The Servant of Society is one who, having in early life abdicated
every claim to independent thought or action, is content to attach
himself to the skirts and coat-tails of the great, and to exist for
a long time as a mere appendage in mansions selected by the unerring
instinct of a professional tuft-hunter. It is as common a mistake to
suppose that all tuft-hunters are necessarily of lowly birth and of
inferior social position, as it is to believe them all to be offensive
in manner and shallow in artifice. The coarse but honest Snob still
perhaps exists, and here and there he thrusts and pushes in the old
familiar way; but more often than not the upstart who has won his
way to wealth and consideration finds himself to his own surprise
courted and fawned upon by those whose boots his abilities would
have fitted him to black, and his disposition prompted him to lick.
Noble sportsmen are proud to be seen in his company, aristocratic
guinea-pigs are constantly in his pocket in the congenial society
of the great man's purse, art willingly reproduces his features,
journalism enthusiastically commemorates his adventures, and even
Royalty does not thrust away a votary whose ministrations are as
acceptable as they are readily performed. Without much effort on his
own part he is raised to pinnacles which he imagined impossible of
access, and soon learns to look down with a contempt that might spring
of ancient lineage and assured merit, upon the hungry crowd whose cry
is that of the daughter of the horse-leech.
But the genuine Servant of Society is of a different stamp. Ordinarily
he is of a good family, and of a competence which both differs from
and resembles his general character in being possessed at once of the
attributes of modesty and assurance. From an early age he will have
been noted for the qualities which in after-life render him humbly
celebrated in subordinate positions. At school he will have had
the good fortune to be attached as fag to a big boy who occupied an
important place as an athlete, and whose condescending smiles were
naturally an object of greater ambition to the small fry than the
approval of the school authorities. For him he performed with much
assiduity the various duties of a fag, happy to shine amongst his
companions as the recipient of the great boy's favours. To play the
jackal without incurring universal dislike is (at school) no very
easy task, but he accomplishes it with discretion and with a natural
aptitude that many maturer jackals might envy.
[Illustration]
At the age of seventeen he is withdrawn from school. His own
marked disinclination saves him from a military career, and he is
subsequently sent to pass a year or two upon the Continent of Europe,
in order that he may first of all pass the examination for the
Diplomatic Service, and subsequently foil foreign statesmen with their
own weapons, and in their own language. Returning, he secures his
nomination, and faces the Examiners. Providence, however, reserves him
for lower things. The Examiners triumph, and the career of the Servant
of Society begins in earnest. The position of his parents secures for
him an entrance into good houses. He is a young man of great tact and
of small accomplishments. He can warble a song, aid a great lady to
organise a social festivity, lead a cotillon, order a dinner, and help
to eat it, act in amateur theatricals, and recommend French novels to
inquiring matrons. His manners are always easy, and his conversation
has that spice of freedom which renders it specially acceptable in
the boudoirs of the smart. The experience of a few years makes plain
to him that, in social matters, the serious person goes down before
the trifler. He therefore cultivates flippancy as a fine art, and
becomes noted for a certain cheap cynicism, which he sprinkles like a
quasi-intellectual pepper over the strong meat of risky conversation.
Moreover, he is constantly self-satisfied, and self-possessed. Yet
he manages to avoid giving offence by occasionally assuming a gentle
humility of manner, to which he almost succeeds in imparting a natural
air, and he studiously refrains from saying or doing anything which,
since it may cause other men to provoke him, may possibly result in
his being forced to pretend that he himself has been ruffled. Yet it
must be added that he is always thoroughly harmless. He flutters about
innumerable dovecots, without ever fluttering those who dwell in them,
and, in course of time, he comes to be known and accepted everywhere
as a useful man. As might be supposed, he is never obtrusively manly.
The rough pursuits of the merely athletic repel him, yet he has the
knack of assuming an interest where he feels it not, and is able to
prattle quite pleasantly about sports in which he takes little or no
active part. At the same time it must be admitted that he holds a gun
fairly straight, and does not disgrace himself when the necessity
of slaughtering a friend's pheasants interrupts for a few hours the
rehearsals of private theatricals, in company with the friend's wife.
