THE CLUBS AND CLUB HOUSES OF LONDON.
WE cannot conceive of any greater contrast than that which exists
between the wretchedness and squalor of the lodging houses, and the
splendor and refined elegance, combined with comfort of the Club houses
of London, which are chiefly situated in Pall Mall, St. James street,
and the neighborhood of lower Regent street.
Club life has attained its greatest perfection in London. No city upon
the Continent can compare with it for the number of its club houses,
the splendor of their architecture, their luxurious furniture, and the
standing in society of their members.
[Sidenote: INTERESTING STATISTICS.]
There are, I believe, upward of fifty clubs in London, in which all the
professions, and all the stations of life find representation, with a
roll of perhaps 45,000 members. The following are the principal clubs
with the cost of ground and construction: Army and Navy Club, George's
street, St. James' square, 1,450 members, £100,000; the Conservative
Club, St. James' street, 1,500 members, £81,000; Garrick Club, King
street, Convent Garden, 500 members, £25,000; Junior United Service
Club, corner of Charles and Regent streets, 1,500 members, £75,000;
Oxford and Cambridge Club, Pall Mall, 1,200 members, £100,000; Reform
Club, 1,400 members, £120,000; University Club, Pall Mall East, 500
members, £20,000; Wyndham Club, St. James' square, 600 members,
£30,000; Westminster Club, Albemarle street, 560 members, £15,000;
Athenæum, Pall Mall, 1,200 members, £60,000; Carlton, Pall Mall,
800 members, £100,000; Guards Club, Pall Mall, 500 members, £40,000;
Oriental, Hanover square, 800 members, £30,000; Traveler's, Pall Mall,
700 members, £30,000; Union, Cockspur street, 1,000 members, £25,000;
United Service Club, Pall Mall, 1,500 members, £70,000; White's Club,
St. James' street, 550 members, £20,000; Boodles, St. James' street,
500 members, £15,000; Cavendish Club, 307 Regent street, 500 members,
£15,000; and Civil Service Club, 86 St. James' street, 1,000 members,
£45,000.
Besides the before-mentioned clubs there are the following, which rank
nearly but not quite as high among Club men:
MEMBERS. COST.
Albert Club, 15 George street, Hanover square, 500 £10,000
Alpine Club, Trafalgar square, 600 18,000
Arlington Club, 4 Arlington street, 400 16,000
Arts Club, 17 Hanover square, 500 16,000
Arundel Club, 12 Salisbury street, Strand, 600 52,000
City of London Club, 19 old Broad street, (merchants,) 1,000 50,000
Gresham Club, City, (bankers, &c.,) 1,000 60,000
Junior Athenæum Club, 29 King street, St. James, 800 30,000
Junior Carlton Club, 14 Regent street, 800 40,000
New Carlton Club, Albemarle street, 800 25,000
New University Club, 57 St. James' street, 600 29,000
Portland Club, Stratford Place, Oxford street, 400 18,000
Smithfield Club, Half-Moon street, Piccadilly 300 12,000
St. James' Club, 54 St. James' street, 500 23,000
Whitehall Club, Parliament street, 500 9,000
Whittington Club, 37 Arundel street, 1,600 40,000
Clarendon Club, 86 St. James' street, 900 36,000
Junior Reform Club, Albemarle street, 800 40,000
Brooks' Club, 60 St. James' street, 575 20,000
Arthur's Club, 69 St. James' street, 600 18,000
Law Society, Chancery Lane, 1,000 68,000
National, Whitehall-Gardens, 400 17,000
Prince's Racket and Tennis Club, Hans Place, Chelsea, 300 11,000
United University, corner Suffolk street and Pall Mall, 500 33,000
Beefsteak Society, Lyceum Theatre, 250 5,000
Club Chambers, Regent street, 400 31,000
" " St. James' square, 300 17,000
Ambassador's, 106 Piccadilly, 200 16,000
Erectheum, St. James's square, 300 20,000
In these several clubs each member is elected by ballot, and pays an
entrance on admission, and afterward an annual subscription, which
varies like entrance fees in different clubs.
Thus, in the Athenæum, the entrance fee is £26.5s., annual
subscription, £6.6s. Arthur's, entrance £21, subscription, £10 10s.
