Country House Pursuits

Nicola here. Today I'm talking about some of the things people in the 18th and 19th centuries did when they stayed in the the country (the respectable activities, I mean, rather than the complicated business of creeping in and out of bedrooms in the dead of night. I'm talking here about the leisured classes, of course, the ones who didn't distinguish between a week day and the weekend. This may be a Wench re-post; because of stuff I have going on at the moment I've had to dust down and add to a piece I'd written a while ago, but even if it is I hope you enjoy it!

One of the questions I’m often asked when I am showing visitors around Ashdown House on guided tours is what did visitors to country houses do all day? Life in London or Bath was exciting, with plays, concerts, opera, shopping and many more entertainments. In contrast the country lifestyle was sometimes mocked as slow and boring, especially on a rainy day. “Morning walks, prayers three times a day and bohea tea” was how the poet Alexander Pope described it.

It was a pleasantly relaxing, of course, at least for the visitors, unlike the servants who attended to their every need. They were free to pursue whatever activity and interests they wished and, mostly, had the money to indulge those interests.

Ashdown House, being a hunting lodge, was all about sport. Guests would go fox hunting and hare coursing over the Downs, riding through the woodland or pheasant shooting. If they wished to be slightly less active they could watch the progress of the hunt from the viewing platform on the roof of the house or visit the horses in their stables. Everyone would join in the picnics and the hunt breakfasts up on the Downs in the fine weather. Nor was it all about field sports; by the nineteenth century there was a cricket pitch and later a gold course in the grounds!

One of the most entertaining things to do was visit local antiquities. Not only did the visitors to Ashdown have the Iron Age hill fort of Alfred's Castle on the doorstep, but they also had the romantic ruins of Waylands Smithy a short distance away. The Gothic stones and the legends associated with them had inspired Sir Walter Scott and many others poets and writers. 

Rainy days did not mean that exercise could not be taken. Many country houses had long galleries designed for a stroll in bad weather. At Ashdown there was the grand staircase where visitors could climb up and down, admiring the portraits as they passed. And by the mid-nineteenth century one of the favourite occupations of visitors to Ashdown House was to watch the Earl taking photographs and posing for them as well. Who said country house life was boring?

From the Regency period Ashdown also had the appropriate accommodation for other country house pastimes. Billiards had been known as a game since the 17^th century when it was played with curved cues called maces. However it did not become widely popular until the late 18^th century and by the 19^th century it was common for there to be a separate billiards room, as there was at Ashdown, with a smoking room alongside. This suggests that billiards was primarily a male entertainment but in fact women played as well and mixed games occurred frequently. In 1813 Lord Byron declared his love for Lady Frances Webster over a game of billiards at Aston Hall in Yorkshire.

Card games were another popular way in which to while away and evening. Most country houses had at least one card table and when there was a ball there were usually at least three tables where guests could play if they were not dancing. In Emma, Jane Austen describes: “a very superior party in which her card tables should be set out with their separate candles and unbroken packs in the true style.” Card games brought with them the dangers of gambling and sometimes accusations of cheating. Nothing was more likely to destroy the happy atmosphere of a country house party than guests falling out because they had lost money at cards or someone had the temerity to accuse a fellow guest of swindling them.

Some aristocratic families such as the Cavendishes were rich enough to employ a private orchestra and to build a private theatre but even those who could not afford to do so could put on private performances in which they all took part. Jane Austen grew up in such a world where families wrote and performed their own theatricals. The Pic Nic Club formed in 1802 to stage their own plays, which were followed by sumptuous suppers. Eventually, of course, we all adopted the eating part without necessarily needing to act out a play beforehand!

What about music? Ladies were expected to be proficient on at least one musical instrument and both ladies and gentlemen sang. Then there were the country house balls; by the 19^th century there was a dedicated ballroom at Ashdown but even if you had to roll back the carpet in the drawing room you could still hold and impromptu dance!

