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.
At the age of seventeen he is withdrawn from school.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.