Emily Post- “Good Taste Today,” 1939

A typed letter from Emily Post to a friend. This letter is part of a group of letters from Emily Post to a friend in the 1930’s and 1940’s. This group of letters was acquired for the Etiquipedia Etiquette Museum, scheduled to be opened within the coming 5 years.– Property of the Etiquipedia private library

Good Taste Today

Part 2

Dear Mrs. Post: What would be your suggestion for clothes to wear at a club breakfast, which begins at noon and continues with an all-afternoon program? 

Answer: Street-length afternoon dresses would be proper, and hats. 

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Dear Mrs. Post: My daughter is being graduated this year from high school and she and I had thought it would be nice for me to invite her teachers to tea some day after school. I have never met any of the teachers but I hardly think, under the circumstances, that fact would matter. My mother seems to feel that this gesture would be all right in all the many more friendly smaller communities but that in this big city it would be looked upon by them as presumptuous rather than courteous. We are naturally very much disappointed at mother's criticism of our plan and wondered if she is right about this. 

Answer: To invite teachers who have shown no especial friendliness to your daughter and for whom she has had no especial liking, might seem to them surprising and possibly questionable. But any teachers she has always liked very much, and who would naturally be the ones she would like you to meet, will, I am sure, be delighted to come. She fact that you do not know them personally does not affect the propriety of your writing a note to each one saying that before Mary leaves school it would give you so much pleasure to meet the teachers of whom she has been especially fond, and inviting her to take tea with Mary and you on Friday, at half past four? – By Emily Post in the San Bernardino Sun, 1939                

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