There are large shooting parties and small shooting parties, shooting parties to which royalty is invited and shooting parties restricted to intimate friends or relations, but in either case the period is the same, three days’ shooting.
If a party is limited to five guns, seven ladies is the average number invited, the hostess relying upon a neighbour or a neighbour’s son to equalise the balance at the dinner table. The success of house-parties mainly depends upon people knowing each other, or fraternising when they are introduced or have made each other’s acquaintance. The ladies of a country-house party are expected, as a rule, to amuse themselves, more or less, during the day. After luncheon there is usually a drive to a neighbouring town, a little shopping to be done there, or a call to be paid in the neighbourhood by some of the party, notably the married ladies, the young ladies being left to their own resources.

At the close of a visit game is offered to those of the shooters to whom it is known that it will be acceptable. The head game-keeper is usually instructed to put up a couple of brace of pheasants and a hare. But in some houses even this custom is not followed, and the whole of the game killed, with the exception of what is required for the house, finds its way into the market, both the local market and the London market.

The first three weeks of September gives a hostess little anxiety on the score of finding amusement for the ladies of the party, as so many aids out of doors are at her command at this season of the year. This is a great advantage, as although some few ladies possessing great strength of nerve have taken up shooting as an amusement and pastime and acquit themselves surprisingly well in this manly sport, yet ladies in general are not inclined for so dangerous a game, and find entertainment in strictly feminine pursuits, while even those intrepid ladies who have learnt how to use their little gun would never be permitted to make one or two of a big shooting party, even were they so inclined.

Occasionally, when the birds are wild and sport is slack, a sort of picnic luncheon is held in the vicinity of a keeper’s lodge, under the shade of some wide-spreading trees, when the ladies join the party; but keen sportsmen despise this playing at shooting, and resent the interruption caused by the company of ladies at luncheon, and prefer to take it in the rough and smoke the while. Thus ladies generally have luncheon in the house at the regulation luncheon hour, and are not rejoined by the gentlemen until the day’s shooting is over, between five and six o’clock. Every day of the week is not thus given up to shooting, and there are few owners of manors who would care to provide five days’ consecutive sport for their guests, and two days’ hard shooting is probably followed by what is called an idle day.

On these off days in September the hostess often gives a garden-party, or takes her guests to one given by a neighbour at some few miles distant, or she holds a stall at a bazaar and persuades her guests to assist her in disposing of her stock, or she induces her party to accompany her to some flower-show in which she takes a local interest; or the host and one or two of the best shots start early after breakfast to shoot with a neighbour, and the remainder of the guests drive over to a picturesque ruin, where they picnic, and return home in time for the eight o’clock dinner. If the owner of a mansion has a coach the whole party is conveyed on it, otherwise all the carriages are brought into requisition, from the barouche to the T-cart, while saddle horses are provided for those who care to ride.

– Manners and Rules of Good Society: or, Solecisms to be Avoided by Member of the Aristocracy (1888)

A Perfect Ascot Week

It is not often in England that we are favoured with such a week of glorious weather as we were favoured with for Ascot, and the attendance and the frocks, therefore, at the famous meeting were, of course, even greater and more noticeable than usual. I must confess I enjoyed Ascot, or rather Ascot week, immensely. The garden-party meeting is such a splendid excuse for delightful house – parties, which necessitate a whole week’s absence from London. There is so little strain on one to know which horse is going to win, for at Ascot, of course, everyone knows that the favourite is a certainty (except when there are Bachelor’s Buttons and the like knocking out such national favourites as Pretty Polly), and, altogether, Ascot is such a thing of beauty that it seems just a little more of a joy each year.

Noticeable Gowns

Most of the dresses, not embroidered with flowers which put Nature to shame, were inset, or incrusted, or whatever they call it, with lovely Irish lace, and judging by the quantity of this latter to be seen, I should think Ireland ought to be making a pretty penny by its manufacture. Gorgeous geranium pinks and emerald greens contrasted with the French gowns of black lace and smoke-grey worn by some of the most elegantly dressed women, while the white linens and muslins worn on the previous days were conspicuous by their absence. The King was looking simply full of health and spirits every day—and how lively and well he is looking.

