Sketcher

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 11 August 1904, Page 3

Sketcher

MANNERS FOB GENTLEMEN.

JKT was a little book with a yellow cover c|b and letters on it in brilliant red jjgfc wh'.ch caught my eye in the secondhand bookseller's Bhop, in the box labelled 'All these 2d. each.' Its title was 'Manners for Gentleman,' and, opening it, I lit on the picture of a very stjlishly dressed man with his left hand placed on his heart to etill its throbs, performing a prodigious bow to a lady smiling her appreciation of bis refined manners.

I bought that book, and have read it with very considerable pleasure. It was packed with advice from cover to cover, and some of it was distinctly amusing. ' Don't blow your nose when in compaey as if it were a bassoon,' was one thing I found there.

'Never attempt to monopolise all the conversation, and never introdncs a remark with ' All sensible people agree,' or ' Only fools believe,' or a phrase cf that d( sttiption. It is apt to be offensive■' 'Cultivate the habit of unobtrusive mastication of your food, Noisy eating is uiost obj actionable. Don't smack your lips. Avcii gurgling. Don't clatter your knife and fork or spoon upen your plate.' • In entering a room with a lady, unless the is on your arm, allow her to enter first. ' Fiace aux dames.' 'Do not assert your own opinions too emphatically, and do not contradict persons of greater age in an iffanaive manner,' etc., etc. We laugh at advice of that description. The bad manners reproved are, one might imagine, such that it appears absurd to warn anyone against them. Probably not even a Hottentot would be guilty of ail theee offences—he would 'draw the line' at some, but at ths same time most of us will be readily able among oar friends and acquaintances to remember those who commit a few of the atrocities the writer mentions.

Why We Qbow Less Polite

This little book has suggested to me the question, Why do manners grow worse P Under the stress and hurry of modern life for one thing we casnot always be as polite as we would. A coachman who has been dismissed by his master, a nobleman, who was a martinet as regards the respect he demanded from his servants, brought an action recently against his former employer for defamation of character. The nobleman on being applied to for a reference had replied that the rain had been dismissed for ' insolence,' He had not touched his bat to his master.

' And why did jou not do so P' asked the judge. * Well, it was like this, my lord,' replied the plaintiff, 'we'd a new pair of horses out that day, and it took me both my hands to keep 'em from bolting.' He proved it to be true, and won his case. When a gentleman is running to catch a train it is absurd to expect him to stop and politely inquire after your health. Mr George E Sims, one of the busiest litterateurs, has recently pathetically related how he has suffered from persons who cannot imagine that he ever has anything to do and who are convinced that be is the personification of rudeness if he discovers any impatience at sparing them just a few minutes—say, half an hour. McEinley as President of the United States was sometimes at a Presidential reception expected to perform the feat of shaking hands with six hundred people an hour. One out of six, he calculated, was disappointed because he did aofc talk to him. There are people who have so little politeness themselves as to expect others to perform impossibilities. But Do We Do Oub Best P But making every allowance for the Btress of life, f doubt whether the generality of people cultivate manners as they might. The world would be a better place for others and a better place for them also if they gave just a little more consideration to ' manners for gentlemen.' l ln spite of certain eccentricities of manner,' said an obituary notice of a groat West-end_ pbyaiewfcn who died some time baok, s he BueceeuedHs~ w-fctSigJSK _a huge practice.' *ln spite' of his eccentricities. It was of this physician the story was told in the cluba that on hia once being summoned to attend a distinguished personage he behaved so boorishly that his patient amazed him and everybody else by leaping from his bed and pushing him out of the room. It nearly cost the patient his life, and lost the doctor a considerable source of income.

Commercially manners are worth a good. deal. The head of a great London firm of stationers that employs a email army of travellers whose duty it is to call on professional men, once told me that he could find plenty of energetic and able men to fill vacancies, bat the most difficult qualification to secure was a thoroughly gentlemanly manner, Yet the salaries offered were such as one would have imagined would have easily attracted desirable persons, Two of the firm's best travellers were younger bods of impecunious aristocratic families who travelled under assumed names. I can imagine what a sensation they would have created in the offices they visited if the customers had only known who * the nice, well-informed, gentlemanly fellow' who came for orders really was. Manners have formed the subject of many a discussion at our Foreign Office. BritoßS are not apt to be over polite to foreigners. In making appointments to posts abroad where suavity and grace were of importance many men who by their attainment in knowledge of political affairs out-distance all rivals have been and are still put aside as ineligible. They will never do. Brusqueness, the inability to adapt themselves to the polite necessities of the position, forbids their appointment. 'Fine Gentlemen.'

The preeest neglect of cultivating manners is, perhaps, very largely dne to the ludicrous importance attached to fashionable veneer a hundred years back. The turning out of 'fine gentlemen' was an employment for most contemptible tutors who used their contemptible knowledge to produce contemptible creatures who earned for the so-called 'cultiv&ted gentleman' well-deserved ridicule and loathisg. There are many people now who consider the study of correct behaviour as beiag in some peculiar manner connected with corrupt morals, frivolity, and general ' unEnglishnesa.'

Probably George IV, and L->rd Chesterfield have done more than anyone .else to depreciate politeness in Britain. They established in the popular mind an as. sociation between polish and insincerity whieh has with raoßt people made the two things appear identical, just as the influence of M&ehiavolli for a long time identified statesmanship with a capacity for c mmitting the most inhuman crimes and for sever by any accident lapsing into the paths of honesty. Statesmen have long since ceased from poisoning their rivals, aad well-mannered men have long eisce ceased from using politeness to merely betray their friends and abusa the admiration of silly women. The Oveblooked Thin©, So, in all seriousness I recommend

Manners for Gentlemen/ or eone similar »w , - o v. conßlderation « 0»8 need not be whatia Wnaa bad-mannered to profit j by the advice given. I do not blow my nose like a bassoon s I do not clatter my knife and fork at table : ldo not 'gurgle' over my soup; I am not obtrusive in masticating my food: Ido not oontradiot old gentlemen and ladies (or eves young ones) in an offensive manner. I wipe my boots at the door and pay proper respect to the hundred-pound carpet; 1 tnok my lees out of the way so that people may walk about without falli»g over thee. Ido not ask people how ranch their furniture cost- I have lenrnt a method of yawning by which I can do so without disturbing a muscle of my face and while retaining an appearance of the utmost interest in what is going on. Upon the whole I frankly admit I regard myself as a decently-mannered man. Being so conceited as ail that, you might imagine that ' Manners for Gentlemen' has done me no good. Bat it has. 'lf yon go to a daßce/ says the writer, 'do not always seek to dance with the ladies who are the prettiest or tho beet dancers. Thackeray, the novelist, used to make it a prsc'ice to dance once at least with the plainest; or moßt neglected girl in the room.'

I never thought of that, and yet common humanity might have Buggetted it long ago. One often wants things rointed out.'