Post Bag

Dear Sir, I wonder whether you might settle a matter that has arisen between myself and a colleague. He maintains that the clip-on tie is a perfectly acceptable substitute for the knotted article, on the grounds that the visual result is the same and the effort considerably less. I maintain it is not. Which of us is correct? (T.R.H., London)

You are correct. Your colleague is wearing a lie around his neck and hoping no one will check.

Mr Crale, I have a pair of brown leather shoes, brogues, that I have worn for several years without doing much in the way of upkeep. They have begun to crack around the toe box and look rather sorry. Is there anything to be done at this stage, or have I left it too late?

Whether you have left it too late depends upon the severity of the cracking, and I suspect, from the apologetic tone of your letter, that it is worse than you are letting on. If the leather has cracked through to the lining, the shoe is finished as anything other than a gardening companion, and you must accept this as the natural consequence of neglect and resolve to do better by the next pair. If the cracks are surface-level, there is hope. Clean the shoes thoroughly with a damp cloth and a small amount of saddle soap, working gently. Let them dry away from direct heat (and away from a radiator, which will stiffen leather faster than anything short of a bonfire). Then apply a good leather conditioner, not polish but conditioner, which nourishes rather than merely disguises. Leave it overnight. Repeat three or four times over the course of a week. The cracks will not vanish, but the leather will soften and the deterioration will slow. The real answer to your question, however, is one you will not enjoy hearing: the time to care for leather shoes is the week you buy them, and every week thereafter. A five-minute routine of brushing, occasional conditioning, and the use of shoe trees when the shoes are not on your feet will prevent the problem you are now attempting to reverse. Prevention is always the actual answer. Treatment is merely what we offer when prevention has been declined.

Dear Crale, I have recently begun ironing my own shirts and find the collar quite impossible. Is there a trick to it, or am I simply not cut out for domestic service?

You are not cut out for domestic service. Very few people are, which is why it was, historically, a profession and not an enthusiasm. The collar is ironed from the points inward, on both sides, with the underside done first. One must press firmly and without hesitation, for the fabric will sense uncertainty and respond to it accordingly. If you find yourself negotiating with a shirt, you have already lost, and the shirt knows it. The trick, since you ask, is not to think of it as a trick at all; it is simply the correct way, and there is only one.

Dear Crale, I have been told I should moisturise. I am thirty-four years old and have never moisturised anything. Where does one even begin?

One begins by accepting that the skin is an organ, the largest one you possess, and that it has been asking for your attention for thirty-four years while you have been occupied elsewhere. I do not say this with judgement, for in my day a man's skincare consisted of soap, water, and the occasional application of cold cream in winter, and we managed well enough, though I suspect we would have managed better with more. A simple, unscented moisturiser applied to the face after washing, morning and evening, is sufficient. You do not need a routine of seven steps. You do not need a serum, which is a word I have learned recently and which I do not trust. You need a single, decent moisturiser, applied consistently, and the discipline to continue doing it after the novelty has passed, which, in my observation of men and their enthusiasms, is approximately nine days. If your skin is oily, use a lighter preparation. If it is dry, use a heavier one. If you do not know which condition applies to you, your skin is probably normal, which means you have been fortunate and should express your gratitude by looking after it before the fortune runs out.

Crale, my flatmate leaves his dishes in the sink for days. I have asked him twice. He agrees, then does nothing. What would you do?

I would not have a flatmate, but this is not helpful to you, and I recognise that the economics of your era make shared accommodation a necessity rather than a choice for many men. You have asked twice, which is the correct number. A third request becomes nagging, and nagging is beneath you. What remains is action, and the options are these: wash only your own dishes and leave his where they are, thereby making the consequence his to live with rather than yours to manage; or establish a system, perhaps a rota, perhaps separate washing-up bowls, in which the expectation is structural rather than personal, for men who will not respond to a request will sometimes respond to a system, the request having been addressed to their better nature and the system to their actual one. Under no circumstances should you wash his dishes for him. You are his flatmate, not his mother, and the distinction, once blurred, is almost impossible to restore.

