Serving Chocolate

While reading, I came across this passage that doesn’t really fit into the article, but I just had to share. The author, John Doran, was discussing the extreamnities of table traits in his book, Table Traits with Something about Them, when he included this rather extreame method of serving chocolate. This is obviously Not how the common American would have drank his or her hot chocolate.

“I will only add that the ceremony of serving chocolate was never such a solemnity in England as in France. In the latter country as late as the days of Louis XVI a man of condition required no less than four footmen each with two watches in his fob according to the fashion to help him to take a single cup of chocolate. One bore the tray and one the chocolate pot, a third presented the cup and a fourth stood in waiting with a napkin, and all this coil to carry a morning draught to a poor wretch whose red heels to his shoes were symbols of the rank which gave him the privilege of being helpless.”