Jane Galt on the Victorian Age

Jane Galt has some interesting things to say about the Victorian intersection of economics, innovation, and (of all things) woodworking:

Now, I come from a family with a fairish amount of Victorian detritus floating around, and I know how the machine age resulted in the invention of a whole lot of barely marginally useful crap, just because there were a lot of newly rich people and middle class people around, and a lot of new machines that could mass produce stuff for the newly rich people. One of the reasons that there is so much hideoeusly ornate late Victorian furniture is that the Victorians invented wood-turning machines, and started putting decorative spindles on everything.

And, perhaps more interesting for many people, dining etiquette:

The Victorians liked to show off their new wealth with massive dinner parties, one of the objects of which was to show just how much silver you had. There was a fork, knife, or spoon for everything, and special tongs for asparagus besides. Many of these things were at best marginally more useful than an ordinary fork, knife or spoon, and some of them were actively less useful. Useless silver was their version of the Quesadilla maker or the $5,000 coffee machine.

[. . .] (Incidentally, the cultural horror of using the wrong fork is completely ridiculous. The Victorians made it dead easy: start outward and work in, unless a specialty item like a lobster pick is served with the course. Anything located at 12 o'clock is for dessert. If you get the wrong fork under this system, they have set the table wrong, entitling you to sneer.)

This is still one of the bigger differences between British restaurants and North American ones: silverware. (I can't speak for Continental restaurants, as I've never been across the Channel . . .). In a British restaurant of any standing, you get sufficient cutlery to handle the food you've ordered without having to use your dinner knife as a butter knife and a first-, second-, and even third-course utensil. Lately, I've noticed improvement in this, but it's still common in North American middle-class eating establishments to be expected to use the same knife and fork through several dishes. Not that I dine in fancy places that often, I assure you.

Some of the Victorian extravagance on silverware can be usefully carried on into the next century . . . but over half of the "innovations" belong only in museums, not in the dining room.