A Truly Awkward Etiquette Dilemma

The photo was found on the body of John Wilkes Booth after he was killed by pursuing Federal troops in April of 1865. The public domain image is of Lucy Hale, the daughter of U.S. Senator John P. Hale and the secret fiancee of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln in 1865. By 1882, she was the wife of William Chandler, Secretary of the Navy.

    

Etiquette at the Capital

The appointment of Mr. Chandler to the naval portfolio has developed an interesting phase of Washington social life, which set gossips agog with speculation. It will be remembered that when J. Wilkes Booth was shot, the picture of a beautiful young lady, a reigning society belle, was found on his person. The origin of this portrait was recognized in the person of Miss Hale, the daughter of a leading politician and statesman, and a lady of whom Booth had become deeply and seriously enamored. 

What encouragement he had received was not precisely known, but there was enough between them to form the basis of a good many romances, which afterward appeared in the public press. Miss Hale afterward became Mrs. Chandler, and is now the wife of the Secretary of the Navy. The same whirligig of time which has brought this about has also made the then young son of the martyred Lincoln, Secretary of War. 

It now appears that, according to etiquette, it is the duty of the Secretary of War to escort the wife of his confrère in rank to dinner. On state occasions he must take the wife of the Secretary of the Navy. Secretary Lincoln, in short, must escort the one-time sweetheart of the assassin of his distinguished father, therefore society is shocked. – San Jose Mercury-News, April 1882

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

Etiquette, Menus in White House Book

Many of the menus, recipes, and health, household and beauty hints in the new book were in the original, published in 1887. The authors were White House steward Hugo Ziemann and Mrs. Fanny Gillette, a domestic science expert. On the etiquette question, they wrote: “Absolute suppression of emotion, whether of anger, laughter, mortification, or disappointment, is one of the most certain marks of good breeding.” On avoiding wrinkles: “The best advice is to go on a diet of milk, beer, and cake in order to grow fat and thus extend the skin to its full tightness.” Presumably, the same end could be accomplished if one received invitations to Martin Van Buren’s “small, beautifully appointed and snobbish dinners” prepared by the chef he’s brought from London.

Cook’s White House Tour and 

The White House Cookbook

NEW YORK (UPI) — Calvin Coolidge was so thrifty a president that he limited the quantity of ice water and the number of paper cups in which to serve it at official White House receptions. “Silent Cal” told an aide he took this step so guests would not stand around all evening drinking instead of going home. Coolidge was by no means the only penurious president, according to Janet Halliday Ervin’s “The White House Cockbook” (Follett). James K. Polk’s first lady, Sarah, served no refreshments at all at twice weekly White House receptions, but set a good table at home in Tennessee. A Christmas dinner menu for the Polk menage there consisted of oyster soup, celery, turkey, homemade wafers, ham, spiced round salsify (a root vegetable), caramel sweet potatoes, pickles, rice, cranberry sauce, blazing plum pudding, wine jelly, charlotte russe, grapefruit salad, fruit cake, nuts, raisins, wine and coffee. 

Old But Good

Many of the menus, recipes, and health, household and beauty hints in the new book were in the original, published in 1887. The authors were White House steward Hugo Ziemann and Mrs. Fanny Gillette, a domestic science expert. Some of the health and etiquette advice would give nightmares to modem physicians and psychiatrists. On the etiquette question, they wrote: “Absolute suppression of emotion, whether of anger, laughter, mortification, or disappointment, is one of the most certain marks of good breeding.” On avoiding wrinkles: “The best advice is to go on a diet of milk, beer, and cake in order to grow fat and thus extend the skin to its full tightness.” Presumably, the same end could be accomplished if one received invitations to Martin Van Buren’s “small, beautifully appointed and snobbish dinners” prepared by the chef he’s brought from London. Even this didn’t satisfy some guests. One winter, guests were said to have complained about the monotony of the menus and entertainment. 

