Etiquette for Ladies

Benedict Ambrose, who watched videos of graduation ceremonies the night before his own, told me that his attending his graduation in person was very important to his mother. 

History does not reveal if he told his mother that his attending his diploma graduation in person was very important to me. 

Happily, we both accepted with alacrity B.A.'s invitations to his graduation ceremony, were pleased that he received Distinction and, if possible, were even more pleased that he managed to climb the stairs, get across the stage with grace and not fall down when bopped on the head with a bonnet.  

Being bopped with a bonnet while graduating is a Scottish thing. (The bonnet is not a Little House on the Prairie ladies' bonnet but a tam o'shanter.)

I am very proud of B.A.'s years of diploma work, to which he stuck in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, and that he managed to finish his last course with honour, despite the new diagnosis, the radiotherapy, and the evil steroids. 

The ceremony--which I was rather dreading, having gone to a number of them, all very long--was surprisingly lighthearted and truly celebratory. There was an organist playing pop music, and there were screens flashing the photos and heartfelt messages of the graduands. There was a sense that a whole new world was opening up before them and that all their dreams would come true. 

These dreams, I reflected, were probably much more practical than those I spun when first I sat in Toronto's Convocation Hall. At the same time, however, I was delighted to see an elderly, stooped man shuffle across the stage to get his PhD in History. This was clearly the pet project of someone in later life, and good for him.

Having a lot of time on my hands, I asked myself if I still dreamed of a PhD, and the answer was no. I originally wanted to get into a PhD program, and I did, and then I wanted to teach at my theological alma mater, which I didn't. The PhD program was an obstacle to overcome, not something I wanted for itself. ("Just get your union card," Fr. Lonergan apparently said of persevering to a doctorate's end.) My goals for old age are financial freedom, the ability to climb up and down stairs, and the strength and wit to fight off whoever tries to put B.A. and/or me in a nursing home. 

During our celebratory lunch, I received a message that a baby very dear to my heart is ill. As it was all we could do, B.A. and I got off our train home a stop early and went to a Mass dedicated to her recovery. It was the Feast of St. Margaret of Scotland in Scotland, which for various reasons was apropos. 

We arrived early, and the priest handed me a book he had found and thought I would enjoy: Ward Lock & Co's 1930 Etiquette for Ladies. B.A. made a joke, the young men around chuckled, and I reflected that although it was once an insult to give a woman an etiquette book, I was delighted. It bridges the gap between Mrs Humphry's 1897 thoughts and those 1962 strictures of Mrs Maclean. 

Interestingly, it has nothing to say about comportment at dances except that the hostess should "stand just inside the ballroom, and with quiet dignity and charm is on the alert to receive the guests are they are announced by the servant" and that she "looks round and makes every possible effort to ensure her guests having a good time."

Servants are mentioned several times in this volume, and there is a long and complicated chapter about calling cards. If anyone is wondering what women with servants between 1800 and 1962 got up to all day, it was paying calls. Foodies weep over the decline of fine French (and Italian) home cooking by women's near-universal entrance into the workforce, but the visiting tradition was utterly pulverized. 

I cannot even imagine calling upon all the Edinburgh women of my acquaintance all morning. The bus rides would take longer than the calls themselves, and almost nobody would be at home. The ones who were home would probably be shocked to have a visitor turn up uninvited, and they might not have any biscuits in the house. 

That said, I like to imagine that there is still a set of Edinburgh women--so rich and socially remote as to be entirely unknown to me--trotting about the New Town and/or Morningside to drop off calling cards and drink cups of tea in elegant drawing-rooms.  

The photograph is of fine Scottish patisserie, which also featured in our very busy day. Scotland was once as famous as France in England for fine baking. When here, find a Fisher & Donaldson's if you can.