An 1897 Question of Etiquette

 I am in receipt of a card advising me that certain ladies would be at home on certain days. Now, as I am not a society man, I would ask whether the ladies mean that they are at home in the afternoon or in the evening, nothing being mentioned on the card but just the day.

A Gilded Age Gent’s Etiquette Query

Will you kindly help me out of a quandary? I am in receipt of a card advising me that certain ladies would be at home on certain days. Now, as I am not a society man, I would ask whether the ladies mean that they are at home in the afternoon or in the evening, nothing being mentioned on the card but just the day. Also is it necessary to acknowledge the receipt of the card outside of the call which one makes? By answering the above you will greatly relieve THE WRITER. New York, Dec. 4, 1897

What are generally known as “days at home” are informal receptions in the afternoon, and it is only necessary to acknowledge the courtesy of an invitation to such informal receptions, either by a call on one of the appointed afternoons, or, if a call is not possible on the afternoons named, at some other time, or by the sending of a card. The “day at home” is the most informal of all social entertainments. It has grown much in vogue during the past few years in New York and other large cities, and many prominent society women now prefer to have two, three, or four “days at home” during the season rather than go to the trouble and expense of one large afternoon or evening reception. “Days at home” also have the advantage of affording those on a lady’s visiting list more than one opportunity of making a call, and the excellent suggestion has been made that the ladies who purpose holding days at home this Winter should, if possible, where they live in about the same locality, choose the same day. Thus, for example, if those ladies living on lower Fifth Avenue and in adjacent streets between Fourteenth Street and Washington Place, would choose Monday, those living between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets would select Tuesdays, those again residing between Twenty third and Thirty-fourth Streets would take Wednesdays, and so on until each fashionable section of the city had, as it were, its day, the labor of calling would be much simplified. –The New York Times, 1897 

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