Restoration, not LARPing

When I retire from the news profession, I will cancel my X-formerly-known-as-Twitter account and pick five to ten Substack accounts to read instead. For now, though, I look at X to find rumours of the latest breaking stories. This means, of course, that I am exposed to a level of scurrility that would awe 18th century London pamphleteers. I also see a lot of nonsense written about Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass.

O that the Muses would give me the skill to find the golden note between gross generalization and the overly particular. To illustrate what I am going to say, I'm afraid I'm going to have to single out a personality, and it is the ex-proprietor of OnePeterFive, Steve Skojec, for accusing Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass of "LARPing." Here is one thing of many things Skojec has written about "traditional Catholicism" based on his experience in the United States, a point I'm going to address right away: 

It is, in some respects, a long-running Live Action Roleplay — a LARP — in which participants act out what they think Catholicism looked like in “the good old days” while perpetually running down any kind of Catholicism (or Catholic who practices it) that isn’t traditionalism. But it is essentially an affectation; an attempt to reconstruct and live within a historical context that no longer exists.

I resist this gross cartoon of Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass.

I do not know how many Catholics habitually attend the Old Mass, let alone how many take an active part in social events before and after it. However, I do know that these Catholics exist worldwide. In the past 15 years I myself have attended the TLM in the USA (Front Royal, VA; Washington, D.C.; South Bend, IN); in Canada (Toronto, ON); in England (York, Birmingham, Cambridge, London); in Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Motherwell, Dundee); in Spain (Barcelona); in France (Chartres Pilgrimage); in Poland (Kraków and Wrocław); in Belgium (a desperate drive to who-knows-where), and in Italy (Rome, Florence). And my own travels are only a very small part of a snapshot that should encompass the whole world, with a particular focus on France.  

But based on my experiences (which I believe are geographically broader than those of Mr Skojec), above all 15 years of assisting at the archdiocese-approved Edinburgh TLM, I can safely say that traditional Catholicism in Canada and in Europe, at very least, is a natural development from the traditional Catholicism of the pre-conciliar era. It was not scribbled on the back of a napkin, as it were. Stubborn individual or families or communities simply refused to give up the Old Mass and the Old Morality. Then, at first very gradually and then (thanks to Summorum Pontificum) more rapidly, converts to Catholicism and Catholic "converts to Tradition" grafted themselves onto their local TLM communities. 

Although my husband and I have formed friendships in the TLM communities in Rome and Toronto, I would be cautious about making too many claims for Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass (and the Traditional Catholic Morality) outside Edinburgh. It is possible that there are Catholic men in Florida, to pick an American state at random, who wear monocles and tweed suits in roasting-hot July, proclaim aloud that women should dress in the fashions of first century Judea, and display themselves in coffee houses reading The Napoleon of Notting Hall. I have not met such men myself, however. 

Naturally I have met a good number of Catholic men who wear tweed suits and woollen pullovers from September until May because I live in the United Kingdom and that is what men here wear when they want to look smart and feel warm. It never ceases to annoy me when people who think they dislike Catholics who go to the Traditional Latin Mass sneer at tweed. Anyone who lives somewhere cold and damp should look into tweed. It certainly looks nicer, and degrades faster in the landfills, than Gore-Tex or polyester, or whatever tweed's detractors think men should wear instead. 

But to return to Skojec's dismissal of traditional Catholicism, I challenge the idea that the historical context to which Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass aspire does not exist. Although, for example, marriage is greatly out of fashion among the traditional British working-class, devout Catholics of the traditional British working-class still do marry. By 2021, just over half of the children born in England and Wales were born out of wedlock. However, there are still devout Catholics (and many others)  in England and Wales who wait until they are married before conceiving or begetting children. The Sexual Revolution conquered the United Kingdom in the 1960s. However, a 1996 study reported that out of 19,000 Britons, 16% of women and 6% of men were virgins when they married. Would Skojec suggest it is wrong or ahistorical for Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass (not to mention the Traditional Catholic Faith) to emulate the chaste 16% and 6%? 

