44 Scotland Street: The Decline of the Dinner Party

“Come, come, Angus,” said Domenica lightly. “You’ll enjoy yourself once you’re there – you always do.”

She was concerned that Angus was becoming a stick-in-the-mud. She liked parties and hoped that now that they were married they might get a few more invitations. Say what people might, a woman on her own was often left out of things; many felt excluded, particularly widows and divorcées, who frequently felt uncertain as to where they fitted in. Domenica, although of independent mind, had thought that keenly; now, though, that there was a new entity, Domenica and Angus, she hoped that invitations that previously did not arrive, would soon start to flood in.

Of course there were all sorts of reason for a paucity of invitations. One of these sprang from a change in people’s social habits. Dinner parties, a staple of the social scene for those over forty, had become rarer with each year that passed. Domenica realised that this might be simply an instance of observer bias or even ignorance of all the facts; even Aristotle had suffered from this, having said that moles were blind – which is not completely true – only because he never succeeded in finding their minute eyes. For this reason you might have to be careful about saying that there were fewer dinner parties; there might be just as many as before, but you might not be invited and therefore would not know about them.

But no, she was sure that an entirely objective observer would conclude that dinner parties were on the decline, and once that fact was accepted, the interesting issue arose as to why this should be so.

She and Angus had discussed this only a few weeks earlier.

“People are just a whole lot busier,” Angus ventured. “They’re tired at the end of the week. They just want to put their feet up.”

“Yes,” said Domenica. “And holding a dinner party involves a lot of work. You have to plan. You have to go to Valvona and Crolla to get food. You have to cook. And then you have to wash up. That all takes time.”

“Yes, it does. A lot of time.”

“And more women these days tend to have jobs. They have to work and they have to run a household.” She paused, looking at Angus as the taxi chugged its way up Hanover Street. It was an older Edinburgh taxi and the seats were slightly uncomfortable; newer taxis believed in padded seats, while the earlier models were made of sterner stuff.

She caught the driver’s eye in the mirror. There was a brief moment of understanding: the driver was a woman and had overheard the conversation.

“Of course,” Domenica continued, “there’s no reason why men shouldn’t do all the cooking.”

The taxi driver glanced in the mirror again.

“Don’t you agree?” Domenica said to the back of the other woman’s head.

“Oh, I do,” said the driver. “My man does nothing in the kitchen. Nothing.”

“You cook everything?” asked Domenica.

Angus squirmed.

“Aye, I do. And I hold down this driving job. And I’ve got three kids.”

Domenica pursed her lips before making her next remark. “Well, there you are,” she said.

Angus sought to lead the conversation onto less awkward ground. “Money may play a part too,” he said. “Having a dinner party is expensive.”

Domenica agreed that this was so. “But it’s not just time and money,” she said. “I think there’s something else going on.”

“Namely?”

“It’s to do with conversation,” said Domenica. “Dinner parties are about conversation. You don’t go to dinner with somebody to sit there and eat your meal silently. You go to a dinner party to converse.”

“That’s right,” said Angus.

“And structured conversation is becoming rarer,” Domenica continued. “People are talking to one another in a different way. Our conversations have become less formal.”

“And isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yes and no. There’s obviously a role for informal conversations, but talk pretty quickly becomes superficial if there’s no structure to it. A proper conversation is an exchange of ideas, and gets through the business in the same way as a well-run meeting. More is said, or rather, more of substance is said.”

Angus thought about this. It was probably true. You had to have structure if elevated, intelligent speech was to occur. He thought of Dr Johnson and his friend, Samuel Boswell, on their trip into Scotland.

“Dr Johnston was your man for that, wasn’t he? And Oscar Wilde.”

“They were both good,” said Domenica. “Though Wilde, I suspect, liked to hold court, dropping his aperçus very carefully at just the right moment, and watching their effect. Having a conversation with him might have been a bit one-sided, I think.’

“Whereas Johnson?”

“He was prepared to listen. He was curious about what people had to say. Look at what Boswell wrote. Johnson was sometimes rude about Scotland, but he could not be accused of being uninterested. Nor could he be accused of not allowing others to have their say.”

“Whereas most people don’t?”

“I’m not sure that I would say that most people don’t. I think, though, that many don’t listen. A good conversation requires that both sides listen. It’s like a game of tennis. The serve is returned and the points go backwards and forwards. That’s what a conversation should be.”

“But without the backhand?”

Domenica liked that. “Very clever, Angus. Wilde himself would have been proud. But, no, one probably doesn’t want a backhanded remark in a good conversation. Its nasty, and it destroys the courtesy that good conversation requires. You shouldn’t insult the person with whom you’re exchanging ideas. You just shouldn’t. Did you ever see William F. Buckley in action?”

Angus was unsure. He thought he might have seen him discussing something or other on television, but the memory was vague.

“He was famous for his television conversations,” Domenica continued. “And although there was an exchange of views, he actually seemed to sneer. There was something about his mouth, his teeth, that gave him the impression of sneering at the people with whom he spoke.”

“I can’t stand sneering,” said Angus.

Domenica was of the same view. “He met his match in Noam Chomsky, though. Chomsky was very courteous and just refuted Buckley’s points, one by one. You can disagree in a conversation – you can disagree very strongly – but you must be courteous.”

Angus thought about this. She was right. That was why our national conversation was so bad. Courtesy had been abandoned in favour of the put-down, the attack, the calculated sound bite. What sort of national conversation was that? The answer came to him immediately: none.