"Enough of this laissez faire crap."

Oh, boy. Adam, over at Amateur Gourmet has weighed in today on the subject of jackets in fine dining restaurants. As you surely remember, in the early days of The Blushing Hostess, John (the Dashing Host) weighed in on the importance of possessing a navy blue blazer. I feel we, here at The Blushing Hostess and The Blushing Hostess Entertains, could weigh in (as this is kind of, er, totally, up our ultra-traditional alley) perhaps more heavily. Since The Host is in Baltimore and could even be sleeping, I will go it alone for you... but check back here because once I get with him and give him his cocktail, he'll have some gentlemanly thoughts on the subject. When I read one commenters sentence, "Enough of this laissez faire crap." I smiled.
After all, that is precisely why John and I began our discourse on manners and tradition. Ah, only we wished we could have been that straight forward.

In the time since John wrote the jacket essay, The Dashing Host has moved to its own new blog and John no doubt still finds use for his jacket nearly everyday. The truth is, that is who are. John will always put on trousers and a jacket if he is not in a suit. And I will always put on a skirt. These days of wine, roses, and jeans are not for us.

We are young, yes. But we come from an old tradition we dutifully protect: Respect. Caring for oneself and having a polished appearance is not a product of being overly concerned for oneself, it is a product of being conscious of the tone others wish to set for their day, their home, their meal, or their restaurant. And if I was to look deeply into myself, I would also admit life goes a little easier when I have taken care with my appearance. I like to think that is the product of an
atmosphere of mutual respect.

I put on good, neat clothes and do my hair and makeup because I want you to know that this conversation I have come by to have with you, or this meal we sit down to together, or this food you made for me, or this exchange of money for postage stamps at the post office window is an important event: You are a human being, as such I will present myself to you in a respectable manner. In doing so, I acknowledge your work, your pride, your presence right from the start.

Once in a while, there is a restaurant I can go to in jeans. But they are very good jeans and that in no way means I let the hair/makeup thing go by the wayside. No, not ever. Even if I am only toddling up the way to 121, a restaurant full to the gills with show jumpers just left the stable, I am still done. And if I am not, I am not coming out.

As for the specific issues of dress codes, I agree with many of Adam's commenters, there should not be one, anywhere. We should live prepared to move from the stable to Le Bernadin: Ever ready. Ever graceful. And "dress codes," can just fade away, instead we could call it elegance. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Let's take it outside

Yesterday I had lunch with my Husband and Daughter at the club. Being here to discuss etiquette in general with you, I should advise you right up front that some of my own respected forebearer's would consider it a poor choice to take an eleven month old child to a public dining room of any sort. In two of the three dining rooms at the club, I would agree. But, in the luncheon room and proverbial nineteenth hole, children are welcome. I observed several tables with young children dining yesterday, all of whom were pleasantly mannered. Then, there was the adults.

I will tell you of this club that it is very traditional in many ways, right down to the goats that once dotted the golf course in the manner of St. Andrew's in Scotland. There is no denim, shorts of less than Bermuda length, or tennis attire allowed in the clubhouse. No printed t-shirts. No tank tops. For the most part, even on days when the public is heavily on the scene there, these old tried and true rules of good dining behaviours, prevail.

But yesterday, for the second day in a row, I noted baseball caps on men's heads in the dining room. Similarly, I once attended a Grand Prix Jumping luncheon and the male riders chose to wear baseball caps at lunch in an enclosed tent, presumably because Mayor Guilani was expected and they did not want to expose their helmet-head from the jumping rounds. But, that is what locker rooms and (in the case of show jumpers) dressing rooms in the trucks are for, to clean yourself up before moving on with your day. The names of those riders stay with me as will the faces of the people in baseball caps yesterday. It will be unlikely, no matter how the years will undulate with joyous and deeply sad circumstances, to forget about these people that they are not gentlemen of the sort I prefer.

Having said that, I will tell you that I know a couple of mannered scoundrels. Their social graces are pitch-perfect at the doorway, at the table, and in church. But manners and decency are not a married pair, never assume the existence of one because there is evidence of the other. I like manners, a lot. But the disclaimer in what I am about to tell you is that given the choice between the two, I would pick decency because I believe it defaults to treating people well and considerately, which is vastly more critical than the correct use of a short fork.

However, if it is at all possible, it would be lovely to be a person who can be said to posses both the skill of manners and the quality, (dare I say) even virtue, of decency. In the pursuit of such an elevated state of grace, one can read all manner of book on the subject. Some of the best are Amy Vanderbilt, How to Raise a Gentleman, How to Raise a Lady, and Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers. In our homes, they live on the reference shelf with other volumes of powerful substance: The dictionary. The thesaurus. The Holy Bible. The Way to Cook. Now you see, these are critical documents. Should you not wish to read, memorize, and review these weighty volumes at length in refreshing yourself or in teaching your child, there are very appealing courses one can take, say, while on vacation. The Don Cesar at St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, offers a short course of study for children or for professionals while they are guests at the resort. I imagine the staff there would love to help the etiquette training along by giving all manner of scenario where one might test their new or newly polished skills.

One skill of important awareness to be learned therein is the removal of your cover. Books on the subject do not disagree though some are more thorough: The rule does not apply only to men and that may surprise you.

Firstly, men are to remove hat, cap, or cover of all sort before entering a building and therefore would never have cause to have a hat of any sort on their head in a dining room. This procedure plays a significant manner-role in our lives, having a Husband and Father who is a military officer. Consequently, this gentility is close to my heart. The military is impressively thorough in both their dicta and upkeep on the subject of covers. One could take a lesson from them.

