Chapter 1 of 4 · 3951 words · ~20 min read

Part 1

MANNERS _for the_ METROPOLIS

[Illustration: _Tips!_]

MANNERS _for the_ METROPOLIS

_An Entrance Key to the Fantastic Life of The 400_

BY FRANCIS W. CROWNINSHIELD

[Illustration]

DECORATIONS BY LOUIS FANCHER

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1908

_Published, October, 1908_

H. S. C.

CONTENTS

PAGE

FOREWORD 3

COUNTRY HOUSES 9

CONVERSATION 27

DINNERS 35

DANCES 53

BRIDGE 65

THE THEATER 85

CALLING 91

OUR COUNTRY COUSINS 95

NEWPORT 103

GENERAL RULES 113

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

TIPS _Frontispiece_

CONVERSATION 28

HOSTESS 60

BRIDGE 78

FOREWORD

It is undeniable that much of the pleasure in modern life is derived from social intercourse.

From time immemorial the gregarious instinct has contributed greatly to the charm of all populated regions. It is worthy of remark that, during the past decade, both in America and in England, sudden and violent changes have somewhat ruffled the placid waters of polite society. These new conditions of life have naturally necessitated new methods of social procedure. The telephone, coeducation, wireless telegraphy, motor cars, millionaires, bridge whist, women’s rights, Sherry’s, cocktails, four-day liners, pianolas, steam heat, _directoire_ gowns, dirigible balloons, and talking machines have all contributed to an astonishing social metamorphosis.

Curiously enough no book of etiquette has taken count of these violent changes. There is literally no Baedeker for this newly discovered country. Many fruitful and enchanted islands have been sighted, but have, alas, remained uncharted.

It is, therefore, with motives of generosity, charity, and kindness that this little guide has been prepared by the benevolent author.

It will be found to contain concise rules of deportment for all the more important social ceremonies—from a _tête-à-tête_ to a betrothal, a picnic to a funeral, a _partie-carrée_ to a divorce, an ushers’ dinner to a Turkish bath, and a piano recital to a rout. It also contains excellent advice on the choice of a motor car, a summer residence, a wife, or a brand of cigar.

The author feels that it should prove of great value to those people who have been born and brought up in refined and well-bred families, and are, at the same time, desirous of entering fashionable society.

To our newer millionaires and plutocrats it should be a very present help in time of trouble, for it is undeniable that many of these captains of industry—however strong and virile their natures—become utterly helpless and panic-stricken at the mere sight of a gold finger bowl, an alabaster bath, a pronged oyster fork, or the business end of an asparagus.

COUNTRY HOUSES

A country house is an establishment maintained by people of wealth and position who have banished from their home circle the old ideas of family life: the hearth-side, the romping little ones, and the studious evenings under the red lamp.

* * * * *

There is so much that is pleasurable in a house party at such an establishment that it is difficult to say which part of it is the most delightful. It is thrilling to receive the invitation; the journey there is full of an expectant pleasure; the sport is invigorating; the meals are usually palatable; the society agreeable. On the whole, however, perhaps the most welcome part of it all is the moment of departure.

* * * * *

At a week-end party, when the servant calls you in the morning and informs you that your bath is running, it is modish to sink off to sleep and allow the bath to overflow. As soon as you are wide awake make certain to turn off the electric light and demand from the servant a brandy and soda. After this bracer you may light a cigarette and send the footman for breakfast and a cigar. It is also a wise precaution to ask for _all_ the morning papers—otherwise the other guests may secure some of them.

* * * * *

It is usual for the bachelors to dawdle about in their riding things until lunch is announced. They can then go to their rooms, take their baths, and change. This puts off the agony of the lunch—which is always a tiresome meal.

* * * * *

Go up early to dress for dinner, or the other guests will have drawn off all the hot water for their own baths.

* * * * *

After a week-end visit it is customary to write your hostess a “bread-and-butter letter,” or “pleaser.” The following note will be found a safe guide for such an occasion.

MY DEAR MRS. WEEKENDE:

How kind you were to open the gates of Heaven and give me that little glimpse of Paradise. Would you be good enough to ask the valet to send me my cap? Perhaps, too, the footman could forward my golf clubs, which I entirely overlooked in the hurry of departure. If not too much trouble, perhaps you will ask the maid to express me my sponge bag, listerine, and razor strop.

With renewed thanks, I am, dear Mrs. Weekende,

Yours sincerely,

PERCY VANDERFORT.

P. S.—I am returning to you, by express, the woodland violet bath salt, the photograph frame, the bedroom clock, the silver brushes, the hot-water bag, and the two sachet cases which your servant mistook for my property.

