Now that September has come, and all our Parliamentary duties are over,
perhaps no class of Snobs are in such high feather as the Continental
Snobs. I watch these daily as they commence their migrations from the
beach at Folkestone. I see shoals of them depart (not perhaps without
an innate longing too to quit the Island along with those happy Snobs).
Farewell, dear friends, I say: you little know that the individual
who regards you from the beach is your friend and historiographer and
brother.
I went to-day to see our excellent friend Snooks, on board the 'Queen of
the French;' many scores of Snobs were there, on the deck of that fine
ship, marching forth in their pride and bravery. They will be at Ostend
in four hours; they will inundate the Continent next week; they will
carry into far lands the famous image of the British Snob. I shall
not see them--but am with them in spirit: and indeed there is hardly a
country in the known and civilized world in which these eyes have not
beheld them.
I have seen Snobs, in pink coats and hunting-boots, scouring over the
Campagna of Rome; and have heard their oaths and their well-known slang
in the galleries of the Vatican, 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.'
Look at the Marquis of Carabas and his two carriages. My Lady
Marchioness comes on board, looks round with that happy air of mingled
terror and impertinence which distinguishes her ladyship, and rushes to
her carriage, for it is impossible that she should mingle with the
other Snobs on deck. There she sits, and will be ill in private. The
strawberry leaves on her chariot-panels are engraved on her ladyship's
heart. If she were going to heaven instead of to Ostend, I rather think
she would expect to have DES PLACES RESERVEES for her, and would send to
order the best rooms. A courier, with his money-bag of office round his
shoulders--a huge scowling footman, whose dark pepper-and-salt livery
glistens with the heraldic insignia of the Carabases--a brazen-looking,
tawdry French FEMME-DE-CHAMBRE (none but a female pen can do justice
to that wonderful tawdry toilette of the lady's-maid EN VOYAGE)--and
a miserable DAME DE COMPAGNIE, are ministering to the wants of her
ladyship and her King Charles's spaniel. They are rushing to and fro
with eau-de-Cologne, pocket-handkerchiefs, which are all fringe and
cipher, 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!
Pompey Hicks is giving elaborate directions to his servant, and asking
loudly, 'Davis, where's the dwessing-case?' and 'Davis, you'd best
take the pistol-case into the cabin.' Little Pompey travels with a
dressing-case, and without a beard: whom he is going to shoot with his
pistols, who on earth can tell? and what he is to do with his servant
but wait upon him, I am at a loss to conjecture.
Look at honest Nathan Houndsditch and his lady, and their little son.
What a noble air of blazing contentment illuminates the features of
those Snobs of Eastern race! What a toilette Houndsditch's is! What
rings and chains, what gold-headed canes and diamonds, what a tuft the
rogue has 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 figure 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 find
that the dissolute old miser has left money behind him. See! he is up to
old Carabas already! I told you he would.
Yonder you see the old Lady Mary MacScrew, and those middle-aged young
women her daughters; they are going to cheapen and haggle in Belgium and
up the Rhine until they meet with a boarding-house where they can live
upon less board-wages than her ladyship pays her footmen. But she will
exact and receive considerable respect from the British Snobs located in
the watering place which she selects for her summer residence, being the
daughter of the Earl of Haggistoun. That broad-shouldered buck, with the
great whiskers and the cleaned white kid-gloves, is Mr. Phelim Clancy of
Poldoodystown: he calls himself Mr. De Clancy; he endeavours to disguise
his native brogue with the richest superposition of English; and if you
play at billiards or ECARTE with him, the chances are that you will win
the first game, and he the seven or eight games ensuing.
That overgrown lady with the four daughters, and the young dandy from
the University, her son, is Mrs. Kewsy, the eminent barrister's lady,
who would rather die than not be in the fashion. She has the 'Peerage'
in her carpet-bag, you may be sure; but she is altogether cut out by
Mrs. Quod, the attorney's wife, whose carriage, with the apparatus of
rumbles, dickeys, and imperials, scarcely yields in splendour to the
Marquis of Carabas's own travelling-chariot, and whose courier has even
bigger whiskers and a larger morocco money-bag than the Marquis's own
travelling gentleman. Remark her well: she is talking to Mr. Spout, the
new Member for Jawborough, who is going out to inspect the operations
of the Zollverein, and will put some very severe questions to Lord
Palmerston next session upon England and her relations with the
Prussian-blue trade, the Naples-soap trade, the German-tinder trade, &c.
Spout will patronize King Leopold at Brussels; will write letters from
abroad to the JAWBOROUGH INDEPENDENT; and in his quality of MEMBER DU
PARLIAMONG BRITANNIQUE, will expect to be invited to a family dinner
with every sovereign whose dominions he honours with a visit during his
tour.
The next person is--but hark! the bell for shore is ringing, and,
shaking Snook's hand cordially, we rush on to the pier, waving him a
farewell as the noble black ship cuts keenly through the sunny azure
waters, bearing away that cargo of Snobs outward bound.