Front Drawing Room
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After dinner, in the eighteenth century at least, it was common for men to remain at table for port, cigars, and numerous toasts, while the women retired upstairs, presenting the men with the opportunity to use the chamber pots provided in the dining room. The first floor or piano nobile was the most important public room; it was here that any works of art possessed by the family would have been on show, and here that many families sat for their portraits.
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Back Drawing Room
| The back room on the first floor was very much a family space and may have been the centre of more intimate gatherings. Music was an integral part of home entertainment, as were card games; although one disgruntled nineteenth century commentator dismissed these as "the eclipse of all human intellect", and complained that "the influence of those coloured pasteboards is such that all reasoning, all mind, disappears, as soon
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Back Drawing Room at No. 29
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as the cards are in hand". On such evenings the children of the family may have been involved in a measured way in proceedings, perhaps participating in improving words games or riddles with their parents and their guests.
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