1950s and 1960s – Page 7

‘End of Term’, Part Two

Chapter Three: Rehearsals and Team Practices

Nicola, Tim and Lawrie are all in Lower IV A this year, along with Miranda, and Esther the new girl, and drippy Marie Dobson. I don’t think much of the academic standards at Kingscote if both Lawrie and Marie are in the top form. And could someone who understands the English education system explain to me about Lower and Upper Forms? In the secondary schools I went to (mostly in Australia) there was First Form to Sixth Form, or Year Seven to Year Twelve (roughly age 12 to age 18). At Kingscote, the twelve-year-olds are in Third Form, but does it then go Lower Fourth (age 13 years), Upper Fourth (14), Lower Fifth (15), Upper Fifth (16), Lower Sixth (17) and finally Upper Sixth (18 and doing A Levels)? So Rowan left after her Lower Sixth year, before she could do the final exams that would gain her entrance to university? And does one ‘form’ take a whole school year, or do pupils skip up to higher forms (eg moving from Upper Fourth to Lower or Upper Fifth) within a school year if they’re doing well? I’m a bit confused by the whole thing.

However, before Nicola and friends/enemies go to their first lesson, Miss Keith makes a dramatic announcement at assembly. The Christmas play, which she (“and I hope you children”) has always regarded as “an act of worship rather than just another school play”, will be performed in Wade Minster this year, by request of the Bishop, and the Minster choirmaster, Dr Herrick, will train the singers. So poor Miranda has even less chance of taking part.

Back in class, Miranda and Nicola bag seats at the front for themselves as well as for Tim, Lawrie and Esther, but their terrifying teacher, Miss Cromwell, has other plans and moves Lawrie to the back of the class. Miss Cromwell, who teaches maths, sounds interesting:

“People who disliked her and were frightened by her, said she was horribly sarcastic and had favourites and wasn’t fair a bit; people who liked her – a fairly strong minority – agreed she was all those things, and, perversely, liked her because of them, apparently finding her faults more stimulating than the conventional virtues of her fellows.”

Miranda and Nicola seem to be favourites already, because they’re both made form prefects. When Marie offers unwanted congratulatory pats-on-the-back to Nicola, Miss Cromwell disapproves loudly: “I will not have vulgar, undisciplined demonstrations of that kind in my form.” She also threatens “blood for breakfast” if anyone ever displays any bad manners. So that’s them told.

At break, Tim and Lawrie assert that Nicola ought to agree to swap places with Lawrie on occasion, but Miranda protests that it would never work and it would be mad for Nicola to antagonise Miss Cromwell over “such a feeble thing”. Tim is furious and storms off. Miranda and Tim seem to have appointed themselves guardians of one twin each, so I foresee trouble there.

The Christmas play is also causing conflict. The Authorities are moving cast members in, out and round about, but “the basis of approval or otherwise remained a mystery”. If the teachers are trying to reward good behaviour and/or punish bad behaviour, in the hope of improving moral character, it would be helpful if the pupils had at least a vague idea of which behaviour of theirs was being rewarded or punished.

Then Dr Herrick further complicates matters by wanting pupils who can actually sing in his choir and he holds an impromptu audition. It turns out he was the judge of the singing competition that Nicola almost won during the summer, and when he sees Lawrie, he thinks Lawrie is Nicola having a bad day (“You have an excellent voice … What was the matter this afternoon? Have you a cold?”). Lawrie, who is terrible at singing, feels humiliated at being relegated to the angel who walks silently beside Nicola (“I don’t want to have to do anything, just because I look like Nick.”) Mind you, I’m not really sure why Lawrie should be so terrible at singing when she’s Nicola’s identical twin. Surely they have identical larynxes and vocal tracts, and it’s not as though Nicola has achieved her voice through training – and Lawrie is good at imitating voices, so she must have good auditory perception. This identical twin-ness is sometimes vitally important, sometimes completely ignored, depending on what’s happening with the plot, but I’m willing to go with the flow on this matter.

