Gloves and Napkins
This is part of a series I've been wanting to do for a long time so I am
excited I am able to have Eugene do this for my blog. It is about
etiquette as was appropriate in the Victorian Era (1837–1901). During
that time, culturally there was a transition away from the rationalism
of the Georgian period and toward romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and the arts. The era is popularly associated with the values of social restraint. What? Social restraint? What's that?!? So we move on....thank you for reading.
Love, George
Gloves and Napkins
Ladies always wear gloves to formal dinners and take them off at the table. Entirely off. It is hideous to leave them on the arm, merely turning back the hands. Both gloves and bags are to be laid across the lap, and one is supposed to lay the napkin, folded once in half across the lap too, on top of the gloves and bag, and all three are suppose to stay in place on a slippery satin skirt on a lap that more often than not slants downward!
It's all very well for etiquette to say, "They stay there," but every woman knows they don't! If you obey etiquette and lay the napkin on top of the bag and gloves loosely across your satin-covered knees, it will depend upon mere chance whether the avalanche starts right, left, or forward onto the floor. There is just one way way to keep these three articles from disintegrating - cover the gloves and bag with the napkin put corner-wise across your knees, and tuck the two side corners under you like a lap robe, with the gloves and bag tied in place, as it were.
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