LITMIR.BIZ

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health was drank by the company present; and upon one of the Club-slips of 1798, after a dinner of twenty-two, is written, "Seven shillings found under the table."

      The dinner-charges appear to have gradually progressed from 1s. 6d. to 10s. per head. In 1858–9 the Club-dinners had been 25, and the number of dinners 309, so that the mean was equal to 12·36 for each meeting, the visitors amounting to 49; and it is further computed, that the average wine per head of late, waste included, is a considerable fraction less than a pint, imperial standard measure, in the year's consumption.

      Among the distinguished guests of the Club are many celebrities. Here the chivalrous Sir Sidney Smith described the atrocities of Djezza Pasha; and here that cheerful baronet—Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin—by relating the result of his going in a jolly-boat to attack a whale, and in narrating the advantages specified in his proposed patent for fattening fowls, kept "the table in a roar." At this board, also, our famous circumnavigators and oriental voyagers met with countenance and fellowship—as Cook, Furneaux, Clerke, King, Bounty Bligh, Vancouver, Guardian Riou, Flinders, Broughton, Lestock, Wilson, Huddart, Bass, Tuckey, Horsburgh, &c.; while the Polar explorers, from the Hon. Constantine Phipps in 1773, down to Sir Leopold M'Clintock, in 1860, were severally and individually welcomed as guests. But, besides our sterling sea-worthies, we find in ranging through the documents that some rather outlandish visitors were introduced through their means, as Chet Quang and Wanga Tong, Chinese; Ejutak and Tuklivina, Esquimaux; Thayen-danega, the Mohawk chief; while Omai, of Ularetea, the celebrated and popular savage, of Cook's Voyages, was so frequently invited, that he is latterly entered on the Club papers simply as Mr. Omai.

      The redoubtable Sir John Hill dined at the Club in company with Lord Baltimore on the 30th of June, 1748. Hill was consecutively an apothecary, actor, playwright, novelist, botanist, journalist, and physician; and he published upon trees and flowers, Betty Canning, gems, naval history, religion, cookery, and what not. Having made an attempt to enter the Royal Society, and finding the door closed against him—perhaps a pert vivacity at the very dinner in question sealed the rejection—he revenged himself by publishing an impudent quarto volume, vindictively satirizing the Society.

      Ned Ward, in his humorous Account of the Clubs of London, published in 1709, describes "the Virtuoso's Club as first established by some of the principal members of the Royal Society, and held every Thursday, at a certain Tavern in Cornhill, where the Vintner that kept it has, according to his merit, made a fortunate step from his Bar to his Coach. The chief design of the aforementioned Club was to propagate new whims, advance mechanical exercises, and to promote useless as well as useful experiments." There is humour in this, as well as in his ridicule of the Barometer: "by this notable invention," he says, "our gentlemen and ladies of the middle quality are infallibly told when it's a right season to put on their best clothes, and when they ought not to venture an intrigue in the fields without their cloaks and umbrellas." His ridicule of turning salt water into fresh, finding a new star, assigning reasons for a spot in the moon, and a "wry step" in the sun's progress, were Ward's points, laughed at in his time, but afterwards established as facts. There have been greater mistakes made since Ward's time; but this does not cleanse him of filth and foulness.

      Ward's record is evidence of the existence of the Royal Society Club, in 1709, before the date of the Minutes. Dr. Hutton, too, records the designation of Halley's Club—undoubted testimony; about 1737, he, Halley, though seized with paralysis, once a week, within a very short time of his death, met his friends in town, on Thursdays, the day of the Royal Society's meeting, at "Dr. Halley's Club." Upon this evidence Admiral Smyth establishes the claim that the Royal Society Club was actually established by a zealous philosopher, "who was at once proudly eminent as an astronomer, a mathematician, a physiologist, a naturalist, a scholar, an antiquary, a poet, a meteorologist, a geographer, a navigator, a nautical surveyor, and a truly social member of the community—in a word, our founder was the illustrious Halley—the Admirable Crichton of science."

