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mosellegreenFlorence King opens her Diary
12 March 2011
My finest hour as an American with an English parent occurred some 50 years ago when I argued down a bevy of unliberated girlfriends who insisted that the newly married Princess Margaret should be called Mrs Jones. ‘After all,’ said one, in the smirkishly solemn tones of the feminine mystique, ‘it’s her husband’s name.’ ‘No!’ I burst out. ‘She is Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowden.’ As my own tones hung in the air I realised that I sounded just like my father. Warming to the subject, I went on. ‘And don’t forget the the. That keeps it from sounding too familiar.’ My Anglophilia got its start early on, honed and polished by the cultural tilts between my English father and my American mother. One concerned the dying philanderer Edward VII. ‘Queen Alexandra sent a car for his mistress, Mrs Keppel, so they could say goodbye,’ said my father. ‘She should have sent a car to run over her,’ said my mother. I wasn’t even sure what a mistress was, but it was my first inkling of the difference between the two countries: Americans are generous but not magnanimous, because the grand gesture is too aristocratic for comfort.
They had another set-to over the abdication. My father patiently explained the constitutional issues that prevented Edward VIII from marrying Mrs Simpson but they went in one American ear and out the other. ‘Baloney! He was the king, he could do anything he wanted. If anybody didn’t like it he could throw them in a dungeon and chop off their head!’ said the great democrat.
My mother would doubtless be cheered by the news that Prince William is to marry Miss Kate Middleton of the ‘aspiring’ middle class. I can hear her now: ‘She’s just what that family needs to bring ’em down to earth. She won’t go around thinking she’s better than everybody else.’ Oh, really? It was the late Princess Diana who did her best to bring the royal family and the entire panoply of monarchy to its knees. Given a choice between the starched collar of respect and the rump-sprung britches of love, Diana’s fashion was never in doubt, but Kate may opt for the style of the greatest middle-class aspirer of all time, and we all know who that is: ‘The Windsor residence! The lady of the house speaking!’ Diana used to pull people up from curtseys but if Hyacinth Bucket ever got hold of the monarchy she would bring back the kow-tow.
Being an English-American can be depressing. For years I thought about giving up my American citizenship and becoming a Brit to get my blood and my nationality lined up without the interference of a hyphen, but then something made me change my mind with a vengeance: Princess Diana’s funeral. I spent three stunned days staring at the TV screen and thinking My God, they’ve turned into us! It wasn’t England any more, just a sceptre’d loony bin set in a sea of rotting flora, a UK of Utter Kitsch where the crud de la crud built teddy-bear temples to a gilded hysteric who resembled nothing so much as Judy Garland with a title. I told myself that if I must live in a country where people who once tipped their hats now tipped the scales, I might as well stay home and save myself the trouble of remembering to look right instead of left to avoid an oncoming hug speeding up the wrong side of the road. My hyphen, right or wrong.
I now get my England fix from ‘Masterpiece Theatre’. I am as hooked on Downton Abbey as everyone else on both sides of the Puddle but I have bones to pick with the first series. Carrying the corpse of the Turk through the corridors in the middle of the night stopped just short of unintentional comic relief. Didn’t Julian Fellowes remember that the same thing happened in Fawlty Towers when Basil and Manuel put the dead guest into the wrong laundry bin? Then there is Countess Cora’s maid, O’Brien. Thinking she is to be discharged, she places a bar of soap — soap! — on the bathroom floor so the pregnant countess will slip and have a miscarriage. Which is what happens. And of course the foetus was male. That long arm of coincidence and the self-parodic touch of soap in a soap opera were jarring. Some predictions for the rest of the plot: Lady Mary will become the Florence Nightingale of the first world war, earning the respect of Mrs Crawley if not the love of Matthew, and Lady Sybil will become the consummate Bright Young Thing, modelled on the real-life avatar, the tragic Elizabeth Ponsonby.
Ethan Trex for mental_floss
October 15, 2010
Sculptor and architect Maya Lin is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C., but modern viewers may not know about her rise to prominence and the subsequent controversy. Let’s take a look at five interesting facts about the architect from Athens, Ohio.
...
