Brooks's...

Brooks’s

Established: 1764

 

“There was something peculiar about a Whig house and a certain similarity between them. The black and white marble hall; the painted ceiling; the Roman busts; the pictures which several generations of young noblemen had brought back from their European tours (then a necessary part of education); the fine library, and a certain air of distinction.”

-Harold Macmillan, The Past Masters

Address:

St. James’s Street, W1

Entry Restrictions

Men only; women are allowed as evening guests on special occasions

 

Famous Members

Charles James Fox (1749-1806)

William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806)

Robert Peel (1788-1850)

Lord Halifax (1881-1959)

Harold Macmillan (1894-1986)

Roy Jenkins (1920-2003)

 

Skills Augmented:

Accounting; Bargain; Credit Rating; Gambling; Law;

Areas of Speciality:

Liberal British Politics; Journalistic Policy; Business & Finance; Current Political Trends; Foreign Affairs; Backgammon

 

History

Brooks’s was first established at a private premises in Pall Mall, from a group of 27 gentlemen including four dukes. Its purpose was to provide a meeting place for those of Whig sensibilities, in direct opposition to those Tory members of Whites. The original meeting place was “farmed” or managed by Scots Club organiser William Macall, known more generally as William Almack, who passed management over to his lieutenant – a fellow named Brooks – who facilitated the move to the new location in St. James’s Street. Although Mr Brooks died only three years after the new premises was established, the name stuck.

The Club building was designed and built by architect Henry Holland and was finished in 1778; in aspect, it resembles a grand country house, with rooms for backgammon and an extensive library. It lies directly across the road from Boodle’s, and the two Tory Clubs – White’s and the Carlton Club – are just down the road. A smaller associated Club – the St. James – occupied the block next door; Brooks’s took over this establishment in 1978, amalgamating the two organisations under the Brooks’s title.

The original purpose of the Club was to provide a home away from home for gentlemen of Whiggish persuasion, to which they could retire whenever it suited them (and whenever domestic life became too unbearable). Gambling was a prevalent activity and outrageous amounts of money where reported to have changed hands there. Notably amongst the Clubs of London, Brooks’s instituted a tradition whereby the subscription fee for membership was deducted from the pay-out from a member’s gambling when they went to cash in their chips; it was considered unseemly to have to present a member with a bill for their membership dues.

Gambling was a somewhat alarming addiction at Brooks’s from the early days, with sessions of whist carrying on for consecutive days and nights at a time. The Whig politician Charles James Fox was known as a reckless and enthusiastic game-player and often bankrupted himself, relying upon his fellow members to bail him out of financial difficulties on several occasions. A certain Mr Thynne resigned in disgust from the Club for having won at cards only £12,000 in two months; the Club records note this event with the comment, “and that he may never return is the ardent wish of members”. Like White’s, Brooks’s has a betting book wherein the more unusual wagers are recorded for posterity; one bet from 1785 runs to the effect that "Ld. Cholmondeley [pronounced ‘Chumley’] has given two guineas to Ld. Derby, to receive 500 Gs whenever his lordship fucks a woman in a balloon one thousand yards from the Earth." The outcome from this wager is not appended.

From the start, Brooks’s aimed to provided substantial meals for its members and in this it succeeded very well. However, variety was not a spice that prevailed in the Club’s kitchens. Bored by the unending repetition of the bill of fare, members set up a protest which resulted in the creation of Watier’s, an on-site restaurant attached to the Club, in 1806.

A fire severely damaged the Great Subscription Room and the front morning room directly below it in the 1970s but this wasn’t the worst calamity to hit the place: in 1974, IRA terrorists threw a bomb into the outer dining room around 10 o’clock in the evening. The blast succeeded in wounding three waiters closing up after the day’s trade but missed the Home Secretary – a Club member – who, it seems, was the intended target of the attack.

Brooks’s has a long and distinguished membership and is acutely sensitive to the need for a tradition of family members. There are members who can trace their forebears back to seven or eight generations as members of the Club. With the amalgamation of the St. James’s Club in the 1970s, entry was opened to European dignitaries, literati and members of the diplomatic set, connexions which have strengthened and broadened the society of the Club. It remains to this day, one of London’s most exclusive gentlemen’s Clubs.

 

“That evening I was to dine with the Chancellor who had been saying to me for some days that he ‘had to talk to me alone, and would take me out to Brooks’s’. So we drove off in his great big Daimler, unloaded ourselves halfway up St. James’s Street and went into the Club. Upstairs is the gaming table with a slice cut out to give room for Charles James Fox’s tummy. At the bar down below were Mark Bonham-Carter and other willowy young men. It’s a classy Club, not at all like the Garrick, and after we’d had a drink we went into the dining room and had claret and gulls’ eggs and were gentlemen together.”

-The Crossman Diaries