Introduction: some are more equal than others

Having rejected the hostile characterisation of mid-century entertainment generated and transmitted by contemporary intellectual and subsequent academic critique, and adopted instead the practical strategy of walking the city streets in the wake of less pretentious Victorian pleasure seekers and journalists, the previous chapter concluded that the essence of the West End was not to be comprehended on the ground. It is not simply a site, but a complex text; its existence is discursive, and a key, a lexicon of that discourse is required. This chapter, therefore, turns once more to the Victorian press, but endeavours this time to understand it as a guide to pleasure and leisure through its articulation of self and culture, by means of one of its own major analytical and taxonomic tools: the notion of class.

In 1878 Matthew Arnold, by then a senior public figure, a noted social and religious critic as well as an established poet, lectured on the subject of ‘Equality’, which he assumed his auditors would regard as a chimera pursued only by the French and the otherwise misguided. His argument in its favour rests upon his characterisation of English class society, in a taxonomy he had refined upon since his description of the ‘Philistines’ and ‘Barbarians’ in Culture and Anarchy in 1869. The published version of the lecture appeared in the intellectual journal The Fortnightly Review, and it includes the following passages: