Club Life of London, Vol. 1 (of 2) / With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries

"KING ALLEN," "THE GOLDEN BALL," AND SCROPE DAVIES.

In the old days when gaming was in fashion, at Watier's Club, princes and nobles lost or gained fortunes between themselves. It was the same at Brookes's, one member of which, Lord Robert Spencer, was wise enough to apply what he had won to the purchase of the estate of Woolbidding, Suffolk. Then came Crockford's hell, the proprietor of which, a man who had begun life with a fish-basket, won the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation of aristocratic simpletons. Among the men who most suffered by play was Viscount Allen, or 'King Allen,' as he was called. This effeminate dandy had fought like a young lion in Spain; for the dandies, foolish as they looked, never wanted pluck. The 'King' then lounged about town, grew fat, lost his all, and withdrew to Dublin, where, in Merrion-square, he slept behind a large brass plate with 'Viscount Allen' upon it, which was as good to him as board wages, for it brought endless invitations from people eager to feed a viscount at any hour of the day or night, although King Allen had more ready ability in uttering disagreeable than witty things.

Very rarely indeed did any of the ruined gamesters ever get on their legs again. The Golden Ball, however, was an exception. Ball Hughes fell from the very top of the gay pagoda into the mud, but even there, as life was nothing to him without the old excitement, he played pitch and toss for halfpence, and he won and lost small ventures at battledore and shuttlecock, which innocent exercise he turned into a gambling speculation. After he withdrew, in very reduced circumstances, to France, his once mad purchase of Oatlands suddenly assumed a profitable aspect. The estate was touched by a railway and admired by building speculators, and between the two the Ball, in its last days, had a very cheerful and glittering aspect indeed.

Far less lucky than Hughes was Scrope Davies, whose name was once so familiar to every man and boy about town. There was good stuff about this dandy. He one night won the whole fortune of an aspiring fast lad who had come of age the week before, and who was so prostrated by his loss that kindly-hearted Scrope gave back the fortune the other had lost, on his giving his word of honour never to play again. Davies stuck to the green baize till his own fortune had gone among a score of less compassionate gentlemen. His distressed condition was made known to the young fellow to whom he had formerly acted with so much generosity, and that grateful heir refused to lend him even a guinea. Scrope was not of the gentlemen-ruffians of the day who were addicted to cruelly assaulting men weaker than themselves. He was well-bred and a scholar; and he bore his reverses with a rare philosophy. His home was on a bench in the Tuileries, where he received old acquaintances who visited him in exile; but he admitted only very tried friends to the little room where he read and slept. He was famed for his readiness in quoting the classical poets, and for his admiration of Moore, in whose favour those quotations were frequently made. They were often most happy. For example, he translated 'Ubi plura nitent non ego paucis offendar maculis,' by 'Moore shines so brightly that I cannot find fault with Little's vagaries!' He also rendered 'Ne plus ultra,' 'Nothing is better than Moore!'[30]

THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB.

Gentleman-coaching has scarcely been known in England seventy years. The Anglo-Erichthonius, the Hon. Charles Finch, brother to the Earl of Aylesford, used to drive his own coach-and-four, disguised in a livery great-coat. Soon after his début, however, the celebrated "Tommy Onslow," Sir John Lacy, and others, mounted the box in their own characters. Sir John was esteemed a renowned judge of coach-horses and carriages, and a coachman of the old school; but everything connected with the coach-box has undergone such a change, that the Nestors of the art are no longer to be quoted. Among the celebrities may be mentioned the "B. C. D.," or Benson Driving Club, which held its rendezvous at the "Black Dog," Bedfont, as one of the numerous driving associations, whose processions used, some five-and-thirty years ago, to be among the most imposing, as well as peculiar, spectacles in and about the metropolis.

On the stage, the gentlemen drivers, of whom the members of the Four-in-Hand Club were the exclusive élite, were illustrated rather than caricatured in Goldfinch, in Holcroft's comedy The Road to Ruin. Some of them who had not "drags" of their own, "tipped" a weekly allowance to stage coachmen, to allow them to "finger the ribbons," and "tool the team." Of course, they frequently "spilt" the passengers. The closeness with which the professional coachmen were imitated by the "bucks," is shown in the case of wealthy young Ackers, who had one of his front teeth taken out, in order that he might acquire the true coachman-like way of "spitting." There were men of brains, nevertheless, in the Four-in-Hand, who knew how to ridicule such fellow-members as Lord Onslow, whom they thus immortalized in an epigram of that day:—

It is a curious fact, that the fashion of amateur charioteering was first set by the ladies. Dr. Young has strikingly sketched, in his satires, the Delia who was as good a coachman as the man she paid for being so:—

The Four-in-Hand combined gastronomy with equestrianism and charioteering. They always drove out of town to dinner, and the ghost of Scrope Davies will pardon our suggesting that the club of drivers and diners might well have taken for their motto, "Quadrigis, petimus bene vivere!"[31]

There is another version of the epigram on Tom Onslow:—

This is the version current, we are told, among Onslow's relations in the neighbourhood of Guildford.