Official entertaining reached what the author calls “a new high” during the Buchanan administration. It began with this menu at the inaugural ball: 400 gallons of oysters, 60 saddles of mutton, 4 saddles of venison, 125 beef tongues, 75 hames, 500 quarts each of chicken salad and jellies, 1,200 quarts of ice cream, a four-foot cake and $3,000 worth of wine. The Ulysses S. Grants also lived well. Among three menus included from Grant’s administration was one for a birthday dinner for the president. It began with clams, continued to crab soup, assorted appetizers, fish, beef filet, chicken, veal sweetbreads and squab, each with appropriate vegetables or fruit; several desserts, coffee and four different wines with the first four courses. The Grant family’s interest in food didn’t stop with their White House days. After the Russian Revolution, the president’s granddaughter and her husband, a former Russian count opened a restaurant in London.

Fit for a President, Chicken a la Russe, a favorite recipe of Princess Cantacuzene, granddaughter of President Grant, is not for weight watchers. “Take two to four spring chickens plucked and cleaned, cleaned. Rub them over with flour and salt and fill them with the following stuffing: 24 tea rusks, well crushed; 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of butter, 1 or 2 egg yolks and 6 tablespoonfuls of parsley. All these ingredients well mixed together. Then roast the stuffed chickens in a half pound of butter. When ready, serve them with melted butter in which a good quantity of tea rusk crumbs have been mixed. This butter is poured over as a sauce. Serves six persons.” – By Jeanne Lesem, UPI Food Editor, 1964

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

A Biased Look at Presidential Manners

Lucy Webb Hayes was a popular hostess in Washington D.C. ; “Mrs. Hayes, on one of her tours with her husband, was asked if she did not get tired of seeing so many people and going so much, and she replied: ‘Oh, no; I never get tired of having a good time.’”—  Laura Carter Holloway

Mr. and Mrs. Hayes’ Manners

There are among Americans two types of good manners. They are not indeed confined to Americans, for Tennyson describes them well enough in his “Walking to the Mail:”

Kind nature is the best; those manners next 

Which fit us like a nature second hand; 

Which are indeed the manners of the great.

There is a certain refined and high bred polish, acquired by many Americans from foreign travel; and acquired more easily, I suspect, by them than any northern race. Such a manner, when combined with a kind heart, is a charming thing to see; it would be a good thing to have in the White House. But better still it is to have manners that are the gift of “kind nature;” that grow from the soil of a simple and genial spirit, cultivated by home and books and daily intelligent companionship, rather than by travel and conventional society. 

One whose manners are of this type may go any where and appear at ease anywhere; while the most graceful manners of the conventional type have certain limitations of their own, may sometimes be so placed as to be very ill at ease. Thus I noticed that, when the Emperor and Empress of Brazil were here, some persons of great social experience were quite perplexed to know how to treat them, they being such very plain and independent Imperial Majesties, traveling incognito in a Republic, whereas those who had never been presented at Court found no difficulty in treating them as they would any other pair of intelligent foreign visitors. 

No matter what may be the follies of our travelers, nothing has ever shaken my conviction that American manners of the best type are the best in the world, because they are the nearest to “kind nature,” it is such manners as these we ought to see, and I think do actually see, just now, in the occupants of the White House. It may be thought presumptuous in a man holding somewhat radical convictions to say it, yet I not only think that the foundation of nature’s manners is best laid in conscience, but that some form of the religious sentiment is almost essential for the truest polish and grace. 

One of the best descriptions known to man of thoroughly beautiful manners is to be found in Clarence King's story of “Cut-off Copple’s,” where he describes a lonely widow in the Sierra Nevada, keeping a wayside house of entertainment for rough miners, and remaining there among utterly alien scenes, that she might fulfill a pledge to her dying husband that his debts should be paid. ”O that unquenchable Christian fire,” says King after his brief sketch of her, “how pure the gold of its result! It needs no practical elegance, no social greatness for its success; only the warm human heart, and out of it shall come a sacred calm and gentleness, such as no power, no wealth, no culture, may ever hope to win. No words of mine would outline the beauty of that plain, weary, old woman, the sad sweet patience of those gray eyes, or the spirit of overflowing goodness which cheered and enlivened the half hour we spent there.”

