Sunday Afternoon Post

It seems that Emily Post enjoyed herself a good wax seal just as much as I do. Although, she will frown upon a seal improperly affixed. She writes, "[i]f you use sealing wax, let us hope you are an adept at making an even and smoothly finished seal." Further, Emily recommends:

[c]hoose a plain-colored wax rather than one speckled with metal. With the sort of paper described for country houses, or for young people, or those living in studios or bungalows, gay sealing wax may be quite alluring, especially if it can be persuaded to pour smoothly like liquid, and not to look like a streaked and broken off slice of dough.

Recognizing that it may seem strange to both seal an envelope with glue as well as with wax, Emily acknowledges the development of envelope technologies and makes an argument steeped in economics to allow for an exception. She writes:

In days when envelopes were unknown, all letters had to be sealed, hence when envelopes were made, the idea obtained that it was improper to use both gum-arabic and wax. Strictly speaking this may be true, but since all envelopes have mucilage, it would be unreasonable to demand that those who like to use sealing wax have their envelopes made to order.

Who would have thought it? Emily Post: defender of personal expression, advocate of mail art.


This post is part of an ongoing series of posts highlighting the rules of etiquette as recorded in 1922 by Emily Post in her seminal text Etiquette.

Sunday Afternoon Post

As much as letter writing was more prevalent in Emily Post's day that it is today, it would be an overstatement to say that it was terribly popular in her time. In her book, Etiquette, Emily laments what she sees as the slow demise of the personal letter, which she estimated at the time to be only ten percent of the contents of an average mail bag in the United States. She sees the practice as, "shrinking" and fears its usurpation by telegrams, telephone messages and post-cards.

Given her feelings about preserving the art of letter writing, however, Emily still feels that certain people just shouldn't bother writing for waste of stationery. Who shouldn't be writing, one might ask? Emily would answer: young people and others that are equally as lazy. Emily writes:

[m]ental effort is one thing that the younger generation of the "smart world" seems to consider it unreasonable to ask ... they let their mental faculties relax, slump and atrophy.

To such as these, to whom effort is an insurmountable task, it might be just as well to say frankly: If you have a mind that is entirely bromidic, if you are lacking in humor, all power of observation, and facility for expression, you had best join the ever-growing class of people who frankly confess, "I can't write letters to save my life!" and confine your literary efforts to picture post-cards with the engaging captions "X is my room," or "Beautiful weather, wish you were here."

Although I can't endorse Emily's generalization about young people (I'm not too far out of my teens myself!), I can agree with her rationale. Emily explains that:

[i]t is not at all certain that your friends and family would not rather have frequent post-cards than occasional letters all too obviously displaying the meagerness of their halting orthography.

Emily is not telling we young folk to give up writing altogether, but is instead encouraging us to package our messages as best we can. And if our messages are short and sweet, they should be expressed as succinctly as possible rather than stretched out over several saccharine pages.


This post is part of an ongoing series of posts highlighting the rules of etiquette as recorded in 1922 by Emily Post in her seminal text Etiquette.

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I stumbled across this article from Autograph Magazine. It seems that Emily Post's distaste for post-cards runs much deeper than I originally thought. The article centers around a piece of fan mail that Emily received, to which she responded, "Why do you write on a postcard? No one ever answers a postcard!!!!"

Sunday Afternoon Post

As ironic as many modern day readers might find it, Emily Post absolutely detests pretentious behavior. From what I can tell thus far, Emily does not define pretension, but rather provides her reader with examples of it. The examples range a variety of behaviors, but they all seem to fall under the broad category of behaviors that feign culture. Emily believes that false presentations of culture have become so problematic that she states culture to be:

[a] word rarely used by those who truly possess it, but so constantly misused by those who understand nothing of its meaning, that it is becoming a synonym for vulgarity and imitation.

