Some of these rules sound farfetched, indeed, though Ms. Post summarised it best: "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use."
They are now, but most of these came from the Victorian era. Many were based on traditions that had been around for many hundreds of years, and others the Victorians made up because... well, that didn’t have the interwebs... tv... etc etc. gotta have something to keep you occupied. Agreed though - I think as long as you are polite and considerate to other people you’ve pretty much cracked it. Who cares what fork you use?
Your mother sounds like she was an extraordinary woman, so much purpose, self disciplined, and dignity. How wonderful that she had the privilege of attending an event at the White House with your brother, and would have had no nerves about etiquette! How proud she must have been to have raised such high achieving sons.
I've been working on a novel in which Emily Post is a character, so I've done a good bit of research on her life and her work. She started off as a fiction writer! Her husband was a cad. There's a great biography of her by Laura Claridge. Anyway, I think it's important to note that yes, the 1922 edition of Etiquette is very Downtown Abbey-ish, but as the years passed and American society got less stuffy, new editions of Etiquette really loosened up. Post was especially keen to help the average woman host successful dinner parties without the aid of cooks and wait staff. Ha. In another 100 years, I think Marie Kondo's books will mystify people just as much as Post's do today.
Since Ted Gioia mentioned Leviticus, I'll just throw in that Judaism has a formalized manner on how one behaves following the death of a family member, plus some guidance for members of the community who wish to offer support to the bereaved. I'm not religious in the slightest, but I've found it helpful. Friends bring food to the home, close family members are not expected to have to bother with the stress of cooking and cleaning and shopping, let alone feeding others who are visiting to express their condolences. The close family actually isn't supposed to leave the home at all for seven days, called the shiva period. What to say? Stock phrases which might seem strange but are actually very helpful. You don't start speaking otherwise until the mourners invite you to do so, like starting to tell them stories about experiences you had with the deceased. Sometimes you don't say anything at all to the mourners, they're not ready to speak and you're just there to support them in their grief. Structure and formality can be very helpful during these acute times in our lives.
Nothing wrong with vallay btw. It's the verb form that's pronounced more like it's spelled.
I wish I had a box at the opera. And a top hat and white gloves. The one time I went, La Traviata at the Met, a friend and I were celebrating our upcoming graduation from med school. We were rather high on life, whisky from a sushi restaurant near Lincoln Center, and more than a little cocaine. Had a grand old time. Saw my cousin's name on the marquee, violin soloist with the NY Phil. And whaddya know, saw him walk by carrying his Stradivarius minutes later. Chatted with him for a couple minutes in Hebrew, and he had the perfect parting sentence. "I'd love to keep talking but as you can see I've got a concerto to perform. Enjoy the opera!"
Ted Gioia amazes me with his breadth, always expanding the topics he expounds on.
Roman Catholic here. One of my favorite writers, Fr. Ron Rolheiser, wrote that as a young priest he was assigned hospital chaplain duty. A Catholic family asked for a priest as they'd received terrible news about their newborn. The young priest joined them in the waiting room, and being young and inexperienced he had no idea what to say, what words might offer comfort at such a painful time. Hour after hour the three of them sat, while the doctors did what they could. When the doctor finally came in with the sad news that their baby was gone, the priest still said nothing - but stood to the side, in case the young parents needed anything. After they'd finally gone home to mourn, he drove himself back to the rectory and confided to his superior that he'd failed this young family. A few months later he saw the couple at Mass, and the wife came over, took his hand, and through tears thanked him - saying, "Your silent presence was such a gift during our sorrow - thank you so much for just being there and staying with us."
Thanks for this. I was going to say something about Judaism and its focus on what one does, not what is in one's heart, one's intentions or things intrinsic to one's self. There are things that one is supposed to do in life and in death. There's a reason one of the great texts is called The Guide for the Perplexed. After all, we are all perplexed in some way.
P.S. I'll always remember that shoveling dirt into a grave is considered a mitzvah because it is an act of kindness that can never be repaid.
We seem to have lost the rules of common courtesy (etiquette) in our daily lives. We might not go to the opera, but civility and courtesy are still solid guides to get us through the day.
