by Jilly Cooper
Ironing out an accent can, of course, cut you off from your background. It didn’t matter to Shelley because her parents were both dead, but the schoolmistress admitted that she was ashamed of her parents:
‘They have every awful pseudo-refinement of the lower-middle classes.’
Harry Stow-Crat has a very distinctive accent. Because of his poker face he only uses vowels that will hardly move his face at all. You open your mouth far less if you say ‘hice’ rather than ‘house’, and ‘aw’ rather than the short ‘o’. Thus Harry automatically says ‘orf’, ‘corsts’, ‘gorn’, ‘clorth’ and ‘lorst’. This of course is old pronunciation: ‘Ride a cock horse to Banbury Crorse’. Harry also manages to move his face less by clipping his words: hence ‘Lond’ndri’ and ‘mag’str’t’ instead of ‘Londonderry’ and ‘magis-trate’. He often uses a short ‘e’ for ‘ay’, like the man who went into the village shop and asked for some pepper.
‘Red or black pepper, sir?’ asked the shopkeeper.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ snapped the man, ‘lavatory pepper.’
The upper-class accent may alter, but they are united in their absence of euphemism or circumlocution. They don’t say ‘pleased to meet you’ because they don’t know if they are, and anyway wouldn’t feel the need to resort to such flattery. They are not arch. They never talk about ‘botties’ or the ‘little girl’s room’, or ask, as Howard Weybridge might, if they can go and ‘point Percy at the porcelain’.
‘If “loo” is out now, there’s “bathroom”, “gents”, “ladies”, “convenience”, “lav”, “water-closet”, “WC”, “bog”, “john”, “can”, “heads”, “latrines”, “privy”, “little girls’ room”, “smallest room”, “powder room”, “khasi”, “rears” . . . There must be something we can call it. . . .’
Samantha Upward enunciates more clearly than Caroline. Her features are more mobile, she smiles more, her voice is less clipped. She is also less direct, talking about ‘having help’ in the house rather than ‘servants’, and saying, ‘How’s your glass’ rather than ‘Would you like another drink?’ Because she is slightly unsure of herself she will probably cling to words like ‘wireless’ and ‘children’ long after the upper classes are saying ‘radio’ and ‘kids’. On the other hand she clips her words far more than Eileen Weybridge—saying ‘’dmire’ rather than ‘ad-mire’, ‘s’cessful’ rather than ‘suck-sessful’ and ‘c’mpete’ rather than ‘com-pete’. She doesn’t say ‘lorst’ or ‘corst’ but she would say ‘sawlt’ and ‘awlter’. She keeps forgetting to say ‘knave’ rather than ‘jack’ when she plays cards and to call Gideon’s ‘wallet’ a ‘notecase’. Dive Definitely-Disgusting couldn’t distinguish Samantha’s voice from Caroline Stow-Crat’s, but he would think Caroline sounded more commanding, and Samantha more hearty and jolly hockeysticks.
If you meet Howard Weybridge you probably won’t be able to tell immediately what part of the world he comes from; he will be very careful not to let his voice slip—a sort of Colonel Bogus. Mrs Weybridge articulates far more than Samantha—she talks about ‘coff-ee’ and ‘syst-im’, like Mr Healey, who is very Weybridge and probably says ‘higgledee-piggledee’ between each word.
There was a Howard Weybridge living in Yorkshire who had a marvellously haw-haw voice, but slipped once at a dance when a fat teenager doing the Dashing White Sergeant with much vigour stepped back on to his foot and induced him to let out a most uncharacteristic yell of ‘Booger’.
Enough has been said about Jen Teale’s refinement. Many of the lower-middle genteelisms—commence, pardon, serviette, perfume, gâteau, toilet—probably became currency to show off the speaker’s familiarity with French. When it comes to ‘o’ sounds though, one might have thought that the English language had been deliberately invented to fox the Teales and the Nouveau-Richards. I defy anyone to say the following list of words very fast three times without slipping: ‘Dolphin, dolt, doldrums, revolving, revolting, involved, holiday, hold, holly, holm, whole, golf, gold.’ Class is a sort of sadistic Histoire d’O.
