Posted by Jock on August 18, 2007 at 17:15:31 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Amazons Toffs? posted by Peter H on August 18, 2007 at 12:33:26:
This allegation is unpleasant and grossly unfair. I am sorry that Jock is introducing an off-key personal note...
Peter, no derogatory personal comment made or intended. It's just that your assertion, There seems to be an overriding desire on TarBoard to show that the Blacketts/Turners were rich toffs served by downtrodden serfs is not supported by the evidence. As it lacked the razor sharp logic, which is the usual 'signature' of your posts, I concluded that you had just wanted to give TarBoard a good stir.
Now back to basics. I was really thinking of the last few years on TarBoard. I recall someone... claiming on TarBoard last year that Nancy was a pillar of local society and a leading figure in the local Hunt. It has also been claimed that the Blacketts received a number of lucrative rents from local farmers.
There is no mystery. Iain Hobbs first identified the Crossley-Blackett/Turner link in an article published in Mixed Moss 10 years ago. He revisited the evidence (and also briefly TarBoard) about a year ago, and I posted an updated version of his essay on If Not Duffers... . Arguing from the apparent deference shown by local tenant farmers to the Amazons, Hobbs speculated that some of their farms were located on the Beckfoot estate. Citing this and other evidence, and identifying the Beckfoot household rather more closely with the Crossley family than I would have done, Hobbs concluded that the Blacketts/Turners were upper class. I'm personally not convinced that Hobbs's evidence that farmers like the Tysons were tenants of the Beckfoot Estate is particularly strong.
However, I'm fascinated by the debate. As this discussion on TarBoard has shown, there is some genuine ambiguity here. The "toff coefficient" (proximity to upper class) of the Beckfoot household is high, but, it seems, just not quite high enough for Nancy and Peggy to make it into upper class.
Now let's cross the border from fiction to reality take a look at my 'placeholder' theory. How does it work? Take a look at Pull Wood House. I would maintain that this is a placeholder for Beckfoot. AR starts with some of the aspects of the real place, rejects others and then adds some characteristics from somewhere else.
| place | contribution | |
|---|---|---|
| Placeholder | Beckfoot | geography, principal occupants |
| Ethos | Lanehead | some of the internal social dynamics |
| Detailed Layout | Somewhere else? | the physical house |
So where does the class ambiguity (upper middle or lower upper) of Beckfoot come from? Did AR set out from his Crossley placemark to make the household upper class and then have a change of mind? And then, perhaps finding that many of the Crossley props and characteristics useful, he didn't throw as many of them out as he should have. Or... .
I must congratulate John Wilson for supplying the answer in his post 28820. And the Crossley family was certainly well off... but this does not mean that they were upper class – they could have been ‘noveau riche’ BULLSEYE!
The Crossleys in spite of their Baronetcy had one fundamental middle class characteristic. THEY WERE IN TRADE! [This discrepency was starring me in the face but I failed to make the deductive leap!] A little poking around reveals that Grandfather Crossley, Sir William was a Director of the Manchester Ship Canal. The baronetcy was created for him [I wonder how he earned it!] in 1909. Father Crossley, Sir Kenneth was the chairman of Crossley Motors and bought the Combermere estate in 1919! So the Crossley's were not 'old money' and, although they were trying hard, not properly 'upper class'!
What strings did father Crossley pull to get his baronetcy? Why did he buy Combermere? Did he try to run his household on the basis of of how he imagined an upper class household would work? Even when they were on holiday? Against the wishes of his protesting daughters?
Now which AR character does that remind you of?