Part 1

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MANNERS FOR MEN

MANNERS FOR MEN

BY MRS. HUMPHRY (“MADGE” OF “TRUTH”)

London JAMES BOWDEN 10, HENRIETTA STREET COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1897

MANNERS FOR MEN.

FIRST EDITION _February, 1897_. SECOND EDITION _March, 1897_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

WOMAN’S IDEAL MAN 1

IN THE STREET 12

IN A CARRIAGE 29

IN A HANSOM 31

SMOKING 32

IN OR ON AN OMNIBUS 36

ON HORSEBACK 42

DRIVING 46

GAMES AND RECREATIONS 50

RULE OF THE ROAD ON THE RIVER 53

DINNER-PARTIES 55

PUBLIC DINNERS 83

AT A RESTAURANT 88

AT LUNCH 91

FIVE O’CLOCK TEA AND AFTERNOON AT-HOMES 94

AT THE PLAY 96

AT A BALL 103

ENGAGEMENT AND MARRIAGE 108

DRESS 113

COUNTRY LIFE 119

VISITING-CARDS AND CALLS 121

MANNER 131

IN CHURCH 145

CORRESPONDENCE 148

PERSONAL SPEECH WITH ROYALTY AND RANK 158

MANNERS FOR MEN.

_WOMAN’S IDEAL MAN_.

I suppose there was never yet a woman who had not somewhere set up on a pedestal in her brain an ideal of manhood. He is by no means immutable, this paragon. On the contrary, he changes very often.

[Sidenote: The ideal changes with the idealist.]

If, however, the woman whose ideal he is grows upward in every way as she grows older, then these changes all go to improve him, and by the time he is finished he is a very fine creature. He never is finished till the brain of his creator ceases to work, till she has added her last touch to him, and has laid down the burden of life and gone elsewhere, perhaps to some happy land where ideals are more frequently realised than ever happens here.

[Sidenote: My ideal man.]

Like every other woman, I have my ideal of manhood. The difficulty is to describe it. First of all, he must be a gentleman; but that means so much that it, in its turn, requires explanation. Gentleness and moral strength combined must be the salient characteristics of the “gentleman,” together with that polish that is never acquired but in one way: constant association with those so happily placed that they have enjoyed the influences of education and refinement all through their lives. He must be thoughtful for others, kind to women and children and all helpless things, tender-hearted to the old and the poor and the unhappy, but never foolishly weak in giving where gifts do

[Sidenote: A man’s brain should be as fine as his heart.]

harm instead of good--his brain must be as fine as his heart, in fact. There are few such men; but they do exist. I know one or two. Reliable as rocks, judicious in every action, dependable in trifles as well as the large affairs of life, full of mercy and kindness to others, affectionate and well-loved in their homes, their lives are pure and kindly.

It was once said by a clever man that no one could be a gentleman all round who had not

[Sidenote: The furnace of experience.]

knocked about the world and associated with all sorts and conditions of men, high and low, rich and poor, good and bad. Experiences like these are like the processes for refining gold. The man who emerges unharmed from the fire of poverty and its associations, and who retains his independent manliness in relations with those high-placed, must have within him a fibre of strength that is the true essence of manliness. So many, alas! go down, down, when “puirtith cauld” touches them with her terrible, chilly finger. And so many become obsequious and subservient, false to themselves, in dealings with those above them.

Well! my ideal does neither. He is always true to himself, and “cannot then be false to any man.” And he must have a sense of humour, too, otherwise he would be far

[Sidenote: Humour an essential.]

from perfect. How life is brightened by a sense of fun! Think of what breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be if all were to be as solemn and as serious as some folk would have it!

If good manners are not practised at home, but are allowed to lie by until occasion calls upon their wearer to assume them, they are

[Sidenote: On behaviour in one’s own home.]

sure to be a bad fit when donned. It may be a trifle of the smallest to acquire a habit of saying “if you please” and “thank you” readily, but it is no trifling defect in a young man to fail to do so. If he does not jump up to open the door for his mother or sister, he may omit to do so some day when the neglect will tell against him in the estimation of those to please whom he would gladly give much. Carelessness in dress and personal appearance amount to bad manners. In the home there is sometimes a disagreeable negligence in this respect. At the breakfast-table unkempt hair, untended finger-nails, and a far from immaculate collar are occasionally to be seen, especially on late-comers who do not practise the ingratiating politeness of punctuality. Lounging, untidy habits are another form of bad manners. The ill-bred young man smokes

[Sidenote: The ill-bred young man at home.]

