38 An Attack upon the Clubs ! [JAN. 



laid in the feelings, or rather in the vices of mankind ; but let us put the 

 saddle upon the right horse ; let us not attribute them to sociableness, 

 to a love of intellectual improvement, or to professional sympathies, 

 with which they have no relation whatever. The clubs are, simply and 

 solely, founded upon two of the ruling passions of the present day 

 videlicet, selfishness and sensuality selfishness, the most heartless and 

 intense ; sensuality, the most ignoble and grovelling. What are their 

 leading objects ? Epicurism, in the least elevated acceptation of that 

 misunderstood word to place the greatest possible luxury, but more 

 especially the pleasures of the palate, within reach of the lowest possible 

 sum to combine exclusiveness with voluptuousness to foster, at the 

 same moment, the love of self and the alienation from others to 

 remove men from their proper and natural mode of living to 

 enable five hundred a-year to command the state, style, and splendour 

 of five thousand to destroy the taste for simple and domestic plea- 

 sures and to substitute a longing for all the expensive and sensual 

 enjoyments that might have gratified an ancient Sybarite. Our inju- 

 rious and absurd law of primogeniture, which, in the upper classes, 

 limits the privilege, or at least the ability, of maintaining an establish- 

 ment to one son, together with our costly habits of married life, have 

 imposed upon a large portion of society a compulsory celibacy, with all 

 its demoralizing and heart- withering effects. This, which was already 

 the predominant evil of our social system, the club-mania will immea- 

 surably aggravate and enlarge. Formerly, a young man of moderate 

 income, revolted by the annoyances of bachelorship and a tavern life, 

 took refuge in the comforts of marriage, aspiring, in that state, to 

 nothing beyond a plain, decent, respectable establishment. A modern 

 Sir Epicure Mammon of the clubs, even if he have one or two thousand 

 a-year, exclaims, with the true calculating selfishness of his order 

 " Zooks ! I should be a loser by marrying, and having a house of mv 

 own ; here I have splendid saloons, gorgeous furniture, numerous livery 

 servants, French cooks, rare wines, a handsome library, all the news- 

 papers and periodicals, none of which I could command if I were to 

 commit matrimony, and settle out of reach of my club \" If an heiress 

 offers, indeed a la bonne heure ; the same selfishness that has hitherto 

 kept him a bachelor makes him a Benedict ; but the code of the club- 

 spoilt Sybarites allows not any alternative between celibacy and a splen- 

 did marriage. 



The same conviction of their objectionable tendency, which has made 

 me uniformly and sturdily reject all applications to become a member 

 of these societies, has prompted me to record my opinion of them with 

 a sincerity which may savour perhaps of harshness. That they may 

 offer some trivial advantage, I will not pretend to deny ; but that these 

 <'ire incalculably outweighed by their evils, I hold to be incontrovertible. 

 Their predominance in the capital, their diffusion in the provinces, con- 

 stitutes one of the very worst features of the times, so far as social man- 

 ners, domestic happiness, and general morality are concerned. All 

 abuses, however, have, luckily, a disposition to correct themselves. 

 From the multiplication of these clubs, there is* a hope that the exclu- 

 siveness will out-number the excluded, when, according to the English 

 standard of gentility, they must, of course, become vulgar. Formerly, 

 it was deemed a distinction to belong to a club ; the time is rapidly 

 approaching when it will be held a mark of superiority and good breed- 

 ing to have kept carefully aloof from them. 



