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 Club makers and club members / 
 
 III 
 
 3 1924 028 066 979 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028066979 
 
CLUB MAKERS AND 
 CLUB MEMBERS 
 
CLUB MAKERS AND 
 CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 By T. H. S. ^COTT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "society IN THE 
 COUNTRY HOUSE," " MASTERS 
 OF ENGLISH JOURNALISM," ETC. 
 
 WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 LONDON: i ADELPHI TERRACE 
 
 LEIPSIC : INSELSTRASSE 20 
 
 r.v 
 
/; <J 
 
 t2 
 
 First published in 1914 
 
 (All riehts reserved) 
 
TO 
 Sir liDWARD LETCHWORTH, F.S.A. 
 
 THE GRAND SECRETARY OF FREEMASONS, 
 
 HIMSELF A CLUBMAN OF THE BEST TYPE: ONE OF 
 
 THE OLDEST AS WELL AS THE MOST VALUED AMONG 
 
 THOSE FOR WHOSE FRIENDSHIP THE PRESENT WRITER IS INDEBTED 
 
 TO A CLUB LIFE OF MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF 
 
 A COURTESY THAT NOTHING COULD RUFFLE, 
 
 OF AN AMIABILITY THAT NOTHING COULD ALIENATE, 
 
 AND OF KINDLY OFFICES SUSPENDED BY NO VICISSITUDES, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED BY HIS 
 
 GRATEFUL AND ATTACHED 
 
 T. H. S. ESCOTT. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume is at least true to its title in that, unlike 
 the several excellent club histories, from John Timbs 
 to Major Arthur Griffiths and Mr. Ralph Nevill, all 
 now standard and universally accessible works, it does 
 not aim at bringing together interesting, and now more 
 or less familiar, details concerning club structures, 
 within and without, the cost of their erection, the 
 fines or subscriptions paid by their members, their 
 scale of coffee-room prices, and the profit or loss of 
 their conduct. 
 
 The object throughout has been, for convenience' 
 sake in chronological order, not invariably observed 
 by those who have already treated of these matters, 
 to trace and illustrate the connection of the club 
 system generally, and of certain institutions in par- 
 ticular, with the representative personages as well as 
 with the social, political, intellectual, and moral 
 tendencies or characteristics of the period during 
 which they grew up. Throughout these pages club 
 makers and club members are alike portrayed as types 
 of their time, and the incidents in which they figure 
 or in which they have any concern as reflections of 
 national life and manners. 
 
 The preparation of such a work could, therefore, 
 necessarily receive less assistance than might be 
 supposed from the instructive labours already accom- 
 plished by others in the same field. Still less could 
 the present enterprise have been carried through 
 without the help of those who in past years, by their 
 interest in the writer as well as their exceptional know- 
 ledge of the theme, promoted the plan of the work and 
 supplied him with many of the hitherto unpublished 
 materials embodied in it. The author's first debt is 
 to the late Lord Avebury, and among others with 
 whom he had been privileged from earliest youth 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 intimately to associate : A. W. Kinglake and Abraham 
 Hayward, Sir M. E. Grant -Duff, the late Markham 
 Spofforth, and the first Lord Ashbourne. Of those 
 happily still living, his obligations are equally 
 great, and in some cases perhaps greater (putting 
 the names in alphabetical order), to — Sir C. H. Acland, 
 Bart., Mr. J. T. Agg Gardner, M.P., Mr. Balfour, 
 Mr. F. Elrington Ball, General Sir Henry Bracken- 
 bury, G.C.B., Emeritus Professor Ingram Bywater, 
 Mr. Alan S. Cole, Mr. Bryan Corcoran, the Hon. 
 Hew Hamilton Dalrymple, the Rev. A. L. Foulkes, 
 Mr. Moreton Frewen, the Rev. Wi. P. Greswell, 
 Professor John Hales, General H. D. Hutchinson, 
 Sir Courtenay Ilbert, G.C.B. (and through him the 
 several parliamentary officials named at the proper 
 places in the chapter " The Best Club in London "), 
 Mr. C. N. Jackson, Fellow and Tutor, Hertford 
 College, Oxford, Viscounts KnoUys and Knutsford, 
 Sir H. Austin Lee, Mr. Barton Mills, Major H. P. 
 Molineux, Mr. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O, the Lord Reay, 
 the Right Hon. G. W. E. RusseU, Mr. J. H. Seabrooke, 
 Sir Bruce M. Seton, Bart., Mr. J. Ashby Sterry, Sir 
 G. O. Trevelyan, Bart., Lord Weardale, Lord West- 
 bury, Sir John Willoughby, Bart. 
 
 Nothing has been more valuable, more courteously 
 or generously forthcoming' than the information which 
 could alone be imparted by certain club secretaries 
 and officials. Nor can I exaggerate my indebtedness 
 to the secretaries of the United University Club and 
 the Oxford and Cambridge, Mr. E. O. Pope and Mr. 
 W. Woodstock ; Colonel C. Russell of the National, 
 or the secretaries of the Kildare Street Club, Dublin, 
 and the New Club, Edinburgh ; or lastly to the secre- 
 taries of other clubs mentioned in this book for their 
 kindness in supplying materials for illustration. 
 
 T. H. S. ESCOTT. 
 West Brighton, 
 September, 191 3. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING . . . -I? 
 
 Club foregleams in classical times and lands — Themistocles as a club 
 product — Alcibiades and others as club managers — Aristotle at the 
 Athenian Club — Cicero as a Roman Club type — The first English 
 clubman — The founder of the Court of Good Company at work and 
 play between Westminster and St. Paul's — Tit for tat with the club 
 Maecenas, Sir Henry Somer— The prototype of the nineteenth century, 
 Sir Henry Anderson, at Stone's — Was John Lydgate expelled from, or 
 Chaucer a member of, the Court of Good Company ? — The first club- 
 man's consolation of penitence and song in poverty and old age — Sir 
 Walter Raleigh crowns his career of adventure, of high favour in Court 
 and camp, with the fame of the second club founder — What he took 
 from and did for the Mermaid men — The Mermaid rehearsal of his Free 
 Trade deliverances — Ben Jonson as club founder in the Middle Temple 
 — The Apollo Ben — Social and intellectual notorieties sealed of the 
 tribe of Ben — Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Sir John Suckling, 
 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Sir Kenelm Digby, Aubigny, Portland — 
 The Apollo after Johnson's death. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CLUBMEN AT WORK . . -39 
 
 The club and the Commonwealth — Sir James Harrington, the one 
 club founder of the period — How the Rota men were " fiill of politics " 
 in New Palace Yard, backed their friends, talked Oceana, and settled 
 what to do with Ireland and the Jews — What passed between Sir William 
 Petty and Major Wildman, Disraeli's soul of English politics 1640-88 
 — The cult of the jumping cat at the Rota and its personal results — 
 How Colonel Cobbet and Sir Richard Willis stood by the King at the 
 Sealed Knot — What the citizens did for trade at the Civil Club — 
 Bryan Corcoran — How the Treason clubmen changed the dynasty and 
 founded a club system — ^The golden egg of the Bank of England laid 
 in a Cheapside club — William Paterson & Co. at the Wednesday 
 Club talk politics and finance, combine capital and experience to 
 organize the London money market — What were the limits of their 
 insight into the banking system ? 
 
10 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON . . . . • 5^ 
 
 The social life of the House of Commons — A typical instance of the 
 progress from pub. to club — Mediaeval M.P.'s taking their ease and 
 food at some of the innumerable taverns adjoining their chamber — 
 The "Cock" — The "Fleece," their social-political life and club arrange- 
 ments — Also "Heaven and Hell " — Germs of St. Stephen's club-life in 
 Bellamy's — Bellamy's social arrangements, port and pies — The pie 
 that came too late for Pitt — Improved club accommodation in Barry's 
 new building, but Bellamy's not dead yet — Caterers since Bellamy — 
 St. Stephen's passes from proprietary club to Members' club and keeps 
 house for itself — Its kitchen and cellar resources — Its charges — Rise in 
 price for the "four hundred a yearers" — The Labour M. P. and the 
 red mullet not en papillote — The House of Commons club in its prime 
 during the sixties — Its twentieth-century conversion into a " cock-and- 
 hen club," to the great discomfort of the womanless M.P.— The 
 smoking-room as a link between the Bellamy and Barry buildings — 
 " I don't like smoking," says T. B. Macaulay ; " Nor I," says 
 Frederick Harrison — But Sir Walter Scott, Brougham, Eldon, Stowell, 
 and Bulwer Lytton do — The smoker's progress from the " Mermaid" 
 to the House of Commons Club — The ' ' four hundred a yearers' " joint- 
 stock palace a reflection of club characteristics of all periods, betting 
 and gambling excepted — The Lords as the second best. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB . . . . -77 
 
 Other refreshment-houses in the Bellamy period — The club equivalents 
 of their time — ^Jonathan Swift's club life and activities — Conspirators, 
 convives, and fisticuffs atthe"CocoaTree " — The "CocoaTree's"con ver- 
 sion from pub. to club — Edward Gibbon in its club days — Nineteenth- 
 century slate tables transform it into a billiard club — Its billiard-players 
 and its present shape — Fact and fiction of the October Club at the 
 " Bell" in Westminster — Who joined it, who stood aloof, who named it, 
 and who gave his life to its management — Mat Prior, Speaker Bromley 
 — Small talk and statesmanship at the October Club — How some con- 
 vivial undergraduates were sent down and founded a rival to the 
 October in the " Calves' Head " — The Whig Hanoverian Kit-Cat Club 
 cradled in Shire Lane, but moved to premises formerly occupied by 
 clubmen of a different kidney, the anti-Walpolean Fountain Club, 
 with four of its chief figures, Pulteney, Sir John Hynde Cotton, the 
 Earl of Chesterfield, and Viscount Cobham — The Kit Cat, why called ; 
 from Christopher Cat or from the "old cats and young kits" it 
 toasted — The ladies it toasted — The first clubwoman it created, and 
 the big-wigs of faculty it brought into fashion (Dr. Garth) — Its 
 summer meetings in the suburbs — Its real creator Jacob Tonson — Its 
 
CONTENTS 11 
 
 PAGE 
 
 headquarters his private house, chiefly Barn Elms — Its artistic chief, 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller — Its portraits in Tonson's gallery and the name 
 contributed by them to the vocabulary of art — A versatile eighteenth- 
 century Bohemian, Dick Eastcourt — Strolling player, London saw- 
 bones, the playgoer's favourite at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, and 
 Drury Lane — The ladies' pet, the Bumper and Beefsteak founder— 
 The mimic who can take off the whole College of Physicians — Sir 
 Roger de Coverley's " old comical one," and port wine agent — The 
 coffee-house rather than the tavern — True club ancestor — How Cano- 
 pus of Balliol brought coffee in and taught the Master how to make 
 it — The London chocolate and coffee-houses culminating in White's. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED . . . . lOO 
 
 How Francesco Bianco came to England — Learnt his business — Set 
 up on his own account — And prospered — His removal from Pall Mall 
 to St. James's lays, in White's Chocolate House, the foundations of 
 White's Club — How he dies and leaves the business to his widow — 
 How she, understanding the spirit of the age, extends it, innovates upon 
 it, and makes her house a centre of rank, fashion, and smartness — The 
 typical progress from coffee-house to club — Celebrities of the place in 
 successive stages of its being — How a shrewd Swiss makes a fortune 
 out of it, and defies the cleverest Englishman to do the same in 
 Switzerland — " University and school of vice" under one roof — The 
 long waiting list — The Young Club and the Old — Their fusion 
 results in^the White's of to-day — White's habitues at all stages of its 
 development. Its king, CoUey Gibber — Its leading exquisite, Horace 
 Walpole — Diarist and collector — Revolutionist and courtier — Gibber's 
 opinion of the Rockinghamites as club members — William Pitt balloted 
 in like Chatham, his father — Makes White's a Tory club — And vetoes 
 "pilling " — White's hospitalities — White's play — Chief habitues of its 
 gambling - room — Its special games— Its sobering down — King 
 Edward VII at White's. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 CLUBMEN AND CLUB DOINGS OF THE GEORGIAN ERA . -119 
 
 White's association with its younger brethren — George Selwyn's 
 influence in that direction — Conjectures, experiences, and traditions 
 ready for his admirers — His reforms at White's and efforts in new 
 ventures — The Brilliants — Figures around the whist-table — General 
 Scott's light dinners and heavy winnings — The dinner at Brighton that 
 gave birth to Watier's — Watier's military element — " Dan" plays his 
 pranks there — Beau Brummell lends Tom Sheridan a helping hand — 
 How a funeral terminated a good game of whist— Where Georgian 
 and modern clubs meet — Lord Alvanley at the Alfred — Sir Lumley 
 
12 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Skeffington — Bishops at play — The paradise of Mayfair — Women at 
 the club— A lady club maker — With the squires at Boodles' — Paul Pry 
 — "Squire" Western and his Essex friends — The work of Boodle's 
 last proprietor — Samuel Johnson's club of clubs — Almack's, the fore- 
 runner of Brooks's — Where Brooks's rivalled White's — Domestic 
 troubles there, and how they were settled. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES .... 147 
 
 What brought the Dover House Club into existence — Brooks's off- 
 spring becomes its rival — A princely moralist — The pioneer of the 
 club in its modern social aspect — the Guards' — the United Service — 
 Exploits of its two founders in the field — The makers of its homes — 
 Servants' clubs and debating societies — The club as peacemaker — 
 Social episodes in the lives of Gladstone and Disraeli— The poet- 
 laureate of Grillion's — Solitary diners — a peep at Grillion's as it is 
 to-day — Two ot its followers who have passed away — The Cosmopolitan 
 and the Breakfast Clubs. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CLUB AS A HOME . . . . . • I?! 
 
 The Travellers' Club and its creator, Lord Castlereagh — Features 
 of the playroom — Scenes between Talleyrand and Montrond — A 
 diplomatist as conversational leader — The Duke of Wellington's 
 opinion of clubs, and what came of it — The Union — The Windham — 
 Makers of the Athenseum — Sir F. Chantrey — J. W. Croker — His 
 personal warfare with Macaulay in society and politics — The Bowood 
 "tale-bearer," Joseph Jekyll — His brother wits, Luttrell and Rogers — 
 Reasons for their close companionship — What Bulwer Lytton thought 
 of Rogers — The fusion of classes and professions at the Athenaeum — 
 A new quarter for reform — Thomas Walker's work in kitchen and 
 cellar. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES . . . . .190 
 
 How mediaeval clubmen dined — Subsequent reformers of the club 
 menu — The club cuisine, the high-water mark of the cookery of the 
 period — Survivals, revivals, and specialities in White's kitchen and 
 elsewhere — Changes in the club dinner-hour — The French Revolu- 
 tion's effect on English dining — Culinary perfection and speculation 
 made the foundations of a new club — Crockford's — Its cook, Louis 
 Ude — Its wits and most prominent habitues — Lord Willoughby 
 D'Eresby — Count D'Orsay— Statesmen and diplomatists at Crockford's 
 
CONTENTS 13 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The hazard-room and supper-table — The personal incidents leading 
 to the abolition of " hells "—Crockford's among them— The last of 
 the Crockfordians, Sir W. H. Gregory, George Payne, Frank Lawley, 
 and the short-lived refuge at the Coventry Club. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE OF WHIP, CELLAR, AND CHEF .212 
 
 From Crockford's to the Carlton— A great Conservative Whip in the 
 making and his club work when made— How " Billy" Holmes got in 
 for Berwick-on-Tweed— How the Carlton, uniting all Conservative 
 sections, compensates the neutrality of White's and counteracts 
 Brooks's— " Billy's " successor. Colonel Taylor— " King " Hudson in 
 the Carlton smoking-room — Other instances of the club's discreetly 
 tolerant hospitality, and enlargement of Conservative influence by 
 non-insistence on severe party test for membership— W. E. Gladstone, 
 the second Duke of Wellington, the third Sir Robert Peel, and the 
 welcome given to W. H. Smith — Lord Abergavenny's benevolent 
 dictatorship, and its well-judged results — His twentieth-century 
 successors—" Bear " EUice's tit-for-tat with " Billy " Holmes in found- 
 ing the Reform — Authorship — Ambiguity of name^Joseph Hume its 
 godfather — And other of its early celebrities —W. M. Thackeray 
 scribbling copy in a quiet corner while printer's boy waits, presages 
 Henry Labouchere similarly occupied at a later day — Garibaldi, an 
 honorary member — Party conventions and club meetings — The succession 
 to Gladstone, the choice of " C. B." — ^Joseph and his brethren — The 
 Junior Carlton — Conservative Club episodes and cookery — The 
 National Liberal Club makers — The Constitutional Clubs — Club 
 makers below stairs — Great artists of the club kitchen — Rise and 
 progress of Alexis Soyer — His wide and enduring influence on the 
 club dinner menu. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIAL CLUB CREATORS . . .236 
 
 The homeless squire at St. Stephen's — And the United University 
 Club — Sword and gown — How the Duke came in — " Men of metal and 
 of acres ' ' — And a family party in the early Suffolk Street days — 
 Palmerston as a light blue champion — His academic patriotism and 
 its club result — The Oxford and Cambri<^e club makers and club 
 marrers — The Harington case — Treasures of the cellar and cuisine at 
 the University Clubs — Literati and literatuli as club creators — Social 
 mixture, and Covent Garden wits — The Garrick generators and 
 regenerators — The Duke of Sussex and his staff at work — Sir Andrew 
 Barnard — Lord Kinnaird — S. J. Arnold — And Francis Mills — Two 
 personaJ storms in Garrick teacups. 
 
14 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 ARTS, SCIENCE, AND CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 256 
 
 " American Notions " in Covent Garden — Garrick Club secessionists 
 led by Dickens to an artistic paradise in Hanover Square. Italian 
 and Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters at the Arts Club — The Arundel 
 Club, Salisbury Street, Strand — Frank Talfourd, its founder — Hisworks 
 and ways of life — Fleet Street workers in their anecdotage at the 
 Arundel — Amateurs and professionals — The latter take refuge in 
 reviving from the fifties Robert Brough's Savage Club — Smaller 
 Bohemian societies — The Century — Its contemporaries, the Burling- 
 ton Fine Arts Clubs and Savile — The Cecil — The Gladstone — The 
 New Reform — The aesthetic vagabond — All the talents and arts at the 
 Whitefriars — The old and new Savage, and the vanishing of Bohemia 
 — The Royal Society Club and its founder, Edmund Halley — The 
 Antiquaries Club — Its makers, members, and guests. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 SWORD AND GOWN . . . . .280 
 
 Eighteenth-century clubmen at the Thatched House Tavern — The 
 Dilettantists — Characteristic members or managers — The Earl of 
 Middlesex, Sir Francis Dashwood, and Thomas Brand — Noble 
 opera patrons and their touts — How the Muscovita gets her salary 
 raised — Lord Thurlow and Edmund Burke on pothouse club com- 
 panies — Thatched House vicissitudes, and its reversion to club use 
 — Sir John Milton designs and Sir Antonio Brady and others found 
 the Civil Service Club — Its transformation into the Thatched House 
 Club^The Ba3?ford Boat Race banquets — Nineteenth-century 
 successors of Junius at the Thatched House — Bob Trufifleton the 
 courtier at club and country house — Quick changes in St. James's 
 Street — The Club where Gladstone was at home, the Devonshire — 
 Pratt's the old home of " crib " — The Junior United and its makers — 
 " Cripplegate," " Billingsgate," and " Hellgate "— " Billy" the second 
 at the "Rag and Tamish " Club — Two "Rag" tragedies — Major 
 Arthur Griffiths, the Army and Navy Club's historian — Napoleon III 
 at the " Rag," and the first club smoking and strangers' rooms — The 
 Naval and Military — The Cavalry — The National Club and its services 
 to Church and State — Its devotional exercises. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT ..... 300 
 
 The Raleigh Club renders timely service to the soldier and the 
 author — Whyte Melville and George Lawrence, the Raleigh projectors 
 — Crimean veterans and Oxford graduates among the Raleigh men — 
 " Jack " Bailey and Captain Grant, the " makers " of the Raleigh 
 
CONTENTS 15 
 
 PAOI 
 
 Club — The Badminton Club— The original Four-in-hand — Charles 
 Finch the first president — Finch's successor, "Tommy" Onslow, his 
 Four-in-hand followers, and Jockey Club retinue — Wine that was little 
 for its age — Twentieth-century transformations in the character and 
 life of sporting clubs — A Royal Yacht Squadron member's punishment 
 for complaining to the waiter — The Arlington Street Club, afterwards 
 the Turf, and its mission in the sporting world — Its whist shares with 
 the Portland the rank of Graham's — Turf notabilities outside the 
 circle of sports — Lord Maurice's anecdotal displays at the Churchill 
 dinner-parties — A big move on the speculative board — The Jockey 
 Club of to-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN, IN TOWN AND COUNTRY . -316 
 
 The she-turfite and her nineteenth-century ancestresses — The primitive 
 clubwoman and her strange contrast to the clubwoman of to-day — 
 Ladies' Athenaeum, Lyceum, Lyric, and Army andNavy Clubs — Thames- 
 side beginnings of the London club out of London — The Orleans — Its 
 second home at Brighton — Clubmen who made the Brighton summer 
 season — The typical country club — Its celebrities, and their services to 
 Church and State — A lady club maker of Scotland — Lady Helen 
 Munro Ferguson carries on the Queen's — Club making in Edinburgh 
 begun by Henry Dundas with the New — Club evolution across St. 
 George's Channel — Daly's, the original resort for Irish M.P.'s — 
 Blackballing extraordinary and a secession — The Kildare Street 
 Club — The stronghold of Union oppositionists — Nineteenth and 
 twentieth century national and Imperial celebrities there — Treasures 
 belowstairs in Scotch and Irish clubs — Other country clubs, the 
 Yorkshire and the Bath and County. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CLUBMEN ABROAD AND AS PEACEMAKERS . . . 335 
 
 The English and French Jockey Clubs personally compared — Parisian 
 clubmen at home, and English clubmen in Paris — Diplomatists as 
 club intemationalizers — The Grosvenor — The iSt. James's, its makers, 
 migrations, and survivors — the Bachelors' Club — Sir Thomas Pycroft 
 as Anglo-Indian club creator and pioneer of an Empire club system — 
 The East India United Service Club— Ladies' Imperial institutions- 
 Club manufacturers of Anglo-American cement and their forerunners 
 —Two clubmen as peacemakers — Sir Frank Lascelles and Lord 
 Weardale — Back from club to pub. — The old club and the new 
 parliamentary timetable — Week-end influences on club and dining-room 
 — Restaurant and cafe rivalry to the club — The club on the Isis, its 
 sympathy with the London club in abstemious habits. 
 
 INDEX ........ 343 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SIR THOMAS DYKE ACLAND 
 
 THE CLUBS OF PALL MALL . 
 
 BEN JONSON .... 
 
 BRYAN CORCORAN 
 
 BOODLE'S CLUB : THE BAY WINDOW 
 
 ST. JAMES'S STREET AND WHITE'S IN 1751 
 
 A PAGE FROM WHITE'S BETTING BOOK 
 
 BROOKS'S IN fox's DAY, FROM ROWLANDSON'S DRAWING 
 
 CHARLES JAMES FOX ..... 
 
 WILLIAM CROCKFORD .... 
 
 CROCKFORD'S CLUBHOUSE, ST. JAMES'S STREET, 1 828 
 
 THE MARQUIS OF ABERGAVENNY 
 
 THE REFORM CLUB KITCHENS 
 
 T. E. POTTER, FOUNDER OF THE COBDEN CLUB . 
 
 ALEXIS SOYER ..... 
 
 FRANCIS FLADGATE .... 
 
 THE WHIG CLUB LIST OF MEMBERS 
 
 AN IRVING NIGHT AT THE SAVAGE CLUB . 
 
 THE STAIRCASE, NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB 
 
 THE JOHNSON CLUB . 
 
 THE THATCHED HOUSE CLUB 
 
 A THATCHED HOUSE INVITATION 
 
 THE NATIONAL CLUB STAIRCASE 
 
 THE BATH AND COUNTY CLUB 
 
 16 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 17 
 
 34 
 
 48 
 80 
 108 
 
 112 
 
 142 
 
 152 
 
 202 
 
 204 
 216 
 226 
 
 232 
 234 
 
 254 
 264 
 270 
 274 
 276 
 282 
 284 
 298 
 334 
 
.--S*.: 
 
Club Makers and Club Members 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 
 
 Club foregleams in classical times and lands — Themistocles as a club product — 
 Alcibiades and others as club managers — Aristotle at the Athenian Club — 
 Cicero as a Roman club type — The first English clubman — The founder of 
 the Court of Good Company at work and play between Westminster and 
 St. Paul's — Tit for tat with the club Maecenas, Sir Henry Somer — The 
 prototype of the nineteenth century, Sir Henry Anderson, at Stone's — Was 
 John Lydgate expelled from, or Chaucer a member of, the Court of Good 
 Company ? — The first clubman's solace of penitence and song in poverty and 
 old age — Sir Walter Raleigh crowns his career of adventure, of high favour 
 in Court and camp, with the fame of the second club founder — What he took 
 from and did for the Mermaid men — The Mermaid rehearsal of his Free 
 Trade deliverances — Ben Jonson as club founder in the Middle Temple — 
 The Apollo Ben — Social and intellectual notorieties sealed of the tribe of 
 Ben — Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Sir John Suckling, Lord Herbert 
 of Cherbury, Sir Kenelm Digby, Aubigny, Portland — The Apollo after 
 Jonson's death. 
 
 Classical Athens and Rome had no clubhouses. It 
 is no baseless fancy to discover in both the presage, 
 if not the actual trace, of a club system. There was 
 no Attic structural equivalent for the Carlton or the 
 Reform, but there were several Athenian prototypes of 
 GrUlion's and " The " Club. Something might be 
 said for describing Themistocles as the earliest personal 
 product of club Ufe. The Athenian companionships and 
 the Athenian dining societies combined to create a 
 socio-political agency faintly foreshadowing that after- 
 wards represented by our own Brooks's or White's. Ten 
 
 2 17 
 
18 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 years after Themistocles and half a century in advance 
 of the most briUiant among Athenian clubmen, Alci- 
 biades, the highly descended and wealthy Cimon, 
 reorganized the existing societies and created at least 
 one new in the interests of aristocracy and sport. The 
 son of Miltiades, he had himself won three Olympic 
 races with his four-horse chariot. The Attic organi- 
 zations, now, for the sake of convenience, loosely called 
 "clubs," during the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. were 
 generally anti-democratic, and the case of Themistocles, 
 to a great extent kept together by this collective sup- 
 port, was an exception. The naturally conservative 
 tendency of these bodies showed itself a generation 
 after Cimon, when the aristocratic wire-puller of the 
 period, the son of Melesias, called, like the historian, 
 Thucydides, successfully employed the club machinery 
 to oppose the rise and thwart the policy of Pericles. 
 
 Athenian politics on the personal side were always 
 a game of conspiracy and intrigue in which the leaders 
 and followers alike were equally ready, as might suit 
 them best, to round on their friends or to play into their 
 opponents' hands, and cursed their ill luck if they could 
 not at the same time be running with the hare and 
 hunting with the hounds. The politics of the old Greek 
 communities, when not raised by patriotic sentiment to 
 a higher level, were apt to be as much honeycombed 
 by corruption and intrigue as is the Greek party system 
 of to-day. The cabals and coteries, whether primarily 
 political or social, which at least anticipated the 
 functions of clubs, were manipulated with un- 
 scrupulous adroitness as secret agencies for rigging 
 the political market, nobbling the Judicature, and 
 influencing the election returns. Between 450 and 
 350 B.C., the orator Andocides and Alcibiades, having 
 first dazzled the democracy by the brilliance of their 
 intellectual displays, aimed at making themselves 
 masters of the State through supporters largely picked 
 up at the public dining-table of fifteen or twenty 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 19 
 
 persons. To each of these messes admission was by 
 ballot, one black ball sufficing to exclude. Every 
 one on entering accepted the rules he found in existence, 
 and expulsion was the punishment for their violation. 
 The wire-pullers of classical Athens thus worked a ' 
 socio-political machinery, undoubtedly possessing some- 
 thing of a club character. These little companies, 
 singly anid collectively, were recognized as having, not 
 only their intellectual as well as- their social and con- 
 vivial attractions, but also their personal and moral 
 temptations. 
 
 Thus Epicurus and others hostile to Aristotle's 
 memory charge him with having, when a young mart, 
 squandered his patriinony on these co-operative 
 banquets, and with having learnt at- them too 
 fastidious a taste in cookery. There is no more 
 evidence to support this view than there is the 
 notion that the well-groomed,- well-dressed, short- 
 haired chief of the Peripatetics was also clean-shaven. 
 On the other hand, one cannot doubt that to the 
 polite training of the Athenian dining -clubs Aristotle 
 owed something of the agreeableness and tact which 
 afterwards commended him to Philip of Macedon as 
 well as to his pupil, the young Alexander, and which 
 made him a favourite with Hermias, the " tyrant " 
 of Atarneus. The characteristics of the Greek dinner 
 groups were inherited by the corresponding institutions 
 in the first and second centuries of republican "Rome . 
 Their very name was identical with the French cefcle. 
 Writing to Atticus appreciatively about the cirdali 
 in which he himself figured so conspicuously, Cicero, 
 with his praise of their wit -sharpening qualities, men- 
 tions that their talk had become much freer than when 
 he joined them.' Analogous reunions were planted 
 and adorned by forgotten clubmen at other Hellenic 
 centres than that of Athens, ndtably in Sparta, as well 
 as in Phoenician cities like Carthage. But in those 
 
 ■ Ad Atticutn, Bk. II, i8: " Seriho in circulis et in convivus est liberior quam fiiit." 
 
20 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 cases even the researches of Doctors Grenfell and Hunt 
 have not yet thrown any light on the personalities of 
 individual clubmen, still less have identified any 
 members of the group known by tradition, with any- 
 thing like the distinctness with which, as has been 
 seen, there stand forth a succession of Greek club 
 products or habitues frorn the Themistoclean to the 
 Periclean period. 
 
 The present survey concerns itself not so much with 
 institutions as with individuals. We must therefore 
 be content to have made the personal acquaintance of 
 the Athenian clubman as he undoubtedly once might 
 have been met with under the shadow of the Acropolis, 
 and of his Italian successor as some three hundred 
 years later he existed at Rome. 
 
 Where shall we find the earliest authentic specimen 
 of the club maker with his club company in England? 
 The answer can be given without a moment's hesitation. 
 Among all his contemporaries he is to be recognized 
 at a glance in our mediaeval Anglo-Saxon rhymer, 
 Thomas Hoccleve. Of Hoccleve's birth, parentage, and 
 family we know nothing. With the man himself we 
 shall easily make ourselves as intimate as if he still 
 wrote and revelled amongst us in the flesh. Anti- 
 quarians have quarrelled among themselves over the 
 discovery of natal neighbourhood in his name, plainly, 
 according to some authorities, a corruption of Hockliffe, 
 a Bedfordshire village near Woburn on the Watling 
 Road. Nothing of the sort, comes the rejoinder. 
 Obviously the first syllable of our prehistoric club- 
 man's patronymic proves him to have been bom in 
 the valley of the Thames. Every one knows Cleve 
 Lock and Mill above Streatley. Higher up still, on 
 the Berks side, a little stream called the Ock joins the 
 Thames at Abingdon. Thomas Hoccleve, therefore, 
 must have first seen the light in the same district as 
 did the Rugby headmaster's eldest son, Matthew 
 Arnold, at Lalehara. All this, we are presently told, 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 21 
 
 is mere moonshine. " There be salmons at Macedon 
 and at Monmouth," says Fluellen. Similarly, the last 
 letters in Hoccleve being those that indicate several 
 Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, or Wiltshire villages, 
 make it certain that the poet's family came from the 
 west. 
 
 Then there are the Hocks to be considered. Though 
 Devonshire may have its Hockridge and Norfolk its 
 Hockwold, a beautiful little Northumbrian hamlet, 
 Hockwill, nestles under the Allendale Hills. From so 
 many claimants to the honour of having given the 
 earliest English clubman birth and name, it would 
 be invidious to make a choice. The poet's period 
 may, however, without offence, be deduced from his 
 writings. 
 
 The French victories of Henry V and the Duke of 
 Gloucester's regency during Henry's absence are com- 
 memorated by Hoccleve in a poem which also, during 
 these events, incidentally fixes the poet's age at fifty- 
 three. The national incidents recorded belong to 
 1 42 1 -2. Hoccleve, therefore, would have been born 
 about 1368-9. 
 
 Like many other notable club figures at all periods, 
 he, who in order of time stands at their head, belonged 
 to the Civil Service. His poem' on the regimen of 
 princes came out in 1411-12. Then, he tells us, he 
 had been twenty-four years in the Privy Seal office. 
 That he entered the department before he was twenty, 
 is further shown by the mention of his name in the 
 Privy Council proceedings and ordinances, 1386- 1400. 
 His Government place was one of those generally filled 
 by a clergyman. At first, therefore, his idea probably 
 was to earn his living as a Govemmfent clerk until 
 he should see a chance of a benefice good enough' 
 to justify him in taking orders. The failure of that 
 expectation, disgusting him' with himself, his patrons, 
 and with his life generally, betrayed him into a dis- 
 ordered and dissolute existence. He soon becarue a 
 
22 CLUB MAK|]JIS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 .Bohemian of the most iaveterately ir regular and self- 
 indulgent sort. If the Church had taken hirrt, he 
 might have siobered down. As it was he had no 
 thought but of securing the jolliest of good times in 
 his bachelor chambers at Chester's Inn, near Middle 
 Temple. 
 
 Eventually he married — for money, not love, and 
 only then when failing health, growing years, and an 
 empty purse made him feel the need of some one who 
 would be nurse as weU as wife. Marriage, however, 
 rnay have chastened but did not at once or entirely 
 put an end to ; the violent delights of single life . 
 The escapades and devilries of that roaring time are 
 written in his Male Regie, 1406. In that poem 
 are recited the carousals and caresses at Westminster 
 immediately after office hou^s, if not in the leisure 
 intervals of his clerkly, day. A little later came the 
 heavier hilarities on the eastern side of Temple Bar, at 
 the Paul's Head tavern. That Hocclevian haunt stood 
 beneath the same roof as, and formed a part of, 
 Paul's brewery. Afterwards it grew into St. Paul's 
 coffee-house. The London alehouses had begun to 
 increase and multiply in and from 700. The particular 
 one called after the cathedral stood on Ludgate Hill 
 between St. Paul's Churchyard and Doctor's Commons. 
 The Thames was the highway on which the medieval 
 clubpian passed from the Westminster cooks and 
 taverners to his eastward rounds, the chief point in 
 these being his Court of Good Cotapany, presently to 
 be visited. 
 
 Clul)in,an or pothouse patron, he denied himself 
 nothing, and stood treat to every one when he was 
 flush of money, as he generally contrived to seem. 
 He paid the boatmen so well that directly they saw 
 him coming they began to fight who should have 
 the double f^re invariably coming from his ever- 
 open purse ; for he was, they all agreed, " a 
 verray gentilipan." Hence their unfailing salute when- 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 23 
 
 ever he appeared, " master " or " squire "—the title 
 then sigtiificant of good station by birth or ofRce. 
 So, too, with the serving men or women, especially 
 the latter, at his various houses of convivial call ; 
 the drawers had only to fill " Master " Hoccleve's 
 cup to be sure of a vail whose value set their mouths 
 watering. As for the girls, be regaled them! on sweet 
 wine and "wafers before kissing them', beyond which, 
 he tells us, a natural shyness would not let him go. 
 Hoccleve's and his friends' club companies resemble 
 those of classical antiquity in being what were once 
 called " ordinaries," but are to-day known as table 
 d'hotes. It is his connection with the most famous 
 on fourteenth-century record of these that justifies his 
 description here as the earliest in the long line of 
 English clubmen. 
 
 The Court of Good Company held its meetings close 
 to the Middle Temple, perhaps in that very Chester's 
 Inn, the Middle Temple's property and our poet's home. 
 Its most highly placed frequenter was Sir Henry Somer, 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. This personage wias 
 a typical forerunner of the patron supplied by the titled 
 or dfficial classes to London's bohemian coteries. One 
 of his successors flourished during the second half of 
 the nineteenth century, and still lives in a vanishing 
 generation's memory. During the later sixties and 
 the earliest seventies Stone's coffee-house, Panton 
 Street, Hajmiarket, a sort of modern Will's or Button's, 
 retained an historic reputation for chops, steaks, and 
 other items of honest English cookery, as well as for 
 the excellence of its sherry and the soundness of its 
 bitter ale. The place had been brought to notoriety 
 by the favour of Douglas Jerrold and of the Punch 
 men belonging to his generation. The Mayhews 
 frequented it as long as there were any of them 
 left, for a long time visiting it, both for the 
 midday meal and later for what one of its habituds 
 called the "sherry and bitters" period of the day, 
 
24 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 newspaper writers of all degrees on their way west- 
 ward frorn Fleet Street, together with countless of 
 the camp followers of the stage and press. The patron 
 of this mixed company was a certain Sir Henry 
 Anderson, membier of the Council of India, who 
 regularly gave the place some of the afternoon during 
 the progress from Whitehall to Queen's Gate. 
 
 Anderson's medigeval predecessor at the Court of 
 Good Company, the already mentioned Somer, not only 
 sometimes made merry with the wits whom Hoccleve 
 had formed into a club, but helped to furnish forth 
 their feasting-table with none of your Frenchified 
 kickshaws, but with wheat for bread and perhaps a 
 capon or a buck for principal dish. Professor Wi. Wj. 
 Skeat has successfully performed an accurate chrono- 
 logical calculation to show that a Court of Good 
 Company dinner, to which Somer in this way contri- 
 buted, actually took place on May i, 1410.' 
 
 The high official who deigns to grace the table 
 anid augment the menu of bohemian gatherings has 
 seldom erred on the side of prodigality. Sir Henry 
 Somer was no exception to the rule. For his thriftiness 
 he had some excuse. Apart from his official salary 
 and fees, he seems to have had nothing. 
 
 Some years later, indeed, he made money on the 
 commission for founding King's College, Cambridge ; 
 but at the beginning of the fifteenth century, while 
 president of the Court of Good Company, he only 
 preached what he was obliged to practise in impressing 
 the necessity of thrift. His henchm'en at the club 
 grew restless under the reiterated advice ; hence, in 
 or about 1408, Hoccleve's metrical reply to Somer's 
 warning that " our club in the Temple " should start 
 a fresh system. " Once," the poet continues, " you 
 tell us, we were moderate. So, you now add, we 
 ought to be again, or at least to have no outrag'eous 
 
 ' Hoccleve's Works in English Text Society (to which I am indebted for the 
 Hoccleve details here given), vol. i. p. xiii. 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 25 
 
 waste." To this counsel and criticism the Court of 
 Good Company clubmen answer through Hoccleve that 
 their expenditure is their own affair, and that they 
 do not desire to involve their distinguished chaimlan 
 in it. Then comes a remonstrance : " Let Sir Henry, 
 if he will, refuse to promote from his wealth to our 
 and his own enjoyment ; but because he is virtuous 
 and mean, let him not be vexed with his humbler and 
 less self-righteous friends, when Jhey offily remind 
 him of a contribution, not in money but in kind, to 
 their next meeting, unsolicited in the first instance by 
 them but volunteered by him. At our last dinner 
 the clubmen, now put on their defence, inform Sir 
 Henry, strict limits of expense, perhaps at his instance 
 imposed by the steward, were religiously observed all 
 round. But why waste more words over the matter? 
 You wish us to take you for our pattern, well and good. 
 We will only eat what you tell us, and will have no 
 more wine drawn than you think fit. C'est tout," 
 Hoccleve winds up, " let us be as dull and as thirsty 
 as even you could wish. But, to come to the point, 
 because you are a skinflint, you need not mock us 
 with false promises or break your word about sending 
 us six great nobles ' to buy wheat in addition to 
 paying your own score. Be at least a man of honour ; 
 give us what you said and yourself too at our next 
 merry meeting." 
 
 It is a mere guess to speak of any other distinguished 
 person besides the two already named as belonging to 
 this the earliest, as well as least known, of London 
 clubs. It is a slur upon the memory of Hoccleve 's 
 contemporary brother bard, John Lydgate, to say that 
 the Court of Good Company either blackballed or 
 expelled him. Chronologically it would have been 
 
 ■ This coin, minted during the reign of Edward ITI. (1344), was, like the half- 
 noble, stamped with a ship ; in it was seated the King with a sword in his hand 
 signifying his defeat of the French off Sluys, June 24, 1340. The noble retained 
 its circulation till Queen Elizabeth's reign. 
 
26 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 possible, but the known facts quite dispose of the 
 traditional report. Hoccleve and his club associates 
 were Londoners, Lydgate was not. Bom in 1370 at a 
 place near Newmarket, of the same name as his own, 
 he chiefly passed his life in the Benedictine monastery 
 of Bury St. Edmund. His journeys between his native 
 Suffolk and Paris and Oxford, at both of whose 
 Universities he studied, no doubt took him' through 
 London. Here on one occasion business detained him 
 longer than he wished. The man of law whom he 
 consulted at Westminster neglected his business because 
 his client could not pay the fees. Lydgate therefore 
 lost no time in returning home. 
 
 The idea of any personal connection between the 
 club and the poet of Canterbury Tales, though not dis- 
 proved, is rendered extremely improbable by dates and 
 the absence of any authentic record. Let the calendar 
 speak. Chaucer was Hoccleve's senior by at least a 
 whole generation. Hoccleve's club days reached their 
 prime during 1407-8. By that date Chaucer, who 
 died 1400, had been eight years in his grave. 
 
 To return to Hoccleve. His earlier manhood had 
 been full of heat, noise, disorder, and debauchery. 
 Advancing years bring the inevitable reaction. The 
 old age which was a regret pathetically laments the 
 youth that had been a blunder. No element of 
 bitterness is wanting to the autobiographical retrospect 
 taken by him who had so long been the life and soul 
 of our club in the Temple. He had been, not only 
 a sinner but a fool, neglecting the wise man's caution, 
 that he who giveth to the rich shall surely conie to want.' 
 Among all those who at the Court of Good Company 
 had laughed at his jokes and revelled at his cost 
 none had a thought for him now. The trials of age 
 and poverty were not, however, allowed to destroy 
 his spirit, to silence his muse, or to permit her 
 indulgence only in vain regrets and picturesque 
 
 ■ Proverbs xxii. l6. 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 27 
 
 but unprofitable recollection of the lost chances and 
 misspent money which, if properly managed, would 
 have secured material comfort or spiritual peace in 
 his declining years. Ill at ease as he was, he contrived 
 to produce his best verses when within a measurable 
 distance of death. Neither pathos nor anything but 
 superficial humour had been the note in his earlier 
 poetry. Both depth of feeling and beauty of expres- 
 sion characterize every line of his address to the 
 Virgin, for which Chaucer sometimes received credit. 
 "But then, the worst is that I do believe." Something 
 like Byron's bitter confession weUs up as a refrain 
 in all the metrical outpourings of his heart by this 
 earliest of English clubmen during his last days. 
 Throughout his disordered youth and^ his self-indulgent 
 manhood Hoccleve had consciously sinned against 
 light, grace, and the capacity for better things. Pro- 
 portionate to that neglected knowledge was the 
 bitterness of his subsequent remorse. Placed at last 
 by circumjstances jbeyond the temptations which in 
 earlier years had not only mastered him, but which 
 he had courted, he now finds himself in an agony of 
 evil thoughts or of unavailing remorse. For deliver- 
 ance from these and for guidance to his soul's health, 
 his prayer is made with the earnest self-abasement of 
 a doomed criminal, or with something like the despair 
 of a lost spirit. His appeal to the Virgin includes 
 one to the Apostle John, as well as to the three 
 persons of the Trinity : — 
 
 " Unto you twain (Mary and John) do I my soul commend, 
 Help me that I may my life amend. 
 Be in my heart, both now and evermore, 
 And of my soul now wash away the sore." 
 
 These may well have been the last words from the 
 pen of the poet clubman who foxmded the Court of 
 Good Company. 
 
 Hoccleve's face, figure, and bearing, as seen in the 
 
28 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 accepted portraits, were undistinguished and typically 
 Anglo-Saxon. There can be no greater contrast than 
 between the fifteenth -century creator of the Court of 
 Good Company and the club founder next to be met 
 with after an interval of about 150 years. Sir 
 ■Walter Raleigh still stands forth not only as one 
 among the most important figures of English history, 
 but as nearly the most handsome and winning man of 
 his time. The dark olive complexion, the keen black 
 eyes, and the finely cut features, were the outward 
 signs of the Celtic strain, manifested in the same type 
 of physiognomy by another western celebrity. Sir John 
 Eliot. Like Eliot, too, Raleigh was a well-born man 
 in virtue of the descent, which he shared with his half- 
 brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, from Sir Richard 
 Grenville. 
 
 During the years when he established the company 
 in which we are now to find him he was still under fifty. 
 Into that space of time he had compressed his most 
 memorable or fortunate travels, as well as the really 
 stirring and brilliant episodes in his course of adventure 
 beyond the four seas. 
 
 Born at Hayes Farm (not manor), near indeed, as 
 reference -books say, to Sidmouth, but still nearer to 
 the now thriving little watering-place Budleigh 
 Salterton, he had cut short his terms at Oriel to fight 
 for the Huguenots in the French war, and did more 
 than merely win his spurs in the battles of Jarnac and 
 Moncontour. The complete man, exemplified more than 
 a generation later by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was 
 also the favourite ideal of Elizabethan courtiers ; it 
 had been lived up to by Walter Raleigh while an 
 Oxford undergraduate, during his continental experi- 
 ences, and especially throughout his stay in Paris, 
 where he was at the time of St. Bartholomew's massacre 
 on August 24, 1572. Few provincial accents cling 
 more closely, as was illustrated by our nineteenth- 
 century Archbishop Temple, than that of Devonshire. 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 29 
 
 Walter Raleigh not only made njo attempt to lose it^ 
 he gloried in it. The fine ladies and gentlemien of 
 the English queen's Greenwich Court, as well as 
 Elizabeth herself, sometimes rallied the favourite on his 
 West of England pronunciation. So did his special 
 literary intimate, Ben Jonson. Raleigh's reply, in a 
 more studiedly Devonian dialect than ever, was that 
 he thought it preferable to the Gallic affectations of 
 voice and phrase which were just then the vogue. 
 From infancy Raleigh's two enthusiasms had been 
 for books and the sea. MiUais's painting, " Raleigh's 
 Boyhood," exhibited in 1870, was executed at Budleigh 
 Salterton, whither he had gone for the purpose of 
 transferring the true local tints to his canvas ; it 
 represents the future Mermaid Club's founder exactly 
 as he was often seen on the Salterton beach, eagerly 
 taking in the tale of oceanic enterprise in all latitudes 
 poured forth by some weather -hardened and sunburnt 
 sailor. Naunton, the historian of the Elizabethan 
 Court and, till Mr. Edmund Gosse, Raleig'h's most 
 authentic biographer, describes him as "an indefatig- 
 able reader." The ruling passion for salt-water and 
 for pen and ink governed his whole life, and explains 
 his appearance among our club -makers. 
 
 By 1600 Raleigh's travels were at an end. As 
 scholar and courtier, not less than soldier and sailor, 
 he had won European fame. Nor was it only that 
 his accomplishments and exploits had made him the 
 ornament of palaces and camps. He was equally 
 successful' with the pen, and in some poems then 
 universally read had happily hit off peculiar turns of 
 thought and expression then the fashion. The same 
 popularity waited on his prose Discovery of the 
 Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana. 
 This book was subsequently called by Humfe a parcel 
 of the grossest and most palpable lies ever imposed 
 upon the credulity of mankind. Later exploration, 
 especially of the Venezuela district, has refuted Humie 
 
30 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 and vindicated Raleigh. Raleigh, therefore, united in 
 himself the personal qualities and distinction which, 
 two centuries earlier, divided between Hoccleve and 
 Sir Henry Somer, had resulted in the foundation and 
 maintenance of the Court of Good Company. For a 
 similar undertaking, at the date now reached, Raleigh's 
 social pre-eminence, wide and various connection, would 
 have made him single-handed more than sufficient. 
 There was, however, volunteered to him' in his task 
 co-operation .more illustrious than any that ever fell in 
 Hoccleve's way ; for his unsolicited colleagues and 
 counsellors were Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson. 
 
 The friendship of these three, founded upon mutual 
 sympathies of intellectual power generally, was in a 
 special degree cemented by a common attraction to 
 the same masters of style. Lucan and Tacitus were 
 the Latin favourites of each. Raleigh's prose, in 
 strength and animation, never rivalled the force of 
 those . stinging judgments — ^pithy and pessimistic 
 generalizations condensed into a phrase— whose mastery 
 Tacitus owed to his oratorical training. Raleigh's 
 ptolixity and involution were the faults of the time 
 rather than of the writer. At his best, like Ben and 
 Bacon, he shows a family resemblance to the classical 
 models studied by all the writers of the Mermaid 
 group ; while his historical summaries and personal 
 estimates of affairs bear the same Tacitean stamp as 
 is impressed on the Essays and Henry VII of Bacon. 
 "But for the Mermaid meetings," said Ben Jonson, 
 " Raleigh would never have put such good matter as 
 he did into, not only his History of the World but his 
 vindication of oligarchic government, contained in The 
 Cabinet Council and The Three Discourses. The club 
 at least made the best wits in England an inkhom for 
 his pen. Take, for instance, what he says about 
 the Punic War ; on two successive club nights he 
 had it from' me much as he afterwards wrote it down. 
 Selden, Cotton, Carew, Donne, and others of our 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 31 
 
 Bread Street company/' Ben would pleasantly add, 
 " could tell the same tale." 
 
 The ecclesiastical wit and historian Thomas Fuller, 
 presently to be met with elsewhere, drew on his 
 imagination for his well-known account of the Mermaid 
 celebrities. The one trustworthy picture of their club 
 life is to be found in Beaumont's descriptive epistle 
 to his old Mermaid crony, Jonson. This shows how 
 seriously the members took themselves and their meet- 
 ings, and how completely the club seemed to them a 
 career in itself. The infinite pains they lavished on the 
 preparation of good things had results brilliant and 
 numerous enough to make the fortune of two more such 
 compan,ies. The club he took so large a part in 
 founding may, therefore, well have given Raleigh a 
 clayfield out of which to make his literary bricks. 
 On the other hand, he brought to it — if not in sparkling 
 talk yet in worldwide knowledge and shrewd sugges- 
 tion — at least as much as he took away ; for it was 
 on a Mermaid club -night that he gave Richard 
 Hakluyt the idea of editing, with a fuU commentary, 
 Peter Martyr's Discovery of the New World. This 
 task, performed, not only on Raleigh's instance but 
 at his money-cost, traced the course of transatlantic 
 speculation or discovery from prehistoric times, and 
 brought together within easy comlpass the beginnings 
 of American history. 
 
 During his London time Raleigh led a double life. 
 On duty about the Court or as Member of Parliament 
 for Devonshire (1585-6) and Cornwall (1593-4), he 
 took his ease and pleasure at the Bread Street 
 gathering's. There, having first refreshed himself by 
 a literary chat with Jonson, he next talked politics or 
 State philosophy with Selden, Cotton, and Donne. 
 
 The earliest of our Empire -builders, Raleigh was 
 also the first of Imperial Free Traders. Before com- 
 municating them to the King on paper, he had told 
 Selden at the Mermaid how in his travels he had seen 
 
32 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 certain countries grow potent with abundance of all 
 things, and yet, though they themselves produced very 
 little, their fountains of wealth never dried up. The 
 reason, he went on to explain, was that these countries 
 added the privileges of smallness of custom (of import 
 duties) to liberty of trade. This he proceeded to 
 illustrate by contrasting Holland with England. Two 
 ships freighted with a cargo of wine are bound, one 
 for London, the other for Amsterdam. In England 
 the custom duties amount to £900 ; in Holland, to 
 less than £650. And so with all other wares anid 
 merchandises. Those nations that keep their duties 
 low draw all the wbrld to traffic with them. Thus the 
 small duties received by the Dutch customs are so 
 numerous and collectively so valuable as to exceed 
 in one year the amounts that make their way to the 
 English Treasury in two years. 
 
 Though the exact spot has not been fixed even by 
 conjecture, Hoccleve's Temiple club, the Court of Good 
 Company, met, beyond doubt, in the City. Two cen- 
 turies later the club course, like the course of Empire, 
 had begun to make its way westward. Sir Walter 
 Raleigh and the Mermaid brethren in 1600 chose for 
 the scene of their reunions some of the old Hocclevian 
 haunts. In or about 161 6 the survivors of the Mermaid 
 men provided Ben Jonson with a nucleus for the Apollo. 
 This society for several reasons n^arks an era in club 
 development, and gives Ben himself a place among 
 club founders as well defined as belongs to any of 
 his already mentioned predecessors, or as will be filled 
 by the most notable of those who come after him in 
 the club succession. In the first place, the Apollo, 
 by the topographical advance in a direction opposite to 
 the Mansion House, brought its members an entire 
 stage nearer the limits of modern clubland than had 
 yet been done ; secondly, it gave them', if not a house, 
 at least a room, probably a complete floor, that was 
 all their own. The house inimortalized by the Apollo 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 33 
 
 stood between the Middle Temple and the Strand end 
 of Fleet Street. Kept by a favourite tapster of the 
 time named Wadlowe, with the sign of the Devil 
 Tavern, it was a fashionable resort during the first 
 Stuart's reign. The Apollo chamjber, however, was 
 scarcely less apart from' the rest of the dwelling than 
 if it had been beneath another roof. 
 
 The evolution of the club may be summed up in 
 a sentence as the progress from! a house of call to a 
 centre of interest, a school of character, and a social 
 training-ground. As this line of advance is followed, 
 the representative club of the period wiU be found a 
 monument, a reflection, and an epitome of the virtues, 
 vices, the social forces or foibles, and tendencies which 
 mark the time. So, to some extent, of course, it was 
 with the mediaeval Court of Good Company. The 
 conditions, however, under which that was gathered 
 together, lacked a feature so essential to the conception 
 of the modern club as a settled domicile. That, it 
 has been seen, was forthcoming in the case of the 
 Apollo, whose situation and equipment bring us 
 as near to the modern club as we shall get before 
 the nineteenth century. The club decorations and 
 fittings, arranged imder the founder's own eyes, inspired 
 the members with a pleasantly proud affection for their 
 common home. They went, in modem phrase, to the 
 club, as well as to meet each other. Charles Montagu 
 (the first Lord Halifax) and Matthew Prior, who lived 
 near enough to the Apollo period to know its traditions, 
 present this aspect of the place in their joint work 
 The Hind and Panther Transversed, a parody of 
 Dryden's " Hind and Panther." The ApoUo company 
 also exemplified the social and intellectual fusion 
 noticeable both at the Court of Good Company and 
 the Meniiaid, and pre-eminently a club attribute. Its 
 members, as will presently be seen, were supplied by 
 classes and interests as numerous and as different as 
 those combined within the joint-stock palaces of Pall 
 
 3 
 
34 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Mall or St. James's to-day. It was not, therefore, as 
 it has been called, a mere mutual admiration society. 
 On the club nights, which were its house dinners, it 
 of course constituted a collective proof of its founder's 
 ascendency in the realm of letters more complete than 
 was again witnessed till Dryden, fifty years later, held 
 his court at Will's. Ben Jonson, however, was not so 
 absorbed by the homage he received as to shrink from 
 the presence of rivals near his throne, but courted 
 comparison with greater intellects than his own, and 
 pitted himself against them. In 1620 he had 
 celebrated Francis Bacon's completion of his sixtieth 
 year by some verses, forcible as well as flattering, 
 and too well known to be quoted here. In return, 
 the Lord Chancellor honoured his panegyrist with the 
 hospitalities of his country seat, Gorham,bury, on the 
 same day that the most rising young man of the time, 
 Thomas Hobbes, was of the party. Bent on giving 
 all possible eclat to the club which was then his most 
 recent creation, Jonson induced his Gorhambury host 
 and fellow-guest to assist at its proceedings. Now, 
 too, there was sealed of the tribe of Ben the most 
 industrious of seventeenth-century translators of 
 Spanish, Thomas Shelton, whose literary fortune was 
 made by his attachment to the ambassadorial suite of 
 Howard de Walden, afterwards Earl of Suffolk. In 
 Spain he picked up enough of the language to English 
 the first part of Don Quixote (1607), two years after 
 its first appearance. The speed (forty days) and 
 the success with which this had been done made 
 Shelton's reputation. The colonial and! Imperial 
 interest personified by Raleigh at the Mermaid had 
 also their representative at the ApoUo in an Arch- 
 bishop of York's son, a notable traveller for that 
 time throughout Europe and in the Near East. George 
 Sandys, after a short time at St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, 
 had been known for his handsome person, well-kbit 
 figure, bronzed and thoughtful face, in the chief 
 
BEN JONSON. 
 (From the picture by Gerard Honthorst.) 
 
 To (ace p. 34. 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 35 
 
 European capitals before visiting Egypt, Turkey, and 
 Palestine. Reappearing in England, he published his 
 Travels in 1 6 1 5, dedicating them to Charles I . 
 Recompensed for this by the treasurership of the 
 Virginian Company, Sandys subsequently moved the 
 Government to take over the colony, in 1624, when 
 having examined its resources and needs, proposed a 
 scheme for its better plantation. There his work 
 beyond the seas ended. His later life was divided 
 between courtiership and literature. At the Apollo 
 we see him' in that part of the room where Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury discusses faith, philosophy, and 
 politics with Falkland of Great Tew, and sometimes 
 contributing to the conversation. In another recess 
 of the Apollo chamber Ben Jonson's special proteges, 
 Cleveland, Herrick, Marmion, Suckling, Carew, grouped 
 themselves round the great man's second in command, 
 Alexander Broome, to say pleasant things obsequiously 
 intended to reach the rnaster's ear. Sir John Suckling, 
 though as a writer his pupU, had no need of Jonson 
 for his patron. He was, indeed, himself the chief social 
 personage of the club. An old " Westminster," as well 
 as a Trinity fellow-commoner, he had scarcely been 
 called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1626, when he 
 became, by his father's death, an Eastern Counties' 
 territorial aristocrat. A Court favourite, and a figure 
 in the best continental circles of h'is tim'e, this dapper 
 little man, with the bright, round, red-haired head, 
 with eyes as sparkling as his wit, filled the same 
 place of distinction and popularity at the Apollo as 
 has since been done at other literary clubs by members 
 uniting accomplishments and tastes of the pen with 
 wealth, position, and personal charml. It was not, 
 therefore, with Suckling a case of being a " lord among 
 wits and a wit among lords." 
 
 The Apollo's personal composition was not less rich 
 in social than in intellectual distinction. The third 
 Earl of Pembroke, as WUliam Herbert, the reputed 
 
36 CLUB MAKEES AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 W. H. of Shakespeare's " Sonnets/' Sir Kenelm Dig'by, 
 Sir Henry Morison, all men of birth as well as fashion, 
 had brought into the club certain men-about-town of 
 wealth and station — some, like Mr. William Cartwright 
 of Gloucestershire, an ancestor of the existing Cart- 
 wrights of Aynho, Oxfordshire, literary and theatrical 
 by taste as well as performance ; and others, such as 
 Aubigny and Portland, bearing patronymics to modern 
 ears charged with' ducal associations, merely well- 
 dressed, well-to-do, and tolerably intellectual loungers. 
 These were the men with whom the great Ben, when 
 in a genial and chatty humour, would discuss the 
 vicissitudes of the literary calling, and dilate on 
 personal grievances never aired before his feUow- 
 writers. Neither about the profession of letters, his 
 paymasters, or his contemporaries, unless his favourite 
 henchmen, had Ben many good words to say. Hear 
 him grumbling in Pembroke's ear : "A scurvy trade 
 and viler wages I My only gains from play -writing 
 have amounted to little more than £200 ; for, look 
 you," he continued, " the poet who does well in the 
 playhouse makes his profit, not as a writer but as a 
 trader. Shakespeare went partner in the management 
 of the theatres that produced his dramas. In this way 
 he grew rich. I, defrauded of all share in the receipts, 
 am, and shall remain, poor." Then would come an 
 outburst against manager Henslowe, as not only the 
 meanest of employers but the most vicious of men. 
 If Henslowe and his gang were not all knaves, it 
 was because so many of them were fools as well. 
 Purely egotistic and vituperative talk, indefinitely 
 continued in this strain, was too much for all but the 
 most resigned listeners. To that number did not belong 
 a prim little gentleman, speaking with a strong Scotch 
 accent, on his rare visits to London an occasional guest 
 at the Devil's Tavern. Had he not heard it at least once 
 a day throughout those weeks that, doing the whole 
 distance from London both ways on foot, Jonson had 
 
THE CLUBMAN IN THE MAKING 37 
 
 been his gnest at his house near Edinburgh in 1619? 
 For the precise Lowland laird, himself also a poet, was 
 Drummond of Hawthornden, who eventually performed 
 for Ben an instalment of the biographical service 
 rendered by another Scot, James Boswell, for an 
 eighteenth -century clubman of nearly the same surname 
 as Ben, Samuel Johnson, like his predecessor, the 
 literary " great Cham " of his period. All that his 
 quiet Scotch home had suffered from his gifted but 
 boisterously convivial visitor was a recent memory with 
 Drummond. Naturally enough, therefore, Jonson's too 
 familiar volleys of invective and sarcasm against the 
 writing tribe generally, and his friends and rivals in 
 particular, caused the guest of the evening, from 
 beyond the Tweed, to whisper to Pembroke, near whom 
 he sat : " Very characteristic, no doubt, and at 
 judicious intervals perhaps interesting ; but I did not 
 travel all the way from Scotland to hear in London 
 what my hospitable duties constrained me patiently to 
 listen to at Hawthornden." 
 
 One feature of the Apollo, not yet mentioned, 
 curiously presages one among the latest of modern 
 club developments. Ladies of spotless character were 
 on special nights admitted to its social and musical 
 entertainments. Jonson's death in 1637 may have 
 eclipsed the Apollo's gaiety, but did not end its 
 meetings. The tavern, deriving its satanic name from 
 a sign on which St. Dunstan pulls the Evil One's nose, 
 retained its popularity. The society which made it 
 famous was only dissolved by degrees. Here, between 
 1663 and 1677, after their learned assemblies at 
 Arundel House, the President of the Royal Society, 
 with Pepys as one of the party, feasted in the room 
 of Jonsonian memory. Here, too, in 1690, a hundred 
 and fifty Whig parliamenta:ry loyalists organized their 
 support of William III on the eve of his Irish expeidi- 
 tion. Thirteen years later the place witnessed the sale 
 of the jewels belonging ^o La Belle Stuart, the beautiful 
 
38 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Duchess of Richtnond. During most of the eighteenth 
 century the Apollo chamber did duty for a place of 
 intellectual and literary or fashionable meeting, and in 
 one or other of these capacities was frequented, not 
 only by Addison and Garth but by Johnson himself. 
 After this it was the scene of Kenrick's Shakespieare 
 lectures, in 1774, and of many musical entertainments. 
 Nor had it ceased being used for these purposes till 
 its purchase in 1787 by the bankers Childs. Even 
 then the clubroom was preserved almost intact till its 
 destruction by the fire of 1879. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CLUBMEN AT WORK 
 
 The club and the Commonwealth — Sir James Harrington, the one club founder 
 of the period — How the Rota men were " full of pohtics " in New Palace 
 Yard, backed their friends, talked Oceana, and settled what to do with Ireland 
 and the Jews — What passed between Sir William Petty and Major Wildman, 
 Disraeli's soul of English politics 1640-88 — The cult of the jumping cat 
 at the Rota and its personal results — How Colonel Cobbet and Sir Richard 
 Willis stood by the King at the Sealed Knot — What the citizens did for trade 
 at the Civil Club — Bryan Corcoran — How the Treason clubmen changed the 
 dynasty and founded a club system — The golden egg of the Bank of England 
 laid in a Cheapside club — William Paterson & Co. at the Wednesday Club talk 
 politics and finance, combine capital and experience to organize the London 
 money market. What were the limits of their insight into the banking 
 system ? 
 
 ,The twentieth-century joint-stock palaces of Pall Mall 
 and St. James's could not dispense with their City 
 connection. The fusion into its veins of new blood 
 from the Stock Exchange occasionally reanimates a 
 club rumoured to be at its last gaspi. Such a 
 revival is the more in accordance with the fitness 
 of things because the earliest club founder on record 
 collected his company within earshot of Bow bells. 
 Once clear of the Middle Ages, however, the club- 
 man's topographical course uninterruptedly became that 
 of Tennyson's Orion, sloping slowly to the west. The 
 occidental movement commenced in 1616 with Ben 
 Jonson, when he housed his Apollo company farther 
 from Guildhall than would have been dreamed of by 
 his predecessors. In the year that he opened his club 
 he opened also his war against the City and its doings 
 with a play named " The Devil is an Ass." The abomi- 
 
 39 
 
40 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 nation of funding, denounced by Swift and other Tory 
 writers as subversive of national prosperity and moral 
 character, was a seventeenth and eighteenth-century 
 product. But Ben's stage satire upon the commercial 
 system of his time, its personages and practices, equalled 
 in bitterness, while it exceeded in personality, the 
 ironical scorn heaped by Swift upon the money brokers, 
 the usurers, with all their customers, whom Marl- 
 borough's Whig wars had exalted above the aristocracy 
 of land. After the ApoUo had passed its prime the 
 club course took a south-westerly direction. 
 
 Under the Commonwealth club companies did not 
 flourish. CromweUianism had parted with its virtue, 
 strength, and spirit, and the national polity of the 
 immediate future had become an open question in 1659. 
 In that year, on the eve of the Restoration, for which 
 everything was now really ripe, though each day brought 
 its new constitutional project from philosophers or 
 empirics, the one club experiment of the republican 
 era was made. 
 
 It occurred to an acute and experienced, a practical 
 as well as speculative, politician to promote the dis- 
 cussion, if not the solution, of State problems by 
 reviving the later Tudor and earlier Stuart club tradi- 
 tion. James Harrington (161 1-77), the eldest son 
 and heir of Sir Sapcote Harrington, representing a 
 family long settled at Rand, Lincolnshire, bore some 
 resemblance as regards person, character, tastes, 
 education, and' social position to the most popular and 
 interesting member of the Apollo, Sir John Suckling. 
 
 By a happy accident he had been born, not where 
 his parents lived, but at his grandfather's house 
 Upton, Northamptonshire. To that fact he owed his 
 early tuition by. Wiilliam ChiHingworth, and his Oxford 
 course, begun in his eighteenth year, at Trinity CoUege. 
 Leaving Oxford without a degree, but with a well- 
 packed, methodical mind, he made the grand tour on 
 the most extensive scale. His family connection, his 
 
17th-century clubmen AT WORK 41 
 
 name, and pleasing person carried him everywhere 
 abroad. He' watched from inside the working of the 
 old regime in France ; notwithstanding its external 
 splendour, apparent strength, and the absence of acute 
 popular discontent, he saw enough to give him a pre- 
 sentiment of its destined collapse. On his return to 
 England, he remarked to his friends at the first meeting 
 of the Rota Club, that the French monarchy existed 
 on a volcano's slope. Before that utterance was made 
 he had traversed Central Europe, and had drawn many 
 conclusions from the relations he observed between 
 the Holy Roman Empire and the subordinate Govern- 
 ments, the Grand Duchies or the petty principalities, 
 which then formed the germs of the modern European 
 system. 
 
 After this he studied statecraft under all its manifes- 
 tations, in its two chief homes, Spain and Italy. When 
 he first brought together his company at the Turk's 
 Head, in New Palace Yard, it was as an aristocratic 
 oligarch who had quite lost the enthusiasm for the 
 Crown which a year or two earlier had caused him, 
 when in Rome, on his audience at the Vatican, not to 
 kiss the pope's toe because he had been so recently 
 privileged to kiss the hand of his only lord and 
 master, Charles I. Before, however, beginning his club 
 career at the Turk's Head, in New Palace Yard, he had 
 ceased to be a royalist at all, and was only a discon- 
 tented republican. His pattern Constitution had become 
 something between the elective kingship of Poland and 
 the aristocratic republic of Venice. " Brethren of the 
 Rota," he once delivered himself, " you are to know 
 that, whether in the form of a Court or an ennobled 
 class, every State requires for its stability something 
 qf hereditary rule. The observations that brought me 
 to this conclusion were completed by what I saw in 
 Holland when visiting the elector palatine during his 
 exile at Arnheim." Three years before the Rota Club' 
 came into being Harrington had summarized the im- 
 
42 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 pressions gathered during his trip of political inquiry, 
 in Oceana. This book contained at once the picture 
 of an ideal polity and, in the sketches of Marpesia 
 and Panopea, a panorama of the British Isles from the 
 point of view both of their actual state and their most 
 pressing needs. The country giving its name to the 
 work was, of course, England. The two others were, 
 respectively, Scotland and Ireland. The last was called 
 the soft mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people. 
 Panopea was, however, from its geog'raphical situation 
 and soil, capable of great development. Here 
 Harrington unconsciously, echoed the earlier estimate 
 recordeid by Raleigh at the Mermaid. Entirely his 
 own, however, was the notion that Ireland ought to 
 have been planted with Jews on their various expul- 
 sions from Oceana. Had this been done, the Hebrew 
 aptitude for merchandise, and agriculture combined 
 would have made Panopea what, with good fortune and 
 wise management, she might even now become, a source 
 of wealth and strength to Oceana, instead of exhaustion 
 and discredit. 
 
 Harrington's conclusions — at least as circumstantially! 
 founded as they were emphatically expressed — were 
 discussed by the clubmen while Miles, through a 
 passage kept open for him among the tables, bustled 
 about, filling and refilling his patrons' cups with coffee 
 — the favourite Rota drink without as yet the accom- 
 paniment of tobacco.. 
 
 Of the Rota company, Harrington, if the originator, 
 was far from being the most famous, active, the only 
 travelled, or even the most representative member. 
 From two club comrades, Charles Wolseley, a Stafford- 
 shire country gentleman, the collateral ancestor of Lord 
 Wolseley, and Michael Drayton the poet, he had gained 
 much of his intimacy with letters and politics. Still 
 more conspicuous were Andrew Marvell, Lord William 
 Russell, Lord Algernon Sidney, his brother, Lord Lisle, 
 Sir William Petty, and Major, afterwards Sir John, 
 
17TH-CENTUEY CLUBMEN AT WORK 43 
 
 Wildman. The chief intellectual lights of the place 
 have been called bookmen and theorists. Wildman 
 was a thoroughly practical, entirely unscrupulous, and 
 on the whole successful party manager, the life and 
 soul of his own side, unrivalled in keenness of eye for 
 any sudden chance that could be used to turn divisions 
 in the House and win elections in the country. The 
 great talkers at the Rota made the best political science 
 and the widest political knowledge of the time articu- 
 late. Wildman, encouraged by his chief backer, 
 Wolseley, recalled them to immediate business. "By 
 all means," broke in Sir William Petty, "- let us be 
 as practical as Wildman urges, and remember that 
 only by taking the line of least resistance can we bring 
 to our side the mutually discordant sections and faiths 
 to be united in our polity." Petty, in addition to being 
 a philosopher, was a clever mimic, and would accom- 
 pany these words with ventriloquial and facial imita- 
 tions of the motley groups, Puritan and Royalist, that 
 he referred to. The Rota name and programme were 
 largely suggested by Petty, in whose model State a 
 third part of the Parliament was to retire annually hy 
 rotation, no officials were to serve for more than three 
 years, and aJl voting was to be by ballot. As it became 
 plainer that the Cromwellian system could not last 
 long, the tone of the Rota debates grew less construc- 
 tive, but also more anti-levelling and contemptuously 
 opposed to " mob rule." 
 
 The spirit of Ben Jonson's bitterness against the 
 City plutocrats and money brokers might almost seem 
 to have descended from the Devil's Tavern in Fleet 
 Street to Miles's coffee-house in New Palace Yard,. 
 The delight with which Harrington dwelt on his own 
 suggestion of regenerating Ireland through Hebrew in- 
 dustrialists invariably started him on a tirade against 
 the infection of democratic principles with a City taint 
 exactly in Ben's most pungent manner. In prin- 
 ciple, of course, Harrington was all for liberty, 
 
44 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 equality, and fraternity among citizens. Still, over 
 his coffee at the Rota he never failed to lead the chorus 
 of disgust at the commonwealth of Cromwell for the 
 stinginess of its practice and the meanness of its ideas. 
 " Our republicans," he complained to Sidney, " have 
 such a Jewish, selling humour that they make all men 
 of liberality and taste their enemies. They cut down 
 the woods which, serving us for health and delight, 
 could formerly be seen from the window of the room 
 we are sitting in, to make threepence profit." Turning 
 to Marvell, he added : " Your friends destroy cathedrals 
 and church ornaments because they are idolatrous. Yet, 
 if we worship at all, we must do so in a house ; and 
 why, pray, may not the house of God be as proper as 
 our own? Did not the primitive Christians in 
 Jerusalem meet with one accord in the temple? — so far 
 were they from any inclination to pull it down." 
 
 The Rota, it will thus be seen, if a political, was by 
 no means a revolutionary club'. Its members had 
 ranged themselves against the Court less from any 
 personal quarrel with the King than because of the 
 indifference to the popular welfare shown by his Queen 
 and the entire palace. But they had never fought 
 against him ; they accepted the Commonwealth as the 
 one practicable alternative to an exacting and burden- 
 some monarchy which could not keep faith with its 
 subjects. By 1659 they were repenting what they 
 had done. The Rota men as a class were neither 
 po'werful while they lived nor fortunate in their ends. 
 The club itself proved of the mushroom order, to which 
 so many institutions of the same kind since then 
 have belonged. Its meetings were gradually more 
 and more thinly attended, till Miles, the landlord, 
 grumbled at the Rota's monopoly of the place : he 
 could, he said, do much better by trusting to chance 
 customers than by reserving so much accommodation 
 for a set of prating scholars, who ordered little for the 
 good of the house and thought it honour enough 
 
17th-century clubmen AT WORK 45 
 
 to hear their talk, which he for the life of him could 
 not understand. The Cromwellian collapse and 
 Monck's declaration for a monarchy ensured the 
 Restoration, and by so doing ended the club, which, 
 after a short and not too merry life of four months, 
 held its last sitting in the February of 1660, exactly 
 eleven weeks before Charles II landed at Dover from 
 Breda. 
 
 Of the Rota founders or pillars, Harrington, after 
 the new kingship was proclaimed, led for some time 
 the life of a hunted hare. In 1661 he had been 
 imprisoned at Plymouth ; shortly afterwards the 
 friendly administration by the jail doctor of an over- 
 dose of gtuaiacum brought on an illness that served 
 as a plea for the captive's removal from the cell to 
 the hospital ward. A short interval of peace was to 
 be enjoyed before he breathed his last. Marrying 
 Sir Marmaduke Dorrel's daughter, he settled down to 
 domestic and lettered enjoyment, disturbed, however, 
 by frequent attacks of gout. Worn out by these, he did 
 not survive a stroke of paralysis in 1677. 
 
 Less fortunate than their club chief, Algernon 
 Sidney and William Russell were executed six years 
 later for complicity in the Rye House plot. Far 
 better luck rewarded the wiles of the Rota Club 
 Ulysses. Wildman, after innumerable hairbreadth 
 escapes during this perilous period, finally contrived 
 to evade, not only the headsman but lifelong im- 
 prisonment. He no sooner saw the republican game 
 was up than he conspired with Bulstrode White - 
 locke against the L'ong Parliament. That design 
 failing, he turned evidence against Whitelocke and 
 secured his dismissal from the wardership of Windsor 
 Castle. The Restoration came ; Wildman sat tight 
 and said nothing. Of his some time associates, a few 
 were ruined by proscription, others were disposed of 
 in a more summiary way. Wildman, returning to 
 military service under James II, carried on a secret 
 
46 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 correspondence with Monmouth, but, eel-like, wriggled 
 out of the actual rising crushed at Sedgemoor. He 
 went back to the army under William III, was knighted 
 as Sir John Wildman in 1689, only to be informed 
 two years later that the King had no further occasion 
 for his services. How, during the next century, another 
 chief ornament of the Rota, Sir WiUiam Petty, profited 
 by his experiences in Miles's coflfee-house to found 
 a club of his own will be related in its proper place. 
 The way taken by Harrington and his friends in 
 New Palace Yard of advancing republican principles 
 was, it has been seen, to satirize and denounce the ill 
 taste and blunders of republican practice. They thus 
 made themselves the instruments of the great reaction 
 whose triumph they all lived to witness in 1 660. As 
 a practical consequence, informally if not altogether 
 unintentionally, they confederated themselves with 
 another society of the time founded in diametrical 
 opposition to the Rota. The truth, of course, is that 
 both those who passed for Commonwealth men were 
 equally shy of decisively committing themselves to the 
 royalist or republican side. The Kentish gang — a 
 phrase to be met with more than once in the club 
 story of a later day — at the command of an officer 
 who had served under the Duke of Ormond and had 
 an estate near Maidstone, founded the monarchical 
 coterie, the Sealed Knot, about the same time as the 
 Rota came into being.' Like a Cheshire knight of 
 the same faction. Sir William Brereton, the Kentish 
 colonel was so heavy an eater that he could have 
 gobbled up the whole Commonwealth at a meal. 
 Cobbet's social and political henchmen lacked their 
 leader's staunchness and, for the most part, were as 
 ready to swallow their professed principles as their 
 
 • Both about the Rota men and Colonel Cobbet, who made it his business to 
 counterwork them, most of what is known will be found in "Hudibras" or in 
 Zachary Grey's notes to Butler's poem, Bell and Murray's 1879 edition, vol. ii. 
 pp. 91 (Rota), 344 (Cobbet). 
 
17th-century clubmen AT WORK 47 
 
 chief was his dinner. Harrington, from Lincolnshire, 
 the Stafford'shire Charles Wolseley, and Wildman, the 
 ancestor of the Nottingham squires who eventually 
 owned Newstead, gave something of a North Midland 
 flavour to the Rota. The leading spirits of the Sealed 
 Knot came chiefly from the south and the west. Next 
 to Cobbet, their most adventurous manager and inde- 
 fatigable intriguer was the descendant of an old Bristol 
 stock, Sir Richard WUlis. Alike as partisan and 
 renegade, the true type of his time, he had begun at 
 the Rota by championing Cromwell against his censors 
 and adversaries in the club debates. In fact, all this 
 time he was in the Protector's secret service, reiporting 
 to his employer with their names aU who disparaged his 
 government, and spying out anything like a Stuart 
 plan of campaign. 
 
 Striking unsuccessfully for higher wages, he went 
 over to the Royalists in the hope of picking up some- 
 thing substantial from the poor remnant of their 
 original wealth left by the Commonwealth confiscators 
 to the country squires and nobles who had staked 
 their all upon the Court cause, and had so far lost. 
 Willis had not changed his tactics with his side. Find- 
 ing he could make a good sum of money down by 
 betraying his old associates, he played a congenial 
 part by turning informer against them. In a manner 
 prophetic of Titus Gates for his model, so highly 
 coloured his account of conversations and designs as 
 to secure the arrest of the Sealed Knot committee only 
 a year before Charles II was proclaimed king. Next, 
 after vainly trying to approach the royal exile at 
 Breda, he flung himself at the King's feet, imploring 
 forgiveness and favour. " No, no ! " characteristically 
 replied Charles. " I have pardoned Harry Marten, one 
 of my father's murderers because he was too amusing 
 a scamp to hang. In your case the scamp is plain 
 enough, but where is the amusement? " 
 
 The grotesquely named clubs of the Restoration 
 
48 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 period have been too often described and in their 
 personal aspects are too little known to detain us here. 
 Shaftesbury alone, in a Chancery Lane tavern, organized 
 the purely political King's Head Club as a support to 
 the Cabal and Court administration when both seemed 
 likely to break down. The social and convivial Club 
 of Kings, consisting of those who bore the " King " 
 patronymic, so tickled the royal fancy as to provoke 
 the remark : " That is quite in my way, and you 
 must put me on the honorary list." All these places 
 were often visited by Roger North, who brackets them 
 together in a lively fashion as Court agencies for 
 parliamentary corruption. • The club founders and 
 companies of Charles II's reign were not all of the 
 noisy, convivial kind. One club in particular, now to 
 be mentioned, presaged the era of club' respectability 
 which the accession of William III was to introduce. 
 The Great Fire of 1666 left a legacy of ruinous depres- 
 sion and disturbance to traders of every, kind, lasting for 
 some years. Why not, it occurred to the most resource- 
 ful and energetic of these citizens, employ the mutual 
 assistance and co-operation of the club for restoring the 
 commercial equilibrium that the calamity of three years 
 earlier had so grievously impaired? Immediate action 
 was taken, and before the close of 1669 the project 
 had been discussed and matured by an influential group 
 of tradesmen who, according to the custom of the 
 time, lived over their business premises. Of those 
 descended from the most active among the compara- 
 tively early, if not the original, members, one at least, 
 Mr. Bryan Corcoran, of 31, Mark Lane, still (October, 
 1912) carries on the -same business as the two pre- 
 
 ' Roger North, known as a writer from his Examen of Kennet's English 
 History, was, like so many others of his period, alternately for and against the 
 Court. In the former of these moods, he still admits that in spite of its bois- 
 terous bearing, the King's Club, nicknamed the Green Ribbon Club, did much 
 for the defence of liberty and property against popery and slavery, and that 
 the street rows, in getting up which its members emulated the Mohocks, had 
 sometimes a good motlTC. 
 
1I.1I1YAK COBCOJiAN'.ESQ? 
 
 To face p. 48. 
 
17th-century clubmen AT WORK 49 
 
 decessors of his own name in the old neighbourhood. 
 To him I am indebted for the interesting, as well as 
 hitherto unpublished, details concerning the club 
 worthies who come next, in the club succession, to the 
 men of the Rota and Sealed Knot. 
 
