 CHAPTER 12 On clerical snobs and snobbishness Mr. Snob, an amiable young correspondent writes, who signs himself snobbling, ought the clergyman who, at the request of a noble duke, lately interrupted a marriage-ceremony between two persons perfectly authorized to marry, to be ranked or not among the clerical snobs. This, my dear young friend, is not a fair question. One of the illustrated weekly papers has already seized hold of the clergyman, and blackened him most unmercifully, by representing him in his cassock performing the marriage-service. Let that be sufficient punishment, and if you please do not press the query. It is very likely that if Miss Smith had come with a license to marry Jones, the person in question, not seeing Old Smith present, would have sent off the beetle in a cab to let the old gentleman know what was going on, and would have delayed the service until the arrival of Smith Sr. He very likely thinks it is duty to ask all marriageable young ladies, who come without their papa, why their parent is absent, and no doubt always sends off the beetle for that missing governor. Or it is very possible that the Duke of Cordelillon was Mr. Whatia Collins's most intimate friend, and has often said to him, Whatia Collins, my boy, my daughter, must never marry the captain. If ever they try at your church, I beseech you, considering the terms of intimacy on which we are, to send off Ratan in a hack-cab to fetch me. In either of which cases, you see, dear snobbling, that though the parson would not have been authorized, yet he might have been excused for interfering. He has no more right to stop my marriage than to stop my dinner, to both of which, as a free-born Briton, I am entitled, by law, if I can pay for them. But consider pastoral solicitude, a deep sense of the duties of his office, and pardon this inconvenient but genuine zeal. But if the clergyman did, in the Duke's case, what he would not do in Smith's? If he has no more acquaintance with the Cordelillon family than I have with the royal and serene house of Saxe-Coburg-Goffa, then, I confess, my dear snobbling, your question might elicit a disagreeable reply, and one which I respectfully decline to give. I wonder what Sir George Tuftall would say, if a sentry left his post because a noble lord, not the least connected with the service, begged the sentinel not to do his duty. Alas! that the beetle who canes little boys and drives them out, cannot drive worldliness out too. What is worldliness but snobbishness? When, for instance, I read in the newspapers that the right reverend, the Lord Charles James, administered the right of confirmation to a party of the juvenile nobility, at the Chapel Royal, as if the Chapel Royal were a sort of ecclesiastical almax, and young people were to get ready for the next world in little exclusive gentile knots of the aristocracy, who were not to be disturbed in their journey thither by the company of the vulgar. When I read such a paragraph as that, and one or two such generally appear during the present fashionable season, it seems to me to be the most odious, mean, and disgusting part of that odious, mean, and disgusting publication, the court circular, and that snobbishness is therein carried to quite an awful pitch. What, gentlemen, can't we even in the church acknowledge a republic? There, at least, the herald's college itself might allow that we all of us have the same pedigree, and our direct descendants of Eve and Adam, whose inheritance is divided amongst us. I hereby call upon all dukes, earls, baronettes, and other potentates, not to lend themselves to this shameful scandal and error, and to beseech all bishops who read this publication to take the matter into consideration, and to protest against the continuance of the practice, and to declare, we won't confirm, or christen Lord Tom Noddy, or Sir Carnaby Jenks, to the exclusion of any other young Christian, the which declaration, if their lordships are induced to make, a great lapis offensionis will be removed, and the snobpapers will not have been written in vain. A story is current of a celebrated nouveau riche, who having had occasion to oblige that excellent prelate, the Bishop of Bullock-Smithy, asked his lordship in return to confirm his children privately in his lordship's own chapel, which ceremony the grateful prelate accordingly performed. Can satire go farther than this? Is there even in this most amusing of prince any more naive absurdity? It is as if a man wouldn't go to heaven unless he went in a special train, or as if he thought, as some people think about vaccination, confirmation more effectual when administered at first hand. In that eminent person the Begum some room died, it is said that she left ten thousand pounds to the Pope, and ten thousand to the Archbishop of Canterbury, so that there should be no mistake, so as to make sure of having the ecclesiastical authorities on her side. This is only a little more openly and undisguisedly snobbish than the cases before alluded to. A well-bred snob is just as secretly proud of his riches and honours as a parvenu snob, who makes the most ludicrous exhibition of them. And a high-born Martianess, or Duchess, just as vain of herself and her diamonds, as Queen Quashibu, who sows a pair of epaulettes onto her skirt, and turns out in state in a cock-hat and feathers. It is not out of disrespect to my peerage, which I love and honour. Indeed, have I not said before that I should be ready to jump out of my skin if two dukes would walk down Palmel with me? It is not out of disrespect for the individuals that I wish these titles had never been invented. But consider, if there were no tree, there would be no shadow, and how much more honest society would be, and how much more serviceable the clergy would be, which is our present consideration, if these temptations of rank and continual bates of worldliness were not in existence and perpetually thrown out to lead them astray. I have seen many examples of their falling away, when, for instance, Tom Sniffle first went into the country as curate for Mr. Fuddleston, Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's brother, who resided on some other living. There could not be a more kind, hard-working, and excellent creature than Tom. He had his aunt to live with him. His conduct to his poor was admirable. He wrote annually reams of the best-intentioned and vapid sermons. When Lord Brandyball's family came down into the country and invited him to dine at Brandyball Park, Sniffle was so agitated that he almost forgot how to say grace, and upset a bowl of current jelly-sauce in Lady Fanny Toffey's lap. What was the consequence of his intimacy with that noble family? He quarreled with his aunt for dining out every night. The wretch forgot his poor altogether, and killed his old nag by always riding over to Brandyball, where he rebelled in the maddest passion for Lady Fanny. He ordered the neatest new clothes and ecclesiastical waistcoats from London. He appeared with choraza shirts, lacquered boots and perfumery. He bought a blood-horse from Bob Toffey, was seen at archery meetings, public breakfasts, actually at cover, and I blushed to say that I saw him in a stall at the opera, and afterwards riding by Lady Fanny's side in rotten row. He double-barreled his name, as many poor snobs do, and instead of T. Sniffle, as formerly, came out in a porcelain card as Reverend T. Darcy Sniffle, Burlington Hotel. The end of all this may be imagined. When the earl of Brandyball was made acquainted with the curate's love for Lady Fanny, he had that fit of the gout which so nearly carried him off. To the inexpressible grief of his son, Lord Alley campaign, and uttered that remarkable speech to Sniffle, which disposed of the claims of the latter. "'If I didn't respect the church, sir,' his lordship said, by Jovide kick you downstairs. His lordship then fell back into the fit, aforesaid, and Lady Fanny, as we all know, married General Poddiger. As for poor Tom, he was overhead and ears in debt, as well as in love. His creditors came down upon him. Mr. Hemp, of Portugal Street, proclaimed his name lately as a reverend outlaw, and he has been seen at various foreign-watering places, sometimes doing duty, sometimes coaching, a stray gentleman's son, at Carl's Row or Kinzingen. Must we say it, lurking about the roulette-tables with a tuft to his chin. If temptation had not come upon this unhappy fellow in the shape of a Lord Brandy Ball, he might still have been following his profession humbly and worthily. He might have married his cousin with four thousand pounds, the wine-merchant's daughter. The old gentleman quarreled with his nephew for not soliciting wine-orders from Lord Bee for him. He might have had seven children, and taken private pupils, and eeked out his income, and lived and died a country parson. Could he have done better? You who want to know how great, and good, and noble such a character may be, read Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold. End of Chapter 12. CHAPTER XIII On clerical snobs. Among the varieties of the snob clerical, the university snob and the scholastic snob ought never to be forgotten. They form a very strong battalion in the black-coated army. The wisdom of our ancestors, which I admire more and more every day, seem to have determined that education of youth was so paltry and unimportant a matter, that almost any man armed with a birch and regulation cassock and degree might undertake the charge. And many an honest country gentlemen may be found to the present day, who takes a very good care to have a character with his butler when he engages him, and will not purchase a horse without the warranty and the closest inspection, but sends off his son, young John Thomas, to school without asking any questions about the schoolmaster, and places the lad at Switchester College under Dr. Block, because he, the good old English gentleman, had been at Switchester under Dr. Buzzwig forty years ago. We have a love for all little boys at school, for many scores of thousands of them read and love punch. May he never write a word that shall not be honest and fit for them to read. He will not have his young friends to be snobs in the future, or to be bullied by snobs, or given over to such to be educated. Our connection with the young at the universities is very close and affectionate. The candid undergraduate is our friend. The pompous old college Don trembles in his common room, lest we should attack him and show him up as a snob. When railroads were threatening to invade the land, which they have since conquered, it may be recollected what is shrieking and outcry. The authorities of Oxford and Eaton made, lest the iron abominations should come near those seats of pure learning, and tempt the British youth astray. The supplications were in vain. The railroad is upon them, and the old world institutions are doomed. I felt charmed to read in the papers the other day a most voracious puffing advertisement headed to college and back for five shillings. The college gardens, it said, will be thrown open on this occasion. The college youths will perform a regatta. The chapel of King's College will have its celebrated music, and all for five shillings. The Goths have got into Rome. Napoleon Stevenson draws his Republican lines around the sacred old cities, and the ecclesiastical bigwigs, who garrison them, must prepare to lay down key encrozier before the iron conqueror. If you consider, dear reader, what profound snobbishness the university system produced, you will allow that it is time to attack some of those feudal middle-age superstitions. If you go down for five shillings to look at the college youths, you may see one sneaking down the court without a tassel to his cap, another with a gold or silver fringe to his velvet trencher, a third lad with a master's gown and hat, walking at ease over the sacred college grass-plats which common men must not traud on. He may do it because he is a nobleman. Because a lad is a lord, the university gives him a degree at the end of two years, which another is seven in acquiring. Because he is a lord, he has no call to go through an examination. Any man who has not been to college and back for five shillings would not believe in such distinctions in a place of education. So absurd and monstrous they seem to be. The lads with gold and silver lace are sons of rich gentlemen, and called fellow commoners. They are privileged to feed better than their pensioners, and to have wine with their victuals, which the latter can only get in