The Club (dining club)

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The Club was a London dining club founded in 1764 by essayist Samuel Johnson, and Joshua Reynolds, the painter.

Initially, the club would meet one evening per week at seven, at the Turk's Head Inn in Gerrard Street, Soho. Later, meetings were reduced to once per fortnight whilst Parliament was in session, and were held at rooms in St James's Street. Though the initial suggestion was Reynolds', it is Dr Johnson whose name is most closely associated with the Club.

John Timbs, in his Club Life in London, gives an account of the Club's centennial dinner in 1864, which was celebrated at the Clarendon hotel. Henry Hart Milman, the English historian, was treasurer.

The Club's motto was "Esto perpetua".

1 Members
- 1.1 The 19th century
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Members

The nine original members were:

Samuel Johnson
Joshua Reynolds
Edmund Burke
Dr. Christopher Nugent
Topham Beauclerk
Bennet Langton
Oliver Goldsmith
Anthony Chamier
John Hawkins

The club later expanded. At any time there was a forty-member maximum. Later members included:

By 1791, the membership recorded by James Boswell included:

[edit] The 19th century

The historian Henry Reeve recorded details of Club membership in his diaries. Members in the 1800s included:

George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
Henry Petty-FitzMaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne
Charles Eastlake
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (March 9, 1830)
Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope (May 14, 1833)
Henry Hart Milman (February 23, 1836)
Sir Henry Holland (February 18, 1840)
William Whewell
Charles Austin (March 7, 1843)
Thomas Pemberton Leigh, 1st Baron Kingsdown (February 25, 1845)
George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (May 20, 1845)
Richard Owen (May 20, 1845)
Sylvain Van de Weyer (February 9, 1847)
Sir David Dundas (February 23, 1847)
Harry Powlett, 4th Duke of Cleveland (June 5, 1849)
Samuel Wilberforce (June 5, 1849)
Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone (June 25, 1850)
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (June 17, 1851)
Robert Rolfe, 1st Baron Cranworth (June 17, 1851)
Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (February 21, 1854)
William Gladstone (March 10, 1857)
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (April 21, 1857)
George Grote, (March 9, 1858)
Edward Stanley, Lord Stanley (February 14, 1860)
William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley (February 14, 1860)
George Richmond (February 14, 1860)
Archibald Campbell Tait (April 9, 1861)
Henry Reeve (April 9, 1861)
Roderick Murchison (June 18, 1861)
Edmund Walker Head (February 25, 1862)
Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke (May 12, 1863)
Spencer Walpole (March 8, 1864)
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (February 28, 1865)
James Anthony Froude (February 28, 1865)
Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (March 14, 1865)
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (March 14, 1865)
Hugh Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns (February 27, 1866)
Edward Twisleton (April 24, 1866)
Charles Thomas Newton (March 4, 1879)
Joseph Dalton Hooker (March 4, 1879)
Matthew Arnold (February 28, 1882)
Joseph Boehm (November 27, 1888)
Edward Maunde Thompson (November 27, 1888)
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (April 26, 1892)^[1]

By 1881, the members of the club included John Tyndall, Sir Frederic Leighton, and Lord Houghton, with Henry Reeve serving as treasurer.

Other prominent 19th century members included Lord Macauly, Thomas Huxley, Lord Acton, Lord Dufferin, W. H. E. Lecky, and Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.

[edit] References

^ Mountstuart Elphinstone, Grant Duff (1904). Notes from a diary, 1892-1895. Dutton, i 41.

Life of Johnson, James Boswell, 1791
The life and selections from the correspondence of William Whewell, Janet Mary Douglas, 1881
Inns and Taverns of Old London, Henry C. Shelley
Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, John Knox Laughton
"The Clubs of London", National Review, Article III, April 1857