Lord Onslow's celebrity as a whip long preceded the existence of the Four-in-Hand Club (the palmy days of which belong to the times of George the Fourth), and it was not a coach, but a phaeton, that he drove. A correspondent of the Athenæum writes: "I knew him personally, in my own boyhood, in Surrey, in the first years of the present century; and I remember then hearing the epigram now referred to, not as new, but as well known, in the following form:—

"Tommy Onslow was a little man, full of life and oddities, one of which was a fondness for driving into odd places; and I remember the surprise of a pic-nic party, which he joined in a secluded spot, driving up in his 'phaeton and four' through ways that were hardly supposed passable by anything beyond a flock of sheep. An earlier exploit of his had a less agreeable termination. He was once driving through Thames-street, when the hook of a crane, dangling down in front of one of the warehouses, caught the hood of the phaeton, tilting him out, and the fall broke his collar-bone."

The vehicles of the Club which were formerly used are described as of a hybrid class, quite as elegant as private carriages and lighter than even the mails. They were horsed with the finest animals that money could secure. In general, the whole four in each carriage were admirably matched; grey and chestnut were the favourite colours, but occasionally very black horses, or such as were freely flecked with white, were preferred. The master generally drove the team, often a nobleman of high rank, who commonly copied the dress of a mail coachman. The company usually rode outside, but two footmen in rich liveries were indispensable on the back seat, nor was it at all uncommon to see some splendidly attired female on the box. A rule of the Club was that all members should turn out three times a week; and the start was made at mid-day, from the neighbourhood of Piccadilly, through which they passed to the Windsor-road,—the attendants of each carriage playing on their silver bugles. From twelve to twenty of these handsome vehicles often left London together.

There remain a few handsome drags, superbly horsed. In a note to Nimrod's life-like sketch, "The Road,"[32] it is stated that "only ten years back, there were from thirty-four to forty four-in-hand equipages to be seen constantly about town."

Nimrod has some anecdotical illustrations of the taste for the whip, which has undoubtedly declined; and at one time, perhaps, it occupied more attention among the higher classes of society than we ever wish to see it do again. Yet, taken in moderation, we can perceive no reason to condemn this branch of sport more than others. "If so great a personage as Sophocles could think it fitting to display his science in public, in the trifling game of ball, why may not an English gentleman exercise his skill on a coach-box? If the Athenians, the most polished nation of all antiquity, deemed it an honour to be considered skilful charioteers, why should Englishmen consider it a disgrace? To be serious, our amateur or gentlemen-coachmen have done much good: the road would never have been what it now is, but for the encouragement they gave, by their notice and support, to all persons connected with it. Would the Holyhead road have been what it is, had there been no such persons as the Hon. Thomas Kenyon, Sir Henry Parnell, and Mr. Maddox? Would the Oxford coachmen have set so good an example as they have done to their brethren of 'the bench,' had there been no such men on their road as Sir Henry Peyton, Lord Clonmel, the late Sir Thomas Mostyn; that Nestor of coachmen, Mr. Annesley; and the late Mr. Harrison of Shelswell? Would not the unhappy coachmen of five-and-twenty years back have gone on, wearing out their breeches with the bumping of the old coach-box, and their stomachs with brandy, had not Mr. Warde of Squerries, after many a weary endeavour, persuaded the proprietors to place their boxes upon springs—the plan for accomplishing which was suggested by Mr. Roberts, nephew to then proprietor of the White Horse, Fetter Lane, London, but now of the Royal Hotel, Calais? What would the Devonshire road have been, but for the late Sir Charles Bamfylde, Sir John Rogers, Colonel Prouse, Sir Lawrence Palk, and others? Have the advice and the practice of such experienced men as Mr. Charles Buxton, Mr. Henry Villebois, Mr. Okeover, Sir Bellingham Graham, Mr. John Walker, Lord Sefton, Sir Felix Agar,[33] Mr. Ackers, Mr. Maxse, Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope, Colonel Spicer, Colonel Sibthorpe, cum multis aliis, been thrown away upon persons who have looked up to them as protectors? Certainly not: neither would the improvement in carriages—stage-coaches more especially—have arrived at its present height, but for the attention and suggestions of such persons as we have been speaking of."

