Antiquaries, long enthroned in Somerset House, were planted in the
modest room of ‘The Bear Tavern,’ in the Strand. Three individuals, to
whom the past was dearer than the present or the future, there met to
talk over the condition of the ancient monuments of the kingdom, while
they smoked their pipes and sipped their ale. One of them was Humphrey
Wanley, the well-known archæologist, and librarian to Harley, Earl of
Oxford. They agreed to add to their numbers, meet every Friday night,
and confine themselves to the consideration of matters and monuments
which illustrated English history not later than the reign of James the
First. The weekly business was to begin at six, and every absentee was
to be fined sixpence. The club or society migrated from the parlour
of one public-house to another before it found royal patronage, and
a home in the palace which occupies the site of the one built by the
Protector Somerset. After a brief sojourn of a month at ‘The Bear,’
they went, in 1708, to the ‘Young Devil’ tavern close by, and there
they seem to have been housed for above a quarter of a century. In 1739
they moved to more commodious apartments in ‘The Mitre,’ Fleet Street,
and they talked no more of sixpences. They numbered a hundred members.
Each of them paid a guinea entrance-fee, and twelve shillings annual
subscription. In 1770 they commenced the ‘Archæologia’; and in the
following year George III. gave them the abiding-place beneath the roof
of Somerset House, where, till the removal to Burlington House, they
met weekly, on Thursdays, during six or seven months of the year, and
sometimes, like Gratiano, spoke an infinite deal of nothing. At other
times the meetings are full of interest, and emperors themselves have
been glad to be enrolled among the Antiquaries, who began their career
as a modest club in a Strand tavern of no great repute.
A more ancient society than the Antiquaries had also a home within
Somerset House. The Royal Society is of much older date, but it began
in a little club-gathering, in 1645, at Dr. Goddard’s lodgings in
Wood Street, and for some time where it could, in Cheapside. After it
rose from a club to an incorporated society, it first met in Gresham
College, but afterwards occupied rooms in Somerset House for upwards of
ninety years, when it migrated to Burlington House. Its first avowed
object--the establishing of facts by successive experiments--was highly
ridiculed, and _that_ most wittily, by Butler, in ‘The Elephant in the
Moon.’ One of the members is described as one who
---- had lately undertook
To prove and publish in a book
That men, whose natural eyes are out,
May, by more pow’rful art, be brought
To see with th’ empty holes as plain
As if their eyes were in again.
Another philosopher is said to be renowned
---- for his excellence
In height’ning words and shad’wing sense.
A third experimentalist and chatterer is transported with the ‘twang of
his own trills.’ Collectively they are men who are satisfied,
As men are wont, o’ th’ bias’d side.
The society set up a telescope to make discoveries in the moon. They
detect armies fighting, and an elephant moving among them. Delighted
with what they had discovered, they drew up a narrative, to be
published in the ‘Transactions.’ By the time this had been done, idle
explorers have made out that the armies are gnats and flies on the
lens, and that the elephant is a mouse that had got imprisoned in the
tube. The philosophers are disconcerted, and the satirical poet rides
over them roughshod, with a moral which is intended to make them as
comfortable as a toad under a harrow. Butler flew at them again, in
prose, in ‘An Occasional Reflection upon Dr. Charlton’s feeling a Dog’s
Pulse at Gresham College.’ This is exquisite fooling. The paper is
supposed to be written by Robert Boyle, Esq., and never was imitation
so hard to be distinguished from an original. It is far superior in
this respect to the prose imitations, in ‘Rejected Addresses,’ of
the styles of Dr. Johnson and of Cobbett. We will not conclude this
reference to the Wood-street Club, which has grown to such dignity and
usefulness as the present Royal Society, without recording that, a
little more than a hundred years ago, a Latin paper, on ‘Volcanoes,’
was read before it by a German, one Raspe. Whether it faithfully
narrated Raspe’s experiences, who can tell?--for Raspe subsequently
wrote that amusingly serious lie called ‘Baron Munchausen.’
In the early part of the last century, a body of ladies constituted
themselves as ‘The Shakespeare Club.’ They met in rooms in Covent
Garden, and their object was to raise funds to supply the managers of
the two theatres, to enable them to act with appropriate splendour the
plays of the national poet strictly according to his text; in other
words, the end was to annihilate the adapters of the bard. How even
the ladies themselves were divided in opinion and into clubs, is seen
in the closing words to Fielding’s ‘Historical Register for 1736.’ The
piece closes with a deprecatory appeal to the fair sex present, to whom
an actor says: ‘And you ladies, whether you be Shakespeare’s ladies, or
Beaumont and Fletcher’s ladies, I hope you will make allowance for a
rehearsal.’
