While thumbing at random through “Town & Country Social Graces,” a 2002 collection of lively essays by different authors on “propriety without the stuffiness,” I came to one of the book’s final entries, “Invisible Grace” by Owen Edwards. The author links civility with kindness, from which there springs a certain grace and beauty of the human spirit.
Manuals like “Social Graces” have long attracted American readers. As a youth, George Washington copied out and then put into practice “110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior,” a list of maxims which, composed by French Jesuits and later translated into English, were popular during his time. Mid-19th-century guides to manners, dress, and customs such as “The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette” and “The Gentlemen’s Book of Etiquette” were highly praised and sold well, and are still available today. Many other guides to manners followed, with perhaps the most influential being Emily Post’s 1922 “Etiquette.”
