The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers (SMC) was granted its charter in 1629 and for much of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was instrumental in furthering the craft and regulating standards. From 1898 it offered a rival system of qualifying exams in optometry to those of the British Optical Association (although many practitioners took both) until it co-founded the College of Optometrists in 1980 and it continues to provide training and qualifications for optical technicians and optician's receptionists as well as supporting many charitable concerns in the field of eyesight.
This Victorian menu card dates from the period in between these two golden ages, when the membership of the SMC was largely devoid of representatives from the world of optics and when you could be forgiven for thinking it was little more than a gentleman's dining club, although this would have been a prejudiced view and the Company's charitable work went largely unsung.
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| Sir Polydore was no doubt relieved he did not require spectacles as they would have diverted attention from his whiskers |
In 1891 there was still no organised profession of ophthalmic optics (that was four years into the future) and what a future Master, Roland Champness, would describe as the 'Great Awakening' of the 1890s when the Company became interested in the training of opticians, was just stirring. That Thursday night in November the Master Sir Polydore de Keyser Bt (who had been Lord Mayor of the City of London four years before) laid on a exquisite feast. Turtle soup was a regular fixture at Company dinners although, of course, the green turtle that goes into it was a quite different creature from the Hawksbill turtle used by opticians to make spectacle frames. It began the eight courses listed on this menu card which included a lot of seafood: John Dorys, Turbot, Lobster and other dishes less frequently encountered today such as Lark puddings. There might just be a clever in-joke here since the lark and the owl are regarded by neurologists as representative of the two types of human body clock or 'chronotypes' (morning people or 'night owls') and the keen-sighted owl has always been associated with opticians whereas the lark is often heard but seldom seen, as in the poem
Ode to a Sky-Lark by Shelley (1820). The lark is rarely visible because it flies too high when singing, or perhaps because you are still sleeping off your meal from the night before. What did they have for dessert and what wine was drunk? No one knows since only half of the card survives. It's a relic of bygone age.
And it makes you wonder how many took the Friday off work.
