A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WE no longer talk about the "lower orders," and an almost equally cogent tabu has virtually deleted from our vocabulary all allusions to the "upper classes." The middle class, no longer stratified into " upper " and "lower," is, on the other hand, a constant theme for leader-writers and orators, and has recently been the subject of more than one serious book. The families who until recently com- posed, rather loosely and unself-consctously, the upper classes are for the most part still in existence ; but a sociologist from (say) Tibet would have the gravest difficulty in discovering any public reference to this fact, except in somewhat anachronistic cartoons and humorous
drawings. The privileges of the upper class have gone, and so has their wealth (if they had any) and most of their houses and much of their land ; but it takes time to liquidate a tradition and an outlook, and I find something slightly unbecoming as well as unreal about a society which, having displaced its hereditary leaders, adopts towards them the policy outlined in the Victorian song: "Oh no! We never mention them!
Their name is never heard!
Our lips are now forbid to speak That once familiar word. . . ."
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