MANNERS AND COURTESY
A child should always say what's true,
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table,
At least as far as he is able.
—A Child's Garden of Verse. Robert Louis Stevenson, 1895
In ancient days in England, manners and courtesy, manly exercises, music and singing, knowledge of precedency and rank, heraldry and ability to carve, were much more important elements in education than Latin and philosophy. Children were sent to school, and placed in great men's houses to learn courtesy and the formalities of high life.
Of all the accomplishments and studies of the Squire as recounted by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, but one would now be taught in English college—music. Of all which were taught, courtesy was deemed the most important.
"Aristotle the Philosopher
this worthye sayinge writ
That manners in a chylde
are more requisit
Than playinge on instrumentes
and other vayne pleasure;
For virtuous manners
is a most precious treasure."
The importance given to outward forms of courtesy was a natural result of the domination for centuries of the laws of chivalry and rules of heraldry. But they were something more than outward show. Emerson says, "The forms of politeness universally express benevolence in a superlative degree." They certainly developed a regard for others which is evinced in its highest and best type in the character of what we term a gentleman and gentlewoman.
It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of etiquette, these conventions of customs had at a time when neighborhood life was the whole outside world. Without them life would have proved unendurable. Even savage nations and tribes have felt in their isolated lives the need of some conventions, which with them assume the form of taboos, superstitious observances, and religious restrictions.
The laws of courtesy had much influence upon the development of the character of the colonial child. Domestic life lacked many of the comforts of to-day, but save in formality it did not differ in essential elements from our own home life. Everything in the community was made to tend to the preservation of relations of civility; this is plainly shown by the laws. Modern historians have been wont to wax jocose over the accounts of law-suits for slander, scandal-monging, name-calling, lying, etc., which may be found in colonial court records. Astonishingly petty seem many of the charges; even the calling of degrading nicknames, making of wry faces, jeering, and "finger-sticking" were fined and punished. But all this rigidity tended to a preservation of peace. The child who saw a man fined for lying, who beheld another set in the stocks for calling his neighbor ill names, or repeating scandalous assertions, grew up with a definite knowledge of the wickedness and danger of lying, and a wholesome regard for the proprieties of life. These sentiments may not have made him a better man, but they certainly made him a more endurable one.
The child of colonial days had but little connection with, little knowledge of, the world at large. He probably never had seen a map of the world, and if he had, he didn't understand it. Foreign news there was none, in our present sense. Of special English events he might occasionally learn, months after they had happened; but never any details nor any ordinary happenings. European information was of the scantiest and rarest kind; knowledge of the result of a war or a vast disaster, like the Lisbon earthquake, might come. From the other great continents came nothing.
Nor was his knowledge of his own land extended. There was nothing to interest him in the newsletter, even if he read it. He cared nothing for the other colonies, he knew little of other towns. If he lived in a seaport, he doubtless heard from the sailors on the wharves tales of adventure and romantic interest, and he heard from his elders details of trade, both of foreign and native ports.
The boy, therefore, grew up with his life revolving in a small circle; the girl's was still smaller. It had its advantages and its serious disadvantages. It developed an extraordinarily noble and pure type of neighborliness, but it did not foster a general broad love of humanity. Perhaps those conditions developed types which were fitted to receive and absorb gradually the more extended views of life which came through the wider extent of vision, which has been brought to us by newspapers, by steam, and by electricity. At any rate children were serenely content, for they were unconscious.
The Pepperell Children
Among early printed English books are many containing rules of courtesy and behavior. Many of these and manuscripts on kindred topics were carefully reprinted in 1868 by the Early English Text Society of Great Britain. Among these are: The Babees Book; The Lytill Children's Lytil Boke; The Boke of Nurture, 1577; The Boke of Curtasye, 1460; The Schole of Vertue, 1557. From those days till the present, similar books have been written and printed, and form a history of domestic manners.
It certainly conveys an idea of the demeanor of children of colonial days to read what was enjoined upon them in a little book of etiquette which was apparently widely circulated, and doubtless carefully read. Instructions as to behavior at the table run thus:—
"Never sit down at the table till asked, and after the blessing. Ask for nothing; tarry till it be offered thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread but break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not. Spit no where in the room but in the corner, and—"
But I will pursue the quotation no further, nor discover other eighteenth-century pronenesses painfully revealed in lurid light in other detailed "Don'ts."
It is evident that the ancient child was prone to eat as did Dr. Samuel Johnson, hotly, avidly, with strange loud eager champings; he was enjoined to more moderation:—
"Eat not too fast nor with Greedy Behavior. Eat not vastly but moderately. Make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking. Smell not of thy Meat; nor put it to Thy Nose; turn it not the other side upward on Thy Plate."
THE
SCHOOL
OF
MANNERS.
OR
RULES for Childrens
Behaviour:
At Church, at Home, at Table, in Company, in Diſcourſe, at School, abroad, and among Boys. With ſome other ſhort and mixt Precepts.
By the Author of the Engliſh Exerciſes.
The Fourth Edition.
LONDON.
