The Book of Snobs Part 13

Be at Sadler's Wells at eleven.'

'Yes, at eleven,' exclaims Goldmore, perturbedly, and walks with a flurried step into the house, as if he were going to execution (as indeed he was, with that wicked Gray as a Jack Ketch over him). The carriage drove away, followed by numberless eyes from doorsteps and balconies; its appearance is still a wonder in Bittlestone Street.

'Go in there, and amuse yourself with Sn.o.b,' says Gray, opening the little drawing-room door. 'I'll call out as soon as the chops are ready.

f.a.n.n.y's below, seeing to the pudding.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Goldmore to me, quite confidentially, 'how could he ask us? I really had no idea of this--this utter dest.i.tution.'

'Dinner, dinner!' roars out Gray, from the diningroom, whence issued a great smoking and frying; and entering that apartment we find Mrs. Gray ready to receive us, and looking perfectly like a Princess who, by some accident, had a bowl of potatoes in her hand, which vegetables she placed on the table. Her husband 'was meanwhile cooking mutton-chops on a gridiron over the fire.

f.a.n.n.y has made the roly-poly pudding,' says he; the chops are my part.

Here's a fine one; try this, Goldmore.' And he popped a fizzing cutlet on that gentleman's plate. What words, what notes of exclamation can describe the nabob's astonishment?

The tablecloth was a very old one, darned in a score places. There was mustard in a teacup, a silver fork for Goldmore--all ours were iron.

'I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth,' says Gray, gravely.

'That fork is the only one we have. f.a.n.n.y has it generally.'

'Raymond!'--cries Mrs. Gray, with an imploring face. 'She was used to better things, you know: and I hope one day to get her a dinner-service.

I'm told the electro-plate is uncommonly good. Where the deuce IS that boy with the beer? And now,' said he, springing up, 'I'll be a gentleman.' And so he put on his coat, and sat down quite gravely, with four fresh mutton-chops which he had by this time broiled.

'We don't have meat every day, Mr. Goldmore,' he continued, 'and it's a treat to me to get a dinner like this. You little know, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, what hards.h.i.+ps briefless barristers endure.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Mr. Goldmore.

'Where's the half-and-half? f.a.n.n.y, go over to the 'Keys' and get the beer. Here's sixpence.' And what was our astonishment when f.a.n.n.y got up as if to go!

'Gracious mercy! let ME,' cries Goldmore.

'Not for worlds, my dear sir. She's used to it. They wouldn't serve you as well as they serve her. Leave her alone. Law bless you!' Raymond said, with astounding composure. And Mrs. Gray left the room, and actually came back with a tray on which there was a pewter flagon of beer. Little Polly (to whom, at her christening, I had the honour of presenting a silver mug EX OFFICIO) followed with a couple of tobacco-pipes, and the queerest roguish look in her round little chubby face.

'Did you speak to Tapling about the gin, f.a.n.n.y, my dear?' Gray asked, after bidding Polly put the pipes on the chimney-piece, which that little person had some difficulty in reaching. 'The last was turpentine, and even your brewing didn't make good punch of it.'

'You would hardly suspect, Goldmore, that my wife, a Harley Baker, would ever make gin-punch? I think my mother-in-law would commit suicide if she saw her.'

'Don't be always laughing at mamma, Raymond,' says Mrs. Gray.

'Well, well, she wouldn't die, and I DON'T wish she would. And you don't make gin-punch, and you don't like it either and--Goldmore do you drink your beer out of the gla.s.s, or out of the pewter?'

'Gracious mercy!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es Croesus once more, as little Polly, taking the pot with both her little bunches of hands, offers it, smiling, to that astonished Director.

And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was presently ended in a similar fas.h.i.+on. Gray pursued his unfortunate guest with the most queer and outrageous description of his struggles, misery, and poverty. He described how he cleaned the knives when they were first married; and how he used to drag the children in a little cart; how his wife could toss pancakes; and what parts of his dress she made. He told Tibbits, his clerk (who was in fact the functionary who had brought the beer from the public-house, which Mrs. f.a.n.n.y had fetched from the neighbouring apartment)--to fetch 'the bottle of port-wine,' when the dinner was over; and told Goldmore as wonderful a history about the way in which that bottle of wine had come into his hands as any of his former stories had been. When the repast was all over, and it was near time to move to the play, and Mrs. Gray had retired, and we were sitting ruminating rather silently over the last gla.s.ses of the port, Gray suddenly breaks the silence by slapping Goldmore on the shoulder, and saying, 'Now, Goldmore, tell me something.'

'What?' asks Croesus.

'Haven't you had a good dinner?'

