Green’s Dictionary of Slang

kettledrum n.

[a play on the omnipresent tea kettle + drum, ‘an assembly of fashionable people at a private house, held in the evening, much in vogue during the latter half of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century ... later, an afternoon tea party, formerly sometimes followed by the larger assembly’ (OED)]

a party; latterly an afternoon tea party on a large scale.

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[UK] Vanbrugh Confederacy I i: The Rogue had a Kettle-drum to his Father, who was hang’d for robbing a Church].
N. Lancaster Pretty Gentleman 15: [note] Drums, Kettle-Drums, Drum-Majors, Routs, Hurries, Riots, Tumults, and Helter-Skelters, the several Appellations by which the modern Assemblies are aptly characterized and distinguished.
E.K. Wood Roland Yorke Ch. xiii: Mrs. Bede Greatorex had cards out for that afternoon, bidding the great world to a kettle-drum; and she was calculating what quantities of ices and strawberries to order in [F&H].
[UK]J. Hatton Cruel London I 36: Talk of women! – why, men are as frivolous and full of gossip and scandal as the tabbies at a West End kettle-drum.
[US]Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 29 Nov. 14/1: [headline] I cannot tell whether it [i.e. a party] was a ‘German’ or a ‘Kettledrum’ but [...] it was a mighty ‘tony’ affair.
[UK]M.E. Braddon Cloven Foot I 269: It is kettledrum time.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Mar. 17/1: I am having a kettledrum this afternoon, and visitors are beginning to arrive, so I must go and receive them – though , if the truth were known, I had far rather stay and finish my gossip with you, ma Belle.
[UK]Daily Tel. 28 Jan. n.p.: The ladies’ kettledrum is not to be shut against male sympathisers, and gentlemen duly provided with tickets are to be suffered to join in the festivities [F&H].