Word: genteelism
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...spring of 1929, while Mao Tse-tung pushed the Red Army through village after dirty village in southern Kiangsi, a few Harvard seniors sat down in the genteel dining room of the Signet Society. John Fairbank, lanky and round-headed, was among them. He listened carefully to Charles Kingsley Webster, a visiting professor from Oxford, as the garrulous old man suggested that someone become interested in sorting out the Chinese documents pouring into the West...
...genteel customs of England's landed gentry, the bright pink coats of fox hunters at their favorite sport, the corruption of London's gin-swilling slums, all these are just a sampling of the subjects contained in the pictorial encyclopedia of Paul Mellon's private English painting collection. So vast has it grown that just to hang its choicest items, Richmond's Virginia Museum of Fine Arts cleared out all its picture galleries 31 years ago. But for all of Virginia's traditional ties to old England, Loyal Yale Grad Mellon ('29) showed...
...powder in moderation, when the vilest words that could be hissed were "She paints." Petite (5 ft. 2½ in.), fluttery, auburn-haired Florence Nightingale Graham was only the daughter of an immigrant Ontario truck farmer, but she intended to be a lady. Borrowing 1) a name from two genteel Victorian books (Elizabeth and Her German Garden and Enoch Arden), 2) the technique of giving "scientific treatments" to customers by massaging on creams and lotions from a previous employer, Eleanor Adair, and 3) $6,000 from a cousin, she set up her first salon, for well-heeled society matrons...
...write her off as a tax loss and drop over once every week to compound his interest. Then Dean Jones stumbles onto the scene as a gamesome competitor, and right behind him comes Rosemary Murphy, playing her Broadway role as the wronged wife, a woodwind still adither with genteel echoes of Bryn Mawr and Short Hills...
...head in the sand while the world goes to the devil. This is not to imply that we world goes to the devil. This is not to imply that we would have them sing to us of Vietnam or MLF or race riots. They are too droll, melodious, and genteel to be militant -- or even engage -- and evenings with them will always have that reassuring quality of entropy frozen to a momentary standstill: gnice, if not really gnu or gnitty-gritty...