Gilded Age Tabletops and Manners

  

The teaching of table manners cannot be begun too soon. But children should never be allowed to trouble guests. If not old enough to behave well at table, guests should not be invited to the meals at which they are present. It is very trying to parents, guests, and servants.

It is well in all households, if possible, for the children to breakfast and lunch with their parents. The teaching of table manners cannot be begun too soon. But children should never be allowed to trouble guests. If not old enough to behave well at table, guests should not be invited to the meals at which they are present. It is very trying to parents, guests, and servants.

When luncheon is to be an agreeable social repast, which guests are expected to share, then the children should dine elsewhere. No mother succeeds better in the rearing of her children than she who has a nursery dining-room, where, under her own eye, her bantlings are properly fed. It is not so much trouble, either, as one would think– and no matter if it is trouble.

Table mats are no longer used in stylish houses, either at luncheon or at dinner. The waiter should have a coarse towel in the butler’s pantry, and wipe each dish before he puts it on the table. Menu-cards are never used at luncheon. Salt-cellars and small water carafes may be placed up and down the luncheon-table.

In our country, where servants run away and leave their mistress when she is expecting guests, it is well to be able to improvise a dish from such materials as may be at hand. Nothing is better than a cod mayonnaise. A cod boiled in the morning is a friend in the afternoon.– From “Manners and Social Usages,” by Mrs. John Sherwood, 1884

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

Gent’s Tabletop Novelties of 1882

A gilded age, sterling menu card holder, in the form of a stag’s head — “For gentleman's dinner parties menu cards painted by hand are in vogue, representing some very realistic part of the preparations for the entertainment. Upon one, the cook in cap and apron, is tossing a pancake, on another the butler has just drawn the cork, and so on through the series.”

Much amusement is derived at some popular dinners from the cards which indicate the seats of guests. They are of endless variety, are often printed expressly to order, and contain witty illusions or satirical pictures. The newest are mounted upon ribbons of bright colors, about 3 inches wide, which are fringed out at the edges, and upon the center of which is a painting is either executed upon the material itself or upon a tinted card.

For a recent farewell bachelor dinner, on the eve of a wedding, such cards, made expressly to order by Tiffany, each one being reserved for a special guest as a memento of the occasion, cost $3 a piece. For hunting dinners floral decorations assume characteristic shapes, and a rabbit, hare, or game of some kind appears in emblematic form upon the table. Novel napkin rings are made of flowers, wired into shape and placed upon the serviette. although they serve no useful purpose they are ornamental.

For gentleman's dinner parties menu cards painted by hand are in vogue, representing some very realistic part of the preparations for the entertainment. Upon one, the cook in cap and apron, is tossing a pancake, on another the butler has just drawn the cork, and so on through the series. For ordinary dinners, menu cards are upon tinted Bristol board, and the newest card style is to have a vignette on one corner, date and place of the entertainment occupying the other. This is on single cards, but those referred to above are double and are intended to be laid opposite the plate of the guest.— New York Times, 1882

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