LADIES FIRST AT THE DINNDR-TABLE. [To THE EDITOR or THE
" SPECTATOR:1
Ste,—In Fielding's Essay on Conversation we read :— " When dinner is on the table and the ladies have taken their places, the gentlemen are to be introduced into the eating-room, where they are to be seated with as much seeming indifference as possible, unless there be any present whose degrees claim an undoubted precedence."
If any of your readers can disengage their attention from the terrible happenings all the world over, can such as one tell me whether there is anywhere else in English literature a reference to ladies being first seated at the dinner-table, as described above, also when the present custom first obtained of pairing off ladies and gentlemen in a different room, and then marching in festal procession to the dining-room or eating-room of Fielding's clay?
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