CLUB LAW
A VALID EXCUSE--AN ANONYMOUS LETTER--A RECIPE FOR
ANNOYANCES--THE GENERAL ON THE PAVE--SECOND CHILDHOOD--RUNNING
THE GAUNTLET--A SUIT OF CLUBS--SETTLED AT LAST--THE FRIEND IN
NEED
“Who the deuce ever heard of ‘military duty’ interfering with dinner?
and what’s the use of being one’s own commanding-officer if one can’t
give oneself leave?--What?--read that, Blanche!” We need hardly
observe that it was General Bounce who spoke, as he tossed a note
across the luncheon-table to his niece, and proceeded to bury himself
in his other dispatches. The General was none of your dawdling,
half-torpid, dressing-gown and slipper gentlemen, who consider London
a fit place in which to spend the greater part of the day in
_déshabillé_--not a bit of it. The General was up, shaved, and rosy
and breakfasted, and prepared to fuss through his day, every morning
punctually at eight. On the one in question he had reviewed a
battalion of Guards who were at drill in the Park, utterly unconscious
of their inspection by such a martinet, and had been good enough to
express his disapprobation of their dress, method, and general
efficiency, to a quiet, unassuming bystander whom he had never set
eyes on before, but who happened to be a peer of the realm, and whose
son, indeed, commanded the very regiment under discussion. The peer
was quite alarmed at the denunciations of a casual acquaintance, so
fierce of demeanour and of such warlike costume, the General never
stirring abroad, for these morning excursions, save in a military
surtout, buttoned very tight, a stiff black stock and buckskin
gloves, armed moreover with a bamboo walking-stick, which he
brandished with great impartiality. After his strictures on the
sovereign’s body-guard he proceeded into the City by a hansom cab;
there was no cab-rebellion in those days, but, nevertheless, Bounce
succeeded in having a violent altercation with his driver, which
resulted in that observer of human nature setting him down for a
madman, and his own discomfiture on referring the dispute to an
impartial policeman. From thence he visited his stables, and
instructed divers helpers belonging to the adjoining mews in the
proper method of washing a carriage, a lesson received by those
worthies with much covert derision. The General was by this time ready
for “tiffin,” as he still called it--a meal at which, for the first
time in the day, he met the ladies of his establishment, read his
notes, letters, etc., and arranged with Blanche the details of the gay
life they were every day leading. That young lady, in a very pretty
morning-gown, now occupied the head of the table; Mary was up-stairs
with a headache--she was very subject to them of late--yet a skilful
practitioner might have guessed the malady lay elsewhere; and whilst
the General, with his eyebrows rising into his very forehead, perused
a dirty, ill-conditioned-looking missive, which seemed to afford him
great astonishment, his niece glanced over her military suitor’s
excuse for not dining with them, in which he expressed his regret that
duty and the absolute necessity of his presence in barracks would
prevent his having that pleasure, but did not as usual suggest any
fresh arrangements for rides, drives, or walks, which should insure
him the charms of her society. Blanche was a little hurt and more than
a little offended; yet, had she closely examined her own feelings, she
would probably have been surprised to find how little she _really_
cared whether he came or not. “Well, Uncle Baldwin,” she said, with
her usual merry smile, “you and I will dine _tête-à-tête_, for I don’t
think poor Mrs. Delaval will be able to come down. We shall not
quarrel, I fancy--shall we?” The General was dumb. His whole soul
seemed absorbed in the missive which hid his face, but, judging from
the red swollen forehead peeping above, indignation appeared to be the
prevailing feeling inspired by its contents. It was not badly
written, though in an unsteady hand, nor was it incorrectly spelt; it
bore no signature, and was to the following effect--
“GENERAL BOUNCE,
“Sir,--This from a friend.--Seeing that you would probably be
averse to an exposure of family matters, in which Miss
Blanche’s name must necessarily appear, a well-wisher sends
these few lines to warn you that _all has been discovered_.
The late Mrs. K.’s will has been found, in which she devises
everything, with the exception of certain legacies, to C----.
