There was an awesome sort of place where Thackeray went, you remember,
where he was scared of the waiters. This probably was not the Reform
Club, as he was very much at home there and loved the place. However,
just the outside of this "mausoleum" in Pall Mall scared Mr. Hopkinson
Smith, who had been inside a few clubs here and there, and who spoke,
in a sketch of London, of its "forbidding" aspect, "a great, square,
sullen mass of granite, frowning at you from under its heavy browed
windows--an aloof, stately, cold and unwelcome sort of place."

An aristocratic functionary, probably a superannuated member of
Parliament, placed me under arrest at the door, and in a vast, marble
pillared hall I was held on suspicion to await the arrival of Mr.
Belloc.

A large, brawny man he is, with massive shoulders, a prizefighter's
head, a fine, clean shaven face and a bull neck. Somehow he suggested
to me--though I do not clearly remember the picture--the portrait of
William Blake by Thomas Phillips, R.A., in the National Portrait
Gallery, frequently reproduced in books.

He gives your hand a hearty wrench, turns and strides ahead of you into
another room. You--and small boys in buttons, with cards and letters
on platters, to whom he pays no attention--trot after him. A driving,
forceful, dominating character, apparently. Looks at his watch
frequently. Perpetually up and down from town, he says, and
continually rushing about London. Keen on the job, evidently, all the
while.

He does not know how far you are acquainted with England; "there is a