Lawrie does have the consolation of probably getting onto the Juniors netball team. It seems Nicola will be Centre and Captain, and that Miranda and Esther are also good players. Unfortunately, Lois rears her evil head and overhears Lawrie and Nicola joking about not having Marie in their team when Nicola is Captain. Lois is fully aware they’re joking but:

“Still, because she had injured Nicola, and Nicola, unlike Lawrie, refused to forget, she naturally preferred to think badly of her.”

So Lois broods about it until she feels “full of a fine and righteous indignation” and decides to tell all the other Sixth Formers a distorted version of the truth – until she catches Janice watching her with “the cool appraising eye of someone who knows a piece of fiction when she hears it and wonders just what’s behind it.”

Then Nicola is late one day to netball training because another teacher has kept her back, and Lois is foul about that, too, so things aren’t looking very good for Nicola’s netball hopes.

I must say, Antonia Forest is doing an excellent job of switching between the Christmas play and netball plots, breaking off at just the right point to keep me turning pages eagerly to see what will happen next. Back to the Christmas play now and Dr Herrick continues to choose his cast based on singing talent rather than Miss Keith’s arbitrary decisions about Moral Character. Miranda listens to the class discussing cast changes and says enviously that “doing it in the Minster sounds gorgeous. Anyway, I never see why I’m not in it, actually.” After all, she points out, practically all the characters in it were Jewish.

Everyone is flabbergasted, but reluctantly admit that she’s correct – except for Lawrie, who refuses to accept that Mary and Joseph and the shepherds were Jewish.

Now, I know Lawrie is a bit dim, but honestly, how could she possibly think they were Christian before Christ was even born?! I mean, that’s the whole point of Christmas! She’s from a Church of England family, so presumably was christened as a baby and has gone to church and scripture lessons. Miss Cromwell comes in at that point and they end up discussing “the Balfour declaration and the Jewish refugees from Europe” and how “the Jews, those who wish to, are returning to Palestine … Because historically it is their native country.”

Lawrie eventually agrees with Miss Cromwell, although only out loud:

“But naturally, it couldn’t be true. Obviously they’d been Christians … But she’d remember to say Jews in future.”

Let me remind you that Lawrie is in the top academic class for her year at Kingscote.

Lawrie also manages to infuriate placid Ann by making fun of the new carols: “See the tender lamb appears, promised from eternal years … It always reminds me of school dinners.”

Apparently Ann is “one of those peculiar people – a few did exist – who took the Christmas play seriously.”

Come on, Ann, that tender lamb joke was pretty funny. Christians are allowed to have a sense of humour.

Next, Chapter Four, Altogether Unexpected.

‘End of Term’ by Antonia Forest

I’m very happy to be back at Kingscote with the Marlow twins, a year after their eventful Autumn Term, because I have plenty of questions I need answered. Did Nicola get promoted to Form IIIA, leaving Lawrie and Tim behind? Will Nicola get a chance to triumph on the netball courts this year? Will she ever find a worthy Best Friend? How will Ann cope with being Eldest Remaining Marlow Sister? And who will be Head Girl now Karen and Rowan have departed? (Surely not Lois Sanger. But the teachers seem clueless as to Lois’s true character, so it’s possible.)

