Legacies of Lords and Their Queen

Lord Stanley, the 17th Earl of Derby, was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was a British soldier, diplomat, and racehorse owner. He was twice Secretary of State for War and also served as British Ambassador to France. His father, also “Lord Stanley” and the 16th Earl of Derby, was the sixth Governor General of Canada, and gave Canada a treasured national icon, hockey’s Stanley Cup.

On the late Lord Derby – The man who was the life and soul of the Conservative party in England for years was in private life one of the most genial and childlike of men. To the last, his spirit of natural gayety never left him, and his wife was, as it were, the shadow of himself. A story was current in London society about this characteristic buoyancy of his, and his son’s no less characteristic ponderosity, not to say boorishness. Dining with the Queen one day, he had been speaking of light and amusing matters, entirely sinking the statesman in the polished man of the world, when the Queen, during a pause in the conversation, suddenly asked him his opinion on a certain political matter then before Parliament. 

He gave it at once, whereupon his royal hostess, seemingly very much amused, said to him, “Lord Stanley (his eldest son now Lord Derby, and a very able politician) was dining with me the other day, and I asked him the same question, which he answered very differently; so I said to him, ‘Your father does not think so.’” ‘No, ma’am,’ he said very gravely, ‘I know it; but my father, ma’am, is a very sanguine man.’” Lord Derby laughed, and, assuming all his son’s cumbersome manner and cumbersome, guttural speech, said with a roguish twinkle in his eye, “And my son, ma’am, is a very cautious man.” 

This anecdote is a capital illustration of the oral characters to whom it refers, the Queen delighting and having great tact in drawing out her guests by judicious little remarks of her own. Thus those Windsor dinners, despite the very strict etiquette of the English court, were skillfully shorn of their tedium, and rendered a pleasant remembrance to all who partook of them. That, however, was before Prince Albert’s death. 

In his own house in St. James’ Square, London, Lord Derby was peculiarly charming. Indeed, he was more charming than absolutely clever, yet it was so strange to think that the same man who at the informal meal of luncheon (of which, unlike many men, he was very fond) could so sparkle with harmless vivacity of spirits, was the same whom other men, cleverer than himself, could, listen to without wearying for a whole night in the House of Lords. 

Sometimes at dinner, when his son was present (which never happened except under moral compulsion), he would purposely start a heavy argument, and keep up a close fire of political repartee with his solemn younger self, to the immense but suppressed amusement of his guests, while Lord Stanley would fall unconsciously into the trap, and miss the kindly satire of his father’s imitative voice. Then after awhile, the elder man would drop the argument as if weary of it, and conclude thus: “But then, Stanley, you are so much older and wiser, and know things so well. You must be right.”— Lady Blanche Murphy, in the October number of Lippincott's Magazine, 1872

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

Gilded Age American Women Lacked Manners?

A beautiful woman without good manners is a flower without fragrance. 

 

Good Manners 

This is the grace of which I think American women are becoming very careless. They are so beautiful as a race, so accustomed to conquest, that perhaps they are getting to believe that Pope's line, “Look in her face and you forget them all,” applies to manners; but a beautiful woman without good manners is a flower without fragrance. She is worse—she becomes a positive nuisance, presuming on her beauty and abusing one of God's greatest gifts. You must look at her, but you look to regret, to disapprove, instead of being charmed for life to “sweet looks married to graceful action,” you grow to despise and hate her. 

In a country like ours we must expect to find a frequent coupling of ignorance with wealth, of official station with awkwardness, high social position with bad manners— combinations more rarely remarked in the older and more settled states of the world. Kings and Queens must be decently well bred and well educated. They cannot help knowing the proper way to eat a dinner, they cannot help observing the properties of dress and etiquette, and the people immediately about them must follow their example. No such necessity exists here. 

We may have a Governor or Mayor who is entirely untrammeled by the laws of grammar and spelling, who uses his own sweet will in regard to his knife and fork, and who is still the proper person to receive the representative of a foreign power. In our cities how sickening it is to see the potentiality of some vulgar rich man who can “buy the crowd” in more senses than one!—How mournful to note the absence of good manners in some of our prominent literary and religious celebrities!— men whom you hesitate to ask to your house, although their talents are exercising so much influence on the world, and their names are on everybody's lips. 

The trouble lies in a deficiency of respect, a lack of training, an absence of something to look up to. The best bred men in America are the officers of the regular Army and Navy. They've been taught to look up to reverence authority and to be respectful. It never leaves them: they become the most dignified and the most simple men in the community. 

When women reach a larger grasp of the subject, and observe this great rule, that “the position of power is better than the show of it,” they will have advanced far beyond their present status. The end and aim of the week and the uncertain is to appear strong and well posed at whatever cost. It has apparently struck some women in the society of our new country, which must be on a shifting scale, that they appear to stand well by being disagreeable-that an air of hauteur and rudeness is becoming aristocratic. It is the mistake of ignorance, and would soon be cured by a careful study of the best models in Europe. — Lippincott's Magazine, 1871 

 

 Lippincott's Magazine was a monthly magazine of literature and science, published in Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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