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

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 the raison d’�tre for 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 lev�e 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 a real lady. 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!

 

CHAPTER LII. THE MANNERS OF THE PAST.

 

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 the _minuet de la

cour_ was 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 the bourgeois. That world which Moliere

divided in his dramatis personae into 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, the

bel air was taught him as we teach our boys how to dance, even

more thoroughly. The grand seigneur of 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 the grand monarque liked 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 these gens de cour a

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. The bourgeois, 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