Thus the guest has before him the enviable privilege of spending the day as he pleases. He need not talk unless he choose; he may take a book and wander off under the trees; he may take a horse and explore the county, or he may drive in a victoria, phaeton, or any other sort of carriage. To a lady who has her letters to write, her novel to read, or her early headache to manage, this liberty is precious.
It must also be said that no one is allowed to feel neglected in an English house. If a lady guest says, "I am a stranger; I should like to see your fine house and your lovely park," some one is found to accompany her. Seldom the hostess, for she has much else to do; but there is often a single sister, a cousin, or a very intelligent governess, who is summoned. In our country we cannot offer our guests all these advantages; we can, however, offer them their freedom, and give them, with our limited hospitality, their choice of hours for breakfast and their freedom from our society.
But the questioner may ask, Why invite guests, unless we wish to see them? We do wish to see them—a part of the day, not the whole day. No one can sit and talk all day. The hostess should have her privilege of retiring after the mid-day meal, with her novel, for a nap, and so should the guest: Well-bred people understand all this, and are glad to give up the pleasure of social intercourse for an hour of solitude. There is nothing so sure to repay one in the long run as these quiet hours.
If a lady invites another to visit her at Newport or Saratoga, she should evince her thought for her guest's comfort by providing her with horses and carriage to pay her own visits, to take her own drives, or to do her shopping. Of course, the pleasure of two friends is generally to be together, and to do the same things; but sometimes it is quite the reverse.
The tastes and habits of two people staying in the same house may be very different, and each should respect the peculiarities of the other. It costs little time and no money for an opulent Newport hostess to find out what her guest wishes to do with her day, and she can easily, with a little tact, allow her to be happy in her own way.
Gentlemen understand this much better than ladies, and a gentleman guest is allowed to do very much as he pleases at Newport. No one asks anything about his plans for the day, except if he will dine at home. His hostess may ask him to drive or ride with her, or to go to the Casino, perhaps; but if she be a well-bred woman of the world she will not be angry if he refuses. A lady guest has not, however, such freedom; she is apt to be a slave, from the fact that as yet the American hostess has not learned that the truest hospitality is to let her guest alone, and to allow her to enjoy herself in her own way. A thoroughly well-bred guest makes no trouble in a house; she has the instinct of a lady, and is careful that no plan of her hostess shall be disarranged by her presence. She mentions all her, separate invitations, desires to know when her hostess wishes her presence, if the carriage can take her hither and yon, or if she may be allowed to hire a carriage.
There are hostesses, here and in England, who do not invite guests to their houses for the purpose of making them happy, but to add to their own importance. Such hostesses are not apt to consider the individual rights of any one, and they use a guest merely to add to the brilliancy of their parties, and to make the house more fashionable and attractive. Some ill-bred women, in order to show their power, even insult and ill treat the people who have accepted their proffered hospitality. This class of hostess is, fortunately, not common, but it is not unknown.
A hostess should remember that, when she asks people to visit her, she has two very important duties to perform—one, not to neglect her guests; the other, not to weary them by too much attention. Never give a guest the impression that he is "being entertained," that he is on your mind; follow the daily life of your household and of your duties as you desire, taking care that your guest is never in an unpleasant position or neglected. If you have a tiresome guest who insists upon following you around and weighing heavily on your hands, be firm, go to your own room, and lock the door. If you have a sulky guest who looks bored, throw open the library-door, order the carriage, and make your own escape. But if you have a very agreeable guest who shows every desire to please and be pleased, give that model guest the privilege of choosing her own hours and her own retirement.
The charm of an American country-house is, generally, that it is a home, and sacred to home duties. A model guest never infringes for one moment on the rights of the master of the house. She never spoils his dinner or his drive by being late; she never sends him back to bring her parasol; she never abuses his friends or the family dog; she is careful to abstain from disagreeable topics; she joins his whist-table if she knows how to play; but she ought never to be obliged to rise an hour earlier than her wont because he wishes to take an early train for town. These early-morning, perfunctory breakfasts are not times for conversation, and they ruin the day for many bad sleepers.
In a country neighborhood a hostess has sometimes to ask her guests to go to church to hear a stupid preacher, and to go to her country neighbors, to become acquainted with what may be the slavery of country parties. The guest should always be allowed to refuse these hospitalities; and, if he be a tired townsman, he will prefer the garden, the woodland, the retirement of the country, to any church or tea-party in the world. He cannot enter into his host's interests or his neighbor's. Leave him to his solitude if in that is his happiness.
At Newport guest and hostess have often different friends and different invitations. When this is understood, no trouble ensues if the host and hostess go out to dinner and leave the guest at home. It often happens that this is done, and no lady of good-breeding takes offence. Of course a nice dinner is prepared for her, and she is often asked to invite a friend to share it.
On the other hand, the guest often has invitations which do not include the hostess. These should be spoken of in good season, so that none of the hostess's plans may be disarranged, that the carriage may be ordered in time, and the guest sent for at the proper hour. Well-bred people always accept these contingencies as a matter of course, and are never disconcerted by them.
There is no office in the world which should be filled with such punctilious' devotion, propriety, and self-respect as that of hostess. If a lady ever allows her guest to feel that she is a cause of inconvenience, she violates the first rule of hospitality. If she fail in any way in her obligations as hostess to a guest whom she has invited, she shows herself to be ill-bred and ignorant of the first principles of politeness. She might better invite twelve people to dinner and then ask them to dine on the pavement than ignore or withdraw from a written and accepted invitation, unless sickness or death afford the excuse; and yet hostesses have been known to do this from mere caprice. But they were necessarily ill- bred people.
The number of questions asked by correspondents on the subject of the proper use of the familiar wordsladyandwoman, and of the titles of married women, induces the reflection that the "woman" question is one which rivals in universal interest those of Nihilism, Irish rebellion, and the future presidency. It is not, however, of ultimate importance to a woman what she is called, as arose by any other name would smell as sweet, but itisof importance to those who speakofher, because by their speech "shall ye know them," whether fashionable or unfashionable, whether old or young, whether welt-bred or ill-bred, whether stylish or hopelesslyrococo!
Nothing, for instance, Can be in worse taste than to say "she is a beautiful lady," or "a clever lady." One should always say "beautifulwoman," "cleverwoman." The would-be genteel make this mistake constantly, and in the Rosa-Matilda style of novel the gentleman always kneels to the lady, and the fair ladies are scattered broadcast through the book, while the fine old Saxon word "woman" is left out, or not properly used.
Now it would be easy enough to correct this if we could only tell our correspondents always to use the word "woman." But unfortunately we are here constrained to say that would be equally "bad form." No gentleman would say, "I am travelling with women." He would say, "I am travelling with ladies." He would not say, "When I want to take my women to the theatre." He would say, "When I want to take my ladies." He would speak of his daughters as "young ladies," etc., etc. But if he were writing a novel about these same young ladies, he would avoid the word "lady" as feeble, and in speaking of emotions, looks, qualities, etc., he would use the word "woman."
Therefore, as a grand generic distinction, we can say that "woman" should be used when the realities of life and character are treated of. "Lady" should be used to express the outside characteristics, the conditions of cultivated society, and the respectful, distant, and chivalric etiquette which society claims for women when members thereof.
