[The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link book
The Book of Snobs

CHAPTER XIX--DINING-OUT SNOBS
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And oh, I tremble to think how many and many a one will read this! A man who entertains in this way--and, alas, how few do not!--is like a fellow who would borrow his neighbour's coat to make a show in, or a lady who flaunts in the diamonds from next door--a humbug, in a word, and amongst the Snobs he must be set down.
A man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to ask Lords, Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of his hospitality towards his own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob.

My dear friend, Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull as--well, we will not particularise.

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.


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