The new club-house has a frontage of 80 feet in Pall Mall and 100 feet in St. James’s Square. The price of the site, together with the excavations, concreting, and so forth, amounted to £52,000; the building cost £54,000, and furnishing £10,000 more; so that the total outlay on the club-house was £116,000. The architects were Messrs. Parnell and Smith, who adopted as their model the well-known Palazzo Rezzonico, which occupies a prominent position on the Grand Canal in Venice. Representations of this palace hang in various rooms of the club. The builders of the house were Messrs. Trego, Smith, and Appleford, and the first stone of the new building was laid on May 13, 1848, by Colonel Daniell, of the Coldstream Guards.
The freeholds purchased by the club included a house owned by the trustees of the Baroness de Mauley, which had formerly been in the possession of Spencer, Earl of Wilmington, and afterwards of John, Earl of Buckinghamshire. This was No. 20, St. James’s Square, which had at more recent dates been occupied by the Hon. W. Ponsonby and by the Parthenon and Colonial Clubs. Other properties purchased were the freehold of Mr. Martineau, No. 3 George Street; Nos. 36 and 37, the freehold of Mr. Malton; Mrs. Justice’s freehold, No. 38 Pall Mall; and that of Mr. Tegart, No. 39 Pall Mall.
This club contains some interesting relics; amongst them, in the smoking-room, is a mantelpiece from the Malmaison, carved by Canova. One of the figures supporting this, however, is modern, and the difference from the other carved by the great sculptor can be clearly discerned.
Another treasured possession of the Army and Navy Club is the Nell Gwynn mirror, which is over the fireplace in the members’ smoking-room. This was in Lord de Mauley’s house, and is probably a genuine relic. A silver fruit-knife which is said to have belonged to the celebrated beauty, bearing the date 1680, has its place in the smoking-room, just below the mirror. The portrait of her by Sir Peter Lely which hangs in the same room was presented by a member, and took the place of another for years said to be Louise de Querouaille. In reality, this represents Mary of Modena.
As late as the eighteenth century the back room on the ground-floor of the old house on this site was covered with looking-glass, as was said to have been the ceiling also. Over the chimney-piece was a picture of Nell Gwynn, whilst a portrait of her sister hung in another room. The house then belonged to Thomas Brand, Esq., of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire.
The tradition that Nell Gwynn lived in the house standing on the ground now occupied by the Army and Navy Club, whilst now generally accepted, has been questioned by some. According to another tradition it was the house opposite—up to recent years used as part of the War Office—which really belonged to the Merry Monarch’s favourite. This, it is said, communicated by an underground passage with the house pulled down when the present club was built. The passage was stopped up within the last fifty years.
Whether or not Nell Gwynn resided in a house on the site of which the Army and Navy Club now stands, it is at any rate certain that part of it was connected with the grant made by Charles II to her; for among the title-deeds of the club property is a deed, dated 1725, which recites that King Charles II, by letters patent dated April 1 in the seventeenth year of his reign, gave and granted unto certain persons several pieces or parcels of ground which formed part of a field or close called Pell Mell Field, otherwise St. James’s Field. This grant was made on the nomination of Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, to Baptist May and Abraham Cowley, in trust for the second Earl of St. Albans, his heirs and assigns, for ever. Evelyn records in his Diary that he saw and heard the King (Charles II) in familiar discourse with “an impudent comedian, Mrs. Nellie, as they called her,” who was looking over the garden wall of a house standing on the north side of Pall Mall. The “Mall” was not then the same as the present street, but an avenue shaded by trees lying north of it, and following the line of the present south side of St. James’s Square, so that a house on the north side of Pall Mall might very well occupy the position of the corner house incorporated with the club.
A constant frequenter of the Army and Navy Club in old days was Prince Louis Napoleon, afterwards the Emperor Napoleon III, who always took great interest in everything connected with it. He had known it as a young man when—an obscure and impoverished exile—he lived in a modest lodging in King Street, St. James’s, in the immediate neighbourhood of the club, which he practically made his home. Soon after his accession to power in France, he presented the club with the fine piece of tapestry which hangs on the grand staircase. This is dated 1849, the year after he became Prince President of the French Republic. It represents “The Worship of Pales,” and is of Gobelins manufacture in 1784.
The Emperor ever cherished a kindly feeling for the club. When he returned to England after his downfall, he gladly resumed his honorary membership, and on his visits to town from Chislehurst he was frequently seen in the club, lunching constantly in the coffee-room, with his equerry seated opposite to him. He never failed to express a great liking for the club, because, as he said, he was always treated in it as a private person, and, except when he wished it, no particular notice was taken of him. It may be added that quite a number of interesting works of art relating to the Bonapartes are possessed by the club, and are kept in the visitors’ drawing-room.
The Army and Navy Club contains what amounts to quite a collection of pictures, statuary, and works of art, some acquired by purchase, others gifts of various members of the club. In the first category is a colossal bust of Queen Victoria, by Alfred Gilbert, R.A., which is a replica of that exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1887—the Jubilee year. Another bust executed for the club, to replace one of plaster which had been broken, is that of Field-Marshal H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, the President of the club. This bust was executed by Admiral H.S.H. Prince Victor of Hohenlohe (Count Gleichen), R.N., who was for many years, and until within a short time of his death, a member of the club. Two portraits in the inner hall—one of Queen Victoria, the other of the Duke of Wellington—were purchased by subscription.