Tag Archives: Georgian

Fanny Burney: The Keeper of the Robes

Fanny Burney, who is best known as the author of novels Evelina and Cecilia, held the position of ‘Keeper of the Robes’ in the court of King George III and Queen Charlotte between 1786 and 1790. As Keeper of the Robes, Burney aided in dressing the Queen in a mostly ceremonial role, twice a day. Her role enabled her to form relationships with members of the royal family and household.

Fanny Burney was involved in court life at the time of the menus examined in this project and her extensive collections of journals and letters offer insight into her life and health at court and others who became affected by King George III’s illness. More information about members of the royal household present at the time of the menus can be found here, in one of our previous blogs.

To ‘a certain Miss Nobody’


Frances Burney as cited in hester davenport, faithful handmaid

Burney wrote her first diary at age sixteen and always wrote as if for an audience.[1] Initially, she wrote to an imaginary friend but by the time she was twenty, Burney’s diary became letters that she exchanged between her sister, Susan and other family friends. In her time at court, Fanny continued to write journals for Susan despite having been advised to not share details of her role in the royal household to the outside world.

‘The King is not well; he has not been quite well some time, yet nothing I hope alarming…’


FRANCES BURNEY AS CITED IN HESTER DAVENPORT, FAITHFUL HANDMAID

In October 1788, Burney wrote of the King’s illness which delayed the courts return to Windsor from Kew. The court were delayed for a week and Burney describes the melancholy and the difficulties of the time where anxiety was high. As King George III’s illness progresses, Burney shows the impact it had on the household and how his behavioural changes were perceived by members of his court. She also kept records of conversations that she had with other members of the royal household such as Colonel Goldsworthy and Colonel Digby that portrayed the anxieties of those close to the King.

‘Nobody stirred; not a voice was heard; not a step, not a motion. I could do nothing but watch, without knowing for what: there seemed a strangeness in the house most extraordinary.’


FRANCES BURNEY AS CITED IN HESTER DAVENPORT, FAITHFUL HANDMAID

During the period of illness, Burney’s relationship with Queen Charlotte is highlighted showing the companionship between the women and the increased pressures of Burney’s role as King George’s illness continued. On November 5th 1788, Burney was called to serve the Queen at one in the morning, after the royal family had dined. During the meal, it had been reported that the King had a violent outburst at one of his sons. She described the Queen as appearing ‘pale, ghastly pale’.

‘Deeply affected, I hastened up to her, but, in trying to speak, burst into an irresistible torrent of tears…She looked like death – colourless and wan; but nature is infectious; the tears gushed from her own eyes, and a perfect agony of weeping ensued…when it subsided, and she wiped her eyes, she said ‘I thank you, Miss Burney – you have made me cry – it is a great relief to me – I had not been able to cry before, all this night long’.’


FRANCES BURNEY AS CITED IN HESTER DAVENPORT, FAITHFUL HANDMAID

It was decided in November, 1788 that the King would move from Windsor to Kew to ensure privacy. On 5th December 1788, Dr. Willis was introduced to Colonel Digby and as seen by the inclusion of his servant in the menus, he was still present in the court in December, 1789. The King began a steady recovery in February 1789 and 23 April 1789 was celebrated as a day of thanksgiving for his recovery. As part of the celebration, Fanny Burney was awarded a medal for her service.

Royal Archives, LS9-226_0007,
14 December 1789.

Burney left the Queen’s service in July 1791. She continued to write letters and journals after she became trapped in Paris while visiting with her husband and son when the Napoleonic Wars restarted in 1802. She even wrote a detailed letter to her sister, Esther, about her mastectomy without anaesthetic in 1812 which you can read courtesy of the British Library.

Diaries and letters provide an alternate source which help to contextualise the menus in court life. The letters written by Burney give individuals of the court personality and character that make them feel more tangible. Burney also provides a valuable insight into the health and feelings of those surrounding King George III during his bouts of illness.


[1] Hester Davenport, Faithful Handmaid: Fanny Burney at the court of King George III (Stroud, 2000).

Dr Willis: The Cure to the King’s Madness or his Personal Torturer?

