Decorum and the French 18th C. Stage

“When a declaration of love was made on the French stage, the actress turned away her head. The lover spoke to the back of her neck. He does so still. No approach to embracing is allowed.” —Above is an image showing 3/4 profiles. This was part of what was part of the strict theatrical conventions of French Neoclassical drama, which governed the stage during the 17th and 18th centuries. It encompassed the Principle of Bienséance (Decorum), "Three-Quarters" profiles, when actresses turned their heads toward the audience so the crowd could see their facial expressions and hear their voices clearly, and more…

French Stage Propriety

The Francais - perhaps the most corrupt theater in Paris, was the one in which traditions of decorum were best preserved. It was among other theaters as Lord Chesterfield would have been at the court of George II. Lord Chesterfield was an homme d'esprit, and never forgot the decorum which he doubtless learned to value in France. Nor did the Francais.

In respect to high decorum, that theater adhered to the traditions of French society prior to Marie Antoinette and the revolution. Everything was done with propriety and order at the Court of Versailles and in the salons of Paris. In the eighteenth century English, Belgian, Austrian fine gentlemen kissed the tips of ladies' fingers. But in France it would have been thought a liberty to do so. When a declaration of love was made on the French stage, the actress turned away her head. The lover spoke to the back of her neck. He does so still. No approach to embracing is allowed.

The most that can be done is, in a transport of admiration, to blow a kiss to the heroine as she makes her exit. At the other theaters there is the côte du jardin on the right-hand side. At the Francais there is the côte de la cour. The court is supposed to be present in the state box, and actors play to it as in the time of Moliere. I dare say the portraits of the ancestors greatly helped to perpetuate the decorous traditions and this particular fiction. No more than in the Letters of Chesterfield were immoralities, consecrated by courtly examples and social usage, thought any harm. But they must be wrapped up and dealt with in an insidious, subtle manner. Paris Correspondence for London Truth, 1900

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and Untrained Servants

The well-trained servant is a perfect treasure, and a very solace in life, if one can afford him or her. The pleasant manner and gentle subdued voice are in strong contrast with the rough, half-defiant demeanor, of the newly-caught, cheap servant, accustomed to hard ways and want of consideration. 

People who are trying hard to get into society a little better than that with which they have had to be content till more favorable circumstances arose, often find a serious obstacle in badly trained servants. They cannot afford, perhaps, to employ domestics who have been accustomed to serve in wealthy or aristocratic families, the demands of such being excessive as to wages while their notions as to the work are of the most meagre kind. 

I remember once calling on a lady who was doing her very best to be “smart,” as she said herself. Two other callers were in the room and our hostess rang the bell and when the maid appeared said, “Tea, please.” Looking round the room, the latter said, “Oh, tea for four” and vanished. Her mistress held up hands and eyes, and said, “She's newly in to-day. Sounds as if she had been waitress in tea-rooms.” And so it did. 

In such simple ways do our servants manage to make us look very small indeed. Their worst side is turned out when they wait at table. However carefully we may train them when only the family is lunching or dining, they are almost sure to get flurried and forget when friends join the party, handing things at the right side instead of at the left, and serving the party in some erratic fashion of their own, instead of straight down one side of the table and then straight down the other.

The well-trained servant is a perfect treasure, and a very solace in life, if one can afford him or her. The pleasant manner and gentle subdued voice are in strong contrast with the rough, half-defiant demeanor, of the newly-caught, cheap servant, accustomed to hard ways and want of consideration. — By Mrs. Humphry, 1900

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

When to Use a Spoon or Fork

“The spoon is the proper medium for conveying many varieties of semi-liquid foods; but methods of preparing certain foods differ according to locality, and to this difference is attributable much of the misunderstanding existing between the use of the fork and spoon.” — You will find many more forks than spoons at place settings. This is because spoons are used for liquid and very soft or semi-liquid foods like sorbets, soups and chili. Forks are used for vegetables, fruits, meats, and nearly everything else at a meal which isn’t a finger food, like breads, etc…  Specialty combination utensils, like many developed in the Glided Age — ice cream forks, pie forks, orange spoons, etc, ... — are rarely seen on today’s tables, which is a shame. The only combination utensils regularly seen today, sadly, are plastic “sporks.”

