The Book of Snobs Part 3

City Sn.o.bs have the same mania for aristocratic marriages. I like to see such. I am of a savage and envious nature,--I like to see these two humbugs which, dividing, as they do, the social empire of this kingdom between them, hate each other naturally, making truce and uniting, for the sordid interests of either. I like to see an old aristocrat, swelling with pride of race, the descendant of ill.u.s.trious Norman robbers, whose blood has been pure for centuries, and who looks down upon common Englishmen as a free American does on a n.i.g.g.e.r,--I like to see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his head and swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of humiliation poured out by Pump and Aldgate's butler. 'Pump and Aldgate, says he, 'your grandfather was a bricklayer, and his hod is still kept in the bank. Your pedigree begins in a workhouse; mine can be dated from all the royal palaces of Europe. I came over with the Conqueror; I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando Furioso, Philip Augustus, Peter the Cruel, and Frederick Barbarossa.

I quarter the Royal Arms of Brentford in my coat. I despise you, but I want money; and I will sell you my beloved daughter, Blanche Stiffneck, for a hundred thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages. Let your son marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche Pump and Aldgate.'

Old Pump and Aldgate clutches at the bargain. And a comfortable thing it is to think that birth can be bought for money. So you learn to value it. Why should we, who don't possess it, set a higher store on it than those who do? Perhaps the best use of that book, the 'Peerage,' is to look down the list, and see how many have bought and sold birth,--how poor sprigs of n.o.bility somehow sell themselves to rich City Sn.o.bs'

daughters, how rich City Sn.o.bs purchase n.o.ble ladies--and so to admire the double baseness of the bargain.

Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article and pays the money. The sale of the girl's person is blessed by a Bishop at St. George's, Hanover Square, and next year you read, 'At Roehampton, on Sat.u.r.day, the Lady Blanche Pump, of a son and heir.

After this interesting event, some old acquaintance, who saw young Pump in the parlour at the bank in the City, said to him, familiarly, 'How's your wife, Pump, my boy?'

Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted, and, after a pause, said, 'LADY BLANCHE PUMP' is pretty well, I thank you.'

'OH, I THOUGHT SHE WAS YOUR WIFE!' said the familiar brute, Snooks, wishing him good-bye; and ten minutes after, the story was all over the Stock Exchange, where it is told, when young Pump appears, to this very day.

We can imagine the weary life this poor Pump, this martyr to Mammon, is compelled to undergo. Fancy the domestic enjoyments of a man who has a wife who scorns him; who cannot see his own friends in his own house; who having deserted the middle rank of life, is not yet admitted to the higher; but who is resigned to rebuffs and delay and humiliation, contented to think that his son will be more fortunate.

It used to be the custom of some very old-fashioned clubs in this city, when a gentleman asked for change a guinea, always to bring it to him in WASHED SILVER: that which had pa.s.sed immediately out of the hands of vulgar being considered 'as too coa.r.s.e to soil a gentleman's fingers.'

So, when the City Sn.o.b's money has been washed during a generation or so; has been washed into estates, and woods, and castles, and town-mansions, it is allowed to pa.s.s current as real aristocratic coin.

Old Pump sweeps a shop, runs of messages, becomes a confidential clerk and partner. Pump the Second becomes chief of the house, spins more and more money, marries his son to an Earl's daughter. Pump Tertius goes on with the bank; but his chief business in life is to become the father of Pump Quartus, who comes out a full-blown aristocrat, and takes his seat as Baron Pumpington, and his race rules hereditarily over this nation of Sn.o.bs.

CHAPTER IX--ON SOME MILITARY Sn.o.bS

As no society in the world is more agreeable than that of well-bred and well-informed military gentlemen, so, likewise, none is more insufferable than that of Military Sn.o.bs. They are to be found of all grades, from the General Officer, whose padded old breast twinkles over with a score of stars, clasps, and decorations, to the budding cornet, who is shaving for a beard, and has just been appointed to the Saxe-Coburg Lancers.

