because we know and respect each other, that the world respects us so
much; that we hold such a good position in society, and demean ourselves
so irreproachably when there.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVII--A LITTLE ABOUT IRISH SNOBS

You do not, to be sure, imagine that there are no other Snobs in Ireland
than those of the amiable party who wish to make pikes of iron railroads
(it's a fine Irish economy), and to cut the throats of the Saxon
invaders. These are of the venomous sort; and had they been invented in
his time, St. Patrick would have banished them out of the kingdom along
with the other dangerous reptiles.

I think it is the Four Masters, or else it's Olaus Magnus, or else
it's certainly O'Neill Daunt, in the 'Catechism of Irish History,' who
relates that when Richard the Second came to Ireland, and the Irish
chiefs did homage to him, going down on their knees--the poor simple
creatures!--and worshipping and wondering before the English king and
the dandies of his court, my lords the English noblemen mocked and
jeered at their uncouth Irish admirers, mimicked their talk and
gestures, pulled their poor old beards, and laughed at the strange
fashion of their garments.

The English Snob rampant always does this to the present day. There is
no Snob in existence, perhaps, that has such an indomitable belief in
himself: that sneers you down all the rest of the world besides, and has
such an insufferable, admirable, stupid contempt for all people but his
own--nay, for all sets but his own. 'Gwacious Gad' what stories about
'the Iwish' these young dandies accompanying King Richard must have had
to tell, when they returned to Pall Mall, and smoked their cigars upon
the steps of 'White's.'

The Irish snobbishness developes itself not in pride so much as in
servility and mean admirations, and trumpery imitations of their
neighbours. And I wonder De Tocqueville and De Beaumont, and THE TIMES'
Commissioner, did not explain the Snobbishness of Ireland as contrasted
with our own. Ours is that of Richard's Norman Knights,--haughty, brutal
stupid, and perfectly self-confident;--theirs, of the poor, wondering,
kneeling, simple chieftains. They are on their knees still before
English fashion--these simple, wild people; and indeed it is hard not to
grin at some of their NAIVE exhibitions.

Some years since, when a certain great orator was Lord Mayor of Dublin,
he used to wear a red gown and a cocked hat, the splendour of which
delighted him as much as a new curtain-ring in her nose or a string of
glass-beads round her neck charms Queen Quasheeneboo. He used to pay
visits to people in this dress; to appear at meetings hundreds of miles
off, in the red velvet gown. And to hear the people crying 'Yes, me
Lard!' and 'No, me Lard!' and to read the prodigious accounts of his
Lordship in the papers: it seemed as if the people and he liked to be
taken in by this twopenny splendour. Twopenny magnificence,
indeed, exists all over Ireland, and may be considered as the great
characteristic of the Snobbishness of that country.

When Mrs. Mulholligan, the grocer's lady, retires to Kingstown, she has
Mulholliganville' painted over the gate of her villa; and receives you
at a door that won't shut or gazes at you out of a window that is glazed
with an old petticoat.

Be it ever so shabby and dismal, nobody ever owns to keeping a shop. A
fellow whose stock in trade is a penny roll or a tumbler of lollipops,
calls his cabin the 'American Flour Stores,' or the 'Depository for
Colonial Produce,' or some such name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVIII--PARTY-GIVING SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIX--DINING-OUT SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XX--DINNER-GIVING SNOBS FURTHER CONSIDERED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXI--SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXII--CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIII--ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIV--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVI--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there, sure enough, she was!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVII--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes.

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

CHAPTER XXVIII--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'THE GREAT ALL.

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

THE SOUTH GALLERY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIX--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXX--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXI--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXII--SNOBBIUM GATHERUM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'19th November.

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

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