When a leading statesman is also a model of decorum

Good manners are an outward sign of inward grace, a harbinger of nicely judged moral actions, warmly reflecting decency in thought. And by good manners I do not mean Osric-like flourishes or Chesterfield’s polished insincerity. Good manners involve taking trouble, a degree, however slight, of self-sacrifice and unselfishness. They are the trade goods of civilisation and, as Yeats observed, civilisation is an exercise in self-restraint. Lockwood wrote of Sir Walter Scott, ‘He was a gentleman even to his dogs.’ I have often puzzled over this remark, for it is sometimes difficult to be good-mannered to dogs, with their bottomless servility. Cats are a different matter, having a super-fine dignity which a dog can never attain. Dr Johnson, not by customary standards well-mannered, was certainly a gentleman to his cats, especially Hodge, being careful to say nothing in his hearing which might offend.

Good manners flourish when the example is set from above. I wish our royal family had better manners. They have usually been dreadful in this respect. The Duke of Wellington said that the sons of George III ‘have, between them, insulted every gentleman in the kingdom’. Victoria used to eat her food greedily and quickly, knowing that the dishes were all removed the second she had cleared her plate — until ‘Harty-Tarty’ (Lord Hartington) snatched his plate back and remonstrated loudly. Edward VII and George V were liable to make devastating personal remarks which the recipients remembered all their lives, and George VI, though more civil in this respect, was subject to sudden outbursts of temper. His secretary Sir Alan Lascelles, whose diaries have just been published, referred to these occasions as ‘Nashville’, since the king literally gnashed his teeth, like an old Hebrew prophet, and raised his clenched fists to heaven. Lascelles compared him to King Lear, and went so far as to consult Lord Dawson of Penn about these paroxysms.