Our Manners

Why is it that nowadays people never want to answer letters? When I was in Britain a few years ago working as a journalist, I wrote to people asking for an interview and I never once got a reply. Although when I telephoned, people usually agreed to meet me. And as for saying "sorry" when someone lets you down over an appointment, forget it. In modern Britain, as well as America, "Never apologize, never explain" has become a way of life. I'm tired of seeing old ladies standing in public transport because no one is polite enough to offer them a seat. Even wearing the right clothes when you go out to dinner seems to be a thing of the past! I may be old-fashioned but good manners are simply a part of a civilized society.
Yet, not all the British are extremely rude, and there even are people for whom good manners are a very important part of behavior as well as thinking.

Here is an example of good manners in Britain.

A gentlemen walks on the outside of the payment when he is with a woman. Men have walked on the outside of the payment since the time when women needed protection from the splashing mud of passing cars, and rubbish being thrown out of the windows upstairs which usually landed on the edge of the pavement. But times changed. There is greater equality between the sexes and today a few men automatically walk on the outside.

Table manners or forms of greeting are part of social etiquette. However, there are other customs which run deeper. For instance, British people are said to be good listeners. In other words, it is not considered polite to interrupt the person who is just speaking.

Understatement is another characteristic trait of the British. It is a very complex concept. George Mikes, a Hungarian by birth, knows a lot about it. Here’s a funny passage, which he wrote more than forty years before.

“Foreigners have souls; the English don’t”

On the Continent if you find any amount of people who sign deeply for no conspicuous reason, yearn, suffer and share blankly, this is soul.

The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead.

If a continental youth wants to declare his love to a girl, he kneels down, tells her that she is the sweetest, the most charming and ravishing person in the world, that she has something peculiar and individual which only a few hundred thousand other women have and that he would be unable to live one more minute without her. Often, to give a little more emphasis to the statement, he shoots himself on the spot. This is a normal, week-day declaration of love in the more temperamental continental countries. In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly: “I don’t object to you, you know.” If he is a man with quite a passion, he may add:” I rather fancy you, in fact.”

If he wants to marry a girl, he says: “I say…would you?...”

If he wants to make an indecent proposal: “I say…what about…”

Our behavior and ways of speaking are what reflects our manners, and if we want other people to be polite we should give the same feedback.

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