“I would not care to dine formally every night — nor buffet-style every night, either. Dinner always served on the same china, with the same candlesticks or candelabra on the table, the same style of table covering, shows lack of imagination.” — Amy Vanderbilt
Dear Etiquetteer:
What is going on with meals in The Crown and Downton Abbey? They show HMQ and the Granthams eating with their plates on placemats. Sometimes it even looks like plates directly on the table. Nary even a runner. I thought the upper crust always used tablecloths.
Dear Tabled:
A white damask tablecloth defines a formal dinner; Etiquetteer has written more about that here. But for informal meals such as all breakfasts and most lunches* placemats are Perfectly Proper Indeed for people of all classes, even the highest ones. While they come in all materials, from woven straw to all sorts of cloth, the most severely upper class placemats are likely to be those cork-backed ones decorated with 19th-century hunting scenes.
“Small place-mats of linen or lace with runner to match are most practical,” wrote Emily Post in 1950. “A dozen mats with one runner can be used permanently as your one and only tablecloth.” Amy Vanderbilt even suggested “tiny straw disks to fit under a dinner plate and not be seen, so that the effect is that of a gleaming bare table.”
Etiquetteer wants to call your attention to that word “gleaming.” If you’re going to use placemats, be sure that your dining table is polished within an inch of its life to gleaming perfection. In days gone by that meant careful inspection after every meal, or at least every day, by the servants. “Dining-tables can only be kept in order by hard rubbing, or rather by quick rubbing, which warms the wood and removes all spots,” said Mrs. Beeton in her famous Household Book, and she wasn’t kidding either. One doesn’t want one’s mahogany or walnut marred by marks from hot dishes! If you’re using placemats, examine your table carefully first and polish as needed.
Now we have felts or table pads to protect against heat marks, including small ones that fit under placemats. But for these to be visible is Not Perfectly Proper. Dear Mother (may she rest in peace) used to have a beautiful set of thick pleated placemats, solid red and solid green, which she would alternate down the dining room table for Christmas. They were octagonal — the corners of the rectangles were truncated — so the corners of her vinyl table pads stuck out and spoiled the view. She simply would not trim them under any circumstances. Don’t you make that mistake.
Etiquetteer wishes you beautiful meals of all levels of formality, and the sort of company that makes you enjoy each one.
*Etiquetteer misses the noun “luncheon,” but it is now considered pretentious except for something exceedingly formal like a wedding (which would be more correctly called a “wedding breakfast” anyway) or a charity fund-raiser.