 And I think that something of this grace of conscientiousness and unpretending religious feeling without narrowness in bigotry, may be found at the White House also. And something of this gratifying impression of sincere and noble qualities is left behind, I think, wherever our new President and wife are known. – Col. Higginson in the Woman's Journal, 1877

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

How Presidential Etiquette Changed in 1884

 

No subject is discussed with more animation or intense feeling among society people here than that of who shall go in first with the President to dinner, or who shall stand nearest to the Lady of the White House during receptions... — Grover Cleveland, a bachelor when he first became President, had to depend upon someone other than a wife to preside over the White House during his first administration. His choice was his sister, Rose. Miss Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, was deemed a young woman of “fine culture, high attainments and superior character.”

—Photo source, Pinterest 

A KNOTTY POINT OF ETIQUETTE

No subject is discussed with more animation or intense feeling among society people here than that of who shall go in first with the President to dinner, or who shall stand nearest to the Lady of the White House during receptions. Little factions are found at all entertainments, contending for the wife of the Secretary of State as against the wife of the Speaker, or for the reverse of that order, and politeness is sometimes strained during the heat which these disputes cause. The passage of the Senate Bill regulating the Presidential succession has given rise to a new line of discussion.


A writer for the Sunday Herald talks seriously about the consequences of the Bill, if it should become a law, and his conclusions indicate the thought which rises uppermost in the society mind upon the study of it. He says, “If the Bill— Senate No. 22— to provide for the performance of the duties of the office of President in case of the removal, death, resignation, or inability both of the President and Vice President, which was passed in the Senate January 21, becomes a law by being passed in the House of Representatives also, and signed by the President — it is now thought by no means probable that the House will agree to it— the guests on all state occasions in future where the same officials are present as were at the President's dinner party on January 30, will have to be seated as they were on that occasion, for the Cabinet, when that Bill becomes a law, will outrank all others save the President and Vice President.”


This is conceded by a prominent Senator whose judgment in matters of etiquette has never been disputed. He says however, that, “Until that Bill does become a law no one, not even the President, should reverse the code of etiquette by putting the Cabinet above the Speaker and Senators on State occasions. The Bill referred to provides that in case of vacancies in the two highest offices, the Secretary of State, or, if there being none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Secretary of the Treasury and the Bill continues to name the members of the Cabinet in their order as eligible to the succession if those above them in the Cabinet should be removed, etc..., shall act as President until the disability of the President or Vice President is removed, or a President shall be elected, etc... This Bill, if passed, will revolutionize official society in Washington, reversing all the laws of etiquette between officials which have prevailed for many years.” — the New York Times, February, 1884

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

19th C. Washington Social Gluttons

Etiquette entitles any person who calls at an afternoon reception in an official household to any evening reception that may be afterward given therein, so that any shrewd gormandizer may make the rounds of Cabinet receptions at least once during the season, and thus obtain a good deal of gratuitous sustenance. I know a certain woman who, from motives of economy, lived off mush and milk last winter, but made up for plain living at home by eating her fill of dainties at cabinet receptions. She understood “the ropes” well enough to get plenty of invitations, and could tell exactly which delicacy each house was noted for.

Gourmandizing at Receptions

Overeating and overdrinking at receptions and parties are among the most common forms of ill-breeding, and the way in which some “swell” people gorge themselves at the supper table would make a cannibal blush. “Please get me another ice and some more wine jelly,” said a pretty girl sitting at my elbow the other night. Her escort looked at her empty plate in astonishment “Really, my dear,” he began, “I should think you would scarcely need anything more after eating four sandwiches, two salads, four creams, and—.” He didn’t finish the list for she checked him with a warning “hush-sh-sh!” Nevertheless he went over to the sideboard and swallowed in succession six glasses of wine, which had been poured out for somebody else. 

