Those poor ruined souls get together and have a society of their own,
the which it is very affecting to watch--those tawdry pretences at
gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that
jingling old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear them. As
Mrs. Raff, with her company of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs.
Diddler, they talk about bygone times and the fine society they kept;
and they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music-books; and while
engaged in this sort of entertainment, in comes Captain Raff with his
greasy hat on one side, and straightway the whole of the dismal room
reeks with a mingled odour of smoke and spirits.
Has not everybody who has lived abroad met Captain Raff? His name is
proclaimed, every now and then, by Mr. Sheriff's Officer Hemp; and about
Boulogne, and Paris, and Brussels, there are so many of his sort that
I will lay a wager that I shall be accused of gross personality for
showing him up. Many a less irreclaimable villain is transported; many a
more honourable man is at present at the treadmill; and although we
are the noblest, greatest, most religious, and most moral people in the
world, I would still like to know where, except in the United Kingdom,
debts are a matter of joke, and making tradesmen 'suffer' a sport that
gentlemen own to? It is dishonourable to owe money in France. You never
hear people in other parts of Europe brag of their swindling; or see
a prison in a large Continental town which is not more or less peopled
with English rogues.
A still more loathsome and dangerous Snob than the above transparent and
passive scamp, is frequent on the continent of Europe, and my young Snob
friends who are travelling thither should be especially warned against
him. Captain Legg is a gentleman, like Raff, though perhaps of a better
degree. He has robbed his family too, but of a great deal more, and has
boldly dishonoured bills for thousands, where Raff has been boggling
over the clumsy conveyance of a ten-pound note. Legg is always at the
best inn, with the finest waistcoats and moustaches, or tearing about
in the flashest of britzkas, while poor Raff is tipsifying himself with
spirits, and smoking cheap tobacco. It is amazing to think that Legg, so
often shown up, and known everywhere, is flourishing yet. He would sink
into utter ruin, but for the constant and ardent love of gentility that
distinguishes the English Snob. There is many a young fellow of the
middle classes who must know Legg to be a rogue and a cheat; and yet
from his desire to be in the fashion, and his admiration of tip-top
swells, and from his ambition to air himself by the side of a Lord's
son, will let Legg make an income out of him; content to pay, so long
as he can enjoy that society. Many a worthy father of a family, when he
hears that his son is riding about with Captain Legg, Lord Levant's son,
is rather pleased that young Hopeful should be in such good company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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