'End of Term' by Antonia Forest It seems that Christmas is a good time to begin reading End of Term, because the plot seems to feature a Nativity Play. That’s pretty much all I know about this book. The cover is not very informative or even very accurate – if that’s the twins with their new short hairdos in front, why are they wearing scarlet uniforms? Unless Nicola used her Boke of Falconerie windfall to buy uniforms, which seems pretty unlikely…

Chapter 1: Sprog Takes a Quarry

So, we begin at Colebridge Junction where Ann, Ginty, Nicola and The Sprog are waiting resignedly for their train to school and Lawrie is acting like a fractious five-year-old. Kingscote is a mere forty minutes by road from Trennels, but do the Marlow parents do the sensible thing and drive the girls and their luggage to school? No, they make them take a three-hour train trip, so the sisters can bond with their fellow pupils on the journey and Nicola can do something dramatic and dangerous to start the book off with a bang. (By the way, I always wondered about the Hogwarts school train. Did Scottish students need to travel all the way to London to catch the train all the way back to Scotland? If they could Floo or Side-Along Apparate with their parents to London to catch the train, why couldn’t they just travel directly to Hogsmeade, then get on the boats or carriages to Hogwarts?)

Anyway, after helping Ginty avoid Unity Logan and watching Lawrie boasting about her new theatrical mentor to Tim and company, Nicola sensibly decides to take The Sprog to the relative peace and quiet of the guard’s van. Everything is going swimmingly until they stop at the penultimate train station and The Sprog flies out the open door after some birds and Nicola tears off after him. Well, at least this time the train was actually stopped of its own accord at a station when she leapt out. And she does catch up with The Sprog, and even better, he’s caught his first sparrow (probably accidentally, but they’re both very proud of him). They trek back to the station, to find the next train isn’t due for three hours and worse, a new girl called Esther Frewen, who snubbed Nicola’s welcoming gestures on the train, is there too, after trying to run away back home.

Nicola really is a very kind and sympathetic child, even if she doesn’t always understand others’ insecurities and anxieties, being a very secure and fearless person herself. She realises they can walk to school across the fields and she tactfully talks about Sprog and school and the famous Marlow family until Esther gets her tears under control. Poor Esther is the only child of divorced parents, which must have been pretty unusual in 1950s England, although Nicola thinks “there were quite a few people at Kingscote to whom this beastly thing had happened”. Even worse, Esther’s had to leave her young puppy, Daks, at home because new girls aren’t allowed to bring pets (yet another of Kingscote’s arbitrary and illogical rules, I suppose, although I do wonder why Esther got a new puppy just when she was about to leave for boarding school).

Back at school, poor Ann is in a flap about Nicola going missing (“You wouldn’t have done this to Rowan”) and has already unpacked Nicola’s things into her drawer completely the wrong way:

“What with depressed new girls and pained sisters and misarranged drawers, Nicola saw no hope for the term at all.”

Such trials and tribulations! So Nicola stomps off to see to Sprog.

Chapter 2: Friends and Enemies

Ugh, Miss Redmond! She corners Lawrie and Nicola on their very first day back and graciously condescends to permit them to rejoin the Guides, saying “everyone was most anxious to be able to feel they could forget the whole unfortunate affair and begin again with an entirely clean sheet”. Oh, and Lois Sanger “was very keen to have them back with the Scarlet Pimpernels”! Lawrie, as usual, goes “scarlet and dumb” and expects Nicola to respond: Nicola quite rightly tells Miss Redmond to go jump in the lake. Miss Redmond storms off in an outraged huff and Tim appears, enjoying the strife. It seems Tim and Lawrie are now Best Friends Forever and both of them quite like Lois after she helped them with their play, but Nicola does not forgive and forget so easily.

Fortunately, Nicola seems to have found a new friend in Miranda West:

“Their hands banged together, and clasped and swung energetically as they went along the path to the outhouse. It was odd how people changed – or else you did – Nicola wasn’t sure which. A year ago, Miranda West had been one of III A’s form prefects, a bossy, conceited person, who made no bones about despising the worms of Third Remove. Then first [Nicola], and later Lawrie and Tim, had moved into III A themselves … and suddenly, last summer term, she had become someone to grin at across the classroom – someone who saw the same joke at the same time as you did.”

