WHO WAS

Southland Times, Issue 21264, 10 December 1930, Page 8

WHO WAS

PODSNAP? Mr John Podsnap was sustained through life by a complete satisfaction with everything. He was satisfied with his inheritance, which was large; he was satisfied with his wife, a handsome woman with a comfortable fortune; satisfied with his Marine Insurance business, with his daughter’s deposition, with England, with the world in general, and most of all with himself in particular. Any problem which was in danger of throwing a shadow of dissatisfaction upon his complacency, Mr Podsnap was wont to dismiss at sight with a sweep of the arm, and an impatient: “I don’t want to know about it; I don’t choose to discuss it; I don’t admit it.” In course of time, therefore, the orbit of his thoughts became as circumscribed as the orbit of his daily round, which followed an unvarying programme of eating and drinking and sleeping. Literature and art he only approved of insofar as they eulogized people of his own type —all else was rubbish and frippery. He placed a comfortable faith in Providence, believing Providence to be a sensible creature, of much the same opinions as himself. Mr Podsnap’s code of existence, and all that it implies, is summed up by Dickens, his creator as “Podsnappery.”