Courtesy, Conduct and Etiquette: An Overview
[In the essay that follows, Morgan defines different types of English social conduct books—including those for men, women, and children—in the late eighteenth century.]
Considering the importance that English people themselves attached to manners, it is surprising that the literature written to promote proper behaviour has remained, until recently, largely unstudied by serious scholars. Only the courtesy book managed to escape this traditional neglect. John Mason's Gentlefolk in the Making (1935) provides a comprehensive account of English courtesy works during their extended heyday from Thomas Elyot's The Governour (1531) to Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son (1774). His study, although thorough, makes no attempt to place the courtesy literature discussed in a larger social context.1
More recently, scholars have explored behavioural literature with an eye toward revealing its significance for the larger society it was designed to soften and refine. With respect to courtesy books in particular, Frank Whigham's Ambition and Privilege discusses their role in fashioning an ideology for Elizabethan court society. Michael Curtin's study Propriety and Position: A Study of Victorian Manners focuses on Victorian society as it was revealed and reflected in etiquette books published between 1830 and 1914. In an earlier article, Curtin analysed the social and cultural implications of the courtesy book's decline in the 1770s and the rise of the more frivolous, fashionable etiquette book in the 1830s,2 Ironically, these works leave a conspicuous gap in the treatment of behavioural literature spanning the years 1774 to 1830—a period when instilling proper conduct emerged as an urgent concern for many upper—and middle-class English people.
Two important exceptions are studies by Joyce Hemlow and Nancy Armstrong.3 Hemlow discussed courtesy books published for women between 1760 and 1820 in relation to the rise of their fictional counterpart—the courtesy novel. She recognised that these courtesy books for women differed from the traditional ones for men in that they were infused with greater religious and moral fervour. But she did not explore the implications of this change or recognise that such works were written for men as well.
Armstrong focused on eighteenth-century behavioural literature for women which she termed ‘conduct books’. Her aim was to use these books to analyse the ‘new domestic woman’ who, in her opinion, was the core of emerging middle-class values and life. Both studies are important for drawing attention to behavioural literature written for women—traditionally even more neglected than that composed for men. But by ignoring behavioural books addressed to men, they fail to fill adequately the gap in our understanding of manners literature published in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
This chapter helps to bridge the gap by offering an overview of all three types of behavioural literature—courtesy, conduct and etiquette. It makes clear their salient characteristics and explores some current explanations for their emergence and decline. Such an overview will enable us then to pursue the more important aim of determining what these books tell us about the response to and nature of changes transforming English society during the early industrial period.
COURTESY BOOKS
In her diary Fanny Burney recounted a conversation indicating that her first novel, Evelina, was initially both pleasing and perplexing to readers. According to Burney, the rather crusty but always entertaining Dr Samuel Johnson suggested that the novel's as-yet-unknown author had depicted life and manners better than did Henry Fielding himself. Upon hearing this evaluation, blue-stocking wit Mrs Elizabeth Montagu was somewhat surprised. She declared:
That I did not expect, for I have been informed it is the work of a young lady, and therefore, though I expected a very pretty book, I supposed it to be a work of mere imagination … but life and manners I never dreamt of finding.4
Such a response, though at odds with more modern assumptions, would have been perfectly natural for anyone living before the French or Industrial Revolutions. From the Renaissance until the late eighteenth century, manners were thought to be crucially important for surviving at court, conducting governmental and diplomatic affairs, and living in society or the ‘world’—activities enjoyed or endured primarily by men. During the eighteenth century gentlemen were equipped with a formal liberal education designed to render them well-mannered, sociable leaders adept at conversing for pleasure, pleasing companions and guiding public affairs. Emphasis was placed on cultivating the whole man, whose liberal education and gentlemanly nature would be palpable in his overall demeanour. The literary expression of gentlemanly qualities from the Renaissance until the 1770s was the courtesy book—a literary form written primarily by and for men.5
The courtesy book was an umbrella-like form of literature composed of four sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping types of manners works. Parental advice books were informal, practical works written by an elder for a usually specific younger gentleman. As one Lord Chesterfield apologist noted, ‘Generation after generation have men … devoted their leisure or their decline to summing up, for the benefit of those dear to them, the lessons which life had taught them.’6 The sons of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Burghley, Francis Osborne and the fourth Earl of Chesterfield were intended recipients of the most popular of such summations. In contrast to advice books, polite conduct books were based more on traditional authorities than on authors' personal experiences. Typical examples, including Henry Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman (1622) and Richard Brathwait's The English Gentleman (1630), were more systematic and encyclopaedic than parental advice books. A third form of courtesy literature focused specifically on the arts of worldly success at court or in government, the classic example being Baldesar Castiglione's The Courtier (1561). These policy books were the most secular and practical of courtesy books, being designed to dispense the behavioural tools for social and political success. Finally, courtesy literature included books on civility which were guides to deportment, personal carriage, dress, conversation and table manners. They differed from later etiquette books because their rules were derived from universal principles of good taste as opposed to the habits and fashions of a particular social set. Representative of these books were F. Nivelon's The Rudiments of Genteel Behaviour (1737) and Adam Petrie's Rules of Good Deportment or of Good Breeding (1720).
More significant than their differences were the characteristics which these four types of courtesy literature shared. Written by tutors, clergymen, schoolmasters or gentlemen, courtesy books outlined a comprehensive or ‘compleat’ picture of an ideal social type—the aristocratic gentleman. Just how comprehensive is revealed by the books' salmagundi-like contents. Issues of ceremony particular to a country mixed gracefully with the more universally revered ones of civility, religious principle and moral virtue. With their prescriptions for ethical and social behaviour, courtesy books attempted to render gentlemen fit for their preordained role as social leaders. Thus they were not practical digests of maxims or rules for the upwardly mobile, but rather more theoretical, encyclopaedic works for a coterie of the elite whose place in the world was fixed and taken for granted.7
One of the most significant characteristics common to courtesy books was their underlying assumption that manners and morals were inseparable and indistinguishable. Such an assumption was axiomatic among the English elite until the late eighteenth century. As one recent historian has argued, ‘In Addison's day, then, manners and morals were co-ordinate, allied, almost synonymous terms.’8 The eighteenth-century Society for the Reformation of Manners waged war on sin, prostitution, drinking, non-observance of the Lord's Day and other activities affecting society's moral fibre—not on such violations of ceremony as ringing the bell during dinner or donning one's hat in the drawing-room. Although courtesy books discussed matters of ceremony particular to time and place, the emphasis was more on behaviours firmly grounded in religious and moral virtues and in universal principles of good taste. Courtesy writers thus reflected not only the prevailing view that manners and morals were inextricably linked, but the pre-industrial penchant for universalism as well.9
According to Curtin, Chesterfield's Letters was ‘the last important representative’ example of courtesy literature.10 The work can more meaningfully be viewed as both the last of the courtesy books and the harbinger of nineteenth-century etiquette books.11 For these letters of advice reflected the same severing of manners and morals characteristic of early etiquette books which often quoted Chesterfield. Concerning the Letters one historian maintained, ‘Despite statements which assert the moral basis of manners … Chesterfield seldom seems fired by the connection.’12 It is unfair, however, to accuse Chesterfield of completely ignoring or being indifferent to the moral virtues. He simply took them for granted and chose instead to focus in his Letters on the more worldly, elegant and superficial graces. As he told his son when speaking of the importance of merit:
By merit, I mean the moral virtues, knowledge, and manners; as to the moral virtues, I say nothing to you; they speak for themselves, nor can I suspect that they want any recommendation with you.13
But despite his occasional references to moral virtue, Chesterfield attracted an onslaught of criticism from moralists for what they regarded as grovelling, worthless and amoral letters.