It is a fact that some people attack their host’s banquet board with the avidity of free-lunch fiends elbowing each other in the scramble for eatables, as if they were eating at a railway station instead of in a fashionable dining room, where time is no object. There are men and women in Washington who go to public receptions for the express purpose of stuffing themselves to their utmost capacity, and who think it a smart thing to fatten at other people’s expense. Indeed this abuse of hospitality has been carried to such excess by vulgar people that some of the Cabinet ladies last year dispensed altogether with refreshments at their afternoon receptions in order to keep out a crowd of hungry strangers who only called to eat and sup. 

Etiquette, however, entitles any person who calls at an afternoon reception in an official household to any evening reception that may be afterward given therein, so that any shrewd gormandizer may make the rounds of Cabinet receptions at least once during the season, and thus obtain a good deal of gratuitous sustenance. I know a certain woman who, from motives of economy, lived off mush and milk last winter, but made up for plain living at home by eating her fill of dainties at cabinet receptions. She understood “the ropes” well enough to get plenty of invitations, and could tell exactly which delicacy each house was noted for. “I must go to Secretary L—— ’s next week.” she would say, “he always has terrapin for suppers.” Or, “I do love to attend Secretary F—’s receptions; his cook makes the best salad I ever tasted.” — Weekly Calistoga, 1882

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

Etiquette for a “Mrs. Malaprop”

“Mrs. Malaprop has climbed up on her husband’s bank account through the usual ways into ‘society,’ and while she gets along very well occasionally lapses a little in conversation, the lapses are being carefully recorded by her dear new friends.” —  Having a lot of money did not automatically or necessarily mean one was automatically accepted into Gilded Age society... The terms “parvenus,” “nouveau riche,” and “new money,” became slurs against someone desperate to be accepted by society —  especially in Washington D.C. and New York society. Without the right education and the right connections, though, much money was spent to attempt to impress others. 

Mrs. Malaprop 

Society Woman at the Capital Who is Credited with Some Unique Sayings

Washington society, like every other society, has its Mrs. Malaprop, a good lady who has said several good things of an inappropriate kind and gets the credit at the clubs and dinner parties of having said ten times as many, says the Boston Herald. The Mrs. Malaprop of Washington, is one of the new-rich who have revolutionized the architecture and the society of Washington. The “smart” society people go to their beautiful house, eat their delicious terrapin, drink their perfect champagne and get off witty remarks about them — if possible quoting them or pretending to, so as to make them ridiculous—all of which, I need not say, is considered quite good etiquette, even if it is not good manners. Well, Mrs. Malaprop has climbed up on her husband’s bank account through the usual ways into “society,” and while she gets along very well occasionally lapses a little in conversation, the lapses are being carefully recorded by her dear new friends. 

To the daughters of one of the most distinguished diplomats she is reported to have said: “I am so glad to meet you. I have been hearing you spoken of so much as the pretty Miss Legation, the clever Miss Legation. Do tell me which of you is the pretty one and which is the clever one.” Again to a famous army officer and his wife, who were telling how much they had enjoyed her dinner party, she cheerily said; “I thought you would like to meet some nice people.” Being presented to a plainly dressed woman whose name she did not catch, she said in the course of conversation, that Washington was a delightful city for people in moderate circumstances. “There are so many pretty little houses such as you, madam, might find suitable,” she said, addressing, unwittingly, one of the richest of the old residents, whose fine house on Lafayette Square is almost historical, and who had the tact and kindness not to set her right. Perhaps Mrs, Malaprop’s most famous speech is of as late date as last spring, just before she went abroad. Coming down to meet a morning caller in her wrapper, Mrs. Malaprop said, sweetly, “You really must excuse me for coming down in my non de plume, but I have been busy packing all the morning.” — The Morning Press, 1892

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

19th C. White House Etiquette

Guests to the White House should really keep their hands to themselves. “Inquisitive people often like to study the upholstery, perhaps, and they forget to replace the shams. The shelf ornaments may take their fancy, and they sometimes fail to restore things to the condition in which they were left at the dictation of the President’s aesthetic taste. In this democratic age, few people are aware of the grandeur to be seen in the home of the Chief Ruler of the nation.”
 U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, 1881-1885
- photo source US News and World Report 

Some Presidential Habits

President Arthur pays attention to every little detail of household decoration. He continually wants this or that article of furniture shifted about, to change the appearance of things. He is particular even to the exact angle at which the corner pieces of furniture rest, and on Mondays, when the rules he has made for the White House exclude visitors, it is his custom to inspect the house throughout and see that everything is in order. A reception is apt to leave some things topsy-turvy. 

