THE SMART YOUNG MAN.

Observer, Volume 5, Issue 131, 17 March 1883, Page 424

THE SMART YOUNG MAN.

No one ever quite knows how or when he first began to be " smart," any more than they know the origin of the word used to designate him. It has no affinity with the American term meaning shrewdness and the capability of getting the better of your neighbour ; while ib'does not mean that he bases bis claim to social importance on his clothes or his button-hole flower. He does pay much attention to dress, and would lie in bed the whole day rather than be seen without the said flower ; but that is only one of his attributes. In analysing him — as far as such a creature can be analysed — let us take his good points first. Except about women or horses— or perhaps money matters if he happen to be hard pressed — he is the soul of veracity. He has never been known to tell a lie (save on one of the above subjects) unless a lie was an absolute necessity of the occasion. He has a great belief in friendship, arid will stick like grim death to a " pal " (as he calls him) unless the " pal " gets down in the world, shabby, or otherwise an unadvisable acquaintance. He will never make love to his " pal's " wife, at least only when he is obliged to do so — as he tells his other " pals " in confidence — by her taking the initiative ; and he will never compromise a lady in showing about her letter?, unless she has done him some injury, such as throwing him over, boring him with too much affection when he wishes to form a new liaison, or preferring someone else to him. No one can be more generous to women than the Smart Young Man, as long as there is do undesirable secrecy to be kept up ; and he will lie to a big husband or a stalwart brother, of course in the lady's interest, with a Bturdiness worthy of a fashionable Ananias. The poor fellow sometimes has to bear tribulation, notwithstanding all these virtues, for he has many rivals in the race for Don- Juan-ish renown ; and if he now and then invent a success without a particle of ground therefor, surely this is better than that he should have made a new confiding husband miserable. It is hard on him that he should thus be compelled to stretch the rigid limits of truth to which he is so anxious, on moral grounds, to adhere. The Smart Young Man of the present day is generally abstemious and careful of his health. It is necessary for his success all round that he should be able to hit rocketing pheasants and ride pretty straight to hounds ; and to his credit it should be recorded that he does generally manage to do most things requiring nerve and skill of the body with a certain dexterity. On all the rest of the world — outside the " smart " circle — he looks with absolute disdain ; but more especially does he despise the horrid " writing fellows," although they have of late taken to serving him up those delicious little scandalous paragraphs which — with the exception of the easier part of sporting papers — are the only reading that he can understand. To kick someone of these people is always his fixed and loudlyexpressed resolve ; but he does nol carry it out ; probably actuated by the same feelings which caused the gentleman to quit the room in which he was insulted — " I left, not because I was frightened, but because I " wanted to." The Smart Young Man — unless he happens to be born to grandeur — generally emerges from obscurity as a reckless gambler. To play high is a certain " open Sesame " nowadays to a Society which wants to get rid of its superfluous cash and to be excited. One night's high play with a few big young men will transform them all by next morning into Tom, Dick, and Harry ; while, if he knows iow to lose well, and to give ample revenge when he wins, he to them soon becomes no other than Bill or Jimmy. To be nicknamed is a grand step. The rest follows easily enough — if he will only take care to live as the others do, and to adopt their vices without hesitation. After a time he can take bolder ground. He knows his men and sees whom he can snub, with whom it is safe to quarrel, and which of them he may select as a butt to amuse the others. Then, too — but this with caution — he can ■adopt a peculiarity. He can wear two flowers at once, or carry a pure gold walking-stick, or hire a hansom for a lease of three years, always to await him ; or he can go home when out shooting unless he lets off his gun fifty times in the first half -hour ; indeed the way in which he may make himself a hero to his world are innumerable. Impertinence, or insolence, or sang-froid, as you like to call it, he must cultivate as a fine art. There are some Dukes that can be insulted with absolute impunity, while there are tailors' sons who have risen that must be treated with scrupulous reverence. This is what the Smart Young Man has to learn. When he once absolutely knows his world he should go far. With respect to pecuniary matters, he is always either very rich or very hard up ; always giving magnificent parures to professional beauties, or dodging the bailiffs. Respectable competency is odious to smart people. And here comes in the cleverness of my ideal Smart Young Man. The hard-up aristocrats around him, with the Jews and dishonoured bills and howling creditors, are most of them either expecting the reversals of fortunes or have more credit than the money-lending solicitors they go to ever tell them of. To him — the young man I write of — some money is absolutely necessary ; for although hiß friends are delighted to laugh at his impecunious stories, there is generally in them a kind of caution when they are asked to enter into a pecuniary transaction from which they themselves get no " stuff," as their slang goes. When the Smart Yousg Man is supposed to have lost thousands on the handicap-, he must take care that it is in reality only hundreds, with, of course, a corresponding difference of figures as regards his winnings. I knew a Smart YoungiMan once who began MMmnl<£lsoo a year, JiyM, gloriously for some six H^^Hterammer3 asfa^reekless plunger on the TtPPPHH^lovefl: and pitied when at length he broke. After ,Qq breaking he ?lived upon the recollection, m t&V minds' 'of .others,' of his former

fame; and all were glad to do a good turn 1 to one who had so. suffered in the cause of the goddess of Fortune. Few but myself, I fancy, knew that his income still remained what it had been at first— £lsoo a year. The Smart Touug Man's manner with women should be entirely made up of intense admiration — for himself. That should be his sole subject of conversation ; as he may argue, if he is worth talking to, surely he is worth talking of ; and the subject lends itself so readily to such variations as his visits to great houses," his flirtations with great ladies, and his performances at baccarat or on horseback naturally suggest. The old variety of beau — the D'Orsay or the Lord Aivanley type — had, if we may believe ancient records, to be a gentleman and a man of honour above all. Now we require nothing of the kind. Vulgarity and want of refinement are hidden easily enough by swagger and smartness ; while honour is only an empty sound in the days when professional beauties and their doings are the principal topic of converse in " Society." The son of a dog-stea'ler, sent to the right tailor, and educated for a few months by one of our cleverest fashionable young men, would do just as well nowadays as Sir Walter Raleigh or Sir Philip Sydney come to life again ; for the latter would probably have broken down .altogether in the grand art of modern success in life, which consists of the blowing of your own trumpet and the annihilation of all scruple.