Moralists failed to understand that a growing distinction between and shift in the nature of manners and morals were coming to characterise society as a whole in the late eighteenth century. If a divorce between manners and morals was only foreshadowed by Chesterfield's advice, it was more clearly and undeniably revealed by Reverend John Trusler's books on manners. In 1775 he wrote a work entitled Principles of Politeness and, in 1805, a companion piece called A System of Etiquette which he specifically referred to as ‘not being a moral treatise’.14 This distinction was recognised by the early nineteenth century. Commenting on a reference to manners in one of William Cowper's verses, the author of Brief Remarks on English Manners admitted that his own view of manners, like Cowper's, signified moral conduct. In his Brief Remarks, however, he stated:
When I venture to criticise certain national peculiarities in our manners, I view the term in its more limited sense, and complain of defects in our system of politeness, or exterior manners.15
The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the definition of manners as ‘a person's habitual behaviour or conduct, esp. in reference to its moral aspect’ became obsolete in 1794. It was superseded by a view of manners as, ‘The modes of life, customary rules of behaviour, conditions of society, prevailing in a people.’ But such changes do not occur in society as neatly and abruptly as they do in dictionaries. As the manners literature published between 1774 and 1858 reveals, the former notion of manners continued to be energetically espoused after 1794 by Evangelically inspired, middle-class conduct books. It was replaced gradually in the 1830s and 1840s by the latter, more amoral concept of manners, as indicated by the emergence and popularity of etiquette books.
CONDUCT BOOKS
If one considers the linking of manners and morals as well as the comprehensive, universal nature of courtesy books as their most significant characteristics, then the literary form did not die or become at all effete with the appearance of Chesterfield's Letters. Writers inspired by religious fervour unleashed a flood of behavioural literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries designed to render the coupling of manners and morals more tenacious than ever before. But this is not to suggest that the conception of manners was the same in courtesy works and religiously inspired advice and conduct books. As Curtin pointed out, manners as presented in conduct books were not valued for their own sake or considered on ‘more or less the same plane as high moral principle’ as they were in courtesy books.16 Nor were they viewed as the readily apparent indicator of one's liberal-mindedness and gentlemanly breeding. They were, instead, regarded and valued as the outward manifestation of religious and moral principles. This distinction was nowhere better clarified than in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park when priest-to-be Edmund Bertram attempted to convince the more worldly, ‘Society’-minded Miss Mary Crawford that priests were desirable and effective influences on behaviour. He argued:
With regard to their influencing public manners, Miss Crawford must not misunderstand me, or suppose I mean to call them the arbiters of good breeding, the regulators of refinement and courtesy, the masters of the ceremonies of life. The manners I speak of, might rather be called conduct. … The result of good principles.17
A modern-day historian of popular English novels from the period 1770 to 1800 asserted:
Conduct, the definition and application of the general moral laws that should govern behavior of man in society, was the prevailing intellectual interest of the age, and naturally enough this interest was reflected in the novel.18
It was reflected in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century advice and conduct books as well, suggesting that courtesy gave way initially to a rising tide of interest in conduct—not etiquette.19
The edition dates of conduct books listed in the British Library and National Union Catalogues show that these works achieved their greatest popularity between the 1770s and 1830s. Two of the most popular conduct books—Thomas Gisborne's An Enquiry into the Duties of Men and Hester Chapone's Letters on the Improvement of the Mind—appeared in multiple editions spanning the time periods 1794 to 1811 and 1773 to 1851 respectively. In the latter case, only eight of the seventy-one publications mentioned were dated after 1830. Although Chapone's Letters preceded Chesterfield's, such a chronological pattern was atypical. Most initial editions of conduct books appeared after 1774. Chesterfield's advice was a spur to palpably moral publications like conduct books. The Letters quickly became popular reading and moralists felt compelled to denounce and counteract the advice. In their view, it was pernicious because it was subversive of Christian morality and conducive to hypocritical, self-interested behaviour. Concerning Chesterfield's volumes, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter—Greek scholar and daughter of a curate/preacher at Canterbury—admonished Mrs E. Montagu:
You cannot have a fairer opportunity of conveying instruction to the world, than by exposing the execrable and wretched doctrines of this vile anti-moral composition to the infamy and contempt which it so highly deserves.20
A more general and potent stimulus to conduct books was the intensification during the latter half of the eighteenth century of vital religion or Evangelicalism.21 Born, in part, of a disillusionment with the established Church's anaemic attitude to religion and morality, Evangelicalism reflected an unprecedented energetic attempt to invigorate the religious life of the nation. Its adherents strove to make Christianity the guiding principle of human behaviour. Thus they were obsessed with conduct—their own and others'. The earnestness with which they indulged in self-examination was equal to that which they expended in trying to influence others via such means as conduct books. Underlying all the behavioural advice contained in these works was the principle that religion—not fashion, custom or taste—was the basis of manners and morals. Writers emphasised that the divine law as revealed in the Bible was the foundation of polite and proper behaviour. Therefore, the true lady or gentleman according to conduct books was, first and foremost, a Christian.
Considering the majority of conduct book writers, it is not surprising that the works were infused with religious concerns. Both male and female writers tended to be actively involved in Church- or chapel-related activities, whether fervent Evangelicals or not. For example, James Fordyce, D.D., Thomas Gisborne and William Roberts wrote immensely popular behavioural works. All three men were well acquainted with the most eminent Evangelicals of their day, including William Wilberforce whom they considered a close friend. Fordyce and Gisborne were both clergymen by profession (Presbyterian and Anglican respectively), and Roberts, though a barrister, edited the British Review—a periodical supporting Tory politics and Evangelical religion.
These authors' female counterparts typically were instrumental themselves or aided their clergymen husbands in organising religious campaigns. The influential coterie of Evangelicals known as the Clapham Sect looked to Hannah More as one of its leaders—a woman who, in addition to churning out conduct books, spearheaded the Sunday school movement and moulded the minds of the working class with her barrage of morally charged Cheap Repository Tracts. A later writer, Sarah Ellis, married the chief foreign secretary of the London Missionary Society and shared his profound interest in missionary work.
In addition to religiosity, these writers had middle-class status in common and they directed their advice primarily to middle-class readers.22 (Exceptions included those works directed at members of the higher ranks in the hope that their reformed behaviour would set an example for all of society.) Whereas courtesy books normally were written for established aristocratic gentlemen, conduct books tended to be composed for middle-class adults and, even more often, for their inexperienced children or those in a position to mould youth to a decent, congenial behaviour, that is schoolmasters, governesses, parents or guardians. Although a preponderant number of middle-class conduct books addressed female audiences, the works by no means focused exclusively on women as Hemlow implied.23 Such titles as Letters to Young Men (1801), The Female Mentor (1793), A Father's Bequest to His Son (1811) and Female Excellence or Hints to Daughters (1840) suggest that these works aimed to influence both sexes. According to conduct book writers, the needs and feelings of a specific daughter, son, brother or niece rather than the demands of a lucrative market prompted these behavioural works.