Inquisitive people often like to study the upholstery, perhaps, and they forget to replace the shams. The shelf ornaments may take their fancy, and they sometimes fail to restore things to the condition in which they were left at the dictation of the President’s aesthetic taste. In this democratic age, few people are aware of the grandeur to be seen in the home of the Chief Ruler of the nation. 

The state dining room is the room in which the President entertains at table the distinguished guests. No matter whom it may be he is entertaining, the President is always served first. He sits at the centre of one side of the long table, his wife, if he be married, directly opposite him. It sometimes happens that the Secretary of State will be seated in the chair usually assigned to the President’s wife. After the President has been served, White House etiquette requires that the lady sitting next the President on his right, and then the lady on his left, be served before any others. Then the President’s wife is waited upon, and afterward the gentlemen immediately on her right and left, in the order named. Then the other guests follow. 

Whenever the table is set for a dinner, the large brass plateau is set for sixteen feet along the table, which was imported from France during the administration of President Monroe, is filled with fruits, flowers and French candies. In the centre, directly in front of the President, is placed a full rigged floral ship, which was sent to President Garfield at the time of the last inauguration by a Boston florist. The flowers are renewed from the White House conservatory. When the chandeliers and candelabra are lighted, and other effects produced to heighten the scene, the spectator is apt to think of the regal festivities of some other land than free America. 

Across the wide hall or corridor, which extends from the East Room to the large plant conservatory at the west end of the house, I was shown into the private dining room of the President. There I saw the handsome buffet and the sideboard which Mrs. Hayes had made during her stay in the While House. The buffet was ornamented with pretty platters and dishes finished from designs of Theodore Davis, the New York artist. The scene depicted upon each dish suggests a story of some kind. 

In the drawers of the sideboard is kept the White House silverware. The gold spoons which President Van Buren purchased are still here. They are said to have defeated him when he ran a second time for the Presidency. Some of the silverware I saw, Crump said, was seventy years old, and the side tables in the room have done duty for sixty five years. The President often entertains his company in this private dining room. Then the upper gas jets are lighted, and the eight candelabra, four of silver and four of brass, are distributed on the table and about the room, the reflectors all being so colored, as to impart a deep rosy tint to the scene. Sixteen pounds of candles are used to carry out this system of lighting by candelabra.

It may be of interest to some people to know the hours meals are served at the White House. During the Hayes’ administration, breakfast was served at 8:30 o'clock, lunch at 1:00 and dinner at 6:00. When President Garfield became the host, the hours were (an Ohio idea) changed, breakfast was ready at 7:30. dinner at 3:00 and tea at 7:00. President Arthur is not regular as to any meal except dinner, which is served at 8 o’clock in the evening (a metropolitan ideal). He is not an early riser, and it is not unusual for his breakfast to be as late as 10:30 o'clock. A cup of coffee is always relished by him at this meal. 

He rarely resigns himself to slumber till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and five or six hours are all he requires for rest. How he maintains good health under the heavy strain of so many hours of activity is a question that troubles his friends. He is fond of the delicacies of the season, and his table is the least expensive of the various drafts upon his purse. — Cleveland Herald, 1882

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

A Fashionable Gilded Age Entertainer

Preferring to be called, “Madame Jones,” critics had dubbed her “the Black Patti” after the Italian/French opera singer, Adelina Patti. She once told a reporter that the name “rather annoys me... I am afraid people will think I consider myself the equal to Patti herself. I assure you I don't think so, but I have a voice and I am striving to win the favor of the public by honest merit and hard work.” In February of 1892, Jones performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison, which led to her eventually singing for four consecutive presidents — Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt — and even the British royal family. Sadly, for three of her White House performances, Jones had to enter the building through the back door, but by the Roosevelt administration, she was finally allowed to enter through the front door.