 In the manner already described the Civil Club 
 came into existence on November 19, 1669. It con- 
 tinued to meet during the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 century. It was, therefore, at the date of its dissolu- 
 tion, given below, the most ancient of aU clubs then 
 going on. Till the eve of the Victorian era, if not 
 later, facts and figures conclusively show that 
 it remained a real socio -commercial power, thanks, 
 no doubt, to the personal influence and official zeal 
 of the best known among its more modern secretaries. 
 That gentleman's picture, a living likeness in oils, 
 still hangs in the Tower wardroom. Of all those ever 
 connected with the club, no one estimated its historic 
 purpose more accurately or laid down with greater 
 precision the principles which had secured its efficiency 
 in the past and would be the guarantee of its usefulness 
 as long as it remained. It was on January 27, 1831, 
 that the Civil Club treasurer resigned his office in a 
 letter constituting the most authentic and instructive 
 of records, so far unprinted, concerning the one con- 
 siderable City club which continuously held its meet- 
 ings from the Restoration period down to our own 
 time. " Our fundamental law," the veteran reminds his 
 brethren, "is to deal with each other. If this be done, 
 not only efficiency, but perpetuity must be the club's 
 future." The docvunentary context shows that only one 
 person in the same line of business at the club's 
 formation was admitted. Retiring members could have 
 their names in the honorary list and were known as 
 gentlemen members. Should they resume their pro- 
 fessional activities, their re-entrance was barred if 
 during their absence their place had been fiUed by 
 some one in the same line as themselves. If not 
 
 4 
 
50 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 from the very first, yet shortly afterwards and then 
 without a break into and during the nineteenth century, 
 the Civil Club had its headquarters at the Old Ship 
 Tavern, Water Lane. Thence it migrated to the New 
 Corn Exchange Tavern, Mark Lane. Here its final 
 dinner took place in 1877. Like other societies of 
 the nomadic sort, the Civil clubmen from time to time 
 changed their venue to suit the season of the year.: 
 The dinners were held quarterly — on the Wednesday 
 before Lady Day, March 25th, on the Wednesday after 
 Midsummer Day, June 24th — in a country tavern near 
 London on the Wednesday before Michaelmas Day, Sep- 
 tember 29th, and on the Wednesday biefore St. Thomas's 
 Day, December 21st. Soon after its establishment 
 other than London citizens were gradually admitted 
 to the company. The social or political distinction 
 between the representatives of the new wealth and 
 of the old acres at first, by slow degrees, diminished 
 and then almost disappeared. The Civil Club's personal 
 composition soon attested the progress of the new 
 social fusion. Country gentlemen, baronets of old 
 descent from Westminster, and dandies from St. James's 
 or Mayfair shared with City knights and aldermen the 
 club's hospitalities, jfirst at the Old Ship Tavern, Walter 
 Lane, Tower, afterwards at the New Corn Exchange 
 Tavern, Mark Lane. Among the eighteenth-century 
 notabilities who, during the pre-Reform Bill period, took 
 their places at the Civil Club dining-table, was the 
 friend of Charles Fox, Alderman Sawbridge, the earliest 
 advocate for shortening Parliament, M.P. for Hythe 
 in 1769, who died in 1795. To the City he was, as an 
 advanced Liberal, much of what another Civil Club 
 guest. Sir Francis Burdett, was to society. Not that 
 even then its original design was forgotten ; on the 
 contrary, its commercial and social expansion went 
 on together. It had, indeed, become to some extent 
 a court of trade appeal. Thus, if in business deahngs 
 one member thought himself overreached by another, 
 
17th-century clubmen AT WORK 51 
 
 he could lay his grievance before the club'. The matter 
 was then referred to an investigating committee, whose 
 decision was final. The Civil Club always had its 
 own chaplain, a City clergyman. The last to serve 
 in that capacity was John Thomas, vicar of All Hallows, 
 Barking. Since his death, the only visible surviving; 
 monument of the club is a pair of high-carved chairs, 
 reserved for the stewards. 
 
 The Civil Club was the last tavern society of its 
 period to meet within the City precincts. At the close 
 of the Stuart era the club progress, carried by Ben 
 Jonson to the verge of the Strand, continued itself 
 in a north-westerly direction to Covent Garden. New 
 Palace Yard had witnessed the gatherings of the Rota 
 critics and censors who helped rather than hindered 
 the programme of the Sealed Knot, matured elsewhere, 
 for the Restoration. The next dynastic change locally 
 connects itself with the enclosure in West Central 
 London, once the garden of St. Peter's Convent, and 
 only changed into something like its existing shape 
 in 1633 ; a little more than fifty years before, this 
 not yet deserted section of clubland became, at the 
 oldest of its taverns, the meeting-place of the men 
 who, to the tune of " Lillibullero," were about to lift 
 the curtain on the throne of William III and Mary. 
 Historically, as at each stage of this narrative we have 
 seen, the relation of the club to the " pub." was that 
 of the child to the parent. The club doings now 
 to be recorded disclose a certain competition between 
 the two. The truth is that not only tavern and club, 
 but country house also, figured in the arrangement 
 of the plans which, blessed by a Protestant wind, 
 brought the Prince of Orange to Torbay on Novem- 
 ber 5, 1688. 
 
 .While the invitation was being signed by the head 
 of the Cavendishes at Chatsworth, eight miles off, in 
 the " Cock and Magpie," a little inn just outside 
 Chesterfield, a Derbyshire gentleman, John D'Arcy, and 
 
52 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 other active Whigs belonging to the North Midlands 
 held conferences in the room long known as the Plotters' 
 Parlour. Thither also came Charles 11 's former 
 minister Danby, after 1688 the Duke of Leeds, Edward 
 Russell, and Compton, Bishop of London, as well as 
 the peer who, in 1694, was to crown his other titles 
 with the Devonshire strawberry-leaf. 
 
 Covent Garden, London, had belonged to the 
 RusseUs since 15512. The emissary to Holland, who 
 superintended the preliminaries of William's dep3.rture 
 from the Hague, was Edward, Admiral RusseU, the 
 conqueror of La Hogue. The invitation brought by 
 him to William was signed by another member of 
 his family, WiUiam, Earl of Bedford, Lord William 
 Russell's father, eventually the first Duke of Bedford, 
 and if not belonging to yet in all the secrets of the 
 body about to be mentioned.' Appropriately enough, 
 therefore, in Covent Garden was situated the head- 
 quarters of the Whigs who had banded themselves 
 together for the purpose of substituting William HI 
 for James II. 
 
 The society was caUed the Treason Club. Its idea 
 had first occurred, towards the close of his career, to 
 the latest survivor of the five members whom Charles I 
 tried to seize on January 3, 1642. He, perhaps not 
 alone of the number, lived long enough to be con- 
 vinced that constitutional monarchy was better than 
 republican dictatorship. Holies, however, had died in 
 1680 ; he, therefore, did not witness the final organi- 
 zation of the company he had done so much to form. 
 James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Ashley Cooper, sub- 
 sequently the second Earl of Shaftesbury, who, after 
 long indecision and many changes, had thrown the 
 weight of his county position and parliamentary 
 influence into the scale against James, WiUiam, the 
 fifth Earl Russell and Thomas Wharton, to be created 
 
 ' Foi all these details of name and incident see Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great 
 Britain, part II, pp. 199,'etc., and Wiffen's House of RusseU, vol. ii. p. 291. 
 
17th-century clubmen AT WORK 53 
 
 in the coining reign the first earl of his name, the 
 progenitor of dukes, and the father of a notorious son, 
 a dishonour and shame to his line. Were the leading 
 spirits of the Treason Club. 
 
 The men, therefore, just mentioned as its chief 
 promoters and patrons laid the foundation stone of the 
 entire club system of the Whigs, as for that matter of 
 the Tories, who adopted and eventually improved on 
 their opponents' method. The Whig clubman came 
 into existence at the Treason. From him directly; 
 descended, in the next century, the builders of Brooks's. 
 The ascendancy of Brooks's caused the Conservatives 
 to construct the Carlton. The counterblast to the 
 Carlton showed itself five years afterwards in the 
 Reform. Not inappropriately, as has been shown, the 
 seventeenth-century birthplace of a society having so 
 many Whig associations as the political club was on 
 .Whig territory, Covent Garden. 
 
 Of the Rose Tavern, where the Treason Club met, 
 even the ruins have perished more completely than 
 the ruins of Troy. The place used to be in Russell 
 Street, next to Drury Lane Theatre. Its last vestiges 
 only outlived the Treason Club by eight years. Its 
 last dinner patron outside the Treason circle was the 
 diarist Pepys, who, having some time to wait for the 
 opening of the King's Playhouse (afterwards Drury 
 Lane) on May i8, 1688, dined at the Rose all alone 
 on half a breast of mutton off the spit. In 1776 the 
 ground occupied by the Rose was covered by Garrick's 
 new theatre. From the reign of Charles II, however, 
 the house of call chosen by the Treason clubmen had 
 won such notoriety that the revival of its name by 
 later hostilities naturally followed. 
 
 The City, however, was stiU prepared to dispute with 
 Covent Garden the distinction of being a club parent. 
 Friday Street, Cheapside, first won historic notoriety 
 as the thoroughfare containing the " Nag's Head," the 
 scene, according to the Papist fable, of the Elizabethan 
 
56 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 communication with the foreigli business men whose 
 friendship and confidence he had won while abroad. 
 The coterie, from being domestic or private, gradually 
 assumed a cosmopolitan character. First, one or two 
 foreign birds of passage through London joined in 
 the conversation ; then certain foreign residents were 
 admitted to the little circle. It was therefore arranged 
 that the company should meet so many times every 
 month — always on a Wednesday, the day that had 
 initiated the discussions. So began, and so continued, 
 the Wednesday Club, whose abiding monument is the 
 Bank of England, the development of the National 
 Debt, and the creation of the " fund-holders," as th© 
 lenders to the State were now calleid. The banking 
 system did not spring, completely equipped, from the 
 Wednesday Club meetings. Safety to the depositor 
 of money, combined with profit to the custodian, the 
 essence of banking as understood to-day, was not 
 definitely in the minds of Paterson and his associates 
 when they founded the Bank of England. The King 
 wanted money for his wars, the hank founders saw 
 their chance of securing the privilege of issuing notes. 
 Hence its original charta and the subsequent increase 
 gradually to the present amount of its capital. On 
 the money then or afterwards advanced to the State, 
 note issues were made without much thought of the 
 depositor. That without such thought there can be no 
 bank stability has been shown by the fact that the Balnk 
 of England would have foundered more than once but 
 for the Government being behind it. As it was it 
 actually defaulted, in other words suspended, payment 
 during the Napoleonic wars, when its notes circulated at 
 a discount. Of all the incidents so far effected by 
 club machinery, next to the organic transformation of 
 •1660 and 1688, that just described was the most 
 far-reaching and beneficent. It did more than 
 anything else to promote the commercial operations 
 of the period, and so to improve the humour of the 
 
17TH-CENTIJRY CLUBMEN AT WORK 57 
 
 business classes with, the new regime. In short, it 
 was largely due to the financial success secured by the 
 project of the Wednesday Club that the new monarchy 
 suffered so slightly in national regard from the shock 
 given to it by the death of WilUam's queen in 1694. 
 Thus during the three Centuries since Somer's and 
 Hoccleve's foundation of the Court of Good Company, 
 the club in England, as this narrative has now shown, 
 had grown from a private gathering into a national 
 agency. It had helped to organize the literary craft 
 under Raleigh. It had promoted the social and in- 
 tellectual fusion of classes and interests under JonsoH 
 at the Apollo. Fifty-three years later it stimulated 
 the best political thought, checked or advanced the 
 chief political movements of the time, called back a 
 prince from exile, and then, by diverting the royal 
 succession to a new line, created a parliamentary] 
 throne. Its influence upon and contributions to the 
 structure of the realm ended with the seventeenth 
 century. Hereafter its activity in State affairs Was 
 shown by its coimection with the welfare, the public 
 work, the inner life of parliamentary parties, the rise 
 and fall of administrations, the advance or the frustra- 
 tion of legislative schemes. Before following the details 
 of this progress, something must be said about the 
 social aspect of an institution, itself the greatest club 
 of all, to which some of the chief clubs, subsequently 
 to be visited, were in a sense affiliated. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 
 
 The social life of the House of Commons, a typical instance of the progress firom 
 pub. to club — Mediaeval M.P's. taking their ease and food at some of the 
 innumerable taverns adjoining their chamber — The "Cock" — The "Fleece" 
 — Their social-political life and club arrangements — Also " Heaven and Hell " 
 — Germs of St. Stephen's club life in Bellamy's — Bellamy's socialarrangements, 
 port and pies — The pie that came too late for Pitt — Improved club accommoda- 
 tion in Barry's new building, but Bellamy's not dead yet — Caterers since 
 Bellamy — St. Stephen's passes from proprietary club to members' club and 
 keeps house for itself — Its kitchen and cellar resources — Its charges — Rise in 
 price for the " four hundred a yearers " — The Labour M.P. and the red mullet 
 not en papillate — The House of Commons Club in its prime during the sixties 
 — Its twentieth-century conversion into a " cock-and-hen " club, to the great 
 discomfort of the womanless M.P. — The smoking-room as a link between the 
 Bellamy and Barry buildings — " I don't like smoking " says T. B. Macaulay; 
 " Nor I " says Frederick Harrison — But Sir Walter Scott, Brougham, 
 Eldon, Stowell, and Bulwer Lytton do — The smoker's progress from the 
 "Mermaid" to the House of Commons Club — The "four hundred a yearers'" 
 joint-stock palace a reflection of club characteristics of all periods, betting 
 and gambling excepted — The Lords as the second best. 
 
 It was Edmund Burke who called the newspaper press 
 " a fourth estate." The originator of an equally 
 familiar description of another estate, now in its social 
 aspect to be considered, cannot be as definitely identi- 
 fied. The expression first became current about 1840 ; 
 it continued in general use certainly till 1865 and prob- 
 ably throughout the seventies. The underlying idea 
 had been conveyed by the historian of the Decline 
 and Fall, during the second half of the eighteenth 
 century. From 1774 to 1782 Edward Gibbon was 
 Member for Liskeard. During those years, in more 
 than one letter, he said of St. Stephen's Chapel, where 
 
 58 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 59 
 
 the elected of the people sat, " I find it a very agree- 
 able coffee-house." Something of that sort the popular 
 chamber, socially considered, had been, or was in the 
 process of becoming, ever since its independent existence 
 began, and its members had a chamber of their own, 
 originally the Chapter House, separate from the Lords, 
 during the first half of the fourteenth century. 
 We now pass to the stages by which the " very agree- 
 able coffee-house " grew into a completely equipped 
 club. I 
 
 The earlier pages of this work have shown that 
 the City of Westminster, not less than the mediasval 
 City of London, was honeycombed by eating places 
 and drinking dens of every description. Royal edicts 
 were periodically issued, or other agencies set in motion 
 by successive sovereigns to restrict the herding together 
 of Parliament men with their belongings in the streets 
 and alleys near the kingly building which had grown 
 up under the shadow of the Abbey and which sheltered 
 a monarch till the close of Henry VIII's reign. All 
 the Stuarts, both before and after 1660, aimed at 
 abolishing the cooks and vintners who made their 
 premises a social meeting-place. Vain efforts at 
 suppression only gave new popularity to the taverns 
 in and about the parliamentary precincts, especially 
 those known as Heaven and Hell." 
 
 From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century the best 
 parts of Westminster were as fashionable as Belgravia 
 and Mayfair. In Tothill Street, between Broad 
 Sanctuary and York Street, lived and died (1563) 
 " the military pride of the peerage," Lord Grey of 
 Wilton, Sir George Carew, and, as late as 1789, 
 
 " Both these closely adjoin Westminster Hall, and were well known in Ben 
 Jonson's time (" Alchemist," Act V.) and are mentioned by Butler in Hitdibras. 
 At Heaven dined Pepys the diarist when Secretary to the Admiralty and a member 
 of Parliament, together with his parliamentary friend and colleague, one Llewelyn 
 (1686). At Hell, without any beds, the night was spent by the members whom 
 Pride's purge expelled from St. Stephen's (Dec. 6, 1648). Afterwards it became 
 the chief house of call for lawyers. 
 
60 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Thomas Amory, an eccentric Irish' littirateur, always 
 an aspirant but never an actuajl M.P. Close by Sir 
 Robert Cotton, in Old Palace Yard, had turned his 
 fine mansion, with its matchless library, into a place 
 of meeting, to all intents and purposes a club, for 
 John Pym and his chief supporters. Those for whom 
 there was no room here overflowed into the public 
 houses of call that inherited a political character of 
 their own from Tudor, if not earlier, days. Such were, 
 not only the resorts close to Westminster Hall, but 
 in Tothill Street were the Fleece (No. 70), a favourite 
 House of Commons tavern down to at least 1666, and 
 the Cock Tavern (No. 72), so famous and picturesque 
 as to call for a few passing words. It was probably 
 in existence so late as 1873, the year of its site being' 
 occupied by the Aquarium. The entrance to it, in 
 a large courtyard, built round, was up a longl flight 
 of stairs. Its rafters and timbers were of cedar. Its 
 parlour was decorated with two ancient oak carvings, 
 one Abraham's arrested sacrifice of Isaac, the other 
 the adoration of the Magi. The same room possessed 
 a table at which, between 1216 and 1272, the workmen 
 engaged on the Abbey were paid their wages. At 
 this table the Commonwealth leaders not only took 
 their refreshments but concerted the policy which ended 
 in the Grand Remonstrance. The places now men- 
 tioned were only a few out of many, all equally famous, 
 as their proprietors advertised, for the very good meat 
 dressed in them during term-time, for their tap of 
 home-brewed, and the pick of French or Italian wines, 
 perfectly conditioned, in their cellars. 
 
 This is only what was to have been expected from 
 the fact that before the Middle Ag'es ended a seat at 
 Westminster, from being an evil or a nuisance to be 
 avoided, had become a prize of social ambition. 
 Throughout the Norman and Plantagenet time " good- 
 man Burgess " was taught wholesome lessons of his 
 own significance, especially by the Court ushers, who. 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 61 
 
 at all ceremonies, warned him off, from the places 
 reserved for his betters, sometimes With the lash. He 
 and the body to which he belonged were, for the most 
 part, only a taxing agency to raise the money for 
 wars in which peers and princes reaped the harvest 
 of profit and renown. Under the Lancastrian dynasty, 
 in the fourteenth century matters improved. The shire 
 knights were recognized as at least the equals of the 
 lesser nobility, and whatever social consideration 
 belonged to borough Members in themselves was 
 intensified by their being Parliament men. ,Whether 
 he were shire knight or borough Member, the elected 
 of the people, if he could not as yet be said to belong 
 to the best club in London, might count upon getting 
 the best of everything and the first call in any house of 
 entertainment where he might show himself. The M.P. 
 affix may not have been universal till the introduction 
 of franking in the seventeenth century. Had the 
 initials been used two or three hundred years before 
 that, they would even then have possessed something 
 of the same commercial value as they were afterwards 
 to have for a company promoter in the City. 
 
 From 1790 to 1834 were first distinctly manifest 
 signs of the destined development of social life at 
 St. Stephen's from that of the pub. to the club. "A 
 Members' club " it was not to become till some tiine 
 after taking its present abode, in the middle pf the 
 nineteenth century. A proprietary club, and an excel- 
 lent one of its kind, it began to be when the earliest 
 of its caterers, Bellamy, entered upon his duties at the 
 House in 17,90. 
 
 For the Bellamy dispensation at the temporary 
 chamber in the Court of Requests, after the Fire of 
 1834, the most graphic as well as accurate authority 
 is the young newspaper reporter then laying the 
 foundations of a fame to be established by Pickwick 
 three years later and before the parliamentary scenes 
 he depicted while in the gallery were obsolete. The 
 
62 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Sketches by Boz contain a living picture of Bellamy's 
 arrangements for the refection and' the creature 
 comforts generally of the honourable and right honour- 
 able gentlemen employed in the Westminster manu- 
 factory of statute law.' When Dickens wrote, the 
 same refreshment-places were used by both Houses 
 as well as by strangers who had come to the debate ; 
 and constituents who, happening to be in London, had 
 buttonholed for a frank or some other favour their 
 Member in the lobby often lingered in hope of an 
 invitation to visit the feeding-floor. If so invited, they 
 made the ascent of a narrow staircase leading to a 
 couple of rooms on the right hand with tables spread 
 for dining. Outside the apartment, a little higher up 
 on the way to the kitchen, was a glass case, behind 
 the window of which stood or sat Bellamy's butler, 
 immortalized by Boz as Nicholas. 
 
 This was a sleek, comfortable, elderly man, never 
 seen out of a weU-brushed black suit or without a 
 tolerably clean shirt-front, and a voluminous craVat, 
 tied invariably in the same folds. Had he lived into 
 the era of universal authorship he might, if by rare 
 good luck similarly gifted after the fashion of door- 
 keeper White,2 have recorded his impressions of M.P.'s 
 for some weekly paper, eventually to appear in book 
 shape. During those less literary nineteenth-century 
 days Nicholas, as he served refreshments, would recall 
 how he had cunningly devised drinks that cheered 
 but not inebriated, chiefly consisting of lemon and 
 soda-water, for Sheridan, Perceval, Castlereag;h, and 
 Canning. 
 
 Solid fare — the staple dishes being chops, steaks, 
 veal, and pork-pies — was taken in a room used for 
 dining. Tea, dispensed by the severe " Jane " and 
 aU manner of drinkables, Bellamy's famous port in- 
 
 ' "A Parliamentary Sketch," Sketches by Boz, crown ed., Chapman and Hall, 
 pp. II2-20. 
 
 ' T. Fisher Unwin : Inner Life of the House of Commons, Wm. White. 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 63 
 
 eluded, were habitually consumed in the corridor. This 
 passage from the House of Commons was approached 
 by stairs, at the head of which there always stood a 
 waiter calling out the name of each successive Member 
 in the old phrase, regularly used by Disraeli, " upon 
 his legs." Some of these names would produce no 
 effect, but Mr. Pitt, Mr. Sheridan, or later Sir Robert 
 Peel " upon his legs," cleared the tables and left 
 Nicholas's cold punch-glasses suddenly as unfinished 
 as if the division bell had sounded. When Benjamin 
 Disraeli, as Member for Maidstone, first dined at 
 Bellamy's, 1837, the serving staff still contained an 
 interesting link with the past. " I think I could eat 
 one of Bellamy's pork -pies," was the dying Pitt's latest 
 articulate murmur. The pie had been carried to 
 Putney by Disraeli's waiter. When the man reached 
 the house the lowered blinds told him he was too late, 
 and Disraeli, telling the story in his most sepulchral 
 tones, always wound up with, " Pitt was dead." Other 
 Bellamy reminiscences, till now unprinted, notably those 
 of Mr. Mark Philij>s, the first Member for Manchester, 
 1832-47, and his brother Robert, Member for Bury, 
 both in the front rank of commercial Members as 
 well as both expert judges in cookery, bore witness 
 to another famous item in the bill of fare, the excellent 
 cold joints that were never cut till they were cold. 
 
 Nicholas, in addition to his skill as a grog-mixer, 
 carved these joints with such consummate skill that 
 every turn of his knife was said to have improved their 
 flavour. Some men, says Dickens, change their politics 
 from expediency, others from conviction. Why was 
 it that Nicholas, who had been staunch for the Grey 
 Government and as stout a champion of reform as 
 Sir Francis Burdett himself, like that worthy and in 
 the same year, 1835, declared himself a Tory? The 
 answer is simple. The new metropolitan Members 
 always dined at home ; the Irish Members, after each 
 disposing of more meat than any three English 
 
64 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Members, and swilling themselves with the gratuitously 
 supplied table beer, ordered no wine, and went back 
 to their lodgings for their whisky. Bellamy and 
 Nicholas therefore considered themselves losers by this 
 sort of patronage. It was not only in the dining depart- 
 ment of the old House that the Irish Members were 
 at a discount. The stiUroom and everything to do, 
 with it elsewhere was controlled by Bellamy's chief 
 Hebe, the already, mentioned Jane, with a staff, of 
 waitresses under her; these, loftily indififerent in manner 
 to aU customers alike, singled out for special disdain 
 any in whose speech they detected a touch of brogue. 
 Towards Daniel O'Connell, with his " household 
 brigade," three sons and two sons-in-law, aU heavy 
 tea-drinkers, their demeanour was described to me by 
 iW. H. RusseU, of the Tintes, as one of withering' 
 contempt. Notwithstanding the undisguised scorn of 
 Jane and her colleagues, tea remained the favourite 
 beverage of leading representatives from the Isle 
 of Saints while on duty at Westminster. The Irish 
 abstinence from intoxicants was more than com- 
 pensated by the British capacity for swallowing port. 
 Both as commoner and peer Brougham, in the course 
 of a single debate, more than once put away seven 
 tumblers, without, as his patrons said, turning a 
 hair, though on one occasion in the Upper House he 
 concluded an impassioned harangue by saying, " On 
 my bended knees I implore your lordships not to pass 
 this Bill," suiting the action to the words. 
 
 Port-drinking fell off a good deal between 1784 
 and 1804. The Duke of Montrose, who belonged to 
 Pitt's administration during both those years, said that 
 in 1784 any one Cabinet Minister drank more wine than 
 sufficed for all the Ministers twenty, years later. As 
 for the oft-told tale of Pitt's performances in this 
 line, they were matched, if not exceeded, by his 
 colleagues or friends, like Lord Chancellor Thurlow, 
 Lord Cower, the Duke of Rutland, Jenkinson (Lord 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 65 
 
 Liverpool), and above all Dundas .(Lord Melville), 
 equally impervious to the effects of strong drink and 
 .Whig arguments. Only twice did their potations 
 indispose either Pitt or Dundas for their work in the 
 House. Both occasions were in 1783, and on one of 
 them Pitt rallied quickly and completely enough for 
 his famous full-dress attack on the peace concluded 
 by Fox as the Duke of Portland's Foreign Secretary 
 between England, the United States, France, Spain, 
 and Holland.' 
 
 Bellamy's fruit, especially his oranges and pears, 
 were in only less favour than his choicest or heaviest 
 vintages. Orange -sucking was found a great relief 
 and help in debate. On February 7, 1828, during a 
 famous deliverance on law reform. Brougham had his 
 hat beside him full of this fruit, sucking them almost 
 incessantly and in an audible aside, abusing Bellamy, 
 if he came across a bad one. Equally great orange- 
 consumers were Daniel O'Connell and William 
 Cobbett. Joseph Hume, the Radical economist, 
 never entered Bellamy's coffee-room, but devoured 
 immense quantities of Bellamy's pears. As late 
 as 1845 Cobden relates how when Ferrand, the 
 Knaresborough M.P., was on his legs, Colonel Sibthorp 
 supplied the fellow with oranges to suck in an affec- 
 tionate manner, for all the world like a monkey fondling 
 a bear. Meanwhile, throughout the chamber generally, 
 others were taking their ease or their refreshments 
 much after the fashion of the gallery in a theatre on 
 Boxing Night. While the party leaders were on their 
 legs, their followers lay stretched on the benches 
 munching apples and cracking nuts. Some of Bellamy's 
 men, though invisible in the background, were always 
 near with fresh supplies when wanted. The pleasant 
 practice of relieving the severities of debate with these 
 
 ' The other occasion, described by an eye-witness, Sir N. W. Wraxall, vol. iii. 
 p. 221, was that which prompted Porson'S familiar epigram, " I cannot see the 
 Speaker," etc. 
 
 5 
 
66 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 little interludes of refresiiment in the House itself 
 ended when the elective law-makers changed their 
 old chamber for their existing abode. 
 
 Even then, however, the professional caterer did not 
 entirely go out. Bellamy's last oflScial appearance 
 was before a select committee on the House of 
 Commons' ofificers and fees, 1833. To this body 
 he explained the prices arid the methods which 
 had been criticized by the new economical Members 
 returned under the Grey Reform Act, and openly 
 declaring that they did not get their money's worth. 
 As to the alleged excessiveness of prices, the figures, 
 he said, were clearly put down in a paper laid on the 
 table. A plain sandwich cost a shilling, cold meat 
 with bread and cheese two-and-sixpence, or with salad 
 and tart three-and-sixpence. For table beer, to what- 
 ever extent drunk, there was no charge at all. The 
 most expensive meal supplied consisted of chops, steaks, 
 veal pie, tarts, and toasted cheese. This repast, in 
 whatever quantity consumed, was only charged five-and- 
 sixpence a head. " Wine, of course," asked one of 
 the committee, "is an extra?" "Yes! a glass of 
 wine and water or negus costs one-and-sixpence. Port 
 wine and sherry cost six shillings a bottle, madeira 
 eight shillings, and claret ten, and other wines in pro- 
 portion. Every wine is of the best quality, that can 
 be procured." 
 
 The coffee-house period of the House of Commons' 
 club life began in the same St. Stephen's Chapel that 
 had witnessed in its parliamentary aspects the King's 
 quarrel with his Parliament. It was interrupted by 
 the fire of 1834. It was resumed directly a tem- 
 porary structure could be prepared. It had dis- 
 appeared when, sixteen years later, the Commons 
 took possession of their present home in Westminster 
 Palace. The architect, Sir Charles Barry, undoubtedly 
 contemplated the eventual equipment of the building 
 with all its present conveniences of a first-rate club. 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 67 
 
 On certain points, such as the dining-floor arrange- 
 ments, but more particularly the whole question of 
 expense, he diflfered from the Government of the day. 
 He threw up the business in a huff. His refusal to 
 hand over his plans necessitated the completion of the 
 work by other architects. The Report of the Select 
 Committee of 1870 on the whole subject, supple- 
 mented by other official information, renders it possible 
 to describe the existing allotment of space in the 
 present Palace of .Westminster, to the various depart- 
 ments of which, like other clubs, the great national 
 club of St. Stephen's consists.' 
 
 The chief idea of the changes explained in a 
 Parliamentary Report of May 25, 1870, was to make 
 the Peers' and the Commons' dining-rooms as close as 
 possible to each other. To that end a conference- 
 room and tea-room were taken from the popular 
 chamber and a committee-room from the hereditary. 
 At the same time the lobby connecting the two Houses 
 was enclosed with a wainscot-glazed screen and made 
 into a serving-bar. To do that it was necessary to re- 
 move the wall of the conference-room. The space thus 
 acquired rendered it possible to perfect the arrange- 
 ments of the bar by a lift and staircase from below. 
 Simultaneously with this, the Members' and strangers' 
 dining-room became the Members' tea-room, the 
 Members' old dining-room was converted into a news- 
 room, and the former newspaper-room became a 
 reception-room. For the serving-bar, lalready described, 
 some ground-floor rearrangements were required. What 
 had been the strangers' dining-room was now used 
 in part as a kitchen and in part as a smoking-room. 
 The small dining-room now did duty as a larder. 
 
 The crowning addition to the club resources of the 
 
 ' Here I must express my deep obligations to the invaluable assistance 
 generously and graciously given me by Sir C. P. Ilbert, and through him to the 
 good offices of the assistant architect, Mr. P. E. Ridge, as well as Mr. Percy A. 
 Bull, one of Sir Courtney Ilbert's parliamentary staff. 
 
68 CLUB MAKEE8 AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Commons was made in 1906 by Mr. Lewis Harcourt 
 when Commissioner of Works. It was effected by 
 appropriating a room formerly belonging to the Lords, 
 though little used by them. The result was now known 
 as the Harcourt dining-room. Its appointments and 
 decorations cost £4,000 ; it seats with comfort a com- 
 pany of 120 persons, and is principally, used for parties 
 in which ladies predominate. After Mr. Harcourt, few 
 M.P.'s have done more than that most indefatigable 
 squire of dames, accomplished of Anglo -Indian states- 
 men, genially energetic parliamentarian. Sir Richard 
 Temple, in promoting the annexation to feminine empire 
 of the Westminster clubhouse. These picturesque trans- 
 formation scenes, beginning just a generation ago, mark 
 a novel and decisive stage iij the triumphal march of 
 tlie militant sex to absolute social supremacy. This 
 advance began a good deal earlier than most people 
 may think, and was first assured of ultimate success 
 during the interval between the eleventh and the 
 fifteenth centuries by the troubadours, the tournaments, 
 and the love-courts. The crusades may not have 
 wrested the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel, but they 
 permanently enthroned the daughters of Eve.' In 
 England, as elsewhere during the Elizabethan period, 
 woman-worship rose to high-water mark in letters and 
 on the stage. Diplomacy also about this time made 
 itself the handmaid of feminine aggrandisement. 
 Instead of Ministers- extraordinary temporarily ac- 
 credited to foreign Courts, there were appointed 
 the stationary Ambassadors who still exist. At first 
 the representatives of the British sovereign were 
 not accompanied by their wives. These ladies, 
 
 ' A certain knight, sentenced by his lady love to a course of probationary 
 fighting in Palestine, returned after three years' absence to his mistress's bower. 
 She had advanced to meet him outside, but, as it was pouring cats and dogs, the 
 lover, throwing his mantle over her shoulders, implored her to get back under 
 shelter. " What " she exclaimed, " you have eyes to see at this moment that it 
 rains ! You cannot, then, love me. " And the poor wretch was promptly sent back 
 to Syria on the chance for redeeming his character. 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 69 
 
 however, so importunately resented being left behind, 
 and gave the Government so much troujble, that they 
 were eventually bidden to follow their lords in foreign 
 parts with all convenient speed. The earliest of the 
 diplomatic matrons, however, was not English but the 
 better half of Count Olivarez, who represented the King 
 of Spain at the Vatican, and whose son, as Minister to 
 Philip IV, figures iri Gil Bias. Having ingratiated 
 herself with all the Roman ladies by a series of costly 
 entertainments and precious gifts, the Countess Olivarez 
 roused them into active enthusiasm for the Holy See. 
 The Pope of the period, Sixtus V, was not ungrateful 
 enough to let such good offices pass without a signal 
 mark of his favour. He bestowed upon his fair 
 Castilian ally the title of ambassadress, which, of course, 
 after this, could not but gradually become general. 
 Puritanism, with the dove or dull-coloured dress and 
 the exaggerated modesty it enforced, gave the sex 
 something of a set-back, but also permanently ranged 
 it on the side of the Cavaliers or their successors . The 
 feminine eclipse ceased with the Restoration, but the 
 twenty-years wars that opened the nineteenth cjentury 
 and the poets Byron, Moore, Scott, and Wordsworth 
 were needed to reinstate women in something like their 
 place of pride, (^ueen Victoria's influence as wife and 
 Smother, not less than sovereign, gave a tone to the 
 Court and feminized the whole surface of society. In 
 yielding at one point after another to the social pressure 
 of ladies, the managers of the orig^inal and genuine 
 St. Stephen's Club have, not more inevitably than 
 appropriately, reflected anld led the great move- 
 ment of their time. The Harcourt dining-room — 
 what is it but the artistically executed monument and 
 the highly decorated symbol of a triumph for which,, 
 as has been already shown, fuU preparations were made 
 at least as far back as the Middle Ages? Every male 
 fortress has in turn faUai before assaults which 
 have known neither check nor pause since, in the 
 
70 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 seventies, wives, daughters, or mistresses made it a 
 practice to rejoin their trousered belongings at 
 luncheon in the pheasant covert or grouse moor. 
 
 Before this the hunting-field, like the racecourse, had 
 shared the same fate ; and " walking with the guns " 
 went out when ladies wielded the breechloader on their 
 own account. Everything, therefore, was ripe before 
 the twentieth century began, not only for the mixed 
 clubs established during the eighties but for those at 
 which man is only a guest or caUer, to be visited 
 hereafter at the proper time. 
 
 Meanwhile certain old-world Piccadilly and Pall 
 Mall haunts had practically renounced their claim to 
 the title once bestowed on them by Bishop Samuel 
 Wilberforce, " places where wives, daughters, and other 
 women cease from troubling, and husbands are at rest." 
 Effecting the same victorious entrance at Pall Mall 
 as at Westminster, ladies found tea awaiting them in 
 the bachelors' bower, becomingly prepared for their 
 reception. St. Stephen's, therefore, had no choice but 
 to show its sjTTipathy with the time spirit by averting a 
 siege and yielding at discretion . Tea on the terrace, with 
 ices, and strawberries and cream, popularized during the 
 eighties, created the House of Commons woman, who is 
 no more to be confounded with the she-politician or 
 the genuine political lady than a junior lord with a 
 first minister. The light alfresco refreshment taken 
 on the embankment of the ImperiaJ river, crimsoned 
 by the setting sun, was, of course, only, a beginning. 
 The chamber itself had always lacked the space for 
 seating its full complement of M.P.'s. Feminine pres- 
 sure followed the rearrangement and extension of the 
 Commons area secured by the already mentioned 
 Committee of 1870. In a twinkling there was dis- 
 covered all the room wanted for attractively assorted 
 and well -contrived dinner companies. It will thus be 
 seen that no other socio-political resort has gone 
 farther towards illustrating and piromoting the very 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 71 
 
 newest and most revolutionary phases of club life than 
 that famed for its devotion to precedent, the national 
 caravanserai of St. Stephen's. This, domiciled in the 
 palace of historic name, owes the charm^ of club 
 supremacy not to its members but to the recent 
 expansion and equipment of its premises, after the 
 fashion already described. Such a social and hospitable 
 vogue with outsiders has been secured at no small cost, 
 and has demanded much sacrifice of convenience and 
 comfort from those who are now salaried, the 
 better to perform; the people's work beneath the same 
 roof. 
 
 Under successive catering dispensations during the 
 nineteenth century's last half, the cuisine, the service, 
 and the appointment of St. Stephen's were those of a 
 first-rate London club. Everything was of the best 
 quality and brought to table in the best style. A 
 couple of decades later came a growing change for 
 the worse. By 1890 the average M..P., on entering 
 its coffee-room, found himself at the mercy of waiters 
 and cooks, with a soul far above diners on a cut off 
 the joint, and exclusively preoccupied with the soigne 
 banquets of the Harcourt room. Not that even at 
 Westminster the club managers have permanently 
 neglected Members for visitors. 
 
 The Kitchen Committee, even in this second decade 
 of this twentieth century, remains an effective body. 
 The example and tradition of its former chairman, now 
 Lord Pembroke, have not been forgotten by his 
 successors. After him came Lord Stanley, to-day Lord 
 Derby, and Mr. Jacoby. These were accompanied, 
 or immediately followed, by the popular and competent 
 Colonel Lockwood and Mr. J. T. Agg-Gardner, the 
 most judicious and kindly of born Amphitryons, in 
 whom the etpicure does not so overcome the altruist 
 as to enable him himself to dine in comfort so long 
 as the minutest wants of those about him are not 
 satisfied. In the great St. Stephen's Club the nominal 
 
72 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 dining-room prices are below, not only those of the 
 Bellamy dispensation but of the various contractors 
 who came afterwards. For two shilling's the Kitchen 
 Committee never failed to provide a dinner more 
 copious and probably better cooked than could be 
 eaten at any public place, club' on pub., between 
 Ludgate Circus and Hyde Park Corner. The price 
 has been raised to two-and-sixpence since the revival 
 of the medieval wages to M.P.'s. Very critically 
 epicurean are these " four hundred a yearers," 
 especially the Labour Members, one of whom recently 
 addressed a stern reprimand to the Kitchen Committee 
 because the most expensive fish of the season, a red 
 mullet, had not been laid before him in the usual 
 paper covering, or, as he expressed it, en papillate. 
 
 Apart from those aspects of social life at St. 
 Stephen's just dwelt on^ Barry's Imperial clubhouse 
 did not, at once, quite extinguish Bellamy's. Bellamy, 
 indeed, or his later equivalents, went on even after 
 the manufacturers of statute law first occupied their 
 present green -leather benches in 1852. Lucas, of 
 Parliament Street, and Gordon, of hotel company fame, 
 were some of the chief refreshment contractors 
 associated with the present building after Bellamy's 
 day. Such were the stages by which the House 
 passed from its pub. period to the club, and then grew 
 from a proprietary club into a Members' club, with 
 various accessory developments and practical results 
 already set forth. Now, of course, the Kitchen Com- 
 mittee ' looks after the cellar, the cuisine, and the 
 
 ' One o6Sce bearing a name of feminine association occurs in the domestic life 
 of the " best club in London." The housekeeper, however, is identical with the 
 Sergeant-at-Arms, nor, as a fact, do women of any kind form a visible part of the 
 establishment. Elsewhere, too, in like manner a feminine name survives the reality. 
 In Westminster Hall, "Alice's," a place of refreshment for lawyers, continued to 
 be so called long after passing into the hands of one John Smith. So, too, under 
 the shadow of St. Paul's, between Paternoster Row and Newgate Street, a tavern, 
 renowned for its beefsteaks as well as for the presence of Fielding, Defoe, and Swift, 
 remained Dolly's Chop House long after its ownership by a male descendant of 
 its original founder, Dick Tarleton, the Elizabethan comedian. 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 73 
 
 cigars ; un<ier the last head is a stock whose value 
 is seldom less than £2,000, while the contents of the 
 wine-cellar represent more than twice that sum, a 
 prominent item in the list being an immense vat of 
 Scotch whisky. 
 
 One of the entries in the foregoing! catalogue 
 significantly recalls the progressive recognition by 
 club managers of the tobacco habit. It had come 
 in during the existence of Raleigh's Mermaid Club, 
 but was not popular either then or, a little later, at Ben 
 Jonson's Apollo, though Jonson himself says enough 
 about it in his plays to excuse the conjecture of 
 the great Ben having been in the early phrase a 
 " tobaccoist." James I's loathing for tobacco was 
 showhi more practically than in his Counterblast by 
 his tax of 6s. lod. in the pound. Even that, he said, 
 was to let too lightly off a thing the foulness of whose 
 stench could only be compared with hell. The royal 
 sentiments were shared by at least two Members of his 
 first and second Parliaments, Peter Campbell, a Derby- 
 shire Member and Sir Edwin Sandys, who sat for 
 Pontefract. Both of these justified to their constituents 
 their frequent absenteeism from the House on the 
 ground* of the tobacco stench in the neighbouring 
 taverns, which they could not avoid entering for their 
 necessary meals. Campbell, moreover, by his will dis- 
 inherited his eldest son if he could ever be found taking 
 tobacco in any form. Sandys dosed his constituents 
 with statistics to show that the money spent on the 
 noisome weed, by Parliament men alone, meant a loss 
 to the kingdom of £20,000 a year. The pipe, however, 
 became more and more popular till the close, and partly 
 in consequence, of the Napoleonic wars, when it was 
 supplemented rather than replaced by the cigar. The 
 cigarette came a good deal later. Known in England 
 so far back as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's residence 
 at our Constantinople embassy (17 16-18), it remained 
 the luxury of a limited class till after the Crimean War. 
 
74 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 From this retrospect it will be seen that Bellamy's 
 provision for the club comforts of Parliament required 
 the addition of the smoking-room to the accommodation 
 for tea-drinkers and diners;. Sir Walter Scott had 
 used pipes and cigars uidiflferently. In the next 
 generation Lord Macaulay disliked both as much as 
 does an eminent man of letters in the present, Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison. Other public characters of or 
 about Macaulay 's time had different tastes. Another 
 Edinburgh Reviewer, Henry Brougham, regularly 
 frequented the old House of Commons smoking-room. 
 So, too, before him, did Stowell and Eldon. The most 
 intellectual and cultivated of George Ill's sons, the 
 Duke of Sussex, used both pipe and cigars ; so did 
 his friend, the eighteenth-century Duke of Devonshire. 
 Two of Macaulay's most distinguished Cambridge con- 
 temporaries, Thackeray and Bulwer Lytton, were 
 smokers, while of these the latter gave any spare minutes 
 he could snatch from the business of debate to the 
 upper room which Macaulay detested, but of which he 
 has handed doAvn the best description. It was a large 
 wainscoted place containing tables covered with green 
 baize and writing materials. On a full night it was 
 generally thronged with smokers, and was then a perfect 
 cloud of fume — "the filthiest," he adds, "of all 
 filthy atmospheres, and the vilest of all company, the 
 smell of tobacco so lodging itself in my nostrils that 
 I cannot get it out." Only one apartment, without 
 which no other club would be considered complete, 
 has, at each point of its progress, been wanting to 
 the best club in London : it has never had a card- 
 room. In the Bellamy period bets may have been 
 booked upon any of the innumerable trivialities that 
 furnished at different times an excuse for making them. 
 But beyond this, in the parliamentary precincts, the 
 gambling spirit has not gone. Tobacco and tea have 
 never meant cards or dice. 
 
 So much for the club life of the Commons ; is it 
 
THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON 75 
 
 rivalled or approached by the Uords? The answer can 
 scarcely be, to use the language of Ministers at quesf 
 tion time, in the affirmative. The club life of the 
 Upper House only began twenty-five years ago. Dater 
 even than that the smoking accommodation was 
 restricted to a small portion of the library. In 1904 
 the Peers did themselves good service, and paid a just 
 compliment to a charming poet and distinguished man 
 of letters, by making Mr. Edmund Gosse their librarian. 
 Soon after that the smoking area on the library was 
 extended by the addition of two large rooms. These 
 have since been transformed into a very comfortable 
 clubroom ; drinks and even light meals can here be 
 served. These conveniences quite recently have been 
 supplemented with two telephones, abundant electric 
 l^ht, the morning and evening papers, as well as 
 the weeklies and other periodicals. On the opposite 
 side of the library corridor there is also now a 
 restaurant, but hereditary legislators, like their spiritual 
 fellows, are men of regular domestic habits, generally 
 (managing their debates so as to get home in good 
 time for dinner. Consequently their life at Westminster 
 lacks the fuU development of those social features with 
 which we have familiarized ourselves in another place. 
 In one respect, as regards its internal arrangements, 
 the best club in London will always present a contrast 
 to clubs of every other kind. At the p:arty meetingjs 
 of which the Carlton or Reform has been the scene 
 reporters have so far found no admittance. Before the 
 parliamentary occupation of the existing .Westminster 
 Palace the Press had won its final victory. The presence 
 of its stenographers, from only having been connived 
 at, was recognized and arranged for. This provision 
 has been enlarged and improved tiU the fourth estate 
 at Westminster finds aU the accommodation it needs 
 in a club scarcely less complete than that of the third 
 estate itself. In 1883, in addition to the rooms behind 
 the reporters' gallery, there had only existed a very 
 
76 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 limited space for refreshment. The same year, how- 
 ever, witnessed the increase of this area by the architect 
 Sir John Taylor, to the extent of four rooms on the 
 first floor and four on the second.. The first-floor 
 rooms were now used for smoking and writing off 
 reports ; on the second floor was a dining-room and 
 kitchen. In 1886 further club accommodation was 
 secured for the gentlemen of the Press by placing at 
 their disposal rooms formerly belonging to the Clerk 
 of the Commons. In 1905 the convenience and comfort 
 of the journalists were once more consulted by the 
 First Commissioner of Works, Mr. Lewis Harcourt, 
 who bestowed on the matter not less personal atten- 
 tion than he gave to the Ladies' Dining Room already, 
 described. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 
 
 Other refreshment-houses in the Bellamy period— The club equivalents of their 
 time — Jonathan Swift's club life and activities — Conspirators, convives, and 
 fisticuffs at the "Cocoa Tree "—The "Cocoa Tree's" conversion from pub. to 
 club — Edward Gibbon in its club days — Nineteenth-century slate tables trans- 
 form it into a billiard club — Its billiard-players and its present shape — Fact 
 and fiction of the October Club at the "Bell" in Westminster — Who joined it, 
 who stood aloof, who named it, and who gave his life to its management — 
 Mat Prior, Speaker Bromley — Small talk and statesmanship at the October 
 Club — How some convivial undergraduates were sent down and founded a 
 rival to the " October " in the " Calves' Head "—The Whig Hanoverian Kit- 
 Cat Club cradled in Shire Lane — But moved to premises formerly occupied by 
 clubmen of a different kidney, the anti-Walpolean Fountain Club, with, for 
 its chief figures, Pulteney, Sir John Hynde Cotton, the Earl of Chesterfield, 
 and Viscount Cobham — The Kit-Cat, why called ; from Christopher Cat 
 or from the " old cats and young kits " it toasted — The ladies it toasted — 
 The first clubwoman it created and the big-wigs of faculty it brought into 
 fashion (Dr Garth) — Its summer meetings in the suburbs — Its real creator 
 Jacob Tonson — Its headquarters his private house, chiefly Barn Elms — Its 
 artistic chief. Sir Godfrey Kneller — Its portraits in Tonson's gallery and the 
 name contributed by them to the vocabulary of art — A versatile eighteenth- 
 century bohemian, Dick Eastcourt — Strolling player, London Sawbones, 
 the playgoer's favourite at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, and Drury Lane. 
 The ladies' pet the Bumper and Beefsteak founder — The mimic who 
 can take off the whole College of Physicians — Sir Roger de Coverley's " old 
 comical one," and port wine agent — The coffee-house rather than the 
 tavern — True club ancestor — How Canopus of Balliol brought coffee in and 
 taught the Master how to make it — The London chocolate and coffee-houses, 
 culminating in White's. 
 
 At .Westminster, as we know, many parliamentary 
 generations passed before Bellamy's supersession of 
 innumerable small houses of entertainment first put the 
 House of Commons in the way of becoming the best 
 club in London. Elsewhere throughout the same period 
 might be seen a similar movement preparatory, in a 
 
 77 
 
78 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 like degree, to the spreading growth' of the club from 
 the tavern. By the eighteenth century the St. James's 
 quarter had made good a practically exclusive claim 
 to the conventional title of " clubland." Even then, how- 
 ever, coffee-houses, to all intents and purposes clubs, 
 were increasing, and prospered in the City. The news- 
 paper press, notwithstanding the vigorous promise of 
 its infancy, had yet to rival or even supplement these 
 resorts as agencies for circulating news or organizing 
 opinion. Between 1650 and 1710 the London coffee- 
 houses of different kinds numbered not less than three 
 thousand — a total exceeding the allowance of any other 
 European capital. The social facilities, the careful 
 catering of these places, and the exclusion, by a penny 
 entrance fee, of undesirable customers, made them clubs 
 in all but name. Repeated edicts for their suppression 
 had produced no effect. They clustered thickly round 
 the Royal Exchange — among'st them being, not only 
 John's or Jonathan's, the haunt of stockbrokers, in 
 Birchin Lane, a great centre for traffic in Goverrmient 
 securities, but Tom's was the haunt of Garrick and his 
 friends, whenever, as frequently happened, financial 
 matters took them' East of Temple Bar. At the latter 
 of these two Birchin Lane taverns were rooms specially 
 reserved for the actor-manager, with the citizens who 
 came to meet him, generally known at the time as 
 Garrick's Club. At Tom's also it was that, during 
 his tragic London experiment, Chatterton picked ^p 
 the odds and ends of news for his topical squibs, tales, 
 and songs. 
 
 The steadier and older-fashioned City men always 
 stuck to the Jerusalem, Garraway's, or Jonathan's ; a 
 younger and more speculative generation particularly 
 affected other resorts on change, especially Sam's, the 
 headquarters of the South Sea Bubble set. Such passed 
 for Sam's sober habitues in comparison with projectors 
 ready to ensure fortunes to all who would take shares 
 in a scheme for extracting sunbqams from cucumbers. 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 79 
 
 or in a £2,000,000 loan for buying and fertilizing 
 the Lincolnshire Fens. Close to the national cathedral 
 there existed a kind of Athenaeum Club in embryo. 
 Doctors of repute, well-placed professional men 
 generally, and especially beneficed, clergymen visiting 
 London, always met the very pidk of their cloth at_.^ 
 Child's, in St. Paul's Churchyard. The Grecian and / 
 Nando 's, near the Temple, reserved themselves for] 
 lawyers. A stone's -throw off, Man's two taverns, on 
 the opposite sides of the street, known as the Old and 
 the Young Mian's, attracted gentlemen who combined 
 commercial interests with social aspirations. Farther 
 west, Giles's and Old Slaughter's were the most 
 instructive and entertaining of cosmopolitan haunts, as 
 much French as English being talked at both ; while 
 Parliament men and' pamphleteers meditating speeches 
 that wanted fresh facts or paragraphs which needed 
 local colour, strained their ears to miss nothing that 
 might fall from' the lips of the chattering throng. 
 Covent Garden overflowed with club potentialities. . 
 Dryden held his court at Will's in Bow Street. Hard by] 
 other coteries were gathered round rival masters of 
 the pen. Addison's social star first reached the ascen- 
 dant in the tobacco -laden atmosphere of Button's 
 (Russell Street). A Scotsman of any pretence to 
 fashion always had the British or Forrest's, near 
 Charing Cross, for his permanent town address. To 
 continue our south-westward progress, beyond St. 
 James's Palace, at the Pall Miall end of St. James's 
 Street itself, stood the Whig St. James's. Close by was 
 the Hanoverian Tory Ozinda's. The most demonstra-l 
 tive of the Jacobite Tories went to the " Cocoa Tree, 'J 
 first situated in Pall Mall, but, by the early eighteerrtn 
 century date now reached, removed to St. James's 
 Street. This was Jonathan Swift's favourite haunt for 
 dinner or supper While staying in London,' and trying 
 
 ' During his early London days Jonathan Swift was ill-received, knew nobody, 
 and, resenting the slights he received, revenged himself by trying to form a new 
 
80 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 to ingratiate himself, at the same timle, with the minis- 
 terial Tories under Harley and with the Tory malcon- 
 tents who looked to Bolingbroke. At Bolingbroke's 
 he would dine ; with Harley, if that statesman hap- 
 pened to be in a crapulous state, following the over- 
 night potations, he would have tea — a beverage which 
 Harley generally supplemented with a hair of the dog 
 that had bitten him and with some queer displays of 
 temper. These would send the Dean off to the " Cocoa 
 Tree," sometimes for some slight refreshment, but quite 
 as often to sit musing and thinking of nothing, to damn 
 the bad wine and the worse cookery inflicted on him 
 earlier in the evening. His wish for solitude was not 
 always respected, and he occasionally complains of 
 intrusion on him by impertinent puppies in the shape 
 of two Papists, three Jacobites, an Irish lord, an 
 English colonel, and a Tory. " Tolerable wine," he fre- 
 quently adds, " but all politics and no wit ; took a dram 
 for the good of the house and so home to bed in my 
 Bury Street lodgings hard by." Some of his " Cocoa 
 Tree" appearances were connected with more serious, 
 if fruitless, transactions. More than once in his diary, 
 apropos of the Pretender, Swift speaks of having 
 settled the succession as well as of having arranged 
 the manner and time of his landing.' 
 
 This was the only tavern frequented by Swift which 
 afterwards developed into a club, but by no means the 
 only public house of call in that quarter visited by him. 
 At the " Smyrna," in Pall Mall, on the ground occupied 
 to-day by Messrs. Harrison, he was as regular an 
 habitu6 as Goldsmith, Prior, Addison, and Steele. In the 
 
 social connection of his own. Hence the countless coteries mentioned in his 
 letters and conducted on principles which he had himself framed into rules. Such 
 were the political club, "the Brothers," which, wandering from one tavern to another 
 during the short existence that ended in 1713, met every Thursday, reckoned 
 among its members Arbuthnot, Pope, Gay, and Bolingbroke himself. The last of 
 these was Swift's most loyal ally in all his club experiments, and a regular attendant 
 at Swift's "literary" Scriblerus Club, frequented also by Harley and dissolved, 
 largely in consequence of the personal differences between those two statesmen. 
 ' Jonathan Swift's Works, edited by Temple Scott, G. Bell & Sons, vol. v. p 480. 
 
Phoi4)} IPictoriai Agency. 
 
 boodle's club : THE BAY WINDOW. 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 81 
 
 present narrative the " Cocoa Tree " deserves special / 
 notice because it belonged to the number of the historuLJ 
 taverns which subsequently grew into clubs. That posi- 
 tion it attained between the days of the Dean of St. 
 Patrick's and the historian of the Roman Empire., 
 Gibbon, who, as we already know, saw an " agreeable 
 coffee-house " in St. Stephen's, became a conspicuous 
 figure in several famous club companies of his time. 
 He was also a club founder, and by his own efforts 
 created an exclusive little society, characteristically 
 called by him the Romans. The chief among those 
 who gathered round him in this enterprise were Lord 
 Mountstuart, afterwards Marquess of Bute, Colonel 
 Edmondstone, William .Weddal, the Earl of Berkeley, 
 Godfrey Clarke, one of the Derbyshire M.P.'s, the 
 Reverend Palgrave, Major Ridley, Thomas Charles 
 Bigge, Sir William Guise, Sir John Aubrey, the Earl 
 of Abingdon, with his son Peregrine Bertie, George 
 Damer, some time Earl of Dorchester, Sir Thomas 
 Gascoygne, Sir John Hort, and the founder's most 
 particular intimate. Lord Sheffield. This convivial 
 group dined together once a week, and leaving in 
 succession each house patronized on any defect in^ 
 service or cuisine. Gibbon ' also sat in the seat of 
 Swift at the " Cocoa Tree," converted since 1745 froni 
 a Jacobite tavern into a meeting-place for Minis-' 
 terialists. As such it was generally called the Govern- 
 ment Club. Twenty or thirty of the first men in the 
 kingdom, in point of fortune and fashion, had little 
 tables, covered with a napkin, in a coffee-room, supping 
 upon a bit of cold meat or a sandwich and drinking a 
 glass of punch — such was the Cocoa Tree Club of 
 Gibbon's time. The K.C.'s, lords of the bedchamber, 
 and a host of other frequenters, decorated with stars 
 and garters, When seated there, spoke of being under 
 the palm-tree, because a carved facsimile of that growth 
 
 • The Letters of Edward Gibbon, edited by R. E. Prothero, John Murray, vol. 
 i. p. 89. The Autobiography of Edward Gibbon, John Murray, pp. 273 and 40S, 
 
 6 
 
82 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 had been thrust up through the ceiling of the room. Its 
 company during the earlier years of the " Cocoa Tree's " 
 club period was apt to be noisy as well as madly 
 speculative. The Stuart associations remained through- 
 out as strong as ever, and there are countless stories of 
 the way in which Jacobite horses and carriages used to 
 stop at the " Cocoa Tree " of their own accord. In the 
 same room, at different tables, might be seen the most 
 fashionable of the Pretender's adherents, George 
 Mackenzie, third Earl of Cromarty, with his eldest 
 son, Lord Macleod, even, upon occasions, not as sympa- 
 thizer but as scornful looker-on, Chatham himself, with 
 some of his family phalanx. Colonel Pitt, Temple, and 
 Lord Cholmondeley. In addition to the statesmen there 
 were journalists. The pugilistic editor, a genuine type 
 of his time, represented by an ex-clergyman, also a 
 future baronet, Edward Bate,' had trodden on " fighting 
 Fitzgerald's " toes at Vauxhall. There was an imme- 
 diate adjournment to the " Cocoa Tree " to arrange for 
 seconds and other preliminaries. By, this time 
 Fitzgerald, having his hands rather full of duelling 
 engagements in other quarters, had handed the Vauxhall 
 business over to a companion, Captain Miles. .When 
 the gentlemen concerned had assembled in St. James's 
 Street, Miles said it would save much timte and trouble 
 if Mr. Bate and himself were to settle the matter then 
 and there with their fists. In one of the clubrooms 
 they went at it hammer and tongs till, less than a 
 quarter of an hour later, in the best prize-ring fashion, 
 the editor had bruised the captain into a jelly. 
 
 Clubs, like books, have their fates. A faithfully 
 picturesque mirror of its age in the aspects already 
 described, slate billiard tables had no sooner been intro- 
 duced in 1827 than the difficulty of securing them in 
 their most perfect form was met between that date 
 
 ' For full details of this personage the reader is respectfully referred to an 
 earlier work by the same author. Master of English Journalism, pp. 191-3, 
 T. Fisher Unwin. 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 83 
 
 and 1837 by the first gentlemen players of the day 
 forming an amateur billiard club in the historic premises 
 at 64, St. James's Street. The proprietorship passed 
 to Mr. Pook. During his day, Faulkner Blair, R. D. 
 Walker, of the Southgate cricketing family, P. H. 
 Lee, Arthur Chapman, Frank Morgan, iVW. E. Stokes, 
 and the then Marquess of Donegal daily or nightly 
 engaged each other or played in the regular club sweep- 
 stakes, while Christmas marked or, as midnight 
 approached, served an appetising form of sandwich, 
 the secret of whose manufacture was entirely his own. 
 Since then billiards have ceased to be the chief reason 
 for the " Cocoa Tree's " existence, and the club has now 
 its place among the other social caravanserais of the 
 district. 
 
 To the iWestminster taverns, once famous club 
 homes, the first decade of the eighteenth century added 
 the " Bell " in King Street. " We hope your Majesty is 
 high Tory and High Church," shouted the mob into 
 iQueen Anne's chariot as she drove to open her first 
 Parliament. In political quarters the expected re- 
 action from the Whig regime was signalized and 
 stimulated by one hundred and fifty squires co- 
 operating to found the October Club at the tavern 
 just mentioned. Sir William Wyndham Bolingbroke's 
 friend approved the design, and, at the request of 
 William Bromley, afterwards Speaker, the most 
 responsible and important figure in the company, even 
 let his name appear among the numbers, but the club 
 itself was not so much the work of the party chiefs 
 as of the ultras in their rank and file ; while these 
 found an indefatigable promoter of their scheme in the 
 clever, bustling poet. Prior, who himself secured the 
 clubroom in the Bell Tavern and decorated it with 
 the portrait of Queen Anne, which was subsequently 
 to adorn the Town Council chamber at Salisbury.. 
 " Support you?" Bolingbroke had said. " Why, I expect 
 you to prove only a thorn in my side ; but as for your 
 
84 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 name, what can there be with less offence in it than 
 that of the month chosen for your first meeting." In 
 this way alone did the title originate. Alike in its 
 spirit and its programme, the new society epitomised 
 and reflected the most characteristic tendencies of the 
 time. To refashion the nation's polity or to change 
 the ruling house had been the animating motive of 
 the socio-political coteries from the Rota or the Sealed 
 Knot down to the Treason. After 1688, club com- 
 panies on both sides, in the place of making or 
 unmaking a king, occupied themselves in trying to 
 influence the personnel and deciding the policy of 
 an administration. In the August of 171 1 Queen Anne 
 dismissed the Whigs, replacing them by the Tories, 
 under Harley and Bolingbroke. .While these appoint- 
 ments were being made, the rank and file of the incom- 
 ing party, clamorous for leaders who, in Bolingbroke's 
 phrase, would show them sport, formed themselves, not 
 at Bolingbroke's instance, if perhaps not withojut his 
 knowledge, into a combination against Harley, which, 
 during the next autumn, grew into the October Club. 
 Harley, who came of an old Puritan stock, had himself 
 been a Whig ; after being improved into Toryism, he 
 was still more than suspected of sneaking sympathies 
 with his old friends. His position, in fact, resembled 
 Sir Stafford Northcote's, on his promotion to the Con- 
 servative leadership in the Commons when Benjamin 
 Disraeli became Earl of Beaconsfield. Northcote, 
 indeed, had never been a Liberal, nor even a Peelite, 
 but he had served as Gladstone's private secretary ; 
 he had learned finance in the Gladstonian school. When 
 he confronted his old chief at Westminster, he was 
 charged with still being under his malignant influence 
 and with being prevented by the memory of ancient 
 ties from fearlessly engaging him in single combat. 
 Hence the Conservative explosion below the gangway 
 and the prominence secured by the Fourth Party during 
 Sir Stafford Northcote's Conservative leadership. What 
 
PROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 85 
 
 Lord Randolph Churchill and his friends were to the 
 ofiScial Conservatism of 1880-2, the October Club had 
 been some 170 years earlier to the Ministerial Tories 
 of the Harley Government. 
 
 In the eighteenth century there existed no hard-and- 
 fast line separating the Jacobite from the Hanoverian 
 Tories. The two factions by imperceptible degrees 
 merged themselves in each other. The October club- 
 men under Queen Anne were thus the prototypes of 
 Chatham's " boys " or " patriots " in the reign of 
 George L They had taken Harley for their bugbear 
 because he resisted their dictation. Their rashness 
 in driving things on to extremes against the Whigs, 
 scattering impeachments broadcast, and, if they could, 
 as Swift puts it, getting off five or six heads, made 
 them quite as dangerous and troublesome to 
 Bolingbroke. iWhile these lines are being written 
 (December 4, 19 12) the management of the Opposition 
 has largely passed from the Conservative front bench 
 to the Press. So was it as nearly as possible two 
 hundred years ago. The real resistance to Walpole 
 proceeded less from Pulteney and St. John at St. 
 Stephen's than from their organs, principally the 
 Craftsman, in the Press. The Tory Examiner, having 
 gone to all lengths in personally assailing when 
 Minister, could, upon occasions, show its teeth to Harley 
 and his moderate adherents. Naturally enough 
 periodical writers of the Craftsman school found a 
 welcome with the October clubmen. Atterbury, the 
 episcopal pamphleteer. Friend, King (both connected 
 editorially with the Craftsman), and Mat Prior had, 
 indeed, helped to form the club.' Prior was the more 
 
 ' In addition to those already mentioned other October Clubmen were John 
 Aislabie, Francis Annesley, William Bromley, Robert Byerley, Henry Campion, 
 Charles Csesar, Sir Robert Danvers, Charles Eversfield, Ralph Freeman, Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer, John Hungerford, Sir Justinian Isham, Packington, George 
 Lockhart, Francis Scovel, Sir Thomas Thorold, John Trevanion, Sir William 
 Whitelock, and Sir Roger Mosten — nearly all Tory names heard of in later 
 politics. 
 
86 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 keen in organizing the October men because he had 
 been expelled from the Hanoverian Kit-Cat, of which 
 more will be said presently. He, like Swift, had placed 
 his pen at Godolphin's disposal. Both offers were 
 promptly declined. Prior began as Tory journalist in 
 the Examiner with an article immediately answered by 
 Addison in his Whig Examiner, a print soon superseded 
 by Mainwaring's Medley. In his capacity of club 
 founder Prior made it his business to show how unten- 
 able was the conventional distinction between the 
 Hanoverian and the Jacobite Tories. In an address to 
 a preliminary meeting at the " BeU," " all who accepted 
 the old constitution of Church and State, disregarding 
 dynastic labels, should," he said, -' be of our company. 
 To ourselves," with cynical frankness he continued, " we 
 may make a contrast between a de jtwe and a de facto 
 king. But as subjects it is not for us to choose whether 
 the crown shall be worn by George the Elector of 
 Hanover or George the Chevalier." Prior's fellow- 
 clubmen took the hint, and, no more flying at such 
 high game as monarchs, were content to hunt down 
 obnoxious Ministers. 
 
 Meanwhile the staunchest of professed partisans were 
 intriguers to a man, anxious above all things at the 
 same time to secure their position in both camps. 
 The Octobrists chuckled with delight while they 
 watched how vainly Harley searched for evidence 
 against Bolingbroke, implicating him' with the Pre- 
 tender, and how infinitely more damning and numerous 
 grew the signs that the man chiefly comprised with the 
 Stuarts was none other than Harley himself. As a 
 fact, both the Macpherson papers ' and Sir James 
 Mackintosh's historical fragments 2 free, not only 
 Bolinghroke but any among' his most advanced 
 followers in the October Club, from the suspicion of 
 active intrigue to reseat a Stuart upon the throne. 
 In 1 7 1 3 the shock to Harley's health caused by the 
 
 ' See especially vol. ii. p. 417 et passim. ° Edinburgh Review, 1835. 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 87 
 
 / 
 ; 
 
 dagger of Guiscard, a French papist, temporarily dis- 
 abled him, and left his rival master of the situation. 
 The Pretender importuned him daily with messengers 
 entreating his support on any terms he liked to name. 
 Atterbury, Prior, Wyndham, and the whole force of 
 the October Club only waited for him to give the signal. 
 Even then Bolingbroke's only reply was to insist on 
 the hopelessness of decisive and harmonious action with 
 a body so heterogeneous as the Parliament. Eight 
 Tories, all Jacobites, to one Hanoverian Whig was 
 the October Club's account of national feeling pre- 
 sented by Prior, in 17 14, to Bolingbroke. The great 
 man looked at the figures and laughed. " Revise," 
 he said to Prior, " your club estimate by putting down 
 one hundred Tories to forty-eight iWhigs." 
 
 Matthew Prior, the life and soul of the October men 
 at. the "Bell," was a type of the clever, fussy, good- 
 naturedly intermeddling clubman as he may be seen 
 in all ages. A Whitehall vintner's son, he had picked 
 up some classical knowledge and made acquaintances 
 above his own rank under Busby, at Westminster 
 School. On leaving St. John's, Cambridge, and coming 
 up to London, he had been taken up by Montagu, and 
 had helped his patron to write the " Town and Country 
 Mouse," a clever burlesque on Dryden's " Hind and 
 Panther." He gratified his taste for the society of 
 his betters by rubbing shoulders with Atterbury's and 
 Swift's highly placed friends while doing for them 
 the real work of the October Club's foundation. In 
 1 7 10 the club used him for the dirty work of manipu- 
 lating the election petitions to increase the already 
 great Tory majority in the Comtnons, as well as in 
 bringing to light the forgotten millions of the impeached 
 Duke of Marlborough's war expenditure. All this, how- 
 ever, was not only not at Bolingbroke's instigation, but 
 to his extreme disgust. " Tell your October friends," he 
 said to Prior, " their warfare against individual members 
 of it will rather help than harm the Whig party." 
 
88 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 The truth is, Bolingbroke had a soul and mind above 
 petty personalities. Even supposing him to have used 
 them for his own ends, he would have heartily despised 
 the methods of the October clubmen. As it was they 
 neither served him for tools nor received the slig'htest 
 countenance from him. The Scandal Club was the 
 name he gave them in return for their pestilent prying 
 into things they did not understand. In the Harley 
 administration the one undoubted Whig was Shrewsbury ; 
 Ormond's Jacobitism was notorious. Therefore, when 
 that position fell vacant, the country squires, in their 
 tobacco parliaments at the " Bell," vowed that the 
 wardenship of the Cinque Ports should go, not to 
 Shrewsbury but to Ormond. On Prior mentioning this, 
 Bolingbroke bade him hold his peace. 
 
 The Anglo-French negotiations for the Utrecht con- 
 gress brought the October Club some distinguished or 
 notorious foreigners as guests, as well as gratified the 
 vanity of the club itself by giving it credit for knowledge 
 of all that was going on behind the scenes. Of course 
 it often deceived itself, and revelled in a glut of mare's 
 nests. Any report damaging to the Whigs generally 
 and Marlborough in particular, the more preposterous 
 the better, after being served up at the October Club, 
 was spread by the club agents, especially Prior, throiUg'h 
 the town and the country.. Such was the story of 
 Marlborough's having, as early as 1708, entertained 
 an offer of a huge French bribe to induce his Govern- 
 ment to accept the French peace terms. Prior, though 
 certainly not Swift, had persuaded himself that this 
 precious fiction was fact. He, at least, about this time, 
 told the story to an acquaintance connected with 
 another and an antagonistic association, who, in his 
 turn, passed it on to Addison. "A rancorous and 
 undiluted lie," was Addison's comment. " How do 
 you know that? " came the rejoinder. " From M. 
 De Torcy himself " — the Foreign Minister of the 
 French king, then visiting London, daily closeted with 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 89 
 
 Bolingbroke, but also privately known by Addison, 
 then in the thick of official circles, and in the way of 
 the earliest and most authentic information. The truth 
 is that as little by its friends as its foes was the October 
 Club taken seriously. Atterbury, Prior, King, like some 
 others of the company at the " Bell," had served the 
 Tory managers in their capacity, not of clubmen but of 
 writers. The use for these had ceased by 17 12. The 
 first day of that year opened the Anglo-French diplo- 
 matic discussions that were not to end till Bolingbroke's 
 private deal with the French Plenipotentiary beforehand 
 enabled him to enter the Congress-room at Utrecht 
 with the draft treaty in his pocket. About the succes- 
 sive moves in this game of international thimblerig, Mat 
 Prior and his fussy club-fellows remained entirely in 
 the dark. 
 
 On the other side less important and of worse repute 
 was the Calves' Head Club. Early in the eighteenth 
 century club-foimding had become a trade, often 
 adopted by enterprising licensed victuallers as a tavern 
 advertisement. About 1703 some well-bom, hard- 
 drinking Whig undergraduates scandalized Tory and 
 Royalist Oxford by uproariously celebrating the anni- 
 versary of Charles I.'s death. The heads of their 
 respective colleges and the Vice-Chancellor promptly 
 sent them down. The rusticated lads determined to 
 finish their interrupted anti-monarchical orgy in 
 London. They all belonged to great and wealthy 
 Whig families. This was well known to the host of the 
 " Golden Eagle," Suffolk Street, where the lads put up. 
 He not only gave them of his best, but encouraged them' 
 in all those antics which no sooner got abroad than 
 they won their way to the fabulous. The innkeeper, 
 a dissenter himself, invited some of his fellow dissenters, 
 Brownists, Familists, Sweet Singers, Quakers, Anabap- 
 tists, and Muggletonians to come in and see the fun. 
 Such a congeries of factions obviously might be turned 
 to account by the .Whigs in their bid for popularity. 
 
90 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 So the thing began and grew. The Calves' Head 
 secret historian, however, knows nothing of this, and 
 only describes the club-founders as an impudent set of 
 people who have their feasts of calves' heads at several 
 points of the town on the 30th of January in derision 
 of the day and defiance of monarchy." 
 
 Proceeding to the Kit-Cat Club, we exchange myth 
 for history. This club took its name from its founder. 
 Christopher Cat (1703-33) kept the " Cat and Fiddle " 
 in Shire Lane, Temple Bar, and won for it the same 
 sort of fame by his mutton-pies as, in Oliver Goldsmith's 
 day, was beginning to come to the " Cheshire Cheese " 
 from its beefsteak puddings. By a lucky chance Cat 
 became the fashion with a little group of London 
 pleasure-seekers. Cat took these customers with him 
 when he went to the " Fountain " iri the Strand. When 
 forming them into a club. Cat found a colleague in a; 
 much more important person than himself. 
 
 This was Jacob Tonson, the somie-time stationer's 
 apprentice, w'ho, in 1677, began business on his own 
 account at Judge's Head, Chancery Lane. In conjunc- 
 tion with his brother Richard he published in 1680 
 Dryden's Spanish Friar. Ten years later he obtained, 
 first half, afterwards the whole of the publisher 
 Brabazon Ailmer's rights in Paradise Lost. After his 
 removal, in 1697, to Gray's Inn Gate, his publishing 
 connection included, not only Dryden himself but 
 several works of Dryden's editing, as well as Addison 
 and Steele. In 17 14 his business increased in size 
 and importance by his Government contracts, which 
 made him, not only a printer of parliamentary votes 
 but stationer and bookseller to the chief public offices. 
 His commercial skill was accompanied with great 
 mental power, real literary taste, sound judgment, and 
 an encyclopaedic knowledge which subsequently made 
 Pope describe him to Harley as a perfect image of 
 Bayle's Dictionary — so full of wit, secret history, and 
 
 ' Temple Scott's Swift, Bell & Son, vol. ix. p. 256. 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 91 
 
 spirit. At the same time one of Cat's patrons, this 
 cultivated and pushing trader Was fitted above all others 
 to organize a really distinguished club. In this way 
 he became, together with Cat, the Kit-Cat's founder, 
 and, soon afterwards, its secretary. At the sign of Cat's 
 " Fountain " there had also met an a.ssociation form- 
 ing a complete contrast to the Kit-Cat. This was the 
 Fountain Club, a Tory institution like the October, but, 
 unlike that, the accredited headquarters of the official 
 Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole. Its invisible pre- 
 siding genius and its most active patron, though always 
 in the background, was Pulteney. Its most distin- 
 guished and energetic manager was Swift. Under his 
 direction the ballots for membership were most severe. 
 After the actual voting he conducted a remorselessly 
 searching inquisition into the personal antecedents as 
 well as the family connections even of those who had 
 been formally elected. 
 
 On one of these supplementary scrutinies there were 
 finally rejected several of Walpole's parliamentary 
 opponents because of the mere suspicion that they might 
 be got at and perverted by the detested Minister. 
 Among those weeded out in this way were Manley and 
 Medlicot. Both generally passed for staunch anti- 
 Walpoleans, but in each case Swift's keen vision had 
 detected some secretly compromising speck. Club 
 meetings conducted in this temper could seldom be 
 tranquil or harmonious, and Swift's own account of 
 the gatherings is apt to conclude with the confession 
 that the company could not agree about new candidates 
 and parted in an ill-humour. As time went on the 
 club became an instrument of purely personal hostility 
 to Walpole, and then, because of his palace support, to 
 
 ;■> 
 
 > 
 
 George I. i ( " 
 
 The Prince of Wales, then being estranged from his 
 father, the club had the heir to the throne among 
 its well-wishers and, perhaps, occasional guests. At 
 this time it was dominated by the Duke of Argyle, the 
 
92 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Earl of Chesterfield, Viscount Cobham, one of the Duke 
 of Marlborough's officers in Flanders, subsequently, on 
 Walpole's overthrow, a field-marshal, the friend of 
 Alexander Pope, the creator of the gardens at Stowe, 
 and by Sir John Hynde Cotton, of Landwade, Cam- 
 bridgeshire, whose Jacobitism for years survived that 
 of his party in general. The Fountain clubmen rather 
 over-valued their political power. On February 1 1, 
 1742, the Chippenham election affair caused Walpole 
 to resign. " All the club's doing," said the jubilant 
 secretary, in his speech proposing the toast of "our noble 
 selves," at the triumphal banquet. The Tories and the 
 Whig malcontents mustered between two and three 
 hundred strong to speed the parting minister and to 
 welcome the incoming one. This was Wilmington, 
 with Carteret as head of the Exchequer. " Shall I 
 see you at the 'dinner to-night? " the new Prime Minister 
 had asked of his Chancellor. " 1 think not," was the 
 answer. " I have never dined at a tavern and don't 
 care to begin now." 
 
 To that rule, however, as a patron of letters and 
 art, this accomplished man, the Earl Granville of 
 1743 onwards, made an exception in favour of the 
 Kit-Cat. 
 
 " Kit-Cat wits spring first from Kit-Cat pies " is 
 Blackmore's explanation of the name, but the club's 
 most characteristic custom, presently to be mentioned, 
 made Arbuthnot derive its title plausibly enough from 
 its pell-mell pack of toasts of " old cats and young 
 kits." ' 
 
 This association was coeval with the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Recruited originally from professional wielders 
 of the pen, the pencil, and the paint-brush, by the co- 
 operation already described of a publican with a 
 publisher, its social and conversational repute soon 
 brought it into general fashion. During the summer, 
 
 ' spectator, No. 9. 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 93 
 
 like so many other societies of the nomadic kind, it 
 met out of town— now at the Upper Flask Tavern, 
 Hampstead, now at Tonson's suburban house at Barn 
 Elms. This, or some other of the publisher's abodes, 
 formed the club's permanent headquarters. The pro- 
 ducer of Dryden's, Pope's, and Otway's books was an 
 early and favourable specimen of the modish publisher 
 familiar to a later age. What Tonson's parlour 
 had been to the eigfhteenth century, that John 
 Murray's drawing-room became to the next, while 
 Tonson's select but cosmopolitan dinner guests 
 founded the hospitable tradition maintained by a 
 long lin,e of successors. The club increased in 
 numbers from 39 to 48. 
 
 One feature of its feasts was the celebration of 
 reigning beauties, both by toast and song. Few meet- 
 ings passed without many glasses being emptied in 
 honour of their Graces of Beaufort, St. Albans, the 
 Countess of Carlisle, Ladieis Bridgwater, Godolphin, 
 Monthermer, Sunderland, Wharton, Mrs. Barton, Sir 
 Isaac Newton's niece, and Mrs. Brudenell, these last 
 two being perhaps the handsomest women of their day, 
 and only less celebrated than their rivals because un- 
 titled. The annals of freemasonry relate how Lord 
 Donerale's daughter was elected into the crafts. The 
 Kit -Cat also had on its list a member of the then 
 clubless sex in the person of Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu, who, when a child, being introduced to the 
 company by her father, the Duke of Kingston, first 
 received its grave salute and then was solemnly declared 
 to belong to it. As time went on each diner became 
 so much a poet as to celebrate in verse some one whose 
 charms had not yet found the immortalizing bard. 
 Thus, in addition to the names already given. Lady 
 Essex, Lady Hyde, and Mademoiselle Spanheim, were 
 successively promoted to the honour of two toasts each. 
 The best specimen of the carefully prepared impromptu 
 lines accompanying each health is Samuel Garth's 
 
94 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 tribute to the perfections boasted by, one belonging to 
 the Villeirs family : — 
 
 " The God of Wine grows jealous of his art — 
 He only fires the head, but Hyde, the heart ; 
 The Queen of Love looks on and smiles to see 
 A nymph more mighty than a Deity." 
 
 The rhyming Kit-Cat wits sometimes gave a vogue to 
 doctors as well as to ladies. The pet physician and 
 palace attendant, Sir Samuel Garth, was a leading 
 Kit-Cat figure. The only drug in which, like perhaps 
 many others of his cloth, he really believed, was the 
 vis medicatrix naturce. Sitting once at the club between 
 Sir Robert Walpole, an early if not an original 
 Kit-Cat mettiber, and the " wicked " Lord Lyttelton, 
 and the hour being late, he was asked by Halifax 
 whether he had no professional eng'agements. " Of 
 colurse," he said, " I have " — producing his pocket-book. 
 " Ten patients Waiting to see me at this moment. 
 But," he added, " five are really so well that they 
 cannot be made better, and the five really sick have 
 such strong constitutions that I defy all the doctors 
 in London and the pharmacopoeia itself to make them 
 worse." It was not Sir Robert, but that Minister's son, 
 Horace Walpole, who, during his researches into the 
 ancestresses of Kit-Cat heroines, discovered an ancient 
 Lady Westmoreland to have been the sister of a Kit- 
 Cat toast. Lady Molyneux, who, chuckled the Straw- 
 berry Hill virtuoso, died smoking a pipe. At a Kit-Cat 
 dinner it w<as that Lord Somers, on the suggestion of 
 Halifax, offered a prize for a poem. Hearing that Tom 
 D'Urfey w*as likely to be a competitor, Somters mur- 
 mured : " He can have no chance, for when I grumbled 
 the other day of some piecrust being half cold, the 
 cook explained he had put the pies into the oven with 
 some of D'Urfey's works under them'. The poems, he 
 said, were so cold that the dough refused to bake." 
 