their rooms. The unlucky boys, who have no tassels to their caps, are called scissors, servitors at Oxford, a very pretty and gentlemen-like title. A distinction is made in their clothes because they are poor, for which reason they wear a badge of poverty, and are not allowed to take their meals with their fellow students. When this wicked and shameful distinction was set up, it was of a peace with all the rest, a part of the brutal, un-christian, wandering fetal system. Distinctions of rank were then so strongly insisted upon that it would have been thought blasphemy to doubt them, as blasphemous as it is in parts of the United States now for a nigger to set up as the equal of a white man. A ruffian like Henry VIII talked as gravely about the divine powers vested in him as if he had been an inspired prophet, a wretch like James I not only believed that there was in himself a particular sanctity, but other people believed him. Government regulated the length of a merchant's shoes as well as meddled in his trade, prices, exports, machinery. It thought itself justified in roasting a man for his religion, or pulling a Jew's teeth out if he did not pay a contribution, or ordered him to dress in a yellow gabardine, and locked him in a particular quarter. Now a merchant may wear wet boots he pleases, and has pretty nearly acquired the privilege of buying and selling without the government laying its paws upon the bargain. The stake for heretics is gone, the pillory is taken down, bishops are even found lifting up their voices against their remains of persecution, and ready to do away with the last Catholic disabilities. Sir Robert Peel, though he wished it ever so much, has no power over Mr. Benjamin Disraeli's grinders, or any means of violently handling that gentleman's jaw. Jews are not called upon to wear badges. On the contrary, they may live in Piccadilly, or the minarees, according to fancy. They may dress like Christians, and do sometimes in a most elegant and fashionable manner. Why is the poor college servitor to wear that name and badge still? Because universities are the last place into which reform penetrates. And now that she can go to college and back for five shillings, let her travel down thither. CHAPTER XIV OF THE BOOK OF SNOPPS This is the LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recording turned a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Shalif Malikim. THE BOOK OF SNOPPS by William Makepeace-Sakare CHAPTER XIV ON UNIVERSITY SNOPPS All the men of St. Boniface will recognize Hubey and Crump in these two pictures. They were tutors in our time, and Crump is in advance to be president of the college. He was formerly, and is now, a rich specimen of a university snob. At five and twenty, Crump invented three new meters and published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek comedy with no less than twenty emendations upon the German text of schnupfinias and schnupsius. These services to religion instantly pointed him out for advancement in the church, and he is now president of St. Boniface and very narrowly escaped the bench. Crump thinks St. Boniface, the centre of the world, and his position as president, the highest in England. He expects the fellows and tutors to pay him the same sort of service that cardinals pay to the Pope. I am sure Crawler would have no objection to carry a strencher or page to hold up the skirt of his gown as he stalks into chapel. He rules out the responses there, as if it were an honour to heaven that a president of St. Boniface should take a part in the service, and in his own lodge and college acknowledges the sovereign only as a superior. When the allied monarchs came down and were made doctors of the university, a breakfast was given at St. Boniface, on which occasion crumple out the emperor Alexander to walk before him, but took the pie himself of the king of Prussia and French Bluquer. He was going to put the Hetman plot off to breakfast at the side-table with the under-college tutors, but he wasn't used to relent and merely entertained that distinguished cossack with the discourse on his own language in which he showed that the Hetman knew nothing about it. As for us undergraduates, we scarcely know more about grump than about the grand lama. A few favoured youths are asked occasionally to tea at the lodge, but they do not speak unless first addressed by the doctor. And if they venture to sit down, grump's follower, Mr. Toadie, whispers, "'Gentlemen, where you have the kindness to get up, the president is passing.' Or, gentlemen, the president prefers that undergraduate should not sit down, or words to a similar effect. To do grump justice, he does not cringe now to great people. He rather patronises them than otherwise, and in London, speaks quite affably to a duke who has been brought up as his college, or holds out a finger to a marquee's. He does not disguise his own origin, but frags of it with considerable self-gratulation. "'I,' and was a charity-boy,' says he, "'see what I am now, the greatest Greek scholar of the greatest college, of the greatest university, of the greatest empire in the world.' The argument being that this is a capital world, for beggars, because he, being a beggar, has managed to get on horseback. Hupey owes this eminence to patient merit and agreeable perseverance. He is a meek, mild, inoffensive creature, with just enough of scholarship to fit him to hold a lecture, or set an examination paper. He rose by kindness to the aristocracy. It was wonderful to see the way in which that poor creature, gruffled before a nobleman, or a lord's nephew, or even some noisy and disreputable recaminer, the friend of a lord. He used to gift a young nobleman the most painful and elaborate breakfasts, and adopted jaunty gentile air and talk with him, although he was decidedly serious, but the opera of the last run was a hounds. It was good to watch him in the midst of a circle of young tufts, with his mean, smiling, eager, uneasy familiarity. He used to write home confidential letters to their parents, and made it his duty to call upon them when in town, to condole or rejoice with them when a death's burst or marriage took place in their family, and to feast them whenever they came to the university. I recollect a letter lying on a desk in his lecture room for a whole term beginning, My Lord Yoke! It was the showers that he corresponded with such dignities. When the lad lamented Lord Glenlivet, who broke his neck at a hurdle race, at the premature age of twenty-four, was at the university, the amiable young fellow, passing to his rooms in the early morning, and seeing Hube's boots at his door, on the same staircase, playfully wadded the inside of the boots with cobbler's wax, which caused excruciating pains to the reverent Mr. Hube, when he came to take some off the same evening, before dining with the must of St. Crispin's. Everybody gave the credit of this admiral piece of fun to Lord Glenlivet's friend, Bob Tizzy, who was famous for such feats, and who had already made away with the college pump handle, filed St. Boniface's nose smooth with his face, carried off four images of nigger boys from the tebekinists, painted the senior procter's horse pea-green, et cetera, et cetera, and Bob, who was of the party certainly, and would not peach, was just on the point of incurring expulsion and so losing the family living, which was in store for him, when Glenlivet nobly stepped forward, owned himself to be the author of the delightful Jude Spree, apologised to the tutor, and accepted the rustication. Hube cried when Glenlivet apologised, if the young nobleman had kicked him round the cord, I believe the tutor would have been happy, so that an apology and a reconciliation might subsequently ensue. My Lord, said he, in your conduct on this and all other occasions, you have acted as becomes a gentleman. You have been an honour to the university, as you will be to the peerage. I am sure when the amiable vivacity of you this calm down, and your cord upon to take your proper share in the government of the nation. And when his lordship took leave of the university, Hube presented him with a copy of his Sermons to a nobleman's family. Hube was once private tutor to the sons of the Earl of Moffbara, which Glenlivet presented in return to Mr. William Ram, known to the fancy as a Tudbury pet, and the sermons now figure on the Boudoir table of Mrs. Ram, behind the bar of her house of entertainment, the game-cock and spurs near Wattstuck, Oxon. At the beginning of the long vacation, Hube comes to town, and puts up in handsome lodgings, near same James Square, rides in the park in the afternoon, and is delighted to read his name in the morning papers, among the list of persons present at Moffbara House, and a marquee's afferentages evening parties. He is a member of Sidney Scrapers' Club, where, however, he drinks his pint of claret. Sometimes you may see him on Sundays, at the hour when tavern doors open, when to issue little girls with great jugs of porter, when charity boys walk the streets, bearing round dishes of smoking shoulders of mutton and baked taters, when Sheenie and Moses are seen smoking their pipes before their lazy shutters in seven dials, when a crowd of smiling persons in clean outlandish dresses, in monstrous bonnets and flaring printed gowns, or in crumpled glossy coves and silks, that bear the creases of the drawers, where they have lain all the week, filed down High Street. Sometimes I say, you may see Hubey coming out at the church of St. Giles and the Fields, with a stout gentlewoman leaning on his arms, whose old face bears an expression of supreme pride and happiness, as she glances round at all the neighbours, and to faces to curate himself and marches into Holborn, where she pulls the bell of a house over which is inscribed, Hubey Habadasha. It is a mother of the reverent F. Hubey, as proud of her son in his white joker, as Cornelia of a Jewels-a-Drome. That is old Hubey bringing up the rear with the prayer-books, and better Hubey, the old mate his daughter. Old Hubey, Habadasha, and Church Warden. In the front-room upstairs, where the dinner is laid out, there is a picture of Mafvera Castle, of the Earl of Mafvera, a ex-Lord Lieutenant for Diddlesex, an engraving from an almanac of St. Boniface College oxen, and a sticking plaster-portrait of Hubey, when young, in a cap and gown. A copy of his sermons to an earbleman's family is on the bookshelf, by the whole duty of man, the reports of the missionary societies, and the Oxford University calendar. Old Hubey knows part of this by heart, every living belonging to St. Boniface, and the name of every tutor, fellow, nobleman, and undergraduate. He used to go to meeting and preach himself, until his son took orders, but of late the old gentleman has been accused of puse-a-ism, and is quite pitiless against the dissenters. CHAPTER FIFTEEN I should like to fill several volumes with accounts of various university snobs, so fond are my reminiscences of them, and so numerous are they. I should like to speak above all of the wise and daughters of some of the professor's snobs, their amusements, habits, jealousies, their innocent artifices to entrap young men, the picnics, concerts, and evening parties. I wonder what has become of Emily Blades, daughter of Blades, the professor of the Mendingo language. I remember her shoulders to this day, as she sat in the midst of a crowd of about seventy young gentlemen, from Corbers and Catherine Hall, entertaining them with ogles and French songs on the guitar. Are you married, fair Emily, of the shoulders? What beautiful ringlets those were that used to dribble over them! What a waste! What a killing sea-green-shot-cell gown! What a cameo! The size of a muffin! There were thirty-six young men of the university enough at one time with Emily Blades, and no words are sufficient to describe the pity, the sorrow, the deep, deep commissuration, the rage-fury and unduradableness, in other words, with which the Miss Drums, daughter of Drums, the professor phlebotomy, regarded her, because she didn't squint, and because she wasn't marked with the smallpox. As for the young university snobs, I am getting too old now to speak of such very familiarly. My recollections of them lie in the far, far past, almost as far back as Pelham's time. We then used to consider snobs, raw-looking lads, who never missed chapel, who wore high lodes and no straps, who walked two hours on the Trumpington Road every day of their lives, who carried off the college scholarships, and who overrated