Maeve's Times

by Binchy, Maeve

  The joy of being able to cross your legs without seven minutes’ judicious edging to the front of your chair and back again, and much surreptitious feeling to make sure that acres of thigh are not visible, has to be known to be believed. The sheer delight of knowing that you need never again hunt for an Irish threepence to put in your suspender when the terrible little knob has worked its way down to the sole of your foot, is one worth having. The days you feel too fragile to wrestle with a corset, for want of a better term, are no longer with us since the invention of tights. If we could only get the makers to invent something which is both sheer and long-lasting, we could be said to have arrived in the perfect society. As it stands, one can often be in the lovely position of having to choose between something that looks like a stocking and lasts three days, or something that will last but looks like a surgical bandage.

  Men are always being asked their views on women’s underwear and they never say anything useful, so I just wouldn’t give them all the chance here in the office. Men always profess to like blacks and scarlets and things, but like their wives to wear broderie anglaise from head to toe until they look as if they had just wandered off the film set of Oklahoma.

  Women were loath to talk about the whole subject, which may or may not be healthy, but one great thread of uniformity ran through what everyone said. We are all in favour of wearing things that have a double purpose, like bra-slips, or panty-girdles or any other hyphenated garments that save effort in the mornings. Whereas we all used to wear one bra, one girdle, one slip, one pair of pants and two stockings (no one admitted to wearing vests), which was a total of six garments, now this can be cut down to a bra-slip and a pair of pantyhose, which is two. The national average is probably three or four. It is all more labour-saving and comfortable somehow, in these busy days.

  On the topic of pretty underthings, everyone said that if all things were equal, which they aren’t, they would indeed choose the attractive lacey flowered ones. But there is a big problem here. Anything that has any remedial nature manages to sacrifice beauty somewhere along the conveyor belt. The bra that holds you in or pads you out is not necessarily or at all the bra that has little rosebuds and pink lace. The girdles that look alluring could let you bulge alarmingly.

  But is anyone ever satisfied with their own shape anyway? As someone put it, there is always one unanswerable question, in the words of the old song:

  ‘Which would you rather

  Or rather would you be

  Legs to the oxter

  Or stomach to the knee?’

  The Nonsense of Etiquette

  30 October 1969

  The real immorality in life is to pretend that etiquette matters. It is the kind of pretence that brings a whole trail of neurosis and misery, as well as creating an artificial society of poseurs. The worst type of columnist is the one who orders her readers to follow the waiter under pain of death, rather than do the normal thing and let the unfortunate man who brought her to the restaurant crash his way through the tables.

  These etiquette fiends do not answer a great need in the country; they create it. I do not accept for one moment that anyone feels more secure and able to face life once they have been definitely forbidden to say ‘pleased to meet you’. The happiness of knowing how to say ‘How do you do?’ is a very ephemeral joy, and the amount of security that a nervous, socially aspiring woman can get from a paperback book on how it’s done, or a weekly nightmarish sermon in a magazine, seems very dubious.

  Of course there are legions of people who will not agree. They will say that it is all very well for those who are born to it to scorn etiquette and social ease; that a duchess has the right and the aplomb to tear her meat apart with bare hands in a restaurant if she chooses. But this is only perpetuating the whole terrible conspiracy.

  There is no such thing in Ireland as being born knowing how to eat oysters or how to address an abbot in speech and on the envelope, or whether you should hunt for a fishbone that is certain to kill you in ten seconds with a fork or with your fist. Nobody will need to know all these things. Telling people how this must or must not be done is going to conjure up a world of decision-making, where the wrong choice in a heavily charged moment is going to mean instant disgrace, and months of recrimination.

  I don’t know how to eat mussels. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this, and if ever I wanted to order them in a restaurant I would ask the waiter or a neighbour how to attack them only if I thought that what seemed the obvious way would reduce everyone to helpless laughter or nausea. If I were on my own eating them, I think I would try some way that managed to get them out of the shell and into my mouth without covering myself and the table with sauce. But what a world it would be if I felt I had to slink into bookshops, and look up ‘Eating’ under the letter M when I thought there was a chance they might be placed suddenly and viciously before me.

  The only real rule in etiquette is to realise that times change, manners change and that there are no absolutes. And even if there were absolutes, what would it matter? What will happen to the hostess who serves to the right and takes away from the left, or whichever is the wrong thing to do? Does she really think it matters? Is there anyone in the world who could produce one single reason for it mattering except a whole lot of claptrap based on what someone somewhere decided had been the Only Way to do it since the court of Louis XIV?

  When schools offer classes in etiquette, parents often bray with delight and think that here, at last, is something that will stand to their daughters in years to come. But my heart sinks when I hear of them, and I envisage some undoubtedly impeccable lady telling the girls how to word invitations for dinner parties, when the most probable type of entertainment they will have to organise is beer and spaghetti on a Saturday night. I know of one real and documented occasion when a nun told the pupils in the Confirmation class that one girl was not being asked to take the Temperance pledge because she would have many demanding occasions in her social life when she left school where she would have to drink, and all the parents crowed their approval of this wisdom. They should have been outraged that the nun had made a class distinction at the age of 12 between this child, who was of a better home and a lovelier family, and the rest.

