Manners and Social Usages

by M. E. W. Sherwood

It therefore requires a fine ear and a fine sense of modern fashion and of eternal propriety always to choose the right word in the delicate and almost unsettled estate of these two epithets. "Ladylike" can never go out of fashion. It is at once a compliment of the highest order and a suggestion of subtle perfection. The word "woman" does not reach up to this, because in its broad and strong etymology it may mean a washer-woman, a fighting woman, a coarse woman, alas! a drunken woman. If we hear of "a drunken lady," we see a downfall, a glimpse of better days; chloral, opium, even cologne, may have brought her to it. The word still saves her miserable reputation a little. But the words "a drunken woman" merely suggest whiskey, degradation, squalor, dirt, and the tenement-house.

It is evident, therefore, that we cannot do without the word "lady." It is the outgrowth of years of chivalric devotion, and of that progress in the history of woman which has ever been raising her from her low estate. To the Christian religion first does she owe her rise; to the institution of chivalry, to the growth of civilization since, has woman owed her continual elevation. She can never go back to the degradation of those days when, in Greece and Rome, she was not allowed to eat with her husband and sons. She waited on them as a servant. Now they in every country serve her, if they are gentlemen. But, owing to a curious twist in the way of looking at things, she is now undoubtedly the tyrant, and in fashionable society she is often imperiously ill-bred, and requires that her male slaves be in a state of servitude to which the Egyptian bondage would have been light frivolity.

American women are said to be faulty in manners, particularly in places of public amusement, in railway travelling, in omnibuses, and in shops. Men complain very much that the fairer sex are very brutal on these occasions. "I wish women would behave like ladies," said a man at a matine. "Yes," said his friend, "I wish they would behave like men." Just then a sharp feminine elbow was thrust into his chest. "I wish gentlemen would not crowd so," was the remark which accompanied the "dig under the fifth rib" from a person whom no one could call a lady.

In speaking to a servant, either a lady or a gentleman will ever be patient, courteous, kind, not presuming on his or her power. But there should always be a certain ceremony observed, and a term of respect to the person spoken of. Therefore a mistress will not say "Have the girls come in?" "Is Lucy home?" She will say: "Have the young ladies come in?" "Is Miss Lucy at home?" This sort of dignified etiquette has the happiest and the most beneficial result on the relations of mistress and servant.

In modern literature the terms man and woman have nearly obliterated the words gentleman and lady, and we can hardly imagine a more absurd phrase than the following: "I asked Mary what she thought of Charles, and she said he was a beautiful gentleman, and Charles said that Mary was a lovely lady; so it was quite natural that I should try to bring them together," etc., etc.

Still, in poetry we like the word lady. "If my lady loves me true," is much better than "if my woman loves me true" would be; so there, again, we have the contradiction, for the Anglo-Saxon rule of using the word "woman" when anything real or sincere in emotion is in question is here honored in the breach. But this is one of the many shadowy conflicts which complicate this subject.

The term "lady" is like the word "gentry" in England—it is elastic. All persons coming within the category of "gentry" may attend the Queen's Drawing-room, yet it is well understood that birth, wealth, association, and position give the raison d'tre for the use of such a privilege, and in that carefully guarded English society the wife or daughters of an officer in the navy or in a line regiment whose means are slender and whose position is obscure would not be justified in presenting themselves at court. The same remark holds good of the wives and daughters of clergymen, barristers, doctors, authors, and artists, although the husband, if eminent, might attend a leve if he wished. Yet these women are very tenacious of the title of lady, and no tradesman's wife would deny it to them, while she would not, if ever so rich, aspire to be called a lady herself.

"I ain't no lady myself, but I can afford to have 'em as governesses," remarked a Mrs. Kicklebury on the Rhine. She was not at all ashamed of the fact that she was no lady herself, yet her compeer and equal in America, if she kept a gin-shop, would insist upon the title of lady.

A lady is a person of refinement, of education, of fashion, of birth, of prestige, of a higher grade of some sort, if we apply the term rightly. She may be out of place through loss of fortune, or she may have sullied her title, but a something tells us that she is still a lady. We have a habit of saying, as some person, perhaps well decked out with fortune's favors, passes us, "She is not a lady," and every one will know what we mean. The phrase "vulgar lady," therefore, is an absurdity; there is no such thing; as well talk of a white blackbird; the term is self-contradictory. If she is vulgar, she is not a lady; but there is such a thing as a vulgar woman, and it is a very real thing.

In England they have many terms to express the word "woman" which we have not. A traveller in the rural districts speaks of a "kindly old wife who received me," or a "wretched old crone," or a "saucy lassie," or a "neat maid," etc. We should use the word "woman," or "old woman," or "girl," for all these.