Sloanes are OK, ya?

A short letter from Ann Barr to the editor of The Observer was a delightful surprise.

Sloanes are OK, ya?

Carole Cadwalladr's spiky article 'The rebirth of posh' (Review, last week) was very interesting, but two points. Peter York was not the author of the original Sloane Ranger's Handbook, 1982; it was a communal book by 60 Harpers & Queen contributors, woven together by me as features editor and deputy editor (and Sloane Ranger person). Peter York was the co-author, for his media skills.

My other concern is confusing the Sloane Ranger with the super-rich. Sloane Rangers are not necessarily well-off or aristocrats, but a stratum of a bygone middle class, at least one rung down from David Cameron and friends. They work behind the scenes to help the community, but do not expect to lead it - and don't all vote Tory.

Ann Barr
London W11
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Nicholas Coleridge was fortunate enough to be mentored by Ann Barr and remembers her here.

The authorship of the Sloane Ranger Handbook is apparently a sore point with poor Peter York (Wallis). Link

Chelsea - Army Veterans Include Female Pensioners

Female army veterans become first women Chelsea pensioners
Royal Hospital, Chelsea, takes new step after 300 years

'One of the army's oldest institutions took the arrival of two pioneers from what some – but not old soldiers – might think of as the monstrous regiment of women in its stride today, as two female veterans became the first women Chelsea pensioners.

It has taken the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, founded by Charles II in 1682 for "the succour and relief of veterans broken by age and war", more than 300 years to accept women army veterans; though Dorothy Hughes and Winifred Phillips, both in their 80s, looked very far from broken as they posed in their new uniforms.

"I think it's wonderful," confided Phillips. "I like men. I am alone. And I wanted to be looked after in my old age."

By their side, the male pensioners on parade to welcome their new comrades were equally enthusiastic. Ralph Dickinson, in the Parachute Regiment for 22 years and at the Royal Hospital for nine, said: "I don't see there's a problem. Women can come anywhere now, even working men's clubs, can't they? They've served just like us. Of course, you're going to get some who grumble, but they're the sort who always do."'
Article and Video at Link

Chav! A User's Guide to Britain's New Ruling Class

A DUMMIES GUIDE might be more appropriate; but here it is... Will offer hours of amusement for Sloanies (practicing Chavspeak) and to other observers of the social scene.

In the Shadow of the Iron Duke

from the Times Literary Supplement
In the shadow of the Iron Duke


As seen by a descendant of the Duke of Wellington: the secret misfortunes of his family
Jane Ridley

...The first Duke left a glorious legacy; but he also bequeathed a troubled inheritance. Like many public figures, “the greatest man England has known” did not enjoy spending time with his family. Wellesley gives a sympathetic account of Kitty Pakenham, his wife. As a penniless younger son in Ireland, Arthur Wellesley proposed to Kitty and was rejected by her family as not being good enough. When he returned from India fourteen years later, a major-general on the make, he proposed again without even seeing her. “She is grown damned ugly, by Jove!” he allegedly remarked when at last they met. Kitty had grown neurotic and depressive too, and Wellesley relates the story of the Iron Duke’s unforgiving cruelty towards his reclusive but obsessively adoring wife. Towards his children he was equally hard. “My father never showed the least affection for any of us”, recalled his son. Not surprisingly perhaps, the two sons of the great man grew up lacking in confidence.

The grateful nation voted the Iron Duke a house at Stratfield Saye, but there was never quite enough money to support it. The Wellington survival strategy was to marry money. As many as three dukes married heiresses to cotton fortunes. Most unconventional of these heiresses was Wellesley’s grandmother, Dorothy Ashton. She divorced her husband Gerry, later the seventh Duke, when her son Valerian was only seven. Even today Valerian is reluctant to talk about the trauma and disgrace of his parents’ divorce. Only towards the end of the book does Wellesley reveal that Dorothy, who was a friend of W. B. Yeats and herself wrote poetry, belonged to the lesbian coterie that revolved around Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Dorothy's lonely life ended in depression and drink, but her defiance of social convention was “unbearable” for the upper-class Wellesleys, and it led to a family rift. Another blot on the family honour was the fifth Duke, who was a member of the pro-Nazi Right Club.

Jane Wellesley has written this book partly as a tribute to her parents. Because they are both alive she cannot perhaps be quite as candid as she might; she says little about her own childhood, for example. Her father is evidently a good man, a brave soldier and an excellent Duke, but he has survived by locking the skeletons into the family closets. In this sympathetic and enjoyable book, Wellesley invites the ghosts to take their place at the family feast.


Jane Wellesley
WELLINGTON
A journey through my family
384pp. Orion. £20.
978 0 297 85231 5


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England's Glory: The Country House

Image: Knole House
This delightful review from the mid-1980's expresses the power over the imagination which the country house exerts. Poetic, wonderfully written.
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Victorian Taxidermy - an Exploration

This article is a good introduction to the somewhat arcane but - to Sloane Rangers and country house visitors - familiar world of taxidermy.