Read enough British Literature (of which crime I am
absolutely, certifiably guilty) and one will come upon the rich and elite
mentioning at tea or at dinner that they are going “to town”. This isn’t popping from their lovely country
estate to the local population; “town” referred to the one and only London,
England. Society gathered in town for
the season (when Parliament was in session, but more specifically for late spring
and summer): balls, derbies, concerts, art exhibits, dinners and overall
enjoying life, and therefore, to keep up appearances, one had a house in town
and one had a house in the country. The
country estate, unless it was from many, many generations before when the
ancestors may not have had the common sense, was close enough to London so that
no more than a day need be spent traveling between country and town
lodgings. While one saw acquaintances of
the country in town, often people would rotate in two different circles- their
town acquaintances and their country neighbors.
Country neighbors were good company for afternoon calls, but if one
wished to raise one’s status, one would usually be seeing a different circle of
acquaintances for the balls and evening dinners.
Of course, if you weren’t of the elite, you had a house in
either the city or the country and rented rooms whenever you needed to travel. This saved you all of the pesky details the
upper, upper class had to see to, such as sending servants on ahead to open up
the house.
