In more or less every club there are one or two solemn-looking members, who are seldom known to speak to anyone, but spend their time in what is, or looks like, deep study. Votaries of almost perpetual silence, they are easily made to frown at the sound of conversation. The favourite haunt of such as these is generally the library, which they regard as their own domain, and where on no account must they be disturbed.
One of this class, who in the more expansive days of his youth, twenty years before, had had a great friend who, after leaving the University, went out to live in the East, was one day, according to his usual wont, reading in the library of his club, when, to his horror, he heard the door briskly open. A robust figure, whose countenance seemed not entirely unfamiliar, strode up to him, and, seizing his hand heartily, shook it. “Well, old fellow,” said the intruder, “it’s many a long day since we met. Now let’s hear what you have been doing all these years.” Without saying a word, the ruffled student raised a warning finger, and pointed at the placard of “Silence” on the mantelpiece.
“I was glad to see the man again,” said he afterwards; “but he had no business to break one of our rules.”
Another kind of club-man is the irascible pedant, whose idiosyncrasies make conversation almost impossible. He will address you; he will lecture; he will instruct you; but he will not chat with you—conversation with him is a monologue. He is to preach, you are to listen. If you interrupt him, he will look at you as if sincerely pained by your audacity; if you advance an opinion, he will promptly contradict it; and even if you ask him a question upon a subject of which he knows nothing, he will reply at enormous length.
It was a man of this kind who once described Niagara as a horrid place where you couldn’t hear the sound of your own voice.
In former days many clubs included amongst their members a privileged joker or two, to whom very great tolerance was extended. This type of individual used to be particularly fond of exercising his propensities at the expense of the most solemn and pompous of his fellow-members, on whom he would play all sorts of childish tricks.
On one occasion, for instance, having got possession of an old gentleman’s spectacles, a joker of this kind took out the glasses. When the old man found them again, he was much concerned at not being able to see, and exclaimed: “Why, I’ve lost my sight!” Thinking, however, that the impediment to vision might be caused by the dirtiness of the glasses, he then took them off to wipe them, but, not feeling anything, became still more frightened, and cried out: “Why, what’s happened now? I’ve lost my feeling, too!”
Some irrepressible jokers have paid for their love of fun by having to resign their membership. One of them, whose escapades were notorious in London twenty years ago, sitting half asleep in a certain Bohemian club, became very much annoyed at a very red-headed waiter who kept buzzing about his chair. The sight of the fiery locks was eventually too much for this wild spirit, and, darting up and seizing the man, he emptied an inkstand over his head before he could escape.
The result, of course, was expulsion from the club, besides which very substantial compensation was rightly paid to the poor waiter, who complained that he could not go about his work in a parti-coloured condition, and it would take some time before the effects of the ink disappeared.
Members who have developed undue eccentricity occasionally cause uneasiness to their fellow-clubmen, for it is sometimes difficult exactly to define the point where personal idiosyncrasies become disquieting to others.