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

traveller as “my

lady,” and holds out her hand for a shilling. This respect strikes

him forcibly. The American in a similar position would not show the

politeness, but she would disdain the shilling. No American woman

likes to take a “fee,” least of all an American landlady. In England

there is no such sensitiveness. Everybody can be feed who does even

the most elevated service. The stately gentlemen who show Windsor

Castle expect a shilling. Now as to the language for common things.

No American must ask for an apothecary’s shop; he would not be

understood. He must inquire for the “chemist’s” if he wants a dose

of medicine. Apothecaries existed in Shakespeare’s time, as we learn

from “Romeo and Juliet,” but they are “gone out” since. The chemist

has been born, and very good chemicals he keeps. As soon as an

American can divest himself of his habit of saying “baggage,” and

remark that he desires his “luggage sent up by the four train,” the

better for him. And it is the better for him if he learns the

language of the country quickly. Language in England, in all

classes, is a much more elaborate and finished science than with us.

Every one, from the cad to the cabinet minister, speaks his

sentences with what seems to us at first a stilted effort. There is

none of the easy drawl, the oblivion of consonants, which mark our

daily talk, It is very beautiful in the speech of women in England,

this clear enunciation and the proper use of words. Even the maid

who lights your fire asks your permission to do so in a studied

manner, giving each letter its place. The slang of England is the

affectation of the few. The “general public,” as we should say,

speak our common language most correctly. At first it sounds

affected and strained, but soon the American ear grows to appreciate

it, and finds the pure well of English undefiled.

 

The American lady will be sure to be charmed with the manners of the

very respectable person who lets lodgings, and she will be equally

sure to be shocked at the extortions of even the most honest and

best-meaning of them. Ice, lights, an extra egg for breakfast, all

these common luxuries, which are given away in America, and

considered as necessaries of existence, are charged for in England,

and if a bath is required in the morning in the tub which always

stands near the wash-stand, an extra sixpence is required for that

commonplace adjunct of the toilette. If ladies carry their own wine

from the steamer to a lodging-house, and drink it there, or offer it

to their friends, they are charged “corkage.” On asking the meaning

of this now almost obsolete relic of barbarism, they are informed

that the lodging-house keeper pays a tax of twenty pounds a year for

the privilege of using wine or spirits on the premises, and seven

shillings—equal to nearly two dollars of our money—was charged an

invalid lady who opened one bottle of port and two little bottles of

champagne of her own in a lodging-house in Half-moon Street. As it

was left on the sideboard and nearly all drunk up by the waiter, the

lady demurred, but she had no redress. A friend told her afterwards

that she should have uncorked her bottles in her bedroom, and called

it medicine.

 

These abuses, practised principally on Americans, are leading to the

far wiser and more generous plan of hotel living, where, as with us,

a man may know how much he is paying a day, and may lose this

disagreeable sense of being perpetually plucked. No doubt to English

people, who know how to cope with the landlady, who are accustomed

to dole out their stores very carefully, who know how to save a

sixpence, and will go without a lump of sugar in their tea rather

than pay for it, the lodging-house living has its conveniences. It

certainly is quieter and in some respects more comfortable than a

hotel, but it goes against the grain for any one accustomed to the

good breakfasts, the hearty lunch, and the excellent dinners of an

American hotel of the better class, to have to pay for a drink of

ice-water, and to be told that the landlady cannot give him soup and

fish on the same day unless her pay is raised. Indeed, it is

difficult to make any positive terms; the “extras” will come in.

This has led to the building of gigantic hotels in London on the

American plan, which arise rapidly on all sides. The Grand Hotel,

the Bristol, the First Avenue Hotel, the Midland, the Northwestern,

the Langham, and the Royal are all better places for an American

than the lodging-house, and they are very little if any more

expensive. In a lodging-house a lady must have a parlor, but in a

hotel she can sit in the reading-room, or write her letters at one

of the half-dozen little tables which she will find in each of the

many waiting-rooms.

 

London is a very convenient city for the writing and posting of

letters. Foreigners send out their letters of introduction and

cards, expecting a reply in a few days, when, lo! the visitor is

announced as being outside. Here, again, London has the advantage of

New York. The immediate attention paid to a letter of introduction

might shame our more tardy hospitality. Never in the course of the

history of England has self-respecting Londoner neglected a letter

of introduction. If he is well-to-do, he asks the person who brings

the letter to dinner; if he is poor, he does what he can. He is not

ashamed to offer merely the hospitality of a cup of tea if he can do

no more. But he calls, and he sends you tickets for the “Zoo,” or he

does something to show his appreciation of the friend who has given

the letter. Now in America we are very tardy about all this, and

often, to our shame, take no notice of letters of introduction.

