True etiquette, as we have said before, is not politeness, yet it
is founded upon the same basis. An English author says:

“Etiquette may be defined as the minor morality of life. No
observances, however minute, that tend to spare the feelings of
others, can be classed under the head of trivialities; and
politeness, which is but another name for general amiability,
will oil the creaking wheels of life more effectually than any of
those unguents supplied by mere wealth or station.”

To be truly polite, one must be at once good, just and generous,
has been well said by a modern French writer:

“True politeness is the outward visible sign of those inward
spiritual graces called modesty, unselfishness, generosity. The
manners of a gentleman are the index of his soul. His speech is
innocent, because his life is pure; his thoughts are direct,
because his actions are upright; his bearing is gentle, because
his blood, and his impulses, and his training are gentle also. A
true gentleman is entirely free from every kind of pretence. He
avoids homage, instead of exacting it. Mere ceremonies have no
attractions for him. He seeks not only to say civil things, but to
do them. His hospitality, though hearty and sincere, will be
strictly regulated by his means. His friends will he chosen for
their good qualities and good manners; his servants for their
thoughtfulness and honesty; his occupations for their usefulness,
or their gracefulness, or their elevating tendencies, whether
moral, or mental, or political. And so we come round again to our
first maxims, _i.e._, that ‘good manners are the kindly fruit of a
refined nature.’

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“Hence it will follow, that one of the probable signs of high
breeding in men generally will be their kindness and mercifulness;
these always indicating more or less firmness of make in the
mind.”

Undoubtedly the first law of good breeding is unselfishness, that
thorough forgetfulness of one’s own wants and comforts, and
thoughtfulness for the happiness and ease of others, which is the
Christian gentleman’s rule of life; which makes him yield the easy
chair to another older and weaker than himself, and sit upon a
narrow bench, or perhaps stand up; which selects for another the
choicest portions of the dishes upon the table, and uncomplainingly
dines off what is left; which hears with smiling interest the well-
worn anecdotes of the veteran story-teller; which gently lifts the
little child, who has fallen, and comforts the sobbing grief and
terror; which never forgets to endeavor to please others, and seems,
at least, pleased with all efforts made to entertain himself. Place
the code of politeness beside that of vulgarity and see if the one
does not contain all virtue, the other vice. Is not good temper
virtuous and polite, bad temper vicious and vulgar? Is not self
denial virtuous and polite, selfishness vicious and vulgar? Is not
truth virtuous and polite, scandal vicious and vulgar? Take every
principle in the conventional code of the perfectly well-bred, and
so define it, and not a virtue is rude.

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Etiquette, it is sometimes urged, is used to cloak what is hollow,
unmeaning and false, yet may it not also drape gracefully what is
true, sincere and important?

True politeness must come from the heart, from an unselfish desire
to please others and contribute to their happiness; when upon this
natural impulse is placed the polish of a complete and thorough
knowledge of the laws of etiquette, the manners must be perfect
and graceful.

Etiquette added to natural politeness is as a beautiful jewel upon
a tasteful dress. Ruskin thus defines a gentleman:

“A gentleman’s first character is that firmness of structure in
the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation,
_and of that structure in the mind which renders it capable of the
most delicate sympathies_–one may say simply fineness of nature.
This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and
mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable
without such delicacy. Elephantine strength may drive its way
through a forest, and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white
skin of Homer’s Atrides would have felt a bent rose leaf, yet
subdue its feelings in glow of battle, and behave itself like
iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal; but if
you think about him carefully, you will find that his non-
vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to
elephantine nature; not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy
foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his
way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind,
and capability of pique on points of honor….

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To quote again from Lord Chesterfield, who says:

“Good sense and good nature suggest civility in general; but in
good breeding there are a thousand little delicacies which are
established only by custom.”

It is precisely these “little delicacies” which constitute the
difference between politeness and etiquette. Politeness is that
inborn regard for others which may dwell in the heart of the most
ignorant boor, but etiquette is a code of outward laws which must
be learned by the resident in good society, either from
observation or the instruction of others.

It is a poor argument used against etiquette that it is not
truthful, and that uncouth manners are more frank and sincere than
polished and refined ones. Is truth then a hedgehog, always 3
bristling and offensive. Cannot truth be spoken in courteous
accents from a kind, gentle impulse, as well as blurted out rudely
and giving pain and mortification? It is true that roughness and
sincerity often abide together, but would it destroy the honesty
to polish away the roughness?

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But such cases are really no argument against etiquette itself,
without deference to which it would be impossible to live in
anything like freedom from annoyance from persons naturally
impertinent, or in the full enjoyment of that social liberty which
every one has a right to expect.

Good breeding is, as Lord Chesterfield well says, “the result of
much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for
the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence
from them.” Lord Bacon, in his admirable essay on Ceremonies,
says:

“Not to use ceremonies at all, is to teach others not to use them
again, and so diminisheth respect to himself; especially they be
not to be omitted to strangers and formal natures; but the
dwelling upon them, and exalting them above the moon is not only
tedious, but doth diminish the faith and credit of him that
speaks.”

