Chapter IX: Part XII: The Parsonage (6)

The daughter was the eldest, and had attained her seventeenth year; and M. Lupot, who spared nothing on her education, did not despair of finding a husband for her with a soul above sticks of sealing-wax and wafers--more especially as it was evident she had no turn for trade, and believed she had a decided genius for the fine arts--for she had painted her father as a shepherd with his crook, when she was only twelve, and had learned a year after to play "Je suis Lindore" by ear on the piano. M. Lupot was proud of his daughter, who was thus a painter and a musician; who was a foot taller than her papa; who held herself as upright as a Prussian grenadier; who made a curtsy like Taglioni, who had a Roman nose three times the size of other people's, a mouth to match, and eyes so arch and playful, that it was difficult to discover them. The boy was only seven; he was allowed to do whatever he chose--he was so very young; and Monsieur Ascanius availed himself of the permission, and was in mischief from morning to night. His father was too fond of him to scold him, and his mother wouldn't take the trouble to get into a passion.

Well, then, one morning M. Lupot soliloquized--"I have a good fortune, a charming family, and a wife who has never been in a rage; but all this does not lead to a man's being invited, courted, and made much of in the world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove and red sealing-wax, I have seen nobody but a few friends--retired tradesmen like myself--who drop in to take a hand at _vingt-et-un_, or loto; but I wish more than that--my daughter must not live in so narrow a circle; my daughter has a decided turn for the arts; I ought to have artists to my house. I will give soirées, tea-parties--yes, with punch at parting, if it be necessary. We shall play _bouillote_ and _écarte_, for my daughter can't endure loto. Indeed, I wish to set people talking about my re-unions, and to find a husband for Celanire worthy of her." M. Lupot was seated near his wife, who was seated on an elastic sofa, and was caressing a cat on her knee. He said to her--

"My dear Felicité, I intend to give soirées--to receive lots of company. We live in too confined a sphere for our daughter, who was born for the arts--and for Ascanius, who, it strikes me, will make some noise in the world."

Madame Lupot continued to caress the cat, and replied, "Well, what have I to do with that? Do I hinder you from receiving company? If it doesn't cause me any trouble--for I must tell you first of all, you musn't count on me to help you"--

"You will have nothing at all to do, my dear Felicité, but the honours of the house."

"I must be getting up every minute"--

"You do it so gracefully," replied the husband--"I will give all the orders, and Celanire will second me."

Mademoiselle was enchanted with the intention of her sire, and threw her arms round his neck.

"Oh yes! papa," she said, "invite as many as you can, I will learn to play some country-dances that we may have a ball, and finish my head of Belisarius--you must get it framed for the occasion."

And the little Ascanius whooped and hollo'd in the middle of the room. "I shall have tea and punch and cakes. I'll eat every thing!"

After this conversation M. Lupot had set to work. He went to his friends and his friends' friends--to people he hardly knew, and invited them to his party, begging them to bring any body with them they liked. M. Lupot had formerly sold rose-coloured paper to a musician, and drawing pencils to an artist. He went to his ancient customers, and pressed them to come and to bring their professional friends with them. In short, M. Lupot was so prodigiously active that in four days he had run through nearly the whole of Paris, caught an immense cold, and spent seven shillings in cab hire. Giving an entertainment has its woes as well as its pleasures.

The grand day, or rather the grand evening, at last arrived. All the lamps were lighted, and they had even borrowed some from their neighbours; for Celanire had discovered that their own three lamps did not give light enough both for the public-room and the supper-room--(which on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.) It was the first time that M. Lupot had borrowed any thing--but also it was the first time that M. Lupot gave a soirée.

From the dawn of day M. Lupot was busy in preparation: He had ordered in cakes and refreshments; bought sundry packs of cards, brushed the tables, and tucked up the curtains. Madame Lupot had sat all the time quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from time to time, "I'm afraid 'twill be a troublesome business all this receiving company."

Celanire had finished her Belisarius, who was an exact likeness of Blue Beard, and whom they had honoured with a Gothic frame, and placed in a conspicuous part of the room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed with amazing care. She had a new gown, her hair plaited _à la Clotilde_. All this must make a great sensation. Ascanius was rigged out in his best; but this did not hinder him from kicking up a dust in the room, from getting up on the furniture, handling the cards, and taking them to make houses; from opening the cupboards, and laying his fingers on the cakes.

Sometimes M. Lupot's patience gave way, and he cried, "Madame, I beg you'll make your son be quiet." But Madame Lupot answered without turning her head, "Make him quiet yourself, M. Lupot--You know very well it's _your_ business to manage him."

