Some rare and slender volumes have made their way into Etiquetteer’s etiquette library. It’s sometimes interesting to browse them for antique advice that remains relevant today — or doesn’t.
For Gracious Greeks, a product of the women’s music fraternity Sigma Alpha Iota*, presented “to its fraternity membership as a guide to gracious living,” provides this nugget of midcentury Perfect Propriety: “Smart travelers do not ‘dress up’ to travel. Dark dresses and suits of material not easily mussed are best.” How definitions change with time! When traveling it was still considered necessary to look respectable and put together. The best traveling clothes were those that would conceal dust and dirt (for instance, from coal-burning locomotives) and keep from wrinkling. This is why tans and grays were considered so appropriate. Think of nowadays! “Not dressing up” means rolling up to the airport in pajamas and sweatsuits and flip flops — not Perfectly Proper.
Tact, by Sir John Lubbock**, opens with this quotation from Jean Paul Richter: “Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.” A booklet for businessmen of the period, it confirms that some advice is timeless as long as it is expressed in the current style. For instance, this could describe what we now call Active Listening: “Little or much may be done to satisfy a complainant. But the main thing is to make him feel that his complaint was listened to with attentive consideration, that an interest was taken in his trouble, and a sincere determination was shown to make matters right.”
Finally, The School of Manners, or Rules for Childrens Behaviours of 1701, reminds us that good table manners are ageless. “Spit not forth anything that is not convenient to be fwallowed, such as the stones of Plums, Cherries, or fuch like; but with thy left hand neatly move them to the fide of thy plate or trencher” and “Look not earneftly at any one that is eating” are as true now as then, though we no longer use trenchers or the long f.
*No publication date is given, but Etiquetteer’s Dear Mother likely picked this up on college. So it can be dated to 1947-51.
**1950.