a quarter past ten
-LSB- Illustration -RSB- One fine morning in the full London season , Major Arthur Pendennis came over from his lodgings , according to his custom , to breakfast at a certain club in Pall Mall , of which he was a chief ornament . As he was one of the finest judges of wine in England , and a man of active , dominating , and inquiring spirit , he had been very properly chosen to be a member of the committee of this club and indeed was almost the manager of the institution ; and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as reverentially as to a duke or a field-marshal . At a quarter past ten the major invariably made his appearance in the best blacked boots in all London , with a checked morning cravat that never was rumpled until dinner time , a buff waistcoat which bore the crown of his sovereign on the buttons , and linen so spotless that Mr. Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress , and would probably have employed her , had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the country . Pendennis 's coat , his white gloves , his whiskers , his very cane , were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a military man _ en retraite _ . At a distance , or seeing his back merely , you would have taken him to be not more than thirty years old : it was only by a nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his rich brown hair , and that there were a few crows ' - feet round about the somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face . His nose was of the Wellington pattern .