Courtly Manners and their Evolution

It was during the sixty-second month of the antepenultimate phase of the Second Great Outward Grope that the court of Cudgelwimsey the Irritating was mortally struck with the Muswellian pructids and forced to withdraw behind the previous winter's line. The complaint spread rapidly, owing to defective firkins and unregulated pestling by Cudgelwimsey's troops, which resulted in the near-dehydration of all the tussocks between Mumbelminster and Gleetwick; an environmental calamity for which the price is arguably still being paid today. Cudgelwimsey himself, whose previous good health had been legendary, to the extent that it was said he could pull out his own teeth with his bare hands and no ill effects beyond a slight improvement in temper, had suffered considerably on the march towards the Hurlingbonian front, and was eventually so far incapacitated as to have his favourite lavatory brought to him on a litter carried by four highly trained Privy Councillors. The lavatory, like all bathroom fixtures during that phase of the Second Great Outward Grope, was made to order; in this case the craftsman was the great Schankes of Flushing, whose invention six years previously of the porcelain armitage had almost resulted in his being arrested for heresy. The lavatory of Cudgelwimsey unfortunately did not survive its owner, being first chipped by his over-elaborate lower grommets during the Third Battle of Gleetwick and later completely destroyed when it was accidentally hurled from the battlements during the victory celebrations at Glottal. Cudgelwimsey, who by this time had begun to recover from the illness which had laid him low, was so angered by the loss that he had the drunken culprits thoroughly fossicked and brindled before sending them off to Peterborough in disgrace. It is unlikely, however, that the loss of his prized possession was the sole influence on Cudgelwimsey's decision to draw up a permanent Code of Hygiene for his household, since at that time the incidence of Muswellian pructids had not been scientifically connected with the insalubrious conditions pertaining at court. In fact, from the time of Cudgelwimsey's grandfather, Piffelsteed the Malodorous, the decline of royal manners had been noted and lamented by the official chroniclers. By the time of Cudgelwimsey it is arguable that decades of war and indigestion had taken their ultimate toll, so that nothing was thought of blacking a lady's eye during dinner, and the use of unconsecrated trenchers was virtually a daily practice. The eventual scouring of court custom, and the consequent revolution in manners throughout the kingdom, would be the work of Cudgelwimsey's grandson, Squilbeam the Antiseptic, whose notorious decree banning the use of fur gloves by cattle-filleters was, despite its gory failure at the time, a primitive precursor of modern health and safety considerations.