b, with
characteristic shrewdness obtained an introduction from Mr. Hampton, the
secretary of the Conservative Club, to the Secretaries of the Reform
and the Athenaeum, and begged their permission to inspect their
complaint-books--a fact which has not before been recorded; and from
them he gained such an insight into the failings of the snobbish
clubman, that that portion of the work is unsurpassed for its truth to
life. It is generally understood that he took Mr. Stephen Price, of the
Garrick Club, as the model for Captain Shandy, and that his type of the
sporting snob was Mr. Wyndham Smith.

There is not much doubt that Thackeray was a little--if ever so
little--of a snob himself, and Jerrold's suspicion of him was to that
extent justified. He did not show it so much by going into Society, for,
as he said to a friend, "If I don't go out and mingle in Society, I
can't write"--just as Mr. du Maurier goes out in order to study his
world, and as Leech rode to hounds for the sake of his health and work.
But Thackeray, who was the writer of some of the most caustic articles
on "Jenkins"--(under which name _Punch_ habitually attacked the "Morning
Post," the aristocratic airs of which were to him a perpetual
provocation)--seemed to take a little more interest in Society than mere
curiosity or policy required; and was once thrown heavily in an
encounter with the "Post's" reporter. Henry Vizetelly retells the story
well in his "Looking Back through Seventy Years":--

A favourite butt for Hannay's savage satire was Rumsey Forster--the
Jenkins of the "Morning," or, as Hannay dubbed it, the "Fawning
Post"--who had supplanted the _ci-devant_ midshipman in the
affections of some pretty barmaid at a London tavern which they
both frequented. Forster was most energetic in his particular
calling, and is said on one occasion to have obtained admission in
the interests of the "Morning Post" to a Waterloo banquet at Apsley
House, by getting himself up as one of the extra servants out of
livery, called in to assist on these occasions. He was highly
indignant with Thackeray for the way in which he persistently
ridiculed him in _Punch_ under the cognomen of Jenkins; and I
remember, after the author of "Vanity Fair" had become a celebrity,
and began to be invited by other wearers of purple and fine linen,
besides Lord Carlisle, to their aristocratic _soirees_, being
h