In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol All of us, I presume,...
According to Clement Clark Moore, sugar-plums are so special that of all the possible delights a child might dream of, they top the list. The children were nestled all snug in their beds,While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads… So what exactly are these “sugar-plums” dancing in dreamland? At...
As my readers already know, the first three novels in The Darcy Saga series moved very slowly in time, covering the first year of Darcy and Elizabeth’s marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy ended as the winter of 1816 turned into 1817 with spring budding on the horizon and Lizzy...
Santa Claus, tinsel on trees, Frosty the Snowman, reindeer pulling a sleigh… These are a few of the current Christmas images we are familiar with in the US. What about yule logs, a boar’s head, community wassail bowls, a king of misrule, mince meat pies, and figgy pudding? Rarely are...
The general opinion is that wassailing is all about the apples and/or an ancient pagan ritual. Neither is true, but the origins are interesting nevertheless. Earliest traces are to a simple Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse toast — Waes Hael! — which translates to “be hale!” To this wish for good health, a fellow drinker...
A Regency Era Christmas centered on food and dining with family, much as it does today. For the dinner entrée, the cook would include goose, pheasant, venison, or a beef haunch. Turkeys and other foul might be served, but not as the main meat focal point. If fortunate they would...
Food historians tell us the practice of serving large, stuffed fowl for Christmas is like many other Christian holiday food traditions in that the idea was borrowed from earlier cultural traditions. Peacocks, swans, geese, duck, pheasant, guinea fowl, and turkeys have topped the list for centuries. The larger the bird,...
The earliest published Christmas menu dates from 1660, the year of Charles II’s restoration to the throne. The Accomplisht Cook was written by Robert May, an English chef who trained in France and cooked for nobility throughout his life. This remarkable document includes a section titled “A bill of fare for Christmas...
Howdy y’all! I have greatly ignored my poor blog these past several months and can honestly offer no excuse. Many other distractions have taken over my life, including my sweet puppy Olivia Marjo, who was the subject of my last blog post. In January! Yikes!! Indeed, we have had a...
This Regency individual intrigued me early on and those of you so fortunate as to have read my novels know that I included this notorious woman a couple of times. Before I get into a dissertation about her, let me just say that one aspect of the fun in writing...
I’ve written six posts which covered, in detail, the men and women who maintained the interior domains of an estate manor house. Now, with this post today, I have four blogs detailing the duties of those men and women who worked to maintain and beautify the exterior aspects of the...
As an adjunct to the recent blog Gamekeepers: Wardens of the Estate’s Wildlife, a fascinating extra tidbit is that these men were directly responsible for the creation of many breeds of dogs. Breeding and care of the dogs used to aid in the hunt and to guard the estate were...
Six separate blogs were necessary to cover everyone who worked inside the walls of a grand country manor house or upper-class London townhouse. All the posts I’ve written regarding the management of a Regency Era estate are listed in the Pemberley Library, or can be found by a website search from...
Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter. The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of...
Today I bring you the sixth installment of my series on Georgian and Regency Era servants. As noted last week, this entry will conclude the staff members who worked within the walls of the country manor or London townhouse. Next week I shall move outside, as it were, and begin...
