Profiles in Etiquette— Emily Post

 In the 1945 edition of Emily Post's book “Etiquette,” Post quoted a disgruntled reader of her work, bridling at the prospect of imitating New York's “Cafe Society,” a group known to be less mannerly than “pretentious and vulgar.” Just who, the reader demanded to know, are these Best People, whose example Post commends throughout her book? Her answer follows: 

“There is nowhere to go to see Best Society on parade, because parading is one thing the Best Society does not intentionally do. And yet it is true (and this is one of the things harder to make clear) that in the forefront of the public parade are to be found a certain few who are really best. But they are best in spite of, and not because of, the publicity they attract. When I say that ‘people of taste do this or think that,’ I naturally have in mind definite people whose taste is the most nearly perfect among all those whom I know. Or on occasion, perhaps, I go back in memory to the precepts of those whose excellence has remained an ideal. In other words when I write of people of quality or fashion or taste, I always select the individual people who ideally serve as models... In other words... Best Society, Best People, or People of Quality can all be defined as people of cultivation, courtesy, taste, and kindness – people, moreover, who are very rarely disassociated from their backgrounds.” – Emily Post
From “A Short History of Rudeness” by Mark Caldwell

To the Manner Born: The Real Story of Emily Post

In the 1922 original edition of “Etiquette,” Emily Post's guide to the practices and manners of "Best Society," 81 pages are devoted to all matters nuptial. There's a sad irony, then, to the fact that Emily Post became the foremost authority on etiquette as the result of an unhappy marriage. In 1905, as biographer Laura Claridge recounts in “Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners,” Post's husband, Edwin, was the victim of a blackmail ploy by a newspaper publisher who threatened to reveal Edwin's affair with a starlet. Edwin, who had lost much of his wife's inheritance playing the stock market, set up a sting to expose the publisher's scheme, then confessed to his wife, who had no choice but to support his decision. The successful sting, along with Edwin's infidelities, was widely reported. The publicity caused Emily much humiliation, and the couple divorced the following year.

Love, sex, money and public shame: 48 years after Post's death, we're still often flabbergasted about the right way to conduct our affairs regarding the first three, and desperate to avoid the last. Even as we celebrate a loosening of social strictures—and equate casualness with self expression—with freedom comes anxiety. (Witness the proliferation of advice books dealing with the etiquette of casual Fridays, e-mail and text messages, and even one-night stands.) With the current financial crisis and political uncertainty, how to address an invitation to an afternoon tea may seem trivial, but, says Peggy Post, Emily's great-granddaughter-in-law and a director of the Emily Post Institute, we long for the structure of established rules more than ever in times of social and economic uncertainty. “Etiquette gives people the blueprints to deal with times of stress,” she says. Perhaps this is why Post was so uniquely qualified to write that blueprint: her life was shaped by stress, both personal and societal.

Post was born within months of the depression of 1873, and grew up in a world where the divide between rich and poor was rapidly expanding. As the daughter of Bruce Price, the architect who designed New York's Tuxedo Park, she enjoyed the diversions of the Gilded Age, consorting with the Astors, Morgans and Vanderbilts. But after her divorce from Edwin she set about reinventing herself as a career woman, gradually shedding the persona of a high-society divorcée for that of a serious professional writer. “I suspect it was good for her to fail in her marriage,” says Claridge. “It helped her come into her own. If she hadn't been so brutally divorced, Emily Post wouldn't have come to be.”

She didn't dispense with society altogether, though; instead, she capitalized on her familiarity with the upper classes by writing novels about romances between American blue bloods and European royalty. By 1920, she was such an authority on the mores of the American aristocracy that her friend the Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield inveigled her to write “a book about how to behave,” as she liked to tell it. (In truth, Claridge writes, Post had been angling for the task for some time.) He believed the country was sorely in need of guidance: “All those new war wives desperate to know how to write a thank-you note, all those immigrants who had made it to our country before the rules tightened, all those new money people, ashamed to admit they had no idea how to behave in society.”

