CHAPTER VII
LATE SITTINGS—FINES—CARDS—CHARACTERS—SUPPER CLUBS
Amongst the changes in club-life in London, perhaps the most striking is the almost total cessation of the late sittings in which members formerly indulged. Various causes have contributed to make people in the West End of London keep earlier hours, of which the most notable is that the number of unoccupied men, who once formed a large proportion of those living in what is called the fashionable part of the town, has shrunk to a very small number, if it has not altogether ceased to exist. In other days there were plenty of young bachelors with something under a thousand a year who spent their life in complete idleness. A club was the pivot of their existence, and here they would often sit till the small-hours of the morning.
Another cause of early hours is the great popularity of motoring and golf, the widespread indulgence in which does anything but promote a love of sitting up late.
At the time when a great number of people had nothing to do all day, not a few regarded the night as being the most amusing part of their existence, when they could forgather with choice spirits and sit talking one against the other, as the old phrase had it, “till all was blue.”
As illustrating the lateness of the hours formerly kept by members of some West End clubs, a story used to be told about a staid country member who, arriving at one of these institutions, having travelled by a night train, went up to the coffee-room and began to order breakfast, upon which he was told, by a sleepy waiter, that no suppers were served after 6 a.m.
One of the latest sitters was Theodore Hook, so renowned for spontaneous wit. He was very proud of a peculiar receipt of his own for the prevention of exposure to the evil effects of night air. “I was once very ill,” said he, “and my doctor gave me particular orders not to expose myself to it; so I come up (from Fulham) every day to Crockford’s, or some other place, to dinner, ever since which I have made it a rule on no account to go home again till about four or five o’clock in the morning.”
Those were the days when the closing hours of a number of West End clubs were much later than is at present the case. Now there are seldom many members to be found in a club-house after one, and fines have become rare. Up to about fifteen or twenty years ago, considerable laxity prevailed as to enforcing these penalties which are exacted for sitting up after a certain hour, but the introduction of more business-like habits into West End life has put an end to such a state of affairs. Late sittings at clubs were, of course, in the vast majority of instances, connected with card-playing; and when this pastime was more prevalent than is now the case, some confirmed lovers of whist, and later of bridge, occasionally sat very late indeed.
Whist is now practically an obsolete game, and it is curious to recall that the introduction of short whist was once considered a great innovation. “Major A.,” the author of “Short Whist,” a book which was famous in the middle of the last century, gives the following account of its origin: “This revolution was occasioned by a worthy Welsh Baronet preferring his lobster for supper hot. Four first-rate whist-players—consequently four great men—adjourned from the House of Commons to Brooks’s, and proposed a rubber while the cook was busy. ‘The lobster must be hot,’ said the Baronet. ‘A rubber may last an hour,’ said another, ‘and the lobster may be cold again or spoiled before we finish.’ ‘It is too long,’ said a third. ‘Let us cut it shorter,’ said the fourth. Carried nem. con. Down they sat, and found it very lively to win or lose so much quicker. Besides furnishing conversation for supper, the thing was new—they were legislators, and had a fine opportunity to exercise their calling.”
Another version was supplied by James Clay, who was one of the principal authorities on whist in his day. His account is as follows:
“Some eighty years back, Lord Peterborough having one night lost a large sum of money, the friends with whom he was playing proposed to make the game five points instead of ten, in order to give the loser a chance, at a quicker game, of recovering his loss. The late Mr. Hoare of Bath, a very good whist-player, and without a superior at piquet, was one of this party, and used frequently to tell this story.”