 The Necessity of a Work on Snobb's Demonstrated from History and Proved by Felicius Illustration. I am the individual destined to write that work. My vocation is announced in terms of great eloquence. I show that the world has been gradually preparing itself for the work and the man. Snobbs are to be studied like other objects of natural science, and are a part of the beautiful with a large bee. They pervade all classes, affecting instance of Colonel Snobbly. We have all read a statement, the authenticity of which I take leave to doubt entirely, for upon what calculations I should like to know is that founded. We have all, I say, been favoured by perusing a remark, that when the times and necessities of the world call for a man, that individual is found. Thus, at the French Revolution, which the reader will be pleased to have introduced so early, when it was requisite to administer a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found, a most foul and no just dose indeed, and swallowed eagerly by the patient, greatly to the latter's ultimate advantage. Thus, when it became necessary to kick John Bull out of America, Mr Washington stepped forward and performed that job dissatisfaction. Thus, when the Earl of Elvira was unwell, Professor Holloway appeared with his pills and cured his lordship, advertisement, etc., etc. Numbulous instances might be adused to show that when a nation is in great want, the relief is at hand, just as in the pantomime, that microcosm, where when clown wants anything, a warming pan, a pump handle, a goose, or a lady's tippet, a fellow comes sauntering out from behind the side scenes with a very article in question. Again, when men commence an undertaking, they always are prepared to show that the absolute necessities of the world demanded its completion. Say it is a railroad. The directors begin by stating that, a more intimate communication between Bathishins and her inane bag is necessary for the advancement of civilization and demanded by the multitudinous acclamations of the great Irish people. What suppose it is newspaper? The prospectus states that, at a time when the church is in danger, flattened from without by savage fanaticisms and miscreant unbelief, and undermined from within by dangerous Jesuitism and suicidal chism, a want has been universally felt, a suffering people has looked abroad for an ecclesiastical champion and guardian, a body of prelates and gentlemen have therefore stepped forward in this hour of danger and determined on establishing the Beedle newspaper, etc., etc. One or other of these points at least is incontrovertible. The public wants a sing, therefore it is supplied with it, or the public is supplied with a sing, therefore it wants it. I have long gone about, with a conviction on my mind, that I had a work to do, a work, if you like, with a great W, a purpose to fulfil, a chasm to leap into like curses, horse and foot, a great social evil to discover and to remedy. That conviction has pursued me for years, it has dogged me in the busy street, seated itself by me in the lonely study, joked my elbow as it lifted the wine-cup at the festive board, pursued me through the maze of rotten row, followed me in farlands. On Brighton-Shingley Beach, on Margaret's Sand, the voice outpiped the roaring of the sea, it nestles in my nightcap and it whispers, Wake slumberer, thy work is not yet done. Last year by moonlight in the Coliseum, the little saddler's voice came to me and said, Smith or Jones, the writer's name is neither here nor there, Smith or Jones, my fine fellow, this is all very well, but you ought to be at home, writing your great work on snobs. When a man has this sort of vocation, it is all nonsense attempting to elude it. He must be out of the nations, he must unboozle himself as James would say, or choke and die. Mark to yourself, I have often mentally exclaimed your humble servant, the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour. First, the world was made, then, as a matter of course, snobs. They existed for years and years, and were no more known than America. But presently, ingents partibode talus, the people became darkly aware that there was such a race, not about five and twenty years since, in name, an expressive monosyllable arose to designate that race. That name has spread over England like railroad subsequently, snobs are known and recognised throughout an empire on which I am given to understand the sun never sets. Punch appears at the ripe season to chronicle their history, and the individual comes forth to write that history in punch. I have, and for this gift I congratulate myself with a deep and abiding thankfulness, an eye for a snob. If the truthful is the beautiful, it is beautiful to study even the snobbish, to drag snobs through history as certain little dogs in Hampshire hunt our truffles, to sink shafts in society, and come upon rich veins of snob all. Snobbishness is like dust in a quotation from Horace, which I hope you never have heard, beating with equal foot at poor men's doors and kicking at the gates of empires. It is a mistake to judge of snobs lightly, and think they exist among the lower classes mainly. An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life. You must not judge hastily or vulgally of snobs. To do so shows that you are yourself a snob. I myself have been taken for one. When I was taking the waters at Bagnic Wells and living at the Imperial Hotel there, they used to sit opposite me at breakfast for a short time, a snob so insufferable that I felt I should never get any benefit of the waters, so long as he remained. His name was Lieutenant Colonel Snobly, of a certain Dragoon regiment. He wore Japan boots and mustaches. He lisped, drawed, and left the arse out of his words. He was always flourishing about and smoozing his lacquered whiskers with a huge flaming bandana that filled the room with noda of musk so stifling that I determined to do battle with that snob, and that either he or I should quit the inn. I first began harmless conversations with him, frightening him exceedingly for he did not know what to do when so attacked, and had never the slightest notion that anybody would take such a liberty with him as to speak first. Then I handed him the paper. Then, as he would take no notice of these advances, I used to look him in the face steadily, and—and use my fork in the light of a toothpick. After two mornings of this practice, he could bear it no longer, and fairly quitted the place. Should the Colonel see this? Will he remember the gent who asked him if he thought Publicola was a fine writer, and drove him from the hotel with the four-pronged fork? End of REFETERY REMARGS I mean positive, such persons as our snobs everywhere, in all companies, from morning till night, from youth to the grave, being by nature endowed with snobbishness, and others who are snobs only in certain circumstances and relations of life. For instance, I once knew a man who committed before me an act as atrocious as that which I have indicated in the last chapter, as performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobbly, Viz, the using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man who, dining in my company at the Europa coffee-house, opposite the Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining at Naples, ate peas with the assistance of his knife. He was a person with whose society I was greatly pleased at first. Indeed, we had met in the crater of Mount Vizuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held to ransom by brigands and calabra, which is nothing to the purpose. A man of great powers, excellent heart, and varied information, but I had never before seen him with a dish of peas, and his conduct in regard to them caused me the deepest pain. After having seen him thus, publicly comport himself, but one course was open to me, to cut his acquaintance. I commissioned a mutual friend, the honourable Polly Anthos, to break the matter to this gentleman as delicately as possible, and to say that painful circumstances, in no wise affecting Mr. Marofat's honour, or my esteem for him, had occurred, which obliged me to forego my intimacy with him. And accordingly we met, and gave each other the cut direct that night, at the Duchess of Montefiasco's ball. Everybody at Naples remarked the separation of the Daemon and Pythias. Indeed, Marofat had saved my life more than once, but as an English gentleman, what was I to do? My dear friend was, in this instance, the snob relative. It is not snobbish of persons of rank of any other nation to employ their knife in the manner alluded to. I have seen Montefiasco clean his trencher with his knife, and every principate in company doing likewise. I have seen at the hospitable board of H.I.H., the grand duchess Stephanie of Baden, who, if the assemble line should come under her imperial eyes, is besought to remember graciously the most devoted of her servants. I have seen, I say, the hereditary princess of Potsthalsand, Donna Retter, that serenely beautiful woman, use her knife in lieu of a fork or spoon. I have seen her almost swallow it by Jove, like Ramos Sammy, the Indian juggler. And did I blench? Did my estimation for the princess diminish? No, lovely Amalia. One of the truest passions that was ever inspired by woman was raised in this bosom by that lady. Beautiful one! Long, long made the knife carry food to those lips, the reddest and loveliest in the world. The cause of my quarrel with Merylfat I never breathed to mortal soul for four years. We met in the halls of the aristocracy, our friends and relatives. We jostled each other in the dance or at the board, but the estrangement continued and seemed irrevocable until the 4th of June last year. We met at Sir George Gallipers. We were placed, he on the right, your humble servant on the left, of the admirable Lady G., peas formed part of the banquet, ducks and green peas. I trembled as I saw Merylfat helped and turned away, sickening, lest I should behold the weapon darting down his horrid jaws. What was my astonishment? What my delight when I saw him use his fork like any other Christian? He did not administer the cold still once. Old times rushed back upon me, the remembrance of old services, his rescuing me from the brigands, his gallant conduct in the affair with the Countess de Spinacci, his lending me the 1700 lira. I almost burst into tears with joy, my voice trembled with emotion. George, my boy, I exclaimed, George Merylfat, my dear fellow, a glass of wine. Blushing, deeply moved, almost as tremulous as I was myself, George answered, Frank, shall it be Hawk or Madeira? I could have hugged him to my heart but for the presence of the company. Little did Lady Gallipers know what was the cause of the emotion which sent the duckling I was carving into her ladyship's