Upperclassman

“ Every man who held land under these conditions—and it was impossible to hold land without them—was of the upper class. He was nobilis or known, and of a rank distinct, apart, and absolutely separate from the remainder of the population, who were at one time actually serfs, and for long enough afterwards, of no higher social position than they had enjoyed in their period of servitude. This wide distinction between the upper and lower classes, which existed from one end of Europe to the other, was the very root and foundation of armory. ”

“ The upper class were further back than those of Europe in the seventeenth century,572 for few of them had received any sort of higher education and none of them had any personal knowledge of free institutions, or any experience in civil administration. ”

“ The upper class is always abused in contrast with the world of tradesmen, priests, workmen and peasants, Sidors and Nikitas of all sorts. I detest both classes, but if I had honestly to choose between the two, I should without hesitation, prefer the upper class, and there would be no falsity or affectation about it, since all my tastes are in that direction. ”

“ If the spirit seizes any of you, then go ahead and be fresh—-of course, not too fresh! Mix in with the upper classmen, all of you, if you want to. Have your opinions, and don't be afraid to let 'em out—-if you can't hold in any longer. To the upper class dances this winter Dick & Co. shall have a bid—-if you'll all learn how to walk and glide across a waxed floor. Remember, when you're among the fellows, you don't have to keep in the back freshmen row—-but see to it that you don't encourage general mutiny in your class against the superior upper classes. ”

“ As a matter of fact, however, the vast majority of the students was drawn from the great middle class. The nobility were nearly always too occupied with their pleasures and their martial duties to have time for the higher education. The tradition that a nobleman should be an educated gentleman had not yet come in. Indeed many of the nobility during the Thirteenth Century rather prided themselves on the fact that they not only had no higher education, but that they did not know even how to read and write. ”

“ Keep clearly before us the ideal of an Upper-class that is homogeneous. Let us have the man of business as cultured as the professional man, and the professional man as cultured as the man of means. Let us be a true Republic, offering every opportunity to the intelligence of the Lower-class to attain to the culture of the Upper. ”

“ The attitude of those who belong to the upper classes, and who have all the advantages of high position, is the same as that of the lower classes who obey implicitly every command that is given to them. ”

“ Before examining what the occupation and estate of the upper classes ought, as far as may reasonably be conjectured, finally to become, it will be well to set down in brief terms what they actually have been in past ages: for this, in many respects, they must also always be. ”

“ I am told, however, that this mixture of ranks, and this condescension on the part of superiors, is only practised at times, and to serve a purpose; and that, although the nobleman will sit down in the kitchen of an inn, and converse familiarly with the servants there, and though he will sit down in a shop, and prattle with the Bourgeoise, yet he keeps his place most proudly in society, inviting and receiving only his equals and superiors. The familiarity of all ranks with their own servants is most disgusting; but, from their poverty, the higher classes must condescend. ”

“ The upper classes have only birth, say the people here, and not thoughts. Yes, but they have manners, and 't is wonderful, how much talent runs into manners:--nowhere and never so much as in England. They have the sense of superiority, the absence of all the ambitious effort which disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone of thought and feeling, and the power to command, among their other luxuries, the presence of the most accomplished men in their festive meetings.
Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. ”

“ Generally speaking, one may say, that while our upper and lower classes are, if anything, rather worse in their morals than in England, we make up for the deficiency by a decided superiority amongst the middle--both upper-middle and lower-middle--class. ”

“ What books and newspapers do these boys read, what talk do they hear, what interests or amusements do they find in the theatre, the tavern, the streets, the home, and the church? What has been the training of the lad of the upper class—that class, small in number but great in influence, which, being lifted above any sordid pressure of material care, should be the spiritual leader of the classes below them—a class which has ten talents committed to it, and which inherits the grand old maxim, Noblesse oblige? ”

“ It is finer to write and read than to do something with your hands, says the upper class. The lower class listens. My son shall not till the earth from which everything that crawls subsists; let him live on other people's work, says the upper class. And the lower class listens. Then one day the roar awoke, the roar of the masses. The masses have themselves learned the arts of the upper class ”

“ Indeed, if
this good man had an enthusiasm, or what the vulgar call a blind side,
it was this: he thought a schoolmaster the greatest character in the
world, and himself the greatest of all schoolmasters: neither of which
points he would have given up to Alexander the Great at the head of
his army. ”

“ Anyone who has seen much of undergraduates, or medical students, or Army candidates, and also of their social subordinates, must be disposed to agree that the difference between the two classes is mainly in unimportant things—in polish, in manner, in superficialities of accent and vocabulary and social habit—and that their minds, in range and power, are very much on a level. With an invincibly aristocratic tradition we are failing altogether to produce a leader class adequate to modern needs. ”

“ It does not mean merely fashionable, that is, complying with a momentary caprice of the upper classes; but it means agreeing with the habitual sense which the most refined education, common to those upper classes at the period, gives to their whole mind. ”

“ It is true that one class was then more distinctly separated from another, by costume and some external habits of life; the knight and the franklin, the monk and the priest, the trader and the peasant, always carried the badges of their position upon them; and we, with our modern notions, are apt to think that the man who was marked out by his very costume as a trader must have been “looked down upon” by what we call the higher classes of society. ”

“ There must be expansion in everything, and in such a country as Rudarlia, where classes exist, I hold that the noble class is all the stronger and better for the introduction into its ranks of all types of brains, that is, of course, the finer types ”

