The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners.  It was that topsy-turvy product—­an “exclusive” commercial enterprise.  That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away.  In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers.  They positively create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them.  If there were a fashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it.  If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon.  The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a square in Belgravia.  It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient one.  But its very inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a particular class.  One inconvenience, in particular, was held to be of vital importance:  the fact that practically only twenty-four people could dine in the place at once.  The only big dinner table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood open to the air on a sort of veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London.  Thus it happened that even the twenty-four seats at this table could only be enjoyed in warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yet more difficult made it yet more desired.  The existing owner of the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by making it difficult to get into.  Of course he combined with this limitation in the scope of his enterprise the most careful polish in its performance.  The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and the demeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the English upper class.  The proprietor knew all his waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them all told.  It was much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel.  Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness, as if he were a gentleman’s servant.  And, indeed, there was generally at least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.

The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have consented to dine anywhere but in such a place, for it insisted on a luxurious privacy; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club was even dining in the same building.  On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their treasures, as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of the society, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the form of a fish, and each