Beauty, mutton chops and mild

"The first injunction we lay upon you is, that you must rise at six o'clock every morning, or at five if you please, but not sooner. Before breakfast you must walk in the open air from half a mile to three miles, according to your strength, at a quick pace.

If you have perspired so as to damp your clothes, or if you have wetted your feet, you must change and have all dry before breakfast and it is also indispensable to have your skin, particularly over the stomach, well rubbed with a soft cotton cloth, or a flesh brush, for ten or fifteen minutes before breakfast, and to wash your hands and face in cold soft water.

The breakfast itself - not later than eight o'clock - ought, in rigid training, to consist of plain biscuit (not bread), broiled beef steaks or mutton chops, under-done, without any fat, and half a pint of mild bottled ale, - the genuine Scotch ale is the best. Our fair readers will not demur to this, when they are told that this was the regular breakfast of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey.

If tea or coffee is taken, the half pint of ale is to be used three hours after breakfast with a biscuit, on returning from your second walk, which must be as long as the first.

The forenoon must be spent in walking, or any other active amusement out of doors, such as gardening, nutting, romping, etc".

from "The Art Of Beauty" 1825


Frankly, if it's good enough for ladies wot leisured in the early nineteenth C, it's good enough for me.


Picture from some place that had a Gillray pic. Thinking of making it my Christmas card this year