OKI
Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN
,
CLUB CAMEOS:
PORTRAITS OF THE DAY.
' Quemvis media elige turba ;
Aut ob avaritiam, aut misera ambitione laborat.'
HORACE, Satires, lib. i. iv.
WITH SIXTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY RUPERT BROWNE.
LONDON :
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET.
I8 79 .
[All rights resented.]
CONTENTS.
I. THE HOUSE .
o
II. THE PRIVATE SECRETARY .... 29
III. THE GUARDSMAN
ol
IV. PATRIOTISM . _.
/O
V. LETTERS
y 4
VI. THE CLUB ...... 195
VIL M. F. H.
... lol
VIII. CULTURE ...... 17 -
IX. FINANCE ..... OQ1
x - WITS ....
........ .091
XL THE OLD SCHOOL ...... 2 47
XII. SOCIAL AMBITION ...... 269
XIII. BOHEMIA
... zyi
XIV. A PARASITE ....... ;513
XV. AGITATION oo
20O0588
THE HOUSE.
B
THE HOUSE.
WITHIN the last two generations a revolution, bloodless,
gradual, and unobtrusive, but none the less radical and
subversive, has been working within our midst. Si-
lently, yet surely, the invading forces of Wealth and
Competition have marched into the once exclusive terri-
tory of Privilege, and dethroned her from her narrow
and haughty position. We have had the age of the
feudal system, when knightly deeds were the passport
to distinction; we have had the age of superstition,
when the priesthood was supreme; we have had the
intellectual age, when literary activity was the highway
to fame ; we have had the dissipated age, when gal-
lantry was the only education of the satellites of fashion;
and now in this nineteenth century we have, in all. its
glory, ostentation, power, and vulgarity, the Age of
Money :
* omnis enitn res,
Virtus, fama, decus, divina humanaque, pulchris
Divitiis parent ; quas qui contraxerit, ille
Clarus erit, fortis, Justus Sapiensne ? Etiam ! et rex,
Et quicquid volet.'
Disguise it as we may, wealth is the governing force in
CLUB CAMEOS.
our social system. Birth has its limits, intellect is
fettered by restrictions ; ready money alone amongst us
can walk erect straight on to its goal, and be master of
all it surveys. "What barrier opposes it ? It surmounts
its newly-found escutcheon with a coronet, and takes its
seat amongst the Howards and the Talbots of the House
of Lords. It is sworn of the Privy Council and is
enrolled in the Cabinet. It takes the oath before the
Speaker, and is the representative of wealthy shires and
important boroughs. It buys up lands, castles, halls,
and manor-houses ; it is put into the commission of the
peace, wears the scarlet and silver of the deputy-lieu-
tenant and the gorgeous uniform of the yeomanry, and
constitutes itself an important section of the landed
gentry. It contracts brilliant marriages ; it enters,
and sometimes leads, society ; its sons officer the crack
regiments; its daughters command the matrimonial
market ; in short, there is no boundary to its ambition,
no confine to its power. Instead of the pedigree-chart
we have substituted the banker's-book.
There was a time, however, and that not very long
ago, when wealth and social position did not necessarily
go hand in hand together. Birth had its sphere and
bullion its own circle. Commerce drew its votaries from
its own set, leaving the higher things in life to its
betters. An unbridged gulf stood between the moneyed
THE HOUSE.
proletarian and the haughty aristocrat. It was right
that the aristocrat should dance at Almack's, should play
his rubber at "White's, should command his troop in the
Blues or the First Life Guards, should be returned for a
close borough, and burden the state with his sinecures.
It was his right, his due, the necessary consequences
that ancient lineage entailed. As for the City man, he
had his ambition and settled career : let him become a
director of the East India Company or the Bank of
CLUB CAMEOS.
England, a member of the Court of Aldermen, Lord
Mayor, the warden of a company, or anything that
the commercial classes might aspire after ; but forbid it.
Heaven, that his vulgar figure should obtrude itself into
the coteries of society, that his plebeian hands should
shuffle the cards in an exclusive club, that his sons
should be attached to embassies or obtain commissions
in crack regiments, that he should oust the landed
gentry from the soil, and deem himself the equal of
men whose ancestry dated back to the Conquest !
Such were the views views as old as the days
of Aristotle and of Plato that society held as to
the position of commerce until the beginning of this
century. Trade was ignoble ; the only occupations
fit for ' a gentleman' were arms, diplomacy, the Bar,
and the Church. But such narrow teaching exists
no more. Commerce, with its splendid fortunes, its
exciting career, its rapid profits, has cast the professions
into the shade, and counts among its followers some of
the best blood in the land. What is the income of a
leading barrister, of a renowned physician, of a bishop,
or an ambassador, or a statesman, when compared with
the colossal profits of a great tea-broker, corn-merchant,,
brewer, distiller, warehouseman, stockbroker, or of that
omnivorous creature the general merchant ? No wonder
that the sons of peers gladly accept partnerships in good
THE HOUSE.
firms, that dandies go on 'Change, and that the voice of
Fashion declares that l there is nothing like trade now-
adays.' Privilege, with its airs and graces, its comfort
and convenience, its patronage and its injustice, is dead
and buried, and over its newly-raised mausoleum Capital
and Competition dance in jubilant triumph.
I am led to make these reflections whenever I have
the pleasure of meeting my friend Mr. Angus Me Welder,
the wealthy iron-master east of the Clyde, and member
CLUB CAMEOS.
for the Forge Burghs. In none of our institutions has
Reform, been more busy with its abolitions and inno-
vations than with the House of Commons. Before the
measures of 1832 and 1867 became law, a young man
of good blood or of great ability could take his seat
upon the green benches of the Lower House as the
nominee of some powerful peer or opulent squire, with-
out being put to the expense of a single farthing. In
this easy fashion the second Pitt, Canning, and Macaulay
entered the House of Commons. But at the present
day, thanks to Eeform Bills and the establishment of
Election judges, to become a member of Parliament
(save in certain exceptional cases, where brilliant
talent or a hereditary name specially recommends
itself to a constituency) requires money, and in many
instances money alone. "What chance has the most
glib barrister or the most clever adventurer against
some local plutocrat who builds a new wing to the town
hospital, erects almshouses for the poor, subscribes
liberally to the racecourse, gives cups at regatta meet-
ings, and on all occasions drops his money as freely
perhaps as he does his 7i's ? "What chance has an un-
known new-comer, with a few hundreds advanced to
him out of the funds of the political committee of his
club, against the man of capital who has been * nursing'
the borough for years in the expectation of a vacancy,
THE HOUSE.
and who, in spite of bribery and corruption clauses, lets
the inhabitants of the town know perfectly well that if
they stand by him he will be their friend, spend his
money amongst them, look after their local interests,
and assist them in all their urban improvements ?
Two things are now requisite to obtain a seat in
Parliament money and a long courtship to the shire or
borough selected by the candidate. The consequence
is that these conditions cause the House of Commons
of the present day to be a somewhat dull assembly ;
its members having taken to politics late in life, there is
an absence of that youthful talent which made the
House bright with its keen wit in the ' good old times'
of close boroughs and nomination boroughs.
From what I hear of Mr. McWelder, he is not cal-
culated, either by his wit or his eloquence, to enliven
the character of the debates. He is interested in but
one subject the sewage question ; and as the word
' manure,' which he calls, by the way, ' manyer,' enters
largely into the composition of his speeches, the wags
have christened him ' Old Guano.' No matter what
may be before the House the Estimates, affairs in the
East, the repair of a turret- ship, Church reform, and
the like as sure as McWelder rises to speak, so sure
will the current of his eloquence finally flow into the
drainage question, until cries of ' Order, order !' i Ques-
CLUB CAMEOS.
tion!' and a friendly tug at his coat-tails from his
nearest neighbour brings him down from the lofty
height of his subject to his seat. The appearance of
McWelder is not in his favour. His face is red and
rough like a Highland steer, and crowned with light
sandy hair which is turning gray at the roots. His eyes
are small, and their expression marred by a most
diabolical squint, caused apparently by a constant ex-
amination of a great wart which nestles closely at the
THE HOUSE.
side of his fleshy and flexible nose. His chest and barrel
are huge and tremulous, and supported by short sturdy
legs as bandy as the timbers of a sugar-cask. He
speaks a language intelligible, I believe, to the mem-
bers of his family, but which requires great care and
attention on the part of the stranger to master. At
times when excited upon his favourite topic, or indignant
with one of the morning -room waiters because the
Scotsman has been mislaid or the Glasgow Herald has
not arrived, I am fearful lest his burrs and his brogue
should force the roof off his mouth.
Like many men whose appearance is somewhat
repelling, he is the essence of kindliness. The nut
is coarse and shaggy, but the kernel is sweet and
tender. "When you know him he talks simply of
himself, and owns with pride that he began life by
trundling a wheelbarrow in one of his own quarries.
On most Wednesdays and Saturdays he engages the
largest table in the strangers' dining-room of the
Caravanserai, and feasts his constituents, men as red,
as unwieldy, and as loud and singsong in their talk
as himself, and who sit far into the night over their
wassail of 'whusky' in the smoking-room. Next
to telling a very long story, always about Scotland
and Scotchmen, which is simply incomprehensible from
its want of point and constant imitation of dialect to
12 CLUB CAMEOS.
any one not hailing from the banks of the Clyde, the
delight of Me Welder is to reproduce before any audience
that will attend to him, in his own peculiar language,
the speeches that were made the night before by the
more important members of either House. To listen to
my friend you would imagine that he was on the most
intimate terms with every member of the Government and
of the Opposition, for in conversation he calls them all by
their Christian names. If the Earl of Beaconsfield has
laid before their lordships in the Upper House some
important disclosures as to the state of foreign affairs
during a season of grave crisis, Me Welder innocently
remarks as he snorts over the Times to me or to some
one else of his acquaintance, 'Ye should have hair-r-r-r-r-d
Benjamin in the Lor-r-rds last nicht ; it wus jist pair-r-r-
fect.' Should the name of the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer crop up, it is Me Welder's opinion ' that Stafford
is doing vara weel in the Hoose, leddie; dinna fash
yersel, he can hold his ain against William.' When he
alludes to the most noble the leader of the Opposition,
or to the Eight Honourable the Speaker, he speaks of
those august persons in so familiar a manner that you
might imagine he was a blood relation of the family.
ISTo matter who the man is whose life or whose character
is being discussed, whether he be a Cabinet Minister or
a judge or an ambassador or a bishop, provided that he
THE HOUSE. 13
at least be a somebody, McWelder will always make
some casual remark about him, and designate him by
his Christian name. "Why he does this no one knows, for
he is the last man to give himself airs and assume
swagger. How he remembers the Christian names of
all the great people he so familiarly alludes to is also
a puzzle to me. Whisky must be very conducive to a
good memory.
Until I became more intimately acquainted with
McWelder, an acquaintance since cemented by a diligent
study of Sir Walter Scott and the glossary to Burns's
poems, it was a matter of wonder to me why he should
have embraced a parliamentary career. He did not want
a baronetcy ; he had no social aspirations ; his education,
to put it kindly, was imperfect ; he had no strong politi-
cal opinions ; he had no special grievances to air. Why,
therefore, should an uncouth untutored man, who was
the head of a most important manufacturing industry,
give up his valuable time, neglect his business, and
incur a grave expenditure to embark upon a career for
which he was both socially and intellectually unfitted ?
The question is a reasonable one; let me therefore
answer it from information that I afterwards received.
Mr. McWelder, as soon as Fortune began to smile upon
him, and iron to claim him for its own, took unto him-
self a wife, the daughter of a large manufacturer at
i 4 CLUB CAMEOS.
Galashiels. For several years their married life kept
the even tenor of its way. McWelder, engrossed by
his commercial operations, had very little time for
anything else, and what leisure fell to him was spent
in improving the magnificent estate he had lately
purchased from a Scotch peer, whose descent was as
rapid as Me Welder's ascent. As Mrs. McWelder an-
nually for some seven years presented her lord and
iron-master with pledges of her love with the most
painful punctuality, she naturally had little opportunity
for idleness. When she wanted change of air, she was
delighted with a tour in the Highlands, or with the
shooting-box on her husband's moors; and when she
thought a little society would do her good, she and her
husband took a house in Edinburgh for the winter.
Neither their thoughts nor their ambition went beyond
their being happy and useful in the position that Provi-
dence had placed them. Fond of her husband and of her
children, Mrs. Me Welder's life was one most equal and
contented. But the serpent was on the trail to poison
her with its venom.
It so happened that a Mr. McMashem of Ayr, a
wealthy brewer and intimate friend of Me Welder's, was
returned to Parliament for Vatlivat. Mrs. McMashem
now lorded it over poor Mrs. McWelder, though they
had been at school together and had learnt the West-
THE HOUSE. 15
minster Catechism together, to an extent not to be
borne by human endurance. She took the pas of her on
every occasion. She laughed at the people of Glasgow ;
she ridiculed the clerical and legal society of Edinburgh ;
she took her children from a Scotch boarding-school and
sent them to Rugby ; she quitted the Free Church
and became an Episcopalian ; she affected to talk Eng-
lish; and in short, she pooh-poohed everything and
everybody about her. ' There was only one place to
live in, and that was London,' she said over and over
again to Mrs. Me Welder. Indeed, the good lady brewed
mischief as her husband brewed beer.
The die was cast. Nothing would now satisfy
Mrs. Me Welder but that her husband should enter
Parliament, and she be on a footing of equality with
that 'ojous' Mrs. McMashem. Need I say that
when a lady takes anything very violently into her
head nothing on the earth beneath or in the waters
under the earth will prevent her from attaining her
object? Me Welder felt that if his life was to be
bearable he must submit to his wife's wishes. He
was somewhat disturbed in his mind as to which
political party he should attach himself. Should he be
a Eaadical, or should he be a Conservative ? His
impartial wife came to his rescue. c Ah, Angus, dinna
fash yersel aboot political opeenions; jist enter the
1 6 CLUB CAMEOS.
Hoose o' Commons for ainy toon that'll tak ye! Ye
can think of opeenions aifter !' The prospect of an
immediate vacancy in the Forge Burghs which had
been Tory since Sheriffmuir decided Me Welder to
enrol himself in the ranks of the ' Consairvative' party.
He hurried up to London, saw the political agent, and
was interrupted in an eloquent speech upon the purity
and fidelity of his political principles by the practical
question, What was he prepared to spend ? It was the
old story of ' them as pays my rent has my vote.' The
Forge Burghs were commercially ambitious: they
wanted a new dock ; they wanted a new pier, a good
quay, warehouses, harbour drainage, a junction with the
North British Eailway, and a few other moderate re-
quests. The man who helped them the most in carry-
ing out their intentions was sure of being returned.
Me Welder came down with his hundreds like a man,
and soon caused his opponent a respectable Edinburgh
advocate, who could talk a horse's hind leg off upon
such questions as education, the Established Church, the
law of hypothec, Scotch currency, &c., but whose purse
was more slenderly stocked than' his head to desist
from canvassing. For the last five years the great
iron-master has represented the Forge Burghs.
It is said that as soon as a man becomes acclimatised
to the peculiar atmosphere of the House of Commons he
THE HOUSE.
cares to breathe no other air. This is the case with
Me Welder. Outside St. Stephen's all is now a blank and
devoid of interest to him. His eldest son carries on the
business, and his wife, thanks to ministerial receptions
and to her hospitalities at the big house in Cromwell-
road, is getting on in London society, and Me Welder is
left much to his own devices. He is always at West-
minster, and is ever to be depended upon to make up a
House ; for when not in the presence of the Speaker or
c
1 8 CLUB CAMEOS.
the Chairman of Committees, he is sure to be in the
smoking-room or in the little apartment sacred to the
genial Sergeant-at-Arms. He speaks constantly ; but as
no one listens to him, he takes his revenge by writing
out his speeches (with casual interpolations of i cheers, 7
'loud cheers,' 'hear, hear,' and 'laughter') and sending
them to his subsidised organ, the Forge Daily Blower.
He serves on committees, and it has fallen to my lot
occasionally to hear him examine a witness ; one of the
clerks has at last been appointed as an interpreter.
Nothing he more delights in than being attentive
to such ladies as he ushers into their latticed gallery.
How he hands them their tea ! how he informs them
of the customs of the House ! how he points out all the
distinguished members, talking of them of course as
William and Eobert and John and Henry ! how polite,
how garrulous, how egotistic he is ! I fancy he does not
tell Mrs. McWelder the names of all the ladies he puts
down in the book. On an important night, when the
entrance to the lobby is thronged with spectators anxious
to obtain admission into the House, how slowly, how
majestically he passes the policemen and runs the
gauntlet of inquiring eyes ! Surely that bent figure, that
thoughtful brow, that absorbed air can belong to none
other than a Cabinet Minister full of the grave informa-
tion he is about to lay before Parliament! How he
THE HOUSE.
stands about the lobby, with that peculiar House-of-
Commons air which is so different from every other form
of swagger, or unites himself to little groups of members,
or walks arm-in-arm with a friend, solemn and thought-
ful, as if upon his rounded shoulders all the responsi-
bilities of the Empire rested ! Yet he is no humbug.
Though he thinks there is no club like the House of
Commons its chat and gossip the best, its dinners the
best, its smoking-room the best, its library the best,
and that he would like to be buried in a House of
Commons coffin beneath the flags of the Embankment,
still he serves his constituents well. He attends to all
their local requests; works at what private bills they
require; never shirks them when they call upon him;
dines with them ; puts their names down for the
Speaker's or the Strangers' Gallery ; does his best to get
them places in the Customs or the Eevenue ; patronises
their sons ; promises a good deal, and fulfils not a little.
McWelder is one of the shining lights of the Cara-
vanserai (to which splendid establishment I also belong),
and he uses the club very frequently. Whenever her
Majesty or the Speaker holds a levee, he generally puts
in an appearance afterwards in the smoking-room to
exhibit the green and gold of his Archer's uniform.
The waiters fear him, for his orders are not very
intelligible to the Southern ear, and he is apt to be
20
CLUB CAMEOS.
irritable when asked to repeat his request. He is fond
of the society of young men, many of whom, I regret to
say, with the insincerity of youth, eat his dinners, smoke
his cigars, dance at his wife's balls, ride his horses, use
his opera-box, ask him for Speaker's orders, and then
behind his back imitate his peculiarities and ridicule his
kindnesses. Fortunately Me Welder is not thin-skinned.
He can listen unflinchingly to the derisive laughter of
the House when turned against him ; he can bear un-
THE HOUSE.
moved its offensive indifference to his speeches; chaff,
innuendoes, invective, are powerless to wound him.
"With amusing blindness McWelder is under the impres-
sion that he is a practical statesman and a politician of a
high order. The office he especially considers himself
fitted for is that of President of the Local Government
Board. He has lately been elected a member of the
committee of the club ; consequently his first duty was
to make inquiry into its drainage system. Undoubtedly,
as Me Welder says, a special knowledge of any subject
is always useful in the House of Commons; but it is
doubtful to me whether my friend's i special knowledge'
is of such a nature as to bear him on its unsavoury tide
to office, however humble. His seat is sure ; his fortune
large ; his wife is avaricious after social honours ; he
has spent a good deal of money for i the party :' it would
not therefore surprise me if some day we should see on
the panels of the gorgeous barouche that occasionally
waits for Me Welder outside the Caravanserai, the blood-
red hand.
There must be something terribly fascinating in par-
liamentary life which the stranger to its existence fails
to understand or sympathise with. "When I see a man
like McWelder not only interested in, but engrossed by,
his duties, it is evident that St. Stephen's has charms*
which she only displays to those admitted within her
CLUB CAMEOS.
circle. The social distinction that once attended upon
the letters M.P. cannot be the attraction, for at the
present day many of our legislators are little better than
town councillors. It cannot be the prizes of the profes-
sion, for out of the six hundred and odd members how
many draw salary from the Treasury ? "Why should a
man abandon his business, give up much of his leisure,
be absent from the country when it is most beautiful,
live for many hours in a close atmosphere, keep late
hours, have to attend to often dull and laborious work,
spend his money, receive no pay, and be on terms of
acquaintanceship with a vast number of people many of
whom in all probability are repulsive to him, and all for
the honour of being returned to Parliament ? Yet, con-
sidering how every seat is competed for, there must be
some powerful attraction in the green benches of the
House of Commons, which we, who are not under the
wand of the magician, fail to comprehend. I can under-
stand certain men the venal, the ambitious, the intel-
lectually active embracing a political career ; they may
win or they may lose ; still the struggle is worth the
effort. "What I cannot understand is, why the men
who constitute the majority of the House of Commons,
the men who cannot hope to get anything, who flo not
even wish to get anything, who are mere voting-
machines and Wednesday orators I cannot understand
THE HOUSE. 23
why these should disburse large sums of money, should
subject themselves to much physical labour, should
swallow self-respect for a vote, should be eternally
badgered, worried, and annoyed, for what to my simple
gaze seems a game hardly worth the candle.
Some little time ago a friend of mine, a man whose
birth and fortune render him independent of the ordin-
ary aspirations of mankind, caught a terrible cold. He
was put to bed ; a blazing fire was all aglow in the room ;
the sudorific he had taken was agreeably acting; a
sense of comfort and relief tingled through his frame ;
quiet and contented, he was immersed in the pages
of Le Nabob. Suddenly his door-bell was rung, a
messenger came in hot haste from 'the whip,' and he
had to dress, to go out in the fog, and hurry down to
the House of Commons to swell the ranks of the Govern-
ment against the tactics of a mischievous Opposition.
"Why should he have subjected himself to this ? Que
diable allait-il faire dans cette galere ? He never speaks
in the House; he is pale with terror even when he
has to address his constituents; he seldom serves on
Committees: he does not want a peerage; he is not
a barrister intent upon reaching the woolsack ; the
House of Commons can give him nothing that he has
not already; and yet session after session he submits
to boredom, to late hours, to a bad atmosphere, and to
24 CLUB CAMEOS.
numerous restrictions interfering with his comfort and
his liberty.
I doubt whether McWelder, in the days when he
was consolidating his iron business, worked much harder
than he does now for the honour and glory of the thing.
"What with writing letters to his constituents, listening
to their wants, their grievances, their applications,
bothering the patient and long-suffering clerks of the
House of Commons about the private bills he wants to
introduce, serving on committees, occasionally being a
member of a Royal Commission, hunting up references
in Hansard for his speeches and replies, and putting in
a constant attendance (when has his name been absent
from the division list?) at the debates of the House,
he never appears to have a minute to himself during the
session; and what little leisure he possesses always
seems occupied in dining his constituents, taking Mrs.
Me Welder to receptions, going to a State ball or concert,
attending levies, and being entertained by the Speaker
or by public companies. It is only very early in the
morning or very late at night that his presence haunts
the writing-room and smoking-room of the Caravanserai.
Even out of the session he is constantly occupied.
"When he is good enough in the autumn to ask me
to Anvilhaugh Castle he can seldom spare time to
shoot the grouse on the moors or the pheasants in
THE HOUSE. 25
his well-preserved coverts, because he has to preside
at this dock committee, or that railway committee, or
the pier improvements committee, or the Forge Burghs
Young Men's Christian Association, or the Forge Burghs
Quarry dinner, or the Masonic meetings of the Hammer
Lodge, or the hundred and one other calls upon the time
of a man who is both a popular and hardworking M.P.
and an extensive landowner. Still Me Welder is not to
be pitied. He is so thoroughly wedded to his new life
that were he to be unseated to-morrow no man north of
the Tweed would be more miserable.
As for the fair chatelaine of Anvilhaugh, she has for a
long time ceased to trouble herself with the McMashems
of this life. A lady whose dinners are as well dressed
as herself, whose dances are famous for the excellent
condition of the floor and the magnificent suppers that
follow, whose two daughters are supposed to have eighty
thousand apiece, and who is every season increasing her
social reputation, need take little notice of those she
knew in the days of her obscurity. ' They are not in
my set,' she says to me in excellent English, and in the
tones of one who from her earliest_infancy has been born
in the purple, and always worn the colour. Ah, Mistress
Me Welder, though the Westminster Catechism may
have taught you much, methinks the articles in the
creed of London Society have taught you more ! Weigh
26
CLUB CAMEOS.
husband and wife in the balance, and the husband will
be found to be the better and more sterling of the two.
On the bede-roll of baronets you may find men more
polished with the gloss of civilisation, and better edu-
cated with the lore of the schools, but not one more
honourable in his dealings, more indefatigable in his
labours, more honest and just, than the future Sir Angus
Me Welder, Bart., M.P. for the Forge Burghs.
THE PKIYATE SECEETAEY.
THE PEIYATE SECRETARY.
TACT is to manner what genius is to talent. There are
many people in the intellectual world who are clever,
erudite, sharp, yet utterly destitute of genius; whilst
in the social world the number of persons who are am-
bitious, plausible, and agreeable, and yet totally defi-
cient in tact, is legion. How frequently do we hear
questions asked which should be avoided, answers given
which should be evaded, and subjects discussed which
should never be introduced ! How constantly do the
scheming and the worldly wise show their hand, and
thus mar their game, by a plausibility so palpable that
it never deceives ! How often is hate defeated by the
intensity of its spite and its clumsy malevolence !
If men and women exhibited a little more tact in
their walk through life, the snob would talk less of his
intimacy with the great, Dives would boast less of his
wealth, women would be more careful in their disparage-
ments of each other, the jealous would pretend less to
indifference, and the acrid would mingle a little more
honey with their gall. We read of an ambition that
30 CLUB CAMEOS.
overvaults itself and falls on the other side. It is quite
as possible to fail from overdoing as from never attempt-
ing. A well-bred display is one thing, the ostentation
of the vulgar another. To know a lord does not neces-
sarily imply an incessant reference to the aristocracy.
The possession of wealth is not always evinced by allu-
sions to the balance at our banker's, the extent of our
property, and the splendour of our establishment.
To be familiar with a thing is to be silent about it ; to
be new to it is to be loquacious and intrusive.
The man who has been of the gentry for centuries
never obtrudes his birth ; but the nouveau riche, smart-
ing under his social shortcomings, is always climbing up
his family tree, and garrulous as to his ancestors. The
Volunteer officer is always more military in his ideas
than the warrior. The dissenting minister is often far
more clerical in his attire than his brother of the Estab-
lishment. Whenever we see an over-precision in dress,
in language, and in the surroundings of a man or woman,
we may be sure that his or her introduction into the
ranks of the cultivated is but recent.
As a rule, in that microcosm which we call society,
it is easy to estimate the character of a man, or judge
the disposition of a woman. But when tact envelops
the subject in its subtle folds, criticism becomes more
difficult. To detect between the fustian and the purple,
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY.
the superficial and the solid, the moderate and the
wealthy, when tact blinds the observer with its glamour,
is an analysis often requiring the greatest social ability.
Amongst minerals there are some precious stones which
can be imitated so cunningly that even the professed
lapidary is often deceived. In wandering through the
dazzling alleys of Vanity Fair it is not always at a
glance that we can separate the pearls from the paste.
Tact, which is often only another form of imitation,
baffles our penetration.
Take the case of Horry Fortescue, for instance. The
son of a clergyman of good birth, but slender means,
with no commanding talents, with no overpowering
attractions as to face or figure, he has yet distanced all
his compeers, and is already in possession of much that
men envy and women admire. He never trespasses upon
the paternal purse Horry is a charming young man,
and remembers that he has sisters yet he never lacks
funds. Though in these days money has ousted birth
from the lofty and exclusive position it occupied during
the regime of the Governing Families, there are still
coteries guarded and protected by vigilant outposts,
where the knavish capitalist, the vulgar borough mem-
ber, the prosperous trader never intrude.
' Licet superbus ambules pecunia,
Fortuna non mutat genus.'
32 CLUB CAMEOS.
In these well- winnowed assemblies the name of Horry
frequently appears, whilst better and cleverer men are
excluded. There are in his set men who have written
books ; there are glib barristers with an eye to Parlia-
ment who make great orations ; yet none can draw up a
document so clearly and succinctly as Horry, none at
wedding-breakfast or other hospitality can say just what
should be said, and no more, better than he. He is
surrounded by men who spend hours over their personal
adornment, and to whom Nature has granted consider-
able attractions ; yet Horry, who runs up a modest bill
with his tailor, and who will dress for dinner when
pressed in some six minutes, is always considered by
ladies to bear away the palm both as to attire and dis-
tinction. He is not a scholar, he is not even well read ;
and yet his conversation is agreeable ; whilst the book-
worm is silent and the erudite shy. He never makes an
enemy ; and yet all his friends are drawn from the ser-
viceable class. He is all things to all men, and espe-
cially to women, but he has the good taste to shun the
air of plausibility of the popular man of the clubs or the
tame cat of the boudoirs. "What his vices are we know
not, for he keeps them rigidly to himself. His talk is
clean and guarded ; he respects the convenances of life ;
he shuns the slang of the turf and the betting-room; and
without being a prig of the Mechanic's Institute type, or
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY.
33
imitating the intense fastidiousness of the educated
tradesman, speaks English like a gentleman. Hence in
the eyes of the ladies he is deemed ' so nice;' whilst men,
in the vernacular they encourage, call him i good form
all round.'
It is now some seven years since Horry Fortescue
came to town. After a career successful yet not brilliant
at Harrow, he went up to Oxford to complete his educa-
tion. He had scarcely furnished his rooms at Merton
D
34 CLUB CAMEOS.
when he was summoned to town, and requested to seat
himself at one of the bureaus in the Protocol Depart-
ment, to which he was appointed by his Grace the Duke
of Ambleside, the Lord Keeper of the Department, and
who, as the Marquis of "Windermere, had been a college
friend of the father of young Fortescue. In these days
of competitive examinations and Civil Service reorgan-
isation, we need hardly say that the Protocol Depart-
ment is one of the most envied of the public offices. It
is divided, with a simplicity of arrangement which makes
the men of the War Office and of Somerset House rage
enviously, into two sections : the first section, with the
title of Assistant Keepers of Protocols, begins at three
hundred a year, rising by thirty-five-pound stages to six
hundred; whilst the second section, with the rank of
Keepers of Protocols, pays its officials from seven hun-
dred to nine hundred a year. There are also various
staff appointments, ranging from a thousand to fifteen
hundred a year, which are given in the Department or
not, according to the interest of the applicant inside, or
the claims of hungry place-hunters outside.
The Protocol Department has this advantage over
its fellows, that its candidates are appointed direct by
the Lord Keeper, and have to endure no ordeal at the
hands of the Civil Service examiners. It is one of the
maxims of the Department that education is all very
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY.
35
well, but that, where simple yet responsible duties are
to be performed, to be what is termed a ' gentleman' is
of far more importance. The Lord Keeper is always a
peer of high degree, and the aristocratic mind shudders
at the thought of seeing some young scion of the vulgar,
whose only recommendation would be brains and a
baptismal certificate, copying protocols or conventions
at one of the comfortable oak bureaus of the Depart-
ment, only perhaps to sell his information to the first
newspaper which would bid for his services. We need
hardly say that honour and honesty are exclusively
confined to those born in the purple. The turf frauds,
the card scandals, the City Company swindles, and the
divorce revelations of recent date, have arisen, as we all
know, entirely within the ranks of the plebeian. At
least, such is the opinion of the Lord Keepers of Pro-
tocols from time immemorial. No son of the people, no
hardworking Irish student, none of the geniuses from
Glasgow and Aberdeen have ever yet entered the swing-
ing dark-mahogany doors of the Department. The
officials are all men with some claims to ancestry, their
fathers standing well in the front of the landed gentry ;
a few of them bear titles of courtesy ; also one or two
have the shadow of the bar sinister across their escutch-
eon. A well-bred fashionable coterie is the Protocol
Department, and such it is likely to remain until the
3 6 CLUB CAMEOS.
seldom quoted New Zealander shall come to take a
photograph of its ruins from the Thames Embankment.
Into this snug berth Horace Fortescue was en-
sconced. The young man well knew that little from
the paternal estate could fall to his share, and that he
would have to be dependent upon his own energies for
his advancement in life. He worked hard, he was
punctual in his attendance, and the result of his labours
could generally be relied upon. There are those who
imagine that the industry displayed in a Government
office chiefly consists in reading the morning papers,
receiving visits from friends, lounging from one room to
the other, partaking of elaborate luncheons, with per-
haps the copying a letter or the adding up of a total,
supported by the stimulant of a cigarette or a cigar.
No greater delusion exists. As a rule, the Civil ser-
vants of the Crown are as industrious and as hard
worked as any other community ; and considering the
poverty of their pay and of their prospects, it speaks
somewhat of their sense of honour that official treachery
is almost unknown in their midst. What banker, mer-
chant, or solicitor would intrust his clerks with the
secrets that are often among the daily duties of a
member of the Civil Service ?
As in all other departments, there were men in the
Protocol Office who came late and went away early,
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY. 37
who idled their time, and who, whenever a diligent
colleague was promoted, cursed their ill-luck, but never
found fault with their industry. The keen calculating
glance of Horry Fortescue soon saw through his brother
officials, and speedily distinguished between the men
who were to be his rivals and those from whom he had
nothing to fear. His tact, his genial ways, his innate
good taste, stood him in good stead during the struggle.
The idlers knew he worked, but did not call him 'a
smug ;' the industrious saw they had a dangerous foe,
but did not dislike him ; on the contrary, he was rather
popular. Gradually Horry began to obtain a reputation
in the Department. The Keepers complimented him;
the assistant- secretaries asked him to dinner; there
was some talk of sending him abroad, attached to a
commission to inspect boundaries.
But the goal upon which the ambition of Horry
was firmly set was still as far removed as ever. He
wanted to know his Grace of Ambleside. On his
appointment he had been introduced to the Duke, who
had hoped his father was well, said that he thought the
morning was cold for the time of the year, trusted there
would soon be a change in the weather, and that was
all. The old rector had asked a few great people he
knew in town to be civil to his son, and Horry had
exerted all his manoeuvres to come across the consort of
38 CLUB CAMEOS.
his Chief. But in vain. Her Grace was a volatile,
impulsive, and somewhat stupid woman, who gave her-
self great airs, snubbed people or took them up, accord-
ing to her fickle fancy, accepted invitations, and then at
the last moment declined them, so that no dependence
could be placed upon her word or her movements.
Three times had Horry been asked to a crush in order
to meet the Duchess, and it had pleased her Grace
precisely at those three times not to put in an appear-
ance. ' It all depends upon how she likes you at first,'
said his fair friends ; l sometimes she likes certain young
men for one thing, and then at other times hates them
for exactly the same thing. It is all a chance.' But
Horry knew perfectly well that where his own interests
were concerned it would become a very difficult job for
any one to hate him. Only let him have five minutes
with the Duchess, and he would not fear the conse-
quences.
As luck would have it, one night he met her Grace
at a calico dance, to which she had not been invited,
but to which she suddenly thought she should like to
go. He was introduced, and had the honour of dancing
with the Lady Maud, the second daughter of the illus-
trious house. There was to be a cotillon. Everybody
was talking about the Moldavian minuet that had been
got up the night before at the house of the Duchess
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY.
39
y Pommeros y Grenos y Giesleroso. No one could re-
member it. Her Grace of Ambleside was most anxious
to see the figure reproduced; she had been told that
there had been a Tarantella in it : Maud could do the
Tarantella no one could do a Tarantella like Maud;
she must see it ; at all events try. Fortunately Horry
had been at the Spanish Embassy. He explained the
much desired figure, and added a few suggestions of his
own ; the Moldavian minuet was got up ; Maud danced
40 CLUB CAMEOS.
the Tarantella. The Duchess was delighted. She
thought Mr. Fortescue the most charming young man
she had ever seen. Horry was asked to Kendal House.
It is said that every man has his opportunity once in
a lifetime, which, if made the most of, leads on to fortune.
The friendship of the Duchess of Ambleside was the
opportunity of Horry Fortescue, and he cleverly availed
himself of it. He suggested the blue and silver which
was to furnish her Grace's boudoir ; he designed, thanks
to an artistic friend in the office, a series of menu cards
of the most novel and elaborate description for her
table; he bought her a gray parrot which could talk
like an Irish Obstructive; his services were invalu-
able at picnics, garden-parties, and at lawn- tennis; he
recommended works of devotion to the eldest daughter,
gave sporting 'tips' to the second, and supported the
third, who was in her teens, when she skated at Prince's.
From l such a charming young man' he soon developed
into ' that dear Horry Fortescue.'
At the end of the season he was asked down to
Ullsthwaite Castle for the shooting. He now schemed
for his reward. There was a talk in the Department
that Sefton Fitzgerald, the Duke's private secretary,
was to become one of the Commissioners of Abbey
Lands. Horry was most desirous of succeeding him.
He begged the Duchess to use her good offices ; and as
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY. 41
her Grace had no poor cousin or favourite tutor to pro-
vide for, she readily consented to become his friend. The
result was that at the end of a few weeks there appeared
the following paragraph in the morning papers :
'We hear that Mr. Sefton Fitzgerald, of the Pro-
tocol Department, has been appointed a Commissioner of
Abbey Lands. Mr. Fortescue, of the same department,
will succeed Mr. Fitzgerald as private secretary to his
Grace the Duke of Ambleside.'
Any one acquainted with official life is well aware
that to be private secretary to a Cabinet Minister is one
of the prizes in the Civil Service. Not only is the lucky
recipient freed from the ordinary duties of his depart-
ment, but he stands an excellent chance of being ap-
pointed to any of the staff posts in the service that
may fall vacant Commissionerships, Comptrollerships,
Assistant-secretaryships, and the like. It is true that
Horry has placed his foot on the first rung of the ladder
of the State, but he has no intention of being content
with his position. His calculating eye looks beyond,
and he sees no obstacle to prevent him from attain-
ing further successes. Already he enjoys the reputa-
tion of being a model private secretary. Search the
Government service through, and there is not a man
in it who knows how to receive a deputation with more
urbanity or dismiss it with greater platitudes than
42 CLUB CAMEOS.
Horry Fortescue. To see him get rid of an Irishman
who thinks he has a claim upon the Government is a
marvel of tact, firmness, and diplomacy. At a glance
he can distinguish the men whom he should introduce
to his Chief from those he is able to deal with himself.
The letters he writes are so terse and yet so courteous ;
no one has a happier knack than he of refusing without
offence or accepting without responsibility.
Seated in his spacious room overlooking St. James's
Park, with its rich mahogany furniture and imposing
silver candlesticks, well dressed never does he don
that indescribable garment called an * office-coat' cour-
teous, agreeable, dignified without hauteur, and easy
without familiarity, he appears to the political visitor
as a very fitting representative of the aristocratic
traditions of the Protocol Department. The Duke
is charmed with him, and vows that he never had a
secretary who was so useful, and whose information can
be so fully relied upon. As his Grace leans on the arm
of Horry whilst walking down to the House of Lords on
a fine afternoon, the friends of the young man who
knew him at Harrow or Oxford friends briefless in
their chambers or poring over ledgers in their fathers'
counting-houses, or who curse the ; service' look at him
enviously, and mutter to themselves, ( What luck some
men have !'
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY.
43
It is true that Horry is a lucky man the element of
luck enters more into the affairs of life than philosophers
suppose but his post is no sinecure. There are few
men in town more hard worked all the year round than
our private secretary. He is daily at the office at eleven ;
he has to read all the letters the Duke receives,
from an important State paper to an application for
an appointment from some one who stayed at the
same hotel at Homburg with his Grace and gave
44 CLUB CAMEOS.
him the address of a doctor ; he receives visitors ; he
attends upon deputations ; he has to hunt up references
for the Duke's speeches, and furnish him with all
departmental facts when the office is inquired into by
the House; after the office is closed he has to attend
upon his Chief at the House of Lords ; when the Pro-
tocol Department is attacked by the Opposition he
knows no rest either day or night, examining corre-
spondence, wading through Blue-books, verifying re-
ferences, and the like ; whilst at the same time he has
to put in an appearance at all great social entertain-
ments, to accompany the Duke to public dinners, and
out of the session to coach up his Grace in the current
topics of the day, and find him material for speech-
making. In short, Horry is amanuensis, aide-de-camp,
public servant, literary man, official devil, man of
fashion, and confidential correspondent all rolled into
one.
