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/cu31924077731317 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1996 CLUBLAND cSonbon axxb ^romncxal BY JOSEPH HATTON tVITJI FORTY-NINE ILLUSTRATIONS, INCLUDING SIXTEEN WHOLE-PAGE PLATES. LONDON J. S. VIRTUE & CO., Limited, 26, IVY LANE 1890 LONDON : PRINTED BT J. S. VIKTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD. PREFACE. 1 M jF the ancient Lacedemonians invented clubs, the modern English may take the credit of having perfected them. There are in London to-day a hundred cluhs which meet in their own houses. How many pthers may be leading precarious lives in hotels and taverns it would l^e difficult to say. In no city in Europe or Amdrica are these organisations administered on such strict principles as are deemed necessary in Gre^t Britain. An Englishman's club for the time being is his private house. The members represent his family and friends. Strangers excluded froin the club-rooms proper are relegated to apartments which have little or no communication with the members' rooms. Whereas in America a visitor properly introduced has the full run of a club, in England he is essentially a stranger. The election of members is conducted upon the most exact- ing principles, and candidates are sometimes not elected until many j^ears after they are proposed. In the oldest and most exclusive clubs members are said to nominate their sons and heirs on the day of their birth. That there is nothing new under the sun is remarkably illustrated in the history of an English club. The feasts of love or public repasts of the days of Lycurgus (as related by Plutarch) were the beginnings of the modern club, which is conducted to-day very much upon the ancient lines. For example the Lacedemonians made up companies of fifteen, and each of them brought contributions of wine, cheese, fish and fruit. It was customary, on the arrival of members, for the oldest among them to stand at the portal and warn his brethren that not a word said within the precincts must be repeated outside. Each candidate for admission was balloted for. The members took in their iv CLUB- LAND. hands a little ball of soft bread, wbich they threw into a deep basin. If, in doing so, they did not press the ball into a flat disc the candidate was elected, otherwise he was excluded. " The golden period" of our London club-land is said to have been in the time of the Spectator^ "in whose rich humour their memories are embalmed." Compared with the luxurious establishments of the present day, however, the clubs of a hundred and fifty years ago were mere gambling dens, held for the most part in hotels and taverns. There is, indeed, hardly an instance of the Addisonian days of a club having its own house, let alone its palace so common in the present era of social and political combiaations. "The first modern club mansion," says Mr. Timbs, " was No. 86, opened as a subscription house, called the Albion Hotel. It was originally built for Edward, Duke of Tork, brother of George III., and is now the office of Ordnance." Club-houses, therefore, as we know them to-day are of recent date. They are a feature of the progress of our own times, in our description of which no more is aimed at than a passing gossip upon an interesting theme. Appearing originally in the Art Journal from month to month, the popularity of the following pages was so great that their present republi- cation was resolved upon. Finding in the chief cities of the provinces a remarkable emulation of Loudon enterprise in the building of palatial club-houses, examples of the new departure were added by way of supple- ment to oui- first series of papers. The two series are now presented to the public bound together in one volume. The history of Club-land, London and provincial, has yet to be written. If the present work should have the good fortune to be accepted as a worthy contribution towards that desirable eud, it wiU. have answered the purpose of both author and publisher. The chapter dealing with Edinburgh and Glasgow Clubs is from the pen of Mr. Eobert Walker. Joseph Hatton. Garrick Club. COKTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Cocoa Tree — Almacks — Conservative — The Mums — Hectors — Sorcerers — Nickers — Mohocks — White's 1 CHAPTER II. Brooks' — Guards' — Orleans — Falstaff — New — Lotos 12 CHAPTER III. Nonsense Club — Beefsteak — Union — United Service — Athenseum . 21 CHAPTER IV. Travellers — Carlton — Reform — Junior Carlton — Army and Navy — Oxford and Cambridge — Guards — East India United Service — Wyndham — Salisbury — Junior United Service — United University — Junior Athe- nseum — Raleigh — St. George's — St. Stephen's ..... 30 CHAPTER V. Arts — Hogarth— Green Room — Fielding — Our Club — Wigwam — Garrick>x- Savage — National Liberal — Constitutional ..... 40 CHAPTER VI. Jockey — Hurlingham — Royal Thames Yacht — Turf — Marylebone Cricket Club — Gun — Four-in-Hand — Alpine — Badminton ..... 49 CHAPTER VII. BIRMIMGHAM CLUBS. Birmingham Press Club — Bean — Union — Midland Conservative — Conserva- tive — Birmingham Liberal Club — Clef Club ...... 57 PAGE 68 vi CONTENTS. CEAPTER Vni. LIVERPOOL CLUBS. Liverpool Art Club — Reform — Conservative ...... CHAPTER IX. MANCHESTER AND LEEDS CLUBS. John Shaw Club — Jacobite — The Gentlemen's Concert Club — Church and King Club — Constitutional — Pitt Club — Orange Club — Billiard Club — Reform — -Conservative — Trafibrd — Union — Clarendon Arts — The Anglo-French — Brazenose — Conservative Club, — Liberal Club, Leeds . 79 CHAPTER X. EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, BELFAST. Scottish Conservative, Edinburgh — New Club, Edinburgh — University Club, Edinburgh — Scottish Liberal Club — United Service Club, Edinburgh — Western Club, Glasgow — Anderston Club, Glasgow — Hodge Podge — Gaelic Club— Face Club— Medical Club— "What you Please" Club- Packer's Club — Amateur Club — -Geg Club — Badger — New Club, Glasgow — Conservative Club, Glasgow — Liberal Club, Glasgow — Glasgow Art Club — Monks of St. Giles, Edinburgh — Pen and Pencil Club, Edinburgh and Glasgow — Societ}' of Musicians, Edinburgh and Glasgow — Ulster Reform Club, Belfast 90 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FULL-PAGE PLATES. FACING PAGE St. James's Street, showing White's and the Devonshire Clubs ... 6 The Guards' Club at Maidenhead . . . , .16 Waterloo Place, with the Untted Service Club 26 The Reform and Carlton Clubs . . 30 The Hall of the Reform Club .32 Junior Carlton Club . . . . ... 36 The East India United Service, Wyndham, and Salisbury Clubs, St. James's Square . 38 The Reading Room, Garrick Club 40 The National Liberal Club 4:4 N.ational Liberal Club . . 46 The Constitutional Club 48 The Badminton Club ... 52 The Isthmian Club . .54 The Ly'ric Club . . . .56 A Picture Show in the Arts Club, Manchester 86 Western Club, Glasgow . . .... 96 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT. PAGE New University Club 3 The Conservative Club 5 The Naval and Military Club 10 Brooks's Club 13 TUl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Theatre of the New Club . The Union Club . The Athen^um Club . City Liberal Clxtb The Junior United Service Club St. Stephen's Club View from the Library, Garrick Club The Constitutional Club The Jockey Club, Newjiarket Arcade Eoom, Jockey Club Coffee Eoom, Jockzy Club .... Staircase of Consekvative Club, Birmingham . Conservative Club and Burnaby Memorial, Birmingham Liberal Club, Birjiingham Exhibition Room, Art Clu^b, Liverpool Eeform Club, Dale Street, Liverpool Entrance to the Conservative Club, Liverpool Morning Room, Conservative Club, Liverpool . A Fireplace, Conservative Club, Liverpool Entrance Hall of Union Club, Manchester Conservative Clue, Manchester The Reform Club (Election Time), Manchester A Corner in the Morning Room of the Conservative Club, Leeds . Scottish Conservatht; Cll-b, Edinburgh Hall of the Scottish Conservative Club, Edinburgh New Club, Edinburgh . . New Club, Glasgow ... The Ulster Reform Club, Belfast PAOE 19 23 28 34 36 39 42 46,47 50 51 53 59 61 65 69 73 75 77 77 81 83 85 89 92 93 95 101 103 CLUB-LAND. LONDON AND PROVINCIAL. STAEED to-day at Piccadilly like a country squire; there are twenty new stone houses/' wrote Horace Walpole, in 1759. What would be his sensations if, revisiting "the glimpses of the moon," he could see the Piccadilly of to-day and the adjacent regions of club-land, St. James's Street and PaU Mall? Of all the busy scenes at these head-quarters of the clubs, so fuU of historic associations with his name and his time, the one landmark that would catch his puzzled gaze would be St. James's Palace. It stands in the very heart of the club country, and its story is the history of England. Since the roystering days of club life in London, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and St. James's Street have been rebuilt. St. James's Street is redeemed, from an antiquarian point of view, by the dingy towers of the Palace, and the quaint suggestions of age in the Queen Anne facade of the Cocoa-tree Club. Otherwise the architectural picturesqueness of the days of Anne and of Walpole have disappeared. You can only find it in the prints that hang in the local shop-windows, or, to go farther afield, in modern revivals of old brick houses that nowadays one comes upon everywhere. There is a singular fascination about these print-shops. As you walk down St. James's Street, and turn round into Pall Mall, note how the pictorial reminiscences of old London attract people. It is not only the B 2 CLUB-LAND. collector, the man of taste, whom you will find gazing at engravings of streets with sedan chairs in them, Birdcage "Walk in the days of Charles, scenes at Vauxhall assembly and gardens, cock-pit encounters, portraits of racing squires, and illustrations of ancient sports ; but the commoner folk contemplate these things with an effort, in their dull way, to realise the changes that have come over this world of London. A reformer who has worked all his life in extending the franchise, because he believes the working classes are to a man against wars, should note the kind of persons who block the pavements where the shop-windows contain military pictures. The bright uniforms of the household troops, the gallant charges in the battle tableaux, these collect audiences of working men. So long as writers, poets, and women make a hero of the warrior, so long will there be wars ; and so long as gold is the key to all doors, so long will men gamble for it. The famous old clubs of this famous region of club-land were originally taverns and gambling-houses. To-day St. James's Street looks so smug and respectable, Pall Mall so like a region of palaces, that you might fairly think we had indeed got far beyond those wild days of gaming when whist and piquet, and hazard and faro, were the chief amusements of the time ; when the palate of a gentleman required the constant titillation of strong wines, and the rattle of the dice-box was music to his soul. These days are past, it is true, but the spirit of gambling is with us still busy as ever, inspiring its votaries with as keen a relish for speculation as that which ruled in 1770, when "Walpole wrote; " The gaming at Almack's, which has taken the pas of White's, is worthy the decline of our empire, or commonwealth, which you please. The young men of the age lose ten, fifteen, twenty thousand pounds in an evening there. Lord Staverdale, not one-and-twenty, lost £11,000 there last Tuesday, but recovered it by one great hand at hazard." "We gamble in a more general and scientific way in these days, and every class engages in the excitement all over the country. The modern phase of gambling is well represented in the old street where Sheridan and Fox, and CLUB-LAND. the Prince of Wales and Brummell, and the rest, drank and gained and fought, and, according to the tenets of their day, proved themselves gentle- men. At the top of the street, on the west corner, with an entrance to Piccadilly, there is a West-end Stock Exchange, Limited; and another kindred institution on the east side, near the bottom. You will find in the windows the opening prices of consols, rentes, Eries, Midlands, Egyptians, &e., with their A^arying quota- tions during the day and their closing prices at night. You can go in and speculate and gamble, at a I'ate never dreamt of by those wild, tearing, duel- ling gamesters of Walpole's time : you can do it in cold blood in your morning coat, then take a ride in the park, lunch calmly at your club, go home unruffled to dinner, and escort your wife to the Opera in the evening, or to a meeting at Exeter Hall with the mild air of a bishop. Those topers and gamblers of old, they had sport in company over their speculations ; they dined and wined, and fired off ribald jests ; they made tbe welkin ring; they Iroubled the watch, sometimes shot each other and made a noise. I suppose our modern system is best. The New Viiii-ersity Club. 4 CLUB-LAND. Do you think streets and houses have a physiognomy ? Then note the clean self-conscious air of respectability and wealth of St. James's Street. The houses have both a city and a country manner. Even the Stock Exchanges have a West-end expression in their windows, as much as to infer that they only deal or associate with county men, with officers and gentlemen. The one at the Piccadilly end has the air of a rich broker, well dressed, with a rose in his button-hole, a fifty-guinea chronometer in his watch fob, and in his mind the consciousness of his little place at Kichmond or Twickenham. Then there is White's, on the other side of the street, a solid stone building, with its thick iron raiHngs and balcony, painted white, its two heavy lamps at the entrance, its mahogany swiugiag doors, and its aristocratic bow window. It looks its history : it is modem, but with an expression of " long descent," even in its blinds. Tory, it looks as if its foundations were deep in the soil, as if they were on the rock ; as if the cellarage was grouted in with concrete; as if, in its modern dress and manner (the present house was built by Wyatt in 1851), it retained its old port wine constitution, and accepted the luxuries of the present only as supplementary to those of the past. Compared with the stock-broker at the comer, it is lord-lieutenant of its county, chairman of quarter sessions, and has sat in Parliament all its life. Idealising these inanimate things in a physiognomical spirit, such are the characteristics that strike one in a general way. I am not straining the idea either, nor is the thought original, since Theodore Hook likened a once well-known bow window, at the other end of St. James's Street, to an obese old gentleman in a white waistcoat. It is an eminently aristocratic street, St. James's. Even the club waiters and the tradesmen feel it. They live up to this ideal. The tradesmen are of "a superior cut." Their manners are courtly compared, for example, with Strand manners, and they have cultivated, if not a higher order of intelli- gence, certainly a show of it. They charge for both in their bills, and rightly. The hall porters at the clubs have the hauteur of the most upper of CLUB-LAND. upper servants. They have even some of the repose that belongs to their masters of the Vere de Veres. It would be an education in social tone for an Tlie Conservative Club. ignorant person to live in St. James's Street. How much more so might this have been said when St. James's was in fact, as well as in name, the metropolis 6 CLUB-LAND. of the Court ! How well the Palace carries on its calm, time-worn features, the grand old story of its life ! It takes us back heyond the Norman conquest, for it occupies the site of a hospital founded before the Conqueror set his foot on these shores ; it has associations with Edward I. and with three Henrys, in whose reigns it was built and rebuilt ; and to-day it is stiU the palace that the eighth Henry built, that the first Charles enlarged, and in which most of the latter monarch's children were born— including his " merry" son, Charles II. Palace, prison, council house, it can bear witness to the greatness and the littleness of royal life, and it characteristically represents the idea that whether our forefathers were less moral in their habits and customs than we are to-day, at least their vices, like their dress, were more picturesque. The best known among the old existing clubs are in St. James's Street — Brooks's, White's, Boodle's, Arthur's, and the Cocoa-tree. There are other important, and even more palatial club-houses here than these, such as the New University, the Conservative, and the Devonshire. The lofty front and fine semi-ecclesiastical portal of the New University is in ■ striking contrast with the old Cocoa-tree house, and the characteristic courtyard of the adjoining hotel ; as is also the entrance-hall of the Junior Army and Navy, with the unpretentious