Then, our querist may ask, Why is the term, "she is a beautifullady," so hopelessly out of style? Why does it betray that the speaker has not lived in a fashionable set? Why must we say "nice woman," "clever woman," "beautiful woman," etc.
The only answer to this is that the latter phraseology is a caprice of fashion into which plain-spoken people were driven by the affectations of the shabby-genteel and half-instructed persons who have ruined two good words for us by misapplication. One is "genteel," which means gentle, and the other is "lady," which means everything which is refined, cultivated, elegant, and aristocratic. Then as to the term "woman," this nomenclature has been much affected by the universalsans-culottismof the French Revolution, when the queen was calledcitoyenne. Much, again, from a different cause, comes from our own absurd want of self-respect, which has accrued in this confusion of etiquette in a republic, as for instance, "I am a lady—as much a lady as anybody—and I want to be called a lady," remarked a nurse who came for a situation to the wife of one of our presidents. "I have just engaged a coloredladyas a cook," remarked anouveau riche. No wonder that when the word came to be thus misapplied the lover of good English undefiled began to associate the word "lady" with pretension, ignorance, and bad grammar.
Still, no "real lady" would say to her nurse, "A woman is coming to stay with me." To servants the term "lady," as applied to a coming guest, is indispensable. So of a gentleman she would say to her servant, "A gentleman is coming to stay here for a week;" but to her husband or son she would say, "He is a clever man," rather than, "He is a clever gentleman."
We might almost say that no women talk to men about "gentlemen," and no men talk to women about "ladies," in fashionable society. A woman in good society speaks of the hunting men, the dancing men, the talking men. She does not say "gentleman," unless in some such connection as this, "No gentleman would do such a thing," if some breach of etiquette had occurred. And yet no man would come into a lady's drawing-room saying, "Where are the girls?" or "Where are the women?" He would Say; "Where are the young ladies?"
It therefore requires a fine ear and a fine sense of modern fashion and of eternal propriety always to choose the right word in the delicate and almost unsettled estate of these two epithets. "Ladylike" can never go out of fashion. It is at once a compliment of the highest order and a suggestion of subtle perfection. The word "woman" does not reach up to this, because in its broad and strong etymology it may mean a washer-woman, a fighting woman, a coarse woman, alas! a drunken woman. If we hear of "a drunken lady," we see a downfall, a glimpse of better days; chloral, opium, even cologne, may have brought her to it. The word still saves her miserable reputation a little. But the words "a drunken woman" merely suggest whiskey, degradation, squalor, dirt, and the tenement-house.
It is evident, therefore, that we cannot do without the word "lady." It is the outgrowth of years of chivalric devotion, and of that progress in the history of woman which has ever been raising her from her low estate. To the Christian religion first does she owe her rise; to the institution of chivalry, to the growth of civilization since, has woman owed her continual elevation. She can never go back to the degradation of those days when, in Greece and Rome, she was not allowed to eat with her husband and sons. She waited on them as a servant. Now they in every country serve her, if they aregentlemen. But, owing to a curious twist in the way of looking at things, she is now undoubtedly the tyrant, and in fashionable society she is often imperiously ill-bred, and requires that her male slaves be in a state of servitude to which the Egyptian bondage would have been light frivolity.
American women are said to be faulty in manners, particularly in places of public amusement, in railway travelling, in omnibuses, and in shops. Men complain very much that the fairer sex are very brutal on these occasions. "I wishwomenwould behave likeladies," said a man at amatine. "Yes," said his friend, "I wish they would behave likemen." Just then a sharp feminine elbow was thrust into his chest. "I wishgentlemenwould not crowd so," was the remark which accompanied the "dig under the fifth rib" from a person whom no one could call a lady.
In speaking to a servant, either a lady or a gentleman will ever be patient, courteous, kind, not presuming on his or her power. But there should always be a certain ceremony observed, and a term of respect to the person spoken of. Therefore a mistress will not say "Have thegirlscome in?" "IsLucyhome?" She will say: "Have the young ladies come in?" "Is Miss Lucy at home?" This sort of dignified etiquette has the happiest and the most beneficial result on the relations of mistress and servant.
In modern literature the terms man and woman have nearly obliterated the words gentleman and lady, and we can hardly imagine a more absurd phrase than the following: "I asked Mary what she thought of Charles, and she said he was a beautiful gentleman, and Charles said that Mary was a lovely lady; so it was quite natural that I should try to bring them together," etc., etc.
Still, in poetry we like the word lady. "If my lady loves me true," is much better than "if my woman loves me true" would be; so there, again, we have the contradiction, for the Anglo-Saxon rule of using the word "woman" when anything real or sincere in emotion is in question is here honored in the breach. But this is one of the many shadowy conflicts which complicate this subject.
The term "lady" is like the word "gentry" in England—it is elastic. All persons coming within the category of "gentry" may attend the Queen's Drawing-room, yet it is well understood that birth, wealth, association, and position give theraison d'trefor the use of such a privilege, and in that carefully guarded English society the wife or daughters of an officer in the navy or in a line regiment whose means are slender and whose position is obscure would not be justified in presenting themselves at court. The same remark holds good of the wives and daughters of clergymen, barristers, doctors, authors, and artists, although the husband, if eminent, might attend a leve if he wished. Yet these women are very tenacious of the title of lady, and no tradesman's wife would deny it to them, while she would not, if ever so rich, aspire to be called a lady herself.
"I ain't no lady myself, but I can afford to have 'em as governesses," remarked a Mrs. Kicklebury on the Rhine. She was not at all ashamed of the fact that she was no lady herself, yet her compeer and equal in America, if she kept a gin-shop, would insist upon the title of lady.
A lady is a person of refinement, of education, of fashion, of birth, of prestige, of a higher grade of some sort, if we apply the term rightly. She may be out of place through loss of fortune, or she may have sullied her title, but a something tells us that she is still a lady. We have a habit of saying, as some person, perhaps well decked out with fortune's favors, passes us, "She is not a lady," and every one will know what we mean. The phrase "vulgar lady," therefore, is an absurdity; there is no such thing; as well talk of a white blackbird; the term is self-contradictory. If she is vulgar, she is not a lady; but there is such a thing as a vulgar woman, and it is a very real thing.
In England they have many terms to express the word "woman" which we have not. A traveller in the rural districts speaks of a "kindly old wife who received me," or a "wretched old crone," or a "saucy lassie," or a "neat maid," etc. We should use the word "woman," or "old woman," or "girl," for all these.
Now as to the term "old woman" or "old lady." The latter has a pretty sound. We see the soft white curls, so like floss silk, the delicate white camel's-hair shawl, the soft lace and appropriate black satin gown, the pretty old-fashioned manner, and we see that this is areallady. She may have her tricks of old-fashioned speech; they do not offend us. To be sure, she has no slang; she does not talk about "awfully jolly," or a "ghastly way off;" she does not talk of the boys as being a "bully lot," or the girls as being "beastly fine;" she does not say that she is "feeling rather seedy to-day," etc. No, "our old lady" is a "lady," and it would be in bad taste to call her an "old woman," which somehow sounds disrespectful.