“ If the higher classes claim superior respect, it is but just they should pay for it, as the higher classes do in Europe, where a man is charged according to his rank; but how few of your fashionable people are willing to lay out an additional groat for the distinction they so ardently covet. ”

“ I could mention a number of young noblemen and wealthy undergraduates who, in my early years, read for a first class and took it; and my experience has certainly been that those who took a first class came out in later life as eminent and useful members of society. Not that eminence in political, clerical, literary, and scientific life was restricted to first classes, far from it. But first-class men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in later life. ”

“ Then, as a stage in the descent to more general use, may be noted its extension to those who, apart from their rank, have acquired the superiority ascribed to age: a superiority sometimes taking precedence of rank, as in Siam, and in certain ways in Japan and China. Such extension occurred in ancient Rome, where pater was at once a magisterial title and a title given by the younger to the elder, though not related; and in Russia, at the present time, the equivalent word is used to the czar, to a priest, and to any aged man. Eventually it spreads to young as well as old. ”

“ There must be an opportunity given them for improvement before we can expect the same refinement and classical attainments which the higher classes, so called, boast of. The higher classes have nothing to do only to study the nature of man, their own dispositions, and those of their fellow-beings. ”

“ I wanted to make myself out one of the lucky ones. I wanted to seem [Pg 226] a superior class to you altogether. And that's the damned funny thing about it, if you'll excuse my swearing. All the time that I was bragging about motor-cars, and you were talking about the stuffy workrooms, you were the superior class to me, and I was the dirt under your feet. Looking back on it, I can't think how I came to make such a fool of myself. Your superior, indeed! Why, even on the outside facts I'm not that, for I only make twenty-eight bob to your thirty, and I haven't got your chance of a rise. ”

“ The classes consist of princes, nobles, priests, military men, professional or learned ones, merchants, and, lastly, artisans, or labourers. Occasionally, through wealth or merit, individuals are advanced to the class above that in which they are born; but to descend into an inferior one, is to forfeit claim to respectability. ”

“ Margaret More is a bright example of opportunities for the higher education given and taken in the lower classes of {286} the nobility of the England of her time. One thing we can be sure of in the England of that time, if the Queen and the highest nobility were interested in education and devoted their time to it so sedulously and successfully, then without doubt those beneath them in rank did so likewise. The upper classes are not alone imitated in things unworthy, but also in what is best if they only provide the good example. ”

“ They do well enough, we think, for us upper-class people; and if you want your son to have a really first-rate education, why, are there not plenty of fine Denominational schools about—the King’s School, Newington, and so on, and our splendid Grammar-school?” The only answer to “prophesyings” of this sort is, that the Upper-class, as a class, are, whatever they may think themselves, simply abominably educated; their education is, even when judged by its own miserable standard, superficial, incoherent, impalpable ”

“ Apart from the grand incentive to endeavor afforded by the fact that the high places in the nation are open only to the highest class men, and that rank in the army constitutes the only mode of social distinction for the vast majority who are not aspirants in art, literature, and the professions, various incitements of a minor, but perhaps equally effective, sort are provided in the form of special privileges and immunities in the way of discipline, which the superior class men enjoy. ”

“ Thirdly, this opinion of our superiority is commonly very erroneous. Who hath not seen a general behave in this supercilious manner to an officer of lower rank, who hath been greatly his superior in that very art to his excellence in which the general ascribes all his merit? Parallel instances occur in every other art, science, or profession.
Fourthly, men who excel others in trifling instances frequently cast a supercilious eye on their superiors in the highest. ”

“ The life of a master at the training college is beastly uneventful, taken all round; not even your keen sense of the romantic could long survive it. The duties are not very exacting, certainly, and in our own way, I suppose we are empire builders of a sort. ”

“ Among the middle classes, the gradations and varieties of social position are more numerous, less distinctly marked, and therefore fenced round with a world of form and ceremony. And as we descend, and enter the lower ranks, and approach the lowest, the distinctions and grades multiply. ”

“ The higher classes of society received more instruction than they applied in the course of their after lives, while the lower classes were neglected, or taught only so much as tended to impress on them their inferiority and the duties of submission. ”

“ On this principle therefore, the first class comprised men only, who in situations of considerable responsibility, drew public attention for their steadiness and general ability.
The second and third classes embraced men, who in various degrees called for favourable mention, and who displayed considerable aptitude and zeal.
The fourth class contained men, who not having the same opportunities of distinguishing themselves as the men in the previous classes, gained the commendation of their officers and others for attention to duty, and cheerfulness and exertion in its execution. ”

“ These have their notions of what is good and beautiful shaped by contact with the master class and carry the preconceptions so acquired back among their low-born equals, and so disseminate the higher ideals abroad through the community without the loss of time which this dissemination might otherwise suffer. The saying, "Like master, like man," has a greater significance than is commonly appreciated for the rapid popular acceptance of many elements of upper-class culture. ”

“ I need not inform your excellency, how contrary such a practice is to that of all the universities in Europe. Your excellency well knows how many learned men, of the two last ages, have been invited by princes to be professors in some art or science for which they were renowned; and that the like rule has been followed in Oxford and Cambridge. I hope your excellency will show no regard to so narrow and partial an opinion, which can only tend to mend fellowships, and spoil professorships ”