Gilded Age Hand-Shaking Etiquette

A lady should always rise to give her hand, and in her own house she should always offer it in greeting strangers and friends alike. In the ball-room, however, hand-shaking is not the thing.

Hand-shaking is British. The lounger in society, in his glass of fashion, enumerates its various styles as indicative of character.  These are aggressive, supercilious, lymphatic, imperative, suspicious, sympathetic, emotional, but none of these are required by etiquette. Still to shake, or rather take, or give a hand, in mere conventional greeting, is a cultivated art of society. A gentleman cannot take a lady’s hand unless she offers it, and an American authority on etiquette reminds him that he must not “pinch or retain it.” 

A young lady must not offer hers first, or shake that given her, unless she is the gentleman’s friend. A lady should always rise to give her hand, and in her own house she should always offer it in greeting strangers and friends alike. In the ball-room, however, hand-shaking is not the thing. It is also the privilege of the superior to be the first to proffer the hand. An American is chary of his hand; in these progressive times, a nod is considered sufficient, except in conservative Virginia and the South generally, where family traditions of old, courtly, and kind observances still obtain. – From “All the Year Round” in the New York Times, 1883

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