The promotion of clubs became a very busy industry under the consulate of Plancus. Of these promotions but few survive, and of these few none are of the proprietary kind. A club, to survive, must have arisen in response to an actual need, and out of the regular assembling of those who are kindred spirits, or who are brought together by common professional interests. The promoters of proprietary clubs are forced to provide for their enterprises both a demand and a supply. Were the gambling laws less drastic in this country, I can easily conceive that a fortune might be made by the proprietor of a roulette and baccarat club. But the promotion of ordinary social rialtos involves a considerable amount of risk. I must have belonged to a dozen of these mushroom institutions between 1870 and 1890, and I was on the committee of a fourth of them. But whether we started with palatial premises or with an unpretentious flat, the end came soon or late. Members seemed always to have an insuperable diffidence about paying their subscriptions, and proprietors had an equally insuperable objection to expelling defaulters.

For some years a gentleman named Russell displayed great pertinacity in pursuing this particular line of promotion. Mr. Russell was, I believe, the son of Henry Russell, the well-known ballad-singer. “Cheer, Boys, Cheer” Russell the old man was called. By his rendering of that song and other spirited compositions by Dr. Charles Mackay, he had added immensely to his reputation, and greatly assisted that tide of emigration that was then setting to the West. His son evidently did not believe in the depopulation of his native land. He was keen on the construction of places of comfortable resort which would induce people to remain right here.

Russell’s first promotion might have proved a success had it been properly financed and discreetly managed. It was founded at what was, or should have been, the psychological moment. It had really fine premises, splendid rooms, and an excellent service. It was situated at the corner of a street running off the Strand, over against St. Mary-le-Strand. It had a strong committee of well-known barristers and literary men, and it was, very happily, called the Temple Club. But in his desire to swell the roll of members, Russell encouraged laxity in the labours of the committee. Men were elected who would have been blackballed at any West End club, and men dropped in at night who were not members at all. The latter circumstance was brought to my notice in a very unpleasant way.

I had been at a performance at the Strand Theatre, and in the foyer I had met Mr. Vincent Boyes, a gentleman well known in literary and artistic circles. Boyes was a most highly respectable person, the very pink of propriety, and an inordinate stickler for les convenances. He was, moreover, a man old enough to have been my father. I invited Boyes to turn into the Temple Club for half an hour. He accepted. We entered the club, I called for some refreshment, and after it had been served we were joined by a man who was personally known to both of us. The new-comer was a soldier of fortune, a bit of a swashbuckler, a traveller, and a most amusing raconteur. It is unnecessary to mention his name in this connection. He kept us in fits of laughter for an hour, during which time both he and I had replenished the glass of the almost oppressively respectable Boyes. At the conclusion of one of the swashbuckler’s narratives, Boyes said gravely: “I’m sorry I can’t ask you fellows to have a drink with me, but I’m not a member.” “Order away, old chap—no more am I!” exclaimed the cheery raconteur. Boyes regarded the man with a look of horror. He rose from his seat, took leave of me, and stalked out of the place without flinging even a nod to the soldier of fortune. That a man should have played the host to him in a club of which that host was not a member was to Boyes the unforgivable offence.

In that same smoking-room there used frequently to meet a little coterie of journalists, among whom were Tom Dunning, one of the most respected men in “the Gallery”; H. H. S. Pearse, special correspondent of the Daily News; and Charles Williams, war-correspondent of many dailies in succession: for Charles, although an accomplished journalist, had an Irish temper, and frequently “quarrelled with his bread and butter.” I have met many eminent romancers in my time. Charlie Williams could have given Baron Munchausen a stone and a beating. He spoke with a rasping North of Ireland accent, and his campaign anecdotes gained greatly by the stolid, matter-of-fact manner in which they were narrated. I recall now one of his campaign reminiscences. It is a quaint experience of a correspondent under fire.

