Six Impossible Episodes: Etiquette Manuals

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frye. Something I think I've mentioned on
the show before is that I think about etiquette a

(00:22):
lot because in my lifetime there's been just a huge
shift in how we interact with other people, Like social
media did not exist when I was born, and now
it is a major way that a lot of people
communicate with one another. And I don't know if anyone
has heard, feels like etiquette hasn't really kept up with

(00:42):
that shift. A lot of the time, there is a
lot of stuff on social media happening continually that I
would say is inconsiderate, like at best, a lot of
it actively incredibly rude. A lot of people use the
word manners and etiquette interchangeably, but they have slightly different

(01:04):
but interrelated meanings. Different sources, of course, give slightly different definitions,
but essentially manners that's a person's conduct or behavior, and
then etiquette is the code of manners or the rules
that delineate what good manners are. Books on etiquette, which
is what we are talking about today in this installment

(01:25):
of six Impossible Episodes. They don't necessarily reflect the rules
that everyone is actually following. So if you're reading a
historical etiquette manual, it's not necessarily depicting what day to
day life is like for people. It's more like what
the author thinks the ideal standard of behavior should be.

(01:48):
So today we're going to do a little six Impossible
episodes on a selection of etiquette manuals from history. And
to be very clear upfront, this is focused on manuals
that we're either written in or translated into English, because
that's the language I am fluent in. And it also
felt way outside of my lane to be commenting on

(02:10):
etiquette books from parts of the world that I have
no cultural connections to or experience with, where you know,
the rules of etiquette might seem strange to me. You
must give your neighbor a duck. The first work that
we are going to discuss came out in fifteen fifty
eight and its author was Giovanni de la Casa of Florence,

(02:33):
who was born on June twenty eighth, fifteen oh three
to a well off and aristocratic family. He seems to
have been a little bit of a troublemaker in his youth,
including writing some satiric and suggestive verse, but eventually he
moved into writing lyric poetry and translating other works, and
in fifteen forty four he was named Archbishop of Benevento.

(02:55):
Unlike most of the existing manuals of behavior and conduct
that were written before this point, this one wasn't focused
on courtly behavior and diplomatic protocols. It was about how
to behave yourself out in the world. Giovanni finished it
in fifteen fifty five, and he died on November fourteenth,
fifteen fifty six. Although he had instructed his family to

(03:17):
burn all of his documents, they published this book as
il Galateo o vera dicostumi or Etiquette or rather Customs
two years later. This treatise was quickly translated into multiple
other languages. It became really influential in a lot of Europe.
It made its way into English for the first time

(03:37):
in fifteen seventy six after being translated by Robert Peterson,
and then it was retranslated and republished in English at
different points after that, including in London in seventeen seventy
four as Galateo or a treatise on politeness and delicacy
of manners addressed to a young nobleman. That is the

(03:58):
one that we are focused on today. Books on etiquette
have often been written in response to changing social norms
or a perceived need to address some kind of big
shift in people's behavior, whether such a shift was actually happening,
or the kinds of people who write etiquette books just

(04:19):
thought that was what was happening. This retranslation came out
as the Industrial Revolution and other social and economic changes
were making it more possible for people to climb the
social and economic ladders. There's this idea that newly affluent
people might not know how to act. The preface to
this seventeen seventy four English edition made it clear that

(04:41):
Italy was seen as the birthplace of good manners. It
quote shows to what a degree of refinement, both in
manners and in literature the Italians were arrived at a
period when we were just emerging from Gothicism and barbarity.
It also makes clear that, in the translator's opinion, English
society has progressed since the work was first written, to

(05:02):
the point that some of the examples might seem absurd.
But at the same time he mentions some very gross
behavior that he's seen from other people, including a man
spitting so vociferously it startled other people, and a woman
using her napkin to clean her teeth after dinner, and
those were points of evidence that a book like Galateo

(05:23):
was still needed. So we can really sum up this
book's whole approach to etiquette with this quote quote. It
is to be observed, then, that whatever is offensive or
disagreeable to any one of our senses, or contrary to
our natural instincts and desires, and further, whatever raises in
our minds an idea of anything filthy or indecent, or

(05:46):
what shocks our understanding, I say that everything and every
action of this kind, being as greatly displeasing to others,
is carefully to be avoided. Nothing therefore, either filthy or
a modest nauseous or disgusting, ought not only to be done,
but even mentioned in the presence of others. Some examples

(06:08):
of things to be avoided finding something stinky and saying
to the person next to you, smell this, it smells terrible.
Similarly grinding your teeth, just breathing too loud. I feel
like I do that one making horrible noises when coughing
or sneezing, howling like a wolf while yawning, which I
think we should all adopt, actually expactorating in company, smelling

(06:31):
glasses of wine or plates of food belonging to other people,
speaking about vulgar subjects, being profane about God, whether you
are serious or joking, going on at length about what
you dreamed about last night, lying arrogance, buffoonery, and giving
unsolicited advice, especially to people who are not your true

(06:53):
and intimate friends. Uh. I like how many of these
are still things that people point out. Uh. Also, Giovanni
de la Casa sure did not like jingling puns, as
well as what we might describe today as dad jokes. Quote.
You will meet also with some people who, for every

(07:15):
word that is spoken, have some other word without any
meaning ready at hand by way of jingle. Others who
will change the syllables in a word in a trifling,
foolish manner. Others will speak and answer in a different
manner from what we expected, and that without any wit
or beauty of thought. As where is thy Lord in

(07:36):
his clothes unless he is bathing or in bed? How
does this wine taste a little moist, I think, how
is this dish to be eaten with your mouth? And
the like? All which kinds of wit, as you will
easily apprehend, are low and vulgar. Givanni, I'm with you.

(07:58):
We talk about that on behind the scenes. An fan
next up Letters to his son on the Art of
Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, by
Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, purported namesake of the
Chesterfield Sofa. Philip had no children with his wife, but
he did have two sons, and he wrote a series
of letters to one of them, also named Philip, starting

(08:20):
in seventeen thirty seven. The younger Philip died in seventeen
sixty eight, and a few years later his widow started
publishing the letters because she really didn't have any other
source of income. There was also a book that collected
the parts that were focused on etiquette and combined it
with other works, which was published as Principles of Politeness
and of Knowing the World, and that came out in

(08:42):
seventeen eighty six. I chose this as one of the
things to talk about in today's episode because it is
frequently cited as the first use of the word etiquette
to mean something like rules for polite behavior in English.
Turns out that doesn't really hold up. Though the word
etiquette comes from a French word meaning label or ticket,

(09:05):
and then later this word etiquette was used to describe
cards or signs that outlined rules for proper conduct at court,
so that label was sort of a label on the
wall telling you how to act, and then the word
etiquette came to describe those rules themselves. The Earl of
Chesterfield did use the word etiquette in these letters, starting

(09:27):
with one that he wrote in seventeen fifty, but he
was talking about those formal protocols, not a more general
standard of good behavior. Specifically, in that letter he was
telling the younger Philip to follow the current protocols when
he met the Pope Nowadays. The Oxford English Dictionary also
cites an even earlier use of this sense of the

(09:49):
word etiquette from London Magazine in seventeen thirty seven. Although
the Earl did not write these letters with the intent
of their ever being published, it makes a lot of
sense that they came to be used as an etiquette
manual once they were. Here's an example from October sixteenth,
seventeen forty seven quote, Dear boy, the art of pleasing

(10:10):
is a very necessary one to possess, but a very
difficult one to acquire. It can hardly be reduced to rules,
and your own good sense and observation will teach you
more of it than I can do. As you would
be done by. Is the surest method that I know
of pleasing. Observe carefully what pleases you in others, and
probably the same thing in you will please others. If

(10:33):
you are pleased with the complaisance and attention of others
to your humors, your tastes, or your weaknesses depend upon it,
the same complaisance and attention on your part to theirs
will equally please them. Take the tone of the company
that you are in, and do not pretend to give it.
Be serious, gay, or even trifling as you find the
present humor of the company. This is an attention due

(10:55):
from every individual to the majority. There are and hundreds
of pages of these letters. I mean, this is this
man's correspondence to his son, going on for many years,
and as was the case with the Galateo, this was
written to a man. It's focused on how a man
should act We are going to get through some other
works and some works by women that were on etiquette

(11:18):
after we have a quick sponsor break. A ton of
etiquette manuals came out in the United States and Europe
in the nineteenth century, thanks in part to developments in

(11:38):
printing for a mass market, and of course there were
huge ongoing social changes related to things like race, gender,
and class. All this happened before, during, and after the
US Civil War. Our next book was written in eighteen
sixty eight and it was published under the pseudonym Daisy Ibright.
That was really Sophia orn Edwards Johnson. She was born

(12:02):
in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then later moved to Bath, New Hampshire.
We don't have a ton of detail about her life,
but she was married to James H. Johnson, who was
a colonel in the New Hampshire Militia and also served
two terms in the House of Representatives. He was more
than twenty years older than she was and she was
his second wife and they had three children together. Like

