Baffling Etiquette Starts 1919 Fad

The new fad has come as a bright light of hope to the thousands of people whose formal dinner parties have too often been ruined by the use of the wrong fork or spoon. It is welcomed by the mere man who presides at less formal affairs and is afraid to meet his wife’s eyes for fear that he is serving potatoes with a tomato spoon or asparagus with a pie fork. Indeed—many problems have been solved by the fad. 

New System For Dinners? A Boon for Guests? Come Out Even at the Finish with this New Fad!
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You Can’t Use the Wrong Fork — New Fad Decrees Hostess Shall Bring Forth Proper Implement with Each Course

Here’s help at last for the poor dinner guest who always comes up at the end of the courses with one fork too many or a spoon too few. Here’s relief from those who cross-examine in the art of eating in attempts to sell “Which Fork and When” in 12 volumes with easy illustrations. It is one of society’s latest fads. Dame Grundy has decreed: That henceforth dinner tables shall be set with linen and china —but with no silver; that there shall be no puzzle for the guests—there shall be no silver to choose from. That each individual piece of silver will be brought to the diners with the dish to which it belongs. 

The movement is not just for the relief of the helpless guest, but it is the latest thing in society. The smartest dinners of late were served without a sign of silver on the table when the guests were seated. Already where Dame Grundy reigns supreme, it is considered without style to set dinner tables with silver. The new fad has come as a bright light of hope to the thousands of people whose formal dinner parties have too often been ruined by the use of the wrong fork or spoon. It is welcomed by the mere man who presides at less formal affairs and is afraid to meet his wife’s eyes for fear that he is serving potatoes with a tomato spoon or asparagus with a pie fork. Indeed—many problems have been solved by the fad. 

Dame Grundy has remembered the dinner guest who, many a time, has complimented herself upon her artful eating and then finds at the end of the courses that she has overlooked a puzzler of a funny looking spoon. There is consideration also for those fair diners who habitually pause for the hostess to single out and lead-off with the right fork, and of course, must sip much un-wanted water. No longer will the diner have to solve the what, why, where, when and how of the foreign-looking thing which is half-fork and half jelly spoon. No longer will the guest have cause to slip a valuable piece of silver into an inner pocket and carry it away just because he picked it up, discovered his mistake, and could not get rid of it any other way. 

The timid diner can now draw a deep breath of relief, for henceforth when peas are served they will be accompanied by the “one and only” designed for the consumption of peas. It is predicted in society circles that dinner parties will become more popular under the new silverless regime. At any rate the fad has come and guests are no longer startled on entering the dining room and finding nothing but fingers to eat with.—Fresno Herald, 1919

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

Walking Stick Etiquette

Some walking sticks are dashed backward and forward like lethal bayonets! So never mind if he growls; you are acting in the interests of etiquette and sound citizenship.

Canes and Sound Citizenship

Walking sticks are "In" with a greater virulence than has prevailed since the year 1898, says the London Chronicle. The West End began it with silver-topped and gold-topped ebonies (same as used by the King), and the East has taken up the tale with cherry crooks that also have metal embellishments. In the Fleet Street-Strand Monkey Crawl of promenaders, nine out of every ten male promenaders had sticks, whereas a few years back the crowd was almost stickless. 

The sticks, it may be added, are a menace, so few people having studied the art of carrying them. They are carried at dangerous angles below the armpit; also they are dashed backward and forward like lethal bayonets. When you come upon a man carrying a stick that projects from his armpit upward behind him, turn it down. Never mind if he growls; you are acting in the interests of etiquette and sound citizenship. — 1914

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

Etiquette, Manners and Flapperism

The disposition on the part of young people to conform or not to conform to the fundamental requirements of morality is not to be gauged by adherence to ballroom rules or dictates of an etiquette not of their choosing.

Every generation lives in its own world. Happy the parents who can recognize this fact and keep the confidence of their children by sympathetic tolerance of new things. 

The press is manifesting the growth of public interest in flappers. We are being treated in news dispatches to definitions of the term —efforts to define the indefinable. Clergymen are giving their views, statesman are called on for theirs. "Bathhouse John" of Chicago contributes his. Twenty years ago this social autocrat declared that any girl who smoke cigarettes "degenerates herself" —the distinction between the transitive and intransitive verb being one he had neither the patience nor the narrowness of mind to observe. When the subject comes with in the ken of "Bathhouse John" it has reached the dignity of a public question.
                                                        

The bobbed hair of flapperism.

To the apprehensive, the question of flapperism is a solemn and portentous one. When the flapper was born it was supposed that she would do exactly as her parents had done before her, and to their shocked surprise she seems to have found a new set of manners not at all like theirs. Those parents should reflect, however, that their manners were at many points unlike those of the flapper's grandparents, whose manners were undoubtedly different from those of her great-grandparents. If ways never changed the world could not progress.
                                                           

It's not the polka, mother!

An expensive trend in its day.

That there is more real evil in society for these changes of manner we strongly doubt. The disposition on the part of young people to conform or not to conform to the fundamental requirements of morality is not to be gauged by adherence to ballroom rules or dictates of an etiquette not of their choosing. They bob their hair. Long hair is not a prerequisite of sanctity. They shorten their skirts. That is sanitary. They go on long hikes. That is healthful.

Flapperism is not serious, but superficial. The best thing to do with flappers, is to let them flap. But not too much. - From S.F. Journal reprinted in Red Bluff Daily News, 1922 

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