Gauntlet

• Berlin gloves: thin white cotton gloves (often worn by butlers, waiters, policemen, etc.)
  • Ref to Selby: Boots at the Swan 7: (of gloves worn by gentlemen) 'Many sports Berlins, or perliseman's as I calls 'em; others come the artful dodge of jeans and washing Limericks — them does werry well for barbers' clerks and sich like; but the rale gentleum sports kid ones'
  • because of their cheapness (as compared with leather gloves), Berlin gloves were considered low-class. In Thackeray’s Pendennis, the narrator speaks scornfully of waiters “in creaking shoes and Berlin gloves;” one such character wears a Berlin glove “stuck in his belt side.” Here, it may be that he has stuffed the glove up his sleeve, as men sometimes did with handkerchiefs, and that part of it is hanging out.