Gilded Age “Welcome Guests”

“There is a difference between acting as though one had never seen a sugar sifter before, and acting as though one thought this particular sugar sifter a very pretty one.” – A gilded and silver sugar sifter to the right of a cherry fork and to the left of the fruit and berry servers, from the Etiquipedia private library.

 

The Welcome Guest:

Let the Woman Who Aspires to Be One Do All These Things

The ancient law that one must not remark either in praise or blame upon one’s hostess’s belongings, ought to be cut out of every book of etiquette. It may be extremely “good form” for a guest to act as though the loveliest things a woman could place before her are everyday affairs to her, as though the most daintily prepared food was a diurnal happening with her, but it is not good heart. 

There is a difference between acting as though one had never seen a sugar sifter before, and acting as though one thought this particular sugar sifter a very pretty one. There is a happy medium between displaying round-eyed astonishment at pate de foie gras and showing a polite appreciation of it.

As a usual thing, the mere fact that one is a guest means that one’s entertainers have brought forth their prettiest linen and china, their daintiest silver and their clearest glass, to do one honor. It is only courteous to show an appreciation of it all by an admiring word. It is a compliment to the hostess’s culinary skill to ask her for a recipe or to testify in some other way to a liking for her viands.

Of course, every woman of good breeding will be extremely careful to observe the family rules about meals and the like. She will not demand services from the maid which the other members of the household do not have. She will never be late to breakfast, unless it is the rule of the establishment that each one shall breakfast when he or she pleases. She will endeavor to be “one of the family” in her interest in those things which interest the others, and her assumption for the time of all the family ways. 

But she will conscientiously avoid being one of the family, if that means being drawn into family disputes, hearing family quarrels or being treated to a view of the family skeleton. And having once been a guest in a house, no well-bred woman will ever allow herself afterwards to indulge in unfriendly criticism of those in it. – New York World, 1894

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