Mrs Beeton and a Feathery Find

 Came home with several finds at the weekend but there were two favourites.  

The first was this …
A box spied from afar.  Hardly daring to hope that its contents were still in place and intact.

A muff box with little carry handle …

Inside, the most beautiful white feather handmuff in amazing condition.  The photos most definitely do not do it justice. 

The second ...

Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management from the late 1800s, containing a mammoth 2040 pages of sage advice for the Mistress of the house.  Not in terribly good condition but hardly surprising given its age.  Some of the cookery books we were given for Christmas last year look pretty well thumbed and stained already!  

Perceived as a matronly cook, Isabella Beeton was actually a young woman who lived a short life.  Born in London in 1836.  Eldest of four children born to Benjamin Mayson and Elizabeth Jerram.  Her father died when she was young and her mother remarried a widower with four children of his own.  They went on to have another thirteen children, Isabella being the eldest of the twenty one children.  Educated in Germany, she became an accomplished pianist.

At the age of 20 Isabella married Samuel Beeton, a rich and handsome publisher of books and magazines and moved to a large Italianate property in Hatch End.  Their first child, Samuel was born the following year but died of croup at just 3 months.  Just over a year later their second son, also called Samuel was born.  Several stillbirths and miscarriages followed.

Isabella began to write articles and supplements on cooking and household management for her husband’s magazines.  At the end of 1861 the supplements were published as a single volume, a bible for the aspiring middle classes and the most famous English domestic manual ever published – the official and complete title was: The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady's-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: With a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort, edited by Mrs. Isabella Beeton.

In the preface, Isabella wrote:

What moved me in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement.  I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly cooked dinners and untidy ways.  Men are now so well served out of doors – at their clubs, well ordered taverns and dining houses – that, in order to compete with the attraction of these places, a mistress must be thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of cookery, as well as be perfectly coversant with all the other arts of making and keeping a comfortable home.

Over 900 recipes, many with coloured engravings.  Much of the content taken from previous writers, but Isabella never claimed its contents to be original, more a collection of works compiled and edited by her.  Cooking was not her great strength, compiling data was.

It sold more than 60,000 copies in its first year and almost 2 million by 1868.

In December of 1861, whilst on holiday in Brighton her young son Samuel was taken ill with Scarlet Fever and died on New Years Eve.  She did, however, go on to have two more sons.  Strangely, Orchart was born two years to the day that Samuel died and Mayson followed two years later. 

Tragically, the day after the birth of her fourth son, Isabella contracted Puerperal fever (a bacterial infection contracted during childbirth often due to poor hygiene on the doctor’s part).  She died a week later, aged just 28.  Her widower outlived her by 12 years and died of TB at the age of 46.

 

Man may live without love - what is passion but pining?

But where is the man who can live without dining?

We may live without friends, we may live without books,

But civilized men cannot live without cooks.

Extract from 'Lucille' by Owen Meredith at the beginning of chapter headed 'The Cook' in Mrs Beeton's.

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 A couple of tins came home too

 A few pretty bits of china - the cup will be turned into a candle.

 Colourful hand painted sandwich plate and fab 50s specs!