 Chapter 36 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. Recording by Jennifer Stearns. The Book of Snobbs by William McPeace-Thackery. Chapter 36 Snobbs and Marriage. We bachelors and clubs are very much obliged to you, says my old school and college companion, Essex Temple, for the opinion which you hold of us. You call us selfish, purple-faced, bloated, and other pretty names. You state in the simplest possible terms that we shall go to the deuce. You bid us rot in loneliness and deny us all claims to honesty, conduct, decent Christian life. Who are you, Mr Snobb, to judge us? Who are you with your infernal benevolence, mark, and grin that laugh at all our generation? I will tell you my case, says Essex Temple, mine, and my sister Polly's, and you make what you like of it and sneer at old maids and bully old bachelors, if you will. I will whisper to you confidentially that my sister was engaged to Sergeant Sturker, a fellow whose talents one cannot deny, and be hanged to them, but whom I have always known to be mean, selfish, and a prig. However, women don't see these faults in the men whom love throws in their way. Scherker, who has about as much warmth as an eel, made up of Polly years and years ago, and was no bad match for a briefless barrister as he was then. Have you ever read Lord Elden's Life? Do you remember how this sordid old snob narrates his going out to purchase two pence-worth of spratts, which he and Mrs. Scott fried between them? And how he berates his humility, and exhibits his miserable poverty, he who, at that time, must have been making a thousand pounds a year? Well, Scherker was just as proud of his prudence, just as thankful for his own meanness, and, of course, would not marry without a competency. Who so honorable? Polly waited, and waited faintly, from year to year. He was in sick at heart. His passion never disturbed his six-hour sleep, or kept his ambition out of mind. He would rather have hugged an attorney any day that have kissed Polly, though she was one of the prettiest creatures in the world. And while she was pining alone upstairs, weeding over the stalk of half a dozen frigid letters that the confounded prig had consented to write to her, he, be sure, was never busy with anything, but his briefs and chambers, always frigid, rigid, self-satisfied, and at his duty. The marriage trailed on year after year, while Mr. Surgeon Scherker grew to be the famous lawyer he is. Meanwhile, my younger brother, Pump Temple, who was in the 120th Hussars, and had the same little patrimony, which fell to the lot of myself and Polly, most fall in love with her cousin, Fanny Fig Tree, and marry her out of hand. You should have seen the wedding, six bridesmaids in pink, to hold the fan, bouquet, gloves, scent bottle, and pocket handkerchief of the bride, basketfuls of white favors in the vestry, to be pinned on the footmen and horses, a gentile congregation of courier's acquaintance in the pews, a shabby one of poor on the steps, all the carriages of our acquaintance, whom Aunt Fig Tree had levied for the occasion, and, of course, four horses from Mr. Pump's bridal vehicle. Then comes the breakfast, or dejeuner, if you please, with the brass band in the street, and policemen, to keep order. The happy bridegroom spends about a year's income in dresses for the bridesmaids and pretty presents, and the bride must have a trousseau of laces, satins, jewel boxes, and tomfoolery, to make her fit to be a lieutenant's wife. There was no hesitation about Pump. He flung about his money as if he had been dross, and Mrs. P. Temple, on the horse Tom Tiddler, which her husband gave her, was the most stashing of military women at Brighton or Dublin. How old Mrs. Fig Tree used to bore me and Polly with stories of Pump's grandeur and the noble company he kept. Polly lives with the Fig Tree's, as I am not rich enough to keep a home for her. Pump and I have always been rather distanced. Not having the slightest notions about horse-flesh, he has a natural contempt for me, and in her mother's lifetime, when the good old lady was always paying his debts and petting him, I'm not sure there was not a little jealousy. It used to be Polly that kept the peace between us. She went to Dublin to visit Pump, and brought back grand accounts of his doings, gayest man about town, aid to comp, to the Lord Lieutenant. Fanny admired everywhere, her excellency, godmother to the second boy, the eldest with a string of aristocratic Christian names that made the grandmother wild with the delight. Presently Fanny and Pump obligedly came to London where the third was born. Polly was godmother to this, and who so loving as she and Pump now? Oh, Essex, says she to me, he is so good, so generous, so fond of his family, so handsome, who can help loving him, and partying his little heirs. One day, while Mrs. Pump was yet in the upper regions, and Dr. Fingerfreeze browed at her door every day, having business at Guildhall, whom should I meet in Cheapside but Pump and Polly? The poor girl looked more happy and rosy than I have seen her these twelve years. Pump, on the contrary, was rather blushing and embarrassed. I couldn't be mistaken in her face and its look of mischief and triumph. She had been committing some act of sacrifice. I went to the family stockbroker. She had sold out two thousand pounds at morning and given them to Pump. Quarreling was useless. Pump had the money. He was off to Dublin by the time I reached his mother's, and Polly radiant still. He was going to make his fortune. He was going to embark the money in the bog of Allen. I don't know what. The fact is he was going over to pay his losses upon the last Manchester Steeplechase, and I leave you to imagine how much principle or interest poor Polly ever saw back again. It was more than half her fortune, and he has had another thousand since from her. Then came efforts to stave off ruin and prevent exposure, struggles on all our parts, and sacrifices that. Here Mr. Essex Temple began to hesitate. That needed to be talked of, but they are of no more use than such sacrifices ever are. Pump and his wife are abroad. I don't like to ask where. Polly has the three children, and Mr. Surgeon Sugar has formally written to break off an engagement on the conclusion of which Miss Temple must herself have speculated, when she alienated the greater part of her fortune. In here is your famous theory of poor marriages. Essex Temple cries, concluding the above history. How do you know that I don't want to marry myself? How do you dare sneer at my poor sister? What are we but martyrs of the reckless marriage system which Mr. Snobb foresooth chooses to advocate? And he thought he had the better of the argument, which, strange to say, is not my opinion. But for the infernal snob worship, might not every one of these people be happy? If poor Polly's happiness lay in linking her tender arms around such a heartless prig, as a sneak who has deceived her, she might have been happy now, as happy is Raymond Raymond in the ballad, with the stone statue by his side. She is wretched because Mr. Surgeon Sugar worshiped money and ambition, and is a snob and a coward. If the unfortunate Pump Temple and his giddy hussey of her wife have ruined themselves and dragged down others into their calamity, it is because they loved rank and horses and plate and carriages and court guides and millinery and would sacrifice all to attain those objects. And whom was guides them? If the world were more simple, were not these foolish people fall all of fashion? Does not the world love court guides and millinery and plate and carriages? Mercy on us. Read the fashionable intelligence. Read the court circular. Read the Gentile novels. Survey mankind. From Pimlico to Red Lion Square. And see how the poor snob is aping the rich snob. How the mean snob is groveling at the feet of the proud snob. And the great snob is lording it over his humble brother. Does the idea of equality ever enter Dive's head? Will it ever? Will the Duchess of Fitzbattle acts, I like a good name, believe that Lady Crushus, her next-door neighbor in Belgrade Square, is as good a lady as her grace? Will Lady Crushus ever leave off pining the Duchess's parties and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth, whose husband has not got his baronetcy yet? Will Mrs. Broadcloth ever hardly shake hands with Mrs. Seedy and give up those odious calculations about whore dear Mrs. Seedy's income? Will Mrs. Seedy, who is starving in her great house, go and live comfortably in the little one, or in lodgings? Will her landlady, Miss Lettson, ever stop wondering how the familiarity of tradespeople, or rebuking the insolence of Suki, the maid, who wears flowers under her bonnet like a lady? But why hope, why wish for such times? Do I wish all snob's to perish? Do I wish these snob's papers to determine? Suicidal fool, art not thou, to a snob and a brother? End of Chapter 36 Recording by Jennifer Stearns, Concord, New Hampshire Chapter 37 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, visit LibriVox.org Recording by Dennis Sayers The Book of Snob's By William Makepeace Thackery Chapter 37 Club Snob's As I wish to be particularly agreeable to the ladies to whom I make my most humble obeisance, we will now, if you please, commence maligning a class of snob's against whom I believe most female minds are embittered. I mean club snob's. I have seldom heard even the most gentle and placable woman speak without a little feeling of bitterness against those social institutions, those