“Delighted,” replied the other.
“I live at Vine Court,” explained the knight.
Baker Green took out his pocket-book as if to make a note.
“What Court did you say?” he asked innocently.
“Vine Court,” replied the pleased Sir Somers.
“Yes—er—and what number?” inquired the remorseless Green.
It is perhaps needless to add that the proposed visit was never paid.
Sir W. S. Gilbert was an occasional visitor at the supper-rooms beneath the club. The incident I am about to relate is scarcely relevant to the subject with which the present chapter deals, but as it happened on the premises, so to speak, I may be pardoned for introducing it. At Evans’s it was the custom to pay for your supper to a waiter who stood at the door—a lightning calculator who, by the means of a legerdemain which was all his own, was able to add about 25 per cent. to every bill without the victim being able to see exactly how it was done. Gilbert rather resented the arithmetical methods of “John,” and at last came to the determination to pay “John” off by tipping him a penny instead of the sixpence which had hitherto been his pourboire. On the night on which his resolution was to be carried into effect his bill amounted to exactly hall a crown. He handed that coin to the magic calculator, and then handed his tip of one penny. “John” looked at the coin, smiled a deprecating smile, and, handing it back to the donor, said in a tone of subdued solicitude: “Perhaps you may be going over a bridge, sir.”
There was a toll levied on those crossing Waterloo Bridge in those days. The retort hit in two ways. The first suggestion was that the gentleman lived at the other side of the water; and the second, that he had been reduced to his last copper. The comment was, in fact, quite Gilbertian—as “John” himself was perfectly well aware.
The doyen of the club was W. B. Tegetmier. He seemed a survival almost of another age. For he was the same W. B. Tegetmier to whom Darwin, in his “Descent of Man,” makes so many acknowledgments of assistance in connection with experiments in the breeding of pigeons. He was one of the first men to use the bicycle as a means of getting to and from his office at the Field, which was then in the Strand. He must have been well over sixty at the time, and he continued to use the machine till he was well over seventy. A wonderful, wiry, active, peppery-tempered little man with a kindly expression indicating a heart more kindly still. Not that he could not say a hard thing when he thought it absolutely necessary. By his intimates he was always called “Teg.” But should any man who was not an intimate presume thus to address him, he would quickly resent the familiarity. Thus, on one occasion Mr. Bowles, a barrister and brother-Savage, finding the little naturalist there, addressed him by his sobriquet.