The “Best Circles” and the Expanding Middle Class

Profits from empire and industrial growth added new members to the upper class, or “best circles,” so called at the time because of their members’ wealth, education, and social status. People in the best circles often came from the aristocracy, which remained powerful even as aristocrats had to share their social position with new millionaires from the ranks of the upper middle class, or bourgeoisie. Monarchs gratefully bestowed aristocratic titles on wealthy businesspeople, and poorer aristocrats approved marriages between their children and those of the newly rich. Such arrangements brought much-needed money to old, established families and the glamour of an aristocratic title to newly wealthy families. Thus, Jeanette Jerome, daughter of a wealthy New York financier, married England’s Lord Randolph Churchill (their son Winston later became Britain’s prime minister). To justify their success, the wealthy often quoted Social Darwinist principles, maintaining that their prosperity resulted from their natural superiority over the poor.

Empire reshaped leisure time. Upper-class men bonded over big-game hunting in Asia and Africa, which replaced age-old traditions of fox and bird hunting. European hunters forced native Africans, who had depended on hunting for income, food, and group unity, to work as guides, porters, and domestics on hunts. Collectors brought exotic specimens back to Europe for natural history museums, and wealthy Europeans added empire to their homes with displays of stags’ heads, elephant tusks, and animal skins.

People in the best circles saw themselves as an imperial elite, and upper-class women devoted themselves to maintaining its standards of social conduct. Members of the upper class did their best to exclude inferiors by controlling their children’s social lives, especially by arranging marriages themselves. Instead of working for pay, upper-class women focused on raising children and directing staffs of servants. They took their role seriously, keeping detailed accounts of their expenditures and monitoring their children’s religious and intellectual development. Being active consumers of Oriental carpets, bamboo furniture, Chinese porcelains, and fashionable clothing was also time-consuming for women. In contrast to men’s plain garments, upper-class women wore elaborate costumes—featuring constricting corsets, voluminous skirts, bustles, and low-cut necklines for evening wear—that made them symbols of elite leisure. Women offset the grim side of imperial and industrial society with the rigorous practice of art and music. With keys made of ivory from Africa, the piano symbolized the imperial elite’s accomplishments and superiority.

Below the best circles, or upper crust, the solid middle class of businesspeople and professionals such as lawyers was expanding, most notably in western and central Europe. In eastern Europe, this expansion did not happen naturally, and the Russian government often sought out foreigners to build its professional and business classes. Although middle-ranked businessmen and professionals occasionally mingled with those at the apex of society, their lives remained more modest. They did, however, employ at least one servant, which might give the appearance of leisure to the middle-class woman in the home even though she did many household chores herself. Professional men working at home did so from a well-appointed, if not lavish, room. Overall, middle-class domesticity celebrated the imperial value of cleanliness.