Social Etiquette

There are few things more profoundly unintelligible, and altogether less susceptible of rational explanation, than certain of the rules laid down by the code of what is conventionally termed society. Who framed them, or for what purpose, no one knows, nor would the most persevering enquirer be likely to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the mystery; all that can be said of them is that they are absolute, and not to be departed from on any pretext whatsoever; the slightest dereliction at once placing the offender beyond the pale of recognised civilisation. These traditional regulations, with which every one who is anybody is supposed to be familiar, may be summarily described as defining the mode of life and language adopted by the members of polite society, in contradistinction to what in modern parlance is designated "bad form." From this unwritten but all-potent shibboleth we learn what may with propriety be done, and what not; we are told by it; and if, notwithstanding this salutary warning, we persist in our evil ways, and decline to accept the jurisdiction of our instructors, society washes its hands of us, we pass from its border-land into Bohemia, and are known no more. This being the case, it may not be amiss, in the interest of the uninitiated in such topics, to glean a few stray hints from the above-mentioned statues, the paramount importance of which presumptuous or irreverent outsiders may possibly at first sight be inclined to question.


We will not dwell upon such manifest violations of good breeding as come under the head of positive vulgarity, these being, as a matter of course, tabooed by every right-thinking individual, and justly regarded as an unmistakable criterion of social inferiority, but we may notice one or two minor points of etiquette which, although apparently unimportant, are perhaps on that very account the more strenuously insisted on, as crucial tests by which the right to social recognition is at once established or negatived.


The first and most intelligible of these is the rule that no young lady should be seen in public without a chaperone, who, provided that she is or has been married, is considered, whatever her age may be, as thoroughly suitable for the office. This accommodating privilege, it is true, occasionally entails rather ludicrous consequences; as in the case where damsels of mature years make their appearance in a ball-room under the wing of a mentor younger than themselves, but in her capacity of matron perfectly equal in the eyes of society to the responsibility of protecting them. The next item also concerns the young ladies, those, at least, who chance to inhabit Belgravia, with those liberty of locomotion it has a decided tendency to interfere; their morning walks, even when accompanied by the indispensable abigail, being capriciously restricted to that patrician quarter of the town. They may shop in Sloane Street, or even Knightsbridge, but Hyde Park Corner is a barrier beyond which, like the lote-tree in Mahomet's seventh heaven, for them there is no passing; one step further would lead them into Piccadilly, and then - what would Mrs. Grundy say! Another point, the non-observance of which is a constant stumbling-block to the unwary, and which, more than either of the preceding, distinguishes the legitimate member of society from the mere hanger-on, is the invariable habit, when speaking of titled individuals under ducal rank, of designating them simply as "lord" or "lady," as the case may be. This summary process, incomprehensible to the outsider, who talks, of an earl with bated breath, and positively revels in the word marchioness, has the undoubted advantage, not only of establishing an imaginary link of privileged familiarity between the speaker and the personage alluded to, but also of at once exposing to deserved reprobation any casual slip of the tongue on the part of an inexperienced interloper.