Printed for Tho. Cockerill, at the Three Legs and Bible againſt Grocers-Hall in the Poultrey, 1701.
Title-page of The School of Manners
In many households in the new world children could not be seated at the table, even after the blessing had been asked. They stood through the entire meal. Sometimes they had a standing place and plate or trencher; at other boards they stood behind the grown folk and took whatever food was handed to them. This must have been in families of low social station and meagre house furnishings. In many homes they sat or stood at a side-table, and trencher in hand, ran over to the great table for their supplies. A certain formality existed at the table of more fashionable folk. Children were given a few drops of wine in which to drink the health of their elders. In one family the formula was, "Health to papa and mamma, health to brothers and sisters, health to all my friends." In another, the father's health only was named. Sometimes the presence of grandparents at the table was the only occasion when children joined in health-drinking.
The little book teaches good listening:—
"When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out if he tell it not right. Snigger not; never question the Truth of it."
The child is enjoined minutely as to his behavior at school: to take off his hat at entering, and bow to the teacher; to rise up and bow at the entrance of any stranger; to "bawl not in speaking"; to "walk not cheek by jole," but fall respectfully behind and always "give the Wall to Superiors."
(9)
17. Bite not thy bread, but break it, but not with ſlovenly Fingers, nor with the ſame wherewith thou takeſt up thy meat.
18. Dip not thy Meat in the Sawce.
19. Take not ſalt with a greazy Knife.
20. Spit not, cough not, nor blow thy Noſe at Table if it may be avoided; but if there be neceſſity, do it aſide, and without much noiſe.
21. Lean not thy Elbow on the Table, or on the back of thy Chair.
22. Stuff not thy mouth ſo as to fill thy Cheeks; be content with ſmaller Mouthfuls.
23. Blow not thy Meat, but with Patience wait till it be cool.
24. Sup not Broth at the Table, but eat it with a Spoon.
Page of The School of Manners
The young student's passage from his home to his school should be as decorous as his demeanor at either terminus:—
"Run not Hastily in the Street, nor go too Slowly. Wag not to and fro, nor use any Antick Postures either of thy Head, Hands, Feet or Body. Throw not aught on the Street, as Dirt or Stones. If thou meetest the scholars of any other School jeer not nor affront them, but show them love and respect and quietly let them pass along."
Boys took a good deal from their preceptors, and took it patiently and respectfully; but I can well imagine the roar of disgust with which even a much-hampered, eighteenth-century schoolboy read the instructions to show love and respect to the boys of a rival school and not to jeer or fire stones at them.
This book of manners was reprinted in Worcester by Isaiah Thomas in 1787. I have seen an earlier edition, called The School of Manners, which was published in London in 1701. The title-page and a page of the precepts are here reproduced. The directions in these books of etiquette are plainly copied from a famous book entitled Youths' Behaviour, or Decency in Conversation Amongst Men, a book unsurpassed in the seventeenth century as an epitome of contemporary manners, and held in such esteem that it ran through eleven editions in less than forty years after its first appearance. Not the least remarkable thing about this volume was the fact that the first edition in English was by an "ingeniose Spark" not then eight years of age, one Francis Hawkins, who rendered it from "the French of grave persons." The bookseller begs the reader to "connive at the stile," on the plea that it was "wrought by an uncouth and rough file of one in green years." Green years! we cannot fancy sober young Francis as ever green or as anything but a sere and prematurely withered leaf. We can see him in sad colored attire, carefully made quill pen in hand, seated at desk and standish, his poor little shrunken legs hanging pitifully down, inditing on foolscap with precision and elegance his pompous precepts. After all he only translated these maxims; hence, perhaps, was the reason that he managed to live to grow up. For translating did not tax his "intellectuals" as would have composition.
The Youths' Behaviour contained many rules and instructions worded from still older books on courtesy, such as The Babees Book, and The Boke of Nurture, and traces of those hackneyed rules lingered even in the etiquette books of Isaiah Thomas, long after the house-furnishings and household conditions indicated by them and sometimes necessitated by them had become as obsolete as the formal duties of the squire's sons, "the younkers of account, youths of good houses, and young gentlemen henxmen," for whom they had originally been written. Let us believe that the habits pointed out by such rules were obsolete also. I cannot think, for instance, that the boy born after our Revolutionary war was in the habit of casting poultry and meat bones under dining tables, even though he is so seriously enjoined not to do so. This rule is a survivor from the earthen floors and dirty ways of old England.
A famous book of rules of etiquette, entitled The Mirror of Compliments, was printed in 1635 in England, and as late as 1795 many pages of it were reprinted in America by Thomas under the title A New Academy of Compliments. The teachings in this book were fearfully and wonderfully polite. This is the sort of thing enjoined upon children and grown folk as correct phrases to be exchanged on the subject of breaking bread together:—
"Sir, you shall oblige me very much if you will do me the honour to take my poor dinner with me.
"Sir, you are too courteous and persuasive to be refused and therefore I shall trouble you.
"Sir, pray excuse your bad entertainment at the present dinner and another time we will endeavour to make you amends.
"Truly, Sir, it has been very good, without any defect, and needs no excuse."
