Volume I Part 25 (1/2)
Taking into account the vast growth of the metropolis, we are not surprised at so luxurious a means of healthful enjoyment as a racquet court presents being added to the establishments or inst.i.tutions of this very clubbable age. Hitherto Clubs had been mostly appropriated to the purposes of refection; but why should not the social refinement be extended to the enjoyment of so health-giving sport and manly a pastime as racquet? The experiment was made, and with perfect success, immediately upon the confines of one of the most recent settlements of fas.h.i.+on--Belgravia. It is private property, and bears the name of ”Prince's Club Racquet Courts.”
The Club, established in 1854, is built upon the Pavilion estate, in the rear of the north side of Sloane-street, the princ.i.p.al entrance being from Hans-place. The grounds are of considerable extent, and were originally laid out by Capability Brown. They were almost environed with lofty timber-trees; and the genius of landscape gardening, fostered by wealth, rendered this glade in the Brompton groves of old a sort of rural elysium.
The Pavilion estate was once the property of Holland, the well-known architect, who planned Sloane-street and Hans-place, as a building speculation; and, in the grounds nearly between them, built himself what was then considered a handsome villa, the front of which was originally designed by Holland as a model for the Prince of Wales's Pavilion at Brighton; hence the name, the Pavilion estate. In the grounds, among the remains of Brown's ornamental work, was an icehouse, amidst the imitative ruins of a priory. Here, also, were the Ionic columns (isolated) which were formerly in the screen of Carlton House.
The Club buildings comprise seven closed courts; a tennis court; gallery and refreshment rooms; baths, and a Turkish bath.
Prince's Club is a subscription establishment; and its government is vested in a committee. Gentlemen desirous of becoming members of the Club must be proposed and seconded by two of its members. Two of the rules enact--that members have the privilege of introducing two friends, but that such visitors, if they play, be charged double the rate charged to members; and that no hazard, dice, or game of chance be allowed in this Club. Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge are members.
AN ANGLING CLUB.
Professor Owen is accustomed to relate the following very amusing incident, which occurred in a Club of some of the working scientific men of London, who, with a few others, after their winter's work of lecturing is over, occasionally sally forth to have a day's fis.h.i.+ng.
”We have,” says Professor Owen, ”for that purpose taken a small river in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and near its banks there stands a little public-house, where we dine soberly and sparingly, on such food as old Izaak Walton loved. We have a rule that he who catches the biggest fish of the day shall be our president for the evening. In the course of one day, a member, not a scientific man, but a high political man, caught a trout that weighed 3 lb.; but earlier in the day he had pulled out a barbel of half a pound weight. So while we were on the way to our inn, what did this political gentleman do but, with the b.u.t.t-end of his rod, ram the barbel down the trout's throat, in which state he handed his fish to be weighed. Thus he scored four pounds, which being the greatest weight he took the chair.
”As we were going away from home, a man of science,--it was the President of the Royal Society,--said to the man of politics, 'If you don't want that fine fish of yours, I should like to have it, for I have some friends to dine with me to-morrow.' My Lord took it home, and I heard no more until we met on the next week. Then, while we were preparing our tackle, the President of the Royal Society said to our high political friend, 'There were some very extraordinary circ.u.mstances, do you know, about that fish you gave me. I had no idea that the trout was so voracious; but that one had swallowed a barbel.'--'I am astonished to hear your Lords.h.i.+p say so,' rejoined an eminent naturalist; 'trout may be voracious enough to swallow minnows--but a barbel, my Lord! There must be some mistake.'--'Not at all,' replied his lords.h.i.+p, 'for the fact got to my family that the cook, in cutting open the throat, had found a barbel inside; and as my family knew I was fond of natural history, I was called into the kitchen. There I saw the trout had swallowed a barbel, full half a pound weight.'--'Out of the question, my Lord,' said the naturalist; 'it's altogether quite unscientific and unphilosophical.'--'I don't know what may be philosophical in the matter--I only know I am telling you a matter of fact,' said his Lords.h.i.+p; and the dispute having lasted awhile, explanations were given, and the practical joke was heartily enjoyed. And” (continued Professor Owen) ”you will see that both were right and both were wrong. My Lord was right in his fact--the barbel was inside the trout; but he was quite wrong in his hypothesis founded upon that fact, that the trout had therefore swallowed the barbel,--the last was only matter of opinion.”
THE RED LIONS.
