by Jilly Cooper
‘It’s quite simple really: the tenth were shiny; the eleventh wore red trousers; the fifth skins wore green trousers; the seventh turn-ups and crossbelts; and all tank men have dirty finger nails’.
Harry Stow-Crat probably served in the Coldstream during the war, as had many of his family in earlier wars. He would say ‘hurt’ rather than ‘wounded’; he would never talk about ‘the C.O.’ or ‘mufti’, and he would never say, ‘When I was an officer in the Cold-stream’, because he would assume everyone would know he was.
Gideon Upward did his National Service in the 7th Hussars, a not-so-smart cavalry regiment which his father, the Colonel, pulled a great many strings to get him into. He remembers all the working-class boys blubbing on their first night, because they’d never been away from home before. Later he went to Hong Kong for a year.
After National Service in the Signals, Howard Weybridge joined what he considered was a smart Territorial Army unit and went away on long drinking weekends on Salisbury Plain, pretending to be a gentleman and growing a small clipped moustache. Once in the H.A.C., he would begin by going back to non-commissioned rank, and have to work his way up. This mystifies Dive Definitely-Disgusting when he too joins the Reserve Army, and occasionally goes on joint exercises with the H.A.C. Afterwards he describes Howard and his mob, as ‘not a bad lot of fuckers but why do they talk so funny?’ On one occasion he sidled up to Howard Weybridge saying: ‘Tell me Bombadier, aren’t most of your lot, ex-officers?’
‘Well quite a few,’ Howard admits modestly.
‘Well what the ‘ell did you get busted for?’ asks Dive.
Eileen Weybridge hopes that her nephew might join the army to knock him into shape. When asked what regiment, she says vaguely, ‘Oh, he’s going into the Greens’. Just as Jen impressed Gideon Upward at a P.T.A. meeting by telling him she had a brother in the Brigade. She meant the Fire Brigade.
Bryan Teale did his National Service as a clerk in the Pay Corps, and spent two years in Bedford looking after the R.H.Q. of a once famous, now defunct, county regiment. He always refers to the adjutant as the ‘adj’. Jen Teale nearly joined the Wrens but thought the black stockings would give people ideas.
Mr D-D was a driver in the R.A.S.C. (The Jam Stealers) during the war and had a good time getting the clap twice in Benghazi, and entering Berlin five days after the end of the war, where he briefly became a black-market baron. He reckons his army days were the happiest of his life. He is now a member of the British Legion, because the beer is cheaper.
A last word of warning. Beware of those who use ranks below colonel in civilian life. Colonels and above are usually sound, but it is not safe to ask what they were in. My father-in-law once queried a brigadier too fiercely and extracted the information that he had served in the A.R.P. in India in 1939.
Socially the Air Force is of little interest—no one knows anyone in it, or rather no one admits to knowing anyone in it. The days of blue-eyed boys with silk scarves, heavy limps and labradors vanished years ago leaving behind them a flotsam of sub-astronauts with social chips and nothing to do—they don’t have any aeroplanes either. To say you were in the ‘Raff rather than the Air Force is very Bryan Teale.
The Navy are difficult to categorize socially; they are often away for a long time, presumably at sea. As far as I can discover, there are not many of them left. There must be more retired naval people than there are serving, particularly admirals. However, the Navy are a game lot with exquisite manners and a romantic image—probably because one sees them so seldom. They’re also quite bright: you can’t get in unless you have five Os and three A-levels.
Harry Stow-Crat had a great-great-great-uncle who fought at Trafalgar and there is a battered portrait of him in the ballroom with a hole in it where some young blood threw an ashtray during a hunt ball. There is a rusting sextant which belonged to another uncle who was in Clippers in the downstairs lavatory. Harry also had an aunt in the Wrens.
Gideon Upward’s grandfather fought at Jutland, but no one knows what became of him after the Queen Mary sank. It was rumoured that he survived and went to Australia. The Nouveau-Richards’ connections with the Navy were restricted to a cruise to Bermuda where they were asked to ‘cocktails’ in the wardroom of H.M.S. something-or-other that was over there showing the flag.
It is very vulgar to call the Navy the ‘Royal Navy’. The upper classes wouldn’t be in anything else, and regard the Merchant Navy as beyond the pale.
Occasionally hand-picked officers in the Navy are selected to sail in Britannia and thereafter keep albums filled with glued-in concert programmes and photographs of princes in grass skirts being ducked at the equator.
