The Book of Snobs
by
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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.
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