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

female in a

rocking-chair violently fanning herself. She learns that this is

the landlady. She asks if she can have a room, some hot water,

etc. The answer may be, “I don’t know; I don’t have to work;

perhaps Jim will tell you.” And it is to the man of the house that

the traveller must apply. It is a favorable sign that American men

are never ashamed to labor, although they may not overflow with

civility. It is a very unfavorable sign for the women of America

when they are afraid or ashamed of work, and when they hesitate to

do that which is nearest them with civility and interest.

 

Another test of self-respect, and one which is sometimes lacking

in those whom the world calls fashionable, those who have the

possessions which the majority of us desire, fine houses, fine

clothes, wealth, good position, etc., is the lack or the presence

of “fine courtesy,” which shall treat every one so that he or she

is entirely at ease.

 

“Society is the intercourse of persons on a footing of apparent

equality,” and if so, any one in it who treats other people so as

to make them uncomfortable is manifestly unfit for society. Now an

optional courtesy should be the unfailing custom of such a woman,

we will say, one who has the power of giving pain by a slight, who

can wound amour propre in the shy, can make a d�butante

stammer and blush, can annoy a shy youth by a sneer. How many a

girl has had her society life ruined by the cruelty of a society

leader! how many a young man has had his blood frozen by a

contemptuous smile at his awkwardness! How much of the native

goodwill of an impulsive person has been frozen into a caustic

and sardonic temper by the lack of a little optional civility? The

servant who comes for a place, and seats herself while the lady

who speaks to her is standing, is wanting in optional civility.

She sins from ignorance, and should be kindly told of her offence,

and taught better manners. The rich woman who treats a guest

impolitely, the landlady who sits in her rocking-chair while the

traveller waits for those comforts which her house of call

invites, all are guilty of the same offence. It hurts the landlady

and the servant more nearly than it does the rich woman, because

it renders their self-imposed task of getting a living the more

difficult, but it is equally reprehensible in all three.

 

Good manners are said to be the result of a kind heart and careful

home training; bad manners, the result of a coarse nature and

unwise training. We are prone to believe that bad manners in

Americans are almost purely from want of thought. There is no more

generous, kindly, or better people in the world than the standard

American, but he is often an untrained creature. The thousands of

emigrants who land on our shores, with privileges which they never

thought to have thrust upon them, how can they immediately learn

good manners? In the Old World tradition of power is still so

fresh that they have to learn respect for their employers there.

Here there are no such traditions.

 

The first duty, then, it would seem, both for those to whom

fortune has been kind and for those who are still courting her

favors, would be to study optional civility; not only the

decencies of life, but a little more. Not only be virtuous, but

have the shadows of virtue. Be polite, be engaging; give a cordial

bow, a gracious smile; make sunshine in a shady place. Begin at

home with your optional civility. Not only avoid those serious

breaches of manners which should cause a man to kick another man

down-stairs, but go further than good manners—have better

manners. Let men raise their hats to women, give up seats in cars,

kiss the hand of an elderly lady if she confers the honor of her

acquaintance upon them, protect the weak, assist the fallen, and

cultivate civility; in every class of life this would oil the

wheels; and especially let American women seek to mend their

manners.

 

Optional civility does not in any way include familiarity. We

doubt whether it is not the best of all armor against it.

Familiarity is “bad style.” It is not civility which causes one

lady to say to another, “Your bonnet is very unbecoming; let me

beg of you to go to another milliner.” That is familiarity, which

however much it may be supposed to be excess of friendship, is

generally either caused by spite or by a deficiency of respect The

latter is never pardonable. It is in doubtful taste to warn people

of their faults, to comment upon their lack of taste, to carry

them disagreeable tidings, under the name of friendship. On the

Continent, where diffidence is unknown, where a man, whoever he

may be, has a right to speak to his fellow-man (if he does it

civilly), where a woman finds other women much more polite to her

than women are to each other in this country, there is no

familiarity. It is almost an insult to touch the person; for

instance, no one places his hand on the arm or shoulder of another

person unless there is the closest intimacy; but everywhere there

is an optional civility freely given between poor and poor, rich

and poor, rich and rich, superiors and inferiors, between equals.

It would be pleasant to follow this out in detail, the results are

so agreeable and so honorable.

 

CHAPTER III.

GOOD AND BAD SOCIETY.

 

Many of our correspondents ask us to define what is meant by the

terms “good society” and “bad society.” They say that they read in

the newspapers of the “good society” in New York and Washington

and Newport, and that it is a record of drunkenness, flirtation,

bad manners and gossip, backbiting, divorce, and slander. They

read that the fashionable people at popular resorts commit all

sorts of vulgarities, such as talking aloud at the opera, and

disturbing their neighbors; that young men go to a dinner, get

drunk, and break glasses; and one ingenuous young girl remarks,

“We do not call that good society in Atlanta.”

