第17章

GREAT CITY SNOBS

There is no disguising the fact that this series of papers is making a prodigious sensation among all classes 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 Scrapers 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 Scraper, Esq.'What CAN be your antipathy to Baker Street?' asks some fair remonstrant, evidently writing from that quarter.

'Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs?' says one 'estimable correspondent: 'are not the snobbish Snobs to have their turn?'--'Pitch into the University Snobs!'

writes an indignant gentleman (who spelt ELEGANT with two I's)--'Show up the Clerical Snob,' 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 Snobs?'

No; far from it.If his lordship's boots are dirty, it is because he is Lord B., and walks.There is nothing snobbish in having only one pair of boots, or a favourite pair; and certainly nothing snobbish in desiring to have them cleaned.Lord B., in so doing, performed a perfectly natural and gentlemanlike action; for which Iam so pleased with him that I have had him designed in a favourable and elegant attitude, 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 Snobs, before one is expressed upon paper.

Great City Snobs are the next in the hierarchy, and ought to be considered.But here is a difficulty.The great City Snob 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 nobility there is little hope of seeing him at home.In a great City Snob 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 Snob) at my Lord N----'s SOIREES, or the lectures of the London Institution; of a third (a City Snob 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 Snob's doors are, for the most part, closed to him; and hence all that one knows of this great class is mostly from hearsay.