hospitable board of Sir Joshua Reynolds, in Leicester-square, rose
that association of wits, authors, scholars, and statesmen, renowned
as the Literary Club. Reynolds was the first to propose a regular
association of the kind, and was eagerly seconded by Johnson, who
suggested as a model the Club which he had formed some fourteen years
previously, in Ivy-lane;[18] and which the deaths or dispersion of its
members had now interrupted for nearly seven years. On this suggestion
being adopted, the members, as in the earlier Club, were limited to
nine, and Mr. Hawkins, as an original member of the Ivy-lane Club, was
invited to join. Topham Beauclerk and Bennet Langton were asked and
welcomed earnestly; and, of course, Mr. Edmund Burke. The notion of
the Club delighted Burke; and he asked admission for his
father-in-law, Dr. Nugent, an accomplished Roman Catholic physician,
who lived with him. Beauclerk, in like manner, suggested his friend
Chamier, then Under-Secretary-at-War. Oliver Goldsmith completed the
number. But another member of the original Ivy-lane, Samuel Dyer,
making unexpected appearance from abroad, in the following year, was
joyfully admitted; and though it was resolved to make election
difficult, and only for special reasons permit addition to their
number, the limitation at first proposed was thus, of course, done
away with. Twenty was the highest number reached in the course of ten
years.
The dates of the Club are thus summarily given by Mr. Hatchett, the
treasurer:--It was founded in 1764, by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr.
Samuel Johnson, and for some years met on Monday evenings, at seven.
In 1772, the day of meeting was changed to Friday, and about that
time, instead of supping, they agreed to dine together once in every
fortnight during the sitting of Parliament. In 1773, the Club, which,
soon after its foundation, consisted of twelve members, was enlarged
to twenty; March 11, 1777, to twenty-six; November 27, 1778, to
thirty; May 9, 1780, to thirty-five; and it was then resolved that it
should never exceed forty. It met originally at the Turk's Head, in
Gerard-street, and continued to meet there till 1783, when their
landlord died, and the house was soon afterwards shut up. They then
removed to Prince's, in Sackville-street; and on his house being, soon
afterwards, shut up, they removed to Baxter's, which afterwards became
Thomas's, in Dover-street. In January, 1792, they removed to
Parsloe's, in St. James's-street; and on February 26, 1799, to the
Thatched House, in the same street.
"So originated and was formed," says Mr. Forster, "that famous Club,
which had made itself a name in literary history long before it
received, at Garrick's funeral, the name of the Literary Club, by
which it is now known. Its meetings were noised abroad; the fame of
its conversations received eager addition, from the difficulty of
obtaining admission to it; and it came to be as generally understood
that Literature had fixed her social head-quarters here, as that
Politics reigned supreme at Wildman's, or the Cocoa-tree. With
advantage, let me add, to the dignity and worldly consideration of men
of letters themselves. 'I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say,'
remarked the Bishop of St. Asaph, when the Society was not more than
fifteen years old, 'that the honour of being elected into the Turk's
Head Club, is not inferior to that of being the representative of
Westminster or Surrey.' The Bishop had just been elected; but into
such lusty independence had the Club sprung up thus early, that
Bishops, even Lord Chancellors, were known to have knocked for
admission unsuccessfully; and on the night of St. Asaph's election,
Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were black-balled."
Of this Club, Hawkins was a most unpopular member: even his old
friend, Johnson, admitted him to be out of place here. He had objected
to Goldsmith, at the Club, "as a mere literary drudge, equal to the
task of compiling and translating, but little capable of original, and
still less of poetical composition." Hawkins's "existence was a kind
of pompous, parsimonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by
one of the wits in an absurd epitaph: 'Here lies Sir John Hawkins,
without his shoes and stauckins.'" He was as mean as he was pompous
and conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the Club, and
begged therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning.
