HE word Club has puzzled the brain of many an acute etymologist, and of many a lazy speculator who is content to wonder on for ever as to what in the world so odd, and abrupt, and compact a monosyllable might originally mean, and where in the world it dropped from, to become a euphonious part of English, and latterly of almost universal speech.

Bailey, one of our veteran lexicographers, defines a club-which he identifies with the Saxon clubbe, and associates with the Latin clava -as (1) a great thick stick; and (2) an assembly of good fellows. The verb to club comes, according to the same authority, from the Saxon cleovan, to cleave, and refers to the division of expenses amongst the members, where it was expected of 'every man to pay an equal share.' Skinner is of the same opinion; deriving the verb to club from the Anglo-Saxon cleofan, findere, to cleave, divide, because the expenses are divided into shares or portions. To club is thus, with him, to contribute a share or portion; and a club is an assembly of persons, contributing each his share or portion. Noah Webster, as becomes his diluvian Christian name, is more recondite, and quotes the Welsh clopa as a probable derivation. On the whole, we are rather inclined to favour the theory of Webster; for if it be allowed, it will help us somewhat to get out of another difficulty which it requires a dashing decision to solve. We refer to the question of the antiquity of clubs. For if the modern word be a direct descendant of one similar in sound in the language of the Cymry-a language which has been proved, to the perfect and unanimous satisfaction of the demonstrator himself, to have been the language of our first parents-it would not be too much to assume, even for so unassuming a person as the present writer, that Adam had invented the word to describe the important little commu

nity of which he was the President, and of which Eve, according to Euripides and Milton, was the Vice.

But he is a poor thing in comparative philology who cannot make one word do double duty-who cannot engraft a slip from one language into the stock of another. The notion, which belongs to the AngloSaxon derivation, of an equal or equitable division of expenses, is no embarrassment to us. If money had not yet been coined or dug from the tortured bowels of the deep, expenses could still be jointly borne by a system of equivalents. Labour is the basis of capital. We know that

'Adam delved and Eve span,' though what she span for is not so easy to decipher in the præ-figleaf epoch of her existence-and that he was a 'grand old gardener,' and she a setter-out of simple and elegant repasts. The manly, invigorating toil of the one was fairly compensated by the gentle activity of the other; and if Eve had earned, by previous exertion, the right to crack her filbert, Adam no less, by grateful and unsweating labour, had made good his privilege, like a very ancient Pistol, to enjoy his leek.

We are aware that there are many painful contrasts between the clublife of Eden and that of Pall Mall. Cookery was nowhere in those primeval days; and the illustrious Soyer would no doubt have inferred, from the fact that, even when preparing to entertain company, there was 'no fear lest dinner cool,' that soup-in which temperature is, if a small, yet an emphatic consideration-did not initiate the banquet. However, all things must have a beginning, just as imperatively as, philosophers tell us, all things must have an end. Housekeeping is not learned perfectly in a prolonged pic-nic; and it would not have surprised us if Milton, who has dogmatised as much about Paradise as most people, had stated that the first déjeuner therein was not, strictly

speaking, à la fourchette. Club-life, again, is not a gourd, a mushroom, or even a Minerva. It is not the growth of a day, just as Rome was not the growth of a day. It does not leap forth fully equipped and perfect in all points, like an unmothered goddess. But what we have chiefly to complain of-it is, by the way, a nice question whether, if perfect rules had been in vogue in the Adam-and-Eve club, we should ever have had the opportunity either to complain or to approve of its rules, or of anything else connected with it -is that no code of exclusion had been drawn up, or, if it had, that it was administered with a too great laxity. The black ball had either not been introduced for the keeping out of ineligible candidates, or the mother of mankind forgot, on at least one memorable and disastrous occasion, to exercise her privilege; and this, too, in the absence of her husband, who, by as disastrous an oversight, had omitted to leave his veto proxy. The Club of Paradise was essentially a club for two; the introduction of a third member, it may be said with reverence, played the serpent with it. So much for the antiquity of clubs. It is enough to have fixed the first; and we shall not again intrude on the other side of the Flood, except barely to mention that memorable little association which floated over its dangers secure within the wooden walls of the Ark. That also was a temporary association, which carried within itself the seeds of dissolution. With the subsidence of the waters it was dissolved accordingly.