Dear Crale, I work in an open-plan office and a colleague clips his fingernails at his desk. I find it repulsive but do not want to cause a scene. How does one address this?

One does not address it, because one cannot address it without drawing more attention to the matter than the matter itself is currently drawing, and the result will be an awkward conversation that the nail-clipper will recount to others in a version that makes you the unreasonable party. This is unjust, but it is how these things go. The correct approach is to mention to your manager, privately and without drama, that a gentle reminder about shared workspace hygiene might be included in whatever communications the office uses for such purposes. If no such mechanism exists, you must endure it, and I am sorry, for I have strong feelings about the management of fingernails and the locations in which that management should occur, and an open-plan office is not among them. The lavatory exists. A private moment at home exists. The desk at which other people are attempting to eat their lunch does not exist as a venue for personal grooming, and the man who treats it as one has revealed something about his domestic habits that he would, upon reflection, prefer to have kept private.

Crale, what are your thoughts on tipping? I never know how much to leave, and the machines now suggest thirty percent, which seems excessive.

Thirty percent is excessive. The machine suggests it because the machine has been programmed by the establishment, and the establishment's interests and yours are not identical, a fact which the machine is designed to obscure by presenting you with options that make the most generous choice appear normal and the reasonable choice appear miserly. In a restaurant with table service, fifteen to twenty percent is appropriate, with twenty being the standard for good service and fifteen for service that was adequate but unremarkable. For exceptional service, you may go higher, but exceptional means exceptional, not merely competent, and the inflation of the word is part of the problem. For counter service, where you have ordered at a till and collected your own food, a tip is not obligatory, and the screen that swivels toward you with its hopeful percentages is a piece of social engineering that you are under no obligation to reward. I say this without animosity toward the workers, who are often underpaid and who deserve better from their employers, but the solution to inadequate wages is not the guilt of the customer; it is the conscience of the proprietor, and until that conscience is engaged, the system will continue to transfer the cost of decency from the business to the individual. Tip generously where service is given. Do not allow a machine to shame you into subsidising a business model.

Dear Crale, I am autistic, and I find much of the social advice in your guide difficult: not because I do not understand it intellectually but because the execution is exhausting in a way that I suspect it is not for most people. Eye contact, reading signals, the unspoken expectations of conversation; these do not come naturally to me, and performing them for any sustained period leaves me drained in a way that is hard to explain to those who have never experienced it. I have two questions. First: how would someone like me have been treated in your time? And second: can an autistic person be a gentleman, or is the whole enterprise designed for people whose minds work differently from mine?

I will answer your second question first, because it is the more important one, and the answer is yes. Without qualification, without hesitation, and without the faintest shadow of a doubt in my mind: yes. A gentleman is not a man who finds social conduct easy. He is a man who treats other people with consideration. If you do that, and your letter suggests very strongly that you do, then you are already closer to the mark than a great many men who have never had to think about it at all, and who are, in my experience, considerably worse for the not thinking. Now to your first question, and I will be honest with you because you deserve honesty and because the truth, though uncomfortable, is less harmful than a pleasant evasion. In my time, a man such as yourself would not have been understood. The word autism did not exist in the vocabulary of the houses I served, and the behaviours it describes would have been attributed to shyness, eccentricity, awkwardness, or, in less charitable households, to a deficiency of character. Some men of this disposition found a place in structured environments (the military, the church, domestic service itself) where the rules were explicit and the expectations were clear, and where a man who followed procedure with precision and without deviation was valued for that precision rather than penalised for the manner in which he achieved it. Others were not so fortunate. I suspect I knew several such men in my years of service and did not understand what I was seeing, and I regret that, for understanding would have cost me nothing and might have spared them something. Your era, whatever its other failings, has the language and the knowledge to do better, and I am glad of it. As to the practical matter of following the social guidance in this guide without overwhelming yourself, I would say this: do not attempt everything at once. The rules of conduct are not a performance to be delivered whole; they are a set of tools, and a man may use the ones that serve him and set aside the ones that do not, provided the underlying intention (consideration for others) remains intact. If eye contact is costly to you, then give what you can afford and do not bankrupt yourself in the giving. If you find that you must choose between maintaining the appearance of ease and actually listening to what someone is saying, choose listening, for it is the greater courtesy by a considerable margin, and the person who receives your genuine attention will value it more than they would ever have valued your eye contact. You may also find, if I may say so, that the systematic nature of etiquette suits a methodical mind rather well. The rules exist so that one does not have to improvise, and the man who has studied them and applies them deliberately is not performing any more than a musician who has practised his scales is performing; he has simply prepared, and preparation is not deception. It is respect, both for others and for oneself. You are welcome in this guide. You were always welcome.