"And was he excused?" asked Dr. Burney, of Johnson. "Oh yes, for no
man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned
him, and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest
man at bottom, though, to be sure, he is penurious and he is mean, and
it must be owned that he has a tendency to savageness." He did not
remain above two or three years in the Club, being in a manner elbowed
out in consequence of his rudeness to Burke. Still, Burke's vehemence
of will and sharp impetuosity of temper constantly exposed him to
prejudice and dislike; and he may have painfully impressed others, as
well as Hawkins, at the Club, with a sense of his predominance. This
was the only theatre open to him. "Here only," says Mr. Forster,
"could he as yet pour forth, to an audience worth exciting, the stores
of argument and eloquence he was thirsting to employ upon a wider
stage; the variety of knowledge, the fund of astonishing imagery, the
ease of philosophic illustration, the overpowering copiousness of
words, in which he has never had a rival." Miss Hawkins was convinced
that her father was disgusted with the overpowering deportment of Mr.
Burke, and his monopoly of the conversation, which made all the other
members, excepting his antagonist, Johnson, merely listeners.
Something of the same sort is said by that antagonist, though in a
more generous way. "What I most envy Burke for," said Johnson, "is,
that he is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to
talk, nor in haste to leave off. Take up whatever topic you please, he
is ready to meet you. I cannot say he is good at listening. So
desirous is he to talk, that if one is speaking at this end of the
table, he'll speak to somebody at the other end."
The Club was an opportunity for both Johnson and Burke; and for the
most part their wit-combats seem not only to have instructed the rest,
but to have improved the temper of the combatants, and to have made
them more generous to each other. "How very great Johnson has been
to-night!" said Burke to Bennet Langton, as they left the Club
together. Langton assented, but could have wished to hear more from
another person. "Oh no!" replied Burke, "it is enough for me to have
rung the bell to him."
One evening he observed that a hogshead of claret, which had been sent
as a present to the Club, was almost out; and proposed that Johnson
should write for another, in such ambiguity of expression as might
have a chance of procuring it also as a gift. One of the company said,
"Dr. Johnson shall be our dictator."--"Were I," said Johnson, "your
dictator, you should have no wine: it would be my business cavere ne
quid detrimenti respublica caperet:--wine is dangerous; Rome was
ruined by luxury." Burke replied: "If you allow no wine as dictator,
you shall not have me for master of the horse."
Goldsmith, it must be owned, joined the Club somewhat unwillingly,
saying: "One must make some sacrifices to obtain good society; for
here I am shut out of several places where I used to play the fool
very agreeably." His simplicity of character and hurried expression
often led him into absurdity, and he became in some degree the butt of
the company. The Club, notwithstanding all its learned dignity in the
eyes of the world, could occasionally unbend and play the fool as well
as less important bodies. Some of its jocose conversations have at
times leaked out; and the Society in which Goldsmith could venture to
sing his song of "An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket" could not be so
very staid in its gravity. Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk were,
doubtless, induced to join the Club through their devotion to Johnson,
and the intimacy of these two very young and aristocratic young men
with the stern and somewhat melancholy moralist. Bennet Langton was of
an ancient family, who held their ancestral estate of Langton in
Lincolnshire, a great title to respect with Johnson. "Langton, Sir,"
he would say, "has a grant of free warren from Henry the Second; and
Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family."
Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. When but
eighteen years of age, he was so delighted with reading Johnson's
_Rambler_, that he came to London chiefly with a view to obtain an
introduction to the author.
Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where
Johnson saw much of him during a visit which he paid to the
University. He found him in close intimacy with Topham Beauclerk, a
youth two years older than himself, very gay and dissipated, and
wondered what sympathies could draw two young men together of such
opposite characters. On becoming acquainted with Beauclerk, he found
that, rake though he was, he possessed an ardent love of literature,
an acute understanding, polished wit, innate gentility, and high
aristocratic breeding. He was, moreover, the only son of Lord Sidney
Beauclerk, and grandson of the Duke of St. Albans, and was thought in
some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. These
were high recommendations with Johnson; and when the youth testified a
profound respect for him, and an ardent admiration of his talents, the
conquest was complete; so that in a "short time," says Boswell, "the
moral, pious Johnson and the gay dissipated Beauclerk were
companions."