themselves in whole. We were premature in pronouncing our verdict of youthful snobbishness. The man without straps fulfilled his destiny and duty. The east's old governor, the Curit in Westmoreland, were helped to sisters to set up the lady-school. He rode the dictionary, or atrethes and conic sections, as his nature and genius prompted. He got a fellowship, and then took to himself a wife and a living. He presides over a parish now, and thinks it rather a dashing thing to belong to the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and his parishioners love him, and snore under his sermons. No, no, he is not a snob. It is not straps that make the gentleman, or high lodes that unmake him, be they ever so sick. My son, it is you who are the snob, if you lightly despise a man for doing his duty, and refuse to shake an honest man's hand, because it wears a burling glove. We then used to consider it not the least vulgar for a parcel of lettes, who had been whipped three months previous, and were not allowed more than three glasses of poured at home, but to sit down to pineapples and ices at each other's rooms, and fuddled themselves with champagne and claret. One looks back to what was called a wine party, with a sort of wonder. Thirty lettes round the table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk-punch, smoking, darsly headache, frightful spectacle of dessert on the table next morning, and smell of tobacco. Your guardian-declergement dropping in, in the midst of this, expecting to find you deep in algebra, and discovering the jib administering soda-water. There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the course hospitalities of wine parties, who prided themselves as giving Recherche, little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were snobs. They were what used to be called dressy snobs. Jimmy, who might be seen at five o'clock, elaborately rigged out, is a camellia in his button-hole, glazed boots, and fresh kid-gloves twice a day. Jessamy was conspicuous for his jewellery, a young donkey glittering all over with chains, rings, and shirt-studs. Jackie, who rode every day solemnly on the Blenheim Road, in pumps and white silk stockings with his hair curled, all three of whom flattered themselves, they give laws to the university about dress, all three most odious varieties of snobs. Sporting snobs, of course, there were, and are always, those happy beings in whom nature has implanted a love of slang, who loitered about the horse-keeper-stables, and drove the London coaches, a stage in and out, and might be seen swaggering through the courts in pink of early mornings, and indulged in dyes and blind hooky at nights, and never missed a race or a boxing match, and rode flat-races and cab-bull-terriers. Wherece snobs, even, than these, were poor miserable wretches who did not like hunting at all, and could not afford it, and were immortal fear at a two-foot ditch, but who hunted because Klennivert and Kingbars hunted. The billiard-snob and the boating-snob were varieties of these, and are to be found elsewhere than in universities. Then there were philosophical snobs, who used the ape-statement at the spouting-clubs, and who believed as a fact that government always had an eye on the university for the selection of orators for the House of Commons. There were audacious young free-sinkers, who adored nobody on nothing, except perhaps a Robespierre and the Quran, and panted for the day, and the pale name of priest should shrink and dwindle away before the indignation of an enlightened world. But the worst of all university snobs are those unfortunate who go to rack and ruin from their desire to ape their batters. Smith becomes acquainted with great people at college, and is ashamed of his father, the tradesman. Smith has fine acquaintances, and lives after their fashion like he gave free-hearted fellow as he is, and ruins his father, and drops his sister's portion, and cripples his younger brother's outset and knife, for the pleasure of entertaining my lord, and riding by the sight of Sir John. And though it may be very good fun for Robinson to foddle himself at home as he does at college, and to be brought home by the policeman he has just been trying to knock down. Think what fun it is for the poor old soul, his mother, the half-pay captain's widow, who has been pinching herself all her life long, in order that that jolly young fellow might have university education. CHAPTER XVI What will he say about literary snobs? Has been a question I make no doubt often asked by the public, how can he let off his own profession? Will the succulent and unsparing monster who attacks the nobility, the clergy, the army, and the ladies indiscriminately hesitate when the turn comes to engorger his own flesh and blood? My dear and excellent queerist, whom does the schoolmaster flock so resolutely as his own son? Didn't Brutus chop his offsprings head off? You have a very bad opinion indeed of the present state of literature and of literary man, if you fancy that any of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbor pen man, if the latter's deaths could do the state any service. But the fact is that in the literary profession there are no snobs. Look around the whole body of British men of letters, and I defy you to point out among them a single instance of vulgarity or envy or assumption. Men and women, as far as I have known them, are all modest in their demeanor, elegant in their manners, spotless in their lives, and honorable in their conduct to the world and to each other. You may occasionally, it is true, hear one literary man abusing his brother. But why? Not in the least out of mellies, not at all from envy, merely from a sense of truth and public duty. Suppose for instance I, good-naturedly, point out a blemish in my friend Miss Punch's purse, and say Mr. P. has a humpback, and his snows and chin are more crooked than those features in the Apollo and Tentonius, which we are accustomed to consider as our standards of beauty. Is this argument also my part towards Mr. Punch? Not in the least. It is the critic's duty to point out defects as well as merits, and he invariably does his duty with utmost gentleness and kinder. An intelligent foreigner's testimony about our menace is always worth having, and I think, in disrespect the work of an eminent American, Mr. M. P. Welles is eminently valuable and impartial. In his history of Ernest Clay, a Greg Megasin writer, the reader will get an exact account of the life of a popular man of letters in England. He is always a lion of society. He takes the P.A.S. of tubes and earls, or the nobility crowd to see him. I forget how many baronesses and duchesses fall in love with him. But on this subject, let us hold our tongues. Modesty forbids that we should reveal the names of the heartbroken countesses and theomarchionesses who are pining for every one of the contributors in Punch. If anybody wants to know how intimately Orses are connected with the fashion-able world, they have but to read the gentile novels. What refinement delicacy pervades the works of Mrs. Barnaby. What delightful good company do you meet with in Mrs. Amitage? She seldom introduces you to anybody under a marquee. I don't know anything more delicious than the pictures of gentle life in ten thousand a year, except perhaps the young Duke and cunning spy. There's a modest case about them, and an air of easy high fashion, which only belongs to blood, but dear sir, to true blood. And what linguists many of our writers are, Lady Balva, Lady Landenderis, or Edward himself. They write the French language with a luxurious elegance and ease which sets them far above the continental rivals, of whom not one, except Paul the Cock, knows a word of English. And what Britain can read without enjoyment the works of James, so admirable for turseness, and the playful humor and dazzling off-and-lightness of Ainsworth. Among other humorists, one might glance at the Gerald, the chivalrous advocate of tourism and the church and state, and the Beckett with a lightsome pen, but the savage earnestness of purpose. It seems whose pure style and wit amingled with perfunery was relished by a congenial public. Speaking of critics, perhaps there never was a review that has done so much for literature as the admirable quarterly. It has its prejudices to be sure, as which of us has not. It goes out of its way to abuse a great man, or lays mercilessly to such pretenders as kids in Tennyson. But on the other hand, it is the friend of all young authors, and has marked and nurtured all the rising talent of the country. It is loved by everybody. There again is Blackwood's magazine, Conspicuous for Modest Elegance, and Amy Irissette here. That review never passes the bounds of politeness in the joke. It is the arbiter of manners, and while gently exposing the foibles of Londoners, for whom the booze spree of Edinburgh entertain a justifiable contempt, it is never causing its fun. The fiery enthusiasm of the antineum is well known, and the bitter wit of the too difficult illiterary gassette. The ex-minor is perhaps too timid and a spectator to boisterous in its praise. But who can cup those minor forts? No, no. The critics of England and the authors of England are enrivaled as a body, and hence it becomes impossible for us to find fault with them. Above all, I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession. Those who know us know what an affectionate and brotherly spirit is among us all. Sometimes, one of us rises in the world. We never attack him or sneer at him under those circumstances, but read choice to emanate his success. If Jones dines with the Lord, Smith never says Jones is a good tear or a gringer. Nor, on the other hand, does Jones, who is in the habit of frequenting the society of great people, give himself any airs on account of the company he keeps. But we leave a Duke's arm in parallel to come over and speak to poor Brown, the young penny-aligner. Above all, I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession. Those who know us know what an affectionate and brotherly spirit there is among us. That sense of equality and fraternity amongst us is always struck me as one of the most amiable characteristics of the class. It is because we know and respect each other that the world respects us so much, that we hold such a good position in society and demean ourselves so irreproachably when there. Literary persons are held in such esteem by the nation that about two of them have been absolutely invited to court during the present train. And it is probable that towards the end of the season, one or two will be asked to dinner with Sir Robert Peel. They are such favorites with the public that they are continually obliged to have the pictures taken and published. And one or two could be pointed out or from the nation insists upon having a fresh portrait every year. Nothing can be more gratifying than this proof of affectionate regard which the people have for its instructors. Literature is held in such honor in England that there is a sum of near 12,000 pounds per annum set apart to pension deserving persons following that profession. And a great compliment this is to, to the professors and the proof of their generally prosperous and flourishing condition. They are generally so rich and thrifty that scarcely any money is wanted to help them. If every word of this is true, how I should like to know am I to write about literary snobs? End of chapter 16, recording by Ellie, July 2009. Chapter 17 of the book of snobs. This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Recording by Ellie. The book of snobs by William Macbeth Sakary. Chapter 17, a little about Irish snobs. You do not to be sure, imagine that there are no other snobs in Ireland than those of the amiable party who wish to make pikes of iron railroads. It's a fine Irish economy and to cut the roads of the Saxon invaders. These are of the Venomers sort and had they been invented in his time, St. Patrick would have banished them out of the kingdom along with the other dangerous reptiles. I think it is the foremasters, or else it's Oleos Magnus, or else it's certainly O'Neill Don't. In the catechism of Irish history, who relates that when Richard II came to Ireland and the Irish chiefs did homage to him, going down on their knees, the poor simple creatures and worshipping and wandering before the English king and the dandies of his court, the lords, the English noblemen, mocked and cheered at the Angkor's Irish admirers, mimicked their talk and gestures, pulled