Perfect Propriety demands responding to crises with Perfect Propriety, which sometimes means improvising. It isn’t easy to know what to do in an emergency. Here are three examples from the last century, two involving First Ladies.
BLATANT FAVORITISM: President and Mrs. Kennedy’s European tour in 1961 included a flawless visit to Paris, and thorny diplomatic challenges with the Soviets they met in Vienna. Jackie Kennedy was then at the height of her adoration by the world public, an adoration which lasted the rest of her life, and beyond. The deafening chants of “JACK-IE! JACK-IE! JACK-IE!” made a luncheon hosted by the daughter of the President of Austria extremely embarrassing; the crowds were ostentatiously overlooking the other guest of honor, Nina Khrushchev, wife of the Premier of the Soviet Union. As Letitia Baldrige tells it in A Lady, First*, Mrs. Kennedy finally got up from the luncheon table and opened one of the windows, allowing the assembly to adore her. She then went back inside and almost literally dragged an unwilling Mrs. Khrushchev onto the balcony with her so that the crowd began chanting “JACK-IE NI-NA! JACK-IE NI-NA!” Deftly achieved!
Betty Ford prays for Rabbi Sage (Gerald R. Ford Library).
MEDICAL EMERGENCIES: Etiquetteer has never forgotten the news coverage of First Lady Betty Ford maintaining control of a 2,500-person gala dinner while the host was having a heart attack right next to her. Dr. Maurice Sage had just introduced Mrs. Ford and returned to his seat by the podium when he collapsed. As a doctor and Secret Service agents turned their attention to Rabbi Sage, Mrs. Ford, “visibly shaken and with her voice trembling,” took to the podium, asked the assembly to rise and bow their heads silently, and improvised a two-minute prayer. This served both to maintain the focus on Rabbi Sage and to keep the asembly calm. Etiquetteer thinks it was downright heroic.
THE COMFORT OF A STRANGER: On a decidedly less global scale, Melville Bell Grosvenor, editor of National Geographic, once demonstrated that it’s more than clothes that make the man, it’s how he wears them. His 1966 obituary in the Geographic included the story of a “shy cub from New England” who was invited for a stay at the Grosvenor’s winter home in Florida. He came down to dinner in a white linen suit - then the vogue - but was horrified to discover that he was the only man present wearing black shoes. Everyone else had on white. “There was nothing he could do in his embarrassment but to try to lose himself among the guests.” Dr. Grosvenor observed this, left his party for a few minutes, and returned wearing a pair of black shoes in solidarity with the “shy cub.” Let others think what they will, that is the true mark of a gentleman.
In the current moment - January, 2021 - none of us know how we will be called upon to respond in an emergency, large or small, diplomatic or domestic, medical or menial. Etiquetteer hopes that we can all do so with the intuition, courage, and deftness required.
*Page 196.