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Updated: July 17, 2025
Alice Challice stood under the immense glass portico of the Grand Babylon, exposed to the raking stare of two commissionaires. "So you are staying here!" she said, as if laying hold of a fact which she had hitherto hesitated to touch. "Yes," he said. "Won't you come in?"
'You must have been maturing the day's business quite a long time, my boyhood's companion, my floater of public companies, my pearl of financiers. Yes, decidedly parts of it were wonderfully ingenious. To sow the place with pickpockets, to get at my cashiers, my commissionaires, and my servers. To substitute your own false shopwalkers for the genuine article.
It will be a universal Corps of Commissionaires, created for the service of the public and in the interests of the poor, which will bring us into direct relations with every family in London, and will therefore constitute an unequalled medium for the distribution of advertisements and the collection of information.
The most human thoroughfare in any of the world's great cities was at its best and brightest. Everywhere commissionaires were blowing their whistles, the streets were thronged with slowly-moving vehicles, the pavements were stirring with life. The little crowd which had gathered in front of the chemist's shop was swept away. After all, none of them knew exactly what they had been waiting for.
Others are present, one a Maltese gentleman, the proprietor of a select club-house, where the garrison officers fence and engage in gymnastics, but Signor Giovani is not of our party. There are also several commissionaires or guides, at five francs a day, for one cannot move at Malta without being attended, and it is wise to engage one cicerone to keep the rest of his tribe at bay.
The two commissionaires, who seemed to have grown accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately after; and the Prince and the Colonel brought up the rear, arm in arm, and smiling to each other as they went.
It had rich resources, and it had also high social standing; and the deferential commissionaires at the doors and the fluffy-aproned, appealing girls who gave away programmes in the foyer were a proof that the Society, while doubtless anxious about such subjects as the persistence of individuality after death, had no desire to reconstitute the community on a democratic basis.
Each of the commissionaires carried a large dish of cream tarts under a cover, which they at once removed; and the young man made the round of the company, and pressed these confections upon every one's acceptance with an exaggerated courtesy. Sometimes his offer was laughingly accepted; sometimes it was firmly, or even harshly, rejected.
Jorrocks was then passed out, to take his chance among the touts and commissionaires of the various hotels, who are enough to pull passengers to pieces in their solicitations for custom.
He told the valet to buy black gloves, and a silk hat, sized seven and a quarter, and to bring up a copy of Who's Who. He hoped the valet would be dilatory in executing these commands. But the valet seemed to fulfill them by magic. And almost before he knew where he was, two commissionaires were helping him into an auto-cab, and the terrific enterprise had begun.
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