I have always admired that dispensation of rank in our country, which sets up this last-named little creature (who was flogged only last week because he could not spell) to command great whiskered warriors, who have faced all dangers of climate and battle; which, because he has money, to lodge at the agent's, will place him over the heads of men who have a thousand times more experience and desert: and which, in the course of time, will bring him all the honours of his profession, when the veteran soldier he commanded has got no other reward for his bravery than a berth in Chelsea Hospital, and the veteran officer he superseded has slunk into shabby retirement, and ends his disappointed life on a threadbare half-pay.

When I read in the GAZETTE such announcements as 'Lieutenant and Captain Grig, from the Bombardier Guards, to be Captain, vice Grizzle, who retires,' I know what becomes of the Peninsular Grizzle; I follow him in spirit to the humble country town, where he takes up his quarters, and occupies himself with the most desperate attempts to live like a gentleman, on the stipend of half a tailor's foreman; and I picture to myself little Grig rising from rank to rank, skipping from one regiment to another, with an increased grade in each, avoiding disagreeable foreign service, and ranking as a colonel at thirty;--all because he has money, and Lord Grigsby is his father, who had the same luck before him.

Grig must blush at first to give his orders to old men in every way his betters. And as it is very difficult for a spoiled child to escape being selfish and arrogant, so it is a very hard task indeed for this spoiled child of fortune not to be a Sn.o.b.

It must have often been a matter of wonder to the candid reader, that the army, the most enormous job of all our political inst.i.tutions, should yet work so well in the field; and we must cheerfully give Grig, and his like, the credit for courage which they display whenever occasion calls for it. The Duke's dandy regiments fought as well as any (they said better than any, but that is absurd). The great Duke himself was a dandy once, and jobbed on, as Marlborough did before him. But this only proves that dandies are brave as well as other Britons--as all Britons. Let us concede that the high-born Grig rode into the entrenchments at Sobraon as gallantly as Corporal Wallop, the ex-ploughboy.

The times of war are more favourable to him than the periods of peace.

Think of Grig's life in the Bombardier Guards, or the Jack-boot Guards; his marches from Windsor to London, from London to Windsor, from Knightsbridge to Regent's Park; the idiotic services he has to perform, which consist in inspecting the pipeclay of his company, or the horses in the stable, or bellowing out 'Shoulder humps! Carry humps!' all which duties the very smallest intellect that ever belonged to mortal man would suffice to comprehend. The professional duties of a footman are quite as difficult and various. The red-jackets who hold gentlemen's horses in St. James's Street could do the work just as well as those vacuous, good-natured, gentlemanlike, rickety little lieutenants, who may be seen sauntering about Pall Mall, in high-heeled little boots, or rallying round the standard of their regiment in the Palace Court, at eleven o'clock, when the band plays. Did the beloved reader ever see one of the young fellows staggering under the flag, or, above all, going through the operation of saluting it? It is worth a walk to the Palace to witness that magnificent piece of tomfoolery.

I have had the honour of meeting once or twice an old gentleman, whom I look upon to be a specimen of army-training, and who has served in crack regiments, or commanded them, all his life. I allude to Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir George Granby Tufto, K.C.B., K.T.S., K.H., K.S.W., &c. &c.. His manners are irreproachable generally; in society he is a perfect gentleman, and a most thorough Sn.o.b.

A man can't help being a fool, be he ever so old, and Sir George is a greater a.s.s at sixty-eight than he was when he first entered the army at fifteen. He distinguished himself everywhere: his name is mentioned with praise in a score of Gazettes: he is the man, in fact, whose padded breast, twinkling over with innumerable decorations, has already been introduced to the reader. It is difficult to say what virtues this prosperous gentleman possesses. He never read a book in his life, and, with his purple, old gouty fingers, still writes a schoolboy hand. He has reached old age and grey hairs without being the least venerable. He dresses like an outrageously young man to the present moment, and laces and pads his old carca.s.s as if he were still handsome George Tufto of 1800. He is selfish, brutal, pa.s.sionate, and a glutton. It is curious to mark him at table, and see him heaving in his waistband, his little bloodshot eyes gloating over his meal. He swears considerably in his talk, and tells filthy garrison stories after dinner. On account of his rank and his services, people pay the bestarred and bet.i.tled old brute a sort of reverence; and he looks down upon you and me, and exhibits his contempt for us, with a stupid and artless candour which is quite amusing to watch. Perhaps, had he been bred to another profession, he would not have been the disreputable old creature he now is. But what other? He was fit for none; too incorrigibly idle and dull for any trade but this, in which he has distinguished himself publicly as a good and gallant officer, and privately for riding races, drinking port, fighting duels, and seducing women. He believes himself to be one of the most honourable and deserving beings in the world. About Waterloo Place, of afternoons, you may see him tottering in his varnished boots, and leering under the bonnets of the women who pa.s.s by. When he dies of apoplexy, THE TIMES will have a quarter of a column about his services and battles--four lines of print will be wanted to describe his t.i.tles and orders alone--and the earth will cover one of the wickedest and dullest old wretches that ever strutted over it.

Lest it should be imagined that I am of so obstinate a misanthropic nature as to be satisfied with nothing, I beg (for the comfort of the forces) to state my belief that the army is not composed of such persons as the above. He has only been selected for the study of civilians and the military, as a specimen of a prosperous and bloated Army Sn.o.b. No: when epaulets are not sold; when corporal punishments are abolished, and Corporal Smith has a chance to have his gallantry rewarded as well as that of Lieutenant Grig; when there is no such rank as ensign and lieutenant (the existence of which rank is an absurd anomaly, and an insult upon all the rest of the army), and should there be no war, I should not be disinclined to be a major-general myself.

I have a little sheaf of Army Sn.o.bs in my portfolio, but shall pause in my attack upon the forces till next week.

CHAPTER X--MILITARY Sn.o.bS

Walking in the Park yesterday with my young friend Tagg, and discoursing with him upon the next number of the Sn.o.b, at the very nick of time who should pa.s.s us but two very good specimens of Military Sn.o.bs,--the Sporting Military Sn.o.b, Capt. Rag, and the 'lurking' or raffish Military Sn.o.b, Ensign Famish. Indeed you are fully sure to meet them lounging on horseback, about five o'clock, under the trees by the Serpentine, examining critically the inmates of the flashy broughams which parade up and down 'the Lady's Mile.'

Tagg and Rag are very well acquainted, and so the former, with that candour inseparable from intimate friendship, told me his dear friend's history. Captain Rag is a small dapper north-country man. He went when quite a boy into a crack light cavalry regiment, and by the time he got his troop, had cheated all his brother officers so completely, selling them lame horses for sound ones, and winning their money by all manner of strange and ingenious contrivances, that his Colonel advised him to retire; which he did without much reluctance, accommodating a youngster, who had just entered the regiment, with a glandered charger at an uncommonly stiff figure.

He has since devoted his time to billiards, steeple-chasing, and the turf. His head-quarters are 'Rummer's,' in Conduit Street, where he keeps his kit; but he is ever on the move in the exercise of his vocation as a gentleman-jockey and gentleman-leg.

According to BELL'S LIFE, he is an invariable attendant at all races, and an actor in most of them. He rode the winner at Leamington; he was left for dead in a ditch a fortnight ago at Harrow; and yet there he was, last week, at the Croix de Berny, pale and determined as ever, astonishing the BADAUDS of Paris by the elegance of his seat and the neatness of his rig, as he took a preliminary gallop on that vicious brute 'The Disowned,' before starting for 'the French Grand National.'

He is a regular attendant at the Corner, where he compiles a limited but comfortable libretto. During season he rides often in the Park, mounted on a clever well-bred pony. He is to be seen escorting celebrated horsewoman, f.a.n.n.y Highflyer, or in confidential converse with Lord Thimblerig, the eminent handicapper.

He carefully avoids decent society, and would rather dine off a steak at the 'One Tun' with Sam Snaffle the jockey, Captain O'Rourke, and two or three other notorious turf robbers, than with the choicest company in London. He likes to announce at 'Rummer's' that he is going to run down and spend his Sat.u.r.day and Sunday in a friendly way with Hocus, the leg, at his little box near Epsom; where, if report speak true, many 'rummish plants' are concocted.

He does not play billiards often, and never in public: but when he does play, he always contrives to get hold of a good flat, and never leaves him till he has done him uncommonly brown. He has lately been playing a good deal with Famish.

