Book Review

The Ladies Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners by Eliza Leslie

In the early 1800s, if you were a woman in America or England who wanted to know how to cook, how to run a household, and how to behave, you were likely to turn to Eliza Leslie, also known as Miss Leslie. As a member of the middle class (her father was a watchmaker) who lived in England and America, Miss Leslie imparted advice that could help the reader cope with an aristocratic ball or a low-grade boarding house, at home or abroad, with equal aplomb.

She wrote or edited 19 books ranging from the specialized (The Indian Meal Book, which was all about cooking with cornmeal, 1847) to the general (The Lady’s Receipt Book, A Useful Companion for Large and Small Families, 1847). Her cookbook Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches, first published in 1837, proved to be the best-selling cookbook of the 1800s. She also wrote and edited fiction, including a yearly anthology called The Gift, which featured several works by Edgar Allen Poe. I’d give an awful lot to know if Poe and Miss Leslie ever met, and if so, how it went down.

In 1834, Miss Leslie branched out from cooking to talk about etiquette with Miss Leslie’s Behavior Book. It was reprinted in 1864 with a new title: The Ladies Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners. I expected to flip through this as an occasional reference, but I found myself completely fascinated by Miss Leslie’s personality, her perspectives, and all the little nuggets about middle class and upper class life that are revealed in these pages.

The thrill of this book isn’t so much the manners as all the other details of life that are revealed. For instance, this book contains detailed instructions on how to make ink and how to make paste. It describes changes in speech and customs, and differences between American and British social mores. There’s a comprehensive guide to British titles for the benefit of Americans who are travelling abroad or entertaining. The stuff about grammar and slang reveals when phrases were coming in and out of fashion. The advice regarding letters is full of history about envelopes and stamps and general geography. There’s a chapter on how to treat literary women that is just as apt now as it was then, a chapter on children that is full of solid common sense, and enough information about fashion and clothes to make any historical re-enactor or cosplayer proud.

All this information would be terribly dry if not for the fact that, like Miss Manners and Dear Abby, Miss Leslie has a powerful and often humorous personality. Generally, Miss Leslie is funny, personable, and employs a combination of excellent common-sense and logical civility. Behold my favorite quote in the history of ever:

If a person begins by telling you, ‘Do not be offended at what I am going to say,’ prepare yourself for something that she knows will certainly offend you.

I read quite a few of Miss Leslie’s comments to my tween daughter and nieces on a family road trip. Miss Leslie became quite a presence – almost an extra person on the trip. Before I knew it the kids were spending dinnertime in heated discussion about what Miss Leslie would say about our table manners. The children were of the opinion that Miss Leslie needs to lighten up, but they also got their elbows off the table.

Eliza Leslie, giving no fucks.

I could easily devote an entire essay to Miss Leslie’s opinions regarding class, race, and gender. Because I think it’s crucial to not gloss over aspects of our history, I’m going to talk about them at length; however, they comprise a fairly small amount of the book. I enjoyed this book because it allowed me to learn a great deal of habits and attitudes of upper and middle class people in Yankee America in the 1800s from a primary source. It’s hardly surprising that some of what I learned (or was reminded of) was unpleasant, but it’s important to be reminded of these aspects of our history.

Because this was written in the 1800s in America, it’s full of stuff about class, gender, and race. HUGE trigger alert for sexism, racism, and ablesism. Interestingly, Miss Leslie seems to think much more highly of people who are “coloured” than people who are immigrants, and woe betide you if you’re Irish. Miss Leslie can hardly be thought to be progressive in modern terms in her ideas about race – at best, she’s condescending. She highly respects “coloured” servants and waiters in high positions and clearly regards them as not only capable but often better at etiquette than the white people they serve (she also instructs the reader not to refer to young men of color as “boys”). But here’s a sudden reminder that shit was real, from a chapter on conversation:

Avoid all discussions of abolition (either for or against) when coloured people are nearby.

Ouch.

Immigrants are another story. Miss Leslie fears that they might take your children to the tenements, where they will pick up bad speech patterns and horrible diseases, and the Irish might whisk your babies away and have them baptized as Catholic. I do not relate this, or some of Miss Leslie’s other prejudiced opinions because I find them amusing – I find them appalling. However, I also find these kinds of comments to be instructive in the sense that Miss Leslie allows me a look at how people of her place, time, and class thought of class and race from a primary source. I feel this is important not because these attitudes are part of our past, but because they are immediate, painful part of our present, although in some cases the identities of those discriminated against have changed.

