Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

I couldn’t have been inside more than ten minutes; but by the time I got back, the paper manufacturer was gone and one of the blondes from the couch had taken his place. This, I suppose, was to be expected. Wallace Wolcott had to be in the sights of every young socialite without a ring on her finger. Most of the able-bodied girls in town would know his net worth and the names of his sisters. The industrious ones knew the names of his hunting dogs too. The blonde, who looked like she’d been thrown a cotillion or two, was wearing white ermine a few months out of season and close-fitting gloves that climbed all the way to her elbows. Drawing closer, I could tell that her diction was almost as good as her figure, but that didn’t mean she was captive of a ladylike reserve.

Grandma Hollingsworth: None of the characters in the book are based on anyone in real life. But three of my grandparents and a great grandmother lived into their late 90s or early 100s. My maternal grandparents lived across the street from me in the summers and I’d see them every day. Over lunch when I was in my twenties, it was great fun to talk with them about their lives between the wars–when they were young adults. My grandmother, who was simultaneously a woman of manners and verve, fended off marriage proposals until she was thirty because she was having too much fun to settle down. Like Katey, while at a party by the sea, my grandmother pushed a romantic rival in white furs off a dock. She told me that’s when she decided to marry my grandfather. It was my conversations with this grandmother that solidified my view that her generation was less Victorian than my parents’ generation. In America, the 1920s and 1930s allowed a certain openness for women that was then countered by the conformity of the 1950s. All one need due is watch the films of the 1930s to see the role models that women had for boldness in the era.