If you ask me, Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass and the Traditional Catholic Faith are just doing as their ancestors--or their spiritual ancestors--always did. It's not at all ahistorical. It's simply normal, and it is a time-tested, healthy, Godly way of life. Our non-Catholic neighbours would call it "a choice." And it is worth noting we now live in an era where fashion is all but dead and we can pick and choose from any era. I can walk to the gym in a tracksuit or in head-to-toe tweed and nobody will look surprised. I could take a ballroom dancing lesson any Sunday evening, and a swing-dancing lesson any Thursday. I can buy mass-produced beer or a local craft ale. That is our historical context. 

Of course, if I walked to the gym in a feathery hat, the more outgoing of my neighbours might have something to say. As interested as I may be in the social world for which Mrs Humphry supplied the road maps, it would be wrong to irritate my neighbours by imprudently adopting the ephemera, which are dated (or worse, have negative implications), instead of the sterling values, which are not. 

The sterling values include good manners, which is to say, behaviour that recognizes that other people are real. More on that anon. I must now take my tracksuited person to the gym. Incidentally, there is no more unbecoming and modest contemporary garment for the gym than baggy jogger bottoms. As a woman who first braved the weight room in the 20th century, I highly recommend the tracksuit for mixed company at the gym.   

P.S. That is St. Therese of Lisieux LARPing as St. Joan of Arc. She then put her traditional habit back on and lived an utterly authentic (if short) traditional life as a traditional Carmelite nun. 

The Unbeatable Gracefulness of Dancing

It is newly Advent, a quasi-penitential season, so it was perhaps a little outré that I had a Waltzing Party yesterday afternoon. On the other hand, it is not as outré as having a Christmas Carol Party, which is where a good many of my invited guests went instead. Had it been an Advent Carol Party, I would have nothing snarky to say.

(CORRECTION: Alas! My snarkiness was indeed misplaced, for I was woefully misinformed. It turns out the event was a service of readings and carols for the season of Advent and also that my talented guests were essential to it, as they belong to the choir. What lessons can I take from this? Better communication through RSVPs, I think.)   

Incidentally, I am reminded of a story about one of my Canadian great-aunts. She allegedly turned cans around in the supermarket so that the English, not the French, side of the labels showed and exclaimed aloud that they should be in "OUR" language. When I heard this, I thought it very cringeworthy. However, I can definitely imagine myself shouting against Christmas decorations in my old age, announcing that they should not go up until Christmas Eve "like in Poland." (Scottish passerby: "So go back to Poland." Polish passerby: "There's been decorations up at home since St. Andrew's Day.")

But because I lost so many guests to the premature Christmas Carol Party service, there were almost equal numbers of men and women. For the waltzing half of the Waltzing Party there were 8 gentlemen to 7 ladies, 6 excluding me, the instructor. However, two gentleman ran away after the waltzing--allegedly to the CCP--and one lady joined us for the jitterbug half, and so then we had 8 ladies to 6 men, excluding the instructors, which distressed me. There is nothing wrong in belonging to a stag line, but no woman at a dance wants to be a wallflower, ever.  But fortunately the jitterbugging was entirely in the context of a lesson, so there was frequent changing of partners, and hopefully nobody felt conspicuous.

Gentlemen and ladies, if you wish to help restore Western Civilization, you must find and greet your host and/or hostess when you arrive at his/her/their party, tell his/her/them if you are leaving early, and then bid him/her/them good-bye when you go. 

This Waltzing Party was an interesting challenge, for I discovered last week that our expert instructor would not be in town, and so the responsibility of teaching fell again to me. I could almost hear my old ballet instructor--the one who memorably injured my foot*--chuckling nastily in her grave. However, you can learn almost everything from YouTube these days, so I found footage posted by a very talented man in Latvia and watched it several times, making notes. 

One thing I noted was that Mr. Smagris teaches his gentlemen how exactly to ask ladies to dance, and then how to return the ladies to their origin point. It all looked extremely graceful. 

"Everything on the dance floor must be graceful!" I squeaked at my captive guests, although not as loudly as our authentic if absent Austrian expert can shout. I then made a speech that was not quite this, but was generally along the lines of what was historically said, like speeches made up described by Livy: "We must strive to be incredibly graceful so that we are not disgraced before the Viennese if our esteemed Austrian teacher ever takes us all to a ball in Vienna, which does not look entirely likely, given the expense of air travel and the uncertainty of your schedules, but you never know."

