AFTEE DINNER 257 



mimicked a Scotch Presbyterian minister and a young Oxford 

 High Church curate ; and there was a mock conjuring display, 

 somewhat on PeHssier lines, in wliich an undergraduate named 

 Audley Miller, very broad in the beam, was made to disappear, 

 which he did by crawling off the stage behind a plank laid edgeways 

 and about six inches deep. 



Mention must here be made of an obscure and ephemeral 

 institution called the Puss Club. This was discovered through 

 the Minute Book being left derelict in a Malcolm Street lodging- 

 liouse. The landlady, having found it, gave it in to Dr. Morley 

 Fletcher, who ordered it to be carefully kept in the Pitt safe, where 

 he told me I might see it. The book contained little information 

 except that the members wore a claret-coloured coat, and presum- 

 ably because the members were more or less enthusiastic beaglers, 

 perhaps less rather than more, as Lord Ronaldshay — a moving 

 spirit — was Master of the Drag, a roast hare was always 'pUce de 

 resistance at the l)anquet. Naturally a club drawing its members 

 from so small an area did not long survive the going down of its 

 first founders. Still the point is of interest as taking us outside 

 official circles. 



Letter 



Eden Hotel, Cap d'Ail, 



Alpes Maritimes, France, 

 January 21, 1911. 



Deaii Sir — Your letter of the 18th re the T.F.B. has been 

 forwarded to me here. I fear my recollections of the Puss Club are 

 somewhat dim. I think it was restricted to members of Mr. H. 0. 

 Davidson's (formerly " Vanity " Watson's) House at Harrow, of 

 whom tliere happened to be five or six up at Cambridge about the 

 years 1894-97. I think we dined more enthusiastically than we 

 beagled. We used to hold a dinner two or three times a term, I 

 believe, to which we invited guests. In common with most dining- 

 clubs of that time (University undergraduate dining-clubs, I mean), 

 we had a distinctive dress in which we dined, i.e. a magenta-coloured 

 smoking-coat. I am not sure who was the genius to whom this 

 garment owed its creation. 



