Etiquette and a Sincere Form of Flattery

“Bock, hund! Bock, I soy!”

Anglophile noun

An·​glo·​phile | \ ˈaŋ-glə-ˌfī(-ə)l \
variants: or less commonly Anglophil \ ˈaŋ-​glə-​ˌfil

Definition of Anglophile
: a person who greatly admires or favors England and things English
First Known Use of Anglophile

1883, in the meaning defined above

New York Girls... One Wicked Correspondent Thinks They Make Blooming English Idiots

The girls of New York grow more and more English every day. Where the inspiration comes from is a mystery. But they all seem moved by the overwhelming desire to look and act like English girls. Their gowns are made of cloth and cut and fitted by English tailors, whose shops are gaudy with coats of arms of foreign notables and who employ only British assistants. Even the masculine walk, which has caused so much ridicule to be cast upon the English women is mimicked by New York girls, and they stalk about the streets with majestic and grenadier-like aspect. 

Everywhere you go, stalwart young women, with their shoulders thrown back and their chins high in the air, stare at you boldly, calmly, or indifferently, and heavy, tan-colored gloves, tall collars, and heavy hats predominate. Despite the rather bold appearance of all this, the girls have a fine, dashing manner and an easy carriage that is captivating. They are all right as to clothes, but they are still off on the accent. This must of course be so, because the accent is in so many cases copied from grooms, waitresses, butlers and shop girls. It is rather curious that they should adopt the most unpleasant characteristics of the English. 

I was caught in a short shower a day or two ago, and dived under the awning at the ladies’ entrance to the Hotel Brunswick to wait until the shower passed. Two dashing Anglomaniacs sought the same protection from the elements. The elder of them was tall and distinguished in appearance, and very well dressed in a tailor’s suit of dark green cloth. Her companion was a chubby little girl of perhaps seventeen years, who wore a standing collar, a pepper-and-salt waistcoat, a bright red scarf with a diamond horseshoe and a little bob-tailed plaid English jacket and yellow leather boots. In one gloved fist was a whip. 

As she dashed under the awning, somewhat out of breath, two. little bull-terriers scurried after her. She struck them half savagely with the whip, and said with the most absurd accent possible: “Bock, hunds ! Bock, I soy!” Then she stamped her little boot and snapped her whip at the dogs. She seemed ao much pleased at the expression that she repeated it several times, and each time the little bull terriers shrank further out of the way. I presume she had heard some English groom tell the hounds to keep back at one of the Rockaway hunts, and hence the English of it all.— The New York Correspondent, Providence Journal, 1885

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

Etiquette and Affecting Superiority

A “gentleman” or French “gentilhomme.” —
“It is true that a cook maybe as much of a lady as any other woman, or a porter as true a gentleman as a President of the United States.”

Everybody reads the advertising columns of the newspaper. Advertisements are always worth looking at. They are a reflex of the business and social needs at the time, and of the manners and customs of the people. Here is a peculiar announcement cut from the columns of a California contemporary: 

‘Wanted—Situation by a middle-aged man and wife; the lady is a first class cook; the gentleman can do all kinds of out-door work; wait on table or act as porter; parties are colored, and late arrivals from the East.’ 

This reveals a rather ludicrous affectation in the use of the words “lady” and “gentleman,’’ where “man” and “woman” would be properly employed, although it is true that a cook maybe as much of a lady as any other woman, or a porter as true a gentleman as a President of the United States. 

Color does not figure in the case at all. Why should people be reluctant to call themselves men and women? No one speaks of Adam as the “first gentleman” or Eve as the “first lady.” But perhaps affectation will some day get to that pitch. —The Marysville Daily Appeal, 1889

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

Awfully Charming Gilded Age Slang

A very “pooty” gown on the cover of the March 1893 Delineator Magazine — “Pretty is no longer pretty, but ‘pooty.’ V., the famous man milliner, has caught the trick from his Duchess customers. You hear him talk glibly of ‘pooty gowns’ and ‘pooty tails.’ ‘Gorgeous’ or ‘deadly’ are the correct adjectives to use when speaking of the weather. Nowadays it is quite customary for educated people to talk of ‘the Dook.’”

How Fashionable People Talk

There are fashions in speech as well as fashions in clothes. Everything in society just now is either “awfully ghastly” or “awfully charming, don’t you know.” If your new bonnet isn't awfully ghastly it must be awfully charming; and if Miss Fourstars’ singing at the local concert the other evening wasn't awfully charming, then it must certainly have been awfully ghastly. Pretty is no longer pretty, but “pooty.” 

