So says "A Guide to the Manners, Etiquette, and Deportment of the Most Refined Society," an 1879 best seller devoted to rules that "make social intercourse more agreeable, and facilitate hospitalities, when all members of society hold them as binding and faithfully regard their observance." Indeed. Social intercourse! How agreeable.
Rutherford B. Hayes – winner of an election not unlike the Gore/Bush 2000 contest – was president. Our 19th and a Republican (1877-1881). He was also the darling of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. No hootchy, no cootchy in D.C.
"Guide" – written by manners maven John H. Young – though 130 plus years old, is still a useful springboard (or pirate's plank) for establishing retrograde Rebiblican pomp and circumcision in the White House. (Say, if Santorum wins; or, when kneeling before God as god in the Oval Office, if Mitt wins.)
Of Refined Interest #1: (Prospective Visitors): "If the caller has no business, but goes out of curiosity, he pays his respects and withdraws to make room for others. It is better in making a private call, to secure the company of some official or some friend of the President to introduce you." Pat Robertson, perhaps.
Item #2 (Proper Attire): "At the New-Year's receptions, the most ceremonious occasion of the executive mansion, it is the custom of the ladies who attend to appear in the most elegant toilets suited to a morning reception." (Note: Toilet is fashionable attire. GOP men's room stalls back then were gaily festooned in red, white, and blue.)
"Members of foreign legations appear in the court dresses of their respective countries on this occasion, in paying their respects to the President of the United States." (Update: Air Force jumpsuits and/or burkas optional.)
Social arbiter Young offers a caveat: "In this country, where everybody possess one and the same title, that of a citizen of this Republic, no one can claim a superiority of rank and title" (Update: unless he or she is a born-again Christian.)
The Guide's protocol rules – originally applicable to the Queen of England and the Court of St. James – just might add a glow-in-the-dark aura to the excellency presidential kiss-kiss and offer a panoply of elbow-rubbing possibilities.
"The person to be presented to the President must provide himself or herself with a court costume, which for men consists partly of knee-breeches and hose for women of an ample court train." And keep your seams, er, straight, girls.
"Those of more democratic professions, such as solicitors, merchants and mechanics, have not as a rule that right of White House presentation, though wealth and connection have recently proved an Open Sesame." To Wall Street, no doubt.
Question for research: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Was Ali an Open Sesame Democrat or a Rebiblican? More to the point: could he tell a pickle fork from a pitch fork? (And use it?)
