Manners and Social Usages

by M. E. W. Sherwood

At Whitsuntide the shop-girls of London—a hard worked class—go down to Epping Forest, or to Hampton Court, or to Windsor, with their basket of lunch, and everywhere one sees the sign "Hot Water for Tea," which means that they go into the humble inn and pay a penny for the use of the teapot and cup and the hot water, bringing their own tea and sugar. The economy which is a part of every Englishman's religion could well be copied in America. Even a duchess tries to save money, saying wisely that it is better to give it away in charity than to waste it.

An unpleasant feature of English life is, however, the open palm, every one being willing to take a fee, from a penny up to a shilling, for the smallest service. The etiquette of giving has to be learned. A shilling is, however, as good as a guinea for ordinary use; no one but an American gives more.

The carriage etiquette differs from ours, as the gentleman of the family rides beside his wife, allowing his daughters to ride backwards. He also smokes in the Park in the company of ladies, which looks boorish. However, no gentleman sits beside a lady in driving unless he is her husband, father, son, or brother. Not even an affianced lover is permitted this seat.

It must be confessed that the groups in Hyde Park and in Rotten Row and about the Serpentine have a solemn look, the people in the carriages rarely chatting, but sitting up in state to be looked at, the people in chairs gravely staring at the others. None but the people on horseback seem at their ease; they chat as they ride, and, all faultlessly caparisoned as they are, with well-groomed horses, and servants behind, they seem gay and jolly. In America it is the equestrian who always looks preoccupied and solemn, and as if the horse were quite enough to manage. The footmen are generally powdered and very neatly dressed in livery, in the swell carriages, but the coachmen are not so highly gotten up as formerly. Occasionally one sees a very grand fat old coachman in wig and knee- breeches, but Jeames Yellowplush is growing a thing of the past even in London.

A lady does not walk alone in the Park. She may walk alone to church, or to do her shopping, but even this is not common. She had better take a hansom, it now being proper for ladies to go out to dinner alone in full dress in one of these singularly open and exposed-looking carriages. It is not an uncommon sight to see a lady in a diamond tiara in a London hansom by the blazing light of a summer sun. Thus what we should shun as a very public thing the reserved English woman does in crowded London, and regards it as proper, while she smiles if she sees an American lady alone in a victoria in Hyde Park, and would consider her a very improper person if she asked a gentleman to drive out with her—as we do in our Park every day of our lives—in an open carriage. Truly etiquette is a curious and arbitrary thing, and differs in every country.

In France, where they consider English people frightfully gauche, all this etiquette is reversed, and is very much more like ours in America. A Frenchman always takes off his hat on entering or leaving a railway carriage if ladies are in it. An Englishman never takes his hat off unless the Princess of Wales is passing, or he meets an acquaintance. He sits with it on in the House of Commons, in the reading-room of a hotel, at his club, where it is his privilege to sulk; but in his own house he is the most charming of hosts. The rudest and almost the most unkind persons in the world, if you meet them without a letter or an introduction in a public place, the English become in their own houses the most gentle, lovely, and polite of all people. If the ladies meet in a friend's parlor, there is none of that snobbish rudeness which is the fashion in America, where one lady treats another as if she were afraid of contamination, and will not speak to her. The lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, the duchess, is not afraid of her nobility; her friend's roof is an introduction; she speaks.

There is a great sense of the value of a note. If a lady writes a pretty note expressing thanks for civilities offered to her, all the family call on her and thank her for her politeness. It is to be feared that in this latter piece of good-breeding we are behind our English cousins. The English call immediately after a party, an invitation, or a letter of introduction. An elegant and easy epistolary style is of great use in England; and indeed a lady is expected even to write to an artist asking permission to call and see his pictures—a thing rarely thought of in America.

CHAPTER LVII. AMERICAN AND ENGLISH ETIQUETTE CONTRASTED.

No sooner does the American traveller land in England than are forced upon his consideration the striking differences in the etiquette of the two countries, the language for common things, the different system of intercourse between the employee and the employer, the intense respectfulness of the guard on the railway, the waiter at the hotel, and the porter who shoulders a trunk, and the Stately "manageress" of the hotel, who greets a traveller as "my lady," and holds out her hand for a shilling. This respect strikes him forcibly. The American in a similar position would not show the politeness, but she would disdain the shilling. No American woman likes to take a "fee," least of all an American landlady. In England there is no such sensitiveness. Everybody can be feed who does even the most elevated service. The stately gentlemen who show Windsor Castle expect a shilling. Now as to the language for common things. No American must ask for an apothecary's shop; he would not be understood. He must inquire for the "chemist's" if he wants a dose of medicine. Apothecaries existed in Shakespeare's time, as we learn from "Romeo and Juliet," but they are "gone out" since. The chemist has been born, and very good chemicals he keeps. As soon as an American can divest himself of his habit of saying "baggage," and remark that he desires his "luggage sent up by the four train," the better for him. And it is the better for him if he learns the language of the country quickly. Language in England, in all classes, is a much more elaborate and finished science than with us. Every one, from the cad to the cabinet minister, speaks his sentences with what seems to us at first a stilted effort. There is none of the easy drawl, the oblivion of consonants, which mark our daily talk, It is very beautiful in the speech of women in England, this clear enunciation and the proper use of words. Even the maid who lights your fire asks your permission to do so in a studied manner, giving each letter its place. The slang of England is the affectation of the few. The "general public," as we should say, speak our common language most correctly. At first it sounds affected and strained, but soon the American ear grows to appreciate it, and finds the pure well of English undefiled.

The American lady will be sure to be charmed with the manners of the very respectable person who lets lodgings, and she will be equally sure to be shocked at the extortions of even the most honest and best-meaning of them. Ice, lights, an extra egg for breakfast, all these common luxuries, which are given away in America, and considered as necessaries of existence, are charged for in England, and if a bath is required in the morning in the tub which always stands near the wash-stand, an extra sixpence is required for that commonplace adjunct of the toilette. If ladies carry their own wine from the steamer to a lodging-house, and drink it there, or offer it to their friends, they are charged "corkage." On asking the meaning of this now almost obsolete relic of barbarism, they are informed that the lodging-house keeper pays a tax of twenty pounds a year for the privilege of using wine or spirits on the premises, and seven shillings—equal to nearly two dollars of our money—was charged an invalid lady who opened one bottle of port and two little bottles of champagne of her own in a lodging-house in Half-moon Street. As it was left on the sideboard and nearly all drunk up by the waiter, the lady demurred, but she had no redress. A friend told her afterwards that she should have uncorked her bottles in her bedroom, and called it medicine.