How the upper middle class live

[LisaJool]

Apologies for yet another class thread but I find this fascinating. Off the back of a thread I started watching a TV series about British aristos and their stately homes. This lead to other YouTube videos and a podcast.
Some observations I made:

1. The women all have great bone structure with the infamous MN UMC swooshy hair.

1. A lot of "sleepless nights" and hand wringing about how they can maintain their homes, which they are "custodians" of. Many have had to do tours/homemade jams/souvenirs to try to bring in extra money. But, their dc go to private schools - surely the first thing you'd do is remove them from that to save money or get rid of the ponies?

1. Re decor, lots of chintz like you'd expect in lovely formal rooms but their kitchens look like something Kim and Aggie need to tackle. Clutter covering all available workspace, books, riding gear, pet bowls etc, lots of knick knacks. Someone on another thread stated that the 'clutter free' movement is a class thing, with it being a LMC to working class thing. Not sure if this is true but interesting all the same.

I don't know anyone who is truly UMC as in old money or landed gentry types. For those who are acquainted, what are they like and how do they live?

If anyone is interest there's a YouTube channel called American Viscountess who married into the Montagu family (Duke of Sandwich). A lot of their income now comes from her social media, and she's also a yoga teacher too (when she's not doing her Masters in Country Houses). They did a Q&A and her husband said at the age of 10 or 11 he realized he'd be soon taking over this dilapidated building and there was no money to do so. That must be quite a weight.

If anyone is feeling sorry for them you can be a patron subscriber or even donate via the website 😁

Proper UC have original Minis, Jaguars, ancient blue Land Rovers, and racing green MG's. The estate manager drives the Volvo, unless it is needed to pull the trailer to horse shows of course.

Why don’t you post her comment instead of quoting someone who isn’t here to defend or clarify. We can verify if the poster did indeed say ‘most’ not ‘some’.

Mirabai - I don’t know if I can find it as it was some time ago but I’ll try.

Yeah but the Beauforts are grand. I'm talking about rural gentry/minor aristocracy. Baronets and ex-colonial administrators rather than dukes. Every time I've been to dinner with the nobocracy (regularly at one time) it was always one or the other. Very well cooked but not fussy food. It's all to do with the thing of not appearing to try too hard.

But that's not the upper classes. That's parvenu lifestyle.

Have we had the threadbare tweeds, battered jeeps, brace of labs, exquisite manners and the problem of the leaky portico of the draughty dower house yet?

FoaF in staff at Duke of Bedford's pile at Woburn Abbey newspapers were ironed and laid out on a tray for delivery to the bedroom each morning. He has 17 properties around the world. The Duke and Duchess have separate bedrooms which seem to be almost standard for aristos.

Oh yes.

Yes but at some point you’d just hide the threads if repeated too much for you

To be fair on the programme most of their clothes did look battered. Lots of clashing patterns too, but somehow on them it looked good.

Because there's no guarantee that you'll keep your well paid job and be able to afford the fees all the way through, so better staying in the state sector and spending the money on the peripheral things instead - hobbies, school trips, language courses, DofE expedition, whatever.

I always find these threads quite bizarre. The way some people lack the ability to imagine people who are in one way different to them (class) can lead rich, diverse lives. Upper middle and upper class people are just as varied as anyone else.

DH is UMC. Firmly and undoubtedly (Public school, HTB their church, Oxford, house by The Park). He works in City law (where most of his colleagues are state educated and/or not British). He married me, from a warm LMC family and we love both sides of our upbringings. We lead a normal, if affluent lifestyle and have friends and family of all walks of life. One of his brothers lives with his husband in Zone One and thinks tweed, Volvos and skiing are all yuk, yuk, yuk. The other works in computing, lives in New York, converted to Judaism and married a liberal Rabbi. Pretty sure they don’t play polo in Central Park. Not an ounce of class anxiety between them. That’s what upper middle class looks like.

Why don’t you post her comment instead of quoting someone who isn’t here to defend or clarify. We can verify if the poster did indeed say ‘most’ not ‘some’.

Mirabai here is the quote.

‘hence most Nazis were let off by the Western allies and allowed in the military, big business, science etc
And on the QT most of the upper classes were quite happy with this, because they still believed in Nazi ideology, but it was no longer possible to admit to it.’

OP, you are describing most of my social circle. Yes to Lidl fish fingers. In fact, yes to Lidl generally. Shepherd's pie, sausages, mash. Waitrose fish counter is very middle class, as are gym memberships, Range Rover Evoques, and skiing holidays. Or any holidays, really.

Yes to clutter everywhere, and clothes with holes in them.

Absolutely no to swishy hair. Hair and make-up are of no interest at all. Good gumboots are, though.

And private school is the one absolutely non-negotiable.

Damn you're supposed to be thick, inbred, drug-addled but very, verry rich malcontents so we plebs can feel superior in our impecunious decrepitude.😉

Because once the war was over the real enemy was the Soviet Union so a brain drain of useful de-Nazified Nazis was valuable in building the post-war western world. Werner Von Braun after all got the US to the moon despite using slave labour in his rocket factories. It was pragmatic rather than any Nazi sympathies real or imagined in the English upper class.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

But that would spoil my amusement at the posters who trot these out with deep sincerity each time. Often with some anecdote about their local aristo mucking in at the village fete and someone only realising his lofty birth when a neighbour addressed him as ‘Your Grace’. (To which he jovially returned ‘Just call me Hugo!’ while manning the coconut shy.)

I know someone like this, but not from this country. My exmil. Lived in absolute chaos. But acres and acres, didn't spend much, but walked around with an air of authority and entitlement, got the best service all over London, couldn't understand why I didn't send my children away to,school and join her travelling. Absolutely loved her

A RR Evoque @LadyHooHa? Surely they are the choice of the aspirational? Or have I been on too many MN class threads?

?@LadyHooHa

haha 😂true

I don’t get the adulation of dear old Hugo but I’m just here for the amusement

For those in the know, is having a brass neck OK in the land of the UC? The Montagu's were crowd funding during the pandemic to keep a roof over their heads and then in the next video she popped over to Tuscany to buy "a little house". Her interior designer then joined her. Surely you don't stand with the begging bowl and then unashamedly show off your new not so "little house?". I was going to join their Patreon too!

The poster is referring to the German aristocracy.

The poster is referring to the German aristocracy.

Mirabai no she’s not referring to the German aristocracy as she goes on to say

‘And on the QT most of the upper classes were quite happy with this, because they still believed in Nazi ideology, but it was no longer possible to admit to it.
Not all, by any means - there were those who liberated the camps and were utterly sickened by what they saw’.

It was the allies who liberated the camps.