pink satin lap. The most good-natured of women pardoned the error and the butler removed the bird. We have been the closest friends ever since, nor, of course, has George repeated his odious habit. He acquired it at a country school where they cultivated peas and only used two-pronged forks, and it was only by living on the continent where the usage of the four-prong is general, that he lost the horrible custom. In this point, and in this only, I confess myself a member of the Silver Fork School, and if this tell but induce one of my readers to pause to examine in his own mind solemnly and ask, do I or do I not eat peas with a knife? To see the ruin which may fall upon himself by continuing the practice or his family by beholding the example, these lines will not have been written in vain. And now, whatever other authors may be, I flatter myself. It will be allowed that I at least am a moral man. By the way, as some readers are dull of comprehension, I may as well say what the moral of this history is. The moral is this, society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society and conform to its harmless orders. If I should go to the British and Foreign Institute, at heaven forbid, I should go under any pretext or in any constant whatever. If I should go to one of the tea parties in a dressing-gown and slippers and not in the usual attire of a gentleman, this pumps a gold waist-cut, a crush-hat, a sham-frill, and a white choker, I should be insulting society and eating peas with my knife. Let the porters of the Institute hustle out the individual who shall so offend. Such an offender is, as regards society, a most emphatical and refractory snob. It has its code and police as well as governments, and he must conform who would profit by the decrees set forth for their common comfort. I am naturally averse to egotism and hate self-lawdation consumedly, but I can't help relating here a circumstance illustrative of the point in question, in which I must think I acted with considerable prudence. Being at Constantinople a few years since, on a delicate mission, the Russians were playing a double game between ourselves, and it became necessary on our part to employ an extra negotiator. Lekebus Pasha of Romelia, then Chief Galeonji of the Port, gave a diplomatic banquet at his summer palace at Bourjouk-Dere. I was on the left of the Galeonji, and the Russian agent Count Dedalov on his dexter side. Dedalov is a dandy, who would die of a rose and an aromatic pain. He had tried to have me assassinated three times in the course of the negotiation, but of course we were friends and public, and saluted each other in the most cordial and charming manner. The Galeonji is, or was, alas, for a bowstring has done for him. A staunch supporter of the old school of Turkish politics. We dined with our fingers and had flaps of bread for plates. The only innovation he admitted was the use of European liquors, in which he indulged with great gusto. He was an enormous eater. Amongst the dishes, a very large one was placed before him, of a lamb, dressed in its wool, stuffed with prunes, garlic, asafotida, capsicums, and other condiments. The most abominable mixture that ever mortals smelt or tasted. The Galeonji, eight of this hugely, and pursuing the Eastern fashion, insisted on helping his friends right and left, and when he came to a particularly spicy morsel would push it with his own hands into his guests' very mouths. I never shall forget the look of old Dedalov, when his excellency, rolling up a large quantity of this into a ball, and exclaiming, Bac Bac, it is very good, administered the horrible bolus to Dedalov. The Russian's eyes rolled dreadfully as he received it. He swallowed it with a grimace that I thought must precede a convulsion, and seizing a bottle next to him, which he thought was saterne, but which turned out to be French brandy, he drank off nearly a pint before he knew his error. It finished him. He was carried away from the dining-room, almost dead, and laid out to cool in a summer-house on the Bosphorus. When it came to my turn, I took down the condiment with a smile, said, Bismala, licked my lips with easy gratification, and when the next dish was served, made up a ball myself so dexterously, and popped it down the old Gallegy's mouth with so much grace that his heart was won. Russia was put out of court at once, and the Treaty of Capobinople was signed. As for Dedalov, all was over with him. He was recalled to St. Petersburg, and Sir Roderick Murchison saw him, under the number 3967, working in the Ural Mines. The moral of this tale, I need not say, is that there are many discreble things in society which you are bound to take down, and to do so with a smiling face. End of Chapter 1. The Snob Playfully Dealt With Recording by Gates Meru Long since at the commencement of the reign of her present gracious Majesty, it chanced, on a fair summer evening, as Mr. James would say, that three or four young Cavaliers were drinking a cup of wine after dinner at the hostel recalled the King's Arms, kept by Mistress Anderson in the royal village of Kensington. It was a balmy evening, and the wayfarers looked out on a cheerful scene. The tall elms of the ancient gardens were in full leaf, and countless chariots of the nobility of England whirled by to the neighbouring palace, where Prince Lee Sussex, whose income laterally only allowed him to give tea parties, entertained his royal niece at a state banquet. When the caroshes of the nobles had set down their owners at the banquet hall, their violets and servitors came to quaff a flag in of nut-brown ale in the King's Arms' gardens, hard by. We watched these fellows from our lattice, by St. Boniface was a rare sight. The tulips in my near-fondue gardens were not more gorgeous than the liveries of these pie-coated retainers. All the flowers of the field bloomed in their ruffled bosoms, all the hues of the rainbow gleamed in their plush breeches, and the long cane-dwinds walked up and down the gardens with that charming solemnity, that delightful quivering swagger of the calves, which has always had a frantic fascination for us. The walk was not wide enough for them, as the shoulder-nuts strutted up and down it in canary and crimson and light blue. Suddenly, in the midst of their pride, a little bell was rung, a side door opened, and, after setting down their royal mistress, Her Majesty's own crimson footmen with epaulettes and black plushes came in. It was pitiable to see the other poor John slink off at this arrival. Not one of the honest private plushes could stand up before the royal flungies. They left the walk, they sneaked into dark holes and drank their beer in silence. The royal plush kept possession of the garden until the royal plush dinner was announced, when it retired, and we heard from the pavilion where they dined conservative cheers and speeches and kentish fires. The other flunkies we never saw more. My dear flunkies, so absurdly conceited at one moment and so abject the next, are but the types of their masters in this world. He who meanly admires mean things is a snob. Perhaps that is a safe definition of the character. And this is why I have, with the utmost respect, ventured to place the snob royal at the head of my list, causing all others to give way before him, as the flunkies before the royal representative in Kensington Gardens. To say of such and such a gracious sovereign that he is a snob is but to say that his majesty is a man. Kings too are men and snobs. In a country where snobs are in the majority, a prime one surely cannot be unfit to govern. With us they have succeeded to admiration. For instance, James I was a snob and a scotch snob, then which the world contains no more offensive creature. He appears to have had not one of the good qualities of a man, neither courage, nor generosity, nor honesty, nor brains, but read what the great divines and doctors of England said about him. Charles II, his grandson, was a rogue but not a snob, whilst Louis XIV, his old square-toes of contemporary, the great worshipper of big wiggory, has always struck me as a most undoubted and royal snob. I will not, however, take instances from our own country of royal snobs, but refer to a neighbouring kingdom, that of Brentford, and its monarch, the late great and lamented GORGEOUS IV. With the same humility with which the footmen at the king's arms gave way before the plush royal, the aristocracy of the Brentford Nation bent down and truckled before GORGEOUS and proclaimed him the first gentleman in Europe. And it's a wonder to think what is the gentlefolk's opinion of a gentleman when they gave GORGEOUS such a title. What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and possessing all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband and honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his tastes to be high and elegant, his aims in life lofty and noble? In a word, ought not the biography of a first gentleman in Europe to be of such a nature that it might be read in young ladies' schools with advantage and studied with profit in the seminaries of young gentlemen? I put this question to all instructors of youth, to Mrs. Ellis and the women of England, to all schoolmasters from Dr. Houghtry down to Mr. Squeers. I conjure up before me an awful tribunal of youth and innocence attended by its venerable instructors like the ten thousand red-cheeked charity children in St. Paul's, sitting in judgment and gorgeous, pleading his cause in the midst. Out of court, out of court, fat old florazelle, Beatles turn out that bloated pimple-faced man. If gorgeous must have a statue in the new palace which the Brentford Nation is building, it ought to be set up in the Flunkies Hall. He should be represented cutting out a coat in which art he is said to have excelled. He also invented maraschino punch, a shoe-buckle—this was in the vigor of his youth and the prime force of his invention—and a Chinese pavilion, the most hideous building in the world. He could drive a fore in hand very needily as well as the Brighton Coachman, could fence elegantly and, it he said, played the fiddle well. And he smiled with such irresistible fascination that persons who were introduced into his august presence became his victims body and soul as a rabbit becomes the prey of a great big boa constrictor. I would wager that if Mr. Widdicombe were, by a revolution, placed on the throne of Brentford, people would be equally fascinated by his irresistibly majestic smile and tremble as they knelt down to kiss his hand. If he went to Dublin they would erect an obelisk on the spot where he first landed as the Paddylanders did when gorgeous visited them. We have all of us read with delight that story of the king's voyage to Haggisland where his presence inspired such a fury of loyalty and where the most famous man of the country, the Baron of Bradwardine, coming on board the royal yacht and finding a glass out of which gorgeous had drunk, put it into his coat pocket as an inestimable relic and went ashore in his boat again. But the barons sat down upon the glass and broke it and cut his coattails very much and the inestimable relic was lost to the world forever. Oh noble Bradwardine, what old world superstition could set you on your knees before such an idol is that? If you want to moralize upon the mutability of human affairs, go and see the figure of gorgeous in his real identical robes at the waxwork. Admittance one shilling. Children and flunkies sixpence. Go and pay sixpence. End of Chapter 2 For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Gates Meru The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 3 The Influence of the Aristocracy on Snobbs Last Sunday week, being at church in this city and the service just ended, I heard two snobs conversing about the parson. One was asking the other who the clergyman was. He is Mr. So-and-so, the second snob answered, domestic chaplain to the earl of what you call him. Oh is he, said the first snob, with a tone of indescribable satisfaction. The parson's orthodoxy and identity were at once settled in this snob's mind. He knew no more about the earl than about the chaplain, but he took the latter's character upon the authority of the former and went home quite contented with his reverence, like a little truckling snob. This incident gave me more matter for reflection even than the sermon and wonderment at the extent and prevalence of Lord Dolotry in this country. What would it matter to snob whether his reverence would chaplain to his lordship or not? What peerage worship there is all through this free country, how we are all implicated in it and more or less down on our knees. And with regard to the great subject on hand, I think that the influence of the peerage upon snobbishness has been more remarkable than that of any other institution. The increase, encouragement and maintenance of snobs are among the priceless services, as Lord John Russell says, which we owe to the nobility. It can't be otherwise. A man becomes enormously rich or he jobs successfully in the aid of a minister or he wins a great battle or executes a treaty or is a clever lawyer who makes a multitude of fees and ascends the bench and the country rewards him forever with a gold coronet with more or less balls or leaves and a title and a rank as legislator. Your merits are so great, says the nation, that your children shall be allowed to reign over us in a manner. It does not in the least matter that your eldest son be a fool. We think your service is so remarkable that he shall have the reversion of your honors when death vacates your noble shoes. If you are poor, we will give you such a sum of money as shall enable you and the eldest born of your race forever to live in fat and splendor. It is our wish that there should be a race set apart in this happy country who shall hold the first rank, have the first prizes and chances in all government jobs and patronages. We cannot make all your dear children peers. That would make peerage common and crowd the house of lords uncomfortably but the young ones shall have everything a government can give. They shall get the pick of all the places. They shall be captains and lieutenant-carnals at nineteen. When hoary-headed old lieutenants are spending thirty years a drill they shall command ships at one in twenty and veterans who fought before they were born. And as we are eminently a free people and in order to encourage all men to do their duty we say to any man of any rank get enormously rich, make immense fees as a lawyer or great speeches or distinguish yourself and win battles and you even you shall come into the privileged class and your children shall reign naturally over ours. How can we help snobbishness with such a prodigious national institution erected for its worship? How can we help cringing to lords? Flesh and blood can't do otherwise. What man can withstand this prodigious temptation? Inspired by what is called a noble emulation some people grasp at honors and win them others too weak or mean blindly admire and grovel before those who have gained them others not being able to acquire them furiously hate abuse and envy there are only a few bland and not in the least conceited philosophers who can behold the state of society these todyism organized base man and mammon worship instituted by command of law snobbishness in a word perpetuated and mark the phenomenon calmly and of these calm moralists is there one I wonder whose heart would not throb with pleasure if he could be seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes down pole mall no it is impossible in our condition of society not to be sometimes a snob on one hand it encourages the commoner to be snobbishly mean and the noble to be snobbishly arrogant when a noble marshanness writes in her travels about the hard necessity under which steamboat travelers labor of being brought into contact with all sorts and conditions of people implying that a fellowship with God's creatures is disagreeable to her ladieship who is their superior when I say the marshanness of whatever writes in this fashion we must consider that out of her natural heart it would have been impossible for any woman to have had such a sentiment but that the habit of trickling and cringing which all who surround her have adopted towards this beautiful and magnificent lady this proprietor of so many black and other diamonds has really induced her to believe that she is the superior of the world in general and that people are not to associate with her except awfully at a distance I recollect being once at the city of grand Cairo through which a European royal prince was passing India words one night at the inn there was a great disturbance a man had drowned himself in the well hard by all the inhabitants of the hotel came bustling into the court and amongst others your humble servant who asked of a certain young man the reason of the disturbance how was I to know that this young gent was a prince he had not his crown and scepter on he was dressed in a white jacket and felt hat but he looked surprised at anybody speaking to him answered an unintelligible monosillable and beckoned his aid to camp to come and speak to me it is our fault not that of the great that they should fancy themselves so far above us if you will fling yourself under the wheels juggernaut will go over you depend upon it and if you and I my dear friend had kowtow performed before us every day found people whenever we appeared groveling in slavish adoration we should drop into the airs of superiority quite naturally and accept the greatness with which the world insisted upon endowing us here is an instance out of Lord El's travels of that calm good-natured undoubting way in which a great man accepts the homage of his inferiors after making some profound and ingenious remarks about the town of Brussels his lordship says staying some day at the hotel de Bellevue a greatly overrated establishment and not nearly as comfortable as the hotel de France I made acquaintance with Dr. L. the physician of the mission he was desirous of doing the honors of the place to me and he ordered for us a dîner en gourmand at the chief restaurateurs maintaining its surpassed through Rocher at Paris six or eight part hook of the entertainment and we all agreed it was infinitely inferior to the Paris display and much more extravagant so much for the copy and so much for the gentleman who gave the dinner Dr. L. desirous to do his lordship the honor of the place feasts him with the best victuals money can procure and my lord finds the entertainment extravagant and inferior extravagant it was not extravagant to him inferior Mr. L. did his best to satisfy those noble jaws and my lord receives the entertainment and dismisses the giver with a rebuke it is like a three-tailed pasha grumbling about an unsatisfactory Bakshish but how should it be otherwise in a country where laudatory is part of our creed and where our children are brought up to respect the peerage as the Englishman's second Bible End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 The Book of Snobbs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jamie Orango The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 4 The Court Circular and Its Influence on Snobbs Example is the best of precepts. So let us begin with a true and authentic story showing how young aristocratic snobs are weird and how early their snobbishness may be made to bloom. A beautiful and fashionable lady pardon gracious madam that your story should be made public but it is so moral that it is ought to be known to the universal world told me that in her early youth she had a little acquaintance who is now indeed a beautiful and fashionable lady too. In mentioning Miss Snobkey daughter of Sir Snobkey Snobkey whose presentation at court caused such a sensation need I say more when Miss Snobkey was so very young as to be in the nursery regions and to walk off early mornings in St. James's Park protected by a French governess and followed by a huge her suit flunky in the canary colored livery of Miss Snobkey's she used occasionally in these promenades to meet with young Lord Claude Lollipop the Marquis de Syllebob's younger son in the very height of the season from some unexpected cause Miss Snobkey suddenly determined upon leaving town Miss Snobkey spoke to her female friend and confidante what will poor Claude Lollipop say when he hears of my absence as to tender hearted child oh perhaps he won't hear of it answers the confidante my dear he will read it in the papers replied the dear little fashionable rogue of seven years old she knew already her importance and how all the world of England how all the world be genteel people how all the silver fork worshippers how all the tattle mongers how all the grocers ladies the tailors ladies the attorneys and merchants ladies and the people living at Clapham and Brunswick Square who have no more chance of consorting with a Snobkey than my beloved reader has of dining with the Emperor of China yet watched the movements of the Snobkeys with interest and were glad to know when they came to London and left it here is the account of Miss Snobkey's dress and that of her mother Lady Snobkey from the papers Miss Snobkey Habid Dekour composed of a yellow-nankine illusion dress over a slip of rich pea-green corduroy trimmed on tabliga with bouquets of brussel sprouts the body and sleeves handsomely trimmed with kalamko and festooned with a pink train and white radishes headdress, carrots and lettuce Lady Snobkey costumed Dekour composed of a train of the most superb peckin