Regency Dinner Parties and Etiquette - Jane Austen articles and blog (2024)

FAQs

What was the dining etiquette in the Regency era? ›

The highest-ranking guests were seated closest to the host and hostess, while those of lesser importance were placed further away. It was customary for ladies to be seated before gentlemen. The most honored lady guest sat on the right side of the host, with other ladies seated in order of precedence around the table.

The ideal of behaviour in 19th-century society was to be gracious and easy-going, a good listener who did not see the need to boast or seek out approbation, who in turn was adept at dispensing compliments and gentle flattery. There was a general recognition that confidence, charm and ease were signs of strength.

A Regency dinner party was quite an affair encompassing several courses with a multitude of dishes at each. Guests who sat down to eat were faced with soup, meat, game, pickles, jellies, vegetables, custards, puddings- anywhere from five to twenty-five dishes depending on the grandeur of the occasion.

In previous centuries, dinner was the main meal of the day and eaten much earlier than it is now (in 1789, Jane Austen would dine at 3:30 p.m.). As dinner moved to a later time (about 5 p.m.), it became necessary to have a bit of a snack between breakfast and dinner, hence lunch.

Favourite after-dinner treats in the Regency included trifles, custards, cakes, and biscuits, as well as gingerbread, plum pudding, candied fruits, and ice creams in an extraordinary range of flavours.

Pace your eating. Pay attention to how fast or slow the other diners are eating so you do not finish way ahead of them or lag behind. Never chew with your mouth open or make loud noises when you eat. If a piece of food happens to slip off your plate, discreetly place it back on the corner of your plate.

During the Regency Era, men and women wore different gloves for different occasions. They always wore them when they left their homes to go for walks or call on friends. It was considered poor breeding to be seen without gloves. They wore them when attending balls, the opera and dinners with friends.

Without knickers, it was harder for a woman to cope with menstruation. They might wrap a strip of fabric around their hips and wear a muslin napkin looped over the front and back, with stitched 'sanitary pads' lining it, which could be boiled and reused.

However a Regency breakfast was a relaxed, informal meal, eaten in the Drawing room and would have been based around cakes. Favourites included honey cake, plum cake, French bread and brioche. Popular spices used in morning cakes were caraway seeds, saffron and ground ginger.

The Regency ideal was a good deal plumper than today's standard of beauty. Paintings and poetry from the day show an affection for plumper backsides and dimpled thighs. Again this was a sign of wealth. The plumper people didn't have to work psychically and they had plenty to eat.

What were parties called in the Regency era? ›

rout. A crowded party, akin to a modern co*cktail party. An American visitor to London in 1810 described it like this: “Great assemblies are called routs or parties …

Hosting a house party was not an inexpensive proposition. You had to feed, house, and entertain between six and twenty other people for seven to twenty days.

This was the time the family might play cards, read riddles (called charades back then) and by 8 or 9pm they would have a light supper and perhaps by 10 or 11pm go to bed. Jane would have enjoyed playing the pianoforte for her family during the evenings also.

Jane Austen is typically described as having excellent health until the age of 40 and the onset of a mysterious and fatal illness, initially identified by Sir Zachary Cope in 1964 as Addison's disease.

In the Austen household, it was Jane's job to prepare breakfast for the family around 9 every morning. The Austen's breakfast consisted of pound cake, toast, tea and occasionally, cocoa. Jane often used the hour before breakfast for her own personal time.

The mid-afternoon daily dinner usually including a few different dishes; one dinner Austen mentioned in a letter consisted of “pease-soup, a sparerib, and a pudding.” Martha Lloyd's Household Book also includes influences from much farther afield.

Austen seemed to love a "white soup," which is meat gravy added to hard-boiled eggs, almond, and cream. A cheese toastie, however, is something anyone can get behind, and then enjoy while reading a favorite book in honor of Ms. Austen.

CORDIALS AND LIQUEURS

Cordials have been around for centuries and were naturally at the heart of home entertaining during the Regency era when a hostess would offer a sip of her cordial to her lady friends while the gentlemen retired to the library for brandies.

“When dining with Her Majesty, no one should begin until she begins eating; similarly, when the Queen's cutlery goes into the finished position, everyone else should follow suit — regardless of whether there is food left on their own plates,” Willam Hanson told the Daily Express in 2022.

What was the etiquette for the Regency era letters? ›

If you were sending a letter locally, it was considered good manners to dispatch it by servant, rather than through the post, so the addressee did not have to pay unnecessary postage. It was not considered polite to send social letters to people you had not previously been introduced to in person.

Important to know is that the early half of the Georgian era saw formal bowing and curtsying as the expected greeting, but by the Regency, not only had it fallen out of fashion in favor of the head nod, the doffed hat, the slight bob, or the handshake, the rules of when and where and to whom one should bow had ...

The host would seat himself at the foot of the table and, later, when the hostess entered the room as part of the procession, she sat at the head. The senior lady was first to choose her seat. After the senior lady was seated, the remaining guests were free to choose their places at the table.