A few weeks ago my mom gave me—by way of a friend who had just traveled to Scotland—a box of Bendicks chocolate mints. I’d never heard of Bendicks before we started this project, and I had a hard time getting my hands on them here, so I couldn’t wait to dig in. Bendicks of Mayfair holds a royal warrant from Her Majesty the Queen as “Manufacturers of Chocolates.”
My box of Bendicks
contained not only bittermints, which the packaging described as “the original
and most famous Bendicks mint,” but also the rest of its mint collection:
chocolate mint crisps, Victorian mints, and dark English mints. Here’s a simple
note on each one from the packaging, just so everyone is caught up:
-Bittermints: “Firm
fondant, with a powerful mint oil, enrobed in intense dark chocolate…”
-Chocolate mint
crisps: “crisp honeycomb pieces in dark chocolate, flavoured with peppermint
oil”
-Victorian mints: “dark
chocolate with a soft peppermint fondant centre”
-Dark English mints: “dark
chocolate baton infused with fresh English Black Mitcham peppermint oil”
I loved all of the mints in this box but the bittermints, which had a mint taste that was too strong. I found it impossible to swallow one without sneezing.
We’d just opened our
Bendicks mint collection box when I left our house early one morning to run my
first half marathon. I had nervously packed up half the house to somehow take
along with me, just in case I needed it, when I spotted the mints. I toyed with
the idea of slipping one into my back pocket, just in case. Maybe it would come in handy somehow during the race. The only thing that stopped me
was realizing how hot it was outside.
I think the British
royal family lives in a pretty constant state of survivor mentality. These
people always need to have something in their back pockets, a trick up their
sleeves just in case.
On May 20, 1974,
Queen Elizabeth’s daughter, Princess Anne, was leaving a London film screening
for Buckingham Palace with her husband and her bodyguard when a white Ford Escort
swerved to block the Rolls Royce in which she was riding. The car’s driver, Ian Ball, then
fired six shots that struck a journalist, a police officer, a passerby, and Anne’s
bodyguard. Ball managed to get into the car briefly with the princess, but in
the presence of so many witnesses he then left the car abruptly. He was later
apprehended by a policeman.
At the time—and even
years later—the royal family tried to laugh this incident off. Anne is tough, they wanted
everyone to know, and perhaps she is. But in an interview in the 1980s, after
she again made joke of the seriousness of the whole incident, Anne faltered a
little. Right around 6:30 in this video, Princess Anne’s husband says to her: “It
never occurred to me that I might end up in that sort of situation. I think you
had thought about it probably.” Even though this interview seems way too flippant and glossy to capture what these people must have been feeling that day, there’s this rare moment of honesty where Anne acknowledges Mark's comment with a very sober facial expression and a little nod of her head. Of course she’s considered how dangerous it is to be the Queen’s daughter when the Queen has so many enemies. She must think about it all the time.
Perhaps long before the rest of us were thrust, really thrust, into the daily reality of terrorism, the British royal family knew all too well what a bitter mint it is to swallow.
Where to Buy: My mint collection came from Scotland, but you can also find these on Amazon.
Photo credit: The second photo above is courtesy of Theo Cohen, who photographed the 2013 Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace.
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