Secondly, Amy Vanderbilt is quite forceful on the subject of baseball caps specifically: Never to be worn indoors. Period! Her emphasis, not mine, though I heartily agree!

Here is the surprise: While women may wear a hat indoors, they are to remove said hat before taking their seat at the table (How to Raise a Lady, Kay West, Thomas Nelson Publisher, 2001). I would go a step further and say that if we are to consider a baseball cap poor manners on a male indoors at all times, in a society seeking equality, we could say the same applies to women: Please remove your baseball cap indoors and your hat of any type before joining the table.

It is not simply that it is a rule of good manners. Nor that I am quietly insulted when one does not remove a hat before entering my home or seating themselves with me at a table. This issue is truly, deeply about respect, and about how much better you look without that baseball cap anyhow. In truth, it is not an attractive fashion article, not in any situation save one: In the house that Ruth built, it is lovely to see Derek Jeter et al. in the traditional attire of their sporting life. But there is something innately appropriate, old school, and lovely about a thing being done properly, is there not?

The Role of The Hostess, In Hindsight

In the days before I went off to college, my Mother gave me a copy of Amy Vanderbilt Complete Rules of Etiquette, a volume written by Mrs. Vanderbilt in 1952, rewritten by Lettia Baldridge in 1978, and finally once again (just for good measure) by Nancy Tuckerman (White House aide to Jaqueline Kennedy and Nancy Dunnan (who wrote on investments and sent articles into Family PC magazine). Generations of doyennes needed to to set us straight on meaningful and indispensable pearls of the wisdom of the mannered set, evidently. But while the book maintained a commitment to detail unrivaled by every other etiquette bible pretender, two rewritings did little to make the book accessible and valuable to the populous. It remains a thick book stuffed with arcane how-to-handle-this scenarios which are largely unimaginable to most (when was the last time you were forced to spit out an unconsumable bit of food and hand it to the maid attending you at the dinner table?).

At times, the book has made use of itself when I have needed to beg off from a wedding with an ambiguously worded note of excuse, craft an invitation to my engagement party, or help someone brush up on the rules of one's good hygienics and presentability. And it helps me to remember elegance as elegance, instead of experiencing the grave feeling of something missing: Experiencing elegance only in the sense of its complete and devastating absence. As frustratingly rigid and abundantly useless as so much of this weighty work is in the modern age, at least it guards grace, if a somewhat overzealous form.

My first copy was the 1978 Lettia Baldridge edition. I adore the book because it has marked tabs on each chapter, making it so very easy for yours truly to determine how to properly address a note to a Captain in the Navy or one of industry, or to refresh my memory on the finer points of what is to happen to one's drink when called to the table at a dinner party (you are to put it down and move to your seat at the table without your glass so as not to interfere with the wine service, formally-speaking, that is). I hate this book on other occasions because it has created a heightened state of pity in my mind: Poor girl, doesn't know she should place her fork, tines down, along the right side of the plate next to her knife to indicate she is through with her meal. Weird little man, putting ketchup bottles on the table! Where on earth are the handtowels? Why are the glasses plastic? And I feel ambivalent towards it always: So carefully transcribed it was from the study and memories of Amy Vanderbilt (not a Cornelius Vanderbilt decedent, but of his brother) who wrote this bible in another time, a more polished age, a land before Britney Spears was a trendsetter; it seems a dinosaur relic from the mannered class of sixty years ago.

Amy Vanderbilt wrote from a place defined by decency, elegance, consideration, and meticulous observation. On the occasions when I have, presumptively, been handed a beer in a can, told there were no soup spoons, or been handed a paper coffee cup after dinner, I realize how far we have come. If writers could reach back generations to consult one another's ghosts, I fear Amy Vanderbilt would look at me, gently shrug her shoulders, smile upwards to a sunny day, and turn away, gloved hand just below the Kelly bag resting on her jacket sleeve giving a barely perceptible wave of goodbye forever, Blushing Hostess. I fear Amy has given all she can and even her legacy has passed us by when we can least afford to lose her voice: Now, that things may become so very difficult, now that we are so far from decorum. Now, is when we need her most. Now, is not when we should tolerate any further degradation from the rules of grace. We will need these skills, you and I, in the years ahead of us.

While I can spend hours trying to convince you there is so much information in these volumes one should know, one should exercise, one should respect, I may have a hard time moving you towards the read: This book, precious fleeting resource that is, is as scintillating as reading a dictionary, unfortunately. This disappoints me so, for you, My Precious, because had any of these authors been asked to step out of their perfect society-girl boxes, they might have furthered both their effectiveness and their position of authority by telling us of the occasional slip or slide, by explaining in a light historical voice how we settled on the convention of place-settings, how we determined as a nation the way we would address respected members of all walks of life, and how all of that amounted to the rules being dictated by Mrs. Vanderbilt, or anyone else for that matter.

If you do a bit of reading on Amy's life, you will discover that she researched etiquette at a world-wide level for five years in writing this book, and that she either died accidentally or possibly committed suicide. I venture to guess though, that the way Amy came to know it all, and the way a perfectly mannered doyenne retreats into paradise, would have made more compelling reads. I wish she had given me the rules and the background. We have the structure but not her notes from dinner tables afar. But it must have been such an adventure, arriving at this configuration of perfection. There must have been some wonderful stories, some compelling ones, some heroic ones, some embarrassing ones from which we might have learned it all in a lighter, more palatable fashion.

Let's you and I do that for Amy, shall we? Let's tell the stories and keep her painstakingly organized details in our words and deeds. Let's do it, so her long-ago work will never be in vain, nor will grace.