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Title:  The Book of Snobs

Author:  William Makepeace Thackeray

June, 2001  [Etext #2686]


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This Etext of The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray
scanned and proof-read by Sean Hackett (shack@eircom.net)





THE BOOK OF SNOBS


BY ONE OF THEMSELVES



PREFATORY REMARKS

(The necessity of a work on Snobs, demonstrated from
History, and proved by felicitous illustrations:-- I am
the individual destined to write that work--My vocation
is announced in terms of great eloquence--I show that the
world has been gradually preparing itself for the WORK
and the MAN--Snobs are to be studied like other objects
of Natural Science, and are a part of the Beautiful (with
a large B). They pervade all classes--Affecting instance
of Colonel Snobley.)

We have all read a statement, (the authenticity of which
I take leave to doubt entirely, for upon what
calculations I should like to know is it founded?)--we
have all, I say, been favoured by perusing a remark, that
when the times and necessities of the world call for a
Man, that individual is found.  Thus at the French
Revolution (which the reader will be pleased to have
introduced so early), when it was requisite to administer
a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found; a
most foul and nauseous dose indeed, and swallowed eagerly
by the patient, greatly to the latter's ultimate
advantage: thus, when it became necessary to kick John
Bull out of America, Mr. Washington stepped forward, and
performed that job to satisfaction: thus, when the Earl
of Aldborough was unwell, Professor Holloway appeared
with his pills, and cured his lordship, as per
advertisement, &c. &c..  Numberless instances might be
adduced to show that when a nation is in great want, the
relief is at hand; just as in the Pantomime (that
microcosm) where when CLOWN wants anything--a warming-
pan, a pump-handle, a goose, or a lady's tippet--a fellow
comes sauntering out from behind the side-scenes with the
very article in question.

Again, when men commence an undertaking, they always are
prepared to show that the absolute necessities of the
world demanded its completion.--Say it is a railroad: the
directors begin by stating that 'A more intimate
communication between Bathershins and Derrynane Beg is
necessary for the advancement of civilization, and
demanded by the multitudinous acclamations of the great
Irish people.'  Or suppose it is a newspaper: the
prospectus states that 'At a time when the Church is in
danger, threatened from without by savage fanaticism and
miscreant unbelief, and undermined from within by
dangerous Jesuitism, and suicidal Schism, a Want has been
universally felt--a suffering people has looked abroad--
for an Ecclesiastical Champion and Guardian.  A body of
Prelates and Gentlemen have therefore stepped forward in
this our hour of danger, and determined on establishing
the BEADLE newspaper,' &c. &c.  One or other of these
points at least is incontrovertible: the public wants a
thing, therefore it is supplied with it; or the public is
supplied with a thing, therefore it wants it.

I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that
I had a work to do--a Work, if you like, with a great W;
a Purpose to fulfil; a chasm to leap into, like Curtius,
horse and foot; a Great Social Evil to Discover and to
Remedy.  That Conviction Has Pursued me for Years.  It
has Dogged me in the Busy Street; Seated Itself By Me in
The Lonely Study; Jogged My Elbow as it Lifted the Wine-
cup at The Festive Board; Pursued me through the Maze of
Rotten Row; Followed me in Far Lands.  On Brighton's
Shingly Beach, or Margate's Sand, the Voice Outpiped the
Roaring of the Sea; it Nestles in my Nightcap, and It
Whispers, 'Wake, Slumberer, thy Work Is Not Yet Done.'
Last Year, By Moonlight, in the Colosseum, the Little
Sedulous Voice Came To Me and Said, 'Smith, or Jones'
(The Writer's Name is Neither Here nor There), 'Smith or
Jones, my fine fellow, this is all very well, but you
ought to be at home writing your great work on SNOBS.

When a man has this sort of vocation it is all nonsense
attempting to elude it.  He must speak out to the
nations; he must unbusm himself, as Jeames would say, or
choke and die.  'Mark to yourself,' I have often mentally
exclaimed to your humble servant, 'the gradual way in
which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an
irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour.
First, the World was made: then, as a matter of course,
Snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no more
known than America.  But presently,--INGENS PATEBAT
TELLUS,--the people became darkly aware that there was
such a race.  Not above five-and-twenty years since, a
name, an expressive monosyllable, arose to designate that
race.  That name has spread over England like railroads
subsequently; Snobs are known and recognized throughout
an Empire on which I am given to understand the Sun never
sets.  PUNCH appears at the ripe season, to chronicle
their history: and the individual comes forth to write
that history in PUNCH.'

I have (and for this gift I congratulate myself with Deep
and Abiding Thankfulness) an eye for a Snob.  If the
Truthful is the Beautiful, it is Beautiful to study even
the Snobbish; to track Snobs through history, as certain
little dogs in Hampshire hunt out truffles; to sink
shafts in society and come upon rich veins of Snobore.
Snobbishness is like Death in a quotation from Horace,
which I hope you never have heard, 'beating with equal
foot at poor men's doors, and kicking at the gates of
Emperors.'  It is a great mistake to judge of Snobs
lightly, and think they exist among the lower classes
merely.  An immense percentage of Snobs, I believe, is to
be found in every rank of this mortal life.  You must not
judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that
you are yourself a Snob.  I myself have been taken for
one.

When I was taking the waters at Bagnigge Wells, and
living at the 'Imperial Hotel' there, there used to sit
opposite me at breakfast, for a short time, a Snob so
insufferable that I felt I should never get any benefit
of the waters so long as he remained.  His name was
Lieutenant-Colonel Snobley, of a certain dragoon
regiment.  He wore japanned boots and moustaches: he
lisped, drawled, and left the 'r's' out of his words: he
was always flourishing about, and smoothing his lacquered
whiskers with a huge flaming bandanna, that filled the
room with an odour of musk so stifling that I determined
to do battle with that Snob, and that either he or I
should quit the Inn.  I first began harmless
conversations with him; frightening him exceedingly, for
he did not know what to do when so attacked, and had
never the slightest notion that anybody would take such a
liberty with him as to speak first: then I handed him the
paper: then, as he would take no notice of these
advances, I used to look him in the face steadily and--
and use my fork in the light of a toothpick.  After two
mornings of this practice, he could bear it no longer,
and fairly quitted the place.

Should the Colonel see this, will he remember the Gent
who asked him if he thought Publicoaler was a fine
writer, and drove him from the Hotel with a four-pronged
fork?



CHAPTER I

THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITH


There are relative and positive Snobs.  I mean by
positive, such persons as are Snobs everywhere, in all
companies, from morning till night, from youth to the
grave, being by Nature endowed with Snobbishness--and
others who are Snobs only in certain circumstances and
relations of life.

For instance: I once knew a man who committed before me
an act as atrocious as that which I have indicated in the
last chapter as performed by me for the purpose of
disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the using the fork in
the guise of a toothpick.  I once, I say, knew a man who,
dining in my company at the 'Europa Coffee-house,'
(opposite the Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the
only decent place for dining at Naples,) ate peas with
the assistance of his knife.  He was a person with whose
society I was greatly pleased at first--indeed, we had
met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were
subsequently robbed and held to ransom by brigands in
Calabria, which is nothing to the purpose--a man of great
powers, excellent heart, and varied information; but I
had never before seen him with a dish of pease, and his
conduct in regard to them caused me the deepest pain.

After having seen him thus publicly comport himself, but
one course was open to me--to cut his acquaintance.  I
commissioned a mutual friend (the Honourable Poly Anthus)
to break the matter to this gentleman as delicately as
possible, and to say that painful circumstances--in
nowise affecting Mr. Marrowfat's honour, or my esteem for
him--had occurred, which obliged me to forego my intimacy
with him; and accordingly we met and gave each other the
cut direct that night at the Duchess of Monte Fiasco's
ball.

Everybody at Naples remarked the separation of the Damon
and Pythias--indeed, Marrowfat had saved my life more
than once--but, as an English gentleman, what was I to
do?

My dear friend was, in this instance, the Snob RELATIVE.
It is not snobbish of persons of rank of any other nation
to employ their knife in the manner alluded to.  I have
seen Monte Fiasco clean his trencher with his knife, and
every Principe in company doing likewise.  I have seen,
at the hospitable board of H.I.H. the Grand Duchess
Stephanie of Baden--(who, if these humble lines should
come under her Imperial eyes, is besought to remember
graciously the most devoted of her servants)--I have
seen, I say, the Hereditary Princess of Potztausend-
Donnerwetter (that serenely-beautiful woman) use her
knife in lieu of a fork or spoon; I have seen her almost
swallow it, by Jove! like Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler.
And did I blench?  Did my estimation for the Princess
diminish?  No, lovely Amalia!  One of the truest passions
that ever was inspired by woman was raised in this bosom
by that lady.  Beautiful one! long, long may the knife
carry food to those lips! the reddest and loveliest in
the world!

The cause of my quarrel with Marrowfat I never breathed
to mortal soul for four years.  We met in the halls of
the aristocracy--our friends and relatives.  We jostled
each other in the dance or at the board; but the
estrangement continued, and seemed irrevocable, until the
fourth of June, last year.

We met at Sir George Golloper's.  We were placed, he on
the right, your humble servant on the left of the
admirable Lady G..  Peas formed part of the banquet--
ducks and green peas.  I trembled as I saw Marrowfat
helped, and turned away sickening, lest I should behold
the weapon darting down his horrid jaws.

What was my astonishment, what my delight, when I saw him
use his fork like any other Christian!  He did not
administer the cold steel once.  Old times rushed back
upon me--the remembrance of old services--his rescuing me
from the brigands--his gallant conduct in the affair with
the Countess Dei Spinachi--his lending me the 1,700L.  I
almost burst into tears with joy--my voice trembled with
emotion.  'George, my boy!' I exclaimed, 'George
Marrowfat, my dear fellow! a glass of wine!'

Blushing--deeply moved--almost as tremulous as I was
myself, George answered, 'FRANK, SHALL IT BE HOCK OR
MADEIRA?  I could have hugged him to my heart but for the
presence of the company.  Little did Lady Golloper know
what was the cause of the emotion which sent the duckling
I was carving into her ladyship's pink satin lap.  The
most good-natured of women pardoned the error, and the
butler removed the bird.

We have been the closest friends over since, nor, of
course, has George repeated his odious habit.  He
acquired it at a country school, where they cultivated
peas and only used two-pronged forks, and it was only by
living on the Continent where the usage of the four-prong
is general, that he lost the horrible custom.

In this point--and in this only--I confess myself a
member of the Silver-Fork School; and if this tale but
induce one of my readers to pause, to examine in his own
mind solemnly, and ask, 'Do I or do I not eat peas with a
knife?'--to see the ruin which may fall upon himself by
continuing the practice, or his family by beholding the
example, these lines will not have been written in vain.
And now, whatever other authors may be, I flatter myself,
it will be allowed that I, at least, am a moral man.

By the way, as some readers are dull of comprehension, I
may as well say what the moral of this history is.  The
moral is this--Society having ordained certain customs,
men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to
its harmless orders.

If I should go to the British and Foreign Institute (and
heaven forbid I should go under any pretext or in any
costume whatever)--if I should go to one of the tea-
parties in a dressing-gown and slippers, and not in the
usual attire of a gentleman, viz, pumps, a gold
waistcoat, a crush hat, a sham frill, and a white choker-
-I should be insulting society, and EATING PEASE WITH MY
KNIFE.  Let the porters of the Institute hustle out the
individual who shall so offend.  Such an offender is, as
regards society, a most emphatical and refractory Snob.
It has its code and police as well as governments, and he
must conform who would profit by the decrees set forth
for their common comfort.

I am naturally averse to egotism, and hate selflaudation
consumedly; but I can't help relating here a circumstance
illustrative of the point in question, in which I must
think I acted with considerable prudence.

Being at Constantinople a few years since--(on a delicate
mission),--the Russians were playing a double game,
between ourselves, and it became necessary on our part to
employ an EXTRA NEGOTIATOR--Leckerbiss Pasha of Roumelia,
then Chief Galeongee of the Porte, gave a diplomatic
banquet at his summer palace at Bujukdere.  I was on the
left of the Galeongee, and the Russian agent, Count de
Diddloff, on his dexter side.  Diddloff is a dandy who
would die of a rose in aromatic pain: he had tried to
have me assassinated three times in the course of the
negotiation; but of course we were friends in public, and
saluted each other in the most cordial and charming
manner.

The Galeongee is--or was, alas! for a bow-string has done
for him--a staunch supporter of the old school of Turkish
politics.  We dined with our fingers, and had flaps of
bread for plates; the only innovation he admitted was the
use of European liquors, in which he indulged with great
gusto.   He was an enormous eater.  Amongst the dishes a
very large one was placed before him of a lamb dressed in
its wool, stuffed with prunes, garlic, assafoetida,
capsicums, and other condiments, the most abominable
mixture that ever mortal smelt or tasted.  The Galeongee
ate of this hugely; and pursuing the Eastern fashion,
insisted on helping his friends right and left, and when
he came to a particularly spicy morsel, would push it
with his own hands into his guests' very mouths.

I never shall forget the look of poor Diddloff, when his
Excellency, rolling up a large quantity of this into a
ball and exclaiming, 'Buk Buk' (it is very good),
administered the horrible bolus to Diddloff.   The
Russian's eyes rolled dreadfully as he received it: he
swallowed it with a grimace that I thought must precede a
convulsion, and seizing a bottle next him, which he
thought was Sauterne, but which turned out to be French
brandy, he drank off nearly a pint before he know his
error.  It finished him; he was carried away from the
dining-room almost dead, and laid out to cool in a
summer-house on the Bosphorus.

When it came to my turn, I took down the condiment with a
smile, said 'Bismillah,' licked my lips with easy
gratification, and when the next dish was served, made up
a ball myself so dexterously, and popped it down the old
Galeongee's mouth with so much grace, that his heart was
won.  Russia was put out of court at once and THE TREATY
of Kabobanople WAS SIGNED.  As for Diddloff, all was over
with HIM: he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and Sir
Roderick Murchison saw him, under the No. 3967, working
in the Ural mines.

The moral of this tale, I need not say, is, that there
are many disagreeable things in society which you are
bound to take down, and to do so with a smiling face.



CHAPTER II

THE SNOB ROYAL

Long since at the commencement of the reign of her
present Gracious Majesty, it chanced 'on a fair summer
evening,' as Mr. James would say, that three or four
young cavaliers were drinking a cup of wine after dinner
at the hostelry called the 'King's Arms,' kept by
Mistress Anderson, in the royal village of Kensington.
'Twas a balmy evening, and the wayfarers looked out on a
cheerful scene.  The tall elms of the ancient gardens
were in full leaf, and countless chariots of the nobility
of England whirled by to the neighbouring palace, where
princely Sussex (whose income latterly only allowed him
to give tea-parties) entertained his royal niece at a
state banquet.  When the caroches of the nobles had set
down their owners at the banquethall, their varlets and
servitors came to quaff a flagon of nut-brown ale in the
'King's Arms' gardens hard by.  We watched these fellows
from our lattice.  By Saint Boniface 'twas a rare sight!

The tulips in Mynheer Van Dunck's gardens were not more
gorgeous than the liveries of these pie-coated retainers.
All the flowers of the field bloomed in their ruffled
bosoms, all the hues of the rainbow gleamed in their
plush breeches, and the long-caned ones walked up and
down the garden with that charming solemnity, that
delightfull quivering swagger of the calves, which has
always had a frantic fascination for us.  The walk was
not wide enough for them as the shoulder-knots strutted
up and down it in canary, and crimson, and light blue.

Suddenly, in the midst of their pride, a little bell was
rung, a side door opened, and (after setting down their
Royal Mistress) her Majesty's own crimson footmen, with
epaulets and black plushes, came in.

It was pitiable to see the other poor Johns slink off at
this arrival!  Not one of the honest private Plushes
could stand up before the Royal Flunkeys.  They left the
walk: they sneaked into dark holes and drank tbeir beer
in silence.  The Royal Plush kept possession of the
garden until the Royal Plush dinner was announced, when
it retired, and we heard from the pavilion where they
dined, conservative cheers, and speeches, and Kentish
fires.  The other Flunkeys we never saw more.

My dear Flunkeys, so absurdly conceited at one moment and
so abject at the next, are but the types of their masters
in this world.  HE WHO MEANLY ADMIRES MEAN THINGS IS A
SNOB--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.

And this is why I have, with the utmost respect, ventured
to place The Snob Royal at the head of my list, causing
all others to give way before him, as the Flunkeys before
the royal representative in Kensington Gardens.  To say
of such and such a Gracious Sovereign that he is a Snob,
is but to say that his Majesty is a man.  Kings, too, are
men and Snobs.  In a country where Snobs are in the
majority, a prime one, surely, cannot be unfit to govern.
With us they have succeeded to admiration.

For instance, James I. was a Snob, and a Scotch Snob,
than which the world contains no more offensive creature.
He appears to have had not one of the good qualities of a
man--neither courage, nor generosity, nor honesty, nor
brains; but read what the great Divines and Doctors of
England said about him!  Charles II., his grandson, was a
rogue, but not a Snob; whilst Louis XIV., his old
squaretoes of a contemporary,--the great worshipper of
Bigwiggery--has always struck me as a most undoubted and
Royal Snob.

I will not, however, take instances from our own country
of Royal Snobs, but refer to a neighbouring kingdom, that
of Brentford--and its monarch, the late great and
lamented Gorgius IV.  With the same humility with which
the footmen at the 'King's Arms' gave way before the
Plush Royal, the aristocracy of the Brentford nation bent
down and truckled before Gorgius, and proclaimed him the
first gentleman in Europe.  And it's a wonder to think
what is the gentlefolks' opinion of a gentleman, when
they gave Gorgius such a title.

What is it to be a gentleman?  Is it to be honest, to be
gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and,
possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the
most graceful outward manner?  Ought a gentleman to be a
loyal son, a true husband, and honest father?  Ought his
life to be decent--his bills to be paid--his tastes to be
high and elegant--his aims in life lofty and noble?   In
a word, ought not the Biography of a First Gentleman in
Europe to be of such a nature that it might be read in
Young Ladies' Schools with advantage, and studied with
profit in the Seminaries of Young Gentlemen?  I put this
question to all instructors of youth--to Mrs. Ellis and
the Women of England; to all schoolmasters, from Doctor
Hawtrey down to Mr. Squeers.  I conjure up before me an
awful tribunal of youth and innocence, attended by its
venerable instructors (like the ten thousand red-cheeked
charity-children in Saint Paul's), sitting in judgment,
and Gorgius pleading his cause in the midst.  Out of
Court, out of Court, fat old Florizel!  Beadles, turn out
that bloated, pimple-faced man!--If Gorgius MUST have a
statue in the new Palace which the Brentford nation is
building, it ought to be set up in the Flunkeys' Hall.
He should be represented cutting out a coat, in which art
he is said to have excelled.  He also invented Maraschino
punch, a shoe-buckle (this was in the vigour of his
youth, and the prime force of his invention), and a
Chinese pavilion, the most hideous building in the world.
He could drive a four-in-hand very nearly as well as the
Brighton coachman, could fence elegantly, and it is said,
played the fiddle well.  And he smiled with such
irresistible fascination, that persons who were
introduced into his august presence became his victims,
body and soul, as a rabbit becomes the prey of a great
big boa-constrictor.

I would wager that if Mr. Widdicomb were, by a
revolution, placed on the throne of Brentford, people
would be equally fascinated by his irresistibly majestic
smile and tremble as they knelt down to kiss his hand.
If he went to Dublin they would erect an obelisk on the
spot where he first landed, as the Paddylanders did when
Gorgius visited them.  We have all of us read with
delight that story of the King's voyage to Haggisland,
where his presence inspired such a fury of loyalty and
where the most famous man of the country--the Baron of
Bradwardine--coming on board the royal yacht, and finding
a glass out of which Gorgius had drunk, put it into his
coatpocket as an inestimable relic, and went ashore in
his boat again.  But the Baron sat down upon the glass
and broke it, and cut his coat-tails very much; and the
inestimable relic was lost to the world for ever.  O
noble Bradwardine! what old-world superstition could set
you on your knees before such an idol as that?

If you want to moralise upon the mutability of human
affairs, go and see the figure of Gorgius in his real,
identical robes, at the waxwork.--Admittance one
shilling.  Children and flunkeys sixpence.  Go, and pay
sixpence.



CHAPTER III

THE INFLUENCE OF THE ARISTOCRACY ON SNOBS

Last Sunday week, being at church in this city, and the
service just ended, I heard two Snobs conversing about
the Parson.  One was asking the other who the clergyman
was?  'He is Mr. So-and-so,' the second Snob answered,
'domestic chaplain to the Earl of What-d'ye-call'im.'
'Oh, is he' said the first Snob, with a tone of
indescribable satisfaction.--The Parson's orthodoxy and
identity were at once settled in this Snob's mind.  He
knew no more about the Earl than about the Chaplain, but
he took the latter's character upon the authority of the
former; and went home quite contented with his Reverence,
like a little truckling Snob.

This incident gave me more matter for reflection even
than the sermon: and wonderment at the extent and
prevalence of Lordolatory in this country.  What could it
matter to Snob whether his Reverence were chaplain to his
Lordship or not?   What Peerageworship there is all
through this free country!  How we are all implicated in
it, and more or less down on our knees.--And with regard
to the great subject on hand, I think that the influence
of the Peerage upon Snobbishness has been more remarkabie
than that of any other institution.  The increase,
encouragement, and maintenance of Snobs are among the
'priceless services,' as Lord John Russell says, which we
owe to the nobility.

It can't be otherwise.  A man becomes enormously rich, or
he jobs successfully in the aid of a Minister, or he wins
a great battle, or executes a treaty, or is a clever
lawyer who makes a multitude of fees and ascends the
bench; and the country rewards him for ever with a gold
coronot (with more or less balls or leaves) and a title,
and a rank as legislator.  'Your merits are so great,'
says the nation, 'that your children shall be allowed to
reign over us, in a manner.  It does not in the least
matter that your eldest son be a fool: we think your
services so remarkable, that he shall have the reversion
of your honours when death vacates your noble shoes.  If
you are poor, we will give you such a sum of money as
shall enable you and the eldest-born of your race for
ever to live in fat and splendour.  It is our wish that
there should be a race set apart in this happy country,
who shall hold the first rank, have the first prizes and
chances in all government jobs and patronages.  We cannot
make all your dear children Peers--that would make
Peerage common and crowd the House of Lords
uncomfortably--but the young ones shall have everything a
Government can give: they shall get the pick of all the
places: they shall be Captains and Lieutenant-Colonels at
nineteen, when hoary-headed old lieutenants are spending
thirty years at drill: they shall command ships at one-
and-twenty, and veterans who fought before they were
born.  And as we are eminently a free people, and in
order to encourage all men to do their duty, we say to
any man of any rank--get enormously rich, make immense
fees as a lawyer, or great speeches, or distinguish
yourself and win battles--and you, even you, shall come
into the privileged class, and your children shall reign
naturally over ours.'

How can we help Snobbishness, with such a prodigious
national institution erected for its worship?  How can we
help cringing to Lords?  Flesh and blood can't do
otherwise.  What man can withstand this prodigious
temptation?  Inspired by what is called a noble
emulation, some people grasp at honours and win them;
others, too weak or mean, blindly admire and grovel
before those who have gained them; others, not being able
to acquire them, furiously hate, abuse, and envy.  There
are only a few bland and not-in-the-least-conceited
philosophers, who can behold the state of society, viz.,
Toadyism, organised:--base Man-and-Mammon worship,
instituted by command of law:--Snobbishness, in a word,
perpetuated,--and mark the phenomenon calmly.  And of
these calm moralists, is there one, I wonder, whose heart
would not throb with pleasure if he could be seen walking
arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes down Pall Mall?  No it
is impossible in our condition of society, not to be
sometimes a Snob.

On one hand it encourages the commoner to be snobbishly
mean, and the noble to be snobbishly arrogant.  When a
noble marchioness writes in her travels about the hard
necessity under which steam-boat travellers labour of
being brought into contact 'with all sorts and conditions
of people:' implying that a fellowship with God's
creatures is disagreeable to to her Ladyship, who is
their superier:--when, I say, the Marchioness of ----
writes in this fashion, we must consider that out of her
natural heart it would have been impossible for any woman
to have had such a sentiment; but that the habit of
truckling and cringing, which all who surround her have
adopted towards this beautiful and magnificent lady,--
this proprietor of so many black and other diamonds,--has
really induced her to believe that she is the superior of
the world in general: and that people are not to
associate with her except awfully at a distance.  I
recollect being once at the city of Grand Cairo, through
which a European Royal Prince was passing India-wards.
One night at the inn there was a great disturbance: a man
had drowned himself in the well hard by: all the
inhabitants of the hotel came bustling into the Court,
and amongst others your humble servant, who asked of a
certain young man the reason of the disturbance.  How was
I to know that this young gent was a prince?  He had not
his crown and sceptre on: he was dressed in a white
jacket and felt hat: but he looked surprised at anybody
speaking to him: answered an unintelligible monosyllable,
and--BECKONED HIS AID-DE-CAMP TO COME AND SPEAK TO ME.
It is our fault, not that of the great, that they should
fancy themselves so far above us.  If you WILL fling
yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you,
depend upon it; and if you and I, my dear friend, had
Kotow performed before us every day,--found people
whenever we appeared grovelling in slavish adoration, we
should drop into the airs of superiority quite naturally,
and accept the greatness with which the world insisted
upon endowing us.

Here is an instance, out of Lord L----'s travels, of that
calm, good-natured, undoubting way in which a great man
accepts the homage of his inferiors.  After making some
profound and ingenious remarks about the town of
Brussells, his lordship says:--'Staying some day at the
Hotel de Belle Vue, a greatly overrated establishment,
and not nearly as comfortable as the Hotel de France--I
made acquaintance with Dr. L----, the physician of the
Mission.  He was desirous of doing the honours of the
place to me, and he ordered for us a DINER EN GOURMAND at
the chief restaurateur's, maintaining it surpassed the
Rocher at Paris.  Six or eight partook of the
entertainment, and we all agreed it was infinitely
inferior to the Paris display, and much more extravagant.
So much for the copy.

And so much for the gentleman who gave the dinner.  Dr.
L----, desirous to do his lordship 'the honour of the
place,' feasts him with the best victuals money can
procure--and my lord finds the entertainment extravagant
and inferior.  Extravagant! it was not extravagant to
HIM;--Inferior! Mr. L---- did his best to satisfy those
noble jaws, and my lord receives the entertainment, and
dismisses the giver with a rebuke.  It is like a three-
tailed Pasha grumbling about an unsatisfactory
backsheesh.

But how should it be otherwise in a country where
Lordolatry is part of our creed, and where our children
are brought up to respect the 'Peerage' as the
Englishman's second Bible?



CHAPTER IV

THE COURT CIRCULAR, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SNOBS

Example is the best of precepts; so let us begin with a
true and authentic story, showing how young aristocratic
snobs are reared, and how early their Snobbishness may be
made to bloom.  A beautiful and fashionable lady--
(pardon, gracious madam, that your story should be made
public; but it is so moral that it ought to be known to
the universal world)--told me that in her early youth she
had a little acquaintance, who is now indeed a beautiful
and fashionable lady too.  In mentioning Miss Snobky,
daughter of Sir Snobby Snobky, whose presentation at
Court caused such a sensation, need I say more?

When Miss Snobky was so very young as to be in the
nursery regions, and to walk off early mornings in St.
James's Park, protected by a French governess and
followed by a huge hirsute flunkey in the canary coloured
livery of the Snobkys, she used occasionally in these
promenades to meet with young Lord Claude Lollipop, the
Marquis of Sillabub's younger son.  In the very height of
the season, from some unexplained cause, the Snobkys
suddenly determined upon leaving town.  Miss Snobky spoke
to her female friend and confidante.  'What will poor
Claude Lollipop say when he hears of my absence?' asked
the tender-hearted child.

'Oh, perhaps he won't hear of it,' answers the
confidante.

'MY DEAR, HE WILL READ IT IN THE PAPERS,' replied the
dear little fashionable rogue of seven years old.  She
knew already her importance, and how all the world of
England, how all the would-be-genteel people, how all the
silver-fork worshippers, how all the tattle-mongers, how
all the grocers' ladies, the tailors' ladies, the
attorneys' and merchants' ladies, and the people living
at Clapham and Brunswick Square,--who have no more chance
of consorting with a Snobky than my beloved reader has of
dining with the Emperor of China--yet watched the
movements of the Snobkys with interest and were glad to
know when they came to London and left it.

Here is the account of Miss Snobky's dress, and that of
her mother, Lady Snobky, from the papers:--

'MISS SNOBKY.

Habit de Cour, composed of a yellow nankeen illusion
dress over a slip of rich pea-green corduroy, trimmed en
tablier, with bouquets of Brussels sprouts: the body and
sleeves handsomely trimmed with calimanco, and festooned
with a pink train and white radishes.  Head-dress,
carrots and lappets.

'LADY SNOBKY.

'Costume de Cour, composed of a train of the most superb
Pekin bandannas, elegantly trimmed with spangles,
tinfoil, and red-tape.  Bodice and underdress of sky-blue
velveteen, trimmed with bouffants and noeuds of bell-
pulls.  Stomacher a muffin.  Head-dress a bird's nest,
with a bird of paradise, over a rich brass knocker en
ferroniere.  This splendid costume, by Madame Crinoline,
of Regent Street, was the object of universal
admiration.'

This is what you read.  Oh, Mrs. Ellis!  Oh, mothers,
daughters, aunts, grandmothers of England, this is the
sort of writing which is put in the newspapers for you!
How can you help being the mothers, daughters, &c. of
Snobs, so long as this balderdash is set before you?

You stuff the little rosy foot of a Chinese young lady of
fashion into a slipper that is about the size of a salt-
cruet, and keep the poor little toes there imprisoned and
twisted up so long that the dwarfishness becomes
irremediable.  Later, the foot would not expand to the
natural size were you to give her a washing-tub for a
shoe and for all her life she has little feet, and is a
cripple.  Oh, my dear Miss Wiggins, thank your stars that
those beautiful feet of yours--though I declare when you
walk they are so small as to be almost invisible--thank
your stars that society never so practised upon them; but
look around and see how many friends of ours in the
highest circles have had their BRAINS so prematurely and
hopelessly pinched and distorted.

How can you expect that those poor creatures are to move
naturally when the world and their parents have mutilated
them so cruelly?  As long as a COURT CIRCULAR exists, how
the deuce are people whose names are chronicled in it
ever to believe themselves the equals of the cringing
race which daily reads that abominable trash?  I believe
that ours is the only country in the world now where the
COURT CIRCULAR remains in full flourish--where you read,
'This day his Royal Highness Prince Pattypan was taken an
airing in his go-cart.'  'The Princess Pimminy was taken
a drive, attended by her ladies of honour, and
accompanied by her doll,' &c.  We laugh at the solemnity
with which Saint Simon announces that SA MAJESTE SE
MEDICAMENTE AUJOURD'HUI.  Under our very noses the same
folly is daily going on.  "That wonderful and mysterious
man, the author of the COURT CIRCULAR, drops in with his
budget at the newspaper offices every night.  I once
asked the editor of a paper to allow me to lie in wait
and see him.

I am told that in a kingdom where there is a German King-
Consort (Portugal it must be, for the Queen of that
country married a German Prince, who is greatly admired
and respected by the natives), whenever the Consort takes
the diversion of shooting among the rabbit-warrens of
Cintra, or the pheasant-preserve of Mafra, he has a
keeper to load his guns, as a matter of course, and then
they are handed to the nobleman, his equerry, and the
nobleman hands them to the Prince who blazes away--gives
back the discharged gun to the nobleman, who gives it to
the keeper, and so on.  But the Prince WON'T TAKE THE GUN
FROM THE HANDS OF THE LOADER.

As long as this unnatural and monstrous etiquette
continues, Snobs there must be.  The three persons
engaged in this transaction are, for the time being,
Snobs.

1.  The keeper--the least Snob of all, because he is
discharging his daily duty; but he appears here as a
Snob, that is to say, in a position of debasement,before
another human being (the Prince), with whom he is allowed
to cemmunicate through another party.  A free Portuguese
gamekeeper, who professes himself to be unworthy to
communicate directly with any person, confesses himself
to be a Snob.

2.  The nobleman in waiting is a Snob.  If it degrades
the Prince to receive the gun from the gamekeeper, it is
degrading to the nobleman in waiting to execute that
service.  He acts as a Snob towards the keeper, whom he
keeps from communication with the Prince--a Snob to the
Prince, to whom he pays a degrading homage.

3.  The King-Consort of Portugal is a Snob for insulting
fellow-men in this way.  There's no harm in his accepting
the services of the keeper directly; but indirectly he
insults the service performed, and the servants who
perform it; and therefore, I say, respectfully, is a most
undoubted, though royal Snob.

And then you read in the DIARIO DO GOBERNO--'Yesterday
his Majesty the King took the diversion of shooting the
woods off Cintra, attended by Colonel the honourable
Whiskerando Sombrero.  His Majesty returned to the
Necessidades to lunch, at,' &c. &c..

Oh! that COURT CIRCULAR! once more, I exclaim.

Down with the COURT CIRCULAR--that engine and propagator
of Snobbishness!  I promise to subscribe for a year to
any daily paper that shall come out without a COURT
CIRCULAR--were it the MORNING HERALD itself.  When I read
that trash, I rise in my wrath; I feel myself disloyal, a
regicide, a member of the Calf's Head Club.  The only
COURT CIRCULAR story which ever pleased me, was that of
the King of Spain, who in great part was roasted, because
there was not time for the Prime Minister to command the
Lord Chamberlain to desire the Grand Gold Stick to order
the first page in waiting to bid the chief of the
flunkeys to request the House-maid of Honour to bring up
a pail of water to put his Majesty out.

I am like the Pasha of three tails, to whom the Sultan
sends HIS COURT CIRCULAR, the bowstring.

It CHOKES me.  May its usage be abolished for ever.



CHAPTER V

WHAT SNOBS ADMIRE

Now let us consider how difficult it is even for great
men to escape from being Snobs.  It is very well for the
reader, whose fine feelings are disgusted by the
assertion that Kings, Princes, Lords, are Snobs, to say
'You are confessedly a Snob yourself.  In professing to
depict Snobs, it is only your own ugly mug which you are
copying with a Narcissus-like conceit and fatuity.'  But
I shall pardon this explosion of ill-temper on the part
of my constant reader, reflecting upon the misfortune of
his birth and country.  It is impossible for ANY Briton,
perhaps, not to be a Snob in some degree.  If people can
be convinced of this fact, an immense point is gained,
surely.  If I have pointed out the disease, let us hope
that other scientific characters may discover the remedy.

If you, who are a person of the middle ranks of life, are
a Snob,--you whom nobody flatters particularly; you who
have no toadies; you whom no cringing flunkeys or shopmen
bow out of doors; you whom the policeman tells to move
on; you who are jostled in the crowd of this world, and
amongst the Snobs our brethren: consider how much harder
it is for a man to escape who has not your advantages,
and is all his life long subject to adulation; the butt
of meanness; consider how difficult it is for the Snobs'
idol not to be a Snob.

As I was discoursing with my friend Eugenio in this
impressive way, Lord Buckram passed us, the son of the
Marquis of Bagwig, and knocked at the door of the family
mansion in Red Lion Square.  His noble father and mother
occupied, as everybody knows, distinguished posts in the
Courts of late Sovereigns.  The Marquis was Lord of the
Pantry, and her Ladyship, Lady of the Powder Closet to
Queen Charlotte.  Buck (as I call him, for we are very
familiar) gave me a nod as he passed, and I proceeded to
show Eugenio how it was impossible that this nobleman
should not be one of ourselves, having been practised
upon by Snobs all his life.

His parents resolved to give him a public education, and
sent him to school at the earliest possible period.  The
Reverend Otto Rose, D.D., Principal of the Preparatory
Academy for young noblemen and gentlemen, Richmond Lodge,
took this little Lord in hand, and fell down and
worshipped him.  He always introduced him to fathers and
mothers who came to visit their children at the school.
He referred with pride and pleasure to the most noble the
Marquis of Bagwig, as one of the kind friends and patrons
of his Seminary.  He made Lord Buckram a bait for such a
multiplicity of pupils, that a new wing was built to
Richmond Lodge, and thirty-five new little white dimity
beds were added to the establishment.  Mm. Rose used to
take out the little Lord in the one-horse chaise with her
when she paid visits, until the Rector's lady and the
Surgeon's wife almost died with envy.  His own son and
Lord Buckram having been discovered robbing an orchard
together, the Doctor flogged his own flesh and blood most
unmercifully for leading the young Lord astray.  He
parted from him with tears.  There was always a letter
directed to the Most Noble the Marquis ef Bagwig, on the
Doctor's study table, when any visitors were received by
him.

At Eton, a great deal of Snobbishness was thrashed out of
Lord Buckram, and he was birched with perfect
impartiality.  Even there, however, a select band of
sucking tuft-hunters followed him.  Young Croesus lent
him three-and-twenty bran-new sovereigns out of his
father's bank.  Young Snaily did his exercises for him,
and tried 'to know him at home;' but Young Bull licked
him in a fight of fifty-five minutes, and he was caned
several times with great advantage for not sufficiently
polishing his master Smith's shoes.  Boys are not ALL
toadies in the morning of life.

But when he went to the University, crowds of toadies
sprawled over him.  The tutors toadied him.  The fellows
in hall paid him great clumsy compliments.  The Dean
never remarked his absence from Chapel, or heard any
noise issuing from his rooms.  A number of respectable
young fellows, (it is among the respectable, the Baker
Street class, that Snobbishness flourishes, more than
among any set of people in England)--a number of these
clung to him like leeches.  There was no end now to
Croesus's loans of money; and Buckram couldn't ride out
with the hounds, but Snaily (a timid creature by nature)
was in the field, and would take any leap at which his
friend chose to ride.  Young Rose came up to the same
College, having been kept back for that express purpose
by his father.  He spent a quarter's allowance in giving
Buckram a single dinner; but he knew there was always
pardon for him for extravagance in such a cause; and a
ten-pound note always came to him from home when he
mentioned Buckram's name in a letter.  What wild visions
entered the brains of Mrs. Podge and Miss Podge, the wife
and daughter of the Principal of Lord Buckram's College,
I don't know, but that reverend old gentleman was too
profound a flunkey by nature ever for one minute to think
that a child of his could marry a nobleman.  He therefore
hastened on his daughter's union with Professer Crab.

When Lord Buckram, after taking his honorary degree, (for
Alma Mater is a Snob, too, and truckles to a Lord like
the rest,)--when Lord Buckram went abread to finish his
education, you all know what dangers he ran, and what
numbers of caps were set at him.  Lady Leach and her
daughters followed him from Paris to Rome, and from Rome
to Baden-Baden; Miss Leggitt burst into tears before his
face when he announced his determination to quit Naples,
and fainted on the neck of her mamma: Captain Macdragon,
of Macdragonstown, County Tipperary, called upon him to
'explene his intintions with respect to his sisther, Miss
Amalia Macdragon, of Macdragonstown,' and proposed to
shoot him unless he married that spotless and beautiful
young creature, who was afterwards led to the altar by
Mr. Muff, at Cheltenham.  If perseverance and forty
thousand pounds down could have tempted him, Miss Lydia
Croesus would certainly have been Lady Buckram.  Count
Towrowski was glad to take her with half the meney, as
all the genteel world knows.

And now, perhaps, the reader is anxious to know what sort
of a man this is who wounded so many ladies' hearts, and
who has been such a prodigious favourite with men.  If we
were to describe him it would be personal.  Besides, it
really does not matter in the least what sort of a man he
is, or what his personal qualities are.