Brooks, entrance, £9 9s., subscription, £11 11s. Carlton, entrance,
£15 15s., annual subscription, £10 10s. Conservative Club, £28 7s.,
subscription, £8 8s. Garrick Club, entrance, £21, subscription, £6
6s. Junior United Service, entrance, £30, subscription £6. Oxford and
Cambridge Club, entrance, £21 5s., subscription, £6 6s. Reform Club,
entrance, £21 5s., subscription, £10 10s. Travelers' Club, entrance,
£31 10s. Union, entrance, £38 10s., subscription, £6 6s. United Service
Club, entrance, £36, subscription, £6. Whittington, entrance, £10 10s.,
subscription, ladies £1, gentlemen, £2 2s. Wyndham, entrance, £27 6s.,
subscription, £8.
When clubs were first started they were regarded with much hostility
as being most antagonistic to domestic life, and the ladies displayed
an intense spirit against them. The clubs, however, survived and
flourished under their enmity, and it was found that they discouraged
coarse drunkenness, the prevalent vice of Englishmen; encouraged social
intercourse--of which ladies partook of elsewhere; refined the manners
of the members, constituted courts of honor, and tended most materially
to the manufacture of gentlemen.
The London clubs are private hotels on a vast and magnificent scale.
They have billiard rooms, coffee rooms, nine-pin rooms, splendid
libraries, saloons, and furniture, and plate of the costliest and
rarest description.
[Sidenote: LUXURIOUS DINNER--LADIES EXCLUDED.]
All the refreshment which a member has, whether breakfast, dinner,
supper, or wine, are furnished to him at the _market cost_ price,
all other expenses being defrayed from the annual subscriptions. For
a few pounds a year, advantages are to be had, which no incomes but
the most ample could procure. The Athenæum, which consists of twelve
hundred members, can be taken as a good example of the rest. Among
the members can be reckoned a large proportion of the most eminent
persons in England--civil, military, and ecclesiastical, peers,
spiritual and temporal, commoners, men of the learned professions,
those connected with the sciences and arts, and commerce, as well as
the distinguished who do not belong to any particular class, and who
have nothing to do but live on their means, bore their tailors, and
admire their family genealogy, and their own figures. These men are
to be met with day after day at the clubs, living with more freedom
and nonchalance than they could at their own houses. For six or eight
guineas a year every member has the command of an excellent library,
with maps, the daily London papers, English and foreign periodicals,
and every material for writing, with a flock of gorgeous flunkies, in
powder and epaulettes, to attend at the nod of a member, and a host
of youthful pages in buttons and broadcloths. The club is a sort of a
palace with the comfort of a private dwelling, and every member is a
master without having the trouble of a master. He can have whatever
meat or refreshment he desires served up at all hours, with luxury
and dispatch. There is a fixed place for everything, and it is not
customary to remain long at table. You can dine alone, or you can
invite a dozen persons to dine with you, females being excluded. From
an account kept at the Athenæum for one year, it appears that 17,323
dinners cost on an average 2s. 9-3/4d. each, and the average quantity
of wine drank by each person at these dinners was a small fraction more
than a pint for each. The bath accommodations are the finest that can
be imagined.
The kitchen of the London clubs cannot be equaled in the world, and
the chief cooks who have charge of the kitchens, have each an European
fame. Alexis Soyer, the greatest cook since Ude or Vatel, had, for
a long time, the charge of the kitchen of the Reform Club, and the
kitchen of this club, of which John Bright, and all the leaders of the
English liberals are members, is the finest in London.
A description of this kitchen will in a measure answer for that of any
other London club, and I will give it here for the information of those
who are curious in such matters.
The kitchen, properly so called, is an apartment of moderate size,
surrounded on all four sides by smaller rooms, which form the pastry,
the poultry, the butchery, the scullery, and other subordinate offices.
There are doorways but no doors, between the different rooms, all
of which are formed in such a manner that the chief cook, from one
particular spot, can command a view of the whole. In the centre of
the kitchen is a table and a hot closet, where various knicknacks are
prepared and kept to a desired heat, the closet being brought to any
required temperature by admitting steam beneath it. Around the hot
closet is a bench or table, fitted with drawers and other conveniences
for culinary operations. A passage going around the four sides of this
table separates it from the various cooking apparatus, which involve
all that modern ingenuity has brought to bear on the cuisine.
In the first place there are two enormous fireplaces for roasting, each
of which would, in sober truth, roast a whole sheep. The screens placed
before these fires are so arranged as to reflect back almost the entire
heat which falls upon them, and effectually shields the kitchen from
the intense heat which would be otherwise thrown out. Then again, these
screens are so provided with shelves and recesses as to bring into
profitable use the radiant heat which would be otherwise wasted.
