proprietors of the club-houses--as White's, Boodle's, Brooks's, and
Arthur's--Brooks's may be taken as a specimen. A roll of its members
from the date of its foundation in 1764 to 1900 has recently been
published under the title _Memorials of Brooks's_, and contains much
interesting information. The editors, Messrs. V. A. Williamson, S.
Lyttelton and S. Simeon, state that the first London Clubs were
instituted with the object of providing the world of fashion with a
central office for making wagers, and a registry for recording them.
In their early days gambling was unlimited. Brooks's was not political
in its origin. The twenty-seven original members included the Dukes of
Roxburgh, Portland, and Gordon. In the 136 years 3,465 members have
been admitted.
The original house was on or near the site of the present Marlborough
Club, and Almack was the first manager or master. About 1774 he was
succeeded by Brooks, from whom the club derives its name. He died in
1782, and was succeeded by one Griffin. In 1795 the system was altered,
and six managers were appointed. The present house in St. James' Street
was constructed in 1889-90, when 2, Park Place, was incorporated
with it. The entrance fee in 1791 was five guineas, and was raised
successively in 1815, 1881, 1892, and 1901, to nine, fifteen,
twenty-five and thirty guineas. The subscription was at first four
guineas, raised in 1779 to eight guineas, and in 1791 to ten guineas.
An offshoot of Brooks's is the Fox Club, a dining club, probably
a continuation of an earlier Whig Club. Up to 1843 it met at the
Clarendon Hotel, and since then at Brooks's. It is said to have been
constituted for the purpose of paying Fox's debts, for which his
friends, in 1793, raised £70,000. Sir Augustus Keppel Stephenson was
the secretary of this club from 1867 until his death in 1904. He was
the son of a distinguished member of Brooks's, who had joined that club
in 1818, the Fox Club in 1829, was secretary of the Sublime Society of
Beef Steaks, and the last man to wear Hessian boots.
The Travellers' Club dates from 1819, the Union from 1821, and the
United University from 1822.
The Union Club is composed of noblemen, members of Parliament, and
gentlemen of the first distinction and character who are British
subjects, and has 1,250 members. Election is by open voting in the
committee. Foreign and Colonial persons of distinction may be made
temporary honorary members. The entrance fee is twenty-one guineas; the
annual subscription ten guineas.
The United University Club has 1,000 members, of whom 500 belong to
Oxford and 500 to Cambridge. The King is a member. Cabinet ministers,
bishops, judges, etc., may be admitted without ballot. All members of
either University are qualified to be candidates, but only graduates,
persons who have resided in college or hall for two years, holders
of honorary degrees, and students in civil law of above three years'
standing, are qualified to be members. The club has recently rebuilt
its house at the corner of Suffolk Street and Pall Mall East.
The Athenæum was originated by Mr. John Wilson Croker, after
consultation with Sir Humphry Davy, president of the Royal Society,
and was founded in 1824 for the association of individuals known for
their scientific or literary attainments, artists of eminence in any
class of the fine arts, and noblemen and gentlemen distinguished as
liberal patrons of science, literature, or the arts. It is essential
to the maintenance of the Athenæum, in conformity with the principles
upon which it was originally founded, that the annual introduction
of a certain number of persons of distinguished eminence in science,
literature, or the arts, or for public services, should be secured.
Accordingly, nine persons of such qualifications are elected by the
committee each year. The club entrusts this privilege to the committee,
in the entire confidence that they will only elect persons who shall
have attained to distinguished eminence in science, literature, or the
arts, or for public services. The General Committee may also elect
princes of the blood Royal, cabinet ministers, bishops, speakers of
the House of Commons, judges, and foreign ambassadors, or ministers
plenipotentiary of not less than three years' residence at the Court of
St. James's, to be extraordinary members; and may invite, as honorary
members during temporary residence in England, the heads of foreign
missions, foreign members of the Royal Society, and not more than
fifteen other foreigners or colonists of distinction. The ordinary
members of the club are 1,200 in number. The entrance fee is thirty
guineas, and the annual subscription eight guineas. The presidents for
the time being of the Royal Society, of the Society of Antiquaries, and
of the Royal Academy of Arts, if members, are ex-officio members of the
General Committee. An Executive Committee of nine is selected from the
General Committee to manage the domestic and other ordinary affairs of
the club. No elected member can remain on the General Committee more
than three consecutive years, unless he is a member of the Executive
Committee, in which case he may be re-elected for a second term of
three years. No higher stake than half-a-guinea points shall be played
for. No game of mere chance shall be played in the house for money. No
member shall make use of the club as an address in any advertisement.
