Curtin - A Question of Manners

A Question of Manners: Status and Gender in Etiquette and Courtesy Author(s): Michael Curtin Reviewed work(s): Source: The
Journal of Modern History, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 395-423 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1879686 . Accessed: 11/01/2013 06:17
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A Question of Manners:Status and Gender in Etiquetteand Courtesy*

Michael Curtin
Universityof California, Berkeley
has become Duringthe past fifteenyears the scholarlystudyof manners to the litcontribution increasinglyactive. Thoughthe most important erature NorbertElias's The Civilizing Process is, in fact, an older l Theworkof historians muchattention. book, it hasonly recentlyattracted has been matchedby sociologists such as ErvingGoffmanand the ethof social process nomethodologistswho have uncovereda wonderland trivial encountersof "everydaylife." Whatis perhaps in the apparently more curiousthan this recent interest in mannersis the fact that, with the exception of anthropologists,scholarshave so long left mannersto the amateurs. Fromthe Renaissanceto the FrenchRevolutionmannerswere an essential aspectof the ideal of civilization andwere thoughtworthyof the of intelligentmen. The literaryvehiclefor the discussion seriousattention of mannerswas the courtesybook, a genre thatfor almostthreehundred strand years, fromElyot to Chesterfield,remaineda lively andimportant formulations of theminor discussions Whileincluding of Englishliterature. of etiquette, courtesy literaturewas certainly not limited to these. A varietyof differentsubjectsmight be examined,but typically the genre accomplishments, of idealsof character, itselfwiththeadvocacy concerned habits, manners,and morals-in short, the artof living in society. The
of this * I wish to thank Sheldon Rothblattfor his help in the preparation numerous article.He haskindlyreadseveralversionsof theworkandhassuggested both in style and substance. imlprovements Elias's Ueber den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939) has only recently been translated(NorbertElias, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund3ephcott, 2 vols. [New York, 1978-82] ). Some otherrecent workswhich discuss manners undim deutschen imfranzosischen Wandel desAnstands Heckendorn, areHeinrich Davidoff,TheBest Circles:Society,Etiquette (Bern,1970);Leonore Sprachgebiet Cuddihy,The Ordealof Civility: and the Season (London, 1973);JohnMurray (New York, Freud, Marx,Levi-Strauss,and theJewishStrugglewithModernity 1977); OrestRanum,"Courtesy,Absolutism,andthe Rise of the French-State, 1630-1660," Journalof ModernHistory52 (1980): 426-51; William Roosen, Journalof Modern A SystemsApproach," Ceremonial: Diplomatic "EarlyModern History 52 (1980): 452-76.
lJournal of Modern History 57 (September 1985): 395-423] :)1985 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801185/5703/OOOlS01.00 All rights reserved.
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steps of a fashionable dance consorted with injunctionsto piety, the worthinessof the chase with the importance of Aristotelianmoderation, the rules of the table with the requiremenfs of justice. Whatmade the genre odd to moderntaste was its mixtureof elements of "high" and "low" culture. Mannershad not yet been dismissedas trivial and were discussed by essayists alongsidethe most serious moralideas withouta sense of incongruityand by the greatestwriterswithouta sense of derogeance. 0
It was, in fact, only when manners came to seem trivialandunworthy of association with serious moral thought that the courtesy book was doomed. After Chesterfield'sLetters to His Son (1774), no authorof distinctionagainjoined togetherall of the genre's characteristic preoccupations. The subject matterthat had once been combinedunderthe rubricof "courtesy" split apart.For mannersthis developmentwas disastrous. Separated from their context in tnoralthoughtand aspiration, mannerswere readilydismissedas trivial, formal, mechanical,andhypocritical, unfit either for moralistsor for historians. Exiled from high culture, the discussion of mannerswas confinedto the etiquettebook, a genrethathadexistedfor centuriesunderthe shadowof courtesy.Though only a pallid and truncatedversion of the old courtesybook, etiquette neverthelessbecamea tremendously populargenrein the nineteenth century. Just as the place of mannersin sixteenth-, seventeenth-,and eighteenth-century society was reflectedin the courtesybook, so the role of mannersin VictorianEnglandwas expressedby the etiquettebook. How can we explainthe decline of one genre and the rise of the other?These are the questionsthis article seeks to answer. Courtesywritersdirectedtheir advice to an aristocratic audience.2One can see this intentionmerelyby examiningthe titles of the majorworks: ThomasElyot's TheBokeNamedthe Gouernour ( 1531), Laurence HumphreytsTheNoblesorofNobilitre (1563), JamesCleland'sSlero-paidea, or the Institutionof a Young Noble Man (1607), HenryPeacham'sThe Compleat Gentleman ( 1622), and Richard Brathwait 's The English Gentleman (1630). The purposeof theiradvice was to fit a class, set out by birthto play a majorrole in the state, with the mannersand virtues to do the job properly.The great Renaissancedebateaboutthe origins andnature of truenobilitywas well suitedto framethematerial of courtesy, and works in the genre commonly began by first acknowledgingthe
. . .
Throughout this article "aristocracy"refersto both titled nobility and substantialgentry thatis, to large landownersand to the typical style of life that accompanied such ownership.
2
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special advantagesand responsibilitiesof birth, then insisting on the inadequacyof birthwithout virtue, and finally proceedingto the main matter-that is, instructionin virtue.3 The genre was not simply an idealizationof the aristocratic way of life. Forexample, the duel, which was the essence of the aristocratic code of honor, was condemned almost unanimously.Courtesywriterswrote as reformersof the aristocracyas much as they did as its propagandists,and their attitudetoward their audiencewas thatof the humanisteducator,not of the dependent client.4 As humanists, courtesy writers drew an assuranceand authorityfrom classical antiquitythatfreed themfromstrictdependenceon aristocratic standards.As educators,they had a naturalpreferencefor virtue over birth. The malleabilityof human natureexalts the teacher, just as it providesanincentiveforhis pupilsto learn.Whenteachers findthemselves to be of a lower social status thantheir own pupils, they may also find that virtue is superiorto birth.5 0 Although the genre had roots in antiquityand the Middle Ages, it emergeddecisively only in the Renaissance.Medievaladvice literature sometimesratedvirtue equal to, or even above, birth, but its "virtue" was closely circumscribed by the requirements of warfare.The medieval aristocracywas still largely a militaryorder whose admiredvirtuesprowess, endurance, impetuosity,indomitability, -and loyalty were determinedby this fact.6Such readerscould have only scantinterestin the
3 RuthKelso, TheDoctrineof the EnglishGentleman in the SixteenthCentury (Urbana, Ill., 1929), pp. 12-41, provides a good discussion of Renaissance theoriesof nobilityandof the debatebetweenbirthandvirtue-. See also Thomas Elyot, TheBokeNamedthe Gouernour (London, 1907), pp. 126-30; TheInstitucionof a Gentleman (London,1555), prologue,sig. A7v-A8r;Laurence Humphrey,TheNobles, or of Nobilitye(London,1563), sig. A4r-ASr; JamesCleland, Ilero-paidea, or the Institutionof a Young Noble Man (1607; reprint New York, 1948), pp. 2-10; HenryPeacham,The CompleatGentleman(London, 1622), pp. 2-5; RichardBrathwait,TheEnglish Gentleman(London, 1630), epistle. 4 Mason,the mainhistorian of the courtesygenre, concentrates heavily on the pedagogical side of the courtesy book, while historiansof educationsuch as Woodward, Brauer,Charlton, andRothblatt all haveusedmaterial fromcourtesy writers extensively. John F. Mason, Gentlefolkin the Making (Philadelphia, 1935); William H. Woodward,Studies in Edxcation during the Renaissance, 7 1400-1600 (1906; reprint New York,1967);GeorgeBrauer,Theoriesof GentlemanlyEducationin England,1660-17i5 (New York, 1959);KennethCharlton, Educationin:Renaissance England(London,1965);SheldonRothblatt, Tradition and Changein EnglishLiberalEducation(London, 1976). s This poiat was suggestedto me by SheldonRothblatt. 0 0 6 Gervase Mathew,"'Ideals of Knighthood in LateFourteenth-Century England," in Studiesin MedievalHistoryPresentedto FrederickMauricePowicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin, and R. W. Southern(Oxford, 1948), p. 358; Mervyn James,EnglishPolitics and the Conceptof Honour,1485-1642 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 3-6.
