Thus did the schoolmaster, wrapping himself in the gentility conferred by a BA, cling to his precarious perch on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. It lingers on in the USA among lawyers, even lady lawyers. Jane Austen would not have needed a book like this to help her address her letters. She slipped a bit when it came to Royalty, but then, they were not family. To those readers, however, who find Austen's world sufficiently confusing, this book may prove useful.
All societies create hierarchies, and forms of address.
Protocol lets each one know where one stands, literally. When protocol is silent, uncertainty and discomfort ensues, as when HRH The Prince of Wales went to Paris to collect the body of his former wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, and no one had thought to indicate on the programme whether he or the President of France should exit the hospital first. Two courteous men each begging to go behind the other resulted in an unseemly shuffle. Few of us now need to know how to address the remarried former wives of eldest sons of marquesses, or the dreadful mistakes that can occur in the case of the wives of the younger sons of dukes and marquesses, but the rise of the professional woman, who is honoured in her own right, is still a novelty. One real shortcoming of this book is the absence of a table of precedence.