第76章

CLUB SNOBS

Why does not some great author write 'The Mysteries of the Club-houses; or St.James's Street unveiled?' It would be a fine subject for an imaginative writer.We must all, as boys, remember when we went to the fair, and had spent all our money--the sort of awe and anxiety with which we loitered round the outside of the show, speculating upon the nature of the entertainment going on within.

Man is a Drama--of Wonder and Passion, and Mystery and Meanness, and Beauty and Truthfulness, and Etcetera.

Each Bosom is a Booth in Vanity Fair.But let us stop this capital style, I should die if I kept it up for a column (a pretty thing a column all capitals would be, by the way).In a Club, though there mayn't be a soul of your acquaintance in the room, you have always the chance of watching strangers, and speculating on what is going on within those tents and curtains of their souls, their coats and waistcoats.This is a never-failing sport.

Indeed I am told there are some Clubs in the town where nobody ever speaks to anybody.They sit in the coffee-room, quite silent, and watching each other.

Yet how little you can tell from a man's outward demeanour! There's a man at our Club--large, heavy, middle-aged--gorgeously dressed--rather bald--with lacquered boots--and a boa when he goes out; quiet in demeanour, always ordering and consuming a RECHERCHElittle dinner: whom I have mistaken for Sir John Pocklington any time these five years, and respected as a man with five hundred pounds PER DIEM; and I find he is but a clerk in an office in the City, with not two hundred pounds income, and his name is Jubber.Sir John Pocklington was, on the contrary, the dirty little snuffy man who cried out so about the bad quality of the beer, and grumbled at being overcharged three-halfpence for a herring, seated at the next table to Jubber on the day when some one pointed the Baronet out to me.

Take a different sort of mystery.I see, for instance, old Fawney stealing round the rooms of the Club, with glassy, meaningless eyes, and an endless greasy simper--he fawns on everybody he meets, and shakes hands with you, and blesses you, and betrays the most tender and astonishing interest in your welfare.You know him to be a quack and a rogue, and he knows you know it.But he wriggles on his way, and leaves a track of slimy flattery after him wherever he goes.Who can penetrate that man's mystery? What earthly good can he get from you or me?

You don't know what is working under that leering tranquil mask.You have only the dim instinctive repulsion that warns you, you are in the presence of a knave--beyond which fact all Fawney's soul is a secret to you.

I think I like to speculate on the young men best.Their play is opener.You know the cards in their hand, as it were.Take, for example, Messrs.Spavin and Cockspur.

A specimen or two of the above sort of young fellows may be found, I believe, at most Clubs.They know nobody.