Hi there!
Once a week I’ll be publishing my best article of the week on Medium over here on Substack.
Enjoy your Saturday morning read and let me know what you think.
Jade x
When you think of the Regency period, your mind goes straight to Jane Austen-esque balls, beautiful dresses, horses, and Mr Darcy types all wrapped up in a tasteful country house landscape. I know mine does!
While I’m sure there were many tasteful aspects of this time, the Regency and indeed the man it was named after were, should we say, a bit ostentatious!
The Prince Regent, dear old Prinny, was over the top and lived to excess in every way. Although he was said to be cultured and very charming, the legend of his conspicuous consumption of wine and food (not even mentioning the mistresses) led to him being ridiculed by cartoonists of the time.
By the end of his life, the now King George IV suffered from gout, was outrageously corpulent at over 20 stone, and had gone almost completely blind.
So what sort of lavish diet made this original trendsetter party boy and a fair few of his contemporaries meet this sort of dismal, but hard-earned end?
Breakfast of champions?
Prinny was apparently fond of extremely large breakfasts often taken with a large dose of laudanum. The staggering menu is said to have included a pair of pigeons and three steaks baked into a pie, two-thirds of a bottle of white wine, a glass of champagne, two of port, and one of brandy.
Not everyone in the upper class ate like him though, with most choosing from hot rolls, toast with butter, a selection of cakes, boiled eggs, or ham. This would most likely have been washed down with tea or coffee.
… and the rest!
After breakfast, Prinny and his cohort of upper-class chums could still have luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper to look forward to. Luncheon for the rich included cold cuts, potted meats, sandwiches, soup, and fruits. Mrs Elton quite liked her strawberries in Jane Austen’s Emma!
Our protagonist did make some very half-hearted attempts at losing some weight and would order a miserable soup for his luncheon occasionally, but it tended to be accompanied by things like lobster gratin.
Dinner with the upper echelons was always an extravagant and formal affair. Turtle soup, fish, roast meats, small roasted birds, butter-laden sauces, pastries, ragouts, cheeses, breads, fruits (including that ever-expensive aspirational pineapple), nuts, cakes, ices, and much more would feature in the many courses served. All of this was alongside wine glasses being topped up by a looming footman.
If his everyday food was this outrageous, you can only imagine what the food was like when he held an official banquet!
An outrageous banquet
On the 18th January 1817, our generously upholstered hero held a grand banquet at his equally over-the-top Brighton Pavilion. His guest was Grand Duke Nicolas of Russia, so he and his army of kitchen staff set out to really put on a show.
A fashion for calorie-laden but sophisticated French food led the King to hire renowned French chef Marie-Antoine Carême to oversee the preparation of over 100 dishes.
Guests dined on extravagant dishes such as terrine of larks, pheasant in truffle and wine sauce, pigeon in crayfish butter, tart of thrushes au gratin, sweet fondues, and vanilla soufflés. Spun sugar diadem anyone?
There were also incredible heritage building centrepieces crafted from pastry, fondant, and marzipan. All in this ostentatious banquet provided guests with 129 individual dishes.
Coronation banquet
At his coronation banquet, the King provided 1,600 guests with substantial amounts of expensive meats, including 7,442lbs of beef and 7,133lbs of veal.
He also ordered other dishes including 160 tureens of soup, and 480 sauce boats to accompany the meat, alongside 3,721 cold dishes of ham, seafood, and jellies.
This lavish coronation banquet also saw to the consumption of 9,840 bottles of wine and 100 gallons of punch! In today’s money, this would have all cost £14 million. This was, however, to be the last coronation feast of such extravagance.
The End is nigh
Much like the aforementioned coronation feast, Prinny himself was literally a dying breed.
Going forward the monarchy was keen to show themselves, especially Queen Victoria onwards, as much more sober in their habits and family-orientated.
By the time he died in June 1830, George was, as we have discovered, bloated, obese, and almost blind. He was suffering from gout and bladder problems that led him to taking ever-increasing amounts of laudanum and opium to cope. However, right to the end his appetite never diminished.
On that fateful June morning, he had a terrible bowel movement and called for his doctor before passing from this realm to the next.
The Times newspaper wasn't very kind in its obituary of the deceased king saying, “There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased King. What eye has wept for him?”
There’s a lesson here somewhere.