LAST month, young historian-and-writer Patrick French and I were thrown out of the plush bar of the Howard Hotel in London into the equally plush lobby by a hawk-eyed maitre d' whose voice was as evil as his smile. My blazer was fine, but hawkeye had spied the jeans. In the lobby, Patrick was embarrassed, and kept muttering. Curiously, I was less perturbed: this sort of thing had happened often enough back home, to both my friends and me. Wrong shoes, no tie, T-shirt without collar. Good Gymkhana kind of bandobast: divorced from reality and context,genuflecting to dumb form and shallow tradition.