lower classes gamble -they enter the Pools.
Upper classes have private incomes.

Don't forget the nouveaux riches! Vera Smithers and Diana Skelton both cause all sorts of trouble because, my dears, they just don't know how to behave properly in the instinctive way that the well-bred proper CS girls do. I suppose Joan Baker'd also fall into that category, but at least Mr and Mrs Baker have the decency to spend all their pools winnings fairly quickly and get back to their proper station in life!

In fairness to EBD, I don't think she was as rigid in her view of society as that verse implies. Wasn't that the thinking of the Edwardians, even those who accepted Darwinism.

To go back even further the saintly doctors so beloved by EBD would not be welcome by the landed gentry. Mr Woodhouse's favourite Dr Parry would not be invited to dine at Hartfield.

I know the Chalet School was written around ten years later than the time of A Vicarage Family but I would imagine those ideas were still clung onto, especially by older people; so Sophie Hamel simply being accepted without question at the Chalet School is really quite forward thinking.

Doctors classed as middle-class, whereas people like the Woodhouses were upper-class.

Gay was wearing a disgraceful old raincoat and beret, and she had put on her heaviest shoes for the walk; but there was no mistaking what she was. Her highbred little face, graceful carriage and clear, cultured voice all gave her away if she had had any hope of passing for a cottage girl.

That's made me wonder something else ... who in the books has the characteristics (physical or otherwise) of 'high-breeding', and yet isn't 'high-bred'?

What are the nationalities of 'high-bred' girls ? Frieda, etc are frequently described as 'a beauty' (or have admirable hair, a beautiful, soft, voice, and so on), but I can only think of high born English girls. It seems anachronistic to go on about being 'high-bred' whilst condemning Thekla for her catagorising people as being hochgeborene or otherwise (although strictly that's 'high-born', which could be construed as an accident of birth, whereas class is a social construct...)

Miss Maynard, striding along, with Joey Bettany on one side and Simone Lecoutier on the other, looked what she was—a jolly, frank Englishwoman. Joey, with her high-bred face, was another; little Simone being typically French. In front of them went the others, most of them showing their various races in their faces and bearing, from Vanna of South Italy, to Lieschen Hoffman...

I know the term "high-bred" comes from the terminology of bloodstock, with all those connotations of attention to bloodlines and pedigree. However, I took from it the implication that the girls described had the qualities you associate with a highly-bred horse, a kind of high-strung, proud and spirited sensitivity, as opposed to the appearance of a person of social superiority. Does that make any sense at all?

In a similar way, the term "well-bred" only suggests to me someone who pays attention to manners and the consideration of others, and has really very little to do with social standing.[/quote
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I'd read 'well-bred' as someone who comes from, what Joey describes as, 'a line of gentle folk.' Whereas having good manners and consideration for others is more to do with a natural refinement.

Biddy's Irishness confers on her a certain social ambivalence. This is because the class structure in Ireland at the time would have been significantly different to that in Britain.

I know the term "high-bred" comes from the terminology of bloodstock, with all those connotations of attention to bloodlines and pedigree. However, I took from it the implication that the girls described had the qualities you associate with a highly-bred horse, a kind of high-strung, proud and spirited sensitivity, as opposed to the appearance of a person of social superiority. Does that make any sense at all?

Yes, as it applies to Joey,but I'm not sure your example fits so well with Gay Lambert. These finer distinctions between well bred and high born are mine fields. They occur in Jane Austen, especially in Emma. Emma is upper middle class or higher(?) because of birth and money, Jane, on the other hand is not because of lack of money, and a more professional than landed background. But Jane Austen credits her with understanding and education, and in those two spheres, she trumps Emma.

In a similar way, the term "well-bred" only suggests to me someone who pays attention to manners and the consideration of others, and has really very little to do with social standing.

I'd read 'well-bred' as someone who comes from, what Joey describes as, 'a line of gentle folk.' Whereas having good manners and consideration for others is more to do with a natural refinement.

Although I have a feeling that Biddy's Irishness and 'picturesque' language etc are fetishised by EBD to the extent that they overcome her original social derivation. I find myself wondering whether EBD would have portrayed the integration into the CS of a Cockney beggar-child, of equally humble stock, especially if she held onto elements of her original accent and speech?

Biddy's Irishness confers on her a certain social ambivalence. This is because the class structure in Ireland at the time would have been significantly different to that in Britain.

I think the ambivalence of an Irish accent is still around. Terry Wogan, for example, is actually a middle class IRishman, but his accent makes him classless and thus acceptable to everyone, even those who wouldn't like a middle class English accent? (Or am I making this all too complicated??)

