Today Etiquetteer brings you backstage to let That Mr. Dimmick Who Thinks He Knows So Much share some news and reflections.
I have been secretly getting an education this year, and the results are now in.
My etiquette education has been autodidactic at best. I was “taught courtesy at my mother’s knee” and in the School of Hard Knocks before accidentally discovering Dear Mother’s Emily Post. This of course led to that more unorthodox guide to Perfect Propriety, Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. Etiquetteer’s principal references come from before my lifetime — Mrs. Post, Lillian Eichler, Millicent Fenwick*, madcap Dorothy Draper, Esquire Etiquette of 1953 — with the notable exceptions of Amy Vanderbilt, Letitia Baldrige, and my beloved Judith Martin. My driving force is perhaps closer to the Mother Superior’s in Charles Busch’s The Divine Sister: “My dear, we are living in a time of great social change. We must do everything in our power to stop it.”
But “Change is the only constant,”** n’est ce pas? How would my 20th-century knowledge, acquired solely through books and life experience, stack up against a curriculum created in, by and for the 21st? In January I began The English Manner and Beaumont Etiquette’s Train the Trainer program, run by experts of this century: Myka Meier of Beaumont Etiquette in New York, and William Hanson and Jo Bryant of The English Manner in London. They delivered a comprehensive and rigorous program with wisdom and the right amount of humor — which is just what I like. The result: I am pleased to say that I have graduated Grade One with merit.
What did I learn that was different from what I knew? Unsurprisingly, a lot of it concerns table settings and afternoon tea, as for instance:
Napkins are placed to the left of the forks, not underneath them. As someone who grew up in a household that used paper napkins, it’s common to place the fork on a paper napkin to keep it from blowing off the table, but it is not correct. Unlike other etiquette writers, Etiquetteer is not going to judge you for using paper napkins for everyday dining (read about that here), but paper napkins remain incorrect for formal dining.
Oyster forks are no longer placed in the bowl of the soup spoon, regardless of all those diagrams in Millicent Fenwick’s Vogue’s Book of Etiquette (1948). As one who loves a Charming Anachronism, this makes me sad. On the other hand, Mrs. Fenwick also included ashtrays in her table settings, which we definitely don’t do now. Change is the only constant.
Fish knives, which a dear friend once described as “the most elegant of blades,” are in fact an invention of the middle class, and not really considered Perfectly Proper (unless you already own them). Perhaps it’s just as well, since they were never standard in domestic American silver services.
Perhaps the most distressing thing was that I had been setting the dessert silver wrong all this time. When setting a dessert fork and spoon above the plate, the fork goes below the spoon, not above, with the tines facing right. But what also surprised me is that this style is referred to as “nursery” in England, where more formal place settings would have the dessert silver set with all the other silver on either side of the plate — which is just the way Dear Mother did it at home . . . and she was not English.
The reason lemon forks exist (all right, first — surprise, there is such a thing as a lemon fork) is to remove the pips from lemon slices because they affect the way your tea tastes. To which I can only exclaim “Science!” and continue to take my tea black.
As someone who loves orange marmalade, it broke my heart a little to learn that it is Not Perfectly Proper for afternoon tea, as it’s considered less dainty that strawberry or raspberry jam. (And no, I am not going to listen to all you “Eat what you want when you want it!” people again. Etiquetteer covered all that with risotto in this column on Company Food.)
Having been raised on American table manners — switching the fork from the left to the right hand for each bite — during this course I was surprised to find myself using British table manners more at home and keeping my fork in my left hand. Peas remain an issue (I do not serve them with mashed potatoes, which makes them easier), but that’s why Practice Makes Perfect.
What impressed me most, however, is that while so much of good manners remains constant, how we communicate it changes to reflect the times we live in. And also, as the oldest member of the class by far, that interest in etiquette remains deep for people of all ages and nationalities. Everyone else brought questions and experiences that I certainly had not had myself.
I’m enormously grateful to have reaffirmed and expanded my knowledge base, and to have heard fresher and newer voices of this century pursuing Perfect Propriety as much as I am. Now . . . what’s next?
*Not to be confused with Millicent Natwick, even though they were never seen together.
**Who was it who said this? Heraclitus?