Life Class: The Selected Memoirs Of Diana Athill by Diana Athill Page A
Authors: Diana Athill
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do you always say ain’t ? The proper way to say it is isn’t .’
‘You’re wrong there,’ said Wilfred placidly. ‘The proper way to say it is is not .’
And snubs to us, I thought, with surprise and pleasure. It was not Wilfred’s scoring over my brother that pleased me, but his scoring over both of us, because for a moment I had identified with the jibe and had simultaneously been made to feel uncomfortable by it. For a flash, we had both belonged to a world superior to Wilfred’s, which had felt wrong. His answer had demolished that superiority and had given him a dignity which I wanted him to possess. I was, after all, in love with him, though not so passionately as I was with the gardener’s boy who was romantically distanced by being in his teens.
If blood sports were as inevitable as the seasons, class differences were as natural as weather; and thus, like the sports, embraced contradictions which we failed to perceive. Of course Wilfred was our best friend – we itched every day for the moment when we could scoot across the park to the farm and join him – and a friend not only congenial, but admirable. He went to bed later than we did, for one thing, and ate tinned salmon which we were not allowed, and knew more than we did about farming matters. He was also more sober and responsible than we were, so if he condemned something as silly we expected him to be right. And he was handsome: I often put him in peril in my daydreams so that I could rescue him and perhaps even kiss him before he recovered consciousness. Yet in spite of all this he never came into our house and we never went into his. We might call for him, or he for us, but then the caller would wait shyly by the door while an adult summoned the one called on. And neither side even noticed this.
In spite of taking class too much for granted to question it, we were not unaware of it. We knew it because this whole place belonged to us (to our grandparents, but we made no distinction). The house, the park, the lake, the farm and other farms as far as we ever had occasion to walk or ride: all ours. No other house known to us was so big or appeared on yellowing postcards sold in the village post office. We knew it because when our mother overheard us boasting to a visiting child that the house had twenty bedrooms, she told us afterwards that we must never talk like that: it was ill-bred to boast of what you had to anyone who had less. We knew it because when I had been impertinent to a housemaid I had been sharply scolded: ‘You must never be rude to servants because, you see, they can’t answer back’ (they could, and did – but it was true that they couldn’t punish me: I saw that, and granted justice to the dictum). We knew it, too, because we had heard grown-ups ask ‘Is he not a gentleman?’ or describe someone as ‘not quite’, and the tone of voice was rich in meaning. There was nothing wrong in being a gamekeeper or a ploughman, a butler or a cook, a saddler or a tailor, but these people existed on another plane; and if someone who belonged on that plane tried to behave as though he didn’t, he became both deplorable and comic. There was likely to be a strong taint of pubbiness about such a person, and our natural appetite for victims made this idea acceptable. Indeed, we found this little-considered but pervasive sense of class sustaining: one can hardly fail to feel the better for being sure one is the best.
It was rare, however, for us to be offensive – perhaps the ain’t – is not incident was the only one of its kind between us and Wilfred. We had few occasions for the open exercise of snobbery: most of the people we knew were of our own class or else of the rural working class which was shaped by economics and custom to fit in with ours. Other people were more likely to be seen at a distance than known. There was, for instance, a girl who came out hunting in a top hat and patent-leather boots – a sort of music-hall
‘You’re wrong there,’ said Wilfred placidly. ‘The proper way to say it is is not .’
And snubs to us, I thought, with surprise and pleasure. It was not Wilfred’s scoring over my brother that pleased me, but his scoring over both of us, because for a moment I had identified with the jibe and had simultaneously been made to feel uncomfortable by it. For a flash, we had both belonged to a world superior to Wilfred’s, which had felt wrong. His answer had demolished that superiority and had given him a dignity which I wanted him to possess. I was, after all, in love with him, though not so passionately as I was with the gardener’s boy who was romantically distanced by being in his teens.
If blood sports were as inevitable as the seasons, class differences were as natural as weather; and thus, like the sports, embraced contradictions which we failed to perceive. Of course Wilfred was our best friend – we itched every day for the moment when we could scoot across the park to the farm and join him – and a friend not only congenial, but admirable. He went to bed later than we did, for one thing, and ate tinned salmon which we were not allowed, and knew more than we did about farming matters. He was also more sober and responsible than we were, so if he condemned something as silly we expected him to be right. And he was handsome: I often put him in peril in my daydreams so that I could rescue him and perhaps even kiss him before he recovered consciousness. Yet in spite of all this he never came into our house and we never went into his. We might call for him, or he for us, but then the caller would wait shyly by the door while an adult summoned the one called on. And neither side even noticed this.
In spite of taking class too much for granted to question it, we were not unaware of it. We knew it because this whole place belonged to us (to our grandparents, but we made no distinction). The house, the park, the lake, the farm and other farms as far as we ever had occasion to walk or ride: all ours. No other house known to us was so big or appeared on yellowing postcards sold in the village post office. We knew it because when our mother overheard us boasting to a visiting child that the house had twenty bedrooms, she told us afterwards that we must never talk like that: it was ill-bred to boast of what you had to anyone who had less. We knew it because when I had been impertinent to a housemaid I had been sharply scolded: ‘You must never be rude to servants because, you see, they can’t answer back’ (they could, and did – but it was true that they couldn’t punish me: I saw that, and granted justice to the dictum). We knew it, too, because we had heard grown-ups ask ‘Is he not a gentleman?’ or describe someone as ‘not quite’, and the tone of voice was rich in meaning. There was nothing wrong in being a gamekeeper or a ploughman, a butler or a cook, a saddler or a tailor, but these people existed on another plane; and if someone who belonged on that plane tried to behave as though he didn’t, he became both deplorable and comic. There was likely to be a strong taint of pubbiness about such a person, and our natural appetite for victims made this idea acceptable. Indeed, we found this little-considered but pervasive sense of class sustaining: one can hardly fail to feel the better for being sure one is the best.
It was rare, however, for us to be offensive – perhaps the ain’t – is not incident was the only one of its kind between us and Wilfred. We had few occasions for the open exercise of snobbery: most of the people we knew were of our own class or else of the rural working class which was shaped by economics and custom to fit in with ours. Other people were more likely to be seen at a distance than known. There was, for instance, a girl who came out hunting in a top hat and patent-leather boots – a sort of music-hall
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