Behind Closed Doors
They are, to most people, mysterious habitats with their own peculiar customs and practices. But with the help of a new book by Andrew Jones, THE RAKE enjoys a tour of London’s most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs.
Last month Andrew Jones launched The London Club — his wonderful book on the architecture and interiors of London’s private members’ spaces — at Brooks’s, the more liberal club founded to offset the more conservative presence in St. James’s of White’s. So much of what is said about these strange and mysterious addresses concerns their memberships and the conversations therein. How do these clubs, whether the gentlemen’s clubs of St James’s, the high-society members’ clubs of Messrs Birley and Birley, or the new-wave clubs of Soho and beyond, allow members to feel like they are at home while, at the same time, retaining a sense of the exclusive?
What these London venues give us is a portal through time, in which the club interiors show shifting tastes and expectations. We know that these institutions began as disreputable backroom gambling dens, but as we learn in Dr. Seth Alexander Thévoz’s book London Clubland, when the more fashionable aristocratic members began to join, expectations for décor and food increased, and the vision of modern clubland began to take shape.
In some cases you may be surprised if you think that the grander the club, the more opulent the setting. This can be the case, such as with the high ceilings and imposing portraiture of White’s. However, in what some might see as an even more exclusive club, Pratt’s, there is the feeling of an old shooting lodge or a captain’s cabin aboard a ship of the line, and that is how the members like it.
The point is that each club has a distinct character, and no other institutions have had such a major impact on the cultural and political landscape of Britain as the St. James’s clubs. These addresses, often austere and uninviting from the outside, and in more or less all cases on or just off St. James’s Street and Pall Mall, were set up as literal ‘power houses’, gathering like-minded people from society, politics and the military. Those that have endured are the final portals to a world in which civility reigns, and not much has changed.
Here, we give you an insight into these spaces, from the palatial lobby, or ‘saloon’, of the Reform Club to the blink- and-you’ll-miss-it artwork in Boodle’s. A special thanks goes to Andrew Jones for expertly documenting these cultural museums, and to the clubs themselves for allowing cameras in when, traditionally, it is strictly verboten.
The London Club, by Andrew Jones, is published by ACC Art Books, £50 (Accartbooks.com)