Dive Definitely-Disgusting joined the sea scouts because you could smoke more easily in a whaler or a rusty M.T.B. than you could in a scout hut where you spent most of your time running around trying to avoid the clutches of the scoutmaster.
22 RELIGION
Frequent church-going becomes markedly less likely as one goes down the social scale. The upper classes regard it as a patriotic duty to set an example and go every Sunday, quite often to their own church where they have their own pew. As Douglas Sutherland has pointed out, the English Gentleman knows that God believes in him and sees it as his duty to return the compliment. He often reads the lesson, sings loudly but out of tune, and tells the vicar to speak up if he can’t hear the sermon. In return his church expects financial support. The Queen always gives £1 to the collection. The local vicar was ludicrously cross recently when the Marquess of Tavistock only sent him £25 for mending the church roof.
The Church of England is predominantly the church of the upper and middle classes. You find that the middle classes hog all the places on the parish council and act as sidesmen and churchwardens, while their wives, with their large well-stocked gardens, are responsible for the church flowers, church fetes and jumble sales. The working classes feel intimidated and left out.
It’s very vulgar to call a vicar ‘Vicar’ to his face, rather like ‘Doctor’ and ‘Teacher’; you should call him ‘Mr Upward’ or whatever his surname is. If he is a canon you could call him ‘Canon Stow-Crat’. On letters he should be addressed as ‘The Rev. Francis Stow-Crat’, never ‘Rev. Francis Stow-Crat’ or ‘The Rev. Stow-Crat’.
Despite keeping the working classes at arm’s length the Anglican Church, since the introduction of the New English Bible, is getting more folksy and vulgar every day. We now have ‘Mother’s Day’ instead of ‘Mothering Sunday’, to get it as far away from a church ritual as possible, and instead of ‘Harvest Festival’ we have ‘Harvest Home’ or ‘Harvest Supper’. In the towns they have plastic fruit, and lots of children arriving with apples on plastic trays. My sister-in-law in the country was asked to ‘bake a harvest pie for the harvest home’. This is apparently another name for a quiche. If she wasn’t up to a harvest pie, said the parish worker, a basket of provender would be very acceptable. Evidently the main excitement was some boys who were coming over from Uppingham to sing in the choir.
Next morning my sister-in-law’s char came in panting and puffing; she wasn’t going to make a harvest pie for them foreigners, she said, and what’s more she didn’t like the vicar.
Any significance Easter may have had for the masses has disappeared under a mass of overpriced chocolate and Easter Bunnies. And nothing can equal the flood of vulgarity which pours forth at Christmas, burying the country under a commercial avalanche of heavenly babes, yule logs, festive robins, jolly cardinals and seasonal cheer.
‘I’m toiling over a hot stove because Mummy prefers faith to works on Sunday mornings.’
The Stow-Crats have a real Christmas tree from the estate. It touches the ceiling and is decorated with candles and ancient peeling baubles. Snipe has a large mutton bone as a present, and Harry’s few remaining tenants and estate servants shuffle in to collect their hams and turkeys and have a drink.
Samantha’s and Gideon’s parents take it in turns to go and stay with
Samantha and Gideon at Christmas.
‘Don’t they realize you’re working?’ Gideon says furiously to Samantha every year. What he really minds about is not being able to drink himself stupid in front of his in-laws, and because Christmas goes on for so long he won’t have a chance to see the secretary he fancies for at least ten days. Christmas staying with in-laws is invariably a nightmare: not enough to drink and Thalia breaks the crib Virgin Mary on Boxing Day. No one fights openly (the Pargeters again) but a muscle is going in both Samantha’s and Mrs Upward’s cheek on the last day. Gideon doesn’t kick up too much because he knows Samantha’s father is going to give him £500 to pay the school fees. (The middle classes often use Christmas to hand over money, so the recipient won’t feel any loss of independence.) In revenge Colonel and Mrs Upward take Zacharias and Thalia to the pantomime in Bournemouth, where all over the theatre you will hear grandparents making cracks about their daughters-in-law.
‘We would have had much better seats and been able to see, Thalia darling, if Mummy hadn’t been so awfully vague about dates.’
Samantha would have a real Christmas tree, and she would prefer candles, but as a result of pressure from Zacharias, and worry about the fire risk, she has this year stuck to fairy lights. She insists on Thalia and Zacharias writing thank-you letters to show how good their hand-writing is. She and Gideon always get glasses as presents to make up for all the ones smashed during the year.
