A formal dinner was a theatrical production. The table groaned under ten courses: oysters, consommé, fish, entrée, roast, sorbet (to cleanse the palate), game, salad, cheese, dessert, and finally, fruits and nuts. Each course required a fresh plate, fresh silverware, and fresh wine. The lady of the house, corseted and jeweled, presided over the footmen like a conductor over an orchestra. Conversation was the main course; gossip, politics, and literature were served with the Bordeaux.

Card games were a pillar of evening entertainment. Whist, euchre, and later, bridge, required not just luck but a silent, intense literacy of faces and finesse. A card table was a battlefield of civility. Meanwhile, the billiards room (invariably off-limits to ladies) was a masculine sanctuary of green baize, chalk dust, and brandy. World War I drew a curtain on the antique big. The servants went to the front; the mansions became too large to heat; the corsets were discarded for cloth. The Jazz Age sped everything up—music, dancing, automobiles, the very pace of conversation. The heavy mahogany was replaced by chrome and Bakelite. The ten-course dinner shrank to three. The grand promenade gave way to the cinema queue.

But the antique big never truly vanished. It haunts our idea of luxury: the desire for a long, slow meal with friends; the pleasure of holding a heavy, well-made object; the magic of a room lit only by candles and a fire. We call it “vintage” or “heritage” now. We pay high prices for “slow travel” and “digital detox” retreats. We are, in our noisy, fragmented age, homesick for a time when entertainment required your full presence, when a single evening of conversation and cards could feel like an epic journey.