Open House - Georgian Style

By Amanda Vickery | Published in History Today Volume: 59 Issue: 11 2009

A revolution in sociability took place among the genteel and ‘middling’ classes of 18th-century England, as visiting friends of similar social status became a leisure pursuit in itself, especially among women,writes Amanda Vickery.

In 18th-century England, the arrival of a wife transformed a man’s house. The Reading distiller Edward Belson bought new printed paper hangings and bed curtains in order to refurbish his old bedroom to receive a wife in 1710; and the Lincolnshire surgeon Matthew Flinders ‘got the best Chamber papered, 2 new hearth Stones, & Fire screens & c & c and some lesser improvements previous to my intended nuptials’ in 1778. Such efforts were typical.Wedding bells announced the coming of the harpsichord, the backgammon set and sewing table to the affluent parlour, to jolly along the long winter evenings of married life. In his gently tongue-in-cheek book of 1745, The Pleasures and Felicity of Marriage, Lemuel Gulliver alerts the newly-wedded husband that the bright morning of marriage has to be reflected in new furniture:

You will be delighted to hear your Spouse every Moment talk of going with her Sister and Aunt, to order in such Furniture as may reflect Dignity and Grandeur upon the Owner.What Pleasure will you receive and how will you applaud the happy Choice you have made,when your Darling gives you a Specimen of the delicacy of her Taste in Down-Beds, Rich-Counterpanes, costly Hangings, Venetian Looking-Glasses, enamel’d China,Velvet Chairs, Turkey Carpets, Capital Painting, Side-board of wrought Plate, curious in-laid Cabinets, rich Child-bed Linen, Flanders Lace, and many other valuable Particulars. Certainly, the Joy of your Heart will far exceed the Chinking of your Purse,when your House, by the indefatigable Pains of your Spouse, is thus grandly adorn’d.

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