It may be added that, as a consequence of the above-mentioned diffidence, Brooks died a poor man in 1782. Indeed, according to tradition, his creditors were so rapacious that, in order to defeat them, his body was interred in a small vault, still existing, under the pavement of St. James’s Street. For this, however, there is no sort of evidence in the records of the club, and the legend may have been suggested by the smallness of the vault, which would just contain a coffin.
Brooks was succeeded in the management by a Mr. Griffin, whose name can be traced down to 1815, though for the six years preceding this date the management figures as “Griffin and Co.” In 1815, however, he disappears, and at some subsequent time the mastership devolved upon Wheelwright, who in 1824 took Halse into partnership, and in 1831 retired; whereupon Halse took Henry Banderet into partnership, himself retiring in 1846, and receiving a grant from the club of £500 on account of his interest in the unexpired lease of the house, and 50 guineas for the surrender of his lodging therein. From that time until his death in 1880, Banderet continued Master; and to him is to be attributed the credit of having established in Brooks’s that refined if somewhat solemn comfort which resembles rather the luxury of a first-class private house than a club, and which has led to its being humorously described as “like dining in a Duke’s house with the Duke lying dead upstairs.” His attention to his duties as Master was unremitting, and it was said that, during the thirty-four years in which he filled that post, he had never been known to be absent, except on one occasion when he was persuaded to take a holiday; but he found himself so miserable that by noon he was back at Brooks’s, which he never afterwards left until his death, when the entire management was taken over by the club.
As a building, Brooks’s is a handsome and suitable club-house, which from time to time has sustained a number of alterations, most of them of a judicious kind. The balcony on the first-floor, formerly such a feature of the façade, has long been removed.
About twenty years ago considerable changes were made in the club-house, and No. 2 Park Place was incorporated as part of it. Up to that time the coffee-room had been what is now the strangers’ smoking-room on the first-floor, the only smoking-room being the round room at the back of the house, now divided into dressing-rooms. There was practically no library, the only apology for one being a small room beyond the coffee-room, containing little except Parliamentary reports, back volumes of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and novels from a circulating library. Opening out of this library was another small room into which hardly anyone ever went, and through that, again, a very small dressing-room which hardly anyone ever used. During the alterations these uncomfortable little rooms, together with the rest of No. 2 Park Place, were swept away, and the present coffee-rooms, with library above, erected in their place, the old drawing-rooms and coffee-rooms being given up to smokers and their guests. At the same time the hall and staircase were entirely reconstructed.
Amongst the important reforms introduced after Banderet’s death was the institution of club bedrooms, and also the privilege of inviting guests to dinner, and—in May 1896—to luncheon.
There are some interesting relics of old days at Brooks’s, including a complete set of the gaming counters used when the club was the scene of much high play. These are well displayed in a case at the bottom of the staircase. In the room upstairs, once the scene of so many late sittings, the old gambling-table still remains. A semicircular cut in this is said to have been made in order to accommodate the portly form of Charles James Fox, a pastel portrait of whom, by Russell, is one of the treasures of the club.
Some old prints of Brooks’s in former days (and a water-colour drawing of the gaming-room by Rowlandson in particular) convey an excellent idea of the past life of the club, while a few portraits of celebrated members decorate its walls.
The fine room upstairs which was once devoted to high play would appear to retain much of its ancient appearance, and the decorative scheme employed on the walls seems to have been little changed.
A treasured possession of this club is the old betting-book, in which are many curious entries, one of which tells that Mr. Thynne, having, according to a note written opposite his name in the club books, “won only £12,000 during the last two months, retired in disgust, March 21, 1772; and that he may never return is the ardent wish of members.”
The entries in this volume deal with all sorts of subjects, and range from a bet of five hundred guineas to ten that none of the Cabinet were beheaded by that day three years, to one of fifty that Mlle. Heinel does not dance at the Opera House next winter.