The writer has seen it, and knows where it is to be found. His
own interests prompt him to make _everything_ public, but his
regard for the family would induce him to listen to terms,
could he himself be guaranteed from loss. General, time is
everything: to-morrow may be too late. If you should be
unwilling to disturb muddy water, an advertisement to X. Y.,
in the second column of the _Times_, or a line addressed to P.
Q., care of Mr. John Stripes, Bear and Bagpipes, corner of
Goat Street, Tiler’s Road, Lambeth, would meet with prompt
attention. Be wise.”
We regret to state that the General’s exclamation, on arriving at the
conclusion of this mysterious document, was of a profane fervour,
inexcusable under any provocation, and very properly amenable to a
fine of five shillings by the laws of this well-regulated country. It
was repeated, moreover, oftener than once; and without deigning to
explain to his astonished niece the cause of his evident discomposure,
was followed by his immediate departure to his own private
snuggery--by the way, the very worst and darkest room in the house,
whither our discomfited warrior made a tremulous retreat, banging
every door after him with a shock that caused the very window-frames
to quiver again.
“Zounds! I won’t believe it!--it’s impossible--it’s a forgery--it’s a
lie--it’s an artifice of the devil! Why, it’s written in a clerk’s
hand. ’Gad, if I thought there was a word of truth in it, I’d go to
bed for a month!” burst out the General, as soon as he was safe in his
own sanctuary, choking with passion, and tugging at the black stock
and tight frock-coat as if to put his threat of retiring into
immediate execution. It was one of his peculiarities, which we have
omitted to mention, to adopt this method of avoiding the common
annoyances and irritations of life. When anything went wrong in the
household, the General made no more ado but incontinently proceeded to
_strip and turn in_. When there was an _émeute_ below stairs, and
Newton-Hollows was in a “state of siege”--a calamity which occurred
about once in two years--the proprietor used to go to bed till the
disturbance had completely blown over. When the news arrived of Mrs.
Kettering’s death, her brother gave vent to his feelings between the
sheets, although he was obliged to get up within a few hours and
travel post-haste to join the afflicted family at St. Swithin’s; nay,
it is related of him that, on one occasion, when an alarming fire
happened to break out in a country-house where he was staying on a
visit, nothing but the personal exertions of his friends, who hurried
after him, and carried him off by force from his chamber, where he was
rapidly undressing, prevented his being burnt alive in his nightcap.
At the present crisis the General had already divested himself of
coat, waistcoat, etc., ere the sight of a clean change of apparel,
laid out ready for his afternoon wear, altered the current of his
ideas, and he bethought him that it would be wiser to walk down to his
club, amuse himself as usual in his habitual resorts, and thus drive
this impertinent “attempt at extortion,” for so he did not hesitate to
call it, entirely from his mind, than place himself at once _hors de
combat_ amongst the blankets. So, instead of his night-gear, the
General struggled into a stiffer black stock and a tighter frock-coat
even than those which he had discarded, and arming himself with his
formidable bamboo (how he wished the head and shoulders of his unknown
correspondent were within its range), strutted off to Noodles’,
feeling, as he cocked his chin up, and threw his chest out, and struck
his cane against the sunny pavement, that he was still young and
_débonnaire_, as in the _beaux jours_ at Cheltenham twenty, ay, thirty
years ago.
