I’ve been watching a lot of Agatha Christie’s Poirot lately on youtube, and can’t help being impressed by the high society of the 1930s, in which Hercule Poirot finds his milieu. The formal dinner jackets, the lavish gowns, the jewelry, those long, long dining tables heaped with silver and crystal… And I’m so afraid that I’ll embarrass myself, if I ever get invited to one of those wingdings.
To guard against my making a fool of myself, I have prepared a list of five things never to say at the dinner table. If I can just avoid these, I ought to do all right in high society.
1. “So what is the best treatment for toenail fungus?”
2. “Gee, I bet this stuff cost a fortune!”
3. “I saw this great midget wrestling match once…”
4. “Are you really going to eat that? I tried it once, and I was on the pot all night! And if that weren’t bad enough,” etc.
5. “I was reading about this famous autopsy…”
You can be sure none of these remarks would ever issue from Poirot’s lips.
I started reading ‘Martine’s Handbook of Etiquette’, written in the late 1800s. Here’s the link here if you’d like to take a peek: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36048/36048-h/36048-h.htm
I thought it was quite interesting and informative! Maybe Poirot read it 😀
Well, if I can just live for another 100 years or so, maybe I could master all the rules in that handbook! Actually, the section on the art of conversation is very interesting.
There are some people who think I learned by etiquette from either Huckleberry Finn or the tribe of apes that raised Tarzan. This is a base canard.
But at least I’ve learned today not to show off by peppering my talk with tiresome French phrases. Also, I avoid saying things like, “Hey, lady, you look awful fat in that dress.”