Therefore we must, while begging of our correspondents to use the word "woman" whenever they can, tell them not entirely to drop the word "lady." The real lady or gentleman is very much known by the voice, the choice of words, the appropriate term. Nothing can be better than to err on the side of simplicity, which is always better than gush, or over-effort, or conceit of speech. One may be "ignorant of the shibboleth of a good set," yet speak most excellent English.
Thackeray said of George the Fourth that there was only one reason why he should not have been called the "first gentleman in Europe," and that was because he was not a gentleman. But of the young Duke of Albany, just deceased, no one could hesitate to speak as a gentleman. Therefore, while we see that birth does not always make a gentleman, we still get the idea that it may help to make one, as we do not readily connect the idea with Jeames, who was a "gentleman's gentleman." He might have been "fine," but not "noble."
As for titles for married women, we have only the one word, "Mrs.," not even the pretty French "Madame." But no woman should write herself "Mrs." on her checks or at the foot of her notes; nowhere but in a hotel register or on a card should she give herself this title, simple though it be. She is always, if she writes in the first person, "Mary Smith," even to a person she does not know. This seems to trouble some people, who ask, "How will such a person know I am married?" Why should they? If desirous of informing some distant servant or other person of that fact, add in a parenthesis beneath "Mary Smith" the important addenda, "Mrs. John Smith."
When women are allowed to vote, perhaps further complications may arise. The truth is, women have no real names. They simply are called by the name of father or husband, and if they marry several times may well begin to doubt their own identity. Happy those who never have to sign but one new name to their letters!
In these days, amid what has been strongly stated as "the prevailing mediocrity of manners," a study of the manners of the past would seem to reveal to us the fact that in those days of ceremony a man who was beset with shyness need then have suffered less than he would do now in these days of impertinence and brass.
A man was not then expected to enter a room and to dash at once into a lively conversation. The stately influence of theminuet de la courwas upon him; he deliberately entered a room, made a low bow, and sat down, waiting to be spoken to.
Indeed, we may go farther back and imagine ourselves at the court of Louis XIV., when the world was broadly separated into the two classes—the noble and thebourgeois. That world which Moliere divided in hisdramatis personaeinto the courtier, the provincial noble, and the plain gentleman; and secondly, into the men of law and medicine, the merchant, and the shopkeeper. These divisions shall be for a moment considered. Now, all these men knew exactly, from the day when they reached ten years of age, how they were expected to behave in the sphere of life to which they were called. The marquis was instructed in every art of graceful behavior, thebel airwas taught him as we teach our boys how to dance, even more thoroughly. Thegrand seigneurof those days, the man who would not arrange the folds of his own cravat with his own hands, and who exacted an observance as punctilious from his valets as if he were the king himself, that marquis of whom the great Moliere makes such fun, the courtier whom even thegrand monarqueliked to see ridiculed—this man had, nevertheless, good manners. We see him reflected with marvellous fidelity in those wonderful comedies of the French Shakespeare; he is more than the fashion of an epoch—he is one of the eternal types of human nature. We learn what a man becomes whose business is "deportment." Even despicable as he is in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme"—-flattering, borrowing money, cheating the poor citizen, and using his rank as a mask and excuse for his vices—we still read that it was such a one as he who took poor Moliere's cold hands in his and put them in his muff, when, on the last dreadful day of the actor's life (with a liberality which does his memory immortal honor), he strove to play, "that fifty poor workmen might receive their daily pay." It was such a one as this who was kind to poor Moliere. There was in thesegens de coura copy of fine feeling, even if they had it not, They were polite and elegant, making the people about them feel better for the moment, doing graceful acts courteously, and gilding vice with the polish of perfect manners. Thebourgeois, according to Moliere, was as bad a man as the courtier, but he had, besides, brutal manners; and as for the magistrates and merchants, they were harsh and surly, and very sparing of civility. No wonder, when the French Revolution came, that one of the victims, regretting the not-yet-forgotten marquis, desired the return of the aristocracy; for, said he, "I would rather be trampled upon by a velvet slipper than a wooden shoe."
It is the best definition of manners—"a velvet slipper rather than a wooden shoe." We ask very little of the people whom we casually meet but that the salutation be pleasant; and as we remember how many crimes and misfortunes have arisen from sudden anger, caused sometimes by pure breaches of good manners, we almost agree with Burke that "manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend."
Some one calls politeness "benevolence in trifles, the preference of others to ourselves in little, daily, hourly occurrences in the business of life, a better place, a more commodious seat, priority in being helped at table," etc.
Now, in all these minor morals the marquis was a benevolent man; he was affable and both well and fair spoken, "and would use strange sweetness and blandishment of words when he desired to affect or persuade anything that he took to heart"—that is, with his equals. It is well to study this man, and to remember that he was not always vile. The Prince of Cond had these manners and a generous, great heart as well. Gentleness really belongs to virtue, and a sycophant can hardly imitate it well. The perfect gentleman is he who has a strong heart under the silken doublet of a perfect manner.
We do not want all the decent drapery of life torn off; we do not want to be told that we are full of defects; we do not wish people to show us a latent antagonism; and if we have in ourselves the elements of roughness, severity of judgment, a critical eye which sees defects rather than virtues, we are bound to study how to tone down that native, disagreeable temper—just as we are bound to try to break the icy formality of a reserved manner, and to cultivate a cordiality which we do not feel. Such a command over the shortcomings of our own natures is not insincerity, as we often find that the effort to make ourselves agreeable towards some one whom we dislike ends in leading us to like the offending person. We find that we have really been the offender, going about with a moral tape-measure graduated by ourselves, and measuring the opposite party with a serene conceit which has called itself principle or honor, or some high-sounding name, while it was really nothing but prejudice.
We should try to carry entertainment with us, and to seem entertained with our company. A friendly behavior often conciliates and pleases more than wit or brilliancy; and here we come back to those polished manners of the past, which were a perfect drapery, and therefore should be studied, and perhaps in a degree copied, by the awkward and the shy, who cannot depend upon themselves for inspirations of agreeability. Emerson says that "fashion is good- sense entertaining company; it hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people, hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties, while it values all particularities as in the highest degree refreshing which can consist with good-fellowship."
It does the awkward and the shy good to contemplate these words. It may not immediately help them to become graceful and self-possessed, but it will certainly have a very good effect in inducing them to try.
We find that the successful man of the world has studied the temper of the finest sword. He can bend easily, he is flexible, he is pliant, and yet he has not lost the bravery and the power of his weapon. Men of the bar, for instance, have been at the trouble to construct a system of politeness, in which even an offensive self- estimation takes on the garb of humility. The harmony is preserved, a trial goes on with an appearance of deference and respect each to the other, highly, most highly, commendable, and producing law and order where otherwise we might find strife, hatred, and warfare. Although this may be a mimic humility, although the compliments may be judged insincere, they are still the shadows of the very highest virtues. The man who is guarding his speech is ruling his spirit; he is keeping his temper, that furnace of all affliction, and the lofty chambers of his brain are cool and full of fresh air.