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represented.It was the absolutist sortof wisdomthat courtesyliterature the political court,thatcreated monarchical stateandits greatsymbol, the prowess military from aristocracy the andsocial incentives that turned power, money, Patronage, book.7 courtesy tocivil arts-and henceto the warin been had they as just court, at found be to andprestigewere all task the thus was It court. the of ways the butonly for those who knew in use constructive for pride aristocratic harness of courtesy writersto 11 Castiglione's warrior. the of out courtier the civil society, to create manners the with concerned explicitly was Cortegiano (1528), forexample, boththegrazEaandsprezzatura readers andmoralsof courelife andtaught and the cool insight and Urbino defunct and that were useful in tiny rude courts of princely and cruel the in required detachmentthat were : Italy.6 was In Englandthe relationshipbetweencourtsandcourtesyliterature for looked readers English When Continent. the on not as close as it was Continental of translations to turned they court, in advice on manners authors Castiglione,DeRefuge, Courtin,and Callibres.Englishwriters concentratedmore on service to the state (which, to be sure, was monarchical)thanthey did on pleasinga prince. Elyot, for example, sought to educate "inferiourgouernours"-kingly counselors, county leaders, abroad.One mustnot exaggeratethe directapplicabilityof ambassadors morals describedby courtesy writers, however. They and the manners professional trainingnor being read by a presupplying neither were professionalaudience. The programof behaviordescribedby courtesy gentleman writerswas highly generalizedandsuitableto the independent was the conduct book courtesy to essential was What society. in civil relatively the of out society civil orderly and pacified a of emergence violent and chaotic Middle Ages. According to NorbertElias, the increasinglyvigilant controlthatindividualsexercisedover their outward demeanorduringthe Renaissancemay be ascribedto the growthof the to its monopolyof violenceandto its extension absolutestate,particularly Thehot temperand emotionalexprovinces. the into order and of law
Forrelationsbetweenknightsandcourtiers,see Kelso, pp. 48-49; Richard Barber,TheKnightand Chivalry(London, 1970), pp. 337-40; Sidney Anglo, Ideals,"in TheCourtsof Europe: TheRenaissanceandChanging "TheCourtier: ed. A. G. Dickens (New York, 1400-1800, Politics, Patronage, and Royalty, 1977), p. 38. Of course, the aspirationsof the medieval aristocracywere not virtues.The wide extentof the courtlylove tradition entirelylinutedto the martial makesthis clear. The courtier-who was amongotherthingsexpectedto possess militaryprowess-was only relatively, not absolutely, more "civil?' than the knight. BaldesarCastiglione see J. R. Woodhouse, 8 Pora modemview of Castiglione, (Edinburgb,1978).
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pressivenessthat made a knight formidablein a society in which power relationswere established by violent aggressiveness madehim vulnerable in civil society.9 Similarly, MervynJames has describedthe medieval "communityof honour that sanctionedthe sortXof aggressiveand com- petitive conduct that made both for continualoutbreaksof violence in daily life and frequentrebellions againstthe king. Duringthe sixteenth century, however, what increasingly underwrotean individual's selfesteem and social statuswas service to the king and state;.The courtesy book was one of a numberof meansby which conductconsonantwith a civil society orderedby law fwasurgedupon the aristocracy.l Softerandmorerefinedmanners werenot seen by everyoneas a triumph of righteouscivility over boorishcontentiousness.Advocatesof civility were persistentlychallenged by bitter and empassionedattacks on the morality of fine manners. The court, home to elegant and impressive manners,was also, the critics charged,hometo trivialandevil morality. As Claus Uhlig has shown in great detail, there was a tremendousoutpouringof criticismin RenaissanceEuropeagainstthe moralfailings of court life.l The court, so this literatureclaimed, encouragedminor accomplishmentsbut discouragedmajorvirtues. Courtstaughtthe arts of deception, flattery, and intriguebut mocked open and simple honesty. They even corruptedsexual morality, turningsome to lasciviousness, others to languideffeminacy. Thoughleaders in "compliment"and ingratiatingmanners,courtswere neverthelesssites of bitterandrelentless competition.Courtstunxed the outward gracesof elegantmanners against their deepermoralroots. AlthoughUhlig concludedhis studywith the Elizabethans,it is clear thatthe anticourt argument persistedinto the seventeenth century,lending its moral weight first to the countryoppositionto the early Stuartsand finally to the general disgust with CharlesII.12Only in the eighteenth centurydid court criticism, along with courts themselves, decline. Increasingly, London-based"fashionablesociety" assumedthe role the courthadpreviouslyplayed as the cynosureof elegantbutimmoralman9 Elias,2:232-36.
lames, pp. 27, 60-63. 1}Claus Uhlig, Hofkritikim England des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Berlin, 1973);forFrance,see PaulineSmith,TheAnti-Courtier Treind in SiJcteenth CenturyFrenchLiterature(Geneva, 1966). 12 The political conflictsbetweencourtandcountryhave been linkedto moral andculturaldifferencesby manywriters.See LawrenceStone, TheCrisis of the Aristocracy,155$-1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 723ferez Zagorin,The Courtand theCountry (NewYork,1970),pp. 34, 43; Uhlig,pp. 343-50. D. R. M. Wilkinson, TheComedyof Habit (Leiden, 1964), discussescourtesyliterature in relationto the courtof CharlesII and Restorationdrama.
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ners. The same argumentsthat had been directed against courts were hadtwo major London.Thesearguments now leveled againstfashionable reinforced fortheinnerlife, powerfully preference foci. First,theChristian mannersseem by puritanintrospection,madethe cultivationof outward eithertrivial andfoolish or evil andhypocritical.Second, the belief that bold, andhonest was andshouldbe straightforward, the Englishman were manners Courtly,fashionable the advocatesof refinement. undercut identified with foreigners whose ingratiatingmannersdisguised both foolish vanity and treacherousevil. Because the court and fashionable ways, it was tempting Londonwereindeedpointsof entryfor Continental of the metropolis, resentfulanddisapproving for thosein the countryside, to representtheir grievances in internationalterms. The elegant and were immoralItaliansof the sixteenthcenturyandthe Frenchthereafter to the sturdyEnglishmanwhat the courtierandthe manof fashionwere was thus supto the countrygentleman.A certainroughnessof manners portedboth by religious conviction and nationalself-conceit. Withoutsuggestingthatthe critics of courtsor of fashionablesociety of theirarguments clearthatthe plausibility werewrong,it is nevertheless restednot merelyon the realitiesof courtor fashionbut also on the fact thatthe vices of flattery,servility, dissimulation,disloyalty, and sexual were problemsendemicto society as a whole. Justas softer, irregularity more refinedmannersrelied generally on civil society ratherthan parsocietyreflected ticularlyon courts,so criticismof courtsandfashionable thanmerely rather aboutthe whole statusof manners uncertainty profound doubts about the specific natureof courts and fashionablesociety. A 4'solution"to the problem was impossible. Mannerswere inevitably hypocriticalbecause they were conceived to be a facade drawn over the reality of self-interest. underlyingrealities, particularly If a solutionwas impossible,courtesywriterscouldat least emphasize the benevolentaspectsof dissimulation the desirabilityof suppressing violent and disagreeableemotions, the dignity of measuredand orderly andsociability,andso on. Mostcourtesy thegainsin self-control manners, writerswere very waryof offendingmoralsensibilitiesandindeedthemto moralpurposes. selves believed that mannersshouldbe subordinated popularity continuing the by indicated was Thesuccessof theircompromise Scylla the between course a steer to possible proved It works. of their If the crudity. country of Charybdis the and immorality of fashionable by opposingthemto soberrespectability,the formertrivializedmanners latter defaced morality by denying its aesthetic aspiration.The harsh andthe indecentelegance in theirhourof triumph of the Puritans plainness Cavaliersin theirsbroughtdiscreditto bothextremes. of the Restoration of good manners It was in the eighteenthcenturythatthe appreciation was moStgeneral. For many of the early Georgianssociability was an
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art, and thereforethe courtesy book, the literarygenre that supported place.13 Indeed, manyof the minorartsof life, this art, hadan important and food and wine connoisseurship,became travel, gardening, such as at this time the commonpropertyof good society not merelythe hobbies discoveredin the ItalianRenof eccentrics.l4The idea that Burckhardt fromthe shackles personality of the individual aissance-the emancipation of unconscioustraditionby the applicationto the self of all the best that artandreasoncouldoffer wasjoinedto worldlygood sense, moderation, and sociability to inspire the characteristiccivilization of eighteenthcenturyEngland.The courtesybook, whichhadits originsin the tradition of self-cultivation,obviously benefited*om the domesticationof these Italianideas into English 'sliberaleducation."In addition,mannersand strandof eighteenthby an important were supported courtesyliterature amongchurchmen,latcenturyreligious opinion. To an extent unalsual found it possible to squarethe minor and worldly morals itudinarians principles.The sociab}evirtuesof self-control, with Christian of coalrtesy reasonableness,tact, and moderationwere believed to cooperate with appealedto the age in more revelation,not to competewith it. 15 Manners ran, were tangibleways as well. Most people?so the commonargument superficialobservers, easily impressedby a show of good mannersbut unable to appreciatethe more difficult moral virtues. If mannerslost somethingin dignity and moralweight, they gainedit back in influence and utility. Manners,not solid virtue, made 6'friends,"and "friends," not able service, madeone's career.'6This was an age of patronage,not imof merit of "friends," not of testableknowledgeandbureaucratic partiality-and thereforethe cultivation of good mannersdid not rest
3 The remainder of this paragraph draws heavily from Rothblatt, pp. 14, 62. Delights(Boston, 1980); Girouardstates that !ibraries 14 J. H. Plumb, Georgian
and picture galleries became common features of the country house only in the House [Oxford, eighteenth century (Mark Girouard, Life in the EnglishCountry 1978], p. 69). Is For the latitudinarians, see Norman Sykes, Churchand State in Englandin (Hamden, Conn., 1962), pp. 257-62; L. P. Curtis, Anglican theXVlllthCentury Moodsin the EighteenthCentury(Hamden, Conn., 1966), pp. 1-48; Gerald R. (Cambridge, 1964), pp. in the EighteenthCentury Cragg, ReasonandAuthority 57-61; R. S. Crane, S'Suggestionstowards a Genealogy of the 'Man of Feeling,' " EnglishLiteraryHistory 1 ( 1934): 205 -30; Donald Greene, " Latitudinarianism and Sensibility: The Genealogy of the 'Man of Feeling' Reconsidered,?' Modern Philology 75 (1977): 159-83 . 16 Charles Pullen ( "Lord Chesterfield and Eighteenth-Century Appearance and Reality," Studies in English Literature,1500-1800 8 [1968]: 501-15) argues that Chesterfield representedcommon eighteenth-centuryopinion on these matters. i.e., intelligence and virtuous morality were often less effective in the pursuit of one's interests than good manners. This is an old theme of the anticourt tradition and can be traced back to the Middle Ages (see Uhlig, pp.- 43-54).
