CHAPTER XIV THE MAN-ABOUT-TOWN

The English man-about-town—and I am not acquainted with any other sort—is, to put it mildly, a devil of a fellow. Who he may be, how he gets a living, whether he gets a living, how and why he became a man-about-town, and whether, after all, he is really a man-about-town, are matters which are wrapt in mystery. Everybody knows him, yet nobody knows much about him. You meet him everywhere, yet nobody can tell you how he gets there. His acquaintance is astonishing, ranging from dustmen to dukes, as it were; he cuts nobody, though he is intimate with nobody; he is familiar with his world and all that it expects of him; and he plays the game skilfully, correctly, and as a[Pg 138] gentleman should. There are droves of him in London; probably no other city in the world could, with comfort, accommodate so many of him. He lives in the sun; he is the joy and pride of the restaurateurs' and the café-keepers' hearts; no billiard-room is complete without him; he shines at bars of onyx; music-halls and theatres could not get on without him; and, on the whole, it is his useful and pleasing function to keep the West End of London and its offshoots going. What the West End of London means to the man-about-town is a large question. It means clubs in the morning, with a tailor, a hatter, a bookmaker or two, thrown in; it means expensive lunches, lazy, somnolent afternoons, big dinners, hard drinking, cards, night clubs, and a day that ends at three o'clock in the morning. Nobody but an Englishman could stand the racket; nobody but an Englishman could find satisfaction in so doing.

The man-about-town is the last expression of an unhealthy plutocracy; he is the child[Pg 139] of means, the son of his father, the pampered darling of his mother; and he has never understood that life was anything more than a frivolous holiday. Whether he has money or happens to have spent it all, he sets the standard of expenditure for everybody who would be considered in the movement. He also sets the fashion in hats, coats, trousers, fancy waistcoats, shoes, walking-sticks, and scarf-pins for Englishmen at large. It never occurs to him that he does this, but he does it. He it is, too, who is the prime supporter and patron of the manly English sports, horse-racing, glove-fighting, coaching, moting, polo, shooting, fishing, yachting, and so forth. In these exercises he finds great delight. When he is not busy dining and wining and painting the town red, sport is the mainstay of his existence.

He is usually young till he reaches the age of thirty, when he begins to decline rapidly. But the older he gets the younger he gets. Although he may lose his hair, and be compelled to have resort to false teeth and[Pg 140] elastic stockings, his spirits are invariably of the cheerfullest, his laugh is boisterous, his interest in life acute, and he continues to be passionately fond of food and drink. It is not till his locks become hoar, his purse well-nigh empty, and the number of his years well over threescore-and-ten that he begins to droop. Englishmen will point him out to you in cafés, and say with hushed voices, "You see that man,—the one with the frowsy beard and his hat atilt—well, he spent a hundred and fifty thousand twice! A hundred and fifty thousand, my boy! What did he do with it? Oh, well, what do people do with money? There's a man, sir, that's seen life: used to have a house in Berkeley Square; has owned three Derby winners; built the Thingamybob Theatre for Miss Jumpabouty; knows everybody; has hobnobbed with the King when he was Prince of Wales; used to be hand-in-glove with the Duke of —— and that crowd; and now, damme! he hasn't a pennypiece."

All this with the air of a person who is[Pg 141] showing you something worth seeing. It is the English fatuity, first of all, to admire the man who is possessed of wealth; secondly, to admire a man who is throwing his money away; and, thirdly, to look with respectful awe upon the man who has thrown it away. It warms the English heart and fires the English imagination to see the son of a recently deceased provision-dealer playing the prince at the best hotels, plunging at Ascot and Monte Carlo, buying up the stalls at the Frivolity at the behest of Lottie Flutterfast, and generally flinging to the winds the hard-earned and, to a great extent, ill-gotten estate of his late lamented parent. By all the best people—by all the best English people, that is to say—such a youth is received and made welcome, if not exactly taken to the bosom. Englishmen ask him to dinner simply because he has money. They are aware that his courses will not bear examination, that his tastes are gross, that his intellect is none of the brightest. He has nothing to say for himself; he is neither[Pg 142] entertaining, nor amusing, nor instructive. The Englishman has no ulterior designs upon him; he does not hope to get him into this or that financial swim, neither does he desire to marry his daughter to him; he simply feels that it is well to be friendly with money and the man-about-town.

Even a bankrupt or "broke" man-about-town is better to the Englishman than none at all. With such a person he will foregather and be pleasant in the sight of all men. "Old So-and-so," he says, "is a dear old sort. He is broke, of course, and sometimes he rather worries one for sovereigns. But I have never deserted a pal in adversity in my life, and I am not going to begin with Old So-and-so." Thus your good snob Englishman would lead you to believe that he was on terms of intimacy and affection with Old So-and-so in Old So-and-so's palmy money-squandering days. Whereas, in point of fact, he never clapped eyes on the man till he had spent his last farthing.

It is all very English, and to a mere Scot[Pg 143] a trifle astonishing. The Scot, if I know him at all, takes no joys of spendthrifts, however prettily dressed, and, least of all, can he be brought to court the society of a man who has reduced himself to beggary by extravagance and riot. The bare gift of prodigality and the bare reputation of having been wealthy are nothing to the Scot. If he wants men to admire, he can find men of solider quality. The Englishman, on the other hand, has no great love for either solidity or worth; the first makes him envious; the second bores him. Though he may himself be a person of judgment and sober life, he likes to have about him men who are going or who have gone the whole hog, and who pursue their pleasures without restraint, remorse, or fear. Hence the man-about-town will always figure interestingly in English society. There is romance about him. He has been foolish, and perhaps even wicked; but he belongs to the select coterie of people who, when all is said, make the gay world go round.