Fan Etiquette and Usage History

This fan exhibition, under the auspices of the Society of Decorative Art, is an exceedingly attractive one and has been well attended. It will continue during the coming week.

 THE FAN EXHIBITION

VARIETIES SEEN AT THE SOCIETY OF DECORATIVE ART

Quite a number of valuable additions have been made to the loan collection of fans now exhibited at the rooms of the Society of Decorative Art, No. 28 East Twenty-first street. Fans belonging to the American Revoluntary period have been contributed. These are of French make, and were certainly once very much in fashion. One represents the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, with Gen. Washington receiving the sword of the English officer. A host of British soldiers, in carmine coats defile from a fortress. Another is the glorification of Washington, with two emblematical figures. The resemblance to the Father of his Country is in no case very striking.

In older times, undoubtedly leading events of the day were produced on fans and became la mode. A pretty souvenir or the day is an oil fan, which must have been used by soine little Miss, of 1770. A fan which once belonged to Mrs. Symmes, wife of Col. Symmes, an officer of the British Army during the Revolution, finds a resting place in one of the cases. There is here, too, a fan once the property of Mme. Doche, a famous French actress, who used it in Alexandre Dumas's play of “La Dame aux Camélias.” Here are gorgeous fans presented to Mrs. Grant while she was on her travels. One is of heavy ivory, covered in part with gorgeous lacquer; another is of tortoise shell. In this same collection are silver filigree fans. It is not an uncommon thing to see a fan, of a composite character, that is, to the sticks belonging to one period has been added the leaf of a later time. This is quite evident in several fans where the brins or sticks of the period of Louis XIV are the more valuable.

In modern fans, there is a lovely one, painted daintily by De Beaumont, a group of ladies by the seaside. Here is a Venetian dagger fan, a real stiletto, which has been incased in an ivory form, fashioned exactly like a fan. This must be an Oriental idea which Venice copied. This fan may have brought about some tragic conclusion to a love drama, such as Alfred de Musset might have written. There is an ugly Chinese dagger fan here which might be carried and no one would suspect its dangerous character. The Chinese make a peculiar fan which answers for a bludgeon. It is of solid iron or steel, handsomely ornamented, but it can inflict a stunning blow like a billy, so that being “brained by a lady's fan” is after all quite a possible thing. It is said that these dagger fans are of Japanese origin, and as the Chinese are not inventive, they probably copied them. Fans of this character are often carried by the Chinese in San Francisco, and are to be found occasionally there in the Chinese pawn shops. The blade is short and sharp and resembles a Malay Kris.

No people are so fastidious as the Chinese in regard to fans, as they use a different fan for Summer or Winter. Fashion has to do with the number of sticks. Even the poorest classes use fans, and a coollie, as he staggers under his load, fans himself. Fans are used even to preserve a kind of incognito, for when one great Mandarin meets another, instead of going through the ceremony of a long salute, etiquette permits them to cover their faces with their fans, and they are then supposed not to see one another. There can be no doubt that fans are used in China, as are penny books or circulars, and an author in Fraser's Magazine tells that the murdering of the Roman Catholic priests and Sisters was produced on pictorial Chinese fans and widely distributed. This fan exhibition, under the auspices of the Society of Decorative Art, is an exceedingly attractive one and has been well attended. It will continue during the coming week. – The New York Times,  March of 1882

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

Gilded Age “Mrs. Manners” on Dress

“Good taste is indispensable in dress, but that, united to neatness, is all that is necessary—that is the fabled Cestus of Venus which gave beauty to its wearer.”

Mrs. Manners, the highest authority we can possibly quote in such matters, has the following hints to girls, which we can not deny ourselves the pleasure of copying, though they may seem, in part, a repetition of remarks already made:

“Good taste is indispensable in dress, but that, united to neatness, is all that is necessary—that is the fabled Cestus of Venus which gave beauty to its wearer. Good taste involves suitable fabrics—a neat and becoming ‘fitting’ to her figure—colors suited to her complexion, and a simple and unaffected manner of wearing one's clothes. 

A worsted dress in a warm day, or a white one in a cold day, or a light, thin one in a windy day, are all in bad taste. Very fine or very delicate dresses worn in the street, or very highly ornamented clothes worn to church or to shop in, are in bad taste. Very long dresses worn in muddy or dusty weather, even if long dresses are the fashion, are still in bad taste.

“Deep and bright-colored gloves are always in bad taste; very few persons are careful enough in selecting gloves. Light shoes and dark dresses, white stockings and dark dresses, dark stockings and light dresses, are not indicative of good taste. A girl with neatly and properly dressed feet, with neat, well-fitting gloves, smoothly arranged hair, and a clean, well-made dress, who walks well, and speaks well, and, above all, acts politely and kindly, is a lady, and no wealth is required here. 

Fine clothes and fine airs are abashed before such propriety and good taste. Thus the poorest may be so attired as to appear as lady-like as the wealthiest; nothing is more vulgar than the idea that money makes a lady, or that fine clothes can do it.” – From the book “How To Behave,” by Samuel R Wells, 1887

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

Etiquette Needed for Theatre Bonnets

Fashions from 1873: Small late Victorian hats and bonnets from Paris set with flowers, ribbons and feathers.
–Photo: Hulton Archive, Getty Images / Hulton Archive

Among items of theatrical news may be mentioned the death of Mrs. Ternan, (Miss Jarman,) an old friend of Charles Dickens. Some of the London managers have just begun to admit bonnets to the boxes, at the moment when bonnets have become hats and shut out the view of the stage from those behind. It is suggested that the managers should make a rule as to the height of ladies' bonnets. – F. H. J. In the New York Times, 1873

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

 

Gilded Age Horseback Dining

The guests were notified to arrive at Sherry's at eight o'clock the next day, their dress code jodhpurs, boots, and formal jackets.  
—Public domain image of the famous stag party on horseback 

A BLACK-TIE DINNER ON HORSEBACK

Millionaire C. K. G. Billings, a New York sportsman and “regular fellow,” became president of the exclusive New York Riding Club in the autumn of 1900 and issued invitations to a stag dinner for members at his medieval castle on Riverside Drive. Alas, the newspapers published rumors of the upcoming dinner, and the irked Billings appealed to restaurateur Louis Sherry. “This notoriety is driving me mad!” he exclaimed. “Reporters are bothering the life out of me. . . . What can we do about it?”

“Leave it to me,” replied Sherry. “Give me carte blanche, and we'll fool the papers as they've never been fooled before.” The guests were notified to arrive at Sherry's at eight o'clock the next day, their dress code jodhpurs, boots, and formal jackets. 

On arrival at Sherry’s at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Fourth Street, they found Sherry’s ballroom converted to a twilight woodland garden where a circle of fine horses were hitched, each one saddled and ready to be mounted. (The horses were brought up earlier on a freight elevator.) The waiters, dressed as grooms in scarlet coats and white breeches, scurried about to serve each guest on a tray affixed to his saddle. 

Two saddle-bags hung from each horse’s flanks, the contents iced champagne to be sipped from rubber tubes. The guests feasted on trout with green sauce. Each horse was provided with a feedbag of oats to chomp on as well. Total cost: about $50,000 (or $1.28 million in today's dollars). — From “What Would Mrs. Astor Do?,” 2018

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

House of Lords’ Etiquette Ruling

 

A new Duchess of Norfolk was introduced in 1905 – LONDON, Jan. 19.-England's premier nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, was today married to the Hon. Gwendolin Mary Maxwell, who thus takes her position at the head of English official society. her position being only one step below rovalty. The Duke of Norfolk is in his 57th year and is very wealthy. His first wife was a daughter of Baron Donington and died in 1887.

The latest pamphlet published by the commission of historical manuscripts in London contains the following interesting and curious travesty on etiquette: “The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, having been summoned to appear before the House of Lords in 1692 in order to plead their suit for divorce, it was debated whether the Lord Chancellor, sitting as Chairman, should lower his dignity by bowing to the Duchess and speaking to her only with his cap in his hand. This question was argued for several days in the House of Lords until debate exhausted itself and several duels resulted. At length it was decided that the Lord Chancellor should first receive the bows of the Duke and Duchess and return them with uncovered head and after that he should replace his cap.” This rule was followed to the letter and is still adhered to today when similar contingencies arise. – Triplicate, Volume XVIII, 1897

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

More Criticism of McAllister’s Manners

Nathan Lane as Ward McAllister and Carrie Coon as the fictional Berth Russell in HBO’s “The Gilded Age”

Another small portion of a dismal review of 

Ward McAllister’s book, 

“Society as I Have Found It”

The Paris dressmaker Worth receives an extensive advertisement throughout the pages of “Society As I Have Found It.” The author’s “distinguished” friends– an adjective which he applies indiscriminately to all of his friends, but which is quite superfluous, since we are perfectly aware from his own admissions that he would avoid the acquaintance of anyone who was not distinguished– are invariably described as having been arrayed in magnificent Worth gowns at the entertainments recorded in his book. The impression which he thus endeavors to convey, that the ladies in the foremost ranks of New York society get their dresses from Worth, is likely to create a considerable impression among his feminine readers in the Western and Southern States, and to prove of much pecuniary value to the once famous faiseur in question. 

For there has been a very marked decrease in the latter’s formerly important transatlantic clientele since the American élégante have at length began to realize that his Vogue disappeared with the fall of the Empire, and to discover that his European customers are almost entirely restricted to the wives of Levantine bankers and to the princesses of the stage and of the demi-monde. No leader of fashion in either London, Vienna or St. Petersburg, nor indeed any Parisian élégante, would ever dream of confining the construction and design of her toilette to the somewhat heavy hands of the Gallicized Yorkshire man in the Rue de la Paix, whose questionable and inartistic taste betrays his north-country origin, and who invariably strives to conceal the vulgarity of his coupe by overloading his creations with parvenu magnificence.

Mr. McAllister's readers, especially those who hope to derive from its pages social experience and a knowledge of etiquette, would likewise do well to avoid following too closely “the forms of invitations used by Mr. McAllister.” It is possibly owing to his connection with trade that he has adopted the commercial method of abbreviating words, such as, for instance, “yrs.” for “yours.” Abbreviations infer that the writer does not regard the person whom he is addressing as worthy of the trouble involved by writing out the word in full, and are therefore discourteous.

More over, it is hardly good form to refer in a letter to a “polite” invitation, while the expression “pray present me most kindly to Mrs. I and believe me yours, etc.,” must surely be an Americanism pure and simple, and the use of which is restricted to Mr. McAllister's “swell” friends. For it is certainly never used in Mayfair or Pall Mall. All these lapses, not only of language, but also of ordinary breeding and education, appear trivial, however, when we come to the appalling confusion of pronouns, which he introduces in his attempts to show his readers how to write a note in the third person.

