Best SocietyAn Annotated Guide to Modern Manners

from Emily Post’s Etiquette

Copyright © 2013 by Ariella Elovic

All Rights Reserved

Post, Emily. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home.

New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1922.

For Mom, Dad, Elisha and Alex

and with special thanks to Professors Pike, Hendrix and Dowd

In writing her book of Etiquette, Emily Post sought to debunk the myth that those of best society are those with money as she insists that it is taste, consideration of others and behavior that determine social rank. Draped in decorated language, many of Post’s 1920s standards are practices we honor today: the importance of keeping quiet during a movie at the theater, our responsibility to keep body odor in check, and the art of a strong handshake. At first glance it’s easy to deem Post’s work useless and attentive only to insignificant details, but we can use her text to incorporate a healthy dose of refinement into contemporary life.

“Every human being — unless dwelling alone in a cave — is a member of society of one sort or another, and therefore it is well to define what is to be understood by the term “Best Society” and why its authority is recognized.”

As tea is the one meal of intimate conversation, a servant never comes to the room at tea-time unless rung for, to bring fresh water or additional china or food, or to take away used dishes.

If the cake is very soft and sticky or filled with cream, small forks must be laid on the tea-table.

Tea also poured into cups, not mixed but accompanied by a small pitcher of cream, bowl of sugar, and dish of lemon, is also passed on a tray.

Do not expose your private affairs, feelings or innermost thoughts in public.You are knocking down the walls of your house when you do.

In other days it was always thought that so much as to adjust a hat–pin or glance in a glass was lack of breeding. Well–bred members of the younger set do not put finishing touches on their faces in public.

Excepting a religious ceremonial, there is no occasion where greater dignity of manner is required of ladies and gentlemen both, than in occupying a box at the opera. If a bachelor gives a small theater party he usually takes his guests to dine at the Fitz-Cherry or some other fashionable and “amusing” restaurant.

Letters, newspapers, books have no place at a dinner table.

Well-bred people are always courteous, but that does not mean that they establish friendships with any strangers who happen to be placed next to them.

On a railroad train you should be careful not to assail the nostrils of fellow passengers with strong odors of any kind.

Considerate and polite behavior by each member of an audience is the same everywhere. The only annoyance met with at ball games or parades, is when some few in front get excited and insist on standing up. If those in front stand — those behind naturally have to!

All people who know each other, unless merely passing by, shake hands when they meet.

It is a commonplace remark that older people invariably feel that the younger generation is speeding swiftly on the road to perdition. But whether the present younger generation is really any nearer to that frightful end than any previous one, is a question that we, of the present older generation, are scarcely qualified to answer.

To be sure, manners seem to have grown lax and many of the amenities apparently have vanished. But do these things merely seem so to us because young men of fashion do not pay party calls nowadays and the young woman of fashion is informal? It is difficult to maintain that youth to-day is so very different

from what it has been in other periods of the country’s history, as “the capriciousness of beauty,” the “heartlessness” and “carelessness” of youth, are charges of a too suspiciously bromidic flavor to carry conviction.

That young people of to-day prefer games to conversation scarcely proves degeneration. That they wear very few clothes is not a symptom of decline. There have always been recurring cycles of undress, followed by muffling from shoe-soles to chin.

subject for an obituary rather than a guide-book

This book was created by Ariella Elovicin the Spring 2013 semester of Communication Design at Washington University in St. Louis as

her senior illustration thesis.