The Book of Snobs | Page 4

people
has looked abroad-- for an Ecclesiastical Champion and Guardian. A
body of Prelates and Gentlemen have therefore stepped forward in this
our hour of danger, and determined on establishing the BEADLE
newspaper,' &c. &c. One or other of these points at least is
incontrovertible: the public wants a thing, therefore it is supplied with it;
or the public is supplied with a thing, therefore it wants it.
I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work
to do--a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; a chasm
to leap into, like Curtius, horse and foot; a Great Social Evil to
Discover and to Remedy. That Conviction Has Pursued me for Years.
It has Dogged me in the Busy Street; Seated Itself By Me in The
Lonely Study; Jogged My Elbow as it Lifted the Wine- cup at The

Festive Board; Pursued me through the Maze of Rotten Row; Followed
me in Far Lands. On Brighton's Shingly Beach, or Margate's Sand, the
Voice Outpiped the Roaring of the Sea; it Nestles in my Nightcap, and
It Whispers, 'Wake, Slumberer, thy Work Is Not Yet Done.' Last Year,
By Moonlight, in the Colosseum, the Little Sedulous Voice Came To
Me and Said, 'Smith, or Jones' (The Writer's Name is Neither Here nor
There), 'Smith or Jones, my fine fellow, this is all very well, but you
ought to be at home writing your great work on SNOBS.
When a man has this sort of vocation it is all nonsense attempting to
elude it. He must speak out to the nations; he must unbusm himself, as
Jeames would say, or choke and die. 'Mark to yourself,' I have often
mentally exclaimed to your humble servant, 'the gradual way in which
you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity
to enter upon your great labour. First, the World was made: then, as a
matter of course, Snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no
more known than America. But presently,--INGENS PATEBAT
TELLUS,--the people became darkly aware that there was such a race.
Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressive
monosyllable, arose to designate that race. That name has spread over
England like railroads subsequently; Snobs are known and recognized
throughout an Empire on which I am given to understand the Sun never
sets. PUNCH appears at the ripe season, to chronicle their history: and
the individual comes forth to write that history in PUNCH.'
I have (and for this gift I congratulate myself with Deep and Abiding
Thankfulness) an eye for a Snob. If the Truthful is the Beautiful, it is
Beautiful to study even the Snobbish; to track Snobs through history, as
certain little dogs in Hampshire hunt out truffles; to sink shafts in
society and come upon rich veins of Snobore. Snobbishness is like
Death in a quotation from Horace, which I hope you never have heard,
'beating with equal foot at poor men's doors, and kicking at the gates of
Emperors.' It is a great mistake to judge of Snobs lightly, and think they
exist among the lower classes merely. An immense percentage of
Snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life. You
must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are
yourself a Snob. I myself have been taken for one.

When I was taking the waters at Bagnigge Wells, and living at the
'Imperial Hotel' there, there used to sit opposite me at breakfast, for a
short time, a Snob so insufferable that I felt I should never get any
benefit of the waters so long as he remained. His name was
Lieutenant-Colonel Snobley, of a certain dragoon regiment. He wore
japanned boots and moustaches: he lisped, drawled, and left the 'r's' out
of his words: he was always flourishing about, and smoothing his
lacquered whiskers with a huge flaming bandanna, that filled the room
with an odour of musk so stifling that I determined to do battle with
that Snob, and that either he or I should quit the Inn. I first began
harmless conversations with him; frightening him exceedingly, for he
did not know what to do when so attacked, and had never the slightest
notion that anybody would take such a liberty with him as to speak first:
then I handed him the paper: then, as he would take no notice of these
advances, I used to look him in the face steadily and-- and use my fork
in the light of a toothpick. After two mornings of this practice, he could
bear it no longer, and fairly quitted the place.
Should the Colonel see this, will he remember the Gent who asked him