CHAPTER XL--CLUB SNOBS
Both sorts of young men, mentioned in my last under the flippant names
of Wiggle and Waggle, may be found in tolerable plenty, I think, in
Clubs. Wiggle and Waggle are both idle. They come of the middle classes.
One of them very likely makes believe to be a barrister, and the other
has smart apartments about Piccadilly. They are a sort of second-chop
dandies; they cannot imitate that superb listlessness of demeanour, and
that admirable vacuous folly which distinguish the noble and high-born
chiefs of the race; but they lead lives almost as bad (were it but for
the example), and are personally quite as useless. I am not going to
arm a thunderbolt, and launch it at the beads of these little Pall
Mall butterflies. They don't commit much public harm, or private
extravagance. They don't spend a thousand pounds for diamond earrings
for an Opera-dancer, as Lord Tarquin can: neither of them ever set up a
public-house or broke the bank of a gambling-club, like the young Earl
of Martingale. They have good points, kind feelings, and deal honourably
in money-transactions--only in their characters of men of second-rate
pleasure about town, they and their like are so utterly mean,
self-contented, and absurd, that they must not be omitted in a work
treating on Snobs.
Wiggle has been abroad, where he gives you to understand that his
success among the German countesses and Italian princesses, whom he met
at the TABLES-D'HOTE, was perfectly terrific.
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