DEATH OF A PRECEDENT
Vicki Woods on
a social revolution in Forthcoming Marriages
THE first job I ever had that wasn't paid by the day and in cash was as a junior, sub-editor on Harpers & Queen. I was 20, and from a northern grammar school; everyone else was from St Mary's Calne. It took Harpers years to train me to work on Mrs Betty Kenward's Jennifer's Diary col- umn, where I had a crash course in everything pertaining to Society. I learned about correct forms of address, the Season, the order of precedence as laid down by Debrett's and how to plan a marquee wedding for 700 guests. It was a double life. I would leave my peeling squat in the Caledonian Road, walk to the office (H & Q paid very little) and spend long after- noons waiting for Mrs Kenward to get back from Ladies' Day and go through her galleys with me. Mrs Kenward would say baffling things ('She's a duke's daughter, so we'll put her here, d'you see?') and I would keep stumm — until I learned the form. The correct form. When I left, I knew how to find people in Debrett's and how to address a duke. 'Good morning, Duke,' I said, to the few dukes I met subsequently.
My next job (I left the squat, too) was on Radio Times, which was more . . . egalit- rian, and the only really pressing problems were the newly fashionable anti-sexist ones: 'Above, Wogan and Gloria enjoying a joke — NB from VW: should this be Wogan and Hunniford or Terry and Glor- ia? Ed to VW: No!' and so forth. Until one day, I was asked to check the captions on some framed copper plates which were to be handed over in ten minutes' time to the all-time great cover stars of Radio Times. I said, 'They're all OK, except this one, Lady Isobel Barnet.' The chief sub said, 'Yes, it's OK, she's I-S-O, one T. She used to be on What's My Line?' I said, 'Is she the daughter of a duke, marquess or earl?' and a baffled silence fell. 'Because if she isn't, it shouldn't be Lady Isobel Barnet. It should be Lady Barnet. It could be Lady (Isobel) Barnet,' I said, remembering the way Mrs Kenward used to solve her problems over the multiplicity of Lady Birdwoods. 'Or Isobel Barnet without the Lady, if that's how she's known profes- sionally' — but the chief sub lost his rag completely and said it didn't matter a toss. That's what he said. To dukes' daughters it matters — I persisted, strong in my know- ledge — and to anybody who cares about being correct. He said, 'Nobody cares about being "correct" anymore. Christ, what year is this?'
It was 1975. But it has taken 15 years until this month — for the editor of the Times to agree with the chief sub of Radio Times that nobody cares about being cor- rect anymore, and run its Forthcoming Marriages column alphabetically down the Court and Social page, instead of in a 'seemly order' based on the order of precedence of the United Kingdom as laid down in Debrett's and following through with the services in order of rank, unless the ranks are equal — then it's navy first, followed by army and air force. Up and down the land I hear the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation. 'When I saw Lord Mancroft halfway down the column, I smarted for him,' Peter Townend of Tatler told me, with his peculiar mixture of scandal and glee. 'And my poor friend Michael Naylor-Leyland, who's announced his engagement to one of old Prince Georg of Hanover's grand-daughters! In the old days, he'd have been at the top of the col- umn, obviously. At least Mr Wilson, no matter what his tendencies were, didn't meddle with the order.'
Simon Jenkins's tendencies are unknown to me, but he is getting very terse about this whining on about a 'seemly order'. He changed it on the Times because he felt it was no longer justified; and it's a terribly minor matter; and he hasn't had any cross letters from readers; and 'What do you mean, what did my social editor say? What would you expect her to say? I told her what I wanted done, and she did it.'
Is it a terribly minor matter? On the Times? The Telegraph still prints names in the old order; the Independent prints very few and those few alphabetically ( the Times envies the younger, moderne, class- less, meritocratic profile of the Indepen- dent). The Guardian's switchboard, asked for 'Social Editor', puts you through to the 'Society' page, which is about low-cost housing, cuts in the NHS and recreational play-schemes in the Wirral. 'We have never run a Court and Social page,' said the obituaries editor. Citizen Maxwell runs no Court and Social pages on the Euro- pean. I wish he would; it would be diz- zying. Debrett's is a breeze compared to Almanach de Gotha.
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