CE N'EST QUE LE PREMIER PAS QUI COÛTE
"The reform of our army," should Panmure ask, "how begin?"
"By not taking," says Punch, "quite so much care of Dowbiggin."
With Bulwer Lytton a long feud was maintained, but it was not as a peer but as a writer and a sophisticated snob that he earned the dislike of Punch, who published (February 28, 1846) Tennyson's retort on his traducer. In later years, however, a complete reconciliation took place.
Thackeray on Great Folks
Punch saw no inherent virtue in peers or peerages. He welcomed the bestowal of one on Macaulay; he applauded the decision of Peel's family in declining the honour after his death. Mentions by name of noble personages in his pages in this period are more often hostile than friendly. He agreed with Tennyson that "kind hearts are more than coronets," but he was far from maintaining that they were incompatible. Thackeray, who, as we know, did not see eye to eye with Douglas Jerrold, and found his constant anti-aristocratic invective tiresome, redressed the balance, notably in "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young Man about Town." Discoursing on good women, in whose company you can't think evil, he says you may find them in the suburbs and Mayfair, and, again:—
The great comfort of the society of great folks is that they do not trouble themselves about your twopenny little person, as smaller persons do, but take you for what you are—a man kindly and good-natured, or witty and sarcastic, or learned and eloquent, or a good raconteur, or a very handsome man, or an excellent gourmand and judge of wine—or what not. Nobody sets you so quickly at your ease as a fine gentleman. I have seen more noise made about a Knight's lady than about the Duchess of Fitz-Battleaxe herself; and Lady Mountararat, whose family dates from the Deluge, enter and leave a room, with her daughters the lovely Ladies Eve and Lilith D'Arc, with much less pretension, and in much simpler capotes and what-do-you-call-'ems, than Lady de Mogins, or Mrs. Shindy, who quit an assembly in a whirlwind, with trumpets and alarums like a stage King and Queen.
[15] Colonel Garwood's selections from the Duke of Wellington's Dispatches.