Club
A club is generally an association of people
united by a common interest or goal, as opposed to any natural ties
of kinship. Such clubs occur in all ancient states of which we have
detailed knowledge. Once people started living together in larger
groups, there was need for men with a common interest to be able to
associate despite having no ties of kinship.
The term club now has broader implications. The Service club, for
example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities; there are
clubs devoted to all sorts of hobbies, sports, and games, political
and religious clubs, Social Activities Clubs that appeal to a
variety of interests, and so forth. See for example BSAC (a big
British scuba diving club). The term Club can also refer to a
nightclub or discothèque.
18th century
English origins
The word club, in the sense of an association to promote
good-fellowship and social intercourse, only became common in
England at the time of Tatler and The Spectator (17091712). It is
doubtful whether its use originated in its meaning of a knot of
people, or from the fact that the members clubbed together to pay
the expenses of their meetings. The oldest English clubs were
merely informal periodic gatherings of friends for the purpose of
dining or drinking together. Thomas Occleve (in the time of Henry
IV) mentions such a club called La Court de Bone Compaignie, of
which he was a member. John Aubrey (writing in 1659) says: We now
use the word clubbe for a sodality in a tavern. For a long time,
most organizations called clubs were gentlemens clubs (in
particular London clubs), but with the modern age the word usage
has spread and many workmans organizations have imitated the club
type of organization.
Of early clubs the most famous was the Bread Street or Friday
Street Club, originated by Sir Walter Raleigh, and meeting at the
Mermaid Tavern. William Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, John
Selden and John Donne were among the members. Another such club was
that which met at the Devil Tavern near Temple Bar; and of this Ben
Jonson is supposed to have been the founder.
The peripatetic lifestyle of the 18th and 19th century middle
classes also drove the development of more residential clubs, which
had bedrooms and other facilities. Military and Naval officers,
lawyers, judges, members of Parliament and government officials
tended to have an irregular presence in the major cities of the
Empire, particularly London; spending perhaps a few months there
before moving on for a prolonged period and then returning.
Especially when this presence did not coincide with the 'season,'
the episodic nature of this presence made a permanent establishment
in the city (i.e., a house owned or rented, with the the requisite
staff), or the opening of a townhouse (generally shuttered outside
the season) inconvenient or uneconomic, while hotels were rare and
socially declasee. Clubbing with a number of like minded friends to
secure a large shared house with a manager was therefore a
convenient solution.
Coffee
houses
With the introduction of coffee-drinking in the middle of the 17th
century, clubs entered on a more permanent phase. The coffee houses
of the later Stuart period are the real originals of the modern
clubhouse. The clubs of the late 17th and early 18th century type
resembled their Tudor forerunners in being oftenest associations
solely for conviviality or literary coteries. But many were
confessedly political, e.g. The Rota, or Coffee Club (1659), a
debating society for the spread of republican ideas, broken up at
the Restoration, the Calves Head Club (c.1693) and the Green Ribbon
Club (1675). The characteristics of all these clubs were:
1. No permanent financial bond between the members, each mans
liability ending for the time being when he had paid his score
after the meal.
2. No permanent clubhouse, though each clique tended to make some
special coffee house or tavern their headquarters.
These coffee-house clubs soon became hotbeds of political
scandal-mongering and intriguing, and in 1675 King Charles II
issued a proclamation which ran: His Majesty hath thought fit and
necessary that coffee houses be (for the future) put down and
suppressed, because in such houses divers false, malitious and
scandalous reports are devised and spread abroad to the Defamation
of his Majestys Government and to the Disturbance of Peace and
Quiet of the Realm. So unpopular was this proclamation that it was
almost instantly found necessary to withdraw it, and by Annes
reign the coffee-house club was a feature of Englands social
life.
