British Royal Curtsey Etiquette

        

Queen Elizabeth II meeting with Norwegian royalty. Note the curtsey… – “There are no obligatory codes of behavior when meeting The Queen or a member of the Royal Family, but many people wish to observe the traditional forms.” – People Magazine
–Image source, Pinterest

According to the royal family's website, which has yet to be updated in full following the death of Queen Elizabeth in September 2022, “There are no obligatory codes of behavior when meeting The Queen or a member of the Royal Family, but many people wish to observe the traditional forms.”

“For men, this is a neck bow (from the head only) whilst women do a small curtsy. Other people prefer simply to shake hands in the usual way,” the page states.

As a gesture of respect, Princess Kate has dipped into deep curtsies to greet King Charles and Queen Camilla during formal events like the Order of the Garter ceremony day and their May coronation at Westminster Abbey. 

Her curtsies to the royal couple at the second annual Royal Carols: Together at Christmas last December even went viral online, though fans may have been surprised to see that Prince George and Princess Charlotte didn’t bow or curtsy as well.

The protocol around that goes back to their young age. Because George and Charlotte are children, they are not required to do so while greeting the King or Queen. – People Magazine, October, 2023

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

American Girls and Curtsey Etiquette

A proper curtsey to Queen Elizabeth II.
— Image source, Pinterest

Claim Girls Not Learning How To Walk

Most American girls do not know how to walk, dance or sit down, says Eveline McCullagh, authority on Royal Court etiquette. She's co-producer of the National Baby and Children's Show August 4 to 12.

Miss McCullagh’s business, among other things, is to train debutantes for presentation at court. She says: “It's appalling how ignorant American girls are about the rudiments of carriage and deportment. They slump. They giggle. They speak a strange patois of their own. They comb their hair in public. Most of them do not even know how to make a proper curtsy, for goodness sake!”

This decorative lady, who is given to large picture hats and flashing jewelry, was born in England of Irish parentage. She studied as a concert pianist in her childhood and took up the teaching of ballroom dancing and court etiquette when the family fortunes wavered.

Between tours of the United States, Miss McCullagh teaches the finer points of ballroom dancing to assorted royalty and financial moguls in the 60-room family home in England, which includes a 100-foot ballroom.

Among her pupils have been such notables as the Duke of Kent, King Alphonso of Spain, King Farouk, the King of Siam, the Maharajah and Maharanee of Patiala, India, and some of the better known American movie stars, such as Bob Hope, Van Johnson, Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer— By Dorothy Roe, AP Women’ s Editor, Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1956

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

Children “Make Their Manners”

We children all turned out in the snow on the sides of the road, the boys in a row on one side, and the girls on the other, for we were always taught to turn out and ‘make our manners’ when teams passed us; and if a scholar went to school and told the teacher that Moses or Hannah did not make their manners when the gentlemen passed the night before, the teacher would call them up and punish them.

          Of Boys and Girls Bows and Curtsies

“There you are with another bag of candy, I declare! What with chocolate and kisses, caramels and lemon-balls, and I don't know what all! You children nowadays can hardly know where to begin eating candy, nor when to stop.” “Didn't folks always have candy, same as they do now, grandma?” “Why, no, indeed! I can remember the first candy I ever saw; I didn't know what it was.” "Oh! oh! How funny! Do tell us about it.” “Well, it was as much as seventy years ago, for I wasn’t more than 5 or 6 years old. It was way down in New Hampshire, in the winter, and I went to school. One night when we were going home from school, a whole roadful of us, the stage-coach came along, that was before cars or depots were ever thought of. Folks traveled by stage in those days. We children all turned out in the snow on the sides of the road, the boys in a row on one side, and the girls on the other, for we were always taught to turn out and ‘make our manners’ when teams passed us; and if a scholar went to school and told the teacher that Moses or Hannah did not make their manners when the gentlemen passed the night before, the teacher would call them up and punish them.

“We all stood there in two rows, and as the stage passed us, the boys made their bows, and we girls our courtesies. The load of passengers smiled and bowed to us, and one very pretty lady tossed out a paper of something. Someone picked it up, and inside were perhaps half a dozen  long, round, white things. ‘Candles.’ we said. They did look like that. There was a house close by, and we all trooped in there with our treasure. ‘I know what that is,’ said the woman, as soon as she unrolled the paper. ‘It's candy. I saw lots of it in the stores when I was to Boston last summer,’ “What’s it good for? we asked.  ‘Good to eat,’ she said. ‘It’s sweet and nice, but they do say it hurts the teeth. Let me divide it among you all.’ That's what the lady meant to have done. I s'pose, so she broke up the sticks of candy and gave as each a little piece. I don't suppose mine was more than an inch or two long, but I thought it was the nicest thing I ever tasted.” “I'm glad I didn't live in those days, grandma.'” “I dare say you are. One thing's sure. We had less candy and more manners, and may be it was just as well for us, after all.”—Youth's Companion, 1898

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

Etiquette and the Curtsey

The curtsey is a traditional gesture of greeting, in which a girl, or a woman, bends her knees while bowing her head. It is the female equivalent of male bowing in Western cultures. Judith Martin, (aka "Miss Manners") explains its knee bend derived from a "traditional gesture of an inferior to a superior."

The Charm of the Curtsey 

A young Englishwoman of title visited this country recently she expressed astonishment at the ignorance of the art of formal social behavior which American girls displayed. They did not know how to bow correctly, the curtsey seemed to have become an obsolete social form here; they had not learned the graceful way to proceed down the length of a receiving line, and there were countless other social manners and customs, held in high esteem by foreigners, which seemed to have been neglected in the early training of American girls, she said.

Then it happened that teachers of social decorum began to consider how to improve the girls' social bearing, and in looking over the field they decided that a touch of quaintness and old fashioned forms would be both charming and suitable. So the curtsey was introduced, and now it is one of the first lessons in etiquette taught the schoolgirl. 

Its revival is expected to have a decided influence on the deportment of the future debutante, for with the development of the curtsey there is gradually growing a more formal attitude among young persons toward older men and women.

The curtsey is a charming greeting from youth to its kind, or from youth to its elders. It is graceful, quaint, has dignity and respect in every movement, and when well executed is as attractive as any form of greeting we have. Young girls master its intricacies of movements readily and after a few lessons are as quick to adapt it to social life as were their grandmothers. 

One grandmother who had not seen her grandchildren since they were in the pinafore stage was surprised the other day to observe one child, aged 15, curtsey to her mother's friends in the drawing room. It was the hour before the serving of the informal dinner to which a few friends had been invited and the children were having 10 minutes' enjoyment with the "company." When the time came for the little group of boys and girls, ranging in aged from 8 to 15, to withdraw while the older persons proceeded to the dining room, each little one curtseyed gravely and gracefully. 

The grandmother was enchanted with the performance and expressed a hope that all children would learn the good old fashioned style of greeting and leave-taking, which is one of the sweetest tributes youth can pay to age, or exalted position. — San Francisco, 1912

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