(12:23):
the younger Philip Stanhope's widow, Johnson turned to etiquette to
try to earn some money, especially after her husband's lumber
mill was destroyed in a flood in eighteen sixty nine.
In addition to her book A Manual of Etiquette with
Hints on Politeness and Good Breeding, she also wrote books
on homemaking and gardening, including every Woman Her Own Flower

(12:45):
Gardener in eighteen seventy one and Household Hints and Recipes
in eighteen seventy seven, and she published columns on etiquette
and household tips in newspapers. Here is how she kicked off.
The preface to this book, quote often speak of good
manners as an accomplishment. I speak of them as a duty. What, then,

(13:06):
are good manners? Such manners as the usages of society
have recognized as being agreeable to men, Such manners as
may take away rudeness and remit to the brute creation
of all coarseness. There are a great many who feel
that good manners are effeminate. They have a feeling that rude,
bluntness is a great deal more manly than good manners.

(13:29):
It is a great deal more beastly. But when men
are crowded in communities, the art of living together is
no small art. How to diminish friction, how to promote
ease of intercourse, How to make every part of a
man's life contribute to the welfare and satisfaction of those
around him. How to keep down offensive pride, how to

(13:49):
banish the rasping of selfishness from the intercourse of men,
How to move among men inspired by various and conflictive motives,
and yet not how collisions. This is the function of
good manners. Ebright's opinions on etiquette and manners continued quote
Etiquette has been defined as a code of laws which

(14:11):
bind society together, viewless as the wind, and yet exercising
a vast influence upon the well being of mankind. But
she writes at the same time, quote good manners are
not merely conventional rules, but are founded upon reason and
good sense, and are therefore most worthy of the consideration
of all. And there are many points of good breeding

(14:33):
which neither time nor place will ever change, because they
are founded upon a just regard of man for man.
Like a lot of nineteenth century writers in the US,
Daisy Ibright framed etiquette and religion, specifically Christianity, as intrinsically connected,
and her view bad manners were not just rude, they

(14:53):
were sinful. She describes the first code of good manners
as the Epistle of Saint James, and she all so
describes Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, as the pattern of
good breeding, and she includes a couple of quotes from
his letters in her book. Some of her rules for
etiquette are more like marriage advice quote nothing can be

(15:14):
more injurious or inconsistent with true politeness and good breeding
than the constant habit of fault finding concerning little petty trifles,
when indulged in by either husband or wife in the
presence of others, or by themselves. This book also has
a special section of advice to children, including quote, be polite, respectful,

(15:35):
and modest to all, and especially to your elders and superiors.
There is nothing more disgusting than a youth who assumes
an air of disrespect and self importance toward his superiors, equals,
or inferiors. This section aimed at children also included quote
never go up and downstairs or about the house with

(15:55):
the speed of a trotting horse and the tread of
an elephant. Step lightly quickly and orderly. There is a
whole chapter in this book on visits of ceremony, visits
of condolence, congratulation, and friendship each of which has its
own code of etiquette. A visit of friendship wouldn't be
going over to a friends for a dinner party. It's

(16:17):
the formal visit, to be made afterward as a gesture
of thanks for having been invited. She talks about rules
for what should be on your calling card, and that
if you can't go for a formal visit, you should
leave a card yourself or send it with a servant
because quote, it is not well bred to send it
through the post. She describes these calling cards not just

(16:38):
as a way of presenting yourself to the person being visited,
but also as part of letting people know that you're
going to be out of town. Quote. If previous to
a long voyage or absence, or on the occasion of
your marriage, you omit to call or send a card
to your friends. It is understood that the acquaintance ceases

(16:58):
when you return home. Those to whom you have sent
cards or paid visits will pay the visit first to you.
This book has chapters on etiquette at home, receiving visitors,
visiting others, table etiquette, dinner parties, evening entertainments, forms of address,
social intercourse, dress, and marriage Toward the end, there's a

(17:19):
chapter with advice specific to husbands, wives, old bachelors, and
old maids, and a final brief poem called good Advice
to Everybody, which reads quote, if Wisdom's ways you wisely
seek five things observed, with care of whom you speak,
to whom you speak, and how and when and where
quaint this very Although it was written after the end

(17:43):
of the US Civil War during the period of reconstruction,
Daisy Eyebright's a manual of etiquette with hints on politeness
and good breeding, makes almost no mention of race. Although
it's presented as though it's rules of etiquette apply to everyone,
there's kind of an implicit assumption that the person reading
it is white. The only specific mentions of anybody else