A commemoration of long service in the coaching department may be related here. In the autumn of 1835, a handsome compliment was paid to Mr. Charles Holmes, the driver and part proprietor of the Blenheim coach (from Woodstock to London) to celebrate the completion of his twentieth year on that well-appointed coach, a period that had elapsed without a single accident to his coach, his passengers, or himself; and during which time, with the exception of a very short absence from indisposition, he had driven his sixty-five miles every day, making somewhere about twenty-three thousand miles a year. The numerous patrons of the coach entered into a subscription to present him with a piece of plate; and accordingly a cup, bearing the shape of an antique vase, the cover surmounted by a beautifully modelled horse, with a coach and four horses on one side, and a suitable inscription on the other, was presented to Mr. Holmes by that staunch patron of the road, Sir Henry Peyton, Bart., in August, at a dinner at the Thatched House Tavern, St. James's-street, to which between forty and fifty gentlemen sat down. The list of subscribers amounted to upwards of two hundred and fifty, including among others the Duke of Wellington.

WHIST CLUBS.

To Hoyle has been ascribed the invention of the game of Whist. This is certainly a mistake, though there can be no doubt that it was indebted to him for being first specially treated of and introduced to the public in a scientific manner. He also wrote on piquet, quadrille, and backgammon, but little is known of him more than he was born in 1672, and died in Cavendish-square on 29th August, 1769, at the advanced age of ninety-seven. He was a barrister by profession, and Registrar of the Prerogative in Ireland, a post worth £600 a year. His treatise on Whist, for which he received from the publisher the sum of £1000, ran through five editions in one year, besides being extensively pirated.

Whist first began to be popular in England about 1730, when it was very closely studied by a party of gentlemen, who formed a sort of Club, at the Crown Coffee-house in Bedford-row. Hoyle is said to have given instructions in the game, for which his charge was a guinea a lesson.

The Laws of Whist have been variously given.[34] More than half a century has elapsed since the supremacy of "long whist" was assailed by a reformed, or rather revolutionized form of the game. The champions of the ancient rules and methods did not at once submit to the innovation. The conservatives were not without some good arguments on their side; but "short whist" had attractions that proved irresistible, and it has long since fully established itself as the only game to be understood when whist is named. But hence, in the course of time, has arisen an inconvenience. The old school of players had, in the works of Hoyle and Cavendish, manuals and text-books of which the rules, cases, and decisions were generally accepted. For short whist no such "volume paramount" has hitherto existed. Hoyle could not be safely trusted by a learner, so much contained in that venerable having become obsolete. Thus, doubtful cases arising out of the short game had to be referred to the best living players for decision. But there was some confusion in the "whist world," and the necessity of a code of the modern laws and rules of this "almost perfect" game had become apparent, when a combined effort was made by a committee of some of the most skilful to supply the deficiency.

The movement was commenced by Mr. J. Loraine Baldwin, who obtained the assistance of a Committee, including members of several of the best London Clubs well known as whist players. They were deputed to draw up a code of rules for the game, which, if approved, was to be adopted by the Arlington Club. They performed their task with the most decided success. The rules they laid down as governing the best modern practice have been accepted, not only by the Arlington, but the Army and Navy, Arthur's, Boodle's, Brookes's, Carlton, Conservative, Garrick, Guards, Junior Carlton, Portland, Oxford and Cambridge, Reform, St. James's, White's, etc. To the great section of the whist world that do not frequent Clubs, it may be satisfactory to know the names of the gentlemen composing the Committee of Codification, whose rules are to become law. They are Admiral Rous, chairman; Mr. G. Bentinck, M.P.; Mr. J. Bushe; Mr. J. Clay, M.P.; Mr. C. Greville; Mr. R. Knightley, M.P.; Mr. H. B. Mayne; Mr. G. Payne; and Colonel Pipon. The Laws of Short Whist[35] were in 1865 published in a small volume; and to this strictly legal portion of the book is appended A Treatise on the Game, by Mr. J. Clay, M.P. for Hull. It may be read with advantage by the commencing student of whist and the advanced player, and with pleasure even by those who are totally ignorant of it, and have no wish to learn it. There are several incidental illustrations and anecdotes, that will interest those not gifted with the faculties good whist requires. Mr. Clay is reported to be one of the best, if not the very best, of modern players. The Dedication is as follows: "To the Members of the Portland Club, admitted among whom, as a boy, I have passed many of the pleasantest days of my life, I have learned what little I know of Whist, and have formed many of my oldest friendships, this Treatise on Short Whist is dedicated with feelings of respect and regard, by their old playfellow, J. C."

