Gilded Age Dinner Etiquette

With the etiquette of seating precedence in the United States versus that of the seating precedence of dinners with members of the British Peerage

“When a dozen or a score of ladies and gentlemen are assembled for the avowed purpose that they may enjoy each other’s society in a festivous way, it would seem to be the dictate of common sense that they should be allowed to pair and to group themselves according to their personal likings, or, at least, according to their affinities and sympathies. To a certain extent that is possible in America; not so in England. There comes in the awful and paramount question of rank and precedence. Lord A would like to have Mrs. B, or perhaps Miss C, for his table companion; but no, although there may be other Lords present, as he is an Earl or a Marquess, and the man of the highest rank present, he must take in the hostess and sit by her side, although the dinner may be given in honor of plain Mr. and Mrs. D; and Lady A, if she be present, must be taken in by the host, and if she is not present, then the lady next in rank...” – Photo of the dining room at the Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum, Massachusetts

It is a point of general agreement among men of sense that the customary formal dinner party is one of the most oppressive and exhausting forms of so-called social pleasure. To men who do not go to their friends’ houses for the sake of getting something good to eat and to drink it is a frequent occasion of wonder why, when we wish to be particularly attentive to certain of our acquaintances and to enable them to enjoy each others’ society, we ask them to dinner. Beyond a question, it is not that we may enjoy their society, or they ours, for of no one does a dinner guest see so little, with no one does he talk so little, as with his host and his hostess. And yet it would be difficult to say with whom he has more social intercourse of any interest on such occasions except the lady whom he “takes in,” or, possibly, his neighbor on the other side of him. 

Dinner guests assemble slowly in the drawing room, and wait an awkward quarter or half an hour, during which everybody is simply in a state of expectancy, during which nobody says anything that can well be omitted, and the end of which everybody welcomes with a look, if not with words, of relief. The male guest takes in the lady to whom he is assigned by the care of his hostess and the bidding of his host; by her side he sits while they eat a certain quantity of food and drink an uncertain quantity of wine, exchanging, in the intervals of service, a few sentences, rarely of more interest to either than the paragraphs of the personal column in a newspaper; at the dessert there is a little general chat of about the same quality; after dinner there is half an hour or an hour of like conversation in the drawing room; the guests separate after having enjoyed each other's society really less than if they had casually been thrown together for an hour in a railway car or on the deck of a steam-boat; there is a formal “visit of digestion” to the hostess within a week, and this is the end of a society dinner.

There are exceptions; but as a general rule everybody except the gourmands is more or less bored. The only end really attained is that the host and hostess have paid certain social debts. This is, we are sure, an expression of the general feeling at out dinner parties, and yet we go on giving them and going to them, and we shall go on doing so for a time, the duration of which is, at present, quite beyond human conjecture.

In England, as well as in America, this appreciation of formal society dinners prevails to such an extent that there it is finding its expression in the social literature of the day. It was Sir George Cornwall Lewis, we believe, who said that life would be very endurable if it were not for its pleasures; and among these pleasures formal dinners seem now to be rated as the greatest by almost general consent. But in England, they have in all society, except the lower middle-class, a drawback or dead weight, from the oppression of which we republicans are relieved, if not entirely, yet in a great measure.

When a dozen or a score of ladies and gentlemen are assembled for the avowed purpose that they may enjoy each other’s society in a festivous way, it would seem to be the dictate of common sense that they should be allowed to pair and to group themselves according to their personal likings, or, at least, according to their affinities and sympathies. To a certain extent that is possible in America; not so in England. There comes in the awful and paramount question of rank and precedence. Lord A would like to have Mrs. B, or perhaps Miss C, for his table companion; but no, although there may be other Lords present, as he is an Earl or a Marquess, and the man of the highest rank present, he must take in the hostess and sit by her side, although the dinner may be given in honor of plain Mr. and Mrs. D; and Lady A, if she be present, must be taken in by the host, and if she is not present, then the lady next in rank.

A writer in a recent number of the Saturday Review, recounting the many perplexities of dinner-giving, mentions this as chief among the very preliminaries – the making up of the party. In the consultation upon that important point, he remarks that it is admitted that “the Glendowers would be all that could be wished; but Lady Glendower’s rank would necessitate her being taken in to dinner by her host, although she is a person of far less importance than Lady Lothbury, and it is desirable that she should be the honored guest of the evening.” This is no whimsical exaggeration; it is a plain and simple setting forth of a practical and constantly recurring difficulty.

Nor are Americans exempt from this perplexing drawback to the pleasure of entertaining when they are in England, as the entertainers as well as the entertained. Here is a case in point. An American lady of high social position, beautiful, intelligent, and wealthy, lived some time in London, and received at her own house the best society of the British capital. She was delighted with it, whether as guest or as hostess. But in the latter position always, as in the former frequently, she found herself in a state of irritating perplexity and disappointment because of this question of precedence. Lest she should give offense, she was obliged to inform herself minutely as to the claims of her guests on the score of rank, in order that she might not be guilty of the solecism of letting Lord F, who was only an Earl, go out of the room before Lord G, who was a Marquess, or of placing Lady H, who was a Viscountess, below Lady I, who was only a Baronet's wife. And then there was the complicated question of what was due to Lords and Ladies K, L, and M, who were only sons and daughters of Marquesses and Earls, and as such entitled to different degrees of precedence.

Moreover, her little personal preferences and desires to show particular attention were thus all swept aside. She could not make up her parties to her liking. At last at one dinner which she desired should be in particular honor of a certain friend, she boldly availed herself of her republicanism, and wrote to one of her expected guests, a nobleman of high rank with whom she was on terms to take such a liberty, asking him if he would oblige her on this occasion by waving his claims to precedence, and not be offended if she gave her arm to Mr. He in the frankest and pleasantest way assented; and, indeed, it may be presumed that he cared nothing at all about the matter, except to please his hostess.

Due arrangement took effect; but the result was far from being satisfactory. For her other guests were so evidently disturbed by this conspicuous derangement of social order and defiance of the laws of precedence that their trouble was apparent all through the entertainment. Their glances and their aside speeches could not be mistaken. At length, in despair, she gave up the contest, and gave up entertaining, and finally she left London because she could not endure this way of “doing society” according to the dictates of the herald’s office.

It is not necessary to be penetrated with that democratic disdain of rank and title which is so conspicuous an American characteristic, to regard this manifestation of aristocracy as almost puerile. That sensible people should be disturbed because persons who are their friends and in their own social set and rank of life, go out of a door before them, and more, that they should be so disconcerted because some one else goes out before a person of higher rank than he or she, that they cannot eat their dinner in peace and quietness, is a result of the aristocratic constitution of society which does not tend to elevate it in the estimation of reasonable men and women.

On state occasions, in aristocratic countries, precedence is, of course, to be observed; but in social entertainments what matter does it make where a Duke sits or stands so long as he sits or stands where and with whom he finds his pleasure? He is no less a Duke by the side of Miss X than he would be by the side of the Duchess of Z; nor would his rank be more or less recognized if he were with the one than if he were with the other. This fuss about precedence reminds us unpleasantly of the squabbles which centuries ago used to take place between Ambassadors for the places which their carriages should take in the streets, and even upon the road, which sometimes led to conflict and bloodshed.

The common sense of the world has long ago set down all such jealousy among the childish follies of an almost semi-barbarous condition of society. And yet there has of late been an attempt to introduce something like such rules of precedence among us at entertainments, in regard to Senators, members of Congress, and the like. All such frivolity might well be disregarded by us, except in the conspicuous case of the President of the United States. The weariness of “society” will not bear to be increased by this addition to its burdens. It has been said that a certain form of obituary eulogy has added new horrors to death. It is certainly true that precedence in society– except within certain easy and movable bounds– adds superfluous perplexity and oppression to the cheerlessness of formal dinner parties.– The New York Times, 1880

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