It was now eight o'clock, and nobody was yet arrived. Mademoiselle looked at her father, who looked at his wife, who looked at her cat. The father of the family muttered every now and then--"Are we to have our grand soirée all to ourselves?" And he cast doleful looks on his lamps, his tables, and all his splendid preparations. Mademoiselle Celanire sighed and looked at her dress, and then looked in the mirror. Madame Lupot was as unmoved as ever, and said, "Is this what we've turned every thing topsy-turvy for?" As for little Ascanius, he jumped about the room, and shouted, "If nobody comes, what lots of cakes we shall have!" At last the bell rang. It is a family from the Rue St Denis, retired perfumers, who have only retained so much of their ancient profession, that they cover themselves all over with odours. When they enter the room, you feel as if a hundred scent-bottles were opened at once. There is such a smell of jasmine and vanille, that you have good luck if you get off without a headache. Other people drop in. M. Lupot does not know half his guests, for many of them are brought by others, and even these he scarcely knows the names of. But he is enchanted with every thing. A young fashionable is presented to him by some unknown third party, who says, "This is one of our first pianists, who is good enough to give up a great concert this evening to come here." The next is a famous singer, a lion in musical parties, who is taken out every where, and who will give one of his latest compositions, though unfortunately labouring under a cold. This man won the first prize at the Conservatory, an unfledged Boildieu, who will be a great composer of operas--when he can get librettos to his music, and music to his librettos. The next is a painter. He has shown at the exhibition--he has had wonderful success. To be sure nobody bought his pictures, because he didn't wish to sell them to people that couldn't appreciate them. In short, M. Lupot sees nobody in his rooms that is not first-rate in some way or other. He is delighted with the thought--ravished, transported. He can't find words enough to express his satisfaction at having such geniuses in his house. For their sakes he neglects his old friends--he scarcely speaks to them. It seems the new-comers, people he has never seen before, are the only people worthy of his attentions. Madame Lupot is tired of getting up, curtsying, and sitting down again. But her daughter is radiant with joy; her husband goes from room to room, rubbing his hands, as if he had bought all Paris, and got it a bargain. And little Ascanius never comes out of the bed-room without his mouth full. But it is not enough to invite a large party; you must know how to amuse them; it is a thing which very few people have the art of, even those most accustomed to have soirées. In some you get tired, and you are in great ceremony; you must restrict yourself to a conversation that is neither open, nor friendly, nor amusing. In others, you are pestered to death by the amphitryon, who is perhaps endowed with the bump of music, and won't leave the piano for fear some one else should take his place. There are others fond of cards, who only ask their friends that they may make up a table. Such individuals care for nothing but the game, and don't trouble themselves whether the rest of their guests are amused or not. Ah! there are few homes that know how to receive their company, or make every body pleased. It requires a tact, a cleverness, an absence of self, which must surely be very unusual since we see so few specimens of them in the soirées we attend.

M. Lupot went to and fro--from the reception-room to the bed-chamber, and back again--he smiled, he bowed, and rubbed his hands. But the new-comers, who had not come to his house to see him smile and rub his hands, began to say, in very audible whispers, "Ah, well, do people pass the whole night here looking at each other? Very delightful--very!"

M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation with a big man in spectacles, with a neckcloth of great dimensions, and who makes extraordinary faces as he looks round on the company. M. Lupot has been told, that the gentleman with the large neckcloth is a literary man, and that he will probably be good enough to read or recite some lines of his own composition. The ancient stationer coughs three times before venturing to address so distinguished a character, but says at last--"Enchanted to see at my house a gentleman so--an author of such----"

"Ah, you're the host here, are you?--the master of the house?"--said the man in the neckcloth.

"I flatter myself I am--with my wife, of course--the lady on the sofa--you see her? My daughter, sir--she's the tall young lady, so upright in her figure. She designs, and has an excellent touch on the piano. I have a son also--a little fiend--it was he who crept this minute between my legs--he's an extraordinary clev----"

"There is one thing, sir," replied the big man, "that I can't comprehend--a thing that amazes me--and that is, that people who live in the Rue Grenetat should give parties. It is a miserable street--a horrid street--covered eternally with mud--choked up with cars--a wretched part of the town, dirty, noisy, pestilential--bah!"

"And yet, sir, for thirty years I have lived here."

"Oh Lord, sir, I should have died thirty times over! When people live in the Rue Grenetat they should give up society, for you'll grant it is a regular trap to seduce people into such an abominable street. I"----

M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing his hands. He moves off from the big man in the spectacles, whose conversation had by no means amused him, and he goes up to a group of young people who seem examining the Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.

"They're admiring my daughter's drawing," said M. Lupot to himself; "I must try to overhear what these artists are saying." The young people certainly made sundry remarks on the performance, plentifully intermixed with sneers of a very unmistakable kind.

