BOHEMIAN CLUBS
THE promotion of clubs became a very busy industry under the consulate of
Plancus. Of these promotions but few survive, and of these few none are
of the proprietary kind. A club, to survive, must have arisen in
response to an actual need, and out of the regular assembling of those
who are kindred spirits, or who are brought together by common
professional interests. The promoters of proprietary clubs are forced to
provide for their enterprises both a demand and a supply. Were the
gambling laws less drastic in this country, I can easily conceive that a
fortune might be made by the proprietor of a roulette and baccarat club.
But the promotion of ordinary social rialtos involves a considerable
amount of risk. I must have belonged to a dozen of these mushroom
institutions between 1870 and 1890, and I was on the committee of a
fourth of them. But whether we started with palatial premises or with an
unpretentious flat, the end came soon or late. Members seemed always to
have an insuperable diffidence about paying their subscriptions, and
proprietors had an equally insuperable objection to expelling defaulters.
For some years a gentleman named Russell displayed great pertinacity in
pursuing this particular line of promotion. Mr. Russell was, I believe,
the son of Henry Russell, the well-known ballad-singer. “Cheer, Boys,
Cheer” Russell the old man was called. By his rendering of that song and
other spirited compositions by Dr. Charles Mackay, he had added immensely
to his reputation, and greatly assisted that tide of emigration that was
then setting to the West. His son evidently did not believe in the
depopulation of his native land. He was keen on the construction of
places of comfortable resort which would induce people to remain right
here.
Russell’s first promotion might have proved a success had it been
properly financed and discreetly managed. It was founded at what was, or
should have been, the psychological moment. It had really fine premises,
splendid rooms, and an excellent service. It was situated at the corner
of a street running off the Strand, over against St. Mary-le-Strand. It
had a strong committee of well-known barristers and literary men, and it
was, very happily, called the Temple Club. But in his desire to swell
the roll of members, Russell encouraged laxity in the labours of the
committee. Men were elected who would have been blackballed at any West
End club, and men dropped in at night who were not members at all. The
latter circumstance was brought to my notice in a very unpleasant way.
I had been at a performance at the Strand Theatre, and in the foyer I had
met Mr. Vincent Boyes, a gentleman well known in literary and artistic
circles. Boyes was a most highly respectable person, the very pink of
propriety, and an inordinate stickler for _les convenances_. He was,
moreover, a man old enough to have been my father. I invited Boyes to
turn into the Temple Club for half an hour. He accepted. We entered the
club, I called for some refreshment, and after it had been served we were
joined by a man who was personally known to both of us. The new-comer
was a soldier of fortune, a bit of a swashbuckler, a traveller, and a
most amusing raconteur. It is unnecessary to mention his name in this
connection. He kept us in fits of laughter for an hour, during which
time both he and I had replenished the glass of the almost oppressively
respectable Boyes. At the conclusion of one of the swashbuckler’s
narratives, Boyes said gravely: “I’m sorry I can’t ask you fellows to
have a drink with me, but I’m not a member.” “Order away, old chap—no
more am I!” exclaimed the cheery raconteur. Boyes regarded the man with
a look of horror. He rose from his seat, took leave of me, and stalked
out of the place without flinging even a nod to the soldier of fortune.
That a man should have played the host to him in a club of which that
host was not a member was to Boyes the unforgivable offence.
In that same smoking-room there used frequently to meet a little coterie
of journalists, among whom were Tom Dunning, one of the most respected
men in “the Gallery”; H. H. S. Pearse, special correspondent of the
_Daily News_; and Charles Williams, war-correspondent of many dailies in
succession: for Charles, although an accomplished journalist, had an
Irish temper, and frequently “quarrelled with his bread and butter.” I
have met many eminent romancers in my time. Charlie Williams could have
given Baron Munchausen a stone and a beating. He spoke with a rasping
North of Ireland accent, and his campaign anecdotes gained greatly by the
stolid, matter-of-fact manner in which they were narrated. I recall now
one of his campaign reminiscences. It is a quaint experience of a
correspondent under fire.
