Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗

would amaze a large number of ambitious

young ladies to be told that it was not proper that young men

should call on them and be received by them alone. But the

solution would seem to be that the mother or chaperon should

advance to her proper place in this country, and while taking care

of her daughter, appearing with her in public, and receiving

visits with her, still permit that good-natured and well-intended

social intercourse between young men and women which is so seldom

abused, and which has led to so many happy marriages. It is one of

the points yet debatable how much liberty should be allowed young

ladies. Certainly, however, we do not wish to hold our young girls

up to the scorn and ridicule of the novelist or the foreign critic

by ignoring what has been a recognized tenet of good manners since

society was formed. The fact that the chaperon is a necessary

institution, and that to married ladies and to elderly ladies

should be paid all due respect, is a subject of which we shall

treat later. No young lady who is visiting in a strange city or

country town should ever receive the visits of gentlemen without

asking her hostess and her daughters to come down and be

introduced to them; nor should she ever invite such persons to

call without asking her hostess if it would be agreeable. To

receive an ordinary acquaintance at any hour, even that of the

afternoon reception, without her hostess would be very bad

manners. We fear the practice is too common, however. How much

worse to receive a lover, or a gentleman who may aspire to the

honor of becoming one, at unusual hours, without saying anything

to the lady of the house! Too many young American girls are in the

habit of doing so: making of their friend’s house a convenience by

which an acquaintance with a young man may be carried on—a young

man too, perhaps, who has been forbidden her own home.

 

A bride receives her callers after she has settled down in her

married home just as any lady does. There is no particular

etiquette observed. She sends out cards for two or three reception

days, and her friends and new acquaintances call or send cards on

these days. She must not, however, call on her friends until they

have called upon her.

 

As many of these callers—friends, perhaps, of the bridegroom—are

unknown to the bride, it is well to have a servant announce the

names; and they should also leave their cards in the hall that she

may be able to know where to return the visits.

 

What has so far been said will serve to give a general idea of the

card and its uses, and of the duties which it imposes upon

different members of society. Farther on in this volume we will

take up, in much more particular fashion, the matters only alluded

to in this opening chapter.

 

We may say that cards have changed less in the history of

etiquette and fashion than anything else. They, the shifting

pasteboards, are in style about what they were fifty—nay, a

hundred—years ago.

 

The plain, unglazed card with fine engraved script cannot be

improved upon. The passing fashion for engraved autographs, for

old English, for German text, all these fashions have had but a

brief hour. Nothing is in worse taste than for an American to put

a coat-of-arms on his card. It only serves to make him ridiculous.

 

A lady should send up her card by a servant, but not deliver it to

the lady of the house; a card is yourself, therefore if you meet a

lady, she does not want two of you. If you wish to leave your

address, leave a card on the hall table. One does right in leaving

a card on the hall table at a reception, and one need not call

again. An invitation to one’s house cancels all indebtedness. If a

card is left on a lady’s reception, she should make the next call,

although many busy society women now never make calls, except when

they receive invitations to afternoon teas or receptions.

 

When a gentleman calls on ladies who are at home, if he knows them

well he does not send up a card; the servant announces his name.

If he does not know them well, he does send up a card. One card is

sufficient, but he can inquire for them all. In leaving cards it

is not necessary to leave seven or eight, but it is customary to

leave two—one for the lady of the house, the other for the rest

of the family or the stranger who is within their gates. If a

gentleman wishes particularly to call on any one member, he says

so to the servant, as “Take my card up to Miss Jones,” and he

adds, “I should like to see all the ladies if they are at home.”

The trouble in answering this question is that authorities differ.

We give the latest London and New York fashion, so far as we know,

and also what we believe to be the common-sense view. A gentleman

can ask first for the lady of the house, then for any other member

of the family, but he need never leave more than two cards. He

must in this, as in all etiquette, exercise common-sense. No one

can define all the ten thousand little points.

 

CHAPTER II.

OPTIONAL CIVILITIES.

 

There are many optional civilities in life which add very much to

its charm if observed, but which cannot be called indispensable.

To those which are harmless and graceful we shall give a cursory

glance, and to those which are doubtful and perhaps harmful we

shall also briefly allude, leaving it to the common-sense of the

reader as to whether he will hereafter observe in his own manners

these so-called optional civilities.

