Servants should be directed to announce visitors. This is always done abroad, and is a convenient custom.
Never allow a female servant to enter a parlour. If all the male domestics are gone out, it is better that there should be no attendance at all.
Some ladies are in the habit of amusing their friends with accounts of the difficulty of getting good servants, etc. This denotes decided ill breeding. Such subjects should never be made topics of conversation.
If a servant offends you by any grossness of conduct, never rebuke the offence upon the spot, nor indeed notice it at all at the time; for you cannot do it without anger, and without giving rise to a scene. Prince Puckler Muskaw was, very properly, turned out of the Travellers’ Club for throwing a fork at one of the waiters.
In the house of another, or when there is any company present in your own, never converse with the servants. This most vulgar, but not uncommon, habit, is judiciously censured in that best of novels,—the Zeluco of Dr. Moore.
CHAPTER XIV.
FASHION.
Fashion is a tyranny founded only on assumption. The principle upon which its influence rests, is one deeply based in the human heart, and one which has long been observed and long practised upon in every department of life. In the literary, the religious, and the political world, it has been an assured and very profitable conclusion, that the public,
“Like women, born to be controlled,
Stoops to the forward and the bold.”
“Qui sibi fidit, dux regit examen,” is a maxim of universal truth. Pococurante, in Candide, was admired for despising Homer and Michel Angelo; he would have gained little distinction by praising them. The judicious application of this rule to society, is the origin of fashion. In despair of attaining greatness of quality, it founds its distinction only on peculiarity.
We have spoken elsewhere of those complex and very rare accomplishments, whose union is requisite to constitute a gentleman. We know of but one quality which is demanded for a man of fashion,—impudence. An impudence (self-confidence “the wise it call”) as impenetrable as the gates of Pandemonium—a coolness and imperturbability of self-admiration, which the boaster in Spencer might envy—a contempt of every decency, as such, and an utter imperviousness to ridicule,—these are the amiable and dignified qualities which serve to rear an empire over the weakness and cowardice of men.