BTW, as someone who could, quantitatively, be said to be “deformed,” I was immensely upset to discover that Miss Leslie advises that no “deformed people” dance at balls or parties because they are distressing to watch. Should I ever have occasion to dance, and Miss Leslie be present, I’ll politely trip her and pin her to the carpet so that she can’t see me, thus saving her considerable distress. Seriously, Miss Leslie, get a grip.

Alas, it is my painful duty to inform you that despite the fact that Miss Leslie was a brilliant woman who built a thriving business and achieved fame and fortune, she was not in favor of women’s rights. She was a fan of the Victorian “Angel in the Home” concept – the idea that women are inferior to men intellectually and physically, but superior morally, and that they should turn their energies towards making the home a moral and physical sanctuary. Women, says Miss Leslie, are best at parenting and nursing and other nurturing activities. While Miss Leslie acknowledges the accomplishments of some women, she believes they are unusual:

Truth is, the female sex is really as inferior to the male in vigour of mind as in strength of body; and all arguments to the contrary are founded on a few anomalies; or based on theories that can never be put into practice.

Oh, Miss Leslie. Why must you break my heart into teensy bits? If we had you on the suffragette team, we would have had the vote a lot sooner. You would have informed the men in power that to deny women the vote was un-gentlemanly and they would have dissolved under your stern gaze like wet tissue paper. Sigh.

Some of Miss Leslie’s ideas seem silly today (a short list of things she dislikes includes calico, old ladies who don’t wear caps, people who drum on the keys of a piano with one finger, slang, the polka, rocking chairs used for any purpose other than rocking a baby, and small dogs). Some are offensive and distressing. But all are grounded by the idea that whatever you may think of the status and condition of people around you, you should treat them as kindly and politely as you can given the information you have and the situation you are in. We all have our own prejudices, preconceptions, and biases, and I’d argue that Miss Leslie’s general principle remains sound. I’d only add that it is also our job to continually attempt to educate and challenge ourselves, so that our prejudices and preconceptions may diminish.

The bottom line for Miss Leslie is that it is your job to behave in a way that makes others comfortable and it is your right to be treated with respect. Miss Leslie does not expect you to be a doormat and, regardless of your personal feelings, you’d better not be a snob. Be as kind and courteous as you can possibly be to everyone you encounter – Miss Leslie is specific in stating that this includes people who are below you in social standing, including the lowest servant.

Without any further ado, here are some tips from Miss Leslie. First, some health and safety advice:

Sleeping with the windows closed in a room newly painted has produced fatal diseases. To some lungs the vapour of white lead is poisonous. To none is it quite inoxious. Its dangerous properties may be neutralized by placing in newly-painted rooms, large tubs of water, into which has been mixed an ounce of vitriol.

THE MORE YOU KNOW. Vitriol is sulphur, by the way.

There’s an entire chapter about tea that includes two long paragraphs about butter, to my vast delight. An excerpt:

By-the-by, the use of cooking-butter should be established in all genteel-houses. If the butter is not good enough to eat on the surface of cold bread or on warm cakes, it is not good enough to eat in the inside of sweet cakes, or in pastry, or in anything else…The use of butter is to make things taste well; if it makes them taste ill, ley it be utterly omitted, for bad butter is not only unpalatable but unwholesome…We know by experience that it is possible to make very fine butter even in the State of New York, and to have it fresh in winter as in summer, though not so rich and yellow.

Don’t laugh at people who hurt themselves. It makes you look unladylike and it also  makes you look like a big jerk:

When you see persons slip down on the ice, do not laugh at them…It is more feminine, on witnessing such a sight, to offer an involuntary scream than a shout of laughter. And still more so to stop and ascertain if the person has been hurt.

Time travelers, this simple tip can save you much embarrassment:

Do not travel in white kid gloves. Respectable women never do.

On that one neighbor that we all have:

There are certain unoccupied females so over-friendly as to take the entree of the whole house…never for a moment do they seem to suppose that their hourly visits may perhaps be inconvenient or unseasonable…If they find that the front door is kept locked, they glide down the area-steps, and get in through the basement. Or else, they discover some back entrance, by which they can slip in ‘at the postern gate’- that is, ‘alley-wise’ – socialists are not proud…Her talk to you is chiefly gossip, therefore her talk about you is chiefly the same.

