Gilded Age Dinner Lengths

Napoleon III insisted on meals which were 3/4 of an hours’ long. Too short for Gilded Age society, according to Ward McAllister. — Nathan Lane as Ward McAllister in HBO’s “The Gilded Age”

As to the length of a good dinner, Napoleon III insisted on being served in 3/4 of an hour. As usual, here we run from one extreme to another. One of our most fashionable women boasted to me that she had dined out the day before, and the time consumed from the hour she left her house, until her return home, was but one hour and forty minutes. This is absurd.

A lover of the fleshpots of Egypt grumbled to me that his plate was snatched away from him by the servant before he could get half through the appetizing morsel on it. This state of things has been brought about by stately, handsome dinners, spun out to to great links. One hour and a half at the table is long enough.— Ward McAllister, 1890

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