The Proper Way to Eat a Pea?

A new British guide to etiquette aims at reassuring the anxious

Five subjects were traditional no-nos at English dinner parties: sex, politics, religion, illness and the servant problem. Now, according to the first book of etiquette published in Britain in more than 50 years, the forbidden list is down to two: malicious gossip and porn movies. Anything else can be discussed, even in "heated conversation," as long as guests have the wit to avoid the four dreadful icebreakers (Do you live in London? What do you do? Have you any children? Have you been abroad this year?). And if the soup is scorching hot, a guest should spit it out to save his burning mouth.

Debrett's Etiquette and Modern Manners is the newest cousin of Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage, the classic guide to British bluebloods, which dates back to 1802. The 400-page manual meanders from behavior in the presence of royalty (curtsying is no longer necessary--bowing from the neck will do) to homey advice on how to handle drunks or carve a chicken. It is all right now to turn your fork over and scoop peas up with the aid of a knife, notes the book, but only with elbows tight to the sides so the person alongside will not be jostled in the legume roundup. Pepper mills and paper napkins are acceptable at dinner parties, but formal two-by-two processions to table are out.

Debrett is too squeamish to say much about sex, and the little counsel that is offered tends to be erratic. Men should rise for a woman after work, but not at an office meeting. A hostess can, in good conscience, allow an unmarried couple to share a bedroom (a stunning advance from the Victorian days when etiquette guides recommended that even books by unmarried male and female writers be kept on separate shelves). At large parties, however, coats should be sexually segregated--women's in the bedroom, men's in the hall.

The etiquette book is one sign of staid old Debrett's new friskiness since H.B. Brooks-Baker, 47, an American who married a European aristocrat, took it over in 1976. He pushed the company into the black by reaching out to the British middle class and the American market, publishing books satirizing the rich and cashing in on the Roots fad by offering to trace family trees for Yanks for $330.

Debrett's Etiquette is directly aimed at the anxious middle class in America as well as Britain. Edited by Tennessee-born Elsie Burch Donald, 42, who now lives in England, it will be published in America next month by Viking Press ($25). Says Brooks-Baker: "The last thing the upper classes really care about is whether something goes wrong at a dinner party, but the middle class is very concerned about things like that. We are giving them what they have asked for."

Yet the focus shifts so quickly from American dating habits to how snuff is served in Britain (like port it travels to the left around the table) that both markets ought to be properly mystified. Instead of guidance, the text is peppered with homilies ("If a neighbour chokes put a glass of water within reach . . . and do not watch"), and even Editor Donald concedes: "What most people will get out of the book is reassurance." Given the touch of old time morality that is mixed in, the effect is a bit like a dialogue between Anthony Trollope and Ann Landers.

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