all over the house, upstairs and downstairs, and even in his mother’s drawing-room. He may be traced from room to room by the litter of newspapers and magazines he leaves behind him. The present fashion of taking one’s reading in pills, so to speak, snatching it in scrappy paragraphs from weekly miscellanies, is but too favourable to this lack of order. In this young man’s own room there is chaos. The maids have endless trouble in clearing up after him. His tobacco is spilled over tables, chairs, and carpets. His handkerchiefs, ties, socks, and collars are lying about in every corner of the room. He is too indolent even to put his boots outside the door at night that they may be cleaned in the morning. To save himself trouble he bangs all the doors instead of gently latching them. And yet, perhaps, if he could but realise that all this is “bad manners,” he would become as neat as he is now the reverse, and would be as decorative at table as he is, at the present moment, unornamental.

It is not only young men whose standard of behaviour in the home is a low one. Masters of the

[Sidenote: “Young” men not alone culpable.]

house, fathers of families, men of middle age, who are terribly put out if any one fails in duty to them, are sometimes conspicuously ill-bred in everyday matters. They are late for every meal, to the discomfort of the other members of the family and the great inconvenience of the servants. Polite to the world outside, they are brusque and disagreeable in their manner at home: rough to the servants, rude to their wives, and irritable with their children. Sometimes a good heart and considerable family affection are hidden away behind all this, but the families of such men would be very glad to compound for a little less affection and hidden goodness and rather more gentleness and outward polish.

Apart from faults of temper, men fall into careless habits of speech and manner at home, and one form of this, viz., habitually using strong language in the presence

[Sidenote: On strong language.]

of women and children, is particularly offensive. Besides, it defeats itself; for if the forcible expressions are intended to express disapprobation, they soon become weak and powerless to do so, because they are used on every possible occasion. After a time they lose all meaning.

I know a family where there are sons and daughters, the latter charming and in every respect young gentlewomen. But the sons fall far below their level.

[Sidenote: A typical family.]

They come to the door with thundering knocks that make every one in the house start disagreeably with surprise, walk through the hall without introducing their muddy boots to either scraper or doormat, sit down to meals without the usual preliminary of hand-washing and hair-brushing, and are altogether rough and unpresentable. If friends call at the house these young men rush away from the chance of encountering them; or, if they cannot help meeting them, they blush scarlet, look very _gauche_ and uncomfortable, and feel miserable. They knock things over out of pure awkwardness, and never realise that the secret of the whole matter is the want of self-training.

[Sidenote: The secret of the whole matter.]

Girls are animated by a greater wish to please, an amiable desire that need not be confounded with vanity, and this wish has led the sisters of these young men to practise those small acts of daily self-denial which after awhile produce the highest self-culture so far as manners go.

[Sidenote: The feminine motive.]

What is habitual neatness but constant coercion of human nature’s innate indolence? What is politeness in the home but the outcome of affection and self-respect, and the suppression of all those natural instincts of self-seeking that, allowed their way, produce the worst manners in the world?

If any young man desires to be a perfect gentleman, he must begin in his own home.

[Sidenote: The young man every one loves.]

It is delightful to see some young men unobtrusively attentive to their sisters, watchful of every need of their father and mother, cheerful and pleasant in their manner, full of fun and brightness, yet never losing the gentleness that denotes the fine nature, and so beloved in the home for all these endearing qualities, that when they leave it they are sadly missed. The father misses them for the pleasant companionship; the sisters miss them for the boyish spirits and the exuberant fun that never exceeds the bounds of good taste and refinement; and the mother misses them more than any one else, for no one better than she knows how many times a day her boys have set aside their own wishes in deference to hers, quietly, silently, unostentatiously--in a word, out of pure good manners, in the deepest, highest, truest sense of the words.

[Sidenote: “Gentle, yet virile.”]

Such gentle, virile natures look out at the world through the countenance, which is a letter of recommendation to them wherever they go.

I have but faintly sketched my ideal. The following pages may fill in the remaining touches.

Many men who go out into the world while still very young to earn their living have few opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of social observances.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in the way.]

Leaving home when boys, at an age when they are utterly careless of such things as etiquette and the “nice conduct of a cane,” they live in lodgings or at boarding-houses of the cheaper sort, where the amenities of existence have to yield to its practicalities.

[Sidenote: “Where amenities yield to practicalities.”]

Meals are served in a fashion that means despatch rather than elegance, economy rather than taste, and very few hints can be picked up for the guidance of young fellows when they enter the homes of friends and acquaintances.

[Sidenote: The penalty of ignorance.]

Their anxiety to fall in accurately and easily with the observances of those they meet on such occasions is as great as it is natural. They know well that to fail in these trifling acts of omission and commission is tacitly to acknowledge that they are unversed in the ways of good society.

[Sidenote: The aspirant is not necessarily a snob.]

There is not necessarily any snobbishness in this. A man may be perfectly manly and yet most unwilling to show himself inferior in any way to others of the class to which he belongs by birth and education. Even should those with whom he occasionally associates be his superiors, is he not right to try to rise?

[Sidenote: Culture and polish are realities.]

Culture may mean little or nothing to the uncultured. Polish may be an empty word to the unpolished. But they are realities, and go far to produce an inward and corresponding refinement of mind and spirit.

There are thousands of young men in London alone at this very moment who are longing to acquire the ease and _aplomb_ of good society.

[Sidenote: The desire to rise deserves encouragement.]

The desire is worthy of all encouragement. Only those with real good in them can feel it. The men who are destitute of it are those who associate with their inferiors, contentedly accept a low moral standard, adopt a mode of speech and action that is coarse and rough, and finally let themselves down to the frequenting of public-houses and places of amusement, where the entertainment has been carefully planned to suit the uneducated, the low-born, and others whose vitiated taste leads them to dislike what is lovely and of good report, and to revel in the reverse.

But, unfortunately, many a good fellow has been driven to seek companionship with those beneath him by the very difficulty he experiences in getting on in society.

[Sidenote: Men to be pitied.]

He fancies that his small solecisms are the subject of observation and comment, and he suffers agonies of _mauvaise honte_.

[Sidenote: A word to girls.]

Girls often laugh very unkindly at shy youths, when they might find opportunities of acting the good angel to them, and by the exercise of tact screening from observation those failures in good manners which are inevitable to the inexperienced. When he finds himself the butt of a few giggling girls, a young man feels miserably uncomfortable and humiliated, and he vows to himself that he will never again put himself in the way of such annoyance. Consequently he cuts good society, not realising that he would very soon overcome these initial difficulties and feel at home in it.

He must find amusement somewhere. It is only natural to youth to crave it. At first his taste is jarred by those inferior to him, and his fastidiousness offended by their manners.

[Sidenote: “We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”]

But, such is the fatal adaptability of human nature to what is bad for it, he soon becomes accustomed to all that he at first objected to, and even forgets that he had ever found anything disagreeable in it. After a few months his speech begins to assimilate the errors of those about him in his leisure hours. He uses the very expressions that jarred upon him at first. His dress and carriage deteriorate, and he is well on his way downhill in life long before he realises that he has quitted his own level, probably for ever.

[Sidenote: “If he had only held his own!”]

And if only he had held his own at a few gatherings, and acquired experience, even at the cost of a little present pain and mortification, he would in the same interval of time be enjoying society, educating himself in its customs, and acquiring that exterior polish which comes of intimate acquaintance with its rules and ease in practising them.

Should this little manual of manners be of use to any such in enabling them to master the theory, as it were, of social customs in the educated classes, it will have attained its aim.

[Sidenote: The object of this book.]

I have always felt the greatest compassion for young men when first introduced, after school and college life, to the routine of dinner, dance, and ball.

[Sidenote: Those early days!]

I have not forgotten the days when shyness made my own heart sink at the prospect of a dinner-party and when the hardest task on earth was the finding of nothings to say to a partner at a ball. It is a miserable feeling of confusion and _gaucherie_, and if I can in any way avert it from others it will be a source of great gratification to me.

_IN THE STREET._

The rule of the road is a simple one, though it is often forgotten or neglected--“Keep to the right.”

[Sidenote: “The rule of the road.”]

Easy enough for women, it is complicated in the case of men by the necessity of always remaining on the kerb side of any lady they may be accompanying. Should the lady keep to the right in meeting or in passing other persons, her escort may either keep by her or go out in the road. He will be able to judge for himself which course will be advisable.

[Sidenote: A man’s duty is always to his lady.]

His first duty is always to his companion, but that need not make him wanting in courtesy to other women. If remaining by the side of his companion should involve any inconvenience to the ladies of the other party, then he must give up his position, and go out into the roadway to let the latter pass. Should these be men, no consideration is necessary. He keeps close by his lady’s side.

[Sidenote: “In crowded streets.”]

In crowded streets he may often have to fall behind, but he should never allow any one to interpose between her and him. Should the pressure from the crowd become extreme, his duty is to protect her from it as much as possible, but never by putting his arm round her waist. A hand on either side the lady’s shoulders is usually sufficient.

[Sidenote: Salutations.]

In meeting acquaintances a nod is sufficient for a male friend, unless his age or position is such as to render it advisable to raise the hat. Should a lady be with the acquaintance, any man meeting them must raise his hat. So must the individual walking with the lady. The etiquette of bowing is a simple one.

[Sidenote: The right of acknowledgment rests with the lady.]

Male acquaintances always wait for acknowledgement on the part of female, as well as from those men who are their superiors in age or position. But this does not mean that they are shyly to look away from them and to ignore them. On the contrary, they must show clearly by their manner that they are on the look-out for some sign of recognition and are ready to reply to it.

[Sidenote: On waiting for acknowledgment.]

Shyness often interferes with this and makes a young man look away, and this is occasionally misconstrued as indifference and resented as such. The calm, quiet, collected expression of face that suits the occasion is not achieved at once. Sometimes the over-anxiety to make a good impression defeats itself, producing a blushing eagerness better suited to a girlish than a manly countenance. This, however, is a youthful fault that is not without its ingratiating side, though young men view it in themselves and in each other with unbounded scorn.

[Sidenote: On self-contempt.]

This sentiment of self-contempt is a frequent one in young people of both sexes. Their valuation of themselves varies as much as the barometer, and is as much affected by outward causes. After a “snub,” real or fancied, it goes down to zero, but as a rule it speedily recovers itself, and in most young men enjoys an agreeable thermometer of 85° or so in the shade!

The well-mannered man never puts out his hand in greeting until a lady extends hers.

[Sidenote: Offering the hand.]

This is a test of good breeding that is constantly applied. To those uninitiated in the ways of society, it would naturally appear the right thing to give as cordial a greeting as possible. Therefore the hand is held out, even on introduction to a perfect stranger. This is wrong. The first move in the direction of cordiality must come from the lady, the whole code of behaviour being based on the assumption that she is the social superior. The same holds good with elders and men of higher rank. When a man is introduced to these he raises his hat and bows, though slightly. It is only to kings and princes that a low bow is made, or to those whose character and eminent position render an introduction to them a very high honour.

[Sidenote: Introducing men to men.]

In introducing two men to each other the name of the inferior is mentioned first. By the inferior I mean the younger, the less important, or of lower rank. Suppose one of the two to be a familiar friend, and another a comparatively new acquaintance, then formality requires that the familiar friend shall be introduced to the other, being named first. The reason for this is that one naturally stands more on ceremony with the man one knows least. There may be counteracting circumstances, however, which would tend to reverse this order of things, but as a general rule, the social rank of both being equal, the above holds good.

[Sidenote: Introducing men to ladies.]

Never introduce a lady to a gentleman; but always the gentleman to the lady. That is, mention the man’s name first, addressing yourself to the woman--thus: “Allow me to introduce my friend Mr. Smith, Miss Jones.” And follow this up immediately by saying, “Miss Jones,” addressing Mr. Smith as you do so. It is a grave solecism to begin by introducing the lady. Tyros very naturally conclude that the lady’s name should be first mentioned; but on thinking it over they will soon perceive that to do so would infer that she is the lesser consideration of the two.

[Sidenote: “Woman’s social superiority.”]

It must always be borne in mind that the assumption of woman’s social superiority lies at the root of these rules of conduct.

It is bad manners to introduce people without permission.

[Sidenote: On permission to introduce.]

Nor must this permission be asked in the hearing of the second party. If Mr. A. wishes to know Miss B., the lady’s leave must be obtained before he can be presented to her. The only exception to this rule is at a dance or ball, where introductions need not be regarded as leading to acquaintanceship. They are only for the dance, and may be ignored next day.

[Sidenote: On recognition after a dance.]

Here, again, it is the lady’s privilege to ignore her partner, if she choose. But if she should bow to him he must raise his hat, whether he desires to follow up the acquaintanceship or not. Objections more frequently arise on the woman’s side; but should a man prefer to drop the matter he can manage to convey in his manner a disinclination to do so, and yet behave with perfect politeness. A man I knew was once introduced at a ball to a girl, with whom he had danced two or three times. Before he met her again he heard that she had been actively concerned in circulating a slander about another girl whom circumstances had misrepresented. I happened to see the next meeting between the two.

[Sidenote: Engineering an awkward point.]

The girl bowed, smiled, and showed some sign of an intention to stop and talk. The man raised his hat, looked extremely solemn and unsociable, and passed on. It was enough. The girl understood that he did not wish to resume the ball-room acquaintanceship, and very probably guessed why. He did it beautifully.