the poor old beards and laughed at the strange fashion of their garments. The English snob rampant always does this to the present day. There is no snob in existence perhaps that has such an indomitable belief in himself that nears you down all the rest of the world besides and has such an insufferable, admirable, stupid contempt of all people but his own, nay, for all sets but his own. Gracious God, what stories about this Irish, these young dandies, a company in King Richard must have had to tell when they returned to Paramel and smoked the cigars upon the steps of fights. The Irish snobbishness develops itself not in pride so much as sensibility and mean admirations and tampery imitations of their neighbors. And the wonder, the talk-will and the bomo and the times-commissioner did not explain the snobbishness of Irish as contrasted with our own. Ours is that of Richard's Norman knights, haughty, brutal, stupid and perfectly self-confident. There's of the poor, wandering, kneeling, simple chieftains. They are underneath still before English fashion, the simple, wild people, and indeed it is hard not to grin at some of their naïve exhibitions. Some years since, when a certain great orator was Lord Mayor of Dublin, he used to wear a red gown and a cocked hat, the splendor of which delighted him as much as a new curtain ring in her nose or a string of glass beads around her neck charms Queen Rashi Nibo. He used to pay visits to people in distress to appear at meetings hundreds of miles off in the red velvet gown, and to hear the people crying, yes, my lord, and no, my lord, and to read the prodigious accounts of his lordship in the papers. It seemed as if the people and he like to be taken in with his two penny splendor. Two penny magnificence indeed exists all over Ireland and may be considered as the great characteristics of the snobbishness of the country. When Mrs. Malhalligen, the grossest lady, retires to Kingstown, she has Malhalligen well painted over the gate of a villa and receives you at the door that won't shut or gazes at you out of a window that is glazed with an old petticoat. Be it ever so shabby and dismal, nobody ever owns to keeping a shop. A fellow who's stuck in trade is a penny roll or a tumbler of lollipops calls his cabin the American flower stores. Are they depository for colonial produce or some such name? As for inns, they are none in the country. Hotels abound as well furnished as Malhalligen will. But again, there is no such people as landlords and landlady. The landlord is out with the hounds and my lady in the parlor talking with the captain or playing the piano. If a gentleman has a hundred a year to live for his family, they all become gentlemen. All keep an egg, ride the hounds and swagger about in the phoenix and growth halves on their chin like so many real aristocrats. A friend of mine has taken to be a painter and lives out of Ireland where he's considered to have disgraced the family by choosing such a profession. His father is a wine merchant and his elder brother an apothecary. The number of men one meets in London and on the continent who have a pretty little property of five and twenty hundred a year in Ireland is prodigious. Those who will with nine thousand a year in land and somebody dies are still more numerous. I myself have met as many descendants from Irish kings as would form a brigade. And who has not met the Irish men who apes the English men and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent? Also smother the taste of it? As it were? Come dine with me my boy. Says O'Dowd of O'Dowdston and you'll find us all English there which he tells you in a progress board is from here to Kingston beer. And did you never hear Mrs. Captain McMainers talk about Ireland and her account of her father's estate? Where a few men have rubbed through the world without hearing and witnessing some of these hermenean phenomena? These two penis blenders. And what's the you to the summit of society, the castle with the shem king and shem lords in waiting and shem loyalty and the shem heron ultra sheet to go about the shem disguise making belief to be a fable and splendid that castle is the pink and pride of snobbishness. A court circular is bad enough with two columns of print about the little baby that's Christian. But think of people liking a shem court circular. I think the shems of Ireland are more outrageous than those of any country. A fellow shows you a hill and says that's the highest mountain in all Ireland and the gentleman tells you he's descended from Priamburu and has five and 30 hundred a year. Or Mrs. McMainers describes her father's estate or all ten rises and says the Irish women are the loveliest. Irish men, the bravest, the Irish land the most fertile in the world and nobody believes anybody. The latter does not believe his story nor the hearer but they make belief to believe and solemnly do honor to Hamburg or Ireland my country. For I make little doubt I'm descended from Priamburu too. And will you acknowledge the two and two make four and call a pike staff a pike staff? That is the very best use you can make of the latter. Irish snobs will quendle away then and we shall never hear tell of hereditary bondsmen. End of chapter 17, Chapter 18 of the Book of Snobbs This is the 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 William Make-Beast Zachary. Chapter 18 Party giving snobs. Our selection of snobs has lately been too exclusively of a political character. Give us private snobs, cry the dear ladies. I have before me the letter of one fair correspondent of the fishing village of Bright Helmstone in Sussex and could her commands ever be disobeyed? Tell us more, dear Mr. Snobb, about your experience of snobs in society. Heaven bless the dearest souls. They are accustomed to the word now. The odious, vulgar, horrid, unpronounceable word slips out of their lips with the prettiest glibness possible. I should not wonder if it were used at court amongst the maids of honour. In the very best society, I know it is. And why not? Snobbishness is vulgar. The mere words are not. That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish. Well, then, at the season is drawing to a close, as many hundreds of kind souls, snobbish or otherwise, have quitted London. As many hospitable carpets are taken up, and window blinds are pitilessly papered with the morning herald. And mansions, once inhibited by cheerful owners, are now consigned to the care of the housekeeper's dreary, low-continence, some mouldy old woman, who, in reply to the hopeless clanging of the bell, pierces at you for a moment from the area, and then, slowly unbolting the great hall door, informs you my lady has left town, or that the family is in the country, or gone up the rind, or what not. As the season and parties are over, why not consider party-giving snob for a while, and review the conduct of some of those individuals who have quitted the town for six months. Some of those worthy snobs are making believe to go yachting, and, dressed in telescopes and P-jackets, are passing their time between share-bork and cows. Some living higgledy-piggledy in dismal little hearts in Scotland, proficient with canisters of portable soup, and friccander, hermetically sealed in tin, are passing their days, slaughtering grouse upon the moors. Some are dozing and bathing away the effects of the season at Kissingen, or watching the ingenious game of Tront-a-Corant at Homburg and Ems. We can afford to be very bitter upon them, now they are all gone. Now there are no more parties. Let us have at the party-giving snobs. The dinner-giving, the ball-giving, the de june-giving, the converzat-sione-giving snobs. Lord, Lord, what havoc might have been made amongst them had we attacked them during the plethora of the season. I should have been obliged to have a guard to defend me from fiddlers and pastry-cooks, indignant at the abuse of their patrons. Already I am told that, from some flippant and unguarded expressions considered derogatory to Baker Street and Harley Street, rents have fallen in these respectable quarters, and orders have been issued that at least Mr. Snob shall be asked to parties there no more. Well, then, now they are all away. Let us frisk at our ease and have it everything like the bull in the china shop. They may not hear of what is going on in their absence, and, if they do, they can't bear malice for six months. We will begin to make it up with them about next February and let next year take care of itself. We shall have no dinners from the dinner-giving snobs, no more from the ball-givers, no more converzat-sione-s. Thank music, as James says, from the converzat-sione-snob, and what is to prevent us from telling the truth? The snobbishness of converzat-sione-s snobs is very soon disposed of, as soon as that cup of washi-bohi is handed to you in the tea-room, or the muddy remnant of ice that you grasp in the suffocating scuffle of the assembly upstairs. Good heavens, what do people mean by going there? What has done there that everybody throngs into those three little rooms? Was the black hole considered to be an agreeable reunion? That Britain's in the dark days here is sick to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a doorway, where you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces, and get a look from that haggard and painted old harpy compared to which the gaze of Hugo Lino is quite cheerful, after withdrawing your elbow out of poor gasping Bob Guttleton's white waistcoat, from which cushion it was impossible to remove it, though you knew you were squeezing poor Bob into an apoplexy. You find yourself at last in the reception-room, and try to catch the eye of Mrs. Bottebaugh, the converzat-sione-giver. When you catch her eye, you are expected to grin, and she smiles too, for the four hundredth time that night, and, if she's very glad to see you, waggles her little hand before her face, as if to blow you a kiss, as the phrase is. Why the dew should Mrs. Bottebaugh blow me a kiss? I wouldn't kiss her for the world. Why do I grin when I see her, as if I was delighted? Am I? I don't care a straw for Mrs. Bottebaugh. I know what she thinks about me. I know what she said about my last volume of poems. I had it from a dear mutual friend. Why, I say in a word, are we going on ogling and telegraphing each other in this insane way? Because we are both performing the ceremonies demanded by the Great Snob Society, whose dictates we all of us obey. Well, the recognition is over. My jaws have returned to their usual English expression of subdued, agony and intense gloom, and the Bottebaugh is grinning and kissing her fingers to somebody else, who is squeezing through the aperture by which we have just entered. It is Lady Anne Clutterbuck, who has her Friday evenings as Bottebaugh, Botte, we call her, has wednesdays. That is Miss Clementina Clutterbuck, the cadaverous young woman in green, with florid, auburn hair, who has published her volume of poems. The death shriek, Damien's, the faggot of Joan of Arc, and translations from the German, of course. The conversation of women salute each other, calling each other, my dear Lady Anne, and my dear good Eliza, and hating each other, as women hate to give parties on Wednesdays and Fridays. With inexpressible pain, dear good Eliza sees Anne go up to a handsome and wedle Abagosh, who has just arrived from Syria, and beg him to patronise her Fridays. All this while, amidst the crowd and the scuffle, and a perpetual buzz and chatter, and the flare of the wax candles, and an intolerable smell of musk, what the poor snobs who write fashionable romances call the gleam of gems, the odour of perfumes, the blaze of countless lamps, a scrubby-looking, yellow-faced foreigner with cleaned gloves is warbling inaudibly in a corner to the accompaniment of another. The great caca furgo, Mrs. Bottiball whispers, as she passes you by. Her great creature, Thumpenstrump, is at the instrument, the Hetman Plutoff's pianist, you know? To hear this caca furgo and Thumpenstrump, a hundred people are gathered together, a bevy of door wagers, stout or scraggie, a faint sprinkling of missus, six smoothie-looking lords, perfectly meek and solemn, wonderful foreign counts with bushy whiskers and yellow faces, and a great deal of dubious jewellery, young dandies with slim waists and open necks, and self-satisfied simpers and flowers in their buttons. The old, stiff, stout, bald-headed conversazione rieuve, whom you must know and see on a rieuve, whom you meet everywhere, who never miss a night of this delicious enjoyment, the three last-caught lions of the season, Higgs, the traveller, Biggs, the novelist, and Toffee, who has come out so on the sugar-question. Captain Flash, who is invited on account of his pretty wife, and Lord Ogilby, who goes wherever she goes. Who are the owners of all those showy scarps and white necklots? Ask little Tom Prigg, who is there in all his glory, knows everybody, has a story about everyone. And, as he trips home to his lodgings in German Street, with his jibous hat and his little glazed pumps, thinks he's the fashionablest young fellow in town, and that he really has passed a night of exquisite enjoyment. You go up, with your usual easy elegance of manner, and talk to Miss Smith in a corner. Oh, Mr. Snob, I'm afraid you're sadly satirical. That's all she says. If you say it's fine weather, she bursts out laughing. Or hint that it's very hot, she vows you're the drawlist wretch. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bottiball is simpering on fresh arrivals. The individual at the door is roaring out their names. Poor cacofergo is quavering away in the music room, under the impression that he will be lance in the world by singing inaudibly here. And what a blessing it is to squeeze out of the door and into the street where a half-hundred of carriages are in waiting. And where the link-boy, with that unnecessary lantern of his, pounces upon all who eschew out and will insist upon getting the winner's lordship's cab. And to think that there are people who, after having been to Bottiball on Wednesday, will go to Clutterbuck on Friday. End of Chapter 18. Chapter 19 of The Book of Snob's 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 Barry Eads. The Book of Snob's William Make Peace Thecoray Chapter 19. Dining Out Snob's In England, dinner-giving snob's occupy a very important place in society, and the task of describing them is tremendous. There was a time in my life when the consciousness of having eaten a man's salt rendered me dumb regarding his demerits, and I thought it a wicked act and a breach of hospitality to speak ill of him. But why should a saddle not unblind you, or a turbet and lobster sauce shut your mouth forever? With advancing age, men see their duties more clearly. I am not to be hoodwinked any longer by a slice of venison, be it ever so fat, and as for being dumb on account of turbet and lobster sauce, of course I am. Good manners ordain that I should be so until I have swallowed the compound, but not afterwards. Directly the victuals are disgust, and John takes away the plate, my tongue begins to wag. Does not yours, if you have a pleasant neighbor? A lovely creature say of some five and thirty, whose daughters have not yet quite come out. They are the best talkers. As for your young misses, they are only put about the table to look at, like the flowers in the centerpiece. Their blushing youth and natural modesty preclude them from easy, confidential, conversational abandon which forms the delight in their course with their dear mothers. It is to these, if he would prosper in his profession, that the dining-out snob should address himself. Suppose you sit next to one of these. How pleasant it is in the intervals of the banquet actually to abuse the victuals and the giver of the entertainment. It is twice as bequant to make fun of a man under his very nose. What is a dinner-giving snob, some innocent youth who is not rependue in the world may ask, some simple reader who has not the benefits of London experience. My dear sir, I will show you. Not all, for that is impossible, but several kinds of dinner-giving snobs. For instance, suppose you, in the middle rank of life, accustomed to mutton, roast on Tuesday, cold on Wednesday, hashed on Thursday, etc., with small means and a small establishment, choose to waste a former and set the latter topsy-turvy by giving the elements unnaturally costly. You come into the dinner-giving snob class at once. Suppose you get in cheap-made dishes from the pastry cooks and hire a couple of green grocers or carpet-beaters to figure as footmen, dismissing Anas Mali, who waits on common days and bedesoning your table ordinarily orminated with willow pattern crockery with two-penny half-penny Birmingham plate. Suppose you pretend to be richer and grander than me. You are a dinner-giving snob. And, oh, I tremble to think how many and many a one will read this. A man who entertains in this way, and alas, how few do not, is like a fellow who would borrow his neighbor's coat to make a show in or a lady who flaunts in the diamonds from next door. A humbug in a word, and amongst the snobs he must be set down. A man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to ask lords, generals, aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggerly of his hospitality towards his own equals, is a dinner-giving snob. My dear friend, Jack Tuftent, for example, knows one lord whom he met at a watering place, Old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a three months old baby, and is mum as an undertaker, and is dull as, well, we will not particularize. Tuftent never has a dinner now, but you see this solemn old toothless patrician at the right hand of Mrs. Tuftent. Tuftent is a dinner-giving snob. Old Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney, the East Indian director, old Cutler, the surgeon, etc., that society of old fogies, infine, who give each other dinners round and round and dine for the mere purpose of gutling, these again are dinner-giving snobs. Again, my friend Lady McScrew, who has three grenadier flunkies in lace round the table, and serves up a mutton on silver, and dribbles you out bad sherry and port by thimble-fools, is a dinner-giving snob of the other sort, and I confess for my part I would rather dine with Old Livermore, or Old Soy, than with her ladyship. Stinginess is snobbish. Ostentation is snobbish. Too great profusion is snobbish. Tufthunting is snobbish. But I own there are many people more snobbish than all those whose defects are above mentioned, viz. those individuals who can and don't give dinners at all. The man without hospitality shall never sit, sub is them trabibus with me. Let the sordid wretch go mumble his bone alone. What again is true hospitality? Alas, my dear friends and brother snobs, how little do we meet of it after all. Are the motives pure which induce your friends to ask you to dinner? This has often come across me. Does your entertainer want anything from you? For instance, I am not of a suspicious turn. But it is a fact that when Hoocke is bringing out a new work, he asks the critics all round to dinner that when Walker has got his picture ready for the exhibition, he somehow grows exceedingly hospitable and has his friends of the press to a quiet cutlet and a glass of ciliary. Old Hunks, the miser who died lately, leaving his money to his housekeeper, lived many years on the fat of the town by simply taking down at all his friends, the names and Christian names of all the children. But though you may have your own opinion about the hospitality of your acquaintances, and though men who ask you from sordid motives are most decidedly dinner-giving snobs, it is best not to inquire into their motives too keenly. Be not too curious about the mouth of a gift horse. After all, a man does not intend to insult you by asking you to dinner. Though for that most some characters about town who actually consider themselves injured and insulted if the dinner or the company is not to their liking. There is Guttelton, who dines at home off a shillings worth of beef from the cook shop, but if he is asked to dine at a house where there are not peas at the end of May or cucumbers in March, along with Trebet, thinks himself insulted by being invited. Good Ged, he says, what deduce do the forkers mean by asking me to a family dinner? I can get mutton at home. Or what infernal impertinence it is of the spooners to get entrees from the pastry cooks and fancy that I am to be deceived with their stories about their French cook. Then again, there is Jack Puttington. I saw that honest fellow to other day, quite in a rage, because as chance would have it, Sir John Carver asked him to meet the very same party he had met at Colonel Cramley's the day before, and he had not got up a new set of stories to entertain them. Poor dinner-giving snobs. You don't know what small things you get for all your pains and money. How we dining out snobs sneer at your cookery, and poo-poo your old hawk, and are incredulous about your four-and-six-penny champagne, and know that the side dishes of today are reshuffles from the dinner of yesterday, and mark how certain dishes are whisked off the table untested so that they may figure at the banquet table. Whenever for my part I see the head-man, particularly anxious, to escalateur the fricken dough or a blunt mange, I always call out and insist upon massacring it with a spoon. All this sort of conduct makes one popular with the dinner-giving snob. One friend of mine, I know, has made a prodigious sensation in good society by announcing apropos of certain dishes when offered to him, that he never eats aspect except at Lord Chit-ups, and that Lady Jimmy Sheff is the only man in London who knows how to dress, Philae and Supanta, or Supreme de Vole-Altrofs. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 OF THE BOOK OF SNOBS 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 Jennifer Stearns THE BOOK OF SNOBS by William Makepeace Thackery Chapter 20 DINNER-GIVING SNOBS Further Considered If my friends would but follow the present prevailing fashion I think they ought to give me a testimonial for the paper on Dinner-Giving Snob, which I am now writing. What do you say now to a handsome comfortable dinner service of plate, not for I hold silver plates to be sheer wantoness, I would almost assume think of silver tea cups. A couple of neat teapots, a coffee pot, trays, etc. with a little inscription to my wife, Mrs. Knob and a half score of silver tankers for the little snobblings to glitter on the homely table where they partake of their Quartinian mutton. If I had my way and my plans could be carried out, Dinner-Giving would increase as much on the one hand as Dinner-Giving Snobbishness would diminish. To my mind, the most amiable part of the work lately published by my esteemed friend, if upon a very brief acquaintance he will allow me to call him so, Alexis Soye, the regenerator, what he, in his noble style, would call the most succulent, savoury and elegant passages are those which relate not to the grand banquets and ceremonial dinners but to his dinners at home. A dinner at home ought to be the center of the whole system of Dinner-Giving. Your usual style of meal, that is plenteous, comfortable, and in its perfection, should be that to which you welcome your friends as it is that of which you partake yourself. For, towards what woman in the world do I entertain a higher regard than towards the beloved partner of my existence, Mrs. Knob who should have a greater place in my affections than her six brothers three or four of whom we are pretty sure will favor us with their company at seven o'clock or her angelic mother my own valued mother-in-law for whom, finally, would I wish to cater more generously than for your very humble servant the present writer. Now, nobody supposes that the Birmingham Plate is had out. The disguised carpet-beaters introduced to the exclusion of the neat parlour-maid, the miserable entrees from the pastured cooks ordered in, and the children packed off as it is supposed to the nursery, but really only to the staircase down which they slide during the dinner-time while laying the dishes as they come out and fingering the round-bumps on the jellies and the forced meatballs in the soup. Nobody, I say, supposes that a dinner at home is characterised by the horrible ceremony, the foolish makeshifts, the mean pomp and ostentation which distinguish our banquets on grand field days. Such a notion is monstrous. I would as soon think of having my dearest Bessie singing opposite me in a turban and bird of paradise and showing her jolly-modeled arms out of blonde sleeves in her famous red satin gown. I, or of having Mr. Tool every day in a white waistcoat in the back shouting, silence, thaw, the chair. Now, if this be the case, if the brimudgeon, plate-pump and the processions of disguised footmen are odious and foolish in everyday life, why not always? Why should Jones and I, who are in the middle rank, alter the modes of our being to assume in a clat which does not