[Sidenote: MODEL KITCHEN.]
Along two sides of the room are ranges of charcoal fires for broiling
and stewing, and other apparatus for other varieties of cooking. These
are at a height of about three feet from the ground. The broiling fires
are a kind of open pot or pan, throwing upward a fierce but blazeless
heat; behind them is a framework by which gridirons may be fixed at any
height above the fire, according to the intensity of the heat. Other
fires open only at the top, are adapted for various kinds of pans and
vessels; and in some cases a polished tin-reflector is so placed as
to reflect back to the viands the heat. Under and behind and over and
around, are pipes, tanks, and cisterns, in abundance, containing water
to be heated, or to be used more directly in the processes of cooking.
A boiler adjacent to the kitchen is expressly appropriated to the
supply of steam for "steaming," for heating the hot closets, the hot
iron plates and other apparatus. In another small room the meat is
kept, chopped, cut, and otherwise prepared for the kitchen. There are
also in the pastry room all the necessary appliances for preparing the
lightest and most luscious triumphs of the art. In another room there
are drawers in the bottoms of which blocks of ice are laid, and above
these are placed articles of undressed food, which must necessarily be
kept cool.
There is a cheerful air, an air of magnificence about these superb
kitchens, which would charm a good housewife. Here all the genius that
can be brought to bear upon cookery is concentrated, and the head cook
would not deign to notice any person of less rank than a baronet, while
in superintendence. Although there are twelve hundred members or over,
yet he is not responsible to any individual one, and the only authority
in the club to which he has to bow is the eight or ten members of the
House Committee, whose decrees even to this great being are arbitrary.
The pots and pans are of an exceeding brightness, and the entire
system is perfect. In one corner of the kitchen is a little stall or
counting-house, at a desk in which sits the "Clerk of the Kitchen."
Every day the chief cook provides, besides ordinary provisions which
are certain to be required, a selected list which he inserts in his
bill of fare--a list which is left to his judgment and skill.
Say three or four gentlemen, members of the club, determine to dine
there at a given hour, they select from the bill of fare, or make a
separate "order" if preferred, or leave the dinner altogether to the
intellect of the _chef_, who is sure to be flattered by this dependence
on his judgment. A little slip of paper on which is written the
names of the dishes and the hour of dining, is hung on a hook in the
kitchen on a black board, where there are a number of hooks devoted to
different hours of the day or evening. The cooks proceed with their
avocations, and by the time the dinner is ready the clerk of the
kitchen has calculated and entered the exact value of every article
composing it, which entry is made out in the form of a bill--the cost
price being that by which the charge is regulated--nothing is ever
charged for the cooking. Immediately at the elbow of the clerk are
bells and speaking tubes, by which he can communicate with the servants
in the other parts of the building.
Meanwhile a steam engine is "serving up" the dinner. In one corner
of the kitchen is a recess, on opening a door in which we see a
small platform, square-shaped, calculated to hold an ordinary sized
tray. This platform is connected with the shaft of a steam engine by
bands and wheels, so as to be elevated through a kind of vertical
trunk leading to the upper part of the building; and here are the
white-aproned servants or waiters ready to take out the hot and
luscious smelling viands from the platform, to the member or members of
the club who are anxiously awaiting dinner.
Architecturally speaking the club houses are the finest buildings
in London, and in the west end of the town, and in the vicinity of
the parks they do much to beautify the city; these massive, richly
decorated, and pillared palaces of exclusiveness.
The "Heavy Swell" Club of all London is the "Guards" in Pall Mall.
There are three or four regiments of the Queen's Household Brigade
stationed always in London to guard the sacred person of the Queen,
and it is from the officers of these crack regiments that the members
of the club are balloted for. These fellows are supposed to bathe
in champagne, and dine off rose water; they are afraid to carry an
umbrella thicker than a walking stick, they hate "low people," and
devote their existence to killing time, yet are withal sensitive,
honorable in many things, (except paying their grocers, wine and
haberdashing bills,) and will fight as becomes the descendants of the
men who dyed the sands at Hastings with their blood, to bequeath a rich
and fruitful kingdom to those who now inherit it.
[Sidenote: THE CONSERVATIVE AND GARRICK CLUBS.]