V., the famous man milliner, has caught the trick from his Duchess customers. You hear him talk glibly of “pooty” gowns and “pooty” tails. “Gorgeous” or “deadly” are the correct adjectives to use when speaking of the weather. Nowadays it is quite customary for educated people to talk of “the Dook.” In quite aristocratic circles the final “G” is dropped in many words. They talk of killin,’ shootin,’ talkin,’ singing.’ 

I suppose the next thing we shall hear will be that they have ceased to aspirate their “H’s” for the excellent reason that it has become so common for ordinary folks to do so. But, after all, these examples of affectation, ridiculous though they sound, are not quite so bad as the mincing style of affectation fashionable in days gone by. Mincing is now chiefly confined to old maids or young girls under 20. Other folks don't seem to get me for it. In these days of push “side,” teens to go further than mincing manners. — Pall Mall Budget, 1893

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

Etiquette and “Affected Speech”

“Fathah awnd grawnfathah were bawn heah.’’ ‘But you haven't lived here much?’ I ventured. “Oh, yes, only a couple of yeahs that I was east at school.” “So there it was; two years east at school had done the mischief. She met a lot of New Yorkers and southerners and no doubt some English people there, and so she tried to fix up a little more elegant accent for herself, with the distressing result.

Affectations of Accent Absurdity

Michigan Professor Makes Observations During Afternoon Tea of Girl Students • 

Type of Talk is a “Poser”• Says Young Women Try to Combine Pronunciations of Their Acquaintances

ANN ARBOR, June 25.—It was no less an authority than a professor in Michigan university who declared not long ago that he was “Sick of affectation in pronunciation.” One of the best loved men in the great school, he has seen thousands upon thousands of men and women go out from his classes in the course of his long academic career, says the Detroit Free Press, “In my early day, when I was a young instructor, affected speech from among young ladies was rare, he told some of his students, then came a wave of it that swept all over and reminded me of those silly foppish French days of the Ridiculous Précieuses (or The Affected Ladies) satire immortalized by Molière, when the bourgeois element began to put on airs that set the whole world a-laughing.” 

“Now, a good pronunciation is to be cultivated, just as pretty modulations of the voice are much to be desired both in men and women, but when it comes to these obviously strained-after apings of somebody else’s English, I think it is time to show people how utterly ludicrous they appear. The fact is, in some forceful slang that appeals to me very much for its terse power of descriptions, these people don’t get away with their airs—not one bit. Not long ago my aversion for this sort of thing got the better of my discretion and of my good manners, I fear, at a charity afternoon tea.”

“Well, there were a lot of Detroit girls among them, and as I stood off for a while listening to them, I marveled where they had acquired their accents. Certainly they didn’t sound like Michigan, nor like anything within many miles of the middle west. To tell you the truth, I couldn't make out what they did sound like and I've done a bit of traveling in this and other countries in my day. But this type of talk was a poser for me. There were a number of broad A’s— some of them quite the broadest I had ever heard.” 

“There were few R’s, except for now and then when someone less alert than her sisters let drop a good, healthy one. At last, one of the prettiest of them, a slender, sweet eyed young thing, that might have been a Rosaetti model, fell to my lot, I never heard such talk. She was mighty nice to me, too, getting the choicest little cakes for me and some very fragrant tea in a pretty cup, and fixed to suit a King. But her accent! ‘You're a Michigan girl?’ I asked. “Oh, yes, indeed,” she beamed, ‘‘Fathah awnd grawnfathah were bawn heah.’’ ‘But you haven't lived here much?’ I ventured. “Oh, yes, only a couple of yeahs that I was east at school.” 

“So there it was; two years east at school had done the mischief. She met a lot of New Yorkers and southerners and no doubt some English people there, and so she tried to fix up a little more elegant accent for herself, with the distressing result. There is no such pronunciation in all the English language as ‘awnd’ for ‘and,’ nor ‘hawnd’ for ‘hand.’ If a child is sent away in its earliest youth it can naturally acquire the accent of its new environment, but when it comes to a grown Michigan girl in a couple of years getting an entirely new version of mother English, it does seem a little miraculous —don't you think?“– Los Angeles Herald, 1910

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