第65章
SNOBS AND MARRIAGE
Everybody of the middle rank who walks through this life with a sympathy for his companions on the same journey--at any rate, every man who has been jostling in the world for some three or four lustres--must make no end of melancholy reflections upon the fate of those victims whom Society, that is, Snobbishness, is immolating every day.With love and simplicity and natural kindness Snobbishness is perpetually at war.People dare not be happy for fear of Snobs.People dare not love for fear of Snobs.People pine away lonely under the tyranny of Snobs.Honest kindly hearts dry up and die.Gallant generous lads, blooming with hearty youth, swell into bloated old-bachelorhood, and burst and tumble over.
Tender girls wither into shrunken decay, and perish solitary, from whom Snobbishness has cut off the common claim to happiness and affection with which Nature endowed us all.My heart grows sad as I see the blundering tyrant's handiwork.As I behold it I swell with cheap rage, and glow with fury against the Snob.
Come down, I say, thou skulking dulness! Come down, thou stupid bully, and give up thy brutal ghost! And I arm myself with the sword and spear, and taking leave of my family, go forth to do battle with that hideous ogre and giant, that brutal despot in Snob Castle, who holds so many gentle hearts in torture and thrall.
When PUNCH is king, I declare there shall be no such thing as old maids and old bachelors.The Reverend Mr.
Malthus shall be burned annually, instead of Guy Fawkes.
Those who don't marry shall go into the workhouse.It shall be a sin for the poorest not to have a pretty girl to love him.
The above reflections came to mind after taking a walk with an old comrade, Jack Spiggot by name, who is just passing into the state of old-bachelorhood, after the manly and blooming youth in which I remember him.Jack was one of the handsomest fellows in England when we entered together in the Highland Buffs; but I quitted the Cuttykilts early, and lost sight of him for many years.
Ah! how changed he is from those days! He wears a waistband now, and has begun to dye his whiskers.His cheeks, which were red, are now mottled; his eyes, once so bright and steadfast, are the colour of peeled plovers' eggs.
'Are you married, Jack?' says I, remembering how consumedly in love he was with his cousin Letty Lovelace, when the Cuttykilts were quartered at Strathbungo some twenty years ago.
'Married? no,' says he.'Not money enough.Hard enough to keep myself, much more a family, on five hundred a year.Come to Dickinson's; there's some of the best Madeira in London there, my boy.' So we went and talked over old times.The bill for dinner and wine consumed was prodigious, and the quantity of brandy-and-water that Jack took showed what a regular boozer he was.'A guinea or two guineas.What the devil do I care what I spend for my dinner?' says he.
'And Letty Lovelace?' says I.
Jack's countenance fell.However, he burst into a loud laugh presently.'Letty Lovelace!' says he.'She's Letty Lovelace still; but Gad, such a wizened old woman!
She's as thin as a thread-paper; (you remember what a figure she had:) her nose has got red, and her teeth blue.She's always ill; always quarrelling with the rest of the family; always psalm-singing, and always taking pills.Gad, I had a rare escape THERE.Push round the grog, old boy.'