[Vwoolf] Snob

Stephen Barkway sbarkway at btinternet.com
Fri Oct 26 15:05:45 EDT 2012


In response to Anne Margaret, Woolf did call herself a snob, believed herself to be one, and demonstrated how it manifested itself in her behaviour (see 'Am I a Snob?').

The VWSGB had an interesting talk during its 'Virginia in Debyshire' week, last month, when David Ellis spoke on DHL and Snobbery.  Apparently, TSE accused DHL of being one!!!

However, it is the meaning of the word which seems to have changed during the last century, certainly in the way it is used in everyday parlance, if not in its formal definition.  My 'Concise Oxford Dictionary' (New Edition, 1982 . . . which I bought in the same transaction as my first copy of The Voyage Out with some Christmas book tokens) has:

snob   person with exaggerated respect for social position or wealth and a disposition to be ashamed of socially inferior connections, behave with servility to social superiors [etc.]

Woolf was highly conscious of having these qualities.  For the latter quality in particular, see this letter to Christabel McLaren (not long afterwards, Lady Aberconway) who lived in the last private mansion to be built in central London:

Sunday. [10 November 1929]
 

Dearest Christabel,

How satisfying & pleasant to see your hand again: I will keep any date to come to you, grey as a mouse & white as a nun, & hand cocktails to the debauched. Do you really mean it?

 

And she signs-off the letter:

Your afflicted but faithful old family servant that has moved in the best circles & only goes charring to oblige- Virginia

As to The Daily Mail: awful, ill-informed, short-hand/lazy journalism.  They are using the word to mean something like 'elitest'.  And Hornby? Well, he won't have won many fans here . . . I feel rather sorry for him, unable to enjoy a masterpiece like Mrs. Dalloway.  'Notoriously difficult prose'??!!  Hardly.  If only he knew what he was missing.

Stephen
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