Post Bag

You are correct, although I should put the matter less dramatically: a clip-on tie resembles the knotted article only until the fastening is seen, and saves so little effort that the substitution has scarcely any practical defence.

Whether you have left it too late depends upon the depth of the cracks, which your apologetic tone leads me to suspect are worse than you say. Leather cracked through to the lining cannot be restored for ordinary wear, though the shoes may continue as gardening companions. Surface cracks allow more hope: clean gently with a damp cloth and a little saddle soap, let the shoes dry well away from direct heat, then apply leather conditioner rather than polish and leave it overnight. Repeat the conditioning several times during the week. The cracks will remain, but the leather should soften and further deterioration may be slowed. With the next pair, begin the five-minute habit of brushing after wear, conditioning when the leather grows dry, and using shoe trees; care begun in the first week is considerably more effective than treatment after several neglected years.

Very few people were cut out for domestic service, which was historically a profession rather than an enthusiasm. Iron the underside of the collar first and work from each point towards the centre, then turn it and repeat upon the face. Firm, short pressure prevents the point from being pushed out of shape; the rest is practice rather than a trick.

Begin with a simple, unscented moisturiser applied after washing in the morning and evening. In my day a man's skincare consisted chiefly of soap, water, and cold cream in winter; we managed, though many faces would have benefited from a gentler soap and more regular moisture. A light preparation usually suits oily skin and a richer one dry skin. If you cannot tell which condition applies, choose a mild lotion sold for normal skin and observe it for a fortnight. Consistency matters more than a seven-step routine or the latest serum, particularly after the novelty of the bottle has passed.

My own preference against having a flatmate is of little use to you, since the economics of your era often make shared accommodation necessary. Having asked twice, move from reminders to an arrangement: wash only your own dishes and leave his consequence visible, or establish a rota with separate washing-up bowls if required. Some men who ignore a personal request respond better when the expectation has been made structural. Do not quietly wash everything yourself, since that teaches him that delay will eventually transfer the work to you and makes the old arrangement harder to restore.

A direct correction may draw more attention to the performance than it presently receives and is likely to be retold with you cast as the unreasonable party. Mention privately to the manager that a general reminder about grooming in shared workspaces would be useful. If your office has no such mechanism, a quiet word may still be necessary: say that the clipping is distracting and ask that it be done in private. The lavatory or home provides an appropriate place; a desk beside colleagues attempting to work or eat luncheon does not.

Thirty per cent is excessive for ordinary service. In a restaurant with table service, fifteen to twenty per cent remains appropriate in Canada and the United States, with twenty for good service and a higher amount reserved for something genuinely exceptional. At a counter where you order and collect the food yourself, a tip is optional; the hopeful screen has been configured by the establishment and does not establish a new rule merely by swivelling towards you. Workers are often underpaid and deserve better from their employers, but a machine should not make the customer's embarrassment a substitute for the proprietor's duty. Leave a fair gratuity where personal service has been given, and make the choice without theatre.

I will answer your second question first because it is the more important one: yes, without qualification or hesitation. 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, as you always ought to have been.

Your son is welcome, and I rather suspect that you are as well.

Then you must stop, and the question is rather less complicated than you appear to believe. What you are really asking, I suspect, is whether your girlfriend is correct or whether the old rule should take precedence, and I will tell you plainly: 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 remains useful even when its expression changes. 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. Her expressed preference supplies all the instruction required.

I will tell you something that may surprise you, coming from a man of my background: some of the finest gentlemen I ever observed came nowhere near my 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 defined by the care he takes with himself on every ordinary 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 belong to 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 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 foreign to his life. Dress for your own occasions and as the best version of yourself; the clothes should be fitted to the man rather than requiring the man to impersonate their imagined owner.

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. Spend the time outdoors and learn what the country teaches, including 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.

You expected a man who would agree with you, which is a different thing. I take your point seriously, for it has sense in it, and the line between adaptation and erosion is real and worth attending to. But you have confused two different things: 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 never intended, 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 divorced from understanding becomes 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 instead of adapting. I prefer that manners alter enough to remain alive. 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.

You are at an excellent age 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 usually 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 gymnasium: 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 gymnasium 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 gymnasium 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 instead of 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 instead of 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 instead of on the floor, for the reasons I have explained in the guide. Attempt neither every discipline at once nor an extravagant purchase of equipment before the first class. Continue beyond the first three months, 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.

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 defined by more than 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 instead of a man of a certain character, then the word has been diminished; the tradesman has not. You are welcome here, and 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.

I am glad the brogues survived. Our earlier exchange was amongst 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 with soap and water, which will do for most men whatever the manufacturers of beard oil may suggest, and trim it to a length you have chosen rather than one which has merely happened through inattention. A beard that is neither growing nor groomed is evidence of indecision rather than a beard, 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. The same habit of maintenance will serve you here.