Although these writers professed to ignore the market, the historian must consider it when discussing the books' audience. Even when authors specifically addressed middle-class men and women, they frequently maintained that their advice was applicable to all ranks. But regardless of such claims, there were few below the status of middle class who could have afforded conduct books in this period. In the late eighteenth century, London journeymen's weekly wages varied from 15 to 20s and were considerably lower in the country and provincial towns. By the 1830s skilled workers in London earned average weekly wages of 30s. Conduct book prices during roughly the same period ranged anywhere from 1s 6d to 14s. A first edition copy of Chapone's Letters in 1773 cost 6s. Gisborne's An Enquiry into the Duties of Men and Dr John Gregory's Father's Legacy to His Daughters cost 14s and 3s respectively in 1810. By 1841, Tilt's series of miniature classics offered the Letters for 1s 6d. Any one of these works would have constituted a sizeable portion of a worker's weekly wages.24
Titles are not always reliable in determining conduct books' audiences. For example, William Cobbett's title Advice to Young Men, and Incidentally to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life suggests a wider audience than the book itself actually addresses. Cobbett's work is divided into sections of advice to youth, to a bachelor, to a lover, to a husband, to a father and to a citizen, indicating that very little material is directed at women. Furthermore, Cobbett assumed that the reader had a profession or a trade and stated clearly at the outset, ‘I suppose you in the middle rank of life.’ Toward the end of the book Cobbett noted once again, ‘I am, however, addressing myself, in this work, to persons in the middle rank of life.’25
Conduct books were as comprehensive and encyclopaedic in nature as the earlier courtesy books, that is, all aspects and stages of life fell within their scope including education, religion, marriage, friendship, widowhood and social behaviours. Advice on such practical matters as dressing, visiting or inviting guests to a meal mingled with more solemn discussions on religion, morality and qualities of character such as benevolence, vanity, modesty, virtue and integrity. However, the attention and emphasis in middle-class conduct books on these latter issues far outweighed that placed on fine points of appearance, external manners and social custom. As Hemlow said of these works:
They attempted to establish first principles first, then a code of behavior based on these principles, that is a system of morals, and only as a last consideration manners insomuch as they were the visible result or expression of such morality.26
This subordination of manners to morals was directly related to the increasing tendency in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for middle-class men and women to fancy themselves the much-needed custodians of morality and virtue. Middle-class behavioural literature exuded a sense of urgency about instilling moral virtue and religious principle not evident in courtesy works. Prescriptions for proper conduct attempted to render young, inexperienced men and women capable of both handling the demands of and remaining immune to the dangers of life. Conduct books viewed society, and particularly cosmopolitan, urban society as a perilous environment where people would become spotted and impure—not as a centre for display and sociability where they would be made more refined. Thus writers of conduct books strove to cultivate individuals encrusted with the moral armour necessary to shield them from worldly persuasions and cared less about fashioning people fit to participate comfortably and perform gracefully in society or the ‘World’.
Books on conduct did not deny that well-bred, worldly ladies and gentlemen might be acceptable guides for social behaviour. The books admonished, however, that the safest, most reliable and important authorities on proper behaviour included older relatives, experienced and virtuous friends, and Scripture. Such a view reflected the books' emphasis on the domestic and afterlife as opposed to the social. Many writers stated that their purpose was to make readers objects of esteem and affection in the domestic sphere and to prepare them for the nobler future realm. The domestic circle emerged in these books as a kind of moral refuge from the corrupting influences permeating the larger society—as ‘the nucleus of national morality’.27 Sequestered from the world, family members and trusted friends were to nurture in each other the moral principles and conduct necessary for leading respectable lives. Men and women who neglected domestic life and shirked its duties were severely criticised. In an opening advertisement, one writer of conduct books defended herself against possible censure by stating reassuringly with regard to her writings, ‘They have been composed at intervals, so as not to interfere with maternal and domestic duties.’28 Even in the nineteenth century when women had assumed the formerly male-reserved roles of social leaders and arbiters, conduct books persisted in arguing, ‘The value of accomplishments … must be estimated not by their effect in society, but by the aid which they give to the rational enjoyments of domestic life.’29
More frequently than not, middle-class moralists discussed conduct in terms of its implications for the afterlife. The ultimate goal which determined proper behaviour was salvation or immortal happiness. Success in society and happiness in the transitory state on earth were clearly of less importance. Conduct books repeatedly exhorted readers to court favour more from God than from men and women. Such a goal would ensure that people were vigilant concerning both their internal principles and external manners.
Although courtesy books were firmly rooted in universalism and cosmopolitanism, authors of middle-class conduct books sought, for their works, even more widespread application. They addressed both men and women and did not confine their advice to well-heeled gentlefolk or to any specific group. Nor was their intention to assist social climbers in oozing their way out of inferior stations. Although conduct books were written primarily with the middle class in mind, their goal was to help people become well-behaved, virtuous and happy in whatever rank God had seen fit to place them. Principles and behaviours outlined were considered desirable for every character, circumstance and station in life. One writer assured readers that her hints and principles were ‘available to all classes of society, and applicable to every diversity of circumstance and situation.’30
Conduct books were universal in the sense of being timeless as well. The appropriateness of their prescriptions for behaviour did not fluctuate with the season like that of flounces and fans. An advertisement in The Athenaeum for a female conduct book stated:
The Young Lady's Book claims to be regarded as a perennial,—NOT an annual publication; as a work of permanent interest and utility; NOT the ephemeral trifle of a season; and to be in all respects worthy of a constant place in the boudoir of an English Lady.31
Even if the shelves and boudoirs of every literate family in England had been filled to overflowing with conduct books, we could not be certain to what degree they actually were read or how effective they were in shaping behaviour. Richard Sheridan's Lydia Languish was undoubtedly not the only English young lady to sprinkle opened but not necessarily read copies of Chapone's works and Fordyce's Sermons around her room before settling back to devour one of her much-preferred and well-concealed ‘trashy’ romantic novels.32 It was all too clear to contemporaries that novels were read voraciously from the late eighteenth century on and some middle-class writers attempted to sweeten their moral and religious principle pills by dispensing them via novels rather than conduct books.33 Such fictional counterparts to conduct books were infused with the same moral fervour and were replete with characters embodying virtues and manners that would have garnered praise from Hannah More herself. Hemlow noted that if one extracted Reverend Villars's letters from the novel Evelina, the result would be a typical conduct book.
Although Reverend Villars may have provided the young, socially inexperienced Evelina with the perfect conduct book, the advice was apparently of little use in guiding her through the behavioural intricacies of London ‘Society’.34 Once in the city and swept up in the mad, seasonal whirl of fashionable parties, operas and plays, what she longed for was ‘a book of the laws and customs à-la-mode’.35 The allure of the London Season was never more irresistible than in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and such a book might have eased the mind and manners of many an inexperienced young person exposed to its delights for the first time. George Packwood, nationally renowned razor strop entrepreneur, typified the newly-enriched but socially awkward businessman who dreaded mixing with those of rank and fortune because he envisioned himself an awkward fellow stepping on others' toes while bowing, spilling soup in his lap or ink on a Turkish carpet.36 But for some time, such social novices as Evelina and Packwood had to blunder through routs and ridottos without the aid of ‘how-to’ books. It was not until the 1830s that the rules and customs of fashionable London ‘Society’ were codified and dispensed in a new type of manners literature—the etiquette book.
