Dinner Etiquette in NYC vs Paris

A gilded terrapin fork and gilded ladle, with terrapin bowls and plates in Limoges French porcelain mixed with Royal Worcester British porcelain. – Many French dinner notions are copied in the U.S. — notably that of serving on unbroken dishes…

A 2nd Debut article from 2020… 

The etiquette of French dinners is more formal than that of American. In Paris, which is all of France, one must never betray any admiration of any effects evolved during the dinner, gastronomic or decorative, much less speak of them. In New York, which by the same token is all of America, it is rather remiss not to express in some uneffusive way, one’s pleasure of taste or sight. “What a charming arrangement of flowers!” “This salad is something to remember!” and others like these, are phrases which no New York hostess thinks of resenting; indeed, rather hopes for. Many French dinner notions are, however, copied here, notably that of serving on unbroken dishes.— New York Times, 1894

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

An Interview with Mrs. Astor

Mrs. Astor from the life sized portrait by the celebrated French painter, Carole’s Duran, now in Mrs. Astor’s Fifth Avenue home.

The Leader of the New York “Four Hundred,” through “The Delineator,” Sends Her First Message to the Public 

Mrs. William Astor, the oldest living member of the Astor family, who has just retired as supreme head of that exclusive set known as the New York “Four Hundred,” gives to this issue of “The Delineator” her first interview on public affairs in fact, it is her first public utterance. When the question of selecting the New York Social Register became a matter of necessity, the Astor family was found to be the oldest in New York, and so it was given precedence, and its oldest member was naturally the social leader. 

By virtue of this position she was simply Mrs. Astor, it never being necessary for her to use or sign any other name. Indeed, it would have been a breach of one of the old rules of social etiquette. Here, for the first time, Mrs. Astor tells the American people what she thinks abouť a great many subjects that are foremost in their minds. She talks very freely and very frankly, and the interview is all the more remarkable in view of her extreme conservatism and the fact that she has always successfully discouraged newspaper prominence. Mrs. Astor was Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, when in 1855 she was married to William Astor, a grandson of the first John Jacob Astor.

ABOUT two years ago I found myself in New York, having just returned from Europe, where I had been living for a number of years. There were many pleasant things in store for me on my return home, and chief among them was an interview with Mrs. Astor. I had looked forward to it for a long time, since I much admired her, not only because of her leadership in New York and Newport society, but because I had heard through her friends so many tributes to her simplicity and charm and her many intellectual interests.

Mine was an unusual opportunity for meeting her. She was aware of my appreciation of her, and she knew that she could trust me. Then, too, it happened that she was interested in many of the people and the things I had just come from; one subject led to another, and we went from scenery to society, from art to artists, from politics to the philosophy of life. I was especially impressed with her wide range of thought and her independence of judgment, by her graceful manner and choice diction. restraint and tact were as remarkable as her her to use or sign any other name. Indeed, it would have been a breach of one of the old rules of social etiquette. 

Here, for the first time, Mrs. Astor tells the American people what she thinks abouť a great many subjects that are foremost in their minds. She talks very freely and very frankly, and the interview is all the more remarkable in view of her extreme conservatism and the fact that she has always successfully discouraged newspaper prominence. Mrs. Astor was Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, when in 1855 she was married to William Astor, a grandson of the first John Jacob Astor.

Her courage of utterance. Enthusiastically patriotic, she did not hesitate to condemn certain phases of American life as seen in New York; but she was full of optimism for the future. Her own intimate knowledge of America was limited to New York and Newport, she said, and she did not allow herself to make sweeping generalizations about America or Americans.

“I Believe in a Republic”

She said she welcomed particularly what seemed to be a reaction in favor of dignity and decency in New York journalism; that it was only a few years ago that certain quiet, inoffensive women like herself were in constant terror of the papers. For that reason, she had not seen a journalist for twenty years or more. “As far as I was concerned,” she said, “they were never unkind, but rather too kind. 

