Gilded Age “400’s” Etiquette Mistakes

I dropped into a very fashionable place at luncheon the other day and I got to wondering if the “400” didn't make mistakes too. So I asked Charlie – everybody knows Charlie. “Yes,” he said. “Some- times they asked me for a table near the door. Sometimes they call me ‘Captain.’ Sometimes they even use the wrong fork. But it’s easy to tell them from the new rich, because the 400 is very quiet and easy to serve. Real people never make themselves conspicuous.” – Above, a depiction of men and women outside the famous Delmonico’s restaurant in New York.

“Your orders, madam?”, Jeffries would ask in his beautiful English voice… 

Mistakes in Etiquette the 400 Make…

Daughter of Boss-Painter, Now High in New York Society, Tells How Social Blunders Are Made and Avoided 

Can someone of humble birth, being suddenly rich, win a place in the best society and act as “to the manor born”?

A poor girl, whose father was a painter and whose mother was a telephone operator, says it isn't hard at all to climb to the top rung of the social ladder and avoid faux pas. (And, by the way, she really did pronounce it fo pa.). For her helpful story of her conquest of society and etiquette, which appears in full in January Smart Set, we print these amusing extracts:

“It wasn't so hard to avoid social errors while we were traveling on my honeymoon. Everything was new and we moved about. constantly. The only thing that annoyed me was the restaurants. ‘What would you like to order, darling?’ my husband would say. I honestly did not know what to order. It always embarrassed me, and I got around it by saying: ‘Oh, you order. Surprise me.’ I learned from him how to order in public and I watched him like a hawk to see which knife and which fork he used.

“How those menus did confuse me. At first, I couldn’t think of a thing but beefsteak and French fried potatoes. But soon I learned to look over the Entrées. I discovered ‘chicken-hash, en bordure,’ ‘eggs Benedict’ with that delicious Hollandaise sauce, and a mixed grill - the tender little lamb chop cuddled among a tomato, mushroom, kidney, bacon and sausage.

“They soon became my favorite luncheon dishes, with hearts of lettuce with Russian dressing. I think I liked the Russian dressing on account of its beautiful pink color. Then I became bold and changed the dressing. I fell easily into selecting soup or oysters perhaps broiled chicken or one of the dishes marked ‘Ready.’ Then sweet - that meant dessert – and I loved chocolate ice-cream. I soon stopped saying ‘small black’ for after-dinner coffee and ‘demi- tasse’ rolled off my tongue as if we had always had coffee in the drawing-room at home.

“Supper! At first when I went out to supper with my husband, I was always torn between a club-sandwich or fruit salad. That had been the thing we ordered when we went out to supper in the old studio days with a ‘beau.’ But after watching Ed it didn't take me long to order lobster a la Newburg - again the pink color intrigued me - or crab meat Dewey.”

She Meets Lord Jeffries

“However, these problems were no laughing matters in those days. Further problems would await me when I got home, and walked into the beautiful house my husband had brought me into. Jeffries, the English butler who had lived with him for years and I was sure was nothing less than a United States Senator when I first saw him, frightened me almost to death, ‘Your orders for the morning, madam?’ he would ask in his beautiful English voice. Those pesky orders - would I ever get away from them? But Jeffries understood. How kind and gentle he was in his unoffensive suggestions and his many subtle moves to me from making glaring mistakes in front of the rest of the servants.” – National City Star-News, 1924

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