The Book of Snobs Part 2

Having received a great deal of obloquy for dragging monarchs, princes, and the respected n.o.bility into the Sn.o.b category, I trust to please everybody in the present chapter, by stating my firm opinion that it is among the RESPECTABLE cla.s.ses of this vast and happy empire that the greatest profusion of Sn.o.bs is to be found. I pace down my beloved Baker Street, (I am engaged on a life of Baker, founder of this celebrated street,) I walk in Harley Street (where every other house has a hatchment), Wimpole Street, that is as cheerful as the Catacombs--a dingy Mausoleum of the genteel:--I rove round Regent's Park, where the plaster is patching off the house walls; where Methodist preachers are holding forth to three little children in the green inclosures, and puffy valetudinarians are cantering in the solitary mud:--I thread the doubtful ZIG-ZAGS of May Fair, where Mrs. Kitty Lorimer's Brougham may be seen drawn up next door to old Lady Lollipop's belozenged family coach;--I roam through Belgravia, that pale and polite district, where all the inhabitants look prim and correct, and the mansions are painted a faint whity-brown: I lose myself in the new squares and terraces of the brilliant bran-new Bayswater-and-Tyburn-Junction line; and in one and all of these districts the same truth comes across me. I stop before any house at hazard, and say, 'O house, you are inhabited--O knocker, you are knocked at--O undressed flunkey, sunning your lazy calves as you lean against the iron railings, you are paid--by Sn.o.bs.' It is a tremendous thought that; and it is almost sufficient to drive a benevolent mind to madness to think that perhaps there is not one in ten of those houses where the 'Peerage' does not lie on the drawing-room table. Considering the harm that foolish lying book does, I would have all the copies of it burned, as the barber burned all Quixote's books of humbugging chivalry.

Look at this grand house in the middle of the square. The Earl of Loughcorrib lives there: he has fifty thousand a year. A DEJEUNER DANSANT given at his house last week cost, who knows how much? The mere flowers for the room and bouquets for the ladies cost four hundred pounds. That man in drab trousers, coming crying down the stops, is a dun: Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him, and won't see him: that is his lordship peeping through the blind of his study at him now. Go thy ways, Loughcorrib, thou art a Sn.o.b, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of hospitality; a rogue who pa.s.ses forged notes upon society;--but I am growing too eloquent.

You see that nice house, No. 23, where a butcher's boy is ringing the area-bell. He has three muttonchops in his tray. They are for the dinner of a very different and very respectable family; for Lady Susan Sc.r.a.per, and her daughters, Miss Sc.r.a.per and Miss Emily Sc.r.a.per. The domestics, luckily for them, are on board wages--two huge footmen in light blue and canary, a fat steady coachman who is a Methodist, and a butler who would never have stayed in the family but that he was orderly to General Sc.r.a.per when the General distinguished himself at Walcheren. His widow sent his portrait to the United Service Club, and it is hung up in one of the back dressing-closets there. He is represented at a parlour window with red curtains; in the distance is a whirlwind, in which cannon are firing off; and he is pointing to a chart, on which are written the words 'Walcheren, Tobago.'

Lady Susan is, as everybody knows by referring to the 'British Bible,' a daughter of the great and good Earl Bagwig before mentioned. She thinks everything belonging to her the greatest and best in the world. The first of men naturally are the Buckrams, her own race: then follow in rank the Sc.r.a.pers. The General was the greatest general: his eldest son, Sc.r.a.per Buckram Sc.r.a.per, is at present the greatest and best; his second son the next greatest and best; and herself the paragon of women.

Indeed, she is a most respectable and honourable lady. She goes to church of course: she would fancy the Church in danger if she did not.

She subscribes to Church and parish charities; and is a directress of meritorious charitable inst.i.tutions--of Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital, the Washerwomen's Asylum, the British Drummers' Daughters'

Home, &c.. She is a model of a matron.

The tradesman never lived who could say that he was not paid on the quarter-day. The beggars of her neighbourhood avoid her like a pestilence; for while she walks out, protected by John, that domestic has always two or three mendicity tickets ready for deserving objects.