“I had got under cover of a big boulder, and had tethered my horse beside
me. I was just munchin’ a beskit, when a shall burst on the rock, an’
shot the nosebag right off my charger. He had shoved his daumned ould
head out of cover.”
“And you?” asked Pearse.
“I just went on munchin’ my beskit.”
“But,” suggested Dunning, “if the shell took away the nosebag, it ought
to have carried away the beast’s head as well.”
“_It did_!” replied Williams, with the utmost sang-froid.
In the same place, but on another occasion, I heard him aver with the
utmost solemnity that he had been selected by the Liberal party to oppose
Sir Hugh M’Calmont Cairns, when that eminent man—afterwards Earl
Cairns—first stood for Belfast in the Conservative interest.
“Ef,” declared Charlie, “I’d stud against Sir Hugh when first he put up
for Bel-fawst, there’d be no such a personage now as Lord Cairns, Lord
High Chawncellor of England!”
He was a bit of a romancer, was Williams. It should be admitted,
however, that Williams did, at a later period in his career, stand as a
candidate for Imperial Parliament. He opposed Herbert Gladstone at
Leeds.
Another promotion of Russell’s was his club for ladies. As a sort of
major-domo for this establishment, Russell engaged the services of the
obese but obliging “Fatty” Coleman, who had some time previously left the
mild pursuits of a private life for the bustle of a public one. He was
assistant-manager of the Aquarium when Russell captured him. “Fatty” was
a broad and beaming man, of immense geniality, and in every sense a most
expansive person. As the presiding genius of a club for ladies he was
entirely in his element. But the time for what were irreverently called
“cock-and-hen” clubs had not fully come, and this venture of the
indefatigable promoter went the road to dusty death which had been taken
by the unfortunate gentleman’s other efforts to divert and refine human
society. The adventures of the ingenuous “Fatty” would make a volume of
their own. I last encountered him in a French watering-place, where he
was acting as a sort of manager’s representative to an hotel much
frequented by Englishmen. He had lost some of his flesh, but none of his
beaming bonhomie. There was a legend—I have never tested its
authenticity—that “Fatty” had at one time held a commission in a regiment
of the Guards.
While the social activities of Russell were at their busiest, the field
was entered by another club-promoter. He, however, after a short
experience became weary of well-doing. This was the Hon. John Colborne.
The Hon. John—“Dirty Jack” was his sobriquet in his regiment—had become
known to the public as the defendant in a criminal libel suit brought
against him by a moneylender. John had got deep into the books of the
remorseless Israelite, and, seeing no way of settling with him in coin,
determined to pay him in kind; so he sat down and wrote an extremely
diverting and trenchant little book entitled “The Vampires of London.”
Herein the methods of usury were exposed in a fierce light. This,
however, the wily Jew might have forgiven. What he could never forgive
was the ridicule which the gallant officer threw on his _ménage_. He had
invited his customer to accept the hospitality of his home, and now the
secrets of that home were held up to public ridicule and contempt. The
writer had not spared the members of the family. The very children of
Israel were sacrificed on the altar of John’s vengeance. The allurements
of Rachael, the schemes of “blear-eyed Leah,” were set forth with
fiendish particularity.
The trial came off at the Old Bailey, and the prosecutor was represented
by a rising barrister called Mr. Hardinge Giffard. That rising young
barrister has, in so far as the Bar is concerned, risen and set many a
day ago. He is now Lord Halsbury. The jury found for the persecuted
Hebrew. The Hon. John was sentenced to certain months in gaol as a
first-class misdemeanant, and ordered to pay a heavy fine. Defendants in
cases of the kind were not so closely watched in those days as they are
in the present year of grace, and when Mr. Colborne was called upon to
receive sentence he was nowhere to be found. Having a very clear notion
of the sort of verdict the jury would give, he had skipped over to France
earlier in the day.