Two years later “Etiquette” came out, the result of Post’s queries to her friends and her friends' children, and liberal plagiarizing of similar guides to correct behavior at home and in the world. The book, now in its 17th edition, has been updated over the years by Post’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Written as a fast-paced social drama (Post imagines a dinner party gone awry thus: “You have collected the smartest and the most critical people around your table to put them to torture such as they will never forget. Never! You have to bite your lips to keep from crying”), the book today is as delicious, and as dated, as an Edith Wharton novel. But those who think Post was overly concerned with raised pinkies and serving spoons underestimate her, says Claridge.

“People want to laugh at her, to devalue her,” she says. “We don't like to be told how to act, especially about matters that seem fairly trivial. You feel put down when other people know these apparent rules. Emily Post believed in having rules, but thought that everyone should have equal access to them. Your only obligation is to make the other person feel OK.”

Claridge developed a passion for her subject only after she was well immersed in the project. Three years after she started the book, she was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. For a while she lost her memory, including her awareness of who Emily Post was and why she had been writing about her. After six months of chemotherapy to remove the cancer, she regained her memory, and came to see Post as an inspiration. “Even in the hospital, my behavior toward the nurses, toward my roommate, was influenced by her. I realized that life is short, and you want to do the best you can while you’re here. It's the golden rule, and she kind of encouraged that.”

If Post remains linked with superciliousness in the public imagination, it's because of our appetite for instruction, not her insistence on protocol. During the Great Depression, she gave radio broadcasts advocating hospitality, quoting from “Etiquette” and its revisions. As Claridge writes, “Letters flooded the radio office, sometimes begging for help: ‘How many inches should I sit from the edge of the table?’ and ‘When taking my place at table, should I approach my chair from the right or the left side?’” An anxious nation wanted reassurance about how to sit at the table, even if it had no guarantee of where the food on it would come from.

Today we might scoff at the very phrase “Best Society,” and be more likely to eat our meals standing over the sink than at any table. “But we're still obsessed with etiquette,” says Peggy Post. Great-grandson Peter Post's “Essential Manners for Men,” one of the many manners guides put out by the Post Institute, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2003. Of the hundreds of e-mail queries the institute receives each month, around half are about weddings (the first time many people think about etiquette, Peggy Post says), but topics include gym protocol, tipping and the eternal conundrum “How do I eat a [fill in the blank]?” “People are so afraid of committing a faux pas,” she says. “They don't want to embarrass themselves and don't want to be mean to other people. Most of these are common respect issues.”

At the height of her fame, Post had a radio show and syndicated newspaper column, and advised the White House on protocol. But the image of her as an unbending automaton was fixed. When she attended a dinner at the Gourmet Society, papers made news of the fact that Post had spilled lingonberries on the tablecloth. In fact, her eyesight had been impaired by a recent operation. As Claridge writes, “Forcing Emily Post to stand in for the one thing she had always emphasized should be forgotten and forgiven—an innocent mistake—journalists were gleefully casting the doyenne of etiquette as part of a system they feared, not one that she endorsed.”

It wasn't until after her death that some were able to appreciate the broader implications of Post’s life work. When, two weeks after her death in 1960, Nikita Krushchev staged his shoe-banging tantrum at the U.N., Life magazine suggested the Soviet leader had displayed poor etiquette. In an article titled “What Would Emily Post Have Said?” the magazine argued that there is “a connection worth tracing between manners and politics.” Today, when political candidates make a show of practicing good manners (“Can I call you Joe?”), then fail to treat each other with honesty or respect, they commit the worst sort of faux pas. “She used to say manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others,” says Peggy Post. “It doesn't matter what fork you use. It is a matter of substance over style.”— By Jennie Yabroff Newsweek, 2008

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

Post vs. Vanderbilt on 1950s Etiquette

Emily Post felt that employers may be embarrassed if a pregnant woman was working him an office. Amy Vanderbilt strongly disagreed. Lucile Ball broke a barrier on her hit television show by showing herself pregnant on screen in 1952. According to ScreenRant.com, “As one of the first hit TV series, I Love Lucy had to tread the murky waters in establishing what networks, censors, and audiences would and wouldn't accept on TV.  When Lucille Ball, the actress who played lead character Lucy Ricardo, got pregnant, the series had to figure out how to handle an expectant mother on TV. Luckily for the network, Ball was married to co-star Desi Arnaz, who played her TV husband Ricky Ricardo, meaning that there was little scandal with the actress being pregnant, only how to present it to viewers. The major problem that CBS had with the pregnancy was not the state of Lucy, but with the word pregnancy itself. Noted as a medical and indecent word, CBS refused to allow the word to be spoken on screen. Dancing around the facts for the whole episode, and even using the French word for pregnancy, "Enceinte" in the title, in the last moments of the episode Lucy tricked her husband into figuring out that they were in the family way. 55 years later, ‘Knocked Up’ premiered. We've come a long way.”– Image source, Pinterest