Sir, I wished only to say that your response to the autistic correspondent in this column was the first piece of writing on the subject of social conduct that has ever made me feel my son would be welcome in such a conversation. He is seventeen and a better man already than many I have met who have had twice his years and none of his difficulties. I am grateful. (M.P.)

Your son is welcome. So, I rather suspect, are you.

Crale, is it still necessary to stand when a woman approaches the table? My girlfriend says it makes her uncomfortable.

Then stop. This is not a complicated question, though your asking it suggests you believe it to be, and I suspect what you are really asking is whether your girlfriend is correct or whether the old rule should take precedence. Your girlfriend is correct. The purpose of standing when a woman approached the table was never to perform a ritual; it was to communicate respect, and if the gesture now communicates something other than respect to the person for whom it was intended, then the gesture has outlived its usefulness in that context. The principle endures. The method adapts. I have said this before and I expect I shall have to say it many more times before the point is absorbed: courtesy is measured by its effect upon the other person, not by its conformity to a rule that was written when the other person's preferences were not consulted. Your girlfriend has told you what makes her comfortable. A gentleman requires no further instruction.

Crale, I am a welder. I work ten-hour shifts in steel-toed boots and flame-resistant coveralls. I come home smelling of metal and sweat. I get maybe two or three occasions a year where I can dress up, and even then I feel out of place in anything that is not workwear. Can a man in my position be a gentleman, and if so, what does that actually look like?

I will tell you something that may surprise you, coming from a man of my background: some of the finest gentlemen I ever observed were not the men I dressed in morning coats. They were the men who came to repair the boiler, who reshod the horses, who arrived at the tradesman's entrance with hands that no amount of scrubbing would ever make entirely clean and who conducted themselves, in every interaction, with a quiet self-possession that many of the gentlemen upstairs would have done well to study. A gentleman is not defined by the occasions on which he dresses up. He is defined by the care he takes with himself on every other day, and a man who keeps his work clothes clean, his boots maintained, and his person in good order has done more to earn the word than a man in a bespoke suit who cannot be bothered to polish his shoes. As to what you should wear when the occasion permits: you already know. The workwear tradition, the chore coat, the heavy cotton shirt, the well-fitted trouser built for durability rather than display; these are not compromises. They are a heritage of honest dress that predates and will outlast whatever the fashion industry is presently selling. A good chore jacket in canvas or duck cloth, well fitted, with the sleeves at the correct length. A heavy chambray or twill shirt, preferably without ornament. Dark trousers that fit properly, which means neither tight nor voluminous, hemmed to break cleanly over the boot. Sturdy leather boots, kept clean and conditioned. This is not dressing up and it is not dressing down; it is dressing correctly for who you are, and the man who does so with consistency and attention will look better than he expects and more at ease than any man wearing clothes that do not belong to his life. Do not dress for an occasion that is not yours. Dress as yourself, at your best, and you will find that it is more than sufficient. The clothes should fit the man. The man should never be made to fit the clothes.

Dear Crale, I spend most of my free time outdoors: hiking, fishing, camping in the backcountry for days at a time. I suspect this is not your idea of a weekend, but I wonder: would a man of your era have had anything useful to say about the outdoors, or is this strictly a modern enthusiasm?

