A Taste for Pineapple....

By Lauren Gilbert

One of the blessings of living in south Florida is having the ability to grow fruit at home. Right now, I am looking forward to fresh pineapple in my refrigerator. It's spring and several of my plants are in the process of producing fruit. There is nothing more delicious than fresh, sweet pineapple, and it's even better when you can pick it in your own garden!

The taste for pineapple and citrus is by no means a modern taste. Explorers were bringing specimens of exotic plants from all over the world during the age of exploration. Portuguese explorers are credited with bringing sweet orange trees back from the orient to the Mediterranean area about 1500, although the Persian orange (which is bitter) was known in Italy as early as 1100. Orange trees became a popular plant widely sought for terraces and formal gardens in France, Italy, Germany and England, and needed special protection from the northern climates. Buildings called “orangeries” were constructed in France in the 17th century at Versailles and other sites.. At Kew Gardens in England, an orangery was built in 1761 by Sir William Chambers, which was the largest glass house in England at that time.

The Orangery in Kew Gardens

A beautiful conservatory was also built for Carlton House by Thomas Hopper in 1807. As you can see, these were restricted to royalty, the aristocracy and the very rich because of the price of glass, and taxes on glass. Conservatories and orangeries at that time could be free-standing buildings, or glassed rooms attached to a stately home. Because of cost, for all but the wealthiest, these structures did not contain nearly as much glass as a greenhouse would contain today. Roofs were frequently solid (although possibly removable) or inset with only a glass panel, and the walls were more solid, inset with larger windows. During the Regency era, the garden room was increasingly popular, as a transition from interior to exterior space. The conservatory reached its hey-day in the Victorian era.

A View of the Conservatory at Carlton House, Ackermann's Repository of Arts 1811

The pineapple was introduced after Christopher Columbus first encountered it in 1493, and became hugely fashionable to display and enjoy for dinners by 18th century royalty and aristocracy. This craze filtered down to the gentry. However, the pineapple had certain special issues for cultivation: as a tropical fruit, it was not sufficient to protect them from frost; they also required more light than orange trees and most other exotics and a source of heat. Pineapple cultivation was originally successful in the Netherlands, and English gardeners went to study the methods used there.

Heating was a real challenge. Conservatories and orangeries were built facing south, to maximize exposure. Angled glass was used to catch morning and afternoon sun, while deflecting the intensity of the mid-day sun. However, pineapples required more warmth. Early attempts with furnaces were not successful as fumes were toxic to the plants. Hot air flues built into the walls were more successful, but the furnaces required constant attention and fires frequently broke out due to the build-up of soot and other material in the flues. One solution was putting the potted plants into pits which were filled with a source of heat. One substance used in these pits was manure, which generated heat but too intensely initially and then cooled too rapidly. Oak bark in water resulted in a fermentation process which released heat at a slow and steady rate and allowed for more success. Because of the special needs of the pineapple, a pinery could be located in an orangery or conservatory, with a door allowing it to be closed off, or in a completely separate structure.

I became interested in pineries because one appears in my work in progress (as well as the fact that I have pineapple plants myself!). Although the term “pinery” is sometimes considered virtually interchangeable with “conservatory” and “orangery”, they are not in fact identical structures, although all are forerunners of the modern greenhouse. The idea of a special structure in which to grow plants that require protection from cold weather has existed for centuries. The Roman emperor Tiberius had a “specularium” designed specifically to grow cucumbers out of season, with windows created from fragments of mica. In France, records indicate a south-facing glass structure existed as early as 1385.

Sources include:

GardenGuides.com. "The History of Greenhouses." Here.

VictoriaHinshaw.com. "Orangeries, Conservatories, Greenhouses and Glass Gardens." (as viewed 3/24/2012, the page is no longer available. (as appeared in The Regency Plume, V. 12, N.3, P. 3 Sept.-Oct. 2002)). http://www.victoriahinshaw.com./default.aspx?page=conservatories

BuildingConservation.com. Lausen-Higgins, Johanna. “A TASTE FOR THE EXOTIC Pineapple cultivation in Britain.” Here.

The Free Library.com. Surchin, Anne. “The beauty around us: from fad building to pleasure palace.” (Date 3/22/2007, Publication: VOX) Here.

