“How insufferably odious, with a few brilliant exceptions, were the dandies of forty years ago! They were generally middle-aged, some even elderly men, had large appetites, gambled freely, and had no luck; and why they arrogated to themselves the right of setting up their fancied superiority on a self-raised pedestal, and despising their betters, Heaven only knows. They hated everybody and abused everybody, and would sit together in White’s bow-window or the pit-boxes at the Opera. They swore a good deal, never laughed, had their own particular slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of them been patronized at one time or other by Brummell or the Prince Regent.” The old-fashioned club-man had comparatively few interests, and even those were of a comparatively narrow kind. His life, indeed, was centred in his club, which often seemed to him the very centre and pivot of the universe. As compared with those of to-day, the clubs of the past were very primitive in their arrangements, though not a few had that peculiar atmosphere of old-world comfort which is generally lacking in our more hurried and strenuous existence. The clubs of the past were almost without exception sombre and occasionally dingy resorts, entirely devoid of bright-coloured decorations, whilst very few prints or pictures adorned their walls. When modern improvements were first suggested in clubs, most of the old-fashioned members fought strenuously against them. The introduction of the electric light, for instance, was bitterly opposed; whilst the telephone seemed to not a few of the older generation an attempt to introduce mercantile outposts into the very heart of clubland. The old club-men at first hated, and afterwards feared, the encroachments of business methods into their kingdom. In the heyday of their sway, indeed, few connected with commerce or the City had much chance of being elected to a West End club, and it was only in the seventies of the last century that a few determined scouts contrived to force an entry into the portals through which the vast army of stockbrokers and the like have since surged. At heart the old club-men probably believed that it was undignified for a gentleman to enter any but certain recognized professions, such as the army, navy, or diplomatic service; and the West End was still permeated by the ideas of another age which had only just passed away. Gradually, as a new and entirely different generation came to the front, the aristocratic traditions which had dominated West End life were discarded, and another kind of club-man began to make his influence felt.