Gilded Age Calling Card Changes

“The fashionable card for a lady is a shade smaller than that of last year. It couldn't be a shade larger without resembling a reception or dinner invitation, so the reduction was a coercive measure.”– Calling card sizes varied over varying decades and the rules for their use, along with the trays for their collection in homes and offices, varied just as much. This gent’s card tray dates from 1891. It is from the book, “What Have We Here?: The Etiquette and Essentials of Lives Once Lived, from the Georgian Era through the Gilded Age and Beyond...”

Leave One of Your Husband’s Cards

The latest edict in the etiquette of card leaving relieves us from the necessity of distributing a shower of paste-boards all along the weary way we traverse in a calling expedition, that is if we would follow English customs. 

A few years ago it became a fixed rule that a woman calling on husband and wife without her consort should leave two of his cards and one of her own with the servant at the door. But the great calling world have gradually decided that it is intensely stupid to use up twice as many of a man’s cards as of a woman’s, when it is plain that a call on the wife is a call on the husband.

Consequently, unless you are very punctilious, it is considered quite sufficient to leave one gentleman’s card. The lady’s card should be left only when the hostess is out, except in the case of a first call, and should not be left at “at homes,” teas or receptions if you would be English and up to date.

The fashionable card for a lady is a shade smaller than that of last year. It couldn't be a shade larger without resembling a reception or dinner invitation, so the reduction was a coercive measure. The man's card is smaller and narrower than that of former years, the proper dimensions being 1½ inches in width and a little more that 3 inches in length.-New York Sun, 1893

 

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

Etiquette for Gilded Age Calls

“Etiquette should wait upon custom in those little villages where the circle of native gentlewomen is invaded by the Summer wanderer or transient resident. Here is where real tact tells, and to follow it may seem primitive, even awkward, ways, is often an evidence of the best breeding.”

The new arrival in any country place receives the first call. If she is a visitor at a friend’s home, her hostess will ensure her cordial reception in the village circle, by giving a tea or “afternoon” within a day or two after her arrival. Most calling in country places is done from 11 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon and from 5 to 8 in the evening, when the visit becomes a piazza function.

All visits should be returned within a week and, except among intimates, no calls should exceed a half hour in length. Etiquette, however, should wait upon custom in those little villages where the circle of native gentlewomen is invaded by the Summer wanderer or transient resident. Here is where real tact tells, and to follow it may seem primitive, even awkward, ways, is often an evidence of the best breeding.– The New York Times, 1895

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

Gilded Age Canine Calling Cards

A dog playfully chews over the day’s news... Dated May 4, 1892, this Pairpoint Silver, gilded age, calling card tray would be at the ready to receive cards from visitors. Calling cards were the forerunners of today’s modern business card.

A Silly Fashion

“Oh, ha, ha! Just a little mention of a tiny absurdity before I append my autograph. Will you believe that my Lady Frivolity and the Misses Brainless made me a morning call while I was out, and with their precious cards I found a bit of pasteboard, about an inch long and a half an inch wide, which bore the name duly engraved upon it, of “Mr. Shepherd Collie!” It was fully one minute before this delightful joke dawned upon me with all its blinding luminosity. Mr. Shepherd Collie was their collie dog, who was accompanying them on their round of calls. 

Desiring not to be behind in the rigid etiquette of social life, I hied me to my stationer in order to cause to be engraved the same sort of card, with the names of my own canine family, ‘The Misses Poodle.’ But, bless you, the modish stationer keeps that sort of thing in stock. I found ready engraved—size, one and a quarter inches by a half of an inch, and done up in the usual visiting card packages of 100—‘Miss Minnie Black and Tan,’ ‘Mr. Suttie Pug,’ ‘Mrs. Willoughby Pug,’ ‘Mr. Frank Fox Terrier’ and ‘many others,’ as the ball lists say.”— Olive Logan in the Philadelphia Times, 1885

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