Taki is right: we are all still snobs
Vassi Chamberlain was taken to task by the poor little Greek boy over her powers of social observation. On reflection, she concedes that snobbery has never truly gone out of fashion
If only we could transport Edith Wharton, the great novelist and social commentator of the late 19th and early 20th century, into 2008. She would have a field day. In The House of Mirth she wrote about turn-of-the-century New York and the horror with which old money greeted, and then had to accept, the new. Plus ça change, is what she’d say.
What really got everyone going was not my introduction, but the piece about the hostesses. Great offence was taken regarding the inclusion of two women who everyone felt shouldn’t be there, or at least not alongside (horror of horrors) the names of the old guard. You’d have thought the objectors had been lumped with Derek Conway, Jade Goody and Peter Hain. ‘How could you include them? They’re so tacky,’ I was told at one dinner. But I didn’t write that bit, I told deaf ears. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you,’ said another. When I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, he sneered. ‘Of course you do.’ No, I really don’t, I replied. ‘You said I had dinner at that person’s house,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been to that person’s house.’ I had to stop myself from laughing in his face and shouting, ‘Call yourself a man, you big investment banker pussy.’
If you think this sort of knee-jerk anti-nouveau snobbery can mostly be consigned to the boors and buffoons of an England that is long dead, think again. Snobbery is as rife in central London as it ever was and by people who have no right to be snobs. Poor Richard Caring has been a victim of it, simply because he (a north London rag-trade millionaire, and an untitled one at that) dared to buy Mark Birley’s empire. The vilest things have been said of him with no justification at all by people who think snob means clever.
Ski resorts like Gstaad may be particular hotbeds of snobbery, but what about Cameron’s fanciful notion of a classless Britain? Not only is the success or failure of such an aspiration so obviously and hilariously impossible to achieve, simply articulating it suggests he understands this country very little. It’s going to be much easier to believe that the citizens of a country with our social history might cosily shake off the class prejudice which so clearly permeates almost every second of UK television (apart from anything else) if one’s vantage point is from the advantaged end of the spectrum. That’s not his fault, it’s just the way it is.
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Evelyn Powell
March 28th, 2008 1:26amMiss Chamberlain just doesn't get it. The subtext of this faux apology is that she is right and Taki is wrong. That could never be. In legal parlance, it is not an admission, nor a confession and avoidance, but a denial. Her belief is that if there are nuances of behaviour and values which distinguish some people from others, there shouldn't be. Which leads of course to the lowest common denominator, multicultural, identity-free, vulgarian society of rock star "celebrities", reality television, estuary english and the tabloids which England has deliquesced into and which is lamented in your leading article today.
Noblesse Oblige
March 28th, 2008 6:13amSince when was it snobbery for persons of patrician provenance and mien to deplore and avoid the appalling pachyderm gatecrashing of nouveaux and arrivistes? That's not snobbery, it's just good sense. Miss Chamberlain soes not know what snobbery is. At its worst it is an exaggerated regard for people on account of their supposed social position or wealth. On that basis, it is the nouveau and the arriviste who are the snobs, not those in whose society they aspire to find acceptance. It is why the Blairs never found acceptance, for they are snobs within that definition, and were seen to be vulgar arrivistes. The other, slightly less pernicious, sort of snobbery looks down on people for the reason that they do not possess social position or wealth. Both sorts are foolish, and show a want of intellect and breeding. I commend Miss Chamberlain to Christopher Sykes's biography of Evelyn Waugh for an interesting analysis of snobbery amongst the English. He posthumously castigated his friend Waugh for his weakness in this regard.