Man, it has been profoundly observed, is a social animal. He likes to link his life to that of another man; sometimes in desperation, of love or of some other pleasant affection, to that of a woman. But in addition to his fondness for society -a disposition which presupposes a tendency to interchange views on things in general in random and miscellaneous gatherings-he is also an associative animal. That is, he is social and exclusive at once. He will be on intimate terms with some one, not with every one. He will have his choice, more or less, in his

convives or companions. He is not a straw or a feather, to be drifted any whither or blown upon by every wind of heaven; not a pipe, to be played upon by every passing bungler of a musician. This tendency to correct sociability by exclusiveness, is one which manifests itselt in different degrees in different countries, and in different stages of taste or phases of civilization. The higher his amount of culture, the more dainty and exigeant will a man be in the demands he makes for a like amount in his fellows; and if the training of the intellect has not worn away and erased the heart, the greater will be the fastidiousness with which he selects the few whom he will venture to make the depositaries of his profounder sentiments. Education multiplies indefinitely the possibility of differences of opinion, although it abridges the likelihood of their external manifestation. Two New Zealanders may only be distinguished by the preference of the one for an Englishman, of the other for a Frenchman-we mean when viewed as matériel for their simple cuisine. But national enlightenment and individual cultivation will introduce questions of even greater delicacy and importance than the relative succulence of a Jesuit and a Protestant missionary. And there is scarcely a point of difference in matters political, ecclesiastical, social, scientific, literary, or artistic, which has not been the basis on which a club-an association which recognizes the identity, on some important question, of its members, and the diversity of opinions entertained by the persons without their rules-has not been founded.

England has been reckoned the native land of clubs, and the Englishman the most clubbable of animals. The reason for this has been found in his disposition to unbend and to refect himself within a limited circle. He likes to take down the windows of his heart; but it shall not be on the highway. He likes to converse about the secrets of his party; but he will not betray its watchwords to any but ascertained sympathizers. The fal

lacy has before now been pointed out which made Archbishop Trench, in his unmitred, decanal days, infer that because the club is, in its modern sense, a peculiarly English idea and entity, therefore the English aro peculiarly sociable above all the other nations of the earth. The contrary is true,' as Grace and Philip Wharton, in their Wits and Beaux of Society,' jointly affirm; 'nay, was true, even in the days of Addison, Swift, Steele-even in the days of Johnson, Walpole, Selwyn; ay, and at all time since we have been a nation. The fact is, we are not the most sociable, but the most associative race; and the establishment of clubs is a proof of it. We cannot, and never could, talk freely, comfortably, and generally, without a company for talking. Conversation has always been with us as much a business as railroad-making, or what not. It has always demanded certain accessories, certain condiments, certain stimulants to work it up to the proper pitch. "We all know" we are the cleverest and wittiest people under the sun; but then our wit has been stereotyped. France has no "Joe Miller;" for a bon-mot there, however good, is only appreciated historically. Our wit is printed, not spoken; our best wits behind an inkhorn have sometimes been the veriest logs in society. On the Continent clubs were not called for, because society itself was the arena of conversation. In this country, on the other hand, a man could only chat when at his ease; could only be at his ease among those who agreed with him on the main points of religion and politics, and even then wanted the aid of a bottle to make him comfortable. Our want of sociability was the cause of our clubbing, and therefore the word "club" is purely English.'