Earlier in the year, I transcribed a number of King George III’s menus from February 1789. In each instance, the title of ‘Dr Willis’s servant’ appeared, prompting me to investigate who this Dr Willis was. With this motivation too, I decided to explore Willis’s life and the treatment he conducted on the king, viewing this in the context of late eighteenth-century medicine. This idea of medicine was largely based on older religious and humoral ideas, shortly before the medical revolutions of the nineteenth-century, and as such appears alien compared to more modern treatment. In exploring Dr Willis, his rise as a physician and his appearance in George’s household will be explored, while his treatment of the king will be evaluated regarding contemporary medical ideas. In this too, the damage done to the king by Dr Willis will be recognised, but only insofar as his actions were in-line with the period’s medical practices.


Born to the minister of Lincoln Cathedral in 1718, Francis Willis was raised to be a religious man. He graduated Oxford University with an MA in 1741 and, having returned to study medicine, gained a medical MD in 1759. Between these years, Willis had married and had turned their home into a mental asylum, and would later go on to help found the Lincoln General Hospital in the 1760s. In 1788, aged seventy, Willis was summoned to court to aid the king, under Lady Harcourt’s recommendation, and began his work in December. Willis was well liked by many at court, such as Fanny Burney, for his manner and wit, but was seen as a quack by other royal physicians. By 17 February 1789, the king was seen to have been cured, and Willis’s job was done. He remained in court for a month after, to keep an eye on the king, and would return to Lincolnshire with a sizeable pension. In later life, Willis would help treat the queen of Portugal for her madness, no doubt aided by his reputation for aiding mad monarchs. Having retired from aiding the royal court in 1801, sending his son to help when the king would relapse, Willis would continue to practice medicine until his death in 1807, aged 89.

Dr Willis is noted here in George’s menu from January 1789 during their stay at Kew

In his service to the royals, Dr Willis was seen as a man of experience for his previous medical work in Lincolnshire, and aided the king as such. In this, the contemporary methods Willis used to treat the king were paired with other methods of psychological aid, meaning that the two parted on good terms despite Willis’s treatment. Though this is surprising considering the treatment George received. The King was tortured and abused in the name of ‘curing’ his madness and, while shocking by modern standards, this treatment was common in treating those deemed ‘mad’. Though simply stating that Willis’s methods were torturous is not enough to understand what the king underwent. In looking into the medical ‘aid’ Willis conducted, compared to medical knowledge in the period, an insight into what George endured is clear.

 

 

A portrait of Dr Willis by John Russel from the same year as the menu above

While by no means malicious, Willis’s treatment of the king was definitely harmful to his overall condition, though it was not uncommon for the period. For treatment, the king would regularly be bound in a chair and gagged, while suffering a wealth of mental and emotional abuse in the form of Willis’s ‘lectures’. In other instances, the king’s legs would be blistered to draw out bad humours, and would even be confined to a straightjacket if he were to remove the bandages from the wounds. George would also even be beaten by one of Willis’s assistants, perhaps even the one mentioned in the royal menus! Though compared to other cases of dealing with madness in the period, the king’s treatment was not out of the ordinary.


In madhouses, where the majority of the mentally ill were treated, conditions were as bleak as what the king endured, with cases such as William Belcher’s offering a harrowing example of treatment for the ‘mad’. As such, George received the same treatment, with Willis even stating that he would draw no distinction in treatment between the king or any other patient. In this then, while the king’s treatment may have been torturous, they were not uncommon in the context or done maliciously, as proven by the positive relationship between George and Willis. Despite this though, the treatment was not wholly effective, perhaps even delaying the king’s recovery from illness and damaging him overall. Furthermore, Willis’s treatment had no long-term effectiveness, with the king’s madness returning the next century and being permanent as of 1810.

“bound and tortured in a straight-waistcoat, fettered, crammed with physic with a bullock’s horn, and knocked down, and declared a lunatic by a Jury that never saw me…”

Belcher’s description of his treatment, Andrew Scull, Madness in Civilisation (London, 2015) p. 139


From this therefore, it is clear to modern audiences that Willis’s treatment was indeed harmful to the king by modern standards, though in his own context Willis acted as one would have with the knowledge they had. Indeed, Brooke’s analogy of Willis being no more cruel than a contemporary dentist removing teeth without anaesthetic speaks volumes about ideas of medicine, and of Willis in the eighteenth century.