Goldmore started, as if a sudden truth had just dawned upon him. He HAD had a good dinner; and didn't know it until then. The three mutton-chops consumed by him were best of the mutton kind; the potatoes were perfect of their order; as for the rolypoly, it was too good. The porter was frothy and cool, and the port-wine was worthy of the gills of a bishop.

I speak with ulterior views; for there is more in Gray's cellar.

'Well,' says Goldmore, after a pause, during which he took time to consider the momentous question Gray put to him--' 'Pon my word--now you say so--I--I have--I really have had a monsous good dinnah--monsous good, upon my ward! Here's your health, Gray my boy, and your amiable lady; and when Mrs. Goldmore comes back, I hope we shall see you more in Portland Place.' And with this the time came for the play, and we went to see Mr. Phelps at Sadler's Wells. The best of this story (for the truth of every word of which I pledge my honour) is, that after this banquet, which Goldmore enjoyed so, the honest fellow felt a prodigious compa.s.sion and regard for the starving and miserable giver of the feast, and determined to help him in his profession. And being a Director of the newly-established Antibilious Life a.s.surance Company, he has had Gray appointed Standing Counsel, with a pretty annual fee; and only yesterday, in an appeal from Bombay (Buckmuckjee Bobbachee v.

Ramchowder-Bahawder) in the Privy Council, Lord Brougham complimented Mr. Gray, who was in the case, on his curious and exact knowledge of the Sanscrit language.

Whether he knows Sanscrit or not, I can't say; but Goldmore got him the business; and so I cannot help having a lurking regard for that pompous old Bigwig.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI--Sn.o.bS AND MARRIAGE

'We Bachelors in Clubs are very much obliged to you,' says my old school and college companion, Ess.e.x Temple, 'for the opinion which you hold of us. You call us selfish, purple-faced, bloated, and other pretty names.

You state, in the simplest possible terms, that we shall go to the deuce. You bid us rot in loneliness, and deny us all claims to honesty, conduct, decent Christian life. Who are you, Mr. Sn.o.b, to judge us. Who are you, with your infernal benevolent smirk and grin, that laugh at all our generation?

'I will tell you my case,' says Ess.e.x Temple; 'mine and my sister Polly's, and you may make what you like of it; and sneer at old maids, and bully old bachelors, if you will.

'I will whisper to you confidentially that my sister was engaged to Serjeant s.h.i.+rker--a fellow whose talents one cannot deny, and be hanged to them, but whom I have always known to be mean, selfish, and a prig.

However, women don't see these faults in the men whom Love throws in their way. s.h.i.+rker, who has about as much warmth as an eel, made up to Polly years and years ago, and was no bad match for a briefless barrister, as he was then.

Have you ever read Lord Eldon's Life? Do you remember how the sordid old Sn.o.b narrates his going out to purchase twopence-worth of sprats, which he and Mrs. Scott fried between them? And how he parades his humility, and exhibits his miserable poverty--he who, at that time, must have been making a thousand pounds a year? Well, s.h.i.+rker was just as proud of his prudence--just as thankful for his own meanness, and of course would not marry without a competency. Who so honourable? Polly waited, and waited faintly, from year to year. HE wasn't sick at heart; HIS pa.s.sion never disturbed his six hours' sleep, or kept his ambition out of mind. He would rather have hugged an attorney any day than have kissed Polly, though she was one of the prettiest creatures in the world; and while she was pining alone upstairs, reading over the stock of half-a-dozen frigid letters that the confounded prig had condescended to write to her, HE, be sure, was never busy with anything but his briefs in chambers--always frigid, rigid, self-satisfied, and at his duty. The marriage trailed on year after year, while Mr. Serjeant s.h.i.+rker grew to be the famous lawyer he is.

'Meanwhile, my younger brother, Pump Temple, who was in the 120th Hussars, and had the same little patrimony which fell to the lot of myself and Polly, must fall in love with our cousin, f.a.n.n.y Figtree, and marry her out of hand. You should have seen the wedding! Six bridesmaids in pink, to hold the fan, bouquet, gloves, scent-bottle, and pocket-handkerchief of the bride; basketfuls of white favours in the vestry, to be pinned on to the footmen and horses; a genteel congregation of curious acquaintance in the pews, a shabby one of poor on the steps; all the carriages of all our acquaintance, whom Aunt Figtree had levied for the occasion; and of course four horses for Mr.

Pump's bridal vehicle.

'Then comes the breakfast, or DEJEUNER, if you please, with a bra.s.s band in the street, and policemen to keep order. The happy bridegroom spends about a year's income in dresses for the bridesmaids and pretty presents; and the bride must have a TROUSSEAU of laces, satins, jewel-boxes and tomfoolery, to make her fit to be a lieutenant's wife.