portals of "White's. Prom a modern point of view, the handsomest club-house in St. James's Street is the Conservative, which occupies the site of the old Thatched House Tavern. It was built in 1845, fi'om designs by Sydney Smirk and George Baseivi. Mr, Timbs has de- scribed it for us : — " The upper portion is Corinthian, with columns and pilasters, and a frieze sculptured with the imperial crown and oakwreaths ; the lower order is Eoman Doric ; and the wings are slightly advanced, with an enriched entrance-porch north, and a bay window south. The interior is superbly decorated by Sang ; the covered hall, with a gallery round it, and the domed vestibule above it, is a fine specimen of German encaustic embellishment, in the arches, soff'ets, spandrels, and ceilings ; and the hall floor is tesselated, around a noble stair of marqueterie." And so on. You CLUB- LAND. 7 need not be told that the rooms, morning and evening, are spacious ; that they are decorated and furnished in harmony with the front and entrance, Mr. Timbs says the kitchen is larger than that of the Eeform Club, wherein, it must be confessed, he touches a vital part of clubbism. One knows that the drawing-room of the Eeform is the handsomest and most elaborately decorated ; but how subtle is the Conservative suggestion that its friendly rival has a larger kitchen ! A vicious Whig in the old days ascribed the first cause of the atrocities alleged to have been committed by the Jacobites to the fact that they fore- gathered without eating and drinking. At least so says a French authority on clubs, who illustrates his own belief in the efficacy of eating and drinking in company, as an antidote to conspiracy, by a further quotation from English literature. "I have even read somewhere," he says, "in an English work, that the French monarchy owed its fall to famine, that heb- domadal feasts would have greatly delayed the Eevolution, and daily banquets have saved the monarchy." Nevertheless the Mohocks, Blasphe- mous, and kindred clubs encouraged each other to commit public outrages over their meat and drink. There were in the reign of Queen Ann e and later many such clubs — notably "the Mums," " the Hectors," "the Sorcerers," and " the Nickers." The chief delight of the later was " to smash windows with showers of half- pence ; " but " the Mohocks " were a ruffianly and blood-thirsty crew. " Their avowed design was mischief, and upon this foundation all their rules and orders were framed. They took care to drink themselves into a condi- tion beyond reason or humanity, and then made a general sally, and attacked all who were in the streets. Some were knocked down, others stabbed, and others cut and carbonadoed." The fiends spared neither sex nor age. They were the subject of a Eoyal Proclamation in 1712 ; but they held their orgies and flourished in their villainies until the end of the reign of George the First. Victor Hugo revelled in the doings of these and similar clubs 8 CLUB-LAND. (the accounts of some of whose brutal frolics are, in many cases, no doubt much exaggerated) in his graphic, if often curious and misleading, pictures of the EngHsh in V Homme qui rit. But touching Walpole's amazement at some changes in PiccadUly, it is worth while to dwell upon the pictures of the past and 'present of a street that is the home of the most ancient and aristocratic of the London clubs. Take White's of to- day, the original White's, and the house and its tenant preced- ing White's as it is. To-day you shall see the successors of the beaux of Walpole's day at their bow window. If the opportunity offers, as it some- times does, of ogling a pretty woman as she passes it is quite possible these county gentlemen would be nothing loth. In the old days the members stood at the wiadow to ogle, and the fine ladies went by on both sides of the street to be ogled. In the early days of Walpole and Addison, White's was close to St. James's Palace, and the life of the street is well shown in the pictures of the time. Contrasted with the modern street the change is startling. There were notable clubs before Brooks's, Boodle's, White's, and Arthur's, and if one were professing to write a history of clubs they would have to be mentioned. White's has a curious history. It is the outcome of White's Chocolate House, 1698, which stood a few doors from the bottom of the west side of St. James's Street. There was a small garden attached to the house. Doran says "that there more than one highwayman took his chocolate, or threw his main, before he quietly mounted his horse and rode down Piccadilly towards Bagshot." The house was burnt down in 1733. The King and Prince of Wales were present, and encouraged the firemen by words and guineas in their efforts to subdue the flames. Cun- ningham says, " The incident of the fire was made use of by Hogarth in Plate VI. of the Eake's Progress, representing a room at White's. The total abstraction of the gamblers is well expressed by their utter inattention to the alarm of the fire given by watchmen who are bursting open the doors." In the first number of The Tatter it is promised that "all accounts of CLUB-LAND. « gallantry, pleasure and entertainment shall be under the article of ' White's Chocolate House.' " Originally the house was public. It became a private club in 1736. Among the members were the Earls of Cholmondeley, Chesterfield, and Rockingham ; Sir John Cope, Major-General Churchill, Bubb Doddington, and Colley Cibber. A gambling-house at first, White's for many years had a bad reputation. Pope, in the "Dunciad," has a shot at it — " Or chaired at Wliite's, amidst the doctors sit, Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit." If Brooks's is, as Mark Lemon in his "Up and Down the London Streets" says, "probably the most aristocratic of London clubs," time was when White's was the fashionable club of the town; and it still holds a distinct and enviable position, though some of its members think the Turf and the Marlborough more amusing. " The men at White's," an old habitue tells me, " still belong to the higher ranks of club men, and it is a pleasant thing in the season, before dinner, to listen to the veterans who occupy the two arm-chairs in the window, talk sports and pastimes, wars and rumours of wars, and discuss current gossip." Dinner at White's is a ceremonial busi- ness, wax-candles, stately waiters, carefully decanted wine, courses that come on with procession-Uke solemnity, a long sitting over the wine, and with the older men a " white- wash " of sherry before your cofi'ee and cigar. The old "bet-book" is stUl preserved and used. Walpole mentions it in a letter of 1748, and in no very complimentary terms. " There is a man about town, Sir William Burdett, a man of very good family, but most infamous character. In short, to give you his character at once, there is a wager entered in the bet-book at White's that the first baronet that will be hung is this Sir William Burdett." There are still some curious and interesting bets registered at White's, dealing as in the past with love and marriage, with horse-racing and with politics. Some of the modern entries in {h.Q bet-book are as eccentric as c 10 CLUB-LAND. those that fill the earliest volumes. Mark Twain, when he described the speculative character of "thish-yer Smiley," who would bet on anything, had probably never heard of "White's, though the members of that ancient institution, when in their own house, were all Smileys. "Jim was always ready and laying for a chance ; there could be no solitary thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it ; if there was a chicken fight The Naval and Military Club, Piccadilly. he'd bet on it ; why if there was two birds sitting on a fence he would bet you which would fly first. . . . Why it made no difference to him, he would bet on anything — the dangdest feller. Parson "Walker's wife lay very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her ; but one morning he came in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better — thank the Lord for his inf 'nite mercy — and coming on so smart, that with the blessing of Providence she'd CLUB-LAND. 11 get well yet ; and Smiley before he thought says, ' "Well, I'll risk two-and-a- half that she don't.' " The sacred philosopher was indeed right, there is nothing new under the sun. More than a hundred years before " thish-yer Smiley," the men at White's not only betted on anything and everything, but registered their transactions in black and white. They betted on births, deaths, and marriages, the length of life of their friends or of a ministry, " on the shock of an earthquake or the last scandal at Eanelagh or Madame Cornelys's." They were as grim in their premeditated bets as Smiley in his thoughtlessness at Parson "Walker's. " A man dropped down at the door of "White's, he was carried into the house. "Was he dead or not ? The odds were immediately given and taken for and against. It was proposed to bleed him. Those who had taken the odds that the man was dead, protested that the use of the lancet would affect the fairness of the bet." "White's removed to its pi'esent site in 1755, into the house previously occupied by the Countess of Northumberland, widow of the tenth Earl. "Walpole says, " She was the last who kept up the ceremonious state of the old peerage." She died in 1688. " "When she went out to visit, a footman, bareheaded, walked on each side of her coach, and a second coach with her women attended her." It would be odd if our present "White's did not suggest to a visitor some- thing of the starchy affectation of " the good old days." CHAPTEE II. |EARNED writers on the social and political life of the past have a fancy for digging up the etymology of the word cltib, and for tracing to its beginnings the history of the kind of institution which it names. The result only goes to confirm the wise saying in the first verse of the ninth chapter of Ecclesiastes. In these days practical science is the only new ground. Everything else has been done before. A good deal that scientists even claim as new is old. Generally, however, science has a world to itself. Nothing else is really new. Friendship is as old as love, and social amenities belong to the first tribes of men. Sociability is the life and soul of a club ; and clubs, even on the lines of our modern institutions, existed when Homer recited his heroic ballads. "With his predilection for Germany, Carlyle necessarily sought for the origin of clubs in the record of the Fatherland. Standing up for their Anglo-Saxon origin, Mr. Timbs thus combats the Scotch philosopher : — " Mr. Carlyle, in his ' History of Frederick the Great,' assumes that the vow of the Chivalry orders — geliihe — in vogue about a.d. 1190, 'passed to us in a singularly dwindled condition : club we now call it.' To this it is objected that the mere resemblance in sound of geluhe and cluh is inconclusive, for the orders of Templars, Hospitallers, and Prussian knights were never called clubs in England ; and the origin of the noun need not be sought for beyond its verb, to club^ when persons joined in paying the cost of the mutual enter- CLUB- LAND. 13 taiument. Moreover, klvhh in German means the social club, and tliat word is borrowed from the English, the native word being scc/sc, which, from its root and compound, conveys the idea generally of joint expenditure, and Bnoki't Club. specially in drinking." But on this principle the Athenians were among the earliest known and recorded club-men. The Spartans had clubs, and elected members by ballot. Take up your Plutarch, refresh your memory 14 CLUB-LAND. with his life of Lycurgus, and note how fresh he is. In his account of the feasts of the Lacedemonians one might be reading a modem author. " They met by companies of fifteen, over or under, and each of them stood bound to bring in monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two pounds and a half of figs for their de^isert, and a little money to buy flesh and fish withal. Besides this, when any of them made sacrifices to the gods, they always sent a dole to the common hall ; and likewise when any of them had been a-hunting, he sent thither a part of the venison he had killed." I am quoting from a translation "by several hands," printed by Jacob Tonson in 1683, and it is most pleasant and invigorating to dip into the strong, simple idiomatic English that men wrote and spoke two hundred years ago. " "When anyone had a desire to be admitted into any of these little societies, he was to go through this manner of probation : each man in the company took a little ball of soft bread to throw into a deep basin which a waiter carried round upon his head : those that lik'd the person to be chosen drop'd their ball into the basin without altering the figure ; and those who dislik'd him press'd it betwixt their fingers, and made it flat : and this signify'd as much as a negative voice ; for if there were but one of these flatted pieces in the basin the suitor was rejected ; so curious they were in the choice of their company, and so tender of disgusting any one member in it, by taking in a man unacceptable to him." The very essence of strict club life, as we understand it to-day, is con- tained in the admonition which Plutarch says was delivered at every meeting. " It was customary for the eldest man in the company to tell each of them, as they came in, 'Look ye, sir, not a word said in company must go out of this door,' and withal he pointed to it." Need any more be said about the antiquity of clubs ? And is it worth while contending for their Anglo-Saxon origin ? Whatever people invented the cognomen Club, it is certain that the thing it means is as old as the hills. No modem nation, however, has adopted the institution with such thoroughness as England, CLUB-LAND. 15 nor does any other city in tlie world possess so interesting and cliaracteristic a record of club life as that which is mixed up with the history of London. Our unwritten law respecting the friendly confidence of the club-house, makes it difficult to attempt anything like detailed personal sketches of interiors. One is bound to observe the golden rule, until the talk of to-day and the men and the times have become fit subjects for the historian. Happily much that is entertaining in connection with London clubs belongs to the past, and if the pen is sometimes constraiaed, the pencil is allowed a special freedom : and so, between the two, London clubs may well prove an attractive subject for an illustrated chat. Brooks's, from being farmed by Almacks, was " taken " by a wine- merchant and money-lender, who goes down to posterity in the title of the club. It migrated from Pall Mall to a handsome house in St. James's Street. But "liberal" Brooks— " Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade. Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid," lost money by his enterprise, retired from business soon after the new house was opened, and died a poor man. The club numbered among its members Burke, Sir Joshua Eeynolds, Garrick, Hume, Walpole, Gibbon, and Wilber- force. The correspondence of the times contaios many records of the witty sayings and repartees that enlivened the conversation at Brooks's. Eef erring to a projected tax on iron, a member suggested that it would be better to raise the necessary money on coals. " That would indeed be out of the frying pan into the fire," said Sheridan. There is something of the old-fashioned air of the past about the Brooks's of to-day. The house is more like a private establishment than a club. Collectively, the members affect Whiggism (if such a thing exists nowadays) in politics ; individually, they keep their principles pretty well to themselves, or for the club, where they are bound to declare them. The leading ideas 16 CLUB-LAND. of Brooks's are centred in comfort, good dinners, old wine, and a quiet rubber. The Guards' Club commenced housekeeping in St. James's Street, but in 1850 removed to No. 70, Pall Mall. It has the appearance of a private house, so modest are its architectural pretensions. Mr. Henry Harrison was its architect. It is admirably designed for convenience and comfort. Members must be officers of one of the three foot regiments of Guards, or have held a commission. Eetu-ed officers must be balloted for. In manful contrast to " pleasant idling " in town is the scene that may be witnessed almost any day on the lovely reaches of the upper Thames near Maidenhead. Adjoining a famous hostelrie on the river, the younger members of the Guards' Club have established themselves in charming rural quarters as " The Guards' Boating Club." "A girl graduate," in the Pall Mall Gazette., once rhapsodised with cleverness and method on the dress that gives most freedom to the limbs, most individuality to the body. The moral of her essay is picturesquely pointed by the Guards at their river-side quarters. Flannels, knickerbockers, square-toed shoes, the appearance of the young athletes is in marked contrast to the "belted knights" on parade. Englishmen delight in getting into flannels, and the military authorities have long since begun to relieve our soldiers in the East of the ancient encumbrances of army tailors. It is a common thing for city clubs in America to have summer retreats on the same principles as those so wisely adopted by the Guards. Phila- delphia, for instance, is especially noted for its club-houses on the river ; and New York and Chicago men have retreats in Canada and " out West," where it is allowable for married members to take their wives. A friend of mine in the Empire City has summer quarters for himself and wife in a famous club-house of fishermen on a Canadian river ; and another spends many summer days at a similar station on an American lake. Members are introduced and elected by ballot, with the same observances of discipline as T/ie Gitaids' Club at Maidenhead. CLUB-LAND. 17 in other clubs. This system of using a club as a lodging is much in vogue in the United States, and is often a great boon to members. The Union League CIub-House has many sets of chambers where members may lire as in an hotel, with the advantage of being in authority over the servants, and paying club rates for whatever they may require. Some of our early clubs had chambers for members, but only in a small way. During the last few years, however, the provinces (which often lead London to good ideas) have extended this use of clubs. There is a hand- some residential club at York; but London has "bettered the example" in a branch establishment of the Orleans at Brighton. The Telegraph reminds us, touching Thackeray's pictures of club life in his time, that the cheer- less grandeur, the severe Doric gloom so impressive at the Acropolis, the Oleander, the Sarcophagus, no longer strike readers with that humorous sense of present fitness which was their fresh and original charm ; and the Orleans Eesidential Club at Brighton is instanced on the other side, the Victorian side of the picture, with the remark that "it is something more than a country club, for Brighton is a detached quarter of London itself, a satellite so near as to be part and parcel of the world for which it shines." No better beginning could be made in the direction of pleasant suburban clubs. The other day, at Philadelphia, I drove along the banks of the Delaware and the Schuylkill, and passed the pretty country quarters of club after club. Town clubs are deserted in the hot summer days, when the members adjourn to their country quarters. If American ideas were adopted generally in London, the Reform, Carlton, Garrick, Athenaeum, all the great clubs, would have their country houses at Henleyj Wargrave, Maidenhead, or Hurley. It may become historical that Lord Randolph Churchill wrote the first letter ever published with the Orleans Eesidential Club address upon it. That letter was the spirited young Tory's gage of battle to the Radical Mayor of Birmingham. The Orleans Residential is not a family house in the American sense. D 18 CLUB- LAND. The members' wives are not lodged there. A married men's club, in which materfamilias could make occasional holiday with her husband and the children, is another new departure which we may live to see at Brighton. Hitherto in London every effort ia this direction may be said to have faUed. A noteworthy attempt to approach the idea of a club at which a member's wife, daughters, or sisters might be welcomed, was the Falstaff, at Evans's in Covent Garden. Nothing was to be more delightful in its social exercises and privileges than the Palstaff. It was to rival the Mirlitons of Paris and the Bohemian club of San Francisco. At one of the early meetings of the promoters and members, Mr. Sala described the perfect propriety which characterized the reimions, the soirees, the gala days of the French and Californian clubs. A series of entertainments on their lines were planned. One or two took place. They certainly established the feasibility of the union of man and wife at the club in such a way as to discount the humorous satire of Tom Hood, who, thirty years ago, under the influence of a feminine agitation against clubs, thus sang the lament of English wives in The Comic Annual ; — " Of all the modem schemes of man That time has brought to bear, A plague upon the wicked plan That parts the wedded pair ! ily wedded friends they all allow They meet with slights and snubs, And say, ' they have no husbands now. They're married to the clubs.' " The Falstaff failed for want of funds, and it hardly deserved to succeed with a title that utterly misrepresented its excellent objects. The New Club more than fulfilled the ambition of the Falstaff; but on somewhat better lines and with good means as well as good management. The exterior of the place had a somewhat bizarre appearance, but the theatre was one of the handsomest among the small houses in the metropolis, and the decora- CLUB-LAND. 19 tions of the billiard-room were unique, the idea carried out being a sort of panoramic epitome of an ancient English village. The New Club has now gone the way of its predecessor. The Lotos, which had a handsome suite of rooms near Oxford Circus, met with no better success than the Falstaff. An effort was made at the outset to " regulate" the introduction of ladies. All went well for a time. The ladies came, gave " afternoon teas " and evening receptions ; but they conducted their entertainments on such economical principles that they left The Theatre of the New Club. * the management no profits. The club was named after an entirely different institution in New York. The Lotos of the Empire City is a club which may be described as something between our Garrick and the Savage, pos- sessing some of the attractions of both, with the freedom of a New York club, and the speciality of a monthly reception or soiree. These reunions are of the pleasantest character. They are very popular with the ladies of New York, The Century (the Garrick of America) has a weekly meeting of members and friends, and now and then opens its rooms for an exhibition 20 CLUB- LAND. of pictures. It is, I fear, useless for a new club to hope to introduce innovations of this kind into London club-land proper. Only established institutions, such as the Athenaeum, and other high-class, non-political clubs, could popularise so new a departure. They are not, however, likely to entertain any such proposals, even if they were made, though the Garrick, within the last two years, spreads a nightly supper for members and guests in the strangers' room ; while on the day when the public is admitted to see the pictures it has actually been known to offer ladies a dish of tea after their tour of the rooms — concessions which fill the future full of revolu- tionary possibilities. CHAPTER III. |MONG the miscellaneous coteries that met and dined together in the Johnsonian days, the Nonsense Club has hardly any recog- nition in the histories. It has escaped that indefatigable inquirer, Timbs; but Mrs. Oliphant, in her "Literary History of the Nineteenth Century," dwells with evident relish upon its curious relation to Cowper. The club consisted of seven "Westmiuster men, who were " distinguished by what was then called ' restlessness,' but which we should now call love of change and variety." This club brought Cowper "at least within the circle of literary life." It included Burnel, Thornton, and George Colman the dramatist, who " were of the same class as that large and flourishing branch of the profession which is now occupied in journalistic work." Mrs. Oliphant well observes " that nothing can be more strange than to realise the back- ground of busy and cheerful and trivial existence upon which the agony of Cowper's life at the time stands out." The Nonsense Club continued its existence as long at least as Cowper kept above water, and its pranks were sometimes amusing enough. It had, among other features, an exhibition of signboards, in mockery of the Eoyal Academy. Hogarth took part in this critical cynicism. Without such a reminder as this revival of Cowper's life, one is not likely to think of the gentle poet of the tea-table as a clubman. Colman, Thornton, and Churchill (Cowper's Westminster friends) were members of other notable clubs — Colman in particular. A diarist of the period describes him "at the Beefsteak Club, quite drunk," making an extraordinary noise while Morris was singing. Another Westminster lad was Lloyd, " both 22 CLUB-LAND. drawing near the end of their tragedy, and in every external respect far more to be pitied than their old schoolfellow, Cowper. They died about a year after Cowper's attempt at suicide, the one of a broken heart for the loss of the other, having wasted their faculties and stained their names in the brief career through which they had stormed so wildly. Clubs and coteries, literary and artistic, are and almost always it seems have been, hardly less exclusive in their way than political gatherings. While Cowper and Churchill and their five companions were meeting regu- larly and having their "fun," Johnson and Goldsmith and their intimate associates were making a notable personal and literary history for them- selves. " It is curious," says Mrs. Oliphant, "that these two circles should have flourished so near to each other without touching, and that no echo of Johnson's heavy foot and autocratic speech should have sounded into the precincts in which Cowper was enclosed." But this is only " curious " as an illustration of the individuality wliich London breeds, both as regards men and coteries. There are clubs and social meeting-places, associated with letters and the arts, to-day in London which, literally next door to each other, are as far apart as the poles. This isolation is a peculiarity of London. It makes it the metropolis of the world, the home of individual liberty, a retreat, a city of refuge, a dwelling-place, where in truth every man's house is indeed his castle, A man might spend his life in exploring the clubs, guilds, coteries, associations, and societies of London, and yet die in harness at a ripe old age. Having sauntered through St. James's Street, take a walk from Trafalgar Square along Pall Mall, a street of palaces, mostly clubs, and you will be impressed with the material progress of London. The club-house at the south-west angle of Trafalgar Square is the Union. It was built in 1824. The architect was Sir Eobert Smirke, E.A. There is no finer site perhaps in any city than this. The clubs that command the Park in Piccadilly have in their outlook the repose that belongs to grass and trees, but the Union CLUB- LAND. 23 has the busy open space of a square that is in the very heart of London, which is, in its turn, the centre of the world. The club is very much the same to-day in its habits and customs as it was when James Smith (author of the " Rejected Addresses "), one of its famous members, thus sketched a day's life at the Union : — " At three o'clock I walk to the club, read the journals, hear Lord John Eussell deified or diablerised, do the same with The Union Club. Sir Eobert Peel or the Duke of "Wellington, and then join a knot of conver- sationists by the fire till six o'clock. We then and there discuss the three per cent, consols (some of us preferring the Dutch two-and-a-half), and speculate upon the probable rise, shape, and cost of the new Exchange. If Lady Harrington happens to drive past our window in her landau, we compare her equipage to the Algerian ambassador's; and when politics happen to be discussed, rally Whigs, Eadicals, and Conservatives alter- 24 CLUB-LAND. nately, but never seriously, such subjects having a tendency to create acrimony. At six the room begins to be deserted ; therefore I adjourn to the dining-room, and gravely looking over the bill-of-fare, exclaim to the waiter, ' Haunch of mutton and apple tart ! ' These viands dispatched, with the accompanying liquids and water, I mount upward to the library, take a book and my seat in the arm-chair and read till nine. Then call for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, resuming my book till eleven ; afterwards return home to bed." A wily old bachelor, James Smith. The Union members to-day are chiefly composed of merchants, lawyers, and gentlemen at large, as they were in his day. Some of them, careful of their health, quiet, peaceful City men, live by rule, and go to bed early ; but few of them, I fancy, are content with as frugal a meal as that which in his latter days satisfied one of "the two witty brothers" whom Keats found out of harmony with his feelings and sentiments. He dined with Horace and James, and " they only served to convince " him " how superior humour is to wit. These men say things which make one start without making one feel." There is a good deal of wit of this kind about in some of our junior clubs. Humour has heart in it, wit is of the head ; wit wounds, humour tickles ; but I am incHned to think James Smith was not at his best when Keats met him. I have read things of his that were genial and kindly, and he had the reputation of being cordial and pleasant among the coterie established by Lady Blessington at Kensington. He wrote some dramatic sketches for Charles Mathews, and received £1,000 for the work. "A thousand pounds for tom-foolery," he remarked, as he told the story ; and Mathews said, " You are the only man in London who can write what I want — good nonsense ! " Mr. Serjeant Ballantyne, in "Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life," devotes an entire chapter to the Union Club. He says it is " one of the very first established upon the now existing basis of the principal clubs," having come into existence in 1808. It was nearly being " christened the Cumber- land, its original meeting being held in a house bearing that title." The CLUB- LAND. 25 first committee was headed by the Marquis of Headfort, Lord Eoden, and General Ormsby ; several bankers were members ; and some years later, when a special effort was made "to make it remunerative," no less than fifty-six members of " the House of Peers joined it, and, most celebrated of all, Lord Byron." The Serjeant says, " At this time it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a proprietary club, which, I believe, was the case with all others then existing. The principal of these were Brooks's and White's, and the Travellers and the United Service ; and so it continued until the year 1821, in the August of which it was established substantially in its present form, and, I believe, was the first club that adopted it. A committee of five was appointed to carry it out, and the success that followed is not wonderful, as one of the greatest men of any age assisted in the task, the Eight Hon. Sir Eobert Peel. The plot of land upon which the house is built was secured at a rental of £306 per annum, and the lease has forty years to run." The Serjeant has evidently a special affection for the Union. He apologises in the chapter devoted to it for having previously mentioned it so often, and in his last chapter but one returns to the subject again, with more apologies, to tell the reader some incidents that had recently been recalled to his mind evidently by meeting with an old member, who was in 1882 still an habitue of the club, though elected in 1828. There used to be high play at the Union. Lord Eivers one night showed Mr. Holmes, the Tory whip of those days, £100,000 in bank notes, though at last "he drowned himself in the Serpentine, the act being attributed to losses at play." An Irish member was expelled for tampering with the ballot boxes. A waiter impeached him. There seemed no particular malice in the unclub-like conduct (though it gave a candidate seven black balls when he should have had nine) ; and this is borne out by the similar generosity of the culprit in sending £100 to the servant who had exposed him. As evidence that " volumes might be written on the eccentricities of clubs," Serjeant Ballantyne relates that he was acquainted with a club-man E 26 CLUB- LAND. (a colonel in tlie army, and ricli) who used to carry away slices of meat from the dinner-table to help out his next morning's breakfast, and who, on hearing of a brother officer being in distress, sent him unsolicited a present of £3,000. He accompanied the gift with a note to the effect that he had intended to bequeath him that amount in his will, but thought " it might at the present time be of more service." Apropos of the learned Serjeant's suggestions, it is worth while mention- ing that in a little volume, " Les Clubs de Londres," by Jean Harley, which I came upon recently, its most prominent chapter is naturally devoted to the eccentricities of les Anglais. The French author's list of strange and curious English clubs is even more complete than that of Mr. Timbs, and some of the societies