A man who is by nature clownish, and who has what he calls a "noble sincerity," is very apt to do injustice to the polished man; he should, however, remember that "the manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and that the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom." A man with an obliging, agreeable address may be just as sincere as if he had the noble art of treading on everybody's toes. The "putter-down-upon-system" man is quite as often urged by love of display as by a love of truth; he is ungenerous, combative, and ungenial; he is the "bravo of society."
To some people a fine manner is the gift of nature. We see a young person enter a room, make himself charming, go through the transition period of boy to man, always graceful, and at man's estate aim to still possess that unconscious and flattering grace, that "most exquisite taste of politeness," which is a gift from the gods. He is exactly formed to please, this lucky creature, and all this is done for him by nature. We are disposed to abuse Mother Nature when we think of this boy's heritage of joy compared with her step-son, to whom she has given the burning blushes, the awkward step, the heavy self-consciousness, the uncourtly gait, the hesitating speech, and the bashful demeanor.
But nothing would be omitted by either parent or child to cure the boy if he had a twisted ankle, so nothing should be omitted that can, cure the twist of shyness, and therefore a shy young person should not be expected to confront such a trial.
And to those who have the bringing up of shy young persons we commend these excellent words of Whately: "There are many otherwise sensible people who seek to cure a young person of that very common complaint—shyness—by exhorting him not to be shy, telling him what an awkward appearance it has, and that it prevents his doing himself justice, all of which is manifestly pouring oil on the fire to quench it; for the very cause of shyness is an over-anxiety as to what people are thinking of you, a morbid attention to your own appearance. The course, therefore, that ought to be pursued is exactly the reverse. The sufferer should be exhorted to think as little as possible about himself and the opinion formed of him, to be assured that most of the company do not trouble their heads about him, and to harden him against any impertinent criticisms that he supposed to be going on, taking care only to do what is right, leaving others to say and to think what they will."
All this philosophy is excellent, and is like the sensible archbishop. But the presence of a set of carefully cultivated, artificial manners, or a hat to hold in one's hand, will better help the shy person when he is first under fire, and when his senses are about deserting him, than any moral maxims can be expected to do.
Carlyle speaks of the fine manners of his peasant father (which he does not seem to have inherited), and he says: "I think-that they came from his having, early in life, worked for Maxwell, of Keir, a Scotch gentleman of great dignity and worth, who gave to all those under him a fine impression of the governing classes." Old Carlyle had no shame in standing with his hat off as his landlord passed; he had no truckling spirit either of paying court to those whose lot in life it was to be his superiors.
Those manners of the past were studied; they had, no doubt, much about them which we should now call stiff, formal, and affected, but they were a great help to the awkward and the shy.
In the past our ancestors had the help of costume, which we have not. Nothing is more defenceless than a being in a dress-coat, with no pockets allowable in which he can put his hands. If a man is in a costume he forgets the sufferings of the coat and pantaloon. He has a sense of being in a fortress. A military man once said that he always fought better in his uniform—that a fashionably cut coat and an every-day hat took all heroism out of him.
Women, particularly shy ones, feel the effect of handsome clothes as a reinforcement. "There is anappuiin a good gown," said Madame de Stal. Therefore, the awkward and the shy, in attempting to conquer the manners of artificial society, should dress as well as possible. Perhaps to their taste in dress do Frenchmen owe much of their easy civility and their success in social politics; and herein women are very much more fortunate than men, for they can always ask, "Is it becoming?" and can add the handkerchief, fan, muff, or mantle as a refuge for trembling hands. A man has only his pockets; he does not wish to always appear with his hands in them.
Taste is said to be the instantaneous, ready appreciation of the fitness of things. To most of us who may regret the want of it in ourselves, it seems to be the instinct of the fortunate few. Some women look as if they had simply blossomed out of their inner consciousness into a beautiful toilet; others are the creatures of chance, and look as if their clothes had been hurled at them by a tornado.
Some women, otherwise good and true, have a sort of moral want of taste, and wear too bright colors, too many glass beads, too much hair, and a combination of discordant materials which causes the heart of a good dresser to ache with anguish. This want of taste runs across the character like an intellectual bar-sinister, forcing us to believe that their conclusions are anything but legitimate. People who say innocently things which shock you, who put the listeners at a dinner-table upon tenter-hooks, are either wanting in taste or their minds are confused with shyness.
A person thus does great injustice to his own moral qualities when he permits himself to be misrepresented by that disease of which we speak. Shyness perverts the speech more than vice even. But if a man or a woman can look down on a well-fitting, becoming dress (even if it is the barren and forlorn dress which men wore to parties in 1882), it is still anappui. We know how it offends us to see a person in a dress which is inappropriate. A chief-justice in the war-paint and feathers of an Indian chief would scarcely be listened to, even if his utterances were those of a Marshall or a Jay.
It takes a great person, a courageous person, to bear the shame of unbecoming dress; and, no doubt, to a nature shy, passionate, proud, and poor, the necessity of wearing poor or unbecoming clothes has been an injury for life. He despised himself for his weakness, but the weakness remained. When the French Revolution came in with itssans-culotteism, and republican simplicity found its perfect expression in Thomas Jefferson, still, the prejudices of powdered hair and stiff brocades remained. They gradually disappeared, and the man of the nineteenth century lost the advantages of becoming dress, and began anew the battle of life stripped of all his trappings. Manners went with these flowing accessaries, and the abrupt speech, curt bow, and rather exaggerated simplicity of the present day came in.
But it is a not unworthy study—these manners of the past. We are returning, at least on the feminine side, to a great and magnificent "princess," or queenly, style of dress. It is becoming the fashion to make a courtesy, to flourish a fan, to bear one's self with dignity when in this fine costume. Cannot the elegance, the repose, and the respectfulness of the past return also?
It is very easy to laugh at the optimist, and to accuse him of "poetizing the truth." No doubt, an optimist will see excellence, beauty, and truth where pessimists see only degradation, vice, and ugliness. The one hears the nightingale, the other the raven only. To one, the sunsetting forms a magic picture; to the other, it is but a presage of bad weather tomorrow. Some people seem to look at nature through a glass of red wine or in a Claude Lorraine mirror; to them the landscape has ever the bloom of summer or a spring-tide grace. To others, it is always cloudy, dreary, dull. The desolate ravine, the stony path, the blighted heath—that is all they can find in a book which should have a chapter for everybody. And the latter are apt to call the former dreamers, visionaries, fools. They are dubbed in society often flatterers, people whose "geese are all swans."
But are those, then, the fools who see only the pleasant side? Are they alone the visionaries who see the best rather than the worst? It is strange that the critics see only weakness in the "pleasant- spoken," and only truth and safety in those who croak.
The person who sees a bright light in an eye otherwise considered dull, who distrusts the last scandal, is supposed to be foolish, too easily pleased, and wanting in that wise scepticism which should be the handmaid of common-sense; and if such a person in telling a story poetizes the truth, if it is a principle or a tendency to believe the best of everybody, to take everybody at their highest note, is she any the less canny? Has she necessarily less insight? As there are always two sides to a shield, why not look at the golden one?
