Good Form, according to the Century Dictionary, signifies conformity to the conventionalities and usages of society; also, in a more comprehensive sense, propriety. That is, propriety or fitness in general — fitness of action and of condition, physical and mental. There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything — a right and a wrong condition of all states of being. To be healthy in mind and body is good form.
"Good form is the manifestation of good breeding. Its scope embraces the whole conduct of life. The conventional element of good form is based upon the varying customs of society; its ethical element rests upon those changeless laws which define the moral obligation of the individual to his fellow man and to the community at large."
Whilst it is possible for a person lacking in the essentials of good form to assume a veneer of politeness that may pass current among superficial observers for sufficient mark of the gentlewoman, true good form is based upon certain essential qualities of the heart, without which it is as a body without a soul, a temple without worshippers, an envelope without an enclosure — it is, in short, the form without the substance.
Mere conformity to the rules of etiquette is of comparatively little consequence. Many a milkmaid, with homely exterior, possesses more of the essentials of a lady than does Mrs. Flam Boyant, with surface polish and innate ill-nature. It has been said that "it takes three generations to make a gentleman." The thought underlying the aphorism is that breeding is necessary to the production of the stable qualities that form the foundation of the character of a gentleman. Training in one generation, becomes habit in the next, and temperament in the third.
True good form must be temperamental. Proper action must spring from proper feeling. The essential condition, then, is that of a sane mind in a sound body. This is largely a matter of heredity, but a splendid heritage may be neglected and even ruined, and an indifferent one may be cherished and developed. The son of a gentleman may become a blackguard, and the daughter of a dairyman may develop into a lovable and polished lady.
It is desirable — necessary, in fact — that a girl should be conversant with the conventionalities of society, but more important that she should cultivate the kindly virtues from which they spring. One is a practical assurance of the other. The woman whose heart is in the right place can never be vulgar. She may commit a trifling solecism, but she will never make a cruel speech. She may eat her entree with a knife, but she will not wound her friend. She may remove her gloves in a ballroom, but she will not scold her servants. Three of the most vulgar acts that have ever come within my experience were committed by women in so-called "high society." Mile. Scudery, in her description of Madame de Sevigne, sketches, with a few strong strokes of the pen, a picture of an admirable woman: "Graceful without affectation, witty without malice, gay without folly, modest without restraint, and virtuous without severity." Simplicity is the keynote of true refinement; simplicity in speech, simplicity in behaviour, simplicity in dress; and all of these emanate from simplicity in thought. When the mind has been trained to habitual right thinking, the result is instinctive right action. The safest guide to proper conduct is the golden rule. You can not go far wrongif you treat others as you would have them treat you. The true gentlewoman is distinguished by her cheery good-will and her readiness to sacrifice her inclinations to the pleasure and comfort of others. These traits should always be prominent in a young girl and especially so where her elders are concerned. The home circle is the natural field for the cultivation of the social virtues, but, sad to say, it is frequently the least favorable. The responsibilities of parents and their opportunities are never so great as during the early years of their children. From the time it learns to lisp, the little one may be taught kindliness and courtesy. The lessons so learnt are the easiest and most effective of our lives. What is impressed upon us then becomes second nature. Its acquisition is almost an unconscious process and its application almost a spontaneous one. The mother who neglects the opportunity afforded by the plastic period of her child's life is not only wronging her offspring, but also denying herself one of the best mediums of self-education.
My young friend, I will impart to you a secret which would surely be revealed to you with more mature experience, although, perhaps, too late to avail. It is that the cultivation of happiness is the surest means to social success. The sunny disposition makes the strongest appeal to our fancy. We are warmed by it and attracted to its possessor. It is infectious and therein lies its chief social value. The happy woman is sought as a companion, as a guest and as — a wife. Her galvanic influence is felt round the dinner table; it radiates through the drawing-room; it relieves the dullest reception.