palaces swaggering in St. James, which are open to the men, while the ladies have but their dingy three-windowed brickboxes in Belgravia or in Penningtonia or in the region between the road of edgeware and that of graze inn. In my grandfather's time it used to be free masonry that roused their anger. It was my great aunt, whose portrait we still have in the family, who got into the clock case at the Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay Suffolk to spy the proceedings of the society of which her husband was a member and being frightened by the sudden worry and striking eleven o'clock, just as the deputy grandmaster was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte, rushed out into the midst of the lodge assembled and was elected by a desperate unanimity deputy grandmistress for life. Though that amourable and courageous female never subsequently breathed a word with regard to the secrets of the initiation, yet she inspired all our family with such a terror regarding the mysteries of J. Chen and Boaz that none of our family have ever since joined the society or worn the dreadful masonic insignia. It is known that Orpheus was torn to pieces by some justly indignant Thracian ladies for belonging to an harmonic lodge. Let him go back to Eurydice, they said, whom he is pretending to regret so. But the history is given, and Dr. Lempry's elegant dictionary in a manner much more forcible than any this feeble pen can attempt. At once, then, and without verbiage, let us take up this subject matter of clubs. Clubs ought not, in my mind, to be permitted to bachelors. If my friend of the Cuddy kilts had not our club, the Union Jack, to go to, I belong to the U.J. and nine other similar institutions, who knows but he never would be a bachelor at this present moment. Instead of being made comfortable and cockered up with every luxury as they are at clubs, bachelors ought to be rendered profoundly miserable, in my opinion. Every encouragement should be given to the rendering their spare time disagreeable. There can be no more odious object, according to my sentiments, than young Smith in the pride of health commanding his dinner of three courses. Then middle-aged Jones, wallowing, as I may say, in an easy padded armchair over the delicious novel or brilliant magazine, or then Old Brown, that selfish old reprobate for whom mere literature has no charms, stretched on the best sofa, sitting on the second edition of the Times, having the morning chronicle between his knees, the herald pushed in between his coat and waistcoat, the standard under his arm, the globe under the other opinion, and the daily news in perusal. I'll trouble you for punch, Mr. Wiggins says the unconscionable old gormandizer, interrupting our friend, who is laughing over the periodical in question. This kind of selfishness ought not to be no. No. Young Smith, instead of his dinner and his wine, ought to be where? At the festive tea-table to be sure by the side of Miss Higgs, sipping the boia or tasting the harmless muffin. While old Mrs. Higgs looks on, pleased at their innocent dalliance, and my friend Miss Wirt, the governess, is performing Thalberg's last sonata in treble X, totally unheeded, at the piano. Where should the middle-aged Jones be? At his time of life, he ought to be the father of a family. At such an hour, say at nine o'clock at night, the nursery bell should have just rung the children to bed. He and Mrs. J ought to be, by rights, seated on each side of the fire by the dining-room table, a bottle of port wine between them, not so full as it was in our sense. Mrs. J has had two glasses. Mrs. Grumble, Jones' mother-in-law, has had three. Jones himself has finished the rest, loses comfortably until bedtime. And Brown, that old newspaper-devouring miscreant, what right has he at a club at a decent hour of night? He ought to be playing his rubber with Miss McWhorter, his wife, and the family apothecary. His candle ought to be brought to him at ten o'clock, and he should retire to rest just as the young people were thinking of a dance. How much finer? Simpler. Nobler are the several employments I have sketched out for these gentlemen, than their present nightly orgies at this horrid club. And, ladies, think of men who do not merely frequent the dining-room and library, but who use other apartments of those horrible dens which is my purpose to batter down. Think of Cannon, the wretch, with his coat off at his age and size, clattering the balls over the billiard table all night, and making bets with that odious captain's butt. Think of Pam in a dark room with Bob Trumper, Jack Duceace and Charlie Voll, playing the poor dear misguided wretch, guinea-points, and five pounds on the rubber. Above all, think, think of that den of abomination which I am told has been established in some clubs called the Smoking Room. Think of the debauchies who congregate there, the quantities of reeking whiskey punch or more dangerous sherry cobbler which they consume. Think of them coming home at cock-crow and letting themselves into the quiet house with the chub-key. Think of them, the hypocrites, taking off their insidious boots before they slink upstairs, the children sleeping overhead, the people of their bosom alone with the waning rush-light in the two-pair front, the chambers so soon to be rendered hateful by the smell of their stale cigars. I am not an advocate of violence. I am not by nature of an incendiary turn of mind. But if, my dear ladies, you are for assassinating Mr. Chubb burning down clubhouses in St. James, there is one snob who will not think the worse of you. The only men who, as Iopine ought to be allowed the use of clubs, are married men without a profession. The continual presence of these in a house cannot be thought even by the most loving of wives desirable. Say the girls are beginning to practice their music, which in an honorable English family ought to occupy every young gentleman-woman three hours. It would be rather hard to call upon poor papa to sit in the drawing-room all that time and listen to the interminable discords and shrieks, which are elicited by the miserable piano during the above-necessary operation. A man with a good ear, especially, would go mad if compelled daily to submit to this horror. Or suppose you have a fancy to go to the milliners or to Howell and James. It is manifest, my dear madam, that your husband is much better at the club during these operations than by your side in the carriage or perched in wonder upon one of the stools at Shawl and Jimcracks, whilst young counter-dandies are displaying their wares. This sort of husband should be sent out after breakfast, and if not members of parliament or directors of a railroad or an insurance company should be put into their clubs and told to remain there until dinner time. No sight is more agreeable to my truly regulated mind than to see the noble characters so worthily employed. Whenever I pass by St. James Street having the privilege, like the rest of the world, of looking in at the windows of blights or foodles or snooks or the great bay at the contemplative club, I behold with respectful appreciation the figures within, the honest rosy old fogies, the moldy old dandies, the waist belts and glossy wigs and tight cravats of those most vacuous and respectable men. Such men are best there during the daytime, surely. When you part with them, dear ladies, think of the rapture consequent on their return. You have transacted your household affairs, you have made your purchases, you have paid your visits, you have aired your poodle in the park. Your French maid has completed the toilette which renders you so ravishingly beautiful by candlelight, and you are fit to make home pleasant to him who has been absent all day. Such men surely ought to have their clubs, and we will not class them among clubs' snobs, therefore, on whom let us reserve our attack for the next chapter. End of chapter 37, Read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California, for LibriVox. Chapter 38 of the Book of Snobbs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Caroline Shapiro. The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 38 Club Snobbs Such a sensation has been created in the clubs by the appearance of the last paper on Club Snobbs as can't but be complementary to me who am one of their number. I belong to many clubs. The Union Jack, the Sash and Marlin Spike, military clubs. The True Blue, the No Surrender, the Blue and Buff, the Guy Fox, and the Cato Street political clubs. The Brummel and the Regent, dandy clubs. The Acropolis, the Palladium, the Areopagus, the Knicks, the Pentelicus, the Illysis, and the Poloflois Bioethylasses, literary clubs. I never could make out how the latter set of clubs got their names. I don't know Greek for one, and I wonder how many other members of those institutions do. Ever since the Club Snobbs have been announced, I observe a sensation created on my entrance by any one of these places. Members get up and hustle together. They nod, they scowl, as they glance towards the present snob. Infernal impudent jack-in-apes! If he shows me up, says Colonel Bludger, I'll break every bone in his skin. I told you what would come of admitting literary men into the club, says Randall Ramvill to his colleague Spoonie of the Tape and Ceiling Wax Office. These people are very well in their proper places, and the public man I make a point of shaking hands with them, and that sort of thing, but to have one's privacy obtruded upon by such