strike me as still more odd under their French titles : as, for example, "LeClubdes Terribles," "Le Club des Tueursd'Hommes," " Le Club des Mendiants," " Le Club de la Femme qui Batifole," "Le Club de la Toison d'Or," " Le Club des Epouvantails ou des Squelettes," " Le Club des Sans-nez," " Le Club des Grippe-sous," and " Le Club des Mohocks." The latter, and some kindred associations, were extravagantly exploited, but with graphic spirit, by Victor Hugo in "L'Homme qui Kit; " and, according to the histories of the time, the French fiction had for its foundation a deep strata of truth. The Mohocks belonged to the golden days of Queen Anne. They sallied forth into the streets at night, and com- mitted assaults on both men and women. The Spectator describes the marauders as " a set of men who have borrowed their name from a set of cannibals in India, who exist by plundering and devouring all the nations about them." Victor Hugo particularly revelled in the descriptions of the ' ' savage diversion of thrusting women into barrels and rolling them down Snow Hill," as sung by Gay in his "Trivia." It is only fair to state that many persons doubted that these savageries were committed. Swift did, though he professed, in his "Journal to Stella," to go in some fear of the Mohocks. " Grub Street papers about them fly like lightning, and a list CLUB- LAND. 27 printed of nearly eighty put into several prisons, and all a lie ; and I begin to think there is no truth, or very little, in the whole story. He that abused Davenant was a drunken gentleman ; none of that gang. My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me, if they could catch me ; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late." Passing down Pall Mall you will come to Waterloo Place, the chief gateway into the regions of club-land : the Carlton House, about which Horace "Walpole wondered where the money to pay for it was to come from — " all the mines in Cornwall " would not make up a quarter of it. The palace was built for Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, and afterwards purchased by Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was pulled down in 1827. Its fittings were taken to Buckingham Palace, and its columns were used in the portico of the National Gallery. The United Service Club-house, designated by Nash, occupies the left-hand side of this entrance to the Park, and the Athenaeum the other. Pall Mall, as we see it now, is comparatively a new street. Its magnificent club-houses date no farther back than the present century. They occupy, however, the sites of some of the taverns where the first London clubs held their meetings. The great Duke of Wellington, even in his latter days, frequently dined at the United Service, and was so punctilious in monetary discipline in its management that once, when charged Is. 3d. for his " cut off the joint," he made a fuss, and re-established the regular charge of Is. The club has several notable pictures, including Stanfield's 'Battle of Trafalgar,' Jones's 'Waterloo,' and W. Eobinson's portrait of the Duke, which was painted for the members. The Athenaeum is the chief literary club of the metropolis. It is built upon part of the old courtyard of Carlton House. The architecture is of the Grecian order, severe and impressive. The frieze is copied from that of the Parthenon. It 28 CLUB- LAND. was the colossal figure of Minerva over the Koman Doric portico that inspired the epigram : — " Ye travellers who pass by, just stop and behold, And see, don't you think it a sin, That Minerva herself is left out in the cold. The figure is by Bailey, and is a fine example of his art. The hall is divided by scagliola columns and pilasters, the capitals being copied from the Choragic monument of Lysicrates. In this " exchange or lounge " (to ■I V-.^ Tiii Aihenc^um Club. quote Timbs), " where the members meet," there are two fire-places ; " over each of them, in a niche, is a statue — the ' Diana Eobing ' and the ' Venus Victrix,' selected by Sir Thomas Lawi-ence — a very fine contrivance for sculptural display." In the library hangs Sir Thomas's last work. It is a portrait of George IV. He was engaged upon it a few hours before he died. Among the many fine busts in the various rooms is Eysbach's Pope, and a fine study of Milton, presented by Anthony Trollope. Although the revival of Gothic architecture is just now a national sentiment, and is in keeping with the exigencies of our climate, one finds, in the best features of Grecian and Italian Art, much that is noble and elevating even under CLUB-LAND. 20 our grey and unsympathetic skies. The design of the Atheiifeum is a help to the dignity and repose which is characteristic not only of the exterior, but of the rooms in the house itself. If the members have collected a library that is said to be the best of its kind in London, the architect and decorator, repeating classic models, have enshrined the volumes with cha- racteristic taste. It brings the admirer of all this sadly down to the realism of the outer street when one is told that a member, desirous to refer to the Fathers on a theological point, asked one of the officials if " Justin Martyr " was in the library, and was answered, " I don't think he's a member, sir, but I will refer to the list." CHAPTER IV. HE architectural story of Pall Mall is in the annual volume of The British Almanack and Companion. It is true the narrative is brief and prosaic, but perhaps no record gives the reader a more comprehensive view of the national progress than the chronicles of " Public Improvements " which are to be found at the end of each yearly volume. I do not recommend the work for its style, nor for its illustrations, but for its suggestiveness. Take it up year after year (begin at about 1830), and you will be astonished at the architectural achievements of the past fifty years. Many a noble edifice (toned into the appearance of age by our smoky atmosphere), which you have probably regarded as more or less ancient, has been built within the last half-century. In this annual record you will find the very first references to most of our great club-houses, and to many other edifices, and the first pictures of them. The volume for 1832 chronicles the completion of the Travellers' Club-house adjoining the Athenaeum, and that for 1856 describes the completion of the present Carlton. Designed by Mr. Barry, the Travellers is in the Italian style, and "in some respects similar to a Eoman palace." The plan is a quadrangle, with an open area in the middle. The principal featui-e on the exterior in Pall Mall is a bold and rich cornice, which finishes the wall of the front. " The windows are decorated with Corinthian pilasters," says the chronicler ; " the Italian taste is preserved throughout : we should not be sorry to see this taste renewed, more especially as the faint projections of the mouldings in almost all the Greek examples of architecture seldom produce any effect in this climate. We therefore think that Mr. Barry has acted most judiciously in CLUB-LAND. 31 adopting a style of architecture which combines boldness of effect with richness of detail." The criticism of the period seems to single out the building as a work that marks " an epoch in the architectural history of club-houses, being almost the first attempt to introduce into this country that species of rich astylar composition which has obtained the name of the Italian palazzo, made by way of contradistinction from Palladianism and its orders." At the same time it must be admitted that the building suffers seriously from its position between its two more august-looking neighbours, the Athenaeum and Eeform. It is a club of world-wide fame, the Travellers. Even eligible candidates have sometimes been on the proposal book for ten years. The Marquis of Londonderry originated it immediately after the peace of 1814, "as a resort for gentlemen who had resided or travelled abroad, as well as with a view to the accommodation of foreigners," who, properly endorsed, are made honorary members during their stay in London. No person is eligible who has not travelled " out of the British Islands to a distance of at least five hundred miles from London in a direct line." Gambling is not permitted. All games of hazard are excluded. Cards are not allowed before dinner, and the highest stake is guiaea points at whist. Mr. Timbs says Prince Talleyrand, during his residence in London, was a frequenter of the whist tables, and he thinks it was here that he made his felicitous rejoinder in regard to the marriage of an elderly lady of rank with her servant : " How- ever could a lady of her birth make such a match ?" " It was late in the game," responded Talleyrand ; " at nine we don't reckon honours." The head- quarters of Conservatism and Liberalism command the entrance to Carlton House Terrace. They are opposite neighbours. Their windows look upon each other. Stranger guests from the country often make the mistake of taking the one for the other. On the demonstration days of political processionists Liberal hisses follow so quickly on the heels of Liberal cheers that they become mixed at the doors of the Carlton. 32 CLUB-LAND. During the excitement of a general election the atmosphere of the two great clubs is charged with the quick electricity of party warfare. It is a fight to the death with these two neighbours. One is in possession of the sweets and privileges of office, the other is besieging the ministerial stronghold. Eeports from the field come in every minute — telegrams from Lambeth and Mary leb one, from Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Worcester, Derby, Sheffield, and indeed from every point of the battle-field which covers all England, Ireland, and Scotland. A few years ago the excitement Avas concentrated here, in the houses of these two neighbours; but now it has reliefs, or " chapels of ease," in the Devonshire, the Junior Carlton, the St. Stephen's, the City Liberal, the Beaconsfield, the Constitutional, and the National Liberal. These all, however, yield allegiance to the higher powers of Pall Mall, who supply champions for shaky commands, and sinews of war to weak-kneed allies : there the truest echoes of the fight are to be heard. A mighty influence is wielded here at the Eeform and the Carlton, the clubs of the " Ins," and " Outs." How like, and yet how unlike, the two fine houses ! The Carlton has the most imposing exterior, the Eeform the most ornate and extensive reading-room. The granite columns of the Carlton fiash in the sun, whose beams seem to lose themselves in the dingy facade of the Eeform. Would it be deemed a slight to the majesty of the Caucus to say that the members of the Carlton appear to be better dressed than the Eeformers ? There is certainly more dignity, and therefore more dulness, at the Carlton ; not perhaps that there are more titled aristocrats among the members of one than the other. Mr. Labouchere says that more titles have been sought and obtained in the last few years by Whigs and Liberals than by the other side. It is a curious experience to step out of one club into the other; to luncheon, say, at the Eeform, and dine at the Carlton. Eecently a Conservative leader jibed at the laxity of spirit in the Tory press. I have often thought that a luncheon at the Eeform and a dinner at the Carlton explain the extra life and go and audacity of the CLUB-LAND. 33 Liberal when compared with, the Tory newspapers. At the Eeform you meet the newspaper men, the editors and contributors, the men who make and lead public opinion ; at the Carlton you do not. I wonder how many provincial editors are members of the Carlton ? The Tory chiefs made a fuss not long since over the election of an influential London journalist of their order. At the Eeform I have met London and country journalists and men of letters ; at the Carlton blood and acres rule. It was. one of Lord Beaconsfield's failings (almost his only one) that he snubbed the press, and the lords of the Carlton, I fear, liked him the better for it. I may not mention modern names too much in these papers. Clubs are clubs. But, with a slight experience of both these party houses, I feel that one great difference between the two is that the press is far more in evidence at the Eeform than at the Carlton. Great clubs both, for aU that — clubs of which the nation may be proud — clubs that well represent the two parties in the State, and which honourably maintain those high and laudable principles that are the life and soul of club-land proper. The Eeform Club was established ostensibly in the interest of the famous Bill of 1830—1832. Great George Street and Gwydyr House, Whitehall, saw its first meetings. It has been erroneously stated that Mr. Disraeli was at the outset of his career a member of the Eeform. His name does not appear in any of the Club records. The architect seems to have had carte hlanche to make the new building " a larger and more magnificent house than any other." Barry's design had been accepted in preference to competing plans of Blore, Basevi, Cockerell, and Sidney Smirke. The style of the architecture is pure Italian, inspired by the Farnese Palace at Eome. While the result is generally excellent, the effect of the frontage is thought to be marred by the windows being too small. An architectural authority considers " the points most admired are extreme simplicity and unity of design, combined with very unusual richness. The breadth of the piers between the windows contributes not a little to that repose which is so ^4 CLUB- LAND. essential to simplicity, and hardly less so to stateliness." The hall, which occupies the centre of the building, 56 ft. by 50 ft., if it lacks light, is gi-and and impressive, surrounded by colonnades, the lower one Ionic, the upper Corinthian ; the one a gallery of full-length portraits, the other richly embellished with frescoes typifying the Fine Arts. The great leaders of the Reform party, Cobden and Bright, the famous Premiers Palmerston, Piussell, Gladstone, and others, are immortalised in painting and sculpture. The upper gallery is approached by a noble staircase, and the colonnade opens into the principal rooms of the club. There is a princely air about all this part of the house. The visitor might be excused for fancying himself in an Italian palace. The drawing-room is luxurious enough for the most pampered of aristocracies. It runs the entire length of the building, and is over the coffee-room, which occupies the garden- front in Carlton House Terrace. Every convenience that modern science and existing habits of comfort can supply are supposed to be found here in dining, drawing, billiard, smoke and card-rooms. The Liberal party neces- sarily attracts to itself many of the eccentricities of political oninion • curious members of Parliament with crotchets, felt hats, and thick boots stump into the club, defiant in their country clothes. On the other hand there have been nervous members who would just as soon have attempted to catch the Speaker's eye as to return Avith defiance the scrutinising glance of the club porter. Cdy Lilwral Club. CLUB-LAND. 35 If the Carlton does not gather -vnthin its fold that variety pf opinion which is represented in the ranks of the so-called Liberal party, it includes the Tory as well as the democratic Conservative. It is a more hopiogeneous crowd than that of the Eeform. The Tories have always been more success- ful than their rivals in founding clubs. They have, I believe, a greater number of established and flourishing clubs in the country than the Liberals; they have more and finer club-houses in London. It is only necessary to name the Carlton, the Conservative, the City Carlton, the Constitutional, the Junior Carlton, the National, the City Conservative, the St. Stephen's, the Beaconsfield, as against the Eeform, Brooks's, Devonshire, tjie City Liberal, the Cobden, and National Liberal. The limit of members at the Eeform is 1,400, at the Carlton 1,600, at the Beaconsfield 900, at Brooks's 600,. at the City Carlton 1,000, at the City Conservative 1,500, at the City Liberal 1,150, at the Conservative 1,200, at the Cobden 960, at the Constitutional 3,700, at the Devonshire 1,200, at the St. Stephen's 1,500, National Liberal " unlimited " • and so on. The reasons for the greater success of the Conservatives as clubbists possibly lie in the fact that, as a rule, they belong to the more settled classes of the community, embracing a large number of men whose moneys are invested in lands, household property, and public funds ; have more leisure than their rivals, and are not disturbed by the faction friction within their camps that agitates the Liberal party ; and that they have by inheritance a larger share of the faculty and habit of administration than the men who have fought their way to power during the present half of this century. The Duke of "Wellington was the originator of the Carlton. It first met in Charles Street, St. James's, fifty odd years ago ; then moved for a time to Lord Kensington's in Carlton Gardens ; in 1836 it built a house in Pall Mall. The house grew with its candidates and members. Sir Eobert Smirke built the first house. Ten years later his brother enlarged it, and in 1854 pulled it down and rebuilt it. The present edifice is the result. It :i6 CLUB- LAND. is not a copy, but an adaptation of the beautiful Sansovino's Library of St. Mark at Venice. To the fastidious eye the tone of the rich facade is marred by the highly-polished columns, which are in too violent a contrast with the dead stone. Nevertheless the clean, bright effect thus obtained is cheerful, and has artistic value in the general architectural picture of the street. The interior arrangements are excellent. It was a happy thought to have the smoking-room at the top of the house, on the garden-front, with a project- TA« Junior Viiited Service Club. ing balcony. The grand central hall is approached by a flight of steps from the entrance, and, as at the Eeform, is square in plan. At the level of the first floor it is surrounded by a gallery octagonal in the plan, and lighted from the top. A broad staircase ascends in front : the morning-room is on the right, with the library over it, and the coffee-room is on the left, each apartment luxuriously and artistically furnished. The upper part of the central hall has coupled Corinthian columns executed in scagliola. The Junior Carlton Club. CLUB- LAND. 37 library has more or less of a novelty in a sloping ceiling. The space is divided by maia and cross beams (the former springing from brackets) into a number of coffers filled in with ornaments. On the other side of the street are the Junior Carlton and the Army and Navy, the former breaking away somewhat from the uniformity of the street's architectural style ; farther down are the Oxford and Cambridge, the Guards, the Marlborough, and the Beaconsfield, and then the street undergoes a startling architectural change in a red-brick revival, with crow's-foot gables and all the pretty picturesque affectations of what may be called the Old Kensington order. Mr. Sydney Smirke and his brother, Sir Eobert, designed the Oxford and Cambridge Universities Club. It somewhat resembles the Athena3um and Travellers, notably in having only a single range of windows above those of the ground floor. " Owing to this alone," says an architectural chronicle of the i^eriod, " all these buildings iu Pall Mall announce themselves very distinctly for what they are at the first glance, and can hardly be mistaken for private mansions, at least not until the latter shall herein imitate them." At present they have not done so, and Pall Mall retains that character- istically un-English appearance which is, to be a trifle paradoxical, so thoroughly English. To return to the Oxford and Cambridge Club ; it was surely a special tribute to English learning and poetry to mix up Bacon with Yirgil, and Shakespeare with Homer, in the bas-reliefs of the panels over the windows. The effect is good, the work, by NichoU, admirable. The entrance vestibule has a flight of steps between two square pillars, which leads to a large doorway opening upon the staircase. On the right is the coffee-room, occupyiug the entire west side of the building ; on the other side is the morning- room, both spacious apartments. A vaulted corridor leads thence to the house dining-room at the south-east angle of the building. These are the principal rooms. Above are coffee-room, drawing- 38 CLUB-LAND. room, library, and other apartments ; and from the back library there is a pleasant view of Marlborough House. Had we but time, we might pause at St. James's Square, with its East India United Service Club, the "Wyndham, and the Salisbury (where ladies are admitted as visitors), and travel onwards to the Junior United Service in Waterloo Place, the United University in Suffolk Street, the Ealeigh in Eegent Street, the Junior Athenaeum in Piccadilly, the St. George's in Hanover Square, and many other notable houses, for we are still in the heart of that club-land whose chief street has been so delightfully apostrophised by Locker : — " The dear old street of clubs and cribs, As nortli and south it stretches, StiU stnacks of William's pungent squibs. And Gilroy's fiercer sketches ; The quaint old dress, the grand old stj-le. The TOOte, the racy stories ; The -wine, the dice — the wit, the bile, , The hate of Whigs and Tories." A word, however, must be said about the historical character of St. James's Square. It has a story that dates back to the days of Charles II. Old prints show that where the statue now stands there was a quaint Gothic conduit of some architectural pretensions. Here was the Duke of Ormond's house ; Lord Falmouth lived at No. 2 ; No. 3 was the Earl of Hardwicke's House ; Earl Cowper lives at No. 4 ; and indeed the succession of the old aristocratic days is more or less maintained in this historic corner. The London Library is quartered in the rooms where the third Countess of Buckinghamshire gave her famous masquerade balls. No. 21 is the house in which Frederick, Prince of Wales, took refuge when George II. turned him out of St. James's Palace ; and here also George III. was born. And how it carries one back to a world of manners and customs that are as dead as that same George himself when one is told that No. 7 (belonging to Lord Egerton of Tatton) was bought with a lottery ticket ! We also give on I) - k^ r^\ :' ,' .1 1 1 CLUB- LAND. 39 this page a view of St. Stephen's Cluh, eligible for persons professing St. Stephen's Cluh. Constitutional and Conservative principles. It is pleasantly situated uudcr the lee of the Houses of Parliament and facing the Thames. CHAPTER T. HE literary, dramatic, and Fine Ai-t clubs of the present day- rival the so-called " golden period " of The Spectator. Far beyond them in material wealth, they will bear comparison with them in the renown of their members. Thackeray, Dickens, Jerrold, Millais, IrYing, are club names which in these days represent their respective branches of literature and Art as worthily as those that belong to any other period. Socially, literature and Art are one. They have some separate and distinct clubs, but literature does not hold itself aloof from painting. The Arts and the Hogarth Clubs count among their members masters of the pen as well as masters of the brush ; and the Savage, the Green Room, and the Beafsteak are assemblages of actors, authors, and journalists. The Green Eoom is regarded as more of an actors' club than any other of the minor societies. It has pleasant rooms in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and its annual dinners are among the most agreeable reunions of men connected with the stage. For a time the Green Room had its home on the Thames Embankment, not far from an older but kindred institution, the Arundel. In moving to Covent Garden they migrated to quarters more closely associated with the history of the stage than the Embankment, though David Garrick's house in Adelphi Terrace gave to the immediate neighbourhood a special theatrical interest. But Covent Garden is the locality, above all others, that belongs to the history of the stage, and the Green Room has on its list of members names that carry on the Covent Garden succession. The locality is associated with Rich, Woodward, Booth, Wilkes, Garrick, and Macklin. The Fielding Club is in King The ScacVing Room, Gurrich Chih. CLUB-LAND. 41 Street, Covent Garden, and Our Club was held in one of tlie former hotels beneath the Piazzas. Our Club was the successor to the old Hook-and-Eye Club, named " after its joint founders, Theodore Hook and Douglas Jerrold." Our Club met once a week. Mr. Charles Dickens, jun., and Mr, Cordy Jeaffreson were the honorary secretaries. There was a severe rule against absenteeism. Any member who failed to dine at the club once during a season was expelled. The Wigwam is the name of a small existing club which is conducted on similar principles ; but it is migratory, and eats its dumers at many different places. In its early days the members of the Savage met at an inn near Covent Garden, and afterwards at a house near the old quarters of Our Club. Mr. Andrew HaUiday was the president, and I recall an evening spent around a fire in a sort of bar parlour there with Byron, Henry Leigh, HaUiday, and other typical Bohemians of twenty years ago. The conversation was very bright. An evening with Byron, when he was iu the humour for talking, was an experience not to be forgotten. Mr. Joseph Knight, the editor of Notes and Queries, one of the oldest members of the Arundel, could tell you that in the best days of that cozy club there was no more witty or instructive conversation to be heard anywhere than around its social board. In those days Mr. James Hannay and Mr. Henry N. Barnett were notable talkers. Mr. Knight himself is well endowed in this respect, and the Arundel still maintains much of that conversational charm which begins to be most delightful in " the small hours." The Garrick is indeed a picture gallery in itself. Every room is crowded with paintings and other Art, treasures. There are examples of the best works of the favourite theatrical artists, Zoffany, Harlowe, Hayman, Wilson, Dance, De Wilde, Clint, and Cotes ; a dozen portraits of Garrick and eleven of John Kemble ; several Hogarths, including, to quote Elia, the " ' Wof- fington on a Couch,' a true Hogarth — dallying and dangerous ; " ' Eich and his Family,' by Hogarth ; Harlowe's ' Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth ; ' G 42 CLUB-LAND. Lawrence's 'Kemble as Caio;' Hayman's 'Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard in The Suspicious Husband;' De Wilde's 'Banister and Parsons in The Village i«z.^.r ; ' Eeynolds's 'Portrait of Samuel Foote;' Yanderguclit's ' Portrait of "Woodward ; ' Grisoni's ' Portrait of CoUey Gibber as Lord Poppington;' Zoffany's 'Garrick and Mrs. Prit- chard in tbe Murder Scene of Macbeth ; ' ' Toung Koscius,' by Opie ; ' John Liston,' by Clint; and many others which would occupy too much space for particularisation. Mr. Percy Pitzgerald has criti- cised and described the best of them in his enter- taining volume, " The World Behind the Scenes." One of the many gems of the collection is ' The Clandestine Mar- riage' of Zoffany, depic- ting King as Lord Ogleby, and Mrs. Baddeley as Miss Stirling, and Mr. Baddeley as the French valet. The situation is that most pleasant equivoque in the third act, where the old lord is led on to make a declaration by the replies of the lady, who fancies that he is urging her lover's suit and not her own. A delightful reminiscence of a beautiful Vieio frmi the Library, Garrick Club. CLUB-LAND. 43 woman is the portrait of Miss Farren, Countess of Derby ; and not to he forgotten as an illustration of the costumier's and the stage-manager's art of Garrick's days is the 'Macbeth' picture, in which the royal thane is represented wearing scarlet breeches, gold-laced coat, enormous waistcoat, silk socks, and bobwig. The technique of the artist finds ample opportunities for display ia the decorated waistcoat, etc., and the hands are painted with wonderful skUl. As a piece of strong reaKstic truthful portrait-painting, the work is beyond praise ; it is Garrick's fault that as a Shakesperian scene the picture is ridiculous. There is other interesting pictorial evidence on the club walls of the way in which plays were dressed and staged in Garrick's time. No other gallery of pictures extant tells so completely the personal story of the English stage. Eecently there have been added to the collection one hundred and sixteen water-colour sketches, representing Charles Mathews in as many different characters. They are arranged en masse in an excellent light upon the wall of the passage leading to the strangers' rooms, where are now to be found busts of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft as well as Millais' portrait of Henry Irving. Among the latest additions to the Art treasures are Clint's superb picture of a scene from A New Way to Pay Old Debts, with Edmund Eean as Sir Giles Overreach, presented to the club by Mr. Irving, and a fine portrait of David Garrick by Sir Joshua Eeynolds, presented by the Earl of Fife from the Duff House Collection. The Garrick Club first began housekeeping in King Street, close by its present quarters in Garrick Street. It is unpretentiously housed in a building designed by Mr. Marrable. The style is Italian. The hall is im- pressive chiefly on account of its noble staircase of carved oak, the waUs decorated with notable paintings. At the top of the staircase there is a landing-place from which the reading-room, library, and card -rooms are entered. The artistic effect of the open doorway of the principal room, seen from the landing, which is in shadow, is very striking. Whichever way you look, from room or staircase, the scene is prettily broken up with light and 44 CLUB- LAND. shade, and you catch, glimpses of statuettes, pictures, relics of the theatre, while the prevailing tone of the surrounding decorations is well calculated to help the general effect. The dining-room, smoking-room, and visitors' apart- ments are on the ground floor, and so embarrassing are the pictorial riches of the place that I had quite overlooked the treasures of the smoking-room, a superb Eoberts, the finest Stansfield I have ever seen, and two by Louis Haghe that are unequalled. I look back with interest to one of my earliest dinners at the Garrick Club. It is a landmark in theatrical and personal history that is worth noting, and the reader will probably find in it an incident for thought and reflection. I dined here with Shirley Brooks and Mark Lemon, " to go to the play," where they had arranged to meet Tom Taylor and Mr. Prith, E.A., the special occasion being the first appearance of Mrs. Eousby in ''Twix Axe and Crown. Three out of four of those distinguished men have joined the majority since then, full of credit and renown. The lady, too, who was so beautiful on that first night at the Queen's, has long since closed a career that began with much promise of success. If these reminiscences suggest to me that I have commenced the descent into the vale, how do those pleasant, garrulous gentlemen feel who talk to me of the Kembles, and the days when Barham, the Smiths, and Theodore Hook were living members of the Garrick ? Every age has its compensations, they will no doubt tell me, but old age must have very pleasant youthful memories, and the sense of a battle well fought, if its inevitable cloudland is to have any silver lining. Thackeray divided his club-life between the Eeform, the Athenaeum, and the Garrick. An anonymous writer in the press says that never had Thackeray appeared to be happier at the Eeform Club than during the last week of his life. " Many men sitting in the libraries and the dining-rooms of these three clubs " were reminded, on the announcement of his death, '' of one of the tenderest passages in his early sketches — 'Brown the Younger at a Club,' — in which the old uncle is represented as telling his nephew, while The National Liberal Club, CLUB- LAND. 45 showing him the various rooms of the club, of those whose names had appeared at the end of the club list, under the dismal category of ' members deceased,' in which (added Thackeray), * you and I shall rank some day.' " As the Lotus Club of New Tork is more or less like the Savage of London, so the Garrick suggests the Century of New Tork, one of the " highest-toned " clubs on the American continent. The Lotus has an arrangement for the interchange of privileges with the Savage. The Garrick and the Century make no official recognition of each other ; but membership of the Garrick is a sure passport to the heart and hospitality of the Century. They keep as an honoured relic the chair in which Thackeray sat when he visited them, which he frequently did when he was in New Tork. The Garrick is much honoured abroad, and at home its inner life is characterized by that quiet social dignity and good-feUowship, to maintain which is the highest aim of club government. The Lyric Club was founded in 1880 to meet the long felt want of a west-end musical club. There are still many features of Club-land yet to glance at ; and the National Liberal Club, one of the most notable additions to the social- political institutions of London, calls for special notice. The temporary premises in Northumberland Avenue were by no means an undesirable home. But the house that is now erected on the Thames Embankment is one of the finest and most complete establishments in London. The site in itself is unique. It is bounded on the north and west by Whitehall Place and Whitehall Avenue, on the east it faces the Gardens of the Thames Embankment, while on the south the club-house