Club Life of London Volume I Part 23

This is the second Club of the Conservative party, and many of its chiefs are honorary members, but rarely enter it: Sir Robert Peel is said never to have entered this Club-house except to view the interior. Other leaders have, however, availed themselves of the Club influences to recruit their ranks from its working strength. This has been political ground for a century and a half; for here, at the Thatched House Tavern, Swift met his political Clubs, and dined with Tory magnates; but with fewer appliances than in the present day; in Swift's time "the wine being always brought by him that is president."[28]

FOOTNOTES:

[28] The Palace clock has connected with it an odd anecdote, which we received from Mr. Vulliamy, of Pall Mall, who, with his family, as predecessors, had been the royal clockmakers since 1743. When the Palace Gate-house was repaired, in 1831, the clock was removed, and not put up again. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood, missing the clock, memorialized William IV. for the replacement of the time-keeper, when the King inquired why it was not restored; the reply was that the roof was reported unsafe to carry the weight, which His Majesty having ascertained, he shrewdly demanded how, if the roof were not strong enough to carry the clock, it was safe for the number of persons occasionally seen upon it to witness processions, and the company on drawing-room days? There was no questioning the calculation; the clock was forthwith replaced, and a minute-hand was added, with new dials. (_Curiosities of London_, p. 571.)

THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CLUB.

The Oxford and Cambridge Club-house, 71, Pall Mall, for members of the two Universities, was designed by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., and his brother, Mr. Sydney Smirke, 1835-8. The Pall Mall facade is 80 feet in width by 75 in height, and the rear lies over against the court of Marlborough House. The ornamental detail is very rich: as the entrance-portico, with Corinthian columns; the balcony, with its panels of metal foliage; and the ground-story frieze, and arms of Oxford and Cambridge Universities over the portico columns. The upper part of the building has a delicate Corinthian entablature and bal.u.s.trade; and above the princ.i.p.al windows are bas-reliefs in panels, executed in cement by Nicholl, from designs by Sir R. Smirke, as follows:--Centre panel: Minerva and Apollo presiding on Mount Parna.s.sus; and the River Helicon, surrounded by the Muses. Extreme panels: Homer singing to a warrior, a female, and a youth; Virgil singing his Georgics to a group of peasants. Other four panels: Milton reciting to his daughter; Shakspeare attended by Tragedy and Comedy; Newton explaining his system; Bacon, his philosophy. Beneath the ground-floor is a bas.e.m.e.nt of offices, and an entresol or mezzanine of chambers. The princ.i.p.al apartments are tastefully decorated; the drawing-room is panelled with _papier mache_; and the libraries are filled with book-cases of beautifully-marked Russian birchwood. From the back library is a view of Marlborough House and its gardens.

THE GUARDS' CLUB.

Was formerly housed in St. James's-street, next Crockford's, north; but, in 1850, they removed to Pall Mall, No. 70. The new Club-house was designed for them by Henry Harrison, and remarkable for its compactness and convenience, although its size and external appearance indicate no more than a private house. The architect has adopted some portion of a design of Sansovino's in the lower part or bas.e.m.e.nt.

THE ARMY AND NAVY CLUB.

The Army and Navy Club-house, Pall Mall, corner of George-street, designed by Parnell and Smith, was opened February 1851. The exterior is a combination from Sansovino's Palazzo Cornaro, and Library of St.