I just want people to learn how to walk down the street in a straight line and on the correct side of the path. Yes, I'm setting the bar really low. I'm sure humans used to know how to walk down a street, but those days are long gone.
The Virginia miner and banjo player Dock Boggs studied etiquette books in the late 1920s. The edition of Emily Post he would have read is the one you’re writing about. People asked him why a man like him was reading books about ‘how to act at parties.’ He said he didn’t want anyone to think less of him if should be invited to the White House.
My mom was a rules absolutist, and she once hauled out Emily Post at the dinner table to show us how you select a pat of butter from the plate. She clearly — and searingly — enunciated a "single" pat of butter. "Don't be rude. Take a single pat at each passing."
An important caveat: years later, she approved my citation of Lady X, who was (apocryphally?) confronted with a n00b who picked up the wrong fork. The guests were horrified, but then the lady picked up the same fork as he — and then everyone knew it was cool. That is the absolute quintessence of good manners: putting others at ease.
This reminds me of what happened between my mother and my aunt after my sociopathic first cousin succeeded in his fortune hunting. My aunt's being the new mother - in - law of a rich man's daughter moved her to take on the kind of airs which arrivistes confuse with manners. By that time, my mother's hearing was failing. But my aunt, whose natural speaking voice was pretty thin, anyway, began to whisper everything she said.
Eventually, my mother had had enough of this, and yelled at her, "Speak up, Gerry! I can't hear you!" This prompted my aunt to reply with relish, "But Margaret! I'm a laa-dee!"
She meant it, too. She was too thick to be satirical.
When my mother discussed this with me, we agreed that a genuine "laa-dee," if she had to do so to make herself understood to a nearly deaf interlocutor, wouldn't hesitate to scream into the person's ear.
Great stuff! I commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force in 1996 and we got a lot of etiquette drummed in to us in officer training. It was only two years previously, in 1994, that the Women’s RAF finally merged in to the regular RAF. I’m not kidding. Etiquette covered everything - what uniform when, attending formal dining nights, what cutlery when, don’t forget to check the seating plan to identify the lady sitting to your left at the meal (not necessarily your significant other!), which hand you pass the port decanter with (NEVER your left), always pour for the lady (they mustn’t touch it), and much more besides. We thought it was ridiculous at the time, but it becomes part of the organisational culture that binds you. What was initially intimidating becomes a badge of honour, and a lot of fond, and very drunken, memories. Btw, for the best info on what a valet is/does see PG Wodehouse and check out Bertie Wooster’s gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves... the G’s G that Meadowes could never be. Highly recommend the books or the the TV adaptation starting Steven Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie (House MD) as Bertie. Toodle pip!
I did two years of USAF ROTC in college (civilian officer training on civilian college campuses) and we learned a LOT about etiquette! When to salute, when to wear a hat ("cover"), how to address officers, senior enlisted, etc. Twice a year we had a formal dinner, and then each spring we had an interservice Military Ball on campus, with the Navy and Army ROTC detachments. Wonderful memories ... and, yes, it became part of the ties that bind.
I had to attend a lot of those @#** military balls in my late teens. Daughter of an officer, I not only had no choice, but there was even etiquette about dresses to wear (and not repeating them) depending on the “etiquette” established by the CO’s wife. In my time we had to have long gloves, too. (This “tomboy” was not amused, especially about the “war paint” my Mother put on my face. She only got away with that, however, when Dad had sea duty. I had to attend when he had Shore duty, but I did not have to wear make up.)
The Army ROTC etiquette manual in the early 1970s had the best cover. Like all of the books in the series, there was a soldier in combat uniform complete with helmet, rifle and a grenade on his belt. I wasn't ROTC, so I don't know what kind of parties they went to.
I immediately thought of Wodehouse (books). Thanks for reminding me about the adaptations. I don’t know about the military now, but in my Father’s US Navy career (he retired in the early 80’s) the uniform/officer/non-com/enlisted etiquette was ironclad. In fact, it was those white uniforms that made me “woke” in 1960. (That is another story.) My Nephew tells me Navy men still don’t like the white uniforms.