ETIQUETTE BOOKS
Although etiquette books did not blossom and become popular until the 1830s, etiquette itself had existed for centuries. The term is derived from the French verb ‘estiquer’ meaning to attach. Initially, its noun form ‘estiquette’ referred to rules and regulations which were attached to castle or palace posts and therefore able to be torn down and altered at whim.37 From the sixteenth to the mid eighteenth century, etiquette meant court or diplomatic ceremonial. When the court's importance as the centre and arbiter of fashion waned in the late eighteenth century, etiquette emerged as the term for the manners of polite society, which in England meant fashionable London ‘Society’. It was in this latter sense of ‘the polite form or manner of doing anything; the ceremonial of good manners’ that the word etiquette appeared in an English dictionary for the first time in 1791.38
Etiquette books did not create but rather codified, in the 1830s, the behavioural rules which, for roughly half a century, had been natural to those accustomed to socialising in fashionable, polite circles. Visiting card rituals such as those detailed in every etiquette book were at least as old as 1788 when a conduct book noted, ‘By a strange innovation and alteration of fashionable etiquette, the card-table occupies the attention of almost every party who pay or receive visits.’39 Twelve years later, P. Boyle published a book of ledger paper for tallying the number of cards received from and delivered to specific fashionable addresses. In Sense and Sensibility (1811) Jane Austen used the term ‘etiquette’ when referring to the proprieties necessary when a man proposed marriage. Lady Holland, an arrogant and imperious arbiter of early-nineteenth-century fashionable ‘Society’, referred in 1833 to a certain breach of etiquette. The Hollands were unable to attend their son's wedding in Florence and to visit his inlaws, the Coventrys, as was the custom. She related to her son, ‘We had the pleasure of a visit from Lady Coventry yesterday, who in the most obliging manner passed over etiquette and came to visit us.’40
Etiquette was not only practised prior to the appearance of etiquette books, but accorded great importance as well. In one foreign observer's opinion, the niceties of behaviour were overly valued in England. While touring the country in 1829 he recorded:
Of all offences against English manners which a man can commit, the three following are the greatest:—to put his knife to his mouth instead of his fork; to take up sugar or asparagus with his fingers; or, above all, to spit anywhere in a room. These are certainly laudable prohibitions, and well-bred people of all countries avoid such practices … the ridiculous thing is the amazing importance which is here attached to them.41
Similarly, English caricaturist James Gillray believed as early as 1804 that English ladies and gentlemen attached an exaggerated importance to rules of etiquette. His caricature entitled ‘Company Shocked at a Lady Getting Up to Ring the Bell’ depicted five ghastly-faced gentleman diners upsetting the chairs, plates and serving pieces as they leapt to prevent their hostess from ringing the servant's bell. The satire referred to the rule which found its way into later etiquette books and stated that under no circumstances was a hostess to ring the bell during dinner. The disarray resulting from the gentlemen's over-reactions indicated that Gillray was poking fun at the seriousness with which English ‘Society’ took etiquette.
Despite the importance of etiquette, the books themselves emerged somewhat haltingly. The first book to appear with ‘etiquette’ in the title was The Fine Gentleman's Etiquette published in 1776.42 This rhythmic rendering of Chesterfield's behavioural advice was more a burlesque than a proper etiquette book. In 1804 Reverend Trusler first published A System of Etiquette which was in many instances a rehashing of his earlier Principles of Politeness and, as Curtin pointed out, ‘an unreliable work’.43 Twenty-four years later James Pitt published Instructions in Etiquette, a book focusing on rules of desirable behaviour for school-age children. Not until William Day's Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society appeared in 1834 did the etiquette book emerge in its proper form and continue to be published regularly. By 1844, when one journal writer said of etiquette that ‘this science … particularly in our own country, so strongly marks the real spirit of the age’, over a dozen etiquette books had been published, many of them in multiple editions.44 For instance, twenty-six editions of Day's Hints on Etiquette appeared between 1834 and 1849 and thirty-three of Etiquette for the Ladies by 1846.
Unlike those who wrote courtesy and conduct books, writers of etiquette books assumed that their readers were rising from the humbler ranks to wealth and higher station. They sometimes wrote with the young and socially uninitiated in mind, but more often for the unprecedented numbers of equally inexperienced but newly-enriched, middle-class adults seeking the manners, dress and external polish suitable for mixing in fashionable ‘Society’. One mid-nineteenth-century writer dedicated his etiquette book to, ‘Those Ladies not having had the good fortune to be born or educated in good Society, yet [who] aspire to be admitted within its circle.’45 But a dedication reaching down to those below middle-class status—no matter how intense their social aspirations—would have been futile. The prices of mid-nineteenth-century etiquette books limited their audience to middle-class social climbers. Such works ranged in price from 6d to over 4s, the former price being an exception. Most volumes cost at least a shilling. Titles such as Etiquette for Gentlemen: With Hints on the Art of Conversation (1841), The Ladies' Pocket Book of Etiquette (1838), and Guide to English Etiquette … for Ladies and Gentlemen (1844) suggest that this form of manners literature, like conduct books, was aimed at both men and women.46
Determining authorship is more problematic for etiquette books than for previous manners literature because, particularly after the mid-nineteenth-century, most of them appeared with anonymous title pages. An aristocratic author guaranteed sales and authenticity, but no member of upper-class, fashionable ‘Society’ could afford the stigma of having his or her name associated with a book so obviously designed to make money. Real and false aristocrats alike who dared to pen etiquette books hid behind such generically aristocratic pen-titles as ‘a Man of the World’, ‘an English Lady of Rank’ or ‘a Member of the Aristocracy’. One so-called ‘Man of the World’ justified his anonymity in a preface to his etiquette book where he stated that anyone moving in good society:
must endeavour to escape sneers of acquaintances who express astonishment that any real lady or gentleman could devote time to so mean a subject. The only way of doing this is by an anonymous title page.47
In fact, the authors of etiquette books were more likely to be dancing masters, artists, stockbrokers, ladies-maids, or parvenus than real ladies and gentlemen of rank and fortune.48
Anonymous title pages were indicative of the more generally impersonal nature of etiquette books. Unlike many courtesy and most conduct books, works on etiquette addressed an impersonal, lucrative market rather than a specific relative or friend. Impoverished as well as pseudoaristocrats teamed up with aggressive publishers to capitalise on the upwardly mobile middle class's craving for information on the minutiae of upper-class life. What they dispensed were hastily, often haphazardly written formula books devoid of individual style, opinion and sentiment, not to mention literary merit. One writer freely admitted about his own etiquette book:
On looking over the pages, it seems ‘a sorry sight,’ and perhaps we have not done it either wisely or too well. The majority of mankind however are ignorant, and generally foolish, but are wisely anxious for instruction, therefore is it, that many books are written, are popular, and sell, and so will it be.49
The publisher's advertisements in an etiquette book sometimes listed four or five other works on etiquette, stipulating that all were of equal size and price. Such standardisation often characterised the information and phraseology inside as well, suggesting that authors felt free to indulge their copying skills. One writer attempted to defend the lack of originality in his book by arguing that any perceptive observer who frequented good ‘Society’ would notice and record the same behaviours. He remarked on the similarity of precepts proffered in other works on etiquette but then maintained defensively, ‘Nothing however has been copied from them in the compilation of this work, the author having drawn entirely from his own resources.’50 His very denial suggests that contemporaries must have believed these writers were freely borrowing from each other.
Judging by the size, contents and purpose of etiquette books, writers must have assumed that their readers would invest as little time reading as they themselves did writing them. Most etiquette books were small pocket-books designed to be quickly digested and then conveniently nestled on one's person as a handy, useful reference. These vade-mecums offered neither a comprehensive picture of a particular social type nor a guide to desirable characteristics and conduct throughout life. They furnished, instead, practical digests of rules and information necessary for avoiding improper, vulgar behaviour. Thus etiquette books consisted of a set of precise prescriptions to be learned concerning what one should and should not do—not whom one should strive to be. The assumption was that good manners resulted not from making a man or woman virtuous, but from teaching him or her a set of proper rules.