And the gentlemen all gracefully asked the ladies to dance, offering their right hands, and the ladies accepted, all gracefully once I remembered that they were supposed to clasp the proffered hands with their left. I felt like Balanchine, and my dead ballet mistress muttered resentfully in her coffin. 

This is the part where I remember that I was trained to be a university chaplain and laugh very hard. I spent my internship listening to my charges' spiritual thoughts, plans, and claims, and getting into trouble for such things as refusing to volunteer my feet to be washed on Holy Thursday. I could not imagine one day I would be teaching young Catholics ballroom dancing. 

But swing-dancing I can leave to professionals, and this time our instructors, having noted last month our Sunday attire, dressed up elegantly themselves. They then improved and added moves to our jitterbug. It was all great fun, and I think this week I will consult our TLM chaplain and lobby that we sing Advent Carols at the end of next Sunday's After-Mass Coffee Hour.   

UPDATE: How to have a dance party for young Catholics

Caveat: I am not a lawyer and am not offering legal advice. 

1. Be a well-known/trusted adult member of a Catholic community with a lot of young people who also genuinely likes young people. (Gnothi sauton.)

2. Consult the parish priest/chaplain and probably the safeguarding officer.  

3. Find a good teacher or teachers of good character. 

4. Rent a hall. (If applicable, make sure the hall owners--not you--are responsible for injuries to guests caused by the property.) 3 hours--half an hour for set up and clean up and half an hour for a snack break--should be enough.

5a. Make an announcement or (my preferred):

5b. Invite your guests individually. Make it clear that they can't bring their own guests to your party without asking you first. It is for them, but this is still your party and you are responsible for the happiness and well-being of your guests. This includes near-certain knowledge that none of them are going to down mini-bottles of whisky in the loo, or ask the youngest girl for her phone number, or tell her on the walk to her bus stop that he doesn't believe in God.  

6. Ensure beforehand that your numbers will not be zero, but do not be annoyed if few RSVP. The majority might not know what an RSVP is, or why it is important, or any French at all, or where France is on the map. ;-)

7. Bake cookies and buy lemonade. Don't go overboard on food, for this is a dance party, not an eating party. If culturally appropriate, plan for tea and coffee during the break. No alcohol. Never alcohol. 

8. Pray for the success of your endeavour. 

9. Thank God when it all works out okay and ponder the lessons you have learned. You may be amazed and edified. 

10. Thank-you notes/messages are not yet a thing with the younger generation, so treasure the ones you do get and don't sweat the rest. Your young guests will probably thank you on their way out. At least, I hope so. If not, make broad hints on social media as an act of charity. If not you, then who, as a wise young lady once asked me.

*As with many bad things, this was in the 1970s or early1980s, when adults still got away with doing stuff like that.

Personal Time

This is a terrible confession to make, but my two best pals are my budget book and my desk diary. The former is our protection against an improvident old age, and the latter is my memory aid, journal, habit tracker and sketchbook. Its lovely blank, holiday-free spaces can be filled in with only those days that are special to me: birthdays, Easter, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mothering Sunday, Canadian Mother's Day, Canadian Father's Day, and a very few others. 

I looked forward to buying the same version of the desk diary, but when it arrived and I looked inside I was terribly disappointed. It was like discovering a beloved friend has become a preachy scold. The month-at-a-glance section is littered with alleged holidays, some of which I have never seen before, and whole months are assigned tasks like "Hispanic Heritage Month"--which seems rather odd in the UK. Perhaps there is an enormous Spanish-speaking population in London. Needless to say, two whole months have been dedicated to the celebration of homosexuality. 

One of the selling points of this journal--and indeed of the stationary company that makes it--is that it can be personalized. You can have your name added to the front. I enjoy this. However, the ideology of time behind my name has nothing to do with me. And it's worse than relativist: it is ideological. 

The designer's own idea of what the year should look like intrudes. Millions agree that January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus. However, the designer believes it is National Mentoring Month. February, for Catholics, is the month of the Holy Family. The designer instructs me that it is LGBT History Month. March makes me think of St. Patrick and St. Joseph. The designer prompts me to remember National Women's History Month. And so the whole year goes. 

