French Leave Etiquette

Gilded age calling card tray with card. T ake your visiting card and write “P. P. C.” on it, which is the French for “Pour prendre congé” and means “to take leave.” 

Taking French Leave

If you are unexpectedly obliged to leave a town where you have been entertained without returning any calls, send back a card to those to whom you are indebted. Take your visiting card and write “P. P. C.” on it, which is the French for “Pour prendre congé” and means “to take leave.” Send these cards by post to all those to whom you owe calls. This will show that you are not unmindful of them and were prevented from calling.–The Morning Union, 1915

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

Etiquette and “Pour Prendre Congé”

The modern form of “Pour prendre congé”? Texting the question and receiving an answer via text. —  Well over a hundred years before texting was created, one had to leave a card with P.p.c. written on it, along with the date when one would return to let friends know their travel return date.

“Etiquette with all its littlenesses and niceties is founded upon a central idea of right and wrong.”—Dr. J. Brown

What Readers Ask— “Recently some neighbors of ours left to live in another state and they have now sent around cards marked P. P. C. with their, new address written at the lower part of the card. What is the significance of this?” 

The letters which should have been written “P.p.c.” stand for the French words “Pour prendre congé” —that is “to take leave.” These cards should have been sent around before your neighbors left. 

It is customary to send them when about to leave for a long journey or when changing one’s residence. For a new place, one should simply give the new address, engraved or written at the lower right hand corner. — By Mary Marshall Duffee, 1917

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

Etiquette for Extra Outer Envelopes

“When invitations are sent by post, an extra outer envelope is always used, and one such may enclose all of the invitations addressed to one family. When delivered by messenger, the outer wrap is no longer used.” 

Using the “Post” 

Manners and Customs Practiced in Polite Society

The post has become as suitable a method as any for conveying social messages. In the stately English etiquette, which our people have so largely adopted, it is considered thoroughly respectful to send cards and invitations by post. It is certainly as complementary to send them by post as by the dirty fingers of a hired messenger. 

In all countries, a card sent by private hand in an envelope is equivalent to a visit. In England, one sent by post is equivalent to a visit, excepting after a dinner. Nothing should ever be penciled on a card sent by post except the letters P.P.C. 

When invitations are sent by post, an extra outer envelope is always used, and one such may enclose all of the invitations addressed to one family. When delivered by messenger, the outer wrap is no longer used. A messenger was once considered the only courteous medium for delivering a ladies social messages, but the conveniences of the postal delivery have made it an approved and satisfactory substitute. — San Diego Bee, 1887

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

Calling Card Etiquette Trends 1903

The hostess who sits down in the hush following the 7 o’clock diminishing clatter of good-byes at the end of her tea, can read a good deal of social law as she runs over the contents of the silver tray that has been heaping since 4 o'clock in the butler’s hand. There is the married woman’s card. It is always a trifle over three inches long and a trifle over two inches wide. Some are larger. Mrs. Hobart uses a card three and a half by almost two and a half. Mrs. Henry Crocker does also.

THE bit of pasteboard is a trifle, perhaps, but it is one of the most significant trifles in this complex world, where the knot of a tie or the size of a pompadour may testify to the wearer’s social status. The calling card may seem even less than either of these, but it tells far more. Wouldn’t our ancestors back in the days of primeval man have thought us a strange race, if they could have known that we were to be judged by a two-by-three-inch scrap of pasteboard, on which only a name— perhaps an address—sometimes a day, is engraved? And yet, after all, how simple a diploma that two-by-three card is, certifying to our knowledge of the forms correct.

The hostess who sits down in the hush following the 7 o’clock diminishing clatter of good-byes at the end of her tea, can read a good deal of social law as she runs over the contents of the silver tray that has been heaping since 4 o'clock in the butler’s hand. There is the married woman’s card. It is always a trifle over three inches long and a trifle over two inches wide. Some are larger. Mrs. Hobart uses a card three and a half by almost two and a half. Mrs. Henry Crocker does also. 

Mrs. Hugh Tevis has a card that is only three by two, no larger than an unmarried woman’s. It is fashionable to engrave the married name in full, as “Mrs. Josephine Sadoc Tobin” and “Mrs. Henry Edwards Huntington.” This, however, depends somewhat on a husband’s choice, and if he has always been in the habit of writing his name with initials he usually prefers that his wife should follow suit. Both initials are sometimes written, as “Mrs. S. G. Murphy,” or the middle initial, as “Mrs William H. Crocker.” Mrs Crocker, by the way, has no period after the abbreviation “Mrs.” This is modern and smart.

The head of a family often uses only the surname, as “Mrs. Hobart.” but this is not advisable unless the name is uncommon. When the address is engraved on the card it appears in the lower right-hand corner; the day at home in the left. A card may have either, both or neither. Mrs. Henry T. Scott has a card giving her Burlingame address in the right, her San Francisco address in the left corner. If one lives on a street corner it is smarter to write out that statement as, “Laguna and Washington streets, northwest corner” instead of the simple house number. If the card is. to be used while you are away from home it is good form to engrave merely “San Francisco” for the address. A card used in making farewell calls has “P. P. C.” in the left corner. This is an abbreviation of the French form– “Pour prendre congé ” or “To take leave.” 

A widow’s card shows her own Christian name instead of her husband’s. Thus, “Mrs. Jane Stanford” would be according to custom, although Mrs. Stanford is in the habit of signing herself “Mrs. Leland Stanford.” The width of the mourning border is a matter of personal taste. Sometimes it is almost a third of an inch wide; sometimes hardly more than a black line. – San Francisco Call, 1903

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

Etiquette "As She is Practiced"

Etiquette is, in short, doing a lot of queer things for fear that if you don’t a lot of people will conclude that you are lacking in refinement, if not common sense.

A writer in the Baltimore Sun has some interesting sidelights on etiquette that contain more truth than poetry: 

“Etiquette is preceding a lady up the stairs and tagging along behind her down the stairs. It is not drinking out of a finger-bowl. It is watching the hostess out of the corner of our eye to see which fork she is using. It is trying to cut the meat off a chicken bone without taking it in your fingers as you do in the bosom of the family. It is leaving your napkin unfolded after a meal to show your hostess that you trust her not to use it again. 

It is burning your tongue with boiling hot coffee rather than pour the coffee into the saucer to cool it. It is answering a formal invitation by speaking of yourself in the third person as though you were somebody else. It is marking a visiting card ‘P. P. C.’ (Pour Prendre Congé) to show that you are going away and ‘P. T. O.’ if you have written something on the back and bending the visiting card in the middle to indicate something or other that at the moment you can’t remember. 

It is, if you are a hostess, having the maid serve you first to prove to your guests that you are not going to poison them without dying, too. It is giving your left arm to a lady so that your right arm is free to use your sword in an emergency. It is waiting for a lady to speak first so that she may have the privilege of cutting you if she wants. It is addressing as ‘Esquire’ anyone to whom you hope to sell life insurance or a bond. It is starting to eat something as soon as you have been helped to it, instead of waiting for everybody to be helped, thereby subtly insinuating to your hostess that her servants are ideal and are going to get around to the others in no time at all. 

Etiquette is, in short, doing a lot of queer things for fear that if you don’t a lot of people will conclude that you are lacking in refinement, if not common sense.” — Editorial Page of Desert Sun News, 1937

 

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