I suspect he was talking about polished wool suits - think mobster. Think Silvio from The Sopranos.
I love the Fussell book and have read my copy to pieces, although I consider much of it provincially biased towards the American Northeast. Still, he presents a number of conceptual underpinnings which, in my opininon, are mostly valid.
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[li]If you visibly aspire to show class, you lose it almost by definition. This includes rigorously observing what you believe to be the conventions of the next higher rung, like the middle class housewife who scrupulously sends out thank-you notes because she thinks it’s what the upper middles do.[/li][li]Use of polysyllabic words when a shorter word means exactly the same thing: “Beverages” instead of “drinks”, “utilize” instead of “use”, and so on, is low.[/li][li]Similarly with the use of specific words which the speaker believes to demonstrate wealth or sophistication: “limousine” instead of “car”, “chauffeur” instead of “driver”, “mansion” instead of “house” for example. Or specifically naming, for example, the drink that will be served, e.g. Cognac or champagne, instead of just inviting someone to have a drink.[/li][li]Conspicuous consumption does not display class; in fact if any kind of consumption does, it’s inconspicuous consumption. This would include things like choosing a tan or light grey overcoat/raincoat, because it is more expensive to clean and maintain than a black one.[/li][li]Scrupulously addressing superiors by their titles, when no one else does, is low. An example would be someone in a Los Angeles corporate business office who insists on calling the boss Mr. X., even though first-name address is practically universal among everyone from the lowliest mail clerk to the CEO. [/li][li]The higher your class, the less you are willing to even discuss it, because a tacit understanding among you and your peers is assumed. To say someone “has class” instantly brands you as what Fussell calls a “prole”. “Classy” is a thousand times worse.[/li][li]As a guest in a wealthy home, to effusively praise expensive furnishings, objets d’art, the food that was served, or the house and grounds, is low. Of course they’re supposed to be of the best, so nothing should need to be said.[/li][li]I really can’t discuss this anymore. :D[/li][/ul]
OK, I’ll talk about it a little more, because I can’t omit the fact that Fussell does not aim all his barbs at the lower rungs of the ladder. Perhaps the worst failing of the super-rich is a tendency towards intellectual laziness. They often send their kids to third rate schools and colleges just because they are expensive and cater to the right sort. In a similar way, they may exult in things like honorary degrees from utterly unknown colleges, when they are awarded to them as benefactors.
If you’ve ever seen the classic film Bringing Up Baby, in which Katharine Hepburn plays an heiress who says a missing dinosaur bone must be “hundreds of years old”, you’ve seen a perfect example of this.
(Bolding mine)
I have to disagree on the college part. Undergraduates tend to be still learning to drink, and to gravitate towards sweet mixed drinks. Besides, pounding rap or loud rock seems to be the sound track of any college bar I’ve ever been in. OTOH I agree that better bars popular with students will offer a more upscale selection of drinks.
I’ve noticed that people who are born to wealth or damn-near-to-it tend not to follow the rules of etiquette that middle-class people assume are signs of “class”.
This is just a single anecdote, but I’ve heard similar stories from others. One of my fellow lab mates in grad school was a guy from a rich family. Grew up in Manhattan, went to Columbia, world traveler, could speak different languages, very well-educated, etc. Nice guy–we had similar political philosophies, so we got along well–although he could be a bit of a grouch. But one thing about him that made him…well, strange…was that he did not follow societal conventions. At least the major ones.
For instance, he’d openly pick his nose. You’d be talking to him and he’d pluck out the juiciest bugger while nodding his head in agreement. Classmates would tell me he would do the same thing in class. If we had been in grammar school, he would have been the boy with the cooties, for sure.
He had bad BO. But just sometimes. (He was married, so I’m sure his wife made sure took a bath at least once a week).
He cursed like a sailor. He was a liberal’s liberal, but I swear he used “cock-sucker” about a hundred times a day to describe various people (I did say he was a grouch, yes?)
He dressed like a runaway slave. Now I did too, but I had an excuse. I was living on the edge of poverty; even Target was too pricey for me. But this was a rich white Jewish kid who chose to dress like a bum. We went shopping at the same Salvation Army (I swear, the one in Chelsea is the best one in all of the Americas). I once went with him and his wife to Chinatown and we went to the rinky-dinkiest places to buy stuff; he hunted down the best soup bowls. But looking at him and me too, you would have thought we were there to rob the place. I’m giggling just thinking about it. He also knew where to get the best Jamaican patties from. I could see some of the middle-class students in our lab sneering at the idea of eating at one of those Jamaican roti stands, but not Jimbo. He shared an experience with me that I would have been too timid to experience otherwise, and I liked it.
