Abstract
The famous jibe made by the brothers Goncourt during the nineteenth century, that if two Englishmen were to be cast upon an uninhabited island, their first consideration would be the formation of a club,1 was not merely an observation of how post-Enlightenment England was viewed by the French, but also how English society had begun to view itself. The formation of clubs has become one of the enduring legacies of the eighteenth century, at a time when many were established to encapsulate various kinds of pleasure. From these we have inherited an invaluable record of social behaviour. How and why the rise of the club facilitated the pursuit of pleasure, particularly in regard to gender, are questions that tend to have been overlooked, even though they should be fundamental to our understanding of this period.
Thus it appears these envied Clubs possess No certain means of social Happiness: Yet there’s a good that flows from Scenes like these, Man meets with Man at leisure and at ease; We to our Neighbours and our Equals come, And rub off pride that Man contracts at home; For there, admitted Master, he is prone To claim Attention and to talk alone.
George Crabbe
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Bibliography
Relatively little work has been done on the clubs in recent years, which is why the best starting points are Robert J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933)
Louis C. Jones, The Clubs of the Georgian Rakes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).
These draw on the numerous accounts of fictional and factual clubs that appear in contemporary periodicals such as The Gentleman’ s Magazine, The Spectator, The Tatler, and World. Another major primary source which is not available in modern editions is the writing of Edward Ward, that includes The Secret History of the London Club[s] or, the Citizens’ pastime ... With a sermon preached to a gang of Highway-men, Part I (London, J. Dutton, 1709) and A Complete and Humorous Account of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the Cities of London and Westminster, from the R[oya]l S[ociet]y down to the Lumber Troop (London: printed for the author, 1745). More accessible are various nineteenth-century accounts of clubs such as John Timbs, London Clubs of the Metropolis during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries, 2 vols (London: privately printed, 1866).
This contains many curious details, as does his History of Clubs and Club Life (1872), along with C. Marsh, Clubs of London, with Anecdotes of their Members, Sketches of Character and Conversation, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1832).
Most recent work is in the form of papers in scholarly journals or lectures, such as Peter Clark, Sociability and Urbanity: Clubs and Societies in the Eighteenth-Century City, published by the Victorian Studies Centre for the University of Leicester, 1986. Out of all the clubs, the Hell Fire Clubs have attracted more attention than most. However, much that has been written has been misleading and sensationalised. One of the most reliable accounts is Betty Kemp, Sir Francis Dashwood; an Eighteenth-Century Independent (London: Macmillan, 1967).
Leading clubs like the Kit-Cat Club have come to the attention of modern scholars and portraits of members are included in Elizabeth Einberg, Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting 1700–1760 (London: Viking, 1987).
For information about the coffee houses there is Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1963)
W. B. Boulton, A History of White’s, 2 vols (London: Hon. A. Bourke, 1892).
Reproductions of coffee-house advertisements appear in A. S. Turberville, English Men and Manners in the Eighteenth Century 2nd edn, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929).
There is a concise account of clubs and coffee houses in G. Rude, Hanoverian London 1714–1808 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971), pp. 71ff.
General works on the social history of eighteenth-century London include Derek Jarrett, England in the Age of Hogarth (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1974)
M. D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1985)
Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 25.
More specific is E. J. Burford’s Wits, Wenchers and Wantons: London’s Low Life: Covent Garden in the Eighteenth Century (London: Hale, 1986)
where it is alleged that the Mohocks used to roll innocent passers-by in barrels. In connection with homosocialism, for a scholarly approach to male bonding in the broadest sense consult Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood. Class. Gender and Fraternalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
A more popularist and contemporary approach is made by Barbara Rogers, Men Only: An Investigation in Men’s Organisations (Pandora: London, 1988)
Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups (London: Nelson, 1969). Many of these current observations hold true for men’s clubs during the eighteenth century.
There has been much recent scholarly interest shown in the history of cross-dressing, mainly in connection with women. Two other burgeoning areas in Women’s Studies focus on clubs of the French Revolution and female Freemasonry. Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988)
provides a thoughtful discussion of the public/private spheres debate and draws on Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981)
While Margaret Jacob has pioneered studies of women and Freemasonry, particularly in Holland. Her Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) contains a useful chapter on ‘Freemasonry, Women, and the Paradox of the Enlightenment’. Another important text is Janet Mackay Burke, “Sociability, Friendship and the Enlightenment among Women Freemasons in Eighteenth-Century France”, unpublished PhD dissertation, Arizona State University (1986). For factual information see Dudley Wright, Women and Freemasonry (London: William Rider, 1922)
F. W. G. Gilby, Women and Freemasonry in the Past and in the Present (Birmingham: privately printed, 1925).
The single most useful account of predominant male masonic societies during this period is J. M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies (London: Secker ... Warburg, London, 1972). For pointing me towards many of my sources I am indebted to Christoph Heyl, Mary Waldron and John Ashby who is the assistant librarian at Freemasons Hall. The kind permission of Grand lodge to reproduce the print of ‘Mademoiselle de Beaumont, or the Chevalier D’Eon’ is gratefully acknowledged as is that of the British Museum, for allowing me to reproduce William Hogarth’s The Mystery of the Freemasons Brought to Light by the Gormogons (1724) and the anonymous painting of Mademoiselle de Beaumont, or the Chevalier D’Eon (n.d.). I am also grateful to Mark Watson-Gandy for extending my knowledge of clubs. Thanks go to Marion Glastonbury, Helen Boden, Roy Porter, John Charles Smith and Caroline Williams for making indispensable comments on my essay. Finally my appreciation goes to Robert Miles for simply deriving pleasure from it.
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© 1996 Marie Mulvey Roberts
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Roberts, M.M. (1996). Pleasures Engendered by Gender: Homosociality and the Club. In: Porter, R., Roberts, M.M. (eds) Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24962-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24962-6_4
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