An excess of the organ of hope has created people like Colonel Sellers in the play, who deluded himself that there were "millions in it," who landed in poverty and wrecked his friends; but this excess is scarcely a common one. Far more often does discouragement paralyze than does hope exalt. Those who have sunshine for themselves and to spare are apt to be happy and useful people; they are in the aggregate the successful people.
But, although good-nature is temperamental, and although some men and women are, by their force of imagination and charity, forced to poetize the truth, the question remains an open one, Which is the nearest to truth, a pessimist or an optimist? Truth is a virtue more palpable and less shadowy than we think; It is not easy to speak the unvarnished, uncorrupted truth (so the lawyers tell us). The faculty of observation differs, and the faculty of language is variable. Some people have no intellectual apprehension of the truth, although they morally believe in it. People who abstractly revere the truth have never been able to tell anything but falsehoods. To such the power of making a statement either favorable or prejudicial depends upon the mood of the moment, not upon fact. Therefore a habit of poetizing the truth would seem to be of either excess the safest. Society becomes sometimes a hot-bed of evil passions—one person succeeds at the expense of another. How severe is the suffering proceeding from social neglect and social stabs! It might, much of it, be smoothed away by poetizing the truth ever so little. Instead of bearing an ill-natured message, suppose we carry an amiable one. Instead of believing that an insult was intended, suppose a compliment.
"Should he upbraid, I'll own that he prevail, And sing more sweetly than the nightingale! Say that he frown, I'll own his looks I view Like morning roses newly dipped in dew."
People who are thus calmly serene and amiable through the frowns and smiles, the ups and downs, of a social career are often called worldly.
Well, let us suppose that they are. Some author has wisely said: "That the world should be full of worldliness seems as right as that a stream should be full of water or a living body full of blood." To conquer this world, to get out of it a full, abounding, agreeable life, is what we are put here for. Else, why such gifts as beauty, talent, health, wit, and a power of enjoyment be given to us? To be worldly, or worldlings, is supposed to be incurring the righteous anger of the good. But is it not improperly using a term of implied reproach? For, although the world may be too much with us, and a worldling may be a being not filled to the brim with the deeper qualities or the highest aims, still he is a man necessary to the day, the hour, the sphere which must be supplied with people fitted to its needs. So with a woman in society. She must be a worldling in the best sense of the word. She must keep up her corner of the great mantle of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. She must fill the social arena with her influence; for in society she is a most important factor.
Then, as a "complex overgrowth of wants and fruitions" has covered our world as with a banyan-tree, we must have something else to keep alive our umbrageous growth of art, refinement, inventions, luxuries, and delicate sensibilities. We must have wealth.
"Wealth is the golden essence of the outer world,"
and therefore to be respected.
Of course the pessimist sees purse-pride, pompous and outrageous arrogance, a cringing of the pregnant hinges of the knee, false standards, and a thousand faults in this admission. And yet the optimist finds the "very rich," with but few exceptions, amiable, generous, and kindly, often regretting that poorer friends will allow their wealth to bar them off, wishing often that their opulence need not shut them off from the little dinners, the homely hospitality, the small gifts, the sincere courtesies of those whose means are moderate, The cheerful people who are not dismayed by the superior magnificence of a friend are very apt to find that friend quite as anxious for sympathy and for kindness as are the poor, especially if his wealth has caused him, almost necessarily, to live upon the superficial and the external in life.
We all know that there is a worldly life, poor in aim and narrow in radius, which is as false as possible. To liveonlyfor this world, with its changing fashions, its imperfect judgments, its toleration of snobs and of sinners, its forgiveness of ignorance under a high-sounding name, its exaggeration of the transient and the artificial, would be a poor life indeed. But, if we can lift ourselves up into the higher comprehension of what a noble thing this world really is, we may well aspire to be worldlings.
Julius Caesar was a worldling; so was Shakespeare. Erasmus was a worldling. We might increase the list indefinitely. These men brought the loftiest talents to the use of worldly things. They showed how great conquest, poetry, thought might become used for the world. They were full of this world.
To see everything through a poetic vision (the only genuine idealization) is and has been the gift of the benefactors of our race. Branger was of the world, worldly; but can we give him up? So were the great artists who flooded the world with light—Titian, Tintoretto, Correggio, Raphael, Rubens, Watteau. These men poetized the truth. Life was a brilliant drama, a splendid picture, a garden ever fresh and fair;
The optimist carries a lamp through dark, social obstructions. "I would fain bind up many wounds, if I could be assured that neither by stupidity nor by malice I need make one!" is her motto, the true optimist.
It is a fine allegory upon the implied power of society that the poet Marvell used when he said he "would not drink wine with any one to whom he could not trust his life."
Titian painted his women with all their best points visible. There was a careful shadow or drapery which hid the defects which none of us are without; but defects to the eye of the optimist make beauty more attractive by contrast; in a portrait they may better be hid perhaps.
To poetize the truth in the science of charity and forgiveness can never be a great sin. If it is one, the recording angel will probably drop a tear. This tendency to optimism is, we think, more like that magic wand which the great idealist waved over a troubled sea, or like those sudden sunsets after a storm, which not only control the wave, but gild the leaden mass with crimson and unexpected gold, whose brightness may reach some storm-driven sail, giving it the light of hope, bringing the ship to a well-defined and hospitable shore, and regulating, with a new attraction, the lately distracted compass. Therefore, we do not hesitate to say that the philosophy, and the creed, and the manners of the optimist are good for society. However, his excellence may well be criticised; it may even sometimes take its place amid those excesses which are catalogued as amid the "deformities of exaggerated virtues." We may be too good, some of us, in one single direction.
But the rounded and harmonious Greek calm is hard to find. "For repose and serenity of mind," says a modern author, "we must go back to the Greek temple and statue, the Greek epic and drama, the Greek oration and moral treatise; and modern education will never become truly effectual till it brings more minds into happy contact with the ideal of a balanced, harmonious development of all the powers of mind, body, conscience, and heart."
And who was a greater optimist than your Athenian? He had a passionate love of nature, a rapt and infinite adoration of beauty, and he diffused the splendid radiance of his genius in making life more attractive and the grave less gloomy. Perhaps we of a brighter faith and a more certain revelation may borrow something from this "heathen" Greek.
Sympathy is the most delicate tendril of the mind, and the most fascinating gift which nature can give to us. The most precious associations of the human heart cluster around the word, and we love to remember those who have sorrowed with us in sorrow, and rejoiced with us when we were glad. But for the awkward and the shy, the sympathetic are the very worst company. They do not wish to be sympathized with—they wish to be with people who are cold and indifferent; they like shy people like themselves. Put two shy people in a room together, and they begin to talk with unaccustomed glibness. A shy woman always attracts a shy man. But women who are gifted with that rapid, gay impressionability which puts themen rapportwith their surroundings, who have fancy and an excitable disposition, a quick susceptibility to the influences around them, are very charming in general society, but they are terrible to the awkward and the shy. They sympathize too much, they are too aware of that burning shame which the sufferer desires to conceal.