No more nonsensical statement could be made than that everything eatable should be carried to the lips with a fork. The spoon is the proper medium for conveying many varieties of semi-liquid foods; but methods of preparing certain foods differ according to locality, and to this difference is attributable much of the misunderstanding existing between the use of the fork and spoon. 

Tomatoes cooked without anything to absorb their liquid contain but little pulp which can be eaten with a spoon, but the delicious manner of thus preparing them, which prevails throughout New England, more than counterbalances the satisfaction that the remnant of solid matter conveyed to the mouth upon a fork would bestow; and those to whom the preparation is agreeable would merely proclaim themselves ridiculously automatic in their ideas by attempting to eat them without the aid of a spoon. 

On the other hand the same vegetable, prepared so that but little moisture remains, is as easily lifted upon the fork as mashed potato. We have made an every-day selection to illustrate this point, but the rule applies as practically to the daintiest viand that rejoices in a French name, and should be as faithfully adhered to at the table of a King as at the humblest board. - By Eliza Lavin, 1889

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and Decorum

         In the Gilded Age, one major, widely sold, best selling etiquette manual featured was Decorum: A Practical Treatise on Etiquette and Dress of the Best American Society. Originally published in 1877 by J.A. Ruth & Co., it was essentially the “bible” for Victorian social norms and ran through numerous, highly successful editions. Another related, notable, though smaller scale best seller was The Bazar Book of Decorum (1870) by Harper & Brothers.

The Word of the Day is Decorum

Today's word is DECORUM. 

It’s pronounced—de-koh-rum, with accent on the second syllable. It means—decency, seemliness, fitness, modesty. 

It comes from—Latin “decorum," comely. 

Companion word —dccorus. It’s used like this —“When in society you should behave with decorum .”

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Miss Manners Rescues Civilization

“The tiniest custom may offer a glimpse into how a mannerly concept, such as fairness, has been translated into behavior,” she writes. “Tradition is what gives a society meaning and the rules by which it lives are what make it work.” — Miss Manners

Handling More Than Mere Manners 

From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing : and Other Lapses in Civility by Judith Martin

A Book Review

“Miss Manners insists on the E-word,” writes Judith Martin in “Miss Manners Rescues Civilization,” the latest in her long-running series of lighthearted lessons in behaving well in our benighted world.

The “E-word,” of course, is etiquette, and etiquette has long been a highly lucrative enterprise for Martin. Why, she has even registered “Miss Manners” as a trademark, and a federal trademark symbol is neatly affixed to the famous name on the cover of her book.

Still, Martin’s seriocomic approach to good manners conceals an earnest interest in what defines and preserves a civilization against decadence and decline. Much of what Martin writes is actually a kind of study in cultural anthropology, even if she dresses up her field notes with artful parody and self-deprecating humor.

“The tiniest custom may offer a glimpse into how a mannerly concept, such as fairness, has been translated into behavior,” she writes. “Tradition is what gives a society meaning and the rules by which it lives are what make it work.”

As she sets up and knocks down straw men, debating with carping letter-writers and always getting in the last word, we realize that Martin is passionately interested in the weightiest and most urgent issues in our troubled world— class hatred, senseless acts of violence, the struggle for social justice, the search for enlightenment and fulfillment. In that sense, the title of her book (like the book itself) only appears to be satirical.

So Martin ponders when it is appropriate to wear hats or white shoes or black tie; she pontificates on the correct way to address a former president; she protests against putting on make-up in public. But she also makes a convincing case for the proposition that good manners can be a matter of life and death.

“Miss Manners may be used to a certain loneliness in her devotion to etiquette as the basic force of civilization, but when a disaster occurs, she has plenty of company,” writes Martin. “After the bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, large and small acts of consideration, thoughtfulness and kindness abounded.”

