Club Government

How the Early Victorian World was Ruled from London Clubs

Seth Alexander Thevoz

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781784538187
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786723727
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book phenomenon of `Club Government' in the mid-nineteenth century, when many of the functions of government were alleged to have taken place behind closed doors, in the secretive clubs of London's St. James's district, has not been adequately historicized. Despite `Club Government' being referenced in most major political histories of the period, it is a topic which has never before enjoyed a full-length study. Making use of previously-sealed club archives, and adopting a broad range of analytical techniques, this work of political history, social history, sociology and quantitative approaches to history seeks to deepen our understanding of the distinctive and novel ways in which British political culture evolved in this period. The book concludes that historians have hugely underestimated the extent of club influence on `high politics' in Westminster, and though the reputation of clubs for intervening in elections was exaggerated, the culture and secrecy involved in gentleman's clubs had a huge impact on Britain and the British Empire.

CHAPTER 1

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL CLUBS

Introduction

Norman Gash identified the 1830s and 1840s as ‘the age of club government’, seeing those decades as the peak of clubs' influence in politics.¹ This chapter sets out the institutional history of the most prominent clubs, insofar as it is relevant to their political role. It is not a narrative of club histories, for which the reader is better served by the works of John Timbs, T. H. S. Escott, or Charles Graves.² Despite a large volume of published material, the lack of any one full-scale study of club politics in the period makes it common for simple factual and chronological errors to persist, even in recent major works on this era by established authorities.³ Furthermore, the origins and founding political objectives of several key clubs are still disputed within the existing literature, and so these inconsistencies must be resolved before embarking further.

The clubs of the era with political objectives are relatively easy to identify, although several such as the National Club and the Free Trade Club have largely evaded the attention of historians.⁴ (See Figure 1.1) Whilst these establishments can be viewed in isolation, it must be stressed that such political clubs were far more commonly viewed in the context of ‘Clubland’ – the physical, geographical expression, with the concentration of clubs focussed around the ‘L’ shape of St James's Street and Pall Mall. All the clubs named are included in Figure 1.1, which shows the physical location of the political clubs (sometimes at several successive addresses) in the context of neighbouring apolitical clubs. From the 1860s, further clubs would be founded in other parts of central London, including north of Piccadilly and west of Regent Street, but as noted in the Introduction, the political clubs were sharply focussed in the St James's area, a short distance from Westminster.

Table 1.1 London clubs with political objectives, active in 1832–68

Political clubs were thus only a small part of ‘Clubland’, and so although this book focuses on the political clubs named in Table 1.1, it is necessary to draw upon instances from ostensibly apolitical clubs as well, especially the two which had a noticeable proportion of their membership drawn from the House of Commons – the Athenaeum Club (usually known simply as ‘the Athenaeum’) and the Travellers' Club. Both had more MPs amongst their members than several of the smaller political clubs combined. Additionally, the organisational similarities between clubs are such that some comparisons with non-political clubs are revealing: clubs emulated one another's business model, and the shape of political clubs was in great measure influenced by transformations in apolitical clubs throughout the nineteenth century.

Figure 1.1 Map of London clubs in the St James's area 1832–68, including all the political clubs.
Source: Author's research, overlaid on Richard Bowles, Plan of Pall Mall, St James's Square, etc, in Fagan, The Reform Club, 1836–1886, p. 9.

The Traditional Clubs

There are numerous accounts of the origins of the earliest clubs and societies, yet beyond Peter Clark's major study and Valérie Capdeville's scholarship, there is little by way of historiography offering different interpretations for the raison d'etre of the earliest clubs.⁵ It is almost universally accepted that they were primarily social institutions, although the standard journalistic accounts have taken at face value the claim that early clubs evolved from ‘chocolate houses’ – whilst this was technically true, it overlooks that such a description was often a euphemism for the legitimate front operation of these clubs, concealing the illegal gambling which went on in the back rooms, out of sight of the shop or coffee room which dominated the facade. The legal standing of being a private members' club thus complicated matters for authorities seeking to raid establishments where gambling was suspected of taking place. Gambling remained illegal throughout this period and, until the Gaming Act 1845 made it easier for authorities to shut gaming houses down, the popularity of gambling continued to be a major factor in the growth of clubs, where such activities could take place with added discretion.⁶