The history of the club has been told by the Rev. J. G. Waugh in an
interesting book printed for private circulation in 1900. Its first
house was 12, Waterloo Place, where it remained until 1827, when it
obtained its present site. Its success was so great that within four
months of the preliminary meeting in 1824 it had a list of 506 members,
including the then Prime Minister and seven persons who afterwards
became Prime Ministers. By 1827 it was full, and had a list of 270
candidates waiting for election. The present house was planned by
Decimus Burton, and an attic storey was added to it in 1899-1900. It is
a successful building, striking attention by the statue of Minerva over
the porch, the frieze, and the noble hall and grand staircase. The hall
was re-decorated in 1891 under the direction of Sir L. Alma Tadema.
Originally, a soirée was held every Wednesday, to which ladies were
admitted. That has long been discontinued, and, as a satirical member
observed, "Minerva is kept out in the cold, while her owls are gorging
within." Among the members of the club have been the following great
actors: Macready, Mathews, Kemble, Terry, Kean, Young, and Irving.
The Oriental Club was also established in 1824, at a meeting held eight
days after that at which the Athenæum had been established. Sir John
Malcolm presided. The club was intended for the benefit of persons
who had been long resident abroad in the service of the Crown, or of
the East India Company. By May, 1826, it had 928 members, and in that
year it took possession of the site of 18, Hanover Square, and employed
Mr. B. D. Wyatt as the architect of its house. Its history has been
written by Mr. Alexander F. Baillie, in a book published in 1901.
Mr. Wyatt provided a grand staircase, but no smoking-room, and only
one billiard-room. At that time and until 1842 the club provided its
members gratuitously with snuff at a cost of £25 per year. In 1874 the
present smoking-room was opened; and now the handsome drawing-room is a
place where those can retire who desire solitude, and the smoking-room
and billiard-rooms are overcrowded. The club has a fine library. It
claims among its members the prototype of Colonel Newcome. The members
have a custom of securing a table for dinner by inverting a plate upon
it.
In 1855 the Oriental Club agreed to take over, without entrance fee,
the members of the Alfred Club, which had been established in 1808,
and was then being dissolved. Nearly 400 members availed themselves of
the offer. The history of that club has some points of interest. It
was largely intended for literary men, but it is said that Canning,
vexed at overhearing a member asking who he was, gave it the nickname
of the "Half-read" Club, which stuck to it. Its early career was
prosperous, and by 1811 it had 354 candidates and only six vacancies;
but its popularity waned. The real cause of its dissolution was the
firm conservatism of the committee. They would not recognise the
growing demand of accommodation for smokers. The clubhouse, No. 23,
Albemarle Street, had been built and arranged in the days when no
such accommodation had been considered necessary, and the committee
resolutely refused to make any concession to the members who desired to
smoke.
The Garrick Club was founded in 1831. It was instituted for the
general patronage of the drama; for the purpose of combining the use
of a club on economical principles with the advantage of a literary
society; for bringing together the supporters of the drama; and for
the foundation of a national library, with works on costume. The
number of members is limited to 650, who pay an entrance fee of twenty
guineas, and an annual subscription of ten guineas. The club is more
than usually hospitable, as it allows a member to invite three visitors
to dinner, and admits the public to see its magnificent collection of
dramatic pictures daily from 10 to 1.
The Carlton Club was established in 1832. It is famous as the rallying
ground for the Conservative party, the temple of Toryism. From it, and
its resources, candidates in that interest derive much encouragement
and support, and it may not unreasonably be inferred that some of that
encouragement and support is material as well as moral.
