The Jewellers consult the Gents, and for them manufacture various dashing articles in electro-gold. Some of the ornaments for the cravat are like large white currants, with gilt eels twisting round them; and others like blanket-pins with water on the brain. We have also seen some sporting Gents—of whom we shall hereafter speak—with mosaic gold heads of horses and foxes stuck in their stocks. And they love rings in profusion, which we have seen them at times wear outside their gloves. But this, perhaps, was an advantage, as Gents are accustomed, in general, to wear their hands large and red, with flattened ends to the fingers.
It is for the Gents to buy, that the print-sellers put forward those dreary pictures of the Pets of the Ballet; consisting chiefly of chubby young persons, in short petticoats and ungraceful attitudes, like nothing ever seen on the stage anywhere; and coloured lithographs of housemaids cleaning steps; and chambermaids with flat candlesticks in their hands; and women with large black dots of eyes and heavy ringlets, trying on shoes. One was very popular a little time ago. It represented a young lady something between a hairdresser’s dummy and a barmaid, with a man’s coat and hat on over her own dress. She was looking through an eye-glass at the top of a whip, and underneath was written “damme!”—why, or wherefore, or in what relation to the singular mode of toilet she has adopted, or what the word itself meant in the abstract, we never could make out. But the Gents seemed to know all about it, and bought the picture furiously.
By the tokens above mentioned—including always the staring shawl and the al fresco cigar—you may know the Gent when you see him, even if you met him on the top of Mont Blanc—a place, however, where you are not very likely to encounter him. He prefers Windmill Hill.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE GENT AT THE THEATRE.
When the Promenade Concerts usurped the place of the regular Drama at our theatres, and Kœnig and Musard occupied the places of Kean and Macready—when Juliet was neglected for Jullien, Prospero for Prospère, and Viola for the violins, the Gent was exceedingly gratified thereby. The Promenade became his Paradise; and he used to walk round and round, keeping his face towards the audience (admiring the young ladies in the dress tier), with the pertinacity of the grand banners in stage processions; which, painted only on one side, appear to be endowed with some heliotropic principle, that causes their emblazoned surfaces to revolve always on the same plane with the footlights. But, whilst the Gent conceived that he was here “doing it—rather,” in the railway trowsers and dazzling stock, he totally forgot that the true flaneur would appear in something like evening costume, although he might not altogether adopt the extreme rigueur.