 The Kit-Cat member the author of the club's most 
 enduring, because its artistic, fame, was by birth a 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 95 
 
 north German, son of a Lubeck Jew. Intended for 
 a soldier, he learned the rudiments of pictorial art in a 
 school for military drawing at Leyden. Conscious of 
 a turn for painting, he soon surprised his friends with 
 a study in oils from the Apocrypha, " Tobit and the 
 Angel." Then came his art apprenticeship to Jacob 
 del Boe at Hamburg, and so mkny signs of promise as 
 to secure him the chance of study in Italy. Luckily for 
 himself, he soon drifted to England, and first made his 
 mark by a portrait of Monmouth's secretary, Vernon. 
 Established at a studio in what was then called Durham 
 Yard, he began his course as Court portrait painter 
 with Monmouth himself, whom he reproduced on his 
 canvas to the life. The palace changed its owners ; 
 Kneller was equally successful in painting them all. 
 His house in the Covent Garden Piazza became .as 
 fashionable a haunt as the Kit-Cat Club itself. Kneller's 
 portraits of its members, executed on a scale to suit 
 Tonson's gallery, 36 in. by 28 in., gradually caused 
 portraits of that size to be known as Kit-Cats. From 
 the mutton which, in the shape of Christopher Cat's 
 pies, formed the basis of the elegant and agreeable 
 Kit-Cat the transition seems appropriate to a company 
 built up on the more fortifying and essentially British 
 foundation of the beef -steak. Of the clubs so far men- 
 tioned, this and the " Cocoa Tree " alone through many 
 vicissitudes and transmigrations, have preserved their 
 name and in some form or other their existence from 
 Queen Anne to George V. 
 
 In 1704 the playgoing taste had been curiously 
 taken at Drury Lane, by an actor named Eastcourt or 
 Estcourt, who rather less than ten years previously 
 had made an extraordinarily successful debut at the 
 Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin, where he remained 
 for some time. He was not of Irish origin, nor does 
 he seem to have been attracted by any Irish friendship 
 or connection to the Irish capital. He had fortuitously 
 drifted thither on the uncertain tide of adventurous 
 
96 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 circumstance. Born (1688-1712), bred, and schooled 
 at Tewkesbury, he had, while a boy, run off with a 
 company of strolling players to escape a whipping 
 for an unlearnt Latin grammar lesson. Pursued by his 
 father, he was at last found almost sinking from star- 
 vation in a barn just outside Chipping Norton. His 
 mother, a second wife, knew something of a Hatton 
 Garden apothecary. To him, therefore, as a preventive 
 against further escapades, the boy was apprenticed, 
 with the result that he picked up about the same 
 smattering of chemical knowledge which, conveyed 
 to-day by a natural science course in a Secondary 
 School, serves as a preparation for the special 
 training of a general practitioner. With real insight 
 into his business, as well as aptitude for it and industry, 
 Eastcourt might have risen to a place among the doctors 
 of his day. Not that he had ever troubled himself 
 much concerning the theory or practice of the healing 
 art, but he could talk knowingly about the properties 
 of drugs and write down the cabalistic instructions for 
 mixing them in the surgery of the Hatton Garden 
 Sawbones. He was a born mimic. At an earlier social 
 venture, the Bumper, he had kept his patrons in night- 
 long roars of laughter at the combinations of facial 
 play and of professional jargon with which he brought 
 before them, not only the first medicine-man of the 
 time, the already mentioned D,r. Garth, but the personal 
 characteristics common to the whole faculty of which 
 Garth was an ornament. To this effect agree both 
 all the traditions of the time and the specific testimony 
 of Gay, Pamell, Addison, and Steele. In whatever 
 place Eastcourt might for the moment have settled 
 himself and gathered his convivial circle, there were sure 
 to reign fun, frolic, and cheer of the liquid sort so good 
 that his habitues, with Sir Roger de Coverley himself 
 at their head, forced on him liberal commissions to 
 supply their own cellars with his superlative port.' 
 
 ' Speciator, No. 264, Sit Roger de Covetley's letter to Eastcourt, addressed 
 as "old comical one." 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 97 
 
 There seems no reason for supposing, Jonathan Swift 
 to have been a Beefsteak clubman, or to have been 
 formally enrolled in the many societies bearing that 
 or a similar name which long flourished both in London 
 and provincial towns, and several of which survive to 
 this day. The Dean, however, knew Dick Eastcourt 
 well. He liked his society or that of his set so much 
 as to sit by while a bowl of bad punch was receiving 
 justice from Mr. Under-Secretary Rowe, the poet, with 
 whom Swift had dined. These meetings were also 
 graced by Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord 
 Cobham, Lord Pembroke, Viceroy of Ireland in 1707, 
 Eastcourt himself, Congreve, and Charles Main, 
 " wondering Main, so fat with laughing eyes," as Gay, 
 called him. 
 
 Both as club founder and club companion Dick 
 Eastcourt, as he was always known, held a warm place 
 ih club memories down to the time of Charles Lamb. 
 The club style that he invented must not be confounded 
 with the sublime society of Beef Steaks. Of in- 
 stitutions called by that name more than one at 
 different periods existed, and they were perpetuated 
 by Henry Irving during his reign at the Lyceum. 
 Through the rest of the eighteenth century and till 
 the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth Dick 
 Eastcourt waited for any Beefsteak successor. He 
 appeared during the seventies in the person of the 
 eighth Duke of Beaufort, the most popular and 
 active among the literary and theatrical patrons of 
 his time both in London and at his seat, Troy House, 
 Monmouth, where E. A. Sothern (Lord Dundreary) 
 was first introduced to the world of title and fashion.. 
 His Grace of Badminton deputed the actual work of 
 reviving the Beefsteak glories to his most loyal, popular, 
 and capable henchman Mr. (" Hughie ") Drummond,' 
 Claude Hay,^ and above all Mr. Charles Sugden, him- 
 
 ' Colonel Henry Edward Stirling Home-Drummond. 
 
 ' The I ith Earl of KinnouU's fifth son, the present peer's brother, bom 1862. 
 
 7 
 
98 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 self a notable link between the cults of art, society, 
 and sport, the creator of many theatrical parts, and, 
 to-day the one player probably living who, as Charles, 
 in " Our Boys," has appeared between five hundred 
 and a thousand times in the same r61e. As in its 
 beginnings with Eastcourt, so thr'oughout its resuscita- 
 tion, the club now fl'ourishing in Green Street, W.C, has 
 conspicuously reflected the class fusion that created its 
 eighteenth-century, not to mention its later, vogue. 
 
 Neither the "Beefsteak," however, nor the "Cocoa 
 Tree," with which, as regards antiquity, it has been 
 coupled here, is by any means the oldest of existing 
 clubs, descended in an unbroken line from a tavern 
 or coffee-house progenitor of (^ueen Anne celebrity. 
 iThe nineteenth century sees successful rivals to the 
 licensed victualler in purveyors of non-intoxicating 
 substitutes, like tea and cocoa, for strong drinks. 
 It is to be remembered that the lineal ancestors 
 of these, rather than the traders of alcohol in 
 any form, most prominently co-operated with the 
 greatest among seventeenth or eighteenth century, 
 club founders. This can easily be shown. The 
 cosmopolitanism of the famous college in Broad Street 
 dates from an epoch long anterior to Benjamin Jowett ; 
 and the Jap undergraduates of his mastership had their 
 predecessors under Charles I., Thomas Lawrence being 
 then Balliol Head, in students imported from a Mediter- 
 ranean island. One of these Cretans, Nathaniel 
 Canopus by name, had been presented by his father, 
 on returning to England to keep his college term in 
 .1641, with several pounds of coffee, coming to the 
 elder Canopus from his Asiatic business connections. 
 Some of this gift he presented to Dr. Lawrence, who, 
 under his pupil's directions, had it prepared for drink- 
 ing in the Master's lodging. • Of the rest of his coffee 
 
 1900-10 Unionist M.P. for Hoxton, at one time Secretary of the Primrose Le^ue 
 and Assistant Secretary at Lloyd's. 
 
 ' It was not only the first, but for some time the last coffee drunk by a Balliol 
 Head, for the parliamentary commission issued in 1641 to demolish church 
 
FROM COFFEE-HOUSE TO CLUB 99 
 
 Canopus prudently disposed in return for many free 
 meals to a certain Jacobs, keeper of an eating-house, 
 on the ground now covered by the Great Western Rail- 
 way buildings. Within a few years English merchants 
 engaged in the same sort of Turkish commerce as 
 Canopus p^re put their hangers-on, mostly Greeks, in 
 the way of emulating the Oxford experiment at various 
 points of the capital. 
 
 Such were the beginnings of the social movement 
 that, continuing its course, improving and enlarging 
 its methods, did not rest till it resulted in the club. Of 
 coffee-houses as club progenitors it has already been 
 necessary to say something ; and inevitably we have 
 already once reached the Court quarter famous for 
 the coffee-houses chiefly pertinent to this narrative. 
 Only an anonymous reference has been made to the 
 particular institution that for several reasons has a 
 claim to be considered the first prolific parent of the 
 English club. White's is the one specimen of the class 
 to which it belongs, of a place at which, beneath almost 
 the same roof, and always bearing the same name, 
 whether as coffee-house or club, the same class of 
 persons has congregated during more than two hundred 
 years. How this has come to pass will be shown in 
 the next chapter. 
 
 ornaments so worried Lawrence that he resigned both his college position and 
 Divinity Professorship, retiring to the Chapelry of Colne, Parish of Somersham, 
 where he died in 1657. A Balliol undergraduate in 1615, Lawrence, from being 
 Fellow of All Souls, had returned as master to his old college in 1637. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 
 
 How Francesco Bianco came to England — Learnt his business — Set up on his own 
 account — And prospered — His removal from Pall Mall to St. James's lays, in 
 White's Chocolate House, the foundations of White's Club. — How he dies 
 and leaves the business to his widow — How she, understanding the spirit of 
 the age, extends it, innovates upon, and makes her house a centre of rank, 
 fashion, and smartness — The typical progress from coffee-house to club — 
 Celebrities of the place in successive stages of its being — How a shrewd 
 Swiss makes a fortune out of it, and defies the cleverest Englishman to do the 
 same in Switzerland — "University and school of vice" under one roof — 
 The long waiting list — The Young club and the Old — Their fusion results in 
 the White's of to-day — White's habitufe at all stages of its development — 
 Its king, CoUey Cibber— -Its leading exquisite, Horace Walpole — Diarist and 
 collector — Revolutionist and courtier — Gibber's opinion of the Rockinghamites 
 as club members — William Pitt balloted in like Chatham, his father — Makes 
 White's a Tory club— And vetoes " pilling " — White's hospitalities — White's 
 play — Chief figures of its gambling-room — Its special games — Its sobering 
 down — King Edward VII at White's. 
 
 The earliest of our English club makers, the mediaeval 
 Hoccleve, described his Court of Good Company as 
 " our club near the Temple." The word therefore 
 had been employed in the sense with which we arfe 
 concerned here long before the date generally given. 
 At the same time this use of it did not become universal 
 tiU after 1660. The club of the Restoration period, 
 like other things of that time, was influenced by the 
 reaction from the repressive severity of the preceding 
 Puritanism. The institution itself had already found 
 a broader and stronger basis than that of convivial 
 fellowship or even political discussion. During the 
 
 reign of Anne the permanent domicile had, as we 
 
 100 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 101 
 
 have seen, generally to be found. The club even in 
 its itinerant and tavern stage Was already m a fair 
 way of becoming a school of manners and a centre 
 of interests. These aspects of its existence were first 
 clearly seen and fixed about the year 1697, in the most 
 famous of St. James's Street coffee-houses. The par- 
 ticular member of the class was known also, and perhaps 
 even better, as a chocolate-house, because the founder 
 of the resort now mentioned shrewdly wished to identify, 
 his enterprise with the beverage introduced a little 
 later than coffee. 
 
 This man's rise and progress might truly be called 
 the romance of a club-founder's life. 
 
 Francisco Bianco was one of several Italian exiles 
 whom persecution and poverty had sent to live by 
 their wits in England. Like others of his class, he 
 had a smattering of as many sciences as the Grceculus 
 Esariens of the Latin satirist or the fasting Monsieur 
 introduced into Johnson's paraphrase, " London." He 
 knew a good deal of conjuring and sleight of hand, 
 something of music, especially fiddling, and a great deal 
 about cookery, ices, and coffee. Encouraged by Pasqua 
 Rosee's example in that line, after an apprenticeship 
 to the business, he put his little, handful of savings 
 into the refreshment business, with such good results 
 that some years later he looked about for a new opening 
 on a more stylish scale. In Bianco's day the " Cocoa 
 Tree " was stiU a Pall Mall tavern where the Junior 
 Carlton to-day stands. Somewhat to the west of this 
 Bianco found a restaurateur on the verge of bank- 
 ruptcy. He looked at the man's books, saw that the 
 turnover was by no means hopeless, and believed that 
 his connection and methods would make the concern 
 a success. The place therefore started on a new lease 
 of life, really on Bianco's capital, and happily for his 
 partner, as for himself, entirely under his own adroit 
 and enterprising control. For twenty miles round 
 Charing Cross there was no coffee, chocolate, or tea 
 
102 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 so good as that served at Bianco 's. Moreover, when 
 you got there, you were sure to be amused as well as 
 refreshed. Bianco 's clever displays of legerdemain were 
 alone worth what your meal might cost. 
 
 The usual payment at the door on going into a 
 coffee-house was, we have already seen, a penny. 
 Bianco's customers had become so numerous that he 
 decided to make them more select by raising the ad- 
 mission to sixpence. At the same time he gave new 
 prominence to the specialities of his cuisine and cellar — 
 ortolans h la LucuUus, macaroni prepared in the most 
 alluring shape, and the choicest Italian vintages from 
 the regal monte pulciano to the Florence wine, lately 
 brought into fashion by my Lord Bolingbroke. 
 
 His original partner had now disappeared. Bianco 
 resolved upon a higher flight ; for so favoured an artist 
 of fortune as himself nothing would do but St. James's 
 Street. Here, then, on the eastern side, nearly on the 
 modern site of Boodle's, he made his new quarters in 
 1693. Four years later he found at a bargain better 
 premises across the road. By this time Bianco had 
 adopted the English style of White, and White's Choco- 
 late House in St. James's Street, even when nominally 
 open, at a price, to aU comers, reserved from the 
 first some of its rooms for special patrons. It was 
 therefore in fact always a club. It thus constitutes, in 
 Baconian phrase, a crucial as well as the most interest- 
 ing instance Of club genesis during the successive 
 periods covered by its growth. Under all its proprietors, 
 from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, it has 
 preserved, without a break, the stamp of fashionable 
 exclusiveness first impressed on it by its original creator 
 and those of his patrons who personified the rank, 
 wealth, and refinement of their day. Elsewhere every 
 one smoked. At White's the only form of tobacco 
 allowed was that of the choicest snuff, the method of 
 taking which had been elaborated by the exquisites of 
 the place into a fine art. This was so throughout all 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 103 
 
 White's chocolate-house days. After its organization 
 into a club had been completed by the rules of 1736, 
 it encouraged newer institutions to restrict within the 
 narrowest limits practicable the opportunities of 
 smoking. Its long resistance to this or any other 
 innovation appreciably helped to rally and strengthen 
 throughout all clubland that prejudice against con- 
 cession to organic change which had to be reckoned 
 with in the interiors of Pall Mall and St. James's till 
 the Victorian era's close. Even the capricious or unjust 
 severity of iWhite's entrance ballot has had its good 
 side. However hard some of the cases, the oldest of 
 clubs has taken the initiative in making club member- 
 ship in its way a real distinction. The example has not 
 been unprofitable to institutions of a younger growth. 
 Not, indeed, that it was either possible or desirable 
 for the wholesale rejection of candidates, which during 
 the eighteenth century reached such a height at White's, 
 extensively to be reproduced elsewhere. Such a pro- 
 ceeding defeats its own object, as it actually did at 
 White's, by transferring elections from the body of 
 the club to a committee. This, however, does not 
 diminish the lasting service to the club system rendered 
 by White's in making the mere fact of adinission to a 
 particular society no purely conventional honour, but 
 a social credential of definite significance and practical 
 value. Always what in its earlier years was styled 
 modish, White's, upon proper occasions, has, as should 
 be the case with all clubs, shown itself not less compre- 
 hensive and cosmopolitan than exacting as regards the 
 antecedents and qualities of those whom it has made 
 free of its company. The drawing-room has often 
 surrendered itself to notoriety, achievement, or personal 
 endowments alone ; by force largely of the example 
 now dwelt on the club has performed a wholesome 
 sifting process in excluding aspirants who have not 
 shown themselves satisfactory in the searchlight of en- 
 trance scrutiny. Differing from every other club of 
 
104 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the same antiquity in having passed its whole life on 
 or close to the spot where it flourishes to-day, White's 
 possesses a national and historic character, if only 
 because its occupants, conversation, and pursuits 
 have ever made it the microcosm and mirror of 
 the contemporary world outside its walls. Its fore- 
 most figures, as one generation has followed another, 
 have been types of their time. Its politics have been 
 those of its period, its small talk was the polite world's 
 commentary, equally in 1739, on the reluctant declara- 
 tion, by Sir Robert Walpole, of war with Spain, and 
 a little less than a century later, on the cataclysm which 
 must overwhelm Court, Church, society, and country 
 if the Grey Reform BiU of 1832 were not thrown 
 out. 
 
 Here, then, is reason enough for continuing the 
 original founder's fortunes to his end, and for sum- 
 marising the subsequent vicissitudes, progress, and 
 celebrities of the place of his successors. .What has 
 been already said may serve to give a correct idea 
 of a typical club in its making. We are now to make 
 the acquaintance of the men whose co-operation estab- 
 lished its vogue. The exact point at which White 
 began was, according to the traditional account, not 
 far from the Pall Mall end of St. James's Street. The 
 latest and the chief authority, Mr. Algernon Bourke, 
 in his official, encyclopaedic, and admirably compiled 
 record, connects White's commencement with the east 
 side of the street, exactly opposite Brooks's. There 
 White did so well that within four years of his first 
 settlement in this thoroughfare he recrossed it to provide 
 his patrons with accommodation better suited to their 
 quality beneath a roof rising from where afterwards,, 
 in 1765, Arthur's was to be. White himself, therefore, 
 never saw the society he had created in the house 
 it now occupies. That experience was reserved for 
 his former manager and eventual successor, John 
 Arthur. This man, following in his employer's footsteps. 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 105 
 
 in the coffee-house he had called after his own name, 
 laid the foundations of Arthur's Club.' 
 
 ■While still in active business, during the year 171 1, 
 White himself died. His death, however, so far from 
 interrupting the operations connected with his name, 
 gave them a fresh impetus. His widow, Elizabeth 
 White, at least understood the club spirit of the age 
 as correctly and as practically as had been done by 
 her husband. Continuing and completing his enter- 
 prise, she also greatly enlarged its scope. The rage 
 for fancy balls and masquerades, as for the opera 
 and all amusements of that kind, had then seized 
 the upper classes. For such diversions places could 
 formerly be booked in the club quarter at Sam's and 
 Mitchell's. Determined to keep abreast of the time, 
 Mrs. White secured her customers' access to all the 
 gaieties of the town by simply walking across her room 
 to get their tickets at a bureau she had opened on 
 the same floor as that occupied by the rooms allotted 
 to her patrons. To perfect the social and cosmopoli- 
 tan attractions of her establishment, she added to the 
 English newspapers a regular supply of the most im- 
 portant journals from the Continent. Thus, at every 
 point. White's unique accommodation as a place of 
 public entertainment formed a fitting prelude to the 
 distinction it was uninterruptedly to enjoy^ as a club 
 during the 176 years that have passed since, in 1697, 
 the finishing touches were given to the representative 
 character testified continuously by its list of members 
 from that day to this. 
 
 Of all institutions, none have been more vitally and 
 essentially English than Parliament and the club. The 
 former grew directly, in 1265, out of the victory won 
 
 ' In the proprietorship of this club Arthur was succeeded by his son-in-law, 
 Robert Makreth, who from having been waiter and billiard-marker, rose to 
 knighthood, as Sir Robert Makreth of Cobham and East Horsley, his two Surrey 
 estates, and a leader in all county business. On his retirement from club enter- 
 prise, White's passed to the Raggetts,and thereafter through a long line, of owners 
 till it reached its present proprietor and analyst. 
 
106 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 over a British sovereign by a foreign-bred baron, a 
 French count's son. The latter, as understood 
 in modern times, we have just seen, originated 
 with the venture of an Italian refugee. In little 
 more than fifteen years after White's Chocolate House 
 beginnings, another shrewd and enterprising alien ' co- 
 operated with iWhite's representative to broaden the 
 basis and crown the superstructure of the club fortunes. 
 About 17 1 2 White's widow entered into a business 
 cormection with a new-comer from beyond' the seas,, 
 who understood the social tastes of the hour not less 
 than did her husband and herself. This was a Zurich 
 clergyman's son, John James Heidegger, who thus came 
 to form an integral pari; of White's establishment. 
 Pas (Far gent pas de Suisse runs the old proverb. 
 Heidegger's turn for money-making showed itself in 
 his boyhood. Through many straits, he worked his 
 way into an ambassadorial household, and reached 
 London in 1708. Opce there, he enlisted as a private 
 in the Guards. By the age of fifty he had got his 
 discharge and was making himself useful in a hundred 
 odd ways to the gentlemen of fashion and pleasure 
 about St. James's Palace. Mask balls had first ac- 
 quired an English vogue during the fourteenth century. 
 Frowned upon, and, so far as could be done, put down 
 by the authorities of Church and State, they were re- 
 vived with immense success under Charles II. Bishops 
 condemned them in their charges, the inferior clergy 
 denounced them from the 'pulpit, protests were made 
 against them in both Houses of Parliament'. By an 
 
 ■ Apropos of Heidegger, Mr. Algernon Bourke summarizes this astute im- 
 presario's social services in a quotation from Bramston's Man of Taste : — 
 
 "Thou, Heidegger, the English taste hast found, 
 And rul'st the mob of quality with sound. 
 If masquerades displease the town, 
 Call 'em ridottos and they still go down. 
 Go on, Prince Phiz, bamboozle all our nation, 
 And style thy masquerade a convocation." 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 107 
 
 Act of 1724 they were declared illegal. They only 
 flourished the more, till, in 1776, their conductors at 
 Ranelagh could sell their tickets for twenty-five guineas 
 each. I 
 
 Long before this they had become associated with 
 the opera, whose English birth was signalized by Henry 
 Purcell ; his " Dido and ^neas " (1680) seems, indeed, 
 to have marked the transformation of the old English 
 masque into the opera. The ex-private of Guards 
 had now made himself the fashion under the title of 
 " the Swiss Count." His entertainment-rooms became 
 the nursery of the opera in England, and his perfectly 
 legal operatic services were highly useful in connection 
 with the contraband masquerades. Concerned only 
 to save appearances, the Government asked no more 
 of Heidegger than that he should not flaunt the official 
 connivance he enjoyed. That of course exactly suited 
 the " count," by enabling him to charge his patrons 
 fancy sums. It also provided Mrs. Wihite with the 
 means of acquiring everything necessary to equip her 
 establishment as the well-appointed club it was soon 
 afterwards to become. As for the ingenious Swiss, 
 the assistant architect of Mrs. White's fortime, and 
 the creator, from English pockets, of his own, he sur- 
 vived to see the Chocolate House a flourishing club. 
 Dying in 1749 at the age of ninety, he attributed his 
 success to the native aptitude of his race. " I came," 
 he frankly said, " to England without a farthing. I 
 have found how to make £5,000 a year and spend it. 
 Now I defy the ablest Englishman to go to Switzer- 
 land, to realize that revenue, or to consumfe it there." 
 
 So far back as 1697, its exclusiveness, and the 
 allotment of private rooms to its most regular and 
 valuable frequenters, had in effect caused White's to 
 enter on a stage of its club existence. Its " master," 
 in other words its proprietor, was the man who had 
 acted as White's manager and who afterwards filled 
 that office for his widow till her death, in 1730. The 
 
108 €LUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 iWhite family and name had therefore ceased to have 
 anything to do with the place when, in 1736, Arthur's 
 patrons settled the rules and conditions under which 
 White's Chocolate House became White's Club. Mean- 
 while a serious accident caused the club's temporary 
 reversion to the tavern stage of its existence. In 
 1733 the burning of Arthur's earlier premises at the 
 corner of St. James's Place had driven him to Gaunt's 
 Coffee-house, near the Palace end of the street. Here, 
 then, on October 30, 1736, the club's original and 
 only code was compiled by White's legislators and 
 founders. These included both Tories, Whigs, and the 
 most notorious of political nondescripts. Among the 
 first were the Earls of Chesterfield and Cholmondeley. 
 The Whigs were headed by the Duke of Devonshire, 
 the Marquis of Rockingham, and General Charles 
 Churchill, the Blenheim conqueror's brother. Others 
 of the company, such as Bubb Dodington (Lord 
 Melcombe), Sir John Cope, and CoUey Cibber, cannot 
 be so easily labelled. Cibber, the literary star of the 
 original members, did not contribute to the literary 
 history of the place as had been done by Sir Richard 
 Steele in its earlier days. A daily visitor during the 
 coffee-house period, Steele questioned, in one of his 
 Tatlers, the wisdom of raising the entrance fee from id. 
 to 6d., but admits the change wiU be justified if only the 
 higher charge secures him and others immunity from 
 the common coffee-house curse of bores. Such are 
 the men who make one miss appointments by button- 
 holing all they meet to hear their long-winded accounts 
 of things which they, and their victims have seen in 
 print. " The extra fivepence will be well spent," he 
 adds, "if we adopt in St. James's the practice of 
 the City, where, at Lloyd's some one is paid to read 
 from a platform a digest of the last published gazettes, 
 and so men are saved from the amateur newsmonger 
 nuisance." Steel's alleged Celebration of White's Club 
 in the " Tender Husband " is imaginary ; for the play 
 
•/ 
 
 [ 
 
 
 ,^ii, 
 
 tiiW^aKt rtti3»iu» A 
 
 
 
 
 ni >• , '/Til/ /ll li i ■!» & « 
 
 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 109 
 
 was written in 1705, while its author died in 1729. 
 But the club's formation, in all its details, was not 
 effected till 1736. On the other hand, by whatever 
 name called, the place abounded from the first in 
 literary associations. Thus Pope knew it equally well, 
 both during its universally accessible and its exclusive 
 period, hitting off in pointed couplets, not only thei 
 humours of its inner life but its most familiar fibres, 
 especially that of the versatile and sententious writer 
 and talker, who became its oracle : — 
 
 "Or chaired at White's amid the doctors [dice] sit, 
 Teach oaths to gamesters and to nobles wit." 
 
 The most graphic and purely personal touch comes 
 elsewhere in The Dunciad, and mock heroically des- 
 cribes the enthronement of White's monarch.' 
 
 The severely select and ultra-fashionable White's by 
 the force of contrast only emphasized its essential 
 character when condescending to incorporate the strange 
 or serviceable representatives of another social world. 
 Colley Gibber, like Heidegger, came from a foreign 
 stock. He was the son of a Holstein sculptor, who 
 had executed sculptures first for several London build- 
 ings, afterwards for great country houses, like 
 Chatsworth and Belvoir. During the last of these 
 commissions he brought his son Colley to help him 
 with his implements. The lad pleased the owners 
 of the mansion ; a little later, at their instance, he 
 was sent to school at Grantham, and often spent his 
 holidays with his ducal patrons of the Manners family. 
 His schooling finished, the stage-struck youth would 
 be nothing but an actor. Eventually he got an en- 
 gagement at Drury Lane. He had no sooner established 
 himself in London than his Belvoir benefactors renewed 
 their observation of him, and jealous critics ascribed 
 
 ' Dunciad, Bk. I, lines 320-2 :— 
 
 " 'God save King Cibber !' mounts in ev'ry note. 
 Familiar White's • God save King Colley ! ' cries ; 
 'God save King Colley' Drury Lane replies." 
 
110 CLUB MAKBES AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 his success behind the footUghts to the good offices of 
 his great friends. That also perhaps more correctly 
 may explain his appearance from the first among the 
 fine gentlemen at .White's. 
 
 In those days some of the rooms opened on a pleasant 
 garden looking out upon St. James's Park. On a 
 seat here Gibber held almost daily an informal recep- 
 tion, delighting those who gathered about him with 
 his brisk talk on the drama — its patrons, position, 
 prospects in London as compared with other capitals^ 
 and, as will presently be seen, his remark's about politics 
 could be as much to the point as about the play. 
 iWhatever the subject, without any pretence at being 
 original, he had, as Lord Chesterfield at White's once 
 put it, the knack of hitting the right nail on the head, 
 while Horace Walpole himself complimented him on 
 his contributions to the cause of theatrical reform. 
 However much he liked the notice of his social betters, 
 he never toadied to them ; and the most critical of his 
 fellow-clubmen saw natural dignity not less than easy 
 grace in Gibber's reception of the magnates of the 
 place as they came up to his table, or, if he were sittingi 
 outside, approached his bower. WJiether in drawing- 
 room or club, no man of Gibber's calling or stamp ever 
 gained his social place without the possession of great 
 qualities and the accomplishment of seriously good 
 work. Lord March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry, 
 best known from his immortality as "old Q," the 
 most worthless of voluptuaries ; Sir John Bland, of 
 Kippax Park, Yorkshire, the greatest gamester, whose 
 high play lost him, first his fortune, then his life, 
 complained that, whenever they thought they had Golley 
 to themselves, their hold on him was sure to be disputed 
 by Lord Petersham, afterwards Earl of Harrington, 
 shuffling up with a peculiar gait that won him the 
 name of " Peter Shamble," and trying to decoy him 
 away. Whatever the ranJc or fame of those about 
 him, Golley's deliverances and sway were bowed to 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 111 
 
 by all. When men such as those just named had left 
 him, they were often followed by a gentleman of infinite 
 vivacity, as Horace .Walpole describes him, one of 
 iWhite's original members, young Wortley,' then just 
 contemplating elopement with Miss Ashe, and asking 
 the whereabouts of some quiet comer abroad. That 
 disposed of. Gibber was soon to be seen trying to shake 
 off Lord Granby, a three-bottled noble, who, with a 
 very flushed face, had just entered, and by a cakning 
 dose of Colley's counsel was trying to compose himself 
 before calling on Lady Strafford, the wealthiest widow 
 of the season, to whom he was then paying his aid- 
 dresses, and who afterwards was to become his wife. 
 The sovereign power of the pen had been confessed, as 
 the reader already knows, by the mixed, but in every 
 case distinguished, comjianies to which Ben Jonson 
 gave the law at the Apollo. At none^ however, of 
 these earlier resorts were there so many great ones 
 of the earth as encircled " King Colley " at White's. 
 Here he might be seen one moment amid the fashion- 
 able and clever knot whose chief ornament was Lord 
 Chesterfield, the next saluted affably, by the great 
 Lord Chatham, with soldiers and sailors such as Clive, 
 CornwaUis, CoUingwood^ and Rodney in the immediate 
 background. The last of these, in consequence of 
 losses at play, had' absented himself from White's for 
 a long time ; on his reappearance he was greeted first 
 and most cordially by Cibber, who presently com- 
 municated to George Selwyn, standing apart in the 
 corner, the true facts about Rodney's re-establishment : 
 ■" You speak of the hat having been sent roimd for him. 
 Nothing of the sort. The club did nothing — it was 
 entirely the French Marshal Biron who set him up." 
 To all these a marked contrast is presented by one 
 among the club's most patrician, but least showy, 
 members, Edmund Burke's patron, the Marquis of 
 Rockingham. Agriculturist, sportsman, honest as the 
 
 ' Walpole's Letters (Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 212). 
 
112 CLUB MAKERS AND CLXJB MEMBERS 
 
 day, and dull as the sky on what the old song calls 
 a hunting morning, Rockingham at (White's dramati- 
 cally personified the opposition of the old drab-coloured, 
 intensely aristocratic Whiggism to the S'ocial " smart- 
 ness " which, even in the eighteenth century, had be- 
 come the note of the club. One of Rockingham's 
 henchmen had spoken disrespectfully of Colley Gibber's 
 personal appearance — ^his red hair and not perfectly 
 symmetrical figure. " Let me tell you," anticipating, 
 it would seem, the later vogue of Tory or patrician 
 democracy, " King CoUey " took the opportunity of 
 saying, " you ^Whigs of this club are fish out of water. 
 Shelbume, who has never been of us, we might do 
 with, because, less tied by aristocratic connections, he 
 is nearer Pitt (Chatham), and therefore to the repre- 
 sentation of national interests ; but mark my words» 
 Shelbume and his personal following, especially 
 Dunning, are Chathamites to a man. To put any one 
 of them in double harness with a Cavendish or Holland 
 House nominee is to court a breakdown. The anti- 
 Rockinghamites, deriving themselves from Chatham, 
 already pass for the people's friends. If the hint 
 is not taken by those whom it concerns, they will 
 become the founders of a new popular Toryism bound 
 some day to hoist with your own petard the old un- 
 bending Whig lot. Already Burke, in all but name, 
 is Tory, and when it comes to the point, will break 
 away from the great families and the essentially aristo- 
 cratic Fox, whom they make their manager." 
 
 Not less different in appearance and manner than 
 in occupation and character from Rockingham is one 
 of his club fellows who often attaches himself to him — 
 a little, dandified gentleman whose walk across the 
 room is a military strut, and who makes up by the 
 authority and importance of his manner for his failure 
 in the field. For he is none other than Sir John Cope, 
 who, together with his colleague Gardiner, commanded 
 the army of between two and three thousand regulars. 
 
r \ I — "^ 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 
 
 A PAGE FROM WHITE'S BETTING BOOK. 
 (By permission oftlie Club.) 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 113 
 
 that was knocked out of time by the Young Pretender 
 with his handful of Highland volunteers at Prestonpans 
 XSeptember 21, 1745). 
 
 Neither a statesman nor a soldier can dispute with 
 CoUey Gibber's eighteenth- century pre-eminence at 
 White's Club. His true rival is a gentleman, quietly 
 but fashionably dressed, who totters, rather than 
 saunters, into the place, coming and going with some- 
 thing of the manner of a spirit from another world, 
 silently, abstractedly, yet on most occasions giving a 
 fixed nunlber of minutes by his watch to any members 
 he may honour with a word or a nod. Whomsoever 
 he may observe or ignore, he attracts all eyes towards 
 himself from the moment of his entrance to that of 
 his departure. He is indeed the greatest connoisseur, 
 virtuoso, collector, as well as the most enthralling and 
 epigrammatic diarist and correspondent of his own or 
 any other day. Horace Walpole, a. lord among authors 
 and author among lords, a fine gentleman, of trifles 
 and gossip all compact, thinks rebellion and regi- 
 cide, like full-bodied port, improved so much by 
 keeping as in a century or two to become virtues. 
 To the other curios of his Gothic cardboard house at 
 Strawberry Hill, he has just added, calling it " Major 
 Charta," Charles I's death-wiarrant. At White's, where 
 he divided supremacy with Cibber and Chesterfield, 
 he was the man of ton, sneering at the ill manners ofi 
 the Parliament in which he sat, concerned first to pick' 
 up all he could about its bets, its scandals, George 
 Selwyn's newest bon mot, Miss Chudleigh's latest esca- 
 pade, and perhaps to put himself on the right track for 
 the fellow to his Madame Maintenon's odd bracelet, or 
 the rapier with which ViUiers, Duke of Buckingham, had 
 run through the Earl of Shrewsbury, while the Countess 
 stood by. The then abode of White's was claimed by 
 him as a family mansion ; standing at the Piccadilly 
 end of St. James's Strefet, it had belonged to countless 
 of his personal intimates or connections — ^amongst them 
 
 8 
 
114 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 to the Countess of Northumberland, whose niece Wal- 
 pole's friend, Lady Suffolk, described as the last to 
 keep up the ceremonious state of the old! peerage. 
 When she went out to visit, a footman biareheadifid 
 walked on each side of her ooach, while a second 
 coach containing her women always attended her. Her 
 daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Somerset, never sat 
 down in her presence without leave to do so. This, so 
 ran Walpole's club talk, was a good school for old Duke 
 Charles (the " proud duke ") to imbibe his stately pride. 
 A born courtier, Walpole resented the magazine's 
 description of him as a learned gentleman. " Do I 
 not," he said to them at White's, " lie abed all the 
 morning, after having played all my life faro, and 
 now loo all night." When he lounged about the club, 
 however, it was to listen rather than to talk, sometimes, 
 indeed, to rehearse his diaries, but more often to coUect 
 or verify their most entertaining entries. These, in 
 1750, talk of the fashionable highwayman McLean, who 
 had frequented White's in its chocolate-house days, 
 giving, when in prison, a horrid idea of us all to 
 the Newgate people, and mention, thirty years later, 
 Rumbold,' the last waiter at White's, whose babe will 
 be rocked in a cradle of gems, and Sykes, the last 
 footman who will be made a baronet for being worth 
 some lacs of rupees. Neither, therefore, of these can 
 help Lord North, should he want another loan of twelve 
 millions to enrich Mr. Drummond, his clerks, and livery 
 servants. Let not his lordship therefore reckon on 
 the India Company. Walpole, too, it was who, with 
 an unusually beaming face, imparted to another White's 
 man, George Selwyn, not only the coat of arms he had 
 
 ' This was the episode which suggested to Disraeli one of the most amusing 
 apologues, the facts being as follows. A waiter at White's, Thomas Rumbold, 
 got an appointment in India and eventually became Governor of Madras. 
 Returning, with great wealth, to England, as Sir Thomas Rumbold, he obtained a 
 seat in Parliament, and, according to the conventional account, not, it would 
 seem, confirmed by Mr. Burke, became a member of the club of which he had 
 before been a servant. 
 
THE MODERN CLUB MODEL CREATED 115 
 
 devised for the club, but the less familiar crest — issuing 
 out of an earl's coronet (Lord Darlington) an arm 
 shaking a dice-box, all proper. 
 
 As to the historic bets at White's, they are to be 
 studied at length in Mr. Algernon Bourse's volume, 
 exclusively devoted to them. This aspect of the club 
 had other commentators among its members, especi- 
 ally Lord Lyttelton, who, " horrified at the devastations 
 of that destructive fury, the spirit of play, trembles 
 lest the rattling of a dice-box at iWhite's in my son's 
 time may shake down our finest oaks at Hagley." 
 
 By this time the club had become the resort, not only 
 of the Prince of M^ales but of the partisans who 
 encouraged the rivalry to his father, George II. 
 " Crown him 1 Crown him 1 " was the cry led' by these, 
 and which, taken up by the crowd, applauded the heir- 
 apparent 's part in the attempt at extinguishing the fire 
 which, in April, 1733, destroyed the building in which 
 Arthur was then carrying on the club. 
 
 Throughout the nineteenth century's second half, per- 
 haps for some time before, Mr. Wallis the wine 
 merchant might be seen on most afternoons receiving, 
 with patrician ease and picturesque dignity, various 
 titled patrons, amongst them generally Lord Winchilsea, 
 in or near his doorway at the corner of St. James's 
 Street, just opposite the palace. This was the exact 
 spot occupied by the above-mentioned Gaunt's Coffee- 
 house, ^?Vhite's temporary abode between the destruc- 
 tion of its earlier home at the comer of St. James's 
 Place and its settlement, in 1755, beneath its present 
 roof. The ornaments of its frontage were not completed 
 till nearly a century later, 1850. Here was soon 
 effected the fusion between the Young and Old Clubs, 
 the school and university of vice, as Gibbon has respec- 
 tively styled them. Thus the existing White's was bom 
 and has so far lived, always on the same spot. Here, 
 too, the original rules of 1736 formally constituting 
 the place a club were revised or confirmed and the 
 
118 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 him into thinking there had never been anything be- 
 tween the two before. His Majesty, however, took the 
 thing very Hghtly, merely remarking, " It isn't the sort 
 of present I should choose for my friends, and I only 
 hope that my enemies' thefts will always be of the same 
 kind." To the leviathans of White's playrooms some 
 other names must be added. Noel Broxholme, one of 
 the few professional men who belonged to the place,; 
 the most fashionable physician of the time, had de- 
 clared gambling in moderation to be beneficial rather 
 than otherwise to the system, but expostulated with 
 Sir John Bland for so abusing a thing not bad in itself, 
 as, in the manner already described, to exhaust both 
 his constitution and his fortune. If Bland's case proved 
 an exception, it was only because others as famous as 
 himself had the resources of a practically bottomless 
 purse. Such were Henry Pelham and his brother, the 
 Duke of Newcastle, both of them among White's most 
 inveterate and extensive gambler?. Each in his time,, 
 not only rivalled but surpassed Fox, first at faro, 
 then at basset. Of these games the former, on its 
 departure from London, took ship to New York, there 
 gradually to naturalize itself by finding high, if transient 
 acceptance. Meanwhile, largely owing to Talleyrand's 
 example and influence, whist domesticated itself at 
 ^Vhite's. Here, as elsewhere, it retained its place till 
 in its turn. whist made way for the universal bridge. 
 
 As for White's, it remained the haunt of statesmen, 
 and of sovereigns' sons to our day. It has been said 
 that his late Majesty 'King Edward VII, when Prince 
 of Wales, proposed joining the club, but never actually 
 became a member of it. As a fact, however, he was 
 not only elected but used it. The restrictions on 
 smoking had not then been relaxed. The Prince, 
 therefore, soon after joining it, retired^ and thereafter 
 used only his own Marlborough Club, to be mentioned 
 on a later page. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CLUBMEN AND CLUB DOmGS OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 
 
 White's associations with its younger brethren — George Selwyn's influence in that 
 direction — Conjectures, experiences, and traditions ready for his admirers — 
 His reforms at White's and efforts in new ventures — The Brilliants — Figures 
 around the whist table — General Scott's light dinners and heavy winnings — 
 The dinner at Brighton that gave birth to Watier's — Watier's military element 
 — " Dan " plays his pranks there — Beau Brummell lends Tom Sheridan a 
 helping hand — How a funeral terminated a good game of whist — Where 
 Georgian and modem clubs meet — Lord Alvanley at the " Alfred " — Sir 
 Lumley Skeffington — Bishops at play — ^The paradise of Mayfair — Women at 
 the club — A lady clubmaker — With the squires at Boodle's — Paul Pry — 
 ' ' Squire " Western and his Essex friends — The work of Boodle's last proprietor 
 — Samuel Johnson's club of clubs — Almack'sithe forerunner of Brooks's— 
 Where Brooks's rivalled White's — Domestic troubles there and how they 
 were settled. 
 
 Among its several members connecting iWliite's with 
 other clubs of the Regency era none was more 
 conspicuous than George Selywn. Bom in 17 19, 
 he went through Oxford at the College, Hertford, 
 afterwards graced by Charles Fox. His birth, breed- 
 ing, and territorial rank would have sufficed to make 
 him a leader in society. The income derived from 
 the fine Gloucestershire estate, Matson, had been in- 
 creased by the cash savings of those from whom he 
 had inherited it. His pleasant presence and the gay 
 sententiousness of his talk made him, as clubman^ 
 host, or guest, the social heir to Philip, Earl of 
 Chesterfield ; and his pungent, pointed sayings owed 
 some of their effect to the listless and drowsy tone 
 of their utterance. Sitting lazily in his chair with 
 eyes nearly closed, he seemed to be more than half 
 asleep, while incessantly on the intellectual alert, and 
 
 U9 
 
120 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 in reality the most wide-awake of the company. 
 Whatever the occasion or the hour, his repartees were 
 always as ready as his improvisations were original, 
 often audacious^ and invariably apt. Duringi 1757 he 
 was dining with the Mayor and corporation of 
 Gloucester when the news came of the failure of the 
 Rochefort expedition undertaken by Hawke and 
 Mordaunt to retrieve the Duke of Cumberland's 
 blunders and prevent the apprehended invasion of 
 England. 
 
 " You, sir," respectfully whispered the Mayor to the 
 ■guest of the evening, " who are behind the scenes, can 
 tell us how it all happened." " Nothing simpler," 
 replied the wag, who now heard of the matter for the 
 first time ; " the fact is, the scaling ladders prepared 
 for the occasion proved on trial to be too short." 
 " Bless my soul ! " said the unsuspecting! dignitary, 
 " how very unfortunate I " Rochefort, it is to be 
 remembered, is an inland town on the River Charente, 
 while the iU-starred expedition had never landed on 
 the French coast. 
 
 Selwyn's special distinction was, by his reminiscences 
 or anecdotes, to furnish the most vivid of club links 
 with an historic past. Even his London like his 
 country house, he used to boast at White's, contained 
 the materials for a museum. Beneath his roof in 
 Cleveland Row occurred Sir Robert Walpole's quarrel 
 with Lord Townshend, which ended in the Prime 
 Minister and the Secretary of State seizing each other 
 by the throat. " While writing ' The Beg'gar's Opera,' " 
 said Selwyn, " Gay called on me to inspect the spot, 
 and later in the same day wrote the scene between 
 Peachum and Lockit, the caricatures of the two 
 statesmen from my traditions, brightened by his 
 imagination." 
 
 So, too, with Selwyn's Gloucestershire residence. 
 During the Royalist siege of Gloucester in 1643, 
 Charles, Prince of Wales, and James, Duke of York, 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 121 
 
 both eventually kings, then boys, stayed at Matson, 
 Recalling that experience to Selwyn's grandfather, 
 James I described the second -floor room, occupied by 
 his brother and himself, adding : " We left the marks 
 of our confinement with our knives on the ledges 
 of all the windows." 
 
 Through Selwyn also, a perfect mine of Stuart gossip, 
 descended to modem times the circumstantial state- 
 ment that Charles I's executioner was neither, as 
 commonly reported. Pride, nor Joyce, nor the hangman, 
 Gregory Brandon, but the last man's son, Richard 
 Brandon. Directly it was over all memorials of the 
 event were sent to the Tower and burnt to ashes. 
 Richard Brandon himself received a hundred guineas 
 on condition of his leaving England and never 
 returning. 
 
 All this came to Selwyn from the Duchess of 
 Portsmouth, Louise de (^uerouaille, seen by him in his 
 boyhood : "At the age of eighty-three," he said, " she 
 retained so much of the beauty that made her Court 
 fortunes as to eclipse the charms of another octogen- 
 arian belle, Ninon de L'Enclos. Selwyn's grandfather, 
 a Stuart courtier as already said, had seen Harry. 
 Bennet, afterwards Lord Lauderdale, at the Chapel 
 Royal, arouse, with a great shake towards the close 
 of the sermon, Charles II, who always slept soundly 
 during Divine worship, and who, regaining conscious- 
 ness with a start, once asked aloud, " Where is 
 NeU? " " For," said Selwyn, " he liked the Drury 
 Lane orange girl better than all the duchesses of his 
 harem." 
 
 Selwyn's father, in the same Chapel Royal, had 
 witnessed Court incidents of the same kind at a later 
 day. An important member of Sir Robert Walpole's 
 Government, Selwyn pere had noted the weariness of 
 George I at a service in a language he did not under- 
 stand, and seen the monarch relieving himself by 
 chatting in French or German with his suite. Younger, 
 
122 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Dean of Salisbury, when George II came, kept that 
 King awake by preaching in German, which he had 
 mastered for the purpose ; standing beside the royal 
 chair at chapel, he not only made his Majesty listen 
 but pleased him so well as to be rewarded with the 
 office of Clerk of the Closet. 
 
 Such are a few comparatively little known specimens 
 of the minute and long-standing Court intimacy which, 
 added to his turn for epigram, made Selwyn the most 
 entertaining conversationist in an age leisurely enough 
 not to resent narratives of this kind. As a clubman 
 Selwyn was, not merely a member but a maker. Him- 
 self a most gigantic club-gambler, he organized the 
 faro -room at the ducal Court of Lorraine, presided 
 over by Stanislaus Leszczyjiski after his expulsion 
 by Peter the Great from the Polish throne. Selwyn 
 returned to London the most resourceful and tolerant 
 citizen of the world that St. Jones's Street had ever 
 seen. " Our clubs," he said, " are so deadly dull 
 because they are so idiotically exclusive." By 1780 
 he could congratulate himself on having made White's 
 for the time an open borough. "A pretty group of 
 Papists, headed by Lord Petre, one Jew, and several 
 Scotsmen, all owe their membership of the club to 
 me. Last night we had a supper party of them, 
 followed by a set at faro, in which poor Parsons held 
 the ' bank,' the punters being Lord Carmarthen, Lord 
 Denbigh, and Lord Essex. The last of these, not 
 having a penny of his own, receives an allowance from 
 his son, which is more than he deserves." Before 
 this particular gathering broke up it was reinforced 
 by the Duke of Dorset and Lord Loughborough, fresh 
 from a tavern club, the Brilliants. This existed chiefly, 
 to judge from Gillray's caricatures, for bestial drunken- 
 ness, tempered by extravagantly high play. Afterwards 
 reorganized or revived as the Eccentrics, it grew 
 greatly in numbers and distinction, including at different 
 times Fox, Sheridaji, Petersham, Melbourne, and 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 123 
 
 Brougliam as well as, before its close, Theodore Hook, 
 who took from it many characters and scenes for his 
 novels. 
 
 White's, however, to its warier, who were generally 
 its most highly titled, members was strictly a place 
 of business as well as of pleasure. The early nine- 
 teenth-century men-about-town numbered no more cool 
 and long-headed an old soldier than General Scott, 
 one of Selwyn's recruits for White's, the Duke of 
 Portland's and George Canning's father-in-law. His 
 daily dinner at White's was made off a boiled chicken 
 with toast and water. Thus lightly refreshed, he 
 brought, not only a memory of extraordinary reten- 
 tiveness and an expert's unfailing judgment but an 
 untaxed digestion to the game which Talleyrand had 
 established at the club. Before he played his last card 
 his winning's at whist had reached £200,000. Whist 
 did not become general at White's till after the middle 
 of the eighteejith century, and its club celebrities are 
 reserved for a later page. It is not, however, out 
 of place here to mention that whist had its first club 
 in Graham's, St. James's Street. At Graham's took 
 place the incident out of which grew the action in 1794 
 brought by Lord de Ros to clear himself of a charge 
 of cheating at the game. It was some of White's whist- 
 players also who, in 1807, were concerned in promoting 
 what passed for the very smartest club of the day. 
 
 The future George IV had been having a select 
 dinner-party in his Brighton Pavilion. " Wiiat a 
 contrast to our club dinners, with their eternal roasted 
 or boiled joints and poultry ! " murmured the epicurean 
 Croesus Sir Thomas Stepney to Sir Philip Francis, of 
 Junius fame, as one fresh delicacy succeeded another 
 at the table. The host overheard the remark, said 
 nothing, but rang the bell and sent for the cook. 
 " Watier," said his Royal Highness, addressing the 
 man, "could you undertake to manage a dinner 
 club? " The answer given may be judged from the 
 
124 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 fact that within a few weeks there was taken in Bolton 
 Street a house with the necessar,y accommodation, as 
 above so below stairs. Intellectual as well as social 
 distinction was given to the club's beginnings by- 
 entrance applications from Lord Byron, who pronounced 
 it the most superb institution of the kind ever known ; 
 from his former Harrow friend, whose Vers de Societe 
 were now popular, William Robert Spencer, the third 
 Duke of Marlborough's grandson ; and from Byron's 
 future biographer, Thomas Moore. Labourie, recom- 
 mended as permanent chef by Watier, prepared the 
 opening dinner, at which the chair was taken by the 
 Regent, with his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards 
 William IV, for vice-president. His ultra -fashionable 
 supporters included the finest flower of Brooks's as 
 well as White's. The banquet over, all adjourned 
 for macao, which was thus installed as one of Watier's 
 pet pastimes. Among other habitues of the place 
 were the Duke of York's aides-de-camp, the dandy 
 diplomatist. Colonel, best known as Kangaroo, Cooke, 
 brother of Sir George Cooke, as of the beautiful Lady 
 Cardigan, whose son a generation or two later was 
 for ever to connect his name with the Light Cavalry 
 Balaclava charge. The Army contributed two others 
 to this company : Colonel Armstrong, the bravest and 
 gentlest of Coldstream officers, uniquely successful as 
 a military disciplinarian, so gracious, yet withal so 
 resolute, that he had only to hint his wishes rather 
 thah give his orders to ensure their immediate execution 
 and to make his regiment a model for the whole service. 
 The other officer's accomplishments were athletic, even 
 acrobatic, rather than social. Colonel Daniel 
 Mackihnon, known throughout the Army as ''Dan," 
 admired everywhere for his perfectly symmetrical and 
 powerful figure, was unrivalled alike by soldiers and 
 civilians in every sort of physical exercise requiring 
 muscular strength or skilful and delicate agility. He 
 would amuse his friends, now by jumping over the 
 
CLUBMEN OP THE GEORGIAN ERA 125 
 
 dining-table, now by creeping over or under less solid 
 pieces of furniture like a cat. The next minute " Dan " 
 had disappeared from view, presently to be seen scaling; 
 the wall till he reached the ceilings — unless, perhaps, 
 he had discovered some trap -door outside leadiiig to 
 the club roof. In that case he had very likely perched 
 himself on the housetop. These were the feats which 
 caused Grimaldi, the greatest of pantomime clowns, to 
 say : " If the Colonel would don motley, and show 
 himself at Saddler's Wells, my occupation would be 
 gone." 
 
 Mackinnon also was equally, pre-eminent among 
 practical jokers for audacity and humour. His recital 
 at Watier's of one of these freaks gave Byron the 
 idea of the Harem scene in "Don Juan." During the 
 Peninsular War the Duke of Wellington, curious to 
 see the inner life of these places, was allowed by the 
 presiding abbess to make a morning call at a convent 
 near Lisbon. Mackinnon, then on the Duke's staff, 
 determined to be beforehand and see what took place. 
 When the great captain arrived his eagle eye detected 
 the delicately cut features and smooth-shaven face of 
 " Don " among the nims. This joke nearly brought its 
 perpetrator to a court-martial, but was eventually 
 forgiven. 
 
 " See," was remarked a few nights later by one of 
 these prodig'ious dandies, " what comes of admitting 
 these City swells." This was said in Watier's macao- 
 room, the occasion being a quarrel of Lady Heytes- 
 bury's brother. Jack Bouverie, with Raikes, the diarist, 
 son of a Bank of England governor, who had laughed 
 at Bouverie's unconcealed annoyance at a series of 
 heavy play losses. The next minute Bouverie retaliated 
 by making too good a shot at Raikes 's head and by a 
 few curses at Raikes's stale jokes. But there the matter 
 ended. The leading figure of the club frequently 
 appears both in Byron's correspondence and verses. 
 This was Beau Brummell, whose Christian name, 
 
126 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 George, is given by Byron as William. The Beau's 
 father, himself a valet's son, had, as Lord North's 
 private secretary, risen to wealth and position. He 
 sent his son to his chief's old school, Eton. There the 
 well-looking, attractive, and popular lad, in his studies 
 neither any idler nor a dullard, but quite unrivalled for 
 his graceful person, his bright manner, as well as his 
 prowess both in the playing-fields and on the river, 
 became one of the " bucks " of the place. Leav- 
 ing school and thinking of the Army, he was 
 brought out in London by the beautiful Duchess of 
 Devonshire at one of her great balls. He soon took 
 unchallenged place as an Admirable Crichton. Great 
 ladies competed with each other in securing; him for 
 their drums. Whether at the dinner-table or in the 
 dining-room, his was the form which every eye first 
 singled out. The Prince of Wales, like the rest, 
 found him irresistible, and set the seal on his royal 
 regard by giving him a commission in his own regiment, 
 the loth Hussars. Shortly afterwards the newly made 
 officer broke his fine Roman nos,e through a fall from 
 his horse at a review on the Brighton Downs. The 
 only effect of the accident was to throw fresh lustre 
 upon Brummell by bringing slight varieties of nasal 
 fracture into fashion. On an afternoon he monopolized 
 the gaze of aU passers-by in the street as he sat in the 
 bay window of White's, attended by the Dukes of 
 Argyle, Dorset, and Rutland, the only members of his 
 set whom he publicly honoured with his company. 
 Brummell, whose conferences with his tailor, Weston, 
 invented the frock-coat, had something of a heart as 
 well as an Apollo -like perfection of fig;ure. He 
 quarrelled with his royal patron rather than counten- 
 ance his desertion of Mrs. Fitzherbert, but was restored 
 to favour ' by the superb play at whist which, while 
 
 The Regent had another grudge against Brummell besides that arising out of 
 the Fitzherbert affair, namely for some act of presumption at a ball given by Lady 
 Cholmondeley. Still, the Beau's restoration to favour might have been permanent 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 127 
 
 the Regent looked on, made him at a single sitting 
 the winner of £20,000 from Harvey Drummond, the 
 banker. Watier's, however, witnessed Brimimell's chief 
 exploits at play. An adept in every game, whetheri 
 of chance or skill, the Beau seemed to have luck at his 
 command. 
 
 Finding one night Tom Sheridaii » among Watier's 
 macao -players, he took up the £10 Sheridan was about 
 to stake, added £200 of his own, and proceeded to 
 play for both. In less than ten minutes the Beau 
 came back with £1,500. Handing half of it to Sheridan, 
 he said : " There, Tom, give your wife and brats a 
 supper and never play again." 
 
 While the play at .Watier's was of the most wildly 
 speculative kind. White's was increasingly sobering 
 down to whist. Even over that whole fortunes often 
 changed hands. In the same year ag Brummell proved 
 Sheridan's good genius. Lord Dudley, Hervey Combe,^ 
 the brewer, and Tippoo Smith, the nabob, sat down 
 to the whist-table on a Monday afternoon, played on 
 without leaving the table till the following Wednesday, 
 and only then left off because Combe had to attend 
 his father's fimeral, taking with him £30,000 he had 
 won and giving Raggett, the then owner, a hundred 
 or two for personally serving' the relays of broiled 
 bones and mulled claret with which the gamblers 
 refreshed themselves. 
 
 but that his display of some after-dinner excitement at Carlton House caused the 
 Regent to say to his brother, "I think we had better order Mr. Brummell's 
 carriage before he gets drunk." At this dinner there was present also one of the 
 famous Waterloo officers, Sir Arthur Upton. He told the second Duke of 
 Wellington, from whom the present writer had these details, that this and not the 
 popular " Wales, ring the bell " remark caused Brummell's final dropping by the 
 Regent. 
 
 ■ Only son of R. B. Sheridan and father of the Duchess of Somerset, the Queen 
 of Beauty at the Eglinton tournament. 
 
 ' Combe, like Brummell, also belonged to Brooks's. Here, while Lord 
 Mayor of London, he lost one night at hazard to Brummell twenty-five guineas. 
 " Quite right, Mashtub," said the Beau, pocketing the money. " In fiiture I shajl 
 never drink any porter but yours." " I only wish," rejoined the brewer, "that 
 every blackguard in London would follow your example. ' ' 
 
128 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Watier's junior by just a year, the Alfred (1808), 
 in its personal composition and its comparatively 
 sedate spirit, foreshadowed more closely than any other 
 institution of the Regency period the ordinary club 
 product of the Victorian era. The Alfred, too, has 
 another claim to be a link between two widely different 
 epochs, because in 1855 it merged itself in the stiU 
 existing Oriental. The idea of the Alfred first suggested 
 itself to a little group of fashionable litterateurs in 
 John Murray's Albemarle Street parlour. From the 
 windows of that famous room was descried on the 
 other side of the way a house to let. "It would be," 
 the projectors of the club exclaimed with one voice, 
 " just the thing for us." So, too, thought and said a 
 little later a legal gentleman, whose law-books were 
 subsequently described by George Canning as pleasant 
 as novels, and his novels as dull as law-books. This 
 was Plumer Ward, a barrister of the Temple, then 
 in a fair way of rising to a judgeship, and eventually 
 to be known from his De Vere and Tremc4ne as the 
 founder of the nineteenth-century political novel. Well 
 connected by birth, he had Used all the opportunities 
 of Oxford and London to make influential acquaint- 
 ances. He had thus succeeded in attaching himself to 
 Canning when the rising Tory star, and had in- 
 gratiated himself with the leaders of the Evangelical 
 party then in the ascendant including several bishops. 
 Hence the episcopal element afterwards so conspicuous 
 in the Alfred and the patronage of the club by George 
 Canning himself. With Canning there came George 
 Ellis, of the anti-Jacobin ; Hookham Frere, Canning's 
 friend and chief ; William Gifford, satirist, translator, 
 editor ; while in their train followed a clergyman, 
 William Beloe, whose Sexagenarian celebrates the place 
 by the name of the Symposium and those who belonged 
 to it as the Symposiasts. 
 
 Heavier guns were not wanting in the illustrious 
 persons of Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Robert Peel, and 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 129 
 
 the statesman who had served as Foreign Secretary 
 in the Goderich, the Canning', and the Wellington 
 administrations. This was the clever, eccentric Lord 
 Dudley, ever talking to himself, as he muttered 
 clinking the sovereigns in his purse, but, in spite of 
 his odd ways, uniting some of the best brains of his 
 day with an acuteness and readiness of caustic repartee 
 that meant a bad five minutes for thos'e who might 
 presume upon his peculiarities. With him might often 
 be seen a plimip little man, with bright, beady, deep-set 
 eyes, to whose droUery, wit, and fashionable vogue the 
 Alfred owed much of the popularity that, before it 
 was ten years old, had in a single twelvemonth attracted 
 to it 354 candidates for six vacancies. This was 
 Lord Alvanley, whose good things are recorded in 
 every jest-book, and whose combination of cynical fun 
 with shrewd common sense and faculty of cosmopolitan 
 anecdote gave him a social position not imlike that 
 afterwards filled by Henry L'abouchtere, in whose 
 features might also be traced some resemblance to 
 Alvanley 's. 
 
 Plumer Ward, or Lord Francis Egerton, also brought 
 into the place Samuel Warren, the novelist of Ten 
 Thousand a Year and the most inveterate tuft-hunter 
 who ever occupied Temple chambers. One of the 
 countless Warren anecdotes then circulating through 
 the club was this : " I suppose," said a feUow -Templar, 
 looking in upon the novelist, " I shall see you at the 
 Lord Chancellor's dinner to-night?" "Most unfor- 
 tunate," came the reply. " Mrs. Warren has just 
 presented me with a son and heir and I do not like 
 to leave her. I was about to write an apology to 
 his lordship." " No need of that," said the other. " I 
 know the Chancellor so well that I can easily make 
 your excuses to him." Warren expressed thanks, and 
 the visitor withdrew. The latter had not reached the 
 end of the passage when the novelist ran up to him 
 with the words : "By the by, don't trouble to say 
 
 9 
 
130 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 anything to his lordship to-night, for to tell you the 
 truth, I have never been asked." " Make yourself 
 quite easy, dear fellow, for as a fact, neither have 1." 
 Generally speaking, it was not the Alfredian laymen 
 who shed the greatest distinction on the club. Those, 
 however, numbered amongst them a member forming, 
 after Alvanley, the club's most notorious figure. It 
 may be the associations of Brummellite foppery with 
 which Byron surrounded it in "English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers " — 
 
 "And sure great Skeffington must claim our praise, 
 For skirtless coats, and skeletons of plays " — 
 
 but the very name Sir Lumley Skeffington raises in 
 most minds an elderly and much made-up dandy. 
 Such, indeed, he was — a padded, bewigged little man, 
 who painted his face, wore stays, and reminded some 
 of a French toy dressed like Robespierre, but others: 
 of a walking perfumer's shop in the adjacent Bond 
 Street, by reason of the combination of sweet scents 
 that heralded his approach. 
 
 The clerical bard of the Alfred, the already mentioned 
 Beloe, might well claim that its most solid and lasting 
 honour came to it from celebrities of his own cloth. 
 The bishops, whose presence always reminded Alvanley 
 of his Catechism, included Watson of Llandaff, Thirlwall 
 of St. David's, and their more, militant spiritual brother, 
 Henry of Exeter (Bishop Philpotts). Not that these, 
 or any one else, talked theology and paraded Church- 
 manship at the club. In those days the Athenaeum and 
 the University Clubs had still to become famous. The 
 Alfred supplied the Episcopal bench with its only social 
 lounge, and at the Alfred it was the card-room that 
 the prelates chiefly affected. Here might be seen, not 
 only the western diocesan already mentioned but 
 Milman, Dean of St. Paul's, Beadon, of Bath and Wells, 
 who loved the game as much as then did most of his 
 clerical subjects and his bishopess, Mrs. Beadon, whom 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 131 
 
 Mr. Pickwick might have found among the keenly 
 gambling dowagers at the Bath Assembly Rooms, and 
 who recommended the game to her parochial clergy,i 
 as a restorative tonic for dyspepsia or weak nerves. 
 Her lord, it was said, on returning from his imetropolitan 
 visits, to his Somerset palace, was apt to be called 
 sharply to account if he failed to bring back the latest 
 whist improvements from the Alfred card-room. 
 
 Of the Alfred's mitred members, several, though by 
 this time drafted into the Athenaeum, survived the in- 
 corporation (1855) of their old club into the Oriental. 
 Of that institution, supposing his life to have been 
 spared, Thackeray's Joe Sedley would certainly have 
 been an original member. Among the items in its 
 daily menu, linking its agreeable present with its historic 
 past, are curries, turtle soup and other dishes, still 
 prepared according to the recipe traditionally 
 bequeathed by a certain Pottanco, chef to a line of 
 Indian Governors, before, in 1824, taking in hand the 
 management of the institution then just established 
 beneath its original roof, 16, Lower Grosvenor Street. 
 Various members of the great Anglo-Indian family of 
 Plowden, also, by their frequent presence bridged 
 over the gulf separating the Oriental, in its present 
 Hanover Square home, from the abode of its infancy. 
 During the twentieth century's second decade, to its 
 manifold attractions as a comprehensive place of social 
 reimion, the club adds the special recommendation of 
 being a Mayfair paradise for inhabitants of the Gros- 
 venor Square district in the dead season. The family 
 is out of town, the servants are on board wages, but 
 the head of the house is obliged to postpone his de- 
 parture, though the only room he finds habitable is 
 his library. Happily for him he belongs to the Oriental. 
 There, within ten minutes' walk of his books and his 
 domestic cigar-box, he finds all he needs in the way 
 of material consolation for his desolate dining-room 
 and closed kitchen. At this (point, however, our narra- 
 
132 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 tive requires a temporary return to certain eigh.teent,li- 
 century doings. 
 
 Somewhere about 1770 ladies of quality were mudi 
 exercised about a new assembly or meeting set up 
 at Boodle's. It consisted of ladies as well as gentle- 
 men, and the idea originated with Miss Lloyd, the 
 Countess of Pembroke's companion. This coterie ,soon 
 became so exclusive that in the first few weeks the 
 Duchess of Bedford and Lord March were blackballed. 
 Its members, without exception, persons of as much 
 leisure as rank, met in the morning for talk and to 
 hear the news, 'dined in the afternoon, found themselves 
 together again at night, sat down to supper, which, 
 like dinner, was always ready as near eleven as might 
 be, and played loo into the small hours. 
 
 The institution now described was an epicene offshoot 
 of a club which, as usual, had grown out of a coffee- 
 house. Its founder, William Boodle, a native of Chip- 
 penham, had begun with various employments in the 
 Lansdowne family at Bowood. When trying his luck 
 in London he obtained a series of odd jobs from 
 p.obert Makreth, as yet only a waiter at White's, 
 but having a practical knowledge of the business and 
 locality highly useful to other beginners in his line. 
 On the other hand", the Wiltshire ,man from his Bowood 
 associations had the chance of (doing Makreth some 
 good turns. Hence the Wiltshire squirearchical element, 
 a conspicuous tradition of Arthur's Club.' From the 
 
 '" . . . Or at Arthur's, 
 Where over the port of the innermost bin 
 The circle of diners is laughing with Phinn, 
 When Brookfield has hit on his happiest vein, 
 And Harcourt is capping the jokes of Delane." 
 
 So sings Sir George Trevelyan, availing himself of a poet's licence as regards 
 name and place, for of Arthur's none of those mentioned were members. Another, 
 but incorrect, version of these lines included Fane. Though Julian Fane was not 
 therefore of Arthur's, the club has always been a favourite with the Fane family. 
 The Indian soldier who raised Fane's Horse, now the 19th Bengal Lancers, was 
 not a member, but there are still at the place those who remember the fine figure 
 and pleasant face of Col. Henry Fane of the 4th Dragoons, a regular habitue of 
 the place up to his death, between ten and fifteen years ago. 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 133 
 
 same county there naturally came also some of Boodle's 
 earliest and most famous patrons. These were rein- 
 forced by a noticeable Hampshire contingent, including 
 the Hampshire squire's son and Hampshire militia 
 officer, afterwards the decadent Roman Empire's his- 
 torian, Edward Gibbon. More conspicuous than that 
 most insatiable of clubmen, as well as regular in his 
 attendance, was another descendant of a stock belonging 
 to the same county, whose ancestor, a Romsey clothier 
 named Petty, giave wealth to a family indebted for 
 name and high lineage to the Fitzmaurices.' The fact 
 of the club's being thus favoured by Lord Shelburne, 
 afterwards Marquess of Lansdowne, sufficed to empha- 
 size its difference from White's, where much has been 
 already seen of Shelburne's rival, Rockingham. Other 
 public men who frequented it, Wilberforce and the 
 Duke of Norfolk, will be met again at Brooks's. The 
 Duke's heavy and indiscriminating appetite had, it was 
 said, a bad effect on the cuisine. Shelburne and 
 Gibbon, both epicures, exercised an appreciably refining 
 influence. Eventually, therefore. Boodle's made good 
 a claim to its original title, the Savoir Vivre Club. The 
 
 ' The stages of enrichment and ennoblement here referred to are as follows. 
 Antony Petty the draper, with whom is our present concern, had a son William, 
 whose great abilities were improved by an Oxford course and a cosmopolitan 
 training. Establishing himself in medical practice at Oxford about 1650, he was 
 soon appointed Physician-General to the Irish army, Ireland itself then opening 
 the same field to adventurous talent as was done by India a century later. Under 
 Cromwell he acquired estates in Kerry worth jf 6,cxx3 a year, kept them at the 
 Restoration, and bequeathed them to his posterity. Sir Wm. Petty, as he had 
 now become, was the father of two children, a son Charles and a daughter Anne. 
 In 1687 he died. His widow became Baroness Shelburne, and his son at the 
 same time Lord Shelburne. This man, dying childless in 1696, was followed in 
 the title by his brother Henry, promoted twenty-three years later to an Earl. 
 Meanwhile the first Lord Shelburne's sister, Anne, had married Thomas Fitz- 
 maurice, Earl of Kerry. The son of this couple, John, inherited the Petty wealth 
 and name. His son, the member and reformer of Boodle's Club, afterwards the first 
 Marquis of Lansdowne, notwithstanding his great position and powers, remained 
 a Prime Minister for only eight months. Why ? Not from any inferiority of 
 intellect or address to Pitt and Fox, but simply because he laboured under the 
 disqualification of a peerage, and since Queen Anne's time the House of Commons 
 had become the chamber for the head of the Government. 
 
134 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 many-acred gentlemen of the southern and border 
 counties were being educated by such masters of the 
 art of dining to fastidiousness. Boodle's carte du jour, 
 from being substantial, became choice. Other influ- 
 ences were impelling the club management in the same 
 direction ; conspicuous among these forces was the 
 most bustling and notable personality at Boodle's, 
 Michael Angelo Taylor. With a face to which port 
 wine had given a fine purple dye, forming a picturesque 
 contrast to his silver-white hair, Taylor emphasized 
 the distinctions he owed to nature by studied peculiarity 
 of costume. His coat of bright blue with buttons as 
 large as saucers, his leather breeches, his white waist- 
 coat, his perfectly snowy, voluminous, and unstarched 
 neckcloth, had attracted notice in the House of 
 Commons before they secured him celebrity at Boodle's 
 Club. Combined with his irrepressible inquisitiveness, 
 these points in his appearance, together with his broad- 
 briinmed beaver hat, might have made him the original 
 of the leading character in Poole's comedy " Paul Pry." 
 He did himself, however, an injustice ; for, notwithstand- 
 ing the silly trick of asking tiresomely small questions 
 about news, he had enough of sound, practical sense, 
 general information, and aptitude for business to make 
 him, during the years he sat in Parliament, a most useful 
 Member of the House, especially in committees. Such 
 were the qualities that made him a club authority, and 
 not merely a club quidnunc, as well as an organizing 
 entertainer of the Whig rank and file at his house in 
 that part of ,Whitehall formerly called Privy Gardens. 
 No such fish, turbots and lobsters especially, as graced 
 Taylor's board were ever seen, it was said, outside 
 the Mansion House on Lord Mayor's Day. Michael 
 Angelo Taylor and with him Boodle's Club reached 
 the height of their political importance during the 
 Perceval administration, 1809-12. "The gentleman 
 at the end of the Mall " was the phrase coined by 
 Taylor in the morning-room, and at once adopted by 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 135 
 
 the Whig party to describe George III, the opposition 
 to whom and to his Ministers found its headquarters 
 for the time at the club. In 1810 the attack on 
 Perceval was being led by Lord Milton, afterwards the 
 fifth Earl Fitzwilliam, and Samuel Whitbread. Between 
 Brooks's over the way, where he consulted with these, 
 and Boodle's, Taylor moved to and fro in a flutter of 
 agitated self -consequence. iWhitbread had drafted at 
 Brooks's the amendment to the Address at the opening 
 of the 1 8 1 o session ; but its purport first obtained 
 club circulation at Boodle's from Taylor's expatiation 
 on the opportunity it would give the Whig chiefs for 
 showing the ruinous price paid by the nation for the 
 privilege of having the Marquis of Wellesley for its 
 Foreign Minister. 
 
 During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 
 territorial exclusiveness and aristocratic prejudice en- 
 trenched and fortified themselves as strongly at Brooks's 
 and Boodle's as they had ever done at White's. It 
 was a Boodle's champion, Charles Callis Western, 
 eventually ennobled, but none the less known as 
 " Squire Western," who devoutly thanked his Maker 
 
 that he had always voted against " that d ^d intellect," 
 
 and always would. This was in reference to George 
 Canning, whom Western, a Whig Protectionist, spoke 
 of as a criminal lunatic. Apart from politics. Western 
 made himself a Boodle's worthy by recruiting the club 
 from eastern county magnates. These gave it as strong 
 {an East Anglian connection as that which, in the 
 manner already described, it had of the southern 
 counties. Thanks to Western, Essex now reinforced 
 Boodle's by a Nugent from Gosfield, a Lockwood 
 from Bishop's Hall, andl a Howard de Walden from 
 Audley End. These were the habitues whose table 
 taste contributed to revive the popularity of marrow- 
 bones as a club dish. Rivalling White's in continuity of 
 existence on the spot that witnessed its birth. Boodle's 
 also resembles it in antiquity of standing as a pro- 
 
136 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 prietary club . This it only ceased to be after the death, 
 in 1897, of its owner of philanthropic memory, W. 
 Gaynor, who generously carried on the eighteenth-cen- 
 tury practice of the shrewd business man to whom 
 Brooks's owes its name of financing clubmen short 
 of ready money. Boodle's during; the Gaynor 
 dispensation triumphantly weathered many little 
 breezes, as well as one great tempest. The manager's 
 orders against dogs in the hall, against strangers in 
 the dining-room, the spread of tobacco fumes, were 
 the periodical cause of much grumbling and some 
 withdrawals. But the really serious trouble arose from 
 a custom connected with the time-honoured house - 
 dinner. On those occasions the wine bill, according to 
 immemorial precedent, was equally divided among all 
 diners, irrespective of the quality or the quantity of the 
 vintage that each might have ordered. That was very 
 well for the pre-teetotal period. Then set in the general 
 tendency for the club to become a co-operative tem- 
 perance hotel. The many who idrank little or nothing 
 resented an involuntary contribution to those who drank 
 much or anything. Gaynor sided with the malcontents 
 and promised a revision of the long-standing rules. 
 He had not, however, reckoned with his " managers." 
 Chief among these was the eighth Duke of Beaufort, 
 who, with others of the committee, objected to any 
 concession. Gaynor had passed his word. The Duke 
 therefore took his name off the books. Several of his 
 partisans followed, declaring that Boodle's itself was 
 doomed. As a fact, a new era of its prosperity was 
 about to open, and the social stronghold of English 
 squires was never in a better way than at this moment. 
 Of the great eighteenth-century clubs still existing. 
 Boodle's (1762) is the oldest. Two years later there 
 were made simultaneous additions to the number, 
 each being very different in character from the other. 
 In 1764 Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 erected a lasting monument of their personal influence 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 137 
 
 by organizing a society entrance into which is as 
 coveted a distinction, after a lapse of 150 years, 
 as when its founders shared the control of the 
 literary and artistic world. While that move- 
 ment was growing to illustrious maturity in Soho, the 
 mortified aristocratic iWihigs were consolidating them- 
 selves and recruiting their energies in St. James's for 
 their struggle with George III. Samuel Johnson's 
 unassisted performances as club maker all exemplified 
 from different points of view his own definition of a 
 club as " an assembly of good fellows, meeting under 
 certain conditions." The conditions, indeed, were not 
 very certain after all, and the gathering-place was 
 constantly changed. All that can be known about them 
 is familiar to every reader of Boswell's Life. None of 
 them attained to length of days or celebrity except 
 the institution of which Johnson, indeed, was an essential 
 part, but whose idea, as has been seen, originated 
 with Johnson's most famous friend, rather than with 
 the sage himself. The same idea had been present to 
 the lexicographer's namesake a century and a half be- 
 fore. iWhat Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds did 
 in the case of the society with which we are now con- 
 cerned had bfeen done at the Apollo, by the Elizabethan 
 dramatist, whose sway over the world of letters was 
 not less absolute than his Georgian descendants. As 
 club makers both those now mentioned aimed at the 
 social fusion of the representatives of intellect and 
 rank. iWith his own disciples and subjects of the 
 pen at the Apollo, the great Ben made a point of 
 mingling typical favourites in Court circles like Aubigny 
 and Portland. In the same way, among the great 
 Samuel's bodyguard there were prominent a duke's 
 grandson, Topham Beauclerk, and a great Lincolnshire 
 squire, Bennett Langton, both men of fashion and Court 
 connection, as well as birth. Both were original 
 members of "The" Club. With them were associated 
 Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Doctor Nugent, and 
 
138 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Sir John Hawkins, Boswell's rival as Johnson's friend 
 and biographer. 
 
 To these names have been added James Boswell, 
 David Garrick, William Windham the politician, and 
 Sir William Jones the scholar and orientalist. These 
 two last, however, were born too late to have 
 been admitted into the society till it was five or six 
 years old. When Garrick's readiness to join was first 
 reported to Johnson, the sage merely grunted out, 
 " The puppy I how does he know we'll have him? " If 
 Boswell was taken in, it can only have been because 
 Johnson wished to reward him for declining to belong 
 to another dompany of which both Reynolds and John- 
 son disapproved. 
 
 A tavern club, " The " Club, has from its beginnings, 
 like Grillion's, always remained. Its earliest meeting- 
 place was at the " Turk's Head," Gerrard Street, Soho. 
 The hour of assembly was 7 p.m., and the night had 
 ceased to be young when the party broke up. By 
 1774 the membership had grown from a maximum of 
 nine to a minimum of thirty-five. By this time also 
 the weekly supper had been replaced by a fortnightly 
 dinner during the parliamentary session. The club 
 itself had moved to m'ore fashionable quarters, first 
 settling itself at Le Teller's in Dover Street, afterwards 
 at Parsloe's, St. James's. Most notabilities of the 
 time had found their way to it, the latest recruits being 
 Bishop Percy of the Reliques ; Shipley, Bishop of St. 
 Asaph ; Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury ; Sir Charles 
 Bunbury, R. B. Sheridan, Joseph and Thomas Wharton, 
 Edward Gibbon, Sir Joseph Banks, Adam Smith, Lord 
 Spencer, the Duke of Leeds, and Lord Palmerston, in 
 Bunbury, R . B . Sheridan, Joseph and Thomas Wharton, 
 Garrick, and Boswell — 
 
 ' ' Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player." 
 
 " That," exclaimed Johnson, on first hearing of Garrick 
 in connection with the place, " is how one ought to sit 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 139 
 
 in a society like ours. If Garrick does apply I'll 
 blackball him. As a fact, when Garrick 's name came 
 up, he had no warmer supporter than Johnson, who 
 made a point of sitting by him at all the meetings up 
 to Garrick's death. The last quarter of the eighteenth 
 century therefore witnessed the justification of Johnson's 
 boast that even during its nonage " The " Club had 
 become so exclusive that the first duke in England could 
 not safely say he would join. As it was then, so it 
 has since continued. The numbers, indeed, have been 
 raised to forty, but by a tacit convention three or four 
 places are always left vatiant. Every new member 
 receives on joining a complete list, together with por- 
 traits, of those who have belonged to it, while in return 
 he enriches the club archives with his own likeness. 
 Gibbon, admitted to it ten years after its formation, 
 in 1774, drew up the form of notice sent to each candi- 
 date on election, apprising him in two or three lines of 
 the honour he had received. 
 
 " The " Club's whole subsequent course without a 
 break down to the present moment has verified its 
 promoter's proud prediction that its membership should 
 not be regarded "as a distinction to be secured at 
 will. No dining society ever approached its brilliant 
 and sustained fame ; and Johnson, who had his full 
 share of the admiration for birth and rank characteriz- 
 ing persons themselves of humble origin, would have 
 exulted in prophetic joy could he have foreseen the 
 names, illustrious for ancestry as well as achievement, 
 that decorate its latest list. The catalogue of 1913 
 opens with a former Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, 
 his successors, Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith, continues 
 with Lord Lansdowne, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Avebury, 
 Sir William Anson, the Archbishops of Canterbury and 
 York, Mr. George Wyndh^m, the President of the Royal 
 Academy, Sir Edward Poynter, Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord 
 George Hamilton, the colonial administrator who wears 
 the title inherited from our greatest poet-laureate, the 
 
140 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 second Baron Tennyson, himself the first Governor of 
 the Australian Commonwealth. Art is represented, not 
 only by its official head but by a great portrait-painter, 
 Mr. J. S. Sargent. To literature " The " Club does 
 honour by counting among its members Sir George 
 Trevelyan, Sir D. Mackenzie Wallace, Mr. Arthur Elliot, 
 Mr. G. W,. Prothero, Mr. John Fortescue, Mr. Wilfrid 
 Ward and Mr. W. J. Courthope. The scientific re- 
 search that has become the handmaid of history con- 
 tributes two members. Sir W. G. Kenyon and Sir E. 
 Maunde Thompson. Legal science personifies itself in 
 Lord Haldane and Mr. Justice Parker. Scientific 
 seamanship sends Sir Cyprian Bridge. The Army has 
 two Field-Marshals, Sir William Gustavus Nicholson 
 and Viscount Wolseley, an honorary member. 
 
 The birth year of " The " Club was, as has been 
 already said, that of Brooks's too. And the beginnings 
 of Brooks's have the same touch of personal romance 
 as White's. During the reign of George I, the Duke of 
 Hamilton on the journey from hlis Scotch to his London 
 palace was accompanied by a favourite valet, William 
 Macall, whose loyalty, discretion, and capacity to profit 
 from promotion his master had long and favourably 
 observed. During this journey occurred the incidents 
 that were to ensure Macall a place of favour among 
 club makers by preparing the foundations of Brooks's. 
 An attack by highwaymen gave him a chance of risking 
 life and limb to save his master. As a consequence, 
 at the end of their travels, the gentleman of the bed- 
 chamber had received the appointment of major-domo 
 and deputy steward, at a salary whose amount and regu- 
 larity more than one ambassador might have envied. 
 He soon discovered and repaired innumerable leakages 
 in the management of the ducal household. 
 