Here's to Moms... mine passed a year ago. Sounds similar to yours. Mine wanted me to do a couple of things; to go to college, and to play a musical instrument. Both were life changing experiences.
This post would pass even the most rigorous of etiquette rules. It made me think of my first-generation Italian mother--insecure and timid all her life from lack of education and understanding of these very things. As I've grown older, I understand why she pushed me the way she did. Thank you for this bittersweet bit of loveliness to start the day.
"Etiquette fills the gap for us when we are at a loss, when our familiar day-to-day ways offer no help. We need that, especially in our most vulnerable moments. The ‘rules of the game’ are like the steps of a ritual. And the older I get, the more I grasp how significant our rituals are. And how much we lose when they disappear."
To take Didion's conclusion further: where has modern scientific knowledge been presaged by cultural knowledge? Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" is a good study of this sort. Are there others? We always seem focused on what the past got wrong, but it would be worthwhile to study the times when culture found useful solutions to problems we didn't yet understand scientifically. Perhaps culture works as a kind of slow, inexact science, itself.
“Excepting a religious ceremonial, there is no occasion where greater dignity of manner is required of ladies and gentlemen both, than in occupying a box at the opera. For a gentleman especially, no other etiquette is so exacting.”
Ms. Post obviously knew nothing of behavior in earlier centuries at the opera!
"Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it, and something warm to start digestion and stimulate impaired circulation is what they most need."
Apparently Ms. Post had never been to an Irish wake . . .
This is such a great point and one of the reasons I’m now drawn to opera. Much of the deep snobbishness of opera is handed down from people who were learning of opera when it was already over 300 years old. We keep losing perspective in opera that what we are really looking at are living pieces of history in the “standard rep”. The people of Emily Post’s time learned opera as kids learn religion in Sunday school. It was handed to them from on high. They’re practically no better of a cargo cult than us today trying to understand these stories.
And the same can be said for ballet in the day. Stravinsky's premiere of The Rite of Spring drew catcalls and precipitated fist fights in the boxes! The din was so great that Nijinsky was said to have shouted out the numbers marking ballet movements from his position in the wings!
In the Baroque era, opera attendees routinely partied loudly and waited for their favorite arias, shouting "boo" or "brave" as their disposition indicated.
Reminds me of a business trip I took to Vienna in the late 90s. I was uncommitted on the day I landed so after dropping a bag at the hotel I wandered the city on foot. By early evening I found myself at the Opera House and, on a whim, thought I'd inquire about available seats for the evening performance. With a "nice try" chuckle, the cashier pointed out that it was opening night, Figaro began in a half hour, and of course there were no seats. But as I turned away, his phone rang with a late cancellation, and I was soon ushered to what can only be described as the Emperor's Box. As I took the one remaining seat wearing the jeans and T shirt I had flown in on, I noted the gentlemen were in white tie and the ladies in the equivalent. The performance was thrilling, but perhaps not thrilling enough. Jet lag caught up with me and I dozed through Acts III and IV. Perhaps I snored. In short, it is likely I violated every one of Ms. Post's rules for attendance at the opera. I hope the experience was more memorable to me than to my boxmates-for-the-evening.
I have my mother’s 1942 edition of Funk and Wagnalls Emily Post. I dove into it after college in 1974. Rather than being an elitist, affected book on snobbery, it explicitly states in chapter one that its purpose is to arm the reader so they might navigate social situations in a more relaxed and confident manner. It is not to be used as a cudgel to correct anyones behavior, rather, it is used as an aid and comfort for social interaction that can be all too stressful. I love this book as dated as it is. We need more of its inherent civility and less of present day so called edgey behavior.
Some of these rules sound farfetched, indeed, though Ms. Post summarised it best: "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use."
They are now, but most of these came from the Victorian era. Many were based on traditions that had been around for many hundreds of years, and others the Victorians made up because... well, that didn’t have the interwebs... tv... etc etc. gotta have something to keep you occupied. Agreed though - I think as long as you are polite and considerate to other people you’ve pretty much cracked it. Who cares what fork you use?
