Etiquette Columns

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Etiquette Columns

Targeted primarily at women, etiquette columns have appeared in American newspapers and magazines since the mid-nineteenth century to guide readers through the tangled thickets of social convention and polite behavior. In part, these columns began as responses to the cultural anxieties of a newly emerging middle class, but they also derived from related American mythologies of moral perfection and self-improvement. And despite contemporary society's avowed indifference to propriety, these concerns clearly persist, as evidenced by the enthusiastic readership of Judith Martin's etiquette column "Miss Manners."

Godey's Lady's Book was among the first periodicals to dispense etiquette advice to American women. In the years before the Civil War, when literacy rates had reached 50 percent, Godey's enjoyed a circulation of 150,000. Editor Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale was determined to avoid subjecting her subscribers to the day's political unpleasantness, so she frequently turned to contributor Mrs. James Parton, known to readers as Fanny Fern, for sharp and amusing columns on "Rules for Ladies."

Following the Civil War, publishers and editors were so concerned about the moral decay presumed to be an inevitable result of bad manners that etiquette columns began to appear further afield. Appleton's Journal, the Atlantic, the Galaxy, and the Round Table all tendered advice on appropriate behavior, though social education continued to be the special purview of women's magazines. Readers who had questions on both fine and general points of etiquette began directing their inquiries directly to the magazines. Among the first to address these questions in a regular column was the Ladies Home Journal, whose editor Edward Bok created "Side-Talks with Girls," written by "Ruth Ashmore" (actually Isabel A. Mallon), but it was not until 1896 that newspapers began to include subjects of special interest to female readers. That year "Dorothy Dix" (Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gilmer) started her etiquette column in the New Orleans Picayune and, soon after, etiquette columns appeared in newspapers throughout the country.

The nineteenth century's true expert on etiquette, however, was undoubtedly Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood. Mrs. Sherwood first offered etiquette advice in a series of features for Harper's Bazaar, at the time noted for presenting European fashions to American women. Readers immediately took Mrs. Sherwood's advice as exact and authoritative. She greatly embellished her writing with florid details so that readers could visualize the fork or finger bowl she was describing, but it wasn't only this attention to detail that made her such a popular columnist. Unlike her predecessor Henry Tomes, whose etiquette columns from Harper's were eventually collected in an edition called the Bazaar Book of Decorum, Sherwood was convinced that American women were not crude by nature. They desperately wanted wise advice on manners and deportment, she argued, but existing articles and books were either inaccessible or wrought with error. Mrs. Sherwood thus set out to do more than codify the rules of good behavior; in Manners and Social Usages (1884), she sought to whet the nation's appetite for gracious living.

Although etiquette was to change dramatically in the new century, the first decade of the 1900s was seemingly obsessed with the subject. Over 70 books and at least twice as many magazine articles appeared between 1900 and 1910. Of these books, Marion Harland's Everyday Etiquette (1905) had the widest appeal. Miss Harland (the nom de plume of Mrs. Albert Payson Terhune, wife of a prominent clergyman) also wrote for many magazines. Another popular etiquette columnist at the time was Gabrielle Roziére, whose articles in the Delineator centered on the "E. T. Quette" family. Columns in Current Literature, Munsey's, The Independent, and Century Magazine all decried the decline of manners, especially the manners of women.

Of the early twentieth-century columnists, the best known were Florence Howe Hall, her sister Maude Howe, and their mother Julia Ward Howe, better remembered for her "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Like their fellow writers, the Howes avoided the term "society," which had, by the turn of the century, become equated with showy extravagance and vulgarity. In a similar fashion, the members of society likewise avoided "etiquette"—reasoning that those who required such advice did not really belong in society. But none of the hundreds of etiquette books and thousands of advice columns had the cultural impact of Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage (1922). Almost immediately, Post became synonymous with etiquette. No one, it seemed, was embarrassed to have "Emily Post" on their shelves, and her book went immediately to the top of the nonfiction bestseller list.

As Post saw it, etiquette was nothing less than "the science of living," and her systematic approach to the subject promised firm guidance to everyone afloat in a sea of social uncertainty. Yet perhaps most important was the way Mrs. Post dramatized etiquette. She introduced characters such as the Oldnames, Mr. Richan Vulgar, and Mrs. Cravin Praise to personify elegance, rudeness, or gaucherie so that readers understood these were not abstractions but very real qualities (or shortcomings) embodied in real people. If earlier writers had used this technique, no one had deployed so extensive a cast. Post's Etiquette thus enjoyed popularity for two reasons. Certainly it was the manual of taste and decorum, but it also allowed average readers to glimpse through a keyhole into the world of footmen and debutante balls that they were unlikely to experience directly. Post's success might also be traced to the burgeoning advertising industry. Her book was heavily advertised and easily played into an advertising strategy as common then as now: exploiting the insecurities of the socially inexperienced.

Like Mrs. Sherwood before her, Mrs. Post was a socialite, and, until she came to write her own book, she had always considered etiquette advice to be an act of sabotage, an easy way for parvenus and social climbers to worm their way into society. She steadfastly maintained this view until she was approached by the editor of Vanity Fair, Frank Crowninshield, and Richard Duffy of Funk and Wagnalls to write an etiquette book. She refused until they sent her a copy of a new etiquette manual to review, which she found condescending and useless. Only then did Mrs. Post agree that a new book was badly needed.

With her impeccable background, Emily Post was an obvious choice for the job. Born in 1872 to a wealthy architect, Brice Price, and his wife, she debuted in 1892 and shortly thereafter married Edwin Post, an affluent financier. The couple eventually divorced amid some indiscretions committed by Post's husband. After her divorce Mrs. Post, who had been drawn to intellectual and artistic pursuits since childhood, turned to writing and enjoyed success as a novelist and feature writer before turning to etiquette. After the enormous popularity of Etiquette, she published many revisions of the book and in 1932 began a syndicated etiquette column that eventually appeared in 200 newspapers.

In its first 20 years, Etiquette sold 666,000 copies, and after its 50th anniversary "Emily Post" had been through 12 editions, 99 printings, and sold 12 million copies. For a time, it was used as a textbook in poise and good manners for high-school classes throughout the country, and by the late 1990s, Mrs. Post's great-grand-daughter-in-law, Peggy Post, was writing the latest editions of the book. "Emily Post," which is now a registered trademark, remains the authoritative voice on all matters of good taste and polite behavior.

—Michele S. Shauf