ITO THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.")
Sie,—In answer to the inquiry of your correspondent "H. C." in the Spectator of August 11th, I know of no allusion to ladies being seated first at the dining-table in any novels or memoirs which I have read, but in Francis, Lady Shelley's Diary (1 vol.) he will And the following information. She writes in 1107:—" It was not, in those days, customary to have more than three or four women at dinner parties, where there were eight or ten men; and dinners were not, as now, a jumble of pairs like the animals entering the Ark." Later, in 1812, she writes to Lady Spencer, the letter written from Woburn :—" We [her husband and herself] were very late, and a formal reception prepared the way for a silent dinner of twenty people. You will guess from this that I know now what your ' Noah's Ark' is; they were all in pairs, and I the solitary snipe. During dinner every one whispered to his neighbour, and I was obliged to do the same, from the dread of hearing my own voice."—I am, Sir, de.,
STEIL HAMILTON OP DALZELL.
Dalzell, Motherwell, Scotland.
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