CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF CLUBS IN COFFEE-HOUSES AND TAVERNS
The modern club, with its luxuries and comforts, has its origin in the tavern and coffee-house of a long-past age. The resorts in question have long since entirely changed their character, although they were once important features of London life, and were used by all classes for purposes of conviviality and conversation.
The appellation “club” seems to have come into use at the time when coffee-houses began to be popular in London. The first notable London club, of course, was the Mermaid, in Broad Street, which was supposed to have been founded by Raleigh, and which was the reputed scene of many witty combats between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The latter himself originated another club—the Apollo—which had its meetings at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar.
In course of time many landlords perceived the advantage which would accrue to their business from the setting apart of special rooms for privileged customers; and gradually a number of fairly exclusive clubs came into being.
Thus Tom’s, a coffee-house till 1764, in that year, by a guinea subscription, was easily converted into a fashionable club. In the same way White’s and the Cocoa-tree changed their character from chocolate-house to club. When once a house had customers enough of standing and good repute, well acquainted with each other, it was quite worth while to purchase the power of excluding all but subscribers, and to turn the place into a club; for by such a proceeding undesirable characters, who could obtain constant admission to an open house, were at once kept outside the doors.
The evolution of the modern club has been so simple that it can be traced with great ease. First the tavern or coffee-house, where a certain number of people met on special evenings for purposes of social conversation, and incidentally consumed a good deal of liquid refreshment; then the beginnings of the club proper—some well-known house of refreshment being taken over from the proprietor by a limited number of clients for their own exclusive use, and the landlord retained as manager; and finally the palatial modern club, not necessarily sociable, but replete with every comfort, and owned by the members themselves. In such places, however, the old spirit of club-life is generally lost. Dr. Johnson, for example, can be imagined passing through the portals of one of these huge buildings, and saying: “Sir, this may be a palace, but it is no club.” There is no doubt that in a great measure he would be right.
It is believed that the first house in Pall Mall ever used as a club was No. 86, originally built for Edward, Duke of York, brother of George III. It was opened as a “subscription house,” and called the Albion Hotel towards the end of the last century.
In the early part of the eighteenth century there were said to be no fewer than 2,000 coffee-houses in London. Every profession, trade, class, party, had its favourite coffee-house. The lawyers discussed law or literature, criticized the last new play, or retailed the legal scandal at Nando’s or the Grecian, not very far away from the Temple. At such places the young bloods of the Inns of Court paraded their gowns in the morning, and swaggered in their lace coats and Mechlin ruffles at night, after the theatre. City men met to discuss the rise and fall of stocks, and to settle the rate of insurance, at Garraway’s or Jonathan’s; parsons exchanged University gossip or discussed points of theology at Truby’s or at Child’s, in St. Paul’s Churchyard; whilst military men mustered to grumble over their grievances at Old or Young Man’s, near Charing Cross. The St. James’s and the Smyrna were the headquarters of the Whig politicians, whereas the Tories frequented the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda’s, in St. James’s Street; Scotchmen had their house of call at Forrest’s, Frenchmen at Giles’s or Old Slaughter’s, in St. Martin’s Lane; the gamesters shook their elbows in White’s and the chocolate-houses round Covent Garden; and the leading wits gathered at Will’s, Button’s, or Tom’s, in Great Russell Street, where, after the theatre, there was piquet and the best of conversation till midnight. At all these places, except a few of the most aristocratic coffee or chocolate houses of the West End, smoking was allowed.
Many of these old taverns must have been exceedingly comfortable places, and the few which survive have an especial charm. They carry one’s thoughts irresistibly to the days when Dr. Johnson blew his cloud by the side of an old-fashioned fireplace, and occasionally floored some unhappy wight with the sledge-hammer of his conversation.
One of the last, if not the last, hostelries, which still retains its ancient appearance, is the Cheshire Cheese. This well-known house is half-way up Fleet Street, on the northern side. It remains, I believe, substantially as it was when, seven years after the Restoration, it was rebuilt on the site of that older Cheshire Cheese where Shakespeare and many other Elizabethan wits were wont to meet.