THE CHEAPNESS OF CLUBS.
ACONTROVERSY has lately been raised in the columns of the Times as to the cost or cheapness of Clubs as houses of entertainment, and, as usual in all such discussions, the predomi- nant reflection left upon the reader's mind after a perusal of the communications addressed to our contemporary is, that the various correspondents know little or nothing about the subject-matter on which they write. In the remarks we have to offer on the ques- tion, we have no wish to deny the utility, comfort, or advantage of Clubs ; all we desire to do is, to dispute the conventional fiction that they are places where you get luxury without paying for it. It is necessary, in any consideration of this kind, to define the term "club." In the first place, then, though we have little doubt that many of our remarks would apply to Clubs in Dublin, Edin- burgh, Liverpool, and our chief cities, we only refer in this article to the London Clubs, and we may say further, to the Clubs in Pall Mall and its adjacent district. Till within the last few years the Clubs were clustered together as close as the Colleges in Cam- bridge ; and though of late there are several successful Clubs in the City, and a few not very successful ones in the suburbs, the habitat of the Club proper is still within a circle of a half-mile radius whose centre is at Charing Cross. We dismiss, too, from our consideration all purely social or convivial clubs, like the " Cosmopolitan " or the "Urban,"
where men meet on certain evenings to smoke and talk. Nor are we concerned with a new description of club which has sprung up recently, and at which meat and drink, as well as the pleasures of conversation, are provided on the premises. What we understand by a club for the nonce is one of the two- score of palatial establishments to be found in and about Pall Mall.
As a Mere matter of comfort, we should strongly recom- mend any man about London to belong to some one of our numerous Clubs. He will derive many advantages and privileges from so doing, but he will not, in our opinion, make an econo- mical investment of his money. The subscription to any first- class club is eight guineas a year, and though at some of the cheaper institutions, like the "United University," it is a little less, yet the annual payment is rising yearly with the increased cost of living, and an average of eight guineas subscription and twenty-five guineas entrance fee is certainly not above the mark. Now, as the estimated duration of club membership is not more than seven years, we shall not be wrong in saying that each member pays about twelve pounds a year for the privilege of belonging to a club. For this sum he is free of the building ; but unless he is prepared to spend considerably more, he practically gets very little for his money. He has, no doubt, the use of a good address, where he can receive letters, and he is enabled to carry on his correspondence without buying sta- tionery, and to read the newspapers and magazines free of cost. But when we have said this, we have said about all. A literary man or a student would undoubtedly find his profit in belonging to the Atheumum or to the Oxford and Cambridge, for the run of their libraries, which, especially at the former, are really valu- able collections of books not easily accessible elsewhere. But as far as the writer's knowledge extends, the book collections of other London clubs are not above the reach of our ordinary watering-place libraries, and assuredly no one would pay the yearly subscription for the mere use of a common club library.
But according to the common theory of outsiders, the mere fact of belonging to a Club confers upon the possessor of membership great advantages for social intercourse, and for becoming acquainted with the talk of the town. We believe ourselves that this theory is an entire mistake. If a man belongs to a class club, like the Guards or the Oriental, he is sure to meet men with whom all his interests are in common, and to whom he is known personally or by name. But in these cases he owes his circle of acquaintance to the fact of his being an officer or an official, not to the circumstance of his being a member of the Guards' or the Oriental. To a certain small degree this observation holds good about the University Clubs, though the bond of union created by having been at college with your fellow-clubmen is neutralized by the old rules of academic etiquette, which interfere even in after-life with free and easy intercourse. But with the exception of class clubs, the mere accident of membership constitutes no intimacy between the members, and not always even a speaking acquaintance. Our conviction is, that a man who was perfectly unobjectionable in manner and appearance, who was neither exceptionally shy nor unusually obtrusive, might pass his days for a dozen years at a London club, reading the newspapers, eating his meals, and using the library, but eschewing the billiard, card, and smoking-rooms, without getting to be on speaking terms with any person he was not acquainted with outside the club doors. We do not say that it is difficult to make plenty of acquaintances in a club, but in order to do so you must spend money.
If you like to smoke in your own room after dinner, you can solace yourself with a farthing pipe of birdseye and a cup of tea which costs you twopence. If you go to the club smoking.
room, as you must do if you want to make acquaintances and hear gossip, you must perforce smoke expensive cigars at fourpence a piece or upwards, and drink coffee that stands you in sixpence a cup. About this, as about other matters, we quite admit that every now and then there are men of especial social agreeability, and also of stern resolution, who contrive to make themselves, so to speak, free of smoking-rooms and card-rooms without incurring any more expense than they would at home. But about the great mass of mankind, you may safely say that if they wish to frequent any society on terms of intimacy, they must pay their footing by doing as their associates do ; and in any club where it is the fashion to smoke regalias and have coffee and liqueurs after dinner, a man who desires to be of the club, as well as in it, must conform to the ways of the majority.
