Tea for Two - Or More



The afternoon tea party seems as British as crumpets and the Union Jack. But the custom didn't really start to develop in England until the 19th century.
Tea drinking itself was popular in Britain long before the Regency. Charles II’s Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza, enjoyed a good cup of tea. She even brought a casket of tea leaves with her when she came to England to be married in 1662. She is considered England’s first tea-drinking Queen.

Queen Catherine, by Peter Lely in 1665
 

Legend has it that Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, came up with the idea of serving afternoon tea in the early 1800s. It was a bit of a stretch in those days between meals, so Anna asked for tea and a bite to eat in the late afternoon to keep her hunger at bay. Reportedly, she also took advantage of the Earl of Sandwich’s invention – two slices of bread with a filling in-between.


It wasn't long before this afternoon tea break became a good excuse for inviting some friends over for socializing. How early this custom began is unclear, but Jane Austen made a reference to afternoon tea around 1804, in a book she never finished.

During the Regency era visitors were seldom offered anything to eat or drink, but that changed as tea parties became more fashionable. And soon it wasn't enough to enjoy a hot cup of tea with your friends – you had to learn a host of etiquette rules so you could drink the stuff properly.

Here’s a poster that spells out some of those rules:

Poster offered by Penhaligon's of London 

I wonder if the Mad Hatter held his cup correctly at his perpetual tea party? I’ll bet Alice knew what to do.

John Tenniel's illustration of the Mad Hatter's tea party in
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
(wood engraving by Thomas Dalziel)


Tea parties are still popular today, though maybe not always performed with the same enthusiasm these gentlemen are exhibiting:


Photo by Matt Baume


But at least the tradition lives on. Maybe someday you'll be inspired to host your own tea party. Invite some friends over, and ditch the tea bags and mugs. Instead, find a tea pot and a set of pretty little cups and saucers. If you have a tea cozy to cover the pot and keep the brew warm, so much the better. Perhaps you can serve cut-up cucumber or watercress sandwiches and small cakes or cookies. Just be sure to keep your pinkie finger down as you hold your cup by its handle! 


Drawing by Kate Greenaway (1879)



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Sources for this article include information from the United Kingdom Tea Council Ltd.  and An Afternoon to Remember Fine Tea and Gifts 

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Whole Tooth and Nothing But the Tooth

"The Toothpuller" probably painted by Caravaggio (1571-1610)


Last week as I was sitting in my least favorite piece of furniture – a dentist’s chair – I couldn't help but reflect that if you (like me) are not a fan of going to the dentist now, you would've absolutely dreaded it during the Regency. 

Reporting pain in any tooth to a Regency-era dentist would most likely result in having the offending tooth pulled. And you needn't have worried about a dental hygienist scolding you for not flossing regularly, because there were no hygienists to coach you on preventative care. 

Dentists in the early 19th century dentists were often termed “tooth-pullers” or “tooth-drawers” because they yanked a lot of teeth. Once your decayed teeth were removed you could, if you had the money, get yourself a nice set of false teeth. Realistic-looking false teeth could be made from ivory or whalebone. (George Washington had several sets of false teeth and despite the myths, none of them were wooden.)

A more durable and expensive option was a denture made from real teeth, set in a base of ivory. Real teeth could be obtained from live donors who were willing to sell them for money, or more nefariously from dead ones who didn't get anything in return. 

Part of an old dentist's sign, promising
"painless (guaranteed)" extractions. I think
the parentheses leaves room for doubt.


During the Regency, the latter type of teeth were called “Waterloo teeth” since the teeth were often culled from soldiers as they lay dead on battlefields. Grave robbers (also known as resurrectionists or body snatchers) also provided an illegal supply of teeth. 

The need for false teeth could be avoided, of course, by proper preventative care, but that aspect of dentistry was in its infancy during the early 19th century. We can thank the doctors and dentists of this era for some advancements in dental care, including fillings (used in the early 1800s) and even flossing.

I'll bet these drops effectively eased pain, 
but I doubt they were a cure.


Levi Spear Parmly was an American doctor who practiced in England and France as well as the U.S., and in 1815 he advocated using silk thread to clean between teeth. Despite this innovation, cleaning teeth during the Regency often involved a toothpick or a primitive type of toothbrush, fashioned with hog hair and a stick.

Here's the Prince Regent himself (in caricature) using a fork to clean his teeth after a lavish meal:

©Trustees of the British Museum


Regency men and women did try to clean and whiten their teeth by using powders. This practice started with the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks, who developed powders containing crushed bones, oyster shells, burnt eggshells or even ground oxen hooves. Though tooth powders became less abrasive as the centuries rolled on, modifications to make them milder (like using snail shells instead of oyster shells) didn't make them any more palatable.