No place makes a man forget his years so much as London. In the great
city, one unit of that circling population rapidly loses his
individuality. There nothing seems extraordinary--nothing seems out of
the common course of events--there, it is proverbial, people of all
pretensions immediately find their own level. If a man thinks he is
wiser, or better, or cleverer, or handsomer, or stronger, or more
famous than his neighbours, in London he will be sure to meet those
who can equal, if not excel him, in all for which he gives himself
credit; and so if an elderly gentleman begins to feel at his
country-place that all around him speaks of maturity, not to say
decay--that his young trees, and his old buildings, and his missing
contemporaries, and the boy to whom he gave apples standing for the
county, and the village he remembers a hamlet growing into a town, and
all such progressive arrangements of Father Time, hint rather
personally at old-fellowhood--let him come to London, and take his
diversion amongst a crowd of fools more ancient than himself: he will
feel a boy again--Regent Street will not appear altered to his
enchanted eye, though they _have_ taken down the colonnade in that
well-remembered thoroughfare. Pall Mall is as much Pall Mall to him as
it was when he trod it in considerably tighter boots, never mind how
many years ago. At his club the same waiter (waiters never die) will
bring him the paper, and stir the fire for him, just as he used to do
when the Reform Bill was a thing unheard of, and he can contemplate
his bald head in the very same mirror that once reflected locks of
Hyacinthine cluster. He meets an old crony, and he is shocked (though
but for the moment) to find him so dreadfully altered--it is possible
the old crony, in his heart of hearts, may return the compliment, but
in all human probability he will greet the friend of his boyhood as if
he had seen him the day before yesterday. If a very demonstrative man,
and it should be before two o’clock in the day--for in the afternoon
our English manners are all squared to the same pattern--the old crony
may perhaps exclaim, with languid rapture, “Why, I haven’t seen you
_for ages_; I don’t think you were in London _all_ last season!” Why
should our gentleman from the country undeceive him, and tell him they
have not met for more than twenty years, and remind him with
mellowing heart of boyhood’s sunny hours and joyous escapades? The old
crony will only think him _a twaddle_ and _a bore_, and thank his
stars that he has stuck to London and the world, and his gods, such as
they are, and is a much _younger_ man of his age than his rustic
friend. And so our country mouse will find in a day or two that the
artificial sits quite as easily upon _him_. When he has visited two or
three of his old haunts he will feel as if he had never left them. He
will go, perhaps, to some well-remembered palace of revelry, and find
there, it may be, one contemporary out of a hundred with whom he once
drank deep of dissipation and amusement, but he forgets the other
ninety-nine. He feels as if the world had gone along with him, and
that threescore years and odd were, after all, as the French king’s
courtiers said, _L’âge de tout le monde_; so he lifts the cup of
pleasure once more with shaking hands to his poor, dry old lips, and
pours its flood, erst so luscious, over a palate, alas! deadened to
all but the intoxication of the draught. Why is it that we so
sedulously strive to deceive ourselves about the lapse of time? Why do
we so wilfully close our eyes to that certainty that every passing
moment brings an instant nearer? It must come! Why will we not look
the shape steadily in the face? We are not afraid to front our
fellow-man in the struggle for life and death; why should we shrink
from the shadowy foe, from whom there is no escape? Perhaps, like all
other distant horrors, it will lose half its terrors when it does
approach--perhaps it will turn out a friend after all. Man lives in
the future; can he not carry his future a little beyond life? Will it
be such a bereavement to lose a poor, old, worn-out frame, with its
gout and its rheumatism, and its hundred aches and pains, and burdens
dragging it day by day towards the earth from whence it sprung? But
where will the disembodied self find shelter? “Ay, there’s the rub,”
and so “conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
Well, young or old, boys will be boys, whether at one score or three,
and all the sermonising in the world will not empty St. James’s Street
towards four o’clock on a summer’s afternoon, or prevent one nose
being flattened against those club-windows from which the _terrarum_
_domini_ of the present day look upon the world with a mixture of
good-humoured satire and careless contempt. Stoics are they in manners
and principles, Epicureans in tastes and practice, and Philosophers of
the Porch on the clear bright evenings--or rather midnights--when they
assemble to smoke in gossiping brotherhood. But now, in the afternoon,
laws human and divine would vote it “bad style” to have anything in
their mouths save the tops of their canes and riding-whips, and these
are scarcely removed to make a passing remark on the unconscious
General as, having accomplished the crossing of Piccadilly, he sweeps
under the guns of battery No 1, on his way to his own resort, where he
too will stand at a window and make comments on the passers-by.
