Narrator: What was it like to be an aristocratic visitor to a Parisian mansion in the late 1700s? Let’s enter the Salon Doré, or Gilded Salon, and find out…  

Take a good look around as you listen. The room was created as part of a French duke’s Paris mansion in 1781. Decorated in the very height of style, its gilded columns and swags of leaves and flowers recall the grandeur of ancient Rome. Its blue and white silk draperies and chairs were a daring choice – red was usual for reception rooms.

Around 5pm was the proper hour to pay calls at this time. How were visitors dressed? Let’s ask Madame de la Tour du Pin, who wrote about her life in just such a household:

Character voice (woman): The ladies' fashions of that day were a form of torture: narrow heels of three inches which kept the foot as if standing on tiptoe, and hair dressed at least a foot high, sprinkled with a pound of powder and pomade, crowned by a bonnet with feathers, flowers, and diamonds. Gentlemen, on the other hand, wore a dress coat, embroidered or plain.   

Narrator: The arrangement of chairs wouldn’t seem at all strange in those days - salons were not a place of relaxation, but a setting for elegant, witty conversation. The hostess sat near the fireplace, with women taking a seat around her. Men often remained standing. Sometimes a visitor read aloud from a fashionable new book, or backgammon tables might be set up. But however thirsty you became with all this talking -

Character voice (woman): It was absolutely impolite to ask for a drink.

Narrator: - according to a woman known as “the oracle of good taste”. And no eating either – you’d have to wait for supper served in the dining room at 9.30pm – if invited. Here’s the low-down:

Character voice (woman): A list of supper guests was a most important and carefully considered item. There were so many people to bring together, so many others to be kept apart. And what a social disaster for a husband to consider himself invited to a house simply because his wife was invited! One needed a very profound knowledge of society - and the current intrigues.

Narrator: Let’s tiptoe quietly out, thankful that we are not this French baron:

Character voice (man): It was no meager skill to leave a salon where thirty men and women were seated in a circle around the fire, managing a dress coat, a wig of thirty-six curls powdered like snow, a hat under one arm, a sword whose point touched one heel, and finally - an enormous fur muff.