He is occasionally to be seen within the walls of the
Caravanserai. I am an elderly gentleman and what
Horace the poet, not the private secretary calls justa
chiragra, or in other words, gout afflicts considerably
my extremities. Consequently my temper is somewhat
peevish and irritable ; and as my dinner chiefly consists
of a basin of mutton-broth and a bottle of Apollinaris
water, I am aware that my company does not much add
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY. 45
to the gaieties of the table. But it is always a pleasure
for me to meet young Fortescue. He is so very different
from many of the jeunesse doree of the present day, who
are often only so many walking advertisements of their
tailor, hatter, perfumer, and jeweller. He does not
part his hair in the middle, or wear white gaiters, or
swagger in his walk, or tilt his hat on one side, or
cover his white well-shaped fingers with massive rings.
He comes of a good stock, and has none of the pretence
and self-assertion of the would-be gentry.
"Whenever he dines at the club I try to secure the
table next him. Living, as he does, among the great,
he knows everything that is going on, and he imparts
such information as he feels inclined to give with none
of the mystery and importance of your fifth-rate man of
fashion, but simply and naturally. He tells me what
young women are going to the altar, and what young
men are going to the dogs ; what beauties are going to
Court, and what fast men are going through it; he
knows the latest good stories in circulation ; he explains
to my untutored mind the mysterious paragraphs in the
newspapers relating to meditated divorces, turf frauds,
and card scandals ; his conversation is always amusing
and, when he chooses, often instructive. Like most
men who work hard, he is something of a gourmet, and
it does my impaired digestion good to see him discuss
46 CLUB CAMEOS.
his dainty little dishes and moisten his throat with the
best club vintages.
But, unfortunately for me, Horry is not a frequent
visitor at the Caravanserai. He belongs to the Blen-
heim and the Coterie, and the fascinations of those two
superior establishments interfere greatly with the
modest charms of my club. His official duties and
crowd of invitations are also formidable obstacles to the
ordinary routine of club life. Horry is a young man
who ' will arrive' as the French say ; and he knows per-
fectly well that to selfishly dine at the club, and after-
wards to play whist till three in the morning, is not the
course for him to adopt. He looks upon society as a
woman does, not as a form of distraction, but as a pro-
fession. Cautious, calculating, self-seeking, good-tem-
pered, good-looking, amusing, he takes stock of his
advantages, and lays them out at the best interest he
can command. He knows the fortunes of all the
widows of his acquaintance, and can be frequently seen
bending over the bulky volumes at the Probate Office
of course always for a friend. Perfectly aware that he
is a 'detrimental,' and not an 'eligible,' he never
attempts to enlist the affections of the few heiresses that
cross his path, and consequently is highly thought of by
prudent mothers. But a charming young widow ! one
who has been united to a wealthy elderly man, who has
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY.
47
twined her simple guileless heart around his sexagena-
rian sympathies like ivy round a ruin, who has inherited
all his fortune, and who has accordingly been cordially
hated by all her husband's relations ! I can fancy
young Fortescue's graceful figure, his winning manners,
his deep-blue eyes, and silky beard, not entering the
lists in vain in such a quarter. Horry's future is cer-
tain. He will marry money, he will enter the House of
Commons, he will make a name for himself, and the
CLUB CAMEOS.
time will assuredly come when, holding some good sub-
ordinate post as Under-Secretary, or Junior Lord, or
Vice-President he will himself command the services
of a Private Secretary.
THE GUAKDSMAN.
THE GUARDSMAN.
WE can hardly imagine any one in this enlightened
nineteenth centuiy labouring under a state of social ig-
norance so profound as to be unacquainted with that
great ornament to himself and to society the Guards-
man of the period. It may not have fallen to the lot of
all to have shaken him personally by the hand, to have
listened awe-struck to his lisping accents, to have been
taken down by him to dinner, or, if we belong to the
sterner sex, to have been taken up by him sharply for
some misstatement we have made respecting the turf,
the opera, or society generally. As regards the flesh
we may, it is true, be strangers to each other ; but 0,
thanks to the ever-flowing pen of the novelist, are we
not intimately acquainted with his movements, his
deeds, his conversations, his habits, his tastes, and all
that belongs to him ? Is not the name of the Guards-
man synonymous with the most voluptuous luxury, the
most perfect fashion, the most graceful indolence, the
most brilliant wit, the noblest birth, the most charming
combination of effeminacy and daring prowess ; in short,
52 CLUB CAMEOS.
with everything that woman admires and man envies ?
If you reply to this in the negative, all we can answer
is, that you are no believer in modern novels.
It is my custom of an afternoon to enter the palatial
halls of the Caravanserai, and to salt my buttered toast
and drink my ante-prandial cup of tea whilst poring
over the evening editions of the newspapers. I must
confess to being partial to that social but somewhat in-
digestible institution, five-o'clock tea, and dawdle over
the mild refection with all the love and languor of those
who sipped bohea in the days of good Queen Anne. As
a rule, scarcely am I seated in my roomy armchair,
with the Pall Mall Gazette, the Globe, and the Evening
Standard clutched in my selfish grasp, than Dolly Cla-
vering, unless his arduous military duties interfere with
his movements, comes in and sits down beside me. He,
too, is fond of the exhilarating Chinese herb, and his
tastes are considerably encouraged in that direction by a
bevy of as fair sisters as ever donned tea-gowns. Dolly
and I are excellent friends * pals' is the expression he
uses ; and he is good enough to say that ' he has a
regard, don't you know, for the old sportsman,' alluding
to myself; though why I am a l sportsman,' unless that
in Dolly's phraseology everybody is a sportsman, is be-
yond me. Some of Dolly's friends call me an 'old
fogey ' and if I am not to be designated by my rightful
THE GUARDSMAN.
53
name, of the two I prefer to be termed an ( old sports-
man.' There is a savour of manliness in the one which
is not objectionable, but of womanliness in the other
which is hardly flattering.
Dolly is a mere lad of one-and-twenty ; and his
bright, fresh, youthful face, with its nascent whiskers
and moustache, the latter fondly caressed, the Clavering
rather beaky nose, and his sisters' eyes, are as pleasant
for a tired London man to look upon as are the snows of
54 CLUB CAMEOS.
the Alps after the sands of the desert. A great buck is
Dolly. His frock-coat fits his tall slender figure without
a wrinkle ; his trousers never break out into ugly folds
at the knees; his boots are lacquered like polished
ebony ; his hat is new without being glossy ; and there
is a swagger, partly from diffidence, partly from hau-
teur, in his gait and greeting, which is seldom disagree-
able in a very young man. Careful as is Dolly with
respect to his attire, you could never mistake him for a
dressy stockbroker or City swell ; everything about him
is quiet, sober, and unpretentious. Apart from liking
young Clavering, and knowing something of his people,
Dolly is regarded by me with a peculiar and special
interest. He is a Guardsman, and has the honour to
hold a commission in that favourite regiment the
Bombardiers. Again let me say that Dolly is in the
Guards.
I repeat the statement, for it appears to me that some
curious delusions exist in the public mind as to the
Guardsman of the period. He is the prize favourite of
the novelists, and it must be confessed that messieurs les
romanciers make him out to be a most wonderful per-
sonage. Only last night I read Bearskin and Boudoir
by that favourite author of military fiction the fashion-
able Fitz- Jenkins. All the heroes of Fitz- Jenkins' works
are soldiers, and it is needless for me to add, when
THE GUARDSMAN. 55
a man boasts of an aristocratic prefix to a plebeian
cognomen, that all his soldiers are Guardsmen, officers
either in the Household Cavalry or in the Foot Guards.
When I read of the doughty deeds of Dormer de Bohun
Cholmondeley Beaumanoir (Fitz-Jenkins likes a good
name for his hero), and think of Dolly, who is rather shy
in ladies' society, and who prefers to go through a gate
than over one when out with the hounds, the contrast is
amusing.
Of course you know this Beaumanoir ? What reader
of fiction (and I own to being a most omnivorous novel-
reader myself) is not acquainted with him ? Are we
not all familiar with his haughty commanding figure,
his perfect features, those dark terrible eyes always
being lit up with desire or revenge, the heavy mou-
stache falling over the stern cruel mouth, the exquisitely
modelled hands white as a beauty's, the arched instep,
and the Arabian feet ? And then the views of this
splendid creature upon modern society ! How fierce is
the cynicism underlying all his opinions and judgments!
When I listen to Fitz-Jenkins' heroes inveighing against
the falsity of woman, and dealing out mordant strokes
against the shams and hypocrisies of life in the club
smoking-room, or in the tabagie of one of those ancient
country mansions for which the pen of our author is
noted, I compare him with Dolly, who can be seen any
56 CLUB CAMEOS.
Sunday morning during the season with his mother and
sisters in the family pew at St. Peter's, Eaton-square,
who is passionately fond of dancing, who is devoted to
amateur theatricals, who loses what he is pleased to call
his heart about half a dozen times a week, and who
colours furiously when a woman snubs him (which is
not often, for he is too shy and too much of a gentle-
man to be forward) ; and the contrast is striking.
"What an ordinary man is Dolly Clavering, and what
a brilliant creature is our Beaumanoir ! When Dolly
goes to ball or dance he is quite in a nutter of excite-
ment if a reigning beauty will allow him to write his
name on her card, or if some high dame of fashion asks
for his escort to Hurlingham or the Orleans Club.
Whereas Beaumanoir creates such havoc amid the
duchesses and countesses, scattered liberally throughout
Fitz- Jenkins' volumes, as to exhibit a most lamentable
state of things in the English peerage. Haughty ladies,
whose blood is so blue that it is surprising it con-
descends to flow at all, sigh for him ; the greatest heir-
esses languish after his smiles; disappointment, rejec-
tion, refusal, are words never to be met with in his
social dictionary. Dolly is not a bad man across country
when his blood is up ; but, as I have said, he regards
jumping, unless when necessary, as a work of superero-
gation ; he is a fair shot, and can knock over his pigeons
THE GUARDSMAN. 57
at Hurlingham or the Gun Club as well as the gene-
rality of his fellows ; nor is his performance despicable
in the stubble and turnip fields, or in the coverts of the
paternal woods. But Beaumanoir ! He rides horses
that none but he can ride ; he never hunts but he is
glued to the hounds from find to finish; whilst the
gates, fences, brooks, doubles, and every mortal thing
he takes with such consummate ease, always make the
whole field tremble with fear. He eschews dauntless
and magnificent creature that he is ! ordinary sport
partridges, pheasants, grouse, and the like and is only
keen after big game. The tigers he shoots on foot ; the
wild buffaloes his unerring aim brings down ; the lions,
leopards, pumas, the whole Zoological Gardens, in fact,
that fall to his wonderful breech-loader, are they not
written in the pages of the veracious Fitz-Jenkins ?
Unless when Dolly is on guard or engaged by society,
he dines modestly at his club for some four or five shil-
lings ; then, while digestion is pleasantly waiting upon
appetite, he pays a visit to the smoking-room and falls
asleep over a novel ; perhaps, when slumber has refreshed
him, he goes up-stairs and takes a hand at whist, rigidly
eschewing all bets, till it is time for him to go to his
bachelor lodgings in Jermyn-street and turn into bed.
We know how Beaumanoir, on the contrary, passes his
time. What princely dinners he orders ! what an
58 CLUB CAMEOS.
educated gourmet lie is ! How deep are his potations,
without ever affecting the clearness of his brain, the
steadiness of his hand, or the basilisk coldness of his
extraordinary eyes ! How he gambles at ccarte,
napoleon, poker, baccarat, winning or losing thousands
without ruffling the composure of that sphinx-like face
or disturbing the serenity of that marble brow ! How
he has to hear from charming female lips of the misery
his coldness, his indifference, or his neglect has caused
in their too susceptible hearts ! When I read of Beau-
manoir of his prowess, his Eochefoucauld maxims, his
pampered tastes, his gorgeous attire, his innumerable
conquests, and his Munchausen sporting adventures it
is a source of congratulation to me that I have never
had the pleasure of seeing him amongst his comrades in
the Household troops; for with all due deference to
Fitz- Jenkins, it seems to me that Beaumanoir is a hard
vicious brute, and far more like a flash groom who has
been educated in the music-halls of the period than ' an
officer and a gentleman.' If certain of our novelists hold
the mirror up to Nature, well may society talk about the
degeneracy of the British army. For my part, I do not
believe in the accuracy of these descriptions of what
use is imagination unless you draw upon it? and in
refutation of such views and theories let me sketch the,
I fear, somewhat commonplace career of Dolly Claveringv
THE GUARDSMAN. 59
The eldest son of an old Wiltshire squire and heir
to some six thousand a year, Dolly, after a brief educa-
tion at Eton, where he distinguished himself as one of
the smartest * fields' in the eleven, was gazetted to the
Bombardiers. In these days of equality and open com-
petition many of the privileges of the Guards have been
docked ; still a commission in one of its regiments
will always be an object of envy to most young men.
Living in London, except when quartered at Windsor
or Shorncliffe, the Guardsman has every advantage
that town life offers, and can enjoy to the full all
the charms and fascinations of good society. Un-
like his less fortunate brother in the Line, he knows
nothing of dull provincial cities, with their barrack
monotonies, garrison hacks, fifth-rate theatres, and
indifferent amusements. He is exempt from foreign
service ; but in the hour of danger, and when the con-
flict is deepening around him, it is his special privilege
to be in the front of battle. The uniform he wears is
in my opinion the most becoming in the service. There
are ladies who so admire the gauntlets, helmets, and
cuirasses of the Life Guards and the Blues, and the
gorgeous blue-and-gold of the Horse Artillery, that
they vow no dress in the British Army equals them.
But with all due deference to the opinion of the fair sex
and in matters of costume their judgment is not to be
Co
CLUB CAMEOS.
decried when Dolly is adorned in his bearskin and well-
fitting 'regimentals,' to use a word always employed by
the ladies when describing the British officer in his
war paint, no soldier, it seems to me, can wear a more
becoming uniform, or one which more unites grace with
quiet splendour.
If we are to credit our novelists, the young Guards-
man is always the handsomest of his sex, enjoys a most
lavish allowance, dwells in sumptuous chambers in St.
THE GUARDSMAN. 61
James's-street, runs through a couple of fortunes before
he has been five years on the town, disappoints his
tradesmen, and then retires to some West India regiment
or takes service under a half-savage potentate till the
friendly heiress, who seems ever to be hovering over the
colours of 'the Household,' takes pity upon him, and
makes him once more a man and a millionaire. Dolly
is certainly very good-looking, but for that advantage,
it seems to me, he is more indebted to his father and
mother than to the Guards. The old Squire gives his
son a decent allowance, which enables him to pay his
wine-merchant and his tailor, to keep a horse which he
both rides and drives, and to have comfortable rooms on
the second floor of a house in Jermyn-street excepting
to the adjutant no quarters are given to officers in
the Guards in London. The paternal mansion is in
Lowndes Street, but Dolly thinks it incumbent upon
himself to live in apartments near his two clubs. He
is known as a good son and a kind brother, and his
people have little cause to complain of his desertion.
Whenever he wants a dinner he has only to let his
mother know that he will make one of the family party
at eight o'clock for the cook to show all her cunning
and the Squire to have up some of that ' Mouton' claret
which has moistened the throats of the Claverings for
well-nigh a generation. Having four charming sisters
62 CLUB CAMEOS.
we need hardly say that Dolly finds no difficulty in
obtaining the company of one or two men in his regi-
ment on these occasions.
I have said that my young friend's allowance is good,
but it is not exorbitant. Dolly has, however, one pull
over his brother linesman he is saved from many of the
expenses which ordinarily attend an officer's life. Ex-
cept when at Windsor or Shorncliife he has no mess-bills
to pay, nor is he called upon for incessant contribu-
tions ; hence his income goes farther than it otherwise
might. If Dolly draws five hundred a year from the
kindly old man he calls l the governor,' it is about as
much as he does ; and if a man does not gamble and is
not the slave of any vicious tastes, five hundred a year
when spent rigidly upon oneself will cover a fair expendi-
ture. At all events Dolly does not live uncomfortably,
he never seems to lack funds to dine his friends at the
Caravanserai, to run over to Paris, to put in an appear-
ance on first nights at the theatres, or to indulge in the
various other forms of social distraction which require
ready money. Nor should he ; for I, moi qui parle, had
a relative the watch he picked up on the field of
Waterloo after the engagement ticks before me as I
write who managed to live in the Guards on an al-
lowance of three hundred a year, until he succeeded
to his modest property ; but, as Dolly reminds me,
THE GUARDSMAN. 63
that was many years ago, and money went further
then than it does now in these days of high wages,
continual strikes, and increased expenditure. From
what one hears, I fancy that the old Squire assists
Dolly in the settlement of his accounts with his tailor
and livery-stable keeper.
In reading novels one is always struck with the
idleness of the Guardsman : he is making his hands
white ; he is adorning his outward man ; he is flirting,
lounging, eating, dancing, riding, driving, shooting,
yachting, hunting, but never working. Far be it from
me to say that Dolly's is an industrious or arduous
life, yet it is not one that is 'all beer and skittles.'
What with attending commanding officer's parade or
adjutant's parade, and going on guard as a rule
about every second day, he is not the complete idler
and l chalk soldier' many suppose. When on duty at
St. James's or Buckingham Palace, or at the Tilt-yard,
a grateful nation entertains him at St. James's Palace at
a dinner, which costs the country some three thousand
a year. At this dinner there are the three officers on
guard at St. James's Palace (colonel, captain, and
lieutenant), the two officers on guard at Buckingham
Palace and the Tilt-yard, the three officers of the Life
Guards if they like to put in an appearance and the
guests of the evening ; the colonel of guard inviting,
64 CLUB CAMEOS.
unless he give a place to one of the juniors ; if the Life
Guards do not come their seats can be filled up. When
it is the lot of the young Guardsman to march his men.
down to Threadneedle-street for the protection of that
treasury of the nation, the Bank of England, the directors
of that distinguished company furnish him with a neat
little dinner, and even extend their hospitality to a
couple of his friends when required ; the Bank granting
one bottle of port, sherry, or claret to each friend, and
one bottle to the officer on guard. Occasionally Dolly
asks me to be his guest, and, indolent youngster that he
is, instead of marching his men along the Strand, Fleet-
street, and Cheapside, he limits his pedestrianism to
walking the soldiers to St. James's Park Station, and
conveying them to their destination by the stifling but
lazy process of travelling by the underground railway,
the fares of course being defrayed out of Dolly's pocket.
No wonder that the men have no objection to Mr.
Clavering being on Bank guard !
When I dine in Threadneedle-street with Dolly, and
look at my cheery host the smart tunic discarded for
the easy shooting-coat I cannot but think how many
young men have sat in that comfortable Bank parlour,
and have drawn the curtain to sleep in that adjoining
bedroom, with life and hope before them, and how
various have been their careers ! There was Jones,
THE GUARDSMAN.
happiest and most amusing of private actors ; lie was
shot down on that pitiless hillside of the Alma. There
was Brown, who, after a brief career, and a decided re-
fusal from his father to pay his bills, became bankrupt,
and is now a partner in a respectable wine- merchant's
office in the east of England. There was Smith, the dull-
est soldier who ever cried out ' form fours' or ' shoulder
arms,' but who is now a great military authority, and
>one of the shining lights in the House of Commons.
F
66 CLUB CAMEOS.
There was Kobbynson, who, after that grievous love dis-
appointment of his, exchanged arms for diplomacy, and is
now Secretary of Legation somewhere across the Atlantic,
and married, so they tell me, to a Creole he who so
raved about fair women ! There was Snooks, a feather-
weight and the buck of his regiment, who is now sixteen
stone, dresses like a farmer, and is great at agricultural
dinners, ploughing matches, and in breeding stock.
"What a funny world it is ! Those we thought fools are
now the wise of the earth, the failures are brilliant
successes, the poor have become rich, and those from
whom we expected such great things have turned out
the most commonplace of mediocrities. True it is
that nothing is certain but the unforeseen, and that
he is a sage man who can predict the future of his
friends.
Still, in spite of this remark, I will take upon myself
to cast the future of my friend, young Clavering. Unless
the old Squire shall have been summoned by pallida
mors to take his place in the vault of his ancestors
beneath the aisle of the parish church at Trevennis,
Dolly will remain in the Bombadiers, in all probability,
till he obtains his company. For the next few years he
will enjoy to the full, in all sobriety, I hope, the plea-
sures of the town. With all the buoyancy of youth he
will let the future take care of itself, and bask in the
THE GUARDSMAN. 67
sunshine of that present which seems eternal at one-
and-twenty.
' Quid sit futurum eras, fuge quserere ; et
Quern sors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
Appone ; nee dulces amores
Sperne puer ; neque tu choreas,
Donee virenti canities abest
Morosa.'
The health of Dolly is excellent, and consequently he
looks upon life through the rosiest of glasses. When
he has money in his pocket he feels that the world
is at his feet. He is easily amused; he believes in
the sincerity of man's friendship ; and in his opinion
there are very few young women who are really ugly.
"We know that even under the humblest auspices life
is enjoyable at that golden age of twenty. Dans un
yrenier on est lien a vingt am; how much more then
must it be enchanting when youth is to be passed amid
all the agrements of existence that men generally care
for? The typical Guardsman, it is true, is an awful
cynic; but then think of those 'deep draughts' he is
always taking, the dinners he eats daily, the love-making
he has to go through, and ask yourself whether all that
liquor, gormandising, and sensuality is not enough to
upset the liver of even a transpontine hero for after all
cynicism is often only another word for spleen. And
pray, why should a Guardsman be a cynic, and his
68 CLUB CAMEOS.
comments always cruel, and his heart always savage?
Is it a matter of such extreme dissatisfaction to be
tolerably well born, to be the heir of a fair fortune, to
be the bien venu, if you behave yourself, in the best
London society, and a welcome guest in country house
after country house? And why should he be biting
and savage in his sarcasms ? Why not make him, for a
change, instead of a being ' sensual, earthly, devilish,'
a frank, genial, kindly type of Young England, as in
nine cases out of ten he is ? Why let his love be always
adultery, his wit always satanic, his courage always
brutality, and his religion always unbelief? Has it
ever struck the novelist that to be a Guardsman is not
necessarily to be above all the ordinary feelings common
to inferior mortals ? Is he aware that the Guards were
among the first to organise after the Crimean war a
society the object of which was to relieve the distress
in the squalid districts of London in the fever-stricken
haunts of Shoreditch, Bethnal-green, Whitechapel, and
Westminster and to relieve that distress not by deputy ?
'Would he be surprised to hear' that gay young
Guardsmen visited these haunts themselves, and dis-
tributed with their own ' snow-white hands' tickets for
such plebeian articles of necessity as bread, meat, and
coal? Yet such was the case, for the writer of these
pages had the pleasure of assisting them in their labours.
THE GUARDSMAN.
69
Perhaps, by his sixth or seventh season, Dolly will
begin to find that there is, after all, a certain amount
of monotony in the distractions of society ; that dinners
and dances are a bore ; that the gossip of the club is
dull ; and that it is possible to have too much of polo,
pigeon- shooting, cricket, lawn- tennis, and incessant ex-
citement. His watchful mother and affectionate sisters
will now make the most of this ennui ; they will pass in
review all the nice eligible girls they know of; a selec-
70 CLUB CAMEOS.
tion will be made ; they will be trotted out for Dolly's
inspection ; the object of his preference will be made to
frequently cross his path in town ; she will be asked
down to Trevennis in the autumn; a fond companion-
ship will be struck up between her and Dolly's sisters ;.
and one fine morning Adolphus Frederick Claver-
ing, captain and lieutenant-colonel in the Bombardier
Guards, will find himself standing at the altar-rails,
ready to be offered as a victim to matrimony. As a
married man and heir to a goodish property he will
abandon soldiering, and betake himself to civil pursuits.
By this time it is not improbable that the old Squire
will be feeing Charon to ferry him over the Styx, and
Dolly will succeed to the paternal fortune and honours.
He will not be lavish or ostentatious, for his fortune
will not permit of extravagance ; yet his house will be
by no means closed to the country around, or to his
various London friends. He will be put into the com-
mission of the peace, and when he goes to Court he
will wear the scarlet uniform of a deputy-lieutenant.
He will hunt a good deal, till he gets fat and his
nervous system begins to break down. He will be
always fond of shooting, for sight generally lasts longer
than nerves. He will be a good landlord, and interest
himself moderately in agricultural matters. If he has
a few hundreds to throw away, and wants occupation,.
THE GUARDSMAN.
he may amuse himself by farming the home-farm on his
own account. His wife and children will look after
the poor. He will be on good terms with his vicar,
and make a point of putting in an appearance in the
square curtained pew of the parish church every Sun-
day morning. He will come up to town for three
months in the year, and as he gets older abuse the
change from the country to London. In short, he will
be a model country gentleman, and he will be none
the less popular in his county, and none the worse
husband and father, because he is a man of the world,
and in his youth was a Guardsman.
PATKIOTISM.
PATEIOTISM.
are told that imitation is the sincerest flattery ; and
if this be the case, the Frenchman ought by no means to
feel his self-love wounded at the homage his country
nowadays meets with at our hands. It was once the
distinctive characteristic of England that she was not
like other continental nations. Her manners, her tastes,
her architecture, the habits of her men, the dresses of
her women, were all very different from the customs
that reigned abroad. It might be difficult at first sight
to distinguish between a Frenchman and an Italian, a
Spaniard and a Portuguese, a Eussian and a German;
but an Englishman carried unmistakably his nationality
in his face, his walk, and the manner in which he took off
his hat. As we were cut off from other countries by our
insulated position, so were our inhabitants cut off from
other people by their insulated tastes and characteristics.
"We piqued ourselves upon being cleaner in our habits,
more refined in our sanitary arrangements, manlier in
our tastes and sports, and at heart more moral and reli-
gious in our approval and condemnation of things. "We
76 CLUB CAMEOS.
thought that in the 'foreigner' there was little calculated
to excite our envy or admiration, and by the word 'fo-
reigner' we generally signified the Frenchman. France
was our hereditary foe ; she was always threatening our
shores ; she was the disturber of the peace of Europe ;
her wit had severely satirised the institutions of our
country, and between the two nations little love was
lost. To the Frenchman we were la perfide Albion, a
nation of shopkeepers, a people with no taste for the fine
arts, puritanical in our creed, and good only to breed
horses and brew beer. To the ' honest John Bull type'
of Englishman the son of Gaul had the manners of a
dancing-master, the morals of a courtesan, the dress and
appearance of a billiard-marker a man filthy in his
personal habits, effeminate in his tastes, and one whose
favourite food was frogs and whose favourite drink was
sugar-and-water.
However, thanks to steam and electricity, our preju-
dices have undergone considerable modification, and,
instead of despising the Frenchman, we now run to the
other extreme, and import many of his customs with
most of his wines to our shores. Slowly but surely our
English institutions are becoming Frenchified. Our
fashions are copied from those in Paris ; our cooks serve
up French dishes ; the most modest restaurant thinks it
incumbent upon itself to translate its thoroughly English
PATRIOTISM. 77
bill of fare into the language of France; every hotel
that conies into existence offers us that most dull and
dreary of all festivities, an English table d'hote; thin sour
wines, maliciously labelled clarets and burgundies, have
ousted old October ale and old dry port from the cellar ;
the startling views of domesticity so dear to the French
novelist and playwriter have been introduced into our
fiction and upon our stage. In spite of the treacheries
of our climate, the familiar cafe of the boulevards has
been transported into certain of our streets ; the games
at cards that are now most popular with our youth are
those that are freely played in the cercles of Paris ; whilst
the one great stronghold of the country, the English
day of rest, is gradually being transformed by the social
hospitalities of the fashionable and the efforts of the
philanthropist into the Sunday of the Continent.
I am not for a moment saying that these changes are
an improvement or the reverse. I simply state a fact
patent to all that our institutions are becoming French-
ified. And la belle France has paid us a similar compli-
ment. As we have adopted, or flatter ourselves that we
have adopted, her toilettes, her vintages, her cookery,
her gaiety, her morality, her games of chance, so she has
introduced our Turf nomenclature into her language, our
stallions into her stud, our jockeys into her stable, the
strain of our hounds into her packs, pale ale into her
78 CLUB CAMEOS.
drinks, the wares of Savile-row into her sartorial estab-
lishments, and built her carriages upon English lines.
The result of this reciprocity has been to create in both
nations a class of men which, whilst maligning the habits
and institutions of its own country, blindly worships all
that belongs to its neighbour. "We have at Paris the
Frenchman who so warmly admires our club-life in Pall
Mall, the beauty of our women, the breed of our horses,
the freedom of our government, the manliness of our
field sports, the cleanliness of our tastes, that, surveying
his own fair land from Picardy to Gascony, and from
Brittany to Franche Comte, he finds it stale, flat, and
unprofitable, and that out of England there is nothing
worthy of envy or acceptance. At London we have the
man who is always instituting comparisons between our
capital and Paris, very much to the disadvantage of the
former, who curses our climate, our architecture, our ill-
dressed women, our wretched cookery, our servility to
the powers that be, our vulgarity, our mock-modesty,
our inappreciation of all true art; our love of beer,
which makes us gross ; our love of field sports, which
makes us brutal in short, everything that belongs to
us and our country.
Prominent among this band of Anglophobists is
Luttrell Chichester, who, on the few occasions that he
visits l that damned city of yours,' as he is pleased to
PATRIOTISM. 79
call the London of Ms fathers, makes his home at the
Caravanserai. A younger son, he was passing his time
as one of the second secretaries of her Majesty's em-
bassy at Vienna, copying despatches, and making a
precis of reports touching the growth and development
of Austrian commerce, when, by the whim of a cousin,
he became the heir to a fair property situated in the not
very beautiful district of East Lincolnshire. To quit
diplomacy, to let his newly acquired estate, and to settle
in Paris were, as the novelists say, the work of a mo-
ment. To be in Paris, and of Paris, had always been
the ambition of Chichester. "When in the diplomatic
service he had exerted all his interest to be attached to
our embassy at that bright capital ; but the Fates and the
Foreign Office had declined to listen to his wishes. He
had been sent to Stuttgardt, then to Dresden, then
this exchange was delightful to Ispahan, and then to
Vienna ; but never once had he had occasion to don his
diplomatic uniform at a ball or levee at the Tuileries.
Therefore as soon as he was a free man, and his bankers'
book permitted him to enjoy without stint all the fasci-
nations of life, he made Paris his home.
He was precisely the man to appreciate the pursuits
and pleasures of this the gayest of cities the gayest
because it is the capital not only of France, but of
Europe. He was a Catholic, but his religion sat lightly
So CLUB CAMEOS.
upon him, never pricking his conscience or interfering
with his amusements, yet always ready to soothe him
when bilious or disappointed; it was not a curb or a
fetter, but an anodyne. He was well-read in the sense
that a Frenchman is well-read ; he was familiar with the
light literature of most countries ; he knew most of the
great tragedies and comedies that had been written ; he
was well up in modern history ; he had a good practical
acquaintance with geography and political economy ; he
had a keen appreciation of wit and humour; and he
knew enough Latin to read the Odes of Horace. He
was an epicure ; he was fond of amusement ; he was
addicted very far from wisely to the society of the fair
sex ; and he could give and swallow any amount of flat-
tery. Between him and the typical Englishman there
was little in common. In the tastes and habits of Lut-
trell Chichester there was a touch of effeminacy. He
was fond of ostentation, and was perfectly free from our
national mauvaise honte. He cared far more to flirt in a
boudoir than to ride across country. Spending a great
deal of time over his personal appearance, and setting up
for a lady-killer of the most seductive description, he
was never so happy as when surrounded by women,
complimenting them, escorting them, and carrying out
their behests. To such a man whose fortune permitted
him to gamble at his cercle, whose birth and religion did
PATRIOTISM. 8 1
not exclude him from the exclusive assemblies of
the Faubourg St. Germain, who was well introduced
into the amusing and cosmopolitan society of the capital
Paris possessed attractions such as no other city could
offer. After a couple of winters, Chichester resolved to
look upon France as his home, and to substitute Paris
for London.
For all practical purposes, he is now as complete a
Frenchman as if he had not been born this side of the
Channel. He rents a flat near the Champs Elysees,
&nd a small chateau near Fontainebleau. He is a mem-
ber of the Bebe Club. He swears fealty to the white flag,
and is the most loyal of those who regard Henri Cinq as
their king. In his dress, and in the appointments of his
chambers and of his country seat, he slavishly imitates
the fashions of the land of his adoption. He eschews
the society of the English at Paris. He trims his hair,
shaves his cheeks, and curls his moustache like a French-
man. He takes his two meals a day like a Frenchman.
He interests himself alone in French politics, and works
himself into a passion when the German victories, the
.annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and the movements
of M. Gambetta are mentioned. When he has occasion
to speak English he shrugs his shoulders and gesticu-
lates like the true Gaul; and when he talks to an
Englishman of England, he alludes to her as 'your
G
82 CLUB CAMEOS.
country.' He has obtained a title from the Pope, and
has blossomed forth into the Chevalier Chichestere.
Ashamed of our island and avoiding her people, he has
so identified himself with French interests and French
manners, that when he is called un Anglais he feels
himself insulted. It must be admitted, however, that
his impersonation of the Frenchman is a great histrionic
success; he both speaks the language and looks the
character to perfection.
When Chichester enters the Caravanserai during one
of his short visits to London, the waiters always look
upon him as one of our distinguished foreign members,
and treat him accordingly. He wears a peculiar hat,
very shiny, very narrow brimmed, and very arched ; he
looks at life out of the lenses of a pince-nez; a heavy
moustache falls over his mouth, whilst a little mouche (it
was an imperial, you know, in the days of the Empire ;
now, under the Eepublic, it is a mouche for MacMahon
wears one how suggestive this is of man's fidelity !)
nestles in the curve above the chin ; his cheeks are blue
and shaven like those of a priest ; very loose all-round
collars, with a spotted tie made into a bow, with wide
pendulous ends, encircle his neck ; his cutaway coat and
waistcoat have that peculiar tightness and inelegance
of the Parisian tailor ; the trousers, often wonderful in
pattern (lavender and the Mackenzie tartan for choice),
PATRIOTISM. 83
fit tight to the leg, and fall over a snow-white pair of
gaiters ; whilst the boots are short and very broad at
the toes. No wonder that men accustomed to the works
of art of Poole, Lock, and Thomas regard Chichester as
a foreigner. As he walks up our morning-room he
adopts a little mincing gait; when he talks to you or
sits down to read the newspaper he puts himself into
attitudes; and when he has occasion to find fault, he
84 CLUB CAMEOS.
pouts and waves his hands like a girl. The wags at the
Caravanserai have christened him Henrietta.
He is a source of great amusement to many of the
members. In his diatribes against England there is no
affectation of animosity ; he really and unfeignedly de-
tests the country, its climate, institutions, and inhabit-
ants. When he takes his walks abroad he returns to the
club sick at heart and sincerely disgusted. He has seen
toilettes that have made his fastidious nerves shudder
as if he had listened to a false note in music ; the dust
has gone into his eyes and down his throat ; the water-
ing-carts have flooded the land where he wants to cross
the road. ' We lay the dust,' he says, with his girlish
pout ; i you make mud.' The hot streets have been un-
shaded by trees, whilst no cool enticing cafe has been
there to offer him repose and refreshment ; he has been
shaken about in a dirty and miserably-hung cab ; he has
been bored by the dead-level of dulness and monotony
that is everywhere visible. ( No wonder,' he says, as he
takes up the Figaro, l that you boast of your home life
in this damned country of yours, for nobody who could
help it would ever go out of doors.' He dines out at the
houses of his sisters, and at the houses of friends he feels
bound once a year to meet, and he mourns over the bad
wines he has to drink, the indigestible dishes that he
has to eat, the bad ventilation of the rooms, the solemnity
PATRIOTISM. 85
of the men, and the want of tact of the women. ' To
thoroughly appreciate Bignon's,' he sneers, 'you must
have dined in England. To know what dress is without
taste, what conversation is without sparkle, what hospi-
tality is without grace, you must enter London society.'
"We take him to the theatres ; we show him Mr. and
Mrs. Bancroft, we show him Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, we
show him Mr. Hare, we show him Mr. Irving ; we ask
him to weep over our tragedies, to laugh over our come-
dies, and to split his sides over our burlesques ; but his
face never relaxes its rigid expression of utter boredom.
' Man Dieu, and those are your actors and actresses !' he
yawns, as he quits the theatre. ' "What a pity it is you
do things by halves ! You get your plays from Paris ;
why not get your actors ?' If he wishes to dine away
from the club, where, he plaintively asks, can he go ?
At his beloved Paris he has the Cafe Anglais (I have
dined with him there in K"o. 16 or rather sat down to
dinner, for dyspepsia does not permit me to indulge and
can speak of him most favourably as a host), the Maison
Doree, Bignon's, and several other haunts well known
to the French gourmet. '"Whilst here,' he cries, 'your
best restaurants, now that Francatelli is dead, are a
disgrace even to the Palais Eoyal.' It is impossible to
please him ; everything he sees, everything we do, every-
thing we praise, is a mistake, and gives rise to the
86 CLUB CAMEOS.
ridicule of Europe. Like ancient Eome and ancient
Greece, like Venice and Spain, England has seen her best
days, and is fast going to wreck and ruin. ' Sapristi P
he says, with his girlish gesticulations, ' you are a droll
people ! In your newspapers and at your clubs you
imagine yourselves a powerful nation, and that your
voice is a potent one in the councils of Europe. Yet
cross the Channel, and what notice do you find any of
the Powers taking of the views and feelings of England?
Rien ! You are a shop, not a barrack, and what else
can you expect? You look upon politics only through
the medium of commercial interests, and then wonder at
the decline of your national prestige. You encourage
pusillanimity, and call it arbitration. You weaken
strength, and call it reduction. You impair efficiency,
and call it economy. You exchange a patriotic aristo-
cracy for a mischievous middle class, and then wonder
at misgovernment. You ridicule Protection, and then
wonder at commercial panics and agricultural distress.
You legalise trades-unions, and then marvel at the
antagonism between labour and capital. You sanction
the freedom of the press, and then are astonished at the
spread of sedition. Mon Dieu, your country is going to
the devil, and it won't be much of a catch when he gets
it !' Luttrell Chichester, I fear, will.
He is particularly wrath with the conduct of the
PATRIOTISM.
English who visit his fondly cherished city. He objects
to the style of dress they adopt, to their open contempt
for the manners of the country, to their arrogance, bru-
tality, and utter want of savoir-faire.
1 Why, if you were Germans,' he sneers, ' you could
not behave worse ! Why walk about the Boulevards as
if you were going out cover-shooting ? Why, when you
dine together, talk at the top of your voice, and let all
Paris know that you are English ? Why refuse to be
CLUB CAMEOS.
courteous to a man or woman simply because he or she
happens to stand behind a counter ? Why, when shut
up at a railway station waiting for your luggage, or
standing at a box-office waiting for a ticket for the
theatre, or at a review, or on the racecourse, always
insist in the loudest of tones upon the superiority of
your own institutions, and make yourselves thoroughly
objectionable to all around you? At Paris you arc
simply hated, and if it were not for your money you
would be treated with marked disrespect.'
' You are quite right to stand up for Paris,' replies
a youngster, who has just entered upon his forensic
career as judge's marshal ; ' it is the jolliest place out !
If I had my way I'd be like you, and live over there.
Give me an invite at Easter, Chichester.'
' Paris the jolliest place out !' sardonically laughs
Chichester. ' That is the way with you young fellows.
Pray what do you know of Paris? You put up at an
hotel where a Parisian never enters ; you walk arm-in-
arm along the Boulevards, and inspired by the romances
of Paul de Kock and Xavier de Montepin, imagine
that you are to enter into an intrigue with the first
great lady you meet in your promenade ; you drive to-
the Bois or up and down the Champs Elysees in a two
francs and a half fly ; you dine by yourselves, and drink
too much at the Cafe Anglais or at Bignon's, and then..
PATRIOTISM. 89
flushed and noisy, you sally forth to a theatre, where
you don't understand the language, or to the Mabille or
the Closerie des Lilas, where you do understand the
language, and finish your day with a supper at Brebant's,
in society which even the clerk of a notaire would con-
sider compromising. And then you say there is no
place like Paris, and flatter yourselves you know what
life in Paris is ! You bring no letters of introduction
with you ; you do not know a single lady of fashion to
ask you to a dance or to dinner ; you belong to none of
the cercles ; you are not acquainted with a single political
or literary celebrity to show you any attention ; and yet
you return to London and say, "Awfully jolly place,
Paris ! Know every inch of it ! Never was more amused
in my life ! You go and see Niniclie"
Chichester, however, is one of the few Englishmen
who really is acquainted with Paris. He has been good
enough to invite me to stay with him both at his cham-
bers and at his charming little country seat. Under his
auspices I am able to form some idea of what Parisian
life is. He takes me into society, which I am not sur-
prised to find is very different from that depicted by
certain novelists and dramatic authors ; at his hospitable
breakfast-table one meets authors, actors, and the
' curled darlings' of the Bebe and the Jockey Club ; he
has introduced me at the greenroom of the Francais;
9 o
CLUB CAMEOS.
he has obtained tickets for me to listen to debates
at Versailles ; and, thanks to him, I have sat amongst
the crush on the admission of an Academician. He
drives me to neighbouring races in his drag driving
like a Frenchman, with his arms sticking out from his
sides, and his body well forward ; he puts my name
down as an honorary member at a cercle, where I can
play baccarat if it pleases me to the most unlimited
extent; he tells me what to see, whom to know, and
what to avoid. He is as different a companion in France
as a London fog is from an Italian sky. Bright, cheery,
amusing, full of anecdote and geniality, he has little in
PATRIOTISM.
common with the discontented, dyspeptic, surly denizen
of Pall Mall that he is when in England.
But to see him at his best you must stay with him
at his chateau near Fontainebleau. There he is the
complete French country gentleman, as on the Boule-
vards he is the complete flaneur. Dressed in a suit of
yellow jean, with a large Leghorn straw hat on his
head, he goes pottering about his trim gardens, with
their succession of terraces, formal flower-beds, mimic
fountains, and yews cut into all manner of fantastic
shapes, whilst the shaved poodle trots by his side ; or
else he pays a visit to his little home farm, well
stocked with Breton cows, Auvergne sheep, pigs from
Westphalia, Spanish poultry, and white huge-flanked
Gorman horses. He is a kind landlord, and is on ex-
cellent terms with the cure of the village, to whom his
donations pour lespauvres are very liberal. As becomes
a Legitimist, and one on whom the pious regions of
the Faubourg St. Germain smile kindly, in the country
he is most respectable, and never misses attending high
mass on Sundays or on the great festivals, acting as
escort to some high dame engaged in collecting une
quete. In Paris he does as he pleases, but in the country
he has to set an example. When la cliasse sets in,
Chichester is in great force. In the coverts around he
has plenty of birds, but it must be admitted that the
CLUB CAMEOS.
pheasants and partridges have little to fear. Not only
is Chichester a wretched shot, but the guests he fills
his house with are little better. His shooting-parties
are very delicious. The petits creves and the gommeux.
who dawdle over breakfast, gorgeously attired in dark-
green coats, black- velvet caps, jack-boots, and couteaux
de chasse at their waistbelts, are in no hurry for the
sport. They chat, smoke cigarettes, look at themselves
in the glass, and then, when the morning is fast dis-
PATRIOTISM. 93
solving into the afternoon, make up their minds to face
the cold air. Each one has his man behind him with
a couple of guns ; but the young Gauls are far more
accustomed to the pavement of Paris than to the ridge
and furrow of the fields, or the yielding leafy rides in
the woods. They do not attempt to keep in line ; they
never think of preserving silence ; they point the bar-
rels of their breechloaders at each other with a charm-
ing contempt for the consequences of manslaughter;
they blaze into a thick covert heedless of dogs, beaters,
or a brother sportsman ; and if they make a bag, which
we should consider most moderate if it fell to one gun,
they are in ecstasies. They want female society, music,
or absinthe to wake them up and give them energy ;
and I am sure in their heart of hearts they curse the
damp, the cold, and long for the evening and to bid
for the bank at baccarat. It was the same when they
went out hunting. Attired in a costume something
between a circus-master and an Odd Fellow, they were
only happy when riding to cover or when saying charm-
ing nothings to the fair amazons who turned up at the
meet; but when the hounds were thrown in by the
huntsman into a furze-brake, and when the music of
their tongues plainly told that the fox had been found,
then the Frenchmen looked uncomfortable. They fidg-
eted about, altered their stirrups, and, before they had
CLUB CAMEOS.
made up their minds to jump a two-feet ditch, men,
horses, and hounds were fields ahead, and our l sports-
men' were hopelessly thrown out.
No, Chichester, most prejudiced of Anglophobists, in
spite of all your teaching, give me old England ! Johnny
Crapaud may be very well in his way. I grant you he
is very amusing and generally very lively; but he wants
ballast, he promises more than he performs, his sincerity
is not to be depended upon, he is not wholesome in many
of his tastes, and he is too fond of ' a gallery' and of
showing off to be really in earnest or really manly.
John Bull, with all his faults, is the more sterling of
the two, as he always was and always will be.
LETTEES.
LETTERS.
THE successful man of letters at the present day lias
little to complain of. Time was when he had to haunt
the antechambers of the great, to badger the whole circle
of his acquaintance for subscriptions, and to sell his
political opinions to the first statesman who wanted
them, ere he could eke out a livelihood sufficient to
liberate him from the clutches of the sheriff's officer and
from the dens of the Fleet. It was a red-letter day with
him when he had received his ten guineas for a dedica-
tion to a peer who wished to pose as a patron of letters
at a modest cost, or when his list of subscribers was full
enough to justify him to go to press with his new volume,
or when he was offered a collectorship in the Customs or
the Revenue because his squibs and his satires had been
useful to a Minister. In those ( dark ages' of literature
the reading public was limited, and the author, unless
favoured by the great or the State, soon found that his
audience was too small or too indifferent to support him.
One little source of pride, however, remained to him;
he might have to starve as Otway starved; he might
have to find his bed, like Savage, on the garbage of the
H
CLUB CAMEOS.
market-place; he might be ill-clad, dunned, and arrested;
but lie was an author a man of education whose opinions
were respectfully listened to, who received the homage
of the set in which he lived, and whose pen commanded
for him a consideration that he would not otherwise
have obtained. Authorship was then, not as now a
profession, but a distinction. To have written a book,
whether it succeeded or was damned, was in itself an
accomplishment which raised the writer a full head and
LETTERS. 99
shoulders above the common herd. It qualified him for
admission into society, it ushered him into the presence
of the powerful, he was treated with deference by all,
saving those who had pecuniary relations with him, and
he was regarded as amongst the notables of the coffee-
house that he frequented. If his book was talked
about, and he was born under the star of a Minister who
encouraged letters and the fine arts, he might find him-
self performing the duties of a sinecure commissioner-
ship, and drawing a handsome salary from the Treasury.
He might hold the seals of a Secretary of State like
Addison ; he might be a Commissioner of Appeals like
Locke ; a Master of the Mint like Newton ; a Com-
missioner of Stamps like Steele; or be attached to
embassies as were Gay, Prior, and Stepney.
It was, however, all a question of luck. If a Minister
like Walpole or the second Pitt stood at the helm of
government, the author, the poet, and the satirist had a
hard time of it. No snug post under the Crown then
fell to his lot ; he was attached to no embassies ; his old
age was cheered by no pensions; as he had made his
bed so must he lie upon it. ' If you are such a damned
fool,' said Sir Eobert Walpole, with his characteristic
delicacy of feeling, to a poor author, 'as to follow a
trade that does not pay, you have only yourself to
blame. If the State is to help all who have been unsuc-
CLUB CAMEOS.
cessful in their calling, the Exchequer would be empty
to-morrow, and I do not see why the country should
assist one whose books publishers cannot sell, or whose
plays managers cannot act, more than one who fails in
any other form of business.' Had old Sam Johnson
lived in the reign of Queen Anne, a high govern-
ment appointment would have effectually relieved
him from slaving for the publishers and from the
drudgery of hack-work. On the other hand, had Con-
greve lived in the days of George II. or of George III.
he would simply have remained a writer for the stage,
and have been dependent upon his own exertions for his
income. The pursuit of literature was in itself a miser-
able occupation ; it might lead to advantages, but such
advantages were unconnected with the calling of author-
ship pure and simple. Until the present century, with
the exception of Pope and Dryden, it is doubtful
whether any single author managed to subsist com-
fortably-upon the profits that arose from the sale of his
works. Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to say that
the pursuit of literature was a bad staff, but a good
stick ; in the ' good old times,' however, the calling of
a man of letters was neither a staff nor a stick, but the
slenderest of reeds.
Happity a healthier state of things has been ushered
in. Education has been busy with the masses, circulat-
LETTERS. IOI
ing- libraries have been established, cheap newspapers
flood the land with their broadsides, and the consequence
is that a vast reading public, eager after novelty and
attractive information, has been called into existence.
A man who hits the literary taste of the day is sure, not
only of popularity, but of the substantial rewards of
ready money. He need not pander to the cheap vanity
of a patron ; there is no necessity for him to go hat in
hand begging for subscribers, nor has the penurious
certainty of a small government appointment any attrac-
tions for him. His patron is the public, and as long as
it reads his works, so long will publishers gladly pay
him for his wares and the libraries order their hundreds
of copies. Literature is now a profession, like law or
medicine, and the successful author enjoys the same rank
and receives the same homage as any other successful
professional man. The mere fact of having written a
book in these days, when everybody reads and almost
everybody writes, is in itself no mark of distinction ;
should the work make a c hit,' the author is treated by
the world with the same consideration that it accords
to the rest of the pedestrians who have distanced their
fellows on the high-road to fame. He is a fortunate
man, precisely as the barrister whose tables are covered
with briefs is a fortunate man, or the doctor who is
gaining a large practice, or the engineer who is full of
102 CLUB CAMEOS.
contracts, or the merchant who freely prospers is a
fortunate man. The days are past when an author is
stared at by society because a publisher has given his
manuscript to the world. We worship success of all
kinds, and if our friend of the pen becomes talked about
we follow in his train, yet not, as in the days of the
Tudors and the Stuarts, because he is a writer, but
because he is successful. Literature has no longer a
pedestal to itself, but takes its place in the sculpture-
gallery with the rest of the statuary, and is bought and
criticised like the other figures that surround it, and
vulgarly valued for what it will fetch. The divinity
that once hedged round the author has departed, and in
its stead is the tradesman with his scale of profits and
losses, and who knows to an ounce what is the true
worth of l copy.' Empty homage has given way to
solid bullion.
That the calling of a successful literary man is not
to be despised is evidenced by the career of one of the
pillars of the Caravanserai, familiarly called 'Jimmy.'
Why he should be known as Jimmy, considering that,
according to the wishes of his godfather and godmother,
he was christened Hugh, and that the family name is
Lister, it is beyond me to discover. One thing is, how-
ever, certain, that he is always called Jimmy, and to speak
of him as Lister is to brand oneself as an ignoramus, an
LETTERS.
103
outsider, and utterly unworthy of membership of the
Caravanserai. Quite a representative man is Jimmy. In
the smoking-room his easy-chair is always the centre of
attraction ; for his stories are amusing, his conversation
witty, and he possesses precisely that information upon
things in general and scandal in particular which is
suited to the hour of one o'clock in the morning. He
is the great authority in the club upon literature, the
drama, and the fine arts. The gossip of the greenroom is
104 CLUB CAMEOS.
at his fingers' ends ; and he is not reticent upon the feuds
of actors and the witcheries of actresses. He knows all
the new works that are coming out, what novels are to
be naughty or insipid, and explains all the mysterious
allusions in the newspapers, and the classical quotations
that may crop up in the course of talk or perusal. Hay-
ing once painted a picture that was rejected, he de-
veloped into the art-critic of a leading journal, and his
remarks, if biting, are amusing on the intrigues of the
Eoyal Academy, the jealousies of artists, and on that
burlesquing of Nature which English people call art.
Jimmy is a general favourite, for he has a great deal
in his power, and is not unlavish in its disposal. The
newspaper of which he is editor and part proprietor is
always open to puff his friends who write books, paint
pictures, or mould busts ; he is always ready, unless in
the full swing of the parliamentary season, to spare a
paragraph for the achievements of the l spring-captains*
and the t sportsmen' who are amongst the number of his
acquaintance for their Alpine ascents, their rowing-
matches against time, their hunting of the big game
in South America, or their racing, driving, yachting,
and running deeds. His pen and kindly words are ever
prompt to introduce a friend, or friend's friend, who is
supposed to have literary or artistic talent, to the pub-
lishers, the picture-dealers, and the editors of magazines
LETTERS.
I0 5
and reviews. From his journalistic position and his
acquaintance with managers and actors he seldom lacks
1 orders' for the theatre and the opera, and when these
are in his possession he generously gives them to those in
the club who he thinks will most appreciate the present
barristers whose briefs have not yet arrived, j^oung
government clerks whose seniors decline to make way
for them, soldiers on half-pay, and the rest of the
fraternity of social paupers. The well-to-do suppliants
and it is astonishing how many of the wealthy
petition for orders he dismisses with a caustic gibe
at their meanness to the libraries and box-offices.
Whenever anything is to be done and wherever
anything is to be seen there to be sure is Jimmy. If an
ironclad is going to be launched, a new bridge to bo
opened, a grand field-day to be held at Aldershot, a
naval review to take place at Spithead, a banquet to
be given to a distinguished personage, Jimmy is certain
to be presented with a card. And as for the tickets
for race-meetings, ' first nights,' private views at exhi-
bitions, concerts, City dinners, and for all the other
forms of the external dissipation of London society that
crowd his looking-glass and mantelpiece, their number
is legion. Xo wonder, then, that a man who has so
much in his gift, who is such excellent company, and
who is the most perfect of hosts, should be much sought
106 CLUB CAMEOS.
after and be deemed the most popular of good fellows.
He has but one enemy, and that is his tailor, whom he
will never permit to dress him in the fashion ; Jimmy
running to flesh prefers his habits loose, and declines to-
be buttoned up and puckered and encased in the manner
sartorial art delights in.
It is not unusual with me to cross the Park of a
morning, and call upon Jimmy at his chambers in Vic-
toria-street whilst he is breakfasting at an hour when
ordinary people are lunching. When I enter his rooms,
furnished in the most approved mediaeval style, and
criticise their luxurious appointments the easy-chairs,.
the valuable engravings, the rare books, the china, and
curious glass that juts out from the wall on velvet
brackets, the old brass and mirrors and oak cabinets or
watch their owner enjoying life to the full, surrounded
by all that modest ambition can desire, the thought
frequently crosses my mind, How different is the-
fate of Hugh Lister from that of many of his prede-
cessors !
"When I see Jimmy giving his little dinners at the
club at a certain well-known round table, the waiters
active and attentive, the chief butler himself superin-
tending the serving of the dishes, the champagne iced
to perfection, the claret warmed with the most consum-
mate care I think of the men, better read than he, and
LETTERS. 107
endowed with greater talents, who knew not where to
turn for a meal or a couch, calling themselves lucky if
they could dine at a tripe-shop or pay for the shelter of
a garret. I think of the author of Venice Preserved
choking himself over the food, from which he had been
so long deprived, in the fierce greed of hunger ; of the
ill-starred Savage crouching for warmth before the
dying ashes of a glass furnace ; of the great Orientalist,,
the translator of the Koran, pursuing his studies amid
the severest privations; of old Sam Johnson, hidden
behind the screen in the publisher's dining-room, be-
cause his coat was too ragged to admit him to the table
of his host ; of Steele, Goldsmith, Smollett, Fielding,
Crabbe, Chatterton, and the hundred and one other
brothers of the pen, who knew often what actual want
was, what misery was, what pain left to itself was, and
what followed from the grasp of the sheriff's officer !
When I see Jimmy on his famous three-hundred-
guinea cob, well up to eighteen stone, and whose head
and crest and quarters are the admiration of the Bow,
or driving his pair of bays about the town or the sub-
urbs, there rise before me visions of pale sad faces
who have had to part with their manuscripts, their
poems, their satires, their tragedies, their essays and
novels, for a tenth or a twentieth of the sum our nine-
teenth-century scribe gives for one of his horses. Did
xoS CLUB CAMEOS.
not Milton sell his incomparable epic for the price of a
new saddle ? Can you buy a stanhope at a good maker's
for the price at which Goldsmith sold his Vicar of
Wakefield? Did not Dryden engage himself to write
ten thousand verses for less than the price of an opera-
box for the season ? Was not Evelina parted with by
Miss Burney at the price of a frock-coat ? And pray
what did the men of letters under the first three Georges
make out of literature ? But perhaps the saddest of all
reflections is how fared it with the men, then as now,
who could find no publisher to take their wares, whoso
tastes and peculiarities of character unfitted them for
the ordinary occupations of life, who read and wrote in
the hope of one day receiving their reward and having
their niche in the Temple of Fame, only to find their
end in the gaol, the hospital, or the terrible exit of the
suicide ? As I write there stands out against the back-
ground of the past the lean haggard form of one I knew,
who busied himself with subjects that appealed to the
few, who degenerated into a publisher's hack ; then
even that calling failed him, for others could be found
to do the work cheaper ; who was poor unto misery, yet
neither his garb nor conversation revealed his sorrows,
for the pride of manhood made him keep his poverty to
himself, till anxiety and suffering bade him one fatal day
brave the terrors of the unknown, and put an end to the
LETTERS.
109
life, whose burden was greater than he could bear, by
his own hand. Poor soul ! had one but known how
severe was the measure the Fates had dealt out to him,
he needed not have been fearful again of distress or pri-
vation ; gladly subscriptions would have been raised for
him : but he kept us all in ignorance of his affairs, and
whilst we mourn his reserve, we cannot but respect the
pride and pluck that dictated it. How many suffering
hearts have thus passed to their rest, conscious of the
genius working within them, their brains stored with
the intellectual accumulations -of ages, yet rudely ignored
by the times in which their lot was cast, whilst the
empty and the frivolous were the idols of the hour !
To obtain success is not always to deserve it. Life is
but a lottery, and it is quite as' often that a prize is
drawn by a fluke as by desert.
Kot that by this digression I am inferring that
Jimmy is not deserving of his prosperity. Far from it ;
no man works harder or is more worthy of the success
that attends him : only there are others to the full as
able as himself, and who work quite as assiduously,
yet somehow their names are known to the few, and
their wares have little market value. Let us see how
Jimmy raised himself to the position of a favourite of
Fortune. The son of an ex-cavalry officer, who was
atoning for the dissipation of his youth and the loss of
no
CLUB CAMEOS.
the paternal acres over hazard by strict economy at the
little town of Dinan in Brittany, young Lister received
his first education at the hands of the parish priest, a
Jesuit well schooled in mathematics and who knew the
classics as his Breviary. Sharp, studious, and a keen
observer of all that fell within his ken, the lad was a
most promising pupil, and soon showed of what he was
capable. He was sent to a grammar-school in Kent
which had numerous exhibitions at Oxford ; two of these
LETTERS. in
young Lister gained, and passed himself through the
University without costing his impecunious parent a
single sou. Disappointed in obtaining a fellowship, he
came to London and entered himself at the Bar. He
had his name painted in the blackest of letters on the
yellowest of backgrounds, he went circuit, he went
sessions, he attended the courts at Westminster; but
solicitors declined to honour him with their patronage.
At last he put his wig in its tin box, hung up his gown,
and betook himself to that great refuge of the unsuccess-
ful forensic mind journalism. He had succeeded to
the family property of two hundred a year, and what
with reviews, magazine articles, and occasional leaders,
he managed to live in Dry den's Buildings, not uncom-
fortably, nay with splendour compared to many of the
barristers who lodged on his staircase. Finding that
works of imagination, if successful, were the most lucra-
tive of all literary productions, he wrote a novel. It
was rejected by the trade. Young authors, take heart
from this, and be not cast down ! The first novel of the
popular Jimmy was refused; why, then, need you
despair? What is the general fate of first efforts?
What are Eaphael's ' Dream' and Gibbon's History of
Switzerland but miserable failures ? Were not the first
appearances of Kean, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons cordi-
ally hissed? Were not the first speeches of Walpole,
H2 CLUB CAMEOS.
Canning, Erskine, Grattan, Disraeli in the House of
Commons failures ? Were not the first works of most
of our modern writers politely declined with thanks?
Success! What is success but the triumph over past
failure ? Mon ami, if you have never been a fool, you
will never be a wise man ; if you have never failed, you
will never be successful. The best across country are
not those who have had the fewest falls.
Mortified at his failure, Jimmy vowed that he would
court Imagination no more ; and, with a sneer, said
he would leave that sphere 'to the women.' It is
astonishing how savage were his reviews on all the
novels that crossed his path at this time, and how
highly moral were the reproofs he directed against the
frivolity of the public taste. Certain social topics then
being discussed, Jimmy took the matter up, infused his
humour and classical culture into the question, and
wrote a few letters signed ' E. S. Y. P.' to that great
journal the Trimmer upon the subject. They were
inserted, and led to his permanent engagement on the
staff. His letters, with the signature ' E. S. Y. P.,'
on international law, penny ices, cheap divorces,
gamekeepers' fees, domestic economy, justices' justice,
tips to servants, state of the nation, state of Eotten
Eow, model farms, baby-farms, what to do with your
manure, what to do with your poor in short, on
LETTERS. 113
anything and everything, were regarded by the public
mind with the respect and consideration accorded only
to the epistles of the most brilliant writers of the day,
which occasionally, through the medium of the Trimmer,
kindly advise the estates of the realm how to act, the
law-officers of the Crown how to legislate, the bench
how to decide, and society generally how to behave.
For the next few years Hugh Lister led the ordinary
life of the literary man- of- all- work. He wrote reviews
on books of all classes from an encyclopedia to an
Oriental grammar by studying the preface and deriving
his information from the pages he criticised, then wind-
ing up with praise or abuse, according to the state of
his liver and the bother the volumes gave him. He
wrote essays, pamphlets, magazine articles, a book of
travels, which was read and forgotten, and edited a
classical author. It was at this time that he painted
the head of a cardinal, which he fancied was, for shade
and colouring, worthy of Eembrandt. As I have said,
it was not accepted by the Eoyal Academy. One mem-
ber of the hanging committee, as he examined it, said
he was prepared for anything from an English artist,
but he must really draw the line at sign-boards. Genial
and good-tempered as are naturally most burly men,
it is a sure ' draw' to get Jimmy on the subject of Art.
His ire is hot and his invectives unbounded when he
i
H4 CLUB CAMEOS.
dilates upon that close borough, the Eoyal Academy.
As Listen imagined that tragedy was his forte, so Lister
sneers at his literary fame, and thinks that the brush
and not the pen should have been his calling, and
that he should be handed down to posterity, not as
a Fielding, but as a Eaphael.
So some fifteen years passed away since Hugh
Lister quitted the cloisters of Alma Mater. Beyond
the literary circle in which he lived he was almost
unknown; his friends recognised his talents, and won-
dered why he had allowed his intellectual inferiors to
distance him in the race of life. Great things had been
anticipated from him by all in his set, still he had not
realised the expectations formed of him. Men not
worthy to clean his inkstand were drawing their hun-
dreds from the publishers and were household names
at the libraries, whilst he was still grinding away at
journalism and hack-work. At last the hour came, and
the man was found ready.
Whilst fishing in Scotland, Hugh Lister was laid
on his back with rheumatism. Immured in a little
Highland village, unable to stir out, free from the ex-
citement of society and the interruption of friends, as
he slowly recovered he bethought himself of a story,
and began for the second time to write a novel. His
experience of life had matured ; he had always been a
LETTERS. 1x5
keen observer of character ; his sense of toleration had
deepened ; his powers of sarcasm, humour, pathos, had
widened in their range and increased in intensity. He
took Balzac and Fielding as his models; he wrote
leisurely and thought much ; two years he spent over
his work, and then gave it to the public. The time
had not been wasted. The book was one exactly suited
to the cynical, genial, religious, infidel, ostentatious,
retiring spirit of the age, and its success was unbounded.
It dissected character, especially female character; it
laid bare the selfishness of human nature ; it lashed the
vices of society and held up the mirror' to the world, so
that it saw itself, not flattered or distorted, but faithfully
reflected. We love to be told of our faults and virtues,
especially when we attribute all the virtues to ourselves
and burden our neighbour with the faults.
The future of Hugh Lister was assured. He was
the Balzac of the day, and anything from his pen found
a ready market. Since his first venture he has written
numerous works, some good, some bad, some indifferent,
but all commanding a large sale and handsomely swell-
ing their author's banking account. A great man is
Jimmy now. He dines with dukes and bishops ; he
lectures in America ; he is a member of several learned
societies ; he takes the chair at literary meetings ; he
is a member of far more distinguished clubs than the
n6 CLUB CAMEOS.
Caravanserai; he has declined a seat in Parliament;
he 'is said to be worth a small fortune. "When I read
Jimmy's books and wince under his satire and caustic
cynicism, and then see him at the club, his fat sides
shaking with laughter, his hand ever ready to help
a friend, always generous, kind, and good, it strikes
me what a difference there often is between what a
man writes and what a man is. I wonder whether l goody'
authors in their private lives are acid, spiteful, and
stingy ? Satirists are often the pleasantest of fellows ;
but may it be forgiven if I say that moralists and the
''gushing' fraternity have occasionally been found far from
agreeable society ? "We all of us have a certain amount
of spleen to get rid of: the literary cynic vents it on
paper, the literary gusher on his friends. Which do
you prefer ?
Whilst at the zenith of his prosperity Hugh Lister
resolved to carry out an idea that he had long medi-
tated. As most actors are ambitious of developing into
managers, so many men who have been engaged in
journalism are desirous of being at the head of a news-
paper. Lister thought he saw his way to start a new
organ, and being well supported by a few sanguine peers
of the Moderado party, and by three or four wealthy
City men, began to put his scheme into execution. The
journal was to be conducted on certain novel principles..
LETTERS. 117
It was to be written by gentlemen for gentlemen ; pri-
vate secretaries were to communicate what official infor-
mation they could impart ; men thoroughly in society
were to give the tittle-tattle of the day gossip which
could be relied upon and not contradicted in the next
number; the leaders were to be written by the best
brains that money could buy; foreign correspondents
were to receive the salaries of ambassadors, and furnish
the latest intelligence from the capitals to which they
were accredited; the dramatic, literary, and artistic
criticisms were to be in the hands of men who had been
encouraged by success, and not soured by failure, and
who were to have no crotchets or personal animosities;
the City article was to be intrusted to a firm of such
wealth and position as to render it like Caesar's wife,
above suspicion; the ladies were to be propitiated by
articles on the fashions direct from the workrooms of
the great Paris men-milliners themselves; whilst hospi-
tality was to be encouraged by the proprietors of the
journal giving every fortnight magnificent 'breakfasts'
at their offices to the illustrious and the fashionable of
the London world.
Doling the winter months the proposed newspaper
was fully talked about in society and at the clubs, and
well ventilated by the press. Early in the season
the first number of the Piccadilly Courier made its
nS CLUB CAMEOS.
appearance. Its success was never one moment in
doubt. It was so well printed, and on such charm-
ingly-toned paper, that the blind could almost read
it. It was so well informed on all the subjects of
which it treated, that to doubt its accuracy was like
doubting infallibility. On all sides it had friends;
never did a journal steer so cleverly between extremes
without running aground or shattering its circulation
by bad editorial navigation. The aristocracy liked it
because it was properly deferential to privilege and
prerogative, and held a right view (that meant an
aristocratic view) upon the land question, game-laws,
and all vested interests. The middle classes liked it
because it took a just view (that meant a mercantile
view) upon all commercial subjects, and advocated
freedom in trade, general progress, and the most com-
plete toleration. Pious people liked it because it was
Catholic without Popery, and Protestant without Dis-
sent. Worldlings liked it because it was witty, cynical,
and epigrammatic in its observations upon men and
manners. Society generally liked it because it told it
exactly what it wanted to know without being cruelly
malicious or impertinently inquisitive. The * breakfasts'
were a most successful institution, and ladies fought
over the possession of cards as they fight over anything
which is new and the rage. In short, the Piccadilly
LETTERS.
119
Courier at one bound placed itself at the head of jour-
nalism, had its claims allowed, and has since declined to
be ousted from its proud position.
And now it was that Hugh Lister became a great
personage in London society, and was christened Jimmy.
It was said that he knew everything, could ' make' any-
body, and was in the most intimate confidence of the
Cabinet and the Eoyal family. He was a lion in club
smoking-rooms. He went to all the great parties in the
season, and to all the great country houses in the
autumn. He had his portrait painted not after Eem-
brandt and hung in the Academy. When he walks
out or rides in the Eow people nudge each other and
say, ' See that fellow ? that's Lister, the great novelist
and editor of the Piccadilly /' He is one of the sights of
London, like the Monument or the Tower. Yet wealth
and fame and flattery sit very well on him. Success is
like wiue some men it exhilarates, some men it makes
sulky, some it does not affect. Jimmy is of the last
order. Prosperous, celebrated, feted, he is the same
joyous, genial, epicurean being that he was when he
was working his steps up the ladder of fame.
Eest on your well-won laurels, Jimmy, most stanch
of friends and cheeriest of companions ! Long may
your brain teem with its present fertility, and never
may you Swift-like ' wither from the top' ! Long may
I2O
CLUB CAMEOS.
the charms of music delight you, the little dishes you
love alas, too well ! nourish you, the drama amuse
you, tobacco solace you, and the life you so thoroughly
enjoy be preserved in all its vigorous completeness !
It will be a sad day for those you leave behind when
your burly form is missed, those chatty lips silenced,
and that joyous, hearty, unmusical laughter heard no
more. Ay, and it will be a sadder day to the struggling
author you have so generously befriended, to the un-
LETTERS. 12 1
known actress whom your praise has encouraged to
further efforts, to the wearied reporter, the worn-out
press-man, and to the whole community of the sick and
afflicted, when you have been summoned hence, and
have joined the majority. But why talk of the urn
and the cypress ? Non omnis moriar. In the hearts of
your friends you will always live, and when they cease
to beat Literature will enshrine you amongst her favour-
ites, and jealously guard your name for posterity.
THE CLUB.
THE CLUB.
DURING the last generation a great domestic revolution
has been gradually taking place, which promises to
effect no unimportant changes in the constitution of
English social life in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. As a people, we have been so long accustomed
to pique ourselves upon the strength of our domestic
affections, upon our more solid characteristics, and upon
our devotion to the attractions of our own fireside, that
in spite of circumstances somewhat calculated to dis-
pel this national belief, we still wrap ourselves in our
superior virtue, and congratulate ourselves that we are
not as our neighbour. We still vaunt the sanctity of
an English home, and with a sneer at the freedom of
continental habits, pronounce the word to be untranslat-
able. We still view with pity the benighted ' foreigner,'
who, ignorant of the fascinations of a pure, a bright,
and a cultivated home-life, prefers in their stead the
gossip of his cafe or the whist of his cercle, and think if
he but crossed the Channel and studied our manners
and customs how valuable might be the lessons he
126 CLUB CAMEOS.
would receive. Here, in our respectable country he
would see the home, that word for which his language
has no equivalent, taking the place of external dissipa-
tion, and the household gods so warmly worshipped,
that it would be deemed iconoclasm of the most ruth-
less character to depose them from the pinnacles on
which they are set. Ah, happy England ! where your
houses are so well built that your citizens are never
tempted to quit them; where thoughtful servants
attend to your every order, and give a dignity to the
office of service ; where your young women are so pru-
dently reared that the most perfect house-discipline
inevitably follows in the wake of marriage ; where your
young men, unselfish and industrious, are content to
begin as their fathers before them began, and to wait
till success has attended their labours before exchanging
a severe economy for a graceful extravagance, and where
all is nobleness of purpose, improvement of mind, and
modesty of conduct. Ah, thrice happy country ! What
need for a Utopia so long as she exists !
I am afraid, however, that there is something un-
sound in this peean of self-praise. It requires only the
slightest amount of national introspection to find that we
are not so different from our neighbour. Boast as we
may of our superior tone of morality, the difference is but
slight between London and Paris, London and Vienna,
THE CLUB.
127
or London and St. Petersburg. "With us secrecy and
modern honour are now synonymous terms * Do what
you like, but be not found out,' is our maxim and we con-
ceal much which our neighbours expose. Thus we are
more discreet ; but discretion is not morality. "We may
vaunt our love of home-life as we please, but there are
very strong indications that such love is fast loosening
its hold upon us. Great wealth, a long peace, the
popular position occupied by trade, the rapid removal of
the social barriers that used formerly to exist, have all
succeeded in bringing us to the not very enviable con-
dition described by Wordsworth :
' Our life is only dressed
For show : mean handiwork of craftsman, cook,
Or groom ! "We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest :
The wealthiest man among us is the best :
!Nb grandeur now, in nature or in book,
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry ; and these we adore :
Plain living and high thinking are no more.'
But of all the circumstances that are tending to
cause English life to enter upon a new phase of exist-
ence, none is more powerful or more insidious than the
establishment of the modern club. Fifty years ago it
was the exception for a man to belong to a club. The
fact of club-membership then implied some social posi-
tion or distinction on the part of the individual. White's,
I 2 8 CLUB CAMEOS,
Brooks's, Boodles's, and a few other establishments,
constituted the palaces in Clubland, and to obtain the
entree was a matter of no little difficulty. A man of hum-
ble birth, or one unknown to the committee, would have
been sure of being blackballed. Clubs were then filled
by those who belonged either to the same political
party or the same fashionable coterie, the members of
which were all known more or less to each other. The
Tory patrician entered himself at "White's ; the Whig
politician of good blood was a member of Brooks's ; the
country gentleman put his name down at Boodles's ; the
distinguished lawyer, divine, or man of letters, became
a member of the Athenaeum; the soldier who was a
field officer crossed over to the United Service ; whilst
the roue, the rake, and the dandy punted at Crockford's.
Save as a house of reunion, in which to write letters
and to play high, a club in the past was of little service
to its members. A club was then an exclusive circle,
not a restaurant. Men visited it, they did not live in it.
But now, owing to the development of the wealth of
the country, the spread of education, and the easier
condition of the community generally, a great change
has taken place in the kingdom of Clubland. When
the advantages of that cooperative system, based upon
debentures and supported by entrance fees and annual
subscriptions, which we call club-life, became to be
THE CLUB.
129
more fully appreciated, it was found that the demand
exceeded the supply. In all the old-fashioned clubs the
books were so crowded with names, that almost half a
generation had to elapse before a candidate stood his
chance of election. The only solution of the difficulty
was to found new clubs. One by one, as years rolled
on, the little shops in Pall Mall and St. James's-street
were demolished, and on their ruins rose stately edifices
such as Venice in her palmiest days would not have
been ashamed of owning. New political clubs, new
professional clubs, new social clubs, sprang into existence,
till what was a luxury in the reign of George IV. is
now a comparative necessity.
Except at one or two establishments, which have
always been reserved for those of recognised position, no
man, provided he does not commit the unpardonable sin of
keeping a shop (but as many warehouses as you please),
and there be nothing known against his character, need
despair of being a recipient of club favours. If he be
blackballed at one institution, there is little to pre-
vent him from putting his name up at another. His
father before him had but a limited choice; whereas
he, the son, can try his chance at several. Is he a Tory,
but his blood not blue enough for White's the father
of the club system he can still seek admission into the
Carlton, the Junior Carlton, the Conservative, or St.
K
1 3 o CLUB CAMEOS.
Stephen's. Is he a middle-class Whig, and fearful of
being ' pilled' at Brooks's, what is to prevent him en-
tering his name at the Reform or the Devonshire ? Does
he belong to one of her Majesty's services, his choice is
embarrassing, for the list of naval and military clubs
has recently been largely swelled. Still, what with the
two United Service Clubs, the Army and Navy more
popularly known as the l Rag' the Naval and Military,
and the East Indian United Service Club, * an officer and
a gentleman' ought to have little difficulty in getting
quarters at one or other of these establishments. The
officers in the Household Troops, however, make a coterie
of their own at the Guards' Club. Tor the University
man who hails from classical Oxford or mathematical
Cambridge (Dublin, Durham, and the like need not
apply), there is the choice between the University Club,
the Oxford and Cambridge, or the New University Club.
For the distinguished divine or lawyer, savant or man of
letters, there is the Athenaeum, whilst for the actor,
the literary man, and the man about town, the Garrick
opens its hospitable doors. To him who does not wish
to bind himself to any political party, but seeks a cercle
of a purely social character, there are the Travellers',
Boodles' s, Arthur's, St. James's, the "Windham, the
Union, and for Anglo -Indians the Oriental, of curry
celebrity. The Marlborough is for the friends of the
THE CLUB. 131
Prince of Wales. The Park, the Badminton, and the
Turf are the favourite haunts of the man of pleasure.
The Portland is sacred to whist. In addition to this
tolerably full list, there are a number of other clubs
less well known, where the subscriptions are lower, and
where the rights of membership can be claimed without
any delay. At the accession of George IV. there were
but some half-dozen clubs ; there are now close upon a
hundred.
It is impossible that this increase in the club-system
should have attained to its present height without affect-
ing the current of English life, and altering the course
of its stream. A brief comparison between the past and
the present will show the nature of the change that has
taken place. In former days, when Pall Mall and St.
James's-street were crowded with the shops of tailors
and of bootmakers, instead of the magnificent palaces
that now occupy their site, men led a very different life
from that now in vogue. A buck, a macaroni, a Corin-
thian the ' swell' of the past lounged into his club to
write a letter or to take a hand at whist, and considered
such an institution as an indispensable adjunct to the
character of a man of fashion as necessary as a know-
ledge of French, or to be a connoisseur of china or of
old fiddles. But to the ordinary man, born in the ranks
of the middle class, who had to look to a profession for
132 CLUB CAMEOS.
his livelihood, a club was out of the question. The
young man reading for the bar, the younger son in a
government office, or the merchant's son in his father's
counting-house, had to content himself with tastes and
habits in accordance with his income. He lived in
modest lodgings or in chambers on the third floor of one
of the Inns of Court. He dined off the joint at a tavern
in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, and it was with
him a red-letter day when he ordered a pint of wine.