In conclusion, permit me to express the earnest hope that young America will not regard as a model of European fashions, nor Europe consider as an example of American fashion, this feeble imitation of the Calais– not the London– Beau Brummel, whose manners, breeding, education and form are like his Huguenot legs– “very, very groggy.” – By an Ex-Diplomatist in the New York Tribune, 1890 

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

Service Etiquette Using a Maid

The maid announces to the hostess that dinner is served at a prearranged time or twenty minutes after the last guest has arrived. The hostess seats guests in the customary manner of alternation, unless one sex outnumbers the other, and then the hostess uses her discretion.

When a Resident Maid or Hired Help Serves Cocktails and Dinner

1. Usually six to eight guests are invited.

2. The time for cocktails and dinner is settled. Invitations are written or telephoned.

3. The menu is written out for the maid to check the procedure. A resident maid will know where things are and your way of doing things. Hired help will need everything put out in readiness and a more careful check of procedure. Remember to allow plenty of room around the table for service. Usually a three-course dinner is offered. Canapés and dips that do not need constant attention are suggested.

4. Cocktails in any may be mixed and served at a bar accommodation in the living room or other suitable place. The maid serves the canapés.

5. Before the guests enter the dining room, the water glasses should be filled, butter put on the butter plates, and candles lighted. Sherry should be poured if it is to be served with the first course.

6. The maid announces to the hostess that dinner is served at a prearranged time or twenty minutes after the last guest has arrived. The hostess seats guests in the customary manner of alternation, unless one sex outnumbers the other, and then the hostess uses her discretion.

7. To simplify service, the first course may be already on the table, whether it is a cold fruit cup or a hot soup in covered dishes.

8. All serving of the food is done on the left side of the guest. Water and wine are served on the right. – Patricia Easterbrook Robert’s, 1960

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

Ping-Pong Diplomacy in 1971

American table tennis player, Glen Cowan (bottom left), who caught the ride on the Chinese team’s bus, along with the other U.S. table tennis players in China – on the cover of Time magazine, in April 1971

Ping-Pong Diplomacy

When an American competitor at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan, missed his team bus back to the hotel, he set off one of the biggest tectonic shifts of diplomacy in world history — and triggered the end of the Cold War.

Jumping on to the Chinese team’s bus instead to catch a ride, one of the Chinese athletes broke strict protocol by handing him a gift of a silk cloth depicting the famous Huangshan Mountains.

When the bus arrived back at the hotel, journalists were astonished to see the two players chatting. Their photographs of this rare meeting of nations dominated news headlines around the world and Mao Zedong, spotting an opportunity, invited the U.S. team to spend a week sightseeing in China.

Capitalising on this new-found good will, President Nixon instigated a visit to Beijing — so began the defusing of the Cold War, and the term Ping-Pong Diplomacy was coined.– Christian Howgill for the Mail Online, June 17, 2022

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

Gents’ Tie Knots for Different Occasions

Numerous tutorials for tying a neck tie can be found online, Styles abound for the knots. Above is a selection.  
– Image source, Pinterest

Knowing which tie knot goes with which occasion is a skill that every sartorial enthusiast eventually masters. The ability to choose an appropriate tie knot for your particular setting is a skill that will allow you to elevate your style game. 

You’ve finally bought that luxurious piece of neckwear that you’ve been contemplating for a while. Go you! The purchase has been made, and you know you’ll look damn good in it. However, you soon realize that another dilemma looms. 

Just how are you going to knot your new treasure? With a range of standard knots and an ever increasing array of novelty knots, how exactly do you showcase your modern day cravat so that you present your best foot forward? Let’s examine tie knots for different occasions:

Before we delve into what occasions should elicit different knots, we should be aware of what knots go best with different collars. Four-in-hand knots go best with pointed collars, Half Windsor knots go well with medium spread collars and Full Windsor knots go best with spread collars. With that being firmly established, here are the different tie knots.

THE FOUR IN HAND KNOT

The four-in-hand knot is the easiest knot to tie and is non-symmetrical. The relatively informal nature of the knot indicates that it should be worn for dressy but not overly formal occasions, such as a party or a social gathering. 

THE HALF WINDSOR KNOT 

The half windsor knot is another men’s knot staple that is symmetrical and more formal. Due to its versatility (and requiring less tie fabric to be tied than a full windsor), it has grown to be a popular choice among well dressed men. The half windsor knot is more formal than the four-in-hand and is therefore best suited for more formal events such as a job interview or a business meeting. 

THE FULL WINDSOR KNOT

The Full Windsor Knot is the most formal and goes well with longer (more fabric is required to tie the tie) and wider ties. The shape of the full windsor is the same as that of the half windsor – except that it is a larger knot. As a result of this, it is best suited for more formal occasions and with spread collared shirts. 

A Full Windsor Knot is best suited to more formal events, such as a wedding or an important business meeting.