* * * * *

When you are visiting in the country and your hostess maintains a very small establishment, the servant may ask you, on awaking you, what you desire for breakfast. Out of consideration for your hostess you should ask for a very small and very simple breakfast. Try to confine yourself to grape fruit, oatmeal, bacon and eggs, corn bread, chicken mince, marmalade, coffee, honey, hot biscuits, and orange juice.

* * * * *

Parlor tricks are great assets in a week-ender. The most popular are moving the scalp and ears, cracking the knuckles, disjointing the thumbs, standing on the head, tearing a pack of cards, and dancing a cake walk.

* * * * *

When the host offers, after breakfast, to show you over the farm, gasp, and mention your rheumatism. Almost any lie is permissible to prevent so terrible a catastrophe.

* * * * *

Young girls, when visiting at a house party, should be quiet and gentle, well behaved and agreeable; but when at home there is no reason why they should not be perfectly natural.

* * * * *

The horrors of the guest room are too well-known to need enumeration, and can seldom be ameliorated. They are, roughly, as follows: The embroidered pillow slips, the egg-finished sheets, the drawer of the bureau that is warped and will not open, the rusty pins in the stony pincushion, the empty cut-glass cologne bottles, the blinds that bang in the night, the absence of hooks on which to hang your razor strop, the pictures of the “Huguenot Lovers” and Landseer’s “Sanctuary” over the headboard of the bed, the tendency of the maid to hide the matches, the dear little children in the nursery above you, the dead fly in the dried-up ink well, and the hidden radiator under the sofa.

* * * * *

When you spend Sunday in the country, the proper schedule of tips for the servants is as follows:

Chauffeur $10.00 Butler 10.00 Coachman 5.00 Footman 3.00 Valet 5.00 Cook nothing Maid 2.00 Chambermaid 2.00 Strapper 1.00 Groom 2.00 ------- Total 40.00

Should you, however, have but $30 with you, you have but to take a very early train, in which case the butler will not have appeared, and there will be no necessity to tip him. The resourceful bachelor may also decide to compensate the maid, if she be pretty, by a few pleasant words of appreciation as to her beauty and by chucking her under the chin, as is invariably done on the stage in comic opera.

If your visit has been for a week, the above table of tips should be disregarded. At the end of such a visit you had best hand the housekeeper a letter of introduction to your lawyer, together with a list of your securities, and allow her to sue your estate for the gratuities.

(If you are from Pittsburg, care should be taken to double the above table of tips.)

* * * * *

The dressing gong is sometimes meant to convey the impression that dinner will shortly be served in the banqueting hall. Usually, however, it is the signal for everybody to begin a new rubber.

* * * * *

Try to go early to the stables and select a good riding horse for the rest of your visit. There are seldom more than two good ones. The rest are usually roarers or crocks.

* * * * *

The hostess at a large country house is naturally expected to provide all the week-end essentials—i. e., liquors, cigars, food, carriages—and motors in condition. Besides these, however, she should never neglect to offer her guests certain little added comforts without which they would, very naturally, be miserable. Every guest should be supplied, therefore, with the following articles: a bottle of listerine, a cloth cap, a tennis bat, a hot-water bag, a pair of motor goggles, a bag of golf clubs, a sweater, six tennis balls, a bathroom, with needle shower (exclusive), a bathrobe, a pair of slippers, a pair of tennis shoes, a bathing suit, a box of cigarettes (fifty in a box), a set of diabolo sticks, a riding and driving horse, a fur overcoat, an umbrella, a bottle of eau de cologne, and a box of postage stamps.

* * * * *

Guests are always invited from Friday night to Monday morning. It is wiser for the hostess to mention the Monday trains, or one of the guests may decide to stop longer. This is seldom a wise plan. Hostesses should clear the house of all guests before the three-day limit. Remember the Spanish proverb, “El huesped y el pece à tres dias hiede,” which, being translated, means, “Any guest, like any fish, is bound to be objectionable on the third day.”

* * * * *

In certain country houses the architect has neglected to supply bathrooms for each of the guests. In some extreme cases as many as three bachelors are expected to share one bath. This is bad.

The best way to maneuver under such circumstances is to send your servant early to the bathroom and let him lock himself in. This will foil the invaders. When he hears your special knock on the door, he can open to you, and you can then bathe, take a nap in the bath, shave, smoke a cigarette, and read the papers in quiet.

* * * * *

At a house party every lady of prominence is sure to bring at least one Pomeranian dog. Many think it wiser to bring a black and a brown, so that, no matter what gown they may wear, one of the darlings is sure not to clash with it. These pets are, of course, extremely expensive. A smart week-end on the Hudson will usually average about six thousand dollars’ worth of Poms.