The Conservative Club is frequented by those athletic and slow going
squires and gentlemen who are always ready to applaud Mr. Disraeli in
the House of Commons, and are willing to serve as special constables
on days when the English democracy become restive and open their eyes
to the fact of their being plundered and robbed every day of their
lives. It was from the Conservative Club that Mr. Granville Murray was
expelled by the secret influence of the moral Prince of Wales, simply
because following his duty as a journalist he had told the hereditary
regulators of England that they were out of place in the nineteenth
century.
[Illustration: CONSERVATIVE CLUB HOUSE.]
The Garrick Club is, as its name indicates, made up of artists,
dramatists, actors, newspaper writers, and authors. It numbers among
its members Charles Reade, Tom Taylor, Charles Dickens, Bulwer, Wilkie
Collins, Anthony Trollope, Andrew Halliday, George Augustus Sala, Mr.
Delane of the Times, H. Sutherland Edwards, William Howard Russell,
Edward Dicey, Thornton Hunt, Editor of the _Telegraph_, John Ruskin,
and I believe Thomas Carlyle's name was proposed as an honorary member;
Charles Kean, Thackeray, Charles Matthews, Sr., who founded the club,
W.H. Ainsworth, the novelist, the Blanchards, the Mayhews, Samuel
Lover, Charles Lever, John Oxenford, Louis Blanc, Walter Thornbury,
Lascelles Wraxall, Edmund Yates, John Hollingshead, formerly critic of
the _Daily News_, James Greenwood, Frederick Greenwood, Brough, Dudley
Costello, Lord William Lennox, Thomas Miller, Cyrus Redding, and other
well known literary men belong to or have at some period or another
been members of this club. American authors, artists, and actors, are
always welcomed here, and among the habitues of the Garrick may be
found Lester Wallack, H.E. Bateman, and others. The Garrick is noted
for its famous gin punch which is a specialty here, and for which the
following ingredients are necessary to composition; pour half a pint of
gin on the outer peel of a lemon, then a little lemon juice, a glass of
maraschino, a pint and a quarter of water, and two bottles of iced soda
water. This is a most fragrant punch and not very intoxicating. The
collection of pictures at the Garrick is very fine, and embraces nearly
all the people, both male and female, who have made themselves famous
in English histrionic art, among whom may be noticed Elliston, Macklin,
Peg Woffington, Nell Gwynne, Colley Cibber, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Garrick
as Richard III, John Phillip and Charles Kemble, Charles Mathews,
Mrs. Siddons, Macready, Miss Inchbald, Edmund Kean, Kitty Clive, Mrs.
Billington, and various others. Some of these portraits have been
painted by the first of English artists. This gallery is only rivalled
by that in Evan's Supper House in Convent Garden, where there is a fine
and similar collection.
The Reform Club has among its members John Bright, W. E. Gladstone,
Lord Hatherley, the present Lord Chancellor of England, the Duke of
Argyll, W.E. Forster, Lord Dufferin, and other well known liberal
nobles. About a year ago John Bright and W.E. Forster, his able
aide-camp, resigned from the membership of the Reform Club, owing to
the fact that a correspondent of an American journal, proposed by them,
had had been black-balled in the Reform Club. This correspondent was
Geo. W. Smalley of the _New York Tribune_. I believe that the club
reconsidered their decision and admitted Mr. Smalley, and Mr. Bright
and Mr. Forster are now members of the club. Sir Charles Wentworth
Dilke, editor of the _Athenæum_, is a member of the Reform Club.
[Sidenote: CARLTON CLUB.]
The Carlton Club ranks high among the Tory or anti-liberal clubs of
London, has a very rich proprietary and a magnificent edifice in Pall
Mall. The Right Hon. Spencer Horatio Walpole, one of the members
for Cambridge University, and Alexander Beresford Hope, one of the
proprietors of the _Saturday Review_, who was a member of Parliament
during the American Civil War, and a bitter foe of the North, are both
members of the Carlton Club, as is also Lord John Manners, a prominent
Conservative noble, and fifth son of the Duke of Rutland. John Laird,
M.P. for Liverpool, the builder of the _Alabama_, is also a member of
the Carlton Club.
Lord Cole, a son of the Earl of Enskillen, and a chief accomplice with
the Prince of Wales in the Lady Mordaunt scandal, is a member of the
Carlton.
[Illustration: CARLTON CLUB HOUSE.]
