 CHAPTER XXV Of the dinner to which we now set down, I am not going to be a severe critic. The mahogany I hold to be involuntable, 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 cloup just before dinner. Nor was a particularly good of its kind, however. Mrs. Major Ponto did not evidently know the difference, for she called the liqueur armante de l'eau during the whole of the repast and drank but a half glass of it, leaving the rest for the major and his guest. Stripes was in the livery of the Ponto family. Although 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 remark, were very large and black, and a fine odor of the stable was wafted about the room as he moved to and fro in his administration. I should have preferred a clean-maid servant, but the sensations of the 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 hamshers had been sacrificed a short time previous to my visit. It was an excellent and comfortable repast, only there was a rather sameness to 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's gags would come out and if the Countess or Mama, this was said with much archeness and he-heeing, still wore that extraordinary purple hair-dye, whether my Lord Guttelberry kept beside his French chef, and an English cordon bleu for the roasts, an Italian for the confectionery, who attended at Lady Clipper-Claw's Conversation E., and whether Sir John's Champiolons Thursday mornings were pleasant, was it true that Lady Carabas, wanting to pawn her diamonds, found that they were paced and that the Marquis had disposed of them beforehand? How was it this snuffin' the great tobacco merchant broke off the marriage which was on the tapet between him and their second daughter, and was it true that a mulatto lady came over from the Havana 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 on, come on snob, my boy, we are all titled, you know. We know you're one of the fashionable people about town. We saw your name at Lady Clipper-Claw's Soirees, and the champagne breakfast, and as for the rubber-dubs, 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 gentile 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 that 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 Almex, 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 Hymenial 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 begun 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 café, une poutie musique au salon, 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 hullins and water? says Ponto, looking roofly at me. This was a very different style of thing to what I had been led to expect from him at her smoking-room at the club, where he swaggeres about his horses and his cellar and slapping me on the shoulder used to say, Come down to Magelwuzershire, snob my boy, and I'll give you as good a day's shooting and as good a glass of claret as any in this country. Well, said I, I like hullins much better than port and gin even better than hullins. 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 une poutie musique had commenced, and the smell of the stable again entering the dining-room in the person of stripes summoned us to café and a 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 there were, too. Strictly according to the present mode, for trinvaline 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, and what a fine arm Maria's is, Miss 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 that 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 her elbow almost in the most profuse contortions. You recognize those polkas? They were played at the Devonshire House on the twenty-third of July, the day of the grand fatay. So I said, yes, I knew them quite intimately, and began wagging my head as if an 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 Ponto's and Miss Wirth the governess set down to entertain us with variations on such a getting up the stairs they were determined to be in the fashion. For the performance of getting up the stairs I have no other name but that it was a stunner. Miss Wirth, 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 getting up the stairs and did so with a fury and swiftness quite incredible. She spun up the stairs, she whirled up the stairs, she galloped up the stairs, she rattled up the stairs, and then having got the tune to the top landing as though 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 Wirth played, getting up the stairs with the most pathetic and ravishing solemnity, plaintative moans and sobs issued from the keys. You wept, you trembled as though you were getting up the stairs. Miss Wirth'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 Wirth 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 café 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 favorite pupil, inestimable to have such a creature, Lady Carabas would give her eyes for her. A prodigy of accomplishments, thank you, Miss Wirth, 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 Wirth 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 Dursonanes, it was dear Duchess's favorite, and Lady Barbara, and Lady Jane Macbeth learned it. It was while hearing Jane play that I remember that dear Lord Castle-Tody 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 Castle-Tody, Mr. Snob? Round Tower's sweet-placed country mail. O Lord Castle-Tody! The present Lord was then Lord Ineshawn. Was a most eccentric old man, they say. He was mad. I heard His Royal Highness the poor Duke of Sussex, such a man, my dears, but alas, addicted to smoking. I heard His Royal Highness say to the Marquis of Engelie, I am sure that Castle-Tody is mad. But Ineshawn wasn't in marrying my sweet Jane, though the dear child had but her ten thousand pounds poor Toe Portage. This invaluable person whispered Misses Major Ponto to me. He has lived in the very highest society, and I, who would be accustomed to see the governess bullied in the world, was delighted to find this one ruling the roast and to think that even the majestic Miss Ponto bent before her. As for my pipe, so to speak, it went out at once. I haven'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 those we talked all the evening incessantly, and about the fashions, and about the court until bedtime came. And are there snobs in this Elysium I exclaimed jumping into the labner perfume-bed? Those snoring boomed from the neighboring bedroom in reply. The Book of Snobbs by William Make-Peace-Stackery Chapter 26 On Some Country Snobbs 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 until breakfast, but with a minute's intermission, when the instrument changes hands, and Miss Emily practices 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 in 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 Porto's manuscript song-books, and found five faults of French in four words, and in a waggish mood asking Miss Wirt whether Dante Algieri 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. Porto 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 and patterns on a broken chair, snipping leaves off a vine. Mrs. Porto measures many yards about in an evening. Yay, heavens, what a guy she is in that skeleton-morning costume! Besides stripes they keep a boy called Thomas or Thomas. Thomas 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, Thomas flings himself like mad into Thomas's clothes and comes out metamorphosed like harlequin in the pantomime. Today as Mrs. P. was cutting the grapevine, as the young ladies were at the roller, down comes Thomas like a roaring whirlwind, with Mrs. Mrs. there's company coming. Mr. P. scurried the young ladies from the roller, down comes Mrs. P. from the old chair, off flies Thomas to change his clothes, and in an incredibly short space of time, Sir John Hobbock, my lady Hobbock, and Master Hugh Hobbock are introduced into the garden, with brazen effrontery by Thomas, who says, Please, Sir Janum, my lady, to walk this year away, I know Mrs. 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-colored gloves, this amazing woman was in the arms of her dearest lady Hobbock. Dearest lady Hobbock, how good of you! Always among my flowers can't live away from them. Sweets to the sweet, hum, ha, ha, says Sir John Hobbock, who peeks himself on his gallantry and says nothing without a hum, a ha, ha. Where the alpinophore cries Master Hugh, we thought you in it over the wall, didn't we, Pa? Hum, ha, ha, burst out Sir John, dreadfully alarmed. Where's Ponto? Why wasn't he at quarter-sessions? How are his birds this year? Mrs. Ponto had those carabas pheasants done any harm to your wheat, hum, ha, ha, ha, and all this while he was making the most ferocious and desperate signals to his youthful heir. Well, she woth in her pinnifor wothenthe ma, said Hugh quite unabashed, which question Lady Hobbock turned away with a sudden query regarding her dear darling daughters, and the unfaunt terrible was removed by his father. I hope you weren't disturbed by the music, Ponto says. My girls, you know, practice four hours a day, you know. Must do it, you know. Absolutely necessary. As for me, you know, I am 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 hobbock saying 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, et cetera. 