Being A Grown-Up

Are you an adult? I’m not asking for a declaration of age, but of intent. Not a license to drink, buy lottery tickets, smoke, drive, or vote, but the sense of responsibility that ought to come with the lattermost of that list. I’m given to ask because of an article in the Wall Street Journal, essentially plugging a book called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women has turned Men into Boys by Kay S. Hymowitz. Apparently, there’s a new phase in the life cycle called ‘pre-adult’, which falls after adolescence and before adulthood proper, and is a synonym for ‘idiot’. This extension of the puerile state is one that we have probably all encountered, but it might be worth looking in the mirror, just to make sure you’re not a jerk.

The basic diagnosis is that a large number of young men (a typical example will hold a university degree and a sense of entitlement) who have had opportunities unique to their generation, have turned en masse into Bertie Wooster. Alas, they have no Jeeves, and thus, no restraint. Blessed with a disposable income, and with access to all the trappings of childhood that have been re-designed for the affluent twenty-something, they blunder through life without checks and balances, without responsibilities or a sense of ever wanting them, drinking and playing video games, and generally behaving as if life is one long frat party. They are really a deplorable lot.

I have personal experience with this new ‘difficult age’, for it is without doubt difficult to define adulthood for the up-and-coming graduate. But difficulty does not excuse a lack of effort. As some of my good friends will testify, I positively sought adulthood for many years. The forces outside ourselves will keep us locked in unsavoury patterns unless we move to assert ourselves. This move begins with the question, ‘what is my purpose?’ and finds its answers in responsibilities and duties of various kinds: personal, familial, and civic.

One must first ask how one is to be seen in the world, and to strive to be the best one can be. There is an element of the Golden Rule here, which I see as essentially reflexive. When we exhort ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, we must first understand how we should wish to be done unto. If we set poor examples, and meander fecklessly through life, we can hardly be surprised if others treat us with aloof disregard. In order to serve others, we must first serve ourselves.

As the self is re-defined according to a model of goodness, the sense of relations to those dear to us take on a different aspect. The nature of friendship and family is slowly revealed for its true value. The importance of filial relations supersedes loose notions of fraternity, that essentially revolve around sexual conquest, alcohol and, these days, facebook gossip.

A sense of place is arrived at, and its context – the nation – comes into view. Define your nation as you will – the term has assumed a fluidity in recent times – but we shall not avoid a sense of civic responsibility that comes with a recognition of the value of that which we hold dear as adults. Understanding how we should be like to be done unto, and how we should like our friends and families to be done unto, requires a degree of striving and vigilance as a citizen lest the power structures of our reality threaten, or fall short of, our ideals of how life should be. The most appalling and dangerous symptom of the ‘pre-adult’ is his political apathy. As he happily rolls through life, he has no notion of the responsibility that comes with the freedom he enjoys. Be afraid of any young man who asserts that politics makes no difference to him.

Being a grown-up seems no longer to come naturally with age. If that is so, we had better start to think about what it takes.

On Possession; or, ceci n’est pas une pipe

‘Have you got anything to smoke?’ Frédéric went on.

Dessardier felt his clothes, then took out of the depths of his pocket the debris of a pipe, a splendid meerschaum pipe, with an ebony stem, a silver lid, and an amber mouthpiece.

For three years he had been working on this pipe to make it a masterpiece. He had taken care to keep the bowl constantly encased in a chamois leather sheath, to smoke the pipe as slowly as possible, never putting it down on a marble surface, and to hang it up every night beside his bed. Now he shook the broken pieces in his hand, the nails of which were bleeding; and, with his chin sunk on his chest and his eyes staring, he gazed at these ruins of his happiness with a look of ineffable melancholy. (Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education, 1869).

We are given to think of sentiment, and to put it in its place. Manly men are not sentimental. We do not fawn over objects for their own sake, and we do not reduce things to banal aesthetics. We are interested in beauty, yes; cuteness, no. We are interested in ritual, yes; possession for its own sake, no. These divisions may at times be finer than we should like, but we shall adhere to them nonetheless.

Dessardier does not lament the loss of a pipe because it is precious, or even because it is precious to him. He laments the loss of the meaningful ritual that the pipe embodies. Indeed, this is not merely a pipe: it is the store of hours that structure a life; the joyful occupation that balances other arduous and necessary occupations. There will be other pipes, but in the wreckage of this one are times lost.

We may apply this principle to most of the material possessions of the manly man, for he knows that the best a man can get is not a plastic razor, but rather that which incorporates experience, good habit, ritual and a weight of meaning. He knows that to own a thing of quality is to reflect on quality. An understanding of what is good, what it is that lasts, is to strive to be good, and to last. When a man harps on his possessions, or on that which he aspires to possess, we may form a sound judgment about the man. That which he cherishes, or desires, tells you of his depth, or its lack. To buy a thing only because a thing is en vogue, or because it is expensive, is to manifest shallowness to a world that consumes conspicuousness, but nevertheless cares not for it.

We must cherish our possessions and understand why. Chances are, if we do this, we shall require a lot less and value what we have a lot more.

