tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29257170680555488392024-03-18T22:34:38.015-05:00My Big HeadOld Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-44952988647300481472013-05-01T15:10:00.001-05:002013-05-01T15:10:55.722-05:00SquaresvilleI love <a href="http://www.ivy-style.com/ivy-style-salutes-squaresville-appreciation-month.html/comment-page-1#comment-28422" target="_blank">this post from Ivy Style</a>.<br />
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There is something so comforting about be square. The pressure is entirely off to be cool, hip or trendy. It's okay to shop at Macy's. <br />
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It's okay to grill burgers in the back yard and hang out with your wife while watching the kids on the swing set. This honestly isn't about being retro. It's about finding those things that are comfortable and sticking with them, regardless of fashion.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-88974425921690293282013-02-19T13:41:00.004-06:002013-02-19T13:46:29.431-06:00Nelson Aldrich Jr.<div class="timeStamp">
The following article comes from the September 26, 1988 issue of <u>People</u> magazine. I thought it was interesting to get some of this background on the author of not only <em>Old Money</em>, but also the article that I posted <a href="http://mybighead04.blogspot.com/2011/11/nelson-w-aldrich-on-preppies.html#more" target="_blank">here</a> some time back.</div>
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<em>Born to the Manor, but Not to the Money, Nelson Aldrich Jr. Reflects on Matters of Class</em><br />
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By Deane Worth</div>
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<!--Begin articleHTML--> Nelson Aldrich Jr., the son, grandson and great-grandson of millionaires, did not set out to live his life as a sociological experiment. Yet though he was raised with many of the trappings of great wealth—the schools, the clubs and the summer homes—he was conspicuously lacking in cash. It was this singular deprivation that led to his discovery that it was less "the reality of unearned wealth" that guaranteed one's position in the world of "old money" than "imagination and pure training." In 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced the rich "different from you and me." Now comes Aldrich to explain those differences in his new book, <em>Old Money, the Mythology of America's Upper Class</em>.<br />
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Before getting it all down, though, Aldrich, 53, had to exorcise some of the demons of his own privileged upbringing. His parents divorced when he was 3, and by the age of 8 little Nelson had been turned over more or less full-time to the "silver-spoon curriculum": the Fay School in Southboro, Mass., St. Paul's and then Harvard, where he joined that most high society, the Porcellian Club. By the time Aldrich discovered that he would inherit almost no money of his own—his father, an architect, lost a small fortune in business, and his mother, who married four times, left most of hers to the housekeeper—he was so steeped in trust-fund culture that he found himself indifferent to earning a living.<br />
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"Just as the nouveau riche will always feel poor, so the nouveau pauvre are always convinced they really are rich," says Aldrich, who concedes that his own résumé "reads like the yellow sheet of a repeat offender." After a sojourn in France working for the Paris Review, Aldrich taught school in Harlem, reported for the Boston Globe, edited at Harper's, produced a TV program and worked as a lobbyist. None of these jobs lasted very long. Schooled in "the airy inconsequentially of working," Aldrich says, he would inevitably alienate his employers.<br />
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Like many children of old money, Aldrich has also been given to romantic, irresponsible gestures—afflicted with the same "moral carelessness," he says, that is evident whenever a young heir dives into drugs, promiscuity or dangerous sports to make a gossamer life seem more real. A heady affair with a married woman in Paris produced a love child—now 26 and living in London. Five years later, settled in New York, Aldrich wed Anna Lou Humes, a young divorcée on her own with four daughters. It seemed a "gallant, dashing thing to do," he says, "rescuing the damsel in distress." But in the end, it was he who needed rescuing, thanks to his other great romance—with the bottle. In the late '70s, when Aldrich was drinking heavily, Anna Lou—who became a bank officer—was often the principal breadwinner for the family. Though she and Nelson have been separated since 1981, <em>Old Money</em> is dedicated to Anna Lou because, says Aldrich—sober now for five years—"she always propped up my morale." Learning of the dedication a few months before publication left Anna Lou "shaken and curious," she says. "But now I'm very pleased. It's a wonderful book."<br />
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Many critics agree. The Atlantic Monthly calls Old Money "the best nonfiction book about the American upper class written by one of its members since Henry Adams' Education." Blending autobiography and social history, Aldrich—who's related to the Rockefellers—discusses the special facts of life cushioned by money that is, by and large, "just there"—long separated from any nastiness involved in its acquisition. (Aldrich's great-grandfather, the first Nelson, a Rhode Island grocer, entered the Senate in 1881 worth $50,000 and left 30 years later worth $12 million, thanks to the kindness of grateful monopolists.) One such fact, familiar to any child ever to hunch down in the family limousine in an agony of shame and pride, is the humiliating public perception that "inheritors of old money are lightweights"—sissies, wimps, dilettantes and degenerates. To counter that, says Aldrich, old money sets its young a series of personal "ordeals": boarding school, the high seas, war.<br />
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Aldrich also explains why polo is the perfect old-money game. It's not just because the horses and equipment cost a fortune, but rather because the sport is almost impossible to master. "To play it well, one has to have always—past perfectly—played it," he says. "The entrepreneur cannot learn it without looking ridiculous. All he or she can do is buy the clothes associated with it." And so it goes for all efforts to reduce old money to a set of marketable products—as if there were, Aldrich writes, "nonchalance sold along with naturally-tailored suits, magnanimity arriving in the mail with every L.L. Bean catalog or a sense of fair play included in the warranty of each Volvo station wagon." Perhaps it's just as well these carefully inculcated old money attitudes cannot be readily retailed, since they often go hand in hand, Aldrich notes, with others, such as racial prejudice and stultifying habit.<br />
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Yet Aldrich neither condemns nor defends his class. Indeed, his cousin Dr. Graham Blaine charges Aldrich with "hedging his bets...wanting to be both an on insider and an outsider." In a sense, though, Aldrich was always that—the poor boy at the ball. And since he has already suffered some of the pitfalls of having been born into money, he wouldn't mind having a bit. "It's nice to be famous," says Aldrich with a laugh, delighted with the critical reception to his book. "But how do I get rich?"</div>
Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-33057897898562665082012-11-20T14:45:00.003-06:002012-11-20T14:45:48.546-06:00Why Our Elites StinkAgain, I have to credit <a href="http://waspmanifesto.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Wasp Manifesto</a> for this one. <br />
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I love <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html" target="_blank">David Brooks</a>. If he and <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/politics/political_wrap/bio_shields.html" target="_blank">Mark Shields</a> shared a Presidential ticket, I would vote for them in a heart-beat--regardless of who headed the ticket.<br />
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But onto our topic for today: meritocracy. Below is an excerpt from David Brooks' article, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-stink.html?_r=0" target="_blank">"Why Our Elites Stink."</a> (Obviously, click on the prior link for the full text--it's well worth the read.)<br />
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"Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance. <br />
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"Yet, as this meritocratic elite has taken over institutions, trust in them has plummeted. It’s not even clear that the brainy elite is doing a better job of running them than the old boys’ network. Would we say that Wall Street is working better now than it did 60 years ago? Or government? The system is more just, but the outcomes are mixed. The meritocracy has not fulfilled its promise."</div>
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"I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room. </div>
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"Phenomena like the test-prep industry are just the icing on the cake, giving some upper-middle-class applicants a slight edge over other upper-middle-class applicants. The real advantages are much deeper and more honest. </div>
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"The corruption that has now crept into the world of finance and the other professions is not endemic to meritocracy but to the specific culture of our meritocracy. The problem is that today’s meritocratic elites cannot admit to themselves that they are elites. </div>
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"Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment. </div>
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"As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership. </div>
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"The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service. </div>
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"Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this." </div>
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"I want to keep the current social order, but I want to give it a different ethos and institutions that are more consistent with its existing ideals. " </div>
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Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-51665265366926733722012-11-19T15:10:00.001-06:002012-11-19T15:10:35.491-06:00"The WASP Ascedancy"I posted, <a href="http://mybighead04.blogspot.com/2012/11/where-im-from.html" target="_blank">the other day</a>, an excerpt from a posting by <a href="http://waspmanifesto.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The WASP Manifesto</a>. As I work my way through old posts, I find some great stuff. I am sincerely impressed by this blog. If you have the opportunity, you should check it out.<br />
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Below is an excerpt from a posting of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alsop" target="_blank">Joseph W. Alsop</a>'s article, <a href="http://waspmanifesto.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/the-wasp-ascendancy/" target="_blank">"The WASP Ascendancy."</a> The following paragraphs really hit a chord with me:<br />
