From Nancy Mitford (1985), by Selina Hastings:
“…At this moment there fell into her lap the subject for an article which, starting off as just another Mitford tease, ended in winning her worldwide notoriety and by giving a new phrase to the language. At luncheon…
luncheon (n.)
“light repast between mealtimes,” 1650s (lunching; spelling luncheon by 1706); earlier “thick piece, hunk (of bread),” 1570s (luncheon), which is of uncertain origin. Perhaps it is based on northern English dialectal lunch “hunk of bread or cheese” (1580s; said to be probably from Spanish lonja “a slice,” literally “loin”), blended with or influenced by nuncheon (Middle English nonechenche, mid-14c.) “light mid-day meal,” from none “noon” (see noon) + schench “drink,” from Old English scenc, from scencan “pour out.”
Despite the form lunching in the 1650s source OED discounts that it possibly could be from lunch (v.), which is first attested more than a century later. It suggests perhaps an analogy with truncheon, etc., or to simulate a French origin. Especially in reference to an early afternoon meal eaten by those who have a noontime dinner. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
…with an American friend, Nancy met a Professor Alan Ross, a philologist from Birmingham University who, in answer to a polite enquiry about his work, told her he was writing an article on sociological linguistics for a learned Finnish journal (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen) to be entitled ‘U and Non-U’, denoting Upper-class and Non-Upper-class usage.
Nancy was fascinated, so much so that she prevailed on Professor Ross to send her his article in proof where she was thrilled to see The Pursuit of Love quoted in a footnote as a source of ‘indicators’ of English upper-class speech. Scenting in the subject a superlative tease Nancy told Ross he should publish the piece in London under the title of ‘Are you a Hon?’ ‘He blenched.’ The following year she tried again, suggesting to Heywood that it was ‘a natural for the Xmas market, illustrated by O. Lancaster & entitled Are you U?’ But the Professor was not amused (‘furious at the idea of his serious pamphlet being frivolously reprinted’), and it was not until it occurred to the editor of Encounter, Stephen Spender, to commission Nancy herself to write on the subject that the project got under way. Never had Nancy enjoyed herself so much: ‘I lovingly cook away at it all day & think it the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s a sort of anthology of teases – something for everybody.’
Entitled ‘The English Aristocracy’, Nancy’s article was based on Ross’s material (although not even he was wholly reliable – ‘poor duck speaks of table napkins’), reproducing his examination of class-indicators in speech (U ‘bike’ versus non-U cycle, U ‘looking-glass’ versus non-U ‘mirror’) and adding to it an imaginative account of the present way of life of the landed classes with many a glance aside at her own code of practice both in speech and behaviour. We learn, for instance, that the sending of letters by air is common: ‘Any sign of undue haste, in fact, is apt to be non-U, and I go so far as preferring, except for business letters, not to use air mail.’ So, too, is saying ‘Cheers’ before drinking, or ‘it was so nice seeing you’ when taking leave. ‘Silence is the only possible U-response,’ Nancy wrote. ‘In silence, too, one must endure the use of the Christian name by comparative strangers and the horror of being introduced by Christian and surname without any prefix. This unspeakable usage sometimes occurs in letters – Dear XX – which, in silence, are quickly torn up, by me.’…
…When that issue of Encounter appeared it sold out almost immediately. Nancy had touched a raw nerve. ‘I went to WHS here yesterday – manager dashed at me saying all sold out the first day. Heywood who usually sells 2o had sold over 100 last week.’ A flood of letters came pouring in – some furious, some amused, some frankly worried; there were newspaper articles and cartoons, endless jokes and sketches, and a coruscating poem in the New Yorker by Ogden Nash with the title, ‘MS Found Under a Serviette in a Lovely Home.’
https://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2013/01/i-wish-id-written-this_18.html
The following year, 1956, Hamish Hamilton reprinted it in book form under the inspired title, Noblesse Oblige, together with Ross’s original article, the poem by John Betjeman beginning ‘Phone for the fish-knives, Norman’, a piece by Peter Fleming (‘Strix’ of the Spectator) on ‘Posh Lingo’, and an open letter by Evelyn, ponderously waggish in tone, ‘To the Honble Mrs Peter Rodd On a Very Serious Subject’, in which he is careful to make the point that it was not until Nancy was twelve that her father succeeded to his peerage. ‘At that impressionable age an indelible impression was made; Hons were unique and lords were rich.’
By the end of the year nearly 14,000 copies of Noblesse Oblige had been sold in Britain; in America 10,000 had gone in the first week. At first Nancy was enormously amused by all the fuss. She had had hundreds of letters, she told Muv, ‘Mostly fans, though some abuse “I am circulating it in the monastery – the Prior much impressed by it” “My typist is so angry she refuses to type a letter to you” & so on… A friend in London sent me a telegram saying lunch Saturday & the girl on the telephone said “as this is to Miss N M should we not put LUNCHEON?”‘ She and Hamish Hamilton, both intensely interested in social nuance, corresponded happily for months on the various horrors perpetrated by those who knew no better. ‘Scottish’ was one of Nancy’s chief dislikes: ‘Both my grandmothers were Scotch & would never have uttered that horrible Scottish’, and ‘Cook’ she wrote emphatically all the way from Rocquebrune,’.. is VERY Non-U one of the very worst in my opinion.’ The jokes went on and on: her favourite, she told Colonel, was ‘”I’m dancing with tears in my eyes ‘cos the girl in my arms isn’t U”‘. But eventually and long before the topic was exhausted, Nancy grew bored with it…”
Julia Upton 