From The Dark Knot, Posted by Rishi Chullani on January 14, 2015 - “To view the Dark Knot's range of exquisite silk ties that tie the perfect knot, especially for half windsor and full windsor knots, please click here. Each of our ties are made with a double interlining layer of wool and cotton, resulting in a rich thick knot that every discerning gentleman loves. Can't decide? You don't have to”

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

Luring a Lord in the Gilded Age

“The original hotel had modern conveniences such as a hydraulic elevator, central steam heat and gas lights. In addition, the property had a billiards room, music room, barber shop, Turkish Bath and children’s playroom. The hotel had 75 large guestrooms, some with balconies, and no two rooms were alike. The hotel welcomed many travelers from around the world and in fact was nicknamed ‘Little London’ because of the many English tourists who came to visit. The city attracted health-savvy individuals seeking the high altitude dry climate, nearby Pikes Peak and the amazing natural rock formations known as Garden of the Gods.” — antlers.com

The Duke’s Progress: The English Lord’s American Journey

Gallons of ice water. Great gusts of suffocating steam heat. The heiress-hunting Englishman was always being buffeted by extremes in America. Take, for instance, the hotels: so wonderfully luxurious, yet so deeply uncomfortable. The elaborate meals were poorly served, and wine was not a matter of course with dinner. The elegant bedrooms were heated to the point of boiling, the enormous, shiny bathrooms overrun with complex, unmanageable systems of faucets. There were bells, buttons and switches everywhere— but no one to look after His Lordship personally, to meet his own little idiosyncratic needs. And topping it all was the demeaning practice of signing the guest book, where any plebeian might thereafter finger his noble name.

No less confounding were the young American ladies. Never before had the English Lord found himself in such unrestricted contact with unmarried females, hurrying here and there, from one social or sporting activity to the next, with no evidence of adult supervision. It was not the least bit necessary for the Englishman to exercise any rituals of courtship formalities until the very last moment. Although he might perpetually expect the red-faced, indignant parent to appear on the horizon of his lovemaking, none ever materialized. The indignity was, in fact, all his own and from another quarter: he soon discovered that he was only one among many, that the girl in question had a veritable horde of equally favored “admirers.”

The question of the girls aside, the English Lord found that civilized America bored him. True, the famous American openness was preferable to the stilted formalities back home— no one was kept standing in the States, and everyone was free to speak his or her mind. But this very freedom produced a certain blandness. Only occasionally could one enjoy an excited discussion of corruption in government, and there was almost no gossip— no little scandalous stories, no intrigues to titillate and amuse. Of much greater interest was primitive America. “Though one can dine in New York,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “one could not dwell there. Better the far West with its grizzly bears and its untamed cowboys.” (Indeed, the West was so full of aristocratic Englishmen that the famous Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs had be come known as “little London.”) Thus the wife-hunting English Lord, after a patient review of American heiress strongholds along the Atlantic coast (where he might or might not attend to the business at hand), would head happily west to points wild and unknown. — From “To Marry an English Lord,” 1989

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

Gilded Age Grocery Shopping

Gilded Age dining room with table set, Potter Palmer mansion, Chicago, ca. 1895-1902… Art Institute of Chicago

On Foods of the Gilded Age …

Fried Artichokes… It's 1896: Let's Go Shopping

The year Fannie Farmer published her cookbook, 1896, was a shopper's paradise. One could walk through the doors of S. S. Pierce, the preeminent grocer of the day, and purchase Formosa oolong, Penang cloves, authentic Parmesan from Italy, a bottle of Château Lafite or Château Margaux (they would set you back $20 to $30 per case, roughly $1,000 to $1,500 in today's dollars), six types of preserved cherries, green turtle soup, Jamaican ginger, California peaches, hothouse cucumbers, potted ham, medicated toilet paper, Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Havana cigars, cherry blossom toothpaste, truffles, jarred French peas, and Tangle foot sticky fly paper.

But this bounty, all neatly displayed and offered for immediate home delivery, was a far cry from Boston's beginnings— a time before Faneuil Hall and Quincy Markets, before the railroads brought oranges from Florida and canned fruit from California, before ships were unloading mushrooms from Paris and olive oil from Italy. The most venerable method of purchasing foodstuffs was through vendors-butchers, fishmongers, and farmers who went door to door. This old English custom endured well into the eighteenth century…

Shopping was not done just by professional cooks or the middle-class housewife with list in hand. By the 1890s, some upper-class women were also going about doing their own shopping, as described in a November 17, 1895, article in the Boston Globe. These “ladies of leisure” would go to market in carriages driven by liveried coachmen, keeping their shopping lists in “leather and gold notebooks.” (Other well-to-do women came by public transportation or walked, of course.)

The experience of shopping for Thanksgiving in 1896 was recorded by one intrepid Boston Globe reporter, who wrote about the tremendous last minute rush for turkeys with “sounds worthy [of] the realms of Beelzebub” as bargain-hunting shoppers descended on Quincy Market to secure the main event in the biggest meal of the year. The streets were lit with both torches and electric lights and the birds formed fences and walls along the lines of the curbstones, hung from their feet by ten-penny nails pounded into improvised wooden scaffolding. As the evening progressed, the prices fell from 20 cents a pound at 8:00 P.M. down to 15 to 17 cents by 9:00 P.M., which was closing time for the market itself. 

Outside, the vendors kept up their “seductive oratory” until almost midnight. By 11:00 P.M., turkey had dropped to 10 cents per pound and a vendor with just one chicken in in ventory hawked it at a mere 5 cents per pound, saying, “Here you go now, ladies and gents. This is the last bird I possess in the world. He's yours for 12 cents, and if you don't find him the tenderest chicken in Boston, I'll give him to you for nothing.” — From Richard Kimball in “Fannie’s Last Supper,” 2010

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

Formal Dinner Service with Help

The size of the guest list is usually established by the size of the staff-six guests to each person serving.