Suppose he is a young nobleman of a literary turn, and
that he published poems ever so foolish and feeble, the
Snobs would purchase thousands of his volumes: the
publishers (who refused my Passion-Flowers, and my grand
Epic at any price) would give him his own.  Suppose he is
a nobleman of a jovial turn, and has a fancy for
wrenching off knockers, frequenting ginshops, and half
murdering policemen: the public will sympathize good-
naturedly with his amusements, and say he is a hearty,
honest fellow.  Suppose he is fond of play and the turf;
and has a fancy to be a blackleg, and occasionally
condescends to pluck a pigeon at cards; the public will
pardon him, and many honest people will court him, as
they would court a housebreaker if he happened to be a
Lord.  Suppose he is an idiot; yet, by the glorious
constitution, he is good enough to govern US.  Suppose he
is an honest, highminded gentleman; so much the better
for himself.  But he may be an ass, and yet respected; or
a ruffian, and yet be exceedingly popular; or a rogue,
and yet excuses will be found for him.  Snobs will still
worship him.  Male Snobs will do him honour, and females
look kindly upon him, however hideous he may be.



CHAPTER VI

ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS

Having received a great deal of obloquy for dragging
monarchs, princes, and the respected nobility into the
Snob category, I trust to please everybody in the present
chapter, by stating my firm opinion that it is among the
RESPECTABLE classes of this vast and happy empire that
the greatest profusion of Snobs is to be found.  I pace
down my beloved Baker Street, (I am engaged on a life of
Baker, founder of this celebrated street,) I walk in
Harley Street (where every other house has a hatchment),
Wimpole Street, that is as cheerful as the Catacombs--a
dingy Mausoleum of the genteel:--I rove round Regent's
Park, where the plaster is patching off the house walls;
where Methodist preachers are holding forth to three
little children in the green inclosures, and puffy
valetudinarians are cantering in the solitary mud:--I
thread the doubtful ZIG-ZAGS of May Fair, where Mrs.
Kitty Lorimer's Brougham may be seen drawn up next door
to old Lady Lollipop's belozenged family coach;--I roam
through Belgravia, that pale and polite district, where
all the inhabitants look prim and correct, and the
mansions are painted a faint whity-brown: I lose myself
in the new squares and terraces of the brilliant bran-new
Bayswater-and-Tyburn-Junction line; and in one and all of
these districts the same truth comes across me.  I stop
before any house at hazard, and say, 'O house, you are
inhabited--O knocker, you are knocked at--O undressed
flunkey, sunning your lazy calves as you lean against the
iron railings, you are paid--by Snobs.'  It is a
tremendous thought that; and it is almost sufficient to
drive a benevolent mind to madness to think that perhaps
there is not one in ten of those houses where the
'Peerage' does not lie on the drawing-room table.
Considering the harm that foolish lying book does, I
would have all the copies of it burned, as the barber
burned all Quixote's books of humbugging chivalry.

Look at this grand house in the middle of the square.
The Earl of Loughcorrib lives there: he has fifty
thousand a year.  A DEJEUNER DANSANT given at his house
last week cost, who knows how much?  The mere flowers for
the room and bouquets for the ladies cost four hundred
pounds.  That man in drab trousers, coming crying down
the stops, is a dun: Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him, and
won't see him: that is his lordship peeping through the
blind of his study at him now.  Go thy ways, Loughcorrib,
thou art a Snob, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of
hospitality; a rogue who passes forged notes upon
society;--but I am growing too eloquent.

You see that nice house, No. 23, where a butcher's boy is
ringing the area-bell.  He has three muttonchops in his
tray.  They are for the dinner of a very different and
very respectable family; for Lady Susan Scraper, and her
daughters, Miss Scraper and Miss Emily Scraper.  The
domestics, luckily for them, are on board wages--two huge
footmen in light blue and canary, a fat steady coachman
who is a Methodist, and a butler who would never have
stayed in the family but that he was orderly to General
Scraper when the General distinguished himself at
Walcheren.  His widow sent his portrait to the United
Service Club, and it is hung up in one of the back
dressing-closets there.  He is represented at a parlour
window with red curtains; in the distance is a whirlwind,
in which cannon are firing off; and he is pointing to a
chart, on which are written the words 'Walcheren,
Tobago.'

Lady Susan is, as everybody knows by referring to the
'British Bible,' a daughter of the great and good Earl
Bagwig before mentioned.  She thinks everything belonging
to her the greatest and best in the world.  The first of
men naturally are the Buckrams, her own race: then follow
in rank the Scrapers.  The General was the greatest
general: his eldest son, Scraper Buckram Scraper, is at
present the greatest and best; his second son the next
greatest and best; and herself the paragon of women.

Indeed, she is a most respectable and honourable lady.
She goes to church of course: she would fancy the Church
in danger if she did not.  She subscribes to Church and
parish charities; and is a directress of meritorious
charitable institutions--of Queen Charlotte's Lying-in
Hospital, the Washerwomen's Asylum, the British Drummers'
Daughters' Home, &c..  She is a model of a matron.

The tradesman never lived who could say that he was not
paid on the quarter-day.  The beggars of her
neighbourhood avoid her like a pestilence; for while she
walks out, protected by John, that domestic has always
two or three mendicity tickets ready for deserving
objects.  Ten guineas a year will pay all her charities.
There is no respectable lady in all London who gets her
name more often printed for such a sum of money.

Those three mutton-chops which you see entering at the
kitchen-door will be served on the family-plate at seven
o'clock this evening, the huge footman being present, and
the butler in black, and the crest and coat-of-arms of
the Scrapers blazing everywhere.  I pity Miss Emily
Scraper--she is still young--young and hungry.  Is it a
fact that she spends her pocket-money in buns?  Malicious
tongues say so; but she has very little to spare for
buns, the poor little hungry soul!  For the fact is, that
when the footmen, and the ladies' maids, and the fat
coach-horses, which are jobbed, and the six dinner-
parties in the season, and the two great solemn evening-
parties, and the rent of the big house, and the journey
to an English or foreign watering-place for the autumn,
are paid, my lady's income has dwindled away to a very
small sum, and she is as poor as you or I.

You would not think it when you saw her big carriage
rattling up to the drawing-room, and caught a glimpse of
her plumes, lappets, and diamonds, waving over her
ladyship's sandy hair and majestical hooked nose;--you
would not think it when you hear 'Lady Susan Scraper's
carriage' bawled out at midnight so as to disturb all
Belgravia:--you would not think it when she comes
rustling into church, the obsequious John behind with the
bag of Prayer-books.  Is it possible, you would say, that
so grand and awful a personage as that can be hard-up for
money?  Alas!  So it is.

She never heard such a word as Snob, I will engage, in
this wicked and vulgar world.  And, O stars and garters!
how she would start if she heard that she--she, as solemn
as Minerva--she, as chaste as Diana (without that heathen
goddess's unladylike propensity for field-sports)--that
she too was a Snob!

A Snob she is, as long as she sets that prodigious value
upon herself, upon her name, upon her outward appearance,
and indulges in that intolerable pomposity; as long as
she goes parading abroad, like Solomon in all his glory;
as long as she goes to bed--as I believe she does--with a
turban and a bird of paradise in it, and a court train to
her night-gown; as long as she is so insufferably
virtuous and condescending; as long as she does not cut
at least one of those footmen down into mutton-chops for
the benefit of the young ladies.

I had my notions of her from my old schoolfellow,--her
son Sydney Scraper--a Chancery barrister without any
practice--the most placid, polite, and genteel of Snobs,
who never exceeded his allowance of two hundred a year,
and who may be seen any evening at the 'Oxford and
Cambridge Club,' simpering over the QUARTERLY REVIEW, in
the blameless enjoyment of his half-pint of port.



CHAPTER VII

ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS

Look at the next house to Lady Susan Scraper's.  The
first mansion with the awning over the door: that canopy
will be let down this evening for the comfort of the
friends of Sir Alured and Lady S. de Mogyns, whose
parties are so much admired by the public, and the givers
themselves.

Peach-coloured liveries laced with silver, and pea-green
plush inexpressibles, render the De Mogyns' flunkeys the
pride of the ring when they appear in Hyde Park where
Lady de Mogyns, as she sits upon her satin cushions, with
her dwarf spaniel in her arms, bows to the very selectest
of the genteel.  Times are altered now with Mary Anne,
or, as she calls herself, Marian de Mogyns.

She was the daughter of Captain Flack of the Rathdrum
Fencibles, who crossed with his regiment over from
Ireland to Caermarthenshire ever so many years ago, and
defended Wales from the Corsican invader.  The Rathdrums
were quartered at Pontydwdlm, where Marian wooed and won
her De Mogyns, a young banker in the place.  His
attentions to Miss Flack at a race ball were such that
her father said De Mogyns must either die on the field of
honour, or become his son-in-law.  He preferred marriage.
His name was Muggins then, and his father--a flourishing
banker, army-contractor, smuggler, and general jobber--
almost disinherited him on account of this connection.

There is a story that Muggins the Elder was made a
baronet for having lent money to a R-y-l p-rs-n-ge.  I do
not believe it.  The R-y-l Family always paid their
debts, from the Prince of Wales downwards.

Howbeit, to his life's end he remained simple Sir Thomas
Muggins, representing Pontydwdlm in Parliament for many
years after the war.  The old banker died in course of
time, and to use the affectionate phrase common on such
occasions, 'cut up' prodigiously well.  His son, Alfred
Smith Mogyns, succeeded to the main portion of his
wealth, and to his titles and the bloody hand of his
scutcheon.  It was not for many years after that he
appeared as Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth de Mogyns, with a
genealogy found out for him by the Editor of 'Fluke's
Peerage,' and which appears as follows in that work:- 'De
Mogyns.--Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth, Second Baronet.  This
gentleman is a representative of one of the most ancient
families of Wales, who trace their descent until it is
lost in the mists of antiquity.  A genealogical tree
beginning with Shem is in the possession of the family,
and is stated by a legend of many thousand years' date to
have been drawn on papyrus by a grandson of the patriarch
himself.  Be this as it may, there can be no doubt of the
immense antiquity of the race of Mogyns.

'In the time of Boadicea, Hogyn Mogyn, of the hundred
Beeves, was a suitor and a rival of Caractacus for the
hand of that Princess.  He was a person gigantic in
stature, and was slain by Suetonius in the battle which
terminated the liberties of Britain.  From him descended
directly the Princes of Pontydwdlm, Mogyn of the Golden
Harp (see the Mabinogion of Lady Charlotte Guest,) Bogyn-
Merodac-ap-Mogyn, (the black fiend son of Mogyn,) and a
long list of bards and warriors, celebrated both in Wales
and Armorica.  The independent Princes of Mogyn long held
out against the ruthless Kings of England, until finally
Gam Mogyns made his submission to Prince Henry, son of
Henry IV., and under the name of Sir David Gam de Mogyns,
was distinguished at the battle of Agincourt.

>From him the present Baronet is descended. (And here the
descent follows in order until it comes to) Thomas
Muggins, first Baronet of Pontydwdlm Castle, for 23 years
Member of Parliament for that borough, who had issue,
Alured Mogyns Smyth, the present Baronet, who married
Marian, daughter of the late general P. Flack, of
Ballyflack, in the Kingdom of Ireland of the Counts Flack
of the H. R. Empire.  Sir Alured has issue, Alured
Caradoc, born 1819, Marian, 1811, Blanche Adeliza, Emily
Doria, Adelaide Obleans, Katinka Rostopchin, Patrick
Flack, died 1809.

'Arms--a mullion garbled, gules on a saltire reversed of
the second.  Crest--a tom-tit rampant regardant.  Motto--
UNG ROY UNG MOGYNS.'

It was long before Lady de Mogyns shone as a star in the
fashionable world.  At first, poor Muggins was the in the
hands of the Flacks, the Clancys, the Tooles, the
Shanahans, his wife's Irish relations; and whilst he was
yet but heir-apparent, his house overflowed with claret
and the national nectar, for the benefit of Hibernian
relatives.  Tom Tufto absolutely left the street in which
they lived in London, because he said 'it was infected
with such a confounded smell of whisky from the house of
those IWISH people.'

It was abroad that they learned to be genteel.  They
pushed into all foreign courts, and elbowed their way
into the halls of Ambassadors.  They pounced upon the
stray nobility, and seized young lords travelling with
their bear-leaders.  They gave parties at Naples, Rome,
and Paris.  They got a Royal Prince to attend their
SOIREES at the latter place, and it was here that they
first appeared under the name of De Mogyns, which they
bear with such splendour to this day.

All sorts of stories are told of the desperate efforts
made by the indomitable Lady de Mogyns to gain the place
she now occupies, and those of my beloved readers who
live in middle life, and are unacquainted with the
frantic struggles, the wicked feuds, the intrigues,
cabals, and disappointments which, as I am given to
understand, reign in the fashionable world, may bless
their stars that they at least are not FASHIONABLE Snobs.
The intrigues set afoot by the De Mogyns to get the
Duchess of Buckskin to her parties, would strike a
Talleyrand with admiration.  She had a brain fever after
being disappointed of an invitation to Lady
Aldermanbury's THE DANSANT, and would have committed
suicide but for a ball at Windsor.  I have the following
story from my noble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself,--
Lady Kathleen O'Shaughnessy that was, and daughter of the
Earl of Turfanthunder:-

'When that odious disguised Irishwoman, Lady Muggins, was
struggling to take her place in the world, and was
bringing out her hidjous daughter Blanche,' said old Lady
Clapperclaw--'Marian has a hump-back and doesn't show,
but she's the only lady in the family)--when that
wretched Polly Muggins was bringing out Blanche, with her
radish of a nose, and her carrots of ringlets, and her
turnip for a face, she was most anxious--as her father
had been a cowboy on my father's land--to be patronized
by us, and asked me point-blank, in the midst of a
silence at Count Volauvent's, the French Ambassador's
dinner, why I had not sent her a card for my ball?

'"Because my rooms are already too full, and your
ladyship would be crowded inconveniently," says I; indeed
she takes up as much room as an elephant: besides I
wouldn't have her, and that was flat.

'I thought my answer was a settler to her: but the next
day she comes weeping to my arms--"Dear Lady
Clapperclaw," says she, "it's not for ME; I ask it for my
blessed Blanche! a young creature in her first season,
and not at your ball!  My tender child will pine and die
of vexation.  I don't want to come.  I will stay at home
to nurse Sir Alured in the gout.  Mrs. Bolster is going,
I know; she will be Blanche's chaperon."

'"You wouldn't subscribe for the Rathdrum blanket and
potato fund; you, who come out of the parish," says I,
"and whose grandfather, honest man, kept cows there."

'"Will twenty guineas be enough, dearest Lady
Clapperclaw?"

'"Twenty guineas is sufficient," says I, and she paid
them; so I said, "Blanche may come, but not you, mind:"
and she left me with a world of thanks.

'Would you believe it?--when my ball came, the horrid
woman made her appearance with her daughter!

"Didn't I tell you not to come?" said I, in a mighty
passion.  "What would the world have said?" cries my Lady
Muggins: "my carriage is gone for Sir Alured to the Club;
let me stay only ten minutes, dearest Lady Clapperclaw"

'"Well as you are here, madam, you may stay and get your
supper," I answered, and so left her, and never spoke a
word more to her all night.

'And now,' screamed out old Lady Clapperclaw, clapping
her hands, and speaking with more brogue than ever, 'what
do you think, after all my kindness to her, the wicked,
vulgar, odious, impudent upstart of s cowboy's
granddaughter, has done?--she cut me yesterday in Hy'
Park, and hasn't sent me a ticket for her ball to-night,
though they say Prince George is to be there.'

Yes, such is the fact.  In the race of fashion the
resolute and active De Mogyns has passed the poor old
Clapperclaw.  Her progress in gentility may be traced by
the sets of friends whom she has courted, and made, and
cut, and left behind her.  She has struggled so gallantly
for polite reputation that she has won it: pitilessly
kicking down the ladder as she advanced degree by degree.

Irish relations were first sacrificed; she made her
father dine in the steward's room, to his perfect
contentment: and would send Sir Alured thither like-wise
but that he is a peg on which she hopes to hang her
future honours; and is, after all, paymaster of her
daughter's fortunes.  He is meek and content.  He has
been so long a gentleman that he is used to it, and acts
the part of governor very well.  In the day-time he goes
from the 'Union' to 'Arthur's,' and from 'Arthur's' to
the 'Union.'  He is a dead hand at piquet, and loses a
very comfortable maintenance to some young fellows, at
whist, at the 'Travellers'.'

His son has taken his father's seat in Parliament, and
has of course joined Young England.  He is the only man
in the country who believes in the De Mogynses, and sighs
for the days when a De Mogyns led the van of battle.  He
has written a little volume of spoony puny poems.  He
wears a lock of the hair of Laud, the Confessor and
Martyr, and fainted when he kissed the Pope's toe at
Rome.  He sleeps in white kid-gloves, and commits
dangerous excesses upon green tea.



CHAPTER VIII

GREAT CITY SNOBS

There is no disguising the fact that this series of
papers is making a prodigious sensation among all classes
in this Empire.  Notes of admiration (!), of
interrogation (?), of remonstrance, approval, or abuse,
come pouring into MR. PUNCH'S box.  We have been called
to task for betraying the secrets of three different
families of De Mogyns; no less than four Lady Scrapers
have been discovered; and young gentlemen are quite shy
of ordering half-a-pint of port and simpering over the
QUARTERLY REVIEW at the Club, lest they should be
mistaken for Sydney Scraper, Esq.  'What CAN be your
antipathy to Baker Street?' asks some fair remonstrant,
evidently writing from that quarter.

'Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs?' says one
'estimable correspondent: 'are not the snobbish Snobs to
have their turn?'--'Pitch into the University Snobs!'
writes an indignant gentleman (who spelt ELEGANT with two
I's)--'Show up the Clerical Snob,' suggests another.--
'Being at "Meurice's Hotel," Paris, some time since,'
some wag hints, 'I saw Lord B. leaning out of the window
with his boots in his hand, and bawling out "GARCON,
CIREZ-MOI CES BOTTES."  Oughtn't he to be brought in
among the Snobs?'

No; far from it.  If his lordship's boots are dirty, it
is because he is Lord B., and walks.  There is nothing
snobbish in having only one pair of boots, or a favourite
pair; and certainly nothing snobbish in desiring to have
them cleaned.  Lord B., in so doing, performed a
perfectly natural and gentlemanlike action; for which I
am so pleased with him that I have had him designed in a
favourable and elegant attitude, and put at the head of
this Chapter in the place of honour.  No, we are not
personal in these candid remarks.  As Phidias took the
pick of a score of beauties before he completed a Venus,
so have we to examine, perhaps, a thousand Snobs, before
one is expressed upon paper.

Great City Snobs are the next in the hierarchy, and ought
to be considered.  But here is a difficulty.  The great
City Snob is commonly most difficult of access.  Unless
you are a capitalist, you cannot visit him in the
recesses of his bank parlour in Lombard Street.  Unless
you are a sprig of nobility there is little hope of
seeing him at home.  In a great City Snob firm there is
generally one partner whose name is down for charities,
and who frequents Exeter Hall; you may catch a glimpse of
another (a scientific City Snob) at my Lord N----'s
SOIREES, or the lectures of the London Institution; of a
third (a City Snob of taste) at picture-auctions, at
private views of exhibitions, or at the Opera or the
Philharmonic.  But intimacy is impossible, in most cases,
with this grave, pompous, and awful being.

A mere gentleman may hope to sit at almost anybody's
table--to take his place at my lord duke's in the
country--to dance a quadrille at Buckingham Palace
itself--(beloved Lady Wilhelmina Wagglewiggle! do you
recollect the sensation we made at the ball of our late
adored Sovereign Queen Caroline, at Brandenburg House,
Hammersmith?) but the City Snob's doors are, for the most
part, closed to him; and hence all that one knows of this
great class is mostly from hearsay.

In other countries of Europe, the Banking Snob is more
expansive and communicative than with us, and receives
all the world into his circle.  For instance, everybody
knows the princely hospitalities of the Scharlaschild
family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort, &c..  They entertain
all the world, even the poor, at their FETES.  Prince
Polonia, at Rome, and his brother, the Duke of Strachino,
are also remarkable for their hospitalities.  I like the
spirit of the first-named nobleman.  Titles not costing
much in the Roman territory, he has had the head clerk of
the banking-house made a Marquis, and his Lordship will
screw a BAJOCCO out of you in exchange as dexterously as
any commoner could do.  It is a comfort to be able to
gratify such grandees with a farthing or two; it makes
the poorest man feel that he can do good.  'The Polonias
have intermarried with the greatest and most ancient
families of Rome, and you see their heraldic cognizance
(a mushroom or on an azure field) quartered in a hundred
places in the city with the arms of the Colonnas and
Dorias.

City Snobs have the same mania for aristocratic
marriages.  I like to see such.  I am of a savage and
envious nature,--I like to see these two humbugs which,
dividing, as they do, the social empire of this kingdom
between them, hate each other naturally, making truce and
uniting, for the sordid interests of either.  I like to
see an old aristocrat, swelling with pride of race, the
descendant of illustrious Norman robbers, whose blood has
been pure for centuries, and who looks down upon common
Englishmen as a free American does on a nigger,--I like
to see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his head and
swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of
humiliation poured out by Pump and Aldgate's butler.
'Pump and Aldgate, says he, 'your grandfather was a
bricklayer, and his hod is still kept in the bank.  Your
pedigree begins in a workhouse; mine can be dated from
all the royal palaces of Europe.  I came over with the
Conqueror; I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando
Furioso, Philip Augustus, Peter the Cruel, and Frederick
Barbarossa.  I quarter the Royal Arms of Brentford in my
coat.  I despise you, but I want money; and I will sell
you my beloved daughter, Blanche Stiffneck, for a hundred
thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages.  Let your son
marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche Pump and
Aldgate.'

Old Pump and Aldgate clutches at the bargain.  And a
comfortable thing it is to think that birth can be bought
for money.  So you learn to value it.  Why should we, who
don't possess it, set a higher store on it than those who
do?  Perhaps the best use of that book, the 'Peerage,' is
to look down the list, and see how many have bought and
sold birth,--how poor sprigs of nobility somehow sell
themselves to rich City Snobs' daughters, how rich City
Snobs purchase noble ladies--and so to admire the double
baseness of the bargain.

Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article and pays the money.
The sale of the girl's person is blessed by a Bishop at
St. George's, Hanover Square, and next year you read, 'At
Roehampton, on Saturday, the Lady Blanche Pump, of a son
and heir.

After this interesting event, some old acquaintance, who
saw young Pump in the parlour at the bank in the City,
said to him, familiarly, 'How's your wife, Pump, my boy?'

Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted, and,
after a pause, said, 'LADY BLANCHE PUMP' is pretty well,
I thank you.'

'OH, I THOUGHT SHE WAS YOUR WIFE!' said the familiar
brute, Snooks, wishing him good-bye; and ten minutes
after, the story was all over the Stock Exchange, where
it is told, when young Pump appears, to this very day.

We can imagine the weary life this poor Pump, this martyr
to Mammon, is compelled to undergo.  Fancy the domestic
enjoyments of a man who has a wife who scorns him; who
cannot see his own friends in his own house; who having
deserted the middle rank of life, is not yet admitted to
the higher; but who is resigned to rebuffs and delay and
humiliation, contented to think that his son will be more
fortunate.

It used to be the custom of some very old-fashioned clubs
in this city, when a gentleman asked for change a guinea,
always to bring it to him in WASHED SILVER: that which
had passed immediately out of the hands of vulgar being
considered 'as too coarse to soil a gentleman's fingers.'
So, when the City Snob's money has been washed during a
generation or so; has been washed into estates, and
woods, and castles, and town-mansions, it is allowed to
pass current as real aristocratic coin.  Old Pump sweeps
a shop, runs of messages, becomes a confidential clerk
and partner.  Pump the Second becomes chief of the house,
spins more and more money, marries his son to an Earl's
daughter.  Pump Tertius goes on with the bank; but his
chief business in life is to become the father of Pump
Quartus, who comes out a full-blown aristocrat, and takes
his seat as Baron Pumpington, and his race rules
hereditarily over this nation of Snobs.



CHAPTER IX

ON SOME MILITARY SNOBS

As no society in the world is more agreeable than that of
well-bred and well-informed military gentlemen, so,
likewise, none is more insufferable than that of Military
Snobs.  They are to be found of all grades, from the
General Officer, whose padded old breast twinkles over
with a score of stars, clasps, and decorations, to the
budding cornet, who is shaving for a beard, and has just
been appointed to the Saxe-Coburg Lancers.

I have always admired that dispensation of rank in our
country, which sets up this last-named little creature
(who was flogged only last week because he could not
spell) to command great whiskered warriors, who have
faced all dangers of climate and battle; which, because
he has money, to lodge at the agent's, will place him
over the heads of men who have a thousand times more
experience and desert: and which, in the course of time,
will bring him all the honours of his profession, when
the veteran soldier he commanded has got no other reward
for his bravery than a berth in Chelsea Hospital, and the
veteran officer he superseded has slunk into shabby
retirement, and ends his disappointed life on a
threadbare half-pay.

When I read in the GAZETTE such announcements as
'Lieutenant and Captain Grig, from the Bombardier Guards,
to be Captain, vice Grizzle, who retires,' I know what
becomes of the Peninsular Grizzle; I follow him in spirit
to the humble country town, where he takes up his
quarters, and occupies himself with the most desperate
attempts to live like a gentleman, on the stipend of half
a tailor's foreman; and I picture to myself little Grig
rising from rank to rank, skipping from one regiment to
another, with an increased grade in each, avoiding
disagreeable foreign service, and ranking as a colonel at
thirty;--all because he has money, and Lord Grigsby is
his father, who had the same luck before him.  Grig must
blush at first to give his orders to old men in every way
his betters.  And as it is very difficult for a spoiled
child to escape being selfish and arrogant, so it is a
very hard task indeed for this spoiled child of fortune
not to be a Snob.

It must have often been a matter of wonder to the candid
reader, that the army, the most enormous job of all our
political institutions, should yet work so well in the
field; and we must cheerfully give Grig, and his like,
the credit for courage which they display whenever
occasion calls for it.  The Duke's dandy regiments fought
as well as any (they said better than any, but that is
absurd).  The great Duke himself was a dandy once, and
jobbed on, as Marlborough did before him.  But this only
proves that dandies are brave as well as other Britons--
as all Britons.  Let us concede that the high-born Grig
rode into the entrenchments at Sobraon as gallantly as
Corporal Wallop, the ex-ploughboy.

The times of war are more favourable to him than the
periods of peace.  Think of Grig's life in the Bombardier
Guards, or the Jack-boot Guards; his marches from Windsor
to London, from London to Windsor, from Knightsbridge to
Regent's Park; the idiotic services he has to perform,
which consist in inspecting the pipeclay of his company,
or the horses in the stable, or bellowing out 'Shoulder
humps!  Carry humps!' all which duties the very smallest
intellect that ever belonged to mortal man would suffice
to comprehend.  The professional duties of a footman are
quite as difficult and various.  The red-jackets who hold
gentlemen's horses in St. James's Street could do the
work just as well as those vacuous, good-natured,
gentlemanlike, rickety little lieutenants, who may be
seen sauntering about Pall Mall, in high-heeled little
boots, or rallying round the standard of their regiment
in the Palace Court, at eleven o'clock, when the band
plays.  Did the beloved reader ever see one of the young
fellows staggering under the flag, or, above all, going
through the operation of saluting it?  It is worth a walk
to the Palace to witness that magnificent piece of
tomfoolery.

I have had the honour of meeting once or twice an old
gentleman, whom I look upon to be a specimen of army-
training, and who has served in crack regiments, or
commanded them, all his life.  I allude to Lieutenant-
General the Honourable Sir George Granby Tufto, K.C.B.,
K.T.S., K.H., K.S.W., &c. &c..  His manners are
irreproachable generally; in society he is a perfect
gentleman, and a most thorough Snob.

A man can't help being a fool, be he ever so old, and Sir
George is a greater ass at sixty-eight than he was when
he first entered the army at fifteen.  He distinguished
himself everywhere: his name is mentioned with praise in
a score of Gazettes: he is the man, in fact, whose padded
breast, twinkling over with innumerable decorations, has
already been introduced to the reader.  It is difficult
to say what virtues this prosperous gentleman possesses.
He never read a book in his life, and, with his purple,
old gouty fingers, still writes a schoolboy hand.  He has
reached old age and grey hairs without being the least
venerable.  He dresses like an outrageously young man to
the present moment, and laces and pads his old carcass as
if he were still handsome George Tufto of 1800.  He is
selfish, brutal, passionate, and a glutton.  It is
curious to mark him at table, and see him heaving in his
waistband, his little bloodshot eyes goating over his
meal.  He swears considerably in his talk, and tells
filthy garrison stories after dinner.  On account of his
rank and his services, people pay the bestarred and
betitled old brute a sort of reverence; and he looks down
upon you and me, and exhibits his contempt for us, with a
stupid and artless candour which is quite amusing to
watch.  Perhaps, had he been bred to another profession,
he would not have been the disreputable old creature he
now is.  But what other?  He was fit for none; too
incorrigibly idle and dull for any trade but this, in
which he has distinguished himself publicly as a good and
gallant officer, and privately for riding races, drinking
port, fighting duels, and seducing women.  He believes
himself to be one of the most honourable and deserving
beings in the world.  About Waterloo Place, of
afternoons, you may see him tottering in his varnished
boots, and leering under the bonnets of the women who
pass by.  When he dies of apoplexy, THE TIMES will have a
quarter of a column about his services and battles--four
lines of print will be wanted to describe his titles and
orders alone--and the earth will cover one of the
wickedest and dullest old wretches that ever strutted
over it.

Lest it should be imagined that I am of so obstinate a
misanthropic nature as to be satisfied with nothing, I
beg (for the comfort of the forces) to state my belief
that the army is not composed of such persons as the
above.  He has only been selected for the study of
civilians and the military, as a specimen of a prosperous
and bloated Army Snob.  No: when epaulets are not sold;
when corporal punishments are abolished, and Corporal
Smith has a chance to have his gallantry rewarded as well
as that of Lieutenant Grig; when there is no such rank as
ensign and lieutenant (the existence of which rank is an
absurd anomaly, and an insult upon all the rest of the
army), and should there be no war, I should not be
disinclined to be a major-general myself.

I have a little sheaf of Army Snobs in my portfolio, but
shall pause in my attack upon the forces till next week.



CHAPTER X

MILITARY SNOBS

Walking in the Park yesterday with my young friend Tagg,
and discoursing with him upon the next number of the
Snob, at the very nick of time who should pass us but two
very good specimens of Military Snobs,-- the Sporting
Military Snob, Capt. Rag, and the 'lurking' or raffish
Military Snob, Ensign Famish.  Indeed you are fully sure
to meet them lounging on horseback, about five o'clock,
under the trees by the Serpentine, examining critically
the inmates of the flashy broughams which parade up and
down 'the Lady's Mile.'

Tagg and Rag are very well acquainted, and so the former,
with that candour inseparable from intimate friendship,
told me his dear friend's history.  Captain Rag is a
small dapper north-country man.  He went when quite a boy
into a crack light cavalry regiment, and by the time he
got his troop, had cheated all his brother officers so
completely, selling them lame horses for sound ones, and
winning their money by all manner of strange and
ingenious contrivances, that his Colonel advised him to
retire; which he did without much reluctance,
accommodating a youngster, who had just entered the
regiment, with a glaudered charger at an uncommonly stiff
figure.

He has since devoted his time to billiards, steeple-
chasing, and the turf.  His head-quarters are 'Rummer's,'
in Conduit Street, where he keeps his kit; but he is ever
on the move in the exercise of his vocation as a
gentleman-jockey and gentleman-leg.

According to BELL'S LIFE, he is an invariable attendant
at all races, and an actor in most of them.  He rode the
winner at Leamington; he was left for dead in a ditch a
fortnight ago at Harrow; and yet there he was, last week,
at the Croix de Berny, pale and determined as ever,
astonishing the BADAUDS of Paris by the elegance of his
seat and the neatness of his rig, as he took a
preliminary gallop on that vicious brute 'The Disowned,'
before starting for 'the French Grand National.'

He is a regular attendant at the Corner, where he
compiles a limited but comfortable libretto.  During
season he rides often in the Park, mounted on a clever
well-bred pony.  He is to be seen escorting celebrated
horsewoman, Fanny Highflyer, or in confidential converse
with Lord Thimblerig, the eminent handicapper.

He carefully avoids decent society, and would rather dine
off a steak at the 'One Tun' with Sam Snaffle the jockey,
Captain O'Rourke, and two or three other notorious turf
robbers, than with the choicest company in London.  He
likes to announce at 'Rummer's' that he is going to run
down and spend his Saturday and Sunday in a friendly way
with Hocus, the leg, at his little box near Epsom; where,
if report speak true, many 'rummish plants' are
concocted.

He does not play billiards often, and never in public:
but when he does play, he always contrives to get hold of
a good flat, and never leaves him till he has done him
uncommonly brown.  He has lately been playing a good deal
with Famish.

When he makes his appearance in the drawing-room, which
occasionally happens at a hunt-meeting or a race-ball, he
enjoys himself extremely.

His young friend is Ensign Famish, who is not a little
pleased to be seen with such    a smart fellow as Rag,
who bows to the best turf company in the Park.  Rag lets
Famish accompany him to Tattersall's, and sells him
bargains in horse-flesh, and uses Famish's cab.  That
young gentleman's regiment is in India, and he is at home
on sick leave.  He recruits his health by being
intoxicated every night, and fortifies his lungs, which
are weak, by smoking cigars all day.   The policemen
about the Haymarket know the little creature, and the
early cabmen salute him.  The closed doors of fish and
lobster shops open after service, and vomit out little
Famish, who is either tipsy and quarrelsome--when he
wants to fight the cabmen; or drunk and helpless--when
some kind friend (in yellow satin) takes care of him.
All the neighbourhood, the cabmen, the police, the early
potato-men, and the friends in yellow satin, know the
young fellow, and he is called Little Bobby by some of
the very worst reprobates in Europe.

His mother, Lady Fanny Famish, believes devoutly that
Robert is in London solely for the benefit of consulting
the physician; is going to have him exchanged into a
dragoon regiment, which doesn't go to that odious India;
and has an idea that his chest is delicate, and that he
takes gruel every evening, when he puts his feet in hot
water.  Her Ladyship resides at Cheltenham, and is of a
serious turn.

Bobby frequents the 'Union Jack Club' of course; where he
breakfasts on pale ale and devilled kidneys at three
o'clock; where beardless young heroes of his own sort
congregate, and make merry, and give each other dinners;
where you may see half-a-dozen of young rakes of the
fourth or fifth order lounging and smoking on the steps;
where you behold Slapper's long-tailed leggy mare in the
custody of a red-jacket until the Captain is primed for
the Park with a glass of curacoa; and where you see
Hobby, of the Highland Buffs, driving up with Dobby, of
the Madras Fusiliers, in the great banging, swinging cab,
which the latter hires from Rumble of Bond Street.

In fact, Military Snobs are of such number and variety,
that a hundred weeks of PUNCH would not suffice to give
an audience to them.  There is, besides the disreputable
old Military Snob, who has seen service, the respectable
old Military Snob, who has seen none, and gives himself
the most prodigious Martinet airs.  There is the Medical-
Military Snob, who is generally more outrageously
military in his conversation than the greatest SABREUR in
the army.  There is the Heavy-Dragoon Snob, whom young
ladies, admire with his great stupid pink face and yellow
moustaches--a vacuous, solemn, foolish, but brave and
honourable Snob.  There is the Amateur-Military Snob who
writes Captain on his card because he is a Lieutenant in
the Bungay Militia.  There is the Lady-killing Military
Snob; and more, who need not be named.

But let no man, we repeat, charge MR. PUNCH with
disrespect for the Army in general--that gallant and
judicious Army, every man of which, from F.M. the Duke of
Wellington, &c., downwards--(with the exception of H.R.H.
Field-Marshal Prince Albert, who, however, can hardly
count as a military man,)--reads PUNCH in every quarter
of the globe.

Let those civilians who sneer at the acquirements of the
army read Sir Harry Smith's account of the Battle of
Aliwal.  A noble deed was never told in nobler language.
And you who doubt if chivalry exists, or the age of
heroism has passed by, think of Sir Henry Hardinge, with
his son, 'dear little Arthur,' riding in front of the
lines at Ferozeshah.  I hope no English painter will
endeavour to illustrate that scene; for who is there to
do justice to it?  The history of the world contains no
more brilliant and heroic picture.  No, no; the men who
perform these deeds with such brilliant valour, and
describe them with such modest manliness--SUCH are not
Snobs.  Their country admires them, their Sovereign
rewards them, and PUNCH, the universal railer, takes off
his hat and, says, Heaven save them!



CHAPTER XI

ON CLERICAL SNOBS

After Snobs-Military, Snobs-Clerical suggest themselves
quite naturally, and it is clear that, with every respect
for the cloth, yet having a regard for truth, humanity,
and the British public, such a vast and influential class
must not be omitted from our notices of the great Snob
world.

Of these Clerics there are some whose claim to
snobbishness is undoubted, and yet it cannot be discussed
here; for the same reason that PUNCH would not set up his
show in a Cathedral, out of respect for the solemn
service celebrated within.  There are some places where
he acknowledges himself not privileged to make a noise,
and puts away his show, and silences his drum, and takes
off his hat, and holds his peace.

And I know this, that if there are some Clerics who do
wrong, there are straightway a thousand newspapers to
haul up those unfortunates, and cry, 'Fie upon them, fie
upon them!' while, though the press is always ready to
yell and bellow excommunication against these stray
delinquent parsons, it somehow takes very little count of
the many good ones--of the tens of thousands of honest
men, who lead Christian lives, who give to the poor
generously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live and die
in their duty, without ever a newspaper paragraph in
their favour.  My beloved friend and reader, I wish you
and I could do the same: and let me whisper my belief,
ENTRE NOUS that of those eminent philosophers who cry out
against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have
got their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

But you who have ever listened to village bells, or
walked to church as children on sunny Sabbath mornings;
you who have ever seen the parson's wife tending the poor
man's bedside; or the town clergyman threading the dirty
stairs of noxious alleys upon his business;--do not raise
a shout when one falls away, or yell with the mob that
howls after him.

Every man can do that.  When old Father Noah was
overtaken in his cups, there was only one of his sons
that dared to make merry at his disaster, and he was not
the most virtuous of the family.  Let us too turn away
silently, nor huzza like a parcel of school-boys, because
some big young rebel suddenly starts up and whops the
schoolmaster.

I confess, though, if I had by me the names of those
seven or eight Irish bishops, the probates of whose wills
were mentioned in last year's journals, and who died
leaving behind them some two hundred thousand a-piece--I
would like to put THEM up as patrons of my Clerical
Snobs, and operate upon them as successfully as I see
from the newspapers Mr. Eisenberg, Chiropodist, has
lately done upon 'His Grace the Reverend Lord Bishop of
Tapioca.'

I confess that when those Right Reverend Prelates come up
to the gates of Paradise with their probates of wills in
their hands, I think that their chance is....  But the
gates of Paradise is a far way to follow their Lordships;
so let us trip down again lest awkward questions be asked
there about our own favourite vices too.

And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice, that
clergymen are an over-paid and luxurious body of men.
When that eminent ascetic, the late Sydney Smith--(by the
way, by what law of nature is it that so many Smiths in
this world are called Sydney Smith?)--lauded the system
of great prizes in the Church,--without which he said
gentlemen would not be induced to follow the clerical
profession, he admitted most pathetically that the clergy
in general were by no means to be envied for their
worldly prosperity.  From reading the works of some
modern writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's
life was passed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and
port-wine; and that his Reverence's fat chaps were always
greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs.  Caricaturists
delight to represent him so: round, short-necked, pimple-
faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a
black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus.
Whereas, if you take the real man, the poor fellow's
flesh-pots are very scantily furnished with meat.  He
labours commonly for a wage that a tailor's foreman would
despise: he has, too, such claims upon his dismal income
as most philosophers would rather grumble to meet; many
tithes are levied upon HIS pocket, let it be remembered,
by those who grudge him his means of livelihood.  He has
to dine with the Squire: and his wife must dress neatly;
and he must 'look like a gentleman,' as they call it, and
bring up six great hungry sons as such.  Add to this, if
he does his duty, he has such temptations to spend his
money as no mortal man could withstand.  Yes; you who
can't resist purchasing a chest of cigars, because they
are so good; or an ormolu clock at Howell and James's,
because it is such a bargain; or a box at the Opera,
because Lablache and Grisi are divine in the PURITANI;
fancy how difficult it is for a parson to resist spending
a half-crown when John Breakstone's family are without a
loaf; or 'standing' a bottle of port for poor old Polly
Rabbits, who has her thirteenth child; or treating
himself to a suit of corduroys for little Bob Scarecrow,
whose breeches are sadly out at elbows.  Think of these
temptations, brother moralists and philosophers, and
don't be too hard on the parson.

