272 DRIVING. 



who, when not engaged in coaching, hunting, or racing, prac- 

 tised as a medical man at Turnham Green, took the lease of 

 100 Piccadilly, and there established the Badminton Club, 

 which was then, to all intents and purposes, a thorough coach- 

 ing club, always having all the year round a coach, a break, a 

 team or two, besides brougham, mail phaeton, &c., as well as 

 capital stabling and coach-houses, with chambers and bedrooms 

 kept for the use of its members. The idea of ' the Doctor ' was a 

 novel one, and most people thought at the time that he had 

 gone mad, for to all appearances there were no available means of 

 utilising, for the purposes of a club, the premises which had for 

 years been occupied by a succession of horse-dealers, and con- 

 sisted of about forty or fifty stalls and loose boxes. But the 

 Doctor set to work. The front yard, where the horses used to 

 be trotted up and down, was metamorphosed into a very 

 pretty garden ; a stable leading out of it, that had contained 

 five stalls and three loose boxes, was transmogrified into a 

 smoking-room ; the hayloft became the coffee-room ; the corn 

 store was converted into a billiard-room ; and so it was occupied 

 until 1883, when the number of members beginning to increase 

 rather too rapidly for the capacity of the premises, and the lease 

 falling in, the opportunity was seized of converting the club 

 into a company. The two next houses, 98 and 99, w r ere 

 secured, and a noble pile of buildings has sprung up. All the 

 old associations, the garden in front, the stables, &c., in the 

 rear, with all their surroundings, are kept up, and the new club- 

 house now (1889) forms a prominent feature of Upper Picca- 

 dilly. 



The institution of driving clubs has not been confined ex- 

 clusively to England, as in 1875 a Four-in-Hand Club was 

 founded in New York. The first meet took place in 1876, on 

 which occasion six coaches turned out ; but the taste for driving 

 four horses having once taken root, flourished, as in 1878 there 

 were nine coaches by English builders, two of Parisian make, 

 and several of American construction. Subsequently the number 

 rose to twenty-two ; but the total has since declined. 



