Venus and Mars

Venus and Mars

What is less obvious today is the gender based zoning at the root of these rooms between the realms of men and the realms of women. The drawing room was where the women would withdrew to after meals, where they could display their musical and drawing talents, and serve tea. By contrast the dining room – along with the library and games rooms – was primarily the male domain. It was only after many hours of drinking port, smoking and talking politics that the menfolk would rejoin the women in the latter’s domain for tea.

The opportunities for friction in this arrangement could not be overlooked, and Musson quotes the wag Beverley Nichols’ caustic recollection of 1930s dinners at Polesden Lacey when Churchill would hold forth:

“His ‘finest hour’ was after dinner, when the ladies had left the table, with more than usually earnest entreaties that we should not be too long over the port, for they knew with bitter experience that when Winston was at the dinner table with a good cigar in one hand and a better Armagnac in the other, the chances were that they would be left without cavaliers until nearly bedtime, and would have to spend the rest of the evening hissing at each other across acres of Aubusson.”

This gender divide was also reflected in the decoration, so that drawing rooms tended to display ‘a woman’s touch’, in contrast to the more masculine design of dining rooms. This does not seem to have deterred some 19th century men however from producing admonishing treatises on the subject of ‘taste’ and the modern drawing room. Musson entertainingly quotes Charles Eastlake’s unrestrained frustrations in his Hints on Household Taste, 1868:

“How often does one see in fashionable drawing-rooms a couch which seems to be composed of nothing but cushions… I do not wish to be ungallant in my remarks, but I fear there is a large class of young ladies who look upon this sort of furniture as ‘elegant’. Now if elegance means nothing more than a milliner’s idea of the beautiful, which changes every season – so that a bonnet which is pronounced ‘lovely’ in 1868 becomes a fright in 1869 – then no doubt this sofa… is elegant indeed.”

Clearly some men like Eastlake believed that though the drawing room was in the women’s sphere of influence, things had been allowed to go a little too far.

The many examples of the country house drawing room in Jeremy Musson’s book that are superbly photographed by Paul Barker, reflect the changing styles but unchanging principles of this room, in some of the greatest historic houses of England. Very fortunately most are also open to the public, and some like Attingham Park are owned by the National Trust. There are of course very many books on the subject of the English country house, but Jeremy Musson’s latest book is as authoritative as it is entertaining and a complete joy to behold.

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MODERN STYLE

60s

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