Implicit in these books was a conception of manners very different from that expressed in courtesy and conduct books. Etiquette books presumed a greatly diminished scope for manners that included superficial, external forms but not internal moral principles. A writer of an etiquette book on courtship and marriage made the distinction clear by indicating that some of his remarks ‘will be found to belong rather to the department of morals, than of mere etiquette.’51 The laws of ‘mere etiquette’ consisted of conventional rules of behaviour for social and public encounters with acquaintances or strangers. They could regulate the recognised offences against morality and decency such as gaming, duelling or waltzing as readily as they could the respectable activities of visiting and dining. Although considered frivolous and frothy by moralists, these amoral, conventional forms were accorded reverential status by ‘Society’ and etiquette authorities. As H. F. Mellers noted:
Agreeableness of forms is one of the most essential elements of a placid and happy life … does not the true repose and serenity of our days depend more upon a multitude of trivial actions, of hourly recurrence, than on more important events, with which the path of life is but sparingly bestowed?52
Although meagre with respect to intellectual and moral substance, etiquette books were not completely oblivious to moral concerns. Curtin pointed out that the central moral principle underlying etiquette was tact or the capacity for self-sacrifice and a sensitivity to the feelings of others.53 The ultimate moral commandment of etiquette might be expressed as ‘Do Not Offend’. An early etiquette book by Arthur Freeling maintained, ‘One of the most distinguishing marks of a gentleman is an apparent regard to the feelings of others.’54 But note that Freeling believed it important for a gentleman to have an apparent, not necessarily an internally felt, regard. His statement is a typical example of etiquette books' indifference to an individual's internal nature and character. As long as his outward appearance and behaviour did not offend others' sensibilities, a man was regarded as well-mannered regardless of the quality of his internal moral principles. In fact, etiquette books rarely discussed such below-the-surface matters as integrity, modesty, dignity or moral virtue. Whereas conduct books regarded manners as the visible expression of internal moral and religious principles, in etiquette books manners emerged as visible indicators reflecting only one's familiarity with and respect for ‘Society’. Neglecting the behaviours and fashions detailed in etiquette books was not so much an affront to morality and virtue as ‘a direct insult to society’.55
This underlying assumption that society was an entity to be respected reflected etiquette books' positive view of and emphasis on the social as opposed to domestic or spiritual sphere. Private matters concerning domestic life as well as relations between intimate friends fell outside the domain of ‘Society’ and the jurisdiction of etiquette and thus received scant, if any, attention in etiquette books. Etiquette writers' overwhelming concern was to codify and dispense the proprieties requisite for performing comfortably and successfully in social or public settings. They placed no value on sheltering individuals from society or on nurturing moral paragons.
Etiquette books largely ignored the spiritual domain as well. In contrast to conduct books, they were primarily secular in orientation, stressing the importance of happiness here on earth as opposed to eternal happiness. The underlying motive determining proper behaviour according to etiquette authorities was the desire for favour and approval from men and women—not from God. Whenever etiquette books spoke of the consequences of ignoring the proprieties of behaviour, they did so in terms of the effect on one's reputation in the eyes of others rather than on one's internal character and principles. As one writer warned:
Do not imagine these little ceremonies to be insignificant and beneath your attention; they are the customs of society; and if you do not conform to them, you will gain the unenviable distinction of being pointed out as an ignorant, ill-bred person.56
This near-exclusive attention to the social sphere meant that the authorities on proper behaviour deferred to in etiquette books differed from those in conduct books. It was not parents, intimate friends or God, but rather the polished, fashionable aristocratic members of London ‘Society’ who dictated the courtesies of life composing etiquette. Those so-called ‘best people’ who deserted their country estates from January to July for the duties of Parliament and delights of the London Season set styles of behaviour no less authoritatively and fickly than they did those of pelisses or cravats. The customs à-la-mode that Evelina longed to know more about were these whimsical, fickle ones of etiquette established by London's fashionable folk. Etiquette books frequently alluded to the difficulty of pronouncing on the proprieties of dinner parties or visiting hours because such rituals were subject to the ever-varying authority of fashion. Nevertheless, etiquette writers encouraged a respect for fashion with such advice as, ‘A due regard to fashion should be observed, because if you happen to be far behind the march of improvement, you become singular—an appearance we have before recommended you to avoid.’ The fashionable nature of etiquette books suggests that they were less perennial and perhaps less deserving of a constant place on one's shelf than conduct books.57
Etiquette books defied the eighteenth-century penchant for universalism with respect to place and circumstance as well as to time.58 Unlike courtesy and conduct books, these works viewed behaviour as a product more of particular settings and circumstances than of universally suitable internal moral principles or laws of good taste. Chesterfield's definition of good breeding as ‘a mode, not a substance; for what is good-breeding at St James's would pass for foppery or banter in a remote village’ was equally descriptive of etiquette.59 The books themselves came to be organised around specific events and places, such as the drawing-room, dining-room, ballroom, street, ‘at home’ or tea. These settings and activities determined which behaviours were proper and which vulgar. An equally important contingency was the company gathered at a given place or activity, for etiquette presumed proper behaviour depended on people's specific ranks rather than their general humanity. Some books included elaborate tables displaying the order of precedence so as to help prevent faux pas when making introductions or filing into the dining-room.
Etiquette books were not the only or even the first printed peeks at the habits and haunts of fashionable aristocratic life. From the early 1820s to the late 1840s, enterprising publishers—Henry Colburn in particular—flooded the market with best-selling ‘silver fork’ novels catering to the public's insatiable curiosity about mystery-shrouded aristocratic delights and decadence. Writers of these fashionable novels ignored matters of plot and characterisation in an effort to detail the titillating tit-bits and superficial splendours associated with aristocratic balls, gaming, dinners, etiquette, dress, duels, and so forth. Rich manufacturers' sons and daughters, upon reading these novels, would have learned that it was fashionable to go to Gunter's for tea, Howard and Gibbs's for a lona, Stultz for a coat and Calais if in debt. But they certainly would have derived little moral improvement from these etiquette books in novel form. Silver fork novels were devoid of concern for moral principle and internal character and were thus appropriate fictional counterparts to etiquette books. Late-eighteenth-century aristocratic embodiments of moral virtue such as Evelina's suitor, Lord Orville, were replaced by moral libertines or Regency dandy-types like Pelham and Vivian Grey. Whereas courtesy novels focused on fashionable ‘Society’ only to censure its amoral values, the silver fork genre strove to portray it in the most accurate detail without passing moral judgment on its habits or members. Considered in their role as manuals on etiquette, these novels reflected a growing split between manners and morals as clearly as did etiquette books.
As Curtin suggested, silver fork novels certainly helped contemporary publishers to see that there was money to be made in dispensing fashionable manners to middle-class folk. But they shed little light on why, by the 1830s, there was sufficient interest in the proprieties of etiquette to prompt and sustain a new type of manners literature. To understand why the etiquette book emerged in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, historians have turned to certain events and changes in the larger society.
Explanations for the etiquette book's appearance in the early nineteenth century have focused on one or a combination of two factors. First, according to Michael Curtin and Leonore Davidoff, the increase in size and influence of the middle class during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a primary stimulus to etiquette books. A second factor suggested by Curtin was the feminisation of sociability in the Victorian period.60
The etiquette book's emergence in the 1830s was most directly and obviously linked to the increasing economic success and power of its middle-class audience.61 Industrialisation enriched unprecedented numbers of merchants and financiers but also a totally new group of manufacturers who, by the 1820s and 1830s, were aggressively seeking political power and social status commensurate with their economic success. Rich merchant families had traditionally mingled comfortably and intermarried with aristocrats and landed gentry. These new manufacturers, on the other hand, were a bewildering breed most often of humble origins and their precipitous rise to wealth and fortune afforded them the economic but not necessarily the behavioural requisites for mixing in polite social and political circles. One writer confessed to indulging in the entertainments of one such newly enriched, socially vulgar furrier's son but admitted:
I am mighty ashamed of … my Company, to hear their loose and idle conversation, and how none of them could pronounce the letter H, and to think what an unlettered vulgar Fellow Tibbits is, and that I should demean myself to associate with such a Companion only because of his Riches, and Wine, and Dinners.62
Upward social mobility for such novices as Tibbits depended as much on their adopting polite, fashionable manners, dress and speech as on their accumulating wealth and property. Inspired by the success of silver fork novels, publishers capitalised on manufacturers' and others' need for instruction concerning the proprieties of fashionable ‘Society’ by offering etiquette books.
