So, doing research is sometimes more fun than writing.

Behold! An amazing book of etiquette from 1891.

It’s just as awesome as you could imagine. As someone who is often at a loss in social situations (damn you, salad fork, why must you look exactly like the dessert fork!), there’s something appealing about the idea of a book of manners that everyone is expected to read and follow. Practically, I know this leads to cotillion, so I won’t wish it on anyone.

(Note: everything I know about cotillion I learned from All I Want For Christmas, in which the young Ethan Embry (nee Randall) rescues his crush from a boring cotillion and proceeds to woo her in a diner? I think.)

(Oh, that and I went to a year of middle school in Texas, where girls were already discussing their coming-outs and how hard it would be to curtsey and how they were ALREADY PRACTICING for their curtseys. I was writing X-Files scripts in ProWrite on my dad’s computer when everyone was asleep. Just saying, thanks for that year in Catholic school, Mom and Dad!)

ANYWAY. MANNERS.

Dresses are from 1880, not 1891, but by 1891 everyone looked like a Gibson Girl and it gets all upsetting.

Ladies and gents, if you ever wondered what to do with your calling cards, well, now you’ll know!

Advice ranges from the useful:

When morning visitors are announced, rise and advance toward them. If a lady enters request her to be seated on a sofa; but if advanced in life, or the visitor be an elderly gentleman, insist on their accepting an easy chair, and place yourself, by them. If several ladies arrive at the same time, pay due respect to age and rank, and seat them in the most honorable places; these, in winter, are beside the fire.

To the obsolete:

When you are going abroad, intending to be absent for some time, you enclose your card in an envelope, having, first, written p.p.c. upon it;–they are the initials of the French phrase, “pour prendre conge”—to take leave, and may wit equal propriety stand for presents parting compliments.

To the screamingly horrific:

Conversing with Ladies.

If you are a gentleman, never lower the intellectual standard of your conversation in addressing ladies. Pay them the compliment of seeming to consider them capable of an equal understanding with gentlemen.

Visiting Acquaintances Alone.

Young married ladies may visit their acquaintances alone; but they may not appear in any public places unattended by their husbands or elder ladies. This rule must never be infringed, whether as regards exhibitions, or public libraries, museums, or promenades; but a young married lady is at liberty to walk with her friends of the same age, whether married or single. Gentlemen are permitted to call on married ladies at their own houses. Such calls the usages of society permit, but never without the knowledge and full permission of husbands.

So; useful resource and blood-pressure-raiser! Those Victorians knew how to make everything do double duty.