'no, after you'
Last night I introduced the fantastic Robert Goddard, who was giving the NAW lecture at the Birmingham Book Festival. He’s a speaker who can make a 500 seat auditorium seem like a living room, partly because he knows what he’s talking about.
A crime writer, he says, has to get things right. And to get things right, it helps to be the kind of person who protects detail like others feel for kittens. If temperamenally you enjoy searching out errors in ancient train timetables (Bradshaw’s (d.1961) for maximum satisfaction) , you could do worse than try your hand at a crime novel.
Also, it’s always reassuring when at a public event a professional storyteller turns out to be brilliant at telling stories. The one I enjoyed most involved the correct etiquette for a gentleman who wishes to show a lady through a revolving door. His dilemma is that he needs to help with the door, but without pushing in front.
The correct solution, apparently, is for the gentleman to enter the revolving door alone, complete four fifths of a cycle (alone), and then to allow the lady to enter the empty section in front of him. He may then complete the cycle, following the lady graciously into the lobby.
Alas, this kind of attention to detail is rarely easy to follow in practice. Other people are ignorant and push in front. And ladies are not as patient as they used to be.
I had a similar dilemma come up in Becoming Drusilla. I can never remember whether the man (if he’s a gentleman) is supposed to walk on the right or the left of his companion. In my mind I have memories of two conflicting possibilities:
‘The man walks on the outside [next to the road] to protect the lady from wheel splash. Or the man walks on the left [which will sometimes be shopside], keeping his scabbard clear, ready at any moment to safely draw his sword and defend the lady’s honour. Or is that the right, freeing the sword arm?’
Looking back on this, I don’t think a gentleman would stand on the right. Even though the sword-arm would be free, the sword in pulling clear might rent and slash the lady’s clothes (crinoline, hopefully) in the act of being honourably drawn.
The answer to this dilemma has since revealed itself. A gentleman should stand on the left of the lady, but should always walk on the right-hand side of the road. Then everyone’s happy.
I should be writing crime novels. I’m that kind of guy.
I was once walking along the road with one of my children.
She said to me, “You should be walking on the outside of me”, indicating the road side of the pavement.
“Why’s that then?” I asked.
“Because you’ve HAD your life” she replied.
My husband always remembers to protect my crinolines from the mud. I usually walk on the inside of the pavement, sides changing depending which side of the road we’re on.
Someone once told me that ancient stair ways are always clockwise (or is it anti-clockwise?), so that swords could be drawn more easily. There again, it would depend on whether you needed the sword going up or coming down. I checked in the three towers where we live and they have stairways going both ways…. I wonder if they made special left handed swords….
I was committed to a young gentleman’s training regime, forced to wear a suit daily from the age of ten and expected to spend the rest of my life applying the rules of etiquette to all my contact with the fairer sex.
None of these rules have ever been applied, I may look like a five foot thirteen and a half inch male to many people but I think you can work out the rest.
I suppose this has made me look like an oaf at times but that is infinitely better than feeling like a fraud.
On the other hand I will open a door for anybody, that is civilised good manners and if universal would have us living in paradise.
Caroline.
ancient stairs in stronholds definitely went clockwise, which made the defensers, who logically were defending the place from the upstairs, free to use their swords against the invaders, as long as they were coming from downstairs. Of course, this defense was useless against armies of left-handed assailants. So the right side may depend on wether you’re walking down or up the street ?
I am impressed that the etiquettists took time out to consider The Problem Of The Revolving Door. As a pursuit it seems akin to coming-up-with-bogus-collective-nouns-for-animals. I suspect that the true answer to them is that revolving doors are intrinsically unchivalrous, as neither voluminous skirts nor scabbards can readily pass through them. Perhaps the most gentlemanly response would be to attack the revolving door on horseback, with one’s lance. Or possibly one of those knobbly things on a chain.
We have huge revolving doors at our local supermarkets, big enough to take wheelchairs and pushchairs. There is a notice saying one shopping trolley at a time which most people obey and take their turn. There is definately a trend towards ‘Priorité à droit’.
I venture to suggest that a gentleman should walk on a lady’s right, allowing the lady to take his arm without inhibiting her escort’s dexterity – should this be required at a moment’s notice in order, for instance, to wield his sword or proffer his credit card.