University of Vermont Extension website. Perry, Dr. Leonard. “Orangeries and Greenhouses.” Here.

Images from Wikimedia Commons: Conservatory at Kew Here and Conservatory at Carlton House Here

This is an updated reblog of an article that appeared on my own blog Here.


Lauren Gilbert lives in south Florida with pineapples, roses, and her husband. A member of JASNA and the Florida Writers Association, her first book HEYERWOOD: A Novel was released in 2011. Her second, A Rational Attachment, is in process. Visit her website Here.

The Regency Review III, by Lady A~, Authoress of 'The Bath Novels of Lady A~'.

Having been quite stuck up a chimney in my last Regency review-of-two, it is fitting that my third little amble through the period should now wind its way down the more refined lanes of English architecture. Fashioned more out of individual taste than by popular demand, and largely owing to the singular style of its architects, the Regency became a landmark era of architectural design; and elegance was its very fitting catchword. From the modest houses of the 'residential squares' of spa resorts to the sweeping prospects of John Nash's grand terraces in town, the finessing of architectural detail spurned a host of theatrical effects. And from classical moldings and cupolas to 'vistas of white or cream-coloured stucco', the evolution of Regency architecture soon singled out its select group of architects-extraordinaire. John Buonarotti Papworth was one such gentleman early admitted to this group, and was renowned for both his views of elegance, coupled with an acute sense of social awareness. Here he expounds his novel theories upon the improvement of laborers' cottages in his work Rural Residences:

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"The habitations of the labouring poor may be rendered ornamental, and the comforts of them increased, at a very trifling charge beyond the cost of common buildings; towards this purpose the annexed plate is designed for four cottages, connected with each other, and under one roof; a mode of building that admits a considerable saving of expense...

The porch in which the husbandman rests after the fatigues of the day, ornamented by some flowering creeper, at once affords him shade and repose; neatness and cleanliness ... bespeak that elasticity of mind, and spring of action, which produce industry and cheerfulness..."

Whether or not the fatigued husbandman did indeed rediscover the 'spring' in his step from such commodious order, Papworth was soon bounding off in another direction, fashioning rural retreats for the gentry. Here he extols his thoughts upon a 'cottage orne':

"The cottage orne is a new species of building, ... and subject to its own laws of fitness and propriety. It is not the habitation of the labourers, but of the affluent; of the man of study, of science, or of leisure; it is often the rallying point of domestic comfort, and, in this age of elegant refinement, a mere cottage would be incongruous with the nature of its occupancy. The lawn, the shrubberies, the gravel walks, and the polish that is given to the garden scenery, connected with such habitations, require an edifice in which is to be found a correspondence of tasteful care: perhaps it is essential that this building should be small, and certainly not to exceed two stories; that it should combine properly with the surrounding objects and appear to be native to the spot, and not one of those crude rule-and-square excrescences of the environs of London, the illegitimate family of town and country."

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Other acclaimed architects associated with the Regency were George Basevi, Decimus Burton, Sir John Soane and Henry Holland. Though the latter died in 1806 (before the Regency began) he has a distinct association with the era. As the son-in-law of  'Capability' Brown, the celebrated landscape gardener, Holland built Claremont [in Esher, Surrey], the house in which Princess Charlotte spent her married life, and the famed Whig men's club, Brooks's, in St James's Street. It was through his association to Brooks's that he was introduced to the Prince of Wales and this brought about Holland's next commission: the rebuilding of Carlton House, the Prince's London residence. Holland also had a hand in redesigning the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which was later designed again, and there his distinct cupola paid tribute to the 'Indian domes of Repton and Nash'.

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The nonpareil of Regency architecture is, undoubtedly, John Nash. As the architect to the Prince Regent, he began his illustrious career in the office of Sir Robert Taylor. After going bankrupt in 1783, he re-established himself designing country houses in 'classical, Gothic and picturesque styles', and in 1796 entered into a partnership with Humphry Repton, who became one of the Regency's most notable landscape gardeners. In 1798 Nash acquired the Prince Regent's patronage and in 1811, as one of his most significant works, he developed Regent's Park into a preeminent residential area. Incorporated into this grand scheme were 'Regent's Canal, churches, artisans' houses, shops and arcades, and the layout of many surrounding streets'.