Mr Nouveau-Richards packs Mrs N-R and all his children off to elocution lessons when he becomes mayor and takes a W.E.A. course in public speaking. Mrs N-R, opening the Bring and Buy, exhorts everyone to ‘give generously like what I have done’.
Mr N-R ticks Jison off for talking too posh in the factory; it alienates the lads. ‘Sorry Dad’, said Jison, ‘You shouldn’t have sent me to such a good school.’
Mrs Definitely-Disgusting has a directness of speech not unlike Harry Stow-Crat. She says ‘definitely’ instead of ‘yes’; Harry says ‘absolutely’. She speaks in very short unfinished sentences, with a total disregard for syntax, and makes great use of conjunctions like ‘so’ and ‘but’ and ‘like I said’. Sentences are often left unfinished. She uses very few subordinate clauses, and punctuates with words like ‘shame’, ‘just fancy’, ‘only natural, innit’ and ‘do you mind’. Statement and answer are often the same.
‘I told you to hold on tight,’ she says.
‘Why,’ asks Dive.
‘I told you to hold on tight, din’ I?’
Dive often changes the first consonant and the final one—’I’ve fort a’ somefink’—and drops the middle one, as in ‘me-al’ for ‘metal’. Because the working classes tend to be inarticulate, they also rely very largely on facial and bodily gestures—shrugging their shoulders, waving their hands, jerking their heads, rolling their eyes, and raising them to heaven, just like Old Steptoe.
Mrs D-D is full of malapropisms. She’s always wanting to get up a ‘partition’ or ‘fumigating’ with anger. She also uses adjectives instead of adverbs: he cooks lovely, she dresses fantastic. Because of her limited vocabulary she is likely to latch onto a new adjective and flog it to death. The ghastly ‘caring’ is becoming a great favourite, with Express Dairies running a competition now to find your ‘caring’ milkman. Because Mrs D-D has received so many lectures from lefties on the dignity of the individual, however lowly, she’s quite keen on the word ‘dignified’ as the opposite of ‘vulgar’.
When a working-class girl played truant last April and posed naked on a horse in the middle of Coventry, her mother said afterwards,
‘Louise made a very dignified Godiva. We are not ashamed of her showing her breasts. We are liberated parents.’ One would have thought it was more Louise’s breasts that were liberated.
16 THE ARTS
The creative writing is on the wall
Of all élite, the two that mix most easily are the aristocracy and the arts—Hamlet and the players—traditionally perhaps because they have the same bohemian disregard for other people’s opinion and the same streak of exhibitionism. In the past, as we shall see later in this chapter, artists have been tragically dependent on the caprice of their rich patrons, but things have changed in the last century. Now successful writers, actors and singers no longer struggle, but are often far richer than the aristocrats. Mick Jagger now dines with Princess Margaret and has Patrick Lichfield as his best man. Jack Hedley and Margaret Drabble have lunch at Buckingham Palace. Elton John keeps his flat cap on throughout Prince Michael’s speech because of a hair transplant he didn’t want anyone to see. And you even have a group of Etonians coming out of a punk concert nearly in tears saying, ‘We put safety pins in our ears, but they still don’t like us.’
The Royal family have over the years been consistently resistant to the arts. George I hated all ‘boets and bainters’. ‘Was there ever such stuff as Shakespeare?’ asked George III, although he did have a massive crush on Handel, and even re-wrote one of Dr. Burney’s reviews of a Handel concert because it wasn’t favourable enough. Even today one has only to watch the jaws of the Royal Family absolutely dislocated with trying not to yawn at gala performances at Covent Garden. If you go to an investiture at Buckingham Palace, you find red flock wallpaper like in an Indian restaurant, pictures that need cleaning and a band playing gems from South Pacific and White Horse Inn. It is at t
his stage that someone always leaps to their defence and starts talking about Prince Charles’s cello and Princess Margaret being a good mimic.
On the other hand, when one thinks of Lady Diana Cooper, Nigel Nicolson, Caroline Blackwood, Lord Ravensdale who, as Nicholas Mosley, writes brilliant novels, Lord Anglesey’s military history, Lord Weymouth’s murals and novels, the Sitwells, the Pakenhams, the Mitfords and many others one realizes that for a section of society that is statistically negligible the aristocracy have done pretty well for the arts.
