He was one of the original members of Russell’s Club for Ladies. Here he would turn up of a night with the largest shirt-front in London, in the middle of which sparkled a diamond of prodigious size. The Colonel was sitting one night in the drawing-room of the club, waiting, no doubt, for one of those ladies for whose special convenience Russell had founded his club. A boyish officer in one of the regiments of Guards was sitting not far off staring at the Colonel, whose get-up fascinated him. The youthful Guardsman was not nearly as sober as he might have been. Having gazed, fascinated, for a length of time at the Colonel, he called out: “Waiter!” “Yessir,” said the servant who answered the summons. “Oh—er—waiter, who’s (hic) that man with the lighthouse in his stomach?” From that day to the day of his death Whitehead was known as Colonel Lighthouse. The Colonel had a big house outside Margate, to which at week-ends he invited his theatrical and literary friends. And the highest sort of high-jinks were carried on there. A certain Irish nobleman was on his death-bed. The priest came to him. The holy man was anxious to get a general confession from him. The nobleman declared he had nothing to confess. “Look back on your past life, my lord. Is there nothing you regret?” “Nothing,” he replied; “_I never denied myself a pleasure_!” He closed his eyes, fell back on his pillow, and, in that happy belief, died. Whitehead was a gentleman of that kidney, and brings to an end my selections from an almost inexhaustible list of odd fish. CHAPTER X BOHEMIAN CLUBS THE promotion of clubs became a very busy industry under the consulate of Plancus. Of these promotions but few survive, and of these few none are of the proprietary kind. A club, to survive, must have arisen in response to an actual need, and out of the regular assembling of those who are kindred spirits, or who are brought together by common professional interests. The promoters of proprietary clubs are forced to provide for their enterprises both a demand and a supply. Were the gambling laws less drastic in this country, I can easily conceive that a fortune might be made by the proprietor of a roulette and baccarat club. But the promotion of ordinary social rialtos involves a considerable amount of risk. I must have belonged to a dozen of these mushroom institutions between 1870 and 1890, and I was on the committee of a fourth of them. But whether we started with palatial premises or with an unpretentious flat, the end came soon or late. Members seemed always to have an insuperable diffidence about paying their subscriptions, and proprietors had an equally insuperable objection to expelling defaulters.