Vacation Etiquette for Americans

This turtle doesn’t need this bag, as he certainly won’t be doing any seaside shopping. “Multiply your left-behind paper plates and cups, soft drink bottles, etc., by the hundreds who will use that picnic area in a given week and you see why some areas look like one big garbage heap. Crews eventually will pick up after you, but you’re not thinking of the others who want to enjoy the outdoors, nor of the multi-million dollars of taxpayers’ money spent on cleanup alone.”  –Photo source Canadian Wildlife Federation

How Are Your Travel Manners? 

Check Yourself

A tourist is judged by his travel manners and the better they are the better the impression made on strangers at home and abroad. The better also you will enjoy your trip if you exercise the rules of courtesy. Good manners add to good service you get too from the motels, hotels, roadside eating places, airlines, trains and buses. Those catering to the vacationer if pinned down could give you a list of gripes that long for correction. They are tolerant, because they are seeking the tourist dollar. But, from talking to various persons in the travel industry, we have compiled –

“Pauley’s Easy Guide for Testing Your Vacation Etiquette”

• Do you hog two seats in the bus, train or plane by deliberately placing your coat, purse or other paraphernalia on the second seat, hoping thereby to seal it off? 
• Do you on planes hang assorted cameras, coats or other accessories including flight bags in your area so that they overlap and create a hazard anyway discomfort for the person behind or in front of you? 
• Do you light a cigarette, pipe or cigar without asking whether smoking bothers the person sitting next to you? 
• Do you use the ash tray nearest you or prefer to lean over and use one of your neighbor, dusting ashes as you go?
• Do you march up to the reception desk of hotel or motel and elbow others aside who are in line ahead of you to register? If you've pushed your way past others a little more patient during a busy tourist season, you’ve just won a top award for crudeness. 
• Do you adapt, if the conditions are not as perfect as promised ? Some of the overseas countries are just getting into the swing of seeking you as guest for a holiday and the shower may not always work, the soap supply not be ample. But point out politely that flaw in the service. Creating a scene does not create a favorable impression of Americans. 
• In motor travel, especially in the United States, do you trash the roadside picnic areas as if litter did not hurt? Multiply your left-behind paper plates and cups, soft drink bottles, etc., by the hundreds who will use that picnic area in a given week and you see why some areas of the United States look like one big garbage heap. Crews eventually will pick up after you, but you’re not thinking of the others who want to enjoy the outdoors, nor of the multi-million dollars of taxpayers’ money spent on cleanup alone. 
• Do your driving manners show in reverse? Tail-gating or nudging out of your lane at a stop light for a quick getaway when the light turns green? These invite disaster. 
• Do you remember to say thank you to the filling station attendant, the policeman or anyone else who acts as a free guide? There are a dozen times a day the tourist has a chance to say “thank you,” and make traveling a treat instead of a trauma. – By Gay Pauley, Women’s Editor, (UPI) New York , 1963

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

Gilded Age Diplomacy and Precedence

“The waves of the tempest in the samovar have subsided and the bits of lemon float serenely upon the placid surface of the brewing in eggshell cups. The new matrons, debutantes, daughters and belles may not have known it, but they need never to have fluttered a single flutter or puzzled their pretty brains for a moment... In this glorious country of ours, which we are proud to call absolutely democratic, and to whose private, and semi-private social functions, no rigid lines of dogmatic court etiquette are known, we have declared with vaunting vanity, the social gospel of the national capital is made, hammered, riveted and clinched with fastenings more stern than steel, by the chieftains who surround the President.”

Precedence: The Burning Topic of the Hour at Washington D.C.

Aroused by the Fact That Lady Pauncefote Led the New Year's Reception at the White House – Cabinet Dictates; Society Dare Not Disobey –By a Woman in Official Life at Washington

QUITE a tempest in a teapot it was while it lasted, to certain matrons, debutantes, daughters and belles newly launched upon Washington society, and a flutter of agnation deeper under the surface than it appeared outwardly was the result of considerable nervousness that followed the first official function of the season. That Lady Pauncefote should have led at the New Year's reception in the White House seems a slight incident, but that it overthrew or waved aside the very gospel of Washington society became apparent in the not too silent attitude in which it was subsequently regarded. But it is all over now. The waves of the tempest in the samovar have subsided and the bits of lemon float serenely upon the placid surface of the brewing in eggshell cups. The new matrons, debutantes, daughters and belles may not have known it, but they need never to have fluttered a single flutter or puzzled their pretty brains for a moment.