I would say ‘Good morning’ in the drawing-room to some cultivated young woman or an immaculate young man, and the next day’s paper would have two or three columns of things I never even imagined! There is a good deal in English journalism that we hope to see in New York, particularly the high sense of honor and personal responsibility that English journalists manifest. “Although I have been in Europe a great deal, I and personally supervise their education at home during the critical early years. They are in love with their husbands and devoted to their interests.

“Yes, I have heard that our young women smoke and drink and do other terrible things. I know a great many of them and know them very well, I have known them since they were born, and I am quite sure there is not one in my circle who is a cigarette fiend or who drinks to excess.”

One of the principal reasons for Mrs. Astor’s life-long interest in society, she said, was her interest in young people. She enjoyed having them about her, enjoyed planning for their amusement. But she said that she felt also that a woman placed by birth or marriage at the head of a great family had no uncertain ‘call of duty to maintain the dignity of the old name.

“That consists in setting a standard for true living in the private life as well as in the public,” Mrs. Astor continued. “One must have high ideals and do the best one can to realize them. My ideals in society have always been very definite. I have not realized them, but who does realize his ideals in this world?”

Circus-Tent Entertainments

“I am not vain enough to think New York will not be able to get along very well without me. Many women will rise up to take my place. But I hope my influence will be felt in one thing, and that is in discountenancing the undignified methods employed by certain New York women to attract a following. They have given entertainments that belonged under a circus tent rather than in a gentlewoman’s home. Their sole object is notoriety, a thing that no lady ever seeks, but, rather, shrinks from. Women of this stamp are few in New York, but, alas! they are so appallingly active! They have done untold harm to the good name of American society in the minds of foreigners. 

When a distinguished man arrives from the other side, he is seized upon relentlessly, although possibly a total stranger to his hostess, and plunged into a mad whirl of extraordinary festivities. He enters upon them with much the same spirit that we would have as spectators of an Indian war-dance. And thus he forms his opinion of all of us. 

I have never entertained a foreigner in my life unless he came to me with a letter of introduction. “The best women in New York society, those of the greatest influence and those who give it its true tone, are almost unknown outside of their own circle. Society newspaper notoriety is interesting to them as it is to me, as a study, a very amusing one, too, sometimes, as one gains so much information about certain women supposed to belong to us, but whom we never see and do not know even by sight.” 

Some American Impossibilities

Mrs. Astor’s ideal of society, she said, was the old French salon in the heyday of its power and prestige. Then history was often made where charming and intellectual women held court attended by the most distinguished statesmen, poets, artists and financiers, and elegance and breeding were as imperative as reading and writing. “The political hostesses of London have a much better chance of realizing such an ideal today than we women of New York. Over there you find at the big balls and musicales a brilliant array of cabinet ministers, journalists, ambassadors, men and women of the stage, painters and poets, and the powers of the money world such as no leader in New York could bring together or would attempt to bring together thought of doing it all my life, but have never seen the possibility of success. 

In the first place, we have too many politicians in America, where in England they have statesmen. Many of our senators and congressmen seem to base their title to public favor upon their uncouth manners and lack of refinement, upon the fact that they have discarded socks or once wore blue jeans. If they were all like Mr. Roosevelt, what a difference there would be! Mr. Roosevelt is a true American, but he would be at home in the most elegant court in Europe. He is not above paying scrupulous attention to his wardrobe and his manners. Any hostess in New York or Newport would be proud to entertain him, and the men in Washington like him.

“Many people seem to think I could have done a great deal in making New York society as democratic as it is in London and open to any one of intellectual attainments, as it is over there. But one can do only one’s best under the conditions. English people all recognize a certain authority in social matters. The King is the leader of society, and the hostesses who gather about them such brilliant men and women can be as independent as they wish to be without assuming the responsibility of an onslaught upon their own domains. The King’s authority is never questioned, and the authority of the great old families is never questioned.