There was another club in the last century whose purpose was one which
deserves for it everlasting respect and admiration. The excellent
object it had in view was the suppression of wearisome preachers, or
the putting down of silly and interminable sermons. Whether the means
taken to arrive at the ends aimed at could be equally respected and
admired, is a matter on which a certain difference of opinion may be
justly allowed. It was the fashion of the time for ladies to carry
fans, and for gentlemen to be inseparable from their canes. These
weapons were turned to church uses by the ladies and gentlemen who
were members of the Rattling Club. They were vagrant Christians, who
attended such churches as possessed congregations who sat in need of
relief from a great oppression--that of being bored by a preacher who
(as Voltaire says of them all) stood five feet above contradiction. The
Rattlers were perfectly unobtrusive during service, and indeed they
were perfectly decorous during sermon, unless they were provoked by
absurdity or tediousness. As soon as any provocation of that sort was
felt, a Lady-Rattler began to agitate her fan, or a Gentleman-Rattler
tapped his cane against the floor or the panelling of his pew. The
signal was followed by the other members, and the interruption was
continued, gradually increasing till there was such a fluttering of
fans and a rattling of canes as to produce conviction on the mind
of the preacher that the sooner he pronounced the word ‘finally’
the sooner there would be peace in the church. It would not be very
unreasonable to call such conduct unseemly--even vulgar. The Rattling
Club, however, had very august precedent for their proceedings. In as
far as the eccentric young Queen Christina of Sweden set the example,
she may be fairly looked upon as the founder of the Rattlers. In her
own royal chapel, as well as in any ordinary church where she happened
to be present before she passed over to the Church of Rome, Christina
used to give decent attention to the sermon till she thought she had
taken as much as would do her good. At that point she would slightly
rap with her fan on the top of the back of the chair which always
stood before her own in the Chapel Royal, or on any hard substance
which happened to be near her, when she was being sermon-vexed in
other places. If the preacher neglected to attend to this signal, her
Majesty declared open warfare against him, and rattled away with her
fan with increasing intensity till she had silenced the pulpit, or
(if the preacher continued to pour forth his volleys) till she raised
the siege and retreated in vexation. Let us mention here, by the way,
that in the early intolerant age of the Reformation which followed the
intolerable era of Popery in England, people were compelled (under
serious penalties) to go to church whether they were Reformers or
Romanists. Many of the latter attended the Protestant service rather
than pay the fine, and yet preserved their consistency; and you may
fancy the mirth in some old country-house, when the solemn knight and
his lady, and the laughing daughters with their haughty brothers, as
soon as they heard the church-bells ring, proceeded to stuff wool into
their ears, and then went to a sermon with a joyous conviction of being
unable to hear a word of it.
Let us now fancy ourselves standing in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, in the year 1711. We are in front of the Land Bank, which
had lately come to grief, and the street was not of the high estate
it had been when lords smoked their pipes at its windows, and could
smell the haycocks that were in St. Pancras Fields. Let us describe
what took place. There was a going in and out, and a standing on
the steps, and a gathering of increased numbers, and an universal
cheerful gossiping, save on the part of Mr. Ferrers, who was dumb.
Passengers stopped to look at these men, and were not slow to recognise
the most eminent among the wellnigh five dozen standing or moving
about the door, or going in and out. People from Drury Lane knew
their neighbour Mr. Vertue, who was talking apart to a little knot of
listeners--engravers like himself. There was Michael Dahl, talking a
good deal about his Swedish patroness Queen Christina, and still more
about his claims to be director of an Academy of Painting. At these
claims his hearers may be taken to have smiled, especially if their eye
happened to fall on a well-dressed, courteous gentleman, who passed
into the house bowing to all who greeted him. There was not a child
in Queen Street who could not recognise in him the great Sir Godfrey
Kneller. Sir Godfrey was probably greeted most warmly by Laguerre, who
had glorified the knight’s house at Whitton with more simple taste than
usually distinguished Laguerre. Thornhill stood near the latter, and
looked on him with no more perceptible air of triumph than a modest
artist could help, who had been substituted for the other in the task
of painting the Life of St. Paul within the dome of the metropolitan
church. Richardson too was there, and his colleagues respected him
as an artist who, if Kneller and Dahl were but away, would be at
the head of portraiture in England. A laughing group stood round
Richardson; he was narrating to them his own great story, which has
been so often retold with other heroes of the tale: ‘_The gentleman
was singularly annoyed that his friend should declare that his Rubens
was only a copy. He said to me: “I will knock any man’s brains out who
will call it a copy! My dear Mr. Richardson, come down to my house,
and give me your candid opinion!”_’ We may fancy that merry and wise
Richardson tripping up the steps laughingly, stopping, perhaps, in
the hall to talk with two gentlemen, brothers, one of whom exhibits
to him, and to smiling Laptist Monnoyer, some paintings on fans which
excite his generous unreserved admiration. It is Mr. Godfrey, behind
whose marvellously-decorated fans--on which figured landscapes created
to make love in--the beauties of the time of Anne and the first two
Georges used to feign to blush and hide confusion which they did not
feel.
When these and others were assembled in the old bank, they numbered
sixty-two. Every man came with his guinea ready for the treasurer. It
was to be the annual subscription. Each member had also with him a list
of twelve names, whom he voted for as directors for one year. Michael
Dahl insinuated his right to be governor, but, saving Dahl’s vote,
Kneller was unanimously elected; and with his quietly moving into the
chair of that club, was the first Academy of Painting established in
England.
The jealousy of Dahl, and a few individual affectations, marred some
of the good that the Academy might have accomplished. In the second
year, the Swedish favourite of Queen Anne and her husband, Prince
George of Denmark, withdrew, because Kneller was still preferred to him
as governor or president. The Academy Club elected new members, with
or without their consent. At that time there was a French painter in
London, named Berchet. He had painted panels and ceilings in England
from the time of the latter years of Charles II.; and when De la Fosse
was over here, he must have been proud, if he was not jealous, of his
pupil. If there be an old painted panel yet in the house that was the
Duke of Schomberg’s, in Pall Mall, it is possibly a portion of the
decoration of the house, and is, in such case, Berchet’s work. The
belles and gallants of the day flocked to Ranelagh, to gaze at the
summer-house so daintily tricked out by Berchet’s delicate pencil.
_Now_, he was painting small mythological pieces, in oils; and the
‘Academicians,’ deeming him worthy of being a member, elected him.
Berchet (by letter) ‘excused himself, being not well and tysicky, and
could not bear the smoke of the lamp.’ His infirmity did not leave him,
neither did his industry. He had just put his name at the foot of ‘A
Bacchanalian,’ his last work, when the pencil dropped for ever from his
hand, and Berchet’s occupation was gone.
We pass from Art to Fashionable Eccentricity. When squires were
_squires_ in England, and came up to London to see a little life, a
club was founded for them in St. James’s Street, which was (and is)
called Boodle’s, but which was long familiarly known as ‘The Topboot
and Worsted Stocking Club.’ To rival Boodle’s dinners, or Almack’s, was
not a difficult matter, since they seem to have consisted of uncouth
legs of mutton, roasted geese, and buttered apple-pies. Something
better than mere squirearchy must have been among the members, for
Gibbon was one, and a hundred years ago the great historian wrote his
letters there. It was the poor cookery of Boodle’s that probably gave
rise to the ‘Sçavoir Vivre Club,’ the palates of whose members could
not bear, nor their stomachs digest, the mutton, geese, and apple-pies
of the club, which still exists. The ‘Sçavoir Vivre’ showed that they
knew how to live, by composing or importing new dishes, and they
showed that they knew how to dress, by creating the most eccentric of
costumes. Among their imported dishes was macaroni. It become such a
favourite dish at the club, and was so invariably brought to table,
that the clubbists themselves became celebrated as ‘Macaronies.’ In
dress they wore a toy cocked hat, gold-laced, buttoned and tasseled
over hair fashioned into a foretop above the head, side-curls, and
a clubbed tail. Tight striped silk breeches, and an equally tight
coat and waistcoat, kept them together. Their tasseled canes were as
long as those still carried by state footmen when they ride behind a
carriage going to court on a drawing-room day. Like Tiddy Bob, they
had a watch in each fob, with cable-chains, and a pound of seals at
the end of them. Their white neck-cloths displayed a front bow as
large as a cauliflower; and they daintily walked about in white silk
stockings and diamond-buckled shoes, in all weathers. In any sense,
for a Macaroni to wear a greatcoat was to confess his unworthiness of
being a member of the august brotherhood. As equestrians, they figured
in the park on little ponies, and looked as if they lacked strength to
get on anything higher. The female Macaronies carried heads top-heavy
with hair of their own and other peoples--hat, feathers, and a world
of knicknackery. Their dress clung almost as closely to the body as
the gentlemen’s to theirs. But they dragged after them a long, long
gold-embroidered train, the very thought of which reminds us of the
poet’s line:--
Hæc nunc auratâ cyclade verret humum.
The Macaronies and the Macaroniesses, as they were called, turned days,
nights, hours, and seasons, topsy-turvy; and the former, to show that
they were men, ran foot-races on Sundays in Kensington Gardens, very
lightly clad, and putting in peril their little lives, by exhaustion
of the little breath they carried in their little bodies. Having
established macaroni as a dish to be thenceforward known in every
household of taste, they died out, and men knew them no more.
The Eccentrics entered into the present century. The Keep-the-Line
Club was one of the brilliant, fashionable, and shortlived clubs of
the first quarter of the present century. Its members consisted of
wits, artists, actors, authors, gentlemen, and peers. It had two
purposes--enjoyment and preservation of temper, by putting it to the
hardest trials. One of the rules was, that whenever a member was
insulted by another, however grossly, the insulted person should rise
and offer his best thanks to the offender. A witty fellow might here
find good opportunity for his wit, if he only knew how to avail himself
of opportunity. Another rule imposed a fine of a dozen of claret to the
club, on the member who published any literary composition of his own.
Samuel Rogers, Topham, Miles Peter Andrews, Merry, Morton, Reynolds,
Fitzgerald, Horace Smith, Boaden, Kenney, and others, paid the fine
willingly whenever it was fairly due. The penalty was once demanded
of Wilson (the surgeon), and of John Tufton. The first had issued an
advertisement announcing a course of lectures; Tufton had addressed
an electioneering handbill to his constituents. Both publications were
pronounced to be literary. The authors had not only to pay the penalty
in claret, but to profess their unfeigned delight at its being imposed
on them.
While the Keep-the-Line loved fun, others loved athletics. The
Mary-le-bone Cricket Club of the olden days did not at all resemble
what it afterwards became when known as Lord’s. In its early age, there
was as much difficulty in passing a ballot successfully, as in the
most exclusive clubs of the present day. The members included players
from every degree in the peerage, members of the House of Commons,
and gentlemen of large landed property. The costume of the club was
_skyblue_! and their chief object--even before cricketing--was the
performance of practical jokes. One of the latter was played by the
bacchanalian Duke of Richmond on Fred Reynolds the dramatist. The Duke
put Reynolds on horseback, and rode with him to a match on Moulsey
Hurst. The steed ridden by Reynolds was from Astley’s, and the Duke led
the way to where a body of soldiers were exercising with gun, drum,
and trumpet. The circus war-horse immediately became dramatic, going
through a course of unparalleled performances, which he concluded by
flinging his sky-blue rider. But there were, besides the practical
jokers, serious and accomplished cricketers. For bowling, David Harris;
for batting, Tom Walker; and for wicket-keeping, sharp-eyed Hammond,
had no equal except in Lord Frederick Beauclerc, who excelled, each in
his speciality, and could beat everybody at all three.
In those days, the Mary-le-bone Club had no particular ground. From
May to September they moved from place to place, encamping here and
bivouacking there by day, and taking their ease in their inn by night.
Hospitality varied this course very pleasantly. Sir Horace Mann,
the King of Cricket, kept open house for the club at his seat near
Maidstone, or at his marine residence at Margate. This hospitality
did not cause him to be respected by the practical jokers. Some of
the jokes lacked decency; and we do not see much fun in the emptying
a man’s box of its snuff and filling it with hellebore, to make him
sneeze a hundred times for one! It was a rule that no offence was to
be taken at the roughest of these jokes, but it was not always in
the power of a man to seem delighted at them. We quite sympathise
with Miles Peter Andrews, who, being asked why he looked serious
when everybody was laughing loudly at a jest perpetrated by the most
convivial of the members, answered--‘My dear sir, I can see no fun in a
man who owes me three guineas!’
