Dinner at that date (1799) was, for the unfashionable, at the hour of three, and for the fashionable not earlier than five, and sometimes much later. Lady Newdigate (_The Cheverels of Cheverel Manor_) says, “The hours of the family are what the polite world would not conform to, viz., breakfast at half past eight, dine at half past three, supper at nine, and go to bed at ten.” Jane Austen in her home life was not in a fashionable set, and her people did not ape the manners of society; she writes at another time, “We dine now at half past three, and have done dinner I suppose before you begin; we drink tea at half past six.” When she went to stay at Godmersham, which she frequently did, she mingled with county people and noted their manners and ways; but she was entirely free from snobbishness, and her quiet satire of those who imitated all the superficial details in the life of a higher class than their own is seen in her account of Tom Musgrave in _The Watsons_, who condescends to stay and play cards with the Watsons until nine, when “the carriage was ordered to the door, and no entreaties for his staying longer could now avail; for he well knew that if he stayed he would have to sit down to supper in less than ten minutes, which, to a man whose heart had long been fixed on calling his next meal a dinner, was quite insupportable.” It is not difficult to trace the evolution of the dinner-hour; in the time of Pepys, busy men rose early and took hardly any breakfast, perhaps a glass of wine or a draught of ale with a bit of bread. M. Grosley, a Frenchman who visited England about the middle of the eighteenth century, says that “the butter and tea, which the Londoners live upon from the morning till three or four o’clock in the afternoon, occasion the chief consumption of bread, which is cut in slices, and so thin that it does as much honour to the address of the person who cuts it as to the sharpness of the knife. Two or three of these slices furnish out a breakfast.” After this slight repast, corresponding to the Continental coffee and roll, men worked hard until dinner-time, a meal that occupied several hours, and at which they consumed an enormous amount; and they did little or no work afterwards. It is easy to imagine how, on account of work, the early dinner-hour of the poorer classes at noon began to be postponed among men who were more or less their own masters until they could feel, in a common phrase, they had “broken the back of the day’s work”; hence the curious hour of three. In out-of-the-way places to this day the Sunday dinner-hour is at four o’clock. When breakfast became more usual, it was not necessary to have dinner so early as three; and with our present fashion of breakfast and lunch, to say nothing of afternoon tea, which we have transferred from after to before dinner, the dinner may be postponed to as late an hour as is desired without inconvenience.