When he went to the play he patronised the pit, and
even on such occasions took advantage of the system of
half-price. He seldom entered society, partly because
it was expensive, and partly because he was not fre-
quently invited. When he lounged down Bond-street
or walked in the Park, he considered himself a dandy of
the first water, and the anxiety he evinced as to his
dress, and the extreme hauteur of his swagger, plainly
proved that his promenade was an event not to be lightly
considered, nor one of frequent occurrence. If he was
a sensible fellow he worked hard at his profession, and
looked forward to the day when he could complete his
modest career by matrimony. Solitary lodgings, tavern
dinners, an absence of comfort, there was little in his life
to make celibacy desirable, and marriage was the haven
for which he steered his bark. Thus, as soon as his in-
come justified him in taking that important step, he
THE CLUB. 133
married. If the parish registers of the earlier half of
the nineteenth century be examined, it will be found
that more than two-thirds of the marriages that then
took place were entered into before the bridegroom had
reached thirty. This is a fact which should not be lost
sight of by the social historian.
But if we turn from the past to the present how dif-
ferent is the picture ! The continued prosperity of the
country in spite of the increase in the cost of living has
CLUB CAMEOS.
greatly benefited every class in the community. The
lower orders receive higher wages and are better off than
their fathers, whilst the incomes of professional people
have more than doubled themselves. The introduction
of a plutocracy among the aristocracy and the acre-
ocracy, though it has tended somewhat to vulgarise our
social institutions, has succeeded in developing a rate of
expenditure which formerly did not exist. Money
easily made is lavishly spent. Never was there a time
in our history when heavier rents were demanded by
the house-agents, higher prices by the horse-dealers,
more exorbitant sums by carriage-builders, milliners,
breeders of stock, jewellers, tailors, by everybody in
short who ministers to the wants and luxuries of man.
Since wealth enjoys now the power and advantages for-
merly possessed by high rank and high intellect, display
has assumed the position of a social force. We give
better dinners, ride better horses, live in better houses,
drive about in better carriages, yet all not so much for
the sake of the enjoyment of excellence, as for the ex-
hibition of the pride of rivalry.
The consequence of this plethora of wealth has been
to create throughout the community fictitious and artifi-
cial tastes. The customs and fashions of our fathers have
been deemed capable of improvement. Quarters that
had once been fashionable have been gradually deserted.
THE CLUB. 135
The glory of Bloomsbury and Baker-street has departed,
and Belgravia, where, amid its swamps at the beginning
of the century, men shot snipe, and Sonth Kensington,
once noted for its market-gardens, are now the districts
favoured by the great world, and by those who wish to
be thought within- its circle. The old taverns of the
Strand and Fleet-street, and the neighbouring regions,
have given place to joint-stock hotels, where everything,
including the wines, is brand new. The dinner-hour
has become later and later, till to ' dine in hall ' is like
dining in the middle of the day. The young lawyers
and students having found no advantage in living near
their Inns, but, on the contrary, that they are far re-
moved from the scenes of social dissipation, migrate to
the west, quitting Lincoln's Inn, the Temple, and
Gray's Inn, for the dingy back streets in the vicinity of
St. James's. The long peace had caused the army to be
dull, so that men as soon as they obtained their companies
retired as a rule from the service. Thus it was, what
with a large population of idlers, and an increasing
luxury all around, that the advantages of the club-
system began to be seriously considered. Men wished
to have comfort without extravagance, and attendance
without responsibility. It was known that the clubs
that had come into existence at the accession of George
IV. were in the most flourishing condition, and that
136 CLUB CAMEOS.
their members had all the advantages of an exqui-
sitely appointed house without the expense and trouble
of proprietorship. One by one, as it became more and
more difficult to be admitted into the older establish-
ments, new clubs sprang up, and have continued spring-
ing up, till now Clubland, from an exclusive and limited
territory, has developed into an extensive and densely
populated domain, offering hospitality to all who have
the slightest claim to that somewhat elastic title of
1 gentleman.'
With the establishment of the club-system a great
revolution has taken place in the domestic life of men,
and especially of young men. Married men, accustomed
to the refined and luxurious mode of existence in a
club, endeavour, so far as their means will permit,
to reproduce its elegance and perfections within their
own homes. They send their cooks to have a fortnight's
training under the eye of the superb club chef; in their
appointments of the table they imitate the club ; their
wine -merchant is often one of the fraternity who sup-
plies the club ; and to say l they could not dine better at
the club' is to confer the highest praise upon one's
domestic arrangements. It was in the year 1850 that
the club-system became popular, and that the club, from
being a lounge, developed into a home. Let an elderly
man hark back in his memory, and compare the dinners
THE CLUB. 137
to which he was invited before the Crimean War, and
those to which he is now asked, and he will find that
the superiority of the one over the other is due not
a little to the host having been educated by his club.
But it is in the life of the bachelor that the intro-
duction of clubs has caused the greatest change. The
solitary lodgings and the tavern dinners have been
relegated to the limbo of the past. All that is now
needed is a bedroom, for the club provides the bachelor
with the rest of his wants. It matters little in what
dingy street or squalid quarter a man lodges, for the
club is the address, and society inquires no further.
He need not purchase an envelope or a sheet of note-
paper throughout the year, for the club provides him
with all the stationery he can possibly require. There
is no occasion for him to buy a book, a magazine, or
a newspaper, for in his club he will find a library such
as few private houses can furnish, and in the morning-
room every newspaper and weekly review that has
a respectable circulation. Does he wish to practise
economy without privation, where can he dine better
and cheaper than at his club? If, on the other hand,
his tastes are those of a gourmet, and his income permits
him, where can he better satisfy the cravings of a
cultivated epicureanism ? Both to the social Dives and
the social Lazarus the club is a boon. The poor man
'38
CLUB CAMEOS.
enjoys life without the discomforts that ordinarily attend
upon poverty, whilst the rich man receives to the full
the value of his money.
To that large class which is neither rich nor poor,
the club is a most cherished haunt. A young man on
some four or five hundred a year enjoys advantages
at his club which only the wealthiest outside can
command. For an annual subscription, after having
paid his entrance fee, of some eight or ten guineas a
THE CLUB. 139
year, he finds himself part owner of a most splendid
town house, where the tax-collector never intrudes,
where repairs and dilapidations never concern him,
where attentive servants wait upon his every order,
where everything provided is of the very best, for it is
worth the contractor's while to give satisfaction, where
retirement can be obtained without the depressing sense
of solitude, and where companionship can be enjoyed
without the dangers of intrusion in short, a home
always well appointed, always bright, and ready to cater
for the simplest necessities or the most elaborate
luxuries.
One of the most prominent consequences of all this
perfection of organisation has been to render celibacy
so desirable, that matrimony, instead of being the natu-
ral ambition of man, is now regarded by many in the
light of a sacrifice. To marry, unless on an income
which is the exception, signifies the exchange of club-
life, with its pleasant gossip, its agreeable luxuries, and
all its disciplined requirements, for the monotony of the
domestic hearth, the worries of housekeeping, and the
servitude of family restraint. Under the old order of
things, when clubs were the exception, matrimony was
regarded as the panacea for all the ills that bachelordom
was heir to, and a man married in order to have the
companionship of a home. Whereas now, in that one
140 CLUB CAMEOS.
word dub, men find a safer substitute for the uncertain
advantages of matrimony. ' "Why should I marry ?' asks
the celibate. l What are the advantages that marriage
will bring to counterbalance its disadvantages? At
present with my income I am well off, the club supplies
me with all my wants, and my movements are unfet-
tered. If I marry, I descend at once to be a poor man,
with all the mortifications and privations of poverty.
The charms of marriage are all very well, but what if
they be followed by anxiety, by boredom, by disappoint-
ment ? Such has been the fate of many ; why should it
not be mine ? Even in a happy marriage there must be
a vast amount of monotony.' That this selfish and one-
sided reasoning is daily gaining ground amongst us is
evident from the decrease of marriages, and the increase
of the club-system, not only in London, but in provincial
towns.
I know no better illustration of these views than my
friend Tommy Montague. An ex-cavalry officer, who
was compelled to send in his papers from certain finan-
cial circumstances over which he had no control, the
future of Tommy was not particularly bright. An
allowance of 150. a year granted him by a surly elder
brother, and the proceeds of his commission, could hardly
be considered a state of affluence for a man who had
never made himself acquainted with the value of money.
THE CLUB. 141
and to whom self-denial was an unknown virtue. As
fortune would have it, one evening, at a certain set of
chambers in the mansion of the Albany, Tommy had
such a run of luck whilst playing ecarte with a young
peer who had just come into his possessions that my lord
preferred, instead of mortgaging some of his acres to ob-
tain the necessary ready money, to allow Montague for
the rest of his natural life the annual sum of five hun-
dred pounds, to be paid quarterly by his lordship's solici-
tors. Tommy had no objection to the arrangement ; and
from that very hour up to the present time he has never
touched a card ; he is one of the very few who have made
gambling pay, and he is quite content.
On this annuity, coupled with his brother's allow-
ance, and the interest on the money he received for
his commission, Tommy leads the quiet luxurious life
of the club-man who spends his all upon himself.
Tommy's maxim is that money spent upon oneself is
never wasted. A garret in Bury-street is the only
pied-a-terre he owns, for the club to him signifies
lodgings, restaurant, country house, library, divan,
in fact, home and all. He hates sport, travelling,
and society, and prefers the club in August and Sep-
tember to anywhere else without the club. To see him
really wretched you must watch him when his beloved
haunt is shut up for repairs, and he has either to go out
142 CLUB CAMEOS.
of town or to betake himself to a strange club which, has
offered him hospitality. On such occasions he is
thoroughly miserable, for it is not club-life that Tommy
merely loves, but the life of his own club. He likes to
breakfast at the same table, to read the newspaper in the
same chair at the same window, to write his letters at
the same table, to study the bill of fare at the same
accustomed stand, and to have his dinner served by the
same waiter at the same corner of the coffee-room. He
is the strictest and most monotonous of Conservatives.
Never was there a man whom it is more easy to find.
You know the hour to a moment when he breakfasts,
when he takes his ' constitutional,' when he smokes his
first cigar, when he lunches, dines, writes his letters,
reads, and goes through the programme of his thoroughly
selfish but not uncomfortable life. He seldom enters
society, and, with the exception of running down to
Brighton or Folkestone for a fortnight, never visits
the country. The club is his home, and save to take
Ms daily stroll or to go to the theatre, of which he is
very fond, he hardly stirs from its walls.
He is the great critic of the establishment, and we all
feel that our comfort is safe in his hands. If the slightest
thing goes w r rong in the club the ventilation imperfect,
sanitary arrangements out of order, waiters inattentive,
books missing, newspapers forgotten to be taken in, and
THE CLUB. 143
the like dip goes Tommy's pen in the ink, and the
secretary is at once informed of the fact. At the annual
meeting Tommy is a perfect Joseph Hume. He is irri-
tatingly inquisitive as to every detail of club expendi-
ture, and declines to be content with the brief statement
in the circular issued by the committee. He wants to
know why there should be a loss on the coffee-room,
why so much should be spent upon snuff, toothpicks,
and stationery, why the bills for repairs should be so
144 CLUB CAMEOS.
enormous, why the salary of the secretary should be
raised, why so little is added to the sinking fund, and
all the rest of it. Nor will he be put off with a smile
from the chairman, or with a little bit of flattery from
some of the committee. He wants to know the reason
why ; and when Tommy ' wants to know the reason why,'
the information he seeks must be lucid and complete
before he is satisfied.
He is the terror of the club-servants, and backs
his bill remorselessly if the joint which is down for
eight o'clock appears half an hour late, or the wine-
butler makes a mistake about the vintage that is
ordered, or the waiter at his table is not perfect in his
duties. Tommy knows to a day when everything is in
season, and woe betide the steward if at the earliest
moment there are no plovers' eggs, no asparagus, no
green peas, or no new potatoes ! He is acquainted with
the price of every article, and instantly checks any at-
tempt on the part of the club to overcharge its members.
He is the great authority on club discipline and club
etiquette ; but everything outside the club he views
with supreme indifference. Talk to him of some awful
disaster, of some terrible commercial failure (provided
he be not affected by it), of some great national loss,
of the death of some great man, and his interest will
hardly be excited ; but tell him that the excellent club
THE CLUB. 145
-cook has given notice, that a certain bin of rare wines
lias been drunk up and cannot be replaced, that the
hall-porter has broken his leg, that there has been a
' row' between certain members on the committee, or that
Brown has not paid his debts of honour, yet still persists
in sitting down to whist, or that the member who steals
the umbrellas has been caught in the act, or that Jones
has been declared a bankrupt, and what will be the
action of the committee, and you at once find him a
ready and suggestive listener. The club, the whole
club, and nothing but the club, is the one creed of Cap-
tain Montague.
A hard selfish man, a I age de la gourmandise, the
Caravanserai provides Tommy with all that he requires.
He declines to dine out, because he says he gets a better
dinner at the club for some ten or twelve shillings than
at the best houses in town ; and why, he inquires, should
he bore himself with dull society when he can have the
chat and ease of the smoking-room ? If he wants to be
amused he goes to the theatre ; if he wants to be instructed
he goes to the library : what has he to do with society, he
asks with a sneer ; he has no money, and he has not a
pretty wife. He is perfectly content with the future
before him, and as he makes his bed so has he no objec-
tion to lie upon it. In spite of shaving off his whiskers,
cutting short his moustache, and freely using a wonderful
L
146
CLUB CAMEOS.
hair-dye, Tommy is not the young man strangers would
at first sight take him for. Quiet, comfort, good living,
freedom from responsibility and anxiety, are the great
desiderata of his life, ' and, begad, you don't get that by
marriage !' he remarks. Talk to him of the solicitude of a
tender wife, of the charms of home, of the soothing power
of affection during the feverish hours of a long sickness,
and he answers, 1 0, of course ! but I get all that from a
nurses' institootion ; two guineas a week and beer-money.'
THE CLUB. r 47
To convert Tommy is hopeless. He will never be
made to see that he leads a purposeless selfish exist-
ence, occupied with petty details, making a business
of trivialities, and ignoring all that is great and noble
in life. He will dine and chat and moon the days away
till the sands of the hour-glass are all run out, and the
hearse stands before his lodgings to convey him to that
great club which is open to us all, and from which no
black balls exclude the cemetery. Then the blind of
his room will be pulled up, somebody else will sleep
in his little bed, there will be a few allusions during the
next fortnight in the club he loved so well to 'poor
Tommy,' and then well, then he will be as completely
forgotten as if he had never been. Yet Captain Mon-
tague is under the impression that were he to quit the
club it would at once fall to the ground. Such is the
difference between the estimate we form of ourselves
and that formed of us by other people.
M. F. H.
M. F. H.
WHATEVER faults the present day may possess, from the
one great vice which is generally attendant upon a
luxurious state of civilisation it is happily free. We
may be all that the cynics and satirists allege, but from
one grave accusation we are at least exempt the courage
of Englishmen is as high and daring as it ever was. No
poet of the future, as he tunes his lyre to sing of the
men and manners of the nineteenth century, can give
vent to the bitter sneer of Horace, as he wailed over
the degeneracy of the Roman youth :
his juventus orta parentibus
Infecit sequor sanguine Punico,
Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit
Antiochum Annibalemque dirum.'
In all feats of pluck and prowess the young Englishman
heads the list of the adventurous. On the Continent
his eagerness for unconventional excitement, and his
contempt for danger, have caused him to be branded
with the stigma of insanity. Nothing is too extra-
ordinary, nothing is too arduous, nothing is too peril-
ous, for the 'mad Englishman' to undertake. He
152
CLUB CAMEOS.
ascends mountains that even the local brave flinch at
scaling; he will scull his outrigger, or paddle his
canoe, in the most unknown and dangerous of waters;
he will cross the most boisterous seas in the pettiest of
yawls ; he will betake himself to the wildest regions to
satisfy his cravings after sport. The fact that a certain
event has never before been accomplished is alone suffi-
cient to tempt him to undertake it, and to give him 110
rest till it has been brought to a satisfactory termina-
tion. In all these feats of daring he seldom has any
great object to serve which justifies the peril that is to
be encountered. The excitement of danger, and the
desire to find a vent for his wealthy supply of nervous
energy, are in themselves often the only inducements
which lead him to enter upon his self-imposed tasks.
I remember once talking to a young Englishman in
Switzerland, who had just come down from making the
ascent of one of the severest and most seldom climbed
of Alpine peaks. 'What a splendid view you must
have had from the top!' said I. * They say there is,'
he replied quietly ; ' but I never looked at it. I don't
care for views.' The exercise, the fun, and the peril
were all that interested this athletic young Philistine.
But there is one sport which of all others is essen-
tially English, which is first favourite amongst us, and
which want of money is the only reason that prevents it
M. F. H. 153
from being freely indulged in by all classes. There
breathes not an Englishman who does not, provided his
banker's book sanctions the expenditure, take to hunting
as instinctively as the duckling takes to water. The
horse is the special object of our national veneration.
Your ordinary Englishman is not much hurt if his
grammar or spelling be found fault with, but he is
wounded to the core if his riding is condemned. He
does not pretend to be a connoisseur in the fine arts, he
admits that his taste in wine may want educating ; but
will he ever forgive you if you tell him that he is no
judge of the noble animal ? He will, as a rule, bear
kindly much hostile criticism, but he is the touchiest of
mortals where his stud and his seat are concerned.
This sensitiveness is perhaps the strongest proof we have
of our innate passion for the chase. Since hunting is
our great pastime, and the breed of our horses the finest
in the world, it becomes almost a reflection for an Eng-
lishman not to be able to sit his fences or to express
ignorance upon the points of a horse. However modest
he may be, there are two things an Englishman always
piques himself upon he can ride, and he is a judge of
horseflesh. You may doubt his parentage, his fortune,
his ability, ay, even his honour ; but if you doubt his
possession of these two gifts you have made an enemy
who will never forgive.
i 5 4 CLUB CAMEOS.
In comparing the past with the present, there are
few things which more strike an elderly man than the
new phase hunting has entered upon. That it is a sport
which has always been a favourite with us is evident ;
but it was never so popular or so generally indulged in
as at the present day. Thanks to the increased wealth
of the country, and to our being able to use the railways
as our cover hacks, hunting is brought within reach of
most of us. The well-to-do idle man will always have
his hunting-box, or take up his quarters at a well-known
hostel in the neighbourhood of the meets; nor is there now
any necessity for the man in active employment the bar-
rister, the merchant, the banker, and the like either to
give up his sport or his business ; such an one can com-
bine both : be can work in the City, and yet, by the aid
of the friendly locomotive, have his two days a week. I
know one hard-working lawyer in town who, though
among the most industrious of his fraternity, yet hunts
regularly his two days a week ; he keeps his horses at
Eugby ; the North-Western is his cover hack ; and thus,
without detriment to the interests of his clients, he is
able to enjoy in moderation the sport he so dearly loves.
In former days this was impossible ; men who hunted
were then within easy reach of the hounds they fol-
lowed; now several of the best subscribers to a pack
live at a considerable distance from its neighbourhood.
M. F. H. 155
Thus hunting no longer appeals especially to those
who reside in the country, but comprises both the rural
and urban populations. How many men engaged in our
manufacturing towns hunt regularly through the winter,
who, before the introduction of steam, would have been
compelled by the necessities of their pursuits to abandon
the sport altogether ! This is no doubt one of the chief
reasons why so many more packs of hounds have come
into existence than were known of at the beginning of
this century. And it is a good sign. Hunting is a test
of courage, of endurance, of activity, of health, and of all
those qualities which call forth presence of mind and
quickness of judgment; and it speaks well for the
manhood of a country where such a sport is, as it is
amongst us, so enthusiastically encouraged. Of course
in every field there is the ' coffee-housing' sportsman
his hat, his natty tie, his well-cut coat, his spotless
leathers, all that the hatter, the haberdasher, the
tailor, the breeches-maker, and the boot-maker can
show of superior workmanship ; who has a perfect
knowledge of the local geography ; who declines to jump
the slightest obstacle, but who is acquainted with every
gate, gap, and bridle-path which will eventually bring
him up with the hounds; and who after dinner, when
the decanters are making their pleasant rounds, will
gallantly talk of the brooks that he cleared, the posts
CLUB CAMEOS.
and rails that lie leaped, and the doubles that he so
cleverly took. In pleasure as well as in business
there are impostors ; but as a rule the fault of our
young men is, not that they funk, but that they ride
too hard.
There is one member of the Caravanserai whom it is
always a great pleasure for me to see within its walls.
Among the c hard riders of England,' Ashby Folville, the
popular master of the Slottesloe foxhounds one of the
M.F.H. 157
loveliest, best-looking, and fastest packs in the country
holds a prominent place. Bad at his books, he is one
of those men who excel in every kind of manly sport.
Though now past forty, there are few young men who do
not own themselves vanquished by him, where gun or
rifle, rod or spear, tennis-ball or cricket-ball, is concerned.
Sport is the only atmosphere he breathes or cares to
breathe. I know no one to whom an accident which
would render him a cripple for life would be more intol-
erable. Eob him of his enjoyment of physical exercise,
and you deprive him of all that makes existence delight-
ful. When Folville is not hunting or shooting, he is
salmon -fishing, sculling, cricketing, mountaineering, or
in some other form getting rid of the superfluous energy
with which he is so abundantly blessed. But good man
as he is all round, it is to the king of sports that he
swears the most ardent attachment. What the meeting
of Parliament is to the ambitious legislator, what the
first day of term is to the lawyer, what the beginning
of the season is to the beauty, is the first Monday in
November to the jovial squire of Highthorpe Abbey.
And small blame to him, as the Irishman says. In
the whole round of pleasure is there any excitement
more intoxicating, is there any exercise more health-
giving both for man and woman, is there any better
training for the acquisition of courage, than hunting?
CLUB CAMEOS.
It is the only innocent pleasure which never palls
upon us. The early rising and the anticipation
of the day's sport give us an appetite such as all the
tumblers of medicinal waters can never excite. As
we ride to covert, Nature, clad in the russet hue of
early winter decay like a woman, Nature never
tries to please so much as when her beauty is on
the wane offers us vistas of sylvan scenery, views of
down and dell bathed in the morning dews, and studies
M. F. H. 159
of clouds which stimulate all that is of the artist and of
the poet within us. Conversation is never so easy and
so brisk as when we meet at the cover-side, smoking
our last cigar before the business of the day begins, and
criticising the mounts of our friends and the fair faces
of the women who enliven the scene by their presence.
Then the pause of expectation, and the encouraging pull
from our flask, whilst the hounds are drawing the cover;
the deep long-drawn-out note proclaiming a find, the
chorus of the pack, and away we follow ; our first fence
taken, confidence is restored, and we are ready to hold
our own with the wickedest. In the excitement of
the run, the light south-west breeze stirring the air
around us, the scent breast high, the pack running really
fast, our mount full of heart and go, at such a supreme
moment we know nothing of physical ills, we ignore all
the anxieties that have been oppressing us ; disease, debt,
care, misery, are thrown off with the hounds ; and for
one day, at least, the wicked cease to trouble us, and the
weary are at rest.
The sport never loses its interest. "When gout or
rheumatism compels us to exchange the saddle for the
phaeton, like the ruined gamester, whose greatest
delight it is to hover round the fatal board of green
cloth, to watch the fall of the cards, and to speculate as
to what colour or number he would back, though he is
160 CLUB CAMEOS.
powerless to stake a farthing, so we who are invalided are
always ready to drive the ladies to the meet, to pass our
comments upon the hounds and the horses, to have a
friendly chat with the redcoats ere they start, and to see as
much of the sport as the line the fox takes and a know-
ledge of the neighbouring roads will permit. It is true
there is another side to the picture. A lame horse, miles
away from anywhere, our flask empty, our sandwich-case
lost, our coat and leathers wet through, a sharp penetrating
rain, night and a sore throat coming on, and a terrible
march to the nearest station from which we can box
home. Or the crashing fall, the gate taken off its hinges,
which serves as the impromptu stretcher, the darkened
room, the weekly six guineas from the ' Accidental' till
we recover, or perhaps we may never require that
pension. In all sports there is a certain amount of
clanger ; but this we maintain, that when we consider
the number of men who ride to hounds, and compare
that number with the accidents which occur during a
season, few will admit that hunting is the dangerous
pastime its enemies allege.
If the noblest study be man, I am sure the noblest
specimen of his race is an English gentleman. He is
courteous, yet manly, which your foreigner so seldom is ;
he is proud, yet not haughty proud with the proper
sense of self-respect ; he has a large stake in the country,
M.F. H. 161
and he is conscious of it ; he comes of a line that has
been gentle for centuries, and he is not ashamed of the
fact. He may be a profound scholar, or he may have
only enough learning to examine the accounts of his
steward, to say a few words without breaking down at
an agricultural dinner, and to take his seat amongst his
brother magistrates without disgracing the bench ; but
where will you find honour more unsullied, hospitality
more generous, and truth more loved for its own sake
than in the order to which he belonged ? England, in
spite of her climate and the diatribes of her critics, is his
ideal of all that a country should be. Whatever be the
creed he professes, or the political principles to which he
adheres, neither his religion nor his party is permitted
to interfere with his patriotism. He is an Englishman
first a disciple or politician afterwards.
Ashby Folville is no bad type of his class. In tastes
and sentiments he is a thorough Englishman. He
thinks there is no country like England, for in no
country, he says, can you spend so much time out of
doors. For beauty and wholesome surroundings he con-
siders his own fair countrywomen as first, and the rest
nowhere. "When he travels he is amused with the
foreigners he comes across, though he never fails to
regard them as an inferior people. In his opinion there
is no man out of England who can ride; or handle a team
M
162 CLUB CAMEOS.
without coming to grief; no man but an Englishman
who has an idea what real sport is ; no gentleman like
an English gentleman, and no pluck like English pluck.
The face and figure of Folville are eminently Eng-
lish. Though he rides well-nigh sixteen stone, his height,
the broad powerful shoulders, and the mighty limbs take
off from the appearance of his bulk, and make him look
a lighter weight than he really is. His face, with its
healthy complexion, gives signs of the outdoor life he so
dearly loves, and were it not for the finely- cut features
it would not escape the stigma of coarseness. I suppose
he has his cares, yet they must sit lightly on him, for
the keenest observer fails to detect worry on that bright
open countenance. To watch him cheering on his
hounds, to hear his jovial laugh, to listen to his simple
honest talk, are all as good as change of air to the
bilious and the acrid. Yet that well-shaped mouth of
his can give tongue to pretty vigorous expressions
should a young farmer head the fox, or ride over a
favourite hound. If a man be heir to a good name, if
his fortune be ample, if his health be sound, and if he
have brains enough to carry him through his ordinary
duties, but not brains enough to make him ambitious
and discontented, life, let the moralist preach as he
may, is to such a one full of enjoyment from find to
finish.
M. F. H. 163
The possessor of one of the finest seats in the
country, happily married, rich, well-born, the squire of
Highthorpe Abbey has little cause to grumble at his
lot. Genial, generous, hospitable, he is the first M.F.H.
who has hunted his country to the satisfaction of its
neighbourhood. Before he took over the Slottesloe
hounds, incessant were the squabbles in the district;
master after master had succeeded to the command of
the pack, yet had always come to loggerheads with the
subscribers ; the farmers wired their fences, and breathed
threatenings and slaughter against all who dared to ride
over their land ; petty spites were at work, and permis-
sion was often refused for neighbouring coverts to be
drawn; the pack deteriorated; there was no lack of
foxes, yet no sport could be got ; and at last the question
of selling the hounds was seriously discussed.
At this juncture Ashby Folville stepped in. He
had just succeeded to the paternal estates, and to a
father who was as fond of chemistry as the son was of
sport. He agreed to take over the hounds. He took a
pleasure in their working and management, and he
would pay keepers, stoppers, damage, everything, him-
self. Need I say so liberal an offer was. gladly ac-
cepted ? Young, wealthy, and known to be a venture-
some rider, the country soon rallied round him. What
was denied to crabbed elderly men was granted to him.
164 CLUB CAMEOS.
^Neighbouring landowners sank their jealousies; the
farmers were won over, and became the most ardent
of the supporters of the hunt ; and gorse covers, where
the woodlands were deficient, were judiciously planted.
At the end of four years the number of hounds reached
sixty couple, boasting some of the best blood from the
finest kennels in the kingdom.
Slowly but steadily the fame of the pack increased.
Hunting-boxes in the neighbourhood were let at double
their former rents. A large joint-stock hotel, with the
most extensive stabling, was erected at Highthorpe.
Men came down from London with their horses to hunt
with the Slottesloe, as they went into the shires to
follow the Pytchley or the Quorn. The name of i the
squire' became as a household word in the sporting
circles of the country. Mounted on his powerful brown
horse, it must indeed be a quick thing which fails to see
Folville close up at the finish. In spite of every obstacle
that falls in his "way to negotiate, he can tell you the
name of every hound that was leading during any part
of the run; he has an eye for country such as few
cavalry officers possess ; his ear, never at fault, tells him
in an instant the course his hounds are taking, and
when sound is useless as a guide, he seems to have an
instinctive knowledge of all the turns and dodges the
fox is up to. It is not therefore surprising that when
M. F. H. 165
its master shows such sport ' the Slottesloe' should be a
great favourite with all who can and dare ride, and that
the right to wear the uniform of the hunt (olive green
"with buff facings) should be much coveted.
Every November finds me invariably a guest at
Highthorpe Abbey. Both the squire and his charming
wife know the art of hospitality to perfection. As a
rule, most country houses are very enjoyable from the
hour of dinner to the end of the evening pleasant
people, well-dressed women, a good table, the produce of
favourite bins, conversation, music, billiards, whist, and
the wind up in the smoking-room, form a combination of
delights which cannot but please even the most difficult.
It is the early part of the day which is often such a trial
at many country houses. Can there be anything more
depressing than that awful meal of breakfast at several
houses ? It is served punctually at half-past nine, and
your host regards it as a slight upon himself if you do
not put in an appearance. You have sat up late, you
are nervous, you are irritable, you have no appetite,
you want to have your cup of tea and bread-and-butter
in bed, and wait till your letters arrive. Yet you
are bound to talk and be agreeable, and take an interest
in the children, and be as lively as if you were at
dinner. There is no meet anywhere in the neighbour-
hood that day, and perhaps the weather does not tempt
i66 CLUB CAMEOS.
you to go out shooting. People have been invited with-
out any regard to each other's tastes and habits. You
think one man looks like an actor and that you will
have some fun, and you find he is a missionary. You
essay to get up a flirtation with a pretty girl, and she
will have none of it, but bores you with questions upon
scientific subjects of which you have never heard. The
few pleasant people in the house are always in their
rooms writing letters. You propose a game of
billiards, but the only man who can play got up at
seven in the morning to ride twenty miles to cover.
You wander into the library, but there are no modern
novels, and you care for no other kind of literature.
The host is engaged his own way ; the hostess is engaged
hers ; girls you would like to know have formed them-
selves into little groups, and you fear to intrude. And
so you end by mooning down to the stable with one
or two friends equally bored with yourself, to smoke.
Some people think when once they have invited you
to stay with them, that they have done all that is
required, and you must amuse yourself as you best
can. To make country-house life agreeable, you ought
to be able to afford either excellent sport, when a man
will accommodate himself to dull society and indifferent
cooking, or if the sport that you can offer be only
moderate, your house should be filled with pleasant
M. F. H.
167
people, and the cunning of your chef a thing to be
fondly anticipated and gratefully remembered even by
a Catius. At Highthorpe Abbey the visitor has little
cause to grumble. The house is always full during the
winter with charming married women, pretty girls,
amusing men, and with one or two celebrities in art and
literature to give a tone to the conversation at dinner
and to assist the ladies in their sketches or in the
solution of acrostics. If you feel lazy after the severities
1 68 CLUB CAMEOS.
of the past week, you tell the comely Hebe who brings
you your morning cup of tea that you are not going
down to breakfast ; and accordingly a fire is lit in your
room, your dejeuner is served up-stairs, and, being in
the bachelors' wing, you can smoke, write your letters,
or read the country papers without intrusion. At
Highthorpe you have all the ease and independence
of an hotel with all the charms of a gay and luxurious
country house.
A strong bond of union exists between the host and
his visitors. Everybody in the house rides, and is
devoted to hunting. The Squire hunts his own hounds
four days a week, and you are within an easy ride to
cover of the Brookby Holt harriers and the Eevesby
and Hawthorne foxhounds. If the visitor at Highthorpe
be a glutton, he can hunt his six days a week, so far as
hounds are concerned. Everything is redolent of the
pleasures of the chase. Walking along the corridors
of the old house, at every turn you come across valets,
either taking to, or bringing from, their masters tops,
leathers, and pink or black coats. The end of your
chamber's bell-rope is ornamented with a fox's brush,
your inkstand is a fox's head, and the handle of your
paper-cutter a fox's pad. Over your mantelpiece, side
by side with the cards that tell you of the arrival and
departure of the London trains and the hour when the
M. F. H.
169
post goes out, is a list of the meets of the Slottesloe and
of the neighbouring packs. When you go down to
breakfast (no formal long table, but little tables scat-
tered about the room, at which you can be as sulky or
as sociable as you please) you see ladies in their habits
the cut and fit plainly suggestive of hard riding
and the men in all their bravery of pink, or in Melton
coats and gorgeous waistcoats. Talk to them of Patti
la Diva or of Thalberg la petite, yet to most of them
1 7 o CLUB CAMEOS.
there is no music like the deep-throated chorus of the
pack, or even of the tramp of the hoofs of the horses as
they are being brought round.
Yet, enthusiastic as all the inmates of Highthorpe
are about hunting if you do not hunt you will be
about as cheerful there as a salmon on a gravel walk
it is the rule of the house that during dinner all hunting
topics are to be strictly tabooed. As you take your tea
in the library with the ladies before going to dress, you
may talk about the run and the fences you took or the
' croppers' you came as much as you please ; you may
resume the subject when you adjourn to the smoking-
room ; but during dinner, and for a couple of hours
afterwards, you are not to pose as the one-idea'd man,
whose powers of conversation are limited entirely ta
the subject of fox-hunting. It is a most excellent rule,
and, when we remember the mendacity and monotony
that so frequently characterise this kind of talk, one
well worthy of adoption. It does not follow that be-
cause a man is fond of hunting he is necessarily inca-
pable of anything better. Some of the most distinguished
men on the bench, in the senate, the camp, the studio,
in literature and in science, have been enrolled in the
ranks of the hard riders of England. Nor, on the other
hand, is it a proof of intellect or humanity for a man
to run down hunting. One of the dullest and savagest
M.F.H. 17 1
of critics that it has ever been my misfortune to meet
is as sentimental as a schoolgirl over i the poor fox ;'
but give him a book to review or a picture to criticise,
and where is his charity, his tenderness, or his hu-
manity ? It has been expended upon the sufferings
of hunted vermin, and is exhausted when he has to
deal with his fellow-creatures. Ah, my bilious friend,
take a few lessons in riding even have a day with
the Old Surrey and your invigorated system will soon
teach you that all who differ from you are neither so
utterly in the wrong nor so hopelessly idiotic as your
jaundiced imagination conceives.
Shortly after his arrival at Highthorpe, one of the
first duties that the visitor if he belong to what is
ironically called the sterner sex has to perform is to
inspect the kennels and the stables. Skirting the well-
timbered park, and pausing occasionally to watch the
red and fallow deer feeding beneath the beech-trees,
clothed in all the golden glories of their autumnal garb,
our destination is soon reached. The kennels and
stables at Highthorpe are a fine range of buildings,
erected at no little cost by the Squire, and freely sup-
plied with water which is pumped up by steam to an
elevation commanding the whole of the buildings. The
first- whip's house is close to the kennels ; and many a
vicar is worse lodged. After a rigid inspection of the
172 CLUB CAMEOS.
dog-pack and the 'ladies' it is best not to hazard a
criticism if your canine knowledge is deficient, for
there are few better judges of the points of a hound
than Ashby Folville brought out on the sward for
your express benefit, and having had the young
hounds drafted out for special examination, you are
nothing loth for perhaps you have been nervous
as to the calves of your legs to be taken over the
stables. The stable-yard consists of a wide square.
On one side is a covered riding-school; on the oppo-
site side is a magnificent range of loose boxes; on
the third side is an equally magnificent range of
stalls; whilst on the fourth side are the boiling-
houses and meal-stores. Men are never shy when
invited to Highthorpe about asking leave to bring
down their horses, for room can always be found for
them ; whilst, on the other hand, he who has no horses
can easily be accommodated with nags ; for the Squire's
stud is an extensive one. l If you can ride I can mount
you,' says Folville to the young men who come down
from the University to spend their Christmastide with
him. However, he would not give his dearest friend
leave to lay his legs over certain valuable animals at the
north end of the stable, which constitute the Squire's
own lot. When a man pays from three to five hundred
guineas for his hunters he is justified in being selfish.
M.F.H. 173
When a frost sets in, or during a couple of months
in the season (chiefly spent at Lord's), the Squire turns
up frequently at the Caravanserai, preferring the gaiety
of that establishment to the sedateness of Boodles' s. He
knows everybody worth knowing in the club ; and we
to whom he has been civil in the country do our best to
repay his hospitality. "When Mrs. Folville gives a
dance, and though she is not a fashionable dame as the
London world counts fashion, we of the club take care to
send her a strong contingency from our best waltzing
division, so that there shall be no lack of good partners.
Her little people are always being taken to the play;
indeed the governess has remonstrated more than once,
as these attentions, she says, interfere with the studies
of her charges. When her boys get an exeat, and none
of the family are in town, there are always plenty of us
glad to receive the lads, and to send them on their way
rejoicing with a tip. As for me, I am always charmed
when it lies within my power to make any return for
the hospitality and kindness it has been my good for-
tune, winter after winter, to receive at that pleasantest
of country houses Highthorpe Abbey.
CULTUEE.
CULTUEE.
LOOKING back at the past from the vantage-point now,
alas ! of many years, there are few features in English
life which more impress me than the giant strides made
within the last generation in the matter of National
Education. The knowledge which was considered highly
creditable in a young man when our fourth George was
king would be considered at the present day as hardly
worthy of the position of an intelligent City clerk. In
those ' good old times' a man obtained his degree often
without examination, or when he had to go through that
ordeal his papers for 'greats' were scarcely superior
to those now put before the candidate at matriculation.
If the army was to be his career, he donned his Majesty's
uniform without troubling himself about the Commen-
taries of Julius Ca3sar, the epochs of history, or the
course of English literature ; his commission had been
paid for, and nothing more was needed. Had he relatives
in the law, he was destined for the bar, ate his dinners,
and became entitled to wear his wig and gown, thanks
to his stomach, and not to his brains. "Was he a younger
N
178 CLUB CAMEOS.
son with interest, lie was appointed to a clerkship in a
Government office, without first having to pay his fees
to a crammer. But now the days of privilege are num-
bered, and the reign of Education has been ushered in.
The creed of the survival of the fittest is the religion
under which we live and move and have our being, and
it must be admitted that the impecunious born fool of
this our age has a roughish future before him.
Yet it is an ill wind that blows no one any good.
If the lot of the noodle is a hard one, that of the clever
man was never more brilliant. Patronage has given
place to competitive examinations, and the world of
official and professional life is no longer an exclusive
area, but an open field, where the prizes of the race fall
to the swiftest. The scholar has it all his own way.
He does not require to come of an ancient line, or to
know a Cabinet Minister, or to possess capital; all he
needs to command success are brains, with perhaps a
baptismal or medical certificate. He can rise to the
highest posts in the service of our Indian empire with-
out being the nephew of a director or the friend of those
in power in Down ing-street. He can wear the blue of
the Artillery and the scarlet of the Engineers ; he can
fly his flag as an admiral ; he can take his seat on the
woolsack ; he can wear the lawn sleeves ; he can become
a member of the Cabinet there is no limit to his ambi-
CULTURE.