Do not make the mistake of imagining, because a few persons, who are elevated upon a pedestal of pelf, choose to affect a sombre, blase demeanour, that it is consonant with true good form. In the main, society is sensible. Its principal element is the great number of educated, well-bred people, the rapidly forming middle-class, that is representative of the best that is in the American nation. It is as distinct from the frivolous few as it is from the riff-raff. Society, then, does not countenance any sham. It respects simplicity and goodness, and it recognizes happiness as the very salt of life. "We ought," says Sir John Lubbock, "to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others." Cultivate happiness and all that makes for it. Form the habit of creating what Ruskin calls "nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea, indeed, but safe beyond all others. Do you know what fairy palaces you may build of beautiful thoughts, proof against all adversity? Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us — houses built without hands for our souls to live in."
Most important among the factors of happiness are the altruistic qualities of sympathy, good-temper and tact. It might be said with almost exact truth that the first embraces the others. At least it is hardly possible that they can be altogether absent from it. The Italians use the word simpatica to imply the possession of almost all the kindly virtues. Unselfish and unfailing sympathy has, indeed, the most powerful and most pervasive influence. It is more attractive than beauty, or intellect, and, unlike these, it is within the capacity of any woman. By the suppression of egoism and the cultivation of interest in others we shall surely develop the quality of sympathy in ourselves.
Good temper — the revelation of a sweet disposition — is practically inseparable from sympathy, and, like it, is attainable by effort. The habitual optimistic attitude, readiness to condone the faults of others, patience and a sense of humor — these will ensure it. Tact is the helmsman in the social sea. It is that delicate, intuitive sense that enables one to appreciate the feelings and position of another. It prompts us to do and say the right thing in the right place and at the right time. Tact is the active principle of sympathy. The lack of it is a serious handicap to many an otherwise admirable and lovable woman. Who does not know the tactless individual — her name is legion — who, in sheer goodheartedness, forces her condolence upon the stricken soul in the first agony of its grief, or she who, with perfectly good intent constantly embarrasses you with malapropos remarks. Such unfortunates are sincerely to be pitied, for they often carry a cargo of sterling worth that fails of its destination only for lack of the guiding hand of tact.
I have dwelt upon these points because they are of vital importance. The qualities we have discussed are the essentials of good-breeding, and good form, in its conventional acceptance, is but the manifestation of them. The process of cultivation, to be effective, must be directed towards the development of these basic qualities. All else is a subsidiary, but natural, outgrowth of them. The forms of etiquette are but the expression of good-will, not the feeling itself, but their value depends upon the existence of the feeling. We realize this at every moment of our lives. Who does not appreciate the difference between the cold and perfunctory greeting and the same words delivered with a warm smile, between the hand that suggests the fin of a fish and the pressure that bespeaks genuine pleasure? Burke said, referring to manners: "According to their quality they aid morals, and they supply them or they totally destroy them." The politeness that is the outcome of genuine good feeling is spontaneous and does not involve that self-consciousness which is destructive of good manners. As Archbishop Whately remarked: "To be always thinking of your manners is not the way to make them good; because the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself." No surer way of attaining this perfection can be found than by the cultivation of happiness, sympathy, charity, and good-nature.
"Evil communications corrupt good manners" is a quotation no less true than trite. Familiar contact with coarse and boorish persons can hardly fail to create rudeness. On the other hand, the companionship of genial and well-bred people will certainly foster the better qualities. The importance of discrimination in this respect is not always patent to young girls. They are very apt to let considerations of little consequence weigh in the selection of their friends, and if, indeed, they exercise any discrimination in the matter, the distinctly rejective process is seldom employed. In other words, whilst they make deliberate effort to secure the friendship of some, they seldom display an equally definite purpose in the avoidance of intimacy with others. Many mothers are insufficiently alive to the necessity of discretion in this matter. Daughters are generally allowed the greatest freedom in the selection of their companions, frequently with dire results. The most attractive personality to an inexperienced girl may be one that proves most injurious to her welfare.