bandanas elegantly trimmed with spangles tinfoil and red tape bodice and underdress of sky blue velveteen trimmed with bouffants and nudes of bell-pulse stomacher on muffins headdress and bird's nest with a bird of paradise over a rich brass knocker and ferronere the man, Kunolene, of Regent Street was the object of universal admiration. This is what you read Oh Mrs. Ellis Oh mothers, daughters, aunts Grandmothers of England This is the sort of writing which is put in the newspapers for you How can you help being the mothers, daughters and cunt of snobs so long as this balder-dash is set before you You stuffed the little rosy foot of a Chinese young lady about the size of a salt-corrent and keep the poor little toes there imprisoned and twisted of so long that the door-fishness becomes irremediable Later the foot would not expand to the natural size were you to give her a washing tub for a shoe and for all her life she has little feet and is a cripple Oh my dear Mrs. Wiggins thank your stars those beautiful feet of yours though I declare when you walk your stars that society never so practiced upon them but look around and see how many friends of ours in the highest circles have had their brains so prematurely and hopelessly pinched and distorted How can you expect that those poor creatures are to move naturally when the world and their parents have mutilated them so cruelly as long as the court circular exists how the deuce of Pete are people whose names are ever to believe themselves as the equals of the cringing race which daily reads the abominable trash I believe that ours is the only country in the world now where the court circular remains in full flourish where you read this day his Royal Highness Prince Patti Pan was taken and airing in his go-kart the princess Pimony was taken a drive attended by her ladies of honor and accompanied by her doll we laugh at the solemnity with which St. Simon announces that sa majestie Saint-Mécler-Camez under our very noses the same folly as daily going that wonderful and mysterious man the author of the court circular drops in with his budget at the newspaper offices every night I once asked the editor of a paper to allow me to lie and wait and see him I am told that in a kingdom where there is a German king consort Portugal it must be for the queen of that country married a German prince who is greatly admired and respected by the natives whenever the consort takes the diversion of shooting among the rabbit warrens of Cintra or the pheasant preserve of Mafra he has a keeper to load his guns as a matter of course and then they are handed to the nobleman his equary and the nobleman hands them the prince who blazes away gives back the discharged gun to the nobleman who gives it to the keeper and so on but the prince won't take the gun from the hands of the loader as long as this unnatural and monstrous etiquette continues snobs there must be the three persons engaged in this transaction are for the time being snobs the keeper the least knob of all because he is discharging his daily duty that is to say in a position of debasement before another human being the prince with whom he is allowed to communicate through another party a free Portuguese gamekeeper who professes himself to be unworthy to communicate directly with any person confesses himself to be a snob two the nobleman in waiting is a snob if it degrades the prince to receive the gun from the gamekeeper it is degrading to the nobleman to execute that service he acts as a snob towards the keeper whom he keeps from communicating with the prince a snob to the prince to whom he pays a degrading homage three the king concert of Portugal is a snob for insulting fellow men in this way there is no harm in his accepting the service of the keeper directly but indirectly he insults the service performed and the servants who perform it and therefore I say respectfully is a most undoubted royal snob and then you read in the Diario de Governo yesterday his majesty the king took the diversion of shooting the woods of Cintra attended by colonel of the honorable with grande sombrero his majesty returned to the necessidades to lunch etc oh that court circular once more I exclaim down with the court circular that engine and propagator of snobbishness I promise to subscribe for a year to any daily paper that shall come out without a court circular were it in the morning herald itself when I read that trash I rise in my wrath I feel myself disloyal a regicide a member of the calf's head club the only court circular story which ever pleased me was that of the king of Spain who in great part was roasted because there was not time for the prime minister and gold stick to order the first page and waiting to bid the chief of the flunkies to request the house made of honor to bring up a pail of water to put his majesty out I am like the posh of three tales to whom the sultan sends his court circular the bow string it chokes me may its usage be abolished forever end of chapter 4 chapter 5 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 MB the book of snobs by William Makepeace Thackery chapter 5 what snobs admire now let us consider how difficult it is even for great men to escape from being snobs it is very well for the reader whose fine feelings are disgusted by the assertion that kings, princes, lords are snobs to say you are confessedly a snob yourself in professing to depict snobs it is only your own ugly mug which you are copying within our cissus-like conceit and fatuity but I shall pardon this explosion of ill temper on the part of my constant reader reflecting upon the misfortune of his birth and country it is impossible for any Britain perhaps not to be a snob in some degree if people can be convinced of this fact an immense point is gained surely if I have pointed out the disease let us hope that other scientific characters may discover the remedy if you who are a person of the middle ranks of life are a snob you whom nobody flatters particularly you who have no toadies you whom no cringing flunkies or shopmen bow out of doors you whom the policeman tells to move on you who are jostled in the north this world and amongst the snobs our brethren consider how much harder it is for a man to escape who has not your advantages and is all his life long subject to adulation the butt of meanness consider how difficult it is for the snobs idle not to be a snob as I was discoursing with my friend Eugenio in this impressive way and knocked at the door of the family mansion in red lion square his noble father and mother occupied as everybody knows distinguished posts in the courts of late sovereigns the marquee was lord of the pantry and her ladieship lady of the powder closet to queen charlotte buck as I call him for we are very familiar gave me a nod as he passed it was possible that this nobleman should not be one of ourselves having been practiced upon by snobs all his life his parents resolved to give him a public education and sent him to school at the earliest possible period the reverend auto rose d.d. principle of the preparatory academy for young nobleman and gentlemen Richmond lodge took this little lord in hand and fell down and worshiped him to the fathers and mothers who came to visit their children at the school he referred with pride and pleasure to the most noble the marquee of bagwig as one of the kind friends and patrons of his seminary he made lord buck from a bait for such a multiplicity of pupils that a new wing was built to Richmond lodge and 35 new little white dimity beds were added to the establishment and the doctor when she paid visits until the rector's lady and the surgeon's wife almost died with envy his own son and lord buckram having been discovered robbing an orchard together the doctor flogged his own flesh and blood most unmercifully for leading the young lord astray he parted from him with tears there was always a letter directed to the most noble the marquee of bagwig at Eton a great deal of snobbishness was thrashed out of lord buckram and he was birched with perfect impartiality even there however a select band of sucking tough hunters followed him young cresis lent him three and twenty brand new sovereigns out of his father's bank young snaily did his exercises for him and tried to know him at home and bull licked him in a fight of fifty-five minutes and he was caned several times with great advantage for not sufficiently polishing his master smith's shoes boys are not all toadies in the morning of life but when he went to the university crowds of toadies sprawled over him the tutors toadied him the fellows in hall paid him great clumsy compliments the dean never remarked about his absence from chapel or heard any noise issuing from his rooms a number of respectable young fellows it is among the respectable the baker street class that snobbishness flourishes more than among any set of people in England a number of these clung to him like leeches there was no end now to creases, loans of money and buckram couldn't ride out with the hounds but snaily a timid creature by nature was in the field and would take any leap at which his friend chose to ride young rose came up to the same college having been kept back for that express purpose by his father he spent a quarters allowance in giving buckram a single dinner but he knew there was always pardon for him for extravagance in such a cause and a ten pound note always came to him from home and he knew what he wanted what wild visions entered the brains of mrs. podge and ms. podge the wife and daughter of the principal of lord buckram's college I don't know but that reverend old gentleman was too profound a flunky by nature ever for one minute to think that a child of his could marry a nobleman he therefore hastened on his daughter's union with professor crab lord buckram after taking his honorary degree for alma mater is a snob too and trickles to a lord like the rest when lord buckram went abroad to finish his education you all know what dangers he ran and what numbers of caps were sat at him lady leech and her daughters followed him from Paris to Rome and from Rome to Baden-Baden mislegged burst into tears before his face when he announced his determination to quit Naples and fainted on the neck of her mama captain mcdragon of mcdragonstown county tipperary called upon him to explain his intentions with respect to his sister ms. amalia mcdragon of mcdragonstown and proposed to shoot him unless he married that spotless and beautiful young creature that he would be altered by mr. muff at chelton if perseverance and 40,000 pounds down could have tempted him ms. liliacrisis would certainly have been lady buckram count toravsky was glad to take her with half the money as all the gentile world knows and now perhaps the reader is anxious to know what