The moment that a shy person sees before him a perfectly unsympathetic person, one who is neither thinking nor caring for him, his shyness begins to flee; the moment that he recognizes a fellow-sufferer he begins to feel a reinforcement of energy. If he be a lover, especially, the almost certain embarrassment of the lady inspires him with hope and with renewed courage. A woman who has a bashful lover, even if she is afflicted with shyness, has been known to find a way to help the poor fellow out of his dilemma more than once. Hawthorne, who has left us the most complete and most tragic history of shyness which belongs to "that long rosary on which the blushes of a life are strung," found a woman (the most perfect character, apparently, who ever married and made happy a great genius) who, fortunately for him, was shy naturally, although without that morbid shyness which accompanied him through life. Those who knew Mrs. Hawthorne later found her possessed of great fascination of manner, even in general society, where Hawthorne was quite impenetrable. The story of his running down to the Concord River and taking boat to escape his visitors has been long familiar to us all. Mrs. Hawthorne, no doubt, with a woman's tact and a woman's generosity, overcame her own shyness in order to receive those guests whom Hawthorne ran away from, and through life remained his better angel. It was through this absence of expressed sympathy that English people became very agreeable to Hawthorne. He describes, in his "Note Book," a speech made by him at a dinner in England: "When I was called upon," he says, "I rapped my head, and it returned a hollow sound."
He had, however, been sitting next to a shy English lawyer, a man who won upon him by his quiet, unobtrusive simplicity, and who, in some well-chosen words, rather made light of dinner-speaking and its terrors. When Hawthorne finally got up and made his speech, his "voice, meantime, having a far-off and remote echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of applause greeted the few well-chosen words drawn up from that full well of thought, that pellucid rill of "English undefiled," the unobtrusive gentleman by his side applauded, and said to him, "It was handsomely done." The compliment pleased the shy man. It is the only compliment to himself which Hawthorne ever recorded.
Now, had Hawthorne been congratulated by a sympathetic, effusive American who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "Oh, never fear—you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed—a fear that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; and, although pleased that he did speak well, invested no particular sympathy in the matter, either for or against, and so spared Hawthorne's shyness the last bitter drop in the cup, which would have been a recognition of his own moral dread. Hawthorne bitterly records his own sufferings. He says, in one of his books, "At this time I acquired this accursed habit of solitude." It has been said that the Hawthorne family were, in the earlier generation, afflicted with shyness almost as a disease— certainly a curious freak of nature in a family descended from robust sea-captains. It only goes to prove how far away are the influences which control our natures and our actions.
Whether, if Hawthorne had not been a shy man, afflicted with a sort of horror of his species at times, always averse to letting himself go, miserable and morbid, we should have been the inheritors of the great fortune which he has left us, is not for us to decide. Whether we should have owned "The Gentle Boy," the immortal "Scarlet Letter," "The House with Seven Gables," the "Marble Faun," and all the other wonderful things which grew out of that secluded and gifted nature, had he been born a cheerful, popular, and sympathetic boy, with a dancing-school manner, instead of an awkward and shy youth (although an exceedingly handsome one), we cannot tell. That is the great secret behind the veil. The answer is not yet made, the oracle has not spoken, and we must not invade the penumbra of genius.
It has always been a comfort to the awkward and the shy that Washington could not make an after-dinner speech; and the well-known anecdote—"Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is even greater than your valor "—must have consoled many a voiceless hero. Washington Irving tried to welcome Dickens, but failed in the attempt, while Dickens was as voluble as he was gifted. Probably the very surroundings of sympathetic admirers unnerved both Washington and Irving, although there are some men who can never "speak on their legs," as the saying goes, in any society.
Other shy men—men who fear general society, and show embarrassment in the every-day surroundings—are eloquent when they get on their feet. Many a shy boy at college has astonished his friends by his ability in an after-dinner speech. Many a voluble, glib boy, who has been appointed the orator of the occasion, fails utterly, disappoints public expectation, and sits down with an uncomfortable mantle of failure upon his shoulders. Therefore, the ways of shyness are inscrutable. Many a woman who has never known what it was to be bashful or shy has, when called upon to read a copy of verses, even to a circle of intimate friends, lost her voice, and has utterly broken down, to her own and her friends' great astonishment.
The voice is a treacherous servant; it deserts us, trembles, makes a failure of it, is "not present or accounted for" often when we need its help. It is not alone in the shriek of the hysterical that we learn of its lawlessness, it is in its complete retirement. A bride, often, even when she felt no other embarrassment, has found that she had no voice with which to make her responses. It simply was not there!
A lady who was presented at court, and who felt—as she described herself—wonderfully at her ease, began talking, and, without wishing to speak loud, discovered that she was shouting like a trumpeter. The somewhat unusual strain which she had put upon herself, during the ordeal of being presented at the English court, revenged itself by an outpouring of voice which she could not control.
Many shy people have recognized in themselves this curious and unconscious elevation of the voice. It is not so common as a loss of voice, but it is quite as uncontrollable.
The bronchial tubes play us another trick when we are frightened: the voice is the voice of somebody else, it has no resemblance to our own. Ventriloquism might well study the phenomena of shyness, for the voice becomes bass that was treble, and soprano that which was contralto.
"I dislike to have Wilthorpe come to see me," said a very shy woman —"I know my voice will squeak so." With her Wilthorpe, who for some reason drove her into an agony of shyness, had the effect of making her talk in a high, unnatural strain, excessively fatiguing.
The presence of one's own family, who are naturally painfully sympathetic, has always had upon the bashful and the shy a most evil effect.
"I can never plead a cause before my father?" "Nor I before my son," said two distinguished lawyers. "If mamma is in the room, I shall never be able to get through my part," said a young amateur actor.
But here we must pause to note another exception in the laws of shyness.
In the false perspective of the stage shyness often disappears. The shy man, speaking the words, and assuming the character of another, often loses his shyness. It is himself of whom he is afraid, not of Tony Lumpkin or of Charles Surface, of Hamlet or of Claude Melnotte. Behind their masks he can speak well; but if he at his own dinner- table essays to speak, and mamma watches him with sympathetic eyes, and his brothers and sisters are all listening, he fails.
"Lord Percy sees me fall."
Yet it is with our own people that we must stand or fall, live or die; it is in our own circle that we must conquer our shyness.
Now, these reflections are not intended as an argument against sympathy properly expressed. A reasonable and judiciously expressed sympathy with our fellow-beings is the very highest attribute of our nature. "It unravels secrets more surely than the highest critical faculty. Analysis of motives that sway men and women is like the knife of the anatomist: it works on the dead. Unite sympathy to observation, and the dead Spring to life." It is thus to the shy, in their moments of tremor, that we should endeavor to be calmly unsympathetic; not cruel, but indifferent, unobservant.
Now, women of genius who obtain a reflected comprehension of certain aspects of life through sympathy often arrive at the admirable result of apprehending the sufferings of the shy without seeming to observe them. Such a woman, in talking to a shy man, will not seem to see him; she will prattle on about herself, or tell some funny anecdote of how she was tumbled out into the snow, or how she spilled her glass of claret at dinner, or how she got just too late to the lecture; and while she is thus absorbed in her little improvised autobiography, the shy man gets hold of himself and ceases to be afraid of her. This is the secret of tact.