When he makes his appearance in the drawing-room, which occasionally happens at a hunt-meeting or a race-ball, he enjoys himself extremely.

His young friend is Ensign Famish, who is not a little pleased to be seen with such a smart fellow as Rag, who bows to the best turf company in the Park. Rag lets Famish accompany him to Tattersall's, and sells him bargains in horse-flesh, and uses Famish's cab. That young gentleman's regiment is in India, and he is at home on sick leave. He recruits his health by being intoxicated every night, and fortifies his lungs, which are weak, by smoking cigars all day. The policemen about the Haymarket know the little creature, and the early cabmen salute him.

The closed doors of fish and lobster shops open after service, and vomit out little Famish, who is either tipsy and quarrelsome--when he wants to fight the cabmen; or drunk and helpless--when some kind friend (in yellow satin) takes care of him. All the neighbourhood, the cabmen, the police, the early potato-men, and the friends in yellow satin, know the young fellow, and he is called Little Bobby by some of the very worst reprobates in Europe.

His mother, Lady f.a.n.n.y Famish, believes devoutly that Robert is in London solely for the benefit of consulting the physician; is going to have him exchanged into a dragoon regiment, which doesn't go to that odious India; and has an idea that his chest is delicate, and that he takes gruel every evening, when he puts his feet in hot water. Her Ladyship resides at Cheltenham, and is of a serious turn.

Bobby frequents the 'Union Jack Club' of course; where he breakfasts on pale ale and devilled kidneys at three o'clock; where beardless young heroes of his own sort congregate, and make merry, and give each other dinners; where you may see half-a-dozen of young rakes of the fourth or fifth order lounging and smoking on the steps; where you behold Slapper's long-tailed leggy mare in the custody of a red-jacket until the Captain is primed for the Park with a gla.s.s of curacoa; and where you see Hobby, of the Highland Buffs, driving up with Dobby, of the Madras Fusiliers, in the great banging, swinging cab, which the latter hires from Rumble of Bond Street.

In fact, Military Sn.o.bs are of such number and variety, that a hundred weeks of PUNCH would not suffice to give an audience to them. There is, besides the disreputable old Military Sn.o.b, who has seen service, the respectable old Military Sn.o.b, who has seen none, and gives himself the most prodigious Martinet airs. There is the Medical-Military Sn.o.b, who is generally more outrageously military in his conversation than the greatest SABREUR in the army. There is the Heavy-Dragoon Sn.o.b, whom young ladies, admire with his great stupid pink face and yellow moustaches--a vacuous, solemn, foolish, but brave and honourable Sn.o.b.

There is the Amateur-Military Sn.o.b who writes Captain on his card because he is a Lieutenant in the Bungay Militia. There is the Lady-killing Military Sn.o.b; and more, who need not be named.

But let no man, we repeat, charge MR. PUNCH with disrespect for the Army in general--that gallant and judicious Army, every man of which, from F.M. the Duke of Wellington, &c., downwards--(with the exception of H.R.H. Field-Marshal Prince Albert, who, however, can hardly count as a military man,)--reads PUNCH in every quarter of the globe.

Let those civilians who sneer at the acquirements of the army read Sir Harry Smith's account of the Battle of Aliwal. A n.o.ble deed was never told in n.o.bler language. And you who doubt if chivalry exists, or the age of heroism has pa.s.sed by, think of Sir Henry Hardinge, with his son, 'dear little Arthur,' riding in front of the lines at Ferozeshah. I hope no English painter will endeavour to ill.u.s.trate that scene; for who is there to do justice to it? The history of the world contains no more brilliant and heroic picture. No, no; the men who perform these deeds with such brilliant valour, and describe them with such modest manliness--SUCH are not Sn.o.bs. Their country admires them, their Sovereign rewards them, and PUNCH, the universal railer, takes off his hat and, says, Heaven save them!

CHAPTER XI--ON CLERICAL Sn.o.bS

After Sn.o.bs-Military, Sn.o.bs-Clerical suggest themselves quite naturally, and it is clear that, with every respect for the cloth, yet having a regard for truth, humanity, and the British public, such a vast and influential cla.s.s must not be omitted from our notices of the great Sn.o.b world.

Of these Clerics there are some whose claim to sn.o.bbishness is undoubted, and yet it cannot be discussed here; for the same reason that PUNCH would not set up his show in a Cathedral, out of respect for the solemn service celebrated within. There are some places where he acknowledges himself not privileged to make a noise, and puts away his show, and silences his drum, and takes off his hat, and holds his peace.

And I know this, that if there are some Clerics who do wrong, there are straightway a thousand newspapers to haul up those unfortunates, and cry, 'Fie upon them, fie upon them!' while, though the press is always ready to yell and bellow excommunication against these stray delinquent parsons, it somehow takes very little count of the many good ones--of the tens of thousands of honest men, who lead Christian lives, who give to the poor generously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live and die in their duty, without ever a newspaper paragraph in their favour. My beloved friend and reader, I wish you and I could do the same: and let me whisper my belief, ENTRE NOUS that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

But you who have ever listened to village bells, or walked to church as children on sunny Sabbath mornings; you who have ever seen the parson's wife tending the poor man's bedside; or the town clergyman threading the dirty stairs of noxious alleys upon his business;--do not raise a shout when one falls away, or yell with the mob that howls after him.

Every man can do that. When old Father Noah was overtaken in his cups, there was only one of his sons that dared to make merry at his disaster, and he was not the most virtuous of the family. Let us too turn away silently, nor huzza like a parcel of school-boys, because some big young rebel suddenly starts up and whops the schoolmaster.

I confess, though, if I had by me the names of those seven or eight Irish bishops, the probates of whose wills were mentioned in last year's journals, and who died leaving behind them some two hundred thousand a-piece--I would like to put THEM up as patrons of my Clerical Sn.o.bs, and operate upon them as successfully as I see from the newspapers Mr.

Eisenberg, Chiropodist, has lately done upon 'His Grace the Reverend Lord Bishop of Tapioca.'

I confess that when those Right Reverend Prelates come up to the gates of Paradise with their probates of wills in their hands, I think that their chance is.... But the gates of Paradise is a far way to follow their Lordships; so let us trip down again lest awkward questions be asked there about our own favourite vices too.

And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice, that clergymen are an over-paid and luxurious body of men. When that eminent ascetic, the late Sydney Smith--(by the way, by what law of nature is it that so many Smiths in this world are called Sydney Smith?)--lauded the system of great prizes in the Church,--without which he said gentlemen would not be induced to follow the clerical profession, he admitted most pathetically that the clergy in general were by no means to be envied for their worldly prosperity. From reading the works of some modern writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was pa.s.sed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port-wine; and that his Reverence's fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of t.i.the pigs. Caricaturists delight to represent him so: round, short-necked, pimple-faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus. Whereas, if you take the real man, the poor fellow's flesh-pots are very scantily furnished with meat. He labours commonly for a wage that a tailor's foreman would despise: he has, too, such claims upon his dismal income as most philosophers would rather grumble to meet; many t.i.thes are levied upon HIS pocket, let it be remembered, by those who grudge him his means of livelihood. He has to dine with the Squire: and his wife must dress neatly; and he must 'look like a gentleman,' as they call it, and bring up six great hungry sons as such. Add to this, if he does his duty, he has such temptations to spend his money as no mortal man could withstand. Yes; you who can't resist purchasing a chest of cigars, because they are so good; or an ormolu clock at Howell and James's, because it is such a bargain; or a box at the Opera, because Lablache and Grisi are divine in the PURITANI; fancy how difficult it is for a parson to resist spending a half-crown when John Breakstone's family are without a loaf; or 'standing' a bottle of port for poor old Polly Rabbits, who has her thirteenth child; or treating himself to a suit of corduroys for little Bob Scarecrow, whose breeches are sadly out at elbows. Think of these temptations, brother moralists and philosophers, and don't be too hard on the parson.

But what is this? Instead of 'showing up' the parsons, are we indulging in maudlin praises of that monstrous black-coated race? O saintly Francis, lying at rest under the turf; O Jimmy, and Johnny, and w.i.l.l.y, friends of my youth! O n.o.ble and dear old Elias! how should he who knows you not respect you and your calling? May this pen never write a pennyworth again, if it ever casts ridicule upon either!