Indeed, there is literally no arena of moral controversy into which she hesitates to wander, no form of human encounter too bizarre to baffle her sense of right and wrong. Miss Manners instructs a ninth-grader on how to conduct a decorous argument on the subject of abortion; she counsels a woman whose waist-length hair attracts fondling by strangers to call the cops; she opines on the proper degree of decorum in dealing with a former neighbor who once molested a reader’s daughter.

Here and there, Martin bulks up her book with questions so dunderheaded and answers so predictable that one suspects she is simply running out of material for yet another book. “Is it ever appropriate to give one the finger?” one reader asks in apparent innocence. “Certainly not,” says the unflappable Miss Manners, surprising no one at all.

More often, though, Miss Manners finds herself drawn into the role of defining, rather than reporting on, the fast-changing standards of etiquette, a role she clearly savors and performs especially well. After all, what does the traditional rule of etiquette tell us about how to deal with a neighbor who watches pornographic movies with the window blinds wide open, or the mourner who brings his video cam to a funeral?

“It seems to Miss Manners that you are showing far too much interest in the nature of your neighbor’s habits,” Miss Manners scolds one reader, and the other reader she comforts: “To film weeping mourners is an appalling intrusion on their privacy.”

Behind the mask of Miss Manners lurks a subtle parodist named Judith Martin, and deep inside Judith Martin beats the heart of a an authentic visionary who is enraptured by the prospect of a world characterized by social equality and social justice. The fact that she uses the “E-word” to characterize her faintly utopian vision— and the fact that she uses such sly good humor in describing it— makes the whole enterprise no less stirring. — By Jonathan Kirsch, Special to the Times, 1996

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and Those You Don’t Enjoy

Navigating Social Situations with

People You Don't Enjoy

Image Source: milkos; "Bad Date.", 2023. Accessed via https://www.123RF.com/photo_161891686, Standard License.

We've all been there — stuck at a networking event, family gathering, or workplace function with people you don't enjoy spending time with. Whether they're acquaintances who rub you the wrong way or new connections that simply don't click, etiquette requires us to maintain civil, respectful behavior even when every fiber of our being wants to escape. The good news? With the right strategies, you can navigate these uncomfortable social situations with grace and dignity.

Understanding the Challenge

When you encounter people you don't enjoy being around, your body often signals distress before your mind catches up. You might feel yourself tense up, experience a sense of dread, or mentally transport yourself anywhere but where you currently stand. These are normal reactions, but they don't have to control your behavior or compromise your professional reputation.

Essential Mindfulness Techniques

The foundation for managing interactions with people you don't enjoy lies in mindfulness. Practice these grounding techniques:

• Breathe deeply through your nose, allowing oxygen to calm your nervous system. Exhale slowly and deliberately — but avoid audible sighing, which can signal impatience or discomfort to others. This simple breathing pattern helps regulate your emotional response and maintains your composure.

• Practice active, attentive listening by focusing genuinely on what the other person is saying rather than planning your escape. This keeps you anchored in the present moment and paradoxically makes the interaction pass more quickly. When you're truly engaged, you'll also spot natural conversation endpoints that allow for polite exits.

• Maintain your composure by checking your body language. Keep your facial expressions neutral to pleasant, avoid crossing your arms defensively, and resist the urge to look at your phone or scan the room for better options.

Conversation Strategies for Difficult Interactions

Once you've centered yourself, employ these tactical approaches in navigating conversation:

• Start positively when entering shared spaces. A simple, genuine opener like "I hope your drive was pleasant" or "It's good to see you" sets a cordial tone that makes the entire interaction easier to manage.

• Find common ground or shared goals, especially in professional settings. Even with people you don't enjoy, you likely share some connection — whether it's a work project, mutual acquaintance, or common interest. Focusing on these neutral territories keeps conversations productive and less personal.

• Redirect skillfully when conversations veer into uncomfortable territory. Use a light touch to change subjects: "That reminds me, did you hear about..." or "Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask someone about..."

• Employ validating phrases like "That's interesting" or "I hadn't considered that perspective" to acknowledge contributions without necessarily agreeing. 

