I belonged to the club shortly after Swinburne had resigned his membership, and the following story was repeated to me. It seems that he had spent an evening in the club; and he was about to leave when, selecting what he thought was his hat from amongst the many, he felt he had inadvertently mistaken another for his own. Replacing it, he tried again. Several times he repeated the process of trying on in hopes of finding the right hat, but all in vain. Growing excited, he began to try on indiscriminately, without success; then, finding he had lost his hat, he lost his head, and dashed the offending hats to the ground in turn. At last, after a grand finale of destruction, he strode hatless from the club, leaving devastation behind him.
Whistler once came searching for his opera hat. I was comfortably ensconced, and did not assist him. Finally, roused by his persistent search, I got up to help, and found to my chagrin that I had been sitting on the hat, and that, in so doing, I had ruined the springs and rendered it useless. He put it on, nevertheless, and although the effect was "amazing" (his favourite expression), Jimmy accepted my apologies most good-humouredly and philosophically.
One of the occasions of note at the club was an annual fish dinner held at the "Old Ship," Greenwich, but when that custom ceased the dinner took place at the club itself. It was at one of these festivities that Edmund Yates, who had been very bitter against me previously in his paper, made, I remember, a very kindly allusion to myself. I had caricatured him, as he thought, with intent to hurt his feelings; and he had publicly—and very unjustly—accused me of artistic snobbery. He had said that I was in the habit of caricaturing only those who were socially unimportant, and flattering noble lords; but at this dinner I was sitting almost opposite him, and when he rose to reply to a toast, he endeavoured to propitiate me by referring to himself as "portly, but not quite so portly as the artist of Vanity Fair had depicted him." This I understood to be a tentative offering of the olive branch. Later, when in prison for libel, he wrote his reminiscences, in which he alluded in a more than friendly manner to some drawings I had done for him in earlier days to illustrate lectures that he delivered in America on Dickens and Thackeray.
The Arts Club numbered some very distinguished men among its numbers. When I belonged, Val Prinsep, Marcus Stone, Phené Spiers, Louis Fagan, Pellegrini, Archibald Forbes, Tenniel, Dr. Buzzard, Marks, and Tadema were frequenters of the Club, as also was Charles Keene, who combined an air of the sixteenth century very successfully with his idea of modern dress. Keene used to smoke a clay pipe which was both becoming and in keeping. These clays, of which he had a continual supply, were among a number found in the Thames, where they had probably been buried at some time, unless, perhaps, a pipe factory had existed in old days on the banks of the river.
Another prominent member, John Tenniel, (so Linley Sambourne told me) had never seen either Dizzy or Gladstone in the flesh till years after his earlier cartoons of them appeared in Punch. It may be also new to my reader that Sambourne gave the nucleus of the idea for his famous cartoon "Dropping the Pilot" at one of the weekly dinners of the staff, the original drawing of which, I believe, is in the possession of Lord Rosebery.
When I left Connaught Street and went to live on the other side of the Park, I became a member of the Orleans Club, and enjoyed the then unique advantage of belonging to one where ladies were permitted to dine. Here I made many pleasant acquaintances and spent a good time.
THE BEEFSTEAK CLUB. The Clubroom occupied from 1876 to 1895.