Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗
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pretender, Tom Titmouse, talking and laughing and making merry.
There are, however, no ancestral diversities fighting for the
possession of Tom Titmouse. The grandfathers and grandmothers of Tom
Titmouse were not people of strong character; they were a decorous
race on both sides, with no heavy intellectual burdens, good enough
people who wore well. But does our bashful man know this? No. He
simply remembers a passage in the “Odyssey” which Tom Titmouse could
not construe, but which the bashful man read, to the delight of the
tutor:
“O gods! How beloved he is, and how honored by all men to whatsoever
land or city he comes! He brings much booty from Troy, but we,
having accomplished the same journey, are returning home having
empty hands!” And this messenger from Troy is Tom Titmouse!
Not that all poor scholars and inferior men have fine manners, nor
do all good scholars and superior men fail in the drawing-room. No
rule is without an exception. It is, however, a comfort to those who
are awkward and shy to remember that many of the great and good and
superior men who live in history have suffered, even as they suffer,
from the pin-pricks of bashfulness. The first refuge of the
inexperienced, bashful person is often to assume a manner of extreme
hauteur. This is, perhaps, a natural fence—or defence; it is,
indeed, a very convenient armor, and many a woman has fought her
battle behind it through life. No doubt it is the armor of the many
so-called frigid persons, male and female, who must either suffer
the pangs of bashfulness, or affect a coldness which they do not
feel. Some people are naturally encased in a column of ice which
they cannot break, but within is a fountain which would burst out at
the lips in words of kindliness if only the tongue could speak them.
These limitations of nature are very strange; we cannot explain
them. It is only by referring to Grandfather Brown and Grandmother
Williams again that we understand them at all. One person will be
furnished with very large feet and very small hands, with a head
disproportionately large for the body, or one as remarkably small.
Differences of race must account for these eccentricities of nature;
we cannot otherwise explain them, nor the mental antagonisms, But
the awkward and the shy do not always take refuge in a cold manner;
Sometimes they study manner as they would the small-sword exercise,
and exploit it-with equal fervor. Exaggeration of manner is quite as
common a refuge for these unfortunates as the other extreme of
calmness. They render themselves ridiculous by the lowness of their
bows and the vivid picturesqueness of their speech. They, as it
were, burst the bounds of the calyx, and the flower opens too wide.
Symmetry is lost, graceful outline is destroyed. Many a bashful man,
thinking of Tom Titmouse, has become an acrobat in his determination
to be lively and easy. He should remember the juste milieu,
recommended by Shakespeare when he says,
“They are as sick that surfeit with too much. As they that starve
with nothing.”
The happy people who are born unconscious of their bodies, who grow
through life more and more graceful, easy, cordial, and agreeable;
the happy few Who were never bashful, never nervous, never had
clammy hands, they need not read these pages—they are not written
for such blessed eyes. It is for the well-meaning, but shy and
awkward, people that the manners of artificial society are most
useful.
For the benefit of such persons we must “improve a ceremonial nicety
into a substantial duty,” else we shall see a cultivated scholar
confused before a set of giggling girls, and a man who is all
Wisdom, valor and learning, playing the donkey at an evening party.
If he lack the inferior arts of polite behavior, who will take the
trouble to discover a Sir Walter Raleigh behind his cravat?
A man who is constrained, uneasy, and ungraceful, can spoil the
happiness of a dozen people. Therefore he is bound to create an
artificial manner, if a natural one does not come to him,
remembering always that “manners are shadows of virtues.”
The manners of artificial society have this to commend them: they
meditate the greatest good to the greatest number. We do not like
the word “artificial,” or to commend anything which is supposed to
be the antipodes of the word “sincere,” but it is a recipe, a
doctor’s prescription that we are recommending as a cure for a
disease. “Good manners are to special societies what good morals are
to society in general—their cement and their security. True
politeness creates perfect ease and freedom; it and its essence is
to treat others as you would have others treat you.” Therefore, as
you know how embarrassing embarrassment is to everybody else, strive
not to be embarrassed.
CHAPTER L. HOW TO TREAT A GUEST.
No one possessed of his senses would invite a person to his country
house for the purpose of making him unhappy. At least so we should
say at first thought. But it is an obvious fact that very many
guests are invited to the country houses of their friends, and are
made extremely miserable while there. They have to rise at unusual
hours, eat when they are not hungry, drive or walk or play tennis
when they would prefer to do everything else, and they are obliged
to give up those hours which are precious to them for other duties
or pleasures; so that many people, after an experience of visiting,
are apt to say, “No more of the slavery of visiting for me, if you
please!”
Now the English in their vast country houses have reduced the custom
of visiting and receiving their friends to a system. They are said
to be in all respects the best hosts in the world, the masters of
the letting-alone system. A man who owns a splendid place near
London invites a guest for three days or more, and carefully
suggests when he shall come and when he shall go—a very great point
in hospitality. He is invited to come by the three o’clock train on
Monday, and to leave by the four o’clock train on Thursday. That
means that he shall arrive before dinner on Monday, and leave after
luncheon on Thursday. If a guest cannot accede to these hours, he
must write and say so. Once arrived, he rarely meets his host or
hostess until dinner-time. He is conducted to his room, a cup of tea
with some light refreshment is provided, and the well-bred servant
in attendance says at what hour before dinner he will be received in
the drawing-room. It is possible that some member of the family may
be disengaged and may propose a drive before dinner, but this is not
often done; the guest is left to himself or herself until dinner.
General and Mrs. Grant were shown to their rooms at Windsor Castle,
and locked up there, when they visited the Queen, until the steward
came to tell them that dinner would be served in half an hour; they
were then conducted to the grand salon, where the Queen presently
entered. In less stately residences very much the same ceremony is
observed. The hostess, after dinner and before the separation for
the night, tells her guests that horses will be at their disposal
the next morning, and also asks if they would like to play lawn-tennis, if they wish to explore the park, at what hour they will
breakfast, or if they will breakfast in their rooms. “Luncheon is at
one; and she will be happy to see them at that informal meal.”
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
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