第63章

SNOBBIUM GATHERUM

WHEN I see the great effect which these papers are producing on an intelligent public, I have a strong hope that before long we shall have a regular Snob department in the newspapers, just as we have the Police Courts and the Court News at present.When a flagrant case of bone-crushing or Poor-law abuse occurs in the world, who so eloquent as THE TIMES to point it out? When a gross instance of Snobbishness happens, why should not the indignant journalist call the public attention to that delinquency too?

How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl of Mangelwurzel and his brother be examined in the Snobbish point of view? Let alone the hectoring, the bullying, the vapouring, the bad grammar, the mutual recriminations, lie-givings, challenges, retractations, which abound in the fraternal dispute--put out of the question these points as concerning the individual nobleman and his relative, with whose personal affairs we have nothing to do--and consider how intimately corrupt, how habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish in a word, a whole county must be which can find no better chiefs or leaders than these two gentlemen.'We don't want,' the great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems to say, 'that a man should be able to write good grammar;or that he should keep a Christian tongue in his head; or that he should have the commonest decency of temper, or even a fair share of good sense, in order to represent us in Parliament.

All we require is, that a man should be recommended to us by the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire.And all that we require of the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire is that he should have fifty thousand a year and hunt the country.'

O you pride of all Snobland! O you crawling, truckling, self-confessed lackeys and parasites!

But this is growing too savage: don't let us forget our usual amenity, and that tone of playfulness and sentiment with which the beloved reader and writer have pursued their mutual reflections hitherto.Well, Snobbishness pervades the little Social Farce as well as the great State Comedy; and the self-same moral is tacked to either.

There was, for instance, an account in the papers of a young lady who, misled by a fortune-teller, actually went part of the way to India (as far as Bagnigge Wells, Ithink,) in search of a husband who was promised her there.Do you suppose this poor deluded little soul would have left her shop for a man below her in rank, or for anything but a darling of a Captain in epaulets and a red coat.It was her Snobbish sentiment that misled her, and made her vanities a prey to the swindling fortune-teller.

Case 2 was that of Mademoiselle de Saugrenue, 'the interesting young Frenchwoman with a profusion of jetty ringlets,' who lived for nothing at a boardinghouse at Gosport, was then conveyed to Fareham gratis: and being there, and lying on the bed of the good old lady her entertainer, the dear girl took occasion to rip open the mattress, and steal a cash-box, with which she fled to London.How would you account for the prodigious benevolence exercised towards the interesting young French lady? Was it her jetty ringlets or her charming face?--Bah! Do ladies love others for having faces and black hair?--she said SHE WAS A RELATION OF de Saugrenue:

talked of her ladyship her aunt, and of herself as a De Saugrenue.The honest boarding-house people were at her feet at once.Good, honest, simple, lord-loving children of Snobland.

Finally, there was the case of 'the Right Honourable Mr.

Vernon,' at York.The Right Honourable was the son of a nobleman, and practised on an old lady.He procured from her dinners, money, wearing-apparel, spoons, implicit credence, and an entire refit of linen.Then he cast his nets over a family of father, mother, and daughters, one of whom he proposed to marry.The father lent him money, the mother made jams and pickles for him, the daughters vied with each other in cooking dinners for the Right Honourable--and what was the end? One day the traitor fled, with a teapot and a basketful of cold victuals.It was the 'Right Honourable' which baited the hook which gorged all these greedy, simple Snobs.Would they have been taken in by a commoner? What old lady is there, my dear sir, who would take in you and me, were we ever so ill to do, and comfort us, and clothe us, and give us her money, and her silver forks? Alas and alas! what mortal man that speaks the truth can hope for such a landlady?

And yet, all these instances of fond and credulous Snobbishness have occurred in the same week's paper, with who knows how many score more?