CHAPTER VII.

THE CLUBS AND CLUB HOUSES OF LONDON.

WE cannot conceive of any greater contrast than that which exists between the wretchedness and squalor of the lodging houses, and the splendor and refined elegance, combined with comfort of the Club houses of London, which are chiefly situated in Pall Mall, St. James street, and the neighborhood of lower Regent street.

Club life has attained its greatest perfection in London. No city upon the Continent can compare with it for the number of its club houses, the splendor of their architecture, their luxurious furniture, and the standing in society of their members.

[Sidenote: INTERESTING STATISTICS.]

There are, I believe, upward of fifty clubs in London, in which all the professions, and all the stations of life find representation, with a roll of perhaps 45,000 members. The following are the principal clubs with the cost of ground and construction: Army and Navy Club, George's street, St. James' square, 1,450 members, £100,000; the Conservative Club, St. James' street, 1,500 members, £81,000; Garrick Club, King street, Convent Garden, 500 members, £25,000; Junior United Service Club, corner of Charles and Regent streets, 1,500 members, £75,000; Oxford and Cambridge Club, Pall Mall, 1,200 members, £100,000; Reform Club, 1,400 members, £120,000; University Club, Pall Mall East, 500 members, £20,000; Wyndham Club, St. James' square, 600 members, £30,000; Westminster Club, Albemarle street, 560 members, £15,000; Athenæum, Pall Mall, 1,200 members, £60,000; Carlton, Pall Mall, 800 members, £100,000; Guards Club, Pall Mall, 500 members, £40,000; Oriental, Hanover square, 800 members, £30,000; Traveler's, Pall Mall, 700 members, £30,000; Union, Cockspur street, 1,000 members, £25,000; United Service Club, Pall Mall, 1,500 members, £70,000; White's Club, St. James' street, 550 members, £20,000; Boodles, St. James' street, 500 members, £15,000; Cavendish Club, 307 Regent street, 500 members, £15,000; and Civil Service Club, 86 St. James' street, 1,000 members, £45,000.

Besides the before-mentioned clubs there are the following, which rank nearly but not quite as high among Club men:

MEMBERS. COST.

Albert Club, 15 George street, Hanover square, 500 £10,000 Alpine Club, Trafalgar square, 600 18,000 Arlington Club, 4 Arlington street, 400 16,000 Arts Club, 17 Hanover square, 500 16,000 Arundel Club, 12 Salisbury street, Strand, 600 52,000 City of London Club, 19 old Broad street, (merchants,) 1,000 50,000 Gresham Club, City, (bankers, &c.,) 1,000 60,000 Junior Athenæum Club, 29 King street, St. James, 800 30,000 Junior Carlton Club, 14 Regent street, 800 40,000 New Carlton Club, Albemarle street, 800 25,000 New University Club, 57 St. James' street, 600 29,000 Portland Club, Stratford Place, Oxford street, 400 18,000 Smithfield Club, Half-Moon street, Piccadilly 300 12,000 St. James' Club, 54 St. James' street, 500 23,000 Whitehall Club, Parliament street, 500 9,000 Whittington Club, 37 Arundel street, 1,600 40,000 Clarendon Club, 86 St. James' street, 900 36,000 Junior Reform Club, Albemarle street, 800 40,000 Brooks' Club, 60 St. James' street, 575 20,000 Arthur's Club, 69 St. James' street, 600 18,000 Law Society, Chancery Lane, 1,000 68,000 National, Whitehall-Gardens, 400 17,000 Prince's Racket and Tennis Club, Hans Place, Chelsea, 300 11,000 United University, corner Suffolk street and Pall Mall, 500 33,000 Beefsteak Society, Lyceum Theatre, 250 5,000 Club Chambers, Regent street, 400 31,000 " " St. James' square, 300 17,000 Ambassador's, 106 Piccadilly, 200 16,000 Erectheum, St. James's square, 300 20,000

In these several clubs each member is elected by ballot, and pays an entrance on admission, and afterward an annual subscription, which varies like entrance fees in different clubs.

