Tag Archives: Queen Elizabeth

“The Beautifying Part of Physic”

I’m diving deep into early modern recipes this month, and as the term recipe was not reserved for the culinary realm during this time that means instructions for all sorts of things: health, hygiene, magic, preservation, and cosmetics, or the “beautifying part of physic” according to one of the first books devoted exclusively to made beauty: Johan Wecker’s Cosmeticks (1660). Wecker’s categorization of cosmetics was in alignment with the contemporary understanding of the body and its operation, best expressed by Francis Bacon in his Advancement of Learning earlier in the seventeenth century:  the knowledge that concerneth man’s body is divided as the good of man’s body is divided, unto which it referreth. The good of man’s body is of four kinds, Health, Beauty, Strength and Pleasure: so the knowledges are Medicine, or the art of Cure; art of Decoration, which is called Cosmetic; art of Activity, which is called Athletic; and art Voluptuary, which Tacitus truly calleth eruditus luxus [refined luxury?]. This subject of man’s body is of all other things in nature most susceptible of remedy; but then that remedy is most susceptible of error. What cosmetic remedies does Wecker offer? Here’s the title page and his own summary of its contents:

Cosmeticks

Cosmetics Contents

As you can read, this book offers a lot: all deformities of Nature corrected, age renewed, youth prolonged, the least impediment amended. I am wondering if it was “promised to the world” by the prominent physician Nicholas Culpepper; I assume that’s just an advertising ploy. The egalitarian pitch (every one may be his own apothecary) is contradicted by many of the valuable ingredients of the recipes within, but there are also some very simple recipes with basic ingredients—essentially there are hierarchies of recipes for the same goal: whiter skin, smoother skin, spot-free skin, fairer hair, more hair in some places, less in others, a sweeter-smelling body. Women should have rose-water on hand at all times, and lots of lemons, the occasional pineapple, and be prepared to devote many eggs to their beauty regimens.

Cosmetics collage

A few skin-whitening recipes are above, with reference in one to the legendary ceruse, the white-lead concoction which all of my students think Queen Elizabeth I slathered on her face every single day to hide her smallpox scars and project majesty and Virgin Mary-ness, thanks to Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998). We don’t have a lot of evidence for this cosmetic fable (see here), and I can’t find recipes for ceruse in any of the likely seventeenth-century texts, perhaps because it was purchased as a ready-made commodity (especially the preferred Venetian variety), or it was too much of a target for the anti-paint Puritans. I did find a Royal Society recipe of sorts (more like an industrial process) in a charming twentieth-century book about the history of cosmetics, Neville Williams’ Powder and Paint. A History of the Englishwoman’s Toilet, Elizabeth I—Elizabeth II (1957), but most of the cosmetic creams referenced in seventeenth-century recipe books featured the less-dangerous and -expensive “bear’s grease”(or that of any animal, but usually pigs) rather than ceruse. The marvellous Hannah Woolley’s skin waters, ointments and creams echo those of Wecker: even though some of her recipes are equally elaborate, it seems that “beautifying” is more about pampering (and removing) than paint (and adorning). Don’t get me started on patches–they are a whole other story.

Cosmetics Williams

Woolley 1685.jpgBeinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

A recipe for an excellent “Pomatum”, to clear the Skin, from Hannah Woolley’s The accomplish’d ladies delight in preserving, physick, beautifying, and cookery : containing I, The art of preserving and candying … II, The physical cabinet, or, Excellent receipts in physick and chirurgery, together with some rare beautifying waters … and also … The art of angling. III, The compleat cooks guide ((1685).

Wash Barrows-grease, or [pig] Lard often-times in May-dew that hath been Clarified in the Sun, till it be exceeding white, then take Marsh-mallow-Roots, scraping off the out-sides, make thin slices of them, set them to macerate in a Balneo, and scum it well till it be Clarified, and will come to rope, then strain it, and put now and then a spoonfull of May-dew therein, beating it till it be through cold in often change of May-dew; then throw away that Dew, and put in a Glass, covering it with May-dew, and so keep it for your Use.


Kings and Queens in the Garden

I’ve been reading an odd little book titled Queen Elizabeth in the Garden. A Story of Love, Rivalry, and Spectacular Gardens by Trea Martyn which recounts the political/botanical rivalry between Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to win the favor of Queen Elizabeth I by out-gardening one another. Queen Elizabeth did love her gardens, that is certain, and I suppose lavish landscaping might have been one avenue towards favorite status, but the book also references images of Elizabeth in the garden, some with which I was familiar, others not. This got me thinking about images of other monarchs in their gardens, and wondering about the point of this particular type of projection. We still like to see monarchs, and other leaders (the White House Rose Garden!) in a pastoral setting: why? Is it the age-old mastery of nature thing or just aesthetics? I suppose it matters what they are doing: Queen Elizabeth II seems to enjoy walking around engaging with the roses, while our presidents use them as a mere backdrop for important announcements. My favorite king-in-the-garden painting is of Charles II accepting a native-grown (but still exotic) pineapple from the royal gardener, John Wise, who is appropriately kneeling as he bears the fruit of his labors. The message seems clear here, but the accessible Charles is clad in the equivalent of “street clothes”, adding interest and intimacy to the painting. Most likely it was a memorial painting for Wise, who died in the same year it was painted, 1677. The “pineapple painting”, along with many other examples of horticultural art, is included (conveniently) in the current exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace:  Painting Paradise: the Art of the Garden,along with paintings of HR Emperor Elector Wilhelm I and his family in their classical garden (1791) and a the 1897 Jubilee Garden Party with Queen Victoria and Princess Alexandra in attendance.