In 1839, when the British a.s.sociation met in Birmingham, several of its younger members happened, accidentally, to dine at the Red Lion, in Church-street. The dinner was pleasant, the guests well suited to each other, and the meeting altogether proved so agreeable, that it was resolved to continue it from year to year, wherever the a.s.sociation might happen to meet. By degrees the ”Red Lions”--the name was a.s.sumed from the accident of the first meeting-place--became a very exclusive Club; and under the presidency of Professor Edward Forbes, it acquired a celebrity which, in its way, almost rivalled that of the a.s.sociation itself. Forbes first drew around him the small circle of jovial philosophers at the Red Lion. The names of Lankester, Thomson, Bell, Mitch.e.l.l, and Strickland are down in the old muster-roll. Many were added afterwards, as the Club was kept up in London, in meetings at Anderton's, in Fleet-street. The old cards of invitation were very droll: they were stamped with the figure of a red lion erect, with a pot of beer in one paw, and a long clay pipe in the other, and the invitation commenced with ”The carnivora will feed” at such an hour. Forbes, who, as _pater omnipotens_, always took the chair at the first chance meeting round the plain table of the inn, gave a capital stock of humour to this feeding of the naturalists by taking up his coat-tail and roaring whenever a good thing was said or a good song sung; and, of course, all the other Red Lions did the same. When roaring and tail-wagging became so characteristic an inst.i.tution among the members, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, then secretary of the Zoological Society, presented a fine lion's skin to the Club; and ever after the President sat with this skin spread over his chair, the paws at the elbows, and the tail handy to be wagged. Alas! this tail no longer wags at Birmingham, and after vibrating with languid emotion in London, has now ceased to show any signs of life. The old Red Lion has lost heart, and has slumbered since the death of Forbes.
At the Meeting of the British a.s.sociation at Birmingham, in 1865, an endeavour was made to revive the Red Lion dinner on something like its former scale; the idea being probably suggested by the circ.u.mstance of the Club having been originated in Birmingham. Lord Houghton, who is, we believe, ”an old Red,” presided; but the idiosyncrasy of the real Red Lion, and his intense love of plain roast and boiled, were missed: some sixty guests sat down, _not_ at the Red Lion, but at a hotel banquet. Not one of the celebrants on this occasion had pa.s.sed through his novitiate as a Red Lion cub: he was not asked whether he could roar or sing a song, or had ever said a good thing, one of which qualifications was a _sine qua non_ in the old Club. There were, however, some good songs: Professor Rankine sang ”The Mathematician in Love,” a song of his own. Then, there are some choice spirits among these philosophers. After the banquet a section adjourned to the B.
Club, members of which are chiefly chemical in their serious moments.
Indeed, all through the meeting there was a succession of jovial parties in the identical room at the Red Lion.[36]
THE COVENTRY, ERECTHEUM, AND PARTHENON CLUBS.
The Coventry, or Amba.s.sadors' Club was inst.i.tuted about twelve years since, at No. 106, Piccadilly, facing the Green Park. The handsome stone-fronted mansion occupies the site of the old Greyhound inn, and was bought by the Earl of Coventry of Sir Hugh Hunlock, in 1764, for 10,000, subject to the ground-rent of 75 per annum. The Club enjoyed but a brief existence: it was closed in March, 1854.
The Erectheum Club, St. James's-square, corner of York-street, was established by Sir John Dean Paul, Bart., and became celebrated for its good dinners. The Club-house was formerly the town depot of Wedgwood's famous ”ware;” and occupies the site of the mansion built for the Earl of Romney, the handsome Sydney of De Grammont's Memoirs.
The Parthenon Club-house (late Mr. Edwards's), east side of Regent-street, nearly facing St. Philip's Chapel, was designed by Nash: the first floor is elegant Corinthian. The south division was built by Mr. Nash for his own residence; it has a long gallery, decorated from a _loggia_ of the Vatican at Rome: it is now the _Gallery of Ill.u.s.tration_.
”The Coventry Club was a Club of most exclusive exquisites, and was rich in diplomacy; but it blew up in admired confusion. Even so did Lord Cardigan's Club, founded upon the site of Crockford's. The Clarence, the Albion, and a dozen other small Clubs have all dissolved, some of them with great loss to the members, and the Erectheum and Parthenon thought it prudent to join their forces to keep the wolf from the door.”--_New Quarterly Review._
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Abridged from the _Daily News_.