John had carried with him across the Channel a new and enlarged edition
of “The Vampires,” and he at once set about issuing copies by post to
advertisers desiring to acquire a work about which the trial had set all
the town talking. To stop this fresh persecution, plaintiff was willing
to accept any sort of terms in reason. All that Mr. Colborne desired was
liberty to return to his native land, to obtain cancellation of the
excessive interest on his bills, and to live thenceforth in peace with
all men. His friends were enabled to arrange terms on this basis, and
John was free to prosecute those schemes for improving the condition of
his fellow-man to which he purposed to devote his energies. His schemes
were fated to “gang agley.” He joined the Egyptian army, and died in
action. It was probably the kind of death he would have wished, for,
however he may have proved wanting in other qualities, no one ever
doubted his high courage.
Chinery, in his club promotions, aimed at higher game. He had served as
Consul-General in a West African State, was a member of the Reform and
the Devonshire, was a convinced Liberal, and had a wonderfully good
connection. Owing to these circumstances, he was able to muster a much
stronger committee than others who had started before him in the club
industry. His first venture was the Empire Club. For this establishment
he had acquired what the auctioneers call “eligible” premises. He got a
lease of the house in Grafton Street, Piccadilly, which had been the last
home of Lord Brougham. Men like the late (and great) Marquis of Dufferin
became members. Viscount Bury was President of the club. A large
membership, including many leading colonials, was assured. The
management was reliable, the cellar unimpeachable, the house dinner
(always presided over by a colonial Governor-General or some other
potentate interested in our overseas Empire) became a welcome feature,
and a long spell of prosperity seemed to be ahead of us. But our hopes
did not reach fruition. Something went wrong with the accounts, and the
Empire closed its doors.
The festive Chinery, in no whit discouraged, started on fresh promotions.
None of them achieved the brilliant reputation of his original venture,
and Chinery himself died a broken man.
At one time I belonged to a club called the Wanderers, in compliment, I
suppose, to the Travellers, which was nearly opposite. The club-house
occupied the corner, on the other side of Pall Mall, corresponding to
that of the Athenæum. This was a comfortable and well-found
establishment. Tod Heatley, the wine-merchant, was supposed to be
interested in it; but it passed through many vicissitudes, and went under
many names, till it was eventually devoted to more profitable purposes.
Although the Wanderers had always other and higher pretensions, it was
essentially a Bohemian club. A mixture of such pretensions with such
actualities should be foredoomed to failure. In clubland the Wanderers
was known as “The Home for Lost Dogs.”
Chief among the genuine Bohemian clubs is the Savage Club, whose home is
on the Adelphi Terrace. Although the Bohemianism of this famous club is
mainly traditional, it preserves the good custom of general communication
among members, and encourages that spirit of playful geniality which is
inseparable from the idea of Bohemianism. But the Savage Club of to-day
is a very different thing from the same association as I knew it in 1870.
This, indeed, will be admitted by the official historian of the club, Mr.
Aaron Watson, whose admirable monograph on the Savage leaves nothing for
any future writer to tell concerning the genesis and early struggles of
the Savages.
I was a guest at the Savage on about half a dozen occasions in early
years, and I once passed a few hours with Christie Murray in its new and
more abiding home.
It was on a dull November day, and Pat Macdonald and I were walking
westward from Fleet Street. We had taken Covent Garden on our way.
“Let’s see if there’s anybody in the Savage Club,” he said casually, as
we left the central avenue of the market, under the shadow of St. Paul’s,
of the convent garden. To me the invitation was delightful. Often I had
heard of the celebrated resort of actors, authors, and musicians. With
the rest of the world, I had become impressed with the idea that election
to this coterie was extremely difficult. I had read with much interest
the first issue of “The Savage Club Papers,” and it came upon me as a
surprise that my friend Macdonald, whose contributions to literature were
of the most tenuous character, should be a member, and that he should
hold his membership so lightly.
Soon I discovered the reason, and this, by the way, is a rather
interesting morsel of history which has escaped the vigilant eye of Mr.