But what is this?  Instead of 'showing up' the parsons,
are we indulging in maudlin praises of that monstrous
black-coated race?  O saintly Francis, lying at rest
under the turf; O Jimmy, and Johnny, and Willy, friends
of my youth!  O noble and dear old Elias! how should he
who knows you not respect you and your calling?  May this
pen never write a pennyworth again, if it ever casts
ridicule upon either!



CHAPTER XII

ON CLERICAL SNOBS AND SNOBBISHNESS

'Dear Mr. Snob,' an amiable young correspondent writes,
who signs himself Snobling, 'ought the clergyman who, at
the request of a noble Duke, lately interrupted a
marriage ceremony between two persons perfectly
authorised to marry, to be ranked or not among the
Clerical Snobs?'

This, my dear young friend, is not a fair question.  One
of the illustrated weekly papers has already seized hold
of the clergyman, and blackened him most unmercifully, by
representing him in his cassock performing the marriage
service.  Let that be sufficient punishment; and, if you
please, do not press the query.

It is very likely that if Miss Smith had come with a
licence to marry Jones, the parson in question, not
seeing old Smith present, would have sent off the beadle
in a cab to let the old gentleman know what was going on;
and would have delayed the service until the arrival of
Smith senior.  He very likely thinks it his duty to ask
all marriageable young ladies, who come without their
papa, why their parent is absent; and, no doubt, ALWAYS
sends off the beadle for that missing governor.

Or, it is very possible that the Duke of Coeurdelion was
Mr. What-d'ye-call'im's most intimate friend, and has
often said to him, 'What-d'ye-call'im, my boy, my
daughter must never marry the Capting.  If ever they try
at your church, I beseech you, considering the terms of
intimacy on which we are, to send off Rattan in a hack
cab to fetch me.'

In either of which cases, you see, dear Snobling, that
though the parson would not have been authorised, yet be
might have been excused for interfering.   He has no more
right to stop my marriage than to stop my dinner, to both
of which, as a free-born Briton, I am entitled by law, if
I can pay for them.  But, consider pastoral solicitude, a
deep sense of the duties of his office, and pardon this
inconvenient, but genuine zeal.

But if the clergyman did in the Duke's case what be would
NOT do in Smith's; if be has no more acquaintance with
the Coeurdelion family than I have with the Royal and
Serene House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha,--THEN, I confess, my
dear Snobling, your question might elicit a disagreeable
reply, and one which I respectfully decline to give.  I
wonder what Sir George Tufto would say, if a sentry left
his post because a noble lord (not the least connected
with the service) begged the sentinel not to do his duty!

Alas! that the beadle who canes little boys and drives
them out, cannot drive worldliness out too; what is
worldliness but snobbishness?  When, for instance, I read
in the newspapers that the Right Reverend the Lord
Charles James administered the rite of confirmation to a
PARTY OF THE JUVENILE NOBILITY at the Chapel Royal,--as
if the Chapel Royal were a sort of ecclesiastical
Almack's, and young people were to get ready for the next
world in little exclusive genteel knots of the
aristocracy, who were not to be disturbed in their
journey thither by the company of the vulgar:--when I
read such a paragraph as that (and one or two such
generally appear during the present fashionable season),
it seems to me to be the most odious, mean and disgusting
part of that odious, mean, and disgusting publication,
the COURT CIRCULAR; and that snobbishness is therein
carried to quite an awful pitch.  What, gentlemen, can't
we even in the Church acknowledge a republic?  There, at
least, the Heralds' College itself might allow that we
all of us have the same pedigree, and are direct
descendants of Eve and Adam, whose inheritance is divided
amongst us.

I hereby call upon all Dukes, Earls, Baronets, and other
potentates, not to lend themselves to this shameful
scandal and error, and beseech all Bishops who read this
publication to take the matter into consideration, and to
protest against the continuance of the practice, and to
declare, 'We WON'T confirm or christen Lord Tomnoddy, or
Sir Carnaby Jenks, to the exclusion of any other young
Christian;' the which declaration if their Lordships are
induced to make, a great LAPIS OFFENSIONIS will be
removed, and the Snob Papers will not have been written
in vain.

A story is current of a celebrated NOUVEAU-RICHE, who
having had occasion to oblige that excellent prelate the
Bishop of Bullocksmithy, asked his Lordship, in return,
to confirm his children privately in his Lordship's own
chapel; which ceremony the grateful prelate accordingly
performed.  Can satire go farther than this?  Is there
even in this most amusing of prints, any more NAIVE
absurdity?  It is as if a man wouldn't go to heaven
unless he went in a special train, or as if he thought
(as some people think about vaccination) Confirmation
more effectual when administered at first hand.  When
that eminent person, the Begum Sumroo, died, it is said
she left ten thousand pounds to the Pope, and ten
thousand to the Archbishop of Canterbury,--so that there
should be no mistake,--so as to make sure of having the
ecclesiastical authorities on her side.  This is only a
little more openly and undisguisedly snobbish than the
cases before alluded to.  A well-bred Snob is just as
secretly proud of his riches and honours as a PARVENU
Snob who makes the most ludicrous exhibition of them; and
a high-born Marchioness or Duchess just as vain of
herself and her diamonds, as Queen Quashyboo, who sews a
pair of epaulets on to her skirt, and turns out in state
in a cocked hat and feathers.

It is not out of disrespect to my 'Peerage,' which I love
and honour, (indeed, have I not said before, that I
should be ready to jump out of my skin if two Dukes would
walk down Pall Mall with me?)--it is not out of
disrespect for the individuals, that I wish these titles
had never been invented; but, consider, if there were no
tree, there would be no shadow; and how much more honest
society would be, and how much more serviceable the
clergy would be (which is our present consideration), if
these temptations of rank and continual baits of
worldliness were not in existence, and perpetually thrown
out to lead them astray.

I have seen many examples of their falling away.  When,
for instance, Tom Sniffle first went into the country as
Curate for Mr. Fuddleston (Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's
brother), who resided on some other living, there could
not be a more kind, hardworking, and excellent creature
than Tom.  He had his aunt to live with him.  His conduct
to his poor was admirable.  He wrote annually reams of
the best-intentioned and vapid sermons.  When Lord
Brandyball's family came down into the country, and
invited him to dine at Brandyball Park, Sniffle was so
agitated that he almost forgot how to say grace, and
upset a bowl of currant-jelly sauce in Lady Fanny
Toffy's lap.

What was the consequence of his intimacy with that noble
family?  He quarrelled with his aunt for dining out every
night.  The wretch forgot his poor altogether, and killed
his old nag by always riding over to Brandyball; where he
revelled in the maddest passion for Lady Fanny.  He
ordered the neatest new clothes and ecclesiastical
waistcoats from London; he appeared with corazza-shirts,
lackered boots, and perfumery; he bought a blood-horse
from Bob Toffy: was seen at archery meetings, public
breakfasts,--actually at cover; and, I blush to say, that
I saw him in a stall at the Opera; and afterwards riding
by Lady Fanny's side in Rotten Row.  He DOUBLE-BARRELLED
his name, (as many poor Snobs do,) and instead of T.
Sniffle, as formerly, came out, in a porcelain card, as
Rev. T. D'Arcy Sniffle, Burlington Hotel.

The end of all this may be imagined: when the Earl of
Brandyball was made acquainted with the curate's love for
Lady Fanny, he had that fit of the gout which so nearly
carried him off (to the inexpressible grief of his son,
Lord Alicompayne), and uttered that remarkable speech to
Sniffle, which disposed of the claims of the latter:--'
If I didn't respect the Church, Sir,' his Lordship said,
'by Jove, I'd kick you downstairs:' his Lordship then
fell back into the fit aforesaid; and Lady Fanny, as we
all know, married General Podager.

As for poor Tom, he was over head and ears in debt as
well as in love: his creditors came down upon him.  Mr.
Hemp, of Portugal Street, proclaimed his name lately as a
reverend outlaw; and he has been seen at various foreign
watering-places; sometimes doing duty; sometimes
'coaching' a stray gentleman's son at Carlsruhe or
Kissingen; sometimes--must we say it?-- lurking about the
roulette-tables with a tuft to his chin.

If temptation had not come upon this unhappy fellow in
the shape of a Lord Brandyball, he might still have been
following his profession, humbly and worthily.  He might
have married his cousin with four thousand pounds, the
wine-merchant's daughter (the old gentleman quarrelled
with his nephew for not soliciting wine-orders from Lord
B. for him): he might have had seven children, and taken
private pupils, and eked out his income, and lived and
died a country parson.

Could he have done better?  You who want to know how
great, and good, and noble such a character may be, read
Stanley's 'Life of Doctor Arnold.'



CHAPTER XIII

ON CLERICAL SNOBS

Among the varieties of the Snob Clerical, the University
Snob and the Scholastic Snob ought never to be forgotten;
they form a very strong battalion in the black-coated
army.

The wisdom of our ancestors (which I admire more and more
every day) seemed to have determined that education of
youth was so paltry and unimportant a matter, that almost
any man, armed with a birch and regulation cassock and
degree, might undertake the charge: and many an honest
country gentleman may be found to the present day, who
takes very good care to have a character with his butler
when he engages him and will not purchase a horse without
the warranty and the closest inspection; but sends off
his son, young John Thomas, to school without asking any
questions about the Schoolmaster, and places the lad at
Switchester College, under Doctor Block, because he (the
good old English gentleman) had been at Switchester,
under Doctor Buzwig, forty years ago.

We have a love for all little boys at school; for many
scores of thousands of them read and love PUNCH:--may he
never write a word that shall not be honest and fit for
them to read!  He will not have his young friends to be
Snobs in the future, or to be bullied by Snobs, or given
over to such to be educated.  Our connexion with the
youth at the Universities is very close and affectionate.
The candid undergraduate is our friend.  The pompous old
College Don trembles in his common room, lest we should
attack him and show him up as a Snob.

When railroads were threatening to invade the land which
they have since conquered, it may be recollected what a
shrieking and outcry the authorities of Oxford and Eton
made, lest the iron abominations should come near those
seats of pure learning, and tempt the British youth
astray.  The supplications were in vain; the railroad is
in upon them, and the old-world institutions are doomed.
I felt charmed to read in the papers the other day a most
veracious puffing advertisement headed, 'To College and
back for Five Shillings.'  'The College Gardens (it said)
will be thrown open on this occasion; the College youths
will perform a regatta; the Chapel of King's College will
have its celebrated music;'--and all for five shillings!
The Goths have got into Rome; Napoleon Stephenson draws
his republican lines round the sacred old cities and the
ecclesiastical big-wigs who garrison them must prepare to
lay down key and crosier before the iron conqueror.

If you consider, dear reader, what profound snobbishness
the University System produced, you will allow that it is
time to attack some of those feudal middle-age
superstitions.  If you go down for five shillings to look
at the 'College Youths,' you may see one sneaking down
the court without a tassel to his cap; another with a
gold or silver fringe to his velvet trencher; a third lad
with a master's gown and hat, walking at ease over the
sacred College grass-plats, which common men must not
tread on.

He may do it because he is a nobleman.  Because a lad is
a lord, the University gives him a degree at the end of
two years which another is seven in acquiring.  Because
he is a lord, he has no call to go through an
examination.   Any man who has not been to College and
back for five shillings, would not believe in such
distinctions in a place of education, so absurd and
monstrous do they seem to be.

The lads with gold and silver lace are sons of rich
gentlemen and called Fellow Commoners; they are
privileged to feed better than the pensioners, and to
have wine with their victuals, which the latter can only
get in their rooms.

The unlucky boys who have no tassels to their caps, are
called sizars--SERVITORS at Oxford--(a very pretty and
gentlemanlike title).  A distinction is made in their
clothes because they are poor; for which reason they wear
a badge of poverty, and are not allowed to take their
meals with their fellow-students.

When this wicked and shameful distinction was set up, it
was of a piece with all the rest--a part of the brutal,
unchristian, blundering feudal system.  Distinctions of
rank were then so strongly insisted upon, that it would
have been thought blasphemy to doubt them, as blasphemous
as it is in parts of the United States now for a nigger
to set up as the equal of a white man.  A ruffian like
Henry VIII. talked as gravely about the divine powers
vested in him, as if he had been an inspired prophet.  A
wretch like James I. not only believed that there was in
himself a particular sanctity, but other people believed
him.  Government regulated the length of a merchant's
shoes as well as meddled with his trade, prices, exports,
machinery.  It thought itself justified in roasting a man
for his religion, or pulling a Jew's teeth out if he did
not pay a contribution, or ordered him to dress in a
yellow gabardine, and locked him in a particular quarter.

Now a merchant may wear what boots he pleases, and has
pretty nearly acquired the privilege of buying and
selling without the Government laying its paws upon the
bargain.  The stake for heretics is gone; the pillory is
taken down; Bishops are even found lifting up their
voices against the remains of persecution, and ready to
do away with the last Catholic Disabilities.  Sir Robert
Peel, though he wished it ever so much, has no power over
Mr. Benjamin Disraeli's grinders, or any means of
violently handling that gentleman's jaw.  Jews are not
called upon to wear badges: on the contrary, they may
live in Piccadilly, or the Minories, according to fancy;
they may dress like Christians, and do sometimes in a
most elegant and fashionable manner.

Why is the poor College servitor to wear that name and
that badge still?  Because Universities are the last
places into which Reform penetrates.  But now that she
can go to College and back for five shillings, let her
travel down thither.



CHAPTER XIV

ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS

All the men of Saint Boniface will recognize Hugby and
Crump in these two pictures.  They were tutors in our
time, and Crump is since advanced to be President of the
College.  He was formerly, and is now, a rich specimen of
a University Snob.

At five-and-twenty, Crump invented three new metres, and
published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek
Comedy, with no less than twenty emendations upon the
German text of Schnupfenius and Schnapsius.  These
Services to religion instantly pointed him out for
advancement in the Church, and he is now President of
Saint Boniface, and very narrowly escaped the bench.

Crump thinks Saint Boniface the centre of the world, and
his position as President the highest in England.  He
expects the fellows and tutors to pay him the same sort
of service that Cardinals pay to the Pope.  I am sure
Crawler would have no objection to carry his trencher, or
Page to hold up the skirts of his gown as he stalks into
chapel.  He roars out the responses there as if it were
an honour to heaven that the President of Saint Boniface
should take a part in the service, and in his own lodge
and college acknowledges the Sovereign only as his
superior.

When the allied monarchs came down, and were made Doctors
of the University, a breakfast was given at Saint
Boniface; on which occasion Crump allowed the Emperor
Alexander to walk before him, but took the PAS himself of
the King of Prussia and Prince Blucher.  He was going to
put the Hetman Platoff to breakfast at a side-table with
the under college tutors; but he was induced to relent,
and merely entertained that distinguished Cossack with a
discourse on his own language, in which he showed that
the Hetman knew nothing about it.

As for us undergraduates, we scarcely knew more about
Crump than about the Grand Llama.  A few favoured youths
are asked occasionally to tea at the lodge; but they do
not speak unless first addressed by the Doctor; and if
they venture to sit down, Crump's follower, Mr. Toady,
whispers, 'Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to get
up?--The President is passing;' or 'Gentlemen, the
President prefers that undergraduates should not sit
down;' or words to a similar effect.

To do Crump justice, he does not cringe now to great
people.  He rather patronizes them than otherwise; and,
in London, speaks quite affably to a Duke who has been
brought up at his college, or holds out a finger to a
Marquis.  He does not disguise his own origin, but brags
of it with considerable self-gratulation:--'I was a
Charity-boy,' says he; 'see what I am now; the greatest
Greek scholar of the greatest College of the greatest
University of the greatest Empire in the world.'  The
argument being, that this is a capital world, for
beggars, because he, being a beggar, has managed to get
on horseback.

Hugby owes his eminence to patient merit and agreeable
perseverance.  He is a meek, mild, inoffensive creature,
with just enough of scholarship to fit him to hold a
lecture, or set an examination paper.  He rose by
kindness to the aristocracy.  It was wonderful to see the
way in which that poor creature grovelled before a
nobleman or a lord's nephew, or even some noisy and
disreputable commoner, the friend of a lord.  He used to
give the young noblemen the most painful and elaborate
breakfasts, and adopt a jaunty genteel air, and talk with
them (although he was decidedly serious) about the opera,
or the last run with the hounds.  It was good to watch
him in the midst of a circle of young tufts, with his
mean, smiling, eager, uneasy familiarity.  He used to
write home confidential letters to their parents, and
made it his duty to call upon them when in town, to
condole or rejoice with them when a death, birth, or
marriage took place in their family; and to feast them
whenever they came to the University.  I recollect a
letter lying on a desk in his lecture-room for a whole
term, beginning, 'My Lord Duke.'  It was to show us that
he corresponded with such dignities.

When the late lamented Lord Glenlivat, who broke his neck
at a hurdle-race, at the premature age of twenty-four,
was at the University, the amiable young fellow, passing
to his rooms in the early morning, and seeing Hugby's
boots at his door, on the same staircase, playfully
wadded the insides of the boots with cobbler's wax, which
caused excruciating pains to the Rev. Mr. Hugby, when he
came to take them off the same evening, before dining
with the Master of St. Crispin's.

Everybody gave the credit of this admirable piece of fun
to Lord Glenlivat's friend, Bob Tizzy, who was famous for
such feats, and who had already made away with the
college pump-handle; filed St. Boniface's nose smooth
with his face; carried off four images of nigger-boys
from the tobacconists; painted the senior proctor's horse
pea-green, &c. &c.; and Bob (who was of the party
certainly, and would not peach,) was just on the point of
incurring expulsion, and so losing the family living
which was in store for him, when Glenlivat nobly stepped
forward, owned himself to be the author of the delightful
JEU-D'ESPRIT, apologized to the tutor, and accepted the
rustication.

Hugby cried when Glenlivat apologized; if the young
nobleman had kicked him round the court, I believe the
tutor would have been happy, so that an apology and a
reconciliation might subsequently ensue.  'My lord,' said
he, 'in your conduct on this and all other occasions, you
have acted as becomes a gentleman; you have been an
honour to the University, as you will be to the peerage,
I am sure, when the amiable vivacity of youth is calmed
down, and you are called upon to take your proper share
in the government of the nation.'  And when his lordship
took leave of the University, Hugby presented him with a
copy of his 'Sermons to a Nobleman's Family' (Hugby was
once private tutor to the Sons of the Earl of
Muffborough), which Glenlivat presented in return to Mr.
William Ramm, known to the fancy as the Tutbury Pet, and
the sermons now figure on the boudoir-table of Mrs. Ramm,
behind the bar of her house of entertainment, 'The Game
Cock and Spurs,' near Woodstock, Oxon.

At the beginning of the long vacation, Hugby comes to
town, and puts up in handsome lodgings near St. James's
Square; rides in the Park in the afternoon; and is
delighted to read his name in the morning papers among
the list of persons present at Muffborough House, and the
Marquis of Farintosh's evening-parties.  He is a member
of Sydney Scraper's Club, where, however, he drinks his
pint of claret.

Sometimes you may see him on Sundays, at the hour when
tavern doors open, whence issue little girls with great
jugs of porter; when charity-boys walk the streets,
bearing brown dishes of smoking shoulders of mutton and
baked 'taturs; when Sheeny and Moses are seen smoking
their pipes before their lazy shutters in Seven Dials;
when a crowd of smiling persons in clean outlandish
dresses, in monstrous bonnets and flaring printed gowns,
or in crumpled glossy coats and silks that bear the
creases of the drawers where they have lain all the week,
file down High Street,--sometimes, I say, you may see
Hugby coming out of the Church of St. Giles-in-the-
Fields, with a stout gentlewoman leaning on his arm,
whose old face bears an expression of supreme pride and
happiness as she glances round at all the neighbours, and
who faces the curate himself and marches into Holborn,
where she pulls the bell of a house over which is
inscribed, 'Hugby, Haberdasher.'  It is the mother of the
Rev. F. Hugby, as proud of her son in his white choker as
Cornelia of her jewels at Rome.  That is old Hugby
bringing up the rear with the Prayer-books, and Betsy
Hugby the old maid, his daughter,--old Hugby, Haberdasher
and Church-warden.

In the front room upstairs, where the dinner is laid out,
there is a picture of Muffborough Castle; of the Earl of
Muffborough, K.X., Lord-Lieutenant for Diddlesex; an
engraving, from an almanac, of Saint Boniface College,
Oxon; and a sticking-plaster portrait of Hugby when
young, in a cap and gown.  A copy of his 'Sermons to a
Nobleman's Family' is on the bookshelf, by the 'Whole
Duty of Man,' the Reports of the Missionary Societies,
and the 'Oxford University Calendar.'  Old Hugby knows
part of this by heart; every living belonging to Saint
Boniface, and the name of every tutor, fellow, nobleman,
and undergraduate.

He used to go to meeting and preach himself, until his
son took orders; but of late the old gentleman has been
accused of Puseyism, and is quite pitiless against the
Dissenters.



CHAPTER XV

ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS

I should like to fill several volumes with accounts of
various University Snobs; so fond are my reminiscences of
them, and so numerous are they.  I should like to speak,
above all, of the wives and daughters of some of the
Professor-Snobs; their amusements, habits, jealousies;
their innocent artifices to entrap young men; their
picnics, concerts, and evening-parties.  I wonder what
has become of Emily Blades, daughter of Blades, the
Professor of the Mandingo language?  I remember her
shoulders to this day, as she sat in the midst of a crowd
of about seventy young gentlemen, from Corpus and
Catherine Hall, entertaining them with ogles and French
songs on the guitar.  Are you married, fair Emily of the
shoulders?  What beautiful ringlets those were that used
to dribble over them!--what a waist!--what a killing sea-
green shot-silk gown!--what a cameo, the size of a
muffin!  There were thirty-six young men of the
University in love at one time with Emily Blades: and no
words are sufficient to describe the pity, the sorrow,
the deep, deep commiseration--the rage, fury, and
uncharitableness, in other words--with which the Miss
Trumps (daughter of Trumps, the Professor of Phlebotomy)
regarded her, because she DIDN'T squint, and because she
WASN'T marked with the small-pox.

As for the young University Snobs, I am getting too old,
now, to speak of such very familiarly.  My recollections
of them lie in the far, far past--almost as far back as
Pelham's time.

We THEN used to consider Snobs raw-looking lads, who
never missed chapel; who wore highlows and no straps; who
walked two hours on the Trumpington road every day of
their lives; who carried off the college scholarships,
and who overrated themselves in hall.  We were premature
in pronouncing our verdict of youthful Snobbishness  The
man without straps fulfilled his destiny and duty.  He
eased his old governor, the curate in Westmoreland, or
helped his sisters to set up the Ladies' School.  He
wrote a 'Dictionary,' or a 'Treatise on Conic Sections,'
as his nature and genius prompted.  He got a fellowship:
and then took to himself a wife, and a living.  He
presides over a parish now, and thinks it rather a
dashing thing to belong to the 'Oxford and Cambridge
Club;' and his parishioners love him, and snore under his
sermons.  No, no, HE is not a Snob.  It is not straps
that make the gentleman, or highlows that unmake him, be
they ever so thick.  My son, it is you who are the Snob
if you lightly despise a man for doing his duty, and
refuse to shake an honest man's hand because it wears a
Berlin glove.

We then used to consider it not the least vulgar for a
parcel of lads who had been whipped three months
previous, and were not allowed more than three glasses of
port at home, to sit down to pineapples and ices at each
other's rooms, and fuddle themselves with champagne and
claret.

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a
sort of wonder.  Thirty lads round a table covered with
bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories,
singing bad songs over and over again.  Milk punch--
smoking--ghastly headache-- frightful spectacle of
dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco--your
guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, in the midst of
this--expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and
discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged
in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided
themselves in giving RECHERCHE little French dinners.
Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs.

There were what used to be called 'dressy' Snobs:- Jimmy,
who might be seen at five o'clock elaborately rigged out,
with a camellia in his button-hole, glazed boots, and
fresh kid-gloves twice a day;--Jessamy, who was
conspicuous for his 'jewellery,'--a young donkey,
glittering all over with chains, rings, and shirt-studs;-
-Jacky, who rode every day solemnly on the Blenheim Road,
in pumps and white silk stockings, with his hair curled,-
-all three of whom flattered themselves they gave laws to
the University about dress--all three most odious
varieties of Snobs.

Sporting Snobs of course there were, and are always--
those happy beings in whom Nature has implanted a love of
slang: who loitered about the horsekeeper's stables, and
drove the London coaches--a stage in and out--and might
be seen swaggering through the courts in pink of early
mornings, and indulged in dice and blind-hookey at
nights, and never missed a race or a boxing-match; and
rode flat-races, and kept bull-terriers.  Worse Snobs
even than these were poor miserable wretches who did not
like hunting at all, and could not afford it, and were in
mortal fear at a two-foot ditch; but who hunted because
Glenlivat and Cinqbars hunted.  The Billiard Snob and the
Boating Snob were varieties of these, and are to be found
elsewhere than in universities.

Then there were Philosophical Snobs, who used to ape
statesmen at the spouting-clubs, and who believed as a
fact that Government always had an eye on the University
for the selection of orators for the House of Commons.
There were audacious young free-thinkers, who adored
nobody or nothing, except perhaps Robespierre and the
Koran, and panted for the day when the pale name of
priest should shrink and dwindle away before the
indignation of an enlightened world.

But the worst of all University Snobs are those
unfortunates who go to rack and ruin from their desire to
ape their betters.  Smith becomes acquainted with great
people at college, and is ashamed of his father the
tradesman.  Jones has fine acquaintances, and lives after
their fashion like a gay free-hearted fellow as he is,
and ruins his father, and robs his sister's portion, and
cripples his younger brother's outset in life, for the
pleasure of entertaining my lord, and riding by the side
of Sir John.  And though it may be very good fun for
Robinson to fuddle himself at home as he does at College,
and to be brought home by the policeman he has just been
trying to knock down-- think what fun it is for the poor
old soul his mother!--the half-pay captain's widow, who
has been pinching herself all her life long, in order
that that jolly young fellow might have a University
education.



CHAPTER XVI

ON LITERARY SNOBS

What will he say about Literary Snobs? has been a
question, I make no doubt, often asked by the public.
How can he let off his own profession?  Will that
truculent and unsparing monster who attacks the nobility,
the clergy, the army, and the ladies, indiscriminately,
hesitate when the turn comes to EGORGER his own flesh
and blood?

My dear and excellent querist, whom does the schoolmaster
flog so resolutely as his own son?  Didn't Brutus chop
his offspring's head off?  You have a very bad opinion
indeed of the present state of literature and of literary
men, if you fancy that any one of us would hesitate to
stick a knife into his neighbour penman, if the latter's
death could do the State any service.

But the fact is, that in the literary profession THERE
ARE NO SNOBS.  Look round at the whole body of British
men of letters; and I defy you to point out among them a
single instance of vulgarity, or envy, or assumption.

Men and women, as far as I have known them, they are all
modest in their demeanour, elegant in their manners,
spotless in their lives, and honourable in their conduct
to the world and to each other.  You MAY, occasionally,
it is true, hear one literary man abusing his brother;
but why?  Not in the least out of malice; not at all from
envy; merely from a sense of truth and public duty.
Suppose, for instance, I, good-naturedly point out a
blemish in my friend MR. PUNCH'S person, and say, MR. P.
has a hump-back, and his nose and chin are more crooked
than those features in the Apollo or Antinous, which we
are accustomed to consider as our standards of beauty;
does this argue malice on my part towards MR. PUNCH?  Not
in the least.  It is the critic's duty to point out
defects as well as merits, and he invariably does his
duty with utmost gentleness and candour.

An intelligent foreigner's testimony about our manners is
always worth having, and I think, in this respect the
work of an eminent American, Mr. N. P. Willis is
eminently valuable and impartial.  In his 'History of
Ernest Clay,' a crack magazine-writer, the reader will
get an exact account of the life of a popular man of
letters in England.  He is always the lion of society.

He takes the PAS of dukes and earls; all the nobility
crowd to see him: I forget how many baronesses and
duchesses fall in love with him.  But on this subject let
us hold our tongues.  Modesty forbids that we should
reveal the names of the heart-broken countesses and dear
marchionesses who are pining for every one of the
contributors in PUNCH.

If	anybody wants to know how intimately authors are
connected with the fashionable world, they have but to
read the genteel novels.  What refinement and delicacy
pervades the works of Mrs. Barnaby!   What delightful
good company do you meet with in Mrs. Armytage!  She
seldom introduces you to anybody under a marquis!  I
don't know anything more delicious than the pictures of
genteel life in 'Ten Thousand a Year,' except perhaps the
'Young Duke,' and 'Coningsby.'  There's a modest grace
about THEM, and an air of easy high fashion, which only
belongs to blood, my dear Sir--to true blood.

And what linguists many of our writers are!  Lady Bulwer,
Lady Londonderry, Sir Edward himself--they write the
French language with a luxurious elegance and ease which
sets them far above their continental rivals, of whom not
one (except Paul de Kock) knows a word of English.

And what Briton can read without enjoyment the works of
James, so admirable for terseness; and the playful humour
and dazzling offhand lightness of Ainsworth?  Among other
humourists, one might glance at a Jerrold, the chivalrous
advocate of Toryism and Church and State; an a Beckett,
with a lightsome pen, but a savage earnestness of
purpose; a Jeames, whose pure style, and wit unmingled
with buffoonery, was relished by a congenial public.

Speaking of critics, perhaps there never was a review
that has done so much for literature as the admirable
QUARTERLY.  It has its prejudices, to be sure, as which
of us has not?  It goes out of its way to abuse a great
man, or lays mercilessly on to such pretenders as Keats
and Tennyson; but, on the other hand, it is the friend of
all young authors, and has marked and nurtured all the
rising talent of the country.  It is loved by everybody.
There, again, is BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE--conspicuous for
modest elegance and amiable satire; that review never
passes the bounds of politeness in a joke.  It is the
arbiter of manners; and, while gently exposing the
foibles of Londoners (for whom the BEAUX ESPRITS of
Edinburgh entertain a justifiable contempt), it is never
coarse in its fun.  The fiery enthusiasm of the ATHENAEUM
is well known: and the bitter wit of the too difficult
LITERARY GAZETTE.  The EXAMINER is perhaps too timid, and
the SPECTATOR too boisterous in its praise--but who can
carp at these minor faults?  No, no; the critics of
England and the authors of England are unrivalled as a
body; and hence it becomes impossible for us to find
fault with them.

Above all, I never knew a man of letters ASHAMED OF HIS
PROFESSION.  Those who know us, know what an affectionate
and brotherly spirit there is among us all.  Sometimes
one of us rises in the world: we never attack him or
sneer at him under those circumstances, but rejoice to a
man at his success.  If Jones dines with a lord, Smith
never says Jones is a courtier and cringer.  Nor, on the
other hand, does Jones, who is in the habit of
frequenting the society of great people, give himself any
airs on account of the company he keeps; but will leave a
duke's arm in Pall Mall to come over and speak to poor
Brown, the young penny-a-liner.

That sense of equality and fraternity amongst authors has
always struck me as one of the most amiable
characteristics of the class.  It is because we know and
respect each other, that the world respects us so much;
that we hold such a good position in society, and demean
ourselves so irreproachably when there.

Literary persons are held in such esteem by the nation
that about two of them have been absolutely invited to
court during the present reign; and it is probable that
towards the end of the season, one or two will be asked
to dinner by Sir Robert Peel.

They are such favourites with the public, that they are
continually obliged to have their pictures taken and
published; and one or two could be pointed out, of whom
the nation insists upon having a fresh portrait every
year.  Nothing can be more gratifying than this proof of
the affectionate regard which the people has for its
instructors.

Literature is held in such honour in England, that there
is a sum of near twelve hundred pounds per annum set
apart to pension deserving persons following that
profession.  And a great compliment this is, too, to the
professors, and a proof of their generally prosperous and
flourishing condition.  They are generally so rich and
thrifty, that scarcely any money is wanted to help them.

If every word of this is true, how, I should like to know
am I to write about Literary Snobs?



CHAPTER XVII

A LITTLE ABOUT IRISH SNOBS

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 stock in trade is a penny
roll or a tumbler of lollipops, calls his cabin the
'American Flour Stores,' or the 'Depository for Colonial
Produce,' or some such name.

As for Inns, there are none in the country; Hotels abound
as well furnished as Mulholliganville; but again there
are no such people as landlords and land-ladies; the
landlord is out with the hounds, and my lady in the
parlour talking with the Captain or playing the piano.

If a gentleman has a hundred a year to leave to his
family they all become gentlemen, all keep a nag, ride to
hounds, and swagger about in the 'Phaynix,' and grow
tufts to their chins like so many real aristocrats.

A friend of mine has taken to be a painter, and lives out
of Ireland, where he is considered to have disgraced the
family by choosing such a profession.  His father is a
wine-merchant; and his elder brother an apothecary.

The number of men one meets in London and on the
Continent who have a pretty little property of five-and-
twenty hundred a year in Ireland is prodigious: those who
WILL have nine thousand a year in land when somebody dies
are still more numerous.  I myself have met as many
descendants from Irish kings as would form a brigade.

And who has not met the Irishman who apes the Englishman,
and who forgets his country and tries to forget his
accent, or to smother the taste of it, as it were?
'Come, dine with me, my boy,' says O'Dowd, of
O'Dowdstown: 'you'll FIND US ALL ENGLISH THERE;' which he
tells you with a brogue as broad as from here to
Kingstown Pier.  And did you never hear Mrs. Captain
Macmanus talk about 'I-ah-land,' and her account of her
'fawther's esteet?'  Very few men have rubbed through the
world without hearing and witnessing some of these
Hibernian phenomena--these twopenny splendours.

And what say you to the summit of society--the Castle--
with a sham king, and sham lords-in-waiting, and sham
loyalty, and a sham Haroun Alraschid, to go about in a
sham disguise, making believe to be affable and splendid?
That Castle is the pink and pride of Snobbishness.  A
COURT CIRCULAR is bad enough, with two columns of print
about a little baby that's christened--but think of
people liking a sham COURT CIRCULAR!

I think the shams of Ireland are more outrageous than
those of any country.  A fellow shows you a hill and
says, 'That's the highest mountain in all Ireland;'
a gentleman tells you he is descended from Brian Boroo
and has his five-and-thirty hundred a year; or Mrs.
Macmanus describes her fawther's esteet; or ould Dan
rises and says the Irish women are the loveliest, the
Irish men the bravest, the Irish land the most fertile in
the world: and nobody believes anybody--the latter does
not believe his story nor the hearer:--but they make-
believe to believe, and solemnly do honour to humbug.

O Ireland!  O my country! (for I make little doubt I am
descended from Brian Boroo too) when will you acknowledge
that two and two make four, and call a pikestaff a
pikestaff?--that is the very best use you can make of the
latter.  Irish snobs will dwindle away then and we shall
never hear tell of Hereditary bondsmen.



CHAPTER XVIII

PARTY-GIVING SNOBS

Our selection of Snobs has lately been too exclusively of
a political character.  'Give us private Snobs,' cry the
dear ladies.  (I have before me the letter of one fair
correspondent of the fishing village of Brighthelmstone
in Sussex, and could her commands ever be disobeyed?)
'Tell us more, dear Mr. Snob, about your experience of
Snobs in society.'  Heaven bless the dear souls!--they
are accustomed to the word now--the odious, vulgar,
horrid, unpronounceable word slips out of their lips with
the prettiest glibness possible.  I should not wonder if
it were used at Court amongst the Maids of Honour.  In
the very best society I know it is.  And why not?
Snobbishness is vulgar--the mere words are not: that
which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be
Snobbish.

Well, then.  As the season is drawing to a close: as many
hundreds of kind souls, snobbish or otherwise, have
quitted London; as many hospitable carpets are taken up;
and window-blinds are pitilessly papered with the MORNING
HERALD; and mansions once inhabited by cheerful owners
are now consigned to the care of the housekeeper's dreary
LOCUM TENENS--some mouldy old woman, who, in reply to the
hopeless clanging of the bell, peers at you for a moment
from the area, and then slowly unbolting the great hall-
door, informs you my lady has left town, or that 'the
family's in the country,' or 'gone up the Rind,'--or what
not; as the season and parties are over; why not consider
Party-giving Snobs for a while, and review the conduct of
some of those individuals who have quitted the town for
six months?

Some of those worthy Snobs are making-believe to go
yachting, and, dressed in telescopes and pea-jackets, are
passing their time between Cherbourg and Cowes; some
living higgledy-piggledy in dismal little huts in
Scotland, provisioned with canisters of portable soup,
and fricandeaux hermetically sealed in tin, are passing
their days slaughtering grouse upon the moors; some are
dozing and bathing away the effects of the season at
Kissingen, or watching the ingenious game of TRENTE ET
QUARANTE at Homburg and Ems.  We can afford to be very
bitter upon them now they are all gone.  Now there are no
more parties, let us have at the Party-giving Snobs.  The
dinner-giving, the ball-giving, the DEJEUNER-giving, the
CONVERSAZIONE-GIVING Snobs--Lord!  Lord! what havoc might
have been made amongst them had we attacked them during
the plethora of the season!  I should have been obliged
to have a guard to defend me from fiddlers and
pastrycooks, indignant at the abuse of their patrons.
Already I'm told that, from some flippant and unguarded
expressions considered derogatory to Baker Street and
Harley Street, rents have fallen in these respectable
quarters; and orders have been issued that at least Mr.
Snob shall be asked to parties there no more.  Well,
then--now they are ALL away, let us frisk at our ease,
and have at everything like the bull in the china-shop.
They mayn't hear of what is going on in their absence,
and, if they do they can't bear malice for six months.
We will begin to make it up with them about next
February, and let next year take care of itself.  We
shall have no dinners from the dinner-giving Snobs: no
more from the ball-givers: no more CONVERSAZIONES (thank
Mussy! as Jeames says,) from the Conversaziones Snob: and
what is to prevent us from telling the truth?

The snobbishness of Conversazione Snobs is very soon
disposed of: as soon as that cup of washy bohea is handed
to you in the tea-room; or the muddy remnant of ice that
you grasp in the suffocating scuffle of the assembly
upstairs.

Good heavens!  What do people mean by going there?  What
is done there, that everybody throngs into those three
little rooms?  Was the Black Hole considered to be an
agreeable REUNION, that Britons in the dog-days here seek
to imitate it?   After being rammed to a jelly in a door-
way (where you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara
Macbeth's lace flounces, and get a look from that haggard
and painted old harpy, compared to which the gaze of
Ugolino is quite cheerful); after withdrawing your elbow
out of poor gasping Bob Guttleton's white waistcoat, from
which cushion it was impossible to remove it, though you
knew you were squeezing poor Bob into an apoplexy--you
find yourself at last in the reception-room, and try to
catch the eye of Mrs. Botibol, the CONVERSAZIONE-giver.
When you catch her eye, you are expected to grin, and she
smiles too, for the four hundredth time that night; and,
if she's very glad to see you, waggles her little hand
before her face as if to blow you a kiss, as the phrase
is.

Why the deuce should Mrs. Botibol blow me a kiss?  I
wouldn't kiss her for the world.  Why do I grin when I
see her, as if I was delighted?  Am I?  I don't care a
straw for Mrs. Botibol.  I know what she thinks about me.
I know what she said about my last volume of poems (I had
it from a dear mutual friend).  Why, I say in a word, are
we going on ogling and telegraphing each other in this
insane way?--
Because we are both performing the ceremonies demanded by
the Great Snob Society; whose dictates we all of us obey.