I stopped following a friend on Twitter because I was so creeped out by his posting pages from the French Republican (or Revolutionary) calendar. This calendar was used by the murderous French government between 1793 and 1805 and was meant to sweep away from the French mind the Old France of royalty and Catholicism. This new calendar must have been very disorientating to those Frenchmen who could not avoid it.  

Naturally this reminds me of the changes to the Calendar of the Saints between 1960 and 1970. That, too, must have been a rug-pull to the Catholics around at the time. My own saint, St. Dorothy of Caesarea, had an enormous following in Northern Europe but was nevertheless dropped from the General Roman Calendar in the 1960s and replaced by St. Paul Miki and Companions in our collective devotions. These heroic Japanese martyrs do indeed deserve our veneration, but February 6 is still St. Dorothy's Day, just as February 14 is still St. Valentine's Day, as important as Cyril and Methodius were in the evangelization of the Slavs. 

If pressed, I could also carry on at length about downgrading the long season of Pentecost to Ordinary Time, a strange expression that returns my thoughts to the French Revolution where they shift uneasily and fidget. 

I admit that I am enormously privileged in my isolation. Working from home, I am cloistered from the British workplace, and therefore celebrate only my own holidays--and, in a small way, American Thanksgiving. I am not sure how strictly secular celebrations are enforced, but it is possible that many UK workplaces enliven their grey carpeting and desk pods with decorations celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week or Sharad Navratri or Movember. Certainly they decorate with rainbow ribbons and decals in summer (and to a lesser degree in February). 

Meanwhile, the UK's commercial Christmas is about to start; its Advent began in late October when the "Advent calendars" (that is, gift boxes containing 24 overpriced items) became available. I am reminded of my Canadian childhood confusion about Cadbury's Easter Creme eggs (as they are not called here); you could buy them only until Easter, which meant that those who had given up sweets for Lent ran the risk of never eating one. (Happily for my sugar-craving junior self, they turned up in our Easter baskets.) Christian Advent is a penitential season; the "Advent calendars" tempt me not at all, and a Polish pal shared her shock that people in Britain have Christmas parties before actual Christmas.   

I should be grateful that Easter was (in my childhood) still so much part of local culture, as Christmas is  in Britain today. In fact, I see that the designer of my year has not bothered to write that December is Universal Human Rights Month. That has been presumably trumped by Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa--and great is my surprise that anyone in the UK wants Kwanzaa on their desk diary.  

Strange to say, I was absolutely furious about changes to my desk diary, a fury that has abated only now. Perhaps it is because I now realize how fortunate I am to have the freedom to acknowledge only the calendar I prefer. I have ordered a wall version from the Monks of Papa Stronsay, and I hope it arrives before this year's FSSP one runs out. 

Meanwhile, a very happy St. Clement's Day to you all ! I shall now send greetings to a young blacksmith of my acquaintance.   

Etiquette for Ladies

Benedict Ambrose, who watched videos of graduation ceremonies the night before his own, told me that his attending his graduation in person was very important to his mother. 

History does not reveal if he told his mother that his attending his diploma graduation in person was very important to me. 

Happily, we both accepted with alacrity B.A.'s invitations to his graduation ceremony, were pleased that he received Distinction and, if possible, were even more pleased that he managed to climb the stairs, get across the stage with grace and not fall down when bopped on the head with a bonnet.  

Being bopped with a bonnet while graduating is a Scottish thing. (The bonnet is not a Little House on the Prairie ladies' bonnet but a tam o'shanter.)

I am very proud of B.A.'s years of diploma work, to which he stuck in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, and that he managed to finish his last course with honour, despite the new diagnosis, the radiotherapy, and the evil steroids. 

The ceremony--which I was rather dreading, having gone to a number of them, all very long--was surprisingly lighthearted and truly celebratory. There was an organist playing pop music, and there were screens flashing the photos and heartfelt messages of the graduands. There was a sense that a whole new world was opening up before them and that all their dreams would come true. 

These dreams, I reflected, were probably much more practical than those I spun when first I sat in Toronto's Convocation Hall. At the same time, however, I was delighted to see an elderly, stooped man shuffle across the stage to get his PhD in History. This was clearly the pet project of someone in later life, and good for him.

