The Book of Snobs | Page 9

shoes. If you are poor, we will give you such
a sum of money as shall enable you and the eldest-born of your race for
ever to live in fat and splendour. It is our wish that there should be a
race set apart in this happy country, who shall hold the first rank, have
the first prizes and chances in all government jobs and patronages. We
cannot make all your dear children Peers--that would make Peerage
common and crowd the House of Lords uncomfortably--but the young
ones shall have everything a Government can give: they shall get the
pick of all the places: they shall be Captains and Lieutenant-Colonels at
nineteen, when hoary-headed old lieutenants are spending thirty years
at drill: they shall command ships at one- and-twenty, and veterans who
fought before they were born. And as we are eminently a free people,
and in order to encourage all men to do their duty, we say to any man
of any rank--get enormously rich, make immense fees as a lawyer, or
great speeches, or distinguish yourself and win battles--and you, even
you, shall come into the privileged class, and your children shall reign
naturally over ours.'
How can we help Snobbishness, with such a prodigious national
institution erected for its worship? How can we help cringing to Lords?
Flesh and blood can't do otherwise. What man can withstand this
prodigious temptation? Inspired by what is called a noble emulation,
some people grasp at honours and win them; others, too weak or mean,
blindly admire and grovel before those who have gained them; others,
not being able to acquire them, furiously hate, abuse, and envy. There
are only a few bland and not-in-the-least-conceited philosophers, who
can behold the state of society, viz., Toadyism, organised:--base
Man-and-Mammon worship, instituted by command of
law:--Snobbishness, in a word, perpetuated,--and mark the
phenomenon calmly. And of these calm moralists, is there one, I
wonder, whose heart would not throb with pleasure if he could be seen
walking arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes down Pall Mall? No it is
impossible in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

On one hand it encourages the commoner to be snobbishly mean, and
the noble to be snobbishly arrogant. When a noble marchioness writes
in her travels about the hard necessity under which steam-boat
travellers labour of being brought into contact 'with all sorts and
conditions of people:' implying that a fellowship with God's creatures is
disagreeable to to her Ladyship, who is their superier:--when, I say, the
Marchioness of ---- writes in this fashion, we must consider that out of
her natural heart it would have been impossible for any woman to have
had such a sentiment; but that the habit of truckling and cringing,
which all who surround her have adopted towards this beautiful and
magnificent lady,-- this proprietor of so many black and other
diamonds,--has really induced her to believe that she is the superior of
the world in general: and that people are not to associate with her
except awfully at a distance. I recollect being once at the city of Grand
Cairo, through which a European Royal Prince was passing
India-wards. One night at the inn there was a great disturbance: a man
had drowned himself in the well hard by: all the inhabitants of the hotel
came bustling into the Court, and amongst others your humble servant,
who asked of a certain young man the reason of the disturbance. How
was I to know that this young gent was a prince? He had not his crown
and sceptre on: he was dressed in a white jacket and felt hat: but he
looked surprised at anybody speaking to him: answered an
unintelligible monosyllable, and--BECKONED HIS AID-DE-CAMP
TO COME AND SPEAK TO ME. It is our fault, not that of the great,
that they should fancy themselves so far above us. If you WILL fling
yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you, depend upon it;
and if you and I, my dear friend, had Kotow performed before us every
day,--found people whenever we appeared grovelling in slavish
adoration, we should drop into the airs of superiority quite naturally,
and accept the greatness with which the world insisted upon endowing
us.
Here is an instance, out of Lord L----'s travels, of that calm,
good-natured, undoubting way in which a great man accepts the
homage of his inferiors. After making some profound and ingenious
remarks about the town of Brussells, his lordship says:--'Staying some
day at the Hotel de Belle Vue, a greatly overrated establishment, and

not nearly as comfortable as the Hotel de France--I made acquaintance
with Dr. L----, the physician of the Mission. He was desirous of doing
the honours of the place to me, and he ordered for us