Not to the manor born? That speaks well of her

Poor Kate Middleton’s mum. She pays a visit to the Queen and when introduced and after Her Majesty had said: “How do you do?” She replied (rather than with another “Howja do?” as is done in polite circles, she instead said: “Pleased t’meetcha.” Not done, you see.

And then, later after tea and bikkies, and realizing a pressing need for the potty – and who wouldn’t in such a situation – asked for the whereabouts of the “toilet” rather than the lavatory. Again, utterly déclassé.

Finally, at the ceremony marking Prince William’s completion of his Sandhurst training, Mrs. Middleton was seen to be, wait for it, chewing gum! Not just déclassé, but pure trailer park Britney Spears that little gaffe was.

Evidently William’s toffee-nosed little overprivileged and incurably snotty friends spared no expense to indict the Middleton materfamilias (above left with Kate) for her commonness. After all, she was an airline stewardess, for heaven’s sake. She actually had to work for a living. And, young Kate, sweet ‘thang’ that she was, ended up being considered in the same light as her intolerably bourgeois mum, just by default. Surely not the sort suitable for the future King of the Realm.

Fair’s fair, and William himself was never heard to utter any such, opinions on Kate, nor on the woman who might have become his mother-in-law. Neither did the Royals themselves express any displeasure with the somewhat plebian origins of Miss Middleton, but it goes to show that the UK is a society in which class truly still matters. And, maybe it’s still a society in which William might be better linked up with some brain-dead spoiled brat with a pedigree as long as Wilt Chamberlain’s arm rather than somebody not to the manor born.

In any case, in my esteem Miss Middleton’s better off out of it. Even though she is probably brighter, I believe she stood in some jeopardy of being another Princess Diana who, albeit with a slightly more patrician lineage, was still far from genuine royal circles. Part of being with the royals is having an abiding understanding of “how things are done.” Diana never ‘got’ that. Probably neither would Kate. Anyway, despite the largesse at your disposal, I don’t think it would be an enviable life.

I do, however, know a little bit about that sort of snobbery. The sort of snobbery that would demean all of those who might be in “trade,” as the saying goes. My believed grandmother was of that ilk. Raised in relative comfort by status-seeking middle-class parents, Grannie had delusions of societal worth, and those delusions could only be nurtured by disdaining those who were not “our sort.”

As she had a youth and childhood with servants, and was essentially home-schooled, as was the case with young ladies of status in her day, she at 18 married my 30-year-old grandfather and headed out to the colonies. My Granddad was of the right class, and all was still good in frontier British Columbia at the time.

Then it all went to hell. World War One intervened, money was lost, wealth that was once there, vanished. By the Depression of the 1930s it was all gone, and my grandparents did not possess that proverbial pot in which to micturate. She wouldn’t have said “piss” if her life depended on it.

She spoke with disdain of her English cousins who were in “trade”, and felt she somehow offered her children a kind of moral doggedness based solely on ‘who’ they were, rather than their means. I visited those English cousins, and grew very fond of them over the years. They lived in lovely homes and drove nice cars. My grandparents lived just this side of Dogpatch. But -- and to Grannie this was important -- none of her children ever grew up referring to that thing you wipe your face with after eating as a ‘serviette’, it was always a ‘napkin.’

That to her was important. I guess to some of William’s friends that is important, too. I guess Kate’s mum didn’t know that.