3. But She Had One Very Polite Ally
As veterans’ groups and Perot were publicly agitating for Lin’s design to either be scrapped or heavily modified, Lin found an unlikely advocate: Miss Manners. Judith Martin, better known to the world as the etiquette columnist, took Lin under her wing during the architect’s tumultuous time in Washington as she tried to get the memorial built. Martin, along with Washington Post architecture critic Wolf von Eckardt, helped Lin get some positive publicity to sway attitudes in favor of her project.
A Lifetime of Advice
The Ladue News
Thursday, October 14, 2010
As an expert on etiquette, Judith Martin, otherwise known as Miss Manners, says she is troubled by the ‘abrasiveness’ of society. She will be in St. Louis on Nov. 15 to speak at the Jewish Book Festival and introduce her new book, Miss Manners’ Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding. She bemoans that weddings have gotten more extravagant and costly, to the point that the ceremony has been eclipsed by a festival of parties, dinners and the reception.
LN: How did you become an expert on etiquette?
JM: I often wonder that myself. I noticed that there was a level of abrasiveness in society that I certainly found annoying and it never occurred to me other people would too. I was writing a column about this on the side to amuse myself when I was working as a drama critic and reporter at the Washington Post. It was always an interest of mine, in connection with an interest in history, and it eventually blossomed into what it is today.
LN: Are you ever asked questions that you don’t know how to answer?
JM: No, but people sometimes send questions that are really legal issues, and I leave myself to the etiquette questions, which involve all of human behavior. The stereotypical view of etiquette is that it’s all about weddings and dinners, but fortunately I have readers who understand it’s really about all social interaction.
LN: Was the wedding of your daughter Jacobina (who co-authored the book) the inspiration for the book?
JM: She was married in April 2009, and I was already set to do the book. However, when my daughter was planning her wedding with me she started reading what we are pleased to call ‘wedding porn.’ That includes the vast amount of commercial propaganda that is put out about weddings. It’s done with commercial interests in mind, and it suggests a lot of buying and spending. It puts people into debt and makes them very anxious. The shocking thing to me was that it was invoking the noble name of etiquette and then suggesting highly improper things. The book was a chance to fight back, and I enlisted my daughter’s aid. She had a great many insights.
LN: Has wedding etiquette changed since you were married?
JM: Indeed it has, almost entirely for the worse. It has become show-businessy and vulgar in the amount of display. It’s become detached from the act of getting married. When I got married everything in my life changed: name, residence, everything. Now nothing changes. People are more likely to be living together already, and they often don’t change their names, so I asked my daughter Why do they make such a big thing now over the wedding? She said that’s exactly why: If they didn’t make a huge thing over the wedding, nothing would change.
I got married in my parents’ house with our relatives and friends around us, and it was very charming. It wasn’t that different from my children’s weddings, except they were a little larger so it was done at our club rather than the house. Neither my children nor I took any part in suggesting that people would give gifts, much less what they should be. But my children got lovely gifts that people chose without just checking off a shopping list.
LN: It’s interesting that you would be opposed to gift registries, because they’re so common.
JM: They’re common in both senses of the word. It is appalling to tell people, Here’s what you have to buy me. Not to mention it’s much less satisfying in the end. I have been married for 50 years and I look around my house and remember who bought me different things. Will you remember in the future who gave you a place setting that you put on a shopping list? Registries let guests avoid having to think about what might please people, which of course is the whole point of presents.
LN: How can a woman avoid being a ‘bridezilla’?
JM: The way brides fall into that trap is that they have probably never done any formal entertaining at all, and the propaganda tells them to put on a huge festival involving a lot of people, to spend great sums of money that they probably don’t have and that it has to be perfect. No wonder they go crazy! Don’t read the propaganda. Just think about the occasion: You are getting married, so you want your relatives and friends around you and want them to have a pleasant time. That’s what it is really all about.
LN: What advice would you give to a bride as she’s planning for her wedding?
JM: Have a little perspective: Your manners are not suspended for the occasion. We do not recognize an etiquette-free zone for people getting married.
(An amusing anecdote from the Jan 26 San Jose Mercury News.)
Nearly everyone knows that Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, the syndicated columnist, is exceedingly correct. Last week, she saw an advertisement in the newspaper that a Maryland jewelry store was having a sale in her silver pattern. Upon arriving at the store, she told the jeweler she was looking for additional dessert spoons in her pattern and had been making do with the larger soup spoons.