I have no talent for drawing so it’s fortunate these days that it is not a general requirement for the female sex to be able to paint and draw since I would be found sadly lacking. For ladies in the 18^th and 19^th century there were itinerant drawing masters who would instruct them in the arts of pencil sketches and of painting in water colour. Tradition dictated that these should be painted outdoors but when it rained ladies would sometimes sketch or draw interiors.

On a rainy day when guests were trapped indoors they might read or sew or make models. We might not now agree with Thomas Hobbes, who claimed that: “Reading is a pernicious habit, it destroys all originality of sentiment” but before the mid 17^th century reading was intended more for reflection than relaxation and country houses had very few books. By the 18^th century a separate room was set aside to house collections of books and although women were always noted to be more avid readers than men, the library was generally a male preserve up until the end of the 18^th century. Interestingly by abut 1820 it had become a multi-purpose sort of a room where tea was taken, music was played and books were read aloud to the assembled company.

The most complicated and intricate of ladies’ entertainments was probably the shell work that became extremely fashionable in the 18^th century. Many ladies decorated boxes with shells but some practised shell work on a grander scale. Sarah, Duchess of Richmond, and her daughters Caroline and Emily, decorated a grotto with seashells at Goodwood Park in Sussex. In 1798 cousins Jane and Mary Parminter decorated a house called A La Ronde in Sussex with seashells, feathered panels, glass, broken pottery shards, mica and cork. Shells were also used in model making. One of the most famous models made during the Georgian period was Betty Ratcliffe’s model of the China pagoda at Kew, complete with tinkling bells.

I hope you've enjoyed this canter through a few ways to while away your time on a visit to a nineteenth century house! If you were a Regency visitor, how would you prefer to spend your time? And if you were a time traveller from the present, which of our current games and activities do you think the guests would enjoy? 

Comments

[Sue McCormick]

Lots of us are going to say this: I would probably look first for a good book to read. But I also enjoy doing emboidery and knitting, and sometimes I try some tatting. I am not very good at the tatting, but I HAVE made some lace to edge some of my small stitcheries. Mostly I love learning new techniques, so I'd be fine in company with other stichers,

[Yvonne]

What is a “gold course”?

[Kareni]

I am equally curious.

[Kareni]

I wouldn't care to hunt and I can not sing, play an instrument, or draw. I'm sure I would do an excellent job of reading, strolling, and eating scones at teatime!

[Laura]

In the mid-1980s, I visited friends deep in the Welsh countryside a few times, usually in summer. They lived in a large Edwardian house on the large estate that the father managed for a British hereditary aristocrat who still had money.

After breakfast, we'd visit local villages, markets, and historic sites (ruins, churches, houses, landscapes), maybe play with the dogs on the lawn or tour the estate and visit the dad at work. One of our crowd did a bit of hunting on foot with a shotgun, but the rest of us preferred hiking and nature viewing. We might have lunch in a village or pub somewhere, or take a pack lunch if we were hiking. The daytime was active and busy.

Everyone would get back to the house by 6pm for tea, which was pots of tea (go figure), fresh bread, butter, and really good honey. After we put away the tea things, our pace would slow down. We'd clean up, change clothes, read books, look at maps to plan the next day's hike or local adventure. A couple members of the group were knowledgable gardeners, so they'd collect samples of unfamiliar plants during the day and we'd page through botany books in the library in the evening, trying to identify them. There were several excellent artists in the family, living and dead, and I'd usually ask to see more portfolios, and someone in the family would tell me stories they remembered about the pieces I was looking at.

Supper was late, 9pm or later. After we cleaned that up, there might be some BBC viewing, but I was usually ready for bed and book by then. And the next day, we'd do it all over again.

Those visits to my friends were delightful, and the closest my real life ever got to being like a novel by E.M. Forster. Sadly, the parents, delightful people who I last saw when I visited them about 15 years ago, have both passed away in recent years. Those were such happy times I had at their home.