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"The greatest advantage, I should be inclined to say, was that the young had their careers laid out for them in advance so there was no foolish waffling and wavering about what to do. If you had special talents in science or architecture or scholarship or some other respectable pursuit, you sought very hard to get to the top of the tree you had chosen for yourself. If you had no such inclinations you could then choose between the various ladders that led to a respectable or even a high place in the WASP ascendancy of your time. The ladders were essentially the various professions, headed by the law, plus businesses of the kind then held to be respectable, with finance and banking at the head of the list.<br />
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"It’s too easily forgotten now, or at any rate it used to be too easily forgotten by the young people who complained this or that 'doesn’t turn me on,' that any healthy man is 'turned on' by the mere act of putting his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder. If he is a serious and ambitious young man he will then wish to get to the top of the ladder, in short to achieve a conspicuous success. These were the reasons why young men of the WASP ascendancy did not suffer from the kind of inner anguish and self-questioning that is all too common today. Even guilt, I fear, was an almost unknown quality in the WASP ascendancy, although its members had plenty to be guilty about, I suppose. Certainly the young people whose parents and grandparents formed the WASP ascendancy appear to me to be extraordinarily guilt-ridden."<br />
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"Above all, if you belonged to the WASP ascendancy, you knew pretty well who you were. I have never to this day understood the phrase “identity crisis” or, indeed, understood why people had identity crises. But this, again, is probably another sign of the narrowness and provincialism that too often marked the ascendancy in the old days."Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-45134594002102548332012-11-09T12:33:00.001-06:002012-11-19T15:11:07.496-06:00Where I'm FromI just discovered a great blog, <a href="http://waspmanifesto.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The WASP Manifesto</a>. It is incredibly well-written and thoughtful. One of his (I say "his" although I'm not certain, as the blog is anonymous) early posts, entitled <a href="http://waspmanifesto.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/happens-every-day/" target="_blank">"Happens Every Day"</a> (October 1, 2009) deals with the importance of community to WASPS. <br />
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It is definitely worth a read. I especially like this line: "If Middle America spent on beach cottages (on whatever beach or lake) what it spends on cruises, Middle America might find itself much more widely contented." Coming from the Mid-West, all I can say is, "Amen."Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-81766836555384070932012-10-24T12:14:00.002-05:002012-10-24T12:14:22.493-05:00Required Reading: Seven Deadly Sins of Preppy DressingI've been following <u>The Daily Prep</u> for quite some time. I really appreciate Muffy's common-sense approach to style and living. Her post, <a href="http://www.muffyaldrich.com/2012/09/the-seven-deadly-or-at-least-mildly_29.html" target="_blank">The Seven Deadly (or at least mildly annoying) Sins of Preppy Dressing</a> is good stuff. I'm posting this link, if for no other reason, so that I can easily find it again when I want it.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-57677215188541361072011-12-12T14:52:00.001-06:002011-12-13T13:12:29.762-06:00A Very Separate Peace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9Awlc5FbmIm269XMP-zflIYbzy1ma86frKRrf69Q_ey80nGJ2FEHogbr_aCEVbCnZS6ZKoo2tzrxkRXGSwOEVB9Pae8MTI4efiYpnhYOcWb1N4mJWcj_ysKBeA74RYxKVjG8gpAEDbTQ/s1600/80275cover%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" oda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9Awlc5FbmIm269XMP-zflIYbzy1ma86frKRrf69Q_ey80nGJ2FEHogbr_aCEVbCnZS6ZKoo2tzrxkRXGSwOEVB9Pae8MTI4efiYpnhYOcWb1N4mJWcj_ysKBeA74RYxKVjG8gpAEDbTQ/s320/80275cover%255B1%255D.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>When I first started teaching, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Knowles" target="_blank">John Knowles'</a> novel, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Separate-Peace-John-Knowles/dp/0743253973/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323722796&sr=1-1" target="_blank">A Separate Peace</a></em> was a part of the curriculum. When I first read it, I loved it. Although the world of these students was fairly different from mine, I could still relate to a lot of what they were going through. However, my students didn't have a clue. But that's another post.<br />
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There is a lot of talk about other Ivy League/Prep School books. But this is one that I rarely read about in the blogosphere, so I'd like to throw a few bits to the wolves. Here are some great (if not seemingly superficial) excerpts to consider:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"> The Devon faculty had never before experienced a student who combined a calm ignorance of the rules with a wining urge to be good, who seemed to love the school truly and deeply, and never more than when he was breaking the regulations, a model boy who was most comfortable in the truant's corner (16).</blockquote>Many a pink-shirted patron should enjoy this one:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"> Phineas was the essence of this careless peace. [...H]e began to dress, that is he began reaching for whatever clothes were nearest, some of them mine. Then he stopped to consider, and went over to the dresser. Out of one of the drawers he lifted a finely woven broadcloth shirt, carefully cut, and very pink.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> "What's <em>that </em>thing?"</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> [...]</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> "This," he then answered with some pride, "is going to be my emblem. Ma sent it up last week. Did you ever see stuff like this, and a color like this? It doesn't even button all the way down. You have to pull it over your head, like this."</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> "Over your head? Pink! It makes you look like a <em>fairy!"</em></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> [...]</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> He did wear it. No one else in the school could have done so without some risk of having it torn from his back. [...] It was hypnotism. I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything" (19-20).</blockquote>He even goes so far as to wear the school tie for his belt--but, of course, gets away with it.<br />
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The clothing is interesting, but I think the attitude is what really draws my attention. Anyone familiar with the novel knows that Phineas is not trying to push buttons or be a jerk. It's simply who he is. He's larger than life and unconcerned about what others think of him. Not that he doesn't care about others; he does. He simply has an innocence in regards to others' opinions of him. <br />
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This is something that a lot of folks try to affect, but it very obviously comes off as affectation. Finny is their ideal, but, tragically, an ideal they can never reach, because they have already become self-aware. Maybe that's a good place to stop for this post. Not sure if I want to tackle that one...Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-56003803664790796312011-12-08T14:11:00.000-06:002012-11-19T15:14:45.109-06:00Civilization<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">What follows is the introduction to the second edition (1922) of Emily Post's <em>Etiquette: In Society, In Business, In Politics and at Home</em>, as swiped from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14314/14314-h/14314-h.htm" target="_blank">Project Guttenburg</a>. It's pretty lengthy. I had intended to cut it down a bit, but as I was reading it, I found that there wasn't anything I could eliminate. Sometimes we get so caught up in the "rules" that we forget why the rules are there in the first place.</span></span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">INTRODUCTION</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">MANNERS AND MORALS</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">By</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Richard Duffy</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Many who scoff at a book of etiquette would be shocked to hear the least </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">expression of levity touching the Ten Commandments. But the Commandments </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">do not always prevent such virtuous scoffers from dealings with their </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">neighbor of which no gentleman could be capable and retain his claim to </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the title. Though it may require ingenuity to reconcile their actions with </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the Decalogue--the ingenuity is always forthcoming. There is no intention </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">in this remark to intimate that there is any higher rule of life than the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Ten Commandments; only it is illuminating as showing the relationship </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">between manners and morals, which is too often overlooked. The polished </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">gentleman of sentimental fiction has so long served as the type of smooth </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and conscienceless depravity that urbanity of demeanor inspires distrust </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">in ruder minds. On the other hand, the blunt, unpolished hero of melodrama </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and romantic fiction has lifted brusqueness and pushfulness to a pedestal </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">not wholly merited. Consequently, the kinship between conduct that keeps </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">us within the law and conduct that makes civilized life worthy to be </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">called such, deserves to be noted with emphasis. The Chinese sage, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Confucius, could not tolerate the suggestion that virtue is in itself </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">enough without politeness, for he viewed them as inseparable and "saw </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">courtesies as coming from the heart," maintaining that "when they are </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">practised with all the heart, a moral elevation ensues."</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">People who ridicule etiquette as a mass of trivial and arbitrary </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">conventions, "extremely troublesome to those who practise them and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">insupportable to everybody else," seem to forget the long, slow progress </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">of social intercourse in the upward climb of man from the primeval state. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Conventions were established from the first to regulate the rights of the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">individual and the tribe. They were and are the rules of the game of life </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and must be followed if we would "play the game." Ages before man felt the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">need of indigestion remedies, he ate his food solitary and furtive in some </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">corner, hoping he would not be espied by any stronger and hungrier fellow.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">It was a long, long time before the habit of eating in common was </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">acquired; and it is obvious that the practise could not have been taken up </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">with safety until the individuals of the race knew enough about one </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">another and about the food resources to be sure that there was food </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">sufficient for all. When eating in common became the vogue, table manners </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">made their appearance and they have been waging an uphill struggle ever </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">since. The custom of raising the hat when meeting an acquaintance derives </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">from the old rule that friendly knights in accosting each other should </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">raise the visor for mutual recognition in amity. In the knightly years, it </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">must be remembered, it was important to know whether one was meeting </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">friend or foe. Meeting a foe meant fighting on the spot. Thus, it is </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">evident that the conventions of courtesy not only tend to make the wheels </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">of life run more smoothly, but also act as safeguards in human </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">relationship. Imagine the Paris Peace Conference, or any of the later </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">conferences in Europe, without the protective armor of diplomatic </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">etiquette!</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Nevertheless, to some the very word etiquette is an irritant. It implies a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">great pother about trifles, these conscientious objectors assure us, and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">trifles are unimportant. Trifles are unimportant, it is true, but then </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">life is made up of trifles. To those who dislike the word, it suggests all </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">that is finical and superfluous. It means a garish embroidery on the big </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">scheme of life; a clog on the forward march of a strong and courageous </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">nation. To such as these, the words etiquette and politeness connote </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">weakness and timidity. Their notion of a really polite man is a dancing </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">master or a man milliner. They were always willing to admit that the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">French were the politest nation in Europe and equally ready to assert that </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the French were the weakest and least valorous, until the war opened their </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">eyes in amazement. Yet, that manners and fighting can go hand in hand </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">appears in the following anecdote:</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">In the midst of the war, some French soldiers and some non-French of the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Allied forces were receiving their rations in a village back of the lines. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The non-French fighters belonged to an Army that supplied rations </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">plentifully. They grabbed their allotments and stood about while hastily </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">eating, uninterrupted by conversation or other concern. The French </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">soldiers took their very meager portions of food, improvised a kind of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">table on the top of a flat rock, and having laid out the rations, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">including the small quantity of wine that formed part of the repast, sat </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">down in comfort and began their meal amid a chatter of talk. One of the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">non-French soldiers, all of whom had finished their large supply of food </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">before the French had begun eating, asked sardonically: "Why do you </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">fellows make such a lot of fuss over the little bit of grub they give you </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">to eat?" The Frenchman replied: "Well, we are making war for civilization, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">are we not? Very well, we are. Therefore, we eat in a civilized way."</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">To the French we owe the word etiquette, and it is amusing to discover its </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">origin in the commonplace familiar warning--"Keep off the grass." It </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">happened in the reign of Louis XIV, when the gardens of Versailles were </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">being laid out, that the master gardener, an old Scotsman, was sorely </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">tried because his newly seeded lawns were being continually </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">trampled upon. To keep trespassers off, he put up warning signs or </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">tickets--<em>etiquettes</em>--on which was indicated the path along which to </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">pass. But the courtiers paid no attention to these directions and so the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">determined Scot complained to the King in such convincing manner that His </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Majesty issued an edict commanding everyone at Court to "keep within the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><em>etiquettes</em>." Gradually the term came to cover all the rules for correct </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">demeanor and deportment in court circles; and thus through the centuries </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">it has grown into use to describe the conventions sanctioned for the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">purpose of smoothing personal contacts and developing tact and good </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">manners in social intercourse. With the decline of feudal courts and the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">rise of empires of industry, much of the ceremony of life was discarded </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">for plain and less formal dealing. Trousers and coats supplanted doublets </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and hose, and the change in costume was not more extreme than the change </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">in social ideas. The court ceased to be the arbiter of manners, though the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">aristocracy of the land remained the high exemplar of good breeding.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Yet, even so courtly and materialistic a mind as Lord Chesterfield's </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">acknowledged a connection between manners and morality, of which latter </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the courts of Europe seemed so sparing. In one of the famous "Letters to </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">His Son" he writes: "Moral virtues are the foundation of society in </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">general, and of friendship in particular; but attentions, manners, and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">graces, both adorn and strengthen them." Again he says: "Great merit, or </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">attentions, mere nothings, either done or reflected, will make you either </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">liked or disliked, in the general run of the world." For all the wisdom </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and brilliancy of his worldly knowledge, perhaps no other writer has done </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">so much to bring disrepute on the "manners and graces" as Lord </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Chesterfield, and this, it is charged, because he debased them so heavily </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">by considering them merely as the machinery of a successful career. To the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">moralists, the fact that the moral standards of society in Lord </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Chesterfield's day were very different from those of the present era </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">rather adds to the odium that has become associated with his attitude. His </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">severest critics, however, do concede that he is candid and outspoken, and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">many admit that his social strategy is widely practised even in these </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">days.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">But the aims of the world in which he moved were routed by the onrush of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the ideals of democratic equality, fraternity, and liberty. With the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">prosperity of the newer shibboleths, the old-time notion of aristocracy, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">gentility, and high breeding became more and more a curio to be framed </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">suitably in gold and kept in the glass case of an art museum. The crashing </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">advance of the industrial age of gold thrust all courts and their sinuous </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">graces aside for the unmistakable ledger balance of the counting-house. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">This new order of things had been a long time in process, when, in the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">first year of this century, a distinguished English social historian, the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">late The Right Honorable G.W.E. Russell, wrote: "Probably in all ages of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">history men have liked money, but a hundred years ago they did not talk </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">about it in society.... Birth, breeding, rank, accomplishments, eminence </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">in literature, eminence in art, eminence in public service--all these </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">things still count for something in society. But when combined they are </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">only as the dust of the balance when weighed against the all-prevalent </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">power of money. The worship of the Golden Calf is the characteristic cult </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">of modern society." In the Elizabethan Age of mighty glory, three hundred </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">years before this was said, Ben Jonson had railed against money as "a thin </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">membrane of honor," groaning: "How hath all true reputation fallen since </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">money began to have any!" Now the very fact that the debasing effect of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">money on the social organism has been so constantly reprehended, from </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Scriptural days onward, proves the instinctive yearning of mankind for a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">system of life regulated by good taste, high intelligence and sound </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">affections. But, it remains true that, in the succession of great </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">commercial epochs, coincident with the progress of modern science and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">invention, <em>almost</em> everything can be bought and sold, and so <em>almost </em></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">everything is rated by the standard of money.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Yet, this standard is precisely not the ultimate test of the Christianity </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">on which we have been pluming ourselves through the centuries. Still, no </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">one can get along without money; and few of us get along very well with </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">what we have. At least we think so--because everybody else seems to think </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">that way. We Americans are members of the nation which, materially, is </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the richest, most prosperous and most promising in the world. This idea is </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">dinned into our heads continually by foreign observers, and publicly we </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">"own the soft impeachment." Privately, each individual American seems </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">driven with the decision that he must live up to the general conception of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the nation as a whole. And he does, but in less strenuous moments he might </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">profitably ponder the counsel of Gladstone to his countrymen: "Let us </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">respect the ancient manners and recollect that, if the true soul of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">chivalry has died among us, with it all that is good in society has died. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Let us cherish a sober mind; take for granted that in our best </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">performances there are latent many errors which in their own time will</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">America, too, has her ancient manners to remember and respect; but, in the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">rapid assimilation of new peoples into her economic and social organism, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">more pressing concerns take up nearly all her time. The perfection of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">manners by intensive cultivation of good taste, some believe, would be the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">greatest aid possible to the moralists who are alarmed over the decadence </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">of the younger generation. Good taste may not make men or women really </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">virtuous, but it will often save them from what theologians call </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">"occasions of sin." We may note, too, that grossness in manners forms a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">large proportion of the offenses that fanatical reformers foam about. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Besides grossness, there is also the meaner selfishness. Selfishness is at </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the polar remove from the worldly manners of the old school, according to </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">which, as Dr. Pusey wrote, others were preferred to self, pain was given </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">to no one, no one was neglected, deference was shown to the weak and the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">aged, and unconscious courtesy extended to all inferiors. Such was the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">"beauty" of the old manners, which he felt consisted in "acting upon </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Christian principle, and if in any case it became soulless, as apart from </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Christianity, the beautiful form was there, into which the real life might </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">re-enter."</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">As a study of all that is admirable in American manners, and as a guide to </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">behavior in the simplest as well as the most complex requirements of life </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">day by day, whether we are at home or away from it, there can be no </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">happier choice than the present volume. It is conceived in the belief that </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">etiquette in its broader sense means the technique of human conduct under </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">all circumstances in life. Yet all minutiae of correct manners are included </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and no detail is too small to be explained, from the selection of a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">visiting card to the mystery of eating corn on the cob. Matters of clothes </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">for men and women are treated with the same fullness of information and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">accuracy of taste as are questions of the furnishing of their houses and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the training of their minds to social intercourse. But there is no </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">exaggeration of the minor details at the expense of the more important </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">spirit of personal conduct and attitude of mind. To dwell on formal </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">trivialities, the author holds, is like "measuring the letters of the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">sign-boards by the roadside instead of profiting by the directions they </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">offer." She would have us know also that "it is not the people who make </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">small technical mistakes or even blunders, who are barred from the paths </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">of good society, but those of sham and pretense whose veneered vulgarity </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">at every step tramples the flowers in the gardens of cultivation." To her </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">mind the structure of etiquette is comparable to that of a house, of which </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the foundation is ethics and the rest good taste, correct speech, quiet, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">unassuming behavior, and a proper pride of dignity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">To such as entertain the mistaken notion that politeness implies all give </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and little or no return, it is well to recall Coleridge's definition of a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">gentleman: "We feel the gentlemanly character present with us," he said, </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">"whenever, under all circumstances of social intercourse, the trivial, not </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">less than the important, through the whole detail of his manners and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">deportment, and with the ease of a habit, a person shows respect to others </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">in such a way as at the same time implies, in his own feelings, and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">habitually, an assured anticipation of reciprocal respect from them to </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">himself. In short, the gentlemanly character arises out of the feeling of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">equality acting as a habit, yet flexible to the varieties of rank, and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">modified without being disturbed or superseded by them." Definitions of a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">gentleman are numerous, and some of them famous; but we do not find such </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">copiousness for choice in definitions of a lady. Perhaps it has been </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">understood all along that the admirable and just characteristics of a </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">gentleman should of necessity be those also of a lady, with the charm of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">womanhood combined. And, in these days, with the added responsibility of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the vote.