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.
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.
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!