      A memorable dinner-party took place on August the 11th, 1859, when among the visitors was Mr. Thomas Maclear (now Sir Thomas), the Astronomer-Royal at the Cape of Good Hope, who had just arrived in England from the southern hemisphere, after an absence of a quarter of a century. "On this day, were present, so to speak, the representatives of the three great applications by which the present age is distinguished, namely, of Railways, Mr. Stephenson; of the Electric Telegraph, Mr. Wheatstone; and of the Penny Post, Mr. Rowland Hill—an assemblage never again to occur." (Admiral Smyth's History of the Club.)

      Among the anecdotes which float about, it is related that the eccentric Hon. Henry Cavendish, "the Club-Crœsus", attended the meetings with only money enough in his pocket to pay for his dinner, and that he may have declined taking tavern-soup, may have picked his teeth with a fork, may invariably have hung his hat on the same peg, and may have always stuck his cane in his right boot; but more apocryphal is the anecdote that one evening Cavendish observed a very pretty girl looking out from an upper window on the opposite side of the street, watching the philosophers at dinner. She attracted notice, and one by one they got up and mustered round the window to admire the fair one. Cavendish, who thought they were looking at the moon, bustled up to them in his odd way, and when he saw the real object of their study, turned away with intense disgust, and grunted out "Pshaw;" the amorous conduct of his brother Philosophers having horrified the woman-hating Cavendish.

      Another assertion is that he, Cavendish, left a thumping legacy to Lord Bessborough, in gratitude for his Lordship's piquant conversation at the Club; but no such reason can be found in the Will lodged at Doctors' Commons. The Testator named therein three of his Club-mates, namely, Alexander Dalrymple, to receive 5000l., Dr. Hunter 5000l., and Sir Charles Blagden (coadjutor in the Water question), 15,000l. After certain other bequests, the will proceeds—"The remainder of the funds (nearly 700,000l.) to be divided, one-sixth to the Earl of Bessborough, while the cousin, Lord George Henry Cavendish, had two-sixths, instead of one;" "it is therefore," says Admiral Smyth, "patent that the money thus passed over from uncle to nephew, was a mere consequence of relationship, and not at all owing to any flowers or powers of conversation at the Royal Society Club."

      Admiral Smyth, to whose admirable précis of the History of the Club we have to make acknowledgment, remarks that the hospitality of the Royal Society has been "of material utility to the well-working of the whole machine which wisdom called up, at a time when knowledge was quitting scholastic niceties for the truths of experimental philosophy. This is proved by the number of men of note—both in ability and station—who have there congregated previously to repairing to the evening meeting of the body at large; and many a qualified person who went thither a guest has returned a candidate. Besides inviting our own princes, dukes, marquises, earls, ministers of state, and nobles of all grades to the table, numerous foreign grandees, prelates, ambassadors, and persons of distinction—from the King of Poland and Baron Munchausen, down to the smart little abbé and a 'gentleman unknown'—are found upon the Club records. Not that the amenities of the fraternity were confined to these classes, or that, in the Clubbian sense, they form the most important order; for bishops, deans, archdeacons, and clergymen in general—astronomers—mathematicians—sailors—soldiers—engineers—medical practitioners—poets—artists—travellers—musicians—opticians—men of repute in every acquirement, were, and ever will be, welcome guests. In a word, the names and callings of the visitors offer a type of the philosophical discordia concors; and among those guests possessed of that knowledge without which genius is almost useless, we find in goodly array such choice names as Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gibbon, Costard, Bryant, Dalton, Watt, Bolton, Tennant, Wedgwood, Abyssinian Bruce, Attwood, Boswell, Brinkley, Rigaud, Brydone, Ivory, Jenner, John Hunter, Brunel, Lysons, Weston, Cramer, Kippis, Westmacott, Corbould, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Turner, De La Beche, et hoc genus omne."

      The President of the Royal Society is elected President of the Club. There were always more candidates for admission than vacancies, a circumstance which had some influence in leading to the formation of a new Club, in 1847, composed of eminent Fellows of the Society. The name of this new Association is "the Philosophical Club," and its object is "to promote, as much as possible, the scientific objects of the Royal Society, to facilitate intercourse between those

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