White's is generally accepted to be London's oldest club, but even the universally-cited 1693 foundation date is misleading; it would be more accurate to record that today's White's is the London club with the earliest roots, for it only gradually evolved into a club in the mid-eighteenth century.⁷ The White's precursor shop moved between different premises along St James's Street in its first few decades, finally settling on the present location in 1755.⁸ It is usually presented as a Tory heartland; an assertion which is challenged through much of this book.⁹ The standard caricature of White's as a home of Pittites, and Brooks's opposite as a rival haven for Foxites overlooks the fact that both Pitt and Fox had in fact been members of both clubs.¹⁰ (For that matter, Fox also belonged to Boodle's, which had no overt political ties.)¹¹ Neither Brooks's nor White's originally had any professed politics – their original apolitical character was preserved for decades, and the anonymous authors of the first history of White's believed that, as late as 1781, the club ‘still preserved its character for neutrality in politics’.¹² Such speculation sounds plausible, even if the extrapolation of a later White's historian of ‘Whigs and Tories living together quite happily’ sounds exaggerated.¹³ The anonymous authors of the first White's history cite Pitt the Younger's ‘use of the club as a place of meeting with his supporters’ as the turning point in its politicisation, and the driving force for Charles James Fox's alienation from the club, and his turning to Brooks's for meetings of his Whig supporters.¹⁴

Between the age of Pitt and the onset of the Great Reform Act, White's' link to Conservative politics was extremely informal. An anonymous member interviewed by the News and Sunday Herald recalled in 1835 ‘White's was formerly, and indeed until three or four years ago, the grand rendezvous of the Tory party’, the word ‘rendezvous’ being an interesting distinction, emphasising the club's value as a venue rather than as an organisation.¹⁵ By the 1830s, the conservatism of its membership was in doubt, and Thomas Raikes complained in 1832 that ‘Brookes's [sic] … is purely a Whig reunion [but] … White's, which was formerly devoted to the other side, being now of no colour, [is] frequented indiscriminately by all.’ Subsequent historians have largely agreed with this verdict, with Robert Stewart writing that by the 1830s it had ‘lost most of its political flavour.’¹⁶ If this was the case, then the practicality of White's as a venue would have been compromised. The anonymous member from 1835 described it as ‘more of a Club of political gossip and private scandal than a gambling Club’.¹⁷

White's' rival, the oldest of the Liberal-affiliated clubs, was Brooks's, which was founded in 1764, and has since 1778 been located almost opposite White's on the west side of St James's Street. G. O. Trevelyan wrote that Brooks's, ‘the most famous political club that will have ever existed in England … was not political in origin’.¹⁸ The club's first official history noted that as with White's, its focus ‘certainly for the first forty years of its existence, was the unlimited gambling which there prevailed’.¹⁹ Its reputation for Whiggery came through its association with Fox, something which was emphasised in late eighteenth century popular representations of the club. (Figure 1.2) What has been written of politics at Brooks's has tended to focus on the club's Foxite connections, as with John Timbs, who wrote the longest of any of his accounts of London clubs on Brooks's, dedicating over half of it to incidents involving Fox.²⁰ By the onset of Reform, the Foxite personality cult was strong at the Club, which hosted a dining society of Foxite MPs memorialising their late lamented icon, the Fox Club.

Whilst the political connection at White's waned with time, it seemed to grow stronger at Brooks's. ‘The 1830s saw the apotheosis of Brooks's as a political club’, asserts Philip Ziegler in his study of the club's involvement in the Reform Bill. He argues that the framing of the Bill, and the subsequent decade of Whig supremacy, led to the optimum involvement of the Club in cabinet (but not parliamentary) politics, citing Clarendon's protest that one might as well go to Brooks's as a cabinet meeting, as they amounted to the same thing.²¹ Certainly, nineteen out of the twenty-one members of Earl Grey's cabinet were members.²²

A noticeable characteristic of the pre-Reform Act clubs, both political and apolitical, was their modest size. Early clubhouses varied from the small converted townhouse (i.e. White's) to the purpose-built construction in the image of a townhouse (i.e. Arthur's, Boodle's, Brooks's, Crockford's and the Travellers' Club). Even the largest rooms in such buildings, like the first-floor Subscription Room of Brooks's, were not conducive to large-scale political meetings, being relatively cramped, and more likely to be set aside for gambling or dining than politics.