#FF? Hang Twitter, It’s Formal Friday

There’s a large minority of people – probably the majority of intelligent people – who think that the casual turn is really what’s wrong with the world. There’s something about ‘looking the part’, a lesson I learnt when I was about four years old, that instils purpose. Uniforms serve a purpose, and not only in schools. I would expect a bank manager to look like a bank manager, for example, and would think twice about entrusting my money, or my conversation about a loan, to a man in khakis and open collar. When I have to deal with a call-centre monkey, pace call-centre monkeys everywhere, I really think I can tell whether s/he has turned up to work smartly dressed or not. It’s something in the tone of voice. You just can’t be confident and professional if you show up to work in a t-shirt. Television engineers, gas men, electricity meter readers, plumbers: under your overalls I should like to see a collar and tie. It shows you care. It shows you’re professional. If you come to install my Sky box or fix my boiler wearing jeans that would be illegal in certain Southern counties in the US I should be loathe to let you into my house.

Worst of all is the general trend in offices everywhere to observe ‘casual Fridays’. Whose idea was this? It can’t be good for business, and it can’t be good for people’s self-esteem. The Victorians believed in the maxim of ‘healthy body, healthy mind’, and bless them if they didn’t rule the bloody world. I can only think that the twenty-first century motto will be remembered as ‘casual attire, casual attitude’, or ‘slack pants, slack off’, while civilisation crumbles around our under-used ankles. What’s more, being casual at work actually takes more effort than professional wear. People worry lest they are judged for their ill taste, and compete for the best individual appearance. Work wear makes no such demand. It simply is what it is. The style-savvy professional might know how to make it his own, but nobody is going to mind if he doesn’t.

Some rather natty Americans have formally rejected the casual turn, and announced that Fridays be especially formal. I’ve long thought that dressing well sets an example, and that, whatever the policy, if a respected individual dresses like a professional then others will emulate him. I exhort you to join the ranks of these fine people and don your best for Fridays in an outward show of contempt for the broad societal acceptance of slovenliness.

What to Do with Bullies in Australia

Currently going viral: what to do with bullies. It speaks for itself really. I will probably have more to say about this though.

Hosting

Can’t stop, I’m prepping for a party chez nous for Mrs. VB’s birthday. Remember the golden rules:

1. Don’t allow glasses to reach empty.

2. Ask the guests about them, and stop wittering on about oneself.

3. Be charming. Always be charming.

4. Do everyone the honour of looking good, but don’t look like you did everyone the honour of looking good.

5. Stay a few shades under a skin full. No man ever cut La Bella Figura when three sheets to the wind.

Until tomorrow, dear friends.

On Becoming Immortal

The writer put down his pen and made a fist, cracking the joints in his hand and feeling the dull ache chase up his arm to the shoulder. ‘To publish a book is to give birth to a child that never dies’, he mused. That wisdom is as old as the hills; perhaps older. In these days of ‘think it, publish it’ he wondered if it remained so.

He took up his pen once more and wrote:

Of course, the ethereal ephemera of our age is really only the pulp nonsense of yesteryear writ large. Of things published we remember less than a tithe. We should be wary of easy roads to living forever: even Aristotle’s works have been partially lost, and nobody is really sure who Shakespeare was. I used to think that writing a book was my chance to leave a timeless legacy of myself to the world. Having written one, I might be forgiven for concluding that I have merely added another unread block of bound paper to the dead weight of the world’s libraries. Writing in our age is the production of ever smaller needles for the stocking of an ever larger haystack. I am given to reflect: a writer needs a reader if he is to achieve immortality, and the reader must be so impressed as to ensure the dissemination of the work. He must not be a mere pleasure reader, for many millions have read J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown in this vein, and we can forecast quite credibly that these authors will not be remembered. The reader must be serious and thoughtful, and also influential in those two capacities. Note to self: find a patron.

Leaning back in his chair, feeling the burn in his neck and the cramp across his shoulders, he noticed that he could no longer feel his legs, and he struggled to his feet. He paced the room impatiently, awaiting the descent of his blood to his feet. As he gasped at the return of sensation, he lamented the bygone times of the Medici, the Court of Friedrich the Great, the English aristocracy, and the conspicuous nouveau riche of America’s gilded age. There were stupid people in abundance, with more wealth than they could ever spend, eager to add, vicariously at least, human importance to their social value. Under such a system the cream rose to the top. To be sure, they made compromises in their art for the sake of the paymaster, but then, the paymasters were often too simple to notice that their prescriptions only made the artists crafty.

The writer traced a finger across a dusty bookshelf and stopped at Milton’s Areopagitica. He thumbed through it until he found the page he wanted, and then folded himself back into his chair, found a blank page, and scribbled:

Milton says: ‘Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them’. I am morally compelled therefore to write, or I risk losing that which I am. But it must not be lost. It must not be mere memoranda, but live in the memory. Write the damn book. But DO find a patron.

The writer looked at his watch. It was 16:44. With renewed purpose, he continued to write out his soul.

In Defence of Breakfast; Or, Dunkin' Don't

Some men, under the illusion that the behaviour makes them seem tough, leave the house each morning on little more than a cigarette, and perhaps coffee. During my stay in the Boston vicinity, I observed that this was often augmented by doughnuts, on the way to wherever men went. I do not like to see unhealthy people. The grey, pallid skin, raccoon-ringed eyes, chapped lips, and mournful vacancy of the expression are all tell-tale signs of the malnourished. Men who look like this do not seem tough to me. They seem fragile.

