London Club Life - John Timbs

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engaged in cultivating the various branches of Natural Science, and who have contributed to its progress; to increase the attendance at the Evening Meetings, and to encourage the contribution and the discussion of papers." Nor are the dinners forgotten; the price of each not to exceed ten shillings.

      The statistical portion of the Annual Statement of 1860, shows that the number of dinners for the past year amounted to 25, at which the attendance was 312 persons, 62 of whom were visitors, the average being = 12·48 each time: and the Treasurer called attention to the fact that out of the Club funds in the last twelvemonth, they had paid not less than £9. 6s. for soda and seltzer water; £8. 2s. 6d. for cards of invitation and postage; and £25 for visitors, that is, 8s. 0¾d. per head.

      THE COCOA-TREE CLUB.

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      This noted Club was the Tory Chocolate-house of Queen Anne's reign; the Whig Coffee-house was the St. James's, lower down, in the same street, St. James's. The party distinction is thus defined:—"A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda's, than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St. James's."

      The Cocoa-tree Chocolate-house was converted into a Club, probably before 1746, when the house was the head-quarters of the Jacobite party in Parliament. It is thus referred to in the above year by Horace Walpole, in a letter to George Montagu:—"The Duke has given Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender's coach, on condition he rode up to London in it. 'That I will, Sir,' said he; 'and drive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa-tree.'"

      Gibbon was a member of this Club, and has left this entry, in his journal of 1762:—"Nov. 24. I dined at the Cocoa Tree with * * *, who, under a great appearance of oddity, conceals more real humour, good sense, and even knowledge, than half those who laugh at him. We went thence to the play (The Spanish Friar); and when it was over, retired to the Cocoa-tree. That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom in point of fashion and fortune supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch. At present we are full of King's counsellors and lords of the bedchamber; who, having jumped into the ministry, make a very singular medley of their old principles and language with their modern ones." At this time, bribery was in full swing: it is alleged that the lowest bribe for a vote upon the Peace of Fontainebleau, was a bank-note of £200; and that the Secretary of the Treasury afterwards acknowledged £25,000 to have been thus expended in a single morning. And in 1765, on the debate in the Commons on the Regency Bill, we read in the Chatham Correspondence: "The Cocoa-tree have thus capacitated Her Royal Highness (the Princess of Wales) to be Regent: it is well they have not given us a King, if they have not; for many think, Lord Bute is King."

      Although the Cocoa-tree, in its conversion from a Chocolate-house to a Club, may have bettered its reputation in some respects, high play, if not foul play, was known there twenty years later. Walpole, writing to Mann, Feb. 6, 1780, says: "Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa-tree, (in St. James's Street,) the difference of which amounted to one hundred and fourscore thousand pounds. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won one hundred thousand pounds of a young Mr. Harvey of Chigwell, just started into an estate by his elder brother's death. O'Birne said, "You can never pay me." "I can," said the youth: "my estate will sell for the debt." "No," said O.; "I will win ten thousand—you shall throw for the odd ninety." They did, and Harvey won."

      The Cocoa-tree was one of the Clubs to which Lord Byron belonged.

      ALMACK'S CLUB.

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      Almack's, the original Brookes's, on the south side of the Whig Club-house, was established in Pall Mall, on the site of the British Institution, in 1764, by twenty-seven noblemen and gentlemen, including the Duke of Roxburghe, the Duke of Portland, the Earl of Strathmore, Mr. Crewe (afterwards Lord Crewe), and Mr. C. J. Fox.

      Mr. Cunningham was permitted to inspect the original Rules of the Club, which show its nature: here are a few.

      "21. No gaming in the eating-room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty of paying the whole bill of the members present.

      "22. Dinner shall be served up exactly at half-past four o'clock, and the bill shall be brought in at seven.

      "26. Almack shall sell no wines in bottles that the Club approves of, out of the house.

      "30. Any member of this Society that shall become a candidate for any other Club, (old White's excepted,) shall be ipso facto excluded, and his name struck out of the book.

      "40. That every person playing at the new guinea table do keep fifty guineas before him.

      "41. That every person playing at the twenty guinea table do not keep less than twenty guineas before him."

      That the play ran high may be inferred from a note against the name of Mr. Thynne, in the Club-books: "Mr. Thynne having won only 12,000 guineas during the last two months, retired in disgust, March 21st, 1772."

      Some of its members were Maccaronis, the "curled darlings" of the day: they were so called from their affectation of foreign tastes and fashions, and were celebrated for their long curls and eye-glasses. Much of the deep play was removed here. "The gaming at Almack's," writes Walpole to Mann, February 2, 1770, "which has taken the pas of White's, is worthy the decline of our empire, or commonwealth, which you please. The young men of the age lose ten, fifteen, twenty thousand pounds in an evening there. Lord Stavordale, not one-and-twenty, lost £11,000 there last Tuesday, but recovered it by one great hand at hazard. He swore a great oath, 'Now, if I had been playing deep, I might have won millions.' His cousin, Charles Fox, shines equally there, and in the House of Commons. He was twenty-one yesterday se'nnight, and is already one of our best speakers. Yesterday he was made a Lord of the Admiralty." Gibbon, the historian, was also a member, and he dates several letters from here. On June 24, 1776, he writes: "Town grows empty, and this house, where I have passed many agreeable hours, is the only place which still invites the flower of the English youth. The style of living, though somewhat expensive, is exceedingly pleasant; and, notwithstanding the rage of play, I have found more entertainment and rational society than in any other club to which I belong."

      The play was certainly high—only for rouleaus of £50 each, and generally there was £10,000 in specie on the table. The gamesters began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze greatcoats, or turned their coats inside outwards for luck. They put on pieces of leather (such as are worn by footmen when they clean the knives) to save their laced ruffles; and to guard their eyes from the light and to prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, and adorned with flowers and ribbons; masks to conceal their emotions when they played at quinz. Each gamester had a small neat stand by him, to hold his tea; or a wooden bowl with an edge of ormolu, to hold the rouleaus.

      Almack's was subsequently Goosetree's. In the year 1780, Pitt was then an habitual frequenter, and here his personal adherents mustered strongly. The members, we are told in the Life of Wilberforce, were about twenty-five in number, and included Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden), Lords Euston, Chatham, Graham, Duncannon, Althorp, Apsley, G. Cavendish, and Lennox; Messrs. Eliot, Sir Andrew St. John, Bridgeman (afterwards Lord Bradford), Morris Robinson (afterwards Lord Rokeby), R. Smith (afterwards Lord Carrington), W. Grenville (afterwards Lord Grenville), Pepper Arden (afterwards Lord Alvanley), Mr. Edwards, Mr. Marsham, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Bankes, Mr. Thomas Steele, General Smith, Mr. Windham.

      In the gambling at Goosetree's, Pitt played with characteristic and intense eagerness. When Wilberforce came up to London in 1780, after his return to Parliament, his great success coloured his entry into public life, and he was at once elected a member of the leading clubs—Miles's and Evans's, Brookes's and

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