Do you see much of that pathetic class of over-ripe bachelor which my boy rather naughtily calls the "Have-Beens"? They are common, I suppose, to every age and country, but England seems to contain more than her fair share. Between thirty-five and fifty, not particularly well-connected, not a _parti_ among them, not even extravagantly popular, but useful--apparently--and _ubiquitous_. I could give you the names of a dozen... Several of them have been in quite good regiments at some time or other. I understand they belong to the usual clubs; most of them dance quite competently; _all_ of them play extremely good bridge, I am told... Several women I know make out a stop-gap list of them; then, if they're short of a man--it is several grades lower than the embassies, of course, and you are not expected to give even a day's notice--, the butler can telephone to them in turn until he finds one disengaged. Delightfully simple, is it not? Having no personalities of their own, they accord well with every one; having no pride, they never resent an eleventh-hour invitation; they are too discreet to pay unduly marked attention to a married woman, they know their place too well to attempt any intimacy with the girls. I am not ashamed to confess that I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of a man who is a man; but the kind I am describing seem to ask nothing more of life than invitations and more invitations--and this strange modern privilege of being "Bunny" and "Chris" and "Theo" to women who are old enough to have outgrown such nonsense. If you entertain--I do not, as you are aware--, I believe it is essential to have some such list as I have indicated; and I am told that the men repay you by running errands and being useful in a thousand ways. For _their_ sake I hope they never hear what other men say about them, even the fellow-members of their little community--there is no more contemptuous critic of "Bunny" than "Theo"--or what the women say, for that matter. We may, if we are built that way, ask "Bunny" or "Theo" to come and look at frocks with us; but we don't respect the man who does... If any girl _dared_ ask Will to waste a morning, talking to her while she sat for her portrait...