You suspect incorrectly. The Edwardian gentleman, or at least the Edwardian gentleman of a certain class, was expected to be competent out of doors, and many were formidably so. The shooting party, the fishing expedition, the long walk across country in weather that would send your era indoors to consult its telephone: these were not pastimes but fixtures of the calendar, and the man who could not conduct himself on a moor or beside a river was a man whose invitations would, quietly but inevitably, cease to arrive. The country house weekend, which was the centrepiece of social life for much of the year, required a man to ride, to walk considerable distances without complaint, to fish if the river was offered, and to shoot if the guns were out, and to do all of this in appropriate clothing, which meant clothing suited to the activity, not clothing suited to being admired. Tweed, which your era has turned into a fashion statement, was in my day a functional cloth, chosen because it was warm, hard-wearing, quiet in the brush, and capable of enduring rain without immediate complaint. A good tweed jacket, properly waxed cotton for the wet, stout boots that had been broken in before they were needed, and woollen layers beneath: this was the kit of a man who expected to be outdoors for the better part of a day and who dressed for the reality of it rather than the appearance. I would note that the Edwardian outdoorsman also understood something your era has largely forgotten, which is that competence in the field is a matter of preparation and not of equipment. The men I observed who were most at ease in the country carried the least and knew the most. They could read weather, tie a fly, dress a wound, navigate without instruments, and build a fire that would catch in the damp, and they learned these things not from a shop but from other men who had done them before and who considered the teaching of them a duty rather than a favour. Your modern shops will sell you everything you could possibly need and a great deal more besides, but the knowledge of how to conduct yourself in rough country, how to move quietly, how to be comfortable with silence and solitude and the absence of distraction; this cannot be purchased, and the man who possesses it is richer in a practical sense than the man who possesses the finest gear and the least idea of what to do with it. Go outdoors. Stay outdoors. Learn what the country teaches, which is patience, self-reliance, and the deeply useful knowledge that you are considerably less important than you thought. These are lessons your era needs rather badly, and the backcountry, which does not care about your opinions or your telephone signal, is the best classroom I know of in which to learn them.

Dear Crale, I have read your column with some regularity and I must confess to a growing unease. Your response to the young man who asked about standing for a woman struck me as a capitulation, not an adaptation. The whole point of etiquette is that it does not bend to individual preference. If we allow every person to decide which courtesies they find comfortable and discard the rest, we have not updated manners; we have abolished them. I expected better from a man of your stated background. (G.S.W.)

You expected a man who would agree with you, which is a different thing. I take your point seriously, for it is not a foolish one, and the line between adaptation and erosion is real and worth attending to. But you have confused two things that are not the same: the principle that underlies a courtesy and the form in which it is expressed. The principle behind standing when a woman arrives at the table is respect. The form is the physical act of rising. If the form now communicates something the principle did not intend, the form has failed, not the principle, and a man who clings to a failed form while the principle it was meant to serve goes unrecognised has chosen ritual over substance. I have seen a great deal of ritual in my time, and I can tell you with some authority that ritual without understanding is not courtesy at all; it is theatre, and the audience is always smaller than the performer supposes. You and I agree, I think, on more than you imagine. Where we differ is that I believe manners must occasionally change their clothes in order to survive, and you believe they should die well-dressed rather than adapt. I prefer survival. But I am grateful for the challenge, and I mean that sincerely, for a column that receives only agreement is a column that has ceased to be useful.

Mr Crale, I read your piece on self-defence with interest. I have a practical question. I have been considering taking up boxing or some form of grappling but I am thirty-one years old and have never been in a fight in my life. Is it too late to start, and if not, where does one actually begin? I confess the idea of walking into a gym full of men who know what they are doing is not an appealing one.