Mrs Nouveau-Richards has a vast silver plastic Christmas tree, groaning with tinsel. Jen Teale insists on a plastic tree too this year; she had to get last year’s tree out by Boxing Day because it was moulting pine needles so badly. She hangs the Christmas cards on strings across the lounge to avoid dust. Samantha regards Christmas cards as a marvellous excuse not to dust.
Christmas cards are a great class indicator in themselves. The upper classes like simple words inside their cards like ‘with best wishes for Christmas and the New Year’. If they have special cards printed, they only put their address at the bottom and write in their Christian names, or their Christian and surnames to those they know less well. The Weybridges have ‘Howard and Eileen Weybridge’ printed as well, and cross out the ‘Weybridge’ for their ‘very good friends.’ Mrs Nouveau-Richards has a very large card with a picture of jolly cardinals quaffing claret in front of a roaring fire, and inside a lovely poem about festive cheer, ‘Hearty Xmas Greetings’ and their name and address in red, loopy, spangled writing. Jison, as a member of the telly-stocracy often puts ‘Yours Aye’ or ‘Sincerely Yours, Jison Richards’ on his cards, which are usually of Santa with a red nose. Harry Stow-Crat would write ‘Love’, particularly if he were writing to a girl.
The spiralists have a photograph of themselves and their family on the front of their Christmas cards with a bigger and bigger house in the background, as the years go by. It is extremely vulgar to send your friends a roneo-ed letter bringing them boastfully up-to-date with all the doings of your family: ‘Daughter Avis is now chairwoman of the Surbiton Ladies’ Guild and still joint chairperson with her brother Roy of my late, beloved Hector’s company, Upstarts Polishing and Machine Tool Grinding Review.’
Samantha Upward insists on buying cards to support a charity, usually painted with someone’s feet. Mrs Definitely-Disgusting only sends cards to relations. She chooses one with ‘To a Very Special Daughter’ for Sharon, and ‘To a Fine Son’ for Dive, and inside underlines the bits in the poem which she thinks are applicable. Sharon and Dive club together to send a ‘Dearest Nana’ card to Mrs D-D’s mother.
Eileen Weybridge thoroughly enjoys the festive season. Her house is a picture of yuletide holly rings, white-washed twigs, and tinsel and ribbon decorations from Good Housekeeping.
She has also followed to the letter an article in the Barelaycard News Magazine on organizing your Christmas menu, which starts off: ‘With a little planning, Xmas can be a holiday for all the family’, and continues with instructions about embarking on a mammoth shopping spree with your Barclaycard, getting the family ‘to clean the cutlery in November’, trying a ‘portion of Minty Ice Cream for dinner on 3rd of December, just to test it’s acceptable for Christmas night’ and making kedgeree on the 5th of December to go in the freezer for breakfast on Christmas eve. Howard Weybridge is delegated to cope with the booze bill with his Barclaycard, and even the turkey is cooked in advance and sliced ready for re-heating. Howard brings home a festive gift box from Bentalls, and a special carrier bag full of fancy goods from the fairy grotto as a special prize for Cook.
Jen Teale also comes into her own at Christmas. Everyone comments on the daintiness of her gifts. She knows that how you wrap a parcel is so much more important than what’s in it. Even boxes of chocolates are now smothered in brightly coloured gift-wrap (as she calls wrapping paper) and topped with tasteful concentric circles of coloured ribbon, just like Harrods. She also bakes all the ‘Christmas Fayre’ without the aid of a deep freeze, because she follows the Woman’s Own guide for keeping bandbox fresh over the ‘Festive Season’.
The Definitely-Disgustings have a real blow-out. They’ve contributed 50p a week all year to the Christmas Club and this year Mr Definitely-Disgusting is personally going to see that the treasurer doesn’t abscond with the lot on the 22nd of December. Sharon Definitely-Disgusting trails round Woolworths with a list saying:
Nan: Devon Violets
Mum: Giftpack
Dad: Condor Tobacco
Dive: Brut
Auntie Dot: Thomas and Sarah’s brandied peaches
Marlene: Bendy Kermit
Mr Whiskas: Catnip Mouse
Spotty: Bumper Xmas Choc Drops
The whole family is glued to I.T.V. over the holiday, although Mr D-D, after a surfeit of turkey and all the trimmings, snores his way like a good patriot through the Queen’s speech. Spotty, having demolished the bumper Xmas Choc Drops, the Catnip mouse and a stolen turkey bone, is sick.
