For ae that and ae that
Reading a review of that latest book by the Tiger Mother woman (and husband) -
a) These people have clearly never read any family saga novels, whether Buddenbrooks or The Crowthers of Bankdam, otherwise they might be a bit more aware of the 'clogs to clogs' narrative, or at least the 'third generation on from the striving upwardly mobile successful patriarch [or matriarch, e.g. Barbara Taylor Bradford] is not interested in striving, but either getting on in Society, or being An Artist'.
b) The C19th British aristocracy wasn't, on the whole, lolling around: it was running the Empire, or at least its own estates. Okay, maybe Lord Lyttelton was unusual - Evangelical in religious beliefs, hardworking educational reformer, etc - but not, I suspect, so very unusual in having a Sense of Duty.
This resonated for me with the article about Orwell and his prep school, which intersected with thoughts I had been having about C. S. Lewis and his very hostile view of experimental education*, and whether that was influenced by his own experiences of prep/public school and the fear that without at least the restraint of having to be in class learning Latin or on the rugger-pitch for significant swathes of time, bullying would become completely unconfined? Rather than the bullying being part of the toxic making-a-man-of-you culture.
*(I have my own head-canon for Harold and Alberta Scrubb in which they are pillars of the local Labour Party, he is a dedicated WEA lecturer, and she is running the local birth control clinic and a member of the Abortion Law Reform Association.)
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