And apropos of Doctor Johnson, what evidence is there that the great lexicographer’s rhinoceros laugh ever vibrated through the “Cheshire Cheese”? Boswell makes no reference to it, and surely such an omission would be impossible in the chronicles of that irrepressible toady—but when all’s said and done, what importance attaches to it so long as the fare maintains its pristine excellence and the American bumpings are restrained within reasonable limits?
When Piccadilly did not consist almost entirely of clubs, public billiard-rooms were patronised by many who would not enter a modern one. Many of these were run on the very best lines, and a regular clientele met every afternoon for sixpenny and half-crown pools.
The best was Phillips’s, at 99, Regent Street, where Edmund Tattersall, Lord St. Vincent, Colonel Dawes, Attenborough, the king of pawnbrokers, and a few members of 14, St. James’s Square Club never missed resorting—wind and weather permitting—from three to seven of an afternoon.
No goat from an alien flock dared hope to browse on that jealously-guarded pasture, and if, as occasionally, one wandered in, he speedily wandered out under the withering glances of old Phillips and his son.
Almost opposite were Smith’s rooms, where pool of a high class (in execution) was indulged in, and any amateur with a local reputation who took a ball soon disabused his mind of any exalted idea of his play.
Dolby’s, near the Marble Arch, had also its regular patrons, and even in the select region of Portman Square such correct old gentlemen as Sir James Hamilton, Mr. Burgoyne, and other residents in the neighbourhood met daily at an unpretentious tobacconist’s in King Street and played pool in a dingy room behind the shop.
But in the clubs of those long-ago days the most cold-blooded inhospitality obtained. If you called upon a friend you had to wait on the door-mat, and the offering of a glass of sherry was attended by the risk of expulsion. Smoking-rooms—if tolerated—were placed in the attics, and a “strangers’ room” was an innovation that only came into existence years after.
For long many clubs held out against the recognition of “strangers,” and only within the last few years have the “Senior” and the more exclusive establishments over-ruled the snarling objections of the few old fossils who use a club from morning to night without adding one cent to its revenue.
It was the privilege of the Army and Navy Club to make the first drastic move in the right direction, and to Louis Napoleon’s frequent visits for luncheon and its attendant cigarette and coffee may be traced the present accepted theory that “clubs were made for man, and not man for clubs.”
The best tobacconists also supplied the need now provided by the ubiquitous club, and Harris’s, Hoare’s, Benson’s, Hudson’s, Carlin’s in Oxford Street and Regent Street, each had their following, where every afternoon such men as Lord William Lennox, Lord Huntingtower, Mr. George Payne, the Marquis of Drogheda, Lord Henry Loftus, and Colonel Fitzgerald might be seen seated on tobacco tubs and cigar chests, smoking big cigars and drinking sherry which flowed from casks around the shop.