Etiquette, Eating, and Eloquence: Two Leading Ladies of the English Language

Two writers, one of them a doyen of etiquette, Judith Martin, the other a grand mistress of gastronomy, M.F.K. Fisher, bring a cosmopolitan elegance to the page, and are in a class all their own. (Aleksey Matrenin/Shutterstock)

Ask someone who knows the movies to name an actor and actress who best depicted sophistication, grace, and style on the big screen, and odds are that Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant will pop up in that conversation.

“Sophisticated” is an adjective often linked with both of these stars. In nearly all his roles, from the dark comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace” to the suspense-filled “North by Northwest,” Cary Grant projected the consummate gentleman, impeccably attired, and a model of manners, wit, and masculinity. The inimitable rhythms of his voice with its practiced Mid-Atlantic accent—softened vowels and discarded R’s—buttressed this image of poise and urbanity.

“Sophisticated” is an adjective often linked with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, seen here in a scene from "Charade." (Public Domain)

Audrey Hepburn likewise brought sophistication to her acting. She may have played the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” but in most of her roles she exhibited a style and grace that imprinted itself indelibly on audiences. Even today, the clothes and jewelry that Hepburn wore and the way she carried herself draw the attention and admiration of younger women.

Just as this brand of sophistication is rare among film stars, so too among American writers. We have many fine makers of words, but rarely would we describe their prose as shimmering with the verbal worldliness and grace of a dry martini, a little black dress, or a perfectly fitted tuxedo.

Miss Manners

Since 1978, Judith Martin has served as the nation’s most prominent arbiter of etiquette. Better known by her pen name “Miss Manners,” Martin has written and seen published several thousand columns, many of them collected in a score of books. Critics have sung her praises as an “authentically comic genius” and “a philosopher cleverly and charmingly disguised as an etiquette columnist.” In 2005, Martin received the National Humanities Medal, our nation’s highest award for work done in the humanities.

In addition to her gifts for humor and her crisp commentary on a broad range of subjects, Martin also brings to her writing a near-genius ability to match the style of her prose with her subject of etiquette. To the delight of her readers, her prim yet saucy tone became the hallmark of “Miss Manners.”

In “Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior,” for example, she replies to a reader asking how one politely eats a grapefruit:

“Gentle reader:

“Carefully, if at all. The grapefruit is a particularly vicious piece of work with a sour disposition, just lying in wait to give someone a good squirt in the eye. If the grapefruit sections have not been loosened with a grapefruit knife before servicing, or if you are not armed with a pointed grapefruit spoon, give up. It will get you before you get it.”

A college girl asks, “How does a lady discreetly deal with perspiration?” and receives this response:

“Gentle reader:

“A lady does not perspire. When dear Orson Welles was married to Rita Hayworth, someone spoke of her as ‘sweating,’ and he replied coldly, ‘Horses sweat. People perspire. Miss Hayworth glows.’ There is nothing wrong with dewy college girls. Within reason, of course.”

Of the elaborate ruses a gentleman often concocts to surprise his potential bride-to-be with a ring and a proposal, Miss Manners notes: “If enough work is put into it, the gentleman will be exhausted enough not to mess with the wedding arrangements, thus enabling the bride to 1) have it all her way, and 2) complain that if he loved her, he would take more of an interest.”

Critics have sung the praises of Judith Martin ("Miss Manners") as a comic genius and “a philosopher cleverly and charmingly disguised as an etiquette columnist.” (Open Library)

This mix of formality and wit make Martin eminently quotable, especially short, succinct messages like this one: “If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.” She also restates truisms that score a bull’s-eye: “Society cannot exist without etiquette. … It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.”

The Queen of Feasts

Writer and media personality Clifton Fadiman called her “the most interesting philosopher of food now practicing in our country.” Poet W.H. Auden bestowed even higher praise when he said, “I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose.”

The subject of their remarks was Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908–1992), better known as M.F.K. Fisher, who once summed up her gastronomical philosophy by writing: “There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love.”

Though the tone of their prose differs, like Judith Martin, M.F.K. Fisher composed sentences that sing to readers. In her 1941 book “Consider the Oyster,” for example, she begins this way:

“An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.

“Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion, and danger.”

“Consider the Oyster” is today available as part of “The Art of Eating,” a 784-page tome made up of four other books as well: “Serve It Forth,” “How to Cook a Wolf,” “The Gastronomical Me,” and “An Alphabet for Gourmets.” Open this hefty collection to any page, and you would be hard-pressed to find a dead sentence or a dull description. I just tried this experiment myself and dropped straight into this passage from “An Alphabet for Gourmets:”

“I have, in public places, watched women suddenly turn a tableful of human beings into scowling tigers and hyenas with their quiet, ferocious nagging, and I have shuddered especially at the signs of pure criminality that then veil children’s eyes as they bolt down their poisoned food and flee.”

That passage precedes, of all things, a special recipe for scrambled eggs.

Fisher’s best-known work, “How to Cook a Wolf,” brings particularly pertinent encouragement to our time of skyrocketing prices in the grocery store. Originally written with the “ration cards and blackouts and like miseries of World War II” in mind—the title derives from the proverbial “wolf at the door”—“How to Cook a Wolf” makes an adventure of eating well when choices and resources are limited. Referring to the postwar return of foodstuffs like butter and spices to the kitchen, Fisher writes that people may be more appreciative of plentiful food: “And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.”

Like Martin, Fisher is not only a fine writer but a cultural philosopher as well.

M.F.K. Fisher makes an adventure of eating well when choices and resources are limited, in "How to Cook a Wolf." (North Point Press)

Ease Is a Mark of High Style

The prose of both Martin and Fisher comes across to their readers, as should the sentences constructed by any conscientious writer, as having leaped effortlessly from the cranium onto the page—or today, onto the electronic screen. Like Hepburn and Grant in their movies, they perform gracefully in paragraph after flawless paragraph.

Yet it’s safe to say that both women put their heart and soul into their writing, choosing words and punctuation with consummate care. In her introduction to “The Art of Eating,” for instance, Fisher tells of a young man who once read aloud to her from a chapter in one of her books, which “had been pointed out to me as a good bit of writing by several people.”

But then she comments: “The mean, cold fact remains, though, that on page one of the chapter, there is a use of one word which I shall never point out to anyone, but which offends me gravely. … I’ll regret until the day I die that I know it is there.”

Now, there’s a writer.

When visiting Judith Martin, readers may find themselves, as I did, bursting into laughter at her sharp witticisms. When in the company of M.F.K. Fisher, those same readers may not laugh quite so much, but they may feel, as I did, as if they were running their fingers through a chest filled not with rubies, sapphires, and gold doubloons, but with the glittering jewels of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

And so, here’s a flute of champagne raised to you, good ladies, for having shared your treasures with the rest of us.