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The French memoirs of this period (the seventeenth century) abound
with references to just such questions of court etiquette; who
might use an arm-chair at court; who was to be invited to the
royal dinner; who might be kissed by the queen; what degree of
nobility entitled a man to be driven to the Louvre in a coach;
whether all dukes were equal, or whether, as some thought, the
Duke de Bouillon, having once possessed the sovereignty of Sedan,
was superior to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, who had never
possessed any sovereignty at all; who should give the king his
napkin at dinner, and who might have the honor of assisting at the
toilet of the queen. The question whether the Duke de Beaufort
ought or ought not to enter the council chamber before the Duke de
Nemours, and whether, being there, he ought or ought not to sit
above him, caused a violent quarrel between the two dukes in 1652,
a quarrel which, of course, ended in a duel, and the death of the
Duke de Nemours. The equally grave question, whether a duke should
sign before a marshal was violently disputed between the Duke de
Rohan and one of the marshals of Henry the Fourth, and the king
was obliged to interfere in the matter.

These, of course, are but so many instances of the principle of
etiquette carried to an extravagant length, and simply prove the
danger there is in allowing things of less importance to supersede
or take the precedence of those of greater weight. They serve to
explain, and in some measure to excuse the denunciatory
expressions which many thoroughly well-bred people use against
etiquette, such expressions being, as before suggested, merely
protests uttered in anticipation of a repetition of the absurdity
which over-attention to ceremonies is liable to introduce.

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Mr. Buckle tells us that as late as the reign of Louis the
Fourteenth, the right to sit in the presence of the French king
“was considered to be a matter of such gravity that in comparison
with it a mere struggle for liberty faded into insignificance.”
There was a perpetual striving which should be accounted greatest.
According to the old code of etiquette, a duke’s wife might sit in
the French queen’s presence, but no one under that rank could do
so. A combination of marquises, counts, and other nobles was
formed and wrung from the hand of Louis the Fourteenth, this
concession that the ladies of the house of Bouillon might sit in
the presence of the queen. But this was fuel to the fire of the
combined noblemen’s anger; two hostile parties were formed, and
the question of etiquette was nearly being decided by the sword.
It required all the tact and statesmanship of Mazarin to prevent
this, and in the end the right was conceded to three of the most
distinguished ladies of the lower aristocracy, to sit down in the
presence of the queen. Upon this, the superior nobility summoned
their adherents to Paris, and really a severe struggle followed,
which ended in the last mentioned concession being revoked; and so
great was the importance attached to the revocation that nothing
would satisfy the nobles short of the public withdrawal being
drawn up in a state paper, signed by the queen’s regent,
countersigned by the four secretaries of state, and conveyed to
the assembly of nobles by four marshals of France.

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There are to be found, even in grave history–amid the records of
war, treaties, conquests, administrations and revolutions–
accounts given in equally grave language of deep questions of
etiquette which seem to have been debated and settled with as much
care and energy as the most serious questions of state affairs.
Cases of this sort are announced and well founded. Whoever likes
to see the extent to which attention was given to the subject can
seek instances in the memoirs of public characters who lived in
the seventeenth century, in the diaries of minute detailers like
the Duke de St. Simon, Page to His Most Christian Majesty, Louis
the Fourteenth; like Sir John Finett, Master of Ceremonies to
Charles the First, and in the domestic histories of the courtiers
and grandees of the Spanish and Venetian courts.

Fortunately, the time has gone by when nice questions about
trifling points of etiquette served to light the flame of civil
war, as once they did in France, and to set the whole of the upper
class in a kingdom in arms. We owe this, perhaps, as much to the
general increase of civilization as to the working of any
particular set of rules or system. But the principle which
actuated the French nobility, at the time alluded to, is an
inherent one in the human mind, and would be likely to repeat
itself in some shape or another, not so violently perhaps, but
still to repeat itself, were it not kept in check by the known
laws of society.

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Most people have heard of the gentleman (?) who was perfect in his
knowledge of the laws of etiquette, and who, seeing a man
drowning, took off his coat and was about to plunge into the water
to rescue him, when he suddenly remembered that he had never been
introduced to the struggling victim, and resuming his coat,
tranquilly proceeded upon his way.

Not less absurd are a thousand instances where a regard for formal
mannerism takes the place of the easy grace that is the mark of
true politeness, which being well acquired and habitual, is never
obtrusive or offensively prominent. Too rigid an observance of the
laws of etiquette makes them an absurdity and a nuisance.

But, because the laws of etiquette may be made a restraint under
injudicious management, it does not follow that they should be
disregarded or in any way set aside. The abuse of them is no
argument against them, any more than gluttony is any reason for
starvation. It is not the food that is in fault, but the excess of
the person partaking of it. The fault must be laid wholly and
solely at the door of those who misunderstand the use and
intention of really sound and excellent precepts. The extravagance
of an overdisplay of etiquette is really only another form of
innate vulgarity, although there are instances which may be drawn
from the side of over refinement, from the history of people and
societies, who become extravagant in their devotion to what they
deem good breeding, simply because, like the stars that looked
down upon Molly Bawn, “they’d nothing else to do.”

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Etiquette, like every other human institution, is of course liable
to abuse; it may be transformed from a convenient and wholesome
means of producing universal comfort into an inconvenient and
burdensome restraint upon freedom and ease. It may become the
first consideration, instead of more properly the second, as is
often the case with the instrumental accompaniment to a song, and
then it becomes, as does the accompaniment, an intolerable
nuisance. The mere form, over-riding and hiding the spirit which
should control and guide it; an entirely artificial state of
things, taking the place of the natural, must inevitably produce
discomfort and extravagance of behavior. Nature is thus made the
slave of Art, instead of Art taking its proper place as the
handmaid to Nature.

Etiquette, to be perfect, therefore, must be like a perfectly
fitting garment, which, beautifying and adorning the person, must
yet never cramp or restrain perfect freedom of movement. Any
visible restraint will mar its grace, as a wrinkle will mar the
pure outline of the garment.

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