Volume I Part 7 (1/2)
Some of its members were Maccaronis, the ”curled darlings” of the day: they were so called from their affectation of foreign tastes and fas.h.i.+ons, and were celebrated for their long curls and eye-gla.s.ses.
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, s.h.i.+nes 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 pa.s.sed 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 Boodle's, White's and Goosetree's. The latter was Wilberforce's usual resort, where his friends.h.i.+p with Pitt, whom he had slightly known at Cambridge, greatly increased: he once lost 100 at the faro-table, and on another night kept the bank, by which he won 600; but he soon became weaned from play.
ALMACK'S a.s.sEMBLY-ROOMS.
In the year following the opening of Almack's Club in Pall Mall, Almack had built for him by Robert Mylne, the suite of a.s.sembly Rooms, in King-street, St. James's, which was named after him, ”Almack's,”
and was occasionally called ”Willis's Rooms,” after the next proprietor. Almack likewise kept the Thatched House Tavern, in St.
James's-street.
Almack's was opened Feb. 20, 1765, and was advertised to have been built with hot bricks and boiling water: the ceilings were dripping with wet; but the Duke of c.u.mberland, the Hero of Culloden, was there.
Gilly Williams, a few days after the opening, in a letter to George Selwyn, writes: ”There is now opened at Almack's, in three very elegant new-built rooms, a ten-guinea subscription, for which you have a ball and supper once a week, for twelve weeks. You may imagine by the sum the company is chosen; though, refined as it is, it will be scarce able to put out old Soho (Mrs. Cornelys) out of countenance.
The men's tickets are not transferable, so, if the ladies do not like us, they have no opportunity of changing us, but must see the same persons for ever.” ... ”Our female Almack's flourishes beyond description. Almack's Scotch face, in a bag-wig, waiting at supper, would divert you, as would his lady, in a sack, making tea and curtseying to the d.u.c.h.esses.”
Five years later, in 1770, Walpole writes to Montagu: ”There is a new Inst.i.tution that begins to make, and if it proceeds, will make a considerable noise. It is a Club of _both_ s.e.xes, to be erected at Almack's, on the model of that of the men of White's. Mrs. Fitzroy, Lady Pembroke, Mrs. Meynell, Lady Molyneux, Miss Pelham, and Miss Lloyd, are the foundresses. I am ashamed to say I am of so young and fas.h.i.+onable society; but as they are people I live with, I choose to be idle rather than morose. I can go to a young supper without forgetting how much sand is run out of the hour-gla.s.s.”
Mrs. Boscawen tells Mrs. Delany of this Club of lords and ladies who first met at a tavern, but subsequently, to satisfy Lady Pembroke's scruples, in a room at Almack's. ”The ladies nominate and choose the gentlemen and _vice versa_, so that no lady can exclude a lady, or gentleman a gentleman.” Ladies Rochford, Harrington, and Holderness were black-balled, as was the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, who was subsequently admitted! Lord March and Brook Boothby were black-balled by the ladies, to their great astonishment. There was a dinner, then supper at eleven, and, says Mrs. Boscawen, ”play will be deep and constant, probably.” The frenzy for play was then at its height. ”Nothing within my memory comes up to it!” exclaims Mrs. Delany, who attributes it to the prevailing ”avarice and extravagance.” Some men made profit out of it, like Mr. Thynne, ”who has won this year so considerably that he has paid off all his debts, bought a house and furnished it, disposed of his horses, hounds, etc., and struck his name out of all expensive subscriptions. But what a _horrid reflection_ it must be to an honest mind to _build_ his fortune on the ruin of others!”
Almack's large ball-room is about one hundred feet in length, by forty feet in width; it is chastely decorated with gilt columns and pilasters, cla.s.sic medallions, mirrors, etc., and is lit with gas, in cut-gla.s.s l.u.s.tres. The largest number of persons ever present in this room at one ball was 1700.
The rooms are let for public meetings, dramatic readings, concerts, b.a.l.l.s, and occasionally for dinners. Here Mrs. Billington, Mr. Braham, and Signor Naldi, gave concerts, from 1808 to 1810, in rivalry with Madame Catalani, at Hanover-square Rooms; and here Mr. Charles Kemble gave, in 1844, his Readings from Shakspeare.
The b.a.l.l.s at Almack's are managed by a Committee of Ladies of high rank, and the only mode of admission is by vouchers or personal introduction.
Almack's has declined of late years; ”a clear proof that the palmy days of exclusiveness are gone by in England; and though it is obviously impossible to prevent any given number of persons from congregating and re-establis.h.i.+ng an oligarchy, we are quite sure that the attempt would be ineffectual, and that the sense of their importance would extend little beyond the set.”[8] In 1831 was published _Almack's_, a novel, in which the leaders of fas.h.i.+on were sketched with much freedom, and identified in _A Key to Almack's_, by Benjamin Disraeli.
BROOKES'S CLUB.
We have just narrated the establishment of this Club--how it was originally a gaming club, and was formed at first by Almack. It was subsequently taken by Brookes, a wine-merchant and money-lender, according to Selwyn; and who is described by Tickell, in a copy of verses addressed to Sheridan, when Charles James Fox was to give a supper at his own lodgings, then near the Club:--
”Derby shall send, if not his plate, his cooks, And know, I've brought the best champagne from Brookes, From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill Is hasty credit, and a distant bill; Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade, Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid.”
From Pall Mall Brookes's Club removed to No. 60, on the west side of St. James's-street, where a handsome house was built at Brookes's expense, from the designs of Henry Holland, the architect; it was opened in October, 1778. The concern did not prosper; for James Hare writes to George Selwyn, May 18, 1779, ”we are all beggars at Brookes's, and he threatens to leave the house, as it yields him no profit.” Mr. Cunningham tells us that Brookes retired from the Club soon after it was built, and died poor about the year 1782.
Lord Crewe, one of the founders of the Club in Pall Mall, died in 1829, after sixty-five years' members.h.i.+p of Brookes's. Among its celebrities were Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick and Hume, Horace Walpole, Gibbon, and Sheridan and Wilberforce. Lord March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry, was one of its notorieties--”the old Q., whom many now living can remember, with his fixed eye and cadaverous face, watching the flow of the human tide past his bow-window in Pall Mall.”--_National Review_, 1857. [This is hardly correct as to locality, since the Club left Pall Mall in 1778, and a reminiscent must be more than 80 years of age.] Among Selwyn's correspondents are Gilly Williams, Hare, Fitzpatrick, the Townshends, Burgoyne, Storer, and Lord Carlisle. R. Tickell, in ”Lines from the Hon. Charles Fox to the Hon. John Townshend cruising,” thus describes the welcome that awaits Townshend, and the gay life of the Club:--
”Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend, What gratulations thy approach attend!
See Gibbon tap his box; auspicious sign, That cla.s.sic compliment and evil combine.
See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise, And friends.h.i.+p gives what cruel health denies.