Miranda is described as having a “vivid, clever little Jewish face” and having “extremely rich” parents. She does seem to share Tim’s disregard for school rules, but has slightly more School Spirit and is worried that now Rowan has left, they might end up with Lois Sanger as Games Captain (Miranda accurately describes Lois as “slippery soap and slithery slime”). And worse luck, Lois has been made Games Captain, as well as being a prefect! Lois is busy crowing to her friends about how Rowan hasn’t even been made a prefect, when Nicola storms up to inform her that Rowan has left school. Take that, Lois! Nicola storms off, leaving Lois’s friends moaning about kids these days, no manners, etc. There’s a lot of storming off in this chapter.

Someone useless called Val Longstreet is Head Girl (to replace useless Karen) and someone called Janice Scott is a prefect, although Miranda wishes Janice had been made both Head Girl and Games Captain. Miranda has a bit of a crush on Janice, but denies it (“I mean, I like looking at her, quite, but not if you mean giving her roses in silver paper, and sleeping with her kirbigrips under my pillow”). Apparently the kirbigrips thing really happened a few years back, with some Lower Fifths obsessing over a couple of older girls, until Miss Keith called a special school assembly to shame the younger girls in the most public and humiliating way possible. (Because she couldn’t possibly have had a quiet sensible word with them right at the start about respecting other people’s privacy, before they got obsessive, and given them a copy of The Friendly Young Ladies.)

Then Nicola and Miranda meet up with Tim and Lawrie. Tim distributes chocolates and Lawrie complains about “the beastliest First Day I’ve ever met”. It turns out the cast list for the Christmas Play has been posted on the noticeboard, and casting depends on good character, not acting or singing talent. Accordingly, Lawrie and Tim are only Crowd. Nicola, who has a much better character, is a Candle Angel. A nice but useless girl called Jess Geddes is Shepherd Boy, the role that Lawrie covets. Ann is Mary, which makes sense, Val is Joseph because she’s Head Girl, and slimy Lois is Reader Angel (although at least Lois has proven reading-aloud skills). Miranda isn’t in it at all, presumably because she’s Jewish (she refers to it as “your play”). I can’t see why she can’t join in, though. She wants to be in it and it’s only a school play. If it’s like most of the Nativity Plays I’ve seen, with singing sheep and so on, it won’t even be particularly Biblical (not that the Gospels tell a consistent story about the birth of Jesus anyway) and it’s being held in a school theatre, not a church. Anyway, I’m sure there’ll be major drama involving the casting before too long.

Next, Chapter Three: Rehearsals and Team Practices

You might also be interested in reading:

‘End of Term, Part Two
‘End of Term’, Part Three
‘End of Term’, Part Four
‘End of Term’, Part Five
‘End of Term’, Part Six
‘End of Term’, Part Seven

‘Autumn Term’ by Antonia Forest
‘The Marlows and the Traitor’ by Antonia Forest
‘Falconer’s Lure’ by Antonia Forest

‘Growing Up Gracefully’, Part Five

Before I discuss etiquette for engagements and weddings, a small digression. I was curious about Nancy Spain, the writer who was so entertaining about Eating for England, because her name was vaguely familiar to me. I’d thought she was a journalist, possibly a war correspondent, and I was half-right. She did work as a newspaper columnist and broadcaster, but was a Wren rather than a writer during the war. After the war, she became famous for writing a series of detective novels set in a girls’ school (called ‘Radcliffe Hall’), for writing a biography of her great-aunt, Isabella Beeton (the Mrs Beeton of Household Management fame) and for getting sued, twice, by Evelyn Waugh for libel. Plus, she had a scandalous private life:

“…she lived openly with the editor of ‘She’, Joan Werner Laurie (Jonny), and was a friend of the famous, including Noël Coward and Marlene Dietrich. She and Laurie were regulars at the Gateways club in Chelsea, London, and were widely known to be lesbians. Spain and Laurie lived in an extended household with the rally driver Sheila van Damm, and their sons Nicholas (born 1946) and Thomas (born in 1952). Nicholas was Laurie’s son; Thomas was also described as Laurie’s youngest son, but may have been Spain’s son after an affair with Philip Youngman Carter, husband of Margery Allingham…”

Rose Collis has written a biography titled A Trouser-Wearing Character: The Life and Times of Nancy Spain, which clearly I need to read.

