Aristocrats in the late 20th C.

Press, 12 May 1984, Page 20

Aristocrats in the late 20th C.

Aristocrats. By Robert Lacey. Hutchinson/BBC. 1983. 249 pp. Illustrations. $35.

(Reviewed by

Stephen Erber)

Evelyn Waugh was one evening, while staying at Renishaw Hall with the Sitwell family, standing on the terrace with Sir George Sitwell, the 4th Baronet. In the valley below them lay “the splendours and squalor” of the industrial hub of Yorkshire — “farms, cottages, villas, the railway, the colliery, and the densely teeming streets of the men who work there.” “You see,” said Sir George looking out distantly towards the hills beyond, “there is no one between us and the Locker-Lampsons.” Modern aristocrats do not, so it would seem from Robert Lacey’s book, practise this sort of disdain which so delighted Waugh. They are, so Lacey argues, much more receptive today to social realities than were their forbears. This book was published in conjunction with the showing by the 8.8. C. of the television documentary of the same name. That documentary considers the future of European aristocratic families now that taxes and the loss of overt political power have reduced their influence and relevance in today’s world. The past and present circumstances of six European aristocratic families are considered to point the author’s messages — although precisely what that is, is sometimes hard to determine — and an extremely colourful and readable book is the result. Britain is represented by the Grosvenor family (and in particular, the 6th Duke of Westminster), Italy by the Frescobaldis, Germany by the Thum und Taxis, France by the Ganay family, Liechtenstein by its prince, and Spain by the Mendinacelis. What has an aristocrat got that

lesser mortals lack? The answer is a history of being at the top, and money based on the possession of land. The word “aristocrat” technically means “the rule of the best” — a meaning which it is not possible to demonstrate has any present factual association. The origins of the nobility lay in the conjunction of military power and the possession of landed estates. A long way back the importance or status of the nobles lay in their castles — their seats of power. Their titles, attaching to those seats, often demonstrated the breadth of their power — counties were governed by counts, margraves governed marches, or turbulent frontier provinces, and lesser domains were controlled by knights or men on horses — hence the German “Ritter” or the French “Chevalier.” As the status of an aristocrat came to depend less on his military worth or significance, so it came to rely wholly on his economic significance or wealth. This book shows, through the history of the families it traces, that whereas the aristocracy was once the rule of the strongest (and arguably therefore the rule of the best) it is now the rule, by influence, of the rich.

I say “by influence” because it is only in Britain that the aristocrat has any hereditary political power. All of the families with whom Lacey deals in this book have not inconsiderable influence in domestic affairs accorded them out of respect for their historical status, but mainly because they are extremely wealthy people. And, as Lacey demonstrates, the influence of these sorts of families is diminishing in direct ratio to the diminution in their fortunes. The assaults of taxation diminish the wherewithal! to maintain the status and so that status is diminished. Without cash there can be no cachet. The rot set in in the mid-nineteenth

century and was then expressed by that acute observer Walter Bagehot — “The aristocracy live in fear of the middle classes — of the grocer and the merchant. They dare not frame a society of enjoyment, as the French aristocracy once framed it.” Lady Bracknell was more to the point (estate duty having been introduced in 1894): “What between the duties expected of one during one’s lifetime and the duties exacted from one after one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one a position and prevents one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be said about land.” The romance of moneyed titles is, however, being kept alive by the Grosvenors, Frescobaldis, et al, whose lives are displayed in this book. Lacey does not wholly approve of their excesses (the most blatant and least acceptable being those of the Thurn und Taxis) but his general theme is that in this grey world, we need some “aristocratic magic” which, he contends “makes the same appeal to human uncertainty that organised religion does...” In short, they give us lesser beings something to aim for, besides which they are responsible for a great deal of our cultural heritage: “A thousand years of aristocracy have left Western Europe a legacy of elegance and achievement that no other corner of the Earth can match — and the present-day nobleman remains a living monument to that.” Such conclusions will no doubt provoke argument, and no doubt more steps will be taken to dismantle these monuments. However, they have proved in the past to be enduring and resilient and, somehow, necessary. The television series on which this book is based would be most welcome if it is as absorbing as the book is.