Well; the recognition is over--my jaws have returned to
their usual English expression of subdued agony and
intense gloom, and the Botibol is grinning and kissing
her fingers to somebody else, who is squeezing through
the aperture by which we have just entered.  It is Lady
Ann Clutterbuck, who has her Friday evenings, as Botibol
(Botty, we call her,) has Wednesdays.  That is Miss
Clementina Clutterbuck the cadaverous young woman in
green, with florid auburn hair, who has published her
volume of poems ('The Death-Shriek;' 'Damiens;' 'The
Faggot of Joan of Arc;' and 'Translations from the
German' of course).  The conversazione-women salute each
other calling each other 'My dear Lady Ann' and 'My dear
good Eliza,' and hating each other, as women hate who
give parties on Wednesdays and Fridays.  With
inexpressible pain dear good Eliza sees Ann go up and
coax and wheedle Abou Gosh, who has just arrived from
Syria, and beg him to patronize her Fridays.

All this while, amidst the crowd and the scuffle, and a
perpetual buzz and chatter, and the flare of the wax-
candles, and an intolerable smell of musk--what the poor
Snobs who write fashionable romances call 'the gleam of
gems, the odour of perfumes, the blaze of countless
lamps'--a scrubby-looking, yellow-faced foreigner, with
cleaned gloves, is warbling inaudibly in a corner, to the
accompaniment of another.  'The Great Cacafogo,' Mrs.
Botibol whispers, as she passes you by.  'A great
creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument--the
Hetman Platoff's pianist, you know.'

To hear this Cacafogo and Thumpenstrumpff, a hundred
people are gathered together--a bevy of dowagers, stout
or scraggy; a faint sprinkling of misses; six moody-
looking lords, perfectly meek and solemn; wonderful
foreign Counts, with bushy whiskers and yellow faces, and
a great deal of dubious jewellery; young dandies with
slim waists and open necks, and self-satisfied simpers,
and flowers in their buttons; the old, stiff, stout,
bald-headed CONVERSAZIONE ROUES, whom
You meet everywhere--who never miss a night of this
delicious enjoyment; the three last-caught lions of the
season--Higgs, the traveller, Biggs, the novelist, and
Toffey, who has come out so on the sugar question;
Captain Flash, who is invited on account of his pretty
wife and Lord Ogleby, who goes wherever she goes.

QUE SCAIS-JE?  Who are the owners of all those showy
scarfs and white neckcloths?--Ask little Tom Prig, who is
there in all his glory, knows everybody, has a story
about every one; and, as he trips home to his lodgings in
Jermyn Street, with his gibus-hat and his little glazed
pumps, thinks he is the fashionablest young fellow in
town, and that he really has passed a night of exquisite
enjoyment.

You go up (with our usual easy elegance of manner) and
talk to Miss Smith in a corner.  'Oh, Mr. Snob, I'm
afraid you're sadly satirical.'

That's all she says.  If you say it's fine weather, she
bursts out laughing; or hint that it's very hot, she vows
you are the drollest wretch!  Meanwhile Mrs. Botibol is
simpering on fresh arrivals; the individual at the door
is roaring out their names; poor Cacafogo is quavering
away in the music-room, under the impression that he will
be LANCE in the world by singing inaudibly here.  And
what a blessing it is to squeeze out of the door, and
into the street, where a half-hundred of carriages are in
waiting; and where the link-boy, with that unnecessary
lantern of his, pounces upon all who issue out, and will
insist upon getting your noble honour's lordship's cab.

And to think that there are people who, after having
been to Botibol on Wednesday, will go to Clutterbuck
on Friday!



CHAPTER XIX

DINING-OUT SNOBS

In England Dinner-giving Snobs occupy a very important
place in society, and the task of describing them is
tremendous.  There was a time in my life when the
consciousness of having eaten a man's salt rendered me
dumb regarding his demerits, and I thought it a wicked
act and a breach of hospitality to speak ill of him.

But why should a saddle-of-mutton blind you, or a turbot
and lobster-sauce shut your mouth for ever?  With
advancing age, men see their duties more clearly.  I am
not to be hoodwinked any longer by a slice of venison, be
it ever so fat; and as for being dumb on account of
turbot and lobster-sauce----of course I am; good manners
ordain that I should be so, until I have swallowed the
compound--but not afterwards; directly the victuals are
discussed, and John takes away the plate, my tongue
begins to wag.  Does not yours, if you have a pleasant
neighbour?--a lovely creature, say, of some five-and-
thirty, whose daughters have not yet quite come out--they
are the best talkers.  As for your young misses, they are
only put about the table to look at--like the flowers in
the centre-piece.  Their blushing youth and natural
modesty preclude them from easy, confidential,
conversational ABANDON which forms the delight of the
intercourse with their dear mothers.  It is to these, if
he would prosper in his profession, that the Dining-out
Snob should address himself.  Suppose you sit next to one
of these, how pleasant it is, in the intervals of the
banquet, actually to abuse the victuals and the giver of
the entertainment!  It's twice as PIQUANT to make fun of
a man under his very nose.

'What IS a Dinner-giving Snob?' some innocent youth, who
is not REPANDU in the world, may ask--or some simple
reader who has not the benefits of London experience.

My dear sir, I will show you--not all, for that is
impossible--but several kinds of Dinner-giving Snobs.
For instance, suppose you, in the middle rank of life,
accustomed to Mutton, roast on Tuesday, cold on
Wednesday, hashed on Thursday, &c., with small means and
a small establishment, choose to waste the former and set
the latter topsy-turvy by giving entertainments
unnaturally costly--you come into the Dinner-giving Snob
class at once.  Suppose you get in cheap-made dishes from
the pastrycook's, and hire a couple of greengrocers, or
carpet-beaters, to figure as footmen, dismissing honest
Molly, who waits on common days, and bedizening your
table (ordinarily ornamented with willow-pattern
crockery) with twopenny-halfpenny Birmingham plate.
Suppose you pretend to be richer and grander than you
ought to be--you are a Dinner-giving Snob.  And oh, I
tremble to think how many and many a one will read this!

A man who entertains in this way--and, alas, how few do
not!--is like a fellow who would borrow his neighbour's
coat to make a show in, or a lady who flaunts in the
diamonds from next door--a humbug, in a word, and amongst
the Snobs he must be set down.

A man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to
ask Lords, Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of
fashion, but is niggardly of his hospitality towards his
own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob.  My dear friend,
Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at
a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as
a three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and
as dull as--well, we will not particularise.  Tufthunt
never has a dinner now but you see this solemn old
toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs. Tufthunt--
Tufthunt is a Dinner-giving Snob.

Old Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney, the East Indian
Director, old Cutler, the Surgeon, &c.,--that society of
old fogies, in fine, who give each other dinners round
and round, and dine for the mere purpose of guttling--
these, again, are Dinner-giving Snobs.

Again, my friend Lady MacScrew, who has three grenadier
flunkeys in lace round the table, and serves up a scrag-
of-mutton on silver, and dribbles you out bad sherry and
port by thimblefuls, is a Dinner-giving Snob of the other
sort; and I confess, for my part, I would rather dine
with old Livermore or old Soy than with her Ladyship.

Stinginess is snobbish.  Ostentation is snobbish.  Too
great profusion is snobbish.  Tuft-hunting is snobbish.
But I own there are people more snobbish than all those
whose defects are above mentioned: viz., those
individuals who can, and don't give dinners at all.  The
man without hospitality shall never sit SUB IISDEM
TRABIBUS with ME.  Let the sordid wretch go mumble his
bone alone!

What, again, is true hospitality?  Alas, my dear friends
and brother Snobs! how little do we meet of it after all!
Are the motives PURE which induce your friends to ask you
to dinner?  This has often come across me.  Does your
entertainer want something from you?  For instance, I am
not of a suspicious turn; but it IS a fact that when
Hookey is bringing out a new work, he asks the critics
all round to dinner; that when Walker has got his picture
ready for the Exhibition, he somehow grows exceedingly
hospitable, and has his friends of the press to a quiet
cutlet and a glass of Sillery.  Old Hunks, the miser, who
died lately (leaving his money to his housekeeper) lived
many years on the fat of the land, by simply taking down,
at all his friends', the names and Christian names OF ALL
THE CHILDREN.  But though you may have your own opinion
about the hospitality of your acquaintances; and though
men who ask you from sordid motives are most decidedly
Dinner-giving Snobs, it is best not to inquire into their
motives too keenly.  Be not too curious about the mouth
of a gift-horse.  After all, a man does not intend to
insult you by asking you to dinner.

Though, for that matter, I know some characters about
town who actually consider themselves injured and
insulted if the dinner or the company is not to their
liking.  There is Guttleton, who dines at home off a
shilling's-worth of beef from the cookshop, but if he is
asked to dine at a house where there are not pease at the
end of May, or cucumbers in March along with the turbot,
thinks himself insulted by being invited.  'Good Ged!'
says he, 'what the deuce do the Forkers mean by asking ME
to a family dinner?  I can get mutton at home;' or 'What
infernal impertinence it is of the Spooners to get
ENTREES from the pastrycook's, and fancy that I am to be
deceived with their stories about their French cook!'
Then, again, there is Jack Puddington--I saw that honest
fellow t'other day quite in a rage, because, as chance
would have it, Sir John Carver asked him to meet the very
same party he had met at Colonel Cramley's the day
before, and he had not got up a new set of stories to
entertain them.  Poor Dinner-giving Snobs! you don't know
what small thanks you get for all your pains and money!
How we Dining-out Snobs sneer at your cookery, and pooh-
pooh your old hock, and are incredulous about your four-
and-six-penny champagne, and know that the side-dishes of
to-day are RECHAUFFES from the dinner of yesterday, and
mark how certain dishes are whisked off the table
untasted, so that they may figure at the banquet
tomorrow.  Whenever, for my part, I see the head man
particularly anxious to ESCAMOTER a fricandeau or a
blanc-mange, I always call out, and insist upon
massacring it with a spoon.  All this sort of conduct
makes one popular with the Dinner-giving Snob.  One
friend of mine, I know, has made a prodigious sensation
in good society, by announcing apropos of certain dishes
when offered to him, that he never eats aspic except at
Lord Tittup's, and that Lady Jimmy's CHEF is the only man
in London who knows how to dress--FILET EN SERPENTEAU--or
SUPREME DE VOLAILLE AUX TRUFFES.



CHAPTER XX

DINNER-GIVING SNOBS FURTHER CONSIDERED

If my friends would but follow the present prevailing
fashion, I think they ought to give me a testimonial for
the paper on Dinner-giving Snobs, which I am now writing.
What do you say now to a handsome comfortable dinner-
service of plate (NOT including plates, for I hold silver
plates to be sheer wantonness, and would almost as soon
think of silver teacups), a couple of neat teapots, a
coffeepot, trays, &c., with a little inscription to my
wife, Mrs. Snob; and a half-score of silver tankards for
the little Snoblings, to glitter on the homely table
where they partake of their quotidian mutton?

If I had my way, and my plans could be carried out,
dinner-giving would increase as much on the one hand as
dinner-giving Snobbishness would diminish:--to my mind
the most amiable part of the work lately published by my
esteemed friend (if upon a very brief acquaintance he
will allow me to call him so), Alexis Soyer, the
regenerator--what he (in his noble style) would call the
most succulent, savoury, and elegant passages--are those
which relate, not to the grand banquets and ceremonial
dinners, but to his 'dinners at home.'

The 'dinner at home' ought to be the centre of the whole
system of dinner-giving.  Your usual style of meal--that
is, plenteous, comfortable, and in its perfection--should
be that to which you welcome your friends, as it is that
of which you partake yourself.

For, towards what woman in the world do I entertain a
higher regard than towards the beloved partner of my
existence, Mrs. Snob?  Who should have a greater place in
my affections than her six brothers (three or four of
whom we are pretty sure will favour us with their company
at seven o'clock), or her angelic mother, my own valued
mother-in-law?--for whom, finally, would I wish to cater
more generously than for your very humble servant, the
present writer?  Now, nobody supposes that the Birmingham
plate is had out, the disguised carpet-beaters introduced
to the exclusion of the neat parlour-maid, the miserable
ENTREES from the pastrycook's ordered in, and the
children packed off (as it is supposed) to the nursery,
but really only to the staircase, down which they slide
during the dinner-time, waylaying the dishes as they come
out, and fingering the round bumps on the jellies, and
the forced-meat balls in the soup,--nobody, I say,
supposes that a dinner at home is characterized by the
horrible ceremony, the foolish makeshifts, the mean pomp
and ostentation which distinguish our banquets on grand
field-days.

Such a notion is monstrous.  I would as soon think of
having my dearest Bessy sitting opposite me in a turban
and bird of paradise, and showing her jolly mottled arms
out of blond sleeves in her famous red satin gown: ay, or
of having Mr. Toole every day, in a white waistcoat, at
my back, shouting, 'Silence FAW the chair!'

Now, if this be the case; if the Brummagem-plate pomp and
the processions of disguised footmen are odious and
foolish in everyday life, why not always?  Why should
Jones and I, who are in the middle rank, alter the modes
of our being to assume an ECLAT which does not belong to
us--to entertain our friends, who (if we are worth
anything and honest fellows at bottom,) are men of the
middle rank too, who are not in the least deceived by our
temporary splendour, and who play off exactly the same
absurd trick upon us when they ask us to dine?

If it be pleasant to dine with your friends, as all
persons with good stomachs and kindly hearts will, I
presume, allow it to be, it is better to dine twice than
to dine once.  It is impossible for men of small means to
be continually spending five-and-twenty or thirty
shillings on each friend who sits down to their table.
People dine for less.  I myself have seen, at my
favourite Club (the Senior United Service), His Grace the
Duke of Wellington quite contented with the joint, one-
and-three, and half-pint of sherry, nine; and if his
Grace, why not you and I?

This rule I have made, and found the benefit of.
Whenever I ask a couple of Dukes and a Marquis or so to
dine with me, I set them down to a piece of beef, or a
leg-of-mutton and trimmings.  The grandees thank you for
this simplicity, and appreciate the same.  My dear Jones,
ask any of those whom you have the honour of knowing, if
such be not the case.

I am far from wishing that their Graces should treat me
in a similar fashion.  Splendour is a part of their
station, as decent comfort (let us trust), of yours and
mine.  Fate has comfortably appointed gold plate for
some, and has bidden others contentedly to wear the
willow-pattern.  And being perfectly contented (indeed
humbly thankful--for look around, O Jones, and see the
myriads who are not so fortunate,) to wear honest linen,
while magnificos of the world are adorned with cambric
and point-lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable,
envious fools, those wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society,
who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,--the
poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather
behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird
whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to
flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the sunshine!

The jays with peacocks' feathers are the Snobs of this
world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more
numerous in any land than they are at present in this
free country.

How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject
in hand?--the Dinner-giving Snob.  The imitation of the
great is universal in this city, from the palaces of
Kensingtonia and Belgravia, even to the remotest corner
of Brunswick Square.

Peacocks' feathers are stuck in the tails of most
families.  Scarce one of us domestic 2birds but imitates
the lanky, pavonine strut, and shrill, genteel scream.
O you misguided dinner-giving Snobs, think how much
pleasure you lose, and how much mischief you do with your
absurd grandeurs and hypocrisies!  You stuff each other
with unnatural forced-meats, and entertain each other to
the ruin of friendship (let alone health) and the
destruction of hospitality and good-fellowship--you, who
but for the peacock's tail might chatter away so much at
your ease, and be so jovial and happy!

When a man goes into a great set company of dinner-giving
and dinner-receiving Snobs, if he has a philosophical
turn of mind, he will consider what a huge humbug the
whole affair is: the dishes, and the drink, and the
servants, and the plate, and the host and hostess, and
the conversation, and the company,--the philosopher
included.

The host is smiling, and hob-nobbing, and talking up and
down the table; but a prey to secret terrors and
anxieties, lest the wines he has brought up from the
cellar should prove insufficient; lest a corked bottle
should destroy his calculations; or our friend the
carpet-beater, by making some BEVUE, should disclose his
real quality of greengrocer, and show that he is not the
family butler.

The hostess is smiling resolutely through all the
courses, smiling through her agony; though her heart is
in the kitchen, and she is speculating with terror lest
there be any disaster there.  If the SOUFFLE should
collapse, or if Wiggins does not send the ices in time--
she feels as if she would commit suicide--that smiling,
jolly woman!

The children upstairs are yelling, as their maid is
crimping their miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing
Miss Emmy's hair out by the roots, or scrubbing Miss
Polly's dumpy nose with mottled soap till the little
wretch screams herself into fits.  The young males of the
family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical
exploits upon the landing-place.

The servants are not servants, but the before-mentioned
retail tradesmen.

The plate is not plate, but a mere shiny Birmingham
lacquer; and so is the hospitality, and everything else.

The talk is Birmingham talk.  The wag of the party, with
bitterness in his heart, having just quitted his
laundress, who is dunning him for her bill, is firing off
good stories; and the opposition wag is furious that he
cannot get an innings.   Jawkins, the great
conversationalist, is scornful and indignant with the
pair of them, because he is kept out of court.  Young
Muscadel, that cheap dandy, is talking Fashion and
Almack's out of the MORNING POST, and disgusting his
neighbour, Mrs. Fox, who reflects that she has never been
there.  The widow is vexed out of patience, because her
daughter Maria has got a place beside young Cambric, the
penniless curate, and not by Colonel Goldmore, the rich
widower from India.  The Doctor's wife is sulky, because
she has not been led out before the barrister's lady; old
Doctor Cork is grumbling at the wine, and Guttleton
sneering at the cookery.

And to think that all these people might be so happy, and
easy, and friendly, were they brought together in a
natural unpretentious way, and but for an unhappy passion
for peacocks' feathers in England.  Gentle shades of
Marat and Robespierre! when I see how all the honesty of
society is corrupted among us by the miserable fashion-
worship, I feel as angry as Mrs. Fox just mentioned, and
ready to order a general BATTUE of peacocks.



CHAPTER XXI

SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS

Now that September has come, and all our Parliamentary
duties are over, perhaps no class of Snobs are in such
high feather as the Continental Snobs.  I watch these
daily as they commence their migrations from the beach at
Folkestone.  I see shoals of them depart (not perhaps
without an innate longing too to quit the Island along
with those happy Snobs).  Farewell, dear friends, I say:
you little know that the individual who regards you from
the beach is your friend and historiographer and brother.

I went to-day to see our excellent friend Snooks, on
board the 'Queen of the French;' many scores of Snobs
were there, on the deck of that fine ship, marching forth
in their pride and bravery.  They will be at Ostend in
four hours; they will inundate the Continent next week;
they will carry into far lands the famous image of the
British Snob.  I shall not see them--but am with them in
spirit: and indeed there is hardly a country in the known
and civilized world in which these eyes have not beheld
them.

I have seen Snobs, in pink coats and hunting-boots,
scouring over the Campagna of Rome; and have heard their
oaths and their well-known slang in the galleries of the
Vatican, and under the shadowy arches of the Colosseum.
I have met a Snob on a dromedary in the desert, and
picnicking under the Pyramid of Cheops.  I like to think
how many gallant British Snobs there are, at this minute
of writing, pushing their heads out of every window in
the courtyard of 'Meurice's' in the Rue de Rivoli; or
roaring out, 'Garsong, du pang,' 'Garsong, du Yang;' or
swaggering down the Toledo at Naples; or even how many
will be on the look-out for Snooks on Ostend Pier,--for
Snooks, and the rest of the Snobs on board the 'Queen of
the French.'

Look at the Marquis of Carabas and his two carriages.  My
Lady Marchioness comes on board, looks round with that
happy air of mingled terror and impertinence which
distinguishes her ladyship, and rushes to her carriage,
for it is impossible that she should mingle with the
other Snobs on deck.  There she sits, and will be ill in
private.  The strawberry leaves on her chariot-panels are
engraved on her ladyship's heart.  If she were going to
heaven instead of to Ostend, I rather think she would
expect to have DES PLACES RESERVEES for her, and would
send to order the best rooms.  A courier, with his money-
bag of office round his shoulders--a huge scowling
footman, whose dark pepper-and-salt livery glistens with
the heraldic insignia of the Carabases--a brazen-looking,
tawdry French FEMME-DE-CHAMBRE (none but a female pen can
do justice to that wonderful tawdry toilette of the
lady's-maid EN VOYAGE)--and a miserable DAME DE
COMPAGNIE, are ministering to the wants of her ladyship
and her King Charles's spaniel.  They are rushing to and
fro with eau-de-Cologne, pocket-handkerchiefs, which are
all fringe and cipher, and popping mysterious cushions
behind and before, and in every available corner of the
carriage.

The little Marquis, her husband is walking about the deck
in a bewildered manner, with a lean daughter on each arm:
the carroty-tufted hope of the family is already smoking
on the foredeck in a travelling costume checked all over,
and in little lacquer-tip pod jean boots, and a shirt
embroidered with pink boa-constrictors.  'What is it that
gives travelling Snobs such a marvellous propensity to
rush into a costume?  Why should a man not travel in a
coat, &c.? but think proper to dress himself like a
harlequin in mourning?  See, even young Aldermanbury, the
tallow-merchant, who has just stepped on board, has got a
travelling-dress gaping all over with pockets; and little
Tom Tapeworm, the lawyer's clerk out of the City, who has
but three weeks' leave, turns out in gaiters and a bran-
new shooting-jacket, and must let the moustaches grow on
his little sniffy upper lip, forsooth!

Pompey Hicks is giving elaborate directions to his
servant, and asking loudly, 'Davis, where's the dwessing-
case?' and 'Davis, you'd best take the pistol-case into
the cabin.'  Little Pompey travels with a dressing-case,
and without a beard: whom he is going to shoot with his
pistols, who on earth can tell? and what he is to do with
his servant but wait upon him, I am at a loss to
conjecture.

Look at honest Nathan Houndsditch and his lady, and their
little son.  What a noble air of blazing contentment
illuminates the features of those Snobs of Eastern race!
What a toilette Houndsditch's is!  What rings and chains,
what gold-headed canes and diamonds, what a tuft the
rogue has got to his chin (the rogue! he will never spare
himself any cheap enjoyment!) Little Houndsditch has a
little cane with a gilt head and little mosaic ornaments-
-altogether an extra air.  As for the lady, she is all
the colours of the rainbow! she has a pink parasol, with
a white lining, and a yellow bonnet, and an emerald green
shawl, and a shot-silk pelisse; and drab boots and
rhubarb-coloured gloves; and parti-coloured glass
buttons, expanding from the size of a fourpenny-piece to
a crown, glitter and twiddle all down the front of her
gorgeous costume.  I have said before, I like to look at
'the Peoples' on their gala days, they are so
picturesquely and outrageously splendid and happy.

Yonder comes Captain Bull; spick and span, tight and
trim; who travels for four or six months every year of
his life; who does not commit himself by luxury of
raiment or insolence of demeanour, but I think is as
great a Snob as any man on board.  Bull passes the season
in London, sponging for dinners, and sleeping in a garret
near his Club.  Abroad, he has been everywhere; he knows
the best wine at every inn in every capital in Europe;
lives with the best English company there; has seen every
palace and picture-gallery from Madrid to Stockholm;
speaks an abominable little jargon of half-a-dozen
languages--and knows nothing--nothing.  Bull hunts tufts
on the Continent, and is a sort of amateur courier.  He
will scrape acquaintance with old Carabas before they
make Ostend; and will remind his lordship that he met him
at Vienna twenty years ago, or gave him a glass of
Schnapps up the Righi.  We have said Bull knows nothing:
he knows the birth, arms, and pedigree of all the
peerage, has poked his little eyes into every one of the
carriages on board--their panels noted and their crests
surveyed; he knows all the Continental stories of English
scandal--how Count Towrowski ran off with Miss Baggs at
Naples--how VERY thick Lady Smigsmag was with young
Cornichon of the French Legation at Florence--the exact
amount which Jack Deuceace won of Bob Greengoose at
Baden--what it is that made the Staggs settle on the
Continent: the sum for which the O'Goggarty estates are
mortgaged, &c.  If he can't catch a lord he will hook on
to a baronet, or else the old wretch will catch hold of
some beardless young stripling of fashion, and show him
'life' in various and amiable and inaccessible quarters.
Faugh! the old brute!  If he has every one of the vices
of the most boisterous youth, at least he is comforted by
having no conscience.  He is utterly stupid, but of a
jovial turn, He believes himself to be quite a
respectable member of society: but perhaps the only good
action he ever did in his life is the involuntary one of
giving an example to be avoided, and showing what an
odious thing in the social picture is that figure of the
debauched old man who passes through life rather a
decorous Silenus, and dies some day in his garret, alone,
unrepenting, and unnoted, save by his astonished heirs,
who find that the dissolute old miser has left money
behind him.  See! he is up to old Carabas already!  I
told you he would.

Yonder you see the old Lady Mary MacScrew, and those
middle-aged young women her daughters; they are going to
cheapen and haggle in Belgium and up the Rhine until they
meet with a boarding-house where they can live upon less
board-wages than her ladyship pays her footmen.  But she
will exact and receive considerable respect from the
British Snobs located in the watering place which she
selects for her summer residence, being the daughter of
the Earl of Haggistoun.  That broad-shouldered buck, with
the great whiskers and the cleaned white kid-gloves, is
Mr. Phelim Clancy of Poldoodystown: he calls himself Mr.
De Clancy; he endeavours to disguise his native brogue
with the richest superposition of English; and if you
play at billiards or ECARTE with him, the chances are
that you will win the first game, and he the seven or
eight games ensuing.

That overgrown lady with the four daughters, and the
young dandy from the University, her son, is Mrs. Kewsy,
the eminent barrister's lady, who would rather die than
not be in the fashion.  She has the 'Peerage' in her
carpet-bag, you may be sure; but she is altogether cut
out by Mrs. Quod, the attorney's wife, whose carriage,
with the apparatus of rumbles, dickeys, and imperials,
scarcely yields in splendour to the Marquis of Carabas's
own travelling-chariot, and whose courier has even bigger
whiskers and a larger morocco money-bag than the
Marquis's own travelling gentleman.  Remark her well: she
is talking to Mr. Spout, the new Member for Jawborough,
who is going out to inspect the operations of the
Zollverein, and will put some very severe questions to
Lord Palmerston next session upon England and her
relations with the Prussian-blue trade, the Naples-soap
trade, the German-tinder trade, &c.  Spout will patronize
King Leopold at Brussels; will write letters from abroad
to the JAWBOROUGH INDEPENDENT; and in his quality of
MEMBER DU PARLIAMONG BRITANNIQUE, will expect to be
invited to a family dinner with every sovereign whose
dominions he honours with a visit during his tour.

The next person is--but hark! the bell for shore is
ringing, and, shaking Snook's hand cordially, we rush on
to the pier, waving him a farewell as the noble black
ship cuts keenly through the sunny azure waters, bearing
away that cargo of Snobs outward bound.



CHAPTER XXII

CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED

We are accustomed to laugh at the French for their
braggadocio propensities, and intolerable vanity about La
France, la gloire, l'Empereur, and the like; and yet I
think in my heart that the British Snob, for conceit and
self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is without a
parallel.  There is always something uneasy in a
Frenchman's conceit. He brags with so much fury,
shrieking, and gesticulation; yells out so loudly that
the Francais is at the head of civilization, the centre
of thought, &c.; that one can't but see the poor fellow
has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the
wonder he professes to be.

About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is
commonly no noise, no bluster, but the calmness of
profound conviction.  We are better than all the world;
we don't question the opinion at all; it's an axiom.  And
when a Frenchman bellows out, 'LA FRANCE, MONSIEUR, LA
FRANCE EST A LA TETE DU MONDE CIVILISE!' we laugh good-
naturedly at the frantic poor devil.  WE are the first
chop of the world: we know the fact so well in our secret
hearts that a claim set up elsewhere is simply ludicrous.
My dear brother reader, say, as a man of honour, if you
are not of this opinion? Do you think a Frenchman your
equal?  You don't--you gallant British Snob--you know you
don't: no more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble
servant, brother.

And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the
consequent bearing of the Englishman towards the
foreigner whom he condescends to visit, this confidence
of superiority which holds up the head of the owner of
every English hat-box from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that
makes us so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we
are; this--more than all our little victories, and of
which many Frenchmen and Spaniards have never heard--this
amazing and indomitable insular pride, which animates my
lord in his travelling-carriage as well as John in the
rumble.

If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you
find precisely the same character of the Englishman, and
Henry V.'s people behaved with just the cool domineering
manner of our gallant veterans of France and the
Peninsula.  Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major
Slasher talking over the war after dinner? or Captain
Boarder describing his action with the 'Indomptable?'
'Hang the fellows,' says Boarder, 'their practice was
very good.  I was beat off three times before I took
her.'  'Cuss those carabineers of Milhaud's,' says
Slasher, 'what work they made of our light cavalry!'
implying a sort of surprise that the Frenchman should
stand up against Britons at all: a good-natured wonder
that the blind, mad, vain-glorious, brave poor devils
should actually have the courage to resist an Englishman.
Legions of such Englishmen are patronizing Europe at this
moment, being kind to the Pope, or good-natured to the
King of Holland, or condescending to inspect the Prussian
reviews.  When Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter
of a million of pairs of moustaches to his breakfast
every morning, we took him off to Windsor and showed him
two whole regiments of six or eight hundred Britons a-
piece, with an air as much as to say,--'There, my boy,
look at THAT.  Those are ENGLISHMEN, those are, and your
master whenever you please,' as the nursery song says.
The British Snob is long, long past scepticism, and can
afford to laugh quite good-humouredly at those conceited
Yankees, or besotted little Frenchmen, who set up as
models of mankind.  THEY forsooth!

I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old
fellow at the Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is
evidently of the Slasher sort.  He came down and seated
himself at the breakfast-table, with a surly scowl on his
salmon-coloured bloodshot face, strangling in a tight,
cross-barred cravat; his linen and his appointments so
perfectly stiff and spotless that everybody at once
recognized him as a dear countryman.  Only our port-wine
and other admirable institutions could have produced a
figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentleman-like.  After
a while our attention was called to him by his roaring
out, in a voice of plethoric fury, 'O!'

Everybody turned round at the 'O,' conceiving the Colonel
to be, as his countenance denoted him, in intense pain;
but the waiters knew better, and instead of being
alarmed, brought the Colonel the kettle.  'O,' it
appears, is the French for hot-water.  The Colonel
(though he despises it heartily) thinks he speaks the
language remarkably well.  Whilst he was inhausting his
smoking tea, which went rolling and gurgling down his
throat, and hissing over the 'hot coppers' of that
respectable veteran, a friend joined him, with a wizened
face and very black wig, evidently a Colonel too.

The two warriors, waggling their old heads at each other,
presently joined breakfast, and fell into conversation,
and we had the advantage of hearing about the old war,
and some pleasant conjectures as to the next, which they
considered imminent.  They psha'd the French fleet; they
pooh-pooh'd the French commercial marine; they showed
how, in a war, there would be a cordon ('a cordong, by---
') of steamers along our coast, and 'by ---,' ready at a
minute to land anywhere on the other shore, to give the
French as good a thrashing as they got in the last war,
'by ---'.  In fact, a rumbling cannonade of oaths was
fired by the two veterans during the whole of their
conversation.

There was a Frenchman in the room, but as he had not been
above ten years in London, of course he did not speak the
language, and lost the benefit of the conversation.
'But, O my country!' said I to myself, it's no wonder
that you are so beloved!  If I were a Frenchman, how I
would hate you!'

That brutal, ignorant, peevish bully of an Englishman is
showing himself in every city of Europe.  One of the
dullest creatures under heaven, he goes travelling Europe
under foot, shouldering his way into galleries and
cathedrals, and bustling into palaces with his buck-ram
uniform.  At church or theatre, gala or picture-gallery,
HIS face never varies.  A thousand delightful sights pass
before his bloodshot eyes, and don't affect him.
Countless brilliant scenes of life and manners are shown
him, but never move him.  He goes to church, and calls
the practices there degrading and superstitious: as if
HIS altar was the only one that was acceptable.  He goes
to picture-galleries, and is more ignorant about Art than
a French shoeblack.  Art, Nature pass, and there is no
dot of admiration in his stupid eyes: nothing moves him,
except when a very great man comes his way, and then the
rigid, proud, self-confident, inflexible British Snob can
be as humble as a flunkey and as supple as a harlequin.



CHAPTER XXIII

ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT

'WHAT is the use of Lord Rome's telescope?' my friend
Panwiski exclaimed the other day.  'It only enables you
to see a few hundred thousands of miles farther.  What
were thought to be mere nebulae, turn out to be most
perceivable starry systems; and beyond these, you see
other nebulae, which a more powerful glass will show to
be stars, again; and so they go on glittering and winking
away into eternity.'  With which my friend Pan, heaving a
great sigh, as if confessing his inability to look
Infinity in the face, sank back resigned, and swallowed a
large bumper of claret.

I (who, like other great men, have but one idea), thought
to myself, that as the stars are, so are the Snobs:--the
more.  you gaze upon those luminaries, the more you
behold--now nebulously congregated--now faintly
distinguishable--now brightly defined--until they twinkle
off in endless blazes, and fade into the immeasurable
darkness.  I am but as a child playing on the sea-shore.
Some telescopic philosopher will arise one day, some
great Snobonomer, to find the laws of the great science
which we are now merely playing with, and to define, and
settle, and classify that which is at present but vague
theory, and loose though elegant assertion.

Yes: a single eye can but trace a very few and simple
varieties of the enormous universe of Snobs.  I sometimes
think of appealing to the public, and calling together a
congress of SAVANS, such as met at Southampton--each to
bring his contributions and read his paper on the Great
Subject.  For what can a single poor few do, even with
the subject at present in hand?  English Snobs on the
Continent--though they are a hundred thousand times less
numerous than on their native island, yet even these few
are too many.  One can only fix a stray one here and
there.  The individuals are caught--the thousands escape.
I have noted down but three whom I have met with in my
walk this morning through this pleasant marine city of
Boulogne.

There is the English Raff Snob, that frequents ESTAMINETS
and CABARETS; who is heard yelling, 'We won't go home
till morning!' and startling the midnight echoes of quiet
Continental towns with shrieks of English slang.  The
boozy unshorn wretch is seen hovering round quays as
packets arrive, and tippling drains in inn bars where he
gets credit.  He talks French with slang familiarity: he
and his like quite people the debt-prisons on the
Continent.  He plays pool at the billiard-houses, and may
be seen engaged at cards and dominoes of forenoons.  His
signature is to be seen on countless bills of exchange:
it belonged to an honourable family once, very likely;
for the English Raff most probably began by being a
gentleman, and has a father over the water who is ashamed
to hear his name.  He has cheated the old 'governor'
repeatedly in better days, and swindled his sisters of
their portions, and robbed his younger brothers.  Now he
is living on his wife's jointure: she is hidden away in
some dismal garret, patching shabby finery and cobbling
up old clothes for her children--the most miserable and
slatternly of women.

Or sometimes the poor woman and her daughters go about
timidly, giving lessons in English and music, or do
embroidery and work under-hand, to purchase the means for
the POT-AU-FEU; while Raff is swaggering on the quay, or
tossing off glasses of cognac at the CAF�.  The
unfortunate creature has a child still every year, and
her constant hypocrisy is to try and make her girls
believe that their father is a respectable man, and to
huddle him out of the way when the brute comes home
drunk.

Those poor ruined souls get together and have a society
of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch--
those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy
attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling
old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear
them.  As Mrs. Raff, with her company of pale daughters,
gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, they talk about bygone
times and the fine society they kept; and they sing
feeble songs out of tattered old music-books; and while
engaged in this sort of entertainment, in comes Captain
Raff with his greasy hat on one side, and straightway the
whole of the dismal room reeks with a mingled odour of
smoke and spirits.

Has not everybody who has lived abroad met Captain Raff?
His name is proclaimed, every now and then, by Mr.
Sheriff's Officer Hemp; and about Boulogne, and Paris,
and Brussels, there are so many of his sort that I will
lay a wager that I shall be accused of gross personality
for showing him up.  Many a less irreclaimable villain is
transported; many a more honourable man is at present at
the treadmill; and although we are the noblest, greatest,
most religious, and most moral people in the world, I
would still like to know where, except in the United
Kingdom, debts are a matter of joke, and making tradesmen
'suffer' a sport that gentlemen own to?  It is
dishonourable to owe money in France.  You never hear
people in other parts of Europe brag of their swindling;
or see a prison in a large Continental town which is not
more or less peopled with English rogues.

A still more loathsome and dangerous Snob than the above
transparent and passive scamp, is frequent on the
continent of Europe, and my young Snob friends who are
travelling thither should be especially warned against
him.  Captain Legg is a gentleman, like Raff, though
perhaps of a better degree.  He has robbed his family
too, but of a great deal more, and has boldly dishonoured
bills for thousands, where Raff has been boggling over
the clumsy conveyance of a ten-pound note.  Legg is
always at the best inn, with the finest waistcoats and
moustaches, or tearing about in the flashest of britzkas,
while poor Raff is tipsifying himself with spirits, and
smoking cheap tobacco.  It is amazing to think that Legg,
so often shown up, and known everywhere, is flourishing
yet.  He would sink into utter ruin, but for the constant
and ardent love of gentility that distinguishes the
English Snob.  There is many a young fellow of the middle
classes who must know Legg to be a rogue and a cheat; and
yet from his desire to be in the fashion, and his
admiration of tip-top swells, and from his ambition to
air himself by the side of a Lord's son, will let Legg
make an income out of him; content to pay, so long as he
can enjoy that society.  Many a worthy father of a
family, when he hears that his son is riding about with
Captain Legg, Lord Levant's son, is rather pleased that
young Hopeful should be in such good company.

Legg and his friend, Major Macer, make professional tours
through Europe, and are to be found at the right places
at the right time.  Last year I heard how my young
acquaintance, Mr. Muff, from Oxford, going to see a
little life at a Carnival ball at Paris, was accosted by
an Englishman who did not know a word of the d----
language, and hearing Muff speak it so admirably, begged
him to interpret to a waiter with whom there was a
dispute about refreshments.  It was quite a comfort, the
stranger said, to see an honest English face; and did
Muff know where there was a good place for supper?  So
those two went to supper, and who should come in, of all
men in the world, but Major Macer?  And so Legg
introduced Macer, and so there came on a little intimacy,
and three-card loo, &c. &c..  Year after year scores of
Muffs, in various places in the world, are victimised by
Legg and Macer.  The story is so stale, the trick of
seduction so entirely old and clumsy, that it is only a
wonder people can be taken in any more: but the
temptations of vice and gentility together are too much
for young English Snobs, and those simple young victims
are caught fresh every day.  Though it is only to be
kicked and cheated by men of fashion, your true British
Snob will present himself for the honour.

I need not allude here to that very common British Snob,
who makes desperate efforts at becoming intimate with the
great Continental aristocracy, such as old Rolls, the
baker, who has set up his quarters in the Faubourg Saint
Germain, and will receive none but Carlists, and no
French gentleman under the rank of a Marquis.  We can all
of us laugh at THAT fellow's pretensions well enough--we
who tremble before a great man of our own nation.  But,
as you say, my brave and honest John Bull of a Snob, a
French Marquis of twenty descents is very different from
an English Peer; and a pack of beggarly German and
Italian Fuersten and Principi awaken the scorn of an
honest-minded Briton.  But our aristocracy!--that's a
very different matter.  They are the real leaders of the
world--the real old original and-no-mistake nobility.

Off with your cap, Snob; down on your knees, Snob, and
truckle.



CHAPTER XXIV

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Tired of the town, where the sight of the closed shutters
of the nobility, my friends, makes my heart sick in my
walks; afraid almost to sit in those vast Pall Mall
solitudes, the Clubs, and of annoying the Club waiters,
who might, I thought, be going to shoot in the country,
but for me, I determined on a brief tour in the
provinces, and paying some visits in the country which
were long due.

