What do you think?
When I was a youngster going off to visit a friend my mother would often say, “Remember your Ps and Qs.” In my youth, that phrase, origin unknown, meant “please and thank you, mind your manners.”
Manners—courtesies that show politeness, civility, respect, thoughtfulness in attitude, and behavior—recognized throughout recorded history an awareness of other people’s feelings. Good manners were like the golden rule, “do unto others,” on one hand and power on the other. In the beginning, manners set a template for appropriate behavior, regulating society by building social skills that would enhance personal relationships.
George Washington, before becoming the father of our country, at age 16 drafted 110 rules of “Civility and Decent Behavior,” as a code to live by. He borrowed ideas embraced in writings of the French Jesuits in 1595 and they, in turn, borrowed from the earliest 13th-century books on etiquette.
Written in 1508, The Book of Courtesies set forth etiquette and morals for the aristocracy. Men were expected to have a cool mind, elegant rhetoric with knowledge of the classics and art, and appropriate dress. Manners and principled behavior were designed to make people marvel you, thus securing your authority.
In 1690, Shakespeare described expected behavior in “The Tragedy of Hamlet” in Polonius’ lecture to his son Laertes. He asserts, “Neither a borrower or a lender be” and “This above all, to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou cannot be false to any man.” He also introduces the importance of dress, “…for apparel oft proclaims the man of best ranks and station.”
The notion that “clothes maketh the man” is cited in literature as early as Homer and emphasized by the Catholic Priest Erasmus in proverbs from the Greeks. For centuries, how you dress set the tone for behavior and unified ethical theory with a richness of character.
More than 100 ago, Mark Twain quipped, “Clothes make a man. Naked people have little to no influence on society.” Dressing poorly communicated contempt for others and lack of consideration for the occasion. Perhaps you can’t tell a book by its cover, but how you look and your bearing are the key elements of first impressions made in a 30-second subconscious snapshot by others. As humorist Will Rogers asserted, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Encouraged by a Vanity Fair editor, Baltimore native Emily Post wrote the book Etiquette in 1922 to aid a nation confused in the social aftermath of World War I. A population of new war brides, immigrants, and the nouveau rich didn’t seem to know how to RSVP, write thank you notes, or, simply, how to behave in polite society. The Gilded Age of the Astors was over. Etiquette established a blueprint to bring order to societal stress. By 1950, Emily Post—born in Baltimore and raised among society in New York City—was ranked the second most important woman after Eleanor Roosevelt.
She died in 1960, but her work to establish a good manners guide is carried on by the Emily Post Institute, managed by her grand and great grand relatives. In 2003, great-grandson Peter Post wrote The New York Times bestseller Essential Manners for Men.
According to Peggy Post, great-granddaughter-in-law and director of the institute, the freedom resulting from the loosening of social structures (e.g. casual blue jean dress codes and pants riding the hips) have opened a New Age of Anxiety. People are asking, “What is proper behavior?” In this changing social world and a time of social and economic uncertainty, we are once again asking for rules…or are we?
Etiquette is now in its 17th edition. It is updated to address today’s social norms such as casual Fridays, email, text messages, and even one-night stands. Love, sex, and money have baffled people forever. Etiquette provides the routes to avoid faux pas and blunders that lead to public shame.
After former Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe-banging temper tantrum at the United Nations in 1960, Life magazine asked, “What would Emily Post say?” Life commented on his poor behavior and raised the issue for the first time, of the connection between manners and politics.
Life is short. For those who want to put their best foot forward, good manners may be the Golden Rule in disguise. In the divided, complex, and anxious social world that surrounds us, are the good manners of Ps and Qs and appropriate dress trivial pursuits or the pathway to a socially refined and connected nation?