Leaving his instructions, like the rules of the committee, to a more severe test than criticism, we extract from his first chapter a description of the incident to which short whist owes its origin. It will probably be quite new to thousands who are familiar with the game.

"Some eighty years back, Lord Peterborough, having one night lost a large sum of money, the friends with whom he was playing proposed to make the game five points instead of ten, in order to give the loser a chance, at a quicker game, of recovering his loss. The new game was found to be so lively, and money changed hands with such increased rapidity, that these gentlemen and their friends, all of them leading members of the Clubs of the day, continued to play it. It became general in the Clubs, thence was introduced to private houses, travelled into the country, went to Paris, and has long since so entirely superseded the whist of Hoyle's day, that of short whist alone I propose to treat. I shall thus spare the reader, the learning much in the old works that it is not necessary for him to know, and not a little which, if learned, should be at once forgotten."

Graham's, in St. James's-street, the greatest of Card Clubs, was dissolved about five-and-twenty years back.

PRINCE'S CLUB RACQUET COURTS.

In the early history of the metropolis we find the Londoners warmly attached to outdoor sports and pastimes; although time and the spread of the great city have long obliterated the sites upon which these popular amusements were enjoyed. Smithfield, we know, was the town-green for centuries before it became the focus of its fanatic fires; Maypoles stood in various parts of the City and suburbs, as kept in remembrance by name to this day; football was played in the main artery of the town—Fleet-street and the Strand, for instance; paille malle was played in St. James's Park, and the street which is named after the game; and tennis and other games at ball were enjoyed on open grounds long before they were played in covered courts; while the bowling-greens in the environs were neither few nor far between, almost to our time.

Tennis, we need scarcely state here, was originally played with the hand, at first naked, then covered with a thick glove, to which succeeded the bat or racquet, whence the present name of the game. A few of our kings have been tennis-players. In the sixteenth century tennis courts were common in England, being attached to country mansions. Later, playing-courts were opened in the metropolis: for example, to the houses of entertainment which formerly stood at the opposite angles of Windmill-street and the Haymarket were attached tennis-courts, which lasted to our time: one of these courts exists in James-street, Haymarket, to this day. To stroll out from the heated and crowded streets of the town to the village was a fashion of the last century, as we read in the well-remembered line—

Taking into account the vast growth of the metropolis, we are not surprised at so luxurious a means of healthful enjoyment as a racquet court presents being added to the establishments or institutions of this very clubbable age. Hitherto Clubs had been mostly appropriated to the purposes of refection; but why should not the social refinement be extended to the enjoyment of so health-giving sport and manly a pastime as racquet? The experiment was made, and with perfect success, immediately upon the confines of one of the most recent settlements of fashion—Belgravia. It is private property, and bears the name of "Prince's Club Racquet Courts."

The Club, established in 1854, is built upon the Pavilion estate, in the rear of the north side of Sloane-street, the principal entrance being from Hans-place. The grounds are of considerable extent, and were originally laid out by Capability Brown. They were almost environed with lofty timber-trees; and the genius of landscape gardening, fostered by wealth, rendered this glade in the Brompton groves of old a sort of rural elysium.

The Pavilion estate was once the property of Holland, the well-known architect, who planned Sloane-street and Hans-place, as a building speculation; and, in the grounds nearly between them, built himself what was then considered a handsome villa, the front of which was originally designed by Holland as a model for the Prince of Wales's Pavilion at Brighton; hence the name, the Pavilion estate. In the grounds, among the remains of Brown's ornamental work, was an icehouse, amidst the imitative ruins of a priory. Here, also, were the Ionic columns (isolated) which were formerly in the screen of Carlton House.

The Club buildings comprise seven closed courts; a tennis court; gallery and refreshment rooms; baths, and a Turkish bath.

Prince's Club is a subscription establishment; and its government is vested in a committee. Gentlemen desirous of becoming members of the Club must be proposed and seconded by two of its members. Two of the rules enact—that members have the privilege of introducing two friends, but that such visitors, if they play, be charged double the rate charged to members; and that no hazard, dice, or game of chance be allowed in this Club. Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge are members.

AN ANGLING CLUB.