"That's not much of a hardship," the employee said. "It is for me," Martin responded. Caught up in the moment, the saleswoman joked, "Who do you think you are, Miss Manners?" The easily recognizable Miss Manners looked at the woman, unable to respond. And then it registered. "Oh my God!" the saleswoman said.
Pamela Paul for The New York Times
October 8, 2010
THE GIST Gossiping can be beneficial.
THE SOURCE “Is Gossip Good for You? Links Between Gossiping Behavior and Subjective Well-Being” — Jennifer Cole and Hannah Scrivener, presented Sept. 7 at a British Psychological Society conference.
“IF you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me,” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a self-proclaimed “hedonist,” used to say. But it seems the greater pleasure comes from more temperate gossip.
New research finds that gossiping can be good for you — as long as you have something nice to say.
In a presentation in September, Jennifer Cole, a social psychologist, and Hannah Scrivener reported results from two related studies, both of which demonstrate that it’s in one’s self-interest to say “So-and-so’s second husband is adorable” rather than “She married that lout?”
In the first study, intended to measure a person’s short-term emotional reaction to gossiping, 140 men and women, primarily undergraduates, were asked to talk about a fictional person either positively or negatively.
The second study, which looked into the long-term effects of gossiping on well-being, had 160 participants, mostly female undergrads, fill out questionnaires about their tendency to gossip, their self-esteem and their perceived social support.
According to Dr. Cole, after speaking kindly of others, positive emotions were raised 3 percent, negative emotions were reduced 6 percent, and self-esteem rose 5 percent. These are not huge numbers, as Dr. Cole is the first to admit. But it’s nonetheless one of the few times researchers have attributed anything beneficial to the silly art of gossip.
And there was one decidedly positive result: whether kind or cruel, gossip was associated with a greater sense of social support for the perpetuator.
But does tittle-tattle really help attract more friends? “It could be that people who gossip a lot think they have social support, but they don’t actually,” Dr. Cole said, noting that previous research shows people tend to dislike and mistrust gossips.
“We’re all gossipers,” said Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners. “We bond that way, and people who talk about other people are interesting.” But, she added, “People who spread malicious gossip are despicable.” Miss Manners would appreciate then, that the consequences of bad-mouthing others were pronounced — not just on the targets, something established by plenty of earlier research — but on the gossipers themselves.
After criticizing other people, gossipers’ positive emotions were reduced by 16 percent and negative emotions increased 34 percent. It may be a function of empathy; we feel badly for the objects of our derision. Or it could be selfishness; we realize people won’t like us for nattering on meanly about others.
But what of Mrs. Longworth, the celebrated Washington socialite?
“She was a law unto herself,” said Ms. Martin, who knew Mrs. Longworth during her later years. “A lot of people did sit next to her!”
A version of this article appeared in print on October 10, 2010, on page ST6 of the New York edition.
How it glows, golden lit, empty of people, mysterious and dumb, behind curved glass that is as space bending unseen, that melts into the still, thin air, guarding what seems to the deceived eye unguarded and free to the touch. Still and bright and strange, like a deserted fairyland, like Eden after its erred denizens had been outed, like a palace garden whence queens fled, gleams that ordered and enchanted space, blossoming like a greenhouse in the dead of night. Golden baskets are piled high with pink roses; crimson roses riot in curious jars; hydrangeas make massed rainbows beneath many-coloured lights; tall lilies form a frieze behind, like liveried, guarding angels. Among the flowers are piled exotic fruits, pears and pines and medlars, little round fruitlets from China; clusters of purple grapes, asparagus in close formation, pressed together like sardines reared on end.~ Rose Macaulay, Personal Pleasures
It is all very lovely, this gleaming vision of the night, so still, remote and bright, entranced behind its unseen glass, as it were a water garden deep planted in green seas, lit by the phosphorent illumination of a thousand fish. And look, it has glass tanks of fish, coral, and sea horses, softly shining in each corner, sending faint light over the flower garden from below, while brighter lights illustrate it from the high walls.
It is a scene so exquisite and so strange that it might be a mirage, to melt away before the wondering gaze. We will leave it, while it is still clear and brilliant; turn away and walk down the cold, empty and echoing street, looking not back lest that bright garden be darkened and fled like a dream before dawn.
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