Aaron Watson. In those early and unsophisticated days, when a man was
put up for membership at the Savage, he was given the run of the club
until the date of the next election; and some men are by nature such
excellent company that a club existing above all other things for
congenial companionship will be apt to regard the claims of the
professionally unqualified candidate as above those of the highly
qualified man who happens to be a dull dog. This month of probation
afforded the good fellow—“the clubbable man” of Dr. Johnson—the
opportunity of asserting his claims; and although the committee was bound
by its first rule, which provided that only men professionally connected
with literature, the drama, or the arts, should be eligible, when they
got the chance of electing a man of Macdonald’s erudition, humour, and
powers of conversation, they were not likely to give that chance away.
It was a strange rule, but it worked well. In those days there was no
place in a club forced to forgather in a single room for men who could
not talk well and laugh loudly.
Under the guidance of my friend, I crossed to the right through the
inevitable slush and vegetable refuse, and we were soon mounting the
steps that led to Evans’s Hotel. With the celebrated Supper-Room beneath
the hotel I was already acquainted, but I had never before visited the
hotel. Nor did I for a moment imagine that the club which occupied so
large a place in my fancy and my esteem occupied rooms on licensed
premises. The Savage Club was in possession of the room on the left of
the hall as you entered the hotel. It had originally been the
coffee-room, and was one of the principal apartments in the building.
Evans’s Hotel is now the National Sporting Club. It was first the
Falstaff, and to fit it for its new purposes considerable structural
alterations were necessary, including a small private theatre, now
abolished, but the lines of the old home of the Savages can still be made
out.
There were very few members present on the occasion of this first visit
of mine, and I was reminded of the omnipresence of the legal profession
on finding that two of them were barristers. One was Mr. Jonas Levy,
Chairman of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway; and the other
Mr. Hume Williams—not the K.C. and Recorder of Norwich, but the father of
that learned gentleman. Another of those present was Henry S. Leigh, the
author of “The Carols of Cockayne”—a gentleman whom I came to know
intimately. He had the bitterest tongue and sweetest nature of any man I
ever met. The arrangements of the room testified to the simplicity of
taste observed by those primitive Savages. On the tables that lined the
walls were laid out clay pipes of the shape and size with which we
associate the name “churchwarden,” and I observed that Leigh was drinking
beer out of a pewter pot. There are no pewter pots in the Savage Club
nowadays, but neither are there any Leighs.
Whether it was the deadly dulness of the autumn afternoon or my own lack
of responsiveness, or whether it was that I had cherished exaggerated
expectations, or whether it was the result of a conspiracy of all these
causes, I cannot say, but my first visit to the Savage was a
disappointment and a disillusion. A year or more went by before I was
afforded an opportunity of reviewing my earlier impressions. This time I
had no cause to complain of the quality of the entertainment. “Jimmy”
Albery, who had recently made his name with “Two Roses”; H. S. Leigh; E.
A. Sothern; George Honey, the actor; Arthur Boyd Houghton, the artist;
and Andrew Halliday, the author and journalist-dramatist, were among
those present. My earlier impressions were at once erased. Never had I
been thrown into the society of a number of grown men where such a spirit
of fun, of _camaraderie_, of irresponsibility, and of the joy of life,
prevailed and sparkled. They talked in the spirit of schoolboys, but
with the point of seasoned wits. It was altogether a delightful
experience.
It was at the Savage Club that I first saw the game of poker played. The
game had been introduced by some Americans who enjoyed the privileges of
corresponding membership in respect of their connection with the Lotus
Club, New York. It was shortly made taboo by a ukase of the Portland and
Turf Clubs, and disappeared from the card-rooms of all the West End
clubs. I have always thought this rather a pity. Poker is one of the
best games to be got out of a pack. It calls into exercise other
faculties beside memory, judgment, skill, and a nice knowledge of the
value of cards. You want to be a bit of a physiognomist. Your own
expression should be under control, and your manner absolutely
inscrutable. It is in respect of their natural endowment in these
qualities that the Yankees make such good poker-players. I became
greatly interested in the game, and it was indirectly through my
instrumentality that its rules were first published in this country.