* * * * *

In nearly all guest rooms the hostess is sure to provide white enamel writing desks, chiffoniers, and tables. By leaving lighted cigarettes on such articles of furniture you are almost certain to secure a very curious and amusing stain, or burn. Sometimes, if your visit is long enough, you can etch, in this way, a complete pattern around a fair-sized table. The Greek fret and egg-and-dart designs are neat and extremely popular.

* * * * *

The passage through a country house of the framed photograph of a friend is often an instructive spectacle to witness. Such a trophy usually begins its career in the drawing-room. It is then moved to the library, and subsequently to the smoking room. After that it begins a heavenly flight into one of the guest rooms, from which place it ascends on its last earthly pilgrimage to the attic.

* * * * *

The English have rather a clever way of “chucking” a week-end engagement in the country. They merely telegraph as follows:

“Impossible to come to-day: lie follows by mail.”

* * * * *

An unprotected lady should be careful not to employ convivial or tippling butlers. We are acquainted with a widow who was recently petrified with horror when her drunken butler entered her sleeping apartment in the dead of the night and proceeded to lay the table for six—upon her bed.

* * * * *

Sunday morning in the country is usually rainy. This is invariably the fault of the hostess. When you descend in the morning, look at her reproachfully; mention the rain; remark on the fact that it has always rained when you have visited her before; sink hopelessly on a sofa, and sigh.

* * * * *

Hostesses very often have a distressing way of asking you how you slept. Under such circumstances it is permissible to speak the truth and to mention, quite frankly, the mosquitoes and the topographical whimsicalities of your bed.

* * * * *

In a country house, if you find, on going up to your room to dress for dinner, that no studs have been put into your evening shirt, complain at once to the stud groom.

* * * * *

Beware of inviting fashionable bachelors for the week-end unless you maintain an adequate _ménage_. The recent and distressing case of a lady (with but one spare room and a very small establishment) may serve as a terrible example.

Her visitor arrived rather late on a rainy night. His belongings looked like those of a traveling theatrical company, and included one forty horse power Mercedes car, a Swiss valet, a violin case, one trunk, two hat boxes, five pounds of bonbons, a fur overcoat, a photographic camera, a bag of golf clubs, a talking machine, two boxes of health cocoa, an Austrian chauffeur, an oxygen jar, two polo ponies, an air cushion, a wire-haired fox terrier, and a box of one hundred clay pigeons.

CONVERSATION

The conversation at a club should be simple and conventional. It is vulgar to go into long or prolix discussions. Only a few remarks are _comme il faut_, such as “Hello!” “Deuced cold!” “Have a drink?” “Who has a cigar?” “How about one rubber?”

Perhaps the safest and most refined remark for constant use is: “Waiter, take the orders.” Even this may be dispensed with—if you make certain to ring the bell.

* * * * *

It is not modish to speak kindly to the servants either in your own or in other people’s houses. In addressing them, simply say: “A napkin,” “The cigars,” “Where the devil are my boots?” Remember that they “get even” in the servants’ hall.

* * * * *

It is customary, in alluding to ladies in the ultra-fashionable set (provided they are not present) to speak of them by their pet names: “Birdie,” “Baby,” “Tessie,” “Posy”; but, when face to face with these ladies, the utmost formality had best be observed.

* * * * *

In criticising a play or a novel be careful to avoid long and discriminating criticisms. You should either “knock” or “boost.” Try to remember that there are only two kinds of plays or novels—they are either “bully” or “rotten.”

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Conversation_]

* * * * *

If a few people in the smart set are entertaining a stranger at lunch, it is _de rigueur_ for them to converse with each other entirely in whispers and always on subjects with which he is absolutely unfamiliar.

* * * * *

In discussing literature at a lunch or dinner, try to remember that there are but a very few fashionable authors. They are as follows: Mrs. Wharton, Colonel Mann, Mrs. Glyn, Robert Hichens, F. Peter Dunne, John Fox, Jr., and Billy Baxter.

* * * * *

At a dinner a gentleman sitting beside a débutante should congratulate her upon her début, and, in a few well-chosen words, should discuss the usual débutante topics—i. e., platonic love, banting, Ethel Barrymore, French dressmakers, John Drew, the relative merits of Harvard and Yale, love at first sight, the football match and the matter of her great personal beauty and charm.

Try always to remember that the chief and most interesting topics of conversation are herself and yourself. _Serious_ topics are very properly deemed out of place in society.

* * * * *

After dinner, over the cigars, it is bad form for men to discuss any subjects but stocks and motor cars.

* * * * *

Whenever, at a dinner, an anecdote is narrated in French, it is always a wise precaution to laugh heartily.

* * * * *

Women should not complain of their husbands in public. All married women have a great deal to contend with. Everybody knows that married men make very poor husbands.

