history;" and the mutations among what Mr. Thackeray affectionately
called its "rich cluster of brown taverns" are sundry and manifest.
Its coffee-houses proper have almost disappeared, even in name. Yet, in
the last century, in one short street of Covent-Garden--Russell-street--
flourished three of the most celebrated coffee-houses in the
metropolis: Will's, Button's, and Tom's. The reader need not be
reminded of Will's, with Dryden, the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, and its
wits' room on the first floor; or Button's, with its lion's head
letter-box, and the young poets in the back room. Tom's, No. 17, on
the north side of Russell-street, and of somewhat later date, was
taken down in 1865. The premises remained with little alteration, long
after they ceased to be a coffee-house. It was named after its
original proprietor, Thomas West, who, Nov. 26, 1722, threw himself,
in a delirium, from the second-floor window into the street, and died
immediately (_Historical Register_ for 1722). The upper portion of the
premises was the coffee-house, under which lived T. Lewis, the
bookseller, the original publisher, in 1711, of Pope's _Essay on
Criticism_. The usual frequenters upstairs may be judged of by the
following passage in the _Journey through England_, first edit.,
1714:--"After the play, the best company generally go to Tom's and
Will's coffee-houses, near adjoining, where there is playing at piquet
and the best conversation till midnight. Here you will see blue and
green ribbons, with stars, sitting familiarly and talking with the
same freedom as if they had left their quality and degrees of distance
at home; and a stranger tastes with pleasure the universal liberty of
speech of the English nation. And in all the coffee-houses you have
not only the foreign prints, but several English ones, with the
foreign occurrences, besides papers of morality and party disputes."
Such were the Augustan delights of a memorable coffee-house of the
reign of Queen Anne. Of this period is a recollection of Mr. Grignon,
sen., having seen the "balcony of Tom's crowded with noblemen in their
stars and garters, drinking their tea and coffee exposed to the
people." We find an entry in Walpole's _Letters_, 1745:--"A
gentleman, I don't know who, the other night at Tom's coffee-house,
said, on Lord Baltimore refusing to come into the Admiralty because
Lord Vere Beauclerk had the precedence, 'it put him in mind of
Pinkethman's petition in the _Spectator_, where he complains that
formerly he used to act second chair in "Diocletian," but now he was
reduced to dance fifth flower-pot.'"
In 1764 there appears to have been formed here, by a guinea
subscription, a Club of nearly 700 members--the nobility, foreign
ministers, gentry, and men of genius of the age; the large front room
on the first floor being the card-room. The Club flourished, so that
in 1768, "having considerably enlarged itself of late," Thomas Haines,
the then proprietor, took in the front room of the next house westward
as a coffee-room. The front room of No. 17 was then appropriated
exclusively as a card-room for the subscription club, each member
paying one guinea annually; the adjoining apartment being used as a
conversation-room. The subscription-books are before us, and here we
find in the long list the names of Sir Thomas Robinson, Bart., who was
designated "Long Sir Thomas Robinson," to distinguish him from his
namesake, Sir Thomas Robinson, created Lord Grantham in 1761. "Long
Tom," as the former was familiarly called, was a Commissioner of
Excise and Governor of Barbadoes. He was a sad bore, especially to the
Duke of Newcastle, the minister, who resided in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
However, he gave rise to some smart things. Lord Chesterfield being
asked by the latter Baronet to write some verses upon him, immediately
produced this epigram:--
"Unlike my subject now shall be my song,
It shall be witty, and it shan't be long."
Long Sir Thomas distinguished himself in this odd manner. When our
Sovereign had not dropped the folly of calling himself "King of
France," and it was customary at the Coronation of an English
Sovereign to have fictitious Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy to
represent the vassalage of France, Sir Thomas was selected to fill the
second mock dignity at the coronation of George III., to which
Churchill alludes in his _Ghost_; but he assigns a wrong dukedom to
Sir Thomas:
"Could Satire not (though doubtful since
Whether he plumber is or prince)
Tell of a simple Knight's advance,
To be a doughty peer of France?
Tell how he did a dukedom gain,
And Robinson was Aquitain."
Of the two Sir Thomas Robinsons, one was tall and thin, the other
short and fat: "I can't imagine," said Lady Townshend, "why the one
should be preferred to the other; I see but little difference between
them: the one is as broad as the other is long."
