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The Essays of "George Eliot", Complete.
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From the Note-Book of an Eccentric,
and Other Essays,
by George Eliot.
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Hints on Snubbing.
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If anything, it's a British - more specifically, English - specialisation, along with hypocrisy. One could include caste system, but all West has them. Brits just had more complex ones for colonies, extended from one back home, but not without inverting that of unconverted natives.
George Eliot discourse here reminds one of How To Be An Alien, by Mikes, whom she preceded.
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"It has been sagely said that men reasoned before Aristotle was born; that animals used their limbs before anatomy was heard of; and that fingers were very efficient prehensile instruments long before the invention of forks; which ingenious observations are meant to illustrate the fact that nature is beforehand with art and science. So the faculty of snubbing has been in exercise ever since the days of Cain and Abel, though the great intellect which is to trace out the laws by which its phenomena are governed, and lay down rules for the development of all its hidden resources, has not yet arisen. There have, indeed, been examples of snubbing genius, and it is in the nature of genius to transcend all rules—rather, to furnish the type on which all rules are framed; nevertheless, it is undeniable that for snubbing to attain its complete scope and potency as a moral agent it must be reduced to an art accessible to the less intuitive mind of the many. A few crude suggestions towards this important end may not be unfruitful in the soil of some active intellect.
"Hobbes defined laughter to be the product of a triumphant feeling of superiority: substitute snubbing for laughter and you have a more just definition. The idea of snubbing presupposes inferiority in the snubbed. You can no more snub your betters than you can patronize them; on the contrary, toadyism towards superiors is the invariable attendant on a large endowment of the snubbing faculty. Toadyism, in fact, is the beautiful concavity which corresponds to the snubbing convexity: the angular posture of Baillie MacWheeble’s body is a perfect illustration."
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Did the famous incident, of Queen Victoria saying "We are not amused", take place before George Eliot wrote this?
" ... The monarchical species of snubbing is doubtless an interesting subject of investigation, but the urgent wants of society point rather to the social, political, religious, and domestic species. We throw out a few hints on these, as mere finger-posts to the rich mines below:"
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"1. All men of a thousand a year, who can occasionally afford to give champagne at their dinner parties, may feel authorized to snub any poorer genius of less magnitude than Dickens, especially if he live in the same town or neighbourhood, as in that case he can by no means be made available as a lion to be served up to the company with the soups and venison.
"2. Men of great or small wit who have established a reputation as diners-out, may give additional zest to their condiments and wine by snubbing any humbler aspirant to the applause of the company. Let them take Johnson as their model in this department.
"3. Editors of country newspapers who feel themselves and their cause in a precarious condition, and who, therefore, as Paley said of himself, cannot afford to keep a conscience, may find a forlorn hope in snubbing. Let them choose for a victim any individual who presumes to avow an opinion in opposition to their own—and, what is more, to act upon it. We assure the dullest poor fellow of an editor that he may put down such an upstart, and utterly ruin him in the esteem of the majority by keeping a stock of epithets, like so many little missies, to be hurled at him on every favourable occasion: such, for instance, as pseudo-philosopher, man of crotchets, infantine dreamer, etc. No matter how stale the epithets may be, paucity of invention is no disadvantage here, since the oftener a nickname is repeated the better it will tell. Do we not know that two-thirds of mankind are influenced, not by facts or principles, but by associations about as appropriate as the connection between a bright summer’s day and roast pig in the mind of the ingenious Mrs. Nickleby?"
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"5. Ladies who go to parties with the hope of being the belles of the evening, must on no account venture to snub any whose pretensions threaten to eclipse their own. This would look like envy. They must rather behave to such with a sweet, condescending blandness, as if unconscious of the danger of rivalry. They may, however, repay themselves by snubbing the plain and ill-dressed; nay, if they can manage to secure a brisk flirtation for the evening with any one of the gentlemen tolerably well to pass, they may even produce a very good effect by snubbing the remainder.
6. But the chief empire of feminine talent lies in the snub religious. Anacreon tells us that nature has given weapons of defence to all creatures—horns to bulls, hoofs to horses, etc., understanding to man, and to woman beauty. But this is mere poet’s flummery; he should have said bigotry, which is the far more generic attribute. All ladies of decidedly orthodox sentiments and serious habits, who, in short, form the public for whom young clergymen print volumes of sermons which may be compared to that popular specific, treacle and brimstone—all such ladies, we say, may snub any man not marriageable, and any woman not an heiress, though as full of talents or of good works as a Sir Philip Sidney or a John Howard, if he or she be suspected of diverging in opinion from that standard of truth which is lodged in the brain of the Rev. Amylatus Stultus, who keeps the key of these same ladies’ consciences. But let everyone beware of snubbing on religious grounds in quarters where there is wealth, or fashion, or influence. In such cases all aberrations from the standard are to be regarded as amiable eccentricities, which do not warrant an uncharitable construction. On the whole it must be admitted that the snub religious is a most valuable agent in society, resembling those compensating contrivances by which nature makes up for the loss of one organ by an extraordinary development of the functions of another. Now that we have no Star-Chamber, Pillory, Test Act, etc., what would become of society without this admirable refinement on the rougher measures of our ancestors? Do we not appeal to a stronger element in the minds of suspected heretics by silently putting a chalk hieroglyphic on their backs, than by hauling them off to prison or to Smithfield?
"7. As regards the snub domestic, gentlemen should by no means neglect one of the grand privileges of conjugal life, an unlimited power of snubbing their wives. Indeed, this may be said to be a sort of safety-valve for the masculine faculty of snubbing which, as men are somewhat amenable for its exercise and cannot, like women and priests, snub with impunity, might lead to no end of duels and horse-whippings, and thus reduce society to a horribly internecine state.
"8. Ladies may take reprisals for their endurance in this matter on such small deer as their governesses, servants, and such old maids of their acquaintance as are not useful in sewing or taking care of the children."
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"9. The servants, again, may snub the shoe-black or the vendor of hareskins. The shoe-black may snub the dog and cat in a variety of ingenious ways, and doubtless the beautiful chain, if we could trace it, descends to the lowest grades of existence. We have no warrant, however, to suppose that a faculty for snubbing is given to any other races than the terrestrial, since we have express authority for the fact that the archangel Michael, on a very remarkable occasion, abstained from snubbing the devil."
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September 27, 2021 - September 27, 2021.
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