The Popularity of the “Black Patti”

A performance by Madame Sissieretta Jones, the “Black Patti,” has become a fad in the most fashionable circles recently. It’s been only a few weeks since she sang for the “Four Hundred” at the residence of Judge Andrews on Fifth Avenue, receiving $200 for her services. At the present time she is doing concert work in the southwest, in company with the Princess Dolgorouky, the violinist. Mrs. Jones was the guest of ex-Postmaster General Wanamaker at Washington, and she appeared at the White House before President Cleveland and his wife. At the present time she is in receipt of a salary of §400 per week, and it is probable that she will command twice that sum, before she is a year older. —New York Times, 1893

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

Washington’s Etiquette Obligations

News photographers crowd in to take photos of the White House state dining room tables set for a formal State Dinner. – Originally, White House tables were very long and rectangular. The round tables were the idea of former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, who felt round tables spread throughout the room would be more conducive to conversations. They have remained this way ever since.

Social Obligations That the President's Wife Cannot Escape 

The etiquette of Washington life in its official, diplomatic and social phases is truly exacting even to those who keep to the head and front in the obligations of their own small circle. Therefore, how much more puzzling it must of necessity be to one who, like Mrs. McKinley, has been practically transplanted from the environment of invalidism to the position and duties that devolve upon the wife of the President: To her there must come many moments of indecision, and a faux pas committed is heralded from one end of the United States to the other. 

Therefore, it is well for all American women to be told what would be expected of them if some day they should become First Ladies of the land, for in this democratic country there is a chance for all of them to occupy the exalted position into which Mrs. McKinley has just stepped. The wife of the President is the one woman in official life exempt from making a first call, as during her husband’s administration she is the First Lady of the land, upon whom every American as well as every foreigner of distinction.

Washington must pay the mark of respect of a first call. When the wife of an ex-President arrives in Washington she must at once make the first call at the White House. The President's'wife must then return that call within the period of three days. The courtesy is greater when the call is returned the following day. When a member of royalty or person of any exalted rank arrives in Washington, it is etiquette for such person to make a first call at the White House. This ceremonial call generally lasts about five minutes, and in the event of such caller being a woman has to be returned by the wife of the President within three hours. In official circles dinner cards designating the place at table are written with the name of the office of the person for whom intended, as “The Vice-President,” “The British Ambassador,” etc. 

At the beginning of each season, generally in the latter part of December, the official list of dinner parties to be given at the White House is made out by one of the private secretaries after due consultation with the President. The order of official entertainments at the White House is given each season as follows: January 1, the President’s reception from 11 a. m. to 2. p. m. The first State Dinner is in honor of the cabinet. The first state evening reception is in honor of the Diplomatic Corps, from 9 to 11 oclock. The second State Dinner is in honor of Congress and the Judiciary. The third State Dinner is in honor of the Supreme Court. The third state reception is in honor of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. The fourth evening reception is in honor of the public. For this reception, no cards are issued. 

At the State Dinners, invitations are generally sent to a limited number of the resident society of Washington or other large cities, such as may be selected by the President or his wife for the dinner. An invitation to a State Dinner is equivalent to a command, in as much as it should be accepted, even if in so doing another previously accepted invitation has to be declined. When, on account of illness, death in the family or absence from the city, it is found impossible to attend a State Dinner, the reason should be stated in the reply to the invitation. At State Dinners, the President does not make his appearance in the East Room, where the guests are received, until the exact hour at which the dinner takes place. The President's wife, on such occasions, precedes him to the East Room five or ten minutes in advance of the time set for the dinner, in order to greet the guests as they arrive. 

