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The Gilded Cage of the 1930s Debutante (Collier's, 1933)
The attached COLLIER'S article is a piece of critical thinking written by two post-debs of the Boston and Manhattan varieties who were both products of what they called "the approval mill". Having been run through the right schools and the right summer camps, they attended the right parties and made charming with all the right people; looking back in their twenties, they were able to see how this long-treasured practice ill-served them and tended to perpetuate the spiraling vortex of women who were educated and polite yet unable to think. Among other assorted maladies they believed the Debutante Gulag that society had established created a feminine upper-class that was, at best, two-faced:"She is effusive and admiring with her friends and acquaintances; behind their backs she is viciously critical. She derives a keen enjoyment from this." Click here to learn how uneducated Americans in the 1860s were able to teach themselves proper manners.
| Emily Post on Language (Photoplay, 1939)
At the tail-end of a very long interview concerning the problems with Hollywood movies, Emily Post (1872 – 1960), America's high-priestess of good manners, was asked just one more question - this one involved the English language and here is Emily Post's 1939 list of what to say and what not to say.
•Don't say 'brainy' - say, 'clever'.
•Don't say 'wealthy', say 'rich'.
•Don't say 'Charmed or pleased to meet you', say 'how do you do'.
•etc, etc, etc.
Emily Post had so many opinions...
| The English Country House: What Good Is It? (Vogue Magazine, 1914)
The author of this VOGUE MAGAZINE article needed to know the answer to this most relevant of questions: did the English country house come into being simply to "keep the English playwright from the bread-lines?"
| Social Customs in Washington, D.C. (Vogue Magazine, 1921)
Although this VOGUE MAGAZINE article was written long before the need was ever created to discuss "e-mail etiquette" or "the proper application for Velcro in custom tailoring", many of these tribal maxims in Social Washington (both official and non) are still adhered to, especially in so far as White House functions are concerned. This article is a one page summation listing the social conventions of Washington D.C. in 1921 and it covers the rules that the First Lady and the Vice-President's wife were expected to abide by as well as the proper manner of accepting White House invitations. "The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is not invited to dine with an Ambassador, or a foreign Minister, or the Secretary of State, because their relative rank has never been established."
The article reads much like any rule book, but it will introduce you to a local deity whom the idolatresses of "The Washington Social Register" have long prostrated before: the Washington Hostess. Click here to read an article about social Washington during the Depression.
| The Charm Offensive... (Yank Magazine, 1943)
This cautionary article seems like a collaboration between Emily Post and Sigmund Freud: it concerns one-part social instruction and one-part psychology. It offers wise words to the Yank readers as how best to behave when being interrogated by Axis goons; American mothers would have been proud to know that their tax dollars were well-spent advising their progeny to keep in mind manners, manners, manners and always anticipate the direction of the conversation: "It's best to call your questioner "Sir" or his rank, if you can figure out what it is. Then when you answer "I'm sorry, sir" to his questions, there isn't much he can do about it..."
| The Fine Art of Introduction (Vanity Fair, 1917)
Stephen Leacock (1869 - 1944) had some amusing opinions concerning social introductions according to the recognized formulas. "With the approach of the winter season, conversation as an art is again in order. It is a thing that we all need to consider. Some of us are asked out to dinner merely because we talk. Others, chiefly because we do not. It is a matter in which we can help one another. Let us discuss it..." Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms.
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