"Founded on the model of the old tavern or convivial Clubs, but confined exclusively to members of the Naval Service, the Royal Naval Club numbered among its members men from the days of Boscawen, Rodney, and 'the first of June' downwards. It was a favourite retreat for William IV. when Duke of Clarence; and his comrade, Sir Philip Durham, the survivor of Nelson, and almost the last of the 'old school,' frequented it. Sir Philip, however, was by no means one of the Trunnion class. Coarseness and profane language, on the contrary, he especially avoided; but in 'spinning a yarn' there has been none like him since the days of Smollett. The loss of the Royal George, from which he was one of the few, if, indeed, not only officer, who escaped, was a favourite theme; and the Admiral, not content with having made his escape, was wont to maintain that he swam ashore with his midshipman's dirk in his teeth. Yet Sir Philip would allow no one to trench on his manor. One day, when a celebrated naval captain, with the view of quizzing him, was relating the loss of a merchantman on the coast of South America, laden with Spitalfields products, and asserting that silk was so plentiful, and the cargo so scattered, that the porpoises were for some hours enmeshed in its folds: 'Ay, ay,' replied Sir Philip, 'I believe you; for I was once cruising on that coast myself, in search of a privateer, and having lost our fore-topsail one morning in a gale of wind, we next day found it tied round a whale's neck by way of a cravat.' Sir Philip was considered to have the best of it, and the novelist was mute."[21] FOOTNOTES: [21] London Clubs, 1853. THE WYNDHAM CLUB. This Club, which partakes of the character of Arthur's and Boodle's, was founded by Lord Nugent, its object being, as stated in Rule 1, "to secure a convenient and agreeable place of meeting for a society of gentlemen, all connected with each other by a common bond of literary or personal acquaintance." The Club, No. 11, St. James's-square, is named from the mansion having been the residence of William Wyndham, who has been described, and the description has been generally adopted as appropriate, as a model of the true English gentleman; and the fitness of the Club designation is equally characteristic. He was an accomplished scholar and mathematician. Dr. Johnson, writing of a visit which Wyndham paid him, says: "Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature, and there Wyndham is 'inter stellas luna minores.'" In the mansion also lived the accomplished John, Duke of Roxburghe; and here the Roxburghe Library was sold in 1812, the sale extending to forty-one days. Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough lived here in 1814; and subsequently, the Earl of Blessington, who possessed a fine collection of pictures. THE TRAVELLERS' CLUB.