Follies of the Nouveau Riche

After my enlightening trip to the refugee camps of Finsbury Park, I made my way by train and dirigible to the suburb of Dulwich, to the family home of a colleague and friend from the London School of Tropical Hygiene. Dulwich, as I've no doubt our dear reader is aware, is a suburb of London located in the clouds above Brixton. As one can see from the silhouettes on my dirigible in the picture, most of the residents of Dulwich are academics or their misshapen research assistants. My colleague Miss A, dear girl that she is, still lives with her family, about whom I didn't ask but I presume they are academics. I'm sure that such respectable folk would be driven to drink were they aware of Miss A's antics with her dancing troupe[1], but then some of these modern academics can lean terribly to the port side, as it were, so I shan't deign to judge. I also shall not infer anything about Miss A's personal propriety from the fact that she lives at home - while it might seem that only the most Upright and Proper of girls are still at home these days, the sheer cost of finding independent accomodation worthy of a Lady of Means in the city would surely drive even the most licentious of bawdies to stay home (and perhaps to set up a knocking shop in their parents' bomb shelter - as I say, I shan't judge).

Anyhow, the purpose of this note is not to inquire into the precise goings on in Miss A's parents' bomb shelter, but to note that her home actually had one!! That's right! Some discussion was entered into on this topic, and it was revealed that this Bomb Shelter is not a sensible response to the dangerous times we are said to be living in (after all, one cannot take one's bomb shelter on the Tube, can one?) Rather, Miss A's suburb was established in the '20s by the Nouveau Riche of the time - vulgar Nylon Baronets, retired Burlesque dancers, newly made Cigarillo Heiresses and the like - all the sorts of horrid social climbers made newly-rich by the mad scramble for wealth in the post-world war 1 era. Obviously the greatest of their Nouveau Riche follies was the elevation of their suburbs into the clouds[3], but within the homes of those who live there now, one can see the remnants of a time when any kind of bawdy excess was considered a mark of exquisite taste by those who had covered themselves in gold selling French Porn to the masses between the wars. To whit:

1. Miss A's home had a bomb shelter. This was built in the interwar period, when these new rich thought they could elevate themselves in status above even Her Majesty, who as we all know would trip down into the underground to sit out the bombings of the Ferocious Hun, and would never deign to seuester herself away from those she (gently and kindly) governed. The bomb shelter was at the bottom of her garden,
2. which had a water feature[5]! This proves that Australia is 70 years behind the British in bad taste. While the new rich in Dulwich had water features in the '20s, the Australian vulgar classes only started adopting their water features in the '90s
3. But worst of all, in the kitchen above the entryway was an old-fashioned box with two rows of lights, and above each a label depicting the room to which it corresponded. One of the other party-goers suggested that this was a device for the husband to call his wife from anywhere in the house, but I maintain that the architecture of patriarchal oppression is much less organised than this [6], and it must be an alarm for a butler. Of course one would expect the new rich to have a butler, right? Upon investigation with Miss A, she revealed that current theory on the matter suggests it was a fake version of such a box - the first inhabitants and designers of the house were so tasteless as to be unable to afford a butler, but to want to maintain the semblance of one[7]!

Of course, Miss A is from a much nobler family, and in their City residence, though I've no doubt they could afford much more than a mere butler, they choose to live according to the proper dictates of modesty - forsooth, they even mixed their own Pimms! Which could explain why a portion of the evening is somewhat blurry... perhaps in future I should insist on Pimms mixed only by professionals...

---
[1] although judging by the amount of Pimms[2] consumed at the party, perhaps Miss A's parents have driven her friends to drink? Or perhaps it was the surroundings... more of that above.

[2] Ah, Pimms! If someone had said to me when I was in deep cover in Japan that the Upper Classes had taken to entertaining themselves with a combination of cucumber and booze, I would have been struck dumb with horror. But it really is the perfect thing for a summer's party!

[3] we should take this as a reminder of both the very low price of energy and labour in the interwar era, and the remarkable state of advancement of English Plumbing at the time - quite unlike the degenerate state of Paris at the same time - but it should always be remembered that the provision of greater resources to the nouveau riche simply enhances the many opportunities for them to show off their vulgarity[4]

[4] the most obvious modern example of this being the proliferation of appalling ditties on the average micro-electro-encephalitic telegram machine since digito-electro-encapsulation replaced wires

[5] though to their credit, Miss A's household had converted the water feature into a rather tasteful pond and traditionally-styled bridge, where one could listen to the frogs were it dark enough

[6] and besides, were this the case, the box would surely have been set in the sewing room...?

[7] Perhaps this is what the Prime Minister means when he refers to "aspirational voters" - the sort of people who, while washing their own dishes, can look at the fake box over the door and say to themselves "one day, when I have sold another 50,000 cluster bombs[8], I too can afford a butler!"

[8] or pairs of used school-girls underwear, or high-tar cigarettes, or electric blue g-strings, or whatever other monstrosity the modern social climber peddles to an unsuspecting public in order to finance his or her velveteen tracksuits