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Historical Background
Although The Empress of Ice Cream is fiction, the events it describes generally fit with the known historical facts. Here are some notes on major events in the book. The Garter Feast April, 1671. Charles II is celebrating the tenth anniversary of his return to England after a seemingly hopeless exile. Ever since his time in France, he has envied Louis XIV’s courts at Marly, the Louvre, and the elegant new palace at Versailles. But it is not only Louis’s lifestyle he admires. By keeping his nobles at court for a never-ending series of entertainments, Louis has cleverly established himself as an absolute, arbitrary ruler – “L’etat, cest moi.” Now that his own coffers have been filled with a secret French bribe, Charles can rebuild Windsor as another Versailles, starting with the banqueting hall. He summons a thousand nobles to what he hopes will be the first of many such feasts, on St George’s day. Despite the occasion, there are no dried-out sides of roast beef or larks in aspic here: instead they eat fresh, seasonal food in the new French style – asparagus, strawberries, lobster, chicken. The courses are even served separately, like the acts of a play, instead of all at once in the English manner. And, as the menu’s highlight, there is “one plate of white strawberries and one plate of iced cream,” a luxury so extraordinary that it is served to the king’s table alone. That one, symbolic gesture encapsulates in microcosm a whole historical conflict: between democracy and autocracy, king and parliament, court and state. For the secret of making ices is at this time known only to a few royal confectioners at the greatest, most splendid courts of Europe. Charles’s rebuilding programme did not only encompass Windsor: he has also built some of Britain’s first ice houses, including one next to his principal royal palace at Whitehall. (Its remains can still be made out today, in what is now Green Park, to the west of the Ritz Hotel.) Why, he even has a French mistress, lissom, green-eyed Louise de Keroualle, who has been given a lavish set of rooms at Whitehall in the manner of one of Louis XIV’s own maitresses en titre. That the king is privileged, not only in his person but in the very pleasures he enjoys, goes right to the heart of the principle of Divine Right. That dish of ice cream is not only the first appearance in history of a remarkable pleasure. It is a political statement, a sign that Charles has signed up to the French approach rather than the English one; that he regards himself as an arbitrary ruler, monarch and state combined, and is thus on a collision course with the Parliament which restored him. But even at this moment, the situation is already more complicated than it appears. Louis XIV’s confectioners make refined sorbets and sherbets – that is to say, water ices and frozen syrups. ‘Iced cream’ is an entirely new development, a peculiarly English one, the result of combining the new freezing technology with the egg-and-dairy-based desserts that have long been popular amongst the ordinary English citizenry: possets, eggnogs, syllabubs and the like. In this new form, ices are much more than a fashionable royal indulgence. They are a completely new foodstuff, a fusion food, inherently more democratic than the insubstantial syrups and frozen cordials that begat them – and reserving them for the royal pleasure alone is surely going to be a far harder feat to pull off. Within twenty years, England will experience the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the first recipe for ice cream will be published. Were the two connected? Perhaps only in a symbolic sense - but what is certain is that ice cream was never again to be a symbol of autocracy and privilege. Louise de Keroualle There are many portraits of Louise de Keroualle, including this one in the Getty collection. She came from a line of impoverished but extremely well-connected Breton aristocrats. Her parents mortgaged their few remaining lands to buy her a place as lady-in-waiting to Louis XIV’s favourite, Henrietta d’Angleterre, no doubt hoping that she would catch the eye of a wealthy courtier. Unfortunately for them, life at Louis XIV’s court was so expensive that even wealthy courtiers could rarely afford to marry ladies-in-waiting without dowries. By the time she was twenty-one, Louise was still unmarried, despite being so beautiful that she was known as ‘La Belle Bretonne’. It’s known she took an active role in her mistress’s complex international intrigues – Henrietta dedicated her entire life to fostering an alliance between her brother, Charles II, and Louis XIV, in the hope that Charles would ultimately turn Catholic and thus bring his country back into the folds of the Church. When Henrietta died – probably of peritonitis, although poison was suspected at the time – Louise no longer had a sponsor at court and faced being sent back to Brittany, a failure and an old maid. Yet somehow, within a month, she was in England. Did she know she was being sent there in the hope that Charles would make her his mistress? Opinion is divided, but I think she probably didn’t. Even after he made it clear that he wanted her to fill such a role, she held out for more than a year before she succumbed, and it’s certain that she was subjected to considerable pressure by the French ambassador, and even by Louis XIV himself, who at one point offered her the ‘alternative’ of a place in a nunnery. I think it more likely she was lured there, perhaps by being told she could continue Henrietta’s work better from a position within Whitehall, or perhaps through suggestions that she herself might become queen if Catharine of Braganza died. And once she did succumb, she had to face the rivalry of Nell Gwynne, seen here in a naked portrait by Peter Lely. In popular history, Nell has always been a heroine and Louise a villain – which was pretty much how they were seen by ordinary people at the time, too. One can’t help thinking that it probably didn’t feel that way to Louise. You can read the first biography of Louise de Keroualle online here. The First Little Ice Age The late 1600s were one of the coldest periods in Northern Europe’s history. The River Thames froze over as often as one year in three – although of course it flowed more slowly then, both because it was blocked by giant millwheels at the Great Bridge, and because the banks were wider and more marshy than they are today. The famous Frost Fairs were great winter carnivals on the ice: one of the most famous, in 1683, lasted two months. The diarist John Evelyn records: “Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs too and fro, as in the streets, sleds, sliding with skates, bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tippling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water." Ice Cream and Ices Who knew the secrets of ice making? It’s certain that there were ice makers at the courts of Naples and Florence, and Louis XIV employed a Frenchman called Audiger who claimed to have discovered their secrets during a trip to Florence in about 1665. He announced himself to the king by sending him a gift of some early-season peas, brought back from Italy – had they perhaps been frozen, or at least chilled, in his ice chests? For more about the history of ice cream and ices, I recommend ‘Harvest of the Cold Months’ by Elizabeth David (Penguin), and ‘Of Sugar and Snow’ by Jeri Quinzio (University of California Press). You can download a long extract from ‘Of Sugar and Snow’ here, by kind permission of Jeri Quinzio. The Royal Society Read more about the creation of the Royal Society here. England in the 1670s England in the 1670s was a turbulent, chaotic, vibrant place. The ongoing Dutch wars were complex, ever-shifting, unprincipled and bloody. Religious affiliations were even more intricate – we simplistically think of the Civil War as having been between ‘roundheads’ and ‘cavaliers’ but in fact the ‘Puritans’ were a diverse collection of nonconformists and dissenters, ranging from Quakers to Levellers, Ranters to Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists to various kinds of Free Lovers, and even one sect in Essex rather quaintly named the ‘Peculiar People’ – who seem, frankly, to have been no more peculiar than most. For a good guide to the period, try ‘England in the 1670s: This Masquerading Age’ by John Spurr. |