Breakfast like a king! It is the first phrase of a three-part maxim, the other two being ‘lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper’. I’ve never been entirely sure about the latter phrase, but in any case, I absolutely adhere to the primary exhortation. When one breaks one’s fast, let us say, at 8 a.m., it may be thirteen or fourteen hours since the body has been nourished. It craves food, and should have it supplied. One cannot possibly expect to make it through a morning’s work in any kind of fit shape unless one is sustained. To eat well in the morning is to take on the fuel necessary to be the best one can be. Let us hear no more of the coffee and cigarette regime.

The knock-on advantages are many. One snacks less. One binges less. One feels fit and able. For those of you who are overweight, I would suggest that eating well – eating best – at breakfast will help you lose weight, for you will be satisfied at the beginning of the day. You will have more energy to exercise, and more will to do it. But what to eat?

The possibilities are endless: porridge, boiled eggs or scrambled, kedgeree or poached haddock, kippers, fruit, pastries and breads, cereals, cheeses and cold cuts. Mix it up, but be sure to feed yourself well. Once, or maybe twice a week, go all out with a Full English. It need not be overly greasy, if done properly, and will sustain you like nothing else. The ingredients, lest anyone should be in any doubt:

Bacon (streaky or back, preferably grilled, according to the English definition of that word).

Sausage (none of your cheap and nasty processed stuff, but something your butcher made. Grilled, for twenty minutes).

Eggs (however you like them. Poached is the healthiest way).

Mushrooms (fried).

Kidneys (from whichever animal you prefer, and lightly fried).

Black pudding, if you can find it.

Fresh tomato (sliced in two and grilled).

Hot toast with butter and jam.

Some people like Heinz baked beans for good measure. Can’t say I disapprove. Wash it all down with a pot of English Breakfast tea, or, for the more refined approach, some Earl Grey.

Nary a weekend in the Beātum household goes by without one. I wish you the same comfort.

Things A Man Should Know About Style; Or, A Book Review Of Sorts

Receiving a parcel is one of those delights that never gets old. Opening a parcel is a game of mixed fortunes, but on the most recent occasion that I received a mysterious package I found inside this book, sent from Mother Dearest, back in the Motherland.

This is not a serious book, and provides no justifications for the advices and exhortations it bestows upon the reader. On matters of style we are asked simply to believe the authors, as if clothes will indeed make the man, all by themselves. It seems there is a greater talent for aphorism than for philosophy here, but then, we shall always have recourse to Carlyle. Nevertheless, it is jammed full of practical wisdom and strategic nuggets of information that cannot fail to make life go more smoothly. What is more, these rules to live by are given with an irreverent wit that will surely raise a smile. This is typified by the selection of the model for all the photographic support that the book provides for its rhetorical maxims. A picture or two will speak many a thousand words:

So what of its rules and regulations? Here are some of the more valuable gems that I have found it handy to live by myself:

If you wear a suit on a plane and there is a flight delay or cancellation, the ticket agent will help you in a way that she wouldn’t if you were in a tracksuit.

The Hawaiian shirt: no.

“Easy-care” is for those who don’t.

There is no foot pain so severe, no dress shoe so fragile, no commute so arduous as to justify the sartorial holocaust that is wearing trainers with a suit.

A restaurant meal tastes better when you’re wearing a suit jacket.

Never trust a fashion magazine.

This last is particularly poignant because the publisher of the book also publishes Esquire, which, it should go without saying, you should never read. This tongue-in-cheek subversiveness warms me all the more to the tome’s tone. Nevertheless, there are some things to which I must take exception, and I might as well share them. First, the authors assume its readers to have no prior knowledge of these things, which surely cannot have been the point of publishing the book. Only a man who thought he knew it all already would ever find amusement in it, and if it ever fell into the hands of a style dunce he would likely regard it as so many silly pictures of bulldogs. I take no satisfaction from the introduction telling me that some of the rules may be broken ‘so long as you know what you’re doing. Which you don’t’. Furthermore, I must take at least partial issue with the following:

There are no bargains.

Speaking of colour, there is little use for pink…

You can’t wear a fedora if you’re under forty-five.

You can’t wear a bow tie with anything other than a tuxedo if you’re under forty-five or not a famous novelist or not a total geek. Got that, professor?

Keep a clip-on [bow tie] in reserve, should your bow-tying skills fail, which they probably will.

If there are no bargains I can only assume that much of my wardrobe doesn’t exist. Finding a bargain doesn’t mean you have to compromise. If there is little use for pink then most well-dressed Englishmen do not exist either. This must just be nonsense. Fedoras are a matter of confidence, not a matter of age. Likewise bow ties. Is one to presume that young and famous authors waited until post-fame to begin wearing them? And if your nervousness about bow ties causes you to carry a spare clip-on lest your ability to tie knots fails, then you should probably also carry some spare shoes that fasten with Velcro. The knot is essentially the same, after all.

All this being said, this isn’t really a book review, but an extended note of thanks for having received it. By the way, one thing that isn’t in here: Always send thanks to people who send you gift parcels. It’s only the right thing to do.

