"Intellectual Snobs"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 67, 4 October 1940, Page 5

"Intellectual Snobs"

HEN there are those awful creatures that we call nowadays "intellectual snobs." Personally I think that’s a silly expression. If you’re really intellectual, you can’t possibly be a snob-you'd be far too intelligent. But, because I can’t think of a better name for them. I shall keep to that one.

You must have met this type of person. We all have-unfor-tunately. For I do think that this particular brand of bad manners is on the increase. There are more of these intellectual snobs about than there used to be. It’s become the fashion to be what is called "high-brow"’-and if your brow isn’t naturally high, there are foolish people who: pretend to look

down on you for it. They are very proud of having picked up a sort of smattering of culture-for I will not, I cannot believe that you will ever find an intellectual snob in the ranks of the really cultured. The one quality simply must rule out the other. But these half-cultured people, these pseudo high-brows-pseudo is a word they are rather fond of, so it’s nice to use it about them-these ‘intellectual snobs have all sorts of tricks that they practise to show you how clever they are. They have a way,

for example, of leading the ‘conversation on to sub« jects that they’re well up in-I always suspect them of having just read a book about it-and which the rest of the company doesn’t know anything about. Then they refer to it casually, just as if it was an everyday subject with them. They talk in that way of very highbrow music or books. They are on most familiar terms with writers, and when they’re in the company of people who read simple books, who haven’t time for much beyond women’s novels and so on-then they like to refer to Lawrence as D.H.L. or James Joyce as J.J., or -our own Katherine Mansfield as "Dear Katherine"? — and so on--(Mrs. Mary Scott, "The Morning Spell: Manners, Good and Bad,’ 2YA September 21.)