Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (great book club books TXT) 📖

write a note of thanks to every one

who sends her a present before she leaves home; all her husband’s

friends, relatives, etc., all her own, and to people whom she does

not know these notes should especially be written, as their gifts

may be prompted by a sense of kindness to her parents or her

fianc�, which she should recognize. It is better taste to write

these notes on notepaper than on cards. It is not necessary to

send cards to each member of a family; include them all under the

head of “Mr. and Mrs. Brown and family.” It would be proper for a

young lady to send her cards to a physician under whose care she

has been if she was acquainted with him socially, but it is not

expected when the acquaintance is purely professional. A

fashionable and popular physician would be swamped with

wedding-cards if that were the custom. If, however, one wishes to

show gratitude and remembrance, there would be no impropriety in

sending cards to such a gentleman.

 

CHAPTER IX.

“WHO PAYS FOR THE CARDS?”

 

We have received a number of letters from our correspondents

asking whether the groom pays for the wedding cards. This question

we have answered so often in the negative that we think it well to

explain the philosophy of the etiquette of weddings, which is

remotely founded on the early savage history of mankind, and which

bears fruit in our later and more complex civilization, still

reminding us of the past. In early and in savage days the man

sought his bride heroically, and carried her off by force. The

Tartar still does this, and the idea only was improved in

patriarchal days by the purchase of the bride by the labor of her

husband, or by his wealth in flocks and herds. It is still a

theory that the bride is thus carried off. Always, therefore, the

idea has been cherished that the bride is something carefully

guarded, and the groom is looked upon as a sort of friendly enemy,

who comes to take away the much-prized object from her loving and

jealous family. Thus the long-cherished theory bears fruit in the

English ceremonial, where the only carriage furnished by the groom

is the one in which he drives the bride away to the spending of

the honeymoon. Up to that time he has had no rights of

proprietorship. Even this is not allowed in America among

fashionable people, the bride’s father sending them in his own

carriage on the first stage of their journey. It is not etiquette

for the groom to furnish anything for his own wedding but the ring

and a bouquet for the bride, presents for the bridesmaids and the

best man, and some token to the ushers. He pays the clergyman.

 

He should not pay for the cards, the carriages, the

entertainment, or anything connected with the wedding. This is

decided in the high court of etiquette. That is the province of

the family of the bride, and should be insisted upon. If they are

not able to do this, there should be no wedding and no cards. It

is better for a portionless girl to go to the altar in a

travelling dress, and to send out no sort of invitations or

wedding cards, than to allow the groom to pay for them. This is

not to the disparagement of the rights of the groom. It is simply

a proper and universal etiquette.

 

At the altar the groom, if he is a millionaire, makes his wife his

equal by saying, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow;” but

until he has uttered these words she has no claim on his purse for

clothes, or cards, or household furnishing, or anything but those

articles which come under the head of such gifts as it is a

lover’s province to give.

 

A very precise, old-time aristocrat of New York broke her

daughter’s engagement to a gentleman because he brought her a

dress from Paris. She said, if he did not know enough not to

give her daughter clothes while she was under her roof, he should

not have her. This is an exaggerated feeling, but the principle is

a sound one. The position of a woman is so delicate, the relations

of engaged people so uncertain, that it would bring about an

awkwardness if the gentleman were to pay for the shoes, the gowns,

the cards of his betrothed.

 

Suppose, as was the case twice last winter, that an engagement of

marriage is broken after the cards are out. Who is to repay the

bridegroom if he has paid for the cards? Should the father of

the bride send him a check? That would be very insulting, yet a

family would feel nervous about being under pecuniary indebtedness

to a discarded son-in-law. The lady can return her ring and the

gifts her lover has made her; they have suffered no contact that

will injure them. But she could not return shoes or gowns or

bonnets.

 

It is therefore wisely ordered by etiquette that the lover be

allowed to pay for nothing that could not be returned to him

without loss, if the engagement were dissolved, even on the

wedding morning.

 

Of course in primitive life the lover may pay for his lady-love,

as we will say in the case of a pair of young people who come

together in a humble station. Such marriages are common in

America, and many of these pairs have mounted to the very highest

social rank. But they must not attempt anything which is in

imitation of the etiquette of fashionable life unless they can do

it well and thoroughly.

 

Nothing is more honorable than a marriage celebrated in the

presence only of father, mother, and priest. Two young people

unwilling or unable to have splendid dresses, equipages, cards,

and ceremony, can always be married this way, and go to the Senate

or White House afterwards. They are not hampered by it hereafter.