belong to us, to entertain our friends who, if we are worth anything in rank two, who are not in the least deceived by our temporary splendor and who play off exactly the same observed trick upon us when they ask us to dine. If it be pleasant to dine with your friends, as all persons with good stomachs and kindly hearts will, I presume allow it to be, it is better to dine twice than to dine once. It is impossible, for men of small means, to be continually spending five and twenty or thirty shillings on each friend who sits down to their table. People dine for less. I myself have seen, at my favorite club, the senior United Service, his grace the Duke of Wellington quite contented with the joint, one and three, and half pint of sherry, nine, and if his grace, why not you and I? This rule I have made and found the benefit of. Whenever I ask a couple of dukes and a marquee or so to dine with me, I sit them down to a piece of beef or a leg of munt and trimmings. The grandees thank you for the simplicity, and appreciate the same. My dear Jones, ask any of those whom you have the honor of knowing if such be not the case. I am far from wishing that their graces should treat me in a similar fashion. Splendor is a part of their station. As decent comfort let us trust of yours and mine. Fate has comfortably appointed gold plate for some and has bidden others contentedly to wear the willow pattern and being perfectly contented indeed, humbly thankful for look around, oh Jones, and see the myriads who are not so fortunate. To wear honest linen, while magnificose of the world are adorned with cambrick and point lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable andvious fools those wretched bow-tibs of society who sport a lace-dicky and nothing besides the poor silly Jays who trail a peacock's feather behind them and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace terraces and to flaunt his magnificent fantail in the sunshine. The Jays with peacock's feathers are the snobs of this world and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present in this free country. How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject in Hen, the dinner-giving snob? The imitation of the great is universal in this city from the palaces of Kensingtonia and Mogravia even to the remotest corner of Brunswick Square. Peacock's feathers are stuck in the tails of most families. Scarce one of us domestic birds, but imitates the lanky, Pavanayan strut and shrill, gentile scream. We try to dinner-giving snobs. Think how much pleasure you lose and how much mischief you do with your absurd granders and hypocrisies. You stuff each other with unnatural forced meats and entertain each other to the ruin of friendship, let alone health, alien destruction of hospitality and good fellowship. You, who but for the peacock's tail might chatter away so much at your ease and be so jovial and happy. What a man goes into a great set company for dinner-giving and dinner-receiving snobs. If he has a philosophical turn of mind, he will consider what a huge humbug the whole affair is. The dishes and the drink and the servants and the plate and the host and hostess and the conversation and the company, the philosopher included. The host is smiling and hobnobbing and tugging up and down the table, but a prey to secret terrors and anxieties, lest the wines he has brought up to sell her should prove insufficient. Lest a corked bottle should destroy his calculations or are from the carpet-beater by making some B-view should disclose his real quality of grain-grocer and show that he is not the family butler. The hostess is smiling resolutely through all the courses, smiling through her agony, though her heart is in the kitchen and she is speculating with terror lest there be any disaster there if the soufflé should collapse or if Wiggins does not send the ices in time. She feels as if she would commit suicide, that smiling jolly woman. The children upstairs are yelling as their maid is crimping their miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emily's hair out by the roots or scraping Miss Polly's dumpy nose with modelled soap to the little wretch screams herself into fits. Young males of the family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical exploits upon the landing-place. The servants are not servants, but the before mentioned retail tradesmen. The plate is not plate, but a mere shiny Birmingham locker and so is the hospitality and everything else. The chalk is Birmingham talk, the wag of the party, with bitterness in his heart, having just quitted his laundry who was tending him for her bill, is firing off good stories and the opposition wag is furious that he cannot get in innings. Jockins, the great conversationalist, is scornful and indignant with the pair of them because he is kept out of court. Young Muscadel, that cheap dandy, is talking fashion and omics out of the morning post and discussing his neighbor, Mrs. Fox, who reflects that she has never been there. The widow is vexed out of patience because her daughter Maria has got a place beside young Cambric, the penniless curate, and not my Colonel Goldmore, the rich widower from India. The doctor's wife is sulky because she has not been let out before the barrister's lady. Old Dr. Cork is grumbling out the wine and Guttelton sneering at a cookery and to think that all these people might be so happy and easy and friendly where they are brought together in a natural, unpretentious way and but for an unhappy passion for peacock's feathers in England, gentle shades of Marat and Robespierre. When I see how all the honesty of society is corrupted among us by the miserable fashion worship, I feel as angry as Mrs. Fox just mentioned and ready to order a general pateau of peacocks. End of Chapter 20 Recording by Jennifer Stearns, Concord, New Hampshire Chapter 21 of the Book of Snobbs This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recording during the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Julie from Alchem The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 21 Some Continental Snobbs Now that September has come and all our parliamentary duties are over, perhaps no class of snobbs are in such high feather as the Continental Snobbs. I watch these daily as they commence their migrations from the beach at Folkstone. I see shawls of them depart, not perhaps without an innate longing too to get the island along with those happy snobbs. Farewell, dear friends. I say, you little know that the individual who regards you from the beach is your friend and historiographer and brother. I went to see our excellent friend Snugs on board the Queen of the French. Many scores of snobbs were there on the deck of that fine ship, marching forth in their pride and bravery. They will be at Austin in four hours. They will inundate the continent next week. They will carry into far lands the famous image of the British snob. I shall not see them, but am wisdom in spirit and indeed, there is hardly country in the known and civilized world in which these eyes have not beheld them. I have seen snobbs in pink coats and hunting boots, scouring over the Campania of Rome, and have heard their roads and their well-known slang in the galleries of the Vatican and under the shadowy arches of the Colosseum. I have met a snob on a dromedary in the desert and picnicking under the pyramid of the Cubs. I like to think how many gallant British snobbs there are in this minute of writing, putting their head out of every window in the courtyard of Maurices in the Rue de Rivoli or roaring out garçon du pain or swaggering down the Toledo at Naples or even how many will be on the lookout for snooks on Austin's pier for snooks and the rest of the snob on board the Queen of the French. Look at the markers of caribers and his two carriages. My Lady Marginus comes on board looks round with that happy air of mingled terror and impertinence which distinguishes her ladyship and rushes to her carriage for it is impossible that she should mingle with the other snob on deck. There she sits and will be ill and private. The strawberry leaves on her chariot panels are engraved on her ladyship's heart. If she were going to heaven instead of to Austin I rather think she would expect to have des places reserved for her and would send to order the best rooms. A courier with his money-bag of office round his shoulders a huge scowling footman whose dark pepper and salt livery glistens with a heraldic insignia of the caribers' a brazing-looking, tawdry French from the chambre none but a female pen can do justice to that wonderful tawdry toilet on voyage and the miserable dumbed company administering to the want of her ladyship and her king's charse espagnol. They are rushing to and through with her haute-golonia pocket handkerchiefs which are all fringe and cipher and popping mysterious cushions behind and before and in every available corner of the carriage. The little Marguess, her husband is walking about the deck in a bewildered manner and the order on each arm and the carity-tough to-hope of the family is already smoking on the four-deck in a travelling costume jacked all over and in little lacquered-tip pot-jean boots and a shirt embroidered with pink bow constrictors. What is it that gives travelling-snob such marvellous propensity to rush into a costume? Why should a man not travel in a coat, etc. but think proper to dress himself like your harlequin in mourning? See, even young Aldermanbury, the teller-merchant who has just stepped on board has got a travelling dress gaping all over with pockets and little Tom Tapeworm the lawyer's clerk out of the city who has but three weeks leave turns out in gaitis and a brand-new shooting jacket and must let the moustaches grow on his little sniffy upper lip pursues. Pompey Hakes is giving elaborate directions to his servant and asking loudly Davis, wear the dressing-case and Davis, you'd best take the pistol-case into the cabin. Little Pompey travels with the dressing-case and without a beard Hakes is going to shoot with his pistols who on earth can tell and what is to do with the servant which weighed upon him I am at a lost conjecture. Look at honest Nathan Handstitch and his lady and their little son what a noble air of blazing contentment illuminates the features of those snobs of eastern race what a twill at Handstitch's is what rings and chains what gold-headed canes and diamonds what a toothed rogue has got to his gin the rogue he will never spare himself any cheap enjoyment Little Handstitch has a little cane with a gilt head and little mosaic ornaments altogether an extra air as for the lady she has all the colours of the rainbow she has a pink parasol with a white lining and a yellow bonnet and an emerald green shawl and a shot-silt police and drab boots and rhubarb-coloured gloves and party-coloured glass buttons expanding from the size of a four-pally piece to crown glitter and twiddle all down the front of a gorgeous costume I have said before I like to look at the people's on their gala days they are so picturesquely and outrageously splendid and happy Yonder comes Captain Bull spic and span, tide and trim who travels for four or six months every year of his life who does not commit himself by luxury of raiment or insolence of demeanour but I think is as great a snob as any man on board Bull passes the season in London sponging for dinners and sleeping in a garret near his club abroad he has been everywhere he knows the best wine at every inn in every capital in Europe lives with the best English companies there has seen every palace and picture gallery from Madrid to Stockholm speaks an abominable little jargon of half a dozen languages and knows nothing nothing Bull hunts tufts on the continent and is a sort of amateur courier he must grave acquaintance with all caribers before they make a stand and well remind his lordship that he met him at Vienna twenty years ago or gave him a glass of schnapps up the reeky we have said Bull knows nothing he knows the birth, arms and pedigree of all the peerage has poked his little eyes into every one of the carriages on board their panels noted and their crest surveyed he knows all the continental stories of English scandal how Count of Roski ran off with Miss Baggs at Naples how very sick Lady Smigsmag was with young Cornish Arnold French Legation at Florence the exact amount which Jack Tuesday's one of Bob Gringews at Baden what it is that made the stacks settle on the continent the sum for which the Orcogarty estates are modgaged etc if he