THE REGENCY LIBRARY  

Brummel, The Clubs and Almacks Part I pages 222-230

Chapter 11 of the Beaux of the Regency by Lewis Melville (1908)

Today there are clubs for everybody, from the peer to the working-man, and from the diplomatist to the music hall performer, and for every purpose from the glorification or the vilification of the stage to the advancement of women’s rights; but at the beginning of the nineteenth century these institutions were few in number and almost exclusively reserved for the aristocracy and the landed gentry, though such wits and beaux of distinction as were of humbler birth were sometimes admitted, though they did not always, as it was sometimes found out—too late, fall under Johnson’s definition of “clubbable men.” Nowadays clubs publish their histories,* but in the Georgian era they were an unknown land save to the initiated, and they were shrouded in a sort of solemn mystery from the vulgar gaze. No lady would then have called at a club for her male relative, Lady Dorothy Nevill has recently reminded us: to-day many clubs set aside a room in which members may entertain the other sex.

            Under the Regency, Graham’s and the Union were second-rate institutions, nor was Arthur’s in the first flight; the membership of “The Club” and Grillion’s was very limited, the Naval, a favourite haunt of the Duke of Clarence, was reserved exclusively for the members of the senior service; while the name of the Royal Societies Club sufficiently indicates its scope. The Eccentrics was a social coterie, more interesting than important, which had on its roll such worthies as Fox, Sheridan, Brougham, Lord Petersham, Theodore Hook, and Lord Melbourne; and the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks was a delightful gathering of Bohemians of all ranks. The Pic-nics, well known in its day, was not a club in the ordinary sense of the word, but a select gathering of fashion folk who supped together at Le Texier’s public room or at the Pantheon in Oxford Street, the repast being provided by contributions from the members, each of whom dipped into a bag containing tickets inscribed with the name of the food or drink they had to supply—it might be a haunch of venison or a salad. This quaint idea was brought over from France by Lady Albina Buckinghamshire, one of the presiding spirits of the Pic-nics. The King of Clubs, founded in 1801, was also a dining-club, the forerunner of the present day Boz, Omar, Pepys, and Titmarsh Clubs, and the monthly assembly was held at the old Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand; but its membership was recruited more from literary than dandiacal circles, and included such celebrities as Rogers, Scarlett, Sydney Smith, Romilly, Lord Holland, Brougham, Porson, Horner, Jeffrey, Whishaw, Hallam, Luttrell, Ricardo, and Mackintosh of whom the author of “Peter Plymley’s Letters” said, his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being with whom he ever had the good fortune to be acquainted.

            The Alfred Club, which was established in 1808, and set up house at No. 23, Albemarle Street, flourished for nearly half a century, and so soon achieved a great reputation, that, three years after its foundation, it had three hundred and fifty four candidates for six vacancies! The club had its troubles, however, for Byron, who was a member,  wrote to Francis Hodgson, on December 8, 1811: “The cook has run away and left us liable, which makes our committee very plaintive. Master Brook, our head serving-man, has the gout, and our new cook is none of the best.” The Alfred’s membership was mainly literary, political, and clerical, and Byron tells us it was the most recherché and tiresome of any of the clubs to which he belonged.** “It was pleasant,” he wrote, on another occasion; “a little too sober and literary, and bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis d’Ivernois; but one met Peel and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties or parliament, or in an empty season.” Lord Alvanley’s dissatisfaction with the Alfred arose from its being so clerical, for, when asked if he was still a member, “not exactly,” he replied: “I stood it as long as I could, but when the seventeenth bishop was proposed I gave in. I really could not enter the place without being reminded of my catechism.”

            Among more important and longer-lived clubs there was Boodle’s at 28, St. James’s Street, known at first as the “Savior Vivre,” to which Mason has an allusion in his “Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers”:

 “So when some John his dull invention racks

And there was the Cocoa-Tree, at 64, St. James’s Street, which arose out of that coffee house of which Defoe wrote, “A Whig will no more go to the ‘Cocoa-Tree’ or ‘Ozinda’s’ than a Tory will be seen at the St. James’s,” and where at one time the Prince of Wales and Byron were frequent visitors.

