Career paths for my fictional, young, non-academic gent in the 1920s/30s

[fictitiousfoibles]

I'm trying to flesh out one of the characters in my novel and am really stuck on a career path for him. Anyone up for taking part in a creative brainstorm?

He's grown up in on an English country estate owned by his mother's family (old money though, again, I haven't decided on how they made their fortunes). Mother lost her brother in WW1, inherited the house and lives their with her husband and their two children. This character is due to inherit it in time but is a dreamy non-academic, non-corporate type - what sort of job would his parents have nudged him into? Ideally it would be a reserved occupation so that his mother (traumatised by loss of brother) can justify his not joining up.

All ideas gratefully received!

TinyOwl - we read the same books!

(I’m thinking Patricia Wentworth and Angela Thirkell specifically)

International playboy and gambler hanging about the south of France and Monaco. Occasionally going home when funds run short to tell his parents he is writing modern poetry or painting so his allowance really shouldn’t be cut off as he is the next Byron or Van Gogh. He is recalled home when the Nazis start invading Belgium, but defies mama as he’s in love with the idea of being in the French resistance. He ends up becoming quite good at exploding things like train tracks. He makes his way home after WWII, inherits the estate and starts a fireworks display company.

The type described in the OP would not lower himself to be an estate manager. He is the heir, not the poor cousin.

Bear in mind the huge families. I had an uncle who went and learned to farm on the estate of HIS uncle by marriage. He had soooo many uncles of various levels of income (cousins reckoned on by dozens ect)

My grandfather was Australian (emigrated here as he didn’t like the heat) so there was another vast tranche of relatives there too.

Someone of that description and background at that time could get into the diplomatic service. You could also use the backdrop of the estate for him to entertain his network through dinner parties, shooting events and the like. Alternatively, media was fast emerging then and a lot of young chaps bought, or part bought, cinemas. Likewise horse racing tracks.

Perhaps they have a current agent in place who lives in the agent's cottage but who wants to retire soon, so your character is shadowing him and getting trained up as a replacement?

Angela Thirkell has a very similar situation in one of her books. Couldn't tell you which, though. Not the family agent, but an elderly agent working for another family who takes the young man on as a sort of apprentice.

Could he be milling around at home meddling with how things have been done up until that point / irritated by the restrictions of only having a small-holding to manage, waiting to be able to sign up?

Where is his father?
You need a much bigger estate for management of the family estate to be a potential career for this young man.
And if his father is around and managing the estate himself, I think he would soon get fed up with a son in his twenties idling around at home after finishing ag. college. He would either have arranged, as suggested, for him to go and get experience with an experienced agent, or packed him off to Canada or somewhere for a year or two - perhaps they know someone who has a ranch or a sheep farm somewhere.

They don't know that there's going to be a war (or not until after Munich) so from his parents' point of view the young man could be hanging around aimlessly indefinitely.

For plot purposes, I need him at the house at the outbreak of war through to at least Feb/March 1940 (could be up to around September 1940)

Could he be recovering from an injury? A riding accident or an accident driving a fast car or something? So he could have been doing anything anywhere up to that point, and he wouldn't be called up because he's not fit for service at that point.

I've read the first six or so of her Barsetshire books so I may well be remembering from there!

Could he be an aspiring actor? Just read trilogy of Antonia White and “drifting” young men of means seem to try to do provincial theatre or perhaps painting. Few “poshos” do a 9-5.

My grandfather was an estate manager. It’s a posh-adjacent job but although you can be running the show if is not - or was not - the sort of job the heirs did. The heirs of my gf’s estate did a) something in the City and b) duff own business eg wooden toy-making. This was all way before my time!

Thank you again for all the excellent thoughts/contributions.

Our young man is definitely more boys brigade than idle, international playboy. I like the idea of his having been abroad for a couple of years but perhaps, as suggested upthread, on a ranch somewhere - that could create some interesting social tensions now he is back. Or, alternatively, something in the city (which I think is what I'll have his father doing) but his heart isn't in it.

A further query for those who might know: what I'm not clear on is whether young men of his profile who went to agricultural college only did so if they had an estate to come back and manage? Clearly there are exceptions e.g. the poster up-thread whose grandfather then went abroad but, as a rule, would a well-to-do young man in line for inheriting a small-holding that didn't warrant any serious management go to agricultural college anyway just as a socially acceptable thing to do to pass the time? Or would it only have been a means to an end?

I don't think he'd have gone to ag. college unless he was intending to make a career of it, either running the family estate or working for someone else. The majority of the students would have been there for that reason, so he'd have been a bit out of place if he was just filling in time.

University would have been more likely. You didn't have to be very academic to go to Oxford in the 1930s. He could have been one of the "hearty passmen who gambol round and learn to play games". That was in 1936, so bang on the time he would have been there. (I expect anyone on this thread will recognise where it comes from.)

I think father being in the City and wanting son to join the family stockbroking firm while son's heart is in the country could work well. But you'd need it to be a bigger estate. A smallholding wouldn't be a full time job, unless he was going to do all the milking, mucking out etc himself.

Stockbroker. Less regulated back then so didn’t need to be particularly academic, but needed to be from a good background with good connections.

His mum would be happy he was safe, he would be bored and frustrated as it didn’t suit him.

Agreed on all counts.

He could be a Reggie Pomfret and spend his time losing his heart to unsuitable older women and taunting proctorial bulldogs.

(Which has led me down a fascinating internet rabbithole about the regular migrations of sex workers caused by 19thc Oxford's transient population of young men, and how the university's night watch used to imprison prostitutes or suspected prostitutes found in the streets at night in the basement of the Clarendon building till they could be brought before the vice-chancellor in the morning to be sentenced...)

https://www.uncomfortableoxford.com/policing-women-at-the-university-of-oxford

I'm thinking (arbitrarily)10-15 acres of land.

That is barely a small holding, an small estate would be around 25,000 acres or 40 square miles.

well-to-do young man in line for inheriting a small-holding

he would not be well to do, or considered in any way a gentleman. He would likely not go to any college. His family would be local cheese makers or flower growers or pig farmers at most. Most with 10-15 acres would use it to feed the family and they’d take in work for cash like perhaps a bit of wood working, or have a small forge and shoe horses. They’d not be in poverty but they’d be working class.

ia with others, OP, that the old money, country estate family background you're describing doesn't really chime with the description of the "estate", which is far too small. If you want them to be landed gentry types, then they need to be able to live off the income from the land alone. They need a much bigger estate with numerous farms and tenants who would provide them with rental income.

One way around this would be to have them (or at least the mother's family) be former landed gentry who have fallen on hard times. They had to sell off the majority of their land, leaving only the one house to live in - perhaps it wasn't even the main house in former times. The family is now essentially upper middle class, as the father and son must work elsewhere to bring in money for the house and family's upkeep.

Another way is to have them never have been old money at all, but rather new money wealthy businesspeople. The mother's family bought a minor manor house with no land and the property has always been funded via their business profits.

You don't become upper class by having the money, you are born into it or have it conferred on you by the Monarch.

So it is perfectly possible to be upper class and have a reasonably-sized property yet not have two halfpennies to rub together. All it takes is for your parents or grandparents to have been younger children and not inherited all that much, as the big money went to the eldest son. There are plenty of tales of the upper classes & landed gentry losing all their inherited wealth by gambling it all away, or by making rotten investments.

@RosewaterMadeleines - very interesting about Oxford prostitutes!

I read a book about the Christie murders obvs much later period, but post WW2 there was a complete glut of prostitutes due to demobbing. There were apparently hordes buzzing round the few remaining customers and hassling ordinary commuters in Paddington Station.

Sorry for derail… the fictional young man could be a traveller - roaming round Europe was still a thing in the 30s if you had a bit of brass. He could also head off to the Spanish Civil War either as an idealist or a thrill-seeker…

I can’t remember which book, but I seem to remember reading one where the main character was a surveyor of country estates post war when they often had to open to the public or it could be sold off to the equivalent of the National Trust. I think they were deemed acceptable enough to be a part of the social set, but also not quite as they had to work. If only I could remember which book.

My father – second born son – was from a wealthy family of businesses, land, and money and he was also woefully lacking in education. He was born in 1918, left school at 14 without any qualifications (a prestigious boys college) and then went to agricultural college for 12 months before working on a farm for his two-year Farm Practical.

He then had to return home after the death of his father in 1938.
He was drafted in summer of 1939 (at 21) and went on to join the Parachute Regiment and then the SAS. After the war he returned home and ended up managing the family business until he retired.
But work-wise, all he ever really wanted was to be an ordinary farmer. I think it's important to remember that children didn't really have much option in those years. You did as you were told by your parents.

@RosewaterMadeleines - interesting article - the reference to the barred window through which brandy was passed in a teapot was actually one of the windows in my third year set!

I think cars would be a good option - maybe the sort of top end sporty models - they were expensive so they would have wanted "naice" young chaps to sell them. He could then be into cars, have his own sporty model crash it and be recovering from the accident at the start of the war.

Oh, good one. More recently than the 1930s my posh but qualificationless cousin did this very job - and he could drive round in RRs in his time off (well, he said he was allowed…).

Furthermore if you had a farm you had petrol in the War; cue df’s family zipping about in sports cars (not on farm business).

So much great food for thought here. Fascinating article on proctors and prostitutes.

I'm coming round to the 'upper middle' line of thinking - his mother's family having perhaps done fairly well through business and brought a minor manor house, and his father falling into the former landed gentry fallen on hard times bracket.

But I think the car option will be useful for his would-be brother-in-law, who is much more in the playboy mould.

There are plenty of tales of the upper classes & landed gentry losing all their inherited wealth by gambling it all away, or by making rotten investments.

Hence entails. The current possessor could then only gamble away the income; he couldn't touch the landed property.

Death duties ruined a lot of landed families post WW1. If the father died of natural causes then two sons were killed (the elder first), that's three lots of death duties within a few years. Add the agricultural depression in the 1920s, and many families found themselves having to sell up. If they were lucky their land might be on the edge of an expanding suburb and wanted for building.

Those that survived, the next generation was hit by high taxation post WW2 and another lot of country houses and estates went under the hammer.