Mark at Venice; but varying in the upper part, which has Corinthian columns, with windows resembling arcades filling up the intercolumns; and over their arched headings are groups of naval and military symbols, weapons, and defensive armour--very picturesque. The frieze has also effective groups symbolic of the Army and Navy; the cornice, likewise very bold, is crowned by a ma.s.sive bal.u.s.trade. The bas.e.m.e.nt, from the Cornaro, is rusticated; the entrance being in the centre of the east or George-street front, by three open arches, similar in character to those in the Strand front of Somerset House. The whole is extremely rich in ornamental detail. The hall is fine; the coffee-room is panelled with scagliola, and has a ceiling enriched with flowers, and pierced for ventilation by heated flues above; adjoining is a room lighted by a glazed plafond; next is the house dining-room, decorated in the Munich style; and more superb is the morning-room, with its arched windows, and mirrors forming arcades and vistas innumerable. A magnificent stone staircase leads to the library and reading rooms; and in the third story are billiard and card rooms; and a smoking-room, with a lofty dome elaborately decorated in traceried Moresque. The apartments are adorned with an equestrian portrait of Queen Victoria, painted by Grant, R.A.; a piece of Gobelin tapestry (Sacrifice to Diana), presented to the Club in 1849 by Prince Louis Napoleon; marble busts of William IV. and the Dukes of Kent and Cambridge; and several life-size portraits of naval and military heroes. The Club-house is provided with twenty lines of Whishaw's Telekouphona, or Speaking Telegraph, which communicate from the Secretary's room to the various apartments. The cost of this superb edifice, exclusive of fittings, was 35,000_l._; the plot of ground on which it stands cost the Club 52,000_l._

The Club system has added several n.o.ble specimens of ornate architecture to the metropolis; to the south side of Pall Mall these fine edifices have given a truly patrician air. But, it is remarkable that while both parties political have contributed magnificent edifices towards the metropolis and their opinions; while the Conservatives can show with pride two splendid piles and the Liberals at least one handsome one; while the Army and Navy have recently a third palace--the most successful of the three they can boast; while the Universities, the sciences, even our Indian empire, come forward, the fas.h.i.+onable clubs, the aristocratic clubs do nothing for the general aspect of London, and have made no move in a direction where they ought to have been first. Can anything be more paltry than that bay-window from which the members of White's contemplate the cabstand and the Wellington Tavern? and yet a little management might make that house worthy of its unparalleled situation; and if it were extended to Piccadilly, it would be the finest thing of its kind in Europe.

THE JUNIOR UNITED SERVICE CLUB.

At the corner of Charles-street and Regent-street, was erected in 1855-57, Nelson and James, architects, and has a most embellished exterior, enriched with characteristic sculpture by John Thomas. The design is described in the _Builder_ as in the Italian style of architecture, the bay-window in Regent-street forming a prominent feature in the composition, above which is a sculptured group allegorical of the Army and Navy. The whole of the sculpture and ornamental details throughout the building are characteristic of the profession of the members of the Club. The exterior of the building is surmounted by a richly-sculptured cornice, with modillion and dentils, and beneath it an elaborate frieze, having medallions with trophies and other suitable emblems, separated from each other by the rose, shamrock, and thistle. The external walls of the building are of Bath stone, and the bal.u.s.trade round the area is of Portland stone; and upon the angle-pieces of this are bronze lamps, supported by figures.

The staircase is lighted from the top by a handsome lantern, filled with painted gla.s.s, with an elaborate coved and ornamented ceiling around. On the landing of the half s.p.a.ce are two pairs of caryatidal figures, and single figures against the walls, supporting three semicircular arches, and the whole is reflected by looking-gla.s.ses on the landing. On the upper landing of the staircase, is the celebrated picture, by Allan, of the Battle of Waterloo. Upon the first floor fronting Regent-street, and over the morning-room, and of the same dimensions, is the evening-room, which is also used as a picture-gallery, 24 feet high, with a bay-window fronting Regent-street. In the gallery are portraits of military and naval commanders; Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the Emperor Napoleon; and an allegorical group in silver, presented to the Club by his Imperial Majesty.

CROCKFORD'S CLUB.

This noted gaming Club-house, No. 50, on the west side of St.

James's-street, over against White's, was built for Mr. Crockford, in 1827; B. and P. Wyatt, architects.

Crockford started in life as a fishmonger, at the old bulk-shop next-door to Temple Bar Without, which he quitted for play in St.

