he was ill at ease there; and he had social resorts in which he
indemnified himself for this restraint by indulging his humour without
control. One of these was a Shilling Whist Club, which met at the
Devil Tavern. The company delighted in practical jokes, of which
Goldsmith was often the butt. One night, he came to the Club in a
hackney-coach, when he gave the driver a guinea instead of a shilling.
He set this down as a dead loss; but, on the next club-night, he was
told that a person at the street-door wanted to speak to him; he went
out, and to his surprise and delight, the coachman had brought him
back the guinea! To reward such honesty, he collected a small sum from
the Club, and largely increased it from his own purse, and with this
reward sent away the coachman. He was still loud in his praise, when
one of the Club asked to see the returned guinea. To Goldsmith's
confusion it proved to be a counterfeit: the laughter which succeeded,
showed him that the whole was a hoax, and the pretended coachman as
much a counterfeit as the guinea. He was so disconcerted that he soon
beat a retreat for the evening.
Another of these small Clubs met on Wednesday evenings, at the Globe
Tavern, in Fleet-street; where songs, jokes, dramatic imitations,
burlesque parodies, and broad sallies of humour, were the
entertainments. Here a huge ton of a man, named Gordon, used to
delight Goldsmith with singing the jovial song of "Nottingham Ale,"
and looking like a butt of it. Here too, a wealthy pig-butcher
aspired to be on the most sociable terms with Oliver; and here was Tom
King, the comedian, recently risen to eminence by his performance of
Lord Ogleby, in the new comedy of _The Clandestine Marriage_. A member
of note was also one Hugh Kelly, who was a kind of competitor of
Goldsmith, but a low one; for Johnson used to speak of him as a man
who had written more than he had read. Another noted frequenter of the
Globe and Devil taverns was one Glover, who, having failed in the
medical profession, took to the stage; but having succeeded in
restoring to life a malefactor who had just been executed, he
abandoned the stage, and resumed his wig and cane; and came to London
to dabble in physic and literature. He used to amuse the company at
the Club by his story-telling and mimicry, giving capital imitations
of Garrick, Foote, Colman, Sterne, and others. It was through
Goldsmith that Glover was admitted to the Wednesday Club; he was,
however, greatly shocked by the free-and-easy tone in which Goldsmith
was addressed by the pig-butcher; "Come, Noll," he would say as he
pledged him, "here's my service to you, old boy."
The evening's amusement at the Wednesday Club was not, however,
limited; it had the variety of epigram, and here was first heard the
celebrated epitaph, (Goldsmith had been reading Pope and Swift's
Miscellanies,) on Edward Purdon:--
"Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,
Who long was a bookseller's hack;
He had led such a damnable life in this world,
I don't think he'll wish to come back."
It was in April of the present year that Purdon closed his luckless
life by suddenly dropping down dead in Smithfield; and as it was
chiefly Goldsmith's pittance that had saved him thus long from
starvation, it was well that the same friend should give him his
solitary chance of escape from oblivion. "Doctor Goldsmith made this
epitaph," says William Ballantyne, "in his way from his chambers in
the Temple to the Wednesday evening Club at the Globe. _I think he
will never come back_, I believe he said; I was sitting by him, and he
repeated it more than once. _I think he will never come back!_ Ah! and
not altogether as a jest, it may be, the second and the third time.
There was something in Purdon's fate, from their first meeting in
college to that incident in Smithfield, which had no very violent
contrast to his own; and remembering what Glover had said of his
frequent sudden descents from mirth to melancholy, some such faithful
change of temper would here have been natural enough. 'His
disappointments at these times,' Glover tells us, 'made him peevish
and sullen, and he has often left his party of convivial friends
abruptly in the evening, in order to go home and brood over his
misfortunes.' But a better medicine for his grief than brooding over
it, was a sudden start into the country to forget it; and it was
probably with a feeling of this kind he had in the summer revisited
Islington; he laboured during the autumn in a room of Canonbury Tower;
and often, in the evening, presided at the Crown tavern, in Islington
Lower Road, where Goldsmith and his fellow-lodgers had formed a kind
of temporary club. At the close of the year he returned to the Temple,
and was again pretty constant in his attendance at Gerard-street."[19]
FOOTNOTES:
[19] See Forster's _Life of Goldsmith_, pp. 422-424.
THE DILETTANTI SOCIETY.
The origin of this Society, which has now existed some 130 years, is
due to certain gentlemen, who had travelled much in Italy, and were
desirous of encouraging at home a taste for those objects which had
contributed so much to their intellectual gratification abroad.
Accordingly, in the year 1734, they formed themselves into a Society,
under the name of Dilettanti, (literally, lovers of the Fine Arts,)
and agreed upon certain Regulations to keep up the spirit of their
scheme, which combined friendly and social intercourse with a serious
and ardent desire to promote the Arts. In 1751, Mr. James Stuart,
"Athenian Stuart," and Mr. Nicholas Revett, were elected members. The
Society liberally assisted them in their excellent work, _The
Antiquities of Athens_. In fact it was, in great measure, owing to
this Society that after the death of the above two eminent architects,
the work was not entirely relinquished; and a large number of the
plates were engraved from drawings in the possession of the
Dilettanti. Walpole, speaking in 1743, of the Society, in connexion
with an opera subscription, says, "The nominal qualification [to be a
member] is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk; the
two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were
seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy." We need scarcely add,
that the qualifications for election are no longer what Walpole
described them to have been.
In 1764, the Society being possessed of a considerable sum above what
their services required, various schemes were proposed for applying
part of this money; and it was at length resolved "that a person or
persons properly qualified, should be sent, with sufficient
appointments, to certain parts of the East, to collect information
relative to the former state of those countries, and particularly to
procure exact descriptions of the ruins of such monuments of antiquity
as are yet to be seen in those parts."
Three persons were elected for this undertaking, Mr. Chandler, of
Magdalen College, Oxford, editor of the _Marmora Oxoniensia_, was
appointed to execute the classical part of the plan. Architecture was
assigned to Mr. Revett; and the choice of a proper person for taking
views and copying the bas-reliefs, fell upon Mr. Pars, a young painter
of promise. Each person was strictly enjoined to keep a regular
journal, and hold a constant correspondence with the Society.
The party embarked on June 9, 1764, in the _Anglicana_, bound for
Constantinople, and were just at the Dardanelles on the 25th of
August. Having visited the Sigæan Promontory, the ruins of Troas, with
the islands of Tenedos and Scio, they arrived at the Smyrna on the
11th of September. From that city, as their head-quarters, they made
several excursions. On the 20th of August, 1765, they sailed from
Smyrna, and arrived at Athens on the 30th of the same month, having
touched at Sunium and Ægina on their way. They staid at Athens till
June 11, 1766, visiting Marathon, Eleusis, Salamis, Megara, and other
places in the neighbourhood. Leaving Athens, they proceeded by the
little island of Calauria to Trezene, Epidaurus, Argos, and Corinth.
From this they visited Delphi, Patræ, Elis, and Zante, whence they
sailed on the 31st of August, and arrived in England on the 2nd of
November following, bringing with them an immense number of drawings,
etc., the result of which was the publication, at the expense of the
Society, of two magnificent volumes of _Ionian Antiquities_. The
results of the expedition were also the two popular works, Chandler's
Travels in Asia Minor, 1775; and his _Travels in Greece_, in the
following year; also, the volume of Greek Inscriptions, 1774,
containing the Sigæan inscription, the marble of which has been since
brought to England by Lord Elgin; and the celebrated documents
containing the reconstruction of the Temple of Minerva Polias, which
Professor Wilkins illustrated in his _Prolusiones Architectonicæ_,
1837.
Walpole, in 1791, has this odd passage upon the _Ionian Antiquities_:
"They who are industrious and correct, and wish to forget nothing,
should go to Greece, where there is nothing left to be seen, but that
ugly pigeon-house, the Temple of the Winds, that fly-cage,
Demosthenes's Lantern, and one or two fragments of a portico, or a
piece of a column crushed into a mud wall; and with such a morsel, and
many quotations, a true classic antiquary can compose a whole folio,
and call it _Ionian Antiquities_."