  I wonder if Emily Post’s marathon guide to every possible situation that could rear its head to harass a human will help the situation or just make it worse.

  Will everybody sit up in bed laughing themselves sick at the etiquette of gloves and napkin? Will they be depressed to think that in 1922 women went out in droves to buy this ludicrous tome, which eventually ran through 99 printings and sold four million copies? Most frightening of all, will any reader who pays £2 10s for the new edition, brought out, I assume, as a giant laugh at this stage, take one word of what Emily wrote seriously? More than any other book that has appeared recently, I would love to know its sales today. I would be fascinated to know who buys it and why I got it to review, but if I had seen it in someone’s house I certainly would have bought it. At least two people I showed it to are ordering copies.

  It is well over 600 pages of utter and complete nonsense, but it is compulsive reading. There is drama in every line, from the gentle warning not to refer to a bell as a ‘tintinnabulary summons’ or a cow’s tail as ‘bovine continuation’, to the wording of engraved pew cards for weddings.

  Emily Post was everyone’s ideal woman in the twenties. Americans bought her book without question as soon as there was to be a wedding in the house. She was a Baltimore Beauty herself, which of course gave her the right to speak; her wedding to Edwin M. Post Jnr in Tuxedo Park was one of the year’s social events. As Edwin became more and more important in Wall Street, Emily became more and more obsessed with table settings and the duties of a chaperone.

  It is easy to be wise after the event, and I know very little about either of them, but I do feel that it must have been quite predictable that the social event of 1892 should have ended in the Divorce Court of 1906.

 
; Then Emily got down to business seriously, and told the world that if a wedding present had to be delayed through illness or disaster, a note should be written At Once to explain the delay and announce that the gift was on its way. She decided that people must have maids with low voices and that children in nice families should have visiting cards which they leave at parties bearing their name and Chez Maman instead of an address.

  She goes completely berserk in the chapter about issuing invitations by telephone. Messages should always follow a prescribed form, apparently: ‘Is this Lennox 0000? Would you please ask Mr and Mrs Smith if they will dine with Mrs Grantham Jones next Tuesday, the tenth, at eight o’clock? Mrs Jones’ number is Plaza one-two, ring two.’

  I am afraid I cannot understand from the book how this message should be communicated. Is it from Mrs Jones’ butler to Mrs Smith’s butler? It would appear to be, because the answer is also in the third person. Even the most personal phone calls seem to have official starts, middles and ends, while the behaviour of engaged couples towards each other has to be seen to be believed.

  There is a chapter on how to get people to talk to each other at meals. That is really called the Turning of the Table. I attacked it with enormous interest, thinking it was some form of spiritualism patronised by Good Society, but didn’t it turn out to be a whole set of directions on which way your face was meant to be turned after the fish course! I am copying directly from the book at this stage: ‘The turning of the table is accomplished by the hostess who merely turns from the gentleman (on her left probably) with whom she has been talking during the soup and fish course to the one on her right. As she turns, the lady to whom the “right” gentleman has been talking turns to the gentleman further on, and in a moment everyone at the table is talking to a new neighbour.’

  But what in the name of God are they all going to say? Emily really falls down on this. What could you possibly say, out of the blue, to a man on your right when the starting gun has been fired by the hostess turning? Or perhaps you aren’t meant to say anything. She has a stern chapter on people who talk too much. I find myself caught between fascination, horror and sheer disbelief. Could anyone have cared, I wonder, and then I remember that four million people went out, presumably sober, and bought the book, and it fills me with rage.

  It is due to the Emily Posts, the Amy Vanderbilts and their successors that you have unfortunates writing urgently to magazines saying that they must know by return of post whether to call the bride and bridegroom at a wedding next Saturday ‘The happy couple’ or ‘Mary and Jimmy’, when they have to make a speech. No punishment is great enough for anyone who made them feel it mattered a damn.

  SEVENTIES

  The World’s Greatest Lies About Women

  16 June 1970

  1. Men like fat, cuddly women. They do, to laugh with and at, but not to fall in love with, behave extravagantly towards and join in matrimony with. If your role is that of sister, playmate and confidante, be as fat and cuddly as possible. If you hoped for anything more adventurous, get thin.

  2. Men like women without make-up. They don’t. They like extremely well and carefully made-up women whose skin has that expensive cultured look which comes from three hours at the dressing table. A woman who is really without make-up would frighten them to death. They regard blotches as eczema, and uneven colouring as a sign of tertiary syphilis.

  3. Men like women in midi-length clothes. Not in Ireland yet, they don’t. A maxi was fine during the winter for a young second arts student, and only when worn over the briefest of midi skirts so that everyone got the best of both worlds. They are afraid that their girlfriend’s midi might be mistaken for someone else’s leftover skirt, or worse still for a foolish attempt to be ahead of fashion, which is considerably more sinister than being behind it.

