THE TRAVELLERS’—ORIENTAL—ST. JAMES’—TURF—MARLBOROUGH —ISTHMIAN—WINDHAM—BACHELORS’—union—CARLTON—JUNIOR CARLTON—CONSERVATIVE—DEVONSHIRE—REFORM  
Though, as has before been said, the majority of West End clubs have been obliged by force of circumstances to relax the exclusiveness which was formerly one of their most salient features, a few still manage to retain that social prestige which was the pride of quite a number in the past.
 
A conspicuous instance is the Travellers’, a club which from the days of its foundation has always been somewhat capricious in electing members. The list of public men who have been blackballed here is considerable. The late Mr. Cecil Rhodes was rejected in 1895, and at different times the late Lord Sherbrooke, the late Lord Lytton, Lord Randolph Churchill, and other public men have met with the same ill fate.
 
The Travellers’ Club was founded in the second decade of the nineteenth century by Lord Castlereagh, the present club-house being built by Barry in 1832. Considerable amusement was aroused by the qualification for membership (which still exists). This laid down that candidates must have travelled 210out of the British Isles to a distance of at least 500 miles from London in a straight line.
 
The supposed partiality of members for exploration was amusingly set forth by Theodore Hook in the following lines:
“The travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily,
And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of Moselai.
The world for them has nothing new, they have explored all parts of it;
And now they are club-footed! and they sit and look at charts of it.”
 
The club-house would appear to have been little altered since its erection, with the exception that a recess for smokers has been contrived in the entrance hall. The building, it should be added, narrowly escaped destruction on October 24, 1850, when a fire did great damage to the billiard-rooms. These were, by the way, an afterthought, and an addition to the original building; but they were by no means an improvement upon the first design, for they greatly impaired the beauty of the garden front.
 
The library at the Travellers’ is a delightful room, most admirably designed, with a fine classical frieze. A relic preserved here is Thackeray’s chair; but as the only connection of the great novelist with this club appears to have been a blackballing, the presence of such a memento seems rather strange.
 
Except the dining-room and the library, the interior of the Travellers’ Club is somewhat cold and bare. No pictures decorate its walls, and the general appearance of the place, whilst highly decorous, is hardly calculated to delight the eye.
 
The Travellers’ still clings to certain rules framed 211in a more formal age, and smoking is prohibited except in certain rooms. It is rather curious that, in days when ladies tolerate cigarettes in their very boudoirs, not a few clubs should still treat smokers in the same way as prevailed in the days when tobacco was only tolerated in one or two uncomfortable apartments.
 
Several distinguished men have belonged to this club, the membership of which includes many high Government officials—heads of Departments, Ambassadors, and Chargés d’Affaires. The general tone here is one of solemn tranquillity; and though in former days there was a regular muster of whist-players, which included Talleyrand, no game of cards seems now to be played.
 
During the season of autumnal renovation the Travellers’ extends its hospitality to one or two other clubs. A dashing young soldier, becoming in this way a visitor, and being desirous of playing bridge, called for a couple of packs of cards and a well-known racing paper. To his intense disgust the astounded waiter who took the order, after making inquiry, reported that the cards would have to be obtained from outside, and the Travellers’ did not take in the paper asked for.
 
Though in a certain way a sociable club—for a large proportion of the members are acquainted with one another—the Travellers’ is principally given up to reading, dozing, and meditation. Of conversation there is but little.
 
Another club which was founded during the same epoch as the Travellers’ was the Oriental.
 
A hundred years ago there were several institutions 212connected with the East in the West End. Such were the Calcutta Club, the Madras Club, the Bombay Club, and the China Club, frequented chiefly by merchants and bankers. These, however, were in reality associations rather than clubs.
 
The Bombay Club was located at 13 Albemarle Street, and consisted of one large news-room and an anteroom. It opened at ten in the morning and closed at midnight, light refreshments being obtainable of the porter, whilst smoking was strictly prohibited.
 
The need for a regular club-house where Anglo-Indians and others might meet in comfort gradually came to be felt, and in July 1824 the Oriental Club was started at 16 Lower Grosvenor Street. The original club-house, it may be added, has now become business premises, being occupied by Messrs. Collard and Collard. It is said that when the owner of this house gave it up to the club he sold some of its furniture and effects to a certain Mr. Joseph Sedley, afterwards immortalized by Thackeray as the pseudo-collector of Boggley Wallah.
 
The first steward of the Oriental was a Mr. Pottanco, who had long been employed by Sir John Malcolm, probably in the East. Members presented books and pictures, and one, Sir Charles Forbes, cheered the hearts of the Anglo-Indians by sometimes sending a fine turtle to be converted into soup.
 
The first chairman of the Oriental Club was Sir John Malcolm, a very popular figure in society. Sir John was a great talker, on account of which 213he had been nicknamed “Bahawder Jaw,” it was said, by Canning. There were ten Malcolm brothers, two of them Admirals. All ten seem to have possessed the same characteristic, for when Lord Wellesley was assured by Sir John that he and three brothers had once met together in India, the Governor-General declared it to be “impossible—quite impossible!” Malcolm reiterated his statement. “I repeat it is impossible; if four Malcolms had come together, we should have heard the noise all over India.”
 
Some of the members of the Oriental Club in old days, no doubt owing to having resided for prolonged periods in the East, had eccentric ways. One member was dissatisfied with the Gruyère cheese, calling it French, not Swiss, and insisted that the waiter who brought it to him should taste it. The waiter demurred, upon which the member complained of his misconduct to the committee. The latter, however, took the waiter’s part, rightly conceiving that it was no part of the waiter’s duty to act as cheese-taster. In another case, a member removed his boots before the library fire, and presently walked off in his stockinged feet into another room. The library waiter, finding the ownerless boots, took them away, and the member on his return was so greatly annoyed that he stormed at the waiter, speaking to him, according to the waiter’s evidence, “very strong.” Here again the committee, to whom it was referred, sided with the waiter.
 
There was no provision for smoking in the original club-house of the Oriental, and permission to 214smoke within the walls was not accorded for some forty years, although it was a constant source of dispute between opposing factions.
 
There are about thirty portraits in the Oriental Club; several of them of a high class have been copied for public buildings and institutions in India, where the individuals portrayed passed most of their careers.
 
The Iron Duke, Lords Clive, Cornwallis, Wellesley, Lake, Hastings, Gough, Warren Hastings, Major-General Stringer Lawrence, Sir John Malcolm, Sir Henry Pottinger, Sir David Ochterlony, and Sir James Outram are amongst the distinguished men whose portraits adorn this club, which also possesses a painting of considerable historical interest, representing the surrender to Marquis Cornwallis of the sons of Tippoo as hostages for the fulfilment of the treaty of 1792. This was painted by Walter Brown in 1793, and presented to the club in 1883 by O. C. V. Aldis, Esq.
 
Besides paintings and busts which have been presented, there is here a silver snuff-box, the gift of a member, and a handsome silver candelabrum presented to the club by Mr. John Rutherford on the completion of fifty years of membership in 1880.
 
In the Strangers’ Dining-Room hangs a stag-hunt by Snyders, the figures by Rubens. The busts in this club include Sir Henry Taylor, by D. Brucciani; and Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, by Baron Marochetti; whilst a curious coloured print after P. Carpenter shows the ground of the Calcutta Cricket Club on January 15, 1861. A number of fine heads and sporting trophies presented by members decorate the 215interior of the house. It should be added that the library at the Oriental, though not a large one, is of considerable interest, as many of its books have been written and presented by members.
 
Though the St. James’ Club, at 106 Piccadilly, was not, like the Travellers’ and the Oriental, founded for those who wander far afield, its membership, owing to the club’s connection with diplomacy, generally embraces many with an intimate knowledge of foreign countries, and even the Far East.
 
The club-house of the St. James’ was formerly the abode of the Coventry Club, a somewhat Bohemian institution, where there was a good deal of gambling and a free supper. It seems to have been an amusing place, to which many diplomatists belonged. This club was established at 106 Piccadilly—formerly Coventry House—in the early fifties of the last century, and lasted a very short time, being closed in March 1854. In 1860 the house became the residence of Count Flahaut, the French Ambassador, who added the eagles now to be seen amidst the decorations of the dining-room ceiling of the present St. James’ Club.
 
The fine mansion was originally built for Sir Hugh Hunlock by the architect Kent, on the site of the old Greyhound Inn, and was bought by the Earl of Coventry, in 1764, for ￡10,000, subject to the ground-rent of ￡75 per annum. Sir Hugh must have found the expenses of completing the house too much for him, for he does not seem ever to have lived there, and, according to tradition, Lord Coventry bought the building before the roof was on.
 
216Nevertheless a relic of Sir Hugh still remains in the area, and may be seen from Piccadilly; this is a very fine leaden eighteenth-century cistern, which is embellished with some moulding of good design and the letters “H. H., 1761.”
 
It is said that when the house was built it was the only mansion standing west of Devonshire House.
 
Up to 1889 there were no pictures or engravings in the St. James’ Club, but in that year, when considerable additions were made at the back of the building, a number of prints were presented by the various embassies and legations. The most valuable gift received was a water-colour drawing by Turner of the village of Clunie, near Lausanne, given by the late Sir Julian Goldsmid. Some fine heads, a picture by Herbert Schmaltz, and more prints were presented by other members. A certain number of bedrooms exist for the use of the members, and from the point of view of comfort the club leaves very little to be desired.
 
The principal artistic feature of interest in the house is the magnificent ceiling in the large dining-room, which is enriched with a number of small paintings by Angelica Kauffmann. The centre painting is surrounded by a number of cartouches set amidst a decorative design of considerable artistic merit, probably the work of the brothers Adam.
 
Here and in the adjoining smaller dining-room (where, most sensibly, smoking is allowed after lunch and dinner) hang modern chandeliers of admirable design. Both rooms were judiciously restored twelve years ago, at which time some fine mahogany doors were rescued from the rubbish heap.
 
217Special features of Coventry House in old days were two octagon rooms, both of which had fine marble mantelpieces (now covered up) immediately beneath windows. The octagon room on the first-floor—a boudoir—was, as its remains still show, a triumph of eighteenth-century ornamentation. Indeed, the exquisite taste exhibited on the walls, over-door, and ceiling, give great cause for regret that such a perfect example of English art should have been defaced in order to form the serving-room which it now is. The carpet had been worked by Barbara, Countess of Coventry, wife of the original owner of the mansion; and when the house ceased to belong to the Coventry family, they took with them this carpet, which in course of time was divided into two, the separate portions going to different branches. The portion belonging to the present Earl was some years ago once more completed by the addition of a new half worked at the School of Art Needlework, and now forms the centre of the drawing-room carpet at Croome.
 
Worked in cross-stitch, it is of many colours on a neutral-tinted ground; garlands and wreaths tied up with ribbons form part of the design of this curious heirloom, which has been comparatively uninjured by time.
 
In connection with the St. James’ Club, it should be added that, according to tradition, an underground passage once ran beneath Piccadilly into the Park opposite, where the Lady Coventry who has just been mentioned is supposed to have had a garden. This story was probably suggested by the fact that the Ranger’s Lodge was nearly opposite, 218and it is possible that there was some communication between that structure and Coventry House.
 
The St. James’ is one of the most agreeable and sociable clubs in London, and still maintains much of that spirit of vitality which seems within the last two decades to have deserted so many London clubs.
 
In the early days of the St. James’ it was located in Bennett Street, St. James’, and was later moved to No. 4 Grafton Street, now the abode of the New Club. This is a fine old house, which still retains some of the features it possessed when it was the residence of Lord Brougham.
 
In the same house in Bennett Street first originated the Turf Club, which was evolved from the Arlington.
 
Of the Turf, which is probably the most exclusive club in London, there is little to be said; for it is of quite modern foundation, and the club-house, though comfortable in the extreme, has no particular interest from an artistic point of view. Like the Athen?um, the Turf employs a design taken from an antique gem on its notepaper, a centaur having very appropriately been chosen.
 
The lighting of the Turf was formerly by candles set in the chandeliers. The latter still remain, but, now that electric light is used, the candles are no longer lighted.
 
Another fashionable club is the Marlborough, opposite Marlborough House in Pall Mall. This was originally founded as a club where members should not be restricted in their indulgence in tobacco at a time when a number of regulations 219as to this habit existed in other clubs. King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, interested himself in the foundation of the Marlborough Club, having sympathized, it was understood, with the attempt made in 1866 to modify a rule at White’s which forbade smoking in the drawing-room. The motion was defeated by a majority of twenty-three votes, for the old school were bitterly opposed to such an innovation. In consequence, the Prince, though remaining an honorary member, ceased to use the club, the newly-founded Marlborough proving more congenial to his tastes.
 
At the present day the Marlborough is used chiefly as a lunching club. At night, like many other clubs, it is now generally more or less empty.
 
