Etiquette, Snobbery and Bohemia

Finding oneself among those free-spirit bohemians evidently happens by accident– The word bohemian has two meanings: one is a person from Bohemia, a historical region in central Europe, and the other is ‘a person who is living an unconventional and artistic life.” The story of Puccini’s popular opera “La Boheme,” is set in 1830’s Paris and shows the “Bohemian lifestyle” of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.

What is Bohemia, you ask? Is it the kingdom where God's charity take precedence to etiquette? No. That's what it ought to be. Is it a kingdom in which people enjoy that which they think they ought to like? No. That’s what it might be, but the results might be disastrous.

It is a kingdom where bottles are more plenteous than baths, curaçao more common than corsets, borrowing more fashionable than paying back; hours, wages, doctrines and meals irregular? Yes, my children; that's about what it is.

Few persons travel straight, with serious intent, to Bohemia. They get there by accident. They take the train to Long Branch or Newport, and it breaks down. When they look to see what station they have stopped at they see no name. But they do see an absence of carriages and liveries, and are there by accident. They take the train aire.

There is also a dearth of children, and a few irrelevant little things only have one name apiece. However, the ladies make up for this by having three each. It is also noticeable that the ladies work harder than the gentlemen in this settlement, and that the latter do not encourage the bootblacks or savings banks.

Then one day the traveler who has halted by accident at this strange settlement, having gained the above impressions, says over the spaghetti (of course, all Bohemian rites are observed over the spaghetti): “By the bye– excuse my ignorance – but where am I?” And the inhabitant questioned answers, smiling strangely: ‘You’re in Bohemia. Isn't it jolly? Say, could you accommodate me with five dollars?’

Then the traveler knows it is Bohemia. Understand me, I am not disparaging this section any more than I should disparage that region called society if anyone in that class needed my advice.

Society is no more entertaining or generous than Bohemia– at least so I am told by Bohemians who have been invited to dinners in Society– when Society gets hard up for amusement and derives a little by watching to see if Bohemia can pick out an oyster fork, or say, “Thank you sir.”– Outlook, 1908

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

Having Money vs Having Manners

 

The same people who say they disdain manners are outraged when they are treated rudely by those who are of their own circumstances or whose services they are buying. Why, then, does etiquette's reputation for abetting snobbery persist? — It is believed that the word “snobbery” came into use for the first time in 1820’s England. According to Wikipedia, “‘Snob’ is a pejorative term for a person that believes there is a correlation between social status and human worth.” The word “snob” also refers to a person that feels superiority over those from lower education levels, lower “social classes,” or other social areas.

The Poor Can Have Manners, and the Rich Can Lack Taste

Considering the frenzy of interest in consumer goods in this society, it is astonishing to Miss Manners that so many people presume that the gentle art of manners is based on a preoccupation with money. Etiquette, it is widely believed, consists of forms of behavior requiring fortunes in silverware, evening clothing and unwieldy vehicles. Most people only feel they need etiquette on occasions when they are spending a great deal of money putting on a wedding, for example. Otherwise, they can apparently make do with rudeness. 

Dear, dear. You can imagine how upsetting Miss Manners finds this. She doesn't know which offends her more, the people who seek to demonstrate their genuineness by eschewing manners or those who are scrambling to learn them to serve their social ambitions. They both end up being rude. The truth is that there is very little relationship between manners and money. Certainly, Miss Manners has never noticed any preponderance of politeness on the part of the rich. Good manners are, first of all, free. And that is not generally true of status symbols.

Secondly, they cover all forms of outward human behavior, from those needed for the most routine daily encounters in households or on highways, to the special ones for special occasions. And thirdly, the consequences of violating them in ordinary life are more unpleasant than the effects of small technical errors on formal occasions, when it would be rude of other people present to notice. The same people who say they disdain manners are outraged when they are treated rudely by those who are of their own circumstances or whose services they are buying. Why, then, does etiquette's reputation for abetting snobbery persist? 

Miss Manners attributes part of it to the fact that one always thinks of familiar behavior as being simply natural, and strange behavior as etiquette. Everyday behavior is therefore classified as nice or mean, rather than good manners or bad manners, while the self-consciousness one has on special occasions leads one to identify their traditional practices as manners. But there is also a mistaken belief that knowledge and possession of expensive things are themselves a demonstration of propriety. People sometimes try to lead Miss Manners into condemning inexpensive goods especially clothing made of synthetic materials as “tacky.” If “tacky” is intended to mean “improper,” they are quite wrong. 

Propriety and impropriety have nothing to do with how much one can afford to spend. That someone does not wear expensive fabrics has nothing whatever to do with the quality of the manners that person may exhibit. If “tacky” refers to taste, then there is a connection with money. Rich people may have not only the money to spend, but also more leisure to learn to distinguish quality in material objects. Miss Manners has nothing whatever against such an educational activity, which can be great fun and is not unknown among people who do not have money. 