Madame Rcamier, the famous beauty, was always somewhat shy. She was not a wit, but she possessed the gift of drawing out what was best in others. Her biographers have blamed her that she had not a more impressionable temper, that she was not more sympathetic. Perhaps (in spite of her courage when she took up contributions in the churches dressed as a Neo-Greek) she was always hampered by shyness. She certainly attracted all the best and most gifted of her time, and had a noble fearlessness in friendship, and a constancy which she showed by following Madame de Stal into exile, and in her devotion to Ballenche and Chateaubriand. She had the genius of friendship, a native sincerity, a certain reality of nature—those fine qualities which so often accompany the shy that we almost, as we read biography and history, begin to think that shyness is but a veil for all the virtues.
Perhaps to this shyness, or to this hidden sympathy, did Madame Rcamier owe that power over all men which survived her wonderful beauty. The blind and poor old woman of theAbbayehad not lost her charm; the most eminent men and women of her day followed her there, and enjoyed her quiet (not very eloquent) conversation. She had a wholesome heart; it kept her from folly when she was young, from a too over-facile sensitiveness to which an impressionable, sympathetic temperament would have betrayed her. Her firm, sweet nature was not flurried by excitement; she had a steadfastness in her social relations which has left behind an everlasting renown to her name.
And what are, after all, these social relations which call for so much courage, and which can create so much suffering to most of us as we conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics, which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good, the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing most necessary to us all. We are apt to like it and its excitements almost too well, or to hate it, with its excesses and its mistakes, too bitterly. We are rarely just to society.
The rounded and harmonious and temperate understanding and use of society is, however, the very end and aim of education. We are born to live with each other and not for ourselves; if we are cheerful, our cheerfulness was given to us to make bright the lives of those about us; if we have genius, that is a sacred trust; if we have beauty, wit, joyousness, it was given us for the delectation of others, not for ourselves; if we are awkward and shy, we are bound to break the crust and to show that within us is beauty, cheerfulness, and wit. "It is but the fool who loves excess." The best human being should moderately like society.
We are asked by a correspondent as to when a gentleman should wear his hat and when take it off. A gentleman wears his hat in the street, on a steamboat deck, raising it to a lady acquaintance; also in a promenade concert-room and picture-gallery. He never wears it in a theatre or opera-house, and seldom in the parlors of a hotel. The etiquette of raising the hat on the staircases and in the halls of a hotel as gentlemen pass ladies is much commended. In Europe each man raises his hat as he passes a bier, or if a hearse carrying a dead body passes him. In this country men simply raise their hats as a funeralcortgepasses into a church, or at the grave. If a gentleman, particularly an elderly one, takes off his hat and stands uncovered in a draughty place, as thefoyerof an opera-house, while talking to ladies, it is proper for one of them to say, "Pray resume your hat "—a delicate attention deeply prized by a respectful man, who, perhaps, would not otherwise cover his head.
Again, our young lady friends ask us many questions on the subject ofpropriety, showing how anxious they are to do right, but also proving how far they are from apprehending what in Old-World customs has been always considered propriety. In our new country the relations of men and women are necessarily simple. The whole business of etiquette is, of course, reduced to each one's sense of propriety, and the standard must be changed as the circumstances demand. As, for instance, a lady writes to know if she should thank a gentleman for paying for her on an excursion. Now this involves a long answer. In Europe no young lady could accept an invitation to go as the guest of a young gentleman on "an excursion," and allow him to pay for her, without losing much reputation. She would not in either England or France be received in society again. She should be invited by the gentleman through her father or mother, and one or both should accompany an her. Even then it is not customary for gentlemen to invite ladies to go on an excursion. He could invite the lady's mother to chaperon a theatre party which he had paid for.
Another young lady asks if she could with propriety buy the tickets and take a young gentleman to the theatre. Of course she could, if her mother or chaperon would go with her; but even then the mother or chaperon should write the note of invitation.
But in our free country it is, we hear, particularly in the West, allowable for a young lady and gentleman to go off on, "an excursion" together, the gentleman paying all the expenses. If that is allowed, then, of course—to answer our correspondent's question she should thank him. But if we were to answer the young lady's later question, "Would this be considered etiquette?" we should say, decidedly, No.
Another question which we are perpetually asked is this: How to allow a gentleman a proper degree of friendly intimacy without allowing him to think himself too much of a favorite. Here we cannot bring in either etiquette or custom to decide. One very general law would be not to accept too many attentions, to show a certain reserve in dancing with him or driving with him. It is always proper for a gentleman to take a young lady out to drive in his dog-cart with his servant behind, if her parents approve; but if it is done very often, of course it looks conspicuous, and the lady runs the risk of being considered engaged. And she knows, of course, whether her looks and words give him reason to think that he is a favorite. She must decide all that herself.
Another writes to ask us if she should take a gentleman's hat and coat when he calls. Never. Let him take care of those. Christianity and chivalry, modern and ancient custom, make a man the servant of women. The old form of salutation used by Sir Walter Raleigh and other courtiers was always, "Your servant, madam," and it is the prettiest and most admirable way for a man to address a woman in any language.
Another asks if she should introduce a gentleman who calls to her mother. This, we should say, would answer itself did not the question re-appear. Of course she should; and her mother should always sit with her when she is receiving a call from a gentleman.
But if in our lesser fashionable circles the restrictions of etiquette are relaxed, let a young lady always remember these general principles, that men will like and respect her far better if she is extremely particular about allowing them to pay for her, if she refuses two invitations out of three, if she is dignified and reserved rather than if she is the reverse.
At Newport it is now the fashion for young ladies to drive young men out in their pony-phaetons with a groom behind, or even without a groom; but a gentleman never takes out a lady in his own carriage without a servant.
Gentlemen and ladies walk together in the daytime unattended, but if they ride on horseback a groom is always in attendance on the lady. In rural neighborhoods where there are no grooms, and where a young lady and gentleman go off for a drive unattended, they have thrown Old-World etiquette out of the window, and must make a new etiquette of their own. Propriety, mutual respect, and American chivalry have done for women what all the surveillance of Spanish duennas and of French etiquette has done for the young girl of Europe. If a woman is a worker, an artist, a student, or an author, she can walk the Quartier Latin of Paris unharmed.
But she has in work an armor of proof. This is not etiquette when she comes into the world of fashion. She must observe etiquette, as she would do the laws of Prussia or of England, if she stands on foreign shores.
Perhaps we can illustrate this. Given a pretty young girl who shall arrive on the steamerGermaniaafter being several years at school in Paris, another who comes in by rail from Kansas, another from some quiet, remote part of Georgia, and leave them all at the New York Hotel for a winter. Let us imagine them all introduced at a New York ball to three gentlemen, who shall call on them the next day. If the girl educated in Paris, sitting by her mamma, hears the others talk to the young men she will be shocked. The girls who have been brought up far from the centres of etiquette seem to her to have no modesty, no propriety. They accept invitations from the young men to go to the theatre alone, to take drives, and perhaps, as we have said, to "go on an excursion."
