Manners and Social Usages, Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood [always you kirsty moseley .txt] 📗
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their power, even insult and ill treat the people who have accepted
their proffered hospitality. This class of hostess is, fortunately,
not common, but it is not unknown.
A hostess should remember that, when she asks people to visit her,
she has two very important duties to perform—one, not to neglect
her guests; the other, not to weary them by too much attention.
Never give a guest the impression that he is “being entertained,”
that he is on your mind; follow the daily life of your household and
of your duties as you desire, taking care that your guest is never
in an unpleasant position or neglected. If you have a tiresome guest
who insists upon following you around and weighing heavily on your
hands, be firm, go to your own room, and lock the door. If you have
a sulky guest who looks bored, throw open the library-door, order
the carriage, and make your own escape. But if you have a very
agreeable guest who shows every desire to please and be pleased,
give that model guest the privilege of choosing her own hours and
her own retirement.
The charm of an American countryhouse is, generally, that it is a
home, and sacred to home duties. A model guest never infringes for
one moment on the rights of the master of the house. She never
spoils his dinner or his drive by being late; she never sends him
back to bring her parasol; she never abuses his friends or the
family dog; she is careful to abstain from disagreeable topics; she
joins his whist-table if she knows how to play; but she ought never
to be obliged to rise an hour earlier than her wont because he
wishes to take an early train for town. These early-morning,
perfunctory breakfasts are not times for conversation, and they ruin
the day for many bad sleepers.
In a country neighborhood a hostess has sometimes to ask her guests
to go to church to hear a stupid preacher, and to go to her country
neighbors, to become acquainted with what may be the slavery of
country parties. The guest should always be allowed to refuse these
hospitalities; and, if he be a tired townsman, he will prefer the
garden, the woodland, the retirement of the country, to any church
or tea-party in the world. He cannot enter into his host’s interests
or his neighbor’s. Leave him to his solitude if in that is his
happiness.
At Newport guest and hostess have often different friends and
different invitations. When this is understood, no trouble ensues if
the host and hostess go out to dinner and leave the guest at home.
It often happens that this is done, and no lady of good-breeding
takes offence. Of course a nice dinner is prepared for her, and she
is often asked to invite a friend to share it.
On the other hand, the guest often has invitations which do not
include the hostess. These should be spoken of in good season, so
that none of the hostess’s plans may be disarranged, that the
carriage may be ordered in time, and the guest sent for at the
proper hour. Well-bred people always accept these contingencies as a
matter of course, and are never disconcerted by them.
There is no office in the world which should be filled with such
punctilious’ devotion, propriety, and self-respect as that of
hostess. If a lady ever allows her guest to feel that she is a cause
of inconvenience, she violates the first rule of hospitality. If she
fail in any way in her obligations as hostess to a guest whom she
has invited, she shows herself to be ill-bred and ignorant of the
first principles of politeness. She might better invite twelve
people to dinner and then ask them to dine on the pavement than
ignore or withdraw from a written and accepted invitation, unless
sickness or death afford the excuse; and yet hostesses have been
known to do this from mere caprice. But they were necessarily ill-bred people.
CHAPTER LI. LADY AND GENTLEMAN.
The number of questions asked by correspondents on the subject of
the proper use of the familiar words lady and woman, and of the
titles of married women, induces the reflection that the “woman”
question is one which rivals in universal interest those of
Nihilism, Irish rebellion, and the future presidency. It is not,
however, of ultimate importance to a woman what she is called, as
arose by any other name would smell as sweet, but it is of
importance to those who speak of her, because by their speech
“shall ye know them,” whether fashionable or unfashionable, whether
old or young, whether welt-bred or ill-bred, whether stylish or
hopelessly rococo!
Nothing, for instance, Can be in worse taste than to say “she is a
beautiful lady,” or “a clever lady.” One should always say
“beautiful woman,” “clever woman.” The would-be genteel make
this mistake constantly, and in the Rosa-Matilda style of novel the
gentleman always kneels to the lady, and the fair ladies are
scattered broadcast through the book, while the fine old Saxon word
“woman” is left out, or not properly used.
Now it would be easy enough to correct this if we could only tell
our correspondents always to use the word “woman.” But unfortunately
we are here constrained to say that would be equally “bad form.” No
gentleman would say, “I am travelling with women.” He would say, “I
am travelling with ladies.” He would not say, “When I want to take
my women to the theatre.” He would say, “When I want to take my
ladies.” He would speak of his daughters as “young ladies,” etc.,
etc. But if he were writing a novel about these same young ladies,
he would avoid the word “lady” as feeble, and in speaking of
emotions, looks, qualities, etc., he would use the word “woman.”
Therefore, as a grand generic distinction, we can say that “woman”
should be used when the realities of life and character are treated
of. “Lady” should be used to express the outside characteristics,
the conditions of cultivated society, and the respectful, distant,
and chivalric etiquette which society claims for women when members
thereof.
Then, our querist may ask, Why is the term, “she is a beautiful
lady,” so hopelessly out of style? Why does it betray that the
speaker has not lived in a fashionable set? Why must we say “nice
woman,” “clever woman,” “beautiful woman,” etc.
The only answer to this is that the latter phraseology is a caprice
of fashion into which plain-spoken people were driven by the
affectations of the shabby-genteel and half-instructed persons who
have ruined two good words for us by misapplication. One is
“genteel,” which means gentle, and the other is “lady,” which means
everything which is refined, cultivated, elegant, and aristocratic.
Then as to the term “woman,” this nomenclature has been much
affected by the universal sans-culottism of the French Revolution,
when the queen was called citoyenne. Much, again, from a different
cause, comes from our own absurd want of self-respect, which has
accrued in this confusion of etiquette in a republic, as for
instance, “I am a lady—as much a lady as anybody—and I want to be
called a lady,” remarked a nurse who came for a situation to the
wife of one of our presidents. “I have just engaged a colored lady
as a cook,” remarked a nouveau riche. No wonder that when the word
came to be thus misapplied the lover of good English undefiled began
to associate the word “lady” with pretension, ignorance, and bad
grammar.
Still, no “real lady” would say to her nurse, “A woman is coming to
stay with me.” To servants the term “lady,” as applied to a coming
guest, is indispensable. So of a gentleman she would say to her
servant, “A gentleman is coming to stay here for a week;” but to her
husband or son she would say, “He is a clever man,” rather than, “He
is a clever gentleman.”
We might almost say that no women talk to men about “gentlemen,” and
no men talk to women about “ladies,” in fashionable society. A woman
in good society speaks of the hunting men, the dancing men, the
talking men. She does not say “gentleman,” unless in some such
connection as this, “No gentleman would do such a thing,” if some
breach of etiquette had occurred. And yet no man would come into a
lady’s drawing-room saying, “Where are the girls?” or “Where are the
women?” He would Say; “Where are the young ladies?”
It therefore requires a fine ear and a fine sense of modern fashion
and of eternal propriety always to choose the right word in the
delicate and almost unsettled estate of these two epithets.
“Ladylike” can never go out of fashion. It is at once a compliment
of the highest order and a suggestion of subtle perfection. The word
“woman” does not reach up to this, because in its broad and strong
etymology it may mean a washer-woman, a fighting woman, a coarse
woman, alas! a drunken woman. If we hear of “a drunken lady,” we see
a downfall, a glimpse of better days; chloral, opium, even cologne,
may have brought her to it. The word still saves her miserable
reputation a little. But the words “a drunken woman” merely suggest
whiskey, degradation, squalor, dirt, and the tenement-house.
It is evident, therefore, that we cannot do without the word “lady.”
It is the outgrowth of years of chivalric devotion, and of that
progress in the history of woman which has ever been raising her
from her low estate. To the Christian religion first does she owe
her rise; to the institution of chivalry, to the growth of
civilization since, has woman owed her continual elevation. She can
never go back to the degradation of those days when, in Greece and
Rome, she was not allowed to eat with her husband and sons. She
waited on them as a servant. Now they in every country serve her, if
they are gentlemen. But, owing to a curious twist in the way of
looking at things, she is now undoubtedly the tyrant, and in
fashionable society she is often imperiously ill-bred, and requires
that her male slaves be in a state of servitude to which the
Egyptian bondage would have been light frivolity.
American women are said to be faulty in manners, particularly in
places of public amusement, in railway travelling, in omnibuses, and
in shops. Men complain very much that the fairer sex are very brutal
on these occasions. “I wish women would behave like ladies,”
said a man at a matin�e. “Yes,” said his friend, “I wish they
would behave like men.” Just then a sharp feminine elbow was
thrust into his chest. “I wish gentlemen would not crowd so,” was
the remark which accompanied the “dig under the fifth rib” from a
person whom no one could call a lady.
In speaking to a servant, either a lady or a gentleman will ever be
patient, courteous, kind, not presuming on his or her power. But
there should always be a certain ceremony observed, and a term of
respect to the person spoken of. Therefore a mistress will not say
“Have the girls come in?” “Is Lucy home?” She will say: “Have
the young ladies come in?” “Is Miss Lucy at home?” This sort of
dignified etiquette has the happiest and the most beneficial result
on the relations of mistress and servant.
In modern literature the terms man and woman have nearly obliterated
the words gentleman and lady, and we can hardly imagine a more
absurd phrase than
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