24 MAY 1873, Page 18

HISTORY OF CLUBS AND CLUB-LIFE.*

THI8 work, which purports to be a sequel to the History of Sign- Boards, might more appropriately be called a Dictionary of London Clubs, Coffee-Houses, and Taverns, for under these three heads the materials are arranged. But this is all the arrangement in the book which we have been able to discover, for the compiler seems to have shovelled extracts, anecdotes, rhymes, dates, and names together, mingled with them a few remarks of his own by way of cement, and have hoped that they would in some fashion form an harmonious whole. Almost in the middle of the volume, in the midst of descriptions of various clubs, we, to our astonishment, come across five pages, headed, "Economy of Clubs," hemmed in on one side by the University Club, on the other by the Union and Garrick Clubs, the said Economy of Clubs consisting of three extracts, one a rhyme from Hood's Comic Annual of1838, the other two some remarks of from the new Quarterly Review and the Builder, a somewhat curious medley.

• We were at first under the impression that a chronological order had been adopted, but finally we found that no real attempt at any classification whatever had been made; political, social, literary, dining, and gambling clubs are all mixed up together. The Diletante Society, founded in 1731, is followed by the Royal Naval Club, founded in 1674; and the Roxburgh Club Dinners precede the Society of Past Overseers of Westminster, which appears to be inserted in this volume simply because it possesses a curious and historical tobacco-box, for not one word do we read about the formation or object of the society itself. We should like to know, too, why Mr. Timbs treats us to a brief résumé of the Whist Clubs, but yet we hear nothing of the various Art Clubs, nor of Debating Societies, except that Canning used to frequent the Clifford-Street Club, and invariably took the weaker side ; William Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, Brougham, and many other celebrated politicians and lawyers, if our recollection is accurate, showed the first gleams of their eloquence over some dingy tavern-table in the neighbour- hood of Fleet Street. It is hardly correct either to class as clubs the Mohawks of Queen Anne's time or the Calves' Heads of an earlier period; they were nothing more than almost casual bands of midnight rowdies, who were pleased to give them- selves a distinctive name, but they possessed none of the attributes of a club, no "local habitation," no subscription for any purpose, whieh is the chief element in the formation of the mutual societies which we term Clubs. In fact, they were no more clubs than were the youths who lately disturbed the in- habitants of Highbury by unseemly ringings at their door- bells. It will be seen from these few remarks that there are a good many serious faults in this book. Many of them are those of form, or rather want of form, but this is one of the things in which we expect an author of a work like this to be most successful ; all these are faults, which we have no hesitation in showing up, because they are evidences of a want of care and attention which can always be given, though errors of judgment or taste are often undiscoverable by an author him- self. Still, we give Mr. Timbs credit for having collected many remarkable and amusing details which will interest others than the mere lovers of quaintness in men and things. It is not difficult to discover the origin of Clubs in friendly meetings in taverns and coffee-houses, which in the olden days seem greatly to have resembled modern French cafes, but it wasnot until the years 1746 and 1836 that we find any club actually established upon modern principles and with an entire house of their own. The two first seem to be the Cocoa-Tree, once a chocolate-house, and History of Clubs and Club-Life. By John TImbs. London : J. C. Hotten. 1872.

White's, also a coffee-house, which was transformed into a club under the auspices of, among others, the Duke of Devonshire, the Earls of Chesterfield and Rockingham, and Colley Cibber, and has had a long and prosperous existence. Other clubs then rose up once famous and fashionable, but now unknown, such as the King of Clubs, founded by Bobus Smith, brother to Sydney Smith ; and Watier's, where the gambling was so heavy and the life so fast that it endured only for twelve years, and killed most of its members. But it was about the termination of the French War, in 1815, that the great modern club-houses began to spring up. In 1814 we find the Travellers' built, and the Senior United Servide in 1815, and many must have been the stories of Napoleon and his wars which circulated there for years after. Then there is a cessation until the years 1823 and 1824, when the Athenum, Oriental, and Union were founded, among the originators of the first being Sir Humphrey Davy, Croker, Lawrence, Scott, and Moore, with Faraday as secretary. After this they become too numerous to note here.