Thus, in the Athenæum, the entrance fee is £26.5s., annual subscription, £6.6s. Arthur's, entrance £21, subscription, £10 10s. Brooks, entrance, £9 9s., subscription, £11 11s. Carlton, entrance, £15 15s., annual subscription, £10 10s. Conservative Club, £28 7s., subscription, £8 8s. Garrick Club, entrance, £21, subscription, £6 6s. Junior United Service, entrance, £30, subscription £6. Oxford and Cambridge Club, entrance, £21 5s., subscription, £6 6s. Reform Club, entrance, £21 5s., subscription, £10 10s. Travelers' Club, entrance, £31 10s. Union, entrance, £38 10s., subscription, £6 6s. United Service Club, entrance, £36, subscription, £6. Whittington, entrance, £10 10s., subscription, ladies £1, gentlemen, £2 2s. Wyndham, entrance, £27 6s., subscription, £8.

When clubs were first started they were regarded with much hostility as being most antagonistic to domestic life, and the ladies displayed an intense spirit against them. The clubs, however, survived and flourished under their enmity, and it was found that they discouraged coarse drunkenness, the prevalent vice of Englishmen; encouraged social intercourse--of which ladies partook of elsewhere; refined the manners of the members, constituted courts of honor, and tended most materially to the manufacture of gentlemen.

The London clubs are private hotels on a vast and magnificent scale. They have billiard rooms, coffee rooms, nine-pin rooms, splendid libraries, saloons, and furniture, and plate of the costliest and rarest description.

[Sidenote: LUXURIOUS DINNER--LADIES EXCLUDED.]

All the refreshment which a member has, whether breakfast, dinner, supper, or wine, are furnished to him at the _market cost_ price, all other expenses being defrayed from the annual subscriptions. For a few pounds a year, advantages are to be had, which no incomes but the most ample could procure. The Athenæum, which consists of twelve hundred members, can be taken as a good example of the rest. Among the members can be reckoned a large proportion of the most eminent persons in England--civil, military, and ecclesiastical, peers, spiritual and temporal, commoners, men of the learned professions, those connected with the sciences and arts, and commerce, as well as the distinguished who do not belong to any particular class, and who have nothing to do but live on their means, bore their tailors, and admire their family genealogy, and their own figures. These men are to be met with day after day at the clubs, living with more freedom and nonchalance than they could at their own houses. For six or eight guineas a year every member has the command of an excellent library, with maps, the daily London papers, English and foreign periodicals, and every material for writing, with a flock of gorgeous flunkies, in powder and epaulettes, to attend at the nod of a member, and a host of youthful pages in buttons and broadcloths. The club is a sort of a palace with the comfort of a private dwelling, and every member is a master without having the trouble of a master. He can have whatever meat or refreshment he desires served up at all hours, with luxury and dispatch. There is a fixed place for everything, and it is not customary to remain long at table. You can dine alone, or you can invite a dozen persons to dine with you, females being excluded. From an account kept at the Athenæum for one year, it appears that 17,323 dinners cost on an average 2s. 9-3/4d. each, and the average quantity of wine drank by each person at these dinners was a small fraction more than a pint for each. The bath accommodations are the finest that can be imagined.

The kitchen of the London clubs cannot be equaled in the world, and the chief cooks who have charge of the kitchens, have each an European fame. Alexis Soyer, the greatest cook since Ude or Vatel, had, for a long time, the charge of the kitchen of the Reform Club, and the kitchen of this club, of which John Bright, and all the leaders of the English liberals are members, is the finest in London.

A description of this kitchen will in a measure answer for that of any other London club, and I will give it here for the information of those who are curious in such matters.

The kitchen, properly so called, is an apartment of moderate size, surrounded on all four sides by smaller rooms, which form the pastry, the poultry, the butchery, the scullery, and other subordinate offices. There are doorways but no doors, between the different rooms, all of which are formed in such a manner that the chief cook, from one particular spot, can command a view of the whole. In the centre of the kitchen is a table and a hot closet, where various knicknacks are prepared and kept to a desired heat, the closet being brought to any required temperature by admitting steam beneath it. Around the hot closet is a bench or table, fitted with drawers and other conveniences for culinary operations. A passage going around the four sides of this table separates it from the various cooking apparatus, which involve all that modern ingenuity has brought to bear on the cuisine.

