Reading the Regency

Fashionable Entertainments - part 2

Dinner

Inviting guests to dinner was a popular way of socialising with friends and neighbours. A table with ten or twelve people was considered the most you could have and still enjoy conversation with all of them. If you wished to ask a lot of people to dinner, then it would be called a Grand Dinner or maybe even a Banquet.

Yet even something as grand as a banquet didn't necessarily have to include lots of people. The Duke of Wellington gave a banquet in February 1819, in the state dining room at Aspley House, where only eighteen people sat down to dinner. It was described as "an entertainment of three courses, with wines of unparallelled quality, and a desert the most delicious and abundant ever seen."

Dinners were often given by gentlemen for gentlemen. Single gentlemen who had no female relative to serve as a hostess were unable to invite unmarried ladies to their homes.

Cabinet Dinners were male-only affairs attended by members of the government or opposition to discuss political matters.

Anniversary Dinners were another kind of men-only event. It was usually a group who met up once a year for a reunion dinner, or a dinner alongside an annual meeting. Charity board members, or men who had attended certain universities or schools, would often congregate at this type of dinner. Rather than being held at someone's house, the Anniversary Dinners were often held at Coffee Shops or Taverns.

Divertissement

A French word meaning an entertainment, or entertaining diversion. The "Argyll Street Divertissement", advertised in the Morning Post in June 1810, was just a fashionable way of talking about an entertaining evening. In that particular case it was a grand ball and supper.

Drum

"Lady Frippery, in imitation of other ladies of rank and quality, was ambitious of having a drum; though the smallness of her lodgings might well have excused her from attempting that modish piece of vanity."
[The History of Pompey the Little: Or, The Life and Adventures of a Lap-dog, by Francis Coventry, pub. 1751)

A Drum was an 18th century version of a Rout; a crowded and noisy evening party. Tobias Smollet described it as "a riotous assembly of fashionable people, of both sexes, at a private house, consisting of some hundreds, not unaptly stiled a drum, from the noise and emptiness of the entertainment."

Although Routs had replaced the Drum as the fashionable crowded party by the early 19th century, some older ladies in the Regency period might reminisce about attending a drum during their youth.

Fete

This is another general word, meaning a festival or celebration. Nowadays, in Britain, a fete often takes place outdoors, and raises money for charity. The Regency style of fete was not limited to outdoors. In June 1815, the Hon. Mrs Hamilton held a fete at her home at Stanley Grove, Chelsea, which was a large house set in a landscaped park.

The Prince of Wales also held a fete at Carlton House in June 1811 to celebrate his father's birthday, but it also marked the glittering beginning of his Regency. Two thousand invitations were issued and temporary rooms were added to accommodate everyone. Four military bands and an orchestra provided music for dancing and to occupy the guests promenading around the gardens.

"At three o'clock supper was announced by the striking up of three bands of grand martial music stationed in the gardens. The supper was the most superb in spectacle arrangement that perhaps ever was exhibited in this country. The state table of the Prince Regent was ranged along the Conservatory, the west end of which, (being the head) was hung semi-circularly with a crimson silk ground, covered with transparent muslin ... the service of this table was in gold. Adjoining to this were tables running through the Library and whole lower suite of rooms, the candelabras in which were so arranged that the Regent could distinctly see, and be seen, from one end to the other. Along those tables, the Royal Family of England, and that of the Bourbons, and the Noblesse, were seated conformably to their respective ranks. On the right hand of the Prince Regent was placed the Duchess d'Angouleme; on his left, the Duchess of York. A limpid stream of water ran through the centre the Regent's table during supper. From the Library, and room beyond, branched out great lines of tables under canvas, far into gardens, each in the shape of a cross all served with silver plate, and covered with every delicacy which the season could possibly afford."
[The Prince Regent's Fete, La Belle Assemblee, or Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, for June 1811]