My boyfriend and I have been working our way through the seven-part HBO miniseries John Adams, based on the book of the same name by David McCullough. I read the book when it first came out and loved it, so I was prepared to like the series. I was completely surprised, however, by the portrayal of George Washington.
I had never though very hard about it, but I realized I had no concept of him as an individual; to me, he was just the mythic figure of grade school, and later, as a political science major in college, as the author of his famous Farewell Address in 1796. But the performance that David Morse gave brought him endearingly to life. So much so that I pulled a copy of His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis, off my shelf where it had been lingering unread since my John Adams days.
In the early pages I was reminded of the list of manners--110 in all--that Washington wrote when he was young. Though sometimes sold as a book, credited to him as the author, in reality, they were a copy of a set of manners created by French Jesuit priests in 1595.
While it was most likely a penmanship exercise, the list survived as a terrific example of the timelessness of good manners--and the peculiarities of a few that, while the considerate sentiment is classic, have no bearing on our modern age, such as number nine: "Spit not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat before it."
I also love the superciliousness of number 16: "Do not Puff up the Cheeks, Loll not out the tongue rub the Hands, or beard, thrust out the lips, or bite them or keep the Lips too open or too Close." I would translate this to: Be self-aware of your actions and image. But to each his own.
Number one sums it all up, though: "Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present." This is timeless advice that will never change.
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