The Book of Snobs

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THE NATIONAL MIND IS AWAKENED TO THE SUBJECT OF SNOBS. The word Snob
has taken a place in our honest English vocabulary. We can't define it,
perhaps. We can't say what it is, any more than we can define wit, or
humour, or humbug; but we KNOW what it is. Some weeks since, happening
to have the felicity to sit next to a young lady at a hospitable table,
where poor old Jawkins was holding forth in a very absurd pompous
manner, I wrote upon the spotless damask 'S--B,' and called my
neighbour's attention to the little remark.

That young lady smiled. She knew it at once. Her mind straightway filled
up the two letters concealed by apostrophic reserve, and I read in her
assenting eyes that she knew Jawkins was a Snob. You seldom get them
to make use of the word as yet, it is true; but it is inconceivable how
pretty an expression their little smiling mouths assume when they speak
it out. If any young lady doubts, just let her go up to her own room,
look at herself steadily in the glass, and say 'Snob.' If she tries this
simple experiment, my life for it, she will smile, and own that the word
becomes her mouth amazingly. A pretty little round word, all composed of
soft letters, with a hiss at the beginning, just to make it piquant, as
it were.

Jawkins, meanwhile, went on blundering, and bragging and boring, quite
unconsciously. And so he will, no doubt, go on roaring and braying, to
the end of time or at least so long as people will hear him. You cannot
alter the nature of men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by laying
ever so many stripes on a donkey's back, you can't turn him into a
zebra.

But we can warn the neighbourhood that the person whom they and Jawkins
admire is an impostor. We apply the Snob test to him, and try whether he
is conceited and a quack, whether pompous and lacking humility--whether
uncharitable and proud of his narrow soul? How does he treat a great
man--how regard a small one? How does he comport himself in the presence
of His Grace the Duke; and how in that of Smith the tradesman?

And it seems to me that all English society is cursed by this
mammoniacal superstition; and that we are sneaking and bowing and
cringing on the one hand, or bullying and scorning on the other,
from the lowest to the highest. My wife speaks with great
circumspection--'proper pride,' she calls it--to our neighbour the
tradesman's lady: and she, I mean Mrs. Snob,--Eliza--would give one of
her eyes to go to Court, as her cousin, the Captain's wife, did. She,
again, is a good soul, but it costs her agonies to be obliged to confess
that we live in Upper Thompson Street, Somers Town. And though I believe
in her heart Mrs. Whiskerington is fonder of us than of her cousins,
the Smigsmags, you should hear how she goes on prattling about Lady
Smigsmag,--and 'I said to Sir John, my dear John;' and about the
Smigsmags' house and parties in Hyde Park Terrace.

Lady Smigsmag, when she meets Eliza,--who is a sort of a kind of a
species of a connection of the family, pokes out one finger, which my
wife is at liberty to embrace in the most cordial manner she can devise.
But oh, you should see her ladyship's behaviour on her first-chop
dinner-party days, when Lord and Lady Longears come!

I can bear it no longer--this diabolical invention of gentility which
kills natural kindliness and honest friendship. Proper pride, indeed!
Rank and precedence, forsooth! The table of ranks and degrees is a lie,
and should be flung into the fire. Organize rank and precedence! that
was well for the masters of ceremonies of former ages. Come forward,
some great marshal, and organize Equality in society, and your rod
shall swallow up all the juggling old court goldsticks. If this is
not gospel-truth--if the world does not tend to this--if
hereditary-great-man worship is not a humbug and an idolatry--let us
have the Stuarts back again, and crop the Free Press's ears in the
pillory.

If ever our cousins, the Smigsmags, asked me to meet Lord Longears,
I would like to take an opportunity after dinner and say, in the most
good-natured way in the world:--Sir, Fortune makes you a present of
a number of thousand pounds every year. The ineffable wisdom of our
ancestors has placed you as a chief and hereditary legislator over me.
Our admirable Constitution (the pride of Britons and envy of surrounding
nations) obliges me to receive you as my senator, superior, and
guardian. Your eldest son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in
Parliament; your younger sons, the De Brays, will kindly condescend
to be post-captains and lieutenants-colonels, and to represent us in
foreign courts or to take a good living when it falls convenient.
These prizes our admirable Constitution (the pride and envy of, &c.)
pronounces to be your due: without count of your dulness, your vices,
your selfishness; or your entire incapacity and folly. Dull as you may
be (and we have as good a right to assume that my lord is an ass, as the
other proposition, that he is an enlightened patriot);--dull, I say,
as you may be, no one will accuse you of such monstrous folly, as to
suppose that you are indifferent to the good luck which you possess, or
have any inclination to part with it. No--and patriots as we are, under
happier circumstances, Smith and I, I have no doubt, were we dukes
ourselves, would stand by our order.

We would submit good-naturedly to sit in a high place. We would
acquiesce in that admirable Constitution (pride and envy of, &c.)
which made us chiefs and the world our inferiors; we would not cavil
particularly at that notion of hereditary superiority which brought many
simple people cringing to our knees. May be we would rally round the
Corn-Laws; we would make a stand against the Reform Bill; we would die
rather than repeal the Acts against Catholics and Dissenters; we would,
by our noble system of class-legislation, bring Ireland to its present
admirable condition.

But Smith and I are not Earls as yet. 'We don't believe that it is
for the interest of Smith's army that De Bray should be a Colonel at
five-and-twenty, of Smith's diplomatic relations that Lord Longears
should go Ambassador to Constantinople,--of our politics, that Longears
should put his hereditary foot into them.

This bowing and cringing Smith believes to be the act of Snobs; and he
will do all in his might and main to be a Snob and to submit to Snobs
no longer. To Longears he says, 'We can't help seeing, Longears, that
we are as good as you. We can spell even better; can think quite as
rightly; we will not have you for our master, or black your shoes any
more. Your footmen do it, but they are paid; and the fellow who comes to
get a list of the company when you give a banquet or a dancing breakfast
at Longueoreille House, gets money from the newspapers for performing
that service. But for us, thank you for nothing, Longears my boy, and we
don't wish to pay you any more than we owe. We will take off our hats to
Wellington because he is Wellington; but to you--who are you?'

I am sick of COURT CIRCULARS. I loathe HAUT-TON intelligence. I believe
such words as Fashionable, Exclusive, Aristocratic, and the like, to
be wicked, unchristian epithets, that ought to be banished from honest
vocabularies. A Court system that sends men of genius to the second
table, I hold to be a Snobbish system. A society that sets up to be
polite, and ignores Arts and Letters, I hold to be a Snobbish society.
You, who despise your neighbour, are a Snob; you, who forget your own
friends, meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, are a Snob;
you, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are
a Snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your
wealth.

To laugh at such is MR. PUNCH'S business. May he laugh honestly, hit
no foul blow, and tell the truth when at his very broadest grin--never
forgetting that if Fun is good, Truth is still better, and Love best of
all.