# When You Write a Letter/Chapter 4

My sister Virginia was giving a dinner, and she asked me to help her write the invitations. For several reasons the invitations were to be written and not engraved. Virginia is a stickler for social conventions and for thoroughly good form, so she couldn't have them printed, for both she and I knew that that would suggest that we are common and vulgar and inexperienced in social affairs; only those who are ignorant of what is done by the most careful people, or those who choose for the sake of haste or economy to ignore social conventions, ever have their calling cards or their invitations printed. There was not time to have them engraved, for Virginia had decided rather hastily to give the dinner, she could secure the caterer only upon a certain night, and she knew that she would have to give her guests ten days in which to reply to her invitation and to get their feathers preened up. The written invitation is quite as good form as is the engraved one, and so, as I said, my sister decided to write her invitations, and she asked me to help her.
​It was to be a thoroughly nice dinner and a good-sized one. The guests comprised the best people of the town, that is the most experienced socially, the most refined, the best educated. It was no common country village in which Virginia lived, but a college town where culture and literary taste flourished, so we were justified in supposing that everything would be done both by the hostess and her guests in the most conventional form.
The invitation was written in the recognized form which such invitations are supposed to follow. We used Virginia's correspondence cards with her monogram stamped in gold in one corner. The writing was carefully placed on the card with wide margins so as to give the best possible suggestion of care and thoughtful arrangement. Such things count for more than most persons suppose. The card read:
Miss Virginia Gale requests the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Hoover's company at dinner on Wednesday evening May the eleventh at seven o'clock, Cosmos Club, Locust and Olive Streets.
"How is your dinner coming on?" I asked Virginia three days later when she had had ample time to hear from every one. She smiled in reply and showed me a little pile of envelopes. Now every one knows who has had any experience or who has thought about it at all that a formal invitation should have an immediate reply; especially is this true of an invitation to dinner. The hostess must know exactly how many guests she is to entertain, she must prepare her menu, and arrange her tables, and decide upon the seating of her guests. Otherwise she will offend some one or her dinner will be a higgledy-piggledy affair without order or definite arrangement, and that was not the sort of dinner that Virginia was planning to give.
I took the envelopes in my hand, less than a dozen of them, and looked them over. They were of all shades and sizes, pink, lavender, cream, and yellow; there ​were business envelopes with bold printed return cards in the corner, and there were envelopes so tiny as to suggest the announcement of a birth. The acknowledgments were equally bizarre. Mrs. Turner—her husband received a doctor's degree from Yale and teaches English—began her note "Dear Friend" and signed it "Yours Truly" with two capital letters, not being satisfied to make one error only in her complimentary close. Bob Bates, whom I had always looked upon as a shining example of what one ought to do and be in social affairs, wrote a rather crude informal note and used the stationery designed for the business operations of his uncle Ed's hardware store. Miss Eleanor Pratt, whose father is president of one of our local banks and who herself is a graduate of a most widely advertised girls' finishing school, affirmed that "Miss Pratt regrets that owing to a previous engagement, she will be unable to accept," etc., instead of saying as she really meant that she is unable to do so. Not a third of those invited had replied and only Mr. Scott's note was in actually perfect form, the only form which could correctly be ​used, in fact. His stationery was beautifully simple and refined, with his street number embossed in dark blue at the top. His penmanship was even and regular and the note was carefully placed in the middle of the folded sheet. The indentations and the margins were very pleasing to the eye. When you saw the envelope, even before you took the card into your hand, you recognized the fact that Mr. Scott is a gentleman who knows social conventions and who follows them punctiliously.
Mr. Scott accepts with pleasure Miss Virginia Gale's invitation to dinner, at seven o'clock on the evening of the eleventh of May.
The acknowledgments came straggling in until the day of the dinner. Some of those invited called up on the telephone at the last moment and declined or accepted, one or two sent word by friends, and in sheer desperation Virginia called up others to find out whether or not they were coming, explaining her action on the ground that she was afraid her own notes had gone astray in an uncertain mail. In one way or another she heard from the ​most of her guests before the hour set for the meal. Mrs. Barnes, sensitive though absent-minded, arrived without either having accepted or declined her invitation, it appearing later that she thought she really had accepted. Three days after the dinner had been given a tardy note of apology was received from Dr. Earle in which he explained that the arrival of some friends from Seattle just at the time Miss Gale's note came had entirely driven the matter of her dinner out of his mind, and he had just that morning come upon it while straightening up his desk. He trusted that his seeming neglect had not caused Virginia any undue annoyance.