joins the new buildings of Whitehall Court. A feature in the building is the Conference Eoom, to which there is a separate entrance from Whitehall Avenue, so that it is accessible to non-members from the street without the necessity of passing through the club. At the end of the hall, opposite the main entrance, is the principal staircase, which rises from the basement to the first floor. It 46 CLUB- LAND. is of elliptical form, and the steps, which are 8 feet wide, are supported at either end by an outer and an inner wall. The outer wall is solid, but the inner consists of a continuous ascending colonnade of various and richly- coloured marbles. At the foot of the first flight of steps is placed the entrance to a passenger lift, which will connect the various floors of the club. From the end of the hall a descending flight of steps leads under the main staircase to the level of the smoking-room, 8 ft. 6 ins. below that of the street. This room, which is 102 ft. by 35 ft. and 23 ft. in height, is provided at its eastern end with a bar and an entrance for servants, while in the south wall a doorway leads to a short flight of steps which ascend to the range of biUiard-rooms under the terrace. Under the entrance to the Conference Eoom is a tradesman's way to this base- ment. Besides the maia entrance, and that to the Conference Eoom, there is yet another entrance from Whitehall Place, under the tower in the north-east angle of the building. This is for the benefit of such non-members as may be ad- mitted on special occasions to the Gladstone Library, and for communication with the residential chambers, ofiices, etc., on the higher floors. The two prin- cipal rooms on the upper ground floor, besides the Gladstone Library and the small members' library, are the grill-room and the dining-room. From the dining-room there is access to an open loggia, and thence down a flight of five steps to the broad terrace, 30 ft. wide, overlooking the Embankment. The dining-room, it may be mentioned, is 108 ft. by 38 ft., the grill-room 63 ft. by 35 ft., both these rooms being 24 ft. in height and 15 ft. 6 ins. Constitutional Club. CLUB-LAND. 47 above the level of the street. The grill-room is the largest of its kind in London. The first floor is occupied by a reading and writing-room over the Gladstone Library, a smokers' reading and writing-room over part of the dining-room, and a drawing-room over the members' library. At this floor the principal staircase ceases, and with it the club proper, the upper stories being reached by the staircase in the tower or by the adjoining lift. The second floor is devoted to chambers, bedrooms, and bedrooms and sitting-rooms combined, some of which have spacious balconies placed over the bay windows of the floors below. The third floor is a repetition of the second, consisting of bedrooms, sitting-rooms, bath-rooms, etc. The fourth floor is partly occupied by chambers and partly by rooms for oflGicials and servants, but the two departments are kept entirely dis- tinct. The steward's room, butler's Constitutional Club. room, pantry, etc., look into the central space over the sky-light of the principal staircase, while the members' rooms occupy the external frontages. The kitchen and scullery are placed on this floor, in the south- west angle of the building, in direct communication with a service-room. Adjoining is a large still-room, with lifts descending to the various serving- rooms. The laundry store-rooms, housekeeper's rooms, and maids' bedrooms are provided on the fifth floor. The tower staircase ceases when it reaches the fourth floor, but from that point a smaller spiral leads to the belvedere, at the summit of the tower, from which an almost unique view can be obtained of the river and its bridges towards St. Paul's. The staircase is a very special architectural feature of the new club-house, making the 48 CLUB-LAND. centre of tlie building the chief point of artistic display. The style of the building is that of the Early Eenaissance, the most noticeable external feature being the tower in the north-east angle, which rises to a height of 180 feet ; and, though severely plain in the lower stories, increases in richness and intricacy as it detaches itself from the gables which lead up to it on either side. Nothing of any moment is ever done without enthusiasm. The National Liberal Club is the creation of an enthusiastic committee, secretary, and architect. It is the first great club designed by Mr. Waterhouse, E.A., whose charming water-colour of it was one of the most attractive pictures in the Architectural Department of the Eoyal Academy Exhibition a few years ago. Close by in Northumberland Avenue stands the Constitutional Club, a handsome building which may be taken as the rival of the National Liberal. Founded in 1883, the club-house as it now stands relieves in a striking manner the architectural monotony of Northumberland Avenue. The use of terra-cotta in the building has had the effect of livening up the whole thoroughfare with a rich warm tone of colour. The main entrance ushers the visitor into a lofty vestibule, from which a few steps lead into the octagonal hall, and thence to the morning and smoking rooms. The grand staircase springs from here to the first floor, where is situated the general coffee-room, 140 feet by 30 feet, and the library. The second floor contains the smoking room, bUliard and card rooms, while above are about eighty bedrooms. The architect of the building, which forms one of the handsomest and most luxurious of modern clubs, was Mr. Edis. 5*- = -f-5 ^ff V z' 4^ -t 1, t - V CHAPTEE TI. |HE national sports of tlie English people are prominently repre- sented in London and the suburbs by the Jockey Club, Hur- lingham, the Yacht Club, the Turf Club, the Marylebone Cricket Club, the Gun Club, the Pour-in-hand Club, and by innumerable minor associations for the promotion of lawn tennis, polo, cricket, shooting, boating, and other athletic pastimes. There are no less than thirty-eight yacht clubs in Great Britain, which, with a few exceptions, have their own houses, some of them being superb establishments. The Poyal Thames Yacht Club, founded in 1823, is "the largest yacht club in existence, possessing, as it does, the greatest number of yachts and the greatest number of members," says one of its authorities, who has written a clever little manual, " Sailing and Yachting." Her Majesty the Queen has been the club's patron for over forty years, and H.E.H. the Prince of "Wales is the commodore of its splendid fleet. The oldest of all the yacht clubs it seems is the Eoyal Cork, founded in 1720, and first known as " The Cork Harbour "Water Club." The yachts, in the early days of the old club, were curious contrasts to the present " white- winged craft " that give so much picturesque charm to English seascapes. " They were open fore and aft, and were from ten to twenty tons. About a third of the length was occupied by a cabin amidships. The rigging was very simple, resembling that of the boats known as the Kinsale hookers. The sails were a mainsail, narrow but lofty, a foresail, and a jib. There was no topmast, no shrouds to the bobstay and bowsprit, and in the bowsprit there .was a great steeve. There was no superfluous gear, the rigging H 50 CLUB-LAND. consisting of two shrouds on either side, backstay, runner, and tackle." The Royal London has club-houses in Regent Street and at Cowes, Isle of Wight, and owns a fine fleet under the commodoreship of Mr. G. C. Lampson. Of all the citizens of a great city your Londoner is perhaps the most "countrified" in his tastes. " Cockney sportsman " is a term of derision singularly misapplied to-day, and probably was from the first. The London yachts- men, rowers, canoeists, anglers, cricketers, marksmen, are famous. Their clubs give rules to the world ; they are among the foremost in the great Thr Joihcij Club, Xcamarkct. competitions, international and otherwise, on tlie turf, at sea, on the rowing rivers, in the cricket fields, on the tennis lawn, and at the rifle butts. It is a curious characteristic, indeed, of London men, that they have always not only shown a love for the country, but a capacity for its athletic sports. Many a city mau hunts twice or thrice a week, owns shooting grounds in Scotland, and fishing stations on foreign lakes and rivers. The Jockey Club has always been a mystery to me. There are those Avho have a key to it no doubt. So far as I can discover, those who possess CLUB-LAND. 51 its secrets are the high-priests of its strange temple. It has no house in London, yet it is the one great power that governs the English turf and gives racing rules to the world. At Newmarket it has "rooms" in the town and on the course. "At least," says an esteemed correspondent of mine, who knows as much as most men about the turf, "there is a room on the course sacred to the Jockey Club, at which a very bad lunch is provided, and to Arcctde Room, Jockey Club. which admission is iu the highest degree exclusive." Says my informant, " For the most part the club consists of ' dukes, and lords,' the pick of English, with a few continental, sportsmen. It has privileges with regard to stand, carriages, enclosure, etc., at Newmarket. It is supreme in all questions with reference to racing, with questions, that is to say, which are not dealt with by the Grand National Hunt Committee. This latter power is a self-elected body, which deals with cross-country sports — steeple chases. 52 CLUB- LAND. hurdle races, and races for hunters carrying not less than ten stone over courses of not less distance than two mUes. The Grand National Hunt Committee is not formally recognised in all respects by the Jockey Club, yet many members of one are members of the other. The Jockey Club business is directed by three stewards, who move annuallj'. Ton will find a list of members, the rules of the club, and much about it, in Ruffes Guide to the Turf, to which I beg to refer the reader who desires to flounder on the frontiers of a country he may not enter, and concerning the personal administration of which my friend says, " you might as well ask a minister to give you an account of a cabinet meeting as ask one of its chiefs to tell what they do at their most secret meetings." London has always been fond of sports. History and fiction are full of the picturesque record of her archery, hawking, tennis, pallmall, her hunting in Epping Forest, and more recently of her modern recreations. No fashion- able novel is complete without a picture of Hurlingham, a lawn-tennis match, or a boating scene on the Upper Thames, unless the story be intended as a special attraction for men, and then it introduces Tattersall's and New- market, a betting club, or a descent of London hunting men upon Melton Mowbray or Market Harborough. It is difficult to reaUse the condition of London when Eeginald Heber published the first number of his Racing Calender in 1751. Snipes were " still drinking in the marshes of Conduit Street ; " there were wild fowl among the bulrushes of the willow walk of Pimlico ; the apprentice lads chased ducks in Moorfield Ponds ; and " the short, sharp bark of the fox still broke on the ear of the wayfarer as he drove his lumbering wain at midnight past Kensington Gardens, and stopped for a draught at the Half-way House bowl." There was still living at Newmarket in those days a few old people who could remember " how the Court hurried back to London at the news of the Eye-House plot, and how Nell Gwynne held her infant out of the window as her royal lover passed down the Palace Gardens to his stables, and threat- Tilt ddwer- Cqvrf^- IW-^^-m^-'M... '';:^ ''W The Badminton Vlub. CLUB- LAND. 53 ened to drop him if he was not made a duke on the spot." The king liked his apartments at Newmarket better than those of Whitehall. One day he might be seen walking among the elms in Hyde Park talking with Dryden about classic poetry, and on the next " his arm on Tom Durfey's shoulder, he would be talking a second to his Phyllida, or ' To horse, my brave boys Coffee Room^ Joekeij Club. of Newmarket, to horse ! ' " Newmarket still retains much of the character of the old days ; her famous club rules appear to be as the laws of the Medes and Persians which altereth not ; it is an assembly of kings and princes and peers, an upper house which has no lower chamber to send up bills for its endorsement, and to storm at it if it ventures to dissent from them, I count in the mysterious Euff's list of members, in addition to our Prince of Wales 54 CLUB-LAND. and his royal brothers, the Emperor of All the Eussias, the King of the Netherlands, the King of the Belgians, the Crown Prince of Germany, and the Grand Duke Vladimer of Eussia. The stewards last year were the Earl of Zetland, the Earl of Cadogan, and the Earl of March. The presidents of the American and the French Jockey Clubs are honorary members, as are also the vice-president and the three stewards of the Erench Jockey Club. The Isthmian Club is non-political, and gentlemen who have been educated at one of the universities or public schools and officers of the army and navy are eligible. The Turf Club since it moved from Grafton Street to Piccadilly is said to have become quite a formidable rival to "White's. The Marlborough is said to have also suffered in this respect. Many of the Marlborough men have joined the Turf. The card-room is an important feature of all these clubs, but the stakes are said to be no longer excessive, and the Turf has now the credit of being a very bright conversational and social lounge. Politics and sports are leading topics, and in the hunting season those members who do not consider it de regie to live at the head- quarters of the Quorn or the Pytchley, join the hounds from London all the same. Indeed for some years past many hunting men have made London their head-quarters between November and February. The pack of hounds that meet within two hours' ride by rail from London draw most of their attendance from the metropolis. Special trains from Paddington and Waterloo accommodate what is called the London brigade, that makes a point of hunting twice a week with her Majesty's staghounds. During the cold, dark,, winter mornings you may, if you travel by the early trains, encounter London sportsmen in their war paint off to ride with the West Kent, the old Berkeley, the Suffolk, the Essex, the East Sussex, the Surrey Union, and other well-known hounds. There are many who go as far as Melton, Crick, or Market Har borough. " Provided the meet be within an hour's ride or drive of a railway station," The Isthmian Club. CLUB-LAND. 55 says an authority on tlie subject, " four Lours -will generally suffice to take the London man from the metropolis to the cover-side, where he will find the Quorn, the Pytchley, or Mr. Tailby's. There are scores of hunting men living in town who twice or even three times a week enjoy a quick thing in Leicestershire ; having left their lodgings in the West End at 6 a.m. and are back to dine at their club by 8 or 8.30 p.m." The more one thinks of London from what may be called a sportsman's point of view the less towny it becomes, the more pastoral are its attractions, and the more certain does it seem that one would require a volume to attempt even a sketch of the outdoor attractions of this very pleasant club- land, some characteristic features of which have been pictorially illustrated in these pages. Club-land is not that mere luxurious lounge which a great minister recently described it, and if it were, what is a club for but a pleasant social resting-place? A political exchange, where men may intrigue and scheme in the interest of their party, is one thing ; a Carlton or Eeform, an Athenseum, a Garrick, or a Badminton, is another. As for London Club-land, it has in it the perfume of flowers, the crack of the whip, the splash of the oar, the sound of the hunter's horn, the merry laugh of girls and boys, and the admiring murmurs of Hyde Park Corner on a coach- ing day, and the shout of enthusiastic crowds at Lord's. Who does not recall gay meets of the Four-in-Hand at the Magazine in Hyde Park, the chestnuts all in bloom, the trees dancing upon the lake ? Who has not pleasant out-door memories of bright days under the auspices of the Maryle- bone Cricket Club at Lord's, of triumphant London boats at Henley regatta, of polo matches at Hurlingham. and of racing yachts that sailed on summer seas? I question whether what may be called the country side of Club-land has not more claims on Art than its architectural, decorative, and conven- tional features. Coaching, hunting, yachting, shooting, have furnished sub- jects for the great artists of all countries. The picturesqueness of our 56 CLUB-LAND. literature is a reflection of the picturesqueness of that side of English life "which includes our sports and pastimes. It is unnecessary to mention among the claims of this other phase of Club-land the inspiration that many an artist has found in the sports of angling, stag-hunting, grouse-shooting ; and usually superfluous to recall the subjects which the Badminton, the Four- in-hand, the Gun Club, the Royal Thames Yachting Club, Lord's, and kindred institutions have supplied to the illustrated literatui-e of popular magazines, English and American. Every Eoyal Academy exhibition is a tribute to English sports and pastimes. It would be an offence even at this last moment to omit all mention of that essentially out-of-door club, the Alpine, which meets in St. Martin's Place to circumvent the icy peaks of Switzerland. No phase of national recreation is excluded from our Club- land; and the professional sporting man who said that from October to July there is no place like London, and that during the other three months it is the best place in England, may be taken to fully endorse the claim of London to be a world within itself — a city with a score of parks and play- grounds in the very heart of it ; from which every high road leads to country lanes and meadows, to forest lanes and pleasant streams, and every river runs into our own surrounding seas. CHAPTEE VII. PROVINCIAL CLUBS — BIRMINGHAM. 