Giuliani Receives Knighthood - 22 February 2002

In the long ago, New York city had a monthly magazine of great elegance.

It was published by a man who hired the most famous writers, the best photographers, reproduced the Impressionists - who were then coming into fashion - in the finest colour reproductions, printed everything in touchably beautiful paper.

The whole magazine was maintained with style and damn the expense - an attitude that alas could not be sustained for long after the Great Depression really set in.

And the magazine folded in the mid-30s.

One of its renowned features was a monthly, full-page colour cartoon by a fine caricaturist, a Mexican named Covarrubias, whose cartoons brought two people together for a social meeting, an interview - two famous people whose appearance in life together anywhere, at any time, would have been inconceivable, preposterously unlikely.

I won't give you any actual examples because I'm sure the stars of that series are long gone and you would never have heard of them anyway.

But if Covarrubias were alive and practising his cunning art today you might have Tony Blair taking tea with Saddam Hussein, or wilder still, Madonna sharing a cocktail with the Pope.

I thought with affection back to Covarrubias, and not a little yearning, because he drew at a time when there was an abundance of fine cartoonists on both sides of the Atlantic.

The New Yorker and Punch then each had at least a dozen brilliant cartoonists with a finished, individual style recognisable at a hundred feet.

Alas this yearning is sharpened by the recognition that we, in both countries today, live in the dark age of comic craftsmanship.

What made me think of Covarrubias and his Vanity Fair series was a scene, a shot on television and next day a photograph in the papers, which was indeed an impossible interview.

A photograph of one Rudolph Giuliani bowing before the Queen of England.

The caption read: "Sir Rudolph?" And the underlying piece went on to tell us why he might not properly or legally be addressed as Sir Rudolph because, well because, the paper said, the Constitution forbids - a widespread delusion which I'm sorry to say even the good, grey, authoritative New York Times appears to share.

I've had it explained countless times, once even by the British Ambassador to Washington in the act of hanging the cherished silver star around my neck: "Because, you see, you became an American citizen, the Constitution forbids."

Ah so! Also not so. The Constitution is quite emphatic but also quite precise about who may not accept a foreign title and who, by inference, may.

During the 17-week convention in Philadelphia which eventually produced the written Constitution the chief authors had, over several days, recited the great range of powers enjoyed by kings which would not be allowed a president.

One deprivation was most pungently expressed by the brilliant young Alexander Hamilton.

"This plan" - the pending Constitution - "gives the express guarantee of a republican form of government ... and the absolute and universal exclusion of titles of nobility."

The Constitution laid down this guarantee without quite such a burst of emotion.

It forbade the granting of titles by the United States and forbade federal government officials to accept and use titles from a foreign state.

Here's the crucial clause in its original 18th Century language:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States and no person holding any office of profit or trust under these United States shall accept any present emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state without the consent of Congress.

I don't know of any case in which an American about to be entitled went to Congress and asked - Please may I use it? - but the point I'm making can be simply stated: That no foreign title may be accepted by anyone holding any office of trust in the federal government.

So Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld could not accept a knighthood. But Rudolph Giuliani is not an employee of the federal government and there is no legal or constitutional reason why he shouldn't be called Sir Rudolph as PG Wodehouse, an American citizen, was dubbed and called Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

But in life there is one very powerful reason that down two centuries has overwhelmed any legal right and it came from Thomas Jefferson who was in Paris during the early debates on the Constitution and he kept an eagle eye on everything in dispute.

He was full of suggestions and recommendations of what should and should not be done.

If they'd had e-mail in their day the delegates wouldn't have been able to keep up a continuous discussion without a blizzard of notes and urgings from Jefferson.

First he was shocked to learn that there was no attached Bill of Rights and he was mainly responsible for its creation.

He added all sorts of personal fusses. One day after a walk through the centre of Paris he scribbled down "no public statues" and rushed the idea off to the next packet. He lost out on that one.

But he did have his say about titles of nobility and it was so sharp and memorable that the delegates quoted it long afterwards.

All Jefferson said was: "Titles of nobility - a very great vanity" which, he went on to imply, no proud republican with any sense of self-esteem would dream of accepting.

This sentiment became so firmly planted in the American consciousness that to this day even distinguished Americans cannot believe the acceptance of a title by democratic, especially socialist, Englishmen.

I remember an American secretary of state, a powerful intellect and a very sophisticated diplomat, yet he marvelled when the most famous Labour leader of his day moved to the House of Lords.

"Lord Atlee. Sound absurd does it not, why would he take it?"

The soft answer came from a waspish friend of the secretary. He said: "Well I suppose even an occasional socialist has his quota of human vanity."

Since everyone present had great admiration for Clement Atlee we moved on to other topics.

However, if Mr Giuliani finds himself in London again and he wanted to get the feel of what it's like to enjoy his permissible title I recommend that he drop in for lunch or dinner at any one of London's top hotels.

He will be greeted by a tribe of men who scorn the niceties of the uninformed, the men in the profession of serving the citizenry. They know what is what and who is who.

"Good evening Sir Rudolph. Would you care for an aperitif Sir Rudolph? And after the flutes of sole Sir Rudolph? Thank you Sir Rudolph. Goodbye Sir Rudolph."

On the other hand he has cause to be glad when he gets back home that he's not a British citizen.

I recall the wearisome experience of the actor, the late Cedric Hardwicke, in his day a very distinguished stage actor indeed - George Bernard Shaw's favourite actor and the one for whom he wrote a special play, casting him as King Magnus in the Applecart.

Long before Olivier or Richardson he was knighted, way back, I'm shocked to realise, in 1934, and very soon took his career and his title to Hollywood. And in the beginning there's no doubt that his title was not an obstacle to Sir Cedric's acquisition of agreeable roles.

Years later when towards the end he was having a rough time, having to do with the high cost of a second divorce, he told me that his title had become "a very expensive albatross around my neck".

"Every American," he said, "who does any kind of service - a waiter, bootblack, delivery boy - assumes that a knight is a very wealthy lord with 20,000 acres, something they hadn't known before.

"So where I normally gave a quarter tip I had to give a dollar and at expensive restaurants where the car parking attendant used to get a dollar, now unless I gave him five he positively sneers and mutters 'cheapskate' to his cronies."

Which reminds me of a friend of mine who, I discovered fairly recently, shared the universal delusion about knighthood and American citizens.

"I thought," he said, " 'holding any office of trust under these United States' was a comic convention of Mencken."

No sir, right there, section one, clause nine of the Constitution.

He was referring to a memorable column by the most famous American journalist of the last century - HL Mencken of Baltimore.

In the roaring 1920s the wonder boy, amateur golfer Bobby Jones, inspired a new national fad - young and old, the famous, infamous and obscure took up golf.

One day a young reporter walked into the Baltimore Sun office wearing plus fours and carrying a golf bag. Mencken was appalled at the costume.

"It makes its wearer look like a stud horse with his hair done up in frizzes ."

He sat down and wrote an indignant column which ended: "If I had my way any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust under these United States."

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