Brooks's Club
W. Hatherell
c. 1890
Signed with initials
Club-Land, 13
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Text and formatting by George P. Landow
Joseph Hatton's Club-Land (1890) on Brook's
Brooks's, from being formed by Almacks, was "taken" by a wine merchant and money-lender, who goes down to posterity in the title of the club. It migrated from Pall Mall to a handsome house in St. James's Street. But "liberal" Brooks — “Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade, / Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid,” lost money by his enterprise, retired from business soon after the new house was opened, and died a poor man. The club numbered among its members Burke, Sir Joshua Keynolds, Garrick, Hume, Walpole, Gibbon, and Wilberforce. The correspondence of the times contains many records of the witty sayings and repartees that enlivened the conversation at Brooks's. Referring to a projected tax on iron, a member suggested that it would be better to raise the necessary money on coals. "That would indeed be out of the frying pan into the fire," said Sheridan.
There is something of the old-fashioned air of the past about the Brooks's of to-day. The house is more like a private establishment than a club. Collectively, the members affect Whiggism (if such a thing exists nowadays) in polities; individually, they keep their principles pretty well to themselves, or for the club, where they are bound to declare them. The leading ideas of Brooks's are centred in comfort, good dinners, old wine, and a quiet rubber. [15]
Photograph from the January 1907 Graphic by S. B. Bolas and Co. Oxford Street, London. Click on image to enlarge it.
Bibliography
Hatton, Joseph. Clubland London and Provincial. London: J. S. Vertie, 1890. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 29 February 2012.
Last modified 29 February 2012