Professor Owen is accustomed to relate the following very amusing incident, which occurred in a Club of some of the working scientific men of London, who, with a few others, after their winter's work of lecturing is over, occasionally sally forth to have a day's fishing. "We have," says Professor Owen, "for that purpose taken a small river in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and near its banks there stands a little public-house, where we dine soberly and sparingly, on such food as old Izaak Walton loved. We have a rule that he who catches the biggest fish of the day shall be our president for the evening. In the course of one day, a member, not a scientific man, but a high political man, caught a trout that weighed 3½ lb.; but earlier in the day he had pulled out a barbel of half a pound weight. So while we were on the way to our inn, what did this political gentleman do but, with the butt-end of his rod, ram the barbel down the trout's throat, in which state he handed his fish to be weighed. Thus he scored four pounds, which being the greatest weight he took the chair.

"As we were going away from home, a man of science,—it was the President of the Royal Society,—said to the man of politics, 'If you don't want that fine fish of yours, I should like to have it, for I have some friends to dine with me to-morrow.' My Lord took it home, and I heard no more until we met on the next week. Then, while we were preparing our tackle, the President of the Royal Society said to our high political friend, 'There were some very extraordinary circumstances, do you know, about that fish you gave me. I had no idea that the trout was so voracious; but that one had swallowed a barbel.'—'I am astonished to hear your Lordship say so,' rejoined an eminent naturalist; 'trout may be voracious enough to swallow minnows—but a barbel, my Lord! There must be some mistake.'—'Not at all,' replied his lordship, 'for the fact got to my family that the cook, in cutting open the throat, had found a barbel inside; and as my family knew I was fond of natural history, I was called into the kitchen. There I saw the trout had swallowed a barbel, full half a pound weight.'—'Out of the question, my Lord,' said the naturalist; 'it's altogether quite unscientific and unphilosophical.'—'I don't know what may be philosophical in the matter—I only know I am telling you a matter of fact,' said his Lordship; and the dispute having lasted awhile, explanations were given, and the practical joke was heartily enjoyed. And" (continued Professor Owen) "you will see that both were right and both were wrong. My Lord was right in his fact—the barbel was inside the trout; but he was quite wrong in his hypothesis founded upon that fact, that the trout had therefore swallowed the barbel,—the last was only matter of opinion."

THE RED LIONS.

In 1839, when the British Association met in Birmingham, several of its younger members happened, accidentally, to dine at the Red Lion, in Church-street. The dinner was pleasant, the guests well suited to each other, and the meeting altogether proved so agreeable, that it was resolved to continue it from year to year, wherever the Association might happen to meet. By degrees the "Red Lions"—the name was assumed from the accident of the first meeting-place—became a very exclusive Club; and under the presidency of Professor Edward Forbes, it acquired a celebrity which, in its way, almost rivalled that of the Association itself. Forbes first drew around him the small circle of jovial philosophers at the Red Lion. The names of Lankester, Thomson, Bell, Mitchell, and Strickland are down in the old muster-roll. Many were added afterwards, as the Club was kept up in London, in meetings at Anderton's, in Fleet-street. The old cards of invitation were very droll: they were stamped with the figure of a red lion erect, with a pot of beer in one paw, and a long clay pipe in the other, and the invitation commenced with "The carnivora will feed" at such an hour. Forbes, who, as pater omnipotens, always took the chair at the first chance meeting round the plain table of the inn, gave a capital stock of humour to this feeding of the naturalists by taking up his coat-tail and roaring whenever a good thing was said or a good song sung; and, of course, all the other Red Lions did the same. When roaring and tail-wagging became so characteristic an institution among the members, Mr. Mitchell, then secretary of the Zoological Society, presented a fine lion's skin to the Club; and ever after the President sat with this skin spread over his chair, the paws at the elbows, and the tail handy to be wagged. Alas! this tail no longer wags at Birmingham, and after vibrating with languid emotion in London, has now ceased to show any signs of life. The old Red Lion has lost heart, and has slumbered since the death of Forbes.