can't catch a lord he will hook on to a baronet or else the odd wretch will catch hold of some beardless young stripling of fashion and show him life in various and amiable and inaccessible quarters fah! the odd brood he has every one of the vices of the most boisterous youth at least he is comforted by having no conscious he is utterly stupid but of a jovial turn he believes himself to be quite respectable member of society but perhaps the only good action he ever did in his life is the involuntary one of giving an example to be avoided and showing what an odious thing in the social picture is that figure of the debauched old man who passes through life rather decorous salinas and dies some day in his garage alone unrepentant and unnoted saved by his astonished heirs who find that this little ultimizer is the money behind him see he is up to old caribers already I told you he would yonder you see the old lady mary mcscrew and those middle-aged young women her daughters they are going to cheapen and haggle in Belgium and up the Rhine until they meet with a boarding-house where they can live upon less board wages than her ladyship's pace of footmen but she will exact and receive considerable respect from the British snobs located in the watering-place which he selects for her summer residence being the daughter of the Earl of Hackestown that broad-shouldered bulk with a great whiskers and the clean-twight kid-gloves is Mr. Fallon Clancy of Paul-Dudy's town he calls himself Mr. De Clancy he endeavours to disguise his native Braug with the richest superposition of English and if you play at billiards or a cart with him he will win the first game and he, the seven or eight games ensuing that overgrown lady with the four daughters I'm the young dandy from the university her son is Mrs. Coosie the eminent baristess lady who would rather die than not be in the fashion she has a peerage in a carpet-back you may be sure which is altogether cut out by Mrs. Quad the attorney's wife whose carriage was the apparatus of rumbles, dickies and imperials scarcely yields in splendour to the marquis of caribers his own travelling chariot and his courier has even bigger whiskers and a larger Morocco money-bag than the marquis' own travelling gentleman remark her well she is talking to Mr. Spaud the new member for Jabra who is going out to inspect the operations of the Tolvarine and he'll put some very severe questions to Lord Palmerston next session upon England and her relations with the Prussian blue trade the navel soap trade the German tinder trade etc Spaud will patronise King Leopold at Brussels will write letters from abroad to the Jabra independent and in his quality of member du parlier mong Britannique will expect to be invited to a family dinner with every sovereign his dominioncy, honours was a visit during his tour the next person is Albert Hark the Belfour shore is ringing and shaking Snook's hand cordially we rush on to the pier waving him a farewell as a noble black ship cuts Keenie through the sunny azure waters bearing away that cargo of snobs outward bound End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of the book of snobs 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 snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 22 Continental Snobbery Continued we are accustomed to laugh at the French for their braggadocio propensities an intolerable vanity about la France, la gloire, l'empereur and the like and yet I think in my heart that the British snob for conceit and self-sufficiency and patriotism in his way is without a parallel there is always something uneasy in a Frenchman's conceit he brags with so much fury shrieking and gesticulation yells out so loudly that the France is at the head of civilization the saunter of thought, etc that one can't but see the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be about the British snob there is commonly no noise no bluster but the calmness of profound conviction we are better than all the world we don't question the opinion at all it's an axiom and when a Frenchman bellows out la France, monsieur la France est à la tête du monde civilisé we laugh good-naturedly at the frantic poor devil we are the first chap of the world we know the facts so well in our secret hearts elsewhere is simply ludicrous my dear brother reader say as a man of honor if you are not of this opinion do you think a Frenchman you're equal you don't you gallant British snob you know you don't no more perhaps does a snob your humble servant brother and I am inclined to think it is this conviction and the consequent bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends to visit the presence of superiority which holds up the head of the owner of every English hat box from Sicily to St. Petersburg that makes us so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are this more than all our little victories and of which many Frenchmen and Spaniards have never heard this amazing and indomitable insular pride which animates my lord and his traveling carriage as well as John and the Rumble if you read the old chronicles of the French wars you find precisely the same character of the Englishman and Henry the fifth people behaved with just the cool domineering manner of our gallant veterans of France and the peninsula did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major Slasher talking over the war after dinner or Captain Bordor describing his action with the indomitable hang the fellows says Bordor their practice was very good many times before I took her cuss those carabineers of Milhoed says Slasher what work they made of our light cavalry implying a sort of surprise that the Frenchmen should stand up against Britons at all a good natured wonder that the blind mad vain glorious brave poor devils should actually have the courage to resist an Englishman legions of such Englishmen are patronizing Europe at this moment being kind to the Pope or good natured to the King of Holland or condescending to inspect the Prussian reviews when Nicholas came here who reviews a quarter of a million pairs of mustaches to his breakfast every morning we took him off to Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight hundred Britons apiece with an air as much as to say there my boy look at that those are Englishmen those are and your master whenever you please as the nursery song says the British knob is long long past skepticism and can afford to laugh quite good humoredly at those conceded Yankees or besotted little Frenchmen who set up as models of mankind they forces I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old fellow at the Hotel du Noir in Boulogne and who is evidently of the slasher sort he came down and seated himself at the breakfast table with a surly scowl on his salmon colored bloodshot face strangling in a tight crossbarred cravat his linen and his appointment so perfectly stiff and spotless that everybody at once recognized him as a dear countryman only our port wine and other admirable institutions could have produced a figure so insolent so stupid so gentlemen like after a while our attention was called to him pouring out in a voice of plethoric fury oh everybody turned round at the oh conceiving the Colonel to be as his countenance denoted him in intense pain but the waiters knew better and instead of being alarmed brought the Colonel the kettle oh it appears is the French for hot water the Colonel though he despises it heartily thinks he speaks the language remarkably well he was in hosting his smoking tea which went rolling and gurgling down his throat and hissing over the hot coppers of that respectable veteran a friend joined him with a wizened face and very black wig evidently a Colonel too the two warriors waggling their old heads at each other presently joined breakfast and fell into conversation and we had the advantage of hearing about the old war and some pleasant conjectures to the next which they considered imminent they shot the French fleet they poo pooed the French commercial marine they showed how in a war there would be a cordon a cordon by blank of steamers along our coast and by blank ready at a minute to land anywhere on the other shore to give the French as good a thrashing as they got in the last war by blank in fact a rumbling canon of oaths was fired by the two veterans during the whole of their conversation there was a Frenchman in the room but as he had not been above ten years in London of course he did not speak the language and lost the benefit of the conversation but oh my country said I to myself it's no wonder that you are so beloved if I were a Frenchman how I would hate you that brutal ignorant peevish bully of an Englishman is showing himself in every city of Europe one of the dullest creatures under heaven he goes traveling Europe under foot shouldering his way into galleries and cathedrals and bustling into palaces with his Buckram uniform at church or theater gala or picture gallery his face never varies a thousand delightful sights past before his bloodshot eyes and don't affect him countless brilliant scenes of life and manners are shown him he goes to church and calls the practices there degrading and superstitious as if his altar was the only one that was acceptable he goes to picture galleries and is more ignorant about art than a French shoe black art nature pass and there is no doubt of admiration in his stupid eyes nothing moves him except when a very great man comes his way and then the rigid proud flexible British snob can be as humble as a flunky and as supple as a harlequin end of chapter 22 chapter 23 of the book of snobs 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 Barry Eads the book of snobs by William Makepeace Thackery English snobs on the continent what is the use of Lord Rome's telescope my friend Pan Whiskey exclaimed the other day it only enables you to see a few hundred thousands of miles farther what were thought to be mere nebula turned out to be the most perceivable starry systems and beyond these you see other nebula which a more powerful glass will show to be stars again and so they go on glittering and winking away into eternity with which my friend Pan heaving a great sigh as if confessing his inability to look infinity in the face sank back resigned and swallowed a large bumper of claret I who like other great men have but one idea thought to myself that as the stars are so are the snobs the more you gaze upon these luminaries the more you behold now nebulously congregated now faintly distinguishable now brightly defined until they twinkle off in endless blazes and fade into the immeasurable darkness I am but as a child playing on the seashore some telescope philosopher will arise one day some great snobanamer define the laws of the great science which we are now merely playing with and to define and settle and classify that which is at present but vague theory and lose some elegant assertion yes a single eye can but trace a very few and simple varieties of the enormous universe of snobs I sometimes think of appealing to the public and calling together a congress of savans such as met at south hampton each to bring his contributions and read his paper on the great subject for what can a single poor few do even with the subject at present in hand English snobs on the continent though they are a hundred thousand times less numerous than on their native island yet even these few are too many one can only fix a stray one here and there the individuals are caught the thousands escape I have noted down but three whom I have met with in my walk this morning through this pleasant marine city a balloon there is the English raft snob that frequents estimin and cabarets who is heard yelling we won't go home till morning and startling the midnight echoes of quiet continental towns with shrieks of English slang the boozy unshorn wretch is seen hovering around quays as packets arrive and tippling drains in in bars where he gets credit he talks French with slang familiarity he and his like quite people the debt prisons on the continent he plays pool at the billiard houses and may be seen engaged at cards and dominoes of forenoons his signature is to be seen on countless bills of exchange it belong to an honorable family once very likely for the English raft most probably began by being a gentleman and has a father over the water who is ashamed to hear his name he has cheated the old governor repeatedly in better days and swindled his sisters of their portions and robbed his younger brothers now he is living on his wife's