My first visit was to my friend Major Ponto (H.P. of the
Horse Marines), in Mangelwurzelshire.  The Major, in his
little phaeton, was in waiting to take me up at the
station.  The vehicle was not certainly splendid, but
such a carriage as would accommodate a plain man (as
Ponto said he was) and a numerous family.  We drove by
beautiful fresh fields and green hedges, through a
cheerful English landscape; the high-road, as smooth and
trim as the way in a nobleman's park, was charmingly
chequered with cool shade and golden sunshine.  Rustics
in snowy smock-frocks jerked their hats off smiling as we
passed.  Children, with cheeks as red as the apples in
the orchards, bobbed curtsies to us at the cottage-doors.
Blue church spires rose here and there in the distance:
and as the buxom gardener's wife opened the white gate at
the Major's little ivy-covered lodge, and we drove
through the neat plantations of firs and evergreens, up
to the house, my bosom felt a joy and elation which I
thought it was impossible to experience in the smoky
atmosphere of a town.  'Here,' I mentally exclaimed, 'is
all peace, plenty, happiness.  Here, I shall be rid of
Snobs.  There can be none in this charming Arcadian
spot.'

Stripes, the Major's man (formerly corporal in his
gallant corps), received my portmanteau, and an elegant
little present, which I had brought from town as a peace-
offering to Mrs. Ponto; viz., a cod and oysters from
Grove's, in a hamper about the size of a coffin.

Ponto's house ('The Evergreens' Mrs. P. has christened
it) is a perfect Paradise of a place.  It is all over
creepers, and bow-windows, and verandahs.  A wavy lawn
tumbles up and down all round it, with flower-beds of
wonderful shapes, and zigzag gravel walks, and beautiful
but damp shrubberies of myrtles and glistening
laurustines, which have procured it its change of name.
It was called Little Bullock's Pound in old Doctor
Ponto's time.  I had a view of the pretty grounds, and
the stable, and the adjoining village and church, and a
great park beyond, from the windows of the bedroom
whither Ponto conducted me.  It was the yellow bedroom,
the freshest and pleasantest of bed-chambers; the air was
fragrant with a large bouquet that was placed on the
writing-table; the linen was fragrant with the lavender
in which it had been laid; the chintz hangings of the bed
and the big sofa were, if not fragrant with flowers, at
least painted all over with them; the pen-wiper on the
table was the imitation of a double dahlia; and there was
accommodation for my watch in a sun-flower on the
mantelpiece.  A scarlet-leaved creeper came curling over
the windows, through which the setting sun was pouring a
flood of golden light.  It was all flowers and freshness.
Oh, how unlike those black chimney-pots in St. Alban's
Place, London, on which these weary eyes are accustomed
to look.

'It must be all happiness here, Ponto,' said I, flinging
myself down into the snug BERGERE, and inhaling such a
delicious draught of country air as all the MILLEFLEURS
of Mr. Atkinson's shop cannot impart to any the most
expensive pocket-handkerchief.

'Nice place, isn't it?' said Ponto.  'Quiet and
unpretending.  I like everything quiet.  You've not
brought your valet with you?  Stripes will arrange your
dressing things;' and that functionary, entering at the
same time, proceeded to gut my portmanteau, and to lay
out the black kerseymeres, 'the rich cut velvet Genoa
waistcoat,' the white choker, and other polite articles
of evening costume, with great gravity and despatch.  'A
great dinner-party,' thinks I to myself, seeing these
preparations (and not, perhaps, displeased at the idea
that some of the best people in the neighbourhood were
coming to see me).  'Hark, theres the first bell ringing!
'said Ponto, moving away; and, in fact, a clamorous
harbinger of victuals began clanging from the stable
turret, and announced the agreeable fact that dinner
would appear in half-an-hour.  'If the dinner is as grand
as the dinner-bell,' thought I, 'faith, I'm in good
quarters!' and had leisure, during the half-hour's
interval, not only to advance my own person to the utmost
polish of elegance which it is capable of receiving, to
admire the pedigree of the Pontos hanging over the
chimney, and the Ponto crest and arms emblazoned on the
wash-hand basin and jug, but to make a thousand
reflections on the happiness of a country life--upon the
innocent friendliness and cordiality of rustic
intercourse; and to sigh for an opportunity of retiring,
like Ponto, to my own fields, to my own vine and fig-
tree, with a placens uxor in my domus, and a half-score
of sweet young pledges of affection sporting round my
paternal knee.

Clang!  At the end of thirty minutes, dinner-bell number
two pealed from the adjacent turret.  I hastened
downstairs, expecting to find a score of healthy country
folk in the drawing-room.  There was only one person
there; a tall and Roman-nosed lady, glistering over with
bugles, in deep mourning.  She rose, advanced two steps,
made a majestic curtsey, during which all the bugles in
her awful head-dress began to twiddle and quiver--and
then said, 'Mr. Snob, we are very happy to see you at the
Evergreens,' and heaved a great sigh.

This, then, was Mrs. Major Ponto; to whom making my very
best bow, I replied, that I was very proud to make her
acquaintance, as also that of so charming a place as the
Evergreens.

Another sigh.  'We are distantly related, Mr. Snob,' said
she, shaking her melancholy head.  'Poor dear Lord
Rubadub!'

'Oh!' said I; not knowing what the deuce Mrs. Major Ponto
meant.

'Major Ponto told me that you were of the Leicestershire
Snobs: a very old family, and related to Lord
Snobbington, who married Laura Rubadub, who is a cousin
of mine, as was her poor dear father, for whom we are
mourning.  What a seizure! only sixty-three, and apoplexy
quite unknown until now in our family!  In life we are in
death, Mr. Snob.  Does Lady Snobbington bear the
deprivation well?'

'Why, really, ma'am, I--I don't know,' I replied, more
and more confused.

As she was speaking I heard a sort of CLOOP, by which
well-known sound I was aware that somebody was opening a
bottle of wine, and Ponto entered, in a huge white
neckcloth, and a rather shabby black suit.

'My love,' Mrs. Major Ponto said to her husband, 'we were
talking of our cousin--poor dear Lord Rubadub.  His death
has placed some of the first families in England in
mourning.  Does Lady Rubadub keep the house in Hill
Street, do you know?'

I didn't know, but I said, 'I believe she does,' at a
venture; and, looking down to the drawing-room table, saw
the inevitable, abominable, maniacal, absurd, disgusting
'Peerage' open on the table, interleaved with
annotations, and open at the article 'Snobbington.'

'Dinner is served,' says Stripes, flinging open the door;
and I gave Mrs. Major Ponto my arm.



CHAPTER XXV

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Of the dinner to which we now sat down, I am not going to
be a severe critic.  The mahogany I hold to be
inviolable; but this I will say, that I prefer sherry to
marsala when I can get it, and the latter was the wine of
which I have no doubt I heard the 'cloop' just before
dinner.  Nor was it particularly good of its kind;
however, Mrs. Major Ponto did not evidently know the
difference, for she called the liquor Amontillado during
the whole of the repast, and drank but half a glass of
it, leaving the rest for the Major and his guest.

Stripes was in the livery of the Ponto family--a thought
shabby, but gorgeous in the extreme--lots of magnificent
worsted lace, and livery buttons of a very notable size.
The honest fellow's hands, I remarked, were very large
and black; and a fine odour of the stable was wafted
about the room as he moved to and fro in his
ministration.  I should have preferred a clean
maidservant, but the sensations of Londoners are too
acute perhaps on these subjects; and a faithful John,
after all, IS more genteel.

>From the circumstance of the dinner being composed of
pig's-head mock-turtle soup, of pig's fry and roast ribs
of pork, I am led to imagine that one of Ponto's black
Hampshires had been sacrificed a short time previous to
my visit.  It was an excellent and comfortable repast;
only there WAS rather a sameness in it, certainly.  I
made a similar remark the next day'.

During the dinner Mrs. Ponto asked me many questions
regarding the nobility, my relatives.  'When Lady
Angelina Skeggs would come out; and if the countess her
mamma' (this was said with much archness and he-he-ing)
'still wore that extraordinary purple hair-dye?'
'Whether my Lord Guttlebury kept, besides his French
chef, and an English cordonbleu for the roasts, an
Italian for the confectionery?'

'Who attended at Lady Clapperclaw's conversazioni?' and
'whether Sir John Champignon's "Thursday Mornings" were
pleasant?'  'Was it true that Lady Carabas, wanting to
pawn her diamonds, found that they were paste, and that
the Marquis had disposed of them beforehand?'  'How was
it that Snuffin, the great tobacco-merchant, broke off
the marriage which was on the tapis between him and their
second daughter; and was it true that a mulatto lady came
over from the Havanna and forbade the match?'

'Upon my word, Madam,' I had begun, and was going on to
say that I didn't know one word about all these matters
which seemed so to interest Mrs. Major Ponto, when the
Major, giving me a tread or stamp with his large foot
under the table, said-- 'Come, come, Snob my boy, we are
all tiled, you know.  We KNOW you're one of the
fashionable people about town: we saw your name at Lady
Clapperclaw's SOIREES, and the Champignon breakfasts; and
as for the Rubadubs, of course, as relations ---'

'Oh, of course, I dine there twice a-week,' I said; and
then I remembered that my cousin, Humphry Snob, of the
Middle Temple, IS a great frequenter of genteel
societies, and to have seen his name in the MORNING POST
at the tag-end of several party lists.  So, taking the
hint, I am ashamed to say I indulged Mrs. Major Ponto
with a deal of information about the first families in
England, such as would astonish those great personages if
they knew it.  I described to her most accurately the
three reigning beauties of last season at Almack's: told
her in confidence that his Grace the D--- of W--- was
going to be married the day after his Statue was put up;
that his Grace the D--- of D--- was also about to lead
the fourth daughter of the Archduke Stephen to the
hymeneal altar:--and talked to her, in a word, just in
the style of Mrs. Gore's last fashionable novel.

Mrs. Major was quite fascinated by this brilliant
conversation.  She began to trot out scraps of French,
just for all the world as they do in the novels; and
kissed her hand to me quite graciously, telling me to
come soon to caffy, UNG PU DE MUSICK O SALONG--with which
she tripped off like an elderly fairy.

'Shall I open a bottle of port, or do you ever drink such
a thing as Hollands and water?' says Ponto, looking
ruefully at me.  This was a very different style of thing
to what I had been led to expect from him at our smoking-
room at the Club: where he swaggers about his horses and
his cellar: and slapping me on the shoulder used to say,
'Come down to Mangelwurzelshire, Snob my boy, and I'll
give you as good a day's shooting and as good a glass of
claret as any in the county.'--'Well,' I said, 'I like
Hollands much better than port, and gin even better than
Hollands.'  This was lucky.   It WAS gin; and Stripes
brought in hot water on a splendid plated tray.

The jingling of a harp and piano soon announced that Mrs.
Ponto's ung PU DE MUSICK had commenced, and the smell of
the stable again entering the dining-room, in the person
of Stripes, summoned us to CAFFY and the little concert.
She beckoned me with a winning smile to the sofa, on
which she made room for me, and where we could command a
fine view of the backs of the young ladies who were
performing the musical entertainment.  Very broad backs
they were too, strictly according to the present mode,
for crinoline or its substitutes is not an expensive
luxury, and young people in the country can afford to be
in the fashion at very trifling charges.  Miss Emily
Ponto at the piano, and her sister Maria at that somewhat
exploded instrument, the harp, were in light blue dresses
that looked all flounce, and spread out like Mr. Green's
balloon when inflated.

'Brilliant touch Emily has--what a fine arm Maria's is,'
Mrs. Ponto remarked good-naturedly, pointing out the
merits of her daughters, and waving her own arm in such a
way as to show that she was not a little satisfied with
the beauty of that member.  I observed she had about nine
bracelets and bangles, consisting of chains and padlocks,
the Major's miniature, and a variety of brass serpents
with fiery ruby or tender turquoise eyes, writhing up to
her elbow almost, in the most profuse contortions.

'You recognize those polkas?  They were played at
Devonshire House on the 23rd of July, the day of the
grand fˆte.'  So I said yes--I knew 'em quite intimately;
and began wagging my head as if in acknowledgment of
those old friends.

When the performance was concluded, I had the felicity of
a presentation and conversation with the two tall and
scraggy Miss Pontos; and Miss Wirt, the governess, sat
down to entertain us with variations on 'Sich a gettin'
up Stairs.'  They were determined to be in the fashion.

For the performance of the 'Gettin' up Stairs,' I have no
other name but that it was a STUNNER.  First Miss Wirt,
with great deliberation, played the original and
beautiful melody, cutting it, as it were, out of the
instrument, and firing off each note so loud, clear, and
sharp, that I am sure Stripes must have heard it in the
stable.

'What a finger!' says Mrs. Ponto; and indeed it WAS a
finger, as knotted as a turkey's drumstick, and splaying
all over the piano.  When she had banged out the tune
slowly, she began a different manner of 'Gettin' up
Stairs,' and did so with a fury and swiftness quite
incredible.  She spun up stairs; she whirled up stairs:
she galloped up stairs; she rattled up stairs; and then
having got the tune to the top landing, as it were, she
hurled it down again shrieking to the bottom floor, where
it sank in a crash as if exhausted by the breathless
rapidity of the descent.  Then Miss Wirt played the
'Gettin' up Stairs' with the most pathetic and ravishing
solemnity: plaintive moans and sobs issued from the keys-
-you wept and trembled as you were gettin' up stairs.
Miss Wirt's hands seemed to faint and wail and die in
variations: again, and she went up with a savage clang
and rush of trumpets, as if Miss Wirt was storming a
breach; and although I knew nothing of music, as I sat
and listened with my mouth open to this wonderful
display, my CAFFY grew cold, and I wondered the windows
did not crack and the chandelier start out of the beam at
the sound of this earthquake of a piece of music.

'Glorious creature!  Isn't she?' said Mrs. Ponto.
'Squirtz's favourite pupil--inestimable to have such a
creature.  Lady Carabas would give her eyes for her!  A
prodigy of accomplishments!  Thank you, Miss Wirt'--and
the young ladies gave a heave and a gasp of admiration--a
deep-breathing gushing sound, such as you hear at church
when the sermon comes to a full stop.

Miss Wirt put her two great double-knuckled hands round a
waist of her two pupils, and said, 'My dear children, I
hope you will be able to play it soon as well as your
poor little governess.  When I lived with the Dunsinanes,
it was the dear Duchess's favourite, and Lady Barbara and
Lady Jane McBeth learned it.  It was while hearing Jane
play that, I remember, that dear Lord Castletoddy first
fell in love with her; and though he is but an Irish
Peer, with not more than fifteen thousand a year, I
persuaded Jane to have him.  Do you know Castletoddy, Mr.
Snob?--round towers--sweet place-County Mayo.  Old Lord
Castletoddy (the present Lord was then Lord Inishowan)
was a most eccentric old man--they say he was mad.  I
heard his Royal Highness the poor dear Duke of Sussex--
(SUCH a man, my dears, but alas! addicted to smoking!)--I
heard his Royal Highness say to the Marquis of Anglesey,
"I am sure Castletoddy is mad!" but Inishowan wasn't in
marrying my sweet Jane, though the dear child had but her
ten thousand pounds POUR TOUT POTAGE!'

'Most invaluable person,' whispered Mrs. Major Ponto to
me.  'Has lived in the very highest society:' and I, who
have been accustomed to see governesses bullied in the
world, was delighted to find this one ruling the roast,
and to think that even the majestic Mrs. Ponto bent
before her.

As for my pipe, so to speak, it went out at once.  I
hadn't a word to say against a woman who was intimate
with every Duchess in the Red Book.  She wasn't the
rosebud, but she had been near it.  She had rubbed
shoulders with the great, and about these we talked all
the evening incessantly, and about the fashions, and
about the Court, until bed-time came.

'And are there Snobs in this Elysium?' I exclaimed,
jumping into the lavender-perfumed bed.  Ponto's snoring
boomed from the neighbouring bed-room in reply.



CHAPTER XXVI

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Something like a journal of the proceedings at the
Evergreens may be interesting to those foreign readers of
PUNCH who want to know the customs of an English
gentleman's family and household.  There's plenty of time
to keep the Journal.  Piano-strumming begins at six
o'clock in the morning; it lasts till breakfast, with but
a minute's intermission, when the instrument changes
hands, and Miss Emily practises in place of her sister
Miss Maria.

In fact, the confounded instrument never stops when the
young ladies are at their lessons, Miss Wirt hammers away
at those stunning variations, and keeps her magnificent
finger in exercise.

I asked this great creature in what other branches of
education she instructed her pupils?  'The modern
languages,' says she modestly: 'French, German, Spanish,
and Italian, Latin and the rudiments of Greek if desired.
English of course; the practice of Elocution, Geography,
and Astronomy, and the Use of the Globes, Algebra (but
only as far as quadratic equations); for a poor ignorant
female, you know, Mr. Snob, cannot be expected to know
everything.  Ancient and Modern History no young woman
can be without; and of these I make my beloved pupils
PERFECT MISTRESSES.  Botany, Geology, and Mineralogy, I
consider as amusements.  And with these I assure you we
manage to pass the days at the Evergreens not
unpleasantly.'

Only these, thought I--what an education!  But I looked
in one of Miss Ponto's manuscript song-books and found
five faults of French in four words; and in a waggish
mood asking Miss Wirt whether Dante Algiery was so called
because he was born at Algiers, received a smiling answer
in the affirmative, which made me rather doubt about the
accuracy of Miss Wirt's knowledge.

When the above little morning occupations are concluded,
these unfortunate young women perform what they call
Calisthenic Exercises in the garden.  I saw them to-day,
without any crinoline, pulling the garden-roller.

Dear Mrs. Ponto was in the garden too, and as limp as her
daughters; in a faded bandeau of hair, in a battered
bonnet, in a holland pinafore, in pattens, on a broken
chair, snipping leaves off a vine.  Mrs. Ponto measures
many yards about in an evening.  Ye heavens! what a guy
she is in that skeleton morning-costume!

Besides Stripes, they keep a boy called Thomas or Tummus.
Tummus works in the garden or about the pigsty and
stable; Thomas wears a page's costume of eruptive
buttons.

When anybody calls, and Stripes is out of the way, Tummus
flings himself like mad into Thomas's clothes, and comes
out metamorphosed like Harlequin in the pantomime.  To-
day, as Mrs. P. was cutting the grapevine, as the young
ladies were at the roller, down comes Tummus like a
roaring whirlwind, with 'Missus, Missus, there's company
coomin'!'  Away skurry the young ladies from the roller,
down comes Mrs. P. from the old chair, off flies Tummus
to change his clothes, and in an incredibly short space
of time Sir John Hawbuck, my Lady Hawbuck, and Master
Hugh Hawbuck are introduced into the garden with brazen
effrontery by Thomas, who says, 'Please Sir Jan and my
Lady to walk this year way: I KNOW Missus is in the rose-
garden.'

And there, sure enough, she was!

In a pretty little garden bonnet, with beautiful curling
ringlets, with the smartest of aprons and the freshest of
pearl-coloured gloves, this amazing woman was in the arms
of her dearest Lady Hawbuck.  'Dearest Lady Hawbuck, how
good of you!  Always among my flowers! can't live away
from them!'

'Sweets to the sweet! hum--a-ha--haw!' says Sir John
Hawbuck, who piques himself on his gallantry, and says
nothing without 'a-hum--a-ha--a-haw!'

'Whereth yaw pinnafaw?' cries Master Hugh.  'WE thaw you
in it, over the wall, didn't we, Pa?'

'Hum--a-ha--a-haw!' burst out Sir John, dreadfully
alarmed.  'Where's Ponto?  Why wasn't he at Quarter
Sessions?  How are his birds this year, Mrs. Ponto--have
those Carabas pheasants done any harm to your wheat? a-
hum--a-ha--a-haw!' and all this while he was making the
most ferocious and desperate signals to his youthful
heir.

'Well, she WATH in her pinnafaw, wathn't she, Ma?' says
Hugh, quite unabashed; which question Lady Hawbuck turned
away with a sudden query regarding her dear darling
daughters, and the ENFANT TERRIBLE was removed by his
father.

'I hope you weren't disturbed by the music?' Ponto says.
'My girls, you know, practise four hours a day, you know-
-must do it, you know--absolutely necessary.  As for me,
you know I'm an early man, and in my farm every morning
at five--no, no laziness for ME.'

The facts are these.  Ponto goes to sleep directly after
dinner on entering the drawing-room, and wakes up when
the ladies leave off practice at ten.  From seven till
ten, from ten till five, is a very fair allowance of
slumber for a man who says he's NOT a lazy man.  It is my
private opinion that when Ponto retires to what is called
his 'Study,' he sleeps too.  He locks himself up there
daily two hours with the newspaper.

I saw the HAWBUCK scene out of the Study, which commands
the garden.  It's a curious object, that Study.  Ponto's
library mostly consists of boots.  He and Stripes have
important interviews here of mornings, when the potatoes
are discussed, or the fate of the calf ordained, or
sentence passed on the pig, &c..  All the Major's bills
are docketed on the Study table and displayed like a
lawyer's briefs.  Here, too, lie displayed his hooks,
knives, and other gardening irons, his whistles, and
strings of spare buttons.  He has a drawer of endless
brown paper for parcels, and another containing a
prodigious and never-failing supply of string.  What a
man can want with so many gig-whips I can never conceive.
These, and fishing-rods, and landing-nets, and spurs, and
boot-trees, and balls for horses, and surgical implements
for the same, and favourite pots of shiny blacking, with
which he paints his own shoes in the most elegant manner,
and buckskin gloves stretched out on their trees, and his
gorget, sash, and sabre of the Horse Marines, with his
boot-hooks underneath in atrophy; and the family
medicine-chest, and in a corner the very rod with which
he used to whip his son, Wellesley Ponto, when a boy
(Wellesley never entered the 'Study' but for that awful
purpose)--all these, with 'Mogg's Road Book,' the
GARDENERS' CHRONICLE, and a backgammon-board, form the
Major's library.  Under the trophy there's a picture of
Mrs. Ponto, in a light blue dress and train, and no
waist, when she was first married; a fox's brush lies
over the frame, and serves to keep the dust off that work
of art.

'My library's small, says Ponto, with the most amazing
impudence, 'but well selected, my boy--well selected.  I
have been reading the "History of England" all the
morning.'



CHAPTER XXVII

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

We had the fish, which, as the kind reader may remember,
I had brought down in a delicate attention to Mrs. Ponto,
to variegate the repast of next day; and cod and oyster-
sauce, twice laid, salt cod and scolloped oysters, formed
parts of the bill of fare until I began to fancy that the
Ponto family, like our late revered monarch George II.,
had a fancy for stale fish.  And about this time, the pig
being consumed, we began upon a sheep.

But how shall I forget the solemn splendour of a second
course, which was served up in great state by Stripes in
a silver dish and cove; a napkin round his dirty thumbs;
and consisted of a landrail, not much bigger than a
corpulent sparrow.

'My love, will you take any game?' says Ponto, with
prodigious gravity; and stuck his fork into that little
mouthful of an island in the silver sea.  Stripes, too,
at intervals, dribbled out the Marsala with a solemnity
which would have done honour to a Duke's butler.  The
Bamnecide's dinner to Shacabac was only one degree
removed from these solemn banquets.

As there were plenty of pretty country places close by; a
comfortable country town, with good houses of
gentlefolks; a beautiful old parsonage, close to the
church whither we went (and where the Carabas family have
their ancestral carved and monumented Gothic pew), and
every appearance of good society in the neighbourhood, I
rather wondered we were not enlivened by the appearance
of some of the neighbours at the Evergreens, and asked
about them.

'We can't in our position of life--we can't well
associate with the attorney's family, as I leave you to
suppose,' says Mrs. Ponto, confidentially.  'Of course
not,' I answered, though I didn't know why.  'And the
Doctor?' said I.

'A most excellent worthy creature,' says Mrs. P. saved
Maria's life--really a learned man; but what can one do
in one's position?  One may ask one's medical man to
one's table certainly: but his family, my dear Mr. Snob!'

'Half-a-dozen little gallipots,' interposed Miss Wirt,
the governess: 'he, he, he!' and the young ladies laughed
in chorus.

'We only live with the county families,' Miss Wirt (1)
continued, tossing up her head.  'The Duke is abroad: we
are at feud with the Carabases; the Ringwoods don't come
down till Christmas: in fact, nobody's here till the
hunting season--positively nobody.'

'Whose is the large red house just outside of the town?'

'What! the CHATEAU-CALICOT? he, he, he!  That purse-proud
ex-linendraper, Mr. Yardley, with the yellow liveries,
and the wife in red velvet?  How CAN you, my dear Mr.
Snob, be so satirical?  The impertinence of those people
is really something quite overwhelming.'

'Well, then, there is the parson, Doctor Chrysostom.
He's a gentleman, at any rate.'  At this Mrs. Ponto
looked at Miss Wirt.  After their eyes had met and they
had wagged their heads at each other.  They looked up to
the ceiling.  So did the young ladies.  They thrilled.
It was evident I had said something terrible.  Another
black sheep in the Church? thought I with a little
sorrow; for I don't care to own that I have a respect for
the cloth.  'I--hope there's nothing wrong?

'Wrong?' says Mrs. P., clasping her hands with a tragic
air.

'Oh!' says Miss Wirt, and the two girls, gasping in
chorus.

'Well,' says I, 'I'm very sorry for it.  I never saw a
nicer-looking old gentleman, or a better school, or heard
a better sermon.'

'He used to preach those sermons in a surplice,' hissed
out Mrs. Ponto.  'He's a Puseyite, Mr. Snob.'

'Heavenly powers!' says I, admiring the pure ardour of
these female theologians; and Stripes came in with the
tea.  It's so weak that no wonder Ponto's sleep isn't
disturbed by it.

Of mornings we used to go out shooting.  We had Ponto's
own fields to sport over (where we got the landrail), and
the non-preserved part of the Hawbuck property: and one
evening in a stubble of Ponto's skirting the Carabas
woods, we got among some pheasants, and had some real
sport.  I shot a hen, I know, greatly to my delight.
'Bag it,' says Ponto, in rather a hurried manner: 'here's
somebody coming.'  So I pocketed the bird.

'You infernal poaching thieves!' roars out a man from the
hedge in the garb of a gamekeeper.  'I wish I could catch
you on this side of the hedge.  I'd put a brace of
barrels into you, that I would.'

'Curse that Snapper,' says Ponto, moving off; 'he's
always watching me like a spy.'

'Carry off the birds, you sneaks, and sell 'em in
London,' roars the individual, who it appears was a
keeper of Lord Carabas.  'You'll get six shillings a
brace for 'em.'

'YOU know the price of 'em well enough, and so does your
master too, you scoundrel,' says Ponto, still retreating.

'We kill 'em on our ground,' cries Mr. Snapper.  'WE
don't set traps for other people's birds.  We're no decoy
ducks.  We're no sneaking poachers.  We don't shoot 'ens,
like that 'ere Cockney, who's got the tail of one a-
sticking out of his pocket.  Only just come across the
hedge, that's all.'

'I tell you what,' says Stripes, who was out with us as
keeper this day, (in fact he's keeper, coachman,
gardener, valet, and bailiff, with Tummus under him,) 'if
YOU'LL come across, John Snapper, and take your coat off,
I'll give you such a whopping as you've never had since
the last time I did it at Guttlebury Fair.'

'Whop one of your own weight,' Mr. Snapper said,
whistling his dogs and disappearing into the wood.  And
so we came out of this controversy rather victoriously;
but I began to alter my preconceived ideas of rural
felicity.

Notes.

(1) I have since heard that this aristocratic lady's
father was a livery-button maker in St. Martin's Lane:
where he met with misfortunes, and his daughter acquired
her taste for heraldry.  But it may be told to her
credit, that out of her earnings she has kept the bed-
ridden old bankrupt in great comfort and secrecy at
Pentonville; and furnished her brother's outfit for the
Cadetship which her patron, Lord Swigglebiggle, gave her
when he was at the Board of Control.  I have this
information from a friend.  To hear Miss Wirt herself,
you would fancy that her Papa was a Rothschild, and that
the markets of Europe were convulsed when he went into
the GAZETTE.



CHAPTER XXVIII

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Be hanged to your aristocrats!' Ponto said, in some
conversation we had regarding the family at Carabas,
between whom and the Evergreens there was a feud.  'When
I first came into the county--it was the year before Sir
John Buff contested in the Blue interest--the Marquis,
then Lord St. Michaels, who, of course, was Orange to the
core, paid me and Mrs. Ponto such attentions, that I
fairly confess I was taken in by the old humbug, and
thought that I'd met with a rare neighbour.  'Gad, Sir,
we used to get pines from Carabas, and pheasants from
Carabas, and it was--"Ponto, when will you come over and
shoot?"--and--"Ponto, our pheasants want thinning,"--and
my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs. Ponto coming over
to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don't know to what
expense for turbans and velvet gowns for my wife's
toilette.  Well, Sir, the election takes place, and
though I was always a Liberal, personal friendship of
course induces me to plump for St. Michaels, who comes in
at the head of the poll.  Next year, Mrs. P. insists upon
going to town--with lodgings in Clarges Street at ten
pounds a week, with a hired brougham, and new dresses for
herself and the girls, and the deuce and all to pay. Our
first cards were to Carabas House; my Lady's are returned
by a great big flunkey; and I leave you to fancy my poor
Betsy's discomfiture as the lodging-house maid took in
the cards, and Lady St. Michaels drives away, though she
actually saw us at the drawing-room window.  Would you
believe it, Sir, that though we called four times
afterwards, those infernal aristocrats never returned our
visit; that though Lady St. Michaels gave nine dinner-
parties and four DEJEUNERS that season, she never asked
us to one; and that she cut us dead at the Opera, though
Betsy was nodding to her the whole night?  We wrote to
her for tickets for Almack's; she writes to say that all
hers were promised; and said, in the presence of Wiggins,
her lady's-maid, who told it to Diggs, my wife's woman,
that she couldn't conceive how people in our station of
life could so far forget themselves as to wish to appear
in any such place!  Go to Castle Carabas!  I'd sooner die
than set my foot in the house of that impertinent,
insolvent, insolent jackanapes-- and I hold him in
scorn!'  After this, Ponto gave me some private
information regarding Lord Carabas's pecuniary affairs;
how he owed money all over the county; how Jukes the
carpenter was utterly ruined and couldn't get a shilling
of his bill; how Biggs the butcher hanged himself for the
same reason; how the six big footmen never received a
guinea of wages, and Snaffle, the state coachman,
actually took off his blown-glass wig of ceremony and
flung it at Lady Carabas's feet on the terrace before the
Castle; all which stories, as they are private, I do not
think proper to divulge.  But these details did not
stifle my desire to see the famous mansion of Castle
Carabas, nay, possibly excited my interest to know more
about that lordly house and its owners.

At the entrance of the park, there are a pair of great
gaunt mildewed lodges--mouldy Doric temples with black
chimney-pots, in the finest classic taste, and the gates
of course are surmounted by the CHATS BOTTES, the well-
known supporters of the Carabas family.  'Give the lodge-
keeper a shilling,' says Ponto, (who drove me near to it
in his four-wheeled cruelty-chaise).  'I warrant it's the
first piece of ready money he has received for some time.
I don't know whether there was any foundation for this
sneer, but the gratuity was received with a curtsey, and
the gate opened for me to enter.  'Poor old porteress!'
says I, inwardly.  'You little know that it is the
Historian of Snobs whom you let in!'  The gates were
passed.  A damp green stretch of park spread right and
left immeasurably, confined by a chilly grey wall, and a
damp long straight road between two huge rows of moist,
dismal lime-trees, leads up to the Castle.  In the midst
of the park is a great black tank or lake, bristling over
with rushes, and here and there covered over with patches
of pea-soup.  A shabby temple rises on an island in this
delectable lake, which is approached by a rotten barge
that lies at roost in a dilapidated boat house.  Clumps
of elms and oaks dot over the huge green flat.  Every one
of them would have been down long since, but that the
Marquis is not allowed to cut the timber.

Up that long avenue the Snobographer walked in solitude.
At the seventy-ninth tree on the left-hand side, the
insolvent butcher hanged himself.  I scarcely wondered at
the dismal deed, so woful and sad were the impressions
connected with the place.  So, for a mile and a half I
walked--alone and thinking of death.

I forgot to say the house is in full view all the way--
except when intercepted by the trees on the miserable
island in the lake--an enormous red-brick mansion,
square, vast, and dingy.  It is flanked by four stone
towers with weathercocks.  In the midst of the grand
facade is a huge Ionic portico, approached by a vast,
lonely, ghastly staircase.  Rows of black windows, framed
in stone, stretch on either side, right and left--three
storeys and eighteen windows of a row.  You may see a
picture of the palace and staircase, in the 'Views of
England and Wales,' with four carved and gilt carriages
waiting at the gravel walk, and several parties of ladies
and gentlemen in wigs and hoops, dotting the fatiguing
lines of stairs.

But these stairs are made in great houses for people NOT
to ascend.  The first Lady Carabas (they are but eighty
years in the peerage), if she got out of her gilt coach
in a shower, would be wet to the skin before she got
half-way to the carved Ionic portico, where four dreary
statues of Peace, Plenty, Piety and Patriotism, are the
only sentinels.  You enter these palaces by back-doors.
'That was the way the Carabases got their peerage,' the
misanthropic Ponto said after dinner.

Well--I rang the bell at a little low side-door; it
clanged and jingled and echoed for a long, long while,
till at length a face, as of a housekeeper, peered
through the door, and, as she saw my hand in my waistcoat
pocket, opened it.  Unhappy, lonely housekeeper, I
thought.  Is Miss Crusoe in her island more solitary?
The door clapped to, and I was in Castle Carabas.

'The side entrance and All,' says the housekeeper.  'The
halligator hover the mantelpiece was brought home by
Hadmiral St. Michaels, when a Capting with Lord Hanson.
The harms on the cheers is the harms of the Carabas
family.'  The hall was rather comfortable.  We went
clapping up a clean stone backstair, and then into a back
passage cheerfully decorated with ragged light-green
Kidderminster, and issued upon

'THE GREAT ALL.

'The great all is seventy-two feet in lenth, fifty-six in
breath, and thirty-eight feet 'igh.  The carvings of the
chimlies, representing the buth of Venus, and Ercules,
and Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculpture
of his hage and country.  The ceiling, by Calimanco,
represents Painting, Harchitecture and Music (the naked
female figure with the barrel horgan) introducing George,
fust Lord Carabas, to the Temple of the Muses.  The
winder ornaments is by Vanderputty.  The floor is
Patagonian marble; and the chandelier in the centre was
presented to Lionel, second Marquis, by Lewy the
Sixteenth, whose 'ead was cut hoff in the French
Revelation.  We now henter

THE SOUTH GALLERY.

'One 'undred and forty-eight in lenth by thirty-two in
breath; it is profusely hornaminted by the choicest works
of Hart.  Sir Andrew Katz, founder of the Carabas family
and banker of the Prince of Horange, Kneller.  Her
present Ladyship, by Lawrence.  Lord St. Michaels, by the
same--he is represented sittin' on a rock in velvit
pantaloons.  Moses in the bullrushes--the bull very fine,
by Paul Potter.  The toilet of Venus, Fantaski.  Flemish
Bores drinking, Van Ginnums.  Jupiter and Europia, de
Horn.  The Grandjunction Canal, Venis, by Candleetty; and
Italian Bandix, by Slavata Rosa.'--And so this worthy
woman went on, from one room into another, from the blue
room to the green, and the green to the grand saloon, and
the grand saloon to the tapestry closet, cackling her
list of pictures and wonders: and furtively turning up a
corner of brown holland to show the colour of the old,
faded, seedy, mouldy, dismal hangings.

At last we came to her Ladyship's bed-room.  In the
centre of this dreary apartment there is a bed about the
size of one of those whizgig temples in which the Genius
appears in a pantomime.  The huge gilt edifice is
approached by steps, and so tall, that it might be let
off in floors, for sleeping-rooms for all the Carabas
family.  An awful bed!  A murder might be done at one end
of that bed, and people sleeping at the other end be
ignorant of it.  Gracious powers! fancy little Lord
Carabas in a nightcap ascending those steps after putting
out the candle!

The sight of that seedy and solitary splendour was too
much for me.  I should go mad were I that lonely
housekeeper--in those enormous galleries--in that lonely
library, filled up with ghastly folios that nobody dares
read, with an inkstand on the centre table like the
coffin of a baby, and sad portraits staring at you from
the bleak walls with their solemn Mouldy eyes.  No wonder
that Carabas does not come down here often.

It would require two thousand footmen to make the place
cheerful.  No wonder the coachman resigned his wig, that
the masters are insolvent, and the servants perish in
this huge dreary out-at-elbow place.

A single family has no more right to build itself a
temple of that sort than to erect a Tower of Babel.  Such
a habitation is not decent for a mere mortal man.  But,
after all, I suppose poor Carabas had no choice.  Fate
put him there as it sent Napoleon to St. Helena.  Suppose
it had been decreed by Nature that you and I should be
Marquises?  We wouldn't refuse, I suppose, but take
Castle Carabas and all, with debts, duns, and mean
makeshifts, and shabby pride, and swindling magnificence.

Next season, when I read of Lady Carabas's splendid
entertainments in the MORNING POST, and see the poor old
insolvent cantering through the Park--I shall have a much
tenderer interest in these great people than I have had
heretofore.  Poor old shabby Snob!  Ride on and fancy the
world is still on its knees before the house of Carabas!
Give yourself airs, poor old bankrupt Magnifico, who are
under money-obligations to your flunkeys; and must stoop
so as to swindle poor tradesmen!  And for us, O my
brother Snobs, oughtn't we to feel happy if our walk
through life is more even, and that we are out of the
reach of that surprising arrogance and that astounding
meanness to which this wretched old victim is obliged to
mount and descend.



CHAPTER XXIX

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Notable as my reception had been (under that unfortunate
mistake of Mrs. Ponto that I was related to Lord
Snobbington, which I was not permitted to correct), it
was nothing compared to the bowing and kotooing, the
raptures and flurry which preceded and welcomed the visit
of a real live lord and lord's son, a brother officer of
Cornet Wellesley Ponto, in the 120th Hussars, who came
over with the young Cornet from Guttlebury, where their
distinguished regiment was quartered.  This was my Lord
Gules, Lord Saltire's grandson and heir: a very young,
short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking nobleman, who
cannot have left the nursery very long, and who, though
he accepted the honest Major's invitation to the
Evergreens in a letter written in a school-boy
handwriting, with a number of faults of spelling, may yet
be a very fine classical scholar for what I know: having
had his education at Eton, where he and young Ponto were
inseparable.

At any rate, if he can't write, he has mastered a number
of other accomplishments wonderful for one of his age and
size.  He is one of the best shots and riders in England.
He rode his horse Abracadabra, and won the famous
Guttlebury steeple-chase.  He has horses entered at half
the races in the country (under other people's names; for
the old lord is a strict hand, and will not hear of
betting or gambling).  He has lost and won such sums of
money as my Lord George himself might be proud of.  He
knows all the stables, and all the jockeys, and has all
the 'information,' and is a match for the best Leg at
Newmarket.  Nobody was ever known to be 'too much' for
him at play or in the stable.

Although his grandfather makes him a moderate allowance,
by the aid of POST-OBITS and convenient friends he can
live in a splendour becoming his rank.  He has not
distinguished himself in the knocking down of policemen
much; he is not big enough for that.  But, as a light-
weight, his skill is of the very highest order.  At
billiards he is said to be first-rate.  He drinks and
smokes as much as any two of the biggest officers in his
regiment.  With such high talents, who can say how far he
may not go?  He may take to politics as a DELASSEMENT,
and be Prime Minister after Lord George Bentinck.

My young friend Wellesley Ponto is a gaunt and bony
youth, with a pale face profusely blotched.  From his
continually pulling something on his chin, I am led to
fancy that he believes he has what is called an Imperial
growing there.  That is not the only tuft that is hunted
in the family, by the way.  He can't, of course, indulge
in those expensive amusements which render his
aristocratic comrade so respected: he bets pretty freely
when he is in cash, and rides when somebody mounts him
(for he can't afford more than his regulation chargers).
At drinking he is by no means inferior; and why do you
think he brought his noble friend, Lord Gules, to the
Evergreens?--Why? because he intended to ask his mother
to order his father to pay his debts, which she couldn't
refuse before such an exalted presence.  Young Ponto gave
me all this information with the most engaging frankness.
We are old friends.  I used to tip him when he was at
school.