The club-house, being quite modern, contains little to call for mention. In a former club, however, which stood on the same site, there was in the days of high play a special room downstairs where money-lenders used to interview such members as necessity had made their clients. The room in question was known as the “Jerusalem Chamber.”
 
The club-house of the Isthmian, at No. 105 Piccadilly, has known many vicissitudes. At one time it was the Pulteney Hotel, and afterwards it became the abode of Lord Hertford. Subsequently the house passed into the hands of the late Sir Julian Goldsmid, who possessed an example of the work of every living Royal Academician, as well as masterpieces by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Romney. His collection of works of art was very fine.
 
In its early days, when the club-house was in 220Grafton Street, the Isthmian was nicknamed the “Crèche.” It was originally founded as a club for public-school men, and some of its members were very young—a fact which gave rise to the humorous appellation in question. From Grafton Street this club migrated to Walsingham House, where it remained until that short-lived building was pulled down to make way for the palatial Ritz Hotel.
 
The Isthmian, it should be added, following the example of two or three other modern clubs, reserves a portion of its club-house for the entertainment of ladies, who are allotted a special entrance of their own in Brick Street.
 
The nickname of the “Crèche” applied to the Isthmian in its early days was rather exceptional in its wit, for most of the attempts at humorous club names have missed their mark. Another amusing instance, however, was a suggested title for the now long-defunct Lotus, an institution which was founded for the lighter forms of social intercourse between ladies of the then flourishing burlesque stage and men about town. This was the “Frou-Frou”—a delicate allusion alike to the principal founder, Mr. Russell, and the fairer portion of the membership.
 
OLD MANSIONS IN PICCADILLY, NOW CLUBS.
From a drawing of 1807.
 
A pleasant social club which has recently been structurally improved, bedrooms having been added, is the Windham, No. 11 St. James’s Square. This club owes its name to the fact that the mansion was once the residence of William Windham, who was considered a model of the true English gentleman of his day. Though William Windham was a great supporter of old English sports, including 221bull-baiting (which he defended with such success in the House of Commons that only after his death could a Bill against it be passed), he was at the same time an accomplished scholar and mathematician. Dr. Johnson, writing of a visit which Windham paid him, said: “Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature, and there Windham is ‘inter stellas luna minores.’”
 
In this house also lived the accomplished John, Duke of Roxburghe; and here the Roxburghe Library was sold in 1812. Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough lived in the mansion in 1814, and subsequently it was occupied by the Earl of Blessington, who possessed a fine collection of pictures. The Windham, it should be added, was founded by Lord Nugent for those connected with each other by a common bond of literary or personal acquaintance.
 
The club-house, which is very comfortable, contains a number of prints, but, as the vast majority of these are modern, they scarcely call for mention.
 
The Bachelors’, at the corner of Piccadilly and Park Lane, is essentially a young man’s club. Only bachelors can be elected, and any member who becomes a Benedict must submit himself to the ballot in order to be permitted to remain a member, being also obliged to pay a fine of ￡25. Ladies may be introduced as visitors, but, it is almost needless to add, their introducer is responsible for his guests being of a standing eligible for presentation at Court.
 
The same hospitable usage prevails at the Orleans in King Street, a pleasant little club decorated with 222sporting engravings, which has always prided itself upon the excellence of its cuisine.
 
The Wellington, like the Bachelors’ and Orleans, is another sociable club which offers its members the privilege of entertaining ladies in a portion of the building specially set aside for their use. In the club-house is a collection of fine heads, trophies of the successful big-game shooting expeditions of sporting members.
 
A long-established non-political club, essentially English in tone, is the union, at the south-west angle of Trafalgar Square. The original home of this club was Cumberland House, where it was first started in 1805, the chairman then being the Marquis of Headfort. George Raggett, well known as the manager of White’s, became club-master in 1807, and at that time the membership was not to be less than 250. The Dukes of Sussex and York, together with Byron and a number of other well-known men, joined the club in 1812. Nine years later it was decided to reconstitute the club and to build a new club-house, and Sir Robert Peel and four other members of the committee selected the present site. By that time the membership had increased to 800, and it was the first members’ club in London. The fine club-house in Trafalgar Square, built by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., was opened in 1824. A most comfortable club, the union well maintains its long-established reputation for good English fare and carefully selected wines. In old days its haunch of mutton and apple tart were widely celebrated, and many gourme............