NE Snob at who will
not think the worse of you.

The only men who, as I opine, ought to be allowed the use of Clubs, are
married men without a profession. The continual presence of these in a
house cannot be thought, even by the most loving of wives, desirable.
Say the girls are beginning to practise their music, which in an
honourable English family, ought to occupy every young gentlewoman three
hours; it would be rather hard to call upon poor papa to sit in the
drawing-room all that time, and listen to the interminable discords and
shrieks which are elicited from the miserable piano during the above
necessary operation. A man with a good ear, especially, would go mad, if
compelled daily to submit to this horror.

Or suppose you have a fancy to go to the milliner's, or to Howell and
James's, it is manifest, my dear Madam, that your husband is much better
at the Club during these operations than by your side in the carriage,
or perched in wonder upon one of the stools at Shawl and Gimcrack's,
whilst young counter-dandies are displaying their wares.

This sort of husbands should be sent out after breakfast, and if not
Members of Parliament, or Directors of a Railroad, or an Insurance
Company, should be put into their clubs, and told to remain there until
dinner-time. No sight is more agreeable to my truly regulated mind than
to see the noble characters so worthily employed. Whenever I pass by
St. James's Street, having the privilege, like the rest of the world, of
looking in at the windows of 'Blight's,' or 'Foodle's,' or 'Snook's,'
or the great bay at the 'Contemplative Club,' I behold with respectful
appreciation the figures within--the honest rosy old fogies, the mouldy
old dandies, the waist-belts and glossy wigs and tight cravats of those
most vacuous and respectable men. Such men are best there during the
day-time surely. When you part with them, dear ladies, think of the
rapture consequent on their return. You have transacted your household
affairs; you have made your purchases; you have paid your visits; you
have aired your poodle in the Park; your French maid has completed the
toilette which renders you so ravishingly beautiful by candlelight, and
you are fit to make home pleasant to him who has been absent all day.

Such men surely ought to have their Clubs, and we will not class them
among Club Snobs therefore:--on whom let us reserve our attack for the
next chapter.

CHAPTER XXXVIII--CLUB SNOBS

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