'Gad!': says he, 'our wedgment's so DOOTHID exthpenthif.
Must hunt, you know.  A man couldn't live in the wedgment
if he didn't.  Mess expenses enawmuth.  Must dine at
mess.  Must drink champagne and claret.  Ours ain't a
port and sherry light-infantry mess.  Uniform's awful.
Fitzstultz, our Colonel, will have 'em so.  Must be a
distinction you know.  At his own expense Fitzstultz
altered the plumes in the men's caps (you called them
shaving-brushes, Snob, my boy: most absurd and unjust
that attack of yours, by the way); that altewation alone
cotht him five hundred pound.  The year befaw latht he
horthed the wegiment at an immenthe expenthe, and we're
called the Queen'th Own Pyebalds from that day.  Ever
theen uth on pawade?  The Empewar Nicolath burtht into
tearth of envy when he thaw uth at Windthor.  And you
see,' continued my young friend, 'I brought Gules down
with me, as the Governor is very sulky about shelling
out, just to talk my mother over, who can do anything
with him.   Gules told her that I was Fitzstultz's
favourite of the whole regiment; and, Gad! she thinks the
Horse Guards will give me my troop for nothing, and he
humbugged the Governor that I was the greatest screw in
the army.  Ain't it a good dodge?'

With this Wellesley left me to go and smoke a cigar in
the stables with Lord Gules, and make merry over the
cattle there, under Stripes's superintendence.  Young
Ponto laughed with his friend, at the venerable four-
wheeled cruelty-chaise; but seemed amazed that the latter
should ridicule still more an ancient chariot of the
build of 1824, emblazoned immensely with the arme of the
Pontos and the Snaileys, from which latter distinguished
family Mrs. Ponto issued.

I found poor Pon in his study among his boots, in such a
rueful attitude of despondency, that I could not but
remark it.  'Look at that!' says the poor fellow, handing
me over a document.  'It's the second change in uniform
since he's been in the army, and yet there's no
extravagance about the lad.  Lord Gules tells me he is
the most careful youngster in the regiment, God bless
him! But look at that! by heaven, Snob, look at that and
say how can a man of nine hundred keep out of the Bench?'
He gave a sob as he handed me the paper across the table;
and his old face, and his old corduroys, and his shrunk
shooting-jacket, and his lean shanks, looked, as he
spoke, more miserably haggard, bankrupt, and threadbare.

LIEUT. WELLESLEY PONTO, 120TH	QUEEN'S OWN PYEBALD
HUSSARS,
TO KNOPF AND STECKNADEL,
CONDUIT STREET, LONDON.
                                                 L. s. d
Dress Jacket, richly laced with gold .          35  0  0
Ditto Pelisse ditto, and trimmed with sable . . 60  0  0
Undress Jacket, trimmed with gold               15 15  0
Ditto Pelisse . .                               30  0  0
Dress Pantaloons                                12  0  0
Ditto Overalls, gold lace on sides.              6  6  0
Undress ditto ditto.                             5  5  0
Blue Braided Frock                              14 14  0
Forage Cap . .                                   3  3  0
Dress Cap, gold lines, plume and chain . . .    25  0  0
Gold Barrelled Sash                             11 18  0
Sword . .                                       11 11  0
Ditto Belt and Sabretache ..                    16 16  0
Pouch and Belt.                                 15 15  0
SwordKnot ..                                     1  4  0
Cloak . ..                                      13 13  0
Valise . ..                                      3 13  6
Regulation Saddle .                              7 17  6
Ditto Bridle, complete . ..                     10 10  0
A Dress Housing, complete ..                    30  0  0
A pair of Pistols.                              10 10  0
A Black Sheepskin, edged. . .                    6 18  0
Total                                         L347  9  0

That evening Mrs. Ponto and her family made their darling
Wellesley give a full, true, and particular account of
everything that had taken place at Lord Fitzstultz's; how
many servants waited at dinner; and how the Ladies
Schneider dressed; and what his Royal Highness said when
he came down to shoot; and who was there? "What a
blessing that boy is to me!" said she, as my pimple-faced
young friend moved off to resume smoking operations with
Gules in the now vacant kitchen ;--and poor Ponto's
dreary and desperate look, shall I ever forget that?

O you parents and guardians!  O you men and women of
sense in England!  O you legislators about to assemble in
Parliament! read over that tailor's bill above printed,
read over that absurd catalogue of insane gimcracks and
madman's tomfoolery--and say how are you ever to get rid
of Snobbishness when society does so much for its
education?

Three hundred and forty pounds for a young chap's saddle
and breeches!  Before George, I would rather be a
Hottentot or a Highlander.  We laugh at poor Jocko, the
monkey, dancing in uniform; or at poor Jeames, the
flunkey, with his quivering calves and plush tights; or
at the nigger Marquis of Marmalade, dressed out with
sabre and epaulets, and giving himself the airs of a
field-marshal.  Lo! is not one of the Queen's Pyebalds,
in full fig, as great and foolish a monster?



CHAPTER XXX

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

At last came that fortunate day at the Evergreens, when I
was to be made acquainted with some of the 'county
families' with whom only people of Ponto's rank
condescended to associate.  And now, although poor Ponto
had just been so cruelly made to bleed on occasion of his
son's new uniform, and though he was in the direst and
most cut-throat spirits with an overdrawn account at the
banker's, and other pressing evils of poverty; although a
tenpenny bottle of Marsala and an awful parsimony
presided generally at his table, yet the poor fellow was
obliged to assume the most frank and jovial air of
cordiality; and all the covers being removed from the
hangings, and new dresses being procured for the young
ladies, and the family plate being unlocked and
displayed, the house and all within assumed a benevolent
and festive appearance.  The kitchen fires began to
blaze, the good wine ascended from the cellar, a
professed cook actually came over from Guttlebury to
compile culinary abominations.  Stripes was in a new
coat, and so was Ponto, for a wonder, and Tummus's
button-suit was worn EN PERMANENCE.

And all this to show off the little lord, thinks I.  All
this in honour of a stupid little cigarrified Cornet of
dragoons, who can barely write his name,--while an
eminent and profound moralist like--somebody--is fobbed
off with cold mutton and relays of pig.  Well, well: a
martyrdom of cold mutton is just bearable.  I pardon Mrs.
Ponto, from my heart I do, especially as I wouldn't turn
out of the best bed-room, in spite of all her hints; but
held my ground in the chintz tester, vowing that Lord
Gules, as a young man, was quite small and hardy enough
to make himself comfortable elsewhere.

The great Ponto party was a very august one.  The
Hawbucks came in their family coach, with the blood-red
band emblazoned all over it: and their man in yellow
livery waited in country fashion at table, only to be
exceeded in splendour by the Hipsleys, the opposition
baronet, in light blue.  The old Ladies Fitzague drove
over in their little old chariot with the fat black
horses, the fat coachman, the fat footman--(why are
dowagers' horses and footmen always fat?)  And soon after
these personages had arrived, with their auburn fronts
and red beaks and turbans, came the Honourable and
Reverend Lionel Pettipois, who with General and Mrs. Sago
formed the rest of the party.  'Lord and Lady Frederick
Howlet were asked, but they have friends at Ivybush,'
Mrs. Ponto told me; and that very morning, the
Castlehaggards sent an excuse, as her ladyship had a
return of the quinsy.  Between ourselves, Lady
Castlehaggard's quinsy always comes on when there is
dinner at the Evergreens.

If the keeping of polite company could make a woman
happy, surely my kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day
a happy woman.  Every person present (except the unlucky
impostor who pretended to a connexion with the
Snobbington Family, and General Sago, who had brought
home I don't know how many lacs of rupees from India,)
was related to the Peerage or the Baronetage.   Mrs. P.
had her heart's desire.  If she had been an Earl's
daughter herself could she have expected better company?-
-and her family were in the oil-trade at Bristol, as all
her friends very well know.

What I complained of in my heart was not the dining--
which, for this once, was plentiful and comfortable
enough--but the prodigious dulness of the talking part of
the entertainment.  O my beloved brother Snobs of the
City, if we love each other no better than our country
brethren, at least we amuse each other more; if we bore
ourselves, we are not called upon to go ten miles to do
it!

For instance, the Hipsleys came ten miles from the south,
and the Hawbucks ten miles from the north, of the
Evergreens; and were magnates in two different divisions
of the county of Mangelwurzelshire.  Hipsley, who is an
old baronet, with a bothered estate, did not care to show
his contempt for Hawbuck, who is a new creation, and
rich.  Hawbuck, on his part, gives himself patronizing
airs to General Sago, who looks upon the Pontos as little
better than paupers.  'Old Lady Blanche,' says Ponto, 'I
hope will leave something to her god-daughter--my second
girl--we've all of us half-poisoned ourselves with taking
her physic.'

Lady Blanche and Lady Rose Fitzague have, the first, a
medical, and the second a literary turn.  I am inclined
to believe the former had a wet COMPRESSE around her
body, on the occasion when I had the happiness of meeting
her.  She doctors everybody in the neighbourhood of which
she is the ornament; and has tried everything on her own
person.  She went into Court, and testified publicly her
faith in St. John Long: she swore by Doctor Buchan, she
took quantities of Gambouge's Universal Medicine, and
whole boxfuls of Parr's Life Pills.  She has cured a
multiplicity of headaches by Squinstone's Eye-snuff; she
wears a picture of Hahnemann in her bracelet and a lock
of Priessnitz's hair in a brooch.  She talked about her
own complaints and those of her CONFIDANTE for the time
being, to every lady in the room successively, from our
hostess down to Miss Wirt, taking them into corners, and
whispering about bronchitis, hepatitis, St. Vitus,
neuralgia, cephalalgia, and so forth.  I observed poor
fat Lady Hawbuck in a dreadful alarm after some
communication regarding the state of her daughter Miss
Lucy Hawbuck's health, and Mrs. Sago turned quite yellow,
and put down her third glass of Madeira, at a warning
glance from Lady Blanche.

Lady Rose talked literature, and about the book-club at
Guttlebury, and is very strong in voyages and travels.
She has a prodigious interest in Borneo, and displayed a
knowledge of the history of the Punjaub and Kaffirland
that does credit to her memory.  Old General Sago, who
sat perfectly silent and plethoric, roused up as from a
lethargy when the former country was mentioned, and gave
the company his story about a hog-hunt at Ramjugger.  I
observed her ladyship treated with something like
contempt her neighbour the Reverend Lionel Pettipois, a
young divine whom you may track through the country by
little 'awakening' books at half-a-crown a hundred, which
dribble out of his pockets wherever he goes.  I saw him
give Miss Wirt a sheaf of 'The Little Washer-woman on
Putney Common,' and to Miss Hawbuck a couple of dozen of
'Meat in the Tray; or the Young Butcher-boy Rescued;' and
on paying a visit to Guttlebury gaol, I saw two notorious
fellows waiting their trial there (and temporarily
occupied with a game of cribbage), to whom his Reverence
offered a tract as he was walking over Crackshins Common,
and who robbed him of his purse, umbrella, and cambric
handkerchief, leaving him the tracts to distribute
elsewhere.



CHAPTER XXXI

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Why, dear Mr. Snob,' said a young lady of rank and
fashion (to whom I present my best compliments), 'if you
found everything so SNOBBISH at the Evergreens, if the
pig bored you and the mutton was not to your liking, and
Mrs. Ponto was a humbug, and Miss Wirt a nuisance, with
her abominable piano practice,--why did you stay so
long?'

Ah, Miss, what a question!  Have you never heard of
gallant British soldiers storming batteries, of doctors
passing nights in plague wards of lazarettos, and other
instances of martyrdom?  What do you suppose induced
gentlemen to walk two miles up to the batteries of
Sabroan, with a hundred and fifty thundering guns bowling
them down by hundreds?--not pleasure, surely.  What
causes your respected father to quit his comfortable home
for his chambers, after dinner, and pore over the most
dreary law papers until long past midnight?,
Mademoiselle; duty, which must be done alike by military,
or legal, or literary gents.  There's a power of
martyrdom in our profession.

You won't believe it?  Your rosy lips assume a smile of
incredulity--a most naughty and odious expression in a
young lady's face.  Well, then, the fact is, that my
chambers, No. 24, Pump Court, Temple, were being painted
by the Honourable Society, and Mrs. Slamkin, my
laundress, having occasion to go into Durham to see her
daughter, who is married, and has presented her with the
sweetest little grandson--a few weeks could not be better
spent than in rusticating.  But ah, how delightful Pump
Court looked when I revisited its well-known chimney-
pots!  CARI LUOGHI.  Welcome, welcome, O fog and smut!

But if you think there is no moral in the foregoing
account of the Pontine family, you are, Madam, most
painfully mistaken.  In this very chapter we are going to
have the moral--why, the whole of the papers are nothing
BUT the moral, setting forth as they do the folly of
being a Snob.

You will remark that in the Country Snobography my poor
friend Ponto has been held up almost exclusively for the
public gaze--and why?  Because we went to no other house?
Because other families did not welcome us to their
mahogany?  No, no.  Sir John Hawbuck of the Haws, Sir
John Hipsley of Briary Hall, don't shut the gates of
hospitality: of General Sago's mulligatawny I could speak
from experience.  And the two old ladies at Guttlebury,
were they nothing?  Do you suppose that an agreeable
young dog, who shall be nameless, would not be made
welcome?  Don't you know that people are too glad to see
ANYBODY in the country?

But those dignified personages do not enter into the
scheme of the present work, and are but minor characters
of our Snob drama; just as, in the play, kings and
emperors are not half so important as many humble
persons.  The DOGE OF VENICE, for instance, gives way to
OTHELLO, who is but a nigger; and the KING OF FRANCE to
FALCONBRIDGE, who is a gentleman of positively no birth
at all.  So with the exalted characters above mentioned.
I perfectly well recollect that the claret at Hawbuck's
was not by any means so good as that of Hipsley's, while,
on the contrary, some white hermitage at the Haws (by the
way, the butler only gave me half a glass each time) was
supernacular.  And I remember the conversations.  O
Madam, Madam, how stupid they were!  The subsoil
ploughing; the pheasants and poaching; the row about the
representation of the county; the Earl of
Mangelwurzelshire being at variance with his relative and
nominee, the Honourable Marmaduke Tomnoddy; all these I
could put down, had I a mind to violate the confidence of
private life; and a great deal of conversation about the
weather, the Mangelwurzelshire Hunt, new manures, and
eating and drinking, of course.

But CUI BONO?  In these perfectly stupid and honourable
families there is not that Snobbishness which it is our
purpose to expose.  An ox is an ox--a great hulking, fat-
sided, bellowing, munching Beef.  He ruminates according
to his nature, and consumes his destined portion of
turnips or oilcake, until the time comes for his
disappearance from the pastures, to be succeeded by other
deep-lunged and fat-ribbed animals.  Perhaps we do not
respect an ox.  We rather acquiesce in him.  The Snob, my
dear Madam, is the Frog that tries to swell himself to ox
size.  Let us pelt the silly brute out of his folly.

Look, I pray you, at the case of my unfortunate friend
Ponto, a good-natured, kindly English gentleman--not
over-wise, but quite passable--fond of port-wine, of his
family, of country sports and agriculture, hospitably
minded, with as pretty a little patrimonial country-house
as heart can desire, and a thousand pounds a year.  It is
not much; but, ENTRE NOUS, people can live for less, and
not uncomfortably.

For instance, there is the doctor, whom Mrs. P. does not
condescend to visit: that man educates a mirific family,
and is loved by the poor for miles round: and gives them
port-wine for physic and medicine, gratis.  And how those
people can get on with their pittance, as Mrs. Ponto
says, is a wonder to HER.

Again, there is the clergyman, Doctor Chrysostom, --Mrs.
P. says they quarrelled about Puseyism, but I am given to
understand it was because Mrs. C. had the PAS of her at
the Haws--you may see what the value of his living is any
day in the 'Clerical Guide;' but you don't know what he
gives away.

Even Pettipois allows that, in whose eyes the Doctor's
surplice is a scarlet abomination; and so does Pettipois
do his duty in his way, and administer not only his
tracts and his talk, but his money and his means to his
people.  As a lord's son, by the way, Mrs. Ponto is
uncommonly anxious that he should marry EITHER of the
girls whom Lord Gules does not intend to choose.

Well, although Pon's income would make up almost as much
as that of these three worthies put together-- oh, my
dear Madam, see in what hopeless penury the poor fellow
lives!  What tenant can look to HIS forbearance?  What
poor man can hope for HIS charity?  'Master's the best of
men,' honest Stripes says, 'and when we was in the
ridgment a more free-handed chap didn't live.  But the
way in which Missus DU scryou, I wonder the young ladies
is alive, that I du!'

They live upon a fine governess and fine masters, and
have clothes made by Lady Carabas's own milliner; and
their brother rides with earls to cover; and only the
best people in the county visit at the Evergreens, and
Mrs. Ponto thinks herself a paragon of wives and mothers,
and a wonder of the world, for doing all this misery and
humbug, and snobbishness, on a thousand a year.

What an inexpressible comfort it was, my dear Madam, when
Stripes put my portmanteau in the four-wheeled chaise,
and (poor P on being touched with sciatica) drove me over
to 'Carabas Arms' at Guttlebury, where we took leave.
There were some bagmen there in the Commercial Room, and
one talked about the house he represented; and another
about his dinner, and a third about the Inns on the road,
and so forth--a talk, not very wise, but honest and to
the purpose--about as good as that of the country
gentlemen: and oh, how much pleasanter than listening to
Miss Wirt's show-pieces on the piano, and Mrs. Ponto's
genteel cackle about the fashion and the county families!



CHAPTER XXXII

SNOBBIUM GATHERUM

WHEN I see the great effect which these papers are
producing on an intelligent public, I have a strong hope
that before long we shall have a regular Snob department
in the newspapers, just as we have the Police Courts and
the Court News at present.  When a flagrant case of bone-
crushing or Poor-law abuse occurs in the world, who so
eloquent as THE TIMES to point it out?  When a gross
instance of Snobbishness happens, why should not the
indignant journalist call the public attention to that
delinquency too?

How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl
of Mangelwurzel and his brother be examined in the
Snobbish point of view?  Let alone the hectoring, the
bullying, the vapouring, the bad grammar, the mutual
recriminations, lie-givings, challenges, retractations,
which abound in the fraternal dispute--put out of the
question these points as concerning the individual
nobleman and his relative, with whose personal affairs we
have nothing to do--and consider how intimately corrupt,
how habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish
in a word, a whole county must be which can find no
better chiefs or leaders than these two gentlemen.  'We
don't want,' the great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems
to say, 'that a man should be able to write good grammar;
or that he should keep a Christian tongue in his head; or
that he should have the commonest decency of temper, or
even a fair share of good sense, in order to represent us
in Parliament.

All we require is, that a man should be recommended to us
by the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire.  And all that we
require of the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire is that he
should have fifty thousand a year and hunt the country.'
O you pride of all Snobland!  O you crawling, truckling,
self-confessed lackeys and parasites!

But this is growing too savage: don't let us forget our
usual amenity, and that tone of playfulness and sentiment
with which the beloved reader and writer have pursued
their mutual reflections hitherto.  Well, Snobbishness
pervades the little Social Farce as well as the great
State Comedy; and the self-same moral is tacked to
either.

There was, for instance, an account in the papers of a
young lady who, misled by a fortune-teller, actually went
part of the way to India (as far as Bagnigge Wells, I
think,) in search of a husband who was promised her
there.  Do you suppose this poor deluded little soul
would have left her shop for a man below her in rank, or
for anything but a darling of a Captain in epaulets and a
red coat.  It was her Snobbish sentiment that misled her,
and made her vanities a prey to the swindling fortune-
teller.

Case 2 was that of Mademoiselle de Saugrenue, 'the
interesting young Frenchwoman with a profusion of jetty
ringlets,' who lived for nothing at a boardinghouse at
Gosport, was then conveyed to Fareham gratis: and being
there, and lying on the bed of the good old lady her
entertainer, the dear girl took occasion to rip open the
mattress, and steal a cash-box, with which she fled to
London.  How would you account for the prodigious
benevolence exercised towards the interesting young
French lady?  Was it her jetty ringlets or her charming
face?--Bah!  Do ladies love others for having faces and
black hair?--she said SHE WAS A RELATION OF de Saugrenue:
talked of her ladyship her aunt, and of herself as a De
Saugrenue.  The honest boarding-house people were at her
feet at once.  Good, honest, simple, lord-loving children
of Snobland.

Finally, there was the case of 'the Right Honourable Mr.
Vernon,' at York.  The Right Honourable was the son of a
nobleman, and practised on an old lady.  He procured from
her dinners, money, wearing-apparel, spoons, implicit
credence, and an entire refit of linen.  Then he cast his
nets over a family of father, mother, and daughters, one
of whom he proposed to marry.  The father lent him money,
the mother made jams and pickles for him, the daughters
vied with each other in cooking dinners for the Right
Honourable--and what was the end?  One day the traitor
fled, with a teapot and a basketful of cold victuals.  It
was the 'Right Honourable' which baited the hook which
gorged all these greedy, simple Snobs.  Would they have
been taken in by a commoner?  What old lady is there, my
dear sir, who would take in you and me, were we ever so
ill to do, and comfort us, and clothe us, and give us her
money, and her silver forks?  Alas and alas! what mortal
man that speaks the truth can hope for such a landlady?
And yet, all these instances of fond and credulous
Snobbishness have occurred in the same week's paper, with
who knows how many score more?

Just as we had concluded the above remarks comes a pretty
little note sealed with a pretty little butterfly--
bearing a northern postmark--and to the following
effect:-

'19th November.

'Mr. Punch,--'Taking great interest in your Snob Papers,
we are very anxious to know under what class of that
respectable fraternity you would designate us.

'We are three sisters, from seventeen to twenty-two.  Our
father is HONESTLY AND TRULY of a very good family (you
will say it is Snobbish to mention that, but I wish to
state the plain fact); our maternal grandfather was an
Earl.' (1)

'We CAN afford to take in a stamped edition of YOU, and
all Dickens' works as fast as they come out, but we do
NOT keep such a thing as a PEERAGE or even a BARONETAGE
in the house.

'We live with every comfort, excellent cellar, &c. &c.;
but as we cannot well afford a butler, we have a neat
table-maid (though our father was a military man, has
travelled much, been in the best society, &c.)  We HAVE a
coachman and helper, but we don't put the latter into
buttons, nor make them wait at table, like Stripes and
Tummus.' (2)

'We are just the same to persons with a handle to their
name as to those without it.  We wear a moderate modicum
of crinoline, (3)and are never limp (4) in the morning.
We have good and abundant dinners on CHINA (though we
have plate (5), and just as good when alone as with
company.

'Now, my dear MR. PUNCH, will you PLEASE give us a short
answer in your next number, and I will be SO much obliged
to you.  Nobody knows we are writing to you, not even our
father; nor will we ever tease (6) you again if you will
only give us an answer--just for FUN, now do!

'If you get as far as this, which is doubtful, you will
probably fling it into the fire.  If you do, I cannot
help it; but I am of a sanguine disposition, and
entertain a lingering hope.  At all events, I shall be
impatient for next Sunday, for you reach us on that day,
and I am ashamed to confess, we CANNOT resist opening you
in the carriage driving home from church. (7)

'I remain, &c. &c., for myself and sisters.

Excuse this scrawl, but I always write headlong. (8)

'P. S.--You were rather stupid last week, don't you
think? (9)  We keep no gamekeeper, and yet have always
abundant game for friends to shoot, in spite of the
poachers.  We never write on perfumed paper--in short, I
can't help thinking that if you knew us you would not
think us Snobs.'

To this I reply in the following manner:--'My dear young
ladies, I know your post-town: and shall be at church
there the Sunday AFTER next; when, will you please to
wear a tulip or some little trifle in your bonnets, so
that I may know you?  You will recognize me and my dress-
-a quiet-looking young fellow, in a white top-coat, a
crimson satin neckcloth, light blue trousers, with glossy
tipped boots, and an emerald breast-pin.  I shall have a
black crape round my white hat; and my usual bamboo cane
with the richly-gilt knob.  I am sorry there will be no
time to get up moustaches between now and next week.

'From seventeen to two-and-twenty!  Ye gods! what ages!
Dear young creatures, I can see you all three.  Seventeen
suits me, as nearest my own time of life; but mind, I
don't say two-and-twenty is too old.  No, no.  And that
pretty, roguish, demure, middle one.  Peace, peace, thou
silly little fluttering heart!

'YOU Snobs, dear young ladies!  I will pull any man's
nose who says so.  There is no harm in being of a good
family.  You can't help it, poor dears.  What's in a
name?  What is in a handle to it?  I confess openly that
I should not object to being a Duke myself; and between
ourselves you might see a worse leg for a garter.

'YOU Snobs, dear little good-natured things, no that is,
I hope not--I think not--I won't be too confident--none
of us should be--that we are not Snobs.  That very
confidence savours of arrogance, and to be arrogant is to
be a Snob.  In all the social gradations from sneak to
tyrant, nature has placed a most wondrous and various
progeny of Snobs.  But are there no kindly natures, no
tender hearts, no souls humble, simple, and truth-loving?
Ponder well on this question, sweet young ladies.  And if
you can answer it, as no doubt you can--lucky are you--
and lucky the respected Herr Papa, and lucky the three
handsome young gentlemen who are about to become each
others' brothers-in-law.'


(1) The introduction of Grandpapa, is I fear, Snobbish.

(2) That is, as you like.  I don't object to buttons in
moderation.

(3) Quite right.

(4) Bless you!

(5) Snobbish; and I doubt whether you ought to dine as
well alone as with company.  You will be getting too good
dinners.

(6) We like to be teased; but tell Papa.

(7) O garters and stars! what will Captain Gordon and
Exeter Hall say to this?

(8) Dear little enthusiast!

(9) You were never more mistaken, miss, in your life.



CHAPTER XXXIII

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

Everybody of the middle rank who walks through this life
with a sympathy for his companions on the same journey--
at any rate, every man who has been jostling in the world
for some three or four lustres--must make no end of
melancholy reflections upon the fate of those victims
whom Society, that is, Snobbishness, is immolating every
day.  With love and simplicity and natural kindness
Snobbishness is perpetually at war.  People dare not be
happy for fear of Snobs.  People dare not love for fear
of Snobs.  People pine away lonely under the tyranny of
Snobs.  Honest kindly hearts dry up and die.  Gallant
generous lads, blooming with hearty youth, swell into
bloated old-bachelorhood, and burst and tumble over.
Tender girls wither into shrunken decay, and perish
solitary, from whom Snobbishness has cut off the common
claim to happiness and affection with which Nature
endowed us all.  My heart grows sad as I see the
blundering tyrant's handiwork.  As I behold it I swell
with cheap rage, and glow with fury against the Snob.
Come down, I say, thou skulking dulness!  Come down, thou
stupid bully, and give up thy brutal ghost!  And I arm
myself with the sword and spear, and taking leave of my
family, go forth to do battle with that hideous ogre and
giant, that brutal despot in Snob Castle, who holds so
many gentle hearts in torture and thrall.

When PUNCH is king, I declare there shall be no such
thing as old maids and old bachelors.  The Reverend Mr.
Malthus shall be burned annually, instead of Guy Fawkes.
Those who don't marry shall go into the workhouse.  It
shall be a sin for the poorest not to have a pretty girl
to love him.

The above reflections came to mind after taking a walk
with an old comrade, Jack Spiggot by name, who is just
passing into the state of old-bachelorhood, after the
manly and blooming youth in which I remember him.  Jack
was one of the handsomest fellows in England when we
entered together in the Highland Buffs; but I quitted the
Cuttykilts early, and lost sight of him for many years.

Ah! how changed he is from those days!  He wears a
waistband now, and has begun to dye his whiskers.  His
cheeks, which were red, are now mottled; his eyes, once
so bright and steadfast, are the colour of peeled
plovers' eggs.

'Are you married, Jack?' says I, remembering how
consumedly in love he was with his cousin Letty Lovelace,
when the Cuttykilts were quartered at Strathbungo some
twenty years ago.

'Married? no,' says he.  'Not money enough.  Hard enough
to keep myself, much more a family, on five hundred a
year.  Come to Dickinson's; there's some of the best
Madeira in London there, my boy.'  So we went and talked
over old times.  The bill for dinner and wine consumed
was prodigious, and the quantity of brandy-and-water that
Jack took showed what a regular boozer he was.  'A guinea
or two guineas.  What the devil do I care what I spend
for my dinner?' says he.

'And Letty Lovelace?' says I.

Jack's countenance fell.  However, he burst into a loud
laugh presently.  'Letty Lovelace!' says he.  'She's
Letty Lovelace still; but Gad, such a wizened old woman!
She's as thin as a thread-paper; (you remember what a
figure she had:) her nose has got red, and her teeth
blue.  She's always ill; always quarrelling with the rest
of the family; always psalm-singing, and always taking
pills.  Gad, I had a rare escape THERE.  Push round the
grog, old boy.'

Straightway memory went back to the days when Letty was
the loveliest of blooming young creatures: when to hear
her sing was to make the heart jump into your throat;
when to see her dance, was better than Montessu or Noblet
(they were the Ballet Queens of those days); when Jack
used to wear a locket of her hair, with a little gold
chain round his neck, and, exhilarated with toddy, after
a sederunt of the Cuttykilt mess, used to pull out this
token, and kiss it, and howl about it, to the great
amusement of the bottle-nosed old Major and the rest of
the table.

'My father and hers couldn't put their horses together,'
Jack said.  'The General wouldn't come down with more
than six thousand.  My governor said it shouldn't be done
under eight.  Lovelace told him to go and be hanged, and
so we parted company.  They said she was in a decline.
Gammon!  She's forty, and as tough and as sour as this
bit of lemon-peel.  Don't put much into your punch, Snob
my boy.  No man CAN stand punch after wine.'

'And what are your pursuits, Jack?' says I.

'Sold out when the governor died.  Mother lives at Bath.
Go down there once a year for a week.  Dreadful slow.
Shilling whist.  Four sisters --all unmarried except the
youngest--awful work.  Scotland in August.  Italy in the
winter.  Cursed rheumatism.  Come to London in March, and
toddle about at the Club, old boy; and we won't go home
till maw-aw-rning till daylight does appear.

'And here's the wreck of two lives!' mused the present
Snobographer, after taking leave of Jack Spiggot.
'Pretty merry Letty Lovelace's rudder lost and she cast
away, and handsome Jack Spiggot stranded on the shore
like a drunken Trinculo.'

What was it that insulted Nature (to use no higher name),
and perverted her kindly intentions towards them?  What
cursed frost was it that nipped the love that both were
bearing, and condemned the girl to sour sterility, and
the lad to selfish old-bachelorhood?  It was the infernal
Snob tyrant who governs us all, who
says, 'Thou shalt not love without a lady's maid; thou
shalt not marry without a carriage and horses; thou shalt
have no wife in thy heart, and no children on thy knee,
without a page in buttons and a French BONNE; thou shalt
go to the devil unless thou hast a brougham; marry poor,
and society shall forsake thee; thy kinsmen shall avoid
thee as a criminal; thy aunts and uncles shall turn up
their eyes and bemoan the sad, sad manner in which Tom or
Harry has thrown himself away.'  You, young woman, may
sell yourself without shame, and marry old Croesus; you,
young man, may lie away your heart and your life for a
jointure.  But if 'you are poor, woe be to you!  Society,
the brutal Snob autocrat, consigns you to solitary
perdition.  Wither, poor girl, in your garret; rot, poor
bachelor, in your Club.

When I see those graceless recluses--those unnatural
monks and nuns of the order of St. Beelzebub, (1) my
hatred for Snobs, and their worship, and their idols,
passes all continence.  Let us hew down that man-eating
Juggernaut, I say, that hideous Dagon; and I glow with
the heroic courage of Tom Thumb, and join battle with the
giant Snob.

(1) This, of course, is understood to apply only to those
unmarried persons whom a mean and Snobbish fear about
money has kept from fulfilling their natural destiny.
Many persons there are devoted to celibacy because they
cannot help it.  Of these a man would be a brute who
spoke roughly.  Indeed, after Miss O'Toole's conduct to
the writer, he would be the last to condemn.  But never
mind, these are personal matters.



CHAPTER XXXIV

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

In that noble romance called 'Ten Thousand a Year,' I
remember a profoundly pathetic description of the
Christian manner in which the hero, Mr. Aubrey, bore his
misfortunes.  After making a display of the most florid
and grandiloquent resignation, and quitting his country
mansion, the writer supposes Aubrey to come to town in a
post-chaise and pair, sitting bodkin probably between his
wife and sister.  It is about seven o'clock, carriages
are rattling about, knockers are thundering, and tears
bedim the fine eyes of Kate and Mrs. Aubrey as they think
that in happier times at this hour--their Aubrey used
formerly to go out to dinner to the houses of the
aristocracy his friends.  This is the gist of the
passage--the elegant words I forget.  But the noble,
noble sentiment I shall always cherish and remember.
What can be more sublime than the notion of a great man's
relatives in tears about ---his dinner?  With a few
touches, what author ever more happily described A Snob?

We were reading the passage lately at the house of my
friend, Raymond Gray, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, an
ingenuous youth without the least practice, but who has
luckily a great share of good spirits, which enables him
to bide his time, and bear laughingly his humble position
in the world.  Meanwhile, until it is altered, the stern
laws of necessity and the expenses of the Northern
Circuit oblige Mr. Gray to live in a very tiny mansion in
a very queer small square in the airy neighbourhood of
Gray's Inn Lane.

What is the more remarkable is, that Gray has a wife
there.  Mrs. Gray was a Miss Harley Baker: and I suppose
I need not say THAT is a respectable family.  Allied to
the Cavendishes, the Oxfords, the Marrybones, they still,
though rather DECHUS from their original splendour, hold
their heads as high as any.  Mrs. Harley Baker, I know,
never goes to church without John behind to carry her
prayer-book; nor will Miss Welbeck, her sister, walk
twenty yards a-shopping without the protection of Figby,
her sugar-loaf page; though the old lady is as ugly as
any woman in the parish and as tall and whiskery as a
grenadier.  The astonishment is, how Emily Harley Baker
could have stooped to marry Raymond Gray.  She, who was
the prettiest and proudest of the family; she, who
refused Sir Cockle Byles, of the Bengal Service; she, who
turned up her little nose at Essex Temple, Q.C., and
connected with the noble house of Albyn; she, who had but
4,000L. POUR TOUT POTAGE, to marry a man who had scarcely
as much more.  A scream of wrath and indignation was
uttered by the whole family when they heard of this
MESALLIANCE.  Mrs. Harley Baker never speaks of her
daughter now but with tears in her eyes, and as a ruined
creature.  Miss Welbeck says, 'I consider that man a
villain;' and has denounced poor good-natured Mrs.
Perkins as a swindler, at whose ball the young people met
for the first time.

Mr. and Mrs. Gray, meanwhile, live in Gray's Inn Lane
aforesaid, with a maid-servant and a nurse, whose hands
are very full, and in a most provoking and unnatural
state of happiness.  They have never once thought of
crying about their dinner, like the wretchedly puling and
Snobbish womankind of my favourite Snob Aubrey, of 'Ten
Thousand a Year;' but, on the contrary, accept such
humble victuals as fate awards them with a most perfect
and thankful good grace--nay, actually have a portion for
a hungry friend at times--as the present writer can
gratefully testify.

I was mentioning these dinners, and some admirable lemon
puddings which Mrs. Gray makes, to our mutual friend the
great Mr. Goldmore, the East India Director, when that
gentleman's face assumed an expression of almost
apoplectic terror, and he gasped out, 'What!  Do they
give dinners?'  He seemed to think it a crime and a
wonder that such people should dine at all, and that it
was their custom to huddle round their kitchen-fire over
a bone and a crust.  Whenever he meets them in society,
it is a matter of wonder to him (and he always expresses
his surprise very loud) how the lady can appear decently
dressed, and the man have an unpatched coat to his back.
I have heard him enlarge upon this poverty before the
whole room at the 'Conflagrative Club,' to which he and I
and Gray have the honour to belong.

We meet at the Club on most days.  At half-past four,
Goldmore arrives in St. James's Street, from the City,
and you may see him reading the evening papers in the
bow-window of the Club, which enfilades Pall Mall--a
large plethoric man, with a bunch of seals in a large
bow-windowed light waistcoat.  He has large coat-tails,
stuffed with agents' letters and papers about companies
of which he is a Director.  His seals jingle as he walks.
I wish I had such a man for an uncle, and that he himself
were childless.  I would love and cherish him, and be
kind to him.

At six o'clock in the full season, when all the world is
in St. James's Street, and the carriages are cutting in
and out among the cabs on the stand, and the tufted
dandies are showing their listless faces out of
'White's,' and you see respectable grey-headed gentlemen
waggling their heads to each other through the plate-
glass windows of 'Arthur's:' and the red-coats wish to be
Briareian, so as to hold all the gentlemen's horses; and
that wonderful red-coated royal porter is sunning himself
before Marlborough House;--at the noon of London time,
you see a light-yellow carriage with black horses, and a
coachman in a tight floss-silk wig, and two footmen in
powder and white and yellow liveries, and a large woman
inside in shot-silk, a poodle, and a pink parasol, which
drives up to the gate of the Conflagrative, and the page
goes and says to Mr. Goldmore (who is perfectly aware of
the fact, as he is looking out of the windows with about
forty other
'Conflagrative' bucks), 'Your carriage, Sir.'  G. wags
his head.  'Remember, eight o'clock precisely,' says he
to Mulligatawney, the other East India Director; and,
ascending the carriage, plumps down by the side of Mrs.
Goldmore for a drive in the Park, and then home to
Portland Place.  As the carriage whirls off, all the
young bucks in the Club feel a secret elation.  It is a
part of their establishment, as it were.  That carriage
belongs to their Club, and their Club belongs to them.
They follow the equipage with interest; they eye it
knowingly as they see it in the Park.  But halt! we are
not come to the Club Snobs yet.  O my brave Snobs, what a
flurry there will be among you when those papers appear!

Well, you may judge, from the above description, what
sort of a man Goldmore is.  A dull and pompous Leadenhall
Street Croesus, good-natured withal, and affable--cruelly
affable.  'Mr. Goldmore can never forget,' his lady used
to say, 'that it was Mrs. Gray's Grandfather who sent him
to India; and though that young woman has made the most
imprudent marriage in the world, and has left her station
in society, her husband seems an ingenious and laborious
young man, and we shall do everything in our power to be
of use to him.'  So they used to ask the Grays to dinner
twice or thrice in a season, when, by way of increasing
the kindness, Buff, the butler, is ordered to hire a fly
to convey them to and from Portland Place.

Of course I am much too good-natured a friend of both
parties not to tell Gray of Goldmore's opinion in him,
and the nabob's astonishment at the of the briefless
barrister having any dinner at all.  Indeed, Goldmore's
saying became a joke against Gray amongst us wags at the
Club, and we used to ask him when he tasted meat last?
whether we should bring him home something from dinner?
and cut a thousand other mad pranks with him in our
facetious way.

One day, then, coming home from the Club, Mr. Gray
conveyed to his wife the astounding information that he
had asked Goldmore to dinner.

'My love,' says Mrs. Gray, in a tremor, 'how could you be
so cruel?  Why, the dining-room won't hold Mrs.
Goldmore.'

'Make your mind easy, Mrs. Gray; her ladyship is in
Paris.  It is only Croesus that's coming, and we are
going to the play afterwards--to Sadler's Wells.
Goldmore said at the Club that he thought Shakspeare was
a great dramatic poet, and ought to be patronized;
whereupon, fired with enthusiasm, I invited him to our
banquet.'

'Goodness gracious! what CAN we give him for dinner?  He
has two French cooks; you know Mrs. Goldmore is always
telling us about them; and he dines with Aldermen every
day.'

'"A plain leg of mutton, my Lucy,
I prythee get ready at three;
Have it tender, and smoking, and juicy,
And what better meat can there be?"'

says Gray, quoting my favourite poet.

'But the cook is ill; and you know that horrible Pattypan
the pastrycook's ---'

'Silence, Frau!' says Gray, in a deep tragedy voice.  'I
will have the ordering of this repast.  Do all things as
I bid thee.  Invite our friend Snob here to partake of
the feast.  Be mine the task of procuring it.'