8LUB life in the provinces is essentially different from that of London. Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, all the *' gi-eat towns and cities outside the metropolis, go to bed early. Life in London may be said to begin when the provinces are abed. Every year the great cities of the north are becoming more and more the workshops of trade and commerce, such as Kingsley di-eamed they might be, with the homes of the workers among the woods and fields and on the banks of running streams. At midnight Manchester is as dead as the city of London round about the Bank, and more so, for it is not as well lighted. The great squares are as sUent as St. Petersburg on winter nights. The scavengers and police moving about the principal thoroughfares might be engaged on those man-hunting missions which, in " the silent watches," fill the Eussian prisons. The provincial club-man rarely dines at his club. He goes home after business hours, and there is nothing much in the city to attract him from the suburbs untU the next morning. Luncheon is the great meal of the day in provincial clubland. The morning's work at an end, the citizens of the midlands and the north meet each other over a very substantial luncheon, which, in many respects, might fairly be called dinner, though it comes within the meaning of the French breakfast. One often hears men lament that we do not live in England on the Parisian system — the morning coffee and roll, and the mid-day breakfast or luncheon. I 58 CLUB-LAND. But this is, in fact, our provincial custom, and as much time is occupied with the mid-day meal in Manchester as in Paris. There are always after- wards the cigar, the friendly chat, sometimes a game at billiards, once in a way a hand at whist. As a rule, at least a couple of hours are devoted to eating and resting. It is in the middle of the day that clubland in the country is brisk and lively ; not so in London. Men of leisure lunch or breakfast at their clubs, but those who are at work in the city, at the bar, or in West-end counting- houses, have to be content with a snack at their offices, or in their rooms, or at a restaurant-counter, a sort of "run and eat refresher," reserving themselves for the evening dinner. As to which is the healthiest mode of life there can be no question, though there are many sticklers for "a short life and a merry one." Special reasons why the metropolis must always keep later hours than the country could be advanced. In regard to the clubs, one reason among many may be found in the claims of strangers. London is always crowded with visitors. They have to be entertained. The club is the chief reception ground of the stranger guest, and he also represents a large floating population of honorary club members. It is his business to see London, and however early he may be at home he delights for the time being to drop into the London ways, and his entertainer is nothing loth. Work begins later here in a morning than in the country. The mornings are darker than country mornings. Having less of the sun, the artificial light of bright fires and glowing rooms obtains with us a heartier appreciation on that account. Moreover, Londoners are more tolerant of the late riser than are the people of country districts, where "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," has always been an established if homely proverb. Just as there seems to be a heartier welcome for a club visitor in New York than in London, there is a more real home feeling for the guest in provincial than in metropolitan clubs. London clubland will give its guests CLUB-LAND. 59 the best of its larder, the choicest of its cellars, but it reserves, " for members only," its inner circle, its sanctum. Every London club lias its " holy of holies." The purely social club is excepted from this remark, such as the Savage, the Green-room, and Beefsteak. But in the great clubs the stranger, as a rule, is relegated to small rooms, from which, under the FfiiuijM'l .SVrti?-(77Ar. Linnihfjliain Coiis':rfalJie Club. auspices of his host, he catches glimpses of the glories beyond, and is content. In New York, as in the English provinces, the stranger has the run of the clubhouse. Nothing is too good for him. He is not cut off from the most secret corner. He may not play cards or billiards as a rule ; but he may visit the card-rooms and see the members play billiards. In London 60 CLUB-LAND. he may not put his inquisitorial nose into these apartments, unless he be elected an honorary member, and then he is free of the club, except that, of course, he has no voice in its management. In the following notes on some provincial clubs let it be understood that it is not intended to give precedence to any club or to any great town or city over another. It happened that we visited Birmingham first, en route to the north, and found our first welcome in the newest, the humblest, and yet not the least interesting of the outposts of provincial clubland. The Birmingham Press Club is one of the youngest of the Birmingham clubs, but it represents in the country a very important addition to the journalistic and literary institutions of the land. It is in friendly communication with the Manchester Press Club and other kindred associations. Its annual dinner is a reunion of local press men, and the exchange of telegraphic greetings between it and other press clubs are not the least of its pleasant incidents. Its home is not in a garret, nor is it exactly in a cellar, but it is artfully arranged with a view to economy. There is no reason, however, why it should not soon pass through its probation and join the larger societies of clubland. There are traditions in Birmingham of old and curious clubs of the past, but the records of them are somewhat hazj-, and the truth is, as compared with the metropolis the provincial club is a very modern institution. The smoke-room meetings of the chief tradesmen and leading citizens of provincial towns, which still obtain in many an ancient city, were clubs in the social sense, and they are almost as old as the inns and taverns. These gather- ings were varied in Birmingham by holding meetings at stated times, and no doubt the Bean Club, which has existed since 1660, had its origin in these smoke-room assemblies, just as the London clubs had their beginnino's in the old taverns of St. James's Street, Co vent Garden, and Fleet Street. The IJnion Club, which is non-political, was the fii-st club of any importance in Birmingham. An attempt was made in 1840 to establish a club in the sa^Bp }T [ i\YQ^ s^^^snnog; no pa;B0O| ;s.ii| sbav qn];-) nouifi^ ot[j^ -^.ttioo siq puB i{o4(Inj3{Tit:g[ ut jeuoissnuiuoQ 9q; K<\ paidnooo noaq innuSaxia^ni q\{% nt SniABq 'qn|Q OAi^BA.iasiioQ paB|pTj\[ q\\% jo ouioq aqj sin.iqj avou pire 'pua puB Si4J 1 Iw ^T ' 111! ijii,!| ^ i*i^^^^g4j^:^= J7? StnuuiSoq s;i jo ouoos oqj SBAi siuoo^x oo[.iajBj^ ^nos3.id oqj, '^-inirej ^ sbav 41 jnq 'S4UBAJ9S puB esnoq ua\o s^i sBq qoiqAv noi^n'jpsni ub jo asuas xijapoui 19 -aNvi-sniD 62 CLUB-LAND. from 1856, and has had a flourishing career. Its present house is one of some architectural pretensions at the corner of Colmore Row and Newhall Street, whither it removed in 1869. It is essentially a social cluh, quiet, comfortable, and eminently respectable, entirely free from the party excit- ment which characterizes the other two great clubs of the midland metro- polis. The Conservatives seem to have been first in the field in the establish- ment of a prominent political club in Birmingham. They had a good sub- stantial house in Union Street in 1872, but their present quarters are on a palatial scale, and may be said to provide the aristocratic company of their fighting army with the luxuries that are supposed to be more necessary for the Tory leaders than for the Liberals, though each party is vying with the other in the splendour of its clubs. The Midland Conservative Club is the working club of the Conservative party in Eirmingham. It is here in exciting times that the pulse of the party is to be felt. The club has a regular electioneering organization. Its libraries of reference, its committee rooms, its secretarial arrangements are of the most business-like and practical character. The Conservative Club-house in Temple Row has only lately been opened. It is quite in character with the surroundings and objects of the club that its front windows look out upon the Burnaby Memorial, a notable addition to local sculpture, which is not always commendable except in the town's good intention of honouring its illustrious men. The old Bean Club was a Conservative organization, which is not a little odd in so eminently Liberal a centre as Birmingham, and it was at the Bean Club that some daring old English spirit was wild enough to suggest a regular and sturdy club of Tories. Mr. Sampson Lloyd, the Eev. W. K. li. Bedford, Mr. Frank James, Mr. J. D. Goodman, Mr. Walter Williams, Mr. Joseph Ludlow, Mr. J. B. Stone, Mr. George Wise, and Mr. E. Mayo, however, took up the idea and found for it a prompt approval and support. The gentlemen named are considered to be, not only the projectors, but, to CLUB- LAND. 63 a great extent, the founders of the club. Lord Dartmouth was the first president. The architects of the present house were Messrs. Osborn and Eeading. The building cost about thirteen thousand pounds ; the site and other charges run the total outlay to upwards of twenty-five thousand pounds. The architects have triumphed over great difficulties in regard to the shape and form of the ground they have covered. It often happens in artistic works that difficulties lead to unexpected successes. In the luncheon- room, for instance, a dead wall is happUy dealt with. It is prettily masked in with a conservatory that presents a pleasing aspect both in summer and winter. The architectural style of the building is Eoman of the early Italian Eenaissance, and the leading featui-es of the front are a boldly out- lined entrance portico, and lofty bay-windows which are carried up on either side to the level of the third story, with balconies and parapets on the two principal floors. A broad flight of steps leads to the ground floor and terminates in a vestibule with inner and outer screens filled with enamelled glass. The floor is paved with mosaic tiles. The staircase hall is thirty feet by twenty -five, lighted by large windows of coloured glass on the staircase and with a lantern in the roof, and partially heated by a hand- some fireplace which is both decorative and useful. The staircase, which opens conveniently upon landings for the various lofty and beautifully furnished rooms, is wide and has broad easy steps. It is of the well-pattern; and the guard, a very artistic open wrought-iron scroll balustrade, by Messrs. Brawn and Co., is a fine example of modern metal-work. Left of the entrance is a convenient morning room, and leading out of the staircase hall is a handsome luncheon room, fifty by twenty-six, with the conservatory, previously mentioned, running the entire length of the room. The new house had only just been opened at the time of our visit, but this annex promised great possibilities and was evidently regarded with much satisfac- tion by the members, who were wandering over the building with the air of proprietors inspecting a new domicile which they had built for themselves 64 CLUB- LAND. upon their own freehold. Everything was new. There was a suspicion of turpentine in the atmosphere of the rooms, a suggestion of paint and putty, but at the same time the establishment was being pushed into working order, and the kitchen was already well organized. And after all it is in the kitchen that much of the success of a club is to be looked for. The strangers', stewards', clerks', and other rooms are on the ground floor, and in every department the latest inventions in the way of fittings and furnish- ing have been introduced. The front first floor is occupied by the grand dining-room, the windows commanding views of the busy thoroughfares intersecting and surrounding St. Philip's Churchyard, and behind this room are card and billiard-rooms, the latter lighted from the roof. The second floor is occupied with the smoke-room and private dining-room, and above are the steward's and servants' chambers and store-rooms. The kitchens are in the basement, and together with all the domestic offices, are lined with white glazed tiles. All the staircases, corridors, and halls are of fire- proof construction. The ventilating and heating appliances are the work of the ^olus Company. The exterior of the building is mostly of white dressed stone, and where stone is not used the material employed is a white hard glazed brick. The furnitui-e is chiefiy dark oak, upholstered in maroon and morocco. The Birmingham Liberal Club dates from 1877. It entered upon the premises shown in our illustration in 1885 ; but since then the members have found their house too costly for maintenance. The luxurious rooms are no longer inhabited, but the building remains, a picturesque addition to the Forum. Situated at the corner of Edmund and Congreve Street its aspect is towards what has been called the Forum of Birmingham. The Forum is unfortunately too crowded for either architectural or picturesque effect, though taken in detail the local works are worthy of the historic importance of the place, and in themselves are not excelled in the provinces. They are fitting memorials of the municipal spirit, the CLUB-LAND. 65 learning and the taste of the midland metropolis. The Mason College, the 1 )!'l Binninghani Liberal Club. Ai't Gallery, the Free Library, the Council House, and the famous Town Hall, represent a cluster of grand buildings, only needing a fine open site to K 66 CLUB- LAND. have presented to the eye a noble architectural picture, but representing none the less, in their somewhat crowded proximity to each other, food for reflection, and objects of national pride. One may also include as decora- tive works fronting the Liberal Club, the statues of Sir Josiah Mason and George Dawson and the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial. The constant splash of the fountain which forms part of the Chamberlain erection, makes pleasant music amidst the din of New Street, which comes humming up the quiet thoroughfares near the Club, and one is fain to acknowledge the excellence of the site not alone for its opportunity of a fine elevation but for its associations. The institution and statues around it are more or less mementoes of modern Liberalism. Josiah Mason was a strong, self-made man. His philanthropy was as practical as George Dawson's religion, and it is as rare as it is commendable to see a public man honoured with a memorial in his life- time — in the case of Mr. Chamberlain one may say in his early manhood. The Birmingham Liberal Club's late home differs altogether from the style of architecture which is prominent in its neighbouring buildings. It never- theless harmonizes pleasantly with them, and helps by its picturesque sky- lines to heighten the dignity of the Forum. The house is a fine example of the best form of the modern revival of architecture in England, warm with red-tiled roof, light and pretty with projecting angle turrets, and here and there exterior galleries ; altogether a pleasant realisation and reminiscence of much that was beautiful in English architecture in the old days, and for the pleasure of contemplating which in our modern life, we have all travelled into the old cities of Europe. Birmingham in many ways is showing an active interest in the revival of the picturesque in street and domestic architecture. The midland capital has always taken an intense