Any time I review a classic, I run into a balancing act problem. There’s always at least one “Oh no you did not use that word” moment in an older book (and a TON in this book) and I don’t want to derail the whole review by dwelling on that aspect, but it would be horribly insensitive for me to ignore it altogether. In some aspects, Miss Leslie is “fair for her day” and in some aspects she is markedly conservative for her time. Miss Leslie herself points out certain areas of controversy between her opinions and those of other people, showing that her social and political attitudes were  not universally adopted been in her time. These issues are so glaring to the modern reader (and rightly so) that they threaten to take over the whole book even though 99% of the book is about more innocuous topics such as how to shop in a new city:

If you are a stranger in the city, do not be always exclaiming at the prices, and declaring that you can buy the same articles much lower and much handsomer in New York, Boston, or Baltimore. For certain reasons, prices are different in different places. If an article is shown to you in Philadelphia as “quite new”, refrain from saying that it has been out of fashion these two years in New York. This may injure its sale with bystanders, chancing to hear you. You need only say “that it is very pretty, but you do not want it now.”

I am giving this book a B+ for its entertainment values and historical values, both interesting and sometimes appalling, with the strong caveat that many of its attitudes are (and certainly should be) offensive to modern readers.

If there is any chance that you may find yourself in the Victorian Era (TARDIS, portal, enchanted portrait, whatever) I highly recommend you prepare yourself by studying this book and, if possible, taking it with you. How else will you know that wearing white kid gloves in 1834 in Philadelphia marks you as a hussy? How else will you know how to prevent lead poisoning and make your own ink?

Now I’m off to write my Miss Leslie/Edgar Allan Poe fan fiction, and Miss Leslie has advice for me, and perhaps you, too, as writers. Above all, be polite about it:

An authoress has seldom leisure to entertain morning visitors; so much of her time being professionally occupied either in writing or in reading what will prepare her for writing. She should apprize all her friends of the hours in which she is usually engaged; and then let none who are really her friends and well-wishers, will encroach upon her convenience for any purpose of their own, unless under extraordinary circumstances.

 

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The Ladies Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners by Eliza Leslie

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  1. Lammie says:

    I downloaded this immediately (yay for interesting public domain books!). This sounds fascinating. Miss Leslie probably wouldn’t approve of me either, as I don’t like wearing dresses very much, but some of her advice reminded me of late grandmother. I will read this in her voice, and remember the woman who always wanted my sisters and I to behave as ladies, and did not understand blue jeans or my brother’s long hair.

  2. Jazzlet says:

    Oooooh goody, I love a well written book like this, fascinating for the insights they give.

  3. DonnaMarie says:

    “It is more feminine, on witnessing such a sight, to offer an involuntary scream than a shout of laughter. And still more so to stop and ascertain if the person has been hurt.”

    I work for orthopaedic surgeons and am constantly getting doors or catching people who aren’t so good on their crutches. When they try to brush aside help, I always tell them if they fall, I’m going to laugh. I’ll help them back up, but I’ll be laughing.

    Otherwise, I adore manners. The world we live in can be singularly lacking in common courtesies. I wonder what Miss Leslie would think of cell phones.

  4. EC Spurlock says:

    This sounds like a wonderful book, and extremely useful for historical writers and/or reenactors. I can definitely use it for both.

    Her prejudice against the Irish reminded me of the scene in Little Women where Amy smuggles her pickled limes to school as a treat for herself and her friends, and her horror when the teacher throws them out the window to be devoured by the Irish children (who are not allowed inside the school and don’t even have enough food, much less treats, but certainly don’t deserve her limes!) But true, wearing white kid gloves while traveling was a stupid idea, because train soot and road dust, along with the desiccating properties of heat, would irreparably ruin them; better to wear fabric gloves in gray or a color that the dirt would more or less blend with, and that could be washed or mended, rather than look like a snob.

    And Miss Leslie apparently never spent time in rural areas, where in order to be the “Angel of the Home” one had to have at least as much “vigour of mind and strength of body” as your husband just in order to get your chores done and keep the place running. Just cooking with cast iron pots and pans was like a daily regimen of weightlifting.

  5. Vicki says:

    Sounds fascinating and I will download as soon as I have a job where my only internet access is not Starbucks. I am deciding I hate traveling.

    I did want to add that, for years, I went and cooked for harvest and planting on my dad’s farm in northern Saskatchewan. No indoor plumbing and only a cast iron wood stove. Between chopping the wood, hauling the water, digging potatoes, etc., out of the garden my grandfather kindly planted each spring, I always left much stronger than I arrived. You have it right, Ms. Spurlock, rural women were no languishing hothouse flowers.

