To choose a different example: arguments, even when pursued in what we would regard as quite a civilized fashion, are warlike. Thus: ‘She attacked all my main points’, ‘That’s an indefensible position’, ‘This is one issue where you’re not going to win’, ‘That’s a weak strategy’, ‘His argument is unassailable.’ It is normal to understand, conduct and discuss arguments as if they are small wars.4 Clearly, arguments can be pursued with different levels of hostility. Yet the ordinary way of talking about them means that, even when they are pursued in a restrained and dignified way, the language of conflict remains. When we use manners in order to forestall arguments, their role is not to prevent thoughtful debate, but to reduce the chances of larger eruptions of violence. This suggests the way our metaphors disclose exactly what is at stake when we practise good manners.
Commenting on an encounter with a plausible young man who turned out to be a petty criminal, charity worker Janine says, ‘His manners were disarming.’ We are used to thinking that disarming means ‘charming’, but for most of its history the word has signified only the more military business of forcing a weapon from someone’s hand or divesting him of armour. This is apt, for manners are a means of depriving other people of their weapons of attack, establishing a peaceful footing rather than a hostile one. They are part of our equipment for self-preservation.
Manners express power relationships. But while sometimes these are visible (as in the polite behaviour of a waiter towards a customer), often they are not. In the context of thinking about sex, the historian and philosopher Michel Foucault argued that ‘Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.’5 Manners seem to bear out his point; they reinforce social similarities and dissimilarities while giving the appearance of taking no account of them.
Though easily construed as deference, mannerly behaviour tends to have an assertive undercurrent. Politeness can be strategic and egotistical even where it looks self-effacing or altruistic. The economist Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) wrote of manners as a form of hangover from bygone rituals, a pantomime in which old gestures of mastery and subservience are symbolically revived. What, then, are we to make of the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s statement, in a speech at a prize-giving in 1892, that ‘Au fond de la vraie politesse vous trouverez un sentiment, qui est l’amour de l’égalité’?6 (This translates, approximately, as ‘Deep down, you’ll find that true politeness is a matter of loving equality.’) At first blush, this seems to contradict everything else in this paragraph. But assiduously practising equality, displaying one’s commitment to it, is itself an act of dominance. Whereas the existence of equality precludes dominance, making a show of equality amounts to confirmation that equality has not been achieved.
What, moreover, are we to make of the appearance here of the word class? So far I have used it only a handful of times. By convention, it is something we all know about but which decent folk do not discuss, something that is everywhere and yet nigh on impossible to treat with candour, a debatable matter but not one that often gets debated. Class is one of the things for which the English are famous; or rather, our concern with class is infamous. No outsider can reflect at length on England without attempting to unpick the peculiarities of its class system; meanwhile the English, even in the act of being hypersensitive about class, tend to profess themselves indifferent to it.
It was in the nineteenth century that the word class began to be used to signify a system. Since the seventeenth century people had spoken of classes – ‘lower’, ‘higher’, ‘governing’. Middle class was established as a noun by around 1750; as an adjective it did not take off until about a hundred years later. We might interpret this as a sign that what we would call class distinctions were coming into sharper focus. But in its new sense the word class, rather than marking social differences precisely, did the reverse. It suggested the existence of a pattern of social divisions, yet created sketchiness where previously there had been the crisper demarcations of rank, order, station and degree. The old terms had connoted heredity, along with duties and ethical expectations. Class was not so bound up with the past, having no air of the feudal or the medieval, and was therefore easier to change. The business of changing it was spelled out in the Victorian period’s innumerable etiquette books, which were aids to ambition. As social distinctions became less static, so defensiveness and rivalry increased, as did a fondness for playing detective, spotting differences that had been submerged.
To this day the language of class is neither consistent nor rigorous, and when inevitably it is used in discussions of social inequalities, it ensures that those discussions are vehemently general rather than usefully particular. In political debate, much is made of the need for a classless society, and all the major parties from time to time claim it as one of their goals. Yet people’s notions of their own class provide them with security or with explanations for their disappointments and failures, and their class is something they reproduce – even in the act of trying to cover it up or deny its existence. The working class is alone in being licensed to extol its own culture publicly; other classes display what they think of as their virtues, rather than talking about them, and may even apologize as they display them (an English middle-class tic).
Our notions of class are piquant and likely to cause resentment, but are incapable of exact definition. The danger of examining class is that it is one of those subjects that disappear into thin air the moment you try to grasp hold of them. Jilly Cooper observes in her book Class, ‘a view from middle England’ published in 1979, that tackling the subject has been ‘like trying to catalogue the sea’. When she tells acquaintances what she is doing, they reel from her in horror, as if she is trying to produce ‘a standard work on coprophilia or child-molesting’. They pretend that class does not exist. The true aristocrat behaves as though ceremonies and boundaries have not been invented. Cooper cites the example of an earl who, at a stag party in a London club, urinates into a chamber pot in full view of the other guests. This kind of insouciance is noticeable even at upper-class weddings: ‘As they are accustomed to giving and going to balls and big parties, the wedding is not such an event as it would be in a middle-class family.’ She mentions ‘one upper-class bride … so relaxed she spent her wedding morning washing her horse’s tail’.7
What emerges from Jilly Cooper’s assorted anecdotes is that it is the psychology of class that really matters – the presence of class in people’s minds. One of the areas in which we see this most clearly is language. George Bernard Shaw famously remarked that ‘it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.’ The social anthropologist Kate Fox glosses this nicely: ‘All English people, whether they admit it or not, are fitted with a sort of social Global Positioning Satellite computer that tells us a person’s position on the class map as soon as he or she begins to speak.’8 This GPS system is not unique to England, but the English version is an object of fascination to outsiders, a complicated feat of engineering that is heavy and built to last yet also highly sensitive, expensive to maintain and not known to travel well.
