I met one of the readers of this blog in person for the first time, and within 2 minutes I knew from the way she talked and comported herself that she was American aristocracy. And I was right.
I’m good. Maybe I should become a citizen if I get this kind of thing.
American aristocracy? Do you mean East Coast old money WASP? (House in the Hamptons, that kind of stuff?)
LikeLike
Yeah, that’s what I am thinking too.
Funny, this reminded me of a comment made by an aforementioned member of the aristocracy (on a clothing forum, no less), to someone asking if some particular suit looked too ‘low class’. I thought it was interesting.
“I’ll be direct: I’m upper class, and neither I nor my friends with the same background would view a guy in a dark blue bespoke suit caustically as a sanitation worker unless he introduced himself as one. And if a man did so introduce himself, he would probably be the hit of the party.
I will let you in on a dirty little American secret: you could wear the best that Corvato makes, but if you don’t have a lineage just so, didn’t go to particular schools, don’t belong to particular clubs, do not associate with and marry particular people, don’t have a particular amount of money, possessed in a particular way, do not give a particular amount of money away, the fabric of your suit does not in any way add or subtract your chances of being accepted as upper class.”
LikeLike
The person I’m talking about is a college professor at a 3rd tier school who studies narratives of racism. In part, I’m sure to compensate for the ancestors who were slave-owning plantation holders with hundreds of slaves. She doesn’t belong to particular class or have any amount of money.
But the point is that I can see through her very modest lifestyle what her ancestry is.
LikeLike
What’s really funny is that right now she and I have identical lifestyles but it’s very clear that she’s aristocracy and I’m completely prole.
LikeLike
The thing is though that that narratives of racism line is accidental – it came from living in Brazil. It’s 1/4 of the heritage only. You then have my grandmother the regular Yankee bourgeoise, my other grandmother the Montana proletarian socialist, and my grandfather the Russian.
LikeLike
Or actually … I got the idea in Brazil but what it connects to in my memory – experience is civil rights. I do not seem to have Issues over the plantation thing … so many of us come from that. One is expected to take it personally, have personal guilt or something, but the fact is that the entire place is complicit and yes, one is responsible, but personally and exceptionally guilty, hardly … that would be what we on the left would at one time have called a “liberal trip”
LikeLike
She can research her whole genealogy on Wikipedia because the ancestors are all there.
LikeLike
Except Emily Williams, the one on the Mormon wagon train, who saw that famous and wicked massacre in Utah by the Sons of Dan. We have not figured that story out completely.
LikeLike
No, not that kind of thing. The point is to be responsible, not to have things. I am descended from some founding fathers on both sides, that is, from the English strain in each side. One grandfather is descended from aristocracy with money, but Southern. For them it is important to have certain skills that are class markers. I don’t have them. The other 3/4 of the grandparents are all different kinds of bourgeoisie to working class but everyone is serious somehow, a person with a role. I don’t know that I would say I am aristocracy, have just been here a long time & the 19th century immigrants mostly did not arrive destitute or unskilled. Also the most recent immigrants are the Russians, and they came in the 1860s which is before those late 19th century waves, and the 19th century German ones came well earlier, so all of these people were a position to get established.
LikeLike
\ What’s really funny is that right now she and I have identical lifestyles but it’s very clear that she’s aristocracy and I’m completely prole.
Can you give a few examples of differences? Without giving any identifying information, of course.
LikeLike
I have bad teeth, I’m fat, I eat spaghettis with my hands, I’m uncomfortable in fancy environments, I’m uncomfortable with bellboys because I feel like it’s wrong to make them carry my stuff, I like the company of plumbers, waitresses, and people without college degrees, I like Dr Phil, I feel uncomfortable around people who weren’t born poor.
LikeLike
I come from what G.B. Shaw called “downstarts”, people who had ancestry in the middle class but because of one thing or another went down before coming up in the world.
My mother’s people had money and property in China before WWII broke out, and came to this country with their possessions they could ship over, and the gold that was sewn inside my mother’s coat. One of her grandfathers was already dead by then, but the piano company he started in Hankou is still in business, and has been in business for 110 years.
My father’s people that I know of include a Confederate deserter, a slave owner, a horse thief, an adulterer, and a self-made businessman.
LikeLike
Yours is definitely not a boring family. ☺
LikeLike
“I eat spaghettis with my hands”
Not to mention using spaghettis as a plural (its non-count in mainstream usage).
But this could be fun thread: ¿Quién es más prole? where we all list our lower class credentials…
LikeLike
cliff, why can not I leave a comment at your blog? Are they screened? Do you accept only comments from real email addresses?
LikeLike
It is I. I am descended on both sides from Roger Williams. On my mother’s side, we have various colonial governors and so on, continuing on to close relations of George Washington and the first governors of some states. Those are the ancestors with the plantation (Wye House in Easton, Maryland, Google it and also read descriptions of it in Frederick Douglass’ narrative as it is where he grew up, the relevant grandfather is William Fitzghugh Goldsborough). On my father’s side (the part of that family that also descends from Roger Williams) we have among others the Beechers (Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beeecher Stowe). There is more.
LikeLike
On this, though, although it is now an old thread — I didn’t see the prole-ness and am also not normally aware of the aristocratic-ness
LikeLike
I don’t do the spaghetti thing in public. 😆😆😆
LikeLike
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment