MORE NEWS.
Twenty years ago the Maecenas Club, which is now so immensely popular, and admission to which is so difficult, was a very quiet unpretending little place, rather looked down upon and despised by the denizens of the marble palaces in Pall Mall and the old fogies in St. James's Street. The great gaunt stuccoed mansion, with the bust of Maecenas in the big hall, then was not; the Club was held at a modest little house, only differing from a private residence in the size of its fanlight, in the fact of its having a double flight of steps (delicious steeple-chase ground for the youth of the neighbourhood), and from its hall-door being always open, typical of the hospitality and good-fellowship which reigned within. Ah! a glorious place in those days, the Maecenas! which, as it stated in its prospectus, was established "for the patronage of literature and the drama, and the bringing together of gentlemen eminent in their respective circles;" but which wisely left literature, the drama, and the eminent gentlemen to take care of themselves, and simply brought together the best and most clubbable fellows it could get hold of. There was something in the little M., as the members fondly abbreviated its name, which was indescribably comfortable and unlike any other club. The waiters were small men, which perhaps had something to do with it; there was no billiard-room, with noisy raffish frequenters; no card-room, with solemn one-idea'd fogies; no drawing-room for great hulking men to lounge about, and put up their dirty boots on yellow satin sofas. There was a capital coffee-room, strangers'-room, writing-room, reading-room, and the best smoking-room in London; a smoking-room whence came three-fourths of the best stories which permeated society, and whither was brought every bit of news and scandal so soon as it was hatched. There was a capital chef who was too true an artist to confine himself to made-dishes, but who looked after the joints and toothsome steaks, for which the M. had such a reputation; and there was a capital cellar. Furthermore, the members believed in all this, and believed intensely in one another.
That a dislike to clubs is strongly rooted in the female breast is not a mere aphorism of the comic writer, but is a serious fact. This feeling would be much mitigated, if not entirely eradicated, one would think, if women could only know the real arcana of those much-loathed establishments. Life wants something more than good entrées and wine, easy-chairs, big waiters, and a place to smoke in: it wants companionship and geniality--two qualities which are very rare in the club-world. You scowl at the man at the next table, and he scowls at you in return; the man who wants the magazine retained by your elbow growls out something, and you, raising your arm, growl in reply. In the smoking-room there is indeed an attempt at conversation, which is confined to maligning human nature in general, and the acquaintance of the talkers in particular; and as each man leaves the room his character is wrested from him at the door, and torn to shreds by those who remain.
It was its very difference from all these that made the Maecenas so pleasant. Everybody liked everybody else, and nobody objected to anybody. It was not too pleasant to hear little Mr. Tocsin, Q.C., shrieking some legal question across the coffee-room to a brother barrister; to have your mackerel breathed over by Tom O'Blather, as he narrated to you a Foreign-Office scandal, in which you had not the smallest interest; to have to listen to Dr. M'Gollop's French jokes told in a broad-Scotch accent, or to Tim Dwyer's hunting exploits with his "slash'n meer;" but one bore these things at the M., and bore them patiently. How proud they were of their notable members in those days; not swells, but men who had distinguished themselves by something more than length of whisker and shortness of head--the very "gentlemen eminent in their respective circles" of the prospectus! They were proud, and justly so, of Mr. Justice Ion, whose kindly beaming face, bright eye, and short-cropped gray hair would often be seen amongst them; of Smielding and Follett, the two great novelists of the day, each of whom had his band of sworn retainers and worshippers; of Tatterer, the great tragedian, who would leave King Lear's robes and be the delight of the Maecenas smoke-room; of Gilks the marine-painter; of Clobber, who was so great in cathedral interiors; and Markham, afterwards the great social caricaturist, then just commencing his career as a wood-draughtsman. The very reciprocity of regard was charming for the few swells who at that time cared for membership; they were immensely popular; and amongst them none so popular as Colonel Laurence Alsager, late of the Coldstream Guards.
By the time that Laurence Alsager was gazetted as captain and lieutenant-colonel, he had had quite enough of regimental duty, quite enough of transition from Portman Barracks to Wellington Barracks, from Winchester to Windsor; quite enough of trooping the guard at St. James's and watching over the treasures hidden away in the Bank-cellars; of leaning out of the little window in the old Guards Club in St. James's Street; quite enough of Derby drags and ballet balls, and Ryde pier and Cowes regatta, and Scotch moor and Norway fishery, and Leamington steeple-chase and Limmer's, and all those things which make up the life of a properly-regulated guardsman. The younger men in the Household Brigade could not understand this "having had quite enough." They thought him the most enviable fellow in the world. They dressed at him, they walked like him, they grew their whiskers as nearly like his as they could (mutton-chop whiskers were then the fashion, and beards and moustaches were only worn by foreign fiddlers and cavalry regiments), they bragged of him in every possible way, and one of them having heard him spoken of, from the variety of his accomplishments, as the Admirable Crichton, declared that he was infinitely better than Crichton, or any other admiral that had ever been in the sister service. The deux-temps valse had just been imported in those days, and Alsager danced it with a long, quick, swinging step which no one else could accomplish; he played the cornet almost as well as Koenig; while at Windsor he went into training and beat the Hammersmith Flyer, a professional brought down by the envious to degrade him, in a half-mile race with twelve flights of hurdles; he was a splendid amateur actor; and had covered the rough walls of the barrack-room at Windsor with capital caricatures of all his brother officers. He knew all the mysteries of "battalion drill" too, and had been adjutant of the regiment. When, therefore, he threw up his commission and sold out, everybody was utterly astonished, and all sorts of rumours were at once put into circulation. He had had a quarrel with his governor, old Sir Peregrine Alsager, some said, and left the army to spite him. He was bitten with a theatrical mania, and going to turn actor ("Was he, by G--!" said Ledger, the light comedian, hitherto his warmest admirer; "we want none of your imitation mock-turtle on the boards!"); he had got a religious craze, and was going to become a Trappist monk; he had taken to drinking; he had lost his head, and was with a keeper in a villa in St. John's Wood. All these things were said about him by his kind friends; but it is probable that none of them were so near the mark as honest Jock M'Laren, of the Scots Fusiliers, a great gaunt Scotchman, but the very best ferret in the world in certain matters; who said, "Ye may depen' upon it there's a wummin in it. Awlsager's a deevil among the sax; and there's a wummin in it, I'll bet a croon." This was a heavy stake for Jock, and showed that he was in earnest.
Be this as it may, how that Laurence Alsager sold out from her Majesty's regiment of Coldstream Guards, and that he was succeeded by Peregrine Wilks (whose grandfather, par parenthèse, kept a ham-and-beef shop in St. Martin's Court), is it not written in the chronicles of the London Gazette? Immediately after the business had been settled, Colonel Alsager left England for the Continent. He was heard of at Munich, at Berlin, at Vienna (where he remained for some considerable time), and at Trieste, where all absolute trace of him was lost, though it was believed he had gone off in an Austrian Lloyds' steamer to the Piraeus, and that he intended travelling through Greece, the Holy Land, and Egypt, before he returned home. These were rumours in which only a very few people interested themselves; society has too much to do to take account of the proceedings of its absent members; and after two years had elapsed Laurence Alsager's name was almost forgotten, when, on a dull January morning, two letters from him arrived in Loudon,--one addressed to the steward of the Maecenas ordering a good dinner for two for the next Saturday night at six; the other to the Honourable George Bertram of the Foreign Office, requesting that distinguished public servant to meet his old friend L. A. at the Maecenas, dine with him, and go with him afterwards to the Parthenium Theatre, where a new piece was announced.
Honest Mr. Turquand, the club steward, by nature a reticent man, and one immersed in perpetual calculation as to ways and means, gave his orders to the cook, but said never a word to any one else as to the contents of his letter. George Bertram, known among his colleagues at the Foreign Office as "Blab Bertram," from the fact that he never spoke to anybody unless spoken to, and even then seldom answered, was equally silent; so that Colonel Alsager's arrival at the Maecenas was thoroughly unexpected by the members. The trimly-shaved old gentlemen at the various tables stared with wonder, not unmixed with horror, at the long black beard which Alsager had grown during his absence. They thought he was some stranger who had entered the sacred precincts by mistake; some even had a horrible suspicion that it might be a newly-elected man, whose beard had never been mentioned to the committee; and it was not until they heard Laurence's clear ringing voice, and saw his eye light up with the old fire, that they recognized their long-absent friend. Then they crowded round him, and wanted to hear all his two-years' adventures and wanderings told in a breath; but he laughingly shook them off, promising full particulars at a later period; and went over to a small corner-table, which he had been accustomed to select before he went away, and which Mr. Turquand had retained for him, where he was shortly joined by George Bertram.
It is probable that no man on earth had a greater love for another than had George Bertram for Laurence Alsager. When he saw his old friend seated at the table, his heart leapt within him, and a great knot rose in his throat; but he was a thorough Englishman, so he mastered his feelings, and, as he gripped Laurence's outstretched hand, merely said, "How do?"
"My dear old George," said Laurence heartily, "what an age since we met! How splendidly well you seem to be! A little stouter, perhaps, but not aged a day. Well, I've a thousand questions to ask, and a thousand things to tell you. What the deuce are you staring at?"
"Beard!" said Mr. Bertram, who had never taken his eyes off Laurence's chin since he sat down opposite to him.