THE FRENCPr JOCKEY CLUB 45 



meeting, and subscription, however, the French Jockey 

 Club seems to have been formed only speciously — if at 

 all — on the model of the English, and with very 

 different results. In both the number of members is 

 understood to be nominally unlimited, but whilst there 

 is virtually a limit to the number in the English Club 

 the French has grown like a grain of mustard seed. It 

 is doubtful whether the English Club ever numbered 

 (all honorary members included) a hundred, and they 

 have always had some — however far away — connection 

 with horse-racing; the French has reached its thousand 

 or two, and it is said that the only horse that most of 

 them have anything to do with is a clothes-horse. The 

 Enfjlish Club, too, for a lonoj while had no resfular 

 meeting-place in London until Messrs. Weatherby went 

 to 6 Old Burlington Street ; the Club would meet at 

 the Star and Garter, Pall Mall, or at the Thatched 

 House, St. James's, or at Tattersall's, or at one another's 

 houses (as is the case now sometimes, on business). The 

 French Club, on the contrary, seem to have always had 

 a regular Club House in Paris, though it had one or two 

 other local habitations (in Eue du Helder, Eue Gransfe- 

 Bateliere, and Eue de Grammont) before settling down 

 at the corner of Eue Scribe. The twelve ' originals ' 

 were not long in adding to their number, as they might 

 do (according to their programme) to an unlimited 

 extent ; and it is probable that the modest payments 

 which were fixed in the first instance facilitated their 

 progress. Two hundred francs entrance and one 

 hundred yearly subscription appear to have been the 

 amounts to be paid at the outset. Then, when ' Societe' 

 was distinguished from ' Cercle ' (or ' Jockey Club '), so 

 that it became possible to belong to the former without 

 being a member of the latter (but a member of the 



