Gilded Age Advice: Strive for Elegance

“Some people eat instinctively with great elegance; some never achieve elegance in these minor matters, but all should strive for it. There is no more repulsive object than a person who eats noisily, grossly, inelegantly.” – One form of inelegant dining at the table was achieved by those gilded age, young women who refused to remove their mousquetaire gloves at the table. Yes, the gloves could be simply unbuttoned and one could shove the glove’s “fingers” under the gloves, pushing them out of the way… avoiding the need to remove them completely, as any elegant women at the table had done. But this custom was never considered proper at the table. Removing one’s gloves completely at the table was the required etiquette, as it still is today.

GOOD AND BAD TABLE MANNERS

Some people eat instinctively with great elegance; some never achieve elegance in these minor matters, but all should strive for it. There is no more repulsive object than a person who eats noisily, grossly, inelegantly. Dr. Johnson is remembered for his brutal way of eating almost as much as for his great learning and genius. With him it was selfish preoccupation.

Fish and fruit are eaten with silver knives and forks; or, if silver fish-knives are not provided, a piece of bread can be held in the left hand. Fish corrodes a steel knife. Never tilt a soup-plate for the last drop, or ostentatiously scrape your plate clean.

A part of table manners should be the conversation. By mutual consent, everyone should bring only the best that is in him to the table. There should be the greatest care taken in the family circle to talk of only agreeable topics at meals. The mutual forbearance which prompts the neat dress, the respectful bearing, the delicate habit of eating, the attention to table etiquette, should also make the mind put on its best dress, and the effort of any one at a meal should be to make himself as agreeable as possible.

No one should show any haste in being helped, or any displeasure at being left until the last. It is always proper at an informal meal to ask for a second cut, to say that rare or underdone beef is more to your taste than the more cooked portions. But one never asks twice for soup or fish; one is rarely helped twice at dessert. These dishes, also salad, are supposed to admit of but one helping– Tuolumne Independent, 1883

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