In the first place there are two enormous fireplaces for roasting, each of which would, in sober truth, roast a whole sheep. The screens placed before these fires are so arranged as to reflect back almost the entire heat which falls upon them, and effectually shields the kitchen from the intense heat which would be otherwise thrown out. Then again, these screens are so provided with shelves and recesses as to bring into profitable use the radiant heat which would be otherwise wasted.

[Sidenote: MODEL KITCHEN.]

Along two sides of the room are ranges of charcoal fires for broiling and stewing, and other apparatus for other varieties of cooking. These are at a height of about three feet from the ground. The broiling fires are a kind of open pot or pan, throwing upward a fierce but blazeless heat; behind them is a framework by which gridirons may be fixed at any height above the fire, according to the intensity of the heat. Other fires open only at the top, are adapted for various kinds of pans and vessels; and in some cases a polished tin-reflector is so placed as to reflect back to the viands the heat. Under and behind and over and around, are pipes, tanks, and cisterns, in abundance, containing water to be heated, or to be used more directly in the processes of cooking.

A boiler adjacent to the kitchen is expressly appropriated to the supply of steam for "steaming," for heating the hot closets, the hot iron plates and other apparatus. In another small room the meat is kept, chopped, cut, and otherwise prepared for the kitchen. There are also in the pastry room all the necessary appliances for preparing the lightest and most luscious triumphs of the art. In another room there are drawers in the bottoms of which blocks of ice are laid, and above these are placed articles of undressed food, which must necessarily be kept cool.

There is a cheerful air, an air of magnificence about these superb kitchens, which would charm a good housewife. Here all the genius that can be brought to bear upon cookery is concentrated, and the head cook would not deign to notice any person of less rank than a baronet, while in superintendence. Although there are twelve hundred members or over, yet he is not responsible to any individual one, and the only authority in the club to which he has to bow is the eight or ten members of the House Committee, whose decrees even to this great being are arbitrary.

The pots and pans are of an exceeding brightness, and the entire system is perfect. In one corner of the kitchen is a little stall or counting-house, at a desk in which sits the "Clerk of the Kitchen." Every day the chief cook provides, besides ordinary provisions which are certain to be required, a selected list which he inserts in his bill of fare--a list which is left to his judgment and skill.

Say three or four gentlemen, members of the club, determine to dine there at a given hour, they select from the bill of fare, or make a separate "order" if preferred, or leave the dinner altogether to the intellect of the _chef_, who is sure to be flattered by this dependence on his judgment. A little slip of paper on which is written the names of the dishes and the hour of dining, is hung on a hook in the kitchen on a black board, where there are a number of hooks devoted to different hours of the day or evening. The cooks proceed with their avocations, and by the time the dinner is ready the clerk of the kitchen has calculated and entered the exact value of every article composing it, which entry is made out in the form of a bill--the cost price being that by which the charge is regulated--nothing is ever charged for the cooking. Immediately at the elbow of the clerk are bells and speaking tubes, by which he can communicate with the servants in the other parts of the building.

Meanwhile a steam engine is "serving up" the dinner. In one corner of the kitchen is a recess, on opening a door in which we see a small platform, square-shaped, calculated to hold an ordinary sized tray. This platform is connected with the shaft of a steam engine by bands and wheels, so as to be elevated through a kind of vertical trunk leading to the upper part of the building; and here are the white-aproned servants or waiters ready to take out the hot and luscious smelling viands from the platform, to the member or members of the club who are anxiously awaiting dinner.

Architecturally speaking the club houses are the finest buildings in London, and in the west end of the town, and in the vicinity of the parks they do much to beautify the city; these massive, richly decorated, and pillared palaces of exclusiveness.

The "Heavy Swell" Club of all London is the "Guards" in Pall Mall. There are three or four regiments of the Queen's Household Brigade stationed always in London to guard the sacred person of the Queen, and it is from the officers of these crack regiments that the members of the club are balloted for. These fellows are supposed to bathe in champagne, and dine off rose water; they are afraid to carry an umbrella thicker than a walking stick, they hate "low people," and devote their existence to killing time, yet are withal sensitive, honorable in many things, (except paying their grocers, wine and haberdashing bills,) and will fight as becomes the descendants of the men who dyed the sands at Hastings with their blood, to bequeath a rich and fruitful kingdom to those who now inherit it.