“I had got under cover of a big boulder, and had tethered my horse beside me. I was just munchin’ a beskit, when a shall burst on the rock, an’ shot the nosebag right off my charger. He had shoved his daumned ould head out of cover.”

“And you?” asked Pearse.

“I just went on munchin’ my beskit.”

“But,” suggested Dunning, “if the shell took away the nosebag, it ought to have carried away the beast’s head as well.”

“It did!” replied Williams, with the utmost sang-froid.

In the same place, but on another occasion, I heard him aver with the utmost solemnity that he had been selected by the Liberal party to oppose Sir Hugh M’Calmont Cairns, when that eminent man—afterwards Earl Cairns—first stood for Belfast in the Conservative interest.

“Ef,” declared Charlie, “I’d stud against Sir Hugh when first he put up for Bel-fawst, there’d be no such a personage now as Lord Cairns, Lord High Chawncellor of England!”

He was a bit of a romancer, was Williams. It should be admitted, however, that Williams did, at a later period in his career, stand as a candidate for Imperial Parliament. He opposed Herbert Gladstone at Leeds.Another promotion of Russell’s was his club for ladies. As a sort of major-domo for this establishment, Russell engaged the services of the obese but obliging “Fatty” Coleman, who had some time previously left the mild pursuits of a private life for the bustle of a public one. He was assistant-manager of the Aquarium when Russell captured him. “Fatty” was a broad and beaming man, of immense geniality, and in every sense a most expansive person. As the presiding genius of a club for ladies he was entirely in his element. But the time for what were irreverently called “cock-and-hen” clubs had not fully come, and this venture of the indefatigable promoter went the road to dusty death which had been taken by the unfortunate gentleman’s other efforts to divert and refine human society. The adventures of the ingenuous “Fatty” would make a volume of their own. I last encountered him in a French watering-place, where he was acting as a sort of manager’s representative to an hotel much frequented by Englishmen. He had lost some of his flesh, but none of his beaming bonhomie. There was a legend—I have never tested its authenticity—that “Fatty” had at one time held a commission in a regiment of the Guards.

While the social activities of Russell were at their busiest, the field was entered by another club-promoter. He, however, after a short experience became weary of well-doing. This was the Hon. John Colborne. The Hon. John—“Dirty Jack” was his sobriquet in his regiment—had become known to the public as the defendant in a criminal libel suit brought against him by a moneylender. John had got deep into the books of the remorseless Israelite, and, seeing no way of settling with him in coin, determined to pay him in kind; so he sat down and wrote an extremely diverting and trenchant little book entitled “The Vampires of London.” Herein the methods of usury were exposed in a fierce light. This, however, the wily Jew might have forgiven. What he could never forgive was the ridicule which the gallant officer threw on his mÉnage. He had invited his customer to accept the hospitality of his home, and now the secrets of that home were held up to public ridicule and contempt. The writer had not spared the members of the family. The very children of Israel were sacrificed on the altar of John’s vengeance. The allurements of Rachael, the schemes of “blear-eyed Leah,” were set forth with fiendish particularity.

The trial came off at the Old Bailey, and the prosecutor was represented by a rising barrister called Mr. Hardinge Giffard. That rising young barrister has, in so far as the Bar is concerned, risen and set many a day ago. He is now Lord Halsbury. The jury found for the persecuted Hebrew. The Hon. John was sentenced to certain months in gaol as a first-class misdemeanant, and ordered to pay a heavy fine. Defendants in cases of the kind were not so closely watched in those days as they are in the present year of grace, and when Mr. Colborne was called upon to receive sentence he was nowhere to be found. Having a very clear notion of the sort of verdict the jury would give, he had skipped over to France earlier in the day.