Since the invention of the museum, people can study and enjoy things without owning them and the rich should remember that their servants usually know more about the quality of their silver and linens, from cleaning them, than the owners do. None of this is within the province of manners, however. Etiquette’s interest in taste, as that applies to consumer items, is chiefly in combating ostentation. What is improper is the diamond bracelet worn for tennis, the car or house referred to as a “limousine” or “mansion,” the designer label any inappropriate display of wealth, or preoccupation with the cost of one’s own or other people’s possessions. In fact, there is hardly anything more rude and vulgar than an active interest in whether someone else's clothes are made of synthetic materials. — Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, 1987

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

Etiquette, Snobbery and Women

“One hears often of a self-made man. He likes to advertise his rise in life. But you never hear of a self-made woman; you never hear a rich woman refer to the time when she was still a mill girl or a servant.” – Virginia Harlan, 1910

Cautioning on the Snobbishness of Women

Women, as a class, are distinctly snobbish. Although it is no extenuation, I grant you that there are snobbish men; but they are altogether out proportioned by the women of snobdom. You will please understand that in the course of these lines I shall refer consistently to the “average’’ woman. You, my dear feminine reader, of course, are not an average woman, and so may judge my statements impartially. Woman, at a very early age, reveals her innate tendency towards snobbishness. 

The little girl with any pretentions to station, gives herself absurd airs when brought into contact with another small child of a lower sphere. Let the small daughter of a tradesman go to a “school for young ladies”— save the mark—and she at once becomes the center of a certain scornful curiosity. Her school mates sneer and giggle at her and, despite their breeding, are not above the sniff ostentatious. They make it very clear to her that they look down on her for the awful fact that her father “keeps a shop.” As the little girl grows up her snobbishness grows with her. In her teens, she plays field games with restraint, hesitating to speak to any other girl players, lest they be of grosser birth than hers. 

Consider the anxiety of the average woman to impress her friends. In order to foster the idea that she has a large dress allowance, she is not above stinting herself in food, so as to have more money to spend on personal adornment. And all these “rolled gold” brooches, and “simulation diamond” rings, and “Peruvian pearl” necklaces — have they not been invented in order to minister to the feminine craving to create an impression? Surely there can be nothing much more snobbish than imitation jewelry! 

One hears often of a self-made man. He likes to advertise his rise in life. But you never hear of a self-made woman; you never hear a rich woman refer to the time when she was still a mill girl or a servant. The woman whose husband is now “getting on well” is always ready to sacrifice her old friends to her snobbishness. Such friends as she does not ruthlessly “cut” she patronizes, and very often they submit to it out of a mere snobbish desire to keep friends with someone rich and influential, who may ask them to dinner with “swells” at a moment's notice—if some guest happens to be unable to come.– By Virginia Harlan, 1910

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

Of Snobs and Manners

Snobbishness consists not of a set of manners, but of a state of mind. It’s possible to eat cabbage with a knife, and still be the most and most intolerable of snobs. – According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word snob does not come from “sine nobilitate.” Sine nobilitate means “without nobility,” which makes it feel as though it could be the origin for snob. The only problem with this is that the various senses of snob which are concerned with social class and suchlike were not the first meanings of this word. When snob first began to be found in print, it was used as a term for a shoemaker, or cobbler. By the 1830s snob had taken on meanings that were directly related to class, but not in the way that we use it today. This early 19th century sense was “a person not belonging to the upper classes; one not an aristocrat.” In the middle 19th century the word took on the meaning of “one who blatantly imitates, fawningly admires, or vulgarly seeks association with those he regards as his superiors.” Finally, by the beginning of the 20th century snob had come to be used to mean “one who tends to rebuff the advances of those he regards as inferior; one inclined to social exclusiveness.”

Listen, World! One hears a good deal of impolite speech in these days when humanity is being reshuffled for a new deal. How we crow over the downfall of crowns and gloat over the fact that the laborer is at last coming into his own! I gloat with the rest, for I've always felt that the bumper share of the crops should go to the chaps who sow and and them. Nevertheless, it may be well to pause before call too many names. For instance, there's this business of labeling people snobs. The popular definition of a snob is anything that rides in an automobile, understands French, and takes lemon with his tea. There are other distinguishing marks, these are sufficient to you as one of the obnoxious breed. 

Now that's all wrong, dear comrade Hoi Polloi. Snobbishness consists not of a set of manners, but of a state of mind. It’s possible to milk a dozen cows a day, tend a potato patch, split wood, butcher hogs and eat cabbage with a knife, and still be the most and most intolerable of snobs. It’s also possible to own six sets of cars, a gold dinner service, and winter in Honolulu, and still be the most neighborly and helpful of commoners. Odd as it may seem, a flannel shirt is no guarantee of a knightly heart beneath, nor does a silken BVD invariably clothe a knight. 