(18:06):
are references to people doing things differently from what she
considers typical of Americans, with Americans here meaning white, middle
and upper class Christian Americans. It's clear that she just
sort of sees this as the default. This is one
of the ways that etiquette can be really fraught. There
is often this underlying assumption that there's one right way

(18:27):
of doing things that applies to everybody, without really acknowledging
all the nuances that exist among people of different cultures
and races and genders and classes and et cetera. This
means that rules for etiquette can really easily be used
to marginalize people outside of a society's dominant cultural group,
and have been used and are still used actively to

(18:50):
marginalize people. The next book that we're talking about is
The National Capital Code of Etiquette, which was published in
nineteen twenty, and it's almost the opposite. It's aware of
race from the beginning. Its author, Edward S. Green, was
a government employee living in Washington, D C. In nineteen twenty,
about twenty five percent of the capital city's residence were black.

(19:13):
Green's publisher, Austin Jenkins Company, produced quote Bibles and special
books for the Colored race by Negro authors. The publisher's
note at the beginning ends with quote, we consider it
a great pleasure and are especial privilege to respectfully dedicate
this volume to the Colored race. The author's preface also

(19:34):
starts with an anecdote about George Washington. In this anecdote,
he bows and raises his hat to two black laborers
after they had done the same to him, and then
when a friend that he was with, said that it
was undignified for him to have returned these laborers salute.
George Washington answered, quote, do you suppose I ever want

(19:54):
to think that he had better manners than I did?
Various elements of the story are very cringey to me.
And then the preface went on to say, quote, thus
spoke the perfect gentleman, kindly consideration of our inferiors, as
well as deference to our superiors as one of the
first rudiments of good manners. But this book is not

(20:17):
about how black people should interact with white society. Its
audience is Washington, DC's black middle class and the rules
for behavior within that society. And a lot of the
actual rules parallel the ones in the books that we've
already discussed, like quote, first, you know what displeases or
angers you personally avoid all such words or actions in

(20:39):
your contact with others. After a little bit about not
monopolizing conversations, this part of the book continues quote, Third,
strive to please study your friends and acquaintances. If they
have hobbies, encourage them to talk about their specialty. This
all sounds very familiar. Yeah, a lot like the things
that we've just talked about, even though the rules them

(21:00):
them selves are often similar, though the racial context of
this book adds some additional nuances. Public schools and recreation
facilities in Washington, d C. Were segregated, and after being
inaugurated as president in nineteen thirteen, Woodrow Wilson had empowered
his administration to segregate the federal workforce. Black workers in Washington,

(21:21):
d C. Were increasingly forced into lower wage jobs and
barred from opportunities that were open to their white coworkers.
So while this book doesn't explicitly mention race after the preface,
it's really threaded through with layers of things like respectability, politics,
and a sense of racial uplift. Here's what Edward S.

(21:41):
Green says about dressing for the types of formal visits
that Daisy Ebright also covered in her book. Quote. In
making formal calls, the lady does not remove her gloves, hat,
or veil. A gentleman may carry his hat into the room.
If wearing gloves, the right should be removed and held
in the lane left gloved hand during the call. And

(22:03):
here are his thoughts on dancing. Quote. The author has
seen these spasmodic revolutions of the dancing public come and
go for many years, but the custom invariably returns to
the dreamy waltz, the more conservative dances, and the sane
orchestra sooner or later. Unless at least seven musicians are employed,
a drum is not only superfluous, it is an abomination.

(22:27):
Since this book was published in nineteen twenty, it was
able to include photographs. Unlike the earlier books that we've
talked about. There are pictures of the social settings that
were being described, examples of well dressed people in the like.
One thing that stands out is that most of the
people in these pictures have relatively light skin. While the

(22:47):
idea of racial uplift was theoretically focused on lifting up
black people as a whole, in reality there was a
lot of colorism, with people with lighter skin being seen
as the best examples of the race. Yes. This book
also includes a lengthy section on writing letters, and it
includes examples of letters for all kinds of different purposes,

(23:09):
like there is a sample letter for a man who
wants to propose to a woman in writing because he's
either too timid to do it in spoken words, or
just feels better able to express himself in writing, than
there are examples of how she could write back to him,
either accepting his proposal or turning it down. Then there's