But, it may be asked, how came the Society to associate so freely
pleasure with graver pursuits? To this it may be replied, that when
the Dilettanti first met they avowed friendly and social intercourse
the first object they had in view, although they soon showed that they
would combine with it a serious plan for the promotion of the Arts in
this country. For these persons were not scholars, nor even men of
letters; they were some of the wealthiest noblemen and most
fashionable men of the day, who would naturally sup with the Regent as
he went through Paris, and find themselves quite at home in the
Carnival of Venice. These, too, were times of what would now be
considered very licentious merriment and very unscrupulous fun,--times
when men of independent means and high rank addicted themselves to
pleasure, and gave vent to their full animal spirits with a frankness
that would now be deemed not only vulgar but indecorous, while they
evinced an earnestness about objects now thought frivolous which it is
very easy to represent as absurd. In assuming, however, the name of
"Dilettanti" they evidently attached to it no light and superficial
notion. The use of that word as one of disparagement or ridicule is
quite recent. The same may be said of "Virtù," which, in the artistic
sense, does not seem to be strictly academical, but that of "Virtuoso"
is so, undoubtedly, and it means the "capable" man,--the man who has a
right to judge on matters requiring a particular faculty: Dryden says:
"Virtuoso the Italians call a man 'who loves the noble arts, and is a
critic in them,' or, as old Glanville says,' 'who dwells in a higher
region than other mortals.'
"Thus, when the Dilettanti mention 'the cause of virtue' as a high
object which they will never abandon, they express their belief that
the union into which they had entered had a more important purpose
than any personal satisfaction could give it, and that they did engage
themselves thereby in some degree to promote the advantage of their
country and of mankind.
"Of all the merry meetings these gay gentlemen had together, small
records remain. We, looking back out of a graver time, can only judge
from the uninterrupted course of their festive gatherings, from the
names of the statesmen, the wits, the scholars, the artists, the
amateurs, that fill the catalogue, from the strange mixture of
dignities and accessions to wealth for which, by the rules of the
Society, fines were paid,--and above all, by the pictures which they
possess,--how much of the pleasantry and the hearty enjoyment must
have been mixed up with the more solid pursuits of the Members. Cast
your eye over the list of those who met together at the table of the
Dilettanti any time between 1770 and 1790."[20] Here occur the names
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Earl Fitzwilliam, Charles James Fox, Hon.
Stephen Fox (Lord Holland), Hon. Mr. Fitzpatrick, Charles Howard (Duke
of Norfolk), Lord Robert Spencer, George Selwyn, Colonel Fitzgerald,
Hon. H. Conway, Joseph Banks, Duke of Dorset, Sir William Hamilton,
David Garrick, George Colman, Joseph Windham, R. Payne Knight, Sir
George Beaumont, Towneley, and others of less posthumous fame, but
probably of not less agreeable companionship.
The funds must have largely benefited by the payment of fines, some of
which were very strange. Those paid "on increase of income, by
inheritance, legacy, marriage, or preferment," are very odd; as, five
guineas by Lord Grosvenor, on his marriage with Miss Leveson Gower;
eleven guineas by the Duke of Bedford, on being appointed First Lord
of the Admiralty; ten guineas compounded for by Bubb Dodington, as
Treasurer of the Navy; two guineas by the Duke of Kingston for a
Colonelcy of Horse (then valued at 400_l._ per annum); twenty-one
pounds by Lord Sandwich on going out as Ambassador to the Congress at
Aix-la-Chapelle; and twopence three-farthings by the same nobleman, on
becoming Recorder of Huntingdon; thirteen shillings and fourpence by
the Duke of Bedford, on getting the Garter; and sixteen shillings and
eightpence (Scotch) by the Duke of Buccleuch, on getting the Thistle;
twenty-one pounds by the Earl of Holdernesse, as Secretary of State;
and nine pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence, by Charles James
Fox, as a Lord of the Admiralty.
In 1814, another expedition was undertaken by the Society, when Sir
William Gell, with Messrs. Gandy and Bedford, professional architects,
proceeded to the Levant. Smyrna was again appointed the head-quarters
of the mission, and fifty pounds per month was assigned to Gell, and
two hundred pounds per annum to each of the architects. An additional
outlay was required; and by this means the classical and antique
literature of England was enriched with the fullest and most accurate
descriptions of important remains of ancient art hitherto given to the
world.
The contributions of the Society to the æsthetic studies of the time
also deserve notice. The excellent design to publish _Select Specimens
of Antient Sculpture preserved in the several Collections of Great
Britain_ was carried into effect by Messrs. Payne Knight and Mr.
Towneley, 2 vols. folio, 1809-1835. Then followed Mr. Penrose's
_Investigations into the Principles of Athenian Architecture_, printed
in 1851.
About the year 1820, those admirable monuments of Grecian art, called
the Bronzes of Siris, were discovered on the banks of that river, and
were brought to this country by the Chevalier Brondsted. The
Dilettanti Society immediately organized a subscription of 800_l._,
and the Trustees of the British Museum completed the purchase by the
additional sum of 200_l._
It was mainly through the influence and patronage of the Dilettanti
Society that the Royal Academy obtained a Charter. In 1774, the
interest of 4000_l._ three per cents. was appropriated by the former
for the purpose of sending two students, recommended by the Royal
Academy, to study in Italy or Greece for three years.