Having a lot of time on my hands, I asked myself if I still dreamed of a PhD, and the answer was no. I originally wanted to get into a PhD program, and I did, and then I wanted to teach at my theological alma mater, which I didn't. The PhD program was an obstacle to overcome, not something I wanted for itself. ("Just get your union card," Fr. Lonergan apparently said of persevering to a doctorate's end.) My goals for old age are financial freedom, the ability to climb up and down stairs, and the strength and wit to fight off whoever tries to put B.A. and/or me in a nursing home. 

During our celebratory lunch, I received a message that a baby very dear to my heart is ill. As it was all we could do, B.A. and I got off our train home a stop early and went to a Mass dedicated to her recovery. It was the Feast of St. Margaret of Scotland in Scotland, which for various reasons was apropos. 

We arrived early, and the priest handed me a book he had found and thought I would enjoy: Ward Lock & Co's 1930 Etiquette for Ladies. B.A. made a joke, the young men around chuckled, and I reflected that although it was once an insult to give a woman an etiquette book, I was delighted. It bridges the gap between Mrs Humphry's 1897 thoughts and those 1962 strictures of Mrs Maclean. 

Interestingly, it has nothing to say about comportment at dances except that the hostess should "stand just inside the ballroom, and with quiet dignity and charm is on the alert to receive the guests are they are announced by the servant" and that she "looks round and makes every possible effort to ensure her guests having a good time."

Servants are mentioned several times in this volume, and there is a long and complicated chapter about calling cards. If anyone is wondering what women with servants between 1800 and 1962 got up to all day, it was paying calls. Foodies weep over the decline of fine French (and Italian) home cooking by women's near-universal entrance into the workforce, but the visiting tradition was utterly pulverized. 

I cannot even imagine calling upon all the Edinburgh women of my acquaintance all morning. The bus rides would take longer than the calls themselves, and almost nobody would be at home. The ones who were home would probably be shocked to have a visitor turn up uninvited, and they might not have any biscuits in the house. 

That said, I like to imagine that there is still a set of Edinburgh women--so rich and socially remote as to be entirely unknown to me--trotting about the New Town and/or Morningside to drop off calling cards and drink cups of tea in elegant drawing-rooms.  

The photograph is of fine Scottish patisserie, which also featured in our very busy day. Scotland was once as famous as France in England for fine baking. When here, find a Fisher & Donaldson's if you can. 

Work Nightmares

"Last night I dreamed that someone had tweeted photos of me dressed inappropriately for the Rome Life Forum," I told Benedict Ambrose this morning. 

They were doctored, though. One of these photos--very unflattering--was taken from below and showed that I had very long rusty-red braids falling past my denim-skirted waist. My braids are nowhere near that long, and I looked unusually tall, as if in a funhouse mirror. 

Another one showed me wearing some sleeveless blouse of a shiny fabric quite unknown to my real-life closet. There was an outdoor pool quite unlike the one at the RLF, in which nobody was allowed to swim. Naturally these dream-photos were accompanied by thundering denouncements from whichever imaginary Americans had posted them on dream-Twitter and their viewers.

As I spend almost all my working hours on the internet, I think this counts as a work nightmare. As far as I can remember, it's the first one to feature Twitter. How very 21st century of my psyche.

Benedict Ambrose also had a work nightmare. In his he was in the basement of the Historical House with a group, and the ghost of a crying baby circled around and around his head. 

"Of course it was really a demon," said B.A., who believes all the ghosts of the peoples are demons, so he hotfooted it out of there. 

That was really quite interesting, as I used to get nervous in the Historical House basement, especially after a mysterious cold breeze blew down my neck, and prayed the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel on my way to or from the laundry room.

There was also, occasionally, Something creepy lurking at the bottom of one of the ornate staircases, or at least I thought so, and once telephoned B.A., who was at a boozy men's party, to tell him that there was a Thing and he must come home. It was 2 AM or so, and B.A. had the phone on speaker, so there was great hilarity among the men and B.A. didn't come home for hours.

We preferred not to say anything to anyone about the cold breeze and the late January visits of the Thing out of respect for The (departed) Family and to avoid the visits of ghosthunters. I seem to recall there was an application of people who wanted to conjure up spirits in the drawing room and B.A. threatened to leave if they did. 

