Are We a Nation of Snobs?

FIRST OF ALL, let us get down to definitions. What is snobbery?

Thackeray, who himself could be a very offensive snob (read his Irish Sketch-Book if you doubt me) had one definition; but what my dictionary says will do well enough for our purpose. Snobbery is “a foolish pretence of superiority; a vulgar apeing of gentility.”

Now it seems to me that, if we adopt this definition, snobbery is becoming alarmingly common in Ireland. Everywhere one goes one finds this objectionable apeing of something that is neither native nor desirable. The affected, mincing speech, the slightly contemptuous attitude towards all that is native and of the people and the general air of superior gentility—these are the hallmarks of the perfect snob. One finds them everywhere. There are social snobs, moneyed snobs, political snobs and literary snobs.

Every morning at the shop where I buy my newspapers the young lady behind the counter lifts her eyes dreamily, gives me a rather bored smile, and says: “Thenks, awf’lly!” The ritual never changes. She seems to imagine, poor girl, that to be natural is to betray a lack of “good form,” and so, day in and day out, there is the same cinema smile and the same “Thenks, awf’lly!” She, and thousands of young girls like her, have, through some foolishly wrong notion of what is “correct” in behaviour, deliberately adopted a pose, an accent and a manner that are inherently false and belied by their features.

AMONG THE HIGHBROWS.

That is, of course, the commonest type of snobbery. Let us take another. There are certain circles in Ireland which pride themselves upon their culture and literary taste. Whenever I happen to be amongst them the conversation always seems to be directed towards the Russian novelists, the work of Marcel Proust, or some fashionable but entirely incomprehensible modern poet. In a jargon that is all their own they talk windy nonsense about “style” and “form” and “technique,” and if you venture to mention the names of Keats or Wordsworth, or Mangan, you are greeted with a dull uncomprehending stare.

Yet one suspects all the time that in their secret heart of hearts many of them would be much more at home with the thrillers of Mr. Edgar Wallace or the poetry of Mrs. Ella Wheeler Willcox.

When confronted with a piece of obscure rubbish in the guise of literature, they lack the moral courage to say: “I don’t know what the fellow is driving at; it seems to be a lot of pretentious tommy-rot!” They prefer to simulate an admiration for what they don’t understand through fear of betraying a limited intelligence. So the latest book by some dirty-minded little novelist, boosted by one or other of the London coteries, is hailed by and “Soccer,” and therefore can hardly be accused of a narrowness of outlook. These literary poseurs are a portent, a message from Olympus.

Let us turn for a moment to the snobs of the playing fields. Now, in the matter of sport I pride myself on a certain broadmindedness, and my attitude towards “foreign games” probably lacks the rigidity required by the orthodox Gael. For my sins (past, present and to come) I was sent to school to a country in which the national pastime is cricket, and I have played that curious, leisurely game with a good deal of quiet enjoyment. I have also played Hurling and Rugby.

But I do take objection to the type of athletic snob who regards a golf-stick as a symbol of social superiority and a caman as a lethal weapon. And, further, let me say this—I have watched a Rugby international at Lansdowne Road; I have been one of a hundred thousand people at an English Cup Final, but the finest athletic contest I have ever seen, or ever hope to see, was a hurling match at Croke Park. But Croke Park is outside the Pale to many of our Irish snobs!

PRIDE IN ANCESTRY.

If there were the least foundation for all this pretence of superiority, it would not be quite so exasperating, but snobbery is quite a distinct thing from a legitimate pride in ancestry. Daniel Corkery, in his book, The Hidden Ireland (itself a fine antidote to the snobbish historians), quotes a story which Arthur Young told in his book of Irish travels over a hundred years ago.

“Another great family in Connaught is MacDermot, who calls himself Prince of Coolavin. He lives at Coolavin, in Sligo, and though he has not above one hundred pounds a year, will not admit his children to sit down in his presence. This was certainly the case with his father, and some assured me, even with the present chief. Lord Kingsborough, Mr. O’Hara, Mr. Sandford, etc., came to see him, and his address was curious. ‘ O’Hara! you are welcome! Sandford, I’m glad to see your mother’s son (his mother was an O’Brien); as to the rest of ye, come in as ye can! ’ ”

Now we may laugh at the old chieftain and his princely demeanour in the midst of penury, but the MacDermot Ruadh had centuries of blood and breeding behind him as some justification for a gesture which was obviously meant to show that he considered the headship of an Irish clan a prouder possession than the highest English title. I would contrast with this story one that I heard some years ago of a certain retired chairman of a District Council, knighted by King Edward the Seventh for presenting an address of welcome, who had a flag-pole erected in his front garden, and every year on his Britannic Majesty’s birthday (until the “troubled times”) ran up the Union Jack! Call the Prince of Coolavin a snob if you like, but at heart he was not, like the others, that very unpleasant thing—a vulgar snob.

FOREIGN JAWS.

Standish O’Grady, when he took up his pen to lash the Ascendency class (of which, though a Gael, he was a member), accused them of laughing “with foreign jaws” at whatever was native to the soil. He foresaw the danger that lay in their contemptuous scorn for the people amongst whom and on and by whom they lived, and he predicted their downfall. That downfall has come, and those of them who remain survive in a chastened mood. But what of those who are trying to step into their social shoes? What an ironic turn of the wheel it will be if the New Ascendency starts to laugh with native jaws at what is native to the soil and to regulate the upbringing of their children by alien standards!

Nor is this a remote danger. It is not only the planter class who send their children to educational institutions in which “Rugger” and cricket are the only games recognised; who afflict them with such un-Irish names as Norman and Stanley and Gladys and Gwendoline; who bestow on their seven-room bungalows or surburban villas such preposterous names as “Sandringham,” “Blenheim,” or “Chatsworth.” With the planter, heredity and tradition sufficiently account for these things; but the shoneenism of the native admits neither of palliation nor excuse.

All this snobocracy is, of course, an evil heritage from the days of the “national” education system which, as one of its founders said, aimed at making the products of our schools “happy little English children.” So long as our scholastic training permitted none save alien mediums and slurred over native culture as if it did not exist, it is no wonder that Irish youth grew up slightly ashamed of its history and its surroundings. Thus warped from the start, the youthful mind was ready when it matured to swallow with avidity the writings of the whole school of Anglo-Irish writers from Lover and Lever to Somerville and Ross and George Birmingham, who exploited us for the laughter of the British public. They laughed at us, and, with them, we laughed at ourselves, and having laughed at ourselves, we began to despise ourselves; to despise even the best, the most wholesome things in the Irish tradition, and to ape the foreigner, so closely associated are the slave-mind and snobbery!

LET US IMPROVE.

Now that we have achieved some measure of freedom, it might be thought that we would strive for new standards of behaviour and a code of manners more in keeping with our race and creed. But many of us are still content to ape those we have supplanted, to imitate—and that very badly, for, to use an Americanism, we have nothing in our Gaelic make-up “back of it”—their dress, their speech, their mannerisms. We are, in short, still “vulgarly apeing gentility.”

But there are gleams of hope upon the horizon. The Irish Press, for instance, has no “Social and Personal” column. For this, let us render thanks to whomsoever they may be due!