Aristocratic New England accents: C/D?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

The best are the women, usually stuffy heiresses drinking gin-and-tonics. Like the grandmother (Emily Gilmore) on Gilmore Girls. Or else mavens like Carrie Donovan, the Vogue-editor-cum-Old-Navy-spokeswoman. Classic, but maybe I just like stereotypes.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Dud -- I grew up with the stereotypes (cucumber sandwich, anyone?)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

See, come on now, cucumber sandwiches are classic!

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Classic. About the only thing cool about William Buckley.

― hstencil, Friday, 11 April 2003 18:10 (twenty-two years ago)

See, come on now, cucumber sandwiches are classic!

Not when you're four!

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, Buckley routinely uses words like "espied." Nice.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Classic. Search Cary Grant, who was properly English of course, but came off sounding like an aristocratic New Englander. See also: Herbert Marshall.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Let's hear it for Peter Gammons, as well.

― hstencil, Friday, 11 April 2003 18:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I also have completely different associations: not gin-and-tonic (never hard liquor, especially not a woman drinking in front of children -- my God, what do you take us for, lobstermen?) but white-wine spritzers in between gravel-court tennis matches and bridge tournaments. Cucumber sandwiches, or cream cheese and honey on white bread for the kids. Dinner clubs with fake animal heads on the walls and floors for ballroom dancing upon which no one ever dances.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:20 (twenty-two years ago)

(Maybe that means I didn't grow up with the stereotypes, or just not the stereotypes mentioned up-thread; my stereotypes might be different.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Also properly English but sounds like aristocratic-New-Englander: Marian McPartland. ("Oh, 'Satin Doll' is such a mahr-velous tewn.")

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:22 (twenty-two years ago)

The concept of cream cheese and honey on white bread just made me vomit on my keyboard.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Tep, I think I get the gin-and-tonic association from Cheever stories. What about at adult cocktail parties?

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Jonathan Miller (what is he doing these days?) does a great posh New England accent.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:25 (twenty-two years ago)

See, that's the thing, my stereotypes are "aristocratic/old-family New England as a child sees it" -- it's all my mother's family, cause my father lost his money when he went into retail and I haven't lived there since I was a teenager. For all I know, they were drinking gin like Fitzgerald when I wasn't looking :)

Cream cheese and honey was great when I was five: "Here, would you like some sugar with that fat?" I don't even like sweet cream cheese (strawberry, whatever) on bagels now, though.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, fruit cream cheese is a dud.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Where do they really talk like this though? I grew up in Darien, CT, and never really heard anyone talk that way. Even though we had a yacht, we didn't belong to the 'yacht club', so maybe that's where... Or maybe it's just that you really need to be old money.

― Sean (Sean), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Also add to the club, even though they're cartoons: Jay Sherman's daffy parents (Franklin & Eleanor) on The Critic. (More fodder for my gin stereotype, too.)

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 April 2003 18:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I think New England accents, outside of Boston maybe, are dying out anyway except when they're affectations. The people I know with the "aristocratic" NE accent are old-family (i.e. not old money per se, but "well-off since the Mayflower arrived") or have married into it. The only people I know in New Hampshire who have a genuine New Hampshire accent -- as opposed to a Boston accent that drifted north and diffused -- are farmers fifty and older. I don't know, maybe in very rural areas that's not the case -- but the folks I know in, like, Hartford and Amherst and so on mostly have that generic folks-on-the-television accent so many of us have.

(Weirdly -- my younger brother's accent is somewhere between Stereotypical South Boston and Michael Rappaport. Mine is Generic American who happens to say "wicked" and "y'all.")

― Tep (ktepi), Saturday, 12 April 2003 04:13 (twenty-two years ago)

boston brahmins vs. philadelphia main-liners FITE!

― Tad (llamasfur), Saturday, 12 April 2003 07:09 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

This was the first thread I started on ILE!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 27 September 2004 15:42 (twenty years ago)

Mmmmmm, fancy feast.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 27 September 2004 15:59 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.