But it was not only writers and publishers who stood to gain by dispensing aristocratic manners to upwardly mobile middle-class folk. As Curtin suggested, upper-class gentlemen themselves recognised after the Reform Act of 1832 that, since the middle class was to have a share in guiding the political life of the nation, to mingle in fashionable drawing-rooms where most political decisions were made, its members needed to be well-versed in the courtesies gracing and regulating polite, fashionable circles. Providing instruction in such behaviours not only would facilitate smooth, harmonious social interactions, but also would perpetuate aristocratic control, values and manners. The English aristocracy believed that the most effective way to control potentially threatening, antagonistic groups was to absorb them, being sure to impose on all newcomers aristocratic standards and manners. The system worked because England's nineteenth-century middle class was fundamentally deferential and wished more to be incorporated into the existing social and political system than to overthrow and replace it with another. There is nothing so deferential as imitation and the popularity of silver fork novels and etiquette books attested to middle-class social climbers' willingness to emulate the manners of their superiors.
Such deference insured that upward mobility of individuals within the social system did not endanger the social structure itself. Nevertheless, the growth in size and prosperity of the middle class and the concomitant blurring of barriers between its richer members and the aristocracy did fuel an intense, exaggerated concern for hierarchy and social stratification. Attempts were made to establish architecturally and artificially the more clearly defined hierarchy which once existed naturally. For instance, London itself became riddled with a labyrinth of hierarchically defined and ordered passageways including—in descending order of rank—squares, places, rows, streets, courts, alleys, and so forth. Furthermore, nineteenth-century English houses assumed a more vertical structure transforming servants into literal lower classes.63 Foreigners were often struck by the English passion for hierarchy. Commenting on the caravan to Ascot, a perceptive French observer recorded:
In England there is a hierarchy in everything, even down to the vehicles on the public roads. Carriages painted with a coat of arms take precedence over all others, middle-class carriages with four horses have precedence over those with only two, the latter over cabriolets and tilburys, hired landaus over coaches, coaches over omnibuses, omnibuses over cabs, and so on and so forth down to the trap, and even it has the right of way over the cart. There you have the secret of all this admirable orderliness. Everyone has his place!64
Etiquette books resulted as much from this obsession with buttressing the social hierarchy and keeping people in their places as from a desire to ease their way into higher stations. They were somewhat ambivalent and paradoxical in that they presumed and facilitated an increasingly mobile society while simultaneously offering such admonishments as, ‘Remember that people are respectable in their own sphere only, and that when they attempt to step out of it they cease to be so.’65 Books on etiquette attempted to impart a knowledge of and respect for the existing social order. One writer provided a history of the various gradations in the elite structure and Trusler's early work on etiquette included a precedency table based on a social ladder composed of fifty-nine rungs above that of gentleman. Etiquette itself reinforced the social hierarchy by assuming that the supreme consideration in regulating conduct between people was rank. Hierarchy permeated social observances and human relations regarding such matters as filing into the dining-room, seating arrangements, visits of ceremony, introductions, acquaintances, intimacy and even the seemingly trivial question concerning whether it was proper to pass a decanter on a tray or by hand. Regarding the latter issue one book advised:
As it is necessary that there should be a difference in the manner in which the same thing is performed by servants and their superiors, and as it is improper for the former to give anything with the hand alone, it will be unnecessary for a lady or gentleman to use a tray.66
Etiquette was used to intensify hierarchical distinctions between the aristocracy and middle class as well. Such occurrences between 1780 and 1840 as increases in both the size of the peerage and the number of carriages licensed to display the gentlemanly coat of arms heightened fear among the elite of an encroaching middle class.67 Aristocratic ladies and gentlemen strove to maintain and even augment artificially their sense and position of superiority via exclusive clubs like Almack's (opened in 1765 and popular until the mid 1830s), subtleties of cut and workmanship rather than extremes in fashion, and fine points of etiquette. Whereas etiquette books were designed to facilitate incorporation of outside groups into the elite, etiquette itself was used to keep the aristocracy as well as smaller fashionable circles apart from and more refined than those they considered beneath them in the social scale.68 Adhering to the minutiae of etiquette was natural for those accustomed to polite society, so a breach of the proprieties provided instant evidence that the offender was an outsider to be ostracised. To keep this defensive weeder—etiquette—effective, the fashionable elite continually changed the rules and invented new distinctions. When the ‘civic classes’ adopted an early dinner hour, for example, they drove their fashionable superiors to change the accepted time for dining ‘from five o'clock to eight or nine … for as the possibility of a patrician eating any repast at the same hour as a plebeian, it is a degradation which none but a radical would dream of.’69 Similarly, as the middle classes and provincial folk began to use forks in the nineteenth century, the more fashionable elites adopted a new ritual of keeping the fork in the left hand.70
This mania for distancing and excluding one group from another was most evident in the coalescence of ‘Society’ in the early nineteenth century. The OED indicates that ‘Society’ designated ‘an aggregate of leisured, cultured or fashionable persons regarded as forming a distinct class or body’.71 By the time the term appeared in print for the first time in 1823, it referred unambiguously to London's aristocratic, fashionable elite and their increasingly formalised and exclusive social life. It was this elite to which the nation deferred for dictates regarding what to wear and how to behave in social settings. ‘Society’ reflected the growing importance of London as a focal point for consumerism and social activities but also the aristocracy's attempt to reinforce its solidarity via social exclusiveness. Aristocratic social arbiters rendered fashionable circles distinct and impervious to undesirable newcomers by formalising and codifying proper behaviour according to rigid rules of etiquette and by transferring the locus of sociability from public arenas to exclusive clubs like Almack's and, more importantly, to the private home.
As etiquette emerged as the behavioural code regulating ‘Society’, so the private drawing-room became the hallowed place where its activities were staged and enjoyed. The drawing-room was a formal room where convention and the social graces reigned over manners, conversation, dress and furnishings. Like the middle-class home, it was a refuge from the more discordant outer world, but a social not a moral refuge. To this social haven men and women retreated for regular respites from the tension, rivalry and bustle of the larger society. When visiting or mingling in this social sanctum people were, above all else, to put themselves and others at ease and to avoid contentious conversation. As one mid-nineteenth-century etiquette book suggested, ‘The object of the drawing room is essentially that of repose and degagée.’72 An equally important object was that of insuring that the company attending a social function was appropriately selective. Such selectivity would both hold at bay the unprecedented numbers of aspiring socialites flocking to the capital for the pleasures of the London Season and limit the marriage market among aristocratic children, providing parents with a means of influencing, since they no longer arranged, their children's marriages. Maintaining the sieve between the drawing-room and the outside world became the right and duty of women—the newly designated arbiters of ‘Society’ and the drawing-room.
According to Curtin, women's increasing opportunities and rise to prominence in the social sphere during the nineteenth century were important in determining the rules and underlying assumptions of etiquette and in prompting the appearance of etiquette books. As the venue for sociability retreated to the confines and protection of the private home, socialising became acceptable and desirable for women. They reigned over the drawing-room no less imperiously than over the larger domestic realm. Concerning West End social circles, one writer commented, ‘In these coteries, the Ladies rule en petit comité and with a sway … that would make a giant tremble.’73 Their sway was not trivial, either, as a woman's skill as a hostess greatly influenced her husband's career and status. Furthermore, success and acceptance in ‘Society’ for a man was a stepping-stone to the more worldly political realm and such acceptance was granted or denied by female arbiters. When offering advice on how to succeed in life, Pelham's mother warned her ambitious son, ‘Never talk much to young men—remember that it is the women who make a reputation in society.’74
But though they made reputations and engineered strategic social connections, women did not actually participate in society or the ‘World’. This fact, in Curtin's view, was largely responsible for the nature and assumptions of etiquette. Etiquette books focused more on the manners of the drawing-room than on those of the larger society. The social activities discussed such as teas, calls, and ‘at-homes’ were domestic ones enjoyed primarily by women. A major concern of the etiquette surrounding visiting cards, introductions and greetings was the shielding of individuals, whether on streets or in drawing-rooms, from intrusions from strangers or undesirable acquaintances. Although both men and women were exhorted to respect and adhere to the etiquette of privacy, such etiquette was, according to Curtin, more important for women whose moral reputation was more easily compromised. Even the moral content of etiquette books betrayed this feminine, unworldly bias. Curtin argued that the moral underpinnings of etiquette—tact, self-sacrifice and kindness—were virtues more easily cultivated and displayed in the private drawing-rooms of leisured ladies than in the competitive, ruthless public world of selfseeking, career-minded gentlemen.
