“Appearing as rarer units we perceive members of the second or _middle_
class proceeding at a more leisurely and dignified pace towards their
professional or commercial pursuits, the haunts of which lie less to
the eastward and more in the centre of the city. These are dressed
entirely in black, and wear upon their heads the round hat to which
one of my colleagues erroneously gave the title of a religious emblem,
a position from which, I am glad to see, he has recently receded.
Nothing is more striking in the scene than the absolute uniformity of
this costume. In the right hand is carried, according to the ritual
of a secret society to which the greater part of this class belong, a
staff or tube. The left hand grasps a roll of printed paper which we
may premise without too much phantasy to be the original news-sheet
from which the innumerable forgeries and copies of the succeeding dark
ages proceeded. We are, of course, ignorant of its name, but we may
accept it as the prototype of that vast mass of printed matter which
purports to be contemporary in date, but which recent scholarship has
definitely proved to be of far later origin. Beyond these, but in
numbers certainly few, the exact extent of which I shall discuss in
a moment, are the _upper_ classes, or Gentry. How many they may be
in such a crowd, I repeat, we cannot tell. We know that to the whole
population they stood somewhat as one to 10,000. The proportion in
London may have been slightly higher, for we have definite documentary
information that in certain provincial centres ‘not a gentleman’ could
be discovered, though for what reason these centres were less favoured
we are not told. In a street full of some thousands we shall certainly
not be exaggerating if we put the number of the Gentry present at
certainly a couple of individuals, and we may put as our highest limits
half a dozen. How are they dressed? In a most varied manner. Some in
grey, some in pink (these are off to hunt the fox in the fields of
Croydon or upon the heath of Hampstead, or possibly--to follow the
conjecture of the Professor of Geology in his fascinating book on the
Thames Valley--to Barking Level). Others are in black silk with a
large oval orifice exposing the chest. Others again will be in white
flannel, and others in a species of toga known as ‘shorts.’ These are
students from the university, or their professors, and they will be
distinguished by a square cap upon the head which, unlike so many other
conjectural forms of headgear, we can definitely pronounce to have had
a religious character. A tassel sometimes of gold hangs from the centre
of this square. With the exception of this headgear the Gentry discover
upon their heads as uniform a type of covering as their inferiors of
the middle class, who salute them as they pass by lifting the round
hat with the right hand. This headgear is tubular and probably of some
light metal, polished to a highly reflecting surface, and invariably
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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