Etiquette for a “Mrs. Malaprop”

“Mrs. Malaprop has climbed up on her husband’s bank account through the usual ways into ‘society,’ and while she gets along very well occasionally lapses a little in conversation, the lapses are being carefully recorded by her dear new friends.” —  Having a lot of money did not automatically or necessarily mean one was automatically accepted into Gilded Age society... The terms “parvenus,” “nouveau riche,” and “new money,” became slurs against someone desperate to be accepted by society —  especially in Washington D.C. and New York society. Without the right education and the right connections, though, much money was spent to attempt to impress others. 

Mrs. Malaprop 

Society Woman at the Capital Who is Credited with Some Unique Sayings

Washington society, like every other society, has its Mrs. Malaprop, a good lady who has said several good things of an inappropriate kind and gets the credit at the clubs and dinner parties of having said ten times as many, says the Boston Herald. The Mrs. Malaprop of Washington, is one of the new-rich who have revolutionized the architecture and the society of Washington. The “smart” society people go to their beautiful house, eat their delicious terrapin, drink their perfect champagne and get off witty remarks about them — if possible quoting them or pretending to, so as to make them ridiculous—all of which, I need not say, is considered quite good etiquette, even if it is not good manners. Well, Mrs. Malaprop has climbed up on her husband’s bank account through the usual ways into “society,” and while she gets along very well occasionally lapses a little in conversation, the lapses are being carefully recorded by her dear new friends. 

To the daughters of one of the most distinguished diplomats she is reported to have said: “I am so glad to meet you. I have been hearing you spoken of so much as the pretty Miss Legation, the clever Miss Legation. Do tell me which of you is the pretty one and which is the clever one.” Again to a famous army officer and his wife, who were telling how much they had enjoyed her dinner party, she cheerily said; “I thought you would like to meet some nice people.” Being presented to a plainly dressed woman whose name she did not catch, she said in the course of conversation, that Washington was a delightful city for people in moderate circumstances. “There are so many pretty little houses such as you, madam, might find suitable,” she said, addressing, unwittingly, one of the richest of the old residents, whose fine house on Lafayette Square is almost historical, and who had the tact and kindness not to set her right. Perhaps Mrs, Malaprop’s most famous speech is of as late date as last spring, just before she went abroad. Coming down to meet a morning caller in her wrapper, Mrs. Malaprop said, sweetly, “You really must excuse me for coming down in my non de plume, but I have been busy packing all the morning.” — The Morning Press, 1892

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the 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