“Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.” EMERSON.

The late Queen Victoria had a profound sense of the importance of manners and of certain conventionalities, and the singular gift of common sense, which stood for so much in her, stands also for the significance of those things on which she laid so much stress.

Conventionality has a bad name at present, and manners are on the decline, this is a fact quite undisputed. As to conventionalities it is assumed that they represent an artificial and hollow code, from the pressure of which all, and especially the young, should be emancipated. And it may well be that there is something to be said in favour of modifying them in fact it must be so, for all human things need at times to be revised and readapted to special and local conditions. To attempt to enforce the same code of conventions on human society in different countries, or at different stages of development, is necessarily artificial, and if pressed too far it provokes reaction, and in reaction we almost inevitably go to extreme lengths. So in reaction against too rigid conventionalities and a social ritual which was perhaps over-exacting, we are swinging out beyond control in the direction of complete spontaneity. And yet there is need for a code of conventions for some established defence against the instincts of selfishness which find their way back by a short cut to barbarism if they are not kept in check.

Civilized selfishness leads to a worse kind of barbarism than that of rude and primitive states of society, because it has more resources at its command, as cruelty with refinement has more resources for inflicting pain than cruelty which can only strike hard. Civilized selfishness is worse also in that it has let go of better things; it is not in progress towards a higher plane of life, but has turned its back upon ideals and is slipping on the down-grade without a check. We can see the complete expression of life without conventions in the unrestraint of “hooliganism” with us, and its equivalents in other countries. In this we observe the characteristic product of bringing up without either religion, or conventions, or teaching in good manners which are inseparable from religion. We see the demoralization of the very forces which make both the strength and the weakness of youth and a great part of its charm, the impetuosity, the fearlessness of consequence, the lightheartedness, the exuberance which would have been so strong for good if rightly turned, become through want of this right impetus and control not strong but violent, uncontrollable and reckless to a degree which terrifies the very authorities who are responsible for them, in that system which is bringing up children with nothing to hold by, and nothing to which they can appeal. Girls are inclined to go even further than boys in this unrestraint through their greater excitability and recklessness, and their having less instinct of self-preservation. It is a problem for the local authorities. Their lavish expenditure upon sanitation, adornment, and to use the favourite word “equipment” of their schools does not seem to touch it; in fact it cannot reach the real difficulty, for it makes appeal to the senses and neglects the soul, and the souls of children are hungry for faith and love and something higher to look for, beyond the well-being of to-day in the schools, and the struggle for life, in the streets, to-morrow.

It is not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home, wherever a child is growing up without control and “handling,” without the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being brought up, not so loud-voiced or so uncouth as the street-rough, but as much out of tune with goodness and honour, with as little to hold by and appeal to, as troublesome and dangerous either at home or in society, as uncertain and unreliable in a party or a ministry, and in any association that makes demand upon self-control in the name of duty.

This is very generally recognized and deplored, but except within the Church, which has kept the key to these questions, the remedy is hard to find. Inspectors of elementary schools have been heard to say that, even in districts where the Catholic school was composed of the poorest and roughest elements, the manners were better than those of the well-to-do children in the neighbouring Council schools. They could not account for it, but we can; the precious hour of religious teaching for which we have had to fight so hard, influences the whole day and helps to create the “Catholic atmosphere” which in its own way tells perhaps more widely than the teaching. Faith tells of the presence of God and this underlies the rest, while the sense of friendly protection, the love of Our Lady, the angels, and saints, the love of the priest who administers all that Catholic children most value, who blesses and absolves them in God’s name, all these carry them out of what is wretched and depressing in their surroundings to a different world in which they give and receive love and respect as children of God. No wonder their manners are gentler and their intercourse more disposed to friendliness, there is something to appeal to and uphold, something to love.

The Protestant Reformation breaking up these relations and all the ceremonial observance in which they found expression, necessarily produced deterioration of manners. As soon as anyone, especially a child, becomes not rightly but aggressively independent, argumentatively preoccupied in asserting that “I am as good as you are, and I can do without you” he falls from the right proportion of things, becomes less instead of greater, because he stands alone, and from this to warfare against all order and control the step is short. So it has proved. The principles of Protestantism worked out to the principles of the Revolution, and to their natural outcome, seen at its worst in the Reign of Terror and the Commune of 1871 in Paris.