Once, when I was in my twenties, a mature guest at a friend’s birthday party took exception to my relaxed posture (both my neighbours had gone walkabout), and asked, ‘Where were you at school that they didn’t teach you not to put your elbows on the table?’ Some might say that such custodial questioning is worse than the behaviour it is designed to reprove. Certainly it doesn’t help smooth out the wrinkles of social intercourse. What I remember most keenly, though, is the form of the question I was asked: ‘Where were you at school…?’ This is a variant on a theme: What do your parents do? Whereabouts do you live? Where did you grow up? It’s the GPS at work, the English appetite for ‘placing’ people. We know that Margaret Thatcher’s father was a grocer in Grantham, and that her successor as Prime Minister, John
Major, was the son of a one-time music-hall performer who manufactured garden gnomes. But how many Americans in the 1980s knew that Ronald Reagan’s father had been a shoe salesman, and how many French citizens knew that the father of their president François Mitterrand had been a stationmaster and later the manager of a business that made vinegar? The English have long attached immense significance to the identity and origins of a person’s father. Even though that preoccupation has receded a little, they remain alert to the minute particulars of other people’s accents, habits, appearance and, of course, manners.
The insistence on placing people is a mark of unease. Kate Fox prefers the term ‘dis-ease’, which has connotations not only of extreme discomfort but also of perversely choosing to be uncomfortable. Sigmund Freud called it Unbehagen. This is conventionally translated as ‘discontents’, as in the title of his book Civilization and Its Discontents (in German Das Unbehagen in der Kultur), though ‘discomfort’ or ‘malaise’ would, along with ‘unease’, be appropriate. As Freud’s title makes clear and the English version does not, the discontents are in civilization – its price – rather than a phenomenon separate from it. Social conformity, as we have already seen, thwarts our instincts, and we can feel frustrated when those instincts are not gratified. This existential malaise is something general, not something peculiarly English. But in English culture it manifests itself in a precise mapping of contours and other surface features, an analysis of positions and elevations. Tightly packed together, certainly when compared with most of the rest of Europe, the English are used to rubbing up against one another but, because so often obliged to do so, would prefer not to. By placing others, by putting them in particular compartments, we create more elbow room for ourselves.
I find it useful to think of society as if it is an apartment building. Residents feel a certain affinity with the others on their floor, even though in many ways they are a nuisance (‘Why can’t I have more considerate neighbours?’). Those on higher floors are admired or grudgingly respected, though it is more usual to think, ‘I should be up there, too,’ than to concede that ‘The folks on the twenty-fifth floor really are a cut above’. People on lower floors are treated with a disdain that is carefully veiled – and may even hide behind a visor that looks like a smile. The grand folks at the very top appear unaware that the rest of the building contains much besides the lift shaft; occasionally they throw their trash off the balcony. Residents reserve their strongest reactions for those to whom they are proximate. Freud wrote about what he called the narcissism of small differences: the details that separate adjoining communities – or adjacent people – are exaggerated in order to italicize oppositions (‘us and them’, and so on).9 A driver in a Mercedes E350 looks down on a driver in a Mercedes E250 more than one in a Ford Fiesta. In practice, observing the narcissism of small differences is crucial to an understanding of manners. We feel most strongly compelled to differentiate ourselves from those who are most like us.
4
Godspeed, babe
or, meetings and greetings
The greatest medieval English painting is the pair of oak panels known as the Wilton Diptych, created around 1395. A true English treasure, it is on show at the National Gallery in London. With its central hinge open, this portable masterpiece shows on the left-hand side Richard II, accompanied by the saints John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr; the right-hand panel shows the Virgin Mary, with Christ in her arms and a supporting cast of eleven angels. When the hinge is closed, we see a coat of arms and a white hart upon a grassy meadow, but it is the painting’s open form that is relevant here, for it shows King Richard kneeling, backed by his patrons, waiting to make a delivery or more likely to receive something. Although the symbolism is open to interpretation, it seems that Richard is appealing to Mary to intercede on his behalf with Christ.
The Wilton Diptych is fascinating as an image of a medieval meeting. If it suggests the sacred nature of kingship, it also honours the idea of political alliance and the possibilities of art as religious propaganda. Enigmatic it may be, but it is a beautiful celebration of the significance of coming together.