  6. Thank you so much for sharing this! I ran right out and downloaded a copy. It’s a fabulous resource for readers and writers.

  7. Oh how interesting – I am currently doing a comparison reading of etiquette books by Emily Post and Florence Hartley… I’m gonna add this one in.

  8. Thank you for this wonderful review. I delight in these sorts of books. Yes, true, some of the attitudes we find appalling today, but we don’t know who we are unless we know where come from and the truth is, many of the attitudes that Ms Leslie offers about the Irish kinda sound like the same prejudice I’ve heard about other immigrants.

    Delighted to see that this is free for the Kindle. Also on Guttenberg!

    Wonder if any of her cookbooks are too? let me see… Indian Meal Cookbook is out of print.

    Ladies Receipt book is available in both hardcover and paperback. Put that on my wishlist!!

    Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches is available for Kindle free and other variously priced kindle editions and in paperback.

  9. Mara B. says:

    And for those of us without kindles, here’s the Project Gutenberg link
    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2148

  10. Mara B. says:

    In a similar vein it’s fun to read the “answers to correspondents” in the Girl’s Own Paper, also on PG. Unfortunately you don’t get to see the questions but the advice can be entertaining. Although PG only has five issues from October to November of 1886.

    Some of my favorites:

    “Cucumber.—We know of no cure but the constant use of a pair of tweezers.”

    “Delia T. (Lausanne).—From your writing we conclude that you are very young. If so, your verses give some promise of better ones when older.”

    “Inconsistency’s paper is too much like a schoolgirl’s composition for our pages; but she evidently tries to think, which is more than many people do.”

    https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/The_Girls_Own_Paper_(Bookshelf)

  11. SB Sarah says:

    @Jen @ Bambi:

    That sounds like a VERY cool project. You’ll have the most consistently kind manners of anyone!

  12. Doug Glassman says:

    “people who drum on the keys of a piano with one finger”

    She really would’ve hated Hoobastank’s “The Reason”.

  13. Mab d says:

    Carrie, that’s ridiculous. If you were pinning Miss Leslie to the floor you wouldn’t be able to dance. I feel sure we would organize rotating shifts of readers to keep her pinned.

    As far as not talking about abolition in front of ‘colored people’ – this is probably giving her too much credit, but maybe it’s partly an intention of being considerate? Talking about how they ahould all be slaves forever *while they’re in the room* is of course terribly impolite, but even with the opposite position, I wonder if a white person carrying on against slavery near slaves wouldn’t put those slaves in danger of being punished just for hearing it.

  14. Mab d, no, I don’t think you are giving here too much credit. Her subject, after all, is “True Politeness and Perfect Manners .”

  15. Dottiebears says:

    I LOVE book like this–cant’ wait to start reading it. I did look to see if there was an audio version, it seems like it would be even more fun to have it read to you than to read the printed word.

  16. Iola says:

    Love your genre classification for this: urban fantasy. Yep, etiquette certainly sounds like fantasy to me.

  17. Rebecca says:

    @Mabd – Yes, I think it’s probably giving her too much credit. The book sounds like it’s aimed at would-be social climbers who draw fine distinctions of behavior to make up for humble backgrounds (I’m trying to avoid the word snob here), and it’s worth noting that in Emma (published 1815) it’s only the terribly vulgar Mrs. Elton who mentions the slave trade, and everyone is sort of embarrassed for her. Ladies and gentlemen (but most especially ladies) were supposed to pretend that their vast wealth just sort of appeared by magic, not to know anything about trade or (worse) systematic exploitation of huge numbers of people. (It’s also the very vulgar Mrs. Elton who is pro-abolition. The properly aristocratic Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park has his wealth completely based on slave labor, nicely off-scene in Jamaica.) Not talking about slavery was just another way of saying “don’t talk about economics or politics” which is a pretty standard warning for a lady in polite company.

    To return to the US for a moment, it’s worth pointing out that Frederick Douglass commented that in the ante-bellum South the topic of slavery would appear in the casual conversation of two Southerners within an hour and if a Northerner was involved in the conversation within 30 minutes because Southerners were so anxious to justify it. Avoiding the topic in 1834 was rather like avoiding the gigantic deformed elephant doing the electric slide in the middle of the room. (Ladies weren’t supposed to worry their inferior heads about it.) Avoiding abolition in 1864 (one year AFTER the Emancipation Proclamation, and close to the end of the Civil War) skates close to the reasons for Juneteenth.

