Miss Manners: The days of door-slamming are done

DEAR MISS MANNERS: If I, as a female, walk out the door first, am I supposed to hold it for the male following me?

GENTLE READER: Yes. We have revoked the custom by which a lady could let it slam in a gentleman’s face.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My late mother rescued a lot of family things as elderly relatives died off. I have inherited her hodgepodge collection of family silver, stretching from the mid-1800s to the 1940s.

There’s quite a bit – mostly sterling – but to make complete place settings, I have to pull from the sets of different (but related) households, each of which had its own pattern. Most of it is monogrammed, so I’m able to tell that the dinner forks came from my great-great-grandparents, while the spoons came from a great-aunt.

Luckily, some of the younger generation would like to have it, and actually prefer a mixture of patterns. As I sort through it all, it makes me wonder what the thought process was: What was supposed to happen to the previous generation’s silver and china, especially if it’s monogrammed, if each child acquired their own sets and patterns when their household was established?

For instance, I have pieces from my great-great-grandparents and three of their six children – all different. Planned obsolescence doesn’t seem right, considering how much it cost. Truly, if I had inherited the complete silver service for each household, I’m pretty sure I could host a state dinner and still have forks left over to replace the ones that dropped on the floor.

When this tradition began, did they not foresee a tsunami of silver a few generations down the road, or was it planned to be sold when the original owners died? And who would buy it, if it’s not their initials? If my small-town, modestly wealthy family had this much silver, I can only imagine how much must be sloshing around the attics of the really well-to-do.

GENTLE READER: You are fortunate to have not only ancestors, but also descendants who appreciate table silver. The latter are especially rare these days.

As British snobs would say, “You are not the sort of people who (sneer) buy their silver.” Mixed monograms were valued as evidence of that.

Some in the family obviously did buy, because one set of parents could produce more than one child, and every household needs to eat. The problem then would not have been a surplus, but supplying the new couples: If three of your great-great-grandparents’ children inherited silver (and grandchildren were more likely to inherit than children, whose parents might still be using theirs), new sets were needed for the other three.

Miss Manners suspects that your accumulation of orphaned silver may have less to do with a shortage of heirs than with a shortage of people to polish silver. It is probably not a coincidence that your silver was not increased after 1940, under wartime austerity and subsequent informality.

In any case, she is delighted to hear that you and your younger relatives appreciate the charm of that hodgepodge.