A few years ago we featured a selection of ‘ Don’ts’ from a manual published in the mid twentieth century. This time we are looking at a reprint of an Anglo-American edition dating from 1880 of a best-selling manual of ‘Mistakes and Improprieties ‘ that appeared from the famous publishing house of Field and Tuer. Some of these extracts are accompanied by comments from your Jotter.
At Table
Don’t, as an invited guest, be late to dinner. This is a wrong to your host, to other guests, and to the dinner.
Don’t seat yourself until the ladies are seated or, at a dinner party, until your host or hostess gives the signal. Don’t introduce, if you introduce at all, after the company is seated.
The advice regarding ladies has been redundant for many decades, as sexual equality is now generally recognised.
Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin, or spread it upon your breast. Bibs and tuckers are for the nursery. Don’t spread you napkin over your lap; let it fall over your knee.
What purpose, one may ask, does a napkin serve on someone’s knee ?
Don’t serve gentleman guests at your table before all the ladies are served, including those who are members of your own household.
Regarding the advice of serving ladies first, this again is outdated.
Don’t eat soup from the end of a spoon, but from the side. Don’t gurgle or draw in your breath or make other noises when eating soup. Don’t ask for a second service of soup.
It’s quite awkward, actually, to ‘eat ‘ soup from the end of a spoon. Try it, if you don’t believe me. I agree fully with the ban on noisy eating, especially the use of the expression ‘ Aaaaaah ‘ to denote pleasure.
Don’t bite your bread. Break it off . Don’t break your bread into your soup.
Good advice. Depositing bits of bread into your soup is the equivalent to ‘ dunking’ biscuits into cups of tea. An abhorrent practice tolerated when children do it, but intolerable when done by adults . Grow up.
Don’t eat with your knife. Never pout your knife into your mouth. Go into any restaurant and observe. Don’t load up the fork with food with your knife, and then cart it , as it were to your mouth. Take up the fork what it can easily carry, and no more.
Any restaurant ? This may have been the case at Simpson’s or the Savoy in 1880, but visit a ‘ greasy spoon ‘ today and you might see a number of knives in mouths, especially when there is no spoon handy to gather up that lovely Bisto gravy. Mmmmm.
Don’t use a steel knife with fish. A silver knife is now placed by the side of each plate for the fish course.
In the era before stainless steel was perfected for culinary use (c1915) posh knives often has steel blades and silver handles. Naturally, ordinary steel immediately discolours and corrodes when it come into contact with even mildly acidic food. But fish is not acidic, so it is unlikely to affect steel fish knife blades. Moreover, it is very difficult to get a cutting edge on silver, so one would not use a silver knife to cut up meat. But it cannot be denied that special silver fish knives were used in up- market Victorian households.
Don’t eat vegetables with a spoon. Eat them with a fork. The rule is not to eat anything with a spoon that can be eaten with a fork. Even ices are now often eaten with a fork.
Sound and sensible advice in 1880 as it is in 2025. That is except the bit about eating ices with a fork. Cake, yes. But ice cream? Surely, if it is starting to melt, it would drip through the tines of the fork.
Don’t leave your knife and fork on your plate when you send it for a second supply.
This is pretty obvious practical advice. These implements get in the way of the second helping of food, which is an inconvenience to your host or hostess.
Don’t apply to your neighbour to pass articles when the servant is at hand.
The servant class was decimated following the end of WW1 and servants at table were rare after the ‘twenties, except perhaps in the households of the very wealthy.
Don’t mop your face or beard with your napkin. Draw it across your lips neatly.
Back in 1880 it was almost unknown for men not to have beards, which tended to be very bushy and unruly, unlike those to be seen in Hoxton and Islington today. Still, back in late Victorian times there was no such thing as a vindaloo in England, so there were fewer excuses to mop faces with napkins.
Don’t forget that the lady sitting at your side has the first claim upon your attention. A lady at your side should not be neglected, whether you have been introduced to her or not.
Don’t drop your knife or fork, but if you do don’t be disconcerted. Quietly ask the servant for another, and give the incident no further heed. Don’t be disquieted at accidents or blunders of any kind, but let all mishaps pass off without comment and with philosophical indifference.
‘When you can keep your head…’
Don’t eat onions and garlic, unless you are dining alone and intend to remain alone some hours thereafter. One should not wish to carry with him unpleasant evidences of what he has been eating or drinking.
Onions ? The majority of dishes have onions in them
Don’t thank host or hostess for your dinner. Express pleasure in the entertainment when you depart—that is all.
Don’t drink from your saucer. While you must avoid this vulgarity, don’t take notice of it, or any mistake of this kind, when committed by others. It is related that at the table of an English prince a rustic guest poured hi s tea into his saucer, much to the visible amusement of the court ladies and gentlemen present. Whereupon the prince quietly poured his own tea into his saucer, thereby rebuking his ill mannered court and putting his guest in countenance.
Don’t smear a slice of bread with butter; break it into small pieces, and then butter.
Don’t read newspaper, or book or letters at table if others are seated with you.
Don’t rise from the table until the meal is finished.
In Dress and Personal Habits
Don’t neglect the details of the toilet. Many persons, neat in other particulars, carry blackened finger- nails. This is disgusting. Don’t neglect the small hairs that project from the nostrils and grow about the apertures of the earls—small matters of the toilet that are often overlooked.
Don’t cleanse your ears , or your nose, or cleanse and trim your finger-nails in public. Cleanliness and neatness in all things pertaining to the person are indispensable, but toilet offices are proper in the privacy of one’s apartment only.
Don’t use hair dye. The colour is not like nature and deceives no-one.
Are you listening Jimmy Carr ?
Don’t wear apparel with decided colors or with pronounced patters. Don’t—we address ere the male reader—wear anything that is pretty. What have men to do with pretty things? Select quiet colors and unobtrusive patterns, and adopt no style or cutting that belittles the figure. It is right enough that men’s apparel should be becoming, that it should be graceful, and that it should lend dignity to the figure; but it should never be ornamental, capricious or pretty.
To be continued.
R. M. Healey