DOI issue:
July to December, 1846
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16543#0123
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
115
THE SNOBS OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER XXIX.—CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED.
We are accustomed to laugh at the French for their braggadocio-
propensities, and intolerable vanity about la France, la Gloira, l'Em-
pereur, and the like ; and yet I think in my heart that the British
Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is
without a parallel. There is always something uneasy in a French-
man's conceit. He brags with so much fury, shrieking, and gesticu-
lation ; yells out so loudly that the Francais is at the head of
civilization, the centre of thought, &c. ; that one can't but seethe
poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the
wonder he professes to be.
About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is commonly no
noise, no bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction. We are
better than all the world ; we don't question the opinion at all ; it's
an axiom. And when a Frenchman bellows out, "La France, Monsieur,
la France est a la tete du monde citilise ! " we laugh good-naturedly at
the frantic poor deviL We are the first chop of the world : we know
the fact so well in our secret hearts, that a claim set up elsewhere is
9imply ludicrous. My dear brother reader, say, as a man of honour, | respectable veteran, a friend joined him, with a wizened face and very
at that. Those are Englishmen, those are, and your master whenever
you please." as the nursery song says. The British Snob is long, long
past scepticism, and can afford to laugh quite good-humouredly at
those conceited Yankees, or besotted little Frenchmen, who set up as
models of mankind. They forsooth !
I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old fellow at
the Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is evidently of the Slasher
sort. He came down and seated himself at the breakfast-table, with a
surly scowl on his salmon-coloured blood-shot face, strangling in a
tight, cross-barred cravat ; his linen and his appointments so perfectly
stiff and spotless that everybody at once recognised him as a dear
countryman. Only our port-wine and other admirable institutions
could have produced a figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentlemanlike.
After a while our attention was called to him by his roaring out, in a
voice of plethoric fury, " 0 ! "
Everybody turned round at the 0, conceiving the Colonel to be, as
his countenance denoted him, in intense pain ; but the waiters knew
better, and instead of being alarmed, brought the Colonel the kettle.
0, it appears, is the French for hot-water. The Colonel (though he
despises it heartily) thinks he speaks the language remarkably well.
Whilst he was inhausting his smoking tea, which went rolling and
gurgling down his throat, and hissing over the " hot coppers " of that
if you are not of this opinion ? Do you think a Frenchman your equal ?
You don't—you gallant British Snob—you know you don't : no more,
perhaps, does the Snob your humble Servant, brother.
And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the consequent
bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends
to visit, this confidence of superiority which holds up the head of the
owner of every English hat-box from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that
makes ua so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are ; this
—more than all our little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and
Spaniards have never heard—this amazing and indomitable insular
pride, which animates my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as
John in the rumble.
If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find precisely
the same character of the Englishman, and Henry V.'s people with
just the cool domineering manner of our owrn gallant veterans of France
and the Peninsula. Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major
Slasher talking over the war after dinner ? or Captain Boarder
describing his action with the Indomptable ? " Hang the fellows,"
says Boarder, " their practice was very good. I was beat off three
black wig, evidently a Colonel too.
The two warriors, waggling their old heads at each other, presently
joined breakfast, and fell into conversation, and we had the advantage
of hearing about the old war, and some pleasant conjectures as to the
next, which they considered imminent. They psha'd the French fleet ;
they poohpooh'd the French Commercial Marine ; they showed how,
in a war, there would be a cordon (a cordong, by—) of steamers along
our coast, and by—, ready at a minute to land anywhere on the other
shore, to give the French as good a thrashing as they got in the last
war, by—. In fact a rumbling cannonade of oaths was fired by
the two veterans during the whole of their conversation.
There was a Frenchman in the room, but as he had not been above
ten years in London, of course he did not speak the language, and lost
the benefit of the conversation. " But oh, my country !" says I to
myself, " it's no wonder that you are so beloved ! If I were a
Frenchman, how I would hate you!"
That brutal ignorant peevish bully of an Englishman is showing
himself in every city of Europe. One of the dullest creatures under
Heaven, he goes trampling Europe under foot, shouldering his way
times before I took her." " Cuss those carabineers of Milhauds," says ' into galleries and cathedrals, and bustling into palaces with his buck-
Slasher, " what work they made of our light cavalry ! " implying a
sort of surprise that the Frenchmen should stand up against Britons
at all ; a good-natured wonder that the blind, mad, vain-glorious,
brave, poor devils, should actually have the courage to resist an
Englishman. Legions of such Englishmen are patronising Europe at
this moment, being kind to the Pope, or good-natured to the King of
Holland, or condescending to inspect the Prussian reviews. When
Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter of a million of pairs of
moustachios to his breakfast every morning, we took him off to
Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight hundred
Britons a-piece, with an air as much as to say,—" There, my boy, look
rsm uniform. At church or theatre, gala or picture-gallery, his face
never varies. A thousand delightful sights pass before his bloodshot
eyes, and don't affect him. Countless brilliant scenes of life and
manners are shown him, but never move him. He goes to church, and
calls the practices there degrading and superstitious, as if his altar
was the only one that was acceptable. He goes to picture-galleries,
and is more igi orant about art than a French shoeblack. Art,
Nature pass, and there is no dot of admiration in his stupid eyes ;
nothing moves h:m, except when a very great man comes his way,
and then the rigid proud self-confident inflexible British Snob can be
as humble as a flunky, and as supple as a harlequin.
WIGGINS AT HOME.
WIGGINS AT BOULOGNE.