sort of man this is who wounded so many ladies hearts and who had been such a prodigious to describe him it would be personal besides it really does not matter in the least what sort of man he is or what his personal qualities are suppose he is a young nobleman of literary turn and that he published poems ever so foolish and feeble the snobs would purchase thousands of his volumes the publishers who refused my passion flowers and my grand epic at any price would give him his own suppose he is a nobleman of jovial turn and has a fancy for wrenching off knockers frequenting gin shops and half murdering policemen the public will sympathize good-naturedly with his amusements and say he is a hearty honest fellow suppose he is fond of play and the turf and has a fancy to be a back leg and occasionally condescends to pluck a pigeon at cards the public will pardon him and many honest people will court him as they would court a housebreaker if he happened to be a lord suppose he is an idiot yet by the glorious constitution he is good enough to govern us suppose he is an honest high-minded gentleman so much the better for himself but he may be an ass and yet respected or a ruffian and yet be exceedingly popular excuses will be found for him snobs will still worship him male snobs will do him honor and females look kindly upon him however hideous he may be end of chapter 5 chapter 6 of the book of snobs this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and here please visit LibriVox.org recording by Deborah Lynn the book of snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray chapter 6 on some respectable snobs having received a great deal of obliquy for dragging monarchs, princes and the respected nobility into the snob category I trust to please everybody in the present chapter by stating my firm opinion of the respectable classes of this vast and happy empire that the greatest profusion of snobs is to be found I paced down my beloved baker street I am engaged on a life of baker founder of this celebrated street I walk in Harley Street where every other house has a hatchment Wimpall Street that is as cheerful as the catacombs a dingy mausoleum of the gentile I row round Regent's Park where the plaster is patching and the Methodist preachers are holding forth the three little children in the green enclosures and puffy valetudinarians are cantering in the solitary mud I thread the doubtful zig zags of Mayfair where Mrs. Kitty Lorimer's broom may be seen drawn up next door to old Lady Lollipops Belozing family coach I roam through Belgravia that pale and polite district where all the inhabitants look prim and correct I see myself in the new squares and terraces of the brilliant brand new Bayswater and Tiber and Junction line and in one and all of these districts the same truth comes across me I stop before any house at hazard and say, oh house you are inhabited oh knocker you are knocked at oh undressed glunky sunning your lazy calves as you lean against the iron railings you are paid by snobs it is a tremendous thought that and it is almost sufficient mind to madness to think that perhaps there is not one in ten of those houses where the periods does not lie on the drawing room table considering the harm that foolish lying book does I would have all the copies of it burned as the barber burned all Coyote's books of humbugging chivalry look at this grand house in the middle of the square the Earl of the Corab lives there he has 50,000 a year a desuné d'encent who knows how much the mere flowers for the room and bouquets for the ladies cost 400 pounds that man in drab trousers coming crying down the stops is a done Lord Lufkurib has ruined him and won't see him that is his lordship peeping through the blind of his study at him now go thy ways Lufkurib thou art a snob a heartless pretender a hypocrite of hospitality but I am growing too eloquent you see that nice house number 23 where a butcher's boy is ringing in the area bell he has three mutton chops in his tray they are for the dinner of a very different and very respectable family for Lady Susan Scraper and her daughters Miss Scraper and Miss Emily Scraper the domestics luckily for them are on board wages two huge footmen in light blue and canary a fat steady coachman who would never have stayed in the family but that he was orderly to General Scraper when the general distinguished himself at Walshurin his widow sends his portrait to the United Service Club and it is hung up in one of the dressing closets there he is represented at a parlor window with red curtains in the distance is a whirlwind in which cannon are firing off and he is pointing to a chart on which are written the words Walshurin Tobago Susan is, as everybody knows by referring to the British Bible a daughter of the great and good Earl Bagwig before mentioned she thinks everything belonging to her the greatest and best in the world the first of men naturally are the Buckrums her own race then following rank the Scrapers the general was the greatest general his eldest son Scraper Buckrum Scraper is at present the greatest and best his second son the next greatest and best in the world she is the most respectable and honorable lady she goes to church of course she would fancy the church in danger if she did not she subscribes to church and parish charities and is a directress of meritorious charitable institutions of Queen Charlotte's lying in hospital the Walshur woman's asylum the British drummers daughter's home and so on she is a model of a matron the tradesmen never lived on the quarter day the beggars of her neighborhood avoid her like a pestilence for while she walks out protected by John that domestic has always two or three mendicity tickets ready for deserving objects ten guineas a year will pay all her charities there is no respectable lady in all London who gets her name more often printed for such a sum of money those three mutton shops which you see entering at the kitchen door will be served on the family plate the huge footmen being present and the butler in black and the crest and coat of arms of the scrapers blazing everywhere I pity Miss Emily Scraper she is still young young and hungry is it a fact that she spends her pocket money in buns malicious tongues say so but she has very little to spare for buns the poor little hungry soul for the fact is that when the footmen and the ladies maids in the season and the two great solemn evening parties and the rent of the big house and the journey to an English or foreign watering place for the autumn are paid my ladies income has dwindled away to a very small sum and she is as poor as you or I you would not think it when you saw her big carriage rattling up to the drawing room and caught a glimpse of her plumes lapits and diamonds waving over her ladyships which balled out at midnight so as to disturb all Belgravea you would not think it when she comes rustling into church the obsequious John behind with the bag of prayer books is it possible you would say that so grand and awful a personage is that can be hard up for money alas so it is she never heard such a word a snob I will engage in this wicked and vulgar world and oh stars and garters how she would start is chased as Diana without that heathen goddesses unlady like propensity for field sports that she too was a snob a snob she is as long as she sets that prodigious value upon herself upon her name upon her outward appearance and indulges in that intolerable pomposity as long as she goes parading abroad like Solomon and all his glory as long as she goes to bed as I believe she does and a court train to her nightgown as long as she is so insufferably virtuous and condescending as long as she does not cut at least one of those footmen down into mutton chops for the benefit of the young ladies I had my notions of her from my old school fellow her son Sidney scraper a chancellery barrister without any practice the most placid, polite and genteel of snobs who never exceeded his allowance in any evening at the Oxford and Cambridge Club simpering over the quarterly review in the blameless enjoyment of his half pint of port end of chapter 6 chapter 7 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 Deborah Lynn the book of snobs on some respectable snobs look at the next house to Lady Susan Scrapers the first mansion with the awning over the door that canopy will be let down this evening for the comfort of the friends of Sir Alley Red and Lady S. DeMoggans whose parties are so much admired by the public and the givers themselves peach-colored liveries laced with silver and pea-green plush inexpressibles render the DeMoggans flunkies as she sits upon her satin cushions with her dwarf spaniel in her arms bows to the very selectists of the Gentile times are altered now with Mary Ann or as she calls herself Mary Ann DeMoggans she was the daughter of Captain Flack of the Wrathdrum Fencebles who crossed with his regiment over from Ireland to Carmarthenshire ever so many years ago and defended whales from the Corsican invader where Mary Ann Wood and won her DeMoggans a young banker in the place his attentions to Miss Flack at a race ball were such that her father said DeMoggans must either die on the field of honor or become his son-in-law he preferred marriage his name was Muggans then and his father a flourishing banker, army contractor smuggler and general jobber almost disinherited him on account of this connection he lent money to a R-Y-L P-RS-N-GE I do not believe it the R-Y-L family always paid their debts from the Prince of Whales downwards albeit to his life's end he remained simple Sir Thomas Muggans representing Puntwildam in Parliament for many years after the war the old banker died in course of time and to use the affectionate phrase cut up prodigiously well his son Alfred Smith Muggans succeeded to the main portion of his wealth and to his titles and the bloody hand of his scotching it was not for many years after that he appeared as Sir Allured Muggans Smith DeMoggans with a genealogy found out for him by the editor of Fluke's Pirage and which appears as follows in that work DeMoggans Sir Allured Muggans Smith Second Baronette is a representative of one of the most ancient families of Whales who traced their descent until it is lost in the mists of antiquity a genealogical tree beginning with Shem is in the possession of the family and is stated by a legend of many thousand years date to have been drawn on papyrus by a grandson of the patriarch himself be this as it may there can be no doubt of the immense antiquity of the race of Muggans in the time of Baudeshia Muggans of the hundred beavers was a suitor and a rival of Karaktikas for the hand of that princess he was a person gigantic in stature and was explained by Suetonius in the battle which terminated the liberties