Ten guineas a year will pay all her charities. There is no respectable lady in all London who gets her name more often printed for such a sum of money.

Those three mutton-chops which you see entering at the kitchen-door will be served on the family-plate at seven o'clock this evening, the huge footman being present, and the butler in black, and the crest and coat-of-arms of the Sc.r.a.pers blazing everywhere. I pity Miss Emily Sc.r.a.per--she is still young--young and hungry. Is it a fact that she spends her pocket-money in buns? Malicious tongues say so; but she has very little to spare for buns, the poor little hungry soul! For the fact is, that when the footmen, and the ladies' maids, and the fat coach-horses, which are jobbed, and the six dinner-parties in the season, and the two great solemn evening-parties, and the rent of the big house, and the journey to an English or foreign watering-place for the autumn, are paid, my lady's income has dwindled away to a very small sum, and she is as poor as you or I.

You would not think it when you saw her big carriage rattling up to the drawing-room, and caught a glimpse of her plumes, lappets, and diamonds, waving over her ladyship's sandy hair and majestical hooked nose;--you would not think it when you hear 'Lady Susan Sc.r.a.per's carriage' bawled out at midnight so as to disturb all Belgravia:--you would not think it when she comes rustling into church, the obsequious John behind with the bag of Prayer-books. Is it possible, you would say, that so grand and awful a personage as that can be hard-up for money? Alas! So it is.

She never heard such a word as Sn.o.b, I will engage, in this wicked and vulgar world. And, O stars and garters! how she would start if she heard that she--she, as solemn as Minerva--she, as chaste as Diana (without that heathen G.o.ddess's unladylike propensity for field-sports)--that she too was a Sn.o.b!

A Sn.o.b she is, as long as she sets that prodigious value upon herself, upon her name, upon her outward appearance, and indulges in that intolerable pomposity; as long as she goes parading abroad, like Solomon in all his glory; as long as she goes to bed--as I believe she does--with a turban and a bird of paradise in it, and a court train to her night-gown; as long as she is so insufferably virtuous and condescending; as long as she does not cut at least one of those footmen down into mutton-chops for the benefit of the young ladies.

I had my notions of her from my old schoolfellow,--her son Sydney Sc.r.a.per--a Chancery barrister without any practice--the most placid, polite, and genteel of Sn.o.bs, who never exceeded his allowance of two hundred a year, and who may be seen any evening at the 'Oxford and Cambridge Club,' simpering over the QUARTERLY REVIEW, in the blameless enjoyment of his half-pint of port.

CHAPTER VII--ON SOME RESPECTABLE Sn.o.bS

Look at the next house to Lady Susan Sc.r.a.per's. The first mansion with the awning over the door: that canopy will be let down this evening for the comfort of the friends of Sir Alured and Lady S. de Mogyns, whose parties are so much admired by the public, and the givers themselves.

Peach-coloured liveries laced with silver, and pea-green plush inexpressibles, render the De Mogyns' flunkeys the pride of the ring when they appear in Hyde Park where Lady de Mogyns, as she sits upon her satin cushions, with her dwarf spaniel in her arms, bows to the very selectest of the genteel. Times are altered now with Mary Anne, or, as she calls herself, Marian de Mogyns.

She was the daughter of Captain Flack of the Rathdrum Fencibles, who crossed with his regiment over from Ireland to Caermarthenshire ever so many years ago, and defended Wales from the Corsican invader. The Rathdrums were quartered at Pontydwdlm, where Marian wooed and won her De Mogyns, a young banker in the place. His attentions to Miss Flack at a race ball were such that her father said De Mogyns must either die on the field of honour, or become his son-in-law. He preferred marriage.

His name was Muggins then, and his father--a flourishing banker, army-contractor, smuggler, and general jobber--almost disinherited him on account of this connection.