Yet given the etiquette book's continuing popularity from the 1830s to the present, it is questionable whether etiquette was as irrelevant to the larger competitive society as Curtin's thesis implies. Curtin himself admitted:
Tact, consideration, and kindness are not to be despised. They are indispensable to all forms of decency and civility, and societies are much more likely to lament their death than their abundance. A civic culture requires that individuals, while pursuing their own projects, also acknowledge their respect and regard for others and their projects. Tact and good … manners are the usual means by which we make this acknowledgement. In other words, we may choose to be tactful because of our recognition of our inter-dependency in civil society.75
That the etiquette book has been the literary vehicle of choice for dispensing manners since the 1830s suggests that the behaviours and assumptions it codified were and remain peculiarly applicable and relevant to industrial civil society as a whole—not just to its more fashionable, exclusive microcosm. Such a suggestion, however, raises the most perplexing and significant question posed by etiquette books' appearance and immediate success. How was it that a form of behavioural literature which divorced manners from morals arose and achieved popularity at the very time when English society was experiencing one of the most intense moral rehabilitations that it had ever known? Could an amoral, irreligious behavioural code possibly have been compatible with a society experiencing unprecedented religious and moral enthusiasm?
To answer these questions, we must first explore the nature of the moral revolution, at least with respect to manners and behaviour. Middle-class conduct books reveal the essence of this revolution. That is, they detail both the precise influences moralists found threatening to moral and social order in the early industrial period, as well as the behavioural solutions moralists proposed for counteracting them. The following analysis of conduct book writers' fears and behavioural prescriptions sheds light on changes transforming English society in this period. Furthermore, it provides the necessary context for a more comprehensive understanding of the rise and success of etiquette books-an understanding more revealing about England's industrialising society than about London's fashionable ‘Society’.
Notes
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J. E. Mason, Gentlefolk in the Making 1531-1774 (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1935).
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F. Whigham, Ambition and Privilege (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); M. Curtin, Propriety and Position: A Study of Victorian Manners (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987); and Curtin, ‘A Question of Manners: Status and Gender in Etiquette and Courtesy’, Journal of Modern History, LVII (September 1985) 395-423.
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J. Hemlow, ‘Fanny Burney and the Courtesy Books’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, LXV (1950) 732-61; and N. Armstrong, ‘The Rise of the Domestic Woman’, in N. Armstrong and L. Tennenhouse (eds), The Ideology of Conduct (New York: Methuen, 1987) pp. 96-141.
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S. C. Woolsey (ed.), The Diary and Letters of Frances Burney, Madame D'Arblay, vol. I (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880) p. 45.
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In addition to Mason's, Whigham's and Curtin's works on courtesy literature, see the following studies for discussions of gentlemanly values and education as reflected in courtesy books: S. Rothblatt, Tradition and Change in English Liberal Education and G. Brauer, The Education of a Gentleman (New York: Bookman Associates, 1959).
Although the courtesy book is considered a mainly masculine literary form, there were, according to Curtin, a scattering of such works written for women throughout the period. D. Bornstein, The Lady in the Tower: Medieval Courtesy Literature for Women (Hamden, CT: The Shoe String Press, 1983) recognises the existence of medieval and Renaissance courtesy literature for women, noting that all of it was written by men, excepting works by Christine de Pizan. See also Armstrong and Tennenhouse (eds), The Ideology of Conduct for studies of behavioural literature for women.
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J. C. Collins, ‘Lord Chesterfield's Letters’, in Essays and Studies (London: Macmillan, 1895) p. 230.
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An exception was the literature written for courtiers during the period 1540-1640—a period characterised, according to Whigham, by a surge of upward mobility into the elite. See Whigham, Ambition and Privilege.
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P. Gay, ‘The Spectator as Actor’, Encounter, XXIX (December 1967) 29.
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Concerning the eighteenth-century vogue of cosmopolitanism or universalism and its reflection in courtesy literature and notions of good breeding, see G. Brauer, ‘Good Breeding in the Eighteenth Century’, University of Texas Studies in English, XXXII (1953) 25-44. See also H. Aarsleff, The Study of Language in England, 1780-1860 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1967) for a discussion of the eighteenth-century bias in favour of universal laws and its persistent influence on the study of language up until the 1830s.
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Curtin, ‘A Question of Manners’, p. 403. S. Rothblatt also stated: ‘The courtesy book lasted in England until 1780, after which it disappeared, or rather, changed into the etiquette book, less universal in tone and more specifically designed for a small coterie of “best people”’ (see Rothblatt, Tradition and Change, p. 60).
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The first book to appear with etiquette in the title was The Fine Gentleman's Etiquette (1776), a rhythmic rendition of Lord Chesterfield's maxims. E. Aresty noted, ‘No one was better qualified than Chesterfield to escort etiquette into the English language, and its general spirit into manners’ (see E. Aresty, The Best Behavior (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970) p. 143).
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C. J. Rawson, ‘Gentlemen and Dancing-Masters: Thoughts on Fielding, Chesterfield and the Genteel’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, I (December 1967) 139.
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Chesterfield, fourth Earl of, Letters to His Son, vol. 1 (London: M. W. Dunne, 1901) p. 76. Chesterfield apologists including J. C. Collins and R. Coxon have argued that the absence of a moral dimension in the Letters should not be seen as a commentary on Chesterfield's actual character. It should be viewed, instead, as a reflection of the very practical purpose underlying the advice. See Collins, ‘Lord Chesterfield's Letters’, in Essays and Studies and R. Coxon, Chesterfield and His Critics (London: Routledge, 1925).
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Reverend J. Trusler, Principles of Politeness, 4th ed. (London: J. Bell, 1775) and Reverend J. Trusler, A System of Etiquette, 2nd ed. (Bath: M. Gye, 1805) p. 23.
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Brief Remarks on English Manners (London: printed for J. Booth, 1816) p. i.
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Curtin, ‘A Question of Manners’, p. 407.
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J. Austen, Mansfield Park (London: MacDonald, 1957; first pub. 1814) p. 88.
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J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England 1770-1800 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961; first pub. 1932) p. 70.
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Throughout this study, I shall refer to all late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century middle-class works on manners which emphasise the moral implications of manners and behaviour as ‘conduct books’, though some were written in the form of letters of advice.
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Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, to Mrs. Montagu, 1755-1800, vol. II (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1817) pp. 245-6.
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On the rise and influence of Evangelicalism, see D. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); I. Bradley, The Call to Seriousness; F. K. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961); and D. Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture (London: Croom Helm, 1984).
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Conduct books reveal that the terms ‘class’, ‘classes’, ‘rank’, and ‘ranks’ were used interchangeably, even in the late eighteenth century. Writers of both conduct and etiquette books clearly conceived of their society as being three-tiered. Whether using ‘class’ or ‘rank’, they categorised social groups as upper, middle and lower.
Although the use of the terms ‘class’ and ‘classes’ became more common in the nineteenth century, it did not replace more traditional social designations such as ‘ranks’. A mid-nineteenth-century etiquette book noted, ‘A journey to the lakes or to some one of the various fashionable watering places is often chosen by those who are placed in the middle ranks of society.’ The same work revealed, ‘The tea-table is the common rendevous of the middle classes of society’ (see Etiquette of Love, Courtship and Marriage (Halifax: Milner & Sowerby, 1859) pp. 109 and 140).
