Quotes

Quote 5 of 13

Leaving aside the proletarian neatness of nanny-gardeners, if you do
spot an unexpectedly and unmistakably plebian feature in such a
garden, it is worth asking the owner about it.  The response will tell
you much more about the owner's class than the feature itself.  I once
expressed mild surprise at the presence of a garden gnome in an
upper-middle-class garden (I said something intelligent like 'Oh, a
gnome').  The owner of the garden explained that the gnome was
'ironic'.  I asked him, with apologies for my ignorance, how one could
tell that his garden gnome was supposed to be an ironic statement, as
opposed to, you know, just a gnome.  He rather sniffily replied that I
only had to look at the rest of the garden for it to be obvious that
the gnome was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

But surely, I persisted, garden gnomes are always something of a joke,
in any garden--I mean, no-one actually takes them seriously or regards
them as works of art.  His response was rather rambling and confused
(not to mention somewhat huffy), but the gist seemed to be that while
lower class saw gnomes as <em>intrinsically</em> amusing, his gnome
was amusing only because of its incongruous appearance in a 'smart'
garden.  In other words, council-house gnomes were a joke, but his
gnome was a joke about council-house tastes, effectively a joke about
class.  A subtle but clearly very important distinction.  Needless to
say, I was not invited back.

This man's reaction to my questions clearly defined him as
upper-middle, rather than upper class.  In fact, his pointing out that
the gnome I had noticed as 'ironic' had already demoted him by half a
class from my original assessment.  A genuine member of the upper
classes would either have boldly admitted to a passion for garden
gnomes (and eagerly pointed out other examples of the genre dotted
about his otherwise effortlessly elegant garden) or said something
like 'Ah yes, my gnome.  I'm very fond of my gnome.' and left me to
draw my own conclusions.  The upper classes to not care what a nosey
anthropologist (or indeed anyone else) thinks of them, and in any case
do not need ironic gnomes to emphasise their status.

p. 132-133

Tags: gardengnomes gardengnome tongueincheek genuinemember mildsurprise elegantgarden councilhouse neatness gist worksofart gardeners apologies joke distinction lt appearance passion genre presence