General Schenk drew up the enactments governing the science of the
pastime, at the request of Lady Waldegrave. Lady Waldegrave had them set
up in type at Strawberry Hill. She had a few dozen copies printed for
the use of her acquaintances. I became the proud possessor of one of
these copies. A friend of mine—or perhaps I should say a gentleman whom
up to that time I had regarded as a friend—induced me to lend him the
brochure to settle some dispute which had arisen between certain
correspondents on his paper; for my friend was a rather distinguished
writer on the sporting press. I never saw that book again, but to my
intense surprise and chagrin I found the whole of the Strawberry Hill
rules published in the columns of my friend’s paper, with their place of
origin given, and Lady Waldegrave’s authority cited.
The transaction did more harm to the gentleman who had betrayed my
confidence than it did to me. In those days an act of the kind would be
generally reprobated. Dog did not eat dog when Plancus was Consul.
Nowadays I am given to understand that it would be regarded as a bit of
smart journalism.
As I write, the memory of that first game of draw-poker comes vividly
back to me, and, singular as it may seem to you, it comes back to an
accompaniment of music. It was night, and in the supper-room below and
at the back the little pale-faced choristers in their Eton suits were
singing glees for Paddy Green’s customers. These vocal exercises were
resented by grumpy members of the club, but to me distance enhanced the
beauty of the singing, and I never hear poker mentioned now, such is the
strange influence of the association of ideas, that I do not instantly
hear the far-away voices of boys singing:
“Oh, who will o’er the downs with me—
Oh, who will with me ride?
Oh, who will up and follow me
To win a blooming bride?”
Poor words, perhaps; set to old-fashioned glee music, no doubt;
introducing in the last line a word rendered vulgar by a merciless
modernity, admitted. But, Lord! how sweet the memory of them comes back
to me over the years—how inexpressibly sweet, yet how incalculably sad!
for nothing but the haunting memory is left. My contemporaries of that
time have, nearly all of them, satisfied their curiosity concerning the
Great Secret. The pale-faced choir boys have grown to manhood,
developing, perhaps, into “fat and greasy citizens.” Only the song
remains.
Baker Green, editor of the _Morning Post_, was a member of the Savage at
a somewhat later date. He was a great hulking figure of a man, with a
terrible mordant humour of his own, and a devilish solemn manner of
stating the most absurd propositions. His monocle was as inseparable
from him as that of Sir Squire Bancroft. His peculiar style of humour
may be best illustrated anecdotically.
A member who loomed large in the life of the club in the days when the
Imperial Institute was being nursed into life was Somers Vine. In
respect of his services rendered to the Institute the excellent man
received the honour of knighthood. It is to be feared that Baker Green
had no great liking for Sir Somers. Of this sentiment on the part of his
fellow-member, Vine, it must be supposed, had no inkling, for one
evening, bubbling over with hospitality and brotherly kindness, he
approached Baker Green in the club.
“I wish, my dear fellow, you would come down and spend a week at my place
at Chislehurst,” he said.
“Delighted,” replied the other.
“I live at Vine Court,” explained the knight.
Baker Green took out his pocket-book as if to make a note.
“What Court did you say?” he asked innocently.
“Vine Court,” replied the pleased Sir Somers.
“Yes—er—_and what number_?” inquired the remorseless Green.
It is perhaps needless to add that the proposed visit was never paid.
Sir W. S. Gilbert was an occasional visitor at the supper-rooms beneath
the club. The incident I am about to relate is scarcely relevant to the
subject with which the present chapter deals, but as it happened on the
premises, so to speak, I may be pardoned for introducing it. At Evans’s
it was the custom to pay for your supper to a waiter who stood at the
door—a lightning calculator who, by the means of a legerdemain which was
all his own, was able to add about 25 per cent. to every bill without the
victim being able to see exactly how it was done. Gilbert rather
resented the arithmetical methods of “John,” and at last came to the
determination to pay “John” off by tipping him a penny instead of the
sixpence which had hitherto been his _pourboire_. On the night on which
his resolution was to be carried into effect his bill amounted to exactly
hall a crown. He handed that coin to the magic calculator, and then
handed his tip of one penny. “John” looked at the coin, smiled a
deprecating smile, and, handing it back to the donor, said in a tone of
subdued solicitude: “Perhaps you may be going over a bridge, sir.”
There was a toll levied on those crossing Waterloo Bridge in those days.
