Once a Week
NEW SERIES.
SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.
SHAM SWELLS.
WAS once travelling in the banquette of the diligence, which in those days ran between Dijon and Geneva, with the conductor and an Englishman; who, the moment the postillion had left off cursing his horses— calling one a “sacred burgess,” another a “determined pig,” and so on—entered at once into conversation. He was well dressed—too well dressed, in fact; talked with intelligence on the country and people; was modest and unassuming in his opinions; and yet he lacked that indefinable something which at once declares the gentleman.
After we had been travelling four or five hours, we fell to discussing a certain noble lord—as how, indeed, can happen otherwise when two or three Englishmen are gathered together?—and he displayed such a prodigious acquaintance with the peerage and its members, their habits, manners, alliances, and even their bankers’ accounts, without a suspicion of swagger, that I was fairly taken aback. Seeing my looks of astonishment, and perhaps of incredulity, as he mentioned name after name of tided personages, he hastened to explain himself; and, drawing a card from his pocket-book, he handed it to me, saying, with a touch of humour in his voice—
“There, sir, you will see now that I am perfectly capable of taking their measure.”
The card bore the name and address of Mr. Sheares, the celebrated tailor of Acqueduct-street.
I could not help laughing, while I respected him. He announced his profession, with as much easy affability as he had dis played in talking of his noble clients—I suppose no man is a hero to his tailor. He was evidently not ashamed of his trade; and,in short, was a very good fellow. We parted on excellent terms; and, on my return to town, I asked him to find a space for my name on his books, which he did. I have reason to believe he has never regretted it, for he has not yet invited me to dinner—, which, I am given to understand, is a practice amongst his craft towards those scions of the aristocracy who don’t pay their bills.
If he had not informed, he would not have I deceived me. I should have set him down as a snob, or a Sham Swell, who is to be held up to obloquy in this paper as a heavy social grievance.
Sir Walter Scott says, in his introduction to the “Monastery”—
“In every period, the attempt to gain and maintain the higher rank of society has depended on the power of assuming and supporting a certain fashionable kind of affectation, usually connected with some vivacity of talent and energy of character, but distinguished at the same time by a transcendant flight beyond sound reason and common sense: both faculties too vulgar to be admitted into the estimate of one who claims to be esteemed a choice spirit of the age!”
