第14章

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 Scrapers.The General was the greatest general: his eldest son, Scraper Buckram Scraper, 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 institutions--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 Scrapers blazing everywhere.I pity Miss Emily Scraper--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 Scraper'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 Snob, 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 goddess's unladylike propensity for field-sports)--that she too was a Snob!

A Snob 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 Scraper--a Chancery barrister without any practice--the most placid, polite, and genteel of Snobs, 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.