L. P. Hartley, Who Are U? Or: Luncheon in the Lounge

In their light-hearted investigation into “the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy”—Noblesse Oblige¹—the distinguished collaborators, with their careful drawing of the line between U and non-U speech, pay little attention to what perils such a division can present to the writer of fiction, or indeed to the critic of fiction. Professor Ross in his contribution merely suggests that “a novel written by a member of the upper class is not likely to differ in any way from one written by a member of another class, except in so far as the novel contains conversation.” In her piece Miss Nancy Mitford seems not to be interested in discussing the matter, except that she admits to trouble with her printers over Scotch versus Scottish; her non-U printers refuse to believe that Scotch is U. But she does in one of her parentheses hint at the possibility of a problem. “One must add,” she says, “that the issue is sometimes confused by U-speakers using non-U indicators as a joke. Thus Uncle Matthew in The Pursuit of Love speaks of his dentures.”

It is only Mr. Evelyn Waugh who admits that there might be something here to worry about. His contribution to the symposium is for the most part a good-natured challenge of the validity of Miss Mitford’s and Professor Ross’s findings. Actually it is not what they have found that he takes exception to; it is their interpretation of these findings: he insists that the basic principle of English social organization is that “everyone . . . thinks he is a gentleman,” and that such lines of demarcation as habits of speech are not a matter of class but of “society.” The tone of his article (in the form of a letter to his friend, Miss Mitford) is one of dry geniality, but peevishness breaks through once when he accuses her of encouraging, in her zeal, any number of young people to believe that they can know or understand anything of “the ramifications of the social order which have obsessed some of the acutest minds of the last 150 years.” These young people, these sour young people, he calls them, are coming off the assembly lines in hundreds every year, he says, and finding employment as critics, even as poets and novelists. “What,” he cries out in despair, “can [these] critics hope to make of the under- tones and innuendoes, the evocative reminiscent epithets of, say, Tony Powell or Leslie Hartley?” The implication is, of course, that “no rudimentary course of social map-reading” like that which Miss Mitford has undertaken will do any good, and that she should have known better. “Was it kind,” he pleads, “. . . to pull their legs?”