Talking of these batteries, we can recollect, old as we are, when we
preferred to thread the press of Piccadilly, and so dodging down Bury
Street to bring up eventually opposite Arlington Street, rather than
face the ordeal of passing under those great guns. Yet was our cab
well hung and well painted, our tiger a pocket-Apollo, and our horse
well-actioned and in good condition, while no one but ourselves and
the dealer who sold him to us could be aware of his broken knee. What
strategy wasted! What skill in charioteering thrown away! How should
we then, in our shy and sensitive boyhood, have winced from the truth,
that no one probably in that dreaded window would have thought it
worth while to waste a single monosyllable on anything so
insignificant as ourselves. Verily, _mauvaise honte_ is a
contradictory foible; but of this weakness the General, like most men
who have arrived at his time of life, has but a small leaven. He
toddles boldly down, under the battery, masked as it is by the _Times_
newspaper, and nods familiarly to a well-brushed hat and luxuriant
pair of grey whiskers just peering above the broadsheet. The whiskers
return the salutation, and a stout gentleman at the fireplace, where
he has been standing for the last three-quarters of an hour, hatted,
gloved, and umbrellaed, as though prepared for instant departure,
carelessly remarks, “Old Bounce is getting devilish shaky;” to which
the grey whiskers reply, “No wonder; he’s an oldish fellow now. Why,
Bounce’ll be a lieutenant-general next brevet. By the by, when _are_
we to have a brevet?” the whiskers forgetting, as after the lapse of
so many years it is natural they should, that they were at school with
“the oldish fellow,” who was then a “younger fellow” than themselves.
However, they have talked about him quite long enough, and pass on to
a fresh topic by the time the General himself arrives at Noodles’.
This very excellent and exclusive club seems to bear to institutions
of a like nature much the same relation that Greenwich and Chelsea
Hospitals do to the crews and battalions of our forces by land and
sea. Should the warrior who enlists under the banner of Fashion have
the good fortune to escape the various casualties common in his
profession, such as absenteeism, imprisonment, marriage, or any other
sort of ruin, he is pretty safe to anchor at Noodles’ at last. There
he brings up, after all his perils and all his triumphs, amongst a
shattered remnant of those who set sail with him in the morning of
life, when every wind was fair and every channel practicable. Many
have been lured by the siren on to sunken rocks, and gone down “all
standing”--many have lost their reckoning and drifted clean away, till
they can “fetch up” no more--many have been captured by crafts trim
and flaunting as themselves, and towed away as prizes into different
havens, where they ride in somewhat wearisome monotony--and of many
there is no account, save that which shall be rendered when the sea
gives up its dead. Yet a few crazy old barks have made the haven at
last--worn, leaky, and sea-worthless, with bulging ribs and warped
spars, and tackle strained, yet are they still just buoyant enough to
float--can still drift with the tide, and, above all, are still
disposed to take in cargo on every available opportunity. As London is
now constituted, you can almost tell a man’s age by the clubs he
frequents. “Tell me your associates, and I will tell you your
character,” says the ancient philosopher. “Tell me your club, and I
will tell you your age,” says the modern “ingenious youth,” as that
sporting Falstaff Mr. Jorrocks calls him, who begins with huge cigars,
gin and soda-water, and billiards, much bemused, at Trappe’s. Anon, as
his collars get higher, and the down upon his cheek begins to justify
a nobler ambition, he aspires to the science of numbers, and lays the
odds to more experienced calculators at “The Short-Grass.” But our
youth is becoming a man-about-town, or thinks he is, and must have the
_entrée_ to more than one of these luxurious republics; so according
to his rank, his profession, or his pretensions, he affects another
afternoon club, esteeming it, whichever it may be, the best and _most
select_ in London. Here he has a plentiful choice. If a professional
or a politician, he will find associations purposely established for
those of his own practice or opinions; and here they are looming like
a city of palaces--the Conflagrative, the Anarchic, the Regency, the
Hat-and-Umbrella, the Chelsea, and the Peace and Plenty. Is there not
the Megatherium for the literary, and the Munchausen for the
travelled? But peradventure our youth is fast, and aspires to be a man
of figure; so shall his carriage be seen waiting at the Godiva, or
himself shall face the ballot at Blight’s. For a time all goes on
smooth and sunny; but the young ones keep growing up, and they rather
jostle him in his chair, and “people let in such boys now-a-days”; so
in disgust he abdicates a sovereignty conferred by years, and retreats
to quieter resorts, where the cutlet is equally well dressed and the
wine a thought better. So we find him presiding over house-dinners at
Alfred’s, or winning the odd trick after a quiet _parti carré_ at
Snookes’s. But even from these celestial seats he must be ousted at
last. Still that pressure from below keeps increasing year by year,
“and the young men of the present day are so slangy, and so noisy, and
so disagreeable,” that he can stand it no longer, and puts his name
down for the first vacancy in that last refuge recommended by his old
friend Sapless. Behold him at length shouldered into the harbour, and
safely landed at Noodles’.
