Read Online Life Class: The Selected Memoirs Of Diana Athill by Diana Athill - Free Book Online

commandeered this set which belonged to Johnnie who was away at school. I was clever with it, working patiently on elaborate constructions, and (as I’d been with the farm) anxious to possess more parts so that I could achieve greater verisimilitude. But this addiction was so uncharacteristic that no one trusted it to last, and Meccano was expensive – so ‘my’ set was reclaimed by its owner, and I accepted that my interest in it had been no more than a whim … accepted, but with regret. I had an inkling that unrecognized capabilities were being written off. And I was right. Many years later, first needlepoint, then dress-making, then gardening were to prove that I am indeed much better at doing things with my hands than my elders, followed by myself, had supposed.
     
     
    Laziness: it was laziness that made one drift in the direction towards which they pushed one. In spite of the energy children put into their activities, it is inertia which most threatens their development into rational beings (‘Why can’t you behave like a rational being?’ an early governess, much despised, used to say to me – so often that the expression became a joke, meaning nothing but this woman’s silliness). Our greatest pleasures were those which were most accessible. Like almost all children we thought jelly the most delicious of foods, and jelly is the food which offers least resistance. Do what is fun, don’t do what is difficult: that was the principle we followed. And the grown-ups, recognizing that this principle is innate in everyone, believed that our upbringing should combat it. They thought it would be hard on us to grow up unaware that people often have to do things they don’t immediately want to do – not only to fit in with other people but also, sometimes, to reach ends desired by themselves.
    So you must wash your hands before coming to the table; you must shut – not bang – doors behind you; you must remember to say ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’; given chocolates, you must offer them round before eating one yourself; you mustn’t shove or grab or shout; you must go to bed without fuss when the time comes: ‘manners’, though considered important in themselves, were also insisted on as being character-forming. The rules, laid down clearly, reached back to a time before we could remember, so that following them wasn’t painful. We would not have observed them if we had not been made to, but we didn’t resent them more than any other tiresome but inevitable thing such as thistles in grass or pebbles on beaches. It seemed natural to me that I should be made to conform to certain patterns of social behaviour, just as it seemed natural that I had to sit down to lessons, like it or not (though I should not have believed it if someone had told me that I would end up deeply grateful for having been taught how to parse a sentence).
    In theory grown-ups, particularly our mother, would have liked to go further in character-forming. She saw the social viability conferred by these mild disciplines as minimal, and would have liked us to become individuals of exceptional ability and virtue. What we would need for this was ‘will-power’.
    She had a decisive, even slightly high-handed manner and bright blue eyes, so she used to appear formidable when she spoke of willpower. We understood it to be something by which the old Adam could be controlled, the lazy could become energetic, the stupid clever. Together with ‘self-control’ it propped an austere ideal: a way of life in which you were indifferent to comfort, ate only for the energy food provides, never thought about yourself, and accomplished great achievements.
    It was an attractive idea. When I was about eleven it seemed to me that I only had to get the knack of it and I would be able to move mountains – or at least an oak tree (I was riding through the park as I thought this). I decided then and there that every day I would do one thing I didn’t want to