James's. "For several years deep play went on at all the Clubs--fluctuating both as to locality and amount--till by degrees it began to flag. It was at a low ebb when Mr. Crockford laid the foundation of the most colossal fortune that was ever made by play. He began by taking Watier's old Club-house, in partners.h.i.+p with a man named Taylor. They set up a hazard-bank, and won a great deal of money, but quarrelled and separated at the end of the first year.

Taylor continued where he was, had a bad year, and failed. Crockford removed to St. James's-street, had a good year, and immediately set about building the magnificent Club-house which bears his name. It rose like a creation of Aladdin's lamp; and the genii themselves could hardly have surpa.s.sed the beauty of the internal decorations, or furnished a more accomplished _maitre d'hotel_ than Ude. To make the company as select as possible, the establishment was regularly organized as a Club, and the election of members vested in a committee. 'Crockford's' became the rage, and the votaries of fas.h.i.+on, whether they liked play or not, hastened to enrol themselves. The Duke of Wellington was an original member, though (unlike Blucher, who repeatedly lost everything he had at play) the great Captain was never known to play deep at any game but war or politics. 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. _Le Wellington des Joueurs_ lost 23,000_l._ at a sitting, beginning at twelve at night, and ending at seven the following evening. He and three other n.o.blemen could not have lost less, sooner or later, than 100,000_l._ apiece. Others lost in proportion (or out of proportion) to their means; but we leave it to less occupied moralists, and better calculators, to say how many ruined families went to make Mr.

Crockford a _millionnaire_--for a _millionnaire_ he was in the English sense of the term, after making the largest possible allowance for bad debts. A vast sum, perhaps half a million, was sometimes due to him; but as he won, all his debtors were able to raise, and easy credit was the most fatal of his lures. 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 is now tottering to its fall."[29]

The Club-house consists of two wings and a centre, with four Corinthian pilasters, and entablature, and a bal.u.s.trade throughout; the ground-floor has Venetian windows, and the upper story, large French windows. The entrance-hall had a screen of Roman-Ionic scagliola columns with gilt capitals, and a cupola of gilding and stained gla.s.s. The library has Sienna columns and antae of the Ionic order, from the Temple of Minerva Polias; the staircase is panelled with scagliola, and enriched with Corinthian columns. The grand drawing-room is in the style of Louis Quatorze: azure ground, with elaborate cove; ceiling enrichments bronze gilt; door-way paintings _a la Watteau_; and panelling, masks, terminals, heavily gilt. Upon the opening of the Club-house, it was described in the exaggerated style, as "the New Pandemonium"; the drawing-rooms, or real h.e.l.l, consisting of four chambers; the first an ante-room, opening to a saloon embellished to a degree which baffles description; thence to a small, curiously-formed cabinet, or boudoir, which opens to the supper room.

All these rooms are panelled in the most gorgeous manner, s.p.a.ces being left to be filled up with mirrors, silk or gold enrichments; the ceilings being as superb as the walls. A billiard-room on the upper floor completes the number of apartments professedly dedicated to the use of the members. Whenever any secret manoeuvre is to be carried on, there are smaller and more retired places, both under this roof and the next, whose walls will tell no tales.

The _cuisine_ at Crockford's was of the highest cla.s.s, and the members were occasionally very _exigeant_, and trying to the patience of M.

Ude. At one period of his presidency, a ground of complaint, formally addressed to the Committee, was that there was an admixture of onion in the _soubise_. Colonel Damer, happening to enter Crockford's one evening to dine early, found Ude walking up and down in a towering pa.s.sion, and naturally inquired what was the matter. "No matter, Monsieur le Colonel! Did you see that man who has just gone out? Well, he ordered a red mullet for his dinner. I made him a delicious little sauce with my own hands. The price of the mullet marked on the _carte_ was 2_s._; I asked 6_d._ for the sauce. He refuses to pay the 6_d._ That _imbecille_ apparently believes that the red mullets come out of the sea with my sauce in their pockets!" The _imbecille_ might have retorted that they do come out of the sea with their appropriate sauce in their pockets; but this forms no excuse for damaging the consummate genius of a Ude.

