What happened in the way of
disfigurement by polishing paste to the surrounding brick or wood had
no importance. The conventions of the parish had no eye save for brass
door-knobs and brass plates, which were maintained daily in effulgence
by a vast early-rising population. Recruiting offices, casualty lists,
the rumour of peril and of glory, could do nothing to diminish the
high urgency of the polishing of those brass door-knobs and those
brass plates.
The shops and offices seemed to show that the wants of customers were
few and simple. Grouse moors, fisheries, yachts, valuations, hosiery,
neckties, motor-cars, insurance, assurance, antique china, antique
pictures, boots, riding-whips, and, above all, Eastern cigarettes!
The master-passion was evidently Eastern cigarettes. The few provision
shops were marmoreal and majestic, catering as they did chiefly for
the multifarious palatial male clubs which dominated the parish and
protected and justified the innumerable "bachelor" suites that hung
forth signs in every street. The parish, in effect, was first an
immense monastery, where the monks, determined to do themselves
extremely well in dignified peace, had made a prodigious and not
entirely unsuccessful effort to keep out the excitable sex.
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