From a letter from Lady Oxford[1] to the Daily Telegraph, on the subject of war economies:
“Since most London houses are deserted there is little entertaining…in any case, most people have to part with their cooks and live in hotels.”
Apparently, nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist.
[1] Margot Asquith (1864-1945) was the widow of Herbert Henry Asquith, Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who was Prime Minister, 1906-16. Peter Davison
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
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Ow. That observation could have been made today.
I believe Margot Asquith’s memoir prompted Dorothy Parker’s review: “The love affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith was one of the tenderest in all literature.”
awesome, eric, awesome.
Here is the quote from Dorothy Parker: “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.”
To be fair, Lady Oxford’s wikipedia entry suggests she was unusually clueless.
She sounds just like the corporate overlords in the U.S. today. America’s middle class has vanished, and “nobody” has noticed, except those of us dying down here, of course.
Let them eat cake!
I have recently read a couple of accounts of life in England during WWII — Beatrice L Warde’s Bombed But Unbeaten and Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes (this is fiction, but lightly glossed, the author also wrote a series called ‘Letters from London’ in the New Yorker and Good Evening, Mrs Craven is a collection of short stories that appeared there that are mostly accounts of wartime life for a certain strata of society, and gives a good feel for the times. Both have descriptions of staying in hotels, particularly early on in the war.
I recently got hold of a copy of Under Siege: Literary Life in London 1939-45 and it has this to say on the matter:
“The best place to be in a raid –if one could afford it– was one of the large, steel-framed hotels. For the well-off the Dorchester became the focal point of London after dark. The Turkish baths had been converted into a luxurious air-raid shelter, while drinking and dancing went on throughout the Blitz in the downstairs grill-room. …. The contrast with the squalor of the shelters in the East End, in the Tilbury foodstore at Whitechapel or the railway arches at Hungerford Bridge, was obvious, and the communist party MP Phil Piratin resolved to do something about it. On 15 September he led about a hundred people to the Savoy, the nearest hotel to the East End, and when the air-raid siren went demanded access to the Savoy’s shelter.”
There are London houses and then there are London houses. I know this to be true because I am acquainted with Jeeves and Wooster, Hercule Poirot, Pink Floyd and, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Oh, and Alfred Hitchcock.
Those “people” had to throw their servants under the bus and go live in luxury elsewhere where they could abuse someone else’s servants. Bummer. It was kind of the elitist “Lady” to, at least, write a letter calling attention to herself
My Impression of this post: Along the expansive horizon of the space/time continuum, we may actually still be in the Dark Ages.
How many eggs today?
The Daily Telegraph’s snob attitude is one of the reasons why the world is at war AGAIN after only 20-years. Blindness was not confined to London or even to Britain. Orwell was right: nothing will ever teach these people.
Makes me think of a comment made by a friend of an older relative. He said he didn’t believe there was much unemployment because he found it impossible to get a caddy!
Tuesday, June 4
“We shall fight on the beaches… We shall never surrender.”
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