Charles Dickens shows the consequences of the Veneerings’ social climbing at several points in Our Mutual Friend. When the newlyweds are first presented, the most notable thing about them is that in their “new house,” every single thing is new. They initially have no friends and commence to make friends one at a time by inviting them. As long as they continue their ascent, they both seem satisfied, as they apparently believe the fictions they promote and are largely unaware of the disdain others have for them.
As they acquire enough friends to have larger dinner parties, Dickens offers a scene in which each guest assesses the others. Most of them are strangers to each other, and many are dining at the Veneerings for the first time. The dinners are successes. As the guests continue to converse, however, it becomes apparent that they do not do so with the hosts themselves. They are well-regarded only as sources of food and entertainment.
The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners—or new people wouldn’t come. . . . It is always noticeable at the table of the Veneerings, that no man troubles himself much about the Veneerings themselves, and that any one who has anything to tell, generally tells it to anybody else in preference.
Once the Veneerings are sufficiently well established, they decide to offer their home for the wedding of Sophronia Akershem and Alfred Lammle. As he visits with them while they plan the event, he meets Mr. Podsnap at their home. The Veneerings presume friendship with every new acquaintance, but they have no genuinely close friends. One guest, Mr. Twemlow, thinks about Podsnap’s aura of familiarity as embracing the “fiction” of being old friends that the Veneerings put forward.
Apparently, Podsnap has been so wrought upon in a short time, as to believe that he has been intimate in the house many, many, many years. . . . Twemlow has before noticed in his feeble way how soon the Veneering guests become infected with the Veneering fiction.
Although the wedding goes off as planned, and the guests enjoy themselves, they also fail to engage with the hosts. The narrator calls their behavior similar to being in a hotel.
Nobody seems to think much more of the Veneerings than if they were a tolerable landlord and landlady doing the thing in the way of business at so much a head.
The full extent of their distance from true friendship and intimacy is brought home when Mr. Veneering decides to stand for parliament for the borough of Pocket-Breaches. The narrator phrases this as though the country decided it needed him, then explains that a “legal gentleman” suggests the idea to Veneering, explaining that he can start his campaign with five thousand pounds, but he needs an answer within four hours. Veneering agrees to sound out his friends about their endorsements.
Veneering declares himself highly flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain “whether his friends will rally round him.” Above all things, he says, it behoves him to be clear, at a crisis of this importance, “whether his friends will rally round him.”
He begins by visiting Mr. Twemlow, who is related to Lord Snigsworth, and asks him as “the dearest and oldest of my friends” to secure that gentleman’s endorsement. Twemlow refuses but offers to work on the campaign. Mrs. Veneering does the same with Lady Tippins, who often dines at their home. When she goes to see her friends, she is straightforward about considering her efforts a charade. Her mocking description of the couple, their home, and their parties summarizes their true alienation from society’s serious consideration. She explains to each one that her “dearest friend . . . in all the world” has committed to taking the seat.
And who is the dearest friend I have in the world? A man of the name of Veneering. Not omitting his wife, who is the other dearest friend I have in the world; and I positively declare I forgot their baby, who is the other. And we are carrying on this little farce to keep up appearances, and isn’t it refreshing! Then, my precious child, the fun of it is that nobody knows who these Veneerings are, and that they know nobody, and that they have a house out of the Tales of the Genii, and give dinners out of the Arabian Nights.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/883/883-h/883-h.htm
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