'“Well as you are here, madam, you may stay and get your supper,” I
answered, and so left her, and never spoke a word more to her all night.
'And now,' screamed out old Lady Clapperclaw, clapping her hands, and
speaking with more brogue than ever, 'what do you think, after all
my kindness to her, the wicked, vulgar, odious, impudent upstart of s
cowboy's granddaughter, has done?--she cut me yesterday in Hy' Park, and
hasn't sent me a ticket for her ball to-night, though they say Prince
George is to be there.'
Yes, such is the fact. In the race of fashion the resolute and active
De Mogyns has passed the poor old Clapperclaw. Her progress in gentility
may be traced by the sets of friends whom she has courted, and made,
and cut, and left behind her. She has struggled so gallantly for polite
reputation that she has won it: pitilessly kicking down the ladder as
she advanced degree by degree.
Irish relations were first sacrificed; she made her father dine in the
steward's room, to his perfect contentment: and would send Sir Alured
thither like-wise but that he is a peg on which she hopes to hang her
future honours; and is, after all, paymaster of her daughter's fortunes.
He is meek and content. He has been so long a gentleman that he is used
to it, and acts the part of governor very well. In the day-time he goes
from the 'Union' to 'Arthur's,' and from 'Arthur's' to the 'Union.' He
is a dead hand at piquet, and loses a very comfortable maintenance to
some young fellows, at whist, at the 'Travellers'.'
His son has taken his father's seat in Parliament, and has of course
joined Young England. He is the only man in the country who believes in
the De Mogynses, and sighs for the days when a De Mogyns led the van of
battle. He has written a little volume of spoony puny poems. He wears a
lock of the hair of Laud, the Confessor and Martyr, and fainted when
he kissed the Pope's toe at Rome. He sleeps in white kid-gloves, and
commits dangerous excesses upon green tea.
CHAPTER VIII--GREAT CITY SNOBS
There 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 interrogation (?), 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 families of De Mogyns; no
less than four Lady Scrapers have been discovered; and young gentlemen
are quite shy of ordering half-a-pint of port and simpering over the
QUARTERLY REVIEW at the Club, lest they should be mistaken for Sydney
Scraper, Esq. 'What CAN be your antipathy to Baker Street?' asks some
fair remonstrant, evidently writing from that quarter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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