![]() After an interval of conversation, often accompanied by brandy or port and sometimes cigars, the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room. Until the mid-twentieth century, after a dinner the ladies of a dinner party withdrew to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen at table, where the tablecloth was removed. In size, a small Drawing-room will be about 16 feet wide by from 18 to 20 feet long: 18 by 24 feet is a good size: 20 by 30 to 26 by 40 is enough for a very superior apartment. There is only one kind of Drawing-room as regards purpose: there is little difference, except in size and evidence of opulence, between that of the duchess and that of the simplest gentlewoman in the neighborhood. It is also the Reception-room for evening parties. ![]() After dinner the ladies withdraw to it, and are joined by the gentlemen for the evening. In it in any case the ladies receive calls throughout the day, and the family and their guests assemble before dinner. If a Morning-room be not provided, it is properly the only Sitting-room of the family. This is the Lady's Apartment, essentially, being the modern form of the Lady's Withdrawing-room, otherwise the Parlour, or perfected Chamber of mediaeval plan. In 1865, an architectural manual in England defined "drawing room" in this way: This was common practice in the affluent circles of the Southern United States. At the conclusion of these greetings, the men remained in the parlor to talk politics and the women withdrew to the drawing room for their own conversation. In 18th-century London, the royal morning receptions that the French called levées were called "drawing rooms", with the sense originally that the privileged members of court would gather in the drawing room outside the king's bedroom, where he would make his first formal public appearance of the day.ĭuring the American Civil War, in the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, the drawing room was off the parlor where CSA President Jefferson Davis greeted his guests. ![]() Middle-class drawing room in Blackheath, London, 1841, painted by James Holland
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