people is really too much. Come along, Spoonie, and the pair of prigs retire superciliously. As I came into the coffee-room at the Nose Surrender, all Jockins was holding out to a knot of men who were yawning as usual. There he stood waving the standard and swaggering before the fire. What, says he, did I tell thee last year? If you touch the corn-laws, you touch the sugar question. If you touch the sugar, you touch the tea. I am no monopolist. I am a liberal man, but I cannot forget that I stand on the brink of a precipice. And if we're to have free trade, give me reciprocity. And what was Sir Robert Peel's answer to me? Mr. Jockins, he said. Here Jockins, I, suddenly turning on your humble servant, he stopped his sentence with a guilty look. His stale old stupid sentence, which every one of us at the club has heard over and over again. Jockins is a most pertinacious club's knob. Every day he is at that fireplace, holding that standard, of which he reads up the leading article and pours it out Oro Rotundo with the most astonishing composure in the face of his neighbor, who has just read every word of it in the paper. Jockins has money, by the tie of his neck-cloth. He passes the morning, swaggering about the city, in bankers and brokers parlours, and says, I spoke with Peel yesterday and his attentions are so and so. Graham and I were talking over the matter and I pledge you my word of honour, his opinion coincides with mine, and that what do you call him, is the only measure a government will venture on trying. By evening paper time he is at the club. I can tell you the opinion of the city, that boy looks as it is briefly this. Ross Childs told me so themselves. In Mark Lane people's minds are quite made up. He is considered rather a well-informed man. He lives in Belgravia, of course, in a drab-coloured genteel house, and it's everything about him that is properly grave, dismal and comfortable. His dinners are in the morning herald, among the parties for the week, and his wife and daughters make a very handsome appearance once a year when he comes down to the club in his deputy lieutenant's uniform. He is fond of beginning a speech to you by saying, when I was in the house, I, etc. In fact he sat for Skittlebury for three weeks in the first reform parliament and was unseated for bribery, since which he has three times unsuccessfully contested that honourable borough. Another sort of political snob I have seen at most clubs and that is the man who does not care so much for home politics but is great upon foreign affairs. I think this sort of man is scarcely found anywhere but in clubs. It is for him the papers provide their foreign articles at the expense of some ten thousand a year each. He is the man who is really seriously uncomfortable about the designs of Russia and the atrocious treachery of Louis Philippe. He it is who expects a French fleet in the Thames and has a constant eye upon the American president. Every word of whose speech, goodness help him, he reads. He knows the names of the contending leaders in Portugal and what they are fighting about and it is he who says that Lord Aberdeen ought to be impeached and Lord Palmerston hanged or vice versa. Lord Palmerston's being sold to Russia the exact number of rubles paid by what house in the city is a favourite with this kind of snob. I once overheard him. It was Captain Swiftfire Royal Navy who had been refused a ship by the Wigs by the way. Indulging in the following conversation with Mr. Minns after dinner. Why wasn't the Princess Skragimovsky at Lady Palmerston's party Minns? Because she can't show. Why can't she show? Shall I tell you Minns why she can't show? The Princess Skragimovsky's party is flayed alive Minns. I tell you, it's raw, sir. On Tuesday last, at twelve o'clock, three drummers of the Priyar-Baginski Regiment arrived at Ashburnham House and half past twelve in the yellow drawing room at the Russian Embassy before the ambassadors and four ladies' maids. The Greek Papa and the Secretary of Embassy Madame Skragimovsky received thirteen dozen. She was touted, sir, touted in the midst of England in Berkeley Square, for having said that the grand Duchess Olga's hair was red. And now, sir, will you tell me Lord Palmerston opt to continue minister? Minns. Good God! Minns follows Spitfire about and thinks him the greatest and wisest of human beings. End of Chapter 38 Recording by Caroline Shapiro Oakland, California, USA Chapter 39 of the Book of Snobbs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Caroline Shapiro The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackery Chapter 39 Club Snobbs Why does not some great author write the mysteries of the clubhouses or St. James the Street unveiled? It would be a fine subject for an imaginative writer. We must all, as boys, remember when we went to the fair and had spent all our money, the sort of awe and anxiety with which we loitered round the outside of the show speculating upon the nature of the entertainment going on within. Man is a drama of wonder and passion and mystery and meanness and beauty and truthfulness and etc. Each bosom is a booth in vanity fair. But let us stop this capital style. I should die if I kept it up for a column. A pretty thing the column all capitals would be, by the way. In a club, though there may be a soul of your acquaintance in the room, you have always the chance of watching strangers and speculating on what is going on within those tents and curtains and tables, their coats and waistcoats. This is a never-failing sport. Indeed, I am told there are some clubs in the town where nobody ever speaks to anybody. They sit in the coffee room, quite silent, and watching each other. Yet how little you can tell from a man's outward demeanor! There's a man at our club, large, heavy, middle-aged, gorgeously dressed, rather bald, with lacquered boots and a boa when he goes out. In a quiet and demeanor, all is ordering and consuming a riche-chée little dinner, whom I have mistaken for Sir John Pocklington any time these five years and respected as a man with five hundred pounds per diem. And I find he's but a clerk in an office in the city with not two hundred pounds income and his name is Jeber. Sir John Pocklington was, on the contrary, the dirty little snuffy man who cried out so and grumbled at being overcharged three half-pence for a herring, seated at the next table to Jeber on the day when someone pointed the bairnit out to me. Take a different sort of mystery. I see, for instance, old Fawney stealing round the rooms of the club with glassy, meaningless eyes and an endless greasy simper. He fawns on everybody he meets and shakes hands with you and blesses you and betrays the most tender and astonishing poem to be a quack in a rogue and he knows you know it, but he wriggles on his way and leaves a track of slimy, flattery after him wherever he goes. Who can penetrate that man's mystery? What earthly good can he get from you or me? You don't know what is working under that leering tranquil mask. You have only the dim instinctive repulsion that warns you, you are in the presence of a nave. Beyond which fact, all Fawney's speculate on the young men best. Their play is opener. You know the cards in their hand as it were. Take, for example, Messer's Spaven and Coxper. A specimen or two of the above sort of young fellows may be found I believe at most clubs. They know nobody, they bring a fine smell of cigars into the room with them and they growl together in a corner about sporting matters. They recollect the history of that short period in which they have been brought to the world by the names of winning horses. As political men talk about the reform year, the year the wigs went out and so forth, these young sporting bucks speak of Tarnation's year or Apadeldox's year or the year when Catawampus ran second for the Chester Cup. They play at billiards in the morning. They absorb pale ale for breakfast and top up with glasses of strong waters. They read Bell's Life and a very pleasant paper too and a great deal of erudition in the answers to correspondence. They go down to Tattersall's and swagger in the park with their hands plunged in the pockets of their palatose. What strikes me especially in the outward demeanor of sporting youth is their amazing gravity, their conciseness of speech and care-worn and moody air. In the smoking room at the regent when Joe Millerson will be setting the whole room in a roar with laughter you hear young Messer's Spaven grumbling together in a corner. I'll take your five and twenty to one about brother to blue-nose," whispered Spaven. Can't do it at the price, coxpur says, wagging his head ominously. The bedding-book is always present in the minds of those unfortunate youngsters. I think I hate that work even more than the peerage. There is some good in the latter, though generally speaking a vain record. Though De Mogans is not descended from the giant Hogan-Mogan, which is truly false and foolish, yet the mottos are good reading, some of them, and the book itself is sort of gold-laced and live and lackey to history and insofar serviceable. But what good ever came out of or went into a bedding-book? If I could be caliph Omar for a week I would pitch every one of those despicable manuscripts into the flames. For my lords, who is in with Jack Snapple's staple and his over-reaching, worse-informed rogues and swindling greenhorns, there is a boy who books eighteen penny odds in the tap-room and stands to win five and twenty bob. In a turf transaction, either