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Besides the significance of this volume as an indubitable authority on </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">manners, it should be pointed out that as a social document, it is without </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">precedent in American literature. In order that we may better realize the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">behavior and environment of well-bred people, the distinguished author has </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">introduced actual persons and places in fictional guise. They are the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">persons and the places of her own world; and whether we can or can not </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">penetrate the incognito of the Worldlys, the Gildings, the Kindharts, the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Oldnames, and the others, is of no importance. Fictionally, they are real </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">enough for us to be interested and instructed in their way of living. That </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">they happen to move in what is known as Society is incidental, for, as the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">author declares at the very outset: "Best Society is not a fellowship of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the wealthy, nor does it seek to exclude those who are not of exalted </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">birth; but it is an association of gentlefolk, of which good form in </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">speech, charm of manner, knowledge of the social amenities, and </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">instinctive consideration for the feelings of others, are the credentials </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">by which society the world over recognizes its chosen members."</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The immediate fact is that the characters of this book are thoroughbred </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Americans, representative of various sections of the country and free from </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the slightest tinge of snobbery. Not all of them are even well-to-do, in </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the postwar sense; and their devices of economy in household outlay, dress </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">and entertainment are a revelation in the science of ways and means. There </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">are parents, children, relatives and friends all passing before us in the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">pageant of life from the cradle to the grave. No circumstance, from an </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">introduction to a wedding, is overlooked in this panorama and the </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">spectator has beside him a cicerone in the person of the author who clears </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">every doubt and answers every question. In course, the conviction grows </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">upon him that etiquette is no flummery of poseurs "aping the manners of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">their betters," nor a code of snobs, who divide their time between licking </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">the boots of those above them and kicking at those below, but a system of </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">rules of conduct based on respect of self coupled with respect of others. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Meanwhile, to guard against conceit in his new knowledge, he may at odd </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">moments recall Ben Jonson's lines:</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Nor stand so much on your gentility,</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is an airy, and mere borrowed thing,</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From dead men's dust, and bones: And none of yours</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Except you make, or hold it."</span></span></div>
Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-719483680152879232011-12-08T09:42:00.000-06:002011-12-08T09:42:37.912-06:00A Whole Man<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRntbHwf5NMojS9hrwCNJo1-R3KxTrqHOfqsImtROUBe9cY6yiiz9t9VLex0VYyJNZgtk2peSXxjtR0kA3-gBT2o_XKLOpE_V_Q5UZyBrpRCwinz2kBsLUNewfws4ZYYczD8Gy0mYPGqic/s1600/51epuugfeyl2%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRntbHwf5NMojS9hrwCNJo1-R3KxTrqHOfqsImtROUBe9cY6yiiz9t9VLex0VYyJNZgtk2peSXxjtR0kA3-gBT2o_XKLOpE_V_Q5UZyBrpRCwinz2kBsLUNewfws4ZYYczD8Gy0mYPGqic/s320/51epuugfeyl2%255B1%255D.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>I've been reading <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/George-Being-Acquaintances-Rivals---Unappreciative/dp/B005UWBNRW/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323358664&sr=1-5" target="_blank">George, Being George</a></em> (edited by Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.). It's much more interesting than a straight-forward biography, because it is a collection of interviews by people who knew George Plimpton. I'm only about halfway through (into the founding of <em>The Paris Review</em>), but the "George" who has emerged is a man to emulate.<br />
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KATHY AINSWORTH: "[...] I'd never had an adult gentleman with beautiful manners, lots of fun, a wonderful dancer, who took me everywhere. He was my first sort of knight errant. He introduced me to everything. He told me what to read. Whether it was culunary, literary, or in bed, he taught me everything. I expected there to be another George in my life, but there never was. There was either passion and no manners, or there were lots of manners and no passion, or they didn't read, or I don't know. He was a whole man."<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglY4DxxyIKYrwuTNa51Rhld_nfeYpVEPeYVtIiCsB5y8eJKYAWxBt0b9Rl-fCG8zL2maKb_SjDdadO7pMINg9mLphF8HLSXlFNKYTa3Gwc7ILksdNMFKyYeuZ86XTw82h-QgODE4iSl_wi/s1600/02plimpton_george16%255B1%255D.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglY4DxxyIKYrwuTNa51Rhld_nfeYpVEPeYVtIiCsB5y8eJKYAWxBt0b9Rl-fCG8zL2maKb_SjDdadO7pMINg9mLphF8HLSXlFNKYTa3Gwc7ILksdNMFKyYeuZ86XTw82h-QgODE4iSl_wi/s320/02plimpton_george16%255B1%255D.gif" width="224" /></a></div>Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-16890106122582813192011-12-07T13:43:00.000-06:002011-12-07T13:43:51.723-06:00Sound AdviceA Suitable Wardrobe's <a href="http://asuitablewardrobe.dynend.com/2011/12/never-endingjourney.html#links" target="_blank">post for today</a> comes from a guest-writer, Stephen Pulvirent, of <a href="http://www.thesimplyrefined.com/" target="_blank">Simply Refined</a>. I'll refrain from re-posting the entire article, although it's great and you should read it if you haven't done so already. Instead, I'll just post the ending here:<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">"They key is not to stress out over it [getting your clothing just-right].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether it's a tie or a pair of shoes, they're just clothes after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enjoy the process of learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you could ever get a complete handle over your wardrobe, dressing would become formulaic and boring - Garanimals for adults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over time you'll learn what tie width suits you best, how you like your shoes polished, the proper way for a lapel to roll, and a million other little things that become second nature faster than you'd think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And every time one thing becomes common sense, two new issues will pop up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">But that's why you can really enjoy your clothes - there's always something new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don't <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">worry</i> about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enjoy thinking about them, doing research before purchases, living in the clothes you own, and avoid, at all costs, making the process seem like studying for an exam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dressing is an ongoing process, and a thoroughly enjoyable one at that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Treat it as such."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">This is such great advice. I remember when I first started to care about what I looked like--rather late in the game, I must admit. I felt like I had to catch up to those who had been listening to their dads' advice all those years. It was impossible. I ended up buy either the wrong thing, or nothing at all. It wasn't until I relaxed and realized I was going to get it wrong for quite awhile, but that, eventually, I would get something right, that I started to enjoy playing around with what I wore on a daily basis.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">I think one of the worst things we can do is treat anyone's opinion as the gospel. Magazines like GQ and Esquire will drive you crazy--not only do they make you feel like you're doing "it" wrong; but "it" changes on a daily basis and you're left playing catch-up.</span></div>Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-37794924501806394432011-12-07T11:23:00.000-06:002011-12-07T11:23:09.861-06:00My Kind of PrepI'm a big fan of F.E. Castleberry's <a href="http://www.unabashedlyprep.com/" target="_blank">Unabashedly Prep</a>. Normally, his over-all looks are a bit "young" for an old geezer like me. But I rarely fail to find a piece or two that I can apply somewhere. Well, <a href="http://www.unabashedlyprep.com/site/entry/down-out/" target="_blank">yesterday's post</a> was spot-on for me.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpDCpUDGcKEU1NzFmQ-M7bwyq-Puwa06SHC3an7yzk3_0sN1QZenP045AT-7kSL8ANacJp11sUQntlk6dOhXB7G0YzWXYOsEnMeAHNNvMPVB9Qp-j7RQNtA8SXRcOOw-zeVnUwyg0Hbnp/s1600/fecastleberry20111021_0085.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpDCpUDGcKEU1NzFmQ-M7bwyq-Puwa06SHC3an7yzk3_0sN1QZenP045AT-7kSL8ANacJp11sUQntlk6dOhXB7G0YzWXYOsEnMeAHNNvMPVB9Qp-j7RQNtA8SXRcOOw-zeVnUwyg0Hbnp/s320/fecastleberry20111021_0085.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>The vest may be pushing my boundaries, but everything else is great. I'm a real sucker for tweed and striped socks.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-84420990030998209212011-12-06T15:27:00.000-06:002011-12-06T15:27:21.197-06:00By GeorgeTo follow up my post on the <a href="http://mybighead04.blogspot.com/2011/12/buckley-style.html" target="_blank">Buckley football game</a>, I thought I'd post some more Life pictures I found another of my non-fashion heroes, George Plimpton.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28JQiiBkvG8nNLMJNLyX_5U6IklRu3BuN3yPSS0UInHFpUF1TIvxtMVapC8bnsslE4RnsCFhLJTMpWk1dwVYiRMMxMlgVPD7F4qB3GGpeyk4Kdkgim_h91oQxt-Ht-VUQaQtkK817IwA7/s1600/52c2ec6e9e9e2bf2_landing.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28JQiiBkvG8nNLMJNLyX_5U6IklRu3BuN3yPSS0UInHFpUF1TIvxtMVapC8bnsslE4RnsCFhLJTMpWk1dwVYiRMMxMlgVPD7F4qB3GGpeyk4Kdkgim_h91oQxt-Ht-VUQaQtkK817IwA7/s320/52c2ec6e9e9e2bf2_landing.jpeg" width="206" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The thing I like about both of these guys is how careless and relaxed they appear. How uncool, and yet cool, they are.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFpeggfpi2khjpsxtCR0dHWNJjpfpQG9l5loCx2D2b2JQyh1mHILc7VMut767iYKb8etBW7IA8pS2h6A_X94vthyphenhyphenCOoAx8MEwuedZvY8Iier2MtaPErdSto9a3LXst65_U1p0jYHCLdG3L/s1600/6fb8a8379d15deb8_large%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFpeggfpi2khjpsxtCR0dHWNJjpfpQG9l5loCx2D2b2JQyh1mHILc7VMut767iYKb8etBW7IA8pS2h6A_X94vthyphenhyphenCOoAx8MEwuedZvY8Iier2MtaPErdSto9a3LXst65_U1p0jYHCLdG3L/s320/6fb8a8379d15deb8_large%255B1%255D.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>There's a great picture of Buckley in the Life article I was talking about last time, where he is sitting in on a family all-night painting session. It's on page <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=jVMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA35&dq=william+f.+buckley&hl=en&ei=0M9gTtmVLIjksQLvxYQR&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">39</a>. His hair is a mess, his sleeves are rolled up, and he is totally absorbed in what he is doing. Yet, for some reason, he looks like a great mess.<br />