To the Ladies: From the Editor

Emily Post, arbiter of etiquette, lays down the rule: “If a pregnant woman works in a small office she can stay at work, provided it does not embarrass her employer. But in a large office, she should leave when her condition becomes obvious.”

Amy Vanderbilt, another authority on etiquette, who says that she herself worked in a big office until six weeks before the birth of her second son, disagrees, contending that “this is a completely accepted thing to-day.”

The turning point so far as etiquette is concerned, Amy Vanderbilt says, was during World War II, when women were desperately needed in their jobs.

Obstetricians, according to the New York Times, “are all but unanimous in praise of the trend. There is nothing harmful about a pregnant woman working, they say, provided she feels comfortable about it.”

The main problem, it seems, in many cases is transportation to and from work. In crowded buses and streetcars women have found that there is not a vast number of cavaliers who will offer a seat to a pregnant woman.

One woman who worked until three days before delivery reported that other women occasionally gave their seat. But male travelers: “Never!” Guess Mothers’ Day, like Christmas, comes only once a year – The East Bay Labor Journal, 1958

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

Etiquette Books Wanted Post WWII

Etiquette usage and knowledge of good manners were important to family life in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s in the United States 

Books on Etiquette in Demand by Patrons of Goodman Library

People do concern themselves with etiquette, according to the librarians at Goodman Library. Especially do the young people keep the books on the social usages always in circulation. One time honored book on this subject, of course, is Emily Post's Etiquette, the blue book of social usage. 

Several copies are constantly being taken from the shelves for home use and the reference copy is frequently consulted for a few minutes at the reading table. The original edition of this work was copyrighted in 1922 and it is now in its sixty-eighth printing.

The contents include: Good taste in the use of names, balls and dances, engagements, Christenings, funerals, conversation, restaurant etiquette, table manners, formal correspondence. games and sports, manners for motorists, visiting cards, etc…

A complete index enables one to find very minute points of etiquette that may be puzzling. For instance did you know that:

• You should never say, “Mrs. Smith, meet Mrs. Jones.” ?

• You should never say, “Mr. Jones, shake hands with Mr. Smith.” ?

• Usually a lady does not take a gentleman's arm in the day-time?

• The wife is the head of the table, though the man is the head of the house?

• When in doubt, wear the plainer dress?

• A lady never takes off her gloves to shake hands unless they are gardening gloves?

• A widow is never addressed by her own given name, always by the name of her late husband?

For complete explanations of all of these points and thousands of others, consult “Emily Post” at the Goodman Library. – By Mrs. Ella Pimentel for the News Napa Illustrated Weekly, 1947

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

Confusion Over Finger Bowl Doily Use

By 1934, doilies had possibly fallen out of fashion in some circles, but they were certainly still used in many homes as part of the “finger bowl ballet.” It’s possible that this woman writing to Mrs. Post believed that the doily’s intended use was to wipe the fingers, when it is merely to sit under the finger bowl, whether on the plate or above the place setting, to the upper left of the dessert plate.

Dear Mrs. Post: While dining in the house of a stranger the other night I noticed that her waitress brought in a dessert plate with a fine lace doily on it and on top of that, a finger bowl. The silver for dessert was already at the places. I had never had a finger bowl brought in just this way. My hostess removed it and the doily from the dessert plate and put the bowl down on the doily at the left to the back of the dessert plate. The dessert was a rich fudge cake, which would have soiled the doily miserably. Is it correct to let a doily take the place of a plate which matches the finger bowl and which stands on top of the dessert plate usually without any doily between them?

