Gilded Age Luncheon Table Etiquette

In the gilded age of 1892, no tablecloth of color for luncheon would do. – “First sugar-coat the luncheon pill by daintily setting forth the table. Do not make the mistake of thinking that anything will do for this meal, and do not eat over a colored cloth that, under any and all conditions is an utterly detestable invention. Let the table, therefore, be graced by a fair linen cloth, tenderly coaxed into a satin shimmer by the laundress; and when it is taken off, be sure and fold it just as she did, in order to preserve its freshness.” 

A Table so Daintily Prepared as to Tempt the Appetite

“LUNCHEON is my housekeeping bugbear! Breakfast and dinner are easy enough, but luncheon is a crazy-quilt kind of a meal, ‘a thing of shreds and patches.’” Thus wailed a young house keeper recently; and it is often so, although there is really no excuse for such a state of affairs. Luncheon, coming at midday, should be toothsome and dainty as possible to tempt the appetite, which at that hour, in warm weather, at all events, is not inclined to be robust, so it often takes offense at a trifle and departs bodily. “But we must use the odds and ends and left-overs some way,” says Madam Economy, with a pucker on her forehead.

“You are right, my dear madam; but let your genius so enwrap these made-over things that the victims shall never discover their identity. Then say grace with unction, fervor, and a quiet conscience, and you will see the victims fall to with a will, and devour the bits that, unadorned, are not, like beauty, adorned the most. When, if you had set them on cold, or Laodicean in spirit and temperature, twenty minutes later they might have been gracing the garbage barrel.

First sugar-coat the luncheon pill by daintily setting forth the table. Do not make the mistake of thinking that anything will do for this meal, and do not eat over a colored cloth that, under any and all conditions is an utterly detestable invention. Let the table, therefore, be graced by a fair linen cloth, tenderly coaxed into a satin shimmer by the laundress; and when it is taken off, be sure and fold it just as she did, in order to preserve its freshness.

The table must be padded first, of course, and if one can not afford the cotton felting that comes for this purpose, use a thin quilt, or a well-washed blanket, but let it soften the asperities of the wood, whatever it is. Or, where one has a highly polished table, and plenty of drawn-work squares, put one of these in the center of the table, and small ones under each plate, thus partially exposing the table top.

Put on the pretty dishes next, and put them on artistically. The maid, if her soul is dead within her to a sense of artistic arrangement— and it probably is—will, if intrusted with this duty, indulge in a species of curved pitch on the dishes, that might answer admirably for baseball, but most illy for the desired effect of deluding the victims aforesaid. Always, if possible, add a flower or two in a pretty vase, somewhere on the table, then straighten things up, and see that everything, including your own countenance, shines, before the victims come in.– Good Housekeeping Magazine, 1892

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