 

Such a letter might have been written to that careful chronicler

of “good society” in the days of Charles II., old Pepys of courtly

fame. The young maiden of Hertfordshire, far from the Court, might

well have thought of Rochester and such “gay sparks,” and the

ladies who threw glasses of wine at them, as not altogether

well-bred, nor entitled to admission into “good society.” We

cannot blame her.

 

It is the old story. Where, too, as in our land, pleasure and

luxury rule a certain set who enjoy no tradition of good manners,

the contradiction in terms is the more apparent. Even the external

forms of respect to good manners are wanting. No such overt

vulgarity, for instance, as talking aloud at the opera will ever

be endured in London, because a powerful class of really well-born

and well-bred people will hiss it down, and insist on the quiet

which music, of all other things, demands. That is what we mean by

a tradition of good manners.

 

In humbler society, we may say as in the household of a Scotch

peasant, such as was the father of Carlyle, the breaches of

manners which are often seen in fashionable society would never

occur. They would appear perfectly impossible to a person who had

a really good heart and a gentle nature. The manners of a young

man of fashion who keeps his hat on when speaking to a lady, who

would smoke in her face, and would appear indifferent to her

comfort at a supper-table, who would be contradictory and

neglectful—such manners would have been impossible to Thomas or

John Carlyle, reared as they were in the humblest poverty. It was

the “London swell” who dared to be rude in their day as now.

 

But this impertinence and arrogance of fashion should not prevent

the son of a Scotch peasant from acquiring, or attempting to

acquire, the conventional habits and manners of a gentleman. If he

have already the grace of high culture, he should seek to add to

it the knowledge of social laws, which will render him an

agreeable person to be met in society. He must learn how to write

a graceful note, and to answer his invitations promptly; he must

learn the etiquette of dress and of leaving cards; he must learn

how to eat his dinner gracefully, and, even if he sees in good

society men of external polish guilty of a rudeness which would

have shocked the man who in the Scotch Highlands fed and milked

the cows, he still must not forget that society demands something

which was not found in the farm-yard. Carlyle, himself the

greatest radical and democrat in the world, found that life at

Craigenputtock would not do all for him, that he must go to London

and Edinburgh to rub off his solitary neglect of manners, and

strive to be like other people. On the other band, the Queen of

England has just refused to receive the Duke of Marlborough

because he notoriously ill-treated the best of wives, and had

been, in all his relations of life, what they call in England a

“cad.” She has even asked him to give back the Star and Garter,

the insignia once worn by the great duke, which has never fallen

on shoulders so unworthy as those of the late Marquis of

Blandford, now Duke of Marlborough. For all this the world has

great reason to thank the Queen, for the present duke has been

always in “good society,” and such is the reverence felt for rank

and for hereditary name in England that he might have continued in

the most fashionable circles for all his bad behaviour, still

being courted for name and title, had not the highest lady in the

land rebuked him.

 

She has refused to receive the friends of the Prince of Wales,

particularly some of his American favorites, this good Queen,

because she esteems good manners and a virtuous life as a part of

good society.

 

Now, those who are not “in society” are apt to mistake all that is

excessive, all that is boorish, all that is snobbish, all that is

aggressive, as being a part of that society. In this they are

wrong. No one estimates the grandeur of the ocean by the rubbish

thrown up on the shore. Fashionable society, good society, the

best society, is composed of the very best people, the most

polished and accomplished, religious, moral, and charitable.

 

The higher the civilization, therefore, the better the society,

it being always borne in mind that there will be found, here and

there, the objectionable outgrowths of a false luxury and of an

insincere culture. No doubt, among the circles of the highest

nobility, while the king and queen may be people of simple and

unpretending manners, there may be some arrogant and

self-sufficient master of ceremonies, some Malvolio whose

pomposity is in strange contrast to the good-breeding of Olivia.

It is the lesser star which twinkles most. The “School for

Scandal” is a lasting picture of the folly and frivolity of a

certain phase of London society in the past, and it repeats itself

in every decade. There is always a Mrs. Candour, a Sir Benjamin

Backbite, and a scandalous college at Newport, in New York,

Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Saratoga,

Long Branch, wherever society congregates. It is the necessary

imperfection, the seamy side. Such is the reverse of the pattern.

Unfortunately, the right side is not so easily described. The

colors of a beautiful bit of brocade