The Book of Snobs Part 10

Up that long avenue the Sn.o.bographer walked in solitude. At the seventy-ninth tree on the left-hand side, the insolvent butcher hanged himself. I scarcely wondered at the dismal deed, so woful and sad were the impressions connected with the place. So, for a mile and a half I walked--alone and thinking of death.

I forgot to say the house is in full view all the way--except when intercepted by the trees on the miserable island in the lake--an enormous red-brick mansion, square, vast, and dingy. It is flanked by four stone towers with weatherc.o.c.ks. In the midst of the grand facade is a huge Ionic portico, approached by a vast, lonely, ghastly staircase.

Rows of black windows, framed in stone, stretch on either side, right and left--three storeys and eighteen windows of a row. You may see a picture of the palace and staircase, in the 'Views of England and Wales,' with four carved and gilt carriages waiting at the gravel walk, and several parties of ladies and gentlemen in wigs and hoops, dotting the fatiguing lines of stairs.

But these stairs are made in great houses for people NOT to ascend. The first Lady Carabas (they are but eighty years in the peerage), if she got out of her gilt coach in a shower, would be wet to the skin before she got half-way to the carved Ionic portico, where four dreary statues of Peace, Plenty, Piety and Patriotism, are the only sentinels. You enter these palaces by back-doors. 'That was the way the Carabases got their peerage,' the misanthropic Ponto said after dinner.

Well--I rang the bell at a little low side-door; it clanged and jingled and echoed for a long, long while, till at length a face, as of a housekeeper, peered through the door, and, as she saw my hand in my waistcoat pocket, opened it. Unhappy, lonely housekeeper, I thought. Is Miss Crusoe in her island more solitary? The door clapped to, and I was in Castle Carabas.

'The side entrance and All,' says the housekeeper. 'The halligator hover the mantelpiece was brought home by Hadmiral St. Michaels, when a Capting with Lord Hanson. The harms on the cheers is the harms of the Carabas family.' The hall was rather comfortable. We went clapping up a clean stone backstair, and then into a back pa.s.sage cheerfully decorated with ragged light-green Kidderminster, and issued upon

'THE GREAT ALL.

'The great all is seventy-two feet in lenth, fifty-six in breath, and thirty-eight feet 'igh. The carvings of the chimlies, representing the birth of Venus, and Ercules, and Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculpture of his hage and country. The ceiling, by Calimanco, represents Painting, Harchitecture and Music (the naked female figure with the barrel horgan) introducing George, fust Lord Carabas, to the Temple of the Muses. The winder ornaments is by Vanderputty. The floor is Patagonian marble; and the chandelier in the centre was presented to Lionel, second Marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, whose 'ead was cut hoff in the French Revelation. We now henter

THE SOUTH GALLERY.

'One 'undred and forty-eight in lenth by thirty-two in breath; it is profusely hornaminted by the choicest works of Hart. Sir Andrew Katz, founder of the Carabas family and banker of the Prince of Horange, Kneller. Her present Ladyship, by Lawrence. Lord St. Michaels, by the same--he is represented sittin' on a rock in velvit pantaloons. Moses in the bullrushes--the bull very fine, by Paul Potter. The toilet of Venus, Fantaski. Flemish Bores drinking, Van Ginnums. Jupiter and Europia, de Horn. The Grandjunction Ca.n.a.l, Venis, by Candleetty; and Italian Bandix, by Slavata Rosa.'--And so this worthy woman went on, from one room into another, from the blue room to the green, and the green to the grand saloon, and the grand saloon to the tapestry closet, cackling her list of pictures and wonders: and furtively turning up a corner of brown holland to show the colour of the old, faded, seedy, mouldy, dismal hangings.

At last we came to her Ladyship's bed-room. In the centre of this dreary apartment there is a bed about the size of one of those whizgig temples in which the Genius appears in a pantomime. The huge gilt edifice is approached by steps, and so tall, that it might be let off in floors, for sleeping-rooms for all the Carabas family. An awful bed! A murder might be done at one end of that bed, and people sleeping at the other end be ignorant of it. Gracious powers! fancy little Lord Carabas in a nightcap ascending those steps after putting out the candle!

The sight of that seedy and solitary splendour was too much for me.

