In England Dinner-giving Snobs occupy a very important place in society,
and the task of describing them is tremendous. There was a time in my
life when the consciousness of having eaten a man's salt rendered me
dumb regarding his demerits, and I thought it a wicked act and a breach
of hospitality to speak ill of him.
But why should a saddle-of-mutton blind you, or a turbot and
lobster-sauce shut your mouth for ever? With advancing age, men see
their duties more clearly. I am not to be hoodwinked any longer by a
slice of venison, be it ever so fat; and as for being dumb on account of
turbot and lobster-sauce----of course I am; good manners ordain that I
should be so, until I have swallowed the compound--but not afterwards;
directly the victuals are discussed, and John takes away the plate,
my tongue begins to wag. Does not yours, if you have a pleasant
neighbour?--a lovely creature, say, of some five-and-thirty, whose
daughters have not yet quite come out--they are the best talkers. As for
your young misses, they are only put about the table to look at--like
the flowers in the centre-piece. Their blushing youth and natural
modesty preclude them from easy, confidential, conversational ABANDON
which forms the delight of the intercourse with their dear mothers. It
is to these, if he would prosper in his profession, that the Dining-out
Snob should address himself. Suppose you sit next to one of these, how
pleasant it is, in the intervals of the banquet, actually to abuse the
victuals and the giver of the entertainment! It's twice as PIQUANT to
make fun of a man under his very nose.
'What IS a Dinner-giving Snob?' some innocent youth, who is not REPANDU
in the world, may ask--or some simple reader who has not the benefits of
London experience.
My dear sir, I will show you--not all, for that is impossible--but
several kinds of Dinner-giving Snobs. For instance, suppose you, in the
middle rank of life, accustomed to Mutton, roast on Tuesday, cold
on Wednesday, hashed on Thursday, &c., with small means and a small
establishment, choose to waste the former and set the latter topsy-turvy
by giving entertainments unnaturally costly--you come into the
Dinner-giving Snob class at once. Suppose you get in cheap-made
dishes from the pastrycook's, and hire a couple of greengrocers, or
carpet-beaters, to figure as footmen, dismissing honest Molly, who waits
on common days, and bedizening your table (ordinarily ornamented with
willow-pattern crockery) with twopenny-halfpenny Birmingham plate.
Suppose you pretend to be richer and grander than you ought to be--you
are a Dinner-giving Snob. And oh, I tremble to think how many and many a
one will read this!
A man who entertains in this way--and, alas, how few do not!--is like
a fellow who would borrow his neighbour's coat to make a show in, or a
lady who flaunts in the diamonds from next door--a humbug, in a word,
and amongst the Snobs he must be set down.
A man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to ask Lords,
Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of
his hospitality towards his own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob. My
dear friend, Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at
a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a
three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull
as--well, we will not particularise. Tufthunt never has a dinner now but
you see this solemn old toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs.
Tufthunt--Tufthunt is a Dinner-giving Snob.
Old Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney, the East Indian Director, old
Cutler, the Surgeon, &c.,--that society of old fogies, in fine, who give
each other dinners round and round, and dine for the mere purpose of
guttling--these, again, are Dinner-giving Snobs.
Again, my friend Lady MacScrew, who has three grenadier flunkeys in lace
round the table, and serves up a scrag-of-mutton on silver, and dribbles
you out bad sherry and port by thimblefuls, is a Dinner-giving Snob of
the other sort; and I confess, for my part, I would rather dine with old
Livermore or old Soy than with her Ladyship.
Stinginess is snobbish. Ostentation is snobbish. Too great profusion
is snobbish. Tuft-hunting is snobbish. But I own there are people more
snobbish than all those whose defects are above mentioned: viz., those
individuals who can, and don't give dinners at all. The man without
hospitality shall never sit SUB IISDEM TRABIBUS with ME. Let the sordid
wretch go mumble his bone alone!
What, again, is true hospitality? Alas, my dear friends and brother
Snobs! how little do we meet of it after all! Are the motives PURE which
induce your friends to ask you to dinner? This has often come across me.
Does your entertainer want something from you? For instance, I am not of
a suspicious turn; but it IS a fact that when Hookey is bringing out a
new work, he asks the critics all round to dinner; that when Walker has
got his picture ready for the Exhibition, he somehow grows exceedingly
hospitable, and has his friends of the press to a quiet cutlet and a
glass of Sillery. Old Hunks, the miser, who died lately (leaving his
money to his housekeeper) lived many years on the fat of the land, by
simply taking down, at all his friends', the names and Christian names
OF ALL THE CHILDREN. But though you may have your own opinion about
the hospitality of your acquaintances; and though men who ask you from
sordid motives are most decidedly Dinner-giving Snobs, it is best not
to inquire into their motives too keenly. Be not too curious about the
mouth of a gift-horse. After all, a man does not intend to insult you by
asking you to dinner.
Though, for that matter, I know some characters about town who actually
consider themselves injured and insulted if the dinner or the company
is not to their liking. There is Guttleton, who dines at home off a
shilling's-worth of beef from the cookshop, but if he is asked to dine
at a house where there are not pease at the end of May, or cucumbers in
March along with the turbot, thinks himself insulted by being invited.
'Good Ged!' says he, 'what the deuce do the Forkers mean by asking ME
to a family dinner? I can get mutton at home;' or 'What infernal
impertinence it is of the Spooners to get ENTREES from the pastrycook's,
and fancy that I am to be deceived with their stories about their French
cook!' Then, again, there is Jack Puddington--I saw that honest fellow
t'other day quite in a rage, because, as chance would have it, Sir
John Carver asked him to meet the very same party he had met at Colonel
Cramley's the day before, and he had not got up a new set of stories
to entertain them. Poor Dinner-giving Snobs! you don't know what small
thanks you get for all your pains and money! How we Dining-out Snobs
sneer at your cookery, and pooh-pooh your old hock, and are incredulous
about your four-and-six-penny champagne, and know that the side-dishes
of to-day are RECHAUFFES from the dinner of yesterday, and mark how
certain dishes are whisked off the table untasted, so that they may
figure at the banquet tomorrow. Whenever, for my part, I see the head
man particularly anxious to ESCAMOTER a fricandeau or a blanc-mange, I
always call out, and insist upon massacring it with a spoon. All this
sort of conduct makes one popular with the Dinner-giving Snob. One
friend of mine, I know, has made a prodigious sensation in good society,
by announcing apropos of certain dishes when offered to him, that he
never eats aspic except at Lord Tittup's, and that Lady Jimmy's CHEF is
the only man in London who knows how to dress--FILET EN SERPENTEAU--or
SUPREME DE VOLAILLE AUX TRUFFES.