Friday 15 January 2021

Douglas Chalmers Hutchinson Sutherland and the Debrett 'English Gentleman' series

 SEE ALSO: https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2012/12/debretts-guide-for-modern-gentleman.html


Douglas Chalmers Hutchinson Sutherland MC (18 November 1919 – 28 August 1995) was a British author and journalist, who was born at Bongate Hall, Appleby-in-Westmorland, in 1919. He always joked that the error of judgement in his not being born in Scotland was compensated for a year later by his family's moving to live in the remote island of Stronsay in Orkney.

 

The family later moved to Aberdeenshire, and Sutherland followed his elder brother to Trinity College, Glenalmond. He joined the army in 1938 as a Private with the King's Own Scottish Borderers, though Sutherland was later commissioned into the King's (Liverpool) Regiment, and saw active service during the Second World War, for which he was awarded the Military Cross, twice being mentioned in Despatches. In 1945, he was posted to Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group Headquarters at Bad Oeynhausen, where he joined the Allied Liaison Branch, and was an observer at the Nuremberg Trials.

 

Career

Returning to London at the age of 26, Sutherland would observe that his first challenge as a civilian was sartorial.[citation needed] To this end, he was helped by Oscar Hammerstein, the American lyricist, who was a friend of his first wife Moyra Fraser, then a ballet dancer. Hammerstein presented him with his cast-off suits,[citation needed] and thus attired, he began working as a journalist for the Evening Standard, and later, the Daily Express.

 

Sutherland's life during this period is affectionately depicted in Portrait of a Decade, where he recalls many of the colourful characters of 1950s London, centred on Muriel Belcher's famous Colony Room in Dean Street, Soho. However, he is best remembered for his best-selling humour series which began with The English Gentleman, and was followed by The English Gentleman's Wife/Child/Mistress, and The English Gentleman Abroad.

 

A more serious side to his writing included biographies, including those of the sporting Earl of Lonsdale (The Yellow Earl), and Fraud with Jon Connell, founder of The Week magazine, the life of the international fraudster Emil Savundra, which won the Crime Writer's Silver Dagger Award for the best non-fiction crime book of the year.

 

In 1963, with Anthony Purdy, he published a book on the notorious spy ring of the 1950s, Burgess and Maclean.Prior to its publication it was rumoured that pressure to withdraw some of the book's most controversial content was placed on the authors from the British establishment, and that Sutherland and Purdy were obliged to suppress their information for reasons of national security.[citation needed] After Blunt's exposure some twenty years later, Sutherland immediately released The Fourth Man, the first full uncensored account of the intrigue.

 

Having married three times, Sutherland settled in Scotland with his third wife Diana. His latter years were marred by ill health and a dispute over the publishing royalties of the English Gentleman series, and he died at South Queensferry on 28 August 1995. His children include Carol Thomas, architect Charlie Sutherland, choreographer James Sutherland, comedy performer Jojo Sutherland and curator Adam Sutherland, director of Grizedale Arts.

 

Obituary: Douglas Sutherland

Leo Cooper

Sunday 10 September 1995 23:02

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-douglas-sutherland-1600567.html

 

Douglas Sutherland was perhaps best known for his English Gentleman series of books, starting in 1978. The avalanche of witty trivia, in this and its four succeeding volumes, tended to obscure his other, more substantial, contributions to the literary and social scene: an excellent biography of Lord Lonsdale, The Yellow Earl (1965); The Landowners (1968); The Fourth Man (1965), an early and accurate account of the treachery of Burgess, Maclean and Blunt; two regimental histories (the Argylls and the Border Regiment) and a number of other books on fishing, wildlife and two volumes of autobiography.

 

Wherever he lived there was never any likelihood of his neighbours' being unaware of his presence. He lived life to the full. He had a distinguished war record, winning the Military Cross (and some say a Bar). He wrote one very funny book about his military experience, called Sutherland's War (1984), in which he claimed to have captured a tank driven by his former German tutor.

 

He was a clever journalist, a bon viveur, an habitue of pubs and clubs, not least the Colony Room, in Soho. He was a frequent visitor to El Vino's, he worked for the London Evening Standard and contributed to many magazines and newspapers on a freelance basis. He was generous, more often than not short of cash; and sometimes bloody-minded, not least to his wives. But he was a king of laughter, a wonderful gossip and a man of so many parts that he was difficult to pin down (and sometimes to reassemble).

