta. Boil 1/2 pound spaghetti al dente. Top with sauce. Garnish with Pecorino Romano and red pepper flakes.
Recipe from “Italian American Favorite Recipes” by the Friends and Members of American Committee on Italian Migration