A well-balanced meal, planned so that it keeps as hot (or as cold) as it was meant to be, that is served correctly and with ease to appreciative company in an attractive setting, is the obvious aim of every hostess. The experienced housewife already knows the answers and how far she is prepared to go to achieve her ideals, but to those just setting up housekeeping, the following check list suggests what can be expected from the kind of space and help you have or can hire for a sit-down dinner party.

Trained Help in Large Households 

1. The size of the guest list is usually established by the size of the staff — six guests to each person serving.

2. The time for dinner, and the time for guests to arrive for cocktails, is settled. Invitations are written or telephoned, with a reminder sent later in the mail to busy people and new friends who need to have your address, phone number, and directions.

3. The menu is discussed and written out for the cook or chef. Formal dinners today usually do not exceed four courses, preceded by cocktails with canapés or hors d'oeuvres.

4. Cocktails may be made to order in the pantry (or kitchen) and served on a tray. It should be possible to serve hot hors d'oeuvres if you have a trained staff; otherwise, canapés and dip dishes are quite sufficient.

5. Before guests enter the dining room, water glasses should be filled, butter, if needed, placed on the butter plates, and candles lighted.

6. The servant should catch the eye of the hostess and announce when dinner is served. For a small group, the hostess seats the guests; otherwise, seating is indicated by place cards. The female guest of honor sits on the host's right, other honored guests on his left and on either side of the hostess, women alternating with men.

7. After the guests are seated, the first course is brought in on an accompanying plate and placed on the service plate before them. The service plate is never, at any time there after, left empty; as one course is removed, another takes its place.

8. All serving of food is done on the guest's left side, and water and wine on the right. Service begins with the guest on the host's right and proceeds around the table counter clockwise. If two people are serving, they should begin at the right and left of the host and proceed down the table, then serving the host and hostess, who immediately picks up the outside piece of flatware (on right of setting) as a signal for the guests to begin eating.

9. The first course is removed with the left hand, and the warm fish course plate is substituted with the right hand. The fish course is served with white wine.

10. The second course is removed with the service plate while a warm plate is substituted with the right hand. The hot entrée is served from garnished platters — often with accompanying potatoes. Other vegetables follow in partitioned dishes. The sauces and red wine are served. At a formal dinner nothing is offered a second time except water and wine replenishments. Individual servings of salad should be placed to the left of the guests if the menu requires them.

11. Remove the main course. Remove salt, pepper, unused flatware, and empty wine glasses to a small tray (leaving the water glass and the glass for dessert wine). Fill the water glasses (never touch the glass and use a napkin in case of drips).

12. Bring in the dessert plate, doily, and finger bowl (and the flatware also if it is not already on the table). The guest puts the doily and finger bowl to the left of the setting and puts his flatware in place on the table. Dessert accompanied by sweet wine or champagne is served.

13. The hostess makes the first move to leave by putting her unfolded napkin at the left of her setting.

14. A servant brings the coffee equipment into the living room for the hostess to pour. The servant passes the coffee to the guests. Liqueurs and glasses are brought in on a tray and served as requested.

During dinner, a servant removes any debris left after the cocktail party and tidies the living room. If the dinner party is larger than twelve and a full complement of staff is not available, the removal of each course begins when the majority has finished. But no guest should be made to feel hurried.— Patricia Easterbrook Roberts, 1960

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

Ice Cream Soda Etiquette

The perfect utensil for simultaneously eating and drinking ice cream sodas or ice cream “floats.”— Antique‘Stroons”  or combination “Straw Spoons” in sterling silver, with heart shaped bowls shown on the right, next to a patent for a similar straw and spoon from 1901 on the left. The proper etiquette is to eat the “solid food”or ice cream, first. Then drink the remaining liquid and melted ice cream in your glass. 
— Images from “Reaching for the Right Fork… the etiquette and evolution of tabletop utensils”

An Unsolved Problem

To the Editor of The New York Times:

In my letter printed in ‘The Times’ of Aug. 27 regarding the matter of drinking or eating ice cream soda, I simply mentioned the matter of soup in an incidental way.

It has amused me to see that all the replies relate to soup. There is no ground for argument on this point. We all know that it is a rule of etiquette to say we eat soup.

The problem remains, however, whether to eat or drink ice cream soda. The authorities on etiquette have not as yet taken up this point, and it is time that they did. True, the matter is not vitally important, but just the same it should not remain unsettled.

What I want to know is when I lead a friend to the soda fountain, can I make him drink or has it got to be eat an ice cream soda? —Thomas A. Wilson, New York, Sept. 1, 1933, The New York Times

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

Clotted Cream Tea Etiquette

“This looks delicious, but it is not ‘the done thing’ to cut a scone, slather clotted cream and jam on, then put the scone back together to form a kind of bulky sandwich. Scones are broken, much like a bread roll. The scone (pronounced as in “gone” not as in “cone”) is to be eaten in a very particular way. Scones are served whole and preferably warm from the oven, and as with bread you break a scone with your fingers, and spread the jam and cream on, bite-size by bite-size piece. One should never be seen to cut a scone with a knife.” – Etiquette Teacher, Rachel North. 

