I Don’t Want To Belong To Any Club That Will Accept People Like Me As A Member – Part Eighteen

Crockford’s

In the general scheme of things Crockford’s had a rather short life, opening in 1828 and closing in 1845. Its principal attraction was gambling and earned itself a reputation for raffish and raucous behaviour.

The club was established by William Crockford who started his working life at his father’s fish shop adjacent to the original site of Temple Bar. The youngster found that his skills for calculation were second to none and soon took to gambling. Over the course of a number of years he had won himself a tidy sum, estimated to be around £100,000, sufficient to commission Benjamin and Phillip Wyatt to build a gaming house at 50-53 St James Street in the heart of London’s club land. It was designed to be the city’s most opulent palace of gentlemanly pleasure and was soon the most famous gambling establishment in Europe.

According to contemporary reports it rose like a creation of Aladdin’s lamp. The genii themselves, it goes on, could not have surpassed the beauty of the internal decorations. The club house consisted of two wings and a centre, with four Corinthian columns and entablature, and a balustrade throughout. The ground floor had Venetian windows and the upper large French windows. The cuisine was of the highest class and the menu offered the opportunity to charge for extras. One member ordered red mullet which was accompanied by a delicious sauce. When presented with a bill for 2 shillings for the fish and sixpence for the sauce, the member objected leaving the exasperated chef to exclaim, “does he think they come out of the sea with the appropriate sauce in their pocket?”  There is no pleasing some.

Its success was phenomenal and in order to preserve some sense of exclusivity Crockford established it as a members’ club. Soon every English social celebrity and distinguished foreign visitor to the metropolis sought membership. Even the Duke of Wellington joined, although it is said that his principal motivation was to blackball his son’s membership if he ever had the audacity to apply.

The game of choice was a rather complicated game called hazard involving two dice. Hazard is mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales on a number of occasions, particularly in the Pardoner’s Tale and the Cook’s Tale, and so had a lengthy heritage. The game of craps is a simplified version. Essentially, it is a game that can accommodate any number of players but the key person is the caster who is the only one to have control of the dice at any one time. The caster specifies a number between 5 and 9 which is known as the main, then throws the dice and the resultant score determines whether he has won or not. The betting activity is restricted between the caster and the bank, known as the setter, who may be the other players acting as a consortium.

Crockford did well out of his establishment, whether by fair means or foul. By 1840 he was able to retire having amassed a fortune estimated to be around £1.2m. A contemporary, Captain Rees Howell Gronow, remarked that he had “won the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation”. Another contemporary reported that “he retired much as an Indian chief retires from a hunting country when there is not game enough left for his tribe, and the Club is now tottering to its fall”.

And so it came to pass.

I Don’t Want To Belong To Any Club That Will Accept People Like Me As A Member – Part Twelve

The Watier Club

It is better to burn out than to fade away. So sang Neil Young and on the whole I tend to agree with him. In the firmament of Georgian London’s club land, none shone brighter nor had as brief an existence as the Watier Club or, as it was affectionately known, the Dandy Club. It lasted only 12 years, from 1807 to 1819, but in its brief existence was one of the most fashionable and notorious of clubs.

Anyone who has dined in many of London’s gentlemen’s clubs will realise that you don’t go there for gastronomic excellent. Much of the fare is reminiscent of school dinners, stodgy and unexciting. And it seems as though it was ever thus. In 1807 the then Prince Regent conducted what we would call a bit of market research by asking his chums, members of White’s and Brooks’s, about the fare dished up at these establishments. The response was that quality was awful and selection monotonous – “the eternal joints, or beef-steaks, the boiled fowl with oyster sauce, and an apple tart – this is what we have, sir, at our clubs and very monotonous fare it is”.

The Prince’s solution was to establish a new club which would eschew any political allegiances but would rather concentrate on the French art of gastronomy. Beau Brummel, the Prince’s best mate, was appointed President in perpetuo and the Regent’s personal chef, Jean Baptiste Watier, was brought in to advise on culinary matters. Although the club was to bear his name Watier declined (or wasn’t allowed) to cook there, the chef-in-residence being another member of the royal staff, Monsieur Labourie.

The club’s premises were on the corner of Bolton Street at 81, Piccadilly and through its royal patronage attracted the cream of English society. Although Watier’s was billed as a musical society and singing club, it made its name as the finest dining establishment in London with food of the quality that surpassed the best that Paris could offer. So good was the fare that it was to ruin many a man’s figure.

What caused greater damage, though, was the club’s emergence as the place to go to for a game of Macao, a form of pontoon or vingt-et-un. A couple of stories will serve to illustrate the sums gambled, won and lost on the premises. Tom Sheridan popped in and decided to wager £10 at macao. Beau Brummell, whose skill at the game was well known, offered to take his place and would split any winnings 50/50, adding £200 to Sheridan’s modest stake. Within ten minutes Brummell had won £1,500.

But Brummell didn’t always win. One evening he had lost spectacularly and striking a tragic pose asked the waiter for a flat candle and a loaded pistol. Bligh, a member who was known to be five cans short of a six-pack, produced two loaded pistols, saying that he would save the waiter the trouble. Brummell didn’t go through with his threat but the members were a little perturbed to learn that a known madman was visiting the club with two loaded guns in his possession!

Macao was the cause of Brummell’s and the club’s ruin. Brummell sustained heavy gambling losses and in 1816 fell out with the Prince Regent and without royal protection, fled to France to avoid his creditors. Without its President the club was taken over by unsavoury sorts who fleeced many a a member at the gambling tables. In 1819 it closed down, although 10 years later the baton for gastronomic excellence was taken up by Crockford’s.