第24章

ON CLERICAL SNOBS AND SNOBBISHNESS

'Dear Mr.Snob,' an amiable young correspondent writes, who signs himself Snobling, 'ought the clergyman who, at the request of a noble Duke, lately interrupted a marriage ceremony between two persons perfectly authorised to marry, to be ranked or not among the Clerical Snobs?'

This, my dear young friend, is not a fair question.One of the illustrated weekly papers has already seized hold of the clergyman, and blackened him most unmercifully, by representing him in his cassock performing the marriage service.Let that be sufficient punishment; and, if you please, do not press the query.

It is very likely that if Miss Smith had come with a licence to marry Jones, the parson in question, not seeing old Smith present, would have sent off the beadle in a cab to let the old gentleman know what was going on;and would have delayed the service until the arrival of Smith senior.He very likely thinks it his duty to ask all marriageable young ladies, who come without their papa, why their parent is absent; and, no doubt, ALWAYSsends off the beadle for that missing governor.

Or, it is very possible that the Duke of Coeurdelion was Mr.What-d'ye-call'im's most intimate friend, and has often said to him, 'What-d'ye-call'im, my boy, my daughter must never marry the Capting.If ever they try at your church, I beseech you, considering the terms of intimacy on which we are, to send off Rattan in a hack cab to fetch me.'

In either of which cases, you see, dear Snobling, that though the parson would not have been authorised, yet be might have been excused for interfering.He has no more right to stop my marriage than to stop my dinner, to both of which, as a free-born Briton, I am entitled by law, if I can pay for them.But, consider pastoral solicitude, a deep sense of the duties of his office, and pardon this inconvenient, but genuine zeal.

But if the clergyman did in the Duke's case what be would NOT do in Smith's; if be has no more acquaintance with the Coeurdelion family than I have with the Royal and Serene House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha,--THEN, I confess, my dear Snobling, your question might elicit a disagreeable reply, and one which I respectfully decline to give.Iwonder what Sir George Tufto would say, if a sentry left his post because a noble lord (not the least connected with the service) begged the sentinel not to do his duty!

Alas! that the beadle who canes little boys and drives them out, cannot drive worldliness out too; what is worldliness but snobbishness? When, for instance, I read in the newspapers that the Right Reverend the Lord Charles James administered the rite of confirmation to a PARTY OF THE JUVENILE NOBILITY at the Chapel Royal,--as if the Chapel Royal were a sort of ecclesiastical Almack's, and young people were to get ready for the next world in little exclusive genteel knots of the aristocracy, who were not to be disturbed in their journey thither by the company of the vulgar:--when Iread such a paragraph as that (and one or two such generally appear during the present fashionable season), it seems to me to be the most odious, mean and disgusting part of that odious, mean, and disgusting publication, the COURT CIRCULAR; and that snobbishness is therein carried to quite an awful pitch.What, gentlemen, can't we even in the Church acknowledge a republic? There, at least, the Heralds' College itself might allow that we all of us have the same pedigree, and are direct descendants of Eve and Adam, whose inheritance is divided amongst us.

I hereby call upon all Dukes, Earls, Baronets, and other potentates, not to lend themselves to this shameful scandal and error, and beseech all Bishops who read this publication to take the matter into consideration, and to protest against the continuance of the practice, and to declare, 'We WON'T confirm or christen Lord Tomnoddy, or Sir Carnaby Jenks, to the exclusion of any other young Christian;' the which declaration if their Lordships are induced to make, a great LAPIS OFFENSIONIS will be removed, and the Snob Papers will not have been written in vain.