Gilded Age “400’s” Etiquette Mistakes

I dropped into a very fashionable place at luncheon the other day and I got to wondering if the “400” didn't make mistakes too. So I asked Charlie – everybody knows Charlie. “Yes,” he said. “Some- times they asked me for a table near the door. Sometimes they call me ‘Captain.’ Sometimes they even use the wrong fork. But it’s easy to tell them from the new rich, because the 400 is very quiet and easy to serve. Real people never make themselves conspicuous.” – Above, a depiction of men and women outside the famous Delmonico’s restaurant in New York.

“Your orders, madam?”, Jeffries would ask in his beautiful English voice… 

Mistakes in Etiquette the 400 Make…

Daughter of Boss-Painter, Now High in New York Society, Tells How Social Blunders Are Made and Avoided 

Can someone of humble birth, being suddenly rich, win a place in the best society and act as “to the manor born”?

A poor girl, whose father was a painter and whose mother was a telephone operator, says it isn't hard at all to climb to the top rung of the social ladder and avoid faux pas. (And, by the way, she really did pronounce it fo pa.). For her helpful story of her conquest of society and etiquette, which appears in full in January Smart Set, we print these amusing extracts:

“It wasn't so hard to avoid social errors while we were traveling on my honeymoon. Everything was new and we moved about. constantly. The only thing that annoyed me was the restaurants. ‘What would you like to order, darling?’ my husband would say. I honestly did not know what to order. It always embarrassed me, and I got around it by saying: ‘Oh, you order. Surprise me.’ I learned from him how to order in public and I watched him like a hawk to see which knife and which fork he used.

“How those menus did confuse me. At first, I couldn’t think of a thing but beefsteak and French fried potatoes. But soon I learned to look over the Entrées. I discovered ‘chicken-hash, en bordure,’ ‘eggs Benedict’ with that delicious Hollandaise sauce, and a mixed grill - the tender little lamb chop cuddled among a tomato, mushroom, kidney, bacon and sausage.

“They soon became my favorite luncheon dishes, with hearts of lettuce with Russian dressing. I think I liked the Russian dressing on account of its beautiful pink color. Then I became bold and changed the dressing. I fell easily into selecting soup or oysters perhaps broiled chicken or one of the dishes marked ‘Ready.’ Then sweet - that meant dessert – and I loved chocolate ice-cream. I soon stopped saying ‘small black’ for after-dinner coffee and ‘demi- tasse’ rolled off my tongue as if we had always had coffee in the drawing-room at home.

“Supper! At first when I went out to supper with my husband, I was always torn between a club-sandwich or fruit salad. That had been the thing we ordered when we went out to supper in the old studio days with a ‘beau.’ But after watching Ed it didn't take me long to order lobster a la Newburg - again the pink color intrigued me - or crab meat Dewey.”

She Meets Lord Jeffries

“However, these problems were no laughing matters in those days. Further problems would await me when I got home, and walked into the beautiful house my husband had brought me into. Jeffries, the English butler who had lived with him for years and I was sure was nothing less than a United States Senator when I first saw him, frightened me almost to death, ‘Your orders for the morning, madam?’ he would ask in his beautiful English voice. Those pesky orders - would I ever get away from them? But Jeffries understood. How kind and gentle he was in his unoffensive suggestions and his many subtle moves to me from making glaring mistakes in front of the rest of the servants.” – National City Star-News, 1924

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

Gilded Age Snobbery and Charity

It’s too bad that charity began at the bazaars, but ended at the idea of showing any charity towards the parvenus or newly wealthy of the era!
– Meme from magicalquote.com

Gilded Age Humor on One’s Lineage 

Mrs. Muscovado— “The Newriches are people who don’t know who their grandparents were.”

 Mrs. Rockoil — “Oh, yes, they do, but they hope no one else does” — Harper’s Bazaar, 1893

Charity has been defined as this state of things: That so soon as ‘A’ is in trouble ‘B’ begins to consider what ‘C’ ought to do for him. All charitable fairs, for instance, are based on this principle. You go and buy something which you probably do not want in order that the profit made on it may go to some good cause. In case you had really wanted what you bought you would have perhaps bought it somewhere else, and the regular trade thus suffers from the loss of your custom. 

In the case of very large fairs, like the “sanitary fairs” in wartime, the ordinary local trade unquestionably suffers, perhaps for a whole year, and the community is thus impoverished to a degree in one way so that it may be helped in other ways. For a great national object, this can easily be endured, although, to be sure, we never have known just what the regular dealers thought about it. But when we consider that the same thing is done to some extent on behalf of every local or sectarian enterprise, it is evident that the principle of the affair is not quite satisfactory. 

Suppose, for instance, that we were all to agree for a single year to have all our shoes and hats made by amateurs “for sweet charity’s sake,” and to have a single church or hospital take the value of them all. Then sweet charity would make an apparent gain no doubt, but all the ordinary hatmakers and shoemakers would starve. Or, if they did not starve, they would be supported by their kindred, who perhaps are not for above the starvation point themselves, or they would be supported by sweet charity, and the last condition of things would be worse than the first. 

It is not really the fact that the evils of society can be greatly helped by dressing up young girls prettily and having them take money and give rather inaccurate change at a bazaar table. One day, perhaps, when the laws of trade are better understood, we shall look at charity fairs as we already look at lotteries, which were once regarded as one of the highest forms of sweet charity, but which are now prohibited by law.— Harper’s Bazaar, 1897

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