Manners no longer receive the attention in our schools that they did in the good old dames' schools of our grandmothers' days, when the bills would contain a charge for teaching "manners and deportment." Happily the advantages of physical culture are more widely recognized than ever before.
"Good form is the manifestation of good breeding. Its scope embraces the whole conduct of life. The conventional element of good form is based upon the varying customs of society; its ethical element rests upon those changeless laws which define the moral obligation of the individual to his fellow man and to the community at large."
Whilst it is possible for a person lacking in the essentials of good form to assume a veneer of politeness that may pass current among superficial observers for sufficient mark of the gentlewoman, true good form is based upon certain essential qualities of the heart, without which it is as a body without a soul, a temple without worshippers, an envelope without an enclosure — it is, in short, the form without the substance.Mere conformity to the rules of etiquette is of comparatively little consequence. Many a milkmaid, with homely exterior, possesses more of the essentials of a lady than does Mrs. Flam Boyant, with surface polish and innate ill-nature. It has been said that "it takes three generations to make a gentleman." The thought underlying the aphorism is that breeding is necessary to the production of the stable qualities that form the foundation of the character of a gentleman. Training in one generation, becomes habit in the next, and temperament in the third.
True good form must be temperamental. Proper action must spring from proper feeling. The essential condition, then, is that of a sane mind in a sound body. This is largely a matter of heredity, but a splendid heritage may be neglected and even ruined, and an indifferent one may be cherished and developed. The son of a gentleman may become a blackguard, and the daughter of a dairyman may develop into a lovable and polished lady.
It is desirable — necessary, in fact — that a girl should be conversant with the conventionalities of society, but more important that she should cultivate the kindly virtues from which they spring. One is a practical assurance of the other. The woman whose heart is in the right place can never be vulgar. She may commit a trifling solecism, but she will never make a cruel speech. She may eat her entree with a knife, but she will not wound her friend. She may remove her gloves in a ballroom, but she will not scold her servants. Three of the most vulgar acts that have ever come within my experience were committed by women in so-called "high society." Mile. Scudery, in her description of Madame de Sevigne, sketches, with a few strong strokes of the pen, a picture of an admirable woman: "Graceful without affectation, witty without malice, gay without folly, modest without restraint, and virtuous without severity." Simplicity is the keynote of true refinement; simplicity in speech, simplicity in behaviour, simplicity in dress; and all of these emanate from simplicity in thought. When the mind has been trained to habitual right thinking, the result is instinctive right action. The safest guide to proper conduct is the golden rule. You can not go far wrongif you treat others as you would have them treat you. The true gentlewoman is distinguished by her cheery good-will and her readiness to sacrifice her inclinations to the pleasure and comfort of others. These traits should always be prominent in a young girl and especially so where her elders are concerned. The home circle is the natural field for the cultivation of the social virtues, but, sad to say, it is frequently the least favorable. The responsibilities of parents and their opportunities are never so great as during the early years of their children. From the time it learns to lisp, the little one may be taught kindliness and courtesy. The lessons so learnt are the easiest and most effective of our lives. What is impressed upon us then becomes second nature. Its acquisition is almost an unconscious process and its application almost a spontaneous one. The mother who neglects the opportunity afforded by the plastic period of her child's life is not only wronging her offspring, but also denying herself one of the best mediums of self-education.
My young friend, I will impart to you a secret which would surely be revealed to you with more mature experience, although, perhaps, too late to avail. It is that the cultivation of happiness is the surest means to social success. The sunny disposition makes the strongest appeal to our fancy. We are warmed by it and attracted to its possessor. It is infectious and therein lies its chief social value. The happy woman is sought as a companion, as a guest and as — a wife. Her galvanic influence is felt round the dinner table; it radiates through the drawing-room; it relieves the dullest reception.
