"For a home, a man must have a large Club, where the members are recruited from a large class, where the funds are in a good state, where a large number every day breakfast and dine, and where a goodly number think it necessary to be on the books and pay their subscriptions, although they do not use the Club. Above all, your home Club should be a large Club, because, even if a Club be ever so select, the highest birth and most unexceptionable fashion do not prevent a man from being a bore. Every Club must have its bores; but in a large Club you can get out of their way."[24]
"It is a vulgar error to regard a Club as the rich man's public-house: it bears no analogy to a public-house: it is as much the private property of its members as any ordinary dwelling-house is the property of the man who built it.
"Our Clubs are thoroughly characteristic of us. We are a proud people,—it is of no use denying it,—and have a horror of indiscriminate association; hence the exclusiveness of our Clubs.
"We are an economical people, and love to obtain the greatest possible amount of luxury at the least possible expense: hence, at our Clubs we dine at prime cost, and drink the finest wines at a price which we should have to pay for slow poison at a third-rate inn.
"We are a domestic people, and hence our Clubs afford us all the comforts of home, when we are away from home, or when we have none. Finally, we are a quarrelsome people, and the Clubs are eminently adapted for the indulgence of that amiable taste. A book is kept constantly open to receive the outpourings of our ill-humour against all persons and things. The smokers quarrel with the non-smokers: the billiard-players wage war against those who don't play; and, in fact, an internecine war is constantly going on upon every conceivable trifle; and when we retire exhausted from the fray, sofas and chaises longues are everywhere at hand, whereon to repose in extenso. The London Clubs are certainly the abodes of earthly bliss, yet the ladies won't think so."[25]
THE UNION CLUB.
This noble Club-house, at the south-west angle of Trafalgar-square, was erected in 1824, from designs by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A. It is much less ornate than the Club-houses of later date; but its apartments are spacious and handsome, and it faces one of the finest open spaces in the metropolis. As its name implies, it consists of politicians, and professional and mercantile men, without reference to party opinions; and, it has been added, is "a resort of wealthy citizens, who just fetch Charing Cross to inhale the fresh air as it is drawn from the Park through the funnel, by Berkeley House, out of Spring Gardens, into their bay-window."
James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses, was a member of the Union, which he describes as chiefly composed of merchants, lawyers, members of Parliament, and of "gentlemen at large." He thus sketches a day's life here. "At three o'clock I walk to the Union Club, read the journals, hear Lord John Russell deified or diablerized, do the same with Sir Robert Peel or the Duke of Wellington, and then join a knot of conversationists by the fire till six o'clock. We then and there discuss the Three per Cent. Consols (some of us preferring Dutch Two-and-a-half per Cents.), and speculate upon the probable rise, shape, and cost of the New Exchange. If Lady Harrington happen to drive past our window in her landau, we compare her equipage to the Algerine Ambassador's; and when politics happen to be discussed, rally Whigs, Radicals, and Conservatives alternately, but never seriously, such subjects having a tendency to create acrimony. At six, the room begins to be deserted; wherefore I adjourn to the dining-room, and gravely looking over the bill of fare, exclaim to the waiter, 'Haunch of mutton and apple-tart!' These viands dispatched, with the accompanying liquids and water, I mount upward to the library, take a book and my seat in the arm-chair, and read till nine. Then call for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, resuming my book till eleven; afterwards return home to bed." The smoking-room is a very fine apartment.