The Edge of Virtue; Or, Good Habits

Most men walk along the edge of virtue, the steep precipices of indiscretion, immorality and vice running closely adjacent to their poorly marked paths. How does a man stay on this path, when lurking close to the surface lies the beast, skulking in the corners of the mind, and stalking the outer reaches of conscience, eager to attack? Most men will confess, if they are truly frank, the demons that attract them: a rather too thirsty attraction to alcohol; a depraved sexual appetite; aggressive and angry sentiments and urges; a compulsion to gamble more than can be afforded to be lost; and the enjoyment of procrastination. Strip away the thin atmosphere of civilization, and men are deeply unpleasant creatures. Fortunately, most men only fall by degrees, rather than all the way to the bottom. And most men pull themselves back up the cliff of failure, through shame, contrition, and renewed intent. But how to stay on the path in the first place?

Good habits are our signposts, our guide rope, our safe port in uncertain waters. Routine – not a slavish obsession over the minutiae of life, but a basic regimen of what should be done regularly – is the means by which we continue to find the right path when the animal urges us in different directions. What is in a routine? Whatever we feel like. But it must hold us to things as we would ideally like them, for then we have a notion of when we are beginning to disappoint ourselves. The objects of our routines consciously jar us into steering a steady course. Let’s say I have ten pairs of shoes: wouldn’t it be good if they were always clean, polished and ready to be worn? Wouldn’t it be best if they were properly dried after wearing, stored as the cobbler would have wanted, and kept mended and maintained when necessary? To the outside, it might seem like I have a fetish, but I will know that I am merely keeping up standards. And chances are, if I keep my footwear fastidiously, I will keep more important things with equal care.

One could make similar cases for matters of the body: hygiene, grooming, fitness. A million men resolve to get in shape everyday, but how many of them incorporate that resolution into their daily understanding of what must be done? Probably not many, and that is why they fail. If we elect to do a thing because we see that it is good, then we must practice that thing because it is good. It must become habitual in its execution, but we must be mindful always of why it is important. I knew a man once – a gentle man under great strain – who insisted on simple politeness. At work he would be confronted by angry and anxious Young Turks, barking questions and commands in lieu of ‘hello’ and ‘good morning’. He would stop, smile, and say ‘Good morning, how are you?’ and would then remind them that everyone was behoved to observe the pleasantries if they were to hold on to their humanity. I’m sure the approach irritated people, but it tended to calm them, and him, down a little.

Keep good habits. Not letting this humble blog slide is one of mine.

Christmas Wrapping

It should be the aim of every  man with any pretensions to refinement and self-respect to steer a middle course between the Scylla of foolish foppery, which bedizens a man as though he were a tailor’s dummy or a barber’s block, and the Charybdis of loutish slovenliness, which neglects all outward graces and dignities. Of the two, I would rather you were a fop than a sloven. In the one case men would laugh at you: in the other they would avoid you. A man should be so dressed that no article of his attire arrests the eye or remains in the memory. There should be nothing in his personal appearance to suggest that it has occupied any but the most subordinate share of his attention and thought. The best-dressed man is he whose attire sits on him with a careless and apparently unstudied simplicity. (An Old Boy, Notes for Boys (and their Fathers) on Morals, Mind and Manners, 1885).

The key word in the above passage, pulled from a most useful little book, is ‘apparently’. It takes great attention and scrupulous thought to appear so thoughtlessly put together in a way that works. It might be said that the fop puts no serious thought into his meticulous appearance, for if he did he would rein himself in and undo that to which his fancy led him. In that respect the fop is merely the dark reflection of the slob.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the man of taste can’t occasionally wear go-to-hell clothes. It is merely that he must wear them as if it was of no consequence to him whether today happened to be grey flannel or loudest plaid. If loud clothes are worn to say ‘look at me!’ then people will, and they will think you an idiot. But if loud clothes are worn because the wearer has the freeness of care and the confidence simply to be in them, then they will strike onlookers as outward signs of a strong character. The line is fine. Sprezzatura takes work.

If you could see my Christmas Day attire you’d understand why I’m given to reflect on these things. Wait, you can see it.

It’s an ensemble of patterns in earthy hues, principally in cashmere and silk. When I laid it out this morning, Mrs VB gave me that look – the one where a single eyebrow seems to question my sanity – but I’ve learnt not to let that put me off. Once adorned, she confessed ‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be’. Then we danced – it is Christmas after all – to Cesaria Evora, with the freedom of movement one has in one’s own home, and the clothes became the man. They tend to do that.

Turkey awaits. Have a great day, one and all.

Spirit of the Season

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843).

It is perhaps unlikely that any apparition will poke its nose through your bed curtains this year, forcing you to examine yourself and all your foibles, but that should not hinder you in your own self-examination. The ghosts of Christmases past, present and yet to come are duly encompassed by the conscience, which in our case, unlike in Scrooge’s, works quite well enough I am sure.

Have we been miserly and mean? Short-tempered and brusque? Uncharitable and callous? Have we lost our humanity in the hurly burly? Our good sense for the sake of dollars and cents? I trust not, but I for one welcome the opportunity to check. We drift into new habits of misanthropy if we let down our guard – which we all assuredly do at times – because the people we meet whom we do not know tend to encourage ill feeling. The crowds of a busy shopping street; the impatient assemblage of the supermarket queue; the drivers who make up the holiday traffic; TV weather men; teenagers on the train; pressure salesmen; surly waiters, and so on. Unless we come up for air from this sea of awfulness, we might feel justified in beginning to think that people are generally bad. But when we are abroad among the madding crown, and other people meet us, they likely think that we too are the pit of humanity!

