The British novelist, CHARLOTTE BINGHAM, gives her views on Thoroughly modern manners

Press, 27 December 1986, Page 14

The British novelist, CHARLOTTE BINGHAM, gives her views on Thoroughly modern manners

A bit late, perhaps, but I have come to the conclusion that I am a creep.

The reason I have come to this conclusion has everything to do with an incident that happened to me a few months ago.

I was at a dinner party and a man who, for reasons unknown to me, had spent most of the evening trying to find the designer label in the back of my dress ( well, that’s what he said he was doing) ended up putting his feet in my lap. I was so astonished that for a full minute I did nothing about it, but stared from his face to his feet, and back again, before I was called to my feet by my infuriated husband.

Now the point of this story is that I should have been Extremely Rude to him, but my upbringing (a million times, alas) just did not provide for this. How to get out of a sports car without showing your slip, yes; how to be rude back, no. However, since that evening when my utter feebleness was so manifest, my best beloved has invented ways for me to cope with this serious lack of savoirfaire.

When in trouble, I now call out in quavering tones, “Your brother has just telephoned" which, since he doesn’t have one, immediately alerts him to a Bad Situation, and as he’s good at being witty and rude, the situation is usually brought under control pretty quickly. All of which brings me to the New American obsession with manners for, according to their Miss Manners, sorter out of all types of social problems via her newspaper column and her Guide to Excruciatingly Good Behaviour, “there is never any excuse for rudeness.” Ever. Period. A dictum with which I absolutely cannot agree.

There are, whatever she says; many occasions when good manners are just not enough to cope with the situation, and to say otherwise is so much social pretence. Just as etiquette (which some people mistake for manners) has, in reality, nothing to do with them. The poor mayor who was struggling to make his peas arrive on top of his fork and was told by the Queen, “Why not turn your fork over; it’s much quicker,” was temporarily the victim of what he thought was good etiquette, but was eventually, and happily, rescued by good manners.

Not that we can’t sympathise with America’s current oobsession with How To Go On, for since the 60s everything seems to have got itself in a terrible tangle. Whatever anyone says now,, many exciting things happened in the Sixties, but not, alas, to manners. Now that the fashion for calling each other “mate” has quite disappeared, and heavy white linen tablecloths have taken the place of simple peasant gingham, it is perhaps time to try and make some new and simple rules for the many strange situa-

tions in which we can find ourselves.

Probably the most hilarious example of the current social confusion is best seen at dinner parties. “Come to dinner” can mean anything from jeans and spaghetti in the kitchen to pearl chokers and bow ties in the dining conservatory (just as the response to “May I introduce ...” can vary from “How do you do?” and a firm handshake to “Hi” and a small crook of the righthand index finger).

I used to solve the dress problem by ringing my hostess the night before and asking her what she was wearing, in the naive belief that if she said “my long black velvet” I would have a rough indication as to the sort of “dinner” hers was.

This worked until one day a famous actress said, “Just a wool skirt, darling.” I turned up in mine and found everyone else was wearing long evening dresses and their largest diamonds. I don’t think I have ever been so hot for so long. That was bad manners, and ever since I have resigned myself to "getting it wrong” three times out of. four. I do not, however, any longer get hot and bothered, because I honestly think it’s up to the hostess to tell people the sort of evening it’s likely to be and if she doesn’t, then she must expect to take pot luck. On the other hand, if you indicate you’re hoping it will be a rather glamorous eveing and people deliberatly turn up in old paint-stained clothes, you can feel quite free to be offended.

I think the nicest example of good manners as far as the “to dress or not to dress”

rule went, happened to a very distinguished friend in Ireland who, for rather complicated reasons, mistook a New Year’s Eve dance invitation as being a fancy dress dance and turned up for the pre-dance dinner at the house of a person (unknown to him but equally distinguished), wearing high heels, a mini skirt and a false bosom.

Apparently the thunderstruck silence when the butler announced him had to be heard to be believed as the assembled house party turned to survey him. But his host, who was as kind as he was distinguished, immediatly put him at his ease (or as near to it as was possible) by- saying gaily, “Oh, what a good idea, let’s all go in fancy dress” and took everyone upstairs to change into equally outrageous costumes.

I think playing a ghetto blaster in a garden, train or bus is horrendous (so, too, can be the prospect of asking for the offending instrument ,to be turned down, given the often confident demeanour of the owners. Elsie Burch Donald, editor of Debrett’s Etiquette and Modern Manners, cannily recommends asking the guard or bus conductor to make the request). Slamming your car door at any time, particularly at night in a street, is also highly inconsiderate. If you’ve ever nursed a sick person while a workman plays his trannie at full volume on next door’s roof, you will know the sort of thing I mean. Exactly the same goes for people who play their car radios at full volume, even if it is Mozart.