"Can you make out what the head is meant for?"

"Not I. I confess I never saw any thing so ridiculous."

"It's Belisarius, my dear fellow."

"Impossible!--it's the portrait of some grocer, some relation, probably, of the family--look at the nose--the mouth--"

"It is intolerable folly to put a frame to such a daub."

"They must be immensely silly."

"Why, it isn't half so good as the head of the Wandering Jew at the top of a penny ballad."

M. Lupot has heard enough. He slips off from the group without a word, and glides noiselessly to the piano. The young performer who had sacrificed a great concert to come to his soirée, had sat down to the instrument and run his fingers over the notes.

"What a spinnet!" he cried--"what a wretched kettle! How can you expect a man to perform on such a miserable instrument? The thing is absurd--hear this A--hear this G--it's like a hurdygurdy--not one note of it in tune!" But the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding, and played incessantly, thumping the keys with such tremendous force, that every minute a chord snapped; when such a thing happened--he burst into a laugh, and said, "Good! there's another gone--there will soon be none left."

M. Lupot flushed up to the ears. He felt very much inclined to say to the celebrated performer, "Sir, I didn't ask you here to break all the chords of my piano. Let the instrument alone if you don't like it, but don't hinder other people from playing on it for our amusement."

But the good M. Lupot did not venture on so bold a speech, which would have been a very sensible speech nevertheless; and he stood quietly while his chords were getting smashed, though it was by no means a pleasant thing to do.

Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to her father. She is distressed at the way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar.

It is not without some difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ, and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see on a mantelpiece. Nevertheless Mademoiselle Lupot essays her ballad; but she can never manage to overtake her accompanier, who, instead of following the singer, seems determined to make no alteration in the movement of his head and feet. The ballad is a failure--Celanire is confused, she has mistaken her notes--she loses her recollection; and, instead of hearing his daughter's praises, M. Lupot overhears the young people whispering--"It wouldn't do in a beer-shop."

"I must order in the tea," thought the ex-stationer--"it will perhaps put them into good-humour."

And M. Lupot rushes off to give instructions to the maid; and that old individual, who has never seen such a company before, does not know how to get on, and breaks cups and saucers without mercy, in the effort to make haste.

"Nannette, have you got ready the other things you were to bring in with the tea?--the muffins--the cakes?"

"Yes, sir"--replied Nannette--"all is ready--every thing will be in in a moment."

"But there is another thing I told you, Nannette--the sandwiches."

"The witches, sir?--the sand?"--enquired the puzzled Nannette.

"It is an English dish--I explained it to you before--slices of bread and butter, with ham between."

"Oh la, sir!" exclaimed the maid--"I have forgotten that ragoût--oh dear!"

"Well--make haste, Nannette; get ready some immediately, while my daughter hands round the tea and muffins--you can bring them in on a tray."

The old domestic hurries into the kitchen grumbling at the English dainty, and cuts some slices of bread and covers them with butter; but as she had never thought of the ham, she cogitates a long time how she can supply the want of it--at last, on looking round, she discovers a piece of beef that had been left at dinner.

"Pardieu," she says, "I'll cut some lumps of this and put them on the bread. With plenty of salt they'll pass very well for ham--they'll drive me wild with their English dishes--they will."

The maid speedily does as she says, and then hurries into the room with a tray covered with her extempore ham sandwiches.

Every body takes one,--for they have grown quite fashionable along with tea. But immediately there is an universal murmur in the assembly. The ladies throw their slices into the fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on the furniture, and they cry--"why the devil do people give us things like these?--they're detestable."

"It's my opinion, God forgive me! the man means to feed us with scraps from the pig-trough," says another.

"It's a regular do, this soirée," says a third.

"The tea is disgustingly smoked," says a fourth.

"And all the little cakes look as if they had been fingered before," says the fifth.

"Decidedly they wish to poison us," says the big man in the neckcloth, looking very morose.

M. Lupot is in despair. He goes in search of Nannette, who has hidden herself in the kitchen; and he busies himself in gathering up the fragments of the bread and butter from the floor and the fireplace.

Madame Lupot says nothing; but she is in very bad humour, for she has put on a new cap, which she felt sure would be greatly admired; and a lady has come to her and said--

"Ah, madame, what a shocking head-dress!--your cap is very old-fashioned--those shapes are quite gone out."

"And yet, madame," replies Madame Lupot, "I bought it, not two days ago, in the Rue St Martin."

"Well, madame--Is that the street you go to for the fashions? Go to Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous Gaillon--you'll get delicious caps there--new fashions and every thing so tasteful: for Heaven's sake, madame, never put on that cap again. You look, at least, a hundred."

"It's worth one's while, truly," thought Madame Lupot, "to tire one's self to death receiving people, to be treated to such pretty compliments."

Her husband, in the meanwhile, continued his labours in pursuit of the rejected sandwiches.

The big man in spectacles, who wondered that people could live in the Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless, of coming there for nothing. He has seated himself in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, and informs the company that he is going to repeat a few lines of his own to them.--The society seems by no means enchanted with the announcement, but forms itself in a circle, to listen to the poet. He coughs and spits, wipes his mouth, tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has the lamps raised, the doors shut, asks a tumbler of sugar and water, and passes his hand through his hair. After continuing these operations for some minutes, the literary man at last begins. He spouts his verses in a voice enough to break the glasses; before he has spoken a minute, he has presented a tremendous picture of crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds, sufficient to appal the stoutest hearts, when suddenly a great crash from the inner room attracts universal attention. It is the young Ascanius, who was trying to get a muffin on the top of a pile of dishes, and has upset the table, with muffin, and dishes, and all on his own head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain the cause of the dreadful cries of his son; the company follow him, not a little rejoiced to find an excuse for hearing no more of the poem; and the poet, deprived in this way of an audience, gets up in a furious passion, takes his hat, and rushes from the room, exclaiming--"It serves me right. How could I have been fool enough to recite good verses in the Rue Grenetat!"

Ascanius is brought in and roars lustily, for two of the dishes have been broken on his nose; and as there is no chance now, either of poetry or music, the party have recourse to cards--for it is impossible to sit all night and do nothing.

They make up a table at _bouillote_, and another at _ecarté_. M. Lupot takes his place at the latter. He is forced to cover all the bets when his side refuses; and M. Lupot, who never played higher than shilling stakes in his life, is horrified when they tell him--"You must lay down fifteen francs to equal our stakes."

"Fifteen francs!" says M. Lupot, "what is the meaning of all this?"

"It means, that you must make up the stakes of your side, to what we have put down on this. The master of the house is always expected to make up the difference."

M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays down his fifteen francs and loses them; next game the deficiency is twenty. In short, in less than half an hour, the ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His eyes start out of his head--he scarcely knows where he is; and to complete his misery, the opposite party, in lifting up the money they have won, upset one of the lamps he had borrowed from his neighbours, and smashed it into fifty pieces.

At last the hour of separation comes. The good citizen has been anxious for it for a long time. All his gay company depart, without even wishing good-night to the host who has exerted himself so much for their entertainment. The family of the Lupots are left alone; Madame, overcome with fatigue, and vexed because her cap had been found fault with; Celanire, with tears in her eyes, because her music and Belisarius had been laughed at; and Ascanius sick and ill, because he has nearly burst himself with cakes and muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the unhappiest of all, thinking of his ninety francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette gathered up the crumbs of the sandwiches, and muttered--"Do they think people make English dishes to have them thrown into the corners of the room?"

"It's done," said M. Lupot; "I shall give no more soirées. I begin to think I was foolish in wishing to leave my own sphere. When people of the same class lark and joke each other, it's all very well; but when you meddle with your superiors, and they are uncivil, it hurts your feelings. Their mockery is an insult, and you don't get over it soon. My dear Celanire, I shall decidedly try to marry you to a stationer."

* * * * *

THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.

THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.

OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.

The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in our last for the admiration and instruction of remote ages. When the nineteenth century shall be long out of date, and centuries in general out of their _teens_, posterity will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is, after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his _monomania_, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if, indeed, it can be said to injure him who glories in his vocation--who is the echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.

The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families, and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the text of Scripture, which commandeth us, "in whatever station we are, therewith to be content."

The gentility-monger is a family man, having a house somewhere in Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is sometimes a man of independent fortune--how acquired, nobody knows; that is his secret, his mystery. He will let no one suppose that he has ever been in trade; because, when a man intends gentility-mongering, it must never be known that he has formerly carried on the tailoring, or the shipping, or the cheese-mongering, or the fish-mongering, or any other mongering than the gentility-mongering. His house is very stylishly furnished; that is to say, as unlike the house of a man of fashion as possible--the latter having only things the best of their kind, and for use; the former displaying every variety of extravagant gimcrackery, to impress you with a profound idea of combined wealth and taste, but which, to an educated eye and mind only, conveys a lively idea of ostentation. When you call upon a gentility-monger, a broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike footman, in Aurora plushes, ushers you to a drawing-room, where, on tables round, and square, and hexagonal, are set forth jars, porcelain, china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed parrots under bell-glasses; corals, minerals, and an infinity of trumpery, among which albums, great, small, and intermediate, must by no means be forgotten.