John had carried with him across the Channel a new and enlarged edition of “The Vampires,” and he at once set about issuing copies by post to advertisers desiring to acquire a work about which the trial had set all the town talking. To stop this fresh persecution, plaintiff was willing to accept any sort of terms in reason. All that Mr. Colborne desired was liberty to return to his native land, to obtain cancellation of the excessive interest on his bills, and to live thenceforth in peace with all men. His friends were enabled to arrange terms on this basis, and John was free to prosecute those schemes for improving the condition of his fellow-man to which he purposed to devote his energies. His schemes were fated to “gang agley.” He joined the Egyptian army, and died in action. It was probably the kind of death he would have wished, for, however he may have proved wanting in other qualities, no one ever doubted his high courage.

Chinery, in his club promotions, aimed at higher game. He had served as Consul-General in a West African State, was a member of the Reform and the Devonshire, was a convinced Liberal, and had a wonderfully good connection. Owing to these circumstances, he was able to muster a much stronger committee than others who had started before him in the club industry. His first venture was the Empire Club. For this establishment he had acquired what the auctioneers call “eligible” premises. He got a lease of the house in Grafton Street, Piccadilly, which had been the last home of Lord Brougham. Men like the late (and great) Marquis of Dufferin became members. Viscount Bury was President of the club. A large membership, including many leading colonials, was assured. The management was reliable, the cellar unimpeachable, the house dinner (always presided over by a colonial Governor-General or some other potentate interested in our overseas Empire) became a welcome feature, and a long spell of prosperity seemed to be ahead of us. But our hopes did not reach fruition. Something went wrong with the accounts, and the Empire closed its doors.

The festive Chinery, in no whit discouraged, started on fresh promotions. None of them achieved the brilliant reputation of his original venture, and Chinery himself died a broken man.

At one time I belonged to a club called the Wanderers, in compliment, I suppose, to the Travellers, which was nearly opposite. The club-house occupied the corner, on the other side of Pall Mall, corresponding to that of the AthenÆum. This was a comfortable and well-found establishment. Tod Heatley, the wine-merchant, was supposed to be interested in it; but it passed through many vicissitudes, and went under many names, till it was eventually devoted to more profitable purposes. Although the Wanderers had always other and higher pretensions, it was essentially a Bohemian club. A mixture of such pretensions with such actualities should be foredoomed to failure. In clubland the Wanderers was known as “The Home for Lost Dogs.”

Chief among the genuine Bohemian clubs is the Savage Club, whose home is on the Adelphi Terrace. Although the Bohemianism of this famous club is mainly traditional, it preserves the good custom of general communication among members, and encourages that spirit of playful geniality which is inseparable from the idea of Bohemianism. But the Savage Club of to-day is a very different thing from the same association as I knew it in 1870. This, indeed, will be admitted by the official historian of the club, Mr. Aaron Watson, whose admirable monograph on the Savage leaves nothing for any future writer to tell concerning the genesis and early struggles of the Savages.

I was a guest at the Savage on about half a dozen occasions in early years, and I once passed a few hours with Christie Murray in its new and more abiding home.

It was on a dull November day, and Pat Macdonald and I were walking westward from Fleet Street. We had taken Covent Garden on our way. “Let’s see if there’s anybody in the Savage Club,” he said casually, as we left the central avenue of the market, under the shadow of St. Paul’s, of the convent garden. To me the invitation was delightful. Often I had heard of the celebrated resort of actors, authors, and musicians. With the rest of the world, I had become impressed with the idea that election to this coterie was extremely difficult. I had read with much interest the first issue of “The Savage Club Papers,” and it came upon me as a surprise that my friend Macdonald, whose contributions to literature were of the most tenuous character, should be a member, and that he should hold his membership so lightly.

Soon I discovered the reason, and this, by the way, is a rather interesting morsel of history which has escaped the vigilant eye of Mr. Aaron Watson. In those early and unsophisticated days, when a man was put up for membership at the Savage, he was given the run of the club until the date of the next election; and some men are by nature such excellent company that a club existing above all other things for congenial companionship will be apt to regard the claims of the professionally unqualified candidate as above those of the highly qualified man who happens to be a dull dog. This month of probation afforded the good fellow—“the clubbable man” of Dr. Johnson—the opportunity of asserting his claims; and although the committee was bound by its first rule, which provided that only men professionally connected with literature, the drama, or the arts, should be eligible, when they got the chance of electing a man of Macdonald’s erudition, humour, and powers of conversation, they were not likely to give that chance away. It was a strange rule, but it worked well. In those days there was no place in a club forced to forgather in a single room for men who could not talk well and laugh loudly.