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 instruments for the same, and favorite 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 gorgeous sash and saber of the horse-marines with his boot hooks underneath in etrophy and the family medicine chest and in a corner the very rod with which he used to whip his son. Wellesley Ponto went a boy. Wellesley never entered the study but for that awful purpose. All these, with Mog's road-book, the gardener's chronicle, and a backgammon board formed the major's library. Under the trophy there's a picture of Mrs. Ponto in a light blue dress and train, and no waste 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 27 A visit to some country snobs. We had the fish, which, as a kind reader may remember, I had brought down in a delicate tension to Mrs. Ponto to variegate the reparse of next day. And cod and oyster-sauce, twice-laid-sword cod and scalloped oysters, formed parts of the bill of fare until I began to fancy that a 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 cause, which was served up in great state by stripes in a silver-ditchened cover, and that came round as dirty sums, and consisted of a lend-rail, not much bigger than a corpulent sparrow? My love, will you take any game? says Ponto, with prodigious gravity, and stuck his fork into the little mouthful of an island in the silver sea. Stripes, too, at intervals, dribbled down the marsala with a solemnity, which would have done honour to a duke's butler. The barma-side's dinner to checker-back 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 tender-forks, a beautiful old parsonage, close to the church where we went, and where the caribous family had ever ancestral cars and monument-ed Gothic pew, and every appearance of good society in the neighbourhood. I rather wondered, we were not alive and by the appearance of some of the neighbours at other grains, and asked about them. We can't in opposition of life. We can't, well, associate with the Italian'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, The most excellent, noisy creature, says Mrs. P, saved Mariah's life, really, learned man. But what can one do in one's position, one may ask one's medical mentor one's table certainly, as is family, my dear Mrs. Knopp. Ah, for dozen little galley-pots, interposed Mrs. Word, the governess. The young ladies laughed in chorus. We only live for the county families, and Mrs. Word continued, tossing up her head. Ors is known. I have since heard that this aristocratic's lady's father was a library-button-maker in St. Martin's Lane, where he met with Miss Fortunes, and his daughter acquired her days for heraldry. But it may be told to her credit, that out of her earning she has kept the bed-ridden old bankrupt in great comfort and secrecy in Pantonville, and furnished her brother's outfit for the cadetship with her patron, Lord Swigglebiggle, gave her when he was at the Board of Control. I have this information from a friend. To him is Word itself. It would fancy that her papa was a rotschild, and that the markets of Europe were a convulse when he went to Josie Gazette. Lord of Ors's note, the duke is abroad. We are at feud with the caravanses. The ringwoods don't come down to Christmas. In fact, nobody's here till the hunting season. Positively, nobody. Who says the large red house just out of the town? What? The Chateau Calico? Ha! Ha! That purse-brout ex-line-and-drape from a sea-yardly with yellow libraries, and a wife in red velvet? How can you, my dear Mrs. Knopp, be so satirical? The impertinence of those people is really something quite overwhelming. Well, then, there is a parson, Dr. Chrysostom. He's a gentleman at any rate. But this Mrs. Ponto looked at Miss Word. After the rite had met, and they had worked 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 very terrible. Another black sheep in the church. So did I with a little sorrow, for I don't care to own that I have a respect for the class. I—I hope there's nothing wrong. Wrong? says Mrs. P, clasping her hands with a tragic air. Oh! says Miss Word, and the two girls gasping in chorus. Wow! says I. I'm very sorry for it. I never saw a nice-looking old gentleman, or a better school, or heard a better sermon. He used to preach those sermons in a surplice, his stout Mrs. Ponto. His puse-eyed Mr. Knopp, a heavenly powers, says I, admiring the pure art of these female theologians, and strives keen and witty—it's a weep that no wonder Ponto 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 land-rail, and the non-preserved part of the harbour property. And one evening, in a stubble of Ponto, skirting the caribers' woods, we got among some pheasants, and had some rail-sport. I shot a hen, I know greatly to my delight. I bagged it, says Ponto, in rather a hurried manner, and hear somebody calling. Though I pocketed the bird. "'You infernal poaching thieves!' roars out a man from the hatch and the garb of a game-keeper. I wish I could catch on the side of the hatch. I'd put a brace of bowels into you, that I would.' "'Curs that snapper,' says Ponto, moving off, is always watching me like a spy. "'Carry of the bird, he sneaks and sell them in London,' roars the individual, where it appears was a keep of Lord Caribers. You'll get six jailings a brace for him.' "'You know the price of them well enough, and so does your master, too, your scoundrel,' says Ponto, still retreating. "'We kill them on our ground,' cries Mrs. Snapper. "'We don't set traps for other people's bird. We're no decoy ducks. We're no sneaking poachers. We don't shoot ends, like that air-cockney who's got a tail of one sticking out of his pocket. "'Only just come across a hatch, that's all.' "'I tell you what,' says Stripes, who was out with her, says Keeper this day. In fact, his Keeper, Cauchman, Coachman, Gardener, Valet, and Bailiff, whist tumours under him. "'If you'll come across, John Snapper, and take your coat off, I'll give you such a whooping as you've never had since the last time I did it at Waddlebury Fair.' "'Whoop on your own, wait,' Mrs. Snapper said, whistling his dogs and disappearing into his wood. "'And so he came out of this controversy rather victoriously. "'But I began to alter my preconceived ideas of rural felicity.' End of Chapter 27. Chapter 28 of The Book of Snobbs. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Clifton. The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray. Chapter 28 On Some Country Snobbs. "'Be hanged,' your aristocrats Ponto said, in some conversation we had regarding the family at Carabas, between whom in the Evergreens there was a feud. "'When I first came into the country, it was the year before Sir John Buff contested in the Blue Interest, the Marquis, then Lord St. Michael's who, of course, was orange to the core, paid me and Mrs. Ponto such attentions that I fairly confessed that I was taken in by the old humbug, and thought that I had met with a rare neighbor.' "'Gads, sir! We used to get pines from Carabas and pheasants from Carabas, and it was Ponto when we come over and shoot, and Ponto or pheasants want dinning, 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 toilet.' "'Well, sir, the election takes place, and though I was always a liberal, personal friendship, of course, induces me to plump for St. Michael's, who comes in at the head of the pole.' "'Next year Mrs. Ponto insists upon going to town, with lodging in Larges Street at ten pounds a week, with a hired brome, and new dresses for herself and the girls, and the doosanal to pay. Our first cards were to Carabas' house. My ladies are returned by a great big flunky, and I leave you to fancy my poor Betsy's discomforture, as the lodging-housemaid took in the cards, and Lady St. Michael's drives away, though she actually saw us at the drawing-room window. Would you believe it, sir, that though we called four times afterward, those infernal aristocrats never returned our visit? That though Lady St. Michael gave nine dinner-parties and four dejourns at 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 Almex. She writes to say that all hers were promised and said in the presence of Wiggins, her ladies-maid who told it to digs 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 jack-napes, and I hold him in scorn. After this Ponto gave me some private information regarding Lord Carabas's pecuniary affairs, and 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 snuffle the state coachman actually took off his blown-glass wig of ceremony and flung it at Labie 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 excite 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 mill-dude lodges, moldy Doric temples with black chimney pots in the finest classic taste, and the gates, of course, are surmounted by the Shabo, the well-known supporters of the Carabas family. Give the lodgekeeper a shilling, says Ponto, who drove me near to it in his four-wheeled cruelty-chase. 