The subject of the Smoking-room would seem to be intimately and
necessarily connected with the subject of smoke, which was dealt with
in our last Chapter. A very good friend of mine, Captain SHABRACK of
the 55th (Queen ELIZABETH'S Own) Hussars, was good enough to favour
me with his views the other day. I met the gallant officer, who is,
as all the world knows, one of the safest and best shots of the day,
in Pall Mall. He had just stepped out of his Club--the luxurious
and splendid Tatterdemalion, or, as it is familiarly called, "the
Tat"--where, to use his own graphic language, he had been "killing the
worm with a nip of Scotch."
"Early Scotch woodcock, I suppose," says I, sportively alluding to the
proverb.
"Scotch woodcock be blowed," says the Captain, who, it must be
confessed, does not include an appreciation of delicate humour amongst
his numerous merits; "Scotch, real Scotch, a noggin of it, my boy,
with soda in a long glass; glug, glug, down it goes, hissin' over the
hot coppers. You know the trick, my son, it's no use pretendin' you
don't"--and thereupon the high-spirited warrior dug me good-humouredly
in the ribs, and winked at me with an eye which, if the truth must be
told, was bloodshot to the very verge of ferocity.
"Talkin' of woodcock," he continued--we were now walking along Pall
Mall together--"they tell me you're writin' some gas or other about
shootin'. Well, if you want a tip from me, just you let into the
smokin' room shots a bit; you know the sort I mean, fellows who are
reg'lar devils at killin' birds when they haven't got a gun in their
hands. Why, there's that little son of a corn-crake, FLICKERS--when
once he gets talkin' in a smokin' room nothing can hold him. He'd talk
the hind leg off a donkey. I know he jolly nearly laid me out the
last time I met him with all his talk--No, you don't," continued the
Captain, imagining, perhaps, that I was going to rally him on his
implied connection of himself with the three-legged animal he had
mentioned, "no you don't--it wouldn't be funny; and besides, I'm not
donkey enough to stand much of that ass FLICKERS. So just you pitch
into him, and the rest of 'em, my bonny boy, next time you put pen
to paper." At this moment my cheerful friend observed a hansom that
took his fancy. "Gad!" he said, "I never can resist one of those
india-rubber tires. Ta, ta, old cock--keep your pecker up. Never
forget your goloshes when it rains, and always wear flannel next your
skin," and, with that, he sprang into his hansom, ordered the cabman
to drive him round the town as long as a florin would last, and was
gone.
Had the Captain only stayed with me a little longer, I should have
thanked him for his hint, which set me thinking. I know FLICKERS well.
Many a time have I heard that notorious romancer holding forth on
his achievements in sport, and love, and society. I have caught him
tripping, convicted him of imagination on a score of occasions; dozens
of his acquaintances must have found him out over and over again; but
the fellow sails on, unconscious of a reverse, with a sort of smiling
persistence, down the stream of modified untruthfulness, of which
nobody ought to know better than FLICKERS the rapids, and shallows,
and rocks on which the mariner's bark is apt to go to wreck. What
is there in the pursuit of sport, I ask myself, that brings on this
strange tendency to exaggeration? How few escape it. The excellent,
the prosaic DUBSON, that broad-shouldered, whiskered, and eminently
snub-nosed Nimrod, he too, gives way occasionally. FLICKERS'S, I own,
is an extreme case. He has indulged himself in fibs to such an extent,
that fibs are now as necessary to him as drams to the drunkard. But
DUBSON the respectable, DUBSON the dull, DUBSON the unromantic--why
does the gadfly sting him too, and impel him now and then to wonderful
antics. For was it not DUBSON who told me, only a week ago, that he
had shot three partridges stone dead with one shot, and in measuring
the distance, had found it to be 100 yards less two inches? Candidly,
I do not believe him; but naturally enough I was not going to be
outdone, and I promptly returned on him with my well-known anecdote
about the shot which _ricocheted_ from a driven bird in front of me
and pierced my host's youngest brother--a plump, short-coated Eton
boy, who was for some reason standing with his back to me ten yards in
my rear--in a part of his person sacred as a rule _plagoso Orbilio_.
The shrieks of the stricken youth, I told DUBSON, still sounded
horribly in my ears. It took the country doctor an hour to extract
the pellets--an operation which the boy endured, with great fortitude,
merely observing that he hoped his rowing would not be spoiled for
good, as he should bar awfully having to turn himself into a dry-bob.
This story, with all its harrowing details, did I duly hammer into the
open-mouthed DUBSON, who merely remarked that "it was a rum go, but
you can never tell where a _ricochet_ will go," and was beginning upon
me with a brand-new _ricochet_ anecdote of his own, when I hurriedly
departed.
Wherefore, my gay young shooters, you who week by week suck wisdom and
conversational ability from these columns, it is borne in upon me that
for your benefit I must treat of the Smoking-room in its connection
with shooting-parties. Thus, perhaps, you may learn not so much what
you ought to say, as what you ought not to say, and your discretion
shall be the admiration of a whole country-side. "The Smoking-room:
with which is incorporated 'Anecdotes.'" What a rollicking, cheerful,
after-dinner sound there is about it. SHABRACK might say it was
like the title of a cheap weekly, which as a matter of fact, it does
resemble. But what of that? Next week we will begin upon it in good
earnest.
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