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See Chapter 1, note 3. In view of the distinction noted above between the conception of manners in courtesy and conduct books, the works for women which Hemlow discussed fall into the category of conduct books, though she terms them ‘courtesy books’.
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J. Cole (ed.), Memoirs of Mrs. Chapone (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1839) p. 40; T. Gisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, 8th ed. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1810) advertisement section; and Etiquette for Gentlemen: With Hints on the Art of Conversation, 13th ed. (London: Tilt and Bogue, 1841), advertisement section for Tilt's Miniature Classics appearing at the end of the book. On the subject of workers' wages in relation to book prices see R. Altick, The English Common Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957) pp. 51 and 275-6.
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W. Cobbett, Advice to Young Men, and Incidentally to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (London: A. Cobbett, 1837) pp. 2 and 119.
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Hemlow, ‘Fanny Burney and the Courtesy Books’, p. 733.
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W. Roberts, The Portraiture of a Christian Gentleman (London: J. A. Hessey, 1829) p. 63.
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Mrs J. Sandford, Female Improvement, vol. I (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1836) advertisement.
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The English Gentlewoman (London: Colburn, 1845) p. 20.
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S. Ellis, Prevention Better than Cure (London: Fisher, 1847) p. 306.
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The Athenaeum (1830) p. 815.
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R. B. Sheridan, The Rivals in J. Bettenbender (ed.), Three English Comedies (New York: Dell, 1966; first pub. 1775) pp. 124-5.
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See Hemlow, ‘Fanny Burney and the Courtesy Books’.
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‘Society’ here refers specifically to the London-based, fashionable, upperclass Society as opposed to the larger society. The concept and term will be discussed more fully at the end of Chapter 1.
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Burney, Evelina, p. 72.
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See the letter to the editor in G. Packwood's Packwood's Whim (London: sold by the author, 1796).
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Aresty, The Best Behavior, p. 13.
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The term is not in either the 1755 or 1785 edition of Johnson's Dictionary but it did appear in J. Walker's A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (London: T. Cadell, 1791). After the definition Walker noted, ‘This word crept into use some years after Johnson wrote his Dictionary, nor have I found it in any other I have consulted. I have ventured, however, to insert it here, as it seems to be established; and as it is more specific than ceremonial, it is certainly of use.’
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Mrs E. Bonhote, The Parental Monitor, vol. I (London: W. Lane, 1788) p. 117.
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Ilchester, Earl of (ed.), Elizabeth, Lady Holland to Her Son, 1821-1845 (London: J. Murray, 1946) p. 141.
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Puckler-Muskau, Tour in England, Ireland, and France, 1828-1829, vol. III (London: E. Wilson, 1832) p. 108.
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A computer search of the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue of all works printed in English between 1700 and 1800 showed this title to be the only one containing the word ‘etiquette’.
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Reverend J. Trusler, A System of Etiquette (Bath: W. Meyler, 1804) and Curtin, ‘A Question of Manners’, p. 411.
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Captain O. Sabertash, ‘The Sliding Scale of Manners’, Fraser's Magazine, XXIX (1844) p. 586.
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Etiquette for Ladies: Or, the Principles of True Politeness (Halifax: Milner and Sowerby, 1852) dedication.
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Although women's authority and opportunities to participate in ‘Society’ increased dramatically in the nineteenth century, Curtin's view of etiquette books as a primarily feminine literary form must be qualified. A survey of thirty different etiquette books published between 1804 and 1881 showed that five were aimed specifically at gentlemen, six at ladies, three at gentlemen and ladies and the rest at no specific audience. Of the fourteen books for which the authors' sex was evident by the actual name or generic pen-title, twelve were written by men and two by women. Furthermore, the male author (G. W. M. Reynolds) of ‘Etiquette for the Millions’, a seventeen part series appearing in The London Journal (1845), directed nine-tenths of his advice to men. I would like to thank Michael Shirley for making me aware of Reynolds's writings on etiquette.
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Court Etiquette (London: C. Mitchell, 1849) preface.
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Thus, one etiquette book noted, ‘To write a treatise on etiquette is to be condemned everlastingly to the region of tailors, ladies-maids, and parvenus.’ See Court Etiquette (London, 1849) p. 10. See also A. Hayward, ‘Codes of Manners and Etiquette’, Quarterly Review, LIX (October 1837) 396 and Curtin, Propriety and Position, 46-52.
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Etiquette for All (Glasgow: G. Watson, 1861) p. 64.
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Etiquette for Gentlemen, 13th ed., preface.
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Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage (London: D. Bogue, 1844) p. v.
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H. F. Mellers, Hints for the Improvement of the Manners and Appearance of Both Sexes; With Details of the Etiquette of Polished Society (London: Dean and Munday, n. d.) p. 12.
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See Curtin, Propriety and Position, pp. 172-93 and ‘A Question of Manners’.
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A. Freeling, The Pocket Book of Etiquette (Liverpool: H. Lacey, 1837) p. 21.
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Ibid., p. 16.
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W. Day, Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society, 7th ed. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1836) p. 19.
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G. W. M. Reynolds, ‘Etiquette for the Millions’, The London Journal (1845) 184. Although etiquette was subject to the vagaries of fashion and the books themselves usually appeared in multiple editions, comparisons between editions of early etiquette books in particular often indicate few changes in substance.
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This increasing emphasis in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries on particular circumstances as opposed to universal laws was evident in the rise of the novel and the discipline of philology as well. See I. Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960) and Aarsleff, The Study of Language.
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Gentleman's Magazine, XXV (1755) 492.
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The following discussion of these two factors is based on Curtin, ‘A Question of Manners’ and L. Davidoff, The Best Circles (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1973).
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On the increasing size, power and self-consciousness of the middle class in the early industrial period see, in particular, Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 1987.
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R. Doyle, Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe, vol. II (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1849), ‘A Partie of Sportsmen Ovt a Shvtynge’.
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See A. Parreaux, Daily Life in England in the Reign of George III (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1969) p. 99, for comments on London's hierarchical layout. Concerning residential architecture see J. Laver, ‘Homes and Habits’, in E. Barker (ed.), The Character of England (London: Oxford University Press, 1947) pp. 462-80.
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Flora Tristan's London Journal, trans. D. Palmer and G. Princetl (London: G. Prior, 1980; first pub. 1840) p. 151.
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Day, Hints on Etiquette, 7th ed., p. 55.
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J. Butcher, Instructions in Etiquette, 3rd ed. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1847) p. 40.
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J. V. Beckett notes that the peerage, whose size had remained roughly unchanged from 1720 to 1780, gained 166 members between 1780 and 1832. Concerning arms-bearing carriages, he reveals that their number grew from 14000 in 1812 to 24000 in 1841. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, pp. 30 and 35.
For a discussion of the landed elite's defensive reaction in the late eighteenth century to newly enriched gentry and businessmen, see Mandler, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform, 1830-1852 and G. Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism 1740-1830 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987) pp. 21-48.
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For a discussion of etiquette as a distancing mechanism at court, see N. Elias, The Court Society, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983; first pub. 1969).
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H. Smith, ‘How to be a Gentleman’, New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, XI (November 1824) 465.
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Aresty, The Best Behavior, p. 175.
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Definition quoted in Davidoff, The Best Circles, p. 103, n. 5. Davidoff indicated that this definition did not emerge until the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
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A. E. Douglas, The Etiquette of Fashionable Life (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1849) p. 24.
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‘The Book of Gentility’, in Miscellanies 1832-1836 (London: W. Kidd) p. 18.
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Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, Pelham (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1842; first pub. 1826) p. 14.
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Curtin, ‘A Question of Manners’, p. 422. Emphasis is in the original.
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