Etiquette Camp Instills Kids With Kindness And Caring
A trip back to a slower, more genteel time begins with the turn onto Old Neck Road, where tidy fields of deep green soybeans shimmer in the sun and well-worn paths lead down to the Perquimans River.
The Fletcher-Skinner-Nixon House stands proudly here, its white-painted, double-decked porches and four brick chimneys looking much as they have for nearly 200 years. What’s going on in the house hasn’t changed much either. Inside, Nancy Rascoe is teaching children their manners. Good, old-fashioned manners.
In her yellow linen suit, jawbreaker pearls and silvery bob, Miss Nancy, as she is called, speaks in a slow, low-pitched drawl, kindly nudging a group of wiggly 6-12-year-olds to address one another properly, set a table with care, write a letter, arrange flowers, eat politely, make a bed and be a good sport.
Because her face wears a broad and infectious smile so much of the time, her voice is suffused with it too. “Lovely to have you, darlin’,” she says upon introduction. “We’re delighted you’re here.”
Nancy and her husband Peter Rascoe, both in their late 70’s, have been holding what they call “Summer House Parties for Etiquette for Young Ladies and Gentlemen” (colloquially referred to as “manners camp”) out of their historic family home in Hertford, NC — one of the state’s earliest permanent settlements — for 15 years. During five-day sleepover sessions, campers canoe, swim, sail and fish, and play tennis, football, horseshoes, and croquet in addition to learning Miss Nancy’s brand of etiquette, which is broadly about human kindness, but garnished with a delightful dose of old-fashioned arcana as well.
Mister Peter, as the campers know him, takes charge of all of the cooking and is famed for his lessons in how to skin a fish. Miss Nancy instructs and participates in nearly all of the sports, which she admits to taking quite seriously. After dinner, individual meetings with each camper and evening prayer, lights out is at 9 p.m. While the children sleep upstairs under white coverlets in antique four-poster beds, presumably the Rascoes get some rest as well. All of this culminates, on the fifth day, in a graduation tea.
Graduation Tea
“Etiquette is today what it has always been,” says a sweet 7-year-old Raleigh girl, standing at the front of the antique home’s broad center hall in her Sunday best, a long-stemmed, ribboned daisy bouquet gripped tightly in her hands, “a code of behavior based on kindness, consideration and unselfishness. Something that should not and will not ever change.”
The hall is lined with oriental rugs, oil portraits, settees and chairs. Poised in them sit the girl’s parents, her grandparents and those of her 12 fellow campers. Lined up on the stairs, peering down from above, their chins flattened on the banister, their flowers fidgeting and their hearts no doubt aflutter, fellow campers await Miss Nancy’s sonorous introduction of their full names, signifying their turn to descend the staircase, take their place at the front of the hall and recite.
“Here’s to the land of the long leaf pine,” the next graduate begins, in a lisping rendition of the Tar Heel Toast. He’s particularly little and very serious. His damp hair is combed carefully across his brow, and his blazer buttons are in the wrong holes. He pauses and looks at his daisies. A junior counselor stage-whispers in his direction. He gulps and continues: “The summer land where the sun doth shine, where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great; here’s to down home, the old North State.”
After each of the children has completed their recitations, received their applause, handed their mothers their flowers, together sung “Apple Red Happiness,” “Doe a Deer” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” (accompanied on the piano by septuagenarian Miss Blue, who assists the Rascoes with every part of their endeavor), and received one of many awards, including Best Host and Tidiest Room, they and their families adjourn to the dining room where a teatime buffet is laid with shining china and crystal.
The children shake off their straight-standing comportment — some even shake off their blazers — and clamor for pound cake and round, crustless cucumber sandwiches, deviled eggs and ham biscuits prepared (at least in good part) by the children themselves. They have arranged armfuls of hydrangeas in crystal bowls and vases to decorate the scene.
Documentary in the Works
“It’s so hard to describe,” says filmmaker Martha Daniel, who, with her colleague Caroline Paxton, is at work on a documentary about Miss Nancy and the manners camp. “I sat there three years ago, at the graduation tea for one of my own granddaughters, and the truth is, I went without knowing what to expect. The first thing that struck me was when Miss Blue began to play a hymn on the piano, and it was like a time warp. Tears sprung to my eyes. It was almost a religious experience.”
Daniel, like many camp visitors, was struck with the notion that something special was going on, something important, elusive and uniquely Southern. She also realized that it wouldn’t last forever and that its story needed to be told.
Daniel bought a video camera, learned to use it and began to record the Rascoe’s manners camps. She learned how to edit her footage at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University where Paxton, who runs her own production company, saw some of Daniel’s footage.
“I approached Martha and elbowed my way in,” Paxton jokes. Together, the two are now hard at work on a documentary, Miss Nancy Minds Their Manners.
“Miss Nancy has so much energy and so much patience, and she’s really hysterically funny. The things that go on are right out of a Southern novel,” Paxton says. She particularly admires Miss Nancy’s uncanny ability to hold the attention of her young, often rambunctious charges. “The children have an innate respect for her. I think sometimes they were just in awe of her for jumping in the river, canoeing in 100-degree heat and all with a gracefulness in her demeanor. They really have respect and really listen.”
The duo is trying to raise the money they need to complete their piece. Paxton estimates they’ve raised about 20 percent of their total budget to date, and with the sponsorship of the Southern Documentary Fund — enabling them to accept tax-deductible donations — they hope to close the gap soon. Then they plan to submit the film to film festivals and try to have it aired on public television and cable channels like Lifetime or the Discovery Channel.
Both women are convinced, as are the parents of the Rascoe’s countless campers over the years, that the wider world has something to learn from Miss Nancy — that our hurly-burly society of technology and immediacy could do with a soft reminder of the benefits of a gentler way, of respect and fair play, of kindness and care.
For more information on Miss Nancy Minds Their Manners, go to www.missnancymindstheirmanners.com.