It is not too late. It is, in point of fact, an excellent age at which to begin, for you are old enough to train with patience and young enough for the body to respond to the training, and the combination of those two qualities is more valuable than either one alone. The men I observed who were most formidable in a physical sense were not the men who had started youngest but the men who had continued longest, and a man who begins at thirty-one and trains consistently for five years will be considerably better prepared than a man who trained intensely for six months at twenty and has done nothing since, which, as I have noted elsewhere, describes rather a large number of men. As to the gym: you are afraid of looking foolish, and I understand the fear, but I will tell you plainly that it is misplaced. Every man in that gym looked foolish on his first day. Every one of them was hit before he learned to avoid being hit, was thrown before he learned to keep his balance, and felt the particular humiliation of discovering that the body he had trusted for three decades did not know how to do what he was asking it to do. This is the universal experience. The men who know what they are doing will, in the main, be patient with you, for they remember their own beginnings, and the culture of a good boxing or grappling gym is, in my observation, one of the more quietly decent cultures your era has produced; the hierarchy is real but it is maintained through competence rather than cruelty, and the man who arrives willing to learn and willing to be bad at the thing before he is good at it will be welcomed rather than mocked. Begin with boxing, for it teaches the fundamentals of distance, of timing, and of composure under pressure more efficiently than any other discipline I have encountered. After six months, if the appetite persists, add a standing grappling art; judo or wrestling, practised on the feet rather than on the floor, for the reasons I have explained in the guide. Do not attempt to learn everything at once. Do not stop after three months. And do not, I beg you, purchase any equipment before your first class, for the shops will be delighted to sell you gloves and wraps and various other items before you have the faintest idea what you need, and the money will have been spent on hope rather than knowledge, which is an exchange that favours the shopkeeper every time.

Sir, I have read a good deal of your guide and I find myself agreeing with most of it, but I confess that some of the social advice feels designed for a man who works in an office and goes to dinner parties. I am a plumber. I work with my hands. I do not go to dinner parties. Is there anything here for me, or is this, as I suspect, a guide for a particular kind of man?

It is a guide for any man who wishes to conduct himself well, and if I have given the impression that it is addressed only to men who wear ties and sit at desks, then the fault is mine and I will correct it. The gentleman, as I have understood him across two centuries of observation, is not defined by his occupation, his income, or the condition of his hands at the end of the working day. He is defined by how he treats other people, how he maintains himself, and whether he can be relied upon to do what he has said he will do. These are qualities that have nothing to do with dinner parties and everything to do with character, and the man who possesses them is a gentleman whether he is laying pipe or laying tables. I will go further: the tradesmen I encountered in my years of service were, taken as a whole, more reliable, more direct, and more honest in their dealings than a good many of the gentlemen they served, and if the word gentleman has come to mean a man of a certain class rather than a man of a certain character, then the word has been diminished and not the tradesman. You are welcome here. The social advice applies to you as it applies to any man who has conversations, shares meals with others, and moves through the world in the company of his fellow creatures. If a particular passage does not suit your circumstances, set it aside. The principles beneath it will.

Mr Crale, I wrote to you some time ago regarding a pair of brogues I had neglected rather badly. I am pleased to report that your advice on saddle soap and conditioner was sound; the shoes are still with me and in considerably better order than they were when I first wrote. I now have a different question. I have begun growing a beard, partly out of curiosity and partly because I dislike shaving, and I find the advice available on the subject to be either wildly contradictory or transparently designed to sell me things. What would you recommend? (The Correspondent with the Brogues)

I am glad the brogues survived. Our earlier exchange was among the first letters this column received, and I confess a certain satisfaction in learning that it produced a practical result rather than merely a theoretical one. As to your beard: I have written on the subject at some length in the guide itself, and I would direct you there for the full account, but the short version is this. Keep it clean; soap and water will do for most men, whatever the manufacturers of beard oil may wish you to believe. Keep it trimmed to a deliberate length, which means a length you have chosen and maintain, not a length that has simply happened to you through inattention. And commit to the thing. A beard that is neither growing nor groomed is not a beard; it is evidence of indecision, and the face it sits on will look accordingly. You have already demonstrated, with the brogues, that you are capable of maintaining something once you have been told how. Apply the same discipline upward.