But let’s return to getting engaged and married. Noel Streatfeild looks back at a Victorian-era etiquette book, which included advice such as:

“When a man marries, it is understood that all former acquaintanceship ends, unless he intimates a desire to renew it, by sending you his own and his wife’s card, if near, or by letter, if distant. If this be neglected, be sure no further intercourse is desired.”

This is because bachelors are known to “associate freely enough with those whose morals and habits would point them out as highly dangerous persons to introduce into the sanctity of domestic life.”

Miss Streatfeild goes on to point out the many ways engagement and matrimony have changed in modern times, starting with the fact that many young people are unable to find a place of their own in an era of post-war housing shortages, and are therefore forced to live with their parents. There’s also the sad fact that most young people will not have a large number of servants to look after their household, nor enough space to hold the vast quantities of furniture, linens, silver, pots and pans that were traditionally given as wedding gifts.

Mr Alroy Maker then looks at the people who are getting engaged, sighing over so many young people making unsuitable friends:

“Goodness knows this is no time to be snobbish, but it is understandable that when parents have tried to bring their children up carefully, often sending them to expensive schools, where they should have made nice friends, it is annoying when they insist on choosing such peculiar types. Frequently ill-kempt, often without an aitch, sometimes dirty, addicted to the strangest views on politics, religion and manners …”

It is good manners for a young person to refrain from bringing their peculiar friends home, especially if they are Communist friends who look like tramps. However, if parents are forced to host the young Communist tramp, they should be tolerant and polite, confining any criticism to “the privacy of their bedroom”. Hopefully, their offspring will go on to marry a more suitable (and non-Communist) person.

Miss Streatfeild and Mr Cecil Notary then discuss how to solve the many problems that arise when two young lovers decide to plight their troth. What should they do if they want a quiet registry wedding, but their parents want a huge family affair? How do you avoid hurt feelings when choosing bridesmaids and, worse, bridesmaids’ frocks? Who should be the best man? (“The gay friend of countless riotous evenings is not necessarily the man to trust…”) Should the bride’s stepmother be allowed to stand in the receiving line? Do you need to hire a private detective disguised as a wedding guest to guard the display of wedding presents? All these and many other vital questions are answered.

Miss Streatfeild then concludes the book with a chapter addressing “late questions that could not be fitted into this book” (except here she is, fitting them in). She explains in detail how to tip when travelling first-class – for example, you must never tip receptionists or lift-boys, but porters and chambermaids require varying and very specific amounts, depending on their level of service. While she’s at it, she advises on London taxi drivers:

“There is no such thing as a threepenny tip. All taxi tips start at sixpence. Myself, I keep to sixpence until my fare reaches two and ninepence, when the man gets ninepence. After three shillings and sixpence, he gets a shilling …”

It goes on, until I started to think it would be a lot easier to take the bus. But woe betide any taxi driver who questions the amount Miss Streatfeild has given him. She says to him, quietly but firmly:

“Sixpence, or whatever it is, is a very good tip, and please remember your manners and say thank you.”

'Taxi Tips', illustration by John Dugan

She concedes this sometimes causes anger on the part of the taxi driver, but she has a strategy for that, too:

“While the taximan roared I removed the offending money from his palm, looked in my purse for the exact fare, and put it in his hand. ‘Since you do not like my tip,’ I said, ‘there is no need why you should have it.’ And I went into the house and shut the door firmly. I admit I trembled a bit at the knees, but nothing happened. After a good deal more shouting he got in his taxi and drove away.”