Since this clearly won’t do, I suggest getting in touch with our better natures in the spirit of the season. A little sympathy here, perhaps; a little generosity there. Prepare to charm and be charmed, and to let the things that rub us the wrong way go by without a second thought. Be generous in giving, and humble in receipt. And give of yourself – your time, your ears – and not just of your wallet. In any case, I’m sure you’ve all been thoroughly nice all year. But best to check, lest you should hear the rattling of chains.

School Uniform; or, The Beginnings of Self-Respect

My paternal grandmother was a fierce woman. I don’t think that anyone who knew her would disagree. Until she was 80 she would go on long marches with a stick, and I was never convinced that the stick served any purpose but for beating stubborn livestock that crossed her path. No doubt her early experience with a bull that had blocked her way home across a field had taught her a lesson. On that occasion she had been forced to spend the night under the stars, staring down the animal with contempt.

The 5th Earl of Carnarvon, or my grandma's largely absentee squire

Always take a stick. This lesson applied to life in general, and she wouldn’t suffer any nonsense. Nevertheless, my grandmother knew her place. She was working class, and defiantly proud of it. I’m sure she used to curtsey for the Earl of Carnarvon when he was up there shooting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she cuffed the lads who weren’t prompt enough in the tugging of forelocks. Being working class was about being respectable: work hard; never let anybody see that you’re hurting, or that you have feelings; toe the line, even when you hate it, but give ‘em what for if there’s a whiff of injustice. Knowing one’s place involved everyone also knowing their respective places. In its own way, it worked. Of course, it also damaged. All that swallowed anger and resentment, those bottled up emotions and un-talked about problems – it was a patchwork of scarring. Still, face was saved. Respectability was assured. Heads could always be held high.


C.J. Vaughan

I wonder if we can dispense with the scarring and somehow reinvigorate the self-respect. What drove people then was a sense of belonging to a group, the code of which ensured that social transgression was policed not by parliament but by community. The same held good for the elite. C.J. Vaughan, headmaster of Harrow in the 1850s, once gave a lecture at Repton (home town of the aforementioned grandmother), claiming that authority and respect was maintained in the elite public schools by the prefects and praeposters, keeping bullying and oppression in check through their own activity of mind, industry and good conduct. Self-respect among leaders set the example for followers.


Local (to me) working-class school uniforms, c. 1970.

This week I read in the news that Education Secretary Michael Gove wants to encourage schools to re-introduce blazer and tie uniforms, and traditional prefect and house systems. There’s not much that’s come out of the mouth of this man in the last few months that I would care to endorse, but I think this is a worthy idea. I was looking through some archival photographs of kids from my childhood locale and noting that it really wasn’t so long ago that even the lowliest of comprehensive schools chose to sport collar, blazer and tie. Kids used to look smart, and schools had an identity because of their colours. Children felt like they belonged, and took ownership of their identity. Sure, they chaffed at the system at times, but surely they looked (and behaved) better than the track-suited and denim tribes one sees these days. I also remember with fondness the house system, with its house points, as late as the 1980s. I was in Nightingale house, and there was a genuine sense of wanting to do well for it. Good conduct, not to mention good work, benefitted the group as well as the individual. Bad behaviour penalised the group, and the group therefore policed itself. I really don’t know why we scrapped such things. To be house Captain surely was no bad thing. Why would we not want that for our children? All of it taught them self-respect, and all of it helped to ensure that the community sorted out its own transgressors.

My senior school scrapped the blazer and tie just before I joined it at 11. I’m sure my grandmother was appalled. Given the chance she would, no doubt, have cuffed the headmaster. Bring it back, I say, and let’s re-begin with self-respect.

Save Standard English; or, Stop Being Mis-CHEEVY-ous!

One hears stories on the BBC, stories without a note of disapprobation mind you, about the ways in which the youth of today is bastardizing the English language without so much as a by your leave. It’s all most troubling. Apparently, the status of English as the new French is not the only route to its being sullied and abused. The bally natives can’t even get the thing right, apparently because they labour under the misconception that words ought to sound how they are spelled. Hence the pronunciation of ‘ate’ as 8, instead of ‘et’, which used to be how it was spelled, until someone made it deliciously ornate to ward off interlopers. The same is true of ‘says’, which the poor blighters are rhyming with ‘ways’ instead of ‘fez’. It will never do.

My pet peeve – you might have noted that I have a number of pet peeves; the apartment is a regular menagerie by now – is the insistence of the illiterate in pronouncing ‘aitch’ with an ‘h’ at the beginning. One might be forgiven for thinking that it is only English-speaking French people who go around putting aitches everywhere except where they are meant to be, but apparently the British have a great knack for it. I’m told it’s something to do with a rather silly neurosis about not appearing to be working class. That’s how Orwell identified his socially inferior comrades, don’t you know? He compelled the middle classes to join forces in an incoherent socialism, telling his stupefied readers that they had nothing to lose but their aitches. Well, more fool him for thinking that aitches were trifles. In the event, it turns out that the working classes fancied a bit of the capitalist pie after all, and figured that aitches were the only thing standing in their way. So, they put them every-bloody-where, including at the start of ‘aitch’, thereby ensuring that everyone can still readily identify them as the working classes they long not to be.