Your mother sounds like she was an extraordinary woman, so much purpose, self disciplined, and dignity. How wonderful that she had the privilege of attending an event at the White House with your brother, and would have had no nerves about etiquette! How proud she must have been to have raised such high achieving sons.
Ditto multiplied.
I've been working on a novel in which Emily Post is a character, so I've done a good bit of research on her life and her work. She started off as a fiction writer! Her husband was a cad. There's a great biography of her by Laura Claridge. Anyway, I think it's important to note that yes, the 1922 edition of Etiquette is very Downtown Abbey-ish, but as the years passed and American society got less stuffy, new editions of Etiquette really loosened up. Post was especially keen to help the average woman host successful dinner parties without the aid of cooks and wait staff. Ha. In another 100 years, I think Marie Kondo's books will mystify people just as much as Post's do today.
Thanks. I scooted out to the library to see what edition my Grandmother gave me for my wedding. 12th. 1969. Memories.
Since Ted Gioia mentioned Leviticus, I'll just throw in that Judaism has a formalized manner on how one behaves following the death of a family member, plus some guidance for members of the community who wish to offer support to the bereaved. I'm not religious in the slightest, but I've found it helpful. Friends bring food to the home, close family members are not expected to have to bother with the stress of cooking and cleaning and shopping, let alone feeding others who are visiting to express their condolences. The close family actually isn't supposed to leave the home at all for seven days, called the shiva period. What to say? Stock phrases which might seem strange but are actually very helpful. You don't start speaking otherwise until the mourners invite you to do so, like starting to tell them stories about experiences you had with the deceased. Sometimes you don't say anything at all to the mourners, they're not ready to speak and you're just there to support them in their grief. Structure and formality can be very helpful during these acute times in our lives.
Nothing wrong with vallay btw. It's the verb form that's pronounced more like it's spelled.
I wish I had a box at the opera. And a top hat and white gloves. The one time I went, La Traviata at the Met, a friend and I were celebrating our upcoming graduation from med school. We were rather high on life, whisky from a sushi restaurant near Lincoln Center, and more than a little cocaine. Had a grand old time. Saw my cousin's name on the marquee, violin soloist with the NY Phil. And whaddya know, saw him walk by carrying his Stradivarius minutes later. Chatted with him for a couple minutes in Hebrew, and he had the perfect parting sentence. "I'd love to keep talking but as you can see I've got a concerto to perform. Enjoy the opera!"
Ted Gioia amazes me with his breadth, always expanding the topics he expounds on.
Roman Catholic here. One of my favorite writers, Fr. Ron Rolheiser, wrote that as a young priest he was assigned hospital chaplain duty. A Catholic family asked for a priest as they'd received terrible news about their newborn. The young priest joined them in the waiting room, and being young and inexperienced he had no idea what to say, what words might offer comfort at such a painful time. Hour after hour the three of them sat, while the doctors did what they could. When the doctor finally came in with the sad news that their baby was gone, the priest still said nothing - but stood to the side, in case the young parents needed anything. After they'd finally gone home to mourn, he drove himself back to the rectory and confided to his superior that he'd failed this young family. A few months later he saw the couple at Mass, and the wife came over, took his hand, and through tears thanked him - saying, "Your silent presence was such a gift during our sorrow - thank you so much for just being there and staying with us."
Sometimes, we don't need to say anything.
Thanks for this. I was going to say something about Judaism and its focus on what one does, not what is in one's heart, one's intentions or things intrinsic to one's self. There are things that one is supposed to do in life and in death. There's a reason one of the great texts is called The Guide for the Perplexed. After all, we are all perplexed in some way.
P.S. I'll always remember that shoveling dirt into a grave is considered a mitzvah because it is an act of kindness that can never be repaid.
We seem to have lost the rules of common courtesy (etiquette) in our daily lives. We might not go to the opera, but civility and courtesy are still solid guides to get us through the day.
I just want people to learn how to walk down the street in a straight line and on the correct side of the path. Yes, I'm setting the bar really low. I'm sure humans used to know how to walk down a street, but those days are long gone.
We could ALL use more of this while driving.