The room is papered with some _splendacious_ pattern in blue and gold; a chandelier of imposing gingerbread depends from the richly ornamented ceiling; every variety of ottoman, lounger, settee, is scattered about, so that to get a chair involves the right-of-search question; the bell-pulls are painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels carpet of flaming colours, curtains with massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous frames; prints, after Ross, of her Majesty and Prince Albert, of course; and mezzotints of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for whom the gentility-monger has a profound respect, and of whom he talks with a familiarity showing that it is not _his_ fault, at least, if these exalted personages do not admit him to the honour of their acquaintance.

In fact, you see the drawing-room is not intended for sitting down in, and when the lady appears, you are inclined to believe she never sits down; at least the full-blown swell of that satin skirt seems never destined to the compression of a chair. The conversation is as usual--"Have you read the morning paper?"--meaning the Court Circular and fashionable intelligence; "do you know whether the Queen is at Windsor or Claremont, and how long her Majesty intends to remain; whether town is fuller than it was, or not so full; when the next Almacks' ball takes place; whether you were at the last drawing-room, and which of the fair _debutantes_ you most admire; whether Tamburini is to be denied us next year?" with many lamentations touching the possible defection, as if the migrations of an opera thrush were of the least consequence to any rational creature--of course you don't say so, but lament Tamburini as if he were your father; "whether it is true that we are to have the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito, this season; and what a heaven of delight we shall experience from the united action of these twenty supernatural pettitoes." You needn't express yourself after this fashion, else you will shock miss, who lounges near you in an agony of affected rapture: you must sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your cane, and say "divine--yes--hope it may be so--exquisite--_exquisite_." This naturally leads you to the last new songs, condescendingly exhibited to you by miss, if you are _somebody_, (if _nobody_, miss does not appear;) you are informed that "_My heart is like a pickled salmon_" is dedicated to the Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon you are favoured with sundry passages (out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages, &c., of that illustrious family; you are asked whether Bishop is the composer of "_I saw her in a twinkling_," and whether the _minor_ is not fine? Miss tells you she has transposed it from G to C, as suiting her voice better--whereupon mamma acquaints you, that a hundred and twenty guineas for a harp is moderate, she thinks; you think so too, taking that opportunity to admire the harp, saying that you saw one exactly like it at Lord (any Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in St James's Square. This produces an invitation to dinner; and with many lamentations on English weather, and an eulogium on the climate of Florence, you pay your parting compliments, and take your leave.

At dinner you meet a claret-faced Irish absentee, whose good society is a good dinner, and who is too happy to be asked any where that a good dinner is to be had; a young silky clergyman, in black curled whiskers, and a white _choker_; one of the meaner fry of M.P.'s; a person who _calls himself_ a foreign count; a claimant of a dormant peerage; a baronet of some sort, not above the professional; sundry propriety-faced people in yellow waistcoats, who say little, and whose social position you cannot well make out; half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age, dressed in grand style, with turbans of imposing _tournure_; and a young, diffident, equivocal-looking gent who sits at the bottom of the table, and whom you instinctively make out to be a family doctor, tutor, or nephew, with expectations. No young ladies, unless the young ladies of the family, appear at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers; because the motive of the entertainment is pride, not pleasure; and therefore prigs and frumps are in keeping, and young women with brains, or power of conversation, would only distract attention from the grand business of life, that is to say, dinner; besides, a seat at table here is an object, where the expense is great, and nobody is asked for his or her own sake, but for an object either of ostentation, interest, or vanity. Hospitality never enters into the composition of a gentility-monger: he gives a dinner, wine, and a shake of the hand, but does not know what the word _welcome_ means: he says, now and then, to his wife "My dear, I think we must give a dinner;" a dinner is accordingly determined on, cards issued three weeks in advance, that you may be premeditatedly dull; the dinner is gorgeous to repletion, that conversation may be kept as stagnant as possible. Of those happy surprize invitations--those unexpected extemporaneous dinners, that as they come without thinking or expectation, so go off with _eclat_, and leave behind the memory of a cheerful evening--he has no idea; a man of fashion, whose place is fixed, and who has only himself to please, will ask you to a slice of crimped cod and a hash of mutton, without ceremony; and when he puts a cool bottle on the table, after a dinner that he and his friend have really enjoyed, will never so much as apologize with, "my dear sir, I fear you have had a wretched dinner," or "I wish I had known: I should have had something better." This affected depreciation of his hospitality he leaves to the gentility-monger, who will insist on cramming you with fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are like to burst; and then, by way of apology, get his guests to pay the reckoning in plethoric laudation of his mountains of victual.

If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after the appointed time, although you arrived to a _minute_, as every Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host, hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow waistcoats, and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of miss, asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a prolonged _rat-tat-tat_ announces the arrival of the noble beast, the lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.

As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not strictly understood, the host desires Honourable Sniftky to take down miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.

You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky, _ex-officio_, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of assize, go circuit.

Then comes hobnobbing, with an interlocutory dissertation upon a _plateau, candelabrum_, or some other superfluous machine, in the centre of the table. One of the professed diners-out, discovers for the twentieth time an inscription in dead silver on the pedestal, and enquires with well-affected ignorance whether that is a _present_; the gentility-monger asks the diner-out to wine, as he deserves, then enters into a long apologetical self-laudation of his exertions in behalf of the CANNIBAL ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION, AND BRITISH SUBJECT TRANSPORTATION SOCIETY, (some emigration crimping scheme, in short,) in which his humble efforts to diffuse civilization and promote Christianity, however unworthy, ("No, no!" from the diner-out,) gained the esteem of his fellow-labourers, and the approbation of his own con----"Shall I send you some fish, sir?" says the man at the foot of the table, addressing himself to the Honourable Sniftky, and cutting short the oration.

A monstrous salmon and a huge turbot are now dispensed to the hungry multitude; the gentility-monger has no idea that the biggest turbot is not the best; he knows it is the _dearest_, and that is enough for him; he would have his dishes like his cashbook, to show at a glance how much he has at his banker's. When the flesh of the guests has been sufficiently fishified, there is an _interregnum_, filled up with another circuit of wine, until the arrival of the _pièces de resistance_, the imitations of made dishes, and the usual _etceteras_. The conversation, meanwhile, is carried on in a _staccato_ style; a touch here, a hit there, a miss almost every where; the Honourable Sniftky turning the head of mamma with affected compliments, and hobnobbing to himself without intermission. After a sufficiently tedious interval, the long succession of wasteful extravagance is cleared away with the upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a look from our hostess, rise with dignity and decorously retire, miss modestly bringing up the rear--the man at the foot of the table with the handle of the door in one hand, and a napkin in the other, bowing them out.

Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive dinner, can be jovial _to order_. The wine goes round, and laudations go with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several speakers, as much as to say, "What a fellow you are, to talk;" the host essays a _bon-mot_, or tells a story bordering on the _ideal_, which he thinks is fashionable, and shows that he knows life; the Honourable Sniftky drinks claret from a beer-glass, and after the third bottle affects to discover his mistake, wondering what he could be thinking of; this produces much laughter from all save the professed diners-out, who dare not take such a liberty, and is _the_ jest of the evening.

When the drinkers, drinkables, and talk are quite exhausted, the noise of a piano recalls to our bewildered recollections the ladies, and we drink their healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending that it is foreign-post night at the Foreign Office, walks off without even a bow to the assembled diners, the gentility-monger following him submissively to the door; then returning, tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone, he's such a good-natured fellow, while the gentleman so characterized gets into his cab, drives to his club, and excites the commiseration of every body there, by relating how he was bored with an old _ruffian_, who insisted upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner in Bryanston Square; at which there are many "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" and "what could you expect?--Bryanston Square!--served you right."

In the mean time, the guests, relieved of the presence of the Honourable Sniftky, are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor, or something of that sort) waxes jocular, and gives decided indications of something like "how came you so;" the man at the foot of the table contradicts one of the diners-out, and is contradicted in turn by the baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured man, supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands' Aborigines Protection Society, in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the dormant peerage retails his pedigree, pulling to pieces the attorney-general, who has expressed an opinion hostile to his pretensions.

In the mean time, the piano is joined by a harp, in musical solicitation of the company to join the ladies in the drawing-room; they do so, looking flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs, sip tea, the younger beaux turning over, with miss, Books of Beauty and Keepsakes: at eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless, stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual, selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon, assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where gulosity has been unrelieved by one single sally of wit, humour, good-nature, humanity, or charity; where you come without a welcome, and leave without a friend.

The whole art of the gentility-mongers of all sorts in London, and _à fortiori_ of their wives and families, is to lay a tax upon social intercourse as nearly as possible amounting to a prohibition; their dinners are criminally wasteful, and sinfully extravagant to this end; to this end they insist on making _price_ the test of what they are pleased to consider _select society_ in their own sets, and they consequently cannot have a dance without guinea tickets nor a _pic-nic_ without dozens of champagne. This shows their native ignorance and vulgarity more than enough; genteel people go upon a plan directly contrary, not merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying themselves without extravagance or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers would do well to imitate people of fashion.

