An Etiquette Dispute Over a Business Letter
A Walla Walla man takes deep offense at the formal address used in a professional letter to his wife, revealing the rigid social anxieties of the era.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A man from the East had occasion to write a business letter to a married lady in Walla Walla county. He addressed it 'My Dear Madam,' a phrase set down in books as thoroughly business-like for someone not well acquainted. The husband became incensed, claiming the tone was one of 'familiarity.' The writer attempted to placate him in a subsequent letter by using 'Dear Madam,' which the husband oddly found more acceptable. Finally, the writer used 'Madam'—a term reserved for enemies or for ending an acquaintance—which the husband deemed 'exactly the proper thing.' The writer remarked that the husband's shifting standards demonstrated a 'lamentable ignorance' of the very social codes he was so desperate to enforce.
“My next letter was addressed to the lady as 'Madam,' a term that is almost insulting in its brevity and one which is only used in letters of anger. Strange to say, the husband of the lady thought this form of address to his wife was exactly the proper thing.”
This petty squabble highlights how social status and gender roles were strictly policed in early 20th-century Walla Walla. It serves as a reminder that the seemingly trivial etiquette rules of the past were often tools used to assert control over domestic life.
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