AFTER DINNER 253 



and two first Whips, also Mr. S. E. Baldwin, being elected members 

 of the Athenffium." 



Thus began the new tradition, of which Mr. Gladstone gave me 

 the following account in conversation. Up to that time members 

 had been very wealthy. Also at the symposia, or " Teas," every 

 toast had to be drunk in a bumper, which, with many toasts, made 

 the night unnecessarily " wet." On attending the first banquet, he 

 (H. S. G.) flatly refused to conform to this rule, and later he and 

 others had succeeded in keeping certain merely wealthy candidates 

 out of the Club. The subscription, as I am informed, has since 

 been reduced, so that " means " should not be so essential to 

 membership. 



This does not mean that Mr. Gladstone persuaded the " bloods " 

 of his day to copy too closely at their feasts the intellectual placidity 

 of the dinner of the Four Masters hereinafter recorded ; there was 

 still plenty of life. For example, at a " going down " dinner of a 

 beagler at about this time, things were not merely lively but, as the 

 diary records, " uproarious." And no names are mentioned even in 

 the original, " as the days may come when we may be glad to say, etc., 

 etc." These are, taken broadly, words of wide prescience. Youth 

 does many wild things of which it would be afterwards glad to have 

 left no written record which might perchance be brought up against 

 it in after life. But in this case I am fain to confess that nothing 

 very desperate happened. " Candle-shades were worn as hats " — 

 true, but so do the grave and reverend signors of Trinity dress their 

 heads with paper gauds from crackers on Christmas night in Hall. 

 Also Queen Victoria's health was drunk with musical honours — 



For she's a jolly good fellow ! 



and the fun is said to have been so fantastic as to " beggar descrip- 

 tion." "At 11.15 the Proctor came in, and M. said to him, 'You 

 are always asking for my name ; now, what's yours ? ' To which he 

 replied, 'Gray of Queen's!' A. told him he was a good sportsman. 

 . . . He proved to be of the grit A. said he was, and took no names." 

 To many generations of Cambridge men the name of "Joey" Gray 

 is familiar, and his sportsmanship is known icrhi et orhi ; and that 