We kept all the acknowledgments, varied and many-colored as they were, and looked them over, after the dinner was a thing of the past, and commented on them. There was considerable food for thought in the little pile of envelopes and in the collection of bizarre notes which they contained.
"If these people," Virginia said to me, "who have been to boarding schools and college, who have traveled in every civilized country in the world and in some un​civilized ones, who are the social leaders in an uncommonly cultivated and educated community, are as ignorant and as careless of social forms and conventions as my guests were, don't you think you ought to write something for the education of young people and the general public with reference to these matters?"
"I believe I will," I replied. And that explains why I am giving such specific information and directions in this chapter. I remember very little that I learned in college, a condition not uncommon I imagine, but one of the things I do recall was said by my professor of English.
"In explaining anything to a general audience you should remember that they are always more ignorant than you think." If I err, then, in this direction, blame it on my early teaching.
Every one receives formal notes at one time or another even if he does not acknowledge them, for a large percentage of such communications are for one reason or another—carelessness, or indifference, or ignorance, or the delay which makes it unnecessary to do so many things in life—not answered or acknowledged at all. ​There are announcements of births and deaths, engagements and marriages; there are invitations to weddings and dinners, and there is for the writer of these notes a correct form to be used and for the recipient something to be said or done and a proper time and a proper method of saying or doing it.
The formal note of invitation or announcement should be written or engraved. There is no more logical reason why it should not be printed than there is why one should not eat with his knife or keep his hat on in the house. Children used to be told that there was a danger of cutting themselves if they ate with their knives, but there is equal danger of wounding themselves with the prongs of a fork. There is really no reason why we should not eat with our knives excepting a conventional one. It is not the custom; refined people generally in English-speaking countries do not do it; and there is an end of the matter. The same thing is true of the printed announcement or invitation or calling card. It shows a lack of social experience, unacquaintance with careful social forms, it suggests the common and the ​vulgar. You ask why? There is no reason. People with the widest social experience and the best breeding just don't do it that way, and that is all.
It is in quite good form to omit titles in the formal note and call every man plain 'Mister' though the one who does this will sometimes give offense to judges and doctors of medicine, and to military officials, who commonly adhere very closely to the titles to which they can legitimately lay claim. A friend of mine, a high college official, was introduced by a physician as "Mr. Jones" though he was entitled to be called "Dean," but when he in turn introduced the physician as "Mr. Brown," he was corrected by the medicine man and reminded that he was "Doctor Brown." It is well, therefore, to keep these points in mind, for though it is never discreditable or discourteous to call any ordinary man "Mister," yet some men will not like it; and more women will object if their husband's titles are not recognized. If you ignore the convention, you must not be annoyed if some people think you do not belong in the first class.
It is a general custom in formal notes ​when names are used to write them in full. It is better to say, "Mr. and Mrs. James Brown Scott" than "Mr. and Mrs. James B. Scott." We can properly write "Mr. and Mrs. Scott" if their identity is sufficiently clear to warrant the omission of the surnames, but it is not good form to use initials only, as "Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Scott." Such a method is too business-like and suggests haste and lack of care.
The formal note is written in the third person throughout as:
Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Phillips request the pleasure of Miss Julia Marlowe's company at dinner on Wednesday evening, June twenty-seventh, at seven o'clock. Woodbine Cottage, 1110 West Illinois Street, Urbana, Illinois.
If the persons concerned all live in the same city, only the street number need be given at the end of the note, and in cases of intimacy even, that may be omitted.
In the engraved invitation it is not always so easy to adhere strictly to the third person throughout the note. In this country at least, the engraved invitation ​commonly changes to the second person in order to avoid the writing in of the name of the one invited, and so follows something of a mongrel method. Such an invitation reads as follows:
Mr. and Mrs. David McConoughey request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Elizabeth to Mr. Robert Rea Brown on Saturday evening the twentieth of November at eight o'clock. Central Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey.