The upper-classes were traditionally patrons of the arts, but because they have had their libraries, their old masters and minstrels in their galleries for so long they tend to take the arts for granted—unlike the middle classes who today make up the audiences at the theatre, ballet and the opera and who tend to regard a knowledge of the arts and literature as a symbol of having got on.
In the same way the lower-middles who want to get on equate culture with upper-class, and promptly start acquiring books, pictures and records. In the furnishing trade bookshelves and record cabinets are actually categorized as ‘furniture for the better home’. The more upmarket a newspaper or magazine is, the more comprehensive the coverage of the arts.
ART
Put not your trust in prints.
Crossing the threshold of Sotheby’s, one feels that sacred frisson, that special reverence evoked when great works of art and vast sums of money are changing hands. Of all the arts painting is the smartest, because it involves the best-dressed people and the most money. Private views are far more frequently covered by the glossies than first nights (which Jen Teale calls ‘preemiaires’), publishing parties or concerts. This may be because the best galleries are situated around Bond Street and Knightsbridge, not far from the offices of The Tatler, and because all the elegant, aesthetic young men, with their greyhound figures and Harvey and Hudson shirts, who work in them, look aristocratic even if they are not.
Caroline Stow-Crat often goes to private views when she’s in London. It’s nice to have a free drink and meet one’s chums after an exhausting day at Harrods, and she likes bumping into all those old school-friends of Harry’s who, in spite of being devastatingly handsome, somehow never got married. The upper classes, too, are very good at looking at paintings. They are able to keep their traps shut and whiz round galleries very fast. Samantha Upward, brought up to fill gaps with conversation, can’t repress a stream of ‘How lovelies’.
What of the social standing of the painter himself? Andy Warhol and David Hockney are asked to the best parties—but they are not restricted by wives. ‘Society is so constituted in England,’ wrote Samuel Rogers, ‘that it is useless for celebrated artists to think of bringing their families into the highest circle when they themselves are only admitted on account of their genius.’
But even genius has to be tempered with charm. No one asked Hogarth to dine, because he was the son of a tradesman. Reynolds on the other hand was taken up by society because he was urbane, intelligent and a gentleman. Sir Alfred Munnings, when he went to Eaton Hall to paint the Duchess of Westminster, was not invited to eat with the Duke and Duchess.
Despite upper-class philistinism, it has always been a status symbol to have one’s portrait painted to provide ancestors to be shown off by future generations. Elizabeth I epitomized the Royal attitude. ‘There is no evidence that she had much taste for painting,’ said Horace Walpole drily, ‘but she loved portraits of herself.’ Once a portrait painter became fashionable he went from one stately home to another, sucking up to duchesses—a sort of Toady at Toad Hall.
‘“Dejeuner sur l’herbe”?—Looks more like tea and crumpet to me!’
‘I don’t want to become a portrait manufacturer,’ sighed Hogarth. While Millais, succumbing to the inevitable tedium, admitted that the best bit was putting the shine on his subject’s boots.
Harry Stow-Crat doesn’t buy paintings—he inherits them. Various ancestors were painted by Romney, Gainsborough, Lely and Van Dyck. Peter Greenham, however, has just finished painting Caroline. It was so successful that he will probably do Georgie and Fiona in the holidays. Harry has also commissioned a new painting of the house, taking in the vista of Gorilla Island, Flamingo Lake and the amusement park.
Mr Nouveau-Richards now thinks it was rather a mistake to commission Francis Bacon to do Tracey-Diane’s por-trait (which he rhymes with gate; the Stow-Crats say ‘portr’t’), but at least Mrs Nouveau-Richards has learnt to say ‘Trechicorf’.
Jeremy Maas, of the Maas Gallery, has a theory that art historians despise Victorian paintings and concentrate on Romneys and Gainsboroughs because this gives them access to grand houses, whereas the Victorian paintings are mostly owned by wool and steel manufacturers in the industrial north who are far less amusing to stay with.
BALLET
‘I do not know anything about ballet except that in the interval the ballerinas stink like horses,’ wrote Chekhov. Since then ballet has been prissying itself up and has become a very lower-middle-class art, intensified by all those layers of tulle and the ballerinas walking around on tiptoe. Jen Teale loves ‘the ballet’ as she calls it: all those good tunes and something undemanding to look at. Except for Eugene Onegin Tschaikovsky is an irredeemably lower-middle-class composer.