Under the guidance of my friend, I crossed to the right through the inevitable slush and vegetable refuse, and we were soon mounting the steps that led to Evans’s Hotel. With the celebrated Supper-Room beneath the hotel I was already acquainted, but I had never before visited the hotel. Nor did I for a moment imagine that the club which occupied so large a place in my fancy and my esteem occupied rooms on licensed premises. The Savage Club was in possession of the room on the left of the hall as you entered the hotel. It had originally been the coffee-room, and was one of the principal apartments in the building. Evans’s Hotel is now the National Sporting Club. It was first the Falstaff, and to fit it for its new purposes considerable structural alterations were necessary, including a small private theatre, now abolished, but the lines of the old home of the Savages can still be made out.

There were very few members present on the occasion of this first visit of mine, and I was reminded of the omnipresence of the legal profession on finding that two of them were barristers. One was Mr. Jonas Levy, Chairman of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway; and the other Mr. Hume Williams—not the K.C. and Recorder of Norwich, but the father of that learned gentleman. Another of those present was Henry S. Leigh, the author of “The Carols of Cockayne”—a gentleman whom I came to know intimately. He had the bitterest tongue and sweetest nature of any man I ever met. The arrangements of the room testified to the simplicity of taste observed by those primitive Savages. On the tables that lined the walls were laid out clay pipes of the shape and size with which we associate the name “churchwarden,” and I observed that Leigh was drinking beer out of a pewter pot. There are no pewter pots in the Savage Club nowadays, but neither are there any Leighs.

Whether it was the deadly dulness of the autumn afternoon or my own lack of responsiveness, or whether it was that I had cherished exaggerated expectations, or whether it was the result of a conspiracy of all these causes, I cannot say, but my first visit to the Savage was a disappointment and a disillusion. A year or more went by before I was afforded an opportunity of reviewing my earlier impressions. This time I had no cause to complain of the quality of the entertainment. “Jimmy” Albery, who had recently made his name with “Two Roses”; H. S. Leigh; E. A. Sothern; George Honey, the actor; Arthur Boyd Houghton, the artist; and Andrew Halliday, the author and journalist-dramatist, were among those present. My earlier impressions were at once erased. Never had I been thrown into the society of a number of grown men where such a spirit of fun, of camaraderie, of irresponsibility, and of the joy of life, prevailed and sparkled. They talked in the spirit of schoolboys, but with the point of seasoned wits. It was altogether a delightful experience.

It was at the Savage Club that I first saw the game of poker played. The game had been introduced by some Americans who enjoyed the privileges of corresponding membership in respect of their connection with the Lotus Club, New York. It was shortly made taboo by a ukase of the Portland and Turf Clubs, and disappeared from the card-rooms of all the West End clubs. I have always thought this rather a pity. Poker is one of the best games to be got out of a pack. It calls into exercise other faculties beside memory, judgment, skill, and a nice knowledge of the value of cards. You want to be a bit of a physiognomist. Your own expression should be under control, and your manner absolutely inscrutable. It is in respect of their natural endowment in these qualities that the Yankees make such good poker-players. I became greatly interested in the game, and it was indirectly through my instrumentality that its rules were first published in this country. General Schenk drew up the enactments governing the science of the pastime, at the request of Lady Waldegrave. Lady Waldegrave had them set up in type at Strawberry Hill. She had a few dozen copies printed for the use of her acquaintances. I became the proud possessor of one of these copies. A friend of mine—or perhaps I should say a gentleman whom up to that time I had regarded as a friend—induced me to lend him the brochure to settle some dispute which had arisen between certain correspondents on his paper; for my friend was a rather distinguished writer on the sporting press. I never saw that book again, but to my intense surprise and chagrin I found the whole of the Strawberry Hill rules published in the columns of my friend’s paper, with their place of origin given, and Lady Waldegrave’s authority cited.