When the signal is given for the company to pass down the corridor ito the State Dining Room, the President leads with such guest of honor as has been selected in accordance with the requisite official rank necessary for the occasion. The President always leads the way at any dinner or entertainment he may attend. The President's wife always walks last at a State Dinner, her partner having been selected with the same due regard to rank as prevailed in the selection of the President's dinner companion.– Sacramento Daily Union, 1897

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

Washingtonian Society Etiquette

Hosting afternoon teas was one of the social duties of Congressmen and their families. Life could be exceedingly onerous for Congressional wives in the Victorian era Washington social scene –“It is optional with Senators and Representatives, as with all officers except the President and members of the Cabinet, whether they shall ‘entertain.’ There is a vast expense in all this, but that is not all. The labor and fatigue which society imposes upon the ladies of the family of a Cabinet officer are fairly appalling. To stand for hours during receptions at her own house, to stand at a series of entertainments at the houses of others whose invitations courtesy requires should be accepted, and to return in person all the calls made upon her, are a few of the duties of the wife of a high official. It is doubtful if her husband, with the cares of state, leads so really laborious a life. In Washington society one end of a card turned down denotes a call in person.” –E.B. Duffy

 

House Speaker and Mrs. Henderson have precipitated another squabble in connection with social precedence at Washington and not a few old-fashioned citizens there are once more unwilling listeners to discussion of what the ultra-fashionables regard as an important issue. Rules of society etiquette at the capital, as interpreted by those who take a deep interest in such matters, provide that the Speaker must not be invited to meet other members of the House. Therefore, he and Mrs. Henderson have refused several invitations to dinner where another was to be the honored guest, and as a result there is quite a tempest in the social teapot. – Los Angeles Herald, 1900

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

Etiquette and Doily Diplomacy

Doilies under finger bowls are for table beautification only, not for use as napkins – Butler preparing the table for a very formal affair, using a candelabra, cutlery and silver that were sent to Washington in 1893 for the British Embassy in Washington D.C. – Photo source, Home and Design Magazine

The Diplomatic Mrs. Morton

A pretty story is told of Mrs. Morton’s tact and courtesy, quite equal to the tradition of Lady Washington’s crushing a tea-cup on purpose to relieve the embarrassment of the guest who had inadvertently broken one of her eggshell cups, in his large and careless hand. Mrs. Morton has a set of exquisitely painted doilies from the atelier of a noted Paris artist. One of her political dinner guests, after dipping his fingers in the finger bowl, drew out the priceless filmy square, and crushed it into a ball, trying to dry his hands as he talked learnedly with his hostess. Mrs. Morton smiled with a serenity for which, it is hoped, the recording angel will give her credit and said, “Such flimsy doilies are useless —let me give you another— but you know it’s the fashion.” And the grateful politician accepted the napkin and never knew his mistake.—New York Sun, 1893

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

Gilded Age Diplomacy and Precedence

“The waves of the tempest in the samovar have subsided and the bits of lemon float serenely upon the placid surface of the brewing in eggshell cups. The new matrons, debutantes, daughters and belles may not have known it, but they need never to have fluttered a single flutter or puzzled their pretty brains for a moment... In this glorious country of ours, which we are proud to call absolutely democratic, and to whose private, and semi-private social functions, no rigid lines of dogmatic court etiquette are known, we have declared with vaunting vanity, the social gospel of the national capital is made, hammered, riveted and clinched with fastenings more stern than steel, by the chieftains who surround the President.”

Precedence: The Burning Topic of the Hour at Washington D.C.

Aroused by the Fact That Lady Pauncefote Led the New Year's Reception at the White House – Cabinet Dictates; Society Dare Not Disobey –By a Woman in Official Life at Washington

QUITE a tempest in a teapot it was while it lasted, to certain matrons, debutantes, daughters and belles newly launched upon Washington society, and a flutter of agnation deeper under the surface than it appeared outwardly was the result of considerable nervousness that followed the first official function of the season. That Lady Pauncefote should have led at the New Year's reception in the White House seems a slight incident, but that it overthrew or waved aside the very gospel of Washington society became apparent in the not too silent attitude in which it was subsequently regarded. But it is all over now. The waves of the tempest in the samovar have subsided and the bits of lemon float serenely upon the placid surface of the brewing in eggshell cups. The new matrons, debutantes, daughters and belles may not have known it, but they need never to have fluttered a single flutter or puzzled their pretty brains for a moment.

In this glorious country of ours, which we are proud to call absolutely democratic, and to whose private, and semi-private social functions, no rigid lines of dogmatic court etiquette are known, we have declared with vaunting vanity, the social gospel of the national capital is made, hammered, riveted and clinched with fastenings more stern than steel, by the chieftains who surround the President. The Cabinet dictates, and society dare not disobey. More than that, the Cabinet has swayed its social scepter these many years, and is, in its turn, compelled to defer to the rigidly established rules laid down by court chamberlains in other parts of the world.

If Mrs. Senator doesn't know how her diplomatic guests are to be placed, like as not, they will attend to that matter themselves. For they know, and their courts insist that they shall know, just how to fall in line at the functions. In order, however, that Mrs. Senator may not betray her quandary as a novice, she has merely to read the Cabinet's order and to consult the diplomatic list, which is compiled by the Department of State, in accordance with precedence established on the lines adopted at the Vienna Congress of 1815. 

Herr von Holleben, the German Embassador, has had some little difficulty in explaining that Lady Pauncefote should have assumed first place on the New Year's reception in the White House in the absence of her husband, the dean of the Diplomatic Corps. The suggestion that she occupy the place that Lord Pauncefote would have been in did not meet the approval of diplomats, who would as soon violate an international law as the ironclad rules of their social training and instruction. The idea that the representative of a country really does represent the regimes in power, is apparently quite forgotten at times, in what we may call our national desire to have things “go smoothly.” 

There is a story told of a dinner given in Washington when the wife of the English Embassador was taken in by, or rather assigned to, the escort of the young son of the house, the reason given being that he was the only “heir apparent.” Like most of the stories about precedence, this cannot be verified, but it serves as a capital anecdote to relate. It will be remembered that at the time of General Grant's funeral, there was a most serious discussion anent who should lead, the English Embassador or the Vice President, and it was said the only way to set the difficulty was to let the Embassador ride on the hearse.

 The rule that the foreign Embasaador who has held his office for the longest term of years is the dean, and ranks first, has simplified matters somewhat, for none can be found to cavil at so practical a rule. The rule as to the wife of each Minister is carried out in the same order. The rule that an Embassador or Minister shall always take in to dinner the wife of someone of rank is rarely ever broken. Another of the Washington stories is to the effect that one daring young hostess gave a Minister a place between two young and pretty girls, and when sharply called to task for having done so by some of the women present, replied that she thought “the poor man had had such a hard winter of it, without any fun, she was unwilling to have him go back to his court without one enjoyable dinner, and she “had sent for him before the dinner and asked him what he wished.”

Every hostess needs to know her “Washington” now, for the sharp eyes that are watching the newly launched, especially, are very tenterhooks to she who may inadvertently “put her foot into it.” Social precedence is the grammar, the arithmetic, the algebra of the woman who would, or who must, entertain. ‘Must,’ sounds a bit harsh, perhaps, to the lay mind, but “must” it is, for the laws of the Medes and Persians were no more impregnable than the inflexible edict, backed by the Cabinet, to which even the “First Lady” must yield. Mrs. Roosevelt must hold just so many public receptions; the wives of Cabinet members must entertain at intervals. None has dared defy, or will ever one ignore this requirement.   

The formal, official entertainments are past; but there still remain the semi-official functions, and in these must the statute of social precedence be regarded no less scrupulously. At even a private entertainment, must the rights of diplomatists be observed with the nicest delicacy. Indeed, in the light of the adequate means at the disposal of a hostess for her guidance, an error in this matter would seem to be inexcusable. Of course, the “newly launched” are not supposed to know, offhand or intuitively, the exact seniority of service upon which depends the precedence of members of the Diplomatic Corps. That they may learn, the Department of State in this Government, under which democracy of social relations is fondly supposed to be absolute issues a little book for limited circulation among those who may be called upon to face what would, without its aid, prove to be a dilemma. – San Francisco Call, 1898

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