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 the curtsy, and the gate opened for me to enter. Poor old Portress, 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 gray 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 there 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 rotten bards that lies at roost in a dilapidated boathouse. Clumps of elms and oaks dot over the huge green flat. Every one of them would have been down long since, but that the marquee 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 woeful 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 façade is a huge ionic portico, approached by a vast, lonely, ghastly staircase. Rows of black windows, framed in stone, stretch on either side, and left three stories 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 Carrabbas, they are but eighty years in the peerage, if she got out of her guilt-coach in a shower, would be wet to the skin before she got halfway 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 Carrabbas's got their peerage, the misanthronic 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 the face as if 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 Caruso in her island more solitary? The door clapped, too, and I was in Castle Carrabbas. The sight entrance in all says the housekeeper. The alligator-hover of the mantelpiece was brought home by Admiral St. Michael's when a captain with Lord Hanson. The harms on the chairs is the harms of the Carrabbas family. The hall was rather comfortable. We went clapping up a clean stone back-stair, and then into a back passage cheerfully decorated with a ragged, light-green kit of minster, and issued upon the Great All. The Great All is seventy-two feet in length, fifty-six in breadth, and thirty-eight feet high. The carvings of the chimneys, representing the birth of Venus and Hercules and Eilash, is by Van Chislam, the most famous sculpture of this hog and country. The ceiling by Calamanco, representing painting, horticulture and music, the naked female figure with the barrel-horgan, introducing George, first Lord Carrabbas to the temple of the Muses. The winter ornaments is by Vanderputty, the floor is Patagonian marble, and the chandelier in the center was presented to Lionel, second Marquis by Louis XVI, whose head was cut off in the French revelation. We now enter the south gallery. One hundred and forty-eight in length by thirty-two in breadth. It is profusely ornamented by the choicest works of heart. Sir Andrew Katz, founder of the Carrabbas family and banker of the Prince of Orange, Kneller. Her present ladieship by Lawrence. Lord St. Michael's by the same. He is represented sitting on a rock in velvet pentaloons. Moses in the bull rushes. The bull very fine by Paul Potter. The toilet of Venus, Vantaschi, Flemish boars drinking, Anginimus, Jupiter and Europa, dehorn. The Grand Junction Canal, Venus by Candletti. An Italian bandit by Silveta Rosa. And so this worthy woman went on, from one room to another, from the blue room to the green, and the green of the Grand Salon, and the Grand Salon to the Tapestry Closet, cracking her list of pictures and wonders, and furatively turning up a corner of a brown Holland to show the color of the old faded, seedy, moldy, dismal hangings. At last we came to her ladieship's bedroom, in the center of this dreary apartment there is a bed about the size of one of those whizz-gig temples in which the genus appears in 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 Carrabbas 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 Carrabbas in a nightcap ascending those steps after putting up the candle. This sight of that seedy and solitary splendor 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 ink-stand on the center-table like the coffin of a baby, and sad portraits staring at you from the bleak walls with their solemn moldy eyes. No wonder that Carrabbas 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 were insolvent, and the servants perished in this huge jury 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 Carrabbas 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 marquee? We wouldn't refuse, I suppose, but take Castle Carrabbas in all, with debts, duns, and mean makeshifts, and shabby pride, and swindling magnificence. Next season, when I read of Lady Carrabbas's splendid entertainments in the morning-post, and see the poor old insolvent cantering through the park, I shall have a much tender interest in those great people that I have had heretofore. Poor old shabby snob, ride on, and fancy the world is still on his knees before the house of Carrabbas. Give yourself airs, poor old bankrupt magnifico, who are under money obligations to your flunkies, and must stoop so as to swindle poor tradesmen. And for us, O my brother's snobs, oughtn't we to feel happy if our walk through life is more even, and that we are out of the reach of the surprising arrogance, and that astounding meanness to which this wretched old victim is obliged to mount and descend. End of Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX of The Book of Snobbs. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Clifton. The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace-Deckery. Chapter XXIX A Visit to Some Country Snobbs. 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 katooing, the raptures and flurry which preceded and welcomed the visit of a real, live Lord and Lord Son. A brother-officer of Coronet Wellesley Ponto in the 120th Hussars, who came over with the young Coronet from Gettlesbury, where their distinguished regiment was quartered. This was my Lord Giles, Lord Salter'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 schoolboy handwriting, with the number of falsely spelling may yet be a very fine, classical scholar for what I know, having had his education eaten, 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-in writers in England. He wrote his horse, Abracadabra, and won the famous Gettlesbury Steeplechase. 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 a betting or gambling. He has lost in one 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 splendor 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 lightweight, 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 dull assessment and be Prime Minister after Lord George Bentnick. My young friend Wellesley Ponto is a gaunt and bony youth with a pale face profusely blotched. From his continuing 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 the cash and rides when somebody mounts him, for he can't afford more than his regulation-chargers. Drinking he is by no means inferior. And why do you think he brought his noble friend, Lord Giles, 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 are wedgment so doothed expensive. Muth-tun, you know. A man couldn't live in the wedgment if he didn't. Muth expenses on off. Muth dine at Muth. Muth drink champagne and claret. Ours ain't a port and sherry-light infantry mess. Uniform awful. Fitzhilt, our colonel, will have him, though. Must be a distinction, you know. At his own expense Fitzhilt 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 alteration alone cost him five hundred pound. The year before last he hoarded the wedgment at an immense expense, and were called the queen's own piebalt from that day. Ever seen it on parade? The emperor nickled birthed into tears of envy when he saw us at Windsor, and you see, continued my young friend, I brought Giles down with me, as the governor is very sulky about shelling out just to talk my mother over who could do anything with him. Giles told her that I was Fitzhilt's favorite of the whole regimen and gad. She thinks the horse guards will give me my troop for nothing, and he humbugged the governor that I was the greatest crew in the army. Ain't that a good dodge? With this Wellesley left me to go, and smoke a cigar in the stables with Lord Giles, and make Murray over the cattle there understripe superintendents. Young Ponto laughed with his friend. At the venerable four-wheeled cruelty chase, but seemed amazed that the latter should ridicule more than an ancient chariot of the build of 1824, emblazoned immensely with the arms of the Pontos and the Snailies, from which latter distinguished family misses Ponto issue. I found poor Ponto 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 Giles tells me that he is the most careful youngster in the regiment, God bless him, but look at that. By heaven's knob, 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 corduroy's, and his shrunk shooting jacket, and his lean shanks, look, as he spoke, more miserably haggard, bankrupt, and threadbare. Lieutenant Wellesley Ponto, 120th, Queen's-owned Highbolt Hussars, Cunop and Stucknatal, Conduit Street, London, LSD, Dress Jacket, Richly Laced with Gold, 35 Pounds, Ditto Police, Ditto and Trim with Sable, 60 Pounds, Undressed Jacket, Trim with Gold, 15 Pounds, 15 Shillings, Ditto Police, 30 Pounds, Dress Pentaloons, 12 Pounds, Ditto Overalls, Gold Lace on Sides, 6 Pounds, 6 Shillings, Undressed Ditto, Ditto, 5 Pounds, 5 Shillings, Blue, Rated Frog, 14 Pounds, 14 Shillings, Forage Cap, 3 Pounds, 3 Shillings, Dress Cap, Gold Lines, Plume and Chain, 25 Pounds, Gold Barreled Sash, 11 Pounds, 18 Shillings, Sward, 11 Pounds, 11 Shillings, Ditto Belt and Sablechet, 16 Pounds, 16 Shillings, Pouch and Belt, 15 Pounds, 15 Shillings, Sward Knot, 1 Pound, 4 Shillings, Cloak, 13 Pounds, 13 Shillings, Velice, 3 Pounds, 13 Shillings, 6 Pounds, Regulation Saddle, 7 Pounds, 17 Shillings, 6 Pounds, Ditto Bridal Complete, 10 Pounds, 10 Shillings, Address Housing Complete, 30 Pounds, A Pair of Pistols, 10 Pounds, 10 Shillings, A Black Sheepskin Edged, 6 Pounds, 18 Shillings, Total, 347 Pounds, 9 Shillings. 