Club Life of London Volume I Part 21

Mr. Hood, in his _Comic Annual_ for 1838, took up the topic in his rich vein of comic humour, and here is the amusing result:--

"CLUBS,

"TURNED UP BY A FEMALE HAND.

"Of all the modern schemes of Man That time has brought to bear, A plague upon the wicked plan That parts the wedded pair!

My female friends they all agree They hardly know their hubs; And heart and voice unite with me, 'We hate the name of Clubs!'

"One selfish course the Wretches keep; They come at morning chimes; To s.n.a.t.c.h a few short hours of sleep-- Rise--breakfast--read the Times-- Then take their hats, and post away, Like Clerks or City scrubs, And no one sees them all the day,-- They live, eat, drink, at Clubs!

"With Rundell, Dr. K., or Gla.s.se, And such Domestic books, They once put up, but now, alas!

It's hey! for foreign cooks.

'When _will_ you dine at home, my dove?'

I say to Mr. Stubbs.

'When Cook can make an omelette, love-- An omelette like the Clubs!'

"Time was, their hearts were only placed On snug domestic schemes, The book for two--united taste,-- And such connubial dreams,-- Friends, dropping in at close of day, To singles, doubles, rubs,-- A little music,--then the tray,-- And not a word of Clubs!

"But former comforts they condemn; French kickshaws they discuss, And take their wine, the wine takes them, And then they favour us;-- From some offence they can't digest, As cross as bears with cubs, Or sleepy, dull, and queer, at best-- That's how they come from Clubs!

"It's very fine to say, 'Subscribe To Andrews'--can't you read?

When Wives, the poor neglected tribe, Complain how they proceed!

They'd better recommend at once Philosophy and tubs,-- A woman need not be a dunce, To feel the wrong of Clubs.

"A set of savage Goths and Picts Would seek us now and then,-- They're pretty pattern-Benedicts To guide our single men!

Indeed, my daughters both declare 'Their Beaux shall not be subs To White's, or Black's, or anywhere,-- They've seen enough of Clubs!'

"They say, without the marriage ties, They can devote their hours To catechize, or botanize-- Sh.e.l.ls, Sunday Schools, and flow'rs-- Or teach a Pretty Poll new words, Tend Covent Garden shrubs, Nurse dogs and chirp to little birds-- As Wives do since the Clubs.

"Alas! for those departed days Of social wedded life, When married folks had married ways, And liv'd like Man and Wife!

Oh! Wedlock then was pick'd by none-- As safe a lock as Chubb's!

But couples, that should be as one, Are now the Two of Clubs!

"Of all the modern schemes of Man That time has brought to bear, A plague upon the wicked plan, That parts the wedded pair!

My wedded friends they all allow They meet with slights and snubs, And say, 'They have no husbands now,-- They're married to the Clubs!'"

The satire soon reached the stage. About five-and-twenty years since there was produced at the old wooden Olympic Theatre, Mr. Mark Lemon's farce, _The Ladies' Club_, which proved one of the most striking pieces of the time. "Though in 1840 Clubs, in the modern sense of the word, had been for some years established, they were not quite recognized as social necessities, and the complaints of married ladies and of dowagers with marriageable daughters, to the effect that these inst.i.tutions caused husbands to desert the domestic hearth and encouraged bachelors to remain single, expressed something of a general feeling. Public opinion was ostentatiously on the side of the ladies and against the Clubs, and to this opinion Mr. Mark Lemon responded when he wrote his most successful farce."[23]

Here are a few experiences of Club-life. "There are many British lions in the coffee-room who have dined off a joint and beer, and have drunk a pint of port-wine afterwards, and whose bill is but 4_s._ 3_d._ One great luxury in a modern Club is that there is no temptation to ostentatious expense. At an hotel there is an inclination in some natures to be 'a good customer.' At a Club the best men are generally the most frugal--they are afraid of being thought like that little sn.o.b, Calicot, who is always surrounded by fine dishes and expensive wines (even when alone), and is always in loud talk with the butler, and in correspondence with the committee about the cook. Calicot is a rich man, with a large bottle-nose, and people black-ball his friends.

"For a home, a man must have a large Club, where the members are recruited from a large cla.s.s, where the funds are in a good state, where a large number every day breakfast and dine, and where a goodly number think it necessary to be on the books and pay their subscriptions, although they do not use the Club. Above all, your home Club should be a large Club, because, even if a Club be ever so select, the highest birth and most unexceptionable fashion do not prevent a man from being a _bore_. Every Club must have its bores; but in a large Club _you can get out of their way_."[24]

"It is a vulgar error to regard a Club as the rich man's public-house: it bears no a.n.a.logy to a public-house: it is as much the private property of its members as any ordinary dwelling-house is the property of the man who built it.