It's to the north, I believe

Those incorrigible scamps who dare to use polysyllables also tinker with the word ‘mischievous’, pronouncing a phantom ‘i’ before the ‘o’. I suppose it’s either a sick joke or that they are borrowing the ‘i’ from American aluminium, which apparently has one going spare. And all the while the politically correct linguists keep repeating that there’s no right or wrong; that this is how language evolves; each to his own, and so on. Well, I’m all for regional diversity: England has a great range of daft accents and dialects that help us to know where we are, and they are a wonderful source of pride and passion, as well as an endless mine for television comedians and advertisers. But, we’ve all always known that there was a correct way to speak that served for job interviews, meeting the vicar or the bank manager, and for generally being understood when outside one’s own village. To be ‘bidialectal’ was to be English. However, if we go around saying that anyone can talk any old way they please, it’s all the same to us, and sorry even for breathing, then before you know it we’ll be a barbarian backwater. Americans, instead of assuming that we’re all touched with genius and related to the Queen, will laud it over us for our inferior articulations, and laugh at our cute incompetency with the language we invented.

Save Standard English. It’s the only damn thing we have left!

On Becoming Manly, Part III

Allow me to resume this thread, with increasing trepidation. I have been uncertain whether to put the how before the why or vice versa, but decided that method should precede what may well be madness on my part. Of course, any attempt at prescription is bound hopelessly to fail, for men being men, and boys being boys, rules will be dismissed peremptorily. All I may offer, therefore, is a sketch (something sketchy?).

Unburdening responsibility upon a greater mind than mine, let us hear what Carlyle has to say (when he unburdens responsibility upon his own fictitious inventions):

In all the sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct: the Mankin feels that he is a born Man, that his vocation is to Work. The choicest present you can make him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to Cooperation, for war or peace, as governor or governed… (Sartor Resartus).

Boys, in short, must play at being men if they are to become men. This is not to say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, but then again, men will be incomplete without having sensed victory and pleasure, and, perhaps more importantly, defeat and pain. Furthermore, they must be given the freedom to build and fashion, to be frustrated and to bleed. We wrap our boys in cotton wool at their peril, for the adult world will not cushion their falls. The chips of life fall in much the same way in childhood as in adulthood, but the stakes are not so high. A boy needs to learn to win with magnanimity and to lose with humility (and to resolve to win the next time) before the blinds become too big.

The Playing Fields of Eton, by Edmund Bristow (1822)

What does this mean in practical terms? Nothing more than the rough-and-tumble, active life, indoors and out, that some of us took for granted. I wonder, nervously, how many boys now enjoy this kind of experience. There is so much fear, and so few playing fields, that kids are cloistered, attached umbilically to their video games and gadgetry. Perhaps the most fundamental step, therefore, is to unplug.

The Gentleman's Club, II

In keeping with the notion that one must seize one’s opportunities, I’m taking the chance to go for lunch at the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall next week, before my European voyage comes to an end. Since I have previously maligned the diminished status of the gentleman’s club, I thought it worthy to give credit where it’s due and celebrate the good old ways where they are well preserved. Here, for your general edification, are the basic rules for club members and visitors alike. If more places insisted on the form of decency, would not the substance of decency follow on?

The Club recognises two standards of dress
Before 11.00am on Weekdays and before 6.00pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays smart informal dress is permitted.

At other times, subject to the exceptions set out in the Regulations, gentlemen are required to wear a jacket and tie, and ladies to dress with commensurate formality. Jeans are not permitted. Gentlemen who remove their jackets pursuant to regulation E (2) must wear long sleeved shirts fastened at the cuff.

The Committee considers that the following forms of dress are inappropriate in the Club house at any time: shorts, t-shirts, training shoes, and similar casual wear.

Members, Guests and Reciprocal members who are using the bedrooms are exempted from the dress code when first arriving and last departing.

The use of mobile phones is distracting to others. Their use is unrestricted in the Pall Mall Business Suite. In other areas please switch them to silent or vibrate, and if you have to take or make a call please go to the telephone booth (on the first floor), or the street outside.

Children under ten are generally not admitted to the Club house. If they are to be invited to a Private Function, please discuss with the Secretary when booking.

Animals are not admitted, except guide dogs.

Browned Off

It has always been my intention to interweave the weighty with the light hearted, and I want to take the opportunity to beg a question of no importance whatsoever. Why all the fuss about wearing brown in town? The maxim is repeated endlessly among sartorialists and yet almost universally ignored in practice. The most self-conscious clothes horses might even opt for brown to feign a lack of care, but the truth is that this rule basically no longer applies; unless you work for a big bank, that is, in which case you have my sympathies (I have seen stories in recent times of big-bank employees wearing brown so that they wouldn’t be recognised as bankers. It’s something akin to American tourists stitching Canadian flags onto their suitcases). Common sense is the order of the day, and one only need ask if one’s dress is appropriate for the situation at hand. This is a matter of the whole ensemble and the cultural practice of your daily setting, rather than any taboo about a particular colour. To wit, I must cry foul with regard to some of the displays I witnessed as I returned to London on Saturday, coincident with the returning of the crowds from Ascot.

