Jennifer Kloester Read online

  Cures for freckles, sunburn, wrinkles, rough skin, dry skin, blotched skin and even facial hair were all offered with impressive assurances of their miraculous powers and efficacy. The first patent for a depilatory was taken out in 1804 and by the time of the Regency various treatments for the removal of unwanted or excess hair were being offered in newspapers and magazines—often at great expense to the unwary man or woman seduced by persuasive advertising. The manufacturers of Trent’s Depilatory promised (at a cost of £1 sent by mail) ‘efficacy and innocence’ and beautifully smooth skin as a result of applying their product, confident that there was no way for dissatisfied customers to regain their money.

  Home-made beauty aids were also popular during the period and hints and recipes were a common feature in the books and magazines of the time. Two books popular in the early nineteenth century were The Toilet of Flora; or a collection of the most simple and approved methods of preparing baths, pomatums and sweet-scented waters; with receipts for cosmetics (1775, translated from the French, with numerous editions) and The Mirror of Graces (1811). Both books offered readers recipes and suggestions for enhancing beauty such as pimpernel water as the ‘sovereign beautifier of the complexion’ or the juice of green pineapples for removing wrinkles and giving ‘the complexion the air of youth’. In The Grand Sophy, Lady Ombersley and the Marquesa de Villacañas discussed the respective merits of the ‘Lotion of Ladies of Denmark’, distilled water of green pineapples, raw veal laid on the skin, and crushed strawberries and chervil water as aids to the complexion. Recipes often called for expensive ingredients such as spermaceti, rose oil and pure white wax (for chapped lips), brandy and white wine (for lavender water) or exotic items such as myrrh, alkanet root, benzoin or gum sandrach for making products to improve the complexion.

  11

  Eat, Drink and Be Merry

  FOOD, REMOVES, REPASTS AND A LIGHT NUNCHEON

  London during the Regency was still surrounded by market gardens and small farms with dairy farms in Islington and Belsize Park, fields of grain in Chelsea and Hammersmith, and cows grazing in the meadows along Kensington High Street all helping to feed the growing population. Meat was the centrepiece of the English diet—bacon for those of the poorer classes who could afford it, mutton and beef for the middle classes and the same for the upper classes with the addition of pork, poultry, game, fish and occasional delicacies such as turtle. Fruit had long been considered by many to be indigestible but the discovery in the eighteenth century that scurvy could be prevented by eating fresh fruit and vegetables led to an increase in their consumption in the nineteenth century.

  Among the wealthy, three courses was considered the optimum number for dinner. The first course generally consisted of soup, a series of entrées, several meat dishes and fish, while the second course focused mainly on meat including game birds, poultry, beef, pork and mutton with a number of vegetable dishes, savouries and sauces served in addition. In False Colours, the portly gourmand, Sir Bonamy Ripple, felt that a second course of just a goose, cauliflower, French beans, peas, asparagus, lobster and a basket of pastries with side dishes of perhaps a braised ham and a haunch of venison would be the ideal thing for a ‘small’ dinner. The third course was the dessert or ‘afters’ course, usually consisting of an assortment of pastries, creams, jellies, ices, nuts and fruit. Each course was laid out according to a particular pattern, depending on the types of food included in the menu. A first course with soup and entrées, for example, saw the soups placed on the four corners of the table ready for serving and the entrées placed in lines along the sides of the table thus making them ‘side’ dishes. Once the soup was finished with, servants would remove the tureens and replace them with dishes of fish such as turbot, smelts, salmon or eel. Dishes to be taken away and replaced in this manner were known as ‘removes’. Guests selected their food mainly from the dishes nearest to them as no one was expected to eat from every dish on the table. It was considered acceptable, although not always desirable, to ask one’s nearest neighbour to pass a particular dish or to call on a servant to bring one’s choice from the other side of the table. Kitty Charing was overwhelmed by the vast array of food when she was invited to dinner at the vulgar Mrs Scorton’s in Cotillion and was unable to eat much more than a French olive. In some houses the table was cleared and completely relaid between courses while the dinner guests continued conversing around the servants’ activities; the cloth was always removed before the dessert was laid out. For a formal dinner the best linen, crystal, china and silverware were used and the guests were seated around the table according to rank. Dinner guests were expected to gather in the drawing-room before the evening meal for at least a quarter of an hour of introductions and conversation before being summoned to the table. On the butler’s announcement of ‘Dinner is served’ the men would offer their arms to the women and the host would escort the highest-ranking lady present to the dining room, followed by the rest of the guests in order of precedence. Despite a general preference for Sir Thomas Bolderwood’s lovely daughter Marianne in The Quiet Gentleman, etiquette demanded that several of her admirers escort other ladies in to dinner. The Earl of St Erth gave his arm to the Duchess of Rutland, his brother Martin took in a countess, Lord Ulverston escorted another high-born lady and to Mr Warboys was given the privilege of escorting the baronet’s daughter.

  Although an ever greater array of food became available during the Regency with imported dishes from foreign climes, a wider variety of fish due to faster transport and new recipes brought to England by foreign chefs—particularly after the French Revolution—traditional English fare remained popular and predominant. Hot and cold meat continued as the focus of every meal and it was not uncommon for men to eat cold beef or ham for breakfast, washed down with a tankard of ale. In The Reluctant Widow, Nicky Carlyon was glad to serve himself a large plate of cold roast beef before sitting down to join his brother and Mrs Cheviot for breakfast. Meals or repasts could be large or small depending on the occasion but as the gap between breakfast and dinner was gradually extended it became more common for the wealthier classes to indulge in a small repast between these two meals. To this end a refreshment known as a nuncheon was sometimes served, particularly when guests were in the house, which often consisted of cold meats, cheese, bread and fruit. A repast could be a meal of any size but it was usually specified as either a ‘light repast’ or a ‘grand repast’; the Prince Regent was particularly fond of the latter.

  MEALS AND MENUS

  For the wealthier classes meals were an important part of the daily routine with breakfast eaten at nine or ten in the morning and dinner at five or eight in the evening, depending on whether those dining were keeping country or town hours. Breakfast tended to be a more substantial meal than in the previous century and often included kippers, herring, eggs or slices of ham kept hot in chafing dishes laid out on a sideboard in the dining room from which guests could serve themselves. This was usually in addition to the traditional toast, tea, coffee, chocolate and fresh rolls with butter which was the preferred breakfast for many Regency ladies (and which was frequently served to them in bed by their maid).

  The gradual shift to a later dinner hour than had been usual in the previous century also saw the introduction into some households of a midday meal in the form of luncheon (not to be confused with the light refreshment of a ‘nuncheon’ which could be eaten at any time of the day), a practice which had become increasingly common by the end of the Regency. Traditionally, dinner had always meant the midday meal, eaten at around noon, but by the early nineteenth century the country dinner hour was usually five, or sometimes six, o’clock, while in the city the fashionable hour, for what had by then become the main meal of the day, could be as late as eight or even nine o’clock in the evening. Upper-class visitors to the country often observed town hours while staying at a country estate or shooting-box although Arabella, used to dining at five, caused Mr Beaumaris’s French chef, Alphonse, great distress by unwi