Diplomatic dinners
One of the most entertaining books I have read, many years ago, was by Lawrence Durrell, called 'Esprit de Corps'. It was all about the more hilarious characters and incidents that are a part of diplomatic life. It is totally fictional, but very funny. In reality, life in the diplomatic service is far more earnest than that, ruled by protocol, rituals and rank.
Although there are and were very eccentric folk in the corps – and we met many in our time, each one meriting his own story – by and large, diplomats were like everyone else.
Protocol reigned supreme, but there were always exceptions to everything. If you were a reasonably personable junior diplomat, you frequently got invited to dinner parties by the great and the good, a.k.a. the ambassadors.
Even so, we knew our lowly place in the hierarchy. We were always seated somewhere at the end of the table near the service door, or in the middle of the table with other equally unimportant people. Our job was to make ourselves agreeable to the guests on our right and left, to entertain and hopefully be entertained too.
Very often, the best places were in fact in the middle of the table or at the end. That was where the most interesting people sat, although they had no rank or title. At one very long and tedious dinner, I saw my husband engrossed in conversation with a dull-looking man on his right. He told me later that this guest, who was the British Embassy doctor, was an expert on the Napoleonic Wars, particularly, on the Battle of Borodino.
On another occasion, I was seated near the end of someone's table, next to a young Australian diplomat. I looked at the people at the head of the table and said, “They must be having such interesting conversations up there. I wish I could be there.” As it happened, the Australian was an expert on Japanese literature and kept me fascinated with the breadth of his knowledge on a variety of subjects, his wit, and his humour. He was very good looking too. When we rose from the table he smiled and asked, “Do you still wish you had been at the top of the table?”
As the years passed, and we moved to the head of the table, figuratively speaking, other young people replaced us at the end. However, it seems to me even today, that those were the better years of our lives. To me, in retrospect, every memory from earlier times seems bathed in a special light, as if everything really was more beautiful, and every experience more pleasurable. Cocktail parties were still occasions to meet wonderful charming people. Dinner discussions were honest, direct, and sincere.
Everyone in the diplomatic corps was professional, highly educated, and well-travelled. We knew the facts, but we looked at the world with clear and uncritical eyes, and found pleasure in every new experience, and in every new city, even when the realities were very different in some cases. We had the whole world to see, much to look forward to, and many things to see and do. We had a real belief that we could make the world a better place in our own small way. We had not yet become blasé. Knowing history, we still did not believe that only power determined the fate of countries. Still, I felt privileged that the government actually paid us to go to new countries and see new things. I look back on those years and all the memories with pleasure, nostalgia, and gratitude. We tend to retain the best memories of the past; the ones that make us look back and smile.
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