In 1835 appeared a Second Volume on Ancient Sculpture. The Society at
this time included, among a list of sixty-four names of the noble and
learned, those of Sir William Gell, Mr. Towneley, Richard Westmacott,
Henry Hallam, the Duke of Bedford, Sir M. A. Shee, P.R.A., Henry T.
Hope; and Lord Prudhoe, afterwards Duke of Northumberland.
That a Society possessing so much wealth and social importance as the
Dilettanti should not have built for themselves a mansion is
surprising. In 1747 they obtained a plot of ground in Cavendish
Square, for this purpose; but in 1760, they disposed of the property.
Between 1761 and 1764 the project of an edifice in Piccadilly, on the
model of the Temple of Pola, was agitated by the Committee; two sites
were proposed, one between Devonshire and Bath Houses, the other on
the west side of Cambridge House. This scheme was also abandoned.
Meanwhile the Society were accustomed to meet at the Thatched House
Tavern, the large room of which was hung with portraits of the
Dilettanti. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was a member, painted for the
Society three capital pictures:--1. A group in the manner of Paul
Veronese, containing the portraits of the Duke of Leeds, Lord Dundas,
Constantine Lord Mulgrave, Lord Seaforth, the Hon. Charles Greville,
Charles Crowle, Esq., and Sir Joseph Banks. 2. A group in the manner
of the same master, containing portraits of Sir William Hamilton, Sir
Watkin W. Wynne, Richard Thomson, Esq., Sir John Taylor, Payne Galway,
Esq., John Smythe, Esq., and Spencer S. Stanhope, Esq. 3. Head of Sir
Joshua, dressed in a loose robe, and in his own hair. The earlier
portraits are by Hudson, Reynolds's master.
Some of these portraits are in the costume familiar to us through
Hogarth; others are in Turkish or Roman dresses. There is a mixture of
the convivial in all these pictures: many are using wine-glasses of no
small size: Lord Sandwich, for instance, in a Turkish costume, casts a
most unorthodox glance upon a brimming goblet in his left hand, while
his right holds a flask of great capacity. Sir Bouchier Wray is seated
in the cabin of a ship, mixing punch, and eagerly embracing the bowl,
of which a lurch of the sea would seem about to deprive him: the
inscription is _Dulce est desipere in loco_. Here is a curious old
portrait of the Earl of Holdernesse, in a red cap, as a gondolier,
with the Rialto and Venice in the background; there is Charles
Sackville, Duke of Dorset, as a Roman senator, dated 1738; Lord
Galloway, in the dress of a cardinal; and a very singular likeness of
one of the earliest of the Dilettanti, Lord Le Despencer, as a monk at
his devotions: his Lordship is clasping a brimming goblet for his
rosary, and his eyes are not very piously fixed on a statue of the
Venus de' Medici. It must be conceded that some of these pictures
remind one of the Medmenham orgies, with which some of the Dilettanti
were not unfamiliar. The ceiling of the large room was painted to
represent sky, and crossed by gold cords interlacing each other, and
from their knots were hung three large glass chandeliers.
The Thatched House has disappeared, but the pictures have been well
cared for. The Dilettanti have removed to another tavern, and dine
together on the first Sunday in every month, from February to July.
The late Lord Aberdeen, the Marquises of Northampton and Lansdowne,
and Colonel Leake, and Mr. Broderip, were members; as was also the
late Lord Northwick, whose large collection of pictures at
Thirlestane, Cheltenham, was dispersed by sale in 1859.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Edinburgh Review, No. 214, p. 500.
THE ROYAL NAVAL CLUB.
About the year 1674, according to a document in the possession of Mr.
Fitch of Norwich, a Naval Club was started "for the improvement of a
mutuall Society, and an encrease of Love and Kindness amongst them;"
and that consummate seaman, Admiral Sir John Kempthorne, was declared
Steward of the institution. This was the precursor of the Royal Naval
Club of 1765, which, whether considered for its amenities or its
extensive charities, may be justly cited as a model establishment.
(_Admiral Smyth's Rise and Progress of the Royal Society Club_, p. 9.)
The members of this Club annually distribute a considerable sum among
the distressed widows and orphans of those who have spent their days
in the naval service of their country. The Club was accustomed to dine
together at the Thatched House Tavern, on the anniversary of the
Battle of the Nile.