This truth applies equally to dinners. A club dinner, in the firat place, is never a cheap one in itself. There is, first of all, I MRS. BEECHER STOWE AND LADY BYRON. the charge for the table, as it is called, which amounts to about a shilling ; if you dine off the joint, that is, if you only take meat, vegetables, and cheese, without fish, soup, or sweets, you very genuine admiration of the peculiar genius of Mrs. Harriet pay two shillings to half-a-crown more ; and a pint of the least Beecher Stowe. She spoke the slave's parable, and perhaps did costly wine comes to a shilling or eighteenpence. Thus, as a more, by " Uncle Tom's Cabin," to precipitate the final victory common rule, the cheapest dinner you can order at a club of the Abolitionists than could be assigned to the single agency to from four to five shillings. illings. No doubt, for this sum of any other individual. When, accordingly, the gifted authoress you get plenty to eat ; you have a very fair dinner, fairly well visited this country, she was welcomed by many friends of the Negro population of America with unfeigned cordiality as the cooked, and excellently served. You have splendid wines, good waiting, clean linen, and all the appurtenances of the table you spokeswoman of a holy cause. By none, probably, was a more miss at lodgings, or even at a restaurant ; but then you pay for loyal and sympathizing reception accorded to her than by Lady it. And, moreover, if you are an habitual diner at the club, it Byron, who—in this respect at least at one with her husband is not easy to keep your dinner-bill down to the minimum price. —had from her earliest years cherished a profound antipathy to oppression in its varied forms, whether of a caste or of a creed. The men you know, and whom you like to dine with, have numbers of extras to their dinners, and drink wines which cost ll considerably more than a shilling a pint. Of course you need not join them, and may cat your slice of mutton alone ; but if published in that magazine by Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe, that she you want the benefits—such as they are—of that fellowship, you must eat and drink as your neighbours do ; and if you do this, sacred mission which lay very close to her ladyship's heart, but
you will find your dinner-bill runs from seven to ten shillings. was made the depositary of those secrets of her married life con- It is continually urged by Club reformers that a good dinner cerning which she maintained towards the outer world so inexor- with fish and soups and sweets might be provided on table d'hote able a silence. With Mrs. IL Beecher Stowe the present writer principles for three to four shillings a head, and every now and has no acquaintance whatever, but to judge from what she has
enough, for if Restaurants, which have to make a profit, can afford then the attempt is made. In theory the scheme is plausible to do this, it may be thought that Clubs, which have no profit to make, the world to whom we could commit the custody of a confidential could do it much more easily. But in practice the experiment is communication. invariably a failure. Many reasons may be assigned for this. Whether the paper in question is, or is not, the true Firstly, the management of a club is necessarily very wasteful. story of Lady Byron's life, the world can only learn autho- The Committee, however active, can only exercise a general super- vision, and the direct interest of every employe and servant in the Lady Byron's own manuscripts; but it seems to us that a club is to swell the tradesmen's bills. Either they receive corn- mission on the amount, or if not, they like to be on good terms sense of literary decorum, would have made it her first duty to with the purveyors of food, and they have no conceivable induce-
consult with Lady Byron's literary executors, and with her meat to exercise economy for the benefit of a corporate body, two surviving grandchildren, whom Mrs. Stowe calls "some of the best and noblest of mankind" (sic), before scattering broad- which has none of the ties such as exist between a private
employer and his servants. Generally, the system on which the club commissariat is conducted is an inherently extravagant one. named—to A first-class restaurant-keeper in London has the whole of the metropolis for his potential constituency. If A, B, C, and D do not drop in for dinner, X, Y, Z, and so on, come in to fill their places ; and after a short experience he is able to tell with deeply interested in the fame of Lady Byron than a mere casual to acquaintance can possibly be, but her statements are made without tolerable accuracy how many dinners he will have to provide each day. But even in the largest clubs the constituency is too small an to name any regular average of dinners. At one London club the writer, in the height of the season, has seen eighty men dining between seven and eight one day, and twelve dining at the same Stowe has wrapped up, apparently, rather carefully, in words hour the next. Under these conditions, every now and then there which have, to comes a loss which completely eats up the profit on a large number Mrs. Stowe writes as follows :—" It has been thought by some f of well-frequented days. It should be remembered that the pur-
veyors for a club must necessarily lay in each morning a large. stock of perishable articles, which if they are not used at once are specifically, her authority for the above narration." almost worthless. A tavern-keeper can, if he thinks fit, lay in a Now, clearly the only possible authority which would justify come in
stock, but a provider for clubs cannot. Members rs Mrs. Stowe in writing and publishing what she calls the true s story of Lady Byron's life would be, first, either a written at any hour and expect to be served at once from the "menu ,, of the day, and if any article mentioned therein is not forthcoming, statement, in Lady Byron's handwriting, instructing her or if the programme is a scanty one, the steward and cook are after a certain time to make known to the world certain facts; or, second, a similar statement, issuing from Lady blamed. Then, too, the great majority of the members of anyts il noted club are proud of their repute as a dining - place, and are anxious that all the kitchen arrangements should be does not possess any such instruction. But her language on a handsome or, in other words, on a costly scale. The economical few are always outvoted by the extravagant many ; supported, as the party of expense always is, by the members who hardly use the club themselves, but rally close united to the
support of the constituted authorities, authentic form were at one time placed in the hands of the writer an association of
In fact, to resume our argument, a Club is of this sketch, leaving to her judgment the use which should be well-to-do men whose incomes rise from five hundred a year to as es many thousands, and who spend a very large portion of their income, be it small or great, upon their personal comfort and Byron bad left a discretionary power with Mrs. Beecher Stowe enjoyment. We do not say that they are wrong in so doing. All as to we urge is that men who want to study economy should not belong document which, she asserts, had been "placed. in her hands." to Clubs, or, at any rate, should not use them as their domiciles. Nay, more, Mrs. Stowe's phraseology is so careful as to warrant If you can afford to live at the rate of ten to twelve pounds a week, the inference that the materials at one time placed in her hands w that is, to spend ten to twelve shillings a day upon your eating, were still in her possession. In the very next sentence, however, drinking, and smoking, you can get better food, better wines, and the reader will note that our authoress does better tobacco at a club than you could elsewhere. But if your object is to save money, or to live for five shillings a day, you will not be assisted in your endeavours by belonging to a London Club. Byron's "mistress," the Countess Guiccioli. Still, the impres-
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