Complete Book of Etiquette

Last month I picked up a 1952 copy of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Gracious Living from the Covenant Presbyterian Rummage Sale. I was attending a meeting at Covenant and walked past the book table and this tattered copy jumped out at me. To be honest, I bought it for a joke or maybe a sermon illustration here and there. It has some real gems. There is a section on welcoming a new servant to the household, or how to rank the people at your dinner party in order of importance. The section on religious holidays is, for me, pretty darn funny for its outside-looking-in generalizations about Advent, Lent, etc. One dollar very well spent.

The more I read, the more I was reminded that from Amy Vanderbilt’s perspective this was all serious business. There were things happening behind the scenes of the dinner party or the way in which you welcomed people into the home that conveyed something foundational. In one section entitled Making Your Overnight Guest Feel At Home, Vanderbilt lays out the bare essentials a host should provide the guest. The list would put the Holiday Inn or Hilton to shame. Bathrobe and slippers, current magazines and a mystery novel, ash trays and a bed time snack on the bed table; these are the bare essentials. She goes on to list the contents of The Well-Appointed Guest Room which further convey that for Vanderbilt, the host was charged with caring for the needs of the guest whatever they may be including the shining of shoes or the occasional headache. Burden or blessing, it was important to show the guest welcome.

Many of my generation would laugh at Vanderbilt’s “no gray area” commands for gracious living. Myself included. Yet I wonder if we would be remiss if we didn’t recognize that behind the dos and don’ts there was something important about hospitality and how it wasn’t allowed to be a “gray area.” Guests or visitors never went unacknowledged, never walked around without a cup of coffee or someone asking to take their coat. Love them or hate them, a guest is a guest and hospitality was the only response. We could all stand to remember that. Myself included.