Gilded Age Manners for Young People

   

It is never polite to comment on another guest’s table manners, regardless of the utensils they have chosen to dine using.~Above is a gilded age, fluted sorbet spoon by Tiffany. Not many silver companies produced sorbet spoons or spoons for ices. The companies who did, produced more of the shovel-like, Italian sorbetto spoons.

Manners from the Books of Etiquette

True politeness is always unassuming, but people who learn their manners from books of etiquette often make themselves ridiculous in attempting to show off their fancied superiority. At a lunch in Washington recently, a distinguished prelate sat next to a young lady who is spending her first winter in the capital. He was eating his ices with a spoon, when he was for a moment struck dumb by her remark, loud enough to be heard by others, “Oh, why don't you use a fork? It isn't polite to eat ices with a spoon.”

When he had recovered his breath, he replied, in the softest and most amiable tone, “My dear child, I am sorry it is not nice; but I was brought up to eat ices with a spoon, and unfortunately I am too old to forget.”

A similar incident occurred at a dinner. An army officer of high rank, while engaged in an animated conversation with his vis-a-vis, inadvertently stuck a three-pronged fork into his oysters. The hostess immediately cried out, “Oh, general, use the smaller fork.”

From the grim look which settled upon the features of that warrior it might be fancied that he was preparing for a battle charge, but he said ne'er a word, and he did not tarry long after the dinner.

Both the general and the prelate were probably aware, however, that they had only neglected to observe a mere caprice of fashionable society, and that they had not violated any law of genuine good-breeding. - From Youths’ Companion, 1886

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