Patronage

This morning the lady in my newsagent presented me with a thought-provoking question (it probably wasn't her intention but shoot me...)

'What did that man mean' she asked me.

'Huh' I asked, raising my head from perusing the great and the good of the alleged centre-left displayed across the days papers under headlines such as The rich list

'He said he liked to patronise local shops - what did he mean?'

I had to do a bit of a doubletake here as a menacing post-modern irony trap appeared to gape before me in the light of the fact that I'd never considered the shop-owners english to be any less comprehensive than my own for all that (or perhaps because) her accent betokened a possible trip to the UK from Uganda some years back and an origin in the sub-continent.

'The word patronise, what does it mean when he uses it in that way?' she clarified (emphasising that my concerns over the potential for minor ironic debacle were, while theoretically well-founded, yet completely un-founded in this instance)

'It means use, like regularly I suppose, like you patronise your local pub or restaurant' I improvised 'It's got two different meanings - that one and the one that now means condescend to' I was late, but this was intriguing, she seemed to get me and I would have liked to kick it about a bit more, she could already see the funny side particularly given the slight pomposity of the previous customer's delivery... 'It comes from being a patron of, buying something from someone...' I concluded.

And my morning had completed one full circle already.

I walked towards the tube thinking that I wished I had time today to research when the term to 'patronise' became linked to condescension - my instinct is that the answer lies in the rise of the middle class in the nineteenth century.

In the sense that this was the point at which the dominant language became the property of a new self-made merchant and manufacturing class for whom the notion of patronage was an archaism. A term redolent of a time when the only means of advancement for their forefathers were at the whim of a member of the aristocracy.

This in a sense is why Tony Blair's notion of Victorian charity is rather different from that of the Victorians. Your Victorian wants everyone to know what he gives and indeed for those who recieve that charity to understand from whence it came.

Tony likes a little less clarity over what we are getting for his money.