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 Squ............