The Virginia miner and banjo player Dock Boggs studied etiquette books in the late 1920s. The edition of Emily Post he would have read is the one you’re writing about. People asked him why a man like him was reading books about ‘how to act at parties.’ He said he didn’t want anyone to think less of him if should be invited to the White House.
Greil Marcus
Damn, you mean I’m not the first one to worry about that!
It's something we should all consider -- or perhaps we win the Nobel Prize, and we have to meet the King of Sweden.
My mom was a rules absolutist, and she once hauled out Emily Post at the dinner table to show us how you select a pat of butter from the plate. She clearly — and searingly — enunciated a "single" pat of butter. "Don't be rude. Take a single pat at each passing."
An important caveat: years later, she approved my citation of Lady X, who was (apocryphally?) confronted with a n00b who picked up the wrong fork. The guests were horrified, but then the lady picked up the same fork as he — and then everyone knew it was cool. That is the absolute quintessence of good manners: putting others at ease.
This reminds me of what happened between my mother and my aunt after my sociopathic first cousin succeeded in his fortune hunting. My aunt's being the new mother - in - law of a rich man's daughter moved her to take on the kind of airs which arrivistes confuse with manners. By that time, my mother's hearing was failing. But my aunt, whose natural speaking voice was pretty thin, anyway, began to whisper everything she said.
Eventually, my mother had had enough of this, and yelled at her, "Speak up, Gerry! I can't hear you!" This prompted my aunt to reply with relish, "But Margaret! I'm a laa-dee!"
She meant it, too. She was too thick to be satirical.
When my mother discussed this with me, we agreed that a genuine "laa-dee," if she had to do so to make herself understood to a nearly deaf interlocutor, wouldn't hesitate to scream into the person's ear.
Great stuff! I commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force in 1996 and we got a lot of etiquette drummed in to us in officer training. It was only two years previously, in 1994, that the Women’s RAF finally merged in to the regular RAF. I’m not kidding. Etiquette covered everything - what uniform when, attending formal dining nights, what cutlery when, don’t forget to check the seating plan to identify the lady sitting to your left at the meal (not necessarily your significant other!), which hand you pass the port decanter with (NEVER your left), always pour for the lady (they mustn’t touch it), and much more besides. We thought it was ridiculous at the time, but it becomes part of the organisational culture that binds you. What was initially intimidating becomes a badge of honour, and a lot of fond, and very drunken, memories. Btw, for the best info on what a valet is/does see PG Wodehouse and check out Bertie Wooster’s gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves... the G’s G that Meadowes could never be. Highly recommend the books or the the TV adaptation starting Steven Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie (House MD) as Bertie. Toodle pip!
I did two years of USAF ROTC in college (civilian officer training on civilian college campuses) and we learned a LOT about etiquette! When to salute, when to wear a hat ("cover"), how to address officers, senior enlisted, etc. Twice a year we had a formal dinner, and then each spring we had an interservice Military Ball on campus, with the Navy and Army ROTC detachments. Wonderful memories ... and, yes, it became part of the ties that bind.
I had to attend a lot of those @#** military balls in my late teens. Daughter of an officer, I not only had no choice, but there was even etiquette about dresses to wear (and not repeating them) depending on the “etiquette” established by the CO’s wife. In my time we had to have long gloves, too. (This “tomboy” was not amused, especially about the “war paint” my Mother put on my face. She only got away with that, however, when Dad had sea duty. I had to attend when he had Shore duty, but I did not have to wear make up.)
The Army ROTC etiquette manual in the early 1970s had the best cover. Like all of the books in the series, there was a soldier in combat uniform complete with helmet, rifle and a grenade on his belt. I wasn't ROTC, so I don't know what kind of parties they went to.
I've been to parties where the mere presence (not the use) of a grenade might have been handy.
The series with Fry and Laurie is almost too good to be true.
I immediately thought of Wodehouse (books). Thanks for reminding me about the adaptations. I don’t know about the military now, but in my Father’s US Navy career (he retired in the early 80’s) the uniform/officer/non-com/enlisted etiquette was ironclad. In fact, it was those white uniforms that made me “woke” in 1960. (That is another story.) My Nephew tells me Navy men still don’t like the white uniforms.