Demons and trolls. To cheer us up, I will relate that one of my sisters will land in Scotland on December 27, and I am now planning excursions, revels and sprees. 

What would readers like to do if they were going to spend 10 days in Scotland? Whenever I think of winter holidays I always want to go on a sleigh ride, but of course there is rarely enough snow anywhere but Quebec for such delights. 

The Order of Charity

Here are some thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas that have particular resonance this Armistice (or Remembrance) Day, touching on who first deserves our love and loyalty: 

... [W]e ought out of charity to love those who are more closely united to us more, both because our love for them is more intense, and because there are more reasons for loving them. Now intensity of love arises from the union of lover and beloved: and therefore we should measure the love of different persons according to the different kinds of union, so that a man is more loved in matters touching that particular union in respect of which he is loved. And, again, in comparing love to love we should compare one union with another. Accordingly we must say that friendship among blood relations is based upon their connection by natural origin, the friendship of fellow-citizens on their civic fellowship, and the friendship of those who are fighting side by side on the comradeship of battle. Wherefore in matters pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most, in matters concerning relations between citizens, we should prefer our fellow-citizens, and on the battlefield our fellow-soldiers. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 2) that "it is our duty to render to each class of people such respect as is natural and appropriate. This is in fact the principle upon which we seem to act, for we invite our relations to a wedding . . . It would seem to be a special duty to afford our parents the means of living . . . and to honor them."

The same applies to other kinds of friendship.

If however we compare union with union, it is evident that the union arising from natural origin is prior to, and more stable than, all others, because it is something affecting the very substance, whereas other unions supervene and may cease altogether. Therefore the friendship of kindred is more stable, while other friendships may be stronger in respect of that which is proper to each of them.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIae II, Q. 26, Art. 7

There are two men whom I remember in particular today. Both risked their lives with other Canadians (and other Scots) to help stop German atrocities in Europe.

The kilted man in the photograph, furious over the Rape of Belgium (which was not a myth: historians say those horrible things did indeed happen to Belgian women), left behind his wife and four children. He returned and fathered a fifth child, the youngest of my great-aunts. 

The little boy sitting here on a stool grew up and left behind his new bride, first to guard the coast of British Columbia and then to shoot down the Luftwaffe. Nine people exist today because he, too, returned. 

I remember also that Canadian casualties (per capita) were so heavy in the First World War that entire towns were essentially depopulated, and that we lost about 45,400 men and women (beginning with Hannah Baird, the stewardess who went down on the Athenia) in the Second.* 

The casualties for World War I were very heavy for the British Empire Army as a whole--as they were for other armies. (Russia lost the most soldiers, I believe, and after Russia France.) The War to End All Wars was a civilizational disaster and, obviously, did not end all wars. It should have been avoided. 

The Second World War was impossible to avoid, even though Britain and France tried to do so. (That was "not being rooted in reality" writ large.) It, too, was a civilizational disaster. 

What a century. 

There is a third man I think about today, rather to his embarrassment. That is my brother Nulli Secundus, who gladly took the Queen's shilling when he was 16 years old, could take apart and reassemble a rifle blindfolded by the age of 20, and now has a deep-seated disgust for firearms. He never saw action but--to once again quote Milton--"they also serve who only stand and wait"--and service took its toll all the same. Thank God he is growing old "as we who are left grow old" and as indeed our great-grandfather grew old (our grandfather, a chain smoker, died at 65, which no longer seems old). 

I never met my great-grandfather, but I think about him and my other ancestors and relations born in Scotland fairly often. If I am near their old addresses, I go out of my way to look. 

According to my mother, my husband sounds like my Edinburgh-by-Perthshire great-grandmother. I am not sure what my warrior great-grandfather sounded like. Perhaps he sounded like the men crowding into Baynes' at 7:30 this morning to order coffee and filled rolls. I had popped in to look for rowies, which I'm now afraid can't be found south of Aberdeen. And for a moment I felt like I had my finger to the pulse of real Scotland, flesh-and-blood Scotland, Scotland of the Scots, and not just tourists, foreign students, job-filling English-and-Europeans, and random New World-born immigrants like me. 

 

*Canada's population was about 11.5 million in 1939. 

