"In a state more alone and unfriended, perhaps, than any youth of his high station had ever before been reduced to on such an occasion—not having a single individual of his own class, either to take him by the hand as friend, or acknowledge him as an acquaintance."
But this state of affairs was not to endure. On February 29th, 1812, Childe Harold appeared.
"The effect was electric; his fame had not to wait for any of the ordinary gradations, but seemed to spring up like the palace of a fairy tale—in a night.... From morning till night flattering testimonies of his success reached him; the highest in the land besieged his door, and he who had been so friendless found himself the idol of London society."
Perhaps we cannot do better than end these literary associations of club-land with a few words about a man who in his time was one of its most brilliant figures—Theodore Hook. When he was released from the King's Bench prison, with his debt to the Crown still hanging over him,
"he took a large and handsome house in Cleveland Row. Here he gave dinners on an extensive scale, and became a member of all the best clubs, particularly frequenting those where high play was the rule. His visiting book included all that was loftiest and gayest and in every sense most distinguished in London society. The editor of John Bull, the fashionable novelist, the wittiest and most vivid talker of the time, his presence was not only everywhere welcome but everywhere coveted and clamoured for. But the whirl of extravagant dissipation emptied his pocket, fevered his brain, and shortened the precious hours in which alone his subsistence could be gained."
In the height of his social triumphs there always hung inexorably over him the Damocles sword of debt. When at last he gave way under the strain, and went into comparative retirement at Fulham, the number of dinners at the Athenæum Club, where he had always had a particular table kept for him near the door (nicknamed Temperance Corner), fell off by upwards of three hundred per annum.
These are a few out of the many literary memories that we may encounter in an afternoon's stroll from the Borough to St. James's, along one of the great city's busiest highways; others, indeed, there are, meeting us at every corner, but space forbids our dwelling upon them, and regretfully we must pass them by.