Edith Wharton

The customs and social codes of the Gilded Age were portrayed by Edith Wharton (1862–1937) who drew on her firsthand knowledge of upper-class society. Born in 1862, she was the daughter of George Frederic Jones, whose wealthy family is said to have inspired the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” Beginning in 1880, Wharton became an active participant in New York high society. She closely observed its rituals and later wove them into her novels and stories. Among these traditions were lavish formal dinners, where menus served as markers of social standing and symbols of sophistication and pride. The following quotations from Wharton’s novels are paired with small menu cards from private residences in the late nineteenth century. Together, they offer a window into this now-vanished world. (Scroll over images for descriptions of the menus.)

“When I was a girl I used to keep the menu of every dinner I went to and write the names of the people on the back.” — The House of Mirth

“Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare, alternating with the equally impersonal cuisine of the dinner-party! ” —  The House of Mirth 

“This discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher guidance, for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn to her correspondence, the right ‘look’ to her hats, the right succession to the items of her menus. ” — The House of Mirth

“That Greiner house, now—a typical rung in the social ladder! The man who built it came from a milieu where all the dishes are put on the table at once. ” — The House of Mirth

“Undine had a sharp vision of the Van Degen dining-room—she pictured it as oak-carved and sumptuous with gilding —with a small table in the centre, and rosy lights and flowers, and Ralph Marvell, across the hot-house grapes and champagne, leaning to take a light from his hostess's cigarette.” —The Custom of the Country 

“Mrs. Henley Fairford gave another of her natty little dinners last Wednesday as usual it was smart small and exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs...” —The Custom of the Country 

“But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with Roman punch, roses from Henderson's, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was a different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken.”— The Age of Innocence

“The dinner was a somewhat formidable business. Dining with the van der Luydens was at best no light matter, and dining there with a Duke who was their cousin was almost a religious solemnity.”— The Age of Innocence

 

“If you dined with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines.”— The Age of Innocence

The above menu comes from a weekend extravaganza hosted by Edith and George Jay Gould a few days before Christmas in 1899. The event marked the opening of a new building on the grounds of their estate, Georgian Court, in Lakewood, New Jersey. The large structure housed tennis, racquet, and squash courts, along with a swimming pool, gymnasium, three bowling alleys, a billiards room, Turkish and Russian baths, a steam room, and twenty bedrooms for the resident polo team. Over two days, their guests dined, danced, and attended performances in a theater built specially for the occasion, where three plays were staged. During the festivities, Edith Gould made her first return to the stage since her marriage, starring in The Twilight of the God, written and directed by Edith Wharton. The portrait of a woman tipped inside this bifold may be a fanciful depiction of Edith Gould.

Edith Wharton belonged to the very social class she so sharply observed. In a letter, she once remarked that a poorly planned menu was as much of a failure as a poorly written chapter. While her fiction does not offer firsthand descriptions of specific dinners, it reflects the mindset that shaped the culture of her time and place.