Pettiness Interfered with Graciousness

The Lady acted in an unladylike manner by publicly cutting the widow… Lady Geddes wouldn’t receive the widow of Terence MacSwiney herself, and she wouldn’t even associate herself with her hostess? It is a curious state of mind.– Public domain image of widow, Muriel MacSwiney, the left-wing activist and Irish republican, in December 1920

Petty Lady Geddes and the Widow MacSwiney

THE British Ambassador in Washington should speak to his wife. He should give a few kindly words of advice to the Lady Geddes. She resigned as a Patroness of the Washington Opera because one of the other patronesses has been too gracious a hostess of Mrs. Muriel MacSwiney. Perhaps there is some hidden point of etiquette in this that would be obvious to English society, but is not so apparent to Washington.

We don't know about these things. The lady feels her caste – and caste is a strange thing. It comes from the Portuguese word casta, meaning “pure.” In India one of lower caste cannot approach a member of higher caste except as a menial; the touch of an inferior is equivalent to pollution. Perhaps it is this sort of reasoning that sponsors the action of Lady Geddes. She wouldn’t receive the widow of Terence MacSwiney herself, and she won't even associate herself with her hostess. It is a curious state of mind.

Of course, Terence MacSwiney died in jail - in stubborn rebellion against the British government. And though some people consider him a martyr, Lady Geddes and her friends must look upon him as an idiot, a fanatic, a traitor, or at least a very foolish man. Or there may be other reasons. The Lady Geddes’ objections to Mrs. MacSwiney may be social and not political. She is the wife of a very successful, self-made man who made himself a power in England by remaining alive and working. 

Mrs. MасSwiney is the widow of another man who never made a material success of life and whose greatest power has come through his death. Lady Geddes must see that there is considerable difference here. And so she refuses to be linked in society with a simple Irish widow – of which there is an increasing number in the world. But Ambassador Geddes, if he cares at all for American popularity, should have a confidential little chat with his wife. She needs it. – San Francisco Call, December, 1920

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

Etiquette and Sport Shooting

“Sport enters into polities, it colors literature, it controls society. It affects dress, manners, etiquette and entertainments, the relations of master and servant, man and wife, father and son —the characteristics of whole classes in the state. It is one of the principal causes and results of aristocracy to-day.” – Image of Downton Abbey hunt shooting party scene source, Pinterest 

“Let's Go Out and Kill Something”? – Devotion to Sport Not Elevating

One-third of the soil of England is devoted to the pleasures of the aristocracy, the principle of which is sport. The story is old of the foreigner who stayed at a country house where every morning the men of the party exclaimed: “Tis a fine day! Let’s go out and kill something.” The picture is not exaggerated. 

Many Englishmen of fortune seem to suppose they are sent into this world to hunt foxes and shoot grouse and deer. This is the purpose of their existence and the occupation of their lives. Among the aristocracy the man who does not shoot is an anomaly, almost a monstrosity. There must be something wrong about him.

All the engagements of the upper classes, political or social, in town or country, are made with reference to sport. The fashionable season and the parliamentary season are determined by the game laws. Country house parties in winter, and tours to the continent in summer depend upon what is called “close times.” 

Courtships are carried on, marriages postponed to suit the convenience of sportsmen. Great political revolutions are precipitated or deferred, questions of peace or war are taken up or let alone because ministers want to go to Scotland, because grouse shooting begins in August, and fox hunting is not over till February. 

The gravest crisis in the history of a government is neglected when legislators are anxious to be off to the moors, and the sessions of parliament can not be held till the frost is out of the ground and the foxes begin to breed.

Estates are purchased and houses built because of the proximity of the covers; properties are valuable for the same reason. Scores of fortunes are lost through the excessive love of sport. Every circumstance and event of English high life revolves around this point, and the results are as visible as those of religion. 

Sport enters into polities, it colors literature, it controls society. It affects dress, manners, etiquette and entertainments, the relations of master and servant, man and wife, father and son —the characteristics of whole classes in the state. It is one of the principal causes and results of aristocracy to-day.

More often, however, society is combined with sport. At a great house the party is usually large. The men sally out each morning “to kill something,” and sometimes the ladies accompany them. Of late years, a few of these are shooters themselves. This is, of course, when the game is driven to the guns; at such times the bags made are enormous, hundreds of birds often falling to a single sportsman. The labor is less, and the glory; but the boasting is prodigious.

The devotion to sport that characterizes the English aristocracy is not elevating. It not only makes them indifferent to more serious occupations, taking the hereditary legislators from the affairs of state to which they are supposed to apply themselves, and often distracting them from their own more important interests, but the incessant practice is brutalizing. 

To be forever planning and inflicting death and pain even on animals cannot be refining. The English nature is coarse in itself, but sport renders it still more so. Like everything else in England this pleasure is a matter of privilege. Game is strictly preserved for the great. The unprivileged may not carry a gun. 

Every Englishman loves sport, the peasant as well as the peer, but poaching is a criminal offense, and the poor man is sent for two months, six months, or even a year, to jail for doing what gives the rich man his keenest satisfaction. Five thousand committals for poaching are made every year in England alone,-Adam Badeau's Letter, 1886

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