The retort hit in two ways. The first suggestion was that the gentleman
lived at the other side of the water; and the second, that he had been
reduced to his last copper. The comment was, in fact, quite
Gilbertian—as “John” himself was perfectly well aware.
The doyen of the club was W. B. Tegetmier. He seemed a survival almost
of another age. For he was the same W. B. Tegetmier to whom Darwin, in
his “Descent of Man,” makes so many acknowledgments of assistance in
connection with experiments in the breeding of pigeons. He was one of
the first men to use the bicycle as a means of getting to and from his
office at the _Field_, which was then in the Strand. He must have been
well over sixty at the time, and he continued to use the machine till he
was well over seventy. A wonderful, wiry, active, peppery-tempered
little man with a kindly expression indicating a heart more kindly still.
Not that he could not say a hard thing when he thought it absolutely
necessary. By his intimates he was always called “Teg.” But should any
man who was not an intimate presume thus to address him, he would quickly
resent the familiarity. Thus, on one occasion Mr. Bowles, a barrister
and brother-Savage, finding the little naturalist there, addressed him by
his sobriquet.
“Hallo, how are you, Teg?” said the devoted man, bent on geniality.
“Quite well, thank you—Po!” answered the other icily.
I had the honour of attending two of the Saturday dinners of the Savage
Club. There was nothing quite like those dinners then; there has been
nothing quite like them since. No after-dinner speeches were permitted,
but when the meal—a very simple one—was at an end, the members set about
entertaining their guests and themselves by song, anecdote, recitation,
imitation, and playing upon instruments—for some of the finest
instrumentalists in England were Savages. Old George Grossmith—father of
George Grossmith, the well-known illustrator of Gilbert and Sullivan
opera and platform entertainer, and grandfather of George Grossmith
junior of the Gaiety Theatre—gave us a reading from the first chapter of
“Bleak House”; Signor Foli sang “Simon the Cellarer”; Oscar Barrett and
John Radcliffe fluted to us; Hamilton Clarke presided at the piano;
Charles Collette pattered; George Honey gave some side-splitting stories,
ably seconded in this department by dear old “Lal” Brough. The whole
thing went with a “zip.” There was no hesitation on the part of
performers; the neophyte who “broke down” in his performance was as
heartily cheered as the veteran who rendered a passage reserved for such
a gathering. Indeed, the feeling that one was listening to an
entertainment which the public could not have for love or money added not
a little, I imagine, to the sense of pleasure in those who took part in
the post-prandial entertainment.
The Arundel and the Wigwam were conducted much on Savage lines, and the
Junior Garrick, to which I have made reference in an earlier chapter, was
decidedly a Bohemian institution. It had two periods. It originally
existed as a members’ club; but a large number of influential members
quarrelled with the committee and withdrew. The financial position of
those who remained was not sufficiently strong to justify them in
continuing it. And it seemed a pity to close the doors; for the club
occupied a fine house at the corner of Adam Street and Adelphi Terrace.
It remains an excellent example of Adam architecture, and contains some
magnificent Adam ceilings and cornices. The drawing-room on the
first-floor, with its unrivalled view of the Thames, is a spacious and
well-proportioned apartment. The room beneath it was our dining-room,
and the billiard-room was at the top of the house.
Now, whereas the Savage never suffered from any schism, the Junior
Garrick was the victim of no less than two. The first while it was a
members’ club; the second, when it had become a proprietary club. The
first offshoot organized itself into the Green-Room Club, which
flourishes to this day, and is at present housed in Leicester Square,
nearly facing the Alhambra. This is now the principal club, entirely
composed of stage professionals. The second offshoot of the old
“J.G.C.,” as we liked to call it, was the Yorick. I know the Yorick
still exists, for I recently saw in the daily Press a letter dated from
that address.