In this glorious country of ours, which we are proud to call absolutely democratic, and to whose private, and semi-private social functions, no rigid lines of dogmatic court etiquette are known, we have declared with vaunting vanity, the social gospel of the national capital is made, hammered, riveted and clinched with fastenings more stern than steel, by the chieftains who surround the President. The Cabinet dictates, and society dare not disobey. More than that, the Cabinet has swayed its social scepter these many years, and is, in its turn, compelled to defer to the rigidly established rules laid down by court chamberlains in other parts of the world.

If Mrs. Senator doesn't know how her diplomatic guests are to be placed, like as not, they will attend to that matter themselves. For they know, and their courts insist that they shall know, just how to fall in line at the functions. In order, however, that Mrs. Senator may not betray her quandary as a novice, she has merely to read the Cabinet's order and to consult the diplomatic list, which is compiled by the Department of State, in accordance with precedence established on the lines adopted at the Vienna Congress of 1815. 

Herr von Holleben, the German Embassador, has had some little difficulty in explaining that Lady Pauncefote should have assumed first place on the New Year's reception in the White House in the absence of her husband, the dean of the Diplomatic Corps. The suggestion that she occupy the place that Lord Pauncefote would have been in did not meet the approval of diplomats, who would as soon violate an international law as the ironclad rules of their social training and instruction. The idea that the representative of a country really does represent the regimes in power, is apparently quite forgotten at times, in what we may call our national desire to have things “go smoothly.” 

There is a story told of a dinner given in Washington when the wife of the English Embassador was taken in by, or rather assigned to, the escort of the young son of the house, the reason given being that he was the only “heir apparent.” Like most of the stories about precedence, this cannot be verified, but it serves as a capital anecdote to relate. It will be remembered that at the time of General Grant's funeral, there was a most serious discussion anent who should lead, the English Embassador or the Vice President, and it was said the only way to set the difficulty was to let the Embassador ride on the hearse.

 The rule that the foreign Embasaador who has held his office for the longest term of years is the dean, and ranks first, has simplified matters somewhat, for none can be found to cavil at so practical a rule. The rule as to the wife of each Minister is carried out in the same order. The rule that an Embassador or Minister shall always take in to dinner the wife of someone of rank is rarely ever broken. Another of the Washington stories is to the effect that one daring young hostess gave a Minister a place between two young and pretty girls, and when sharply called to task for having done so by some of the women present, replied that she thought “the poor man had had such a hard winter of it, without any fun, she was unwilling to have him go back to his court without one enjoyable dinner, and she “had sent for him before the dinner and asked him what he wished.”

Every hostess needs to know her “Washington” now, for the sharp eyes that are watching the newly launched, especially, are very tenterhooks to she who may inadvertently “put her foot into it.” Social precedence is the grammar, the arithmetic, the algebra of the woman who would, or who must, entertain. ‘Must,’ sounds a bit harsh, perhaps, to the lay mind, but “must” it is, for the laws of the Medes and Persians were no more impregnable than the inflexible edict, backed by the Cabinet, to which even the “First Lady” must yield. Mrs. Roosevelt must hold just so many public receptions; the wives of Cabinet members must entertain at intervals. None has dared defy, or will ever one ignore this requirement.   