"Our Clubs are thoroughly characteristic of us. We are a _proud_ people,--it is of no use denying it,--and have a horror of indiscriminate a.s.sociation; hence the exclusiveness of our Clubs.

"We are an _economical_ people, and love to obtain the greatest possible amount of luxury at the least possible expense: hence, at our Clubs we dine at prime cost, and drink the finest wines at a price which we should have to pay for slow poison at a third-rate inn.

"We are a _domestic_ people, and hence our Clubs afford us all the comforts of home, when we are away from home, or when we have none.

Finally, we are a _quarrelsome_ people, and the Clubs are eminently adapted for the indulgence of that amiable taste. A book is kept constantly open to receive the outpourings of our ill-humour against all persons and things. The smokers quarrel with the non-smokers: the billiard-players wage war against those who don't play; and, in fact, an internecine war is constantly going on upon every conceivable trifle; and when we retire exhausted from the fray, sofas and _chaises longues_ are everywhere at hand, whereon to repose _in extenso_. The London Clubs are certainly the abodes of earthly bliss, yet the ladies won't think so."[25]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] _Times_ journal.

[24] New Quarterly Review.

THE UNION CLUB.

This n.o.ble Club-house, at the south-west angle of Trafalgar-square, was erected in 1824, from designs by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A. It is much less ornate than the Club-houses of later date; but its apartments are s.p.a.cious and handsome, and it faces one of the finest open s.p.a.ces in the metropolis. As its name implies, it consists of politicians, and professional and mercantile men, without reference to party opinions; and, it has been added, is "a resort of wealthy citizens, who just fetch Charing Cross to inhale the fresh air as it is drawn from the Park through the funnel, by Berkeley House, out of Spring Gardens, into their bay-window."

James Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected Addresses_, was a member of the Union, which he describes as chiefly composed of merchants, lawyers, members of Parliament, and of "gentlemen at large." He thus sketches a day's life here. "At three o'clock I walk to the Union Club, read the journals, hear Lord John Russell deified or diablerized, do the same with Sir Robert Peel or the Duke of Wellington, and then join a knot of conversationists by the fire till six o'clock. We then and there discuss the Three per Cent. Consols (some of us preferring Dutch Two-and-a-half per Cents.), and speculate upon the probable rise, shape, and cost of the New Exchange. If Lady Harrington happen to drive past our window in her landau, we compare her equipage to the Algerine Amba.s.sador's; and when politics happen to be discussed, rally Whigs, Radicals, and Conservatives alternately, but never seriously, such subjects having a tendency to create acrimony. At six, the room begins to be deserted; wherefore I adjourn to the dining-room, and gravely looking over the bill of fare, exclaim to the waiter, 'Haunch of mutton and apple-tart!' These viands dispatched, with the accompanying liquids and water, I mount upward to the library, take a book and my seat in the arm-chair, and read till nine. Then call for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, resuming my book till eleven; afterwards return home to bed." The smoking-room is a very fine apartment.

One of the grumbling members of the Union was Sir James Aylott, a two-bottle man; one day, observing Mr. James Smith furnished with half-a-pint of sherry, Sir James eyed his cruet with contempt, and exclaimed: "So, I see you have got one of those d--d life-preservers."

The Club has ever been famed for its _cuisine_, upon the strength of which, we are told that next-door to the Club-house, in c.o.c.kspur-street, was established the Union Hotel, which speedily became renowned for its turtle; it was opened in 1823, and was one of the best appointed hotels of its day; and Lord Panmure, a _gourmet_ of the highest order, is said to have taken up his quarters in this hotel, for several successive seasons, for the sake of the soup.[26]

FOOTNOTES:

[25] The Builder.

[26] London Clubs, 1853, p. 75.

THE GARRICK CLUB.