There was no hesitation about Pump. He flung about his money as if it had been dross; and Mrs. P. Temple, on the horse Tom Tiddler, which her husband gave her, was the most das.h.i.+ng of military women at Brighton or Dublin.

How old Mrs. Figtree used to bore me and Polly with stories of Pump's grandeur and the n.o.ble company he kept! Polly lives with the Figtrees, as I am not rich enough to keep a home for her.

'Pump and I have always been rather distant. Not having the slightest notions about horseflesh, he has a natural contempt for me; and in our mother's lifetime, when the good old lady was always paying his debts and petting him, I'm not sure there was not a little jealousy. It used to be Polly that kept the peace between us.

'She went to Dublin to visit Pump, and brought back grand accounts of his doings--gayest man about town--Aide-de-Camp to the Lord-Lieutenant--f.a.n.n.y admired everywhere--Her Excellency G.o.dmother to the second boy: the eldest with a string of aristocratic Christian-names that made the grandmother wild with delight. Presently f.a.n.n.y and Pump obligingly came to London, where the third was born.

'Polly was G.o.dmother to this, and who so loving as she and Pump now?

"Oh, Ess.e.x," says she to me, "he is so good, so generous, so fond of his family; so handsome; who can help loving him, and pardoning his little errors?" One day, while Mrs. Pump was yet in the upper regions, and Doctor Fingerfee's brougham at her door every day, having business at Guildhall, whom should I meet in Cheapside but Pump and Polly? The poor girl looked more happy and rosy than I have seen her these twelve years.

Pump, on the contrary, was rather blus.h.i.+ng and embarra.s.sed.

'I couldn't be mistaken in her face and its look of mischief and triumph. She had been committing some act of sacrifice. I went to the family stockbroker. She had sold out two thousand pounds that morning and given them to Pump. Quarrelling was useless--Pump had the money; he was off to Dublin by the time I reached his mother's, and Polly radiant still. He was going to make his fortune; he was going to embark the money in the Bog of Allen--I don't know what. The fact is, he was going to pay his losses upon the last Manchester steeple-chase, and I leave you to imagine how much princ.i.p.al or interest poor Polly ever saw back again.

'It was more than half her fortune, and he has had another thousand since from her. Then came efforts to stave off ruin and prevent exposure; struggles on all our parts, and sacrifices, that' (here Mr.

Ess.e.x Temple began to hesitate)--'that needn't be talked of; but they are of no more use than such sacrifices ever are. Pump and his wife are abroad--I don't like to ask where; Polly has the three children, and Mr.

Serjeant s.h.i.+rker has formally written to break off an engagement, on the conclusion of which Miss Temple must herself have speculated, when she alienated the greater part of her fortune.

'And here's your famous theory of poor marriages!' Ess.e.x Temple cries, concluding the above history. 'How do you know that I don't want to marry myself? How do you dare sneer at my poor sister? What are we but martyrs of the reckless marriage system which Mr. Sn.o.b, forsooth, chooses to advocate?' And he thought he had the better of the argument, which, strange to say, is not my opinion.

But for the infernal Sn.o.b-wors.h.i.+p, might not every one of these people be happy? If poor Polly's happiness lay in linking her tender arms round such a heartless prig as the sneak who has deceived her, she might have been happy now--as happy as Raymond Raymond in the ballad, with the stone statue by his side. She is wretched because Mr. Serjeant s.h.i.+rker wors.h.i.+ps money and ambition, and is a Sn.o.b and a coward.

If the unfortunate Pump Temple and his giddy hussy of a wife have ruined themselves, and dragged down others into their calamity, it is because they loved rank, and horses, and plate, and carriages, and COURT GUIDES, and millinery, and would sacrifice all to attain those objects.

And who misguides them? If the world were more simple, would not those foolish people follow the fas.h.i.+on? Does not the world love COURT GUIDES, and millinery, and plate, and carriages? Mercy on us! Read the fas.h.i.+onable intelligence; read the COURT CIRCULAR; read the genteel novels; survey mankind, from Pimlico to Red Lion Square, and see how the Poor Sn.o.b is aping the Rich Sn.o.b; how the Mean Sn.o.b is grovelling at the feet of the Proud Sn.o.b; and the Great Sn.o.b is lording it over his humble brother. Does the idea of equality ever enter Dives' head? Will it ever?

Will the d.u.c.h.ess of Fitzbattleaxe (I like a good name) ever believe that Lady Croesus, her next-door neighbour in Belgrave Square, is as good a lady as her Grace? Will Lady Croesus ever leave off pining the d.u.c.h.ess's parties, and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth whose husband has not got his Baronetcy yet? Will Mrs. Broadcloth ever heartily shake hands with Mrs. Seedy, and give up those odious calculations about poor dear Mrs.