Class

by Jilly Cooper

  Which brings us to the upper-class horror of trade. A gentleman didn’t have to earn his living, as has been pointed out in chapter 4. ‘The acceptance of high living and leisure,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh in Noblesse Oblige, ‘as part of the natural order, is a prerequisite of the aristocratic qualities and achievements. [The aristocrat] who goes into business and sticks to it and makes good, is soon indistinguishable from his neighbour in Sunningdale. You should have said, not that aristocrats can’t make money in commerce, but that when they do they become middle-class.’

  In fact, if one looks back at most of the great families one will find that they started off in trade. Many of them got rich lending money to both sides in the Wars of the Roses, and then bought land. But once one’s pile was made, the life of leisure was espoused and one’s origins rejected, which goes a long way to explain the parlous state of British industry today.

  This horror of commerce is further expressed by John Betjeman:

  Businessmen with awkward hips

  And dirty jokes upon their lips,

  And plump white fingers made to curl

  Round some anaemic city girl.

  Conversely the moment the businessman gets his foot on the ladder he’ll start gathering round him upper-class trappings: going out hunting, buying boats, leasing a reach of a good salmon river and joining several smart clubs.

  Firms like Plessey even employ upper-class ex-army types to organize shooting parties and get very grand people along to impress the customers, often with disastrous results. One adviser remembers a peer arriving drunk from shooting with President Giscard, and telling such filthy stories at dinner that the great industrialist invited to meet him left the table in high dudgeon and cancelled the order.

  Trade seems less despised if one is flogging works of art, and somehow shipping or oil seem to be more respectable.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be heaven if Hamish got a job in Shell at £600 a year,’ wrote Nancy Mitford in the ‘thirties, and the Onassis and Niarchos families seem to have been totally accepted by the English and French aristocracy, if not by the Greeks, which is often the case. One’s social deficiencies always seem more glaring to one’s fellow-countrymen than they do abroad. Onassis and Niarchos have been brilliantly described as ‘parachutists’, people who drop out of nowhere into a new class. The French have a splendid word, rastaquouère, to describe foreign nobility of dubious origin.

  Social advancement is also dependent on access. Businessmen tend not to meet the upper classes. But members of the ‘professions’—architects, doctors, dentists, estate agents, solicitors—encounter all classes, as do West End tailors, interior decorators, dressmakers and some journalists, while chauffeurs, nannies and masters at boarding schools have long-term access. All these people not only see the upper classes at close range and have ample opportunity to observe them and ape their manners, but also, if they have charm and a certain deference, often get taken up. When Michael Fish was invited to some frightfully smart house, the housekeeper was overheard saying to the butler:

  ‘Things have come to a pretty pass when they ask the shirt-maker to stay.’

  In Germany and America the businessman is of a far higher caste, and at the same time more democratic. In America, even though the men on the shop floor call the managing director by his Christian name, no one looks down on him socially. Advertising is also much smarter in America because Ad men get paid such vast sums of money.

  ‘Advertising is still not considered a fit occupation for a gentleman,’ said David Ogilvy recently. ‘If I were top of another profession, such as law, I would be in the House of Lords today. If I were an actor or even a jockey I would have been knighted. As it is I get the C.B.E. When the Queen heard what I did her expression was a mixture of amazement and amusement.’

  On the other hand, the laid-back, lotus-eating entrepreneurial atmosphere of advertising is very well suited to the upper classes.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘In which agency?’

  THE ARISTOCRACY

  Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light

  Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!

  It is the business of the wealthy man

  To give employment to the artisan.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry, said Bacon, but during the twentieth century the gospel of work has spread to the upper classes. What career, then, is open to Georgie Stow-Crat? He’s unlikely to go into any of the professions (Lord Colwyn as a trumpeter and a dentist being a rare exception) because he lacks the application to train for six years and he’d find the people too stuffy and boring. One aristocrat who actually managed to pass his bar finals left the legal profession after a year:

  ‘I couldn’t stand the other barristers. They were so pompous and middle-class, and only interested in talking shop.’

  Georgie might temporarily become a stockbroker, like the Marquess of Tavistock, or dabble in accountancy, like Lord Greenock. This would help him run his estate later and teach him the rudiments of tax evasion. Others take up ‘head-hunting’ or go into property where they do very well because they know all the right people and get hot tips about whose land is coming on the market. Georgie might also run a restaurant or add kudos to a smart nightclub, acting as bait to rich upper-class friends, and even richer nouveaus.

  Some aristocrats try photography because it gives them the chance to get at pretty girls; others flatten their ‘a’s and go into the pop music business or produce films. They are very good as front men in P.R. because they know the right people, but they are better at charming the press and clients than dealing with all the follow-up work.

  A lot of them go into Sotheby’s or Christie’s or smart art galleries, because, being surrounded by beautiful things at home, they’re supposed to know something about furniture and pictures. They don’t, of course. One Christie’s valuer told me that only once, in all the houses he’d visited, was he made to dine in the kitchen with the servants, although in another house there was an old nanny in residence who wouldn’t let him watch television after 8:30.

