Etiquette Throwback 1948: When To Go Home
Millicent Fenwick bring's us Vogue's take on when to leave a social engagement.
Vogue’s Book of Etiquette, 1948, When To Go Home
We sympathize with Millicent Fenwick’s admission at the start of this section that it’s impossible to give exact advice for when to go home since social engagements vary so much. Last week’s cake-cutting cue is one of the few official signals that exist. Let’s see what Fenwick offers up for mid-century Americans.
*Please note that grammar and spelling in the following excerpt follow mid-20th-century standards.
Memos to Guests
WHEN TO GO HOME
It is impossible to give an exact schedule for the amount of time one should spend as a guest in someone else's house. At a reception, one might want to copy the American ambassador who allowed three to five minutes for a quick handshake and a surreptitious departure. Or, one might want to spend two hours with the kindly intention of making an inexperienced hostess feel that her tea party has been a great success. The one rule is that one must not leave before a guest of honor. (The matter of the guest of honor’s departure is discussed below.) Apart from this one certainty, the schedule cannot be fixed exactly and the following suggestions can only be taken as a rough guide, to be changed to fit any local customs.
At tea or an afternoon reception: twenty minutes minimum, if there are ten or twelve guests or more; forty-five minutes minimum for smaller parties. The maximum depends entirely on when one's hosts may be expected to be dining; one should always leave at least an hour before the dinner hour customary in the community.
At an evening reception: forty-five minutes minimum at very large receptions; an hour and a half at smaller ones. The maximum depends on the number of people still remaining. If there are only 10 or 12 left out of 100, it is probably time for anyone but an intimate friend to leave.
At luncheon: the margin here is very small; anyone asked to come at a quarter past one, and planning to leave before half-past two, might feel the necessity of explaining his departure to the hostess. The usual duration of a luncheon is one and a half to two hours.
At dinner: about three hours minimum, or three hours and a half. The maximum, as in the case of an evening reception, depends on the other guests. One can always leave after one or two couples have already gone, and, as an acquaintance rather than a friend of the hostess, it is always wise to leave while there are still one or two couples left.
As the guest of honor, one as a special responsibility in the matter of going home, because none of the other guests, no matter how tired he may be, can leave earlier. If the dinner is very formal, the usual minimum of three, or three and a half hours, should be observed. At a less formal dinner, when sandwiches are served at about half-past eleven, the guest of honor should leave at about twelve or half-past. In a very protocol-conscious gathering, a guest of honor’s responsibility may be given to those who have been seated at the right of the host and hostess at dinner. Therefore, if there seems to be a low, and if three and a half hours have gone by and the hostess is not apparently planning to have sandwiches or supper served, it would probably be wise to leave.
More than the advice of twenty minutes if there are this many people for a reception and forty-five minutes if there are that many people, we appreciate seeing into the world of mid-century formal entertaining. The “afternoon teas” and “receptions” read like they could be out of Emily’s 1922 edition. The mention of sandwiches and suppers served AFTER dinners feels very Gatsby. Yet, it makes sense if the party will go on long into the night and maybe even into the morning to serve another meal. Emily’s debutante days tired her considerably because she was not a night owl, and often, the dances would go late enough that a late supper of breakfast dishes was served around midnight.
We’re often happy to go home after that lovely three-and-a-half-hour dinner party. What about you? Do you find yourself checking your watch ready to go right after dessert, or are you the guest who will talk long into the night? Communities Members may post in the comments section of this post. If you can’t post here, try our Monday podcast post, where the comment thread is open to all.
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