The Retrograde Menu

Twice on our European travels in the last weeks, Mrs. VB and I have been confronted with customs that I presumed were long-since abolished. Readers of this humble blog will know well that although I see clear values and virtues for manly men, these generally tend to be inclusive, considerate and, by-and-large, in keeping with the times. I hold on to traditions where they are important, but I am not hard-headed about the hard-won social victories – progress, if you will – of the last fifty years. For my many female readers, I hope to provide an image of man that they might endorse. It would be remiss of me, therefore, not to call attention to the Retrograde Menu.

The Retrograde Menu comes in two forms. One of them looks like any other menu, replete with prices. The other contains all of the dishes on offer, but no prices. The latter form is given to the lady, on the nineteenth-century understanding that a woman has a) no understanding of money; b) no income; c) no interest in the ways in which a household’s money is spent; d) no notion of value; e) no intention ever to pay, or contribute to the expense; f) no self-esteem g) no standing whatsoever when in the company of men. Furthermore, she is supposed to be relieved of having avoided the political minefield of choosing a dish that will not offend her male counterpart’s wallet. She may assume, after all, that if he couldn’t afford the Lobster and the Dom Perignon, he wouldn’t have taken her there. For the man of straightened circumstances, the menu for her can simply be dispensed with: he will decide what she would like.

What utter rot! Needless to say, on both occasions Mrs. VB and I studied the same menu. As a form of protest, I suggested in one instance that she might order for me. I do not think, on the whole, that men are still concerned either to pay for everything, or to conceal the price of things from women. This is an empty chivalry, and no way for a modern marriage to function. So why, please somebody tell me, does this custom remain?

I have noticed that the service in those establishments persisting with this system also tends completely to ignore women. When a man and woman walk into a restaurant together, is there not something distinctly odd about the greeting ‘Good afternoon, Sir’? No eye contact for the lady; no words of welcome; not even an acknowledgment that more than one person has entered the room. I do wonder what would happen if a woman were to dine alone in such a place. What a horrible dilemma for the maître d’. He might have to admit that women exist (and, what’s more, earn more than he does).

I was under the impression that we were well beyond reducing women to empty-headed and meaningless extensions of their husbands. To prove that we are not, and to enhance the foul taste that this leaves in our mouths, I hold up for your general derision the Retrograde Menu.

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.

American Manly

American Manly is an example to us all, and let us hope, in him, we may find the redemption of that troubled country. I shall resist the temptation to introduce any particular real-life exemplars of American Manly, for within its purview there is room to move, to breathe, even to square-off and box, and I wouldn’t want to prejudice anyone against the possibilities of this noble breed. Where it exists, American Manly is an aspirational figure, an embodiment of respect and, in his presence, a guarantor of a raised tone. He is the finest of all things, save perhaps for the English Gentleman (of course), and it is high time that the shady bushel that has been obscuring him of late is once and for all uprooted to reveal the gleaming light.

Allow me a moment of comic-book fantasy, if you will. In the good old days, Superman’s superhero status had a lot to do with Clark Kent. He was hard-working, diligent, and well-dressed, but modest and courteous to boot. Awkward, yes, but the awkwardness was the ultimate affectation: a modest disguise for the ultimate modesty. A secret identity ensured that the man would receive no glory, no unwanted attention. He could go about his business. His transformation into strength itself, a noble fighter of evil and doer of good, depended in part on the gentle sensibilities of the alter ego. Cometh the hour, and so forth. Superman’s character worked because it said something about American values. Politeness, diligence and the grace of civil life were matched by the controlled power, strength, and determination to fight for the protection of that civil life, when duty called. Superman, the ideal type of American Manly, was America’s finest citizen.

On the walls of the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard are the names of many of Harvard’s alumni who gave their lives in World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam, and the Gulf, replete with their School and graduating year. The memorials themselves are nothing of note. After all, there are lists of names of the fallen everywhere, cenotaphs in every British town. Once I was at the Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ypres, and the names fell around me like a deathly shroud. Yet in this church more than any other place one gains a sense of sacrifice; a notion of what was on the line; an appreciation of the substance behind the names. For here are marked the snubbed flames of American potential, who fought that others might have the chance to realise theirs. These were leaders in intellect, in enterprise, in spirit; they saw purpose in their way of life, and saw that it was worth the fight. Given the chance, they might well ask what we have made of their sacrifice.

You can see the descendents of American Manly across the country. They are intelligent, but are galled by the ‘smart’; they throw up their hands at the politicians and thereafter roll up their sleeves; they understand the importance of form, carriage, comportment, courtesy and modesty; they know the measure of a man by his handshake, and judge themselves by the cast-iron of their word. Nothing is more disappointing than disappointment in themselves. American Manly treasures his family and his heritage, and understands that the love of his country must be rooted in the things for which it has historically stood. And this means that he must be a reader, a learner, an asker of questions, and above all a listener. In times of disarray, American Manly marches to his own tune, assured that it is composed of the right stuff, and confident that it is better to take the lead than to follow fools.

Homo Americanus should take note, for American Manly is not a distinct species. He is there to follow, and with good measures each of perspiration and hard thinking, he is there to become.

Signs of the Times

Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. (Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 1829).

Never a more eloquent carpe diem was yet uttered, and yet, in the same breath as the exhortation to get up and do, Carlyle bade us to stop awhile and reflect; a look, if you will, before the proverbial leap:

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer.

What Carlyle found on closer inspection was a mechanised world that had buried all traces of the finer points of character, the magic of genius, the mystery of faith, and the dynamism of humanity, swapping it all instead for a balance sheet of pleasure and pain, some scientific instruments, bank statements, and an unedifying tendency to want to know how things were before anybody had asked what they were. A surfeit of facts buzzed around the institutions of late-Georgian England, at the expense of imagination. It was only to get worse. Carlyle thought that all the steam being blown off would ultimately reduce the noise of the fanatics to a whimper. In this estimation, history sits as grim judge.

We, therefore, are the inheritors of the mechanised world, and through its ever more efficient operations we have grown lazy and fat, greedy and insatiable. Carlyle’s judgement on his own times rings true for ours, but the sentence carries the added weight of offences oft repeated:

The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.

What then, is to be done? Well, tarnished as we are by failings similar to those of our forebears, we would be foolish to look, as they did, to governments, institutions, and charities (now all subsumed under the title of ‘the internet’) for our solutions. These, so saith Carlyle, are merely the accursed machines. I can think of nothing better than Carlyle’s original solution, a project close to my own heart:

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

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).