• Challenge your negative thoughts when they arise. Notice when you're thinking critically about someone and consciously counter it with something neutral or positive. This internal practice prevents negativity from seeping into your expression or tone.

Cultivating Compassion

Perhaps the most powerful tool for managing people you don't enjoy is compassion. Remember that everyone carries invisible burdens — social anxiety, low self-esteem, personal struggles, or simply feeling out of place. The person irritating you might be deeply uncomfortable themselves, expressing their discomfort in ways that don't resonate with you.

We don't always know another person's full story, despite assumptions made through workplace gossip or first impressions. Ask open-ended questions that invite storytelling: "How did you get started in your field?" or "What's been the highlight of your week?" You might discover surprising common ground or qualities worth appreciating.

The Professional Standard

Regardless of personal feelings, maintaining professional dignity is non-negotiable. This means never using coarse language, avoiding confrontational behavior, and treating everyone with basic respect. Your reputation depends not on how you treat people you like, but on how you treat people you don't enjoy.

Finding Perspective

Sometimes, the qualities that bother us in others reflect aspects of ourselves we haven't fully accepted. Other times, people simply handle situations differently than we would. Extending grace acknowledges that we're all imperfect, all doing our best with the tools and awareness we have.

By keeping interactions civil, polite, and when possible, brief, you protect your own peace while honoring etiquette's fundamental principle: treating all people with dignity, regardless of personal preference.

Contributor, Candace Smith is a retired, national award-winning secondary school educator, Candace Smith teaches university students and professionals the soft skills of etiquette and protocol. She found these skills necessary in her own life after her husband received international recognition in 2002. Plunged into a new “normal” of travel and formal social gatherings with global leaders, she discovered how uncomfortable she was in many important social situations. After extensive training in etiquette and protocol, Candace realized a markedly increased confidence level in meeting and greeting and dining skills and was inspired to share these skills that will help others gain comfort and confidence in dining and networking situations. Learn more at http://www.candacesmithetiquette.com/

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Post WWI Manners Deplorable

The lack of good manners in all classes is to be deplored. It has been thought of sufficient importance for an agitation to be started in one city to teach manners in the public schools…

Good Manners:

World Not Yet Recovered Yet From Great War

A 2nd Debut Article from 2018

“I THINK there is so much hypocrisy in good manners,” said a woman whom I know very well, the other day. “You mean,” I quickly retorted, “hypocrisy may be found in fine manners?”

She tossed her head defiantly, declaring: “That is a distinction, not a difference.”

I persisted in my defense. “You know quite well” said I. “that good manners mean sincere regard for others, self-discipline and service. Fine manners may mean being merely polite and well-bred in behavior.”

The lack of good manners in all classes is to be deplored. It has been thought of sufficient importance for an agitation to be started in one city to teach manners in the public schools.

This slump in conventional dignity, this letting down of social bars, is the recognized aftermath of war. Those who can recall the effect of the Civil War upon must shudder at the memory.  Today the frenzy of the World War is past, but the world has not yet recovered its poise.

Let us, however, take notice of the stupendous development of real unselfishness in our own people- the practical unselfishness which has made America the hope of famishing European babies and mothers. What has this to do with the question of manners? Everything!

Selfishness is the supreme foe of good manners. And in this real solicitude for suffering humanity, there may be found hope for the redemption of American manners which, at their best, are agreeable and likely to win favor, in any official or private gathering.

There is no need to worry over the lost manners of some of our men, for the loss is only temporary. Many of us women, however, will acquire better manners when we learn how to conquer our nerves and conserve our nervous energies. For, in spite of beauty, cleverness and good taste, some women lack the exquisite charm of repose.

Many young women in fashionable social life, as well as some actresses, are incapable of seating themselves gracefully. They will crouch, they will flop, they will stand in front of a chair and fidget before dropping into it. can't keep still. 

The average American woman can’t — keep still. This is the chief blemish of American manners, and just as soon as we women are convinced of this fact we will conquer our nerves and acquire poise.