The formal, official entertainments are past; but there still remain the semi-official functions, and in these must the statute of social precedence be regarded no less scrupulously. At even a private entertainment, must the rights of diplomatists be observed with the nicest delicacy. Indeed, in the light of the adequate means at the disposal of a hostess for her guidance, an error in this matter would seem to be inexcusable. Of course, the “newly launched” are not supposed to know, offhand or intuitively, the exact seniority of service upon which depends the precedence of members of the Diplomatic Corps. That they may learn, the Department of State in this Government, under which democracy of social relations is fondly supposed to be absolute issues a little book for limited circulation among those who may be called upon to face what would, without its aid, prove to be a dilemma. – San Francisco Call, 1898

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

23 Victorian Dining Rules

Though catalogs and shops in the 1870’s, 1880’s and 1890’s featured the newest and latest designs in tableware, knowledge of the “correct fork” to use is nowhere on this list of good table manners for guests, and hosts, alike. Knowing all of the correct utensils is wonderful, but the premise of good manners being based on kindness towards our fellow man, remains the same. 

Dining at the 19th C. Table

True politeness has its origin in Christian charity and kindness. All standard rules of etiquette were founded for the greater convenience and happiness of all the members of society. Although the reasons may not be obvious at first sight, they exist, and will be apparent on a careful consideration. 

1. Do not keep others waiting for you, either at the beginning or at the close of the meal. 
2. Do not sip soup from the tip, but from the side of the spoon. 
3. Be careful not to drop nor spill anything on the table cloth. 
4. Keep your plate neat; do not heap all sorts of food on it at once. 
5. In passing your plate to be refilled, retain the knife and fork. 
6. When asked for a dish, do not shove, but hand it. 
7. While drinking, do not look around. 
8. Instruct the servant to hand the cup at the left side, so that it may be received by the right hand. 
9. Do not drink your tea or coffee without first removing the teaspoon from the cup to the saucer. 
10. Use the knife for cutting only; never put it to the lips nor in the mouth. 
11. Break your bread into small pieces and rest them on your plate while spreading. 
12. Do not eat too fast. Besides giving one the appearance of greed, it is not healthy. 
13. If you find anything disagreeable in your food, put it aside as quietly as possible, without drawing the attention of anyone to it. 
14. Do not open the lips nor make any unnecessary noise in chewing. 
15. Do not touch the head. 
16. Do not rest the elbows on the table. 
17. Do not speak with the mouth full. 
18. Brush the table neatly before bringing on the dessert. 
19. Be thoughtful and attentive to the wants of those about you. 
20. Converse on pleasant subjects with those sitting near you. 
21. Do not say anything not intended for all present to hear. 
22. Leave your plate with the knife and fork lying parallel, the handles pointing to the right. 
23. Never leave the table before others, without asking the lady or gentleman who presides to excuse you. — Russian River Flag, 1871

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

Phone Etiquette for Teens

Back in the mid-1960’s, Sally Field’s boy-crazy, surfer-girl “Gidget,” seemed to spend more time on her pink Princess phone, than she did in the ocean. If memory serves, Gidget’s phone manners could teach teens a thing or two today.

Miss Debb Gives Sound Advice to Teens in 1964 

Q. How do you handle a phone call gracefully, if a boy calls when you're entertaining another date? What if you like the guy on the phone better than the one in the living room? 

A. No matter who you like best, it’s a matter of basic dating manners not to chat on the phone when you have a guest. When the phone rings, be brief. Tell him you have a guest and can talk only a minute. 

And remember—the same principle holds if that guest is a girl friend. – Madera Tribune, 1964

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

Amy’s Teen Etiquette Q & A

Amy Vanderbilt on Teens and Dating... 

Q. My brother is 17 and I am 16. He says that it is not right for sister and brother to double-date. What do you think? E.T., Beaumont, Tex. – A. Your brother is right. 

Teen Topics

Etiquette concerns itself with the forms required by good breeding. The necessary judgment to act appropriately in any situation develops slowly and needs guidance. Here are some relevant letters: 

Q. I confided something to a friend and found that she repeated what I said to the very people we discussed. Now she comes to my house every day and seems happy that she has caused a break in my friendship with these people. D.S., Clayton, Mo. 
A. Why not meet the issue squarely? Explain the situation to the hurt friends and apologize for the trouble this girl caused. Then stop seeing her. 

Q. My brother is 17 and I am 16. He says that it is not right for sister and brother to double-date. What do you think? E.T., Beaumont, Tex. 
A. Your brother is right. 

