Tea at Trianon: Glove Etiquette

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, April 7, 2017

Glove Etiquette

From Regency Reader:

Question: I am confused about glove etiquette. When did a gentleman remove his gloves?

Some specific examples from the reader demonstrate what a tangled web is the etiquette of gloves. You may remember my post a year or so ago about gentlemen’s gloves and some of the contradictory instructions about how when/where men might take off their gloves. The most unanimous direction was that a gentleman never ate supper in his gloves.

My reader has already read Geri Walton’s excellent primer on glove etiquette and come up with the following questions which may also be a source of confusion for other readers and writers so I would like to walk through them and offer my best approximation of an answer based on research. Since there were a lot of questions, I split this post in to two parts with part two to arrive next week (so stay tuned).

How often did a gentleman remove only his right glove, and did he then immediately put it back on after, eg, shaking hands? Did men remove their gloves at balls, when dancing? I thought their attire included gloves to cover their perspiration. (Read more.)