The Reform Club was established in 1837, and then held the same
position towards the Liberal party. It was instituted for the purpose
of promoting the social intercourse of the Reformers of the United
Kingdom. All candidates are to declare themselves to be reformers,
but no definition of a "reformer" is given. If, however, a member is
believed not to be a reformer, fifty members may call a general meeting
for his expulsion. Members of Parliament and peers may be admitted by
general ballot, with priority of election. The committee elect each
year two gentlemen of distinguished eminence for public service, or in
science, literature, or arts. The Political Committee of fifty members
elect each year two persons who have proved their attachment to the
Liberal cause by marked and obvious services. Other members are elected
by general ballot, one black ball in ten excluding. The club has 1400
members. It has a fine library. It has liberal regulations as to the
admission of guests, and ladies may be admitted to view the club from
11.0 a.m. to 5.0 p.m. Members may inspect the books and accounts and
take extracts from them. The admission fee is £40, and the annual
subscription ten guineas.
The Conservative Club was established in 1840, and the National Club
in 1845. The object of the National Club is to promote Protestant
principles, and to encourage united action among Protestants in
political and social questions by establishing a central organisation
to obtain and spread information on such questions, by affording
facilities for conference thereon, and by providing in the metropolis
a central place of meeting to devise the fittest means for promoting
the object in view. Its members must hold the doctrines and principles
of the reformed faith, as revealed in Holy Scripture, asserted at the
Reformation, and generally embodied in the Articles of the Church
of England. It has a general committee, house committee, library
committee, prayer and religious committee, wine committee, finance
committee, and Parliamentary committee. The General Committee has power
to elect as honorary members of the club not more than twenty persons
distinguished by their zeal and exertions on behalf of the Protestant
cause; these are mostly clergymen. All meetings of committees are to
be opened with prayer. The household are to attend the reading of the
Word of God and prayers morning and evening in the committee room. The
Parliamentary committee are to watch all proceedings in Parliament
and elsewhere affecting the Protestant principles of the club. Its
fundamental principles are declared to be:
(1) The maintenance of the Protestant constitution,
succession, and faith.
(2) The recognition of Holy Scripture in national education.
(3) The improvement of the moral and social condition of the
people.
The club is singular in having these definite religious purposes, and
no doubt has in its time done much for the Protestant cause; but there
is a little incongruity between the earnestness of its purpose and
the self-indulgence which club life almost necessarily implies; and
religious opinion, which claims to be the most stable of all things, is
really one of the most fluid. Most men, who think at all, pass through
many phases of it in their lives. It would not be surprising if this
early earnestness had somewhat cooled down.
Another group of clubs consists of those the members of which are bound
together by a common interest in some athletic sport or pursuit--as the
Marylebone Cricket Club, which dates from 1787; the Alpine Club, which
was founded in 1857; the Hurlingham Club, in 1868; and to these may
perhaps be added, as approximating to the same class, the Bath Club,
1894.
The gradual filling up of old clubs, which we observed in the case
of the service clubs, and the congested state of their lists of
candidates, leading to long delay before an intending member had the
chance of election, has led to the establishment of junior clubs; thus,
in 1864, the Junior Athenæum and the Junior Carlton were founded.
A further development has been the establishment of clubs for women.
The Albemarle Club, founded in 1874, admits both men and women, and
adjusts its lists of candidates so as to provide for the election of
nearly equal numbers of both.
The Marlborough Club should also be mentioned specially, as it was
founded by the King, and no person can be admitted a member except upon
His Majesty's special approval.
The Authors' Club was established in 1891 by the late Sir Walter
Besant, and is especially noted for its house dinners, at which some
person of distinction is invited to be the guest of the club.