In her world, the cultural impostor is a person in the poorest of taste. Right below the cultural impostor on Emily's list of people she holds in low regard is the individual who misguidedly exhibits behaviors in attempt to display evidence of culture and good taste when, in reality, those behaviors, per se, are evidence of the contrary. For example, as the last paragraph in chapter on long letters, Emily writes:

[n]ever sprinkle French, Italian, or any other foreign words through a letter written in English. You do not give an impression of cultivation, but of ignorance of your own language. Use a foreign word if it has no English equivalent, not otherwise unless it has become Anglicized. If hesitating between two words, always select the one of Saxon origin rather than Latin. For the best selection of words to use, study the King James version of the Bible.

Aside from the ethnocentrism with which Emily writes, her point makes a great deal of sense. It seems only proper that when writing to someone that you would use the vocabulary that the reader of your letter would most likely be acquainted. And, in 1922 America, most people would be at least well versed in the language of the Bible.

This thread of analysis leads us to Emily's central point on what makes good etiquette. To Emily Post, good etiquette is the practice of making people comfortable. And, from what I can tell, pretension tends to make people uncomfortable, and that is why it's so bad.


This post is part of an occasional series highlighting the rules of etiquette as recorded in 1922, by Emily Post in her seminal text Etiquette.

Personal Icons

According to Emily Post, it is perfectly acceptable for an individual to adopt a symbol for use on their stationery. Granted, Emily places limits on the acceptability of this practice, limiting it to stationery used for one's country house, for young girls, etc. In any case, I think that it's a marvelous practice, one in which I myself indulged for a short time. At one point, I adopted the pineapple as my symbol, and though I still have many pieces of stationery with the symbol on it, I now use engraved correspondence cards for professional notes.

This lovely image arrived to me on a card from a pen pal. I don't think that my pal intends on making it his hallmark, but he wanted to send it to me in response to a letter I wrote him on the toile de jouy stationery I purchased while visiting Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. This icon is based on Martha Washington's writing desk at Mount Vernon. I just love it. The paper it is printed on is none too shabby, either.

Do you have a personal icon? What is it? If not, what would you like it to be?

Sunday Afternoon Post

It's been over a week since I received my reprint of the first edition of Etiquette by Emily Post, written in 1922, and I have yet to set it down! At over six hundred pages, there is a whole lot of Etiquette to take in. To better tackle this enormous tome, I have decided to read it by section, in the order of which those sections are of interest to me. First on the list: the chapters on the etiquette of writing letters.

Emily (I know it would pain her to know that I refer to her by first name, but I've come to feel so well acquainted with her that calling her Mrs. Price Post feels too stiff and impersonal) writes a great deal about what is proper, but I find most amusing her commentary about what is improper. Those are the gems that I should like to share with you, dear readers.

In today's Sunday Afternoon Post, the name I've chosen for this series of posts, I would like to highlight a section that brought to my mind the many politicians in recent memory who have found themselves above the fold in newspapers around the country due to their intimate indiscretions.

From the chapter her chapter on longer letters, Emily writes about "The Letter No Gentleman Writes":

One of the fundamental rules for the behavior of any man who has the faintest pretension to being a gentleman, is that never by word or gesture must he compromise a woman; he never, therefore writes a letter that can be construed, even by a lawyer, as damaging to any woman's good name.

His letters to an unmarried woman may express all the ardor and devotion that he cares to subscribe to, but there must be no hint of his having received especial favors from her.

This post is the second in an occasional series highlighting the rules of etiquette as they were in 1922, published by Emily Post in her seminal text Etiquette.

Etiquette

Today, I received Emily Post in my afternoon post. I'm so excited! This volume of Etiquette is a reprint of Post's 1922 first edition.


Widely regarded as the outspoken authority on social etiquette, Post writes about the proper etiquette from public gatherings to formal dinners, from weddings to funerals, and, you guessed it, letter writing.

As I read through the book, I will post excerpts from Etiquette, to both inform and entertain.

In her introduction to the chapter on Notes and Shorter Letters, Post writes about the importance of neat handwriting, stating:

Therefore, while it can not be said with literal accuracy that one may read the future of a person by study of his handwriting, it is true that if a young man wishes to choose a wife in whose daily life he is sure always to find the unfinished task, the untidy mind and the syncopated housekeeping, he may do it quite simply by selecting her from her letters.