Certainly he is not a fool. He gauges with great accuracy his own
capacities, and carefully limits his ambition to those smaller desires
which, since they exact no vaulting power, are never likely to bring
about a fall on the other side. The objects of his admiration are
mean; and since he meanly admires them, he comes quite naturally under
the Thackerayan definition of a Snob.
Whilst he is still a year or two on the fair side of thirty, it may
happen that a turn of the political wheel will bring into high office
a statesman who is quite willing to be served by those who are able
to make themselves useful to him, without exacting from them solidity
either of character or of attainments. With him the Servant of
Society, with an instinct that does credit to his discernment, will
have established friendly relations. The politician was first amused
and then impressed by his versatility; now, having the opportunity,
he offers to him the position of Assistant Private Secretary (unpaid),
and it is scarcely necessary to say that the young man accepts it
with a gratitude which proves that he believes his patron capable
of conferring further favours. From this time forward he begins to
abandon the merely frivolous air that has hitherto distinguished him.
He lays in a mixed stock of solemnity, mystery, and importance, and
occasionally awes the friends of his flippant days by assuming the
reticent look and the shake of the head of one who is marked off from
common mortals by the possession of secrets the revelation of which
might, perhaps, imperil the peace of the world. In country-houses,
in London drawing-rooms, and at Clubs, where he had hitherto been
mentioned with a laugh as "Little So-and-So," he comes to be talked
of as "So-and-So--of course you know him--Lord BLANK'S Private
Secretary." Thus he becomes quite a personage. But he is far from
abandoning the _rôle_ of Servant of Society. Indeed, he only enlarges
and glorifies the scope of his ministrations, without in any way
ceasing to cultivate those smaller trifles which stood him in such
good stead at the outset of his career. He now has the satisfaction
of seeing many of those who desire anything that a Cabinet Minister
can give, cringing to one whom they despise, and who rejoices in the
knowledge that he can afford to patronise them, and perhaps crush them
by obtaining for them that which they want.
When, in the course of a few years, Lord BLANK'S party ceases to
direct the government of the country, his Assistant Private Secretary
follows him into the cold shade of adversity and opposition, and
stands by him with exemplary usefulness and fidelity. But, though he
is often pressed, he never contests a constituency, feeling, perhaps,
that it is impossible to serve both Society and the Caucus. In time
his name becomes the common property of all Society journals--his
biography is published in one, his discreet service is extolled in
another, while a third goes so far as to hint that, if the truth were
known, it would be found that the various departments of the State
could not possibly carry on their affairs without his enlightened
counsel. He adopts an antique fashion of dress, in order to emphasise
his personality. He wears a stock, and a very wide-brimmed hat, and
carries a bunch of seals dangling from a fob.
At forty-five he marries the daughter of a powerful Peer, and, shortly
afterwards, insures so much of the favour of Royalty as to be spoken
of as a _persona grata_ at Court. Henceforward his services are often
employed in delicate negotiations, which may necessitate the climbing
of many back-stairs. On such occasions, and after it has been
announced in the papers that "Mr. So-and-so was the bearer of an
important communication" from one great person to another, it is his
custom to show himself in his Clubs and in crowded haunts, so that he
may enjoy the pleasure of being pointed out, _digita prætereuntium_,
and of catching the whispers of those who nudge one another as they
mention his name.
Finally, it will be rumoured that he has been collecting materials for
the Memoirs which he proposes shortly to publish. But though he never
disclaims the intention, and is even understood, on more than one
occasion, to allude in conversation to the precise period of his life
to which his writing has then brought him, it is quite certain that
he will never carry out the intention, or bring out the book. At
the age of sixty he will still be a young man, with a gay style of
banter peculiarly his own. Towards the end of his life he will often
talk darkly of great events in which he has played a part, and of
extraordinary services which only he could have performed; and when he
dies, the country will be called upon to mourn for one who has saved
it from social degradation, and from political disaster.
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