To these coffee and chocolate houses came all the wit and all the fashion of London. Men of letters and statesmen, men of the robe and men of the sword, lawyers, dandies, poets, and philosophers, met there to discuss politics, literature, scandal, and the play. There were often very strange figures among the motley crowd behind the red-curtained windows of a St. James's coffee-house. The gentleman who made himself so agreeable to the bar-maid or who chatted so affably about the conduct of the allies or the latest news from Sweden, might meet you again later on if your road lay at all outside town, and imperiously request you to stand and deliver. But of all the varied assembly the strangest figures must have been the beaux and exquisites, in all their various degrees of "dappers," "fops," "smart fellows," "pretty fellows," and "very pretty fellows." They made a brave show in many-colored splendor of attire, heavily scented with orange-flower water, civet-violet, or musk, with large falbala periwigs, or long, powdered duvilliers, with snuff-boxes and perspective glasses perpetually in their hands, and dragon or right Jamree canes, curiously clouded and amber headed, dangling by a blue ribbon from the wrist or the coat-button. The staff was as essential to an early Georgian gentleman as to an Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the cane-carrying custom incurred the frequent attacks of the satirists. Cane-bearers are made to declare {77} that the knocking of the cane upon the shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it in the mouth, were such reliefs to them in conversation that they did not know how to be good company without it. Some of these young men appear to have affected effeminacy, like an Agathon or a Henri Trois. Steele has put it on record that he heard some, who set up to be pretty fellows, calling to one another at White's or the St. James's by the names of "Betty," "Nelly," and so forth. Servants play almost as important parts as their masters in the humors of the time. Rich people were always surrounded by a throng of servants. First came the valet de chambre, who was expected to know a little of everything, from shaving and wig-making to skill in country sports, and had as much experience in all town matters as a servant out of Terence or Moliere. Last came the negro slave, who waited on my lord or my lady, with the silver collar of servitude about his neck.