The hospitality of Mann to the club was, if possible, exceeded by
that of Richard Leigh, whose welcomes to the members at Wilmington
were feudal in their sumptuousness. His good taste and liberality
were manifested in many ways. His musical gatherings were exquisite
treats. His love for athletic sports was shown in his zeal at getting
up cricket matches. The eccentric Duchess of Gordon, who had married
two dukes and a marquis to her three daughters, once said aloud to
Richard Leigh: ‘I am the _first_, but you are the second, match-maker
in England, Mr. Leigh.’
One of the droller incidents of the club-matches was long remembered.
Reynolds, who was but an amateur, was one day called upon to go in for
a member who was too ill to play. He went to the wicket with a feeling
of fright, as if he stood in front of a loaded pistol levelled at him,
when he saw that the formidable Harris was about to bowl. In his own
words, he says: ‘My terrors were so much increased, by the mock pity
and sympathy of Hammond, Beldam, and others round the wicket, that when
this mighty bowler--the _Jupiter Tonans_--hurled his bolt at me, I shut
my eyes in the intensity of my panic, and mechanically gave a random
desperate blow, which, to my utter astonishment, was followed by a loud
cry all over the ring of “Run! run!” I did run, and with all my force;
and getting three notches, the Duke of Richmond, John Tufton, Leigh,
Anguish, and other arch-wags, advanced and formally presented to me
twenty-five sixpences in a hat, collected from the bystanders as “the
reward of merit.” Even Lord Winchilsea and Sir Horace Mann contributed
to this, and then all playfully commenced promoting a new subscription,
which only stopped because I could not stop the next ball. To my great
joy, up went my stumps and out I walked--certainly with some little
_éclat_, being the first member of the club who had been considered a
_regular player_--_i.e._, _paid_ for his services.’
We have now to say a few words of some other clubs and their purposes.
In the last century, Benjamin Franklin was in the chair at a private
club which used to meet weekly at ‘The Prince of Wales’ in Conduit
Street. A proposal was made to do something for starving authors.
The members murmured over their pipes, stared at the punch-bowl, and
thought authors were vulgar people, who were not worth being thought
about. The matter, however, was not allowed to drop. Year after year
some kind soul or another brought it hot upon the anvil, hammered at it
till he was weary, and then passed the hammer to another and another,
and he to another, till at last the _something_ was beaten into shape,
and shape into substance, till there was fashioned that excellent and
praiseworthy institution, the Literary Fund. In its first year only a
few shillings could be spared for one hungry author, but _now_ it sends
forth welcome relief by hundreds of pounds.
This Literary Fund brings to our mind a literary club which we must not
pass over--namely, ‘The Syncretics.’ The worthy gentleman who invented
the name has never been discovered; but, dignified as the title looked,
it sorely troubled some of the members, particularly those who had
looked into a dictionary for the interpretation, yet who, on being
asked for the meaning of ‘Syncretic,’ had forgotten the dictionary
definition. The object of this united body was the encouragement of the
dramatic element among the members. They were to write plays, which
managers were to put on the stage for them; and as each play was acted,
the Syncretics were bound, or were supposed to be bound, to support
the drama of their brother-member by enthusiastic demonstrations of
applause. Their motto seemed to be: ‘_Hors nous et nos amis nul n’aura
de l’esprit_.’
When the amiable society had furnished nearly as many new dramas as
there were members, the difficulty arose as to which play should have
the precedence. It was a delicate matter. Each writer saw peculiar
claims and merits in his own play, and those members whose pieces
were as yet only on the stocks thought that the club should not be
in too great a hurry, lest, by failing in their first venture, they
should discourage the possible or probable new Shakespeares who as yet
lacked time to bring about their dramatic _dénouements_. At length
a decision was arrived at, and a play called ‘Martinuzzi’ had the
good or evil fortune to be selected for representation. The public
expectation had been stimulated to a high degree, but disappointment
followed. ‘Martinuzzi’ was a lugubrious failure; but an ill-natured
world would have it that it was most violently hissed by the author’s
fellow-clubbists, the Syncretics. What will not a censorious world
assert? The scandal-mongers affirmed that it was a Syncretic rule
for each member, except the author, to hiss the play in course of
representation, as each sibilant member hoped, by damning his brother’s
play, to obtain a better chance of bringing his own forward earlier.