(23:30):
another example of his letter to her father asking for
his permission to get married, followed by examples of letters
from the father answering yes or no. There are some
sample letters in some of the other books that we
were talking about today, but there are quite a lot
of them in this one, and that makes a lot
of sense considering that this book was written a couple

(23:51):
of generations after the abolition of slavery in the United States,
Literacy rates in black communities were still recovering from laws
had prohibited enslaved people and sometimes free black people from
learning to read and write. Yeah, literacy rates had improved
a lot within black communities, but there were still big

(24:12):
disparities between black communities and white communities, and then within
the black community there were disparities by age groups, with
much younger people generally more often able to read, and
older people. Maybe not. After we take a quick sponsor break,
we are going to talk about one of the more
famous American etiquette books. When I started thinking about this episode,

(24:42):
which I usually say at the beginning, we usually pick
six things, or I usually pick six things that for
whatever reason can't stand on their own. This one really
probably could the thing that we're going to talk about next,
but I'm including it for reasons that I'm about to say.
My original intent was that we would talk about some
etiquette books that were fairly evenly distributed from the sixteenth century,

(25:05):
when the focus of these books started to shift from
like courtly protocols to more general rules of good behavior,
up to sometime in the early twentieth century, when we
get to the end of things being in the public
domain so we can quote from them however much we want.
I wound up, though, with more stuff from the early
twentieth century than I really had originally intended to, and

(25:29):
one reason was that it seemed like it would just
be weird to not touch on any of the more
famous names in etiquette, like Emily Post. Emily Post was
a real person born Emily Price in Baltimore, Maryland, in
October of eighteen seventy two. She was from a very
well off family. She went to private school. She had

(25:50):
a formal society debut, and she started writing after she
and her husband divorced. Once her children were in school.
In addition to her works on etiquette, she wrote about
things like architecture and interior design. Her father was a
well known architect. She also wrote novels and stories, many
of which were published serially in magazines. Her nineteen twenty

(26:12):
two book Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and
at Home is what she became most famous for. There
have been lots and lots of subsequent editions of this book,
revised and updated according to the changing social norms, including
a centennial edition that came out in twenty twenty two.

(26:33):
She eventually founded the Emily Post Institute, which is still
a family business that is still run by her descendants
and their spouses, to kind of carry on her work
in the field of etiquette. That original nineteen twenty two
work is in the public domain now, and a lot
of the basic standards of etiquette it contains are again
right in line with the earlier works we've been talking about.

(26:55):
There are chapters on greetings, public gatherings, conversation, cards and visits, dinners, dances, weddings,
and manners at home and abroad. There are also examples
of letters and which styles of envelope are in good
and bad taste. The diagrams of envelope shapes that are
in poor taste kind of cracked me up. This book

(27:19):
became an enormous bestseller. It went through almost ninety printings
and ten revisions before she died in nineteen sixty. It's
also seemingly exhaustive, clocking in at thirty eight chapters and
six hundred and twenty seven pages, including an index that
is about three times long or even longer than all

(27:40):
the other books that we've talked about so far, with
the exception of the Earl of Chesterfield's letters, which like
that was years and years of personal correspondence that he
had never intended to have published as a book. As
a side note, Lord Chesterfield is again name dropped several
times in this book. This book is also very specific,

(28:00):
like here's what to say when introduced quote best Society
has only one phrase and acknowledgment of an introduction, how
do you do it? Literally accepts no other. When mister
Bachelor says missus Worldley, may I present mister Struthers, Missus
Worldley says, how do you do? Struthers bows and says
nothing to sweetly echo mister Struthers with a rising inflection

(28:24):
on theirs is not good form. Saccerin chirpings should be
classed with crooked little fingers, high handshaking, and other affectations.
All affectations are bad form. Persons of position do not
say charmed or please to meet you, et cetera. But
often the first remark is the beginning of a conversation.

(28:46):
For instance, young Struthers is presented to Missus Worldley. She
smiles and perhaps says, I hear that you are going
to be in New York all winter. Struthers answers, yes,
I am at the Columbia Law School, et cetera. Or
since he is much younger than she, he might answer yes,
Missus Worldly, especially if his answer would otherwise be a

(29:07):
kurt yes or no. Otherwise he does not continue repeating
her name. The idea of best society which Polly said
at the very beginning of that quote that was at
the heart of this whole book quote, society is an
ambiguous term. It may mean much or nothing. Every human being,
unless dwelling alone in a cave, is a member of

(29:29):
society of one sort or another. And therefore it is
well to define what it is to be understood by
the term best society and why its authority is recognized.
Best society abroad is always the oldest aristocracy, composed not
so much of persons of title, which may be new,
as of those families and communities which have, for the

