"The senior member has outlived the whole Club twice over, and has been drunk with the grandfathers of some of the sitting members."
The Lawyer's Club is thus described in the Spectator, No. 372:—"This Club consists only of attorneys, and at this meeting every one proposes to the board the cause he has then in hand, upon which each member gives his judgment, according to the experience he has met with. If it happens that any one puts a case of which they have had no precedent, it is noted down by their chief clerk, Will Goosequill (who registers all their proceedings), that one of them may go with it next day to a counsel. This is, indeed, commendable, and ought to be the principal end of their meeting; but had you been there to have heard them relate their methods of managing a cause, their manner of drawing out their bills, and, in short, their arguments upon the several ways of abusing their clients, with the applause that is given to him who has done it most artfully, you would before now have given your remarks.
"They are so conscious that their discourses ought to be kept a secret, that they are very cautious of admitting any person who is not in the profession. When any who are not of the law are let in, the person who introduces him says, he is a very honest gentleman, and he is taken, as their cant is, to pay costs." The writer adds, "that he is admitted upon the recommendation of one of their principals, as a very honest, good-natured fellow, that will never be in a plot, and only desires to drink his bottle and smoke his pipe."
The Little Club, we are told in the Guardian, No. 91, began by sending invitations to those not exceeding five feet in height, to repair to the assembly, but many sent excuses, or pretended a non-application. They proceeded to fit up a room for their accommodation, and in the first place had all the chairs, stools, and tables removed, which had served the more bulky portion of mankind for many years, previous to which they laboured under very great disadvantages. The President's whole person was sunk in the elbow-chair, and when his arms were spread over it, he appeared (to the great lessening of his dignity) like a child in a go-cart. It was also so wide in the seat, as to give a wag occasion of saying, that "notwithstanding the President sat in it, there was a sede vacante." "The table was so high, that one who came by chance to the door, seeing our chins just above the pewter dishes, took us for a circle of men that sat ready to be shaved, and set in half-a-dozen of barbers. Another time, one of the Club spoke contumeliously of the President, imagining he had been absent, when he was only eclipsed by a flask of Florence, which stood on the table, in a parallel line before his face. We therefore new-furnished the room, in all respects proportionably to us, and had the door made lower, so as to admit no man above five feet high, without brushing his foretop; which, whoever does, is utterly unqualified to sit amongst us."
Mr. Daniel, in his Merrie England in the Olden Time, has collected a further list of Clubs existing in London in 1790. He enumerates the following:—The Odd Fellows' Club; the Humbugs (held at the Blue Posts, in Covent-Garden); the Samsonic Society; the Society of Bucks; the Purl Drinkers; the Society of Pilgrims (held at the Woolpack, in the Kingsland-road); the Thespian Club; the Great Bottle Club; the Je ne sçai quoi Club (held at the Star and Garter in Pall-Mall, and of which the Prince of Wales, and the Dukes of York, Clarence, Orleans, Norfolk, Bedford, etc., were members); the Sons of the Thames Society; the Blue Stocking Club; the No Pay No Liquor Club (held at the Queen and Artichoke, in the Hampstead-road, and of which the ceremony, on a new member's introduction, was, after his paying a fee on entrance of one shilling, that he should wear a hat, throughout the first evening, made in the shape of a quart pot, and drink to the health of his brother members in a gilt goblet of ale); the Social Villagers (held at the Bedford Arms, in Camden-town), etc. Of the Villagers of our time, Sheridan Knowles, the dramatist, was a jovial member.
JACOBITE CLUB.
In the year 1854 a Correspondent of Notes and Queries communicated to that journal the following interesting reminiscences of a political Club, with characteristics of the reminiscent.
"The adherents of the Stuarts are now nearly extinct; but I recollect a few years ago an old gentleman in London, who was then upwards of eighty years of age, and who was a staunch Jacobite. I have heard him say that, when he was a young man, his father belonged to a society in Aldersgate-street, called 'The Mourning Bush;' and this Bush was to be always in mourning until the Stuarts were restored." A member of this society having been met in mourning when one of the reigning family had died, was asked by one of the members how it so happened? His reply was, "that he was not mourning for the dead, but for the living." The old gentleman was father of the Mercers' Company, and his brother of the Stationers' Company: they were bachelors, and citizens of the old school, hospitable, liberal, and charitable. An instance occurred that the latter had a presentation to Christ's Hospital: he was applied to in behalf of a person who had a large family; but the father not being a freeman, he could not present it to the son. He immediately bought the freedom for the father, and gave the son the presentation. This is a rare act. The brothers have long gone to receive the reward of their goodness, and lie buried in the cemetery attached to Mercers' Hall, Cheapside.
By the above statement, the Club appears to have taken the name of the Mourning Bush Tavern, in Aldersgate, of which we shall have more to say hereafter.