“We’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting days, and moreo’er puddings and flapjacks; and thou shalt be welcome,” was the Shakesperean motto of this frankly christened club. The pious founder of the club, in a finely printed booklet, declared that “it was deemed a requisite that your club should flourish under some rollicking epithet such as had not previously been ‘empounded’ by any other fraternity. The title should be terse; it should also be outrageous. It should smack of the caveau, and have the scent of the beeswing. Accordingly, many have been the creations that have in turn possessed the mind of your promoters. Fuddling clubs, gorging clubs, out Heroding Herod clubs—these comprised a whole hand of clubs, in which was not a single trump. Then did your promoters bethink themselves of that unctuous cognomen, ‘The Soakers.’ The title is a nudity.... The name of ‘The Soakers’ Club’ is selected only as conveying a sharp antithetical travestie upon our sober habits as moderate men.” This last statement is consolatory, for it would have been unpleasant if the club had come to the “Cheese” merely to make manifest their loyalty to their name. They were good fellows, and, though not quite antithetical to their designation did not allow it to run riot with their moderate tendencies. They dined at the “Cheese” regularly for years, but their numbers did not increase, owing probably to the frank brutality of their title, and the natural result was that they gradually dwindled away.
THE ST. DUNSTAN’S CLUB.
No wife, however shrewd, could object to her marital slave being a member of the St. Dunstan’s, while even the most angelic of ladies would scarcely like to see her lord flourishing as a leader among “The Soakers.” Therefore has the St. Dunstan’s flourished like a green bay tree for over a century. Its proud boast is that it has contributed more Common Councilmen and Aldermen (and consequently Lord Mayors) to the Corporation of the City of London than any other club in the Metropolis.
The St. Dunstan’s is pre-eminently a social club, neither party nor religion entering into its management. As may be expected, its members (now limited to twenty-eight) are leading men in their respective walks of life. The St Dunstan’s Club is called after the courageous English saint who, according to tradition, once pulled Satan by the nose with a pair of pincers. This episode in the life of the holy friar is represented on the insignia of the club. The club legend is that St. Dunstan shook the devil all round the boundaries of the parish, and then dropped him in the Temple, hence the origin of the name of the “Devil’s Own” applied to the legal profession, hence also the name of the “Devil” tavern, nearly opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, where the Apollo Club was presided over by Ben Jonson. Fleet Streeters can no longer “go to the Devil,” in the sense of going to any particular tavern, but anyone of respectability may be introduced to Child’s Bank, No. 1 Fleet Street, which stands on the Devil’s site. The bankers preserve in their parlour Jonson’s Latin rules set down for the guidance of the club.
It appears by the Minute Book that the St. Dunstan’s Club was first established at Anderton’s Coffee House on March 10, 1790, by the Rev. Joseph Williamson, the then Vicar of St. Dunstan’s, Mr. Nicholls, of St. Bride’s, Deputy of the South Side of the Ward of Farringdon Without, and some fifteen others, inhabitants of Fleet Street and its immediate vicinity. The club was limited to thirty members, whereof twenty-six were to be inhabitants of the parish, and four gentlemen resident in the ward. A chairman, treasurer, and secretary, were annually elected at the first meeting of the club in the month of October, and the toasts were fixed by resolution to be as follows:—
1st.—The King.
2nd.—The Queen, the Prince of Wales, and the rest of the Royal Family.
3rd.—Unanimity to this Parish.
4th.—Prosperity to the Ward.
5th.—The Absent Members.