(29:52):
longest period of time known the highest cultivation. Our own
best society is represented by social groups which have had,
since this is America widest rather than the longest, association
with old world cultivation. Cultivation is always the basic attribute
of best society, much as we hear in this country

(30:14):
of an aristocracy of wealth. In addition to spelling out
that in her mind, the best society in the US
is the people who have the widest association with old
world cultivation. This book is underpinned by the idea that
its readers have money. On the one hand, it frames
good manners is something that everyone can aspire to. On

(30:35):
the other, there are so many references to maids and
servants and secretaries and housekeepers and butlers. One theory on
why this book became so popular is that it gave
everyone else a glimpse into the inner workings and manners
of high society, full of fictionalized depictions of good breeding
with names like missus kindheart and mister worldly. Yeah. I

(30:57):
kind of cracked up at how often it was like,
and you can just send your secretary to do this.
It's like, my, what so easy? Uh? Personally, I found
Emily Posts nineteen twenty two Etiquette to be way more
overwhelming than any of the earlier books we have talked about.
The basic idea of etiquette is pretty similar across all

(31:20):
the books, like it's a way to try to make
society better, try to make other people comfortable, and don't
act like a jerk. It was not until I got
to Emily Post's work that I started to feel worried
about messing up all kinds of very particular little rules.
Like that whole passage that Holly read about greeting people
really stressed me out. This book also felt judgier to

(31:41):
me than a lot of the other works we have
talked about today. As one example, there is a section
on pronunciation, inherently a stressful subject to me, and it
starts quote, a gentleman of Irish blood may have a
brogue as rich as plumcake, or another's accent be soft
Southern or flat newingand or rolling Western, And to each

(32:02):
of these the utterance of the others may sound too flat,
too soft, too harsh, to refined or drawled or clipped, short,
but not uncultivated. The sounds almost like it's acknowledging that
all these different accents can have a place in her
best society. But then the next paragraph names the quote

(32:22):
cultivated Englishmen as nearest to perfection in English, before describing
the accents of New York, Boston, the South, and Pennsylvania
in a way that came off to me as very insulting.
I can't wait to talk about Emily Post on Friday.
Oh our last Etiquette book for today is Emily Post's

(32:44):
biggest competitor in the nineteen twenties, Lillian Eichler later Lillian
Eichler Watson. We've been going chronologically up to now, but
the copyright on her two volume Etiquette is from nineteen
twenty one, so that's a year before Emily Posts book.
I really wanted to do a full episode on Lillian
Eichler a while back, but I just could not find

(33:06):
enough information to make it work, which is one of
the reasons why sometimes I do six impossible episodes. Lillian
Eichler was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Hungary and
she liked to write. At the age of eighteen, she
got a job at an advertising agency on the strength
of that writing. She really did not have much formal
education or any experience beyond that. She basically showed them

(33:29):
a sample and then they hired her. The advertising agency
was Ruth, Ralph and Ryan and one of its clients
was Doubleday Publishing. Lillian was tasked with writing an ad
to help double Day sell through a backlog of an
etiquette manual by Emily Holt. She wrote an ad about
spilling coffee on a tablecloth and not knowing what to do,

(33:50):
sort of like, has this ever happened to you? You
could protect yourself from this kind of mortification with this
book on etiquette. And this ad worked really, really well,
and people bought the book, but a lot of them
returned it because it was a reprint of an older
book and at this point its advice was really out
of date. So then Eichler wrote a new two volume

(34:11):
book of etiquette. Volume one of this book included Etiquette
for engagements, weddings, funerals and Christenings, Letters, correspondents and calling cards,
and Etiquette for parents and Children. And then volume two
included servants, dinners, luncheons, teas, dancing, games, and etiquette for
things like business, theater, hotels, and travel and also like

(34:36):
pretty much everyone in this episode, it references the work
of Lord Chesterfield. Eichler wrote the advertising campaign for these
books as well. The most famous ad in this campaign
ran under the headline again she Orders a Chicken Salad Please,
which told a story of a young woman who wanted
to impress a man on a date, but didn't know

(34:56):
how to pronounce the French words on the restaurant menu
or how to con verse with them, so she just
kept ordering chicken salad and all that folded in on
itself to make her feel graceless and awkward. Another full
page ad that Eichler wrote for this book had the
headline are you haunted by the ghosts of your social mistakes?
Both ads noted that etiquette is the armor to protect