179
tion but the throne and the grave, provided he be one
of the brilliant pupils of our new schoolmaster. As
Demosthenes extolled the advantages of action, action,
action, so now the sires of the rising generation din into
the ears of their sons the advantages of education, edu-
cation, education. Can we therefore wonder that the
temple of Minerva should be thronged with worshippers ?
A great statesman once wrote that we lived under the
Venetian system. Under whatever system we lived
i8o CLUB CAMEOS.
before the first Eeform Bill, there can be little doubt
about our now living under the Chinese system.
Nor is this progress in education limited to the
higher classes. Culture I believe that is the correct
word is now the aim and desire of all save the most
vagabond. What with endless cram, competitive exa-
minations, mechanic institutes, popular science, and
text-books on all subjects for the million, it will be
quite a treat in a few years to meet with a man who
knows nothing. A veteran like myself, educated under
the old regime, is about as much at home in modern
conversation as an alderman upon a penitential diet.
Everything that I learned in my youth has to be un-
learned. Historical characters that I was taught to
regard as monsters are now proved to have possessed
every domestic virtue ; whilst the men who appeared to-
me all that was noble and good have, alas, turned out to
be villains of the blackest dye. The constant revelations
of science and science is a subject which was never
my strong point bewilder me to exasperation; for no
sooner have I made myself familiar with a recent dis-
covery and disabused myself of all my former preju-
dices, than some great leader of science starts up, and
proves most satisfactorily that what I have just acquired
is nothing more than a tissue of false conclusions drawn
from unsound premises, and utterly worthless in theory
CULTURE. iSr
and in practice. Then this enlightened person is in his
turn contradicted by another great leader in science;
and so the ball goes rolling until, what with dogmatic
assertions and vehement refutations, it seems to me that
life is too short to make a study of science. It is the
same with theology : all my early impressions upon the
subject have been shown to be most erroneous; yet
what to believe is very puzzling, for no two divines
teach alike, and every theory is at variance with its
fellow.
Sometimes I think the ignorance and simple faith,
which were the fashion in my younger days, preferable
to this very advanced state of education, which destroys
so much and builds up so little. We are so educated
that not only do youths in their teens glibly discuss the
most abstruse subjects, but our lower orders have caught
the contagion. They in their turn have acquired that
little knowledge which Bacon says is so dangerous a
thing, and the consequence is that they are gradually
becoming discontented with their position in life. The
educated tradesman is ashamed of keeping a shop, so he
calls his quarters an 'emporium.' The working man,
who jumbles up history, geography, and political economy
at a night-class, calls himself an * artisan.' The counter-
jumper, who drops his 7i's at a debating-club, dubs him-
,self an 'assistant.' The bagman is a 'commercial
1 82 CLUB CAMEOS.
gentleman,' the young person is a i young lady,' the
clerk is an ' employe,' the hairdresser is an ' artiste,'
and for aught I know to the contrary the dustman may
call himself an l artiste in refuse,' and his brother of the
watering-cart an i employe in hydraulics.' A system of
education which renders a man happier in his position
in life, which makes him a better creature and a more
respectable citizen, is a great national boon ; but a system
of education which makes him ashamed of his calling
and sullen to his superiors, yet does not render him
qualified for a superior station, is, it seems to me, a very
doubtful advantage.
Hence one of the results of this false shame is to
cause a great exodus from the working classes into the
middle classes. The prosperous shopkeeper declines to
bring up his son for the lower walks of trade. The field
is now so open thanks to the example set us by John
Chinaman and the prizes to be obtained by the highly
educated are so worth the winning, that every one
wishes to qualify for the race. The son of the yeoman
and the son of the tradesman jostle the son of the gentle-
man at every step at the public schools, at the univer-
sities, and at the great examinations. But though the
prizes are many, the competitors are to be counted by
their thousands ; and as only the few can win, the many
who are defeated have no alternative but to add them-
CULTURE. 183
selves to the already overcrowded middle classes, and
intensify the fierce fight for life. With those whom
education has placed in the ranks of the victors, exist-
ence is no doubt pleasant enough ; but with those who
have not been so successful, who have tried and have
failed, what is their future ! How many a tradesman,
who sees his son, of whom he had such expectations,
plucked for India or the Engineers, getting no practice
at the bar, obtaining no patients in medicine, discon-
tented, idle, and fit for nothing, too good for trade, yet
not good enough for anything else, must have regretted
the day when he vowed l he would make a gentleman of
the boy' instead of sending him into the shop! And
how many a son, suspicious and sensitive, and made
perhaps by an unkind world to smart under his social
shortcomings (you want money and success to carry off
some things), must often have felt, in spite of his l posi-
tion as a gentleman,' that it would have been better for
him to have been as his father before him, a prosperous
tradesman, than a poor and unsuccessful ' gentleman' !
One man whom I know within the walls of the
-Caravanserai must often have indulged in such reflec-
tions. Mr. Thome can hardly be considered in the
light of an eligible member of our community. We
are told that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,
.and it is surprising how disagreeable one cantankerous
1 84 CLUB CAMEOS.
man who uses his club can make it to those around him.
He is always coming upon the scene and cannot be
avoided. If you go up to the library you find him
snoring on the very sofa you want, with the very book
you have come in search of in his useless grasp. If you
dine accidentally at the club your table is sure to be
placed next to his. Are you having a quiet chat with a
friend in the smoking-room, most assuredly will this
wretched being drop in and spoil the conversation. He
is always quarrelling with the committee, and asking
you to support his complaints ; nor is it a pleasant task
to refuse the requests of the cantankerous. At billiards
he disputes the accuracy of the marker; at whist his
frowns and reproofs intimidate his partner ; if you turn
up the king at ecarte his expressive smile plainly con-
veys to you the impression that he considers you a
swindler.
From these observations you will perhaps gather that
Mr. Thorne is not a popular personage, nor in arriving
at that conclusion will you be much mistaken. Indeed,
he is not a favourite. There are some men, no matter
how illustrious their birth or how high their office, who
from their charm of manner and attractive geniality are
always known to their fellows by some fond sobriquet
or affectionate diminution of their Christian name ; but
who, looking into the pale spiteful face of Mr. Thorne,
CULTURE.
185
with the sinister set in his cold gray eyes, and the angry
lines round his snappish mouth, would ever think of
addressing him otherwise than as Mr. Thorne ? He has
no friends, and the list of his acquaintances is limited.
"When he speaks to you he draws himself up to his full
height, regards you with elevated eyebrows, and a
general look of lofty superiority on his sickly counte-
nance, and expects you humbly to listen to him, as if he
were conferring a great favour in imparting the opinions
1 86 CLUB CAMEOS.
his splendid intellect has arrived at to so incompetent a
creature as yourself. ' "What I hate about that fellow,'
said a frank youth to me, ' is that he always treats every
one as if he were a damned ass.' The remark is forcible,
but it not inaptly hits off the character of this superior
person.
Mr. Thorne is one of those men with whom conver-
sation is impossible. He will address you, he will lecture
you, he will instruct you, but he will not chat with
you conversation with him is a monologue. He is to
preach, you are to listen. If you interrupt him he will
look at you as if utterly dumbfounded by your audacity ;
if you advance an opinion he will promptly contradict
it; and if you ask him a question upon a subject of
which he knows nothing he will reply in his nastiest
tones that 'he is not a schoolboy.' "When he is present
he is Sir Oracle, and permits no one to interfere with
his monopoly of eloquence and information. He passes
his judgment upon the works of the greatest writers,
patronising them if he approves of their views, or run-
ning them down to the lowest depths of disparagement
if he differs from them. The range of his criticism
is wide, embracing every subject, from music to archae-
ology, and from astronomy to comparative philology.
Provided you are submissive and deferential he will
answer the queries you put to him. Should you, how-
CULTURE. 187
ever, hold views of your own, he will decline to enter
into a discussion with you. 1 1 object to have my
brains sucked,' he says loftily. As for me, I scarcely
over like to inquire after his health for fear he should
think I want to l suck his brains' about anatomy.
Quack is a favourite word of Mr. Thome's. If a man
has attained to fame by some brilliant discovery, or by
the publication of some erudite work, or by the achieve-
ment of some great deed, Mr. Thorne, who hates success
-as only the failed can hate it, brands him as a quack.
Essentially a critic, and the turn of his mind purely
receptive, our lofty genius piques himself upon his
creative faculties, and is indifferent to everything that
is not what he considers original. It must, however, be
admitted that there are few things which Mr. Thorne
considers original outside his own literary efforts; for
no sooner is some discovery said to be new, or some
author becomes famous for the novelty of his opinions,
than this kindly person proyes that the discoverer has
only improved upon an old plan, and that the writer is a
plagiarist. Listening to this critic it would appear that
we have amongst us no scientific men worthy of the
name, no profound philosophers, no statesmen who are
not adventurers, no historians who are aught than
ignorant copyists, no artists, actors, engineers ; in short,
that there is in this country but one man whose learning
1 88 CLUB CAMEOS.
and brilliant abilities save her from contempt, and his
name is Mr. Ebenezer Thorne. If to detract from the
fame of established reputations, if to take the exact
opposite of public opinion, if to be guided alone by the
spiteful views of a splenetic egotism be originality, no
one will deny that Mr. Thorne is of all men the most
original ; and long may the monopoly of such a gift be
confined to him !
The existence of such a creature is due entirely to
our system of advanced education. Mr. Thorne is one
of the painful results of culture to be pronounced,
if you please, ' culchaw.' The son of a fairly prosperous
bootmaker in Oxford-street, he was sent as a lad to one
of the large City schools. Here his aptitude for mathe-
matics and the superior calibre of his abilities generally
attracted the attention of the head-master. Young
Thorne soon worked his way up to the sixth form, and
gained most of the prizes in the school. It had been the
intention of the worthy bootmaker to let his son have a
good commercial education, and then to take him into
the shop as a partner. But the father, like many men
whose sons are more brilliantly endowed than them-
selves, was somewhat in awe of his boy. How could he
.ask a young man who could spout page after page from
the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, who could read
the comedies of Moliere without a dictionary, and who
CULTURE.
189
was quite at home in conic sections and hydrostatics, to
add up a ledger, put on an apron, and take orders?
There was no alternative but for the father to ' make a
gentleman of the lad.' He came to this resolve with a
sigh, for he knew the profits of the shop were not to be
despised ; and, from several of the bad debts he had on
his books, he also entertained a shrewd idea of what
a i gentleman' was. Yet there was no help for it ; he
had educated his son above his position, and there was
I 9 o CLUB CAMEOS.
little blame to be attached to the boy if he sneered
at his father's calling. * There is nothing like leather,'
we all know ; so let us appreciate at its proper value the
sacrifice made by the parent.
Accordingly, young Thorne was sent to Cambridge.
That he would pass all the examinations was never for
one moment to be doubted. He had been the head of
his school, and it was fully expected that he would
greatly distinguish himself. Nor would these hopes
have been disappointed had the peculiarities of his tem-
perament not made themselves now painfully visible.
Mr. Thorne declined to follow the counsels of his tutor ;
he rejected the books he was told to study ; he disputed
many of the conclusions that the greatest mathematicians
had arrived at. His was one of those lofty minds not to
be fettered by tutors and nourished upon school-books.
He would rely only upon himself; he would take nothing
for granted ; he would be his own mathematician, geo-
metrician, and astronomer ; and the consequence was that
instead of being, as he had modestly expected, Smith's
prizeman and among the first three wranglers, he came
out in the middle of the Junior Optimes. Of course
it was from no fault of his ; he had often feared what
the result would be ; the examiners were jealous of him,
and had entered into a conspiracy to defeat him. One
of the most painful features in the character of Thorne
CULTURE.
191
is that he never will acknowledge himself worsted from
any failure of his own. As the Frenchman, when he is
beaten, always cries out, f Nous sommes trahisj so
Thorne always ascribes his unsuccesses to jealousies,
combinations, and conspiracies. "Why the world should
put itself to such inconvenience as always to spy upon
his every action and misinterpret his every motive none
of us have as yet been able to discover. Perhaps, after
all, it may be that the world is not so malicious as Mr.
Thorne alleges, and that its censures are but the out-
come of its honest judgment and opinions.
Quitting Cambridge, Thorne took up his abode in
London at the paternal villa of Eulham. So superior a
person declined to go through the drudgery of working
for professional success. He had no interest at the bar ;
he despised commerce ; and of course, as became a man
of his enlightened views, he held that religion was but
the result of hereditary prejudices, and the Church an
organised superstition. He resolved to devote him-
self to science, and to show the world how unjust had
been the treatment he had received at the hands of that
school of a larger growth the University. He wrote a
work on ' Gravitation,' in which his views were so
' original ' that he inveighed against everybody who
had previously illustrated the Newtonian theory, and
maintained that his own conclusions were the only
192 CLUB CAMEOS.
sound ones upon the subject. The book was damned by
the press, and the publisher's ledger displayed an alarm-
ing sale of forty copies, of which twenty-five had been
bought by the proud father of the author.
Still the confidence of Mr. Thorne in himself was not
damped ; the world only cared for frivolity, the critics
were a parcel of venal and spiteful hacks, and the council
of the Astronomical Society had conspired to crush him.
He declined to be crushed. He wrote a volume on the
' Multiple Stars,' another on ' Sound,' a third on ' Tidal
Investigations,' an essay on ' Optics,' and a treatise on
'Statical Couples.' None of these great works having
succeeded in bringing either money or fame to their
illustrious author, the old bootmaker roundly declared to
his son that he could no longer afford to keep him in
idleness, and that he must look out for some employ-
ment. A third-rate insurance office being in want of
an actuary, Mr. Thorne sent in an application, and was
glad enough to be appointed to the post. We have to
thank one of his directors for electing this great genius
a member of the Caravanserai.
We are told by Sydney Smith that the dissenters
of Bicester were very fond of declaring that until their
arrival there was no such thing in their town as intellec-
tual light all was wrapped in ignorance, incapacity,
and the Established Church. Mr. Thorne is gifted with
CULTURE. 193
not a little of the conceit and arrogance of the Bicester
dissenter. Until his election to the Caravanserai, he
considers that no man of real culture or superior attain-
ments has ever been admitted within the club. Though
surrounded by statesmen, distinguished lawyers, well-
known members of the House of Commons, men of
letters who have taken high honours at the University,
et hoc genus omne, he calmly regards himself as the one
intellectual star of the establishment. It is his judg-
ment that should alone be accepted; his opinion that
should alone carry weight. He knows what the Govern-
ment is going to do and what it should do better than
the one or two Parliamentary Under-Secretaries who
honour the smoking-room with their presence. He lays
down the law about art, in spite of the E.A.s and
A.E.A.s who are amongst his audience. If the Astrono-
mer Eoyal were to sit at the next table to him he would
condemn many of his conclusions. He criticises every-
thing and everybody, yet in all his criticisms his object
is to show, either by implication or by positive state-
ment, how very much better he could have done the
work under discussion. His own brains are the standard
by which he measures everything; and therefore,
whenever he says in his most dogmatic manner, ' / can-
not understand it,' or i /have never heard of it,' it is to
be at once concluded that the subject which engages
o
194 CLUB CAMEOS.
our attention is either too ridiculous or too trivial to be
noticed. Whenever any classical or French quotation is
made in his presence he has a disagreeable trick of ask-
ing what you said, and on the request being complied
with of dryly saying, 'Oh!' and then of repeating the
quotation very distinctly, as much as to say that is the
way it should be pronounced. It was of Mr. Thome
that it was once remarked that had he been present at
the Creation he would have given a few hints.
Yet, let us be charitable ; for much of this irritating
omniscience Mr. Thome has a certain excuse. He has
never found his level. At school, at the University, in
his little circle, he has always lived in a set who have
looked up to him with blind adoration. At home he is
surrounded by those to whom socially and intellectually
he is greatly the superior, and he lords it over the
parental circle with that despotism which is generally
accorded to these dictators of a coterie. Thus he has
acquired a habit of not only laying down the law, but of
imagining that because education is a novelty to himself
and to those in his own sphere, it must be equally a
novelty to others. We know how the man to whom
champagne is an unwonted luxury talks about that vin-
tage ; how the snob swaggers about having met a lord ;
how the beggar behaves when set on horseback; and
therefore we must not be hard upon Mr. Thorne, consi-
CULTURE.
dering his shortcomings, that he somewhat over-estimates
his erudition.
Nor has any one the wish to be hard upon him, if
he would only act with a little more tact and modesty.
Conscious that he is the social inferior of almost every
one in the club, he thinks it incumbent upon him-
self to assume a defensive tone in order to preserve
his dignity. But he who is always on the defensive
scarcely fails to be offensive. Suspicious to insanity, he
196 CLUB CAMEOS.
snatches at every accidental remark, as if it were in-
tended to convey a personal insult to himself. Should
one member innocently say to another, ' It is ill waiting
for dead men's shoes,' or ' There is nothing like leather,'
or 'Shoemaker, stick to your last,' or 'What boots it?'
or ' That is quite another pair of shoes,' and the like,
Mr. Thorne grows pale and quivers, and imagines that
allusions are being made to his origin. Of course at the
Caravanserai we all know who the man is, though Mr.
Thorne is under the delusion that he preserves the secret
of his birth most cleverly ; but with the good taste of
Englishmen we do not permit ourselves to be prejudiced
against him on account of any social shortcomings under
which he labours, and willingly would we hold out the
right hand of fellowship were Mr. Thorne a more
agreeable personage. Yet with that strange incon-
sistency which is so puzzling a feature in human
nature, it is Thorne who ever begins the aggressive;
it is he who is always indulging in personal remarks,
who is always branding a member as no gentle-
man, and who is always informing us what 'society'
should do on certain occasions. It is true that he has
more than once drawn upon himself some cruel retort
which has silenced him for days, but it has only been
after having richly deserved the punishment. He has
made numerous enemies, and his foes know that his
CULTURE.
197
vulnerable point is 'the shop.' Thus tortured by his
sense of social inferiority, yet exalted by what he con-
siders his intellectual superiority, he goes through life
transformed into that curious combination of antitheses
which we so often see in men of the Thorne type com-
bative, yet shrinkingly sensitive ; arrogant, yet humble ;
fearful of oppression, yet ever oppressing ; a master one
moment, a slave the next.
To me he is a study. Yet when I watch him turning
pale at some covert sneer; jealous at the success of men
who have distanced him ; the holder of a petty appoint-
ment, after all the nourish of trumpets that had ushered
him into the arena of life ; bitter, sensitive, miserable
it seems to me how much happier he would have been
had not ' culture' taken him out of his position, and we
of the Caravanserai had been, instead of his companions
his customers.
FINANCE.
FINANCE.
THEORIES are like men, they may be crushed by scorn or
ridicule ; yet if they decline to be crushed they will end
by being listened to, and by gaining followers. Look-
ing over a file of old newspapers a few nights ago, and
reading them by the light of some of ' H. B.'s' carica-
tures, I could not help comparing the present with
the past, and reflecting how very different was the
treatment which one peculiar theory met with in days
bygone from what it now receives. Most of us can
remember when the opinions concerning the 'Asian
mystery' were first promulgated. We were told that
mankind, instead of holding the Hebrew race in pro-
found contempt, should reverence it for the important
part it played in the history of the world. "Without the
Hebrew race, it was said, the records of Holy Writ would
have been hopelessly lost ; without the Hebrew race the
creed of Christianity would never have been founded ;
without the Hebrew race the scheme of man's redemp-
tion would never have been accomplished. The Jews
were both the favoured and the ostracised of the
202 CLUB CAMEOS.
Supreme Being ; to their disloyalty as well as to their
loyalty the world owed a deep debt of devotion.
We were told that the existence of the Hebrew race
was a proof of its superiority over the other families of
mankind. It had encountered the bitterest of persecu-
tions j it had been dispersed ; it had been oppressed by
the harshest of laws ; all over the globe it had met with
cruelty, contempt, and infamous restrictions. Yet it
lived, whilst the nations which had maltreated it had
declined and had fallen, never to rise again. Not only
did it live, but we were informed that, in spite of the
awful past, the intellectual vitality of the Hebrew race
was as vivid, as powerful, and as commanding as ever.
Eemove the shackles that fettered the Jew, admit him
into the arena of life unhandicapped by the restrictions
of intolerance, accord him all the civil rights of a subject,
and speedily, it was alleged, he would work his way to
the front, and stand a full head and shoulders above the
rest of the crowd. From this fact it was argued we
ought to learn a great ethnological truth that a supe-
rior race cannot be absorbed or repressed by one that is
inferior. Other races had existed as pure in their
lineage as the Jew, but what had been their fate ?
Either they had been absorbed by their victors in inter-
marriage, or they had become extinct from the deadly
thraldom of conquest. Save the Jew, there was not an
FINANCE. 203
instance in the world of a race, whilst subject for centu-
ries to every evil influence that prejudice and persecu-
tion could suggest, having maintained both its purity of
blood and its intellectual vitality. From this we were
bidden to mark not only the fulfilment of prophecy, but
the superiority of the Jew.
We can remember the wit and humour that were
directed against this theory and against its Apostle. Yet
the laugh has not been exactly on our side. The Apostle
has proved the truth of his teaching in his own person,
by a success which has never before fallen to the lot of
a statesman in this country, whilst his theory is on all
sides being most fully exemplified. Everywhere the
Jew confronts his fellow-man, and stands forth as master
of the situation. Admitted but yesterday to the bar, he
is in the first rank of counsel, second to none in elo-
quence, in the lore of jurisprudence, and in the skill of
the consummate advocate. The realms of finance have
always been his especial dominion, but never has he
occupied so powerful a position as at the present day ;
he holds empires in pawn, and by a wish to realise his
possessions could reduce half a continent to bankruptcy.
His civil disabilities removed, he becomes a legislator
distinguished by his ready gift of debate, or a magistrate
conspicuous for his tact and common sense. Music and
song and the drama have been so eminently the mono-
204
CLUB CAMEOS.
poly of the Hebrew race, that no one is surprised at a
great composer, or a great actress, or a prima donna
being of Jewish descent. In art, in science, in litera-
ture, the Hebrew is again among the most gifted in his
profession. Whatever department is open to him, his
success in it is so remarkable as to make him one of the
conspicuous. When the field of his intellect was
limited to medicine and finance, he rose till he could
rise no higher ; and now that the world closes none of
FINANCE. 205
its avenues at his approach, the talents which made him
attain distinction when under persecution render every
career he selects in this age of his toleration a brilliant
one.
The Hebrew has all the qualities which lead men to
prosperity. A keen brain, intense perseverance, great
industry, great nervous energy, frugality, an ambition
that never loses an opportunity, a conscience somewhat
dulled by that cunning which is hereditary in the per-
secuted, pushing, active, knowing instinctively what to
accept and what to reject, it is not surprising that his
success is marked. Between the Jew and the Scotch-
man though both cordially dislike each other there is
much in common. Both comprise within themselves all
that is good and bad in human nature in a marked
degree ; both clan together, seldom working singly, so
that the success of one brings other successes in its
wake ; both carry their nationality in their face ; both
are eager after the main chance, and somewhat indiffer-
ent as to the means, provided the end be gained ; both
are frugal and persevering; both are imbued with
strong religious prejudices and both sold their king.
It is in society that the position of the Jew has be-
come the most conspicuous. Men now not elderly can
remember the time when the Jew was never met with at
the houses of the great. He lived apart, formed a com-
206 CLUB CAMEOS.
nmnity of his own, and was regarded as a pariah outside
the pale of social existence. A dame of fashion would
have felt her self-respect wounded had she permitted a
Jewess to enter her drawing-rooms, whilst a peer would
as soon have asked a Jew to his country house as he
would the hangman. But as wealth became more and
more the idol of the age, as one by one the barriers set
up by prejudice were uprooted, and as Judaism, gradu-
ally losing its distinctive characteristics, developed into
a kind of deism, society had to march with the times and
extend its frontiers. The Jew was admitted, and his
tact soon transformed the bare inch which was reluct-
antly doled out to him into the lengthiest of ells. It is
a curious fact that whilst the middle classes still enter-
tain a strong prejudice against the Jew, nowhere is he
more cordially welcomed than amongst what are termed
the higher classes. "Whether this is due to the fact that
the more rarefied the social atmosphere the freer is it
from the vulgarities of intolerance and the artificialities
of civilisation, or that Hebrews, themselves strongly
tinged with aristocratic sentiments, take more pains to
please when in the society of the great than when
amongst their equals, I know not.
There is one member of the Caravanserai to whom
many of these remarks refer. It is now many years
since Hermann Wertheim left his native city of Magde-
FINANCE. 207
burg to seek his fortune and build up a prosperous
career for himself. Obscure, penniless, unbefriended,
he began life dependent entirely upon his own resources.
What the history of his lineage is none of us know,
though, since he has attained to celebrity, malice and
imagination have been busy with his name. Yet what-
ever his parentage may have been, there can be no doubt
as to his Hebrew origin. There are various types of
Jew. There is the low-caste Jew bullet-headed, bull-
necked, olive-hued, snub-nosed, with low brow, greasy
curls, negro lips, and redeemed alone from the most for-
bidding ugliness by the splendid eyes of his tribe.
There is the Jew in the humbler walks of trade, short,
fat, and differing little from the physiognomy of the or-
dinary Frenchman save in the hook of the nose and the
peculiar shape of the eye. There is the Jew whose
wealth has raised him for generations above the common
herd of his fellows who is the aristocrat of his race
whose features are finely cut; the forehead broad yet
lofty ; the nose aquiline, and only when past middle age
developing into the Judaic curve ; the mouth, though
too full, yet beautifully shaped; the chin firm and
decided ; the shape of the head, the ears, the hands,
the feet, all showing unmistakable signs of breed-
ing. There are dark Jews and fair Jews, red-headed
Jews and bald-headed Jews, little dumpy Jews and
208
CLUB CAMEOS.
tall slim Jews, Jews bearded like the pard, Jews shaved
like priests; yet different as are these various types
of Israelite, in the 'cast of countenance, and above
all in the melancholy expression of the eyes, the ob-
server has seldom any difficulty in deciphering the
nationality. Wertheim is a dark man with black curly
locks, large brown eyes, an aquiline nose, and a long
well-kept beard ; he might pass for an Italian, were it
not for that peculiarity of expression which stamps him
FINANCE.
209
at a glance as a Jew. By the women he is considered
very handsome ; the men say he would be good-looking
were he not a Jew.
The career of Wertheiin is a curious one. Whilstja
lad at Magdeburg he read an advertisement in an Eng-
lish journal stating that a firm of merchants were in
want of a clerk. He thought the opportunity a good
one for perfecting himself in the English language, and
applied for the post. He was successful, and was engaged
210 CLUB CAMEOS.
at the modest salary of forty pounds a year. At the
end of three years he rose to the position of correspond-
ence clerk. Here his knowledge of foreign languages,
his shrewdness, his business capacity, his tact and fore-
sight, caused him to be regarded as one of the most
useful of officials. He was sent over to Eio Janeiro as
a junior partner to manage the fortunes of the Bra-
zilian branch of the firm. Before he was forty he had
succeeded thanks to the busy hand of death in be-
coming senior partner, and then retired from the busi-
ness, demanding as his share some two hundred thousand
pounds.
With this sum Wertheim speculated largely in the
United States during a season of great commercial
depression, and well-nigh doubled his fortune. He now
came to London, took splendid offices in the City, and
soon established a reputation as one of the happiest of
financial promoters. He touched nothing which did not
dissolve itself into gold. Every company he brought
out was a success, and paid handsome dividends. His
name as chairman or director of a mine, a line of rail-
way, a joint-stock bank, or any other financial associa-
tion, inspired the public with confidence and sent up the
price of its shares. His terms were heavy, yet specula-
tors were only too glad to pay what he asked, provided
he would promote the companies they proposed to him.
FINANCE.
When it was known that Wertheim had consented
to bring out a company, the competition for allotments
set in fast and furious, and the shares once floated were
bought up at a heavy premium. His offices were
always crowded with eager capitalists anxious for an
interview not always granted with the great man,
imploring him to take their money and invest it in any
undertaking he thought best. At first the great City
houses looked somewhat askance at the l adventurer,' as
he was called ; but they ended, as the rest of the frater-
nity had ended, by hanging about his magnificent ante-
rooms and invoking his aid. It is better to be born
lucky than rich, says the proverb ; but when a man is
both lucky and rich the ball lies at his feet. Wertheim
was lucky. Numerous as had been the enterprises in
which he had been engaged, none had been miserable
failures, none had led to investigations which reflected
upon his honour. Some were paying twenty per cent,
some were only paying four, but there was not one of
them at a discount. The official liquidator had never
had occasion to intrude himself unpleasantly upon the
presence of Hermann Wertheim. It was computed that
within ten years he had realised nearly a couple of
millions.
And now the self-control and sagacity of the man
appeared. At the very zenith of his prosperity, when
212 CLUB CAMEOS.
he was worshipped in the streets and lanes around the
Exchange, when every continental Bourse was applaud-
ing his ventures and exaggerating his successes, when
committees of the House of Commons listened to his
opinions as conclusive, when he was looked up to both
by the Treasury and the Bank of England as the
soundest of financial advisers, Wertheim sold his offices
in the City and retired from every undertaking in
which his name appeared. Jews are, of all people, the
most pleasure -loving and the least given to ennui or
satiety. They drink the cup of life to the dregs, and
find the last quaff almost as pleasant as the first. Wer-
theim had worked and won ; he would give ill-luck no
opportunity; the rest of his days he would pass in
leisure.
A brilliant position east of Temple Bar signifies at
the present day a brilliant position west of that now
happily removed obstacle. Gradually, first through
dandies and politicians who had sat with him at the
same Boards of Directors, then through Ministers who-
had asked him for counsel, and then through certain
great ladies of a speculative temperament, who had been
indebted to the famous promoter for allotments, shares^
and early information as to railway amalgamations, "Wer-
theim entered society, and his wealth soon made him
a personage in the circles of its leaders. It is difficult
FINANCE.
213
to understand how a race, shunned and oppressed like
the Jews, should have obtained that social tact and
power of pleasing, when it suits them, which are emi-
nently their characteristics. There is hardly a capital in
Europe, where a Jewess by her brilliant social gifts is
not amongst the leaders of its society; and the Jew,
whether he be one by religion or by blood, who has
mixed much in the world, is always a witty and amus-
ing companion. It is only when among his equals or
inferiors that the egotism, the selfishness, and the lack
of scruple of the Hebrew appear.
Hermann "Wertheim was not only admitted into good
society ; he was soon courted by it. The women con-
sidered him handsome ; his manners had much of the
repose and dignity of the Oriental ; his conversation was
always amusing and could be instructive; whilst his
wealth gave him that assurance and self-respect which
other men obtain from high birth and acknowledged
position. He bought a beautiful property in the
favourite home county of his race, and one of the best
town houses that the agents had on their books. He
w r as unmarried, and such a parti was not likely to be
permitted to remain for long unattached. Whatever
creed "Wertheim inwardly professed, he was to all in-
tents and purposes a Christian. In the country he was
a model squire, and from his large curtained pew in the
214
CLUB CAMEOS.
village church repeated the responses in a most edifying
manner. In town he could be seen every Sunday morn-
ing in the fashionable fane of his quarter. He had a few
livings in his gift, and was most orthodox in the exer-
cise of his patronage. He took a great interest in the
future of the English Church, and spoke once or twice on
the subject at Congress meetings. Whether he was ever
baptised no one inquired ; he was for all practical pur-
poses as much a Christian as half the inhabitants of the
FINANCE. 215
kingdom, and to look deeper would have been both, im-
pertinent and inquisitive. Still the Jews are an adaptive
people, and in posing as a good Protestant Hermann
Wertheim may after all be but an outsider in the fold.
"Wandering up Edgeware-road one fine September morn-
ing, I entered the splendid synagogue of that district.
It was the Day of Atonement. Gazing at the sad sallow
countenances of the worshippers, it struck me that I saw
the great ex-financier in their midst. As our eyes met,
he buried his face in his talitli. Perhaps after all I was
mistaken one Jew is so very like another.
It took few of us by surprise when Wertheim married
Lady Delia St. Julien. Everybody knew that the Earl
of Leoville was as poor as poor could be, and that his
clever wife had devoted the best part of two seasons to
ensnare the capitalist. The match has proved a happy
one for both parties. The mortgages on Medoc Castle
and Eomanee Park have been paid off, and the Countess
has taken her diamonds out of pawn I mean has re-
ceived them back from her banker. Lady Delia a dame
of some five-and-thirty, very cold, very haughty, very
distant, and who would have married Beelzebub, had she
been assured of the extent of his rent-roll, to benefit her
family has come to the conclusion that she is a most
fortunate woman. Domesticity has always been a marked
feature in the Jewish race, and Wertheim is no excep-
216 CLUB CAMEOS.
tion to the rest of his tribe. Fond of his wife, passion-
ately attached to their only child, he has succeeded in
transforming Lady Delia from a statue into a most
agreeable and charming woman. Thanks to the wealth
and generous disposition of her husband, she has made
her house one of the most popular in town. In the coun-
try their hospitalities are conducted in the most lavish
manner. The house is seldom free from visitors ; and
as "Wertheim is himself a splendid musician and some-
what of an artist, one meets there not only the fashion-
able, but the celebrities of the drama, the studio, and
the library.
Considering that Hermann Wertheim is a man much
sought after, he is a frequent visitor at the Caravanserai.
He has many friends, especially amongst the young and
the hard-working who have not yet attained to fame.
At his dinners and Lady Delia's balls the youth of the
Caravanserai show up in great force, whilst he places
his stable and his shootings almost too much at their
disposal. He has his enemies ; but when they have
called him ' a German Jew,' and sneered at him as
an 'adventurer,' they have little more to say against
him. Besides, he has been forced so frequently to meet
these two charges during his life that their venom has
long ceased to wound : he has found the antidote in
wealth and success.
FINANCE.
217
One regret he certainly experiences. Imbued with
a sincere admiration for the institutions and the people
of England, a naturalised subject himself of her Majesty,
and well read in political history, he would give much
of his bullion to be able to enter the House of Com-
mons. Those green benches have an attraction for him
which the promoting of companies or the bringing out
of loans never possessed. When an important debate
takes place he may generally be seen sitting behind a
friendly member under the gallery. How slight is the
barrier that divides him from the House ! yet by him
it can never be o'erpassed. As I see him watching
speaker after speaker, the mere routine of the business
of the House having a special interest for him, the desire
of his heart can be read. He is another instance of a
man not completely happy. He has wealth, he has
talents, he has health, he has a delightful home ; yet
the one thing he yearns after he has not (had he it,
would he yearn after it ?) the power to take an active
part in the legislative labours of the nation of his adop-
tion. Among those who have gained much, yet who
still long after the unattainable, the name of Hermann
"Wertheim must also be written.
' Inde fit, ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum
Dicat, et exacto contentus tempore vitae
Cedat, uti conviva satur, reperire queamus.'
WITS.
WITS.
THERE are few things more puzzling to the unsophisti-
cated mind than the manner in which certain people,
without any definite means of subsistence, manage to
live. "We know that such persons have no profession,
that no kind relations have put their names down for
handsome legacies, that they are social waifs and strays,
not clearly belonging to anybody or to anything ; yet
they appear always to be amply supplied with the goods
of this world, and freely to enjoy the pleasures thereof.
If they are married they live in the most charming of
bijou establishments, give excellent dinners, where the
male element somewhat predominates, drive in the easi-
est and most miniature of broughams, ride the cleverest
of hunters in the shires and the most perfect of hacks
in the Park, and are always to be met with in the
haunts that Fashion specially selects for her amuse-
ment, and everywhere maintaining a rate of expenditure
of several thousands a year. How do they do it ? We
know that the husband was ' broke' in the Goodwood of
CLUB CAMEOS.
18 , and that his wife had nothing; how, then, da
they exist in comfort and splendour ?
On the other hand, if they are bachelors they give
their address at one or two good clubs, they are clad in
purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.
They have their stall at the Opera and their hack for
the Kow, they are not content with the club points at
whist, but bet heavily, and they always have money to
entertain useful friends at the neatest of little dinners.
WITS.
223
and to gratify the sins they most affect. Yet how is it
done ? We see men with good fortunes, making a
lucrative practice or holding high and well-paid appoint-
ments, and yet they say candidly that they should come
to signal grief did they launch themselves forth on the
lavish career which is the daily life of these penniless
puzzles. Again we ask, How do they do it? The
answer returned is, By their wits.
At the present day the clever impecunious adven-
turer finds many an active sphere for his peculiar
labours which was denied to his predecessor. In the
olden times our friend, whose keen wit had to stand
him in the stead of lofty name and handsome revenues,
was forced to open the world with his sword as a soldier
of fortune, or to ingratiate himself, under the happy
feudal system, with a monarch who would offer him the
requisite facilities for marrying an heiress, or else to
descend to the tricks and cunning of the downright
knave. He could punt over the green cloth at games
of hazard, it is true ; but your man who has to live by
his wits can seldom afford to play unless he has a
decided advantage over his opponent; he is willing to
keep the bank, to play whist or ecarte; a game of skill
is an income to him, whilst a game of pure chance de-
feats his calculations and renders his superior knowledge
valueless.
224 CLUB CAMEOS.
But in these easier later times there are numerous
roads and convenient bypaths which lead to the temple
of Fortune the temple of Honour is behind the temple
of Fortune. A knowledge of horseflesh can in itself
be employed so as to gain a comfortable annuity; a
crack ' gentleman jock,' though he is disqualified from
getting his three pounds a mount and five pounds when
successful, may yet make an excellent thing of his
riding, thanks to the little investments put to his credit
by his employer. And as for the income that can be
obained from whist, from ecarte, from billiards, from
pigeon-shooting, and from making a book on the different
races, it may vary according to the capital and capacities
of the ' sportsman,' from one hundred to thousands a
year. The man who has to live by his wits, provided
he be not ashamed of the profession and his nerve and
talent fit him for the career, need scarcely nowadays
grumble at the opportunities afforded him for distinction
and perhaps for notoriety. There are plenty of pick-
ings for the rook ; the fox seldom prowls about in vain ;
and the fold is so feebly guarded that the wolf now
almost wants a whet for his appetite. The creed of the
survival of the fittest is an excellent arrangement for
the fittest; to those, however, who are not in that
category it is perhaps open to objection.
Among the predatory individuals who are especially
WITS. 225
created, as it were, to live upon their fellow-men, Davie
Benson will always occupy a prominent place. No one
knows who he is, what his parentage is, what locality
gave him birth, or what his available means of subsist-
ence are. He is the child of mystery, nor does he ever
attempt to raise the veil except when he vaguely alludes
to ' his people in the north ;' but whether he means the
north of England or the north of Scotland or the north
of London none of us whom he honours with his ac-
quaintance have ever been able to discover. If I might
venture upon a suggestion, I fancy he knows more about
the people of the east than of the north, from the nature
of the monetary transactions he occasionally indulges in.
Yet Davie, in spite of the secrecy with which he en-
velops his social surroundings, is quite a representative
man of his order at the Caravanserai. At a glance you
can tell to what calling he belongs. To the observing
mind nothing is simpler than to identify a man with his
profession. A hundred tricks of gait, attire, and talk
reveal the soldier and the sailor. Without his white
tie and black garb the parson, disguise himself as he
may, is soon discovered. You can tell a barrister by
the way he trims his whiskers, pulls about his nose, and
rises and sits down. "What tutored eye ever fails to
recognise the solicitor, the doctor, the clerk, and the
City man ? All have peculiar movements and expres-
Q
226
CLUB CAMEOS.
sions inseparable from their walk in life, and which
stamp them with the trade-mark of their calling. And
who could ever make a mistake about Davie Benson?