The appet.i.tes of some Club members appear to ent.i.tle them to be called _gourmands_ rather than _gourmets_. Of such a member of Crockford's the following traits are related in the _Quarterly Review_, No.

110:--"The Lord-lieutenant of one of the western counties eats a covey of partridges for breakfast every day during the season; and there is a popular M.P. at present [1836] about town who would eat a covey of partridges, as the Scotchman ate a dozen of becaficos, for a whet, and feel himself astonished if his appet.i.te was not accelerated by the circ.u.mstance. Most people must have seen or heard of a caricature representing a gentleman at dinner upon a round of beef, with the landlord looking on. 'Capital beef, landlord!' says the gentleman; 'a man may cut and come again here.' 'You may cut, Sir,' responds Boniface; 'but I'm blow'd if you shall come again.' The person represented is the M.P. in question; and the sketch is founded upon fact. He had occasion to stay late in the City, and walked into the celebrated Old Bailey beef-shop on his return, where, according to the landlord's computation, he demolished about seven pounds and a half of solid meat, with a proportionate allowance of greens. His exploits at Crockford's have been such, that the founder of that singular inst.i.tution has more than once had serious thoughts of giving him a guinea to sup elsewhere; and has only been prevented by the fear of meeting with a rebuff similar to that mentioned in _Roderick Random_ as received by the master of an ordinary, who, on proposing to buy off an ugly customer, was informed by him that he had already been bought off by all the other ordinaries in town, and was consequently under the absolute necessity of continuing to patronize the establishment."

Theodore Hook was a frequent visitor at Crockford's, where play did not begin till late. Mr. Barham describes him, after going the round of the Clubs, proposing, with some gay companion, to finish with half an hour at Crockford's: "The half-hour is quadrupled, and the excitement of the preceding evening was nothing to that which now ensued." He had a receipt of his own to prevent being exposed to the night air. "I was very ill," he once said, "some months ago, and my doctor gave me particular orders not to expose myself to it; so I come up [from Fulham] every day to Crockford's, or some other place to dinner, and I make it a rule on no account to go home again till about four or five o'clock in the morning."

After Crockford's death, the Club-house was sold by his executors for 2,900_l._; held on lease, of which thirty-two years were unexpired, subject to a yearly rent of 1,400_l._ It is said that the decorations alone cost 94,000_l._ The interior was re-decorated in 1849, and opened for the Military, Naval, and County Service Club, but was closed again in 1851. It has been, for several years, a dining-house--"the Wellington."

Crockford's old bulk-shop, west of Temple-bar, was taken down in 1846.

It is engraved in Archer's _Vestiges of London_, part i. A view in 1795, in the Crowle Pennant, presents one tall gable to the street; but the pitch of the roof had been diminished by adding two imperfect side gables. The heavy pents originally traversed over each of the three courses of windows; it was a mere timber frame filled up with lath and plaster, the beams being of deal with short oak joints: it presented a capital example of the old London bulk-shop (sixteenth century), with a heavy canopy projecting over the pathway, and turned up at the rim to carry off the rain endwise. This shop had long been held by a succession of fishmongers; and Crockford would not permit the house-front to be altered in his lifetime. He was known in gaming circles by the sobriquet of "the Fishmonger."

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Edinburgh Review.

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

In the old days when gaming was in fas.h.i.+on, at Watier's Club, princes and n.o.bles 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 h.e.l.l, 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 bra.s.s 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 paG.o.da 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 shuttlec.o.c.k, which innocent exercise he turned into a gambling speculation. After he withdrew, in very reduced circ.u.mstances, to France, his once mad purchase of Oatlands suddenly a.s.sumed 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 compa.s.sionate 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 a.s.saulting 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 cla.s.sical 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 s.h.i.+nes 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 _debut_, 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 a.s.sociations, 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 _elite_, were ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.sengers. 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:--