Etiquette of the 1908 Bridge Table

No one should venture to entertain at bridge, nor accept a bridge invitation, who cannot play the game more than passably well. Don’t go out into public until you can do more than “play at the game”! It is not enough that the hostess provide only four well-matched players, cards and a score pad and pencil. 

Before the evening or afternoon game starts, there are several things that the thoughtful hostess must attend to before she can be assured of a perfect party. 

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Above– A bridge table luncheon place setting for 1955, complete with ash tray, matches and cigarettes. Cigarettes, ash trays and a lighter or matches, were proper at place settings from the 1940’s and 1950’s, They were likely found at most all card tables in 1908, though the proper place setting manuals and etiquette books did not mention them as “requisites” until the 1940’s. 

How to Cover a Bridge Table

It is said that the etiquette of bridge must be as strictly adhered to as must the very rules themselves, and one of the most important etiquette laws is that the table at which the game is played shall be of correct height and size and in perfect keeping with the furnishings of the room. No longer is the cheap wooden table with its dull felt cover permissible, but, fortunately, an attractive bridge table is an easy matter to make at home, and to have the card table in keeping with the style of room there need be no added expense to be considered.

The newest bridge tables are less than a yard square and made of the lightest pine wood so as to be easily portable. A square yard of material will therefore cover the table completely, and this cover may be either brocade, heavy corded silk, panne velvet, tapestry, chints, or felt of a shade corresponding to the color scheme of the room. For a country house a bright French chintz is attractive, while a good piece of tapestry is smart for a library or den. Brocade for a handsome French period room is most frequently made use of, while panne velvet in soft shades of green, pink, and blue is often used and makes a delightfully soft cover and one that is excellent to play on. The felt is still preferred by numbers of card enthusiasts, but the light colors are now generally preferred, although with a dark background it is unquestionably easier to distinguish the cards one from an other.

To put on the cover is an easy matter. The material is first stretched tightly over the table and then cut so as to leave about an inch beyond what is necessary to turn in to prevent fraying. The brocade, felt, or whatever the material chances to be, is then nailed to the wooden rim with large thumb tacks or brass-headed nails, or, if desired, the material may be drawn down underneath the edge of the table and fastened there with small tacks.

Gilt tables are extremely pretty, and on any white wood the gilt can easily ba painted. Silver is also sometimes used, but unless peculiarly in keeping with the furnishings of the room is not so effective as the gold finish. White enamel paint is most attractive for a morning room, while mahogany varnish is easily applied, if that will look best in the room, Mahogany and marquetry tables can be made up to order, but must not be ex pected to masquerade as antiques, for the modern bridge is quite unlike the card table used when whist flourished in the days of Thackeray and Dickens. Perhaps the most fashionable furniture of the moment is the golden-brown English walnut, and there are bridge tables to be had in this wood just as the design of the Louis XIV., XV., XVI. and the Empire can be copied in the legs of the bridge table if so desired for a room as an example of that special period.– The New York Times, 1908

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

White House Smoking Etiquette

A place setting from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Administration (1963 — 1969) complete with the required ashtrays, White House matches and holders of cigarettes flanking the floral arrangement.  — At State Dinners and home dinners, smoking at meals was so commonplace, the 1940’s Sunset “Host and Hostess” book on entertaining cautioned that for a properly set dining table, each place setting needed an ashtray, no less than 3 cigarettes, and matches or a lighter. It wasn’t until the Clinton administration, that smoking was banned in the White House at the dining tables.

Smoke When They Please, Hang The Protocol at the White House

Washington (UPI) 

Backstairs at the White House: Be it a sign of less respect for strictly formal etiquette or the informality of the ‘New Frontier,’ but guests at White House State Dinners these days— some guests, at least— seem to smoke when they please and hang the protocol. It once was rigid custom that guests smoked only late in the dinner, certainly not until after the entree, and to be completely safe, not until the champagne was served before dessert. 

In the Truman administration, for example, smoking at formal dinners was controlled rather simply — no ash trays. When the time came for smoking, waiters placed ash trays along the glittering banquet tables. At one of the first Truman dinners, the wife of a new cabinet officer lit up right after the soup and discovered, to her horror, there was no place for ashes except the hallowed, historic dinner china or the floor. A stern butler let her collect ashes in her hand for a few minutes, then marched up disdainfully and relieved her of the smoldering butt. 

The Eisenhowers put ash trays on the table, with small dishes of cigarettes, but since neither the President nor his wife smoked, it was hard to watch them for guidance. Occasionally, late in a dinner, either the former President or his wife Mamie, would tell those nearest them to smoke if they wished. At some of the more recent functions given for visiting heads of state by President and Mrs. Kennedy, however, several guests started smoking early in the proceedings. 

At the recent dinner for Sudan President Ibrahim Abboud, several guests lighted cigarettes moments after they were seated, even before the dinner actually began. They apparently spotted raised eyebrows and doused the cigarettes quickly. The President does not smoke at the table. He lights up when he goes into the adjoining red, green, or blue rooms for coffee and liqueurs after dinner. 

The more valorous protocol would indicate no smoking until a host or hostess gives some indication, but it may be that with a growing climate of informality not only in Washington, but other gathering places of prominent people, the sin of smoking before the entree is becoming less heinous. The Kennedy’s, early in their White House career, stopped the long established custom of splitting the men and women into carefully segregated groups after dinner for brandy and cigars in one room, creme de menthe, frappe and cigarets in the other.— By Merriman Smith, White House Reporter, 1961

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