[Zigûr]

Firstly I want to say sorry (especially to skip spence) if I'm banging on about this too much and/or making too much of one remark.

In any event, high-ranking Elves certainly could be arrogant, even towards each other, and I recall that they do seem to have considered some people to be "ugly" (I thought this was about the Dwarves, but it was the language of the Dwarves which is "unlovely" to their ears).

At the same time, however, I don't recall Elves ever being "precious" about their appearances in a "don't want to get their fingernails dirty" kind of way. Elves were naturally "fair" and seem to have generally been well-dressed and well-groomed, but I don't recall them ever, as it were, "wrinkling their noses" in a sort of posh way at things they thought were dirty or unhygienic or something like that. Finrod doesn't seem to have cared about disguising himself as an Orc, for instance, although perhaps those disguises were purely magical.

I suppose this is bringing to my mind the image of a posh nobleman holding some "dirty" thing at arm's length with a wrinkled nose, and such behaviour simply doesn't come across to me in the books. Many high-ranking Elves were craftsmen, and that's inevitably dirty, sweaty work. Some of them may have sneered at "lesser" Elves and other peoples, but they don't come across as shying away from "dirty" work (of which battle was surely another one).

I apologies if I'm going on too much about this, and I don't mean to harp on about one thing you said skip spence. I'm just not sure how much evidence there is for this "avoiding getting their fingernails dirty" characterisation of Elves.