WHEN I see the great effect which these papers are producing on an
intelligent public, I have a strong hope that before long we shall have
a regular Snob department in the newspapers, just as we have the
Police Courts and the Court News at present. When a flagrant case of
bone-crushing or Poor-law abuse occurs in the world, who so eloquent
as THE TIMES to point it out? When a gross instance of Snobbishness
happens, why should not the indignant journalist call the public
attention to that delinquency too?
How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl of Mangelwurzel
and his brother be examined in the Snobbish point of view? Let alone
the hectoring, the bullying, the vapouring, the bad grammar, the mutual
recriminations, lie-givings, challenges, retractations, which abound
in the fraternal dispute--put out of the question these points as
concerning the individual nobleman and his relative, with whose personal
affairs we have nothing to do--and consider how intimately corrupt, how
habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish in a word, a whole
county must be which can find no better chiefs or leaders than these two
gentlemen. 'We don't want,' the great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems
to say, 'that a man should be able to write good grammar; or that he
should keep a Christian tongue in his head; or that he should have the
commonest decency of temper, or even a fair share of good sense, in
order to represent us in Parliament.
All we require is, that a man should be recommended to us by the Earl
of Mangelwurzelshire. And all that we require of the Earl of
Mangelwurzelshire is that he should have fifty thousand a year and hunt
the country.' O you pride of all Snobland! O you crawling, truckling,
self-confessed lackeys and parasites!
But this is growing too savage: don't let us forget our usual amenity,
and that tone of playfulness and sentiment with which the beloved
reader and writer have pursued their mutual reflections hitherto. Well,
Snobbishness pervades the little Social Farce as well as the great State
Comedy; and the self-same moral is tacked to either.
There was, for instance, an account in the papers of a young lady who,
misled by a fortune-teller, actually went part of the way to India (as
far as Bagnigge Wells, I think,) in search of a husband who was promised
her there. Do you suppose this poor deluded little soul would have left
her shop for a man below her in rank, or for anything but a darling of
a Captain in epaulets and a red coat. It was her Snobbish sentiment
that misled her, and made her vanities a prey to the swindling
fortune-teller.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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