 All this made Macall's fortune. He had now capital 
 enough to set up in business for himself upon an 
 increasing scale of enterprise. His first step,, on giving 
 up service, was to buy at a bargaiin the St. James's 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA 141 
 
 Thatched House Tavern, which will be visited later. 
 His next was commemorated by Horace iWalpole in a 
 letter to Lord Hertford of March 14, 1765. Almack's 
 Assembly Rooms, then just established in King Street, 
 nearly a century later transformed into Willis's Rooms, 
 had been visited by .Walpole on their opening night. 
 The great features of the initial success were the pro- 
 prietor's Scotch face in a bag wig waiting at supper, 
 with his lady in a sack, making tea and curtseying to 
 our duchesses. Slightly transposing the letters of his 
 name, MacaU had christened his new venture after 
 himself, Almack's. That also gave a title to the Pall 
 Mall Club founded by him about the same time, where 
 the Marlborough stands to-day. 
 
 Next comes the transformation of the shrewd Scot's 
 bagnio into the social and political headquarters of 
 kWhiggism. Like Macall, whose club he bought. Brooks 
 had been a gentleman's gentleman. The peer on whose 
 domestic staff he served fell into such difficulties that 
 he had already given notice to many of his servants, 
 and contemplated retiring to Boulogne. " Your lord- 
 ship," said Brooks with an air of sympathetic but 
 deferential stateliness, " need do nothing of the 
 sort. The fact is, having; put by a little money, 
 and seeing what was likely to happen, I found an 
 opportunity of buying up your lordship's debts. I 
 have therefore the happiness, at this moment, to be your 
 only creditor." The unexpectedly relieved peer, as he 
 looked at his benefactor, for the first time noticed a 
 certain natural dignity, improved by aristocratic asso- 
 ciations.' " Brooks," he said, " you should go into the 
 House of Commons, and I will put you in for one of my 
 boroughs." " Thank you, my lord, but the oppor- 
 tunities you have given me wiU enable me to serve 
 your connection better by a club." 
 
 ■ For these details I am indebted to my dear old friend A. W. Kinglake, who 
 knew the authentic tradition of Brooks's personal appearance, " as aristocratic as 
 a Whig duke's." 
 
142 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 For some years Brooks's patrons applied his name or 
 Almack's almost indifferently to the place. In 1778 
 came their settlement beneath their present roof, which, 
 during the 134 years of their occupation progressively 
 perfected and adorned, has called for very little struc- 
 tural change. Whatever the original purpose of the 
 projector whose name it bore, only in the nineteenth 
 century did the place become a party house of 
 call. |The sole and sufficient reason of its being 
 was play. 
 
 The London into which Charles Fox had been born 
 thirty years before the creiation of the club so closely 
 associated at once with the growth of his parliamentary 
 power and the decay of his pecuniary fortune had 
 become, as Sir George Trevelyan has put it, one great 
 casino. As men laid or took the odds about all the 
 personal possibilities of public or private life, the minis- 
 tries not yet appointed, about marriagtes which still had 
 to be made, and about children at present unbojrn, so 
 they betted everywhere and plied the dice-box or the 
 card-pack in any bun-shop or tea not less than coffee- 
 house or tavern they thanced to frequent. Compara- 
 tive privacy, as the wager^ers and gamesters gradually 
 found, could alone protect them from professional 
 sharpers and knaves. Against these, the only guaran- 
 tees were the club and the preliminary ballot. Such*, 
 more than half a t;entury after White's, was the genesis 
 of those institutions among which Brooks's stood by 
 itself. Of the two chambers which were all the club 
 at first contained, the eating-room, as regards size and 
 appointments, was dwarfed into insignificanc'e by the 
 play-room. In the former there might be " tossing up 
 for reckonings," but nothing more. The genius and 
 splendour of the place were displayed in the latter,, 
 which was professedly controlled hy strict rules. No 
 one could stake on Credit or on money borrowed from 
 the players or bystanders. Every one at the quinze- 
 table was to keep fifty guineas before him and not 
 

 & is. 
 
 
 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN BRA 143 
 
 less than twenty guineas at the twenty- guinea table. 
 No limit, however, was placed on the obligations which 
 might be incurred to the club master for food and wine, 
 or for cash advances ; nor did any committee call 
 the indebted members to account. The losses thus 
 sustained by Brooks himself permanently impoverished 
 him and perhaps acted as a warning to some of his 
 successors.' 
 
 Brooks himself had disappeared when Brooks's be- 
 came the haunt of official tWhiggism, not so much as a 
 result of its domination by the Foxites as from its 
 opposition to Pitt, who, as has been already explained, 
 had made his headquarters at White's. For the earliest 
 pillars of Brooks's, though great Whig nobles, were as 
 much men of fashion as political partisans. They in- 
 cluded the Dukes of Grafton, Richmond, and Roxburgh, 
 the Earl of Strathmore, and Mrs. Crewe's husband, of 
 "true blue" fame,2 from 1768 to 1806 Member for 
 Chester, afterwards Lord Crewe. Charles Fox had 
 been admitted to the club in its earliest days at an age 
 when he ought still to have been at school. Like an 
 earlier iWhig, Sir Robert Walpole, and like another 
 Brooks's man of his own standing, George Selwyn, he 
 had begun his club life at " Young iWhite's." From 
 iWhite's too he brought (Feb. 28, 1781) the then newly 
 seated Member for Appleby, his great rival, iWilliam 
 Pitt. By that time. Sir Joshua Reynolds, ;an original 
 member, David Garrick, Topham Beauclerk's candi- 
 date, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, David Hume, 
 Horace Walpole, and William Wilberforce were all 
 well-established members, while in the year before Pitt 
 entered the Foxites, under Colonel Fitzpatrick, had 
 carried the election of Sheridan against George Selwyn, 
 
 ■ In 1782 Brooks was succeeded by GrifEn. Subsequent proprietors were 
 Wheelwright with Halse (1846). In that year, too, Banderet followed, and 
 remained master till 1880, when the management was taken over by the club. 
 
 » " Mrs. Crewe and true blue " was the toast given by Fox at one of this lady's 
 dinner-parties. The hostess promptly responded with " True blue and all of you." 
 
144 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 who opposed him less because he was a rival wit than 
 because his father was a player. When the eighteenth 
 century closed tlie chief noble names of the place were 
 the Earls of Bessborough, Upper Ossory, Romney, 
 and Lord Robert Spencer. From these, in 1796, was 
 formed Brooks's first committee, its number being raised 
 to six by the addition of the only two' commoners,, 
 Crowle and Miller, each' a puissant and irepresentative 
 Whig M.P. 
 
 " All men are equal on the turf and under it." 
 And the constantly increasing introduction of City men 
 and traders to the vWihig patrician palladium formed 
 a standing testimony to the truth that there is no leveller 
 like play. , Throughout the Georgian era the chief centre 
 of Brooks's inner life was the gambling- room. Here 
 fortunes were made, as well as lost, not only during 
 the same season but sometimes in a single night. In 
 1772 Thynne of L'ongleat, the third Viscount Wey- 
 mouth, took his name off the book in disgust at having 
 won only twelve thousand' guineas from two months,, 
 while, in the same year, between the afternoon and 
 midnight, £70,000 had changed hands at faro alone. 
 During this year, too. Lord Lauderdale at the same 
 game saw £5,000 staked on a single card. So early 
 as 1765, Rigby, writing to George Selwyn, could speak 
 of deep play being removed from Wlaite's to Brooks's, 
 and of membership of Brooks's being now of greater 
 distinction than White's. Palmerston's coming Lord 
 Chancellor, reporting his professional progress to the 
 paternal manse in 1822, calls Tiis election at Brooks's 
 " the greatest distinction that has come to our house 
 since we lost our estates in the county of Angus." 
 In this matter " Jock Campbell " fared better than 
 his political chief. For Palmerston, whose parliamen- 
 tary career started in 1806, had to wait for success 
 at Brooks's ballot till 1830, when, at the age of forty- 
 six, he became Lord Grey's Foreign Secretary. 
 
 Long before that the members of Brooks's in their 
 
CLUBMEN OF THE GEORGIAN BRA 145 
 
 corporate capacity, had asserted themselves as arbiters of 
 literary taste, npt less than, bestowers of social honour. 
 In 1797 Canning and Gifford, both first-rate masters 
 and judges of that sort of composition, had been loud in 
 the praises of T. J. Mathias's " Pursuits of Literature," 
 a satire in Popeian couplets on over-rated writers like 
 Parr, Godwin, and especially "Monk" Lewis. The 
 " Monk " complained of the injury in mind, body, and 
 state he suffered from the attack . Canning's approbation 
 of Mathias, followed by that of White's Club generally, 
 determined Fox that Brooks's should take up the cause 
 of Lewis. He therefore got the club to pass a resolution 
 denouncing Mathias's onslaught as the most spiteful 
 and unjust satire that had ever disgraced the literary 
 world. 
 
 During the first half of the nineteenth century 
 Brooks's was called upon to pay a heavy price on two 
 different occasions for overdone loyalty to its own plain 
 .Whig principles and its tradition of social exclusive- 
 ness. Byron never belonged to Brooks's ; but the 
 Napoleon,ic enthusiasm against the Duke of Wellington, 
 animating alike his conversation and his verse, exactly 
 reproduced the prevailing sentiment of the club as Lord 
 Houghton, on becoming a member at the age of nineteen, 
 found this feeling to have been.' It was not, however, 
 the suspicion of imperfect patriotism, converting, though 
 that did, many young Whigs to Tories, but O'Connell's 
 relations with the party, which, in 1835, shook the club 
 to its very base. At the Carlow election, in the year 
 just named, a candidate named Raphael declared he 
 had been cheated out of £200 by O'Connell. A com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons having inquired into 
 the accusation, exonerated the liberator at Westminster, 
 but did not entirely rehabilitate him with the English 
 public. The strength of popular feeling against him 
 
 ' " All their wish and hope was against their own country, and paeans would 
 have arisen at Brooks's had the duke been taken prisoner" (Wemyss Reid's 
 Life of Houghton, vol. i. p. 19). 
 
 10 
 
146 CliUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 may be judged from the fact that the Times 
 of November 26th published this couplet :— 
 
 " Scum, condensed of Irish bog, 
 Ruffian, blackguard, demagogue." 
 
 By this time one of the oldest and most conspicuous. 
 Brooksites, Sir Francis Burdett, had renounced his 
 Radicalism and joined the Tories, then beginning to 
 be known as Conservatives. He was also the bitterest 
 of O'Connell's enemies. This was the first serious 
 dispute laid before the committee appointed in 1796. 
 " Either," said Burdett, " you expel O'Connell, or I 
 resign." This ultimatum being refused, he at once 
 took his name off the books.' His secession was im- 
 mediately followed by that of Stanley, afterwards, as 
 the fourteenth Earl of Derby, the Conservative chief, 
 by the future Peelite, Sir James Graham, and by sixty 
 Whig peers. Brooks's narrowly escaped disruption. 
 For fifteen years passed before the club regained its 
 normal complement of members. The next intestine 
 disturbance came during the period of Gladstone's con- 
 version to Home Rule. The Liberal Unionists of the 
 place resented the language applied to them by the 
 Ministerial Liberals, and a war of internecine black- 
 balling was only averted through Lord Granville's 
 tactful intervention .2 
 
 ' A full account of this episode is contained in Raphael's and Burdett's letter 
 to the Times, November 21, 1835, and in the Annual Register of the same year 
 (Chronicle, p. 146). 
 
 = Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of Second Earl Granville, vol. ii. p. 294. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 
 
 What brought the Dover House Club into existence — Brooks's offspring 
 becomes its rival — A princely moralist — The pioneer of the club in its modem 
 social aspect — The Guards' — The United Service — Exploits of its two 
 founders in the field — The makers of its homes — Servants' clubs and debating 
 societies — ^The club as peacemaker — Social episodes in the lives of Gladstone 
 and Disraeli — The poet-laureate of Grillion's — Solitary diners — ^A peep at 
 Grillion's as it is to-day — ^Two of its followers who have passed away — The 
 Cosmopolitan and the Breakfast Clubs. 
 
 Brooks's, like its immediate ancestor and eventual 
 rival, White's, became in turn a club parent. Something 
 may now be said about those who reared its progeny. 
 Among the particular cronies of George IV, whether as 
 regent or king, were Jack (or more fully John Willett) 
 Payne and Banastre Tarleton. Payne, belonging 
 to a West Indian family and born, 1752, at his father's 
 house, Government House, St. Kitts, was sent back to 
 England to be educated for the Navy, first at Greenwich, 
 afterwards at Portsmouth. During the interval of his 
 various commands afloat he acted as private secretary 
 to his particular friend and patron, the Prince of Wales 
 (George IV). Then, joining the Prince's friends in 
 Parliament as Member for Huntingdon, he supported 
 Fox and made himself so useful at Carlton House that, 
 with the rank of admiral, he was rewarded with the 
 treasurership of Greenwich Hospital, where he died in 
 1803. Tarleton, on the other hand, at no time a 
 professional courtier, was one of those brave officers 
 whom the Prince sometimes did credit to himself by 
 delighting to honour. Under Comwallis in America 
 
 W7 
 
148 CLUB MAKEKS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 as a cavalry leader he had no equal for dash. A 
 Liverpool merchant's son, he became M.P. for his 
 native city in 1790, and resigned his seat to George 
 Canning in 18 12. As a Shropshire squire, he lived 
 in retirement to see the Grey Reform Bill passed in 
 1832, and died the next year. 
 
 In their relations with royalty, the sailor, Payne, and 
 the soldier, Tarleton, opened the gallant list of those 
 who, from George IV to George V, have brought to 
 their niche in the Palace entourage a great record in 
 one or other of the fighting services. They were, how- 
 ever, too independent at Westminster to please the 
 party leaders. Their royal friend himself proposed 
 them in the candidates' book and put on a heavy whip 
 to secure their election. Each, however, was rejected. 
 Carlton House lashed itself into furious indignation. 
 The then Heir-apparent vowed that if he could not 
 meet his friends at Brooks's, he would enjoy their 
 society at a club of his own. 
 
 Prominent among the Prince's hangers-on at this 
 time was a man with respect to whom it had 
 always been a standing marvel that a pair of legs as 
 short as a dwarf's should safely support a body whose 
 girth approached that of a beer-barrel. A nose 
 resembling a bloated, partially ripe strawberry and 
 deep-sunk eyes, glittering like glow-worms from their 
 cavernous recesses, with a face every line of which 
 showed a combination of humour and cunning, were 
 the other most noticeable, features of a man who in 
 a few years had become as well known in St. James's 
 Street as his royal master. The name of the person 
 now described was Weltjie — a shrewd, serene Gennan, 
 who had no sooner entered the royal service than he 
 made himself indispensable either by anticipating his 
 employer's wishes or finding a way to give them effect 
 when others threw up their hands in despair. Already 
 he had delighted the Prince by removing all obstacles 
 from the way towards realizing the pet design of a 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 149 
 
 seaside palace that a: little later was to become the 
 Brighton Pavilion. " Nothing easier, your Royal 
 Highness," was Weltjie's reply, on hearing of the Heir- 
 apparent 's purpose, " and I have for some time had 
 my eye on just the position we require." This, it 
 turned out, was the spot afterwards covered by Fenton's 
 Hotel. 
 
 Thus, during the winter of 1787-8, on the west 
 side of St. James's Street, within a stone's^throw of 
 Dover Street's junction with Piccadilly, the Dover 
 House Club grew up. The site, owned by the Earl 
 of Dover, who inherited the property from his uncle, 
 Henry Jermyn, was then full of great memories. Not 
 only the ground landlord but Robert Harley, Earl of 
 Oxford, and St. John, Viscount Bolinghroke, had lived 
 there at a comparatively recent date." The men who 
 composed the Dover House Society seemed for a time 
 in a fair way of emulating if not eclipsing the original 
 Brooksites. For that success more than one reason 
 may be assigned. In Brooks's playroom Fitzpatrick 
 and Lord Carlisle had achieved a notoriety not less 
 than that of Fox, who elsewhere in the establishment 
 remained its ruling personality. In and after 1785 
 he had fallen out of favour with the Prince by openly 
 disapproving of that august personage's treatment of 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert, in which, however, the fashionable 
 opinion of the time saw less to denounce than might 
 have been expected. At the same time Fox had 
 strained severely the personal allegiance of some of 
 his followers by his coalition with North. 
 
 Brooks's new rival was disarmed, however, of its 
 worst dangers to the older club by the presence among 
 its members of royal favourites not so desirable as 
 Payne and Tarleton. Not that the Prince, though to 
 some extent its creator and chief patron, entirely 
 
 " In the immediate neighbourhood lived and, by his own hand, died (July 6, 
 1815) Samuel Whitbread, while what was afterwards Ashburnham House had 
 been the abode of Prince Lieven, and Prince Pozzo di Borgo. 
 
150 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 dominated the Dover House establishment. He could 
 not, had he wished, have introduced to it men like 
 George Hanger, the " paragon of debauchery " ; Lord 
 Barrymore, whose character was condensed into his 
 nickname " Hellgate " ; Sir John Lade, with the dress 
 and tastes of a groom, the fit husband of a wife 
 raised from a highwajanan's mistress to the back kitchen 
 of Carlton House ; the base, bestial Duke of Queens- 
 berry ; and his eleventh Grace of Norfolk, who scarcely 
 adorned even his sobriquet " Jockey." These, and 
 others like them, were reserved for the amalgam, 
 epitome, and concentration of blackguardism and 
 brutality collected at the Brighton Pavilion. In St. 
 James's Street, however, the Prince's factotum and 
 partner showed his zeal for club respectability and 
 proprietorial self-interest by giving them a wide berth. 
 Thus whenever Barrymore or any other of the gang 
 came up for election at the London club, Weltjie 
 contrived that they should be blackballed. 
 
 In addition to their princely and fashionable vogue, 
 Weltjie and his clients profited from the royal presence 
 and conversation. For the Prince's vein was not always 
 one of frivolity and vice. At times he could 
 not only be serious but talk instructively and well. 
 He never forgot either a face he had once seen or a 
 sugigestive remark he had at any time heard. More- 
 over, he united with some crude, unsystematic scholar- 
 ship a faculty of historical generalization and a knack' 
 of turning schoolboy reading occasionally to effective 
 account. His performances in this direction gradlially 
 became one of the club's most agreeable traditions. 
 Samuel Rogers, the banker, poet, and universal host/, 
 heard from those present on the occasion accounts 
 of the Prince's deliverances, intended to be taken for 
 original, on polite learning and on the various arts 
 composing it. " Of these," he said, " that ,of persuasion, 
 otherwise oratory, as opposed to the art of reasoning 
 logic, is mischievous, because it withdraws attention 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 151 
 
 from the substance to the show, from the subject of the 
 discourse to its ornaments. As regards the practical 
 effects of Greek or Roman eloquence we can only 
 guess, because we do not know for certain which 
 speeches were actually delivered and which, like Cicero's 
 masterpiece of abusive personality, his second philippic, 
 were only written. But," continued the critic, " we do 
 know from our nearest continental neighbour the iU 
 result of accustoming a people to oratorical stimu- 
 lants. The French public, throughout the whole of 
 the revolutionary period, were kept in a continual fejver 
 by public speakers without forming a single habit 
 favourable to knowledge or liberty. The tide of words 
 rolls over the mind, leaving it as barren and as 
 impervious to fertilizing forces as the earth when just 
 reclaimed from the sea. Among ourselves," the Prince 
 would proceed, " neither Magna Charta nor the Bill of. 
 Rights originated in eloquence. In the English Parlia- 
 ment Burke had no listeners, and the one good law that 
 Fox helped to make, the law of libel, owed nothing 
 to his quickness in detecting the weak points of an 
 opponent's argument which, far more than his flow 
 of words, formed the secret of his power." 
 
 At the Dover House, indeed, the Regent showed 
 acumen and industry in playing the candid friend to 
 his sometime favourite Fox, never forgetting, and 
 always taking care to remind others, that Fox, the 
 popular champion, had begun by being the Court 
 mouthpiece, the avowed enemy of the masses, as well 
 as an undisguised foe to the indiscriminate bestowal 
 of political liberty. " Fox," he said, " was fond of 
 quoting Home Tooke's advice to the various demo- 
 cratic societies, ' If you wish to be powerful, pretend 
 to be powerful.' Nobody," the Prince went on,. 
 " knew better than both Fox and Pitt the monstrous 
 exaggeration of the Friends of the People Club." 
 The two rivals, however, played into each other's hands, 
 for while Fox accepted the glaringly false estimate, 
 
15? CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Pitt snatched an easy dialectical triumph by arguing 
 against his rival on the premises which that rival had 
 obligingly supplied. So, too, as regards the gallo- 
 philism with which Fox had been taunted ; it was 
 far more useful to the Tories than to the Whig's, for 
 Pitt never spoke on the subject without making party 
 capital from the exposure of — 
 
 "The coward whine and Frenchified, 
 Slaver and slang of the other side." 
 
 The iWhig leader, too, often supplied the Princ^ 
 with a subject for remarks on the social and personal 
 ruin brought by gambling. " Fox," he said, " played 
 piquet and whist so uncommonly well that he might 
 have ensured himself of a good income but for his 
 fatal addiction to games of mere chance, like hazard 
 and faro. But," continued the Prince, who at timesi 
 could moralize in strains Worthy of a pulpit, " I see, 
 even in this club, signs of the rage for play wearing 
 itself out." As a fact the Dover House Club gamblers 
 never reached the height of Brooks's, and were for 
 the most part content with whist at comparatively low 
 points. 
 
 Before passing to the club makers who were the lineal 
 descendants of those just mentioned, something must 
 be said about men belong'ing to a very different kind, 
 who during 1 8 1 3 were the first to introduce the club in 
 its then new, but now familiar and representative, 
 character as a co-operative home for otherwise entirely 
 or partially homeless gentlemen. That new departure 
 in the club record the common sense and better feelings 
 of the fourth George did something to promote. This 
 sovereign, like most of those bom in the purple and 
 brought up in the world, was not prevented by his 
 own excesses from appreciating conduct and homely 
 virtues at their true value as the foundations of national 
 character and as social guarantees of political stability. 
 Even while regent, he could show as keen an eye for 
 
CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 (From a drawing by Lady Diana Beaticlerk.) 
 
 To lace p. 152. 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 153 
 
 real merit in a man as for the qualities that make an 
 agreeable companion. Above aU, he knew a good 
 soldier by instinct. 
 
 The beginning of the Peninsular War in 1808 awoke 
 him to a new sense of his responsibilities as regards 
 the Army at home. St. James's and Pall Mall swarmed 
 with officers who had made arms their serious pro- 
 fession. These, while eagerly waiting to join the 
 campaign, had for some time wished to employ their 
 social leisure in London more pleasantly, profitably, 
 and economically than the gentlemen of their cloth 
 had so far found it easy to do. The club makers who 
 led this social movement were officers in the Household 
 Infantry. These found their most popular and active 
 member in Jack Talbot of the Coldstreams. A bold 
 and skilful leader of men in the field, he had also 
 given proof of administrative capacity, as well as of 
 intellectual taste, when in his Eton days captain of 
 Oppidan's, and his failings were common to his time 
 rather than personal to himself. His old comrade-in- 
 arms, Alvanley, calling in the course of his last short 
 illness, commented, on the suggestion of bleeding the 
 invalid, that nothing but claret would be found in him. 
 The sick man faintly smiled approval. To another of his 
 friends, the Duke of Cambridge, who had begged him 
 to call in medical and spiritual advice, he had said, " I 
 want neither doctor nor parson, but only to depart 
 in peace." The Duke, however, was not prevented 
 from sending to the dying Guardsman his old school- 
 master, Keate, of Eton. That spiritual comforter 
 arrived only to find his former pupil dead in an arm- 
 chair, with an empty sherry -bottle near his hand. 
 
 Before displaying his resourcefulness and energy in 
 the establishment of the Guards' Club, Talbot had won 
 the same professional distinction in Spain as another 
 member of his set, a Light Cavalry officer and frequent 
 visitor of the Guards' Club, then the only military club 
 existing. This was Talbot's feUow and contemporary 
 
154 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Etonian, affectionately known throughout the whole 
 service as " Teapot Crawfurd," and singled out for 
 special eulogy and benediction by the Regent, when his 
 regiment, the loth Hussars, paraded before the Prince 
 for the last time on the eve of sailing for Spain. His 
 Scotch bravery and skill were combined with a Scotch 
 prudence and frugality which made his social influence 
 all for good. His nickname recalled a schoolboy habit 
 of making tea in an odd-looking, old black vessel. He 
 fulfilled the promise of his earlier career by his part 
 in the charge at Orthes, and reappeared in London 
 covered with glory. The confidence in his judgment, 
 business aptitude, and tact, recognized by all his 
 brothers-in-arms, was largely availed of by the founders 
 of an institution older by a few; years than the 
 United Service, the pioneer of the nineteenth -century 
 club system. The St. James's Coffee House, about 
 which a good deal has already been said, was the chief 
 resort of officers on London duty about the year 1813. 
 Its frequenters agreed in calling it " a miserable little 
 den." The comforts and refinements of continental 
 restaurants^ with which spells of foreign service had 
 acquainted them, made the standing floors and the 
 pothouse surrounding seem, on their return to London, 
 more intolerable than ever. The company, too, had 
 become as mixed and unsavoury as the place. Sheridan 
 and Jekyll occasionally enlivened it ; but the chance 
 of their society was heavily paid for by the impos- 
 sibility of avoiding the sharpers and the Irish bullies 
 who infested the coffee-house. In Brussels, Vienna, 
 and Paris, too, they had seen the best refreshment - 
 houses so monopolized by gentlemen in uniform as 
 in effect to be army clubs,. The warriors, mostly but 
 not exclusively Guardsmen, already ktiown to us, talked 
 the matter over. They were cautioned by the Regent 
 and the Duke of York against repeating the excesses and 
 luxury of Watier's, and bidden to aim at something which 
 would combine the comforts of a private gentleman's 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 155 
 
 first-class house with the opportunities of a select hotel 
 in which every one would find himself at home. The 
 result was the still flourishing Guards' Club. Originally 
 domiciled during the year 1813 in the north-western 
 section of St. James's Street, it fulfilled its purpose 
 of presenting a complete contrast to the gambling and 
 drinking haunts of the regency. It was absolutely, 
 the first members' club, as distinguished from the pro- 
 prietary club, firmly to establish itself. The Cold- 
 streamer, Dan Mackinnon, of the fine figtire, the calm 
 smile, the black eyes, and the acrobatic endowments 
 above described, ruled the committee, saw that its 
 cookery was good, its cellar first-rate, and the whist 
 points in its cardroom kept discreetly low. 
 
 The example thus set by officers of the Household 
 Infantry before receiving the general compliment of 
 civilian imitation, found favour with the highest repre- 
 sentatives of the Army at large on the conclusion of 
 the great war in 1 8 1 5 . About that time two of the 
 Duke of Wellington's officers happened to meet each 
 other at the Albion Hotel, 86, Pall Mall. In the coffee- 
 room, or seen from its windows, passing and repassing 
 in the street outside, were many of their old comrades, 
 some who lived in London on their daily stroll to or 
 from the park, others birds of passage up from the 
 country on business. " We are all of us," said one of 
 the veterans, " as sheep, if not without a shepherd, 
 yet wanting a pasture-ground ; and the need can only 
 be supplied by a club, which there need be no difficulty 
 or delay in making." In appearance, in dress, habit, 
 tastes, and pursuit, both the friends belonged to the 
 class of country gentlemen. Each had reached the 
 rank of general. 
 
 Thomas Graham, whose father, the Laird of 
 Balgowan, spelt the family name Graeme, had passed 
 from private tutors at home to Christ Church. Here 
 his horse waited for him at the " Canterbury Gate " on 
 the morning of every convenient meet of the old 
 
156 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Berkshire pack. No undergraduate of his time rode 
 to hounds with mor,e courage or judgment, or, if he 
 sometimes cut his lectures, kept more uniformly clear 
 of serious trouble with the dons. Before going down 
 he had introduced golf to the BuUingdon ground. 
 Re-establishing himself in his native land, he captained 
 the first cricket eleven Scotland ever knew. Full of 
 zeal for agricultural improvement and a keen all-round 
 sportsman, h,e had settled down to a squire's life when 
 his wife's health compelled her removal to a milder 
 climate. Some years were now passed at Gibraltar 
 and elsewhere in Spain, or as a guest with Lord Hood's 
 Mediterranean fleet. But he had caught the military 
 enthusiasm of the time. He returned to Scotland to 
 raise a regiment of his own, the Perthshire Volunteers, 
 that with them he mig'ht take part in the fighting. 
 Then followed a succession of moving experiences 
 without a break until he retired from the Army in 1 8 1 4 . 
 In addition to the work he did with his own corps, 
 he was attached as the British Military Commissioner 
 to the Austrian Army. In Virgil's day the vicinity 
 of his native Mantua to Cremona almost proved its 
 destruction. During* Napoleon's invasion of Italy it 
 first made Graham's name known throughout Europe. 
 Besieged by the French, the Austrian commander at 
 Mantua perceived the surrender of the place to be 
 inevitable if timely relief did not come from the main 
 body of the Austrian army stationed some distance off 
 near the Adige, the classical Digentia, a tributary of 
 the Po. Not a day must be lost in acquainting their 
 distant comrades with the dire need of the besieged 
 Austrians. But how, came the question, find or spare 
 a man capable of taking the message? " I," said the 
 English attache, "have nothing to do. Send me." 
 Accordingly, at nightfall, December 29, 1797, in a 
 heavy snowstorm, Graham, disguised as a peasant, set 
 out on his desperate errand. Within a week, January 4, 
 1798, he had reached the headquarters of the Austrian 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 157 
 
 general, Alvinzi, at Bassano. Mantua was saved, and 
 the first serious check to the French advance in Italy, 
 came from the British officer who, afterwards on 
 March 5, 181 1, with a handful of men, by his great 
 victory at Barrosa, planted the English colours in the 
 village over which the French flag had floated. 
 
 Almost a quarter of a century previously Graham 
 had added by purchase to his Scotch possessions the 
 estate of Lednoch or Lynedoch. Hence the title of 
 Baron Lynedoch, with which in 18 14 he retired. 
 
 His brother-in-arms and associate -in-peace. General 
 Sir Rowland Hill, came, like an earlier great soldier, 
 Robert Clive, of a Shropshire stock. He belonged 
 to the Hills of Hawkestone. Second son of the third 
 baronet, Sir John Hill, he had for his ancestor the 
 famous Tory, Sir Richard, commemorated in the 
 Rolliad for his loyalty and piety. Educated, not, 
 according to the current account, at Rugby but at 
 Ightfield and Chester, he served successively in the 
 38th and 5 3rd regiments, took part in the bloodless 
 capture of Minorca, 1798, but first won his laurels 
 in the battle of Aboukir three years later, 1801, where 
 he commanded the 90th Highlanders, and in the same 
 year led that regiment in the advance on Cairo. Then 
 followed his distinguished doings under the Duke of 
 Wellington, first in Portugal and Spain, finally at 
 Waterloo. " I am," wrote the Duke in his Waterloo 
 dispatch, " particularly indebted to General Hill for 
 his assistance and conduct on this as on all other 
 occasions." After the European pacification Hill 
 became Commander-in-Chief during the fourteen years 
 (1828-42) before Wellington himself took up that 
 position for life. His closing years were those of a 
 country gentleman, dividing his time between field 
 sports and the care of his estate and labourers at 
 Hardwicke Grange. 
 
 Trained in the same social and military school, as 
 well as resembling each other in mode of life, tastes. 
 
158 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 and personal bearing. Lords Lynedoch and Hill were 
 strongly of the same opinion on one point connected 
 with their new project. The association of club with 
 pub .J however inevitable, had been hitherto mis- 
 chievously close. The venture whose details they were 
 busily maturing in 1815 must entirely avoid the tradi- 
 tional sinister connection. It must not derive its origin 
 from, or be tainted by, any relation to the taverns and 
 taprooms that were the curse alike of the town and 
 the service. " Till we have a roof of our own, beneath 
 which a man can eat his mutton-chop in the same 
 surroundings as his own dining-room, we must refuse 
 to come into existence." 
 
 On the 31st of May^ in the year just mentioned, that 
 decorous shelter was found in Charles Street, St. 
 James's. The necessary building' had been quickly 
 run up under the skilled and energetic supervision 
 of one of the two men whose mastery of bricks and 
 mortar was indispensable to the club makers of the 
 time. Robert Smirke, who within and without designed 
 the United Service Club's earliest habitation, combined 
 a fine natural taste with a cultivated intelligence. For 
 not a little of his training he was indebted to his 
 brother, Sydney Smirke, the Royal Academician. 
 Thanks largely to this relative, as well as his accom- 
 plished and influential father, he had already been the 
 architect of the British Museum and the Covent 
 Garden Theatre when Lynedoch and Hill secured him 
 for their earliest clubhouse. 
 
 To a very different class belonged Smirke's con- 
 temporary and professional rival, John Nash. To 
 Welsh cunning and greed he added a rare capacity of 
 making the rich and great take him at his own estimate 
 of himself. Ten years after the date now reached he 
 drew the plans and superintended the construction of 
 the Pall Mall palace still occupied by the club. But 
 long before this he had been concerned in raising the 
 Brighton Pavilion and Chain Pier, as well as innumer- 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 159 
 
 able town and country mansions, some of which were 
 eventually devoted to club purposes. 
 
 Lynedoch and Hill lived for some time after Nash 
 had prepared his plans for the second clubhouse. They 
 were inspecting them one day in the committee -room 
 of the Charles Street building while, after his usual 
 peacock fashion, Nash, strutting up and down, radiantly 
 congratulated himself on having conceived the chambers 
 that would be honoured to the end of time by England's 
 greatest warriors. "It is," he said, "my lords, no 
 small glory to have created the earliest Service Club in 
 this metropolis." The two grave old soldiefs exchanged 
 looks but said nothing. At last Lynedoch, in a deep, 
 weather-beaten voice and his most solemn Scotch accent, 
 said : " Not quite so fast, if you please, Mr. Nash. 
 That cannot b'e your honour, for long before any of 
 us htere were thought of, the Royal Naval Club, founded 
 in the reign of Charles II, was at the height of its 
 fame soon after its reorganization a hundred years 
 ago by Admiral Sir John Kempthorn, with Admiral 
 Boscawen, Lord Rodney, Lord Nelson, and his Royal 
 Highness, the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV, 
 for members." It was all perfectly true, and the old 
 salts of which it consisted periodically foregathered at 
 the Thatched House in the same room as was afterwards 
 appropriated by the Dilettanti. 
 
 On a social level different from that to which this 
 narrative so far has confined itself, the first quarter 
 of the nineteenth century produced a fusion between 
 two separate kinds of club makers. The description in 
 Pickwick of the Bath footmen's " swarry," under Mr. 
 John Smauker's presidency, is no caricature but an 
 exact sketch of the high life below stairs that had 
 become general under the first two Georges. All the 
 servant troubles, to-day spoken of as the peculiar curse 
 reserved for employers in this degenerate and revolu- 
 tionary age, had been cited at the beginning of the 
 Hanoverian succession as proof of the celestial wrath 
 
160 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 at the end of the Stuart dynasty. Dressed in their 
 masters' clothes, calling each other by their masters' 
 namesj and imitating their masters' manners, footmen, 
 valets, and grooms swaggered about their Bloomsbury 
 clubs, as nearly as art could make them copies of the 
 beaux, fops, and coxcombs who paid them their wages, 
 and who then probably were themselves sauntering into 
 White's. These coteries, composed from the house- 
 keeper's room and the kitchen, began to take on 
 something of a political complexion after the French 
 Revolution. Between 1812 and 1827 the coercive 
 severities of the Liverpool-Castlereagh and Sidmouth 
 dispensation united with the societies of the gentleman's 
 gentleman, and these organized by the professional 
 demagogues in a common resistance to the Tory 
 Government. The Bath footmen in Pickwick who enter- 
 tained Sam Weller at the boiled leg of mutton with the 
 usual trimmings " swarry," caUed the greengrocer in 
 attendance upon them a vulgar beast because he yawned 
 while handing round the dishes. In 181 5 and again 
 in 1 8 1 7, however, the Smaukers, the Tuckles, and the 
 rest of the flunkey tribe, condescended to make common 
 cause with the greengrocers, giving them at the same 
 time the benefit of their earlier experience. From that 
 coalition resulted certain industrial and proletarian 
 bodies, which gradually grew into political powers. 
 Such were the promoters of the Spencean, the 
 Hampden, and the Union Clubs. Of these, the 
 Spenceans were organized by a Yorkshire schoolmaster 
 named Spence, who aimed at making all land the 
 property of the State, and dividing all its produce 
 among the people. The Hampden Club, founded in 
 1 8 1 1 by a Devonshire man, Northmore, living in 
 London, stopped short of Socialism, and limited its 
 programme to parliamentary reform and the ballot as 
 a guarantee of free voting. The class fusion already, 
 dwelt on, as promoted by the club system, reached its 
 culminating point in the personnel of these societies. 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 161 
 
 The servants' clubs had, indeed, largely become con- 
 federate with them, but the Union Club at least included 
 some highly placed and extensive landlords too. That 
 resulted less from enthusiasm for the Prog'ressive cause 
 than from the daily deepening Radical tints imparted 
 to Whiggism by a master-maker of clubs like those 
 now touched upon. 
 
 Major John Cartwright had not, like his brother 
 Edmund, who invented the power-loom, been at a 
 crack Oxford College (University), but he had spent 
 twelve years in the Navy (1758-70), under Howe.. 
 Before getting his majority in the Nottingham militia, 
 he did some soldiering and more writing. He might 
 not have taken up the business of agitation manager 
 but for the fine of £200 he had just paid on the charge 
 of sedition. His good family connections and personal 
 popularity secured him the friendship of the great, 
 as well as the enthusiasm of the lowly. Thtis he secured 
 for his Union Club the adhesion of men like the Duke 
 of Norfolk, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Byron, and others, 
 representing the landed interests, such as Ducane of 
 Braxted, Fawkes of Farnley, Hodges of Hemsted, 
 and Rashleigh of Prideaux. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the central points of London clubland, 
 as well as in the provinces, there steadily advanced 
 the movement whose impetus animated and strengthened 
 the future creators of the Carlton and Reform. One 
 result of the overthrow of absolute king'ship in 1688 
 had been an immense increase in debating societies 
 on every social level, but for the most part on the 
 City side of Temple Bar or in the Fitzroy and Soho 
 quarters. The institution improved to suit the taste 
 of a more fashionable district reproduced itself at the 
 West End, and occupies a middle place between the 
 Brooks's or White's, in the time of Pitt and Canning, 
 and the two great party headquarters which to-day 
 ornament Pall Mall. 
 
 The hitherto unfamiliar details concerning the 
 
 II 
 
162 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 founder of Brooks's given above show that, from the 
 second half of the eighteenth century onwards, an upper 
 male servant in a great family saw in the private 
 venture club the same opportunity, on his retirement 
 from service, as his latter-day descendants have dis- 
 covered in the tavern, the hotel, or in the Mayfair 
 lodging-house. During the reign of George III 
 the Duke of Portland had an under-steward whose 
 name, easily corrupted into Goosetree, supplied with 
 its title a Pall Mall bagnio, at which the second Pitt 
 won the only money he ever made by gambling. 
 Its chief piUars were the men Pitt afterwards 
 ennobled — Robinson (Lord Rokeby) and R. Smith 
 [(Lord Carrington). The Goosetree's founder, or his 
 descendants, saw the rise of the debating societies 
 already mentioned. A Mayfair house which they had 
 on their hands gave them the chance of making a 
 new venture in this line. Thus originated the Clifford 
 Street Club. The mark made there by the most 
 illustrious of its earliest habituds, Georg'e Canning, first 
 brought him to the notice of Pitt. It was, in fact, a 
 iWest End edition of the Fleet Street Coger's Hall.' 
 A few doors off lived Addington, at whom in the 
 club Canning levelled his bitterest gibes. The chief 
 other debaters were Lord Charles Townshend, Sir 
 James Mackintosh — a combination which made the club 
 quite as much a commercial success as its projectors' 
 Pall Mall establishment — and a pushful mediocrity, 
 " Conversation Sharpe." Platitudes, spiced with malice, 
 poured forth without pause or end, have preserved 
 in an epithet the memory of this link between the 
 club society of Johnson, Burke, and that of Byron, 
 Rogers, and Moore . The trade of a hatter had brought 
 him a fortune ; the publication of his poems and essays, 
 
 ■ More exactly No. 15, Bride Lane. The Ancient Society of Cogers, established 
 1756, was the school in which many others besides Charles Bradlaugh trained 
 themselves for House of Commons debate, and was from the first quite the 
 most distinguished institution of the kind dealt with in this chapter. 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 163 
 
 a. taste for travel, art, and other modes of intellectual 
 self-indulgence, provided him with a means of spending 
 it. He entered Parliament, never to be heard of agiain, 
 and joined the Clifford Street Club, chiefly, it seems, to 
 regret that he could not induce William Wordsworth to 
 follow him. The poet, however, gratified him by saying 
 that he knew more of Italy than any other Eng'lishman, 
 neither Byron nor Rogers excepted. At the club he 
 talked well enough to receive from Mackintosh the 
 compliment of being the soundest critic he knew, while 
 in one of the debates, during! which George Canning 
 advocated the Liberal view, Sharpe put the opposite 
 argument so well as to elicit from the statesman the 
 words, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Tory." 
 
 The club makers of the pre-Carlton and Reform 
 period were party peacemakers as well as party, 
 organizers. The nineteenth century, indeed, brought 
 with it signs of a coming relaxation even in the political 
 rivalries of White's and Brooks's. But the honour of 
 the initiative in devising a club for the exclusive purpose 
 of bringing together men of various and even diametri- 
 cally opposite political views belongs to the tenth 
 baronet of the Acland line. This creator of Grillion's 
 was fitted alike by temperament and career for the 
 social part he was to play. The cross-bench mind 
 was afterwards to declare itself throughout the most 
 important episodes of his political course. He 
 co-operated with Wilberforce and Stuart Wortley in 
 their efforts to avert the scandal of the divorce pro- 
 ceedings against Queen Caroline, pressed by George IV 
 on the Liverpool Government. Like the Conservative 
 Lord Sandon, he showed his independence of party 
 by supporting Lord John Russell's repeal of the Test 
 and Corporation Acts in 1828. That was just sixteen 
 years after he first conceived the idea of using the 
 club as an age,ncy for promoting mutual knowledge, 
 social peace, personal goodwill between political com- 
 batants on both sides. Casually mentioned to some of 
 
166 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 specimen of this Grillionite bard's society verse, often 
 misquoted and mangled, may, however, be taken from 
 Grillion's authentic record :— 
 
 "The first of September one Sunday morn, 
 I shot a hen pheasant in standing com. 
 Without a licence : combine who cani 
 Such a cluster of crimes against God and man." 
 
 Gladstone was not the first member of the club 
 whose solitary repast the same muse had chronicled. 
 On March 9, 1864, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe sat 
 down companionless to table, minuting the fact in the 
 club book. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Oxford 
 being chairman. Lord Clarendon (Liberal) and Colonel 
 Wilson Patten (Conservative) united in a resolution 
 carried item. can. that " Lord Houghton do write an ode 
 on the event, and henceforth wear the title of the club 
 poet -laureate." Some years before this the place had 
 laeen promoted to official rank in English diplomacy. 
 In 1 85 1 Lord Granville, then the new Foreign 
 Secretary, following Palmerston's example, wished to 
 establish confidential relations by private letters with 
 our leading representatives abroad. Sir Stratford 
 Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, was 
 the most commanding figure amorig our diplomatists 
 abroad, but did not share the Foreign Secretary's Whig 
 opinions. In opening communications with him on the 
 subject, Granville began by pleading the freemasonry 
 of GriUion's as a sufficient introduction to his new 
 correspondent.' 
 
 As a scholar, but scarcely in any other respect, Sir, 
 George Cornewall Lewis had much in common with 
 Gladstone . Feeble and halting in his oratorical manner, 
 he seldom made a speech which did not contain one 
 or two memorable expressions. Amongst these was 
 the remark that life would be tolerable but for its 
 amusements. " The most real of these," he after- 
 
 ' Lord Fitzraaurice's Lord Granville, vol. i. p. 69. 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 167 
 
 wards said, "I have found at Grillion's dining-table." 
 It could not weU have been otherwise, for amongst 
 the brilliant contrasts of the club in his day were, not 
 only some already mentioned but the " Rupert of 
 debate," the fourteenth Earl of Derby ; two Indian 
 Viceroys, Lords Canning and Dalhousie ; Lord 
 Ashburton, Lord Stanhope the historian ; Lord 
 Lyttelton, Sir William SterlingI Maxwell, Lord 
 Shaftesbury, the poor man's peer ; Sir James 
 Graham, Charles BuUer, and Dean Stanley. The 
 twentieth century reveals the same charm of variety 
 that characterized the club in the nineteenth. Sir 
 Edward Grey may find himself seated next to Lord 
 Milner, Mr. Bonar Law may have for his next-door, 
 companion Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Carson and Mr. 
 Birrell are helped out of the same dish. Revisiting 
 England, the Indian Viceroy, Lord Hardinge of 
 Penshurst, would be sure to see in the company Field - 
 Marshal Earl Roberts. The most Catholic Duke of 
 Norfolk! enters the room at the same time as Edward 
 Stuart Talbot, Bishop of Winchester, to be followed 
 immediately by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Lord Derby, 
 and the Duke of Devonshire. The present number of 
 the club is eighty, ; four members are elected each 
 year, if so many vacancies occur.' 
 
 As free from party colour and as diversely repre- 
 sentative as GriUion's was the Cosmopolitan. It was 
 cradled during the winter of 1852 in the Bond Street 
 lodgings of Robert Morier, then of the Foreign Office, 
 a man full of useful and curious information, afterwards 
 our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, gradually throwing 
 aside in that position an opinion he had brought to it 
 of Russia's intention to lose no time in advancing on 
 Herat, while, as was then the case, we were pre- 
 
 ' Contrary to the prevailing impression, the name of Mills does not, it will be 
 seen, occur among the thirteen original members of Grillion's. The fact is that the 
 present Sir C. T. D. Acland's uncle, Mr. Arthur Mills, succeeded the founder of 
 Grillion's as the club secretary, while he lived chiefly at Bude in a house built 
 on ground given him by Sir Thomas Acland. 
 
168 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MBMBEES 
 
 occupied with Egypt and had an army locked up in 
 Africa . 
 
 " Why should not we and a few others," it was 
 asked, " come together, as we have done this evening, 
 in some place of our own on Saturday and Sunday 
 nights during the session? " The suggestion came 
 from A. H. Layard, whose eventful course then lay, 
 for the most part in the future. The Sultan's firman 
 and a large supply, of pickaxes had, indeed, already 
 secured him the nickname of " Nineveh," and won 
 him fame from his excavations in that ancient district. 
 The Dean of Bristol's son, and bom in Paris, he 
 was from his boyhood a " rolling stone." He had 
 not passed beyond his twenty-third year when, 
 traversing the vaUey of the Tigris on his way to 
 Ceylon, he was impressed by the appearance of the 
 neighbourhood, and thought of the prehistoric monu- 
 ments probably buried beneath its surface. Five years 
 later he had begtm his subterranean researches at 
 Nimrud, the undoubted Nineveih of biblical narrative. 
 Almost at the first turn of the spade he struck a main, 
 which afterwards led him to the discovery of four 
 palaces. The books recording his experiences made 
 him, not only the lion of the season but the first 
 authority in a department of learning till then prac- 
 tically unknown. 
 
 Henry Reeve, Registrar of the Privy Council, editor 
 of the Edinburgh Review and the Greville papers, 
 came in with the first batch. By the beg'inning of the 
 season and session of 1853, the Cosmopolitan had 
 become a brilliant success, membership of which ranked 
 only a little below and promised to be something like 
 a stepping-stone to Grillion's and "The" Club. 
 Established on the drawing-room floor in Charles Street, 
 Berkeley Square, that had been G. F. Watts's studio, 
 it became the one nocturnal lounge at the week's end 
 and beginning, regularly, frequented by the most 
 brilliant among those who remained of the Cambridge 
 
CLUBS, CLIQUES, AND COTERIES 169 
 
 " apostles," with Alfred Tennyson, the poet -laureate, 
 at their head ; Lord Houghton, James Spedding of 
 the Times, Baconian editor, and G. S. Venables, the 
 Saturday Reviewer, for his supporters. In its later 
 days the club included among its members the 
 pleasantest and brightest of Parliament men, the 
 ever-delightful Frederick Leveson-Gower, and Viscount 
 Barrington, one of Disraeli's two confidential lords- 
 in-waiting. Their contemporary, Henry Drummond 
 Wolff, combined in the happiest proportions the mental 
 acumen and close observation of his widely travelled 
 father with the outspoken insight into human nature 
 that, directly inherited from his maternal ancestor, Sir 
 Robert Walpole, imparted an airy cynicism to his temper 
 and talk, and made him in his prime an enjoyable 
 raconteur. The charm of contrast to Wolff was forth- 
 coming in Robert G. W. Herbert, the fourth Lord 
 Carnarvon's cousin, permanent Under-Secretary in the 
 department controlled by his kinsman, whose success 
 as Colonial Minister Herbert did not a little to promote. 
 
 For about half a century the Cosmopolitan remained 
 the London paradise of the intelligent foreigner. Then 
 the frequenters, who did so much to give it its character, 
 one after another from death or infirmity left their places 
 vacant. The lease of the famous old house ran out, 
 other quarters had to be found. At the beginning of 
 the twentieth century the club was only a pleasant 
 memory to those who, like the present writer, had 
 belonged to it, or a name of little meaning to those 
 who had not. 
 
 What, in the fifties, the Cosmopolitan began to be 
 for the night, the Breakfast Club on February 24, 
 i866j became for the morning. Its original or early 
 members included among others equally distinguished 
 its active promoter, Mount Stuart E. Grant Duff, his 
 particular friends Lord Arthur Russell, Sir James 
 Lacaita, Sir John Lefevre, Sir Edmund Head, Sir John 
 Simeon, Sir T. Erskine May, Sir W. Stirling Maxwell ; 
 
170 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Lords Carlingford, Goschen, Herschell, de Tabley, 
 Wolseley, and Reay, the Marquis of Lansdowne, 
 Speaker Peel, Mackenzie Wallace, Henry Cowper, 
 G. S. Venables, and Sir Alfred Lyall. The invitations 
 to the houses of all the members in turn were for 
 9.30a.m.; no one was waited for after ten. Gradually 
 it contributed as large a proportion to the governors 
 of the British Empire as Balliol College itself. By 
 1884 Lord Lansdowne had exchanged the Canadian 
 for the Indian Viceroyalty ; Lord Dufferin, after having 
 held various embassies, had become Indian Viceroy, 
 and Grant Duff himself had been successively Colonial 
 Under-Secretary and Governor of Madras. Indeed, 
 almost the only Breakfast Club men who failed to 
 achieve high promotion during these eighteen years had 
 either approached the end of their career when they 
 joined the society or had been withdrawn from it by 
 death or some other cause. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CLUB AS A HOME 
 
 The Travellers' Club and its creator, Lord Castlereagh — Features of the playroom 
 — Scenes between Talleyrand and Montrond — A diplomatist as conver- 
 sational leader — The Duke of Wellington's opinion of clubs, and what came 
 of it— The Union— The Windham— Makers of the Athenseum— Sir F. 
 Chantrey — J. W. Croker — His personal warfare with Macaulay in society and 
 politics — The Bowood "tale-bearer," Joseph Jekyll — His brother wits, 
 Luttrell and Rogers — Reasons for their close companionship — What Bulwer 
 Lytton thought of Rogers — The fusion of classes and professions at the 
 Athenaeum — A new quarter for reform — Thomas Walker's work in kitchen 
 and cellar. 
 
 With the nineteenth century, a reaction set in against 
 the club as the outwork and agency of Parliament. 
 Political organization, it was felt, had been secured 
 on terms disastrous to social intercourse. If life was 
 not to lose one of its chief pleasures, the brightest 
 and best of the ^Westminster partisans on either side 
 must be systematically brought together at a common 
 table in St. James's or Mayfair. That feeling had, 
 as the reader already knows, moved Sir Thomas 
 Acland in 1812, on lines generally resembling 
 " The " Club, to establish another dining society, 
 Grillion's. That, however, was a nomadic institution, 
 changing its weekly venue according to taste or con- 
 venience. After the United Service, the first politically 
 neutral club settled in its own permanent premises owed 
 its existence to a diplomatist, who had for some time 
 conceived the design of a Pall Mall society which should 
 be as cosmopolitan as Grillion's was impartial. At 
 the dining club, men of all political connections, sat 
 
 171 
 
172 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 down with great satisfaction together ; the Uving club, 
 now about to be created, was to form an international 
 home for distinguished foreigners, irrespective of the 
 country to which they belonged, or the form of polity 
 which they represented. 
 
 Special endowments and opportunities ensured success 
 in the execution of this scheme for Lord Castlereagh.' 
 He had been Foreign Secretary, and led the House of 
 Commons during the Liverpool administration. His 
 intimacy with the polite world in all its phases, his 
 aptitude for personal detail, and his untiring business 
 industry had made him of special service at White's, 
 where he first learned the art of club management. 
 White's, indeed, alone had given him the social training 
 only less indispensable than his high station and his 
 parliamentary experience for success in the control of 
 St. Stephen's, as well as in his violently opposed but 
 fruitful administrative course. For Castlereagh, as will 
 presently be seen, unlike his rival. Canning, never had 
 the advantage of an Eton training ; while, at the 
 University, instead of Canning's two years at Christ- 
 church, he only kept a twelvemonth's terms at St. 
 John's, Cambridge. 
 
 Yet this was the man who enabled the second Pitt 
 to carry the Irish Union, who, by trusting Wellington 
 with the command, crushed Napoleon, and thus 
 secured for Europe more than half a century of sub- 
 sequent peace. He now added to these achievements 
 the fame of a club founder, on lines then entirely new. 
 Each of these great performances was due to Castle- 
 reagh's unfailing presence of mind, sound sense, serenity 
 of temper, and unflinching courage, which carried him 
 through many difficulties that would have Wrecked 
 quicker intellects and more highly cultivated minds. 
 In reality, too, he no doubt gained, rather than lost, 
 from not, as a youth, having gone through the same 
 conventional mill as other lads of quality. At Armagh 
 
 ' Son of the first Earl and Marquis of Londonderry. 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 173 
 
 College he had studied the life and character of a 
 people, instead of, as must more or less have been the 
 case at an English public school, contracting the narrow 
 prejudices of a class. Personal intimacy with the Courts 
 and capitals of Europe formed a better apprenticeship to 
 his trade in life than the same time spent in dissipation 
 or even study on the Cam. From his mother he had 
 inherited the fine manner, if not the grace, of the 
 stately Seymours. Before he came of age he knew 
 as much of the chanceries and diplomatic coulisses of 
 Europe as he did of St. James's or Pall Mall. 
 
 By 1790, while still under twenty-one, he had been 
 returned to Parliament by the Tory landlords of the 
 County Down. In the next century, having meanwhile 
 been Foreign Minister at home, he went as British 
 representative, in 1818, to the Congress of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle . Thus habituated to intercourse with European 
 sovereigns and statesmen, he asked himself, during his 
 return journey, whether it might not be possible to 
 create in London a company whose ampler atmosphere, 
 inaccessible to the disturbing influence of party, might 
 recall, not only to Englishmen but to foreigners of 
 ambassadorial rank or antecedents, the Olympian air 
 of continental council-chambers and salons — in a word, 
 an international reunion, all whose appointments were 
 to be on a correspondingly impressive scale. 
 
 Passing through Paris, he saw, at his house in the 
 Rue de Rivoli, an old friend. General Sir William 
 Keppel, one of the survivors of those who had witnessed 
 George IV's marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and who 
 had won fame throughout Europe for his mellow 
 wisdom, for the sweetness and gentleness of his 
 manners, and for a power of patient listening, which 
 had recommended him to sovereigns and statesmen. 
 To him Castlereagh confided his project, with the result 
 that soon after reaching London he became the founder 
 and Keppel one among the original members of the 
 Travellers' Club. Subsequently Lord Chancellor Eldon 
 
174 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 successfully faced the ordeal of the ballot ; Sidmouth 
 was put up and blackballed. Castlereag-h himself used 
 the club regularly till the close of his life ; he dined 
 there together with Eldon just after his nomination 
 to attend the Congress of Verona in 1822. The two 
 friends made merry on that occasion over the name 
 borne by the club in which they were sitting being 
 also that of the newspaper belonging to their arch- 
 assailant in the Press, iWilliam Hone, abortively prose- 
 cuted in 18 1 7, and tried by Lord EUenborough, not for 
 libel on Ministers but for the profane parodies of the 
 Litany and the Athanasian Creed. As to Hone's poli- 
 tical gibes, the founder of the club laughingly reminded 
 his friend how he had been called " Old Bags," Sid- 
 mouth the " Doctor." " I myself," he added, " was im- 
 mortalized as ' Derry Down Triangle.' " A few days 
 later Castlereagh killed himself by cutting his throat 
 in the dressing-room of his house at Foots Cray. 
 
 From the first the club distinguished itself by supply- 
 ing foreigners of social or official position with a well- 
 appointed home^ temporary or permanent. The tariff 
 had the economical advantages of the Guards or the 
 United Service. High play of any kind was dis- 
 couraged, pure games of chance were forbidden, and 
 the whist points were kept severely low. The reputation 
 at this game brought by Talleyrand and another 
 stranger, Montrond, to the Travellers' card-room alto- 
 gether exceeded the skill and success of either. The 
 two men secretly disliked and were jealous of each 
 other . Talleyrand's ill-will frequently found very brutal 
 and by no means amusing expression — as when Mont- 
 rond, tilting his chair and losing his balance, fell back 
 to the ground in an epileptic fit. The stricken man, in 
 the convulsive clutching and tapping of his fingers on 
 the floor, only drew from Talleyrand the sneering 
 murmur, " // me parait qu'el veut absolument des- 
 cendre," and the company applauded and circulated 
 the remark as the great man's latest good thing. 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 175 
 
 Montrond himself could be equally bitter, but gene- 
 rally contrived to put more point and information into 
 his least amiable words. For instance, the appearance 
 in 1832 of Louis XVIII's "Memoirs" raised some 
 doubt of their authenticity. " Their genuineness," ob- 
 served Montrond, " is stamped on every page because, 
 while wishing to convince readers of his wisdom, he 
 caimot help writing himself down the consummate rogue 
 which every one knows him to have been." 
 
 Ten years later the gossips at the Travellers' were 
 discussing the successive bulletins from Montrond's sick- 
 room and telling each other how, thanks to the Duchess 
 de BrogUe and Madame Hamelin, both indefatigable 
 in their deathbed ministrations, he had gone through a 
 complete conversion and had passed away in the odour 
 of sanctity. 
 
 For at least fifty years after its foundation, the 
 Travellers' remained the centre of the best Anglo- 
 French table talk about the relations between the two 
 countries, and above all on whatever concerned the 
 growth and embellishment of the Napoleonic legend. 
 
 On these subjects, the Travellers' had for its oracle 
 a nobleman whom the gossips, groundlessly enough no 
 doubt, called the original of Dickens's Cousin Feenix 
 in Dombey and Son. This was the Lord Rokeby 
 who died during the April of 1847, at Naples, while 
 still, as years went, little past the prime of life, but 
 driven by various maladies into premature old age. He 
 had long spent most of his life abroad. He would 
 probably never have revisited England, but for the 
 attraction of his friend Castlereagh's club. As regards 
 bearing, address, and independence of character the 
 universally accepted model of his order, he had been 
 longer and oftener behind the diplomatic scenes than 
 any of his club contemporaries. Those who came 
 after him at the club might well fancy they still saw 
 him in his brother, the last wearer of the title, who 
 died in 1883. This Lord Rokeby not only reproduced 
 
176 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 his kinsman and predecessor's appearance and manner,, 
 but, having Hved in the closest confidence with him, 
 bequeathed to Mrs. Climenson, his daughter, the varied 
 and valuable memorials, skilfully condensed by that 
 lady into a work forming the best commentary possible 
 on one who will always be remembered as a club 
 worthy, as well as on not a few of the secret 
 international episodes which occasionally formed his 
 Pall Mall table talk. 
 
 " If something cannot hie done to change their tone, 
 clubs will gradually become like spouting booths at' 
 a country fair." So said the Duke of .Wellington, 
 while Master- General of the Ordnance, one of Lord 
 Liverpool's Cabinet — his ears, as he put it, deafened, 
 his whole being disgusted by the echoes of party strife. 
 Amongst those who heard the great man's remark, 
 were his private secretary, Arbuthnot, and a young 
 naval officer, Lieutenant Egerton, Lord Francis Eger- 
 ton's son, whose general intelligence and professional 
 zeal had won the Duke's good opinion. Nothing, 
 however, in the signs of the times promi ,ed any club 
 movement such as the Duke seemed to desire. On the 
 contrary, so far back' as 1822, the party managers 
 on both sides had begun to talk about the necessity 
 of supplementing Brooks's and tWhite's with institu- 
 tions more suited to the spirit of the time. Nevertheless 
 the decade and a half preceding the Grey Reform Act 
 witnessed in Pali Mall and its neighbourhood a desire 
 for places of social meeting into which politics, so far 
 as might be, should not enter. The Duke had no sooner 
 signified his viCjWS and wishes than those about him' 
 were moved to see what might be done towards ex- 
 tending the movement so successfully initiated by 
 Castlereagh in the Travellers'. 
 
 The earliest result of their efforts was the Union 
 Club, with the hero of .Waterloo for the most illus- 
 trious on the list, and with Sir Robert Peel coming 
 in soon afterwards. The Union was the first institution 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 177 
 
 to be from its birth a members' club. Candidates 
 were elected by the vote of the entire society. Its 
 original, distinctive, and long preserved feature was 
 the copious interfusion of professional men, bankers, 
 merchants, and lawyers with the country gfentlemen, 
 who, as the Duke had foreseen, found it a pleasant 
 alternative to Brooks's or White's. Applications multi- 
 plied more rapidly than was in the interests of the 
 society itself. It began to be honeycombed by mutually 
 hostile and jealous coteries and cliques. The country 
 gentlemen pilled the professions. The. lawyers and 
 doctors, not seeing their way to retaliate directly, 
 showed their independence and power by blackballing 
 indiscriminately those not belonging to their cloth . The 
 fortunes of the place suffered from the intestine strife. 
 The representatives of the .Wellington and Peel tradi- 
 tion wisely decided that disruption could only be averted 
 by transferring the power of election from the body of 
 the club to a committee, in whose hands it still remains. 
 To this day, the happy blend of the man -about -town, 
 the professional, and the squirearchical elements has 
 preserved for the Union its former attractions, both to 
 members and their guests, that marked it during those 
 Victorian years when Sir Bruce Seton, among the 
 pleasantest and best-known figures of the club-life of 
 his time, employed his evening's leisure from War Office 
 duties in familiarizing a series of representative com- 
 panies with the Union's best resources of cuisine and 
 cellar. Another of the club's leading Amphitryons 
 then was Sir Richard Quain, most amiable and 
 serviceable, whether of friends or doctors, presiding 
 over a party that generally numbered Lord James of 
 Hereford, Henry Cakraft, H. M. Stanley, and Anthony 
 Trollope. 
 
 Six years after the great Duke and his agents had 
 made their successful protest against the club systeni 
 becoming a political monopoly, one of Wellington's 
 countrymen founded on the same neutral lines as the 
 
 12 
 
178 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Union a club that has flourished uninterruptedly to 
 the twentieth century. Queen Anne's Secretary of 
 State, immortalized by Pope James Craggs, had a 
 sister, also his heiress, who married an Irish husband, 
 Robert Nugent, who subsequently and successively 
 became Baron Nugent, Viscount Clare, and Earl 
 INugent. To the daughter of this union, the first 
 Marquis of Buckingham's wife, was born Lord Nugent, 
 who lived much with literary men of his time, and 
 himself dabbled in prose and verse. 
 
 The taste for pen and ink was, indeed, hereditary 
 in his line j his grandfather, who had brought a title 
 to the family, lived with the wits of his day, and was 
 addressed by Goldsmith in his poem "The Haunch of 
 Venison." The descendant of the afterwards ennobled 
 Robert Nugent carried on his grandfather's socio - 
 literary traditions. Burke and Johnson's intimate, he 
 had no sooner gone through Oxford at Brazenose than 
 he became in London the Maecenas of his period. 
 From 1812 to 1832 he sat for Aylesbury, and 
 resigned his seat that he might go as Lord High Com- 
 missioner to the Ionian Isles. Returning to England 
 in 1835, he resumed, not without distinction, his course 
 at Westminster, and always in connection with the same 
 Buckinghamshire constituency which family influence 
 had first given him. There were, indeed, breaks in 
 his Aylesbury membership between 1837 and 1847. 
 During the last year, after unsuccessfully contesting 
 Southampton, he regained his original borough and 
 remained its representative till his death, in 1850. His 
 closing parliamentary sessions were signalized by his 
 motions for the abolition of capital punishment. 
 
 Had he been a richer man, with a domestic establish- 
 ment on the old grand scale, he might have had no 
 place among the club makers. As it was, he found the 
 r61e of entertainer so costly, and the list of guests 
 expectant so increasingly formidable, that the house 
 of William Windham the statesman. No- 1 1, St. James's 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 179 
 
 Square, had no sooner been vacant some time than he 
 secured it for the club which he named after the original 
 owner of the mansion. 
 
 Nugent's intellectual sympathies were quite as much 
 with the new sciences as with the old letters. The 
 movement that led three years later to the British 
 Association, 1831, was now fairly started. The various 
 Inns of Court, during the late twenties and the early 
 thirties, seem to have abounded in students who had 
 many intellectual interests, even though these did not 
 include any great zeal for their future profession. Many 
 of them had but recently g'one through the course 
 of foreign travel begun after leaving the University. 
 While abroad they had acquainted themselves with the 
 latest discoveries of continental researchers in various 
 branches of physical inquiry. Such subjects had for 
 them a permanent attraction greater than they had yet 
 found in politics or pen and ink. Most of them were 
 friendless and homeless in London;. Some found their 
 way to Nugent, who let them know that they might 
 not only be welcome but find congenial company at 
 the Windham Club. In this way, therefore, the place 
 from its very beginnings had a character and fulfilled 
 a mission so far entirely unique. There were, of 
 course, plenty of young men-about-town of a more 
 frivolous turn, but the superior element just described 
 formed for some years an appreciable leaven. From 
 the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the 
 Windham had more in common with Arthur's than 
 with any other club. During the dead season, while 
 repairs and cleanings were in progress, the two clubs 
 exchanged hospitalities . 
 
 Meanwhile, the club makers to whose example 
 Nugent and his colleagues of the Windham owed some- 
 thing could congratulate themselves on an achieve- 
 ment more important in itself and more far-reach- 
 ing in its results than any addition to the joint- 
 Stock palaces of Pall Mall since Lord Lynedoch 
 
180 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 arid Sir Rowland Hill had called thq United Service 
 into being. 
 
 Upon one point the three or four men of widely- 
 differing antecedents and character who combined to 
 found the Athenaeum in 1824 were unanimous. Art, 
 literature, and science had become powerful enough 
 to dispense with purely aristocratic patronage. The 
 originators of the Athenaeum belonged by birth to 
 the middle class. Taking them in alphabetical 
 order : Sir Francis Chantrey was a Derbyshire 
 carpenter's son. Apprenticed to a carver and g;ilder 
 in Sheffield, he showed a skill in modellingt stone and 
 wood that attracted the notice of the mezzotint engraver 
 J. R. Smith. The good offices of this his first friend 
 enabled him on his twenty-first birthday to strike out 
 a new line by cancelling his indentures, going to 
 London, and studying in the Royal Academy schools. 
 While thus a student, he supported himself by wood- 
 carving, with such results as soon to be promoted to 
 marble. Without any help or introductions from the 
 rich and g;reat, his first work in stone, a bust for 
 Sheffield Church, was followed by commissions for stone 
 heads on a larger scale of naval celebrities to adorn 
 Greenwich Hospital. By 1807 his artistic industry 
 and a discreet marriage had made him an independent 
 man. He still remained busy in his studio, executed 
 the statue group that still adorn the Lichfield Cathedral, 
 " The Sleeping Children," and had won twofold 
 European fame by his marble figures of statesmen 
 and sovereigns and by the treatment of imaginative 
 subjects shown in his " Peace and Plenty," his 
 " Penelope," and his " Satan." 
 
 Chantrey's chief colleague at the Athenaeum was 
 the man generally credited with the lion's share in 
 founding the club. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), 
 a native of Galway and the son of an Excise officer, in 
 the opening year of the nineteenth century exchanged 
 Trinity College, Dublin, for Lincoln's Inn, London. 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 181 
 
 The foundation of his success was, not professional 
 distinction as a lawyer but the skill and happiness with 
 which he hit off the public taste in his letters to the 
 French Revolutionist TaUien, published by the Times. 
 In his mastery of that subject he had few rivals, and 
 his perfect command over it secured him at least one 
 victory over Macaulay during the 1832 Reform Bill 
 debates.' The rivalry of the two men extended from 
 politics to society and from Parliament to the club. 
 Macaulay casually remarked at the Athenaeum that 
 he knew only two ways of governing men, by public 
 opinion and the sword. For some days afterwards 
 Croker's table-talk abounded in efforts to cap, to con- 
 trovert, or to improve on the observation. Croker, 
 it has been circumstantially shown, was much less 
 black than Disraeli and Macaulay agreed to paint him. 
 The social jealousy which, in Coningsby, made Rigby 
 try to keep Lucian Gay out of Monmouth House was 
 so absent from the Croker of real life that he secured 
 the friendship and service of the Prince Regent for 
 Walter Scott, as well as the refusal of the laureateship. 
 No two men sat at the same table more frequently 
 than the author of Waverley and the Quarterly 
 Reviewer, and it became a fixed club opinion that 
 Croker owed not a little unpopularity to his inevitable 
 personal comparison with Scott. To Croker's disadvan- 
 tage, as it could not but be, women as well as men 
 contrasted the sarcastic table-talk and the contemp- 
 tuous expression of his face with the always amiable 
 
 ' See T. E. Kebbel's Essays ufon\History and Politics (Chapman and Hall), 
 1864. On December 20, 1831 Macaulay had warned the English aristocracy 
 against bringing on themselves the same destruction that had overtaken the French 
 noblesse because of their obduracy to the popular demand for political rights. 
 " But," asked Croker, " did those nobles show the blind and obstinate resistance 
 imputed to them ? " As a fact they joined the Tiers Etat with headlong alacrity, 
 and even led the way in the giddy orgies o. ruin. It was a Montmorency who 
 offered the privileges of the nobility on the altar of sacrifice, and a Noailles who 
 proposed the abolition of all feudal and senorial rights. Turn over the page, and 
 we find the Montmorencies in exile and the Noailles on the scaffold. 
 
182 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 conversation, the frank and benevolent countenance of 
 the good and great Sir Walter. Yet the reputed 
 original of Disraeli's Rigby had a personality neither 
 unpleasing nor unimpressive. Under rather than above 
 middle heig'ht, his slight, well-knit figure was so perfect 
 in all its proportions as to convey a sense of natural 
 dignity. A glance at his face and a niinute or two's 
 exchange of remarks were enough to tell the casual 
 acquaintance of brain power, quick perception, and 
 active intellect. He had, too, the capacity of making 
 the first personages of his time, including the Duke 
 of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, take him seriously 
 at his own estimate of himself. The damaging dis- 
 closureSj as they were called, of his confidential business 
 relations with the Duke of York and Lord Hertford 
 were so put by Louis Jennings » in his encyclopaedic 
 work as to win from two judges, not less competent than 
 Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt, the verdict 
 that Croker came remarkably well out of it. Whether 
 in club, drawing'-room, or print, Croker's enemies were, 
 not his rivals and caricaturists but his own overwhelm- 
 ing egotism, much paraded superiority, and omniscience. 
 These were qualities resented by Byron when, on the 
 publication of " Beppo," 1818, Croker told Murray 
 that the inspiration of this poem was purely Italian. 
 Berni, Byron admitted, had founded that kind of 
 writing, but, he added, " my poem all the same is 
 purely English, and my immediate model was ' Whistle- 
 craft ' [Hookham Frere] . As for Croker's further 
 suggestion, that I plagiarized from Rose's AnimaU, 
 I did not know you had published the translation till I 
 saw it a few days ago." After 1824 the Athenaeum 
 and its affairs became in themselves a sort of pro- 
 fession to Croker. They did not, however, interfere 
 with his long prepared and much talked of edition of 
 Boswell, published in 1831, or cause Macaulay to 
 
 ' See Croker's Memoirs and Correspondence, ediled by L. T- Jennings 
 (Murray, 1884). 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 183 
 
 neglect the pickle in which he was keeping the rod to 
 be applied directly his enemy's magnum opus appeared'.' 
 During his Athenaeum days club memories also 
 naturally ran on the literary hot water out of which 
 Croker never long kept himself. Thus the critic had 
 written one of his slashing" articles on Lord John 
 RusseU's Life of his own compatriot and friend Thomas 
 Moore. Russell, by way of reply, showed that Croker, 
 while indulging the safe malignity of his pen, had 
 been cultivating his own acquaintance, as well as asking 
 his good offices, for his own ends. Much later, between 
 1848 and 1857, Croker published in the Quarterly 
 those onslaughts on Macaulay's History of England 
 which caused Samuel Rogers pleasantly to remark that 
 Croker had attempted murder, but had only committed 
 suicide. Especially did the Athenaeum Club become 
 a personal battle-ground between the two men during 
 the period of instalment in its present building", 1830. 
 That year, by bringing Macaulay to Westminster as 
 Member for Calne, marked the beginning of their 
 parhamentary feud. For Croker, who had held the seat 
 for Downpatrick since 1807, stood so well with all 
 the Tory leaders of his time, and showed such official 
 ability as to have become in 1809 Secretary of the 
 Admiralty. He held that office till the fall of the 
 Wellington administration, in 1830. His literary retire- 
 ment which followed proved most active, and among 
 other things produced the rechristening of the Tory 
 party as the Conservatives .2 Nature had formed him 
 for a life of bustling self-assertion. He seemed out 
 
 " Fourteen years before this Sir Walter Scott generously acknowledged to an 
 Athenaeum acquaintance his obligation to Croker's Stories for Children from 
 English History, for his own Tales of a Grandfather. As for the Boswell episode, 
 it had been matter of Athenxum gossip for some time that Croker's edition would 
 at once be tackled by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 * First, in a Quarterly Review article, written after much conference with Sir 
 Robert Peel. The new name gained general adoption during the elections of 
 January, 1833, and was recognized by Lord John Russell, who met it by himself 
 taking that of Reformer. 
 
184 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 of his element during his forced abstinence from 
 occupation with the affairs of others. Nothing there- 
 fore could have been more congenial to him than the 
 swift succession of personal detail and the free scope 
 for the exercise of administrative ingenuity and personal 
 predilection afforded by the society of which, from the 
 first he had put himself forward as the incarnation. On 
 May II, 1829, was held a 'general meeting of the 
 club. One of its trustees and a permanent member 
 of the committee, Croker had specially concentrated 
 himself on the architectural details for the stately fabric 
 then rising in Pall Mall. The original scheme pro- 
 vided the same four-columned portico as that which 
 ornaments Pall Mall to-day. Without consulting his 
 coUeagties, Croker had taken steps to substitute one 
 of two columns. On the motion of a little known but 
 original member, a Scotch physician. Dr. Henderson, 
 a keen debate about the whole subject arose. But 
 behind Henderson and one or two more there stood 
 Macaulay. All these warmly advocated the first plan. 
 Samuel Rogers and Crabb Robinson were equally strong 
 in the same direction. The general sense of the 
 meeting was that the time had come to throw off 
 the Crokerian despotism. " Move I Move!" became 
 the general cry ; and the Macaulayites carried by 
 acclamation the proposal not to affront the committee 
 by substituting for its collective scheme the arbitrary 
 amendment of an individual. 
 
 Of the Athenseum company in the pre-Victorian days, 
 now looked back upon, belonged one or two others 
 of what may be called the Bowood g'roup. Lord 
 Lansdowne, it has been seen, wisely wished not to 
 put himself in the forefront of the enterprise. He 
 smiled, however, his active approval, and it prospered 
 accordingly. In the first half of the nineteenth century 
 Lord Lansdowne was the figtire-head and patron of 
 men, without the spice of whose conversation any club 
 would then have lacked its most essential flavour. Such 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 185 
 
 were the two sharpest tongues that had wagged almost 
 from time immemorial in Pall Mall, and that linked 
 the traditions of Selwyn and Alvanley with the per- 
 formances of Theodore Hook, Abraham Hayward, and 
 Bernal Osborne. 
 
 Born in the reign of George III, and living into 
 that of Queen Victoria, Joseph Jekyll, after going 
 through Westminster and Christchurch, set up in 
 society during the Regency on an anecdotic capital, 
 chiefly derived from his father, a naval officer, who 
 had not only sailed round the world with his eyes and 
 ears always open, but had dined and talked with states- 
 men and generals personally concerned in the rise 
 and fall of the first Napoleon. A barrister by pro- 
 fession, Jekyll first rose to fame as a depositary of legal 
 jokes, most of which when he beg'an were new. Some 
 of them had been rehearsed at Bowood, if not elsewhere, 
 too, before their issue from the Athenaeum secured 
 them metropolitan currency. During Lord Mansfield's 
 Chief Justiceship heavy arrears of work were supposed 
 to necessitate a sitting on Good Friday. The barristers 
 would not attend. The judge went through the cases 
 with the attorneys alone — " a thing," said Serjeant 
 Davy, " never known before." " Naturally," observed 
 Jekyll, " seeing there has been no precedent for such 
 a transaction since the time of Pontius Pilate." Great 
 as a lawyer and advocate. Lord Erskine, the tenth Earl 
 of Buchan's youngest son, never caught the ear of 
 St. Stephen's or showed much fluency of speech else- 
 where. So iU did he acquit himself at a Fishmong'ers' 
 Hall dinner that Jekyll, who was sitting near, asked 
 him in a very audible aside whether it was in honour 
 of the company he had floundered so. Jekyll had 
 followed Dunning as Member for Lord Lansdowne's 
 borough, Calne. His parliamentary patron's house 
 became to him a second home. " This pert joker's 
 one vocation in life," amiably remarked Jeremy 
 Bentham, who had not much in common with the wits. 
 
186 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 "is to act as tale-bearer to the household at Bo wood." 
 The description, when repeated at the Athenaeum, was 
 met with a stinging retort from Charles Duller, then, 
 as always, the social ally of Monckton Milnes. Indeed, 
 whether at the club or in private house, the two worked 
 together, concerting their epigrams or anecdotes before- 
 hand, and each in turn so leading! in the conversation 
 as to give the other the best chance of exhibiting his 
 well-prepared verbal fireworks. 
 
 Of the same Athenaeum standing as Jekyll was the 
 breakfast-giver, the poet of Italy, who, dying in 1885, 
 outlived most if not aU fathers of the club. Rogers 
 and Jekyll were seldom out of each other's society. 
 "It is the only way," said Jekyll, " in which I can 
 prevent Rogers saying spiteful things about me." And 
 in another room of the same club at the same hour 
 Rogers might have been heard making the same 
 observation about Jekyll. 
 
 Equally sharp and caustic of tonglie, but without 
 the nerve control and calmness of Jekyll, was another 
 of Rogers' club associates, first known as the " Colonel 
 Luttrell of Junius " ; he was a natural son of Lord 
 Carhampton, the Irish Commander-in-Chief, and was 
 much sought after by Rogers, because, as was said, 
 his bustling vivacity seemed the only thing which could 
 impart warmth and movement to the chilly and 
 sepulchral serenity of the banker bard's prevailing 
 manner. Resembling JekyU in the smart impudence, 
 talk, and manner that won Jekyll his reputation 
 for wit, Luttrell showed himself far more sparkHng 
 and widely informed in conversation than either 
 Jekyll, Rogers, or any other of his sect. The infancy 
 of the Athenaeum witnessed a characteristic display of 
 his peculiar temperament. Lady Holland had been 
 driving him in her carriage from Kensington to Pall 
 MaU. Part of the road had been very rough ; her 
 ladyship was very nervous. She therefore told the 
 coachman to proceed slowly. The drive, performed 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 187 
 
 at a foot's pace, occupied some hours. Luttrell reached 
 his destination to find that the friend whom he had 
 kept waiting had lost patience and gone. " No 
 wonder ! " he hissed out between clenched teeth. " Did 
 not the very funerals all pass us? " 
 
 What Rogers and Luttrell were at the beginnings 
 of their fame, they remained to the end — Luttrell, at 
 fourscore, an unrepentant and a most -sought -after 
 diner out, the life and soul of every party, the coveted 
 quarry of every hostess and host. Equally unchanged, 
 so long as breath lingered in the attenuated frame, 
 was Rogers. To the last the same mild venom as in 
 his maturity flavoured his every word, causing Jekyll, 
 on his last appearance in the club, to compare him with 
 one of those soft caterpillars that crawl gently and 
 quietly over the skin, but mark their track by irritation 
 and blister. Notwithstanding his bitterness, Rogers 
 had nothing about him of the bully, was not really 
 unpopular with such of the Athenaeum rank he noticed, 
 and spoke as if he hated only those of his social 
 betters whom the world agreed to praise. He made 
 it his special mission to play the part of the slave in 
 the triumphal procession of the Roman Emperor. He 
 might sometimes put in a good word for the absent 
 subject of universal abuse ; his dissentient voice never 
 failed to break the chorus of general praise. Thus 
 the vocabulary of panegyric was being exha.usted upon 
 a certain young peer noted for his good looks, his 
 brains, and his wealth. Rogers listened in patient but 
 visible disgust. At last, unable longer to bear the 
 strain, he murmured, "Thank Heaven, he has bad 
 teeth ! " A little later the over-praised nobleman came 
 up for election at the club. The decisive blackball 
 was dropped into the ballot-box by Rogers.' Jekyll, 
 at the Athenaeum dinner-table, was the one member of 
 
 " For, as he frankly explained to the historian Grote, much the same reason 
 that the Athenians ostracized -Nicias, because they wearied of hearing him called 
 by every one " the Just." 
 
