It s a jungle out there and it s a well-known fact a man requires something more these days than the right connections, chiselled cheekbones and finely turned calves to make his way in the world, reads this month s editorial. That something more is information. The Chap keeps you abreast of the latest developments in such diverse fields as pipe smoking, lavatorial etiquette and dressing for sport.
A regular contributor to the periodical is Sister Millicent Fond, who this month proffers advice on how to achieve the elegant pallor of a gentleman afflicted with tuberculosis:
Spend all your waking and sleeping hours clad in pyjamas and dressing gown. Throw all your other clothes away, so you won t be tempted to get dressed. Make sure visitors call in the middle of the afternoon, to emphasise that you are completely inactive. Always receive visitors in bed, under an exaggerated amount of bedclothes. A few additions to your room can encourage the heady aroma of the invalid s bedchamber. Leave the tops off bottles of medicine, allowing their clinical odours to seep into the room. Used bandages, swabs and cotton wool can be left in sinister mounds near the bed, allowing your friends to conjecture the worst.
Sick and tired of dunking your newly starched cuffs in your mulligatawny? If so, help is at hand in the form of Saint George Elasticated Arm Bands. Fun to wear and manufactured from 100% shiny-effect metal, these stunning requisites are exactly what you need to get you noticed in all professions that involve extensive arm usage. Almost impossible to come by in the shops, they re available to readers of The Chap for just #3.75.
Elsewhere there s a pair of Hunt & Holditch sock suspenders for Letter of the Month writer, Major Bertram Burberry-Macintosh:
Sir, in recent visits to public houses I have noted numerous examples of persons forced, it seems, to drink their beers directly from the bottle. Surely in these supposedly never had it so good times, the licensed victuallers of Britain can do something about this apparent shortage of glasses?
Our favourite part of The Chap, though, is the one in which that most aristocratic of East Europeans, Vladamir Shokov, shares with us his personal reminiscences:
The last time I saw Gary, he was cocking a snook at a brigand of sportswear-clad ruffians on The Oxford Street. They were wearing Nike; he was wearing a Hawkes worsted three-piece and sporting a magnificent cane. The foppish delivery of Gary s acerbic witticisms soon had the better of the ruffians, whose bovine attempts at one-upmanship merely sucked them deeper and deeper into their quagmire of vulgarity.
Well said, old boy.