Q. I am a girl of 13 and am going on a week-end trip with five girls. Our chaperon is 21 years old. Do you think it would be all right to have boys along? D.F., Portland, Me. 
A. No, it would not. A young, unmarried woman is not a suitable chaperon for a mixed group. 

Q. I am a girl in my early teens. Is it proper to give a priest who has been very kind a gift? If so, would cookies or something I have baked myself be suitable? A.C., Elko, Nev. 
A. Yes, to both questions. 

Q. At what age should a girl be referred to as “Miss”? Do you think a girl of 11 or 12 should let a boy hold her hand at a show? C.B., Springfield, Colo. 
A. On an envelope, a girl is addressed as "Miss" from infancy. At 16 she may officially use the title “Miss” on calling cards. From 16 on she should receive the courtesy of that title from strangers. A little girl of 1 1 or 12 should not be holding hands with a boy at a show and should not be there at all except perhaps in the afternoon with a group. 

Q. I would like to know how many dresses, skirts, sweaters, blouses, shoes, etc..., a girl of my age (15) should have in her school wardrobe. N.D., Hanna City, Ill. 
A. I cannot answer this. It is wise for a girl to gear her wardrobe in style, but not necessarily quantity, to that of the girls with whom she associates. 

Q. I attend a high school which is very large, and has a number of social sets and clubs. In my club there are some very nice girls and yet I feel I would like to be with a more popular crowd. I know I could get into a club more to my liking because the girls in it have told me so many times. But most of these girls are very wealthy and have different ideas on kissing, dating, etc... I would not like to endanger my high-school career. What do you advise? D.J., Newark, N.J. 
A. Stay in the group that you now are with. You will feel more comfortable. –Amy Vanderbilt for Parade Magazine, 1956

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

In Praise of Old Etiquette Books

“You don't happen to remember your name, do you?” 

Even dusty old etiquette books are nothing to sneeze at!

It was on a crumbling page of a 100-year-old etiquette book that Miss Manners came across the solution to that enduring problem: What to say when confronted with a person whose name you know you are expected to know, but don't. The answer comes to us from an anonymous Victorian, apparently a Hero of Etiquette but described merely as “a good-natured eccentric.” 

Beaming a jovial smile at a vaguely familiar face, he would inquire in a pleasant, oh-by-the-by tone, “You don't happen to remember your name, do you?” Miss Manners is given to perusing aged volumes for just such forgotten devices to ease the difficulties of life. Vintage etiquette holds up remarkably well. The human body may have changed, as anyone trying to squeeze into vintage clothing may discover, but the situations into which it manages to get itself, are not all that different. In some cases, whole sets of manners may simply be retrieved and dusted off. – Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, 1988

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

Kids’ Manners Last to Awaken

Siblings thawing out as the day goes on... “Once we get a chance to work off a bit of our bad manners in ill-humored speech or need we feel better immediately and the day takes on a more hopeful glow. We begin to thaw out and our manners steal back one by one, like guilty sheep that had gone astray.”

Our Children and Morning Manners

Manners are always shy at getting up in the morning. Perhaps they are the last of our accomplishments to waken, but surely, whatever the reason, they are conspicuously absent in the general family breakfast gathering. The children scrambling to be off on time for school, add to the unpleasantness. They are without a shadow of manners before noon! “Shut up!” snaps Jane. “Why don’t you step on my ear?” growls brother George. “Can't you remember there’s somebody else at the breakfast table beside yourself?” flares big sister. “I’m striving hard to forget it,” retorts Big Brother and having for once been equal to the occasion be forthwith unbounds and in beaming good humor passes the sugar to his offended sister. There's something about us that works that way. 

Once we get a chance to work off a bit of our bad manners in ill-humored speech or need we feel better immediately and the day takes on a more hopeful glow. We begin to thaw out and our manners steal back one by one like guilty sheep that had gone astray. There is none among us who has not been guilty and who has not wished and hoped for a happier morning mood. “Perhaps!” we muse, “the children will manage better. Their manners may hold over until the morning. Perhaps!" For the children’s sakes, let’s hope so. It is as hard to be had mannered as it is to bear the bad matters of those who wreak them upon us. What can wo do to prop the children’s morning manners? Begin the night before. Send them to bed on time and in the right mood. Watch them fold and arrange their clothes so that they will be easy to find and put on in the morning. That's a big part of the battle. Call them on time and see that they get their turn in the bathroom. 

