by Jilly Cooper
Breast-feeding in public is indulged in by left-wing trendies, and surprisingly by Jen Teale who, probably thinking it’s uninhibited upper-class behaviour, will even whip out a tit in the middle of a christening, sending uncles, grandfathers and male godparents fainting into the garden. Mrs Definitely-Disgusting feeds little Dive whenever he’s hungry. One remembers Mum in The Larkins plugging little Oscar into her massive bosom in hotel lobbies, dining-rooms and on the beach. The left wing middle-class mother also feeds her baby on demand, and it’s been demanding ever since.
Old-fashioned nannies, who came from the working classes, tended to get their children on the pot and out of nappies very early—quite understandable as they had no washing machines or Napisan in those days. Geoffrey Gorer in his book Exploring English Character, suggests that the obsessive desire for privacy of the upper-class male is the result of being watched over on the pot:
‘Immersed in clubs, behind ramparts of newspapers, silent in the corner of first-class carriages, at last he is free of Nanny.’
Caroline Stow-Crat talks about ‘toilet-trining’ with a cockney accent to excuse the word toilet.
It is very Jen Teale to use the word diapers. Caroline says ‘nappies’.
Let us now digress slightly to nomenclature. While the upper classes say ‘having a baby’, Samantha Upward says ‘pregnant’, the lower-middle classes say ‘expecting a baby’ or ‘starting a family’. The working-class mother, however, will say ‘Three months after I had Dive, I fell for Sharon,’ which doesn’t mean that, due to post-natal gloom, she developed Lesbian tendencies, merely that she got pregnant again.
Upper and middle-class children call their parents ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’, although the boy might call his father ‘Dad’ as he gets older, or refer to him as ‘my father’. The lower-middles call them ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, and the working classes ‘Moom’ and ‘Dud’. Socially aspiring lower-middles like Sandra in The Liver Birds also call their mother ‘Mummy’. Trendy lefties and women who are reluctant to grow old, insist their children call them by their Christian names. Jen and Bryan Teale call each other ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’, the working classes ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’.
A lot of confusion is caused by the word ‘nanny’. To the upper and middle classes it means someone who looks after children for money, although Samantha Upward would prefer to call her ‘my girl’, or ‘the au pair’. To the working classes ‘Nanny’, ‘Nana’ or ‘Nan’ is one’s grandmother who, as all the mothers are rushing back to work, probably also looks after the children—but is not paid for it. To the upper classes Nana means a large dog in Peter Pan.
The upper classes call their aunts ‘Aunt Mary’, the middle classes ‘Auntie Mary’. Lower-middle and working-class children are forced to call any friend of their parents ‘Auntie’ or ‘Uncle’. Two working-class expressions that seem to be creeping upwards are ‘Baby needs changing’, as though you were fed up with her already, and ‘I’ve potted Sharon’, as though she was a shiny red billiard ball. Confusion is also caused by the word ‘putting down’. The upper classes ‘put down’ dogs, Jen Teale tends to ‘put them to sleep’ or ‘send them to the Happy Hunting Ground’. The middle classes ‘put down’ children for schools, but when the working classes say, ‘I’ve put Sharon down’, it means they’ve put her to bed. When they say, ‘I mind children,’ it doesn’t mean that they dislike them but that they look after them.
The sociologist refers to the child as ‘The Third Estate of the nuclear family’. The lower-middles and working classes call him a ‘kiddy’, the middle classes a ‘kid’. The upper-middles and uppers talk about ‘the children’. But upper-class people, trying to be democratic, have started to call them ‘kids’. This unnerves Samantha Upward.
It is also an aristocratic trait to refer to members of one’s family by name, assuming automatically that other people will know who one means. Caroline Stow-Crat would say,
‘Harry’s shooting. Can I bring Fiona and Georgie?’
She would also say the baby, rather than ‘my baby’, or ‘Baby’ or the American-influenced ‘my little girl’ which is very Jen Teale. Harry, on the other hand, if asking a friend how his son is getting on, might easily say: ‘How’s your boy?’