Many a man rides in an automobile because he has earned it by honest, fair dealing, by industry and intelligence. Many a man reposes in a gutter, because he’d be gutter bound if you gave him a million. And there’s quite as much intolerance, suspicion, meanness and lack of dignity in the tenement as there is in the mansion. Let us by all means do away with social industrial injustice. But while we’re doing: it, let us also remember that individual character is the final, determining factor in a man’s success or failure. The surest sign of a weak or snobbish nature, is a tendency is to blame or envy or flutter the other chap. The Lord gave you two legs. Stand on them and stop making faces at the rest of the world. – Written and Illustrated By Elsie Robinson, 1923

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

Etiquette, Snubs and Snobs

It is believed that the word “snobbery” came into use for the first time in 1820’s England. According to Wikipedia, “‘Snob’ is a pejorative term for a person that believes there is a correlation between social status and human worth.” The word “snob” also refers to a person that feels superiority over those from lower education levels, lower “social classes,” or other social areas.

 Who is the Real Snob?

I have noticed more than once that a certain American newspaper which toadies to “the people” makes a point whenever the opportunity offers of denouncing as a “snob” our present Ambassador to France, Mr. Henry White. Within a day or two it has made an unusually vicious attack, asserting that Americans come home from Paris complaining bitterly of having been snubbed at the Embassy, the while our distinguished representative was groveling at the feet of British Lords and French of high degree; or some such nonsense. Once or twice before this I have been tempted to make comment on these charges, not as a matter of duty to Mr. White, with whom I have but the slightest acquaintance, but to the country which sent him abroad as one of its most conspicuous representatives. 

To begin with the specific charge, no man was ever less of a snob than Mr. White. He has now been in the Diplomatic Service of the United States for 26 years, and has left his record wherever he has been accredited as one of the few American gentlemen with whom Europeans could find no fault— as simple and high-bred in manner as he is magnetic, intelligent and sympathetic. With more reason to be spoiled than any American we have ever sent abroad, he has never lost his balance, his courtesy, his sincerity. I have quoted him for years, both in Europe and at home as the American Diplomatist of whom we have the greatest reason to be proud; and not only for his in comparable manners, for his warm and genuine Americanism that no amount of old world polish could hide if it would. What does the average person mean when he uses the word “snob?” This is a question which has often puzzled me, and I have a faint idea that it is a pet word with people who have been, or fancy they have been, snubbed; there being a confused sense of relationship in their minds between the two words. 

A writer of the newspaper I allude to is one of the most pitiful snobs extant, as I understand the word. While toiling at a desk, liable to discharge any moment by his imperious master, he is yet a “climber” in New York society, and even in a business conversation can not refrain from mentioning the names of certain famous leaders, hinting that they are his intimate friends. Yet at the time of the Algeciras conference, he lamented at great length in print, that we were to be represented by a “snob” like our Ambassador to Italy, as Mr. White then was, instead of being grateful that the President had appointed a gentleman, as well as an experienced Diplomatist. His own attack reeked of snobbery, for had he felt conscious that he was in the same class as its object, irreproachably born and bred, it would never have occurred to him to make it. He put himself in the class of the Americans who storm the Embassy in London, asking to be escorted to Henley, or given tickets for Royal functions, and, when politely steered to the door, anathematize the patient envoy as a “snob,” and: “no American.” 

None of our fellow countrymen has ever held (not occupied temporarily) the distinguished position in English society that the Whites have held for the last quarter of a century. And instead of this being a matter of reproach, as certain of our newspapers would have us believe, we should congratulate ourselves that there is at least one small class of foreigners who, coming in contact with few Americans, assume that we are a well bred nation. Mr. White, having been born at the top, has never lost his head, as many of our Ambassadors have done when suddenly privileged to entertain royalty and hobnob with the bearers of titles they, had hardly heard pronounced until coached by their secretaries. I do not believe that the most ingenuous of these gentlemen has ever intentionally snubbed an American who approached him properly. Not only would such an indulgence be unwise from the politicians’ standpoint, but most of them are good Americans at heart and quite ready to do their duty by their fellow citizens. – Gertrude Atherton, 1909

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

Etiquette and “Snobbery”

The word “Snob” crept gradually into vogue in England among the gentry, as a recognized, but permitted, slang word for a low-born, vulgar, “base mechanical” person.Thackeray applied the word to all vulgarly, pretentious persons, however high their rank or large their wealth; and this sort of snob, he said, was scattered freely through all classes of society in all countries.  

The Word "Snob"— Of words which have two clearly distinct senses in both countries, the commonly used, but yet slangish and not very pleasant, “snob” is an example. Snob crept gradually into vogue in England among the gentry, as a recognized, but permitted, slang word for a low-born, vulgar, “base mechanical” person. This sense it retained, exclusively I believe, until the appearance in Punch of Thackeray's Snob Papers, before which time it was not used and was almost unknown in this country. 

In those humorous and savagely satirical papers, Thackeray applied the word to all vulgarly, pretentious persons, however high their rank or large their wealth; and this sort of snob, he said, was scattered freely through all classes of society in all countries. “There are snobs in China,” he remarked. Had he seen Dickens’ book-plate with its crest, knowing Dickens’ origin and early habits of life, he would have called that snobbish. In this sense, the word came rapidly into vogue in the United States. Here it has, in New York at least, been subjected to yet another modification in certain circles, where it is used to mean a person who somewhat pretentiously affects the society of persons condition and wealth. – Richard Grant White in Atlantic, 1879

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