Are Lizzie Bennett’s fine eyes or Miss Woodhouse’s delicate complexion more than a fortuitous gift of Nature? What weapons did the Regency lady have in her cosmetic arsenal?
More than you might think. Some–hair pomades made of pork fat and scented with essential oils–are not the sort of things you’d want to read, write, or even think about. The white foundation used by the former generation was lead-based and could ruin a woman’s complexion, if not kill her. The companion red for the clown look so popular then was mostly harmless, but could be expensive, made of safflower, cochineal, brazilwood, or sandalwood.
Favorite scents, for soap, lotions, and face-washes, included many ingredients we’d associate nowadays with cooking–cinnamon, cloves, citrus, cardamom–as well as amber, musk, violet, rose, linden flowers, and elder. No, I have no idea what elder smelled like!
It’s possible to make your own skincare potions with ingredients found in the kitchen–here are a couple I’ve actually tried.
Cleanser:
Grind up oatmeal in a food processor, add some honey (this is all to taste, I don’t measure this sort of thing). You might even want to heat it slightly. Massage into face. Rinse off.
Toner:
Rosewater (you can buy it at an Indian grocery store) beaten into one egg white. Let dry on face, rinse off.
And here’s one I haven’t tried, but it has a beautiful name–Queen of Hungary Water–and I intend to make some (when the mint is obliging enough to emerge and I can borrow some rose petals and lavender from my neighbors). I will post before and after pictures. It’s recommended as an astringent, aftershave, deodorant, hair and skin tonic and even as an inhaled headache remedy:
1 part roses
1 part lavender
1 part rosemary
1 part sage
1 part orange peel
1 part lemon peel
2 parts mint
To 2 ounces apple cider vinegar, add 2 ounces of the above herbal formula. Put in an airtight glass jar, let steep for about 2 weeks. Strain and add 1 1/2 cups pure distilled rosewater. Pour into an airtight decanter and use daily.
Go to this site, http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/8088/skin.html for more of the same. And do you have anything in the kitchen you enjoy slathering onto your face (other than accidental chocolate and ice cream smearage?)
Janet
I haven’t cooked up anything intentionally as a beauty treatment, but those recipes sound yummy!
I’ve got a book called REGENCY ETIQUETTE: The Mirror of Graces (1811) by a Lady of Distinction (which is not what we think of as an etiquette book). It has some recipes at the back.
One, for Eau d’Ange (a perfume) includes cloves, cinnamon and anniseed and sounds very nice. The Eau de Veau (a skin treatment) that starts with boiling a calf’s foot, not so nice.
OTOH I probably don’t want to know what’s in some of those jars and tubes of things I use.
Elena
Good information. But what about arsenic? Was that later or earlier?
Avocado is great for the skin too! Use a ripe one as a mask and then rinse off. Cover your eyes with cucumber slices while you’re letting the avocado dry.
A bit of lemon juice with water is a good astringent. And you can use a bit of extra-virgin olive oil (not that you’d know anything about anything virginal, Janet) as a moisturizer.
It’s true, honest!
Well, boiling up a calve’s foot would get you quite a quantity of gelatin.
Now we have carageenan and various plant gums to use as thickeners and emulsifiers, but they’re not that lovely, nor do they smell that good when they’re being boiled up either.
Actually, even as I type this, I am sitting in a hot mud bath. Hard to not drip on the keyboard, though.
Todd-whose-complexion-will-be-divine-tomorrow