The transaction did more harm to the gentleman who had betrayed my confidence than it did to me. In those days an act of the kind would be generally reprobated. Dog did not eat dog when Plancus was Consul. Nowadays I am given to understand that it would be regarded as a bit of smart journalism.

As I write, the memory of that first game of draw-poker comes vividly back to me, and, singular as it may seem to you, it comes back to an accompaniment of music. It was night, and in the supper-room below and at the back the little pale-faced choristers in their Eton suits were singing glees for Paddy Green’s customers. These vocal exercises were resented by grumpy members of the club, but to me distance enhanced the beauty of the singing, and I never hear poker mentioned now, such is the strange influence of the association of ideas, that I do not instantly hear the far-away voices of boys singing:

“Oh, who will o’er the downs with me—
Oh, who will with me ride?
Oh, who will up and follow me
To win a blooming bride?”

Poor words, perhaps; set to old-fashioned glee music, no doubt; introducing in the last line a word rendered vulgar by a merciless modernity, admitted. But, Lord! how sweet the memory of them comes back to me over the years—how inexpressibly sweet, yet how incalculably sad! for nothing but the haunting memory is left. My contemporaries of that time have, nearly all of them, satisfied their curiosity concerning the Great Secret. The pale-faced choir boys have grown to manhood, developing, perhaps, into “fat and greasy citizens.” Only the song remains.

Baker Green, editor of the Morning Post, was a member of the Savage at a somewhat later date. He was a great hulking figure of a man, with a terrible mordant humour of his own, and a devilish solemn manner of stating the most absurd propositions. His monocle was as inseparable from him as that of Sir Squire Bancroft. His peculiar style of humour may be best illustrated anecdotically.

A member who loomed large in the life of the club in the days when the Imperial Institute was being nursed into life was Somers Vine. In respect of his services rendered to the Institute the excellent man received the honour of knighthood. It is to be feared that Baker Green had no great liking for Sir Somers. Of this sentiment on the part of his fellow-member, Vine, it must be supposed, had no inkling, for one evening, bubbling over with hospitality and brotherly kindness, he approached Baker Green in the club.

“I wish, my dear fellow, you would come down and spend a week at my place at Chislehurst,” he said.

“Delighted,” replied the other.

“I live at Vine Court,” explained the knight.

Baker Green took out his pocket-book as if to make a note.

“What Court did you say?” he asked innocently.

“Vine Court,” replied the pleased Sir Somers.

“Yes—er—and what number?” inquired the remorseless Green.

It is perhaps needless to add that the proposed visit was never paid.

Sir W. S. Gilbert was an occasional visitor at the supper-rooms beneath the club. The incident I am about to relate is scarcely relevant to the subject with which the present chapter deals, but as it happened on the premises, so to speak, I may be pardoned for introducing it. At Evans’s it was the custom to pay for your supper to a waiter who stood at the door—a lightning calculator who, by the means of a legerdemain which was all his own, was able to add about 25 per cent. to every bill without the victim being able to see exactly how it was done. Gilbert rather resented the arithmetical methods of “John,” and at last came to the determination to pay “John” off by tipping him a penny instead of the sixpence which had hitherto been his pourboire. On the night on which his resolution was to be carried into effect his bill amounted to exactly hall a crown. He handed that coin to the magic calculator, and then handed his tip of one penny. “John” looked at the coin, smiled a deprecating smile, and, handing it back to the donor, said in a tone of subdued solicitude: “Perhaps you may be going over a bridge, sir.”