According to taste.com.au, “Jam or cream first – it’s the ultimate food fight. Scones: they’re the quintessential English dessert and also the cause of a long-running (and often heated) debate around the world. What goes first? Jam or cream?…The two English counties famous for cream teas are Cornwall and Devon, and they differ on order. Cornish cream tea will do jam then cream, Devonians do it the other way around. The nation votes –To help settle the long-running debate once and for all we put it to our Facebook followers: which is the right way to eat a scone? Jam first or cream first. With over 18,000 votes in total, 17,000 of those said jam first, while only 1,000 people said cream. While it’s safe to say it wasn’t a nail-biting vote, people weren’t afraid to let their opinions be known.”

Cream Ladles

A cream ladle with a gilded bowl, used for placing clotted cream in tea, from the Gilded Age. It’s in the 1902 “Poppy” pattern by Gorham. Numerous books for identification of silver patterns and dating your flatware are available. This ladle was photographed on an old book by the late, Richard Osterberg, on sterling flatware, as I was looking at other pieces in the “Poppy” pattern.

Although warm milk was sometimes added to tea in China in the seventeenth century, when tea-drinking was taken up in England in that same century, sugar was the sole additive. The addition of milk was delayed to the early eighteenth century, ‘but... the English epicure who first tempered tea with milk remains unchronicled’. 

The milk for tea was hot during the first quarter of the century, following which cold milk was the rule. Cream was served with tea beginning in the late eighteenth century. The first receptacles for cream were pitchers or jugs with wider mouths than comparable containers for milk, to accommodate the thicker, slower-pouring liquid. There was no need for spoons or ladles.

Such utensils were needed, however, with ‘clotted cream’ (also known as Devonshire cream), which was milk heated until its cream became thick or clotted. (Clotting not only enriched the taste but helped to preserve the cream in the days before refrigeration.) 

The service of clotted cream in small silver pails became a ‘fashionable conceit’ on dessert tables in the late 1740s. The receptacles took other forms, as well, including boats supported on three or four feet and openwork baskets with liners of Bristol blue glass. Small silver ladles accompanied the containers. — William P. Hood, Jr. in 1999’s “Tiffany Silver Flatware”

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Medieval Bread Etiquette and Use

The bread for the Lord of the house was fresh, that for guests one day old and that for the rest of the household three days old. Four-day-old bread was reserved for cutting the trenchers… —Three, late-19th century bread forks for serving bread, rolls and toast. 

At medieval banquets bread was served in the form of manchets, which were round loaves of the finest whole wheat, sliced using a tranchoir (from the French trancher, to slice) by a designated carver (q.v. Carving tools and accessories).

The bread for the Lord of the house was fresh, that for guests one day old and that for the rest of the household three days old. Four-day-old bread was reserved for cutting the trenchers, which were pieces of bread sliced approximately 6 inches square and 2-3 inches thick, placed directly on the table and used in lieu of plates. (Later these had an ‘under plate’ of pewter or wood which evolved into the modern dinner plate.)

The bread knife of today is the successor to the tranchoir of the Middle Ages. Along the way, it was Queen Victoria who made it acceptable to put a loaf (of bread) and knife on the dining table. — William P. Hood, Jr. in 1999’s “Tiffany Silver Flatware”

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Gilded Age San Francisco Social Scene

Ladies’ lunches Mrs. Wallace considers the least alluring form of social entertainment, although she owns that San Francisco society is composed almost entirely of ladies. The men she considers are to blame for this.

Questions of Etiquette for Both Sexes 

Brightly Considered 

From a San Francisco Standpoint

San Francisco society is known in the Eastern States as peculiarly pleasant, but also as unique of its kind. Why is this? Eastern visitors remark upon the absence of rigid form and the free-and-easy plan of entertainment here as "delightful Californian hospitality." In California, they say, invitations hardly require an answer, nobody thinks of paying duty calls, nor is there any strict qualification required to obtain an entree to any particular circle. Above all, they declare, there seems to be no idea of reciprocity in entertainment. 

These floating charges are of serious moment to San Francisco society, and “The Call” has collected some representative ideas regarding them. They would seem to be somewhat borne out by the prevalent local belief that the role of a San Francisco hostess is a difficult one to play. The question is still an open one, but at present the general indictment seems to lie against the San Francisco men. The men appear to largely leave their social duties to the ladies and to think that a mere appearance anywhere is a favor on their part. This, if true, is a heavy indictment, however pleasantly it may be touched upon by the ladies whose views are given below.

Mrs. Judge Wallace is of the opinion that social duties are, as a whole, extremely pleasant. Naturally some forms of entertainment are more enjoyable than others. In her opinion balls and at homes, with dancing, varied by music, yield the most entertainment to old and young alike. The young enjoy taking part and the old enjoy looking on; while the strain upon the hostess is very slight indeed. 

A dinner party is, in her estimation, a more serious affair. Given guests who are intellectual enough to enjoy conversation as a fine art in addition to the banquet, a dinner is the highest form of entertainment, but even then the duty of selecting and pairing off the right people is a serious one for the hostess.

Ladies’ lunches Mrs. Wallace considers the least alluring form of social entertainment, although she owns that San Francisco society is composed almost entirely of ladies. The men she considers are to blame for this.

What more pretty and informal than an afternoon tea? In London and New York, the male element is largely represented at this form of amusement. Mrs. Wallace considers it a pity that San Francisco men, when their day’s duties are over, instead of going to the clubs, do not take an occasional cup of tea with lady friends. In the same way she regrets, for the sake of society, that the married men do not help more to receive at home, or visit with their wives and daughters instead of leaving to the latter nearly all the social duties.

