Tufthunt never has a dinner now but
you see this solemn old toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs.
Tufthunt--Tufthunt is a Dinner-giving Snob.
Old Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney, the East Indian Director, old
Cutler, the Surgeon, &c.,--that society of old fogies, in fine, who give
each other dinners round and round, and dine for the mere purpose of
guttling--these, again, are Dinner-giving Snobs.
Again, my friend Lady MacScrew, who has three grenadier flunkeys in lace
round the table, and serves up a scrag-of-mutton on silver, and dribbles
you out bad sherry and port by thimblefuls, is a Dinner-giving Snob of
the other sort; and I confess, for my part, I would rather dine with old
Livermore or old Soy than with her Ladyship.
Stinginess is snobbish. Ostentation is snobbish. Too great profusion
is snobbish. Tuft-hunting is snobbish. But I own there are people more
snobbish than all those whose defects are above mentioned: viz., those
individuals who can, and don't give dinners at all. The man without
hospitality shall never sit SUB IISDEM TRABIBUS with ME. Let the sordid
wretch go mumble his bone alone!
What, again, is true hospitality? Alas, my dear friends and brother
Snobs! how little do we meet of it after all! Are the motives PURE which
induce your friends to ask you to dinner? This has often come across me.
Does your entertainer want something from you? For instance, I am not of
a suspicious turn; but it IS a fact that when Hookey is bringing out a
new work, he asks the critics all round to dinner; that when Walker has
got his picture ready for the Exhibition, he somehow grows exceedingly
hospitable, and has his friends of the press to a quiet cutlet and a
glass of Sillery.
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