第78章

CLUB SNOBS

Both sorts of young men, mentioned in my last under the flippant names of Wiggle and Waggle, may be found in tolerable plenty, I think, in Clubs.Wiggle and Waggle are both idle.They come of the middle classes.One of them very likely makes believe to be a barrister, and the other has smart apartments about Piccadilly.They are a sort of second-chop dandies; they cannot imitate that superb listlessness of demeanour, and that admirable vacuous folly which distinguish the noble and high-born chiefs of the race; but they lead lives almost as bad (were it but for the example), and are personally quite as useless.I am not going to arm a thunderbolt, and launch it at the beads of these little Pall Mall butterflies.They don't commit much public harm, or private extravagance.They don't spend a thousand pounds for diamond earrings for an Opera-dancer, as Lord Tarquin can:

neither of them ever set up a public-house or broke the bank of a gambling-club, like the young Earl of Martingale.They have good points, kind feelings, and deal honourably in money-transactions--only in their characters of men of second-rate pleasure about town, they and their like are so utterly mean, self-contented, and absurd, that they must not be omitted in a work treating on Snobs.

Wiggle has been abroad, where he gives you to understand that his success among the German countesses and Italian princesses, whom he met at the TABLES-D'HOTE, was perfectly terrific.His rooms are hung round with pictures of actresses and ballet-dancers.He passes his mornings in a fine dressing-gown, burning pastilles, and reading 'Don Juan' and French novels (by the way, the life of the author of 'Don Juan,' as described by himself, was the model of the life of a Snob).He has twopenny-halfpenny French prints of women with languishing eyes, dressed in dominoes,--guitars, gondolas, and so forth,--and tells you stories about them.

'It's a bad print,' says he, 'I know, but I've a reason for liking it.It reminds me of somebody--somebody Iknew in other climes.You have heard of the Principessa di Monte Pulciano? I met her at Rimini.Dear, dear Francesca! That fair-haired, bright-eyed thing in the Bird of Paradise and the Turkish Simar with the love-bird on her finger, I'm sure must have been taken from--from somebody perhaps whom you don't know --but she's known at Munich, Waggle my boy,-- everybody knows the Countess Ottilia de Eulenschreckenstein.Gad, sir, what a beautiful creature she was when I danced with her on the birthday of Prince Attila of Bavaria, in '44.Prince Carloman was our vis-a-vis, and Prince Pepin danced the same CONTREDANSE.She had a Polyanthus in her bouquet.

Waggle, I HAVE IT NOW.' His countenance assumes an agonized and mysterious expression, and he buries his head in the sofa cushions, as if plunging into a whirlpool of passionate recollections.

Last year he made a considerable sensation by having on his table a morocco miniature-case locked by a gold key, which he always wore round his neck, and on which was stamped a serpent--emblem of eternity--with the letter Min the circle.Sometimes he laid this upon his little morocco writing-table, as if it were on an altar--generally he had flowers upon it; in the middle of a conversation he would start up and kiss it.He would call out from his bed-room to his valet, 'Hicks, bring me my casket!'

'I don't know who it is,' Waggle would say.'Who DOESknow that fellow's intrigues! Desborough Wiggle, sir, is the slave of passion.I suppose you have heard the story of the Italian princess locked up in the Convent of Saint Barbara, at Rimini? He hasn't told you? Then I'm not at liberty to speak.Or the countess, about whom he nearly had the duel with Prince Witikind of Bavaria? Perhaps you haven't even heard about that beautiful girl at Pentonville, daughter of a most respectable Dissenting clergyman.She broke her heart when she found he was engaged (to a most lovely creature of high family, who afterwards proved false to him), and she's now in Hanwell.'