The ‘unclassed’ is a word seldom used these days, but much in vogue at the turn of this century. It refers to people who by virtue of personal choice, happenstance (a very recent word, this one) have lost their position in the world. Or who chose to throw it all away and live in vans. They may be defiant about it, or wretched, or try to hide it, but those who remain firmly fixed and secure in their position in the world, who make lasting and sensible marriages, who look after their money properly, who have clean tablecloths at properly laid tables, recognise them for what they are at once, and look to their pockets, and to their daughters. It is often, but not always, a matter of money.
The classed sleep with the unclassed but do not marry them, because then they become unclassed themselves.
These are the ranks of the unclassed:
Any man or woman who married too far above or below them on the social scale.
Any woman divorced and not speedily re-marrying, preferably her lover.
Any man made redundant and not quickly re-employed at a higher salary.
Anyone on Social Security.
Anyone dying of an incurable disease.
Anyone ‘in the media’. That is to say, anyone questioning or commenting on a society in a way disruptive to that society. Actors, artists, writers, musicians and so on, who seem to prefer the company of the unclassed to that of the classed, and who form a demi-monde, of some slight interest to the classed, who will sometimes have one or two to dinner at a time. (Painters, in particular, oddly, often make great efforts to appear classed. In England they appointed each other RAs, that is to say, Royal Academicians, and put on dinner jackets and smoke cigars and comment on the wine, but it doesn’t really work.)
Anyone whose parents do not have a fixed abode, or are not married.
Anyone who was born as the result of a genetic experiment, or conceived in a test-tube, by in-vitro fertilisation.
Do you understand? It is not a matter of snobbery (a bus driver can be as classed as a stockbroker) but of belonging, or not belonging, either intentionally (which is at least something) or unintentionally by virtue of birth, which is – as the French say – bas de gamme. The unclassed are rubbish and that’s the fact of it. Yet there are so many of us, and more every day, test-tubes popping all over the land.
Astronomers are not normally unclassed. But Sandra Harris, astronomer, forty-two, struggling to be classed all her life, by way of passing exams, gaining degrees, changing partners, moving house, making and saving money, pretending her past did not exist, was de-classed yet again when she discovered the mouldy Planet Athena (mouldy! would that it were. Mould implies moisture, warmth, fungus, life) and became the object of media attention, and not even marrying Matthew Sorensen made it any better. Stargazer Sandra!
To be unclassed is one of the most painful experiences of being alive, if you ask Sandra Sorensen, S.S., or anyone in a Social Security queue for the first time.
Yet Jack the mad trumpeter seeks unclassification willingly, embraces it for all our sakes. That’s why I love him.