Etiquette Advice for Democrats of 1922

Was it only Democrats in San Francisco who needed a book of Etiquette in 1922? It’s hard to believe that all of the other political parties of the day couldn’t use an etiquette book too.

Reading a Book on Etiquette

A QUIET adventure for a good democrat is to go to a library and spend an hour our looking over a book on “Etiquette,” “Social Usage” or “Good Form.” He will be astounded at the tricks men and women teach themselves in the effort to be fashionably correct. 

Page after page he will find is devoted entirely to the unreal and the artificial in human manners. But he will find, also, that a certain proportion of the tricks are dictated by a real courtesy. The spirit behind about two in every five rules is a desire to be kind, to be helpful, to make people feel at ease. The other three are stunts, obvious and awkward passwords into the land of artificiality.

Almost any man you meet during the day, helping an elderly woman across the street or giving her his seat in the car, knows the acts of kindness, but he couldn't even guess or imagine the other things that go solemnly into a book on etiquette. How could he know, for example, that “a butler never wears gloves, nor a flower in his button hole,” or that “in a dignified house, a servant is never spoken to as Jim, Maisie or Katie, but always as James or Margaret or Katherine, and a butler is called by his last name nearly always”? 

How could he know that at weddings “the best man wears precisely what the groom wears, with only one small exception: the groom's boutonniere is slightly different and more elaborate”? If he picked up a book of etiquette he would read: “To sit gracefully one should not perch stiffly on the edge of a straight chair, nor sprawl at length in an easy one. The perfect position is one that is easy but dignified. In other days, no lady of dignity ever crossed her knees, held her hands on her hips, or twisted herself sideways, or even leaned back in her chair! 

Today all these things are done; and the only etiquette left is on the subject of how not to exaggerate them.” It was unforgivable “in other days” for a lady to lean back in her chair; it would be equally unforgivable, according to the book, if she cut her salad lettuce with a knife instead of folding it. A few years ago over in Berkeley one young girl was not invited to become a member of a sorority because she ate the lettuce part of her salad at a test dinner.

A democrat reads a book on etiquette and feels just as snobbish toward the fashionable as the fashionable feel toward the uncouth democrat who doesn't know their tricks. — San Francisco Call, 1922

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia