A Book Browser’s Take on Emily Post

The modern ideal of hospitality… from the 1937 printing of Emily Post’s Blue Book of Etiquette – Friendliness, rather than formality, is expressed in every detail of this enchanting picture.

“The Browser” Talks of Books

LAUGH AT Mrs. Emily Post and her etiquette book if you want, but the Browser from now on is on her side of the car tracks. He has just given an hour of his invaluable time to hopping and skipping around in her massive tome, “The Blue Book of Social Usage,” and he is a changed man. If he ever sniffed at Mrs. Post he was a blundering idiot and did not know that the basis of her philosophy of etiquette is always tact, taste, consideration, convenience and courtesy Her “good form” is not conspicuous waste of gesture but a streamlined remodeling of conduct to suit the requirements of 1937. And the Browser approves, and he knows very few members of the human species who would not profit from rambling through the 877 pages of Mrs. Post's “Etiquette.”

The Browser doesn't go to opera, so he isn't interested in knowing what to do with an opera hat that he doesn't own. Neither does he dance, so he skips the chapter on dancing. He was raised among artichokes, so her little paragraph on how to eat them is wasted on him. But many of the other tips and commands she gives would be very useful to him, and they would keep other people from recognizing him for the savage that he essentially is.

She’s no fuss budget. Mrs. Post tells you not to put your elbows on the table in a private home, but at a small table in a restaurant she does not forbid it. She does not tell young women they mustn’t smoke; but she does say that it is not yet good form for them to smoke on the street. She gives advice on office manners; she teaches the young man how to avoid boorishness; she supplies tips on how to keep the conversational ball rolling, and after turning over the pages of her book the Browser understands why 25 large printings of it have been sold since 1922. No snob gets any comfort out of Emily Post. – By Marshall Marlin, 1937

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