  Then there are the Whore Lords, who get their names on to as many firms’ writing paper as possible. Kind hearts may mean more than coronets, but a lord on the board means business and impresses customers, particularly Americans.

  Georgie is most likely to end up farming his own land. If he were a younger son, he’d probably go into the army. Cirencester Agricultural College prepares heirs for the task of managing their estates, and currently (1979) boasts three sons of earls, three sons of viscounts, two barons’ sons, a peer and, much to the joy of the popular press, a bewildered-looking Captain Mark Phillips. Sandhurst takes second and subsequent sons for training in the martial arts. All that shooting is such good practice for the grouse moors later.

  ‘I don’t mind you working at Christies, Georgie, but why on earth do they want to come and look over the place?’

  There is also a strong correlation between the aristocracy and the arts. Genius, being unbridled, is very upper-class. ‘Look in thy heart, and write’ said Sir Philip Sidney, but don’t get paid for it. No one worries about that today. Lord Kilbracken and Lord Oaksey are journalists. The Marquess of Anglesey is writing a four-volume history of the British Cavalry. Dukes and earls burst joyously into print publishing their memoirs, or extolling the merits of their ancient houses. Lord Weymouth paints murals and writes thrillers.

  In the same way, there’s nothing unsmart about science as long as it’s not applied. It is perfectly all right for his lordship to potter around in the west wing letting off stink bombs and making hot air balloons. But it should be pointed out that, in the arts and among academics, social snobbery is invariably suspended in favour of intellectual snobbery.

  ‘When I find myself among scientists,’ said Auden, ‘I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing-room full of dukes.’

  Or as J
ohn Betjeman, gently taking the mickey out of donnish attitudes, put it:

  Objectively, our Common Room

  Is like a small Athenian state

  Except for Lewis; he’s all right

  But do you think he’s quite first-rate?

  That tentative, fusty ‘quite first rate’ seems to sum up the whole world of academic snobbery. The egghead is mightier than the strawberry leaf.

  ‘Scientists,’ said one sociologist pompously, ‘tend to have a classless image, which can be embraced by working-class students without involving a denial of biological self,’ which means they have very short hair and are all so common they have to go abroad to achieve any status, or hide themselves in laboratories engaged in what they call ‘ree-search’.

  Most academics get on together talking shop, but all hell breaks out when their wives meet and are expected to get on.

  ‘It was dreadful,’ said one sociologist’s wife after a dinner party. ‘All the walls of the lounge were papered in different colours.’

  You may be a giant among bio-chemists but a pygmy at the local P.T.A.

  COMPUTE, COMPETE AND COMMUTE

  ‘To the middle classes,’ wrote Dahrendorf, ‘the career is the supreme reality.’ Fear of failing is almost as strong as the urge to succeed. The fittest survive and escape to another rung up the ladder, the unsuccessful are ostracized. The historical origins of the middle classes lie in trade. They can be traced back to the bourgeoisie in the chartered towns where they grouped together to demand their rights and govern the towns, terrifying the aristocracy in much the same way that the Trade Unions scare the middle classes today. (Samantha Upward’s mother thinks T.U.C. stands for ‘Terribly Unkind Communists’).

  The middle classes didn’t become really powerful until the Industrial Revolution, when the development of industry brought the need for new types of work: insurance, banking, accounting, engineering and science. Many of the people who entered these professions were successful craftsmen or farmers who had left the land. The penalty of failure was to sink back into the ranks of the working classes, so a gulf grew between them. As the big towns grew, so did the middle classes. They moved out of the towns and built suburbs and dormitory towns, and this seclusion enabled them to copy the way of life of the upper classes. Their children, as has been pointed out in chapter 4, were sent to the new boarding schools and developed refinements of dress and speech and, like all newly risen classes, walked through life gingerly as though they were treading on eggs. Their distinctive characteristic was that their work was not manual. Like the working classes, however, they had numerous rankings within themselves, which included manufacturers above the grade of foreman, most farmers, the majority of civil servants, professional people, businessmen and shopkeepers who owned their own shops, as well as independent craftsmen. It seems ludricrous to lump the small shopkeeper with the great banker, but all were united by their dedication, persistence and desire to get on.

  Ever since the Middle Ages the ‘professions’ have considered themselves superior to bankers and businessmen and regarded themselves as a class on their own. Medicine, law and the church were suitable occupations for a gentleman; they did not dull the brain like manual work, nor corrupt the soul like commerce. They did not advertise. Some sort of qualification was needed, so they formed professional associations and became members of closely knit, protective groups.

  The smartness of the various professions is subject to changes. Architects are considered smart today because there is something creative about their work. There was not, until recently, any stigma attached to a young man going into the Church, because the upper classes have to believe in God. Indeed a country parish was traditionally the destiny of younger sons with small private incomes. Medicine, as we have pointed out, is on the way down, except in the private sector. Dentists, on the other hand, are on the way up. They tend to make much more money than doctors, because they’ve escaped the clutches of the National Health, and because the desire for perfectly capped teeth has spread from America. Vets are also on the way up, aided by a little touch of Heriot in the night.