Again the influence of the Church on manners was dominant in the age of chivalry. At that time religion and manners were known to be inseparable, and it was the Church that handled the rough vigour of her sons to make them gentle as knights. This is so well known that it needs no more than calling to mind, and, turning attention to the fact that all the handling was fundamental, it is handling that makes manners. Even the derivation of the word does not let us forget this manners from manieres, from manier, from main, from manus, the touch of the human hand upon the art of living worthily in human society, without offence and without contention, with the gentleness of a race, the gens, that owns a common origin, the urbanity of those who have learned to dwell in a city “compact together,” the respect of those who have some one to look to for approval and control, either above them in dignity, or beneath them in strength, and therefore to be considered with due reverence.

The handling began early in days of chivalry, no time was lost, because there would necessarily be checks on the way. Knighthood was far off, but it could not be caught sight of too early as an ideal, and it was characteristic of the consideration of the Church that, in the scheme of manners over which she held sway, the first training of her knights was intrusted to women. For women set the standard of manners in every age, if a child has not learnt by seven years old how to behave towards them it is scarcely possible for him to learn it at all, and it is by women only that it can be taught. The little damoiseaux would have perfect and accomplished manners for their age when they left the apartments of the ladies at seven years old; it was a matter of course that they would fall off a good deal in their next stage. They would become “pert,” as pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession of their knighthood. We have no longer the same formal and ceremonial training; it is not possible in our own times under the altered conditions of life, yet it commands attention for those who have at heart the future well-being of the boys and girls of to-day. The fundamental facts upon which manners are grounded remain the same. These are, some of them, worth consideration:

1. That manners represent a great deal more than mere social observances; they stand as the outward expression of some of the deepest springs of conduct, and none of the modern magic of philanthropy altruism, culture, the freedom and good-fellowship of democracy, replaces them, because, in their spirit, manners belong to religion.

2. That manners are a matter of individual training, so that they could never be learnt from a book. They can scarcely be taught, except in their simplest elements, to a class or school as a whole, but the authority which stands nearest in responsibility to each child, either in the home circle or at school, has to make a special study of it in order to teach it manners. The reason of this is evident. In each nature selfishness crops out on one side rather than another, and it is this which has to be studied, that the forward may be repressed, the shy or indolent stimulated, the dreamy quickened into attention, and all the other defective sides recognized and taken, literally, in hand, to be modelled to a better form.

3. That training in manners is not a short course but a long course of study, a work of patience on both sides, of gentle and most insistent handling on one side and of long endurance on the other. There are a very few exquisite natures with whom the grace of manners seems to be inborn. They are not very vigorous, not physically robust; their own sensitiveness serves as a private tutor or monitor to tell them at the right moment what others feel, and what they should say or do. They have a great gift, but they lay down their price for it, and suffer for others as well as in themselves more than their share. But in general, the average boy and girl needs a “daily exercise” which in most cases amounts to “nagging,” and in the best hands is only saved from nagging by its absence of peevishness, and the patience with which it reminds and urges and teases into perfect observance. The teasing thing, and yet the most necessary one, is the constant check upon the preoccupying interests of children, so that in presence of their elders they can never completely let themselves go, but have to be attentive to every service of consideration or mark of respect that occasion calls for. It is very wearisome, but when it has been acquired through laborious years there it is, like a special sense superadded to the ordinary endowments of nature, giving presence of mind and self-possession, arming the whole being against surprise or awkwardness or indiscretion, and controlling what has so long appeared to exercise control over it the conditions of social intercourse.

How shall we persuade the children of to-day that manners and conventions have not come to an end as part of the old regime which appears to them an elaborate unreality V It is exceedingly difficult to do so, at school especially, as in many cases their whole family consents to regard them as extinct, and only when startled at the over-growth of their girls’ unmannerly roughness and self-assertion they send them to school “to have their manners attended to”; but then it is too late. The only way to form manners is to teach them from the beginning as a part of religion, as indeed they are. Devotion to Our Lady will give to the manners both of boys and girls something which stamps them as Christian and Catholic, something above the world’s level. And, as has been so often pointed out, the Church’s ritual is the court ceremonial of the most perfect manners, in which every least detail has its significance, and applies some principle of inward faith and devotion to outward service.

If we could get to the root of all that the older codes of manners required, and even the conventionalities of modern life these remnants, in so far as they are based on the older codes it would be found that, as in the Church’s ceremonial, not one of them was without its meaning, but that all represented some principle of Christian conduct, even if they have developed into expressions which seem trivial. Human things tend to exaggeration and to “sport,” as gardeners say, from their type into strange varieties, and so the manners which were the outcome of chivalry exquisite, idealized, and restrained in their best period, grew artificial in later times and elaborated themselves into an etiquette which grew tyrannical and even ridiculous, and added violence to the inevitable reaction which followed. But if we look beyond the outward form to the spirit of such prescriptions as are left in force, there is something noble in their origin, either the laws of hospitality regulating all the relations of host and guest, or reverence for innocence and weakness which surrounded the dignity of both with lines of chivalrous defence, or the sensitiveness of personal honour, the instinct of what was due to oneself, an inward law that compelled a line of conduct that was unselfish and honourable. So the relics of these lofty conventions are deserving of all respect, and they cannot be disregarded without tampering with foundations which it is not safe to touch. They are falling into disrepute, but for the love of the children let us maintain them as far as we can. The experience of past ages has laid up lessons for us, and if we can take them in let us do so, if only as a training for children in self-control, for which they will find other uses a few years hence.

But in doing this we must take account of all that has changed. There are some antique forms, beautiful and full of dignity, which it is useless to attempt to revive; they cannot live again, they are too massive for our mobile manner of life to-day. And on the other hand there are some which are too high-pitched, or too delicate. We are living in a democratic age, and must be able to stand against its stress. So in the education of girls a greater measure of independence must necessarily be given to them, and they must learn to use it, to become self-reliant and self-protecting. They have to grow more conscious, less trustful, a little harder in outline; one kind of young dignity has to be exchanged for another, an attitude of self-defence is necessary. There is perhaps a certain loss in it, but it is inevitable. The real misfortune is that the first line of defence is often surrendered before the second is ready, and a sudden relaxation of control tends to yield too much; in fact girls are apt to lose their heads and abandon their self-control further than they are able to resume it. Once they have “let themselves go” it is the favourite phrase, and for once a phrase that completely conveys its meaning it is exceedingly difficult for them to stop themselves, impossible for others to stop them by force, for the daring ones are quite ready to break with their friends, and the others can elude control with very little difficulty. The only security is a complete armour of self-control based on faith, and a home tie which is a guarantee for happiness. Girls who are not happy in their own homes live in an atmosphere of temptation which they can scarcely resist, and the happiness of home is dependent in a great measure upon the manners of home, “there is no surer dissolvant of home affections than discourtesy.” [1 D. Urquhart.] It is useless to insist on this, it is known and admitted by almost all, but the remedy or the preventive is hard to apply, demanding such constant self-sacrifice on the part of parents that all are not ready to practise it; it is so much easier and it looks at first sight so kind to let children have their way. So kind at first, so unselfish in appearance, the parents giving way, abdicating their authority, while the young democracy in the nursery or school-room takes the reins in hand so willingly, makes the laws, or rather rules without them, by its sovereign moods, and then outgrows the “establishment” altogether, requires more scope, snaps the link with home, scarcely regretting, and goes off on its own account to elbow its way in the world. It is obviously necessary and perhaps desirable that many girls should have to make their own way in the world who would formerly have lived at home, but often the way in which it is done is all wrong, and leaves behind on both sides recollections with a touch of soreness.

For those who are practically concerned with the education of girls the question is how to attain what we want for them, while the force of the current is set so strongly against us. We have to make up our minds as to what conventions can survive and fix in some way the high and low-water marks, for there must be both, the highest that we can attain, and the lowest that we can accept. All material is not alike; some cannot take polish at all. It is well if it can be made tolerable; if it does not fall below that level of manners which are at least the safeguard of conduct; if it can impose upon itself and accept at least so much restraint as to make it inoffensive, not aggressively selfish. Perhaps the low-water mark might be fixed at the remembrance that other people have rights and the observance of their claims. This would secure at least the common marks of respect and the necessary conventionalities of intercourse. For ordinary use the high-water mark might attain to the remembrance that other people have feelings, and to taking them into account, and as an ordinary guide of conduct this includes a great deal and requires training and watchfulness to establish it, even where there is no exceptional selfishness or bluntness of sense to be overcome. The nature of an ordinary healthy energetic child, high-spirited and boisterous, full of a hundred interests of its own, finds the mere attention to these things a heavy yoke, and the constant self-denial needed to carry them out is a laborious work indeed.

The slow process of polishing marble has more than one point of resemblance with the training of manners; it is satisfactory to think that the resemblance goes further than the process, that as only by polishing can the concealed beauties of the marble be brought out, so only in the perfecting of manners will the finer grain of character and feeling be revealed. Polishing is a process which may reach different degrees of brilliancy according to the material on which it is performed; and so in the teaching of manners a great deal depends upon the quality of the nature, and the amount of expression which it is capable of acquiring. It is useless to press for what cannot be given, at the same time it is unfair not to exact the best that every one is able to give. As in all that has to do with character, example is better than precept.