Mr. Thackeray was a hearty lover of London, and has left us many evidences of his sincerity. He greatly favoured Covent Garden, of which he has painted this clever picture, sketched from "the Garden,"

where are annually paid for fruits and vegetables some three millions sterling:--

"The two great national theatres on one side, a churchyard full of mouldy but undying celebrities on the other; a fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote and history; an arcade, often more gloomy and deserted than a cathedral aisle; a rich cl.u.s.ter of brown old taverns--one of them filled with the counterfeit presentment of many actors long since silent, who scowl or smile once more from the canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers; a something in the air which breathes of old books, old pictures, old painters, and old authors; a place beyond all other places one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight; a crystal palace--the representative of the present--which peeps in timidly from a corner upon many things of the past; a withered bank, that has been sucked dry by a felonious clerk; a squat building, with a hundred columns and chapel-looking fronts, which always stands knee-deep in baskets, flowers, and scattered vegetables; a common centre into which Nature showers her choicest gifts, and where the kindly fruits of the earth often nearly choke the narrow thoroughfares; a population that never seems to sleep, and that does all in its power to prevent others sleeping; a place where the very latest suppers and the earliest breakfasts jostle each other on the footways--such is Covent-Garden Market, with some of its surrounding features."

About a century and a quarter ago, the parish of St. Paul was, according to John Thomas Smith, the only fashionable part of the town, and the residence of a great number of persons of rank and t.i.tle, and artists of the first eminence; and also from the concourse of wits, literary characters, and other men of genius, who frequented the numerous coffee-houses, wine and cider cellars, jelly-shops, etc., within its boundaries, the list of whom particularly includes the eminent names of Butler, Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Otway, Dryden, Pope, Warburton, Cibber, Fielding, Churchill, Bolingbroke, and Dr.

Samuel Johnson; Rich, Woodward, Booth, Wilkes, Garrick, and Macklin; Kitty Clive, Peg Woffington, Mrs. Pritchard, the d.u.c.h.ess of Bolton, Lady Derby, Lady Thurlow, and the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Alban's; Sir Peter Lely, Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, and Sir James Thornhill; Vandevelde, Zincke, Lambert, Hogarth, Hayman, Wilson, Dance, Meyer, etc. The name of Samuel Foote should be added.

Although the high fashion of the old place has long since ebbed away, its theatrical celebrity remains; and the locality is storied with the dramatic a.s.sociations of two centuries. The Sublime Society of Steaks have met upon this hallowed ground through a century; and some thirty years ago there was established in the street leading from the north-west angle of Covent-Garden Market, a Club, bearing the name of our greatest actor. Such was the Garrick Club, inst.i.tuted in 1831, at No. 35, King-street, "for the purpose of bringing together the 'patrons' of the drama and its professors, and also for offering literary men a rendezvous; and the managers of the Club have kept those general objects steadily in view. Nearly all the leading actors are members, and there are few of the active literary men of the day who are not upon the list. The large majority of the a.s.sociation is composed of the representatives of all the best cla.s.ses of society.

The number of the members is limited, and the character of the Club is social, and therefore the electing committee is compelled to exercise very vigilant care, for it is clear that it would be better that ten un.o.bjectionable men should be excluded than that one terrible bore should be admitted. The prosperity of the Club, and the eagerness to obtain admission to it, are the best proofs of its healthy management; and few of the cases of grievance alleged against the direction will bear looking into."

The house in King-street was, previous to its occupation by the Garrick men, a family hotel: it was rendered tolerably commodious, but in course of time it was found insufficient for the increased number of members; and in 1864, the Club removed to a new house built for them a little more westward than the old one. But of the old place, inconvenient as it was, will long be preserved the interest of a.s.sociation. The house has since been taken down; but its memories are embalmed in a gracefully written paper, by Mr. Shirley Brooks, which appeared in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_, immediately before the removal of the Club to their new quarters; and is as follows:--

"From James Smith (of _Rejected Addresses_) to Thackeray, there is a long series of names of distinguished men who have made the Garrick their favourite haunt, and whose memories are connected with those rooms. The visitor who has had the good fortune to be taken through them, that he might examine the unequalled collection of theatrical portraits, will also retain a pleasant remembrance of the place. He will recollect that he went up one side of a double flight of stone steps from the street and entered a rather gloomy hall, in which was a fine bust of Shakspeare, by Roubiliac, and some busts of celebrated actors; and he may have noticed in the hall a tablet recording the obligation of the Club to Mr. Durrant, who bequeathed to it the pictures collected by the late Charles Mathews. Conducted to the left, the visitor found himself in the strangers' dining-room, which occupied the whole of the ground-floor. This apartment, where, perhaps, more pleasant dinners had been given than in any room in London, was closely hung with pictures. The newest was Mr. O'Neil's admirable likeness of Mr. Keeley, and it hung over the fireplace in the front room, near Sir Edwin Landseer's portrait of Charles Young.

There were many very interesting pictures in this room, among them a Peg Woffington; Lee (the author of the Bedlam Tragedy, in nineteen acts); Mrs. Pritchard, and Mr. Garrick, an admirable ill.u.s.tration of