Gilded Age Manners and Society

The true charm of fine manners is best seen in poverty, when attainable there; but wealth is doubtless the better school for them at first, and this is one reason why men are tempted by wealth. The English word “means,” or the phrase “a man of means,” is very instructive, for it views property but as a means toward something more important. – Above, “Men of Means.”

Fine social intercourse is really the finest of the fine arts; and if painting and sculpture and architecture are worth cherishing, so is that higher standard of manners without which these things are merely a misplaced fringe for barbarism. It is true that manners joined with nothing better are disappointing. It is true that a hungry man would rather dine with a boor on venison than with Duke Humphrey on his proverbial dinner —that is, on nothing. But if the boorishness destroys one’s appetite, where is the good of vension? and “a dinner of herbs where love is” —or even where refinement is—turns out the better bill of fare. 

The true charm of fine manners is best seen in poverty, when attainable there; but wealth is doubtless the better school for them at first, and this is one reason why men are tempted by wealth. The English word “means,” or the phrase “a man of means,” is very instructive, for it views property but as a means toward something more important. And though many men go no further than the means, yet it is something that we have this great truth recognized in language. 

So all the love for fashionable novels is really an expression of a longing after the refinements of life. And though the “society columns” are often made up largely of the doings of the socially obscure, and though the socially prominent usually try to keep out of them, yet they are no doubt a humble school for good manners to those readers who distrust themselves. The young girl who with vague admiration reads of Mrs. A.’s and Mrs. B.’s entertainments perhaps acquires the wish that when she also is annexed to some matrimonial letter of the alphabet, she also may have an attractive home. —T. W. Higginson in Harper’s Bazar, 1891

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