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

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 countryhouse 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.

 

CHAPTER LI. LADY AND GENTLEMAN.

 

The number of questions asked by correspondents on the subject of

the proper use of the familiar words lady and woman, 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 it is of

importance to those who speak of her, 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

hopelessly rococo!

 

Nothing, for instance, Can be in worse taste than to say “she is a

beautiful lady,” or “a clever lady.” One should always say

“beautiful woman,” “clever woman.” 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 beautiful

lady,” 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 universal sans-culottism of the French Revolution,

when the queen was called citoyenne. 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 colored lady

as a cook,” remarked a nouveau 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 are gentlemen. 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 wish women would behave like ladies,”

said a man at a matin�e. “Yes,” said his friend, “I wish they

would behave like men.” Just then a sharp feminine elbow was

thrust into his chest. “I wish gentlemen would 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 the girls come in?” “Is Lucy home?” 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