* * * * *

At a dinner the safest conversational opening is as follows: “Is that your bread, or mine?”

* * * * *

When, at a dinner, you don’t know the lady next to you, show her your dinner card and say:

“I’m that; what are you?”

* * * * *

Chivalry demands that a lady’s name should never be mentioned in a gentleman’s club. Occasionally, however, this hard-and-fast rule may be slightly infracted, and her intimate affairs discreetly talked over—provided that the group of gentlemen be a small one and absolute privacy assured.

N. B.—A “small group” is any group of less than twelve.

DINNERS

A dinner is a miscellaneous collection of appropriately dressed men and women, who are not in the least hungry and who are invited by the host and hostess to repay certain social obligations for value received or expected. The attitude of the guests at such a repast is very often one of regret and revolt, because of the haunting memory of an invitation, much more enticing in its prospects, but, alas, more recently received.

* * * * *

On arriving at a dinner a servant should hand each male guest an envelope containing a card. This card will bear the name of the lady whom he is to take in to dinner. This part of the ceremony is usually accompanied by groans and maledictions as the gentlemen tremblingly open their envelopes.

Some hostesses allow their guests to file in to dinner in ignorance of their partners. They thus learn their fate at the dinner table, which postpones the terrible shock for as long a period as possible.

* * * * *

Nothing adds so much to an appearance of _savoir faire_ as the art of gracefully removing from a dinner or evening party a gentleman who has imbibed, not wisely but too well. The correct method is to ask the butler to inform him that a lady wishes to speak to him on the telephone. When he has left the room, spring upon him in the hall and chivy him into a cab.

* * * * *

Rouge sticks and powder puffs may be used by ladies at luncheons, but _never_ at dinners.

* * * * *

If a bachelor receives a dinner invitation from people who are not really “in the swim” (people, let us say, like old friends, classmates, and business associates, who are, so to speak, “on the green, but not dead to the hole”), he should simply toss it into the fire. This plan will prevent any more invitations from so undesirable a quarter. Were he to answer these people politely, they would certainly annoy him again at a later date. Remember that “the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword.”

* * * * *

Do not address your best thoughts to the ladies until they have had an opportunity to brush the glove powder from their arms and to look carefully at the dresses and ornaments of the other ladies at the dinner.

* * * * *

At a very large dinner, the lady beside you is almost certain to be one who entertains generously and, as such, should be treated with a certain degree of politeness. Try to suppress, however, all sentiments purely human in their nature, such as pity, kindness of heart, sympathy, enthusiasm, love of books, music, and art.

These ridiculous sentiments are in exceedingly bad taste and should be used but sparingly, if at all.

* * * * *

Ladies do not call upon a bachelor, in his rooms, after attending a dinner given by him—except in Mrs. Wharton’s novels.

* * * * *

On leaving a dinner you should always manage to come down the steps with a group of the super-rich—they may give you a lift home.

* * * * *

On driving home with friends from a dinner, it is the generally accepted practice to abuse the host and draw particular attention to his ghastly collection of family portraits, his wretched plate, and execrable food. Do not fail also to draw a moving picture of the stupidity and hideousness of the lady next to you at dinner—unless she should be in the carriage with you at the time.

* * * * *

When you are over half an hour late at a dinner it is well to have an excuse. There are, just now, only two modish excuses: First, you were arrested for speeding your motor; second, you were playing bridge, and every hand seemed to be a spade or a club.

* * * * *

When a gentleman at a dinner upsets a plate of terrapin, a ruddy duck, or a bowl of vegetable salad upon the dress of the lady beside him, she should laugh merrily and should always be provided with some apt jest with which to carry off the little _contretemps_.

* * * * *

Fletcherites have lately added a new horror to dining out. These strange creatures seldom repay attention. The best that can be expected from them is the tense and awful silence which always accompanies their excruciating tortures of mastication.

* * * * *

There are two _recherché_ methods for a bachelor to refuse a verbal dinner invitation. The first is to say that you are dining with a business associate. The second is to say that your engagement book is at home and that you will consult it immediately upon reaching there and will telephone. This gives you the desired opportunity of saying “No.” It is always easier over the wire than face to face.

* * * * *

In wriggling out of a dinner at the last moment in New York, it is _chic_ to invent some mythical female relative in Philadelphia who has developed a sudden and alarming illness and has hastily summoned you to her bedside.

* * * * *

If, at a dinner, food is passed to you which you do not care to eat, it is good form to take a generous heap of it, to pat it and mess it up on your plate with a fork.

* * * * *

After dinner, if a lady has been asked to sing and refused, do not urge her further. It is the height of bad manners, and there is just the off chance that she may yield.

* * * * *