There was a toll levied on those crossing Waterloo Bridge in those days. The retort hit in two ways. The first suggestion was that the gentleman lived at the other side of the water; and the second, that he had been reduced to his last copper. The comment was, in fact, quite Gilbertian—as “John” himself was perfectly well aware.

The doyen of the club was W. B. Tegetmier. He seemed a survival almost of another age. For he was the same W. B. Tegetmier to whom Darwin, in his “Descent of Man,” makes so many acknowledgments of assistance in connection with experiments in the breeding of pigeons. He was one of the first men to use the bicycle as a means of getting to and from his office at the Field, which was then in the Strand. He must have been well over sixty at the time, and he continued to use the machine till he was well over seventy. A wonderful, wiry, active, peppery-tempered little man with a kindly expression indicating a heart more kindly still. Not that he could not say a hard thing when he thought it absolutely necessary. By his intimates he was always called “Teg.” But should any man who was not an intimate presume thus to address him, he would quickly resent the familiarity. Thus, on one occasion Mr. Bowles, a barrister and brother-Savage, finding the little naturalist there, addressed him by his sobriquet.

“Hallo, how are you, Teg?” said the devoted man, bent on geniality.

“Quite well, thank you—Po!” answered the other icily.

I had the honour of attending two of the Saturday dinners of the Savage Club. There was nothing quite like those dinners then; there has been nothing quite like them since. No after-dinner speeches were permitted, but when the meal—a very simple one—was at an end, the members set about entertaining their guests and themselves by song, anecdote, recitation, imitation, and playing upon instruments—for some of the finest instrumentalists in England were Savages. Old George Grossmith—father of George Grossmith, the well-known illustrator of Gilbert and Sullivan opera and platform entertainer, and grandfather of George Grossmith junior of the Gaiety Theatre—gave us a reading from the first chapter of “Bleak House”; Signor Foli sang “Simon the Cellarer”; Oscar Barrett and John Radcliffe fluted to us; Hamilton Clarke presided at the piano; Charles Collette pattered; George Honey gave some side-splitting stories, ably seconded in this department by dear old “Lal” Brough. The whole thing went with a “zip.” There was no hesitation on the part of performers; the neophyte who “broke down” in his performance was as heartily cheered as the veteran who rendered a passage reserved for such a gathering. Indeed, the feeling that one was listening to an entertainment which the public could not have for love or money added not a little, I imagine, to the sense of pleasure in those who took part in the post-prandial entertainment.

The Arundel and the Wigwam were conducted much on Savage lines, and the Junior Garrick, to which I have made reference in an earlier chapter, was decidedly a Bohemian institution. It had two periods. It originally existed as a members’ club; but a large number of influential members quarrelled with the committee and withdrew. The financial position of those who remained was not sufficiently strong to justify them in continuing it. And it seemed a pity to close the doors; for the club occupied a fine house at the corner of Adam Street and Adelphi Terrace. It remains an excellent example of Adam architecture, and contains some magnificent Adam ceilings and cornices. The drawing-room on the first-floor, with its unrivalled view of the Thames, is a spacious and well-proportioned apartment. The room beneath it was our dining-room, and the billiard-room was at the top of the house.

Now, whereas the Savage never suffered from any schism, the Junior Garrick was the victim of no less than two. The first while it was a members’ club; the second, when it had become a proprietary club. The first offshoot organized itself into the Green-Room Club, which flourishes to this day, and is at present housed in Leicester Square, nearly facing the Alhambra. This is now the principal club, entirely composed of stage professionals. The second offshoot of the old “J.G.C.,” as we liked to call it, was the Yorick. I know the Yorick still exists, for I recently saw in the daily Press a letter dated from that address.

