Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/11

 would say, “How wicked my lord is looking!” Noblesse oblige, you see, and so an aristocrat should be very careful of his good name. Anonymous naughtiness does little harm.

It is pleasant to record that many persons were unobnoxious to the magic of his title and disaproved of him so strongly that, whenever he entered a room where they happened to be, they would make straight for the door and watch him very severely through the key-hole. Every morning, when he strolled up Piccadilly, they crossed over to the other side in a compact body, leaving him to the companionship of his bad companions on that which is still called the “shady” side. Lord George——was quite indifferent to this demonstration. Indeed, he seemed wholly hardened and when ladies gathered up their skirts as they passed him, he would lightly appraise their ankles.

I am glad I never saw his lordship. They say he was rather like Caligula, with a dash of Sir John Falstaff, and that sometimes on wintry mornings in St. James’s Street, young children would hush their prattle and cling in disconsolate terror to their nurse’s skirts, as they saw him come (that vast and fearful gentleman!) with the east wind