I’ll focus on the way the evening would go in late Victorian/early Edwardian Britain (this is Downton Abbey after all)
We’ll start
about three weeks ahead of the event, when the lady of the house, in this case
Lady Grantham, would decide who will be in attendance. This could become an
enormous ordeal, because not only did one have to make sure there was an equal
number of gentlemen and ladies who were both single and married, there was also
the matter of precedence, that is, making sure you didn’t invite someone who
would make the rest of the guests uncomfortable. A duke and the village doctor,
probably wouldn’t mix well, and the hostesses’ main job was making sure her
guests were comfortable. The amount of guests at a dinner party could range
anywhere from ten to forty, sometimes even more. Then the hostess would wait
for a response of some sort, always sent by letter.
About a week,
to a day or two before the event, the hostess would go over the menu with the
cook or chef, deciding how many courses would be served. Among the Edwardian
elite, up to twelve courses wouldn’t be uncommon and the hostess would often
orchestrate the menu according to the guest of honor’s favorites. Bertie, the
Prince of Wales at the time, would often polish off
several dozen oysters, plus bread and butter,
caviar, plovers’ eggs, ortolans (a type of songbird), sole poached in Chablis
garnished with oysters and prawns, chicken and turkey in aspic, quails and
pigeon pie, grouse, snipe, partridge, pheasant and woodcock. This doesn’t even
go into the desert and sorbet courses. The hostess would also decide which
plate and dinner services would be used and make sure the appropriate wines
were served. Sometimes the host did this too.
At last the
evening arrived and at the designated time (usually around 7 to 9 P.M.), guests
would begin to arrive and would be shown to the drawing room (at Downton) or in
the case of Blenheim Palace, the Long Library. Everyone would stand or sit,
admiring each other’s gowns and waiting for the late arrivals. Cocktails was a
strictly American custom until after WWI and the shilly shallying didn’t last
long, as everyone wanted to get to the main event - dinner.
While
everyone was mingling, the hostess would make any necessary introductions
before beginning the most nerve wracking part of her evening, precedence or “Who
Will Sit With Whom”. This could become quite a task, as titles were so
intermingled and intricate. If you had two dukes at your party who ranked
higher? The one with the oldest title. But what about the elder son of a duke
vs. an earl? Who then? You can easily see how a hostess, especially a young
bride, could become easily muddled. Also, one had to make sure that they didn’t
allow people who loathed each other to go into dinner together as they had to
spend a large part of the evening in conversation with that person. If Lady
Anne had been once engaged to Lord Percy, and they had broken the engagement,
it would be a terrible social blunder for the hostess to have them go in
together. Consuelo Vanderbilt, a young American who married an English duke,
received many set-downs for committing such errors and often a guest would take
her aside and express their displeasure about who they had been seated beside.
The host
always took the lady of the highest rank in to dinner and, the gentleman of the
highest rank, took in the hostess. This rule was absolute, unless the highest
ranking male and female were related to the host or hostess. Then it was the
next ranking. Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, and mothers and sons
never went into dinner together. The hostess always tried to invite an equal
number of men and women to the party, although if possible, it was always best
to have more gentlemen, so married women were not obligated to go in to dinner
with each others’ husbands only. In the case of there being more ladies than
men, the highest ranking ladies would be taken into dinner by the gentlemen
present, and the remaining ladies would go in by themselves.
Once in the
dining room, the host remained standing, until everyone had been seated. The
seating depended on precedence and the host and the hostess sat at opposite
ends of the table, the host at the bottom of the table, the highest ranking
lady at his right hand. The hostess at the top and the gentleman who took her,
sat at her left. Then the lady second in rank, sat at the host’s left hand and
the other female guests at the right of the gentleman who had brought them in
to dinner. Sometimes, place-cards with the names of the guests were placed on
the table, thus making things easier for everyone. Thank goodness! The hostess
of course, would have had to instruct the butler to lay these out ahead of
time, a copy of Burke’s or Debrett’s Peerage in hand. The menus were always
written in French and were placed between each place setting, often shared by
two persons.
The table
could be decorated a number of different ways. Flowers, elaborate silver
centerpieces or epergnes, and fruit arrangements could all be part of the
display. Silver candlesticks were a must and, even when electric lighting
became popular, it was still common to dine by candlelight. Then of course
there were those elaborate place settings with a zillion different forks.
Generally these were comprised of a soup spoon, fish knife and fork, two
knives, two large forks, and goblets and wine flutes for the wine, along with
the various dinner and dessert plates. All this was known as the “cover.”
Dinner
etiquette was very rigorous and went beyond just using proper table manners.
This was another reason why the hostess only invited those of her own social
class. They were generally the only ones who knew what they were doing and
wouldn’t make such blunders as eating off a knife or tucking a napkin into
their shirt collar (although earlier in the century, the napkin tucking wasn’t
as offensive as it became later on) When a lady sat down at the table she would
always remove her gloves, placing them either in her lap or beside her plate.
Now for the
eating. Generally, they began with hors d’oeuvres and went on to soup, fish,
entree, meat, salad, savory, sorbet, dessert. What each of these courses
consisted of is a whole different blog post.
While all
this food was being consumed, everyone engaged in conversation with the person
seated next to them, until halfway into the meal they would “turn.” This meant
they would turn and talk to the person on the other side of them. To engage in
conversation with someone other than those you had been seated beside, wasn’t
really the “done thing” although occasionally it did happen. Polite meant no
discussion of health, politics (even if the person beside you was a politician)
or anything especially deep. It also meant no arguing at the table or no
conversation that involved personal or family matters.
After dinner,
which usually went on for an hour to an hour and a half, the hostess would nod
to the lady of the highest rank present, thus signaling it was time for the
ladies to retire to the drawing room. The gentlemen rose when the women did and
the ladies exited in order of their rank, hostess following last. The chaps
were then left to their port, claret, cigars and talk of subjects perhaps not
always suitable for the delicate ears of a well-bred duchess. The ladies
meanwhile were in the drawing room having coffee and gossiping about the latest
on dits or perhaps playing the piano.
The gentlemen
rejoined the ladies in half an hour to an hour, and usually cards or some sort
of game was proposed. There was no set time for leave-taking and some dinner
parties could last well into the night. Pity the poor servants who had to wait
on them. Although Carson wouldn’t dream
of yawning!After the last guest was seen into their carriage, the host and hostess were free to congratulate each other on how well the evening went (assuming it did) and then collapse. For tomorrow night, there would be yet another party to attend and the whole process would repeat all over again. Whew!
-Amanda
P.S. I am taking a two week hiatus from blogging (one of
the reasons why the post was so long), due to moving to a new house. I plan to be
back around July 15, with more writing and Victorian era themed posts! So stayed tuned.