“We have to be more exclusive in New York because in America there is no authority in society, and Americans in general are not inclined to admit its possibility. Each woman is for herself and trying to outdo the others in lavish display and mad extravagance, with little thought of any ultimate good or any ideal.”

A Woman of Ideals

She came back so often to that word “ideal”! Mrs. Astor is a woman of ideals, and when she talks of them her face lights up in a marvelous way. Her face - how shall I describe it? It was youthful with enthusiasm, the gray eyes sparkled with animation, prepared, even eager to meet a young girl on her own ground of vigorous buoyancy and vivacity.

Very vividly do I recall my first sight of her and the picture she made as she came slowly down the broad marble stairs, not with any apparent feebleness, although a jeweled hand grasped firmly the iron balustrade. She was smiling cordially beneath the big black hat and lace veil, dressed entirely in black, unrelieved even by the conventional white at neck and throat. The gown was cut severely plain, and out-lined a youthful, supple figure, not in the least inclined to embonpoint. As she advanced, I saw that she was about medium height, a little less, perhaps, and as straight as an Indian. 

The head, well set on the rather broad shoulders, was carried high, not with arrogance but good breeding. The waves of soft black hair were youthful, too. But youth does not have the deep, sweet lines of resignation that characterize Mrs. Astor's face, nor the gentle light of her eyes, the light that comes to a woman with motherhood, and glorifies her ever afterward if she be true to that motherhood. 

The smiles of youth are not those that come bravely forth after tears have been shed and battles fought in the inner sanctuary of the soul’s retreat, the tears and the battles which are inevitable to, maturity. Whatever impassiveness Mrs. Astor may consider necessary to assume on usual occasions was thrown aside for the moment, and in her face the true woman shone forth.– In the San Jose Mercury-News, article by Rebecca H. Insley, September, 1908

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

Names of the New York Social Register

Public domain image of Clare Boothe (Brokaw) Luce, American editor, playwright, social activist, politician, journalist, and diplomat

American Society and Near Society

THE Social Registers, which are the official indices of “society “ in the United States somewhat resemble, in character, Le Bottin Mondain of Paris, Webster's Royal Red Book of London, the various Taschenbücher of Europe, with an occasional faint touch of the Almanach de Gotha and Burke's Peerages.

The New York Social Register for 1931 contained about thirty-five thousand names, an increase of fifteen thousand over the Social Register of 1914; and the fourteen social registers of the largest American cities contained more than one hundred thousand names an increase of over fifty thousand names dur ing the same length of time..

These figures are particularly remarkable when one considers that the social register of exactly one hundred years ago, Longworth's New York Directory, boasted exactly eighteen names. (They were, even in those days, “important” ones, and, with few exceptions, they have continued to figure prominently in the annals of American society: Astor, Brevoort, Bleecker, De Rham, DePeyster, Halleck, Irving, Livingstone, Brockholst, Rhinelander, Roosevelt, Rutgers, Schermerhorn, Suydam, Stewart, Taylor, Vanderbilt, Van Rensselaer.)

The present Society census therefore shows an increase of ten thousand percent, which is to say that the efflorescence of American society has outdistanced every other phenomenon of that phenomenal country. Not even the population itself has kept step with the growth of the beau monde. From being practically nonexistent a hundred years ago, it now blooms like the green bay tree throughout the country.

The average foreigner would deduce, from these figures, that the development must be a superficial, and not a profound, one. He cannot believe that a delicately integrated society, founded on birth and kept alive by breeding– even with due consideration of the usual intravenous injections of money– could evolve at such a rate. He is correct. As a matter of fact, authentic New York society of today is still fairly represented by those eighteen names of a hundred years ago, with the addition of perhaps two or three hundred other names– a normal enough increase. – Clare Boothe Brokaw, 1932

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

Gilded Age New Year’s Fashions, 1883

It is not in good taste to wear low-necked or sleeveless dresses for the daytime. It is done by brides on their wedding day sometimes, but for receptions or on New-Year’s scarcely ever in these latter days. It once was the foolish fashion. Indeed, the range of dress proper for this unique occasion is a wide one. One only custom is peremptory— a lady must wear gloves.