Answer: I don't think I understand your question. I don't see how the cake could possibly come in contact with the doily. Doilies are not often used, but when they are, you pick yours up with the finger bowl and put both down together on the tablecloth where there is space. Then you whatever the dessert may be is put on the plate. You certainly would not put food on the doily, ever! — By Emily Post, 1934

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

Etiquette of the “Little Dinner”

"The little dinner is thought by most people to be the very pleasantest social function there is." — Emily Post

The Little Dinner

The little dinner is thought by most people to be the very pleasantest social function there is. It is always informal, of course, and intimate conversation is possible, since strangers are seldom, or at least very carefully, included. For younger people, or others who do not find great satisfaction in conversation, the dinner of eight and two tables of bridge afterwards has no rival in popularity. The formal dinner is liked by most people now and then (and for those who don't especially like it, it is at least salutary as a spine stiffening exercise), but for night after night, season after season, the little dinner is to social activity what the roast course is to the meal.

The service of a "little" dinner is the same as that of a big one. As has been said, proper service in properly run houses is never relaxed, whether dinner is for eighteen or for two alone. The table appointments are equally fine and beautiful, though possibly not quite so rare. Really priceless old glass and china can't be replaced because duplicates do not exist and to use it three times a day would be to court destruction; replicas, however, are scarcely less beautiful and can be replaced if chipped. The silver is identical; the food is equally well prepared, though a course or two is eliminated; the service is precisely the same. The clothes that fashionable people wear every evening they are home alone, are, if not the same, at least as beautiful of their kind. Young Gilding's lounge suit is quite as "handsome" as his dinner clothes, and he tubs and shaves and changes his linen when he puts it on. His wife wears a tea gown, which is classified as a negligé rather in irony, since it is apt to be more elaborate and gorgeous (to say nothing of dignified) than half of the garments that masquerade these days as evening dresses! They wear these informal clothes only if very intimate friends are coming to dinner alone. "Alone" may include as many as eight!—but never includes a stranger.

Otherwise, at informal dinners, the host wears a dinner coat and the hostess a simple evening dress, or perhaps an elaborate one that has been seen by everyone and which goes on at little dinners for the sake of getting some "wear out of it." She never, however, receives formally standing, though she rises when a guest comes into the room, shakes hands and sits down again. When dinner is announced, gentlemen do not offer their arms to the ladies. The hostess and the other ladies go into the dining-room together, not in a procession, but just as they happen to come. If one of them is much older than the others, the younger ones wait for her to go ahead of them, or one who is much younger goes last. The men stroll in the rear. The hostess on reaching the dining-room goes to her own place where she stands and tells everyone where she or he is to sit. "Mary, will you sit next to Jim, and Lucy on his other side; Kate, over there, Bobo, next to me," etc… — From Emily Post’s 1922 book, “Etiquette”

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

Emily Post on Receiving Lines

 

Hands in Greeting 

Dear Mrs. Post: Etiquette suggests that a man wait for a woman to extend her hand in greeting first. But what is a man to do when a hostess receiving at a party for her daughter fails to put out her hand in spite of the fact that etiquette also says that a guest should shake hands with a hostess and her daughter in the receiving line at such a party? 

Answer: If she does not hold her hand out to him, then he behaves as he was taught in dancing school when a small boy. In other words, he takes one step, cracks his heels and bows from the waist and says, How do you do, Mrs. Brown.” – By the World's Foremost Authority on Etiquette © Emily Post, 1937

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

Emily Post on Hats

The general rule is if you wear an afternoon dress (meaning a dress not suitable for general wear on the street) in the evening, then you should go without a hat, but if you are wearing a street dress, then you should wear a hat.– Emily Post on CBS Radio

Shall I Wear a Hat With Afternoon Dress?

.

Dear Mrs. Post: We seldom wear formal clothes in our simple community, which fact I contend is no reason why the ladies here may not go to evening parties wearing afternoon dresses and no hats. Don’t you agree with me? There are several new residents who have been turning up on such occasions with hats on. 

Answer: The general rule is if you wear an afternoon dress (meaning a dress not suitable for general wear on the street) in the evening, then you should go without a hat, but if you are wearing a street dress, then you should wear a hat. But whether the hats you describe are bad form or not, depends entirely upon their type. In other words, if they are an indoor type of hat, they are quite as suitable to wear with afternoon dresses as to go without. In fact, they are decidedly a fashion of the moment. 

