viii Preface 



of our fathers. We learn from them that in the middle of 

 the eighteenth century men sat down to dinner at the hour 

 when they now take luncheon, and supped when they now 

 dine. We can trace the slow retreat of dinner in steps of 

 half an hour or an hour at a time, each pause lasting for 

 some years before the next move was made. We see that 

 our great grandfathers showed little of that passion for 

 holidays which is now the vogue. There was no general 

 annual migration of a large portion of the community in 

 summer and autumn to country quarters and foreign lands ; 

 hence, as the patients did not leave town, the fashionable 

 physicians remained there also. The long summer vacation 

 and the recesses now enjoyed at Easter, Whitsuntide and 

 Christmas were unrecognised by the Club, and were ulti- 

 mately adopted only after a struggle lasting for many years. 

 One of the most curious features of the Club records is to 

 be found in its dinner-registers, where a detailed bill of fare 

 is given for every dinner, week by week, in the course of 

 more than forty years of the eighteenth century, affording 

 to the deipnosophist a lively picture of the gastronomic 

 art of the time in England. 



It should be added here that this volume has been pre- 

 pared, first of all, for the present and future Members of 

 the Club of which it relates the history. The question was 

 considered whether it should be printed only for private 

 circulation, but the feeling prevailed that as its subject was 

 so intimately bound up with the history of the Royal Society 

 there would probably be Fellows of the Society who, although 

 not Members of the Club, might wish to possess the book, 

 while it might even find some readers in the world outside. 

 The decision was accordingly made in favour of publication. 



SHEPHERD'S DOWN, HASLEMERE, 

 26th April, 1917. 