of Britain from him descended directly the princes of Pontuildum Muggans of the Golden Harp see the Mabinodian of Lady Charlotte Guest Bagan Meridoc Muggans the black fiend son of Muggans the guards and warriors celebrated both in Wales and Amorica the independent princes of Muggans long held out against the ruthless kings of England until finally Gamm Muggans made his submission to Prince Henry son of Henry IV and under the name of Sir David Gamm de Muggans was distinguished at the battle of Agincourt from him the present Baronet is descended and here the descent follows of the present Baronet of Pontuildum Castle for 23 years member of parliament for that borough who had issue Allured Muggans Smith the present Baronet who married Marion daughter of the late General P Flack of Bally Flack in the Kingdom of Ireland of the Count's Flack of the HR Empire Sir Allured has issue Allured Karadoc born 1819 Marion 1811 Katinka Restoption Patrick Flack died 1809 Arms Amolian garbled jewels on a salt tire reversed of the second crest a tom-tip rampant regardant motto Ung Roy Ung Muggans it was long before Lady de Muggans shone as a star in the fashionable world at first poor Muggans was in the hands of the Flacks Clancy's the tools the Shanahan's his wife's Irish relations and whilst he was yet but heir apparent his house overflowed with Claret and the national nectar for the benefit of hibernian relatives Tom Tuftall absolutely left the street in which they lived in London because he said it was infected with such a confounded smell of whiskey from the house of those Irish people it was abroad that they learned to be genteel their way into the halls of ambassadors they pounced upon the stray nobility and seized young lords traveling with their bear leaders they gave parties at Naples Rome and Paris they got a royal prince to attend their soirees at the latter place and it was here that they first appeared under the name of de Muggans which they bear with such splendor to this day all sorts of stories are told of the desperate efforts made by the indomitable Lady de Muggans and those of my beloved readers who live in middle life and are unacquainted with the frantic struggles the wicked feuds the intrigues, cabals and disappointments which as I am given to understand reign in the fashionable world may bless their stars that they at least are not fashionable snobs the intrigues set afoot by the de Muggans to get the duchess of buckskin to her parties would strike a tally rand with admiration she had a brain fever and would have committed suicide but for a ball at Windsor I have the following story from my noble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself Lady Kathleen O'Shaughnessy that was and daughter of the Earl of Turf and Thunder when that odious disguised Irish woman Lady Muggans was struggling to take her place in the world and was bringing out her hij's daughter Blanche said old Lady Clapperclaw Lady Kathleen doesn't show but she's the only lady in the family when that wretched Polly Muggans was bringing out Blanche with her radish of a nose and her carrot of ringlets and her turnip for a face she was most anxious as her father had been a cowboy on my father's land to be patronized by us and asked me point blank in the midst of a silence that Count Volavance the French ambassador's dinner conveniently says I indeed she takes up as much room as an elephant besides I wouldn't have her and that was flat I thought my answer was a settler to her but the next day she comes weeping to my arms Dear Lady Clapperclaw says she it's not for me I ask it for my blessed Blanche a young creature in her first season and not at your ball my tender child will pine and die of vexation Mrs. Bolster is going I know she will be Blanche's chaperone you wouldn't subscribe for the Rathdom Blanket and Potato Fund you who come out of the parish says I and whose grandfather honest man kept cows there will twenty guineas be enough dearest Lady Clapperclaw twenty guineas is sufficient says I and she paid them so I said Blanche may come but not you mind and she left me with a world of thanks I didn't see it when my ball came the horrid woman made her appearance with her daughter didn't I tell you not to come said I in a mighty passion what would the world have said cries my lady Muggins my carriage is gone for Sir Al you read to the club let me stay only ten minutes dearest Lady Clapperclaw well as you are here madam you may stay and get your supper I answered Lady Clapperclaw clapping her hands and speaking with more rogue than ever what do you think after all my kindness to her the wicked vulgar odious impudent upstart of his cowboys granddaughter has done she cut me up yesterday in High Park and hasn't sent me a ticket for her ball tonight though they say Prince George is to be there yes such is the fact in the race of fashion the resolute and active de Moggins of friends whom she has courted and made and cut and left behind her she has struggled so gallantly for polite reputation that she has wanted pitilessly kicking down the ladder as she advanced degree by degree Irish relations were first sacrificed she made her father dine in the stewards room to his perfect contentment and would send Sir Al you read thither likewise but that he is a peg on which she hopes to hang her future honors fortunes he is meek and content he has been so long a gentleman that he is used to it and acts the part of governor very well in the daytime he goes from the union to Arthur's and from Arthur's to the union he is a dead hand at picket and loses a very comfortable maintenance to some young fellows at West at the travelers his son has taken his father's seat in Parliament and has of course joined Young England for the years in the demoggans and sighs for the days when a demoggans led the van of battle he has written a little volume of spoony puny poems he wears a lock of the hair of law the Confessor and Martyr and fainted when he kissed the pope's toe at Rome he sleeps in white kid gloves and commits dangerous successes upon green tea end of chapter 7 Chapter 8 of the Book of Snobbs this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 8 Great City Snobbs there is no disguising the fact that this series of papers is making a prodigious sensation among all classes in this empire notes of admiration of interrogation or abuse compouring into Mr. Punch's box we have been called to task for betraying the secrets of three different families of demoggans no less than four lady scrapers have been discovered and young gentlemen are quite shy of ordering half a pint of port and simpering over the quarterly review at the club lest they should be mistaken for Sidney Scraper Esquire what can be your antipathy on Baker Street asks some fair remonstrant evidently writing from that quarter why only attack the aristocratic snobs says one estimable correspondent are not the snobbish snobs to have their turn pitch into the university snobs writes an indignant gentleman who's felt elegant with two eyes show up the clerical snob suggests another being at Marisa's hotel in Paris sometimes since some wag hints I saw Lord B leaning out of the window with his boots in his hand and bawling out garçon Sidney moi c'est bot aren't he to be brought in among the snobs no, far from it if his lordship's boots are dirty it is because he is Lord B and walks there is nothing snobbish and desiring to have them cleaned Lord B and so doing performed a perfectly natural and gentleman like action for which I am so pleased with him that I have had him designated in a favorable and elegant attitude and put at the head of this chapter in the place of honor no, we are not personal in these candid remarks as Phidias took the pic of a score of beauties I am pleased to examine perhaps a thousand snobs before one is expressed on paper great city snobs are the next in the hierarchy and ought to be considered but here is a difficulty the great city snobs is commonly most difficult of access unless you are a capitalist you cannot visit him in the recesses of his bank parlor in Lombard street unless you are a sprig of nobility there is little hope of seeing him at home in a great city snob firm there is generally one partner whose name is down for charities and who frequents Exeter Hall you may catch a glimpse of another a scientific city snob at my lord ends soirees or the lectures of the London institution of a third a city snob of taste at picture auctions at private views of exhibitions in the city of Lombard or the Philharmonic but intimacy is impossible in most cases with this grave, pompous and awful being a mere gentleman may hope to sit at almost anybody's table to take his place at my lord dukes in the country to dance a quadrille at Buckingham palace itself beloved lady Wilhelmina waggle wiggle do you recollect the sensation Hammersmith but the city snob's doors are for the most part closed to him and hence all that one knows of this great class is mostly from hearsay in other countries of Europe the banking snob is more expansive and communicative than with us and receives all the world into his circle for instance everybody knows the princely hospitalities of the charles child families they entertain all the world even the poor at their fets Prince Polonia at Rome and his brother the Duke of Straccino are also remarkable for their hospitalities I like the spirit of the first name no woman title's not costing much in the roman territory he has the head clerk of the banking house made a marquee and his lordship will screw what a commoner could do it is a comfort to be able to gratify such grandees with a farthing or two it makes the poorest man feel that he can do good the polonias have intermarried with the greatest and most ancient families of Rome and you see their heraldic cognizance a mushroom or on an azure field quartered in a hundred places in the city with the arms of the colonists and dorias aristocratic marriages I like to see such I am of a savage and envious nature I like to see these two humbugs which dividing as they do the social empire of this kingdom between them hate each other naturally making truth and uniting for the sordid interests of either I like to see an older aristocrat swelling with pride of race the descendants of illustrious Norman robbers whose blood has been pure for centuries and an Englishman as a free American does on a nigger I like to see old stiff neck obliged to bow down his head and swallow his infernal pride and drink the cup of humiliation poured out by pump and aldgate's butler pump and aldgate says he your grandfather was a bricklayer and his hot is still kept in the bank your pedigree begins in a workhouse mine can be dated from all the royal palaces of Europe I came over with a conqueror I am own cousin to Charles Martel Orlando