The fellow who had this suit made knew a thing or two.

Now, Ascot is a strange event by anyone’s standards. I have something of a penchant for morning suits and top hats, and it’s such a pity that – save for weddings and Ascot – they are mere badges of eccentricity. Still, if you’re going to do it, it is worth doing well. A properly bedecked man in morning attire really looks the part, but if there is a piece missing it begins to look ridiculous. Why go to all the trouble of renting (presumably) a morning suit for Ascot if you plump for polyester? Trim your first couple of stakes at the Tote and you’ll save the difference for a proper job. And presuming you have kitted yourself out appropriately, why then would you wear un-shined, everyday shoes of various descriptions? Ascot is not a fancy-dress party (a ‘costume party’, for the North Americans among you), but a formal event. If you do not have the cash or the class to scrub up properly, then find a different stand and wear a suit.

But don’t wear a black suit. Now here’s the thing: much as I don’t see the quibble with brown, I do have a problem with the excess of black. Black has a number of purposes – evening wear and funerals being two – and its current universality risks its special functions. While I’m at it, I might also beg that those men who begin the day, at Ascot or otherwise, sporting a necktie should try to end the day with it still on, and with the top button fastened. There is only one reason why wearing a tie is ever uncomfortable, and that is that the shirt does not fit. And there is no more sure-fire way to look like a ‘punter’ than to undo that button or to remove the tie and sally forth with chest hair aplenty. Please, save it for after dark (i.e. when nobody can see you).

Time and A Place; or, Get A Room.

I am all for the romantic arts. ‘Courtship’, whenever that word gets wheeled out, seems unable to escape its epithet: ‘old-fashioned’. Since I care not for fashion, nor for passing fads, I think we ought to put period to this unfair appellation. The outward form of courtship may change with the times, but at its heart is a respectable romance and a foundation of politeness. It takes place in two settings, one public and one private. To observe a courtship in public is never to be outraged, never offended. The intentions of the lover are manifested subtly, through kindnesses and attentions. The responsiveness of the beloved is likewise demure, modest. The courtship is suggestive only insofar as eye contact, or the occasional kiss of the hand, lingers, barely perceptively, a little longer than it might otherwise. In private we may dispense with some of the formality, but to put too fine a point on it would be to undo it. It is private, after all.

I was sitting in my usual spot, working in the library. I have often thought that libraries are sexually charged places, but this has something to do with the impossibility of even verbal, let alone physical interaction. As I have said before, if one desires a frisson of excitement, it is to be found in restraint, in covering up, in patience. The mind must not be deprived of its imaginative work by feasts of the eye! Yet even the hushed halls of places of learning crumble against the pressure of an uncouth culture, beating its walls from within and without.

The Place Where I Sit. Almost.

Immediately to my right, with her back to me, a woman was working away. At first, I only noticed the ear plugs: sad testimony to the inevitable noise. Well, thought I, at least I won’t have any trouble from her. Until the man arrived. As she plucked out her earplugs, I noticed the rest of her, entirely clad in black, tight work-out gear. Her nether woman was barely covered, and in the gap between the top of her sweat pants and the bottom of her t-shirt (about ten inches), her rather skimpy underwear made an unwelcome appearance. She smiled a come-to-bed hello at this unexpected visitor, who kissed her on the mouth – somewhere between friendly and obscene. She pulled the pins out of her raven hair and shook like a wet dog in a shampoo ad. He sat beside her, much preening and many eyes being made. They then proceeded to ‘talk about work’, each with one hand pointing at respective computer screens; academic and intellectual interest being feigned. His other hand made a bid for her shoulder, thereafter sliding down her back and lingering on the aforementioned lingerie. Looping his fingers around the thong, he brushed her naked skin with his thumb.

Enough. Concentration cast to the wind, I simply exited the room. I cannot help feeling it should not have been me seeking alternative shelter. In their little bubble of loveliness, no doubt thrilling to them, was something ghastly. Time and a place, dear readers, time and a place.

Short Temper

It was anomalously 90 degrees yesterday. My approach to such unseasonal temperatures is simply to slow down, but I see that this is not to everyone’s taste. The frenetic pace comes at a price, however, and I’m afraid that the desire to move at winter speeds in sweltering heat is too dearly bought. There are two things that should hardly ever be seen on a man, except when he is engaged in some form of athletic activity, or some form of manual labour: sweat and shorts. I shall consider you, dear readers, as men about town. As such, I exhort you not to sweat, and not to wear shorts. To my rural readers, of course, one must make exceptions. Honest toil makes for honest perspiration, but how many really know about that anymore? Still, there’s probably no good reason for shorts, even in the country. To my lady readers, I am sure you will join me in this prescription. Although you will have no first-hand knowledge of either sweating or shorts, I am sure you have seen them both on men, and I am sure that, with me, you object.

Um, no.