188 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the club who could igiiVe odds to its quickest and sharpest 
 repartee -maker, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Dudley 
 and Ward. But then it must be remembered that 
 it was Rogers himself who, exasperated by one of 
 the nobleman's very personal remarks about his appear- 
 ance, retaliated with the familiar qpigram of learning his 
 speeches by heart. The best of Rogers came out, not in 
 the conversational tournament of the dinner-table but in 
 colloquy with an audience " fit though few." 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton, at the Athenaeum, had always rather 
 avoided him. One evening in the^ dead season the 
 novelist, having been at the play, acceded to the bard's 
 request that he would sup with him in St. James's 
 Place. "His talk," said the novelist, recounting the 
 experience, " was the most brilliant, varied, instructive, 
 and inspiring to which I ever listened. And it was 
 poured forth continuously from a little before midnight 
 till within an hour or two of dawn." 
 
 The only other joint-stock palace that could compare 
 with the Athenaeum as a genuine home for its members 
 was the United Service, its senior by nine years. The 
 younger establishment gradually realized a distinction 
 desired and foreseen for it from the first by Croker, 
 necessarily not within the United's reach. In other 
 words, its neighbours of all kinds appreciated the 
 compliment of contributing their foremost representa- 
 tives to it. The Athenaeum numbers from time to 
 time as many famous soldiers and sailors as its nearest 
 Pall Mall neighbour, founded by Lynedoch and. Hill. 
 It is as well supplied with ambassadors as the 
 Travellers', with the makers and unmakers of adminis- 
 trations as Brooks's or White's, the Carlton or the 
 Reform. Throughout the nineteenth century it was 
 the only London home of his spiritual lordship, Samuel 
 Wilberforce. It afforded the same domestic haven 
 to most occupants of the episcopal bench. Hence 
 the joke wickedly invented for Lord Salisbury that 
 he had to give up going to the Athensum because 
 
THE CLUB AS A HOME 189 
 
 the bishops took away his new umbrellas by mistake. 
 Here, too, one of those same bishops heard Lord 
 Brougham deny the authorship of the Edinburgh article 
 on Byron's first volume of poems, while, a little later, 
 he was one of the country house party which received 
 Brougham's confession of the Edinburgh Reviewer 
 having been none other than himself. In that 
 Athenseum period prominent and unfailingly regular 
 figures were also Abraham Hayward, Eothen King- 
 lake, Chenery, Delane's successor at the Times, as 
 well as the most distinguished officials and authors 
 then at work. These, at the luncheon hour, included 
 Sir Lewis Mallet, of the India Office ; Robert G. W. 
 Herbert, the Colonial Under-Secretary ; M. E. Grant 
 Duff and Laurence Oliphant. St. Mary's Church, 
 Whitechapel, contains a memorial tablet to the man 
 who, more than any other of his day, had been instru- 
 mental in perfecting the home life and conveniences 
 of the club. 
 
 This was Thomas Walker, son of the Manchester 
 cotton-spinner, who founded the local Constitutional 
 Society and formed a chief piUar of Lancashire 
 Whiggism. His most interesting monument, however, 
 is the Original, published by him in the interest of 
 good cookery and high health in the year before his 
 death at Brussels in 1836. "His one real and sufficient 
 title to immortality is," said Hayward, " the Athenaeum 
 cuisine and cellar." In the latter he introduced the 
 first really good claret at a moderate price ever drunk 
 in Pall Mall. This was the wine that Hayward himself 
 had in mind when he disclaimed the reputation of a 
 professional diner out : " Cold beef, if you like, does 
 for my dinner, provided there is g'ood claret, and 
 plenty of it." The considerations sug'gested by this 
 remark, however, pave the way to another chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 
 
 How mediaeval clubmen dined — Subsequent reformers of the club menu — The 
 club cuisine, the high-water mark of the cookery of the period — Survivals, 
 revivals, and specialities in White's kitchen and elsewhere — Changes in the 
 club dinner-hour — The French Revolution's effect on English dining — 
 Culinary perfection and speculation made the foundations of a new club — 
 Crockford's — Its cook, Louis Ude — Its wits and most prominent habitufe — 
 Lord Willoughby D'Eresby — Count D'Orsay — Statesmen and diplomatists at 
 Crockford's — The hazard-room, and supper-table — The personal incidents 
 leading to the abolition of " hells " — Crockford's among them — The last of 
 the Crockfordians, Sir W. H. Gregory, George Payne, Frank Lawley, and 
 the short-lived refiige at the Coventry Club. 
 
 In the most popular arts for the gratification of the 
 senses, music, painting, cookery, and. wine manufacture, 
 the moderns have had little to learn from the ancients. 
 The two most learned and practical authorities on the 
 subijeot, BeauviUiers and Car^me, have shown that 
 neither the Roman, nor the Athenian cuisine produced 
 anything likely to be appreciated by the discriminating 
 palate of Christian Europe. That, too, is the verdict of 
 impartial historians of the kitchen,' as well as of 
 scholarly critics like the already mentioned Thomas 
 Walker, and his commentator, Abraham Hay ward. The 
 Athenians, of course, were to the cuisine of antiquity 
 what the French afterwards became to that of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 The Roman commissioners to the Attic capital for 
 
 ' Such are William Rabisha in The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected (London, 
 1675), Mrs. Hannah Glasse in Cookery made Plain and Easy (1747), and R. 
 Warner, Antiquitates Culinare (1791). 
 
 190 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 191 
 
 investigating the laws of Solon brought back with them 
 some domestic suggestions much appreciated by the 
 housekeepers of the seven-hilled city. More than a 
 century and a half later a family intimate of Pericles, 
 the little known poet Archestratus, so far combined a 
 gourmeVs taste with a poet's pen as to commemorate 
 in many verses the various products of the then known 
 animal and vegetable world. Further, he personally 
 watched their preparation for the table by the cooks of 
 the countries he had traversed, and only accepted dinner 
 invitations from those who valued the good things of 
 land and sea as highly as he did himself. Pericles, 
 however, on hearing this from his son, the poet's chief 
 friend, sceptically remarked that the fellow was always 
 like an undersized skeleton, and since his return had 
 dwindled almost to nothing. Talking over this story 
 at the Athenaeum, to .Washington Irving during his 
 last visit to England, Hayward said, " I have found a 
 classical prototype for the Dutchman in your History 
 of New York, who pined away so imperceptibly that 
 there was nothing left of him to be buried." 
 
 The first century a.d. witnessed an advance of far- 
 reaching results in Roman cookery, thanks chiefly to one 
 of the three epicures, bearing the name of Apicius,' 
 who between 14 and ^y founded cookery schools, and 
 was hailed by his disciples as " mighty master." This 
 gastronomic worthy, having by a course of table ex- 
 travagance, reduced his fortune to a poor £80,000, 
 heroically chose death to starvation on such a pittance. 
 To pass from Periclean Athens to Imperial Rome, 
 Lucullus and his convives seem first to have demanded 
 that their menu should be the costliest which ocean, 
 earth, and air could furnish. Hence the value set upon 
 
 • The first of these belonged to the age of Sulla, B.C. 92, the second is men- 
 tioned in the text. Quite early in life he won fame with his contemporaries, 
 and assured himself of immortality afterwards by his sauces and confection. 
 The third, Celius, presided over the Emperor Trajan's kitchen, and especially 
 distinguished himself by an invention for sending his master fresh oysters while 
 on his Asiatic campaigns. 
 
192 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the dishes made from five hundred pe3.cocks' brains, 
 or from the tongues of as many nightingales. Cleo- 
 patra therefore only followed the fashion by quenching 
 her thirst with a decoction of pearls, and it was un- 
 conscious fidehty to classical precedent that made the 
 English sailor place a £io note between two pieces of 
 bread and butter for the. lovely Mrs. Sawbridge ' to 
 eat as a sandwich. 
 
 The two bright features relieving the darkness of 
 the Middle Ages were the culinary and the literary 
 renaissance. Before then, however, in the eighth cen- 
 tury, Charlemagne's feasting companies described by 
 Brillat Savarin (in other words, the clubi dinners of the 
 period) helped to raise the standard of table arrange- 
 ments . 
 
 Then came the Normans, whose educated and edu- 
 cating taste in cookery may be judged from Sir Walter 
 Scott's historically accurate description of the banquet 
 (ii97)j given by Prince John after the tournament at 
 Ashby-de-la Zouche. Not only venison pasties, but 
 others composed of the most exquisite foreign deli- 
 cacies, generically known as karum pie, as well as 
 preparations of larks, pigeons, and nightingales, ap- 
 peared at these Norman feasts, which, more closely 
 than the Saxon, presaged the club dinner, because they 
 were for the most part bachelors' banquets. ^ Amongst 
 the Norman contributions, first to the French, after- 
 wards to the English menu, were ices and cunningly 
 prepared salads. In England, however, as in France, 
 the earliest great kitchen reformers were of the nation- 
 ality which, personified by Francis Bianco, alias White, 
 introduced the club system to Pall Mall and St. James's. 
 In 1533, Catharine de Medici, as bride of Henry II, 
 brought to Paris several Florentine professors of the 
 domestic arts, perfected in the establishments of the 
 princely hosts then ruling the Tuscan capital. A 
 writer of that period, Montaigne, mentions his con- 
 
 ' The reputed original of black-eyed Susan. ' Ivanhoe, chapter xiv. 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 193 
 
 versation with one of these artists in Cardinal Caraffa's 
 service. "He expounded to me," says the essayist, 
 with the magisterial air of one declaring a grave theo- 
 logical doctrine, " the difference between the appetite 
 caused by fasting and that excited or piqued after 
 the second or third course;. He then dwelt on th^ 
 philosophy of salads and sauces, passing, in the rich 
 and magnificent terms drawn from the government 
 of an empire, to elevated and important considerations 
 connected with the order of service, and why somie) 
 dainties are better cold than hot." 
 
 Berini was the name of Catharine de Medici's cook, 
 whose instructions descended with unbroken contin- 
 uity to the days of Francis WJiite. One of Berini's 
 famous dishes was often seen at .White's Club, during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century. The genius who 
 prepared it afterwards entered the service of the first 
 Henry Labouchere, Lord Taunton, the second Henry's 
 uncle. As his guest at his Somersetshire house, _Quan- 
 tock Lodge, the present writer saw and tasted it. Its 
 picturesquely parti-coloured appearance was produced 
 by the contrast between slices of ruddy tongue and 
 some white velvety substance, which proved to be tripe, 
 laid on the side of the dish round the other ingredients 
 in the centre. It was, or at least by one of the company 
 was represented as being a dish with a histofy that 
 gives it special interest in these pag^es. Lord Taunton's 
 chef, Perron, was an importation from White's, where 
 he had introduced the ptat which so pleased the Quan- 
 tock Lodge guests. Amongst these was Mr. Gladstone, 
 whose knowledge of social life in medigeval Italy in- 
 cluded even its cookery. Perron's ancestors, from time 
 immemorial in the same line as himself, had delighted 
 royal palates by preparing them delicacies whose secret, 
 he said, had descended from the sixteenth-century 
 Berini to Signer Francesco Bianco, the founder of 
 White's Club. Bianco's recipes were all preserved, 
 and often referred to in the kitchen archives. Nothing 
 
 13 
 
194 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 more likely, declared Mr. Gladstone, than that one 
 speciality of iWhite's Glut) should be identical with the 
 favourite dainty of the French queen. Other dishes 
 traditionally distinctive of that institution will presently 
 be given a place among the characteristic products of 
 club kitchens. They may appropriately be preceded by 
 a retrospect of club cookery from mediseval times. 
 
 Neither at Hoccleve's Gourt of Good Company, not 
 . in the societies which, at different intervals, followed 
 it, did the club cellar or cuisine fall below, if it did 
 not rise above, the high-water mark of the time. While 
 taking their ease at their inn, the primitive clubmen 
 did not dispense with the elaborate ceremonial proper 
 to the feasting table in the Middle Ages, or the gradu- 
 ated hierarchy of butlers, pantlers, tasters, and carvers. 
 The carvers, indeed, must have had an easy time of it. 
 Joints, roast or boiled, did not become the chief items 
 in the bill of fare till the seventeenth century.' The 
 Court of Good Company, if not their Mermaid suc- 
 cessors, chiefly confined themselves to " made " dishes. 
 These largely consisted of flesh, fish, or fowl, reduced 
 to a pulp, and prepared with fried fruit, spices, and 
 wine. The luxury in most esteem, blamange (sic), 
 consisted of pounded chicken, almond, rice, and white 
 sugar, tinted just enough with sandal-wood, or blood, 
 to secure for it the name of the rose. Another con- 
 fection of the same class, gracing the Good Company 
 board when Sir Henry Somer was the guest of honour, 
 amedon, must have been nearly if not quite the same 
 as the mortrews which Chaucer celebrates in the 
 Canterbury Tales. It formed another variety of the 
 compote, which, made of meat, was as much a club- 
 standing dish under Richard II and Henry lY as the 
 fruit compote is at the Anglo-German table d'hdtes 
 of our own day. 
 
 Eggs, from the first, were much used' in the four- 
 
 ' Joints of meat were particularly patronized by Charles II, who was always 
 regaled on them by Lady Castlemaine. 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 195 
 
 teenth-century cuisine, and their yokes suffused amedon 
 or mortrews with a much appreciated saffron hue. At 
 other times when chicken formed the piece de resistance, 
 it was nearly always boiled, and served with verjuice 
 or sorrel sauce. At the best houses of call used as 
 club centres, croquettes, rissoles, haggis, black pudding, 
 and sausages of various kinds were as familiar in 
 Lancastrian or Tudor times as beef -steaks and mutton- 
 chops afterwards became. 
 
 Between 1575 and 1621 the Mermaid and the Apollo 
 entertainments marked a new and better stage in club 
 cookery. These confraternities were the earliest to 
 acquaint themselves with and adopt the kitchen and 
 table reforms for which the English clubman first, 
 and the English household afterwards, owe undying 
 gratitude to the sound common sense and the inno- 
 vating genius of iWilliam Rabisha, whose name and 
 writings have already been mentioned with the pioneers 
 and oracles of the British cuisine. He it was who closed 
 the era of animal food, taken in the form of pulp^ 
 and seasoned with barbaric sauces, and who, at the 
 school of cookery which he opened in the City, taught 
 the art of roasting game and poultry and bringing 
 them to table after the fashion of to-day. The Civil 
 Club in 1675 regularly opened with boiled meats, and 
 continued with game or poultry, each item cooked 
 and supplemented acc'ording to Rabisha's instructions. 
 The earliest club bills of fare prepared on Rabisha's 
 principles, and therefore the earliest club dinners of 
 the modern type, belong, niot to St. James's or Pall 
 Mall but were those of the Civil Club, under the 
 already mentioned Bryan Corooran's presidency ' be- 
 tween the years 1780 and 1830. Soup, 'fish, poultry, 
 ragouts, and joints appeared at these quarterly feasts. 
 The opening puree, generally some bird, was almost a 
 
 ■ The present writer's obligation, for whatever concerns the Civil Club, to the 
 present Mr. Bryan Corcoran has been confessed, it will be remembered, on an 
 earlier page. 
 
196 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 meal in itself, because often it contained whole the duck, 
 the partridge, or other bird which gave its name to the 
 dish. Then, at the West End club would come a chine 
 of mutton, a fillet of beef, and at Arthur's invariably 
 veal a la royate. 
 
 At this point, however, may be given the menu 
 which, during the year 1707, a certain Squire Hill 
 approved for a party of friends at White's. Two sorts 
 of soup, a puree of ducks, and a bisque of partridges 
 were followed by three or four varieties of fish. These 
 gave place to marrow puddings, sweetbreads, oyster 
 loaves, and mince pies. This substantial refection 
 derives additional interest from the fiact that it was 
 among the earliest at which the different dishes did 
 not appear on the table, but were served from the 
 sideboard. This a. la Russe method was, however, 
 seemingly not altogether the novelty it might have been 
 thought. It had, as a fact, been iadopted at bachelor 
 parties in Tudor times. After that, it had fallen into 
 disuse. The credit of reviving it belongs to Lord 
 Castlereagh's maiire d'hotel, Montoy, who also, for a 
 time, presided over the culinary arrangements of the 
 Travellers', and who, as regards the management 'of 
 that august society, condescendingly recogtiized in his 
 employer who founded it " my noble colleague." At 
 the Travellers', Montoy, who might have been twin 
 brother to Thackeray's Mirobolant in Pendennis, did 
 not disdain certain suggestions (inspirations he called 
 them), of Colonel Darner,' Richard Ford, the Devonian 
 traveller in Spain, Lord Marcus Hill,2 and Talleyrand. 
 The two first had consulted him about the cooking of 
 the first canvas-back ducks ever seen in England, a 
 present from the American diplomatist, Featherstone- 
 haugh to his friends at the club. The last won his 
 approval of the custom just introduced from France of 
 taking parmes;an immediately before cheese, and 
 madeira immediately after. 
 
 ' M.P. for Dorchester, 1847-52. " M.P. for Evesham, l?>z^-A^■ 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 197 
 
 At the particular point in the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century now reached, the club epicures, and the 
 chefs whom they favoured, might have been divided 
 into two schools. That represented at the Alfred by 
 the first Earl of Dudley, who died in the March of 
 i833j without exactly proposing to itself an ideal of 
 plain living and high thinking, did what it could to 
 discourage the vaulting ambition of the gastronomic 
 masters. English cookery, Lord Dudley and his friends 
 maintained, when good, was the best the world could 
 show. " Do not," he said to Alvanley, " talk to me 
 about entrees and entremees. Nothing in the world 
 can beat a good soup, a neck of venison, a d^uckling 
 with green peas, or a chicken with asparagus." Lord 
 Dudley's wholesomely patriotic influence upon the club 
 dinner table radiated from the Alfred to a wide cir- 
 cumference, and is felt at the Athenaeum, the United 
 Service, and many other clubs to this day. Dudley's 
 recommendation of a famous cooked-beef shop, patro- 
 nized by George IV as regent, became instrumental in 
 ensuring a supply of this meat, roast or boiled, hot 
 or cold, throughout clubland, and no item in the daily 
 menu was ever more in demand.' 
 
 On the other hand, vivurs like Lord Alvanley thought 
 that the art of dining had seldom been better understood 
 than by the prodigal feeders of Imperial Rome. The 
 true reason, it came to be said, why the witty gourmet 
 had given up the Alfred, as well as greatly diminished 
 his attendance at White's and Brooks's, Was the diffi- 
 culty of getting his favourite dish, a supreme de volailte, 
 made to his liking. It ought, he held, to be composed 
 entirely from the tit -bits of poultry known as the 
 oysters. It thus, of course, took some twenty fowls 
 to furnish forth one dish of moderate size. The 
 
 ' The popularity of Bellamy's historic cold joints already mentioned suggested 
 to some purveyors in or near St. Martin's Lane the preparation and sale of beef 
 better cooked than was possible at any private establishment, and always sent 
 out so hot that in The Art of Dining, p. 125, Hayward mentions the possibility 
 of sending a round to Birmingham without any loss of heat or gravy. 
 
198 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 supreme of ordinary dinner-tables had, before Alvanley's 
 day, secured for itself a high place amongi club 
 delicacies, and was served everywhere but at the 
 Athengeum. That exception has been anecdotally ex- 
 plained. John Wilson Croker had induced Lord 
 Hertford to dine with him at his house at Molesley. 
 A supreme appeared in honour of the great man, who, 
 before he could be induced to take any of it, said : 
 " Only |One artist in the world, my own chef, can 
 prepare this thing properly. Yours, of course," the 
 guest presently added, " is detestable." " Now, I have 
 you, my lord," rejoined the host. " That dish came from 
 the hands of your own cook, who is at this moment 
 in my house." " Then, all I can say," replied the 
 marquis, " is, you must have spoiled his palate by 
 drinking" beer with him." It must have been a Pyrrhic 
 victory for Croker. The little incident left so much 
 soreness behind as to make the dish an abomination 
 to him. He never talked about it again, and did 
 all he could to discourage its appearance at the 
 Athensum . 
 
 With one characteristic addition to the menu of that 
 club, made during his lifetime, Croker had nothing 
 to do. Colonel William Mure of Caldwell, the historian 
 of Greek literature, during one of his tours in Attica, 
 had proved the excellence of the native turkeys when 
 fattened on the olives of Hymettus. Some of these 
 birds, together with the necessary olives, he broug'ht 
 back with him and acclimatized at his Scotch country 
 seat, and occasionally presented them to his chief 
 London club. Hence the occasional appearance some 
 years afterwards on the Athenaeum dining-list of turkeys 
 prepared in the Hymettian manner. 
 
 A very different kind of writer, the creator of 
 Pecksniff, popularized pike and carp, and more than 
 won London clubs by recipes brought back by him 
 from Salisbury. But long before then Arthur's South 
 of England connection had made much the same dishes 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 199 
 
 a feature in its cuisine.' There is no salmon like that 
 taken from the Christchurch waters, nor trout to 
 compare with those caught in the districts watered by 
 the Hampshire Avon. To be tasted at their highest 
 perfection they must be done over a fire, if possible, 
 of myrtle wood. All this was diligently impressed 
 upon the cook at Arthur's by the Wiltshire and 
 Hampshire squires who at one time dominated the 
 club. The tradition has been handed down through 
 generations, and to-day Arthur's arrangements of fish 
 and fowl — the latter especially, including wheatears and 
 reeves — are among the best things to be eaten in St. 
 James's Street. 
 
 The club popularity of marrow from the earliest 
 times has already been mentioned. Marrow-bones, 
 clothed in snowy white napkins with the necessary silver 
 accompaniments, already an institution of the place, 
 were always ordered by the historian Gibbon when 
 he dined at Boodle's. From Boodle's, its cradle in 
 the St. James's quarter, this dish next grew into high 
 favour at the Windham, and, at the instance of his 
 private secretary Algernon Greville, was never wanting 
 at the Union when the Duke of Wellington talked 
 of dining there. 
 
 The great events through which the Duke had lived, 
 or in which he had taken part, coincided with the 
 opening of a new epoch in the club dinner-table. 
 First came the question of time. In St. James's or 
 Pall Mall, as elsewhere, the dinner-hour had varied 
 through centuries to and fro from any time between 
 lo a.m. and lo p.m. Oliver Cromwell always dined 
 at i.o; Joseph Addison, whether in his lodgings, at 
 his house of call, or in the convivial fraternities he 
 frequented, never later than 2.0. That was also the 
 time at which the poet Alexander Pope and his 
 
 ' This detail was given me personally by Mr. Hayward, who at the White 
 Hart Hotel, Salisbury, discovered the origin of the great novelist's fresh-water 
 additions to his menu. 
 
200 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Twickenham neighbour, Horace Walpole, sat down to 
 their chief meal. In 1740 Pope complains of his 
 friend Lady Suffolk inviting her guests for the fashion- 
 ably advanced but painfully inconvenient 4 o'clock. 
 Between 1804 and 18 10 6 p.m. replaced 3 to 4 as 
 the college dinner-time at Oxford. The innovation 
 shortly afterwards spread to the London clubs. 
 
 While absent on his campaigns, Wellington got into 
 the habit of not sitting down to table till the day's fi'ght- 
 ing was done, and, whenever that might be, generally 
 to a beefsteak -pudding as a dish that would not spoil 
 by keeping. On his return to London he brought 
 with him these habits. The 7 p.m. or 7.30 p.m. 
 dinner-hour jWas the social monument of the conqueror 
 of Waterloo. So, too, as regards the bill of fare. 
 The piece de resistance and potatoes au naturel, both 
 coeval with the revolutionary period of 1793, were 
 introduced by the Duke's officers, first at the United 
 Service and thence to the neighbouring establishments. 
 
 Meanwhile the Revolution had overthrown the aris- 
 tocratic hospitalities of the Faubourg St. Germain and 
 replaced them with cafes and restaurants. After some 
 experience at these, the unemployed chefs of the French 
 nobility drifted across the Chaimel, and soon, to their 
 great advantage, reorganized club cuisines. Thus, 
 while domiciled at Gore House, but on one of his 
 occasional visits to Francej Count D'Orsay in Paris 
 complained that French gastronomy had followed the 
 example of society, emigrated to England, and had 
 no wish to return, adding : " We do not absolutely 
 die of hunger here, and that is all that can be said." 
 
 This was in 1852. Some quarter of a century, 
 however, before that, as will presently be seen, the 
 Parisian artist of the kitchen had taken his place 
 among the club makers of St. James's ; while, much 
 more recently, Felix, the great captain's chef, lent 
 for a time by his grace to the Union, had improved 
 at that club on the Duke's favourite beefsteak-pudding 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 201 
 
 by the addition to it of oysters and mushrooms. In 
 the same place he also bequeathed to his successor 
 the idea of a mutton-chop pudding, with oysters but 
 without mushrooms, that remained for some time a 
 Union dish. In 1827 a French cook of wider immor- 
 tality than Felix obtained the great opportunity which 
 made him part -creator of an institution that marks 
 an epoch in a narrative like the present. At the date 
 now recalled the club palate generally had been 
 educated to a highly fastidious point, while, after a 
 temporary lull, the passion for play raged once more 
 at least as widely and feverishly as it had ever done. 
 Between the western end of Piccadilly and the east 
 side of Leicester Square there existed thirty-six 
 gambling houses, all of them filled night after night, 
 and many of them kiiown to be little better than 
 swindling dens, in which dishonestly kept hazard and 
 faro-tables emptied the pockets of the unwary. 
 
 These were the circumstances under which it 
 occurred to an astute tradesman of the smaller sort 
 that a fortune might be made out of an establishment 
 in which the attractions of an honestly managed 
 gambling-room were combined with those of a first- 
 rate cuisine. Hitherto he had been content with making 
 shillings or at most pounds from the lowly wayfarer. 
 He would now build a fortune on the foundation-stone 
 of the " nobs." 
 
 William Crockford, born in 1775, had begun by 
 laying the odds against horses to his customers in the 
 little parlour behind his fishshop close to Temple Bar. 
 According to rumour, more illicit forms of excite- 
 ment were known on the premises. Gradually he 
 conceived the notion of reviving, within the walls which 
 were once Watier's, the culinary perfection and specu- 
 lative charms of that institution, dismantled in 1 8 1 9 . 
 He found a partner in a certain Taylor. The two 
 therefore began business together in Watier's old 
 Piccadilly house. The ex -fishmonger was evidently 
 
202 CLUB MAKEES AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the master mind, and when, after working togfether 
 a year, the partners separated, Crockford had acquired 
 so much capital and so many backers as on an entirely 
 unprecedented scale, without difficulty and with great 
 eclat, to open in February, 1827, what his patrons 
 called his new concern. Magnificent, perfect in taste 
 and beauty, it contained the finest suite of rooms in 
 England, surpassing in splendour, as those who knew 
 both buildings said, even the Palace of Versailles. 
 
 Its architecture would have been little without its 
 cook. That personage, the indispensable joint-creator 
 of Crockford's, stands forth from the cooks of the 
 world, not only as a consummate artist but as the Gil 
 Bias of the kitchen. Louis Eustache Ude was the 
 son of a scullion in Louis XVI's household by an 
 attractive and vivacious milliner. The mother, seeing 
 her own good looks and cleverness perpetuated in 
 her boy, thought him too good for life below stairs. 
 She apprenticed him first to an engraver, then to a 
 printer, finally to a haberdasher. After this he became 
 a commercial traveller. Wearying of that employ- 
 ment, he next tried the stage. This not suiting him, he 
 set up an office, drove in a smart cabriolet, and turned 
 broker or jobber on the Bourse. Next, trying official 
 life as an inspector of gambling-houses, he was seized 
 with a desire to breathe once more the natal atmo- 
 sphere, and donned the white cap and blouse with 
 which it had been from the first the scullion's paternal 
 ambition to see him invested. In that capacity he 
 began with the Princess Letitia Bonaparte. After the 
 Bourbon Restoration of 18 13 he came to England 
 and soon obtained great engagements — successively with 
 the Duke of York and with the acknowledged head 
 of the English gourmands and gourmets, the second 
 Earl of Sefton. The completion of 'Crockford's palatial 
 structure was finished soon enough to secure him as 
 mattre d' hotel. The same year closed the life of his 
 old employer, the Duke of York, and elicited from 
 
WILLIAM CROCKFORD. 
 (From a frint kindly lent by ihc Devonshire Club.) 
 
 To (acep, 202. 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 203 
 
 Ude himself the comment : " Ah ! mon pauvre due, 
 howl much you shall miss me where you are gone ! " 
 
 An early chapter of Disraeli's Sibyl gives a notion 
 of the life at Crockford's as true as the descriptions 
 in most fashionable fictions, notably those of a novel 
 called after the place, are false. No representative of 
 the new wealth, after the manner set forth by the 
 romances of hig;h life, was ever lured to the place 
 that he might be plucked and pigeoned in its play- 
 rooms. The committee discouraged all candidates 
 except men of station and means. Whether hazard 
 or whist, the gambling arrangements were always above 
 suspicion. The playroom at the end of a long suite 
 was next to the apartment in which, throughout the 
 season, supper of the most elaborate kind Was g'oing on. 
 
 The magnificent peer who as Lord Gwydyr had led 
 the dandies at Watier's a decade earlier, was now, as 
 Lord Willoughby D'Eresby, the most imposing and 
 authoritative among the dandies at Crockford's. Those 
 ornaments of the place, if sometimes fops, were seldom 
 fribbles, noodles, or spendthrifts. At Crockford's the 
 future Napoleon III, then an exile, completed his 
 education in the reserve of manner and tongue which 
 afterwards made him the sphinx of Europe, and which 
 he always said he had learned from the grave, silent 
 men of the English turf ; there, too, he refused in 1830 
 the ofl^er of the brand-new Greek crovsm, while his great 
 friend D'Orsay showed himself, not only an arbiter of 
 fashion but a man of first-rate accomplishments, 
 sagacity," and wit. D'Orsay 's social part was, like 
 his personal endowments, hereditary ; for his father, 
 Le Beau D'Orsay, one of Napoleon's generals, and 
 
 " D'Orsay's judgment of character was at fault in the case of Louis Napoleon, 
 who, he said, having /sf ^esprit, had no future. But then, of all those conversant 
 with the talk at Crockford's, Benjamin Disraeli alone correctly predicted his 
 future. In that forecast he was confirmed at the time by no one else except 
 the host at Gunnersbury at himself and Louis Napoleon, Baron N. M. Roths- 
 child, who never doubted the great things in store for the Bonaparte adventurer. 
 So the present writer was told by the first Lord Lamington. 
 
204 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 particularly distinguished at the battle of Salamanca, 
 had passed for the handsomest man, not only in the 
 French Army but in all Europe. D'Orsay's stately and 
 symmetrical figure, developed to perfection by all manly 
 exercises, clothed in faultless taste but in the extreme 
 of fashion, so dazzled spectators with a sense of 
 splendour that, as they saw him driving: in his tilbury, 
 they involuntarily compared him with a gorgeous 
 dragonfly skimming through the air. The charm of 
 his conversational wit was heig;htened by the blend 
 of French and English that he chose for its medium. 
 Patronized by Lady Holland on his first arrival in 
 England, he was given a chair at dinner next to his 
 hostess. The lady was so stout as to find a difficulty 
 in keeping her dinner napkin in her lap. " Please pick 
 it up," she said, with a bland but authoritative smile to 
 the count. The performance and the request were 
 repeated so often that at last D'Orsay wearied of the 
 exercise, saying : " Ne ferais-je pas mieux, Madame, de 
 trCasseoir sous la table, a fin de pouvoir vous passer 
 la serviette plus rapidement? " 
 
 Crockford's itself was the scene of another witticis!m. 
 The diarist known in his day as Dandy Raikes had 
 written D'Orsay an anonymous letter, impressing the 
 wax which fastened it with something that might have 
 been the top of a thitnble. The recipient of this 
 missive soon found out who its writer was, and did not 
 forget that his face was touch pitted with smallpox. 
 Going up to him in Crockford's morning-room, he 
 pleasantly addressed him with : " Ha ! ha ! my good 
 Raikes, the next time you write an anonymous letter, 
 you must not seal it with your nose." 
 
 Membership of White's had never been more coveted 
 than that of Crockford's. To belong to it one need not be 
 a gambler, but one must be something of a personage. 
 The Duke of Wellington seldom played at all, and 
 never played deep. Lord Palmerston was equally 
 careful ; so were Lord Lyndhurst, John Wilson Croker, 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB PATES 205 
 
 and the most impressive of the Peelites, Sir James 
 Graham. None of them, however, failed nightly to 
 look in at Crockford's. The corps de diplomatique 
 was represented among others by Count Matuscewitz, 
 Prince Lieven's colleague at Palmerston's conference 
 for peacefully settling the affairs of Belgium and 
 Holland. Fresh from the St. Petersburg chancetlerie, 
 the joint Russian plenipotentiary had, with the rest 
 of the delegates, reached London in 1830. Like another 
 of his countrymen at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, Count Woronzow, Matuscewitz did not return 
 when the special business which had brought him 
 here was settled. As permanent Ambassador, he took 
 root in this country, spoke the langniage perfectly, 
 adopted English habits and tastes, and only departed 
 to become Russian Minister at Naples. 
 
 The triumphs of the culinary art achieved for 
 Crockford's table, by Ude first and Francatelli after- 
 wards, were enjoyed to the accompaniment of talk 
 worthy of their excellence. The Whig and Tory whips, 
 Henry Baring and Ben Stanley, sparkled competitively 
 with wit and repartee, only at times eclipsed by another 
 member of the club named Auriol, whose good looks and 
 personal charm were crowned by an unfailingly healthy 
 appetite, and whose uniform luck won him the name 
 of " Crockford's ugly customer." Nine and five were 
 Auriol's lucky numbers, as they were also the favourite 
 ones iwith another of Crockford's leviathans, BaU 
 Hughes, though less frequently with Auriol's good 
 results. Lords Chesterfield, Lichfield, and Cantilupe, 
 the last of the dandies, as WiUoughby D'Eresby was 
 the first and greatest, and Sir Vincent Cotton played 
 habitually for stakes not less heavy than Auriol and 
 Hughes. The scene of their operations, in comparison 
 with the supper-room, was small, most of it being filled 
 by the large green table presided over by the croupiers. 
 Page, Darking, and Bacon, ea:ch equally conspicuous 
 for a fateful, bland impa;ssivity of cotintenance, a 
 
206 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 general sleekness of appearance, stiff, spotless white 
 neckcloths, and the dexterity with which they raked 
 away the stakes of the punters at the table. In a 
 corner of the room, from a desk somewhat raised above 
 the floor, the proprietor himself as groom-porter silently 
 and incessantly watched over all, scrutinized every 
 one who entered and every coin or note staked. 
 The fishmonger was fifty-two when he opened his 
 " hell." ;He had, therefore, passed middle age at the 
 time of the incidents now described in the forties, and 
 his face had acquired an expression of sly and oily 
 omniscience. 
 
 Crockford's, like known " heUs " of every kind, re- 
 ceived its deathblow from the Report of the House of 
 Commons Gambling Committee, 1 844.1 Before then, 
 and particularly in 1832, Crockford's became more of 
 a socio-political lounge for party malcontents from 
 both camps. At the supper-table there sat side by side 
 Benjamin Disraeli, in the glory of his jet-black curls, 
 Bulwer-Lytton, proud of his abundant auburn hair, the 
 Waterloo heroes, Lord Anglesey and Sir Hussey Vivian. 
 Near these, in the same ringing voice as a little while 
 before he was calling the main in the playroom, Tom 
 Duncombe, dandy, demagogue, the Chartist patrician 
 champion, told Colonel Armstrong, famed for his 
 pungent comments and rasping repartees, how, look- 
 ing in on the Upper House Reform debate a few hours 
 earlier, he had heard Lord Carnarvon say that to support 
 the Bill a man must have a fool's head on his shoulders 
 with a traitor's heart in his bosom. 
 
 On Tuesday, May i oth, the Duke of Wellington was 
 sent for by the King, and, abortively as it turned out, 
 
 ' As for Crockford himself, notwithstanding heavy losses in mining and other 
 speculations, he left behind him on his death, in 1844, ;if7oo,ooo. His club 
 building served for the Military, Naval, and County Club till 1851. Then it 
 became the Wellington Dining Rooms. Known afterwards for a short time as the 
 St. George's Club, it remained without a permanent occupant till its acquisition 
 in 1877 by the Devonshire Club, which at the same time acquired the back 
 premises fronting Arlington Street, formerly belonging to the Arlington Club, 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 207 
 
 undertook the formation of a ministry to replace the 
 resigned " Greylings." The same evening the appear- 
 ance on the premises for a few minutes of the Duke of 
 Wellington himself, attended by Lord Sefton, roused 
 the men who at Crockford's table lost or staked their 
 thousands with absolutely unruffled tranquillity to un- 
 controllable emotions of applausive welcome. Within a 
 week the Duke, after having kissed hands as First 
 Lord of the Treasury, failed to bring a new Govern- 
 ment together. Crockford's, before any other club, 
 knew of the failure by the recently jubilant Sefton 
 entering the place with the look and manner of a lost 
 spirit. 
 
 By 1835 the play at Crockford's had reached a 
 greater height than ever. Stories of the ruin of families 
 descending to generations yet unborn so multiplied in 
 number and circumstantiality that the growing scandal 
 could not be ignored. Even thus, however, Crock- 
 ford's, had it stood alone, might have remained 
 untouched, for its havoc was at least worked honestly. 
 The bank won, as it always does, but never by foul 
 play. Nor was it, indeed, at Crockford's there occurred 
 the incident which led to the fatal investigation at 
 Westminster. 
 
 A Balliol undergraduate visiting London on his way 
 home at the end of term had gone to the opera with 
 others of his little party. Coming out, he told his 
 friends he had to see a lady into her carriage, promising 
 presently to join them at Evans's Covent Garden supper- 
 rooms. He never came. At the opening of the next 
 Oxford term nothing had been heard of him. In his 
 absence his rooms on the arch above the porter's 
 lodge were given to a freshman. His nearest relatives 
 did not know certainly what had happened tiU he 
 reappeared in the family dining-room some years later. 
 The mystery of the whole episode explained itself in 
 the following way. The undergraduate of the forties, 
 on the eventful evening at Covent Garden Opera, had 
 
208 CLUB MAKEES AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 no sooner lingered behind his friends for a few 
 minutes than he realized that he was coming to the end 
 of his ready money. He had put up at a Jermyn Street 
 hotel, next door to which he knew there was a public 
 hazard -table. Believing in his star and his luck?, he 
 went in, took his place at the table, and called a main. 
 He contrived to leave the room a little richer than 
 when he entered. Going into Piccadilly, he saw 
 a coach starting from the " White Horse " cellar for 
 Southampton. He got a seat, and reached the Hamp- 
 shire seaport shortly before a vessel was announced to 
 lift anchor for South Africa. There, he suddenly recol- 
 lected, his maternal relatives had some property. The 
 next day he was on the seas, and in due course found 
 himself at Pietermaritzburg. Here he soon came on 
 family friends, found occupation as a rough-rider and 
 farmer, made a prudent marriage, became a prosperous 
 colonial worthy and politician, only revisiting his native 
 land When he could give this s3,tisfactory account of 
 himself. 
 
 Meanwhile, his sudden withdrawal hald caused natural 
 distress to his family. One of his relations, then M.P. 
 for Winchester, alone shrewdly conjectured almost ex- 
 actly what had happened. Other experiences of the 
 same kind had fallen in this gentleman's way. In 
 conjunction with his most intimate friend|, Mr. Mihier 
 Gibson, he obtained the parliamentary committee ' 
 which examined representatives of every class engaged 
 in gambling operations of all kinds, east and west 
 of Temple Bar, and reported th'at on the declaration 
 of three inhabitants the police should be empowered 
 to visit all suspected houses so as effectufally to starflp 
 
 ' The chairman of this body was Lord Palmerston. Among its best known 
 members were Viscount Jocelyn, Sir Horace Seymour, Mr. James Wortley, Mr. 
 Lascelles, Mr. Baillie Cochrane, and Mr. Milner Gibson. But, together with 
 the last of these, the chief promoter and most active prosecutor of the inquiry 
 was a member of the same name as the present writer, who is indebted to that 
 long-departed relative and the late Lord Lamington for the hitherto unpublished 
 details now given. 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 209 
 
 out the growing curse of " hells," high and low. The 
 informations thus invited began to reach the police- 
 courts in shoals. Crockford's, vainly urged Palmerston, 
 a member of the committee, was a genuine club. Its 
 play, restricted to a single room, formed merely an 
 accident of the place. Upon none of its arrange- 
 ments had there ever rested la suspicion of malfeasance. 
 The magistrates would make no exception in favour 
 of the " hell " frequented by hereditary and elective 
 legislators. Gambling was illegal, and the law en- 
 forced against one must be enforced against all. With 
 Crockford's there disappeared one of the most familiar, 
 and as it had been immemorially considered charac- 
 teristic phases of club life. Games of pure chance 
 were driven from the West End joint-stock palaces. 
 As a consequence, the money won at biUiards or bridge 
 (whist having now practically gone out among club- 
 men) is inconsiderable, and gambling in the old sense 
 has become scarcely less obsolete than the personal 
 equipments once commonly used, according to a con- 
 temporary writer, • by the gamesters — the pieces of 
 leather used to protect the lace ruffles, and the masks 
 worn to conceal their emotions when playing for high' 
 stakes . 
 
 Several who had been noticeable figures at Crock- 
 ford's survived till within measurable distance of the 
 twentieth century. Such were Sir W. H. Gregory, to 
 whom the present writer is indebted for many of these 
 details, the second Lord Wenlock's son, Frank Lawley, 
 and Charles Greville's friend and contemporary in sport 
 alternately his confederate and rival, George Payne. 
 The last of these, like Greville himself, was a perfectly 
 preserved and typical specimen of the old turfite school. 
 Both men looked upon racing as a business not less 
 serious than politics, and as one exclusively proper to 
 aristocracy, wealth, and education. Both equally de- 
 tested mere trifling of every kind, could not tolerate 
 
 ' The Decline of Aristocracy, by Arthur Ponsonby (Fisher Unwin), p. 73. 
 
 14 
 
210 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the vapid or frivolous talk of the modem dining-table, 
 drawing-room, or club, and abominated the class fusion, 
 the alloy of wealth and mere notoriety, which, as they 
 thought, were the ruin of society. Both had received 
 the regulation Eton and Christchurch training, lived in 
 the same set, kept up the knack of classical quotation, 
 and thoroughly understood horses. Payne, however, 
 differed from Greville in possessing hosts of friends and 
 no enemies, as well as in having, both at Newmarket and 
 in St. James's Street, plunged more heavily, and on 
 the whole more disastrously. Inheriting from his father 
 Sulby Hall, Northamptonshire, when scarcely of age, 
 he lost at Doncaster over £20,000. Entering Crock- 
 ford's a few days after this knockdown blow as he 
 called it, he said to Gregory : " This is my last appear- 
 ance at any of the places. I have made up my mind 
 to cut the turf entirely, and stick to hunting." Had 
 that resolution been fulfilled, he would have lived and 
 died a prosperous, hospitable, and highly cultured 
 country gentleman — the part for which he had been 
 cast by kindly Nature and generous fortune. For, as 
 the Sulby squire, he had been sheriff of Northampton 
 while still under five and twenty. Even after his 
 fortunes began to wane he was master of the Pytchley. 
 Alas ! it was too late ; he could not shake off the 
 fascinations of the play-room and the racecourse. Two 
 fortunes and his ancestral home passed from him. All 
 he got in their place was a dual success during the 
 second half of his life — that of Clementine in the 
 Thousand Guineas and of Glauca in the Cesarewitch. 
 He had also, it is true, the satisfaction of seeing his 
 " magpie " colours, the well-known black and white, 
 thoroughly popular wherever they appeared. George 
 Payne's later days, like those of his friend Greville, 
 were embittered by a sense of misspent time and lost 
 opportunities. To one hiunan being only did he confide 
 these regrets, the late Rev. J. B. Fleming, who, when 
 Canon of York, was frequently with him during his 
 
CLUB FARE AND CLUB FATES 211 
 
 last illness, and to whom the present writer is indebted 
 for his knowledge of the scene and character on which, 
 in 1878, the curtain fell. 
 
 Before Crockford's ceased to exist, the connection 
 of its creator with its most famous cook had been 
 severed. Ude's successor in St. James's Street was 
 Francatelli. When the latter had been deprived, by 
 the events already narrated, of that opportunity of 
 exercising his genius. Sir W. H. Gregory's, George 
 Payne's, and Frank Lawley's organizing energies com- 
 bined to provide him with a new opening in the short- 
 lived Coventry Club, Piccadilly, which those just named 
 had done more than any one else to call into existence, 
 and which made a show of perpetuating the traditions 
 and carrying on the life of Crockford's. The hazard- 
 table could not, of course, be reproduced. Its best- 
 knovsTi members, however, were men of sufficient mark 
 to impress the club with a character distinguishing 
 it from other institutions which came into being about 
 the same time. Sir William H. Gregory's rare social 
 gifts delighted successive generations of clubmen during 
 his parliamentary course from 1857 to 1871, ending 
 only with his appointment to the Governorship of Ceylon 
 in the last-named year. To the Coventry he attracted 
 several representatives of the old Irish squirearchy, 
 notably Seymour Fitzgerald, M.P. for Horsham from 
 1852 to 1859. Returning to England from Ceylon, 
 he regained and till his death, in 1892, held almost 
 the same social place as he had adorned the best part 
 of half a century earlier. 
 
CHAPTER X , 
 
 THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE OF WHIP, CELLAR, AND CHEF 
 
 From Crockford's to the Carlton — A great Conservative Whip in the making and 
 his club work when made — How " Billy " Holmes got in for Berwick-on- 
 Tweed — How the Carlton, uniting all Conservative sections, compensates 
 the neutrality of White's and counteracts Brooks's — "Billy's" successor. 
 Colonel Taylor — "King" Hudson in the Carlton smoking-room — Other 
 instances of the club's discreetly tolerant hospitality, and enlargement 
 of Conservative influence by non-insistence on severe party test for member- 
 ship — W. E. Gladstone, the second Duke of Wellington, the third Sir Robert 
 Peel, and the welcome given to W. H. Smith — Lord Abergavenny's benevo- 
 lent dictatorship, and its well-judged results — His twentieth-century successors 
 — " Bear " Ellice's tit-for-tat with " Billy " Holmes in founding the Reform — 
 Authorship — Ambiguity of name — Joseph Hume its godfather — And other of 
 its early celebrities — W. M. Thackeray scribbling copy in a quiet corner 
 while printer's boy waits, presages Henry Labouchere similarly occupied at 
 a later day — Garibaldi, an honorary member — Party conventions and club 
 meetings — The succession to Gladstone, the choice of "C.B." — ^Joseph and his 
 brethren — The Junior Carlton — Conservative Club episodes and cookery — 
 The National Liberal Club makers — The Constitutional Clubs — Club makers 
 below stairs — Great artists of the club kitchen — Rise and progress of Alexis 
 Soyer — His wide and enduring influence on the club dinner menu. 
 
 The figures of most prominent interest in the last 
 chapter are not so much characteristic representatives' 
 of the club movement during the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century, as, in taste, temper, associations, 
 personal habits, and dress, the survivors of a bygone 
 dispensation. Instead of following the central stream 
 of club progress, we have been drawn by the current 
 of our subject into one of its backwaters. Crockford's 
 marked a reaction towards AViatier's, and was essen- 
 tially a Georgian product. The club makers and 
 members with whom we have now to do, like the 
 
 31!i 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 213 
 
 methods and economy of their institutions, as in time, 
 so in spirit and temper, belong to the Victorian age. 
 
 Among the newly fledged graduates of Trinity 
 College, Dublin, in 1795, was the son of a rich Sligo 
 brewer whose resourcefulness, inventive ingenuity, and 
 refusal to be beaten by circumstances marked him 
 out, in the contemporary opinion of the place, for a 
 career of bustling and successful notoriety. Grasping 
 the sword as soon as he had put on his bachelor's 
 gown, he soon found himself under orders to proceed 
 with his regiment to the West Indies. While there, 
 he became military, secretary to Sir Thomas Hislop. 
 " Short of creating anything from nothing, there is no 
 emergency to which Holmes can prove unequal, or no, 
 difficulty out of which he cannot find a way." Such 
 was his commanding officer's estimate of the man 
 destined to organize victory for the Conservative cause 
 by founding the Carlton Club. 
 
 In 1807 a lucky marriage with a wealthy dowager. 
 Lady Stronge, made him independent of a profession. 
 The way, therefore, had now become clear to realizing 
 the parliamentary ambitions, that his Irish readiness 
 of wit and speech had long caused him secretly to 
 indulge. His first seat was the Cornish borough 
 Grampound. His Tory friends were then opposing 
 the Portland administration. Holmes made himself so 
 invaluable as a party man-of-all-work, that, on the 
 Tories coming back, Perceval gave effect to a general 
 wish of his supporters by putting down Holmes's name 
 for some official post thereafter. Not, however, tiU 
 1820 did Holmes receive from Liverpool the Treasurer- 
 ship of the Ordnance, which he held till 1830. Nature, 
 however, whether on the side of the ins or the outs, 
 had created " Billy " Holmes to be a Whip. That 
 was the capacity in which, for thirty years, he kept 
 Sir Robert Peel's majority together. His constituency 
 during that critical term was no longer Grampound, 
 but Berwick-on-Tweed. His return for this borough 
 
214 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 took place in a manner highly characteristic of all 
 those concerned in it, and of the time. 
 
 In his election business he had the help of his son 
 Tom, the popular parliamentary agent, and the sole 
 manager of his father's business in the border town. 
 The following description was given by Tom Holmes 
 himself to the late Markham Spofforth, the present 
 writer's lifelong acquaintance, and if an old Carlton 
 story, is no mere club invention. The Berwick poll 
 had been kept open till there were no more votes to 
 be recorded, and " Billy " Holmes was twenty to the 
 bad. Tom at once went to his father's committee- 
 room, and reminded the thirty committee men, whom 
 he found sitting round the table, that he had only paid 
 the last £500 on the solemn assurance that his father 
 was safe. " Yet," he added, " the poll is now closing, 
 and my father is twenty votes behind." " But," 
 said the chairman, " you will find it is still as I said, 
 for all of us here have yet to vote." " Then why on 
 earth," came the natural rejoinder, " don't you go and 
 do so? " " Because," was the answer, " we have not 
 yet had our regulars." These, it appeared, meant 
 £10 apiece. Tom therefore placed a ten -pound note 
 before each of the hangers-back. They trooped off like 
 one man to the polling-booth, and the founder of the 
 Carlton Club secured the border seat. 
 
 His insight into character, his intimacy with the 
 family connections, the personal interests, and am- 
 bitions of the Conservative rank and file, made the 
 elder Holmes extraordinarily skilful in dispensing 
 patronage. " Holmes," said his chief, " consolidated 
 the party by playing upon the foibles of individual 
 members and sections as upon an old fiddle." ' Sir 
 Robert Peel and the Duke of .Wellington recognized 
 that White's had lost its old distinctive colour. " And," 
 added the Duke, " We must have something to counter- 
 
 • Disraeli might easily having been told of this remark ; at any rate, he applied 
 the same metaphor to Sir Robert Peel's influence over the House of Commons. 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIEATE 215 
 
 act the vitality of Brooks's." Agreed on this point, 
 the two chiefs were also unanimous that the practical 
 details of the new Conservative society should be left 
 entirely to the ingenious and invincible " Billy." Irish- 
 men in England were then fond of working together. 
 Compatriotic sentiment seems to have had more to do 
 than party zeal in winning Lord Clanwilliam's warm 
 support of his fellow-Celt's enterprise, and even facili- 
 tating the purchase of Lord Kensington's house in 
 Carlton Gardens as the Carlton's first home. 
 
 On the nth May, 1832, the Duke of .Wellington 
 and Lord Lyndhurst rallied their followers at Apsley 
 House. " You will have," said the chiefs, " a club 
 which, when finished, will differ from other places of 
 the kind, in being the daily resort of men representing 
 the whole party in active co-operation. On the Sunday 
 following the Duke took the chair at the Carlton's 
 opening diimer. This occasion was unique in the his- 
 tory of club dinners, because there were present several 
 who, like the diarist Thomas Raikes, repudiated party 
 labels, or openly called themselves lukewarm Tories, 
 not to be relied upon too implicitly by the .Whip in any 
 division. Of these Peel smilingly whispered Holmes, 
 " Then, by true companionship, we must educate them 
 into good Conservatives." 
 
 Words could not more aptly and accurately express 
 the socio-political mission continuously fulfilled from 
 that time to this by the club whose agency, within ten 
 years from its foundation, helped Holmes, by a series 
 of gradual advances, to change Peel's Conservative 
 minority of 314 in 1832 into a majority of 8 1 four 
 years after the accession of Queen Victoria. Dying 
 in the January of 185 i. Holmes, forecasting the future 
 with the eye of experience and hope, never despaired 
 about the Conservative reaction which his club would 
 prove instrumental in effecting — not, as he always main- 
 tained, under the fourteenth Lord Derby, but under 
 Disraeli. By more than twenty years he missed seeing 
 
216 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the fulfilment of his prophecy in the election of 1874, 
 giving, as that did, for the first time during forty 
 years, his party not only place but power. 
 
 Some of his contemporaries survived to see a com- 
 patriot of " Billy " Holmes, in Household Suffrage 
 days, take his place as chief party Whip and Carlton 
 Club pillar. This was Colonel Taylor. In appearance 
 the model of a well-proportioned, athletic, handsome, 
 and genial Irishman, he was, like the Marquis of Aber- 
 gavenny, then Viscount Nevill, whose portrait, admir- 
 ably painted by Mr. Mark Milbank, is among the 
 club's most becoming and most valued ornaments, one 
 of Lord Derby's and Disraeli's confidential advisers, 
 as well as perhaps the most popular Parliament man 
 of his time, and as patronage secretary at once so 
 conciliatory, persuasive, and keen, that his whisper or 
 look would prevent either absentees or pairs. The 
 most pointed and freshest raconteur in all Irish matters 
 of his day, he had a conversational colleague rather 
 than competitor in ,Wi. H. Russell of the Times. This 
 little group was often joined by Lord Abergavenny's 
 chief henchman, Markham Spofforth, of whom more 
 presently, and to whom the Carlton was a home as 
 well as a club. That was what the place had been 
 for a deposed railway sovereign, during his retirement. 
 In 1870 there still sat in the Carlton smoking-room a 
 big, heavy man, whose head still kept some of the drab- 
 coloured, wiry hair which, twenty years earlier, had 
 attracted notice, as, by the side of an overdressed lady 
 in a gorgeous carriage, he rolled on the afternoon drive 
 through Hyde Park. This was the York linen-draper 
 George Hudson. In 1828 he put his inheritance of 
 £30,000 into railway speculation, made more than one 
 fortune for himself, put others in the way of doing 
 the same, and then " fell like Lucifer, never to rise 
 again." He dragged, however, no one down with him, 
 nor divulged any secrets of the prison-house. Friends, 
 therefore, were not wanting to him in his distress. His 
 
Phoio\ 
 
 I Reeves, Lewes. 
 
 THE MARQUIS OK AUERCAVKNNY. 
 
 T;face p. 216, 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 217 
 
 house at Knightsbridge, where he had entertained the 
 great Duke of .Wellington, the Duke of Canibridge, and 
 other smaller royalties, became the French Embassy. 
 Mrs. Hudson's chariot was put down. The " railway 
 king " himself walked where he had formerly driven, 
 but bore the change of fortune cheerfully, or at least 
 calmly, and remained radiant for the rest of the day 
 after a courteous recognition in the park by Lord Grey. 
 The acquaintances of other days rallied round him. 
 The first Sir George Elliot and Mr. Hugh Taylor 
 became the trustees of a fvmd subscribed to ensure him 
 £600 a year. His wife and son were still spared to 
 him. For himself, however, he preferred a solitary 
 life in London lodgings. He had ceased to be Member 
 for Sunderland in 1859. The forbearing kindliness, 
 traditionally characteristic of its members, was pleas- 
 antly shown in the welcome given to Hudson at the 
 club till the close of his life, in 1 8 7 1 . The unfailing 
 resort of his evenings was the smoking-room, where he 
 was always accorded the same seat. " They have," 
 he might in the north-country dialect that he never 
 lost, be heard quietly and pathetically boasting, "made 
 me their chairman." His keen Yorkshire common 
 sense and his equable temper were never displayed 
 with more of dignity, as well as pathos, than during 
 the twenty-three years of eclipse (1848-71) which, 
 in his own words, perfect freedom from anxiety made 
 the happiest time of his life. 
 
 The founder of the club, and those for whom he 
 acted, had decided from the first that tolerant and 
 comprehensive hospitality should be one of its prin- 
 ciples. That characteristic has been worth to the party 
 many votes on a division in the House. It has also, 
 from time to time, reinforced the club with some of its 
 less known members who have been pillars of strength 
 to the Conservative cause at Westminster. The idea 
 of inducing Disraeli and Gladstone to work together 
 on the Conservative side was long encouraged in 
 
218 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 sanguine breasts by their common membership of the 
 club. Gladstone just missed being an original member. 
 He joined at the same time as he took possession of 
 his Albany chambers, in the March of 1833. His 
 name remained on the books, not only after he had 
 ceased to be, in Macaulay's words, the hope of the 
 stern, unbending Tories, but after he had become as 
 much an object of distrust to the new Liberal Con- 
 servatives as to the old Whigs. Sir Robert Peel's 
 death, in 1850, marked him out as that statesman's 
 successor in the completion of the Free Trade system 
 and the creation of an untaxed breakfast table. Two 
 years later came his first great and victorious encounter 
 with Disraeli over the Conservative Budget of 1852. 
 
 During the same twelvemonth occurred, within the 
 walls of the place, an incident that beneath any roof 
 where the genius of clubability was less strong must 
 have brought the Gladstonian coimection with the 
 society to a close. The charge of bribery at the election 
 for Derby, first insinuated against Mr. Horsfall, the 
 Tory Member in December, 1852, not only rallied his 
 friends round him but made him the gUest of the 
 evening at a Carlton dinner. Mr. Gladstone did not 
 join the company ; he was, however, quietly reading 
 in another room. Some of the diners presently entered ; 
 in rather more than audible asides they hinted at the 
 renegade's removal through the open window by a 
 short cut to his proper place, the Reform.' Exactly 
 ten years after this the Carlton once more exemplified 
 its real policy by bestowing membership on W. H. 
 Smith, rejected at the Reform in 1862, and by thus 
 securing for the party one of its most esteemed and 
 not least successful House of Commons leaders. As 
 for Mr. Gladstone, his connection with the Carlton long 
 survived his real conversion to Liberalism. With- 
 out further molestation or suggestion of his depar- 
 ture, he only took his name off in i860, two years 
 
 ' For the details of this incident see Morley's Life, vol. i. p. 441. 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 219 
 
 before Mr. W. H. Smith was put on. While still a 
 Carltonian, therefore, he had been for the second time, 
 and then for a full year, Palmerston's Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer. Such are the classical instances of 
 the discriminating superiority to partisan scruples 
 which the club managers have always reserved for 
 themselves the right upon special occasions to show. 
 This judicial and genial elasticity of qualifying test 
 has been maintained and increased in a very special 
 degree by one who, as regards dates to-day, boasts 
 the distinction of being six years older than the club 
 itself. Collaterally descended from the great baron 
 who made monarchs and chang'ed dynasties, Colonel 
 Taylor's and Markham Spofforth's Viscount Nevill, 
 known since 1876 as the Marquis of Abergavenny, 
 has owed his supremacy in the party and its club to 
 his territorial power. Grants from the Crown, united 
 with fortunate marriages, have extended his family sway 
 over three southern counties. 
 
 Beauchamps, Braoses, and at least one other line 
 equally illustrious and opulent, had bequeathed to his 
 predecessors and to himself, not only their estates but 
 their niediseval founder's most rare and precious 
 personal attribute, the gracious and genial art of 
 winning favour, as with the rank and file, as of the 
 peerage, so with the commonalty. Hence the happy 
 way in which, as has been related elsewhere,' the Lord 
 Burgeny of 1747 (for so the name was then spelt) 
 helped himself and a college friend out of what might, 
 with less tactful adroitness, have been magtiified into 
 a charge of homicide. The details, which may be 
 briefly recalled, are to the following effect. One 
 morning a scout was found dead at the bottom of some 
 steep stone steps near Lord Burgeny 's rooms. These, or 
 the adjoining chambers, had witnessed some rather 
 noisy festivities on the previous evening. One of the 
 revellers had been heard to threaten the dead servant 
 
 ' Society in the Country House, p. no. 
 
220 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 with punishment for some delinquency. The town 
 authorities, having gpt wind of the affair, hinted that 
 certain noble undergraduates. Lord Charles Scott of 
 the ducal Buccleuchs, as well as Lord Burgeny, might 
 find themselves in the Criminal Court. The academic 
 and municipal authorities met for the purpose of con- 
 sidering the course to be taken. Their deliberations 
 were interrupted by the appearance of the Dean of 
 Christchurch, who, he said, had just received an in- 
 teresting and important communication from Lord 
 Burgeny. His lordship, it seemed, was fiUed with 
 creditable concern for the deserving family suddenly 
 deprived of its breadwinner by the occurrence of the 
 previous night. He had just heard from his agent that 
 a lodge-keeper was wanted for one of his parks, and 
 that the gamekeeper and gardener had employment 
 for respectable lads. He could, therefore, offer 
 immediate provision for the household now suffering 
 from the college servant's regrettable death. And so, 
 without scandal and with much praise to Lord Burg'eny, 
 the matter ended. Another ancestor of the first 
 marquis, Earl Henry, locally known because of his 
 splendour and puissance as the " g'rand Duke," 
 threatened with ejectment all the marriageable widows 
 on his property if they did not take second husbands 
 to increase of his local voters. Borough Members and 
 shire knights alike were all, of course, in his neighbour- 
 hood returned by himself. Some of his electoral pawns 
 took exception to his parliamentary nominees. The 
 " grand Duke," with unruffled and beaming calm, had 
 a contingent of prize-fighters sent down from London 
 to protect his candidates, who, of course, were brought 
 in scatheless and with flying colours at the head of the 
 poll. The first Marquis of Abergavenny had relin- 
 quished little of his beneficent absolutism in the club 
 or in the party when, now more than a generation 
 ago. Lord Randolph Churchill asserted his independence 
 of Sir Stafford Northcote not entirely without the 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 221 
 
 backing of E ridge Castle. He not only liked the 
 courage but sympathized with the sporting instincts 
 of the nineteenth-century reviver of that Tory demo- 
 cracy which he wished the Carlton to reflect. Men 
 of such unchallengeable ascendancy ^s his can Con- 
 descend to any personal associations without loss of 
 dignity. Therefore, as king of the committee, in con- 
 sidering the qualifications of candidates, he despised 
 all petty inquisitiveness about personal or social ante- 
 cedents, and even degrees of political conviction, only 
 inquiring of his henchmen whether the aspirant was 
 a good sort of fellow." During the seventeenth-century 
 parliamentary conflict Thomas Wentworth, Lord 
 Strafford, was known as " the Cock of the North." 
 John Pym, therefore, received from his followers the 
 style " Cock of the South." As a party boss Lord 
 Abergavenny had, not a rival but an ally in a nine- 
 teenth-century " Cock of the North," the opulent Tory 
 Yorkshire squire, Andrew Montagu, at different times, 
 and in equal degrees, the good and golden genius of 
 the Carlton itself, of the entire party, and of such 
 among its individual members as needed a patron. 
 
 Personal varieties, of the type once familiar, have 
 quite gone out of date in Pall Mall and elsewhere. 
 Club pillars like those just described were the products 
 of a period which has almost as little in common with 
 the twentieth century as the Regency itself. With 
 Sir John E. Gorst, the brains, wisdom, wariness, and 
 statesmanship of the old Randolphian coterie, there 
 disappeared from the club the last representative 
 survivor of the g'reat Abergavenny and Taylor dis- 
 pensation. To-day the Carlton remnant of the 
 Victorian age comprises few, if any, besides Mr. 
 
 ■ What "troubles," like those at Winchester and Rugby in the sixties, were 
 to public schools, incidents verging on the scandalous have since then been to 
 clubs. The only experience of this sort at the Carlton took place late during the 
 eighties, when a financial adventurer was smuggled into the club by the com- 
 mittee, through the agency of a very clever legal M.P., who, not long afterwards, 
 died. 
 
222 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 H. D. Greene, K.C.,' Mr. Agg Gardner, Mr. A. 
 Baumann, Lord Claud Hamilton,2 chairman of the 
 Carlton committee, and Viscount Chilston,3 formerly 
 Mr. Akers Douglas, all happily living, who, like the 
 late Mr. John Bateson, missed by less than half a 
 generation a personal acquaintance with the consummate 
 kitchen organization which secured for the dinner-table 
 Christchurch salmon, caught the same morning in the 
 Hampshire Avon. The near predecessors of these had 
 frequented the club when its famous chef, Palanque, 
 won its fame for his entirely unique arrangements of 
 fowl and truffles, or when George Smythe, reflected 
 at more than one point in Disraeli's Coningsby, the 
 exclusive original of Waldemar in his last novel 
 Endymion, drank the famous dry champagne that soon 
 came to be known as " Young England's nectar." 
 
 Disraeli himself, as Young* England's inspiring 
 genius, appropriately left his mark in the new decora- 
 tions added to the club during 1878. These, as it was, 
 were of sufficiently Oriental magnificence ; that they 
 were not more Asiatically gorgeous was due to Lord 
 Ahergavenny's restraining influence, exercised, not then 
 for the first time, upon the great man's liking for 
 Semitic colouring. The squire of Hughenden had come 
 up from his Buckinghamshire manor-house one Septem- 
 ber day dressed, according to his idea of a modern 
 country gentleman, in a short, purple velvet coat and 
 resplendent knickerbockers. Thus attired he was about 
 to enter the Carlton when the master of Eridge met 
 him on the steps. "Dizzy," said the Marquis, "this 
 
 ■ M.P. Shrewsbury, 1892, retiring 1906. Treasurer of Middle Temple, 1912, 
 and now bencher. His cousin, Sir Walter Greene, also formerly one of the 
 Cambridgeshire Members, and his son, Raymond Greene, M.P. North Hackney, 
 1910. 
 
 ' Chairman of the Carlton Club Committee 1913, as well as a recent benefactor 
 of the club by bringing to light, and restoring to their proper place, some well- 
 carved panels and fittings previously covered over. 
 
 3 A prominent and popular figure in the Kentish group, 1883-95. One of the 
 Conservative Whips. Thereafter First Commissioner of Works, with a seat in 
 the Cabinet. 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 223 
 
 will never do. For Heaven's sake go back to Curzon 
 Street and chanige ! " Dizzy did as he was told, and 
 presently reappeared at the club in the orthodox frock- 
 coat and the regulation topper instead of a loose 
 Tyrolese felt, decorated with a pheasant or peacock 
 plume. 
 
 Other times, other manners and other men. Com- 
 paring the Carlton present with the Carlton past, one 
 is almost tempted to adapt to the change Burke's 
 lament over the succession of the age of chivalry by 
 that of sophisters, economists, and calculators. Not, 
 indeed, that the glory of the Carlton is extinguished for 
 ever, or even for a day, but the feudal great Panjan- 
 drums, the many-acred sporting grand transparencies, 
 wearing their hat at an angle of forty-five degrees, 
 belong to a past which will never again be a present. 
 They have given place to the professional managers 
 of party and the clerkly bosses of faction. There 
 is no great Kentish leader of many legions to confer 
 to-day with presences approaching in picturesqueness 
 to the House of Commons chief, who then still remained 
 something of an " Asian mystery," or his eagle-beaked, 
 eye-flashing generalissimo, the fourteenth Earl of 
 Derby. Instead of the nineteenth-century Viscount 
 Nevill, organizing Conservative reaction with the help 
 of Colonel Taylor, or the Whips who came afterwards, 
 the personalities dominating the Carlton to-day are 
 first, of course, the Conservative Premier of the 
 future, complained of perhaps by some as not of the 
 Vere de Vere stamp, nevertheless, the indispensable 
 head of his political connection, Mr. Bonar Law, 
 together with his compatriot, the creator and controller 
 of Midland Unionism, Mr. Steel -Maitland, Member for 
 East Birmingham, still wearing as he does the orna- 
 ments of varied scholarship and the genial graces of 
 the honour schools. 
 
 The most minutely observant, active, and absolutely 
 indefatigable Pall Mall personage, in the years im- 
 
224 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 mediately preceding the Victorian era, was, beyond a 
 doubt, the Right Hon. Edward EUice, the maker of 
 the Reform Club, and still best known in socio-political 
 life by his original sobriquet, the " Bear." Not, as 
 Thomas Carlyle has put on record, from any trace of 
 ursine ferocity but from his wiliness, as well perhaps 
 as because of his fortune, acquired in the fur trade. 
 His private residence at 14, Carlton House Terrace" 
 gave the Whigs the same rallying point during the 
 Reform period as at an earlier date they had found 
 in Lord Althorp's Albany chambers. No reward might 
 well have seemed too great for a man who by his inex- 
 haustible energy and vast wealth did more than any 
 other to hasten, if not to ensure, victory for the Grey 
 Government. Returned for Coventry in the first Reform 
 Parliament, EUice held the seat at each successive step 
 of his parliamentary rise till his sudden death, from 
 heart disease, in 1863. 
 
 As Secretary at War thirty years earlier in the 
 Melbourne administration, he furnished the first instance 
 of an outsider passing, at a single bound, from the 
 counting-house to the Cabinet. Keen partisan as Nature 
 had made him, he always instinctively looked at politics 
 in their purely personal aspect. For whole sessions 
 together, during the first half of his time at St. 
 Stephen's, he devoted himself to the study of Brougham, 
 shadowing that extraordinary man in all his movements, 
 private or public. In 1827 Brougham had a rencontre 
 with Raikes the diarist that seemed to promise a duel, 
 and that he particularly wished to hush up. Hurrying 
 out of Brooks's, the scene of the row, he ran into the 
 arms of EUice, who, of course, knew all about what 
 had just happened, and who was ready to be useful, 
 apparently to either party, in any way that might be 
 desired . 
 
 On the other hand, what EUice was to Lord 
 Brougham, the Tory Earl of Sefton made himself to 
 
 ' EUice's later and equally known London house was in Arlington Street. 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 225 
 
 EUice, watching him as a cat does a mouse, and 
 rivalling Cassandra in his predictions of the '-' Bear's " 
 impending fall. One day it was the ruin of the fur 
 trade which doomed the " Bear " to bankruptcy ; the 
 next certain malpractices, accidentally discovered, would 
 destroy him with his political chiefs, and might 
 conceivably lodge him in the Tower. 
 
 " Bear " EUice's dryly humorous and pungent 
 remarks about his colleagues, under his two great chiefs. 
 Grey and Melbourne, contain few jokes. His Tory 
 rival, " Billy " Holmes, whether in the lobby or the 
 club, at times literally overflowed with his Irish fun. 
 Thus, during the first session of 1832, a rather pre- 
 tentious Leicester M.P., Morrison, by trade a haber- 
 dasher, having just made a speech on the foreign glove 
 question, came up to Holmes and asked the Whip to 
 get him a pair for the rest of the evening. " Of 
 what," said Holmes — "gloves or stockings?" 
 
 This sort of banter was not at all in the " Bear's " 
 line. Nor were his most monumental services to his 
 party rendered till his official days were over, and he 
 had become almost as much of a personage in fashion- 
 able Paris as in West End London. His trips a^cross 
 the Channel had some connection with the effort of club 
 creation reserved by him for the Victorian era. For, 
 during his sojourns in the French capital, he seriously 
 studied the art of cookery and reconnoitred the best 
 talent available in connection with the club scheme 
 that was his masterpiece. On May 5, 1836, he con- 
 vened his friends in Carlton House Terrace for 
 arranging the preliminaries of the Reform Club and 
 securing for its temporary domicile Gwydyr House, 
 Whitehall. 
 
 EUice credited Joseph Hume with the title of the new 
 fraternity. Before, however, his club association with 
 EUice, Hume had been one of a company originally, 
 known as the Westminster, afterwards dubbed the 
 Reform'. Bulwer-Lytton, as a Radical, promoted its 
 
 15 
 
226 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 formation and invited his friend Disraeli to it, who in: 
 1834, when applied to for an overdue subscription, 
 paid the money, but requested that his membership 
 of the place should end. Hence the charge afterwards 
 made agfainst the future Lord Beaconsfield of an early 
 connection with the Liberal headquarters in Pall Mall. 
 As for Hume himself, his admission to the club came 
 some time after his first return for Middlesex, if not 
 after he had exchanged that constituency for Montrose. 
 The Reform founder had the satisfaction of seeing the 
 place become as important a centre of political small 
 talk and Cabinet negotiation as Brooks's. Fifteen years 
 after it had been established the parliamentary 
 diplomatists were discussing possible combinations on 
 the Liberal side. At the Reform, rather than anywhere 
 else, might be heard the best answers to the question 
 whether Lord John Russell and Lord Pahnerston would 
 be induced to serve together; how there were hopes 
 that Granville's tactful versatility might smooth away 
 the mutually contemptuous bitterness separating 
 Pahnerston from Sir James Graham, and might bring 
 about the co-operation of the Peelites with the Whigs, 
 absolutely indispensable as that was for a Liberal 
 Cabinet. Lord Granville from the first had done much 
 towards making the club the common centre of all 
 the Liberals. 
 
 By 1852 that was what it had really become, and 
 from it issued the sole trustworthy talk as to the 
 negotiations in progress. Before this EUice ha;d the 
 satisfaction of seeing his club instrumental in rallying 
 the letters and intellect of the time to the Liberal 
 leaders. In 1850 Palmerston's successful diplomacy 
 was celebrated by a club dinner, with Thackeray among 
 those present. The author of Vanity Fair had joined 
 the club in 1840. In that year his wife's ill health 
 broke up his domestic life. After that the club became 
 his home. At the Reform he not only dined regularly 
 but did much of his work, covering, as he sat in a 
 

THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 227 
 
 corner of the library or at his table in the dining-room, 
 small slips with pencil manuscript, often carried away 
 by a servant to the printer's boy waiting in the hall. 
 Between fifteen arid twenty years later at the sattie club 
 and in the same place Henry Labouchere the second, 
 when editing and largely writing Truth, did exactly 
 the same thing. 
 
 The Reform also showed Thackeray in his most 
 amiable humour. He took much pains to secure success 
 at the ballot for Douglas Jerrold first and G. A. Sala 
 afterwards, coming up in both cases from the country 
 to whip up supporters on the day of election. The 
 novelist also showed himself not less kindly to new 
 members whose solitary strangeness he had noticed. 
 Such, on his first appearance there, was Henry Fawcett. 
 " Do," he said to Bernal Osborne and Milner Gibson, 
 " what you can to make that poor fellow feel a little 
 less like an alien within the gates." 
 
 " Bear " EUice had passed away before one of his 
 wishes was realized and the club's hospitalities extended 
 to foreign chambers of the Progressive cause. In 1864 
 Garibaldi was not only entertained by the Reform 
 at breakfast but became its honorary member. Mean- 
 while the club had become the scene of party meet- 
 ings, like those previously held at Brooks's. At one 
 of the Brooks's gatherings it was that the future 
 Conservative leader, Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley, 
 apropos of the contemplated peers creation during the 
 Reform contest, jumping on the table, said : " The 
 King will clap coronets on all the Foot Guards to swamp 
 the House of Lords." The most important among the 
 latter-day meetings of Liberal M.P.'s at the Reform 
 began with that in 1875 for choosing Lord Hartington 
 as Mr. Gladstone's successor in the leadership. The 
 next century saw Lord Salisbury's House of Commons 
 opponents entering the club for a similar purpose, to 
 ratify Sir H. Camipbell-Bannerman's choice as Mr. 
 Gladstone's twentieth-century successor. Between these 
 
228 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 two gatherings there was another, the important attend- 
 ance at which made it, though only a club meeting, 
 something of a party convention as well. In 1883 two 
 brothers of Mr. Gladstone's most representative Radical 
 colleague, Joseph Chamberlain, had been rejected 
 at the Reform. The full strength of the club now 
 mustered to discuss whether this particular pilling 
 should be reconsidered. John Bright, then Joseph 
 Chamberlain's colleague at Birmingham, used the club 
 regularly and took an active part in these proceedings. 
 Lord Hartington, who entered the place soon after, 
 so rarely frequented it that he was asked by the 
 hall porter's officious page whether he was a 
 member. 
 
 The Carlton's judicious comprehensiveness, already 
 mentioned, was twice signally illustrated during the 
 nineteenth century. The third Sir Robert Peel, the 
 Prime Minister's eldest son, changed his colours more 
 than once, but never left the club. The Second Duke 
 of Wellington, almost politically immutable, received 
 a hint from the committee that he might withdraw. 
 His characteristic reply was : "I shall do no such 
 foolishness. For the purpose for Which I use it, it is 
 the most convenient spot in London." The Catholicism 
 of the Carlton has been imitated by its younger name- 
 sake, originating as that did, not like the older club 
 in the efforts of a Whip, but of an election manager, 
 Lord Abergavenny's right-hand man, Markham 
 Spofforth, once belonging to the legal firm Baxter, 
 Rose, Norton, and himself a universally known Carlton 
 figure. The country lawyers had rendered invaluable 
 help in organizing the party in the provinces. They 
 now looked for admission to the Carlton. For this, 
 however, the waiting list was already too heavy. 
 
 Spofforth, therefore, after consultation with Colonel 
 Taylor, then the head Whip, called on Disraeli at 
 Grosvenor Gate, and suggested, with his chief's warm 
 approval, the name Jimior Carlton. The most difficult 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 229 
 
 preliminary now remaining was to secure Lord Derby's 
 consent. Eventually, Taylor and Spoflforth, calling at 
 St. James's Square, received "the Earl's" authority 
 to go ahead, but only on the express condition of, 
 in Lord Derby's own words, " the curtain not drawing 
 up till the house was full." Nothing now remained 
 for the present but the formation of a committee. This 
 was headed by the then Viscount Nevill, and included, 
 besides Taylor, the two other Conservative Whips, Mr. 
 Gerard Noel and Sir William Hart Dyke. These men 
 and their successors, in an unbroken line, contrived to 
 make the Junior Carlton the most popular and repre- 
 sentative institution of the time, at once the mirror and 
 the bulwark of the party. No profession but what is 
 included in its list, or whose members are not conscious 
 of deriving definite advantage from their connection 
 with it. 
 
 The club makers recalled showed the confidence and 
 courage of their partisanship in never doubting an 
 early Conservative success, even when the political tide 
 seemed most decisively to have set against them. The 
 next achievement in the way of club creation on the 
 same side took place under conditions less depressing, 
 and had the encouraging approval of the Carlton's 
 founder, who remained, till his death, in 1850, 
 the Conservative Whip. His son Thomas, it will 
 be remembered, was a parliamentary agent. As 
 such he took no part in club manufacture, but he 
 watched keenly the political signs of the times 
 throughout the country, and in this Way made himself 
 generally useful to his father. " Our prospects," he 
 said to that relative in 1840, '-' are really brighter to-day 
 than when, eight years ago, the rally of the Carlton 
 began. For," he added, " manufacturing Lancashire 
 and the industrial Midlands will vote, to a man, for Sir 
 Robert Peel. These, however, have no social centre 
 in London ; even those whom they send to Parliament 
 will not feel at home in Pall Mall." Representations 
 
230 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 of the same kind, especially from a group of Stafford- 
 shire Conservatives, with " Tom " Nash as their spokes- 
 man, reached Sir Robert himself. Official Toryism, 
 it became known, had pronounced its blessing on the 
 movement, whose visible result in 1840 was the 
 Conservative Club. 
 
 In the way just explained the begfinnings of this 
 society connected it closely with the new and enlightened 
 Toryism of Peel and his followers. Its chief promoters, 
 however, wanted a social quite as much as a political 
 reunion, and were not going to deny themselves any of 
 the comforts and luxuries for which the Carlton was 
 famous. On the contrary, their first action was to call 
 in Francatelli, who set all their kitchen arrangements 
 going, and Who, in the most accomplished of his pupils, 
 provided them with a permanent cook of the first 
 order. At the same time, the cellar Was magnificently 
 stocked with wines, some of which, of almost fabulous 
 value, had come from the disestablished Crockford's. 
 These attractions not only delighted the gentlemen 
 for whose special benefit the club had been started, but 
 drew to it some of the Carlton's most epicurean 
 frequenters . 
 
 On the other hand, the Conservative justified its 
 title by instituting a political committee, as well as by 
 assisting the party through subscription from its 
 members. Its zeal has been less uniformly tempered 
 by the politic toleration which has served the constitu- 
 tional cause so well. Thus in 1865 a recently elected 
 member of the St. James's Street body, a Fellow of 
 King's, Cambridge, an inoffensive scholar, who had 
 joined the club for its library, voted for John Stuart 
 Mill in the Westminster election. The Carlton would 
 have ignored the matter and very likely have gathered 
 into the true fold the misguided member, Thomas 
 Bendysshe. The Conservative managers insisted that 
 he should take his name off the book's. " I will do 
 so the more readily," he said, " because, since I have 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 231 
 
 been here, I have read everything the library con- 
 tains." 
 
 A little later another literary member, E . C . Grenville 
 Murray, was charged virith libelling in the Queen's 
 Messenger, under the title of Lord Coachington Jarvy, 
 a nobleman who, when one fine afternoon the peccant 
 journalist was coming out of the place, made a show 
 of inflicting on him personal chastisement.' 
 
 To that period of the club belonged one of its 
 chief parliamentary ornaments, Patrick Boyle Smollett. 
 Descended from the novelist of his name, this Conserva- 
 tive clubman inherited much of his ancestor's full- 
 flavoured humour. He was never more amusing, either 
 in the club or at St. Stephen's, than when bantering 
 the Irish Members. Living till the eve of the twentieth 
 
 ' This incident was absurdly exaggerated by the newspapers next morning into 
 " Horsewhipping of a Personal Journalist by a Peer." Not long before it 
 occurred the present writer had heard Murray's Apologia orally expressed by him 
 to one of his friends at the Conservative. . "Society," he said, " like its ruling 
 powers, wears a conventional expression and has struck a conventional attitude. 
 In dealing with it, I, as a writer, claim the liberty which was conceded to Hogarth 
 as an artist." "Mariage d la Mode was a pictorial satire, full of point, but not much 
 relished at the time. George II's remarks about the march of the Guards to 
 Finchley will not bear repetition ; the painting is now the chief ornament of the 
 Foundling Hospital Collection, and was admitted to have had something to do 
 with the mended manners of the household troops. I have modelled myself upon 
 Addison, use only the simplest words of his vocabulary, and avoid all expression, 
 suggestion, or colour that would violate his purity. As for Grenville Murray, 
 his father, the Duke of Buckingham, who ruined himself, noting his natural 
 son's literary turn, got him on to the then Palmerstonian Morning Post. Palmer- 
 ston, struck by the young man's cleverness, put him into the Diplomatic Service, 
 and made him an attache at Vienna, where our then Ambassador was the object 
 of Palmerston's special detestation. The attache's duty was to furnish private 
 reports to Palmerston, not directly, but through one of his creatures at the 
 Morning Post office. Some of these documents miscarried, into the hands 
 of Murray's official chief at the Austrian capital. Palmerston then appeared 
 to laugh the matter off, putting it down to the zealous youth's error. Murray, 
 however, was moved from Vienna and shelved with a Consulship of Odessa. 
 This he subsequently forfeited, less,' he admitted, from ill-will on the Foreign 
 Minister's part than because he had fellen foul of a man whom he described as a 
 Foreign Office clerk, but who was in reality James Murray, an assistant Under- 
 Secretary. Whatever Grenville Murray's failings, he was not only a very ^ree- 
 able man, but at heart serious, and even religious, as may be seen from the 
 Prefaces to his various novels. 
 
232 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 century, he made his most lasting joke at their expense 
 when he called them " talking potatoes." With him, 
 too, originated the advice which since his day has 
 infused new blood into the club, and by doing so 
 greatly enlarged its membership. " Let us," he said, 
 " invite those of our sons or nephews who have taken 
 good degrees at the University, or who are in a 
 fair way of achieving distinction in their respective 
 careers." 
 
 All these Conservative club makers not only con- 
 solidated their own side, but helped their opponents 
 by putting them on their mettle. Hence,, just a 
 generation ago, the earliest Liberal effort to counter- 
 act and reproduce on the other side the most fruitful 
 hotbed and effective agency available for Conser- 
 vatism in the Junior Carlton. The year 1882 witnessed 
 the settlement of preliminaries, and in 1883 the 
 National Liberal Club was established in tem- 
 porary premises in Trafalgar Square. The founda- 
 tion-stone of the existing structure in Whitehall 
 Place followed, after a short interval. A special pro- 
 priety and significance attached to its name. It was 
 not to be, like the Refortn, a metropolitan association 
 alone, I but was to form a centre in London for Liberals 
 belonging to the provinces as well as to London. 
 A. G. Symonds, Secretary of the National Reform 
 Union, whose headquarters are in Manchester, signed 
 the circulars sent out in 1882. There was an autumn 
 session that year. The club committee used to meet 
 in " Willie " Bright's rooms at Storey's Gate. Of this 
 
 ' During the seventies the Reform Club acquired a fresh interest for Free 
 Traders throughout the country from the fact that T. B. Potter, then Member for 
 Rochdale, a well-known and popular member of the Reform, had been allowed to 
 occupy a little room on the second or third floor, as the temporary offices of the 
 Cobden Club, foriped by himself in conjunction with Tborold Rogers and others. 
 The twentieth-century headquarters of the Cobden Club are in Broadway Court, 
 Westminster. One of Mr. Potter's sons, Mr. Arthur B. Potter, Mr. T. Fisher 
 Unwin, and the treasurer of Mr. Potter's day, J. W. Probyn, belong to the 
 committee whose chairman is Lord Welby. 
 
T. li. POTTER. 
 {Founder of the Cobden Club.) 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 233 
 
 body the ;brother-in-law of the host, J. J. Tylor, 
 Henry de la Beche Dillwyn, S. C. Evans -WiHiams, 
 iWalter Wren, and A. J. .Williams were members. The 
 last of these was the ruling spirit, life, and soul of 
 the movement. Mr. Symonds organized the secre- 
 tarial business and the whole department to which 
 it belonged. Even sooner than had been anticipated, 
 everything was ready for the laying of the foundation- 
 stone by Mr. Gladstone (November 5, 1884). Such 
 have been the successive stages in the fulfilment of the 
 promise held out on May 2nd of 1883 at the West- 
 minster Aquarium dinner, formally introducing the 
 scheme to the pubHc. On that occasion Lord Granville 
 took the chair; roim.d him' were gathered the guest 
 of the evening, Mr. Gladstone, the Earl of Rosebery, 
 the future Viscount Morley of Blackburn, and the leader 
 of the Essex agricultural Progressives, to-day Lord 
 Blyth. Among the rest were Sir Charles Dilke, the 
 late Lord Avebury, the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord Monson, 
 Mr. J. Bryce, Mr. Lewis Fry, Mr. J. J. Colman, Mr. 
 T. R. Buchanan, and Mr. C. B. MacLaren. 
 
 So successful a proof of club creation not being a 
 Conservative monopoly stimulated the other side to 
 fresh efforts of the same kind. The defenders of 
 the Church and altar, at the instigation of their then 
 election manager. Captain R. W. E. Middleton, with 
 others of the Kentish gang, rejoined, in 1883, with the 
 Constitutional and, in 1887, Junior Constitutional Clubs. 
 Both of these adopted the custom, long known in the 
 provinces but still more or less novel in London, of 
 providing bedrooms for country members. Both, 
 too, like other societies founded during the Victorian 
 age, recognized the importance of a cuisine less 
 recherche and costly, indeed, than Crockford's, but still 
 excellent of its kind and within the reach of an ordinary 
 purse. With much wisdom this was often secured, 
 not by a male artist, receiving a Cabinet Minister's 
 wages, but by a first-rate woman cook, if not occa- 
 
234 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 sionally a coMon Meu.^ Justice has been alrea;dy done 
 to the great Carlton chef, Palanque. He and his 
 rival at Brooks's, Comte, were the masters of the 
 studios and laboratories in the basement, whose pupils 
 made their influence felt in most club kitchens during 
 the period now looked back upon. Among the 
 disciples of those artists were the Englishman, Farmer, 
 who, having perfected himself in Lord Bathurst's 
 service, eventually regaled the gourmets of the Con- 
 servative with the potage a. la Mag Merrities, the Duke 
 of Buccleuch's particular delight. Best known of all, 
 however, was a Frenchman, trained at Lord Chester- 
 field's, Alexis Soyer, to be remembered for other 
 reasons than his coimection w^ith the Reform. Wit 
 and author, as well as cook, he published in 1846 his 
 Gastromomic Regenerator. Five years later he took his 
 place as a guest among the cosmopolitan notabilities in 
 the drawing-room of the long, low, stucco-fronted house 
 which, then standing in Kensington Gardens, opposite 
 Kensington Gore, belonged to Lady Blessington. The 
 building overflowed with motley associations and had 
 beloriged to curiously difl^erent owners. Before the 
 D'Orsay era it had for its possessor and occupant 
 William Wilberforce. In 1849 the closing of what 
 is immortalized in Pickwick a Mrs. Leo Hunter's 
 menagerie, left it available for the professional opera- 
 tions of the Apicius, who had formerly mingled on 
 equal terms with the company which glittered in its 
 saloons. Soyer's conversion of the place into a 
 
 ' The New Almanack des Gourmands (1883) refutes the mistake of supposing 
 this expression to mean a first-rate artist of either sex. Louis XV held excellence 
 in the culinary art to be denied to women. Madame Dubarry resolved on con- 
 vincing him that he vi^as wrong. Under her supervision, the cleverest of her cook 
 maids prepared a delicious dinner for the King, who expressed his satisfaction in 
 these words, " Let your cuisinier henceforth form part of the royal household." 
 " It is no cuisinier at all," rejoined the lady, " but a cuisinihre. I claim for her 
 from your Majesty a cordon bleu." The ex-griseite carried her point. But the 
 first known recipient of the title was Marie, cook of ^cfermier giniral who 
 built the Elysee Bourbon. 
 
ALEXIS SOYEK. 
 {From a frivl at the Rcfoiui Club, reproduced by pcnnissioii.) 
 
 To face p. 234. 
 
THE CLUB TRIUMVIRATE 235 
 
 restaurant was suggested to him by his extraordinary 
 success at the Reform. During his twelve years of 
 office at that club he had seen his administration of 
 its kitchen bear fruit throughout the caravanserais of 
 Pall Mall and St. James's Street in the growing diffusion 
 of improved cookery at not unreasonable prices. This, 
 indeed, was Soyer's special mission. The race of 
 cooks, some trained by himself, who came afterwards 
 never repeated, whether in club or private service, 
 the insanely Wasteful habits of their predecessors ; 
 while after Soyer's day the club coffee-room prices 
 went down everywhere, except at the Windham. • The 
 amiable and wealthy Irish peer, with whom acquaintance 
 has already been made as its founder, did not desire, 
 it was said, the indiscriminate membership of his less 
 well-to-do fellow-countrymen, the Irish M.P.'s. He 
 had, therefore, fixed coffee-room charges at a pro- 
 hibitive figure, retained, however, only a short time 
 after his death', in 1850. Elsewhere, thanks largely 
 to Soyer's influence, skill in the selection of the carte 
 du jour would enable the clubman to dine at any of 
 the great Pall Mall clubs as well for four or five 
 shillings as would have been possible for five times 
 that charge at the coffee-houses and hotels resorted 
 to by bachelors in the Georgian era. 
 
 The epoch in club cookery which Soyer introduced 
 at the Reform had two distinctive marks. Generally 
 he revived the taste for old English dishes, often of 
 the most simple kind, by showing the imperishable 
 attraction with which a little care in their making 
 invested them. The boiled beans and bacon which 
 Thackeray loved, remain to this day one of Soyer's 
 monuments. So, too, is the volauvent d la financiere. 
 That dish came in with the epicurean plutocrats who, 
 after the Revolution, succeeded the old nobility as 
 Amphitryons and critics. 
 
 ' My authority for this statement is Abraham Hayward, who has not, I think, 
 included it in those of his writings to which this present work is so much indebted. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIAL CLUB CREATORS 
 
 Thehomeless squire at St. Stephen's— And the United University Club— Sword and 
 gown — How the Duke came in — " Men of metal and of acres " — And a family 
 party in the early Suffolk Street days — Palmerston as a light blue champion 
 — His academic patriotism and its club results — The Oxford and Cambridge 
 clubmakers and club-marrers — The Harington case — Treasures of the cellar 
 and cuisine at the University Clubs — Literati and literatuli as club creators 
 — Social mixture, and Covent Garden wits — The Garrick generators and 
 regenerators — The Duke of Sussex and his staff at work — Sir Andrew Bar- 
 nard — Lord Kinnaird — S. J. Arnold — And Francis Mills — Two personal 
 storms in Garrick teacups. 
 
 Even the work of socio-political organization would 
 not have been complete without the two rival estab- 
 lishments added to Pall Mall during the thirties. 
 Parliament men and others brought to London by the 
 iWestminster sessions had already received much help 
 in their social arrangements from two clubs established 
 between ten and twenty years before the Carlton, the 
 Reform, or the Conservative opened their doors. 
 During the pre-Reform era Joseph Hume brought back 
 with him from India, in 1808, a fortune of little less 
 than £50,000, and a determination to spend, whether 
 at St. Stephen's or elsewhere, all his money, energies, 
 and time on a war against all the abuses, social as 
 well as economic, of public life. The first thing he 
 took in hand was the creation of direct personal re- 
 sponsibility on the part of Members to their constituents . 
 Pamphlet after pamphlet, and speech after speech, 
 showed that a growing proportion of those sent to 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 237 
 
 guard local interests in the great council of the nation, 
 were not only silent and indolent, but for weeks and 
 months together absentees. For their own per- 
 sonal interests and private advancement, they put the 
 letters M.P. after their names, without the faintest sense 
 of obligation to the taxpayers who had enabled them 
 to do so. Only after the burning of the Houses, in 
 1834, did the country realize that the chamber which 
 easily contained its 530 occupants in the seventeenth 
 century was preposterously inadequate to the 658 repre- 
 sentatives of the people two hundred years later. Long 
 before this, however, Hume, on first entering it, in 
 18 18, found that there was not only a deficiency of 
 seats but an absence of standing-room'. Consequently a 
 large percentage of Members never went near the place, 
 and were at their country houses when they ought to 
 have been at Westminster. 
 
 From the quarters immediately interested in this 
 matter, Hume at once received an unmistakable and 
 most encouraging answer to his appeal. M.P.'s of 
 old standing were looked up by their constituents in 
 the Lobby, and received plain hints not to shirk their 
 duties. New candidates were told that punctual atten- 
 dance at divisions must be a condition of their return. 
 About 1820, therefore. Members were faced with the 
 necessity of passing most of their time in the capital. 
 Locomotion between the provinces and the capital was 
 costly and tedious. Wholesale domestic migration from 
 Arcadia to Babylon meant endless discomfort and 
 impracticable expense. A bachelor, however, could find 
 an excellent bedroom and dressing-room in clubland, 
 and could easily house for a few days in town his 
 womenkind at a hotel or a friend's. When, therefore, 
 the head of the family was summoned to his duties at 
 St. Stephen's, unless he rolled in the same wealth as 
 some of his new commercial colleagues, or were a 
 great squire, he found a pied d terre for himself in one 
 of the streets opening out of St. James's or Pall Mall, 
 
238 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 taking his more serious meals at the House itself, or 
 at the club. 
 
 As above all things the London home of the country- 
 gentleman in the Commons, the United University, 
 Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, formed the great club success 
 of 1822. That was twelve years before the Duke of 
 Wellington's official connection with Oxford, as 
 Chancellor. Unlike other Conservative leaders before 
 or after him, the Duke, knowing little from experience 
 of home life, was the most inveterate and ubiquitous 
 clubman of his day. He looked from the first favour- 
 ably upon the Suffolk Street society. Lacking the 
 academic qualifications for membership till he became 
 Chancellor, he joined it in 1835. His first appearance 
 at the club then had been heralded by several anecdotes 
 about the Oxford! function of the previous year. Of 
 these stories the least ktiown and the most authentic 
 may be given. 
 
 The short Latin address demanded from the hero 
 of W^aterloo contained the names of James I and 
 Charles I. JacObus was the new Chancellor's pro- 
 nunciation of the first Stuart King. Accepting the 
 whispered correction of the Vice-Chancellor standing 
 by. Dr. kWynter of St. John's, the great man proceeded 
 confidently to Carolus. Again the false quantity was 
 pointed out, this time, however, only to elicit from his 
 grace, " Hang it I you know, you can't have it both 
 ways." 
 
 Others who belonged to the club from the first were 
 George Canning, Lord Eldon, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord 
 Grenville, Lord Abinger, Lord Palmerston, the Earl 
 of Aberdeen, the Earl of EUenborough, Sir J. C. Hob- 
 house, Lord Broughton, Dr. Butler of Harrow, Dr. 
 Keate of Eton, Whewell, Master of Trinity, H. H. 
 Milman, then Professor of Poetry at Oxford, in and 
 after 1849 Dean of St. Paul's. 
 
 The rank and file of the L'ower House was led into 
 the club by a gentleman of middle height, remarkable 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 239 
 
 for corpulence of person, largeness of features, fullness 
 and rotundity of face. This was Sir Robert Harry 
 Inglis, since 1829 Member for Oxford University, the 
 strength of whose sentiments, the force and occasional 
 ferocity of whose epithets were the more noticeable 
 from the bland meekness of his manner and the melting 
 softness of his voice. Thus, when first seen at the club, 
 in pained tones of plaintive murmur, he had lately con- 
 cluded a peacemaker's speech at Westminster by charg- 
 ing with perjury O'Connell, Sheil, and the Roman 
 Catholic Members generally. Caseproof against ridicule 
 and attack, Inglis, as a speaker, never alloiwed his 
 composure to be disturbed. Sometimes, indeed, he 
 acquitted himself so well as to hold the assembly from 
 the moment he rose till he sat down. This was the 
 case with his declaration, in 1834, against the ad- 
 mission to Oxford of Papists and Dissenters. Sheil, 
 unable to refute his argument, could only rally Inglis 
 on the fatness and sleekness of his oratory as well as of 
 his appearance. The performance, however, enriched 
 with well-digested historical research, was admittedly, 
 next to Sir Robert Peel's, the best contribution to the 
 debate on the Tory side, and made him for the moment 
 something of a club personage. 
 
 Another picturesquely typical Conservative Member 
 of the Inglis period, Samuel Trehawke Kekewich, a 
 man of strikingly distinguished and handsome presence, 
 had been in the same division at Eton as the fourteenth 
 Lord Derby, and given his form fellow one of those 
 openings never missed by the Rupert of debate. " D — 
 your eyes, Stanley I " Kekewich had impatiently said, 
 instantly drawing forth the rejoinder " Damno tuos 
 occulus arboris accipiter! " 
 
 Of the same political colour was another early habitud 
 of the place, noted at St. Stephen's for his beautifully 
 modidated silver voice, strikingly reproduced at a later 
 day by his descendant. Dean Goulbum. Henry Goul- 
 bum himself. Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1841, 
 
240 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 might have combined! with his great social popularity 
 more political weight than he did but for his advanced, 
 uncompromising High Church and State views. 
 
 At the epoch now looked back upon, the club's 
 personal composition presented a feature already men- 
 tioned in the case of Arthur's, and common of course, 
 to many other societies. During its first decade some 
 half a dozen of its most regular frequenters belonged 
 to the same family. Thus Trehawke Kek'ewich was 
 one of a group of cousins that includled also another 
 original Member, Charles Barter of Sarsden, a little 
 later his younger brother Robert, iWarden of Winches- 
 ter, and yet another kinsman, from 1841 to 1847 as 
 Member for Winchester a well-known parliamentary 
 figure. Some of these names have appeared pretty 
 continuously or at short intervals in the club list since 
 then. 
 
 In 1830 the Oxford and Cambridge Club was created 
 by much the same social agencies of the time, and was 
 connected with many of the same personal forces, as 
 the United University Club, eight years earlier. It found 
 in the initiative of Lord Palmerston an equivalent for the 
 older institution's patronage by the Duke. At the Cam- 
 bridge election of 1806 Macaulay, at Lord Brougham's 
 request helped '-' the good cause " forward by sup- 
 porting the independent candidate, Lord Henry Petty, 
 against the Ministerial nominee. Viscount Palmerston.' 
 Fresh from college, that young man was pronounced 
 by Brougham wanting in aU qualifications for the 
 place. " His family are imiformly enemies to slave 
 trade abolition, presumably he is so himself. His 
 maxim is that the life of a courtier is the most brilliant 
 object of human ambition." This was not the first 
 
 ' This was the struggle mentioned by Palmerston's Harrow schoolfellow, 
 Byron, in " Hours of Idleness " : — 
 
 " Petty and Palmerston survey, 
 Who canvass there with all their might, 
 Against the next elective day." 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 241 
 
 occasion on which the misguided nobleman had entered 
 the electoral rimning on the Cam. tWilliam Pitt was 
 burgess for the University up to the time of his death, 
 in the preceding January. PaJmerston, having recently, 
 inherited his title, was reminded by his private tutor, 
 Dr. Outram, how well he had always done in the 
 college examinations, and how exemplary his conduct 
 had always been. Others of the authorities at St. 
 John's said pleasant things of the same sort to the 
 newly fledged peer. Why, therefore, should he not 
 boldly come forward and contest the seat, notwith- 
 standing that he would have for his competitors Lords 
 Lansdowne and Spencer. At the close of the contest 
 Pahnerston was neither surprised nor discouraged to 
 find himself at the bottom of the poll. The next year, 
 1807, brought another University election. Pahnerston 
 again came forward, did much better than before, and 
 lost the seat by only 4 votes. Towards the close of 
 his life Pahnerston confessed to something of dis- 
 appointment at never having received the compliment 
 of the Cambridge Chancellorship. Palmerston never 
 lost his attachment either to his old school or his 
 university. He made a point of riding down to 
 every Harrow Speech Day. " If," he once said, 
 " my house had not been so named before I got to it,' 
 I should have called it after the alma mater, in love 
 for which I do not yield to Macaulay hitnself." 
 
 In 1830 Palmerston became Foreign Secretary, and, 
 in the engrossing international affairs of that year, 
 made his diplomatic mark. Neither the settlement of 
 Belgium, nor the repression of the Russian advance 
 upon Asiatic Turkey, diminished his vigilant activity 
 in university, matters. An original member, and a 
 pretty regular frequenter of the United University, he 
 
 ' " The last house built in Piccadilly," first inhabited by the Earl of Egremont, 
 gained its later style when the Duke of Cambridge took it in 1829, living there 
 till his death, July 8, 1850. Then the owner of the freehold, Sir Richard Sutton, 
 resided there till 1855, when Palmerston's occupancy began. 
 
 16 
 
242 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 saw from the growing pressure on its accommoidation 
 from the increased attendance at the House of 
 Commons, and the immense development of the London 
 season, that there was ample room for another resort 
 of men trained on the Isis and the Cam. 
 
 Oxford, it struck him, had taken a leading part in 
 the movement whose result was the Suffolk Street 
 establishment. Time should be saved and success en- 
 sured by Cambridge, with himself for its representative, 
 promoting the preliminaries to be settled before another 
 university club could be organized. Throughout the 
 entire business he received valuable assistance from 
 two gentlemen named Mazzoni and Moore, both equally 
 entitled to a place among the club founders. Outside 
 those already concerned in the enterprise, the first 
 recruit personally enlisted by Palmerston for the enter- 
 prise was one of the oldest Oxford graduates then 
 living, the fourth Earl of Egremont, whose predeces- 
 sors in the title owned and inhabited the building which, 
 first taking its name from their title, was afterwatdfe 
 known as Cambridge House, with all its Palmerstonian 
 associations. The Cantab, contingent was headed by 
 the Earl of Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, and 
 the most distinguished resident members of Palmers - 
 ton's old college, St. John's. 
 
 As if equally to associate both universities with the 
 scheme from its inception, Palmerston chose a favourite 
 Oxford house of call, the British Coffee House, Cock- 
 spur Street, for the meeting which (May 17, 1830) 
 resolved on the formation of the club. Conspicuous 
 among those who then attended were the Duke of 
 Devonshire, at that time Lord Cavendish, Sir R. H. 
 Inglis, already known to us at the United University, 
 the tall, handsome figure with a dark complexion and 
 black hair and the delicately chiselled features which 
 belonged to Lord Chandos, afterwards Duke of 
 Buckingham, well deserving to be called the farmers' 
 friend, from his forfeiture of a high place under Sir 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 243 
 
 Robert Peel rather than throw over the agriculturists 
 by a postponement of his motion for the Malt Tax 
 repeal. Three years previously, notwithstanding the 
 credit for the idea claimed by Colonel Sibthorpe, he 
 introduced into the Reform Bill the Chandos clause, en- 
 franchising £50 county occupiers. Those three formed 
 the first club trustees. In their frequent appearances 
 at the place they were afterwards joined by, not only, 
 as was seen on an earlier page, ^Wi. E. Gladstone, but 
 by Sidney Herbert, Sir Robert Phillimore, S. H. Wal- 
 pole, Gathorne Hardy ; among; classical scholars by 
 H. A. J. Munro, editor of LUcretius ; and among men 
 of letters by the towering presence of Matthew Higgins 
 ("Jacob Omnium"), J. T. Delane's and W. Ml 
 Thackeray's associate. The succession to celebrities like 
 these was continued by Vernon Harcourt, Sir Henry 
 Holland, Viscount Knutsford, Speaker Gully (Lord 
 Selby), Sir Ed'ward Grey, Sir R. C. Jebb, and Andrew 
 Lang. 
 
 The deliberations at the British Coffee House were 
 followed by the opening of the club itself on temporary 
 premises in St. James's Square. The first year of the 
 Victorian era saw it settled in its present home, periodi- 
 cally improved within and redecorated without till the 
 finishing touches were only given on the eve of the 
 twentieth century. During the process of perfecting 
 the structure, an important principle of club adminis- 
 tration, involving the collective rights of a club com- 
 mittee and the privileges of individual members, became 
 the subject of a legal decision. In March, 1902, the 
 club committee raised the armual subscription from 
 eight to nine guineas. The late Sir Richard Harington, 
 a County Court Judge, in answer to an inquiry of the 
 secretary, itself in the nature of a protest, was told 
 that the alternative to paying the higher subscription 
 would be a determination of membership. On this he 
 appealed to the courts and secured an injunction ag'ainst 
 the committee. The eventual decision was entirely in his 
 
244 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 favour, for the court judge ruled that evien the ratification 
 of a general meeting does not empower the committee 
 to raise the subscription without the approval also of 
 the subscribing members. Sir Richard Harington, 
 therefore, neither paid' the increased subscription nor 
 resigned — he merely went on at the old rate . On 
 these terms he remained a member of the club till his 
 death. Since then, of course, the rules have been 
 altered. In the case of the Oxford and Cambridge, 
 the original omission, providing for the alteration of 
 rules from time to time, has been repaired. As a 
 consequence, to-day, there as elsewhere club committeesj, 
 when backed by a majority of members, can raise the 
 subscription at will. The Harington incident could 
 in no case recur. 
 
 Meanwhile the Oxford and Cambridge, like the 
 United University, had made for itself a reputation of 
 being, in Palmerstonian phrase, one of the very best 
 mounted institutions of its kind. Palmerston never, 
 or extremely seldom, touched any wine but the driest 
 Amontillado, which he imported direct. The new club 
 in Pall Mall shared with the older one in Suffolk Street 
 the distinction of possessing a supply of the statesman's 
 particular vintage, not yet, it was recently said^ quite 
 exhausted.' Both clubs also contrived, during the 
 thirties, to lay in a few specimens of the finest port 
 ever known, dispersed from the tWootton cellars of 
 George Grenville, the minister who died in 1770. Side 
 by side with the port were some bottles of the priceless 
 sherry produced by the City of London at the banquet 
 to the Queen and Prince Albert in 1840. There were 
 also some of the spoils of Crockford's. Such was the 
 champagne formerly drunk at the club' for seven 
 shillings a bottle, afterwards sold for a guinea, and 
 finally bought up by Lords Donegal, Lichfield, and 
 Mr. Orby Hunter, from whose collections after their 
 
 ' With a sandwich, a glass of it formed the daily lunch of E. F. S< Pigott, 
 examiner of plays, almost down to his death, in 1895. 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTUEY CLUB CREATORS 245 
 
 death the United University, and the Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge Clubs acquired it. WJien it had found its way 
 into the cellars now mentioned, it would have been 
 considered something of a bargain at twelve guineas a 
 dozen. 
 
 There is an old story of George Canning's tasting 
 some dry champagne, spitting it out in disgust, and 
 saying, " The man who says he likes dry champagne 
 will say anything." Canning, however, before he died, 
 was induced to change his opinion on this subject by 
 a glass of the famous vintage mentioned above. Stock's 
 dry champagne. The United University and the 
 Oxford and Cambridge ceUar committee bought with 
 rare success because the connoisseurs personally super- 
 intended the business. These were the men who under- 
 stood that it was not mere antiquity, but the year or 
 the vintage which stamps the value. Thus the famous 
 hock of I So I is inferior to that of the comet year i8i i;; 
 while the claret of 1834 is altogether superior to the 
 far more celebrated vintage of a decade earlier. Acting 
 upon this knowledge, the club managers, to the infinite 
 chagrin of the Travellers' and .White's, drained the 
 market of those particular products that were the crown- 
 ing glory of 181 1 and 1834 respectively. On these 
 principles, Lord Ducie, by far the best judge of claret 
 then living, and Sir John Mowbray, laid the foundations 
 of the Suffolk Street and Pall Mall cellars respectively. 
 The chief baron of the exchequer, both as Sir James 
 Scarlett and Lord Abinger, Sir John Johnstone,' R. 
 Bell, Lord Melbourne's younger brother, George Lamb, 
 and his private secretary, T. Young,^ at the United Uni- 
 versity, not only had a genius in wine judgment amount- 
 ing almost to an instinct, but seemed to know intuitively 
 where new and priceless acquisitions for their club 
 cellars from time to time might be found. Lampreys, 
 
 • Of Hackness York, M.P. Scarborough 1832-68. 
 
 = Known as the real though irresponsible Prime Minister, because his chief 
 left everything to him. 
 
246 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Jersey mullet, and' lark pudding were dainties brought 
 into favour at the older club by Lord Melbourne's taste, 
 and a special gift for preparing them possessed by its 
 cook. Menus of the thirties or forties in which they 
 appear were preserved by old members living into 
 comparatively recent times. 
 
 The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a 
 renewal of the socio -literary movement whose beginnings 
 may be traced back to Samuel Johnson, and which 
 found its later expression in clubs of various calibre 
 still flourishing. Maclise's well-known picture, " The 
 Fraserians," brings together, round a dinner-table, at 
 their headquarters, 2 1 5, Regent Street, Coleridge, 
 Carlyle, D'Orsay, James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, 
 and a writer so good-looking that La,dy Blessington, 
 with him on one side of her and D'Orsay on the other, 
 described herself as sitting between the two handsomest 
 men in London. At the Fraserian feasts Thackeray 
 had an occasional place, and here he saw enough of 
 Maginn, of Theodore Hook, and of John iWilson Croker 
 to sijpply him, in Pendennis, with the originals o| 
 Captain Shandon, iWenham, and Wagg. 
 
 Gradually others unconnected with Fraser's Magazine, 
 such as Thomas Hood and Robert Browning, dropped 
 in. Informally, therefore, and by imperceptible degrees, 
 a new literary society came to the birth. The most 
 active and prolific maker of clubs on this smaller scale 
 was Douglas Jerrold. The London Library only began 
 to exist in 1846. Before then, and more than ever 
 afterwards, in the great reading-room opened in 1857, 
 men read up for their articles and books at the British 
 Museum. Hence the Museum Club, due to the united 
 efforts of Jerrold and Charles Knight. A little later 
 these two created a dining company, " Hooks and 
 Eyes," which, by its maturer style, Our Club, flourished 
 till late in the sixties. 
 
 Of this, other early lights were Shirley Brook's, 
 T. K. Hervey, editor of the Afhenceum; Mark Lemon, 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 247 
 
 editor of Punch; as well as a later and better known 
 Atheneeum editor, Hepworth Dixon, who assisted at 
 the feasts held at Clunn's Hotel, Covent Garden, till a 
 much later date. Such were Thomas H amber, then 
 one of the most familiar and picturesque among Fleet 
 Street figures, editor of the Standard till 1876; his 
 particular friend John Bruce Norton, formerly a legal 
 member of the Madras Government ; another of 
 Hamber's intimates, also an Anglo-Indian, a good 
 writer, a first-rate English scholar, Colonel Cunning- 
 ham, Allan Cunningham's son. With these also were 
 two genial and accomplished bohemians, both club types 
 of their period, Spencer Smith, a medical man, and 
 M. C. Conry, a Wykehamist, for many years one of 
 the House of Commons clerks in the private bill office. 
 A more notable figure than any of these had been at 
 the earlier meetings a little, old-fashioned City clerk, 
 Jerrold's special favourite, the secretary, F. W. Hamp- 
 stede, who might have stepped out from one of 
 Dickens's novels. Thackeray, if not a very regular 
 frequenter, belonged to this society, under all its 
 different names, from the first. After Jerrold's death 
 he became its acknowledged leader, and here only was 
 he heard to sing his own ballads of " Little Billee " 
 and "Dr. Martin Luther." This, in Jerrold's life or 
 presence, he had never done. 
 
 The humour and satire of the two men had so much 
 of the same flavour that each felt a sort of constraint 
 while in the other's company. Thackeray's retirement 
 from Punch in 1854 did not grow out of any personal 
 difference with his colleague on the paper, Jerrold, 
 but in his want of sympathy with its line in public affairs . 
 Other of Thackeray's minor club associations wiU be 
 reverted to on a later page. 
 
 The institution with which he specially identified 
 himself owed its existence to personal agencies very 
 different from those that created other literary and 
 artistic resorts of the time. At several points in this 
 
248 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 narrative, from the infancy of the club' system in the 
 Court of Good Company, and through all its successive 
 developments, not less at the Mermaid and the Apollo 
 than at White's or the Alfred, we have seen the un- 
 restrained intermingling of the aristocratic or official 
 orders with untitled intellectual workers of the period. 
 This feature showed itself more conspicuously than is 
 generally known — or at least commonly remembered — 
 in the genesis of the Garrick. George Ill's sixth son 
 was justly called the popular member of the royal 
 family. He was also the most sensible, best informed, 
 and, in his popular affinities, the most wholesome among 
 t'he royalties of his time. This was the Duke of 
 Sussex. In the absence of blood and rapine from the 
 French Revolution of 1830, he found a new argument 
 for parliamentary reform ; while his acute observation 
 of the literary class, and especially of journalists in 
 France and England, impressed him with the English 
 superiority. The time, he thought, had come 
 when it would be an advantage to all concerned 
 in literary industry, as well as society at large, if the 
 Athen^um were supplemented with a club recruited 
 from the most active caterers for the public taste with 
 pen and pencil in the studio and on the stage. 
 
 Once satisfied that the scheme was feasible, he cast 
 about for some coadjutor, not himself coimected with 
 the arts and sciences, on whose experience, counsel, 
 and tact he could rely. He found ready to his hand 
 just the man he wanted, as well as two others. 
 
 The first was a man for his experience and sag'acity 
 esteemed a very Ulysses among his contemporaries. 
 Sir Andrew Barnard (1773-1855), a native of Donegal, 
 had begun life as an ensign in the 90th Foot in 1794. 
 Transferred subsequently to different regiments, each 
 time with higher rank, he served under Abercromby 
 in the West Indies, in Canada, afterwards distin- 
 guished himself in Spain and Portugal, fought at Quatre 
 Bras, was wounded at Waterloo, and ten years before 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 249 
 
 becoming associated with the Duke of Sussex in the 
 enterprise of 1831 had been made groom of the bed- 
 chambers, and soon afterwards one of the royal 
 equerries. 
 
 For his second in command the Duke chose one 
 whose antecedents were not less cosmopolitan than 
 Barnard's. The ninth Lord Kinnaird, before going to 
 Eton, had shown himself a shrewd, clever, adven- 
 turous boy at his Perthshire home, Drimmie House, the 
 family residence before Rossie Priory. After some 
 years in the Guards in Canada, and a long course of 
 travel in Italy, he succeeded to the family title in 1826, 
 and settled down to agricultural reform in his native 
 county. Here he introduced the first steam implements 
 used in Scotch farming, superintended the construction 
 of the Perth to Dundee Railway, established eveningi 
 schools, reading-rooms, and libraries for the workmen 
 on his estates, and drafted the Fofbes Mackenzie Act, 
 closing public-houses on Sundays. 
 
 These public services secured the conversion by Lord 
 Grey of a Scotch barony into an English peerage in 
 1 83 1. That year brought the Duke of Sussex another 
 club colleagtie in the most ingenious, resourceful, 
 versatile, and highly cultivated man -about -town then 
 living. This was Samuel James Arnold (1774-1852). 
 Educated for an artist, he found his strongest attrac- 
 tion in the theatre. Drury Lane was burnt down in 
 1809. Arnold engaged those of its company whom 
 he thought useful for the purpose and removed them 
 to the Lyceum, which he opened as an English opera- 
 house. His ability and ambition could be satisfied 
 with no smaller field than the rebuilt Drury. Of 
 this, in due course, he became manager. Three years 
 afterwards his chief friend on the committee, Samuel 
 Whitbread, committed suicide in 1 8 1 5, and Arnold 
 retired from the management, too soon for the public, 
 but not before he had secured rare success with " Man 
 and Wife" or "More Secrets than One." 
 
250 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 As regards the fourth of the Garrick founders, 
 Francis Mills, it might be well to correct some current 
 mistakes about his identity. These seem largely due 
 to the fact that Sir Thomas Acland's brother-in-law, 
 Arthur Mills, a member of Grillion's, took a part in 
 other club activities belonging to the first half of the 
 Victorian age. His father bore the name of Francis, 
 and held for fifty years the Warwickshire living of 
 Barford, his best known descendant being V. H. MiUs, 
 of Pillerton Manor, Warwick, Arthur Mills's grandson. 
 There was, however, a second Francis Mills during 
 1 83 1, connected with the other family of that name. 
 He lived at Bistem Manor, Ringwood, and was a well- 
 known figure at the Hampshire and Sussex country 
 houses so much mixed up with the socio-political life of 
 the Regency and of William IV. He was also, like Sir 
 Andrew Barnard, though much less intimately, among 
 the fugle men of the Duke of Sussex. 
 
 Seven years earlier the Athenaeum (1824), as has 
 been already seen, proclaimed, at Lord Lansdowne's 
 own suggestion, its independence of aristocratic 
 patronage. The Garrick at its birth was partly noble, 
 partly royal, and altogether patrician. These associa- 
 tions, indeed, it has never shed. The two most notable 
 among its earliest members of this kind. Sir Charles 
 Taylor and Sir Henry de Bathe, both well-knovra men 
 of the world, with a large following among the repre- 
 sentatives of stage and pen, combined an airy cynicism 
 with a contemptuous condescension of manner. They 
 were each of them privileged to call the literary chief 
 of the club, Thackeray, by the first syllable of his name, 
 and were never slow to unbend in congenial, appre- 
 ciative smoking-room company. Neither at the 
 Garrick nor elsewhere are there now club autocrats like 
 those just named. Both men outlived their original 
 ascendancy, and as in Pall Mall so in Covent Garden, 
 abstained from attempting any revival of the earlier 
 system. 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 251 
 
 To some extent Sir Charles Taylor, and in much 
 larger degree Sir Henry de Bathe, were prepared to 
 act as mediators in a quarrel of Thackeray, the great 
 panjandrum of the place, with a then obscure mem- 
 ber of it, afterwards the once well-known Edmund 
 'Yates. There was no doubt a touch of \nilgarity 
 about Yates's criticism in a .twopenny paper of 
 Thackeray's personal and literary manner. There was, 
 however, no violation of the confidences of club life, 
 nor did the comments contain amy proof of social 
 intimacy with their subject. They might have been 
 written equally well had their author never been 
 in the same room with the novelist. The great man, 
 however, with the littleness from which even finer 
 natures are not exempt, protested that his commentator's 
 acquaintance with his characteristics had been gathered 
 from the Garrick smoking-room. " If," he said, " such 
 practices were to be allowed, it would be fatal to any 
 society of gentlemen." It Was thus, as will be seen, 
 a trumpery affair from the beginning. Of all men who 
 ever handled a pen for the purposes of history or 
 fiction, Thackeray was the one whom it least became 
 to appear as complainant in such a matter. No novelist 
 ever drew his characters from the life more systemati- 
 cally than was done by him. His Book of Snobs, made 
 out of " Snob Papers " in Punch, had been recoglnized 
 on its first appearance as a portrait -gallery of habitues 
 at the Reform, the Garrick, and elsewhere. The 
 scurrilities, with which he assailed Bulwer-Lytton in 
 Fraser, in Punch, and wherever else his struggling 
 pen forced an entrance, disgusted many of those to 
 whom the author of Falkland and Pelham was the 
 opposite of a hero. 
 
 Those not themselves sufferers in this way resented 
 the caricature of the brilliant, reckless, unhappy William 
 Maginn, as Captain Shandon in Pendennis. Both in 
 that novel and in Vanity Fair there were held up to 
 ridicule others whose acquaintance, so Thackeray told 
 
252 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 them, had been welcomed by him as a pleasure and a 
 compliment. Such were John Wilson Croker and 
 Theodore Hook. These were the novelist's models for 
 his Wenham' and iWagg, the former of whom co-operates 
 with Rawdon Crawley's " friend " as peacemaker after 
 Crawley's castigation of the marquis in Becky Sharp's 
 drawing-room. Unlike either of these, another 
 character in Ptendermis not only belonged to the 
 Garrick but lived there intimately with Thackeray. He 
 was indeed the Mr. Archdeckne who, after assisting at 
 one of the lectures on the English humorists, remarked 
 before leaving, "- Thack, my boy ! you ought to have 
 had a pianner." Thackeray no doubt forgave a liberty 
 of this kind ; he did not forget it, as Archdeckne found 
 out to his cost when, a little later, his Garrick friends 
 congratulated him on the immortality of ridicule 
 awarded him in the character of Harry Foker. 
 
 Another club acquaintance of a very different kind 
 complained, from his point of view not without reason, 
 of the novelist's addiction to personalities. The famous 
 Reform Club cook, Alexis Soyer, with all his pseudo- 
 artistic affection and gastronomic sentimentalism, was 
 reproduced to the life in Mirobolant. The great chef 
 resented bitterly the sorry return made by this carica- 
 ture for his delicate attention during' many years to 
 the novelist's table tastes in various menus and in the 
 carte du jour. 
 
 Thackeray was only less thin-skinned himself than he 
 was indifferent to the feelings of others. In his youth 
 he had met Benjamin Disraeli at Lady Blessington's. 
 His attempt many years later to renew the acquaint- 
 ance when both men were famous failed. Why? 
 In 1847 Thackeray was writing his " Prize Novelists " 
 for Punch. Far the best of those wonderful produc- 
 tions was Codlingsby, the parody of the great Young 
 England novel, then the talk and admiration of the 
 town. Thackeray himself, elate with satisfaction, as 
 he well might be, at his own masterpiece, saw so 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 253 
 
 little of offence in it to Disraeli that he actually 
 suggested to Monckton Milnes the possibility of the skit 
 being taken by Disraeli for a compliment. -' Why," 
 he said, " should not we three celebrate the event, and 
 bury the hatchet by a friendly dinner at the ' Little G.' " 
 Disraeli never forgave his satirist. Many years after- 
 wards Lord Stanhope, getting up a dinner for 
 Disraeli's amusement, suggested asking Thackeray. 
 "On no account," was the reply ; " but I should like 
 to meet Mr. Dickens." The creator of PickMck accord- 
 ingly came, and was pronounced by the guest of the 
 evening " a perfectly delightful person." 
 
 Thackeray's annoyance of Yates in the affair already 
 mentioned was embittered by the memory of a purely 
 personal difference with the peccant paragraphist's 
 father, Frederick Yates the actor. The incident soon 
 developed into a quarrel, in which sides were taken, 
 and in which Edmund Yates never had a chance. 
 Thackeray's reference of the matter to the committee 
 produced from that body a demand for an unreserved 
 apology from the younger to the older man. Had 
 Yates been well advised, he would have bowed to 
 the force majeure, and made it. Instead, with amazing 
 unwisdom, he consulted Dickens, who at once declared 
 the proposed apology impossible. Then came the 
 general club meeting, held for no other purpose than 
 to emphasize Thackeray's triumph and to heap fresh 
 ignominy on the victim of his wrath. 
 
 This, though the best known, was not the only nor 
 the earliest Garrick trouble of the same kind. Among 
 the first if not absolutely original members were the 
 publishers, Richard Bentley, William Longman, John 
 Murray ; Spottiswoode, the King's printer ; Sheridan 
 KnoWles the dramatist ; Poole, the author of Paul Pry\ ; 
 George Catermole and Clint, artists ; Sir George Smart 
 the composer ; Horace and James Smith, of Rejected 
 Addresses fame ; Samuel Rogers, at least two of the 
 Sheridan family, the elder and the younger Mathews, and 
 
254 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 T. P. Cooke/who, from being a lieutenant in the Royal 
 Navy, distanced aU rivals as a player of nautical parts 
 on the stage. The Earl of Coventry, when Lord Deer- 
 hurst, the second Duke of Wellington, while as yet 
 only Marquis of Douro, Lords Adolphus Fitzclarence, 
 Clanricarde, Chesterfield, and Castlereagh, and the witty 
 Canon of St. Paul's who wrote the Ingotdsby. Legends, 
 R. Barham, all belonged to the second batch of 
 members. Barham's chief intimate at the Garrick was 
 Francis Fladgate, a man of great social polish, varied 
 culture, and singularly attractive manner, represented 
 at the club by an unbroken line of descendants till 
 the eve of the twentieth century.' Barham's pet aversion 
 was a certain Ibidson Farquhar, who gradually became 
 to the poet of Ingotdsby what Edmund Yates was 
 afterwards to be to the author of Vanity Fair. In the 
 earlier case, as in the later, the great man squeezed out 
 the small, and Farquhar succumbed to the same fate as 
 Yates for a like offence, the putting of club impressions 
 into print. 
 
 Of those now mentioned Lord WiUiam Lennox and 
 the second Duke of Wellington were among the few 
 who survived to assist at the club's removal from 
 its earliest home, 35, King Street, Covent Garden, to 
 its present abode in Garrick Street. The Yates - 
 Thackeray incident of 1862, like its predecessor the 
 Barham-Farquhar business of twenty years before, does 
 not belong to the existing structure, which is not less 
 remarkable for unbroken freedom from aU disturbances 
 in its domestic economy than for its art treasures, its 
 beautiful landscapes by Clarkson Stanfield and David 
 Roberts, that wealth in artistic treasures generally which 
 caused the old Eton master, W. G. Cookesley, seldom 
 to find himself in that quarter of the town without 
 obtaining from his old pu^il, Sir F. C. Burnand, an 
 introduction to the Garrick theatrical portrait gallery. 
 
 ' "Papa" Fladgate the father of the Garrick, Thackeray's special friend, 
 brother of the solicitor William, died at the age of 93 in 1892. 
 
FRANCIS FLADGATE. 
 {From a fhotagratih kindly lent by Miss Geraldine Fladgale.) 
 
 [To face p, 254, 
 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLUB CREATORS 255 
 
 Nor is the club less famous for the art in its kitchen 
 than the art on its walls. Now, like other clubs, it 
 has a French chef ; but much of its nineteenth-century 
 cuisine was managed by a woman cook, one of the 
 few consummate cordons bleu then known in the club 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 ARTS, SCIENCE, AND CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 
 
 " American Notions "in Co vent Garden — Garrick Club secessionists led by Dickens 
 to an artistic paradise in Hanover Square — Italian and pre-Raphaelite poets 
 and painters at the Arts Club — The Arundel Club, Salisbury Street, Strand 
 — Frank Talfourd, its founder — His works and ways of life — Fleet Street 
 workers in their anecdotage at the Arundel— Amateurs and professionals — 
 The latter take refuge in reviving from the fifties Robert Brough's Savage 
 Club — Smaller Bohemian societies — The Century — Its contemporaries, the 
 Burlington Fine Arts Clubs and the Savile — The Cecil— The Gladstone- 
 Russell New Reform — The esthetic vagabond — All the talents and arts at 
 the Whitefriars — The old and new Savage, and the vanishing of Bohemia — 
 The Royal Society Club and its founder, Edmund Halley — The Antiquaries 
 Club — Its makers, members, and guests. 
 
 The club forming the chief subject of the last chapter 
 is the one society of its kind that reached fashionable 
 notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic at the same, 
 time. For that fact credit was claimed by the New 
 York literary gossip, N. P. iVWillis, who visited England 
 during the period in which the club came to the birth, 
 and who, in his " Home Letters," revealed glimpses 
 of its celebrities in comparison with which Edmund 
 Yates's remarks about Thackeray were models of dis- 
 cretion and good taste. As a fact, however, JViillis 
 had less to do with the matter than an American turfite, 
 Stephen Price, well known in all theatrical and sporting 
 circles, an acquaintance of Thackeray, and a constant 
 frequenter of the club. Those were, the days when 
 Theodore Hook was the fashionable novelist of the 
 hour, and a great Garrick habitud. The inventor of 
 Hook's favourite gin punch was not, as has been often 
 supposed. Hook himself, or Tom HiU the genuine 
 
 256 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 257 
 
 original of Paul Pry, the Garrick veteran whose bap- 
 tismal register could not, as Hook said, be found, be- 
 cause it was burned in the Great Fire of London, 1666. 
 The true patentee of the beverage was the already 
 mentioned Price, who also introduced to the club the 
 modification of the porter-house steak known as the 
 Garrick steak. 
 
 The Garrick steak was described to the present writer 
 by G. A. Sala, who, though not a member of the club, 
 knew the dish well, and rivalled Dumas in his ac- 
 quaintance with cookery, as an adroitly carved combi- 
 nation of the upper and under cut of a sirloin. 
 Abraham Ha5rward's punch recipe, given him by Price 
 himself, was : Pour half a pint of gin on the outer peel 
 of a lemon, add lemon-juice, sugar, a little maraschinOj 
 a pint and a quarter of water, and of soda-water two 
 bottles. This was the preparation of which Hook, 
 with the accompaniment of one or two mutton-chops, 
 once took six glasses at the club, and only stopped 
 at that lest he should be late for a dinner at Lord 
 Canterbury's. 
 
 The Garrick and, by the name of Lord Dollamore, 
 its great patron during the club's rise to fashion, were 
 described to the life by the expelled Edmund 
 Yates in Black Sheep. But the two Garrick 
 novelists par excellence were W. M. Thackeray 
 and his disciple, Anthony Trollope. At the time 
 of the Thackeray-Yates episode his victorious hero 
 had but a year to live. He had entered the club in 
 1833, four years before Dickens and twenty-nine be- 
 fore Trollope. Those are the writers who in their 
 club descriptions have exactly hit off the amalgam 
 of intellect, frivolity, bohemianism, and swelldom 
 characterizing the life of the place at the time of the 
 Dickens and Thackeray duel over the prostrate form 
 of the victimized Yates. Dickens immediately left the 
 Garrick. Several of his friends retired at the same 
 time. A good many of these did not belong to the 
 
 17 
 
258 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Athenasum, or to any other important society of the 
 kind. An opening, therefore, evidently presented it- 
 self for another establishment on something the same 
 scale as Thackeray's "Little G." Exactly the build- 
 ing wanted for the purpose was not at first to be 
 found . 
 
 About this time, it so happened that another as yet 
 unfledged club company was on the look-out for a 
 suitable home. The popular and accomplished Arthur 
 Lewis, in taste, appearance, and association, most attrac- 
 tive of typical artists, had made his Jermyn Street rooms 
 the rendezvous of the gifted and variously distinguished 
 set to which he belonged. An adept, like many of 
 those about him, in aU manly exercises, he took an 
 active part in the Volunteer movement. Supported by 
 his particular intimates, he founded the Artists' Rifle 
 Corps. The company thus brought together had out- 
 grown the capacity of his private chambers. They 
 held their meetings in a portion of the old Burlington 
 House, granted them for the combined purposes of drill- 
 hall, armoury, and mess-room. 
 
 The artists of the brush had been gradually rein- 
 forced by those of the pen. Thomas Hughes, who 
 wrote Tom Brown's Schooldays, had joined the group, 
 bringing with him other of F. D. Maurice's lay pupils. 
 With the body thus formed the Garrick secessionists 
 united themselves. Instead of a house in the artists' 
 quarter, in and about Fitzroy Square, according to 
 the original idea, the clubmen eventually settled on a 
 more picturesque abode than any that region could 
 have afforded, and in a more convenient quarter. The 
 representatives of art and literature could not have 
 housed themselves more suitably than in 1863 they were 
 able to do, with the Academy of Music for their next 
 door neighbour at 17, Hanover Square. It was a 
 Georgian mansion, whose chief feature on entering 
 seemed the magnificent old oak staircase. The rooms 
 above stairs and below were a,dorned with floridly 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 259 
 
 carved maatelpieces, superbly panelled walls, and 
 ceilings painted by Angelica Kauffmann. 
 
 Among those domiciled beneath this charming and 
 delightful roof, the most famous was the creator of 
 Pickwick, who, though not often seen on the premises, 
 remained a member till his death, introducing to it his 
 son, afterwards his successor in the conduct of All the 
 Year Round, Charles Dickens the second, and the son 
 of his old friend Frank Stone, the present Royal 
 Academician, Mr. Marcus Stone, whom he had pro- 
 posed for the club in 1866, and who, after forty-seven 
 years, still remains a member. Of those he met at the 
 Arts, none interested Dickens more deeply than the 
 Chancery barrister who had been Arnold's pupil at 
 Rugby, and whose impressions of his old master are 
 recorded in the most successful story of school life 
 ever written. i 
 
 The attraction possessed for Dickens by Hughes is 
 easily explained. Some twenty years earlier the 
 novelist, during his continental travels, experienced a 
 prolonged and acute spiritual crisis. This was suc- 
 ceeded by a torment of self-questionings about the 
 Church to which, Anglican or Roman, a true Christian 
 should belong.' During this protracted and growing 
 agony the book which helped him most was Stanley's 
 Life of Arnold. " I respect and reverence his memory," 
 Dickens afterwards said, " beyond all expression." 
 " Every sentence you quote from it," he said to Forster, 
 " is the textbook of my faith." Afterwards at the 
 Arts, Hughes, in answer to his eager questions, told 
 him 'something of Arnold's magnetic attractiveness, and 
 the occasional never-to-be-forgotten addresses to his 
 sixth form. Till then, any personal acquaintance of 
 Dickens with Dean Stanley was only that of chance 
 meeting in society. Hughes brought about a closer 
 personal intercourse. The Arts clubhouse would, he 
 knew, interest Stanley's historical taste. Eventually, the 
 
 • John Forster's Life of Dickens, crown edition, p. 255. 
 
260 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 biographer of Thomas Arnold and the author of David 
 Capperfietd signalized the first year of the Arts Club's 
 existence by meeting as Hughes's guests in the dining- 
 room of the infant society ; for the twelvemonth wit- 
 nessing the club's formation saw also Arthur P. Stanley 
 installed in the place, as he often put it, of the Abbot of 
 [Westminster. 
 
 Personal ties connect the Arts Club only less closely 
 with the writers of the time than with its painters. 
 Poet in print, as well as on canvas, Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti sometimes delivered in the club smoking-room 
 those discourses, emphasized by the eloquent Italian 
 gesture, that proclaimed him a natural leader. Thither 
 also came his brother, Wj. M. Rossetti, the art critic, 
 for the most part silent, but sometimes readily dis- 
 cussing to a little circle the experiences and observa- 
 tions, foreign and British, of which his comments were 
 the well -weighed outcome. The atmosphere of the 
 place at this time was perceptibly charged with Pre- 
 Raphaelite influence and interests, with Dante Gabriel 
 for the prophet of the cult in metre and W. M. as its 
 expositor in prose. 
 
 From Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where, most of them 
 beneath the same roof, the band then lived, there came 
 throughout the sixties to Hanover Square, not only the 
 two remarkable brothers just mentioned, but George 
 Meredith and A. C. Swinburne. From Swinburne take 
 all that is Rossetti, or that was acquired in association 
 with George Meredith or Rossetti's pupil of the brush, 
 Frederick Sandys — ^very little will be left of the poet 
 of " Atalanta " and " Chastelard." 
 
 The personal forces concerned in the composition of 
 the poet were those of his inferiors as well as of his 
 elders and equals. Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) 
 and Captain (Sir Richard) Burton were the two chief 
 master minds with which Swinburne was brought into 
 contact. But, once he had risen to fame, their influence 
 upon him was not greater than that of the worshippers 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 261 
 
 with whom by this time he had surrounded himself— 
 Thomas Bendysshe, Joseph Knight, and Alfred Bate 
 Richards. These were not all members of the Arts 
 Club, but they were its frequent visitors, and the club 
 thus became the intellectual centre of the whole mixed 
 Swinburnian company. Swinburne's chief inspirer, if 
 not creator, Rossetti, was far from being the sole Arts 
 Club celebrity of Italian name and blood. The club 
 beneath its present Dover Street roof is still visited 
 by one who only just missed being an original member, 
 C. E. Perugini. His whole English course has been 
 one unbroken fulfilment of flattering prophecies about 
 his artistic future, uttered in his student days by his 
 chief European teachers, Ary Scheffer, in Paris, and 
 Mancinelli in Rome ; while, at the same time, his own 
 triumphs with the brush have been accompanied by 
 those of his gifted wife, daughter of the most famous 
 of all Arts clubmen, Charles Dickens himself. Finally, 
 till 1889 the most original cartoonist of his day. Carlo 
 Pellegrini, of Vanity Fair, entertained and exercised his 
 brethren at the Arts with the humours and antics of 
 a Neapolitan lazzaroni. Present and past Arts Club 
 lists give the same impression as a stroll through a 
 gallery of nineteenth and twentieth century painters. 
 The artist whose " Darkened Room " was the picture of 
 the year at the Academy of 19 13, Sir Luke Fildes, 
 forms the most illustrious link connecting the artists 
 at work under George V with their club predecessors 
 of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, including as these 
 did, in addition to the names already mentioned, Field 
 Talfourd, the Serjeant's brother, with his fine aristo- 
 cratic features and bearing, admirably set off by his 
 velvet coat, gracious and kindly smile ; Henry D 'Egville, 
 still remembered for his Venetian water colours; 
 the Kentish cattle painter, Sichiey Cooper ; his son 
 Thomas, who did not carry his years so well as his 
 venerable father ; the impressionist James Whistler, with 
 his squeaky voice and white forelock, a club and draw- 
 
262 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 ing-room pet wlxose social acceptance did much towards 
 giving a fashionable vogue to the studied Yankeeisms 
 of phrase and pronunciation in which he vied with 
 Lord Dunraven. Among the Arts men whose social 
 antecedents and connection caused them to start from 
 a position like that of Clive Newcome, were, in the 
 Hanover Square days, Val Prinsep, Philip Calderon, 
 Wi. V. Burgess, Edwin Long, Colonel Robert Goff, 
 Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers ; Edwin 
 Hughes, society's chief portrait painter ; Haynes 
 Williams, credited with so many historical pieces ; and 
 Heywood Hardy, whose studies of brute creation 
 are not so much counterfeit presentments as living 
 creations. 
 
 The Punch illustrators have always been familiar in 
 English mouths as household words. First came John 
 Tenniel, whose cartoon was from time immemorial, as 
 it almost seemed, the artistic feature of the week, to- 
 gether with Tenniel's colleague and contemporary, 
 Charles Keene, the great and noble artist who hit off 
 the life and character of the street and of the hunting 
 field with a colour, a movement, and a life that made 
 the paper happy enough to possess him, a joy and re- 
 freshment to every member of the body politic. His 
 death, in 1891, eclipsed the gaiety of Punch. The old 
 fun died out of its pages, and the new social satire 
 of drawing-room and dinner -table seemed but a partial 
 substitute. Those who supplied these elements were, 
 like their predecessors of the Arts Club, George du 
 Maurier and Linley Sambourne. 
 
 The most famous artistic ornaments of the nineteenth 
 century all had a connection with the club. Frederick 
 Leighton had belonged to it some time when, on be- 
 coming President of the Royal Academy, he received 
 a complimentary dinner, in 1878. This event also 
 brought into the club J. E. Millais, hurriedly elected 
 to take the chair on the occasion, and, except 
 on that evening, afterwards as before, a stranger to 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 263 
 
 the place. Passing to its literary members, Edmund 
 Yates speedily followed his friend and champion, 
 Dickens, into the club, and used it regularly throughout 
 his editorship of the World till the year of his death, 
 1894. The most variously accomplished of Dickens's 
 magazine staff, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, did not follow 
 his chief to Hanover Square, where, however, the rank 
 and file of periodical letters — for instance, Bernard H. 
 Becker, a sound and safe general utility journalist, of 
 Dickensian training, and H. Schiitz Wilson, a various 
 and versatile magazinist, with Alpine climbing for his 
 forte and asstheticism for his foible — shone for years 
 with pleasant brightness, and may still be remembered 
 for their genial presence, honest and finished work. 
 The one master of fiction with whom Dickens lived in 
 intimacy, Wilkie Collins, was not quite a stranger to 
 the club, and drew from it all the touches of club life 
 incidentally relieving his most sensational stories. 
 Charles Reade used the club as regularly as in the 
 vacation he did his Fellow's rooms at Mag'dalen, Oxford, 
 and often stayed till nearly midnight, walking up and 
 down the smoking- drawing room, refreshing himself 
 at every turn with a deep draught of tea, two relays of 
 which had sometimes been consumed before he went 
 home. The tea-drinking may have been dropped, but 
 the whist-room knew him constantly till within a decade 
 of his death, in 1884. To Reade's era also belongs 
 the membership of three other writers who left their 
 mark upon the time — W. R. S. Ralston, the Slavonic 
 expert, who did for Russian letters what Sir Mackenzie 
 Wallace afterwards did for the social and political life 
 of the Tsar's subjects ; Emanuel Deutsch, whose 
 Quarterly article on the Talmud was welcomed by the 
 learned as an original contribution to the study of 
 Israelitish tradition and thought ; and the Cologne 
 Gazette's extraordinarily acute and well-informed cor- 
 respondent. Max Schlesinger, whose peculiar sources of 
 behind-the-scenes acquaintance with international move- 
 
264 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 ments made him sought after, not only by newspaper 
 men, but by financiers, leading parliamentarians, and 
 sometimes ministers themselves. 
 
 Less completely equipped with club conveniences than 
 the Arts, and designedly unconventional in its life and 
 atmosphere, was the Arundel. It differed chiefly from 
 innumerable other fraternities of similar personal com- 
 position in its permanent possession during the sixties 
 of a picturesquely placed roof looking out on the 
 Thames in Salisbury Street, Strand.' Its parentage 
 was respectable and even illustrious enoug'h for a far 
 graver institution, keeping much more decorous hours. 
 
 Frank Talfourd, Serjeant Talfourd's son, had, under 
 his distinguished father's eye, been given, at home and 
 at school, an education almost unique in its social and 
 intellectual value. Before going to Eton as a brilliant 
 boy of thirteen, he had been patted on the head by 
 celebrities of all kinds at his father's house. Going to 
 Christchurch in 1845, he brought there, and carried 
 away from it, a reputation for ability equal to any 
 performance, qualified, unfortunately, by a disposition 
 only to exert it upon the intellectual taste or humour 
 of the moment. From the first he had been taught 
 by precept and example to look for the best company 
 that could be found, and to keep his mind in constant 
 training. Called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 
 >i8s2, he went on circuit so longi as the travelling mess 
 amused him, and no longer. He then settled down to 
 work, but not of a legal kind, in his Temple chambers. 
 
 His school and college antecedents, a pleasant, easy 
 manner, a faculty of self -adaptation to the chance 
 acquaintanceship of the moment, natural readiness and 
 unfailing versatility of pen, once created an idea that 
 he may have been the original of the name character 
 in Thackeray's Pendennis. Any such notion is a 
 chronological impossibility ; the true and only Pendennis 
 was Thackeray himself. But the journalistic and lite- 
 
 ' Later it moved to Adelphi Terrace. 
 

 / xyt^An^/J/^.^:^,^.^^^^/,'^.^ c.^<D 
 
 A 
 
 7 
 
 '( ly I ,'^-«^ '-<.^C^ 
 
 
 
 
 THE WHIG CLUB LIST OF MEMBERS. 
 
 {Block of autographs kindly lent by Messrs. Maggs Bros., Strand.) 
 
 The Whig Club started in 1780. It did much towards bringing to a focus the obscurer and dispersed 
 Whig agencies which a generation later were to be utilized by EUice at the Reform. 
 
 To face p. 264. 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 265 
 
 rary associations of Serjeant Talfourd's youth may well 
 have given the novelist many hints, both in the way 
 of character and incident, for the story that at different 
 times has attracted to newspaper-writing as many lads 
 as Charles Lever's novels have impelled into the Army 
 or Captain Marryat's sent to sea. 
 
 Coming after J. R. Planche, Frank Talfourd worked, 
 with equal industry and success, the vein first struck 
 by his predecessor. He thus prepared on the burlesque 
 stage the way for Sir F. C. Bumand, H. J. Byron, 
 and Robert Reece. Between 1852 and 1862 his ex- 
 travaganzas " Alcestis, the Original Strong-minded 
 Woman " and " The Rule of Three " were played at 
 the Strand, two more, " Ganem " and " Shylock," at 
 the Olympic, yet another, " Pluto and Proserpine," 
 at the Haymarket, then one more, " Abou Hassam," 
 at the St. James's. No man, in his way, worked 
 harder than Frank Talfourd. Had he contented 
 himself with the labours of the pen, he would not 
 have had to exchange London for Mentone, or 
 have died on the Riviera at thirty-four. By way of 
 adding to his exhausting enjoyments and to ensure him- 
 self against a sufficient amount of nightly rest, he 
 founded the Arundel Club at 16, Salisbury Street. In 
 that enterprise he was assisted by a solicitor of artistic 
 tastes who had his offices next door, and who decorated 
 the Arundel rooms with his own fine collection of 
 line engravings. The club outlived its creator. JA^hen 
 the third or fourth anniversary of his death came round, 
 it had grown into a favourite house of call for workers 
 in the thoroughfare and its tributaries happily called 
 by G. A. Sala, Great Brain Street. Albert Smith looked 
 in almost nightly on his way to or from the Garrick 
 and the Egyptian Hall. 
 
 Charles Mathews, then at the Lyceum, before going 
 there, had often dined from the joint at the house; 
 dinner, and sometimes told a droll story about himself, 
 Albert Smith, and another Arundel man, a playwright 
 
266 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 as well as daily newspaper editor, the most strikingly 
 handsome and quite the best talker among his Fleet 
 Street contemporaries. This was Leicester Bucking- 
 ham. When editing the Morning Star, he had gone 
 one evening to the Lyceum by appointment to see 
 Mathews in his dressing-room. Arrived there, he found, 
 not Mathews but his other friend, Albert Smith, who 
 explained his presence by saying he had come on the 
 same errand as Buckingham. After a long time of 
 waiting, and no appearance of Mathews, Buckingham 
 could stay no longer, and was departing when Smith 
 drew him back with the words, " One moment more, 
 and perhaps Mathews will come after all." Suiting 
 the action to the word, the speaker pulled off a false 
 moustache, and revealed to the amazed Buckingham, 
 not the supposed Albert Smith but the expected and 
 indubitable Charles Mathews. 
 
 The other daily editor best khown to the Arundel, 
 both when conducting the Standard, first, the Hour and 
 the Morning Advertiser afterwards, was Tom Hamber, 
 always, whatever the journal with which he had to do, 
 in the ultra- Conservative interest. On one occasion he 
 capped Leicester Buckingham's recital of the Lyceum 
 dressing-room incident with something like a similar 
 experience of his own. Going to dine with a Conserva- 
 tive host in Mayfair, arriving rather late and proceeding 
 to the dinner-table direct, Hamber suddenly realized 
 that he was sitting next to John Bright. He looked 
 round, thought the room had a strange appearance. 
 He had of course entered the wrong house, but went 
 quietly through with his dinner while the " tribune of 
 the people," ignorant of course as to his next-door 
 neighbour's identity, denoimced the Conservative Party 
 and Press, but finally made some complimentary re- 
 marks concerning the tone of some recent Standard 
 leaders. It suddenly struck Hamber that it might be 
 a good thing for his paper to print in its correspondence 
 columns a short letter to the editor from Bright on some 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 267 
 
 topic of the day. He knew that the great orator rather 
 fancied his own pen, and often took a pride in some- 
 thing he had written or inspired in his paper, the 
 Morning Star. Frankly explaining his identity to 
 Bright, and the cause of their accidental meeting, 
 H amber ventured so tactfully on the suggestion that 
 he at once jumped into Bright's favour, and of course 
 secured from him the " letter to the editor," signed 
 with his name. 
 
 During the sixties and seventies there was less all- 
 night work at newspaper offices than to-day ; the pres- 
 sure of personal competition, steam presses, and tele- 
 graphic extension had not organized the system to a 
 height that seriously interfered with the nightly atten- 
 dance at the Arundel of many who were then consider- 
 able journalistic figures. The wit combats of John 
 Oxenford and James Davison, the theatrical and musical 
 critics of the Times, sometimes attracted also Laman 
 Blanchard, the veteran pantomime -writer and the Daily 
 Telegraph stage oracle. There was plenty of force 
 and freshness, too, in the premeditated dialogues on all 
 things histrionic, held by the well-read and clearly 
 judging Joseph Knight of the Aihenceum with Clement 
 Scott, whose days were then occupied by a ,War Office 
 clerkship, but whose evenings were always free for 
 the play and the critical column afterwards called 
 forth by a first night. Seated a little apart from these 
 was a man who had scarcely reached the prime of 
 middle life, and who was not destined to see the full fruits 
 of his work as the dramatist who, by his series of Prince 
 of Wales's plays, did not a little towards re-creating the 
 English stage, T. iW. Robertson, remarkable for the 
 impression of intellectual power conveyed by his well- 
 shaped head, and his talk, now pungent and cynical, 
 now humorous, but always holding spellbound the circle 
 of which he was the centre, and which often included 
 two other dramati^ authors, W. S. Gilbert, then best 
 known for his " Bab Ballads " in Fun, and William 
 
268 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Gorman Wills, who, beginning with The Man of Air lie 
 in 1866, rose to higher flights with Charles /, Jane 
 Shaw, Nell Gwynne, and Sedgemoor, before his death, 
 in 1 891. 
 
 The founder of the Arundel Club, in popularizing the 
 theatre with clever young men of good position, was 
 followed a generation later by Lewis Wingfield, the 
 sixth Viscount Powerscourt's second son, also an 
 Arundelian. The club itself, from originally being and 
 long remaining entirely a meeting-ground for men who 
 lived by pen or brush, transformed itself into a resort 
 of the theatrically disposed loafers on the look-out 
 for a chance of planting their own unacted plays, 
 or securing from some playwright of repute a piece 
 adapted to the genius of an actress in whom they were 
 interested or a favourable press notice of her current 
 performance. The place thus gradually lost its original 
 character of a reunion of men whose chief concern 
 was the industry by which they, lived. Young gentle- 
 men reading for Civil Service examinations, briefless 
 barristers of all standings as of all disqualifications, 
 and copper captains from Aldershot, whose efforts on 
 the amateur boards had eaten up their narrow means 
 and left them hungry for an engagement from a 
 manager for whom they had just the new comedy sure 
 to suit him, now" flooded the club. The bored pro- 
 fessionals of studio, stage, and press did not then 
 appreciate the opportunities of social advancement that 
 might be opened up by the invading amateurs. Might 
 it not, they asked themselves, be possible to revive 
 the " free-and-easy " for intellectual toilers only, forth- 
 coming at the Savage Club, as devised by Robert 
 B rough ten years earlier. Even in the late sixties 
 Sala's Great Brain Street, with its denizens and 
 Tyburnia, not to mention Belgravia or Mayfair, were, 
 not as afterwards, hand-in-glove with each other, but 
 rather at open feud. 
 
 The secession from what he thought the degenerate 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 269 
 
 Arundel to the Savage of which he hoped so much 
 was led by Tom Hood, son of him who sang the " Song 
 of the Shirt," till 1865 one of many literary clerks in 
 the War OfiSce, after that the conductor of an attenipt 
 to make Fun the literary and artistic rival to Punch. ^ 
 Himself the inheritor of some of his father's gifts, he 
 laboured indefatigably as well as to some extent suc- 
 cessfully to raise the literary tone of the lighter 
 journalism of his day and to help the play by capable 
 and honest criticism. He had gathered round him, and 
 had been the first to bring out, several clever performers 
 with pen and pencil. The former comprised W. S. 
 Gilbert, Clement W. Scott, George Rose, J. T. Delane's 
 Oxford contemporary at Magdalen Hall, one of 
 Newman's followers to Rome, the creator in Fun of 
 the Gampish Mrs. Brown, the rarely gifted W. J. 
 Prowse, whose debauched old tipster, Nicholas, with 
 his " sherry wine " and " knurr and spell," would not 
 have discredited Thackeray; and H. S. Leigh, whose 
 vers de Societe were not below Praed or Locker. At 
 the early Savage Club Saturday dinners, both in its 
 original Maiden Lane home, and afterwards at Radley's 
 Hotel in Covent Garden, were James MacdoneU, then 
 of the Daily Telegraph, afterwards of the Times, two 
 Yankee humorists, one pictorial the other literary, and 
 Ernest Griset, whose close study of the caged dwellers 
 at the Zoological Gardens, quick, original imagina- 
 tion, and keen eye to the ridiculous enabled him to 
 read varieties of human character into members of 
 the brute creation. The American litterateur at the 
 early Savage Club was Charles Farrar Browne, whose 
 refined and grave personality was in impressive contrast 
 to the jesting exuberance which formed the profes- 
 
 • This competition showed itself particularly in the engravings of Alfred 
 Thompson, Gordon Thomson, W. Brunton, Thomas Morten, and above all of a 
 gifted young Irishman, Paul Gray, whose cartoon, " Puck in Tears for the Lost 
 Cable " (one of the failures to complete the telegraphic connection of the Anglo- 
 Saxon world on the two sides of the Atlantic), fell little short of Tenniel's 
 excellence. 
 
270 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 sional r61e of Mark Twain's and Bret Harte's 
 predecessor from the Far West. 
 
 A great character of the Savage at this distant date 
 was a certain old Frankfort Jew, a Doctor Strauss, 
 originally discovered by G. A. Sala in his wanderings, 
 and was made something of a hero by an action for libel 
 that he brought against the Athenaeum for throwing 
 doubt on the genuineness of the learning he had paraded 
 in a novel called The Old Ledger. 
 
 jThe essayist was then more in demand than at the 
 present time. His two representatives among the early 
 Savages were Hain Friswell, who secured fame and 
 fortune from a collection of social articles contributed 
 to the Family Herald, afterwards republished and sold 
 by thousands as the Qentle Life. Other essayists at 
 the club were two of Dickens's writers, Andrew 
 Halliday, John HoUingshead, and Arthur William k 
 Beckett, the youngest member of the Punch family. 
 Science had its labourers in the recently departed 
 W. B. Tegetmeier and John Brough, a chemist, who 
 with his two brothers, Lionel the actor, and William, a 
 coimtry theatrical manager, were among the latest sur- 
 vivors of Robert Brough's Savage Club. 
 
 The tradition and something of the spirit of that 
 primitive Savage's bitterness against rank, wealth, and 
 social privilege had descended to his club posterity in the 
 sixties. But neither of his two kinsmen had any of 
 that quality known as " devil," so conspicuous in 
 Robert Brough, or, the one in the theatre he controlled, 
 the other in the laboratory where he worked, cared 
 for anything outside his business. Even T. W. 
 Robertson, a Savage as well as an Arundelian, who had 
 more of Brough's genius and temper than any others 
 of the set, saw that there was a cant of Radicalism 
 and democracy, as well as of smug, prosperous, and 
 respectable Philistinism. Dr. Strauss, who had a really 
 revolutionary temper, as well as personal memories of 
 Robert Brough, thought the original genius of the 
 
>avage: 
 
 Wrwcome. 
 
 Savage Club House Dinner 
 
 Saturday Aprh- t2'-i9o2. 
 DThiNEAS SAbR-AHAM mTmCyAlB^ 
 
 AN IRVING NIGHT AT THE SAVAGE CLUB. 
 
 By W. H. Pike, R.B.A. 
 
 (By permission nf the Club.) 
 
 '/V'D-;U.MOriD -» 
 
 \ 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 271 
 
 society suflfered from the infusion into it of the pro- 
 fessional element by Edward Draper, a solicitor, and 
 C. Millward, a Liverpool trader of literary tastes, who 
 conducted the Porcupine in his native city, ajid who 
 afterwards edited one or two volumes of Savage Club 
 papers . 
 
 If the men thus banded together gloried a little 
 ostentatiously in their bohemianism, they were united 
 among themselves by a genuine spirit of mutual 
 assistance in their daily work. It was quite as much 
 an industrial guild as a. convivial fellowship. None 
 of its members had any means of living except by 
 their brains. None at the Saturday gatherings were 
 " going on " anywhere afterwards ; only a stray 
 Savage of that period was ever seen in evening dress. 
 No "person of quality" appeared among the guests. 
 Except, therefore, in name it had little in common with 
 the twentieth-century Savage Club, at which princes, 
 ambassadors, and bishops have appeared, and an in- 
 vitation to whose table has become an honour of the 
 same kind as was a feast at the Prytaneum in classical 
 Athens, or an invitation to a City compaliy dinner in 
 modern London. To its progressive social distinction 
 the modern Savage Club has added much of genuine 
 journalistic authority. The last years of the nineteenth 
 century saw, not only a leading Savage, George 
 Byrom Curtis, a man of great mental power, as well 
 as of rare journalistic gift, justly, on W. H. Mudford's 
 retirement, promoted to the Standard editorship, but 
 his staff exclusively recruited from his fellow-clubmen. 
 
 In transforming itself from a homeless gathering 
 into a sufficiently select, well-to-do, and decorous 
 society beneath its own illustriously hospitable roof -tree, 
 the Savage has not only obeyed a fundamental law 
 of club evolution but has illustrated a social tendency 
 of modern life. Neither in the Fitzroy Square district, 
 in St. John's Wood, in Chelsea, nor in its more ancient 
 Westminster whereabouts, does the social cartographer 
 
272. CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 to-day place any geographical counterpart of the 
 Parisian Latin quarter. The explanation is that 
 Bohemia, which formerly had as distinct a local exist- 
 ence as Leicester, and as much a population of its 
 own, finds its twentieth-century equivalent in a place 
 of fashion participated in by ladies and gentlemen of 
 every degree. In the old Robertsonian Prince of 
 Wales's comedy, " Society," the Alsatian " pressman," 
 Stylus, scandalizes a titled hostess by accidentally 
 pulling out of his pocket and dropping on the carpet 
 a strongly smelling brier-root pipe. To-day her lady- 
 ship would have thought it the most natural thing in 
 the world, and by way of making a guest at home might 
 have offered him her own silver cigarette-case. 
 
 The polite world first found its delight in 
 bohemianism about the same time that it made a 
 " smart " philanthropy of slumming. Royalty led the 
 way with smoking-concerts, modelled upon those at 
 which it had assisted in the unconventional saloons 
 of Langham Place. Dukes, duchesses, and Cabinet 
 ministers, by their presence at the recherche suppers of 
 a popular actor behind the scenes after the play, set 
 the example to Tyburnia and Suburbia of conjugating 
 in all its moods and meanings the not exactly trans- 
 latable verb sencanuiller . Meanwhile the old 
 picturesque, irregular life had gone quite out of date 
 with the intellectual workers conventionally supposed 
 to be incapable of leading any other. The sober truth 
 is that the new organization of the literary and artistic 
 craft has compelled its practitioners to turn their lives 
 into the same self-denying ordinance as that imposed 
 by his duties on the physician who cannot set to work 
 editing his Medical Encyclopsedia till after midnight, 
 or the Oxford theologian whose University lectures in 
 the week have to be combined with preparation for 
 the Sunday sermon at Whitehall. Shakespeare's 
 Bohemia was a land of inhospitable deserts, surprising 
 pomps, and strange portents. The London Bohemia of 
 
CULTURE IN THE OLUBABLE MOOD 273 
 
 the current Georgian era is the pleasant meeting -ground 
 of congenial spirits taken indifferently from every 
 social order and class. Wherever those who belong to 
 it congregate, it first came into vogue as a protest 
 against the dull decorum of a pretentious aristocratic 
 monotony. 
 
 The sixties produced several little societies in addition 
 to those already mentioned. Some of these either grew 
 into clubs now flourishing, or gave the first impulse 
 to the movement of which those clubs were the result. 
 Among them was the Century,' which in 1867 on Sunday 
 evenings met on a Pall Mall first floor, occupied during 
 the week by a fashionable money-lender. Thomas 
 Hughes, of Tom Brown's Schooldays, was the chief 
 talker in a circle which included W. Sidgwick of 
 Merton, still living near Rugby, whose son, N. V., 
 is a Fellow of Lincoln ; R. S. Wright, afterwards the 
 judge ; Lyulph Stanley, now Lord Sheffield, both of 
 BaUiol ; the then future Greek professor, Mr. Ingram 
 By water ; C. E. Appleton, Fellow of St. John's, Oxford, 
 founder of the Academy ; the Dilkes, Charles and 
 Ashton ; Joseph Chamberlain, W. E. Forster, Frederic 
 Harrison, T. B. Potter, and the pioneer, as Lord 
 Salisbury may be called the creator, of the endowment 
 of research. Cambridge was first represented by Mr. 
 Oscar Browning, a host in himself, as well as by one 
 or two of his personal intimates and most prominent 
 pupils . 
 
 These reunions afterwards developed themselves on 
 two diff^erent lines. J. S. Mill and John Bright were 
 the chief political heroes of the Centurions, and the in- 
 spirers of one or two other smaller societies, contempor- 
 ary with or quickly following on that already mentioned. 
 
 ' The Sabbath Century meetings were not easily attended by Oxford resi- 
 dents. These combined to produce on the Isis, a local edition of the society 
 known as the Dominicans as well as the Century. For this or for its metropolitan 
 original Mr. Robinson Ellis suggested a motto from Tacitus, cerumpere et 
 corrumpi seeculum vecatur, 
 
 18 
 
274 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Art and letters, not less than politics, also began to make 
 themselves felt as club forces. C. E. Appleton, Sir 
 Henry Thompson, Seymour Haden,' both scarcely less 
 famous as artists than as surgeons, a Sussex art collector, 
 R. Fisher of Hill Top, Midhurst, Mr. George Salting 
 and Mr. Montagu Guest, both first-rate judges, as well 
 as collectors of paintings and statuary, combined to 
 advance the movement ultimately resulting in the 
 Burlington Fine Arts Club. The Savile Club, a later 
 development of the New Club in Spring Gardens, and 
 the Authors' Club in Whitehall, form the most im- 
 portant additions to the literary resorts already visited. 
 To the Century in 1882 is due also the first faint outline 
 of the idea since, as we have already seen, triumphantly 
 fulfilled by the National Liberal Club. 
 
 Indirectly the Radical Century was to yield some 
 Conservative fruits, for the rooms in which it met 
 became afterwards the haunt of several clever young 
 men, who saw so much of and liked each other so well 
 that they fancied themselves a political party. They 
 actually called themselves the Cecil Club. Their chief 
 speaker and their most resourceful mind, Alfred Austin, 
 afterwards poet -laureate, here found the encouragement 
 to start the National Review. 
 
 The inevitable tendency on the part of smaller 
 reunions to merge their identities and their names in 
 larger bodies explains the complete disappearance of 
 innumerable coteries very much in evidence during 
 the second half of the Victorian age. Such were the 
 Fielding, not the reviv«d institution of that name 
 already mentioned, but the earlier society, domiciled 
 first at Ofifley's, afterwards at the Cider Cellars, the 
 reunion whose best known habitues were J. G. Tomline, 
 the theatrical critic, in its earliest days Walter Lacy, and 
 its very latest the actor, H.J. Montagu. The Knights 
 
 ' Between this gentleman and James Whistler a personal difference much 
 agitating the club in 1 874 was composed, at least for the time, by Sir E. J . Poynteri 
 P.R.A., an original member. 
 

 THE STAIRCASE, NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. 
 (From a dmicinii by Mr. Joseph Peimell, kindly lent by the Clnb.) 
 
 To lace p. 374. 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 275 
 
 of the Round Table dined on Saturdays at Simpson's 
 m the Strand. These were succeeded by companies 
 equally unconventional but of more serious aim, artistic 
 or political. Such were the New Reform Club, brought 
 into being by P. W. Clayden, of the Daily Nem, and 
 by Mr. G. WJ. E. Russell as a corporate protest on 
 the part of the Liberal forwards against the Transvaal 
 policy of successive achninistrations . Chiefly or entirely 
 literary or pictorial in their origin were the two 
 Vagabond Clubs, the Old (and the New, which grew 
 out of it). These, from their personal associations, 
 have some claim to be considered Pre-Raphaelite 
 monuments erected out of due time. James Westland 
 Marston, a well-read and conscientious dramatist, 
 showed himself at his house in Regent's Park the most 
 hospitable of men. His son, Philip Bourke, combined 
 his father's knowledge and taste with more than his 
 father's genius. The friend of Sharp, Swinburne, and 
 Rossetti, he solaced the blindness that afflicted him by 
 poetic composition, in particular delicately wrought 
 lyrics on the friends whom his genius and affliction had 
 gathered round him, and who formed themselves into 
 the Vagabond Club with the chief purpose, in the first 
 instance, of providing him with a resort to his own 
 taste. In 1913 the Vagabonds have merged themselves 
 in the O. P. Club, and the name is now known no 
 more. 
 
 The countless little coteries of which the Vagabond, 
 Old or New, is a specimen resembled each other in 
 gathering themselves round the more or less well- 
 known central figure, and in being dominated by the 
 representatives of some commanding interest. Thus 
 the still existing Whitefriars, one of whose principal 
 meeting-places was Anderton's Hotel, was largely 
 coloured by the Cassell staff of La Belle Sauvage Yard, 
 and had for its personal providence a. gentleman 
 whose connection with the social life of Fleet Street and 
 the Strand dated from Frank Talfourd and the Arundel 
 
276 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Club— the late Jonas Levy, who seldom missed the 
 iWhitefriars' Friday meeting or removed his cherry-wood 
 pipe from his mouth even when retailing his Green Room 
 stories. Other members of great literary distinction were 
 E. H. Palmer, Arabic Professor at Cambridge, and a 
 writer for the Standard, who lost his life on a Govern- 
 ment mission to the Sinai tribes in 1882, and the well- 
 known newspaper authority on aU fimancial subjects, 
 Mr. A. J. Wilson. Omar Khayyam, Rabelais, and other 
 quaint literary unions had existed for some time when 
 the Samuel Johnson centenary of December, 1884, 
 brought into existence the Johnson Club," after a 
 preliminary supper at the " Cock," a Johnsonian 
 brotherhood of thirty-one members, including the Greek 
 Minister in London, M. Gennadius, F. W. Chesson, 
 Dr. Birkbeck Hill, Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, Sir F. C. 
 Gould, and a former Member for Blackburn, Mr. ,W. E. 
 Briggs, best known as -' Napoleon " Briggs. 
 
 Extremes meet. Among the latest of nineteenth- 
 century clubs the Royal Societies', now housed in 
 St. James's Street, is lineally descended from the most 
 illustrious of the nomadic coteries that sprang up during 
 the Restoration. An early chapter of the present 
 narrative, touching upon the Rota, mentioned that one 
 of the Rota men would be met again in the scientific 
 circles of the seventeenth century. Sir William Petty, 
 thus referred to, notwithstanding his eminence in 
 scientific research, would have had no place among 
 the creators of clubs for the learned apart from his 
 association with the discoverer of HaUey's comet. 
 
 Edmund Halley, a Derbyshire man of good birth, 
 owed the independence which made him master of 
 his time and movements to the paternal success as 
 a Shoreditch soap-boiler. The Royal Society had been 
 
 ' Naturally convener of the company at the "Cock," Mr. T. Fisher Unwin was 
 proclaimed the prior of the new social order, who, in addition to those mentioned 
 above, has for his fellow-clubmen Mr. Birrell, K.C., Mr. Oscar drowning, Sit 
 W. Robertson NicoU, and John O'Connor. 
 
{Drawn by Sir F. Carruthers Gould, Brother of the Johnson Club.) 
 
 The three portraits below are those of the early Priors : T. Fisher Unwin, the 
 originator of the Club, the late F. W. Chesson, and E. J. Leveson. The 
 portrait above is that of S. Rowe Bennett, the Club's first scribe. 
 
 'I'o face p. 276. 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLB MOOD 277 
 
 founded before his birth, and had its earliest beginnings 
 in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, above the entrance arch 
 of Wadham College, some ten years before its estab- 
 lishment in London. With that learned body H alley 
 communicated on the movements of planets, while still 
 an undergraduate of Queen's. On leaving Oxford 
 he went abroad and became socially intimate with the 
 first European savants of the time. On his return to 
 England, his experiences abroad, and especially his 
 observation at St. Helena of the transit of Mercury, 
 secured him admission into the famous body that then 
 included Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, with Sir 
 Joseph Williamson for its president, and the German 
 philosopher William Oldenburg, John Mikon's friend, 
 for its first secretary. Eventually Halley became 
 Oldenburg's successor. Halley's personal appearance 
 and manner gave no suggestion of the profound and 
 absorbed student of Nature in her grandest, most 
 mysterious phenomena, and of the abstrusest problems 
 presented by the universe to man. His slight, well-knit 
 figure, with its quick and light movement, he must 
 have resembled the late Lord Avebury, like whom he 
 had the faculty of interesting in scientific study men 
 of the world who, till they knew Halley, exclusively 
 divided their attention between the racecourse and the 
 club. 
 
 The Royal Society Club, as Halley called it into 
 being, had, like the other companies just recorded, no 
 fixed dwelling-place. Its earliest rendezvous was the 
 Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, about which a good deal 
 has been said on an earlier page. Thence, by way 
 of Covent Garden and Pall Mall, in each of which 
 quarters it made some sojourn, it settled in the 
 Thatched House Tavern, St. James's, tiU that 
 structure was pulled down to make way for another 
 building, eventually developed into a new club. 
 The vicissitudes of the " Thatched House " will 
 be mentioned in a coming chapter. Here something 
 
278 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 may be said about two or three other haunts neither 
 less prominent nor less interesting than those already 
 mentioned in club affinities of the illustrious corporation 
 of British savants. 
 
 The most various as well as one of the most enter- 
 taining and useful nineteenth-century diarists would 
 have had nothing to say about his experiences in 
 general, or the most notable among the Royal Society's 
 Club tributaries, but for his friend and contemporary 
 the shrewd and kindly Scot, Alexander Macmillan, who 
 made the great publishing house which bears his name, 
 and who saw at a glance that his friend's adventures 
 among the wise men would make excellent copy. 
 Robinson was induced by Macmillan not to give up 
 the Antiquaries' Club in a fit of pettish boredom, and 
 was rewarded for taking this advice by his consequent 
 intimacy with two natural philosophers, almost as 
 learned and perhaps quite as agreeable as Edmund 
 H alley. These had found the Antiquarian company 
 the direct way into the Royal Society itself. They were 
 amiably willing to enable Robinson to make the same 
 discovery on his own account. Like HaUey, Ayloffe, 
 afterwards by inheritance the sixth baronet of his name, 
 was no mere recluse preoccupied by calculations of 
 eclipses and diagrams of the heavens, but being by 
 profession a barrister, was a man of the world from 
 his position, and by his personal endowments did much 
 towards propagating an interest in science throughout 
 the polite world. 
 
 His successor, Thomas Amyot, who lived from 1775 
 till 1850, laboured in a different field, but as an in- 
 tellectual missionary among the same classes ; while 
 his researches were specially in the province that the 
 Antiquarian Society had made its own. To illustrate 
 and apply the services of archaeology to the historian 
 became Amyot's great work, never attempted before 
 him, and in its far-reaching results never more felt 
 than at the present moment. The chief corporate 
 
CULTURE IN THE CLUBABLE MOOD 279 
 
 agencies established by him for the advancement of 
 this work were the Camden Society, still flourishing, the 
 Percy, the Shakespeare, and other literary brotherhoods. 
 The social orbit of these club makers continuously 
 enlarged itself, attracted to it all that was most brilliant 
 and famous in the intellectual movements of the time. 
 Amongst others was Whewell, the Master of Trinity, who 
 had pursued knowledge to its last term, and it was of 
 him that Samuel Rogers, who as a visitor of course, 
 was everywhere, drew from a fellow-guest, Sydney 
 Smith, the remark, " Whewell's forte is science ; his 
 foible omniscience." Perhaps the most interesting 
 habitu6 as honorary member of the circle was R. W. 
 Emerson, then on one of his visits to England, who, 
 when he made his debut in April, 1848, at the anniver- 
 sary Antiquarian dinner, was not only a stranger to 
 English Society except by name, but was confronted by 
 personal prejudice against him. His combination of 
 intelligence and sweetness quite disarmed his severest 
 critics, drawing from them the unanimous admission 
 that he had one of the most interesting countenances 
 and charming manners the learned gentlemen had ever 
 beheld. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SWORD AND GOWN 
 
 Eighteenth-century clubmen at the Thatched House Tavem— The Dilettantists— 
 Characteristic members or managers— The Earl of Middlesex, Sir Francis 
 Dashwood, and Thomas Brand of the Hoc — Noble opera patrons and their 
 touts — How the Muscovita gets her salary raised — Lord Thurlow and 
 Edmund Burke on pothouse club companies — Thatched House vicissitudes, 
 and its reversion to club use — Sir John Milton designs and Sir Antonio 
 Brady and others found the Civil Service Club — Its transformation into the 
 Thatched House Club — TheBayford Boat Race banquets — Nineteenth-century 
 successors of Junius at the Thatched House — Bob Truffleton the courtier at 
 club and country house — Quick changes in St. James's Street — The Club 
 where Gladstone was at home, the Devonshire — Pratt's the old home of 
 " crib " — The Junior United and its makers — " Cripplegate ," " Billingsgate," 
 and '" Hellgate "—" Billy " the second at the "Rag and Famish" Club- 
 Two " Rag " tragedies — Major Arthur Griffiths, the Army and Navy Club's 
 historian — Napoleon III at the " Rag," and the first club smoking and 
 stranger's rooms — ^The Naval and MiUtary — The Cavalry — The National 
 Club, and its services to Church and State — Its devotional exercises. 
 
 The assembly place of Crabb Robinson and his brother 
 Antiquarians mentioned in the last chapter differs from 
 other institutions of the same kind, not only in having 
 been a home of several clubs but in eventually becoming 
 a club itself, to-day called by its own name. The 
 Thatched Club ' was the title given by Jonathan Swift 
 himself, in 171 1, to the most important among the 
 many Tory coteries which he organized in Harley's 
 service. Exactly fifty-eight years afterwards it was 
 again to be used as a political club, the extra-parlia- 
 mentary headquarters of the Opposition to the Govern- 
 ment of the day. But in 1769 its chief reception-room 
 was occasionally appropriated by a society of patrician 
 
 ' Swift's Prose Works, edited by Temple Scott (Bell & Sons), vol. xii. 
 
 280 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 281 
 
 origin fortned! in 1734 for the combined furtherance 
 of conviviality and art. 
 
 On Mondays and Thursdays during a greater part 
 of the eighteenth century there bustled of an after- 
 noon in and out of the " Thatched House " two titled 
 personages, as well known to every street passenger 
 as the sentries outside the neighbouring palace. Their 
 particular business was personally to see that no hitch 
 occurred in the arrangements for the bi-weekly 
 Dilettanti Club dinner, for which they held them- 
 selves responsible in their capacity of club 
 managers. They were Charles Sackville, Earl of 
 Middlesex, eventually the second Duke of Dorset, and 
 Sir Francis Dashwood. The former's only claim to 
 personal distinction was his peculiarity of expression, 
 gait, and a habit of talking to himself which suggested 
 lunacy. The latter, from his conduct in the Bute 
 administration, was known for the most blundering 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer who had ever received 
 the promise of a peerage.' Both were known to be 
 distanced in the infamy of their life by Bute's First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich. They 
 were, however, experts in painting crockery and bric-k- 
 brac, judging not as connoisseurs in love with beauty but 
 as dealers who knew the worth of an article to a 
 sixpence. They also set the fashion of opera and 
 theatre management. Regularly on one or other of 
 the days just mentioned they convened at the " Thatched 
 House " a committee presided over by themselves, and 
 including Lord SaviUe, Thomas Potter, the archbishop's 
 son, who, in bestial blackguardism, could give points 
 to Dashwood or even Sandwich, and John Wilkes, who 
 owed his moral wreck to domestic surroundings, and 
 whose mature life might have been cleanly but for the 
 calamitous, ill-assorted marriage forced upon him in 
 
 » He was created Baron le Dispencer in 1763, the year in which Henry Fox, 
 for being content with the Paymastership of the Forces, became the first Lord 
 Holland. 
 
282 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 his youth. The shining purity of his boyhood: was 
 considered by his family friend the saintly Andrew 
 Baxter to contain the sure promise of godly and 
 philanthropic service. As it was, his intellectual 
 displays, his humour, wit, and epigram did something 
 to relieve the unspeakable degradation of the company 
 into which he drifted. In his own words, he had 
 stumbled at the very threshold of the Temple of 
 Hymen ; he married when little more than twenty, to 
 please, he said, his father, and not driven to the step 
 by debt, a wealthy woman, half as old again as him- 
 self, with whom he only lived till the birth of one 
 child, a daughter, and whom he afterwards only once 
 saw again. 
 
 The " Thatched House " Dilettantists were the 
 subdued London duplicates of the sulphureously styled 
 clubmen of Medmenham, Bucks. The chief business 
 done at the Dilettanti dinners, after a little picture- 
 dealing, was to ensure the diners against dull evenings. 
 To that end the general opera fund must be well 
 maintained, while a periodical whip was put on for 
 special sums that would make the London ballet and 
 its " pet " equal to those of any other European 
 capital. Thomas Brand, of the Hoo, Hertfordshire, 
 one of the original Dilettantists and a toady of Lord 
 Middlesex, took upon himself the penetration of con- 
 tinental coulisses from Madrid to Moscow in search of 
 coryphees up to his fastidious patron's high standard. 
 On that errand Mr. Brand took with hitn for 
 companion and guide the Dilettantists' operatic 
 manager, Venneschi. For his complete success, how- 
 ever, he was indebted to an Italian tailor whom, in 
 gratitude, he brought back to London, " because," 
 sneered Horace Walpole, " we have no tailors here ! " 
 who was warmly welcomed by Brand's fellow-clubmen, 
 and who made himself so agreeable as to be unani- 
 mously elected a member. The Middlesex interest 
 soon created him opera paymaster, and the grateful 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 283 
 
 tailor, once installed in his new post, showed a proper 
 sense of obligation to the friendly nobleman by raising 
 the salary of the dancer known as the Muscovita, one 
 of the Middlesex harem, from four hundred to six 
 hundred guineas. The poet who did the librettos had 
 to be satisfied with fifty, but the Italian vocalists, 
 called after the impresario the -' Tailorini," secured for 
 the season from eight hundred to a thousand. 
 
 The business of pleasure and the various interests 
 of the Dilettanti brought many curious characters to 
 the " Thatched House," among others Adolphus 
 Frederick of Holstein, whose tastes and habits were 
 those of Heliogabalus but who actually became Bishop 
 of Lubeck and narrowly missed election to the Crown 
 of Sweden ; the eccentric Mathias Howard, third Earl 
 Stafford, who, marrying the wealthiest heiress of his 
 time, a Paris banker and wine-merchant's daughter, 
 Miss Cantillon, repaid the enjoyment he received from 
 the Dilettanti by a large legacy to the club for beauti- 
 fying its rooms, and by a smaller one to the tavern 
 in which it was held. 
 
 George Il's great minister was a member of White's 
 but not of the Dilettanti. That society had, however, 
 a Sir Robert of its own (Sir R. Rich) without the 
 statesman's abdominal development, as well as, of 
 course, minus his official decoration. A Dilettanti 
 page-boy knew no other Sir Robert than the laiightly 
 Premier, familiar to every one by his proportions and 
 the insignia of the Bath that he always wore. One 
 day the Suffolk baronet ' bounced into the club and 
 desired that a gentleman whom he had come to see 
 should be told of Sir Robert being there. Taken aback 
 by the name, perplexed, incredulous, but pale and 
 trembling, the lad exclaimed to a fellow-servant stand- 
 ing by, " Where can the blue string and the corporation 
 have gone 1 " 
 
 A later generation witnessed other clubs within a club 
 ' Six Robert Rich, Bait, of Rose Hall, Suffolk, Colonel of the 4th Dr^oons. 
 
284 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 at the " Thatched House " besides the Dilettanti, among; 
 them a Pittite company exclusively composed of peers ; 
 one of these from his place in Parliament mentioned 
 some information coming to him from the " Thatched 
 House." This brought down Thurlow, then sitting 
 on the Woolsack. " As regards," he said, " what 
 the noble lord in the red riband told us he had heard 
 at the alehouse. . . ." 
 
 In much the same spirit Edmund Burke, writing 
 to Lord Claremont, calls it an ordinary place of refresh- 
 ment. Whether in its club or tavern character, the 
 " Thatched House " by the middle of the eighteenth 
 century was a place of which it was a distinction to 
 be made free. In 1769 the North Briton episode 
 united the Rockingham and the Grenville Whigs with 
 the chief Chathamites, Shelburne and Temple, against 
 the Duke of Grafton for making his administration 
 the tool of the royal vindictiveness towards the 
 Middlesex electors and the Member they persistently 
 returned. Both the Whig malcontents of title and the 
 commoners, like Burke, Barr^, and Conway, made the 
 "Thatched House" their headquarters. There, too, 
 they conferred with Sir Philip Francis, Aldeiman 
 Sawbridge, and the Progressive members of the Civil 
 Club. 
 
 The Junius letters Were now drawing to a close, 
 their general drift being favourable to Wilkes but not 
 to the American colonies — ^an accurate reflection of 
 popular feeling which sufficiently explains their success. 
 Long ago, in the terms of an algebraic problem,' de 
 Quincey set forth the proofs of Francis's identity with 
 Junius. Francis himself admitted his indebtedness 
 to the company of all sorts he met in St. James's Street 
 for his correct insight into the public mind on all the 
 subjects he touched. 
 
 The " Thatched House " habitues did something more 
 than prime Francis for his work. In due course they 
 
 • Tail's Magazine, December, 1840. De Quincey's Works, vol. iii. pp. 132-3. 
 
< a; 
 
 _2 '-*":= 
 
 MiSLi^ .. ■ -, :■ .; -^T-^iWfciaui — -■i,«»^^T»ibu^.,.-t.-„:'^a^^a^j^s.a; 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 285 
 
 led the movement for an amendment in, the Statute 
 Book, vitally and permanently affecting the freedom 
 of the press. Woodfall, who owned the Public 
 Advertiser, in which the letters appeared, when brought 
 to trial was found by the jury guilty, not of libel hut 
 of publishing, and Lord Chief Justice Mansfield denied 
 the jury's competence to consider a question of law 
 as well as of fact. " This will never do ! " exclaimed 
 one " Thatched House " man to a more famous 
 member. Home Tooke ; and the two set on foot an 
 agitation which knew no pause till its authors had 
 applied to Fox the pressure that produced the Libel 
 Act of 1792, enabling a jury to find a general 
 verdict. That legislative feat entirely resulted from 
 the "Thatched House" dinner, May, 10, 1769, cele- 
 brating the substantial minority of 1 43 votes against the 
 197 awarding the Middlesex seat to the Court candidate. 
 Colonel Luttrell, afterwards Lord Carhampton. 
 
 The " Thatched House " entered on the club stage 
 of its existence in 1865, but not exactly on the spot 
 formerly covered by the little rural inn adjoining the 
 hospital for leprous maidens, which Henry VIII con- 
 verted into a royal palace. The place of refreshment, as 
 Burke had called it, was not entirely squeezed out, but 
 only elbowed a little south by the Conservative Club in 
 1843. Between five and six years later the last dinner 
 took place beneath the old convivial roof. The build- 
 ing, continuously devoted for more than a century to 
 some form of social enjoyment, was allowed to remain 
 first as a house of business, then as an insurance office. 
 That, or some kindred purpose, it subserved till the 
 whirligig of time once more wrought its revenges, 
 and a new transforming agency began to readapt the 
 historic — ^then the most perfect situation of the kind 
 available — to a social use. 
 
 The extraordinary success of the Junior Carlton in 
 1865 suggested the idea of a Civil Service Club to 
 certain members of the staff at St. M^-rtin's le Grand 
 
286 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 and at the War Ofifice. The latter conting-ent was 
 headed by a man who, had honours then been bestowed 
 as lavishly as they are now upon the service to which 
 he belonged, would have received something more than 
 the C.B. and the knighthood eventually awiarded him. 
 Sir John Milton had begun in 1840 as a junior clerk 
 in the department of the Secretary at War. He rose 
 by annual degrees to be recognized as the most useful 
 and brilliant servant of the reconstituted War Office. 
 National recognition soon followed the services he 
 rendered to Miss Nightingale in the hospital work 
 at Scutari and elsewhere in the East during the 
 Crimean War. An occasional writer for the Times 
 under Delane, he also acted as one of John Murray's 
 " readers." Government clerks were then systemati- 
 cally underpaid and overworked. Milton took up their 
 cause and soon secured a material and lasting improve- 
 ment in their prospects and pay. 
 
 A cousin of Anthony Trollope, he was the novelist's 
 one kinsman to Whom the lonely and out -at -elbows 
 post-office junior owed many good turns during his 
 squalid lodging-house days. The memory of kindnesses 
 like these made Trollope, in The Small House at 
 AUington, find in Milton the original of the office 
 colleague Butterwell, who so seasonably and promptly, 
 lends Crosbie £400. Milton's own prosperity deepened 
 his interest in the social lot of his juniors, and their 
 want of any comfortable centre for meeting each other 
 at a clean table, over decently cooked food. Trollope, 
 who could speak from a sterner experience than Milton, 
 took up the matter, but not quite so warmly as some 
 of his Post Office contemporaries, especially Mr. 
 H. Buxton Forman. But the man on whom Milton 
 chiefly relied, and whom he always called the real 
 founder, was Sir Antonio Brady.' Sir Henry Cole, the 
 
 ■ Of the Admiralty, lived in the East End, and took as leading a part in the 
 establishment of the Bethnal Green Museum as he did in that of the Thatched 
 House Club, 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 287 
 
 creator of the South Kensington Museum, and after- 
 wards of an entirely new school of juvenile literature, 
 contributed to the club his goodwill, and an enthusiastic 
 supporter in his nephew, Wentworth Cole, if not an 
 original, one among the earliest members, joined after- 
 wards by his cousin the present Mr. Alan S. Cole. 
 Anthony TroUope's indifference to the undertaking is 
 largely to be explained by his official and social 
 intimacy with the Treasury and other Brahmins of 
 the service, who from the first frowned on and did all 
 they could to frustrate "a thing of this sort." 
 
 The kitchen and the cellar were always first-rate 
 as to quality and reasonable as regards cost. Club 
 life, to the economically disposed, is no bad prepara- 
 tion for housekeeping. The Civil Service clubtnen 
 frequenting the place on fixed incomes soon found 
 that they could live there in the same high degree of 
 comfort as in any other of the joint -stock palaces 
 adjoining, and, with a little study of the coffee-room 
 list, at a daily rate not exceeding their previous expen- 
 diture on lodging-house landladies and restaurants. 
 The rent, of course, was heavy, while on the second 
 and third floors there was much unoccupied room . 
 This, "when the club took a new, or rather an 
 older, name, was let to one of its members, and 
 became Mr. George Salting's Palace of Art,' whose 
 cultivated and wealthy owner had raised up some 
 humbler imitators in curio-collection — a quaint little 
 old gentleman. Doctor Manley, a persevering philatelist, 
 given to rummaging in waste -paper baskets, if happily 
 he could find a fresh specunen for the stamp-book 
 
 ' These spacious chambers were chosen by their opulent and discriminating 
 tenant less because of their receiving visitors than for the excellence of their 
 arrangements as regards light for the priceless objects of art with which they over- 
 flowed. Mr. Salting, a man of handsome and dignified presence, used the smoking- 
 room more than any other part of the Thatched House Club. It was singularly 
 in accordance with the fitness of things that his pictures, cabinets, and china should 
 have been housed just where the eighteenth-century art connoisseurs, the 
 Pilettanti, held their meetings. 
 
288 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 always carried about with him ; and an Anglo -Mexican 
 doctor, the attendant of Juarez (1862-7), who, returning 
 to the club after a long absence with many new ideas 
 of club management, gave the place a new lease of 
 prosperous life. It soon proved necessary to recruit 
 the membership from outside Civil Service ranks. The 
 result was a miscellaneous but well-assorted company, 
 whose members soon displayed mutually assimilative 
 powers that made the place an agreeable, as well as 
 excellently regulated, resort. The original name, how- 
 ever, had obviously ceased to be applicable. A new 
 and convenient title was readily forthcoming from the 
 topographical associations of the place. From 1866 
 the former Civil Service Club has been known as 
 the Thatched House Club. 
 
 The chief stronghold of John Wilkes being the City, 
 his Westminster friends were, as we have seen, largely 
 reinforced at the Thatched House Tavern by adherents 
 from the eastern side of Temple Bar. It was con- 
 sequently a reversion to historic precedent for the 
 nineteenth-century Thatched House Club to derive 
 strength and substance from the City in the persons of 
 Mr. Frank C. Fielding, Mr. F. C. Rasch, and others. 
 
 At the same time, the place by no means lost its 
 original civilian colour. Anthony Trollope had for 
 some time been too much occupied by the Garrick to 
 visit the " Thatched House " often ; but his cousin 
 Milton never lost his paternal interest in it, and con- 
 stantly looked in during the years of his service on 
 various royal commissions connected with the relations 
 between the English and Indian military forces under 
 Lord Cranworth first and Lord Cairns afterwards.' 
 
 The best known of those brought by Milton into 
 the Civil Service Club remained there when it had 
 become the. Thatched House. That was the case 
 
 ' Royal Commission on recruiting, 1866. Sir W. James's Committee on the 
 Supersession of Officers, 1870, and the Royal Commission on same subject presided 
 over by Lord Cairns, 1871. 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 289 
 
 with one among the earliest light blue oarsmen of note, 
 and, as he became afterwards, a pillar in the service 
 of the Crown, the shrewd, genial A. F. Bayford, then 
 registrar of the Court of Probate and Chancellor of 
 Manchester Cathedral, formerly bow of the Cambridge 
 crew in the first University boat-race ever rowed", 1829. 
 He often kept up the memory of his aquatic prowess by 
 entertaining at a club' dinner on boat-race day sottie 
 of those who had been his colleagues in the initial 
 contest, Thomas Entwisle, like himself of Trinity Hall, 
 and a barrister, a Hampshire squire of good fortune 
 near Christchurch ; W*. T. Thompson, as English 
 chaplain at Brussels, himself by way of belonging to 
 the Civil Service ; Charles Merivale, whom, as his 
 old friend, Anthony TroUope was always asked to meet, 
 the historian of Imperial Rome arid Dean of Ely. Nor 
 from Bayford's anniversary banquets Was there often 
 absent the most illustrious then living of Eton "wet 
 bobs," the former " seven " of Bayford's boat, G. A. 
 Selwyn, the best school swimmer of his time, whose 
 establishment, at his boyhood's alma mater, of the 
 swimming school called -' passing," has prevented 
 any death by drowning since. 
 
 Scarcely less well known in their different ways 
 than Bayford and his guests were the younger civilians, 
 past or present, brought by Milton into the club. 
 Edward Letchworth', who served the Crown by managing 
 the royal manor of Enfield, a solicitor, one of the best 
 bred and most universally welcome club figures, whose 
 fine, dignified presence to-day adorns the office of Grand 
 Secretary at Freemasons' Hall. For premises associated 
 with the author of Junius some representatives of the 
 nineteenth-century press were properly forthcoming at 
 the club on the old " Thatched House " site in 
 Arthur Wj. k Beckett, in whom Milton took particular 
 interest, and at still more notable writer, the founder; 
 of a whole journalistic school and style, ThomaS 
 Gibson Bowles. 
 
 19 
 
290 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Those were the days when, at the " Thatched 
 House " and elsewhere, the " club characters " now 
 absolutely unknown were still to be seen. A super- 
 annuated ex-Windsor subordinate, with something of 
 the old Georgian swagger in his bearing, was full 
 of royal reminiscences and Court anecdotes, Which the 
 club smoking-room humoured the old gentleman by 
 encouraging with a smile, but which proved a social 
 capital of some value at the select provincial boarding 
 establishhient where he made his " round of country- 
 house visits " during the long vacation. There old 
 Bob Trufifleton played conversational battledoor and 
 shuttlecock with a little dried -up compound of fiction 
 and affectation in petticoats, Who, bom in a kitchen 
 of quality, had afterwards, during a period of pro- 
 motion as lady's-maid, caught the grand manner of 
 the housekeeper's room and picked up a familiarity with 
 the names and doings of the fine world profoundly to 
 impress a sensitive, well-toi-do Liverpool gent, to be in- 
 stalled with the management of his villa at Sefton Park. 
 When old Bob used to meet her she was comparatively 
 fresh from this situation, and with the pathetic spright- 
 liness of a comfortably left widow of threescore, rattled 
 on with an occasional tear about the fine society and 
 surroundings to match of her old home, the husband, 
 who was altogether imaginary, his vineries, glass- 
 houses, and stables. All these, as old Bob at once 
 saw, were pure inventions for the purpose of capping 
 his own mythical recollections of the " grand trans- 
 parencies " who had smiled approvingly on his youth 
 and who had not forsaken him' in his maturity. Among 
 the other human specialities of comprehensive nine- 
 teenth-century clubs, like the " Thatched House," were 
 the retired diplomat, who still flourished on the strength 
 of having saved his country from some vague, untold 
 calamity or by remaining at his post in some South 
 American State through war, earthquake, and pestilence 
 in the Palmerstonian era. In St. James's Street it is 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 291 
 
 only with the present neo -Georgian era that the club 
 types and characters of our grandfathers' days have 
 quite gone out. The " Thatched House " illustrates 
 the transformation of the counting-house into the club. 
 At some points in the same street, the order of things 
 is being exactly reversed. Messrs. Hooper, the Court 
 coach-builders, have to-day annexed the ground on 
 which in Victorian days there stood the Argus Club, not 
 dissimilar in composition to the Thatched House, and 
 another, the Verulam, combining in judicious degree 
 veiled bohemianism with severe orthodoxy. The most 
 permanent and noticeable club addition to this part 
 of the thoroughfare, the Devonshire, was at its 
 beginnings the Gladstonian supplement of the Reform. 
 Here the Liberal leader, with Canon Malcolm MacCoU 
 for his host and Archbishop Magee for his chief fellow- 
 guest, unbent more freely than at any other dirmer-table 
 in the quarter, and when in the vein would give copious 
 droll extracts from the secret history, as it may be 
 called, of his own measures for abolishing Church 
 rates. The exact circumstances promoting the most 
 active of the Liberal clubs in St. James's Street 
 will be mentioned more appropriately on a later 
 page. 
 
 Meanwhile the fashionable counterpart of the Covent 
 Garden and Strand nocturnal haunts already visited 
 was, from the fourth year of Queen Victoria to the last 
 of her successor, Pratt's Club, now exiled to 14, Park 
 Place, though only founded by an enterprising billiard- 
 marker under substantial rather than fashionable 
 patronage during its St. James's period, was the nightly 
 lounge of the Fraser trio — the handsome Keith, the 
 greatly daring Charles, and their eldest brother, the 
 scholarly and poetic Sir William, whose baronetcy has 
 descended to his nephew, Keith Fraser's son, well knovm 
 formerly at Lord's as the Eton bowler. 
 
 Prominent among the other habitues of Pratt's, the 
 former rival in society and on the turf of the eleventh 
 Earl of Winchilsea, who criticized the Greville papers 
 
292 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 in an epigram sometimes wrongly attributed to Lord 
 Rosslyn — 
 
 "For fifty years he listened at the door — 
 He heard some secrets and invented more" — 
 
 Lord Winchilsea was not the only old-world peer who 
 always remained faithful to the haunt he had done 
 much to create, and only left it when its various attrac- 
 tions as a supper club in the seventies elbowed out 
 the old-fashioned game of cribbage, of which it had 
 been the one St. James's Street stronghold. Lord 
 Willoughby also, in the intervals of its nocturnal sports 
 as he paced up and down the hearthrug of the club- 
 room on the lowest floor, delivered himself of sentiments 
 exactly in the Winchilsean vein. Some one had praised 
 the indifference of the English peerage to revolutions 
 of all kinds. Dukes, in fact, like his grace of Suther- 
 land, rather encouraged them, as they might well afford 
 to do, and their leaders. WiUoughby, who had in 
 early days travelled much in the Far West, then took 
 up his parable to this effect. "The old aristocracy 
 is in exactly the same case as the tribes of North 
 American Indians. The tide of pseudo-improvement 
 hems them in, narrows the circle of their influence, and 
 will before long sweep them away. Mais en attendant, 
 Us s'amusent." "The aristocracy," commented Sir 
 William Fraser, " has too fast a hold on the real feeling 
 of the country to be swept away by Radical clamour " ; 
 of which " All my eye and my elbow I " was the only 
 notice takien by Lord Winchilsea, of whom', as he will 
 be met with a little later, no more need be said here. 
 
 The military element was at first more marked in 
 the membership of Pratt's than it otherwise might have 
 been, because, throughout the forties, the Junior United 
 Service and the Army and Navy did not represent the 
 Army so exhaustively as was the case a little later. The 
 organisation of the Junior owed much to the Duke of 
 Wellington's well-known Peninsular veteran Colonel Sir 
 Henry Brackenbury, uncle to the two gifted brothers 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 293 
 
 Charles and Henry Brackenbliry of a later day. Co- 
 operating with him and constantly at the club during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century were three or, 
 four of his contemporaries, special favourites with the 
 Duke, himself one of the club's earliest patrons, the 
 social and professional pick of the headquarter staff, 
 Horse Guards. The club, true to prehistoric precedent, 
 began in a tavern much in vogue with officers who had 
 served in .Portugal, the Lisbon, Dover Street, and 
 was established a year later, 1828, in the house formerly 
 belonging to the Senior, which then moved to its Pall 
 Mall home. It was not completely settled beneath its 
 Charles Street roof till 1856. Its successful course 
 has been chequered, like other clubs, by intrigues and 
 cabals resulting in periodical sessions, but not affecting 
 the prestige, comfort, or prosperity of the place. The 
 chief feature in these vicissitudes has been its domina- 
 tion from time to time by the Army doctors, who 
 here first planned, and afterwards completed, the 
 successful movement to obtain independent military 
 rank. One of the more recent worthies of the club, 
 dying only in 19 10, was Lord Wolseley's accomplished 
 officer General Sir WiUiam F. Butler, who in 1877 gave 
 his name to the artist of the " Roll Call," and who 
 especially identified himself with the club by not moving 
 on, as Sir Henry Brackenbury and others of his 
 contemporaries did, to the Senior. 
 
 In the year of the Queen's accession the Senior, from 
 the supposed but absurdly exaggerated average of its 
 members, had received the nickname of " Cripplegate " ; 
 unparliamentary language was said to have been heard 
 at the Junior, which in consequence was called' 
 " Billingsgate." By 1838 a fresh institution was ready 
 for the description of " Hellgate," where, as at other 
 places in that period, high play sometimes still went 
 on. This club, the Army and Navy, owed something, 
 not only of character but of its title to the great Duke, 
 who, declining aU recognition of a society to be called 
 
294 CLUB MAKEES AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the Army, welcomed one that was to bear also the 
 name of the sister Service. 
 
 This company had, like the Carlton, though in a less 
 distinguished degree, a " Billy " of its own, Captain 
 William Duff of the 3rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers. With- 
 out the Carlton " Billy's " statesmanship he was not 
 a bad man of business, and was frequently consulted 
 by his more famous brethren-in-arms, who did not 
 rest from their labours till, on the site of Nell Gwynne's 
 Pall Mall dwelling, they had erected the handsomest 
 and most perfectly appointed co-operative palace at 
 the corner of St. James's Square. Into its coffee-room, 
 after a lively evening with some choice congenial 
 spirits, came Captain Duff, hungering for supper. He 
 could find none, for the cooks had gone to bed and 
 the fires were out. Before quitting the premises with 
 a benediction he had coined for them a descriptive 
 phrase, the " Rag and Famish," whose first monosyllable 
 still forms his sufficient title to immortality. 
 
 Other and later captains might have a place in the 
 "Rag" portrait -gallery. Hawley Smart, whose Breezy 
 Langton can hold its own as a sporting novel with any 
 of Whyte Melville's, was seldom out of the place till 
 the poor, dear fellow's stricken lungs sent him from 
 London for change, and as it proved for death, to the 
 soft, myrtle -scented air of Budleigh Salterton. 
 
 The Army and Navy whist-room and billiard-room, 
 both of equal repute for their scientific play, also 
 attracted Captain Sam Batchelor, a past master in 
 all such games, who looked to his " Rag " winnings 
 to make up his weekly printer's bill when he owned 
 the Glowworm, and who, finding the horse he had drawn 
 in the club Derby sweep was next door to the actual 
 winner, was so overcome that, sinking on a couch in 
 the hall, he dissolved himself in tears. 
 
 Another " Rag " ex -captain, the easiest and 
 pleasantest of men, when Major Arthur Griffiths, 
 formed an addition to the club's literati and made him- 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 295 
 
 self its historian. The place never had! a more hospit- 
 able habitu6. To his frequent guest, the present writer, 
 he recounted, with much wealth of detail, how the Army 
 and Navy strangers' room was the first known in club- 
 land, and how the regular visits to it of the future 
 Napoleon III when a London exile secured it the earliest 
 smoking-room on a lower level than the attics. 
 
 In 1862 the Bufifs were quartered at the Tower of 
 London. Some of its officers. Major W. H. Cairnes, 
 Captain W. Stewart, and Lieutenant F. T. Jones, after 
 dinner in their historic mess-room, were talking club 
 matters over with their visitors, L. C. Barber of the 
 Royal Engineers, and his brother H. H. of the 17th 
 Lancers. All the Service clubs were then crowded 
 to more than their full number. It was decided that, 
 before Lady Day, something must be done for the 
 accommodation of the clubless ones. The Naval and 
 Military Club came into existence at once. No house 
 was found till the following September, when the club- 
 men became yearly tenants of 18, Clifford Street. Next 
 year there was a move to more spacious premises at 
 22, Hanover Square. Here, however, the overcrowd- 
 ing still went on. It was only ended in the April of 
 1866 by the acquisition, chiefly through Major Cairnes's 
 business diplomacy, of Cambridge House, Piccadilly. 
 
 The most ancient Service club, the Royal NaVal, 
 has been incidentally mentioned on an earlier page. 
 Nearly if not quite the newest military house of call, 
 it has a special interest from being a posthumous 
 creation. The Cavalry Club first suggested itself as 
 a possibility to some officers of the King's Dragoon 
 Guards and some others in the sixties. These early, 
 projectors included some of the best amateur actors 
 and brightest spirits of our land forces. Roger 
 Darnell, who, before turning soldier, had done well 
 at Eton, and one of whose remarks at University 
 CoUege, Oxford, afterwards suggested a little engraving 
 to a Punch artist : " My father is a well-meaning man. 
 
296 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 who never misses sending his old butler down to clear 
 up one's ticks at the end of the term." 
 
 Among Darnell's comrades, as agreeable though in 
 some cases less well informed than himself, was the 
 husband of the greatest beauty of her age. No woman 
 ever had a more faultless face or more expressive eyes 
 than Mrs. Thistlethwayte, whose features may stiU be 
 seen, drawn from life, in a picture, " The Nun." The 
 officer whose name this lady bore had an eccentric 
 wa,y of summoning his servant from the lower regions 
 by firing a pistol through the ceiling of his room. 
 Riding with his regiment through Hertfordshire, they 
 approached the battlefield of Barnet. " Here," said 
 Thistlethwayte, "must have been the fight." "You 
 old stupid I " rejoined his companion. Captain Prior. 
 " Don't you know that was at Famborough, in Kent? " 
 The correction becomes intelligible when it is remem- 
 bered that the incident now recalled belongs to the 
 year i860, the year of the Heenan-Sayers encounter, 
 which had put all other historic contests out of the 
 gallant Captain's mind. 
 
 On other subjects the two men talked on their 
 march of little else blit the addition they intended 
 making to military clubland. Some thirty years were 
 to pass before their project took form and substance, 
 and the Cavalry Club at 127, Piccadilly, by including 
 the Imperial Yeomanry, as well as all the equestrian 
 regulars of the Crown, sensibly helped the reaction 
 towards the militarism with which' the nineteenth century 
 went out. 
 
 The peer who patronized Pratt's and did not love 
 Greville showed himself also a club maker for the 
 organization of another body not less militaiit in a' 
 different way than that from which the cluibs just 
 mentioned drew their members. In his youth the 
 eleventh Lord Winchilsea had been among the best 
 cricketers, horsemen, and proficient in all manly exercises 
 of his time. At his country home at Burleigh -on -the- 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 297 
 
 Hill he kept open house, welcoming at the same time 
 hundreds of guests, with their horses and their sta:ble 
 servants. Twice married, the second time to Sir Charles 
 Bagot's daughter, the maid -of -honour, he had been 
 confirmed by his first wife, a daughter of the Duke of 
 Montrose, in the more serious objects of his life. These 
 found expression in his manifesto, prompted by the 
 rise of tractarianism, by the increasing RomeWard drift 
 of Anglican ritual and doctrine, and by a. shrewd pre- 
 sentiment of the fresh papal aggression which was to 
 come a few years later. Hence the appeal to his 
 countrymen that they should stand up and protect their 
 religion from Popish scepticism and infidelity. 
 
 Among those who responded to this call were the 
 Dukes of Marlborough and Newcastle, the Earls of 
 Egmont and Roden, Viscounts Hill and O'Neill. iWithin 
 a month these had founded the National Club, then, as 
 now, at I, Whitehall Gardens, for the maintenance of 
 Protestant principles in political administration, for up- 
 holding national education based on the Scriptures. The 
 National Club men have shown themselves on the 
 alert in all the successive crises of Church and Sta;te, 
 and were particularly active in supporting the Public 
 Worship Bill of 1874, subsidizing to that end a new 
 daily Conservative paper, the Hour.^ The members 
 of the club who took the move in that matter were a 
 West Highland Scotch laird. Colonel Macdonald of 
 St. Martin's Abbey, Perth ; his clerical adlatus, the 
 Reverend G. R. Badenoch ; J. Bateman, F.R.S., of 
 Biddulph Grange, Congleton ; and the still happily 
 surviving Lord BaKour of Burleigh. 
 
 • Edited by Captain Thomas Hamber, formerly of the Standard, and as much 
 devoted to certain forms of sport as to the Church itself. He then lived in a 
 house with a beautiful garden sloping down to the river at Chiswick. Thither he 
 was going when he took on his way the National Club to confer with its com- 
 mittee on the conduct of his journal. He had scarcely sat down when there 
 stepped forth from his shooting coat's capacious pocket, and strutted over the 
 green-baize table, two game-cocks. These he was carrying home and had invited 
 some friends in to see their combative performance on the following day, which 
 happened to be the first of the week. 
 
298 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 If poor Tom Hamber's fighting cocks scandalized 
 any of those with whom he had come to do serious 
 business, the National Club leaders of his time were 
 not wanting in sportsmen of proved and unimpeach- 
 able staunchness. Side by side with purely evangelical 
 champions like the Marquis of Cholmondeleyj the Earl 
 of Cavan, H. L'. Powys-Keck, Colonel Myles Sandys, 
 James Maden Holt, and Wi. B. Habershon were men 
 as distinguished in the hunting-field or on the road as 
 C. N. Newdegate, Arbury Warwick, and Lord Tolle- 
 mache of Helmingham, Suffolk. 
 
 The National clubmen, though still loyal to their 
 earliest traditions, are to-day powerful individually 
 rather than collectively, and thoug'h among them are 
 a noble pillar of their earliest faith, Sir John Kennaway, 
 do not include Lord Radstock, or other successors to 
 himself, and Lord Shaftesbury, like Lord Kinnaird and 
 Sir Fowell Buxton. From the eighteenth century till 
 nearly the close of the nineteenth Messrs. Hatchard 
 were rightly described by Sydney Smith as the great 
 evangelical resort of the West End. This character 
 it has so far periodically maintained, as still to be more 
 or less a house of call for many, lay and clerical, whom 
 one would have expected to find at the National Club. 
 
 On the other hand, the Rationalists and Ritualists 
 to-day dominating Anglicanism do not possess, simply 
 because they do not need, any club centre. Such an 
 experiment, made a few years ago in the Westminster, 
 proved entirely superfluous. Any club organization 
 to-day needed by the clerical party overwhelmingly 
 in the ascendant is supplied by the literary or academic 
 clubs, and especially by the New University in St. 
 James's Street, ever growing in popularity as the resort 
 of the progressively triumphant broad or high eccle- 
 siastics. 
 
 The National Club, notwithstanding a good deal 
 that has been said to the contrary, still maintains the 
 devotional aspect and practices which' distinguished it 
 
THE NATIONAL CLUB STAIRCASE. 
 {With fortrait of the sixth Duke of Manchestet . Photo kindly lent by the Club.) 
 
 To face p. 2 
 
SWORD AND GOWN 299 
 
 on its establishment, sixty-eight years ago. The weekly 
 prayer-meeting from 2 to 2.30 on Mondays during 
 the parliamentary session has not been dropped ; com- 
 mittee-meetings open with a request for Divine 
 guidance, daily prayers are morning and evening usage 
 in the committee-room. If, in this age of rush, the 
 evening prayers are a difficulty, the morning worship 
 brings together an average of from three to ten members 
 and from eight to ten servants. 
 
 The autumn of 191 3 finds the National clubmen 
 in quest of new quarters. Among those of their 
 number most active in making the attempt at migration 
 a success are the Bishops of Durham, of Newcastle, 
 and of Khartoum, Sir Alfred Bateman, Sir Clifford 
 Cory, Lords Ardilaun, Blythswood, Lytton, Inverclyde, 
 Iveaghj and such well-known men of letters and of 
 the world as Mr. A. C. Benson, Mr. Austin Dobson, 
 Mr. Edmund Gosse, and Mr. Maurice Hewlett. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 
 
 The Raleigh Club renders timely service to the soldier and the author — Whyte- 
 Melville and George Lawrence, the Raleigh projectors — Crimean veterans and 
 Oxford graduates among the Raleigh men — "Jack" Bailey and Captain 
 Grant, the "makers" of the Raleigh Club— The Badminton Club — The 
 original Four-in-hand — Charles Finch the first president — Finch's successor, 
 " Tommy " Onslow, his Four-in-hand followers and Jockey Club retinue- 
 Wine that was little for its age — Twentieth-century transformations in the 
 character and life of sporting clubs — A Royal Yacht Squadron members' 
 punishment for complaining to the waiter — The Arlington Street Club, 
 afterwards the Turf, and its mission in the sporting world — Its whist shares 
 with the Portland the rank of Graham's — Turf notabilities outside the circle 
 of sport— -Lord Maurice's anecdotal displays at the Churchill dinner-parties — 
 A big move on the speculative board — The Jockey Club of to-day. 
 
 The English officers Who lived! through the Crimean 
 War found the London to which th^y returned on the 
 conclusion of peace in 1856 very different, in some 
 respects that touched them closely, from the capital 
 they had left two years before. Many of their old 
 haunts had quite disappeared ; most of those that 
 remained had fallen into bad management or worse 
 repute. Limmers's Hotel in Coriduit Street, Hanover 
 Square, from being rapid was becoming rowdy. Even 
 Long's seemed shorn of its old perfections. As for 
 clubs, the Junior United and the Army and Navy ha:d 
 grown in comfort and splendour, but did not necessarily 
 include all the returned warriors among their members. 
 There seemed consequently room for another institu- 
 tion, on a less extensive scale, available at all hours 
 of the day or night for those who now found themselves 
 
 practically clubless and tavemless in Pall Mall. " Let 
 
 300 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 301 
 
 it be," said Wi. H. Russell of the Times, then a social 
 power in all circles, " a place where all which is 
 mutually congenial in sword and pen can meet." As 
 a fact, the most active promoters of the Raleigh Club 
 in 1858 did not then belong to the regular Army,. 
 Two novelists of the time, with a difference in age of 
 only six years between them, Whyte -Melville and 
 George Lawrence, happened to meet each other in a 
 Hampshire country house. Whyte-Melville, bom 1821, 
 had been writing successful and generally more or less 
 sporting stories since 1850. Lawrence had made his 
 first hit in 1857 with Guy Livingstone. Before then 
 the only fictions treating of the hunting-field or the 
 racecourse that attracted many readers were those with 
 Mr. Jorrocks for their central figure. But Surtees, not- 
 withstanding his wide acceptance, lacked social qualities 
 abundantly forthcoming in his two successors, and had 
 never been the personal idol of the regiment and the 
 college that Whyte-Melville and Lawrence afterwards 
 became . 
 
 At the period of the country-house visit now referred 
 to Whyte-Melville had just passed his thirty-seventh 
 birthday, an age that to an extremely youthful and 
 bumptious subaltern, who happened to be staying 
 beneath the same roof, seemed something more than 
 the beginning of fogeydom. When the juvenile officer, 
 without as yet knovraig his feUow-guest's name, first 
 met him in the smoking-room he showed his extreme 
 greenness by rattling on about his ow!n performances 
 in games of skill and on horseback. The click of balls 
 in the neighbouring biUiard-room suggested a game 
 before they went to bed. Whyte-Melville, a really first- 
 rate player, proposed playing ai htmdred up, of which, 
 in a very few strokes, he had put together just 
 a quarter to his adversary's " love." When his 
 opponent had made between twenty or thirty the 
 elder man scoreid the game by a very difficult screw 
 cannon, following three or four losing hazards off the 
 
302 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 red into the middle pocket— the now familiar but then 
 little known stroke. 
 
 The scene of competition was next momiflg' shifted 
 to the turnip-field and the stubble. The young marks- 
 man blazed away, but seldom came near a bird. The 
 " old fogey," himself carrying and loading his gun 
 throughout, time after time wiped the youngster's eye. 
 By noon he had filled the partridge-bag. " Ever have 
 a canter over the hurdles? " said the boy to the veteran. 
 " Yes," came the drawling answer, " when there's 
 nothing better to do." Accordingly, the paddock was 
 approached, the hurdles set up, and the jumps cleared 
 by both, the elder man always leading, while George 
 Lawrence stood, watch in hand, as timekeeper. When 
 they dismounted Whyte-MelviUe could and did compli- 
 ment his rival on his performance. " You wiU," he 
 said, " find it no bad aid to success in going through 
 life to ride straight to hounds and say nothing. You 
 can do the former well enough ; try the latter." 
 
 Whyte -Melville had gone into the Coldstreams after 
 the usual years at Eton and something less than a 
 term at Christchurch . He had left the regiment with 
 the rank of major in 1849. On the Crimean War 
 breaking out he had joined the cavalry corps of the 
 Turkish contingent, thus ending his connection with the 
 profession of arms. Lawrence, on the other hand, had 
 never been nearer to the Army than the Militia, in which 
 he became captain. Going up to Balliol from Rugby 
 about 1845, he passed his vacations and some two 
 or three years after he left Oxford less in his father's 
 Essex rectory than with some Irish friends hte had made 
 at school. The most important of these belonged to 
 the Vandeleurs, with houses chiefly in the counties West 
 Meath and Clare. Here he met the first of the 
 Herculean warriors and of the tigerish belles dames 
 sans merci who served for the models of the heroes 
 and heroines, the consummate human animals of both 
 sexes, whom Lawrence introduced in 1857 — eight years, 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 303 
 
 that is, before Ouida followed suit with Strathtnore 
 and! its sequels. 
 
 At the conclusion of the country-house visit already 
 mentioned, before leaving that part of the country, 
 Whyte -Melville decided on looking in at Aldershot to 
 see the progress of the camp, new since his time. 
 There, long known from his books, he found himself 
 preceded by the fame of his exploits just described. 
 Before his departure with Lawrence on short visits to 
 Eton and Oxford, he had been told of a club enter- 
 prise, scarcely inchoate, in whose success young 
 Aldershot took a keen interest. Would not the author 
 of Dighy Grand give the thing his support and be 
 one of its patrons? The original idea was a place 
 on a much smaller scale than any of the service clubs, 
 and not, indeed, necessarily connected with the land 
 or sea forces, but at the same time specially suited to 
 military members on active duty, who, after an even- 
 ing in town, had to appear at the regimental parade 
 next morning at Aldershot, or elsewhere, travelling 
 for the most part by a very late night, generally called 
 the cold -meat, train. Civilians, however, were not 
 only achnitted but were essential features of the 
 establislmient . 
 
 During the progress of these preparations Whyte- 
 Melville was not only the most distinguished novelist 
 in his line then at work, but in appearance, manner, 
 and conversation quite the most interesting of men- 
 about-town. From his father, the old laird of Mount 
 Melville, near St. Andrew's, he inherited a pawkiness 
 and tact that ensured exactly the right thing at the 
 right moment being done or said. Neither father nor 
 son had probably ever committed a serious social 
 mistake. Personally no two men could have been 
 more unlike — ^the elder even at eighty years keen, quick, 
 alert, straight as an arrow, and eager as a boy in the 
 business of the moment, whatever it chanced to be ; 
 the younger with a drooping figure, a face pre- 
 
304 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 maturely lined and aged^ and the a;bstracted look and 
 speech of one who had long since exhausted exist- 
 ence. At times, however, when in congenial com- 
 pany he could be induced to talk, the smothered fire 
 often burst into flame, and one realized the presence 
 alternately of the man who had been everywhere and 
 seen everything, had written the Adventures of Tilbury 
 No go and Hottnby House, as well as the Queen's 
 Maries. Those who assisted at the opening dinner 
 of the Raleigh Club in 1858 had the opportunity of 
 seeing Whyte -Melville in both these moods. 
 
 Among the best known members of the Army and 
 Navy Club, who were also of the Raleigh in its earliest 
 days, were at least two Light Brigade officers who had 
 ridden at Balaclava, Sir Roger Clayton and Colonel 
 Harrington Trevelyan ; while the officers of the old 
 56th, now the Essex regiment, furnished some of its 
 most useful and: active members. Civilians, however, 
 were quite as much in evidence as soldiers. Lawrence, it 
 has been already said, revisited Oxford towards the close 
 of the fifties and talked in Balliol about the club then 
 coming to the birth . Two other old' Balliol men happened 
 to be there at the same time — ^Robert Herbert, subse- 
 quently Colonial Under-Secretary, and C. S. Calverley, 
 afterwards of Christ's, Cambridge, known throughout 
 his Oxford time as " Blayds." None of these men ever 
 made much use of the club ; both were elected 
 members, and about the same time one or two other 
 University men who had taken orders, and then held 
 country livings. Concerning one of these is the familiar 
 story told that, having to catch an early morning train 
 for the resumption of his clerical duties in the country, 
 he entered the Raleigh coffee-room so early that the 
 overnight's work was not quite finished. " Beg your 
 pardon, sir," said the half -asleep wiaiter, "but the 
 supper bill has been taken off." This is only one of 
 many anecdotes formerly current to illustrate the con- 
 trast between lay and clerical, decorous and fast, visible 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 305 
 
 beneath a roof that, though on a humbler scale, com- 
 bined as much of sword and gown as the Athenseum 
 itself. 
 
 Most club experience shows that the projector is 
 seldom the same as the executive and practical 
 organizer. It was so with the Raleigh, where the 
 Whyte -Melville and Lawrence patronage would have 
 waited much longer than they had to do for any 
 practical result without the " spade work " done by 
 Major John Bailey and Captain John Grant. Either 
 of these genial and inexhaustibly resourceful gentle- 
 men was fully capable of doing single-handed every- 
 thing necessary for a club's success, from the laying 
 of its financial foundation at the bankers' to the equip- 
 ment of its smoking-room, the stocking of its cellar, 
 and the setting of its kitchen in working order. One 
 of the countless officers who at the end of the Crimean 
 period went into the wine business, " Jack " Bailey, 
 had no superior as a judge of vintages, and knew 
 instinctively what would be the eventual value of any 
 investment he might make in the juice of the grape. 
 As for Captain Grant, the Raleigh had still to come 
 into being when he placed the whole British Army under 
 an obligation to him for the supervision of its commis- 
 sariat and the improvement of its cuisine." A mediocre 
 school for training men, not meant to be soldiers, into 
 indifferent generals, but partially redeemed from dis- 
 tredit by Captain Bailey's lessons to soldiers' wives in 
 the art of preparing food on which their husbands 
 can fight " — such was Bernal Osborne's description of 
 the temporary Chobham and the permanent Aldershot 
 camps. It was the co-operation of Captain Grant 
 with Major Bailey which formed the entire secret of 
 the Raleigh's success. Its subsequent course has been 
 decided by its e§.rliest traditions, and it is stiU. without 
 any dangerous rival, excepting possibly its eighteen- 
 year junior, the Badminton. 
 
 Notwithstanding its associations, the only ducal thing 
 
 20 
 
306 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 about this club is its name. Yet it owes its existence 
 to a coaching celebrity almost as well known in the 
 nineteenth century as his Grace of Beaufort himself, 
 John Benedict, more familiar and famous by his sport- 
 ing alias. Cherry AngeU, the hero of the Reverend 
 Carlo Clarke's once popular novel, A Box for the 
 Season, died in Curzon Street, May 12, 1874. About 
 a year earlier he had become acquainted at Hatchett's 
 in Piccadilly with a sporting surgeon, ambitious of 
 social promotion, of a highly adventurous turn, natned 
 Hurman. " Why not start a new kind of club? We 
 will all back you up, and the place is ready to your 
 hand in the tenantless stables at 100, Piccadilly." 
 " Sawbones," as he was greeted!, knew the place, had 
 often thought something might be done with it, liked 
 the suggestion, secured a lease, and straightway pre- 
 pared to convert a stable-yard, belonging in its day to 
 various horse-dealers, into a suitable resort for his 
 patrons and friends. A club looking out on a garden 
 of its own was at least a novelty ; and into a very 
 pretty garden was easily improved the front yard, 
 formerly used as a trotting-ground . The adjacent stalls 
 and loose-boxes, hayloft and corn stores, not less readily 
 underwent a process that made them billiard-room, 
 coffee-room, and other chambers necessary for the new 
 establishment. Applications for membership poured in. 
 The two next houses were added to the enterprise. 
 Before the end of 1875, in its own stables, horses, and 
 vehicles, the Badminton possessed all the conveniences 
 and comforts, within and without, necessary for a noble 
 owner who was also a member of the Four-in-hand. 
 
 The best part of a century before the Badtninton 
 came into existence, the fourth Earl of Aylesford's 
 brother, Charles Finch, with abundance of patrician 
 support but quite unhelped in this particular work, had 
 organized the original Four-in-hand, flourishing since 
 then till the present day without any break in its 
 activity, but, amid many vicissitudes, always of an 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 307 
 
 upward tendency in the progress toward its twentieth- 
 century social distinction and personal prestige ; for 
 when George III was King, the Four-in-hand Club gave 
 no more promise than the Jockey Club of being the 
 exceedingly select and high-toned body which each has 
 become under George V. Its early picturesque tradi- 
 tions have been maintained lat all eras by the Four- 
 in-hand, meeting at first three times a week (the 
 twentieth-century meets are, of course, very much' less 
 frequent) ; the equipages were to proceed together to- 
 wards their appointed dining-place to the music of 
 silver bugles, played by the members' servants on every 
 coach. Disguised in a livery coachmian's greatcoat, 
 Charles Finch led the procession — or, in his absence, the 
 temporary " master " of the club — for many years, 
 always along the Windsor Road. If the royal borough 
 itself were the destination, the banquet which the club 
 chef had been sent on to superintend took place at 
 the " White Hart " ; or, should a more rural venue 
 be chosen, it was frequently the " Wheatsheaf " at 
 Virginia Water. For a generation that has watched 
 the meets at the " Magazine " in Hyde Park, and the 
 horses' heads turned afterwards in the direction of 
 Richmond or Norwood, it must be said that both these 
 objectives were innovations of the middle Victorian 
 age. But, however the route has varied, the popular 
 interest in the parades of the Four-in-hand Club has 
 been maintained through more than a. hundred years. 
 The essential features of the whole pageant have 
 been preserved in their integrity from Finch's time to 
 the present day. The costume worn by the accom- 
 plished ajnateurs of the Duke of Beaufort's company 
 may be less severely professional than that in which 
 the second of Four-in-hand presidents, " Tommy " 
 Onslow,' insisted on turning out. 
 
 ' The second Earl of Onslow (1814-27), commemorated in the famous lines, 
 " What can Tommy Onslow do ? " etc. Onslow, however, was a scholar as well 
 as a coachman, and often, in and out of Parliament, very effective with his repartees. 
 
308 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 The other pictorial efifects — the beautifully appointed 
 vehicles, the grooms in rich liveries behind!, and the 
 perfectly dressed queen of beauty on the box-seat — are 
 all there still. 
 
 With Charles Finch's successor as Four-in-hand 
 president, the just-mentioned " Tommy " Onslow, a 
 master equally of the whip and of the slang and 
 persiflage of the road, there were associated such 
 Regency celebrities as Sir John La.de, the concentration, 
 epitome, and amalgam of eighteenth-century black- 
 guardism, without a single redeeming spot in his nature 
 or in his life, with a pawnbrokter's heart, a drayman's 
 tongue, as degraded in his vices as he was infamous 
 in every relationship of life. With this pleasant crew, 
 captained by the first gentleman of Europe, were closely 
 connected three bright particular stars of the Georgian 
 Jockey Club — the Duke of Queensberry, the most 
 repulsive instance of senile sensuality, disgracing even 
 those bad times ; the last surviving member of the old 
 Bloomsbury gang, " Old Dick Vernon," who, begin- 
 ning life in the Foot Guards, continued it as a blackleg 
 at Newmarket, too mean to be a spendthrift, but stiU 
 contriving to live and die a debauchee ; and General 
 Slnith, who, wanting Vernon's social opportunities, 
 learned the business of life in a cheesemonger's shop, 
 went as a boy to India, shook the pagoda-tree with 
 such effect that he returned to England in early man- 
 hood with a large fortune, qualifying him at once for a 
 place in the fastest and smartest circles of the time. 
 
 General Smith's one service to his impure and sordid 
 set was his relief of its d'uU dissipation by introducing' 
 to it Foote, the actor-manager at the Haymarket, a 
 man, in Garrick's description, of wonderful abilities, 
 the most entertaining companion of his time, to whose 
 vivacity, intelligence, gaiety, and unfailing huhiour the 
 choicest wits of France presented no parallel, placed 
 by Horace Walpole in the front rank of humorists, 
 and only forgotten now because, as John Forster pointed 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 309 
 
 out, he was less an observer of character than a satirist 
 of peculiarities.' 
 
 One of his highly placed hosts produced in his honour 
 a very small bottle of tokay,^ in a very small bottle 
 because of its priceless value, dispensing it drop by drop 
 with many words about its exquisite growth and 
 antiquity. " Indeed 1 " said the actor, holding up to the 
 Ught the sample which just wetted the bottom of his 
 glass, " it is very little for its age." 
 
 How much the sporting society of to-day has 
 improved upon that of our forefathers wiU appear, 
 from the most superficial comparison of what were 
 known at the end of the Georgian era as the Four-in- 
 hand Club and the Jockey Club 3 with those institutions 
 as they exist by the same name to-day. The committee 
 of the Four-in-hand Club, whose meets at the 
 " Magazine," the twentieth century knows, had for its 
 first president and vice-president the Duke of Beaufort 
 and the Marquis of Stafford ; while among those since 
 conspicuous in this body or among the members have 
 been the Earl of Macclesfield, Lord Aveland, Lord 
 Wenlock, the Duke of Portland, the Marquis of 
 Waterford, Mr. Walter Long, Count Miinster, so 
 familiar a nineteenth-century figure as the German 
 Ambassador, the sole personal link with the era: 
 described by Pigott being "Tommy" Onslow's 
 descendant, the latter-day Earl of Onslow. 
 
 The Four-in-hand clubmen have not only gratified 
 their ruling passions themselves, they have communi- 
 cated it and their organization effectually to others. 
 The committee and members of the smaller club girowths 
 
 ' John Forster's Essays, vol ii. p. 296 (John Murray). 
 
 ' The wine called from the town in Upper Hungary, where it was made by 
 Italian dressers (1235-70), and fifty bottles of which were given to Queen Victoria 
 at her Jubilee in 1887. 
 
 3 A picture, at once accurate and vivid, of these clubs as they then were, as well 
 as of the social and sporting conditions of the age generally, is given in the first 
 volume of Recollections by an old Oxford man (B.N.C.), Charles Pigott, drawn 
 upon so extensively by modern compilers as to be generally familiar. 
 
310 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 springing from the Four-in-hand parent stock, whether 
 the short-hved Road Club or the existing Coaching 
 Club, have always been and still continue as representa- 
 tive and as free from reproach as their titular prede- 
 cessors of pre-Victorian times were the exact opposite. 
 It has been with driving as with yachting. The old 
 acres and the new wealth, under the most august 
 patronage, have harmoniously co-operated to keep alive 
 and extend on both sides of the Atlantic the true 
 Anglo-Saxon tradition of these sports. At the same 
 time, these combined forces have made the organization 
 incidental to both a healthy school of social training. 
 
 It is not many years since an exceedingly rich 
 baronet of old creation and good family, a Wykehamist, 
 by the by, without William of Wykeham's manners, 
 having been elected by a lucky chance to the Royal 
 Yacht Squadron, and dining for the first time at the 
 Cowes Clubhouse, expressed his dissatisfaction with the 
 eooking and service rather too noisily for one or two 
 leading committee-men who happened to be in the room. 
 When his complaints to the waiter broke out afresh, 
 that attendant respectfully placed in his hands a letter 
 from, as he said, the secretary. It was, indeed, the 
 committee's intimation that since sitting down to dinner 
 he had ceased to be a member of the club ; and in 
 other departments of sport like instances might be given 
 of the enforcement of good temper and good breeding 
 by not less exemplary means. 
 
 The impetus given by the Four-in-hand Club to the 
 coaching revival made its best -known members national 
 personages in the last century, as Well as gave something 
 of the same character to the popular Whips of the last 
 century, Carleton, Blyth, and Captain Candy ; while in 
 the present it is the son of an earlier Four-in-hand man, 
 the third Lord Cheylesmore, who as an active member 
 of the same exclusive society personifies the genuine 
 popularity of the recreation which could ill dispense 
 with the Vanderbilt millions or with the equine enthu- 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 311 
 
 siasm of the Brighton Winans, as with those descended 
 from the nobleman who, when George III was King, 
 to the music of silver bugles piloted the first four-in- 
 hand ever run between the " White Horse," Piccadilly, 
 and the "White Hart," Windsor. 
 
 It has fared with the racecourse as with the road. 
 George Payne, and even Charles GreviUe, lived to see 
 Newmarket a resort for those who qualified for patrons 
 of the play rather than the racecourse, and the Jockey 
 Club entered by men altogether unacquainted with 
 the rudiments of turf law. In London itself the 
 Turf Club had reflected the popularizing processes just 
 noticed in every department of sport. The Marquises 
 of Londonderry and Waterford, whose story is written 
 in the social record of the time, hit upon the idea of 
 gathering from the most select caravanserais in Pall 
 Mall and St. James's such members as were specially 
 given to various forlns of sport and play. Thus during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century grew up the 
 Arlington Club in Arlington Street — a thoroughfare con- 
 stituting a landmark in the social fusion which began in 
 the seventies,' and which is nowhere more noticeable 
 than among those whose business is with horses and 
 different forms of speculative pastime. In 1870 it 
 became necessary to think about new premises. At 
 the same time other considerations, originally advanced 
 by Mr. Henry Chaplin, suggested the reconstitution 
 and renaming of the club itself. Whist was still played 
 when, in 1876, after a short sojourn in Grafton Street, 
 the Turf Club settled at the corner of Clarge's Street 
 and Piccadilly, where the Dukes of Grafton had 
 formerly lived. By its earlier name the Turf 
 had shared with the Portland, first formed in Blooms - 
 bury, then moved to Stratford Place, Oxford Street, now 
 
 ' At this time in Arlington Street, a few doors from Lord Salisbury's, Sir John 
 Pender's successes in transatlantic telegraphy were celebrated beneath his 
 hospitable roof by entertainments more conspicuously bringing together than had 
 ever been done before the chief representatives of the patriciate and the 
 plutocracy. 
 
312 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 in St. James's Square, the distinction, as the direct 
 successor of Graham's, of being the hea,dquarters of 
 European whist, and speaking with less authority only 
 than the Portland on everything concerned with the 
 game. The third Sir Robert Peel, whose voice Mr. 
 Gladstone considered the finest in the House of 
 Commons, had made his handsome presence felt in 
 the Arlington whist-room. He did not become a 
 negligible figure in the Turf, whose nineteenth-century 
 records contain more than one animated passage 
 between the just -named baronet and the Marquis of 
 Huntly, both rivals at the card-table and both fancying 
 their own play. The Turf, however, notwithstanding 
 its name, was from the first and stiU rem;ains, not so 
 much a sporting centre as a meeting -place for men of 
 good position in widely different avocations and of 
 very opposite antecedents. The first Lord Russell of 
 KUlowen, throughout the successive stages of his great 
 career, used the Turf rather than the Reform. This 
 preference was shared by the terrifically clever Ely 
 Place solicitor whose briefs first started Russell on 
 the road to success, the first Sir George H. Lewis, of 
 whom it used to be said that he knew enough to hang 
 half the City of London. 
 
 Almost better known to the general public, and, 
 therefore, reflecting more popular interest on the club 
 than these, were the two racing confederates, the present 
 Earl of Dunraven and the late Lord Randolph Churchill. 
 The latter's dinner-parties at the club' were events in 
 its history, if only for the anecdotal entertainment 
 afiforded by his guests. Most brilliant among these 
 was Lord Morris, whose Irish stories at the time he 
 told them were new. Such was the reminiscence of the 
 judge who, on bidding a jury to be seated in their 
 proper places, saw each of them one after another enter 
 the prisoners' dock. Another related to Bemal 
 Osborne's friend and contemporary before Irish 
 Members drank, as now, nothing stronger than toast 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 313 
 
 and water. Tom Corrigan spoke after Osborne on 
 some Irish question, and quoted apropos of Osborne's 
 superficial acquaintance with the subject Pope's line, 
 " A little learning is a dangerous thing." " Go on, 
 Tom I " interjected his friend in an audible aside, " and 
 quote the next line." " And why," addressing himself 
 to the Chair, asked Corrigan, " should I be after 
 quoting the next line, Mr. Speaker, sorr? " "Be- 
 cause," put in Osborne, " it particularly suits you, for 
 it runs, ' Drink deep . . . rl'Tom." This was the same 
 Member from the emerald isle whom Lord Morris 
 declared he had seen returning home late one night 
 through a park avenue, and who, coming into collision 
 with one of the trees, politely begged its pardon. 
 Another collision followed, and then another. On this 
 Mr. Corrigan, with the words "I'll be after sitting 
 down till this procession has passed by," dropped on 
 to the lap of Mother Earth. 
 
 Neither at the Turf Club nor elsewhere are there turf 
 plungers to-day, or any play except at bridge for 
 moderate points. Why? Because the City has con- 
 quered the West End, and the jargon of the Stock 
 Exchange has become the talk of smoking-rooms and 
 the prattle of boudoirs. The game of speculation in 
 Mayfair and Belgravia in stocks and shares supplies 
 the players of both sexes with too much work in getting 
 information about the chances of a rise and faU to 
 tempt them to risk their money on the turn of a card 
 or the running of a horse, as to whom they cannot 
 possibly know whether he is meant or not. 
 
 The contrast between the Jockey Club, in the reigns 
 of the third and fifth Georges, is not less striking than 
 that of the Four-in-hand at the same dates. Just haK 
 a century before the Four-in-hand, the Jockey Club 
 was founded at the Red Lion Inn, Newmarket, in 1750. 
 Seventeen years later the election to the Jockey Club 
 coffee and dining-rooms began to be by ballot, and 
 the new Jockey Club rules at present existing were 
 
314 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 drawn up. In 1821 came further organization, the 
 purchase of the estates at Newmarket was completed. 
 Some two decades, however, elapsed before, in 1882, 
 all the racing details were settled. 
 
 Henceforward, every race meeting was advertised in 
 the calender under the conduct of at least two stewards, 
 a judge, a starter, and a clerk of the course, a handi- 
 capper, a stake-holder, and clerk of the scales. Of these 
 officials the clerk of the course acts as mainspring of 
 the whole machinery. For these important duties he is 
 paid partly by salary, partly by a share in the profit 
 from gate-money. Equally responsible is the post of 
 clerk of the scales, who, to ensure perfect accuracy 
 in weighing, may be seen throwing his handkerchief 
 into the scales to test their perfect balance before the 
 day's work begins. The starter, like the other func- 
 tionaries just mentioned, is a salaried Jockey Club 
 official, and the first gentleman who ever discharged 
 the duty was Lord Marcus Beresford, succeeded in 
 1890 by Mr. Arthur Coventry. The absolute rulers 
 of the turf are the Jockey Club stewards, who are 
 a law unto themselves, and from whom there is no 
 appeal. These, towards the close of the last or the 
 beginning of the present century, were Lords Cadogan, 
 Zetland, and March. At the present time of writing 
 (August, ,1913) they are Lord Durham's twin brother, 
 F. Lambton (senior steward). Major Eustace Loder, 
 and Lord Wolverton. These, especially of late, faithful 
 to their predecessors' example in putting a veto on 
 betting or horse ownership by jockeys, practically con- 
 trol the doings, not only of jockeys but of owners. 
 
 These autocratic prerogatives have, of course, their 
 perilous side, seen, as some think, during the Derby 
 of the year in which these lines are written, when, 
 without any complaint on the part of those interested 
 in Aboyeur, to whom the race was awai^d'ed, the judge 
 disqualified the actual winner and favourite, Craiganour, 
 on the ground of its jockey having " bumped " his 
 
CLUB ORGANIZATION OF SPORT 315 
 
 nearest rival. On the whole, however, the Jockey Club 
 supervision has raised the standard of turf ethics. 
 Against occasional rascality there can be no guarantee, 
 but in this third year of King George V, Whatever may 
 be the case with trainers, a jockeys' ring can scarcely 
 be said to exist. As for the alleged dearth of good 
 jockeys, that may be largely due to the popularization 
 by the Yankee rider, Tod Sloan, of the " monkey 
 seat." Hence the place of their own filled by such 
 jockeys as Frank Wootton and Danny Maher. 
 
 One other innovation is the settlement of bets at the 
 Victoria Club instead of at Tattersall's, whose com- 
 mittee, however, is still the tribunal for adjudicating 
 on disputed bets and for posting defaulters. During 
 the Middle Ages sport of different kinds formed the 
 chief interest of the European U(pper classes, uniting 
 them, whatever their country, into one social interest. 
 The same may be said about the various divisions of 
 London if not European society generally to-day. 
 Hence the representative character of the Turf Club, 
 as well as in a less degree of others. Not, indeed, 
 that the Turf is the official rendezvous of the turf 
 rulers. These hold constant meetings on their own 
 Newmarket estate. Their annual meeting takes place 
 at the London house of one or other of their members, 
 usually at Lord Derby's, formerly the well-remem- 
 bered corner building in St. James's Square, but, since 
 the present century came in, removed to Stratford Place. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CLUBWOMEN AND, CLUBMEN, IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 The she-turfite and her nineteenth-century ancestresses — The primitive clubwoman 
 and her strange contrast to the clubwoman of to-day — Ladies' Athenaeum, 
 Lyceum, Lyric, and Army and Navy Clubs — Thames-side beginnings of the 
 London club out of London — The Orleans — Its second home at Brighton — 
 Clubmen who made the Brighton summer season — The typical country club — 
 Its celebrities, and their services to Church and State — A lady club maker of 
 Scotland — Lady Helen Munro Ferguson carries on the Queen's — Clubmaking 
 in Edinburgh begun by Henry Dundas with the New Club evolution across 
 St. George's Channel — Daly's, the original resort for Irish M.P.'s — Black- 
 balling extraordinary and a secession — The Kildare Street Club — The 
 stronghold of Union oppositionists — Nineteenth and twentieth century 
 national and Imperial celebrities there — Treasures belowstairs in Scotch and 
 Irish clubs — Other country clubs — The Yorkshire and the Bath and County. 
 
 The varied animation of the racecourse, the picturesque 
 effect of the well-appointed coaches, especially at Ascot 
 and Goodwood, massed under the trees near the Grand 
 Stand, and the many-coloured line of jockeys breaking 
 up for a preliminary canter, and then manoeuvring them- 
 selves into position, in a far greater degree than the 
 glimpses caught of the race itself, explain the feminine 
 interest in the great meetings of the different seasons. 
 The smart sportswomen of the earlier Georgian era 
 were so much in evidence, with their jewelled betting- 
 books, and, always in the same groups, appeared so 
 regularly on every course that the social historian 
 recently referred to deals with them collectively as a 
 Female Jockey Club.' Prominent among them were 
 her Royal Grace of York, with more than one of her 
 kin, the Duchesses of Devonshire, Rutland, Bedford, 
 
 ' Pigott's IVoris, vol. ii., "The Female Jockey Club, or a Sketch of the 
 
 Manners of the Age." 
 
 316 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 317 
 
 Montrose ; Viscountess Hampden, Lady Molyneux, the 
 Countess Dudley and Ward, and the Countess of 
 Sefton. It was some Yorkshire members of this ex- 
 ceedingly " smart set," who had much to do with the 
 St. Leger as early as it did becoming one of the 
 classic races, and with the general success of the 
 Doncaster meeting. 
 
 Before the eighteenth-century Ladies' Jockey Club 
 the clubwoman was unknown to polite life. In 
 Elizabethan times there had certainly been " ladies' 
 nights " at Ben Jonson's Apollo, while, more than a 
 hundred years afterwards. Peg Wofifington was first 
 elected to the Beefsteak Club, and then chosen president 
 for the season of 1749. But apart from the progres- 
 sive and generally titled turf patronesses already 
 mentioned, the Georgian ladies affecting what they 
 called clubs, were certainly not in society. They 
 belonged, in fact, to the lower and industrial portion 
 of the middle class. 
 
 Thus a Weavers' Wives' Club met at sL select pot- 
 house in Spitalfields ; there was a Milliners' Club not a 
 stone's -throw from the Royal Exchange, a Mantua 
 Makers' in St. Martin's Lane, and innumerable others 
 of the same kind elsewhere.' 
 
 The feminine club system of the twentieth century 
 has as little of real affinity to the convivial combina- 
 tion of craftswomen in the Middle Ages as to the 
 sporting sisterhood of some hundred and fifty years 
 ago. The only ladies' club with a suspicion of sport 
 in its name, the Kermel, has grown out of the monopoly 
 
 ' See an anonymous eighteenth-century publication, The New Art and Mystery 
 of Gossiping, being a general account of all women's clubs in the City and its 
 suburbs. Only the brush of Hogarth, Rowlandson, or Gillray could do justice to 
 these feminine meetings, at which, after a disorderly repast of French beans and 
 roast mutton, each carving for herself, a discussion on the club funds ends in a 
 free fight ; the cash-box is broken open, and its contents scattered over the room. 
 Ned Ward, the scurrilous pamphleteer who wrote the London Spy, gives enlarged 
 accounts of these incidents, which had been used by a French writer, Jean Harley, 
 in his Clubs de Londres. 
 
318 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 of their mistresses' affection by canine pets, and en- 
 courages their breed by at least one annual show. The 
 Park is at once horticultural and residential, and 
 redeemed by Viscountess Wolseley's connection with 
 it from any suspicion its name might suggest of being 
 a butterfly haunt for the flaneuse. The clubwomen of 
 to-day form a company at least as miscellaneously 
 and even illustriously representative as their inferiors 
 of the trousered sex. 
 
 The Ladies' Athenaeum in Dover Street has for its 
 president a royally born lady, Louise, Duchess of 
 Argyll ; for its vice-president the most popular and 
 powerful of authoresses, Mrs. Humphry Ward. Among 
 its leading members or its committee of fifty (three 
 forming a quorum) are, adopting alphabetical order, 
 another novelist, Madame Albanesi, Lady Archibald 
 Campbell, Mrs. Calander of Ardinglass, yet a third 
 mistress of fiction, Mrs. WJ. K. Clififord, Lady Susan 
 Fitzclarence, Mrs. Farquharson of Invercauld, Ladj 
 Grey Egerton, Lady Helen Forbes, the Countess of 
 Gosford, Lady Constance Hatch, Lady Herbert of 
 Llanarth, Mrs. Rochefort Maguire, Lady Muriel Paget, 
 the Countess of Portsmouth, Lady Ridley, the Mar- 
 chioness of Ripon, Mrs. George Cornwallis West (Lady 
 Randolph Churchill), and Lady Rivers Wilson. 
 
 Artistic literary sympathies or political interests 
 qualify for membership of the Athenaeum. Original 
 contributions in the shape of books or articles, or some 
 achievement in painting or statuary, can alone secure 
 membership of the Lyceum. This select company of 
 modish Minervas, founded in 1 9 1 1 by the lady who is 
 now Mrs. Armfield, has for its president Lady Frances 
 Balfour, as the eighth Duke of Argyll's daughter, the 
 sister-in-law of the Princess Louise. Among those 
 grouped around her are the lady who, as Sir Richard 
 Strachey's widow, represents the family whose combined 
 statesmanlike and soldierlike qualities have placed them 
 high among the personal forces that have made the 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 319 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Empire ; Mrs. Bedford Fenwick, Lady 
 Beachcroft, Mrs. Dickinson Berry, M.D. ; not to pro- 
 long the catalogue of names, there may be mentioned 
 at once the distinguishing feature of the Ladies' 
 Lyceum, its affiliation to societies of the same kind and 
 on the same scale in Berlin, Brussels, Florence, Milan, 
 Paris, and Stockholm. The clubwoman, therefore, has 
 only to intimate her arrival at any of these capitals 
 to find in them without any entrance payment the same 
 sort of accommodation as she has left behind her at 
 128-9, Piccadilly. The actual or potential mothers of 
 the University first-class women of the future have 
 also a genial haunt in the Lyric Club, at which, as 
 at the Lyceum, the place of a library is filled by the 
 lectures of male celebrities, duly lunched and sometimes 
 dined by their listening hostesses. The practical utility 
 of these institutions to the clubwoman is for non]-resident 
 members, who, when up for a short spell of shopping, 
 find independence of movement and economy of money 
 and time, who therefore dislike billeting themselves, 
 and to whom a club .bedroom, if one happens to be 
 vacant, is a pleasant alternative to a lodging-house or 
 an inn. Naturally, therefore, all these conveniences 
 are intensified in the case of the Ladies' Army and 
 Navy Club, without which the twentieth-century grass- 
 widow finds it difficult to imagine how her predecessor 
 of the Victorian age contrived to exist. For has not 
 the frequent wifely furlough to Europe become a 
 parental duty, at intervals as short as may be, when 
 boys and girls are at school in England? Fortunately, 
 in these days of rapid locomotion between home and 
 the military stations of our Asiatic Empire or other 
 dependencies, the return journey cam be made almost 
 as economically as swiftly, and the clubHvoman on whom 
 domestic duty forces that effort heroically goes through 
 with it at a cost which feminine tact, self-^denial, and 
 experience have reduced to a minimum. 
 
