"There was then," says one who was educated in this style,[2] "a
certain way of walking, of sitting down, of saluting, of picking up a
glove, of holding a fork, of tendering any article, in short, a
complete set of gestures and facial expressions, which children had to
be taught at a very early age in order that habit might become a
second nature, and this conventionality formed so important an item in
the life of men and women in aristocratic circles that the actors of
the present day, with all their study, are scarcely able to give us an
idea of it."
Not only was the outward factitious but, again, the inward; there
was a certain prescribed mode of feeling and of thinking, of living
and of dying. It was impossible to address a man without placing
oneself at his orders, or a woman without casting oneself at her feet,
Fashion, 'le bon ton,' regulated every important or petty proceeding,
the manner of making a declaration to a woman and of breaking an
engagement, of entering upon and managing a duel, of treating an
equal, an inferior and a superior. If any one failed in the slightest
degree to conform to this code of universal custom, he is called "a
specimen.
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