Another prominent society lady smiled at the idea of social duties in San Francisco being fatiguing. “A leader in society,” she observed, “means one who gives up her entire time and energies to social duties. She must take the initiative in balls, dinners and every form of entertainment that becomes the fashion.” In London or New York, this is pleasant, but very hard work. At present in San Francisco the post of a social leader is little more than a sinecure.

“Ten or twelve years ago,” she continued, “when Mrs. Gwin and Mrs. McMullin kept open house, we were much more gay, and, I believe, that eight or ten years hence, when San Francisco has grown more, we shall be gay again. One reason for our present repose is that we Californians are great travelers; we think nothing of going to London or New York for our social diversions. I consider dinners decidedly the pleasantest form of entertainment.” she said.

“It is a compliment to ask a guest to your table. A ball means a crowd, and a guest who accepts an invitation to a ball does me a favor in helping to make up my number. Teas are very enjoyable, and at our Saturday teas we San Francisco hostesses generally have a very fair number of gentlemen. The reason our men do not visit more is that they work harder here than in Europe and the East. They have longer hours and take fewer vacations.”

One of San Francisco’s leaders, who was busy issuing invitations to a large tea, found time to remark: “It seems to me that people are too ready to accept the pleasures and utterly neglect the duties of society. I mean they have no idea of reciprocity. A guest owes something to his hostess, if it is only a ‘duty’ dance with the girl she is chaperoning the next time he meets her at a ball. Here in California these duties, that elsewhere are considered imperative, are rather neglected.” – San Francisco Call, 1892

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Ward McAllister’s Etiquette Questioned

A small portion of a dismal review of Ward McAllister’s book, “Society as I Have Found It”

I can imagine the silent glance of contempt which the cook, if she be worthy of that name, must dart at the man who, while claiming supreme authority and pre-eminence in such matters, is ignorant of the difference between the releve and the piece de resistance of a dinner, who considers that Johannisberg should go with cheese, and who fondly imagines that “les quatres mendiants” – the most bourgeois and vulgar of desserts, only to be found in France at tenth-rate table d'hotes –constitutes a fit conclusion to a dinner-given by himself – which he describes as having been absolutely perfect. – Nathan Lane (as Ward McAllister) with Carrie Coon (as the fictional Bertha Russell), in HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’

M’allister’s Book – What a Foreigner Says of the Remarkable Production

The “Autocrat of Society” Mercilessly Ridiculed.

His Manners, Breeding, Education and Form, Like His Huguenot Legs, are “Very, Very Groggy”

“… The latter is equally at sea with regard to the Court of the Tuileries; for he declares he landed in France for the first time in 1857, that he was present at the baptism of the Prince Imperial, and that he visited the International Exhibition. The christening of the ill-fated prince in question took place, however, on March 16, 1856, just eighteen months previous to Mr. McAllister's first arrival in Paris, while the International Exhibition to which he refers was held even still earlier, namely, in 1855.

Nor is the pheasant incident above mentioned the only demonstration of Mr. McAllister's imperfect acquaintance with the ethics of the table and of the cuisine; and when I picture him to myself, engaged in what he describes as his principal daily task of commenting to his cook on her performance of the previous day, much in the same manner as Emperor William is accustomed to address “la critique” to his generals at the close of a sham battle. 

I can imagine the silent glance of contempt which the cook, if she be worthy of that name, must dart at the man who, while claiming supreme authority and pre-eminence in such matters, is ignorant of the difference between the releve and the piece de resistance of a dinner, who considers that Johannisberg should go with cheese, and who fondly imagines that “les quatres mendiants” – the most bourgeois and vulgar of desserts, only to be found in France at tenth-rate table d'hotes –constitutes a fit conclusion to a dinner-given by himself – which he describes as having been absolutely perfect.

With regard to wines– a subject to the discussion of which, by the by, Mr. McAllister devotes several chapters of his book– he does not appear to be acquainted with the important operation of chambre-ing red Bordeaux wines. No gourmet of the old world would ever dream of putting his lips to a claret which had not undergone this process– a process so vital to the taste of the wine that none but skilled hands are intrusted with the task. 

He seems likewise to be unaware that there is absolutely no Tokay in the market, and that the wine which he dignifies with that name is but merely a feeble imitation of that nectar of the gods which is served in thimble-sized glasses at the Imperial tables at Vienna-one glass being sufficient to perfume an entire room, and which is so highly prized and so rare that Emperor Francis Joseph's gift of four dozen bottles to Queen Victoria, at the time of her Jubilee, was regarded in Europe as constituting one of the most valuable and magnificent of the thousands of costly presents which she received on that occasion.– By an Ex-Diplomatist in the New York Tribune, 1890

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Etiquette from the 14th Century

Only squirrels hoard nuts… diners should not take more than a few when they are served at a dinner – “only… take two or three nuts when nuts are on the table.”

