Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/397

 12 S.X.APRIL 29, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 323 he says in it that I recollect being present complete, and might be brightened with when, Swinburne, who was a warm sup- some reminiscences of good things said and porter of the claim of Italy to independence, done, if I had not had before my mind the read, to the delight of the Club, a poem warning of the Beefsteaks : which he had just then written upon the subject. After the amalgamation with the Ethnological Society, when the united Societies became the Anthropological Insti- 1 tute, the Cannibal Club ceased to meet, j but on the return of Sir Richard Burton to England I made an unsuccessful attempt Ne fldos inter amicos sit Qui dicta foras eliminat. E. BRABROOK. SOME CHANGES IN FLEET STREET. to revive it. We had one dinner together RECENT demolitions having effaced some and no more The interval between the buildings of more than ordinary interest, Council and the evening meetings has for i theip { deserves chronicling in these some years been filled up by a dinner. j pageg) and it may be as we ll to place on When I joined the London and Middlesex | recor d familiar allusions and some descrip- Archseological Society in 1865 they had a ; t j on o f their appearance, club which occasionally met for dinners No 189> F i eet street. This building, and took country week-end excursions. | having three floors and ground floor slightly After some years it ceased to meet. | ra i se( i above street level and basemerrt The Royal Society of Literature had no ; lighted from a rail-guarded area, was built club till after the death of Sir Patrick j m 1802 from the designs of Sir John Soane. Colquhoun, the President, in 1891. One | Consequently it had fluted pilasters rising was then started and called the Colquhoun | to a cornice dividing the second and third Club out of respect for his memory. Of ; floors. These and the flattened screen this club, the first president was Dr. Taylor, surmounting the top were characteristic of Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, i this architect and appear in drawings and and the latest president, Sir Henry NewboJt. photographs so numerous that to give detail Under the guidance of the late Dr. Ames, here is almost superfluous. The house who was Secretary of the Society and of the replaced a much earlier building, to which Club, it had great success. He made the famous Mrs. Salmon brought her Wax- hospitality a leading characteristic of it ; at nearly every meeting of the Club one or more distinguished visitors accepted works Show from St. Martin's-le-Grand very early in the eighteenth century. The exact date is not known, but there is the familiar the invitation to attend, and opportunity j allusion to her in The Spectator dated April was given to them to address the Club on mi. it is known that prior to the re- the subjects which most interested them. In 1872 I attended the Brighton meeting of the British Association, was .elected on the General Committee and became a Red Lion cub. What that means is well described by Sir William Tilden in his Life of Sir William Ramsay, and by Mr. Leonard Huxley in his article in The Corn- hill Magazine for March, 1922. Other coteries which should be mentioned were the Reunion Club in Maiden Lane, Strand, and the Urban Club at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, both of them resort^ of men of various professions but of high capacity and bright social qualifications. There were resorts of a humbler kind, such building she removed to No. 17. The old building, while in use for this exhibition, is illustrated in a plate published by N. Smith, June 26, 1793. In this it will be noticed that the rebuilding of No. 188, the house on the left or westward side, has caused a subsidence of the first and second floors. The sign of the " salmon " above the shop door is very noticeable. The rebuilt No. 189 was occupied by Praed's Bank ; William Praed of Truro opening the bank here soon after the rebuilding. Ultimately this was absorbed by Messrs. Lloyds, but the old fittings and cash bowls remained, and were there in the present century (vide 'Historic Homes of the Linotype,' 1913, as Bubble's ; the " Coach and Horses " oppo- j p. 32). The late Mr. F. G. Hilton-Price site Somerset House, where supper could be (' The Signs of Old Fleet Street,' p. 370) had ; and Stone's Coffee-room in Panton says Messrs. Praed built the recently Street, where one was sure of good com- ! existing house, " and have recently vacated panv. This list of mid-Victorian attrac- it " (1895). My suggestion is that the re- tions might be made much longer and more building was made necessary by the unsafe