Next on the books is Samuel Foote, who, after the decline of Tom's,
was mostly to be seen at the Bedford. Then comes Arthur Murphy, lately
called to the Bar; David Garrick, who then lived in Southampton-street,
(though he was not a clubbable man); John Beard, the fine tenor
singer; John Webb; Sir Richard Glynne; Robert Gosling, the banker;
Colonel Eyre, of Marylebone; Earl Percy; Sir John Fielding, the
justice; Paul Methuen, of Corsham; Richard Clive; the great Lord
Clive; the eccentric Duke of Montagu; Sir Fletcher Norton, the
ill-mannered; Lord Edward Bentinck; Dr. Samuel Johnson; the
celebrated Marquis of Granby; Sir F. B. Delaval, the friend of Foote;
William Tooke, the solicitor; the Hon. Charles Howard, sen.; the Duke
of Northumberland; Sir Francis Gosling; the Earl of Anglesey; Sir
George Brydges Rodney (afterwards Lord Rodney); Peter Burrell; Walpole
Eyre; Lewis Mendez; Dr. Swinney; Stephen Lushington; John Gunning;
Henry Brougham, father of Lord Brougham; Dr. Macnamara; Sir John
Trevelyan; Captain Donellan; Sir W. Wolseley; Walter Chetwynd;
Viscount Gage, etc.;--Thomas Payne, Esq., of Leicester House; Dr.
Schomberg, of Pall-Mall; George Colman, the dramatist, then living in
Great Queen Street; Dr. Dodd, in Southampton-row; James Payne, the
architect, Salisbury-street, which he rebuilt; William Bowyer, the
printer, Bloomsbury-square; Count Bruhl, the Polish Minister; Dr.
Goldsmith, Temple (1773), etc. Many a noted name in the list of 700 is
very suggestive of the gay society of the period. Among the Club
musters, Samuel Foote, Sir Thomas Robinson, and Dr. Dodd are very
frequent: indeed, Sir Thomas seems to have been something like a
proposer-general.
Tom's appears to have been a general coffee-house; for in the parish
books of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, is the entry:--
£. s. d.
46 Dishes of chocolate 1 3 0
34 Jelleys 0 17 0
Biscuits 0 2 3
Mr. Haines, the landlord, was succeeded by his son. Thomas, whose
daughter is living, at the age of eighty-four, and possesses a
portrait, by Dance, of the elder Haines, who, from his polite address,
was called among the Club "Lord Chesterfield." The above lady has
also a portrait, in oil, of the younger Haines, by Grignon.
The coffee-house business closed in 1814, about which time the
premises were first occupied by Mr. William Till, the numismatist. The
card-room remained in its original condition; "And, here," wrote Mr.
Till, many years since, "the tables on which I exhibit my coins are
those which were used by the exalted characters whose names are
extracted from books of the Club, still in possession of the
proprietress of the house." On the death of Mr. Till, Mr. Webster
succeeded to the tenancy and collection of coins and medals, which he
removed to No. 6, Henrietta-street, shortly before the old premises in
Russell-street were taken down. He possesses, by marriage with the
grand-daughter of the second Mr. Haines, the old Club books, as well
as the curious memorial, the snuffbox of the Club-room. It is of large
size, and fine tortoiseshell; upon the lid, in high relief, in silver,
are the portraits of Charles I. and Queen Anne; the Boscobel oak, with
Charles II. amid its branches; and at the foot of the tree, on a
silver plate, is inscribed Thomas Haines. At Will's the small wits
grew conceited if they dipped but into Mr. Dryden's snuffbox; and at
Tom's the box may have enjoyed a similar shrine-like reputation. It is
nearly all that remains of the old coffee-house in Covent Garden, save
the recollection of the names of the interesting personages who once
thronged its rooms in stars and garters, but who bore more
intellectual distinctions to entitle them to remembrance.
THE KING OF CLUBS.
This ambitious title was given to a Club set on foot about the year
1801. Its founder was Bobus Smith, the brother of the great Sydney
Smith. The Club at first consisted of a small knot of lawyers, a few
literary characters, and visitors generally introduced by those who
took the chief part in the conversation, and seemingly selected for
the faculty of being good listeners.
The King of Clubs sat on Saturday of each month, at the Crown and
Anchor Tavern, in the Strand, which, at that time, was a nest of
boxes, each containing its Club, and affording excellent cheer, though
latterly desecrated by indifferent dinners and very questionable wine.