Seek Local Custom 

Dear Mrs. Post: Should the ladies pouring at a formal tea wear hats? Common sense seems to be the basis of your etiquette, and in my humble judgment hats at this time do not sound sensible. 

Answer: This question is best decided by the arbitrary custom of each community. In New York, for example, a deputy hostess always wears a hat unless she is a house visitor, and even in this case she is likely as not to wear one. Neither dress or hat for a deputy hostess should be too tailored.– By the World's Foremost Authority on Etiquette © Emily Post, 1937

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

Emily’s Etiquette Book Backlash

“Saucers for vegetables are contrary to all etiquette.” – Advice from Emily Post’s 1922 “Etiquette––the Blue Book of Social Usage”

Emily Post was a New York socialite who turned to writing after her 1906 divorce. First trying her hand at novels, in 1922 and at the age of 50, Post’s reworked version of Emily Holt’s 1901 “Encyclopaedia of Etiquette,” titled “Etiquette––the Blue Book of Social Usage” was published. Countless etiquette books had already been written for centuries before, but within a year of Post’s book being published, the British press was poking fun at Americans. They delighted in mocking those they viewed as pushy and upwardly mobile, nouveau riche Americans, who bought Post’s book, striving to be part of what she called, “Best Society.”

Many English Papers Mock U. S. Customs

——————

Press Is Poking Fun at Supposed ‘Cultural Revolution’

LONDON— Certain English newspapers seem to delight in poking fun at American customs and manners, and some of the London publications make more or less a practice of parading the idiosyncrasies and habits of American tourists. This is especially true where American customs differ from the orthodox traits of the Englishman. 

A London newspaper with a circulation of 1,000,000 has featured the following paragraph regarding a “cultural revolution” which was taking place in the United States: “Cuspidors are being removed from countless American drawing rooms. Chewing gum is being scraped off parlor chairs. Several million Americans spend hours daily in practising the correct pronunciation of the words ‘aunt,’ ‘clerk,’ ‘derby’ and ‘advertisement’.” Then came the ironical information that “bootlegging is no longer the principal occupation of the cultured minds of America.” and that much more time is being spent “In reading the social culture advertisements and learning how easy it is to misbehave “unless one buys the book of good manners.” 

The British public is told that a great wave of etiquette is sweeping America. “Half America’s 110,000,000 people are now spending a large part of their time in watching the other half and seeing that they conform to the rules of social culture,” says this satirical Journal. Patrons of restaurants are pictured as spending so much time watching one another that they eat only about a half what they consumed before the wave of etiquette struck America. The paper quotes a Broadway manager as saying that “when a diner uses his knife on a salad or takes two bites at a strawberry, such a hush falls upon the assembly that one can even hear the orchestra.” — Associated Press Correspondence, 1923

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

Handshake Etiquette and Gender

If she does not hold her hand out to him, then he behaves as he was taught in dancing school when a small boy.

Hands in Greeting 

Dear Mrs. Post: Etiquette suggests that a man wait for a woman to extend her hand in greeting first. But what is a man to do when a hostess receiving at a party for her daughter, fails to put out her hand, in spite of the fact that etiquette also says that a guest should shake hands with a hostess and her daughter in the receiving line at such a party? 

Answer: If she does not hold her hand out to him, then he behaves as he was taught in dancing school when a small boy. In other words, he takes one step, cracks his heels and bows from the waist and says, “How do you do, Mrs. Brown.” – Mill Valley Record, 1937

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

Etiquette, Elbows and Emily

One blogger unaware of her 1937 stance, states that Emily Post's position​ evolved on many subjects but,"There was one standard, she refused to relax, which was the importance of chaperones." In Victorian society which she came of age in, "no proper young lady would risk the damage to her reputation that might be incurred by an unchaperoned trip or overnight stay with a young man. Until the end, Emily Post believed that was sage advice."

The fountains of sacred rivers flow upward, everything is turned topsy turvy. This plaint of Euripides is echoed 23 centuries after the Greek dramatist by no less a modern mentor of manners and morals than Emily Post, whose name is synonymous with etiquette. Mrs. Post is nonplussed by the confusion of modern life, by the way in which the younger generation has taken the bit in its teeth. 

