Their standard fare was cheese,
bread, and tea, the latter of which was usually from used tea
leaves bought from rich houses.
Households were smaller; a peer had a household of about 25-50.
The proportion of women grew to one-third to one-half. Dinner
guests sat and were served in order of rank, with gentlemen on one
side of the table and ladies on the other. Later, a fashion came
in to sit alternately by sex. Dinner was in several courses and
lasted a few hours. Toasts might be made. It was bad manners to
put one's elbows on the table, to sniff the food, to eat too
slowly or too quickly, to scratch, spit, or blow one's nose at the
table, or to pick one's teeth with a toothpick before the dishes
were removed. After dinner, the men drank, smoked, and talked at
the table. There was a chamber pot under the sideboard for their
use. Politics was a popular subject. The women talked together in
the drawing room. Later, the men joined the women for tea and
coffee. The evening often finished with card games, reading
newspapers, verse-making, fortune-telling, walks in the garden,
impromptu dancing, perhaps gambling, and supper.
The nobility and gentry became more mobile and now mixed together
at parties. At these afternoon parties, there were a variety of
simultaneous activities, instead of everyone participating in the
same activities together as a group. Guests could choose to engage
in conversation, news, cards, tea-drinking, music, dancing, and
even go into supper at different times.
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