When these two young men entered the Club, Langton was about
twenty-two, and Beauclerk about twenty-four years of age, and both
were launched on London life. Langton, however, was still the mild,
enthusiastic scholar, steeped to the lips in Greek, with fine
conversational powers, and an invaluable talent for listening. He was
upwards of six feet high, and very spare. "Oh that we could sketch
him!" exclaims Miss Hawkins, in her Memoirs, "with his mild
countenance, his elegant features, and his sweet smile, sitting with
one leg twisted round the other, as if fearing to occupy more space
than was equitable; his person inclining forward, as if wanting
strength to support his weight; and his arms crossed over his bosom,
or his hands locked together on his knee." Beauclerk, on such
occasions, sportively compared him to a stork in Raphael's cartoons,
standing on one leg. Beauclerk was more a "man upon town," a lounger
in St. James's-street, an associate with George Selwyn, with Walpole,
and other aristocratic wits, a man of fashion at court, a casual
frequenter of the gaming-table; yet, with all this, he alternated in
the easiest and happiest manner the scholar and the man of letters;
lounged into the Club with the most perfect self-possession, bringing
with him the careless grace and polished wit of high-bred society, but
making himself cordially at home among his learned fellow-members.
Johnson was exceedingly chary at first of the exclusiveness of the
Club, and opposed to its being augmented in number. Not long after its
institution, Sir Joshua Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. "I
like it much," said little David, briskly, "I think I shall be of
you." "When Sir Joshua mentioned this to Dr. Johnson," says Boswell,
"he was much displeased with the actor's conceit. '_He'll be of us!_'
growled he; 'how does he know we will _permit_ him? The first duke in
England has no right to hold such language."
When Sir John Hawkins spoke favourably of Garrick's pretensions,
"Sir," replied Johnson, "he will disturb us by his buffoonery." In the
same spirit he declared to Mr. Thrale, that if Garrick should apply
for admission, he would black-ball him. "Who, Sir?" exclaimed Thrale,
with surprise: "Mr. Garrick--your friend, your companion--black-ball
him?" "Why, Sir," replied Johnson, "I love my little David
dearly--better than all or any of his flatterers do; but surely one
ought to sit in a society like ours,
"Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player."
The exclusion from the Club was a sore mortification to Garrick,
though he bore it without complaining. He could not help continually
asking questions about it--what was going on there?--whether he was
ever the subject of conversation? By degrees the rigour of the Club
relaxed; some of the members grew negligent. Beauclerk lost his right
of membership by neglecting to attend. On his marriage, however, with
Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, and recently
divorced from Viscount Bolingbroke, he had claimed and regained his
seat in the Club. The number of the members had likewise been
augmented. The proposition to increase it originated with Goldsmith.
"It would give," he thought, "an agreeable variety to their meetings;
for there can be nothing new amongst us," said he; "we have travelled
over each other's minds." Johnson was piqued at the suggestion. "Sir,"
said he, "you have not travelled over my mind, I promise you." Sir
Joshua, less confident in the exhaustless fecundity of his mind, felt
and acknowledged the force of Goldsmith's suggestion. Several new
members, therefore, had been added; the first, to his great joy, was
David Garrick. Goldsmith, who was now on cordial terms with him, had
zealously promoted his election, and Johnson had given it his warm
approbation. Another new member was Beauclerk's friend, Lord
Charlemont; and a still more important one was Mr., afterwards Sir
William Jones, the linguist. George Colman, the elder, was a lively
Club-man. One evening at the Club he met Boswell; they talked of
Johnson's _Journey to the Western Islands_, and of his coming away
"willing to believe the second sight," which seemed to excite some
ridicule. "I was then," says Boswell, "so impressed with the truth of
many of the stories which I had been told, that I avowed my
conviction, saying, "He is only _willing_ to believe--I _do_ believe;
the evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What
will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle; I am filled with
belief."--"Are you?" said Colman; "then cork it up.""