(35:18):
yourself from such embarrassments. I'd find are you Haunted by
the ghosts of your social mistakes? Just profoundly effective, Because yes, Lillian,
I am. I am haunted by them all the time. Uh.
As we said earlier, Lillian Eichler was Emily Post's biggest
competitor in the nineteen twenties. Eichler's Book of Etiquette sold

(35:39):
two million copies, and it was revised and reprinted. Her
tone was generally a lot more casual and conversational than
than Emily Posts. Eichler started it off quote, success without
culture is like old fashioned strawberry shortcake without the whipped cream.
It has no flavor. There are certain little courteous of deservances,

(36:00):
certain social formalities that bespeak the true lady, the true gentleman.
Some of us call it good form some of us
call it culture, some of us call it etiquette. But
we all admit that it makes the world a better
place to live in. A bit later in the introduction,
she wrote, quote, too rigid an observance of the laws
of good society makes them nothing short of an absurdity.

(36:22):
The purpose of correct manners is not to enable us
to strut about in society and command the admiring glances
of the people around us, as the peacock in its
vanity parades before onlookers in a proud dignity that is
quite obviously assumed. The true service of etiquette is so
to strengthen and simplify this social life that we are

(36:43):
able to do what is absolutely correct and write without
even stopping to think about it. I like any book
from one hundred years ago and all the other books
we've been talking about today, parts of this are pretty
backward by today's standards. Like she acknowledges that a lot
more women were making their way into the world of business,
and that was something that she praised. But here is

(37:05):
some of what she had to say about women in
the workplace quote, it took many centuries of hammering before
the portals of business and industry and art were thrown
wide open to women. Now that it has happened, it
is her duty and pride to conduct herself in such
a way that there can be no regrets and vain
longings for the return of the woman of yesterday. By

(37:27):
her manner and her dress, a woman determines her place,
and the women who are careless of their appearance and
careless of their standard are the ones who are hindering
the progress of women toward the goal of perfect womanhood.
When she enters business, she must realize that she is
on an equal footing with men, and she should not
demand or expect privileges simply because she is a woman.

(37:50):
What she does and says and whares during the hours
of her social life is entirely distinct from her business life,
though of course she is always courteous, however hard it
may be sometimes to control herself under the grinding of
the routine work at the office. Her advice on tipping
could have been written today, although her assertion is that

(38:11):
it was a European custom and not an American one,
and that's missing some big nuance. While tipping was introduced
to the US from Europe, it became widespread in the
United States after the Civil War when employers hired free
black people for low wages and then encouraged patrons to
tip them for good service. In her advice, Eichler wrote, quote,

(38:32):
while the custom is observed as widely in this country
as it is today, it is both inconsiderate and bad
form to ignore it. The wages of waiters and waitresses, porters,
and hotel servants are outrageously small for the reason that
they receive tips for each service they performed for individual
guests and travelers. If the tipping custom were abolished, the

(38:53):
wages of these people would be correspondingly increased, but as
things are now, it is inconsiderate to deprive them of
the tips that both they and their employers expect that
they will receive. On the other hand, though she describes
lavish tipping as vulgar, I don't agree with her there.
I don't either. Mind your own business, Lilian, Yeah. Lillian

(39:18):
Eichler Watson continued to write about etiquette and other topics
almost up until her death on June twenty fifth, nineteen
seventy nine. She hit married Tobias F. Watson in nineteen
twenty eight. They'd had two children together, but she had
not turned her work into something of an etiquette empire
that kept her name going and her recognition going after

(39:39):
her death the way Emily post did. I have lots
of feelings about him etiquette, and I think Holly has
responded to a number of things in this episode too,
so we'll be talking about all that more on Friday.
Do you have listener mail for us? I also have
some listener mail for us. This is from Lisa. This
is another another message following our episode on Rebecca Lee

(40:03):
Crumpler and Lisa wrote, Hi, Tracy and Holly from a
very wet and windy Dublin, Ireland. I was thrilled to
hear your recent episode on doctress Rebecca Lee Crumpler, as
I used to work as an archivist at the Drexel
University Med School Archives in Philadelphia, and immediately knew exactly
what you're going to say about the medal with the
mystery date, since that was my first introduction to her

(40:26):
when a researcher asked for a copy of the photo
of the medal many years ago. I even more thoroughly
enjoyed the behind the scenes mini episode and was practically
shouting my answers to your questions about the Black Women
Physicians project begun by Margaret Jaredo back in the nineteen eighties.
I managed to keep the dialogue internal, though, as I
didn't think the good people of Sheffield, where I was