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merely on an ideal of high civilization but also on the firm groundof Georgianplace hunting. Interestin mannerswas closely tied to the expansionof Londonin the eighteenthcentury.l7In some ways courtesybooks may be viewed as a meansby which a countryfamily prepared itself for a visit to the capital. Howto live in the chaotic,cosmopolitan capital,howto dealwithstrangers on the basis of impersonalnorms, how to be, in a word, "urbane": these considerationsbecame prominentin courtesy literaturebecause of the increasing size and importanceof London. The central dichotomy in eighteenth-century discussions of mannerswas not, as it became in the. nineteenthcentury, between the aristocracyand the middle class but rather betweenurbanity andprovincialism. Manners identified individuals not so much accordingto theirrankon a scale of social stratification as on theiracquaintance with the cultureof London.Admittedly,the most prestigious manners of thecapitalwerefoundin fashionable andaristocratic circles, but "good manners"were not simply synonymouswith "aristocraticmanners."It was indeed the Londonconnectionthat separated the richestandmost fashionablesectionsof the aristocracy fromits rivals in the lower aristocracy.The-superiorityof Londonmannerswas by no means 1lncontested,and large sections of the aristocracyremainedunperturbably local.l8 But the usages of the capital-connected, as they were, with the elite of the aristocracy-graduallybut inexorablyspread into the countryside,replacinglocal traditionsandturningsquires'eyes to Londonand to courtesybook manners. Thus, despite the declining importanceof court life, the uncertain moralstandingof fashionableLondon,the continuinguneasinessabout hypocrisy, the nationalinclinationto bluntness,andreligiousdistrustof worldliness, good mannersheld a place amongthe recognizedvirtuesof civilized life. The characteristic expressionof this association of manners with morality,the courtesybook, was solidly basedin eighteenth-century culture. And yet by the end of the centurythe genre died. What were the causes of death? II The counesy genredied becausethe conditionsthatsustainedits difficult compromisebetween mannersand morals did not themselves endure.
17 For London
and manners, see Rothblatt, pp. 32-39; Richard Sennett, The
Fall of Public Man (New York, 1977), pp. 47-88.

18 London manners affected provincial society just as provincial mannersaffected London society. Robert Malcolmson (PopularRecreationsin English Society, 1700-1850 [Cambridge, 1973], pp. 67-71), discusses how new ideas of civility split the traditional rural community.
A Questionof ANanners 403 When it became incongnous to think of fine rnanners as an esseatial elementof civilizedlife, the courtesybookwas doomed,andthe etiquette book, a genre that cheerfully preachedmannersinX a desecratedtemple, became the appropriate vehicle for instructionin that diminishedkind of mannersthat we call "etiquette." Our explanationof the demise of the courtesybook (and the rise of the etiquettebook) begins, therefore, with an explanationwhy in the late eighteenthandearly nineteenthcenturiesthe traditional associationbetweenmanners andmoralswas broken. Since Prancis Osborne's important Advice to a Son (1656-58),l9 a strandof courtesy literatureitself had come close to abandoningthe attemptto squaremannerswith morals. Osbornedid not, in the manner of later etiquette writers, give merely perfunctoryrecognition to the moralcontextof manners.Indeed,he partlyshared the view of traditional critics of manners thatthe "worlds'was a compound of folly andwickedness. For Osborne, however, recognition of worldly iniquity did not dictatemoralisticwithdrawal.The very fact thatthe "world"was so full of vain, petty, foolish people made mannersessential to the pursuitof self-interest.Onelearnedgood manners in orderto improve one's chances in a cruel world, not in orderto makethe world a betterplace. Though put forwardin a disturbinglycynical way bEy Osbornes the usefulness of good manners wasyas we haveseen, a clichEof eighteenth-century thought and a premiseof the courtesybook itself.20 The most famous, indeed notorious, exponent of the expediency of finemanners wasChesterfield (1694-1773). Anyexplanation of thedemise of the English courtesy book must account for Letters to His Son, the last importantrepresentativeof the genre. Certainly, Chesterfielddid not himself kill the courtesy book. Letters to His Son does, however, strikinglyillustratewhy the courtesybook was unableto perpetuateits traditionalcouplingof mannersand moralsin late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century society. lust at the momentwhenforces deeplyhostile to the cultivationof fine mannerswere gatheringgreatforce, Letters to His Son appeared to representmannersin theirmost cynical, expedient, and immorallight. Chesterfield,as Coxon, Collins, DobrEe,and others have insisted, was not the moral ogre that popularopinion liked to believe.2l This is
i9 Pepys noted in his diary that PrancisOsborne'sAdvice to a Son (Oxford, 1658) was one of the most discussed books of the day. I owe this referenceto Mason, p. 69. 20 Pullen, pp. S01-15. 21 Roger Coxon, Chesterfeld and His Critics (London, 192S);John Churton Collins, Essays and Studies (Londons1895); BonamyDobrFe,"Introduction," in TheLettersof Philip DormerStanhope,4th Earl of Chesterffeld, ed. Bonamy DobrEe(London, 1932).
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or to sort out in his writingsthe real not the place to defendChesterfield for my the public fromthe private;butit is important from the apparent, to misreadChesterfield to recognizethatit was a simple matter argument hisLetters. Chesterfield thatpepper andto neglectthe manymoralcautions had an affinity for that traditionof realism that refused to idealize the in declaiming capacitiesof manbut saw no purpose moralandintellectual againstiniquityand in testifying to personalrlghteousness.At the same time, he had no desire to offend or scandalize the public and would certainlyhave disapprovedof the publicationof his Letters. Indeed, as one who believed that the place of civility and moralityin society was held it to be a dutyof the richandthe enlightened Chesterfield precarious, to supportthe mythsby which public orderwas maintained.And yet the secret escaped. The Letters were published, and in them one finds not of mannersto moralsthatpublic the careful andpedanticsubordination discourse requiredbut rathersome very frankstatementsaboutthe importanceof good mannersin makingone's way in the world. This was critics Thetraditional a clichEandanoffensiveinnovation. simultaneously lay that reality unseemly of mannershad always claimedto uncoverthe testimony insouciant the Son, to His beneaththe elegantexterior.Letters of an insider, suppliedthe proof. The rootlessness of fashionablemannersis everywhereapparentin Chesterfield. He was an aristocratwith no interest in country life, a courtierwithouta court, an Englishmanwith a great(butnot uncritical) of the French. A great believer in the delights of civilized appreciation also worriedaboutthe aimandelegant leisure, Chesterfield intercourse lessness of this style of life and doubtedthe capacity of the ordinary to sustainthe desiredlevel of sophistication.Thoughborninto aristocrat fashionablesociety, he remainedan outsiderwith an acuteawarenessof the gulf separatingthe individualfrom his society. Letters to His Son containeda curious combinationof sociability and aloofness: one was chargedto seek out good society, to enjoy it, and learn from it, but at the same time to remaindistant,controlled,andcoolly observant,ready The elaboratecare to turn particularsituations to one's advantage.22 seemedto be entirelyselfishandwithout devotedto manners Chesterfield concern for the good of the community.Whatwas most strikingabout
22 It was this cool, detached manner, not the many moral cautions that Chesterfield directed toward his son, that readers of the Letters seized upon. The readiness with which Chesterfield was distorted and misread must be understood in relation to the moral disapproval that was long directed against courts and the conscious manipulation of manners. For some contemporary reaction to ChesLetters: terfield, see Sidney Gulick, ed. s TwoBurlesquesof LordChesterfield's Etiquette(1776) (Los Angeles, TheGraces (1774) land] TheFine Gentleman's 1960).
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Chesterfield,however, was not his reductionof mannersto ingratiation and self-interest-which, as we have seen, was an idea with a long history. The instructionin social and political institutions, in modern and ancienthistoryand letters, and the many-other worthysubjectsthat occupied so muchof the Letters were conceived in what appearedto be a similarly self-interestedspirit. The Renaissancetraditionof self-cultivationfoundin Chesterfielda very compromising adherent.He seemed to devote the aesthetic idea of personalitynot to the service of civic humanism, courtly counsel, or even Burokhardtian individualismbut ratherto the mediocre ends of eighteenth-century place hunting. The individualformedhimself so as to be able to exploit the institutionsof sociefy for his own ends, andindeedeighteenth-century publicinstitutions were all too often exploited by incumbentsfor privateends. Vicesimus Knox, one of the last of the courtesywriters, complained of Chesterfield'simmenseinfluence:''Nothinghas of late militatedmore powerfully againstNobility than the publicationof LordChesterfield's Letters." Knox's purpose was traditionalamong courtesy writers. He wantedto impartto noble youth an educationand moralcharacterthat would enable them to fulfill the mabyduties of theirsocial position. To Knox, Chesterfield'sadvice represented a perniciousdistortionof these purposesbecauseLetters to His Son associatedaristocratic educationnot with duty andresponsibilitybut ratherwith "a wantof all public spirit, and a most anxious attentionto self-interest, aggrandizement, and gratification."23 Writingin the shadowof the FrenchRevolution,Knox and many others believed that unless the English aristocracyreformedits mannersalong more respectablelines, it too would go the way of the charmingbut dissolute French. While the times were not inauspicious for mannersof a certainkind, the aristocraticworldlinessof Letters to His Son now representeda dangerousabuse ratherthan a progressive ideal. Chesterfieldseemed to associate fine mannerswith the frivolous preoccupations of a rentierclass, not with the serious aspirationsof the communityas a whole. Antiaristocratic opinion, madeimmenselymore powerfulandaggressiveby the Frenchltevolution,foundChesterfieldian mannersoffensive. The old argumentthat good mannerswere trivial status symbolsratherthangenuineaspects of high civilization was now assertedin a chargedpolitical context. In the past mannershad drawn prestige from their associationwith the aristocracy(and vice versa). In the futurethe value of this associationwas muchdiminished, and each partyhad to sharethe ignominyas well as the prestigeof the other. Likemanyothereighteenth-century authors, Chesterfield, withoutbeing disrespectfulof religion, wrote in a worldlyvein. At midcentury,when
:
23
Vicesimus Knox, Personal Nobilily (London, 1793), pp. 317-21.
