Servant’s Etiquette for Tea Service

The simple afternoon tea of a lady who is at home informally to her friends should be arranged by the waitress. She should have command of this situation, as well as of all others in her department. Bouillon should be hot, a cup of tea should be hot and fresh. Finger rolls should be spread in such a manner that bits of butter will not come in contact with gloves. A tumbler must be only three-fourths full of water.

For afternoon tea you need: Two small tables, fringed or embroidered tea cloths, doilies, an urn for bouillon, bouillon cups, spoons, a teakettle, tea pots, tea caddy, sugar bowls, cream jugs, sugar tongs, teacups and saucers, teaspoons, a pitcher for iced water, tumblers, plates for finger rolls, plates for small cakes, bonbon dishes. The afternoon tea, which may properly be placed under the head of receptions, is not here considered. To serve it requires more than one person.

The simple afternoon tea of a lady who is at home informally to her friends should be arranged by the waitress. She should have command of this situation, as well as of all others in her department. Bouillon should be hot, a cup of tea should be hot and fresh. Finger rolls should be spread in such a manner that bits of butter will not come in contact with gloves. A tumbler must be only three-fourths full of water.

Place a small table-round if possible-where it will be most convenient for the hostess. Lay on it a daintily embroidered tea cloth, two or three choice cups and saucers, with spoons, a small sguar bowl with sugar tongs, a small cream jug, a dish of bon bons and, at the last moment, a small teapot of freshly made tea.

In a corner of the room, or at one side in the back ground, lay another table with a tea cloth and place. upon it an urn of bouillon, bouillon cups, doilies, teacups and saucers, spoons, a kettle of boiling water, a pitcher of iced water, tumblers, plates of finger rolls and small cakes, a dish of bonbons, a sugar bowl, a cream jug and a tea caddy. On this table have, also, a teapot heating for the next brewing of tea. 

Twenty minutes, or even more, may elapse between the serving of the first cups of tea and those which follow. Tea to be enjoyable must be freshly brewed. When the hostess has received a guest or guests, offer bouillon from a tray which holds also a small plate of finger rolls and one or two doilies. If tea, which the hostess offers, is preferred, offer cakes with it.

Observe quietly when a guest has finished a cup of bouillon or a cup of tea, and, without the least appearance of haste, remove it on your tray. Be sure that the hostess has always some fresh cups ready to serve, and replenish the sugar bowl and cream jug when necessary. If tea and cake only are served, you will still need a table for the hot water kettle, pitcher of iced water, tumblers and whatever is necessary to replenish the tea table of the hostess.

If Russian tea be served, select a fair, fresh lemon and slice it evenly. Place a small dish which holds three or four slices of lemon on the tea table and have another in reserve from which to replenish.— The Expert Waitress, A Manual for the Pantry, Kitchen and Dining-room, 1892

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

19th C. Wisdom Promotes Grace and Poise

Have you learned that comparisons are odious, and doubly so when they involve flattering phrases?

                                      

Have You Learned?

1. Not to expect too much of humanity?
2. To create sunshine during the day, cheer at evening time?
3. To accept a gift gracefully and a compliment in the same manner?
4. To wait patiently, when that implies most acceptable service?
5. That during illness we often discover the finest traits of character?
6. That great men are human, not to be worshipped, not great in all things?
7. That comparisons are odious, and doubly so when they involve flattering phrases? – From Good Housekeeping, 1892

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

Gilded Age Help “Without Beer”

They eat very little meat, most of it salt; the cheapest kind of fish, and then they have potatoes and greens and puddings with treacle; and they are provided with beer, unless in engaging servants it is stipulated that the engagement is “without beer.”

Keeping House In London

An American taking a house in London will learn that she will have to keep more servants in the old country than in the new. These servants are trained, and one who is willing to engage to do many things, is usually willing to take such a position because she is incompetent in everything. 

A small family there would keep a cook, a chambermaid and a waitress. The washing would be put out, and a charwoman would be called in once a week to help with the general cleaning and clearing up. A very good cook can be had for one hundred dollars a year, a chambermaid for sixty dollars, and a smart waitress for eighty dollars. The charwoman will be paid two shillings, or fifty cents a day, and given her beer and food. The washing for such a family will cost from three to four dollars a week. 

