THE PS AND QS

Alexander McCall Smith examines etiquette conundrums, such as what to do when you find your host hiding in a wardrobe…

Alexander McCall Smith ensures we all mind our manners

Ihave always enjoyed the advice columns in magazines and newspapers. These founts of social and psychological wisdom must help so many people through socially anxious waters. How do you respond to a tricky invitation? What do you do when confronted with awkward guests? How do you address a letter to somebody who, having received a knighthood, then undergoes gender reassignment surgery and becomes a woman? Does that person automatically become a Dame, or continue to be Sir?

The latter seems incompatible with the new gender, but leaving out the title surely demotes somebody who doesn’t deserve to be demoted. It is all very difficult, and goes to show that assumptions that modern life has become less socially complicated are quite unfounded.

The Americans are fortunate in having a social oracle whose advice has quasi-legislative effect. This is Miss Manners, who reigns supreme in the columns of the Washington Post, from which she speaks, ex cathedra, on a wide variety of topics. And don’t assume that those easy-going Americans do not have etiquette issues – they have plenty of them. There are, for example, strict rules in America as to when women can wear white shoes. The answer is something to do with Labour Day; I forget, though, whether you can wear them before or after Labour Day. Miss Manners has the answer, however, and you can read all about it in her voluminous collected responses to the social concerns of her readers.

There are several advisors to whom one can turn on this side of the Atlantic, although there is nobody with the towering status of Miss Manners. Country Life has Kit Hesketh-Harvey, who is very good, and very irreverent, not to say subversive. Then the Spectator has Mary Killen of Dear Mary, who is deliciously amusing and who attracts queries such as that made recently by a reader whose theatre-going companion falls asleep at every performance, or the reader who wondered about the correct response when you find somebody hiding from you in a cupboard.

That problem, by the way, is more common than you might imagine, and happened to a great-aunt of mine when revisiting a house in which she used to live in Argyll. She and her husband went back to the house years later and were invited in for tea, although they were told by the current occupier that his wife was not in. My great-aunt could not resist the temptation to do some snooping when she went off to visit the bathroom, and had a quick peek in a large cupboard, only to discover the hostess hiding within. In my view, the correct response in such a situation is to say, triumphantly, ‘I thought I might find you here!’ That forestalls any possible reproach: the accidental discovery becomes deliberate and the moral high ground is claimed.

I found myself in need of advice of this nature a couple of weeks ago. At the end of each year I bring out a small pamphlet for friends, in which I burden them with reflections, and the occasional poem. This year I published a poem about anchoring, and the whole business of choosing a firm anchorage not only for a boat, but also, metaphorically, for the friendships in one’s life. This poem appeared with a dedication, which said, simply: ‘To Richard and Caroline’. These were friends with whom I had been sailing, and indeed the poem was written on their boat.

Among the friends to whom the pamphlet was sent was my London publisher, whose name is Richard, and whose partner’s name is Caroline. When he received the pamphlet, Richard was uncertain as to whether the dedication was to him. He was in a difficult position, though, because if he did not write to thank me, he feared I would think him ungrateful. But then a further complication occurred: was the dedication to him, as publisher, and my agent, whose name happened to be Caroline. Confusion and doubt piled upon confusion and doubt.

He decided to write to thank me for the poem. That put me in a very difficult situation. I knew the dedication was not for him, but should I pretend that it was in order to save him the embarrassment of being informed that he had presumed something that was not the case? I canvassed opinion amongst friends, and two schools of thought emerged: one was in favour of saying nothing, and letting him think the dedication was his; the other took the view that it would be better to come clean. There is always a case for telling the truth, so I telephoned him and told him that he and Caroline did not have a dedication after all. I think that was the right thing to do, and it was also what the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant would have done – I think.

But always sugar a pill, if you can. I assured Richard (non-dedicatee) that he and Caroline (fellow non-dedicatee) would in due course have a poem dedicated to them – or even an article in Scottish Field. Miss Manners – and I suspect, Dear Mary – would have approved. Or possibly not.

“There are strict rules in America as to when women can wear white shoes