The Blots on the Picture

The men, of course, as usual, had the distinction of throwing up, by their sombre attire, the fairy-like garb of the women. Few followed the King’s example by indulging in a while or grey high hat, and so they just suffered in dark frock coats and high hats, sustained only by the thought of their heroism, and borrowing sometimes the tiny fans which all the women carried. On Thursday, there was, to everyone’s relief, very little sun, though this did not deter the feminine portion from proving to the world that they had with them the very latest cry in petal-like sunshades, or Lord Rosebery from clinging to his blue glasses. So far as I could make out, there were no girls present on Cup Day! At last, only a stray one here and there, and even these were so submerged, as it were, by the flaunting magnificence of their married sisters, that they were scarcely noticeable. Most of the women, beautiful and elegant and exquisitely turned out as they were, looked what one might call experienced, and certainly none of the shy gaucherie of youth was to the fore. All the clubs, of course, dispensed hospitality right and left, the Ladies’ Army and Navy being not the least among them.

The Bystander, June 27, 1906

This year marks the three hundred year anniversary of the Royal Ascot, and incidentally, is also the one hundred and one year anniversary of the infamous “Black Ascot,” which commemorated King Edward VII, who died in May of 1910.

The history of the Ascot is traced back to 1711, when Queen Anne developed a taste for horse-racing and commanded that a racecourse be laid out over the Common at Ascot. Shortly thereafter, an announcement was made that the Queen would present a challenge plate worth 100 guineas. The London Gazette printed an official statement:

“Her Majesty’s Plate of 100 guineas will be run for round the new heath on Ascot Common, near Windsor, on Tuesday, the 7th August next, by any horse, mare, or gelding, being no more than six years old the grass before, as just be certified under the hand of the breeder, carrying 12 stone, three heats, to be entered the last day of July, at Mr. Hancock’s, at Fern Hill, hear the Starting Post.”

The races were actually postponed until the 11th of August, when Queen Anne inaugurated the Ascot with a drive in state from Windsor Castle. Ever since then, the royal influence on the Royal Ascot has been quite marked, and has made the races one of the highlights of the London season.

Beverley Glick recounts the rise of Ascot into what we see today:

The first four-day Royal Meeting took place in 1768 but Royal Ascot week as we now know it started to take shape with the introduction of the Gold Cup in 1807, when the roots of today’s Royal Enclosure dress code first emerged.

Regency dandy Beau Brummell, a close friend of the Prince Regent, decreed that men of elegance should wear waisted black coats and white cravats with pantaloons. Over the years, this evolved into the wearing of morning suits for men and equally formal clothes for ladies, who must still wear hats in the Royal Enclosure.

It was racing fan George IV who commissioned a two-storey stand with surrounding lawn to be built in 1822; access was by royal invitation only.

Three years later, the King introduced the Royal Procession, and the sight of the Royal party driving up the centre of the racecourse continues to be one of the defining images of Royal Ascot and the summer season.

The Gold Cup remains the feature race of the third day of Royal Ascot and is traditionally the busiest day of the week. It has been known as Ladies’ Day ever since 1823, when an anonymous poet described the Thursday of the Royal Meeting as: “Ladies’ Day, when the women, like angels, look sweetly divine”.

In the 19th century it was common for a small fortune to be spent by the most fashionable society ladies on dresses commissioned solely for Royal Ascot, with their most extravagant outfits saved for parading on the day of the Gold Cup.

In the 1860s, the Duchess of Marlborough found Ascot week “very tiring… fortunes were yearly spent on dresses selected as appropriate to a graduated scale of elegance which reached its climax on Thursday; for fashion decreed that saved one’s most sumptuous toilette for the Gold Cup day”.

The Gold Cup is Ascot’s oldest surviving race, and today’s winning owners still receive a gold trophy which becomes their property.

Another Royal Ascot tradition can be traced back to the very earliest meetings. In the 18th and early 19th centuries there are accounts of wealthy race-goers turning up with entire carriages devoted to champagne, wine and cigars and even portable ice-houses to transport them in.

The more modern tradition of the picnic in the car park came with the arrival of the motor car at Ascot in 1912. Even today you can catch sight of butlers, candelabra and silver service at some of the more lavish picnics in number 1 and 2 car parks.

The tradition of extravagant parties during Royal Ascot week continued until the First World War but the relative austerity of subsequent decades saw such lavish excess come to an end.

Sources:
The London Season by Louis T. Stanley
Homepage of the Royal Ascot