“So, Mr. Commissioner,” said Selwyn—“you will excuse me, sir, I forget your name—you are at length installed, I find.” The word “installed” conveyed an awkward idea; for the new Commissioner’s grandfather had been a stable-boy. “Why, sir,” replied the other, “if you mean to say that I am at length appointed, I have the pleasure to inform you that the business is settled. Yes, I am appointed; and though our noble friend, the Duke here, did oblige me with letters to the Minister, yet these letters were of no use; and I was positively promoted to the office without knowing a syllable about the matter, or even taking a single step in it.” “What! not a single step?” cried George. “No, not one, upon my honour,” replied the new-fledged placeman. “Egad, sir! I did not walk a foot out of my way for it.” “And egad, sir!” retorted Selwyn, “you never before uttered half so much truth in so few words. Reptiles, sir, can neither walk nor take steps—nature ordained they should creep.” Like many men of his day, Selwyn did and said many things which a later age would call very snobbish. Happening to be at Bath when it was nearly empty, he was induced, for the mere purpose of killing time, to cultivate the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman he was in the habit of meeting in the Rooms. In the height of the following season Selwyn encountered his old associate in St. James’s Street. He endeavoured to pass unnoticed, but in vain. “What! do you not recollect me?” exclaimed the indignant provincial. “I recollect you perfectly,” replied Selwyn, “and when I next go to Bath I shall be most happy to become acquainted with you again.” Though Selwyn appears to have preferred White’s, he did not entirely confine his attention to it. It was in his day the fashion to belong to as many clubs as possible—Wilberforce, indeed, mentions no fewer than five to which he himself belonged: Brooks’s, Boodle’s, White’s, Miles and Evans’s in New Palace Yard, and Goosetree’s, on the site of which stands the Marlborough. As their names imply, all these clubs were originally mere coffee-houses, kept by men of the above names, the most celebrated of whom, next to the proprietors of White’s, was Brookes, or Brooks, who founded the present club in St. James’s Street. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV BROOKS’S, THE COCOA-TREE, AND THE THATCHED HOUSE At one time considerable rivalry existed between White’s and Brooks’s. Great festivities took place all over the country in the spring of 1789, and both White’s and Brooks’s gave balls, which seem to have occasioned much unpleasant feeling between the party of the Prince of Wales and that of the Court. Pitt was a member of both clubs (having been elected to Brooks’s in 1781, on the proposal of Fox), but he had a decided partiality for White’s.