In these days the Bohemian thinks it no longer good form to roam around the town attired in the negligent seediness of the impecunious student of the Quartier Latin. Unkempt locks, extreme squalor, and dirty finger-nails, are no longer regarded as essential characteristics of the social Bohemian. In the process of evolution we have now arrived at the evening-dress Bohemian. The Eccentric Club at Piccadilly Circus is his chosen resort. The phenomenal success of this club is attributable to the fact that the principal members of the original committee were business men; that it has been enabled to develop on a very small capital—some £700, I think; and that it was so fortunate as to acquire the premises, furniture, and fixtures, of an expiring institution at a ridiculously small figure.

This flourishing society grew out of the ashes of the old Coventry, a proprietary club which existed for some years in Coventry Street. When that rather cosy resort went the way of all proprietary clubs, a few of us met at Rule’s, in Maiden Lane, with a view of seeing whether a sufficient number of old Coventry members could not be induced to found another social centre in which men who had for some years come to regard the Coventry as their ordinary place of meeting. The idea caught on. The title “Eccentric” was decided on at our very first meeting. The old premises of the Pelican were to be had on reasonable terms. And we commenced, with a good list of members, in those sacred precincts. Among the actors who joined were “Lal” Brough and Arthur Roberts, and among the artists were Phil May, Julian Price, and Paleologue. The last-named gentleman adorned the walls of the club-house with some very spirited mural decorations. So spirited, indeed, was the fresco from the atelier of Paleologue, that when the club gave what were called “ladies’ days” Paleologue’s canvas had to be removed for the occasion. Knowing who some of the ladies were, and understanding something also of the characteristics of the committee-men who succeeded in carrying this proposal, the arrangement always struck me as being particularly quaint and insular.

One of the paintings of Julian Price was an inimitably clever likeness of Drummond, our head-waiter. No man was ever half so respectable as Drummond looked; and Price has caught his mild, inquiring, deprecatory expression to a nicety. His trim black whispers increase the pallor of his face, and, to mark the members’ appreciation of his high reputation, the artist has endowed him with a halo. We had taken Drummond on from the Raleigh Club. In carrying out his duties, Drummond was unaffected by the circumstances passing around him. The most mirth-provoking joke might be let off in his presence, but Drummond never turned a hair. When joking took a practical turn, and when he became the subject of the joke, affairs took on another complexion. And Drummond’s reason for resigning at the Raleigh was—or was said to be—that Lord Marcus Beresford, in an access of boyish irresponsibility, had put Drummond into the ice-chest, shut the lid on him, and had then forgotten all about him. Fortunately, another waiter had occasion to go to the refrigerator before a fatality occurred, or poor Drummond would have become just so many pounds of frozen meat.

This extraordinary man, notwithstanding his serious mood, was the most painstaking, obliging, and solicitous club waiter I have ever met. He understood the gastronomic tastes of every member, and was infinitely desirous of giving satisfaction. He had one or two curious methods of pronunciation; I believe they had been imposed on him by facetious members of the Raleigh. Thus, he always said “sooty” instead of “sautÉ.” It became quite a habit to ask Drummond what potatoes were ready, for the sake of hearing his quaint version: “What potatoes to-day, Drummond?” “Potatoes, sir? There’s biled, mashed, and sooty.”

Drummond’s reason for accepting service at clubs which remained open all night long, and frequently until four and five in the morning, was a singular one. It seems that he was a proper religious man, and held the office of deacon in connection with some conventicle in the suburbs. In accepting a position in a club where all-night sittings were the rule, he was free for every Sunday. I have seldom heard of a man sacrificing more for his religion—have you? If Drummond be still alive, he must be an old man by now, and may his declining years be peaceful! If he be dead, may the turf lie light on him!

The safeguard of a strong committee will never stand between a proprietary club and eventual extinction. One of the strongest committees I have known was got together by Mr. Earn Murray when he founded the United Arts Club. The promoter was enterprising, sanguine, and ambitious. But the only two private members of the club who ever succeeded in achieving notoriety were “Old Solomon,” the racing tipster, and Percy Lefroy, the murderer of Mr. Gold.

