COMPANY MANNERS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 15, 1880

COMPANY MANNERS.

ALMOST all of us know what it is to have best things. In dress, furniture, rooms, and personal belongings generally, there are almost always an upper and an under crust, and a division into two classes—one for show, and the other for use. But it is not merely our persons and our rooms that we put into company dress for high days and holidays; we put our minds, our tempers, and our manners as well. Only the most marvelously amiable people have no company tempers at all, but are as sweet and placid on work-days as on Sundays; and only the very highest state of artificial good breeding combined with this natural perfection of temper, makes us uniformly courteous to every one, irrespective of station or of degree of intimacy.

Nothing is more rare than this unvarying good breeding; for just as fine ladies wear their court plumes only on court days, and as queens lay aside their crowns and go about in caps and bonnets like ordinary folk, so the gala dress of minds and manners, which is adopted for society, is dropped for the slipshod undress of home; and the people who have just now been the very pink of politeness in a neighbor's drawing-room, became nothing better than boors at the family fireside, where there is no one to dazzle or to win.

The perfection of manner alone, even if it go no deeper than the outside, is a charm beyond that of mere beauty. The one is the result of education—that is, intellectual and spiritual; the other is only the raw material—a natural gift, not won but bestowed, and, though attracting personal love, reflecting no honor. What we mean by a thorough gentleman or a high-bred lady is one who has no veneer of company manners, but whose whole nature is so penetrated with the self-respect of courtesy that nothing coarser can be shown under any provocation. This is an immense power in those who possess it. Nothing weakens a righteous cause so much as intemperate language in supporting it; and nothing tells more against a good principle than bad manners in those who uphold it. When men swear and fume, and use hard names, and make themselves generally disagreeable and insulting, it does not signify to the aggrieved in what cause or in whose service they are so comporting themselves. Human nature is but a weak vessel for holding justice at the best, and we may be sure that the natural inclination of most people would be against the cause advocated by such unpleasant adherents.

Speaking broadly, and from the widest stand-point of national characteristics, we would say that the Italians, of all European nations, have most of this solid courtesy throughout; not a stately, but a good-tempered courtesy—by no means chivalrous in the way of the stronger protecting the weaker, and for self-respect keeping watch and ward over the fiercer enemies within the soul, but rather deferential, as assuming that every one is better than themselves. When an Italian does give way to passion he is dangerous; but when in a good fair-sailing humor nothing can well exceed the almost feminine sweetness of his courteous demeanor. The French have a coarser core, that comes through the veneer on occasions when you touch their self-love or their jealousy; and the core of French discourtesy is very coarse indeed when really got at. We English have not a very fine veneer at any time, and the rougher grain below even that not overpolished surface rubs up without much trouble. But then we pride ourselves on this rough grain of ours, and think it a mark of honesty to let it ruffle up at the lightest touch. Indeed, we despise any thing else, and have hard names for a courtesy that is even what the Americans call "clear grit" throughout; while as for that which is only veneer, stout, or slender, there is no word of contempt too harsh for the expression of our opinion thereanent.

We are so far right, in that company manners put on for show and not integral to the character, nor worn in daily life, are an abomination to souls understanding the beauty of truth. But we need not be so frightfully severe against all kinds of surface smoothness as we are, and condemn the polish of material, and the seeming of veneer as sins identical with each other. In this confusion of cases we are wholly wrong and unjustifiable; the one being a virtue attained only as an ultimate grace, and by immense labor—the fruitage of a long and well-cultivated garden; the other being just so much poonah-painting, or potichomania, or wax-fruit show—got at with no trouble at all—pretense and pretentiousness, and nothing more.

