Society: The middle and Upper Classes Contrasted.

Otago Witness, Issue 1582, 18 March 1882, Page 28

Society : The middle and Upper Classes Contrasted.

The trading class in England are, as a rule, heavy, unimaginative, without conversation and with very little taste, anxious to spend money, but with no idea how to do so to advantage. The display of wealth, unrestrained by culture or taste, is glaring, offensive, and repellant. The vulgarity of such people is but the more repugnant for being heavily gilded. At their assemblies there is a dull tone of oppression. No one is at his ease. No one is at home. Nobody knows what to say or how to say it. The tact of manner is utterly wanting, and with the desire to make every one comfortable it only ends in making every one supremely uncomfortable. For, let it be said in a whisper, the Englishman of this class has a suspicion of his own imperfections, and fears you will find it out. He is aware that his manners are gauche, that his grammar is faulty, that his wife drops her aspirates, and that his son and daughter, who have been to good schools, know it and make fun of their parents. Society is terrible to these people, but they must go through with it. Now contrast one of these dull, heavy assemblies with a reception by the Countess of j L in Mayfair. Here everything is bright, j cheerful, and one's eye is fascinated not so J much by the costliness of the surroundings as j by the beauty. As Ruskin would say, we ye- ] cognise the lamp of sacrifie and the lamp of i beauty. And look at the guests. Are they not another order of beings? Everybody at ease, meeting with as much nonchalance as if np pne else were present, the infinity of tact of i fch'e hostess, who receives, says a word, andi

passes every one on to feel perfectly at home, cheerful, exhilarated if you will, and yet not a tone, not a gesture that is not graceful and gentle. What is it that underlies and produces all this ? It is that culture which years and generations have produced in the best London society. The courtesy, the ease without assumption, the absence of mauvaise honte, the disposition and the capacity to say the right thing to every one and to refrain from saying the wrong thing, are qualifications without which good society cannot exist. And they require no ordinary talent. To remember where you met people last, to select topics of conversation which put them at their ease and make them feel no inferiority, to inquire about absent friends, to discuss subjects of mutual interest, to be particularly careful to take such notice of strangers and new-comers that they are made quite at home— this is the result of culture, and culture trained through many generations, and to find it in its highest order we must look for it in the drawing-rooms of the English aristocracy. In ,the same degree we shall find it nowhere else.