BOOKS Every man in his U-mour

LORD EGREMONT

I have an old-fashioned, inherited, natural accent. I go on using it because it is the only unaffected accent I've got. Those on the listening end generally hoist in what I am saying: like a Tompion clock, it is old but it works. Anyway, at the age if forty- nine I am not going to try to change it.

These thoughts are evoked by a book, edited by that famous U-expert, Alan S. C. Ross, called What are U? (Andre Deutsch 25s). As one who has no particular interest in U usage I nevertheless found this an amusing book, although Ross and his friends sometimes get a bit didactic. For ex- ample, they say that the pronunciatffi'n of 'girl' to rhyme with 'curl' is the thing and that nobody says it differently now. Meet me sometime, Mr Ross, and ask me to say 'girl'.

The whole subject is ludicrous, anyway. We should all speak as we choose and be- have as we choose so long as we don't make a nuisance of ourselves or bore other people. In my youth there was a distinguished nobleman, Lord Ancaster, who always spoke cockney. So did his sister, Lady Dal- housie. Why they did so I do not know, but I am sure it was natural. It was thought rather endearing—as was Lord Curzon's pe- culiar accent, too.

I once asked my father if it was true that we left the bottom button of our waistcoats undone because King Edward VII had once done so either by mistake or because he was feeling fat. My father said yes, he believed that was so: 'Darned stupid, too; suppose he'd gone and left all his fly buttons un- done.' I could not but agree.

Old U-people used to say 'Ain't it?' in- stead of 'Isn't it?' Then they gave it up. The only person I can remember off-hand who said 'Ain't it?' was Eva, Lady Dunraven. The Salisburys had fish-knives at Hatfield. That sort of thing must have been bewilder- ing to earl)," U-students.

I was once sitting by the fire with my favourite grandmother. She was a spry but very old lady. We had been silent for a while. Silence is part of the art of conversation between fond relatives. Suddenly my grand- mother spoke and startled me by saying apropos of nothing about which we had been talking earlier, that she held no brief for the crinoline—in many ways it was objectiona- ble, especially when sitting down in a hurry or attempting to enter a crowded carriage— but otherwise it was decorous and 'comfort- able for running'. Those were her words. I was amazed. Did she really mean that they ran. those ladies? My grandmother was an early Victorian by upbringing, in her teens when Prince Albert died. I had always thought that ladies in those days were not supposed to run—only to glide about at a walk for short distances in the brief inter- vals between frequently changing their clothes. Goodness! Whither had my grand- mother been running in her crinoline? Or, worse still, from whom? ...

But she explained that even small chil- dren wore the crinoline. 'It had its points: I remember as a little girl being grateful to it for allowing unfettered liberty to the legs.' She then went on to chat about Disraeli and Gladstone. Although married to a Tory, out of affection for her brother, Rosebery, she had been in favour of the Liberal cause at least until the fall of Rosebery. Socially, however, she preferred Disraeli to Gladstone: 'At dinner Mr Gladstone pontif- icated, demanding the attention of one and all; Lord Beaconsfield usually spoke to his neighbours.' Nobody has ever studied how to be U more and with greater effect than Disraeli did. Well, U-usage, like my grandmother's crinolines, might be decorous and sometimes handy.

They say in this book that it is U to call a mackintosh a mac. Oh, I hope not. Other- wise we shall soon have U-ladies in the springtime after a tinkle on the phone going out in their macs (in case of rain) to pick dates in their gardens, and being altogether more twee than U.

They also say in this book: 'There is an odd convention, the origin of which lies wrapped in the mysterious past, and that is the fact that it is non-U to smoke a pipe out hunting'. There is no mystery. It is simply a safety precaution to spare other people from wasting their time having to deal with a pointlessly injured fool or his horse. Look. You are at the covert-side when hounds are drawing. Suddenly the chase begins. You gallop. If you are smoking a cigarette, you throw it away. If you are smoking a pipe, what on earth are you to do with the thing? Knock it out on the heel of your boot and possibly burn the horse?

Put it in your pocket and possibly b yourself? Keep it in your mouth and t if you come a cropper, possibly get rammed down your throat as you fall your face?

Esoteric different usages prevail amo different sets of people: they prevail in Armed Forces—and in the Army they differ from regiment to regiment schools, colleges, closely knit offices and on. In the British Prime Minister's off the thing with which you punched holes sheets of typewritten paper in order to them together into a bundle used to called a bodger. Sir Winston Churchill Downing Street, taking an interest in eve thing, opined that bodger wasn't a bad u for it, but he preferred to call it a clop (because that was roughly the noise it m when you operated it). I never have lea what the proper name for the thing is.

An interesting passage in this book u contributed by Mr Michael Fish: Teo can be divided into doers of their own thi and non-doers of their own thing. people who do their own thing are confide confident in themselves, knowing their o minds. They don't do things because of w other people will think.'

As Mr Osbert Lancaster once famo caused Maudie Littlehampton to say of he had depicted her eating peas off a kn. 'If it's me, it's U.'

Although I am not particularly interest in U-usage (possibly because, unconscious I have always used it myself), I am keen differences. There is very little differe basically, between one man and anoth but what there is can be very imports• The thought of us all being the same- ing in the same sort of house, doing same sort of things, all following the sa sort of conventions—is anathema. Why. once went to Norway. There, except for King, they all seemed to lead the same of life in the same sort of house of were rich you had more than one of same sort of house), the same sort of mot car, and so on. There was one rich N wegian, a shipping magnate, who had than one house, all, of the same small ty He was very keen on cars. He had a sP did Rolls Royce: it was the apple of his but he was so sheepish about it that he k• it across the border in Sweden. Must have it like that here? It seems to me to a very glum way of life.

Thus I propound a doubt. I am not hedonist, but I am in favour of gaiety this vale of tears. Gaiety is the hard cash happiness. Everything else is only a pro sory note. Of course there is a school thought which says in a jejune way that would be tolerable but for its amuseme Everybody needs amusements. Dille people need different amusements. that the point: hence the need for variety. thing to fight against is any need to form—except that you must not do ti.n which may offend other people. And , must—if only in your own self-interest kind: the wretched have no compassion.

The happiest of all lives might be a solitude coupled, nevertheless, as .a grows older, with love for his wife his children—for some people, but not everybody.

Nothing may endure but mutabl Character is a long-standing habit, but it be eroded or even erased. Wherever we we are on the way to somewhere else. I that in any somewhere else there will room for variety. There should be room U-people, too.