Bibliography:

Brooke, John, King George III (Tiptree, 1972)
Burney, Frances, The Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, Vol. 2 (London, 1891)
Clarke, John, The Life and Times of George III (London, 1972)
Hibbert, Christopher, George III: A Personal History (London, 1998)
Porter, Roy, “Willis, Francis” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2012)
Scull, Andrew, Madness in Civilisation (London, 2015)
Smith, Leonard, Peters, Timothy, “Introduction to ’Details on the Establishment of Doctor Willis, for the Cure of Lunatics’ (1796)” in History of Psychiatry, Vol 28 (3), (September, 2017)

LS9-226_0060, January 31, 1789

Giving Food as Gifts


George Cruikshank ‘At Home in the Nursery or The master and Misses Twoshoes Christmas Party’ 1835

We all love food. We eat it every day, we incorporate it into celebrations, and we even use it as gifts – it is the most basic form of offering. Most family get-togethers nowadays will often incorporate food, with the practice often helping maintain relationships. The gifting of food is still a very common practice; I frequently gift my grandparents with chocolates and biscuits, despite my grandfather having diabetes… he likes what he likes.  However, how common was the gifting of food in Early Modern England?

Gift giving is explained as having two features: the first is the exchange of goods, with the value of gifts being uncertain and the time between giving and exchanging being at the discretion of those involved.[1] The meaning of the gift typically outweighs its value. The second feature of gift giving is that it takes place in a context of reciprocal interactions, with parties usually exchanging gifts at the same time.[2] 

The gifting of food was important in Early Modern society for the maintenance of relationships, peacemaking, corporate alliances and sometimes as a doctrine of charity to those who may be less well off. If you engage in readings regarding Medieval or Early Modern life, you might notice that food gifts sometimes appear as ‘rewards’. Food was not the only thing exchanged. During the period we see items such as silverware, furniture and money also exchanged. Neighbourly exchange of goods was common within this period. There was still a popular belief in witchcraft and some people thought it best to please their neighbours to avoid being cursed or being subjected to accusations. Often, peasants gave hens to their lords at Easter and other times throughout the year as well as their rent which needed to be paid.

Gift Giving at Christmas

Christmas has often been known as a time of over-spending and overindulgence, some might argue that we spend far too much money on gifts for loved ones and friends. Within the Early Modern period, gift giving typically commenced on New Years Day. Some people gave items of monetary value, whereas others exchanged produce. This included apples, eggs or a fat capon (a castrated cockerel specially fattened for the table).[3]  




Langley and Company, ‘Langley’s New Twelfth Night Characters’, 1818

Foods for the Feast

Dining was a common practice for those living in Early Modern society. The upper-class had certain cultural practices which were to be followed. This included things like elaborate dinner clothing, meal preparations, entertainment and the exchange of goods.

In the countryside, the gentry and elite members of society often showed their hospitality by hosting entertainment for their friends and neighbors. This included music, feasts and performances, especially during the Christmas period. Guests showed their gratitude by giving gifts to the hosts. A gentleman from Sussex, Timothy Burrell often invited friends, family, and dozens of the “humbler neighbors and their wives”.[4] Richer neighbors gifted the Burrell household with presents such as large quantities of cheese and butter, wine, sugar, chocolate, ducks, and pigeons.[5] The “humbler” attendees would bring “small tributes”. [6]

The Early Modern Period saw some of the most notable exchanges in history, including the Columbian Exchange. Despite this well-known, large scale form of exchange, it is important to remember the small transactions that occurred within communities as tokens of gratitude and appreciation. Remember, ‘It is better to give an apple than to eat it’!


[1] Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Gifts and Favors: Informal Support in Early Modern England’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 72, No. 2 (June 2000), pp. 229.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Hannah Flemming, ‘Christmases past to present(s): how the great British Christmas took shape’ (2011), <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/london/8966907/Christmases-past-to-presents-how-the-great-British-Christmas-took-shape.html> [accessed 28 April 2019].

[4] Timothy Burrell, ‘Journal and Account Book of Timothy Burrell, from the Year 1683 to 1714’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. 3 (London, 1850), pp. 125.

[5] Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Gifts and Favors: Informal Support in Early Modern England’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 72, No. 2 (June 2000), pp. 315.

[6] Timothy Burrell, ‘Journal and Account Book of Timothy Burrell, from the Year 1683 to 1714’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. 3 (London, 1850), pp. 126.

Georgian Christmas – What a Feast!


Hogarth’s ‘The Assembly at Wanstead House’, 1728-31

When we think of Christmas, most of us will think of the massive amounts of food we have left over at the end of the day. If you are like my family one joint of meat is not enough, we typically having gammon, turkey and beef. But just what did the Georgians feast on at Christmas and how similar is this to what we eat today? 