Figure 1.2 James Gillray, Promis'd Horrors of the French Invasion (1796) depicting a Fox-led army from Brooks's on the right invading White's on the left, flagellating Pitt the Younger, and absconding with private wealth. Gillray, who lived on St James's Street, frequently referenced clubs in his work.
Source: James Gillray, Promis'd Horrors of the French Invasion, or Forcible Reasons for Negotiating a Regicide Peace (London: Hannah Humphrey, 20 October 1796)

Amongst the nearby clubs which flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were Arthur's, Boodle's and Crockford's – all popular with parliamentarians. Despite numerous references to significant political members in the eighteenth century, there are relatively few instances of their having had any political impact in the post-Reform era, their main interest being as venues for gossip.²³ Conservative MP William Mackworth Praed recorded how Boodle's, a social club founded in 1762, was part of the nineteenth century parliamentary world, but in a purely apolitical sense, with his rhyme,

In Parliament I fill my seat,

With many other noodles;

And lay my head in Jermyn Street,

And sip my hock at Boodle's.²⁴

One exception to the marginal importance of apolitical clubs was the Union Club. Its foundation in 1799 was to have far-reaching consequences for the independence of all clubs. Despite the Club being apolitical in the period covered here, its name marked a time ‘when the Union of Parliaments … was in agitation’.²⁵ Until the Union Club came into being, all clubs had been proprietary; their premises being leased from a landlord who drew a profit from the running of such clubs, and members had a legal status akin to tenants. The Union Club was the first club to own the freehold of its premises, and each of its members also became a shareholder.²⁶ Almost all the political clubs followed suit, although it was still the norm for establishments such as the Carlton, Reform and National Clubs to rent interim premises for their first few years until their purpose-built premises were completed. Some of the short-lived clubs which closed after only a couple of years – namely the Westminster Reform Club and the Free Trade Club – did not last long enough to realise their ambition to move out of rented accommodation. Such was the extent that club ownership of premises became the norm that even the longest-standing proprietary clubs eventually raised the funds among members to ‘buy out’ the freehold of their premises and belatedly became members' clubs, as happened with Brooks's in 1880, White's in 1891, and Boodle's in 1896.²⁷

The nineteenth-century switch from proprietary clubs to members' clubs had profound implications for how members related to the newer political clubs. Since members were now shareholders, they had a strong economic incentive to see their club flourish. As Bernard Darwin observed in a 1943 history of Clubland, ‘Whatever a club possesses … there is an immense difference between enjoying these things on sufferance as a guest or owning some minute fraction of them as a member.’²⁸ Conversely, the collapse and bankruptcy of a club would mean that members were liable to cover club debts – a serious disincentive to establishing new clubs, with Benjamin Disraeli cautiously citing the case of the closure of Crockford's in 1844 (of which he had been a member, left liable for the Club's debts) as a possible reason to not establish a Junior Carlton Club in the early 1860s. Indeed, the Junior Carlton Club only achieved adequate backing when it was made clear that members would not be held liable in the event of the Club's collapse.²⁹ Members also had an economic incentive to keep club membership numbers capped, since increases in club membership would reduce each member's proportion of a club's assets. Increases in membership numbers would also reduce each member's voting strength at open meetings. There were thus strong incentives in place to restrict the number of new members recruited in member-owned clubs. In short, the new model of a club that was owned by the members encouraged its members to behave in a markedly different way to the members of eighteenth century clubs.

The strong influence of the Union Club's example can be traced in the archives of clubs which were founded in the nineteenth century, as newer clubs consciously emulated its structure. When the Reform Clu...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Development of Political Clubs
• 2. Clubs and the MPs’ World I: A Quantitative Analysis
• 3. Clubs and the MPs’ World II: Experiences in Clubland Space
• 4. Clubs as an MP’s Base: Accommodation, Dining, Information and Organisational Support
• 5. Clubs and Whips in the House of Commons
• 6. Clubs and Electoral Interventions
• Conclusion
• Appendix Appendix to Chapter 2: List of sources used in the database of club memberships for MPs who sat in the House of Commons in 1832–68
• Notes
• Bibliography