Nella Henney on 1920’s Table Manners

“One must not make the mistake of believing that goodwill can be built on courtesy alone.” — Nella Henney 

One of Nella Henney’s most popular books was her “Book of Business Etiquette.

“Business etiquette is constantly evolving, and what may have been considered good etiquette in the 1920's is no longer the norm. Thus, the real value of this work is the portrait it paints of a specific time in history. Reading Henney's work will transport you back to the roaring 20's, that brief postwar time where business was booming and thousands of Americans entered the white-collar workforce for the very first time.” — From Barnes and Noble

 

In the old books of etiquette in the chapter on table manners the authors used to state that it was not polite to butter your bread with your thumb, to rub your greasy fingers on the bread you were about to eat, or to rise from the table with a toothpick in your mouth like a bird that is about to build her nest. We have never seen any one butter his bread with his thumb, but— There are in the United States nearly five million people who can neither read nor write. We have no statistics but we venture to say there are as many who eat with their knives. 

There are people among us—and they are not all immigrants in the slum districts or those in the poorer sections of the South—who do not know what a napkin is, who think the proper way to eat an egg is to hold it in the hand like a piece of candy, and bite it, the egg having previously been fried on both sides until it is as stiff and as hard as a piece of bristol board, who would not recognize a salad if they saw one, and who have never heard of after-dinner coffee.

In addition to this a young man is very fortunate, especially if his way of life is cast among people whose manners are different from those to which he has been accustomed, if he has a friend whom he can consult, not only about table manners but about matters of graver import as well. And he should not be embarrassed to ask questions. The disgrace, if disgrace it could be called, lies only in ignorance.— Nella Henney, “The Book of Business Etiquette,” 1922

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