Here’s the basic problem. Shorts are ugly. Moreover, male legs leave a lot to be desired. Shorts tend to do nothing for the masculine pins, being ill cut, ill-conceived, and often ill coloured. Men demonstrate far more sartorial bravery in shorts than at any other time, and they should not be surprised if I label it what it really is: foolishness. Few men can pull it off. In large part it has to do with the choice of footwear that is paired with shorts. I occasionally see a man looking enviously good in well-tailored shorts, with expensive boat shoes, and then I think to myself: those shoes are going to be ruined by his sweaty feet, and he will smell. Of course, had he been wearing socks I would have thought he was sadly misguided. Trainers are for training. Sandals are for hippies, geography teachers, and those men generally lacking in taste. Flip flops? Please. Canvas deck shoes I can nearly picture, but the sweating! There’s no escaping those leaky feet. It’s just a no-win situation.

Unfortunately, I shall be in Italy in late May and it will be so hot that my betrousered legs may slow to a stop. In that case I shall be forced to make a difficult decision. I shall not make it lightly, but only after due apologies to the gods of good taste. If, in the meantime, anybody can suggest some plausible way to look good in shorts and shoes without the aforementioned problems, I shall be much obliged.

The Devil Is in the Details

I have spent the last six weeks editing a book. Publishing in the digital age isn’t what it was. The days of turning in a physical manuscript and waiting for the proofs seem long-since gone. To be an author/editor is also, now, to be a copy editor and type setter. My eyes are addled by the constant scrutiny, searching earnestly for rogue commas and inadvertent spaces; watching out for the differences between Em spaces and En spaces; burning the occasional ‘which’ that should be a that, which follows a genuine rule you know; juggling leading (line spacing), and font sizing, headings and subheadings, headers, footers and the like. I’ve also been unifying spelling and punctuation. When you have fifteen people writing in English who hail from half-a-dozen different countries it is quite apparent that English is not one language but many. Also references: there are really only four main styles of academic referencing, but most academics write in an idiosyncratic combination of all four. Making one out of four is a devilish business. And of course there are mistakes, and often not of the obvious variety. Would you be able to spot that a quote from Cicero is mistakenly attributed to ‘On Ends’ when really it came from ‘On Duties’? Well, to my surprise, I did.

Now, forget page counts and word counts. When you consciously set about eyeballing every facet of a document (you can hit the show/hide button in MS Word to make every key stroke appear on the page, including spaces and carriage returns) the relevant number becomes the character count. There are, at present, 707,000 characters in this book. I am, understandably I think, bleary eyed. But I am also satisfied.

Why? Because this stuff is important. Too many people these days cannot form basic sentences in their native language (I am reasonably convinced that the problem is worst for English speakers). Spelling has gone out of the window; punctuation is like some mysterious black art; grammar, so far as many people are concerned, is merely your mother’s mother. Mistakes are passed over unnoticed. The beautiful, slippery, taut but paradoxically flexible vagaries of grammatical rule are jettisoned in favour of expediency, laziness, and an altogether unengaged approach to discourse. I maintain, however, that these things are the pillars of politeness. They afford us grace in our interlocutions. They hold us together by a common bond. They pour meaning into belonging, and grant that feeling an esteem, appreciated most, perhaps, when we see it abused. And yet our language, when used properly, also allows us to transcend its strictures, and therein lies its power, its authority, and dare I say it, its cool. But rules can only be broken when rules are known. Otherwise transgression is simple ignorance, and in simple ignorance there is no power, and no authority. There is no cool.

The Devil is in the details. We should do well to pay them mind. Our language is, after all, a precious inheritance.

A Short Step to Eccentricity

Dressing well is not a straightforward matter. Even for those in the know, the difference between classic elegance and ridiculousness is slight, the pitfalls awaiting missteps great. Everyone will tell you to be an individual, to mix things up, to not be too studied, or too ‘put together’. Acquire an air of relaxed formality, they will say. Yet one is to know one’s palette, and work within it. And of course, the basic rules must be observed. All well and good. But to a man without a friend in the know this can be bewildering. Just as watching Tiger Woods videos won’t improve your swing, watching the world of fashion will not usher you into it. The basics – fit, cut, cloth, colour – are not obvious. The ambitious but misguided may feel like they are really cutting it, when in fact they have made themselves into mere caricatures. This is the basis of all those magazine ‘experts’ and TV media hacks who make their living pointing out where the celebs went sartorially wrong. Perhaps the rich and famously stupid can get away with it. The man on the street may not fare so well.

My case in point, so as not to embarrass anybody, is Mr. Charles James Mathews, 1803-78. As an English comic actor, his public appearance may not be thought to have been in earnest. It was all ‘just so’, and yet all ‘off’. I imagine it took quite some considerable skill on the part of Mr. Mathews to achieve such a studiously eccentric and nonsensical appearance, without obviously transgressing any rules of formal wear. A couple of details ground the look: the umbrella is charming, the moustache in keeping with the times, the shoes all too ordinary. The rest, while retaining a clear sense of the English gentleman, does enough to make one question his sanity. His posture accentuates the stomach and narrows the shoulders (too many men stand like this without realising it). His trousers are on the long side, breaking at the knee, the shin, and above the shoe, and giving the impression of limpness. So, no backbone, and no strength. A fop, to be sure. The jailbird reference in the trousers is a screaming faux pas and the jacket, with big metal buttons and plaid lining, invokes a cross between a policeman and a bookie. The hat is as like to produce a rabbit as to be doffed at the ladies. In short, this is a man at whom one would laugh, unless he tried to sell you anything, in which case you would run away. The laughter, from Mr. Mathews' point of view, was sought. Unless you seek it too, be mindful.