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Tom Moore, the poet, wrote:

"[The Prince] is to have a villa upon Primrose Hill, connected by a fine street with Carlton House, and is so pleased with this magnificent plan, that he has been heard to say 'it will quite eclipse Napoleon'. "

The villa was never built, but Crabb Robinson, the noted diarist, recorded his opinion upon Regent's Park:

"I really think this enclosure, with the new street leading to it from Carlton House, will give a sort of glory to the Regent's government, which will be more felt by remote posterity than the victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo."

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Nash was made Deputy Surveyor-General between 1813-15, and had also become the Prince Regent's personal architect during that time. Between 1815-1823 he set to work on giving the Regent's palace at Brighton, the Royal Pavilion, an ornate makeover in the 'Hindoo' style, at a cost of nearly two-hundred thousand pounds. The extensions and additions incorporated the Great Kitchen and the Long Gallery (and its staircase). In 1817, the Music and Banqueting Rooms were added. After a 'new sixty-ton dome' was fashioned for the palace, and the entire center part of the building reworked, some critical commentary followed the progress. Mr. Croker of the Admiralty stolidly remarked:

"It is not so much changed as I had been told ... But in the place of the two rooms which stood at angles ... with the rest of the building ... have been erected two immense rooms, sixty feet by forty; one for a music-room and the other for a dining-room. They both have domes; an immense dragon suspends the lustre of one of them. The music-room is most splendid, but I think the other handsomer. They are both too handsome for Brighton, and in an excessive degree too fine for the extent of His Royal Highness's premises. It is a great pity that the whole of this suite of rooms was not solidly built in or near London. The outside is said to be taken from the Kremlin at Moscow; it seems to me to be copied from its own stables, which perhaps were borrowed from the Kremlin. It is, I think, an absurd waste of money, and will be a ruin in half a century or sooner."

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Fortunately Mr. C's foreboding of rack and ruin was itself waylaid to dust, and a Victorian critic made due account of the chinoiserie-styled music-room in proper praise:

"No verbal description, however elaborate, can convey to the mind or imagination of the reader an appropriate idea of the magnificence of this apartment...
 
The windows, which are so contrived as to be illuminated from the exterior, are enriched with stained glass displaying numerous Chinese devices, and similar decorations, in green gold, surround them...

At the [cupola's] apex, expanding in bold relief and vivid colouring, is a vast foliated ornament, bearing a general resemblance to a sunflower, with many smaller flowers issuing from it in all luxuriancy of seeming cultivation. From this, apparently projected from the calyx, depends a very beautiful lustre of cut glass, designed in the pagoda style, and sustaining by its chain-work an immense lamp in the form of the ... water-lily. The upper leaves are of white, ground glass edged with gold, and enriched with transparent devices derived from the mythology of the Chinese; the lower leaves are of a pale crimson hue. At the bottom are the golden dragons in attitudes of flight..."

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The erstwhile critic, Mr. Croker, did however set his seal of approval upon the Pavilion's new kitchens:

"The kitchen and larder are admirable -- such contrivances for roasting, boiling, baking, stewing, frying, steaming and heating; hot plates, hot closets, hot air, and hot hearths, with all manner of cocks for hot water and cold water and warm water and steam, and twenty saucepans all ticketed and labelled, placed up to their necks in a vapour bath."

In 1819, the last improvements to the Pavilion came in the additions of the King's Apartments, and in 1821, Buckingham House became Nash's next palatial project, never to be completed. After it was ordered that it be rebuilt as a royal palace, time ran out on George IV (formerly the Regent) and his personal architect. In 1830 the King died amidst a great groundswell of personal unpopularity, which likewise, and predictably, underwrote Mr. Nash's (regally affiliated) professional demise.

But fond friends despair not! Before dear Prinny goes up in a veritable puff of smoke in his palace, alongside his gifted architect and his glorious era, I shall, in my next review, continue to meander into the Regent's imaginative and extravagant world. I invite you all, most cordially, to join me there, at a later date, in unveiling the politics of  landscape gardening, the Picturesque movement, and the fashions and pleasures of the affluent in both town and country.

