London Club Life. John Timbs
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Название: London Club Life
Автор: John Timbs
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066379759
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Our Clubs, or social gatherings, which date from the Restoration, were exclusively political. The first we hear of was the noted Rota, or Coffee Club, as Pepys calls it, which was founded in 1659, as a kind of debating society for the dissemination of republican opinions, which Harrington had painted in their fairest colours in his Oceana. It met in New Palace Yard, "where they take water at one Miles's, the next house to the staires, where was made purposely a large ovall table, with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee." Here Harrington gave nightly lectures on the advantage of a commonwealth and of the ballot. The Club derived its name from a plan, which it was its design to promote, for changing a certain number of Members of Parliament annually by rotation. Sir William Petty was one of its members. Round the table, "in a room every evening as full as it could be crammed," says Aubrey, sat Milton and Marvell, Cyriac Skinner, Harrington, Nevill, and their friends, discussing abstract political questions. Aubrey calls them "disciples and virtuosi." The place had its dissensions and brawls: "one time Mr. Stafford and his friends came in drunk from the tavern, and affronted the Junto; the soldiers offered to kick them down stayres, but Mr. Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered it."
To the Rota, in January, 1660, came Pepys, and "heard very good discourse in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government; and so it was no wonder the balance of prosperity was in one hand, and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war: but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government; though, it is true, by the voices it had been carried before that, that it was an unsteady government. So to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another." The Club was broken up after the Restoration; but its members had become marked men. Harrington's Oceana is an imaginary account of the construction of a commonwealth in a country, of which Oceana is the imaginary name. "Rota-men" occurs by way of comparison in Hudibras, part ii. canto 3:
"But Sidrophel, as full of tricks
As Rota-men of politics."
Besides the Rota, there was the old Royalist Club, "The Sealed Knot," which, the year before the Restoration, had organized a general insurrection in favour of the King. Unluckily, they had a spy amongst them—Sir Richard Willis—who had long fingered Cromwell's money, as one of his private "intelligencers;" the leaders, on his information, were arrested, and committed to prison.
THE OCTOBER CLUB.
The writer of an excellent paper in the National Review, No. VIII., well observes that "Politics under Anne had grown a smaller and less dangerous game than in the preceding century. The original political Clubs of the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, plotted revolutions of government. The Parliamentary Clubs, after the Revolution of 1688, manœuvred for changes of administration. The high-flying Tory country gentleman and country member drank the health of the King—sometimes over the water-decanter, and flustered himself with bumpers in honour of Dr. Sacheverell and the Church of England, with true-blue spirits of his own kidney, at the October Club," which, like the Beef Steak Club, was named after the cheer for which it was famed—October ale; or rather, on account of the quantities of the ale which the members drank. The hundred and fifty squires, Tories to the backbone, who, under the above name, met at the Bell Tavern, in King Street, Westminster, were of opinion that the party to which they belonged were too backward in punishing and turning out the Whigs; and they gave infinite trouble to the Tory administration which came into office under the leadership of Harley, St. John, and Harcourt, in 1710. The Administration were for proceeding moderately with their rivals, and for generally replacing opponents with partisans. The October Club were for immediately impeaching every member of the Whig party, and for turning out, without a day's grace, every placeman who did not wear their colours, and shout their cries.
Swift was great at the October Club, and he was employed to talk over those who were amenable to reason, and to appease a discontent which was hastily ripening into mutiny. There are allusions to such negotiations in more than one passage of the Journal to Stella, in 1711. In a letter, February 10, 1710–11, he says: "We are plagued here with an October Club; that is, a set of above a hundred Parliament men of the country, who drink October beer at home, and meet every evening at a tavern near the Parliament, to consult affairs, and drive things on to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old ministry to account, and get off five or six heads." Swift's Advice humbly offered to the Members of the October Club, had the desired effect of softening some, and convincing others, until the whole body of malcontents was first divided and finally dissolved. The treatise is a masterpiece of Swift's political skill, judiciously palliating those ministerial errors which could not be denied, and artfully intimating those excuses, which, resting upon the disposition of Queen Anne herself, could not, in policy or decency, be openly pleaded.
The red-hot "tantivies," for whose loyalty the October Club was not thorough-going enough, seceded from the original body, and formed "the March Club," more Jacobite and rampant in its hatred of the Whigs, than the Society from which it branched.
King Street would, at this time, be a strange location for a Parliamentary Club, like the October; narrow and obscure as is the street, we must remember that a century ago, it was the only thoroughfare to the Palace at Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. When the October was broken up, the portrait of Queen Anne, by Dahl, which ornamented the club-room, was bought of the Club, after the Queen's death, by the Corporation of Salisbury, and may still be seen in their Council-chamber. (Cunningham's Handbook, 2nd edit., p. 364.)
THE SATURDAY, AND BROTHERS CLUBS.
Few men appear to have so well studied the social and political objects of Club-life as Dean Swift. One of his resorts was the old Saturday Club. He tells Stella (to whom he specially reported most of his club arrangements), in 1711, there were "Lord Keeper, Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I." Of the same Club he writes, in 1713: "I dined with Lord Treasurer, and shall again to-morrow, which is his day, when all the ministers dine with him. He calls it whipping-day. It is always on Saturday; and we do, indeed, rally him about his faults on that day. I was of the original Club, when only poor Lord Rivers, Lord Keeper, and Lord Bolingbroke came; but now Ormond, Anglesey, Lord Stewart, Dartmouth, and other rabble intrude, and I scold at it; but now they pretend as good a title as I; and, indeed, many Saturdays I am not there. The company being too many, I don't love it."
In the same year Swift framed the rules of the Brothers Club, which met every Thursday. "The end of our Club," he says, "is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation. We take in none but men of wit, or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other Club in this town will be worth talking of."
The Journal about this time is very full of Brothers Arran and Dupplin, Masham and Ormond, Bathurst and Harcourt, Orrery and Jack Hill, and other Tory magnates of the Club, or Society as Swift preferred to call it. We find him entertaining his "Brothers" at the Thatched House Tavern, in St. James's Street, at the cost of seven good guineas. He must have been an influential member; he writes: "We are now, in all, nine lords and ten commoners. The Duke of Beaufort had the confidence to propose his brother-in-law, the Earl of Danby, to be a member; but I opposed it so warmly, СКАЧАТЬ