|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Home | Business: Features | Pictures | See & Do | Community | RAs | History | Bulletin Boards | Site Index | ||||
|
||||
|
The Way to a Man's HeartMrs. Beeton and the 'Book of Household Management'
 In
1834 Henry Dorling returned from London, where he had been serving a seven-year
apprenticeship, and settled down to help his father William in the family
business at Epsom. The Dorlings traded as booksellers, but were not above
selling writing paper, lavender water, pianos and other items of a more
miscellaneous description. William had acquired an Albion printing press
for his original shop at Bexhill, and when this came to Epsom he used it
to run off race cards for the Derby: hoping to improve this side of the
business, he made sure Henry was apprenticed to a printer.Henry brought a wife, Emily, from London: they had four children. In 1840 his business opportunity came when he was made Clerk of the Course for Epsom races. Preparing race cards had already made the Dorlings familiar with the world of trainers, bookmakers, stable-boys and jockeys; now Henry was in direct contact with the owners. He struck up a friendship with Lord George Bentinck, who was deep in a struggle to reform the racing underworld, and together the two of them planned 'to do something to pull Epsom racecourse together'. Henry had married again in 1843. Elizabeth Mayson, the widow of his friend Benjamin, brought four children of her own to the marriage - Isabella (then four years old) being the eldest - so that accomodation in the Dorling premises was cramped. In 1845 Henry leased the Grandstand, a building which had been constructed fifteen years before by the Epsom Grand Stand Association and was now running at a loss. An offer of £1000 a year rent for it, together with Bentinck's endorsement of the enthusiastic lessee, decided the Association in his favour. Henry bought a new printing press and moved his business to the Grandstand basement, leaving his father and sister Lucy to run the bookshop and stationers in the High Street. He began reforms to the building and the races, laying out a new Derby course in 1847 and building a new wing for the stand. And he sent his children off to live in this vast classical structure, sleeping in the smaller committee rooms and offices and romping around balconies intended to accommodate five thousand spectators. On race days, when the building returned to its original purpose, the children were packed off to Brighton. By 1851 William Dorling had retired and Henry was head of the firm. He rented Ormonde House at the end of the High Street, using the northern wing as his bookshop and lending library. Here a growing family could live in style: Henry (like the Derby to which he owed his success) was becoming increasingly popular and respectable. The eldest children endured long dinner parties and filled in time with country walks. Isabella looked forward to fitting sessions with the dressmaker Miss Findlay - 'if you feel at all dull she amuses you with all sorts of poetry' - and to weekly piano lessons in London. By the time that Isabella was courting her future husband Sam, the Dorling children had reached a formidable total of seventeen. The courtship was carried on largely by letter, as there were few opportunities to meet. At the wedding there were eight bridesmaids in pale green, pale mauve or white: each of Isabella's sisters had contributed to her bridal costume. Presents were laid out between flowers in the reception room, the champagne flowed, and after a few hours she left Epsom at last, heading for Reigate to catch the honeymoon train. When he was apprenticed in a City paper-merchant's office, Sam Beeton learnt to rise early and to work till late. He realised that cheap books and magazines were selling well, because growing numbers of people had been taught to read for the first time; he also realised that there were two gaps in the market - no-one was publishing anything specially aimed at women or children. In 1852 he began his publishing career with a best-seller, the novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', which kept seventeen printing presses busy at the height of its popularity and earned enough to support his later journalism. At 2d a copy, Sam's 'Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine' was the first cheap publication of its kind. He set the essay competitions; he commissioned columns on invalid care, pets and gardening; and he did his best with the correspondents to Cupid's Letter-Bag.'Minnie looks cold. Gentleman sends presents; Minnie refuses them. Nevertheless, the gentleman perseveres...Minnie has a wilful mind'. In 1855, in between persuading a male reader of the 'Englishwoman's' that essay competitions would not make a girlfriend unacceptably clever, and launching the 'Boy's Own Magazine' (articles on Benjamin Franklin, catching a crocodile, weapons of war and the Gunpowder Plot), Sam was courting Isabella. He had met her in London, and he continued to appear in Epsom at fortnightly intervals despite a cool reception by Henry Dorling. After their marriage in 1856, they returned from a Continental honeymoon to live in a villa at Pinner. Within a few months Isabella had taken over the household hints and cookery columns in Sam's magazine. She added a third on childcare - after all, she had been accustomed to looking after a new brother or sister every year, and the arrival of her own first baby did not interrupt the flow of work. Within a month of her debut she had evolved a characteristic style - brief, blunt and clear, supported by epigrams or proverbs, but rejecting the flowery diction with which Sam spun out his editorials. Isabella spent three years planning the 'Book of Household Management', and had it issued in parts along with the 'Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine'. Sam assured readers that every recipe had been personally tested, and offered prizes of gold and silver watches to those who could drum up more subscribers. Isabella, anxious to show some general knowledge, researched diligently into the number of sheep in England and the feasibility of making cloth out of Jerusalem artichokes. The work was a success even before it came out in book form. Meanwhile arrangements had been made for including fashion plates in the magazine. These were to be produced in Paris, so Isabella and Sam set off to interview contacts there. For every outfit illustrated in the plates, a pattern was supplied on request, ready cut and tacked. In 1861 she was called in to edit women's features for a new venture, the 'Queen'. Three years later she helped plan a girl's magazine, the 'Young Englishwoman', and early in 1865 while correcting proofs for the 'Dictionary of Cookery' gave birth to her fourth child. Shortly afterwards puerperal fever led to her death. Isabella was not an innovator - most of her recipes, though she had tested them herself, came from earlier books, and her only introduction was the idea of listing ingredients at the head of each dish. Other people were also writing guides to the kitchen. There was a ready market for these among the middle classes, since young women were now expected to break ties with their own family when they went to build a new suburban home. Nervous newly-weds, managing house for the first time, had only to refer to the right page of Mrs.Beeton for instructions on how to pay morning calls or fix the duties of a housemaid. Isabella and Sam Beeton worked together, but this was traditional. Women of her generation had few rights (something her husband cared about more than she did) but they were expected to work. One in ten traders in Isabella's Epsom was a woman - waggoners and a blacksmith as well as dressmakers. Her aunt Lucy ran the Post Office for 34 years and on retirement handed it on to her daughter. It was assumed that a wife would help run her husband's shop or workyard, and Isabella simply treated Sam's publishing office at Bouverie Street in the same way. The 'Book of Household Management' was the best-organised publication of its kind. There had been other works on the same subject - the first guides on how to run a household were composed in the Middle Ages - but none of them had the same cool efficiency. Isabella had watched he mother cope with eighteen children and her father manage 250,000 racegoers, and she knew the secrets of organisation. These are to get up early, moderate your feelings, understand accounts, cost and plan each item in advance, and allocate clear duties to your servants. Apart from a training in German pastrymaking, which she received at finishing school in Heidelberg, and some subsequent lessons at Barnards the confectioners in Epsom, Isabella had never needed to do the cooking herself. For the book, she worked out what was necessary and then went through, testing, with a new recipe each day. Only one recipe in the book (from the Baroness de Teissier at Woodcote Park) has an Epsom connection, and there is no local interest evident in the anecdotes which pad its pages. All this research was done in three years of hard work at Pinner.
|
|
|
||
| Top
of page | Sponsors
| About Epsom and Ewell on the Internet is operated by Internetworks Ltd of Epsom as a service to our community. It is supported by local businesses appearing on our feature pages which is a cost-effective way of promoting your services to our community. We appreciate your feedback. Kindly notify any problems to the webmaster. Last updated |
||
|
|
|