Here's to Moms... mine passed a year ago. Sounds similar to yours. Mine wanted me to do a couple of things; to go to college, and to play a musical instrument. Both were life changing experiences.
We are blessed.
My mother wanted me to play a musical instrument, instead, I chose the drums.
I wanted to play drums... ended up on guitar... which has been a lifelong pleasure.
This post would pass even the most rigorous of etiquette rules. It made me think of my first-generation Italian mother--insecure and timid all her life from lack of education and understanding of these very things. As I've grown older, I understand why she pushed me the way she did. Thank you for this bittersweet bit of loveliness to start the day.
"Etiquette fills the gap for us when we are at a loss, when our familiar day-to-day ways offer no help. We need that, especially in our most vulnerable moments. The ‘rules of the game’ are like the steps of a ritual. And the older I get, the more I grasp how significant our rituals are. And how much we lose when they disappear."
Such beautiful and true sentiments.
To take Didion's conclusion further: where has modern scientific knowledge been presaged by cultural knowledge? Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" is a good study of this sort. Are there others? We always seem focused on what the past got wrong, but it would be worthwhile to study the times when culture found useful solutions to problems we didn't yet understand scientifically. Perhaps culture works as a kind of slow, inexact science, itself.
“Excepting a religious ceremonial, there is no occasion where greater dignity of manner is required of ladies and gentlemen both, than in occupying a box at the opera. For a gentleman especially, no other etiquette is so exacting.”
Ms. Post obviously knew nothing of behavior in earlier centuries at the opera!
"Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it, and something warm to start digestion and stimulate impaired circulation is what they most need."
Apparently Ms. Post had never been to an Irish wake . . .
This is such a great point and one of the reasons I’m now drawn to opera. Much of the deep snobbishness of opera is handed down from people who were learning of opera when it was already over 300 years old. We keep losing perspective in opera that what we are really looking at are living pieces of history in the “standard rep”. The people of Emily Post’s time learned opera as kids learn religion in Sunday school. It was handed to them from on high. They’re practically no better of a cargo cult than us today trying to understand these stories.
Exactly right!
And the same can be said for ballet in the day. Stravinsky's premiere of The Rite of Spring drew catcalls and precipitated fist fights in the boxes! The din was so great that Nijinsky was said to have shouted out the numbers marking ballet movements from his position in the wings!
In the Baroque era, opera attendees routinely partied loudly and waited for their favorite arias, shouting "boo" or "brave" as their disposition indicated.
Reminds me of a business trip I took to Vienna in the late 90s. I was uncommitted on the day I landed so after dropping a bag at the hotel I wandered the city on foot. By early evening I found myself at the Opera House and, on a whim, thought I'd inquire about available seats for the evening performance. With a "nice try" chuckle, the cashier pointed out that it was opening night, Figaro began in a half hour, and of course there were no seats. But as I turned away, his phone rang with a late cancellation, and I was soon ushered to what can only be described as the Emperor's Box. As I took the one remaining seat wearing the jeans and T shirt I had flown in on, I noted the gentlemen were in white tie and the ladies in the equivalent. The performance was thrilling, but perhaps not thrilling enough. Jet lag caught up with me and I dozed through Acts III and IV. Perhaps I snored. In short, it is likely I violated every one of Ms. Post's rules for attendance at the opera. I hope the experience was more memorable to me than to my boxmates-for-the-evening.
But you got to see Figaro in Mozart's city!
I have my mother’s 1942 edition of Funk and Wagnalls Emily Post. I dove into it after college in 1974. Rather than being an elitist, affected book on snobbery, it explicitly states in chapter one that its purpose is to arm the reader so they might navigate social situations in a more relaxed and confident manner. It is not to be used as a cudgel to correct anyones behavior, rather, it is used as an aid and comfort for social interaction that can be all too stressful. I love this book as dated as it is. We need more of its inherent civility and less of present day so called edgey behavior.
One of the delights of your writing are the comments that ensue. I guess that is a perk of Substack as well. Thank you for another good one.
This is one of the most beautiful things I've read by you - and your mom sounds like the kind of person it would have been worthwhile to get to know.