vi Preface 



After the lapse of nearly fifty years, during which some 

 important incidents had occurred in the Club's experience, 

 a desire arose among the Members that a continuation of 

 Admiral Smyth's narrative should be prepared. Accordingly 

 the late Mr. Robert H. Scott, who had been Treasurer for 

 seventeen years, and was about to retire from office, was 

 asked if he would supply such a continuation But his 

 health had already begun to fail, and he was never able to 

 undertake the task. 



Meanwhile the stock of Admiral Smyth's volume was 

 nearly exhausted. The opportunity seemed to the Members 

 to be favourable for the preparation of a new and possibly 

 fuller history of the Club, and they honoured me by the 

 proposal that I should take the work in hand. As I had 

 given a good deal of attention to the history of the Royal 

 Society, I was naturally attracted by the subject of the 

 Society's Dining Club ; but to enable me to judge of the 

 nature and extent of the material available for literary 

 treatment, the Senior Treasurer at the beginning of last 

 year put into my hands the whole of the Archives of the 

 Club. I soon saw that the material was abundant and 

 possessed sufficient interest to be worthy of being treated 

 in considerable detail. And I thereupon embarked on the 

 work. 



After full deliberation it appeared to me that the most 

 satisfactory way of dealing with the records would be to 

 take them year by year in the form of annals. In such a 

 procedure certain repetitions would obviously be unavoidable, 

 and might sometimes be a little irksome. But this defect 

 would, I thought, be more than compensated by the greater 

 scope that would be afforded in tracing the progress of the 

 Club, in following the careers of its individual members, and 

 above all, in doing justice to what has all along been a dis- 

 tinctive feature of the Club its hospitality. From the very 

 beginning the Club has invited to its table representatives, 

 both native and foreign, of every department of public life 

 and every branch of scientific enquiry. In its remarkably 

 varied gallery of guests, the same individual sometimes 



