You can’t forget what you never knew. Because Eleanor Roosevelt left such a broad and colorful legacy as a tireless First Lady and human rights advocate, her Book of Common Sense Etiquette has been left to languish in the shadows. People simply don’t know that she produced 555 pages on Space Age Perfect Propriety in 1962. This could be for two reasons: she doesn’t really tell you where the forks go when setting the table (so many people believe that is the only function of an etiquette book — that and weddings), and her all-purpose answer to just about anything is “Democracy” (which is not always that helpful).
What makes her Common Sense an innovator of the period is her inclusion of young people with special sections on “Thirteen to Nineteen (Teen Agers*),” etiquette for interacting smoothly with the disabled, and especially (to Etiquetteer) her words of wisdom and good taste about patriotism. The former she approached with some reluctance but with great sensitivity and understanding: “The rules that govern [teenagers’] behavior should be no different form those that govern the behavior of anyone else. Yet they are in the grip of physical and spiritual drives which they have not known as young children, and which will not affect them in quite the same way when they grow up. Their situation is special, and for that reason they deserve a special chapter.”** Tellingly, she begins this section with “Idealism and the Call to Leadership.”
Mrs. Roosevelt may well be the first etiquette writer to consider the needs of the disabled***, and she does so with her trademark compassion backed up with expert medical opinion. Her most helpful advice could be distilled to Don’t Overdramatize: “One who is sincerely interested in . . . cooperation, in being genuinely helpful, will pay only so much attention to the disability as is necessary to give the other the help he needs and wants, will not call undue attention to it by extravagant gestures of sympathy and elaborate offers of undesired help . . . ” and will basically Keep Calm****.
But to Etiquetteer, her most important chapter comes at the very end, “Showing Your Colors: Patriotism, the Flag, and the National Anthem.” Mrs. Roosevelt doesn’t just cover the mechanics of how to behave when the United States flag is raised, lowered, displayed, disposed of, or carried in a parade, or what to do when the National Anthem is sung (in a stadium, if you are not at your seats yet, you stop where you are in the aisle and stand at attention until the Anthem is finished), but she gets right to the heart of what patriotism is for all people: “True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.”*****
Etiquetteer invites you to reflect on those words today, and every day.
*In the text she refers to “teenagers,” but it is amusing to consider this moment in the linguistic evolution of a new word, from “teen ager” to “teenager” — much as “e-mail” gradually became “email.”
**Page 418.
***Again, it is interesting to observe how our language has changed since this book was published in 1962. We no longer refer to the Handicapped, for instance, but to the Disabled or the Differently Abled. The term “crippled,” once standard, is now considered an insult.
****Page 459.
*****Page 550.