SMALL CHANGE FOR PERSONS GOING ON THE CONTINENT
Laugh at everything you do not understand, and never fail to ridicule anything that appears strange to you. The habits of the lower class will afford you abundant entertainment, if you have the proper talent to mimic them. Their religious ceremonies you will also find to be an endless source of amusement.
Recollect very few people talk in English on the Continent, so you may be perfectly at your ease in abusing foreigners before their faces, and talking any modest nonsense you like, in the presence of ladies, at a _table d'hôte_. Do not care what you say about the government of any particular state you may be visiting, and show your national spirit by boasting, on every possible occasion, of the superiority of England and everything English.
DOORKEEPER: "Beg your pardon, Sir--but must, indeed, Sir, be in full dress."
SNOB (excited): "Full dress!! Why, what do you call this?"]
[Sidenote: _The "Gent" Abroad and at Home_]
The criticism, if caustic, was not without provocation, and unhappily the provocation did not cease, indeed, it may not be a rash assertion to observe that it has not yet altogether ceased. The type reappeared as "'Arry." In the early 'forties he was one of _Punch's_ pet aversions under the title of "the Gent":--
Of all the loungers who cross our way in the public thoroughfares, the _Gent_ is the most unbearable, principally from an assumption of style about him--a futile aping of superiority that inspires us with feelings of mingled contempt and amusement, when we contemplate his ridiculous pretensions to be considered "the thing."
No city in the world produces so many holiday specimens of tawdry vulgarity as London; and the river appears to be the point towards which all the countless myriads converge. Their strenuous attempts to ape _gentility_--a bad style of word, we admit, but one peculiarly adapted to our purpose--are to us more painful than ludicrous; and the labouring man, dressed in the usual costume of his class, is in our eyes far more respectable than the Gent, in his dreary efforts to assume a style and _tournure_ which he is so utterly incapable of carrying out.
_Punch_ was a sincere lover of his country and her Constitution. When foreigners criticized England or the English he was up in arms in a moment. John Bull, he declared, _à propos_ of the suspicion of the French Government, was the best natured, most kindly, and tolerant fellow in the world. But this conviction never stood in the way of his playing the candid friend to and dealing faithfully with his countrymen on all possible occasions. As a comprehensive indictment of their failings it would be hard to beat or to improve upon the following list of the things an Englishman likes:--