The Book of Snobs Part 6

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

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

I think the shams of Ireland are more outrageous than those of any country. A fellow shows you a hill and says, 'That's the highest mountain in all Ireland;' a gentleman tells you he is descended from Brian Boroo and has his five-and-thirty hundred a year; or Mrs. Macma.n.u.s describes her fawther's esteet; or ould Dan rises and says the Irish women are the loveliest, the Irish men the bravest, the Irish land the most fertile in the world: and n.o.body believes anybody--the latter does not believe his story nor the hearer:--but they make-believe to believe, and solemnly do honour to humbug.

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

CHAPTER XVIII--PARTY-GIVING Sn.o.bS

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

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

Some of those worthy Sn.o.bs are making-believe to go yachting, and, dressed in telescopes and pea-jackets, are pa.s.sing their time between Cherbourg and Cowes; some living higgledy-piggledy in dismal little huts in Scotland, provisioned with canisters of portable soup, and fricandeaux hermetically sealed in tin, are pa.s.sing their days slaughtering grouse upon the moors; some are dozing and bathing away the effects of the season at Kissingen, or watching the ingenious game of TRENTE ET QUARANTE at Homburg and Ems. We can afford to be very bitter upon them now they are all gone. Now there are no more parties, let us have at the Party-giving Sn.o.bs. The dinner-giving, the ball-giving, the DEJEUNER-giving, the CONVERSAZIONE-GIVING Sn.o.bs--Lord! Lord! what havoc might have been made amongst them had we attacked them during the plethora of the season! I should have been obliged to have a guard to defend me from fiddlers and pastrycooks, indignant at the abuse of their patrons. Already I'm told that, from some flippant and unguarded expressions considered derogatory to Baker Street and Harley Street, rents have fallen in these respectable quarters; and orders have been issued that at least Mr. Sn.o.b shall be asked to parties there no more.

Well, then--now they are ALL away, let us frisk at our ease, and have at everything like the bull in the china-shop. They mayn't hear of what is going on in their absence, and, if they do they can't bear malice for six months. We will begin to make it up with them about next February, and let next year take care of itself. We shall have no dinners from the dinner-giving Sn.o.bs: no more from the ball-givers: no more CONVERSAZIONES (thank Mussy! as Jeames says,) from the Conversaziones Sn.o.b: and what is to prevent us from telling the truth?

The sn.o.bbishness of Conversazione Sn.o.bs is very soon disposed of: as soon as that cup of washy bohea is handed to you in the tea-room; or the muddy remnant of ice that you grasp in the suffocating scuffle of the a.s.sembly upstairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIX--DINING-OUT Sn.o.bS

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

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

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

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

Suppose you pretend to be richer and grander than you ought to be--you are a Dinner-giving Sn.o.b. And oh, I tremble to think how many and many a one will read this!

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

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

Tufthunt--Tufthunt is a Dinner-giving Sn.o.b.

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

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

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

What, again, is true hospitality? Alas, my dear friends and brother Sn.o.bs! how little do we meet of it after all! Are the motives PURE which induce your friends to ask you to dinner? This has often come across me.

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

Though, for that matter, I know some characters about town who actually consider themselves injured and insulted if the dinner or the company is not to their liking. There is Guttleton, who dines at home off a s.h.i.+lling's-worth of beef from the cookshop, but if he is asked to dine at a house where there are not pease at the end of May, or cuc.u.mbers in March along with the turbot, thinks himself insulted by being invited.

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

CHAPTER XX--DINNER-GIVING Sn.o.bS FURTHER CONSIDERED

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

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

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

For, towards what woman in the world do I entertain a higher regard than towards the beloved partner of my existence, Mrs. Sn.o.b? Who should have a greater place in my affections than her six brothers (three or four of whom we are pretty sure will favour us with their company at seven o'clock), or her angelic mother, my own valued mother-in-law?--for whom, finally, would I wish to cater more generously than for your very humble servant, the present writer? Now, n.o.body supposes that the Birmingham plate is had out, the disguised carpet-beaters introduced to the exclusion of the neat parlour-maid, the miserable ENTREES from the pastrycook's ordered in, and the children packed off (as it is supposed) to the nursery, but really only to the staircase, down which they slide during the dinner-time, waylaying the dishes as they come out, and fingering the round b.u.mps on the jellies, and the forced-meat b.a.l.l.s in the soup,--n.o.body, I say, supposes that a dinner at home is characterized by the horrible ceremony, the foolish makes.h.i.+fts, the mean pomp and ostentation which distinguish our banquets on grand field-days.

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

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

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

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

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

The jays with peac.o.c.ks' feathers are the Sn.o.bs of this world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present in this free country.

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

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

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