            Brooks’s rose phoenix like upon the ruins of Almack’s Club, and hoisted the Whig colours. It, too, boasted of the name of the Prince of Wales on its roll of members, but his Royal Highness withdrew when his friends Tarleton and Payne were blackballed, and founded for himself and his friends a new club, to which his house-steward Weltzie, gave his name. Sheridan, in spite of the opposition of George Selwyn, became a member of Brooks’s, and wrote a rhymed epitaph on the founder:

             If Brummell was a favourite in the boudoirs, he was a very hero in clubland. He was proposed at Brooks’s by Mr. Fawkener in 1799, and he remained a member until after he left England. Captain Jesse states that the Beau was “declined as it is delicately expressed in the ledger of the club in May 1816,” but the insinuation conveyed by this expression is unwarranted, for the word “declined” always has been and still is, used at the club in question to signify “resigned” and it does not carry with it any suggestion of compulsory retirement.

            What Brooks’s was in the politic world, White’s, which soon took down the Tory flag, and received members without regard to their opinions, was in the realms of fashion; it was, indeed, pre-eminently the home of the dandies. “White’s is how a club,” Sir William Fraser has written. “It was an Institution; an Institution of the most powerful and effective character which for one hundred and thirty years ruled the Society of London, as regards men, with wonderful discrimination and marvelous force. To be admitted a member of that body gave a young man a cachet such as nothing else could give. Looking through the volumes of candidates for many years, the discrimination to be observed is marvelous. The absolute qualifications are difficult to define, but still are strongly marked: ‘Je ne sais quoi’ its device. Neither Rank, Wealth, Wit, nor any quality in itself, enabled a candidate to be sure of election; and although the blackballing, which in some instances continued for years, appears at first tyrannical, it rarely happened that ultimately the individual, if possessing the particular qualifications desired, did not gain admission. Some were excluded, notwithstanding the annual efforts of a lifetime. Some few were admitted at once; but sooner or later justice was done.”*** This gives a true idea of the importance of that famous club, the members of which, almost as a matter of course, had the entrée to society; and men in that day might, without much exaggeration, have been divided into members of White’s—and others.

            Brummell was elected a member in 1798, on his retirement from the army, and he took his place as a matter of course, as one of the small coterie that sat in the famous bow window, which—we have it on the authority of the Hon. Algernon Bourke, the historian of that institution—was sacred ground, to which only the chosen were admitted. Its occupants were the leaders of the inner circle, and the right to stand or sit there was by convention relinquished by the rest. Indeed, Mr. Bourke states, “from members still living, we learn that, within their memory, an ordinary frequenter of White’s would as soon have thought of taking his seat on the throne in the House of Lords, as of appropriating one of the chairs of the bow-window.”**** The select coterie, or inner circle of the club included the Duke of Argyll, Lord Worcester, Lord Alvanley, Lord Foley, John Mills, Henry Pierrepoint, Bradshaw, Lord de Ros, Charles Standish, Edward Montagu, Hervey Aston, Lord Sefton, “Dan” Mackinnon, George Dawson Damer, “Rufus” Lloyd, and a few others whose names now have no interesting associations.***** So well known as this bay window that, when it was being temporarily enlarged, and its habitués were temporarily unable to take their accustomed place, Luttrell thought it worth while to note the circumstance:

 *The History of White’s has been privately printed in two great quarto volumes by the Hon. Algernon Bourke, and an account of Grillion’s has been issued in the same way. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has published a volume on the Garrick Club and Mr. Aaron Watson on the Savage Club. Particulars of many clubs are to be found in Charles Marsh’s Clubs of London and John Timbs’ Clubs and Club-Life in London.” [Note: Regency Library reprinted the History of Whites in serial form in 1996 and this is still available as a reprint. The illustrations used in presenting these articles are from that volume]

 **”I belonged, or belong to the following Clubs or Societies: to the Alfred, to the Cocoa-Tree, to Watier’s, to the Union, to Racket’s (at Brighton), to the Pugilistic, to the Owls, or ‘Fly by Night,’ to the Cambridge Whig Club, to the Harrow Club, Cambridge, and to one or two private Clubs, to the Hampden Political Club, and to the Italian Carbonari, etc. etc. etc. ‘though last not least.’ I got into all these and never stood for any other—at least to my own knowledge. I declined being proposed to several others; though pressed to stand candidate.”—Byron: Detached Thought, Section 31.

 ***Words on Wellington.

 ****History of White’s Club.

 *****Golden Ball was a member of White’s, though it is not clear if he sat among the elite; and Croker was distinguished as the one man of letters, not a beaux, who passed the test of the ballot box.