The quiet classics: old world manners at a London dinner, worn lightly

Old manners are often mistaken for formality. They are really a way of paying attention. Holding a door says you noticed someone behind you. Rising when a guest returns to the table says her return mattered. None of it concerns rules. All of it concerns the other person.

In the rooms of St James's, where many of these habits were first written down, they never quite went out of use. A companion who dines here often will notice them, gently, and return each one in kind. Debrett's still publishes guidance on most of what follows, as it has for generations; read it once and then forget it, since the aim is instinct rather than scholarship.

The classics of moving through a city together are few, and every one of them is practical.

When she arrives, stand. If the maître d' shows her to the table, let him draw out her chair; if nobody does, draw it yourself. Give her the seat with the view of the room, so that she has the room and you have her.

When she leaves the table and returns, rise, if only halfway. It is the courtesy most men have forgotten and the one women notice most. It costs a second and says a great deal.

Let her order for herself. The old habit of ordering on a woman's behalf has rightly been retired; ask what she is considering, if you like, and let the waiter take it from her directly. Wine is the exception. The host generally chooses, or consults the sommelier, and asks her preference before either.

The telephone belongs in a pocket, not on the cloth, face down or otherwise. If a call truly cannot wait, excuse yourself and take it outside the room. She will mind the brief absence far less than she would mind the screen.

Take her coat at the door, and help her into it as you leave: hold it low, so she finds the sleeves without reaching behind her. Keep the cloakroom ticket yourself. Carry the umbrella and hold it over her rather than yourself.

If she is carrying something heavy, a shopping bag from Jermyn Street or a parcel of books from Hatchards, offer to take it. If she declines, leave it. The offer was the courtesy, and pressing it turns kindness into a small contest.

Some habits have aged badly, and the best-mannered men have quietly let them go.

The truest measure of manners is not how you treat your companion, whom you are trying to please, but how you treat the people paid to be polite to you: the doorman, the waiter, the woman at the cloakroom. Thank them by name if you know it, look at them when you speak, and never make a point of your own importance.

Your companion notices this more than anything else. So does every waiter in the quarter, which is why the tables you want become easier to have once you are known as a courteous guest. Arrive when you said you would, too. Punctuality is the courtesy that makes the others possible, and in a quarter where tables are held to the minute, everybody notices it.

The last rule governs all the others. Manners performed are worse than manners forgotten. A chair drawn with a flourish, a door held with a remark about chivalry, a speech about how things used to be done: each turns a courtesy into a show, and your companion into its audience. Do the thing and say nothing. If she thanks you, smile and carry on.

At the end of the evening the bill is yours as host, settled away from the table where possible, without discussion. Her fee has already passed to her privately at the start, so nothing about money interrupts the close.

Karolina, poised, patient and with a pianist's sense of timing, will notice every courtesy and remark on none of them. Margo, in her early thirties, has spent enough evenings in salerooms to tell manners from performance at a glance. Patricia, soft spoken and warm, is at her best at an early dinner taken at a gentle pace. All three are among our slender companions.

For a dinner with room for every courtesy, choose the luxury dinner, four hours for £1,800; the other lengths are on the rates page. Octavia reads every message sent through booking herself.