A Charming Compliment

Over the last few years I've amassed a modest collection of old books on etiquette and charm. One of my favorites is Margery Wilson's The Woman You Want to Be, published in 1942. Apparently it was a hugely popular book at the time (mine is a 14th edition), but it seems to be mostly forgotten today. Google yields very little about it. I picked this one up at a book sale in Ithaca about ten years ago, and was totally charmed by it. Since then I've learned a little bit about Ms. Wilson. She was a silent film actress and director, one of the first women directors in Hollywood. After her career in film, she wrote a number of advice books. The most popular seems to have been TWYWTB. There's a mention in the front of the book of the "Margery Wilson Institute," which I think was a charm school. After I bought this book, I hunted down her other books on Ebay, and I think I've got them all now. Every now and then I reread bits and pieces of TWYWTB, in hopes that maybe I'll internalize some of her advice and become lovely and charming.

So, without further ado, I give you the passage that caught my eye this evening.

A CHARMING COMPLIMENT. The gracious woman never says, "You look lovely in that hat!" -- which gives the hat a lot of credit. With charming tact and greater truth, if the hat is becoming, she says, "That hat looks lovely on you," which implies that the wearer makes the hat effective. From this remark alone you can govern hundreds of expressions in your daily conversation that will add to your pleasing effect on others, who in turn will call you charming. Will it be flattery? I do not think so. Do you know that every human being feels a sense of failure at some point? Thus, no matter what glittering circumstances surround the individual she struggles secretly or openly with a sense of inferiority. When you lift this feeling from her, even temporarily, you help her back to self-approval -- you help her back to full possession of her powers. This is a noble thing to do.