You do not, to be sure, imagine that there are no other Snobs in Ireland than those of the amiable party who wish to make pikes of iron railroads (it’s a fine Irish economy), and to cut the throats of the Saxon invaders. These are of the venomous sort; and had they been invented in his time, St. Patrick would have banished them out of the kingdom along with the other dangerous reptiles.
I think it is the Four Masters, or else it’s Olaus Magnus, or else it’s certainly O’Neill Daunt, in the ‘Catechism of Irish History,’ who relates that when Richard the Second came to Ireland, and the Irish chiefs did homage to him, going down on their knees — the poor simple creatures!— and worshipping and wondering before the English king and the dandies of his court, my lords the English noblemen mocked and jeered at their uncouth Irish admirers, mimicked their talk and gestures, pulled their poor old beards, and laughed at the strange fashion of their garments.
The English Snob rampant always does this to the present day. There is no Snob in existence, perhaps, that has such an indomitable belief in himself: that sneers you down all the rest of the world besides, and has such an insufferable, admirable, stupid contempt for all people but his own — nay, for all sets but his own. ‘Gwacious Gad’ what stories about ‘the Iwish’ these young dandies accompanying King Richard must have had to tell, when they returned to Pall Mall, and smoked their cigars upon the steps of ‘White’s.’
The Irish snobbishness developes itself not in pride so much as in servility and mean admirations, and trumpery imitations of their neighbours. And I wonder De Tocqueville and De Beaumont, and THE TIMES’ Commissioner, did not explain the Snobbishness of Ireland as contrasted with our own. Ours is that of Richard’s Norman Knights,— haughty, brutal stupid, and perfectly self-confident;— theirs, of the poor, wondering, kneeling, simple chieftains. They are on their knees still before English fashion — these simple, wild people; and indeed it is hard not to grin at some of their NAIVE exhibitions.
Some years since, when a certain great orator was Lord Mayor of Dublin, he used to wear a red gown and a cocked hat, the splendour of which delighted him as much as a new curtain-ring in her nose or a string of glass-beads round her neck charms Queen Quasheeneboo. He used to pay visits to people in this dress; to appear at meetings hundreds of miles off, in the red velvet gown. And to hear the people crying ‘Yes, me Lard!’ and ‘No, me Lard!’ and to read the prodigious accounts of his Lordship in the papers: it seemed as if the people and he liked to be taken in by this twopenny splendour. Twopenny magnificence, indeed, exists all over Ireland, and may be considered as the great characteristic of the Snobbishness of that country.
When Mrs. Mulholligan, the grocer’s lady, retires to Kingstown, she has Mulholliganville’ painted over the gate of her villa; and receives you at a door that won’t shut or gazes at you out of a window that is glazed with an old petticoat.
Be it ever so shabby and dismal, nobody ever owns to keeping a shop. A fellow whose st............