Gilded Age Intimate Etiquette

Mothers and guardians seem often to fancy that knowledge how to conduct oneself in the delicate dilemmas of life comes by instinct. Girls leave boarding schools and go into society with the vaguest of notions about their relations to it, and stumble through its small difficulties, hiding their embarrassments as best they can, keeping a brave front to the last, while the world never guesses the secret torches they undergo in trifling matters.– Image source from HBO’s The Gilded Age, Pinterest

The Freedom of Modern Social Life—Girls Handled too Much

“Shirley Dare” concluded a fashion letter in the Chicago Republican with the following: Somebody wants a chapter on what may be termed intimate etiquette. This is touched by such inquiries as we see in the correspondent’s column of ladies’ papers, where Lucia wants to know if she ought to allow a gentleman to kiss her when she comes home with him from a concert, and Caroline is dubious whether she ought to correspond with her friend’s betrothed in secret. One can’t but sympathize with the young ladies, knowing how inconsiderately someone has neglected their duty toward them. 

Mothers and guardians seem often to fancy that knowledge how to conduct oneself in the delicate dilemmas of life comes by instinct. Girls leave boarding schools and go into society with the vaguest of notions about their relations to it, and stumble through its small difficulties, hiding their embarrassments as best they can, keeping a brave front to the last, while the world never guesses the secret torches they undergo in trifling matters. Often enough for mere restless craving for novel confidences, young ladies seek public instead of private advise, and their mothers and friends are quite ready and competent to give them all the help they need. But there is a great deal of trial that besets young girls at the age when they feel failures most keenly, which the best parents forget to provide against. They ought to recall their own debates of etiquette in youth, and teach their children prudence before they need it. Forewarned, forearmed. 

“Nellie, see here,” said a prudent father to his girl of sixteen, in her tarletan ball dress, warming her slippers before the fire, waiting for her escort —if girls ever do any of the waiting. “You are looking sweetly fresh to-night, and as fresh in heart as in dress, I hope. You are to stay so, do you hear, madam. You are not to let people hold you close when you waltz; nobody has any business to touch you till you have a lover or a husband of your own. I don't want my girl talked about. Remember, nobody has the least right on any pretence to do more than touch your fingers, or lay his hand on you in the permittent freedom of the waltz, unless he is a relative, or going to be.” 

And after that she would probably sit in the conservatory, letting a handsome Jack, the fast and lady-killer, slip his arm by degrees, from the back of her chair, lift her locket from her bare neck, and kissed her hand till he dared to kiss her lips, and gather her close to him, which would probably be the sixth time they met, at farthest. You see, men and women like such things. It’s right they should! I am not going to belie the blood that beats in this wrist an instant, to say they should not. Only one may have some choice as to whether one will accept caresses from the wholesale stock of natural liking, or from the special, reserved fund of pernicious preference. 

Suppose young, warmhearted girl, as you lean on that broad shoulder, in the half-lit parlor to-night, thinking how nice it is to have some one fond and protecting, and how dear you seem to be to him—suppose you should by some invisible magnetic sense, be made aware of all the cheeks that have rested on that shoulder, and all the forms that arm had encircled. It’s fortunate you don’t know these things—it might lead you, however, to keep yourself more sacred for some one who will love you as entirely as you love this man, who “takes life as it comes,” and by force of habit, if not by inclination, could not remember one woman six months, if his happiness depended upon it. 

Did you ever see the old fashioned book on etiquette, called ‘The Young Ladies’ Friend?’ Good Mrs. Farrar will never guess the benefit that straight-forward, wholesome book of advice has been to girls. She knew the class she was writing for, and gave opinions in such words as these, I quote from memory : “You are to allow no personal freedoms from gentlemen of your acquaintance. If a finger is put out to examine a locket or chain on your dress, draw back and take it off for inspection, if you choose. The reason for this rule is clear to those who are better acquainted with the world.” 

The reason is perfectly clear to every one who comes to be twenty-five years of age outside a reform institution. A man of society, who dealt in occasional roughness of speech, said once in a parlor before ladies, that he would never marry a then New York girl of fashion, for the class allowed themselves to be handled too much. A girl who protects herself from the freedom to much in vogue in society, increases her own value if she only knew it, with those she may have to repulse. I don't believe in prudishuess or suspicion, but I do believe that, when men and women are not contented with the friendship that can be impressed by frank, kind eyes, and cordial and brief handshakes, and clear words one is not ashamed the world should hear, they should know what intoxication they are sharing. 

It strikes one curiosity to see ladies forget their hands in a man’s clasp while they are talking so earnestly; there is a great deal of expression in the nearness of two conversationalists which often tells a little more than people are aware of. It is all right and innocent, of course, but if people are properly indifferent to each other’s hands, why not observe convenances and drop them when the cordial salute is performed? You never see Rev. Mr. Surplice hold any hand in his but that of young Rocket the curate with the melancholy large black eyes, and you never see grave legal gentlemen crushing the flounces of equally grave and interesting spinsters. There is a fine distinct line between the cordial commerce of good will and heaven warm affection that binds the human family together, and these leadings of affection that with nameless license destroy the bloom of refinement.

There is one rule that settles a thousand queries of the nature we are considering. Whatever is secret may be safely left untouched. The touch, the look, the intimacy, the correspondence that needs to be secret, has something wrong about it. If you are sure there is no evil in your motives, for heaven’s sake come out and avow your friendship, your design, whatever it may be. You make the world purer and get a precedent by your frankness that tears away a thousand hypocrisies. The world has a keen sent for the really innocent, and if you cannot face its first sneers of criticism, you have reason to doubt yourself. Please consider this the porch to a topic of larger dimensions, and don’t judge me too hardly for prudery, till you hear the rest.— Trinity Journal, 1870

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