  Schoolmasters could be described as middle-class, but again there is a vast difference between the headmaster of one of the great public schools, or fashionable prep schools, and the junior master in an urban sink school. On the whole the private sector look down on, but feel guilty about not being part of, the public sector. On the other hand they make exceptions. I was talking about the headmaster of an élitist primary school the other day.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the head of my son’s prep school. ‘He’s obviously a coming man. I’ve met him at a dinner party.’

  Engineering has always been an unsmart profession, partly because no one knows what it involves. Harry Stow-Crat thinks it is something to do with driving a train. When people asked me what my father did I always used to say he was in the army or that he was a scientist because I thought that sounded more romantic and boffinish than being an engineer. But once again things are changing.

  Among the great variety of middle-class occupations there are three main strands which are particularly in evidence: the ‘burgesses’, the ‘spiralists’ and the lower middle class. The terms ‘burgess’ and ‘spiralist’ were coined by W. Watson in his article ‘Social Mobility and Social Class in Industrial Communities’ (1964). The burgess tends to stay put in the neighbourhood where he was brought up or started work, and establish prestige in the community. He is often the country solicitor, accountant or local businessman; he takes an interest in the community and often gets into local government to further his business interests.

  In Middle Class Families Colin Bell quotes a burgess describing his life. He is a typical Howard Weybridge. The Weybridge expressions are italicized.

  ‘My people have always been comfortably off. After going into the forces, I went into Dad’s business. We have several representatives, who have come up from the shop floor . . . I am a very keen member of Rotary [on a par with Teacher and Doctor]. I belong to many clubs and associations because I think it’s a good thing other Swansea folk see me at the right functions, and realize we are not just tradesmen. I also belong to several social clubs as a duty, so that I meet the important Swansea people.’

  This is typical middle-class behaviour, the careerist socializing, the pomposity of expression, the desire to be a power in the community, a big fish in a small pool, and the joining of clubs, which would all be unthinkable to the working or upper classes.

  The second category, the spiralist, moves from job to job and place to place, upping his salary and his status as he goes. Colin Bell quotes a chemist from a working-class background who is far more upper-class and direct in his language than the burgess.

  ‘I went to a grammar school and then to a university, very red brick and provincial. I worked like hell and got a first, then did a Ph.D in chemistry to avoid going out in the world. Meantime I got married and had several children; after that I moved from firm to firm, upping my salary every time. Then I was promoted to Holland’ (where class and accent didn’t matter).

  He then left the research side, because, if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get on, and went into the middle-class admin’ side, which was far more cut-throat, but which counted for more. Now, as the head of a large industrial plant, he had to decide whether to move to head office in London to up his salary or change jobs. His only friends were people he worked with, his wife’s only friends their wives. The only way to get on, he felt, was to move. He hoped it didn’t interfere too much with the children’s education.

  ‘If I get a couple of notches further up,’ he concluded, ‘I’ll send them to boarding school. Not that I really approve of it, but it will make moving about easier.’

  Here you have a man, sometimes working-class, sometimes lower-middle in origin, who is prepared to sacrifice friends, children and principles to his career. In fact he’s eager to leave his family and the friends of his childhood because they might be a social embarrassment.
Later the spiralists often jettison their wives and trade them in for a Mark II model that goes with a new life-style.

  Interesting, too, that this particular spiralist showed working-class shyness by cocooning himself against the world and taking a Ph.D. He made a typically working-class early marriage to combat the loneliness, but then made a deliberate decision to move over to the middle-class admin’ side because it would further his career.

  In a survey of managers’ wives, it was shown that they all wanted their daughters to marry a ‘burgess’ in the professions. All believed this would provide more security and status than industry. They did not realize how many young barristers have to tramp the streets for months after qualifying before they get any work. Nor could they appreciate the status props that go with the spiralist’s job: the houses, the company cars, trips for wives, gardeners and chauffeurs, the source of which can all be concealed from the neighbours.

  ‘It’s great, Angela! I’ve been promoted to Patagonia!’

  The salient characteristic of the spiralist, whether he is from the working classes or the lower-middles is his adaptability and his total ruthlessness. He is the cog in the wheel, the corporation man who can charm his colleagues while trampling them under foot with his slip-on Guccis. His mecca is the conference.

  ‘I’ve come a long way,’ said one spiralist. ‘My parents were working-class in the North-East; my expectations were at best tradesman. When I’m at conferences I feel how far I’ve come.’

  On the other hand his social mecca would be Sunningdale or East Horsley, so he often ends up turning into a Howard Weybridge.

  I went to a conference recently where the spiralists were rampant. The ‘venue’, as they would call it, was the Café Royal, and it was all firm handshakes and announcing of names: