ABSTRACT
In a powerfully descriptive study of the social structure in 1909 C. F. G. Masterman in The Condition of England portrayed the nation as divided into three classes – ‘The Conquerors,’ ‘The Suburbans’ and ‘The Multitude’. He might have personalised them as ‘The Forsytes’, ‘The Pooters’ and ‘The Tressells’ as representative types of his three categories. It was usual for contemporary observers of the social scene to focus attention on the first group, the affluent, for whom late Victorian and Edwardian England seemed something of a Golden Age, whose extravagant lives were led in the public gaze in the fashion and gossip columns of the newly-emerged popular press, and whose lifestyles evoked a mixture of envy, admiration and condemnation from those outside the privileged circle. ‘The Suburbans’ were both more numerous and more anonymous, hidden during the day
in small, crowded offices under artificial light, doing immense sums, adding up other men’s accounts, writing other men’s letters … As darkness falls, it finds itself in its own territory, in the miles and miles of little, red houses in little, silent streets, in number defying imagination. Each boasts its high-sounding title – ‘Acacia Villa’ or ‘Camperdown Lodge’, attesting unconquerable human aspiration. 1
