A Gilded Age Philosophy of Etiquette

Though forks hadn’t started to appear on the tables of the United States until the 1830’s and 1840’s, like early mobile phone usage in the U.S., they soon took hold and were common place within a matter of just 15 to 20 years, as new technology always does. New etiquette was written for them too. By 1883, eating from one’s knife instead of a fork was discouraged in every book and publication of the day, as Granny would well know!

There is an 1883 philosophy in the requirements of good breeding, whether in the etiquette of the table, the street, the call or in the discharge of other social duties and pleasures. The requirements which polite society demands of its votaries are not mere arbitrary rules, but will be found to be invariably the result of a careful study of the greatest good and pleasure of the greatest number. 

Take, for instance, a very gross and marked example: Etiquette requires that the food shall be borne to the mouth on the fork and never on the knife. It is, evidently, most unclean, and, therefore, disagreeable to see a person thrust a knife into his mouth, and exceedingly trying to delicate nerves to see him in continual danger of involuntarily enlarging his mouth by an awkward slip of the knife.- From “Granmaw’s Kitchen” in Hilltop Messenger, 1967

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia