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."
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 . . .
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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 . . .
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.