After the English Revolution (1642 to 1660) Christmas was made illegal in England under the rule of radical Puritan, Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell banned the festivities as the Puritans believed that “excessive eating, drinking, and partying” were sinful acts and that the day should instead be a sober day of reflection.[1]After his death, the monarchy was reinstated, with King Charles II on the throne. Christmas was back!

Georgian Christmas spanned much longer than in the Medieval and Tudor period or than our own festive period today. Beginning on St. Nicholas Day, December 6th, to Twelfth Night, January 16th.[2] The month-long celebration included attending church, exchanging presents, lavish get-togethers and parties.

Traditional Food

Christmas in this period saw large feasts, parties and get-togethers, meaning the quantity of food needed was massive. A lot of the food preparation was thus done in advance. Dishes like boiled puddings were something the kitchen staff and cooks could prepare around a week beforehand without them going bad. Cold food was also something that was customary.

Some dishes the feasts included were turkey or goose, venison but this was mainly eaten by the gentry, Christmas pudding, mince pies, twelfth cake, which is like modern Christmas cake, soups, cheese and a whole array of other meats and vegetables.

Doughlas Barnett, ‘Passing The Wassail Bowl’

As Christmas is a time for festivities and parties, many in the Georgian era consumed a lightly spiced ale with honey from large drinking bowl. The Wassail bowl was passed around the dinner table from guest to guest. The Anglo-Saxon term “weas hael” is what the Wassail Bowl was traditionally toasted to – meaning “for your health”.

Mince Pies

Mince pies have always been a popular item to eat around Christmas time. Today, the average Briton consumes an average of 27 mince pies at during the Christmas period.[3] However, mince pies haven’t always been the sweet treat we know them as today.

Traditionally, mince pies did contain mincemeat, typically being beef or mutton but in this period the type of meat would depend on the household income. These mince pies were a savory dish, rather than a sweet. Something strange about the mince pies is that during preparation an old tale demands that the mixture should only be stirred anti-clockwise. Also, the shape had great significance. They were an oval shape to represent the manger baby Jesus slept in.[2] Around Christmas, stars were put on top of the mince pie to represent the star that led the shepherds and kings to Bethlehem; this is something we still see today.

When looking at King George III’s Christmas Day Menu and many of the other menus for this festive period, “minced pyes” are a popular item incorporated into the daily feasts. You can see “2 dishes of minced pyes” at the bottom of the image to the right.

If you are interested in baking your own traditional Georgian mince pies, you can find a recipe put together by the National Trust here.

Christmas Pudding

Christmas pudding was regularly referred to as plum pudding within the Georgian era as one of its main ingredients was plum. Christmas pudding was traditionally made with chopped up pieces of meat, but within the Georgian period, suet was used instead. Again, like mince pies, plum pudding is something that frequently appears on King George III’s royal menus.

If you would like to make your own Georgian Christmas pudding this year take a look at the recipe below.

A boiled Plum Pudding – Hannah Glasse (18th-century recipe)

“Take a pound of suet cut in little pieces not too fine a pound of currants and a pound of raisins storied eight eggs half the whites half a nutmeg grated and a teaspoonful of beaten ginger a pound of flour a pint of milk beat the eggs first then half the milk beat them together and by degrees stir in the flour then the suet spice and fruit and as much milk as will mix it well together very thick Boil it five hours”.[]Hannah Glasse
[

I Hope you have enjoyed reading about Georgian Christmas dishes and get to try out the recipes. Happy baking!


[1] Serina Sandhu, Shoppers have already spent £4 million on mince pies (2017), https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/shoppers-already-spent-4-million-mince-pies/ [accessed 27 April 2019]

[2] The Journal, ‘The taste of Christmas past’ (2010), http://www.thejournal.co.uk/culture/restaurants-bars/the-taste-of-christmas-past-4445817 [accessed 27 April 2019].

[3] Joanne Mattern, ‘Celebrate Christmas’ (United States: Enslow Publishers, 2008), pp. 22.

[4] Ben Johnson, ‘A Georgian Christmas’, Historic UK, < https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/A-Georgian-Christmas/> [accessed 27 April 2019].

[5] Hannah Glasse, ‘The Art of Cookery made plain and easy’ (Michigan, 1967). pp. 167.5