Class Read online

  About the Book

  The English have been and always will be obsessed by class, even though they may not realise it. And Jilly Cooper has put an accurate, acerbic, and wickedly funny finger on the idiosyncracies of the English at home, whether it be in their castles, their nice villas in Weybridge, or in their high rise council flats. In Class we study the peculiar habits and mores of all classes - at play, at school, at work, during courtship and marriage rituals, even the way they dress, eat, and conduct their sex lives.

  Here we have Harry and Caroline Stow-Crat who love their dogs more than each other, Gideon and Samanatha Upward who drink too much and are always in respectable middle-class debt, and here, too, are the wonderful Nouveau Richards, whose luxury homes are in execrable taste but blissfully comfortable with chandeliers in the loo.

  Jilly Cooper

  Class

  A view from middle England

  with drawings by

  TIMOTHY JAQUES

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409032007

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  CLASS

  A CORGI BOOK : 978 0 552 14662 3

  Originally published in Great Britain by Eyre Methuen Ltd

  printing history

  Eyre Methuen edition published 1979

  Corgi revised edition published 1980

  Mandarin edition published 1993

  Corgi edition published 1999

  7 9 10 8 6

  Copyright © Jilly Cooper 1979, 1990, 1999

  Illustrations and captions copyright © Timothy Jaques 1979, 1980

  The right of Jilly Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Set in 10/11pt Century Schoolbook.

  Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers,

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA,

  a division of The Random House Group Ltd.

  Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Dramatis Personae

  Introduction

  One: The Classes

  Two: Children

  Three: The Nanny

  Four: Education

  Five: University

  Six: Work

  Seven: Sex and Marriage

  Eight: Homosexuality

  Nine: Houses

  Ten: Geography

  Eleven: Gardens

  Twelve: Food

  Thirteen: Drink

  Fourteen: Appearance

  Fifteen: Voices

  Sixteen: The Arts

  Seventeen: Television

  Eighteen: World of Sport

  Nineteen: Dogs

  Twenty: Clubs

  Twenty-One: The Services

  Twenty-Two: Religion

  Twenty-Three: Death

  About the Author

  Jilly Cooper is a journalist, writer and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire with her husband Leo, her rescue greyhound Feather and her black cat Feral.

  She was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to literature, and in 2009 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Gloucestershire for her contribution to literature and services to the County.

  Find out more about Jilly Cooper at her website www.jillycooper.co.uk

  By Jilly Cooper

  FICTION

  RIDERS

  RIVALS

  POLO

  THE MAN WHO MADE HUSBANDS JEALOUS

  APPASSIONATA

  SCORE!

  PANDORA

  WICKED!

  JUMP!

  NON-FICTION

  ANIMALS IN WAR

  CLASS

  HOW TO SURVIVE CHRISTMAS

  HOTFOOT TO ZABRISKIE POINT (with Patrick Lichfield)

  INTELLIGENT AND LOYAL

  JOLLY MARSUPIAL

  JOLLY SUPER

  JOLLY SUPERLATIVE

  JOLLY SUPER TOO

  SUPER COOPER

  SUPER JILLY

  SUPER MEN AND SUPER WOMEN

  THE COMMON YEARS

  TURN RIGHT AT THE SPOTTED DOG

  WORK AND WEDLOCK

  ANGELS RUSH IN

  ARAMINTA’S WEDDING

  CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  LITTLE MABEL

  LITTLE MABEL’S GREAT ESCAPE

  LITTLE MABEL SAVES THE DAY

  LITTLE MABEL WINS

  ROMANCE

  BELLA

  EMILY

  HARRIET

  IMOGEN

  LISA & CO

  OCTAVIA

  PRUDENCE

  ANTHOLOGIES

  THE BRITISH IN LOVE

  VIOLETS AND VINEGAR

  My husband, a publisher, claims that it is excruciatingly bad form to dedicate a book to one’s publisher. It is therefore entirely in character for me to dedicate this book to my publisher, Geoffrey Strachan, with love and gratitude.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am extremely grateful to the people who have helped me with this book. They include Andrew Batute, formerly manager of the French Revolution Restaurant in London, John Challis, formerly manager of Lloyds Bank, Sloane Square, Michael Davey, funeral director, Mathias of Putney, Brian Edgington, headmaster of Roehampton Church School, Brian Holley, divisional careers officer of ILEA (Putney), Heather Jenner, Auriol Murray, of Nannies (Kensington), Renate Olins, of the Marriage Guidance Council, Charles Plouviez, chairman of Everetts Advertising.

  I also owe an eternal debt to my friends, who have entered into the spirit of things, and come up with numerous suggestions, some serious, some less so. They include Brinsley Black, John Braine, Lucinda Bredin, Christopher Brown, Madeleine Carritt, Tony Carritt, Camilla Dempster, Val ffrench-Blake, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Bertie Gratton-Belew, Caroline Gray, Laura Hesketh, George Humphreys, Sophie Irvin, Jennifer Justice, Susan Kyle, Ronald and Sylvia Lewin, Miles and Juliet McNair, Nicholas Monson, John Parvin, Humphrey Pullar, Elizabeth Steel, Michael Stourton, Antonia Thynne, Guelda Waller, Alexander Weymouth, David Wright, Michael Ward, and Caroline Yardley.