[Sidenote: THE CONSERVATIVE AND GARRICK CLUBS.]

The Conservative Club is frequented by those athletic and slow going squires and gentlemen who are always ready to applaud Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons, and are willing to serve as special constables on days when the English democracy become restive and open their eyes to the fact of their being plundered and robbed every day of their lives. It was from the Conservative Club that Mr. Granville Murray was expelled by the secret influence of the moral Prince of Wales, simply because following his duty as a journalist he had told the hereditary regulators of England that they were out of place in the nineteenth century.

The Garrick Club is, as its name indicates, made up of artists, dramatists, actors, newspaper writers, and authors. It numbers among its members Charles Reade, Tom Taylor, Charles Dickens, Bulwer, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Andrew Halliday, George Augustus Sala, Mr. Delane of the Times, H. Sutherland Edwards, William Howard Russell, Edward Dicey, Thornton Hunt, Editor of the _Telegraph_, John Ruskin, and I believe Thomas Carlyle's name was proposed as an honorary member; Charles Kean, Thackeray, Charles Matthews, Sr., who founded the club, W.H. Ainsworth, the novelist, the Blanchards, the Mayhews, Samuel Lover, Charles Lever, John Oxenford, Louis Blanc, Walter Thornbury, Lascelles Wraxall, Edmund Yates, John Hollingshead, formerly critic of the _Daily News_, James Greenwood, Frederick Greenwood, Brough, Dudley Costello, Lord William Lennox, Thomas Miller, Cyrus Redding, and other well known literary men belong to or have at some period or another been members of this club. American authors, artists, and actors, are always welcomed here, and among the habitues of the Garrick may be found Lester Wallack, H.E. Bateman, and others. The Garrick is noted for its famous gin punch which is a specialty here, and for which the following ingredients are necessary to composition; pour half a pint of gin on the outer peel of a lemon, then a little lemon juice, a glass of maraschino, a pint and a quarter of water, and two bottles of iced soda water. This is a most fragrant punch and not very intoxicating. The collection of pictures at the Garrick is very fine, and embraces nearly all the people, both male and female, who have made themselves famous in English histrionic art, among whom may be noticed Elliston, Macklin, Peg Woffington, Nell Gwynne, Colley Cibber, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Garrick as Richard III, John Phillip and Charles Kemble, Charles Mathews, Mrs. Siddons, Macready, Miss Inchbald, Edmund Kean, Kitty Clive, Mrs. Billington, and various others. Some of these portraits have been painted by the first of English artists. This gallery is only rivalled by that in Evan's Supper House in Convent Garden, where there is a fine and similar collection.

The Reform Club has among its members John Bright, W. E. Gladstone, Lord Hatherley, the present Lord Chancellor of England, the Duke of Argyll, W.E. Forster, Lord Dufferin, and other well known liberal nobles. About a year ago John Bright and W.E. Forster, his able aide-camp, resigned from the membership of the Reform Club, owing to the fact that a correspondent of an American journal, proposed by them, had had been black-balled in the Reform Club. This correspondent was Geo. W. Smalley of the _New York Tribune_. I believe that the club reconsidered their decision and admitted Mr. Smalley, and Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster are now members of the club. Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, editor of the _Athenæum_, is a member of the Reform Club.

[Sidenote: CARLTON CLUB.]

The Carlton Club ranks high among the Tory or anti-liberal clubs of London, has a very rich proprietary and a magnificent edifice in Pall Mall. The Right Hon. Spencer Horatio Walpole, one of the members for Cambridge University, and Alexander Beresford Hope, one of the proprietors of the _Saturday Review_, who was a member of Parliament during the American Civil War, and a bitter foe of the North, are both members of the Carlton Club, as is also Lord John Manners, a prominent Conservative noble, and fifth son of the Duke of Rutland. John Laird, M.P. for Liverpool, the builder of the _Alabama_, is also a member of the Carlton Club.

Lord Cole, a son of the Earl of Enskillen, and a chief accomplice with the Prince of Wales in the Lady Mordaunt scandal, is a member of the Carlton.