Garden King Charles

Garden Elector Wilhelm

Garden Party Buckingham Palace

British School, Charles II Presented with a Pineapple, c. 1675-80; Wilhelm Böttner,Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, later Elector Wilhelm I, his wife, Wilhelmine Caroline and their children, Wilhelm, Friederika and Caroline; Laurits Regner Tuxen, The Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, 28 June 1897, all Royal Collection Trust / © HM Queen Elizabeth II 2015.

The imperial garden party image could date from this year or last, with updated clothes and Queen Elizabeth II and Duchess Kate standing in for Victoria and Alexandra, even though Great Britain is no longer a true global empire. But we would want a close-up, perhaps like that taken of Victoria and her family in the garden of Osborne House a bit earlier. And as for Elizabeth (I), we have two garden paintings which present contrasting images, one featuring a very relaxed queen at Kenilworth (her back to us!) with Leicester and another more formal, symbolic projection of Elizabeth the Peacemaker, olive branch in hand and sword at her feet. In one painting she is in the garden, of the garden, in the other, it serves merely as a backdrop for a working Queen.

Victoria in the Garden photograph

Hals Detail

Elizabeth Peace Portrait

Detail of a photogravure of Queen Victoria at Osborne House, 1890 (b/w photo), English Photographer, (19th century) / Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images; Dirck Hals, Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth (detail), early seventeenth century,  Royal Cornwall Museum; Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, The Peace Portrait of Elizabeth I (also call The Welbeck or Wanstead Portrait), between 1580-85, private collection.


Ralegh’s Cloak

By all accounts he was a charming and handsome man, but how has Sir Walter Ralegh (I’m using the preferred historical spelling), born today in 1552 or 1554, emerged as the most enduring of Queen Elizabeth’s many accomplished courtiers? He was a Renaissance man by our estimation (soldier, explorer, poet, historian, colonizer, seeker of gold) but not of his own time, when you had to do not only a lot of things and look good doing a lot of things, but also succeed at doing a lot of things. Sir Walter was an erratic explorer, he did not find gold, and his conspiratorial plotting led to his imprisonment and eventual beheading in 1618. His writings, most prominently the Historie of the World, and the Discoverie of Guiana, definitely crafted and sustained his historical reputation as the ultimate dashing Elizabethan adventurer, but I think Ralegh is also the recipient (and the product) of two cultural tendencies:  our love for what Tennyson called the many-sided man, and the attention that we pay to anecdotal history.

Raleigh Historie World

Ralegh Bookplate TM Brushfield

Ralegh Bookplates UNC

Ralegh’s Historie of the World (1614), and later examples of “Raleighana”: bookplates belonging to T.M Brushfield, St. John’s College, Oxford University–with the Tennyson line— and the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library, which maintains collections relating to the man “who personified the national ambitions of England in the ‘Age of Discovery'”.

Ralegh’s “many sides”, his daring and his intellect, his actions and his words, his strengths and his weaknesses, captured the attention of his contemporaries and held, but I also think that it is the little things that made the man. Anyone who has ever taught history at any level knows the power of the anecdote, and Ralegh’s depicted life is rich with them. Seventeenth-century sources credit him with introducing two transformative commodities to England: the potato and tobacco. Knowledge of both probably preceded Raleigh, but he is ever-linked to them anyway, particularly the latter: it’s difficult to find an illustration of him from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in which he is not in close proximity to smoke. But the characterization of Ralegh as the gallant, who dropped his “plush” cloak on the mud before Queen Elizabeth so that she would not sully her slippers, is even more pervasive/persuasive. Here is the first appearance of this anecdote, in Bishop Thomas Fuller’s gossipy Worthies of England (1662): this captain Raleigh coming out of Ireland to the English court in good habit (his clothes being then a considerable part of his estate) found the Queen walking, till, meeting with a plashy place, she seemed to scruple going thereon. Presently Raleigh cast and spread his new plush cloak on the ground; where the queen trod gently, rewarding him afterwards with many suits, for his so free and seasonable tender of so far a foot cloth. Thus an advantageous admission into the first notice of a prince is more than half a degree to preferment.”  Whether this little story is true or not, we will never know, but it hardly matters: the power of repetition and illustration has made it so. Ralegh did indeed receive many material favors from Queen Elizabeth, but the dramatic rise depicted here was followed but an equally-dramatic fall during the reign of her successor. And that’s another reason why Ralegh endures.

Raleigh Meets Queen

Ralegh Kenilworth NYPL

Raleigh's Cloak Victoria BM

Raleigh 1909 Selfridges Ad

Raleigh's cloak Marshall 1914

Ralegh Cigarette Cards

A portfolio of images of Ralegh, his cloak, and the Queen:  the iconic event in several editions of Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth, New York Public Library Digital Images’ A Victorian variation, 1886, British Museum; an Edwardian advertisement, Victoria & Albert Museum collections; the scene in Beatrice Marshall’s Sir Walter Raleigh, 1914; Churchman’s and Will’s cigarette cards from the 1930s; NYPL Digital Images. Just a sample of a wide assortment!


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