'Don't be expensive, Raymond,' says his wife.

'Peace, thou timid partner of the briefless one.
Goldmore's dinner shall be suited to our narrow means.
Only do thou in all things my commands.'  And seeing by
the peculiar expression of the rogue's countenance, that
some mad waggery was in preparation, I awaited the morrow
with anxiety.



CHAPTER XXXV

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

Punctual to the hour--(by the way, I cannot omit to mark
down my hatred, scorn, and indignation towards those
miserable Snobs who come to dinner at nine when they are
asked at eight, in order to make a sensation in the
company.  May the loathing of honest folks, the
backbiting of others, the curses of cooks, pursue these
wretches, and avenge the society on which they trample!)-
-Punctual, I say, to the hour of five, which Mr. and Mrs.
Raymond Gray had appointed, a youth of an elegant
appearance, in a neat evening-dress, whose trim whiskers
indicated neatness, whose light step denoted activity
(for in sooth he was hungry, and always is at the dinner
hour, whatsoever that hour may be), and whose rich golden
hair, curling down his shoulders, was set off by a
perfectly new four-and-ninepenny silk hat, was seen
wending his way down Bittlestone Street, Bittlestone
Square, Gray's Inn.  The person in question, I need not
say, was Mr. Snob.  HE was never late when invited to
dine.  But to proceed my narrative:--

Mr. Snob may have flattered himself that he made a
sensation as he strutted down Bittlestone with his richly
gilt knobbed cane (and indeed I vow I saw heads looking
at me from Miss Squilsby's, the brass-plated milliner
opposite Raymond Gray's, who has three silver-paper
bonnets, and two fly-blown prints of fashion in the
window), yet what was the emotion produced by my arrival,
compared to that which the little street thrilled, when
at five minutes past five the floss-wigged coachman, the
yellow hammer-cloth and flunkeys, the black horses and
blazing silver harness of Mr. Goldmore whirled down the
street!

It is a very little street, of very little houses, most
of them with very large brass plates like Miss
Squilsby's.  Coal-merchants, architects and surveyors,
two surgeons, a solicitor, a dancing-master, and of
course several house-agents, occupy the houses--little
two-storeyed edifices with little stucco porticoes.
Goldmore's carriage overtopped the roofs almost; the
first floors might shake hands with Croesus as he lolled
inside; all the windows of those first floors thronged
with children and women in a twinkling.  There was Mrs.
Hammerly in curl-papers; Mrs. Saxby with her front awry;
Mr. Wriggles peering through the gauze curtains, holding
the while his hot glass of rum-and-water--in fine, a
tremendous commotion in Bittlestone Street, as the
Goldmore carriage drove up to Mr. Raymond Gray's door.

'How kind it is of him to come with BOTH the footmen!'
says little Mrs. Gray, peeping at the vehicle too.  The
huge domestic, descending from his perch, gave a rap at
the door which almost drove in the building.  All the
heads were out; the sun was shining; the very organ-boy
paused; the footman, the coach, and Goldmore's red face
and white waistcoat were blazing in splendour.  The
herculean plushed one went back to open the carriage-
door.

Raymond Gray opened his--in his shirt-sleeves.  He ran up
to the carriage.  'Come in, Goldmore,' says he; 'just in
time, my boy.  Open the door, What-d'ye-call'um, and let
your master out,'--and What-d'ye-call'um obeyed
mechanically, with a face of wonder and horror, only to
be equalled by the look of stupefied astonishment which
ornamented the purple countenance of his master.

'Wawt taim will you please have the CAGE, sir?' says
What-d'ye-call'um, in that peculiar, unspellable,
inimitable, flunkefied pronunciation which forms one of
the chief charms of existence.

Best have it to the theatre at night,' Gray exclaims; 'it
is but a step from here to the Wells, and we can walk
there.  I've got tickets for all.  Be at Sadler's Wells
at eleven.'

'Yes, at eleven,' exclaims Goldmore, perturbedly, and
walks with a flurried step into the house, as if he were
going to execution (as indeed he was, with that wicked
Gray as a Jack Ketch over him).  The carriage drove away,
followed by numberless eyes from doorsteps and balconies;
its appearance is still a wonder in Bittlestone Street.

'Go in there, and amuse yourself with Snob,' says Gray,
opening the little drawing-room door.  'I'll call out as
soon as the chops are ready.  Fanny's below, seeing to
the pudding.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Goldmore to me, quite
confidentially, 'how could he ask us?  I really had no
idea of this--this utter destitution.'

'Dinner, dinner!' roars out Gray, from the diningroom,
whence issued a great smoking and frying; and entering
that apartment we find Mrs. Gray ready to receive us, and
looking perfectly like a Princess who, by some accident,
had a bowl of potatoes in her hand, which vegetables she
placed on the table.  Her husband 'was meanwhile cooking
mutton-chops on a gridiron over the fire.

Fanny has made the roly-poly pudding,' says he; the chops
are my part.  Here's a fine one; try this, Goldmore.'
And he popped a fizzing cutlet on that gentleman's plate.
What words, what notes of exclamation can describe the
nabob's astonishment?

The tablecloth was a very old one, darned in a score
places.  There was mustard in a teacup, a silver fork for
Goldmore--all ours were iron.

"I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth,' says
Gray, gravely.  'That fork is the only one we have.
Fanny has it generally.'

'Raymond!'- cries Mrs. Gray, with an imploring face.
'She was used to better things, you know: and I hope one
day to get her a dinner-service.  I'm told the electro-
plate is uncommonly good.  Where the deuce IS that boy
with the beer?  And now,' said he, springing up, 'I'll be
a gentleman.'  And so he put on his coat, and sat down
quite gravely, with four fresh mutton-chops which he had
by this time broiled.

'We don t have meat every day, Mr. Goldmore,' he
continued, 'and it's a treat to me to get a dinner like
this.  You little know, you gentlemen of England, who
live at home at ease, what hardships briefless barristers
endure.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Mr. Goldmore.

'Where's the half-and-half?  Fanny, go over to the 'Keys'
and get the beer.  Here's sixpence.'  And what was our
astonishment when Fanny got up as if to go!

'Gracious mercy! let ME,' cries Goldmore.

'Not for worlds, my dear sir.  She's used to it.  They
wouldn't serve you as well as they serve her.  Leave her
alone.  Law bless you!' Raymond said, with astounding
composure.  And Mrs. Gray left the room, and actually
came back with a tray on which there was a pewter flagon
of beer.  Little Polly (to whom, at her christening, I
had the honour of presenting a silver mug EX OFFICIO)
followed with a couple of tobacco-pipes, and the queerest
roguish look in her round little chubby face.

'Did you speak to Tapling about the gin, Fanny, my dear?'
Gray asked, after bidding Polly put the pipes on the
chimney-piece, which that little person had some
difficulty in reaching.  'The last was turpentine, and
even your brewing didn't make good punch of it.'

'You would hardly suspect, Goldmore, that my wife, a
Harley Baker, would ever make gin-punch?  I think my
mother-in-law would commit suicide if she saw her.'

'Don't be always laughing at mamma, Raymond,' says Mrs.
Gray.

'Well, well, she wouldn't die, and I DON'T wish she
would.  And you don't make gin-punch, and you don't like
it either and--Goldmore do you drink your beer out of the
glass, or out of the pewter?'

'Gracious mercy!' ejaculates Croesus once more, as little
Polly, taking the pot with both her little bunches of
hands, offers it, smiling, to that astonished Director.

And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was
presently ended in a similar fashion.  Gray pursued his
unfortunate guest with the most queer and outrageous
description of his struggles, misery, and poverty.  He
described how he cleaned the knives when they were first
married; and how he used to drag the children in a little
cart; how his wife could toss pancakes; and what parts of
his dress she made.  He told Tibbits, his clerk (who was
in fact the functionary who had brought the beer from the
public-house, which Mrs. Fanny had fetched from the
neighbouring apartment)--to fetch 'the bottle of port-
wine,' when the dinner was over; and told Goldmore as
wonderful a history about the way in which that bottle of
wine had come into his hands as any of his former stories
had been.  When the repast was all over, and it was near
time to move to the play, and Mrs. Gray had retired, and
we were sitting ruminating rather silently over the last
glasses of the port, Gray suddenly breaks the silence by
slapping Goldmore on the shoulder, and saying, 'Now,
Goldmore, tell me something.'

'What?' asks Croesus.

'Haven't you had a good dinner?'

Goldmore started, as if a sudden truth had just dawned
upon him.  He HAD had a good dinner; and didn't know it
until then.  The three mutton-chops consumed by him were
best of the mutton kind; the potatoes were perfect of
their order; as for the rolypoly, it was too good.  The
porter was frothy and cool, and the port-wine was worthy
of the gills of a bishop.  I speak with ulterior views;
for there is more in Gray's cellar.

'Well,' says Goldmore, after a pause, during which he
took time to consider the momentous question Gray put to
him--' 'Pon my word--now you say so--I--I have--I really
have had a monsous good dinnah-- monsous good, upon my
ward!  Here's your health, Gray my boy, and your amiable
lady; and when Mrs. Goldmore comes back, I hope we shall
see you more in Portland Place.'  And with this the time
came for the play, and we went to see Mr. Phelps at
Sadler's Wells.  The best of this story (for the truth of
every word of which I pledge my honour) is, that after
this banquet, which Goldmore enjoyed so, the honest
fellow felt a prodigious compassion and regard for the
starving and miserable giver of the feast, and determined
to help him in his profession.  And being a Director of
the newly-established Antibilious Life Assurance Company,
he has had Gray appointed Standing Counsel, with a pretty
annual fee; and only yesterday, in an appeal from Bombay
(Buckmuckjee Bobbachee v. Ramchowder-Bahawder) in the
Privy Council, Lord Brougham complimented Mr. Gray, who
was in the case, on his curious and exact knowledge of
the Sanscrit language.

Whether he knows Sanscrit or not, I can't say; but
Goldmore got him the business; and so I cannot help
having a lurking regard for that pompous old Bigwig.



CHAPTER XXXVI

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

'We Bachelors in Clubs are very much obliged to you,"
says my old school and college companion, Essex Temple,
'for the opinion which you hold of us.  You call us
selfish, purple-faced, bloated, and other pretty names.
You state, in the simplest possible terms, that we shall
go to the deuce.  You bid us rot in loneliness, and deny
us all claims to honesty, conduct, decent Christian life.
Who are you, Mr. Snob, to judge us.  Who are you, with
your infernal benevolent smirk and grin, that laugh at
all our generation?

'I will tell you my case,' says Essex Temple; 'mine and
my sister Polly's, and you may make what you like of it;
and sneer at old maids, and bully old bachelors, if you
will.

'I will whisper to you confidentially that my sister was
engaged to Serjeant Shirker--a fellow whose talents one
cannot deny, and be hanged to them, but whomwhom I have
always known to be mean, selfish, and a prig.  However,
women don't see these faults in the men whom Love throws
in their way.  Shirker, who has about as much warmth as
an eel, made up to Polly years and years ago, and was no
bad match for a briefless barrister, as he was then.

Have you ever read Lord Eldon's Life?  Do you remember
how the sordid old Snob narrates his going out to
purchase twopence-worth of sprats, which he and Mrs.
Scott fried between them?  And how he parades his
humility, and exhibits his miserable poverty--he who, at
that time, must have been making a thousand pounds a
year?  Well, Shirker was just as proud of his prudence--
just as thankful for his own meanness, and of course
would not marry without a competency.  Who so honourable?
Polly waited, and waited faintly, from year to year.  HE
wasn't sick at heart; HIS passion never disturbed his six
hours' sleep, or kept his ambition out of mind.  He would
rather have hugged an attorney any day than have kissed
Polly, though she was one of the prettiest creatures in
the world; and while she was pining alone upstairs,
reading over the stock of half-a-dozen frigid letters
that the confounded prig had condescended to write to
her, HE, be sure, was never busy with anything but his
briefs in chambers--always frigid, rigid, self-satisfied,
and at his duty.  The marriage trailed on year after
year, while Mr. Serjeant Shirker grew to be the famous
lawyer he is.

'Meanwhile, my younger brother, Pump Temple, who was in
the 120th Hussars, and had the same little patrimony
which fell to the lot of myself and Polly, must fall in
love with our cousin, Fanny Figtree, and marry her out of
hand.  You should have seen the wedding!  Six bridesmaids
in pink, to hold the fan, bouquet, gloves, scent-bottle,
and pocket-handkerchief of the bride; basketfuls of white
favours in the vestry, to be pinned on to the footmen and
horses; a genteel congregation of curious acquaintance in
the pews, a shabby one of poor on the steps; all the
carriages of all our acquaintance, whom Aunt Figtree had
levied for the occasion; and of course four horses for
Mr. Pump's bridal vehicle.

'Then comes the breakfast, or DEJEUNER, if you please,
with a brass band in the street, and policemen to keep
order.  The happy bridegroom spends about a year's income
in dresses for the bridesmaids and pretty presents; and
the bride must have a TROUSSEAU of laces, satins, jewel-
boxes and tomfoolery, to make her fit to be a
lieutenant's wife.  There was no hesitation about Pump.
He flung about his money as if it had been dross; and
Mrs. P. Temple, on the horse Tom Tiddler, which her
husband gave her, was the most dashing of military women
at Brighton or Dublin.

How old Mrs. Figtree used to bore me and Polly with
stories of Pump's grandeur and the noble company he kept!
Polly lives with the Figtrees, as I am not rich enough to
keep a home for her.

'Pump and I have always been rather distant.  Not having
the slightest notions about horseflesh, he has a natural
contempt for me; and in our mother's lifetime, when the
good old lady was always paying his debts and petting
him, I'm not sure there was not a little jealousy.  It
used to be Polly that kept the peace between us.

'She went to Dublin to visit Pump, and brought back grand
accounts of his doings--gayest man about town--Aide-de-
Camp to the Lord-Lieutenant--Fanny admired everywhere--
Her Excellency godmother to the second boy: the eldest
with a string of aristocratic Christian-names that made
the grandmother wild with delight.  Presently Fanny and
Pump obligingly came to London, where the third was born.

'Polly was godmother to this, and who so loving as she
and Pump now?  "Oh, Essex," says she to me, "he is so
good, so generous, so fond of his family; so
handsome; who can help loving him, and pardoning his
little errors?"  One day, while Mrs. Pump was yet in the
upper regions, and Doctor Fingerfee's brougham
at her door every day, having business at Guildhall, whom
should I meet in Cheapside but Pump and Polly?  The poor
girl looked more happy and rosy
than I have seen her these twelve years.  Pump, on the
contrary, was rather blushing and embarrassed.

'I couldn't be mistaken in her face and its look of
mischief and triumph.  She had been committing some act
of sacrifice.  I went to the family stockbroker.  She had
sold out two thousand pounds that morning and given them
to Pump.  Quarrelling was useless--Pump had the money; he
was off to Dublin by the time I reached his mother's, and
Polly radiant still.  He was going to make his fortune;
he was going to embark the money in the Bog of Allen--I
don't know what.  The fact is, he was going to pay his
losses upon the last Manchester steeple-chase, and I
leave you to imagine how much principal or interest poor
Polly ever saw back again.

'It was more than half her fortune, and he has had
another thousand since from her.  Then came efforts to
stave off ruin and prevent exposure; struggles on all our
parts, and sacrifices, that' (here Mr. Essex Temple began
to hesitate)--'that needn't be talked of; but they are of
no more use than such sacrifices ever are.  Pump and his
wife are abroad--I don't like to ask where; Polly has the
three children, and Mr. Serjeant Shirker has formally
written to break off an engagement, on the conclusion of
which Miss Temple must herself have speculated, when she
alienated the greater part of her fortune.

'And here's your famous theory of poor marriages!' Essex
Temple cries, concluding the above history.  'How do you
know that I don't want to marry myself?  How do you dare
sneer at my poor sister?  What are we but martyrs of the
reckless marriage system which Mr. Snob, forsooth,
chooses to advocate?'  And he thought he had the better
of the argument, which, strange to say, is not my
opinion.

But for the infernal Snob-worship, might not every one of
these people be happy?  If poor Polly's happiness lay in
linking her tender arms round such a heartless prig as
the sneak who has deceived her, she might have been happy
now--as happy as Raymond Raymond in the ballad, with the
stone statue by his side.  She is wretched because Mr.
Serjeant Shirker worships money and ambition, and is a
Snob and a coward.

If the unfortunate Pump Temple and his giddy hussy of a
wife have ruined themselves, and dragged down others into
their calamity, it is because they loved rank, and
horses, and plate, and carriages, and COURT GUIDES, and
millinery, and would sacrifice all to attain those
objects.

And who misguides them?  If the world were more simple,
would not those foolish people follow the fashion?  Does
not the world love COURT GUIDES, and millinery, and
plate, and carriages?  Mercy on us!  Read the fashionable
intelligence; read the COURT CIRCULAR; read the genteel
novels; survey mankind, from Pimlico to Red Lion Square,
and see how the Poor Snob is aping the Rich Snob; how the
Mean Snob is grovelling at the feet of the Proud Snob;
and the Great Snob is lording it over his humble brother.
Does the idea of equality ever enter Dives' head?  Will
it ever?  Will the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe (I like a
good name) ever believe that Lady Croesus, her next-door
neighbour in Belgrave Square, is as good a lady as her
Grace?  Will Lady Croesus ever leave off pining the
Duchess's parties, and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth
whose husband has not got his Baronetcy yet?  Will Mrs.
Broadcloth ever heartily shake hands with Mrs. Seedy, and
give up those odious calculations about poor dear Mrs.
Seedy's income?  Will Mrs. Seedy who is starving in her
great house, go and live comfortably in a little one, or
in lodgings?  Will her landlady, Miss Letsam, ever stop
wondering at the familiarity of tradespeople, or rebuking
the insolence of Suky, the maid, who wears flowers under
her bonnet like a lady?

But why hope, why wish for such times?  Do I wish all
Snobs to perish?  Do I wish these Snob papers to
determine?  Suicidal fool, art not thou, too, a Snob and
a brother?



CHAPTER XXXVII

CLUB SNOBS

As I wish to be particularly agreeable to the ladies (to
whom I make my most humble obeisance), we will now, if
you please, commence maligning a class of Snobs against
whom, I believe, most female minds are embittered--I mean
Club Snobs.  I have very seldom heard even the most
gentle and placable woman speak without a little feeling
of bitterness against those social institutions, those
palaces swaggering in St. James's, which are open to the
men; while the ladies have but their dingy three-windowed
brick boxes in Belgravia or in Paddingtonia, or in the
region between the road of Edgware and that of Gray's
Inn.

In my grandfather's time it used to be Freemasonry that
roused their anger.  It was my grand-aunt (whose portrait
we still have in the family) who got into the clock-case
at the Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy
the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband was
a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and
striking eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-
Master was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the
reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the midst of
the lodge assembled; and was elected, by a desperate
unanimity, Deputy-Grand-Mistress for life.  Though that
admirable and courageous female never subsequently
breathed a word with regard to the secrets of the
initiation, yet she inspired all our family with such a
terror regarding the mysteries of Jachin and Boaz, that
none of our family have ever since joined the Society, or
worn the dreadful Masonic insignia.

It is known that Orpheus was torn to pieces by some
justly indignant Thracian ladies for belonging to an
Harmonic Lodge.  'Let him go back to Eurydice,' they
said, 'whom he is pretending to regret so.'  But the
history is given in Dr. Lempriere's elegant dictionary in
a manner much more forcible than any
this feeble pen can attempt.  At once, then, and without
verbiage, let us take up this subject-matter of Clubs.

Clubs ought not, in my mind, to be permitted to
bachelors.  If my friend of the Cuttykilts had not our
club, the 'Union Jack,' to go to (I belong to the 'U.J.
and nine other similar institutions), who knows but he
never would be a bachelor at this present moment?
Instead of being made comfortable, and cockered up with
every luxury, as they are at Clubs, bachelors ought to be
rendered profoundly miserable, in my opinion.  Every
encouragement should be given to the rendering their
spare time disagreeable.  There can be no more odious
object, according to my sentiments, than young Smith in
the pride of health, commanding his dinner of three
courses; than middle-aged Jones wallowing (as I may say)
in an easy padded arm-chair, over the delicious novel or
brilliant magazine; or than old Brown, that selfish old
reprobate for whom mere literature has no charms,
stretched on the best sofa, sitting on the second edition
of THE TIMES, having the MORNING CHRONICLE between his
knees, the HERALD pushed in between his coat and
waistcoat, the STANDARD under his arm, the GLOBE under
the other pinion, and the DAILY NEWS in perusal.  'I'll
trouble you for PUNCH, Mr. Wiggins' says the
unconscionable old gormandiser, interrupting our friend,
who is laughing over the periodical in question.

This kind of selfishness ought not to be.  No, no.  Young
Smith, instead of his dinner and his wine, ought to be,
where?--at the festive tea-table, to be sure, by the side
of Miss Higgs, sipping the bohea, or tasting the harmless
muffin; while old Mrs. Higgs looks on, pleased at their
innocent dalliance, and my friend Miss Wirt, the
governess, is performing Thalberg's last sonata in treble
X., totally unheeded, at the piano.

Where should the middle-aged Jones be?  At his time of
life, he ought to be the father of a family.  At such an
hour--say, at nine o'clock at night--the nursery-bell
should have just rung the children to bed.  He and Mrs.
J. ought to be, by rights, seated on each side of the
fire by the dining-room table, a bottle of port-wine
between them, not so full as it was an hour since.  Mrs.
J. has had two glasses; Mrs. Grumble (Jones's mother-in-
law) has had three; Jones himself has finished the rest,
and dozes comfortably until bed-time.

And Brown, that old newspaper-devouring miscreant, what
right has HE at a club at a decent hour of night?  He
ought to be playing his rubber with Miss MacWhirter, his
wife, and the family apothecary.  His candle ought to be
brought to him at ten o'clock, and he should retire to
rest just as the young people were thinking of a dance.
How much finer, simpler, nobler are the several
employments I have sketched out for these gentlemen than
their present nightly orgies at the horrid Club.

And, ladies, think of men who do not merely frequent the
dining-room and library, but who use other apartments of
those horrible dens which it is my purpose to batter
down; think of Cannon, the wretch, with his coat off, at
his age and size, clattering the balls over the billiard-
table all night, and making bets with that odious Captain
Spot!--think of Pam in a dark room with Bob Trumper, Jack
Deuceace, and Charley Vole, playing, the poor dear
misguided wretch, guinea points and five pounds on the
rubber!--above all, think--oh, think of that den of
abomination, which, I am told, has been established in
SOME clubs, called THE SMOKING-ROOM,--think of the
debauchees who congregate there, the quantities of
reeking whisky-punch or more dangerous sherry-cobbler
which they consume;--think of them coming home at cock-
crow and letting themselves into the quiet house with the
Chubb key;-- think of them, the hypocrites, taking off
their insidious boots before they slink upstairs, the
children sleeping overhead, the wife of their bosom alone
with the waning rushlight in the two-pair front--that
chamber so soon to be rendered hateful by the smell of
their stale cigars: I am not an advocate of violence; I
am not, by nature, of an incendiary turn of mind: but if,
my dear ladies, you are for assassinating Mr. Chubb and
burning down Club-houses in St. James's, there is ONE
Snob at who will not think the worse of you.

The only men who, as I opine, ought to be allowed the use
of Clubs, are married men without a profession.  The
continual presence of these in a house cannot be
thought, even by the most loving of wives, desirable.
Say the girls are beginning to practise their music,
which in an honourable English family, ought to occupy
every young gentlewoman three hours; it would be rather
hard to call upon poor papa to sit in the drawing-room
all that time, and listen to the interminable discords
and shrieks which are elicited from the miserable piano
during the above necessary operation.  A man with a good
ear, especially, would go mad, if compelled daily to
submit to this horror.

Or suppose you have a fancy to go to the milliner's, or
to Howell and James's, it is manifest, my dear Madam,
that your husband is much better at the Club during these
operations than by your side in the carriage, or perched
in wonder upon one of the stools at Shawl and Gimcrack's,
whilst young counter-dandies are displaying their wares.

This sort of husbands should be sent out after breakfast,
and if not Members of Parliament, or Directors of a
Railroad, or an Insurance Company, should be put into
their clubs, and told to remain there until dinner-time.
No sight is more agreeable to my truly regulated mind
than to see the noble characters so worthily employed.
Whenever I pass by St. James's Street, having the
privilege, like the rest of the world, of looking in at
the windows of 'Blight's,' or 'Foodle's,' or 'Snook's,'
or the great bay at the 'Contemplative Club,' I behold
with respectful appreciation the figures within--the
honest rosy old fogies, the mouldy old dandies, the
waist-belts and glossy wigs and tight cravats of those
most vacuous and respectable men.  Such men are best
there during the day-time surely.  When you part with
them, dear ladies, think of the rapture consequent on
their return.  You have transacted your household
affairs; you have made your purchases; you have paid your
visits; you have aired your poodle in the Park; your
French maid has completed the toilette which renders you
so ravishingly beautiful by candlelight, and you are fit
to make home pleasant to him who has been absent all day.

Such men surely ought to have their Clubs, and we will
not class them among Club Snobs therefore:--on whom let
us reserve our attack for the next chapter.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

CLUB SNOBS

Such a Sensation has been created in the Clubs by the
appearance of the last paper on Club Snobs, as can't but
be complimentary to me who am one of their number.

I belong to many Clubs.  The 'Union Jack,' the 'Sash and
Marlin-spike'--Military Clubs.  'The True Blue,' the 'No
Surrender,' the 'Blue and Buff,' the 'Guy Fawkes,' and
the 'Cato Street'--Political Clubs.  'The Brummel' and
the 'Regent'--Dandy Clubs.  The 'Acropolis,' the
'Palladium,' the 'Areopagus,' the 'Pnyx' the
'Pentelicus,' the 'Ilissus' and the 'Poluphloisboio
Thalasses'--Literary Clubs.  I never could make out how
the latter set of Clubs got their names; I don't know
Greek for one, and I wonder how many other members of
those institutions do?
Ever since the Club Snobs have been announced, I observe
a sensation created on my entrance into any one of these
places.  Members get up and hustle together; they nod,
they scowl, as they glance towards the present Snob.
'Infernal impudent jackanapes!  If he shows me up,' says
Colonel Bludyer, 'I'll break every bone in his skin.'  'I
told you what would come of admitting literary men into
the Club,' says Ranville Ranville to his colleague,
Spooney, of the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office.  'These
people are very well in their proper places, and as a
public man, I make a point of shaking hands with them,
and that sort of thing; but to have one's privacy
obtruded upon by such people is really too much.  Come
along, Spooney,' and the pair of prigs retire
superciliously.

As I came into the coffee-room at the 'No Surrender,' old
Jawkins was holding out to a knot of men, who were
yawning, as usual.  There he stood, waving the STANDARD,
and swaggering before the fire.  'What,' says he, 'did I
tell Peel last year?  If you touch the Corn Laws, you
touch the Sugar Question; if you touch the Sugar, you
touch the Tea.  I am no monopolist.  I am a liberal man,
but I cannot forget that I stand on the brink of a
precipice; and if were to have Free Trade, give me
reciprocity.  And what was Sir Robert Peel's answer to
me?  "Mr. Jawkins," he said ---'

Here Jawkins's eye suddenly turning on your humble
servant, he stopped his sentence, with a guilty look--
his stale old stupid sentence, which every one of us at
the Club has heard over and over again.

Jawkins is a most pertinacious Club Snob.  Every day he
is at that fireplace, holding that STANDARD, of which he
reads up the leading-article, and pours it out ORE
ROTUNDO, with the most astonishing composure, in the face
of his neighbour, who has just read every word of it in
the paper.  Jawkins has money, as you may see by the tie
of his neckcloth.  He passes the morning swaggering about
the City, in bankers' and brokers parlours, and says :--
'I spoke with Peel yesterday, and his intentions are so
and so.  Graham and I were talking over the matter, and I
pledge you my word of honour, his opinion coincides with
mine; and that What-d'ye-call-um is the only measure
Government will venture on trying.'  By evening-paper
time he is at the Club: 'I can tell you the opinion of
the City, my lord,' says he, 'and the way in which Jones
Loyd looks at it is briefly this: Rothschilds told me so
themselves.  In Mark Lane, people's minds are QUITE made
up.'  He is considered rather a well-informed man.

He lives in Belgravia, of course; in a drab-coloured
genteel house, and has everything about him that is
properly grave, dismal, and comfortable.  His dinners are
in the MORNING HERALD, among the parties for the week;
and his wife and daughters make a very handsome
appearance at the Drawing-Room, once a year, when he
comes down to the Club in his Deputy-Lieutenant's
uniform.

He is fond of beginning a speech to you by saying, 'When
I was in the House, I &c.'--in fact he sat for
Skittlebury for three weeks in the first Reformed
Parliament, and was unseated for bribery; since which he
has three times unsuccessfully contested that honourable
borough.

Another sort of Political Snob I have seen at most Clubs
and that is the man who does not care so much for home
politics, but is great upon foreign affairs.  I think
this sort of man is scarcely found anywhere BUT in Clubs.
It is for him the papers provide their foreign articles,
at the expense of some ten thousand a-year each.  He is
the man who is really seriously uncomfortable about the
designs of Russia, and the atrocious treachery of Louis
Philippe.  He it is who expects a French fleet in the
Thames, and has a constant eye upon the American
President, every word of whose speech (goodness help
him!) he reads.  He knows the names of the contending
leaders in Portugal, and what they are fighting about:
and it is he who says that Lord Aberdeen ought to be
impeached, and Lord Palmerston hanged, or VICE VERSA.

Lord Palmerston's being sold to Russia, the exact number
of roubles paid, by what house in the City, is a
favourite theme with this kind of Snob.  I once overheard
him--it was Captain Spitfire, R.N., (who had been refused
a ship by the Whigs, by the way)--indulging in the
following conversation with Mr. Minns after dinner.

Why wasn't the Princess Scragamoffsky at Lady
Palmerston's party, Minns?  Because SHE CAN'T SHOW-- why
can't she show?  Shall I tell you, Minns, why she can't
show?  The Princess Scragainoffsky's back is flayed
alive, Minns--I tell you it's raw, sir!  On Tuesday last,
at twelve o'clock, three drummers of the Preobajinski
Regiment arrived at Ashburnham House, and at half-past
twelve, in the yellow drawing-room at the Russian
Embassy, before the ambassadress and four ladies'-maids,
the Greek Papa, and the Secretary of Embassy, Madame de
Scragamoffsky received thirteen dozen.  She was knouted,
sir, knouted in the midst of England--in Berkeley Square,
for having said that the Grand Duchess Olga's hair was
red.  And now, sir, will you tell me Lord Palmerston
ought to continue Minister?'

Minns: 'Good Ged!'

Minns follows Spitfire about, and thinks him the greatest
and wisest of human beings.



CHAPTER XXXIX

CLUB SNOBS

Why does not some great author write 'The Mysteries of
the Club-houses; or St. James's Street unveiled?'  It
would be a fine subject for an imaginative writer.  We
must all, as boys, remember when we went to the fair, and
had spent all our money--the sort of awe and anxiety with
which we loitered round the outside of the show,
speculating upon the nature of the entertainment going on
within.

Man is a Drama--of Wonder and Passion, and Mystery and
Meanness, and Beauty and Truthfulness, and Etcetera.
Each Bosom is a Booth in Vanity Fair.  But let us stop
this capital style, I should die if I kept it up for a
column (a pretty thing a column all capitals would be, by
the way).  In a Club, though there mayn't be a soul of
your acquaintance in the room, you have always the chance
of watching strangers, and speculating on what is going
on within those tents and curtains of their souls, their
coats and waistcoats.  This is a never-failing sport.
Indeed I am told there are some Clubs in the town where
nobody ever speaks to anybody.  They sit in the coffee-
room, quite silent, and watching each other.

Yet how little you can tell from a man's outward
demeanour!  There's a man at our Club--large, heavy,
middle-aged--gorgeously dressed--rather bald--with
lacquered boots--and a boa when he goes out; quiet in
demeanour, always ordering and consuming a RECHERCHE
little dinner: whom I have mistaken for Sir John
Pocklington any time these five years, and respected as a
man with five hundred pounds PER DIEM; and I find he is
but a clerk in an office in the City, with not two
hundred pounds income, and his name is Jubber.  Sir John
Pocklington was, on the contrary, the dirty little snuffy
man who cried out so about the bad quality of the beer,
and grumbled at being overcharged three-halfpence for a
herring, seated at the next table to Jubber on the day
when some one pointed the Baronet out to me.

Take a different sort of mystery.  I see, for instance,
old Fawney stealing round the rooms of the Club, with
glassy, meaningless eyes, and an endless greasy simper--
he fawns on everybody he meets, and shakes hands with
you, and blesses you, and betrays the most tender and
astonishing interest in your welfare.  You know him to be
a quack and a rogue, and he knows you know it.  But he
wriggles on his way, and leaves a track of slimy flattery
after him wherever he goes.  Who can penetrate that man's
mystery?  What earthly good can he get from you or me?
You don't know what is working under that leering
tranquil mask.  You have only the dim instinctive
repulsion that warns you, you are in the presence of a
knave--beyond which fact all Fawney's soul is a secret to
you.

I think I like to speculate on the young men best.  Their
play is opener.  You know the cards in their hand, as it
were.  Take, for example, Messrs. Spavin and Cockspur.

A specimen or two of the above sort of young fellows may
be found, I believe, at most Clubs.  They know nobody.
They bring a fine smell of cigars into the room with
them, and they growl together, in a corner, about
sporting matters.  They recollect the history of that
short period in which they have been ornaments of the
world by the names of winning horses.  As political men
talk about 'the Reform year,' 'the year the Whigs went
out,' and so forth, these young sporting bucks speak of
TARNATION'S year, or OPODELDOC'S year, or the year when
CATAWAMPUS ran second for the Chester Cup.  They play at
billiards in the morning, they absorb pale ale for
breakfast, and 'top up' with glasses of strong waters.
They read BELL'S LIFE (and a very pleasant paper too,
with a great deal of erudition in the answers to
correspondents).  They go down to Tattersall's, and
swagger in the Park, with their hands plunged in the
pockets of their paletots.

What strikes me especially in the outward demeanour of
sporting youth is their amazing gravity, their
conciseness of speech, and careworn and moody air.  In
the smoking-room at the 'Regent,' when Joe Millerson will
be setting the whole room in a roar with laughter, you
hear young Messrs.  Spavin and Cockspur grumbling
together in a corner.  'I'll take your five-and-twenty to
one about Brother to Bluenose,' whispers Spavin.  'Can't
do it at the price,' Cockspur says, wagging his head
ominously.  The betting-book is always present in the
minds of those unfortunate youngsters.  I think I hate
that work even more than the 'Peerage.'  There is some
good in the latter--though, generally speaking, a vain
record: though De Mogyns is not descended from the giant
Hogyn Mogyn; though half the other genealogies are
equally false and foolish; yet the mottoes are good
reading--some of them; and the book itself a sort of
gold-laced and livened lackey to History, and in so far
serviceable.  But what good ever came out of, or went
into, a betting-book?  If I could be Caliph Omar for a
week, I would pitch every one of those despicable
manuscripts into the flames; from my Lord's, who is 'in'
with Jack Snaffle's stable, and is over-reaching worse-
informed rogues and swindling greenhorns, down to Sam's,
the butcher-boy's, who books eighteenpenny odds in the
tap-room, and 'stands to win five-and-twenty bob.'

In a turf transaction, either Spavin or Cockspur would
try to get the better of his father, and, to gain a point
in the odds, victimise his best friends.  One day we
shall hear of one or other levanting; an event at which,
not being sporting men, we shall not break our hearts.
See--Mr. Spavin is settling his toilette previous to
departure; giving a curl in the glass to his side-wisps
of hair.  Look at him!  It is only at the hulks, or among
turf-men, that you ever see a face so mean, so knowing,
and so gloomy.

A much more humane being among the youthful Clubbists is
the Lady-killing Snob.  I saw Wiggle just now in the
dressing-room, talking to Waggle, his inseparable.

WAGGLE.-- 'Pon my honour, Wiggle, she did.'

WIGGLE.-- 'Well, Waggle, as you say--I own I think she
DID look at me rather kindly.  We'll see to-night at the
French play.'

And having arrayed their little persons, these two
harmless young bucks go upstairs to dinner.



CHAPTER XL

CLUB SNOBS

Both sorts of young men, mentioned in my last under the
flippant names of Wiggle and Waggle, may be found in
tolerable plenty, I think, in Clubs.  Wiggle and Waggle
are both idle.  They come of the middle classes.  One of
them very likely makes believe to be a barrister, and the
other has smart apartments about Piccadilly.  They are a
sort of second-chop dandies; they cannot imitate that
superb listlessness of demeanour, and that admirable
vacuous folly which distinguish the noble and high-born
chiefs of the race; but they lead lives almost as bad
(were it but for the example), and are personally quite
as useless.  I am not going to arm a thunderbolt, and
launch it at the beads of these little Pall Mall
butterflies.  They don't commit much public harm, or
private extravagance.  They don't spend a thousand pounds
for diamond earrings for an Opera-dancer, as Lord Tarquin
can:
neither of them ever set up a public-house or broke the
bank of a gambling-club, like the young Earl of
Martingale.  They have good points, kind feelings, and
deal honourably in money-transactions--only in their
characters of men of second-rate pleasure about town,
they and their like are so utterly mean, self-contented,
and absurd, that they must not be omitted in a work
treating on Snobs.

Wiggle has been abroad, where he gives you to understand
that his success among the German countesses and Italian
princesses, whom he met at the TABLES-D'HOTE, was
perfectly terrific.  His rooms are hung round with
pictures of actresses and ballet-dancers.  He passes his
mornings in a fine dressing-gown, burning pastilles, and
reading 'Don Juan' and French novels (by the way, the
life of the author of 'Don Juan,' as described by
himself, was the model of the life of a Snob).  He has
twopenny-halfpenny French prints of women with
languishing eyes, dressed in dominoes,--guitars,
gondolas, and so forth,--and tells you stories about
them.

'It's a bad print,' says he, 'I know, but I've a reason
for liking it.  It reminds me of somebody--somebody I
knew in other climes.  You have heard of the Principessa
di Monte Pulciano?  I met her at Rimini.  Dear, dear
Francesca!  That fair-haired, bright-eyed thing in the
Bird of Paradise and the Turkish Simar with the love-bird
on her finger, I'm sure must have been taken from--from
somebody perhaps whom you don't know --but she's known at
Munich, Waggle my boy,-- everybody knows the Countess
Ottilia de Eulenschreckenstein.  Gad, sir, what a
beautiful creature she was when I danced with her on the
birthday of Prince Attila of Bavaria, in '44.  Prince
Carloman was our vis-a-vis, and Prince Pepin danced the
same CONTREDANSE.  She had a Polyanthus in her bouquet.
Waggle, I HAVE IT NOW.'  His countenance assumes an
agonized and mysterious expression, and he buries his
head in the sofa cushions, as if plunging into a
whirlpool of passionate recollections.

Last year he made a considerable sensation by having on
his table a morocco miniature-case locked by a gold key,
which he always wore round his neck, and on which was
stamped a serpent--emblem of eternity--with the letter M
in the circle.  Sometimes he laid this upon his little
morocco writing-table, as if it were on an altar--
generally he had flowers upon it; in the middle of a
conversation he would start up and kiss it.  He would
call out from his bed-room to his valet, 'Hicks, bring me
my casket!'

'I don't know who it is,' Waggle would say.  'Who DOES
know that fellow's intrigues!  Desborough Wiggle, sir, is
the slave of passion.  I suppose you have heard the story
of the Italian princess locked up in the Convent of Saint
Barbara, at Rimini?  He hasn't told you?  Then I'm not at
liberty to speak.  Or the countess, about whom he nearly
had the duel with Prince Witikind of Bavaria?  Perhaps
you haven't even heard about that beautiful girl at
Pentonville, daughter of a most respectable Dissenting
clergyman.  She broke her heart when she found he was
engaged (to a most lovely creature of high family, who
afterwards proved false to him), and she's now in
Hanwell.'