Did you know you are also supposed to tip hairdressers? I have never tipped a hairdresser in my life. Maybe that’s why my hair always looks so disorderly.

Miss Streatfeild also gives advice on how to get out of doing something you don’t want to do (“keep as close to the truth as possible” so “you can speak with what sounds like real regret”) and the right way to get up and leave a social gathering.

There is certainly a lot to remember if you want to grow up gracefully! But as Miss Streatfeild kindly points out,

“…the eyes of the world are far less on you than you think, because even the grandest person is often looking inward, as it were, studying themselves. So if on some occasion your manners slip, do not go over and over it in your mind, blushing when you think of it, the chances are fewer people noticed than you think, and those that did are not, as you suppose, making your blunder the sole topic of conversation. The great thing is to mark your slip, remember how it happened, and be determined it will never occur again.”

‘Growing Up Gracefully’, Part Four

If there’s some logic to the sequencing of the chapters in Growing Up Gracefully, I’ve yet to figure it out. Following Miss Laski’s philosophical discussion of the nature of eccentricity, we jump to Mr Martin Parson on the etiquette of letter-writing. He says a thank you letter should be written whenever you have been entertained, keeping in mind “they have to be sent whether you have enjoyed the hospitality or not”.

'Letters', illustration by John Dugan

He acknowledges it can be difficult to compose other letters, such as letters of congratulation when someone gets engaged, married, receives some important award or has a baby. Especially the baby situation because:

“…what on earth is there to say? You haven’t seen the baby, you are not interested in what it weighs, and anyway, all babies look alike.”

Luckily new parents are too busy with their newborn to care much about what you write.

Mr Denzil Batchelor then explains ‘When and When Not to Make a Fuss’. This is complicated, because as Noel Streatfeild says in her introduction, “Most British people look upon making a fuss in public as the worst possible bad manners.” However, sometimes your conscience will demand you speak up. For example, imagine you are listening to a conversation and someone says something that you know is a lie. If the liar is a known fool and no one is likely to be harmed by the lie, it’s best to keep quiet. But what if the liar is maliciously spreading suspicion and hatred?

“Your conscience should force you to make a fuss whenever you hear an innocent person being traduced in his own absence, or your country attacked by somebody who just enjoys running down his own side – it’s surprising how many asses of that sort there are – or whenever you hear malicious mouths attack the religion you happen to believe in.”

I doubt I’d rush to the defence of my country or my (lack of) religious beliefs, although I’m sure lots of others would. In fact, a great deal of Twitter content seems to consist of this sort of fuss. However, Mr Batchelor does note that any fuss should be made immediately and you must keep your temper.

Apart from conversational outrages, it can also be appropriate to make a fuss over social interactions involving unfairness. For instance, if you’re at a café and the waitress brings you a cracked cup (“the surest collecting-place for the army of germs that beset our good health”), then “politely but firmly insist on being given another” cup. If you’re on a date at a restaurant, check the bill and if you’ve been overcharged, make a fuss! (“If your girl friend thinks it all very embarrassing, get another girl friend.”) And if you buy a “pair of nylons” and they ladder the first time you try to put them on – take them back to the shop and make a fuss!

However, if you’re the victim of an accident (for example, a waiter spills soup on you), you must smile sweetly and accept apologies with good grace. This is easier to do if you’re Australian, rather than British:

“I’m told the last time the Australian cricketers were in England, Lindsay Hassett, their captain, was the victim of just such an accident. The horrified waiter was profuse in his apologies and begged to be allowed to remove the cricketer’s coat and get it dried and pressed. ‘How kind of you,’ said Hassett, ‘but as a matter of fact the soup went over my trousers too.’ And without–well, he was a cricketer, let’s say without batting an eyelid–he removed his trousers also, revealing the most elegant pair of striped silk underpants. And in shirt and pants he sat down, without moving a muscle of his face, and finished his dinner as if nothing had happened.”