Altogether, the clubs of London are very numerous, and we have only
been able to draw attention to the peculiarities of a few of them. Like
every other human institution, they are subject to continual change,
and there are pessimists who go about saying that they are decaying
and losing their popularity and their usefulness. The long lists of
candidates on the books of the principal clubs do not lend much colour
to this suggestion. Social habits alter with every generation of men,
and it is possible that many men do not use their clubs in the same way
that the founders did, but the fact remains that they do use them, and
that clubs still form centres of pleasure and convenience to many.
One particular in which the change of social habits is especially
noticeable is with respect to gaming. This, as we have seen, was almost
the _raison d'être_ of some of the early clubs, and there are numerous
tales of the recklessness with which it was pursued, and the fortunes
lost and won at the gaming table. We have quoted from one or two clubs
the regulations which now prevail, and similar regulations are adopted
in most of the other clubs. Games of chance are wholly prohibited; and
limits are provided to the amount that may be staked on games of cards.
Each club has also a billiard room.
With respect to smoking, the habitués of clubs have experienced a great
change. Formerly the smoking room, if any, was small and far away;
now the luxury of the club is concentrated in it, and the question
is rather in what rooms smoking is not to be allowed. Very few clubs
retain the old tradition that smoking is a thing to be discouraged and
kept out of sight.
Other signs of change are the increase in the cost of membership and
the later hours for dining. It need hardly be said that the clubs pay
great attention to their kitchens. We have it on the authority of Major
A. Griffiths (_Fortnightly Review_, April, 1907) that the salary of the
chef is between £200 and £300 a year.
The customs of the clubs with regard to the admission of visitors
vary. At one end of the scale is the Athenæum, which will not allow
its members to give a stranger even a cup of cold water, and allows of
conversation with strangers only in the open hall or in a small room
by the side of the doorway. At the other end are clubs which provide
special rooms for the entertainment of visitors, and encourage their
members to treat their friends hospitably, and to show them what the
club is able to do in the matter of cooking and wines.
The social ethics of clubs vary in like manner. In some clubs,
notably those of the Bohemian type, but including several which would
claim not to belong to that group, mere membership of the club is a
sufficient introduction to justify a member in addressing another, and
conversation in the common rooms of the club becomes general. This
is delightful--within limits: it is not always possible to create by
the atmosphere of the club a sentiment that will restrain all its
members from sometimes overstepping those bounds of mutual courtesy
and consideration which alone can make such general conversation
altogether pleasant. The greater clubs go to the opposite extreme,
and members of them may meet day after day for many years in perfect
unconsciousness of the existence of each other; yet, even in these, the
association of those who know each other outside the club, but without
its opportunities would rarely meet, though they have similar interests
and pursuits, is a very desirable and useful thing. Many an excellent
measure, originating in the mind of one member, has been matured by
conversation with others, to the general good. So may the Clubs of
London continue to prosper and flourish.
THE INNS OF OLD LONDON
BY PHILIP NORMAN, LL.D.
To write a detailed account of London inns and houses of entertainment
generally would require not a few pages, but several volumes. The inns,
first established to supply the modest wants of an unsophisticated age,
came by degrees to fulfil the functions of our modern hotels, railway
stations, and parcel offices; they were places of meeting for business
and social entertainment--in short, they formed a necessary part of the
life of all Londoners, and of all who resorted to London, except the
highest and the lowest. The taverns, successors of mediæval cook-shops,
were frequented by most of the leading spirits of each generation from
Elizabethan times to the early part of the nineteenth century, and
their place has now been taken by clubs and restaurants. About these a
mass of information is available, also on coffee-houses, a development
of the taverns, in which, for the most part, they were gradually
merged. As to the various forms of public-house, their whimsical
signs alone have amused literary men, and perhaps their readers, from
the time of _The Spectator_ until now. In this chapter I propose to
confine my remarks to the inns "for receipt of travellers," so often
referred to by John Stow in his _Survey of London_, which, largely
established in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, continued on the
same sites, mostly until years after the advent of railways had caused
a social revolution. These inns, with rare exceptions, had a galleried
courtyard, a plan of building also common on the Continent, which came
perhaps originally from the East. In such courtyards, as we shall see,
during Tudor times theatrical performances often took place, and in
form they probably gave a hint to the later theatres.
