ABSTRACT
Class society at its zenith was, as we saw in the last chapter, marked by a growing segregation in income, status and geographical location between the classes. What was still more striking was the segregation within each class. Not only did the rich, the comfortable, and the poor, in Chiozza Money’s terminology, live utterly different lives (see Table 2.2 on page 30). Each of these great divisions of society was further divided by lines of cleavage which were not merely horizontal, between different layers of wealth and prestige, but also vertical. There were vertical divisions between the old rich and the new, the landed aristocracy and the new millionaires; between the business and the professional middle class and between the petty bourgeoisie and the new white-collar class, which at both levels were growing more apart; and in the working class between the ‘respectable’ and the ‘roughs’, which by no means corresponded to the difference between the skilled labour aristocracy and the lesser or unskilled. At the highest level, where landed and business wealth were drawing closer together, the rich and the powerful of both kinds were drawing away from those immediately below them. As Frank Harris, the journalist and rake who moved in the highest circles of the Marlborough House set as well as in some of the lowest of the demi-monde, noted, ‘Snobbery is the religion of England.’1 We shall find that to be true not only between the major social classes but within them as well.
