Part 22
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Athenæum review of Captain Gronow's Anecdotes.
[31] Athenæum, No. 1739.
[32] Written, it must be recollected, some thirty years since. Reprinted in Murray's 'Reading for the Rail.'
[33] Perhaps one of the finest specimens of good coachmanship was performed by Sir Felix Agar. He made a bet, which he won, that he would drive his own four-horses-in-hand, up Grosvenor-place, down the passage into Tattersall's Yard, around the pillar which stands in the centre of it, and back again into Grosvenor-place, _without either of his horses going at a slower pace than a trot_.
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, Ombre, and Quadrille, at Court were used, And Bassett's power the City dames amused, Imperial Whist was yet but slight esteemed, And pastime fit for none but rustics deemed. How slow at first is still the growth of fame! And what obstructions wait each rising name! Our stupid fathers thus neglected, long, The glorious boast of Milton's epic song; But Milton's muse at last a critic found, Who spread his praise o'er all the world around; And Hoyle at length, for Whist performed the same, And proved its right to universal fame."
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Abridged from the _Times_ journal.
[35] _The Laws of Short Whist_, edited by J. L. Baldwin, and a Treatise on the Game, by J. C. Harrison, 59, Pall Mall.
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--
"Some dukes at Marybone bowl time away."
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._
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Abridged from the _Daily News_.
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
"Rife and celebrated in the mouths Of wisest men."
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.