Descended from 18th century coffee houses, gentlemen’s clubs grew rapidly in popularity and reached their zenith during the late Victorian era. Members were drawn from the upper echelons of society and clubs became an integral feature of elite life.

Primarily functioning as a second home, these private members’ clubs provided an exclusive environment for members to work, read, dine and meet with their friends and peers in a convenient and comfortable setting. ‘To an Englishman,’ reported the New York Times on 18 June 1871, ‘his club is his home.’

Gentlemen’s clubs originated in the West End of London and the high concentration of clubs in the area of St James’s led it to become known as clubland. However, these institutions were not restricted to London and they could be found in leading provincial towns and cities across the country. Nevertheless, it was in the capital that they had the most significant impact. ‘The example of London has,’ as the architectural magazine, The Builder, pointed out on 31 August 1878, ‘been extensively followed in the provinces, every provincial city, or town of considerable population has now its club, and many of them more than one, but none of these approach the metropolis in the number and variety of such institutions.’

Clubs varied in size significantly. The Cocoa Tree Club, for instance, had 350 members while the National Liberal Club had over 5,000 members. Moreover, each club had its own distinct identity and attracted a specific clientele. The United Services Club, for example, was open to military officers, the Oxford and Cambridge accepted graduates from these universities and the Roxburghe Club welcomed bibliophiles. Many men belonged to multiple clubs and this enabled them to meet different sets of friends in different clubs.

Membership was stringently controlled through a recommendation and voting process and it could often be an arduous task gaining admittance to a club. In the first instance candidates had to be nominated by an existing member. Some clubs also had very specific criteria an applicant had to meet before being considered for membership. The Travellers’ Club, for example, required prospective members to have to have travelled 500 miles in a straight line from London, whereas the Roxburghe Club insisted that nominees possessed a significant private library.

Suitably proposed candidates were added to a sometimes lengthy waiting list before their application was voted on by members. The ballot was anonymous with members placing a ball into a box indicating their assent or otherwise of the applicant. Candidates who made it to the ballot stage had, in theory, been pre-approved by members and therefore the use of the black ball should have been an exceptionally rare event. However, it did happen and some candidates experienced the social indignity of being blackballed. Indeed, Henry Irving, the acclaimed stage-actor, suffered this humiliation on his initial attempt to join The Garrick.

There were a variety of reasons why men became members of a gentlemen’s club. One critically important factor was that club membership conferred prestige on an individual and it was an incontrovertible sign of an elevated social status. Self-made men, in particular, were delighted to be accepted for membership as it demonstrated to the wider world that they had joined the elite establishment. Membership was equally important to elite men and they regarded it as a natural and automatic rite of passage in their lives.

Clubs also provided a retreat from the stresses and strains of daily life. Members knew they could seek refuge from the outside world and remain undisturbed at their club. Indeed, club staff were trained in protecting members from their problems. The committee at Brook’s Club, for instance, resolved that hall porters should try to decline any summons that was delivered. Similarly, the Arts Club committee barred the dissemination of any information about their members to inquirers. Even a man’s wife could encounter difficulties trying to reach her husband at his club. According to Percy Colson, an historian of White’s, if a member tells the hall porter he is not in the club, ‘if anyone – even his wife – calls, well, he is as inaccessible as the Grand Lama of Tibet.’

Clubs unquestionably provided members with a degree of privacy and sanctuary from the outside world. However, men also joined a club to use the practical facilities it offered and for the enjoyment it could give them. Clubs typically provided members with a dining room, library, drawing room, study, billiards and games room and in some cases even bedrooms. They gave men a place to work, relax and meet with their friends. For many a club was a surrogate home which they used as a base to conduct their everyday lives. Small wonder then that the French traveller Francois de la Rochefoucauld firmly believed a gentlemen’s club ‘provided everything that people want’.

A member could easily spend the day at their club. They could breakfast at their club early in the morning and then head for the drawing room to complete any essential correspondence or read the newspapers. After midday they could lunch with friends and await the arrival of the evening papers and the flock of members who appeared before dinner.

Clubs were renowned for the quality of their meals. ‘The dinners are good and cheap,’ declared Max Schlesinger, especially when ‘compared to the extortionate prices of the London hotels’. Similarly, Captain Gronow vividly recalled the wonderful evening meals he used to delight in during his time at Crockfords. Gronow boasted of regularly enjoying ‘A supper of the most exquisite kind, prepared by the famous Ude, and accompanied by the best wines in the world, together with every luxury of the season’.

The standards were so high that members often preferred to entertain friends at their club rather than at home. The civil servant, Sir Almerick Fitzroy, for example, chose the Travellers’ Club as the venue for his 50th birthday celebration.

After dinner a member could drink and gossip with their friends or, depending on their interests, play billiards or gamble. Gambling was a passion for many clubmen and the notorious gaming clubs (White’s, Boodle’s and Brook’s) saw huge stakes wagered every evening. Lord Lyttleton lamented that ‘the rattling of a dice-box at White’s may one day or other shake down all our fine oaks’. The gambling conducted within these clubs could undoubtedly get out of control, Indeed, Horace Walpole observed that ‘a thousand meadows and cornfields are staked at every throw’. Perhaps unsurprisingly this febrile atmosphere could have dire repercussions. In 1755, for instance, Sir John Bland lost £32,000 in a single evening and subsequently killed himself as a result.

It was also possible to stay overnight in some clubs and some members actually lived on the premises. The American author Henry James was delighted when a room at the Reform Club became available. ‘They are let by the year only, and one waits one’s turn long – (for years); but when mine the other day came round I went it blind instead of letting it pass,’ he explained in a letter to his friend and revealed that his spacious room was ‘tranquil, utterly, and singularly well-serviced, and I find I can work there’.

Gentlemen’s clubs dominated the lives of elite men during the 18th and 19th centuries. As an article in the New York Times on 1 August 1885 put it, ‘The custom of practically living in clubs is so widespread and so deeply rooted that it would be a matter of practical impossibility to the average Englishman to any other method of passing his time.’

However, their popularity began to fade during the 20th century. Many members and servants lost their lives during the First World War and clubs inevitably suffered from declining attendances. Even when the war ended clubs struggled to retain their allure and were increasingly viewed as outdated institutions. The Second World War hastened their decline further and many clubs were forced to either amalgamate or go out of business.

Further reading:

• British Clubs, Bernard Darwin (William Collins of London, 1944)
• The Reminiscences and Recollections of Captain Gronow, Rees Howell Gronow (John C. Nimmo, 1943)
• London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late-Victorian Britain, Amy Milne-Smith (Palgrave, 2011)
• High Society: A Social History of the Regency Period, 1788–1830, Venetia Murray (Viking, 1998)