    Suggesting that “slaves could be punished for hearing about it” kind of has the underlying idea that slaves never thought about freedom unless white abolitionists put the idea into their heads. Aside from being manifestly not true, that also provided an easy out for any slave who was questioned about listening; “oh, no, I didn’t understand what they were saying. Didn’t make much sense to me. I don’t know anything about that.” (Rather like what Anne Moody says the “right” answer was to questions about the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi 100 years later in “Coming of Age in Mississippi.”) That answer had the advantage of making the slave owner feel both smarter than his (or her) slave AND reinforcing the fantasy that slaves were happy.

  18. CarrieS says:

    @Rebecca – Mansfield Park reads quite differently when one knows that Jane Austen was quite openly and fairly vocally abolitionist. Mansfield Park is largely about the corruption and moral decadence of the upper classes (in contrast to Pride and Prejudice and Emma). Thus it’s no coincidence that it’s the only one of her book in which it’s made clear that the estate is funded by slavery (and the patriarch’s departure to deal with the complications in the West Indies make it possible for the kids to run amok).

    I don’t recall the scene in Emma with Mrs. Eton, but in Mansfield Park Fanny makes a comment about slavery. Fanny is, of course, the moral center of the novel – she is held up as the one consistently moral person in a nest of vipers (with her beloved cousin being moral but too easily led astray). Everyone else shushes Fanny because to talk about slavery is bad form, but Austen appears to be on Fanny’s side here. They are content to live in hypocrisy whereas Fanny is more clear-sighted.

    As to whether this book is aimed at social climbers – Miss Leslie might feel that it depends on the climber. She’s quite anti-snob in some areas – and she specifically states that servants, slaves, merchants, and menial workers should be treated with consideration and respect (but not equality).

  19. Rebecca says:

    @Carrie – Thanks for the info on Austen’s abolitionist sympathies. (I’m not sure I’d call her “outspoken” but she certainly moved in circles where it was socially acceptable.) But I don’t think the novel “reads very differently” even so. The main characters live supported by slave labor, which remains off stage. I know there’s a ton of polemic about the exact nature of Fanny’s comment about slavery in Mansfield Park, and the exact nature of Sir Thomas’ response, but I think Austen deliberately leaves it ambiguous, because the point ISN’T to argue about abolition, but to point out that Fanny has done something seen by her social betters as inappropriate. (Edmund tells her she should talk up, but he’s presumably part of the dead silence that follows her comment.) She’s a poor relation from a port city and she makes a comment about both trade AND politics. Better brought up young ladies know not to, and whether or not that’s a question of better MORALS it’s definitely a question of better MANNERS. But then, I’m in the camp who thinks that Fanny’s uncompromising morals are a bunch of passive-aggressive b.s., and that she knows precisely what she’s doing when she says something earnest and not polite. (I completely understand WHY Fanny’s perfected being a passive aggressive manipulator for reasons of survival, and it’s a brilliant portrait, but I don’t like her or think her morality is anything other than a way of claiming agency in a rather sneaky and unkind way. Love the novel, hate the characters.)

    Sorry to go off topic. As to whether Miss Leslie’s book is aimed at social climbers, I think any of Austen’s characters would laugh at the idea of a watch-maker’s daughter being condescending (in the strictly positive sense in which Austen uses), or possibly not laugh – because that wouldn’t be condescending and considerate to a member of the lower orders – but would smile gently. I have the feeling Miss Leslie’s book (like most self-help books) was not REALLY aimed at people who were actually entertaining nobility, but rather at those who either wanted to or enjoyed the fantasy, probably while being far from hothouse flowers.

  20. Katty Carol says:

    Thanks for sharing your reviews with regard “The Ladies Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners” book written by Eliza Leslie. It seems to be a very interesting book, I am going to download it now. Actually, I am a passionate book lover and love to shop it after comparing its various online book stores. Can you please suggest me from where I should buy it at the cheapest price?

    All suggestions are highly appreciated 🙂

  21. Katty Carol, if you read through the comments above, you will find several sources where it is free, including Amazon and Project Guttenberg.

  22. Sandra says:

    Vitriol isn’t sulphur – it’s suphuric acid ! I happen to be an old lady who wears a cap – a baseball cap. I wonder if Miss Leslie would approve ? 😉

  23. lucyy says:

    thank you for article it really inetersting and i really wanted to read more about 1840-1880- did you know of more manual-etiquette of young lady in society (especially about balls or first in court all about upper class ) or journals of young women

    i thank you

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