Source: Richardson J., The Regency, (Collins, 1973.)
Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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The Regency Review, by Lady A~, Authoress of 'The Bath Novels of Lady A~' Collection

As the English Regency is probably the little spot in history where I most oft lodge myself, I thought I would write a series of blog-pieces to take it to review, vignette by vignette, and through the eyes, ears and exploits of its contemporary players.

The English Regency began in 1811 when George III's heir, George, Prince of Wales (aptly nicknamed 'Prinny'), took the presumptive sovereign reigns as Prince Regent. While the 'much-enlightened' Prince let King George sink privately into the perennial 'madness' of porphyria, Prinny as proxy took the helm of a rapidly expanding empire. With England, at its center, the country was still largely an agrarian nation with its social strata clearly defined by hierarchy. Though still at war with Napoleon, England remained yet untouched by 'Boney' and his mighty military machine, while leaving any sense of the outside world, beyond France, in the jurisdiction of the sole 'mass medium', the English Press. Transport was slow and largely dependent on the stage coach and mail coach, and here, Richard Rush, the American Minister to the Court of St. James's accounts for his views of just such a 'picture', on his way from Portsmouth to London:

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"At noon, I set out for London. We were soon out of Portsmouth, and went as far as Godalming that day, a distance of 38 miles, over roads like a floor.
     I was surprised at the few houses along or near the road side. I had been full of the idea of the populousness of England ... We rarely met wagons, carriages, or vehicles of any sort, except stage coaches. We did not see a single person on horseback. The stage coaches illustrated what is said of the excellence of that mode of travelling in England. These, as they came swiftly down the hills, or were met in full trot upon the plains, the horses fine, the harness bright, and inside and out filled with passengers, not only men but women, all well dressed, crowding the tops, had a bold and picturesque appearance. The few peasants whom we saw, were fully and warmly clad. They wore breeches and stockings, a heavy shoe, which lacing over the ankle, made the foot look clumsy; a linen frock over the coat, worked with plaits [braids], and stout leather gloves, which they kept on while working."

Rush then details the changing landscape just before reaching London:

"All within our view grew more and more instinct with life; until at length, evening coming on, at first villages, then rows of buildings, and people, and twinkling lights, and all kinds of sound, gave token that the metropolis was close by. We entered it by Hyde Park Corner, passing through Piccadilly and Bond Street, beholding the moving crowds which now the town lights revealed."

Regency London was large and handsome and Charles Lamb best describes it:

"The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street, the innumerable trades, tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses, all the bustle and wickedness about Covent Garden, the very women of the town, the Watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles, -- life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night, the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street, the crowds, the very dirt & mud, the Sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old book stalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee houses, steams of soups from  kitchens, the pantomime, London itself a pantomime and a masquerade ..."

And if in Regency London, who better to experience its pleasures than with the Regent himself. The Morning Chronicle gives this report of the Regent's entrance at a garden supper for two-hundred guests of the nobility and gentry:

"His Royal Highness the Prince Regent entered the State Apartments about a quarter past nine o' clock, dressed in a scarlet coat, most richly and elegantly ornamented in a very novel style with gold lace, with a brilliant star of the Order of the Garter ... The conservatory presented the fine effect of a loft aisle in an ancient cathedral ... The grand table extended the whole length of the conservatory, and across Carlton House to the length of 200 feet ... Along the centre of the table, about six inches to above the surface, a canal of pure water continued flowing from a silver fountain, beautifully constructed at the head of the table. Its faintly waving artificial banks were covered with green moss and aquatic flowers, gold and silver fish, gudgeons, etc., were seen to swim and sport through the bubbling current, which produced a pleasing murmur when it fell, and formed a cascade at the outlet. At the head of the table, above the fountain, sat His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, on a throne of crimson velvet, trimmed with gold."

The cost for this frilly fete of finery at Carlton House came to over one-hundred-thousand pounds. In an effort to recoup the expense to the Empire the apartments, housing the party, were opened to the public for the price of a ticket. On the final day of reviewing just how very properly the beau monde could waste money, there was such a rush at it that some "delicate and helpless females who were present ... were thrown down, and ... [were] literally trod upon by those behind, without the possibility of being extricated".

