Q. I recently attended a dinner party of about a
dozen in a household where the custom persists of evacuating the women at the conclusion of the meal to the drawing-room, leaving the men to focus on anecdote and port. Three of these guests were circuit high court judges, one of whom was female. When the time came for our hostess to signal imminent departure, the female judge indicated by her demeanour that she regarded herself, anyway for these purposes, as an ex officio male. Our hostess was presented with a dilemma to which there appear to be three optional solutions. 1) coerce the female judge to join the ladies; 2) remove the ladies, leaving the female judge behind; 3) abandon the custom on that occasion. She adopted the first option, which was accomplished — but with palpable awkwardness. Do you think she was right?
E.D.G., Lostwithiel, Cornwall A. Female truculence when confronted with this quaint and harmless custom is fairly passé now that the supremacy of the sexes has been almost fully reversed. Nevertheless, your hostess was faced with a delicate situation, and one which also arises when senior female politicians are involved. Unless there has been prior negotiation, the ‘Staff Solution’, as they say in the military world, must be to abandon the programme on that evening — although this option need not be considered a precedent.
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