There is a story that Muggins the Elder was made a baronet for having lent money to a R-y-l p-rs-n-ge. I do not believe it. The R-y-l Family always paid their debts, from the Prince of Wales downwards.

Howbeit, to his life's end he remained simple Sir Thomas Muggins, representing Pontydwdlm in Parliament for many years after the war. The old banker died in course of time, and to use the affectionate phrase common on such occasions, 'cut up' prodigiously well. His son, Alfred Smith Mogyns, succeeded to the main portion of his wealth, and to his t.i.tles and the b.l.o.o.d.y hand of his scutcheon. It was not for many years after that he appeared as Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth de Mogyns, with a genealogy found out for him by the Editor of 'Fluke's Peerage,' and which appears as follows in that work:--'De Mogyns.--Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth, Second Baronet. This gentleman is a representative of one of the most ancient families of Wales, who trace their descent until it is lost in the mists of antiquity. A genealogical tree beginning with Shem is in the possession of the family, and is stated by a legend of many thousand years' date to have been drawn on papyrus by a grandson of the patriarch himself. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt of the immense antiquity of the race of Mogyns.

'In the time of Boadicea, Hogyn Mogyn, of the hundred Beeves, was a suitor and a rival of Caractacus for the hand of that Princess. He was a person gigantic in stature, and was slain by Suetonius in the battle which terminated the liberties of Britain. From him descended directly the Princes of Pontydwdlm, Mogyn of the Golden Harp (see the Mabinogion of Lady Charlotte Guest,) Bogyn-Merodac-ap-Mogyn, (the black fiend son of Mogyn,) and a long list of bards and warriors, celebrated both in Wales and Armorica. The independent Princes of Mogyn long held out against the ruthless Kings of England, until finally Gam Mogyns made his submission to Prince Henry, son of Henry IV., and under the name of Sir David Gam de Mogyns, was distinguished at the battle of Agincourt.

From him the present Baronet is descended. (And here the descent follows in order until it comes to) Thomas Muggins, first Baronet of Pontydwdlm Castle, for 23 years Member of Parliament for that borough, who had issue, Alured Mogyns Smyth, the present Baronet, who married Marian, daughter of the late general P. Flack, of Ballyflack, in the Kingdom of Ireland of the Counts Flack of the H. R. Empire. Sir Alured has issue, Alured Caradoc, born 1819, Marian, 1811, Blanche Adeliza, Emily Doria, Adelaide Obleans, Katinka Rostopchin, Patrick Flack, died 1809.

'Arms--a mullion garbled, gules on a saltire reversed of the second.

Crest--a tom-t.i.t rampant regardant. Motto--UNG ROY UNG MOGYNS.'

It was long before Lady de Mogyns shone as a star in the fashionable world. At first, poor Muggins was the in the hands of the Flacks, the Clancys, the Tooles, the Shanahans, his wife's Irish relations; and whilst he was yet but heir-apparent, his house overflowed with claret and the national nectar, for the benefit of Hibernian relatives. Tom Tufto absolutely left the street in which they lived in London, because he said 'it was infected with such a confounded smell of whisky from the house of those IWISH people.'

It was abroad that they learned to be genteel. They pushed into all foreign courts, and elbowed their way into the halls of Amba.s.sadors.

They pounced upon the stray n.o.bility, and seized young lords travelling with their bear-leaders. They gave parties at Naples, Rome, and Paris.

They got a Royal Prince to attend their SOIREES at the latter place, and it was here that they first appeared under the name of De Mogyns, which they bear with such splendour to this day.

All sorts of stories are told of the desperate efforts made by the indomitable Lady de Mogyns to gain the place she now occupies, and those of my beloved readers who live in middle life, and are unacquainted with the frantic struggles, the wicked feuds, the intrigues, cabals, and disappointments which, as I am given to understand, reign in the fashionable world, may bless their stars that they at least are not FASHIONABLE Sn.o.bs. The intrigues set afoot by the De Mogyns to get the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckskin to her parties, would strike a Talleyrand with admiration. She had a brain fever after being disappointed of an invitation to Lady Aldermanbury's THE DANSANT, and would have committed suicide but for a ball at Windsor. I have the following story from my n.o.ble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself,--Lady Kathleen O'Shaughnessy that was, and daughter of the Earl of Turfanthunder:--

'When that odious disguised Irishwoman, Lady Muggins, was struggling to take her place in the world, and was bringing out her hidjous daughter Blanche,' said old Lady Clapperclaw--(Marian has a hump-back and doesn't show, but she's the only lady in the family)--'when that wretched Polly Muggins was bringing out Blanche, with her radish of a nose, and her carrots of ringlets, and her turnip for a face, she was most anxious--as her father had been a cowboy on my father's land--to be patronized by us, and asked me point-blank, in the midst of a silence at Count Volauvent's, the French Amba.s.sador's dinner, why I had not sent her a card for my ball?

'"Because my rooms are already too full, and your ladyship would be crowded inconveniently," says I; indeed she takes up as much room as an elephant: besides I wouldn't have her, and that was flat.

'I thought my answer was a settler to her: but the next day she comes weeping to my arms--"Dear Lady Clapperclaw," says she, "it's not for ME; I ask it for my blessed Blanche! a young creature in her first season, and not at your ball! My tender child will pine and die of vexation. I don't want to come. I will stay at home to nurse Sir Alured in the gout.

Mrs. Bolster is going, I know; she will be Blanche's chaperon."

'"You wouldn't subscribe for the Rathdrum blanket and potato fund; you, who come out of the parish," says I, "and whose grandfather, honest man, kept cows there."

'"Will twenty guineas be enough, dearest Lady Clapperclaw?"

'"Twenty guineas is sufficient," says I, and she paid them; so I said, "Blanche may come, but not you, mind:" and she left me with a world of thanks.

'Would you believe it?--when my ball came, the horrid woman made her appearance with her daughter!

"Didn't I tell you not to come?" said I, in a mighty pa.s.sion. "What would the world have said?" cries my Lady Muggins: "my carriage is gone for Sir Alured to the Club; let me stay only ten minutes, dearest Lady Clapperclaw."

'"Well as you are here, madam, you may stay and get your supper," I answered, and so left her, and never spoke a word more to her all night.

'And now,' screamed out old Lady Clapperclaw, clapping her hands, and speaking with more brogue than ever, 'what do you think, after all my kindness to her, the wicked, vulgar, odious, impudent upstart of s cowboy's granddaughter, has done?--she cut me yesterday in Hy' Park, and hasn't sent me a ticket for her ball to-night, though they say Prince George is to be there.'

Yes, such is the fact. In the race of fashion the resolute and active De Mogyns has pa.s.sed the poor old Clapperclaw. Her progress in gentility may be traced by the sets of friends whom she has courted, and made, and cut, and left behind her. She has struggled so gallantly for polite reputation that she has won it: pitilessly kicking down the ladder as she advanced degree by degree.

Irish relations were first sacrificed; she made her father dine in the steward's room, to his perfect contentment: and would send Sir Alured thither like-wise but that he is a peg on which she hopes to hang her future honours; and is, after all, paymaster of her daughter's fortunes.

He is meek and content. He has been so long a gentleman that he is used to it, and acts the part of governor very well. In the day-time he goes from the 'Union' to 'Arthur's,' and from 'Arthur's' to the 'Union.' He is a dead hand at piquet, and loses a very comfortable maintenance to some young fellows, at whist, at the 'Travellers'.'

His son has taken his father's seat in Parliament, and has of course joined Young England. He is the only man in the country who believes in the De Mogynses, and sighs for the days when a De Mogyns led the van of battle. He has written a little volume of spoony puny poems. He wears a lock of the hair of Laud, the Confessor and Martyr, and fainted when he kissed the Pope's toe at Rome. He sleeps in white kid-gloves, and commits dangerous excesses upon green tea.