In America, such a family would have two women — one a cook, who would also wash and iron, and another as chambermaid and waitress. The servants we have here do more, but they do it more roughly, and are totally deficient in that silent subservience which makes the trained English domestic perform the usual household duties with automatic celerity. 

Generally, you have to have a greater number of servants there than here, but wages are less, and the feeding costs less. There, the servants do not expect to eat just what is provided for the family. Not at all. When the marketing is done special things are bought for the servants, and they have a table for their own, the meals being served at a different hour, and the quality of food very much less in cost. They eat very little meat, most of it salt; the cheapest kind of fish, and then they have potatoes and greens and puddings with treacle; and they are provided with beer, unless in engaging servants it is stipulated that the engagement is “without beer.”— John Gilmer Speed, 1892

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

Etiquette for Comforting Invalids

Two Victorian Pap Boats… Pap Boats or Invalid Feeders were for feeding small children, the ill or the elderly. The Blue Onion or “bulb design” on the left, was a Chinese design, but became extremely popular in Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was reimagined by other manufacturers in response. 

– In its earliest usage, ‘pap’ referred to breast-feeding infants. “Pap” meant ‘breast’, “nipple,’ or even ‘teat”. By the 18th century, ‘pap’ also referred to a sweet-tasting, heavily diluted, porridge or gruel, similar to baby food. Pap was comfort food… soothing, often sweet and easy on the stomach and on the digestive system. If  toddlers or babies were ill, medicine was often mixed into the pap formula so that the dosage could be taken with a minimal amount of fuss. Recipes for pap typically called for milk, occasional fruit juices, flour, butter, sugar, softened breads and/or breadcrumbs.

Would You Comfort an Invalid? 

If you would, follow this etiquette…

1. Look hopeful, never despairing.
2. When requested to read the news, omit the death list.
3. Tell only the pleasant tidings; there is no fear of for getting the evil.
4. Sigh, if you must, after leaving the sick-room, not in the presence of the sufferer. 
5. Leave stiff linen cuffs outside – in England, where they are fashionable, if you like.
6. Refrain from telling about a similar case in which the invalid died a shocking death.
7. Let every article of food be delicately dished, taking only small, tempting quantities.
8. If you must chew gum, munch popcorn or nuts, wait until a half-mile away from sensitive ears.
9. Make the most of the luxuries at hand without expatiating upon the charms of the unattainable.
10. If your sick ones think the curtain is green when it is really blue, what harm in allowing them to think so? – L. Sturges, 1892

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

Kettle Etiquette and Discerning Palates

The Chinese are well known to possess great delicacy of taste, especially in regard to their favorite beverage, tea.

Delicacy in Taste and Hygiene

The Chinese are well known to possess great delicacy of taste, especially in regard to their favorite beverage, tea. Few would be inclined, however, to give them credit for such sensitiveness of palate as was recently described by a Chinese lecturer on tea drinking, who said that when he was a boy about eleven years old, he lived with his father, who was a little near-sighted, in a cottage in the southern part of China. One day he was cleaning out his father’s teakettle, and could not get all the tea leaves out, so he put his hand in the kettle.

About a half-hour afterward his father called for his tea, which the speaker took to him and returned to work. Shortly, the old gentlemen called him again, and asked him if he did not tell him never to put his hand in the teakettle. “Well,” said the speaker, “I did not know whether my father was peeking through the keyhole, watching me or not. So I let three weeks pass, when I knew my father was out on business, and I again put my hand in the teakettle. That evening I was called to answer the question which was asked me several weeks before. But you can rest assured from that time to this I have never put my hand in any teakettle.”  — Original in Good Housekeeping, 1892

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

Riches Give No Social Guarantee

Not everyone can be hypnotized to see what isn’t there, and there are many things that one cannot purchase. True friendship, social acceptance, and admiration from others are just a few of these things that money cannot buy and that a vulgar amount of money can actually dissuade.   

