‘My first and last thought is, how it will look’: Dining in the Eighteenth-Century British Country House

Alyssa Myers is currently a decorative arts and furniture cataloger and head condition report specialist at the Austin Auction Gallery in Texas. She graduated from the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art’s History of Design MA in December 2020. She is a member of the French Porcelain Society’s Emerging Scholars group, and is passionate about all things 18th century, the British country house, formal dining, and material culture IG & Twitter: @alyssa_decarts

‘My first and last thought is, how it will look’: Dining in the Eighteenth-Century British Country House is the title of my MA dissertation. It came about from a 1765 diary entry of Bluestocking Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), in which she wrote to friend and fellow Bluestocking, Catherine Talbot (1721-1770) -

‘I have been vast busy in contriving a dinner for about a dozen people, which is always a very serious consideration with me, who have no extraordinary natural talents for it. - Most folks consider first, I suppose, how their dinner will eat; but my first and last thought is, how it will look. - And so comforting myself with the hope, that in defect of the ‘pye the good company will be content to gnaw the streamer,’ I sit down to the contemplation of my picture with great satisfaction.’

From Carter’s emotional (and then aesthetic) response to the formal dinner, I came to an overarching focus on the eighteenth-century British country house dining room as a unique, specialised and ideological space, where formality and theatricality were intertwined.

My dissertation is split into three chapters: 1. Space, 2. Display, and 3. Servants. The consumption of material culture is a principal framework based on the sheer variety of commodities present within the dining sphere. From glass to silver to porcelain, on and off the table, these specially designed objects were ever present. This research therefore asked how the upper echelons of society engaged with the experience of dining, as well as the dining material culture in the British country house and villa. The interdependent relationship between the host, guest and servants further underlined this research.

A Dinner Party, Marcellus Laroon the Younger, ca. 1719-1725. 

Space

The first chapter asks what is the dining space? Essentially, the dining ‘space’ was not confined to just the dining room. The formal dinner began with the gathered party forming a promenade, or, as Fanny Burney describes it in 1778: ‘when dinner was upon table, I followed the procession, in a tragedy step, as Mr. Thrale will have it, into the dining-parlour.’ This ‘funeral’ procession was merely one way to show off a piece of the entertainment circuit of architecture historian Mark Girouard’s ‘social’ house prior to dinner.

The dinner party would arrive to their destination with the first course of the meal laid out in full, as was custom with the a la française method of dining. The (commonly) Palladian interior spoke to the education, travel and power of the elite homeowners – where the guests were essentially held as captive audiences for the duration of the meal to the not so subliminal messaging of the allegorical displays.

State Dining Room at Syon House, designed by Robert Adam in the 1760s.

But again, the ideology of the formal dinner was not always contained within one room. This is the part of my dissertation where one very special contemporary figure comes in to play. Horace Walpole. And his Gothic villa, Strawberry Hill. An avid collector and entertainer, Walpole included the visitation of his china closet as part of the formal dining experience. So much so that Bluestocking Mary Hamilton recorded in her diary not once, but two different occasions on when Mr. Walpole took the guests to view his china closet after dinner (Yale Edition of Walpole’s Correspondence).

Print of the chimney piece in the china closet at Strawberry Hill, 1781.

While primarily for display, the glass, ceramic, and porcelain objects presented within this room, were indeed ‘dining’ wares by nature. Ultimately, the location of his china closet (across from the waiting room where the pre-dinner processional would have begun) and his routine of taking his guests to see it after dinner set up a direct correlation between his china closet, its’ contents and the act of dining.

Display

Sketch of interior details for Kenwood House, the sideboard at the bottom has a wine cistern underneath and is flanked by two standing plate warmers in the shape of urns, 1774.

This leads us to the chapter that the opening quote by Elizabeth Carter centers around and it is all about the material culture. As mentioned above, the eighteenth-century featured the a la française method of dining. Which essentially meant that each course was laid out in full (barring the remove dishes), followed by an elaborate dessert course. This allowed the food, silver, glass and porcelain to all shine equally within a cohesive setting.

Asparagus tureen, Chelsea Porcelain Factory, ca. 1756.

The highlight of this chapter (in my opinion) is the use of trompe l’oeil porcelain tureens as the material example of the eighteenth-century phenomenon of naturalism through artifice. The combination of modelling, coloration and applied texture on these tureens suggest that dinner guests could easily be fooled into assuming they were the real thing – especially during a candlelit dinner. The artifice expressed through their realism is also reiterated by the use of these tureens for primarily dessert courses, where the sweet contents would not always match the savory exteriors. Conversation would be invoked through a sensory moment of trickery.

Servants

And last, but certainly not least… the servants. When I first began my research into dining in the British country house, I wasn’t quite sure where it would lead me. Turns out, there are a surprising number of diary and letter entries mentioning the negative impact that the servant’s mere presence had on the dinner. Though they were clearly integral to its’ success. From the bribing of the footmen to get the choicest cuts, to the cook, kitchen maids and confectioners, the formal country house dinner would not be possible without the servants.

Satirical print titled ‘The Jealous Maids’ depicting a footman in livery and powdered wig, 1772.

Conclusion:

My dissertation (and this blog post) begins with the title: ‘My first and last thought is, how it will look.’ This simple expression of a host’s priority on aesthetic precedence underpins the eighteenth-century British country house formal dinner. It was an event that kept traditional hierarchies alive through the entrance processional, seating by rank and the presence of the liveried footmen. And ultimately, was a unique socio-political event that went beyond the designed space of the dining room to embody the ideologies of the country house as ‘an arena for display’ and as a demonstration of the status and Taste of the families who owned them.

I am one of the lucky historians who are still in as much love with my dissertation topic and research as the day I started. That is why I will be returning to the UK in the fall of 2023 to begin my collaborative PhD ‘Suburban Villas in Eighteenth-Century London: Forms, Functions and Networks’ with Manchester Metropolitan University and English Heritage.