But she is not worried as to the basic goodness of her fellow women, she told a New York audience. Instead of deploring the disappearance of the ancient institution of the chaperone, she chuckles over the interesting problems that have resulted; instead of teaching the conventions to her young readers she finds she must adapt the conventions to fit modern behavior. 

Etiquette means something more important in human conduct than choosing the right fork, a lapse of which Mrs. Post herself frequently is guilty since she is both near-sighted and absentminded; she also, let it be whispered so that your children do not hear, puts her elbows on the table at dinner when she feels like it, and says, "it really makes no difference." 

What does make a difference is eternal vigilance to be considerate of the rights of others, and to be kind. At the moment, Mrs. Post is deep in the study of a great problem; Is it correct for a woman to pay all or part of the dinner and entertainment check? She is brooding about this to the exclusion of all others and will write a book about it when she has completely made up her mind. 

In the daytime in the business world, she muses, a man and woman are equals, work as companions, lunch as co-workers. But in the evening matters are changed, the woman becomes a woman again and the man pays and pays. Is that fair, she wonders, when women are earning as much or more than the men who entertain them? Would it not be fairer if he takes her out once and she takes him another time? We await with bated breath her decision on this vital question. – San Bernardino Sun, 1937

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

Etiquette and Ambitious Parvenus

A fancy wig does not a gentleman make.

The Hallmark of the Social Climber

Nothing so blatantly proclaims a woman climber as the repetition of prominent names, the owners of which she must have struggled to know. Otherwise, why so eagerly boast of the achievement? Nobody cares whom she knows--nobody that is, but a climber like herself. To those who were born and who live, no matter how quietly, in the security of a perfectly good ledge above and away from the social ladder's rungs, the evidence of one frantically climbing and trying to vaunt her exalted position is merely ludicrous.

All thoroughbred women, and men, are considerate of others less fortunately placed, especially of those in their employ. One of the tests by which to distinguish between the woman of breeding and the woman merely of wealth, is to notice the way she speaks to dependents. Queen Victoria's duchesses, those great ladies of grand manner, were the very ones who, on entering the house of a close friend, said "How do you do, Hawkins?" to a butler; and to a sister duchess's maid, "Good morning, Jenkins." 

A Maryland lady, still living on the estate granted to her family three generations before the Revolution, is quite as polite to her friends' servants as to her friends themselves. When you see a woman in silks and sables and diamonds speak to a little errand girl or a footman or a scullery maid as though they were the dirt under her feet, you may be sure of one thing; she hasn't come a very long way from the ground herself. — Emily Post, 1922

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

Emily Post on Etiquette and Race Relations

and the tragedy of the lovers’ lives Emily Post and her family pulled apart in order to save New York’s “Best Society” and its Social Register.

“No matter who he may be, whether rich, or poor, in high life or low, the man who publicly besmirches his wife’s name, besmirches still more his own, and proves that he is not, was not, and never will be, a gentleman.” — Emily Post, (presumably referring only to those husbands who's wives were of the same racial background?) 

Blue Blood Marries “Colored Girl,” Emily Post Frowns - Judge Orders “Nipple” Check     

by William Norwich

Above- Domestic worker, Alice Beatrice Jones “Are the candidate’s friends as well as his family likely to be agreeable to the present members of the Club? If not, he is not admitted.”  Emily Post on Private Clubs

IN 1921, WHILE OUT motoring, society’s Leonard Kip Rhinelander met Alice Beatrice Jones, a domestic worker who lived near Stamford, Connecticut’s Orchard School, an inpatient clinic where young Leonard was seeking the cure for a variety of “nervous conditions” including stammering and extreme shyness.

Leonard Kip Rhinelander, right, in court

While Alice had a curative effect on Leonard, his family hoped it was just an upstairs-down- stairs dalliance. They hoped wrong. In 1924, shortly after Mr. Rhinelander turned 21, the couple married. Unbeknownst to all, Mrs. L. Kip Rhinelander became the first black woman in the New York Social Register—but not for long.

