Book: Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.




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 _pieces 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 _a
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_.

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