Gilded Age Card Protocol

‘‘There is one unvarying rule for women, married and single. It is never right nor in good form to sign one’s name with the addition of Miss or Mrs. You are Mary Emily Jones, not Mrs. Patrick Fitzgerald Jones, to whomsoever you may be writing. If it is necessary to notify your correspondent of your married style and estate, you may do so and in one of several ways. 

A Woman’s Name: The Etiquette of the Signature and the Name on the Card

As far as the etiquette of the signature is concerned, Harper’s Bazar says: ‘‘There is one unvarying rule for women, married and single. It is never right nor in good form to sign one’s name with the addition of Miss or Mrs. You are Mary Emily Jones, not Mrs. Patrick Fitzgerald Jones, to whomsoever you may be writing. If it is necessary to notify your correspondent of your married style and estate, you may do so and in one of several ways. 

“Please remember that a correspondent should not be left in doubt as to this, much embarrassment being frequently caused by the omission, in letters between strangers, of exact information as to whether the writer is married or single. You may readily indicate all you wish to tell. “You may place Mrs. P. F. before the Mary Emily aforesaid in parentheses. You may write Mrs. Patrick Fitzgerald out fully and plainly in the left hand corner of your sheet below your proper signature, or you may simply inclose your engraved visiting card in your letter, this being on the whole most elegant and also the most convenient method of showing one’s relation to society. 

“The exception must be remarked here that the visiting card is out of place in an exclusively business letter — one which has not even remotely a social bearing. Card etiquette is one of the finest and most delicate tests by which a woman classifies her acquaintances. Its laws are unalterable, its sins of omission or commission among the few that are absolutely unpardonable. Concerning the name on the card an authority tells that the name engraved in script through the center should have the address below it in the right hand corner, the day for receiving in the left corner. This name should never include a husband’s title or profession, but spell out the husband’s name in full, and not be written with the initials alone. 

“A daughter in the first year of her social life has no card, but engraves her name on her mother’s card. After this probationary year the eldest or the only daughter in a family writes only Miss before her family name. The younger daughters write the full name. It has been decided that on a widow’s card the dear name so long borne, so hard to relinquish, may be retained with propriety for social use, though in all practical matters the widow writes her own Christian name instead of that of her husband.”— Los Angeles Herald, 1893

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