Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays

by Julia Ward Howe

Let me here relate a little story of my early years. I had a nursery governess when I was a small child. She came from some country town, and probably regarded her position in my father's family as a promotion. One evening, while we little folks gathered about her in our nursery, she wept bitterly. "What is the matter?" we asked; and she took me up in her lap, and said: "My poor old father came here to see me to-day, and I would not see him. I bade them tell him that he had mistaken the house, and he went away, and as he went I saw him looking up at the windows so wistfully!" Poor woman! We wept with her, feeling that this was indeed a tragical event, and not knowing what she could do to make it better.

But could I see that woman now, I would say to her: "If you were serving the king at his table, and held his wine-cup in your hand, and your father stood without, asking for you, you should set down the cup, and go out from the royal presence to honor your father, so much the more if he is poor, so much the more if he is old." And all that is really polite in polite society would say so too.

Now this action which I report of my governess corresponds to something in human nature, and to something which polite society fosters.

For polite society bases itself upon exclusions. In this it partly appeals to that antagonism of our nature through which the desire to possess something is greatly exaggerated by the difficulty of becoming possessed of it. If every one can come to your house, no one, you think, will consider it a great object of desire to go there. Theories of supply and demand come in here. People would gladly destroy things that give pleasure, in order to enhance their value in the hands of the few.

I once heard a lady, herself quite new in society, say of a Parisian dame who had shown her some attention: "Ah! the trouble with Madame—— is that she is too good-natured. She entertains everybody." "Indeed," thought I, "if she had been less good-natured, is it certain that she would have entertained you?"

But of course the justifiable side of exclusion is choice, selection of one's associates. No society can confer the absolute right or power to make this selection. Tiresome and unacceptable people are everywhere entangled in relations with wise and agreeable ones. There is no bore nor torment who has not the right to incommode some fireside or assembly with his or her presence. You cannot keep wicked, foolish, tiresome, ugly people out of society, however you and your set may delight in good conduct, grace, and beauty. You cannot keep poor people out of the society of the rich. Those whom you consider your inferiors feed your cherished stomach, and drape your sacred person, and stand behind your chair at your feasts, judging your manners and conversation.

Let us remember Mr. Dickens's story of "Little Dorrit," in which Mr. Murdle, a new-rich man, sitting with guests at his own sumptuous table, is described as dreading the disapprobation of his butler. This he might well do, as the butler was an expert, well aware of the difference between a gentleman of breeding and education and a worldling, lifted by the possession of wealth alone.

Very genial in contrast with this picture appears the response of Abraham Lincoln, who, on being asked by the head waiter at his first state dinner whether he would take white wine or red, replied: "I don't know; which would you?"

Well, what can society do, then? It can decree that those who come of a certain set of families, that those who have a certain education, and above all, a certain income, shall associate together on terms of equality. And with this decree there comes to foolish human nature a certain irrational desire to penetrate the charmed circle so formed.

The attempt to do this encounters resistance; there is pushing in and shoving out,—coaxing and wheedling on the one hand, and cold denial or reluctant assent on the other. So a fight is perpetually going on in the realm of fashion. Those not yet recognized are always crowding in. Those first in occupation are endeavoring to crowd these out. In the end, perseverance usually conquers.