CLUBS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY With the beginning of the 18th century there was a sudden and large increase of clubs in London. Passing over the notorious Calves' Head Club (q.v.) we may note that a number of clubs arose whose doings are mentioned in The Tatler and The Specta tor, and with some of which the names of Swift and Bolingbroke are closely associated. Of these the October Club (I 71O-11), which gave no little trouble to Harley's administration, and its more advanced offshoot, the March Primitive October Club; the Saturday Club, inaugurated by Bolingbroke in 1711; the King's Head, or Green Ribbon Club, due to Shaftesbury's efforts; and the Hanover Club, organized to support the new dynasty, are examples. Such contemporary ones as The Society, or Brothers' Club, of which Swift was a leading light ; the Scriblerus Club, which he actually founded; and the better remembered Kit Cat Club, due to Jacob Tonson's exertions, whose list of famous mem bers, its toasts and its portraits, have made it something of a thing apart, were in the nature of literary reunions where politics occu pied a subsidiary place. Nor should those associations known as Mug House Clubs be overlooked. The disorderly doings to which they gave rise enter largely into the social and political annals of the period, for however peaceful may have been their original intention, they degenerated into hot-beds of strife and were even tually suppressed with all the rigour of the outraged law. To call them clubs at all shows what a wide significance was given to the term, a significance still wider when we find it applied even to the disorderly illegalities of such fraternities as the notorious Mo hocks, Scourers, Nickers, et hoc omne genus, which made London a place of danger and fear to law-abiding citizens; and against the terrorism of which what were called street clubs, i.e., places where the Londoner might find ready refuge, came into existence.
Of the number of clubs (so to call them) of a profane or at least eccentric character which existed at this period, the pages of The Spectator and the two books on the subject written by Ned Ward give sufficiently suggestive accounts. For although many of those recorded by the latter were but figments of his imagina tion, they were based on many actually existing, and may thus be regarded as typical. It will be recalled that it was to a club of this character held at the Boar's Head Tavern, that at a later date Johnson advised Boswell not to belong, lest it should damage his reputation.
Lesser-known clubs of the earlier half of the i8th century were The Mourning Bush, or, as it was afterwards re-named, The Fountain (it is satirically referred to by Tom Brown), of Jacobite tendencies; The Board, which Walpole (Letter to Mann, 1743) mentions; the Coterie, started in 1764; The Revolution and The Independents, of rather later date, but all having a marked political and even militant character.
During the second half of this period, clubs began to take on a more regularized system of life, and embraced all sorts of wants, from the famous Dilettante Club (still existing) and The Thes pian, whose names indicate their character, to the Sons of the Thames, a pioneer of later aquatic clubs; the Je ne scai quoi, which met at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall with George, Prince of \Vales, as its perpetual chairman, to the No Pay No Liquor Club, whose members were obliged to wear a hat of peculiar con struction and to drink from a cup of peculiar shape. Such clubs were as the sands of the sea, and there could have been few direc tions of human interest to which one or other of them did not appeal.
The literary and purely social club is most characteristic of this period. Of the former Dr. Johnson is the protagonist. In the winter of 1749 he founded the Ivy Lane Club; 14 years later the far more famous Literary Club or The Club, whose annals fill so large a space in the record of his career, and which still exists, having enrolled among its members nearly all the outstanding men of two centuries. In 1783, not long before his death, Johnson founded yet another club, The Essex Head, so named from the tavern where its members foregathered.
Of more specialized character may be mentioned the Royal Society Club (1731), not, of course, to be confounded with the existing Royal Societies Club, parodied by Ned Ward as The Virtuosos; the Noviomagians Club, standing in the same relation to the Society of Antiquaries as the former did to the Royal Society. There were also a number of subsidiary clubs meeting at Will's and Tom's coffee-houses, in a description of which by Macky (Journey through England) we recognize various similar ities to the club as it exists to-day. The Sublime Society of Beef steaks (1735-1867), of which the present Beefsteak Club is a kind of successor; the Robin Hood Club, whose beginnings were in far-off days but which only emerged into prominence when Burke was an eloquent member; the Wittanagemot, a small and little-known society, something on the lines of our present-day dining societies, are types of the clubs of this period; while the Blue Stockings, of which more than one was in existence about this time (the latter half of the i8th century), formed a link between the fashionable and literary society of the day. To these may be added Goldsmith's Wednesday Club, and such quasi debating, quasi-social institutions as the Cogers in the east and the Clifford Street Club and the so-called King of Clubs (I 8o 1) in the west.
With the beginning of the 19th century, clubs, as a general rule, although there had been one or two pioneers in this direction, such as White's and Brooks's, first began to have their own head quarters and consolidated themselves on those lines which in many instances still obtain. The close of the Napoleonic Wars resulted in numbers of officers of both services being at large in London, and needing centres where they could meet, and where food and general amenities could be obtained at a reasonable rate. Hence the rise of the Service clubs, which, once inaugurated, increased gradually, with the result that The United Service came into exist ence in 1815 ; The Guards in 1813 ; the Junior United Service in 1827: The Oriental in 1824; the Army and Navy in 1837; and the East India United Service in 185o; to be followed by others now existing or defunct.
Regency days were, too, notable for regular gambling clubs, as differentiated from the card-playing at other centres, and Watiers, where Brummell was an outstanding figure, started its hectic career in 1805, which lasted till 1823, when Crockford took it, but gave it up on opening his splendid structure in St. James's street some five years later—a building which is now, after many vicissitudes, the home of The Devonshire Club (1875). Other small but fashionable clubs of the time were Weltzie's (named after a cook to the Prince of Wales) and The Alfred (18o8), which the wits called The Half-Read and of which Byron was a member.