Having cake, but not eating it

Carefully open the lid of the Georgian sewing box and, in the centre, you will see something wrapped in white acid-free tissue paper. Lift it out very slowly and gently, gently unfold the paper to reveal … something wizened and tubular that has a rip at one end. What on earth is it? It is a small piece of cake (fruit cake to be precise) wrapped in fragile brown paper with spidery handwriting from a bygone age telling us:
“Prince & Princess of Wales Wedding Cake 10th March 1863 for Miss Dar …”
Oh no! Just when we are about to find out who didn’t eat the cake, they rip the packet open across their name and now we may never know. Such are the conundrums that come with some museum objects.

 

 
Royal Wedding Cake, 1863 (albumen print, courtesy of the Royal Collections Trust RCIN 2905626)

The small piece of cake probably comes from one of two made for the royal wedding between Edward, Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark held in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Five hundred people were invited to the wedding; there were two wedding ‘breakfasts’ and so two cakes were made. One was made by Messrs Bolland of Chester, a Royal confectioner, and stood five feet high. The other, illustrated above, is understood to have been made by the Queen’s confectioner Monsieur Pagniez, housed in a towering gothic edifice decorated with figures, insignia and jasmine flowers. We don’t know which cake our piece came from but, from peeking through the wrapper of our little slice, the cake had white icing of the hard type know as ‘royal’ with a silvered coating.

 

 
Cake housed in a gold-plated casket (By kind permission of Daniel Bexfield Antiques)

Miss D must have treasured her cake so much as a memento of being part of a national day of celebration that she could not bring herself to eat it. Instead, she put it in her sewing box for safekeeping and it has been there ever since. It may well be one of only two pieces of the cake known to still be in existence.

A larger piece of cake housed in an exquisite, custom-made gold-plated casket has recently come to light and, at time of writing, is in the possession of Daniel Bexfield Antiques (see link below). According to engraving on the casket, this portion of cake was a gift for Mr W.S. Charles from Lady Cust, whose husband, Sir Edward Cust, was the Royal Master of Ceremonies so would have had an instrumental role in the wedding itself. 

 

 

Although the wedding on 10th March 1863 between Edward, Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark was a grand affair, it was very much overshadowed by the sudden death of Edward’s father, Prince Albert, in December 1861. A distraught Queen Victoria refused to emerge from deepest mourning. She apparently only allowed the wedding to take place within the customary two-year period of court mourning because Prince Albert had been very keen on the union and arrangements were already underway at his death. At her insistence, the wedding was smaller than would be usual for an heir to the throne, and women guests were expected to wear the muted ‘half-mourning’ shades of grey and lavender as a mark of respect. The Queen herself, garbed in swathes of matt black to reflect her mood and depth of mourning, watched the ceremony from a private balcony rather than join the congregation.