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 Fitzshilter'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, she said, as my pimple-faced young friend moved off to resume smoking operations with Giles 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 since in England, O you legislators about to assemble in parliament, read over that tailor's bill above printed, read over that absurd catalog of insane gimmicks 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 hot and taut or a highlender. We laugh at poor Jaco the Monkey dancing in uniform or at poor James the Flunky with his quivering calves and plush tights, or at the nigger Marquilla Marmalade dressed out with sabre and epiphylets and giving himself the heirs of a field-martial. Lo is not one of the Queen's pine-balls in full fig as great and foolish a monster. End of Chapter 29 Chapter 30 of the Book of Snobbs by W. M. Thackeray. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Book of Snobbs by W. M. Thackeray Chapter 30 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 Pontos 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 diarist and most cutthroat spirits with an overdrawn account of the bankers and other pressing evils of poverty, although a 10-penny 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 error 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 scented from the cellar. A professed cook actually came over from Guttelberry to compile culinary abominations. Stripes was in a new coat and so was Ponto for wonder and Tumus' button suit was worn unpermanence. And all this to show off the little lord thinks I. All this in honor of a stupid little cigarified cornered 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 bedroom in spite of all her hints, but held my ground in the shins tester, vowing that Lord Gules as a young man was quite small and hearty enough to make himself comfortable elsewhere. The great Ponto party was a very august one. The Hobbuck's came in their family coach with the blood red band and blazoned all over it and their man in yellow livery weighted in country fashion at table only to be exceeded in splendor by the Hipsley's, the opposition baronet in light blue. The old lady's Fitzagu drove over in their little old chariot with the fat black horses, the fat coachman, the fat footman. Why aren't Dowager's horses and footmen always fat? And soon after these personages had arrived with their Auburn fronts and red beaks and turbans came the honorable and reverend Lionel Petitpois, who with general and Mrs. Sego formed the rest of the party. Lord and Lady Frederick Howlett were asked, but they have friends at Ivy Bush, Mrs. Ponto told me, and that very morning the castle haggard sent an excuse as her ladyship had a return of the Quincy. Between ourselves, Lady Castle Haggard's Quincy always comes on when there is dinner at the Evergreens. If the keeping of Palleg 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 imposter who pretended to a connection with the Snobbington family in General Sego who had brought home, I don't know how many lacks of rupees from India was related to the peerage or the barantage. 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 dullness of the talking part of the entertainment. Oh, my beloved brother Snobbs 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 10 miles to do it. For instance, the Hipsley's came 10 miles from the south and the Hobbuck's 10 miles from the north of the Evergreens and were magnets in two different divisions of the county of Mangle-Wurzelshire. Hipsley, who is an old baronet with a bothered estate, did not care to show his contempt for Hobbuck, who is a new creation and rich. Hobbuck, on his part, gives himself patronizing heirs to General Sego, who looks upon the Pontos as little better than poppers. Old Lady Blanche says, Ponto, I hope will leave something to her goddaughter, 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 illiterate turn. I'm inclined to believe the former had a wet compress around her body on the occasion when I had the happiness of meeting her. She doctors everybody in the neighborhood 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 Dr. 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 Hanuman in her bracelet and a lock of prisen its hair in a brooch. She talked about her own complaints and those of her confidant for the time being to every lady in the room successively, from our hostess down to Ms. Wirt, taking them into corners and whispering about bronchitis, hepatitis, st. Vitus, neuralgia, cephalalgia, and so forth. I observed poor, fat Lady Hobbuck in a dreadful alarm after some communication regarding the state of her daughter Ms. Lady Hobbuck'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 Gettleberry and is very strong in voyages and travels. She has a prodigious interest in Borneo and displayed a knowledge of the history of the Punjab and Kaphirland 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-hunting ram jugger. I observed her ladyship treated with something like contempt her neighbor the Reverend Lionel Petupois, a young divine whom he made 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 Ms. Wurt a sheaf of the little washerwoman on Putney Common and to Ms. Hobbuck a couple of dozen of Meat in the Trey or the young butcher boy rescued and on paying a visit to Gettleberry Gow, I saw two notorious fellows waiting their trial there and temporarily occupied with the game of cribbage, to whom his reverence offered a tract as he was walking over Craction's Common and who robbed him of his purse, umbrella, and camber cankerchief, leaving him the tracks to distribute elsewhere. End of Chapter 30. Chapter 31 of the Book of Snobbs. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Clifton. The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackery. Chapter 31, a visit to some country snobs. Why, dear Mr. Snobbs 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 worked 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 laser retos and other instances of martyrdom? What do you suppose induced gentlemen to walk two miles up to the batteries of Siborin 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 pour over the most dreary law papers until long past midnight? Madam Moselle, duty, which must be done but like 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, number 24, Pumpcourt Temple, were being painted by the honorable 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 Pumpcourt look when I revisited its well-known chimney-pots. Carrie Lugie, welcome, welcome, oh, frog 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 Hobbock of the Hawes, Sir John Hipsley of Briary Hall, don't shut the gates of hospitality. Of General Sego's mulligan 20, I could speak from experience. And the two old ladies at Guttlesbury, 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 clerid at Hobbock'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 super-neckular. And I remember the conversations, oh, madam, madam, how stupid they were, the subsoil plowing, the pheasants and poaching, the row about the representation of the country, the earl of Mangle Woosershire being at variance with his relative and nominee, the honorable Marmaduke Tom Naughty, all these I could put down had I the mind to violate the confidence of private life and a great deal of conversation about the weather, the Mangle Woosershire hunt, new manures and eating and drinking of course. But, quibonote, in these perfectly stupid and honorable families, there is not that snobbishness which it is our purpose to expose. An ox is an ox. A great hulking, fat-sighted, bellowing, munching beef. He ruminates according to his nature and consumes his destined portion of turnips or oil cake 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 