Fellowes, J. (2004) Snobs. Weidenfeld & Nicholson

 

Fellowes, J. (2004) Snobs. Weidenfeld & Nicholson

 

Summary

Edith wants to climb the social ladder. Her mother is desperate for her to climb the social ladder. Edith meets and marries Charles, Earl Broughton. For a while, she delights in her new life of luxury and privilege but becomes bored by life on a country estate and by the limited conversation of the aristocracy with whom she mingles. She meets and sets-up home with Simon, a struggling actor with tremendous good looks … and a wife and children. For a while, Edith delights in her new life with Simon, but she becomes bored by life among the arty-actor set and hankers for the security of the staid-but-stable life of a mid-level aristocrat. Despite the best efforts of his mother ('Googie' - married to 'Tigger'), Charles hasn't found a (more suitable) replacement for Edith and they reunite just seven months before she bears her child with Simon.

 

 

My comments

The author/narrator gives every appearance of criticising the aristocracy for the various ways in which they exclude and dismiss people outside their class. Yet this book excludes and dismisses people who don't share the author's class, background and education. Some examples:

* 'Who do you know?' or, rather, 'Of whom do you know?

         'Certainly Edith was no Gertrude Stein. Her idea of intellectuality was reading the latest John Mortimer. … I suppressed my urge to smile at being trapped in this bit of Frederick Lonsdale dialogue.' (p.54)

* 'What do you know?'

'(Charles) had no modes of original expression and was almost invariably forced back into cinematic clichés when trying to describe love or hate or anything else not covered by the Jockey Club rules.' (p.54)

'(The Paris Ritz is) A red white and gilt palace, sumptuous and yet quite pretty - quite unlike the modern, Park Lane equivalents got up, as they are, like enormous Maida Vale hairdressing salons.' (p.55)

* Surely you know French?!

'Au fond' (p.43), 'cuisine de la maison' (p.72), 'haut bourgeois' (p.78), 'plus Catholique que le Pape' (p.83), 'luxe', 'hateur' (p.89), 'Grand Battu' (p.90), 'anciens riches' (p.92), 'declasse' (p.93), 'fin de siecle' (p.97), 'bouillon' (p.98)

 

Snobs has a similar tone to the novels by John Wyndham (whose stories I admire) - 'the world is as it must be, because I'm doing all right in it'. So there's nothing essentially wrong with the aristocracy's enormous wealth, power and privilege - but they are quite extraordinary people, aren't they?