CHAPTER VIII--GREAT CITY Sn.o.bS

There is no disguising the fact that this series of papers is making a prodigious sensation among all cla.s.ses in this Empire. Notes of admiration (!), of interrogation (?), of remonstrance, approval, or abuse, come pouring into MR. PUNCH'S box. We have been called to task for betraying the secrets of three different families of De Mogyns; no less than four Lady Sc.r.a.pers have been discovered; and young gentlemen are quite shy of ordering half-a-pint of port and simpering over the QUARTERLY REVIEW at the Club, lest they should be mistaken for Sydney Sc.r.a.per, Esq. 'What CAN be your antipathy to Baker Street?' asks some fair remonstrant, evidently writing from that quarter.

'Why only attack the aristocratic Sn.o.bs?' says one 'estimable correspondent: 'are not the sn.o.bbish Sn.o.bs to have their turn?'--'Pitch into the University Sn.o.bs!' writes an indignant gentleman (who spelt ELEGANT with two I's)--'Show up the Clerical Sn.o.b,' suggests another.--'Being at "Meurice's Hotel," Paris, some time since,' some wag hints, 'I saw Lord B. leaning out of the window with his boots in his hand, and bawling out "GARCON, CIREZ-MOI CES BOTTES." Oughtn't he to be brought in among the Sn.o.bs?'

No; far from it. If his lordship's boots are dirty, it is because he is Lord B., and walks. There is nothing sn.o.bbish in having only one pair of boots, or a favourite pair; and certainly nothing sn.o.bbish in desiring to have them cleaned. Lord B., in so doing, performed a perfectly natural and gentlemanlike action; for which I am so pleased with him that I have had him designed in a favourable and elegant att.i.tude, and put at the head of this Chapter in the place of honour. No, we are not personal in these candid remarks. As Phidias took the pick of a score of beauties before he completed a Venus, so have we to examine, perhaps, a thousand Sn.o.bs, before one is expressed upon paper.

Great City Sn.o.bs are the next in the hierarchy, and ought to be considered. But here is a difficulty. The great City Sn.o.b is commonly most difficult of access. Unless you are a capitalist, you cannot visit him in the recesses of his bank parlour in Lombard Street. Unless you are a sprig of n.o.bility there is little hope of seeing him at home. In a great City Sn.o.b firm there is generally one partner whose name is down for charities, and who frequents Exeter Hall; you may catch a glimpse of another (a scientific City Sn.o.b) at my Lord N----'s SOIREES, or the lectures of the London Inst.i.tution; of a third (a City Sn.o.b of taste) at picture-auctions, at private views of exhibitions, or at the Opera or the Philharmonic. But intimacy is impossible, in most cases, with this grave, pompous, and awful being.

A mere gentleman may hope to sit at almost anybody's table--to take his place at my lord duke's in the country--to dance a quadrille at Buckingham Palace itself--(beloved Lady Wilhelmina Wagglewiggle! do you recollect the sensation we made at the ball of our late adored Sovereign Queen Caroline, at Brandenburg House, Hammersmith?) but the City Sn.o.b's doors are, for the most part, closed to him; and hence all that one knows of this great cla.s.s is mostly from hearsay.

In other countries of Europe, the Banking Sn.o.b is more expansive and communicative than with us, and receives all the world into his circle. For instance, everybody knows the princely hospitalities of the Scharlaschild family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort, &c.. They entertain all the world, even the poor, at their FETES. Prince Polonia, at Rome, and his brother, the Duke of Strachino, are also remarkable for their hospitalities. I like the spirit of the first-named n.o.bleman. t.i.tles not costing much in the Roman territory, he has had the head clerk of the banking-house made a Marquis, and his Lordship will screw a BAJOCCO out of you in exchange as dexterously as any commoner could do. It is a comfort to be able to gratify such grandees with a farthing or two; it makes the poorest man feel that he can do good. 'The Polonias have intermarried with the greatest and most ancient families of Rome, and you see their heraldic cognizance (a mushroom or on an azure field) quartered in a hundred places in the city with the arms of the Colonnas and Dorias.