Ad for "An Unrivalled Preparation for Cleansing,
Beautifying and Preserving the Teeth & Gums"
(Image from Boston Public Library, www.flickr.com)

By the end of the 18th century tooth powders contained baking soda and borax, which made the powders foamy. During the Regency era glycerin was added, making the powders more paste-like. However, it wasn't until the 1870s that toothpaste was put into jars and mass-produced. By the end of the century a Connecticut doctor had the idea of putting toothpaste into a collapsible tube, which is how most of use the product today.





So the next time you brush and floss your teeth think about the centuries of development that went into this routine. No matter how much you may hate going to the dentist, you can be glad you get to make an appointment with a 21st century dentist instead of a 19th century tooth-puller.


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Sources for this article include:

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, except where otherwise noted

A Stitch in Time


French woman knitting, circa 1801
(Dames a la Mode atTumblr.com)


If you are like me and many of my friends, you just can’t relax for long without a colorful strand of yarn threaded through your fingers and a project to knit or crochet.

Hand knitting and crocheting, used to make sweaters, blankets and other protective clothing, were once necessary skills. It was economical to be able to weave strands of wool or yarn into fabric without a loom. The difference between the two crafts is slight – knitters typically use two needles to make their projects while crocheters use a single hook. 

Today knitting and crocheting are regarded as hobbies - still practical but also satisfying, with a social element thrown in. You can find knitting and crocheting circles in almost every city or region, proof that the practitioners of these crafts like to chat as they work.

Both knitting and crocheting existed during the Regency, though depictions of fashionable ladies enjoying these pastimes are rare. Accomplished young ladies were expected to learn fine needlework skills such as embroidery, along with music, watercolor painting, dancing and a few French phrases to sprinkle in conversation. The humbler skill of knitting wool into fabric for warm clothing was most likely left to the lower classes.


"The Knitting Woman,"
by William-Adolphe Bouguereau


Of the two crafts, knitting is older, probably by a few centuries. The earliest known pieces of knitting appear to have come from Egypt, between the 11th and 14th centuries. These pieces consist of many types of clothing, including stockings.

Indeed, stockings were a common knitted item in the American Colonies. During the Revolutionary War, Martha Washington is said to have organized groups of knitters, urging them to produce bandages and stockings for the soldiers. One wartime knitter, named Mrs. Eliot, incorporated the date 1776 into the socks she knitted.

The patriotic urge to knit socks for soldiers emerged again during World War I, as evidenced by this wartime poster.




And who can forget literature’s nastiest knitter, Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities? During the French Revolution she not only knitted as she watched the guillotine do its grisly job, she also wove the names of the victims into her work. She was definitely a whiz with her knitting needles, even if she was sinister.


Illustration of Madame Defarge knitting
during the French Revolution (The Telegraph)


The art of crochet is more recent. It appears to have sprung fully formed from the pages of ladies’ magazines in the early 19th century, during our Regency period. The first reference in writing to crochet showed up in 1812. In her book, The Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Elizabeth Grant talks about “shepherd’s knitting” as a way to use homespun wool to make items of warm clothing like hats, drawers (underwear) and waistcoats.  An old comb was fashioned into a hook for this work.

There is some evidence that lace making in earlier centuries was a predecessor to crochet. Another theory is that crochet may have evolved from “tambour work,” a type of embroidery done with a hook in 18th century France. The term “crochet” in the early 19th century was spelled as either “crotchet” or “crochet” until about 1848, after which “crochet” was the accepted spelling.

"Woman Knitting,"
by Francoise Duparc, 1726-1778



No matter how you spell it, crocheting, like knitting, is a popular hobby, fun as well as useful. I suspect that women during the Regency period, like women during the centuries before and after, enjoyed keeping these arts alive for the benefit of the generations that followed. I’ll think of them the next time I crochet a dishcloth or knit a scarf.

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Sources for this article include:
  • “Knitting History,” from the Knitting Guild Association website
  • Kooler, Donna, Encyclopedia of Crochet, Leisure Arts. Inc. 2002
  • Madame Defarge: My favourite Charles Dickens character“, February 5, 2012, The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, except where otherwise noted





There Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime Blues: The Summer of 1811 and King George III’s Final Decline

Poster for"The Madness of King George,"
 the story of the King's suffering and recovery
from a bout of porphyria in 1788 



The 1950s rockabilly song “Summertime Blues” is the lament of a teenage boy who has to sacrifice his freedom for a job one summer. As long as he has to work, he knows that there “ain’t no cure” for his blues.