But in the matter of manners example alone is by no means enough; precept is formally necessary, and precept has to be enforced by exercise. It is necessary because the origin of established conventionalities is remote; they do not speak for themselves, they are the outcome of a general habit of thought, they have come into being through a long succession of precedents. We cannot explain them fully to children; they can only have the summary and results of them, and these are dry and grinding, opposed to the unpremeditated spontaneous ways of acting in which they delight. Manners are almost fatally opposed to the sudden happy thoughts of doing something original, which occur to children’s minds. No wonder they dislike them; we must be prepared for this. They are almost grown up before they can understand the value of what they have gone through in acquiring these habits of unselfishness, but unlike many other subjects to which they are obliged to give time and labour, they will not leave this behind in the schoolroom. It is then that they will begin to exercise with ease and precision of long practice the art of the best and most expressive conduct in every situation which their circumstances may create.

In connexion with this question of circumstances in life and the situations which arise out of them, there is one thing which ought to be taught to children as a fundamental principle, and that is the relation of manners to class of life, and what is meant by vulgarity. For vulgarity is not what it is too often assumed to be a matter of class, but in itself a matter of insincerity, the effort to appear or to be something that one is not. The contrary of vulgarity, by the word, is preciousness or distinction, and in conduct or act it is the perfect preciousness and distinction of truthfulness. Truthfulness in manners gives distinction and dignity in all classes of society; truthfulness gives that simplicity of manners which is one of the special graces of royalty, and also of an unspoiled and especially a Catholic peasantry. Vulgarity has an element of restless unreality and pretentious striving, an affectation or assumption of ways which do not belong to it, and in particular an unwillingness to serve, and a dread of owning any obligation of service. Yet service perfects manners and dignity, from the highest to the lowest, and the manners of perfect servants either public or private are models of dignity and fitness. The manners of the best servants often put to shame those of their employers, for their self-possession and complete knowledge of what they are and ought to be raises them above the unquietness of those who have a suspicion that they are not quite what might be expected of them. It is on this uncertain ground that all the blunders of manners occur; when simplicity is lost disaster follows, with loss of dignity and self-respect, and pretentiousness forces its way through to claim the respect which it is conscious of not deserving.

Truth, then, is the foundation of distinction in manners for every class, and the manners of children are beautiful and perfect when simplicity bears witness to inward truthfulness and consideration for others, when it expresses modesty as to themselves and kindness of heart towards every one. It does not require much display or much ceremonial for their manners to be perfect according to the requirements of life at present; the ritual of society is a variable thing, sometimes very exacting, at others disposed to every concession, but these things do not vary truth, modesty, reverence, kindness are of all times, and these are the bases of our teaching.

The personal contribution of those who teach, the influence of their companionship is that which establishes the standard, their patience is the measure which determines the limits of attainment, for it is only patience which makes a perfect work, whether the attainment be high or low. It takes more patience to bring poor material up to a presentable standard than to direct the quick intuitions of those who are more responsive; in one case efforts meet with resistance, in the other, generally with correspondence. But our own practice is for ourselves the important thing, for the inward standard is the point of departure, and our own sincerity is a light as well as a rule, or rather it is a rule because it is a light; it prevents the standard of manners from being double, one for use and one for ornament; it imposes respect to be observed with children as well as exacted from them, and it keeps up the consciousness that manners represent faith and, in a sense, duty to God rather than to one’s neighbour.

This, too, belongs not to the fleeting things of social observance but to the deep springs of conduct, and its teaching may be summed up in one question. Is not well-instructed devotion to Our Lady and the understanding of the Church’s ceremonies a school of manners in which we may learn how human intercourse may be carried on with the most perfect external expressiveness? Is not all inattention of mind to the courtesies of life, all roughness and slovenliness, all crude unconventionality which is proud of its self-assertion, a “falling from love” in seeking self? Will not the instinct of devotion and imitation teach within, all those things which must otherwise be learned by painful reiteration from without; the perpetual give up, give way, give thanks, make a fitting answer, pause, think of others, don’t get excited, wait, serve, which require watchfulness and self-sacrifice?

Perhaps in the last year or two of education, when our best opportunities occur, some insight will be gained into the deeper meaning of all these things. It may then be understood that they are something more than arbitrary rules; there may come the understanding of what is beautiful in human intercourse, of the excellence of self-restraint, the loveliness of perfect service. If this can be seen it will tone down all that is too uncontrolled and make self-restraint acceptable, and will deal with the conventions of life as with symbols, poor and inarticulate indeed, but profoundly significant, of things as they ought to be.