Gregory, the member for Galway, also a sympathizer with the Slaveholder's Rebellion, belongs to the Carlton. To be brief, this Carlton Club, essentially aristocratic and inimical to democracy all over the world, contributed more individual moneyed and social influence and support to Jeff. Davis than all the London Clubs put together.

I might state here that Bass, the great East India Pale Ale man, is a member of the Reform Club, while Sir Arthur Guiness, the Dublin Brown Stout man, Bass's great rival, is a member of the National Club, which is pseudo liberal. Jonathan Pim, the rich Irish Quaker, a member for Dublin City like Guiness, does not belong to any London club and keeps away from the flesh pots of Egypt. John Francis Maguire, M.P. for Cork, is a member of the Stafford Club, which numbers some of the Catholic families in its roll of membership. Sir Patrick O'Brien, an amusing Irishman who frequents the Cremorne a good deal, belongs to the Reform Club. The present Earl of Derby, late Lord Stanley, who was expected to lead the liberals in the House of Lords, but does not give much promise of doing so while he is an active member of the Carlton Club.

The Right Hon. George Goschen, a Jewish merchant, who is President of the Poor Law Board, yet quite a young man and promising, has his name inscribed on the lists of the Reform and Athenæum Clubs, and Robert Lowe, the witty, sarcastic, and clear-headed Chancellor of Exchequer, are lights in the Reform Club. Edward Sullivan, the Irish Attorney General, may be seen at the Reform, and George Henry Moore, a countryman of his, and an apologist for the Fenians, is a habitue of Brook's Club in St. James street. Sir John Evelyn Dennison, the Speaker of the House of Commons, while in town during the session, when dinner time comes, always doffs his gown and wig and toddles around to the Reform Club for a chop or steak, and a glass of wine. Vernon Harcourt, who signs himself in the _Times_ "Historicus," represents Oxford Borough in the House of Commons, and is a member of the Oxford and Cambridge University Club. A good story is told of "Historicus." Three heavy swells of the Guards were dining at the Star and Garter at Richmond, and all three made a wager that they each could boast of the biggest bore in London as an acquaintance. The discussion wore high, and they agreed to test it by bringing each his bore to dine on a set day, and at a set hour, at the "Star and Garter." When the day came two close carriages were drawn up to the "Star and Garter," and out of each leaped one of the gentlemen who had made the wager. They were both disappointed in their bores, and came without them as they had previous engagements. A third carriage drove up, and out of it leaped the third Swell who had made the wager, with a tall gentleman in a cloak. As soon as the stranger uncovered and presented the smiling countenance of "Historicus," the two swells cried out in astonishment,

"By J-a-a-v ye knaw, that's not f-eh-ah--_he's got our bo-a-h_!"

[Sidenote: BEEFSTEAK CLUB.]

Whalley, the religious madman, belongs to the Reform Club, and so does the Right Hon. Hugh Childers, First Lord of the Admiralty.

Kinglake, the historian, who bribed his way into the House of Commons, and afterwards testified to it without shame, is a member of Brooks, the Travelers, the Athenæum, and the Oxford and Cambridge Clubs.

Sir Robert Peel, the member for Farnsworth, is to be found at Brook's and Boodle's. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, formerly ambassador at Washington, at the Reform Club. Layard, the Nineveh discoverer and now English ambassador at Madrid, belongs to the Athenæum Club. The O'Donoughue at the Stafford and Reform Clubs, while young Mr. Gladstone, son to the Premier, modestly drinks his wine at the New University Club. Lord Carrington, a boon companion of the Prince of Wales, is a member of the Guards Club, and Sir Francis Crossley, the great Yorkshire manufacturer, may be seen nightly during the session passing his hours in the Reform and Brook's Clubs.

Queer and strange reminiscences cling to the London Clubs like barnacles to a packet ship. At the Alfred Club, George Canning, one of the greatest men ever known in England, used to take a steak and onions alongside of Lord Byron, who was always partial to Madeira negus.

Louis Napoleon, in his cheerless and hard up days, ate his eighteenpenny dinner at the Army and Navy Club in silence, while aristocratic Englishmen sat around chaffing and joking and taking no part in the sorrows of the exiled nephew of his Uncle. Since then dynasties have changed, and now a magnificent piece of Gobelin tapestry work, the "Sacrifice of Diana," worthy to be the gift of a sovereign, hangs in the club house of which he was once a member. The Emperor presented it to the Club.