overwise, but quite passable, fond of port wine of his family of country sports and agriculture. Simply minded, with as pretty a little petrimonial country house as heart can desire, and a thousand pounds a year, it is not much but. Entre nois, 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 marrific family, and is loved by the poor for miles around, 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, Dr. Chrysostom. Mrs. P. says they quarreled about Poozyism, but I am given to understand it was, because Mrs. C. had the paw 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 Petipolis allows that, in whose eyes the doctor's surplus is a scarlet abomination, and so does Petipolis 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 Giles does not intend to choose. Well, although Pawn's income would make up almost as much as that of these three worthies put together, oh, my dear madam, see what in hopeless penury the poor fellow lives. What tenant can look to his forbearance? Poor man can hope for his charity. Master's the best of men, honest Stripes says, and when we was in the regiment a more free-handed chap didn't live. But the way in which Mrs. Deuxayu I wonder the young ladies is alive, that I do. They live upon a fine governess and fine masters, and have clothes made by Lady Crobs's own milliner, and their brother rides with earls to cover, and only the best people in the country 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 down my portmandu in the four-wheeled chase, and, poor P, on being touched with sciatica, drove me over to Garabas Arms at Gettleberry, 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 showpieces on the piano, and Mrs. Ponto's gentile tackle about the fashion and the country families. CHAPTER XXXII This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recording turned public domain. From our information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Book of Snobbs My William Make-Peace Tha'Gray CHAPTER XXXII Snobbium Gathorum 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 cause the public attention to their delicacy too? How, for instance, could that wonderful Kate of the Earl of Mangalverta, and his brother, be examined in the snobbish point of view, and let alone the hackaturing, the bullying, the vaporing, the bad grammar, the mutual recommendations, lie-givings, challenges, retractions, which abound in the fraternal dispute, put out of the question these points is 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 candid of Mangalverta, it 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 Mangalvertsershire, and all that we require of the Earl of Mangalvertsershire, is that he should have fifty thousand a year, and hunt the country. Oh, you pride of all snobland, are you crawling, trockling, self-confessed lackeys, and parasites! But this is going to savage. Don't let us forget our usual amenity, the tone of playfulness and sentiment with which the beloved reader and writer have pursued their mutual reflection, says the Toe. Well, snobbishness pervades the little social farce, as well as a great state-comedy, and the self-same moral is tacked to either. There was, for instance, an accountant the papers of a young lady whom is led by fortune-teller actually went part of the way to India, as far as Begnick was, I think, in search of a husband who was promised his heir. Do you suppose this poor deluded little soul would have left a shop for a man below her in rank, or for anything but a darling of a captain in a polyts and a red coat? It was her snobbish sentiment, that misled her, and to make up vanities appraided with this wendling fortune-teller. Case two was that of Manuel Zeldesau-Grenoux, the interesting young French woman with the profusion of jetty wringlets, who lived for nothing at boarding-house at Gosford, was it then conveyed to Farron Greaters, 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 exercise towards the interesting young French lady? Was it a jetty wringlets, or her charming face? Bah! The ladies loved others for having faces and black hair. She said she was a relation of the so-Grenoux, talked of a ladyship around, and of herself as the so-Grenoux. The honest boarding-house people read her feet at once. Good honest, simple, Lord-loving, Jeldon 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 practiced on an old lady, hypocrite 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 pickers for him, the daughters advised with each other in cooking dinners for the right honourable. At what was the end? One day the draid fled, with a teapot and a basket full of cold fixtures. It was a right honourable, which bated the hook which gorge all these greedy, simple snobs. Would they have been taken in by Kamuna? What old lady is there, my dear sir, who would take in you and me, where we ever so ill-to-do and comfort us and close 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 land, lady! 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 nulls and post-mark, unto the following effect. 19th of 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 an homage to mention that, but I wish to state the plain fact. Our maternal grandfather was an Earl. The introduction of grandpa-power is, I fear, snobbish. We can afford to take in a stamped edition of you, and all Dickens' works, as fast as they come, but we do not keep such a thing as a peerage, or even a baronetage, in the house. We live with every comfort, excellent cellar, etc., etc. But as we cannot well afford a butler, we have a knee-table made, though our father was a military man, as traveled much, being in the best society, etc. We have a coachman and helper, but we don't put the letter into buttons, nor make them wait at table, like stripes and tumours. No, too. That is, as you like. I don't object to buttons and moderations. We are just the same to persons who use a handle to their name as to those without it. We wear a moderate modicum of criniline, note three, quite right. And our never-limb, note four, bless you. In the morning we have good and abundant dinners on China, though we have played, note five, snobbish, and I doubt, with you all to dine as well alone as with company, you will be getting too good dinners. And just as good when alone as with company. Now, my dear Mr. Punch, will you please give us the short answer in your next number, and I will be so much obliged to you. Nobody knows who I'm writing to you, not even our father, nor will we ever tease. Note six. We like to be teased, but tell papa. You again, if you will only give us an answer. Just for fun. Now do. If you get as far as this, which is doubtful, you will probably fling it into the fire. If you do, I cannot help it, but I am of a sanguine disposition, and entertain a lingering hope. At all events, I shall be impatient for next Sunday, for you reach us on that day, and I am ashamed to confess we cannot resist opening you and the carriage driving home from church. Note seven. Oh, goddess and stars, what will Captain Gordon and Exeter Hall say to this? I remain, etc., etc., for myself and sisters. Excuse this growl, but I always write headlong. Note eight. Dear little enthusiast. P.S., you were rather stupid last week, don't you think? Note nine. You were never more mistaken as in your life. We keep no gamekeeper, and yet have always abundant game for friends to shoot and spite of the poachers. We never write and perfume to paver. In short, I can't help thinking that if you knew us, you would not think as snobs. To this I reply in the following manner. My dear young ladies, I know your post-town, and shall be a church there the Sunday after next, when will you please to wear a tulip or some little driveling in your bonnets, so that I may know you. You will recognise me and my dress, a quite-looking young fellow, in a white top coat, a crimson-setter necklace, light-fruit trousers, with glossy-tip boots, and an emerald breast-pin. I shall have a black crepe around my white head, and my usual bamboo cane with a richly-guilt knob. I am sorry there will be no time to get up mustaches between now and next week. From seventeen to two-and-twenty, you gods, what ages! Dear young creatures, I can see you all three. Seventeen suits me, as near as my own time of life, but might I don't say two-and-twenties to old? No, no, and that pretty, roguish, demure, middle-one, peace, peace, the silly little fluttering heart. You, snobs, dear young ladies, I will pull any man's nose who says so. There is no harm in being of a good family. You can't help it, poor dears. What's in a name? What's in a handle to it? I confess openly that I should not object to being a duke myself, and between ourselves you might see worse leg for a garter. Use snobs, dear little good-nature things, no, that is, I hope not. I think not. I won't be too confident, none of us should be, that we are not snobs, that very confident savers of arrogance and to be arrogant