Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BEST CLUB IN LONDON The social life of the House of Commons, a typical instance of the progress from pub. to club?Mediaeval M.P’s. taking their ease and food at some of the innumerable taverns adjoining their chamber?The
Cock ?The Fleece ?Their social-political life and club arrangements?Also Heaven and Hell ?Germs of St. Stephen’s club life in Bellamy’s?Bellamy’s social arrangements, port and pies?The pie that came too late for Pitt?Improved club accommodation in Barry’s new building, but Bellamy’s not dead yet?Caterers since Bellamy?St. Stephen’s passes from proprietary club to members’ club and keeps house for itself?Its kitchen and cellar resources?Its charges?Rise in price for the
four hundred a yearers ?The Labour M.P. and the red mullet not en papillote?The House of Commons Club in its prime during the sixties ?Its twentieth-century conversion into a
cock-and-hen
club, to the great discomfort of the womanless M.P.?The smoking-room as a link between the Bellamy and Barry buildings? I don’t like smoking
says T. B. Macaulay; Nor I says Frederick Harrison?But Sir Walter Scott, Brougham, Eldon, Stowell, and Bulwer Lytton do?The smoker’s progress from the Mermaid to the House of Commons Club?The four hundred a yearers’ joint-stock palace a reflection of club characteristics of all periods, betting and gambling excepted ?The Lords as the second best. It was Edmund Burke who called the newspaper press
a fourth estate. The originator of an equally familiar description of another estate, now in its social aspect to be considered, cannot be as definitely identified. The expression first became current about 1840; it continued in general use certainly till 1865 and probably throughout the seventies. The underlying idea had been convey…