I should go mad were I that lonely housekeeper--in those enormous galleries--in that lonely library, filled up with ghastly folios that n.o.body dares read, with an inkstand on the centre table like the coffin of a baby, and sad portraits staring at you from the bleak walls with their solemn Mouldy eyes. No wonder that Carabas does not come down here often.

It would require two thousand footmen to make the place cheerful. No wonder the coachman resigned his wig, that the masters are insolvent, and the servants perish in this huge dreary out-at-elbow place.

A single family has no more right to build itself a temple of that sort than to erect a Tower of Babel. Such a habitation is not decent for a mere mortal man. But, after all, I suppose poor Carabas had no choice.

Fate put him there as it sent Napoleon to St. Helena. Suppose it had been decreed by Nature that you and I should be Marquises? We wouldn't refuse, I suppose, but take Castle Carabas and all, with debts, duns, and mean makeshifts, and shabby pride, and swindling magnificence.

Next season, when I read of Lady Carabas's splendid entertainments in the MORNING POST, and see the poor old insolvent cantering through the Park--I shall have a much tenderer interest in these great people than I have had heretofore. Poor old shabby Sn.o.b! Ride on and fancy the world is still on its knees before the house of Carabas! Give yourself airs, poor old bankrupt Magnifico, who are under money-obligations to your flunkeys; and must stoop so as to swindle poor tradesmen! And for us, O my brother Sn.o.bs, oughtn't we to feel happy if our walk through life is more even, and that we are out of the reach of that surprising arrogance and that astounding meanness to which this wretched old victim is obliged to mount and descend.

CHAPTER XXIX--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY Sn.o.bS

Notable as my reception had been (under that unfortunate mistake of Mrs.

Ponto that I was related to Lord Sn.o.bbington, which I was not permitted to correct), it was nothing compared to the bowing and kotooing, the raptures and flurry which preceded and welcomed the visit of a real live lord and lord's son, a brother officer of Cornet Wellesley Ponto, in the 120th Hussars, who came over with the young Cornet from Guttlebury, where their distinguished regiment was quartered. This was my Lord Gules, Lord Saltire's grandson and heir: a very young, short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking n.o.bleman, who cannot have left the nursery very long, and who, though he accepted the honest Major's invitation to the Evergreens in a letter written in a school-boy handwriting, with a number of faults of spelling, may yet be a very fine cla.s.sical scholar for what I know: having had his education at Eton, where he and young Ponto were inseparable.

At any rate, if he can't write, he has mastered a number of other accomplishments wonderful for one of his age and size. He is one of the best shots and riders in England. He rode his horse Abracadabra, and won the famous Guttlebury steeple-chase. He has horses entered at half the races in the country (under other people's names; for the old lord is a strict hand, and will not hear of betting or gambling). He has lost and won such sums of money as my Lord George himself might be proud of.

He knows all the stables, and all the jockeys, and has all the 'information,' and is a match for the best Leg at Newmarket. n.o.body was ever known to be 'too much' for him at play or in the stable.

Although his grandfather makes him a moderate allowance, by the aid of POST-OBITS and convenient friends he can live in a splendour becoming his rank. He has not distinguished himself in the knocking down of policemen much; he is not big enough for that. But, as a light-weight, his skill is of the very highest order. At billiards he is said to be first-rate. He drinks and smokes as much as any two of the biggest officers in his regiment. With such high talents, who can say how far he may not go? He may take to politics as a DELa.s.s.e.m.e.nT, and be Prime Minister after Lord George Bentinck.

My young friend Wellesley Ponto is a gaunt and bony youth, with a pale face profusely blotched. From his continually pulling something on his chin, I am led to fancy that he believes he has what is called an Imperial growing there. That is not the only tuft that is hunted in the family, by the way. He can't, of course, indulge in those expensive amus.e.m.e.nts which render his aristocratic comrade so respected: he bets pretty freely when he is in cash, and rides when somebody mounts him (for he can't afford more than his regulation chargers). At drinking he is by no means inferior; and why do you think he brought his n.o.ble friend, Lord Gules, to the Evergreens?--Why? because he intended to ask his mother to order his father to pay his debts, which she couldn't refuse before such an exalted presence. Young Ponto gave me all this information with the most engaging frankness. We are old friends. I used to tip him when he was at school.