is to be a snob. In all the social gradations from sneak to tyrant, nature has placed the most wondrous and various progeny of snobs, but are there no kindly-natures, no tender hearts, no souls humble, simple and true sloughing? Ponder well on this question, sweet young ladies, and if you can answer it, as no doubt you can, lucky are you, and lucky the respected herp of her, and lucky the three handsome young gentlemen who are about to become each other's brother-in-law. CHAPTER 33 SNOBS AND MARRIAGE Every body of the middle rank who walks through this life with a sympathy for his companions on the same journey, at any rate every man who has been jostling in the world for some three or four lustres, must make no end of melancholy reflections upon the fate of those victims whom society, that is, snobbishness, is immolating every day. With love and simplicity and natural kindness, snobbishness is perpetually at war. People dare not be happy for fear of snobs. People dare not love for fear of snobs. People pine away lonely under the tyranny of snobs. Honest kindly hearts dry up and die. Gallant generous lads, blooming with hearty youth, swell into bloated old bachelorhood, and burst and tumble over. Tender girls wither into shrunken decay, and perish solitary, from whom snobbishness has cut off the common claim to happiness and affection with which nature endowed us all. My heart grows sad as I see the blundering tyrant's handiwork. As I behold it I swell with cheap rage, and glow with fury against the snob. Come down, I say, thou skulking dullness! Come down, thou stupid bully, and give up thy brutal ghost! And I arm myself with the sword and spear, and taking leave of my family, go forth to do battle with that hideous ogre and giant, that brutal desperate-in-snob castle who holds so many gentle hearts in torture and thrall. When punches, King, I declare there shall be no such thing as old maids and old bachelors. The Reverend Mr. Malthus shall be burned annually instead of Guy Fawkes. Those who don't marry shall go into the workhouse. It shall be a sin for the poorest not to have a pretty girl to love him. The above reflections came to mind after taking a walk with an old comrade, Jack Spigot, by name, who is just passing into the state of old bachelorhood after the manly and blooming youth in which I remember him. Jack was one of the handsomest fellows in England when we entered together in the Highland buffs, but I quitted the cutty kilts early and lost sight of him for many years. Ah! how changed he is from those days! He wears a waistband now and has begun to dye his whiskers. His cheeks, which were red, are now mottled. His eyes, once so bright and steadfast, are the colour of peeled plover's eggs. Are you married, Jack? says I, remembering how consumedly in love he was with his cousin Letty Loveless when the cutty kilts were quartered at Strathbongo some twenty years ago. Married? No, says he, not money enough, hard enough to keep myself much more a family on five hundred a year. Come to Dickinson's, as some of the best Madeira in London there, my boy. So we went and talked over old times. The bill for dinner and wine consumed was prodigious, and the quantity of brandy and water that Jack took showed what a regular boozer he was. A guinea or two guinea's? What the devil do I care what I spend for my dinner? says he. And Letty Loveless, says I. Jack's countenance fell. However, he burst into a loud laugh presently. Ha! Letty Loveless, says he, she's Letty Loveless still, but God, such a wizened old woman. She's as thin as a thread-paper. You remember what a figure she had. Her nose has got red and her teeth blue. She's always ill, always quarrelling with the rest of the family, always psalms singing, and always taking pills. God, I had a rare escape there. Push round the grog, old boy. It way memory went back to the days when Letty was the loveliest of blooming young creatures. When to hear her sing was to make the heart jump into your throat. When to see her dance was better than Montessu or Noble, they were the ballet queens of those days. When Jack used to wear a locket of her hair with a little gold chain round his neck, and exhilarated with Toddy, after a sederant of the cutty-kilt mess used to pull out this token and kiss it and howl about it to the great amusement of the bottle-nosed old major and the rest of the table. My father and hers couldn't put their horses together, Jack said. The general wouldn't come down with more than six thousand. My governor said it shouldn't be done under eight. Loveless told him to go and be hanged, and so we parted company. They said she was in a decline. Gaman, she's forty and as tough and as sour as this bitter lemon peel. Don't put much into your punch, snob, my boy. No man can stand punch after wine. And what are your pursuits, Jack, says I. Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go down there once a year for a week, dreadful slow. Shilling wist. Four sisters all unmarried except the youngest. Awful work. Scotland in August. Italy in the winter. Cursed rumour-tism. Come to London in March and toddle about at the club, old boy. And we won't go home till morning till daylight does appear. And here's the wreck of two lives. Mused the present snobographer after taking leave of Jack's bigot. Pretty, merry, letty, loveless's rudder lost, and she cast away. And handsome Jack's bigot stranded on the shore, like a drunken trinket-low. What was it that insulted nature, to use no higher name, and perverted her kindly intentions towards them? What cursed frost was it, that nipped the love that both were bearing, and condemned the girl to sour sterility, and the lad to selfish old bachelorhood? It was the infernal snob tyrant who governs us all, who says, thou shalt not love without a lady's maid, thou shalt not marry without a carriage and horses, thou shalt have no wife in thy heart, and no children on thy knee, without a page in buttons, and a French bon. Thou shalt go to the devil, unless there has a broom. Marry poor, and society shall forsake thee. Thy kinsmen shall avoid thee as a criminal. Thy aunts and uncles shall turn up their eyes, and bemoan the sad, sad manner in which Tom or Harry has thrown himself away. You young woman may sell yourself without shame and merry old creases. You young man may lie away your heart and your life for a jointure. But if you are poor, woe be to you! Society the brutal snob autocrat consigns you to solitary perdition. Sir poor girl in your garret, rot poor bachelor in your club. When I see those graceless recluses, those unnatural monks and nuns of the order of Saint Beelzebub, my hatred for snobs and their worship and their idols passes all continents. Let us hew down that man-eating juggernaut, I say, that hideous day gone. And I glow with the heroic courage of Tom Thumb, and join battle with the giant snob. Footnote. This of course is understood to apply only to those unmarried persons whom a mean and snobbish fear about money has kept from fulfilling their natural destiny. Many persons there are devoted to celibacy because they cannot help it. Of these a man would be a brute who spoke roughly. Indeed, after miso-tools conduct to the writer, he would be the last to condemn. But never mind, these are personal matters. End of footnote. End of chapter 33. Chapter 34 of the Book of Snobbs. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Ruth Golding. The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray. Chapter 34 Snobbs and Marriage. In that noble romance, called Ten Thousand a Year, I remember a profoundly pathetic description of the Christian manner in which the hero, Mr. Aubrey, bore his misfortunes. After making a display of the most florid and grandiliquent resignation, and quitting his country mansion, the writer supposes Aubrey to come to town in opposed shares and pair, sitting bodkin, probably, between his wife and sister. It is about seven o'clock, carriages are rattling about, knockers are thundering, and tears bedim the fine eyes of Kate and Mrs. Aubrey, as they think that in happier times at this hour their Aubrey used formerly to go out to dinner, to the houses of the aristocracy, his friends. This is the gist of the passage, the elegant words I forget, but the noble, noble sentiment I shall always cherish and remember. What can be more sublime than the notion of a great man's relatives in tears about his dinner? With a few touches, what author ever more happily described a snob? We were reading the passage lately at the house of my friend Raymond Grayesquire, Barrister at Law, an ingenuous use without the least practice, but who has, luckily, a great share of good spirits, which enables him to bide his time, and bare laughingly his humble position in the world. Meanwhile, until it is altered, the stern laws of necessity and the expenses of the northern circuit oblige Mr. Gray to live in a very tiny mansion, in a very queer small square, in