The Club was a grand talk, the prevalent topics being books and
authors; politics quite excluded. Bobus Smith was a convivial member
in every respect but that of wine; he was but a frigid worshipper of
Bacchus, but he had great humour and a species of wit, that revelled
amidst the strangest and most grotesque combinations. His manner was
somewhat of the bow-wow kind; and when he pounced upon a disputatious
and dull blockhead, he made sad work of him.
Then there was Richard Sharp, a partner of Boddington's West India
house, who subsequently sat in Parliament for Port Arlington, in
Ireland. He was a thinker and a reasoner, and occasionally
controversial, but overflowed with useful and agreeable knowledge, and
an unfailing stream of delightful information. He was celebrated for
his conversational talents, and hence called "Conversation Sharp;" and
he often had for his guest Sir James Mackintosh, with whom he lived
in habits of intimacy. Mr. Sharp published a volume of _Letters and
Essays in Prose and Verse_, of which a third edition appeared in 1834.
Sharp was confessedly the first of the King of Clubs. He indulged but
rarely in pleasantry; but when anything of the kind escaped him, it
was sure to tell. One evening, at the Club, there was a talk about
Tweddel, then a student in the Temple, who had greatly distinguished
himself at Cambridge, and was the Senior Wrangler and medallist of his
year. Tweddel was not a little intoxicated with his University
triumphs; which led Sharp to remark, "Poor fellow! he will soon find
that his Cambridge medal will not pass as current coin in London."
Other frequent attendants were Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger);
Rogers, the poet; honest John Allen, brother of the bluest of the
blues, Lady Mackintosh; M. Dumont, the French emigrant, who would
sometimes recite his friend the Abbé de Lisle's verses, with
interminable perseverance, in spite of yawns and other symptoms of
dislike, which his own politeness (for he was a highly-bred man)
forbade him to interpret into the absence of it in others.
In this respect, however, he was outdone by Wishart, who was nothing
but quotations, and whose prosing, when he did converse, was like the
torpedo's touch to all pleasing and lively converse. Charles Butler,
too, in his long life, had treasured up a considerable assortment of
reminiscences, which, when once set going, came out like a torrent
upon you; it was a sort of shower-bath, that inundated you the moment
you pulled the string.
Curran, the boast of the Irish bar, came to the King of Clubs, during
a short visit to London; there he met Erskine, but the meeting was not
congenial. Curran gave some odd sketches of a Serjeant Kelly, at the
Irish bar, whose whimsical peculiarity was an inveterate habit of
drawing conclusions directly at variance with his premises. He had
acquired the name of Counsellor Therefore. Curran said he was a
perfect human personification of a _non sequitur_. For instance,
meeting Curran, on Sunday, near St. Patrick's, he said to him, "The
Archbishop gave us an excellent discourse this morning. It was well
written and well delivered; _therefore_, I shall make a point of being
at the Four Courts to-morrow at ten." At another time, observing to a
person whom he met in the street, "What a delightful morning this is
for walking!" he finished his remark on the weather by saying,
"Therefore I will go home as soon as I can, and stir out no more the
whole day." His speeches in Court were interminable, and his
_therefore_ kept him going on, though every one thought he had done.
"This is so clear a point, gentlemen," he would tell the jury, "that I
am convinced you felt it to be so the very moment I stated it. I
should pay your understandings but a poor compliment to dwell on it
for a minute; _therefore_, I will now proceed to explain it to you as
minutely as possible."
Curran seemed to have no very profound respect for the character and
talents of Lord Norbury. Curran went down to Carlow on a special
retainer; it was in a case of ejectment. A new Court-house had been
recently erected, and it was found extremely inconvenient, from the
echo, which reverberated the mingled voices of judge, counsel, crier,
to such a degree, as to produce constant confusion, and great
interruption of business. Lord Norbury had been, if possible, more
noisy that morning than ever. Whilst he was arguing a point with the
counsel, and talking very loudly, an ass brayed vehemently from the
street, adjoining the Court-house, to the instant interruption of the
Chief-Justice. "What noise is that?" exclaimed his Lordship. "Oh, my
Lord," retorted Curran, "it is merely the echo of the Court."
WATIER'S CLUB.
This Club was the great Macao gambling-house of a very short period.