A reporter discovered that she was the daughter of “a colored man,” a former taxi driver who was almost unrecognizably mixed-race. Newspapers ran with headlines like “Blue Blood Weds Colored Girl.” For a few weeks, Leonard defended his wife, but his family won, urging the couple to separate “because of the Ku Klux Klan,” reported the New York Times. His lawyers filed for an annulment, claiming that Alice had hidden her race from Leonard.

Artist's depiction of Alice Beatrice Jones in the judge’s chambers

In the judge’s chambers, Alice, crying and holding on to her mother, was forced to remove various articles of clothing so the all-male and all-white jury could see, by the appearance of her nipples, back, and legs, that Leonard must have known prior to the marriage that she was not entirely of white blood. To the jury’s credit, the annulment was denied, the marriage up- held. Under a subsequent agreement, Alice received a sum of $32,500 plus $3,600 annually for life. (She and Leonard never reunited.)

The annulment was denied.  Even worse?  Mrs. L. Kip Rhinelander became the first black woman in the New York Social Register. But not for long, as Emily Post was on the case!

It was Emily Post, otherwise the champion of kindness and courtesy, who pushed the Social Register to drop Alice. Personalities over principles: Her people in Tuxedo Park were related by marriage to the Rhinelanders, you see. Mrs. Post got more than she bargained for. She sought only Alice’s ouster, but with it came Leonard’s as well.

A product of her time undoubtedly, even Emily Post couldn't quite figure out what she meant by “Best Society.”

 In the 1945 edition of Emily Post's book “Etiquette,” Post quoted a disgruntled reader of her work, bridling at the prospect of imitating New York's “Cafe Society,” a group known to be less mannerly than “pretentious and vulgar.” Just who, the reader demanded to know, are these Best People, whose example Post commends throughout her book? Her answer follows: “There is nowhere to go to see Best Society on parade, because parading is one thing the Best Society does not intentionally do. And yet it is true (and this is one of the things harder to make clear) that in the forefront of the public parade are to be found a certain few who are really best. But they are best in spite of, and not because of, the publicity they attract. When I say that ‘people of taste do this or think that,’ I naturally have in mind definite people whose taste is the most nearly perfect among all those whom I know. Or on occasion, perhaps, I go back in memory to the precepts of those whose excellence has remained an ideal. In other words when I write of people of quality or fashion or taste, I always select the individual people who ideally serve as models... In other words... Best Society, Best People, or People of Quality can all be defined as people of cultivation, courtesy, taste, and kindness -- people, moreover, who are very rarely disassociated from their backgrounds.” – Emily Post
–From “A Short History of Rudeness” by Mark Caldwell

Selections from Emily Post's “Etiquette”

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GOOD BEHAVIOR 
Far more important than any mere dictum of etiquette is the fundamental code of honor, without strict observance of which no man, no matter how "polished," can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles; he is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless, and the champion of justice--or he is not a gentleman. 

DECENCIES OF BEHAVIOR= 
A gentleman does not, and a man who aspires to be one must not, ever borrow money from a woman, nor should he, except in unexpected circumstances, borrow money from a man. Money borrowed without security is a debt of honor which must be paid without fail and promptly as possible. The debts incurred by a deceased parent, brother, sister, or grown child, are assumed by honorable men and women, as debts of honor. 

A gentleman never takes advantage of a woman in a business dealing, nor of the poor or the helpless. One who is not well off does not "sponge," but pays his own way to the utmost of his ability. One who is rich does not make a display of his money or his possessions. Only a vulgarian talks ceaselessly about how much this or that cost him. 
A very well-bred man intensely dislikes the mention of money, and never speaks of it (out of business hours) if he can avoid it. 

A gentleman never discusses his family affairs either in public or with acquaintances, nor does he speak more than casually about his wife. A man is a cad who tells anyone, no matter who, what his wife told him in confidence, or describes what she looks like in her bedroom. To impart details of her beauty is scarcely better than to publish her blemishes; to do either is unspeakable. Nor does a gentleman ever criticise the behavior of a wife whose conduct is scandalous. What he says to her in the privacy of their own apartments is no one's affair but his own, but he must never treat her with disrespect before their children, or a servant, or any one. 

A man of honor never seeks publicly to divorce his wife, no matter what he believes her conduct to have been; but for the protection of his own name, and that of the children, he allows her to get her freedom on other than criminal grounds. No matter who he may be, whether rich, or poor, in high life or low, the man who publicly besmirches his wife's name, besmirches still more his own, and proves that he is not, was not, and never will be, a gentleman. 

