title: Sorry!: The English and Their Manners
author:  Henry Hitchings 
description: Although most people have some idea of what good (or bad) manners are, its less likely they know where they come from. Hitchings addresses that through a comprehensive historical review, with some fun tidbits along the way. He brings the perspectives of the past to bear on customs of the present, using examples from writers such as Samuel Pepys, Lord Chesterfield, and Fanny Trollope. This rambling examination is concerned only with English manners, not those of other British countries. Hitchings is affectionate toward typically English mannerisms such as tactfully saying one thing, when meaning anotherwhen told, We really must have lunch sometime, does anyone believe itll actually happen? The book contains some illuminating examples of how manners are a social construct and can vary widely across cultures. The tour of manners encompasses living conditions, language, social structures, innovations, and philosophy throughout centuries. This is not a book of etiquette instruction, but deconstruction. For those who wish to dig deeper into the myriad forces at work behind polite customs, large and small, the book is sure to please. --Bridget Thoreson
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  # The Great Condition
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Henry James
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
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  ### 1
  
  
  
  
  
    
  "Ah there, confound it!" said Bertram Braddle when he had
  
  
  once more frowned, so far as he could frown, over his telegram. "I _
  
  
  must_ catch the train if I'm to have my morning clear in town. And
  
  
  it's a most abominable nuisance!"
  
  
    
  "Do you mean on account of — a — _her_?" asked, after a
  
  
  minute's silent sympathy, the friend to whom — in the hall of the
  
  
  hotel, still bestrewn with the appurtenances of the newly disembarked
  
  
  — he had thus querulously addressed himself.
  
  
    
  He looked hard for an instant at Henry Chilver, but the hardness
  
  
  was not all produced by Chilver's question. His annoyance at not being
  
  
  able to spend his night at Liverpool was visibly the greatest that
  
  
  such a privation can be conceived as producing, and might have seemed
  
  
  indeed to tran