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There is a certain self-confidence that comes through with both of these gentlemen that I hope to attain some day.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-65430795251675164372011-12-05T15:30:00.000-06:002011-12-05T15:30:56.377-06:00Buckley StyleI am a huge fan of Life Magazine archives on Google books. I would love to have old copies of these magazines, but my wife would never let me take up that much storage space. So here's the next best thing.<br />
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One of the articles that I found interesting was a profile on the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=jVMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA35&dq=william+f.+buckley&hl=en&ei=0M9gTtmVLIjksQLvxYQR&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Buckley family</a>. There's quite a bit of history in this article about this impressive clan. But I think I loved the pictures even more. I've always enjoyed pictures of the Kennedys at home. But there's something messier about the Buckleys that I find very refreshing. I've included a couple of photos here from Life images at Google. I just can't imagine Jack Kennedy allowing himself to look as goofy (and human) as William F. Buckley does. He looks like he's really having fun--not just posing. Enjoy.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL9wD9HJ-DAp_jpk-Mu2rXJwcEB5u9TaaHffBm_dfQE_u4txE1_1TfdX0W34MBYq1mRysrkZTkrA-pKPVzEnxC5RVvhbUMpR_xFj2qkXMqMWyQvQ1KowE2aEppy9v-D1EbR2e9hDQxu0VQ/s1600/Buckley+Football.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dda="true" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL9wD9HJ-DAp_jpk-Mu2rXJwcEB5u9TaaHffBm_dfQE_u4txE1_1TfdX0W34MBYq1mRysrkZTkrA-pKPVzEnxC5RVvhbUMpR_xFj2qkXMqMWyQvQ1KowE2aEppy9v-D1EbR2e9hDQxu0VQ/s320/Buckley+Football.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhItRDUvGmxLc1EjR3v6e9BJR7WXYau7g58ywq5ARgo5zN4sEhwnUVMXFyFy1Hb9y90hT_fR9KliiHPNF65r5SmxxRSKj5SausCzGIvimO0HIG5jY4duSrSOyOZIplkLmlUz_HdvcArkNhL/s1600/Buckley+Football+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dda="true" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhItRDUvGmxLc1EjR3v6e9BJR7WXYau7g58ywq5ARgo5zN4sEhwnUVMXFyFy1Hb9y90hT_fR9KliiHPNF65r5SmxxRSKj5SausCzGIvimO0HIG5jY4duSrSOyOZIplkLmlUz_HdvcArkNhL/s320/Buckley+Football+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I really like his sister, Priscilla, in the William F. sweatshirt. Can't imagine Pat Kennedy running around in a sweatshirt with Jack's picture on it.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-77692226555570744592011-12-05T14:37:00.000-06:002011-12-05T14:37:50.819-06:00"Something in the way she Says..."(Okay, so that was a bad use of the beginning of a great line. Sorry. But it came from a British artist, which is topical.)<br />
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There is something about the British Accent. My wife and I were watching <em>Four Weddings and Funeral</em> not long ago and my wife said something to the effect, "Do you notice how someone with a British accent can say the most awful, disgusting things and it still sounds elegant?" (This in reference to Mr. Grant's prolific use of the "F" word.)<br />
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But it's true. If you watch enough films with British characters (and they must be of a certain class as well...), you'll see what I'm saying. On the other hand, a lower-class British accent can make a prayer sound dirty (try watching a Guy Ritchie film).Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-27363416300953070172011-12-02T21:51:00.000-06:002011-12-02T21:51:05.479-06:00That Time of YearThe tree and decorations are up. The lights are on outside. Christmas music on the strings playing quietly in the background. The fire is dying down. The kids are in bed. (And it's only December 2nd!) I'll be honest, Christmas used to depress me. But after getting married and having kids has changed all of that. Now that our kids are old enough to get excited about Christmas, it's a bit infectious. I find myself not getting nauseous in department stores when I hear the Christmas muzak.<br />
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Of course, if I got to hang out with these two after my shopping, I think I would definitely feel better about the whole experience!<br />
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(Thanks to <a href="http://easyandelegantlife.com/" target="_blank">Easy and Elegant Life</a> for bringing these clips to my attention!)Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-37950777204898017542011-12-01T14:00:00.001-06:002013-02-19T14:14:49.701-06:00Responsible Privilege: A Rambling Rant?I've been spending a lot of time thinking, lately, about what it is about our culture that makes us do what we do. There has been a lot of analysis lately in the blogosphere about this Ivy League/Prep/WASPy culture. Most of the time, they are looking at the outward characteristics of this/these groups. But very little time is spent analyzing the dominate character traits. That's why I like <a href="http://mybighead04.blogspot.com/2011/11/nelson-w-aldrich-on-preppies.html" target="_blank">Aldrich's article</a> so much. He uses the superficial outward appearance to describe what is going on inside of us.<br />
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From my experience, the most admirable (some would say foolish) quality about our culture is a very high level of optimism. We take it for granted that we are going to be around for a long, long time. Even if we, as individuals, pass away, we take it as a given that our line will stay right where it is for generations. This is why we invest in property and possessions that will outlive us (and why we are less likely to "waste" our money on short-term investments and items). <br />
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When I buy a house, it's not simply my house. It is my son's house. It is my grandson's house (pardon the sexism--that's how I think). When I buy a watch (which I didn't do--I'm wearing my grandfather's), it doesn't just have to make it through the next couple of years. I've bought it for the future as well. Funny side note, but all of my grandfather's jewelry (watch and wedding band) is in white gold or silver. My father's (watch and wedding band) is all in yellow gold. Mine (watch and wedding band) is all white or silver. I suppose my son's will be all yellow. See my point?<br />
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Now some will take this as being egotistical--that we don't think we will ever lose our "power" (whatever that means). But I think it causes us to actually be more responsible with our resources (which may, in turn, be the reason we are able to hold onto our "power"). My resources are not my own. They belong to the future. This observation shouldn't be Earth-shattering. But I think that if you look around at a lot of folks in Our culture you'll find that it's true. <br />
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Many others will look at the idea of Privilege (having things given to one) as unfair. Now, if the Privilege came from under-handed dealings and the exploitation of others, I would agree. But Privilege in and of itself is not unfair. What is unfair is to lump every Privileged family together and label them. <br />
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Don't forget that, within this culture, Privilege comes also with a healthy dose of Responsibility. We do not really get to keep anything that we are given. We are Caretakers for the future. If anything, the Privilege becomes a burden, because we are called upon to maintain what our forefathers have handed down--if not add to it. (Please, don't read this as a complaint, merely a reality.) <br />
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But something has happened. A lot of families have lost touch with this idea of providing for the future. They have focused on the Privilege and forgotten about the Responsibility. These families are the ones in the papers with the wasteful, dissolute progeny getting photographed in less than flattering situations. Many families are wasting their Privilege and giving the quiet masses of Responsible families a black eye.<br />
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I think it's fair to say that this has always been the case to a certain extent. One could look at the annals of the past century in this country and find numerous examples of Irresponsible Privilege. Maybe the reason we are more aware of it today comes from an increase in the availability and speed of information dissemination. I'm not a sociologist--I don't pretend to have any answers.<br />
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But I do think that those who are still of the Responsible Privileged class should remember where that Privilege came from and where it should be going.<br />
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Do I <em>deserve</em> the Privilege I've been given? No. Have I done anything to <em>earn</em> this Privilege? No. Have I been <em>trained</em> to be a Caretaker of this Privilege? You better believe it. We are all born into a role that we have no control over. None of use <em>deserve</em> the role we're given. But it is our Responsibility to do the best we can with what we have and provide a <em>better</em> world for those who follow me.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-69727088860604884212011-11-30T15:02:00.000-06:002013-02-19T13:58:13.674-06:00Nelson W. Aldrich on PreppiesI totally ripped this off from <a href="http://www.ivy-style.com/" target="_blank">Ivy Style</a>. I just wanted to post it here, because I find it such a fascinating article, and I haven't been able to find it in this much entirety anywhere else. Thanks Christian!<br />
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“Preppies: The Last Upper Class?”<br />
By Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.<br />
<em>Atlantic Monthly</em>, January 1979 (excerpts)<br />
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“Preppie” is a catchall epithet to take the pace of words too worn or elaborate for everyday use, words such as privileged, ruling class, aristocrat, society woman, gentleman, and the rich. Ideological struggle is too shaming to talk about these days. Lifestyle rivalry is the new engine of history. In this sort of society, Preppies pass for an upper class.<span id="more-204"></span><br />