Spaven or Coxbur would try to get the better of his father and, to gain a point in the odds, victimize his best friends. One day we shall hear of one or other Levanting, an event at which not being sportingmen we shall not break our hearts. See, Mr. Spaven is settling his toilette previous to departure, with a voice of hair. Look at him. It is only at the hulks or among turfmen that you ever see a face so mean, so knowing, and so gloomy. A much more humane being among the youthful clubbists is the lady-killing snob. I saw Wiggle just now in the dressing-room talking to Waggle his inseparable. Waggle. Pond my honor, Wiggle, she did. Wiggle. Well, Waggle, as you say, did look at me rather kindly. We'll see tonight at the French play. And having arrayed their little persons, these two harmless young bucks go upstairs to dinner. End of Chapter 39 Recording by Caroline Shapiro, Oakland, California, USA. CHAPTER 40 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 McPhee Stackeray CHAPTER 40 CLUB SNOBS Both sorts of young men mentioned in my last, under the flippant names of Wiggle and Waggle may be found intolerable plenty, I think, in clubs. Wiggle and Waggle are both idle. They come of the middle classes. One of them very likely makes believe to be a barrister, and the other has smart apartments about Piccadilly. They are a sort of second-chopped dandies. They cannot imitate that superb listlessness of demeanor and that admirable, vacuous folly which distinguish the noble and high-born chiefs of the race. But they lead lives almost as bad, were it but for the example, and are personally quite asuseless. I am not going to arm a thunderbolt and launch it at the heads of these little Paul Mall butterflies. They don't commit much public harm or private extravagance. They don't spend a thousand pounds for diamond earrings for an opera dancer, as Lord Tarquin can. Neither of them ever set up a public house or broke the bank of a gambling club like the young Earl of Martingale. They have good points, kind feelings, and deal honorably in money transactions. Only in their characters of men with great pleasure about town, they and their like are so utterly mean, self-contented, and absurd that they must not be omitted in a work treating on snobs. Wiggle has been abroad where he gives you to understand that his success among the German Countesses and Italian princesses whom he met at the tables de Hoit was perfectly terrific. His rooms are hung round with pictures of actresses and ballet dancers. He passes his mornings down, burning pastels and reading Don Juan and French novels. By the way, the life of the author of Don Juan as described by myself was the model of the life of a snob. He has two penny-half-penny French prints of women with languishing eyes, dressed in dominoes, guitars, gondolas, and so forth, and tells you stories about them. It's a bad print, he says. I know. But I have a reason for liking it. It reminds me of somebody, somebody I knew in other climes. You have heard of the Princepessa de Monte Polsiano? I met her at Rimini. Dear, dear Francesca, that fair-haired, bright-eyed thing in the bird of Paradise and the Turkish Samar with the lovebird on her finger, I'm sure must have been taken from, from somebody perhaps whom you don't know. But she's known at Munich waggle, my boy. Everybody knows the Countess Ottalia de Ulenschreckenstein. Gad, sir, what a beautiful creature she was when I danced with her on the birthday of Prince Attila of Bavaria in 44. Prince Carlemont was our vis-a-vis. And Prince Pepin danced the same contra-dance. She had a polyanthus in her bouquet. Waggle, I have it now. His continence assumes an agonized and mysterious expression, and he buries his head in the sofa cushions, as if plunging into a whirlpool of passionate recollections. Last year he made a considerable sensation by having on his table a Morocco miniature case locked by a gold key, which he always wore round his neck and on which was stamped a serpent, emblem of eternity, with the letter M in the circle. Sometimes he laid this upon his little Morocco writing-table, as if it were on an altar. Generally he had flowers upon it. In the middle of a conversation he would start up and kiss it. Then he would come from his bedroom to his valet. Hicks, bring me my casket. I don't know who it is, Waggle would say. Who does know that fellow's intrigues? Desperal Wibble, sir, is the slave of passion. I suppose you have heard the story of the Italian princess locked up in the convent of St. Barbara at Romini. He hasn't told you? Then I'm not at liberty to speak. Or the Countess about whom he nearly died. Perhaps you haven't even heard about that beautiful girl at Pentonville, daughter of a most respectable dissenting clergyman. She broke her heart when she found he was engaged to a most lovely creature of high family who afterwards proved false to him. And she's now in hand well. Waggle's belief in his friend amounts to frantic adoration. What a genius he is if he would but apply himself, he whispers to me. His poems are the most beautiful things you ever saw. He's written a continuation of Don Juan from his own adventures. Did you ever read his lines to Mary? They're superior to Byron, sir, superior to Byron. I was glad to hear this from so accomplished a critic as Waggle, for the fact is I had composed the verses myself for Honest Wibble one day, whom I found at his chambers plunged in thought over a very dirty, old-fashioned album in which he had not as yet written a single word. I can't, says he. Sometimes I can write whole cantos and today not a line. Oh, snob, such an opportunity, such a divine creature. She asked me to write verses for her album and I can't. Is she rich, said I? I thought you would never marry any but an heiress. Oh, snob, she's the most accomplished, highly connected person. How will you have it, says I, rot with sugar? Don't, don't. You trample on the most sacred feeling, snob. I want something wild and tender, like Byron. I want to tell her that amongst the festive balls and that sort of thing, you know. I only think about her, you know. That I score in the world and am weary of it, you know, the present writer observed, and we began. To marry. I seem in the midst of the crowd the lightest of all, my laughter rings cheery and loud in banquet and ball, my lip hath its smiles and its sneers for all men to see, but my soul and my truth and my tears are for thee, are for thee. Do you call that neat, Wiggle, says I? Close, says Wiggle, we say that all the world is at my feet. Make her jealous, you know, in that sort of thing, and that I'm going to travel, you know. That perhaps may work upon her feelings. So we, as this wretched prig said, began again. Around me they flatter and fawn, the young and the old, the fairest are ready to pawn their hearts for my gold. They sue me, I lap as I spurn the slaves at my knee, and in finis I turn unto thee, unto thee. Now for the traveling, Wiggle, my boy, and I began in a voice choked with emotion. Away, for my heart knows no rest since you taught it to feel. The secret must die in my breast I burn to reveal. The passion I may not. I say, snob. Wiggle here interrupted the excited bard, just as I was about to break out into four lines so pathetic that they would drive you into hysterics. I say, ahem, couldn't you say that I was a military man and that there was some danger of my life? You, a military man, danger of your life, what deduce do you mean? Why, said Wiggle, blushing a great deal, I told her I was going out on the Ecuador expedition. You abominable young imposter, I exclaimed, finish the poem for yourself. And so he did, and entirely out of all meter, and bragged about the work at the club as his own performance. Poor waggle fully believed in his friend's genius, until one day last week he came with a grin on his continence to the club and said, oh, snob, I've made such a discovery, going down to the skating today, whom should I see but Wiggle walking with that splendid woman, that lady of illustrious family in immense fortune, Mary, you know, whom he wrote the beautiful verses about. She's five and forty, she's red hair, she's a nose like a pump handle. Her father made his fortune by keeping a ham and beef shop, and Wiggle's going to marry her next week. So much the better waggle, my young friend, I exclaimed, better for the sake of womankind that this dangerous dog should leave off lady-killing. This blue beard give up practice, or better rather for his own sake, for as there is not a word of truth in any of those prodigious love stories which you used to swallow, nobody but Wiggle himself, whose affections will now center in the ham and beef shop. There are people, Mr. Waggle, who do these things in earnest and hold a good rank in the world, too. But these are not subjects for ridicule, and though certainly snobs are scoundrels likewise, their cases go up to a higher court. CHAPTER 41 CLUB SNOBS Bacchus is the divinity to whom Waggle devotes his special worship. Give me wine, my boy, he says to his friend Wiggle, who is priding about lovely women, and holds up his glass full of the rosy fluid, and winks at it pretentiously, and sips it, and smacks his lips after it, and meditates on it as if he were the greatest of connoisseurs. I have remarked this excessive wine amateurship, especially in youth. Snoblings from college, fledglings from the army, gazlings from the public schools, who ornament our clubs, are frequently to be heard in great force upon wine questions. This