Manners and Social Usages
Sherwood, Mrs. John M. E. W.
English
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[frontispiece]THE MODERN DINNER-TABLE.
MANNERS
AND
SOCIAL USAGES
BY
MRS. JOHN SHERWOOD M.E.W.
AUTHOR OF "A TRANSPLANTED ROSE"
"Manners are the shadows of great virtues."--Whateley
"Solid Fashion is funded politeness."--Emerson
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION, REVISED BY THE AUTHOR
JUN 11 1887
PG TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
This etiquette manual was probably originally a series of columns
in a newspaper or a magazine like Harper's, as the chapters on
weddings in the different seasons refer to how the fashions have
changed since the last one--by the original copyright, 1884,
though the book version appeared in 1887. Notable features among
the usual: how to dance the German, or Cotillon; remarks and four
chapters on English, French, or others in contrast to American
customs, making it a guide to European manners; proper behavior
for the single woman past girlhood; appropriate costumes for many
occasions; three chapters on staff and servants.
PREFACE.
There is no country where there are so many people asking what is
"proper to do," or, indeed, where there are so many genuinely
anxious to do the proper thing, as in the vast conglomerate which
we call the United States of America. The newness of our country
is perpetually renewed by the sudden making of fortunes, and by
the absence of a hereditary, reigning set. There is no aristocracy
here which has the right and title to set the fashions.
But a "reigning set," whether it depend upon hereditary right or
adventitious wealth, if it be possessed of a desire to lead and a
disposition to hospitality, becomes for a period the dictator of
fashion to a large number of lookers-on. The travelling world,
living far from great centres, goes to Newport, Saratoga, New
York, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and gazes on what is
called the latest American fashion. This, though exploited by what
we may call for the sake of distinction the "newer set," is
influenced and shaped in some degree by people of native
refinement and taste, and that wide experience which is gained by
travel and association with broad and cultivated minds. They
counteract the tendency to vulgarity, which is the great danger of
a newly launched society, so that our social condition improves,
rather than retrogrades, with every decade.
There may be many social purists who will disagree with us in this
statement. Men and women educated in the creeds of the Old World,
with the good blood of a long ancestry of quiet ladies and
gentlemen, find modern American society, particularly in New York
and at Newport, fast, furious, and vulgar. There are, of course,
excesses committed everywhere in the name of fashion; but we
cannot see that they are peculiar to America. We can only answer
that the creed of fashion is one of perpetual change. There is a
Council of Trent, we may say, every five years, perhaps even every
two years, in our new and changeful country, and we learn that,
follow as we may either the grand old etiquette of England or the
more gay and shifting social code of France, we still must make an
original etiquette of our own. Our political system alone, where
the lowest may rise to the highest preferment, upsets in a measure
all that the Old World insists upon in matters of precedence and
formality. Certain immutable principles remain common to all
elegant people who assume to gather society about them, and who
wish to enter its portals; the absent-minded scholar from his
library should not ignore them, the fresh young farmer from the
countryside feels and recognizes their importance. If we are to
live together in unity we must make society a pleasant thing, we
must obey certain formal rules, and these rules must conform to
the fashion of the period.
And it is in no way derogatory to a new country like our own if on
some minor points of etiquette we presume to differ from the older
world. We must fit our garments to the climate, our manners to our
fortunes and to our daily lives. There are, however, faults and
inelegancies of which foreigners accuse us which we may do well to
consider. One of these is the greater freedom allowed in the
manners of our young women a freedom which, as our New World fills
up with people of foreign birth, cannot but lead to social
disturbances. Other national faults, which English writers and
critics kindly point out, are our bumptiousness, our spread-
eagleism, and our too great familiarity and lack of dignity, etc.
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