No gentleman goes to a lady's house if he is affected by alcohol. A gentleman seeing a young man who is not entirely himself in the presence of ladies, quietly induces the youth to depart. An older man addicted to the use of too much alcohol, need not be discussed, since he ceases to be asked to the houses of ladies. 

A gentleman does not lose control of his temper. In fact, in his own self-control under difficult or dangerous circumstances, lies his chief ascendancy over others who impulsively betray every emotion which animates them. Exhibitions of anger, fear, hatred, embarrassment, ardor or hilarity, are all bad form in public. And bad 
form is merely an action which "jars" the sensibilities of others. 

=THE HALL-MARK OF THE CLIMBER= 

Nothing so blatantly proclaims a woman climber as the repetition of prominent names, the owners of which she must have struggled to know. Otherwise, why so eagerly boast of the achievement? Nobody cares whom she knows--nobody that is, but a climber like herself. To those who were born and who live, no matter how quietly, in the security of a perfectly good ledge above and away from the social ladder's rungs, the evidence 

of one frantically climbing and trying to vaunt her exalted position is merely ludicrous. 

All thoroughbred women, and men, are considerate of others less fortunately placed, especially of those in their employ. One of the tests by which to distinguish between the woman of breeding and the woman merely of wealth, is to notice the way she speaks to dependents. Queen Victoria's duchesses, those great ladies of grand manner, were the very ones who, on entering the house of a close friend, said "How do you do, Hawkins?" to a butler; and to a sister duchess's maid, "Good morning, Jenkins." A Maryland lady, still living on the estate granted to her family three generations before the Revolution, is quite as polite to her friends' servants as to her friends themselves. When you see a woman in silks and sables and diamonds speak to a little errand girl or a footman or a scullery maid as though they were the dirt under her feet, you may be sure of one thing; she hasn't come a very long way from the ground herself.

Emily Post on Country Clubs

Country clubs are as a rule less exclusive and less expensive than the representative city clubs, but those like the Myopia Hunt, the Tuxedo, the Saddle and Cycle, the Burlingame, and countless others in between, are many of them more expensive to belong to than any clubs in London or New York, and are precisely the same in matters of membership and management. They are also quite as difficult to be elected to as any of the exclusive clubs in the cities—more so if anything, because they are open to the family and friends of every member, whereas in a man's club in a city his membership gives the privilege of the club to no one but himself personally. The test question always put by the governors at elections is: "Are the candidate's friends as well as his family likely to be agreeable to the present members of the Club?" If not, he is not admitted.

Nearly all country clubs have, however, one open door—unknown to city ones. People taking houses in the neighborhood are often granted "season privileges"; meaning that on being proposed by a member and upon paying a season subscription, new householders are accepted as transient guests. In some clubs this season subscription may be indefinitely renewed; in others a man must come up for regular election at the end of three months or six or a year.

Apart from what may be called the few representative and exclusive country clubs, there are hundreds—more likely thousands—which have very simple requirements for membership. The mere form of having one or two members vouch for a candidate's integrity and good behavior is sufficient.

Golf clubs, hunting clubs, political or sports clubs have special membership qualifications; all good golf players are as a rule welcomed at all golf clubs; all huntsmen at hunting clubs, and yet the Myopia would not think of admitting the best rider ever known if he was not unquestionably a gentleman. But this is unusual. As a rule, the great player is welcomed in any club specially devoted to the sport in which he excels.

In many clubs a stranger may be given a three (sometimes it is six) months' transient membership, available in some instances to foreigners only; in others to strangers living beyond a certain distance. A name is proposed and seconded by two members and then voted on by the governors, or the house committee.

The best known and most distinguished club of New England has an "Annex" in which there are dining-rooms to which ladies as well as gentlemen who are not members are admitted, and this annex plan has since been followed by others elsewhere.

All men's clubs have private dining-rooms in which members can give stag dinners, but the all men's clubs have private dining-rooms in which members can give stag dinners, but the representative men's clubs exclude ladies absolutely from ever crossing their thresholds. –Excerpt From: Post, Emily. “Etiquette.”

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