One of the first events in the baby’s life is a trip to the clinic. On rainy days the place is deserted because the Mrs Definitely-Disgustings, who always dress up to wheel their prams to the clinic, don’t like getting their best clothes wet. You can tell the middle-class mothers because they are much more scruffy and have smaller prams (to fit into the Volvo). When I visited a clinic in Putney there were naturally no upper-class mothers because they don’t live south of the river and they never go to clinics. Several working-class mothers, in mini-skirts, leather coats and high-heeled shoes, with very done-up babies, were capping each other’s crawling and teething stories. Two left-wing middle-class mothers with eager, unpainted faces, ragged hair and dirndl skirts were talking about an anti-aircraft noise meeting that night. Behind them a pretty Samantha Upward appeared to be carrying on a very enunciated conversation with another upper middle-class mum to which no one could help listening. Suddenly one realized that she was addressing a non-stop monologue to her own six-month-old baby, having obviously read somewhere that the more you talk to your baby, the sooner it talks back. The ratlet race had begun.
THE CHRISTENING
The next big event in a child’s life is the Christening. The Queen was christened in a private chapel at Buckingham Palace at five weeks, baptised with water from the Jordan, and dressed in christening robes of cream Brussels lace, worn by every baby in the royal family since Queen Victoria’s children.
The aristocracy tend to be christened in their own thirteenth century churches, wearing slightly yellowing christening robes embroidered with the family crest. The Times will report it on the social page. A London christening takes place at the Guards Chapel or in the Crypt Chapel at the House of Commons, with lunch at Boodles afterwards.
Sloane Ranger christenings tend to have Earl Grey tea, not enough champagne and, if they’re short of cash, the top layer of their wedding cake re-iced. Christening presents include silver mugs with at least four initials to take in the double barrels, and premium bonds, but not napkin rings or building society shares, which are very lower-middle class.
As the Merrytocracy are fast reaching a state when they can’t open their mouths without a glass in their hand, christenings are tending to get later and later, with champagne, chicken drumsticks and leprous quiche at 5:30.
The suburbs and Jen and Bryan Teale tend to go in for multiple christenings with each couple looking beadily at everyone else’s baby and thinking how much more ‘well spoken’ their own godparent is when she names this child. The vicar looks in at all the parties afterwards and has difficulty not shlurring his words at Evenshong.
The left-wing middles, combining parsimony with agnostic puritanism, don’t have their kids christened.
Mr Definitely-Disgusting goes out mini-cabbing to pay for the party and a new costume for Mrs Definitely-Disgusting who makes all the food, which includes pork pie, apple pie with pastry leaves, sponge cakes and fruit punch. The godparents probably keep the local pub.
Social climbers choose famous or successful godparents who might advance their children’s careers or improve their status. They’ve dropped all their childhood friends. Sloane Rangers’ mothers advise them not to ask that awfully nice girl from next door in Fulham, because you probably won’t see her again after you move to the country. Jean Cocteau once acted as a godparent, then promptly forgot about the child. Years later he met the father who reproached him for neglecting his duties. Mortified, Cocteau at once sent his godson a large teddy bear.
‘Was he pleased,’ he asked next time he met the father.
‘Not awfully,’ came the reply. ‘He’s a colonel now.’
The christening, like the wedding, is frequently an occasion when two different classes meet head-on. The
baby’s mother, for example, may be lower-middle and determined not to put a foot wrong, while the baby’s father’s family may be upper-middle and equally determined to patronize. Less smart relations are kept in the background or ruthlessly excluded. Examples of this can be found in Colin Bell’s fascinating book, Middle Class Families, in which he devotes a chapter to describing three Welsh christenings.
The first involved a lower-middle-class couple, who asked a hundred guests to the church. Of these only six were manual workers and their wives. The baby’s mother was awfully pleased that her cousin (the sole member of the family who’d been to a public school) had bothered to come. Only one manual worker and his wife, however, was asked back to the party at home after the service. The husband worked on the railways and they lived in a council house.