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There are two sorts of Preppies, the self-made and the hereditary. Hereditary Preppies will have a Preppie parent or two — a parent, that is, who went to a prep school. But the purest of the type will go to the same prep school as his parent.<br />
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Contrary to widespread belief, most students at prep schools are not hereditary Preppies.<br />
Historically, of course, most Preppies have been privileged WASPs. The Preppie ideal is therefore indelibly stamped with a certain privileged WASPishness.<br />
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WASPishness may be defined as a particular squeamishness. WASPs are readily revolted by the following facts of life: physical flabbiness, homosexuality, enthusiasm, Archies, cynicism, fearfulness, salesmanship, flamboyance, money, self-assertion.<br />
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More positively, WASPishness may be defined as a certain bravery in the face of other facts of life: disease, demonstrative women, impotent men, accident, disgrace, and physical hardship (especially when suffered, or inflicted, in the name of a civic virtue such as patriotism).<br />
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Whether or not they are in fact rich, all true Preppies act as if they were. But there are many ways of acting rich. Misers act rich by acting as if they were poor. Spendthrifts act rich by openly impoverishing themselves. Technicians of wealth merely get rich, by knowing how to use money. All these ways of being rich manifest a belief that riches are important. The Preppie way of being rich is to act as if riches had no importance at all.<br />
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Preppies are not abnormally obtuse. They know that people are generally valued according to the work they do, and that the work they do is generally valued according to the money that’s paid for it. Nevertheless, all prep schools and many Preppie parents go to some lengths to cultivate in their charges an unfeigned indifference to money. The indifference will be either high-minded or careless. High-minded indifference leads to ambitions of public service, in which case the Preppie may easily attain a place in the top 5 percent income bracket. Careless indifference leads to careers in arts, letters, and leisure, in which case the Preppie’s indifference will soon be tested by poverty. Usually he flunks the test, and ends up putting a very un-Preppie-like value on money.<br />
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Inherited wealth is widely believed to offer the best base from which to cultivate high-mindedness or carelessness with respect to money. This is correct, as a general rule. It is a great mistake to conclude, however, that all high-minded and careless Preppies are hypocrites enjoying the benefits of their trust funds while also enjoying feelings of warm superiority over their rivals, the striving City Kids or the anxious Archies.<br />
In the first place, while wealth does not confer Preppieness, prep schools do, and attendance at a prep school is expensive, around $5,000 a year.<br />
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Like all ideals, the Preppie ideal represents a collective yearning; with respect to money, it is a yearning for a triumph — of class over income, of grace over works, of being over doing. The City Kid, of course, represents a yearning for more worldly triumphs. Archies worry too much to yearn for anything but peace.<br />
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Preppie clothing is so uniform that it betrays a group consciousness as distinct as that of investment bankers or <em>arriviste</em> Arabs. A list of articles in the Preppie wardrobe would be tedious, but the following are some of the more familiar items: LL Bean boots, Top-Sider moccasins, tasseled loafers; pure wool socks, black silk socks, no socks; baggy chinos, baggy brick-red or lime or yellow or pink or Pulitzer trousers, baggy Brooks Brothers trousers, baggy boxer underpants; shirts of blue, pink, yellow, or striped Oxford, sometimes buttoned down, some made for a collar pin, usually from Brooks or J. Press or The [name of town or college] Shop; jackets of tweed, corduroy, poplin, seersucker with padless shoulders, a loose fit around the waist, and (if tweed) a muddy pattern; a shapeless muddy-patterned tweed overcoat, its collar lopsidedly rolled up under one ear, a shapeless beige raincoat bleached by years of use and irresistant to rain; no hat, a cross country ski cap, a very old snap-brimmed felt hat, a very old tennis hat.<br />
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Thus the male preppie wardrobe.<br />
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It is true that Preppie women are alone in all the world in their devotion to Fair Isle sweaters, while Preppie men are alone only in their devotion to a particular ensemble. Nevertheless, the most remarkable aspect of Preppie attire is that males and females, lacking any difference in size or form, could help themselves to each other’s clothes without any embarrassment whatsoever.<br />
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There are peculiarities of fit in the Preppie costume. On Brooks Brothers trousers, for example, the crotch invariably floats midway between the Preppie crotch and the Preppie kneecaps. Alternatively, the trouser crotch is where it belongs, near the Preppie crotch; but in that event, the trouser cuff will float midway between the Preppie instep and the Preppie calf. The reason for this characteristic float is that at fittings, Preppies always repel too intimate a calculation of the inseam length of their trousers.<br />
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Preppies are made squeamish by other aspects and articles of clothing, too. They never wear anything made of acrylic fibers, or double knit. They always eschew the display of any totemic figure on their sport shirts, unless, at the farthest limit of the permissible, it’s their own country club’s totem. An alligator worn on the breast of an otherwise Preppie-looking fellow indicates either an incomplete emergence from Archieness or an imminent collapse into it.<br />
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Like bankers and Arabs, Preppies occasionally enjoy stepping out of sartorial type. When they do, it is with exquisite prudence and calculation. With regard to clothing, as with most human performances, the Preppie is a connoisseur of marginal differences. The most vital difference is the one he guards between himself and the Archies. Yet Archies, unlike the vaguely Italianate City Kids, have no distinctive uniform for Preppies to avoid. Fortunately, however, there are certain costumes they would never wear. An Archie would never dress like a farmworker or a lobsterman, for example, or a City of Londonman either in the city or enjoying a four-day weekend. Thus, Preppie deviations always run in vaguely aristocratic directions, toward nature’s noblemen or what he thinks of as Europe’s. Preppie women are even more cautious in their deviations, always wearing a modest pin or earrings with their jeans.<br />
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The Preppie’s connoisseurship is most rigorously tested when he is still in prep school or college, for then he must decide what to wear as a Preppie among other Preppies. For this audience, most Preppies select margins of differentness so subtle as to be invisible to anyone else. This intense rivalry of small differences is experienced by almost all real Preppies as oppressive; only would-be Preppies or late converts engage in it happily. Yet the oppressiveness has one great virtue; it provides the necessary circumstances against which a few Preppies may act out thrilling dramas of costume rebellion. And the fact that most prep schools still enforce dress codes, albeit less rigorously than do banks or construction firms, contributes a whiff of real peril to the fun.<br />
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With respect to most other aspects of appearance — straightness of teeth, of nose, healthy complexion, and so on — Preppies are no longer distinguished, if they ever were. A more general prosperity has put these good things in the grasp of all but the poor. But with respect to the appearance of youthfulness, Preppies still cling to an advantage over their life-style (or, if you will, class) rivals. So important to Preppies is the obligation to seem young that two of the most egregious qualities of their costume are contrived to that end. One is the amazing stability of the Preppie style, which, having changed scarcely at all in forty years, enables Preppies to wear in middle and old age the inimitable clothing of their youth. The second is the odd Preppie palette. Preppies of all ages and both sexes demonstrate an unwavering taste for luminescent pastels and hard primary colors, a taste evidently designed to evoke the infantile gaiety of the nursery or the youthful certainties of Playskool.<br />
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Preppies are not the only class of people in society to acknowledge the value of charm, but they’re the only ones to cultivate it. Preppies work on their charm the way City Kids work on their wits, and the way Archies work on their golf game.<br />
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Preppies tend to think of their charms as virtues. Perhaps they are some of them. It is virtuous, for example, to put people at their ease, which is what many of the Preppie charms aim to do. Still, Preppies think of their charms as “working” or “not working,” and this is not the way people ordinarily think of virtues such as goodness or courage. The Preppie charms, then, include discretion, modesty, self-restraint, deference, gratitude and grace. All grow out of the principal characteristics of prep-school life, its harshness, competitiveness, and unending publicity, its hierarchies of winners and losers, and its quality of constant performance.<br />
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<em>Discretion</em>. In social situations, Preppies seem to be guided less by their intelligence than City Kids are, and less by convention than Archies. They move instinctively, and the instinct most alive in them is discretion.<br />
Discretion is alertness. The Preppie is exquisitely alert to the most delicate reverberations of his own impact on a social situation, and of everyone else’s. Discretion is a sense of occasion. Preppies mete out their feelings and thoughts and gestures in discreet performances, chosen and shaped for their appropriateness like a daub on a pointillist’s brush.<br />
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<em>Modesty</em>. The essence of Preppie charm, to those who aren’t wholly contemptuous of it, is that it is disarming. It’s meant to be. Preppies know that they are seen as privileged and on that account are envied. Much Preppie charm, especially modesty, is calculated to disarm envy.<br />
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Modesty is the economy of egotism. Its first rule is to honor the claims of others to a share of the audience’s time, if only so that they may make fools of themselves. Its second rule is to be aware that in the perspective of history (with which the Preppie fancies himself on special terms), all feats are soon undone, surpassed, or shown to have had evil consequences. Thus Preppie modesty downplays all accomplishments, not just one’s own.<br />