In his bell-shaped hat, so glossy and so curly ; in the
small keen whiskerless face ; in the tie, sporting yet not
loud ; in the frock-coat, fitting like a glove to his thin
supple figure ; in the tight trousers, the gait, and the
gaiters and varnished boots, you read as plainly as if it
were labelled on his back, Horseflesh. No one who
WITS. 227
does not spend much of his time in the saddle could
walk in that peculiar style, and no one save he whose
figure is always in strict training could be so emaciated
and yet so powerful.
Standing little above five feet six, with not an ounce
of superfluous flesh upon him, apparently as slight as a
girl, there are not many who can surpass Davie in those
feats which require both strength and dexterity for their
accomplishment. The raking chestnut which carries
him so well amid the pastures of Leicestershire, and
which is the admiration of the grooms at the ' George/
knows the utter futility of attempting to free herself
when in one of her moods from the iron hands that never
move from her withers. The favourite pupil of Alick
Eeed, there are few more awkward customers to encounter
at a bout with the gloves than Davie who quicker than
he at out-fighting or more clever in avoiding a rally ?
To watch him ' on the bench' handling an unruly team is
a study of strength, tact, and patience ; how soon the
restive wheelers and the recalcitrant leaders find out that
obstinacy is a mistake, and put an end to their opposition
by stepping as well together as if they had been accus-
tomed to leave Piccadilly every morning at ten and trot
back in the evening at seven. "Watch Davie turn in to
scale after a three-mile match, ' lOst. 71b. each, owners
up,' over a stiffish hunting country : he is as cool and
228 CLUB CAMEOS.
calm as if lie had just come out of his morning tub,
whilst his opponent is breathing like a walrus and
streaming like a waterfall. Many a broad-shouldered
powerful Goliath has had to acknowledge himself beaten
by the endurance of this effeminate-looking David on
the moors of Scotland, amid the streams of Norway and
Canada, on the track of the big game, and wherever
sport and pluck cater for disciples.
'It is all a question of condition,' says Davie
quietly; 'the only difference between me and other
men is that I am always in condition, whilst other
men only occasionally are. A man says he will ride
against me or run me for a mile or row against me
from Putney to Mortlake, and forthwith he goes
into severe training, but the moment the match is
over drops back to his old life : dines late, takes
brandies-and-sodas, eats too much, sleeps too much,
drinks too much, everything too much, and substitutes
mooning for exercise. It is not the training that
does a man harm; it is the life he leads after the
training, the sudden revulsion from a systematic asceti-
cism to unbridled luxury. I am always in training,
and my weight does not fluctuate a pound in a twelve-
month. It is true I sit up late except when I am
going to ride or men have made some match or other
for me but as I never smoke and seldom drink it
WITS.
229
affects me less than it otherwise might. Besides, a man
who is always taking severe exercise does not require
much sleep. It is your idle, well-fed, luxurious man
about town who is always ready for slumber. The prize
pig cannot keep awake ; a few hours' sleep is ample for
the racehorse.'
He has need for this asceticism. What wealth,
rank, and education are to other men, coolness, temper-
ance, and endurance are to Davie. His physical quali-
ties are his stock-in-trade, and should his nerve fail or
he damage himself permanently steeplechasing, he would,
metaphorically, have to put the shutters up and take
the benefit of the act. Though he insures heavily in
the ' Accidental,' the sum he would receive in case of
mutilation or incapacity would, I fear, be but a poor
compensation for the loss of income he would sustain.
What Davie' s income is it is difficult to ascertain, but
it must be considerable. A man cannot lead the life he
does, ride the horses he does, play the points he does,
know the men he does, or undertake the financial opera-
tions he does, without having at his disposal a large
amount of ready money. How does he amass it ? If
you study his career the reply is not difficult to find.
In these days of fierce competition, when every
calling is crowded with pushing, eager, greedy fol-
lowers, every man who comes to the front has some-
230 CLUB CAMEOS.
thing of great merit in him. He may not have all
the brilliant qualities his friends allege, but assuredly
he is not the mediocrity his enemies declare. In
his own peculiar vocation Davie is a prominent man,
and consequently a successful one. My acquaintance
with him is slight, but whenever we meet he is always
agreeable, and I am under obligations to him for pick-
ing me up, for a mere song, the handsomest roan cob
that was ever trotted out at the Eanelagh. Nor do I
fail to confess that there is much in Davie which calls
forth my admiration. I respect his skill, his courage,
his manly tastes and the splendid self-control he always
exhibits. I have never seen him lose his temper, and I
have heard less against his honour honour nowadays
being confined to the fulfilment of all pecuniary obliga-
tions than one would expect from the peculiar life he
leads. If he rides it is generally safe to back his mount ;
and if he does not rigidly eschew all the frauds of the
turf, he has never acted in such a way as to draw upon
himself censure, or to justify the desertion of his sup-
porters. When he puts down his name, either at home
or abroad, as one of the competitors at a dove tourna-
ment, he means to kill his bird, and it is through no
fault or conspiracy of his if the blue-rock flies over the
enclosure. His debts of honour are always scrupulously
paid. When you make a bet with him he does not pre-
WITS.
231
tend to do you a favour, and then give you a point
below the current odds. You may safely play ecarte
with him so far as scoring the king is concerned, though
it is only fair to tell you that there are few men at the
' Mediterranee' at Nice who better know the game. If
he sells you a horse he will certainly make his profit on
the transaction, but the probability is that you will get
a better and a cheaper animal than from the dealers.
In short Davie knows the world so well as to be fully
232 CLUB CAMEOS.
alive to the advantages to be gained by having the repu-
tation of a fair character. Honesty is not only morally
the best policy, but also pecuniarily.
The social position that Davie occupies is, as I have
said, a mystery to those of his acquaintance. He never
speaks of his relations or of his early days, and that in
itself is a secrecy somewhat open to suspicion. Men as
a rule, after a certain amount of acquaintance, have no
objection to let their fellows know to whom they belong,
where they have been educated, and what county is-
their home ; it is only the adventurer who is silent on
such subjects. To repeat the rumours as to Davie's
origin which gossip and calumny indulge in is idle.
According to some, the bar sinister lies across his
escutcheon ; according to others, his parentage is legi-
timate, but his father was a convict, an unfrocked priest,
a hatter, a horse-coper, a bankrupt warehouseman, a
barrister, an undertaker, a soldier, a sailor, a tinker, a
tailor ; all which simply proves that my friend knows
how to keep his own counsel ; and that the world, as it
always does when it is in utter ignorance about any-
thing, substitutes imagination for information. What-
ever may be Davie's antecedents, his social sponsor is
Sir Eankesborough Gorse, the well-known sportsman
and pillar of the turf. Where Sir Eankesborough met
Davie and how an alliance between the two sprang up
WITS.
2 33
are questions which the inquisitive have not yet solved.
Certain it is that Davie is the managing man of Sir
Eankesborough's stud and controls all its arrangements,
from the purchase of the yearlings to the dismissal of
the trainer. He executes all Sir Eankesborough's racing-
commissions, rides when required, and his opinion is law
in the stable. More than once has his judgment been
confirmed against an adverse majority; and in spite of
the objections of the trainer and the fears of his patron,
more than once has he selected some despised and over-
looked animal which has carried the ' black and silver'
colours of the baronet to victory. Can we not remember
the hostility of the ring against Whitesocks, and how
severe were the comments of the learned in horseflesh
upon his somewhat abject appearance ? yet Davie never
once faltered in his decision, and, as we all know, the
horse won ' the Guineas' in the commonest of canters.
A knowledge of the noble animal is a great gift, and
Davie ranks second to none in the possession of that
information. Dealers know better than to palm off any
of their dodges upon ' Sir Eankesborough's man' their
flattery, their doctoring, and all their cunning never
deceive the keen cold eye that takes in at a glance both
the character of the vendor and the points of the ani-
mal. I will back Davie to pick up a horse cheaper and
sell it at a better profit than any man in England,
234 CLUB CAMEOS.
whilst seldom incurring after reproaches from the pur-
chaser.
The intimacy between Sir Eankesborough Gorse and
David Benson is one of those friendships which benefits
both the contracting parties. Since Davie has had the
control of the baronet's stable the ' black and silver' has
had no cause to complain ; race after race has fallen to
Sir Eankesborough's colours, till his lot have become
the idols of the public. He has not yet won a Derby,
but there is a certain yearling, bought by Davie at
Marden Park some months ago, which will, I am sure,
astonish the beholders when he makes his appearance
on the Downs. To win a Derby is the one soul-absorb-
ing ambition of Sir Eankesborough an ambition which,
unless I grievously mistake, will be gratified when the
time arrives for that yearling aforesaid to strip in the
paddock. On the other hand, * the f 'la that Sir Eankes-
borough picked up' has been admitted into a social
atmosphere which, under less happy circumstances, he
would not have breathed. It is through Sir Eankes-
borough that Davie has been elected a member of the
Caravanserai and of the Verdure ; it is through his con-
nection with Sir Eankesborough that he gathers together
the select specimens of la jeunesse doree of our capital
that are so often to be met with at his hospitable dining-
table at Long's Hotel ; it is to Sir Eankesborough that
WITS.
2 35
he owns his introduction to the messes of most of the
crack regiments in the kingdom ; in short, without the
baronet, Davie would have remained a little stagnant
puddle, isolated and alone, and hopelessly cut off from
ever mingling with the brilliant stream of life.
Yet Davie, large as is his acquaintance, is essen-
tially a man's man. "Walk with him in the Park, and
it is astonishing the number of friendly greetings that
he has to acknowledge ; but he has seldom an occasion
to remove his hat, for rarely does a bonnet bow to him
in graceful salutation. Men ask him freely to dinner
at their clubs, but never dream of taking him home and
introducing him to their wives and sisters. You meet
him at bachelors' boxes, not at country houses. When-
ever Davie talks about ladies he calls them 'modest
women' which the spiteful say shows that he knows
very little of society. Intimate as he is with Sir
Eankesborough, he no more knows Lady Mildred Gorse
than does her ladyship's house-steward or head-groom.
K"or does Davie object to this exclusion. "Whether the
society of ladies would bore him, or he is conscious of
his social shortcomings, or whatever be the reason, he
never seems hurt that his most intimate acquaintance
keeps the women of his household from him, nor does
he ever attempt to push his way into drawing-room or
boudoir. He is quite content with his position in life
236 CLUB CAMEOS.
and the manner lie has played his cards, and he no more
regrets that the doors of society are shut upon him than
does a ring-man at Ascot that he is not admitted into
the royal enclosure. Not that Davie is in any way
objectionable, for, on the contrary, he is far more modest
and presentable than many of his betters who have the
entree of the best houses in the town. If he is not ' a
gentleman' he is an excellent imitation of the article ;
and if in manners, dress, and appearance somewhat
horsey, in tone of honour and in sense of self-respect he
is often the superior of those who sneer at him as ' the
fellah Sir Eankesborough picked up.' The position
occupied by Davie is, however, not an exceptional one.
There are many men in London who, from their talents,
their skill, their amusing qualities, their special know-
ledge of special subjects, live on the surface of society,
comfortabty, perhaps brilliantly, yet, by some tacit
understanding between them and those they come in
contact with, they never seek to penetrate deeper. A
frontier line is drawn, and it must not be overstepped.
The club, the suite of chambers, the hunting-box, the
shooting-box, the moor, the deer-forest, the yacht, as
much as you please; but the drawing-room requires
credentials which it is not given to every one to possess.
That passport is not among Davie' s papers.
However uncertain and nondescript may be the
WITS. 237
social position of Davie, there can be no question as to
the certainty and substantiality of his income. In these
days, when the professions are thronged, and commerce
is venturesome, save to the large capitalist, a man might
do worse, so far as money is concerned, than follow in
the steps of Davie. The occupation of the viveur upon
his wits is, however, not the simple matter it may
appear to the ignorant. As the barrister has to study
law, as the doctor has to walk the hospitals, as the mer-
chant has to learn the duties of a clerk, and as the
tradesman begins by being an apprentice, so men like
Davie have to acquire their part and perfect themselves
Toy severe application. That consummate skill in all
their accomplishments, that steadiness of nerve, that
coolness of head which neither the excitement of success
intoxicates nor the mortification of failure irritates, that
power of enduring fatigue, that pluck and strength, are
not obtained without continual practice and the severest
application. Watch Davie at Sandown or Croydon, at
Liverpool or Warwick: with what judgment he rides,
what patience he has, how well he knows when to force
the running and when to wait upon his horses, and how
exactly at the right time does he make his effort and
scores another victory for the black and silver ! Have
that skill and judgment been obtained by aught than the
severest labour? Mark Davie at the Gun Club, at
238 CLUB CAMEOS.
Baden, at Monaco, at Deauville, when he has backed
himself to win a heavy sweepstake, or is pitted in a
match against a formidable dove-slayer the roar of the
ring never disturbs him, the hopes of his admirers never
fluster him, the consciousness of the fact that success
may mean a fortune and defeat a heavy loss never ruffles
his equanimity ; he takes his breech-loader calmly from
the man, surveys the brazen-throated book-makers with
a smile, makes a few additional bets, perhaps, as he takes
up his position, then, 'Are you ready?' 'Pull!' covers
his bird, and the day must be very bad, or the blue-rock
wonderfully wild, if it does not fall a victim on the sward.
How many hours must he have spent before he educated
his eye to attain that unerring aim ! Again, watch
Davie at billiards : how softly he plays his l cannons' and
makes his ' hazards,' whilst always managing to leave
nothing on the table for his opponent ! At pool, too,
who more dead at taking l lives,' or who more clever in
nestling himself under the cushion, than he ? But it is
perhaps at whist that his peculiar gifts are the most daz-
zling. He has all the qualities necessary for a whist-
player of the very first class a splendid memory, a
perfect temper, a clear head never clouded by the fumes
of wine or tobacco (Oh, those after-dinner rubbers !), great
powers of combination and concentration, and a lightning
quickness for drawing inferences. He plays high the
WITS.
2 39
loss of a ' bumper' at the Verdure is no joke and when as
confident in his partner as he is in his own genius, he
does not scruple to back himself to a considerable extent.
Yet his self-control never deserts him. Your true-born
Englishman, as a rule, when he is winning stops and
pockets his gains, whilst he will back his ill-fortune to
any extent, and plunge deeper and deeper, in the hopes
of regaining his losses.
Davie is wiser in his generation. "When in luck he
24 o CLUB CAMEOS.
soon rushes his opponents into money. ' The great art
of gambling,' he says, ( is to avoid losing your own coin,
and to play boldly when Fortune favours you with your
gains.' This theory he carries into practice. "When he
loses four rubbers running or five games ofecarte straight
off he withdraws from the table. ' I wish whist,' he re-
marks, ' to last me all my life ; and if you lose four rub-
bers running, luck is against you, and you may, if you con-
tinue, lose another ten. No matter what are the points,
to take up bad hand after bad hand interferes with
your play and robs you of the pleasure of the game.'
Like most men who gamble, Davie is a believer in luck ;
and, however much one may be unable logically to de-
monstrate that there is such a thing, there can be no
question as to the fact of its existence. Any one who
plays cards must have noticed how often Fortune clings
to one man or to certain seats during an evening, whilst
ill-luck of the most persistent description marks another
man or the opposite seat for its own. "Why ? How ?
"Who can tell? Watch the lucky man: what honours
he holds, what cards he has, and how well he is always
supported by his partner ! The unlucky man, on the
other hand, cannot escape from his temporary bad for-
tune ; he may call for fresh cards, he may change his
seat, he may adjure the fickle goddess by all the strangest
forms of propitiation, yet the spell cannot be broken.
WITS.
241
Since I have heard Davie's remarks, how often have
I noticed that a man who loses four rubbers running
continues to lose, and how often have five adverse games
at ecarte developed into ten and more ! In all specula-
tions nothing is certain; but as luck is on the whole
even in its operations, he who is a good whist-player,
and who declines to follow a run of misfortune, cannot
fail to rise up a winner at the end of the year. Hence
to Davie whist alone must be a comfortable annuity.
The young men at the Caravanserai to whom Davie
is somewhat of an idol often speculate as to the sums
he makes in a year. That he amasses wealth cannot be
doubted. He is one of those men who whatever they
touch turns into coin. "What arrangements Sir Kankes-
borough enters into with him we know not ; but Davie
must draw a handsome share of the profits of the stable
in addition to the sums he independently backs himself
for when confident of his mount. From billiards and pool
alone he must derive the income of a county court judge.
Whist yields him large profits, which are considerably
increased by his operations of systematically laying 'five
to two' on the winners of the first game. ' I began,' he
openly admits, in reference to these operations, ' with a
capital of one thousand pounds my capital, though it
has had to bear some smartish fluctuations, is always
intact at the end of the year, whilst my profits quite
TV
242 CLUB CAMEOS.
satisfy my modest requirements. To any man in search
of a livelihood, I recommend the profession of laying
five to two. The odds are always eagerly taken and
seldom landed. Let a man begin with a capital of one
hundred pounds, let him make himself acquainted with
the respective merits of the players he is to back, and
then let him systematically lay five pounds to two using
of course his judgment when to decline and he will
preserve his capital untouched, and make without
difficulty three hundred a year.' Davie lays fifty to
twenty, therefore the profits he derives from his pro-
ceedings can easily be ascertained by a simple sum of
rule of three. Having an extensive acquaintance with
men, the ' books' he makes on all the large races must
allow him after every meeting to place a handsome
sum at his bankers'.
Of late dark gentlemen with almond eyes, beaky
noses, curly locks, and moist yellow complexions have
been seen coming out of Davie's chambers, and I hear
that my active young friend has recently taken to
utilise his capital by indulging in certain very profit-
able speculations in land. Thus what with riding,
betting, horse-coping, cards, billiards, pigeon-shooting,,
and backing himself generally for anything that he is
likely to win, Davie must turn over annually a very
handsome income. Knowledge is power, and the pos-
WITS. 243
session of wits is wealth. I do not say that . the career
is a perfectly reputable one yet Davie has never been
guilty of anything glaringly disreputable still it has
the advantage of being open to all who are endowed with
the requisite physical and intellectual gifts. You do not
require education, for from the mistakes in orthography
that Davie makes in his letters asking you to dinner,
and from the peculiar pronunciation of certain words, he
can scarcely be called an educated man. You do not
require good birth, or even good manners, or even capital
to enter upon this somewhat outside profession. Still,
though you may dispense with the learning from books,
you must possess qualities which are, perhaps, after all
rarer to find than the attainments of the scholar, before
you can hope to make such a livelihood as falls to the lot
of Davie Benson, Esq., of the north.
THE OLD SCHOOL.
THE OLD SCHOOL.
THERE are few things more distressing to a reflective
mind than the attitude which the Church of England
has assumed within the last generation. Disguise the
matter as much as we may, there can be no doubt of the
fact that the Anglican Church is fast becoming a Komish
institution. In spite of the bench of bishops, the Thirty-
nine Articles, and the decisions of the courts of law,
many of our clergy preach to their congregations the
creed pure and simple of the Eoman Catholic Church.
Enter many of our places of worship in London and
in our country towns, and, unless told to the contrary,
we might imagine that we were under the sway of the
Vatican. The altar is gorgeously draped and lighted ;
incense renders the air heavy and sickly; the conse-
crated elements are held aloft for adoration ; confession
is openly taught from the pulpit and practised in the
aisles ; the clergy, not content with the title of priest,
insist upon the designation of 'father;' banners with
strange devices hang against the walls ; and forms and
248 CLUB CAMEOS.
ceremonies unknown to the Establishment are freely
introduced into the services.
Between Eitualism on the one hand and Eesearch on
the other, it seems to me that the dear old Church
of England of my youth must fall to the ground. It
was once the pride of Englishmen to regard the creed
they professed as the best and purest of all religions. It
was manly without being destructive ; it was Catholic
without mummery ; it was warmly attached to the State,
and its teachers were gentlemen. Can the same now be
said of the Church of England ? In one parish we see a
clergyman ashamed of his garb and his title ; dressing
like a layman and dropping the reverend; criticising
the Bible as he would any ordinary historical work, and
dismissing many of what have been considered the great
truths of Christianity as unworthy of acceptance by any
rational mind. Whilst in another parish we see its vicar
acting more like an Italian than an Englishman, and
doing his utmost to put down the Protestantism of the
Church which he has solemnly sworn to support, and to
erect in its place the faith of the Papacy. I decline
to split hairs. I know that our Eitualists maintain
they are not Papists ; but when I see them inculcating
the teaching of Eome, issuing little books of devotion
coolly plagiarised from those of Eome, and imitating in
their ceremonies, their attire, and their institutions the
THE OLD SCHOOL.
249
practices of Eome, it seems to me perfectly justifiable to
say that they are Italian, and not English, Churchmen.
And it is from the Eitualists that we have the most
to fear. The Broad Churchman appeals to the few
whose intellect is stronger than their faith; but the
Eitualist appeals to that immense class, idle, weak,
emotional, in whom the superstitious element is stronger
than the intellectual. No one who has watched, even
most superficially, the currents of society but must have
250 CLUB CAMEOS.
perceived how they set, especially among the higher, or,
to speak more correctly, the wealthier classes, towards
Eitualism. We are living under a plutocracy, and
Eitualism is essentially the religion for the rich. In
Eitualism plutocracy sees itself reflected: it is the
caricature of an ancient faith, as the plutocrat is himself
the caricature of the aristocrat ; it is gay and gaudy,
and fond of pomp and show like the plutocrat; it is
arrogant and self-asserting, its priests concealing their
want of birth and scholarship by the robes of sacerdotal
pretensions, as the plutocrat himself attempts to hide his
deficiencies by the display of his wealth and money
power ; it is shallow, unscrupulous, and miserably
effeminate. Yet no sensible man can attempt to deny
that Eitualism is now an immense force in the country,
and one that is daily extending its power.
A society that is rich, that is idle, that has little to
occupy its leisure, must betake itself to some form of
distraction. Men have their professions and their ambi-
tion to engage their minds ; but it is upon the women
that idleness falls as a rule with so heavy a hand. Balls,
dinners, and intrigue that is politely called flirtation
will occupy the leisure of many ; still there are others
to whom social dissipation is a routine of boredom, and
who seek after a more refined excitement. If they have
a taste for art, science, or literature, they are fortunate ;
THE OLD SCHOOL. 251
but these are the exceptions, not the rule. And now it
is that that strange creation of the nineteenth century,
the Anglican priest, steps in and opens out a path for
work and action. The young woman whose matrimonial
chances are not yet decided, the disappointed middle-
aged woman, the elderly dame with no domestic cares,
all find their allotted labour a round of ceremonial
observances and duties occupy all their leisure. The
nineteenth- century dame, be she spinster, childless wife,
or widow, need have no cause to mourn over the leaden
wings of Time. The Eitualist comes to her aid, and
ennui and inactivity are no more. What with attending
early celebrations, matins, confession, vespers, and mid-
night services ; attaching herself to a sisterhood ; visit-
ing a certain class of sick and poor under strict clerical
supervision ; interesting herself in church decorations,
pestering her friends for endless contributions, and dis-
tributing little sentimental works of devotion, the day
is, in fact, too short for her so short, indeed, that she
is often unable to assist her mother in the concerns of
her household, or to add by her presence to the geniality
of the domestic circle.
We are so wealthy that we wish our religion, like
our houses and other appointments, to be in keeping.
The robes of our clergy must be splendid; and our
clergy, who are now for the most part literates instead
252 CLUB CAMEOS.
of graduates, have 110 objection that the cope should hide
the want of the university hood ; our churches must be
ornate and artistic ; we must have music, flowers, ban-
ners, elaborate altar-cloths, and everything that fasci-
nates the eye and inspires the senses. The old-fashioned
faith of our fathers has gone to its rest, and save in
some obscure village, where people go to worship and
not to perform, is hard to be met with. Sentimental
pietism is now religion; an adherence to a host of silly
ceremonial observances stands in the place of duty ; and
faith is now only another word for a belief in the ' priest.'
It is idle to talk to Englishmen of the devotion of the
Anglican priest, the purity of the Anglican nun, and the
zeal of the Anglican monk now working within our
midst. Innovators are always zealous and devoted till
their system is established. But we have had the sys-
tem before ; and we know, three hundred years ago,
what the priesthood, the nunnery, and the monastic
order resulted in. History is apt to repeat itself; we
have no wish to see those scenes repeated.
There is one dear friend of mine who cordially sym-
pathises with these views, whom it is always a great
pleasure to see at the Caravanserai. Hubert Marborough
is a type of the old English clergyman which is, un-
happily for us, fast dying out. A man of unfeigned
piety, an active yet not fussily inquisitive rector, a good
THE OLD SCHOOL.
253
classic, and a most perfect gentleman in all his tastes
and feelings, lie is the last of that class which Sydney
Smith called the ' squarsons.' A second son, he was
destined for holy orders, and was duly installed in the
family living of Hettiscombe. Ten years after having
taken his ordination vows, his elder brother was drowned
with his only son whilst yachting in the Mediterranean,
and Hubert suddenly found himself transformed from a
country parson, with a living of eight hundred a year,
into a squire with a rent-roll of some annual twelve
thousand. Many men under these circumstances would
have quitted the Church, and have forgotten the priest
in the country gentleman. Not so Hubert Marborough.
He exchanged the rectory for the old hall, letting his
curates dwell in the house that he had deserted ; but he
still worked his parish, visited his poor, and preached
his sermons as became a man who had put his hand to
the plough and declined to look back.
The only difference that fortune made in him was to
extend immensely his powers for doing good. He pays
his curates well, neither patronising them nor despising
them, but treating them like gentlemen, though he is
very particular as to their belonging either to the one
or the other of our two Universities, and to their style
of reading. He can forgive a young clergyman a good
many things, but he will not forgive him for dropping.
254
CLUB CAMEOS.
his A's or making a false quantity. He has established
a dispensary and a good useful library, in which humor-
ous works are not excluded, in the village. He sees
that every cottage on his estate is put into repair, and
made not only habitable but comfortable. One of the
sternest of magistrates on the bench to the tramp and
the vagrant, his hand is ever ready to alleviate misery
and suffering. Nor does he perform his acts of charity
by deputy, for none knows better than he how a kind
THE OLD SCHOOL. 255
word and a friendly greeting enhance a gift from the
rich to the poor. It is his hand that often tucks the
warm clean blankets around the bed of the rheumatic
peasant, or administers the nourishing soup or the dry
old port to the weak and the sickly. It is his smile and
chat that are almost as welcome to the honest man
temporarily out of work as is the little present of ready
money. The poor dame, who has just become a mother,
knows well enough to whom to apply, if she is ordered
by the village doctor what it is impossible for her hus-
band to supply her with. Though an opulent squire,
the chairman of quarter sessions, and allied by marriage
to a powerful earl in his county, none of the poor stand
in awe of him. If they want advice or assistance they
scruple less to go to him than to one of the curates.
Yet, gentle and loving as is their pastor, they know
better than to try to use any of the wiles of the sup-
pliant. In spite of his large heart and intense amiability,
Hubert Marborough has a keen eye for character, and
can be as repellent as the harshest if he suspect imposi-
tion. He is the tenderest of shepherds to his flock, but
he is quite up to all the gambols of the black sheep.
Of all the broad counties in England I know no
fairer than that of let me call it Quartzshire. For
the combination of mountain and moor, wood and water,
it stands unrivalled. To the artist with his aasthetic
256 CLUB CAMEOS.
eye, its hilly passes, richly-clothed valleys, thickly-tim-
bered forests, and picturesque varieties which the land-
scape is ever unfolding, are as full of charm as are the
well-stocked trout-streams and the wild moorland, broken
by hill and dale, to the sportsman. In one of its most
lovely spots, watered by the broad current of let me
say the Mica, and within gunshot of the spledid Knole
Wood, stands Hettiscombe, a large white building with
columns and porticoes, on the brow of one of the nu-
merous undulations that surround the neighbourhood.
A fine park, severed in twain by a lake fed by the river
Mica, encircles the house, whilst in the rear is the
wood, with its tall waving firs and mysteries of shade.
Away in the distance the great upland region of Sleign-
moor can be seen, with all its variety of hill and valley,
bog and stream ; whilst, like Cyclopean castles, the
gigantic masses of weathered granite rise at intervals to
crown the famous Tors.
Approaching the house, one sees from the balconied
terraces and well-kept lawn and gardens that the place
is carefully looked after; yet it is not merely as a
country seat that Hettiscombe is dear to me. No doubt,
amid the stately mansions of this old England of ours,
there is many a castle and hall which, so far as archi-
tecture, luxury, and appointments are concerned, is the
superior of Hettiscombe ; but where shall I find such a
THE OLD SCHOOL. 257
home ? Eunning down from London, with its cynical
tone, its artificial pleasures, and its wearying round of
excitement, to Quartzshire, no sooner have you passed
a couple of days with the family of Hubert Marborough
than you look upon life very differently from what you
have been accustomed to do in Pall Mall. Perhaps, for
the first time, it strikes you that there is something
higher than mere pleasure, something nobler than selfish-
ness, something truer and more comforting than mundane
philosophy. The manner in which a man brings up his
family has always been to me the best test of his character
and of the strength of his principles, and I know no
more charming sight than the home-life of Hettiscombe.
The daughters are simple, well-bred, and unaffected ; the
sons are free from the slang of the barrack and the stable ;
whilst between parents and children, and husband and
wife, there is that exquisite harmony of feeling caused
by affection, self-respect, and a clear conscience.
A spirit of the most fascinating cheerfulness pervades
the whole establishment, and even finds itself reflected
amongst the stable-helps, a notoriously discontented
class. The old vicar talks to his wife as if the honey-
moon had never dissolved itself into the silver wedding,
and the sisters only wrangle amongst themselves in
trying to spoil their brothers when on leave from their
regiments, or at home during f the Long.' Though the
s
2 5 8
CLUB CAMEOS.
house is seldom free from visitors, yet there is no need
for the presence of the stranger to give a fillip to the
often monotonous round of domesticity. The vicar is
quite happy among his books and papers, thinning his
trees, cantering about the moorland on his old white
hunter, or making a round of calls in the parish. Lady
Mary, it seems to me, is never so content as when, in
big hat and gauntlet gloves, she is pottering about the
garden, whilst her husband, in the roomiest of Indian
THE OLD SCHOOL. 259
chairs, is seated within call, studying the advertise-
ments in the Field, or reading the clerical speeches in
the Guardian. The girls amuse themselves in a
thousand ways with a sense of consideration for each
other's tastes and wishes not always to be observed
amongst sisters; whilst the brothers seem so proud of
the successes of each other Hal has got the good-
conduct sword at Woolwich, Dick has won the cup as
best shot at Hythe, Eeggie has been complimented by
the judge for the way in which he conducted his case
as utterly to preclude all feelings of secret jealousy.
When the visitor arrives he is made not only welcome,
but feels, no matter how shy by nature, completely at
home. Without any fuss or obtrusive activity, he finds
the whole family consulting his wishes, laying before
him proposals exactly in accordance with his tastes,
leaving him alone when he desires, or giving him plenty
of society when solitude is unacceptable.
And one of the charms of Hettiscombe is, that you
never meet disagreeable people. However cantankerous
a man's or woman's nature is, I do not believe he or she
could be long in that irritable state under the influence
of the cheery piety of the rector, and of the sunny pre-
sence of his household. The most suspicious cannot but
feel, however much they may differ from him, that
Hubert Marborough is a good and single-minded man.
260 CLUB CAMEOS.
Listen to his conversation, watch him as narrowly as
you please in all the relations of life, hear him pray and
preach, observe the example he sets his family, and you
cannot come to any other conclusion than that you are in
the society of one who, without a doubt or reservation,
believes in the doctrine he professes, and essays to carry
out all that it teaches. A Low Churchman of the old
school, he is as devoid of the intolerance and acidity of
certain of his brethren as he is of the mummery and
sickly sentimentalities of the Ritualist. He is an Eng-
lishman, with the healthy tastes and aspirations of an
Englishman. Old as he is there are few men in his part
of the county, did he think hunting a sport that became
his profession, who are better riders to hounds ; and in
spite of his waning sight I would sooner back the rec-
tor's breechloader to bring down more birds, either in
the coverts or on the moors, than that of many a
younger man who fancies i himself.'
Marborough can get on with most people, and long as
I have known him never have I heard him utter a spite-
ful remark or give heed to scandal. Frivolous and ma-
licious gossip he abominates, and its entire absence from
the conversation of the household of Hettiscombe is one
of the peculiarities of that charming home. Never do you
hear any of the slander about the lord-lieutenant, the
bishop, or the neighbouring clergy and gentry, which
THE OLD SCHOOL. 261
forms so large a part of the conversation of the country.
The rector's maxim is that of good old Archbishop Tillot-
son, if you can say no good of a man, at least say no evil.
Yet there is one class of people he cannot agree with.
He sternly refuses to countenance the Ritualists. He
can understand, and to a certain extent sympathise with,
a man who is a Roman Catholic or a Dissenter or a Jew
or even a Freethinker, but he can neither understand
nor sympathise with one whom he regards as a traitor to
the Church of England. To his keen sense of honour it
.seems inconceivable that a man should continue to draw
his stipend from the Church whose teaching he declines
to accept and whose discipline he seeks to subvert. It is
open to any one who differs from the creed of the Church
of England to go outside her pale ; but, in the opinion of
Marborough, it is mean and dishonest in the extreme to
receive the pay of the Church and to wear her uniform
whilst working for the enemy. In vain the Ritualists
around Hettiscombe have sought to convert Hubert
Marborough to their way of thinking. His church is
sound, solid, air-tight, water-tight, warm, and comfortable;
he will not have it l restored.' Vestments have no charms
for him ; when he reads prayers he wears his surplice
and university hood, and when he preaches he appears
in the pulpit in a black gown. He does not believe in
incessant church services and in constant celebrations of
262 CLUB CAMEOS.
the Holy Communion, for in his eyes these only fatigue
the clergy and make worship mechanical. But he believes
in helping the sick and needy, in visiting the widow in
her affliction, and in succouring the distressed. "When
spoken to of the advantages of the system of confession,
he mildly replies that he ' has travelled in Italy, France,
and Spain, and he has yet to learn that the morality in
those countries is superior to that in England.'
During the month of May, when the meetings at
Exeter Hall and St. James's Hall are held, my host of
Hettiscombe always turns up at the Caravanserai. His
figure is quite one of the curiosities of the club. There
is no mistaking that tall slender form, now somewhat
bowed with age, that high broad-brimmed hat with the
healthy smiling face beneath, that frill jutting out of the
black sporting-looking waistcoat, till it loses itself within
the folds of the capacious white neckcloth ; no mistaking
that loose untidy-looking black coat, with the side-
pockets wide open, suggestive of samples ; those wonder-
ful trousers, tight below the knee, yet voluminous enough
in all conscience above; those rough cloth gaiters;
those thick serviceable shoes ! Thus attired, the rector-
squire looks the very opposite of many of his clerical
brethren, with their smug suits of shiny black and their
atrocious head-gear a hideous compromise between a
billycock and the hat of a cardinal.
THE OLD SCHOOL. 263
There are many married men to whom a run up
to London and a fortnight at the club are the most
delightful of changes. Not so with Hubert Marborough.
As he wanders about the rooms of the Caravanserai,
taking up one newspaper after the other, fidgeting about
from chair to chair, you can see at a glance that he is
not at home. At breakfast the little table, with its
bachelor equipments, is a poor substitute for the long
broad board at Hettiscombe, with its snow-white cloth
and graceful medley of fruit and flowers amid the
toast and scones and rolls and the old-fashioned silver
dishes. He misses, like most men blessed with many
children, the talk and society of the family circle ; and
he says his tea never tastes the same unless poured out
by his eldest daughter. When he surveys the daily bill
of fare, swinging on its frame, he looks at it helplessly,
undecidedly, and is grateful to the butler when he sug-
gests what should be ordered for dinner. He agrees
with the Apostle, that a little wine for the stomach's
sake is a good thing ; and he also agrees with the Apostle
that it should be wine, and not logwood juice, or some
other vile decoction calculated to give the drinker acute
heartburn within twenty minutes. At Hettiscombe he
knows he can rely upon the contents of his cellar-book ;
.. but the club wine-list is a publication with which he is
not so familiar ; the names of many of the wine-mer-
264
CLUB CAMEOS.
chants are new to him ; several of the clarets are un-
known to him; and as he sips his port-wine after
dinner (our ports are not famous at the Caravanserai)
I fancy he sighs after the vintages he is accustomed to
at home. He declines to take a house in town for the
season, because he is unwilling to quit his parish for
any length of time ; and as his wife and daughters have
no fancy to leave the country when it is most beautiful
THE OLD SCHOOL. 265
for the dust and heat of London, the rector generally
spends his month en garcon. Occasionally his family
come up ; but after three weeks at Thomas's Hotel they
pine for the shade and breezes of their west-country
home, and take their departure.
As the club scarcely suits the domestic instincts of
my friend, it is very fortunate that he has seldom occa-
sion to find himself within its walls. As a representative
Low Churchman, and one of the pillars of the National,
Hubert ]\larborough is the welcome guest of the London
evangelical world. He dines out at sedate mansions,
where the festivities of the evening conclude with an
exposition of Scripture and family prayers. At evan-
gelical Drawing-rooms, assembled to encourage mission-
ary or philanthropic enterprise, he often takes the chair,
and offers a handsome contribution to the institution
pleaded for when the velvet bag or china plate makes
its begging round. He is always one of the speakers
at the anniversaries of the great Low Church societies,
and has frequently been asked to preach their annual
sermon. He is on the committee of most of the reli-
gious institutions of his party, and is the president of
one or two little benevolent ' homes' and 'refuges,' which
he has founded, and which, if the truth were known,
are mainly supported by his generosity. Young ladies
who write anecdotes of the poor, or little stories with a
266 CLUB CAMEOS.
moral, are always petitioning him to draw up a preface,
or to allow them to introduce his name, so as to en-
courage the sale of their literary undertakings. For the
rector-squire of Hettiscombe, apart from the sermons
and addresses that he has published, is one of the most
fertile of the polemical writers of his party. Not a
movement is made by the Eitualists but he exposes the
danger to be apprehended from their insidious proceed-
ings. No sooner does a freethinking divine indulge in re-
flections contrary to the spirit and teaching of the Thirty-
nine Articles than the rector of Hettiscombe boldly comes
to the front, and does his best to refute them.
Thus Hubert Marborough, from his social position,
his wealth, and his decided views, is looked up to as
one of the leaders of his party. His advice is courted
by his bishop, and young evangelical vicars and curates
decline to form an opinion upon any great clerical
question until they know the views of the divine of
Hettiscombe. My friend no doubt has his faults, like
all of us ; but when his exquisite conscientiousness,
his single-minded piety, his high tone of honour, his
practice to the very letter of all that he preaches, are
compared with the life and morality of the rest of the
world, he seems to me one of the very few who really
deserve that noblest title on the roll of Honour, that
of a Christian and a gentleman.
SOCIAL AMBITION.
SOCIAL AMBITION.