He prided himself on his low maintenance. He lived in Park Slope, which isn’t exactly Bedstuy, but it ain’t Park Avenue either. He would take a series of subways to get to Newark to Brooklyn every day, just like a poor kid would. But not the rest of us. I had a car, so I’d give him a ride to the train station when I felt like it. But then I’d zip home. As would the rest of the grad students in the lab. The richest student in the lab actually lived the most frugal lifestyle amongst us. I don’t think the irony hit anyone except for me, because I was the most aware of both how rich he was and how simply he lived compared to everyone else.
He did have one of the first Ipods though. And during the summer, he always went on some exotic vacation somewhere. So he did have his accoutrements and luxuries. But again, nothing that would indicate that he was really rich. Just “treats”. Just by observing him, he taught me that truly rich people tend not to be snobs; it’s actually the people who just think they are who are the most judgemental about other people’s “tastes” and “classiness”. My experiences with diverse groups of people since then have attested to this. (And it’s also made me keep my mouth shut on more than one occassion when I’ve been tempted to be a snob, although I do like the rule that it’s alright to be a snob about just one thing, whether it be books, art, food, wine, etc.).
I’m sure I’ve met richer people than Jimbo since then, but to me, he has come to symbolize what it means to be wealthy: Being able to do pretty much whatever you want without caring about norms or what other people think, because the people who raised you were busy teaching you more weightier things. Like how to cultivate an impressive personality. Which he had, without question.
monstro, read Class if you haven’t already. Your lab partner seems to have been a textbook specimen of the Northeastern super-rich as described by the author. I may as well mention here that it’s a surprisingly fun read on what is definitely a difficult subject. Highly recommended.
Thanks, Spectre. It will be on my “must check out” list when I go to the library next week.
Fussell makes the point that it’s not how much money you have that’s relevant to class, but the source of that money. The greater the proportion of your money that is inherited rather than earned, the higher your class.
As far as music in bars goes, the really high class option would be no music at all. This used to be the norm in the old days - as hard as it is for the contemporary bar-hopper to believe. The writer Kingsley Amis complains about the growing scourge of pop music being played in English pubs in one of his books from the 1970s (now collected in the volume Everyday Drinking.
Sounds like an ultra lounge to me, which is definitely NOT high class.
The bars in the old money neighborhoods around me really aren’t that much different than the dives. The big differences include:
- Cleaner and better maintained.
- No video or bartop games.
- No neon signs.
- Television usually airing news programming or upper class sports (golf, tennis, etc).
- Minimal crap on the walls; mostly framed local ephemera, things like golf clubs, and maybe an animal head or two.
- The place has been around forever, with few changes in its furnishings.
The wine bars and other modern “upscale” bars are very new money, IMHO.
The truly well-off don’t really drink in public bars. They go to private city clubs, country clubs, hunt clubs and the like. Bars in old money country clubs tend to be understated. They’re comfortable, there’s the usual dark wood walls and/or trim, and they’re often well-worn, but don’t scream “luxury”. They only whisper “class”, and I found they’re among the most comfortable, unpretentious places to have a drink.
Rock music / Jazz music were both considered degenerate when they first came out, but I think they’re relatively class-neutral now. Fans of particular groups and sub-genres, however, may be considered high class or low class or anything in between.
Class is like price; if you have to ask…
I was thinking more about bars in NYC like The Campbell Appartment, The Brandy Library and Stone Rose Lounge that tend to be relatively upscale. At least compared to Murray Hill frat douche bars like Joshua Tree or Mercury Bar or Bleeker Street NYU bars like Off the Wagon.
I’ll retract the “dress code and cover charge” part. These bars don’t need to enforce a dress code or charge a cover because your typical B&T douchebag is going to balk at the $15 martinis and lack of skanky guidettes.
Spectre of Pithecanthropus - I said “near a college”. Not necessarily “college bar”. College bars tend to be a bit “classier” than “townie” bars. Obviously the classiness of the college will influence the classiness of the bar.
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The wine bars and other modern “upscale” bars are very new money, IMHO.
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That is because they are a relatively new phenomenon.
“Old money” just means that you didn’t have to work for it. They consider themselves the epitome of “class” because they don’t need to debase themselves with such bourgeois activities as the active pursuit of wealth.
I’d say that’s not far off. I went to college with a fair number of wealthy kids and a lot of them are just “off”. Many of them have this sort of sense of lazy entitlement.
