Publisher's Synopsis
Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had something to do with thedesigning of the things called flats in England and America. There is something entirelyGargantuan in the idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other, frontdoors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything maydwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices ofthe Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attractand startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. Thepasser-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro ShippingAgency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and passes through the twilightpassages as one passes through the twilight corridors of a dream. If the Thugs set up aStrangers' Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street, and sentin a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries would be made. And the Clubof Queer Trades reigns in a great edifice hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils.The nature of this society, such as we afterwards discovered it to be, is soon and simplytold. It is an eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which the absolute condition of membershiplies in this, that the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his living.It must be an entirely new trade. The exact definition of this requirement is given in thetwo principal rules. First, it must not be a mere application or variation of an existing trade.Thus, for instance, the Club would not admit an insurance agent simply because instead ofinsuring men's furniture against being burnt in a fire, he insured, let us say, their trousersagainst being torn by a mad dog. The principle (as Sir Bradcock Burnaby-Bradcock, in theextraordinarily eloquent and soaring speech to the club on the occasion of the questionbeing raised in the Stormby Smith affair, said wittily and keenly) is the same. Secondly, thetrade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its inventor. Thus theClub would not receive a man simply because he chose to pass his days collecting brokensardine tins, unless he could drive a roaring trade in them. Professor Chick made that quiteclear. And when one remembers what Professor Chick's own new trade was, one doesn'tknow whether to laugh or cry.