[Mary M.]

Being the inquisitive bunny I am, of course (pun intended) I Googled "gold course." I concluded that (a) "gold" in this case was probably a typo of "golf", and (b) there actually is such a thing as a Gold Course: apparently the toughest rating for a professional golf course (Red being the easiest). Gold being toughest is what led me to conclusion (a). Although a golf course in hilly country might be tough, I imagine.

I know, like estate visitors I have too much time on my hands! But what Wench or Wenchlet doesn't love going down a rabbit hole?

[Nicola Cornick]

Sue, I love the idea of taking the time to try something new or to develop an existing skill. I think there would be something quite relaxing about having the leisure to do that - assuming your fellow stitchers were good company, or quiet!

[Nicola Cornick]

LOL, that is my mis-spelling of Golf Course!

[Nicola Cornick]

That sounds perfect, Kareni. You could work up an appetite for the scones with those country walks, and then relax with a good book.

[Nicola Cornick]

Laura, thank you very much for sharing your experiences of Welsh country house life. You really were living the aristocratic lifestyle and it does sound most enjoyable!

[Nicola Cornick]

Haha! Well done, Mary. And of course you were right. I had no idea there was a Gold Course though, or Red or any other colour so I've learned something new as well!

[Karin]

I hope the Regency folks would enjoy board games. I think they had the older games like chess, checkers and maybe parcheesi? But not Scrabble or Monopoly. I'm not sure when jigsaw puzzles were invented, but I bet those would have been a hit too.
Looking at the list of activities Nicola came up with, it seems like they had a lot to keep them busy!

[Sue McCormick]

At stitching retreats in our day (not including Covid-19) we stitch and we talk and we stitche and we eat and we talk, and we talke and we stitch. There is lots of talk going on, but we get lots and lots of stitching done also. And we bring snacks to share, so we eat continuously, outside of the meals provided by the venue.

[Sue McCormick]

I am not sure of my facts (and I don't know where to look it up) but I have the impression that Jigsaw puzzles are Victorian. So not Regency, but still historic.

[Kareni]

Ah, a truly golden error!

[Annette N]

Thanks for the lovely post. I know that spending time in a lovely country setting would not become boring for me. I think that all those wealthy people had a pretty darn good time of things.

And that does not count the bedroom sneaking.

I hope everyone is taking care and staying well.

[Laura Resnick]

When talking to folks back in the US in those days, I referred to that family in Wales as my "Masterpiece Theater" friends. (It's a long-running TV program in America that imports a lot of British shows like Brideshead Revisited, Upstairs Downstairs, etc.)

[Laura Resnick]

I was the first American they knew. The only one ever, I think. The mom, a wonderful women, once came out into the garden where I was playing with the dog and asked me sheepishly if I could come into the library and get on the phone. Her brother-in-law, Punch, hadn't spoken with an American since the war and, on the phone with her at that moment, was asking her to go get me so he could hear my accent and reminisce.

[Mary M.]

Yes! Hope it's okay to quote this from Wikipedia:

"Beginning in the 18th century, jigsaw puzzles were originally created by someone painting a picture on a flat, rectangular piece of wood, and then cutting that picture into small pieces. Despite it being called a jigsaw, a jigsaw was never actually used to cut it. John Spilsbury, a London cartographer and engraver, is credited with commercializing jigsaw puzzles around 1760.[1] Jigsaw puzzles have since come to be made primarily of cardboard."

[Nicola Cornick]

That sounds exactly right! And that's so funny about you going to talk to her brother on the phone! That's an experience I've had in reverse in the US!

[Nicola Cornick]

Yes, definitely the old board games would have been popular. I'd forgotten Parcheesi! Had to look that up. I'm not exactly sure about jigsaws either though I had the impression they were invented in the 19th century.

[Nicola Cornick]

Too true, Annette, they definitely had a good time!

[Nicola Cornick]

That's so interesting, Mary. Thank you!