Un soupçon de politesse belge

Friday, 8th January 2010

R.J. Stove wonders if we could learn something from modern Belgian attitudes to etiquette

Douglas Woodruff, British journalist and broadcaster, revealed in his book The Tichborne Claimant (1957) why the Claimant’s, um, identity crisis endured for so long. It was this: in Australia, remittance men and other such types changed their names as casually as they changed their socks. And the habit tied in with unease about criminal origins. It didn’t do to enquire too searchingly about an aristocratic-looking chap’s surname if said chap’s grandfather had been a convict sent to Botany Bay. The outcome: a culture in which simply having a surname would be considered an embarrassment, long after the last convict ship arrived in 1868.

I found myself thinking anew of Sir Roger Tichborne, sorry, Arthur Orton, after a November-December visit to London followed by much longer periods in two Belgian cities (Brussels and Liège). The Belgian stay was splendid, thanks for asking. The London stay… well, let’s just observe that London now belongs irretrievably to the Third World. That the public transport would be largely hopeless; that the road traffic would be unspeakable; that most of the women would be wearing burkhas (and that numerous other women had grown so obese and ill-favoured, you wished they were wearing burkhas); that sales clerking now — save among Indians and Pakistanis — operated on the principle of The Customer Can Eff Off: these things I predicted. What I had not predicted was the extreme informality.

In the space of 30 years, London’s approach to casual social interaction has gone from the Manchu Court to Trainspotting. I always rather liked the Manchu Court.

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