As we have already said, Mr. Timbs gives numberless details concerning the life at the Clubs and taverns which are valuable illustrations of the social manners and morality of various periods, the most marked feature being the frightfully high play in which the habitués of the old Clubs indulged. At White's " Lord Car- lisle lost 110,000 in one night, and was in debt to the house for the whole." We are told of a set in which "at one point of the game he stood to win 250,000. Sir John Bland, of Kippar Park, who shot himself in 1755, as we learn from Walpole, flirted away his whole fortune at hazard,"—in one night he lost 232,000. Again, in speaking of the same club, and also of Brooks's, Fox's gambling naturally forms a prominent feature. "Here are some instances of his desperate play. Walpole further notes that in the debate on the Thirty-nine Articles, February 6, 1772, Fox did not shine. He had sat up playing at hazard at Almack's from Tuesday evening, the 4th, till five in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 5th. An hour before he had recovered 212,000 that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five o'clock, he had ended, losing 211,000. On the Thursday he spoke in the above debate ; went to dinner at past eleven o'clock at night, from thence to White's, where he drank till seven the next morning ; thence to Almacks, where he won 26,000." "His brother Stephen lost /11,000 two nights after, and Charles 210,000 more on the 13th, so that in three nights the two brothers, the eldest not twenty- five, lost 232,000. Now-a-days, with all the betting that goes on, nothing like such gambling as this is happily to be seen in the Clubs, and much as we cry out when a duke or a lord becomes bankrupt through an over-fondness for gambling in some form, yet it is undeniable that even as regards outside gambling the present generation is infinitely superior to that in which the above circum- stances happened, and when it does take place it is much more in a business-like spirit, and with more of a quid pro quo, as befits a utilitarian age. Coming to amusing things, the amount of bons mots from the lips of witty members of the various clubs is disappoint- ingly few. We should have thought a volume could have been filled with them alone, for in the eighteenth century, when there were no comic periodicals and other means of obtaining money in exchange for humour, the amount of good things spoken was immense. But the one noticeable feature was that the clever men frequently never talked so well as when ladies were present ; and like a Bar-mess, which the outside world frequently supposes to be a scene of sparkling encounters, and is quite the reverse, so perhaps the tired joker slipped off to his club in order not to talk, and there found one of his greatest solaces. To take a specimen, how- ever, perhaps one of the neatest to be found is the impromptu epigram of Lord Chesterfield, then a member of a club at Tom's Coffee-house, Covent Garden, on Long Sir Thomas Robinson, a Colonial governor, when the latter somewhat unfortunately asked to be written upon :— " Unlike my subject now shall be my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long."

Of the expenses, internal arrangements, and management of the Clubs, we are told very little. Here and there we find an item given,—as, for instance, that in 1780, the reckoning for a dinner during the Session was 12s. at White's ; but nothing that can really tell us whether Clubs have kept pace in economy and management with the age, which would have been by no means uninteresting or uninstructive. Indeed some mention of expendi- ture in modern clubs would have been by no means out of place, for great as are the convenience and, on the whole, moderate charges of the present day, there are yet very many not unreasonable men who consider that more might be done than is the case at present with the large incomes of the London Clubs. We will conclude this notice by mentioning the Ladies and Gentlemen's Club at Almack's. There the men were elected by the women, and vice versci ; gambling, dining, supping, and we imagine gossipping, were its chief attractions. But unluckily Mr. Thnbs does not tell us how long it lasted, or in fact anything but a few bare particu- lars about it. Something more would not have been amiss. We cannot, indeed, understand how it is that ladies in London and the large suburbs have not by this time established several clubs in some central part ; there is nothing unfeminine in them, though doubtless some people would say so ; they are not, like Mr. Tennyson's utopian university in Maud, unpractical things. Why the sisters as well as the brothers should not have an opportunity of seeing periodicals, papers, and books of reference for a com- paratively small sum, and be able to get a luncheon without paying three times its value is difficult to understand ; and much greater twaddle could not be talked than that which forms the ordinary conversation of a club drawing-room.