Here the invitation uses the pronoun "your" to apply to any one to whom the invitation may be addressed instead of including the name of each specific individual invited.
In England the third person would be strictly adhered to whether the invitation were written or engraved, and would read:
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Williams re quest the pleasure of Miss Althea Marsh's company at luncheon on Tuesday January the eleventh at one o'clock. 302 West Hill Street.
In general in such notes most punctuation is omitted excepting the period following abbreviations, and no abbreviations should be used excepting the most conventional ones, like "Mr." and "Mrs."
The better the materials used in the writing of any note, or in an engraved note, the more favorable impression will be made, and this is especially true of the formal note. Tinted paper, unless it be gray, is in very questionable taste; white is always the safest; pink and lavender are, I think, most commonplace and vulgar. They suggest the child or the rustic. Double sheets of note paper of any adult conventional size or correspondence cards approximately three and one-half by five and one-half inches of thoroughly good quality are the most appropriate materials to be used in writing such notes, and refined people commonly use only black ink. ​The paper or the cards may bear the writer's monogram or coat of arms or an embossed street address. The envelopes should fit the paper once folded and should be of the same quality as the paper. This last specification should go without saying, I suppose, but I have seen so many instances where it did not do so, that I hesitate to let the matter pass without additional emphasis or comment.
Mr. Frank King Robeson very much regrets that owing to an enforced absence from the city, he is unable to accept Mr. and Mrs. George Bennett's invitation to dinner on Tuesday evening the ninth of June at seven o'clock.
There are so many varieties of formal notes and announcements that one is sometimes at a loss to know just what he ought to do or say. I find in the morning mail various formal announcements. George Ward, an old friend of mine, has gone into partnership with some one in Spokane, and he wants me to know it; Randolph Eide and his wife have a new baby, and a little card gives me the information; John Honens is going to be married to Elizabeth Butler, whom I have never met, and her parents, with whom, also, I am unacquainted, invite me to the wedding; Betty Crawford has been married to a man I have never before heard of, and her parents announce the wedding. What should I do in each of these several cases?
The first note is simply for my information and does not demand an acknowledgment, though if I am polite and ​interested, as I should be, I may write George informally and congratulate him upon his advancement and assure him that I am glad to know of his success. Courtesy and diplomacy both require that I should reply to the announcement of the baby's birth. Parents expect a reply, for they are usually pretty sensitive regarding any lack of attention to their offspring and resent any slights or neglect in that direction more even than they would if these were directed toward themselves. Such announcements, however, should bear somewhere an address to which an acknowledgment may be sent, and in most cases which come under my notice do not do so. I shall have to write Mr. and Mrs. Eide and tell them how lucky they are to have this young American to train and to spend their money on, and how much I envy them the opportunity. This note, also, will be an informal one. The wedding invitation requires one note and admits of two others. I must accept or decline the invitation of the parents at once, and this must be done in a formal note addressed to them and similar to the invitation. I ought to write an informal ​note to John Honens congratulating him on his marriage and wishing him well, for I have known him all his life, he has done me the courtesy to recall our old friendship at the time of his approaching marriage, and it is to him I owe the pleasure of the invitation. I should be rather thoughtless and crude, and I should miss an opportunity to cement a very happy relationship, if I did not return his courtesy with a similar one. If I feel like making a little present to the newly formed household, this must be sent to the bride, and even though I do not know her, the fact that I am a near friend of her husband to be gives me the right to address her in an informal note and to say whatever pleasant and gracious things may come to my mind. If I do not wish to write her I may simply enclose my calling card with whatever I send.
In general, then, every formal announcement or invitation admits of an acknowledgment or requires one. The invitation should be accepted or declined on the day it is received. Such a procedure is only in justice to the hostess who must make specific preparation for the enter​tainment of her guests. If you are uncertain it is better to decline than to annoy her by holding up her plans for your convenience. If you want to make friends, if you would like to gain a reputation for thoughtful courtesy and punctilious regard for social conventions, you will in some way acknowledge every formal note which you receive even if the conditions existing do not actually require such an acknowledgment, and you will do it with your own hand even though the stenographer is unoccupied while you are doing it, for the stenographer, useful and necessary as she is, is for purposes of business and not for social courtesy.