  4. Everyone looks better in summer than in winter. Completely untrue. Everyone has more courage in summer, that’s all. In winter you wouldn’t dare to show veiny legs that had undergone a half-hearted attempt at instant tanning, and wear sleeveless dresses that showed the most ageing part of the body – the flesh on the top of the arms. For all those who turn that mythical brown, thousands more go red, or freckled, or that attractive shade of peel that can be a menace to anyone who sits beside you. Winter is safer, much.

  5. Pregnant women are beautiful. They are, if they are sitting in a Chanel dress with a white collar framing an unworried face, thinking beautiful thoughts about a wonderful and miraculous event that is going to change everyone’s lives. They are considerably less than beautiful if they are wearing their sister-in-law’s maternity dress, elastic stockings, bemoaning the fact that they can’t drink gin, and wondering how on earth they are going to afford another child.

  6. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t beautiful. You are quite right, it doesn’t matter a damn to anyone else, but it matters quite a lot to you.

  Baby Blue

  24 December 1971

  My first evening dress was baby blue, and it had a great panel of blue velvet down the front, because my cousin who actually owned the dress was six inches thinner everywhere than I was. It had two short puff sleeves, and a belt which it was decided that I should not wear. It was made from some kind of good taffeta, and had, in its original condition, what was known as a good cut.

  It was borrowed and altered in great haste, because a precocious classmate had decided to have a formal party. A formal party meant that the entire class turned up looking idiotic and she had to provide 23 idiotic men as well.

  I was so excited when the blue evening dress arrived back from the dressmaker. It didn’t matter, we all agreed, that the baby blue inset was a totally different colour from the baby blue dress. It gave it contrast and eye-appeal, a kind next-door neighbour said, and we were delighted with it. I telephoned the mother of the cousin and said it was going to be a great success. She was enormously gratified.

  I got my hair permed on the day of the formal party, which now many years later I can agree was a great mistake. It would have been wiser to have had the perm six months previously and to allow it to grow out. However, there is nothing like the Aborigine look to give you confidence if you were once a girl with straight hair, and my younger sister who hadn’t recognised me when I came to the door said that I looked 40, and I thought that was good too. It would have been terrible to look 16, which was what we all were.

  I had bought new underwear in case the taxi crashed on the way to the formal party and I ended up on the operating table; and I became very angry with another young sister who said I looked better in my blue knickers than I did in the dress. Cheap jealousy, I thought, and with all that puppy fat and navy school knicker plus awful school belted tunic as her only covering, how could she be expected to have any judgment at all?

  Against everyone’s advice I invested in a pair of diamante earrings, cost 1s. 3d. old money in Woolworths; they had an inset of baby blue also, and I thought that this was the last word in coordination. I wore them for three days before the event, and ignored the fact that great ulcerous sores were forming on my earlobes. Practice, I thought, would solve that.

  The formal party started at nine p.m. I was ready at six, and looked so beautiful that I thought it would be unfair to the rest of the girls. How could they compete? The riot of baby blue had descended to the shoes as well, and in those days, shoe dyeing wasn’t all it is these days. By seven p.m. my legs had turned blue up to the knee. It didn’t matter, said my father kindly, unless, of course, they do the can-can these days. Panic set in, and I removed shoes, stockings and scrubbed my legs to their original purple, and the shoes to their off-white. To hell with coordination, I wasn’t going to let people think I had painted myself with woad.

  By eight p.m. I pitied my drab parents and my pathetic family, who were not glitter and stardust as I was. They were tolerant to the degree of not commenting on my swollen ears, which now couldn’t take the diamante clips and luxuriated with the innovation of sticking-plaster painted blue.
They told me that I looked lovely, and that I would be the belle of the ball. I knew it already, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

  There is no use in dwelling on the formal party. Nobody danced with me at all, except in the Paul Jones, and nobody said I looked well. Everyone else had blouses and long skirts which cost a fraction of what the alterations on my cousin’s evening dress had set me back. Everyone else looked normal, I looked like a mad blue balloon.

  I decided I would burn it that night when I got home, in the garden in a bonfire. Then I thought that would wake my parents and make them distressed that I hadn’t been the belle of the ball after all, so I set off down the road to burn it on the railway bank of Dalkey station. Then I remembered the bye-laws, and having to walk home in my underwear, which the baby had rightly said looked better than the dress, so I decided to hell with it all, I would just tear it up tomorrow, at dawn.

  But the next day, didn’t a boy, a real live boy who had danced with me during one of the Paul Joneses, ring up and say that he was giving a formal party next week, and would I come? The social whirl was beginning, I thought, and in the grey light of morning the dress didn’t look too bad on the back of a chair.

  And there wasn’t time to get a skirt and blouse and look normal like everyone else, and I checked around and not everybody had been invited to his formal party; in fact only three of us had. So I rang the mother of the cousin again, and she was embarrassingly gratified this time, and I decided to allow my ears to cure and not wear any earrings, and to let the perm grow out, and to avoid dyed shoes.

  And a whole winter season of idiotic parties began, at which I formally decided I was the belle of the ball even though I hardly got danced with at all, and I know I am a stupid cow, but I still have the dress, and I am never going to give it away, set fire to it on the railway bank or use it as a duster.