  Five other people made it possible for me to complete the book. I would therefore particularly like to thank my agent, George Greenfield, who has always shown such enthusiasm for the project, Beryl Hill, who typed out the manuscript and who miraculously managed to decipher my appalling hand-writing, and my resident major domo, Maxine Green, who retyped chunks of the manuscript when I couldn’t read my own corrections and kept up my spirits throughout those dark, desperate weeks, before the book was finally handed in and Tom Hartman and Alan Earney, who helped so much with the editing. The lion’s share of my gratitude, however, must go to my publisher, Geoffrey Strachan, who has been amazingly kind, patient, and encouraging over a long long period, when he must have despaired that the
manuscript would ever see the light of day, and finally to my husband, Leo, whose humour and powers of observation have been a constant source of inspiration, and who remained good tempered, even when the whole house, including our bedroom, disappeared under a sea of papers and reference books.

  Putney 1979

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The people you will meet in this book are:

  HARRY STOW-CRAT, a member of the aristocracy

  CAROLINE STOW-CRAT, his wife

  GEORGIE STOW-CRAT, his son

  FIONA STOW-CRAT, his daughter and numerous other children, both regularly and irregularly conceived

  SNIPE, a black Labrador

  GIDEON UPWARD, a member of the upper middle classes

  SAMANTHA UPWARD, his wife

  ZACHARIAS UPWARD, his son

  THALIA UPWARD, his daughter

  COLONEL UPWARD, Gideon’s father

  MRS UPWARD, Gideon’s mother

  HOWARD WEYBRIDGE, a member of the middle middle classes

  EILEEN WEYBRIDGE, his wife

  BRYAN TEALE, a member of the lower middle classes

  JEN TEALE, his wife

  WAYNE TEALE, his son

  CHRISTINE TEALE, his daughter

  MR DEFINITELY-DISGUSTING, a member of the working classes

  MRS DEFINITELY-DISGUSTING, his wife

  DIVE DEFINITELY-DISGUSTING, his son

  SHARON DEFINITELY-DISGUSTING, his daughter and numerous other children

  MR NOUVEAU-RICHARDS, a millionaire

  MRS NOUVEAU-RICHARDS, his wife

  JISON NOUVEAU-RICHARDS, his son

  TRACEY-DIANE NOUVEAU-RICHARDS, his daughter

  Introduction

  In the middle of the seventies when I tentatively suggested writing a book about the English class system, people drew away from me in horror.

  ‘But that’s all finished,’ they said nervously, ‘no one gives a hoot any more. Look at the young.’ They sounded as if I was intending to produce a standard work on coprophilia or child-molesting. It was plain that, since the egalitarian shake-up of the ’sixties and early ’seventies, class as a subject had become the ultimate obscenity.

  What struck me, however, as soon as I started the book was the enormity of the task I had taken on. It was like trying to catalogue the sea. For the whole system, despite its stratification, is constantly forming and reforming like coral. ‘Even a small town like Swansea,’ wrote Wynford Vaughan Thomas ‘has as many layers as an onion, and each one of them reduces you to tears.’ To me the system seemed more like a huge, striped rugger shirt that had run in the wash, with each layer blurring into the next and snobbery fiercest where one stripe merged with another.

  I found, too, that people were incredibly difficult to pin down into classes. John went to a more famous boarding school than Thomas, who has a better job than Charles, who’s got smarter friends than Harry, who lives in an older house with a bigger garden than David, who’s got an uncle who’s an earl, but whose children go to comprehensive school. Who is then the gentleman?

  A social class can perhaps be rather cumbersomely described as a group of people with certain common traits: descent, education, accent, similarity of occupation, riches, moral attitude, friends, hobbies, accomodation; and with generally similar ideas and forms of behaviour, who meet each other on equal terms and regard themselves as belonging to one group. A single failure to conform would certainly not exclude you from membership. Your own class tend to be people you feel comfortable with – ‘one of our sort’ – as you do when you are wearing old flat shoes rather than teetering round on precarious five-inch heels. ‘The nice thing about the House of Lords,’ explained one peer, ‘is that you can have incredibly snobbish conversations without feeling snobbish. Yesterday I admired a chap’s wife’s diamonds; he said they came from Napoleon’s sword, and before that from Louis XIV.’

  I was continually asked as I wrote the book what right had I to hold forth on the English class system. Most people who had tried in the past, Nancy Mitford, Christopher Sykes, Angus Maude, had been members of the upper classes. The answer was no right at all. All I could claim was a passionate interest in the subject and, being unashamedly middle class, I was perhaps more or less equidistant from bottom and top.