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<em>Deference</em>. Deference is the ghost of chivalry that hides in every Preppie’s closet. It is learned at boarding school through the experience of unremitting subordination — to the headmaster, to the faculty, and to boys and girls older and better than you.<br />
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Deference, moreover, is not only an expression of eager subordination; it also expresses a faith that society may really and truly be composed of hierarchies of excellence, that America is a landscape of natural pyramids. Thus, a son who shows deference to his father, or a student to his teachers, or an associate to his senior partners, or an adviser to the President of the United States, is not only granting to paternity, knowledge, seniority, or high office the authority that in the Preppie view they deserve; he is also reinforcing his belief that paternity, knowledge, seniority, and high office still continue as the chief organizing principles of society. Therefore, deference is a Preppie charm in the quite literal sense that it makes the world seem a place in which Preppies get what they deserve, and where those who get more than others do deserve deference as well.<br />
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<em>Gratitude</em>. The wealth of the Preppie is measured in “contacts,” not in bank accounts. Some of them come to believe that contacts count for everything in the world, in which case gratitude is the essential element in their Preppie modesty. None of them ever believes, or is ever allowed to believe, that “he made it on his own.” Archies and City Kids can be self-made men; Preppies can only be grateful.<br />
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<em>Grace</em>. Of all the Preppie charms, grace is the hardest to achieve. Grace is what separates princes from frogs and hobgoblins (or Preppies from Archies and City Kids). Grace is a sign of legitimacy; Grace is the ultimate favor in the gift of the Great Contact on High.<br />
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With the charm of grace, the Preppie enters the very heaven of social ideals. All his other charms are distinctive and difficult and rare. But gracefulness in word and deed, <em>sprezzatura</em>, <em>désinvolture</em>, nonchalance, a manner that embraces carelessness, negligence and arrogance, a manner that’s languid and easy, proud and indifferent, reckless and uncalculating — such a charm lifts the Preppie from time-bound figment of social imagination to myth. Which naturally enough, is where he’d like to be.<br />
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With the charm of grace, the Preppie is the envy of the world, a reminder of the strange workings of Fortune, which is unmoved by solicitations, prayers, merit, intelligence, violence, or any of the other things that people usually have to rely on to get ahead in the world. To Archies and City Kids, the graceful Preppie is a rebuke to effort, a living portent of the fundamental injustice of the universe.<br />
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For the Preppie, on the other hand, gracefulness is less a gift than a standard, something to measure up to, a performance. The delight of the thing comes from the knowledge that it’s all contrived, that the effect of effortlessness requires a good deal of strain, that negligence requires attention, that indifference requires concentration, that simplicity and naturalness require affectation. The most delicious “in” joke of Preppiedom is the anxiety everyone feels about being carefree.<br />
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Life after prep school is for most Preppies a lengthy process of learning the dead spots in the various auditoriums where they’re called upon to perform. Not only are whole groups of people — policemen and bureaucrats, for example — unmoved by their charms, almost everyone fails to be charmed at one time or another.<br />
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One explanation for these failures is that Preppies often operate from an inadequate theory of social life, according to which the division of society into Preppies, Archies and City Kids corresponds to older triparite divisions such as aristocrats, bourgeois, and commoners, or capitalists, managers, and proletarians, and these divisions are fixed. In this scheme of things charm is a quality of manners, and manners are a dramatization of differences in status, and status is a perfectly intelligible matter of one’s place in the social structure. Thus everyone has manners and charm, so long as everyone stays in his place. Moreover, everyone’s place is such that within his own class there will always be someone above and below him, so that no one will be deprived of the gratifications of subservience, and the pleasures of mastery. This theory, if believe in and acted upon, causes the whole auditorium to go dead.<br />
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A more adequate theory for the effective exercise of Preppie charm is one that sees society in the image of a cruise ship. The ship has a number of classes of accommodation, which have no congruence with the Preppie, City Kid and Archie classes. The theory recognizes, moreover, that a substantial minority of the passengers do not feel comfortable in their assigned accommodations. Accordingly, for as long as the cruise continues, there’s a good deal of running around as the people push, work and bribe their way into cabins where they think they belong.<br />
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How the Preppie acts on the basis of this theory depends on whether he decides to stay in his cabin or join the others running around all over the ship. Many Preppies never emerge from their suites, but pass away the time giving parties. These deploy their charms on each other, and are consequently soon bored. Other Preppies, remembering their prep school competitiveness, “get out there and fight,” “join in,” and soon begin running around the ship looking for better quarters of their own. These Preppies learn quickly to think of their charms not as semaphore of a status already arrived at, but as tools with which to acquire status, or to defend it once acquired.<br />
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So far the theories assume an intelligible society. What happens when it ceases to be intelligible? Now everyone is running around looking for better quarters. Now the scene has none of the qualities of a contest, with formal boundaries, agreed-upon rules, and recognizable trophies. Now everyone keeps score in his own way, counting two units of happiness as the equivalent of one million dollars, or good health as the equivalent of a son in medical school, or a house in the country as the equivalent of a satisfying job. Now the great group competitions break up, too, as Preppies and City Kids find the game too complicated to play anymore. As this happens, the conflict becomes unmanageable, at once limitless and instantaneous, like an endless series of random murders in the corridors. What good is Preppie charm in a society like that?<br />
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The answer is that Preppie charm must then become frankly a branch of situational theater, with this difference: Theatrical workers never aim to deceive, only to create an illusion that everyone knows to be an illusion. Charm-workers do aim to deceive. Their lives depend on it. They create order and status by creating an audience. In the new world of the free-for-all, Preppies many have a better chance even than City Kids, for they’re nothing if not trained for performances.<br />
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There were once two readily distinguishable sets of Preppie ideals.<br />
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One set was preached and occasionally practiced at those schools that had been established on the model of the English public schools. They were known as the “St. Grotlesex” schools. The chief characteristic of St. Grotlesex idealism was that it was self-consciously aristocratic. The good life was a life of service and of heroism, preferably in war but if necessary in one of its moral equivalents. The text adumbrating these ideals were to be found in the more martial passages of the Old Testament, especially the story of David before he became king, and in Malory and Tennyson. An aristocratic kind of egalitarianism was preached, as when people feel about each other, “Why, you’re as good as I am.” And this style affected to despise the acquisitive life in all its forms, except the collection of beautiful objects.<br />
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The second set of ideals — preached and occasionally practiced at schools such as Exeter, Choate, Hotchkiss and Milton — was more bourgeois than aristocratic, more Congregational or Unitarian than Episcopal, more New England than old, more industrial Victorian than sentimental Victorian. It seldom preached the doctrine of service, except in the utilitarian sense that he helps all who helps himself, and instead of the heroism of battle, it emphasized the heroism of hard work. Self-consciously democratic, it encouraged the sort of egalitarianism that says, “I’m as good as you are.” Though these schools were as scholastic in tone as the St. Grotlesex ones were athletic, they produced as few intellectuals and perhaps even fewer artists. The acquisitive spirit was held, if not in honor, then certainly in respect.<br />
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In the past 10 or 15 years [1964-1969], under the influence of coeducation, the commingling of students of different backgrounds, and the attrition of the older teachers and headmasters, there has been a certain convergence of the two sets of idealism. And with the convergence it has become difficult, as it never was a generation or two ago, to tell <em>what</em> ideals, if any, are inculcated at prep schools. Among the students, there is a certain reaction against the relentless competitiveness of Preppie life, in the name of cooperation. And out of this reaction, some prep schools have tried to create an odd set of ideals compounded of Christian, Maoist and Rogerian elements that many of the students seem to find affecting, if not yet soothing.<br />
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Just discernible in this new Preppie idealism is a wish, barely disguised as a fear, that the era of economic growth may really be finished, and that a New Dark Age may be upon us. In that event, the prep schools might at last find their historic mission and in the fullness of time redeem the uselessness of their past. For in a world of rapidly diminishing resources, the prep schools — compact, highly organized, egalitarian societies that they might be — could finally become the models of the way we must all learn to live.Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2925717068055548839.post-18275007550717083892011-11-30T14:52:00.000-06:002013-02-19T09:12:42.113-06:00What's in My Big Head?In answer...not much. I've been trying, for some time, to define what it is I'm wanting to do with this blog--but it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Contrary to what many readers may think, this blog will not really be about me, my ego, or my rather large cranium. Instead, it's a repository for everything that interests me or strikes my fancy. So...instead of trying to put some pre-conceived limits on this thing...here we go...Old Knockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16770462562022563029noreply@blogger.com0