第45章

ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT

'WHAT is the use of Lord Rome's telescope?' my friend Panwiski exclaimed the other day.'It only enables you to see a few hundred thousands of miles farther.What were thought to be mere nebulae, turn out to be most perceivable starry systems; and beyond these, you see other nebulae, which a more powerful glass will show to be stars, again; and so they go on glittering and winking away into eternity.' With which my friend Pan, heaving a great sigh, as if confessing his inability to look Infinity in the face, sank back resigned, and swallowed a large bumper of claret.

I (who, like other great men, have but one idea), thought to myself, that as the stars are, so are the Snobs:--the more.you gaze upon those luminaries, the more you behold--now nebulously congregated--now faintly distinguishable--now brightly defined--until they twinkle off in endless blazes, and fade into the immeasurable darkness.I am but as a child playing on the sea-shore.

Some telescopic philosopher will arise one day, some great Snobonomer, to find the laws of the great science which we are now merely playing with, and to define, and settle, and classify that which is at present but vague theory, and loose though elegant assertion.

Yes: a single eye can but trace a very few and simple varieties of the enormous universe of Snobs.I sometimes think of appealing to the public, and calling together a congress of SAVANS, such as met at Southampton--each to bring his contributions and read his paper on the Great Subject.For what can a single poor few do, even with the subject at present in hand? English Snobs on the Continent--though they are a hundred thousand times less numerous than on their native island, yet even these few are too many.One can only fix a stray one here and there.The individuals are caught--the thousands escape.

I have noted down but three whom I have met with in my walk this morning through this pleasant marine city of Boulogne.

There is the English Raff Snob, that frequents ESTAMINETSand CABARETS; who is heard yelling, 'We won't go home till morning!' and startling the midnight echoes of quiet Continental towns with shrieks of English slang.The boozy unshorn wretch is seen hovering round quays as packets arrive, and tippling drains in inn bars where he gets credit.He talks French with slang familiarity: he and his like quite people the debt-prisons on the Continent.He plays pool at the billiard-houses, and may be seen engaged at cards and dominoes of forenoons.His signature is to be seen on countless bills of exchange:

it belonged to an honourable family once, very likely;for the English Raff most probably began by being a gentleman, and has a father over the water who is ashamed to hear his name.He has cheated the old 'governor'

repeatedly in better days, and swindled his sisters of their portions, and robbed his younger brothers.Now he is living on his wife's jointure: she is hidden away in some dismal garret, patching shabby finery and cobbling up old clothes for her children--the most miserable and slatternly of women.

Or sometimes the poor woman and her daughters go about timidly, giving lessons in English and music, or do embroidery and work under-hand, to purchase the means for the POT-AU-FEU; while Raff is swaggering on the quay, or tossing off glasses of cognac at the CAF?.The unfortunate creature has a child still every year, and her constant hypocrisy is to try and make her girls believe that their father is a respectable man, and to huddle him out of the way when the brute comes home drunk.

Those poor ruined souls get together and have a society of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch--those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear them.As Mrs.Raff, with her company of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs.Diddler, they talk about bygone times and the fine society they kept; and they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music-books; and while engaged in this sort of entertainment, in comes Captain Raff with his greasy hat on one side, and straightway the whole of the dismal room reeks with a mingled odour of smoke and spirits.

Has not everybody who has lived abroad met Captain Raff?