REVIEWS 



GENERAL 



Annals of the Royal Society Club. The Record of a London Dining-Club in 

 the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. By Sir Archibald Geikie, 

 O.M., K.C.B., D.C.L., Past-President of the Royal Society. [Pp. xv + 504, 

 with contemporary portraits.] (London : Macmillan & Co., 1917. Price 

 iSs. net.) 



This long history of the Royal Society Club, or the Society of Royal Philosophers 

 as they were called for fifty years, which is now the Dining-Club of the Royal 

 Society, goes to prove that old Aubrey's definition of a Club is correct. Aubrey 

 says : " We now use the word Clubbe for a sodality in a taverne," and the book 

 before us shows that a great part of the doings of this ancient body has consisted 

 of " sodality in a taverne," together, we will hope, with a certain amount of 

 convivium. 



From statements made by Pepys, Evelyn and others, we know that there is no 

 doubt that certain of the Fellows of the Royal Society used to meet and eat 

 together on the days of the meetings of the Society long before 1743, when the 

 formal foundation stone of the Royal Society Club was laid ; and we know that the 

 Invisible College, which was the forerunner of the Royal Society, used to meet at 

 the Bull Head in Cheapside, and it is not likely that they would have met in 

 a tavern without eating and drinking together. 



But the first attempt to make a formal incorporation took place on October 27, 

 1743, when eight gentlemen met together, two of them not at that date Fellows of 

 the Royal Society, and formed what was to be called later the Royal Society Club. 



The records of the Club or Society then formed are very extensive, the Minute 

 Books being complete from the beginning to the present day, and the Dinner 

 Registers complete from 1747 to 1855, and from 1879 to tne present day. There 

 is an unfortunate gap of twenty-four years in the Dinner Registers, which are 

 apparently lost, as they have hitherto eluded the most careful search. This book 

 was written mainly for the present members of the Club, but the records of a body 

 of this character must have great value ; partly on account of the members and 

 guests having often been men of the greatest eminence, and partly on account of 

 the long and interesting period which the history of the Club covers ; and this 

 book, done by a very gifted member of the Club and a Past- President of the 

 Royal Society in the charming and intimate style suitable to such a record, will 

 therefore have an historical value far beyond that of its immediate object, which is 

 to detail the past history of the Royal Society Club for the instruction and 

 delectation of its present members. 



The book is written in the form of " Annals," that is, the details of each year's 

 doings, as set forth in the annual report of the Treasurer, are recorded ; interspersed 

 with delightful short histories of new members of note, and with lists of the most 

 important visitors and notes, sometimes copious, of any interesting facts connected 

 with their lives. As an example of an account of a new member, the sketch of 

 Henry Cavendish is a masterpiece. Any gleanings about the life and habits of 

 this extraordinarily shy and reserved man, one of the greatest on the roll of the 



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