Gregory, the member for Galway, also a sympathizer with the
Slaveholder's Rebellion, belongs to the Carlton. To be brief, this
Carlton Club, essentially aristocratic and inimical to democracy
all over the world, contributed more individual moneyed and social
influence and support to Jeff. Davis than all the London Clubs put
together.
I might state here that Bass, the great East India Pale Ale man, is a
member of the Reform Club, while Sir Arthur Guiness, the Dublin Brown
Stout man, Bass's great rival, is a member of the National Club, which
is pseudo liberal. Jonathan Pim, the rich Irish Quaker, a member for
Dublin City like Guiness, does not belong to any London club and keeps
away from the flesh pots of Egypt. John Francis Maguire, M.P. for Cork,
is a member of the Stafford Club, which numbers some of the Catholic
families in its roll of membership. Sir Patrick O'Brien, an amusing
Irishman who frequents the Cremorne a good deal, belongs to the Reform
Club. The present Earl of Derby, late Lord Stanley, who was expected to
lead the liberals in the House of Lords, but does not give much promise
of doing so while he is an active member of the Carlton Club.
The Right Hon. George Goschen, a Jewish merchant, who is President
of the Poor Law Board, yet quite a young man and promising, has his
name inscribed on the lists of the Reform and Athenæum Clubs, and
Robert Lowe, the witty, sarcastic, and clear-headed Chancellor of
Exchequer, are lights in the Reform Club. Edward Sullivan, the Irish
Attorney General, may be seen at the Reform, and George Henry Moore,
a countryman of his, and an apologist for the Fenians, is a habitue
of Brook's Club in St. James street. Sir John Evelyn Dennison, the
Speaker of the House of Commons, while in town during the session, when
dinner time comes, always doffs his gown and wig and toddles around
to the Reform Club for a chop or steak, and a glass of wine. Vernon
Harcourt, who signs himself in the _Times_ "Historicus," represents
Oxford Borough in the House of Commons, and is a member of the Oxford
and Cambridge University Club. A good story is told of "Historicus."
Three heavy swells of the Guards were dining at the Star and Garter at
Richmond, and all three made a wager that they each could boast of the
biggest bore in London as an acquaintance. The discussion wore high,
and they agreed to test it by bringing each his bore to dine on a set
day, and at a set hour, at the "Star and Garter." When the day came
two close carriages were drawn up to the "Star and Garter," and out of
each leaped one of the gentlemen who had made the wager. They were both
disappointed in their bores, and came without them as they had previous
engagements. A third carriage drove up, and out of it leaped the third
Swell who had made the wager, with a tall gentleman in a cloak. As soon
as the stranger uncovered and presented the smiling countenance of
"Historicus," the two swells cried out in astonishment,
"By J-a-a-v ye knaw, that's not f-eh-ah--_he's got our bo-a-h_!"
[Illustration: OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CLUB HOUSE.]
[Sidenote: BEEFSTEAK CLUB.]
Whalley, the religious madman, belongs to the Reform Club, and so does
the Right Hon. Hugh Childers, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Kinglake, the historian, who bribed his way into the House of Commons,
and afterwards testified to it without shame, is a member of Brooks,
the Travelers, the Athenæum, and the Oxford and Cambridge Clubs.
Sir Robert Peel, the member for Farnsworth, is to be found at
Brook's and Boodle's. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, formerly ambassador
at Washington, at the Reform Club. Layard, the Nineveh discoverer
and now English ambassador at Madrid, belongs to the Athenæum Club.
The O'Donoughue at the Stafford and Reform Clubs, while young Mr.
Gladstone, son to the Premier, modestly drinks his wine at the New
University Club. Lord Carrington, a boon companion of the Prince of
Wales, is a member of the Guards Club, and Sir Francis Crossley, the
great Yorkshire manufacturer, may be seen nightly during the session
passing his hours in the Reform and Brook's Clubs.
Queer and strange reminiscences cling to the London Clubs like
barnacles to a packet ship. At the Alfred Club, George Canning, one of
the greatest men ever known in England, used to take a steak and onions
alongside of Lord Byron, who was always partial to Madeira negus.
Louis Napoleon, in his cheerless and hard up days, ate his
eighteenpenny dinner at the Army and Navy Club in silence, while
aristocratic Englishmen sat around chaffing and joking and taking no
part in the sorrows of the exiled nephew of his Uncle. Since then
dynasties have changed, and now a magnificent piece of Gobelin tapestry
work, the "Sacrifice of Diana," worthy to be the gift of a sovereign,
hangs in the club house of which he was once a member. The Emperor
presented it to the Club.
