In the early seventies Evans’s ceased to attract, and, after undergoing various vicissitudes and sheltering several clubs, the house finally became the headquarters of boxing, being now occupied by the National Sporting Club. The original staircase remains, and a number of prints recalling the palmy days of the prize-ring decorate the walls of the club-house. Ninety years ago, it should be added, the prize-fighting fraternity had a club of their own, called the Daffy Club, which met at the Castle Tavern, Holborn, then kept by the famous boxers, Tom Belcher and Tom Spring. The walls of the long room in which it met were adorned by a number of sporting prints and portraits of famous pugilistic heroes, amongst them Belcher himself, Gentleman Jackson, Dutch Sam, Gregson, Humphreys, Mendoza, Cribb, Molyneux, Gulley, Randall, Turner, Martin, Harmer, Spring, Neat, Hickman, Painter, Scroggins, Tom Owen, and many others. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II CURIOUS CLUBS OF THE PAST—PRATT’S—BEEFSTEAK CLUBS, OLD AND NEW Many curiously-named clubs existed in the past. Addison, for instance, speaking of the clubs of his time, mentions several the names of which were probably merely humorous exaggerations. Names such as the Mum Club, the Ugly Club, can hardly be considered to have been in actual use. Real clubs were the Lying Club, for which untruthfulness was supposed to be an indispensable qualification; the Odd Fellows’ Club; the Humbugs (which met at the Blue Posts, in Covent Garden); the Samsonic Society; the Society of Bucks; the Purl Drinkers; the Society of Pilgrims, held at the Woolpack, in the Kingsland Road; the Thespian Club; the Great Bottle Club; the Aristocratic “Je ne sçai quoi” Club, held at the Star and Garter, in Pall Mall, of which the Prince of Wales and the Dukes of York, Clarence, Orleans, Norfolk, Bedford, and other notabilities, were members; the Sons of the Thames Society; the Blue Stocking Club; the “No Pay No Liquor” Club, held at the Queen and Artichoke, in the Hampstead Road, and of which the ceremony, on a new member’s introduction, was, after his paying a fee on entrance of one shilling, that he should wear a hat throughout the first evening of his membership, made in the shape of a quart pot, and drink to the health of his brother members in a gilt goblet of ale. At Camden Town met the “Social Villagers,” in a room at the Bedford Arms. One of the first clubs was the October Club, composed of some hundred and fifty staunch Tories, chiefly country Members of Parliament. They met at the Bell, in King Street, Westminster—that street in which Spenser starved, and Dryden’s brother kept a grocer’s shop. A portrait of Queen Anne, by Dahl, hung in the club-room.