Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/405

 n s. ix. MAY 16, i9i4.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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anywhere else can I find the name foxes' lungs given to any herb. The greater mul- lein was called bullock's lungwort, but the true lungwort, according to Gerard, was the spotted comfrey. I have not ' The Devil's Law Case ' at hand, but the quotation given by your correspondent ante, p. 324, under lungs of fox, certainly does not appear to refer to a plant, and I should be glad to have his authority for so applying it. C. C. B.

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Club Makers and Club Members. By T. H. S.

Escott. (Fisher Unwin, 12s. Qd. net.) MR. ESCOTT'S long experience of club life has enabled him to collect the materials for this interesting record. The club histories of John Timbs and Major Arthur Griffiths deal with club structures, the cost of their erection, the fines or subscriptions paid by their members, their scale of coffee-room prices, and the profit or loss on their conduct. Mr. Escott's object has been to trace and illustrate the club system generally, and we have presented to us the histories of the various clubs and much about their chief members. These are portrayed as types of their time, and the incidents in which' they figure are regarded as reflections of national life and manners.

" The best club in London " takes a prominent place, and a description is given of the social life of the House of Commons in the time of Bellamy, who was noted for his good cooking, .and especially for his pork pies. We have been informed that Palmerston much enjoyed the fare provided, and on one occasion, when his Ministry was defeated, and Gladstone, who was one of its members, came to him, looking very glum, he told him to cheer up and invited him to go with him to Bellamy's ancl have one of his good mutton chops. Bellamy had a very skilful carver, and members used to say of him " that every turn of his knife improved the flavour of the joint."

Under ' The Club-Room Doings of the Georgian Era ' we get plenty of gossip. There was General Scott, who " dined lightly and won heavily," his winnings at whist amounting to 200,000?. Mr. Escott states that whist had its first club in Graham's, St. James's Street. Brooks, the founder of the club bearing his name, had been a gentleman's gentleman, and his personal appear- ance was " as aristocratic as a Whig duke's." Throughout the Georgian era the chief centre of the inner life of Brooks's was the gambling- room. Like its immediate ancestor and eventual rival, White's became in turn a club parent, and had a new rival in the Dover House Club. Here the Regent " showed acumen and industry in playing the candid friend to his sometime favourite Fox, never forgetting, and always taking care to remind others, that Fox, the popular champion, had begun by being the Court mouthpiece, the avowed enemy of political liberty."

The honour of initiating a club for the exclusive purpose of bringing together men of various and even diametrically opposite political views belongs to Sir Thomas Acland. When he mooted the idea at Oxford, he found enthusiastic supporters in Sir James East and Sir .H. H. Inglis. The club,

as our readers will remember, took the name of the keeper of the Albemarle Street Hotel, Grillion ; here Lord John Russell and Lord Derby would meet ; and Disraeli and Gladstone, although " not of their own free choice," would find them- selves neighbours at the same table. On 27 April,

1883, Gladstone sat down companionless to table ; be entered after his name " one bottle of cham- pagne." Lord Houghton, the club poet laureate, added the words :

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

During the seventies the Reform Club allowed" T. B. Potter, the member for Rochdale, to occupy a room as the temporary offices of the Cobden Club, which now has its head-quarters in Broadway Court, Westminster.

In 1883 the most important political club founded in recent days the National Liberal Club was established in Whitehall.

Under ' Arts, Science, and Culture in the Clubbable Mood ' we have much about the Garrick, the Arts Club (where we find George Meredith, Rossetti, and Swinburne), the Arundel Club, and the Savage (with Tom Hood the younger, editor- of Fun, Clement Scott, H. S. Leigh, George Rose, the creator of " Mrs. Brown," and a host of other well-known names).

The Samuel Johnson centenary of December,

1884, brought into existence the Johnson Club* After a preliminary supper at " The Cock," arranged by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, a Johnsonian brotherhood of thirty-one members was formed. Mr. Unwin was proclaimed the Prior, and had among his fellow-clubmen Mr. Birrell, F. W* Chesson, Mr. Oscar Browning, Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, and Sir F. C. Gould.

Among the ladies' clubs mentioned is the- Ladies' AthenaBum in Dover Street, having for its president Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, and among its leading literary members Mrs- Humphry Ward and Mrs. W. K. Clifford.

The volume contains twenty-four full-page illustrations, including the clubs of Pall Mall, Boodle's, St. James's Street, and WTiite's in 1751, and portraits of Fox, Crockford, Soyer, and Francis Fladgate (the father of the Garrick). In the picture of the Johnson Club, Mr. Fisher Unwin, F. W. Chesson, and Mr. E. J. Leveson are depicted as Priors.

Mr. Escott has produced a valuable addition to the history of clubs.

The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries- of Spain in 1772-6. Translated and compiled, with Notes and an Introduction, by Bolton Glanvill Corney. Vol. I. (Hakluyt Society.)

THE exploits related here represent part of the last action of Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the South Seas. The Spanish king still claimed sovereignty over the " Indies," and over any island or stretch of coast new discovered southwards between his own shores and distant Asia. But from time to time the descents of French, and yet more of English, explorers upon known regions, and their discovery of new islands, threw the Spanish governors into embarrassment, and caused them to fit out expeditions bent on ascertaining exactly what foothold their rivals had gained, or, if they had but touched and passed, what they had learnt, or how they had affected the native population. In the documents printed hero we-