Generational Wealth And Status In The US and The UK

What I learned from my Substack Live conversation with Eleanor Anstruther

This past Monday I had a Substack Live conversation with my good friend, novelist Eleanor Anstruther. Eleanor’s family is part of the British aristocracy so it was a thrill to hear her views on generational wealth in the UK from the inside. My ancestors came to America from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Eleanor’s family is connected to William the Conqueror, the Norman invader of England in 1066.

Over the centuries, Eleanor’s family was granted various titles and lands. The lands have been kept more or less intact, which is rare and a testament to the family’s perseverance and ability to adapt, i.,e., their stewardship. The lands produce income and the titles confer status.

Many ancient families have lost their land and their fortunes but it is exceedingly rare to lose a title. And although a title has no income attached to it, a penniless duke will retain status and will not starve.

Neither the titles nor the lands, however, are a guarantee of happiness. In fact they can oppress even as they provide privilege.

Our full conversation is available at the end of this post. Below are some of my observations followed by short clips.

The children of wealth

Eleanor notes that a landed and titled estate in a family for a thousand years has a powerful gravitational pull. No one wants to be part of the generation that failed the test of stewardship or persistence. But at the same time, it’s a heavy burden to be a link in that long, long chain. To be part of something so vast in time can diminish your sense of yourself as an individual. It can make you feel like a small cog in an impersonal machine.

In America, preserving a long, multi-generational stretch of wealth is difficult to pull off. We don’t have institutions like landed estates and titles to facilitate dynastic desires. As well, Americans tend more towards individualism. Perhaps that’s just as well.

It is gratifying to know that you have enabled your children to carry on some aspects of your way of life. But as a parent, there should be an expectation that your children will do things differently. And to force conformity to a particular lifestyle or particular career is usually a parental mistake.

A juggernaut

I’m fascinated, like many Americans, with the idea of the British aristocracy.

For example, at the height of my Downton Abbey obsession, I’d prepare a tray for my lunch, take it to my desk, and pretend to be the butler Carson serving Lord Grantham. I’d bow slightly and mumble, “Here you are M’lord.”

I’d place the tray down with gentle care, take my seat, and now, as Lord Grantham, I’d say, “Thank you, Carson,” with an air of weariness but still with grace. Lord Grantham always speaks with grace. ¹

I haven’t lived this life so therefore I can romanticize it. Fantasize about it. Be weird about it.

Eleanor, however, has lived it. She describes the institutions of the old landed families as juggernauts that can crush the people they were created to benefit––the descendants of all those careful generations that came before. Prioritizing the institution––the continuity of the land and bricks and mortar––over the people strikes her as foolish.

I don’t think I’d want a burden like that for me or for my children. Yet it would be comforting to know that my distant descendants would have available to them a continuity of income and status. Perhaps compared to the UK, there’s more status anxiety in the US where the phrase “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” has become a cliché.

It’s a cliche because it happens often and is a meme in popular television shows like Friends and Neighbors where wealth and privilege are presented as something fragile and evanescent that can be taken away with one bad decision, or one unfortunate accident. Or, more prosaically, by a generation that’s spendthrift and irresponsible.

What confers status

In England, the very top of the status pyramid is occupied by the nobility even if they’re poor. Even if they’ve long ago lost their estates. A penniless aristocrat will still be invited to lavish events and exclusive places. And if an American billionaire is there, perhaps to foot the bill, they can be made to feel like a parvenue. New money. Inferior. Eleanor takes us inside those rooms where few Americans would ever go.

In America, wealth confers the most status. American wealth can be transmuted into other forms of status like political power or even the acquisition of a British aristocratic bloodline as with marriages combining American money and British titles. ²

Women dress “busy,” men dress like slobs

I’ve been known to go out in public in shirts and pants with holes and in clashing and garish color combinations. ³

So when Eleanor responded to my post, The Status Flex Of Being Busy, by pointing out that wealthy British women can appear busy just by the way they dress, while aristocratic British men can dress like slobs, I was excited to think that perhaps there was a method to my sartorial squalor.

Legacy

Both Eleanor and I were born into privilege. Both of us found our way to writing as a way of creating a legacy that could stand apart from our familial circumstances.

Eleanor has already created a writer’s legacy. Her novels A Perfect Explanation and In Judgment Of Others showcase her talents. I loved both.

I also recommend Eleanor’s Substack The Literary Obsessive.

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Full Conversation

Thank you Henry Oliver, Amy Brown, Jonathan Brownson, Molly Moynahan, Kyle Berlin, and many others for tuning into my live video with Eleanor Anstruther! Join me for my next live video in the app, when I will try to be on time!

Question for the comments: What say my readers about the status hierarchies of the various countries they live in?

1. My wife Debbie asked if I really did this nutty bit of playacting, which I believe can be called LARPing. Of course I did. But I didn’t wear any costumes.

2. These marriages, or alliances, between American money and British aristocracy were prominent in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Consuelo Vanderbilt married the Duke of Marlborough and brought with her a dowry in railroad stock sufficient to save the Blenheim estate, which was the ancestral home of Winston Churchill’s family. Similarly, Churchill’s mother was an American heiress.

These marriages are also a theme in fiction. The creator of Downton Abbey, Jullion Fellowes, uses this meme in much of his work.

My favorite Edith Wharton novel, The Custom Of The Country, is all about the social climbing of Undine Spragg, the beauty who marries into the French aristocracy.

3. My wife has embargoed pictures of me in this state of unstudied sloth.