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      WHITE'S CLUB.

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      This celebrated Club was originally established as "White's Chocolate-house," in 1698, five doors from the bottom of the west side of St. James's-street, "ascending from St. James's Palace." (Hatton, 1708.) A print of the time shows a small garden attached to the house: at the tables in the house or garden, more than one highwayman took his chocolate, or threw his main, before he quietly mounted his horse, and rode down Piccadilly towards Bagshot. (Doran's Table Traits.) It was destroyed by fire, April 28, 1733, when the house was kept by Mr. Arthur, who subsequently gave his name to the Club called Arthur's, still existing a few doors above the original White's. At the fire, young Arthur's wife leaped out of a second floor window, upon a feather-bed, without much hurt. A fine collection of paintings, belonging to Sir Andrew Fountaine, valued at 3000l., was entirely destroyed. The King and the Prince of Wales were present above an hour, and encouraged the firemen and people to work at the engines; a guard being ordered from St. James's, to keep off the populace. His Majesty ordered twenty guineas to be distributed among the firemen and others that worked at the engines, and five guineas to the guard; and the Prince ordered the firemen ten guineas. "The incident of the fire," says Mr. Cunningham, "was made use of by Hogarth, in Plate VI. of the Rake's Progress, representing a room at White's. The total abstraction of the gamblers is well expressed by their utter inattention to the alarm of the fire given by watchmen, who are bursting open the doors. Plate IV. of the same pictured moral represents a group of chimney-sweepers and shoe-blacks gambling on the ground over-against White's. To indicate the Club more fully, Hogarth has inserted the name Black's."

      Arthur, thus burnt out, removed to Gaunt's Coffee-house, next the St. James's Coffee-house, and which bore the name of "White's"—a myth. The Tatler, in his first Number, promises that "all accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-house." Addison, in his Prologue to Steele's Tender Husband, catches "the necessary spark" sometimes "taking snuff at White's."

      The Chocolate-house, open to any one, became a private Club-house: the earliest record is a book of rules and list of members of the old Club at White's, dated October 30th, 1736. The principal members were the Duke of Devonshire; the Earls of Cholmondeley, Chesterfield, and Rockingham; Sir John Cope, Major-General Churchill, Bubb Dodington, and Colley Cibber. Walpole tells us that the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield lived at White's, gaming and pronouncing witticisms among the boys of quality; "yet he says to his son, that a member of a gaming club should be a cheat, or he will soon be a beggar," an inconsistency which reminds one of old Fuller's saw: "A father that whipt his son for swearing, and swore himself whilst he whipt him, did more harm by his example than good by his correction."

      Swift, in his Essay on Modern Education, gives the Chocolate-house a sad name. "I have heard," he says, "that the late Earl of Oxford, in the time of his ministry, never passed by White's Chocolate-house (the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies) without bestowing a curse upon that famous Academy, as the bane of half the English nobility."

      The gambling character of the Club may also be gathered from Lord Lyttelton writing to Dr. Doddridge, in 1750. "The Dryads of Hagley are at present pretty secure, but I tremble to think that the rattling of a dice-box at White's may one day or other (if my son should be a member of that noble academy) shake down all our fine oaks. It is dreadful to see, not only there, but almost in every house in town, what devastations are made by that destructive fury, the spirit of play."

      Swift's character of the company is also borne out by Walpole, in a letter to Mann, December 16, 1748: "There is a man about town, Sir William Burdett, a man of very good family, but most infamous character. In short, to give you his character at once, there is a wager entered in the bet-book at White's (a MS. of which I may one day or other give you an account), that the first baronet that will be hanged is this Sir William Burdett."

      Again, Glover, the poet, in his Autobiography, tells us: "Mr. Pelham (the Prime Minister) was originally an officer in the army, and a professed gamester; of a narrow mind, low parts, etc. … By long experience and attendance he became experienced as a Parliament man; and even when Minister, divided his time to the last between his office and the club of gamesters at White's." And, Pope, in the Dunciad, has:

      "Or chair'd at White's, amidst the doctors sit,

       Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit."

      The Club removed, in 1755, to the east side of St. James's-street, No. 38. The house had had previously a noble and stately tenant; for here resided the Countess of Northumberland, widow of Algernon, tenth Earl of Northumberland, who died 1688. "My friend Lady Suffolk, her niece by marriage," writes Walpole, "has talked to me of her having, on that alliance, visited her. She then lived in the house now White's, at the upper end of St. James's-street, and was the last who kept up the ceremonious state of the old peerage. When she went out to visit, a footman, bareheaded, walked on each side of her coach, and a second coach with her women attended her. I think, too, that Lady Suffolk told me that her granddaughter-in-law, the Duchess of Somerset, never sat down before her without leave to do so. I suppose the old Duke Charles [the proud Duke] had imbibed a good quantity of his stately pride in such a school." (Letter to the Bishop of Dromore, September 18, 1792.) This high-minded dame had published a "Volume of Prayers."

      Among the Rules of the Club, every member was to pay one guinea a year towards having a good cook; the names of all candidates were to be deposited with Mr. Arthur or Bob [Mackreth]. In balloting, every member was to put in his ball, and such person or persons who refuse to comply with it, shall pay the supper reckoning of that night; and, in 1769, it was agreed that 'every member of this Club who is in the Billiard-Room at the time the Supper is declared upon table, shall pay his reckoning if he does not sup at the Young Club.'

      Of Colley Cibber's membership we find this odd account in Davies's Life of Garrick:—"Colley, we told, had the honour to be a member of the great Club at White's; and so I suppose might any other man who wore good clothes and paid his money when he lost it. But on what terms did Cibber live with this society? Why, he feasted most sumptuously, as I have heard his friend Victor say, with an air of triumphant exultation, with Mr. Arthur and his wife, and gave a trifle

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