 

In the matter of dress the American lady finds a complete

bouleversement of her own ideas. Who would not stare, on alighting

at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in the hot sunshine of a June evening, to

find ladies trooping in at the public entrance dressed in red and

blue and gold, with short sleeves or no sleeves, and very low

corsage, no cloak, no head-covering? And yet at the Grand Hotel in

London this is the nightly custom. These ladies are dressed for

theatre or opera, and they go to dine at a hotel first. No bonnet is

allowed at any theatre, so the full dress (which we should deem very

improper at Wallack’s) is demanded at every theatre in London. Of

course elderly and quiet ladies can go in high dresses, but they

must not wear bonnets. The laws of the Medes and Persians were not

more strictly enforced than is this law by the custodians of the

theatre, who are neatly dressed women ushers with becoming caps.

Here, again, is a difference of custom, as we have no women ushers

in America, and in this respect the English fashion is the prettier.

It would be well, if we could introduce the habit of going to the

theatre bonnetless, for our high hats are universally denounced by

those who sit behind us.

 

The appearance of English women now to the stranger in London

partakes of a character of loudness, excepting when on the top of a

coach. There they are most modestly and plainly dressed. While our

American women wear coaching dresses of bright orange silks and

white satins, pink trimmed with lace, and so on, the English woman

wears a plain colored dress, with a black mantilla or wrap, and

carries a dark parasol. No brighter dress than a fawn-colored

foulard appears on a coach in the great London parade of the Four-in-Hands.

 

Here the London woman is more sensible than her American cousin. The

Americans who now visit London are apt to be so plain and

undemonstrative in dress that they are called shabby. Perhaps

alarmed at the comments once made on their loudness of dress, the

American woman has toned down, and finds herself less gay than she

sees is fashionable at the theatre and opera. But she may be sure of

one thing—she should be plainly dressed rather than overdressed.

 

As for dinner parties, one is asked at eight or half-past eight; no

one is introduced, but every one talks. The conversation is apt to

be low-voiced, but very bright and cordial—all English people

unbending at dinner. It is etiquette to leave a card next day after

a ball, and to call on a lady’s reception day. For the out-of-door

f�tes at Hurlington and Sandhurst and the race days very brilliant

toilettes of short dresses, gay bonnets, and so on, are proper, and

as no one can go to the first two without a special invitation, the

people present are apt to be “swells,” and well worth seeing. The

coaches which come out to these festivities have well-dressed women

on top, but they usually conceal their gay dresses with a wrap of

some sombre color while driving through London. No one makes the

slightest advance towards an acquaintance or an intimacy in London.

All is begun very formally by the presentation of letters, and after

that the invitation must be immediately accepted or declined, and no

person can, without offending his host, withdraw from a lunch or

dinner without making a most reasonable excuse. An American

gentleman long resident in London complains of his country-people in

this respect.

 

He says they accept his invitations to dinner, he gets together a

most distinguished company to meet them, and at the last moment they

send him word: “So sorry, but have come in tired from Richmond.

Think we won’t come. Thank you.”

 

Now where is his dinner party? Three or four angry Londoners, who

might have gone to a dozen different dinners, are sulkily sitting

about waiting for these Americans who take a dinner invitation so

lightly.

 

The London luncheon, which is a very plain meal compared with ours—

indeed, only a family dinner—is a favorite hospitality as extended

to Americans by busy men. Thus Sir John Millais, whose hours are

worth twenty pounds apiece, receives his friends at a plain lunch in

his magnificent house, at a table at which his handsome wife and

rosy daughters assist. So with Alma Tadema, and the literary people

whose time is money. Many of the noble people, whose time is not

worth so much, also invite one to lunch, and always the meal is an

informal one.

 

English ladies are very accomplished as a rule, and sometimes come

into the drawing-room with their painting aprons over their gowns.

They never look so well as on horseback, where they have a

perfection of outfit and such horses and grooms as our American

ladies as yet cannot approach. The scene at the corner of Rotten Row

of a bright afternoon in the Derby week is unapproachable in any

country in the world.

 

Many American ladies, not knowing the customs of the country, have,

with their gentlemen friends, mounted a coach at the Langham Hotel,

and have driven to the Derby, coming home very much shocked because

they were rudely accosted.

 

Now ladies should never go to the Derby. It is not a “lady” race. It

is five hundred thousand people out on a spree, and no lady is safe

there. Ascot, on the contrary, is a lady’s race. But then she

should have a box, or else sit on the top of a coach. Such is the

etiquette.

 

It would be better for all Americans, before entering London

society, to learn