(40:48):
for the weekend, would appreciate a mud covered American. I
had just finished an especially mucky parkrun, enthusing loudly about
the collection on their buses. So finally I can share
my thoughts here. First, a bit of background on the
archives as a whole. They held the papers of the
former Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hannaman University. It's

(41:09):
a bit ironic that the two came together as Drexel
University College of Medicine, as the former was one of
the first in the United States to admit women, and
Hannaman was one of the very last to do so,
although Women's med started admitting men and became simply the
Medical College of Pennsylvania in nineteen seventy. Without getting too
far off topic, the Hanneman side of the collection is

(41:31):
also a fascinating look at the history of homeopathy, although
that focus had been largely dropped by the school by
the nineteen twenties, partially because of the earlier Flexner report
which you mentioned, but because of its earlier grounding. In
that approach, there is a Paracelsus collection of rare books
more people should know about, but that's a story for
another time. Back to the Black Women's Physician Project. Margaret

(41:55):
Jaredo began the work relatively early in her career. She
later went on to work at to University as an
archivist and still consults with the Mother Bethel Ame Church Archives.
Jaredo created what archivists call an artificial collection, pulling together
items from across the Drexel med Archives and I've spent
a goodly amount of time with those boxes. It's often

(42:15):
the first place to look when a researcher needs anything
relating to Black women in medicine, whether they attended Women's
Med or any of its descendant institutions or not. It's
essentially an analog starting to point to other parts of
the collection, or indeed to others elsewhere. It was an
initiative very much ahead of its time and is hugely valuable.
Of course, the rest of the collection is also amazing.

(42:38):
Other early black women doctors who did graduate from Women's
Med include Rebecca Cole and Eliza Grier. Lisa points to
some blog posts and says that they're a little too
old now to count as self promotion. Eliza Greer had
a heartbreakingly difficult journey to becoming a doctor and a
tragically early death, all to commonist story for many early

(42:59):
women doc There's a letter in her file from Susan B. Anthony,
essentially asking for someone else to offer her some assistance.
There's also a great online collection on the question of
whether doctor or doctress was the most appropriate title. There
were certainly opinions among these early physicians supporting both views.
But in short, it's an amazing collection to visit, and

(43:19):
still the friendliest place I've ever worked. Everyone goes above
and beyond to support researchers of all sorts and to
make sure that these women's stories are told. If you
ever do visit, you can see Harriet the preserved nervous
system of probably Harriet Cole, although with all the caveats
we would now have today about informed consent or its
historical absence. Apologies for this being so long, but it's

(43:42):
a place and team I remember with such fondness, and
the care for the collections and drive for accessibility is
second to none. I am, of course also attaching a
picture of our two cats, Ruby the Devin Rex who
has made a previous listener mail appearance on a letter
from my husband about of all things turnips, and Ginger
the Tory. Both are tearing around the house right now.
They are the best colleagues anyone could have for working

(44:04):
at home. As always a great listen Lisa, ps. I
must always make more people aware of Doctor Euthanasia Med
WMCP class of eighteen sixty nine, later the personal physician
of Sarah Winchester of so called Mystery House fame, and
her graduate thesis. It is a triumph of nominative determinism.

(44:24):
Please enjoy, Lisa. So thank you so much, Lisa for
all of this. I received this, I think mere minutes
before we read or before we went into the studio
to record last Tuesday. I wanted to note a couple
of things besides just saying thank you so much for this.
One is that there was also there's also a lot

(44:47):
in the Boston University School of Medicine history that is
about homeopathy. I did not get into any of that
in that episode at all because it felt sort of
tangential to what we were talking about. But there are
a lot of medical schools in the US that, like
late nineteenth early twentieth century, we're very focused on homeopathy.

(45:09):
And I also loved hearing sort of another perspective on
this collection, sort of the perspective of someone who has
worked there versus the perspective of some students accessing the collection.
And of course to incredibly cute cats sitting on some stairs,
magical deaf and Rex Baby looking a little startled cutie pies.

(45:32):
So thank you so much for this, Lisa. If you
would like to send us a note about this, or
any other podcast. We're at history Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com,
and we're all over social media at Misson History. I
say all over. It's kind of all. It's like there's
the ex that used to be Twitter. There's Facebook, there

(45:53):
is Instagram. We put up our new show announcements there.
And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

(46:13):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff You Missed in History Class News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Tracy V. Wilson

Holly Frey

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

1. The Podium

2. In The Village

3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Six Impossible Episodes: Etiquette Manuals