The child who sought to be mannerly certainly must have felt rather discouraged at the prospect laid before him. These superfluities of politeness were equalled by the absurdities of restraint. It would certainly have been a study of facial expression to see the average schoolboy when he read this dictum, "It is a wilde and rude thing to lean upon ones elbow."
In Brinsley's Grammar Schoole, written in 1612, he enumerates the "bookes to bee first learned of children." First were "abcies" and primers, then the Psalms in metre, then the Testament.
"Then if any other require any little booke meet to enter Children, the Schoole of Virtue is one of the Principall, and easiest for the first enterers being full of precepts of ciuilitie.... And after the Schoole of Good Manners, leading the child as by the hand, in the way of all good manners."
The constant reading of these books, and the persistent reprinting of their formal rules of behavior, may have tended to conserve the old-fashioned deportment of children which has been so lamented by aged grumblers and lovers of the good old times. It was certainly natural that children should be affected by the regard for etiquette, the distinctions of social position which they saw heeded all around them, and in all departments of life. No man could enlist in the Massachusetts Cavalry unless he had a certain amount of property. Even boys in college had their names placed in the catalogues, not by classes, years, scholarship, or alphabetical order, but by the dignity and wealth of their family and social position; and a college boy at Harvard had to give the baluster side of the staircase to any one who was his social superior. Of course the careful "seating of the meeting" was simply an evidence of this regard of rank and station.
Thomas Aston Coffin, Three Years Old
It was a profound distance between Mr. and Goodman. Mistress and Goody marked a distinction as positive if not as great as between a duchess and a milkmaid. Unmarried women and girls, if deemed worthy any title at all, were not termed Miss, but were also Mrs. Rev. Mr. Tompson wrote a funeral tribute to a little girl of six, entitled, "A Neighbour's Tears dropt on ye Grave of an amiable Virgin; a pleasant Plant cut down in the blooming of her Spring, viz: Mrs. Rebecka Sewall August ye 4th, 1710." Cotton Mather wrote of "Mrs. Sarah Gerrish, a very beautiful and ingenious damsel seven years of age." Miss was not exactly a term of reproach, but it was not one of respect. It denoted childishness, flippancy, lack of character, and was not applied in public to children of dignified families. In Evelina the vulgar cousins, the Branghtons, call the heroine Miss. "Lord! Miss, never mind that!" "Aunt has told you all hant she, Miss?"
A certain regard for formality obtained even in very humble households. The childhood of David and John Brainerd, born respectively in 1718 and 1720, in East Haddam, Connecticut, who later in life were missionaries to the New Jersey Indians, has been written by a kinsman. They were nurtured under the influences of Connecticut Puritanism, in a simple New England home. Their biographer writes of their rearing:—
"A boy was early taught a profound respect for his parents, teachers, and guardians, and implicit prompt obedience. If he undertook to rebel his will was broken by persistent and adequate punishment. He was taught that it was a sin to find fault with his meals, his apparel, his tasks or his lot in life. Courtesy was enjoined as a duty. He must be silent among his superiors. If addressed by older persons he must respond with a bow. He was to bow as he entered and left the school, and to every man and woman, old or young, rich or poor, black or white, whom he met on the road. Special punishment was visited on him if he failed to show respect for the aged, the poor, the colored, or to any persons whatever whom God had visited with infirmities."
All children in godly households were taught personal consideration of the old and afflicted, a consideration which lasted till our present days of organized charities. As a lesson of patience and kindness, read Mrs. Silsbee's account of the blind piano tuner in Salem. He was employed in many households and ever treated with marked attention. His tuning instrument had to be placed for him on each piano-screw by some member of the family. He was paid, given cake and wine, then humored by being given a tangled skein of silk to unravel and thus show his dexterity, and finally led tenderly home.
Sir Francis Doyle says, "It is the intention of the Almighty that there should exist for a certain time between childhood and manhood, the natural production known as a boy." This natural production existed two centuries ago as well as to-day. Though children were certainly subdued and silent in the presence of older folk, still they were boys and girls, not machine-like models of perfection. We know of their turbulence in church; and boys in colonial days robbed orchards, and played ball in the streets, and tore down gates, and frightened horses, and threw stones with as much vim and violence as if they had been born in the nineteenth century. Mather, in his Vindication of New England, referring to the charge of injuring King's Chapel, shows us Boston schoolboys in much the same mischief that schoolboys have been in since:—
"All the mischief done is the breaking of a few Quarels of Glass by idle Boys, who if discover'd had been chastis'd by their own Parents. They have built their Chapel in a Publick burying place, next adjoining a great Free School, where the Boyes (having gotten to play) may, some by Accident, some in Frolick, and some perhaps in Revenge for disturbing their Relatives' Graves by the Foundation of that Building, have broken a few Quarels of the Windows."
Children did not always pose either as models of decorum or propriety in their relations with each other. In a little book called The Village School, we read of their beating and kicking each other, and that there was one bleeding nose. Worse yet, when the girls went forth to gather "daisies and butter-flowers," the ungallant boys kicked the girls "to make them pipe."