WIGGINS AT SEA.
115
THE SNOBS OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER XXIX.—CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED.
We are accustomed to laugh at the French for their braggadocio-
propensities, and intolerable vanity about la France, la Gloira, l'Em-
pereur, and the like ; and yet I think in my heart that the British
Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is
without a parallel. There is always something uneasy in a French-
man's conceit. He brags with so much fury, shrieking, and gesticu-
lation ; yells out so loudly that the Francais is at the head of
civilization, the centre of thought, &c. ; that one can't but seethe
poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the
wonder he professes to be.
About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is commonly no
noise, no bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction. We are
better than all the world ; we don't question the opinion at all ; it's
an axiom. And when a Frenchman bellows out, "La France, Monsieur,
la France est a la tete du monde citilise ! " we laugh good-naturedly at
the frantic poor deviL We are the first chop of the world : we know
the fact so well in our secret hearts, that a claim set up elsewhere is
9imply ludicrous. My dear brother reader, say, as a man of honour, | respectable veteran, a friend joined him, with a wizened face and very
at that. Those are Englishmen, those are, and your master whenever
you please." as the nursery song says. The British Snob is long, long
past scepticism, and can afford to laugh quite good-humouredly at
those conceited Yankees, or besotted little Frenchmen, who set up as
models of mankind. They forsooth !
I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old fellow at
the Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is evidently of the Slasher
sort. He came down and seated himself at the breakfast-table, with a
surly scowl on his salmon-coloured blood-shot face, strangling in a
tight, cross-barred cravat ; his linen and his appointments so perfectly
stiff and spotless that everybody at once recognised him as a dear
countryman. Only our port-wine and other admirable institutions
could have produced a figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentlemanlike.
After a while our attention was called to him by his roaring out, in a
voice of plethoric fury, " 0 ! "
Everybody turned round at the 0, conceiving the Colonel to be, as
his countenance denoted him, in intense pain ; but the waiters knew
better, and instead of being alarmed, brought the Colonel the kettle.
0, it appears, is the French for hot-water. The Colonel (though he
despises it heartily) thinks he speaks the language remarkably well.
Whilst he was inhausting his smoking tea, which went rolling and
gurgling down his throat, and hissing over the " hot coppers " of that
if you are not of this opinion ? Do you think a Frenchman your equal ?
You don't—you gallant British Snob—you know you don't : no more,
perhaps, does the Snob your humble Servant, brother.
And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the consequent
bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends
to visit, this confidence of superiority which holds up the head of the
owner of every English hat-box from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that
makes ua so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are ; this
—more than all our little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and
Spaniards have never heard—this amazing and indomitable insular
pride, which animates my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as
John in the rumble.
If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find precisely
the same character of the Englishman, and Henry V.'s people with
just the cool domineering manner of our owrn gallant veterans of France
and the Peninsula. Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major
Slasher talking over the war after dinner ? or Captain Boarder
describing his action with the Indomptable ? " Hang the fellows,"
says Boarder, " their practice was very good. I was beat off three
black wig, evidently a Colonel too.
The two warriors, waggling their old heads at each other, presently
joined breakfast, and fell into conversation, and we had the advantage
of hearing about the old war, and some pleasant conjectures as to the
next, which they considered imminent. They psha'd the French fleet ;
they poohpooh'd the French Commercial Marine ; they showed how,
in a war, there would be a cordon (a cordong, by—) of steamers along
our coast, and by—, ready at a minute to land anywhere on the other
shore, to give the French as good a thrashing as they got in the last
war, by—. In fact a rumbling cannonade of oaths was fired by
the two veterans during the whole of their conversation.
There was a Frenchman in the room, but as he had not been above
ten years in London, of course he did not speak the language, and lost
the benefit of the conversation. " But oh, my country !" says I to
myself, " it's no wonder that you are so beloved ! If I were a
Frenchman, how I would hate you!"
That brutal ignorant peevish bully of an Englishman is showing
himself in every city of Europe. One of the dullest creatures under
Heaven, he goes trampling Europe under foot, shouldering his way
times before I took her." " Cuss those carabineers of Milhauds," says ' into galleries and cathedrals, and bustling into palaces with his buck-
Slasher, " what work they made of our light cavalry ! " implying a
sort of surprise that the Frenchmen should stand up against Britons
at all ; a good-natured wonder that the blind, mad, vain-glorious,
brave, poor devils, should actually have the courage to resist an
Englishman. Legions of such Englishmen are patronising Europe at
this moment, being kind to the Pope, or good-natured to the King of
Holland, or condescending to inspect the Prussian reviews. When
Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter of a million of pairs of
moustachios to his breakfast every morning, we took him off to
Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight hundred
Britons a-piece, with an air as much as to say,—" There, my boy, look
rsm uniform. At church or theatre, gala or picture-gallery, his face
never varies. A thousand delightful sights pass before his bloodshot
eyes, and don't affect him. Countless brilliant scenes of life and
manners are shown him, but never move him. He goes to church, and
calls the practices there degrading and superstitious, as if his altar
was the only one that was acceptable. He goes to picture-galleries,
and is more igi orant about art than a French shoeblack. Art,
Nature pass, and there is no dot of admiration in his stupid eyes ;
nothing moves h:m, except when a very great man comes his way,
and then the rigid proud self-confident inflexible British Snob can be
as humble as a flunky, and as supple as a harlequin.
WIGGINS AT HOME.
WIGGINS AT BOULOGNE.
WIGGINS AT SEA.