There is a peculiar race of Gents to be seen, through the windows, lounging in tobacco-shops; some leaning against the counter, others seated on tubs, or occupying the like positions. This employment is another variety of what Gents think “fast.”
The presiding goddess of this temple of smoke is a scantily educated woman, who has been more or less pretty at some time or another; but still retains, it would seem, sufficient attraction to draw the Gents about her. Here they will pass hours, finding intense pleasure in her commonplace uninteresting conversation—retailing dull jokes, worn-out anecdotes, or vapid inevitable puns to each other; and staring at any casual purchaser who may enter the shop, as if he were an intruder on their domain.
There are the Gents, also, who are afterwards seen in the theatres at half-price: in the slips during the performances, and in the saloon during the entr’acte—the class who, whilst they carry on brisk conversation and smart repartees (of a sort) with the least reputable in public life, form the vapid nonentities of private society when females are present. They are men, to use a phrase more expressive than elegant, strongly addicted to bear parties—who think “a glass of grog and a weed” the acme of social enjoyment, and who look upon all entertainments that throw them into the society of ladies, or, indeed, any one of intellect and refinement, as bores. They are the great men at the night taverns, before alluded to. All that is, however, harmless in its way; for the majority of those houses are exceedingly well conducted: and, indeed, it is only the Gents of the lowest sphere who deem it spirited to mix themselves up, in other resorts, with the ruffians of the ring and the most degraded of either sex, in an atmosphere of oaths and odours, where indecency is mistaken for broad humour and dull slang for first-rate wit.
It is the cheap tailor who advertises, to whom this style of Gent goes for his clothes. He is caught by the poetry and the names of the articles related; as well as of the establishment, whether it be “Paletot Palace,” “the Kingdom of Kerseymere,” or “the Walhalla of waistcoats,” as it is termed in those small but lively works of fiction thrown with such unsparing liberality through the windows of railway omnibuses. The following is an announcement peculiar to the Frankensteins of these strange creations. We have written it, and present the copy-right to any of them that may choose to adopt it.
TRIUMPHS OF BRITISH VALOUR.
Fame’s trumpet says we’ve had victories enough,
And our great soldiers leave their arms to follow the plough:
But first to London they came with their retinues complete;
Everybody makes a holiday to join in the fête.