In any case, the English are not to have it all their own way in the matter of clubs, as if other nations, whether of antiquity or of modern times, knew nothing about them. The tendency to association rests, as we have already had occasion to recognise, upon the fact of identity or of likeness of taste or opinion on the part of the persons associated,

with a synchronous idea of unlikeness or unsympathy in regard to their binding principles on the part of the persons without their pale. Wherever there has been community subsisting side by side with indifference or antagonism, there has always been a tendency to incorporation. And corporations, whether ancient or modern, are in their essence clubs, whether they do or do not justify their claim to the title by the equal distribution of expenses, or whether, in fact, they have or have not expenses at all to incur or to defray. Club, indeed, in this sense, is not a name derived from a necessity, but from an accident of organization. The esoterics of Pythagoras, the mystics of Eleusis, were virtually clubbists, as being differenced from the exoterics or from the uninitiated. Such as these, and as the Essenes amongst the Jews, were in fact the philosophical or religious club-men of antiquity. Other associations for the prosecution of morals, or of immorals, as the case might be, were well enough known to Greece; and, when introduced furtively into Rome, alarmed the virtue of the senate.

Clubbism has resulted from expatriated nationality. The old colonial Greek would cleave to his followGreek as against the barbarian whom he superciliously excluded from the amenities of his society. The Roman pro-consul or centurion would unbend with his fellowRoman when he would not suffer the intimate or equal advances of the chain-mailed Dacian or the Briton of the meteoric hair.

Politics have been a club-bond; and associations, ages before_our own Carlton or the French Jacobins, had been formed for the conservation or for the overthrow of existing governments.

Science had its clubs dotted here and there throughout a scattered Hellas, ages before our own Royal Society sought to explain the reason why a living fish introduced into a vessel brimful of water would not cause the water to overflow.

Art was a mystery, and a basis of association. Caste and hereditary handicrafts were the insignia of the

clubbist spirit, as nowadays are the trades' unions, the strikes, and the lockouts of labour and the employers of labour. There is, indeed, scarcely any end which two men may have in common which may not give rise to an association for the purpose of accomplishing that end, whether it be for good or for evil; for revolution or for consolidation; for science or for amusement; for gambling or for plunder; or even, testibus the Thugs cum De Quincey, for the fine art of murder.

But chiefly we look upon the club as a social gathering of convives; of men who, whatever be the profounder purpose for which they assemble together, agree in this, that they shall be comforted with apples and stayed with flagons in congenial society. Eating and drinking are, if not the life of clubs, a very visible sign of their existence. The spirit of adhesion is in the bowl or the loving-cup; the soul of co-partnery is in the cookery; the sentiment of confraternity is warmly cherished at the extremity of an Havana; and the clouds of external difference are dissipated along with the narcotic incense to such gentle winds as an enlightened theory of ventilation permits to play around the smoking-room.

A churchwarden, whether done in flesh and blood or, less fearfully and wonderfully, in pipe-clay, was, we have reason to believe, beyond the most gorgeous dreams or the most magnificent ideals of Plato. Yet the philosopher enjoyed his Symposium, as did many of the cultivated and curious Athenians of his own and of after times. We have a taste of the quality of some of these meetings in the 'Symposiac Questions' which the piety of Plutarch has preserved and discussed. The idea of gathering for the joint refection of mind and body has given us the 'Deipnosophists' of Athenæus, and the Saturnalia' of Macrobius. Athens had its clubs proper, where each man sent his proportion of the feast, and brought his proportion of the intellectual entertainment. Of these, the club named after Hercules is the one which, perhaps, at the present day

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is the best remembered. Sparta was clubbish to the backbone in the idea of its common repasts, where the public tables were spread for messes of fifteen each, the members of which were elected by ballot. We leave these, however, to their black broth and their laconisms, that we may come to the foaming tankard and the wit-combat, to the sparkle of champagne and the effervescence of repartee.