EVER since the days when Horace asked of Maecenas
how it came to pass that no one was satisfied with the
position that the gods had placed him in, discontent has
been the lot of humanity. "What is a source of envy to
one man is a source of disappointment to another. Here
is a distinguished statesman, whose lofty wisdom has
influenced the councils of Cabinets and guided the
policy of the State ; yet in his heart of hearts he would
gladly sacrifice all his past reputation could he but gain
a niche in the temple of fame as a great author. There
is a gallant soldier, whose broad breast, covered with
hardly-won decorations, bears witness to the brilliant
services he has rendered his country; yet he is indif-
ferent to the laurels won by his sword, and is only
solicitous after those he is never likely to gain by his
brush as an artist. A third sees the distance between
himself and the woolsack lessening year after year ; yet,
careless of his name as a splendid lawyer, he aspires
after the reputation of a Lovelace, and curses Nature,
which has endowed him with brains, for neglecting to
270 CLUB CAMEOS.
adorn his face. Were not Kiehelieu, Mazarin, Somers,
"Walpole, far prouder of their conquests in the boudoir
than of their victories in the Senate? A fourth has
raised himself to a leading position in the republic of
letters ; yet would he throw all his manuscripts to the
wind to be considered a man of fashion. A fifth lends
loans to empires, and by a word of acceptance or re-
fusal can influence the markets of the world ; yet all his
wealth is powerless to buy what he covets with cravings
that can never be satisfied the blue blood of ancient
lineage. Around us we see soldiers who would they
were divines, divines who would they were statesmen,
lawyers who wish to be artists, philosophers who wish
to be men of fashion, peers who would they were dema-
gogues, republicans who would sell their souls for a
coronet men of war, men of science, men of industry,
men of idleness all dissatisfied with their position in
life, and longing after the unattainable. The question
put to the illustrious descendant of Tuscan kings is as
applicable now as then. ' How is it, Maecenas,' asks the
genial pagan, ' that no one lives content with his condi-
tion, whether Eeason gave it him or Luck threw it in
his way, but praises those who have different pursuits ?'
Yet is this question only the echo of the cry of the
bard-king who had drunk the chalice of life to the very
dregs, and found the cup but vanity of vanities, all was
SOCIAL AMBITION. 271
vanity. In this best of all possible worlds no one is
completely happy, no one is so thoroughly contented
with his lot however brilliant that lot may appear to
the outsider as not to hanker after what he has not.
The barrister, up whose staircase solicitors never ascend,
no doubt looks upon the illustrious occupier of the wool-
sack as the happiest and most fortunate of men; yet
perhaps his lordship is a martyr to dyspepsia or the
gout, or his wife makes his home-life unbearable, or his
eldest son goes to the bad, or there hangs over his head
some scandal of the past which he is ever in terror of
being made public, or there is some other decoction of
the amari aliquid which mars the completeness of his
enjoyment. However well furnished our houses and
ornate their appointments, there exists a skeleton in
every cupboard; and not a tenant but fears, at some
time or other, that either he or his guests will hear the
rattling of its bones. Conscience makes cowards of us
all. We know in what particular apartment of our
mansion is suspended that attenuated spectre, and we
dread lest it walk down-stairs and expose itself to our
disgrace. Perhaps we give ourselves the airs of the
choicest Lafitte or of '42 port; how, then, should we
like the skeleton to visit our cellar and show us up as
vin ordinaire of the thinnest of vintages ? Or it may be
that we pretend to be as wealthy as our neighbour;
272
CLUB CAMEOS,
how, then, should we approve of that lean monster quit-
ting his retreat, and holding up our banker's book to the
world, and revealing our miserable shifts and petty
economies to make both ends meet ? We say we are
as brave as Agamemnon : should we care for the arm of
the skeleton to strip the lion's skin from off our shoul-
ders, and expose us in our true asinine garb ? We are
religious, and looked up to by the neighbourhood ; but
have we no stories in the book of our life to which we
would rather that that bony finger did not point ? We
are high born or well connected, and we pretend to
intimate relations with certain in the Peerage or the-
SOCIAL AMBITION.
273
Landed Gentry ; can it, then, be desirable for our cup-
board tenant to be let loose, and to disclose those little
flaws in our genealogical tree which somewhat rudely
disturb the purity, or perhaps the legitimacy, of our
descent ? And so each one of us shuts up his peculiar
skeleton, stows his bones effectively out of sight and
smell, and tries to forget that so ghastly a visitor is in
the family. But our precautions are in vain : close as
we keep the secret of its prison, not a friend who calls
upon us but is perfectly aware of the existence of our
disagreeable lodger, and, blind to the fact that we know
all about the anatomical remains in his closet, pities us
accordingly. My good sir, if you wish to preserve any-
thing from the public eye, expose it ; conceal it, and it
will be criticised, inquired into, and disclosed before you
are many hours older.
My friend, little Freddy West, has a secret which
he fancies he cleverly conceals from us of the Caravan-
serai. He, too, is under the impression that his skeleton
is most safely locked up, and that none of his friends
have ever heard its bones rattle. The son of a most
respectable City tea-merchant (everybody in Mincing-
lane knows the firm, Leaf, West, Grounds, & Co.), who
lias made a large fortune, I am given to understand, out
of his dealings with the Chinese in opium, and with the
English in bohea, Freddy declines to have any connec-
T
274 CLUB CAMEOS.
tion with the paternal warehouse. The little impostor
scorns trade and all its belongings, and, thanks to manu-
factured crest and manipulated arms, lays claim to belong
to a distinguished Kentish family. "When asked by the
stranger, in all innocence, whether he is related to the
noble house whose armorial bearings he has assumed, he
replies quietly, ' Yes, but we are the younger branch ;'
and drops the subject. In common with so many of his
class, he ' double-barrels' his name. His mother, a Miss-
Farningham, the daughter of a small country vicar, he
was christened Frederick Farningham ; and consequently
he has now blossomed forth as F. Farningham- West,
leaving the uninitiated to imagine, by the adoption of the
hyphen, that in his veins is not only the blood of the
Wests, but that he will succeed to some of the family
property. It has much amused me, when the waiter
has written Freddy's name on a bit of paper, and placed
it on the table which that young gentleman wishes to
secure for dinner, to hear one of the enlightened of the
club, on ascertaining who is to be his prandial neigh-
bour, remark, ' yes, he is one of the Delawarr lot, you
know ; his father, a younger son, married a Sackville
West, had a pot of money with her, and took the name.
That young fellow is the heir to a rattling good fortune.'
Of such is the accuracy of the world.
Whatever may be . the wealth of West pere, very
SOCIAL AMBITION. 275
little of its golden stream will flow into the pockets of
the son. Educated at Harrow and afterwards at Oriel,
Freddy, after having obtained his degree, declined to sit
on a three-legged stool, to pore over ledgers or to look
after customers. In an age which sees the sons of some
of the first families in the country covet partnerships in
good mercantile houses, young "West, whose social in-
stincts were strong, felt that he had a soul above com-
merce, and pined after a prominent position in what his
father called 'the West-end.' As he added up the
books, examined dock- warrants, or watched the expec-
torations of the tea-taster, visions of intimacies with
men of fashion, of flirtations with high-born dames, of
the portals of society opened a deux battants before him,
revealing all the pleasures and hospitalities of a graceful
and refined civilisation, conjured themselves up before
his envious gaze. He wanted to be a c swell' and to
belong to the order. He had nothing in common with
business and its surroundings. He hated the loud noisy
men, who came into the office with their hats on the
side of their heads, who slapped him vigorously on the
back and wanted 'to know if the governor was in.'
Careful and fastidious in his dress, he objected to run
about the lanes and alleys of the City on mercantile
errands, like a bank-clerk. The partners did not come
up to his standard of what gentlemen should be; he
276
CLUB CAMEOS.
declined to laugh at their stories whilst he corrected
their grammar. His airs and graces so grievously
offended many of the firm's best clients that they went
away in anger and took their custom to a rival.
Nor did Freddy attend to the work intrusted to him.
He came late and went away early. He read the news-
papers instead of the letters. He preferred to lunch at
the Caravanserai to the cookshops patronised by the
other partners. He was far more eager to obtain invi-
SOCIAL AMBITION. 277
tations to dance or dinner than to beat up for customers.
In short, he was worse than useless in the firm, and his
father had no alternative but to turn him out. Freddy,
intent upon exploring the realms of society, had long
quitted the paternal villa at Dulwich, and between son
and sire there was little love lost. Accordingly the
young man found himself the possessor of the interest
on 10,000/., strictly tied up, and with not a hope of
obtaining a farthing beyond. His second brother,
who had been educated at a City school, and who was
perfectly content with suburban life, was taken into
partnership, and doubtless will one day develop into a
merchant-prince.
Idle, independent, ambitious, Freddy strained all
his efforts to get into good society. It was up-hill
work, and he made little progress. A young man,
against whom there is nothing notorious, has several
ways at the present day of entering society, should his
kith and kin be unable to command the ordinary mode
of ingress. A good tenor voice will open the doors of
houses which otherwise would be closed. A marked
capacity for private theatricals is in itself an introduc-
tion to the highest. An amusing talker will generally
end by finding his legs under the mahogany in most
desirable dining-rooms. Music, comic songs, a talent
for getting up cotillons, mimicry, ventriloquism, conjur-
278 CLUB CAMEOS.
ing, are all means to an end. I know one man who
was asked out a good deal simply and solely because he
had a name as being a clever designer of monograms, in
the days when monograms were the rage. Where he
dined he had to design ; as another man, where he dines,
has to sing, play, amuse, or talk. Society conducts its
hospitalities on a very commercial basis. You are wel-
come because you are noble, illustrious, famous, or
wealthy, and thus by your presence reflect credit on
your host and hostess. If you are none of these things,
you are invited because you take the place of the pro-
fessional singer, musician, or entertainer. There is no
obligation on either side. You get your dinners out of
society, and society gets its equivalent out of you. But
to the man who has no equivalent to offer, society is the
coldest of hosts. And this was the case with Freddy.
He had enough to live on with economy, but nothing
more. In spite of his sham pedigree the secret of his
origin was known to all. He was not musical, he had
no voice, he was a bad waltzer, he was not particularly
amusing, he could not act, he had no special gifts likely
to bear him on their tide to social success. Season after
season passes, and he finds himself no nearer to the goal
of his ambition than when he started.
Yet he employs all the devices of the unadmitted. He
knows a good many men, but they do not take him to
SOCIAL AMBITION. 279
their houses. He hunted one winter at Melton, and he
took a share in a yacht one summer at Cowes ; but nei-
ther of these moves led to anything. He travels a good
deal ; but the English he knows abroad drop him when
they cross the Channel. He has taken an active part in
politics ; but though the members whose elections he has
been instrumental in obtaining gladly ask him to meet
their constituents at a club-dinner, and seek his coopera-
tion on platforms at meetings, these are not exactly the
rewards he desires. He has essayed the religious line, in
the hope that when in the one world he might scale the
boundary- wall and find his way into the other. Yet in
vain. He has interested himself in parish-work under
the auspices of a fashionable London vicar ; he has taught
in schools ; he has visited the poor ; he has asked the
curates to dinner ; he has subscribed to causes he does
not care about, and to missions he never before heard
of: but all his energy and hypocrisy have been useless.
He was invited to a conversazione and a drawing-room
meeting or two, but he made no acquaintances. The
vicar and the fashionable district-visitors were charmed
to meet him on parochial matters, and to give him a long
list of the poor he was to visit ; but they did not con-
sider that an interest in alleviating surrounding distress,
however admirable and praiseworthy such feelings might
be, necessarily led to social intimacy. ' That game is no
280 CLUB CAMEOS.
go,' said Master Freddy to himself; ' damme, I don't
want to know the poor I want to know the rich.' To
us who were somewhat behind the scenes this episode in
our little friend's life was very amusing.
Thus it has happened that the aims Freddy set before
him have never been realised. He is still, though on
the verge of thirty, to use a favourite word of his, an
* outsider.' In his modest lodgings in Duke-street no
invitations arrive of the nature he desires; no well-
appointed carriage, with its fair well-dressed occupants r
calls for him at the club to take him out for a drive ;
when he takes his walks abroad it is seldom that he haa
occasion to lift his hat and make his bow. He hovers
between two social spheres, and belongs to neither. He
is not of the great world, and he is not of the commer-
cial world. Holding in horror trade, and clinging with
such tenacity to the Farningham-West imposition that
he ends by almost believing it, he has completely severed
himself from his father's friends and relations. On the
few occasions when he has put in an appearance at the
parental table, he has become livid with suppressed rage
at the boorish fashion in which his sire partakes of the
dishes he loves, at the vulgar caps and colours his
mother wears, at the English spoken by his brothers,,
and at the want of breeding of his sisters. It is not a
happy gathering. The family look upon Freddy as ( a
SOCIAL AMBITION. 281
swell,' and stand in awe of him ; whilst "West pere, hot
with drink and sulky, glares at his first-born as if he
would like, but dare not, to kick him into the road.
Yet in the whole realms of Pall Mall there is not a
more miserable little creature than Freddy. Thanks to
his tailor and hatter, a neat figure and an agreeable
appearance, he looks like a gentleman ; but in his views
and sentiments he has little in common with the name.
To rank he is prepared to pardon every shortcoming ;
and so long as men and women are born in the purple,
he extenuates every fault and vice they commit. He
worships birth and all the surroundings of fashion as
only one of the middle class, who is ashamed of the order
to which he belongs, can worship them. ' Blood' is to
him all what religion is, all what principle is, all what
honour, truth, morality are to other men. He does not
respect rank as it is only right that it should in this
country be respected, but he regards it with the most
slavish adulation. If the son of a peer is a knave, or
the daughter of a peer hideous, he will find the one
honourable and the other a beauty. He detests every
class but the one to which he does not belong, and into
which he cannot gain admittance. He is indifferent to
anything for its own sake; but if an undertaking be
encouraged by the peerage, he likes to see his name
amongst those who have given a guinea. He is the
282 CLUB CAMEOS.
best of men to visit a fancy bazaar, for a duchess or a
countess can wheedle him out of half of his monthly
allowance. He seldom plays whist ; but when he finds
that any ' swells' t are in the card-room of the Caravan-
serai, he will cut in and be proud to lose his money in
such good company. On the slightest encouragement
he will strike up an acquaintance with men of fashion,
and economise for a fortnight to ask them to a dinner,
which they never return. Though not in the world, he
takes great pains to appear to be of it. He studies all
the fashionable newspapers, and makes himself familiar
with the movements of the leaders of society. He
knows what receptions are to be held, and what balls
and dinners are to be given, during the week. He has
learnt his Burke almost by heart, and makes it his busi-
ness to be familiar with the marriages that are to take
place during the season. He knows by sight all the
great people in town, and is a very useful man to escort
country cousins to the Opera or the Park. Such people
imagine him to be a buck of the first water, for he points
out to them the beauties amongst the women and the
distinguished amongst the men; and freely, when in
their company, takes off his hat to carriages as they
drive past, but whose occupants, a keen observer will
notice, decline to return the salutation. He casually
inquires of these rustics whether they are going to Lady
SOCIAL AMBITION.
283
Dash's dance to-night, or to the Duchess of Blank's
reception to-morrow ; and when they modestly say, *
dear no ; we know no one in London !' he manages to
convey the impression to their minds that he of course
is amongst the invited.
As her is only happy in the society of those who, as
it were, bolster up his social position, he is the most
abject of toadies. If one of the few really great men
who belong to the Caravanserai enters the club, Freddy
284 CLUB CAMEOS.
will follow him about with his eyes, examine his dress,
and watch how he eats, sits down, or reads the news-
paper. "When the young men of fashion, who belong to
that world whose joys he so fiercely covets, hang about
the hall in groups before driving out to the houses to-
which they are invited, he hovers near them and listens
to their conversation. How he admires those ' swells,'
who talk quite simply and naturally of the great people
they know, nor seem to be much impressed by the
favours accorded to them ! I verily believe if Mephis-
topheles would come up and offer Freddy a peerage, and
all the advantages attached to it, he would have no
difficulty in coming to terms about my little friend's
soul. Aware that he is not what he wishes to be
and what he pretends to be (it is amusing how jealously
he keeps the secret of his commercial origin, and how
patent that secret is to all of us !), young West is utterly
deficient in self-respect, and in the higher qualities of
true manhood. In his heart he feels himself, to use a
term of reproach he is rather fond of casting at others, a
' snob ;' and as long as he holds the mean views of life
he entertains, even were he the son of a duke, he richly
deserves the name. Freddy is a snob. He has the
tricks of imposition of the snob, the servile admiration
of the snob, that mixture of deference for the great and
contempt for the lowly only to be found in the snob r
SOCIAL AMBITION. 285
and he suffers the needless mental tortures of the
snob.
When I see Freddy and listen to his conversation, I
cannot help moralising on man's discontent. Here is a
young fellow born to what many would envy. He en-
tered upon life under most favourable auspices. For
him the anxiety and struggle which fall to the lot of
the man who has to make a career did not exist. The
family business was already founded; he had only to
follow in his father's footsteps to be a wealthy man. He
had a home (it might, perhaps, be in better taste, but
one cannot have everything) such as only money could
furnish and keep up. His family doted upon him until
his contemptible affectation alienated them from him.
He could have had troops of friends to cheer and amuse
him. He could have led a happy, manly, and contented
life. He had nothing to be ashamed of. His father
was an upright honest man, whose good name had never
been tarnished by sharp practice or fraudulent proceed-
ings. It was true that he was in trade ; and pray,
Master Freddy, who is not in trade in these days ? The
father may have just reason to be ashamed of the son,
but certainly not the son of the sire.
Yet Freddy has sacrificed all these advantages for
the emptiest of ambitions ; he has lost everything and
gained nothing. He is nobody. He never will have
286
CLUB CAMEOS.
more than some eight hundred a year. He would like
to marry, but he refuses to marry into his father's set,
and he has little chance of marrying outside it. He has
no friends but those who ridicule him for his failings.
His life is passed in sham, hypocrisy, and unhappiness.
Cui bono? Even from his own point of view he has
played his cards badly. Had he humoured his father
and been diligent in business there was nothing to pre-
vent him, good-looking and well-mannered, and with For-
SOCIAL AMBITION. 287
tune at his back, from, working his "way, as many have
before him, into the society he so warmly admires. As
a member of the great Plutocracy he would have had
no occasion to go forth into the highways and byways
to find ' friends;' nor, when once the extent of his
means was ascertained, need he have despaired of
making an excellent alliance. He had a future before
him which might have been brilliant, but which cer-
tainly would have been comfortable. The future that
now stares him in the face is a blank ; for let Freddy
wish as much as he may, the portals of the paternal firm
are shut against him. JSTor will it be long, from what I
hear, before the doors of the Dulwich villa will follow
the example of the warehouse in Mincing-lane. If ever
man gave up the substance to grasp the shadow, it
is F. Farningham-'West ; and there must be times, I
fancy, when he and his skeleton pass many a mauvais
quart d^lieure together. I should not care to be present
at those interviews.
BOHEMIA.
u
BOHEMIA.
IT has been well said that the one half of the world does
not know how the other half lives. We each of us
move in our own sphere, follow its habits, accept its
teaching, and adopt its customs. Of the vast world
outside our own petty circle of its struggles for ex-
istence, of its professional wiles, of its feuds, jealousies,
and observances we know no more than the Chinaman,
who writes down all beyond his dominions as barbarians.
As in geology each stratum has its separate and distinct
formation, so in social life each class has its own pecu-
liarities of manner, industry, and amusement, which
reveal the order to which it belongs. What is per-
mitted in the one class is not tolerated in the other;
what is pleasure to the one would be regarded as the
most irksome of restraints by the other. If there were
no lines of demarcation separating the one class from
the other, the very differences in the mode of life and in
the ways of thought would prove in themselves obstacles
292 CLUB CAMEOS.
sufficiently insurmountable to prevent fusion between
such discordant elements.
Take the Bohemian as an example. To him the
fetters of civilisation are insupportable ; he declines to
obey the commands of society and the code of morals
it draws up. The homage to rank and wealth, the
emptiness of general conversation, the monotony of
routine, the attention paid to outward adornment, are all
eminently distasteful to him. A man generally with
some pretensions to art or literature, he infinitely prefers
to chat with an artist over his pictures or with an author
over his manuscripts than to add his name to the crowd
of nobodies which throng the reception-rooms of a lady
of fashion, or to take part in the feebleness and platitudes
of ordinary social talk. Fond of the society of women,
he detests the society of those whom the vulgar call
' ladies of position.' A woman no matter how humble
her birth of genius ; a clever woman ; a woman who is
well read without being a prig ; a woman who is making
a name for herself by her pen, her brush, her chisel, or
by her musical attainments, is always sure of his homage
and respectful admiration. In the society of such an
one he thinks there is the best of all companionships, the
companionship of thought ; whilst on the other hand the
society of ladies, of women who are simply the repre-
sentatives of their order, and destitute of everything but
BOHEMIA. 293
modesty and good breeding, is in his opinion an un-
pleasant restraint. In the presence of the woman of
Bohemia he can talk without reserve, he can consult his
own comfort as to the posture he adopts, he can drink
and smoke in her society without wounding her self-
respect, and his brain becomes quick and teeming from
the rapid interchange of ideas and the play of wit
and humour. The propriety and inanities of a lady,
however, freeze him up and render him dull and sulky.
The Bohemian is, as a rule, singularly free from the
scruples of the moralist and the antipathies of the bigot ;
he will make love to all who let him, and when he has
money he intends to pay his debts. He is kind and
generous if it be in his power to those who are not
likely to develop into rivals; but where he fears compe-
tition he is more jealous and spiteful than would bo
expected from his jovial presence and careless indif-
ference. He frequents those haunts in the town where
he is sure to meet men of his own calling and addicted
to his own tastes ; and, except under certain special cir-
cumstances, he resents the intrusion of the followers of
' society' within his midst. In all things he consults his
own ease, and refuses to hamper his pleasures by any
restrictions which Mrs. Grundy may think it prudent to
-suggest.
He has little sympathy with certain of his brother
294
CLUB CAMEOS.
Bohemians, who are using the reputation which their
productions have gained to become acquainted with the
great and to hang on to the skirts of fashion. He ridi-
cules their pretensions and despises their ambition. To
him the conviviality of his own set, the freedom which
permits each one to do as he pleases, the stories that are
told, the liquor that is drunk, the fun and devilry which
are interwoven with the texture of their lives, surpass
all that the most servile toadyism can ever expect to
obtain. Your true Bohemian is never more intolerant
than when attacking those who are in a superior position
to his own, and running amuck at all the proprieties.
When by chance he meets a great man he will refute his
arguments and disparage the profession to which he
belongs. On the occasions when he treads upon that
common ground where all worlds assemble at flower-
shows, exhibitions, musical and dramatic entertainments,
and the rest he is easily to be recognised by his garb
and his studied contempt of all the convenances of life.
Good-humoured enough in his own circle, a spirit of the
most truculent antagonism pervades all his movements
and conversation when he issues into a higher grade of
life than his own. He thinks his own views upon all
subjects to be correct, and is apt to become warm when
contradicted. It is impossible to mistake him for aught
than he is, or to identify him with the class to which he
BOHEMIA.
2 95
does not belong. In his dress and bearing we as plainly
recognise him to be a citizen of the realm of Bohemia
as we can tell the Frenchman who hails from Paris
or the German whose home is in Berlin.
One such Bohemian is a member of the Caravanse-
rai. Converts are always the most fervent in the sup-
port of their new creed, and no subjects are more
patriotic than those who have been naturalised. Boy
Somerset Fitzgerald Capel de Beaufoy (commonly called
Alphabet de Beaufoy from his ample supply of Christian
names) belongs to the Bohemian world, not by birth or
profession, but by inclination and preference. The son
of a distinguished Irish peer, who at one time gracefully
filled the office of Viceroy of his native land, Alphabet
de Beaufoy has little in common with the stock from
which he has sprung. He is deficient in all the charac-
teristics of the typical aristocrat. Little Farningham-
"West, with his blonde locks, his large blue eyes, his
aquiline nose, his short upper-lip, and the smallness of
his ears, hands, and feet, possesses in an eminent degree
all those i points' which race alone, it is said, can confer.
Yet we know that he is but humbly born, and for the
sake of Mrs. West, who is the severest of Sabbatarians,
let us hope that the principles of ethnology occasionally
vary in their course of development.
No one looking at Alphabet would imagine him to
296
CLUB CAMEOS.
belong to an exclusive order, and to be allied directly
or indirectly to some of the proudest houses in the
country. He is untidy in his dress, and careless as to
the make and shape of his garments ; as long as they
keep him warm in winter and cool in summer he is
utterly indifferent as to their cut or texture. He has
been reproved more than once by his sisters for putting
in an attendance at a fashionable marriage with an
alpaca coat on his back and a straw hat on his head,
BOHEMIA. 297
simply because the event happened to take place on a
warm day in June. He abominates evening attire most
heartily, and considers that as long as a man's linen is
clean he is in proper costume to go anywhere. On the
few occasions when he drives his stanhope in the Park,
or rides his mare in the Eow for he prefers, not un-
wisely, the attractions of the suburbs he dons a cos-
tume more suitable for the country than for London.
Only once have I seen him in a tall hat, and then he
told me he had been to church with his mother ; but
even this deference to the demands of civilisation was
somewhat marred by the tweed suit he had thought it
convenient to wear on the occasion.
There are some men who can dispense with all the
advantages of art, but De Beaufoy is hardly to be in-
cluded in the category. He is not ugly (no one with
those honest brown eyes of his could be positively ill-
looking, and some ladies have even been known to admit
that he is ' almost handsome ;' but then my friend has a
very good fortune left him by his grandmother) ; but a
man with a big nose, a large laughing mouth, a com-
plexion very much freckled, hair thin and sandy, and a
figure which good living and whisky-and-water have
combined most effectually to destroy, should not be
offended if his friends class him amongst the ill-favoured.
Yet plain in appearance and disorderly in dress, it is
298 CLUB CAMEOS.
impossible not to take the man for a gentleman after
speaking to him. On certain occasions, when his self-
respect has been wounded, his manner is very haughty
and dignified ; the great monarch himself could not be
more crushing in his lofty disdain than De Beaufoy when
he has to suppress a cad.
When Alphabet first joined the Caravanserai, it was
considered f shocking bad form' for him always to ap-
pear in the club in a wideawake, and to dine in a shoot-
ing-coat it was treating the club like 'a pot-house,'
some said; nor do I think such remarks were uncalled
for by the supreme indifference of my friend to the con-
ventionalities of life. Little West was one of the
warmest of this band of critics ; when, however, he dis-
covered that the object of his severe strictures was the
son of a mighty peer, he discontinued his observations,
and did his best to become acquainted with the Bohe-
mian. How elastic is human nature, and how much we
forgive to our superiors ! If Jones was to walk in the
Park in a pot-hat, to enter the stalls of a theatre in a
tweed suit, or to be seen outside an omnibus, he would
lay himself open to being cut by his acquaintances. But
if a noble Marquis dines at his club in thick boots and
velveteens, or walks up St. James's- street eating wal-
nuts, or is seen carrying home a large parcel from the
Cooperative Stores, his conduct is not considered repre-
BOHEMIA. 299
liensible. The one is ' a cad' for acting as he does ; the
other is praised for being above the t timidity of the snob.'
"Who after this can say that there is not one law for the
great and another for the humble ?
"Where civilisation has attained to. its highest pitch
of luxury and ostentation, as at the present day with us,
there will always be men to whom its splendours and
restraints will be distasteful. And as a rule those who
can enjoy to the fullest extent all that a wealthy and re-
fined civilisation has to offer will often be the very men
to turn their backs upon its charms, and go elsewhere.
These know what they are rejecting ; they have entered
the race, found the training irksome, and have seen that
the prizes are not worth the winning. On the other
hand, the men who have had little opportunity for the
indulgence of social pleasures either from the intensity
of their industry or from obstacles that bar their pro-
gress in society are always most keen in their pursuit
of what wealth and rank can lay before them. The one
have eaten the apple, and discovered that it is but Dead
Sea fruit ; the other see the pippin hanging on the tree
red, luscious, and tempting and with outstretched
hand and watering mouth long for the moment when
they can grasp it and taste its imagined sweetness.
De Beaufoy has little to learn from the great world
which he does not already know. Familiar from the
300 CLUB CAMEOS.
days of his boyhood with all the seductions that society
can offer, they cease now to have any attraction for him.
It is with difficulty that he can ever be persuaded to be
bored by going out to dance and dinner. His Bohemian
tastes interfere sadly with his family ties, for it is only
under the greatest pressure that he can be made to visit
his relations, or to add himself to the number of the
home circle. Yet if his mother and sisters only knew
how easily he accepts an invitation from an actress to
breakfast, or from an actor to supper, or from a detective
to go the rounds of the cribs of London, they would
scarcely feel flattered.
He is Bohemian to the backbone, and only cares
for Bohemia. Every single haunt in the country of his
adoption he is familiar with. When he is in society he
is huffy, and stands on his dignity ; outside its pale he
will be on good terms with all the varied crew that cross
his path. However strict may be the rules of a theatre,
De Beaufoy has only to send his card round to the stage-
door to be welcomed by the manager, to lounge about
the greenroom, and to enter into little prandial arrange-
ments with certain of the fair artistes. He belongs to a
host of small clubs, which hold their meetings at a late
hour of the night in cozy taverns, where the rooms are
carpeted with sawdust; where the chairs are of the
familiar Windsor pattern now relegated to kitchens;
BOHEMIA.
301
where the tables are coverless, and of the darkest ma-
hogany, and stained by the rings of pewter-pots and the
blemishes caused by heated tumblers ; where prints of
famous trotters, of ex-champions of the belt and of the
river, of jockeys, statesmen, and deformities, hang
against the walls ; where the cuisine is strictly limited
to kidneys, chops, and steaks, served with the whitest
and most floury of potatoes; where the wines should
be shunned, but where the beer and the spirits may be-
302 CLUB CAMEOS.
depended upon; and where the unfamed in letters and
in art love to assemble. On the few occasions when it
has been my good fortune to meet the magnates of
authorship, I have invariably been disappointed with
their powers of conversation. Their wit seems forced,
their stories are old, and their talk is halting and hesi-
tating, as if they knew that they were impostors, and on
the point of being found out. In many an anteroom I
have listened to far more wit and humour from men who-
could not write a page without committing themselves
to errors in grammar and orthography.
Yet I must admit that when Alphabet has taken me
into one of these obscure haunts as his guest, it has sel-
dom been my lot to come away from the kindly dens
disappointed. those evenings, or rather nights, or
rather mornings ! How bright was the wit, how exqui-
sitely droll, though somewhat naughty, the stories ! how
good were the songs! how jokes and (keen, but not ma-
licious) chaff went the round ! and how queer and un-
couth were many of the members, and what a terrible
dryness of throat seemed to afflict every one of the com-
munity ! There they were actors scarcely a remove
from supers; journalists who were really little better
than penny-a-liners ; artists sketching for magazines, or
painting for the dealers at famine prices ; stage-managers
of theatres one never heard of ; authors who had to put
BOHEMIA. 303
their big thoughts away, and slave for the publishers as
hacks ; a few barristers who had never held a brief, but
who, from their remarks, seemed worthy to occupy the
seat on the bench vacated by an eminent Lord Chief
Baron who at one time held his court in the Strand ;
one or two men whom drink had i broke,' and who were
picking up a livelihood as best they could; and a
sprinkling of what some of the club called ' swells from
the West-end.' What a motley lot! full of fun and
devilry and brandy-and-water ! They appeared to re-
gard life as one gigantic joke, and to look upon him who
was the funniest comedian as the best man amongst
them. Never had I been made to laugh so much. The
very appearance of some of the men, the expressions
they used when discussing any question that came up,
their wholesale irreverence for the leaders of their dif-
ferent professions, were all intensely amusing. Added
to this, there was much real brilliancy in the conversa-
tion during the earlier part of the evening, till the talk
unhappily became blended with spirits-and-water ; whilst
there were two men whose voices would have commanded
high prices on the stage or in concert-rooms, could their
sobriety only have been guaranteed. In such company
even the great Dr. Johnson himself would have refrained
from moralising. It is the next morning, when the
tongue is parched and the brow is fevered, that we
304
CLUB CAMEOS.
moralise. l Those fellows do make me laugh./ said Do
Beaufoy, as we returned westwards ; l if we only had
one or two of them at Pratt' s !'
Eeading a novel some nights ago, I was much
amused at certain ideas of the talented authoress touch-
ing Bohemia. The fair and gifted creature was evi-
dently under the impression that there- is a certain
quarter in our capital which is as much the haunt of the
Bohemian as Pall Mall is of the club-man. In this
BOHEMIA.
35
curious faubourg, we are told, the inhabitants consist
entirely of artists, authors, journalists, actors, sculptors,
and entertainers of the public. It has its own special
clubs and taverns and places of amusement. None but
the Bohemian is admitted within this privileged quarter;
and it is subject to its own laws, which it has power to
enforce by fine or punishment upon the refractory. I
need hardly say that, except in the fertile imagination
of the novelist, no such imperium in imperio exists.
As Satan in Paradise Lost is made to say that
wherever he goes he makes a hell, so the Bohemian,
wherever he pitches his tent, makes a Bohemia. Let
De Beaufoy wander where he list, he is sure to surround
himself with Bohemians. Though he flies the ensign of
' the Squadron,' he shuns all the fascinations of Cowes;
but is generally to be found off the coast of Scotland or
Ireland, where he is the patron of whalers, herring
fishermen, coastguard-men, pilots, and the officials con-
nected with the lighthouses and lifeboats. "When be-
calmed or fond of a certain spot, he is a godsend to every
one in the harbour, and to the seafaring community
around. He gets up sailing - matches amongst the
owners of the herring - smacks, rowing - matches and
swimming-matches, and is most liberal in the distribu-
tion of prizes in the shape of tankards, kegs of whisky,
ready money, and tablets of honeydew tobacco. Should
306 CLUB CAMEOS.
a storm arise, and the lifeboat of the place distin-
guish itself, he invites the crew to a supper at a
tavern, and shines as the most noisy and jovial of hosts.
He avoids the country houses of the neighbourhood like
the plague ; but he can talk by the hour to an old salt,
and is the best and thirstiest listener imaginable to a
yarn. Alphabet is no fool or ' chalk yachtsman.' He
has studied harder in Thames-street than most men do
at the University, and has obtained his certificate from
the Board of Trade. The sailors know that, though he
is a ' swell,' he is as smart an amateur seaman as there
is afloat; and captains of barques have more than once
been indebted to him for downright professional as-
sistance.
Like many men passionately fond of the sea, Alpha-
bet is but a lukewarm lover of the pleasures of the chase.
He has a little hunting-box about fifty miles from
London ; and if a bad rider to hounds, he is at least a
bold one, for he cranes at nothing, though he has come
terribly to grief on more than one occasion. When a
frost sets in, I fancy he is not keenly disappointed ; for
at such times he drives over to the stables of a neigh-
bouring trainer of great repute, and is far happier
chatting with that gentleman over some old dry sherry,
hearing anecdotes about the days of the turf past and
present, inspecting the horses, and talking to the jockeys,
BOHEMIA. 307
than when pursuing the wily fox. He is a good shot,
but in his eyes there is no sport more attractive than at
the dead of night to join with the keepers in a free-fight
with the poachers. Those guardians of the game for
miles around always let l the honourable' know when
they expect battle, and seldom does he fail to put in an
appearance. Some men have a weakness for driving
locomotives, others for attending conflagrations and
working the fire-engine, and others for slaving at a
printing-press. The weakness of De Beaufoy is a moon-
light night, the rides of a wood, and a hand-to-hand
encounter between a dozen men and a dozen poachers.
It is fortunate for the poachers that the law limits
Alphabet's powers of punishment as a magistrate, else
those sneaking puiioiners would never receive a more
lenient sentence than five years' penal servitude.
Whenever an opportunity presents itself De Beaufoy
runs up to London. Like your true Bohemian, he is
always happy in a crowd, with the bustle of life going
on around him, the fun of the fair presenting itself at
every step, agitation, noise, confusion, amusement at
every turn. The theatre is his favourite pastime, and
he must be on the high seas, or else there must be very
good reason for his absence, when he fails to attend the
performances of a first night. He is extremely fond of
discovering obscure talent, and more than one young
308 CLUB CAMEOS.
actor owes his elevation to the London boards to the
interest and discrimination of my friend, who has been
struck by his playing in the provinces. Sunday is the
favourite day for De Beaufoy to give his dinners at the
Caravanserai, because that day is generally the only one
at the disposal of the actors, who are sure to be amongst
his guests. There is scarcely a theatre in town where
his presence is not welcome in the greenroom, and there
is not a play brought out but that he forms part of the
audience which listens to its first reading. Intimately
acquainted with modern dramatic literature, De Beaufoy
would make an excellent newspaper critic were he forced
to write for his living. More than once, at some of his
tavern haunts, have I heard him, after the first night of
a new piece, correcting the surmises of dramatic critics
as to the source of the new play, showing what was
original in it and what was plagiarised, and giving
chapter and verse for his authority. Actresses like him,
not simply because he is very generous and peculiarly
susceptible to the charms of a pretty face and of a well-
moulded figure, but because, having travelled much, and
having been acquainted with most of the leading actors
in Europe, he has been really of service to them in the
creation of their characters. I know one young actress
who made a great hit in a part, and yet her idea of the
character was due, not to the originality of her genius,
BOHEMIA.
309
but solely to the teaching of De Beaufoy, who had seen
when at Dresden an obscure German actress in a role of
a similar kind.
Anything new, or any one who is making a sensation,
is sure of finding in De Beaufoy a patron and friend. Is
a comic singer the rage, is a gymnast particularly clever
on the trapeze, has a pedestrian made himself famous by
his walking powers, has a new comic author appeared,
Alphabet will make his acquaintance, and if the man is
3io CLUB CAMEOS.
presentable ask him to supper at a certain excellent
hostel not a hundred miles from Covent Garden. Is
there a man or woman noted for gigantic stature, enor-
mous bulk, or some extraordinary malformation, Do
Beaufoy is sure to be among those present at the earliest
medical investigation. His curiosity is boundless. He
visits prisons, lunatic asylums, convict establishments,
and, thanks to the protection of friendly detectives, he
knows every thieves' kitchen in London as well as if he
had lived all his years in the atmosphere of Scotland
Yard. The low life of the town, the society of those
in an inferior grade to his own, intercourse with that
great body of the community whose object it is to amuse
the public by their peculiar gifts, have attractions for
him which are irresistible. His fortune, his name, his
social surroundings, have placed him in the order of the
patricians ; but in tastes, habits, and sympathies nature
has marked him out as a proletarian. As the age of
miracles is past it cannot be expected that he will ever
be transformed into other than he is. He will live and
die a Bohemian.
A PAEASITE.
A PAEASITE.
IN the animal world there are certain insects, apparently
of little use in the scheme of creation except to them-
selves, which derive their sustenance entirely from the
objects, whether animate or inanimate, to which they
cling. Eefusing to be shaken off, they only take their
departure when the victim of their close embraces has
yielded up all that he, she, or it once possessed. Their
appearance upon the scene is generally indicative of two
things : the first, that the creature upon which they
settle is a prey worth the sucking ; and the second, that
their attentions generally end in the ruin of their sub-
ject. "We know the plant that stealthily creeps up the
stalwart trunk of the vigorous tree twines its deadly
foliage around the bark, and soon causes what was once
blossom and vitality to be transformed into tinder and
decay. We know the insidious reptile which so tena-
ciously adheres to its quarry, that, whilst it swells and
battens upon the blood, every prick of its sucker inflicts
a mortal wound. "We know that terrible excrescence,
half animal, half vegetable, which, wherever it deposits
314 CLUB CAMEOS.
itself, becomes so identified with the object of its selec-
tion as to be an actual necessity to the existence of the
victim : remove it, and he dies ; starve it, and he perishes ;
the two the victimiser and the victimised are insepar-
able until the hateful union is dissolved by the triumph
of the parasite.