bottle's corked, says snobling, and Mr. Slide the butler, taking it away, returns presently with the same wine in another jug, which the young amateur pronounces excellent. Hang champagne, says fledgling, it's only fit for gals and children, give me pale sherry at dinner, and my twenty-three clare afterwards. What's port now, says Gosling, disgusting six-sweet stuff, where's the old dry wine one used to get? Until the last twelve month fledgling drank small beer at Dr. Swish-Tales, and Gosling used to get his dry old port at a gin-shop in Westminster, till he quitted that seminary in 1844. Anybody who has looked at the caricatures of thirty years ago must remember how frequently bottle-noses, pimpled faces, and other bardolfian features are introduced by the designer. They are much more rare now, in nature and in pictures, therefore, than in those good old times, but there are still to be found amongst the youth of our clubs, lads who glory in drinking bouts, and whose faces, quite sickly and yellow for the most part, are decorated with those marks which Rowland's Caledore is said to efface. I was so cut last night, old boy, Hopkins says to Tompkins, with amiable confidence. I tell you what we did, we breakfasted with jack herring at twelve, and kept up with brandy and soda water, and weeds till four. Then we toddled into the park for an hour, and we dined and drank Maltport till half price. Then we looked in for an hour at the hay market, then we came back to the club, and had grills and whiskey-punch till all was blue. Hello, waiter! Get me a glass of cherry brandy. Club waiters, the civilist, the kindest, the patientest of men, die under the inflection of these cruel young toppers. But if the reader wishes to see a perfect picture on the stage of this class of young fellows, I would recommend to witness the ingenious comedy of London Assurance, the amiable heroes of which are represented not only as drunkards and five o'clock in the morning men, but as showing a hundred other delightful traits of swindling, lying, and general debauchery, quite edifying to witness. How different is the conduct of these outrageous youth to the decent behaviour of my friend Mr. Papworthy, who says to Poppins the butler at the club. Papworthy. Poppins, I am thinking of dining early. Is there any cold game in the house? Poppins. There's a game pie, sir. There's cold grouse, sir. There's cold pheasant, sir. There's cold peacock, sir. Cold swan, sir. Cold ostrich, sir. Et cetera, et cetera, as the case may be. Papworthy. Ham, what's your best clare now, Poppins? In pints, I mean. Fate, sir. There's lathe and sawdust. St. Julien, sir. Bung's Leoville is considered remarkably fine, and I think you'd like a jugger's chateau margot. Papworthy. Ha, ha. Well, give me a crust of bread and a glass of beer. I'll only lunch, Poppins. Captain Shindy is another sort of club boar. He has been known to throw all the club in an uproar about the quality of his mutton chop. Look at it, sir. Is it cook, sir? Smell it, sir. Is it meat fit for a gentleman? He roars out to the steward, who stands trembling before him, and who, in vain, tells him that the bishop of Biloxmythie has just had three from the same loin. All the waiters in the club are huddled round the captain's mutton chop. He roars out the most horrible curses at John for not bringing the pickles. He utters the most dreadful oath, because Thomas has not arrived with the harvysauce. Peter comes tumbling with the water jug over James, who is bringing the glittering canisters with bread. Whenever Shindy enters the room, such is the force of character, every table is deserted, every gentleman must dine as he best may, and all those big footmen are in terror. He makes his account of it, he scolds, and is better waited upon in consequence. At the club he has ten servants scutting about to do his bidding. Poor Mrs. Shandy and the children are, meanwhile, in dingy lodging somewhere, waited upon by a charity girl in Pattons. End of Chapter 41 Chapter 42 of The Book of Snobbs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rosie Williams Chapter 42 Club Snobbs Every well-bred English female will sympathize with the subject of the harrowing tale the history of Sackville, Maine I am now about to recount. The pleasures of clubs have been spoken of. Let us now glance for a moment at the dangers of those institutions, and for this purpose I must introduce you to my young acquaintance, Sackville, Maine. I was at a ball at the house of my respected friend, Mrs. Perkins, that introduced to this gentleman and his charming lady. Seeing a young creature before me in a white dress with white satin shoes, with a pink ribbon about a yard and breadth, flaming out as she twirled in a polka in the arms of Monsieur de Springbock, the German diplomatist, with a green wreath on her head, and the blackest hair this individual said eyes on. Seeing, I say, before me a young charming woman whisking beautifully in a beautiful dance and presenting as she wound and wound round the room, now a full face, then a three-quarter face, then a profile, a face in fine, which every way you saw it looked pretty and rosy and happy. I felt, as I trust, a not unbecoming curiosity regarding the owner of this pleasant countenance, and asked Wigley who was standing by in conversation with an acquaintance, who was the lady in question, which, says Wigley, that one with the cold black eyes, I replied, hush, said he, and the gentleman with whom he was talking moved off with a rather discomfited air. When he was gone, Wigley burst out laughing, cold black eyes, said he, you've just hit it. That's Mrs. Sackville Main, and that was her husband who just went away. He's a cold merchant, snobbed my boy, and I have no doubt Mr. Perkins Walsons are supplied from his wharf. He is in a flaming furnace when he hears colds mentioned. He and his wife and his mother are very proud of Mrs. Sackville's family. She was a mischuff, daughter of Captain Chuff, R.N. That is the widow, that stout woman in Crimson cabinet about the odd trick with Mr. Dumps at the card table. And so, in fact, it was Sackville Main, whose name is a hundred times more elegant, surely, than that of Chuff, was blessed with a pretty wife and a gentile mother-in-law, both of whom some people may envy him. Soon after his marriage, the old lady was good enough to come and pay him a visit, just for a fortnight at his pretty little cottage, Kennington Oval, and such is her affection for the place, has never quitted it these four years. She has also brought her son, Nelson Collingwood Chuff, to live with her, but he is not so much at home as his mama, going as a day boy to Merchant Taylor's school where he is getting a sound classical education. If these beings so closely allied to his wife and so justly dear to her may be considered as drawbacks to Main's happiness, what man is there that has not some things in life to complain of? And when I first knew Mr. Main, no man seemed more comfortable than he. His cottage was a picture of elegance and comfort. His table and cellar were excellently and neatly applied. There was every enjoyment but no ostentation. The omnibus took him to business of a morning, the boat brought him back to the happiest of homes where he would wile away the long evenings by reading out the fashionable novels to the ladies as they worked, or accompany his wife on the flute which he played elegantly, or in any one of the hundred pleasing and innocent amusements of the domestic circle. Mrs. Chuff covered the drawing rooms with prodigious tapestries the work of her hands. Mrs. Sackville had a particular genius for making covers of tape or network for those tapestry cushions. She could make homemade wines. She could make preserves and pickles. She had an album into which during the time of his courtship Sackville made bad written choice scraps of Byron's and Moore's poetry analogous to his own situation and in a fine mercantile hand. She had a large manuscript receipt book, every quality in a word which indicated a virtuous and well-bred English female mind. And as for Nelson Collingwood, Sackville would say laughing, we couldn't do without him in the house. If he didn't spoil the tapestry we should be over cushioned in a few months. And whom could we get but him to drink Laura's homemade wine? The truth is the gents who came from the city to dine at the oval could not be induced to drink it. In which fastidiousness I myself, when I grew to be intimate with the family, confessed that I shared. And yet, sir, that green ginger has been drunk by some of England's proudest heroes Mrs. Chuff would exclaim, Admiral Lord Exmouth tasted it and praised it, sir, on board Captain Chuff's ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, seventy-four at Algiers, and he had three dozen with turn in the pitchfork frigate, a part of which was served out to the men before he went into his immortal action with the fury bond Captain Chauffleur in the Gulf of Panama. All this, though the old dowager told us the story every day when the wine was produced, never served to get rid of any quantity of it. And the green ginger, though it had fired British Tars for combat and victory, was not to the taste of us peaceful and degenerate events of modern times. I see Sackville now as on the occasion when presented by Wigley, I paid my first visit to him. It was in July, a Sunday afternoon, Sackville Maine was coming from church with his wife on one arm and his mother ill-law in Red Tabernet, as usual, on the other. A