At the Meeting of the British Association at Birmingham, in 1865, an endeavour was made to revive the Red Lion dinner on something like its former scale; the idea being probably suggested by the circumstance of the Club having been originated in Birmingham. Lord Houghton, who is, we believe, "an old Red," presided; but the idiosyncrasy of the real Red Lion, and his intense love of plain roast and boiled, were missed: some sixty guests sat down, not at the Red Lion, but at a hotel banquet. Not one of the celebrants on this occasion had passed through his novitiate as a Red Lion cub: he was not asked whether he could roar or sing a song, or had ever said a good thing, one of which qualifications was a sine quâ non in the old Club. There were, however, some good songs: Professor Rankine sang "The Mathematician in Love," a song of his own. Then, there are some choice spirits among these philosophers. After the banquet a section adjourned to the B. Club, members of which are chiefly chemical in their serious moments. Indeed, all through the meeting there was a succession of jovial parties in the identical room at the Red Lion.[36]

THE COVENTRY, ERECTHEUM, AND PARTHENON CLUBS.

The Coventry, or Ambassadors' Club was instituted about twelve years since, at No. 106, Piccadilly, facing the Green Park. The handsome stone-fronted mansion occupies the site of the old Greyhound inn, and was bought by the Earl of Coventry of Sir Hugh Hunlock, in 1764, for £10,000, subject to the ground-rent of £75 per annum. The Club enjoyed but a brief existence: it was closed in March, 1854.

The Erectheum Club, St. James's-square, corner of York-street, was established by Sir John Dean Paul, Bart., and became celebrated for its good dinners. The Club-house was formerly the town depôt of Wedgwood's famous "ware;" and occupies the site of the mansion built for the Earl of Romney, the handsome Sydney of De Grammont's Memoirs.

The Parthenon Club-house (late Mr. Edwards's), east side of Regent-street, nearly facing St. Philip's Chapel, was designed by Nash: the first floor is elegant Corinthian. The south division was built by Mr. Nash for his own residence; it has a long gallery, decorated from a loggia of the Vatican at Rome: it is now the Gallery of Illustration.

"The Coventry Club was a Club of most exclusive exquisites, and was rich in diplomacy; but it blew up in admired confusion. Even so did Lord Cardigan's Club, founded upon the site of Crockford's. The Clarence, the Albion, and a dozen other small Clubs have all dissolved, some of them with great loss to the members, and the Erectheum and Parthenon thought it prudent to join their forces to keep the wolf from the door."—New Quarterly Review.

ANTIQUARIAN CLUBS,—THE NOVIOMAGIANS.

We have already seen how the more convivially disposed members of Learned Societies have, from time to time, formed themselves into Clubs. The Royals have done so, ab initio. The Antiquaries appear to have given up their Club and their Anniversary Dinner; but certain of the Fellows, resolving not to remain impransi, many years since, formed a Club, styled "Noviomagians," from the identification of the Roman station of Noviomagus being just then discovered, or rather

One of the Club-founders was Mr. A. J. Kempe; and Mr. Crofton Croker was president more than twenty years. Lord Londesborough and Mr. Corner, the Southwark antiquary, were also Noviomagians; and in the present Club-list are Sir William Betham, Mr. Fairholt, Mr. Godwin, Mr. S. C. Hall, Mr. Lemon, etc. The Club dine together once a month during the season at the old tavern next the burial-place of Joe Miller in Portugal Street. Here the Fellows meet for the promotion of good fellowship and antiquarian pursuits. "Joking minutes are kept, in which would be found many known names, either as visitors or associates,—Theodore Hook, Sir Henry Ellis, Britton, Dickens, Thackeray, John Bruce, Jerdan, Planché, Bell, Maclise, etc." The Club and its visitors may have caught inspiration here; for in their sallies movere jocum, they have imitated the wits at Strawberry Hill, and found Arms for the Club, with a butter-boat rampant for the crest, which is very significant.

In 1855, Lord Mayor Moon, F.S.A., entertained at the Mansion House the Noviomagians, and the office-bearers of the Society of Antiquaries to meet them. After dinner, some short papers were read, including one by Mr. Lemon, of the State Paper Office, presenting some curious illustrations of the state of society in London in the reign of James I., showing the "Migration of Citizens Westward." (See Romance of London, vol. iii. pp. 315-320.)

THE ECCENTRICS.

Late in the last century there met at a tavern kept by one Fulham, in Chandos Street, Covent Garden, a convivial Club called "The Eccentrics," which was an offshoot of "The Brilliants." They next removed to Tom Rees's, in May's-buildings, St. Martin's-lane, and here they were flourishing at all hours, some five-and-twenty years since. Amongst the members were many celebrities of the literary and political world; they were always treated with indulgence by the authorities. An inaugural ceremony was performed upon the making of a member, which terminated with a jubilation from the President. The books of the Club up to the time of its removal from May's-buildings are stated to have passed into the possession of Mr. Lloyd, the hatter, of the Strand, who, by the way, was eccentric in his business, and published a small work descriptive of the various fashions of hats worn in his time, illustrated with characteristic engravings.