Occasionally Covent Garden have gala nights, which Jen Teale pronounces ‘gay-la’, presumably because of the number of homosexuals present. The effeminate appearance of the men puts off Harry Stow-Crat and the Definitely-Disgustings alike. ‘Pouffe’s football’ Old Steptoe called ballet dismissively.
A recent survey of ballet audiences broke them down as 61 per cent upper-middle-class males, 19 per cent middle-class, 15 per cent lower-middles and only 5 per cent working-class, who presumably are the rough trade accompanying the upper-middle homosexuals.
‘Have we come for the dancing or the singing?’ Mr Nouveau-Richards was overheard saying to his wife as they arrived at Covent Garden.
ACTORS
Until recently Thespians were not considered respectable. A gentleman might go to bed with an actress and shower her with presents, but he did not make an honest woman of her, and, although a few aristocrats married Gaiety Girls, the parental opposition was stiff enough to discourage most Mrs Worthingtons from putting their daughters on the stage.
Since the advent of the talkies, and even more so of television, things have changed. Acting is one of the most popular professions for girls from public schools. Actors and actresses get lionized out of proportion to any other profession. (When Kurt Jurgens gets half a million for a coffee commercial it’s hard to ignore him.)
Caroline Stow-Crat, however, still regards the show-business world with a mixture of excitement and horror. I remember a debs’ mums’ lunch at which they were discussing whether they could entice Georgia Brown or David Essex to sing at some charity ball:
‘Anyway, Elizabeth can look after whoever it is,’ said the chairman. ‘She’s so good with those sort of people.’
The upper-middle classes, who apart from homosexuals, tourists and the coach trade, are the only consistent patrons, tend to go to the theatre for a good sleep, but sometimes they manage to wake up for the last scene. At a production of Vivat Regina at Chichester some years ago, when Elizabeth and Mary stalk out of opposite corners of the stage at the end, Mary to be beheaded, one Tory lady was heard saying to another, ‘That’s exactly what happened to Monica.’
Actors and actresses, although the good ones can adjust their accents to cross most class barriers, seldom appear upper-class because they are too self-conscious, too theatrical, too expansive of gesture and mobile of feature. Their diction is also far too good—the upper-classes would never say ‘yee-eers’ or ‘how-ers’ for ‘years’ and ‘hours’. Actresses do this to make their parts longer.
Mrs Nouveau-Richards loves ‘to do a show in town’, and rustles a box of milk chocolates through the entire performance.
LITERATURE
Like the actor, the
professional writer wasn’t always socially acceptable. The Elizabethans considered poetry, dancing and playing an instrument the sort of accomplishment, rather like sex, that you did in the privacy of your own home, but never for money.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said that it was contemptible to write for money, and even in the nineteenth century Flaubert attacked the practice—though admittedly from the security of a large private income.
It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century, as Frank Muir pointed out, that the habit of reading spread down the classes and became fashionable, in a very minor way like television today.
Reviewers, bitterly opposed to emergent lower-middle-class writers, savagely attacked Keats for not being a gentleman, and belonging, with Leigh Hunt, to what was derisively called the ‘Cockney school’. Cockney in those days didn’t mean working class but ‘genteel suburban’. It is hardly surprising that Byron and Shelley, as very nouveau aristocracy (Byron inherited the title from a great-uncle; Shelley’s grandfather managed to marry two heiresses), should initially have attacked Keats’s poetry, not only because he was beneath them socially but, more dangerous, he looked suspiciously like a far greater poet. Once Keats was dead he was no more competition, and it was much easier for Byron to leap to his defence with Who Killed John Keats and for Shelley to write Adonais.
Recently a reviewer expressed amazement that Hardy could be simultaneously such a towering genius and such a raging mean-minded snob. This seems quite logical. Any English novelist, if he is to draw characters with any accuracy, must be aware of the minutest social nuance. Many English writers have been frightful snobs. Shakespeare’s heroes and heroines, except for the middle class Merry Wives, are upper-class; working-class characters are only introduced to provide comic relief.
Pope always pretended to be related to the Earl of Down. Jane Austen was probably so obsessed with class because on one side she was related to an earl, but on the other side to a haberdasher.