“Le jour de l’an,” as the French call it, is, indeed, the principal day of the year to many who still keep up the custom of calling and of receiving calls— a custom which has been in danger of falling into desuetude, through the size of the city and its immense growth of population, in New York. There are, however, other towns and “much country” (as the Natives say) outside of New York, and there are warm hearts and hospitable boards in it still, where the happy and the light-hearted, the gay and the thoughtful, will meet and exchange wishes for a happy New-Year.

To those who will receive calls, we would say that the best plan is, if possible, to have every arrangement made two or three days before New Year’s, so that the lady, or ladies, will not feel flurried, as calls begin early, even at eleven o’clock, if the caller means to make a goodly day of it. A lady should have her hair dressed for the day when she rises, and if her dress be not too elaborate, put it on then, so that she be not upstairs but down in the parlor when the first of the gentlemen callers arrive. 

In regard to the question of dress, as to what to wear, we should say that for elderly ladies black velvet, or black satin, or any of the handsome combination dresses so fashionable now, with handsome laces, with always a pair of Swedish gloves (of pearl or tan color, not white kids; these are decidedly rococo, and not in fashion), would be appropriate. A black satin, elegantly made up with beaded passementerie, is perhaps the handsomest dress for anybody. Brocaded silk, plain gros-grain — any thing even which a lady would wear at the wedding reception of her daughter is allowable, although the plainer dresses are in better taste.

For young ladies nothing is so pretty as a dress of light cashmere and silk, made high. These dresses, in the very pretty tints worn now, are extremely becoming, warm-looking, and appropriate for a reception, when the door is being thrown open often. White dresses of thick silk or cashmere, trimmed around the neck with lace, are also exceedingly elegant. In all countries young married ladies are allowed to be as magnificent as a picture of Marie de Medicis, and can wear on New-Year's Day rose-colored and white brocaded silk, pearl trimmings, or plain ciel blue, or prawn-colored silk over white, or embossed velvet, or what they please, so that the dress is cut high, with long sleeves to the elbow; and each lady should have near her an ermine cape or small camel's-hair shawl in case of draughts. 

It is not in good taste to wear low-necked or sleeveless dresses for the daytime. It is done by brides on their wedding day sometimes, but for receptions or on New-Year’s scarcely ever in these latter days. It once was the foolish fashion. Indeed, the range of dress proper for this unique occasion is a wide one. One only custom is peremptory— a lady must wear gloves.

Whilst much magnificence is allowable, still a plain black or dark silk dress, if well made, with fresh ruffles at neck and wrist, is quite as proper as anything else, and men generally admire it more. But where a lady has several daughters to receive with her, she should study the effect of her rooms, and dress the young ladies in prettily contrasting colors, now so easily and cheaply done since the pretty merinos have come in in the fashionable shades. Short dresses are usually worn in these materials. Imported dresses are now so cheap and so easily obtained that a mother with many daughters can not do better than to buy what the economical French make up for their jour de l'an dresses. They have no idea in France of our extravagant way of doing things. — Harper’s Bazar, 1883 

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

Gilded Age American Women Lacked Manners?

A beautiful woman without good manners is a flower without fragrance. 

 

Good Manners 

This is the grace of which I think American women are becoming very careless. They are so beautiful as a race, so accustomed to conquest, that perhaps they are getting to believe that Pope's line, “Look in her face and you forget them all,” applies to manners; but a beautiful woman without good manners is a flower without fragrance. She is worse—she becomes a positive nuisance, presuming on her beauty and abusing one of God's greatest gifts. You must look at her, but you look to regret, to disapprove, instead of being charmed for life to “sweet looks married to graceful action,” you grow to despise and hate her. 

