Better spared than shared
We should not expect fellow Guns to have attended Lucie Clayton’s finishing school. Well, not if they’re blokes. Founded in 1928 and based in Oxford Street, it taught young ladies — such as Jean Shrimpton and Joanna Lumley — deportment and etiquette. The average male Gun — a little ruddy, battered tweeds, a few too many pork pies — would not have wafted easily among the debutantes.
Nor, perhaps, should we assume close reading of Debrett’s Correct Form, invaluable when boning up on order of precedence for formal banquets (Masters of Foxhounds normally sit above the salt), but also a decent, general distillation of how chaps ought to behave.
We could, however, as, Lord knows, it’s hung in enough country-house water closets. Perhaps they never get further than the famous “Never, never let your gun/ Pointed be at anyone”, or perhaps they never read the last verse, omitted from many reproductions. It reads:
