"Some distance away from Madam Frout’s Academy, in Esoteric Street, were a number of gentlemen’s clubs. It would be far too cynical to say that here the term “gentlemen” was simply defined as “someone who can afford five hundred dollars a year”; they also had to be approved of by a great many other gentlemen who could afford the same fee. And they didn’t much like the company of ladies. This was not to say that they were that kind of gentlemen, who had their own, rather better decorated clubs in another part of town, where there was generally a lot more going on. These gentlemen were gentlemen of a class who were, on the whole, bullied by ladies from an early age. Their lives were steered by nurses, governesses, matrons, mothers, and wives, and after four or five decades of that the average mild-mannered gentleman gave up and escaped as politely as possible to one of these clubs, where he could snooze the afternoon away in a leather armchair with the top button of his trousers undone. (pp. 78-79)"