The stiff upper lip takes it easy

Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, 90 soon, regrets the passing of the stiff upper lip. "We weren't sloppy-sentimental," she said. "It was all rather skated over. It wasn't the thing to keep belly-aching."

No, indeed: The stiff upper classes had plenty to make their bellies ache but they didn't moan. Or not all of them. The Duchess's late sister Nancy Mitford had sadnesses enough, such as her failed marriage and unreciprocated love for a confederate of General de Gaulle, but she is cheery as a cricket in her 20-year correspondence with Evelyn Waugh. This is partly because each puts into practice that maxim of La Rochefoucauld: "In the misfortunes of our best friends, we always find something not altogether displeasing to us." Mitford observed: "The English rather welcome death for their friends and relations. The French passionately mourn and miss their friends."

In response, Waugh instanced the behaviour of the Frenchwoman Maria Canavaggia, a translator of his books, whose father had "succumbed to a long and painful illness at the age of 91. The ‘shock' was so great that she fell down in the street, injuring her head." Very droll.

Lady Hamilton remembered the day that a naval officer called to break the news of Nelson's death. "Captain Whitby was unable to speak — tears in his eyes and a deathly paleness over his face made me comprehend him. I believe I gave a scream and fell back and for ten hours, I could neither speak nor shed a tear."

When Churchill viewed bomb damage at the Houses of Parliament, Chips Channon recorded, Churchill kept his cigar in his mouth as he spoke. The implication was that he was too moved to keep his lip from trembling. There is a subtle difference, though, between stiff upper lip and sangfroid. The latter is illustrated, perhaps, by Sheridan's remark when he was criticised for coolly drinking a refreshment as he watched the Drury Lane theatre (which he owned) burn down: "A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of refreshment by his own fireside." This recognition that setbacks are misfortunes but not catastrophes contrasts with present-day convictions that an unpleasant experience in youth "ruins your life".

The opposite attitude finds its exemplar in the Earl of Uxbridge at Waterloo. After eight or nine horses had been shot from under him, things took a turn for the worse. A grapeshot smashed his right knee. "By god, sir, I've lost my leg!" he is meant to have cried. Wellington replied: "By god, sir, so you have." That much of the celebrated tale is sangfroid but the sequel demonstrates something more valiant. Uxbridge was offered an annual pension but refused it. Yet unflinching duty should not mean inability to cope with one's feelings.

The biography of our late beloved W.F. Deedes showed only too much of that difficulty. After a chilly childhood, Lord Deedes found himself a survivor after half the company of the King's Royal Rifle Corps he was commanding was killed in 1945. "I'd like to say nothing about it," he said in a letter to his wife. It was an incident that froze his emotions for 60 years. Sometimes lips can be too stiff for your own good.