The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

It has arrived -

Lady Troubridge's guide to etiquette for people of 'gentle minds'

and it immediately brought to mind those opening words to 

L.P. Hartley's  'The Go-Between'.

Volume 1 published in 1926, comprises 240 pages of advice

utterly alien to most people's way of life,

for example, the correct way to eat cucumber,

'Cucumber is eaten with a fork, 
and is generally handed and eaten from the dinner-plate, 
 not from a separate salad plate.'


When did this cease to be a matter for concern?

I think there is an academic paper to be had out of this.

Certainly by 1935 these Poole Pottery cucumber plates
had found a niche in polite society.

So the rot had set in even before the last war.

Tomorrow: what to do with the finger-glass at dessert.