What can be more detestable than the things we see and hear at times from gentlefolks, whose gentlehood is in name, and appearance, and style of living, and the banker's book, rather than in anything more substantial? Take the woman who rates her children, and flouts her husband when they are alone, but who is all smiles and suavity to the people next door, whom she despises—the girls, who are snappish and peevish to each other, but who put on their sweetest graces for the benefit of young Corydon and his sisters, diligently ironing down those rugged seams of theirs while turning the smooth side outermost, that young Corydon may think the stuff all of a piece throughout, with no jagged joinings anywhere—papa, who comes home "as cross as the cats," as the Irish say, letting the home life go shabby and slipshod for want of a little of the courtesy he bestows so lavishly on his guests, not a man of whom he likes, nor a woman of whom he fancies—"the boys," who make their sisters feel the full weight of masculine insolence and neglect, while to their sisters' friends they are everything that is chivalrous and devoted, as "boys" should be—can anything be less of the substance of gentlehood than these? And yet how often we meet with them in the world! Each of these represents a distinct section of the coarse core veneered—just so much plausible hypocrisy covering up an inner sin, as a silken coat hides ragged linen—just so much domestic misery that might be avoided if folks cared more for reality than for show, and thought the solid pudding of happiness better worth having than the frothed cream of praise. The fiddle is hung up behind the house door in too many homes, and suavity is laid aside with the dress suit. And yet it would seem by the merest common-sense calculation that as home is the place where we live, and where nine-tenths of our days are passed, home happiness and family peace are far in advance of any outside pleasures or barren social reputation, and should be the possessions we ought most to cultivate. But common-sense calculations have very little to do with the arrangement of our affairs. We lay aside our company manners with our company coats, and make ourselves what we call "comfortable" at home; that is, we give way to any natural peevishness of temper we may have, and suffer ourselves to go slipshod and unpleasant, both in mind and body, for the benefit of those who are nearest and dearest to us.

The cause of this lies in the kind of home we of the middle classes make for ourselves; in the excessive exclusiveness and isolation which we think the only safe or decent mode of life; in the belief each man has that the four walls of his titular castle are built of better brick than any other man's four walls, and inclose pearls of price that would be spoilt if allowed to be set beside other pearls of as great price. No check of public opinion reaches the home circle of the middle classes, save on those rare holiday occasions which call forth company manners. Even a "lodger," though becoming by time part of the family, necessitates a little self-control, wanting in the ordinary conditions of a home life; for no one likes to show the worst of himself, or herself, to a person not connected with him, or her, by blood or marriage. To people who can take up their hats and umbrellas, and walk out of the house at their own sweet wills we are considerate and courteous. We lavish on strangers, and we starve our own.

There is no greater education into vulgarity than home carelessness. A man or woman brought up under such a system is ruined for all the reality of refinement in after years. The surliness too often allowed at home, where children are permitted to be snappish to each other, disobligeing and discourteous, ruins the manners as much as it hurts the mind. Hence we come to company manners, to a sickly sweetness put on simply for the occasion, to a formality of speech, and an oppressiveness of attentions, to an exaggerated politeness that is so terribly afraid of transgressing into liberties as to be absolute bondage, and to all the silly little affectations belonging to the condition.

We never know any one whom we have not lived with, and even then not always. To be admitted into the Temple does not include entrance into the adytum; and we may remain for weeks in a house where master and mistress and maids are all reticent alike, and may know nothing of the reality underlying the surface. People of whom I once knew something, and who were notoriously ill-matched, but marvelously polite, could keep their house full of company, and yet allow none of their guests to find out that the husband and wife were not on speaking terms. All the communication between them, that was absolutely necessary, was carried on by writing. Personally, these two, dispensing smiles and civilities to all around, held no direct intercourse. Yet they managed so well that no one saw through the screen.

With company manners and company dress, there is also a company voice. Who does not know that false voice of society? Mincing or thrown boldly forward, flung into the chest or pitched up into the head, it is all the same—the company voice, accent, choice of words, and register—all artificial alike. And there are company gestures. People sit, and stand, and walk, and use their hands according to the different degrees of familiarity in which they stand toward their society. There is a vast deal of company make-believe among us; and if we would only give half the time we now bestow on "looking pretty" and "behaving pretty" in society, to being sweet tempered, and amiable, and careful of pleasing, at home, it would be all the better for ourselves and our families, and a gain in the way of true civilization.—All the Year Round.