Waggle's belief in his friend amounts to frantic
adoration.  'What a genius he is, if he would but apply
himself!' he whispers to me.  'He could be anything, sir,
but for his passions.  His poems are the most beautiful
things you ever saw.  He's written a continuation of "Don
Juan," from his own adventures.  Did you ever read his
lines to Mary?  They're superior to Byron, sir--superior
to Byron.'

I was glad to hear this from so accomplished a critic as
Waggle; for the fact is, I had composed the verses myself
for honest Wiggle one day, whom I found at his chambers
plunged in thought over a very dirty old-fashioned album,
in which he had not as yet written a single word.

'I can't,' says he.  'Sometimes I can write whole cantos,
and to-day not a line.  Oh, Snob! such an opportunity!
Such a divine creature!  She's asked me to write verses
for her album, and I can't.'

'Is she rich?' said I.  'I thought you would never marry
any but an heiress.'

'Oh, Snob! she's the most accomplished, highly-connected
creature!--and I can't get out a line.'

'How will you have it?' says I.  'Hot, with sugar?'

'Don't, don't!  You trample on the most sacred feelings,
Snob.  I want something wild and tender,--like Byron.  I
want to tell her that amongst the festive balls, and that
sort of thing, you know--I only think about her, you
know--that I scorn the world, and am weary of it, you
know, and--something about a gazelle, and a bulbul, you
know.'

'And a yataghan to finish off with,' the present writer
observed, and we began:--

'TO MARY

'I	seem, in the midst of the crowd,
The lightest of all;
My laughter rings cheery and loud,
In banquet and ball.
My lip hath its smiles and its sneers,
For all men to see;
But my soul, and my truth, and my tears,
Are for thee, are for thee!'

'Do you call THAT neat, Wiggle?' says I.  'I declare it
almost makes me cry myself.'

'Now suppose,' says Wiggle, 'we say that all the world is
at my feet--make her jealous, you know, and that sort of
thing--and that--that I'm going to TRAVEL, you know?
That perhaps may work upon her feelings.'

So WE (as this wretched prig said) began again:--

'Around me they flatter and fawn--
The young and the old,
The fairest are ready to pawn
Their hearts for my gold.
They sue me--I laugh as I spurn
The slaves at my knee,
But in faith and in fondness I turn
Unto thee, unto thee!'

'Now for the travelling, Wiggle my boy!'  And I began, in
a voice choked with emotion--

'Away! for my heart knows no rest
Since you taught it to feel;
The secret must die in my breast
I burn to reveal;
The passion I may not. . .'

'I say, Snob!' Wiggle here interrupted the excited bard
(just as I was about to break out into four lines so
pathetic that they would drive you into hysterics).  'I
say--ahem--couldn't you say that I was--a--military man,
and that there was some danger of my life?'

'You a military man?--danger of your life?  What the
deuce do you mean?'

'Why,' said Wiggle, blushing a great deal, 'I told her I
was going out--on--the--Ecuador--expedition.'

'You abominable young impostor,' I exclaimed.  'Finish
the poem for yourself!' And so he did, and entirely out
of all metre, and bragged about the work at the Club as
his own performance.

Poor Waggle fully believed in his friend's genius, until
one day last week he came with a grin on his countenance
to the Club, and said, 'Oh, Snob, I've made SUCH a
discovery!  Going down to the skating to-day, whom should
I see but Wiggle walking with that splendid woman--that
lady of illustrious family and immense fortune, Mary, you
know, whom he wrote the beautiful verses about.  She's
five-and-forty.  She's red hair.  She's a nose like a
pump-handle.  Her father made his fortune by keeping a
ham-and-beef shop, and Wiggle's going to marry her next
week.'

'So much the better, Waggle, my young friend,' I
exclaimed.  'Better for the sake of womankind that this
dangerous dog should leave off lady-killing--this Blue-
Beard give up practice.  Or, better rather for his own
sake.  For as there is not a word of truth in any of
those prodigious love-stories which you used to swallow,
nobody has been hurt except Wiggle himself, whose
affections will now centre in the ham-and-beef shop.
There ARE people, Mr. Waggle, who do these things in
earnest, and hold a good rank in the world too.  But
these are not subjects for ridicule, and though certainly
Snobs, are scoundrels likewise.  Their cases go up to a
higher Court.'



CHAPTER XLI

CLUB SNOBS

Bacchus is the divinity to whom Waggle devotes his
especial worship.  'Give me wine, my boy,' says he to his
friend Wiggle, who is prating about lovely woman; and
holds up his glass full of the rosy fluid, and winks at
it portentously, and sips it, and smacks his lips after
it, and meditates on it, as if he were the greatest of
connoisseurs.

I have remarked this excessive wine-amateurship
especially in youth.  Snoblings from college, Fledglings
from the army, Goslings from the public schools, who
ornament our Clubs, are frequently to be heard in great
force upon wine questions.  'This bottle's corked,' says
Snobling; and Mr. Sly, the butler, taking it away,
returns presently with the same wine in another jug,
which the young amateur pronounces excellent.  'Hang
champagne!' says Fledgling, 'it's only fit for gals and
children.  Give me pale sherry at dinner, and my twenty-
three claret afterwards.'  'What's port now?' says
Gosling; 'disgusting thick sweet stuff--where's the old
dry wine one USED to get?'  Until the last twelvemonth,
Fledgling drank small-beer at Doctor Swishtail's; and
Gosling used to get his dry old port at a gin-shop in
Westminster--till he quitted that seminary, in 1844.

Anybody who has looked at the caricatures of thirty years
ago, must remember how frequently bottle-noses, pimpled
faces, and other Bardolphian features are introduced by
the designer.  They are much more rare now (in nature,
and in pictures, therefore,) than in those good old
times; but there are still to be found amongst the youth
of our Clubs lads who glory in drinking-bouts, and whose
faces, quite sickly and yellow, for the most part are
decorated with those marks which Rowland's Kalydor is
said to efface.  'I was SO cut last night--old boy!'
Hopkins says to Tomkins (with amiable confidence).  'I
tell you what we did.  We breakfasted with Jack Herring
at twelve, and kept up with brandy and soda-water and
weeds till four; then we toddled into the Park for an
hour; then we dined and drank mulled port till half-
price; then we looked in for an hour at the Haymarket;
then we came back to the Club, and had grills and whisky
punch till all was blue--Hullo, waiter!  Get me a glass
of cherry-brandy.'  Club waiters, the civilest, the
kindest, the patientest of men, die under the infliction
of these cruel young topers.  But if the reader wishes to
see a perfect picture on the stage of this class of young
fellows, I would recommend him to witness the ingenious
comedy of LONDON ASSURANCE--the amiable heroes of which
are represented, not only as drunkards and five-o'clock-
in-the-morning men, but as showing a hundred other
delightful traits of swindling, lying, and general
debauchery, quite edifying to witness.

How different is the conduct of these outrageous youths
to the decent behaviour of my friend, Mr. Papworthy; who
says to Poppins, the butler at the Club:--

PAPWORTHY.--'Poppins, I'm thinking of dining early; is
there any cold game in the house?'

POPPINS.--'There's a game pie, sir; there's cold grouse,
sir; there's cold pheasant, sir; there's cold peacock,
sir; cold swan, sir; cold ostrich, sir,' &c. &c. (as the
case may be).

PAPWORTHY.--'Hem!  What's your best claret now, Poppins?-
-in pints, I mean.'

POPPINS.--'There's Cooper and Magnum's Lafitte, sir:
there's Lath and Sawdust's St. Julien, sir; Bung's
Leoville is considered remarkably fine; and I think you'd
like Jugger's Chateau-Margaux.'

PAPWORTHY.--'Hum!--hah!--well--give me a crust of bread
and a glass of beer.  I'll only LUNCH, Poppins.

Captain Shindy is another sort of Club bore.  He has been
known to throw all the Club in an uproar about the
quality of his mutton-chop.

'Look at it, sir!  Is it cooked, sir?  Smell it, sir!  Is
it meat fit for a gentleman?' he roars out to the
steward, who stands trembling before him, and who in vain
tells him that the Bishop of Bullocksmithy has just had
three from the same loin.  All the waiters in the Club
are huddled round the captain's mutton-chop.  He roars
out the most horrible curses at John for not bringing the
pickles; he utters the most dreadful oaths because Thomas
has not arrived with the Harvey Sauce; Peter comes
tumbling with the water-jug over Jeames, who is bringing
'the glittering canisters with bread.'  Whenever Shindy
enters the room (such is the force of character), every
table is deserted, every gentleman must dine as he best
may, and all those big footmen are in terror.

He makes his account of it.  He scolds, and is better
waited upon in consequence.  At the Club he has ten
servants scudding about to do his bidding.

Poor Mrs. Shindy and the children are, meanwhile, in
dingy lodgings somewhere, waited upon by a charity-girl
in pattens.



CHAPTER XLII

CLUB SNOBS

Every well-bred English female will sympathize with the
subject of the harrowing tale, the history of Sackville
Maine, I am now about to recount.  The pleasures of Clubs
have been spoken of: let us now glance for a moment at
the dangers of those institutions, and for this purpose I
must introduce you to my young acquaintance, Sackville
Maine.

It was at a ball at the house of my respected friend,
Mrs. Perkins, that I was introduced to this gentleman and
his charming lady.  Seeing a young creature before me in
a white dress, with white satin shoes; with a pink
ribbon, about a yard in breadth, flaming out as she
twirled in a polka in the arms of Monsieur de Springbock,
the German diplomatist; with a green wreath on her head,
and the blackest hair this individual set eyes on--
seeing, I say, before me a charming
young woman whisking beautifully in a beautiful dance,
and presenting, as she wound and wound round the room,
now a full face, then a three-quarter face, then a
profile--a face, in fine, which in every way you saw it,
looked pretty, and rosy, and happy, I felt (as I trust) a
not unbecoming curiosity regarding the owner of this
pleasant countenance, and asked Wagley (who was standing
by, in conversation with an acquaintance) who was the
lady in question?

'Which?' says Wagley.

'That one with the coal-black eyes,' I replied.

'Hush!' says he; and the gentleman with whom he was
talking moved off, with rather a discomfited air.

When he was gone Wagley burst out laughing.  'COAL-BLACK
eyes!' said he; 'you've just hit it.  That's Mrs.
Sackville Maine, and that was her husband who just went
away.  He's a coal-merchant, Snob my boy, and I have no
doubt Mr. Perkins's Wallsends are supplied from his
wharf.  He is in a flaming furnace when he hears coals
mentioned.  He and his wife and his mother are very proud
of Mrs. Sackville's family; she was a Miss Chuff,
daughter of Captain Chuff, R.N.  That is the widow; that
stout woman in crimson tabinet, battling about the odd
trick with old Mr. Dumps, at the card-table.'

And so, in fact, it was.  Sackville Maine (whose name is
a hundred times more elegant, surely, than that of Chuff)
was blest with a pretty wife, and a genteel mother-in-
law, both of whom some people may envy him.

Soon after his marriage the old lady was good enough to
come and pay him a visit--just for a fortnight--at his
pretty little cottage, Kennington Oval; and, such is her
affection for the place, has never quitted it these four
years.  She has also brought her son, Nelson Collingwood
Chuff, to live with her; but he is not so much at home as
his mamma, going as a day-boy to Merchant Taylors'
School, where he is getting a sound classical education.

If these beings, so closely allied to his wife, and so
justly dear to her, may be considered as drawbacks to
Maine's happiness, what man is there that has not some
things in life to complain of?  And when I first knew Mr.
Maine, no man seemed more comfortable than he.  His
cottage was a picture of elegance and comfort; his table
and cellar were excellently and neatly supplied.  There
was every enjoyment, but no ostentation.  The omnibus
took him to business of a morning; the boat brought him
back to the happiest of homes, where he would while away
the long evenings by reading out the fashionable novels
to the ladies as they worked; or accompany his wife on
the flute (which he played elegantly); or in any one of
the hundred pleasing and innocent amusements of the
domestic circle.  Mrs. Chuff covered the drawing-rooms
with prodigious tapestries, the work of her hands.  Mrs.
Sackville had a particular genius for making covers of
tape or network for these tapestried cushions.  She could
make home-made wines.  She could make preserves and
pickles.  She had an album, into which, during the time
of his courtship, Sackville Maine bad written choice
scraps of Byron's and Moore's poetry, analogous to his
own situation, and in a fine mercantile hand.  She had a
large manuscript receipt-book--every quality, in a word,
which indicated a virtuous and well-bred English female
mind.

'And as for Nelson Collingwood,' Sackville would say,
laughing, 'we couldn't do without him in the house.  If
he didn't spoil the tapestry we should be 'over-cushioned
in a few months; and whom could we get but him to drink
Laura's home-made wine?'  The truth is, the gents who
came from the City to dine at the 'Oval' could not be
induced to drink it--in which fastidiousness, I myself,
when I grew to be intimate with the family, confess that
I shared.

'And yet, sir, that green ginger has been drunk by some
of England's proudest heroes,' Mrs. Chuff would exclaim.
'Admiral Lord Exmouth tasted and praised it, sir, on
board Captain Chuff's ship, the "Nebuchadnezzar," 74, at
Algiers; and he had three dozen with turn in the
"Pitchfork" frigate, a part of which was served
out to the men before he went into his immortal action
with the "Furibonde," Captain Choufleur, in the Gulf of
Panama.'

All	this, though the old dowager told us the story every
day when the wine was produced, never served to get rid
of any quantity of it--and the green ginger, though it
had fired British tars for combat and victory, was not to
the taste of us peaceful and degenerate gents of modern
times.

I see Sackville now, as on the occasion when, presented
by Wagley, I paid my first visit to him.  It was in July-
-a Sunday afternoon--Sackville Maine was coming from
church, with his wife on one arm, and his mother-ill-law
(in red tabinet, as usual,) on the other.  A half-grown,
or hobbadehoyish footman, so to speak, walked after them,
carrying their shining golden prayer-books--the ladies
had splendid parasols with tags and fringes.  Mrs.
Chuff's great gold watch, fastened to her stomach,
gleamed there like a ball of fire.  Nelson Collingwood
was in the distance, shying stones at an old horse on
Kennington Common.  'Twas on that verdant spot we met--
nor can I ever forget the majestic courtesy of Mrs.
Chuff, as she remembered having had the pleasure of
seeing me at Mrs. Perkins's--nor the glance of scorn
which she threw at an unfortunate gentleman who was
preaching an exceedingly desultory discourse to a
sceptical audience of omnibus-cads and nurse-maids, on a
tub, as we passed by.  'I cannot help it, sir,' says she;
'I am the widow of an officer of Britain's Navy: I was
taught to honour my Church and my King: and I cannot bear
a Radical or a Dissenter.'

With these fine principles I found Sackville Maine
impressed.  'Wagley,' said he, to my introducer, 'if no
better engagement, why shouldn't self and friend dine at
the "Oval?"  Mr. Snob, sir, the mutton's coming off the
spit at this very minute.  Laura and Mrs. Chuff' (he said
LAURAR and Mrs. Chuff; but I hate people who make remarks
on these peculiarities of pronunciation,) 'will be most
happy to see you; and I can promise you a hearty welcome,
and as good a glass of port-wine as any in England.'

'This is better than dining at the "Sarcophagus,"' thinks
I to myself, at which Club Wagley and I had intended to
take our meal; and so we accepted the kindly invitation,
whence arose afterwards a considerable intimacy.

Everything about this family and house was so good-
natured, comfortable, and well-conditioned, that a cynic
would have ceased to growl there.  Mrs. Laura was all
graciousness and smiles, and looked to as great advantage
in her pretty morning-gown as in her dress-robe at Mrs.
Perkins's.  Mrs. Chuff fired off her stories about the
'Nebuchadnezzar,' 74, the action between the 'Pitchfork'
and the 'Furibonde'--the heroic resistance of Captain
Choufleur, and the quantity of snuff he took, &c. &c.;
which, as they were heard for the first time, were
pleasanter than I have subsequently found them.
Sackville Maine was the best of hosts.  He agreed in
everything everybody said, altering his opinions without
the slightest reservation upon the slightest possible
contradiction.  He was not one of those beings who would
emulate a Schonbein or Friar Bacon, or act the part of an
incendiary towards the Thames, his neighbour--but a good,
kind, simple, honest, easy fellow--in love with his wife-
-well disposed to all the world--content with himself,
content even with his mother-in-law.  Nelson Collingwood,
I remember, in the course of the evening, when whisky-
and-water was for some reason produced, grew a little
tipsy.  This did not in the least move Sackville's
equanimity.  'Take him upstairs, Joseph,' said he to the
hobbadehoy, 'and--Joseph--don't tell his mamma.'

What could make a man so happily disposed, unhappy?  What
could cause discomfort, bickering, and estrangement in a
family so friendly and united?  Ladies, it was not my
fault--it was Mrs. Chuff's doing--but the rest of the
tale you shall have on a future day.



CHAPTER XLIII

CLUB SNOBS

The misfortune which befell the simple and good-natured
young Sackville, arose entirely from that abominable
'Sarcophagus Club;' and that he ever entered it was
partly the fault of the present writer.

For seeing Mrs. Chuff, his mother-in-law, had a taste for
the genteel--(indeed, her talk was all about Lord
Collingwood, Lord Gambier, Sir Jahaleel Brenton, and the
Gosport and Plymouth balls)--Wagley and I, according to
our wont, trumped her conversation, and talked about
Lords, Dukes, Marquises, and Baronets, as if those
dignitaries were our familiar friends.

'Lord Sextonbury,' says I, 'seems to have recovered her
ladyship's death.  He and the Duke were very jolly over
their wine at the "Sarcophagus" last night; weren't they,
Wagley?'

'Good fellow, the Duke,' Wagley replied.  'Pray, ma'am'
(to Mrs. Chuff), 'you who know the world and etiquette,
will you tell me what a man ought to do in my case?  Last
June, his Grace, his son Lord Castlerampant, Tom Smith,
and myself were dining at the Club, when I offered the
odds against DADDYLONGLEGS for the Derby--forty to one,
in sovereigns only.  His Grace took the bet, and of
course I won. He has never paid me. Now, can I ask such a
great man for a sovereign?--One more lump of sugar, if
you please, my dear madam.'

It was lucky Wagley gave her this opportunity to elude
the question, for it prostrated the whole worthy family
among whom we were.  They telegraphed each other with
wondering eyes.  Mrs. Chuff's stories about the naval
nobility grew quite faint and kind little Mrs. Sackville
became uneasy, and went upstairs to look at the children-
-not at that young monster, Nelson Collingwood, who was
sleeping off the whisky-and-water--but at a couple of
little ones who had made their appearance at dessert, and
of whom she and Sackville were the happy parents.

The end of this and subsequent meetings with Mr. Maine
was, that we proposed and got him elected as a member of
the 'Sarcophagus Club.'

It was not done without a deal of opposition--the secret
having been whispered that the candidate was a coal-
merchant.  You may be sure some of the proud people and
most of the parvenus of the Club were ready to blackball
him.  We combated this opposition sucessfully, however.
We pointed out to the parvenus that the Lambtons and the
Stuarts sold coals: we mollified the proud by accounts of
his good birth, good nature, and good behaviour; and
Wagley went about on the day of election, describing with
great eloquence, the action between the 'Pitchfork' and
the 'Furibonde,' and the valour of Captain Maine, our
friend's father.  There was a slight mistake in the
narrative; but we carried our man, with only a trifling
sprinkling of black beans in the boxes: Byles's, of
course, who blackballs everybody: and Bung's, who looks
down upon a coal-merchant, having himself lately retired
from the wine-trade.

Some fortnight afterwards I saw Sackville Maine under the
following circumstances:--

He was showing the Club to his family.  He had 'brought
them thither in the light-blue fly, waiting at the Club
door; with Mrs. Chuff's hobbadehoy footboy on the box, by
the side of the flyman, in a sham livery.  Nelson
Collingwood; pretty Mrs. Sackville; Mrs. Captain Chuff
(Mrs. Commodore Chuff we call her), were all there; the
latter, of course, in the vermilion tabinet, which,
splendid as it is, is nothing in comparison to the
splendour of the 'Sarcophagus.'  The delighted Sackville
Maine was pointing out the beauties of the place to them.
It seemed as beautiful as Paradise to that little party.

The 'Sarcophagus' displays every known variety of
architecture and decoration.  The great library is
Elizabethan; the small library is pointed Gothic; the
dining-room is severe Doric; the strangers' room has an
Egyptian look; the drawing-rooms are Louis Quatorze (so
called because the hideous ornanents displayed were used
in the time of Louis Quinze); the CORTILE, or hall, is
Morisco-Italian.  It is all over marble, maplewood,
looking-glasses, arabesques, ormolu, and scagliola.
Scrolls, ciphers, dragons, Cupids, polyanthuses, and
other flowers writhe up the walls in every kind of
cornucopiosity.  Fancy every gentleman in Jullien's band
playing with all his might, and each performing a
different tune; the ornaments at our Club, the
'Sarcophagus,' so bewilder and affect me.  Dazzled with
emotions which I cannot describe, and which she dared not
reveal, Mrs. Chuff, followed by her children and son-in-
law, walked wondering amonst these blundering splendours.

In the great library (225 feet long by 150) the only man
Mrs. Chuff saw, was Tiggs.  He was lying on a crimson-
velvet sofa, reading a French novel of Paul de Kock.  It
was a very little book.  He is a very little man.  In
that enormous hall he looked like a mere speck.  As the
ladies passed breathless and trembling in the vastness of
the magnificent solitude, he threw a knowing, killing
glance at the fair strangers, as much as to say, 'Ain't I
a fine fellow?'  They thought so, I am sure.

'WHO IS THAT?,' hisses out Mrs. Chuff, when we were about
fifty yards off him at the other end of the room.

'Tiggs!' says I, in a similar whisper.

'Pretty comfortable this, isn't it, my dear?' says Maine
in a free-and-easy way to Mrs. Sackville; all the
magazines, you see--writing materials--new works--choice
library, containing every work of importance--what have
we here?--"Dugdale's Monasticon,' a most valuable and, I
believe, entertaining book.'

And proposing to take down one of the books for Mrs.
Maine's inspection, he selected Volume VII., to which he
was attracted by the singular fact that a brass door-
handle grew out of the back.  Instead of pulling out a
book, however, he pulled open a cupboard, only inhabited
by a lazy housemaid's broom and duster, at which he
looked exceedingly discomfited ; while Nelson
Collingwood, losing all respect, burst into a roar of
laughter.

'That's the rummest book I ever saw,' says Nelson.  'I
wish we'd no others at Merchant Taylors'.'

'Hush, Nelson!' cries Mrs. Chuff, and we went into the
other magnificent apartments.

How they did admire the drawing-room hangings, (pink and
silver brocade, most excellent wear for London,) and
calculated the price per yard; and revelled on the
luxurious sofas; and gazed on the immeasurable looking-
glasses.

'Pretty well to shave by, eh?' says Maine to his mother-
in-law.  (He was getting more abominably conceited every
minute.)  'Get away, Sackville,' says she, quite
delighted, and threw a glance over her shoulder, and
spread out the wings of the red tabinet, and took a good
look at herself; so did Mrs. Sackville--just one, and I
thought the glass reflected a very smiling, pretty
creature.

But what's a woman at a looking-glass?  Bless the little
dears, it's their place.  They fly to it naturally.  It
pleases them, and they adorn it.  What I like to see, and
watch with increasing joy and adoration, is the Club MEN
at the great looking-glasses.  Old Gills pushing up his
collars and grinning at his own mottled face.  Hulker
looking solemnly at his great person, and tightening his
coat to give himself a waist.  Fred Minchin simpering by
as he is going out to dine, and casting upon the
reflection of his white neckcloth a pleased moony smile.
What a deal of vanity that Club mirror has reflected, to
be sure!

Well, the ladies went through the whole establishment
with perfect pleasure.  They beheld the coffee-rooms, and
the little tables laid for dinner, and the gentlemen who
were taking their lunch, and old Jawkins thundering away
as usual; they saw the reading-rooms, and the rush for
the evening papers; they saw the kitchens--those wonders
of art--where the CHEF was presiding over twenty pretty
kitchen-maids, and ten thousand shining saucepans: and
they got into the light-blue fly perfectly bewildered
with pleasure.

Sackville did not enter it, though little Laura took the
back seat on purpose, and left him the front place
alongside of Mrs. Chuff's red tabinet.

'We have your favourite dinner,' says she, in a timid
voice; 'won't you come, Sackville?'

'I shall take a chop here to-day, my dear,' Sackville
replied.  'Home, James.'  And he went up the steps of the
'Sarcophagus,' and the pretty face looked very sad out of
the carriage, as the blue fly drove away.



CHAPTER XLIV

CLUB SNOBS

Why--Why did I and Wagley ever do so cruel an action as
to introduce young Sackville Maine into that odious
'Sarcophagus'?  Let our imprudence and his example be a
warning to other gents; let his fate and that of his poor
wife be remembered by every British female.  The
consequences of his entering the Club were as follows:--

One of the first vices the unhappy wretch acquired in
this abode of frivolity was that of SMOKING.  Some of the
dandies of the Club, such as the Marquis of Macabaw, Lord
Doodeen, and fellows of that high order, are in the habit
of indulging in this propensity upstairs in the billiard-
rooms of the 'Sarcophagus'-- and, partly to make their
acquaintance, partly from a natural aptitude for crime,
Sackville Maine followed them, and became an adept in the
odious custom.  Where it is introduced into a family I
need not say how sad the consequences are, both to the
furniture and the morals.  Sackville smoked in his
dining-room at home, and caused an agony to his wife and
mother-in-law which I do not venture to describe.

He then became a professed BILLIARD-PLAYER, wasting hours
upon hours at that amusement; betting freely, playing
tolerably, losing awfully to Captain Spot and Col.
Cannon.  He played matches of a hundred games with these
gentlemen, and would not only continue until four or five
o'clock in the morning at this work, but would be found
at the Club of a forenoon, indulging himself to the
detriment of his business, the ruin of his health, and
the neglect of his wife.

>From billiards to whist is but a step--and when a man
gets to whist and five pounds on a rubber, my opinion is,
that it is all up with him.  How was the coal business to
go on, and the connection of the firm to be kept up, and
the senior partner always at the card-table?

Consorting now with genteel persons and Pall Mall bucks,
Sackville became ashamed of his snug little residence in
Kennington Oval, and transported his family to Pimlico,
where, though Mrs. Chuff, his mother-in-law, was at first
happy, as the quarter was elegant and near her Sovereign,
poor little Laura and the children found a woful
difference.  Where were her friends who came in with
their work of a morning?--At Kennington and in the
vicinity of Clapham.  'Where were her children's little
playmates?--On Kennington Common.  The great thundering
carriages that roared up and down the drab-coloured
streets of the new quarter, contained no friends for the
sociable little Laura.  The children that paced the
squares, attended by a BONNE or a prim governess, were
not like those happy ones that flew kites, or played hop-
scotch, on the well-beloved old Common.  And ah! what a
difference at Church too!--between St. Benedict's of
Pimlico, with open seats, service in sing-song--tapers --
albs--surplices--garlands and processions, and the honest
old ways of Kennington!  The footmen, too, attending St.
Benedict's were so splendid and enormous, that James,
Mrs. Chuff's boy, trembled amongst them, and said he
would give warning rather than carry the books to that
church any more.

The furnishing of the house was not done without expense.

And, ye gods! what a difference there was between
Sackville's dreary French banquets in Pimlico, and the
jolly dinners at the Oval!  No more legs-of-mutton, no
more of 'the best port-wine in England;' but ENTREES on
plate, and dismal twopenny champagne, and waiters in
gloves, and the Club bucks for company--among whom Mrs.
Chuff was uneasy and Mrs. Sackville quite silent.

Not that he dined at home often.  The wretch had become a
perfect epicure, and dined commonly at the Club with the
gormandising clique there; with old Doctor Maw, Colonel
Cramley (who is as lean as a greyhound and has jaws like
a jack), and the rest of them.  Here you might see the
wretch tippling Sillery champagne and gorging himself
with French viands; and I often looked with sorrow from
my table, (on which cold meat, the Club small-beer, and a
half-pint of Marsala form the modest banquet,) and sighed
to think it was my work.

And there were other beings present to my repentant
thoughts.  Where's his wife, thought I?  Where's poor,
good, kind little Laura?  At this very moment--it's about
the nursery bed-time, and while yonder good-for-nothing
is swilling his wine--the little ones are at Laura's
knees lisping their prayers: and she is teaching them to
say--'Pray God bless Papa.'

When she has put them to bed, her day's occupation is
gone; and she is utterly lonely all night, and sad, and
waiting for him.

Oh, for shame!  Oh, for shame!  Go home, thou idle
tippler.

How Sackville lost his health : how he lost his business;
how he got into scrapes; how he got into debt; how he
became a railroad director; how the Pimlico house was
shut up; how he went to Boulogne,--all this I could tell,
only I am too much ashamed of my part of the transaction.
They returned to England, because, to the surprise of
everybody, Mrs. Chuff came down with a great sum of money
(which nobody knew she had saved), and paid his
liabilities.  He is in England; but at Kennington.  His
name is taken off the books of the 'Sarcophagus' long
ago.  When we meet, he crosses over to the other side of
the street; I don't call, as I should be sorry to see a
look of reproach or sadness in Laura's sweet face.

Not, however, all evil, as I am proud to think, has been
the influence of the Snob of England upon Clubs in
general:--Captain Shindy is afraid to bully the waiters
any more, and eats his mutton-chop without moving
Acheron.  Gobemouche does not take more than two papers
at a time for his private reading.  Tiggs does not ring
the bell and cause the library-waiter to walk about a
quarter of a mile in order to give him Vol. II., which
lies on the next table.  Growler has ceased to walk from
table to table in the coffee-room, and inspect what
people are having for dinner.  Trotty Veck takes his own
umbrella from the hall--the cotton one; and Sydney
Scraper's paletot lined with silk has been brought back
by Jobbins, who entirely mistook it for his own.  Wiggle
has discontinued telling stories about the ladies he has
killed.  Snooks does not any more think it gentlemanlike
to blackball attorneys.  Snuffler no longer publicly
spreads out his great red cotton pocket-handkerchief
before the fire, for the admiration of two hundred
gentlemen; and if one Club Snob has been brought back to
the paths of rectitude, and if one poor John has been
spared a journey or a scolding--say, friends and brethren
if these sketches of Club Snobs have been in vain?



CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ON SNOBS

How it is that we have come to No. 45 of this present
series of papers, my dear friends and brother Snobs, I
hardly know--but for a whole mortal year have we been
together, prattling, and abusing the human race; and were
we to live for a hundred years more, I believe there is
plenty of subject for conversation in the enormous theme
of Snobs.

The national mind is awakened to the subject.  Letters
pour in every day, conveying marks of sympathy; directing
the attention of the Snob of England to races of Snobs
yet undescribed.  'Where are your Theatrical Snobs; your
Commercial Snobs; your Medical and Chirurgical Snobs;
your Official Snobs; your Legal Snobs; your Artistical
Snobs; your Musical Snobs; your Sporting Snobs?' write my
esteemed correspondents.  'Surely you are not going to
miss the Cambridge Chancellor election, and omit showing
up your Don Snobs, who are coming, cap in hand, to a
young Prince of six-and-twenty, and to implore him to be
the chief of their renowned University?' writes a friend
who seals with the signet of the Cam and Isis Club.
'Pray, pray,' cries another, 'now the Operas are opening,
give us a lecture about Omnibus Snobs.'  Indeed, I should
like to write a chapter about the Snobbish Dons very
much, and another about the Snobbish Dandies.  Of my dear
Theatrical Snobs I think with a pang; and I can hardly
break away from some Snobbish artists, with whom I have
long, long intended to have a palaver.

But what's the use of delaying?  When these were done
there would be fresh Snobs to pourtray.  The labour is
endless.  No single man could complete it.  Here are but
fifty-two bricks--and a pyramid to build.  It is best to
stop.  As Jones always quits the room as soon as he has
said his good thing,--as Cincinnatus and General
Washington both retired into private life in the height
of their popularity,--as Prince Albert, when he laid the
first stone of the Exchange, left the bricklayers to
complete that edifice and went home to his royal dinner,-
-as the poet Bunn comes forward at the end of the season,
and with feelings too tumultuous to describe, blesses his
KYIND friends over the footlights: so, friends, in the
flush of conquest and the splendour of victory, amid the
shouts and the plaudits of a people--triumphant yet
modest--the Snob of England bids ye farewell.

But only for a season.  Not for ever.  No, no.  There is
one celebrated author whom I admire very much--who has
been taking leave of the public any time these ten years
in his prefaces, and always comes back again when
everybody is glad to see him.  How can he have the heart
to be saying good-bye so often?  I believe that Bunn is
affected when he blesses the people.  Parting is always
painful.  Even the familiar bore is dear to you.  I
should be sorry to shake hands even with Jawkins for the
last time.  I think a well-constituted convict, on coming
home from transportation, ought to be rather sad when he
takes leave of Van Diemen's Land.  When the curtain goes
down on the last night of a pantomime, poor old clown
must be very dismal, depend on it.  Ha! with what joy he
rushes forward on the evening of the 26th of December
next, and says--'How are you?--Here we are!'  But I am
growing too sentimental:--to return to the theme.

THE NATIONAL MIND IS AWAKENED TO THE SUBJECT OF SNOBS.
The word Snob has taken a place in our honest English
vocabulary.  We can't define it, perhaps.  We can't say
what it is, any more than we can define wit, or humour,
or humbug; but we KNOW what it is.  Some weeks since,
happening to have the felicity to sit next to a young
lady at a hospitable table, where poor old Jawkins was
holding forth in a very absurd pompous manner, I wrote
upon the spotless damask 'S--B,' and called my
neighbour's attention to the little remark.

That young lady smiled.  She knew it at once.  Her mind
straightway filled up the two letters concealed by
apostrophic reserve, and I read in her assenting eyes
that she knew Jawkins was a Snob.  You seldom get them to
make use of the word as yet, it is true; but it is
inconceivable how pretty an expression their little
smiling mouths assume when they speak it out.  If any
young lady doubts, just let her go up to her own room,
look at herself steadily in the glass, and say 'Snob.'
If she tries this simple experiment, my life for it, she
will smile, and own that the word becomes her mouth
amazingly.  A pretty little round word, all composed of
soft letters, with a hiss at the beginning, just to make
it piquant, as it were.

Jawkins, meanwhile, went on blundering, and bragging and
boring, quite unconsciously.  And so he will, no doubt,
go on roaring and braying, to the end of time or at least
so long as people will hear him.  You cannot alter the
nature of men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by
laying ever so many stripes on a donkey's back, you can't
turn him into a zebra.

But we can warn the neighbourhood that the person whom
they and Jawkins admire is an impostor.  We apply the
Snob test to him, and try whether he is conceited and a
quack, whether pompous and lacking humility--whether
uncharitable and proud of his narrow soul?  How does he
treat a great man--how regard a small one?  How does he
comport himself in the presence of His Grace the Duke;
and how in that of Smith the tradesman?

And it seems to me that all English society is cursed by
this mammoniacal superstition; and that we are sneaking
and bowing and cringing on the one hand, or bullying and
scorning on the other, from the lowest to the highest.
My wife speaks with great circumspection--'proper pride,'
she calls it--to our neighbour the tradesman's lady: and
she, I mean Mrs. Snob,--Eliza--would give one of her eyes
to go to Court, as her cousin, the Captain's wife, did.
She, again, is a good soul, but it costs her agonies to
be obliged to confess that we live in Upper Thompson
Street, Somers Town.  And though I believe in her heart
Mrs. Whiskerington is fonder of us than of her cousins,
the Smigsmags, you should hear how she goes on prattling
about Lady Smigsmag,--and 'I said to Sir John, my dear
John;' and about the Smigsmags' house and parties in Hyde
Park Terrace.

Lady Smigsmag, when she meets Eliza,--who is a sort of a
kind of a species of a connection of the family, pokes
out one finger, which my wife is at liberty to embrace in
the most cordial manner she can devise.  But oh, you
should see her ladyship's behaviour on her first-chop
dinner-party days, when Lord and Lady Longears come!

I can bear it no longer--this diabolical invention of
gentility which kills natural kindliness and honest
friendship.  Proper pride, indeed!  Rank and precedence,
forsooth!  The table of ranks and degrees is a lie, and
should be flung into the fire.  Organize rank and
precedence! that was well for the masters of ceremonies
of former ages.  Come forward, some great marshal, and
organize Equality in society, and your rod shall swallow
up all the juggling old court goldsticks.  If this is not
gospel-truth--if the world does not tend to this--if
hereditary-great-man worship is not a humbug and an
idolatry--let us have the Stuarts back again, and crop
the Free Press's ears in the pillory.

If ever our cousins, the Smigsmags, asked me to meet Lord
Longears, I would like to take an opportunity after
dinner and say, in the most good-natured way in the
world:--Sir, Fortune makes you a present of a number of
thousand pounds every year.  The ineffable wisdom of our
ancestors has placed you as a chief and hereditary
legislator over me.  Our admirable Constitution (the
pride of Britons and envy of surrounding nations) obliges
me to receive you as my senator, superior, and guardian.
Your eldest son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in
Parliament; your younger sons, the De Brays, will kindly
condescend to be post-captains and lieutenants-colonels,
and to represent us in foreign courts or to take a good
living when it falls convenient.  These prizes our
admirable Constitution (the pride and envy of, &c.)
pronounces to be your due: without count of your dulness,
your vices, your selfishness; or your entire incapacity
and folly.  Dull as you may be (and we have as good a
right to assume that my lord is an ass, as the other
proposition, that he is an enlightened patriot);--dull, I
say, as you may be, no one will accuse you of such
monstrous folly, as to suppose that you are indifferent
to the good luck which you possess, or have any
inclination to part with it.  No--and patriots as we are,
under happier circumstances, Smith and I, I have no
doubt, were we dukes ourselves, would stand by our order.

We would submit good-naturedly to sit in a high place.
We would acquiesce in that admirable Constitution (pride
and envy of, &c.) which made us chiefs and the world our
inferiors; we would not cavil particularly at that notion
of hereditary superiority which brought many simple
people cringing to our knees.  May be we would rally
round the Corn-Laws; we would make a stand against the
Reform Bill; we would die rather than repeal the Acts
against Catholics and Dissenters; we would, by our noble
system of class-legislation, bring Ireland to its present
admirable condition.

But Smith and I are not Earls as yet.  'We don't believe
that it is for the interest of Smith's army that De Bray
should be a Colonel at five-and-twenty, of Smith's
diplomatic relations that Lord Longears should go
Ambassador to Constantinople,--of our politics, that
Longears should put his hereditary foot into them.

This bowing and cringing Smith believes to be the act of
Snobs; and he will do all in his might and main to be a
Snob and to submit to Snobs no longer.  To Longears he
says, 'We can't help seeing, Longears, that we are as
good as you.  We can spell even better; can think quite
as rightly; we will not have you for our master, or black
your shoes any more.  Your footmen do it, but they are
paid; and the fellow who comes to get a list of the
company when you give a banquet or a dancing breakfast at
Longueoreille House, gets money from the newspapers for
performing that service.  But for us, thank you for
nothing, Longears my boy, and we don't wish to pay you
any more than we owe.  We will take off our hats to
Wellington because he is Wellington; but to you--who are
you?"

I am sick of COURT CIRCULARS.  I loathe HAUT-TON
intelligence.  I believe such words as Fashionable,
Exclusive, Aristocratic, and the like, to be wicked,
unchristian epithets, that ought to be banished from
honest vocabularies.  A Court system that sends men of
genius to the second table, I hold to be a Snobbish
system.  A society that sets up to be polite, and ignores
Arts and Letters, I hold to be a Snobbish society.  You,
who despise your neighbour, are a Snob; you, who forget
your own friends, meanly to follow after those of a
higher degree, are a Snob; you, who are ashamed of your
poverty, and blush for your calling, are a Snob; as are
you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your
wealth.

To laugh at such is MR. PUNCH'S business.  May he laugh
honestly, hit no foul blow, and tell the truth when at
his very broadest grin--never forgetting that if Fun is
good, Truth is still better, and Love best of all.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Book of Snobs, by Thackeray