In these days the Bohemian thinks it no longer good form to roam around
the town attired in the negligent seediness of the impecunious student of
the Quartier Latin. Unkempt locks, extreme squalor, and dirty
finger-nails, are no longer regarded as essential characteristics of the
social Bohemian. In the process of evolution we have now arrived at the
evening-dress Bohemian. The Eccentric Club at Piccadilly Circus is his
chosen resort. The phenomenal success of this club is attributable to
the fact that the principal members of the original committee were
business men; that it has been enabled to develop on a very small
capital—some £700, I think; and that it was so fortunate as to acquire
the premises, furniture, and fixtures, of an expiring institution at a
ridiculously small figure.
This flourishing society grew out of the ashes of the old Coventry, a
proprietary club which existed for some years in Coventry Street. When
that rather cosy resort went the way of all proprietary clubs, a few of
us met at Rule’s, in Maiden Lane, with a view of seeing whether a
sufficient number of old Coventry members could not be induced to found
another social centre in which men who had for some years come to regard
the Coventry as their ordinary place of meeting. The idea caught on.
The title “Eccentric” was decided on at our very first meeting. The old
premises of the Pelican were to be had on reasonable terms. And we
commenced, with a good list of members, in those sacred precincts. Among
the actors who joined were “Lal” Brough and Arthur Roberts, and among the
artists were Phil May, Julian Price, and Paleologue. The last-named
gentleman adorned the walls of the club-house with some very spirited
mural decorations. So spirited, indeed, was the fresco from the atelier
of Paleologue, that when the club gave what were called “ladies’ days”
Paleologue’s canvas had to be removed for the occasion. Knowing who some
of the ladies were, and understanding something also of the
characteristics of the committee-men who succeeded in carrying this
proposal, the arrangement always struck me as being particularly quaint
and insular.
One of the paintings of Julian Price was an inimitably clever likeness of
Drummond, our head-waiter. No man was ever half so respectable as
Drummond looked; and Price has caught his mild, inquiring, deprecatory
expression to a nicety. His trim black whispers increase the pallor of
his face, and, to mark the members’ appreciation of his high reputation,
the artist has endowed him with a halo. We had taken Drummond on from
the Raleigh Club. In carrying out his duties, Drummond was unaffected by
the circumstances passing around him. The most mirth-provoking joke
might be let off in his presence, but Drummond never turned a hair. When
joking took a practical turn, and when he became the subject of the joke,
affairs took on another complexion. And Drummond’s reason for resigning
at the Raleigh was—or was said to be—that Lord Marcus Beresford, in an
access of boyish irresponsibility, had put Drummond into the ice-chest,
shut the lid on him, and had then forgotten all about him. Fortunately,
another waiter had occasion to go to the refrigerator before a fatality
occurred, or poor Drummond would have become just so many pounds of
frozen meat.
This extraordinary man, notwithstanding his serious mood, was the most
painstaking, obliging, and solicitous club waiter I have ever met. He
understood the gastronomic tastes of every member, and was infinitely
desirous of giving satisfaction. He had one or two curious methods of
pronunciation; I believe they had been imposed on him by facetious
members of the Raleigh. Thus, he always said “sooty” instead of “sauté.”
It became quite a habit to ask Drummond what potatoes were ready, for the
sake of hearing his quaint version: “What potatoes to-day, Drummond?”
“Potatoes, sir? There’s biled, mashed, and sooty.”
Drummond’s reason for accepting service at clubs which remained open all
night long, and frequently until four and five in the morning, was a
singular one. It seems that he was a proper religious man, and held the
office of deacon in connection with some conventicle in the suburbs. In
accepting a position in a club where all-night sittings were the rule, he
was free for every Sunday. I have seldom heard of a man sacrificing more
for his religion—have you? If Drummond be still alive, he must be an old
man by now, and may his declining years be peaceful! If he be dead, may
the turf lie light on him!
The safeguard of a strong committee will never stand between a
proprietary club and eventual extinction. One of the strongest
committees I have known was got together by Mr. Earn Murray when he
founded the United Arts Club. The promoter was enterprising, sanguine,
and ambitious. But the only two private members of the club who ever
succeeded in achieving notoriety were “Old Solomon,” the racing tipster,
and Percy Lefroy, the murderer of Mr. Gold.
