I am far from wishing that their Graces should treat me in a similar fashion.Splendour is a part of their station, as decent comfort (let us trust), of yours and mine.Fate has comfortably appointed gold plate for some, and has bidden others contentedly to wear the willow-pattern.And being perfectly contented (indeed humbly thankful--for look around, O Jones, and see the myriads who are not so fortunate,) to wear honest linen, while magnificos of the world are adorned with cambric and point-lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable, envious fools, those wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,--the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the sunshine!
The jays with peacocks' feathers are the Snobs of this world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present in this free country.
How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject in hand?--the Dinner-giving Snob.The imitation of the great is universal in this city, from the palaces of Kensingtonia and Belgravia, even to the remotest corner of Brunswick Square.
Peacocks' feathers are stuck in the tails of most families.Scarce one of us domestic 2birds but imitates the lanky, pavonine strut, and shrill, genteel scream.
O you misguided dinner-giving Snobs, think how much pleasure you lose, and how much mischief you do with your absurd grandeurs and hypocrisies! You stuff each other with unnatural forced-meats, and entertain each other to the ruin of friendship (let alone health) and the destruction of hospitality and good-fellowship--you, who but for the peacock's tail might chatter away so much at your ease, and be so jovial and happy!
When a man goes into a great set company of dinner-giving and dinner-receiving Snobs, if he has a philosophical turn of mind, he will consider what a huge humbug the whole affair is: the dishes, and the drink, and the servants, and the plate, and the host and hostess, and the conversation, and the company,--the philosopher included.
The host is smiling, and hob-nobbing, and talking up and down the table; but a prey to secret terrors and anxieties, lest the wines he has brought up from the cellar should prove insufficient; lest a corked bottle should destroy his calculations; or our friend the carpet-beater, by making some BEVUE, should disclose his real quality of greengrocer, and show that he is not the family butler.
The hostess is smiling resolutely through all the courses, smiling through her agony; though her heart is in the kitchen, and she is speculating with terror lest there be any disaster there.If the SOUFFLE should collapse, or if Wiggins does not send the ices in time--she feels as if she would commit suicide--that smiling, jolly woman!
The children upstairs are yelling, as their maid is crimping their miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emmy's hair out by the roots, or scrubbing Miss Polly's dumpy nose with mottled soap till the little wretch screams herself into fits.The young males of the family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical exploits upon the landing-place.
The servants are not servants, but the before-mentioned retail tradesmen.
The plate is not plate, but a mere shiny Birmingham lacquer; and so is the hospitality, and everything else.
The talk is Birmingham talk.The wag of the party, with bitterness in his heart, having just quitted his laundress, who is dunning him for her bill, is firing off good stories; and the opposition wag is furious that he cannot get an innings.Jawkins, the great conversationalist, is scornful and indignant with the pair of them, because he is kept out of court.Young Muscadel, that cheap dandy, is talking Fashion and Almack's out of the MORNING POST, and disgusting his neighbour, Mrs.Fox, who reflects that she has never been there.The widow is vexed out of patience, because her daughter Maria has got a place beside young Cambric, the penniless curate, and not by Colonel Goldmore, the rich widower from India.The Doctor's wife is sulky, because she has not been led out before the barrister's lady; old Doctor Cork is grumbling at the wine, and Guttleton sneering at the cookery.
And to think that all these people might be so happy, and easy, and friendly, were they brought together in a natural unpretentious way, and but for an unhappy passion for peacocks' feathers in England.Gentle shades of Marat and Robespierre! when I see how all the honesty of society is corrupted among us by the miserable fashion-worship, I feel as angry as Mrs.Fox just mentioned, and ready to order a general BATTUE of peacocks.