Five years after the death of Garrick, Dr. Johnson dined with the Club
_for the last time_. This is one of the most melancholy entries by
Boswell. "On Tuesday, June 22 (1784), I dined with him (Johnson) at
the Literary Club, the last time of his being in that respectable
society. The other members present were the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord
Eliot, Lord Palmerston (father of the Premier), Dr. Fordyce, and Mr.
Malone. He looked ill; but he had such a manly fortitude, that he did
not trouble the company with melancholy complaints. They all showed
evident marks of kind concern about him, with which he was much
pleased, and he exerted himself to be as entertaining as his
indisposition allowed him."
From the time of Garrick's death the Club was known as "The Literary
Club," since which it has certainly lost its claim to this epithet. It
was originally a club of authors _by profession_; it now numbers very
few except titled members (the majority having some claims to literary
distinction), which was very far from the intention of its founders.
To this the author of the paper in the _National Review_ demurs.
Writing in 1857, he says: "Perhaps it now numbers on its list more
titled members and fewer authors by profession, than its founders
would have considered desirable. This opinion, however, is quite open
to challenge. Such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne, the late Lord
Ellesmere, Lords Brougham, Carlisle, Aberdeen, and Glenelg, hold their
place in 'the Literary Club' quite as much by virtue of their
contributions to literature, or their enlightened support of it, as by
their right of rank." [How many of these noble members have since paid
the debt of nature!]
"At all events," says Mr. Taylor, "the Club still acknowledges
literature as its foundation, and love of literature as the tie which
binds together its members, whatever their rank and callings. Few
Clubs can show such a distinguished brotherhood of members as 'the
Literary.' Of authors proper, from 1764 to this date (1857), may be
enumerated, besides its original members, Johnson and Goldsmith, Dyer
and Percy, Gibbon and Sir William Jones, Colman, the two Wartons,
Farmer, Steevens, Burney, and Malone, Frere and George Ellis, Hallam,
Milman, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Lord Stanhope.
"Among men equally conspicuous in letters and the Senate, what names
outshine those of Burke and Sheridan, Canning, Brougham, and Macaulay?
Of statesmen and orators proper, the Club claims Fox, Windham, Thomas
Grenville, Lord Liverpool; Lords Lansdowne, Aberdeen, and Clarendon.
Natural science is represented by Sir Joseph Banks, in the last
century; by Professor Owen in this. Social science can have no nobler
representative than Adam Smith; albeit, Boswell did think the Club had
lost caste by electing him. Mr. N. W. Senior is the political
economist of the present Club. Whewell must stand alone as the
embodiment of omniscience, which before him was unrepresented.
Scholars and soldiers may be equally proud of Rennel, Leake, and Mure.
Besides the clergymen already enumerated as authors, the Church has
contributed a creditable list of bishops and inferior dignitaries:
Shipley of St. Asaph, Barnard of Killaloe, Marley of Pomfret,
Hinchcliffe of Peterborough, Douglas of Salisbury, Blomfield of
London, Wilberforce of Oxford, Dean Vincent of Westminster, Archdeacon
Burney; and Dr. Hawtrey, late master and present provost of Eton.
"Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Charles Eastlake are its two chief
pillars of art, slightly unequal. With them we may associate Sir
William Chambers and Charles Wilkins. The presence of Drs. Nugent,
Blagden, Fordyce, Warren, Vaughan, and Sir Henry Halford, is a proof
that in the Club medicine has from the first kept up its kinship with
literature.
"The profession of the law has given the Society Lord Ashburton, Lord
Stowell, and Sir William Grant, Charles Austin, and Pemberton Leigh.
Lord Overstone may stand as the symbol of money; unless Sir George
Cornewall Lewis is to be admitted to that honour by virtue of his
Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Sir George would, probably, prefer
his claims to Club membership as a scholar and political writer, to
any that can be picked out of a Budget.
"Take it all in all, the Literary Club has never degenerated from the
high standard of intellectual gifts and personal qualities, which made
those unpretending suppers at the Turk's Head an honour eagerly
contended for by the wisest, wittiest, and noblest of the eighteenth
century."