half-grown, or habidahoyish footman, so to speak, walked after them, carrying their shiny golden prayer books, the ladies had splendid parasols with tags and fringes. Mrs. Chuff's great gold watch, into her stomach, gleamed there like a ball of fire. Nelson Collingwood was in the distance, shying shoes at an old horse on Kennington Common. T'was on that verdant spot we met, nor can I ever forget the majestic courtesy of Mrs. Chuff, as she remembered having had the pleasure of seeing me at Mrs. Perkins's, nor the glance of scorn which she threw at an unfortunate gentleman who was preaching an exceedingly desultory discourse to a skeptical audience of omnibus-cads and nursemaids on a tub as we passed by. To help it, sir, says she, I am the widow of an officer of Britain's navy. I was taught to honour my church and my king, and I cannot bear a radical or a dissenter. With these fine principles I found Sackville Maine impressed. Waguely said he to my introducer, if no better engagement why shouldn't self and friend dine at the oval? Mr. Snob, sir, the mutton's coming off the spit at this very minute. Laura and Mrs. Chuff, he said Laura and Mrs. Chuff, but I hate people who make remarks on these priorities of pronunciation, will be most happy to see you, and I can promise you a hearty welcome and as good a glass of port wine as any in England. This is better than dining at the sarcophagus, thinks I to myself, at which club Waguely and I had intended to take our meal, and so we accepted the kindly invitation once arose afterwards a considerable intimacy. Everything about this family and house was so good-natured, comfortable, and well-conditioned that a cynic would have ceased to growl there. Mrs. Laura was all graciousness and looked to as great advantage in her pretty mourning gown is in her dress robe at Mrs. Perkins'. Mrs. Chuff fired off her stories about the Nebuchadnezzar 74, the action between the pitchfork and the furibond, the heroic resistance of Captain Schofler, and the quantity of snuff he took, etc. etc. which, as they were heard for the first time, were pleasanter than I have subsequently found them. Sackville Main was the best of hosts. He agreed in everything everybody said, altering his opinions without the slightest upon the slightest possible contradiction. He was not one of those beings who would emulate a chambine or fryer bacon or act a part of an incendiary towards the Thames, his neighbor, but a good kind, simple, honest, easy fellow in love with his wife, well-disposed to all the world, content with himself, content even with his mother-in-law. Nelson Culling would, I remember, in the course of the evening, when whiskey and water was for some reason produced, grew a little tipsy. This did not in the least move Sackville's equanimity. Take him upstairs, Joseph, said he, to the habitahoy, and Joseph, don't tell his mama. What could make a man so happily disposed, unhappy? What could be the discomfort, bickering and estrangement in a family so friendly and united? Ladies, it was not my fault. It was Mrs. Chuff's doing. But the rest of the tale you shall have on a future day. CHAPTER 43. CLUB SNOBS. The misfortune which befell the simple and good-natured young Sackville arose early from that abominable sarcophagus club, and that he ever entered it was partly the fault of the present writer. Forseeing Mrs. Chuff, his mother-in-law, had a taste for the gentile. Indeed, her talk was all about Lord Collingwood, Lord Gambier, Sir Jalil Brenton, and the Gosport and Plymouth Balls. Waguely and I, according to our want, trumped her conversation and talked about lords, dukes, marquises, and baronettes, as if those dignitaries were familiar friends. Lord Sexton Berry, says I, seems to have recovered her ladieship's life. He and the duke were very jolly over their wine at the sarcophagus last night, weren't they, Waguely? Good fellow, the duke, Waguely replied. Pray, ma'am, to Mrs. Chuff, you who know the world and etiquette, will you tell me what a man ought to do in my case? Last June, his grace, his son Lord Castle-Rampant, Tom Smith, and myself were dining at the club when I offered the odds against Daddy Longlegs for the derby, forty to one, in sovereigns only. His grace took the bet, and I, of course, won. He has never paid such a great man for a sovereign. One more lump of sugar, if you please, my dear madam. It was lucky Waguely gave her this opportunity to allude the question, for it prostrated the whole worthy family among whom we were. They telegraphed each other with wondering eyes. Mrs. Chuff's stories about the naval nobility grew quite faint, and little Mrs. Sackville became uneasy and went upstairs to look at the children, not at that young monster Nelson Collingwood, who was sleeping off the whiskey and water, but at a couple of minutes, he and Sackville were the happy parents. The end of this and subsequent meetings with Mr. Maine was that we proposed and got him elected as a member of the sarcophagus club. It was not done without a deal of opposition, the secret having been whispered that the candidate was a coal merchant. You may have been sure some of the proud people in most of the parvenues of the club were ready to blackball him. We combated this opposition successfully, however. We pointed out to the parvenues that were proud by accounts of his good birth, good nature, and good behavior, and wagley went about on the day of the election describing with great eloquence the action between the pitchfork and the furibond and the valour of Captain Maine, our friend's father. There was a slight mistake in the narrative, but we carried our man with only a trifling sprinkling of black beans in the boxes. Biles is, of course, who blackballs everybody, and Bungs, who looks down upon a coal merchant, having himself lately retired from the wine trade. Some of the people in Battlesburg join Bysheeper or any of the other people in the club have been talking about what happened to he remember during the campaign, their good deeds and their bark. The people in the club had no choice in what to do with the bid-miss or the wage-ập because every party in the club had a great reputation for their good deeds and their bark. The people in the club were at the critical moment, trying to of the place to them. It seemed as beautiful as paradise to that little party. The sarcophagus displays every known variety of architecture and decoration. The Great Library is Elizabethan. The Small Library is pointed Gothic. The Dining Room is Severe Doric. The Strangers Room has an Egyptian look. The Drawing Rooms are Louis Catoes, so-called because the hideous ornaments displayed were used in the time of Louis Kahn's. The Cortile or Hall is Morisco Italian. It is all over marble, maple wood, looking glasses, arabesques, or molo, and sclagliola. Scrolls, ciphers, dragons, cupids, polyanthuses, and other flowers writhe up in the walls in every kind of cornucopia. Fancy every gentleman in Julian's band playing with all his might and each performing a different tune. The ornaments at our club, the sarcophagus, so bewilder and affect me. Dazzled with emotions which I cannot describe, in which she dared not reveal, Mrs. Chuff, followed by her children and son-in-law, walked wandering amongst these blundering splendors. In the Great Library, 225 feet long by 150, the only man Mrs. Chuff saw was Tiggs. He was lying on a crimson velvet sofa reading a French novel of Paul de Coq. It was a very little book. He is a very little man. In that enormous hall he looked like a mere speck. As the ladies passed breathless and trembling in the vastness of the magnificent solitude, he threw a knowing killing glance at the fair strangers as much to say, ain't I a fine fellow? They thought so, I'm sure. Who is that? His is out, Mrs. Chuff, when we were about fifty yards off him at the other end of the room. Tiggs says I, in a similar whisper. Pretty comfortable this, isn't it, my dear? Says Maine in a free and easy way to Mrs. Sackville. All the magazines you see, writing materials, new works, choice library, containing every work of importance. What have we here? Dugdale's Monastacon, a most valuable and I believe entertaining book. And proposing to take down one of the books for Mrs. Maine's inspection, he selected Volume 7, to which he was attracted by the singular fact that a brass door handle grew out of the back. Instead of pulling out a book, however, he pulled open a cupboard, only inhabited by a lazy housemaid's broom and duster at which he looked exceedingly discomfited, while Nelson Collingwood, losing all respect, burst into a roar of laughter. That's the rummest book I ever saw says Nelson. I wish we'd know others at Merchant Taylor's. Hush, Nelson, cries Mrs. Choff, and we went into the other magnificent apartments. How they did admire the drawing room hangings, pink and silver brocade, most excellent wear for London, and calculated the price per yard, and reveled on the luxurious sofas, and gazed on the immeasurable looking glasses. Pretty well to shave by us, says Maine to his mother-in-law. He was getting more abominably conceited every minute. Get away, Sackville, says she, quite delighted, and threw a glance over her shoulder and spread out the wings of the red cabinet, and took a good look at herself. So did Mrs. Sackville. Just one, and I thought the glass reflected a very smiling, pretty creature. But what's a woman at a looking glass? Bless the little deers, it's their place. They fly to it naturally. It pleases them, and they adorn it. What I like