In fact Carlton House was London's party-central. Anybody who was anyone tried to get an invitation to its most memorable events and royal fetes. Here Lady Elizabeth Feilding describes, in hyperbolical terms, one of these glittering occasions to a correspondent:

"I am afraid all my powers of description would fail to give you an idea of the oriental air of everything in that Mahomet's Paradise, Carlton House. I do not know whether we looked like Houris, but I for one was certainly in 77th heaven ...
     Imagine yourself ascending a flight of steps into an immense saloon lighted up to the ceiling with a profusion of candles and a display of gold plate on either hand that dazzled the eye while a sonorous band of turbaned slaves played 'God Save the King'.
     The sight and sound were both animating, the kettle-drums and cymbals, the glitter of spangles and finery, of dress and furniture that burst upon you was quite eblouissant.
     Then you turned to the right through a suite of rooms, some hung with scarlet and gold, others with blue and gold, and some decorated with portraits of all our great commanders. At last you arrived at the ballroom, where sat the Queen at the upper end, with the Princess de Conde on her right hand, and the Russian Ambassadress (Comtess de Lieven) on her left. This last was a most singular figure; she was in black velvet up to her chin, with a huge ruff like Queen Elizabeth, or rather Mary Queen of Scots, for she is very handsome. She had no ornaments whatever but a long chain of very large diamonds, and a picture that hung on her back. Her head was dressed quite flat, and she looked like something walked out of its frame in an old picture gallery ..."

And gastronomy was no less impolitic in the Regency than its stampedes over royal post-party exhibits or Lady Elizabeth Feilding's '77th heaven'. In June 1814 this arrangement of hedonistic delights was laid before the visiting Allied Sovereigns:

"The Dinner was as sumptuous as expense or skill could make it, and was served entirely on plate ... Samuel Turner, Esq., one of the Directors of the Bank of England, very handsomely presented a fine Turtle for the occasion, which was the first imported in the season, and arrived in time to be served ... A large Baron of Beef, with the Royal Standard, was placed upon a stage at the upper end of the Hall, in view of the Royal Table, attended by the Serjeant Carvers and one of the principal Cooks, in proper Costume."

Poor 'Turtle'! After 'fifteen toasts' and a 'flourish of trumpets', it was clear that what life was left in the poor creature on arrival, was vanquished in voracity by noblemen and gentry with dreadfully epicurean tastes. But the Prince wasn't done for the Season and he then proceeded to host a sumptuous ball for the Duke of Wellington, as Lady Harriot Frampton details quite minutely:

"The supper laid out in one room for the Queen was very handsome, as the ornaments were quite beautiful. There were fifty covers, and the plateau down the middle of the table was covered with exquisite groups in silver gilt. The centre group was above three feet high, and each one of the figures was so beautifully executed that they might have been ornaments in a drawing-room, and everything else, even the salt-cellars, was in the most excellent taste. All was in gold or silver gilt, which made the silver plate, set out in the deep-recessed windows, look cold and poor, although in reality it was very massive and handsome.
     The plates only were of china and I recognised them as a set of the finest Sevres porcelain which Lady Auckland had once shown me at Beckenham, as having been a present from Louis XVI to the late Lord Auckland, when he was Ambassador at Paris, and I regretted that they should have been obliged to part with them. Each plate had a large bird painted in the centre of it.
     All the rooms were studded with Ws in honour of the Duke of Wellington, who, however, seemed to do all he could to avoid notice."

 Photo courtesy Siren-Com

One can only think the Duke a very wise man for all of his Ws at such an occasion! And such was the novelty of London, and the extravagant influence of the Prince Regent (whom Shelley appositely describes as the 'overgrown bantling of Regency'), that excess in the metropolis took on the veritable hallmarks of fashion. Though the darker side of a dingier London played nefarious host to the 'Lunar races', as Robert Southey put it, the Prince and his People did true justice to the everything that shone 'Solar'.

In my next review of this extraordinary era, we go onwards and upwards to shining hedonistic heights with its celebrity extraordinaire, the Prince Regent, and to his most darling of places, Brighton. There contemporary witnesses will paint a picture of the Prince and his period that waxes nothing shy of uncommon, exotic and, at the very least, everything that was very 'elegant and lively'.

Sources: Richardson J. The Regency (Collins, 1973)
Regency images courtesy Wikimedia

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