'Gad!': says he, 'our wedgment's so DOOTHID exthpenthif. Must hunt, you know. A man couldn't live in the wedgment if he didn't. Mess expenses enawmuth. Must dine at mess. Must drink champagne and claret. Ours ain't a port and sherry light-infantry mess. Uniform's awful. Fitzstultz, our Colonel, will have 'em so. Must be a distinction you know. At his own expense Fitzstultz altered the plumes in the men's caps (you called them shaving-brushes, Sn.o.b, my boy: most absurd and unjust that attack of yours, by the way); that altewation alone cotht him five hundred pound.

The year befaw latht he horthed the wegiment at an immenthe expenthe, and we're called the Queen'th Own Pyebalds from that day. Ever theen uth on pawade? The Empewar Nicolath burtht into tearth of envy when he thaw uth at Windthor. And you see,' continued my young friend, 'I brought Gules down with me, as the Governor is very sulky about sh.e.l.ling out, just to talk my mother over, who can do anything with him. Gules told her that I was Fitzstultz's favourite of the whole regiment; and, Gad!

she thinks the Horse Guards will give me my troop for nothing, and he humbugged the Governor that I was the greatest screw in the army. Ain't it a good dodge?'

With this Wellesley left me to go and smoke a cigar in the stables with Lord Gules, and make merry over the cattle there, under Stripes's superintendence. Young Ponto laughed with his friend, at the venerable four-wheeled cruelty-chaise; but seemed amazed that the latter should ridicule still more an ancient chariot of the build of 1824, emblazoned immensely with the arme of the Pontos and the Snaileys, from which latter distinguished family Mrs. Ponto issued.

I found poor Pon in his study among his boots, in such a rueful att.i.tude of despondency, that I could not but remark it. 'Look at that!' says the poor fellow, handing me over a doc.u.ment. 'It's the second change in uniform since he's been in the army, and yet there's no extravagance about the lad. Lord Gules tells me he is the most careful youngster in the regiment, G.o.d bless him! But look at that! by heaven, Sn.o.b, look at that and say how can a man of nine hundred keep out of the Bench?' He gave a sob as he handed me the paper across the table; and his old face, and his old corduroys, and his shrunk shooting-jacket, and his lean shanks, looked, as he spoke, more miserably haggard, bankrupt, and threadbare.

LIEUT. WELLESLEY PONTO, 120THQUEEN'S OWN PYEBALD HUSSARS, TO KNOPF AND STECKNADEL, CONDUIT STREET, LONDON.

L. s. d Dress Jacket, richly laced with gold . 35 0 0 Ditto Pelisse ditto, and trimmed with sable . . 60 0 0 Undress Jacket, trimmed with gold 15 15 0 Ditto Pelisse . . 30 0 0 Dress Pantaloons 12 0 0 Ditto Overalls, gold lace on sides. 6 6 0 Undress ditto ditto. 5 5 0 Blue Braided Frock 14 14 0 Forage Cap . . 3 3 0 Dress Cap, gold lines, plume and chain . . . 25 0 0 Gold Barrelled Sash 11 18 0 Sword . . 11 11 0 Ditto Belt and Sabretache .. 16 16 0 Pouch and Belt. 15 15 0 SwordKnot .. 1 4 0 Cloak . .. 13 13 0 Valise . .. 3 13 6 Regulation Saddle . 7 17 6 Ditto Bridle, complete . .. 10 10 0 A Dress Housing, complete .. 30 0 0 A pair of Pistols. 10 10 0 A Black Sheepskin, edged. . . 6 18 0 Total L347 9 0

That evening Mrs. Ponto and her family made their darling Wellesley give a full, true, and particular account of everything that had taken place at Lord Fitzstultz's; how many servants waited at dinner; and how the Ladies Schneider dressed; and what his Royal Highness said when he came down to shoot; and who was there? "What a blessing that boy is to me!"

said she, as my pimple-faced young friend moved off to resume smoking operations with Gules in the now vacant kitchen;--and poor Ponto's dreary and desperate look, shall I ever forget that?

O you parents and guardians! O you men and women of sense in England! O you legislators about to a.s.semble in Parliament! read over that tailor's bill above printed, read over that absurd catalogue of insane gimcracks and madman's tomfoolery--and say how are you ever to get rid of Sn.o.bbishness when society does so much for its education?

