(no subject)

[iniquiticity]

Anonymous asked
So in Greenhouses, why does Washington call everyone sir?
Hello! Thank you for putting this comment in tumblr. i am weird about responding to ao3 comments. We can talk more about that later.

anyway the answer for this is, like all other things in greenhouses that washington does: politeness. so obviously, in a highly structured political world, there are specific honorifics that have to go to all the different people, and they all mean different things, etc…

i covered this i think briefly in the early chapter with lee, but here’s more on that.

so i suppose the worst thing you could do was go by just a default first/last name with someone who you knew or you weren’t sure wasn’t cool with it. for example, washington would never call any of the schuyler ladies or their partners without that person explictly saying “oh, stephen is fine” (in the case of peggy’s husband.) and for someone who pays as much respect to etiquette as washington does, he would use the default in mixed company. so that’s why alex is Lord Schuyler at a ball, even though he might be alexander at some point in the future. since alex doesn’t have a lot of respect of value in these kinds of etiquette situations, alex uses his default for a person even in mixed company (such as angelica.)

so the most disrespectful would be to use a first/last name.

and then up from would be mister/misses. and this would probably be sort of anyone that wasn’t… anything? i figure this would qualify for “mid-level gentry” like probably the washingtons were before GW became a big deal. i don’t really feel like there are a lot of misters. you might bring your friend who’s lower-class and he would be a mister. but there aren’t a lot of misters in this situation, generally.

(it’s interesting to think that lawrence was probably a mister when him and washington knew martha and sort of introduced them into this world. in a lot of ways, lawrence might have been the only mister some of them knew. according to wikipedia, lawrence was actually married to anne fairfax - thus giving george the opening into the status he needed - was because they were trying to move anne fairfax away from some creepy pastor (according to wiki). so i wonder if there was a similiar circumstance here, where lawrence wasn’t the best choice (based on status), but he was convineient and interested and certainly up and coming. and he would have immediately become lord washington upon marrying sally fairfax. so anyway this is a huge tangent.)

so generally in this case, calling someone mister would be a big insult. that’s why washington thinks about it with lee, but he just goes with lord.

so anyway that’s totally a tangent. the reason washington calls everyone sir has two reasons:

- covers all your respect bases. you can call a colonel sir, or a general sir, or a lord sir.

- but it’s also a way to be respectful of your underlings. like, i imagine you could call your servants (and merchantpeople) whatever you want, but with sir you’re saying i acknowledge you, you’re a real person, i understand that you’re doing work. for washington, who became who he is through huge gains in status, there are advantages to acknowledging people under him. he needs people under him to understand/consider/respect him as a general who values in soldiers (and citizens). it’s important a huge part of his strength as a politician is the populace. so he needs them - servants and craftpeople, for example, to say ‘this guy calls me sir! that means he knows i’m a real person! he gets me.”

- but also, washington really does want to be the leader for the leader for the people - he really does care about craftspeople and servants. and so not only is it valueable for them go go “hey, this guy gets me!” he also goes “yes, i get you, i respect you, you make this country go.” and this comes back from him being a general and seeing his soldiers suffer and realizing that he might have food but obviously HE can’t win the army.

so he calls people sir - even servants - because he cares about them, in his leaderly way.

i wonder if this is a thing people don’t like. i’m sure it is. “why did you call my servant ‘sir’?” jefferson says, when they’re at monticello.

“that platter is heavy, and we’re far from your kitchens. why would he not be a sir?”

“he’s a servant.”

“and a man, who does a lot of good work.”

(there’s a whole another argument here about how different lords treat their servants and the politics of it.)

anyway that is a REALLY long-winded tangential answer to your question. let me know if i covered it at all. or just shoot me more asks. we are very cool.