Let us teach our children manners for home use as a beginning. and, before we know it, there will be no reason left to complain of American manners. “Manners are the happy ways of doing things,” wrote Emerson. — By Clara Morris, Los Angeles Herald, 1921

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Manners Make the World Nicer

 

In his fantasy, whenever someone did something rude he changed into a muscular man in a Superman-like outfit with a big “M” on his chest. In his fantasy, people would look up into the sky and say, “Look, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Manners Man!” He was Manners Man. 

In 1983, He wanted to make the world nicer

WASHINGTON I have a fantasy. (Okay, I have several, but this cne I can write about.) In my fantasy, whenever someone does something rude I change into a muscular man in a Superman-like outfit with a big “M” on my chest. In my fantasy, people will look up into the sky and say, "Look, it's a bird, it's a plane, it’s Manners Man!” I am Manners Man. 

When a group of really tough-looking kids blast one of those monster portable radios. I go up to them and ask politely that they either turn it off or play a soft Bach piece say the Goldberg Variations, preferably the Glenn Gould rendition. The kids give me a look of utter contempt, offer some comments on my ancestry, and offer to engage me in fisticuffs. It is then that I dart into a phone booth and return as Manners Man. I swoop down on them, take the radio in my hands of steel, and reduce the thing to a lump of plastic. Then I tell the kids that never, under pain of being heaved into outer space, will they play the radio loudly again. 

Back in civilian clothes and looking like the mildmannered columnist that I am, I scour the city, searching for breaches of manners. I pay particular attention to rest rooms, appearing as Manners Man whenever I catch somebody throwing paper towels on the floor. I offer my usual speech about good manners and then go on my way, leaving everyone openmouthed and, of course, wiser. Next, I sit by the phone, waiting for a call. In due course, it comes and a voice says, “Is Chuck there?” Very politely I say, "I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number. There is no Chuck here.” The caller merely hangs up. No sorry. No thank you. Just a click. Whoosh! I become Manners Man. 

Through powers I will not bother to explain, I fly to the house of the caller. I find him, big, powerful, insolent, sitting by the phone. I come right through the window. “It is bad manners to get a wrong number and hang up without apologizing.” He looks at me in dismay. “You are rude,” I say, and with that, I grab the phone, yank it from the wall and heave it in the general direction of Krypton. 

Being Manners Man keeps me very busy. I have to straighten out cab drivers who give passengers anxiety attacks by not acknowledging that they heard the destination. 1 also have to do something when cab drivers don’t say thank you after being tipped. I deal with people in supermarkets who leave their carts in the middle of the aisle, drivers who empty their ashtrays out the window and kids who cut into movie lines. 

In fact, Manners Man spends a lot of time in the movies. He has to straighten out people who talk too loudly, put their feet up on the seat, read subtitles out loud. Outside the movies, Manners Man contends with people who stop in their tracks when getting off an escalator, not caring that the people behind them have no place to go but up their backs. He wrecks the cars of drivers who do not signal when turning and he deals ruthlessly with sales clerks everywhere who ignore a customer to take a telephone call. Manners Man throws them clear into the lingerie department. 

A psychiatrist might think that Manners Man is just another name for my super ego, that I am frustrated, thwarted and full of hostility. Manners Man, though, does not care what they think. Manners Man’s only concern is to make the world nicer, for it to be less rude and cleaner and not as loud. To this end, like Captain Midnight (or was it someone else?), Manners Man asks no quarter and gives no quarter. Soon, Manners Man becomes the scourge of motorcyclists. He hunts down those with the loudest machines and wraps their cycles around telephone poles. 

Manners Man demolishes garbage trucks that grind away early in the morning and it goes without saying that Manners Man does not, for a second, put up with Billy Martin or George Steinbrenner. Manners Man washes out their mouths with soap. Unlike Superman, Manners Man is not fazed by Kryptonite. The only thing that can stop him is good manners, and with John McEnroe setting an example for the world, Manners Man’s future is assured. Up, up and away. —By Richard Cohen, The Washington Post, 1983

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia