Punch (10.1846)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

177

Serenade to tfje ?Loro fBtapor.

Come, arouse thee, arouse thee, my lazy Lord Mayor,

Do not slumber thy twelvemonths away ;
Don't you know that because you won't take proper care,

People's lives are endanger'd each day ?
What's the use, my Lord Mayor, of your ruling the Thames,

If wild anarchy flaunts on its wave ;
Which the steam-boat, o'ercrowded, illegalh- stems,

Whilst with cool unconcern you behave ?

To what end does your Lordship the river control,

If you suffer the piers on its banks
To consist, as you know they do, nearly the whole,

Of a lot of old barges and planks '?
Come, arouse thee, arouse thee, my lazy Lord Mayor,

And attend to the cares of your realm ;
Can the course of the City Barge ever prove fair,

With a lubber asleep at the helm ?

THE SNOBS OF ENGLAND.

by one of themselves.

CHAPTER VIII.—GREAT CITY SNOBS.

here is no disguising the fact
that this series of papers is
making a prodigious sensation
among all classes in this Empire.
Notes of admiration (!), of inter-
rogation (?), of remonstrance,
approval, or abuse, come pouring
into Mr. Punch's box. We have
been called to task for betraying
the secrets of three different fami-
nes of De Mogyns ; no less than
four Lady Susan Scrapers have
been discovered ; and young gen-
tlemen are quite shy of ordering
half-a-pint of port and simpering
over the Quarterly Review at the
Club, lest they should be mis-
taken for Sydney Scraper, Esq.
" What can be your antipathy to
Baker Street ? " asks some fail-
remonstrant, evidently writing
from that quarter.—" Why only
attack the aristocratic Snobs ? "
says one estimable correspondent;
" are not the snobbish Snobs to
have their turn ? "—" Pitch into
the University Snobs ! " writes
an indignant gentleman, (who
spells elegant with two l's.)—
" Show up the Clerical Snob,"
suggests another. — "Being at
Meurice's Hotel, Paris, some time since," some wag hints, " I saw
Lord B., leaning out of the window with his boots in his hand, and
bawling out, ' Garcon, cirez-moi ces bottes ' Oughtn't he to be brought in
among the Snobs ? "

No ; far from it. If his lordship's boots are dirty, it is because he
is Lord B., and walks. There is nothing snobbish in having only one
pair of boots, or a favourite pair ; and certainly nothing snobbish in
desiring to have them clean. Lord B., in so doing, performed a per-
fectly natural and gentlemanlike action ; for which I am so pleased
with him that I have had him designed in a favourable and elegant
attitude, and put at the head of this Chapter in the place of honour.
No, we are not personal in these candid remarks. As Phidias took
the pick of a score of beauties before he completed a Venus : so have
■we to examine, perhaps, a thousand Snobs, before one is expressed upon
paper.

Great City Snobs are the next in the hierarchy, and ought to be
considered. But here is a difficulty. The great City Snob is
commonly most difficult of access. Unless you are a capitalist, you
cannot visit him in the recesses of his bank parlour in Lombard
Street. Unless you are a sprig of nobility, there is little hope of

seeing him at home. In a great City Snob firm there is generally
one partner whose name is down for charities, and who frequents Exeter
Hall ; you may catch a glimpse of another (a scientific City Snob) at
my Lord N—'s soirees, or the lectures of the London Institution ; of
a third, (a City Snob of taste,) at picture-auctions, at private views
of exhibitions, or at the Opera or the Philharmonic. But intimacy is
impossible, in most cases, with this grave, pompous, and awful being.

A mere gentleman may hope to sit at almost anybody's table—to
take his place at my lord duke's in the country—to dance a quadrille
at Buckingham Palace itself—(beloved Lady Wilhelmina Waggle-
wiggle ! do you recollect the sensation we made at the ball of our
late adored Sovereign Queen Caroline, at Brandenburgh House,
Hammersmith ?) but the City Snob's doors are for the most part
closed to him ; and hence all that one knows of this great class is
mostly from hearsay.

In other countries of Europe, the Banking Snob is more expansive
and communicative than with us, and receives all the world into his
circle. For instance, everybody knows the princely hospitalities of
the Sciiarlachschild family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort, &c. They
entertain all the world, even the poor, at their fetes. Prince Polonia,
at Rome, and his brother, the Duke of Strachino, are also remark-
able for their hospitalities. I like the spirit of the first-named noble-
man. Titles not costing much in the Roman territory, he has had
the head clerk of the banking-house made a Marquis, and his Lord-
ship will screw a bajocco out of you in exchange as dexterously as any
commoner could do. It is a comfort to be able to gratify such gran-
dees with a farthing or two, it makes the poorest man feel that he can do
good. The Polonias have intermarried with the greatest and most
ancient families of Rome, and you see their heraldic cognisance (a
mushroom or on an azure field) quartered in a hundred places in the
city, with the arms of the Colonnas and Dorias.

Our City Snobs have the same mania of aristocratic marriages. I
like to see such. I am of a savage and envious nature,—I like to see
those two humbugs which, dividing, as they do, the social empire of
this kingdom between them, hate each other naturally—making truce
and uniting—for the sordid interests of either. I like to see an old
aristocrat swelling with pride of race, the descendant of illustrious
Norman robbers, whose blood has been pure for centuries, and who
looks down on common Englishmen as a free-born American does on a
nigger. I like to see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his head
and swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of humiliation
poured out by Pump and Aldgate's butler. " Pump and Aldgate,"
says he, " your grandfather was a bricklayer, and his hod is still kept
in the bank. Your pedigree begins in a workhouse ; mine can be
dated from all the royal palaces of Europe. I came over with the
Conqueror : I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando Furioso,
Philip Augustus, Peter the Cruel, and Frederic Barbarossa.
I quarter the Royal arms of Brentford in my coat. I despise ) ju,
but I want money ; and I will sell you my beloved daughter, Blanche
Stiffneck, for a hundred thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages.
Let your son marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche Pump
and Aldgate."

Old Pump and Aldgate clutches at the bargain. And a comfort-
able thing it is to think that birth can be bought for money. So you
learn to value it. Why should we, who don't possess it, set a higher
store on it than those who do ? Perhaps the best use of that book,
the Peerage, is to look down the list, and see how many have bought
and sold birth,—how poor sprigs of nobility somehow sell themselves
to rich City Snobs' daughters, how rich City Snobs purchase noble
ladies—and s0 to admire the double baseness of the bargain.

Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article, and pays the money. The
sale of the girl's person is blest by a Bishop at St. George's, Hanover
Square, and next year you read, " At Roehampton, on Saturday, the
Lady Emilia Pump, of a son and heir."

After this interesting event, some old acquaintance, who saw young
Pump in the parlour at the bank in the City, said to him, familiarly,
" How's your wife, Pump, my boy ? "

Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted, and, after a
pause, said, " Lady Blanche Pump is pretty well, I thank you."

" 0, I thought she was your wife !" said that familiar brute,
Snooks, wishing him good by ; and ten minutes after, the story was
all over the Stock Exchange, where it is told, when young Pomp
appears, to this very day.

We can imagine the weary life this poor Pump, this martyr to
Mammon, is compelled to undergo. Fancy the domestic enjoyments
of a man who has a wife who scorns him ; who cannot see his own
friends in his own house ; who, having deserted the middle rank of life,