the airy neighbourhood of Grayes in Lane. What is the more remarkable is that Gray has a wife there. Mrs. Gray was a Miss Harley Baker, and I suppose I need not say that, is a respectable family. Guide to the cavern-dishes, the oxfords, the merry-bones, they still, though rather deschew from their original splendour, hold their heads as high as any. Mrs. Harley Baker, I know, never goes to church without John behind to carry her prayer-book. Nor will Miss Welbeck, her sister, walk twenty yards of shopping without the protection of Figby, her sugar-loaf page, so the old lady is as ugly as any woman in the parish, and as tall and whiskery as a grenadier. The astonishment is how Emily Harley Baker could have stooped to marry Raymond Gray. She who was the prettiest and proudest of the family, she who refused Sir Cockle Biles of the Bengal service, she who turned up her little nose at Essex Temple, QC, and connected with the noble house of Albings. She who had but four thousand pounds, pour tout potage, to marry a man who had scarcely as much more. A scream of wrath and indignation was uttered by the whole family when they heard of this mes alliances. Mrs. Harley Baker never speaks of her daughter now but with tears in her eyes and as a ruined creature. Miss Welbeck says, I consider that man a villain, and has denounced poor good-natured Mrs. Perkins as a swindler, at whose ball the young people met for the first time. Mr. and Mrs. Gray, meanwhile, live in Gray's in Lane, a foresaid, with a maid-servant and a nurse whose hands are very full, and in a most provoking and unnatural state of happiness. They have never once thought of crying about their dinner, like the wretchedly pooling and snobbish woman-kind of my favourite snob-albury of ten thousand a year. But on the contrary, accept such humble vitals as fate awards them with the most perfect and thankful good-grace. Nay, actually have a portion for a hungry friend at times, as the present writer can gratefully testify. I was mentioning these dinners and some admirable lemon puddings which Mrs. Gray makes to our mutual friend the great Mr. Goldmore, the East India director, when that gentleman's face assumed an expression of almost apoplectic terror, and he gasped out, What? Do they give dinners? He seemed to think it a crime and a wonder that such people should dine at all, and that it was their custom to huddle round their kitchen fire over a bone and a crust. Whenever he meets them in society it is a matter of wonder to him, and he always expresses his surprise very loud, how the lady can appear decently dressed, and the man have an unpatched coat to his back. I have heard him enlarge upon this poverty before the whole room at the conflagrative club, to which he and I and Gray have the honour to belong. We meet at the club on most days. At half-past four, Goldmore arrives in St. James's street from the city, and you may see him reading the evening papers in the bow-window of the club which enfilades Palmal, a large plethoric man with a bunch of seals in a large bow-windowed light waistcoat. He has large coat-tails stuffed with agents' letters and papers about companies of which he is a director. His seals jingle as he walks. I wish I had such a man for an uncle, and that he himself were childless. I would love and cherish him, and be kind to him. At six o'clock in the fall season, when all the world is in St. James's street and the carriages are cutting in and out among the cabs on the stand, and the tufted dandies are showing their listless faces out of whites, and you see a respectable grey-headed gentleman waggling their heads to each other through the plate-glass windows of Arthur's, and the redcoats wish to be bryarian so as to hold all the gentleman's horses, and that wonderful red-coated royal porter is sunning himself for Malbrahouse. At the noon of London time you see a light yellow carriage with black horses and a coachman in a tight floss-silk wig, and two footmen in powder and white and yellow liveries, and a large woman inside in shot silk, a poodle, and a pink parasol, which drives up to the gate of the conflagrative, and the page goes and says to Mr. Goldmore, who is perfectly aware of the fact, as he is looking out of the windows with about forty other conflagrative bucks. Your carriage, sir." Gee wags his head. "'Remember, eight o'clock precisely,' says he to Mulligatorni, the other East India director, and ascending the carriage, plumps down by the side of Mrs. Goldmore for a drive in the park, and then home to Portland Place. As the carriage whirls off all the young bucks in the club, feel a secret elation. It is a part of their establishment, as it were. That carriage belongs to their club, and their club belongs to them. They follow the equipage with interest. They eye it knowingly as they see it in the park. But halt! We are not come to the club snobs yet. Oh, my brave snobs, what a flurry there will be among you when those papers appear! Well you may judge from the above description what sort of a man Goldmore is. A dull and pompous Leadenhall Street creases, good-natured with all and affable, cruelly affable. Mr. Goldmore can never forget, his lady used to say, that it was Mrs. Gray's grandfather who sent him to India. And though that young woman has made the most imprudent marriage in the world, and has left her station in society, her husband seems an ingenious and laborious young man, and we shall do everything in our power to be of use to him. So they used to ask the grays to dinner twice or thrice in a season when, by way of increasing the kindness, Buff the butler is ordered to hire a fly to convey them to and from Portland Place. Of course I am much too good-natured a friend of both parties not to tell Gray of Goldmore's opinion in him, and the Nabob's astonishment at the idea of the briefless barrister having any dinner at all. Indeed, Goldmore's saying became a joke against Gray amongst us wags at the club, and we used to ask him when he tasted meat last whether we should bring him home something from dinner, and cut a thousand other mad pranks with him in our facetious way. One day then, coming home from the club, Mr. Gray conveyed to his wife the astounding information that he had asked Goldmore to dinner. My love! says Mrs. Gray in a tremor. How could you be so cruel? Why, the dining-room won't hold Mrs. Goldmore. Make your mind easy, Mrs. Gray. Her ladyship is in Paris. It is only Cresus that's coming, and we are going to the play afterwards, to Sadler's Wells. Goldmore said at the club that he thought Shakespeare was a great poet and ought to be patronised, whereupon fired with enthusiasm I invited him to our banquet. Goodness gracious! What can we give him for dinner? He has two French cooks. You know Mrs. Goldmore is always telling us about them, and he dines with Alderman every day. A plain leg of mutton, my Lucy, I pretty get ready at three. Have it tender and smoking and juicy, and what better meat can there be? says Gray, quoting my favourite poet. But the cook is ill, and you know that horrible pattypan the pastry cooks Silence, foul! says Gray in a deep tragedy voice. I will have the ordering of this repast. Do all things as I bid thee. Invite our friend Snob here to partake of the feast. Find the task of procuring it. Don't be expensive, Raymond, says his wife. Peace, thou timid partner of the briefless one. Goldmore's dinner shall be suited to our narrow means. Only do thou in all things my commands. And seeing by the peculiar expression of the rogue's countenance that some mad waggery was in preparation, I awaited the morrow with anxiety. End of Chapter 34 The Book of Snob's by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 35 Punctual to the hour, by the way, I cannot omit to mark down my hatred, scorn, and ignation towards those miserable snobs who come to dinner at nine when they are asked at eight, in order to make a sensation in the company. Be the loathing of honest folks, the backbiting of others, the curses of cooks, pursue these riches, and avenge the society on which they trample. Punctual, I say, to the hour of five, which Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Gray had appointed a youth of an elegant appearance in a neat evening dress whose trim whiskers indicated neatness, whose light step denoted activity, for in sooth he was hungry and always is at the dinner hour whatsoever the hour may be, and whose rich golden hair curling down his shoulders was set off by a perfectly new four-and-nine-penny silk hat, was seen winding his way down Biddlestone Street. Biddlestone Square greys in. The person in question, I need not say, was Mr. Snob. He was never late when invited to dine. But to proceed my narrative, Mr. Snob may have flattered himself that he made a sensation as he started down Biddlestone with his richly knobbed cane, and indeed I vow I saw heads looking at me from Mrs. Squilby's. The brass-plated milliner, opposite