 

Although, wrongly I think, best known for the English Gentleman series, which certainly earned him (and its publishers, Debretts) a lot of money, he should not be judged by such waffle. He was far better than that. He spent money like water and drank whisky as if it were; he was always the first man to put his hand in his pocket and the last man out of the pub. He was a great embroiderer of episodes in his career. He enjoyed the comforts of life without ever being able to afford them, and he was kind, talented and, when he was able to be, and indeed when he was not so able, generous.

 

Two stories remain in the mind. He wrote a history of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders for me, published in 1969. During the course of his research he was unwittingly locked into Stirling Castle after everyone had gone home. Climbing over the walls, no singular feat, he managed to reach his car only to be apprehended by the local copper. Having passed the breath test, he was allowed back into the car and, driving off, put the car into reverse and rammed the police car. A second test was called for, with the inevitable result.

 

I once saw him give a speech to the assorted might of the Argylls, standing up in front of us all with his fly-zipper undone. No one seemed to mind. On another occasion, he rang my office at about 8.30am to ask, "Can you lend me a pair of socks?" While he was sleeping rough under the arches at Charing Cross after a row with his wife Diana, someone had relieved him of his socks - but not his shoes. I was able to obligeand sent a chit to the Royalty Department asking them to debit his royalty account. Needless to say, they failed to see the joke.

 

Douglas Sutherland lived a rumbustious and varied life. He was a very funny man and a very brave man. Having learnt recently that he had incurable cancer he refused all treatment. When offered the opportunity of going home to live out his final days he had to admit that there was no longer anyone left to look after him, Diana, his third wife, having died four years ago.

 

Sutherland once rented a house near Malton, in Yorkshire. It was called Pasture House. He always said he was attracted to the name, so people could say "I walked past your house this morning." I bitterly regret his passing.

 

Leo Cooper

 

Douglas Chalmers Hutchinson Sutherland, writer, journalist: born Appleby, Westmorland 18 November 1919; married 1944 Moyra Fraser (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1954), 1954 Susan Justice (two sons; marriage dissolved 1960), 1991 Diana Fendall (died 1991); died 28 August 1995.

 



Originally written for Debrett's Peerage and now something of a classic, Douglas Sutherland's guide to that endangered species, the English Gentleman, was originally written as an antidote to all the endless, dull little books on manners and etiquette: the kind read by those who long to be recognised as part of the real gentry by the way they use their finger-bowl or address an Archbishop. Both genuinely informative and yet very funny in its self-deprecating tone, The English Gentleman offers a window to the parvenu on the rather perverse world of the genuine article. It describes his habits: where he might live, what he might wear, his school, his clubs, his hobbies and sports, his family and relationships, his behaviour when abroad, his mode of speech and the acceptable way to behave in almost any given situation (invariably the very opposite of what the outsider might think). Not to mention advice on the correct attitude to have toward money (it is vulgar), sex (it is vulgar) and business (it is vulgar unless, of course, it is run at a heavy loss). It all adds up to an unmissable initiation into the eccentric social history of the stiff upper lip. A hilarious and insightful look at the real life counterparts to the sort of squires found in the fiction of Nancy Mitford, PG Wodehouse and Compton Mackenzie. Proving that truth is often stranger than fiction.

 


Dressing The Part

From “The English Gentleman Is Dead: Long Live The English Gentleman!”

By Douglas Sutherland, 1992

 

In the second half of the 20th century it is true that the English Gentleman has had to shed something of his country image and assume the trappings of an urban life. This does not, however, mean that the way he dresses has become any less distinctive than it has always been; a style which is envied and imitated throughout the world.

 

Certainly a gentleman would never dress for effect but this does not mean that it is not something which he feels to be beneath his notice to devote any thought. He would no more think of disregarding the advice of his tailor when having a suit made (“built” is the correct expression) than he would instruct his surgeon on how to remove his right leg should such an operation become necessary. He is essentially a conventionalist.

 

What gentlemen seek to avoid at all costs in their dress is any suggestion of the sort of flamboyance which might be calculated to frighten the horses. In short, gentlemen in their appearance never seek to glitter. Such wardrobe items as designer shirts and underwear or other ostentations adornments have no place in his life.

 

It might be helpful to observe that the way a gentleman dresses has  nothing to do with his financial circumstances. The tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, which is so often thought of as his hallmark, is not an affectation. It is usually simply a case of his not being able to afford a new one. To have leather patches sewn on or cuffs relined without there being any necessity is one of the worst forms of affectation.

 

By the same token it is unlikely that he would have in his wardrobe anything which he would call a sports jacket. This is simply an in-built mental attitude more than anything else. A gentleman will often have a great number of jackets but each will have a specific purpose. Thus he will have a jacket in which he goes shooting which is called a shooting jacket and when this becomes too old and disreputable looking, it will be demoted to the role of a gardening jacket. He will probably have a blazer or two inherited from his cricketing or rowing days or simply to lounge around in when he is not required to wear a suit, just as he will have a hunting jacket to go hunting in or a dinner jacket for when he goes out to dinner.