Nor is the species unknown to the social world.
Yaried in its operations, of different tastes, habits, and
capacity, the manoeuvres of the class are always the
same in the end profit to themselves and destruction to
the creature fixed upon for suction. As in animal life,
so in social life, the parasite never attaches itself to a
vigorous and healthy subject. It knows that where
there is sound and genuine vitality it has no place, and
would be instantly expelled did it attempt to take up
its abode. Its scent is keen after physical or moral
decay, and where that is found it is sure of a home.
The oak may appear to the uninitiated healthy and
flourishing ; but the parasite knows what poison is in-
stilled in the juice of the sap, and how long it will be
before the branches wither, and the trunk be the haunt
of corruption. The man may seem, to most of his
acquaintance, more than ordinarily free from the faults
of human nature ; yet the parasite knows what are his
infirmities, and settles upon the weak points, provided
something worth the effort may be extracted from them.
A PARASITE. 315
The social parasite is of all descriptions ; the genus is as
extensive as ubiquitous ; still its characteristics are in-
variably the same to maintain its existence at the
expense of another.
There is the literary parasite. He may be of a
keenly acquisitive turn of mind, and obtain his reputa-
tion by sucking the brains of deceased authors, of obso-
lete authors, of unknown foreign authors, or of authors
who have innocently confided their manuscripts to his
hands, and, by manipulating their thoughts and dressing
their ideas in a different costume, pose before the public
as a new and original writer. A great work of science
appears ; it is the result of the labour of half a lifetime ;
it is heavy, crude, and undigested, and appeals to the
few. The literary parasite takes it up, cleverly evades
infringing upon its copyright, and popularises it ; it has
a large sale, and the parasite profits at the expense of
the discoverer. A valuable history is published; he
epitomises it. A writer hits the public taste by inge-
nuity of plot or charm of style ; he copies it. It may
be that the parasite has been unfortunate in his produc-
tions; they have no market; they are unread at the
libraries; they have been bought by weight by the
butterman and the trunkmaker. The instincts of his
species prompt him how to act. He fastens himself
upon some writer who has gained for himself a great
316 CLUB CAMEOS.
name. He criticises with spiteful malevolence every
work such an author produces. He discovers errors in
his dates, in his grammar, in his transcripts, in all that
he says and thinks. When the great author issues his
volumes, the cynical and malicious rush to the reviews
and the magazines to hear what the parasite has to say.
Abuse, so long as it be bitter and personal, never lacks
readers. As the moon receives all her light from the
sun, so the literary parasite borrows all his lustre from
the great intellectual orbs he copies or traduces.
There is the commercial parasite. He attaches him-
self to some great capitalist, sings the praises of his
wealth, vaunts the undertakings he has set afloat, and
receives his reward by sneaking into the board-room as
a director. He makes it his business to know when a
bank is shaky in its credit, or a stock-jobber has sold
shares which he cannot deliver, and forthwith it is
through him and his tribe that the stock of the one falls
to the ground, and the stock of the other rises to a
heavy premium. He twines himself round the great
pillars of the City, and is always petitioning for ' tips,'
and for allotments in new Companies which are sure on
their day of issue to be quoted at a profit. "When one
of his patrons fails, or is committed for fraudulent pro-
ceedings, the parasite is always among the first to say
that 'he knew all along that the firm was rotten,' or
A PARASITE. 317-
that 'the fellow was the greatest scoundrel unhung.'
He worships chairmen of committees, for he is a great
respecter of the powers that be. He is the toady of the
wealthy merchant, but the systematic libeller of all the
smaller fry. He is the Ananias of panics, and would
lie till his tongue cleaved to his mouth, provided he
could rig the market so as to serve his ends. He is the
first to crave for time when unable to meet his own bills,
and the last to extend such mercy to another.
There is the political parasite. He clings to the
leaders of the party, writes them up in newspapers, and
flatters them at the meetings of their associations. He
gets up testimonials ; he is honorary secretary to half a
dozen political institutions, but leaves the work to a
clerk ; he is the terror of private secretaries, upon whom
he is always calling ; he is the author of pamphlets,
which he sends to every member of the Cabinet, on all
the great public questions; and he passes his fussy days
in the hope that he will eventually creep into office and
fifteen hundred a year. If he is appointed, the country
is saved. If the Government refuse to recognise his
claims, the country is going to the mischief, and he
offers his services to the other side.
There is the military parasite, haunting the Horse
Guards, and cringing after good civil or military posts,
to the exclusion of men who have served their country
CLUB CAMEOS.
in all parts of the globe, whilst he himself has never
been out of England. There is the clerical parasite,
hanging on to the dignitaries of the Church ; toadying
private patrons, pretending to interest himself in the
labours of the great religious societies, fawning, schem-
ing, eating dirt, and crawling in the dust, provided he
only succeeds in obtaining the prize he has set before
him a good fat living. There is the scientific parasite,
turning the inventions of other men to his own account,.
A PARASITE.
319
and stealing the principle of their ideas, whilst keeping
himself clear of the Patent Laws. And there is the
commonest and most prosperous of the order the para-
site who makes society his victim.
Scrope Hillingdon is a prominent member of this
class of creature. A younger son, he testifies by his
life and career to the partialities of the law of primo-
geniture. Whilst his brother, Sir Alured, is a great
landowner and a county magnate of the wealthiest and
most powerful description, Scrope is a nobody, and
lord of some six thousand pounds, strictly tied up, which
yield him four and a half per cent per annum. During
his father's lifetime no distinction was made between
himself and the heir. Both went to the same school ;
both went to the same tutor on the Continent; both
spent the same pocket-money ; and both, on their return
to the parental roof, led the same kind of lives. Scrope
thought of entering a profession; but pleasant years
passed by, and he forgot all about his intention. He
lived in the same set as his elder brother ; went into the
same society; belonged to the same clubs; had the
same tastes, and indulged in the same expenditure;
when he wanted horses he drew upon the paternal
stables, and when he wanted funds he was permitted to
draw upon the paternal banker. One chill October
morning his father dies ; the elder son succeeds to the
320 CLUB CAMEOS.
family honours ; and the younger son finds himself with
a pittance, on which he is to live for the rest of his
days.
What course is open to him ? His past habits and
tastes have unfitted him for the slow laborious business
of following a profession and making it pay. He has
lived in society, he has been accustomed to luxuries of
a certain kind which have developed into necessities,
and whenever he wanted the sinews of war ' the old dad
parted like a trump.' Therefore, without any previous
training in self-denial or economy, he suddenly finds
himself thrown upon the world a beggar. All the ac-
complishments he possesses are useless for the serious
purposes of life; it is hard work tilling land with a
silver trowel. He can ride ; he can dance ; he is a fair
shot ; he can read French ; he is a very good amateur
vet. ; and his knowledge of navigation, for a yachtsman,
is more than respectable. Yet, desirable as these accom-
plishments are for the idle man, they have no market
value. To fight the battle of life a man wants something
more than a becoming uniform.
Scrope soon realised his position. His brother was
very kind to him, was hospitality itself in the way of
putting him up in the country for any length of period,
allowed him to ride his horses, lent him his yacht and
paid all the expenses; but he drew the line at ready
A PARASITE. 321
money. When Scrope hinted at his wretched allowance,
and how acceptable a further provision would be to him,
Sir Alured never rose to the bait. On the contrary, it
was the baronet who made out that his own resources
were crippled he had to pay off certain heavy mort-
gages ; the portions of his sisters were a terrible charge
upon the estate ; the expenses that he had incurred for
drainage and building improvements were simply enor-
mous ; the demands of his tenants were as incessant as
they were exorbitant ; and the rest of the usual excuses
which country gentlemen make when directly applied to
by any branch of their family for money. Sir Alured
would do all in his power to help his brother ; he would
willingly use what interest he possessed with the Govern-
ment to get him an appointment. How would he like
an inspectorship of factories, or the governorship of a
prison, or a post in the Consular service? But he
clearly made him to understand that the property would
not bear the grant of any addition to the six thousand
pounds, and that he would not consider himself liable
for any debts that the younger brother might in the
future incur.
For a man of Scrope' s tastes to live on an income of
something less than three hundred a year was practically
impossible. With economy it might keep him in clothes
and dinners, and suffice for his travelling expenses, but
Y
322
CLUB CAMEOS.
it was incapable of further extension. He thought of
the matrimonial market: but heiresses, numerous and
amiable enough in novels, are not so easily found in real
life to bestow their wealth upon penniless younger sons.
Gradually, and almost unconsciously, Scrope sank to the
vocation of a parasite. He had birth, he had good looks,
and, above all, thanks to his name and his sisters'
marriages, he was in society. Around him he saw
many men who had what he had not, and who coveted
A PARASITE.
323
to possess what he, until he was made to learn its value,
held somewhat cheap. With these people he entered
into a treaty of reciprocity ; he gave what they desired,
he received what he was in need of.
The acquaintance of Scrope is strictly limited to those
who are calculated to be of service to him. As sure as
he attaches himself to any man or family, so sure is it
that the victim is worth the bleeding. A young peer
has just succeeded to his property; Scrope makes his
acquaintance, takes stock of his intellectual attainments,
and if he finds him a likely subject to be operated upon,
proceeds at once to leech him. Endowed with most of
those agreeable qualities which captivate the young,
Scrope soon weaves his cobwebs to catch his fly. He
flatters the lad about the two points that youth is the
most easily gulled the fair sex and horse-flesh. My
lord soon fancies himself a perfect lady-killer, and is
introduced by Scrope into doubtful society ; and, as a
consummate judge of that noble animal the horse, buys
from his friend at high prices the refuse of the market.
The parasite is generally a good card-player, and Scrope
is no exception to the rule. He teaches the young aris-
tocrat how to play whist and ecarte, and the subtle beau-
ties that are to be found in baccarat, napoleon, and
poker. Such lessons are not given, as we are aware, for
nothing ; and perhaps most of us have had to pay pretty
324 CLUB CAMEOS.
heavily for our knowledge in these matters. I should
like to know the extent of the cheques to which many a
young peer has scrawled his name and handed over to
Scrope as fees for tuition.
The next move of the parasite is to look after the
estates of his victim ; and, if he finds the steward is
capable of being corrupted, the two stand in together,
and derive no inconsiderable profit from what they are
pleased to term the management of the property. During
this happy period of suction Scrope has seldom occasion
to touch the interest upon his six thousand pounds.
His lordship provides him with all that ministers to the
wants of man, and as long as such a state of things
continues Scrope is perfectly content and supremely
loyal. The intimacy, however, seldom lasts for any
great length of time. Many causes operate against its
duration. The victim gradually finds out, perhaps, that
he is being pigeoned, and a rupture takes place ; or he
marries, and his wife disapproves of the acquaintance of
Mr. Hillingdon ; or his friends interfere ; or he ends by
being ruined, when it is the parasite and not the peer
who brusquely dissolves partnership.
Scrope, however, has many irons in the fire, and if
one falls out it is soon replaced. To the man of trade
whose wife is ambitious of social honours the parasite is
a most invaluable friend. He tones down the gaudiness
A PARASITE.
325
of the furniture, and alters the suburban look of the ap-
pointments of the establishment. He gives little hints
as to behaviour and deportment, which are gratefully
received. He examines the lady's visiting-list, and freely
erases from it. When his lessons have been mastered
sufficiently, so that the woman can dress herself without
courting ridicule, and the man can behave at dinner
without attracting attention, Scrope calls upon his sis-
ters and desires them * to be civil to these people.' And
those fair dames, knowing that it is to their brother's
interest to comply with his request, carry out his instruc-
tions to the letter. More than one eminent City lady
has entered society through the interest of the female
branches of the Hillingdon family in her behalf, and
more than one eminent City man has had to pay sub-
stantial footing-money to Scrope for the favours thus
accorded.
Scrope is the middle-man between the outside world
and the inside world, and, provided you pay his fees, he
will do the best he can for you. As there are men in
London who will furnish you with cooked dinners, with
active waiters, with bands (brass or string), with plate
and china, and temporary decorations of all kinds, so
Scrope will supply you with guests for your garden-par-
ties, celebrities for your dinners, and saltatory youth for
your dances, It is like everything else nowadays, only
326 CLUB CAMEOS.
a question of arrangement and ready money. If it may
be said without offence, I should certainly decline to
appoint Scrope Hillingdon as one of my executors; I
should not recommend him as a trustee ; there are times
when his word might be open to suspicion ; it might be
perhaps carrying confidence too far to lend him money ;
but if I wanted a garden-party to be a success, or the
dresses at a fancy-ball to be noted for their artistic or
picturesque character, or a complicated cotillon to be got
up, or pleasant people to be collected together and to be
amused, or anything of a similar nature, I should with-
out hesitation be only too glad to employ the services of
Scrope. He is a kind of master of the ceremonies let
out for hire.
Nor is he in this matter different from the rest of the
class. One of the oddest features which society nowa-
days presents is the calm business-like manner in which
certain of its members, without apparent loss of caste,
receive money for the display of any accomplishments
they may possess. You go to one house, and listen to
a young man pleasantly warbling at the piano to a
hushed crowd, and your hostess tells you in a whisper
that he is very much in request, and that she pays him
ten guineas for his three songs. The next evening
you are at dinner, and there opposite you is the young
man) whom in the simplicity of your heart you regarded
A PARASITE. 327
as an ordinary professional vocalist, and you find that
he is an officer retired from the service, and the nephew
of a bishop. At a third house you meet a mediaeval
designer ; at a fourth, a comic entertainer ; at a fifth, a
reader ; at a sixth, an amateur actor, and so on, all
young men of the most irreproachable connections, all
' in society,' and all who receive payment in solid cash
for their services. It is difficult in these days to know
where the amateur ends and the professional begins. In
former times the line of demarcation was very fairly
drawn ; he who received payment for his work could no
longer dub himself amateur. But now it is notorious
that men, who would be much angered if they were
considered as professionals, sing at drawing-rooms for
money, act at private theatricals for money, give comic
or dramatic readings for money, ride indirectly for
money, play cricket-matches for money, superintend
the decoration of your houses in the most approved style
of Gothic art for money ; and soon, I suppose, country
gentlemen, who wish to outrival each other in the
slaughter they can effect, will have to pay crack shots
to walk their moors and enter their preserves; or
hostesses, in despair at the absence of good dancers,
will have to pay young men to waltz. Fifty years ago
such a nondescript state of things would not have
been permitted to exist. If a man chose to be a l pro--
328 CLUB CAMEOS.
fessional,' he had to work at his career as a profes-
sional; if he became celebrated, society was glad to
know him ; if he failed to attain distinction, he was lost
to his former set. But it would never have been allowed
for a man to expect the social advantages of an ama-
teur whilst in the enjoyment of the pecuniary rewards
of the professional. We in this generation are more
liberal ; we permit our young men to serve society and
worship Mammon.
Such being the case, Scrope Hillingdon has carved
out for himself a very lucrative career as an amateur
master of the ceremonies. To the great and the wealthy,
whom he knows, he takes an amazing amount of trouble
off their hands. He organises their picnics, superintends
all the arrangements at their garden-parties, prompts the
nervous and the hesitating at private theatricals, gives
instructions as to the dresses to be worn at fancy-balls,
makes neat little speeches when circumstances require
them ; and, in short, is a kind of general-utility man on
the stage of society. Of course he is paid. If the truth
Were known, that paternal legacy of six thousand pounds
must have swelled itself into quite a splendid array of
figures by this time. I cannot say that the course he
pursues is either pleasant or highly honourable, but it is
eminently prosperous. Young men have entered life
under his auspices : some have shunned the rocks ahead,
A PARASITE. 329
and got safe into port ; others have struck and have
foundered: but Scrope Hillingdon, the -wrecker, has
managed, ere the bark went down, to secure for himself
a goodly portion of the cargo. Wealthy men have been
ushered into society through the portieres of his sisters'
drawing-rooms ; their ambitious wives have entered upon
a reckless career of luxury and display ; ruin has over-
taken them ; yet Scrope Hillingdon has made full profit
out of the transaction before the servants were dismissed,
and the petition in bankruptcy filed.
As in the days of fable story there were few who
crossed the path of the ogre but had to pay for their
temerity, so there are few who have fallen in the way of
Scrope and have escaped unhurt. He may not have
taken their lives, but at least his victims issue from his
den torn and maimed. "Why was poor young Fluffe,
Lord Downy's eldest son, the gayest Lancer that ever
fluttered pennon, hurriedly obliged to send in his papers ?
Had Scrope nothing to do with introducing the lad to the
money-lenders, and with the history of that card scandal
which was the talk of every ante-room in the kingdom ?
What made poor old Molasses, that eminent sugar -baker,
suspend payment and appear in the Gazette ? Was it
not the extravagance of his wife, prompted and encour-
aged by Scrope ? and pray how much of that misspent
Wealth found its way into Scrope's pocket ? Why did
330
CLUB CAMEOS.
young Fitz-Storke have to mortgage the Heron property
to the hilt ? Who was the cause of Monty Lascelles
having to resign his excellent appointment, and betake
himself to cattle-farming at Monte Video ? Who created
the difference between young Palmer and his father, and
who was the real cause why that ill-balanced youth imi-
tated the signature of his parent ? Where are Arthur
Domville, Eeggie Turner, the ' General,' Jumping Hin-
ton, and the rest of that gay crew ? Broke, helplessly
A PARASITE. 331
broke ! And their ruin, either directly or indirectly,
lies at the door of Scrope Hillingdon.
Naturally there are numerous stories against this
plausible gentleman, yet none have been proved in such
a satisfactory manner as to justify either society or the
committee of his clubs to take cognisance of his proceed-
ings. On the contrary, on the few occasions when it
has been necessary to make some quiet and unofficial
inquiry into certain matters with which Scrope was con-
nected, he has come triumphantly out of the investiga-
tion, and those who have set it on foot have been made
to smart for their suspicions. Still most of us know it
bodes little good to the aristocrat or plutocrat who is
seen much in his society. How we pity the young men
he collects around his luxurious dining- table at the club,
who laugh at his stories in the smoking-room, who sit in
his box at the theatre, and who are so proud to be seen
with a man who knows everybody, and one of whose
sisters is a countess of the highest fashion ! Rest assured
that a time will come when his victims will find neither
his dinners appetising nor his stories amusing, but, when
that grave parliament with the family lawyer is held,
will curse the day they ever allowed themselves to be
dazzled by the brilliancy of the gifts of Scrope Hil-
lingdon.
Of late years this skilful spider has chiefly been con-
332
CLUB CAMEOS.
tent with spinning his web in commercial circles. He is
just the man the wealthy trader admires. He is a gentle-
man by birth, and looks the character ; his manners are
perfect, he knows everybody who is worth knowing,
and he is entirely free from pride. Given a man of un-
doubted wealth, and there are few who can surpass
Scrope in all the arts of fascination ; to the ordinary
mortal he is, however, as a rule, cold and repellent. The
plutocrat likes to have Scrope at his house, and to trot
A PARASITE. 333
him out to the different guests. 'Know that fellow?
0, he's a capital chap ! He is a brother of Sir Alured
Hillingdon' (occasionally Sir Halured Illingdon), 'and
his sister, don't you know, is the wife of that old swell,
the Earl of Mountsorrel. 0, he's a great friend of mine ;
always here.' And as long as the plutocrat has a large
balance at his banker's, a good house over his head, a
good cook in his kitchen, curious vintages in his cellar,
a well-kept country house, a moor to shoot over, a
deer-forest, and perhaps a steam-yacht, Scrope has
not the slightest objection to be his 'great friend.'
Indeed, he prefers the plutocracy to the aristocracy.
' They think more of one, and they give better dinners,'
he says. After a few weeks' acquaintance with Mr.
Bullion, the old game begins. ' I suppose you know that
Lady Mountsorrel is my sister ?' asks Scrope of his host,
as they sit together after dinner. ' 0, of course ; who
does not ?' is the reply. c Why, she is one of the most
fashionable women in London.' * I was thinking,' says
Scrope carelessly, ' of asking her to call upon Mrs. Bul-
lion. Your wife would have no objection, I suppose ?'
' Objection, my dear feller ! Why, it's what Mrs. Bul-
lion has been badgering me about for the last I mean
my wife would take it as a great honour, Mr. Hilling-
don, and I should be very much obliged to you. You
know Mrs. Bullion is a bit 'igh in her notions.' Then
334
CLUB CAMEOS.
the conversation takes the form of business. At the end
of a few days the barouche of Lady Mountsorrel appears
at the door of Mr. Bullion's mansion ; cards are handed
out ; Mrs. Bullion, seated in the gaudiest of chariots
drawn by the showiest of horses in the brassiest of har-
ness, returns the visit ; and a fortnight afterwards the
couple are asked to dinner. Scrope is invited to meet
them ; he takes down Mrs. Bullion, and freely introduces
her at the reception which his sister afterwards holds.
He borrows (that is the polite way of putting it) a loan
from Mr. Bullion shortly after this arrangement has been
entered into.
The system of ' promotion by purchase' has been
transferred from the ranks of the army to the ranks of
society.
AGITATION.
AGITATION.
THE professional fanner of discontent has at the present
day a wide and active career before him. Scarcely a
question arises which is not capable of bringing grist to
his mill. No matter what be the course proposed by the
calm and temperate mind for the solution of surround-
ing difficulties, the agitator is equal to the occasion, and
can discover flaws in every scheme. In a country like
England, where there is great wealth on the one side,
and great poverty on the other, where labour and
capital, production and want, free-trade and restrictions
are ever coming into collision, it is not difficult for the
man whose interest it is to sow the seeds of dissension
to scatter them broadcast, and to watch the upgrowth of
a goodly crop.
The agitator declines to be satisfied, and can turn
the softest answer into bitterness. If we extend the
suffrage, we are permitting an ignorant majority to over-
awe an educated minority* If we refuse to extend the
suffrage, we are allowing a coterie to legislate for the
nation, and ignoring the opinions of the masses. If we
338 CLUB CAMEOS.
reduce the naval and military estimates, we are enfeebling
our position as a great power. If we increase the esti-
mates, we are wantonly adding to the taxation of the
country. If we take part in the affairs of foreign
nations, we are guilty of officious interference. If we
hold ourselves aloof, we are conscious of our insigni-
ficance. If we consent to arbitration, we are afraid to
fight. If we are prepared to maintain our demands by
force, we are a blustering bully. If we add new laws to
the statute-book, we are harassing the country by over-
legislation. If we cease to legislate, we are indifferent
to the existence of the grossest abuses. If we advise
capital to modify its gains, we are being intimidated by
the working classes. If we recommend labour to suc-
cumb, we are pandering to the extortions of a grinding
plutocracy. Nothing that we do or suggest satisfies
the agitator, whose object it is to fan the flames to heat
himself.
Outside the realm of agitation the professional agi-
tator has nothing, and has attained to no distinction.
Discontent is the atmosphere he breathes, and he lives
only by encouraging the passions and prejudices of his
followers. He is indifferent to what cause he supports,
provided he sees his way to bringing his name before
the public, to becoming the agent of the special societies
that have been created, and to being handsomely paid
AGITATION.
for his services. He may pose as the uncompromising
defender of Protestant principles, flood the land with
offensive literature, and incite mob-riots by the stimu-
lating invective of his lectures. He may appear in the
garb of a Kitualist, and derive a handsome annuity,
thanks to the subscriptions of sympathisers, out of the
prosecutions that have been instituted against him. He
may stand forth as the fierce denunciator of the wrongs
of the working man, and draw a comfortable salary out
of the penny contributions of the masses. If there is
an explosion underground, he depicts the sufferings of
the poor miner, and exposes the indifference of the
Government to the welfare of the mining population.
If a ship is lost at sea, he dilates upon the scoundrelism
of ship-owners, who, provided they obtain their insur-
ance, are careless as to the soundness of the craft they
overload with cargo, or the safety of the crew they col-
lect together. If there is a strike, he sides with the
foes of the manufacturer, coal-owner, or agricultural
employer. If men, notorious for their political offences,
or for their fraudulent practices, are confined in gaol, he
takes their part, speaks at indignation meetings, drives
in a fly at Sunday processions, and is incessant in peti-
tioning the Home Secretary. The aim of his mischievous
existence is to be always talked about, to have his name
always cropping up in newspapers, and to create, if not
340 CLUB CAMEOS.
an anxiety, at least a curiosity, in the mind of the public
as to his movements during seasons of crisis and excite-
ment.
The goal that the professional agitator sets before
him varies according to his talents, his position in life,
and the notoriety he succeeds in obtaining. At the end
of a few years, what with contributions, peculations,
fees for lecturing, and the sale of pamphlets, he may be
able to retire on his ill-gotten gains and quit the trade
of agitation for ever. Or he may receive an income
from his followers, have his political expenses paid, and
enter Parliament. Or it may be the policy of Govern-
ment to throw him a sop in the shape of petty office,
and silence his barking. But whatever be the prizes of
the seditious career that the professional agitator has
chosen, of one thing we may be assured, that no sooner
has he received the reward that contents him, than he
will utterly ignore in the future the advocacy of the
cause that has borne him on its tide to success* Of
what use is the orange when its contents have been well
sucked ? Job knew human nature well when he wrote,
' Doth the wild-ass bray when it hath grass ?'
There is one man of my acquaintance who, when he
finds his way into the Caravanserai, is generally to be
seen in the library poring over the pages of Hansard
or the file of old newspapers, who on the whole has
AGITATION. 34 j
not found the profession of agitation either dull or
unprosperous. There is no mistaking Bob Koyston for
other than he is. Who but a demagogue and the
favourite tribune of the people would dare be seen,
west of Charing Cross, wearing that low, broad-brimmed,
conspirator's-looking hat, and with that huge, ill-folded,
faded, green umbrella as a staff for his footsteps ? "Who
but an agitator one so absorbed in the miseries of the
people as to be heedless of the petits soins of civilisation
would wear so rusty and shapeless a coat, so unbut-
toned a waistcoat, such terribly curtailed inexpressibles,
and such ragged and discoloured linen? "Who but a
democrat could knit his features into so severe a frown,
and pass his hand through his long untidy locks with
such an air of thought, menace, contempt, and ferocity ?
"Who but the poor man's advocate could enter the club,
and so savagely glare at the luxurious surroundings of
the Caravanserai ; at the newspapers stitched and care-
fully folded for perusal ; at the oil-lamps giving a soft
subdued light ; at the sofas and easy-chairs, so sugges-
tive of conversation, repose, or slumber ; at the attentive
gentle-footed waiters, wearing the plush and stockings of
servitude; at the hush and quiet of well-disciplined
arrangements? He says, as plainly as face can speak
without words, ' Ye Sybarites, ye pampered scions of a
one-sided state of creation, why are ye revelling in
342
CLUB CAMEOS.
luxury and in all the refinements of the most selfish
civilisation, whilst yonder, outside these walls, are the
bitterest misery, the most grinding poverty, the basest
crime ? Arouse ye out of your sloth, and come out and
help us !' And who but the agitator, born to be obeyed
by his followers, to be listened to with deference, and to
be enveloped in the incense of homage and flattery,
could so bully the waiters who have to attend upon his
orders could so rudely crush conversation by the intro-
AGITATION, 343
cluction of argument could be so arrogant, offensive,
and generally disagreeable ?
There is in all that Eoyston does that charming
suavity of the Eepublican who considers rudeness a
proof of independence, and that good manners and ser-
vility necessarily go hand in hand together. He talks
in a loud voice, as if he were addressing a meeting ; he
snatches a newspaper from your knee without apology ;
he jostles you on one side as he enters the room ; he
breathes hard as he writes his letters; he opens the
window when the wind is in the east ; he disturbs the
silence of the library by his snores, and the waiters dare
not awake him; he eats like a German, and drinks
spirits-and-water like an exciseman. He is one of the
most objectionable men in the club, yet neither the club
nor the committee can turn him out. Ah, if clubs could
only treat offensive persons as they do bankrupts, how
much more pleasant those institutions would become !
But, then, who are to decide as to the offensive people ?
We might have a club which would winnow its members
till none were left.
Yet there was a time when Eoyston was deemed a
good fellow, and no one who knew him in the days of
his youth would have imagined that he would have de-
veloped into the turbulent truculent man he now is. At
Winchester he was a popular captain of the school, and
344
CLUB CAMEOS.
when he went up to New, his rooms, owing to his musi-
cal talents and the liberality of his festivities, were
among the most frequented in the University. It was
only when he quitted Oxford, and after several years
passed in obscurity at the Bar, that he began to pose as
the people's friend and the enemy of his own class. As
so often happens to men who have attained to distinction
or to notoriety, a purely accidental circumstance made
him create the character he now plays with such success
upon life's stage. How chance fashions the careers of
men ! Had Smeaton been articled to an attorney,
would the world ever have heard of him? Had Eousseau
taken his seat at the paternal cobbler's stall, should we
have had the Confessions and Emile ? Had Hume gone
into trade, would our literature have been enriched with
his History ? Had Turner remained a barber, would he
have been handed down to posterity as the Shakespeare
of English landscape-painters? Had Lord Eldon be-
taken himself to coals instead of to Coke upon Littleton,
would he ever have raised himself above the ruck of
mankind ? Had the great Thesiger remained in the navy,
should we ever have heard of his name ? And if Koy-
ston had not been engaged as counsel in a leading case,
would he ever have achieved notoriety and developed
into a mob-hero? Fortune in one of her freaks made
him what he is, and transformed him from what he was.
AGITATION.
345
There is no necessity to enter into the details of the
famous trial which a few years ago was the talk of the
country, and still occupies a prominent place among our
causes celebres. A Eoman Catholic peer had succeeded
in forcing his orphan niece, to whom he was guardian,
to be converted from Protestantism, to place her fortune
in his hands, and to enter a convent. The friends of
the lady interfered, and, on discovering that the young
woman had acted under severe pressure in alienating
her property and in changing her religion, demanded
her release, and the restoration of her estates. His
lordship, however, denied the facts brought against him,
and declined to return a single acre of what he was
pleased to term 'the free and spontaneous gift of his
niece.' The case came into court, and Eoyston held a
brief as counsel for the young lady. As luck would
have it, his leader became so gravely indisposed during
the proceedings that almost the whole onus of the trial
devolved upon the junior. Eoyston saw his opportunity,
embraced it, and became famous. The case had all
those elements which appeal to the passions and preju-
dices of the multitude. The oppressor was a peer, a
man of wealth, and a Papist ; the victim was a young
and pretty woman, compelled to abjure her religion, and
to be immured against her will in that ecclesiastical
prison, a convent. Fierce were the denunciations of
546 CLUB CAMEOS.
Boyston against the avarice and inutility of an aristo-
cracy, against the inhumanity of the defendant, and the
diabolical nature of the machinery of the Eomish Church
when it was once set in motion to crush a helpless
victim ! With what keenness he cross-examined the
Eoman Catholic bishops and monsignors and lady-supe-
riors and nuns that appeared in the witness-box, and
how terrible was his invective when he commented upon
their proceedings ! How eloquently he discoursed upon
the virtues of the plaintiff, her miseries, her sufferings,
and the tyranny of her protector, who had robbed her
of her property, and alienated her from those of her
religion !
The trial was eagerly watched by the public. All
classes of society were interested in it, and the court
was densely crowded throughout the proceedings. The
newspapers took the matter up, and their columns were
filled with verbatim reports of each day's doings. Sel-
dom had a barrister such an opportunity, and Eoyston
made the most of it. He was the idol of the hour, and
both when he entered and took his departure from
"Westminster Hall he was vociferously cheered by an ad-
miring crowd. When the verdict of the jury was given
in favour of his fair client the enthusiasm of the mob
knew no bounds; they applauded in open court, they
surrounded Eoyston as he entered his brougham, and if
AGITATION. 347
the police had not interfered they would have taken the
job-horses out and drawn the carriage themselves.
Before that memorable trial Koyston was unknown ;
after it not a hamlet in the country but was familiar
with his name. Suddenly, without preparation, and
almost in spite of himself, the barrister had created a
role which he felt henceforth he must always act. Be-
fore the trial he had been welcome in society ; he had,
as a gentleman, lived amongst gentlemen, and he had
entertained the views and sentiments of the class to
which he, by birth, belonged. All was now changed.
Carried away by the homage of the mob, he had, during
the trial, identified himself with the people; he had
uttered sentiments which he knew would be popular
with the crowd ; he had inveighed against the govern-
ing classes, against the inequality in the distribution of
wealth, against the absorption of the land by a pleasure-
seeking aristocracy, against the Eomish Church, and
much that he had said against the Church of Eome was
applicable to the Church of England. Yet whilst in-
dulging in these diatribes against the upper classes he
had pandered to the vanity and the discontent of the
mob, by applauding all their actions and sympathising
with all their grievances.
There was now no alternative but for him to continue
as he had begun. He had insulted society, and the
343
CLUB CAMEOS.
polite world looked askant at him ; his former friends
shunned him as a political mischief-maker ; save one or
two very advanced Eadicals, he was cut by all who had
once known him, Indifferent to all slights, Eoyston
threw in his lot with the most mischievous of the lower
orders with the men who will agitate, but who will
not work. By these he was most cordially welcomed.
He was on the committees of all their societies for the
equalisation of mankind and the destruction of capital.
AGITATION. 349
In all their differences lie was appointed their arbitrator.
He was the favourite speaker at all their meetings. A
newspaper called the Red Banner was especially started
to report his speeches, and to convey his opinions to the
multitude. Whenever an agitation deputation no
matter what was the cause of the agitation waited
upon the Home Secretary or other Minister, Eoyston
was the spokesman. The mob, whatever be its faults,
is seldom fickle in its loyalty to its own favourites ;
come weal or woe, through pleasure or persecution, in
storm or sunshine, the fervent ignorant crowd declines
to be laughed out of its sympathies, or to depose the
idols it has once set up. Politicians, newspapers, re-
views, priests, dandies, might sneer at Eoyston, but his
unwashed adherents never doubted his judgment or
deserted his standard. In all strikes, lock-outs, and
agricultural differences, his opinion was the first asked
and the first followed.
The forensic career presents numerous phases of ex-
istence. There is the barrister who wins a name as a
brilliant lawyer, who enters Parliament, who becomes
one of the law-advisers of the Crown, and who ends by
gaining the great prizes of his profession. There is the
barrister who, as the son of a solicitor or as the husband
of the daughter of a solicitor, finds himself at once the
master of a lucrative practice, and though he may never
350 CLUB CAMEOS.
have been heard of by the public outside, yet he is not the
least amongst the luminaries of his calling. There is
the barrister who, despairing of solicitors' visits, be-
takes himself to the cheaper but readier rewards of
journalism. There is the barrister, generally the son of
a retired tradesman, who is called to the Bar because
he thinks it will give him the * position of a gentle-
man.' There is the barrister, the heir to a good estate,
who attaches himself to one of the Inns of Court, not
with any intention of practising, but because a study of
the law will be of service to him when he takes his seat
amongst his brother magistrates. And there is the
barrister who commands a large business in the lower
walks of his profession, who is not held in much esteem
'by his fellows of the long robe, and who has as much
chance of obtaining ' silk' or of being raised to the bench
as a bottle of Tarragon vinegar has of developing into
'47 port.
To this last class belongs Bob Eoyston. One of the
results of his appearing in the character of the people's
friend, and of posing as the enemy of the privileged
classes, was gradually to turn his business from the
civil into the criminal channeL Many barristers have
begun at the Old Bailey, and have ended as the most
respectable of Westminster HalL Eoyston has reversed
the process. He made his name at "Westminster, and
AGITATION.
351
he is now one of the pillars of the criminal law east
of Temple Bar. In all cases where the proletariat have
struggled against their masters, or rank or wealth has
been guilty of misconduct, he is engaged as counsel
in the first instance to defend the poor, in the second
to expose the rich. Is a tenant of a small holding
at war with his powerful landlord, the Agricultural
Union comes to the defence, and Eoyston enters the
arena of justice as the peasant's friend. Is a sailor uu-
352 CLUB CAMEOS.
justly treated by his captain on a long voyage, Eoyston
is just the man to deal with the ease, and to attribute
all the blame to the commander and none to the hand.
Is labour fighting against the compromises of capital,
Eoyston is the upholder of trades-unionism, and bids the
working man not yield a jot of his demands. Is the
directorate of a bank accused of defrauding its share-
holders, and of robbing the widow and the fatherless,
who more severe against a grasping and unscrupulous
plutocracy than Royston ? Has a wild Irishman been
imprisoned for treasonable practices, who can better de-
fend him than the turbulent demagogue? In all
election disputes, how scathing are the comments of
Royston upon the bribery and corruption practised by
the rich ! To hear him, one would think that honour,
virtue, patriotism, and fair dealing were only on the
side of the lower orders.
Royston is an excellent type of the Old Bailey law-
yer of the last generation. He has a power of coarse
eloquence ; a bullying manner of cross-examination ; a
loud overbearing voice ; a face capable of all the ex^
pressions of scorn, hate, contempt, and ridicule, which
would have made him the bosom friend of Judge
Jeffreys. Witnesses have fainted in the box at the mere
look of the man. Judges stand somewhat in awe of
him, and dislike differing from him or interrupting him,
AGITATION.
353
Jurymen have been days before the sounds of his grating
boisterous voice have ceased to buzz in their ears. The
fellow knows his power, and does not scruple to use
it. Fear him, and he will domineer over you to the
last; but brave his furious glances, meet him as he
meets you, show him that you are not to be intimidated,
and he will cringe and fawn and be as submissive as
a whipped hound. Still it must be admitted that it
is only a few who are prepared to oppose him. It is not
given to everybody to possess the peculiar qualities
which subdue the bully, though no man yields sooner
than he.
The aim of Royston, like that of most men who live
by agitation, is to enter Parliament ; but as yet he has
been uniformly unsuccessful. In spite of the eulogiums
of his newspapers, of the efforts of his itinerant lec-
turers, and of his obtruding himself, whenever an occa-
sion offers, as the working man's candidate, he has
never yet headed the poll. "Why he should have been
so systematically rejected, it is difficult for me to under-
stand. He is the friend of the working man; the
working man pays all his election expenses ; the work-
ing man quotes him as an infallible authority; the
working man adds largely to the agitator's income by
paying him to serve on committees and to look after his
interests ; yet Eoyston has stood for boroughs where the
AA
354
CLUB CAMEOS.
votes of the working classes should have carried the day,
but has not been elected. His political principles are
elastic enough for any shire or borough in the country.
He is an independent Liberal, or, in other words, inde-
pendent of his party when it declines to do anything
for him, but dependent enough when he fancies he per-
ceives rewards in the distance.
It is amusing t& watch Eoyston shift and veer and
trim his sails to catch every breeze that blows from
AGITATION. 355
high quarters, when he thinks he has the chance of
being appointed a judge of county courts, or of con-
quering the prejudices of the Lord Chancellor against
admitting him within the bar. Eoyston is a very clever
man, well read in law, and enjoys the reputation, among
certain classes, of being a sound Protestant, a great
philanthropist, and a perfect Cato where loyalty to his
principles is concerned ; yet I should be very sorry to
place much faith either in his honour or integrity where
a conflict had to ensue between his principles and his
interests. The latter, I think, would win easily, and
there would be little market for the former. Still, pro-
fession is a great thing. People are too indolent or too
timid to judge for themselves, and to have the courage
of their opinions ; and hence, what a man calls himself,
the world generally ends by accepting and acknowledging.
Eoyston is the working man's friend, though it seems
to me, considering the amount of business the working
man brings to Eoyston, the name is somewhat of a mis-
nomer; it is the working man who is the friend of
the agitator, not the agitator who is the friend of the
working man.
THE END.
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