Thither we have likewise brought the General, and given him ample time
to spell through the papers, and reconnoitre his acquaintance as they
pass up and down St. James’s Street. But the General is ill at
ease--he cannot get that infernal anonymous letter out of his head; do
what he will, he cannot prevent himself from glancing at the second
column of the _Times_, and poring over a map of London in search of
Goat Street, Tiler’s Road, Lambeth. He fancies, too, as a man is apt
to do when self-conscious of anything peculiar, that people look at
him strangely; and if two men happen to whisper in a window, he cannot
help thinking they must be talking about him. At last he gets nervous,
and determines to take counsel of a friend; nor is he long in
selecting a recipient for his sorrows, inasmuch as the most remarkable
object in the room is Sir Bloomer Buttercup, who is standing in an
attitude near the fireplace (Sir Bloomer, for certain mechanical
reasons, cannot sit down in that particular pair of trousers), and to
him the General resolves to confide his annoyances, and by his advice
determines to abide. Although, probably, no man in this world ever
managed his own affairs so badly as Sir Bloomer Buttercup--partly, it
must be owned, in consequence of his having the most generous heart
that ever beat under three inches of padding--yet in all matters
unconnected with self, his judgment was as sound as his penetration
was remarkable. No man had got his friends out of so many scrapes, no
man had given such good counsel, and no man had probably done so many
foolish things as kind, good-natured Sir Bloomer; and when he minced
after the General into an empty room on those poor, gouty, shiny toes,
he really felt as ready as he expressed himself, to “see his old
friend through it, whatever it was.”
“I’ll tell you what, Bounce,” lisped the old beau, as the General
concluded his tale with that most puzzling of questions, “What would
you advise me to do?”--“I’ll tell you what. I think I know a fellow
that can sift this for us to the bottom. You know, my dear boy, that I
have occasionally been in slight difficulties--merely temporary, of
course, and entirely owing to circumstances over which I had no
control” (Sir B. had spent two fortunes, and was now living on the
recollection of them, and the possible reversion of a third)--“but
still difficulties--eh?--a ten-knot breeze was always more to my fancy
than a calm. Well, I’ve been brought in contact with all kinds of
fellows, and I do know one man, a sort of a lawyer, that’s in with
every rogue in London. He could get to the rights of this in
twenty-four hours if we made it worth his while. He’s a clever
fellow,” added Bloomer reflectively, “a very clever fellow; in fact, a
most consummate rascal. Shall I take you to him?”
“This instant,” burst out the General, with a terrific snatch at the
bell; “I’ll send for my brougham--what?--it’ll be here in five
minutes. Zounds! not go in a brougham? Why not?”
Sir Bloomer had frightful misgivings as to the effects on his costume
of the necessary attitude in which carriage exercise must be taken;
but in the cause of friendship he was prepared to hazard even a
rupture of the most important ties, and he replied heroically, “I’ll
see you through it, Bounce; what o’clock is it? Ah! I promised--never
mind--they must be disappointed sometimes; and for the sake of your
charming niece, I’d go through fire and water a good deal farther than
the City. Bounce, Bounce, what an angel that girl is! She mustn’t be
told a syllable of this--not a syllable; with me, of course, it’s
secret as the grave.” So the pair started, firmly persuaded that not a
soul in London, save their two selves, knew a word about the letter,
or the will, or the dethronement of poor little Blanche from her
pedestal as an heiress.