Worth reflecting, I suppose, that Forster had grown up in the late 19th century and first found success in the Edwardian era when you also have the upper strata of society facing a tension between breeding, if you like, and wealth and power. It’s the time of aristocrats looking for American heiresses to marry so that they can repair the east wing: Consuelo Yznaga married Viscount Mandeville, later Duke of Manchester, in 1876; her god-daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt married the Duke of Marlborough in 1895, the same year Mary Leiter married Lord Curzon of Kedleston, and her sister Margaret Leiter married the Earl of Suffolk in 1904. But you also have the uncomfortable challenge of rich male outsiders, not least Jewish ones like Sir Ernest Cassel, the Prussian-born banker who became such good friends with Edward VII that he was nicknamed “Windsor Cassel”.
Oh yes, absolutely. Edith Wharton is very good on this. And I haven’t actually read the books for decades so I was trying not to make any sweeping statements about Forster’s intent! Although I was fascinated to see that he wrote all his most successful novels in a perfectly ordinary semi-detached three-bed in Weybridge, about a mile away from where I live. I’m going to go on a pilgrimage.
This is an essay I've been waiting for at least since 1985, when I first saw Room With a View in Chicago as a college student (and observed the various reactions by men and women of various sensibilities and ages). It reminded me of what happened five years earlier with Brideshead Revisited, in New York, where department stores gave their window displays over to "The Brideshead Look" and all the stern moral complexity of Waugh's cautionary story seemed to be getting lost.
Seeing this stuff as an American with a left-wing sensibility, it annoyed me that so many people I knew (mostly but not entirely young women) could be enticed so easily into throwing away all their American frontier-spirit ideologies because of houses and linens and dresses, but that was the template: ostensibly this was all about condemning the oppressive strictures of the Old World, but, actually, it was class porn; as long as you didn't name it outright you could participate in it.
Despite all this, the movies were and are great — and more recent stuff like Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightley "extending her famous underbite like the Alien Queen" as Anthony Lane put it) still seems to hit that same sweet spot between modern "romantic" yearnings and just enough social commentary to provide a gloss of political sophistication...as someone wrote about the moralizing of the Reagan era, "A spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down."
Anyway, this is a great piece of work. One question (and forgive my Yank ignorance): what does it mean that the Schlegel sisters are "Guardian-coded"?
Nice analysis, appreciate the insights. The '80s were my teen years, when I, a Yank, developed a powerful fascination with Edwardian/Georgian England. I turned 13 in '81, when Chariots of Fire and Brideshead Revisited dropped. I was smitten, and it only grew from there. I saw all the Merchant Ivory movies multiple times as well as many tangential films — Another Country, Gallipoli, etc. (When I made my wife watch Room With a View, I practically recited the entire film under my breath. Same with Chariots.) I think it was equal parts swooning over the fashions and the romance of it all, and what a contrast it was to the garish '80s (which I dearly love for other reasons, such as the music it produced, and some fantastic contemporary cinema). I also read most of the books. But as much as I might have wanted to be George Emerson, I actually identified more with poor Leonard Bast.
Worth reflecting, I suppose, that Forster had grown up in the late 19th century and first found success in the Edwardian era when you also have the upper strata of society facing a tension between breeding, if you like, and wealth and power. It’s the time of aristocrats looking for American heiresses to marry so that they can repair the east wing: Consuelo Yznaga married Viscount Mandeville, later Duke of Manchester, in 1876; her god-daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt married the Duke of Marlborough in 1895, the same year Mary Leiter married Lord Curzon of Kedleston, and her sister Margaret Leiter married the Earl of Suffolk in 1904. But you also have the uncomfortable challenge of rich male outsiders, not least Jewish ones like Sir Ernest Cassel, the Prussian-born banker who became such good friends with Edward VII that he was nicknamed “Windsor Cassel”.
Oh yes, absolutely. Edith Wharton is very good on this. And I haven’t actually read the books for decades so I was trying not to make any sweeping statements about Forster’s intent! Although I was fascinated to see that he wrote all his most successful novels in a perfectly ordinary semi-detached three-bed in Weybridge, about a mile away from where I live. I’m going to go on a pilgrimage.
Forster was a great fake-it-till-you-make-it man (and why not?). Mad that he died the same year the Beatles split up.
“Julian Sands, for instance, is straight out of Compton. That’s Compton in Guildford.)” Oh, behave!
This is an essay I've been waiting for at least since 1985, when I first saw Room With a View in Chicago as a college student (and observed the various reactions by men and women of various sensibilities and ages). It reminded me of what happened five years earlier with Brideshead Revisited, in New York, where department stores gave their window displays over to "The Brideshead Look" and all the stern moral complexity of Waugh's cautionary story seemed to be getting lost.
Seeing this stuff as an American with a left-wing sensibility, it annoyed me that so many people I knew (mostly but not entirely young women) could be enticed so easily into throwing away all their American frontier-spirit ideologies because of houses and linens and dresses, but that was the template: ostensibly this was all about condemning the oppressive strictures of the Old World, but, actually, it was class porn; as long as you didn't name it outright you could participate in it.
Despite all this, the movies were and are great — and more recent stuff like Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightley "extending her famous underbite like the Alien Queen" as Anthony Lane put it) still seems to hit that same sweet spot between modern "romantic" yearnings and just enough social commentary to provide a gloss of political sophistication...as someone wrote about the moralizing of the Reagan era, "A spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down."
Anyway, this is a great piece of work. One question (and forgive my Yank ignorance): what does it mean that the Schlegel sisters are "Guardian-coded"?
Nice analysis, appreciate the insights. The '80s were my teen years, when I, a Yank, developed a powerful fascination with Edwardian/Georgian England. I turned 13 in '81, when Chariots of Fire and Brideshead Revisited dropped. I was smitten, and it only grew from there. I saw all the Merchant Ivory movies multiple times as well as many tangential films — Another Country, Gallipoli, etc. (When I made my wife watch Room With a View, I practically recited the entire film under my breath. Same with Chariots.) I think it was equal parts swooning over the fashions and the romance of it all, and what a contrast it was to the garish '80s (which I dearly love for other reasons, such as the music it produced, and some fantastic contemporary cinema). I also read most of the books. But as much as I might have wanted to be George Emerson, I actually identified more with poor Leonard Bast.
PS Sean Harris just looking at you is enough to make anyone tremble in fear!
Fabulous, Rowan, just fabulous!
Class, money, class, old school networks, class, entitlement, class…I could go on…ha-ha!
A sharp reminder that even though things ain’t what they used to be, some things remain unchanged in dear old Blighty.
Made my morning, Rowan. Thanks!