Benjamin Disraeli famously described the rich and the poor as “two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy”. Indeed, the future prime minister thought them so “ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings” that they might as well be “inhabitants of different planets”.
But distance isn’t the only cause of class conflict — sometimes proximity is the problem. Adjacent classes can be all too familiar with each other’s habits, breeding not just contempt but also resentment. As we read this month, even reasonably well-off Londoners, living in £800,000 flats, come to see being denied access to a sky pool as a form of “apartheid” — which might seem somewhat hyperbolic to people who live in parts of the country where £800,000 is a lot (or indeed to people who lived under apartheid).
And much of the class tension throughout history has been not between rich and poor, but between class neighbours, those on the very next rung of the hierarchy. For instance, there has always been tension between the working class who actually work and their non-working neighbours. Then there’s the often vicious war of words between the intelligentsia and the petty bourgeoisie — divergent tendencies within the middle class but with very different worldviews. The former may control “the arts”, but the latter have the Daily Mail.
Finally, at the top of the pile, there’s the clash between “old money” and “new money”, which has long been a staple of English literature. The rise and fall of fortunes was an obsession of 19th century authors, but the definitive showdown comes in a 20th century novel, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. Newly out of copyright, the great American novel of the 1920s East Coast elite has become the most popular book about class in our own age, and yet it is telling just how alien its ruling elite are compared to ours.
Published in 1925, Gatsby was not at first a roaring success. Indeed, it didn’t acquire its classic status until after Fitzgerald’s premature death in 1940. In our own time, however, it exerts a grip on the popular imagination. In particular, it has formed our double image of who we think the rich are: the snobby, aristocratic elites versus flashy, free-spending social climbers.
The novel’s main setting is Long Island, New York — where the two classes live side-by-side — or very nearly. The nouveaux riches live in the village of “West Egg” — which is across the bay from “East Egg”, the exclusive abode of the establishment. Of course, in a young country like the US old money is never that old, and compared to Europe, the whole of America is West Egg. Nevertheless, it takes only two generations to give old money its defining feature: which is that it is passed down from one generation to the next.
Inheriting wealth means not having to work for it — and that is, or rather was, the ultimate signifier of class. To be unmarked by the sun — and the labour that others perform from dawn to dusk — is what made the rich look rich. In old portraits, the wealthy and powerful are pale and soft, and were careful to present themselves as such. No tanning or toning for them.
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