From its commencement the Eccentrics are said to have numbered upwards of 40,000 members, many of them holding high social position: among others, Fox, Sheridan, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Brougham. On the same memorable night that Sheridan and Lord Petersham were admitted, Hook was also enrolled; and through this Club membership, Theodore is believed to have obtained some of his high connexions. In a novel, published in numbers, some five-and-twenty years since, the author, F. W. N. Bayley, sketched with graphic vigour the meetings of the Eccentrics at the old tavern in May's-buildings.

DOUGLAS JERROLD'S CLUBS.

One of the chapters in "The Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold," by his son, Blanchard Jerrold, discourses most pleasantly of the several Clubs to which Mr. Jerrold became attached. He was of a clubbable nature, and delighted in wit-combats and brilliant repartees, the flash of which was perfectly electric.

In this very agreeable précis, we find that towards the end of the year 1824, some young men at a humble tavern, the Wrekin, in the genial neighbourhood of Covent Garden, with Shakspeare as their common idol; and "it was a regulation of this Club that some paper, or poem, or conceit, bearing upon Shakspeare, should be contributed by each member." Hither came Douglas Jerrold, and he was soon joined by Laman Blanchard. Upon Jerrold's suggestion, the Club was called the Mulberries, and their contributions were entitled Mulberry Leaves. In the Club were William Godwin; Kenny Meadows, the future illustrator of Shakspeare; W. Elton, the Shakspearean actor; and Edward Chatfield, the artist. Mr. Jerrold wrote, in the Illuminated Magazine, a touching memoir of the Society—"that knot of wise and jocund men, then unknown, but gaily struggling."

The Mulberry Club lived many years, and gathered a valuable crop of leaves—contributions from its members. They fell into Mr. Elton's hands, and are now in the possession of his family. They were to have been published, but no one would undertake to see them through the press—an office which, in most cases, is a very un-thankful one. The Club did not, however, die easily: it was changed and grafted. "In times nearer the present, when it was called the Shakspeare Club, Charles Dickens, Mr. Justice Talfourd, Daniel Maclise, Mr. Macready, Mr. Frank Stone, etc. belonged to it. Respectability killed it." But some delightful results of these Mulberry Club meetings are embalmed in Mr. Jerrold's Cakes and Ale, and their life reminds one of the dancing motes in the latter. Then we hear of other clubs—the Gratis and the Rationals, of which Jerrold was a member.

"But," says the gentle Memoir, "with clubs of more recent date, with the Hooks and Eyes, and lastly, with Our Club, Douglas Jerrold's name is most intimately associated. It may be justly said that he was the life and soul of these three gatherings of men. His arrival was a happy moment for members already present. His company was sought with wondrous eagerness whenever a dinner or social evening was contemplated; for, as a club associate said of him, 'he sparkled whenever you touched him, like the sea at night.' A writer in the Quarterly Review well said of him: 'In the bright sallies of conversational wit he has no surviving equal.'

"He was thus greatly acceptable in all social literary Clubs. In the Museum Club, for instance, (an attempt made in 1847 to establish a properly modest and real literary Club,) he was unquestionably the member; for he was the most clubbable of men." When members dropped in, sharp shots were possibly exchanged: here are a few that were actually fired within the precincts of the Museum Club—fired carelessly, and forgotten:

Jerrold defined dogmatism as "puppyism come to maturity;" and a flaming uxorious epitaph put up by a famous cook, on his wife's tomb, as "mock turtle." A prosy old gentleman, meeting him as he was passing at his usual quick pace along Regent Street, poised himself into an attitude, and began: "Well, Jerrold, my dear boy, what is going on?"—"I am," said the wit, instantly shooting off.

At a dinner of artists, a barrister present, having his health drunk in connexion with the law, began an embarrassed answer by saying he did not see how the law could be considered one of the arts, when Jerrold jerked in the word black, and threw the company into convulsions.

A bore remarking how charmed he was with a certain opera, and that there was one particular song which always carried him quite away—"Would that I could sing it!" ejaculated the wit.

A dinner is discussed. Douglas Jerrold listens quietly, possibly tired of dinners, and declining pressing invitations to be present. In a few minutes he will chime in, "If an earthquake were to engulf England to-morrow, the English would manage to meet and dine somewhere among the rubbish, just to celebrate the event."