The stock of wine in the cellars of the Athenæum is worth about $30,000, and is never allowed to run down or deteriorate, and its yearly revenue amounts to about $50,000.

The Beefsteak Club is a coterie of choice spirits who meet over the Lyceum Theatre to eat beefsteaks and drink tobys of ale, each member bringing his own beefsteak and furnishing his own jokes. Several noblemen belong to it, and the President wears as his emblem of office, a golden gridiron. Peg Woffington was at one time a member of this club.

The Duke of Wellington was in the habit of dining at the United Service Club, in Pall Mall, off the roast joint of beef or mutton, and one day he was charged 1s. 3d. for his plate of meat instead of 1s., the proper charge. He declared he would not pay the extra three-pence, and denounced the swindle until the three-pence was deducted, when the old soldier became satisfied and said that he would have paid the extra charge, but that he did not wish to establish an unjust precedent whereby others might suffer.

Just one hundred years ago a man dropped down at the door of White's Club, which is still flourishing in St. James' St., and the crowd of loungers in the bow windows immediately began to lay wagers whether the man was dead or not. A charitable person suggested that he be bled, but those who had wagered refused to allow it, saying that it would affect the fairness of the bet. In 1814, a banquet was given to the allied sovereigns at White's, which cost over $50,000 of American money, and the next year after a banquet was given to the Duke of Wellington which cost £2,480 10s. 9d. George IV, and Chesterfield, the master of politeness, were members of White's Club.

During the hard winter of 1844, the aristocratic clubs of London contributed to the starving poor of the metropolis, 3,104 pounds of broken bread, 4,556 pounds of broken meat, 1,147 pints of tea-leaves, and 1,158 pints of coffee-grounds. Otherwise these leavings might have been given to swine to fatten them.

[Sidenote: DEMOCRATIC CLUB.--LADIES ADMITTED.]

Gambling was carried on to a very high pitch at one time in the London clubs, but many have mended within twenty years. Crockford's Club House, No. 50 St. James' street, was known all over the world, and kings, princes, ambassadors, and statesmen, were inscribed upon its rolls as members. It no longer exists, however.

Crockford started in life as a fishmonger, in the old bulk-shop next door to Temple Bar Without, which he quitted for "play" in St. James'. He began by taking Watier's old club-house, where he set up a hazard-bank, and won a great deal of money; he then separated from his partner, who had a bad year, and failed. Crockford now removed to St. James' street, had a good year, and built the magnificent club house which bore his name; the decorations alone are said to have cost him £94,000. The election of the club members was vested in a committee; the house appointments were superb, and Ude was engaged as _maître d'hôtel_. "Crockford's" now became the high fashion. Card-tables were regularly placed, and whist was played occasionally; but the aim, end, and final cause of the whole was the hazard-bank, at which the proprietor took his nightly stand, prepared for all comers. His speculation was eminently successful. During several years, everything that anybody had to lose and cared to risk was swallowed up; and Crockford became a _millionaire_. He retired in 1840, "much as an Indian chief retires from a hunting-country when there is not game enough left for his tribe;" and the Club then tottered to its fall. After Crockford's death, the lease of the club-house (thirty-two years, rent £1,400) was sold for £2,900.

The Whittington Club is the only democratic club in London. It was started twenty-four years ago by Douglas Jerrold, who became its first president. It combines a literary society, with a club house, upon an economical scale, and contains dining and coffee rooms, library and reading rooms, smoking and chess rooms, and a large hall for balls, concerts, and soirees. Lectures are given here, and classes are held for the higher branches of education, fencing, dancing, etc. Ladies have all the privileges of gentlemen or members in the restaurant, and in balloting, while their dues and subscriptions is half that of the male members. This is the largest club in London, and combines all classes, having a roll of 1,700 members, all of whom are to be considered active. The Whittington Club is the only one in London where a person may be proposed without having a crest, or without belonging to a "good family," which means to loaf or idle a life away, and live upon the bread which is furnished by the blood and sweat of what these dandy Club men call the "lowah closses."