This piece is about Gentlemen’s Clubs in London, those
highly respectable havens for men of relatively exalted social position
enabling them to escape from their wives and savour the company of like-minded
and civilised members. They are a world away from the other kind of London
clubs offering lap-dancing or worse or which are poised to fleece you as you
gamble away your birth-right at the roulette wheel. My knowledge of London
Gentleman’s Clubs is far from comprehensive as I am currently a member of none
but have benefitted from the kindness and hospitality of friends who are.
Gentlemen’s clubs are probably an anachronism as wives become even more
assertive and hen-pecked husbands surrender to uxorious blandishments. I
suspect these institutions will disappear in a generation so enjoy their
manifold charms while you can and wangle an invitation!
There is a concentration of clubs around Pall Mall and St
James’s Street. The oldest (late 17th century) is probably exclusive
White’s, down whose steps a hooligan
member kicked Labour’s Nye Bevan in 1951 after he had remarked that “Tories are
vermin”. The member was naturally obliged to resign as Bevan was a guest at the
club. David Cameron resigned too in his politically correct way in protest
against the continuing refusal to admit women, even though his father had been
club chairman. Nearby is Boodles in
whose informal Undress Room, I attended board meetings – our well-connected
brewer chairman was a keen member. Across the road is Brooks’s, originally a Whig stronghold, where once Charles James
Fox drank and gambled although William Pitt the Younger was also a member. Half of Lord Melbourne’s cabinet in the 1830s
were members at Brooks’s. The club was once thought rather dreary “like a
Duke’s house, with the Duke lying dead upstairs” but it is now very civilised
in its elegant Henry Holland building.
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| Brooks's Club |
A little further down St James’s Street is that bastion of
the traditional Tory party The Carlton
Club where a famous Party meeting in 1922 saw the Tories destroy Lloyd
George’s coalition ministry. The Carlton has convivial bars but the highlight
is the painted portrait of wonderful Margaret Thatcher, an Honorary Member, before
whose portrait on the main staircase it is appropriate to genuflect or at least
blow a kiss!
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| Wellington Room at the Carlton Club |
Two renowned Clubs are adjacent on Pall Mall, The Reform and The Travellers. The Reform
Club is a majestic Italianate palazzo by Charles Barry in 1841 with a
spectacular atrium beyond the entrance hall. It was founded in the 1830s as a
place for those who approved of the 1832 Reform Act and later supported the
campaigns of Cobden and Bright to repeal the Corn Laws and improve “the
condition of the people”. It became a Liberal stronghold before party splits in
the 1880s but it remains progressive in spirit – one of the first to admit
women to membership. The Reform was the venue for a spectacular fencing duel
between James Bond and Gustav Graves in Die
Another Day (2002).
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| The Reform (left) and The Travellers (right) |
The Travellers was founded before The Reform and was by the
same architect Charles Barry. It was first intended for wandering diplomats and
members are still supposed to have visited at least 4 other countries. It is
not quite as progressive as The Reform – the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin
Welby, recently resigned after the members failed to change its rules to admit
ladies. The Travellers has a fine Library, beautiful coffee rooms and a
particularly attractive back garden.
Also on Pall Mall is the splendid Athenaeum by Decimus Burton commissioned when he was only 24 in
1824, with a copy of the Elgin Marbles frieze over the portal. Its leading
light was the formidably reactionary critic John Wilson Croker. The club’s
spirit is intellectual and it is well-known as a haven for bishops, writers,
academics and engineers – Michael Faraday was an early member and Dickens and
Thackeray were reconciled there after a long and bitter quarrel. Few
politicians or businessmen darken its doors although in the 1920s rumbustious
Tory F E Smith, Lord Birkenhead, not a member, regularly relieved himself in
the basement lavatory of the Athenaeum. When challenged at last by the Club
Secretary he enquired, all innocence, “Oh, is this place a gentlemen’s club
too?”
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| The splendid Athenaeum Club |
I have only written of a few of the clubs. Perhaps the most
well-equipped is the Royal Automobile
in Pall Mall with lavish facilities and an imposing exterior. The acting and
literary cliques are well served by The
Garrick and The Savile and they
can dine in a bohemian ambiance at The
Beefsteak. I attended a delightful wedding reception at The National Liberal Club presided over
by a large bust of Mr Gladstone and there is no better place to celebrate Burns
Night soon on 25 January than with nostalgic fellow- Scotsmen at The Caledonian Club in Belgravia.
While the great days of clubs have passed, some of their
spirit was well-captured by PG Wodehouse with his portrayal of the fictional Drones, patronised by Bertie Wooster and
his friends Pongo Twistleton, Tuppy Glossop, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright and Oofy
Prosser with the ladies catered for at the Junior
Lipstick, haunt of red-headed and anarchic Bobby Wickham. Today’s Clubs are
more serious and are the delightful epitome of London’s gentle civilisation.
SMD
19.01.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
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