Meeting new people is for most of us a common occurrence, not obviously fraught with danger, even if it can make us a little nervous. But in primitive societies it was a source of anxiety. First encounters were tentative and interrogative. Some of the modern rituals of greeting bear a trace of this: we assay a person by means of a handshake, perhaps, and with a conventional question (‘How do you do?’) that is a calcified form of what would once have been a genuine query.
Even when we present ourselves discreetly, we measure everyone we meet. The first time I encounter you, I will probably form a quick picture of your intelligence, education, attitudes, honesty, social and economic status, sexuality and emotional soundness. Some of my first impressions may well be incorrect; many will be right. I’m not making a claim here for my being outstandingly perceptive; as a species, we are adept at this rapid probing of strangers’ key attributes. This ability is of immense practical use. For precisely this reason, we develop artful ways of deceiving others, manoeuvring in order to make our strengths look stronger and keep our vulnerabilities out of sight.
Greetings are routines, memorized performances of politeness. We learn them as children, and later they are refined. Think of what gets taught when you start learning a foreign language: it’s all ‘Hello’, ‘Good morning’, ‘How are you?’, ‘Where are you from?’ The routines we use with strangers are acts of appeasement; those we use with more familiar people are means of asserting the continuity of our relationship – for instance, ‘How are your mum and dad?’ means ‘I know your mum and dad. We’ve done this before.’
In other cultures, a meeting between two people may involve waving, tongue-poking, rubbing noses or delicately patting each other on the bottom. Yet across cultures the essence of greetings is pairing: the structure is that of question-and-answer or call-and-response, a ritual of turn-taking that expresses recognition and the pleasure taken in recognition. When I greet someone, I am acknowledging that he or she is worth recognizing; when the greeting is returned, the value of being recognized by me is acknowledged. If this reciprocity is not achieved, offence is likely.
In some cultures this notion of pairing extends to forms of address. Anyone who speaks even a little French will be aware of the distinction between tu and vous: these are the singular and plural forms of ‘you’, but vous is also used when addressing just one person, either in formal situations or to mark politeness. Such a distinction does not exist in English, but it used to: thou was the singular form for intimate use, and ye, besides being the plural, was used in circumstances that demanded greater formality. The thou/ye distinction faded in the late sixteenth century; Shakespeare made dramatic use of it, but within a generation it had come to seem archaic, a fusty way of marking social differences, reminiscent of a feudal age. For a long time English has achieved something equivalent to the tu/vous distinction by other means: with nominals such as mate (the tu mode) and sir (the vous mode). Calling someone dear when she expects to be called madam will seem at best cheeky, and, again, not matching another person’s formality – as by calling someone bruv when he has called you sir – will cause offence. It is generally expected that an invitation, which is a greeting and a call for participation, will be extended and answered in the same format. If it comes in the third person (‘Mr and Mrs Leopold Bloom request the pleasure of your company…’), it is answered in the third person (‘Henry Hitchings accepts with pleasure…’).
Not all greetings are exactly paired; in some cases, the reciprocation takes the form of an acknowledgement rather than a duplication of the greeting. A bow, for instance, does not have to be answered with a bow, but it has to be recognized. Bowing is essentially an abbreviated form of the act of prostrating oneself before a superior. Prostration was common among the ancient Chinese (the word kowtow, literally ‘knock the head’, is a relic of
this) and was encouraged by Alexander the Great. The Greek chronicler Plutarch records that his fellow historian Callisthenes would not make this servile gesture; the less demonstrative bow was his compromise.1 In modern Japan there are distinct styles of bow such as the eshaku, which is a slight bending of the body, and the saikeirei, which is a slow, deep bow expressing great reverence; Buddhists when they bow make a gesture called gassho, in which the hands are held, palms together, in front of the heart, much like the Indian namaste.
The English bow is brief, short and masculine. The curtsy, which we now think of as a female gesture, achieves the same effect as the bow, but in a somewhat more expansive style that hints at the nimbleness of a dance move. The word itself is a variant of courtesy, and in the sixteenth century it was a general term for a gesture of obeisance (in Shakespeare the curtsying is often done by men). Up until the first half of the nineteenth century, it was usual to bow or curtsy when one entered or left a room where there were people of one’s own or a higher status. One spoke not only of making a curtsy, but also of dropping one, and the choice of verb indicated both the necessary lowering of the body and the manner of one’s doing so – lightly respectful rather than deeply reverent.
Today we are surprised if someone bows or curtsies. We are also unused to people wearing hats, except at occasions such as weddings, so the old practice of removing one’s hat as a mark of respect is unfamiliar, and the one kind of hat we come across a lot, the baseball cap, is always resolutely kept on, a protection against the sun and the attentions of CCTV.
The formal greeting we experience most often is a handshake. This used to mark a pledge. There are handshakes in Homer, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Britain, its significance changed from the middle of the seventeenth century, thanks to the Quakers. Trust and reciprocity were essential to Quaker business relationships, and they used the handshake as an egalitarian alternative to greetings that required any show of deference. The handshake did not fully establish itself in Britain until the late eighteenth century, but soon it was regarded as a distinctly British and indeed English custom. In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, published in 1856 with the subtitle ‘Moeurs de province’ (Provincial Manners) and set a couple of decades earlier, a handshake is described as a greeting ‘in the English fashion’.
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