Manners and Society

The Down-Hill Side of Being a Society Girl (Collier’s Magazine, 1933)

The attached Collier’s article was written by two post-debs of the Boston/Manhattan variety who were both products of what they called the approval mill of America’s upper-crust. Having been run through the right schools and the right summer camps, they attended the right parties and made charming with all the right people; looking back in their 20s, they were able to see how this long-treasured practice prepared them poorly for life – tending to perpetuate the spiraling vortex of women who were educated and polite, yet unable to think.

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‘The Low State of High Society” (Coronet Magazine, 1958)

Another article by a highbred, woebegone, blue-blood who, plagued by a boatload of distinguished primogenitors and over-burdened by a lavish trust fund – to say nothing of a bad case of affluenza, could take no more of it; she broke-down and scribbled the attached expose in hopes that the whole highfalutin’ plutocracy would come crashing down on top of all those icky, pompous know-it-alls.

Life for America’s so-called social aristocrats is colorless and uninspired. Our education, now that I look back at it, seems to have produced a frightening number of properly mannered, emotionally passive and intellectually sterile young snobs… This training is not easily overcome.


Gosh. We thought only Howard Zinn wrote like that.

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Social Jottings from Newport (Vanity Fair, 1922)

Here is a mock society page that sought to belittle all the goings on among the sweet young things at Newportstyle=border:none during the season of 1922. The article was illustrated by Clara Tice (Art Director of The Masses).

A large and fashionably dressed group of Newport’s ‘creme de la creme’ were observed on burning sands. Mixed bathing was indulged in…Many succulent bits of gossip and spicey rumor have been overheard in the ladies annex during the noon dressing hour and right merry time was had by all.

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Social Jottings from Newport (Vanity Fair, 1922)

Here is a mock society page that sought to belittle all the goings on among the sweet young things at Newportstyle=border:none during the season of 1922. The article was illustrated by Clara Tice (Art Director of The Masses).

A large and fashionably dressed group of Newport’s ‘creme de la creme’ were observed on burning sands. Mixed bathing was indulged in…Many succulent bits of gossip and spicey rumor have been overheard in the ladies annex during the noon dressing hour and right merry time was had by all.

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The Fine Art of Introduction (Vanity Fair, 1917)

Stephen Leacock (1869 – 1944) had some amusing opinions concerning social introductions according to the recognized formulas.

With the approach of the winter season, conversation as an art is again in order. It is a thing that we all need to consider. Some of us are asked out to dinner merely because we talk. Others, chiefly because we do not. It is a matter in which we can help one another. Let us discuss it…

Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms.

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Charming White Russians in Exhile (Vogue Magazine, 1922)

Princess Luciene Murat (1876 – 1951?), a distinguished member of the French nobility and a devotee to Paul Poiret, wrote this VOGUE article shortly after her return from Turkey in 1922. It is the sort of piece that could only be written by an over-indulged member of the post-war European high-society, which makes it all the more enjoyable to read. Her reminiscences of her visit to the city of Pera are especially interesting for the observations made regarding the White Russians of her acquaintance who reluctantly resided there in some discomfort.

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The Bush Wedding, Kennebunkport (Vogue Magazine, 1921)

These days the Bush family is not much in vogue, but that was not always the case.


Attached is a small notice from a 1921 issue of VOGUE MAGAZINE announcing the marriage of George Herbert Walker’s daughter, Dorthy, to a Mr. Prescott Sheldon Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine. From this union would spring two U.S. Presidents, one Florida governor, and one Chief Executive of the Municipal Opera Association.

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Emily Post on Society Language (Photoplay Magazine, 1939)

At the tail-end of a very long interview concerning the problems with Hollywood movies, Emily Post (1872 – 1960), America’s high-priestess of good manners, was asked just one more question – this one involved the English language and here is Emily Post’s 1939 list of what to say and what not to say.


• Don’t say ‘brainy’ – say, ‘clever’.
• Don’t say ‘wealthy’, say ‘rich’.
• Don’t say ‘Charmed or pleased to meet you’, say ‘how do you do’.
• etc, etc, etc.
Emily Post had so many opinions…

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