 

In France, when a gentleman takes off his hat in a windy street or

in an exposed passage-way, and holds it in his hand while talking

to a lady, she always says, “Couvrez vous” (I beg of you not to

stand uncovered). A kind-hearted woman says this to a boatman, a

coachman, a man of low degree, who always takes off his hat when a

lady speaks to him. Now in our country, unfortunately, the cabmen

have such bad manners that a lady seldom has the opportunity of

this optional civility, for, unlike a similar class in Europe,

those who serve you for your money in America often throw in a

good deal of incivility with the service, and no book of etiquette

is more needed than one which should teach shop-girls and shop-men

the beauty and advantages of a respectful manner. If men who drive

carriages and street cabs would learn the most advantageous way of

making money, they would learn to touch their hats to a lady when

she speaks to them or gives an order. It is always done in the Old

World, and this respectful air adds infinitely to the pleasures of

foreign travel.

 

In all foreign hotels the landlords enforce such respect on the

part of the waiters to the guests of the hotel that if two

complaints are made of incivility, the man or woman complained of

is immediately dismissed. In a livery-stable, if the hired

coachman is complained of for an uncivil answer, or even a silence

which is construed as incivility, he is immediately discharged. On

the lake of Como, if a lady steps down to a wharf to hire a boat,

every boatman takes off his cap until she has finished speaking,

and remains uncovered until she asks him to put on his hat.

 

Now optional civilities, such as saying to one’s inferior, “Do not

stand without your hat,” to one’s equal, “Do not rise, I beg of

you,” “Do not come out in the rain to put me in my carriage,”

naturally occur to the kind-hearted, but they may be cultivated.

It used to be enumerated among the uses of foreign travel that a

man went away a bear and came home a gentleman. It is not natural

to the Anglo-Saxon race to be overpolite. They have no _petits

soins_. A husband in France moves out an easy-chair for his wife,

and sets a footstool for every lady. He hands her the morning

paper, he brings a shawl if there is danger of a draught, he

kisses her hand when he comes in, and he tries to make himself

agreeable to her in the matter of these little optional

civilities. It has the most charming effect upon all domestic

life, and we find a curious allusion to the politeness observed by

French sons towards their mothers and fathers in one of Moliere’s

comedies, where a prodigal son observes to his father, who comes

to denounce him, “Pray, sir, take a chair,” says Prodigal; “you

could scold me so much more at your ease if you were seated.”

 

If this was a piece of optional civility which had in it a bit of

sarcasm, we can readily see that civility lends great strength to

satire, and take a hint from it in our treatment of rude people. A

lady once entering a crowded shop, where the women behind the

counter were singularly inattentive and rude even for America,

remarked to one young woman who was lounging on the counter, and

who did not show any particular desire to serve her,

 

“My dear, you make me a convert to the Saturday-afternoon

early-closing rule, and to the plan for providing seats for

saleswomen, for I see that fatigue has impaired your usefulness to

your employer.”

 

The lounger started to her feet with flashing eyes. “I am as

strong as you are,” said she, very indignantly.

 

“Then save yourself a report at the desk by showing me some lace,”

said the lady, in a soft voice, with a smile.

 

She was served after this with alacrity. In America we are all

workers; we have no privileged class; we are earning money in

various servitudes, called variously law, medicine, divinity,

literature, art, mercantile business, or as clerks, servants,

seamstresses, and nurses, and we owe it to our work to do it not

only honestly but pleasantly. It is absolutely necessary to

success in the last-mentioned profession that a woman have a

pleasant manner, and it is a part of the instruction of the

training-school of nurses, that of civility. It is not every one

who has a fascinating manner. What a great gift of fortune it is!

But it is in every one’s power to try and cultivate a civil

manner.

 

In the matter of “keeping a hotel”—a slang expression which has

become a proverb—how well the women in Europe understand their

business, and how poorly the women in America understand theirs!

In England and all over the Continent the newly arrived stranger

is received by a woman neatly dressed, with pleasant, respectful

manners, who is overflowing with optional civilities. She conducts

the lady to her room, asks if she will have the blinds drawn or

open, if she will have hot water or cold, if she would like a cup

of tea, etc.; sends a neat chambermaid to her to take her orders,

gets her pen and paper for her notes—in fact, treats her as a

lady should treat a guest. Even in very rural districts the

landlady comes out to her own door to meet the stranger, holds her

neat hand to assist her to alight, and performs for her all the

service she can while she is under her roof.

 

In America a lady may alight in what is called a tavern, weary,

travel-stained, and with a headache. She is shown into a

waiting-room where sits, perhaps, an overdressed