 Before its international application by the Ladies' 
 
320 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Lyceum, the mere man — of course, after a far more 
 limited fashion — had made the experiment of club 
 afifiliation in London and the home counties. Captain 
 Harry Womb well, with Mr. Algernon Bourke, ranks 
 among the most resourceful and enterprising of 
 club contrivers during the last quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century. Before leaving the Army he had been 
 one of those who co-operated with the officers and 
 others already mentioned in organizing the Raleigh. 
 During the early seventies the success of the Guards' 
 and other clubs on the Upper Thames suggested to him 
 the idea of more elaborately equipped riparian quarters 
 nearer London. One of the mansions in which Louis 
 Philippe had passed some years of his first exile Waited 
 for a tenant. Why not acquire the property and fit 
 it up as a branch of the parent tree in King Street. 
 Thus was founded and for a short time flourished the 
 Orleans Club, Richmond. Its prospectus had been 
 idyllically attractive ; for a modest subscription it 
 promised to bring within the reach of week -long toilers 
 in London chambers the combined charms of a first- 
 rate hotel and of a private villa, in the prettiest bend 
 of a river rivalled by few streams for the exhaustless 
 diversity of its scenic effects. From the Temple and 
 Lincoln's Inn there was an early rush to secure bed- 
 rooms in the summer, weeks and even months ahead. 
 Sir Charles Dilke, whose skill in oarsmanship and 
 devotion to the imperial stream foreign travel and 
 parliamentary preoccupation had not been allowed to 
 impair, gave the project his substantial and enthu- 
 siastic support. Sir Douglas Straight, then distancing 
 as an advocate his contemporaries at the Common Law 
 bar, took up the scheme not less warmly as a means 
 of weekly recuperating his physical and forensic 
 agencies. Gradually, however, the warmest votaries 
 of the Orleans found that they were less free than 
 they had anticipated to make it a regular Saturday 
 to Monday resort. Sometimes their Richmond excur- 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 321 
 
 sions had to be made with their domestic belongings ; 
 at others they were pre-engaged to private hosts in that 
 delightful neighbourhood. As a substitute, at the 
 King's Road comer of West Street, Brighton, exactly 
 the house for a marine Orleans unexpectedly presented 
 itself. The old Sussex Club in the Steine, the Union 
 Club, and its latest neighbour on the sea-front, the 
 New Club, left room for the enterprise. During the 
 earlier eighties the Brighton Orleans became a favourite 
 resort for week-ends and often for longer terms. Lord 
 Randolph Churchill made it his political headquarters 
 out of town, summoning there his chief henchmen. 
 Sir John E. Gorst occasionally, but more often and, 
 indeed, invariably Sir Alfred Slade and one or two of 
 the Fourth Party's unattached members or independent 
 well-wishers. Of these, the chief survivor to-day is 
 Mr. J. T. Ag'g-Gardner, then, as now, the Conservative 
 Member for Cheltenham. To him Brighton, if she 
 does not owe a statue on the sea-front, is imder material 
 obligations, because his hospitalities, exercised at the 
 Orleans, first acquainted Randolph Churchill and others 
 of social consequence in their day with the summer 
 charms of the place as yet fashionably known only in 
 its late autumnal and winter aspect. 
 
 Hitherto, throughout the dog-day period, the beach 
 had swarmed with trippers certainly not belonging to 
 the polite world, but, like its adjacent promenades, was 
 barren of visitors from the London West End. Captain 
 WombweU had had the good fortune to secure for his 
 managing secretary a former Light Cavalry comrade, 
 Major H.J. Wilkin, the perfect embodiment of a club 
 disciplinarian. Under his regime every room was 
 engaged long before the Sussex fortnight opened in 
 August with Goodwood. Thus, for the first time, 
 society, through the medium of the Brighton Orleans, 
 found that East End excursionists, holiday -making 
 shopboys and servants, maids out of place, did not 
 prevent the summer breezes blowing from the Channel 
 
 21 
 
322 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 or the inland downs from being equally salubrious 
 and enjoyable. 
 
 Beneath another roof Mr. Algernon Bourke meri- 
 toriously attempted to revive the club whose lasting 
 memorial to-day is the possession by the watering-place 
 of George IV, of a season in what used to be the deadest 
 time of its year, corresponding in variety and vivacity 
 to the winter season in London before Parliament 
 meets . 
 
 Whether on the south coast, at the inland spas, or in 
 any other pleasure towns, the inner life of the clubs 
 most in request and the personality of its habitues a 
 good deal resemble each other. Their most refreshing 
 feature is a comparative absence of party colour in 
 politics, their members taking it for granted about 
 each other that they all belong to wliat at the centre of 
 provincial fashion which they have made their home is 
 considered the " gentlemanly " party. Only a few doors 
 off at the Madonna Club their womenkind are echoing , 
 the London gossip of fifth-rate society papers in the 
 intervals of an active campaign at bridge, and from 
 the small talk of their better halves the local lords 
 of creation, in the club they scarcely call their own, 
 take their conversational cue. For the clubmen of 
 London-by-the-sea, or at the wells of the medicinal 
 hinterland, testify to a pervading feminine influence, 
 which often has its agents in the medical pope and 
 anti-pope of the place, the soft-spoken fetcher and 
 carrier between boudoir and smoking-room, Emulsius 
 Placebo, and the more Abernethylike healer. Sir Rufus 
 Craggs. These are presently joined by Mr. Algernon 
 Theodore Gripp, long the fashionable member of the 
 firm of Clench and Holdfast, Lincoln's Inn, who having 
 professionally achieved something more than a com- 
 petence, has not perhaps found all that his imagination 
 painted in matrimony, but has reasonably reckoned on 
 some years of happy wedded companionship with a 
 perfectly blameless, attractive, and sensible little widow 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 323 
 
 without domestic encumbrances, inhabiting a pretty 
 " maisonette " in a desirable quarter. Here she may have 
 escaped the suitors that infested Penelope, but has 
 become the prey of she-parasites and vampires. These 
 ■resent her second marriage as an injury to themselves, 
 and are intent on its undoing by making, the yoke in- 
 tolerable to the husband, who is gradually weak 
 enough to play into the conspirators' hands iby 
 giving up the field to grass widows, district visitors, 
 and pet parsons. Thus though he is now out 
 of the firm he frequently finds there are rem- 
 nants of business requiring his presence in town, 
 and making it convenient on his return to dine at the 
 club. "If," in his honeyed voice murmurs Dr. 
 Placebo, " I were changing my state, I would sooner 
 face a regiment of worsted rivals than half a dozen dis- 
 possessed, lady friends. The truth," he proceeds to 
 explain, " is, when pretty little Mrs. Canterton changed 
 her name, the happy man whose patronymic she took 
 put a number of feminine noses out of joint." She had 
 long been the soul of hospitality to countless friends 
 of her own sex, who periodically quartered themselves 
 for health or pleasure at her delightful residence close 
 to the esplanade and the mineral springs in Megiddo 
 Terrace, Mozambique. " Take my word for it," says 
 little Bob Spruce, who knows everything, "it is not 
 the multitude of male admirers who may still buzz 
 about her, but, as somebody called it, the ' monstrous 
 regiment ' of her own sex, the sisterhood touts and 
 the host of alms-mongering Mrs. Jellybys who have 
 become her camp followers, that make the popular 
 widow with an independence so risky an investment." 
 At least a score of poor relations and professional 
 mothers-in-law periodically swarmed round Mrs. Canter- 
 ton, not only for board and lodging when they wanted 
 it but for little loans of money or contributions to the 
 Easter offerings fund, which practically comes to much 
 the same thing. 
 
324 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 The consequence is that ever since Clench and 
 Holdfast's foitner partner set up his own Lares and 
 PenateSj the independent gentlewomen who cannot live 
 on Mrs. Gripp as they lived on Mrs. Canterton have 
 commiserated to make the unhappy benedict's life a 
 burden to him, and it may be eventually to break up 
 his home. 
 
 If secular politics do not much enter into the Sesame, 
 the stnart club at Mozambique, the medical and more 
 or less religious cliques keep it, from time to time, in 
 a ferment. The two white -chokered rivals of the place 
 both belong to the club. Latterly, indeed, they have 
 been, not rivals but allies. The Rev. Plantagenet 
 Toplady Tuft had always passed for an evangelical, 
 and filled his local church with the wealthiest and most 
 select members of that school. Vicar after vicar of 
 Mozambique, generally an Anglo -Catholic, had success- 
 fully resisted the mere incumbent's claim to a larger 
 share in the ecclesiastical loaves and fishes, or to speak 
 quite correctly, the parochial perquisites of the places. 
 The club, a real factory of Mozambique opinion, has 
 several unattached clerical members. These, in their 
 unctuous phrase, declared the aforesaid squabbles to 
 be verging on the unsavoury. At last the old clerical 
 autocrat of Mozambique died. " Why not," one day 
 at the club said the ruse Anglo-Indian General Protocol, 
 one of Tuft's supporters, to his pastor, " bury the 
 hatchet with the new man and settle the difficulty by 
 pooling whatever comes in, and afterwards quietly 
 dividing' the spoil — I mean," he said, " all locally 
 collected moneys for any Church needs? " 
 
 The hint did not fall on deaf or un-willing ears. As 
 soon as the ceremony of " reading himself in " had been 
 performed by the new vicar, the High Anglican Pierre- 
 point Bellows, with the peacemaking General Protocol 
 as seconder, he was proposed by the evangelical Tuft 
 for the Sesame. There, at a luncheon arranged by 
 Protocol and assisted at by two or three of the chief 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 325 
 
 clerically minded laymen in the place, an a;greement 
 between the ecclesiastical boss of Mozambique and the 
 most formidably independent of his clergy was signed 
 and sealed. The vicar of St. Luke's-in-the-Hollow 
 was to make certain concessions in the matter of weekly 
 celebrations, Saints' Day observances, and choral re- 
 form. In return he was to receive some privileges, not 
 devoid of pecuniary value, hitherto kept tenaciously 
 by a long line of Mozambique vicars to themselves. 
 From all quarters congratulations poured in upon 
 General Protocol for his politic and equitable composi- 
 tion of differences that had so long marred the social 
 and religious harmony of Mozambique. The general 
 modestly received them with the words : " The credit 
 is not mine but the club's ; and if aU other clubs like 
 the Sesame would pour oil on the troubled waters of 
 the Church militant, after the same fashion, they would 
 leave the judicial committee of the Privy Council very 
 little work to do." 
 
 The absence of any Anglo -Catholic counterblast to 
 an institution like the National Club was mentioned in 
 an earlier chapter. In places like the essentially typical 
 Mozambique this defect is more than supplied by the 
 management and finesse exemplified in the historical 
 case just mentioned. The civil even more than the 
 religious administration of a town or neighbourhood 
 gains more than may be thought from a first -class and 
 really representative institution like the Sesame. Every 
 day and in all parts the provincial club operates as a 
 centre for organizing wholesome opinion and intelli- 
 gent criticism in municipal matters, as well as the most 
 drastic antidote to jobbery and corruption, which social 
 ambition when properly manipulated can supply. It 
 may, like its metropolitan model, be honeycombed by 
 cliques and sets, but these do not impair its effective 
 custody of civic morals and mapners. 
 
 To pass from the English Channel coast and the 
 home counties to the other side of the Tweed, the 
 
326 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Scotch capital shows the club system, as well in its 
 newest and oldest aspects, and both in the most perfect 
 working order. Place aux dames, from both parents 
 the late Lord and the present Dowager Lady Dufferin, 
 Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, has inherited, among 
 other things, a rare gift of organizing. Of that gift 
 there can be no more triumphal exhibition than the 
 Queen's Club, Edinburgh. Its founder had matured 
 her plan and was ready to carry it into execution some 
 time before London varieties of the institution came 
 into being. Had Lady Helen Munro Ferguson needed 
 a model, she would have found it ready to lier hand 
 in her own country. The New Club, Edinburgh, in 
 1787, also the birth year of the M.C.C. at Lord's, owed 
 its existence as entirely to a single mind as was to be 
 the case with the Queen's Club a hundred and twenty 
 years after. 
 
 In 1775 a low-roofed room in Dowie's Tavern, with 
 wooden chairs and a sanded floor, convivially brought 
 together the Duke of Buccleuch and various other 
 Midlothian magnates over huge bowls of hot whisky 
 punch, whose steam seemed to drop from the ceiling 
 and whose fragrance, as Cockburn, one of the revellers, 
 put it, perfumed the whole parish. Songs, toasts, and 
 arguments were the accompaniments of these high jinks, 
 as they had been of those at which Councillor Pleydell, 
 the lively, sharp -looking gentleman, with a professional 
 look in his eye and a professional formality in his 
 manner, assisted in Guy Mannering. The presid- 
 ing and animating spirit of these meetings, at which 
 elevation never passed into inebriety, was Cockbum's 
 uncle, universally known alike in North and South 
 Britain as Harry Dundas, the earliest Anglo-Indian 
 expert who ever sat at St. Stephen's, a shrewd, tactful 
 lawyer, a genial, clever, popular man of the world, and 
 in his capacity for stowing away strong waters, wine or 
 spirit, beneath his waistcoat without turning a hair a 
 veritable sandbag. In his preference for men over 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 327 
 
 measures and his belief in persons rather than principles, 
 Dundas personified the temper of the time at which 
 Whig and Tory had lost much of their own old dis- 
 tinction, and public men were Pittites, Foxites, followers 
 of Rockingham or Shelburne. For some time an estab- 
 lished ornament of the Scotch Bar, Dundas entered 
 the House of Commons as the Tory North's Lord 
 Advocate in 1774; he contrived to retain the office 
 under Rockingham. Fie might doubtless have done 
 so during the Fox and North coalition, under the Duke 
 of Portland, but, distrusting the vitality of that regime 
 and seeing the man of the future in William Pitt, he 
 would not do violence to his political conscience by any 
 connection with the unscrupulous and necessarily ephe- 
 meral alliance of two greedy, in themselves mutually 
 antagonistic, place-hunters with a ducal nonentity for 
 a figure-head. 
 
 Pawky Hal, as by this time Dundas was known, 
 ias one of the Opposition threw in his lot with Pitt, and 
 made himself the coming Minister's right-hand man. 
 In 1784 the fall of the coalition and the rise of 
 Chatham's son to the first place brought Dundas's 
 reward in the Treasurership of the Navy. By this 
 time his popularity in Scotland was only as great as 
 the favour and, indeed, the affection he enjoyed with 
 Pitt. He was able, therefore, from his place on the 
 Treasury Bench to introduce and carry a Bill for restor- 
 ing their estates to the Jacobite landlords who had been 
 proscribed after the '45. No English statesman since 
 the union under Queen Anne had ever been as power- 
 ful north of the Tweed as was the younger Pitt in 
 1784. With scarcely an exception the Scotch con- 
 stituencies returned his supporters. Nor in India, then 
 becoming the chosen field for Scotch enterprise and 
 ingenuity, could any applicant for a post, great or 
 small, expect success unless Dundas, now President of 
 the Board of Control, saw that he was not less of a 
 Pittite than himself. Dundas, however, did not allow 
 
328 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 zeal for his friend and patron's political advancem^it to 
 interfere with the work of promoting the social welfare 
 and harmony of his native land, and especially its 
 capital. Of his efforts in that direction the institution 
 now to be visited is the prosperous and enduring 
 monument. The tavern festivities already described 
 were joined in equally by Whig and Tory, by profes- 
 sional men and peers of old descent. At these drinking 
 bouts the question had more than once suggested 
 itself why Edinburg'h had as yet no estabhshment of 
 the same social consideration, convenience, and com- 
 fort as the famous London resorts in St. James's or 
 Pall Mall. To remove all traces of the party and 
 personal rivalry between Hanoverian and Jacobite, 
 Dundas, after consulting the wisest heads of all parties 
 and factions, decided that no better means couJ.d be 
 adopted than a society which should acclimatize in 
 Prince's Street the social methods and creature accom- 
 modation of Boodle's, Brooks's, or the stiU more 
 venerable Wliite's. Whigs as numerously and as 
 promptly as Tories from the first came into the New 
 Club. On the Tory side the chief figure was the 
 third Duke of Buccleuch, who combined with feudal 
 politics a vast landlord's enlightened and beneficent 
 interest in agricultural reform ; and another Scotch 
 peer of the same rank, his grace of Atholl, the intense 
 nationality of whose ancestral traditions had been shown 
 first by a tardy acceptance of the English supremacy, 
 secondly by a gradual and reluctant acquiescence in 
 the Hanoverian settlement. Prominent on the other 
 side was Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards the eighth 
 Earl of Stair. 
 
 Within half a century of its having been planted 
 there sprang from this parent stock several smaller 
 social growths. "The" Club and the Friday Club 
 included Sir Walter Scott among their members, and 
 though beginning, like the London club, in a tavern, 
 contained the germs of later organizations like the 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 329 
 
 Edinburgh City Club, the Scottish Conservative, and 
 the University. 
 
 As in the Scotch capital so in the Irish, the club 
 maker developed himself from the tavern-keeper. The 
 coffee -house life of Dublin reproduced in miniature 
 that of London. Lucas's in Cork Street was the same 
 house of call for fine gentlemen, idlers, and gamblers 
 as White's from the earliest stage of its existence 
 had been. At most of these meetings attention was 
 fixed on the handsome face and well-dressed person of 
 Maria Edgeworth's ancestor. This was the great Dublin 
 buck of his day, Colonel Ambrose Edgeworth, called 
 by Dean Swift " the prince of puppies," whose entrance 
 into any company acted as the signal for Swift's depar- 
 ture from it.' Edgeworth, like others of his set, longed 
 for a resort where the company would be a little more 
 select and the fare not quite so roughly chosen. The 
 first person to whom he imparted these notions was 
 Enoch Sterne, then a collector of Wicklow, Clerk to the 
 Irish House of Lords, and extensively acquainted with 
 the men most likely to forward such a project. The 
 eventual result was the creation of Daly's Club, 
 encircled, as readers of Charles Lever's novels will 
 remember, with so pleasant a halo of comic romance. 
 
 Originating in Dame Street, Daly's reached the height 
 of its fame after its removal to College Green in 1791- 
 To Daly's, when the house was up, came Curran, Flood, 
 Bushe, Plunket, all resplendent in evening dress -coats 
 braided with gold, white pantaloons, satin waistcoats„ 
 and above all the Irish Demosthenes, to adopt Lord 
 Holland's description, Grattan, dressed exactly as he 
 may stiU be seen in his portrait in Trinity College— 
 the scarlet uniform of the Volunteers. 
 
 If the club idea had first occurred to Ambrose 
 Edgeworth, it was Flood's chief disciple and successor 
 
 " Swift's Journal to Stella, edited by F. Ryland (Bell & Sons), p. 33. The 
 Dublin Society (now Royal) was founded in 1730, and joined by Swift's friend 
 Thomas Sheridan, and others of his circle, but never by Swift himself. 
 
330 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 who carried it into effect. What Henry Dundas was 
 to Pitt, his contemporary and chief intimate, Denis 
 Daly, had been from the first to Grattan, who looked 
 upon him as a master of parliamentary tact and an 
 oracle of social knowledge. At the club to which 
 Grattan's confidant gave his name, the orator, ensconced 
 in a quiet corner, would rehearse in an undertone some 
 of the oratorical effects which, as Member for the 
 Yorkshire borough of Malton, he was long afterwards 
 to reproduce in the English Parliament, when the friend 
 who had helped him so much in their preparation 
 was no more. Grattan's fellow -clubmen at Daly's, 
 Langrishe, Ponsonby, and Plunket, such of these as 
 heard him in the House, said that his short, antithetical 
 sentences, uttered in a foreign accent, owed something 
 of their success, not only to their original prepara- 
 tion at Daly's Club but to the shrewd hints of Denis 
 Daly himself. 
 
 Daly's resembled White's, as well in its high play ' 
 as in its exclusiveness . The severity of its entrance 
 ballot caused a serious secession in 1787. The two 
 most popular young men in Dublin society then were 
 Lord Conyngham's twin sons. Of these, Henry after- 
 wards became the third baron of his line, and sub- 
 sequently the first marquis. His brother, on inheriting 
 the Barton estates in the county Clare, took the Barton 
 name. This Nathaniel Barton, as he had now become, 
 in the year already mentioned was blackballed at Daly's 
 from purely political motives. 
 
 The inevitable result was a withdrawal of his 
 supporters from Daly's, promptly followed by the 
 genesis of a new society. This, flourishing as much 
 as ever at the present moment, gradually achieved the 
 same consequence in the Isle of Saints as had been 
 already done by the New Club in Scotland. The 
 
 ■ See Charles Lever's novel The Knight of Gwynne, where the knight stakes 
 every acre in his possession, and rises up from the card-table in the grey of 
 the morning a beggar. 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 331 
 
 Kildare Street Club has always stood at the meeting of 
 Nassau Street and Kildare Street. It soon success- 
 fully competed with Daly's as a parliamentary and 
 fashionable haunt, and eventually eclipsed its older 
 rival. From the first it brought together not fewer 
 celebrities than, as we have seen, met beneath the 
 famous roof on College Green. The Kildare Street 
 Club of one's own time is associated so closely with 
 the territorial and bureaucratic elite that some surprise 
 may be excited by the presence among its earliest 
 members of men uncompromisingly opposed to the 
 English connection. Such were Sir Jonah Harrington,' 
 the anecdotal historian of the Union Act, with which 
 the nineteenth century opened, an independent and 
 entertaining critic of successive administrations, while 
 sitting for Tuam first, for Bannagher afterwards, the 
 fourth son of the squire of Abbeyleix, in Queen's 
 County (the reputed original of Miss Edgeworth's 
 Castle Rackrent.) Sir Jonah certainly personified 
 throughout the vicissitudes of his life the presiding 
 spirit of the home surroundings described in that novel. 
 In 1798, some years after he had been called to the 
 Bar, he received the appointment of Admiralty Judge. 
 Those portions of his Memoirs relating to the tenure 
 and forfeiture for corruption of that office gave 
 Thackeray some hints for Barry Lyndon. Other 
 Kildare Street Opposition champions were Lord Henry 
 Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Connor of the United Irishman, 
 and Robert Stewart, who a few years later, as Lord 
 Castlereagh, by a corruption more lavish than Bar- 
 rington's, was to overthrow the national Legislature 
 of which he had been a bulwark. But the club's most 
 familiar ornament, in its opening years, was Sir Boyle 
 Roche, noteworthy not only for his bulls but for his 
 repartees . 
 
 Of the former, less hackneyed than the bird simile, 
 was the passionate declaration : "1 would gladly 
 sacrifice, not only part of the Constitution but the 
 
332 CLUB MAKEES AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 whole of it to preserve the remainder." The readiness 
 of rejoinder has no better example than the words 
 addressed to Curran, who had just exclaimed : " Don't 
 speak to me of my honour ; I am the guardian of 
 my own honour." " Faith I " said Sir Boyle, " I knew 
 you would, at one time or other, accept a sinecure." 
 Contemporary with these, and not less well known in 
 his day, was the head of the Conollies, whose father 
 had been the first Member returned by Ballyshannon, 
 and one of whose nineteenth -century descendants kept 
 open house at Castletown, near Dublin. Between 1849 
 and 1876 "Tom" ConoUy visited the club once or 
 twice a week for the express purpose of reinforcing the 
 guests under his huge, rambling, universally hospitable 
 roof with some of its members, who generally included 
 Sir William Gregory, the some-time Ceylon Governor, 
 as well as M.P. for his native county, Galway, and 
 for Dublin, the most delightful, instructive, and 
 variously experienced Irishman of his time. 
 
 The bay window of the club, for the interest of its 
 varied associations, may be compared with that of 
 White's, and contains the comer in which the 
 most illustrious of Kildare Street warriors, the first 
 Viscount Gough, whose victories secured England 
 the Punjab, talked over past times with Gregory, 
 and often beckoned to his chair some of the 
 younger men about him. To this period of the 
 club belonged also the best known of the Herberts of 
 Muchross, the second Earl of Erne, the most universally 
 beloved of aU Irish magnates, and the great Ulster 
 leader of Florence Court, the picturesque patriarch 
 of his people, the third Earl of Enniskillen. 
 
 So the Kildare Street Club succession has gone on 
 tiU to-day, by no one in the Victorian era more impres- 
 sively represented than by the fourth Earl of Longford, 
 by none more agreeably or amiably than by the eloquent 
 and resourceful Edward Gibson, the first Lord Ash- 
 bourne, by none in a manner more congenial to the 
 
CLUBWOMEN AND CLUBMEN 333 
 
 place than the twentieth-century Lord Longford, and 
 by the inheritor of so many great and graceful endow- 
 ments, the David Plunket who is the first Lord 
 Rathmore . 
 
 The common possession both of the chief Edinburgh 
 and Dublin club is a cellar whose contents are of 
 matchless merit and antiquity. Irish wine was in 
 Swift's day and long afterwards the common descrip- 
 tion of claret. Scotland, of course, claimed an equal 
 right to give the vintage her own name. No con- 
 noisseur in the British Isles during the first half of 
 the nineteenth century had such an assortment as lay 
 in the cellars of the New and Kildare Street Clubs 
 of the 1834 claret, of the 181 1 (the colnet year) hock, 
 and of Stock's dry champagne, bought at Crockford's 
 sale for something between half a guinea and a guinea 
 a bottle. This was the wine of which, at the Dublin 
 club four Irish members drank fifteen bottles at a 
 sitting in the worst year of Irish distress. 
 
 Of other provincial clubs, nearly, if not quite, the 
 oldest is the Yorkshire. This, like the Edinburg'h 
 and Dublin societies, grew out of the meetings held 
 at a tavern, in this case the Black Swan Hotel, by men 
 well known in their different divisions of the coimty. 
 The lead in this matter was unanimously given to 
 Mr. George Lane Fox, of Barkston. His chief coad- 
 jutors in the year w^hich witnessed the club's founda- 
 tion, 1839, were the third baronet of the WombHvell line, 
 as well known in the Court and in the salon of his day, 
 if not in the camp, as his son and successor of Balaclava 
 fame ; a great cricketer's grandfather, the fifth Lord 
 Hawke, and the first and newly created Lord Wenlock. 
 Head and shoulders above the notabilities who after- 
 wards came in was the last Duke of Cleveland, with 
 his tall figure, piercing eyes, eagle beak, in his counten- 
 ance and carriage the personified ideal of a great noble, 
 the surface area of Whose estates covered a great part 
 of the king'dom. 
 
334 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 Going southward, most of the excellent resorts 
 abounding in the western counties grew up at least a 
 couple of decades after the Yorkshire Club, and in one 
 western county, Somerset, the Bath and County Club 
 was indebted for its earliest vogue to the fact of its 
 having secured a cook who had been trained in the 
 Bath, York House Hotel, had there learned the secret 
 of the filets de bceuf a. la Bemaise, and who could tell 
 the butler how and where to get the champagne called 
 vin du President, from being the brand which, in 
 his pre-imperial days, the great Napoleon dispensed to 
 the troops at Satory." 
 
 ' Hayward's Art of Dining (Murray, 1899), p. 51. 
 
B — 
 
 X 
 H 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CLUBMEN ABROAD AND AS PEACEMAKERS 
 
 The English and French Jockey Clubs personally compared — Parisian clubmen 
 at home and English clubmen in Paris — Diplomatists as club international- 
 izers — The Grosvenor — The St. James's, its makers, migrations, and sur- 
 vivors — The Bachelors' Club — Sir Thomas Pycroft as Anglo-Indian club 
 creator and pioneer of an Empire club system — the East India United Service 
 Club — Ladies' Imperial institutions — Club manufacturers of Anglo-American 
 cement and their forerunners — Two clubmen as peacemakers — Sir Frank 
 Lascelles and Lord Weardale — Back from club to pub. — The old club and 
 the new parliamentary timetable — Week-end influences on club and dining- 
 room — Restaurant and cafe rivalry to the club — The club on the Isis, its 
 sympathy with the London club in abstemious habits. 
 
 Separated by their wealth and leisure from their less 
 fortunate fellow-countrymen, the upper classes of 
 medieval Europe, as Bishop Mandell Creighton has 
 shown in his Simon de Montfort, were united into a 
 single aristocratic polity, with sport or war for its exclu- 
 sive pursuit. As regards the former of these occupa- 
 tions, the remark is singularly applicable to opulent 
 Britons of widely differing origin and antecedents at 
 home, and it characterises the international relation- 
 ships of polite life in the twentieth not less than 
 in the thirteenth century. An institution so vari- 
 ously representative as the Turf Club, for example, 
 not only brings together the English personifica- 
 tion of, the old acres and the new wealth, but, 
 as has also been done by the Travellers' and 
 the St. James's Clubs, mingles with these from time 
 to time men of corresponding station and resources 
 from the other side of the Dover Straits. There is 
 consequently some amount of intercommunion between 
 
 335 
 
336 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 the dubs of Paris and London, notwithstanding the 
 many contrasts between the developments of the club 
 system in the two capitals. The French Jockey Club 
 sometimes admits to social fellowship beneath its roof 
 in the Rue Royale foreigners of high distinction, as 
 well as pillars of the turf belonging to other countries, 
 even though little known outside sporting circles. 
 King Edward VII and the Duke of Fife were both 
 members. Lord Farquhar is still a member. Sir 
 H. Austin Lee, of our embassy most polished, pleasant, 
 kindly, capable, and distinguished of international types, 
 figured as a " diplomatic " member for twenty-five 
 years, but has recently taken his name off the books. 
 The other two or three Englishmen are turfites of high 
 authority and extensive influence in their own depart- 
 ment, but of a fame chiefly confined within its limits. 
 In its official and executive capacity the club is assisted 
 by other bodies in its turf administration. Its racing 
 committee is concerned chiefly or only with flat racing ; 
 the Cercle de la Rue Royale, less select than the Jockey 
 Club but recruited from the upper classes, manages 
 steeplechases and is largely a gambling club. So, too, 
 is the Cercle de V Union Artistique, the resort of artists, 
 society actors, promoters of amateur theatricals. This 
 is said to realize from its card money between £20,000 
 and £30,000 a year. The Union Club is the most 
 purely diplomatic and old-fashioned in the French 
 capital. The Travellers' Club in the Champs Elys^es 
 has little in common with the Travellers' Club in Pall 
 Mall, and is chiefly in favour with flutter-loving 
 Americans. The Cercle Agricole is a country gentle- 
 men's club, known as the pomme de terre. The 
 Cercle Volney resembles the Artistic Union in the large 
 proportion of painters on its books and the periodical 
 exhibition of their works. 
 
 Generally the continental club system shoWs two signs 
 of as yet being in its youth : its subscriptions are much 
 higher than in England, generally ranging between 
 
CLUBMEN ABROAD AND AS PBACEMAKlitlS 337 
 
 £15 and £30, and in nearly all there is tolerably high 
 play, i^nglishmen, who are seldom found in the native 
 institutions, have in Paris a club to themselves, but of 
 no social consequence, being chiefly commercial. The 
 Ladies' Lyceum is the only London club possessing, 
 as already mentioned, what are practically quarters 
 of its own in Paris. But the Grosvenor, which began 
 on an artistic, literary, and scientific basis, the Albe- 
 marle, the New Almack's and the Bath, each open to 
 both sexes, have club connections, not only in Europe 
 but at the Antipodes, as well as in Mexico . In London 
 a club movement towards internationalism set in with 
 the St. James's Club. While founding this, three years 
 after he had come into his title and nine years after 
 his first Foreign Office experience as Under-Secretary, 
 Lord Granville interested in his project the younger 
 as well as the older members of the London Corps 
 Diplomatique, just as, a generation earlier, Lord 
 Londonderry did not establish the Travellers' before 
 securing Talleyrand's goodwill and adhesion. Lord 
 Granville's motive was to relieve the pressure on the 
 Travellers', for which then names had to be put down 
 twenty years ahead. The St. James's Club (1849) 
 began in Bennet Street, St. James's, and moved to 
 Grafton Street before settling at their present abode, 
 106, Piccadilly, once Coventry House, afterwards 
 occupied as the French Embassy by Count Flahault, 
 the present Lord Lansdowne's grandfather. The best 
 known among its original members were the witty, 
 kindly ruse, raconteur, home and foreign politician, 
 Henry Drummond Wolff, and Percy Smythe,' younger 
 brother of George, loosely known as the original of 
 Coning^by . Beneath its present roof, decorated with 
 
 ' Asked to join while the club was in formation, but retired very shortly after. 
 In addition to Sir H. D. Wolff, among the other original members departed in 
 the last few years are Sir John Gordon Kennedy, the Earl of St. German's, and 
 Sir E. Malet. Of the original members (in the first week of September, 1913) 
 still living, the only two are Sir Horace Rumbold and Mr. Victor W. Bates Van 
 de Weyer. 
 
 22 
 
338 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 visible associations of the Second Empire, it soon 
 widened its pale and became the resort, not only, in 
 addition to Foreign Office men, of Treasury exquisites, 
 but of the social Hite of the whole Civil Service and 
 of golden or smart youth generally. In that capacity 
 it may be regarded as having become, with the help 
 of Mr. William Gillett, a born master of the ceremonies, 
 whose social tact was only equalled by his enterprise, 
 the parent, in 1880, of the ultra-brilliant and peren- 
 nially prosperous Bachelors' Club, which, by being the 
 first to entertain ladies at five o'clock tea, began to 
 revolutionize the club system and give an impulse in 
 the direction of ladies' clubs. 
 
 Similarly, the Oriental Club visited in an earUer 
 chapter occupies something of a parental relation to the 
 East India United Service. The actual maker of this, 
 though, had little personally to do with the Anglo -Indian 
 company in Hanover Square. The elder of two un- 
 commonly clever brothers, Sir Thomas Pycroft, who 
 lived till 1892, entered the East India Company's 
 service in 1829. On one of his visits home he met, 
 at a room provided for their convenience by their 
 London agents, several of his past or present colleagues. 
 No feature of the time was more prominent then than 
 the multiplication of clubs. The gentlemen on fur- 
 lough from Hindustan asked each other why they 
 should not follow the fashion and establish their own 
 social resort in a commanding position. Finance, 
 architecture, and domestic management were all equally 
 in Sir Thomas Pycroft's way. The prompt conclusion 
 of all the preliminaries, the selection of a suitable 
 building, and the changes necessary for its adaptation 
 to its new purpose were all his work. 
 
 In justice to the militant sex, twentieth-century male 
 club makers who have worked on Sir Thomas Pycroft's 
 lines might take for their motto the Elizabethan Dux 
 femina facti; for two years before the male United 
 Empire Club in Piccadilly (1904) there had come the 
 
CLUBMEN ABROAD AND AS PEACEMAKERS 339 
 
 Ladies' Empire (1902), while, after a short interval, 
 this was followed by the Ladies' Imperial (1906). 
 During and before this period of patriotic club-running, 
 certain transatlantic agencies were preparing the 
 ground for several Anglo -American club ventures. 
 First came the conciliatory and winning methods, the 
 faultless tact, and an amiable common sense approach- 
 ing to genius, with which not only Mr. but Mrs. 
 Phelps, during their London stay, inaugurated an 
 entirely new era in the mutual intercourse of the two 
 great branches of the Anglo-Saxon family. Then 
 followed the extraordinary professional success and 
 universal acceptance of the ex -Confederate Attorney- 
 General J. P. Benjamin, together with Charles Russell, 
 afterwards Chief Justice, and the late Sir George Lewis, 
 one of the best whist -players in those official head- 
 quarters of the game, the Portland Club. Benjamin 
 died in Paris in 1884. Before leaving London the 
 golden opinions won by him there on all sides were 
 shown by the farewell dinner in the Temple Hall, pro- 
 moted by all the legal lights of his day. Other incidents 
 or personages in Anglo-American intercourse leading 
 up to the twentieth-century international clubs were the 
 reception given here to the benevolent and sagacious 
 United States industrial captain and benefactor, Mr. 
 Peter Cooper, and to his son-in-law, Mr. Abraham 
 Hewitt, and the extraordinarily favourable effect pro- 
 duced by Lord Coleridge's and Frank Lock-wood's 
 transatlantic tour. Among the literary ambassadors 
 from the New World, whose accomplishments, sym- 
 pathetic and successful deepening of the entente 
 cordiale, endeared them to the multitude, as well as 
 helped on the coming clubs, were Colonel John Hay 
 (1897-9) and Mr. J. H. Choate. Neither of these, 
 in the cordiality of his welcome from all sorts and 
 conditions of EngUshmen or in social and intellectual 
 charm, fell short of the author of the Biglow Papers, 
 James Russell Lowell (1880-5). 
 
340 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 The Anglo-American societies, for which the twentieth 
 century had thus become ripe, incidentally revived the 
 most ancient of all features in the club system, its 
 tavern life. The beginning of the twentieth century 
 witnessed, in the Old World and the New, the simul- 
 taneous establishment of twin societies, both named 
 the Pilgrims', for the promotion of Anglo-American 
 good-fellowship. On the other side the Pilgrims chiefly 
 rallied round Joseph Choate, after returning to the land 
 of his birth, William Butler Duncan, and Chauncy 
 Depew. In London their first president was and con- 
 tinues to be Lord Roberts. Its members include 
 General Doveton Hutchinson and Mr. Moreton Frewen. 
 Its secretary is a born organizer, Mr. Harry Brittain. 
 The club dining-rooms and offices are at the Savoy 
 Hotel. Another company of like texture and kindred 
 motive, the Welcome, finds a home in the exhibition- 
 grounds of Earl's Court. 
 
 The cause of amity and good understanding between 
 the peoples and rulers of Europe is maintained without 
 any special club machinery by champions like Lord 
 Weardale and Sir Frank Lascelles. The latter wias 
 our Ambassador at Berlin till 1908 ; Lord Weardale, 
 a diplomatist, not by calling but by natural aptitude 
 and experience, combines the shrewd insight of a 
 travelled man of the world into the dominant feeling of 
 nationalities, with a knowledge of the personal character 
 and rivalries of the statesmen who govern them. 
 Both the men now mentioned have for their object 
 the strengthening of the European concert and the 
 establishment of international solidarity upon the basis 
 of conciliation and ait)itration . Comprehensive aims 
 like these scarcely admit of advancement by club agency. 
 " Club opinion," generally a fiction and often a carica- 
 ture, could not in these matters form a really driving- 
 power. Propagandists like those now mentioned may, 
 however, and actually do influence the manufacture of 
 current opinion in the joint -stock palaces of the fashion- 
 
CLUBMEN ABROAD AND AS PEACEMAKERS 341 
 
 able quarters, or wherever else the process may be 
 carried on. But whether social or political, imperial or 
 domestic, club creation has now done its work and 
 reached its goal. Whatever additions may be made 
 to any of the societies already existing are likely to 
 illustrate a further reversion to type in the shape of 
 a return to the tavern clubs. Much that gave the 
 nineteenth-century Carlton and Reform real interest 
 and importance has disappeared before the innova- 
 tion of week-ends. In Victorian days the house rose 
 on Wednesdays at 5.30, and was generally counted 
 out early on Fridays. Now Wednesday is a Govern- 
 ment night ; Friday, being allotted to private Members 
 for business of only local or personal concern, prac- 
 tically ends the parliamentary week. The released 
 Members take the first train out of London, and perhaps, 
 en route to the country house, the seaside, or some other 
 pleasure or business resort, a hurried meal at the club. 
 Club life, therefore, instead of being, as formerly, at 
 its height on the eve of the Sabbath between or during 
 •church hours on Sunday, is in a state of suspense. 
 
 The great Saturday and Sunday dinners at the joint- 
 stock palaces of Pall Mall or St. James's have there- 
 fore gone, like the week-end banquets in Belgravia 
 or Mayfair. At the height of the session and the 
 season the Athenaeum, the Travellers', and the St. 
 Stephen's Club, so convenient for gentlemen of the 
 long robe with parliamentary practice, are scarcely less 
 deserted than during September or on Christmas Day, 
 while, in addition to this, the clubs which during the 
 Victorian era were the sole dining-places for men have 
 now to compete with rivals daily growing in popularity 
 like the legion of first-rate restaurants, none of which 
 were in existence fifty years ago, while some of the 
 best known, like the " Ritz " and the " Savoy," how- 
 ever famous and firmly established, are even more 
 modern growths. In this respect London's experience 
 is that also of provincial capitals, where the companies 
 
342 CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS 
 
 most in demand meet, not like the pleasant and cheery 
 Brazenose Club at Manchester, beneath the roof of their 
 own, but at an inn. Similarly Vincent's and Loder's, 
 each in a separate abode of its own, flourished at jOxford 
 half a century ago. Then came in quick succession the 
 Palmerston, the Canning, the Russell, the New Tory, 
 the Old Etonians', the Caledonians', the American, the 
 Canadian, the Gridiron, the Authentics. Of these, 
 several may be suggested by the old Bullingdon Club, 
 the Trinity Claret Club, the Myrmidons, the Phoenix, 
 the Octagon (both of Brazenose), the Adelphi, and the 
 Remnants (both of Exeter) — all, like the last London 
 institutions included in this survey, of a migratory 
 kind and free to meet on any premises they like. 
 
 These counterfeit presentments in miniature, whether 
 on the Isis or the Cam, of the London societies already 
 described, have done the same good, and are at this 
 moment exerting the same beneficent influences, moral 
 and social, as are contemporaneously illustrated in Pall 
 Mall, St. James's, and Piccadilly. Whether metro- 
 politan or provincial, the twentieth -century club, so far 
 from stimulating, operates as a powerful check upon 
 youthful extravagance. Costly wines for the most part 
 enjoy the unbroken repose of the club cellar. They 
 only appear upon rare and august occasions on the club- 
 man's table. The long drinks that quench a whole- 
 some and entirely non-crapulous thirst are generally 
 innocent of alcohol, the sherries and bitters or brandies 
 and sodas of fifty years ago have been replaced by 
 the huge jug of iced barley-water on the buffet in 
 summer, or by the plain draft of hot water from the 
 kitchen boiler which has been discovered to possess 
 the same liver -awakening and invigorating effects in 
 the smart a la mode club, cleared of the old fogey 
 element, as in a Derbyshire hydro. Such is the clubman 
 up to date, as in the metropolis so in the garrison or 
 xmiversity town, whatever the convivial traditions of the 
 house of call may have been. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen, Earl of, 233, 238 
 Abergavenny, Marquis of, 216, 
 
 219, 222-3 
 Abinger, Lord, 238, 245 
 Acland, Sir C. H., 8 
 Acland, Sir Thomas, 163-4, 250 
 Addison, 38, 79, 80, 86, 88-90, 96, 199 
 Agg-Gardner, J. T., 8, 71, 321 
 Alcibiades, 18 
 Alexander, 9 
 Alford, the, 197, 248 
 Alfred's, 128, 130-1 
 Alice's, 72 
 Almack's, 141 
 Alvanley, Lord, 129, 130, 153, 185, 
 
 197-8 
 American Club, 342 
 Amory, Thomas, 60 
 Amyot, 278 
 Andocides, 18 
 Anglesey, Marquis of, 206 
 Anne, Queen, 83-5, 178, 327 
 Anson, Sir William, 139 
 Antiquaries' Club, 278 
 Apicius, 191 
 Apollo, the, 32-3, 37-8, 57, 73, 137, 
 
 19s. 248. 317 
 Appleton, C. E., 273-4 
 Arbuthnot, 80, 176 
 Archestratus, 191 
 Argyll, Duchess of, 318 
 Argyll, Duke of, 91, 126 
 Argus Club, 291 
 Aristotle, 19 
 Arlington Club, 312 
 Armstrong, Colonel, 124, 206 
 Army and Navy Club, 292-3, 300 
 Arnold, Matthew, 20 
 Arnold of Rugby, 259 
 Arthur, John, 104-5 
 Arthur's, 104-5, 108, 132, 179, 
 
 196-9 
 Art in Clubs, 256-79 
 
 Artists' Rifle Corps, 258 
 Arts Clubs, 259, 260-2, 264 
 Arundel Club, 264-8 
 Asquith, H. H., 139, 167 
 Athenasum Club, 79, 130-1, 180-3, 
 
 186-9, 197-8, 250, 267, 341 
 AthencEum, the, 246 
 Athol, Duke of, 328 
 Atterbury, 85, 87, 89 
 Austin, Alfred, 274 
 Authentics, the, 342 
 Authors' Club, 274 
 Avebury, Lord, 8, 139, 233, 277 
 
 Bachelors' Clubs, 35 
 Bacon, Fr., 30, 34 
 Badminton Club, 305 
 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 296 
 Balfour, A. J., 139 
 Balfour, Lady Frances, 318 
 Banks, Sir J., 138 
 Barham, Canon, 254 
 Baring, Henry, 205 
 Barnard, Sir Andrew, 245-50 
 Barrington, Viscount, 169 
 Barrington, Sir Jonah, 321 
 Barry, Sir Charles, 66, 72 
 Barrymore, Lord, 150 
 Batchelor, Captain Sam, 294 
 Bath Club, 334, 337 
 Bathe, Sir H. de, 250 
 Bathurst, Lord, 234 
 Beauclerk, Topham, 137, 143 
 Beaufort, Duke of, 96, 136, 300-7, 
 
 309 
 Beaumont, 31 
 Beauvilliers, 190 
 Beckett, A. W. a, 270, 289 
 Beefsteak Club, 95-8, 317 
 Beefsteak Society, 97-8 
 Bell Tavern, the, 83, 86-7 
 Bellamy, 61-6, 74, 77, 197 
 Beloc, William, 128, 130 
 
344 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bendysshe, Theo, 230, 261 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 185 
 
 Benson, A. C, 299 
 
 Beresford, Lord Marcus, 314 
 
 Berkely, Lord, 81, 117 
 
 Bernini, 193 
 
 Bertie, Peregrine, 81 
 
 Bessborough, Lord, 144 
 
 Bianco, see White 
 
 Billiards, introduction of, 82-3 
 
 Biron, Marshall, iii 
 
 Birrell, Mr., 167 
 
 Bland, Sir J., no, 118 
 
 Blessington, Lady, 234, 246, 232 
 
 Blythswood, Lord, 299 
 
 Bohemianisni; 271-2 
 
 Bolingbroke, 80, 149 
 
 Bonaparte, Letitia, 202 
 
 Boodle, William, 132 
 
 Boodle's, 102, 132-%, 199, 328 
 
 Boswell, A., 137-8 
 
 Boswell, J., 137-8 
 
 Bourke, Algernon, 104, 106, 115, 
 
 320, 322 
 Bowles, T. G., 289 
 Boyle, Robert, 277 
 Brackenbury, General Sir H., 8, 292 
 Bradlaugh, 102 
 Bramston, 106 
 Brazenose Club, 342 
 Breakfast Club, 169-70 
 Bridge, Sir Cyprian, 140 
 Bridgewater, Duke of, 93 
 Bright, John, 228, 266, 277 
 Bright, William, 232 
 Brillat-Savarin, 192 
 British Association, the, 179 
 British Coffee House, 79 
 Broglie, Duchess de, 175 
 Bromley, William, 83, 85 
 Brooks, 141, 143 
 Brooks' Club, 53, 104, 116-7, 135, 
 
 141-2 ; gambling at, 144, 148, 
 
 162-3, I97> 27s, 328 
 Brothers' Club, 80 
 Brough family, 263, 268, 270 
 Brougham, Lord, 61, 65, 74, 189, 
 
 224, 240 
 Browning, Oscar, 273 
 Browning, Robert, 246 
 Brummel, 125-6 ; heavy winnings 
 
 of, 127 
 Bryce, J., 233 
 
 Buccleuch, Duke of, 234, 326, 328 
 Buckingham, Duke of, 231, 242 
 
 Buckingham, Leicester, 266 
 Buller, Charles, 107, 186 
 BuUingdon Club, 342 
 Bulwer-Lytton, 74, 188, 206, 225-6, 
 
 251 
 Bumper, the, 96 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, 50, 63, 146 
 Burgeny, Lord, 220 
 Burke, Edmund, 58, in, 137, 143, 
 
 162, 178, 223, 284 
 Burlington Fine Arts Club, 274 
 Burnand, Sir F. C, 254 
 Burton, Captain Sir Richard, 260 
 Bute, Marquis of, 81 
 Butler, Sir W. F., 293 
 Button's Clubhouse, 23, 79 
 Byron, H. J. 265 
 Byron, Lord, 69, 124-6, 145, 161-3, 
 
 182, 189 
 
 Cadogan, Lord, 314 
 
 Caledonian Club, 342 
 
 Calverly, C. S., 304 
 
 Calves' Head Club, 89, 90 
 
 Cambridge, Duke of, 153, 217 
 
 Camden Society, 279 
 
 Campbell, Lady H., 368 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 227 
 
 Campion, H., 85 
 
 Canadian Club, 242 
 
 Canning, 62, 116, 128, 135, 145, 
 
 148, 162-5, 167, 173, 238, 24s 
 Canning Club, 342 
 Canopus, Nathaniel, 98 
 Canterbury, Archbishop of, 139 
 Caraffa, Cardinal, 193 
 Cards, 117 
 
 Carhampton, Lord, 186, 285 
 Carlton Club, 53, 75, 117,161,215-8, 
 
 221, 341 
 Carlyle, Thos., 224, 246 
 Carnarvon, Lord, i6g, 206 
 Caroline, Queen, 163 
 Carson, Sir Ed., 167 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 62, 172-4, 176, 
 
 196, 254, 331 
 Cat, Christopher, 90 
 " Cat and Fiddle," 90 
 Catherine of Braganza, 117 
 Cattermole, 253 
 Cavendishes, the, 51 
 Cecil Club, 274 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, 139 
 Century Club, 273-4 
 Chamberlain, Austen, 167 
 
INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 228, 273 
 Chantrey, Sir Francis, 180 
 Chaplin, Sir Hy., 311 
 Chapter House, the, 59 
 Charlemagne, 192 
 Charles I, 35, 52, 89 
 Charles II, 45, 48, 53, 120-1 
 Chatham, 82, 85 
 Chatterton, ni-12 
 Chaucer, 26, 194 
 Cheshire Cheese, 90 
 Chesson, F. W., 276 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 92, 108, iio-ii, 
 
 113, 119, 205, 2S4 
 Choate, J. H., 339, 340 
 Cholmondely, Lord, 82, 108, 297 
 Churchill, Lady Randolph, 318 
 Cibber, Colley, 108-13 
 Cicero, 19 
 
 City, clubs in the, 78 
 Civil Club, 49, 50 
 Civil Service Clubs, 285, 287 
 Clarendon, Lord, 165-6 
 Clarke, Carlo, 306 
 Cleopatra, 192 
 Cleveland, Duchess of, 333 
 Clifford, Mrs. W. K., 318 
 Clive, Lord, in 
 " Club, The," 137-9, 168, 328 
 Clubs, the modern growth of, 
 
 100-15 
 Clubwomen, 316-34 
 Clunn's Hotel, 247 
 Cobbett, 65-6 
 Cobden, 65 
 Cobden Club, 232 
 Cobham, Lord, 92 
 Cock Tavern, 60 
 " Cocoa-tree," 78, 80-3, 88 
 Coffee introduced, 98 
 Coffee-houses, number of, 78 ; the 
 
 first, 99 
 Cogers Hall, 162 
 Coleridge, 246 
 Coleridge, Lord, 334 
 Collingwood, in 
 Collins, Wilkie, 203 
 Colman, J. J., 233 
 Commons, House of, 58-76 
 Comte, 234 
 
 Conservative Club, 230 
 Constitutional Club, 233 
 Cookery, 190-2 11 
 Cooksley, W. G., 254 
 Cooper, Ashley, 52 
 
 Cope, Sir John, 108, 112-13 
 Corcoran, Bryan, 8, 48-9, 19S 
 Cordon bleu, 234 
 Cornwallis, Lord, in, 147 
 Corrigan, Tom, 313 
 Cory, Sir Clifford, 299 
 Cosmopolitan Club, 167-9 
 Counterblast of James I, 73 
 County Club, 334 
 Court of Good Company, 22-3, 
 
 32-3, loo, 194, 248 
 Coventry, Arthur, 314 
 Craftsman, the, 85 
 Crawford, " Teapot," 154 
 Creighton, Bishop, 335 
 Crewe, Lord, 143 
 Cricket, in Scotland, 156 
 Crockford, 201, 207-9, 210-12 
 Croker, John Wilson, 180-4, i88> 
 
 198, 204, 246, 252 
 Cromwell, 46, 199 
 Crusades, the effect of, 68 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 120 
 Curran, 329, 332 
 
 Dalhousie, Lord, 167 
 
 Daly's Club, 329-31 
 
 Darnell, Roger, 295-6 
 
 Darner, George, 81, 196 
 
 Dartmouth, Lord, 164 
 
 Davy, Serjeant, 185 
 
 De Quincy, 284 
 
 Deerhurst, Lord, 254 
 
 Defoe, 72 
 
 Delane, J. T., 132, 209, 286 
 
 Depew, Chauncey, 340 
 
 Derby, Lord, 71, 164, 167, 215-6, 
 
 227, 229, 239 
 Devil, the, 33, 277 
 Devonshire, Duchess of, 316 
 Devonshire, Duke of, 52, 67, 74, 
 
 108, 242 
 Dickens, Charles, 61-2, 198-9, 253, 
 
 257, 259, 261, 263 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 36 
 Dilettante Club, 281-3 
 Dilke, Ashton, 273, 320 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, 233, 273, 320 
 Disraeli, 63, 84, 114, 164-5, 169, 
 
 181, 203, 206, 214-6, 218, 222, 
 
 228, 252-3 
 
 Dixon, Hepworth, 247 
 Dobson, Austin, 299 
 Doddington, Bubb, 108, 117 
 " Dog and Whistle," 54 
 
346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 DoUamore, Lord, 8i, 257 
 
 Dolly's Chop House, 72 
 
 Donegal, Lord, 83, 244 
 
 Donne, 30, 33 
 
 Dorset, Duke of, 126, 281 
 
 Douglas, Akers, 222 
 
 Dover House Club, 149, 150-3 
 
 Dowie's Tavern, 326 
 
 Draper, the, 
 
 Drayton, 42 
 
 Drummond of Hawthornden, 37 
 
 Dryden, J., 54, 79, 90, 93 
 
 Ducane, 161 
 
 Dudley, Lord, 127, 188, 107 
 
 Duff, E. G. Mount Stuart,' 169, 189 
 
 Dufferin, Lady, 326 
 
 Dufferin, Lord, 326 
 
 Du Maurier, 202 
 
 Dundas, Henry, 326-8, 330 
 
 Dunraven, Lord, 262, 312 
 
 Dyke, Sir W. Hart, 269 
 
 East India United Services Club, 
 
 338 
 Edgeworth, Col. Ambrose, 329 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 329, 331 
 Edinboro' City Club, 329 
 Edward VII, 118,336 
 Egerton, Lord. Francis, 129, 176 
 Eglinton tournament, 127 
 Eliot, Sir John, 28 
 Eloquence, Prince Regent on, 
 
 150-1 
 EUenborough, Lord, 174, 238 
 Ellice, Rt. Hon. Ed., 224-5 
 Emerson, R. W., 279 
 Empire Club, 338 
 Enniskillen, Lord, 332 
 Epicurus, 19 
 Erskine, Lord, 185 
 Examiner, the, 85-6 
 
 Falkland of Tew, 35 
 Familists, the, 89 
 Fane, Col. Henry, 32 
 Farmer, chef, 234 
 Fawcett, Henry, 227 
 Fazakerly, J. N., 164 
 Felix, 200 
 
 " Female Jockey Club," 316 
 Fenton's Hotel, 149 
 Fielding Club, 274 
 Fielding, Henry, 72 
 Fife, Duke of, 336 
 Fildes, Sir Luke, 261 
 
 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 82 
 Fitzgerald, Percy, 263 
 Fitzherbert, Mrs., 120, 149, 173 
 Fitzpatrick, Colonel, 143, 149 
 Fitzwilliam, Lord, 135, 242 
 Flahaut, Comte, 116, 337 
 Fleece Tavern, 60 
 Foote, 308-9 
 Forman, H. Buxton, 286 
 Forrest's Coffee House, 79 
 Forster, J., 259, 273, 308 
 Fountain, the, 90 
 Fountain Club, 91-2 
 Four-in-Hand Club, 306, 309-10 
 Fourth Estate, 58 
 Fox, Charles, 50, 65, 112, 116-9, 
 
 142, 143, 149, 150, 285, 327 
 Francatelli, 205, 211, 230 
 Francis, Sir Phihp, 123, 284 
 Eraser family, the, 291-2 
 French Jockey Club, 336 
 Frere, J. Hookham, 128 
 Freshwater fish, club dish, 198-9 
 Friday Club, 328 
 Friends of the People, 151 
 Friswell, Hain, 270 
 
 Gambling, 117 
 
 Gambling, House of Commons 
 
 Committee on, 206-8 
 Gardner, Agg, 222 
 Garibaldi, 227 
 Garrick Club, 78, 200-4, 208, 248, 
 
 257, 265 
 Garrick, David, 138-9, 143 
 Garroway's, 78 
 Garth, 38, 93-4, 96 
 Gaunt' s, 105, 115 
 Gay, 80, 96, 120 
 George I, 91, 121 
 George II, 91, 122, 231 
 George III, 74, 117-8, 135, 307 
 George IV, 147-8, 150-2, 154, 163, 
 
 173. 181, 197 
 George V, 148, 307 
 Gibbon, Edward, 58, 81, 115, 133, 
 
 138-9, 143, 189 
 Gibson, Milner, 208, 227 
 Gil Bias, 69 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 28 
 Gilbert, W. S., 267, 269 
 Giles's, 79 
 
 Gillett, William, 338 
 Gladstone, W. E., 84, 164-5, 193~4' 
 
 217-8, 227-18, 233, 243, 312 
 
INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Golden Eagle Tavern, 89 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 80, 90, 137, 178, 
 Golf, 156 
 Goosetree, 162 
 Gorst, Sir J., 221, 321 
 Gosse, Ed. 29, 75 
 Gould, F. C, 276 
 Government Club, 81 
 Gower, F. Leveson, 169 
 Grafton, Duke of, 143, 284, 311 
 Graham, General, 155-7 
 Graham, Sir James, 146, 167, 205, 
 
 226 
 Graham's, 123-4 
 Granby, Lord, iii 
 Grant-Duff, Sir M. E., 8 
 Grantham, 329, 330 
 Grantham, Lord, 116 
 Granville, Lord, 92, 146, 165-6, 
 
 226, 233, 337 
 Great Fire, the, 48 
 Grecian tavern, 79 
 Gregory, Sir W. H., 209, 211, 332 
 Grenville, George, 244 
 Grenville, Lord, 238 
 Grenville, Sir R., 28 
 Greville, Algernon, 199, 210-11 
 Greville, Charles, 311 
 Greville, Lord, 292 
 Grey, Egerton, Lady, 318 
 Grey, Sir Edward, 139, 167, 243 
 Grey, Lord, 225, 249 
 Grey of Wilton, Lord, 59 
 Gridiron Club, 342 
 Griffin, 143 
 
 Griffiths, Major A., 7, 294 
 Grillion's, 163-8, 250 
 Grimaldi, 125 
 Griset, E., 269 
 Grosvenor Club, 337 
 Guards' Club, 153-4, 320 
 Gully, Speaker, 243 
 Gwynn, Nell, 121 
 
 Habershon, W. B., 297 
 Haden, Seymour, 274 
 Hakluyt, 227 
 Haldane, Lord, 140 
 Hally, Edmund, 276-7 
 Hamilton, Duke of, 140 
 Hamilton, Lord Claud, 222 
 Hamilton, Lord George, 139 
 Hampden Club, 160 
 Harcourt, L., 68 
 Harcourt, Sir Vernon, 243 
 
 Hardinge, Lord, 167 
 
 Hardy, Gathorne, 243 
 
 Harley, Lord, 80, 84-8, 90, 149 
 
 Harrington, James, 40-4, 49 
 
 Harrison, Frederick, 74, 273 
 
 Hartington, Lord, 227 
 
 Hartopp, Sir George, 164 
 
 Hawkins, Sir J., 138 
 
 Hay, Col. John, 339 
 
 Hayward, A., 8, 185, 189, 190, 197 
 
 Heaven and Hell, 59 
 
 Heidegger, J. J., 106 
 
 Henry VHI, 59, 285 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury, 28, 35 
 
 Herbert, R. G. W., 169, 189 
 
 Hermias, 19 
 
 Herrick, 35 
 
 Hertford, Lord, 14,1, 182, 198 
 
 Hewitt, Abraham, 339 
 
 Hewlett, Maurice, 299 
 
 Hill, Lord, 157-9, 297 
 
 Hill, Sir John, 157 
 
 Hill, Sir Rowland, 157, 180, 188 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 34 
 
 Hoccleve, 20-1, 24-8, 30, 32, 57, 
 
 100, 194 
 Holland, Lady, 186 
 Holland, Lord, 329 
 HoUingshead, J., 270 
 Holmes, Tom, 213, 229 
 Holmes, William, 213-5, ^-5 
 Hone, William, 173 
 Hood, Tom, 246, 269 
 Hooke, Theodore, 185, 246, 252, 
 
 256-7 
 Hooks and Eyes, 246 
 Houghton, Lord, 145, 165-6, 169, 
 
 186, 253, 260 
 Hour, the, 297 
 
 Hudson, George, 216-17, 236-7 
 Hughes, Tom, 258-60 
 Hume, David, 29, 65, 143 
 Hume, Joseph, 225-% 
 Hungerford, Mrs., 85 
 Hutchinson, General H. D., 8,340 
 
 Ilbert, Sir Courtenay, 8, 67 
 Inglis, Sir R. N., 164 
 Irish Members, 63-4 
 Irving, 97 
 Irving, Washington, 191 
 
 Jacobites, at the " Cocoa Tree " 
 
 and elsewhere, 80-6 
 Jacobs, introduces coffee, 99 
 
348 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jacoby, 71 
 
 James I, 73, 120-1 
 
 James II, 47, 52 
 
 James of Hereford, Lord, 177 
 
 Jane, 64 
 
 Jebb, Sir R. C, 243 
 
 Jekyll, IS4, 185-7 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 23, 227, 246-7 
 
 Jerusalem Coffee House, 78 
 
 Jockey Club, 308, 313-14 
 
 " John's," 78 
 
 Johnson Club, 276 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 37-8, 51, 136-9, 
 
 162, 178, 246 
 Johnston, Sir J., 245 
 Jonson, Ben, 29-34, 36-9, 73 
 Jowett, Benjamin, 98 
 Junior Carlton, 229, 232, 283 
 Junior Constitutional, 233 
 Junior United Services, 292, 300 
 
 Keate, Dr., 153, 238 
 Keene, Charles, 262 
 Kekewich, S. T., 239, 240 
 Kennaway, Sir J., 297 
 Kennel Club, 317 
 Khartoum, Bishop of, 299 
 Kildare St. Club, 331-3 
 Kinglake, A. W., 8, 141, 189 
 King's Head Club, 48 
 Kings, Club of, 48 
 Kingston, Duke of, 93 
 Kit-Cat Club, 86, 90-3 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 95 
 Knight, Joseph, 261, 267 
 Knollys, Viscount, 8 
 Knowles, Sheridan, 253 
 
 Labouchere, Henry, 129, 193, 227 
 
 Labour Members, epicurean, 72 
 
 Lade, Sir J., 150, 308 
 
 Ladies' Army and Navy Club, 319 
 
 Ladies' Athenaeum, 318 
 
 Ladies' Empire Club, 339 
 
 Ladies' Imperial Club, 339 
 
 Ladies in Club Life, see Club- 
 women 
 
 Lambton, F., 314 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 243 
 
 Lansdowne, Marquis of, 133, 139, 
 184, 241, 250, 337 
 
 Lauderdale, Lord, 121, 144 
 
 Law, Bonar, 167 
 
 Lawley, Frank, 209, 211 
 
 Lawrence, George, 301-3, 305 
 
 Lawrence, Thomas, 98 
 
 Layard, A. H., 108 
 
 Le Teller, 138 
 
 Leeds, Duke of, 52, 138 
 
 Leighton, Frederick, 202 
 
 Lemon, Mark, 246 
 
 Lever, Charles, 265, 329 
 
 Lewis, " Monk," 145 
 
 Lewis, Sir George, 312, 339 
 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 166 
 
 Lloyd, Miss, 132 
 
 Lockwood, Colonel, 71 
 
 Lockwood, Frank, 339 
 
 Loder, Major Eustace, 314 
 
 Loder's Club, 342 
 
 London Corps Diplomatique, 337 
 
 London Library, 246 
 
 Londonderry, Lord, 311 
 
 Long, Walter, 309 
 
 Longman, William, 253 
 
 Lords, club life of House of, 75 
 
 Lorraine, Court of, 122 
 
 Louis XVIII, 17s 
 
 Lowell, J. Russell, 339 
 
 Lucan, 30 
 
 Lucas, 72, 329 
 
 LucuUus, 91 
 
 Luttrell, Colonel, 186-7, 285 
 
 Lyceum Club, 318, 337 
 
 Lydgate, John, 25-6, 204, 215, 238 
 
 Lynedoch, Lord, 157-9, I79> 188 
 
 Lyric Club, 31 
 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 94, 115, 167 
 
 Lytton, Lord, 299 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 74, 181, 183-4, 
 
 218, 260 
 Mackinnon, Colonel, 124-5, '55 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 86, 128, 
 
 162-3 
 Maclise, 246 
 
 Macmillan, Alexander, 278 
 Macpherson papers, 86 
 Madonna Club, 322 
 Magee, Archbishop, 291 
 Maginn, William, 246, 251 
 Maguire, Mrs. Rochefort, 318 
 Makreth, Sir Robert, 105, 132 
 Male Regie, Hoccleve's, 22 
 Mancinelli, 261 
 Mansfield, Lord, 185, 285 
 Mantua Makers' Club, 317 
 Marlborough Club, 1 18 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 87-9, 297 
 Marrow, club dish, 199 
 
INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Marryat, Captain, 265 
 
 Marston, J. Westland, 275 
 
 Marston, P. Bourke, 275 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 42, 44 
 
 Masked balls, 106-7 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 258 
 
 Maxwell, Sir William Sterling, 
 
 167, i6q 
 May, Sir T. Erskine, 169 
 Mazzoni, 242 
 
 Medici, Catherine de, 192-3 
 Medley, the, 86 
 Medmenham, 282 
 Melbourne, Lord, 225, 266 
 Melville, Whyte-, 294 
 Meredith, George, 260 
 Mermaid Tavern, 30-3, 73, 194-5, 
 
 248 
 Middlesex Cricket Club, 326 
 Miles' Coffee House, 43-4 
 Mill, J. S., 230, 273 
 Millais, J. G., 262 
 Milliners' Club, 317 
 Mills, Arthur, 167, 250 
 Mills, Burton, 8 
 Milman, Dean, 130, 238 
 Milner, Lord, 167 
 Milton, Sir J., 277, 286, 288-9 
 Mitchell's, 105 
 Molineux, Major H. P., 8 
 Molyneux, Lady, 44, 317 
 Monck, General, 45 
 Monmouth, 95 
 Montagu, Andrew, 221 
 Montagu, Charles, 33, 55, 87 
 Montagu, H. J., 274 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 73, 
 
 93 
 Montaigne, 182 
 Montrond, 174-S 
 Montrose, Duchess of, 64, 317 
 Montrose, Duke of, 64, 
 Moore, Tom, 6g 124, 162, 183 
 Morier, Robert, 167 
 Morley, Lord, 233 
 Miinster, Count, 309 
 Murray, John, 93, 128, 231, 253 
 Muscovita dancer, 283 
 Museum Club, 246 
 Myrmidons, Club, 342 
 
 Nag's Head, 53 
 Nando' s, 79 
 Napoleon HI, 203 
 National Club, 296-8, 325 
 
 National Liberal Club, 232, 274 
 
 National Review, 274 
 
 Naval and Military Club, 295 
 
 Nelson, 159 
 
 Nevill, see Abergaveny 
 
 New Almack's, 337 
 
 New Club, Edinburgh, 326, 328, 
 
 330, 333 
 New Reform Club, 275 
 New Tory Club, 342 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 118, 297 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 93, 277 
 Nightingale, Miss, 286 
 Ninon de I'Enclos, 121 
 Norfolk, Duke of, 150, 161, 167 
 North, Lord, 126, 327 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 84, 105, 
 
 220 
 Nugent, Lord, 178 
 
 Dates, Titus, 55 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 64-5, 145-6, 
 
 239 
 Octagon Club, 342 
 October Club, 83-8 
 Old Etonians' Club, 342 
 Old Man's Tavern, 79 
 Old Playgoers' Club, 275 
 Old Slaughter's Tavern, 79 
 Olivarez, Count and Countess, 69 
 Omar Khayyam Club, 276 
 Onslow, Lord, 307-9 
 Oriental Club, 128, 338 
 Orleans Club, Brighton, 321 
 Orleans Club, Richmond, 320-1 
 Orsay, Count D', 200, 203-4, 246 
 Osborne, Bernal, 185, 227, 305, 
 
 312-13 
 Our Club, 246 
 Oxford and Cambridge Club, 240, 
 
 244-S 
 Oxford, Lord, see Harley 
 Ozinda's Coffee House, 79 
 
 Palanque, 222, 234 
 Palmerston Club, 342 
 Palmerston, Lord, 138, 144, 166, 
 
 204, 208-9, 225, 240-1, 244 
 Park Club, 318 
 Parker, Matthew, 54 
 Parliament, gains in dignity, 60-1 
 Parnell, 96 
 
 Paterson, William, 54-5 
 Patten, Colonel Wilson, 166 
 Paul's Coffee House, 22 
 
350 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Paul's Head Tavern, 22 
 Payne, George, 147-9, 209-11, 311 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 63, 128, 176, 
 182-3, 214-15, 218, 229, 239, 312 
 Pellegrini, Carlo, 261 
 Pembroke, Earl of, 35, 71 
 Peninsular War, effect of, 153 
 Pepys, 37, 53, 59 
 Perceval, 62, 134-S, 213 
 Percy, Bishop, 138 
 Percy Society, 279 
 Pericles, 18, 191 
 Perron, 193 
 Peter the Great, 122 
 Petty, Antony, 133 
 Petty, Sir William, 42, 133 
 Phelps, Mr. and Mrs., 339 
 Phillimore, Sir Robert, 243 
 Philpotts, Bishop, 130 
 Phoenix Club, 342 
 Pigott, E. F. S., 244 
 Pilgrims' Club, 340 
 Pitt, 63-S, 82, 116, 143, 151-2, 172, 
 
 241. 327. 330 
 Plotters' Parlour, 52 
 Plowden family, 131 
 Plunket, 329-30 
 
 Pope Alexander, 80, 90,93, 109, 199 
 Pork pies, Bellamy's, 63 
 Porson, 65 
 Port, excess of, 64 
 Portland Club, 339 
 Portland, Duke of, 36, 65, 137, 162, 
 
 309. 327 
 Portsmouth, Duchess of, 121 
 Portsmouth, Lady, 318 
 Pottanco, chef, 131 
 Potter, T. B., 232, 273, 281 
 Praed, 269 
 Pratt's Club, 291 
 Press, accommodation for in H ouse 
 
 of Commons, 75-6, 85 
 Pretender, the, 80-5, 87, 113 
 Prinsep, Val, 262 
 Prior, 33, 80, 83, 85-9 
 Pulteney, 85, 91 
 Pusey, 164 
 Pym, 60, 221 
 
 Quain, Sir Richard, 177 
 Queensberry, Duke of, no, 150,308 
 
 Rabelais Club, 276 
 Rabisha, William, 195 
 Raggetts, the, 105, 127 
 
 Raikes, the diarist, 125, 204, 215, 224 
 
 Raleigh Club, 301, 304-5 
 
 Raleigh, Sir J., 28, 30-2, 57 
 
 Reade, Charles, 263 
 
 Reay, Lord, 8 
 
 Reform Club, 53, 75, 161, 218, 
 
 225-7, 235, 251-2, 341 
 Reid, Wemyss, 165 
 Remnants' Club, 342 
 Restoration, Clubs of the, 100 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 136-8, 143 
 Richmond, Duchess of, 38, 143 
 Roberts, Lord, 167, 340 
 Robertson, T. W., 267, 270 
 Robinson, Crabb, 184, 278, 280 
 Roche, Sir Boyle, 331-2 
 Rockingham, Lord, 108, 111-12, 
 
 133, 327 
 Rodney, in, 159 
 Rogers, Samuel, 150, 162, 183-4, 
 
 186-7, 253> 279 
 Rogers, Thorold, 232 
 Rokeby, Lord, 162, 175-6 
 Romans, Society of, 8i 
 Rome, germs of club life in, 17 
 Romney, 144 
 Rose Tavern, 53 
 Rosebery, Lord, 139, 233 
 Rossetti, W. M., 260 
 Rota Club, 41-4, 49, 84, 276 
 Round Table, 275 
 Rowe, 97 
 
 Royal Academy of Music, 258 
 Royal Naval Club, 159 
 Royal Societies' Club, 276 
 Royal Society, 276-7 
 Royal Yacht Squadron, 310 
 Rue Royale, Cercle de la, 336 
 Russell Club, 342 
 Russell of Killowen, 312 
 Russell, Hon. G. W. E., 8, 275 
 Russell, Lord John, 163-4, ^^3' 
 
 225-6 
 Russell, Lord William, 42, 45 
 Russell, W. H., 64, 216, 301 
 Rutland, Duke of, 64, 126 
 
 St. James's Club, 335, 337 
 
 St. James's Coffee House, 154 
 
 St. James's quarter, growth of 
 
 clubs in, 78 
 St. Stephen's, the best club, 61 ; 
 
 66-8, 71 
 St. Stephen's Chapel, 58, 66 
 St. Stephen's Club, 341 
 
INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 Sala, G. A., 227, 257, 265, 268-9 
 Salisbury, Lord, 188, 227, 273 
 Salting, Geo., 274, 287 
 Sambourne, Linley, 262 
 Sam's, 78-9, 105 
 Sargent, J. S., R.A., 140 
 Savage Club, 268-71 
 Savile Club, 274 
 Savoir Vivre Club, 133 
 Science in the clubs, 256-79 
 Scott, Clement, 267-9 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 181-2, 192, 328 
 Scott, Sir William, 69, 74 
 Scottish Conservative Club, 329 
 Sealed Knot Club, 49, 51, 84 
 Sefton, Lord, 202, 207, 224-5 
 Selwyn, George, iii, 114-22, 143-4, 
 
 185 
 
 Senior Army and Navy Club, 293 
 
 Servants in the eighteenth century, 
 i6o 
 
 Sesame Club, 324 
 
 Seton, Sir Bruce, 8, 177 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 48, 52, 167 
 
 Shakespeare, 36 
 
 Shakespeare Society, 279 
 
 "Shamble Peter," no; Sharpe, 
 " Conversation," 162-3 
 
 Sheffield, Lord, 81, 273 
 
 Shelburne, Lord, 112, 133, 284, 327 
 
 Sheridan, R. B. 62-3, 127, 138 
 
 Sheridan, Tom, 127, 143-4 
 
 Shipley, Bishop, 138 
 
 Sibthorpe, Colonel, 65, 243 
 
 Sidney, Algernon, 42, 44-5 
 
 Skeffington Sir Lumley, 130 
 
 Smart, Hawley, 294 
 
 Smauker, J., 159-60 
 
 Smith, Adam, 138 
 
 Smith, Albert, 265-6 
 
 Smith, Horace, 253 
 
 Smith, Sidney, 279 
 
 Smith, W. H., 218-19 
 
 Smoking-room in House of Com- 
 mons, 74 ; in House of Lords, 75 
 
 Smollet, P. B., 231 
 
 Smyrna Tavern, 80 
 
 Snuff, at White's, 102-3 
 
 Somer, Sir H., 23-4, 30, 57, 194 
 
 Somerset Club, 334 
 
 Somerset, Duchess of, 114, 127 
 
 Sothern, E. A., 97 
 
 Soyer, chef, 234-5, 252 
 
 South Sea Bubble, 78 
 
 Sparta, life in, 19 
 
 Spencean Club, 160 
 Spencer, Lord, 138, 241 
 Spencer, Lord Robert, 144, 149, 
 
 228-9 
 Spofforth, Markham, 8, 214, 216 
 Sport, represented in the clubs, 
 
 300-15 
 Stafford, Lord, 283, 309 
 Stanhope, Lord, 71, 167, 253 
 Stanley, Dean, 167, 259--60 
 Stanley, H. M., 177 
 Steele, 80 
 
 Steel-Maitland, 223 
 Stone, Marcus, 259 
 Stone's Coffee House, 23 
 Strafford, 221 
 Straight, Sir Douglas, 320 
 Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, 104, 
 
 166 
 Stuart kings, 59 
 SuckUng, 35, 40 
 Suffolk, Lady, 114, 117, 200 
 Sugden, Charles, 97-8 
 Supreme, a famous, 197-8 
 Surtees, 301 
 Sussex Club, 321 
 Sussex, Duke of, 74, 248-50 
 Svyift, 40, 72, 79, 80-1, 85, 88, 91, 
 
 97, 280, 329, 333 
 Swinburne, A. C, 260-1 
 
 Tacitus, 30 
 Tailorini, the, 283 
 Tait, Archbishop, 165 
 Talleyrand, 116, 118, 174, 196 
 Tallien, 181 
 Tarleton, 72, 147-9 
 Tattersall's, 315 
 Taunton, Lord, 193 
 Taverns of Westminster, 83 
 Taylor, Colonel, 216, 219, 228-9 
 Taylor, Michael Angelo, 134-5 
 Temple, Archbishop, 28 
 Thackeray, 74, 226-7, 235, 246, 
 
 250-4, 256-7, 264, 269, 282, 288, 
 
 290-1, 331 
 Thatched Club, 280 
 Thatched House, the, 141, 227, 
 
 281-S 
 Themistocles, 17, 18 
 Thuqydides, 18 
 Thurlow, Lord, 64, 284 
 Tobacco, attack upon, 73 
 " Tom's," 78 
 Tonson, Jacob, 90, 93 
 
352 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Tooke, Home, 151, 285 
 Tothill, H., 59, 60 
 Travellers' Club, 173-6, 196 
 Treason Club, 52-3, 84 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, 132, 140, 142 
 Trinity Claret Club, 342 
 TroUope, Anthony, 177, 257, 286-9 
 Turf Club, 311-13, 33S 
 Turk's Head Tavern, 41, 138 
 
 Ude, 202, 205 
 
 Union Artistique, 336 
 
 Union Club, 160, 176-7, 200-1 
 
 United Services Club, 154, 180, 197 
 
 United Universities' Club, 238, 
 
 240, 24s 
 University Club, 130 
 Unwin, T. Fisher, 232, 276 
 Upper Flask Tavern, 93 
 
 Vagabond Club, 275 
 Vagabond, the Nevy, 275 
 Venneschi, 282 
 Verulam Club, 291 
 Victoria, influence of, 69 
 Victoria Club, 315 
 Vincent's Club, 342 
 Volney, Cercle, 336 
 
 Walker, Thomas, 189, 190 
 Wallace, Sir D. Mackenzie, 140, 263 
 Walpole, Horace, 94, iio-ii, 113- 
 
 14, 117, 141, 143, 200, 282, 308 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, 85, 91-4, 
 
 104, 120-1, 143, 169 
 Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 318 
 Ward, Plumer, 128-9 
 Watier's, 124, 126, 128, 154, 164, 
 
 201, 212 
 Watson, Bishop, 130 
 Weavers' Wives' Club, 317 
 Weardale, Lord, 8, 340 
 Wednesday Club, 56-7 
 Welcome Club, 340 
 Wellesley, Lord, 135, 164 
 Wellington, Duke of, 116, 125, 
 
 1+5. iSS. 157. 172, 176, 182, 199, 
 
 200, 204, 206, 214-15, 238 ; 
 
 second Duke of, 254 
 
 Weltjie, 148-50 
 
 West, Mrs. G. Cornvs/allis, 318 
 
 Westminster, eating-houses at, 59 
 
 Wharton, J., 138 
 
 Wharton, Thomas, 52 
 
 Whewell, 238, 278 
 
 Whig Examiner, 86 
 
 Whistler, J. McNeil, 261, 274 
 
 Whitbread, Samuel, 135, 149, 249 
 
 White, 99-102 
 
 White, Mrs., 105-9 
 
 White's, 94-105, 114 ; bets at, 115; 
 burned, 115; 1 16-19, 122; play 
 at, 126 ; 142-3, 147, 163, 172, 
 188, 193-4, 196-7, 204, 214, 248, 
 283, 328-30 
 
 Whitefriars Club, 275-'6 
 
 Whyte-Melville, 301-3, 305 
 
 Wilberforce, 133, 143, 163, 170, 
 
 Wildman, Sir John, 143-5 
 
 Wilks, John, 281, 284, 288 
 
 William HI, 37, 48, 51-2, 54, 57 
 
 William IV, 124, 159, 250 
 
 WilUs, N. P., 256 
 
 Willis's Rooms, 141 
 
 Willoughbyd'Eresby, Lord, 203-5 
 
 Wills, W. G., 268 
 
 Wills's Coffee House, 23, 34, 79 
 
 Winchester, Bishop of, 167 
 
 Winchilsea, Lord, 115, 291-2 
 
 Windham, William, 138, 178 
 
 Windham Club, 179, 199 
 
 Woffington, Peg, 317 
 
 Wolff, Sir H. Drummond, 169,337 
 
 Wolseley, Lady, 318 
 
 Wolseley, Lord, 140 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 69, 163 
 
 Wyndham Club, 87 
 
 Wyndham, George, 139 
 
 Yates, Edmund, 251, 253-4, 256-7, 
 
 263 
 York, Archbishop of, 139 
 York, Duchess of, 316 
 York, Duke of, 154, 182, 202 
 Yorkshire Club, 334 
 Young Man's Tavern, 79 
 Young and Old Clubs, 115 
 Young White's, 143 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, 1 HE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON