Etiquette of Placing the Furniture

“During the palmy days of the French Bourbon Kings, when court etiquette reached a point of greater complexity than it has ever reached before or since, there was quite a lot that the well bred— that is to say courtly man or woman— had to know about managing himself with respect to furniture.” — The table at which Marie Antoinette ate at Versailles

“Habit is a second nature.”— Montaigne

During the palmy days of the French Bourbon Kings, when court etiquette reached a point of greater complexity than it has ever reached before or since, there was quite a lot that the well bred— that is to say courtly man or woman— had to know about managing himself with respect to furniture. And more time was spent in teaching the future grandee of France how to wave a person to a chair, how to take his own seat in the presence of the king, and otherwise how to manipulate the furniture than unfortunately was spent on teaching him the principles of good government.

Though we don't worry much about how we manage the furniture now, still there are some things that every person who wants to appear at ease in his own or other people’s houses should remember. Children should be very early reminded and impressed with the fact that chairs were meant to sit on, and not to be used as rocking horses, for sometimes your children in other people’s houses forget this and the furniture that someone else values highly is put out of commission as a result.

It is in really bad form to tip back on two legs of a chair, save possibly among men in their club or in their offices. One very good reason for this is that most fine furniture will not stand such rough treatment. At dinner table it is in bad form to turn your chair out of its straight position before the table to facilitate conversation with a person at one side or the other or for the purpose of taking a more comfortable position in the chair. 

When the custom is for women to leave the dining room after dessert, the men, left to their smokes and their own conversation, may, however, place their chairs to suit themselves, even leaving their given places at table to go talk to someone in some other position at the table. But this would never be done save after the women of the party had left the room.

It is not customary to change the position of a chair in another person’s house. If you wish to change your positon take another chair. However, the considerate hostess often makes rearrangements of smaller chairs to suit the convenience of guests or asks some man present to do this for her. For instance, in order that a guest might get a better light for a bit of needle work or might better see some pictures that were being shown.

A house guest would hardly move any piece of furniture, save possibly a small chair, in her room unless it were for some very good reason and then she should consult her hostess about it. — By Mary Marshall Duffee, 1918

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

Flunkyism and Royal Prussian Etiquette

Feudalism had its faults as well its merits: but it never conceived anything so contemptible or degrading to the character of a man as the flunkyism that surrounded Louis XIV and symbolized the “divinity that doth hedge a king,” by confiding to the nobles of France the august privilege of putting the King's shirt over his royal shoulders. 

Prussia, faithful to its traditions as a parvenu Kingdom, seems bent upon retaining the most foolish and out-of-date ceremonials that were imitated from the ways of the French Court by the founders of her position in Europe. Feudalism had its faults as well its merits: but it never conceived anything so contemptible or degrading to the character of a man as the flunkyism that surrounded Louis XIV and symbolized the “divinity that doth hedge a king,” by confiding to the nobles of France the august privilege of putting the King's shirt over his royal shoulders. 

All this is long gone by in France and in England, and of those who attend a Royal levee St.James's Palace, probably few remember that the popular crush of to-day originated, as its name implies, in the services rendered by French peers to French kings when they got out of bed in the morning. But in Berlin it is still the glory of Princes and content to play the lackey at the royal table on the or cousin of royal weddings. At the marriage of the Princess Alexandrine of Prussia, tureens of soup were placed before the King and his family by Prussian nobles, and other duties were fulfilled which show that the Prussian nobility have yet to learn the first elements of that personal self-respect which constitute a most important element in the security of the aristocracy of England. That a wealthy duke, possessing everything that position and education can bestow, should count it an honor to play at being butler to a King, would seen ludicrous even in the eyes of an English “workingman.” 

There is to disgrace in servitude, when it is a man's lot in life. It means simply that the servant is a poor man and has to work for his living. But this Berlin service is flunkyism pure and unmitigated. That the English and French ambassador recalled not have been admitted to share the dinner of a Sovereign thus hedged on from all brotherhood with the rest of mankind was but an insult of the same bygone ideas. In the darkness of feudalism,  earls and royalty dined at the same table with their household servants, and the modern notion about the divine right of Kings was unknown. Happily, we have long got rid of the notion and its attendant ceremonials in England. – From the Pall Mall Gazette, Dec 15, 1865

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