In a country like ours we must expect to find a frequent coupling of ignorance with wealth, of official station with awkwardness, high social position with bad manners— combinations more rarely remarked in the older and more settled states of the world. Kings and Queens must be decently well bred and well educated. They cannot help knowing the proper way to eat a dinner, they cannot help observing the properties of dress and etiquette, and the people immediately about them must follow their example. No such necessity exists here. 

We may have a Governor or Mayor who is entirely untrammeled by the laws of grammar and spelling, who uses his own sweet will in regard to his knife and fork, and who is still the proper person to receive the representative of a foreign power. In our cities how sickening it is to see the potentiality of some vulgar rich man who can “buy the crowd” in more senses than one!—How mournful to note the absence of good manners in some of our prominent literary and religious celebrities!— men whom you hesitate to ask to your house, although their talents are exercising so much influence on the world, and their names are on everybody's lips. 

The trouble lies in a deficiency of respect, a lack of training, an absence of something to look up to. The best bred men in America are the officers of the regular Army and Navy. They've been taught to look up to reverence authority and to be respectful. It never leaves them: they become the most dignified and the most simple men in the community. 

When women reach a larger grasp of the subject, and observe this great rule, that “the position of power is better than the show of it,” they will have advanced far beyond their present status. The end and aim of the week and the uncertain is to appear strong and well posed at whatever cost. It has apparently struck some women in the society of our new country, which must be on a shifting scale, that they appear to stand well by being disagreeable-that an air of hauteur and rudeness is becoming aristocratic. It is the mistake of ignorance, and would soon be cured by a careful study of the best models in Europe. — Lippincott's Magazine, 1871 

 

 Lippincott's Magazine was a monthly magazine of literature and science, published in Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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

Gilded Age Etiquette of Christmas Trees and Stockings

Two conflicting views of St. Nick on Christmas Eve: One with stockings hung for Victorian era goodies of a large-sized apple, gingerbread, candy and small toys.  In another, Santa is with a Christmas tree. “There was no lack of room on it's capacious branches, and the New England stocking, conscious of its imperfections, shrank timidly into obscurity.” —Life Magazine, 1883

“The very name of the Christmas stocking is now held to be improper in the most refined New England circles, and New England children, as they gaze in joy and wonder if their Christmas trees glowing with lights and blossoming with copies of Emerson's works, and bags of oatmeal and beans, would laugh in derision at the sheer idea of a stocking large enough to hold those alluring delicacies.”

Santa's looks have changed a bit over the years, as this old drawing suggests. There was a time when a Christmas stocking's capacity was so far reduced that it became an insufficiently hollow mockery. It could contain only the smallest sized apple, and no toys worth having could be crowded into it's contracted body. The result was indisputable and growing juvenile dissatisfaction, and as the only possible measure of relief the Christmas tree was introduced.

Statistics concerning the prevalence of Christmas trees during the recent Christmas season show a marked increase in the number of trees used in New England and in the West, and a decrease in the number of those used in this city and in its vicinity.

The Christmas tree is conceded to be German in its origin. Why the Germans originally adopted the fashion of hanging cheap candles and inexpensive presents on small evergreen trees, does not particularly concern us. Probably the thrifty Germans perceived that the Christmas tree was more economical than the Christmas stocking; but in the absence of any trustworthy data in regard to the stockings of the fatherland, it is impossible to arrive any decision. All that we certainly know is that Germans invented and used the Christmas tree, and that it was gradually adopted to a greater or lesser extent by other nations.

The introduction of the Christmas tree into New England followed soon after the introduction of transcendental philosophy. The relation between the two was not, however, that of cause and effect. They were both results, or perhaps the incedents of a great change which had naturally altered the character of the New England stocking.

In the early days of New England the stockings were hung up on Christmas Eve-  and which as a matter of course, as a full-grown stocking- was able to contain a fair and satisfactory quantity of presents. There was room in its extremity for a large-sized apple, and the capacity of the rest of the stocking for gingerbread, candy and small toys was all that could be desired. There was a time, however, when this capacity was so far reduced that the Christmas stocking became an insufficiently hollow mockery. It could contain only the smallest sized apple, and no toys worth having could be crowded into it's contracted body. The result was indisputable and growing juvenile dissatisfaction, and as the only possible measure of relief the Christmas tree was introduced.

Etiquipedia would be thrilled to find this spoon from 1892 in its Christmas stocking!

There was no lack of room on it's capacious branches, and the New England stocking, conscious of its imperfections, shrank timidly into obscurity. The very name of the Christmas stocking is now held to be improper in the most refined New England circles, and New England children, as they gaze in joy and wonder if their Christmas trees glowing with lights and blossoming with copies of Emerson's works, and bags of oatmeal and beans, would laugh in derision at the sheer idea of a stocking large enough to hold those alluring delicacies.

While the popularity of the Christmas tree in New England is that it's easily explained, an entirely different cause has led to the introduction of the Christmas tree into the thriving cities and towns of the West. The Western people are proverbially liberal, but even liberal people, if they are wise stop short of bankruptcy. The Western mother or sister who undertook to fill her personal stockings with Christmas presents, found the task a laborious and costly one. It is said- on the irreproachable authority of the Chicago press- that in Cincinnati and St. Louis, the pumpkin entirely superseded the traditional apple as the proper article with which to begin the storing of a stocking; and St. Louis papers have pictured with much pathos the Chicago matron in the act of employing pound after pound of candy, and a vast succession of bulky toys, into the insatiate maw of a stocking that no effort could fill. 

Moreover, when the Western Christmas stocking was partially filled, it required the muscular energy of a strong man to move it, and was it was necessary to place it on the floor under the bed of the child for whom it was intended, for the reason that it was unsafe to suspend such a heavyweight to any article of furniture. Accidents of a really serious character often occurred in connection with these overgrown Christmas stockings, and even when they were emptied they were still sources of danger, as was shown by the miserable fate of the small boy, aged twelve years, who crept into the empty Chicago stocking on Christmas morning, in the year 1865, and having failed to find his way out was not released for three days, at the expiration of which he was fortunately discovered by washer-woman, and saved from an untimely death by starvation.

LIFE 1883... When the "liberal West" area of the United States was Chicago and St. Louis. "The Christmas tree is now almost universal in all the leading Western cities, and it is only when a fond husband desires to give his wife a sewing-machine, or his daughter a sealskin dolman, that he suggests the hanging of a Christmas stocking."

That the Western people should, in the interest of humanity and economy, have substituted the Christmas tree for the Christmas stocking, in what might've been expected in view of the intelligence and enterprise of the West, the Christmas tree is now almost universal in all the leading Western cities, and it is only when a fond husband desires to give his wife a sewing-machine, or his daughter a sealskin dolman, that he suggests the hanging of a Christmas stocking. 

Thus, for reasons utterly dissimilar, the Christmas tree has virtually driven out the Christmas stocking both in New England and in the West, and there is little probability that in either locality the stockings will ever again come into favor.

On the other hand New York has never had any need of Christmas trees. To some extent the Christmas tree has been used in families, where the custom was adopted solely on the ground but it was a German custom, but it has never become really popular, and of late years has been steadily dying out. 

The stocking in which the Christmas treasures of our small boys and little girls are placed is capacious enough to satisfy any reasonable child, while it is not so large as to overtax the pockets or energies of parents. Could the same sort of stocking be imported and acclimated in New England and the West, Christmas trees would no longer have any excuse for being, and the stocking would be universally accepted as precisely the thing needed to fill every household with juvenile happiness on Christmas morning.

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