Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Etiquette 1953

“Women are getting more and more into worthwhile community activities as their home lives are becoming simplified and informal,” she said. “Fifty years ago it was important to have a maid on front door duty for afternoon callers. Now the lady who languished at home waiting for a caller, is much more likely to be found at some meeting of a community organization and doing some good. A little working knowledge of parliamentary law is more useful to her than a briefing on proper conduct during a call.”

A Vanderbilt View of Etiquette

NEW YORK, Jan. 17. That funny noise you hear may be Mrs. Grundy spinning in her final resting place. Amy Vanderbilt, author of the new “The Complete Book of Etiquette,” out in favor of elopements and against debuts. She thinks formal dinners are a lot of nonsense. “Etiquette,” said Miss Vanderbilt with something of a snort, “is an old word for itsy-bitsy manners – where to put your feet, how to hold your hands, how to sit down. For goodness sake, modern furniture is so wide and so big, it’s impossible to sit down like a lady, and most of the time you need help to get back on your feet.”

Miss Vanderbilt has written a five-pound tome which she feels is mainly a guide to modern living. There are chapters devoted to the traditional items such as when to turn down the corner of a calling card, how to address the younger sons of a Duke, and the proper uniform for a chambermaid. But her heart is really in portions devoted to informal entertaining, household budgeting, painless methods of getting rid of obnoxious guests, coping with gossip columnists, applying television makeup, and other problems more likely to vex today’s men and women.

She thinks an elopement is a handy device if the couple is expected to have a big wedding and doesn’t want one. She thinks debuts are silly and tokens of shallow social success. “I feel living has changed so that it’s almost silly to go into such things as the traditional formal dinner for 34 with one butler for each three guests,” she said. “In the first place, where would you find that many butlers?”

Her publishers insisted that people like to read about such things, so she finally gave in. “Etiquette is really a social study of manners.” Miss Vanderbilt continued. “Thorstein Veblen in his theory of the leisure class around 1902, talked of manners as a deliberate advertising of uselessness. He said the upper class women of that day laced themselves into rigid, tight corsets to demonstrate they couldn't possibly do any work. Too many of our manners are outgrowths of this sort of thing."

“Manners,” she continued, “are directly related to economics and sociology. Informality became important in war time. I think we’ll never go back to stereotyped living,” she commented. “It's patently ridiculous to live by the rules laid down by useless people of another century. And if people are foolish enough to maintain a big house for reasons of pure social prestige, they'll just have to keep their help their on eight-hour shifts.”

There are many signs of a change in manners. Miss Vanderbilt spoke of a friend in Washington - where etiquette and protocol is still pretty important - who hires a taxi driver to make the rounds of the embassies dropping the required calling cards. In New York, the men’s clothing store which used to be headquarters for ready made servants’ liveries and uniforms now has ready made “civilian” suits. Servants’ clothes are obtainable only on a custom-tailored basis. 

Important sections of the book are devoted to proper conduct during “public appearances.” “Women are getting more and more into worthwhile community activities as their home lives are becoming simplified and informal,” she said. “Fifty years ago it was important to have a maid on front door duty for afternoon callers. Now the lady who languished at home waiting for a caller, is much more likely to be found at some meeting of a community organization and doing some good. A little working knowledge of parliamentary law is more useful to her than a briefing on proper conduct during a call.”

Miss Vanderbilt - who admits that the magic name she inherited is a good one for an arbiter of manners – says she wrote the book sort of like a detective story. She’s a wife, mother of three, indefatigable hostess and formerly a successful business woman. She wrote most of the rules in these areas out of her own experiences. – By Cynthia Lowry, 1953

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