Culling the list of Dinner Guests from All History down to just who would fit in the dining room was quite a exercise, but there were a few Historical Personages Etiquetteer wouldn’t have dreamt of inviting. Let’s consider them chronologically.
Louis XIV has gone down in history as one of the great etiquetteers, making of Etiquette a religion and Versailles its temple. But the Sun King used etiquette too much as a weapon and not as a guide for Etiquetteer’s taste. And he was so focused on la gloire that he considered the welfare of his subjects not at all. Etiquetteer’s view is that of Shakespeare’s from Henry IV, Part 2: “When he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved . . .”
Emma, Lady Hamilton. The most scandalous beauty of her day, she created her own art form, her Attitudes, sadly outshone in her legacy by her brazen affair with Lord Nelson. But Emma could be a little embarrassing at table because of her excessive love of the bottle. Once in her later years back in England, champagne was served as a special treat at a private dinner. “Accustomed to drink it like water,” Emma got very enthusiastic, called for more, and suggested the party play a drinking game. All this served to underline with embarrassment that there was no more champagne*. Oopsie!
Queen Victoria was another royal stickler for Perfect Propriety; you most definitely had to be on your Ps and Qs around her! But what few remember is that she had terrible table manners. The Hanoverians were known for their lusty appetites. While her uncles took their pleasures in bed, Queen Victoria took hers at the board. A greedy eater, she would bolt down a dinner of multiple courses in half an hour or less. This meant she barely had a word to say to anyone with her. And when she was done, everyone was done, whether they’d actually been served or not. For a dinner at which the food is an excuse for conversation, Vicky would be out of place.
Nicholas II might be an interesting companion one on one — Etiquetteer would love to draw out some stories about the antics of the Potato Society over a brandy in the study — but he was so very much a family man that he was difficult to draw out in social situations.
Hugh Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, the “Yellow Earl” because of his fondness for that color, lived and loved in the Grand Manner and certainly knew a thing or two about entertaining. Etiquetteer vaguely remembers a story** about synchronizing the timing of a visiting dignitary’s train (either Edward VII or the Kaiser) with a procession of yellow carriages so that both would arrive simultaneously at the station. The Earl won, so the dignitary’s train had to pause for ten minutes out of town. Now that is stage management! But his flagrant adultery and his fondness for the Kaiser rub Etiquetteer the wrong way, as does also his tendency to lapse into monologue at the dinner table. As his nephew’s wife recorded “Conversation at dinner was apt to develop into something of a monologue by Hugh, usually on the subject of some of the achievements of his past life, the details of which were fantastic in the extreme. Because most of his closest friends were inclined to be sycophantic and seldom dared to contradict him, his stories were apt to get wilder and wilder.”*** We need some conversational give and take at Etiquetteer’s table!
Elsa Maxwell was a true American success story, the little girl who came up from nothing in San Francisco to be the outrageous mistress of ceremonies to transatlantic High Society. Etiquetteer actually has a soft spot for Elsa, because she really did help to make entertaining fun. She took the stuffing out of the stuffy with her scavenger hunts and costume parties. But my goodness, you can stub every toe you have on all the names she drops, and there is such a “Me, me, ME” quality to Elsa . . . a dinner party like this is about sharing the spotlight. Etiquetteer would much rather see Elsa privately for a drink than in a group setting.
Greta Garbo, sometimes described as a “recluse about town” in her retirement years, retains the fascination of an idol in its ark even today. But she wasn’t what could be called a Conversational Giver, and also had the disconcerting (to some) habit of occasionally appearing topless; this happened once when she was staying with Ava Gardner, and for Ava, once was more than enough****.
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A Facebook reader expressed interest in the menu Etiquetteer would serve to the 13 Dinner Guests from All History; since Etiquetteer’s Dress Dinner Challenge is coming back for the winter starting this Saturday night, it makes sense to offer up a Fantasy Menu for a Formal Dinner. Millicent Fenwick documented the then-dying and now very-much-dead custom of the Dinner of Ceremony in her Vogue Book of Etiquette, and Etiquetteer is basing this menu off hers of no more than seven courses:
OYSTERS: Oysters Rockefeller
SOUP: Consommé Madrilène (in the language of formal dinners, “Madrilène” always means tomato), served hot, perhaps garnished with a transparent slice or two of cucumber.
FISH: Turbot au court-bouillon (Mrs. Fenwick says do not serve with potatoes with fish at a formal dinner, except as garnish on the platter. She may not be invited to dinner, but you’d better not cross her.)
MEAT: Filet de boeuf Richelieu, Sauce Madère, Pommes Duchesse, Petits pois
ASPARAGUS: Asperges, sauce Hollandaise
DESSERT: Glace Nesselrode (Nesselrode always means hazelnuts). Mrs. Fenwick describes this as “a hollow mold of vanilla ice cream filled and decorated with riced purée of marrons glacés,” but none of the recipes that pop up when searching for “Glace Nesselrode” seem to describe this. Molded ice cream was the dessert for formal dinners for decades.
FRUIT: Etiquetteer departs from the traditional service of plain old fresh fruit to include Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly from Last Dinner on the Titanic, along with dishes of Muscat grapes.
Needless to say, you won’t see Etiquetteer producing a menu like this just for one on Saturday night! But stay tuned . . .
*From her biography by Flora Fraser.
**It is infuriating not to be able to find this reference!
***From The Yellow Earl by Douglas Sutherland.
****From Ava: My Story, by Ava Gardner.