Furioso Philip Augustus Peter the Cruel and Frederick Barbarossa I quarter the royal arms of Brentford in my coat I despise you but I want money and I will sell you my beloved daughter blanche stiff neck for a hundred thousand pounds to pay off my mortgages let your son marry her and she shall become lady blanche for a hundred million and a comfortable thing it is to think that birth can be bought for money so you learn to value it why should we who don't possess it set a higher store on it than those who do perhaps the best use of that book the peerage is to look down the list and see how many have bought and sold birth how poor sprigs of nobility somehow sell themselves to rich city snobs' daughters how rich city snobs the baseness of the bargain old pump and aldgate buys the article and pays the money the sale of the girl's person is blessed by a bishop at St. George's Hanover Square and next year you read at Roehampton on Saturday the lady blanche pump of a son in air after this interesting event some old acquaintance who saw a young pump in the parlor at the bank in the city said to him familiarly Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted and after a pause said lady blanche pump is pretty well I thank you oh I thought she was your wife said the familiar brute snooks wishing him goodbye and ten minutes after the story was all over the stock exchange where it is told when young pump appears to this very day we can imagine the weary life of a young pump this martyr to mammon is compelled to undergo fancy the domestic enjoyments of a man who has a wife who scorns him who cannot see his own friends in his own house who having deserted the middle rank of life is not yet admitted to the hire but who is resigned to rebuffs and delay and humiliation contented to think that his son will be more fortunate it used to be the custom of the beginning always to bring it to him in washed silver that which has passed immediately out of the hands of vulgar being considered as too coarse to soil a gentleman's fingers so when the city snobs money has been washed during a generation or so has been washed into estates and woods and castles and town mansions it is allowed to pass current as real aristocratic coin old pump sweeps a shop clerk and partner pump the second becomes chief of the house spends more and more money marries his son to an earl's daughter pump tertius goes on with the bank but his chief business in life is to become the father of pump quartus who comes out of full blown aristocrat and takes his seat as baron pumpington and his race rules hereditarily over this nation of snobs end of chapter 8 Chapter 9 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 Darvinia the book of snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 9 on some military snobs as no society in the world is more agreeable than that of well-bred and well-informed military gentlemen so likewise none is more insufferable than that of military snobs they are to be found of all grades from the general officer whose padded old breast twinkles over with a score of stars clasps and decorations to the budding cornet who is shaving for a beard and has just been appointed to the sacks cobra glancers I have always admired that dispensation of rank in our country which sets up this last named little creature who was flogged only last week because he could not spell to command great whiskered warriors who have faced all dangers of climate and battle which because he has money to lodge at the agents will place him over the heads of men who have a thousand times more experience and desert and which in the course of time will bring him all the honors when the veteran soldier he commanded has got no other reward for his bravery than a birth in Chelsea hospital and the veteran officer he superseded has slunk into shabby retirement and ends his disappointed life on a threadbare half-pay when I read in the Gazette such announcements as Lieutenant and Captain Grig from the Bombardier Guards to be Captain Vice Grizzle who retires from the Peninsula Grizzle I follow him in spirit to the humble country town where he takes up his quarters and occupies himself with the most desperate attempts to live like a gentleman on the stipend of half a tailor's foreman and I picture to myself little Grig rising from rank to rank skipping from one regiment to another with an increased grade in each avoiding disagreeable foreign service and ranking as a colonel at thirty all because he has money and Lord Grigsby is his father who had the same luck before him Grig must blush at first to give his orders to old men in every way his betters and as it is very difficult for a spoiled child to escape being selfish and arrogant so it is a very hard task indeed for this spoiled child of fortune not to be a snob it must have often been a matter of wonder to the candid reader that the army the most enormous job of all our political institutions should yet work so well in the field and we must cheerfully give Grig and his like the credit for courage which they display whenever occasion calls for it the Duke's dandy regiments fought as well as any they said better than any but that's absurd the great Duke himself was a dandy once and jobbed on as Marlborough did before him the Duke's dandies are brave as well as other Britons as all Britons let us concede that the high-born Grig rode into the entrenchments at Sobran as gallantly as Corporal Wallop the ex plow boy the times of war are more favourable to him than the periods of peace think of Grig's life in the Bombardier Guards or the Jackboot Guards his marches from Windsor to St. John's Park the idiotic services he has to perform which consist in inspecting the pipe-clay of his company or the horses in the stable or bellowing out shoulder-humps carry-humps all which duties the very smallest intellect that ever belonged to mortal man would suffice to comprehend the professional duties of a footman are quite as difficult and various the red jackets gentlemen's horses in St. James's Street could do the work just as well as those vacuous, good-natured gentlemen-like rickety little left-in-ents who may be seen sauntering around Palmao in high-heeled little boots or rallying round the standard of their regiment in the palace court at eleven o'clock when the band plays did the beloved reader ever see one of the young fellows staggering under the flag or above all it is worth a walk to the palace to witness that magnificent piece of tomfoolery I have had the honour of meeting once or twice an old gentleman whom I look upon to be a specimen of army training and who has served in crack regiments or commanded them all his life I allude to left-hand general the honourable Sir George Gramby Tufto KCB KTS W etc. his manners are irreproachable generally in society he is a perfect gentleman and a most thorough snob a man can't help being a fool be he ever so old and Sir George is a greater ass at sixty-eight than he was when he first entered the army at fifteen he distinguished himself everywhere his name is mentioned with praise in a score of gazettes and a text whose padded breast twinkling over with innumerable decorations has already been introduced to the reader it is difficult to say what virtues this prosperous gentleman possesses he never read a book in his life and with his purple, old, gouty fingers still writes a schoolboy hand he has reached old age and grey hairs without being the least venerable he dresses like an outrageously young man to the present moment and laces and pads his old carcass as if he were still handsome George Tuftow of eighteen hundred he is selfish, brutal, passionate and a glutton it is curious to mark him at table and see him heaving in his waistband his little bloodshot eyes gloating over his meal he swears considerably in his talk and tells filthy garrison stories after dinner on account of his rank and his services people pay the bestard and be titled old brute a sort of reverence and he looks down upon you and me and exhibits his contempt for us with a stupid and artless candor which is quite amusing to watch perhaps had he been bred to another profession he would not have been the disreputable old creature he now is but what other he was fit for none too incorrigibly idle but this in which he has distinguished himself publicly as a good and gallant officer and privately for riding races drinking port fighting duels and seducing women he believes himself to be one of the most honourable and deserving beings in the world about Waterloo Place of afternoons you may see him tottering in his varnished boots and leering under the bonnets of the women who pass by when he dies of apoplexy the times will have a quarter of a column about his services and battles four lines of print will be wanted to describe his titles and orders alone and the earth will cover one of the wickedest and dullest old wretches that ever strutted over it lest it should be imagined that I am of so obstinate a misanthropic nature as to be satisfied with nothing I beg for the comfort of the forces to state my belief that the army is not composed of such persons as the above he has only been selected for the study of civilians and the military as a specimen of a prosperous and bloated army snob no, when epaulets are not sold when corporal punishments are abolished and corporal Smith has a chance to have his gallantry rewarded as well as that of Lieutenant Grig when there is no such rank the existence of which rank is an absurd anomaly and an insult upon all the rest of the army and should there be no war I should not be disinclined to be a major general myself I have a little sheaf of army snobs in my portfolio but shall pause in my attack upon the forces till next week end of chapter 9 chapter 10 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 Darvinia the book of snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray chapter 10 military snobs walking in the park yesterday with my young friend Tag and discoursing with him upon the next number of the snob at the very nick of time there are very good specimens of military snobs the sporting military snob Captain Ragh and the lurking or rafish military snob ensin famish indeed you are fully sure to meet them lounging on horseback about five o'clock under the trees by the serpentine examining critically the inmates of the flashy brooms which parade up and down the lady's mile so the former with that candor inseparable from intimate friendship told me his dear friend's history Captain Ragh is a small dapper north country man he went when quite a boy into a crack light cavalry regiment and by the time he got his troop had cheated all his brother officers so completely selling them lame horses for sound ones and winning their money by all manner of strange and ingenious contrivances