  It might therefore be appropriate here to digress a little and explain what my origins are. My paternal grandfather was a wool-merchant, but my paternal grandmother’s family were a bit grander. They owned newspapers and were distinguished Whig M.P.s for Leeds during the nineteenth century. My mother’s side were mostly in the church, her father being Canon of Heaton, near Bradford. Both sides had lived in the West Riding of Yorkshire for generations and were very, very strait-laced.

  My father went to Rugby, then to Cambridge, where he got a first in two years, and then into the army. After getting married, he found he wasn’t making enough money and joined Fords and he and my mother moved, somewhat reluctantly, to Essex, where I was born. At the beginning of the Second World War he was called up and became one of the army’s youngest brigadiers. After the war we moved back to Yorkshire, living first in a large Victorian house. I was eight and, I think for the first time, became aware of class distinction. Our next-door neighbour was a newly rich and very ostentatious wool-merchant, of whose sybaritic existence my parents disapproved. One morning he asked me over to his house. I had a heavenly time, spending all morning playing the pianola, of which my mother also disapproved—too much pleasure for too little effort—and eating a whole eight-ounce bar of black market milk chocolate, which, just after the war, seemed like stumbling on Aladdin’s cave. When I got home I was sick. I was aware that it served me right both for slumming and for over-indulgence.

  Soon after that we moved into the Hall at Ilkley, a splendid Georgian house with a long drive, seven acres of fields for my ponies, a swimming pool and tennis and squash courts. From then on we lived an élitist existence; tennis parties with cucumber sandwiches, large dances and fetes in the garden. I enjoyed playing little Miss Muck tremendously. I had a photograph of the house taken from the bottom of the drive on my dressing table at school and all my little friends were very impressed.

  My brother, however, still had doubts about our lifestyle. It was too bourgeois, too predictable and restricted, he thought. One wet afternoon I remember him striding up and down the drawing-room going on and on about our boring, middle-class existence.

  Suddenly my mother, who’d been trying to read a detective story, looked over her spectacles and said with very gentle reproof ‘Upper-middle class, darling.’

  Occasionally we were taken down a peg by a socialist aunt who thought we’d all got too big for our boots. One day my mother was describing some people who lived near York as being a very ‘old’ family.

  ‘Whadja mean old?’ snorted my aunt. ‘All families are old.’

  There were very few eligible young men in Ilkley; the glamorous, hard-drinking wool-merchants’ sons with their fast cars, teddy-bear coats and broad Yorkshire accents were as far above me sexually as they were below me, I felt, socially. But when I was about eighteen two old Etonians came to live in the district for a year. They were learning farming before going to run their estates. They were both very attractive and easy-going, and were consequently asked everywhere, every mum with a marriageable daughter competing for their attention. I was terribly disconcerted when, after a couple of visits to our house, and one of them taking me out once, they both became complete habitués of the house of a jumped-up steel-merchant across the valley. Soon they were both fighting for the hand of his not particularly good-looking daughter. But she’s so much commoner than me, I remember thinking in bewilderment, why don’t they prefer my company and our house? I realize now that they far preferred the easy-going atmosphere of the steel-merchant’s house, with its lush hospitality, ever-flowing drink and poker sessions far into the night, to one glass of sherry and deliberately intelligent conversation in ours. I had yet to learn, too, that people invariably disl
ike and shun the class just below them, and much prefer the class below that, or even the one below that.

  I was further bewildered when, later in the year, I went to Oxford to learn to type and shared a room with an ‘Hon’ who said ‘handbag’. This seemed like blasphemy. Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love had been my bible as a teenager. I knew that peers’ daughters, who she immortalized as ‘Hons’, said ‘bag’ rather than handbag. At that time, too, aware of a slowly emerging sexuality and away at last from parental or educational restraint, I evolved a new way of dressing: five-inch high-heeled shoes, tight straight skirts, very, very tight cheap sweaters and masses of make-up to cover a still rather bad skin. I looked just like a tart. People obviously took me for one too. For when my room-mate introduced me to all her smart friends at Christ Church, one young blood promptly bet another young blood a tenner that he couldn’t get me into bed by the end of the week. Before he had had time to lay siege the story was repeated back to me. I was shattered. Shocked and horrified to my virginal middle-class core, I cried for twenty-four hours. My would-be seducer, who had a good heart, on hearing of my misery turned up at my digs, apologized handsomely and suggested, by way of making amends rather than me, that he take me to the cinema. On the way there he stopped at a sweet shop and bought a bar of chocolate. Breaking it, he gave me half and started to eat the other half himself.

  ‘But you can’t eat sweets in the street,’ I gasped, almost more shocked than I had been by his intended seduction.

  ‘I,’ he answered, with centuries of disdain in his voice, ‘can do anything I like.’

  Hons who talked about handbags, lords who ate chocolate in the street like the working classes, aristocrats who preferred the jumped-up to the solidly middle class: I was slowly learning that the class system was infinitely more complicated than I had ever dreamed.

 
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