The exertions a gentility-monger will make, to rub his skirts against people above him; the humiliations, mortifications, snubbing, he will submit to, are almost incredible. One would hardly believe that a retired tradesman, of immense wealth, and enjoying all the respect that immense wealth will secure, should actually offer large sums of money to a lady of fashion, as an inducement to procure for him cards of invitation to her _set_, which he stated was the great object of his existence. Instead of being indignant at his presumption, the lady in question, pitying the poor man's folly, attempted to reason with him, assuring him with great truth that whatever might be his wealth, his power or desire of pleasing, he would be rendered unhappy and ridiculous, by the mere dint of pretension to a circle to which he had no legitimate claim, and advising him, as a friend, to attempt some more laudable and satisfactory ambition.

All this good advice was, however, thrown away; our gentility-monger persevered, contriving somehow to gain a passport to some of the _outer_ circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed, laughed at, and honoured with the _soubriquet_ (he was a pianoforte maker) of the _Semi-Grand_!

We know another instance, where two young men, engaged in trade in the city, took a splendid mansion at the West End, furnished it sumptuously, got some desperate knight or baronet's widow to give parties at their house, inviting whomsoever she thought proper, at their joint expense. It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows succeeded in getting into good society, not indeed in the _Court Circular_, but in the--_Gazette_.

There is another class of gentility-mongers more to be pitied than the last; those, namely, who are endeavouring to "make a connexion," as the phrase is, by which they may gain advancement in their professions, and are continually on the look-out for introductions to persons of quality, their hangers-on and dependents. There is too much of this sort of thing among medical men in London, the family nature of whose profession renders connexion, private partiality, and personal favour, more essential to them than to others. The lawyer, for example, need not be a gentility-monger; he has only to get round attorneys, for the opportunity to show what he can do, when he has done this, in which a little toadying, "_on the sly_," is necessary--all the rest is easy. The court and the public are his judges; his powers are at once appreciable, his talent can be calculated, like the money in his pocket; he can now go on straight forward, without valuing the individual preference or aversion of any body.

But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women, and an inexhaustible variety of _sotto voce_ contrivances, must needs have a tendency to create a subserviency of spirit and of manner, which naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering: where realities, such as medical experience, reading, and skill, are remotely, or not at all, appreciable, we must take up with appearances; and of all appearances, the appearance of proximity to people of fashion is the most taking and seductive to people _not_ of fashion. It is for this reason that a rising physician, if he happen to have a lord upon his sick or visiting list, never has done telling his plebeian patients the particulars of his noble case, which they swallow like almond milk, finding it an excellent _placebo_.

As it is the interest of a gentility-monger, and his constant practice, to be attended by a fashionable physician, in order that he may be enabled continually to talk of what Sir Henry thinks of this, and how Sir Henry objects to that, and the opinion of Sir Henry upon t'other, so it is the business of the struggling doctor to be a gentility-monger, with the better chance of becoming one day or other a fashionable physician. Acting on this principle, the poor man must necessarily have a house in a professional neighbourhood, which usually abuts upon a neighbourhood fashionable or exclusive; he must hire a carriage by the month, and be for ever stepping in and out of it, at his own door, keeping it purposely bespattered with mud to show the extent of his visiting acquaintance; he must give dinners to people "who _may_ be useful," and be continually on the look-out for those lucky accidents which have made the fortunes, and, as a matter of course, the _merit_, of so many professional men.

He becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society, which gives him the chance of conversing with a lord, and the right of entering a lord's (the president's) house, which is turned into sandwich-shop four times a-year for his reception; this, being the nearest approach he makes to acquaintance with great personages, he values with the importance it deserves.

His servants, with famine legibly written on their bones, are assiduous and civil; his wife, though half-starved, is very genteel, and at her dinner parties burns candle-ends from the palace.[48]

[48] In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St.
James's Street, may be seen stumps, or, as the Scotch call
them, _doups_ of wax-lights, with the announcement "Candle-ends
from Buckingham Palace." These are eagerly bought up by the
gentility-mongers, who burn, or it may be, in the excess of
their loyalty, _eat_ them!

If you pay her a morning visit, you will have some such conversation as follows.

"Pray, Mr ----, is there any news to-day?"

"Great distress, I understand, throughout the country."

"Indeed--the old story, shocking--very.--Pray, have you heard the delightful news? The Princess-Royal has actually cut a tooth!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, I assure you; and the sweet little royal love of a martyr has borne it like a hero."

"Positively?"

"Positively, I assure you; Doctor Tryiton has just returned from a consultation with his friend Sir Henry, upon a particularly difficult case--Lord Scruffskin--case of elephantiasis I think they call it, and tells me that Sir Henry has arrives express from Windsor with the news."

"Indeed!"