Lady Barnett, the author of ‘Presents – Giving and Receiving’ does not comment on Australian gift-giving habits, but does note how beautifully wrapped American parcels are, “as pretty as the gifts they enclose”. (This is absolutely true. Every American gift-giver I know does a superb and creative job of wrapping, with gorgeous paper and ribbons and hand-made labels. Do they teach this skill in American schools?) Lady Barnet feels that giving presents should be fun for both giver and receiver, whether at Christmas or birthdays or weddings, or just “to say ‘Thank you’ or to bring joy to a sick friend”. A present doesn’t need to be expensive, it simply needs to be thoughtful. And, of course, if you receive a gift, you need to write a thoughtful letter of thanks.

Mr Donald Wolfit then discusses ‘Manners in a Place of Entertainment’. He concedes that the British have not always been well-behaved at the theatre, particularly in Georgian and Victorian times:

“The quantity of liquor consumed, both before and during the performance, often led to high words, as a result David Garrick was eventually responsible for excluding the patrons and nobility from having seats on the stage at benefit performances. It is on record that on one occasion when playing King Lear, when he had laid the dead Cordelia on the stage in the final scene, he had to reprove a member of the party who thought having the actress’s body near him was an admirable opportunity to strike up an acquaintance with her, he even attempted to disarrange her corsage.”

Things were just as bad in America, during a performance of Macbeth:

“Macready records in his diary that asafoetida, vegetables, fruit and even the carcase of a dead sheep, were thrown at him from the auditorium.”

'Theatre Manners', illustration by John Dugan

While dead sheep are no longer hazards of theatre-going, modern-day patrons light up pipes and cigars, unwrap crinkly chocolates, have coughing fits and (if they are school students forced to watch the classics on stage) engage in nudging and whispering and spit-ball fights. This is very bad manners.

In the final section of Growing Up Gracefully, we will learn all about well-mannered engagements and weddings.

‘Growing Up Gracefully’, Part Three

Each chapter of Growing Up Gracefully has a short introduction by Noel Streatfeild and her introduction to ‘Manners Abroad’ contains the following sage advice for those travelling to Australia:

“I remember being surprised when, on my arrival at Menzies Hotel in Melbourne, the lift-boy took my book from under my arm, read the title, and said casually, ‘I’ll have a read of that when you’re through.’ But a very short time spent in Australia showed me his were not bad manners, as I had first supposed, but merely new manners with which I was not familiar. The boy was asserting in a friendly way that he might be a lift-boy, and I a guest in the hotel, but we had tastes in common.”

Miss Streatfeild also experienced some differences between British and American manners:

“One of the freedoms on which Americans most pride themselves, for which, in fact, many of their forebears left the lands of their birth to become Americans, is the right to speak their minds on any and every subject … We may sometimes think more guarded speech would be better manners, but Americans do not feel like that. They believe speaking out is good manners, and keeping your thoughts to yourself hypocrisy. Maybe they are right. But right or wrong, what we consider good manners when abroad remains unchanged, so whatever we may think of foreigners and their countries we must Keep Our Thoughts To Ourselves.”

'Manners Abroad', illustration by John Dugan

Miss Virginia Graham then provides lots of useful hints for travelling abroad, which can often be challenging:

“A lot of irritating things will happen to you when you are overseas, and you will feel rather superior and will long to say to somebody that at home we manage these things much better…”

However, you must remember that foreigners don’t like hearing their countries criticised and can often understand English:

“So accept your sausageless continental breakfast with a smile, enquire, more as if you were seeking information than complaining, why it is that when you pull the plug nothing happens, tip with grace, wait quietly for those trains which never come.”

She explains how to manage tipping and taxis, how to clean your clothes and order breakfast in a hotel, how to manage cutlery in France and cheese in Holland and bathrooms in Italy, and how to avoid dropped bricks (“Although you are probably too young to remember much about the last war, it is quite a good thing to know which side the country you are in was on …”).

