Every customer is treated with a studied politeness and the more urbane and
Chesterfieldian a clerk is, the better the manager likes it." Dawdling and rushing clerks were equally unappreciated.
Isenberg rejects the notion that Burr was "a
Chesterfieldian cad," instead arguing that he was a modern feminist (61).
Consider this passage from a long report, written by Liebling in 1938, called "The Jollity Building," which described the inhabitants of a certain edifice situated along Manhattan's Broadway in the upper Forties: "chiefly orchestra leaders, theatrical agents, bookmakers, and miscellaneous promoters [i.e., con men]." Liebling is describing "a tall
Chesterfieldian old man named Dr.
With
Chesterfieldian perfection, Frank uses Emma, just as he uses Mrs.
Abigail Adams admitted, for example, that despite the problems, "many excellent maxims and rules for the conduct of youth were strewn throughout the work."(69) If we miss this early affinity of middling folks for Chesterfieldian advice, we will miss the rising of the middle class.
Bushman and Wood see an "ambivalence" towards the spread of European notions of refinement in late eighteenth-century America, often expressed as criticism of "Chesterfieldian" behavior (see n.