‘But she’s my auntie,’ said the baby’s mother, ‘and they’re the salt of the earth.’ (An expression used by all classes to excuse those of lower station.) As a first grandchild, the baby was given a staggering £1000 by his grandparents and enough clothes to keep Dr Barnado’s going for a year.
The second christening involved a slightly less smart family. The father was described as a ‘geographically mobile plant superintendent’, which actually meant he’d moved around the country in the course of his career, upping his salary each time. On this occasion their daily woman came to the church to keep the older children quiet, but was not invited back to the house for tea afterwards, even to help—a classic example of the nouveau-riche not knowing how to treat servants—and presumably because she was close enough to the family in class to be mistaken for a relation. In spite of this she sent the baby a coodly toy. Unsmart relations weren’t asked, even though they lived nearby.
‘Not because I’m a snob,’ said the mother untruthfully, ‘but he’s a porter or something.’
In the final christening the parents were both bright children of working-class parents, who’d met at university and promptly moved to another part of the country, away from any embarrassing roots. The relations were mercifully too poor to come to the christening. Godparents were friends from work. The grandparents didn’t send any presents, only vastly elaborate christening cards.
Another example of the clash between classes occurred at a recent middle-class christening I attended. One of the godfathers, a working-class actor who’d done very well for himself but had never been to a christening before, missed the church service and rolled up in time for tea, armed with a christening cake decorated with primrose yellow icing, the baby’s name in mauve and a stork and a baby made out of a sugared almond with its features slipping. Alas, the baby’s grandmother had also provided a large white christening cake complete with stork and slipping-featured sugared almond. The cakes were placed side by side—with Storky and Co gazing sourly at one another.
And while we’re on the subject of cakes, Caroline Stow-Crat would never call marzipan ‘almond paste’.
THE RATLET RACE
The christening over, the ratlet race starts in earnest. The battle is particularly vicious among the middle classes, where if you can’t boast an ‘int’risting’ career, you justify your existence by rearing a little genius. This is another part of the backlash against women going out to work. Newspapers and women’s magazines are constantly stressing the importance of the child being mentally stimulated during the first five years of its life. Journalists like Mary Kenny recant on women’s lib principles and expound the joys of motherhood. This is very easy for lady journalists who can always write at home and see their babies when they want to. Middle-class society is teeming with women having nervous breakdowns because they feel so inadequate about only being a wife and mother.
‘Oh Gideon—do you think he’s having his first breakdown?’
At plonk-and-pâté-tasting-of-old-socks-parties beloved by the upper-middle classes, you can hear the battle raging. Samantha Upward who, in spite of having a degree, believes in staying at home to raise little Zacharias ‘creatively’, is talking to a career mum:
SAMANTHA (who knows one is never regarded as a cabbage if one’s ‘intristed’ in other people): How’s the job?
CAREER MUM: Oh exhausting. I had to lunch George Best on Monday, look after Graham Greene all week, then we had a press party for Isherwood last night. (Fifteen-love to Career Mum).
SAMANTHA: And how’s Damian?
CAREER MUM: All right, I think. How’s the baby? (Not being round much she doesn’t even know Zacharias’s name.)
SAMANTHA: Oh he’s just finished Alice in Wonderland. Simply couldn’t put it down. I do recommend flash cards. And he can already beat Gideon at chess. We’re a bit worried he’s a Gifted Child, but you can’t really tell at two. (Thirty-fifteen to Samantha.)
Harry Stow-Crat doesn’t believe in wives working, or husbands for that matter. It would interfere with shooting and fishing.
The upper classes have nurseries upstairs. The upper-middles call them ‘playrooms’ and tend to have them downstairs so the children won’t miss any cultural pearls dropped by their parents. In the kitchen a cork board groans with Zacharias’s first drawings. Jen Teale, who is determined that little Wayne shall get on in life, has the nursery in the lounge with model soldiers on the mantelpiece and children’s posters on the wall. The garden will be filled with Wendy huts and social climbing frames.