Before the fifteenth century it was usual for travellers to seek the
hospitality of religious houses, the great people being lodged in
rooms set apart for them, while the poorer sort found shelter in the
guest-house. But as time went on this proved inadequate, and inns on
a commercial basis came into existence, being frequented by those who
could hardly demand special consideration from the religious houses,
and were not fitting recipients of charity. Naturally enough, these
inns, when once their usefulness became recognised, were soon to be
found in the main thoroughfares leading out of the metropolis, and they
were particularly plentiful in Southwark on each side of what we now
call the Borough High Street, extending for a quarter of a mile or more
from London Bridge along the main road to the south-eastern counties
and the Continent. The first thus established, and one of the earliest
in this country, had to some extent a religious origin--namely, the
"Gentle hostelrye
That hight the Tabard, fasté by the Belle,"
about which and about the Southwark inns generally I propose now to say
a few words, for although well known, they are of such extreme interest
that they demand a foremost place in an account of this kind. From the
literary point of view the "Tabard" is immortalized, owing to the fact
that Chaucer has selected it as the starting-point of his pilgrims
in _The Canterbury Tales_. Historically, it may be mentioned that as
early as the year 1304 the Abbot and Convent of Hyde, near Winchester,
purchased in Southwark two tenements, on the sites of which he built
for himself a town dwelling, and at the same time, it is believed, a
hostelry for the convenience of travellers. In 1307 he obtained license
to build a chapel at or by the inn, and in a later deed we are told
that "the abbott's lodginge was wyninge to the backside of the Tabarde
and had a garden attached." From that time onwards frequent allusions
can be found to this house, the sign of which (a sleeveless coat,
such as that worn by heralds) got somehow corrupted into the Talbot,
a species of dog, by which it was known for a couple of centuries
or more, almost to the time of its final destruction. Although the
contrary has been asserted, the inn was undoubtedly burnt in the Great
Southwark Fire of 1676, but was rebuilt soon afterwards in the old
fashion, and continued to be a picturesque example of architecture
until 1875, when the whole was swept away, hop merchants' offices and a
modern "old Tabard" now occupying the site.
Equal in interest to the last-named inn was the "White Hart." At the
one Chaucer gave life and reality to a fancied scene; at the other
occurred an historical event, the bald facts of which Shakespeare has
lighted up with a halo of romance. The White Hart appears to have dated
from the latter part of the fourteenth century, the sign being a badge
of Richard II., derived from his mother, Joan of Kent. In the summer
of 1450 it was Jack Cade's headquarters while he was striving to gain
possession of London. Hall, in his _Chronicle_, records this, and adds
that he prohibited "murder, rape and robbery by which colour he allured
to him the hartes of the common people." It was here, nevertheless,
that "one Hawaydyne of sent Martyns was beheaded," and here, during
the outbreak, a servant of Sir John Fastolf, who had property in the
neighbourhood, was with difficulty saved from assassination. His
chattels were pillaged, his wife left with "no more gode but her
kyrtyll and her smook," and he thrust into the forefront of a fight
then raging on London Bridge, where he was "woundyd and hurt nere
hand to death." Cade's success was of short duration; his followers
wavered, he said, or might have said, in the words attributed to him by
Shakespeare (2 Henry VI., act iv., scene 8), "Hath my sword therefore
broken through London gate that you should leave me at the White Hart
in Southwark?" The rebellion collapsed, and our inn is not heard of
for some generations. Want of space prevents our recording the various
vicissitudes through which it passed, and the historic names connected
with it, until the time of the Southwark Fire of 1676, when, like the
"Tabard," it was burnt down, but rebuilt on the old foundations. In
1720 Strype describes it as large and of considerable trade, and it so
continued until the time when Dickens, who was intimately acquainted
with the neighbourhood, gave his graphic description of Sam Weller
at the White Hart in the tenth chapter of _Pickwick_. In 1865-66 the
south side of the building was replaced by a modern tavern, but the
old galleries on the north and east sides remained until 1889, being
latterly let out in tenements.