Noblesse Oblige : An inquiry into the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy by Nancy Mitford

Author:Nancy Mitford [Mitford, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: English language, Aristocracy (Social Class), Speech and social status, Upper class, Nobility, Social classes
Publisher: New York : Atheneum
Published: 1986-03-23T13:00:00+00:00

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE HONOURABLE MRS.PETER RODD (NANCY MITFORD) ON A VERY SERIOUS SUBJECT

FROM EVELYN WAUGH

Dearest Nancy,

Were you surprised that your article on the English aristocracy caused such a to-do? I wasn't. I have long revered you as an agitator—agitatrix, agitateuse? —of genius. You have only to publish a few cool reflections on eighteenth-century furniture to set gangs on the prowl through the Faubourg St. Germain splashing the walls with "Nancy, go home." In England class distinctions have always roused higher feelings than national honour; they have always been the subject of feverish but very private debate. So, when you brought them into the open, of course everyone talked, of course the columnists quoted you and corrected you. Letters poured in to the various editors, many of them, I am told, unprintably violent. You were the subject of a literary competition (which produced very sad entries) and now here am I, late but implacable, chipping in too.

Should delicacy have restrained you? your friends anxiously ask. There are subjects too intimate for print. Surely class is one? The vast and elaborate structure grew up almost in secret. Now it shows alarming signs of dilapidation. Is this the moment to throw it open to the heavy-footed public? Yes, I think it is, and particularly, as you have done, to the literary public. My reproach is that, in doing so, you have in your skittish way bamboozled a great number of needy young persons. Have you ever heard of the "Butler Education Act"? I suppose not, although it happened in the days when you still lived among us. It was one of the things that politicians did when no one was looking, toward the end of the war. It has nothing at all to do with training male indoor-servants nor with instructing the designer of the "Unknown Political Prisoner" in the intricacies of his craft. The name derives from the Mr. Butler who at the time of writing has just knocked a few shillings off the price of my trousers. Clearly he is a generous fellow. In his Education Act he provided for the free distribution of university degrees to the deserving poor. Very handy for splitting atoms and that kind of thing, you will say. But many of Mr. Butler's proteges choose, or are directed into, "Literature." I could make your flesh creep by telling you about the new wave of philistinism with which we are threatened by these sour young people who are coming off the assembly lines in their hundreds every year and finding employment as critics, even as poets and novelists. L'£cole de Butler are the primal men and women of the classless society. Their novelists seem to be aware of the existence of a rather more expensive world than their own—bars in which spirits are regularly drunk in preference to beer, loose women who take taxis, crooks in silk shirts— but of the ramifications of the social order which have obsessed some of the acutest minds of the last 150 years, they know less than of the castes of India.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.