jointure she is hidden away in some dismal Garrett patching shabby finery and cobbling up old clothes for her children the most miserable of women or sometimes the poor woman and her daughters go about timidly giving lessons in English and music or do embroidery and work under hand to purchase the means for the pot a few while raft is swaggering on the quay or tossing off glasses of cognac at the cafe the unfortunate creature has a child still every year and her constant hypocrisy is to try and make her girls believe that their father is a respectable man and to come out of the way when the brute comes home drunk those poor ruined souls get together and have a society of their own the which it is very affecting to watch those todry pretenses at generality these flimsy attempts at gayity those woeful sally's that jingling old piano oh it makes the heart sick to see and hear them as mrs. raff with her company of pale daughters gives a penny tea to mrs. diddler they talk about bygone times and the society they kept and they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music books and while engaged in this sort of entertainment incomes captain raff with his greasy hat on one side and straight away the whole of the dismal room reeks with a mingled odor of smoke and spirits has not everybody who has lived abroad met captain raff his name is proclaimed every now and then by mr. sheriffs officer hemp and about balon and paris and brussels there are so many of his sort that i will lay a wager that i shall be accused of gross personality for showing him up many alas irreclaimable villain is transported many a more honorable man is at present at the treadmill and although we are the noblest greatest most religious and most moral people in the world i would still like to know where except in the united kingdom debts are a matter of joke and making tradesmen suffer a sport it is dishonorable to owe money in France you never hear people in other parts of europe brag of their swindling or see a prison in a large continental town which is not more or less people with english rogues a still more loathsome and dangerous snob than the above transparent and passive scamp is frequent on the continent of europe and my young snob friends who are traveling thither should be especially warned against him captain leg is a gentleman like raft though perhaps of a better degree he has robbed his family too but of a great deal more and has boldly dishonored bills for thousands where raft has been boggling over the clumsy conveyance of a ten pound note leg is always at the best in with the finest waist coats and mustaches or tearing about in the flashes of britska's while poor raft is tipsifying himself with spirits and smoking cheap tobacco amazing to think that leg so often shown up and known everywhere is flourishing yet he would sink into utter ruin but for the constant and ardent love of gentility that distinguishes the english snob there is many a young fellow of the middle classes who must know leg to be a rogue and a cheat and yet from his desire to be in the fashion and his admiration of tip top swells and from his ambition to air himself by the side of a lord's son will let leg make an income out of him content to pay so long as he can enjoy that society many a worthy father of a family when he hears that his son is writing about with captain leg lord levante son is rather pleased that young hopeful should be in such good company leg and his friend major maser make professional tours through europe and are to be found at the right places at the right time last year I heard how my young acquaintance from Oxford going to see a little life at a carnival ball at Paris was accosted by an english man who did not know a word of the d blank language and hearing muff speak it so admirably beg him to interpret to a waiter with whom there was a dispute about refreshments it was quite a comfort the stranger said to see an honest english face and did muff know where there was a good place for supper so those two went to supper and who should come of all men in the world but major maser and so leg introduced maser and so there came on a little intimacy and three card Lou et cetera et cetera year after year scores of muffs in various places in the world are victimized by leg and maser the story is so stale the trick of seduction so entirely old and clumsy that is only a wonder people can be taken in anymore but the temptations of vice and gentility together are too much for young english snobs and those simple young victims are caught fresh every day though it is only to be kicked and cheated by men of fashion your true british knob will present himself for the honor I need not allude here to the very common british knob who makes desperate efforts at becoming intimate with the great continental aristocracy such as old rolls the baker who has set up his quarters in the faborg saint germain marliss and no french gentleman under the rank of a marquis we can all of us laugh at that fellow's pretensions well enough we who tremble before a great man of our own nation but as you say my brave and honest john bull of a snob a french marquis of 20 descents is very different from an english pier and a pack of beggarly german and italian first stein and principae awaken the scorn of an honest minded britain but our aristocracy is a very different matter they are the real leaders of the world the real old original and no mistake nobility off with your cap snob down on your knees snob and chuckle end of chapter 23 chapter 24 of the book of snobs 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 snobs by william make peace thackeray chapter 24 on some country snobs tired of the town where the sight of the closed shutters the nobility my friends makes my heart sick in my walks afraid almost to sit in those vast palm all subtleties the clubs and of annoying the club waiters who might i thought be going to shoot in the country but for me i determined on a brief tour in the provinces and paying some visits in the country which were long due my first visit was to my friend major ponto hp of the horse marines in manglewuzershire the major in his little theaton was in waiting to take me up at the station the vehicle was not certainly splendid but such a carriage as would accommodate a plain man as ponto said he was and a numerous family we drove by beautiful fresh fields and green hedges through a cheerful english landscape the high road as smooth and trim as the way in a nobleman's park was charmingly checkered with cool shade and golden sunshine rustics and snowy smock frocks jerked their hats off smiling as we passed children with cheeks as red as apples in the orchards bob curtsies to us at the cottage doors blue church spires rose here and there in the distance and as the buxom gardener's wife opened the white gate at the major's little ivy covered lodge and we drove through the neat plantations of furs and evergreens up to the house my bosom felt a joy and elation which i thought it was impossible to experience in the smoky atmosphere of a town here i mentally exclaimed small peace plenty of happiness here i shall be rid of snobs there can be none in this charming arcadian spot stripes the major's man formerly a corporal in his gallant core received my portmanteau in an elegant little present which i have brought from town as a peace offering to mrs. panto thee a cod in oysters from groves in a hamper about the size of a coffin panto's house the evergreens mrs. p has christened it is a perfect paradise of a place it is all over creepers and bow windows and verandas a wavy lawn tumbles up and down around it with flower beds of wonderful shapes and zigzag gravel walks and beautiful but damp shrubberies of myrtles and glistening lorestines which it procured at its change of name it was called little bullocks pound in old doctor panto's time i had a view of the pretty grounds and the stable and the adjoining village and church in a great park beyond from the windows of the bedroom where the panto conducted me it was the yellow bedroom the freshest and pleasantest of bed chambers the air was fragrant with a large bouquet that was placed on the writing table the linen was fragrant with a lavender in which it had been laid the chintz hangings of the bed and the big sofa were, if not fragrant with flowers, at least painted all over the wiper on the table was the imitation of a double dahlia and there was accommodation for my watch and a sunflower on the mantelpiece a scarlet-leaved creeper came curling over the windows through which the setting sun was pouring a flood of golden light it was all flowers and freshness oh how unlike those black chimney pots in st. albin's place London on which these worry eyes are accustomed to look it must be all happiness here panto said I flinging myself down into the snug berger and inhaling such a delicious draught of country air as all the millflowers Mr. Atkinson shop cannot impart to any the most expensive pocket handkerchief nice place isn't it? said panto quiet and unpretending I like everything quiet you've not bought your valet with you stripes will arrange your dressing things and that functionary entering at the same time proceeded to gut my portmondo and to lay out the black carousel the rich cut velvet genoa waistcoat the white choker and other polite articles of evening costume with great gravity and dispatch a great dinner party thinks I to myself seeing these preparations and not perhaps displeased at the idea that some of the best people in the neighborhood were coming to see me hark there's the first bell ringing said panto moving away and in fact a clamorous harbinger of victuals begin clanging from the stable turret and announced the agreeable fact that dinner would appear in half an hour if the dinner is as grand as the dinner bell thought I faith I'm in good quarters and had leisure during the half hours interval not only to advance my own person to the utmost polish of elegance which it is capable of receiving to admire the pedigree of the panto's hanging over the chimney and the panto crest and arms emblazoned upon the wash-hand basin and jug but to make a thousand reflections on the happiness of a country life upon the innocent friendliness and or reality of rustic intercourse and to sigh for an opportunity of retiring like panto to my own fields to my own vine and fig tree with placens exure in my dominance and a half score of sweet young images of affection sporting round my paternal knee clang! at the end of thirty minutes dinner bell number two peeled from the adjacent turret I hastened downstairs expecting to find a score of healthy country folk in the drawing room there was only one person there a tall and roman nose lady glistering over with bulges in deep mourning she rose advanced two steps made a majestic curtsy during which all the bulges in her awful headdress begin to twiddle and quiver and then said Mr. Snob, we are very happy to see you at the evergreens and heaved a great sigh this then was Mrs. Major Panto to whom making my very best bow I replied that I was very proud to make her acquaintance as also that of so charming a place as the evergreens another sigh we are distantly related Mr. Snob, she said, shaking her melancholy head poor dear Lord Rubidub oh, said I, not knowing what the deuce Mrs. Major Panto meant Major Panto told me that you were the likeest your Snob's a very old family and related to Lord Snobbington who married Laura Rubidub who is a cousin of mine as was her poor dear father for whom we are mourning what a seizure only sixty-three and a poplixly quite unknown until now in our family in life we are in death Mr. Snob does Lady Snobbington bear the deprivation well why, really Madam I don't know I replied more and more confused as she was speaking I heard a sort of cloup by which well-known sound I was aware that somebody was opening a bottle of wine and Panto entered in a huge white netcloth in a rather shabby black suit my love Mrs. Major Panto said to her husband we were talking about our cousin poor dear Lord Rubidub his death has placed some of the first families in England in mourning does Lady Rubidub keep her house on Hill Street do you know I didn't know but I said I believe she does at a venture and looking down to the drawing-room table I saw the inevitable a dominable maniacal absurd disgusting peerage open on the table interleaved with annotations and open at the article Snobbington dinner is served says Stripes flinging open the door and I gave Mrs. Major Panto my arm end of chapter 24