True, but I'm not sure EBD would have known this, given how often she gets things about Ireland completely wrong on the relatively few occasions she portrays Irish characters! I think you're right about Irishness giving Biddy social ambivalence in the way a working-class London child wouldn't have had for EBD, but I think it may be more that her humble origins can be veiled under a kind of Celtic picturesque blur, rather than suggesting unromantic urban poverty of the kind we see later with the evacuees. Yet Biddy isn't entirely allowed either to be just a 'wild Irish scamp', even when she's first adopted, because we're carefully told she has the dainty table manners and desire to bathe regularly learned, via her mother, from her (presumably Anglo-Irish?) employer.

Mr. Perry is an apothecary, though, and I think lower in status to a physician. And I read somewhere that it was towards the end of the 19th century that the doctor replaced the lord as the hero in romantic literature.

Of course there could be a secret in Biddy's past: Miss Honora might have dallied with the handsome chauffeur and produced a child who was hastily foisted onto the faithful maid. Equally, Miss Honora's father/brother might have dallied with the faithful maid, etc, etc. That could explain the astonishing beauty and high-bred characteristics, because, of course, Biddy would be upper class!

your observation of Terry Wogan is spot on. I would, however, add a rider to it thus: "...his accent makes him classless" to a non-Irish person.

Perhaps EBD examined the Irish pound note at the time, which depicts Lady Lavery with a shawl, no less, looking most picturesque and Celtic romantic,for her respective portrayals of the upper middle and Anglo Irish Mollie Bettany and the dainty, peasant Biddy!

Miss Maynard is from a 'county' background at the very least, and probably higher up the social ladder than Joey by some way, yet she's only jolly and frank compared to Joey's air of 'high-breeding'!

I'd agree that you can't make your way into the upper classes by professional means - though Reg is making himself solidly middle-class by becoming a doctor (and through marrying Len!), and Biddy O'Ryan becomes middle-class through education, I suppose, and Ros Lilley. (We hear so much about Joan not 'quite fitting in' that the hint seems to be that she never quite passes for middle-class...)

It does annoy me that EBD decided to put the Bakers back in their place by saying that they soon went through their winnings: it would've been quite amusing to've seen Joan return to the Platz later on as a sort of Footballers' Wives character, dripping in jewellery and driving a very expensive car

It does annoy me that EBD decided to put the Bakers back in their place by saying that they soon went through their winnings: it would've been quite amusing to've seen Joan return to the Platz later on as a sort of Footballers' Wives character, dripping in jewellery and driving a very expensive car

They are selling most of their things and buying all new. Mr. Baker has been talking to Dad over the garden wall and he has just come in and told me Mr. B. means to buy a car and they will send Joan and Pam to a good school. Dad says he can see it will be easy come easy go with them unless Mrs Baker's father or someone can make them see sense. Dad is going to mention it to Canon Gay if he gets a chance. And you remember that it is silly to spend all you have got for then where are you?

"Edna Baker has left her job and she's sent Reg Harrison his ring back. Mrs. Harrison was in last night and she did carry on about Edna.

I mean, were they supposed to stay living where they were, sending their daughters to a school acknowledged elsewhere in the series as poor, working at jobs they didn't like, and sitting on their nest-egg against a rainy day?

So, they are moving to Worthing to be nearer family, buying a car and sending the younger two girls to good schools - none of which sounds particularly extravagant, though presumably the car would have been seen as aspiring waaay 'above their station'...? It isn't even as if they were throwing away their old possessions - they are selling them, which sounds like a financially canny move, and not like people who have gone crazy with sudden wealth! Perhaps Edna always hated her job, and only stayed in it because they needed the money -

Incidentally, I wonder why her ambitious younger sister Pamela (aged 13 in Wins the Trick never came to the CS? Too expensive? She's still too young at 13, but might come later on? Joan is obviously unhappy there? I wonder what Joan would have told her family about the CS...

Interestingly, after Problem, Joan seems to have genuinely 'reformed' and become more or less acceptable, until Richenda, when she suddenly becomes cheaply pretty and all those other things we hear so much about. But for four books or so, she isn't mentioned a lot, but when she is it's usually something fairly positive. i wonder why EBD changed her mind?

The other Joan incident I find curious is in Ruey, where everyone has Lacrosse fever but Joan says she'll stick to what she knows, and Ruey doesn't have a lot of time for her after that. Are we supposed to think that it's silly of Joan not to join in? Or is it meant to be an example of Ruey's lax obsession? If it were any other girl I'd say the latter, but with Joan it's hard to know.

Ah, but people like Elma Conroy's boyfriend and Captain Carrick gamble on card games, on horse racing or in casinos true upper class caddish style .

One is that awful scene in Trials where Joan and another girl ask Naomi questions that are (presumably) too personal, and Joan ends up snubbed not just by Naomi, but also by the other girl. This is meant to show Joan's ill-breeding, of course! But it makes me think of the girl Gillian in the Island books, whose habit of asking personal questions is put down to her curiousity, and not bad manners as such.