Ancient Table Etiquette

Some of the ancient table directions are very quaint. You are told, for instance, not to eat much cheese, not to leave your spoon on your platter, not to play with your knife or roll your napkin into a cord or tie it into knots, only to take two or three nuts when nuts are on the table, and not to get intoxicated during dinner time. The “Boke of Curtasye” also warns people not to play with the cats and dogs while at table.—Correspondent for Chicago Herald, 1892

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Etiquette Minutiae of Gladstone’s Life

“His dinners are selected to his taste. He takes soup, fish (if it is to his fancy), but usually dines off one dish, which he selects and does not depart from. He is very fond of rice pudding and prunes and rice, and upon either of these, but more especially the former, he would, if the etiquette of the dinner table permitted it, make an entire meal.”– Public domain image of William Ewart Gladstone

Gladstone’s Life: The Great Statesman's Simple Habits. Plain Food, Plenty of Sleep

Mr. Gladstone is in the best of health, sleeps remarkably well, and, so far from having shown signs of decreasing vitality through an inability to maintain an appetite for food, the right honorable gentleman en joys his meals with the zest of a young man. When he rises he invariably takes a tepid bath, and every morning before breakfast while at Biarritz he attended church, and since his return to London has frequently taken a little walk in the grounds of Downing street. His first meal usually consists of a hard-boiled egg, a slice of tongue, with tea and toast. After breakfast he devotes him self to his correspondence, and for several hours is busy with his private secretary and receiving such political callers as may arrive. 

For luncheon Mr. Gladstone takes cold meat, milk pudding and cheese. He drinks a couple of glasses of light wine, and some times finishes with a glass of port. At 5 o'clock, if disengaged, he has afternoon tea. His dinners are selected to his taste. He takes soup, fish (if it is to his fancy), but usually dines off one dish, which he selects and does not depart from. He is very fond of rice pudding and prunes and rice, and upon either of these, but more especially the former, he would, if the etiquette of the dinner table permitted it, make an entire meal. 

He drinks claret, and to his cheese has a liberal glass of port wine. Half of this he takes with his cheese, and sips the remainder in conversation over dessert. When dining out Mr. Gladstone takes two or three glasses of champagne, concluding, as usual, with port. He does not drink coffee because it is seldom made to his liking, and being astringent keeps him awake. 

While at Biarritz a rule was made that Mr. Gladstone should be left alone at 10 o'clock every night. This rule is likely to be adhered to still, and the other evening, while the guest of a friend, he left at a quarter past ten and was in bed fifteen minutes later. Mr. Gladstone has, with very rare exceptions, always slept well and for some time was in the habit of remaining in bed until noon. This was when he felt fatigued or desired to think out some matter which specially engaged him. But at Biarritz he never lay in bed but once and that was two days before the time fixed for his departure, when he was attacked by a cold in the head and reverted to his old rule, kept his bed for twenty-four hours and thus regained his usual health. 

Since the right honorable gentleman returned to London he has risen early, and is as vigorous and hearty as his friends could wish. Mr. Gladstone lives very plainly, his regimen being guided by authority. but his appetite in London is good. On one occasion at Biarritz he was asked how he slept, to which he replied gayly, “Well, I have done my nine hours.”

His memory is as keen as ever, and at the Biarritz dinner-table, as when he dines at home or with friends in London, he was the life of the party. On one occasion when Mr. Tollemache was present there was a discussion about classics, and Mr. Gladstone quoted not single lines of Greek, but whole passages. On the voyage from Calais, the channel was very stormy, and Mr. Gladstone lay down, but did not suffer from seasickness. The reports of his ill health and lessened vitality have caused the Downing-street postbag to be unusually heavy, and a great deal of ill-afforded time has consequently been expended in refuting these idle inventions.– St. Jame's Gazette, 1893

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Egg Spoons and Egg Etiquette

Erasmus, in his treatise on manners, de civilitate morum puerilium (On the Civility of the Behavior of Boys), 1530, warned against cleaning out the shell's contents with the fingers or tongue.— Figure 74 from the Tiffany Silver Flatware book—A selection of egg spoons with gilded bowls in Tiffany full-line patterns. Left to right: Vine (iris), 4in.; Lap Over Edge, 4 in.; Persian, 4 in. The egg-shaped bowl of the Lap Over Edge specimen is standard. The shield-shaped bowl of the other two examples is unusual.

The soft-boiled egg has been a favorite food for a long time but before the appearance of egg cups and spoons presented problems as to how it should be eaten. Erasmus, in his treatise on manners, de civilitate morum puerilium (On the Civility of the Behavior of Boys), 1530, warned against cleaning out the shell's contents with the fingers or tongue. Apparently the use of a small knife was acceptable, as was dipping small pieces of bread into the egg. 

Italians at one time were given to drinking a barely heated egg right out of its shell. At first, egg spoons were used not to eat the egg directly but to transfer the semi-liquid contents to a plate, where it was mashed with butter, or to a glass, from which it was drunk.

Egg spoons have always been appropriately small, usually about 4 to 5in. in length, but the shape of the bowl has varied. Some bowls are very slightly oblong, others almost pear-shaped. Still others are shield shaped. 

The most commonly-observed Tiffany egg spoon bowl is egg-shaped, but the bowl of what we think is the egg spoon in some of the early patterns has a shield shape. Bowls of egg spoons are usually gilded to protect against discoloration from the sulfur in yolks. The handle on Tiffany's egg spoon is that of a large coffee spoon.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, egg spoons and cups were often part of an egg cruet, or egg stand, sometimes surmounted by a salt cellar. Tiffany made these, along with silver or silver-plated egg boilers, or coddlers.— Tiffany Silver Flatware- 1845-1905- When Dining Was an Art, 1999

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