Christine Speer LeJeune’s 9-year-old son was heading to his first class in etiquette offered at the Saturday Club in Wayne, a 137-year-old women’s organization, LeJeune writes in Philadelphia Magazine.
He would learn social graces, how to introduce himself properly, how to accept a compliment gracefully, and eat spaghetti without looking like a Jackson Pollock painting.
The women’s organization behind the Saturday Club is a Main Line institution created in 1886.
It’s been a hospital during World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic. The women campaigned for child labor laws at the turn of the century and founded the town’s first kindergarten.
After a two-year COVID absence, the women decided to bring the classes back last fall, though a bit more modern than in the past, with new advice like not answering your cell phone at the table.
The third- and fourth-grade classes sold out in under nine minutes this past fall.
COVID is a likely culprit for the etiquette class’ popularity.
“There were changes in family dynamics and social situations,” said Saturday Club President Anne Pratt, “and I think people were just like, ‘My gosh, my child could use a refresher from someone who isn’t me.’”
Read more about a Main Line etiquette class at Philadelphia Magazine.
Check out the Saturday Club Cotillion.
