The Fitz-Boodle PapersThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Fitz-Boodle Papers
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Imaginary letters; Satire, English
This profession, too, is a great, lofty and exceptional one, and
discovered by me considering these things, and deeply musing upon the
necessities of society. Nor let honorable gentlemen imagine that I am
enabled to offer them in this profession, more than any other, a promise
of what is called future glory, deathless fame, and so forth. All that
I say is, that I can put young men in the way of making a comfortable
livelihood, and leaving behind them, not a name, but what is better, a
decent maintenance to their children. Fitz-Boodle is as good a name as
any in England. General Fitz-Boodle, who, in Marlborough's time, and
in conjunction with the famous Van Slaap, beat the French in the
famous action of Vischzouchee, near Mardyk, in Holland, on the 14th of
February, 1709, is promised an immortality upon his tomb in Westminster
Abbey; but he died of apoplexy, deucedly in debt, two years afterwards:
and what after that is the use of a name?
No, no; the age of chivalry is past. Take the twenty-four first men who
come into the club, and ask who they are, and how they made their money?
There's Woolsey-Sackville: his father was Lord Chancellor, and sat
on the woolsack, whence he took his title; his grandfather dealt in
coal-sacks, and not in woolsacks,--small coal-sacks, dribbling out
little supplies of black diamonds to the poor. Yonder comes Frank
Leveson, in a huge broad-brimmed hat, his shirt-cuffs turned up to his
elbows. Leveson is as gentlemanly a fellow as the world contains, and if
he has a fault, is perhaps too finikin. Well, you fancy him related to
the Sutherland family: nor, indeed, does honest Frank deny it; but entre
nous, my good sir, his father was an attorney, and his grandfather
a bailiff in Chancery Lane, bearing a name still older than that of
Leveson, namely, Levy. So it is that this confounded equality grows and
grows, and has laid the good old nobility by the heels. Look at that
venerable Sir Charles Kitely, of Kitely Park: he is interested about the
Ashantees, and is just come from Exeter Hall. Kitely discounted bills
in the City in the year 1787, and gained his baronetcy by a loan to the
French princes. All these points of history are perfectly well known;
and do you fancy the world cares? Psha! Profession is no disgrace to
a man: be what you like, provided you succeed. If Mr. Fauntleroy could
come to life with a million of money, you and I would dine with him: you
know we would; for why should we be better than our neighbors?
Put, then, out of your head the idea that this or that profession is
unworthy of you: take any that may bring you profit, and thank him that
puts you in the way of being rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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