The Trouble with Invitations

The days are short and cold but sunny and bright with yellow leaves. Yesterday I very much enjoyed my walk to the post office. There I posted a thank you note (written on a postcard) and a long letter written on notepaper. 

Mrs Humphry's Manners for Men (1897) thinks "over-ornament" in the "embossed or printed" address on personalized notepaper is "in the worst taste," and I have just had a nervous look at mine. I think Mrs Humphry might say it would do for a lady, but teal ink is pushing the boundaries. 

Mrs Humphry doesn't have much to say about writing invitations, except that sending them out three weeks before the planned dinner party is "usual."  Sarah Maclean (no relation) of The Pan Book of Etiquette and Good Manners (1962) says that it no longer a solecism to have them printed instead of engraved although the latter are still necessary for "very formal occasions such as coming-out dances and elaborate dinner parties." 

Mrs Maclean spells out how to write invitations for weddings, cocktail parties, dinner parties,"bridge or bottle" parties and dances, but the advice for this last is confusing:

For an informal dance an ordinary 'At Home' card can be used, filled in in exactly the same way as for a cocktail party except that 'Dancing' and the time to start dancing is to start is put where the word cocktails usually goes. For a formal dance all the information is engraved and the card is longer. 

I have lived in Britain for almost 15 years and although I have admired many an embossed or printed invitation propped up on many a chimneypiece, I have never seen an "ordinary 'At Home' card." In addition, almost nobody I know in Britain has a space large enough at home for informal dances. When I hold an informal dance, it is in a parish hall.

For reasons both legal and sociological (the latter explained in a previous post), these informal dances are private parties. To underscore the privacy and the total lack of legal responsibility of the archdiocese or any priestly fraternity for these parties, I used to write invitations--that is, I would put the details in the least embarrassing children's party invitations I could find and hand them out. I filled in the RSVP space with my email address.

To my very great surprise, very few obeyed the RSVP.  I was thus also surprised to see who turned up. (I moreover suffered an early death in the church car park after I realized there were 11 young men to 5 young women and 3 chaperones.) And I am beginning to think that people born after 1990 do not actually know what an RSVP is, let alone that it is (or was) an iron-clad social rule that you do not simply ignore a personal invitation or turn up without telling the host or hostess that you mean to do so. 

Therefore, youthful readers, RSVP is an anagram meaning répondez s'il vous plaît which is polite French for "Please reply." If you get an invitation to something, it means that the host or hostess is paying you the compliment of thinking you are, or might be, an ornament to society. Anyone who goes to the trouble of having a planned party or dance wants it to be a success, so being personally invited to it is a great compliment. The first way you say thank you for this compliment is to respond to the invitation as asked: Dear Mrs So-and-So, Thank you very much for the invitation to your dance party. I will certainly attend. Could I bring anything? Yours sincerely, Hope of the Future. (The second way is to post or email a note afterwards saying Thank you so much. I had a wonderful time. Elegant Baby Boomers still sometimes telephone [on a landline!] their thanks as a substitute for a note; I wouldn't expect that of Gens X, Y or Z.)

According to Mrs Humphry, the rule in 1897 was that "notes of invitation should be replied to within twenty-four hours." Mrs Humphry also says this to the young man, lest he think he is all that and a bag of chips: "To be invited is an honour to the young man who is just beginning his social life." 

The other problem with my invitations, though, was that I couldn't always find the invited, as I don't know their addresses and they don't always come to the TLM on Sundays. Sometimes I would entrust invitations to other guests to hand out at the university, should they find the absent invitees there. They didn't always find them, which led to disappointments and many wasted envelopes. 

Thus, I switched from store-bought invitations to the little white cardboard flashcards I have in profusion and just wrote 25+ invitations by hand. Sadly, our pastor found one of them scrunched and thrown under one of the tables in the parish hall, a response to the RSVP I wasn't expecting. And after the Michaelmas Dance, I moved the whole business of invitation to a super-private Facebook group, stopped expecting RSVPs, and now look on the bright side when men outnumber women 2:1.  

In conclusion, restoring the social graces of the pre-conciliar era, let alone those of 1897, will take a group effort. Someone is going to have to write a book to assist in this. It will probably have to be me. But maybe I can interest the prolific Dr. Peter Kwasniewski in the task.