One of Mrs. Post’s minor characters, a certain young Struthers, also stands sharply out of her pages. She has caught him perfectly in that scene which she entitles “Informal Visiting Often Arranged by Telephone” (and a darn good name for it, too). We find him at the moment when he is calling up Millicent Gilding, and saying, “‘Are you going to be in this afternoon?’ She says, ‘Yes, but not until a quarter of six.’ He says, ‘Fine, I’ll come then.’ Or she says, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m playing bridge with Pauline--but I’ll be in tomorrow!’ He says, ‘All right, I’ll come tomorrow.’" Who, ah, who among us does not know a young Struthers?
As one delves deeper and deeper into Etiquette, disquieting thoughts come. That old Is-It-Worth-It Blues starts up again, softly, perhaps, but plainly. Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness. The letters and the conversations of the correct, as quoted by Mrs. Post, seem scarcely worth the striving for. The rules for the finding of topics of conversation fall damply on the spirit. “You talk of something you have been doing or thinking about--planting a garden, planning a journey, contemplating a journey, or similar safe topics. Not at all a bad plan is to ask advice: “‘We want to motor through the South. Do you know about the roads?’ Or, ‘I’m thinking of buying a radio. Which make do you think is best?’"
I may not dispute Mrs. Post. If she says that is the way you should talk, then, indubitably, that is the way you should talk. But though it be at the cost of that future social success I am counting on, there is no force great enough ever to make me say, “I’m thinking of buying a radio.”
It is restful, always, in a book of many rules--and Etiquette has six hundred and eighty-four pages of things you must and mustn’t do--to find something that can never touch you, some law that will never affect your ways. . . .
And in Etiquette, too, I had the sweetly restful moment of chancing on a law which I need not bother to memorize, let come no matter what. It is in that section called “The Retort Courteous to One You Have Forgotten,” although it took a deal of dragging to get in under that head. “If,” it runs, “after being introduced to you, Mr. Jones” (of course it would be Mr. Jones that would do it) “calls you by a wrong name, you let it pass, at first, but if he persists you may say: ‘If you please, my name is Stimson.’"
No, Mrs. Post; persistent though Mr. Smith be, I may not say, “If you please, my name is Stimson.” The most a lady may do is give him the wrong telephone number.
Dorothy Parker's review of Emily Post's Etiquette was first published in The New Yorker magazine on December 31, 1927.
