1890] The Crabbet Club 4 1 



ists, and had re-established Parnell's character as a responsible states- 

 man at a higher point than ever before in English eyes, so that it was 

 confidently expected that at the next general election Gladstone would 

 be returned to power with a majority sufficient to overcome the opposi- 

 tion of the House of Lords, and carry his Home Rule Bill into law. 

 It was, therefore, with a free conscience that I led an idle life at home, 

 writing my verses and enjoying social pleasures in the company of my 

 friends. It was in that summer that the Crabbet Club, which was to 

 acquire a certain social celebrity, was established on a footing which 

 was to gain for it a character almost of importance. It will not be 

 out of place, seeing that our memoir writers of the day have included 

 it, or rather have not left it unnoticed in their recollections, if I say a 

 few words here as to what it really was. 



The Crabbet Club was in its origin a purely convivial gathering, 

 unambitious of any literary aim. It began in this way : When George, 

 Lord Pembroke (the 13th Earl) came of age in 1871, having been a 

 very popular boy at Eton, with many school friends, and afterwards at 

 Oxford, he thought it would be amusing to continue in some measure 

 the life they had led by having them to stay with him once or twice 

 every summer at Wilton, for a day or two at a time, to play cricket, 

 and row on the river, and otherwise divert themselves, and they took 

 the name of the " Wilton," or " Wagger " Club, and it proved a great 

 success. In 1876, though much older than the rest of the members, I 

 was asked to join it as one who had known the Herberts from their 

 school days. Pembroke was staying with me at Crabbet, and his two 

 brothers and their sister Gladys (afterwards Lady Ripon), and several 

 of their friends, and several of mine, and I drove them all to Epsom 

 for the Derby (Silvio's year), and we had a cricket match and a lawn 

 tennis handicap (lawn tennis was in the process of being invented, and 

 we played on a court 20 feet longer than what afterwards became the 

 regulation length), and it was on this occasion that I joined the club. 

 The party at Crabbet had proved such a success that the next year it 

 was proposed that the club should make one of its regular meetings 

 there, and so it gradually came about that the members came to Crabbet 

 annually. The members of the club were never more than a few, a 

 dozen to twenty, and consisted, besides the Herbert brothers, of Eddy 

 Hamilton, who was afterwards Gladstone's private secretary, Lord 

 Lewisham, Jocelyn Amherst, Granny Farquhar, Lionel Bathurst, with 

 Harry Brand (afterwards Lord Hampden), Nigel Kingscote, Godfrey 

 Webb, Button Bourke, Frank Lascelles, Mark Napier, and half-a- 

 dozen more of my own intimates, and these came regularly to Crabbet 

 every summer, and we gradually adopted the " Crabbet Club " as the 

 name of our branch. 



Though we professed no kind of politics, and looked to amusement 