 

… It is also advisable when hiring morning clothes not to rely on the inevitable “morning” tie the dress hire firm will thrust upon you. It is becoming more and more the practice to wear an old school tie with these clothes. In fact, to wear an old school tie on other than formal occasions is increasingly considered to be bad taste. This is something I shall refer to again when it comes to looking at the whole public school business.

 

This attention to detail is also reflected in the number of cuff buttons on a gentleman’s suit It is the sort of triviality on which it is wise to be careful. Traditionally only bespoke suits sport four buttons on each cuff. The others have only three. As part of the very high cost of a handmade suit, a customer can expect that all the button holes are handsewn and all the buttons sewn on to last a lifetime. A button which comes off in the first ten years of a suit’s life would, in the view of the more old-fashioned customer, justify its being sent back for free servicing. Most important is that cuff buttons should unbutton so that, among other things, a gentleman can turn them back when he is going through the ceremonial washing of hands. For cuff buttons to be sewn on to a suit purely for show is regarded by many to be as bad as the wearing of a made-up bow tie or keeping their trousers up with a belt instead of braces.

 

Of all the details which go to make up the way a gentleman dresses, perhaps the most important of all concerns the head and the feet. Generally speaking, a gentleman always wears well polishes leather shoes. The traditional high polish of a gentleman’s footwear derives from the days when every gentleman had his own personal servant either as a batman when in the army or a valet in his private life and for whom the most exacting chore was the task of keeping his master’s riding boots and other footwear up to snuff. In these servantless days it is still considered to be rather infra dig for a chap to be seen to be cleaning his own shoes. However, in households where chivalry has not yet died, there are quite a few gentlemen who draw the line at deputing the task to their wives and anyway it is something that many wives are not awfully good at. This is an example of one area in this modern world where some gentlemen are having to bite the bullet for the sake of keeping up appearances and do the job for themselves.

 

What a gentleman wear on his head is another matter for debate in a world where everything is changing. It is basically true that , eve since the wearing of morning clothes with the then obligatory top hat whenever he came up to London went out of fashion, the gentleman has dispensed with a town hat. There was a brief period when gentlemen coming up to London to see their men of business like lawyers or bankers favored the bowler or, as it is more correctly described, the Coke (pronounced Cook) hat as a compromise the with more formal topper. The Coke hat had originally been designed as a hard hat which could be worn when out hunting on less formal days. When it became adopted by businessmen for City wear, however, it dropped out of fashion with their country cousins. in these days when so many gentlemen have become urbanized most of them now go bareheaded about their daily business. By contrast, to wear a hat for any openair activity in the country is almost universal. However, whatever the occasion, it is not the hat the gentleman chooses to wear but the way that he wears it that makes him distinctive.

 

Perhaps there is no hat in the whole repertoire which demonstrates this better than the common or garden flat at which the late Norman Wisdom made so much the hallmark of the working man. Where the pigeon fancier from Birmingham and all points north wears his cloth cap with the brim pointing defiantly outwards and upwards, the gent somehow manages to wear it tipped down over his forehead so that the brim runs more or less parallel with his nose. This in turn means that if the wearer is to see where he is going he has to tilt his head back and gaze on his fellow men with a look of disdain akin to a guardsman on parade. It is something which takes quite a lot of practice. I believe this is the origin of the expression “to look down your nose” at people. The gentleman does not really mean it. It is just one of this many curiosities.

 

The overall look common to all gentlemen, which has its origins in his nursery days, is of being well brushed and well scrubbed. the only difference in his more mature years is that, as the day goes on, he stays that way longer.

 

Fashions change in these matters but, in the present day, most gentlemen are clean shaven. In fact beards, apart from a few naval officers and arctic explorers, have been out since the days of Edward VII The day of the well clipped mustache in the military style once so much the fashion is also now very much out since its universal adoption by the more rampant homosexuals. Only in the way the hair is cut is there now a certain amount of lassitude. Where the short-back-and-sides-llook  was once more or less de riguere, many gentlemen now wear their hair much longer, even to the extent of the pony-tail look not always being confined to young gentlemen’s sisters. The more conventional, however, are usually content to display their individuality by allowing the hair of a certain amount of length at the sides and brushed up into the sort of quiffs which used to be known as “bugger’s grips.” The origin of this expression is now lost in antiquity which is perhaps just as well.

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