258 Presidentship of Sir Joseph Banks 1818 



canvass of the members for the purpose of having the 

 obnoxious resolution repealed. Unfortunately the minutes 

 of the proceedings at the meetings are tantalisingly brief. 

 They do not reveal whether there was any opposition to the 

 resolution of 1817 intermitting the autumn dinners, or to the 

 resolution of 1818 restoring them. A perusal of the dinner- 

 lists affords grounds for a surmise as to who the most active 

 members were likely to have been in the movement for 

 the renewal of the dinners. But without attempting to 

 discover how the Club should have been led to reverse the 

 policy which it had adopted twelve months before, we 

 must admit that those members who favoured the return 

 to the old practice of continuing the meetings throughout 

 the year took good care to ensure that their action should 

 be justified by the attendance during the August, September 

 and October of this year. They must have beaten up every 

 member who could be in London during these months, with 

 the result that whereas the total average attendance from 

 the end of July to the beginning of November during the 

 five years that preceded the Anniversary of 1817 was 56, 

 in 1818-19 it rose at one bound to 101. Considerable effort 

 must have been required on the part of those who worked 

 for the restitution of the dinners to gather so large a com- 

 pany. Some faces appeared that had never been seen in 

 the autumn before. The venerable and invalid President 

 did his duty most manfully in carrying out what appeared 

 to be the desire of the majority of the Club, for out of the 

 thirteen meetings in the three autumn months, in spite of 

 his infirmities he presided at eleven. Writing on 24th 

 August to his friend and medical adviser, Sir Everard Home, 

 he reported " The Club prospers. Till last Thursday we 

 had not mustered less than nine. On the last club-day we 

 were seven : agreed to reduce the number from twelve to 

 seven. . . . Murdoch never misses, Barrow is a good atten- 

 dant. Of my attendance you are quite sure, as I have 

 no other dinner on Thursday when in London." 1 



1 Edward Smith's " Life of Sir Joseph Banks," p. 281. This quotation 

 reveals, what the dinner register no longer recorded, that the minimum 