But the bride should never forget her dignity. She should never

let the groom pay for cards, or for anything, unless it is the

marriage license, wherever it is needful in this country, and the

clergyman’s fee. If she does, she puts herself in a false

position.

 

A very sensible observer, writing of America and its young people,

and the liberty allowed them, says “the liberty, or the license,

of our youth will have to be curtailed. As our society becomes

complex and artificial, like older societies in Europe, our

children will be forced to approximate to them in status, and

parents will have to waken to a sense of their responsibilities.”

 

This is a remark which applies at once to that liberty permitted

to engaged couples in rural neighborhoods, where the young girl is

allowed to go on a journey at her lover’s expense. A girl’s

natural protectors should know better than to allow this. They

know that her purity is her chief attraction to man, and that a

certain coyness and virginal freshness are the dowry she should

bring her future husband. Suppose that this engagement is broken

off. How will she be accepted by another lover after having

enjoyed the hospitality of the first? Would it not always make a

disagreeable feeling between the two men, although No. 2 might

have perfect respect for the girl?

 

Etiquette may sometimes make blunders, but it is generally based

on a right principle, and here it is undoubtedly founded in truth

and justice. In other countries this truth is so fully realized

that daughters are guarded by the vigilance of parents almost to

the verge of absurdity. A young girl is never allowed to go out

alone, and no man is permitted to enter the household until his

character has undergone the closest scrutiny. Marriage is a unique

contract, and all the various wrongs caused by hasty marriages,

all the troubles before the courts, all the divorces, are

multiplied by the carelessness of American parents, who,

believing, and truly believing, in the almost universal purity of

their daughters, are careless of the fold, not remembering the one

black sheep.

 

This evil of excessive liberty and of the loose etiquette of our

young people cannot be rooted out by laws. It must begin at the

hearth-stone, Family life must be reformed; young ladies must be

brought up with greater strictness. The bloom of innocence should

not be brushed off by careless hands. If a mother leaves her

daughter matronless, to receive attentions without her dignified

presence, she opens the door to an unworthy man, who may mean

marriage or not. He may be a most unsuitable husband even if he

does mean marriage. If he takes the young lady about, paying for

her cab hire, her theatre tickets, and her journeyings, and then

drops her, whom have they to thank but themselves that her bloom

is brushed off, that her character suffers, that she is made

ridiculous, and marries some one whom she does not love, for a

home.

 

Men, as they look back on their own varied experience, are apt to

remember with great respect the women who were cold and distant.

They love the fruit which hung the highest, the flower which was

guarded, and which did not grow under their feet in the highway.

They look back with vague wonder that they were ever infatuated

with a fast girl who matured into a vulgar woman.

 

And we must remember what a fatal effect upon marriage is the

loosing of the ties of respect. Love without trust is without

respect, and if a lover has not respected his fianc�e, he will

never respect his wife.

 

It is the privilege of the bride to name the wedding day, and of

her father and mother to pay for her trousseau. After the wedding

invitations are issued she does not appear in public.

 

The members of the bride’s family go to the church before the

bride; the bridegroom and his best man await them at the altar.

 

The bride comes last, with her father or brother, who is to give

her away. She is joined at the altar step by her fianc�, who

takes her hand, and then she becomes his for life.

 

All these trifles mean much, as any one can learn who goes through

with the painful details of a divorce suit.

 

Now when the circle of friends on both sides is very extensive, it

has of late become customary to send invitations to some who are

not called to the wedding breakfast to attend the ceremony in

church. This sometimes takes the place of issuing cards. No one

thinks of calling on the newly married who has not received either

an invitation to the ceremony at church or cards after their

establishment in their new home.

 

Now one of our correspondents writes to us, “Who pays for the

after-cards?” In most cases these are ordered with the other

cards, and the bride’s mother pays for them. But if they are

ordered after the marriage, the groom may pay for these as he

would pay for his wife’s ordinary expenses. Still, it is stricter

etiquette that even these should be paid for by the bride’s

family.

 

People who are asked to the wedding send cards to the house if

they cannot attend, and in any case send or leave cards within ten

days after, unless they are in very deep mourning, when a

dispensation is granted them.

 

The etiquette of a wedding at home does not differ at all from the

etiquette of a wedding in church with regard to cards. A great

confusion seems to exist in the minds of some of our

correspondents as to whom they shall send their return