"Founded on the model of the old tavern or convivial Clubs, but
confined exclusively to members of the Naval Service, the Royal Naval
Club numbered among its members men from the days of Boscawen, Rodney,
and 'the first of June' downwards. It was a favourite retreat for
William IV. when Duke of Clarence; and his comrade, Sir Philip Durham,
the survivor of Nelson, and almost the last of the 'old school,'
frequented it. Sir Philip, however, was by no means one of the
Trunnion class. Coarseness and profane language, on the contrary, he
especially avoided; but in 'spinning a yarn' there has been none like
him since the days of Smollett. The loss of the Royal George, from
which he was one of the few, if, indeed, not only officer, who
escaped, was a favourite theme; and the Admiral, not content with
having made his escape, was wont to maintain that he swam ashore with
his midshipman's dirk in his teeth. Yet Sir Philip would allow no one
to trench on his manor. One day, when a celebrated naval captain, with
the view of quizzing him, was relating the loss of a merchantman on
the coast of South America, laden with Spitalfields products, and
asserting that silk was so plentiful, and the cargo so scattered, that
the porpoises were for some hours enmeshed in its folds: 'Ay, ay,'
replied Sir Philip, 'I believe you; for I was once cruising on that
coast myself, in search of a privateer, and having lost our
fore-topsail one morning in a gale of wind, we next day found it tied
round a whale's neck by way of a cravat.' Sir Philip was considered to
have the best of it, and the novelist was mute."[21]
FOOTNOTES:
[21] London Clubs, 1853.
THE WYNDHAM CLUB.
This Club, which partakes of the character of Arthur's and Boodle's,
was founded by Lord Nugent, its object being, as stated in Rule 1, "to
secure a convenient and agreeable place of meeting for a society of
gentlemen, all connected with each other by a common bond of literary
or personal acquaintance."
The Club, No. 11, St. James's-square, is named from the mansion having
been the residence of William Wyndham, who has been described, and the
description has been generally adopted as appropriate, as a model of
the true English gentleman; and the fitness of the Club designation is
equally characteristic. He was an accomplished scholar and
mathematician. Dr. Johnson, writing of a visit which Wyndham paid him,
says: "Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to
the regions of literature, and there Wyndham is 'inter stellas luna
minores.'"
In the mansion also lived the accomplished John, Duke of Roxburghe;
and here the Roxburghe Library was sold in 1812, the sale extending to
forty-one days. Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough lived here in 1814;
and subsequently, the Earl of Blessington, who possessed a fine
collection of pictures.
THE TRAVELLERS' CLUB.
This famous Club was originated shortly after the Peace of 1814, by
the Marquis of Londonderry (then Lord Castlereagh), with a view to a
resort for gentlemen who had resided or travelled abroad, as well as
with a view to the accommodation of foreigners, who, when properly
recommended, receive an invitation for the period of their stay. One
of the Rules directs "That no person be considered eligible to the
Travellers' Club who shall not have travelled out of the British
Islands to a distance of at least 500 miles from London in a direct
line." Another Rule directs "That no dice and no game of hazard be
allowed in the rooms of the Club, nor any higher stake than guinea
points, and that no cards be introduced before dinner."
Prince Talleyrand, during his residence in London, generally joined
the muster of whist-players at the Travellers'; probably, here was the
scene of this felicitous rejoinder. The Prince was enjoying his
rubber, when the conversation turned on the recent union of an elderly
lady of respectable rank. "How ever could Madame de S---- make such a
match?--a person of her birth to marry a _valet-de-chambre_!" "Ah,"
replied Talleyrand, "it was late in the game: at nine we don't reckon
honours."
The present Travellers' Club-house, which adjoins the Athenæum in
Pall-Mall, was designed by Barry, R.A., and built in 1832. It is one
of the architect's most admired works. Yet, we have seen it thus
treated, with more smartness than judgment, by a critic who is
annoyed at its disadvantageous comparison with its more gigantic
neighbours:--
"The Travellers' is worse, and looks very like a sandwich at the
Swindon station--a small stumpy piece of beef between two huge pieces
of bread, _i.e._ the Athenæum and the Reform Clubs, which look as if
they were urging their migratory neighbour to resume the
peregrinations for which its members are remarkable. Yet people have
their names down ten years at the Travellers' previous to their coming
up for ballot. An election reasonably extended would supply funds for
a more advantageous and extended position."