The Book of Snobs

and under the shadowy arches of the Colosseum. I have met a Snob on a dromedary in the desert, and picnicking under the Pyramid of Cheops. I like to think how many gallant Brit­ish Snobs there are, at this minute of writing, pushing their heads out of every window in the courtyard of “Meurice“s” in the Rue de Rivoli; or roaring out, “Garsong, du pang,” “Gar­song, du Yang;” or swaggering down the Toledo at Naples; or even how many will be on the look-out for Snooks on Os­tend Pier, – for Snooks, and the rest of the Snobs on board the “Queen of the French.”

and popping mysterious cushions behind and before, and in every available corner of the carriage.

The little Marquis, her husband is walking about the deck in a bewildered manner, with a lean daughter on each arm: the carroty-tufted hope of the family is already smoking on the foredeck in a travelling costume checked all over, and in little lacquer-tip pod jean boots, and a shirt em­broidered with pink boa-constrictors. “What is it that gives travelling Snobs such a marvellous propensity to rush into a costume? Why should a man not travel in a coat, &c.? but think proper to dress himself like a harlequin in mourning? See, even young Aldermanbury, the tallow-merchant, who has just stepped on board, has got a travelling-dress gaping all over with pockets; and little Tom Tapeworm, the lawyer“s clerk out of the City, who has but three weeks” leave, turns out in gaiters and a bran-new shooting-jacket, and must let the moustaches grow on his little sniffy upper lip, forsooth!

got to his chin (the rogue! he will never spare himself any cheap enjoyment!) Little Houndsditch has a little cane with a gilt head and little mosaic ornaments – altogether an extra air. As for the lady, she is all the colours of the rainbow! she has a pink parasol, with a white lining, and a yellow bonnet, and an emerald green shawl, and a shot-silk pelisse; and drab boots and rhubarb-coloured gloves; and parti-coloured glass buttons, expanding from the size of a fourpenny-piece to a crown, glitter and twiddle all down the front of her gor­geous costume. I have said before, I like to look at “the Peo­ples” on their gala days, they are so picturesquely and outra­geously splendid and happy.

Yonder comes Captain Bull; spick and span, tight and trim; who travels for four or six months every year of his life; who does not commit himself by luxury of raiment or insolence of demeanour, but I think is as great a Snob as any man on board. Bull passes the season in London, sponging for dinners, and sleeping in a garret near his Club. Abroad, he has been ev­erywhere; he knows the best wine at every inn in every capi­tal in Europe; lives with the best English company there; has seen every palace and picture-gallery from Madrid to Stock­holm; speaks an abominable little jargon of half-a-dozen lan­guages – and knows nothing – nothing. Bull hunts tufts on the Continent, and is a sort of amateur courier. He will scrape acquaintance with old Carabas before they make Ostend; and will remind his lordship that he met him at Vienna twen­ty years ago, or gave him a glass of Schnapps up the Righi. We have said Bull knows nothing: he knows the birth, arms, and pedigree of all the peerage, has poked his little eyes into

every one of the carriages on board – their panels noted and their crests surveyed; he knows all the Continental sto­ries of English scandal – how Count Towrowski ran off with Miss Baggs at Naples – how VERY thick Lady Smigsmag was with young Cornichon of the French Legation at Florence – the exact amount which Jack Deuceace won of Bob Green­goose at Baden – what it is that made the Staggs settle on the Continent: the sum for which the O“Goggarty estates are mortgaged, &c. If he can“t catch a lord he will hook on to a baronet, or else the old wretch will catch hold of some beardless young stripling of fashion, and show him “life” in various and amiable and inaccessible quarters. Faugh! the old brute! If he has every one of the vices of the most boisterous youth, at least he is comforted by having no conscience. He is utterly stupid, but of a jovial turn, He believes himself to be quite a respectable member of society: but perhaps the only good action he ever did in his life is the involuntary one of giving an example to be avoided, and showing what an odi­ous thing in the social picture is that fi gure of the debauched old man who passes through life rather a decorous Silenus, and dies some day in his garret, alone, unrepenting, and un­noted, save by his astonished heirs, who fi nd that the disso­lute old miser has left money behind him. See! he is up to old Carabas already! I told you he would.

About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is commonly no noise, no bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction. We are better than all the world; we don“t question the opin­ion at all; it“s an axiom. And when a Frenchman bellows out, “LA FRANCE, MONSIEUR, LA FRANCE EST A LA TETE DU MONDE CIVILISE!” we laugh good-naturedly at the frantic poor devil. WE are the fi rst chop of the world: we know the fact so well in our secret hearts that a claim set up elsewhere is simply ludicrous. My dear brother reader, say, as a man of hon-

our, if you are not of this opinion? Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don“t – you gallant British Snob – you know you don“t: no more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble ser­vant, brother.

natured to the King of Holland, or condescending to inspect the Prussian reviews. When Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter of a million of pairs of moustaches to his breakfast every morning, we took him off to Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight hundred Britons a-piece, with an air as much as to say, – “There, my boy, look at THAT. Those are ENGLISHMEN, those are, and your master when­ever you please,” as the nursery song says. The British Snob is long, long past scepticism, and can afford to laugh quite good­humouredly at those conceited Yankees, or besotted little Frenchmen, who set up as models of mankind. THEY forsooth!