London Clubs: Their History & TreasuresNevill, Ralph
History
London Clubs: Their History & Treasures
Nevill, Ralph
Clubs -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
Brooks was succeeded in the management by a Mr. Griffin, whose name can
be traced down to 1815, though for the six years preceding this date the
management figures as “Griffin and Co.” In 1815, however, he disappears,
and at some subsequent time the mastership devolved upon Wheelwright,
who in 1824 took Halse into partnership, and in 1831 retired; whereupon
Halse took Henry Banderet into partnership, himself retiring in 1846,
and receiving a grant from the club of £500 on account of his interest
in the unexpired lease of the house, and 50 guineas for the surrender of
his lodging therein. From that time until his death in 1880, Banderet
continued Master; and to him is to be attributed the credit of having
established in Brooks’s that refined if somewhat solemn comfort which
resembles rather the luxury of a first-class private house than a club,
and which has led to its being humorously described as “like dining in a
Duke’s house with the Duke lying dead upstairs.” His attention to his
duties as Master was unremitting, and it was said that, during the
thirty-four years in which he filled that post, he had never been known
to be absent, except on one occasion when he was persuaded to take a
holiday; but he found himself so miserable that by noon he was back at
Brooks’s, which he never afterwards left until his death, when the
entire management was taken over by the club.
As a building, Brooks’s is a handsome and suitable club-house, which
from time to time has sustained a number of alterations, most of them of
a judicious kind. The balcony on the first-floor, formerly such a
feature of the façade, has long been removed.
About twenty years ago considerable changes were made in the club-house,
and No. 2 Park Place was incorporated as part of it. Up to that time the
coffee-room had been what is now the strangers’ smoking-room on the
first-floor, the only smoking-room being the round room at the back of
the house, now divided into dressing-rooms. There was practically no
library, the only apology for one being a small room beyond the
coffee-room, containing little except Parliamentary reports, back
volumes of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, and novels from a
circulating library. Opening out of this library was another small room
into which hardly anyone ever went, and through that, again, a very
small dressing-room which hardly anyone ever used. During the
alterations these uncomfortable little rooms, together with the rest of
No. 2 Park Place, were swept away, and the present coffee-rooms, with
library above, erected in their place, the old drawing-rooms and
coffee-rooms being given up to smokers and their guests. At the same
time the hall and staircase were entirely reconstructed.
Amongst the important reforms introduced after Banderet’s death was the
institution of club bedrooms, and also the privilege of inviting guests
to dinner, and—in May 1896—to luncheon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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