Did people really sit at opposite ends of those enormous tables?

May 3, 2013 12:35 PM

We've all seen plenty of depictions, in fiction, of enormously long dining room tables, with a husband and wife sitting at opposite ends. Usually we see those images in period pieces set in Victorian times, or more modern eras but evoking the hyper-formal rigidity that we (correctly or not) associate with the Victorians. Now, with tons of inexpensive servants for every middle-and-upper-class family, that seems doable, but did it really happen?

Did people actually sit separated by ten feet of carved cherrywood as they sipped their soup, served entirely by footmen and maids? Or was it closer to how most of the modern-day families I know use very large dining room tables - everyone sitting around one end (perhaps with the head of the household at the head of the table), with the rest of the table going unused if there was no company over?

posted by Tomorrowful to Society & Culture (11 answers total)

It might have been just exaggerated for fiction; I asked this sort of similar question a while ago.
posted by Melismata at 12:37 PM on May 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Folks who lived that kind of lifestyle probably didn't dine alone (just Mr and Mrs) very often, but had guests. In that event, they certainly sat at opposite ends but had others along the sides. In the absence of guests, my guess is that they ate less formally, at a smaller table in a different room, or at one end of the long table.
posted by beagle at 12:47 PM on May 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Having gone round a lot of stately homes, the dining tables often aren't as long as the ones you see in fiction, and you could carry on a conversation (though not an intimate one, and not if the other person was hard of hearing) if there were just the two of you at opposite ends of the table. Houses that are big enough to have really huge dining tables may also have secondary dining rooms as well, with smaller tables.

And as beagle points out, guests were an almost permanent fixture - from Jane Austen to PG Wodehouse, it's clear that you were rarely without guests.
posted by Coobeastie at 12:52 PM on May 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: That big long table was only for formal dinners. If it was just the family, or a few people, they may have had a less formal dining room elsewhere in the house. Or perhaps taken "dinner on a tray" in one's boudoir.

Often tea, a less formal meal, usually taken in a parlour, would be expanded into something slightly heartier than watercress sandwiches and served as an early supper.

But when the manor house was occupied, it was usually full of guests.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:55 PM on May 3, 2013

It might have been exaggerated for fiction, but in my experience yes. Sometimes crazy things went on at dinner. I had a great grandmother who believed THAT is how PROPER families eat. Must dress for breakfast. Must dress differently for lunch. Must dress UP for dinner. And the table. She insisted, even got properly pissed off if the proper seating, table settings, dishes weren't all formal.

As a child, I found it easier to just not eat the things that weren't within reach, cause I sure as hell wasn't comfortable with asking to pass, or slide the potatoes down the table. I also saw enough tele that I knew if the whole proper dining was going to be a standard, WHY THE HELL WAS THE SERVING MAID LET GO YOU CRAZY OLD LADY!
posted by QueerAngel28 at 12:58 PM on May 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

I was invited to a private dinner at a diplomat's home in Belgium in the late 80's, the table was laid so the husband and wife each sat at an end, and my husband and I sat in the middles of the long sides. All alone, with at least 2 meters out to the hosts. The mother of the hostess was relegated to the kitchen.
In one of his truly great moves, my husband just moved all the settings together at one end of the table, so we could talk.
posted by mumimor at 2:48 PM on May 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

There's a scene in the movie JFK where a character is asked why you would seat people on the ends of such a long table. His answer is that the table itself is a work of art, and you seat people at the ends so they can properly appreciate it.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:02 PM on May 3, 2013

As I understand it was improper for couples to sit together at formal functions. There were seating charts to mix up the guests for lively conversation during dinner. The lady of the house would sit at one end to entertain properly and the man of the house the other. Tables with inserts or leaves could adjust to the size of the crowd.
posted by PJMoore at 6:57 PM on May 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Nthing guests. Every single work of fiction depicting the English upper class that I have ever read depicts multiple sets of guests visiting at any one time, and certain works depict people whose entire livelihoods are earned as perpetual guests.

I've eaten in the homes of wealthy people with very long dining tables (not formal dining, though), and usually if it was just two or three of us we grouped at one end of the table.

Ditto for the (upper middle class) family dining room of my childhood -- that table seated 8, with leaves to expand for 10, but if it was just immediate family, we'd all cluster at one end. Then again, my parents' roots are pretty humble. Maybe this was a total faux pas and we had no idea.
posted by Sara C. at 11:54 PM on May 3, 2013

My mom's dining room table (now my dining room table) has removable leaves. Without leaves, it's a simple small round table; with leaves it can expand to seat ten or so (we're not talking a huge mansion-sized table). I think that many diining-room tables were adjustable like this. The leaves would not be visible if a tablecloth was used. Family only = leaves out; company = leaves in.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 7:43 AM on May 4, 2013

According to Margaret Visser (in The Rituals of Dinner) there is a difference between English and French seating conventions. In England the host and hostess sit at the short ends of the dining table, facing each other across the length of the table, whereas in France they sit in the middle of the long sides of the table. However, this only applies to formal dinner parties with many guests, and Visser says nothing about husband and wife sitting at opposite ends of an otherwise empty table (a custom which I find it hard to believe ever existed outside fiction).

I confess to a shameful fascination with the Royal Family's dining habits, as revealed by Diana's butler Paul Burrell in A Royal Duty. If ever there was a couple who should have dined at opposite ends of an empty table, it was Charles and Diana, but according to Burrell they generally dined à deux at a small card-table in the sitting-room at Highgrove, occasionally with disastrous results when they started chucking crockery at each other.
posted by verstegan at 2:09 PM on May 5, 2013