Raymond Gray's, who has three silver-paper bonnets and two fly-blown prints of fashion in the window. Yet what was the emotion produced by my arrival, compared to that which the little street thrilled, when at five minutes past five the floss-wigged coachman, the yellow hammer cloth and flunkies, the black horses, and blazing silver harness have Mr. Goldmore whirled down the street. It is a very little street, of very little houses, most of them with very large brass plates like Mrs. Squilby's. Coal merchants, architects and surveyors, two surgeons, a solicitor, a dancing master, and of course several house agents occupy the houses. Little two-storied edifices with little suckle porticoes. Goldmore's carriage, over top the roofs almost. The first floors might shake hands with crosses, as he lulled inside. All the windows of those first floors, thronged with children and women in a twinkling. There was Mrs. Hammerley in curl-papers, Mrs. Saxby with a front awry, Mr. Riggles peering through the gauze curtains, holding in the while his hot glass of rum and water. In fine, a tremendous commotion in Biddlestone Street, as the Goldmore carriage drove up to Mr. Raymond Gray's door. How kind it is of him to come with both the footmen, said little Mrs. Gray, peeping at the vehicle, too. The huge domestic descending from his perch gave a wrap at the door which almost drove in the building. All the heads were out. The sun was shining, the very organ boy paused. The footmen, the coach, and Goldmore's red face and white waistcoat were blazing in splendor. The Herculean plushed one, went back to open the carriage door. Raymond Gray opened his, in his shirt sleeves. He ran up to the carriage. Come in, Goldmore, says he, just in time, my boy. Open the door, what do you call him, and let your master out. And what do you call him, obeyed mechanically, with a phase of wonder and horror only to be equaled by the look of stupefied astonishment which ornamented the purple countenance of his master. What, Tame, will you please have the cage, sir? Says what do you call him, in that peculiar, unspellable, inimitable, flunkified pronunciation which forms one of the chief charms of existence. Best have it to the theatre at night. Gray exclaims, it is but a step from here to the wells, and we can walk there. I've got tickets for all, be it Sadler's wells at eleven. Yes, at eleven, exclaims Goldmore, perturbedly, and walks with a flurried step into the house, as if he were going to execution, as indeed he was, with that wicked gray as a jack catch over him. The carriage drove away, followed by numberless eyes from doorsteps and balconies. Its appearance is still a wonder in Biddlestone Street. Go in there, and amuse yourself with snob, says Gray. Open the little drawing-room door. I'll call out as soon as the chops are ready. Fanny's below, seen to the pudding. Gracious mercy, said Goldmore to me, quite confidentially. How could he ask us? I really had no idea of this, this utter destitution. Dinner, dinner! Wars out Gray from the dining-room, once issued a great smoking and frying, and entering that apartment we find Mrs. Gray ready to receive us, and looking perfectly like a princess who, by some accident, had a bowl of potatoes in her hand, which vegetables she placed on the table. Her husband was meanwhile cooking mutton chops on a gridiron over the fire. Fanny has made the roly-poly pudding, says he. The chops are my part. Here's a fine one, try this, Goldmore. Auntie popped a fizzling cutlet on that gentleman's plate. What words, what notes of exclamation can describe then a bob's astonishment? The tablecloth was a very old one, darned in her score places. There was mustard in a teacup, a silver fork for Goldmore, all ores were ironed. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, says Gray, gravely. That fork is the only one we have. Fanny has it generally. Raymond, cries Mrs. Gray, with an employing face. She was used to better things, you know, and I hope one day to get her a dinner service. I'm told the electro-plate is uncommonly good. Where the deuce is that boy with a beer? And now, said he, springing up, I'll be a gentleman. And so he put on his coat, and sat down quite gravely, with four fresh mutton chops, which he had by this time broiled. We don't have meat every day, Mr. Goldmore, he continued, and it's a treat to me to get a dinner like this. You little know, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at Ease, what hardships, briefless barristers endure? Gracious mercy, said Mr. Goldmore. Where is the half-and-half? Fanny, go over to the keys and get the beer. Here's six pence. And what was our astonishment, when Fanny got up as if to go? Gracious mercy, let me, cries Goldmore. Not for worlds, my dear sir, she's used to it. They wouldn't serve you as well as they serve her. Leave her alone. I'll bless you," Raymond said, with astounding composure. And Mrs. Gray left the room, and actually came back with a tray on which there was a pewter flag and a beer. Little Polly, to whom, at her christening, I had the honour of presenting a silver mug ex officio. Followed with a couple of tobacco-pipes, and the queerest, roguish look in her round little chubby face. Did you speak to Tappling about the gin, Fanny, my dear? Gray asked, after bidding Polly put the pipes on the chimney piece. Which that little person had some difficulty in reaching? The last was turpentine, and even your brewing didn't make good punch of it. You would hardly suspect, Goldmore, that my wife, a Harley Baker, would ever make gin punch? I think my mother-in-law would commit suicide if she saw her. Don't always be laughing at Mama, Raymond, said Mrs. Gray. Well, well, she wouldn't die, and I don't wish she would. And you don't make gin punch, and you don't like it, either. And, Goldmore, do you drink your beer out of the glass or out of the pewter? Gracious mercy! Ejaculate's cautious once more. As little Polly, taken the pot with both her little bunches of hands, offers it, smiling, to that astonished director. And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was presently ended in a similar fashion. Gray pursued his unfortunate guest with the most queer and outrageous description of his struggles, misery, and poverty. He described how he cleaned the dives when they were first married, and how he used to drag the children in a little cart, how his wife would toss pancakes, and what parts of his dress she made. He told Tibbetts his clerk, who was in fact the functionary, who had brought the beer from the public house, which Mrs. Fanny had fetched from the neighboring apartment, to fetch the bottle of port wine when the dinner was over, and told Goldmore, as wonderful a history, about the way in which that bottle of wine had come into his hands as any of his former stories had been. When the repast was all over, and it was near time to move to the play, and Mrs. Gray had retired, and we were sitting ruminating, rather silently, over the last classes of the port. Gray suddenly breaks the silence by slapping Goldmore on the shoulder and saying, Now, Goldmore, tell me something. What? asks, crocious. Haven't you had a good dinner? Goldmore started, as if a sudden truth had just dawned upon him. He had had a good dinner, and didn't know it until then. The three mutton chops, consumed by him, were best of the mutton kind. The potatoes were perfect of their order. As for the roly-poly, it was too good. The porter was frothy and cool, and the port wine was worthy of the guilds of a bishop. I speak with ulterior views, for there is more in Gray's cellar. Well, says Goldmore, after a pause, during which he took time to consider the momentous question Gray put to him. Upon my word, now you say so, I. I have. I really have had a monstous good dinner. Monstous good. Upon my word. Here's your health, Gray, my boy, and your amiable lady, and when Mrs. Goldmore comes back, I hope we shall see you more in Portland's place. And with this the time came for the play, and we went to see Mr. Phelps at Sallow's Wells. The best of this story, for the truth of every word, of which I pledge my honor is, that after this banquet, which Goldmore enjoyed so, the honorist fellow felt a prodigious compassion and regard for the starving and miserable giver of the feast, and determined to help him in his profession. And, being a director, at the newly established Anti-Bilius Life Assurance Company, he has had Gray appointed standing counsel with a pretty annual fee, and only yesterday, in an appeal from Bombay, Bacmugi, Bacmugi v. Ramchatter Bahadur, in the privy counsel, Lord Braham complimented Mr. Gray, who was, in the case, on his curious and exact knowledge of the Sanskrit language. Whether he knows Sanskrit or not, I can't say, but Goldmore got him the business, and so I cannot help having a lurking regard for that pompous old bigwig. End of Chapter 35. Recording by Jennifer Stearns, Concord, New Hampshire.