1850's Western Etiquette

The Yankee out West who recently wrote home to his mother that he had seen a live Hoosier, has sent his mother another epistle on Western etiquette.

"Western people go to their death on etiquette. You can't tell a man here that he lies, as you can down east, without fighting. A few days ago a man was telling two of his neighbors, in my hearing, a pretty large story. Says I, 'Stranger, that's a whopper.' Says, he, 'Lay there, stranger.' And in the twinkling of an eye, I found myself in the ditch, a perfect quadruped, the worse for tear and wear. 

Upon another occasion, says I to a man I never saw before, as a woman passed him, 'That isn't a specimen of your Western women, is it?' Says he, 'You are afraid of the fever and ague, stranger, aren't you?' Very much,' says I. 'Well,' replied he, 'That lady is my wife, and if you don't apologize in two minutes, by the honor of a gentleman, I swear that these two pistols," which he had in his hands,' can cure you of the disorder entirely— so don't fear, stranger.' So I knelt down and apologized. I admire the Western country much, but curse me if I can stand so much etiquette; it always takes me unawares." – Daily Alta, 1855

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

Etiquette and Les Petits Soins

A man learns to be graceful and deferential, au fait in all small things, gentle and kindly, not after he has attained to six feet and evening clothes, but while he is young and under his mother’s and his father’s tutelage.

Small Attentions and 

Etiquette

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Grace and Tactful Deference to the Trifles of Everyday Intercourse

“Les Petits Soins” do much toward making life pass pleasantly, a point which Harper's Bazar illustrates as follows; 

The man who helps you on or off with your wrap, who lowers or raises a window for you, who interposes his ready strength between you and a crowd, who finds a seat for you and treats you as though you were a queen or a queen's mother, is a man for whom you entertain a genuine regard. 

"Thomas is a perfect Gibraltar for honesty and goodness,” remarked a lady of anacquaintance "but he stalks in front of you into the dining room and marches out of it before you; he talks to you with his hat on his head and puffs the smoke of his cigar into your face; he calmly takes the best chair in the room and leaves you the hardest; he never knows anything about paying little attentions; he is like a man who may have a twenty dollar bill in his pocketbook, but never by any chance carries any small change.”

Probably, if the truth were known, Thomas and men like him were not accustomed in their boyhood, either to receive or to pay small attentions. A man learns to be graceful and deferential, au fait in all small things, gentle and kindly, not after he has attained to six feet and evening clothes, but while he is young and under his mother’s and his father’s tutelage. Old people are apt to resent obtrusive attention, and to regard with pathetic irritability the offered help which accentuates the fact of their declining years. 

None the less they like tactful recognition of their claim upon the service of their juniors. A man may safely yield the easy chair and the window where the light lingers latest to the grandmother who likes her comfort, and who takes her knitting or her sewing where she can see most readily. The strong shoulder of youth is meant for the bearing of burdens, and unless an elderly person be exceptionally unreasonable he or she will not persist in carrying loads which ought to he borne by those who are able to assume them. —1893

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

A 19th C. Etiquette Lament

Politeness Has Vanished

A few of the people in this room have no idea of the kindly spirit that seeks to make things pleasant for the humblest stranger, as well as for the guest.

I am not an old woman, and yet I have lived long enough to see the almost utter decadence of old-fashioned virtues. Take politeness, for instance—simple, old-fashioned politeness, that sprung from the heart, like a rose from the root. How little we see of it nowadays. 

We see a great deal of what you call company manners, learned from a book of etiquette, perhaps; but the kindly spirit that seeks to make things pleasant for the humblest stranger, as well as for the guest who comes in the van of a trumpeting herald, is growing rarer each year.


What if it does cost a little trouble to answer a question, or drop your task to direct a stranger; what is the use of being in the world at all if not to lend a helping hand where we can and make folks happy? 

The courtesy that is only shown to people we know, and to people who can respond perhaps in kind, is a spurious courtesy, as different from old-time politeness as a pink made of muslin to a sweet, carnation that grows in the garden and woos the bees. — Philadelphia Times, 1895

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

Etiquette is One's Duty

There are a great many who feel that good manners are effeminate. They have a feeling that rude bluntness is a great deal more manly than good manners. It is undoubtedly a great deal more beastly. But when men are crowded in communities, the art of living together is no small art.
 

Good Manners A Duty

Men often speak of good manners as an accomplishment. I speak of them as a duty. What, then, are good manners? Such manners as the usages of society have recognized as being agreeable to men. Such manners as take away rudeness, and remit to the brute creation all coarseness. 

There are a great many who feel that good manners are effeminate. They have a feeling that rude bluntness is a great deal more manly than good manners. It is undoubtedly a great deal more beastly. But when men are crowded in communities, the art of living together is no small art. 

How to diminish friction; how to promote ease of intercourse; how to make every part of a man's life contribute to the welfare and satisfaction of those around him; how to keep down offensive pride; how to banish the raspings of selfishness from the intercourse of men; how to move among men inspired by various and conflictive motives, and yet not have collisions— this is the function of good manners. It is not effeminate to be refined. And in this land no man should plead inability.

It is not effeminate to be refined. And in this land no man should plead inability.

There may be a peasantry in other countries, there may be a class in foreign lands who have no opportunities; there may be those whose toil is so continuous, whose opportunities for knowing what constitutes good manners are so few, and whose ignorance is so gross that they are excusable; but this is not the case with any within reach of my voice. That a man is a mechanic, is no reason why he should not be a gentleman. I affirm for every American citizen the right to be not simply a man, but a good mannered man.