Our legislature, which always does things in a grandmotherly sort of way, thought to purify the West End and suppress the Cyprian by closing the night-houses in the Haymarket and in the streets impinging thereon. The abolishing of those squalid dens did not, indeed, result in her disestablishment, but in the betterment of the conditions under which she carried on her sad but—if the unco’ guid will permit the use of the word in this relation—necessary calling. Phryne, like the poor, we shall always have with us. The obvious duty of society, therefore, is not to take measures for her suppression, but measures for her amelioration and regulation. School Board education and an acquired knowledge of the laws of hygiene have done much for her. When one compares the toilet, the costume, and the manners, of the demi-mondaines who nightly frequent the back of the dress-circle of certain houses of entertainment with the tawdry, over-painted, giggling, solicitous creature of thirty years ago, then, and only then, can one understand the gratifying change that has taken place in the habitude of this inalienable excrescence on the body politic.

When the night-houses were closed, and the police instructed to keep the West End streets clear at midnight, there opened, here and there, clubs for the accommodation of Phryne and her friends. So that the closing of the frowsy saloons in which she had been wont to congregate was a blessing in disguise, and, indeed, fixes the date of the gratifying amelioration in her manners. For in the clubs a certain decorum was observed even in the ballroom, which afforded the raison d’Être of social rialtos of the small-hours. The proprietors saw to that; for the recurrence of disturbance or the report of sinister incidents might occasion a raid. Election to these clubs was not, as may well be supposed, a very difficult matter. One was proposed on the doorstep, seconded on the hall mat, and unanimously elected a member in the cloak-room. But the men “on the door” knew perfectly well whom to admit and whom to dismiss. The bully, the exploiter of frailty, the souteneur, were kept ruthlessly outside. Thus the proprietor protected at once himself and his customers. He ran a sort of bon marchÉ in fact, where no middleman operated between the goods and the patrons of the exchange.

The children of Israel—whose mission in these later years is to be both our paymasters and our panders—were particularly zealous in the promotion of this kind of rÉunion bohÉmiene. Belasco opened the Supper Club in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road. Sam Cohen provided the “Spooferies” in Maiden Lane. He had previously run the concern as a baccarat club, its useful career in that direction having ended in a raid, and a prosecution of the greatest number of persons ever called up at Bow Street to answer a single charge. Sam must have been a bit of a cynic in his way, for the house in which the “Spooferies” met was next door to the Jewish synagogue. A Hebrew named Foster established a similar place in Long Acre, and a coreligionist of his called Moore—a euphuism, I apprehend, for Moses—opened the Waterloo Club in Waterloo Place, Pall Mall. There were others. But those I have named are the only ones of which I had a personal knowledge. This admission may, I fear, horrify those readers who are of the dawn of the century. I can assure my prudish friends, however, that were I mischievously inclined I could give them a list of names of persons who were at one time young men about town, but who now occupy prominent positions in the Senate, at the Bar, and, generally speaking, in the public life of the country, who were to be seen, in the jocund years, thoroughly enjoying themselves in such Bohemian society as was to be found at the “Spooferies” or the Supper Club.

I can see—in my mind’s eye, Horatio—some adipose, sleek, and eminently respectable householder, some Member of Parliament, London County Councillor, West End physician, fashionable painter, or what not, who has taken up these reminiscences to while away an hour. I can see this staid citizen, this respectable family man, this stickler for morality, this Justice of the Peace, and all the rest of it, squirming as he reads the above passage. With a blush he lays down the book, and, looking suspiciously around, murmurs: “Damn the fellow, he means me!” Yes, I undoubtedly mean you. But you may read on without apprehension, my excellent friend, for I am the soul of discretion. Your early trespasses are safe. In return I would only ask this: that, remembering that you and I have sown some wild-oats in the same fallows, you should exercise a little more common-sense and charity in dealing with the peccadilloes of your juniors, and that, generally speaking, you would carry yourself with a less pompous air of conscious rectitude.