The Wit's Guide to Snobs
Or, the unkindest cutlery
Snobbery begins with cutlery. And like cutlery, it works from the outside in.
In the first chapter of The Book of Snobs — the 1848 satire in which William Thackeray defined the snob as someone who “meanly admires mean things” — the author must unfriend “a man of great powers, excellent heart, and varied information” simply because this man had been seen eating peas with a knife.
Back when forks had two prongs and knives were broad and dull, this was common practice. But with the four-tined fork came a revolution in manners, and so eating peas with a knife became a red line for the English gentleman.
I eat my peas with honey;
I've done it all my life.
It makes the peas taste funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.
— Doggerel of unknown origin
This, Thackeray explained, was relative snobbery, and we are all relative snobs. We choose a field in which we excel and make it a litmus test for the world. Which is fine! It’s the absolute snob — the snob about everything — in whom we need to put a fork.
“This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”
— Winston Churchill
In her famous 1950s treatise on upper-class English, Nancy Mitford singled out the fish knife as a distinctly arriviste implement: They only came into fashion in the Victorian age, so a table setting with one marks your silverware as embarrassingly new.
Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.
— John Betjeman, opening lines from How To Get On In Society
The dinner table is the traditional hunting ground of the snob. Martin Amis was dining with Christopher Hitchens when an unctuous pair of absolute snobs who “had the air of those who await, with epic stoicism, the deaths of elderly relatives” came over to ask if the scruffy young writers might move to accommodate their larger, richer party.
“You’re going to hate us for this,” the toff began.
“We hate you already,” Hitchens replied.
“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”
— Mark Twain
Imagine being at a Thai restaurant with a bunch of people who look down on you because you can’t order in fluent Thai! This famously didn’t happen to Bill O’Reilly, according to a 2001 evisceration by Michael Kinsley. The talk show host so bent reality to make himself a victim that he effectively disproved the existence of traditional snobbery in America. Reverse snobbery, or what Kinsley called “egalitarianism overshooting the mark,” is the thing. Just ask Dr. Oz about the difference between a crudite and a veggie tray.
“Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its theoretical abhorrence of them.”
— H.L. Mencken
And to pick up the fork again, there’s a great Canadian myth both propagated and debunked by Peter Gzowski that uses cutlery to celebrate the effective end of snobbery, at least at the table. A royal tour in the north brings the Duke of Edinburgh to a traditional banquet. At the end of the meal, one of the local dignitaries leans over to HRH to helpfully advise:
“Keep your fork, Duke — there’s pie!”
Quote Vote
“Although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.” — E.B. White
Snobbery garnered more votes than any previous subject, which shows you are my social betters. Show me the way!
Speaking of…
A snob eating a banana with a fork
A snob eating greens instead of vegetables
GWQ No. 164 must also mention that when Dudley Do-Right had to get himself kicked off the RCMP, he conspicuously ate peas with a knife. The surest sign that snobbery lives on in America is the Facebook group That Name is a Tragedeigh, devoted to making fun of the Jexsons and Crystaleanors of the world and nicely analyzed by Kathryn Jezer-Morton here. Don’t read Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting at the dinner table. Use your fish knife to tap the ❤️ below.
First full-throated chuckle of my day! Thanks!