Mr. Thomas Raikes, who understood all its mysteries, describes it as
very genteel, adding that no one ever quarrelled there. "The Club did
not endure for twelve years altogether; the pace was too quick to
last: it died a natural death in 1819, from the paralysed state of its
members; the house was then taken by a set of blacklegs, who
instituted a common bank for gambling. To form an idea of the ruin
produced by this short-lived establishment among men whom I have so
intimately known, a cursory glance to the past suggests the following
melancholy list, which only forms a part of its deplorable results....
None of the dead reached the average age of man."
Among the members was Bligh, a notorious madman, of whom Mr. Raikes
relates:--"One evening at the Macao table, when the play was very
deep, Brummell having lost a considerable stake, affected, in his
farcical way, a very tragic air, and cried out, 'Waiter, bring me a
flat candlestick and a pistol.' Upon which Bligh, who was sitting
opposite to him, calmly produced two loaded pistols from his coat
pocket, which he placed on the table, and said, 'Mr. Brummell, if you
are really desirous to put a period to your existence, I am extremely
happy to offer you the means without troubling the waiter.' The effect
upon those present may easily be imagined, at finding themselves in
the company of a known madman who had loaded weapons about him."
MR. CANNING AT THE CLIFFORD-STREET CLUB.
There was in the last century, a debating Club, which boasted for a
short time, a brighter assemblage of talent than is usually found to
flourish in societies of this description. Its meetings, which took
place once a month, were held at the Clifford-street Coffee-house, at
the corner of Bond-street. The debaters were chiefly Mackintosh,
Richard Sharp, a Mr. Ollyett Woodhouse; Charles Moore, son of the
celebrated traveller; and Lord Charles Townshend, fourth son of the
facetious and eccentric Marquis. The great primitive principles of
civil government were then much discussed. It was before the French
Revolution had "brought death into the world and all its woe."
At the Clifford-street Society, Canning generally took "the liberal
side" of the above questions. His earliest prepossessions are well
known to have inclined to this side; but he evidently considered the
Society rather as a school of rhetorical exercise, where he might
acquire the use of his weapons, than a forum, where the serious
profession of opinions, and a consistent adherence to them, could be
fairly expected of him. One evening, the question for debate was "the
justice and expediency of resuming the ecclesiastical property of
France." Before the debate began, Canning had taken some pains to
ascertain on which side the majority of the members seemed inclined to
speak; and finding that they were generally in favour of the
resumption, he expressed his fears that the unanimity of sentiment
would spoil the discussion; so, he volunteered to speak against it. He
did so, and it was a speech of considerable power, chiefly in reply to
the opener, who, in a set discourse of some length, had asserted the
revocable conditions of the property of the church, which, being
created, he said, by the state, remained ever after at its
disposition. Canning denied the proposition that ecclesiastical
property was the creature of the state. He contended that though it
might be so in a new government, yet, speaking historically, the great
as well as lesser ecclesiastical fiefs were coeval with the crown of
France, frequently strong enough to maintain fierce and not unequal
conflicts with it, and certainly not in their origin emanations from
its bounty. The church, he said, came well dowered to the state, who
was now suing for a divorce, in order to plunder her pin-money. He
contended that the church property stood upon the same basis, and
ought to be protected by the same sanctions, as private property. It
was originally, he said, accumulated from the successive donations
with which a pious benevolence ought to enrich the fountains, from
which spiritual comfort ought to flow to the wretched, the poor, the
forsaken. He drew an energetic sketch of Mirabeau, the proposer of the
measure, by whose side, he remarked, the worst characters in history,
the Cleons, the Catilines, the Cetheguses, of antiquity, would
brighten into virtue. He said that the character of the lawgiver
tainted the law. It was proffered to the National Assembly by hands
hot and reeking from the cells of sensuality and vice; it came from a
brain inflamed and distended into frenzy by habitual debauchery. These
are, of course, but faint sketches of this very early specimen of
Canning as a speaker. The humour and irony with which he delighted his
auditors are indescribable. He displayed the same powers of pleasantry
which, in maturer years, enlivened the dulness of debate, and softened
the asperities of party. He was, indeed, less rapid, and more measured
in his elevation; sometimes impeded in flow, probably, from too
fastidious a selection of words; but it was impossible not to predict
that at no very distant period he would rise into high distinction as
a parliamentary speaker.
Canning was then the most handsome man about town; and his fine
countenance glowed, as he spoke, with every sentiment which he
uttered. It was customary during the debates at the Clifford-street
Senate, for pots of porter to be introduced by way of refreshment.
Canning, in his eloquent tirade against Mirabeau, handled the peculiar
style of the Count's oratory with great severity. The president had,
during this part of Canning's speech, given a signal for a pot of
porter, which had been brought in and placed before him. It served
Canning for an illustration. "Sir," said he, "much has been said about
the gigantic powers of Mirabeau; let us not be carried away by the
false jargon of his philosophy, or imagine that deep political wisdom
resides in tumid and decorated diction. To the steady eye of a
sagacious criticism, the eloquence of Mirabeau will appear to be as
empty and vapid as his patriotism. It is like the beverage that stands
so invitingly before you,--foam and froth at the top, heavy and muddy
within."
ECCENTRIC CLUBS.
In Ward's _Secret History_, we read of the Golden Fleece Club, a
rattle-brained society, originally held at a house in Cornhill, so
entitled. They were a merry company of tippling citizens and jocular
change-brokers, who every night washed away their consciences with
claret, that the mental alienations and fallacious assurances the one
had used in their shops, and the deceitful wheedling and stock-jobbing
honesty by which the other had outwitted their merchants, might be no
impediment to their night's rest; but that they might sleep without
repentance, and rise next day with a strong propensity to the same
practices. Each member on his admission had a characteristic name
assigned to him; as, Sir Timothy Addlepate, Sir Nimmy Sneer, Sir
Talkative Do-little, Sir Skinny Fretwell, Sir Rumbus Rattle, Sir Boozy
Prate-all, Sir Nicholas Ninny Sipall, Sir Gregory Growler, Sir
Pay-little, etc. The Club flourished until the decease of the leading
member; when the dull fraternity, for want of a merry leader, and
neglecting to be shaved and blooded, fell into the dumps, gave up
their nocturnal revels, forsook frenzied claret for sober water-gruel,
and a cessation of bumpers was proclaimed, till those who were sick
recovered their health, and others their senses; and then, the better
to prevent their debasement being known, they adjourned their Society
from the Fleece in Cornhill to the Three Tuns in Southwark, that they
might be more retired from the bows and compliments of the London
apprentices, who used to salute the noble knights by their titles, as
they passed to and fro.
Another of Ward's humorous Sketches is that of the Lying Club, at the
Bell Tavern, in Westminster, with Sir Harry Blunt for its chairman.
The Clubs were fruitful sources of satire to the _Spectator_. He is
merry on the Mummers, the Twopenny, the Ugly, the Fighting, the
Fringe-Glove, the Humdrum, the Doldrum, and the Lovers; on Clubs of
Fat Men, Tall Men, and One-Eyed Men, and of Men who lived in the same
Street.
The pretentious character of the Clubs of Queen Anne's time, and the
historical importance attached to their annals, are humorously
satirized in the following sketch of the Everlasting Club, to which,
in those days, if a man were an idle, worthless fellow, who neglected
his family, and spent most of his time over a bottle, he was, in
derision, said to belong.
"The Everlasting Club consists of an hundred members, who divide the
whole twenty-four hours among them in such a manner, that the Club
sits day and night from one end of the year to another: no party
presuming to rise till they are relieved by those who are in course to
succeed them. By this means, a member of the Everlasting Club never
wants company; for though he is not upon duty himself, he is sure to
find some who are; so that if he be disposed to take a whet, a
nooning, an evening's draught, or a bottle after midnight, he goes to
the Club, and finds a knot of friends to his mind.
"It is a maxim in this Club that the Steward never dies; for as they
succeed one another by way of rotation, no man is to quit the great
elbow-chair, which stands at the upper end of the table, till his
successor is ready to fill it; insomuch that there has not been a
_sede vacante_ in their memory.
"This Club was instituted towards the end, or, as some of them say,
about the middle of the Civil Wars, and continued with interruption
till the time of the Great Fire, which burnt them out and dispersed
them for several weeks. The Steward all that time maintained his post
till he had like to have been blown up with a neighbouring house,
which was demolished in order to stop the fire: and would not leave
the chair at last, till he had emptied the bottles upon the table, and
received repeated directions from the Club to withdraw himself. This
Steward is frequently talked of in the Club, and looked upon by every
member of it as a greater man than the famous captain mentioned in my
Lord Clarendon, who was burnt in his ship, because he would not quit
it without orders. It is said that towards the close of 1700, being
the great year of jubilee, the Club had it under consideration whether
they should break up or continue their session; but after many
speeches and debates, it was at length agreed to sit out the other
century. This resolution passed in a general club _nemine
contradicente_.