OF THE GENT IN THE OPEN AIR.
THE most popular lounging thoroughfares of the west-end, such as Regent
Street, the Burlington Arcade, Bond Street, or Piccadilly, are not those
in which the Gents are to be often encountered in the day-time. The
majority of them have evidently occupations, which keep them somewhere
until four or five o’clock, so that they never come out in their full
force until dusk, except on holidays; and then the short steamboats are
the best places to find them. In fine weather, they discard the staring
shawl for a blue handkerchief, with white spots; and then they provide
themselves with a cigar (the cigar again!), a bottle of stout, and a
Sunday paper, and, from the edge of the paddle-box, or from the top of
the cabin, defy the world. You can find out their locality by the vapour
of the cigar, as the “smoke which so gracefully curled” showed the
author of “The Woodpecker” that he was in the vicinity of a cottage. If
you cannot discover them by this sign, you must look out for their
studs—they have a great idea of studs—usually like blue raspberries,
which you will find glittering in the sun. If, by chance, they wear a
long stock, then they have two pins and a chain; but such pins! and such
a chain! You can never see any thing like them, unless you go to the
Lowther Arcade; and there, amongst those wondrous collections of
ornamental and useful articles which strew that thoroughfare—for all the
houses appear to have turned themselves and their contents out of the
window—you will find similar ones; meant, however, if we mistake not,
for the back plaits of ladies’ hair. And this reminds us that the
Lowther Arcade is a favourite lounge with the Gents: it is possible
that, from the glittering stores here displayed, they acquire their
taste for jewellery. The Lowther Arcade is to the men in the city
chambers what the Burlington is to the denizens of the Albany. It is, as
it were, the frontier between the two hemispheres of London life, to
which position it lays some claim, inasmuch as when very crowded, a
personal examination of effects sometimes takes place on passing it. And
great is the throng here of an afternoon, principally composed of Gents
and seedy foreigners, walking up an appetite for the incomprehensible
carte of Berthollini; or a doubtful cross between these two varieties of
the human species, found, upon investigation, to be attached to
billiard-tables. And, by the way, remember, that of all the scamps upon
town, your billiard-table _habitués_ are the darkest. Here they walk up
and down for hours, loading the air with the products of combustion from
their cheap cigars, (cigars again!) puffing the smoke into every bonnet
they meet, or standing at the entrance with a whip in their hands, as
though they had just got off their horse, and were keeping an
appointment. But in reality they have no horse, nor do they expect any
body.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
There are several loungers at this part of the town, who belong neither
to the race of Gents nor Foreigners, and certainly are not military,
although they evidently wish to be considered so; to whom we may briefly
allude; for they partake, in a slight degree, of the characteristics of
the former. They wear mustaches and curious frock-coats, sometimes with
dabs of braid about them. Their hair is wiry and dark, and they are
constantly arranging it with their hands. Sometimes they are seen with
spurs; occasionally they carry a black cane, shouldered like a gun,
twisted round their arm, with its head in their pocket, held upside
down, in any way but the normal one. Day after day, when it is fine;
nay, year after year; there they are, true _batteurs de pavé_. You may
follow them for hours, and you will never see them speak to, or
recognised by, any body. They do not even commune with each other.
Nobody knows them; they belong to no club, and are never seen anywhere
else. And it is remarkable that, like butterflies, you only come across
them in bright weather. Where they go to at other times we cannot tell;
we shall never be able to do so, until we have solved two other similar
enigmas with respect to pins and bluebottles; and their ultimate
destination is, to our thinking, the greatest marvel of the present day.
For the corpses of the latter, found in grocers’ windows and saucers of
unacknowledged poisons, and the rusty remains of the former discovered
between boards, bear no comparison to the numbers that have existed.
This disappearance is as remarkable as the generation of the fine woolly
substance you find in the corner of your waistcoat pocket, where you
have only kept a pencil-case and latch-key. But this by the way.
[Illustration]
We have said the Gent likes to be outside an omnibus. But he also loves
the roof—literally, the roof; and he almost rejoices when he finds that
the box is full, and he is obliged to perch there; for his mind appears
to be brightened by his position, and many eccentricities are induced.
He nods to other passengers as they pass, in a familiar manner, causing
them to puzzle themselves almost into insanity during the remainder of
the day, in endeavours to recollect who he could have been. He winks at
the elder pupils of the promenading Hammersmith academies, if on their
road; and tells old ladies, when they get out to go away, to give his
love at home, and that he will be sure to write to them. He also has a
cigar here, and he offers one to the coachman and other passengers.
Before stages were exterminated the Gent preferred the box just the
same; indeed, he felt in a measure degraded if he could not get it; and
when the coachman got down he liked to hold the reins and whip in the
proper manner, and show people that he was perfectly used to such a
thing, and, for aught they could tell, might have a four-in-hand of his
own.
A variety of this last style of Gent, whom we may call the Driving Gent,
has lately come up about town. We were in the Strand the other
afternoon, and suddenly heard some notes from a post-horn, very badly
blown; upon which we looked round, and saw a dog-cart approaching, with
two horses to it, driven tandem fashion, with ferret-bells on their
bearing reins. On this dog-cart were four Gents—not two gentlemen and
two servants, as might have been expected. They were all dressed nearly
alike; hats with narrow brims, coats with large buttons, staring shawls,
and trowsers of the most prominent style—very _loud_ patterns, as a
friend appropriately called them. Three had cigars, and the other had
the horn; and it was evident that they thought they were “doing the fast
thing, and no mistake.” We saw them afterwards in the Park, and chanced
to follow them for some distance. The whole time they were there they
never exchanged a salute with a soul—evidently they were out of their
sphere; but went round and round, looked at by every body with something
between a stare and a sneer, until they drove off again. The last time
we saw them, they were shaking hands with a fighting man at the door of
a gin-shop.
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