W M Thackeray

The Book of Snobs W M Thackeray

There are relative and positive Snobs. I mean by positive, such persons as are Snobs everywhere, in all companies, from morning till night, from youth to the grave, being by Nature endowed with Snobbishness-and others who are Snobs only in certain circumstances and relations of life. For instance: I once knew a man who committed before me an act as atrocious as that which I have indicated in the last chapter as performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man who, dining in my company at the 'Europa Coffee-house, ' (opposite the Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining at Naples, ) ate peas with the assistance of his knife. He was a person with whose society I was greatly pleased at first-indeed, we had met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held to ransom by brigands in Calabria, which is nothing to the purpose-a man of great powers, excellent heart, and varied information; but I had never before seen him with a dish of pease, and his conduct in regard to them caused me the deepest pai