Bathroom etiquette has a great deal to do with the good humor and consequent good manners of the family In the mornings. The person who monopolizes the bathroom for shaving or hairdressing or private laundry work is an outcast and an alien, and should be dealt with accordingly. Also the person who splashes about like a mislaid whale and flaps out leaving his watery wake to fluster the next comer. Who wouldn't be snorty at finding the tub one-third full of milky water, with a dreary washrag floating about in it, or a hairknot, with a buuch of hairpins sticking in it, afloat on the edge of the lavatory? Morning manners are always bad, always have been bad, but perhaps we might do a little toward improving them even if it were breakfasting alone when the mood was too bad or staying up all night and prolonging the genial manner of the mellower hours? Anyway try to make It a bit easier for the children. – By Angelo Patri, 1923

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

D.C.’s “Green Book” Etiquette

The etiquette behind why Jimmy Carter and Liz Taylor were in, and Gerald Ford was out of the 1977 edition of the Washington D.C. Green Book. – Founder Helen Ray Hagner created the social registry, called “the Green Book,” in 1930. It is an annual “who’s who” in our nation’s capital. A comprehensive list of Washington D.C.’s elite. The book currently includes some 5,500 names, addresses (with winter and summer homes), phone numbers, maiden names and even children’s schools. According to Hagner’s great-grandson, when interviewed by the Washington Post, one cannot pay, nor bribe their way into the book. Many have tried over the years. And if one is on the list, there’s no guarantee of staying there. VIPs have been dropped from the book. They even claim to be very careful about who gets to buy a copy each fall, so mind your P’s and Q’s!

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jimmy Carter is in. So are Liz Taylor and Henry Kissinger. But Jerry Ford is out. And Bert Lance is in barely. The Green Book, the 1978 Washington Social Register of who counts and who doesn't in the nation's capital, is off the presses. Carter wasn't listed last year, but he's in this year because he lives at the most prestigious address in town the White House. Actress Elizabeth Taylor is in because she married potential senatorial candidate, former Navy secretary and Virginia estate-owner John Warner, who also owns a house in Georgetown. Former President Gerald R. Ford isn't in this year because he moved out of town after he left the White House. But former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made the list because he still lives in the city. Lance, who resigned under fire as Carter's budget director, doesn't live here any more, but he left town after the social register was printed. 

Known as the Green Book because of its fuzzy, Kelly green cover, the social list contains most White House executives, members of Congress, the Supreme Court, ambassadors, party givers and upper crust. And it gives the dos and don’ts of capital etiquette. One of its most useful functions is that it serves as a handy telephone directory for many of those who find it socially unacceptable to list their telephone numbers in the local telephone book. Addresses, too, are listed. Except, say Green Book staff members, for a select few, like Chief Justice Warren Burger, who considers it a security risk for folks to know where he lives. The book says his address is: Supreme Court of the United States, 20503. For $31.50 you, too, can get this nifty little guide on whom to seat below the salt (assistant chiefs of protcol); how to address Rep. Thomas P. O'Neill of Massachusetts (My dear Mr. Speaker); and what it means when someone leaves you a calling card enscribed “P.P.” (pour présenter, or, if you no parlez Francais “to introduce.”) 

But if you have to send an invitation to a man and his wife, watch out if she’s one of those liberated types, like Deputy Director of Action, Mary King, who keeps her maiden name. The Green Book says King is really Mrs. Peter Bourne. If asked however, Mrs. Peter Bourne insists she is Mary King. “We refuse to get into the business of listing people this way,” said Jean Shaw Murray, the Green Book's new publisher. “It isn't correct, and we won't be pushed into it.” Murray took over as publisher this year from her mother, Carolyn Hagner Shaw, who died last spring. – San Bernardino Sun, 1977

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