A Manner Of Being

remembering interviewing the late Sir Hardy Amies as a younger journalist. I had had no option other than to turn up without tights. Amies was unsympathetic when I explained why. He intoned that, in his view, dressing well is a “mark of respect to those you are going to be interacting with in the course of your day”. He had a point. My failure to have tights on was a breach of manners, rather than etiquette, because it was insulting to Sir Hardy that I had clearly not rated him (or I wouldn’t have dropped my tights on the station platform). Some etiquettes have become outmoded for purely practical reasons. Thank-you letters and postcards, for example. Emails and texts are now widely substituted. All that matters is that you do thank. And no one minds wheeled luggage as much as they used to — provided you avoid leaving marks by carrying it, rather than wheeling it, through the house. But some ancient etiquettes are still pertinent. When, for example, you meet an exciting new person for the first time at the house of a mutual friend, your mutual friend must be also invited to any follow-up meeting between the two of you. The reason? If you don’t, the host will find out and, feeling they have been used as a mere springboard, will be sad.

A more recherché example of etiquette is one of my own favourites. At a dance, a gentleman should offer his seat to an exhausted lady, but should engage her first in a brief upright conversation — this to give time for his ‘personal miasma’ to dissipate before she sinks into the seat. But these concepts require the capacity to think in the abstract and, if the ability is never called on because everything online is, metaphorically, black or white, it will fail to come to fruition. Think of those orphans, adopted aged two, who had never been cuddled, and who could not later empathise. It is known that the imaginations of children who begin watching television before the age of four will be stunted. And no wonder when CGI can create such magical scenes as it does with Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings.

Meanwhile, dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK, where our diet is 52% comprised of highly processed food, but only the eighth-leading cause in Italy, where they have a better diet. Is bad diet affecting brain function because the synapses are not being ‘lubricated’ or otherwise serviced due to the fact that highly processed food is lacking in the requisite stuff? It is known that dyslexia (also now an epidemic) is linked to low omega-3:high omega-6 ratios (found in oily fish). Have brains’ abilities to perceive subtlety, nuance, irony, and to judge context been nuked, as has been the hormone leptin, which used to tell humans they had had enough to eat, but is clearly no longer working? (Hence Ozempic)? I almost rest my case that wokeism might be a disability rather than an ideology.

Is there still a point to the gentleman in 2024? Here I quote from my own book, What Would HM The Queen Do? The Queen was the standard bearer for classic British good manners and her consideration for others was at the core of her popularity. When she met someone, she engaged fully with them and brought her whole focus to bear on them so that, for example, at investitures that might have taken a total of 60 seconds, the invested would reel away feeling they had had one of the most powerful experiences of their life. But etiquette played no part in the civility of which the Queen was globally

viewed as the embodiment. Civility is a courtly art, practised by responsible well-wishers to ensure that others feel valued and respected. It has its roots in chivalry, one of the three rocks on which our European civilisation is built, the other two being Christianity and classical antiquity. The Indian Civil Service, a highly efficient administrative body, required candidates to have studied the classics at university and to have a certificate from the riding master at Woolwich. Candidates were expected to be courageous, faithful to the Church, and give service to the poor and weak, as well as being courteous to the fair sex and refraining from criminal activity. Thus the code of a gentleman, at its most basic, can serve as a substitute for Christian or humanist ethics.

But now, our House of Lords is nicknamed the House of Common as created life peers are rude to the staff, considering themselves superior, when the real hereditary lords realised about accidents of birth and they all got on like a house on fire. The English gentleman’s word was his bond, but look what happened when Mrs Thatcher allowed non-gentlemen to enter the City. At the very least, the City gentleman would acknowledge a job application, rather than ignoring it, thus increasing the depression levels of the young. An Eton scholar I know with a double first from Oxford sent his CV to 77 finance houses. Only two replied — incidentally one of these was Jacob Rees-Mogg at Somerset Capital.

Being a gentleman may now be viewed as an elitist act, rather than something to aspire to. But not forever. He may have to keep his head down and meet other gents behind closed doors like members of the French Resistance, but he should include the occasional junior so they can see what they are missing out on. Once they have tasted civility, they will want to join in.