Etiquette, Diplomacy and Cads

The dapper, Spencer Eddy, spent 15 years working his way up in the U.S. diplomatic service and was briefly the Minister to Argentina (1908-1909), followed by Romania (1909), when he resigned due to his wife’s poor health. What a pity that in his many lofty positions, he never learned that publicly spreading gossip about others was considered poor manners.
—Public domain photo 

Who is the Real Cad?

That brilliant light of diplomacy, Spencer Eddy, who married a granddaughter of the late Claus Spreckels of San Francisco, is said by the New York Globe to be telling a story of the horrible experience he went through when a San Francisco friend ate peas with his knife at a London dinner. Eddy is a Chicagoan, and his story is amusing to Californians, for when Chicago’s millionaires were still serving head cheese for dessert and pigs-feet for breakfast, Californians were returning from European tours where they were indistinguishable from other civilized beings by their table manners, except that Californians conducted themselves at the table better than the average Europeans. 

No Californian abroad has ever behaved in the way British cads have in this country, and several of the cads had titles, too. Nor does it become a New York paper to discuss crudity of table manners, for the public restaurants there give an opportunity for comparison that puts the average Gothamite in the ultra ill-bred class. Here is another point of view. 

Even if Eddy's San Francisco friend did commit the horrible faux pas of eating peas with his knife, he must have been a decent fellow—too decent to have told tales about Eddy, had Eddy, for example, come to California and made a fool of himself, as many such persons do, in discussing local affairs and history. If Eddy told the story credited to him by the New York Globe, it is Eddy who is the boor and the cad for decrying his guest, and not the mythical San Franciscan. — San Francisco Call, 1909

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia