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.