to see, and watch with increasing joy and adoration, is the club men at the great looking glasses. Old Gill's pushing up his collars and grinning at his own mottled face. Hulker looking solemnly at his great person, and tightening his coat to give himself a waist. Fred mentioned simpering by as he is going out to dine, and casting upon the reflection of his white-neck cloth a pleased moony smile. What a deal of vanity that club mirror has reflected, to be sure. Well, the ladies went through the whole establishment with perfect pleasure. They beheld the coffee rooms, and the little tables laid for dinner, and the gentlemen who were taking their lunch, and old jockens thundering away as usual. They saw the reading rooms, and the rush for the evening papers. They saw the kitchens, those wonders of art, where the chef was presiding over twenty pretty kitchen maids, and ten thousand shining saucepans, and they got into the light blue fly perfectly bewildered with pleasure. Sackville did not enter it. The little Laura took the backseat on purpose, and left him the front place alongside of Mrs. Chuff's red tablet. We have your favorite dinner, says she, in a timid voice. Won't you come, Sackville? I shall take a chop here today, my dear, Sackville replied. Home, James! And he went up the steps of the sarcophagus, and the pretty face looked very sad out of the carriage as the blue fly drove away. End of Chapter 43. Reading by Rosie. Chapter 44 of The Book of Snobbs. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rosie. The Book of Snobbs by William Makepeace Thackeray. Chapter 44. Clubs, Knobbs. Why? Why did I in Wigley ever do so cruel an action as to introduce young Sackville Main into that odious sarcophagus? Let our imprudence and his example be a warning to other gents. Let his fate and that of his poor wife be remembered by every British female. The consequences of his entering the club were as follows. One of the first vices the unhappy wretch acquired in this abode of frivolity was that of smoking. Some of the dandies of the club, such as the Marquis of Maccabar, Lord Dudine, and fellows of that high order, are in the habit of indulging in this propensity upstairs in the billiard rooms of the sarcophagus. And partly to make their acquaintance, partly from a natural aptitude for crime, Sackville Main followed them and became an adept in the odious custom. Where it is introduced into a family I need not say how sad the consequences are, both through the furniture and the morals. Sackville smoked in his dining room at home and caused an agony to his wife and mother-in-law which I do not venture to describe. He then became a professed billiard player, wasting hours upon hours at that amusement, betting freely, playing tolerably, losing awfully to Captain Spot and Colonel Cannon. He played matches of a hundred games with these gentlemen and would not only continue until four or five o'clock in the morning at this work, but would be found at the club of a forenoon, indulging himself to the detriment of his business, the ruin of his health, and the neglect of his wife. From billiards to whisked is but a step, and when a man gets to whisked and five pounds on a rubber, my opinion is that it is all up with him. How was the coal business to go on, and the connection of the firm to be kept up, and the senior partner always at the card table? Consorting now with gentile persons and Paul Maul Bucks, Sackville became ashamed of his snug little residence in Kennington Oval and transported his family to Pimlico, where, though Mrs. Chuff, his mother-in-law, was at first happy, as the quarter was elegant and near her sovereign, poor little Laura and the children found a woeful difference. Where were her friends who came in with their work of a morning at Kennington and in the vicinity of Clapham? Where were her children's little playmates on Kennington Common? The great thundering carriages that roared up and down the drab-colored streets of the new quarter contained no friends for their sociable little Laura. The children that paced the squares attended by boom, or a prim governess, were not like those happy ones that flew kites or played hopscotch on the well-behaved Old Common. And, ah, what a difference at church, too, between St. Benedict's of Pimlico with open seats, service and sing-song, tapers, albs, surpluses, garlands and processions, and the honest old ways of Kennington. The footmen, too, attending St. Benedict's, were so splented and enormous that James, Mrs. Chuff's boy, trembled amongst them and said he would give warning rather than carry the books to that church anymore. The furnishings of the house was not done without expense, and he, God's, what a difference there was between Sackville's dreary French banquets in Pimlico and the dolly diners at the oval. No more legs of mutton, no more the best port wine in England, but entrees on a plate and dismal two-penny champagne and waders in gloves and the club bucks for company, among whom Mrs. Chuff was uneasy and Mrs. Sackville quite silent. Not that he dined at home often. The wretch had become a perfect epicure and dined commonly at the club with the gormandizing click there, with old Dr. Ma, Colonel Cramley, who as as lean as a greyhound and has jaws like a jack, and the rest of them. Here you might see the wretch tippling ciliary champagne and gorging himself with French viands, and I often looked with sorrow from my table on which cold meat, the club's small beer and a half pint of marsala formed the modest banquet, and sighed to think it was my work. And there were other beings present to my repentant thoughts. Where's his wife thought I? Where's poor good kind little Laura? At this very moment it's about the nursery bedtime, and while yonder good for nothing is swilling his wine, the little ones are at Laura's knees lisping their prayers, and she is teaching them to say, pray God bless papa. When she has put them to bed, her day's occupation is gone, and she is utterly lonely all night, and sad and waiting for him. Oh for shame, for shame, go home, thou idle tipler. How Sackville lost his health, how he lost his business, how he got into scrapes, how he got into debt, how he became a railroad director, how the Pimlico house was shut up, how he went to Belone. All this I could tell, only I am too much ashamed of my part of the transaction. They returned to England because to the surprise of everybody, Mrs. Chuff came down with a great sum of money, which nobody knew she had saved, and paid his liabilities. He is in England, but at Kennington. His name is taken off the books of the sarcophagus long ago. When we meet he crosses over to the other side of the street. I don't call as I should be sorry to see a look of reproach or sadness in Laura's sweet face. Not, however, all evil as I am proud to think has been the influence of the snob of England upon clubs in general. Captain Shindy is afraid to bully the waiters anymore and eats his mutton chop without moving acron. Gabamush does not take more than two papers at a time for his private reading. Tiggs does not ring the bell and cause the library waiter to walk about a quarter of a mile in order to give him volume two, which lies on the next table. Growler has ceased to walk from table to table in the coffee room and inspect what people are having for dinner. Trotty Vec takes his own umbrella from the hall, the cotton one, and Sidney Scrapers' Palateau lined with silk has been brought back by Jobbins, who entirely mistook it for his own. Wiggle has discontinued telling stories about the ladies he has killed. Snooks does not any more think at gentlemen like to blackball attorneys. Snuffler no longer publicly spreads out his great red cotton pocket hanger chief before the fire for the admiration of 200 gentlemen, and if one club's knob has been brought back to the paths of rectitude, and if one poor John has been spared a journey or a scolding, say friends and brethren if these sketches of club's knobs have been in vain. End of Chapter 44, Reading by Rosie. Make peace, Thackery. Chapter 45. Concluding observations on snobs. How it is that we have come to number 45 of this present series of papers, my dear friends and brother snobs, I hardly know. But for a whole mortal year have we been together prattling and abusing the human race, and were we to live for a hundred years more, I believe there is plenty of subject for conversation in the enormous theme of snobs. The national mind is awakened to the subject. Letters pour in every day conveying marks of sympathy directing the attention of the snob of England to the races of snobs yet undescribed. Where are your theatrical snobs? Your commercial snobs, your medical or chirurgical snobs, your official snobs, your legal snobs, your artistical snobs, your musical snobs, your sporting snobs, write my esteemed correspondence. Surely you are not going to miss the Cambridge Chancellor election and admit showing up your Don snobs. Who are coming? Cap in hand to a young Prince of six and twenty, and to implore him to be the chief of their renowned university, writes a friend who seals with the signet of the Cam and Isis Club. Pray, pray cries another. Now the operas are opening, give us a lecture about omnibus snobs. Indeed I should like to write a chapter about the snobbish Dons very much, and another about snobbish Dandies. Of my dear theatrical snobs, I think with a pang, and I can hardly break away from some snobbish artists with whom I have long, long intended to have a palaver. But