There was a Tommy society
in Mayfair that winter, nearly all of the members eminent or
beautiful, and they held each other's hands. Both sexes were eligible,
married or single, and the one rule was something about sympathy. It
afterwards became the Souls, but those in the know still call them the
Tommies.
They blackballed Mrs. Jerry (she was rather plump), but her married
stepdaughter, Lady Pippinworth (who had been a Miss Ridge-Fulton), was
one of them. Indeed, the Ridge-Fultons are among the thinnest families
in the country.
T. Sandys was invited to join the society, but declined, and thus
never quite knew what they did, nor can any outsider know, there being
a regulation among the Tommies against telling. I believe, however,
that they were a brotherhood, with sisters. You had to pass an
examination in unrequited love, showing how you had suffered, and
after that either the men or the women (I forget which) dressed in
white to the throat, and then each got some other's old love's hand to
hold, and you all sat on the floor and thought hard. There may have
been even more in it than this, for one got to know Tommies at sight
by a sort of careworn halo round the brow, and it is said that the
House of Commons was several times nearly counted out because so many
of its middle-aged members were holding the floor in another place.
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