Vulgar Displays of Riches

There is a great deal said by Americans about the corruption of society by wealth. Vulgar display of riches is seen often enough, but this does not find an entrance into the best society.

Americans without sufficient cause malign their own institutions more than they know. While plutocracy is an evil felt in many directions, the fact remains that it is a thing apart from the people, receiving no honors in its own right and given distrust and dislike as its natural portion. 

The rich who stand as leaders in society are also leaders in public movements of a beneficent character. In matters relating to education, in charitable movements and in the advancement of literature and art, they are prominent. 

Riding to hounds and the possession of racing stables are not their chief pleasures. Pheasant culture, and the periodical shooting of the birds so cultivated, do not occupy their time. Their recreations are of a more intellectual sort.

Anglomania and the snobbery that it implies are to be found in certain circles in America, but they are recognized as an unhealthy growth and are received by the public with a humorous indulgence which is very far away from genuine admiration. — “America,” 1892

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

A New Table Drink from London

A “true trio” is two different shaped, porcelain cups (one for coffee and one for tea) and one matching saucer. This set is circa 1840s. True trios were sold in this manner, as a consumer would conceivably need only need one saucer, as the coffee and tea would not be drunk simultaneously. Etiquipedia has not yet found if a specific gilded age, “coffee-tea” cup was ever invented. 

Coffee-tea, a beverage made from the leaves of the coffee shrub, is a new candidate for popular favor, and would seem to have some advantages over the berry. It has not yet reached this country, save as a chance curiosity, but was recently brought under the notice of the Royal Botanic Society of London. The samples of coffee-tea, or prepared coffee leaves, were grown in the society's conservatory. 

The secretary said it had been estimated that the percentage of theine in the leaves of coffee was 1.26 as against 1.00 in the beans. As the leaves may be easily grown in many parts of the world where it is difficult to insure good crops of coffee beans, he thought it might prove a valuable agricultural product in many warm colonies. At present, he said, only some two millions of men use coffee-tea, in comparison with 110 millions who use the bean, and 500 millions who drink Chinese and Indian tea. — Good Housekeeping Magazine, 1892

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

Etiquette and the “Indelicate”

If we go farther back toward the dining table, we shall find that the disgusting habit grows even more pronounced, and that the table itself is often a witness of the indelicate proceeding. — A trio of antique toothpicks from the 18th and 19th centuries, from the book, “What Have We Here? The Etiquette and Essentials of Lives Once Lived, from the Georgian Era through the Gilded Age and Beyond...”

The Fall of the Toothpick

If there is one thing more than another which needs correction, in the ranks of what pass for cultivated people, it is the prominence of the toothpick. No sight is more common, about the dinner hour, than to see knots of men gathered in front of hotels and boarding houses, standing on street corners, riding in public conveyances or else where, with a toothpick ostentatiously protruding from the mouth, or with the said wooden splinter in diligent use as an excavator. If we go farther back toward the dining table, we shall find that the disgusting habit grows even more pronounced, and that the table itself is often a witness of the indelicate proceeding.

It is a matter of congratulation, therefore, that a better habit is asserting itself, in witness of which the following extract from a hotel journal may be quoted: “The practice of serving toothpicks, as a course, is no longer observed in polite society. Neither are they used as a sideboard decoration and a centerpiece for the table. Neither are they served along with after-dinner coffee, and it is not polite to pick the teeth at table; it is rather the act of a scavenger, even if the face and mouth are covered by a napkin, as some people. seem to think is correct. Really refined people suffer pain rather than to pick their teeth at the table. A person might as well brush the teeth at a meal, and it would be quite as agreeable a diversion. 

“The toothpick is properly an article of toilet and for the bathroom and the dressing room, and not for the dining-room. People do not clean their nails at the table, which would be far more preferable than the opening of cavernous, mouths. The time has really come when something should be said about this disgusting toothpick fad. Better go to the dentist and have the holes plugged up with gold and cement, instead of prying meat out with a toothpick. The whole thing is pandering to a low taste instead of a high one, and it is high time that it ceased to be a custom, or to be tolerated as such.”— Original in Good Housekeeping, 1892

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