After that comes Mr Sidney Form’s ‘Guests and Hosts’. In her introduction, Miss Streatfeild takes a moment to rejoice in the evolution of manners since the war:

“A mother, as it might be your own, calling on a friend’s mother in calling-card days, had to leave three cards – one of her own and two of her husband’s. If it happened that the called-on was a widow, she only left two cards, one of her own and one of her husband’s. In any case, however many cards she left, she had to turn down the right-hand corners inwards, to show she had delivered the cards herself and not sent a servant with them. This turning down corners ritual went on even though the people on whom the mother called knew perfectly well there was either no servant, or the one that existed had far better things to do than going round delivering calling-cards…”

However, there are still difficulties to be overcome when hosting parties, says Mr Form. He thinks big parties are easier, because you can hold them outside your home, invite everyone you know, and let the caterers deal with the food, drink and clean-up. Small parties require skill when selecting the guest list (he advises you to find a celebrity and “implore him or her to attend”) and you might need to make it a cocktail or sherry party (if you have a lot of drab guests with nothing much in common, “clearly they won’t be an easy lot to get going at square-dancing”).

There are also challenges when guests stay overnight in your home, beginning with the state of your guest room (“where no member of the family has slept in them they do not know its horrors”). Then when the guests arrive, they will need to be entertained. Some hosts declare, ‘You must take us as you find us’, which is fine as long as the regular household routine is sufficiently organised and amusing. Others set up a strict and stressful activity schedule. Mr Fine believes that “perfect hosts are those who entertain tactfully, but not too much.” He also provides advice for house guests, including how to escape when necessary (fake an illness or arrange for a friend to telephone about an ‘emergency’).

'Take Us As You Find Us', illustration by John Dugan

Miss Marghanita Laski then discusses ‘How Eccentric May I Be?’

“By the time you come to read this book, the question is probably settled; you’re either going to accept the world as you find it or else to reject it – perhaps to make a better one and perhaps not. Both rebels and conformers are necessary. Both can be the salt of the earth, and both can be the most intolerable nuisances and bores.”

Rebellion is the natural state of young people, she believes, although she distinguishes between rebellion against the previous generation’s rules and true eccentricity, which is rare:

“A real eccentric is a person so much divorced from the social life around him or her that the opinion of others doesn’t matter at all. He directs his life entirely by his own thoughts and wishes which seldom happen in any way to coincide with the thoughts and wishes of other people. By the lights of the world, he is almost certainly a madman. He may be a mad genius, like Blake, or he may just be mad. It is to the highest degree improbable that this is the kind of eccentric you are.”

In fact, a lot of ‘rebellious’ teenagers are simply copying each other (‘Teddie-boys’ are again used as an example). But if you come into conflict with your parents about say, your religious or political opinions, she advises that you first determine whether you know you are absolutely right in your beliefs. If so, then it’s up to you to decide:

“Will you save your own conscience at the cost of outraging theirs, even if it’s only outraging some purely social value that they believe to be a matter of conscience? Or will you decide to conform outwardly rather than upset them, in which case your own conscience is in no danger at all, and you’re undoubtedly an unusually kind and mature young person?”

Often parents are concerned about your choice of friends, or your clothes, or whether you drink or swear or read certain books, because they worry it will lead you to become an unhappy adult, rejected by society as “immoral or criminal or grossly irresponsible”. Perhaps you are right or perhaps they are. Perhaps they refuse to compromise. Regardless, you have a right to your own views, but also a duty to ensure they are thoughtful views of your own, not copied from those you admire or put on to outrage those you dislike. Miss Laski concludes with her answer to the question of how eccentric you may be:

“As eccentric as you can reasonably manage without permanently damaging yourself or gratuitously hurting other people.”

As for the practicalities of this, perhaps they are dealt with in the next section, which includes a chapter on ‘When and When Not to Make a Fuss’.