Word: fenwick
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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VOGUE'S BOOK OF ETIQUETTE (658 pp.) -M/7//cen/ Fenwick-Simon & Schusfer...
...cookery to the knottier intricacies of proper behavior for divorcees and the correct way to address a letter to an Archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church ("The Very Reverend Archimandrite"). Cold-toned, it tries to sell etiquette purely as a civic virtue. "Think of ball games," raps Author Fenwick (who obviously never does) "without a conventional seating system. Whenever egos touch . . . common sense demands a system. [Etiquette] is essential to the amenities of civilized life...
...imagines itself to be: plain common sense and practical advice. But there is also a great deal of pedantic nonsense whose prissiness would drive a climbing Milquetoast to despair, as he struggled always to say "telephone" (instead of "phone") and "whiskey and soda" (instead of "highball"). "TOMATO," says Author Fenwick firmly, "is better pronounced 'to-mah-to,' as ... it comes from the Spanish Toma-te,' which is pronounced 'tomahtay.'' This is a much hotter potato* than Author Fenwick seems to realize...
Guided by Author Fenwick's inflexible hand, the common man may well proceed to great rewards. The chief reward: being safe from snubs. Author Fenwick deplores "fake fireplaces filled with a fake coal fire, lighted by electricity," deprecates "a shawl on the piano" and " 'popup' cigarette boxes , . . decorated with a scotty or a nude." But she shows that her judgment has less to do with taste than with fashion when she advocates "tables made of old painted tin trays on a modern stretcher base" and "odd saucers of Lowestoft china ... as ashtrays...
...antisocial man is irresponsible and ill-bred," snaps Author Fenwick, i.e., at funerals he grins cheerily at his fellow mourners; at weddings he actually shows "unrestrained gaiety." He cannot stand in a queue without "sneaking up to a higher place," or walk out of his apartment house without dropping his butts in the hallway (instead of in the Lowestoft). All the same, he strikes the reader as a more attractive man than he will be after he has let Vogue lighten his darkness...