Our legislature, which always does things in a grandmotherly sort of way,
thought to purify the West End and suppress the Cyprian by closing the
night-houses in the Haymarket and in the streets impinging thereon. The
abolishing of those squalid dens did not, indeed, result in her
disestablishment, but in the betterment of the conditions under which she
carried on her sad but—if the unco’ guid will permit the use of the word
in this relation—necessary calling. Phryne, like the poor, we shall
always have with us. The obvious duty of society, therefore, is not to
take measures for her suppression, but measures for her amelioration and
regulation. School Board education and an acquired knowledge of the laws
of hygiene have done much for her. When one compares the toilet, the
costume, and the manners, of the _demi-mondaines_ who nightly frequent
the back of the dress-circle of certain houses of entertainment with the
tawdry, over-painted, giggling, solicitous creature of thirty years ago,
then, and only then, can one understand the gratifying change that has
taken place in the habitude of this inalienable excrescence on the body
politic.
When the night-houses were closed, and the police instructed to keep the
West End streets clear at midnight, there opened, here and there, clubs
for the accommodation of Phryne and her friends. So that the closing of
the frowsy saloons in which she had been wont to congregate was a
blessing in disguise, and, indeed, fixes the date of the gratifying
amelioration in her manners. For in the clubs a certain decorum was
observed even in the ballroom, which afforded the _raison d’être_ of
social rialtos of the small-hours. The proprietors saw to that; for the
recurrence of disturbance or the report of sinister incidents might
occasion a raid. Election to these clubs was not, as may well be
supposed, a very difficult matter. One was proposed on the doorstep,
seconded on the hall mat, and unanimously elected a member in the
cloak-room. But the men “on the door” knew perfectly well whom to admit
and whom to dismiss. The bully, the exploiter of frailty, the
_souteneur_, were kept ruthlessly outside. Thus the proprietor protected
at once himself and his customers. He ran a sort of _bon marché_ in
fact, where no middleman operated between the goods and the patrons of
the exchange.
The children of Israel—whose mission in these later years is to be both
our paymasters and our panders—were particularly zealous in the promotion
of this kind of _réunion bohémiene_. Belasco opened the Supper Club in
Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road. Sam Cohen provided the “Spooferies”
in Maiden Lane. He had previously run the concern as a baccarat club,
its useful career in that direction having ended in a raid, and a
prosecution of the greatest number of persons ever called up at Bow
Street to answer a single charge. Sam must have been a bit of a cynic in
his way, for the house in which the “Spooferies” met was next door to the
Jewish synagogue. A Hebrew named Foster established a similar place in
Long Acre, and a coreligionist of his called Moore—a euphuism, I
apprehend, for Moses—opened the Waterloo Club in Waterloo Place, Pall
Mall. There were others. But those I have named are the only ones of
which I had a personal knowledge. This admission may, I fear, horrify
those readers who are of the dawn of the century. I can assure my
prudish friends, however, that were I mischievously inclined I could give
them a list of names of persons who were at one time young men about
town, but who now occupy prominent positions in the Senate, at the Bar,
and, generally speaking, in the public life of the country, who were to
be seen, in the jocund years, thoroughly enjoying themselves in such
Bohemian society as was to be found at the “Spooferies” or the Supper
Club.
I can see—in my mind’s eye, Horatio—some adipose, sleek, and eminently
respectable householder, some Member of Parliament, London County
Councillor, West End physician, fashionable painter, or what not, who has
taken up these reminiscences to while away an hour. I can see this staid
citizen, this respectable family man, this stickler for morality, this
Justice of the Peace, and all the rest of it, squirming as he reads the
above passage. With a blush he lays down the book, and, looking
suspiciously around, murmurs: “Damn the fellow, he means _me_!” Yes, I
undoubtedly mean _you_. But you may read on without apprehension, my
excellent friend, for I am the soul of discretion. Your early trespasses
are safe. In return I would only ask this: that, remembering that you
and I have sown some wild-oats in the same fallows, you should exercise a
little more common-sense and charity in dealing with the peccadilloes of
your juniors, and that, generally speaking, you would carry yourself with
a less pompous air of conscious rectitude.