The stock of wine in the cellars of the Athenæum is worth about
$30,000, and is never allowed to run down or deteriorate, and its
yearly revenue amounts to about $50,000.
The Beefsteak Club is a coterie of choice spirits who meet over the
Lyceum Theatre to eat beefsteaks and drink tobys of ale, each member
bringing his own beefsteak and furnishing his own jokes. Several
noblemen belong to it, and the President wears as his emblem of office,
a golden gridiron. Peg Woffington was at one time a member of this club.
[Illustration: UNITED SERVICE CLUB.]
The Duke of Wellington was in the habit of dining at the United Service
Club, in Pall Mall, off the roast joint of beef or mutton, and one
day he was charged 1s. 3d. for his plate of meat instead of 1s., the
proper charge. He declared he would not pay the extra three-pence, and
denounced the swindle until the three-pence was deducted, when the old
soldier became satisfied and said that he would have paid the extra
charge, but that he did not wish to establish an unjust precedent
whereby others might suffer.
Just one hundred years ago a man dropped down at the door of White's
Club, which is still flourishing in St. James' St., and the crowd of
loungers in the bow windows immediately began to lay wagers whether the
man was dead or not. A charitable person suggested that he be bled, but
those who had wagered refused to allow it, saying that it would affect
the fairness of the bet. In 1814, a banquet was given to the allied
sovereigns at White's, which cost over $50,000 of American money, and
the next year after a banquet was given to the Duke of Wellington
which cost £2,480 10s. 9d. George IV, and Chesterfield, the master of
politeness, were members of White's Club.
During the hard winter of 1844, the aristocratic clubs of London
contributed to the starving poor of the metropolis, 3,104 pounds of
broken bread, 4,556 pounds of broken meat, 1,147 pints of tea-leaves,
and 1,158 pints of coffee-grounds. Otherwise these leavings might have
been given to swine to fatten them.
[Sidenote: DEMOCRATIC CLUB.--LADIES ADMITTED.]
Gambling was carried on to a very high pitch at one time in the London
clubs, but many have mended within twenty years. Crockford's Club
House, No. 50 St. James' street, was known all over the world, and
kings, princes, ambassadors, and statesmen, were inscribed upon its
rolls as members. It no longer exists, however.
Crockford started in life as a fishmonger, in the old bulk-shop
next door to Temple Bar Without, which he quitted for "play" in St.
James'. He began by taking Watier's old club-house, where he set up a
hazard-bank, and won a great deal of money; he then separated from his
partner, who had a bad year, and failed. Crockford now removed to St.
James' street, had a good year, and built the magnificent club house
which bore his name; the decorations alone are said to have cost him
£94,000. The election of the club members was vested in a committee;
the house appointments were superb, and Ude was engaged as _maître
d'hôtel_. "Crockford's" now became the high fashion. Card-tables
were regularly placed, and whist was played occasionally; but the
aim, end, and final cause of the whole was the hazard-bank, at which
the proprietor took his nightly stand, prepared for all comers. His
speculation was eminently successful. During several years, everything
that anybody had to lose and cared to risk was swallowed up; and
Crockford became a _millionaire_. He retired in 1840, "much as an
Indian chief retires from a hunting-country when there is not game
enough left for his tribe;" and the Club then tottered to its fall.
After Crockford's death, the lease of the club-house (thirty-two years,
rent £1,400) was sold for £2,900.
The Whittington Club is the only democratic club in London. It was
started twenty-four years ago by Douglas Jerrold, who became its first
president. It combines a literary society, with a club house, upon an
economical scale, and contains dining and coffee rooms, library and
reading rooms, smoking and chess rooms, and a large hall for balls,
concerts, and soirees. Lectures are given here, and classes are held
for the higher branches of education, fencing, dancing, etc. Ladies
have all the privileges of gentlemen or members in the restaurant,
and in balloting, while their dues and subscriptions is half that of
the male members. This is the largest club in London, and combines
all classes, having a roll of 1,700 members, all of whom are to be
considered active. The Whittington Club is the only one in London where
a person may be proposed without having a crest, or without belonging
to a "good family," which means to loaf or idle a life away, and live
upon the bread which is furnished by the blood and sweat of what these
dandy Club men call the "lowah closses."
[Illustration]