"Do you think, Mr ----, there will be a general illumination?"

"Really, madam, I cannot say."

"_There ought to be_, [with emphasis.] You must know, Mr ----, Dr Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter a beautifully bound copy of his work on ulcerated sore throat; he says there is a great analogy between ulcers of the throat and den--den--den--something, I don't know what--teething, in short. If nothing comes of it, Dr Tryiton, thank Heaven, can do without it; but you know, Mr ----, it may, on a future occasion, be _useful to our family_."

If there is, in the great world of London, one thing more spirit-sinking than another, it is to see men condemned, by the necessities of an overcrowded profession, to sink to the meannesses of pretension for a desperate accident by which they may insure success. When one has had an opportunity of being behind the scenes, and knowing what petty shifts, what poor expedients of living, what anxiety of mind, are at the bottom of all this empty show, one will not longer marvel that many born for better things should sink under the difficulties of their position, or that the newspapers so continually set forth the miserably unprovided for condition in which they so often are compelled to leave their families. To dissipate the melancholy that always oppresses us when constrained to behold the ridiculous antics of the gentility-mongers, which we chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation--let us contrast the hospitality of those who, with wiser ambition, keep themselves, as the saying is, "_to themselves_;" and, as a bright example, let us recollect our old friend Joe Stimpson.

Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller in Bermondsey, the architect of his own fortune, which he has raised to the respectable elevation of somewhere about a quarter of a million sterling. He is now in his seventy-second year, has a handsome house, without and pretension, overlooking his tanyard. He has a joke upon prospects, calling you to look from the drawing-room window at his tanpits, asking you if you ever saw any thing like that at the west end of the town; replying in the negative, Joe, chuckling, observes that it is the finest prospect _he_ ever saw in his life, and although he has been admiring it for half a century, he has not done admiring it yet. Joe's capacity for the humorous may be judged of by this specimen; but in attention to business few can surpass him, while his hospitality can command a wit whenever he chooses to angle for one with a good dinner. He has a wife, a venerable old smiling lady in black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes; three daughters, unmarried; and a couple of sons, brought up, after the London fashion, to inherit their father's business, or, we might rather say, _estate_.

Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain unmarried, we cannot say, nor would it be decorous to enquire; but hearing them drop a hint now and then about visits, "a considerable time ago," to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we are led, however reluctantly in the case of ladies _now_ evangelical, to conclude, their attention has formerly been directed to gentility-mongering at these places of fashionable resort; the tanyard acting as a repellent to husbands of a social position superior to their own, and their great fortunes operating in deterring worthy persons of their own station from addressing them; or being the means of inducing them to be too prompt with refusals, these amiable middle-aged young ladies are now "on hands," paying the penalty of one of the many curses that pride of wealth brings in its train. At present, however, their "affections are set on things above;" and, without meaning any thing disrespectful to my friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet, and Susan Stimpson are certainly the three least agreeable members of the family. The sons are, like all other sons in the houses of their fathers, steady, business-like, unhappy, and dull; they look like fledged birds in the nest of the old ones, out of place; neither servants nor masters, their social position is somewhat equivocal, and having lived all their lives in the house of their father, seeing as he sees, thinking as he thinks, they can hardly be expected to appear more than a brace of immature Joe Stimpsons. They are not, it is true, tainted with much of the world's wickedness, neither have they its self-sustaining trials, its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles, or that experience which is gathered only by men who quit, when they can quit it, the petticoat string, and the paternal despotism of even a happy home. As for the old couple, time, although silvering the temples and furrowing the front, is hardly seen to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder of either, much less to put his finger on eyes, ears, or lips--the two first being yet as "wide awake," and the last as open to a joke, or any other good thing, as ever they were; in sooth, it is no unpleasing sight to see this jolly old couple with nearly three half centuries to answer for, their affection unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and temper undisturbed by the near approach, beyond hope of respite, of that stealthy foe whose assured advent strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson, if he thinks of death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring. The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife, unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings, somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven, they don't care who goes to ----," a place that Virgil and Tasso have taken much pains in describing, but which the old gentleman sufficiently indicates by one emphatic monosyllable.

Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates cant and humbug, and has no prejudices--hating the French he will not acknowledge is a prejudice, but considers the bounden duty of an Englishman; and, though fierce enough upon other subjects of taxation, thinks no price too high for drubbing them. He was once prevailed upon to attempt a journey to Paris; but having got to Calais, insisted upon returning by the next packet, swearing it was a shabby concern, and he had seen enough of it.

He takes in the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ because his father did it before him--but he never reads it; he takes pride in a corpulent dog, which is ever at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache, and swears at any body who calls it _tic-douloureux._