The best way I can describe it is like this. A middle class person might bust their ass so they can graduate and land a high paying job on Wall Street or in law. A lot of rich kids practically have that handed to them and often view it as a nusaince.
I’m thinking about old money establishments, like the Ship Tavern in Denver, Oliver’s and Eagle House in Buffalo, Caucus Club in Detroit, and so on.
I should have been more explicit; I meant “near a college” as well, but one which is popular among students. UCLA didn’t even have a on-campus pub, and still doesn’t. UCSD did get one at about the mid-point of my time there. Except for the not having a pub at UCLA, I’m grateful to have grown up and gone to universities in California. We really don’t do that town vs. gown thing here, and while the different bars one could go to might well differentiate along class and economic lines, the local students can be seen in any and all of them.
My experience has been that middle class etiquette tends to be based on Victorian etiquette or worse 20th century advertising. Upper class etiquette is the etiquette of the 1700s or earlier. The implication being that they learned these customs growing up and their familes have had money for more than two centuries. The classic example for this would be the issues of tableware. According to my English relatives, the middle class and the new money rich are the ones who own and use fish forks and fish knives (invented in the Victorian Era). Old money gentry eat their fish with two forks because (ideally at least) their family silver was purchased before fish forks and fish knives were invented. Old money uses salt spoons and picks up asparagus with their fingers because that’s the way it’s been done since before the Renaissance. The old money table is set with china, silver, and crystal, etc. that clashes, often quite horribly, not because the owner has no taste, but because everything is inherited and they are at the mercy of previous generations. It is conspicious consumption of a sort. They are advertising not only how wealthy their familes are, but how long they have been wealthy.
I’m not familiar with those establishments, although Denver, Buffalo and Detroit don’t exactly strike me as “old money neighborhoods” (but I’m sure like all cities they have old money familes). Growing up in the Northeast, when people say “old money” I think of places like Greenwich CT, Block Island MA, Martha’s Vinyard MA, Newport RI, The Hamptons, and so on.
Monstro, I really enjoyed your post, that was fascinating (and you’re always a compelling writer).
The thread title made me think of O. Henry stories and some older books, like Auntie Mame and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Gone With the Wind. In just some vague pop-culture sense, I’ve thought that “high class” referred to being discreet. Toned-down. Subtle. Having self-control.
And I always thought it was an admiration for European manners among the wealthy (who could afford to travel) that brought about an appreciation for low-key behavior.
Or perhaps it’s just that having and demonstrating self-control is a luxury.
Personally, I’m aiming for bohemian. I’m a tad noisy (and unpredictable) for high class.
ZPG Zealot - I think that here in the US, I think we are not as conscious about “class” as much as the British (or at least not in the same way). I’m sure over in England, they have “Old Money” familes that go back centuries and are tied to the old aristocracy and nobility. Most of our Old Money families like the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Carnegies, and so on only go back about a century and all of them were self-made men. Families like the Waltons and Hiltons only go back about 3 generations. Does anyone consider first generation billionares like Gates, Buffett or Bloomburg “lower class”? Would they even care?
I would agree that there is a tendency to “legitimize” ones wealth by demonstrating how long it has been in the family. And let’s face it. There is something sort of cool about stuff that is really old and has actual family history behind it. Sure, anyone with enough money can buy a house in the Hamptons. But you can’t buy 5 generations of MSmithingtons living in that house for the past 100 years.
Oh God - please tell me the ‘Triton Pub’ was not considered ‘high class’ at UCSD. That place was a turd, and fit every element of ‘low class’ that has been defined thus far…
It’s in the clothes and what cell phone you have. At the local homeless shelter the kids are rioting because they won’t wear donated Walmart clothes to school or use the free Goodwill coupons. They want the taxpayers to take them to the Gap.
This irks me. Since when does a homeless kid have the right to “appear” high classed to attend school? Why do homeless people not appreciate the free roof over their head and food? Why do they have cell phones if they are homeless?
Clothes don’t make the man or at least that is the way it used to be?
I am going to go out on a limb and say that homeless people have cell phones because the telephone company won’t install a regular line to the park bench they live on.
Do you really think people who wear Gap are high class? It’s not like they insist on being taken to the Andover Shop.
I realized this recently when some out-of-town friends came to visit. They are very educated and wealthy and coincidentally, from the northeast…we are none of those things. We decided to meet for dinner at a fancy restaurant, so my husband and I got all swankied up in our best duds. Our friends showed up in t-shirts and shorts. I thought, “We’re trying to be good enough for this restaurant, they are hoping the restaurant will be good enough for them.”
I still dress up, but I’m just an old trailer park gal from way back…