he advised him to retire which he did without much reluctance accommodating a youngster who had just entered the regiment with a glandered charger at an uncommonly stiff figure he has since devoted his time to billiards, steeple chasing and the turf his headquarters are Rummers in conduit street where he keeps his kit but he is ever on the move in the exercise of his vocation as a gentleman jockey according to Bell's life he is an invariable attendant at all races and an actor in most of them he rode the winner at Leamington he was left for dead in a ditch a fortnight ago at Harrow and yet there he was last week at the quad a bernie pale and determined as ever astonishing the badow of Paris by the elegance of his seat and the neapness of his rig as he took a preliminary gallop the disowned before starting for the French Grand National he is a regular attendant at the corner where he compiles a limited but comfortable libretto during season he rides often in the park mounted on a clever well-bred pony he is to be seen escorting celebrated horsewoman Fanny Highflyer or in confidential converse with Lord Thimble Rig he carefully avoids decent society and would rather dine off a steak at the one-ton with Sam Snaffle the Jockey Captain O'Rourke and two or three other notorious turf robbers than with the choicest company in London he likes to announce at rumours that he is going to run down and spend his Saturday and Sunday in a friendly way with Hocus the Leg at his little box near Epsom where, if reports speak true many rummage plants are concocted he does not play billiards often and never in public but when he does play he always contrives to get hold of a good flat and never leaves him until he has done him uncommonly brown he has lately been playing a good deal with Famish when he makes his appearance in the drawing-room which occasionally happens when he enjoys himself extremely his young friend is Ensign Famish who is not a little pleased to be seen with such a smart fellow as Ragh who bows to the best turf company in the park Ragh lets Famish accompany him to Tattersoles and sells him bargains in horse-flesh and uses Famish's cab that young gentleman's regiment is in India and he is at home on sick leave he recruits his health by being intoxicated every night and fortifies his lungs which are weak by smoking cigars all day the policeman about the hay market know the little creature and the early cab men salute him the closed doors of fish and lobster shops open after service and vomit out little Famish who is either tipsy and quarrelsome when he wants to fight the cab man or drunk and helpless when some kind friend in Yellow Satin takes care of him all the neighbourhood the cab man the police the early potato men and the friends in Yellow Satin know the young fellow and he is called Little Bobby by some of the very worst reprobates in Europe his mother Lady Fanny Famish believes devoutly that Robert is in London which doesn't go to that odious India and has an idea that his chest is delicate and that he takes gruel every evening when he puts his feet in hot water her ladyship resides at Cheltenham and is of a serious turn Bobby frequents the Union Jack Club of course where he breakfasts on pale ale and deviled kidneys at three o'clock where beardless young heroes of his own sort congregate and make merry and give each other dinners where you may see half a dozen of young rakes of the fourth or fifth order lounging and smoking on the steps where you behold slappers long-tailed leggy mare in the custody of a red jacket until the captain is primed for the park with a glass of curacao and where you see hobby of the Highland Buffs driving up with Dobby a great banging swinging cab which the latter hires from Rumble of Bond Street in fact military snobs are of such number and variety that a hundred weeks of punch would not suffice to give an audience to them there is besides the disreputable old military snob who has seen service the respectable old military snob who has seen none and gives himself the most prodigious internet heirs there is the medical military snob who is generally more outrageously military in his conversation than the greatest sabreur in the army there is the heavy dragoon snob whom young ladies admire with his great stupid pink face and yellow moustaches a vacuous, solemn, foolish but brave and honourable snob there is the amateur military snob who writes captain on his card because he is a lieutenant in the Bungay Militia there is the lady-killing military snob and more who need not be named but let no man we repeat charge Mr. Punch with disrespect for the army in general that gallant and judicious army every man of which from F. M. the Duke of Wellington et cetera downwards with the exception of Field Marshal Prince Albert who, however, can hardly count as a military man reads Punch in every quarter of the globe let those civilians who sneer at the acquirements of the army read Sir Harry Smith's account of the Battle of Allewall a noble deed was never told in nobler language and you who doubt if chivalry exists or the age of heroism has passed by think of Sir Henry Hardinge son, dear little Arthur riding in front of the lines at Ferozha I hope no English painter will endeavour to illustrate that scene for who is there to do justice to it the history of the world contains no more brilliant and heroic picture no no the men who perform these deeds with such brilliant valor and describe them with such modest manliness such are not snobs their country admires them everyone rewards them and Punch, the universal railer takes off his hat and says heaven save them end of chapter 10 chapter 11 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 Thackery chapter 11 on clerical snobs after snobs military snobs clerical suggest themselves quite naturally and it is clear that with every respect for the cloth yet having a regard for truth humanity and the British public such a vast and influential class must not be omitted from our notices of the great snob world of these clerics there are some whose claim to snobbishness is undoubted as well as tear for the same reason that Punch would not set up his show in a cathedral out of respect for the solemn service celebrated within there are some places where he acknowledges himself not privileged to make a noise and puts away his show and silences his drum and takes off his hat and holds his peace and I know this that if there are some clerics who do wrong they would not comply upon them while though the press is always ready to yell and bellow excommunication against these stray delinquent parson it somehow takes very little count of the many good ones of the tens of thousands of honest men who lead Christian lives who give to the poor generously who deny themselves rigidly and live and die in their duty without ever a newspaper paragraph in their favor my beloved friend and reader and let me whisper my belief Entre knew that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parson the loudest there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often but you who have ever listened to village bells or walked to church as children on sunny Sabbath mornings you who have ever seen the parson's wife attending to the poor man's bedside or the town clergyman threading the dirty stairs do not raise a shout when one falls away or yell with the mob that howls after him every man can do that when old father Noah was overtaken in his cups there was only one of his sons that dared to make merry at his disaster and he was not the most virtuous of the family let us too turn away silently nor huzzah like a parcel of school boys because some big young rebel suddenly starts up and whoops the school master if I had by me the names of those seven or eight Irish bishops the probates of whose wills were mentioned in last year's journals and who died leaving behind them some two hundred thousand apiece I would like to put them up as patrons of my clerical snobs and operate upon them as successfully as I see from the newspapers Mr. Eisenberg, charopatist has lately done upon his grace the reverend Lord Bishop of Tabioka I confess that when those reverend prelates come up to the gates of paradise with their probates of wills and their hands I think that their chance is but the gates of paradise is a far way to follow their Lordships so let us trip down again less awkward questions should be asked about our own favourite vices too and don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice that clergymen are an overpaid and luxurious body of men that is pathetic the late Sidney Smith by the way by what law of nature is it that so many smiths in this world are called Sidney Smith lauded the system of great prizes in the church without which he said gentlemen would not be induced to follow the clerical profession he admitted most pathetically that the clergy in general were by no means to be envied for their worldly prosperity from reading the works that were passed and gorging himself with plum pudding and port wine and that his reverences, fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs caricaturists delight to represent him so round, short-necked, pimple-faced apoplectic bursting out of the waistcoat like a black pudding a shovel-hatted, fuzz-wigged selenus whereas if you take the real man he labours commonly for a wage that a tailor's foreman would despise he has too such claims upon his dismal income as most philosophers would rather grumble to meet many ties are levied upon his pocket let it be remembered by those who grudge him his means of livelihood he has to dine with the squire and his wife must dress neatly and he must look like a gentleman as they call it and bring up six great hungry sons if he does his duty he has such temptations to spend his money as no mortal man could withstand yes, you who can't resist purchasing a chest of cigars because they are so good or an armulou clock at Howell & James because it is such a bargain or a box at the opera because Leblanc and Greci are divine in the puritanny fancy how difficult it is for a person to resist spending a half crown or standing a bottle of port for poor old Polly Rabbits who has her thirteenth child or treating himself to a suit of corduroy for little Bob Scarecrow whose breeches are sadly out at the elbows think of these temptations rather moralist and philosophers and don't be too hard on the person but what is this instead of showing up the persons we are indulging in model and praises of that monstrous black coated race oh saintly Francis lying at rest under the turf oh Jimmy and Johnny and Willie, friends of my youth oh noble and dear old Elias how should he who knows you not respect you and your calling may this pen never write a penny worth again if it ever casts ridicule upon either