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 I
am 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.
In other countries of Europe, the Banking Snob is more
expansive and communicative than with us, and receives
all the world into his circle. For instance, everybody
knows the princely hospitalities of the Scharlaschild
family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort, &c.. They entertain
all the world, even the poor, at their FETES. Prince
Polonia, at Rome, and his brother, the Duke of Strachino,
are also remarkable for their hospitalities. I like the
spirit of the first-named nobleman. Titles not costing
much in the Roman territory, he has had the head clerk of
the banking-house made a Marquis, and his Lordship will
screw a BAJOCCO out of you in exchange as dexterously as
any commoner could do. It is a comfort to be able to
gratify such grandees with a farthing or two; it makes
the poorest man feel that he can do good. 'The Polonias
have intermarried with the greatest and most ancient
families of Rome, and you see their heraldic cognizance
(a mushroom or on an azure field) quartered in a hundred
places in the city with the arms of the Colonnas and
Dorias.
City Snobs have the same mania for aristocratic
marriages. I like to see such. I am of a savage and
envious nature,--I like to see these two humbugs which,
dividing, as they do, the social empire of this kingdom
between them, hate each other naturally, making truce and
uniting, for the sordid interests of either. I like to
see an old aristocrat, swelling with pride of race, the
descendant of illustrious Norman robbers, whose blood has
been pure for centuries, and who looks down upon common
Englishmen as a free American does on a nigger,--I like
to see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his head and
swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of
humiliation poured out by Pump and Aldgate's butler.
'Pump and Aldgate, says he, 'your grandfather was a
bricklayer, and his hod is still kept in the bank. Your
pedigree begins in a workhouse; mine can be dated from
all the royal palaces of Europe. I came over with the
Conqueror; I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando
Furioso, Philip Augustus, Peter the Cruel, and Frederick
Barbarossa. I quarter the Royal Arms of Brentford in my
coat. I despise you, but I want money; and I will sell
you my beloved daughter, Blanche Stiffneck, for a hundred
thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages. Let your son
marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche Pump and
Aldgate.'
Old Pump and Aldgate clutches at the bargain. And a
comfortable thing it is to think that birth can be bought
for money. So you learn to value it. Why should we, who
don't possess it, set a higher store on it than those who
do? Perhaps the best use of that book, the 'Peerage,' is
to look down the list, and see how many have bought and
sold birth,--how poor sprigs of nobility somehow sell
themselves to rich City Snobs' daughters, how rich City
Snobs purchase noble ladies--and so to admire the double
baseness of the bargain.
Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article and pays the money.
The sale of the girl's person is blessed by a Bishop at
St. George's, Hanover Square, and next year you read, 'At
Roehampton, on Saturday, the Lady Blanche Pump, of a son
and heir.
After this interesting event, some old acquaintance, who
saw young Pump in the parlour at the bank in the City,
said to him, familiarly, 'How's your wife, Pump, my boy?'
Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted, and,
after a pause, said, 'LADY BLANCHE PUMP' is pretty well,
I thank you.'
'OH, I THOUGHT SHE WAS YOUR WIFE!' said the familiar
brute, Snooks, wishing him good-bye; and ten minutes
after, the story was all over the Stock Exchange, where
it is told, when young Pump appears, to this very day.
We can imagine the weary life this poor Pump, this martyr
to Mammon, is compelled to undergo. Fancy the domestic
enjoyments of a man who has a wife who scorns him; who
cannot see his own friends in his own house; who having
deserted the middle rank of life, is not yet admitted to
the higher; but who is resigned to rebuffs and delay and
humiliation, contented to think that his son will be more
fortunate.
It used to be the custom of some very old-fashioned clubs
in this city, when a gentleman asked for change a guinea,
always to bring it to him in WASHED SILVER: that which
had passed immediately out of the hands of vulgar being
considered 'as too coarse to soil a gentleman's fingers.'
So, when the City Snob's money has been washed during a
generation or so; has been washed into estates, and
woods, and castles, and town-mansions, it is allowed to
pass current as real aristocratic coin. Old Pump sweeps
a shop, runs of messages, becomes a confidential clerk
and partner. Pump the Second becomes chief of the house,
spins more and more money, marries his son to an Earl's
daughter. Pump Tertius goes on with the bank; but his
chief business in life is to become the father of Pump
Quartus, who comes out a full-blown aristocrat, and takes
his seat as Baron Pumpington, and his race rules
hereditarily over this nation of Snobs.