interest in music. Its festivals have introduced to the world of musical art some of its rarest modern compositions, and given to music an impetus which has done much towards popularising among us the best composers and performers, vocal and CLUB- LAND. 67 instrumental. There are no less than a dozen important musical associations in Birmingham for the practice and popularisation of high-class works, without counting the Clef Club, which more particularly belongs to the scope of this necessarily brief glance at the local clubland. The Clef Club was founded in 1881, combining with the purposes of a club the study and practice of vocal and instrumental music. Beginning in a modest way, with large aims but patient in its working, the Club was enabled within four years to lease sufficient premises for its purpose in Paradise Street, near the Town Hall, and the members had the good fortune to enroll the name of Sir Arthur Sullivan as its President. Smoking concerts form a leading feature of the social evenings in Paradise Street, and it is claimed that the club has already exercised a good educational influence, more particularly in the diffusion of a more correct musical taste than was possible hitherto, when men interested in the art and delighting in its practice had not the opportunities of discussion and example which they now possess in the Clef Club. CHAPTER VIII. LIVERPOOL. IIYEEPOOL is a city of ships, tlie halting-place of travel, a haven and a refuge, a port of arrival and departure. People one meets in Birmiugham you feel sure will return home at night and start afresh for business the next morning. In Liverpool you can hardly venture to guess at anybody's destination. They are coming from all parts of the earth, the people in the streets, or they are on their way to distant lands. The traffic is foreign. One almost feels an impostor in Liverpool unless one is either going over the sea or coming home again. This kind of pleasurable unrest seems to characterize most things in Liverpool, and it is apparent in the atmosphere of the clubs, unless you happen to find yourself ensconced some evening in the hospitable chambers of the Liver- pool Art Club, perhaps the most notable of all Art clubs out of London, and with features, aims, objects, and organization superior to any similar insti- tution in the metropolis. The club is unostentatiously housed. The dining- room is plainly furnished, and is in useful proximity to the kitchen, the secret, according to Mr. Original Walker, of good service and hot dishes. The smoking-room might be the room of a private gentleman, whose first consideration is for the ease and comfort of his guests. There are all kinds of easy-chairs and handy tables, but no attempt at decoration. The Club to use an Americanism, has "spread itself" on a supplementary room, CLUB-LAND. 69 which it has designed and built with care, and of which the members may well feel proud. It is a picture gallery, admirably lighted, and although it seems a sine qua non for an Art Club, it is the first Social Club we know of as possessing an exhibition gallery. In this matter the Liverpool Art Club-house is like the home of a painter, in which the studio is the most important feature. The objects of the Club are to bring '// ),/V/ rrfTjiffj I iij'^^A m\ ii uiiiH.i '"^/l ' ' " I, III Exhihit'tan Room, Liverpool Art CUth. together those interested in artistic subjects, and the furtherance of any- thing that may promote Art or spread a knowledge of it. The inspiration of the idea came out of the reflection that the amount of wealth expended by Liverpool upon different forms of Art was out of all proportion to the influence exerted upon the practice or products of Art. Other branches of knowledge had representative societies to cultivate and exploit their 70 CLUB- LAND. work, but Art, wliich has many subtle lessons to teaeb that cannot be learned from books, had none until the club under notice was established. It often happens that the high aims of Art institutions fall short in the realisation, but the Liverpool Art Club is admirably fulfilling its early promise and ambition, both as a social club and as an organization for the promotion of the best interests of Art in the full acceptation of the term. In the collection of works of an instructive and elevating character for exhibition it has had many distinct successes. Its exhibition of the works of David Cox, some years since, was the most complete collection of that famous master ever hkely to be seen again ; the club also made an unique collection of the works of Doyle, illustrating the singular versatility of that remarkable caricaturist. It has had shows of curios too, and exhibitions of local Art, industrial and otherwise, including examples of local efforts in design and otherwise by local working men. It gives lectures illustrated by works of all kinds, and treats music with the distinction it deserves in the foremost rank of the arts. During an evening which we spent with its members, plans for the future were being discussed with much enthusiasm. It was hoped that following up an exhibition of old engrav- ings, they would be able to collect a sufl&cient number of examples of modern mezzotint for an interesting evening's lecture. Mr. Finnie, a prominent member of the club, and chief of the Liverpool School of Art, has already been successful in promoting this revival of an almost lost art. In addition to his weU-known landscape work in colour he has a very exceptional and practical knowledge of etching and mezzotint. The President of the club is Dr. Caton. He has been fortunate in his vice- presidents, Mr. P. H. Eathbone and Mr. John Dunn, and in the enthusiastic secretary, Mr. Henry E. Kensburg. The club has recently been able to congratulate itself on the accession to its active supporters of several of the professors and other gentlemen connected with University College, who have been welcomed with much CLUB-LAND. '1 cordiality, and who have identified themselves with the educational ohjects of the club. Here is the record of a year, as set forth in the oflBcial report. In January the club gave an afternoon tea, inviting prominent citizens to see their Ai-tisans' Art Exhibition, and at which there was a distribution of medals and commendations among the exhibitors. During the following month there was a conversazione, at which Professor Conway read a paper on Albrecht Diirer, illustrated by a very remarkable collection of reproductions of Diirer's works. During the remainder of the year there were smoking and other concerts, an amateur dramatic per- formance, a discussion upon the character of Hamlet, an exhibition of embroidery, and other equally pleasant and instructive meetings. By a recent rule it has been decided to admit ladies to certain Art privileges of the club, though at present the rule has not proved very attractive. It only needs a few prominent ladies of Liverpool to set the fashion of club-membership to give to the Liverpool Art Club an extended field of usefulness. Until 1877 there was no club of any importance in Liverpool. There was the Exchange, of course, which had been the social ground of the merchants for ten or fifteen years, but politics had had no club life up to 1877, when twenty leading Liberals (to-day they are known as Liberal TJnionists, for the Eeform Club is Hartington to the backbone) subscribed funds for the erection of a club-house to- be called The Eeform. These twenty generous and practical men said to the party, " We will build you a club, the condition being that you will support it, and the subscription shall be two guineas per annum, out of whicli we will take whatever return there may be for our money." The investment has yielded some three or four per cent. The year the club was opened the whole of the municipal elections, having previously been in favour of the Conservatives, "went Liberal," which the founders of the club and the public generally, seem to have ascribed to the inspiriting influence of the go-aheadism of the party 72 CLUB-LAND. as demonstrated in their establishment of a new political institution. Upon this the Conservatives naturally came to the conclusion that it was necessary that they should have a club. Within three years the aristocratic party rejoiced in two clubs, a Conservative and a Junior Conservative. After an existence of two or three years the Junior got into difficulties. It is even said that the furniture was seized by the sheriffs; but this may be a calumny. At all events the club-house and furniture passed into the hands of the Liberals, who, in the once Conservative rooms, now hold high revel, and even sport upon their sideboard a piece of testimonial-plate, which fell into their sacrilegious hands with the other effects of the defunct Junior Conservative. .There could have been no leaven of Toryism left in either the house or its furnitiu-e, for the Junior Eeform is now the home of the Liverpool Gladstonians. The followers of the Old Man of Hawarden find the Eeform Club no longer a home for them, and they claim that the Junior is " the real Simon Pure of Liverpool Liberalism." The original club flourishes nevertheless, its chef is efficient, its rooms are pleasant if a trifle dingy, its smoke-room is a well-seasoned and comfortable apartment, and the life of the club, if not so buoyant as the Junior, is dignified and in harmony with settled opinions and a sense of the responsibility of statesmanship. It is situated on the north side of Dale Street, on the site of the Old George Hotel, and is designed for the accommodation of twelve hundred members. It is a plain, substantial, unpretentious house. Six feet of granite forms the base of the building, above which the main walling is of Euabon bricks, relieved with stone dressings. The principal entrance is in the centre of the building, its portico being balanced by massive granite columns from Shap, in "Westmoreland. From the entrance hall the first and upper floors are approached by a grand staircase. On the right is the reading-room, forty feet long by twenty-seven wide, with an outlook upon Dale Street. The remaining portion of the ground floor is occupied by a dining-room, eighty-seven feet by twenty-seven, running the whole depth of the building. CLUB-LAND. 73 On the next floor we come to a small private dining and snug room, smoke- room, and fine lofty billiard-room. There are above these rooms a few bed- chambers for the use of members. At the opening of the club the Earl of -SBuS*^-'*'' i ■ i I \ ■ \ M-r \ The Reform CUtb, Dale Street, Liverpool. Sefton, Lord Lieutenant of the county, and first President of the club, occupied the chair. Lord Hartington was the principal guest. It was felt that the two noblemen were particularly in their right places upon the L 74 CLUB-LAND. occasion, Lord Sefton as the natural head of the Party in the district, and Lord Hartington as the Liberal leader in the House of Commons. The speakers at the banquet included Mr. E. E. Eussell, the accomplished editor of the Daily Post, Mr. Hibbert, M.P., M. Yates Thompson, Colonel McCorquodale, and Mr. D. Holt. The Liverpool Conservative Club-house is by far the finest in the city, and is not surpassed architecturally, or in regard to internal arrangements and fittings, by any club in the provinces. The style is Italian of a French type, regarded by the architects (Messrs. F. and G. Home) as affording a pleasing combination of the domestic with a somewhat palatial architecture, more suitable for the purposes of a club-house in a city than too severe a treatment of any special or particular style. "With the assistance of an ofiicial description of the building it will be interesting to note and enter into details of the plans and the existing results. The site covered is about one thousand one hundred square yards, with frontages of 96 feet to Dale Street, 102 feet 9 inches to Sir Thomas's Buildings, and 107 feet to Cumberland Street. The chief aim has been to obtain a thoroughly useful building, in all particulars, without sacrificing the aesthetic or sanitar}' conditions. The fronts towards Dale Street and Sir Thomas's Buildings, as well as the returned end in Cumberland Street, are built with Stourton stone, with outlooks from the principal apartments of the club proper. A suitable balustrade finishes the street line to the two main fronts, with lamp pedestals on a solid sloping retaining wall, forming areas. The ground-floor story is taken up by the grand entrance-hall, reception-room, morning-room, library, and writing-room. A speaker's balcony is so con- structed as to be accessible from the morning-room, and from it addresses can be delivered as occasion requires. The first floor is composed of a complete Corinthian order of polished stone. The principal windows are semicircular, and the spandrils of architrave are emphasized by sculpture in relief, representing twelve subjects of the arts and sciences, as follows : — CLUB-LAND. 75 ifi»fe. Architecture and Engineering, Sculptur>3 and Painting, Masonry and Carpentry, Navigation and Commerce, Agriculture and Manufacture, and Astronomy and Chemistry. A spectator's balcony is constructed in recesses of two fronts, 5 feet 6 inches wide, supported I i' ! on massive projecting consoles, boldly carved in relief The second floor, which is a repetition of the order below, is occu- pied by two spacious private dining - rooms, three billiard-rooms, and two card-rooms ; whilst the attic chieflj^ consists of extensive dormitories, separated alternately by the steward's and house- keeper's apartments, ser- vants' hall, kitchen, and accessories. The fronts of the building are agreeably relieved by carved panels in window dados, key-stones, spandrils, festoons, and capitals to columns. The grand entrance to the club proper is situated at the corners of Dale Street and Cumberland Street (nearest to the Town Hall), and is approached by a flight of marble steps, on either side being lamp pedestals, Peterhead granite pilasters, jambs richly carved counter-jambs, and carved capitals, surmounted by massive consoles and bold entablature and pediment, having the arms of the city and county, also the constitutional motto, carved in deep relief. On either side of the vestibule are flower stands, enclosed by ornamental oak and plate- Entrance to tlte Cont^ei'vative (Huh, LucrpooL 76 CLUB-LAND. glass screens. Tie vestibule folding-doors lead to the grand entranee-hall, which is subdivided into upper and lower vestibules by marble columns, and the floor is in marble mosaic. The steps, columns, pilasters, and dado of the entrance-hall are formed of massive stone from the Penmon quarries, near Beaumaris, a considerable portion of which is beautifully polished, imparting to it a brilliant finish, and showing to what a variety of decorative purposes this stone is applicable. There is a commodious committee-room in close proximity to the staircase hall. By a series of marble steps the grand staircase is reached, presenting a complete Tuscan order — deep walnut dado between pilasters, and continued all round up the staircase and along the landings. The floor of the landing has a deep margin of parquet work, alabaster, Italian marble, balustrade double columns, pilasters, and pedestals. The lighting of the second floor is obtained by three large windows from central area, also counter ceiling light, moulded bars, and all filled in with stained glass. On the ground floor there are the entrances to library and morning-room, passing through massive folding doors having glass panels and coloured glass fan-lights. The morning-room occupies two flanks of Dale Street and Sir Thomas's BuUdings (equal to an area of 60 feet by 25 feet). The coffee-room Las three noble bays, and in capacity represents about 100 feet by 28 feet, the height 18 feet 6 inches. The room is pleasingly broken into sections by single Corinthian columns, pilasters, with entablature and suitable cornice, deep walnut and cement dado. The smoke-room is treated like the coffee-room except the ceiling, which is deeply coved and intersected by geometrical ribs. The apartment has a large bay, and is lighted from Dale and Cumberland Streets. On the second floor are three spacious billiard-rooms, having four tables — one for use of strangers — two card-rooms, and two commodious private dining-rooms. On the occasion of our visit to the Conservative Club, it had just been newly decorated, and we were much struck by the artistic effect obtained in a comparatively economical method of treatment which entirely eschewed CLUB-LAND. 77 the use of gold-leaf. The panelled and traccried ceilings of the grand staircase and hall \yere painted in a subdued tone of greenish blue, the stylings in shades of citron and warm buffs, while the varied plaster enrich- ments and mouldings were of white porcelain enamel. The panelled walls Morning Room, Cor.servative Club, Liverpool. A Firrplacc, Conf