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most of his Letters were writtenif not published, this outlook was acceptable and respectable. Even among explicitly religious writers, the sociable virtuesof moderation,self-restraint,andgood-fellowshipwere clergy that the highly valued. It was indeed among the latitudinarian cause of good mannersfoundits most potentadvocates.Latitudinarians had bten impressedby the virtues of moderationafter witnessing the excesses of sectarianenthusiasmin the Civil War.In roughand violent times the cause of mannerscould be madeto seem the cause of religion manners Butonce achieved,softerandmorerestrained andenlightenment. appearedinimical to profounderthings. Thus, the unusualstability of English society in the first two-thirdsof the eighteenthcenturyand the in mannersduringthat time graduallyroutinizedand real improvement then diminishedthe value placed on polite sociability. By the end of the century just when Chesterfieldleft the courtesy position- the climateof religious opinion traditionin a very vulnerable of thereligious themostimportant changing.TheEvangelicals, wasrapidly of "manners,"but the reformers,wrote much about the improvement they hadin mindhadlittle to do withthe minute,outward sortof manners graces that fascinatedChesterfield.We cannoteven say that the Evangelicals were interestedin mannersof any sort unless we mean, as they did, the mannersthat derivedfrom religious postulates.Unlike some of theirmoreconventionalVictorianheirs, the earlyEvangelicalswere not of conduct. standards to respectable conformity contentwithmereoutward Religious faith, continuallyscrutinizedby anxiousandrelentless introbehavior.While in manycases faith spection, was to determineoutward coincidedwith worldlygood manners,sometimesit did not. One was to preachthe Wordin and out of season, and yet it was good mannersnot to discuss religion in company.24
24 The early Evangelicals encouraged the faithful not to be bashful or ashamed about religious earnestness. Even if one's behavior was obtuse from the point of view of worldly manners, one should speak out boldly. Chesterfield addressed a similar problem, though from a different perspective and with a different conclusion. He advised his son to conduct himself according to moral principles but to disguise his principled behavior under a mask of bon}omie. "Do not refuse lan invitation to gamble deeply] gravely and sententiously, alleging the folly of staking what would be very inconvenient for one to lose, against what one does not want to win: but parry those invitations ludicrously, et en badinant. Say that if you were sure to lose you might possibly play, but that as you may as well win, you dread l'embarras des richesses ever since you have seen what an incumbrance they were to poor Harloquin, and that therefore you are determined never to venture the winning above two Louis a-day" (Lord Mahon, ed., The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, 4 vols. [London, 1845], 2:6).
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Mere outwardconformitymay have been the best that could be immediately expectedfromtheheathen massesagainst whomtheEvangelicals directedso muchof their energy. But with the middleandupperclasses the problemwas different. There worldly standardsof good behavior were alreadyin place and indeed had been erected into a hollow idol that, accordingto the Evangelicals,barredfurther progress.As William Wilberforce(1759-1833), the Evangelicalleader, madeclear in his influentialPractical View (1797), the mere good citizen who did his duty to himself, his family, and his society was no longer adequate.Indeed, it was precisely the eighteenth-century traditionof latitudinarian goodfellowshipandcitizenship thatWilberforce foundto be his mostformidable and objectionableopponent.25 This comfortableconflationof worldly mannersand moralitywith Christianitydeluded people about the true state of their souls. Christianity,Wilberforceinsisted, was a difficult, exigent creed, which did not merely sanctify enlightenedhumanitybut ratherguidedman to a reconciliationwith God. Thereremained, of course,muchroomfor the improvement of manners at the end of the eighteenthcentury, and no one was more active in this regardthanthe Evangelicalsthemselves. But the courtesybook - based on the Renaissancetraditionof self-cultivation was not in the position to capitalize on the sort of mannersthat interestedthe Evangelicals. Whereascourtesyliterature valuedgood mannersfor theirown sake and regardedthem on more or less the same plane as high moralprinciple, Evangelicals diminished manners to a mereoutward expression of religious nature.On the other hand, if one wishes to include within the courtesy tradition suchworksas TheWhole Dutyof Man( 1659)andits descendants, thenthe genreitself endured,indeedflourished, in the climateof religious revival. The generallydomestic, self-abnegatory spiritof this branchof "courtesy literature"was also well-suited to the situationof women, who, as we shall see, were emerging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturiesas the mainconstituencyof good manners.26
25 The argumentagainst refined and respectable worldliness is made most directly in chap. 4, the central section of the Practical View. Hannah More made the same point repeatedly in " An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World" and "Thoughts on the Importanceof the Manners of the Greatto General Society," in Hannah More, Collected Works, 2 vols. (New York, 1857), 2:262-300. 26 The importance of feminine readership to nineteenth-centuryetiquette books is discussed below, Sec IV. Joyce Hemlow ("Fanny Burne-yand the Courtesy Books," Publications of the Modern Language Association 65 [1950]: 732-33, 756-57) has drawnattentionto the "courtesy-novel" andto the numerous "courtesy books" directed to women in the late eighteenth century. However, it is not clear that the volume of courtesy literature directed to women in this period actually increased. A glance at the bibliography in Ruth Kelso's Doctrine for theLady
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Another trend in late eighteenth-century opinion which had fateful consequencesfor the courtesybook was the rise of Romanticism.27 The Romanticstress on the meritsof diversityas opposedto universality and on the integrityandworthinessof individualcommunitiesas opposedto cosmopolitan standards of civility was hostileto the intentions of courtesy writers. This line of thoughtassertedthat it was morallyreprehensible to proclaimgeneralstandards of civilization. The cosmopolitanwas essentially rootless and mistook thin and brittleconventionfor strenuous and exalted virtue. Mannerswere supposedto be the productof unique cultures and appropriate only in the context that gave them birth;they were not for intellectual discussion or for improvement but ratherfor simple and direct living; they were the expression of the identityof a particular communityor a particular individual,not of the aspirations of mankindas a whole. If, on the one hand, the cultivation of manners alienatedman from his community,on the other, it alienatedhim from himself. The Romanticquest after deep and "authentic"feeling, uninhibited by proprietyor social convention, was obviously destructiveof manners.The courtesygenre, which was predicated on the idea thatthe uninstructedand uninhibitedself was base, lost its audiencewhen the Romanticsdiscoveredthat the child was fatherto the man. The autochthonous self of the Romanticswas at every point contraryto the effort of courtesy writers to make the mannersand morals of the individual conform with recognized (if debated) standardsof civilization. There was no more anti-Romantic book thanLettersto His Son. Chesterfield's cosmopolitancultureand the readinesswith which he acceptedthe impositions of fashion and mannerson the "essential" self marked him as one of the least Romanticof men. The Romantics also frequently expressed the opinionthatthe individual could discover and cultivate his true self only in the solitude of the countryside.This belief had a long history, at least partof which was of theRenaissance (Urbana, III., 1956) shows the wide extent of the genre in earlier times. At a minimum, it is certain that courtesy literature directed to women maintained itself during the late eighteenth century, whereas that directed to men declined drastically. 27 There are many aspects to Romanticism, some of which contradict others. In this passage I use "Romanticism" to refer to the following ideas; (1) primitivism, (2) the preference for diversity over universality and uniformity, and (3) nationalism based on historical and ethnic communities. See Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the EighteenthCentury(London, 1929), pp. 99, 25868; A. O. Lovejoy, TheGreatChainof Being: A Studyin theHistoryof an Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), pp. 293, 307, 312-14; A. O. Lovejoy, Essays in the Historyof Ideas (Baltimore, 1948), pp. 228-53; Isaiah Berlin, Against theCurrent: Essays in the History of Ideas (New York, 1979), pp. S, 11-12.
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interwovenwith the old opposition to courts and fashionable society. The late eighteenth-century recrudescenceof the pastoralwas, in part, a reaction against the forces of urbanization and industrialization that were destroyingtraditional formsof community life. Romanticism flourished by mourninga culture and a type of mannersthat were passing away. The courtesybook, on the otherhand,died alongsidemuchof the rustic and traditional behaviorthat it had long campaignedagainst. III The courtesybook effectively joined the more minuteand ceremonious aspects of "manners"with those broaderand more substantialpartsof conductthat verge onto what we call "morals."Etiquettebooks, on the other hand, concentratedon precise descriptionsof the exact rules of interpersonal behavior with a relative disregardfor moral thought. In the formthey took in the nineteenthcentury,etiquettebooks were organized around particular social situations dinners,balls, receptions,presentationsat court, calls, promenades, introductions, salutations rather thanaccording to themoralvirtuesof anidealindividual-grace, fortitude, self-control. Whereascourtesytreatedmanbroadlyin society, etiquette focusednarrowly on sociability.Onedid not speakof an etiquette between master and servant, employer and employee, buyer and seller, or, in general, of the workplace,whereasone of the grandthemesof courtesy, while not exactlywork, was serviceto king andcommunity,andrelations betweenmasterandservantwere exploredthoroughly.Nor was therean etiquetteof family life: relationsbetweenhusbandandwife andbetween parentsand childrenwere amongthe staple topics of courtesybut were absentfrom etiquette. Finally, etiquettewritersshowed little interestin the solitary individual;they prescribedno courses of reading, no selfimprovingactivities, no lists of useful habitsto cultivate. The courtesy book was, of course, full of precisely this sort of advice. There was no importanttraditionof etiquettebooks in seventeenthand eighteenth-century England. FannyBurney, who was as interested in mannersand the literatureabout them as anyone, made Evelina say that she regrettedthe lack of any book which describedthe "laws and customs a la mode."28 Even the medieval-styleetiquette books which
28 FannyBurney,Evelina, letter 20. This passage was drawnto my attention by Hemlow, p. 733. Mason, p. 253, observedthattherewere no native English etiquette (in his terms"civility")booksin theseventeenth andeighteenth centuries. Evelinauses the phrase"lawsandcustomsa la mode"in preference to "etiquette." "Etiquette"does appearin Evelina (letter 2()), but it is italicized as a French word. It was Chesterfield,accordingto the OED, who introduced"etiquette" into English. Withsuchanambassador, it is notsurprising thatwhen "etiquette"
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concentrated heavilyon tablemanners andvery basicphysicalproprieties wereno longerbeingproduced by the English.Whenin 1788JohnWesley wantedto cautionhis followersagainstboorishcoarseness,he republished passages from TheRefinedCourtier(1663), itself a paraphrase of Della Casa's Galateo (1558).29 There were some etiquette books available, however, thoughnone of them was entirely satisfactory.AdamPetrie's Rules of Good Deportment,or of Good Breeding (1720) was heavily dependent on Frenchauthorities, and, whereoriginal,it was rather naive. TheManof Manners(c. 1735)3 gave adviceon a few pointsof etiquetteintroductions,salutations, and promenades-but the jocular, facetious tone of this worklimitedits usefulness.Matthew Towle, a dancingmaster at Oxford, includeda discussion of etiquettein his Young Gentleman's andLady'sPrivate Tutor( 1770) which, thoughcompetent,was strongly slantedtowardthe dutiesof the youngto the old andtherefore notentirely appropriate for general society. ThePolite Academy(n.d.) was another work that contained useful advice but that was directed to children. Translations of FrenchandItalianworkswere madeand, of course, one could consult earliercourtesybooks on some points of etiquette.31 The greatpopularity of Chesterfield in the late eighteenth andearlynineteenth centuriesmust have been due, in part, to readerswho wished to glean bits of etiquettefrom the voluminousand repetitiveLettersto His Son. JohnTruslerassistedsuchreadersby extractingthe passageson manners from Chesterfieldand publishingthem separatelyas Principles of Politeness, itself an immensely popularwork.32Trusleralso essayed an
crossed the Channel, it lost its primary French meaning of "label" or "ticket" but retained the secondary definitions of "court ceremonial" or "manners and rules of polite society." John Walker (A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary [ 1791; reprint, Menston, 1968]) was first to include "etiquette" in an English dictionary: "This word crept into use some years after Johnson wrote his Dictionary, nor have I found it in any other I have consulted. I have ventured, however, to insert it here, as it seems to be established; and as it is more specific than ceremonial, it is certainly of use." 29 Arminian Magazine, vol. 11 (1788). I owe this reference to Maurice Quinlan, Victorian Prelude: A History of English Uanners, 1700-1830 (New York, 1941), p. 34. 30 Dated by the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, vol. 2, col. 1938. 31 For translations of Della Casa, see Antonio Santosuosso, The Bibliography of Giovanni Della Casa: Books, Readers and Critics, 1537-1975 (Florence, 1979), pp. 1011; for translations of Courtin, see V. B. Heltzel, "The Rules of Civility (1671) and Its French Sources," Modern Language Notes 43 (1928): 17-22. 32 Sidney L. Gulick, A Chesterfield Bibliography to 1800 (Chicago, 1935), p. 7. Principles of Politeness went through thirty-five editions (including reissues) between 1775 and 1800.
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etiquettebookof his own, System of Etiquette ( 1804), anunreliablework thatincludedsome important errorson the etiquetteof duelingin its first edition. BetweenTrusler'sbook andJamesPitt's Instructions in Etiquette (1828) thereappearto have been no etiquettebooks published.33 While the etiquettebook as a separategenre developed only slowly andhaltinglyin the eighteenthandearlynineteenth centuries,it emerged in the 1830swithsurprising rapidity andpopularity. In 1837the Quarterly Review was able to review eleven separateetiquette books published between 1835 and 1837, several of which claimedto have alreadygone throughas many as eleven printings.34 The sudden appearanceof the etiquettebook was relatedto the audienceit addressed.In the fifteenth andearly sixteenthcenturies,for example, etiquettebookswere directed towardthe childrenof gentle parents,particularly towardpages serving in the households of aristocraqc magnates.35 Later,the declininginfluence of these householdsand the rising importance of royal courtswere also reflected in etiquette books, particularlyon the Continent.The young manwith a careerto makeat courtbecamethe objectof etiquettewriters' attentions.36 Neitheryouthfulpagesnorfuturecourtiers composeda likely
33 It is, of course, difficult to prove a negative. There is a subject index to books issued between 1816 and 1846 in the London book trade. This includes a heading entitled "Etiquette, Morals, etc. ," but it contains no entries for etiquette books for the period 1816-28 (The London Catalogue of Books Published in Great Britain. Bibliotheca Londinensis: A Classified Index to the Literature of Great Britain during Thirty Years [London, 1848] ). Robert Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica (Edinburgh, 1824) also lists none. Nor do the subject indexes issued on the collections of the London Library or the British Library (R. A. Peddie, Subject Index of Books Published before 1800, 4th ser. [London, 1933-48]; C. T. Hagberg-Wright and C. J. Purnell, Catalogue of the London Library, 2 vols. [London, 19131). These lists, of course, are not complete, and for later periods etiquette books have been located that escaped them. Nevertheless, researches have not turned up any titles between 1804 and 1828, and it would seem either that there simply were none or that they were printed in such small numbers that they escaped the main libraries and faded from notice. As one librarian said in a private communication, etiquette books are "ephemeral" literatureand therefore not always collected. 34 [Abraham Hayward], "Codes of Manners and Etiquette" (Quarterly Review 59 11837]: 396), accepted the number of printings claimed by the various etiquette books as "without much exaggeration." 35 FrederickJ. Furnivall, ed., TheBabeesBook, Aristotle'sABC, Urbanitatis, Stans Puer ad Mensam, The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, The Bokes of Nurture of Hugh Rhodes and John Russell, Wynkynde Worde's Boke of Keruynge, The Booke of l)emeanor, The Boke of Curtasye, Seager's Schoole of Vertue, etc. (London, 1868). 36 Antoine de Courtin, for example, addressed his Nouveau traite'de la civilite' (1671) to a provincial friend's son who was about to come to court for the first time. As indicated in Sec. I, the court was more importantto Continentaldiscussions of manners than English.
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marketfor etiquette books in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The marketfor modernetiquette was the middle class, and the mannersit wantedto learn were not the courtesybook generalities of universalpoliteness but ratherthe specific details of the aristocratic writerswere explicit abouttheirexpectedreadership. life-style. Etiquette CharlesDay declared:
In a mercantilecountrylike England,people arecontinuallyrisingin the world, withthepossession manufacturers; andmechanics becomemerchants, shopkeepers But althoughtheir of wealth they acquirea taste for the luxuriesof life.... increase,it rarelyoccursthatthepolishof theirmanners capacitiesfor enjoyment areoftenpainfully suchpersons of theiradvancement; keepspace withthe rapidity remindedthatwealthaloneis insufficientto protectthemfromthe mortifications with society will entail uponthe ambitious.37 a limited acquaintance
The Spirit of Etiquetteagreedthatit was "highlydesirablethatthe agremens of society should be more generallydiffused amongstthe middle class" and directed itself "to those who are anxious to become better of the The appearance acquaintedwith the usages of the polite world."38 etiquette book, the QuarterlyReview sourly noted, could be explained eagerness"of the middleclass "to learn anddegrading by the "unworthy how lords and ladies ate, dressed, andcoquetted."39 Aristocraticmannersfor middle class audiences:this formula, first thenineteenth in use throughout clearlyrecognizedin the 1830s, remained Lettersof Chesterfield's century.Judgingby the enormouspopularity "hardlyto be matchedin the eighteenthcentury"40 it seems likely that an enterprisingwriter or publishermight have exploited this formula earlier. There were clear reasons, however, why even the dullest could not mistakeits commercialpossibilities in the 1830s. In the firstplace, the tremendoussuccess of the silver-fork novel in the 1820s alerted aristocratic writers and publishersto the potentialprofitsof marketing later hisand contemporaries Both mannersto middle-classaudiences. class's middle to the genre of this the popularity torianshave attributed a certain of "persons how learning "idolatryof rank"andto its hope of rankand consequencein society demeanthemselvesto each otherin the
37 [CharlesDay], Hints on Etiquette(London, 1836), pp. 10-11. 38 The Spirit of Etiquette(London, 1837), p. ii . MagNewMonthly 39 Hayward,p. 397; see also 1T.C. Morgan],"Etiquette,"
azine 54 (1838): 23. mostfrequently to HisSonwasthethird pp. 3-4; Letters 40Gulick,Bibliography, the years 1773-84 (PaulKaufman, during bookfromthe BristolLibrary borrowed Recordof Reading from the Bristol Library,1773-1784: A lYnique Borrowings Vogues [Charlottesville,Va., 1960], p. 122).
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minutest particulars" by readingthese works.41 In otherwords,the silverfork novel pioneeredthe formula of the etiquettebook in fictionalized form. In the second place, the struggles surrounding the Reform Bill cast all things, includingmanners,in the pc)larizing light of class. If the middle class were to mix in the fashionabledrawingrooms where so many political decisions were made, then it would have to acquirethe requisitemanners. If we mustfocus narrowlyon the 1830s in orderto explainthe sudden emergenceof the etiquettebook, we must look more widely for an explanationwhy etiquettebooks came to rely on a middle-classaudience in the firstplace. Wemust ask whether,like the etiquettebooks directed to pages in aristocratichouseholds and to future courtiers, Victorian etiquettebooks and theiraudiencereflectedthe broadsocial structure of theirera. In particular, was the etiquettebook a by-product of thatvague but undeniablephenomenon,"the rise of the middle class"? In one obvious and importantrespect the answer must be negative. The middle class audiencethat showed such a "degradingeagernessto learnhow lords and ladies ate, dressed, and coquetted"was not an aggressive and self-confidentclass that was set on remakingthe world in its own image. It was aristocratic,not middle-class, mannersthat were taughtin the etiquettebook. The manydisparaging remarks thatetiquette writersdirectedagainstthe boorishnessof parvenusremindus that the triumph of themiddleclass in Victorian England wasby no meanscomplete andthatparticularly in questionsof education,aesthetics, andmanners, older, often aristocratic,ideals remainedpotent. Wemustbe carefulnot to cut the matter too fine, however. It was, after all, the economic achievementof the middle class and its new (albeit insecure) self-consciousness that suppliedthe etiquettebook with its audience.We should not dismiss readerswith a pitying nod towardabjectdeference, either. Those who wantedto learn aristocraticmannersperceived the task not as a craven capitulationto a class enemy but as a worthyemulationof highstandards. Aristocratic manners didnot appear to contradict economic success but ratherto crown it with a diademof high culture. Etiquette books were indeed an authenticcreationof middle-classcivilization: a civilization, however,thatexpressedsome of its deepestandtralest urges in the emulationof its class antagonists. Both courtesy and etiquettewere closely, if complexly, boundto the systems of prestigeandsocial stratification of theirrespectivesocieties.
41 tHenry Taylor], "Novelsof Fashionable Life," Quarterly Review 48 (1832): 166- 67. Matthew Rosa(TheSilver-Fork School [PortWashington, N .Y., 1964], p. 18) agreed that the formulafor these novels was aristocraticmannersfor middle-classaudiences.
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Upwardmobility was built directly and explicitly into the structureof the etiquettebook: middle-classreaderslearnedaristocraticmannersin orderto converttheireconomicsuccess into social prestige. Individuals were "placed" and identities formed on the basis of a myriadof tiny bits of informationdrawn from the realm of manners,most of which could be understoodonly in the context of the social class system. It was assumedthatmannersidentifiedindividualsaccordingto theirclass and that middle-class individualswished to blur this identificationby learning the mannersof their betters. Etiquettewriters taught readers who were eagerbothto makesocial advancesandto hide the fact of their advancehow to avoid those humiliatingblundersthat drew attentionto humbleorigins. This complewof ideas andemotionsaboutmannersand social mobility was not unique to etiquette. Such themes were among the staplesof Victoriannovels andsocial criticism.Whattriumphed was noe so much the aristocraticmannersthat etiquettebooks spreadto the middle class-because, in fact, influence ran in both directions-but rather the generalpointof view thatsubordinated manners to social class. An individual's manners,therefore, were not taken at face value but rather were interpreted to reveal his class position, origin, aspiration or somecombination of the three.In fact, the gameof manners was endlessly complexbecause, thoughultimatelyrelatedto the class structure,in the shortrun mannersreflectedthe status structuremore accurately.As a rule, mannersbecame a lively issue within ratherthanbetween classes andserved to exaggeratesmall differencesratherthanto measurelarge ones. In distinguishingthe upperaristocracyfrom the lower, the lower aristocracy from the uppermiddleclasses, this "set'9 from that, and so on, mannerswere useful and fascinatingbecausethey ministeredto the commontendencyof individualsto comparethemselvesnot with their classenemiesbut with theirnearneighborsin statusandprestige. Moreover, there is a sense in which the reductionof mannersto the vanities of statuscompetitionactuallydiminishedtheirimportance as a measure of social stratification. Forthose who held to rigorousstandards of character,achievement,and morality, mannerswere corrupted by their associationwith petty statuscompetitionandlost the place they once held alongside the highervirtuesof civilized life-and hencealso theirpower toindicatesocial status. The low intellectuallevel of the etiquettebook incomparison to theoldcourtesy tradition measured thedescentof manners froman ideal of civilization to a symbol of vanity and status. Eighteenth-century courtesy writers, reflecting both the difficulties andopportunities of Londonlife, describedan inclusive sociabilitythat soughtto create temporary harmoniesbetween divergentinterestsand opinionsby the inculcation of polite, aesthetic, and useful norms of commingling. Victorian etiquette oftenaimedattheopposite.An exclusive
A Question
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sociability that sought to limit companyto select and conformingindividuals was its preoccupation.A concernwith statussymbols and other means of identifying the "ins" and "outs" supersededthe traditional interestsof writerson mannerssuch as the natureof "pleasing," of selfcontrol, or of the legitimate and illegitimateforms of hypocrisy. A satisfactionwith standards basedon "set" or class replaceda strivingafter universalpoliteness. Underlyingthe emergenceof a self-satisfied, exwithinthe aristocracy of a common clusive etiquette was the establishment of fashionable London set of manners, if not morals,basedon the triumph over provincialdiversity. London Society had matured or ossifiedunanimous voice.42 Etiquette andnow spokewitha forcefulandapparently writers who passed along its decrees frequentlyreferredto the authority-ofSociety as if such a referenceansweredall questionsof value. This or that bit of etiquette was "correct" because that was the way answeranysubstantial questions Societydid it. Societydid not, of course? of value. Indeed, the exclusion of "undesirables"from Society and of moralthoughtfrom the etiquettebook went handin hand. A limited and the exself-satisfiedSociety producedtrivialand unexaminedmanners; clusion of moral thought from the etiquette book permittedetiquette writersto propound suchmanners withouta pressingsense of incongruity. of social stratification In the courtesy book, on the otherhand,problems simply did not amountto much. Of course, courtesydealt with "rank" and "order"ratherthan"class" or "classes," andit was not uncommon for badmanners to be stigmatizedwith wordsof vaguely social reference Courtesybooks such as "vulgar,"butthese wererelativelyunimportant. notto socialinferiors. weretypicallydirected to theyoungorto provincials, social mobilityoccurredchanged Moreover,thecontextin whichupward radicallyfromthe eighteenthto the nineteenthcentury.As describedby of the eighteenth century R. G. Wilson,for example,the Leedsmerchants by bothconsciousness werenot a "class," separated fromtheirsuperiors the richermerchants mivced easily andeconomicinterest.To the contrary, to with the local gentry, intermarried with them, sold apprenticeships theiryoungersons, andentertained themduringthe Leeds social season. Merchants rodewiththe hounds,collectedpictures,andwhenthey could andgardening,just as their affordit, indulgedtheirtaste for architecture superiors did. "Since the frontierbetweentownandcountrywas difficult to determine,and the merchantwho knew nothing of the ways of the land was unknown,the transitionfor the manof wealthto the ideal way
literallyas well as figuratively.In 42 The "voice" of LondonSociety matured the elevation of Received Standard English (above other local dialects) to the role. ReceivedStandard English nationallanguage,Londonplayedanimportant had, of course, a brightfutureas an indicatorof social status.
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of life in eighteenth-century society was not difEcult."The mannersand generalcultureof the Leeds merchant did not, in otherwords, reinforce his economic differenceswith the gentry.43 By the early nineteenthcenturythe situati-on had changeddrastically. Whentheoldwoolenstradewasdestroyed bymanufacturers whomarketed theirown products,Leeds merchants chose to cast theirlot not with the new world of industrialcapitalism which, however "middle class," was aliento them-but rather with thatwithwhichthey wereacquainted. Thoso who could afford it set up as country gentlemen or joined the numerousand important class of "urbangentry" that Alan Everitthas described; othersoptedforgentleprofessions suchas thechurch ormilitary or found a differentniche in the world of commercesuch as banking.44
43 R. G. Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants:TheMerchantCommunity in Leeds, 1700-18S0 (Manchestet,1971), p. 227. PeterMathias(The Transformation of England[New York, 1979], pp. 247-48) notes thatthe greateighteenth-century Londonbrewerswere avid participants in polite society and were "recognized as belongingto the sameclub as the landedintetest." Of the Londonmerchants, NicholasRogers("Money,LandandLineage: TheBig BourgeoisieofHanoverian London,"Social Slistory4 [1979]:437-54, esp. 453) writes:"Drawnprincipally fromwell-established urban familiesresembling at timesextended kinshipgroups, the merchantelites of Dthe Georgianera enjoyed a status not accordedto the captainsof industry, whose petty-bourgeoisorigins createdformidablesocial barriers.The acceptanceof the merchantgrandeebut not the factory-master, in fact, underscored bot}lthe flexibilityandlimitations of Hanoverian politeculture." GordonJackson(Hull in the EighteenthCentury[Oxford, 1972], pp. 262-69) makesthe samepointaboutthe Hullmexchants. WhileWilsonportrays the Leeds merchants as eagerto buyan estate andcopy the aristocratic style of life, Rogers and Jacksonstress the independenceof the urbanpatriciate.For our purposes, independence or dependenceis not crucialsince all writersstressthatmerchants followed a patternof sociability similar to that of the landed gentleman.For Jacksonand Rogers this meansthe merchants were partof the same high rank as the landedelite and equal participants in polite culture;for Wilson it means that they were slightly below the landed elite but close enough to copy their betters and to be acceptedby their betters as partnersfor marriage,business, andconviviality. The importance of sociability in townhistoryhas beenmentioned by severalwriters(AlanEveritt,"Introduction," in Perspectives in EnglishlJrban History, ed. Alan Everitt [London, 1973], p. 7). PeterBorsay ("The English UrbanRenaissance:The Developmentof ProvincialUrbanCulture,c. 1660c.1760," Social History 5 [1977]: 581-614) finds that one cause of the urban renaissancein the provinceswas the fluid, open natureof a society that placed a premium on manners,fashion, andconsumption. Statuswas no longerascribed but must be achieved by tasteful and fashionablepatternsof consumption,by good manners,intelligence, etc. The town, accordingto Borsay, was wherethis sort of statuswas best pursued. 44Anotherreasonthe ol,dmerchant class of Leeds declinedwas theirrefusal after the Europeanmarketcollapsed, to follow tradeto America. Everything about America the extremes of weather, the incivility, the dirt, the general
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Even in the nineteenthcenturythere remainedan importantsection of the middleclass that sharedthe habitsof the aristocracy. Rubinsteinhas called attentionto the London-basedfinancialmiddle class, which, in contrastto the manufacturing middle class of the provinces, kept very close ties with traditionallanded society throughreligion, education, and generalstyle of life.45It was the industrial,not the commercialand financial,middle class that createdthe oppositionalclass structure that dominated theimagination of Victorian England andparipassutheetiquette book. Fromneitherestablishedmerchant nor gentryorigins, the manufacturers werenew men who were unusedto the ways of polite societyand vice versa. Etiquettebooks both attestedto this division within the elite and ministeredto its closure. There were, of course, many who doubtedthe authorityof Society, who thoughtpolite society was not so polite, afterall. For those with a militant middle-classconsciousness, those who, for examples thought of upward mobility in the termsof SamuelSmiles's Self-Help, etiquette was anathema. Duringthe eighteenthcentury,whenthe social orderwas heavily influencedby patronageandconnectionsof "friends,i' manners hadanobviousrole to play in the makingof a career.But in the nineteenth century at least accordingto the myth of careers open to talent it was not the graces but ratherhardwork, perseverance,daring, and intelligence that made for success.46In some ways, Smiles's Self-Help, not the etiquette book, was the true successor to courtesy.:SelS-Help taughtreadersvirtuesthatwere widely admiredin theirsociety andthat contributed to the pursuitof useful andproductivelives, just as courtesy
prominence of plebianculture was abhorrent to the old merchants."The sons of the Divcons, Denisons, Milnes and their like were not prepared to pass their time in similarexcursions. They preferredhuntingand assemblies, Bath and Scarborough, andsoughta commissionin the armyor a goodbenefice"(Wilson, p. 120). 4S W, D. Rubinstein, "The VictorianMiddle Classes: Wealth, Occupation, and Geography," EconomicHistoryReview, 2d ser., 30 (1977): 602-23, esp. 620. 46 A reviewer in the Congregationalistsarcasticallywrote after enc-amining some books on manners:"We are the crowd, the 'commonherd,' the vulgar people, the oi polloi, as the Greekshad it, the nobodiesof 'society.' Well, in practice, this does not matter;our peace is not troubledby it; we really do not care aboutprecedence;it never disturbsus to know that, accordingto Court etiquette,LordSo and So, or Sir JohnSomebody,has the rightto go into or out of a room before us; we sleep none the worse for it, we eat or drinkjust the same;indeedin the greatcommunities wheremostof us live, we arenot conscious thatthereis such a thing as.precedence democratic people to the backbone it is first come, first served" ("Notes on Etiquetteand Precedence," Congregationalist2 [1873]: 20-27, 91-99, esp. 21).
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had. The same could not be said of etiquette.The ability to pass examinations, to buy and sell at advantageousterms: these were what the marketsociety rewarded,not a facility for making"friends."47 Both Self-Help and courtesyliteraturewere addressedto an audience which was presumedto be youthful, high-spirited,and aggressive, but whichrequired an admixture of restraint andself-discipline for the pursuit of worldlydistinction.The characteristic moralvirtuesof the presumed audiencefor etiquette, on the other hand, were tact and consideration, qualities that suited those whose concernwas to "fit into" society, not to standout from it. The mannerstaughtby etiquettewere those of the drawingroom, not of the wider society. To completeour understanding of the place of the etiquettebook in Victorianculture,we musttherefore look not only to broad questions of social structurebut also to more domestic things. IV Victorianladies-both middle-classand aristocratic-enjoyed a.much greaterrange of sociable opporiunitiesthan their eighteenth-century predecessors.It was this fact, in conjunctionwith the economictriumph of the middle class, that was the decisive variablein the emergenceof theVictorianetiquettebook. Manners are not, thoughthey may seem so froma twentieth-century perspective,a natural andinevitablesubjectof mainlyfeminineinterest.Courtesyliterature was an almostentirelymasculinegenre for the simple reason that its task was to instructreaders how to get on "in the world," a sphere in which ladies did not often move. There were, of course, many works devoted to the social and moralduties of women, but the message of these was to stay at home andto cultivate the traditionalfeminine virtues of modesty, chastity, andthe like.48By the late eighteenthcentury,courtesyliterature began tofind a somewhatmore active role for women in sociability, but the domestic life andits corresponding moralhabitsremained the mainconcern.How different was etiquette and how curious to think that this despisedand trivial genre should have been a part of the "widening sphere" of opportunities that womenenjoyedin the nineteenth century! Allthe fears of feminine sociability that had troubledcourtesy writers for centuries weresimplyignoredby etiquette writers.Inplaceof warnings about the frivolity of fashion, the insipidandwastefulhabitsof visiting, promenading, andtlie like, we find suggestionshow to enjoy these pastimes. Whatin the courtesybookhadbeenevil andforbidden temptations were in etiquetteenjoyableandrespectableamusements of the everyday
47 Rothblatt, pp. 62, 124-25 48 Kelso,Doctrinefor the Lady, pp. 25, 31.
of Manners 419 A Question

world. On the otherhand, the eliminationfrom etiquetteof most of the thathadbeenthestapleof courtesy andpoliticalmatter moral,educational, in part,as a consequenceof the genre's feminine mayalso be understood, womenwerenot active in the worldandhencedid not require orientation: aboutworldlythingsin theirbooks of manners.The etiquette instruction of womenintothe mainstream theemergence presupposed book,therefore, of sociability-a step forwardthat historianshave not yet sufficiently recognized49 but also their continuingexclusion from society's most sources of power and prestige. important It was in the sociabilityof the "lady" thatis, the womanwho toiled neitherin the home nor the marketplace thatthe etiquettebook found its characteristic,though not its exclusive, subject matter.Luncheons, cards,calls, at-homes:these were almostentirelyfeminineactivitiesand were, along with dinnersandballs, the mostcommontopics of etiquette. didnot imposeitself on the etiquette gentleman Thelife-styleof the rentier book in the same manner.Behaviorat gentlemen'sclubs, for example, was only rarely treatedby etiquette writers, whereasthe ladies' clubs that sprangup in the last decades of the centuryregularlycalled forth advice. Similarly,the huntbecamea topic for the etiquettebookon those occasions-such as the hunt breakfast in which ladies regularlyparticipatedalong with gentlemen.Thus, while the formulaof aristocratic held, therewas a strongbias toward mannersfor middle-classa-udiences specificallyfeminine interests. In additionto overt subjectmatter,other, more subtle aspects of the etiquettebook were relatedto its feminine bias. The great importanceto mannersin all problemsof class andstatus etiquettewritersattributed owed much to the influenceof ladies on the genre. Powerless in most ways, ladies foundin mannersa meansby whichthey could assertthemladies, selves and create effects in their interests. Nineteenth-century weremorethan gentlemen,realizedthatmanners like eighteenth-century merely an aesthetic fancy. They were also a means of making friends and, throughfriends, gaining influenceandrecognition.Mannersinflubattle a womanever foughtfor social classenced the most important that is, her struggleto win a desirablespouse. To the extent that a wife could help her husbandprosper,mannersagain played a key role. Her ability to act as a hostess, to create an impressivedomestic facade, to all these required mlx readilywith those who wereuseful to herhusband: alsoclaimedthatwhilethemiddlewriters Someetiquette skillfulmanners. in politesocietyoutof deference of a manmightbe tolerated class manners apply to his wife, who could not did same to his wealth or talents, the
49 But see J. A. Banks and Olive Banks, Feminismand Family Planning in VictorianEngland(New York, 1964); and Davidoff (n. 1 above).
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expect to be entirely excluded unless her mannerspassedmuster.50 The obsessive concern of etiquette writersto establish criteriaby which to identify and to exclude undesirableswas motivatednot merely by the snobberyand insecuritiesof social superiors,however. Ladies, in particular, required"protection"more for fear of morallycompromising associationsthanfor reasonsof social status. Finally, the commonantimiddle-classprejudiceof the etiquettebook may be attributed, in part, to the situationof the lady. Removedfrom the daily struggleof earning a livingSthe middle-class ladyembraced andidealizedmanners andhabits that were consistent with her world of leisure and that denigratedthe world from which she was excluded-the world of work. It was the middle-classwoman, not the middle-classman, whose leisureexpanded most rapidly in the nineteenthcenturyand whose attitudes,therefore, were most affectedby those ancientexperts in leisure and anti-middleclass feeling-the aristocracy.The mostimportant (anddifficult-to-define) effect of the femininepoint of view on the etiquettebookmaybe foundin the moralandpsychological atmosphere of thegenre.In particular, etiquette writers repeatedly stressed the importanceof tact, consideration,and self-sacrifice. Very specific suggestions were regularlymade: the properway to treat a borrowed book so that it could be returnedin good condition, the suggestion to travelwith soft boxes thatwouldnot scratcha hostess's floors,the caution to place one's piano at a distance from the common wall of a semidetachedhouse, and so forth. However useful these suggestions may have been to the inconsiderate,etiquettewritersdid not-conceivetheir audience to be neophytes in mattersof tact. They wrote as if tactful considerationwere the common currencyof society, and the knottiest problemof good mannerswas how to deal with the kindnessandtact of others. Some effort was devoted, therefore,to instructing readershow to avoidlong-winded andself-defeating exchangesof deferential kindness with similarlymindedgentlefolk. In the tactfulworldof etiquetteit was difficultto make explicit requestsfor assistanceor special treatmentnot becausesuch requestswouldbe refused, butbecausethey inevitab}y would be accepted, howevermuchdifficultythey imposedon the other. Moreover, whensome breachof tactdid occur,whensomehurtful remark was passed, the reactionwas much more likely to be troubledand vulnerablesilence thanaggressivereactionand retaliation.In otherwords, the world of tact was one in which self-sacrifice, not self-interest, was regularlyexpected, asserted,contested, and negotiated. The fact thatetiquettedid not reflectthe commonimageof the insolent, boorish Victorianis not surprising,since books of mannersof all ages
soFlorenceKliclamann, Etiqwette of Today(London, 1902),p. 5.
421
counselrestraint,decency, andkindliness.However,the courtesybook, trueto its masculineinspiration,had a differentmoralatmosphere from etiquette, despite agreementon the superIScial appearance of tact. For example, the preoccupationof etiquette writers with anticipatingthe vulnerabilitiesof others in order not to hurt them took on a different: meaningin courtesy.In courtesy, individualswere consideredvolatile, not vulnerable,and the refsult of a breachof proprietywas likely to be some form of retaliation,perhapseven a challenge to duel. Similarly, while the effortsof courtesywritersto teachtheirreaders how to "please" resembledthe tact of etiquette, the two differedentirelyin internalmotivation. No one discussed "pleasing' with greateracuitythanChesterfield, but the lesson taughtby Lettersto His Son was anythingbut selfeffacingkindliness.Sl One "pleased"becauseit was in one's self-interest to do so, not because of concern and respect for one's fellows.52Each genre had an hypocrisyappropriate to itself. In courtesyone deceived others out of calculation:one could get one's way more successfully throughthe arts of tact than throughdirect self-assertion. In etiquette? Onthe otherhand,one deceivedout of kindlinessandhadthe preservation of another'samourpropreas one's object. It must be added, however, thatthe kindlinessof etiquetteprobablyrestedon self-deceptionas well as truebenevolence.The powerlessandtimidoften findthatself-interest is best pursuedby a sort of deferencethat wins the approbation of the powerful. In this sense, both the tact of etiquette and the pleasing of courtesyhad the same object, thoughthe formerwas muchmore prone to mystify and idealize itself. Thoughit is, of course,truethaetact, self-effacement, andvulnerability are not exclusively feminine,just as aggressiveself-seekingis not inevitably and exclusively masculine, the fact remainsthat the relative dependenceand powerlesshessof women and independenceand power of mencreatea psychologyandmorality appropriate to theirgivenconditions of life. The worldof tact presupposes(at least) threethings, ali of which are found, not exclusively, but in their pureststate, in the situationof the lady. First, because deferentialself-sacrificeis rapidlysuperseded by assertive(thoughnotnecessarilyamoral or individualistic) self-interest in tliepursuit of scarceandvaluedresources, tactfulness unfoldsluxuriantly
sl The contrastbetween the tactfulnessof etiquetteand the dissimulationof courtesyis, of course,relative.Courtesy writerswerenot entirelywithoutsincere tactfulness. Similarly,therewas a certainamountof self-seeking dissimulation in etiquette. 52 For examplej Osborne,Advice to a Son (n. 19 above), p. 43: "Speake disgracefullyof none at Ordinaries,or publickmeetings:least some kinsman, or Friendbeing thereshouldforce you into base recantation."
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only underthe steadywarmth of security,privilege, andwealth.Second, because the struggleover scarce and valuedresourcesis a basic fact of the humancondition, stratcgieswhich are generally ineffective in this struggle, such as tactful self-sacrifice, can only flourishapartfrom the "world,s' in a limitedbutprotected environment. Finally,sucha protective environmentimplies the subordination of its tactful inmatesto worldly butbenevolentguardians who alonecan shieldthe whole fromcorrupting struggles with outside forces. Thus, by a wholly unfamiliarroute, we arriveat a very familiarVictorian destination. The moralnature of women owed its beauty to its remova]from the world. Since this moralbeauty consistedlargely of variousformsof self-sacrifice,it could flourishonly when self-sacrifice was saved from being self-destructive.All this was nicely compatiblewith, and indeed dependentupon, patriarchal domination. This analysis may seem unnecessarily harsh.Tact, consideration, and kindlinessare not to be despised. They are indispensable to all formsof decency and civility, and societies are muchmorelikely to lamenttheir dearththan their abundance.A civic culturerequiresthat individuals, while pursuingtheir own proj-ects, also acknowledgetheir respect and regardfor othersandtheirprojects.Tactandgood manners,thoughoften takingodd andtrivialforms, are the usualmeansby whichwe makethis acknowledgment.In otherwords, we may choose to be tactfulbecause of our recognition of our interdependency in civil society ratherthan because of the psychologicalcompulsionsof dependency. If, because of their dependency, women took a leading role in the moralityof tact, we must also acknowledgethat we are all dependent beings. Nietzsche's protestsagainst "slave morality"notwithstanding, the only feasible moralityin any society takes interdependency as its startingpoint. The Victorians,who were very concernedaboutthe harsh and competitivenatureof their own society and who also believed that womenwere a meansby whichmoralimprovement mightoccur,grasped in an obscure and perhapsdistortedway the interrelation between dependency and morality. Simone de Beauvoirhas written:"Because of woman'smarginalposition in the world, men will turnto herwhenthey strive throughcultureto go beyondthe boundaries of theiruniverseand gain access to something other than what they have known. Courtly mysticism, humanistcuriosity, the taste of beauty which flourishedin the Italian Renaissance, the preciosity of the seventeenthcentury, the progressiveidealismof the eighteenth all brought aboutunderdifferent formsan exaltationof femininity."53 To this let us addthatthe Victorians
S3 Simone de Beauvoir, TheSecond Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley(New York 1961), p. 122.
423
also turnedto women when they strove for what they conceived to be a purermoralworld. If we findthat the "moralpurity"of womenis a byproductof social dependency,we may also wonderif moralityitself has somethingto learnfromthe history of women's dependency. :
V
Thus, the etiquettebook'was decisively influencedby women or, more precisely, by ladies. The roots of the genre's preoccupationwith tact and kindliness were found in the c'ombination of privilege and powerlessness that' definedher position. All this supportspopularideas about the protectedanddomesticated lives of Victorianladies. In anotherway, ho'wever, the etiquettebook markeda significantphase in the liberation of the lady fromthe home. If the economic andpolitical worldwere still closed to her, at least sociability was no longer the threatto feminine virtue that it had been in courtesy literature.The Victorians, after all, did not invent the domesticatedand virtuouslady; they inheritedher. Whatthey did invent or ratherdrasticallyexpanded-were the opportunitiesshe enjoyedto pursuea careerof largelyindependent sociability. The tremendousgrowth and elaborationof the London Season in the nineteenthcenturywas a productnot only of the marriage market,or of ties betweenpoliticalandfashionable establishments, or simplyof greater wealth and bettertransport,but also of the desire of ladies for an outlet for achievementand of the endorsementof;that desire by an important segment of generalopinion.By meansof thevarious finelygraded activities of the London Season, women erected for themselves somethingcomparableto a careerladder. Sociability, in other words, was not merely for "fun."It was for ladies-also a meansof recognition,of organizing anddirectingambition,andthe like. In this sense, the Victorianetiquette book played the same role for ladies as the Renaissancecourtesybook had for gentlemen.

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A Question of Manners: Status and Gender in Etiquette and Courtesy Author(s): Michael Curtin Reviewed work(s): Source: The

A Question of Manners:Status and Gender in Etiquetteand Courtesy*

and manners, see Rothblatt, pp. 32-39; Richard Sennett, The

Fall of Public Man (New York, 1977), pp. 47-88.

Vicesimus Knox, Personal Nobilily (London, 1793), pp. 317-21.

of Manners 419 A Question

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