THE OLD TABARD INN, HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK
The Tavern! We can hardly understand how large a place it filled in the lives of our forefathers, who did not live scattered about in suburban villas, but over their shops and offices. When business was over, all of every class repaired to the Tavern. Dr. Johnson spent the evenings of his last years wholly at the Tavern; the lawyer, the draper, the grocer, the bookseller, even the clergy, all spent their evenings at the Tavern, going home in time for supper with their families. You may see the kind of Tavern life in any small country town to this day, where the shopkeepers assemble every evening to smoke and talk together. The Tavern was far more than a modern club, because the tendency of a club is to become daily more decorous, while the Tavern atmosphere of freedom and the equality of all comers prevented the growth of artificial and conventional restraints. Something of the Tavern life is left still in London; but not much. The substantial tradesman is no longer resident; there are no longer any clubs which meet at Taverns; and the old inns, with their sanded floors and great fireplaces, are nearly all gone. The Swan with Two Necks, the Belle Sauvage, the Tabard, the George and Vulture, the Bolt-in-Tun—they have either ceased their existence, or their names call forth no more associations of good company and good songs. The Dog and Duck, the Temple of Flora, Apollo’s Gardens, the Bull in the Pound, the Blue Lion of Gray’s Inn Lane—what memories linger round these names? What man is now living who can tell us where they were?
SIGN OF THE SWAN WITH TWO NECKS, CARTER LANE
SIGN OF THE BOLT-IN-TUN, FLEET STREET
CHAPTER XII.
IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND.
Club-land was a comparatively small country, peopled by a most exclusive race. There were twenty-five clubs in all,[4] and, as many men had more than one club, and the average membership was less than a thousand, there were not more than 20,000 men altogether who belonged to clubs. There are now at least 120,000, with nearly a hundred clubs, to which almost any man might belong. Besides these, there are now about sixty second-class clubs, together with a great many clubs which exist for special purposes—betting and racing clubs, whist clubs, gambling clubs, Press clubs, and so forth.