A friend is anxious to awaken Mr. Jerrold's sympathies in behalf of a mutual acquaintance who is in want of a round sum of money. But this mutual friend has already sent his hat about among his literary brethren on more than one occasion. Mr. ——'s hat is becoming an institution, and friends were grieved at the indelicacy of the proceeding. On the above occasion, the bearer of the hat was received with evident dissatisfaction. "Well," said Douglas Jerrold, "how much does —— want this time?"—"Why, just a four and two noughts will, I think, put him straight," the bearer of the hat replied. Jerrold—"Well, put me down for one of the noughts."

"The Chain of Events," playing at the Lyceum Theatre, though unsuccessful, is mentioned. "Humph!" said Douglas Jerrold, "I'm afraid the manager will find it a door-chain strong enough to keep everybody out of the house,"—and so it proved.

Douglas Jerrold is seriously disappointed with a certain book written by one of his friends, and has expressed his disappointment. Friend—"I have heard that you said —— was the worst book I ever wrote." Jerrold—"No, I didn't; I said it was the worst book anybody ever wrote."

A supper of sheep's-heads is proposed, and presently served. One gentleman present is particularly enthusiastic on the excellence of the dish, and, as he throws down his knife and fork, exclaims, "Well, sheep's-heads for ever, say I!" Jerrold—"There's egotism!"

During a stormy discussion, a gentleman rises to settle the matter in dispute. Waving his hands majestically over the excited disputants, he begins: "Gentlemen, all I want is common sense."—"Exactly," says Douglas Jerrold, "that is precisely what you do want."

But the Museum Club was broken up by troubled spirits. Then succeeded the Hooks and Eyes; then the Club, a social weekly gathering, which Jerrold attended only three weeks before his death. Hence some of his best sayings went forth.

Jerrold ordered a bottle of old port; "not elder port," he said.

Walking to his Club with a friend from the theatre, some intoxicated young gentleman reeled up to the dramatist and said, "Can you tell me the way to the Judge and Jury?"—"Keep on as you are, young gentleman," was the reply; "you're sure to overtake them."

Asking about the talent of a young painter, his companion declared that the youth was mediocre. "Oh!" was the reply, "the very worst ochre an artist can set to work with."

"The laughing hours, when these poor gatherings," says Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, "fell from the well-loaded branch, are remembered still in the rooms of Our Club; and the hearty laugh still echoes there, and will, it is my pride to believe, always live in the memory of that genial and refined circle."

The Whittington Club originated in 1846, with Douglas Jerrold, who became its first President. It was established at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand; where, in the ball-room, hung a picture of Whittington listening to Bow-bells, painted by Newenham, and presented to the Club by the President. All the Club premises were destroyed by fire in 1854; the picture was not saved, but fortunately it had been cleverly engraved. The premises have been rebuilt, and the Club still flourishes.

CHESS CLUBS.

The Clubs in various parts of the Metropolis and the suburbs, where Chess, and Chess only, forms the staple recreation of the members, are numerous. We must, however, confine ourselves to the historical data of the early Clubs, which record the introduction of the noble game in the Metropolis.

In 1747, the principal if not the only Chess-Club in the Metropolis met at Slaughter's Coffee-house, St. Martin's-lane. The leading players of this Club were—Sir Abraham Janssen, Philip Stamma (from Aleppo), Lord Godolphin, Lord Sunderland, and Lord Elibank; Cunningham, the historian; Dr. Black and Dr. Cowper; and it was through their invitation that the celebrated Philidor was induced to visit England.

Another Club was shortly afterwards founded at the Salopian Coffee-house, Charing Cross: and a few years later, a third, which met next door to the Thatched House Tavern, in St. James's-street. It was here that Philidor exhibited his wonderful faculty for playing blindfold; some instances of which we find in the newspapers of the period:—

"Yesterday, at the Chess-Club in St. James's-street, Monsieur Philidor performed one of those wonderful exhibitions for which he is so much celebrated. He played three different games at once without seeing either of the tables. His opponents were Count Bruhl and Mr. Bowdler (the two best players in London), and Mr. Maseres. He defeated Count Bruhl in one hour and twenty minutes, and Mr. Maseres in two hours; Mr. Bowdler reduced his games to a drawn battle in one hour and three-quarters. To those who understand Chess, this exertion of M. Philidor's abilities must appear one of the greatest of which the human memory is susceptible. He goes through it with astonishing accuracy, and often corrects mistakes in those who have the board before them."

In 1795, the veteran, then nearly seventy years of age, played three blindfold matches in public. The last of these, which came off shortly before his death, we find announced in the daily newspapers thus:—