To the French girl this seems to be a violation of propriety; but later on she accepts an invitation to go out on a coach, with perhaps ten or twelve others, and with a very young chaperon. The party does not return until twelve at night, and as they walk through the corridors to a late supper the young Western girl meets them, and sees that the young men are already the worse for wine: she is apt to say, "What a rowdy crowd!" and to think that, after all, etiquette permits its own sins, in which she is right.
In a general statement it may be as well to say that a severe etiquette would prevent a young lady from receiving gifts from a young man, exceptbonbonnieresand bouquets. It is not considered proper for him to offer her clothing of any sort—as gowns, bonnets, shawls, or shoes—even if he is engaged to her. She may use her discretion about accepting a camel's-hair shawl from a man old enough to be her father, but she should never receive jewellery from any one but a relative or herfiancjust before marriage. The reason for this is obvious. It has been abused—the privilege which all men desire, that of decking women with finery.
A young lady should not write letters to young men, or send them presents, or take the initiative in any way. A friendly correspondence is very proper if the mother approves, but even this has its dangers. Let a young lady always remember that she is to the young man an angel to reverence until she lessens the distance between them and extinguishes respect.
Young women often write to us as to whether it is proper for them to write letters of condolence or congratulation to ladies older than themselves. We should say, Yes. The respect of young girls is always felt gratefully by older ladies. The manners of the present are vastly to be objected to on account of a lack of respect. The rather bitter Mr. Carlyle wrote satirically of the manners of young ladies. He even had his fling at their laugh: "Few are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter from the throat outward, or at best produce some whiffling husky cachinnations as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such comes good." A young lady must not speak too loud or be too boisterous; she must even tone down her wit, lest she be misunderstood. But she need not be dull, or grumpy, or ill-tempered, or careless of her manners, particularly to her mother's old friends. She must not talk slang, or be in any way masculine; if she is, she loses the battle. A young lady is sometimes called upon to be a hostess if her mother is dead. Here her liberty becomes greater, but she should always have an aunt or some elderly friend by her side to play chaperon.
A young lady may do any manual labor without losing caste. She may be a good cook, a fine laundress, a carver of wood, a painter, a sculptor, an embroideress, a writer, a physician, and she will be eligible, if her manners are good, to the best society anywhere. But if she outrage the laws of good-breeding in the place where she is, she cannot expect to take her place in society. Should she be seen at Newport driving two gentlemen in her pony-phaeton, or should she and another young woman take a gentleman between them and drive down Bellevue Avenue, she would be tabooed. It would not be a wicked act, but it would not look well; it would not beconvenable. If she dresses "loudly," with peculiar hats and a suspicious complexion, she must take the consequences. She must be careful (if she is unknown) not to attempt to copy the follies of well-known fashionable women. What will be forgiven to Mrs. Well Known Uptown will never be forgiven to Miss Kansas. Society in this respect is very unjust—the world is always unjust—but that is a part of the truth of etiquette which is to be remembered; it is founded on the accidental conditions of society, having for its background, however, the eternal principles of kindness, politeness, and the greatest good of society.
A young lady who is very prominent in society should not make herself too common; she should not appear in too many charades, private theatricals, tableaux, etc. She should think of the "violet by the mossy stone." She must, also, at a watering-place remember that every act of hers is being criticised by a set of lookers-on who are not all friendly, and she must, ere she allow herself to be too much of a belle, remember to silence envious tongues.
In no respect can American and English etiquette be contrasted more fully than in the matter of the every-day dinner, which in America finds a lady in a plain silk dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, but at which the English lady always appears in a semi-grand toilette, with open Pompadour corsage and elbow sleeves, if not in low-necked, full-dress attire; while her daughters are uniformly sleeveless, and generally in white dresses, often low-necked in depth of winter. At dinner all the men are in evening dress, even if there is no one present at the time but the family.
The dinner is not so good as the ordinary American dinner, except in the matter of fish, which is universally very fine. The vegetables are few and poor, and the "sweets," as they call dessert, are very bad. A gooseberry tart is all that is offered to one at an ordinary dinner, although fine strawberries and a pine are often brought in afterwards. The dinner is always served with much state, and afterwards the ladies all combine to amuse the guests by their talents. There is no false shame in England about singing and playing the piano. Even poor performers do their best, and contribute very much to the pleasure of the company. At the table people do not talk much, nor do they gesticulate as Americans do. They eat very quietly, and speak in low tones. No matters of family history or religion or political differences are discussed before the servants. Talking with the mouth full is considered an unpardonable vulgarity. All small preferences for any particular dish are kept in the background. No hostess ever apologizes, or appears to hear or see anything disagreeable. If theomelette souffleis a failure, she does not observe it; the servant offers and withdraws it, nor is any one disturbed thereby. As soon as one is helped he must begin to eat, not waiting for any one else. If the viand is too hot or too cold, or is not what the visitor likes, he pretends to eat it, playing with knife and fork.
No guest ever passes a plate or helps to anything; the servant does all that. Soup is taken from the side of the spoon noiselessly. Soup and fish are not partaken of a second time. If there is a joint, and the master carves, it is proper, however, to ask for a second cut. Bread is passed by the servants, and must be broken, not cut, afterwards. It is consideredgaucheto be undecided as to whether you will take clear soup or thick soup; decide quickly. In refusing wine, simply say, "Thanks;" the servant knows then that you do not take any.
The servants retire after handing the dessert, and a few minutes' free conversation is allowed. Then the lady of the house gives the signal for rising. Toasts and taking wine with people are entirely out of fashion; nor do the gentlemen remain long in the dining-room.
At the English dinner-table, from the plainest to the highest, there is etiquette, manner, fine service, and everything that Englishmen enjoy. The wit, the courtier, the beauty, and the poet aim at appearing well at dinner. The pleasures of the table, says Savarin, bring neither enchantment, ecstasy, nor transports, but they gain in duration what they lose in intensity; they incline us favorably towards all other pleasures—at least help to console us for the loss of them.
At very few houses, even that of a duke, does one see so elegant a table and such a profusion of flowers as at every millionaire's table in New York; but one does see superb old family silver and the most beautiful table-linen even at a very plain abode. The table is almost uniformly lighted with wax candles. Hot coffee is served immediately after dinner in the drawing-room. Plum-pudding, a sweet omelet, or a very rich plum-tart is often served in the middle of dinner, before the game. The salad always comes last, with the cheese. This is utterly unlike our American etiquette.
Tea is served in English country-houses four or five times a day. It is always brought to your bedside before rising; it is poured at breakfast and at lunch; it is a necessary of life at five o'clock; it is drunk just before going to bed. Probably the cold, damp climate has much to do with this; and the tea is never very strong, but is excellent, being always freshly drawn, not steeped, and is most refreshing.
Servants make the round of the table in pairs, offering the condiments, the sauces, the vegetables, and the wines. The common- sense of the English nation breaks out in their dinners. Nothing is offered out of season. To make too great a display of wealth is consideredbourgeoisand vulgar to a degree. A choice but not oversumptuous dinner meets you in the best houses. But to sit down to the plainest dinners, as we do,in plain clothes, would never be permitted. Even ladies in deep mourning are expected to make some slight change at dinner.
Iced drinks are never offered in England, nor in truth are they needed.