23 DEATH
O happy release, where is thy sting?
At last we come to Death the Leveller who lays his icy hand on Stow-Crats and Definitely-Disgustings alike. Poets over the ages have been haunted by the theme. Shakespeare wrote of golden lads and girls mingling in the dust with chimney-sweepers. Hardy described the yokels William Dewy and Tranter Reuben lying in Mellstock churchyard beside the Squire and Lady Susan. But even if we are all equal in the moment of death, the living see that our departure is celebrated in very different ways.
Once upon a time funerals were occasions for great pomp—with a long procession of carriages drawn by horses wearing floor-length black velvet, with everyone including the children in deepest black, men and boys doffing their hats along the route, and close relations going into mourning for several months. An outward and lavish display was regarded as a measure of the family’s affection for the dead. But, like most fashions, it filtered down the classes, withering at the top, until today only among the working classes, who are usually much closer to their families and like any excuse for a party, does the tradition of the splendid funeral linger on.
Attitudes have changed too. In Victorian times everyone accepted and talked naturally about death. Given the rate of infant mortality, it would have been impossible even for a child to be shielded from the subject. Sex was the great taboo, with copulation never mentioned, and babies being born under gooseberry bushes. Today everyone talks about sex and birth quite naturally, it is death that has become taboo. Perhaps it is because most people no longer believe in an after-life that they cannot face up to the horror of death and so sweep everything under the carpet. In the old days a man died surrounded by his family; the Victorian deathbed was one of the great set pieces. Today, according to Geoffrey Gorer’s excellent book, Death, Grief and Mourning, in the upper-middle and professional classes it is rare for a bereaved person to be present at death (less than one in eight).
The undertaker would pick up the body from the hospital, and none of the family would pay respects to it. In the same wa
y, Samantha Upward or Jen Teale, even if their mother died at three o’clock in the morning, would be on to the undertaker in a flash to get the body out of the house. The Definitely-Disgustings, however, would be much more likely to be present at the death, and to visit the body if they were not. When I worked on a local paper, whenever a working-class person died I was always invited in for a cup of tea to admire the corpse lying in his coffin in the sitting room. As cremation gets more and more popular, too, the ashes tend to be left with the undertaker, and even a grave to mourn at is disappearing. According to our local undertaker, the middle classes often prefer not to watch that poignant final moment when the coffin disappears through the doors. They specify beforehand that they don’t want the coffin to move, and troop out while it’s still on its platform.
Fear of expressing unhappiness is also a characteristic of the upper middles—the stiff upper-middle lip again. Geoffrey Gorer said his own sister-in-law didn’t even go to her husband’s funeral, she was so terrified of breaking down in front of all her friends and relations and, wishing to spare the children such a depressing experience, took them for a picnic. Yet as a bereaved person, she found herself shunned like a leper. Only if she acted as though nothing of consequence had happened was she again socially acceptable. Thus, not only death but overt suffering is taboo. Perhaps this explains the plethora of euphemisms surrounding the subject. Howard Weybridge never ‘dies’, he ‘passes away’, or ‘passes on’, or ‘passes over’, or ‘goes to God’ or ‘to his rest’. Death is even described as ‘falling asleep’. ‘Flowers’ become ‘floral tributes’; even the undertaker prefers to call himself a ‘funeral director’, and describes a burial as an ‘interment’.
Harry Stow-Crat’s father, Lord Egliston, would have had a nice end to his life. He had made everything over to Harry to avoid estate duty, and all the family have been frantically cosseting him to keep him alive the required five years. ‘My father’s great dread was going senile,’ said one aristocrat, apologising for his father who was happily exposing himself in the orangery. ‘But now he has, he’s enjoying himself enormously.’ Since his father’s death would be noticed on the obituary page, Harry might not bother to pay for an insertion in the deaths column. If he did, it would be simple, saying where his father had died, and where and at what time the funeral would be held. Gideon Upward would also put his mother’s death in The Times, and he might add her age (Samantha certainly would, out of spite) and the fact that she was the widow of Colonel Upward. Howard Weybridge would use the Telegraph. Jen Teale would use the local paper and add a sentence about ‘passing peacefully away’, and being the ‘loving mother of Bryan and devoted granny of Wayne and Christine. The Definitely-Disgustings would probably throw in ‘a happy release’, and ‘a special auntie to Charlene and little Terry’, and a ‘thank you’ to the nurses, doctors and district nurses concerned.