Presidential Etiquette and Thanks

In 1840, gold table settings became Presidential campaign issue. Helping William Henry Harrison, a simple frontiersman, grab the Presidency from Martin Van Buren. When Benjamin Harrison, his grandson, won the Presidency later, his wife, Caroline Harrison, wanted new White House china that would be “symbolic and meaningful to Americans.”  The First Lady, knowledgeable of the expected social graces of the day, was an artist herself. She placed the Coat of Arms of the United States in the center of the plates, and designed a goldenrod and corn motif, etched in gold around a wide band of blue. The corn represents Mrs. Harrison's home state of Indiana. Forty-four stars, one for each state at the time, make up the inner border. Mrs. Harrison directed a large-scale remodeling effort of the White House, adding a china closet to display all past Presidential china services. Caroline Harrison was not able to use the china she had ordered, as she died before it was delivered. The china arrived in December 1892.

A Card of Thanks from the President

“I desire for myself and for the ladies of our party, to give an expression of our thanks for many individual acts of courtesy, which, but for the pressure upon our time, would have been specially acknowledged. Friends who have been so kind, will not, I am sure, impute to us any lack of appreciation or intended neglect. The very excess of their kindness has made any adequate, and much more, any particular, return impossible. You will all believe that there has been no purposed neglect of any locality or individual. We leave you, with all good wishes for the State of California and all her people.”

– Benjamin Harrison

Originally published May 4, 1891 in the Daly Alta News, California 

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

Washington Centenary Etiquette

William Henry Harrison was the 9th President of the United States. The last president born as a British subject, Harrison died of pneumonia merely 31 days into his term, thereby serving the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. He was the first president to die in office. Harrison's death briefly sparked a constitutional crisis, leaving unsettled Constitutional questions as to the presidential line of succession. 

If we could be carried back into the 18th century we should behold a country totally unfamiliar to us, and the material transformation which the progress of a hundred years has wrought, but measures a corresponding change in the national attitude. Though only the Chief Magistrate of a Government which was viewed with scant respect abroad, and composed of a few factious states that offered many intricate puzzles in statecraft, and sharply checked any extension of the executives power, nevertheless the Republican Court was hedged in by much more formality than is now permitted, to rule the White House.

Were we to apply the principle of evolution to social forms, we could see how well they have been demonstrated in the changes wrought in the etiquette of the Federal Capital. Washington's attendance, upon Congress in a cream-colored coach, drawn by six white horses, with outriders and postilions, escorted by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, savored of Kingly state. His receptions were chillingly formal, but in strict accordance with his sense of Presidential propriety, which forbade the ceremonial of hand-shaking as too familiar. England's yoke had been thrown off, but her influence was still apparent in the aristocratic tinge of society and the imitation of her form.

As the notion of the Republic has been developed, these remaining traces of Royal ceremonies have disappeared, until now. President Harrison steps from the ranks of private citizenship into the executive chair of a nation great in extent and influence without any essential change in the etiquette of his intercourse with his fellow-citizens, and now Americans see nothing derogatory to the indignity of the high position when our President serves his guests to refreshments or assists them in the cloakroom. 

These changes have deep seated causes. The cheers which will re-echo for President Harrison on his progress to New York will have a widely different keynote from those that greeted Washington. The pulse of the nation, then struggling to its feet, beat high with hope and with fear for their new Government. Under the Confederation, the United States were hopelessly drifting toward anarchy, and the terrors of the French revolution filled American elites with forebodings for their own future. 

The Federal Government seemed to offer a remedy, but might not the President become an absolute Monarch, and the Senate arrogate to itself aristocratic privileges and relentlessly crush the liberty of the States. Thus it was that a deep undercurrent of anxious emotion surged through the hearts of the citizens who greeted Washington, while the cheers which will resound for Harrison as he follows in his predecessor's footsteps will arise from hearts full of proud satisfaction in their President, and trusting with perfect confidence in the form of Government that has so well stood the test of the century, and under which the country has achieved such unparalleled progress. — Pacific Rural Press, 1889

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

Veep Breached Canadian Etiquette

Vice President to Theodore Roosevelt, Charles W. Fairbanks “Failed to Observe the Proprieties” while on official visit to Canada, upon the Quebec “ter-centennial” or “tricentennial.”

English Woman Says Vice President Fairbanks Did Not Conform to Etiquette

Vice President Fairbanks, according to a prominent English woman who has written to a friend in St. Louis, made the French and English Canadians furious by his failure to observe the "proprieties" at the ter-centennial festivities at Quebec.


The Vice President is accused of standing up, in his carriage and making speeches "to the crowd" as he drove along the street, of standing ahead of the host in the "receiving line" at the garden-party and with quarreling with the mayor of the city, all of which. according; to reports have not "tended to increase the friendly relations between Canada and the United States."


The writer of the letter went from England to Quebec to attend the ceremonies. On account of her prominence, she was in a position to observe the Vice President's movements and therefore the effect they had on the English and French Canadians.


It is said that Canadian officials managed, to keep Vice President Fairbanks' breaches of official etiquette out of the Canadian. newspapers. The French and English Canadians, as a rule, are at "daggers'-polnts" on most questions, but they seem to be agreed that the Vice President assumed a position far beyond his official importance at the festivities. As Fairbanks was generally regarded as the official representative of the United States, the offense is considered all the more serious. —St. Louis, Missouri, 1908

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

Etiquette for 19th C. State Dinners

The long White House tables, all dressed up, for a State Dinner being held in honor of Admiral Dewey

State Dinner Etiquette

Just What the Host and Guests are Expected to Do 

The usual hour for a state dinner is 8 p.m. As the guests arrive, which should be fifteen minutes before the hour set, they are shown to the rooms for the removal of wrappings, and descend by the private stairway to the grand corridor and proceed direct to the East Room, where the President and lady await them. 
                                     

Benjamin Harrison was the President of the United States in 1890. This is a photo of the "Harrison Presidential china." For more on Presidential china, read our post on The Etiquette of White House Table Service and State Dinners or Etiquette and Dishing on White House China for State Dinners

Each gentleman, upon entering the room, is handed by an usher, a small envelope containing a card inscribed with the plan of the table and bearing the name of the lady he will escort. On the diagram, the number of the seats he and the lady will occupy are marked. After being received by the President, he examines the card and immediately joins the lady he will accompany to the State Dining Hall. The lady whom he has brought remains with him until her escort appears. 
                                            

"The President with the first lady guest, leads the way to the State Dining Room, followed by the remaining guests. The residing lady, escorted by the principal man, close the line." The first lady guest was the female guest of greatest importance. The residing lady was who is now known as the "First Lady" or "FLOTUS." For more who the original "First Ladies"of Washington D.C. society were, read our post on 19th C. Washington Societal Etiquette Above~ A stereoscopic view of the unset White House tables.

All the guests having arrived at the appointed hour, the steward announces the dinner is in readiness. The President with the first lady guest, leads the way to the State Dining Room, followed by the remaining guests. The residing lady, escorted by the principal man, close the line. The Marine band meanwhile performs a suitable march. In the dining room, the guests find their places and take the seats assigned them by the plate cards, which correspond in location with the diagram handed them upon entering the East Room.

A corner of the East Room, modern day.

There are four services at all State dinners. The dishes in their order are served on silver salvers by waiters, the guests helping themselves. The chief waiter serves the President first, and then proceeds toward the the right, and the second waiter toward the left. The same course is observed on the opposite side of the table, beginning with the presiding lady. No one is ever served twice. The plates of one course are removed as soon as each guest is finished, and the plate for the next is put in its place.

"There are four services at all State Dinners. The dishes in their order are served on silver salvers by waiters, the guests helping themselves."~ The first White House Cookbook was published in 1887. Not only did it have Presidential favorite foods, recipes and the menus from important meals and events held in the Executive Mansion, but it also had "recipes" for cosmetics and cleaners, basic etiquette of the day and tips on child rearing. It really had everything a lady of the Victorian Era ought to know. Its menus, recipes and helpful tips, made this a favorite cookbook of wives across the U.S. 

At the close of dinner, which lasts about three hours, it has been the custom of late years for the gentleman to leave the table with the ladies and not return. The custom during the earlier administrations was for the ladies to have their coffee served in the drawing-room, and for the gentleman to return to drink a single glass of wine to the health of the President. Gentlemen wishing to enjoy a cigar retire during the coffee to the corridor of the foot of the private stairway, but join the ladies when the presiding lady makes the motion to retire. After the promenade through the suite of parlors, the gentlemen surrender the ladies to the gentleman with whom they came, and with their own ladies take leave of the President and his lady. They should receive their wrappings and leave the building quietly and promptly. The last of the guests should have retired within thirty minutes after leaving the table. –From the Washington Star, March 15, 1890 

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