April, 1913.
AS this is the last letter I shall write to you before we meet, Caroline, I shall have to collect all the little things I want to say to you which are much easier to write than to express personally. And so, first, I shall begin by suggesting what you had better avoid. The whole tendency (as I think I said in a former letter) of modern society is toward rowdiness and vulgarity, and if one is very young and full of spirits it is so easy to be led away into indiscretions when one sees most of one’s companions doing the same thing. But it is very foolish and not in our scheme to secure for you prestige and a brilliant future, my child, so I shall be quite ruthless in what I am going to say.
It is very much the fashion now to lunch and dine at restaurants; even the most youthful débutantes go to them with their chaperons, or to large boy-and-girl dinners before balls or theater parties, when there may be only one or two of the mothers present. I must give you a few hints as to what I notice is common and unattractive behavior on these occasions. One can derive a cynical amusement from sitting quietly and watching the entrance and exit of people in restaurants, so atrocious are the movements of most of them. It is seldom that anyone seems to remember that in public true distinction is shown by the quietest and most dignified bearing. You will see women and girls flustering in, dragging on their gloves and taking great strides, or waddling in these very narrow skirts, all self-conscious and plainly aware that they are being observed by those sitting on the chairs at the sides of the halls. In a public place true breeding should give you the same repose as at home, and all but your own personal acquaintances should be apparently unobserved. So, Caroline, cultivate this unconscious bearing. Finish your toilet, in the way of adjustment of gloves, etc., etc., before you leave the dressing-room, and then walk easily and without looking about you to join your party. And when you are at the table, do not lean your elbows upon it! If you have this deplorable modern habit in your own or intimate friends’ houses, for heaven’s sake leave it behind you when you come out! To see a lot of—presumably—ladies lounging all over the cloth, as they lean forward eagerly to talk to their vis-à-vis or the persons next them, is not an engaging sight, and only a few years ago it would have been considered as branding them as belonging to another world. Whatever laxity of tenue has become habitual in private life, surely you can realize that it is very cheap to indulge in it in public, and that the fact that everything is cheap now is no reason for you, who are starting in life, and wish to be distinguished, to follow the fashion. There is another frightful thing numbers of people do as they leave restaurants—you will see them twisting their tongues round their teeth or making some movement of the lips which gives the impression that they have hardly finished their meal as they walk out! It is perfectly revolting. It seems horrible to have to speak of such things, child, but one sees them happen so constantly that I am obliged to warn you.
Try to walk through halls gracefully, without self-consciousness or swinging arms; and when the dinner has begun, enter into the spirit of it, and endeavor to be agreeable to your neighbors, but never forget that you are in a public place, and that at other tables there are strangers whom you do not know, and before whom you certainly do not wish to make yourself of no account. I have seen boy-and-girl parties at restaurants where, if one had not known the names of the actual people, one would have presumed they were a set of young hoydens imagining themselves at a village feast. All noisy or unrestrained behavior is really very vulgar in any mixed company. I am sure you will agree with me about this, Caroline, and, if you will give yourself time to reflect what self-respect really means, you will discover that, if it is innate, it will guide you better than any words of mine; and that even as an acquired quality it makes the only infallible standard to judge the expediency or inexpediency of certain conduct by. You may, if you are petulant, retort, “Goodness gracious, if I have got to be thinking all the time of how I am behaving, I shall be a stuck-up, unnatural thing, and won’t have any fun!” Now, listen, Caroline. We will make the simile that society is an operatic stage, or, to give a still more up-to-date example, the Russian Ballet! A certain organized institution. It could not go on if the dancers had not been taught at all and thought they could cavort about as they pleased on the plea of being natural. The higher the state of their training, the more perfectly natural do their movements appear. So you, before entering society, should learn in such perfection all the technical part of polish that to do the right thing comes naturally to you, and gives you time, so to speak, to encourage your individual talent, and be a Pavlova or a Karsavina. But, if you are only at the stage of the last-joined chorus-girl, you cannot hope to dance the pas seul! Should you desire to be so perfectly savage that you need never think if you are doing ugly and unattractive things or not, then you have no business to try to enter society at all, which is admittedly a civilized circle, with standards of behavior which are the result of centuries of evolution. It is not a primeval forest, where you can climb trees and roll on the grass at will! No one forces you to enter society, but for heaven’s sake, if you do, decide to do it well!