Dive Definitely-Disgusting has no room set aside for him and often sleeps in the same room, or even bed, as his brothers and sisters. The reason they go to bed so late is because Mrs Definitely-Disgusting has to ensure that one child is soundly asleep before she can put the next one to bed, and so on. The cot is often bought with Embassy coupons.
The upper classes send their children to bed at six-thirty so that they’ll be out of the way before their father comes back from shooting or the city. The role-reversed upper-middles who believe that contact with the father is essential, tend to keep them up slightly later so they’ll have half an hour with Daddy before going to sleep. Gideon Upward, knackered after a hard day, is corrected by little Zacharias every time he tries to skip a page of Paddington Bear and longs for a bit of upper-class peace downstairs with a large gin and tonic.
Sleeping alone, the middle-class child is often frightened of the dark, but his parents can afford to leave a light on all night outside his room.
The middle classes have always given a lot of parental authority to the father. The upper and working classes tend to leave discipline to the mother, nanny or grandmother. But, with shorter working hours and less shift work, the working-class father is tending to be at home more, take more interest in his children and no longer be ashamed to be seen pushing the pram.
‘Vic takes baby up the park on the weekend, while I get the dinner on,’ is a typical working-class remark.
Equally, as the upper classes get poorer and can’t afford servants, the fathers are forced to pay more attention to the children.
‘I used to shove the baby into his arms,’ said one monthly nurse, ‘and walk out of the room. He’d hold it like a rattlesnake; but by the time I left he was pushing the pram and changing nappies.’ One upper-class husband, she said, refused to push the pram, but would walk behind his wife when she was pushing it, pushing her.
By the time the middle-class child is a year old, say the statisticians, he will be less likely to have a tantrum than the working-class child, will have had a much better diet and be off the bottle (as though he’d been on an alcoholic binge for the first twelve months). Harry Stow-Crat will have had a grille put in the back of the estate car to stop Georgie bothering Snipe. Georgie will have had his first party, which he won’t remember, but which was a great show-off occasion for his nanny. Jen Teale’s child will now be referred to as a ‘toddler’ or a ‘tiny tot’. Samantha will be out on the culture beat hawking little Zacharias round museums and art galleries to stop herself becoming a cabbage. The Hayward Gallery won’t allow prams inside but provides baby slings to help Mummy appreciate Dada.
CH
ILDREN’S CLOTHES
Little Georgie Stow-Crat will be out of long dresses now and into romper suits with Peter Pan collars, or short trousers which he will wear until he’s half-way through prep school. Occasionally in Hyde Park on cold days one sees the camp sight of little upper-class boys wearing tights under their shorts. He might occasionally be allowed to wear jeans like the middle classes, but never ones that fit, in case their tightness stops him carrying on the line. Upper-class little girls are smock-marked.
The middle classes dress their children like small adults in the hope that they’ll grow brighter and more adult earlier. In the same way that the upper classes force boy babies into little dresses, the middle classes force little girls into jeans. Jen Teale’s daughter, Christine, wears her dresses slightly too short, to display hen’s bum knickers.
Tracey-Diane Nouveau-Richards in casual clothes
All little girls, in fact, are lower-middle by inclination. If allowed, they would always dress like Christine in peasant blouses with elasticated waists and sleeves, their hair in bunches, sticking out above the ears; or like Tracey-Diane Nouveau-Richards in earrings, with painted toenails, huge nylon bows in the hair, pink plastic butterfly slides and white slingback or even high-heeled shoes. The Teales and the Nouveau-Richards encourage such prissiness by saying, ‘Always try to be a little lady’, or ‘Isn’t Tracey-Diane a little flirt?’ Mrs Nouveau-Richards, who believes in getting her pound of flesh from the nanny, insists that all Tracey’s clothes are ‘hand’ washed as she calls it. Mrs Definitely-Disgusting dresses her children in brightly coloured polyester and acrylic—shocking pink, mauve, royal blue and turquoise being the most popular. They also wear very shiny T-shirts with ‘Ars-nel’ on them and mock suede coats with nylon fur collars. The upper classes only used to allow their children to wear anoraks on the ski slopes, but have now given in.