The Eccentricity Clause

Which brings me to a further complicating factor: taste is often judged, in social terms, not by the deed but by the doer. If someone is securely established as a member of a particular class, his or her house may feature a number of exceptions to the rules I have mentioned without any danger of reclassification downwards or upwards. I read somewhere recently that Princess Anne’s house, Gatcombe Park, is cluttered with displays of every gift she has ever received, including the sort of tacky national dolls and cheap African carvings normally only found in working-class ‘front rooms’. Such signs of plebeian tastes among the upper classes or even long-established upper-middles are generally regarded as harmless eccentricities.

And it works the other way round as well. I had a friend of impeccable working-class credentials – a school cleaner, living on a run-down council estate – who had a passion for the upper-class equestrian sport of eventing (also known as Horse Trials, and also, incidentally, favoured by Princess Anne). She kept a horse (free in return for mucking-out) at a nearby riding school, and her council-house kitchen was festooned with rosettes and photographs of herself competing in local hunter-trials and one-day events. Her working-class friends and neighbours accepted her ‘posh’ horsey doings and decorations as an innocuous quirk, a somewhat eccentric hobby which in no way affected her status as their social equal.

This ‘eccentricity clause’ seems to be most reliably effective at the top and bottom ends of the social scale. The middle-middle, lower-middle, upper-working and even upper-middle zones are more vulnerable to re-classification on the grounds of perceived deviation from the class norm. Here, a single lapse in home-decorating taste may be forgiven or disregarded, but two or more could be damaging. Even among the less vulnerable, it is safest to choose your eccentricity from a class at the opposite end of the scale, rather than from the one immediately adjacent to your own. An upper-middle showing evidence of middle-middle tastes, for example, is much more likely to be suspected and downgraded than an upper-middle with a penchant for an unmistakably proletarian item of furniture or decoration.

In borderline cases, well-intentioned gifts can pose a problem for the class-conscious English. I was once given some very pretty wooden coasters, and not having any tables worth protecting from drink-stains – nor, I must admit, wishing to be suspected of the bourgeois instinct to do so – I use them to prop open my dodgy windows. I could get the broken sashes mended instead, of course, but then what would I do with the coasters? Being English can be quite tricky sometimes.

House-talk rules

Whatever your social class, there are rules governing not only what you must do when you move into a house, but also how you should talk about it – or rather, to be more precise, how you should moan about it.

The ‘Nightmare’ Rule

When talking about your house-move, it must always be described as traumatic, fraught with difficulty and disruption, even if in fact the process was completed smoothly and without noticeable stress. This rule applies to the initial house-hunting, the purchase of the house, the move itself, any DIY undertaken upon moving in, and ‘having the builders in’: it is universally understood that all of these are ‘a nightmare’. To describe them in any more favourable or even neutral terms would be regarded as odd, possibly even as arrogant – as somehow implying that you are immune to the stresses and upsets afflicting all normal house-buyers.

There is a modesty-rule implied here as well. The more grand or desirable your new residence, the more you must emphasize the troubles, inconveniences and ‘nightmares’ involved in its acquisition and improvement. One does not boast about one’s purchase of a beautiful Cotswold cottage or even a château in France: one moans about the awfulness of the estate agents, the carelessness of the removal men, the obtuseness of the local builders or the dire state of the plumbing, roof, floors or garden.

Done well, with just the right air of long-suffering humour, this kind of English moaning can be remarkably convincing, and highly effective in deflecting envy. I have found myself sympathizing – genuinely sympathizing – with the beleaguered new owners of just such bijou cottages and grand châteaux. Even if you are not convinced, and indeed even if you are boiling with envy, resentment or righteous indignation, the correct response is to express sympathy: ‘How infuriating!’ ‘You must be exhausted!’ ‘What a nightmare!’

At one level, this ritual moaning is of course an indirect boast – an excuse to talk about one’s new property and convey its attractions without appearing to crow. At the same time, however, it can also be seen as another manifestation of English ‘polite egalitarianism’, a less invidious form of hypocrisy. The moaners, by emphasising the mundane practical details and difficulties of home-buying or moving, are focusing on problems they and their listeners have in common, matters with which we can all identify, and politely deflecting attention from any potentially embarrassing disparity in wealth or status. I could sympathize with my château-buying friends because their laments centred on the only element of their situation that could be compared with my own humble removals from one cheap flat to another. But this practice is observed by all classes, and in circumstances of much less dramatic income-disparity. Only the most vulgar nouveaux-riches break the rule and tell house-move stories that blatantly advertise their superior wealth.