1888 Bombay Boot and Shoe Etiquette

“When the governor of Bombay held a levee at Ahmedabad, a number of Hindoo officials clubbed together to buy a pair of English boots, so as to avoid the indignity of appearing before his excellency with bare feet…”

The boot and shoe etiquette sorely perplexes native officials on ceremonial occasions. In the mofussil it is customary for all native government officials to take off their native shoes before entering the presence of their superior, but if they wear English boots no such change is required. When the governor of Bombay held a levee at Ahmedabad, a number of Hindoo officials clubbed together to buy a pair of English boots, so as to avoid the indignity of appearing before his excellency with bare feet. Each took it in turn so wear the boots as he was presented to the governor, and no small amusement was created outside the levee room by the officials rushing backward and forward to exchange the solitary pair of boots with the next comer.-London Globe, 1888

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

A Most Unusual Colonial Dinner

A reproduction, Williamsburg sterling Sucket fork and spoon, needed for eating a British Tudor Era and American Colonial treat known as “wet suckets” or just “Sucket.” Wet suckets were candied or gingered fruits and fruit peel – usually prepared with oranges or other citrus or seasonal fruits. These were served in a delightful sugary liquid syrup, made of honey and water. By the early 17th century, sugar and rosewater were used to make the syrup. It was proper to eat with the forked-end first, then switch to using the spoon-end to enjoy the syrup remaining in the dish.

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Host Continues a Dinner Party While His House Burns

There is a familiar saying that a lady should be mistress of herself, although china fall, but to be master of himself and his dinner-table while his house is in flames is a degree of self-control granted to few. Grace Ellery Channing, in her book, “The Sisters of a Saint,” tells of a certain gentleman of Colonial times who appears to have been endowed with even that measure of Puritan self-repression.

The Royal Commissioners, then In Boston, were bidden to a dinner on Christmas eve at the stately Bristol residence of John Wentworth, a man of great natural parts and of a noble. and lofty bearing. The table, set forth with old plate and damask, was loaded with good cheer of all kinds. The host gave the customary signal for the dinner to be served in the words:

“Friends, you see your dinner!” As the visitors’ lips opened to make the response demanded by etiquette, a servant rushed in with the announcement that the house was on fire. Sternly bidding the startled guests to sit down, John Wentworth commanded the servants to take out the tables and set them upon the lawn; then the chairs were also removed.

“The air will be keen outside. Bring hither the wraps,” said John Wentworth. But the flames had already consumed them. “Bring whatever you can find, then!” and the servants returned with their arms heaped with curtains and table-cloths, and these strange wraps were hastily donned by the company.

“To the tables,” commanded Wentworth, and at the word the panic-stricken guests trooped forth from the now blazing house and seated themselves about the table upon the wintry lawn. The host repeated the greeting. “And a very good dinner we see!” was the tremulous response. 

In vain the guests essayed nervously to eat and drink; fitful attempts at gayety died away in the ever-increasing roar of flames; but Wentworth kept up an easy flow of conversation, pressing upon his guests the various dainties with all the concern of a man who had naught weightier upon his mind.

Now and again the sound of a falling beam would be echoed by a falling glass from some shaking hand. As the last glass shivered to the ground it was answered by a dull crash; the last wall of the house sank and fell. Wentworth did not turn his head.– Sausalito News, 1899

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

Etiquette and People of the 5 Meals

Downton Abbey’s Mrs. Hughes, Mr. Carson and Anna Bates enjoying a Middle Age “beever” or “noonshine?”

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What 5 British meals was Signor Bergeret referring to?  —The terminology around eating in the UK is confusing. For some, “lunch” is “dinner” and vice versa. From the Roman times to the Middle Ages everyone ate in the middle of the day, but it was called dinner and was the main meal of the day. Lunch as we know it didn’t exist - not even the word. During the Middle Ages daylight shaped mealtimes, says food historian Ivan Day. With no electricity, people got up earlier to make use of daylight. Workers had often toiled in the fields from daybreak, so by midday they were hungry. “People got up much earlier and went to bed much earlier.” By midday workers had often worked for up to 6 hours. They would take a quick break and eat what was known as a “beever” or “noonshine,” usually bread and cheese. As artificial light developed, dinner started to shift later in the day for the wealthier, as a result a light meal during the day was needed. The origins of the word “lunch” are mysterious and complicated, says Day. “Lunch was a very rare word up until the 19th C.,” he says. One theory is that it's derived from the word “nuncheon,” an old Anglo-Saxon word which meant a quick snack between meals that you can hold in your hands. Others theorise that it comes from the word “nuch” which was used around in the 16th and 17th C. and means a big piece of bread. — from an article by Denise Winterman, BBC News Magazine

Signor Bergeret, the special traveling correspondent of the “Mattino,” Naples, has been much impressed with the wonderfully adaptive qualities of the British, who bend all things to their will. Writing from Colombo he says: “Only the English, the race of stone and iron, are able, in the midst of this high-pressure work of nature, to continue their physical and mental activity, and the over-feeding which has procured for them the name of  ‘people of the five meals.’ They demand that in the colonies, every Briton shall be ‘twice British.’ 

“They have transported to the torrid zone their fatiguing games, their rigid etiquette, the abuse of meat, and the use of whisky, and have got the better of the climate as of the land; of the hostility of commercial and official intrigues, as of the violence of nature. No human race has ever been so admirably tempered for colonial domination. Their nature, education and moral principles combine to render the British masters of men and things on the seas and in distant countries. “Seeing their work, one becomes reconciled to the English. These gentlemen of the porcelain shirt fronts, the impeccable cravats, are marvelously tenacious workers, but their incessant fatigue does not make them into so many machines as it does the Germans.” — 1904

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