Fig. 5—Badge of Bridge House Estates.
[THE CLUBS OF LONDON]
By Sir Edward Brabrook, C.B., F.S.A.
These are of many kinds. We suppose they are all more or less the lineal descendants of the taverns and coffee-houses that we associate with the memory of Ben Jonson, Dryden, Addison, and Samuel Johnson.
"Souls of poets dead and gone,
What elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid tavern?"
The wits' coffee-house, where Claud Halcro carried a parcel for Master Thimblethwaite in order to get a sight of glorious John Dryden. Button's coffee-house, where the "Guardian" set up his Lion's Head. The Cock and the Cheshire Cheese, which resound with Johnson's sonorous echoes. If, indeed, the tavern has developed into the club, that palace of luxury, one can only say, as in the famous transmutation of alphana to equus, "C'est diablement changé sur la route."
Intermediate is the host of clubs meeting occasionally, as the Breakfast Club, and the numerous dining clubs, one of which, the Royal Naval Club, established in 1765, is said to be a renewal of an earlier one dating from 1674. "The Club," which comes down from the time of Johnson and Reynolds, and still uses a notification to a new member drawn up by Gibbon; the Royal Society Club; the X Club, which consisted of ten members of the Athenæum; the Society of Noviomagus, and the Cocked Hat Club, consisting of members of the Society of Antiquaries; the Cosmos Club of the Royal Geographical Society; the Colquhoun Club of the Royal Society of Literature; and a host of others in connection with learned societies, most of which are content to add the word "club" to the name of the society. Of another, but cognate, kind is the famous "Sublime Society of Beef Steaks," which was founded in 1735, and died (of inanition) in 1867. The members were not to exceed twenty-four in number. Beef steaks were to be the only meat for dinner. The broiling began at 2.0, and the tablecloth was removed at 3.30. In 1785 the Prince of Wales, in 1790 the Duke of York, in 1808 the Duke of Sussex, became members. It had a laureate bard in the person of Charles Morris, elected a member in 1785, who died in 1838 at the age of 93 years. In early times the members appeared in the uniform of a blue coat and buff waistcoat, with brass buttons bearing a gridiron and the motto "Beef and Liberty." The hour of meeting became later gradually, till in 1866 it was fixed at 8 o'clock; then the club quickly died out. Founded by John Rich, harlequin and machinist at Covent Garden, it had counted among its members William Hogarth, David Garrick, John Wilkes, John Kemble, William Linley, Henry Brougham (Lord Chancellor), and many other distinguished men. The Ettrick Shepherd gave an account, in 1833, of a visit he paid to this club:—