Social climbers, beware! What fresh hell are you climbing to?
PAUL JOHNSON
Social climbing isn't what it used to be. Dress, for instance. The right gear, a Shakespearean term, used to be essential. Provincials trying to make it at Elizabeth's court 'carried their fortunes on their backs'. Ralegh, an archetypal pusher, spent all he had on jewel-embroidered clothes: that is why his sacrificing his cloak in a puddle made such a big impression, not least on the Queen. In Goldsmith's day, it was still possible to think, as he did, that his magnificent 'bloomcoloured coat' would advance his social progress. Beau Brummell outlawed colourful finery and laid down the new rule: 'white linen, and plenty of it, and country washing'. But even as he was doing so Byron was inventing bohemian rig: open shirt, loose cravat or scarf, an exotic touch. So, through a succession of dandies — Monckton Milnes, Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, Harold Acton, Brian Howard, et al. — the mark of upwardly mobile fashion changed constantly. But photographers show that such figures also wore official white tie and tails when required. Now that is dead, except for occasions no social climber wants to attend. Most invitation cards no longer specify dress, or take refuge in the despairing 'informal'. 'Lounge suits' sounds naff, non-U. Some now say 'smart'. Eligible young men are expected to dress like a pop singer or a football manager.
Accents? There was a time when ambitious young men took elocution lessons. Boswell, for instance, made efforts to lose his 'Scottishness' and deplored the failure of some of his friends to do so. Professor Higgins and his peers flourished in the period 1850-1914. Grandees from the north, like the Earl of Derby and Marquis Curzon, could get away with short 'a's, but climbers had to conform. Some still do. Peter Mandelson, the most ambitious climber I've known recently, affects RP and makes himself sartorially inconspicuous, while being ubiquitous and therefore noticed. But he didn't last, did he? The BBC is now making a co-ordinated and often brutal effort to destroy the traditional upper-class accent by flaunting estuary, gruesome vowel-sounds, glottal stops and speech-defects. 'Talking proper', as their mandarins put it, is now a bar to promotion. Voice mannerisms, common enough in my youth — 'Old Whig', 'Bloomsbury Quaver', The Academic Shout', 'Buck House Cockney' and 'Upper LSE', to mention only five — are dying out. People whose voice mannerisms were a social cachet, like Noel Cow ard and Isaiah Berlin, have not been replaced. The only virtuoso I can think of is Brian Sewell, and who can say whether his vocables are an up or a down escalator?
How to get invited in the first place? Looks. They matter as much as ever, both for men and women. Indeed, a ravishing girl can now get in anywhere, subject to security. That is the new, hellish factor, which is a drag on social mobility. When Lady Palmerston was queen of London society, and lived in the Piccadilly mansion later called 'The In and Out', she always said that gate-crashing young men were welcome to her routs provided they were good-looking and properly dressed. But there were no security men in those days to scrutinise the invitations: the only barrier was Lady Fs sharp glance at the top of the stairs. I remember Tom Driberg saying. 'In the season. if I'm feeling at a loose end, I just put on tails, wander into Mayfair and crash wherever I see a tasty party going on. If you're refused admittance, go on to the next.' But it wouldn't work now: security. That's another of the sins of terrorism; it has destroyed the livelihood of the gate-crashing classes.
Half a century ago, there were still welltrodden paths up the ladder. If you could somehow sound the decibels, get heard of, noticed, you were on your way. Publishing a talked-about book has been an entrée since the second half of the 17th century. Writing an inflammatory article has worked since the 1820s: witness Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin. Ferocity in print, more recently on the airwaves, has always been a foot in the door: witness D.H. Lawrence, Gilbert Harding, Malcolm Muggeridge, Dennis Potter and many more. Ken Tynan ascended three rungs at a jump when he became the first to use a four-letter word on television. And that's how Tracey Emin got her start. Notoriety is more than ever a social password. I recall that when I asked Alan Clark to a party at my house, just after his adventures with the judge's wife and two of her daughters became public knowledge, he was the guest people wanted to be introduced to, especially ladies of impeccable moral credentials. Everyone likes to get a close-up of a bad boy. Don't think for a moment that Jeffrey Archer will lack invitations when he comes out of the slammer. And if he starts up his parties again, you can be sure that the bien-pensants and lively ladies will be glad to go.
Social success has never been based on the Ten Commandments — indeed, those who make graven images like the predatory Mr Freud seem to do particularly well. Getting to the right parties — and still more the left parties; the smart ones, I mean — has nothing to do with altruism or even political correctness. Just occasionally, entrenched society has succeeded in repelling boarders by force. Edward II made a point of promoting social climbers from showbiz and athletics, and he met a decisive come-uppance with 'a hotte brushe through the secret place posteriale'. His heir, Edward III, went to the other extreme by cultivating the old aristos, and even founded the Garter as an exclusive club, the ladder's top rung. Again, Richard II infuriated the establishment by favouring outsiders, cads and pushers — foreigners, too — and so ended up in Pontefract Castle, dead 'from unknown causes'. There are times when what Evelyn Waugh called 'the good old-fashioned snobbery of pound sterling and strawberry leaves' can constitute the social taw of the land. But not often, and certainly not now. Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, failed to hound the Churchills out of 'decent society', just as, when he became king at last, the old guard at the Palace failed totally to exclude his Jewish friends. Who can doubt that, if Princess Diana had lived, she would have established her own court of infatuated men (like me and Taki) and uppity ladies, which would have made anything that Charles and Camilla set up look like a provincial dowdy-show? (Apart from anything else, it helps to have a notorious butler.) However, you may well ask: what's the object of social climbing today? No point in Jack tugging his way up the beanstalk if he finds nothing worth having when begets to the top. In my day Jack knew he'd arrived when he got an invitation to one of Pam Berry's lunch-parties, and wonderful they were too: no duds, no phonies, no swine, no mediocrities — just what old J.B. Priestley called 'sheer bloody talent'. Again, if you found yourself in Mrs Rodd's salon in the rue Monsieur, the company truly glittered, the talk fizzed and the pink champagne was nectar. It was worth the effort. Today most parties are commercial events, personalities are mass-manufactured with a quick sell-by date, women dress like honky-tonk whores, yobs are trumps, and everything — peerages, invitations, introductions, even fellow-guests — is for cash. Why climb the ladder it on the top rung. Mr and Mrs 'Posh', or Puff Daddy, are receiving?
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