ANOTHER VOICE

The truth about manners in the good old days (they were bad)

PETRONELLA WYATT

The other day, while staying with friends, I was knocked down by a very elderly fellow-guest, a gentleman with white hair and quite a presence. Usually I spend my time capsizing other people, not being capsized by them, so I began to apol- ogise. Then I remembered it was he who should be repentant, not I. He said, 'You silly, f—ing cow.'

Well, this was not how I remembered it. I had always been led to believe that the pre- war generation had impeccable manners, far better than ours today. They had gone through a bit of wear and tear, perhaps, but not wear and swear. My fellow-guest was sceptical when I told him so. He said, 'Don't be daft.'

This shook me further. I have always been one for nostalgia, when the moment is right. At the moment it is quite modish to like it. A few weeks ago this paper pub- lished an editorial on the subject of decade chic, which appears to have taken over from radical chic, minimalist chic and danc- ing chic-to-chic. The idea behind decade chic is that any other period is preferable to our own.

We are losing our desire to be contempo- rary. Nothing now is demode, except the present. No wonder, you might say, given its hellishness. But our attitude is quite unusual. One assumes that each era thought the past one superior. But this is not the case. The desire to be contempo- rary has existed in varying degrees in most previous periods. The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that pre- ceded it, and the 17th and 18th centuries went so far as to cover priceless mosaics with plaster and whitewash.

There is nothing wrong with nostalgia. It is fun. Sometimes it is salutary, too. But there is too much of it around. We have too much nostalgia, so that we may soon cease to believe in the wisdom of our own time or, worse, to lose all confidence in any the- ory of moral progress.

Rose-tinted veils of nostalgia need to be twitched aside. Manners may seem a trivial example, but they are both the wellspring and mirror of any society. We know that barbarian peoples would not have come up to Mary Killen's standards, whereas most civilised races have fairly civil manners. Today, commentators use a supposed decline in manners to argue that there has been a general deterioration in society, which may even end in chaos. But have manners really lapsed? After my elderly fellow-guest had calmed down, I engaged him in this subject. He was born in 1906, the golden age of golden ages. Everyone loves the Edwardians — those great big swirling skirts and swirling moustaches and all that bowing and curt- sying and doffing of hats. You would be surprised, wouldn't you, if anyone ques- tioned its chivalry? My new friend said, 'When I was a child, there wasn't much chivalry. It was invented by Hollywood pictures.'

By this point we had sat down on a sofa. I told him that someone had once men- tioned to me an Edwardian writer on man- ners called Mrs George Cornwallis West, a sort of combination of Drusilla Beyfus and Lynda Lee-Potter. This elicited a response: `Ah, yes. Lynda Lee-Pooter [sic]. Yes Mrs Cornwallis was very much like her. She didn't think much of my father's generation. She thought people were very impolite.'

The works of Mrs Cornwallis, extraordi- nary as it may seem, are out of print. But I managed to purloin a copy belonging to my new friend. Mrs Cornwallis churned out the stuff like a milkmaid. One won- dered how she stood it. Her oeuvre con- sists of a collection of 103 articles entitled Modern Manners. Most of them were writ- ten between 1903 and 1907.

Mrs Cornwallis sounded just like today's women columnists, that is, she didn't just earn her living, she yearned her living. She was also very dyspeptic. One article began: 'The genius may be forgiven for lacking manners. Genius, however, is the exception. The colourless people endowed with ordinary brains who make up the majority of what we call "the world" cannot and ought not to be toler- ated without manners.'

But manners in this so-called golden age, according to Mrs Cornwallis, were very bad. Among all classes public behaviour was 'horribly unrefined', so that 'in this pro- saic age the chivalrous figures of ancient times seem merely myths to us so changed are the conditions of things'. You might say that Mrs Cornwallis never had to contend with films like Crash. But we are speaking of people's behaviour towards each other, and doubtless the Edwardians had books that were just as vile as some of our films.

The middle and upper classes, apparent- ly, behaved with enormous inconsideration: 'There is no doubt that people of the pre- sent generation treat someone else's house more or less like a hotel, coming and going as they like to suit their own convenience and seldom consulting that of their hosts.' Conversation, complained Mrs Cornwallis, rarely took place: 'People are getting out of the habit of exercising their wits and find great difficulty in keeping up a general con- versation on any topic of interest. Art, liter- ature, music one seldom hears discussed.' Sometimes the host and hostess were not even at home to welcome their guests. Sometimes people rose from the table and left without explanation. Most 'shirked' their thank-you letters.

There was no doubt that self-indulgence ,was dominant in all classes. The men and women on the street would think nothing of 'rushing into you without so much as a repentant word, there is no help to be had, even for the elderly in trouble. On the con- veyances, seldom does anyone give up their seat to a more helpless person. Indeed I have seen people spit at those deserving of kindness.' There was far more public drunkenness and brawling than today, though it was not quite as bad as the 18th century when both men and women would vomit on passers-by on their way home from Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens.

In any case, perhaps it is a mistake to expect too much of the British and man- ners. Our social conduct has never been elaborate like that of the French. But you might say that the English possess fewer manners but more freedom. Elaborate behaviour is not a substitute for common humanity. We are not stately, but we are often tolerant. If the strict rules and eti- quette which some societies obeyed are not practised here, it is because, with excep- tions, we do not need their severe restrain- ing influence.

It would seem reasonable to assume that people are generally more polite because of the tendency towards demo- cratic uniformity. Behaviour and taste have become more standardised. Good qualities are as easily destroyed as bad ones, but the aim is not always achieved by lowering all standards. In my experience, people arrive at the time they are asked, write thank-you letters, give up their seats on public transport and are generally amenable — unless they were born in 1906. In many ways, we are politer than the Edwardians.