Last week I gave a review of Emily Post’s 1922 book Etiquette: in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home. In that, I shared a number of quotations. However, there was one passage that was too long to include with the review. I really like this passage and so thought it merited a blog article of its own. It describes how Emily Post believed ‘the perfect guest’ should behave. I find it aspirational because it is the type of lady I want to become and the character I seek to cultivate. She is warm, caring, selfless, charming, creative, ready to be playful but also dignified, above all motivated by love and so loved in response. As we grow towards becoming better women, I think the world would be a better place if we tried to include some of these characteristics.
‘The perfect guest not only tries to wear becoming clothes but tries to put on an equally becoming mental attitude. No one is ever asked out very much who is in the habit of telling people all the misfortunes and ailments she has experienced or witnessed, though the perfect guest listens with apparent sympathy to every one else’s. Another attribute of the perfect guest is never to keep people waiting. She is always ready for anything—or nothing. If a plan is made to picnic, she likes picnics above everything and proves her liking by enthusiastically making the sandwiches or the salad dressing or whatever she thinks she makes best. If, on the other hand, no one seems to want to do anything, the perfect guest has always a book she is absorbed in, or a piece of sewing she is engrossed with, or else beyond everything she would love to sit in an easy chair and do nothing.
She never for one moment thinks of herself, but of the other people she is thrown with. She is a person of sympathy always, and instantaneous discernment. She is good tempered no matter what happens, and makes the most of everything as it comes. At games she is a good loser, and a quiet winner. She has a pleasant word, an amusing story, and agreeable comment for most occasions, but she is neither gushing nor fulsome. She has merely acquired a habit, born of many years of arduous practise, of turning everything that looks like a dark cloud as quickly as possible for the glimmer of a silver lining.
She is as sympathetic to children as to older people; she cuts out wonderful paper dolls and soldier hats, always leisurely and easily as though it cost neither time nor effort. She knows a hundred stories or games, every baby and every dog goes to her on sight, not because she has any especial talent, except that one she has cultivated, the talent of interest in everyone and everything except herself. Few people know that there is such a talent or that it can be cultivated.
She has more than mere beauty; she has infinite charm, and she is so well born that she is charming to everyone. Her manner to a duke who happens to be staying in the house is not a bit more courteous than her manner to the kitchen-maid whom she chances to meet in the kitchen gardens whither she has gone with the children to see the new kittens; as though new kittens were the apex of all delectability!
She always calls the servants by name; always says “How do you do” when she arrives, “Good morning” while there, and “Good-by” when she leaves. And do they presume because of her “familiarity” when she remembers to ask after the parlor-maid’s mother and the butler’s baby? They wait on her as they wait on no one else who comes to the house—neither the Senator nor the Governor, nor his Grace of Overthere!
This ideal guest is an equally ideal hostess; the principle of both is the same. A ready smile, a quick sympathy, a happy outlook, consideration for others, tenderness toward everything that is young or helpless, and forgetfulness of self, which is not far from the ideal of womankind.’
Emily Post, Etiquette: in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home (1922)
Feminine Finishing School 