But during the summer of 1811 King George III was suffering from another type of blues, for which there really was no cure. During that first year of the Regency, August marked the Court’s final acceptance of the King’s mental incapacity and the certainty that he’d never be a functional king again. That month the old King’s apartments at Windsor Castle were padded, signifying that no one expected him to ever regain his sanity or resume his duties as the ruling monarch of Great Britain. And indeed, he never did.

That August renovation of the King’s quarters marked a melancholy milestone; prior to 1811 King George had weathered several bouts of what appeared to be madness, but he’d always recovered his wits. However, in November of 1810 King George had a particularly bad spell from which he never fully recovered. By an act of Parliament his eldest son the Prince of Wales officially became the Prince Regent in January of 1811. Though the King’s mental state appeared to be improving in the early months of 1811, his condition soon deteriorated again. “Prinny” ruled as Regent in his father’s stead until King George III died in 1820. 

During the nine years the Regency lasted many significant events occurred: there was the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the marriage and death of Princess Charlotte and her infant son, the royal heir, in 1817.  Through it all the old king whiled the years away in a detached dream world. Though he was mentally untethered to the present, he was often quite cheerful according to his doctors.  He insisted on wearing a long white robe and both his white hair and beard grew long. He became blind and went almost completely deaf before he died at age 82.

1817 engraving of King George III by Henry Meyer,
showing the king confined to his apartments
in Windsor Castle



But was it madness that killed King George? Today the general consensus is that he suffered throughout his life from acute, intermittent attacks of porphyria, a rare metabolic condition caused by the body’s inability to synthesize heme, a complex molecule that transports oxygen to the cells. Porphyria is not a single disease but rather a group of at least eight disorders. There are two general types of porphyria, one which affects the skin and one which affects the nervous system. The King most likely suffered from the latter type.

Porphyria can produce manifestations of what appears to be mental illness. Historically it’s been wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenia, hysteria and even neuropsychosis. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, blisters and deep red or purple urine. Though nowadays porphyria is treatable, it is still uncurable. Most significantly, it is an inherited condition.

Evidence suggests that Prinny himself had occasional if not very severe attacks of porphyria, and that three of his brothers (the Dukes of Kent, Sussex and York) were ill with the disorder at times. Additionally, Princess Caroline of Brunswick (Prinny's wife and cousin) showed signs of the disorder, as did her daughter Princess Charlotte.

Mary, Queen of Scots


A postmortem analysis confirmed that Queen Victoria's granddaughter Charlotte, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm, had porphyria. Researchers suspect that her mother Vicky, Victoria's daughter, had the disorder as well.

Scientists who have studied the link to porphyria in Britain's royal family believe it may have started with Mary, Queen of Scots, who was the fifth great-grandmother of George III. Her son, James I, showed symptoms of the condition  too, especially when he descried his urine as being the same color as Alicante wine (a Spanish red wine). 

Prince William of Gloucester  

In more modern times, Prince William of Gloucester (1941-1972) was diagnosed with porphyria. Prince William was the grandson of King George V and Queen Mary, and the son of Queen Elizabeth II’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. A diplomat and a dashing pilot, Prince William died on another August day in 1972 at 30 years old in an airplane crash, flying his own plane during a competition. 

As a side note, Prince William was close to his younger cousin Charles, the Prince of Wales. Prince Charles named his son William (the current Duke of Cambridge and recent proud papa of another royal George) after his cousin. 

Other notable people who are believed to have suffered from this disorder include Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia of the House of Dracula (known after his death as Vlad the Impaler). His symptoms may have contributed to the vampire legends that now surround his name. 


Vlad the Impaler

Tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh was another possible porphyria sufferer. 

Self-Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh , 1887 

Those who carry the genes to this group of disorders have a 50-50 chance of passing it on to their offspring. However, porphyria is not the tragic and baffling disease it once was; today it can be diagnosed and treated. 

Children in the royal family are now tested for this condition as a matter of routine. So the threat of this deadly but rare disorder doesn't have to cloud the reign of any future British king or queen - including that of baby Prince George Alexander Louis, who may one day rule Britannia as King George VII. 



Sources for this post include:

  • Laudermilk, Sharon and Hamlin, Teresa, The Regency Companion, Garland Publishing, New York and London, 1989.
  • Priestley, J.B. , The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency 1811-1820, Harper and Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, 1969.
  • Information and Resources on Porphryria, Web MD 
  • Treatment options from the American Porphyria Foundation
  • The Royal Family’s Toxic Time Bomb,” article in the Bulletin of the University of Sussex at Brighton, Friday, June 25, 1999.
  • Wilson, Christopher, "Th other Prince William: The uncanny parallels between Wills and the dashing but doomed cousin in whose memory he was named," The Daily Mail Online, November 4, 2011.
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


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