Do not make the mistake of imagining, because a few persons, who are elevated upon a pedestal of pelf, choose to affect a sombre, blase demeanour, that it is consonant with true good form. In the main, society is sensible. Its principal element is the great number of educated, well-bred people, the rapidly forming middle-class, that is representative of the best that is in the American nation. It is as distinct from the frivolous few as it is from the riff-raff. Society, then, does not countenance any sham. It respects simplicity and goodness, and it recognizes happiness as the very salt of life. "We ought," says Sir John Lubbock, "to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others." Cultivate happiness and all that makes for it. Form the habit of creating what Ruskin calls "nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea, indeed, but safe beyond all others. Do you know what fairy palaces you may build of beautiful thoughts, proof against all adversity? Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us — houses built without hands for our souls to live in."
Most important among the factors of happiness are the altruistic qualities of sympathy, good-temper and tact. It might be said with almost exact truth that the first embraces the others. At least it is hardly possible that they can be altogether absent from it. The Italians use the word simpatica to imply the possession of almost all the kindly virtues. Unselfish and unfailing sympathy has, indeed, the most powerful and most pervasive influence. It is more attractive than beauty, or intellect, and, unlike these, it is within the capacity of any woman. By the suppression of egoism and the cultivation of interest in others we shall surely develop the quality of sympathy in ourselves.
Good temper — the revelation of a sweet disposition — is practically inseparable from sympathy, and, like it, is attainable by effort. The habitual optimistic attitude, readiness to condone the faults of others, patience and a sense of humor — these will ensure it. Tact is the helmsman in the social sea. It is that delicate, intuitive sense that enables one to appreciate the feelings and position of another. It prompts us to do and say the right thing in the right place and at the right time. Tact is the active principle of sympathy. The lack of it is a serious handicap to many an otherwise admirable and lovable woman. Who does not know the tactless individual — her name is legion — who, in sheer goodheartedness, forces her condolence upon the stricken soul in the first agony of its grief, or she who, with perfectly good intent constantly embarrasses you with malapropos remarks. Such unfortunates are sincerely to be pitied, for they often carry a cargo of sterling worth that fails of its destination only for lack of the guiding hand of tact.
I have dwelt upon these points because they are of vital importance. The qualities we have discussed are the essentials of good-breeding, and good form, in its conventional acceptance, is but the manifestation of them. The process of cultivation, to be effective, must be directed towards the development of these basic qualities. All else is a subsidiary, but natural, outgrowth of them. The forms of etiquette are but the expression of good-will, not the feeling itself, but their value depends upon the existence of the feeling. We realize this at every moment of our lives. Who does not appreciate the difference between the cold and perfunctory greeting and the same words delivered with a warm smile, between the hand that suggests the fin of a fish and the pressure that bespeaks genuine pleasure? Burke said, referring to manners: "According to their quality they aid morals, and they supply them or they totally destroy them." The politeness that is the outcome of genuine good feeling is spontaneous and does not involve that self-consciousness which is destructive of good manners. As Archbishop Whately remarked: "To be always thinking of your manners is not the way to make them good; because the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself." No surer way of attaining this perfection can be found than by the cultivation of happiness, sympathy, charity, and good-nature.
"Evil communications corrupt good manners" is a quotation no less true than trite. Familiar contact with coarse and boorish persons can hardly fail to create rudeness. On the other hand, the companionship of genial and well-bred people will certainly foster the better qualities. The importance of discrimination in this respect is not always patent to young girls. They are very apt to let considerations of little consequence weigh in the selection of their friends, and if, indeed, they exercise any discrimination in the matter, the distinctly rejective process is seldom employed. In other words, whilst they make deliberate effort to secure the friendship of some, they seldom display an equally definite purpose in the avoidance of intimacy with others. Many mothers are insufficiently alive to the necessity of discretion in this matter. Daughters are generally allowed the greatest freedom in the selection of their companions, frequently with dire results. The most attractive personality to an inexperienced girl may be one that proves most injurious to her welfare.
Manners no longer receive the attention in our schools that they did in the good old dames' schools of our grandmothers' days, when the bills would contain a charge for teaching "manners and deportment." Happily the advantages of physical culture are more widely recognized than ever before.
-- Mrs. Charles Harcourt
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