Three hundred and forty pounds for a young chap's saddle and breeches!

Before George, I would rather be a Hottentot or a Highlander. We laugh at poor Jocko, the monkey, dancing in uniform; or at poor Jeames, the flunkey, with his quivering calves and plush tights; or at the n.i.g.g.e.r Marquis of Marmalade, dressed out with sabre and epaulets, and giving himself the airs of a field-marshal. Lo! is not one of the Queen's Pyebalds, in full fig, as great and foolish a monster?

CHAPTER x.x.x--ON SOME COUNTRY Sn.o.bS

At last came that fortunate day at the Evergreens, when I was to be made acquainted with some of the 'county families' with whom only people of Ponto's rank condescended to a.s.sociate. And now, although poor Ponto had just been so cruelly made to bleed on occasion of his son's new uniform, and though he was in the direst and most cut-throat spirits with an overdrawn account at the banker's, and other pressing evils of poverty; although a tenpenny bottle of Marsala and an awful parsimony presided generally at his table, yet the poor fellow was obliged to a.s.sume the most frank and jovial air of cordiality; and all the covers being removed from the hangings, and new dresses being procured for the young ladies, and the family plate being unlocked and displayed, the house and all within a.s.sumed a benevolent and festive appearance. The kitchen fires began to blaze, the good wine ascended from the cellar, a professed cook actually came over from Guttlebury to compile culinary abominations. Stripes was in a new coat, and so was Ponto, for a wonder, and Tummus's b.u.t.ton-suit was worn EN PERMANENCE.

And all this to show off the little lord, thinks I. All this in honour of a stupid little cigarrified Cornet of dragoons, who can barely write his name,--while an eminent and profound moralist like--somebody--is fobbed off with cold mutton and relays of pig. Well, well: a martyrdom of cold mutton is just bearable. I pardon Mrs. Ponto, from my heart I do, especially as I wouldn't turn out of the best bed-room, in spite of all her hints; but held my ground in the chintz tester, vowing that Lord Gules, as a young man, was quite small and hardy enough to make himself comfortable elsewhere.

The great Ponto party was a very august one. The Hawbucks came in their family coach, with the blood-red band emblazoned all over it: and their man in yellow livery waited in country fashion at table, only to be exceeded in splendour by the Hipsleys, the opposition baronet, in light blue. The old Ladies Fitzague drove over in their little old chariot with the fat black horses, the fat coachman, the fat footman--(why are dowagers' horses and footmen always fat?) And soon after these personages had arrived, with their auburn fronts and red beaks and turbans, came the Honourable and Reverend Lionel Pettipois, who with General and Mrs. Sago formed the rest of the party. 'Lord and Lady Frederick Howlet were asked, but they have friends at Ivybush,' Mrs.

Ponto told me; and that very morning, the Castlehaggards sent an excuse, as her ladyship had a return of the quinsy. Between ourselves, Lady Castlehaggard's quinsy always comes on when there is dinner at the Evergreens.

If the keeping of polite company could make a woman happy, surely my kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day a happy woman. Every person present (except the unlucky impostor who pretended to a connexion with the Sn.o.bbington Family, and General Sago, who had brought home I don't know how many lacs of rupees from India,) was related to the Peerage or the Baronetage. Mrs. P. had her heart's desire. If she had been an Earl's daughter herself could she have expected better company?--and her family were in the oil-trade at Bristol, as all her friends very well know.

What I complained of in my heart was not the dining--which, for this once, was plentiful and comfortable enough--but the prodigious dulness of the talking part of the entertainment. O my beloved brother Sn.o.bs of the City, if we love each other no better than our country brethren, at least we amuse each other more; if we bore ourselves, we are not called upon to go ten miles to do it!

For instance, the Hipsleys came ten miles from the south, and the Hawbucks ten miles from the north, of the Evergreens; and were magnates in two different divisions of the county of Mangelwurzelshire. Hipsley, who is an old baronet, with a bothered estate, did not care to show his contempt for Hawbuck, who is a new creation, and rich. Hawbuck, on his part, gives himself patronizing airs to General Sago, who looks upon the Pontos as little better than paupers. 'Old Lady Blanche,' says Ponto, 'I hope will leave something to her G.o.d-daughter--my second girl--we've all of us half-poisoned ourselves with taking her physic.'

Lady Blanche and Lady Rose Fitzague have, the first, a medical, and the second a literary turn. I am inclined to believe the former had a wet COMPRESSE around her body, on the occasion when I had the happiness of meeting her. She doctors everybody in the neighbourhood of which she is the ornament; and has tried everything on her own person. She went into Court, and testified publicly her faith in St. John Long: she swore by Doctor Buchan, she took quant.i.ties of Gambouge's Universal Medicine, and whole boxfuls of Parr's Life Pills. She has cured a multiplicity of headaches by Squinstone's Eye-snuff; she wears a picture of Hahnemann in her bracelet and a lock of Priessnitz's hair in a brooch. She talked about her own complaints and those of her CONFIDANTE for the time being, to every lady in the room successively, from our hostess down to Miss Wirt, taking them into corners, and whispering about bronchitis, hepat.i.tis, St. Vitus, neuralgia, cephalalgia, and so forth. I observed poor fat Lady Hawbuck in a dreadful alarm after some communication regarding the state of her daughter Miss Lucy Hawbuck's health, and Mrs.

Sago turned quite yellow, and put down her third gla.s.s of Madeira, at a warning glance from Lady Blanche.

Lady Rose talked literature, and about the book-club at Guttlebury, and is very strong in voyages and travels. She has a prodigious interest in Borneo, and displayed a knowledge of the history of the Punjaub and Kaffirland that does credit to her memory. Old General Sago, who sat perfectly silent and plethoric, roused up as from a lethargy when the former country was mentioned, and gave the company his story about a hog-hunt at Ramjugger. I observed her ladyship treated with something like contempt her neighbour the Reverend Lionel Pettipois, a young divine whom you may track through the country by little 'awakening'

books at half-a-crown a hundred, which dribble out of his pockets wherever he goes. I saw him give Miss Wirt a sheaf of 'The Little Washer-woman on Putney Common,' and to Miss Hawbuck a couple of dozen of 'Meat in the Tray; or the Young Butcher-boy Rescued;' and on paying a visit to Guttlebury gaol, I saw two notorious fellows waiting their trial there (and temporarily occupied with a game of cribbage), to whom his Reverence offered a tract as he was walking over Crackshins Common, and who robbed him of his purse, umbrella, and cambric handkerchief, leaving him the tracts to distribute elsewhere.

CHAPTER x.x.xI--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY Sn.o.bS

'Why, dear Mr. Sn.o.b,' said a young lady of rank and fashion (to whom I present my best compliments), 'if you found everything so Sn.o.bBISH at the Evergreens, if the pig bored you and the mutton was not to your liking, and Mrs. Ponto was a humbug, and Miss Wirt a nuisance, with her abominable piano practice,--why did you stay so long?'

Ah, Miss, what a question! Have you never heard of gallant British soldiers storming batteries, of doctors pa.s.sing nights in plague wards of lazarettos, and other instances of martyrdom? What do you suppose induced gentlemen to walk two miles up to the batteries of Sabroan, with a hundred and fifty thundering guns bowling them down by hundreds?--not pleasure, surely. What causes your respected father to quit his comfortable home for his chambers, after dinner, and pore over the most dreary law papers until long past midnight?, Mademoiselle; duty, which must be done alike by military, or legal, or literary gents. There's a power of martyrdom in our profession.

You won't believe it? Your rosy lips a.s.sume a smile of incredulity--a most naughty and odious expression in a young lady's face. Well, then, the fact is, that my chambers, No. 24, Pump Court, Temple, were being painted by the Honourable Society, and Mrs. Slamkin, my laundress, having occasion to go into Durham to see her daughter, who is married, and has presented her with the sweetest little grandson--a few weeks could not be better spent than in rusticating. But ah, how delightful Pump Court looked when I revisited its well-known chimney-pots! CARI LUOGHI. Welcome, welcome, O fog and s.m.u.t!

But if you think there is no moral in the foregoing account of the Pontine family, you are, Madam, most painfully mistaken. In this very chapter we are going to have the moral--why, the whole of the papers are nothing BUT the moral, setting forth as they do the folly of being a Sn.o.b.