I have seen men at the anvil who were as perfect gentlemen as men of books or men of society. I know no reason why a man who tans hides should not be a gentleman. I know no reason why a man who digs in the soil, a man who works in metals and woods, a man who builds, should not be a perfect gentleman. There is nothing in mechanical occupations which is incompatible with the highest courtesy. 

Every man is bound to observe the laws of politeness. It is the expression of good-will and kindness.

Not only is the violation of good manners inexcusable on ordinary grounds, but it is sinful. When, therefore, parents and guardians and teachers would inspire the young with a desire for the manners of a good society. It is not to be thought that they are accomplishments which may be accepted or rejected. Every man is bound to observe the laws of politeness. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is religious duty, and should be part of religious training.

There is a great deal of contempt expressed for what is called etiquette in society. Now and then there are elements of etiquette which perhaps might well be ridiculed ; but in the man there is a just reason for all those customs which come under the head of etiquette. There is a reason which has regard to the facility of intercourse. There is a reason in the avoidance of offense. There is a reason in comfort and happiness. And no man can afford to violate these unwritten customs of etiquette who wishes to act as a Christian gentleman. I may speak, also, of a tendency which is bred by our institutions —the want of veneration.

There are various ways in which this want of veneration shows itself. We often hear that there is not the same respect shown for the aged that there used to be. We know that there is very little respect shown for magistrates and men in authority. This is partly due, I think, to the institutions under which we live. One of the unfortunate effects derived from the early stages of democratic training is the sense of personal sovereignty; the feeling that we stand on as high ground as anybody else. Under monarchial institutions men are taught to revere the great and glorious in government. The feeling of reverence does not prevail to any great extent among us. I discern a great lack in this respect.       

This courtesy, which carries with it respect; this testimony of veneration to the aged; this yielding oneself in a thousand little society rites for the sake of making others happy— Oh! What brightness it gives to life!

Children, nowadays, are brought up to be pert, to be saucy, to be almost without restraint. They are brought up to have very little regard either for their parents or their superiors. And, although there are a great many Christian households whose children are rightly bred in this regard, it seems to me there has been a decay of that instruction which used to prevail, the tendency of which was to make children modest and respectful. We bring up our children to be old and smart and impertinent. This courtesy, which carries with it respect; this testimony of veneration to the aged; this yielding oneself in a thousand little society rites for the sake of making others happy— Oh! What brightness it gives to life! What beauty, what adornment it gives to Christian character!

There are many other points that I might speak of. The effect of punctuality and order; the relations which men sustain toward each other's convenience and necessities—these and a hundred other branches of this subject I might discourse upon, but it is not necessary that I should go into them. I have given such examples as I have merely as specimens, for the purpose of calling your attention to the minuteness and carefulness with which the Scripture inculcates these things. It enjoins not merely the right spirit, but the right spirit manifested in the most beautiful way.—Phillip A. Bell, in "The Elevator" 1873

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

Victorian Plea for Civic Etiquette

Never did Egyptian war chariot rush upon the foe more desperately than these fellows upon their victims; and the suave qui peut (every man for himself) is the constant alarm.

It would be pleasant to have a few questions of civic etiquette settled definitely; and when settled, sanctioned by some legal means to make them obligatory. Thus the side of the pavé to which the pedestrian is entitled and is currently understood to be at his right hand. Gentlemen – by which for the nonce we mean men of ordinary tact and manners – conform to this understanding, and give the pas to the passer. But boors and brutes, whether in broadcloth or satinet, are recusants; and they unfortunately are the very men, to avoid whom such regulations more especially exist. Is there no way of giving a prescriptive right a legal form? 

If a quiet, inoffensive personage, pursuing his ideas and his solitary path dinnerwards at the extreme right of the walk, and confiding in that fact to save him from concussion, is deliberately rundown and prostrated buy some overgrown scoundrel, is he to have no other amend than the – ‘D**n your eyes! Why don't you mind how you go!’ of the trespasser? Might not the ability to call a policeman – supposing, (and we admit the violence of the assumption,) such a character to be within vocal range – help to prevent these frequent acts of rudeness? Grievous, indeed, it is to see, as we are at times obliged to, delicate women run down and half annihilated by some wanton wanderer from ‘his own side.’

It strikes us that a treaty should once be entered into between equestrian and pedestrian to prevent these contre-temps.

Then again at the crossings. Upon what principal did the decisions upon cases arising thereabouts hinge? It is, perhaps, natural and just that the tide of unmounted mortals should be dammed, while a tide of vehicles is passing the street. It is no more than a reasonable act of forbearance. The unrestricted freedom of trade, and a desire to encourage commerce, would oblige us to yield where a train of loaded carts is fairly under weigh. But we have no right to demand some trifling consideration in return? Why is it that drivers of car and hack and milk-wagon charge relentlessly upon the “unprotected female,” the confused crowd, or the abstracted philosopher, creating, at each street corner, daily astounding miracles in the way of escapes? Never did Egyptian war chariot rush upon the foe more desperately than these fellows upon their victims; and the suave qui peut is the constant alarm. 

It is all very well for agile people, lithe man and brisk young folk, to be thus stirred up to unwonted exercise; but who can look on tender women or tottering sires fearfully frightened, and well-nigh ground into the cobble-stones, by these knights of the lash, without experiencing a glow of virtuous indignation? It strikes us that a treaty should once be entered into between equestrian and pedestrian to prevent these contre-temps. The law of etiquette should be solemnly determined, and a penalty should be annexed to violation, with competent authority in the hands of somebody to enforce it. The right of might is the present rule, and requires modification. – 1852, New York Times

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