what's the use of delaying? When these were done, there would be fresh snobs to portray. The labor is endless. No single man could complete it here hard but fifty-two bricks and a pyramid to build. It is best to stop. As Jones always quits the room as soon as he has said his good thing, and as Cincinnati's and General Washington both retired into private life in the height of their popularity, as Prince Albert, when he laid the first stone of the exchange, left the bricklayers to complete that edifice, and went home to his royal dinner. As the poet Bun comes forward at the end of the season, and with feelings too tumultuous to describe, blesses his keyined friends over the footlights, so friends in the flush of conquest and the splendor of victory, amid the shouts and the plaudits of a people. Triumphant, yet modest. The snob of England bid ye farewell. But only for a season, not forever. No, no. There is one celebrated author whom I admire very much, who has been taking leave of the public any time these ten years and his prefaces, and always comes back again when everybody is glad to see him. How can he have the heart to be saying goodbye so often? I believe that Bun is affected when he blesses the people. Parting is always painful. Even the familiar bore is dear to you. I should be sorry to shake hands even with jockons for the last time. I think a well constituted convict on coming home from transportation ought to be rather sad when he takes leave of Van Diemen's land. When the curtain goes down on the last night of a pantomime, poor old clown must be buried dismal, depend on it. Ha! With what joy he rushes forward on the evening of the 26th of December next and says, How are you? Here we are. But I am growing too sentimental to return to the theme. The national mind is awakened to the subject of snob. The word snob has taken a place in our honest English vocabulary. We can't define it, perhaps. We can't say what it is any more than we can define wit or humor or humbug. But we know what it is. Some weak sense happening to have the felicity to sit next to a young lady at a hospitable table where poor old jockons was holding forth in a very absurd pompous manner. I wrote upon the spotless damask S Blank B and called my neighbor's attention to the little remark. That young lady smiled. She knew it at once. Her mind straight away filled up the two letters concealed by epistrophic reserve and I read in her assenting eyes that she knew jockons was a snob. You seldom get them to make use of the word as yet. It is true. But it is inconceivable how pretty an expression their little smiling mouth would assume when they speak it out. If any young lady doubts just let her go up to her own room look at herself steadily in the glass and say snob. If she tries this simple experiment my life for it she will smile and own that the word becomes her mouth amazingly. A pretty little round word all composed of soft letters with a hiss at the beginning just to make it pecan't as it were. A jockons mean time went unblundering and bragging and boring quite unconsciously and so he will no doubt go on roaring and braying to the end of time or at least so long as people will hear him. You cannot alter the nature of men and snobs by any force of satire as by laying ever so many stripes on a donkey's back you can't turn him into a zebra. But we can warn the neighborhood that the person whom they and jockons admire is an imposter. We apply the snob test to him and to try whether he is conceited and a quack whether pompous and lacking humility whether uncharitable and proud of his narrow soul. How does he treat a great man how regard a small one how does he comport himself in the presence of his grace the Duke and how in that of Smith the tradesman and it seems to me that all English society is cursed by this mamaniacal superstition and that we are sneaking and bowing and cringing on the one hand or bullying and scorning on the other from the lowest to the highest. My wife speaks with great circumspection proper pride she calls it to our neighbor the tradesman's lady and she I mean Mrs. Snob Eliza would give one of her eyes to go to court as her cousin the captain's wife did she again is a good soul but it costs her agonies to be obliged to confess that we live in upper Thompson street Summers town and though I believe in her heart Mrs. Whiskrington is fonder of us then of her cousins the Smigs Mags you should hear how she goes on prattling about Lady Smigs Mag and I said to Sir John my dear Sir John and about the Smigs Mags house and parties in Hyde Park Terrace Lady Smigs Mag when she meets Eliza who is a sort of a kind of species of a connection of the family pokes out one finger which my wife is at liberty to embrace in the most cordial manner she can devise but oh you should see her ladyship's behavior on her first chop dinner party days when Lord and Lady long years come I can bear it no longer this diabolical invention of gentility which kills natural kindness and honest friendship proper pride indeed rank and precedence forsooth the table of ranks and degrees is a lie and should be flung into the fire organize rank and precedence that was well for the masters of ceremonies of former ages come forward some great martial and organize equality in society and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold sticks if this is not gospel truth if the world does not tend to this if her redditary great man worship is not a humbug and an idolatry let us have the stewards back again and crop the free presses ears in the pillory if ever our cousins smicks mags asked me to meet Lord long years I I would like to take an opportunity after dinner and say in the most good natured way in the world sir fortune makes you a present of a number of thousand pounds every year the ineffable wisdom of our ancestors has placed you as a chief and hereditary legislator over me our admirable constitution the pride of britain's and envy of surrounding nations obliges me to receive you as my senator superior and guardian your eldest son fits he-haw is sure of a place in parliament your younger sons the Dubrae's will kindly condescend to be post captains and lieutenant colonels and to represent us in foreign courts or to take a good living when it falls convenient these prizes our admirable constitution the pride and envy of etc pronounces to be your do without count of your dullness your vices your selfishness or your entire incapacity and folly dull as you may be and we have as good a right to assume that my lord is an s as the other proposition that he is an enlightened patriot dull i say as you may be no one will accuse you of such monstrous folly as to suppose that you are indifferent to the good luck which you possess or have any inclination to part with it no and patriots as we are under happier circumstances smith and i i have no doubt where we dukes ourselves would stand by our order we would submit good-naturedly to sit in a high place we would acquiesce in that admirable constitution pride and envy of etc which made us chiefs and the world our inferiors we would not travel particularly at that notion of hereditary superiority which brought many simple people cringing to our knees maybe we would rally round the corn laws we would make a stand against the reform bill we would die rather than repeal the acts against catholics and dissenters we would by our noble system of class legislation bring ireland to its present admirable condition but smith and i are not earls as yet we don't believe that it is for the interest of smith's army that debris should be a colonel at five and twenty of smith's diplomatic relations that lord long ears should go ambassador to constantanople of our politics that long ears should put his hereditary foot into them this bowing and cringing smith believes to be the act of snobs and he will do all in his might and main to be a snob and to submit to snobs no longer to long ears he says we can't help seeing long ears that we are as good as you we can spell even better can think quite as rightly we will not have you for our master or block your shoes anymore your footmen do it but they are paid and the fellow who comes to get a list of the company when you give a banquet or a dancing breakfast at long gray house gets money from the newspapers for performing that service but for us thank you for nothing long ears my boy and we don't wish to pay you any more than we owe we will take off our hats to wellington because he is wellington but to you who are you I am sick of court circulars I lo ought tone intelligence I believe such words as fashionable exclusive aristocratic and the like to be wicked un-christian epithets that ought to be banished from honest a court system that sends men of genius to the second table I hold to be a snobbish system a society that sets up to be polite and ignores arts and letters I hold to be a snobbish society you who despise your neighbor are a snob you who forget your own friends meanly to follow after those of a higher degree are a snob you who are ashamed of your poverty and blush for your calling are a snob as are you who boast of your pedigree or are proud of your wealth to laugh at such is Mr. Punch's business may he laugh honestly hit no foul blow and tell the truth when at his very broadest grin never forgetting that if fun is good truth is still better and love best of all end of chapter 45 read by Dennis Sayers for LibriVox in Modesto, California and end of The Book of Snobbs by William make peace Thackery