Perhaps the earliest club in England of which we have any traces was one of which Occleve, and probably Chaucer, were members. It was flourishing in the reign of Henry IV., and was called 'La Court de bone Compagnie.' It was a society governed by its duly appointed officers, and amenable to a certain code of regulations. "This society of four centuries and a half since was evidently a jovial company,' says Mr. Timbs; to us its members are simply empty bottles, marines, and dead men.

Ben Jonson, whose social and affectionate affinities were, to do him justice, as remarkable as his convivial proclivities, was the founder of a club that met at the Devil tavern near Temple Bar. The rare old Ben would doubtless be magnificent in the midst of his literary 'sons,' whose privilege it was to wait reverently for his hiccups and his flashes of wit and merriment. For the moment we prefer, however, to think of him as a member of that more historical which met at the Mermaid, in Bread Street, and to which belonged Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne, and others of only less celebrity. But it was years after this that we make acquaintance with the word 'club;' for formerly the thing had gone under different names, according to the different objects proposed. The genus had to be named after the species had grown and multiplied. We now use the word clubbe,' says old John Aubrey, F.R.S., and the gos siping recorder of Miscellanies,' for a sodality in a taverne '-sodality, in this case, being, as we opine, the Latin for a 'free-andeasy."

So early as 1659, when Aubrey became a member of the Rota, after due balloting and admission, we find that politics had penetrated far into club-life; and it is not wonderful that we should find Dryden thinking it necessary to ask indignantly, during the patriarchal government of Charles II., who was the father of (so many of) his people, by what sanction they became the rallying places of the Opposition. 'What right,' demands glorious John, has any man to meet in factious clubs to vilify the government? What right, indeed!

But we have anticipated. Before the first real club was opened under that name, a society of wits who met at the Mermaid, and whom we have just mentioned, had flourished and sparkled under the favour or the presidency of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Who would not, if he could-conveniently, that is, without sacrificing his privileges as a contemporary of telegraphs, express trains, and limited liability hotel and finance companies-have given a pretty premium to have been stowed away in a corner of the room, or to have served for one night only' as a drawer of their strong waters, if he might but have listened to such wit-combats' as Beaumont celebrates in an epistle to the 'rare Ben' of our literature, and as Fuller alludes to in his 'Worthies? Many were the witcombats,' says the latter, 'betwixt Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, which two I behold (in my mind's eye, Horatio!) like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-ofwar: Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.' Beaumont is more rapturous a describer, as becomes one who had personally assisted at the intellectual revels to which he refers. One or two lines of the following quotation from him are known to nearly everybody; the whole of it may be rather more unfamiliar.

"Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters: what things have we

Been

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble and so full of subtile flame,

As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past, wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancelled: and when that was gone
We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies
Right witty; though but downright fools, more
wise.'

Modern scepticism has thrown much doubt on the long current tradition that it was Sir Walter Raleigh who founded the Mermaid Club. It was very pleasant to receive this account of its institution, by faith; it can for the future be received, alas! by nothing short of credulity. Gifford, however, who is not generally omnivorous in his beliefs, speaks of the Mermaid as though he saw no reason to challenge the popular sentiment as to Sir Walter being its father. In addition to this, he endorses the commonly received notion of the Mermaid having stood in Friday Street, Cheapside; whilst it is said by Ben Jonson himself, who must have been well informed on the subject, at least when he entered the tavern, to have been in Bread Street. But the difference is reconciled when we have an opportune explanation that the Mermaid in Bread Street, the Mermaid in Friday Street, and the Mermaid in Cheapside, were all one and the same Mermaid with different outlets and approaches. The house was consumed in the great fire of 1666.

Now for Gifford. 'About this time (1603),' he says, 'Jonson probably began to acquire that turn for conviviality for which he was afterwards noted. Sir Walter Raleigh, previous to his unfortunate engagement with the wretched Cobham and others, had instituted a meeting of beaux esprits at the Mermaid, a celebrated tavern in Friday Street. Of this club, which combined more talent and genius than ever met