Oxford transformed hereditary arrogance into upper-class ideology of noblesse oblige

Evidence

The strain of brilliance, idealism and arrogance had surfaced in a daughter, Lady Bountiful, and had been passed on through her—undiluted, strong but somewhat formless—to her son Robert. Oxford, using the brilliance as catalyst, was to refine the other two ingredients in the strain. Two years among her spires and statue-crowned columns, her quadrangles and cloisters, her towers that had whispered to Matthew Arnold “the last enchantments of the Middle Ages,” would boil the fattiness out of the idealism, rendering out of a vague desire to “help people” not only a clear, definable concept of public service but also a specific means of performing that service. Two years among her richly paneled halls, her ancestral tankards and inlaid croziers, among begowned processions led by bedels carrying silver staves and among gardens tended by a thousand gardeners would distill the arrogance, potent though it already was, and make it still more potent by adding to its essence a philosophical base, the British belief, firm indeed in the early twentieth century and epitomized in the trappings and teachings of Oxford, in the duties—and the rights—of those born to wealth and privilege. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 210

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the class condescension in German-Jewish philanthropy from ch4 and to the general patronizing reformism theme. — connects to: Excluded Yale strivers found relief in Oxford’s inherited, effortless elitism — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 213; Admiration for aristocratic rule slid logically into racial contempt — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 224; Ridiculous aristocratic racial theories gained serious respectability by the turn of the century — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 459 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Ridiculous aristocratic racial theories gained serious respectability by the turn of the century #expands (0.70) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 459