From across the pond, Brit scribbler Charles Glass has a complaint about the fairer sex: they have taken to canceling dinner dates by email:
‘Some women behave as if it were acceptable within the bounds of etiquette. But it is a new etiquette. Chucking by text may, for all I know, be required by the modern Miss Manners. Maybe the nature of relations between men and women has developed to the stage that friends and lovers, like Bic pens, are disposable without any notice at all. The pre-dinner cancellation text may, in fact, be the last bastion of civility in a world where a woman just won’t bother to say anything. After an hour or two chatting to the waiter, you may grasp she had a better offer.’
Glass insists that gentlemen still cancel by telephone and with profuse apologies. I deplore Mr. Glass’ ungallant naming of names of several women who chucked him by email–men who get kissed off and tell are not gentlemen. Still, I can only agree with his agony at this new form of rudeness. O tempora, O mores, Mr. Glass wails. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Let’s pray this form of distaff disdain for manners hasn’t crossed the pond.