Malone, in 1810, gave the total number of those who had been members
of the Club from its foundation, at seventy-six, of whom fifty-five
had been authors. Since 1810, however, literature has far less
preponderance.
The designation of the Society has been again changed to "the Johnson
Club." Upon the taking down of the Thatched House Tavern, the Club
removed to the Clarendon Hotel, in Bond-street, where was celebrated
its centenary, in September, 1864. There were present, upon this
memorable occasion,--in the chair, the Dean of St. Paul's; his
Excellency M. Van de Weyer, Earls Clarendon and Stanhope; the Bishops
of London and Oxford; Lords Brougham, Stanley, Cranworth, Kingsdown,
and Harry Vane; the Right Hon. Sir Edmund Head, Spencer Walpole, and
Robert Lowe; Sir Henry Holland, Sir C. Eastlake, Sir Roderick
Murchison, Vice-Chancellor Sir W. Page Wood, the Master of Trinity,
Professor Owen, Mr. G. Grote, Mr. C. Austen, Mr. H. Reeve, and Mr. G.
Richmond. Among the few members prevented from attending were the Duke
of Argyll (in Scotland), the Earl of Carlisle (in Ireland), Earl
Russell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Overstone (at Oxford),
Lord Glenelg (abroad), and Mr. W. Stirling (from indisposition). Mr.
N. W. Senior, who was the political economist of the Club, died in
June, preceding, in his sixty-fourth year.
Hallam and Macaulay were among the constant attendants at its dinners,
which take place twice a month during the Parliamentary season. The
custody of the books and archives of the Club rests with the
secretary, Dr. Milman, the venerable Dean of St. Paul's, who takes
great pride and pleasure in showing to literary friends the valuable
collection of autographs which these books contain. Among the
memorials is the portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with spectacles on,
similar to the picture in the Royal Collection: this portrait was
painted and presented by Sir Joshua, as the founder of the Club.
Lord Macaulay has grouped, with his accustomed felicity of language,
this celebrated congress of men of letters.
"To discuss questions of taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language
so exact and so forcible that it might have been printed without the
alteration of a word," was to Johnson no exertion, but a pleasure. He
loved, as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was
ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on anybody who would
start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a stage-coach, or on the
person who sat at the same table with him in an eating-house. But his
conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was
surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled
them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that he
threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a Club, which
gradually became a formidable power in the commonwealth of letters.
The verdicts pronounced by this conclave on new books were speedily
known over all London, and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition
in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker
and the pastrycook. Nor shall we think this strange when we consider
what great and various talents and acquirements met in the little
fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and light
literature, Reynolds of the Arts, Burke of political eloquence and
political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian,
and Jones, the greatest linguist of the age. Garrick brought to the
meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and
his consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant
attendants were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound
together by friendship, but of widely different characters and
habits,--Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek
literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of
his life; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowledge
of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his sarcastic wit. To
predominate over such a society was not easy. Yet even over such a
society Johnson predominated. Burke might indeed have disputed the
supremacy to which others were under the necessity of submitting. But
Burke, though not generally a very patient listener, was content to
take the second part when Johnson was present; and the Club itself,
consisting of so many eminent men, is to this day popularly designated
as "Johnson's Club."
To the same master-hand we owe this cabinet picture. "The [Literary
Club] room is before us, and the table on which stand the omelet for
Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads
which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the
spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly
sneer of Beauclerk, the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his
snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the
foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the
figures of those among whom we have been brought up--the gigantic
body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown
coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched
foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We
see the eyes and the nose moving with convulsive twitches; we see the
heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the 'Why, Sir?'
and the 'What then, Sir?' and the 'No, Sir!' and the 'You don't see
your way through the question, Sir!'"
FOOTNOTES:
[18] The house in Ivy-lane, which bore the name of Johnson, and where
the Literary Club is said to have been held, was burnt down a few
years since: it had long been a chop-house.
GOLDSMITH'S CLUBS.