I wasn't looking at her eyes
Posted on 04/18/2007 8:46:28 AM PDT by dead
Poor Kate Middleton, dumped by the second in line to the British throne then displayed humiliatingly to the world as Prince William's "practice chick", the mere recipient of some of his wild oats. But judging by the astonishing Pommy snobbery unleashed in the week since the break-up of her almost five-year relationship, Middleton, 25, is well off out of it.
British newspapers are full of quotes from the supposed upper classes about how Kate was too "common" to marry William, 24.
Her mother, Carole Middleton, was "pushy, rather twee and incredibly middle-class", according to a royal source quoted by the Daily Mail.
Mrs Middleton's crimes? She says "Pleased to meet you" instead of "How do you do", "toilet" instead of "lavatory" and "pardon?" instead of "what?".
Senior courtiers at Buckingham Palace were said to be whispering that Carole, a former flight attendant who married a pilot, was really "not the thing". Therefore, nor was her daughter, despite the fact that Kate has behaved impeccably in the five years since she met William at university in Scotland and moved in with him.
Another element of Toiletgate, as it has been dubbed, is the claim that William's friends used to mock Middleton by whispering "Doors to Manual" whenever she entered a room, a dig at her mother's trolley-dolly past.
"There'd be jibes asking Kate if she was going to wheel in the trolley and when the food service would start. All pretty juvenile stuff, but these are former Eton chaps who are permanently stuck in that sort of humour."
The snobs are anonymous but there is a ring of truth to the slurs, which have a long history in Britain, as a contrived way of separating the anxious U (upper classes) from the aspirational non-U, terms immortalised by the English author Nancy Mitford in a 1956 essay.
The U might be under threat of extinction in the new classless Britain but the fact its secret code remained un-cracked by bourgeois Carole Middleton and her daughter apparently is cause for crowing celebration in the aristocracy, a sign that all is not yet lost.
"I am a firm believer in people marrying into the same class," the self-described aristocrat Kishanda Fulford wrote this week in the Daily Mail, which described her as "the wife of Francis Fulford, whose family has lived in their stately home for 800 years", and obviously has never had to buy his own furniture - another distinction between U and non-U.
"There is no confusion over what time 'dinner' is and what to call the 'loo'… There are many pretty girls from the lower and middle classes who have married into the aristocracy, indeed, Duchesses past and present have bloodlines which could be considered as ordinary as Kate's - but they never ended up queen."
According to another "insider": "Carole's whole approach is very aspirational. But re-laying your front drive and trimming the wisteria around your front door isn't going to make your home, or your daughter, fit for a prince."
Ouch.
Seen from a middle-class meritocracy such as Australia, the attacks on the Middletons are bafflingly petty, especially when William, his brother, Harry, and their mates are so often seen behaving with as much class as Paris Hilton.
Last month, for instance, British tabloids ran a front-page photo of William posing for the camera while squeezing the breast of a young woman - not Kate. His pick-up line is reported to be: "Hi, I'm going to be king; d'ya fancy a pull?", which may, of course, be an urban myth.
The more we see of the Queen's descendants, the less suitable they appear to be to reign over an egalitarian country such as ours.
Of course, there is goodwill and sympathy for William in Australia, mainly because of the tragic end of his mother, Princess Diana. And it is silly for the British press to chastise him for doing what practically every other man his age does - extending his promiscuous bachelor days as long as possible.
Still, as the British TV agony aunt Denise Robertson wrote this week of the break-up: "There are undertones of 'droit du seigneur' - a maiden dishonoured and then discarded."
It is an old-fashioned concept, but Middleton's fate is a salutary lesson for young women contemplating shacking up with the love of their lives rather than holding out for a firm commitment.
In 2005 the median age at marriage for Australian men was 32 (up from 26 in 1985), and for women it was 29.7 (up from 24) and leaving a shrinking window of fertility. In the expanding period of singledom, cohabitation has become an almost mandatory stepping stone to marriage. A whopping 76 per cent of couples (69 per cent in NSW) who married in 2005 had been "living in sin", as they used to say.
But the idea of "try before you buy" gives all the advantages to men, who get the benefits of marriage with none of the responsibilities. They get sex on tap, domesticity, companionship, and probably nutritional and hygiene improvements. They can test-drive the merchandise for as long as they like.
But for women, the immovable biological fact of declining fertility means the deal is inevitably unfair. And if marriage comes at all, it often is a utilitarian choice after all the magic and mystery has been used up in a tenuous coexistence in which neither partner fully trusts the other and one foot is always out the door.
If Middleton had really wanted to marry William she never should have set up house with him. Smart girls don't give away marital perks free.
devinemiranda@hotmail.com
She is attractive.
The 1 on the left could be a “bad angle”. I think her eyes are pretty in the middle. Although there she is classy and on the right....giving away the store.
My Daddy described the attitude as "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"
Sounds like we had wise Dads, huh? Amazing, in this age of women's lib, that young girls don't seemed to have cottoned to these facts of life, huh?
One of the tip-offs between a "U" and a "non-U" is what I suppose you could call false gentility . . . iow using ultra-refined terms. "Pardon" is one of those.
I would have thought, though, that "toilet" and "lavatory" would be the other way around. "Lavatory" is definitely an ultra-refined euphemism. You should wash when you go to the loo, but that's not what you go in there for. I wouldn't use that as a distinguishing mark, though, because matters of elimination habits are rife with euphemism. "Loo" and "toilet" are also euphemisms.
Kate is lucky to be rid of him. Prince William is a pure playboy with terrible manners....he abused her emotions with all his playing around. He needs to grow up.
Well, there she was talking about her general “manners”.
The bottom half of the article really sticks it about shacking up.
She is extremely attractive, but she can do better. I have a 22 year old daughter who thinks William is hot. I’ve told her no thanks. I want her to marry into a good family.
Actually that's quite true. In days of old it was part of a business strategy to have a daughter marry into another Sovereign's family. It kept the peace.
Yeah....I was thinking....HA....maybe this was HER PRACTICE Husband........I think she wins in this one.
If Middleton had really wanted to marry William she never should have set up house with him. Smart girls don’t give away marital perks free.
^^^^
Amen! Are you listening, young women?
I agree with Miranda’s column to a large extent, but am surprised with the ease with which she absolves the fairer sex of having any advantages resulting from shacking up.
If women are such victims and so put-upon, then why do they shack up in droves?
Exactly. And our society is the worse off for it.
I wasn't looking at her eyes
Wow. That’s an education.
That totally blows me away!
“What?” is all too common in America now, but I was given “the look” if I used such a reply word growing up, and would “get it” if I really had the attitude. Never mind the other words!
“But those lines are dying out too, so it’s only a matter of time before they have to marry into the dreaded ‘middle class’.”
Isn’t that what His Royal Chuckness, Princess Anne, Prince Edward, and Prince Andrew all did? They married people from middle or upper middle class backgrounds, and Camilla will be the de facto queen no matter what her title is when Charles is on the throne. If Camilla is finally acceptable as a consort to the king, why not Kate?
I hope William ends up marrying another Diana who gets rid of all his snobbish friends, courtiers, and hangers-on. It would serve them all right.
The only problem is that Brit / Aussie inflections creep into your writing after you read it...
Must...get...mind...out...of...gutter.
TAW
(1) A British prince is surrounded by friends who qualify for Monty Pyhton's "Upperclass Twit Of The Year" award;
(2) A woman was respected less for shacking up with her boyfirend than if she held out for marriage.
I note as an aside that the "U" individuals had particular contempt for the young lady's mother because she, unlike them, had actually worked to earn a living.
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