"Clubs, as far as my observation goes, are favourable to economy of time. There is a fixed place to go to, everything is served with comparative expedition, and it is not customary in general to remain long at table. They are favourable to temperance. It seems that when people can freely please themselves, and when they have an opportunity of living simply, excess is seldom committed. From an account I have of the expenses at the Athenæum in the year 1832, it appears that 17,323 dinners cost, on an average, 2_s._ 9¾_d._ each, and that the average quantity of wine for each person was a small fraction more than half-a-pint.
"The expense of building the Club-house was 35,000_l._, and 5,000_l._ for furnishing; the plate, linen, and glass cost 2,500_l._; library, 4,000_l._, and the stock of wine in cellar is usually worth about 4000_l._: yearly revenue about 9000_l._"
The economical management of the Club has not, however, been effected without a few sallies of humour. In 1834, we read: "The mixture of Whigs, Radicals, _savants_, foreigners, dandies, authors, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, artists, doctors, and Members of both Houses of Parliament, together with an exceedingly good average supply of bishops, render the _mélange_ very agreeable, despite of some two or three bores, who 'continually do dine;' and who, not satisfied with getting a 6_s._ dinner for 3_s._ 6_d._, 'continually do complain.'"
Mr. Rogers, the poet, was one of the earliest members of the Athenæum, and innumerable are the good things, though often barbed with bitterness, which are recorded of him.
Some years ago, judges, bishops, and peers used to congregate at the Athenæum; but a club of twelve hundred members cannot be select. "Warned by the necessity of keeping up their number and their funds, they foolishly set abroad a report that the finest thing in the world was to belong to the Athenæum; and that an opportunity offered for hobnobbing with archbishops, and hearing Theodore Hook's jokes. Consequently all the little crawlers and parasites, and gentility-hunters, from all corners of London, set out upon the creep; and they crept in at the windows and they crept down the area steps, and they crept in unseen at the doors, and they crept in under bishops' sleeves, and they crept in in peers' pockets, and they were blown in by the winds of chance. The consequence has been, that ninety-nine hundredths of this Club are people who rather seek to obtain a sort of standing by belonging to the Athenæum, than to give it lustre by the talent of its members. Nine-tenths of the intellectual writers of the age would be certainly black-balled by the dunces. Notwithstanding all this, and partly on account of this, the Athenæum is a capital Club: the library is certainly the best Club library in London, and is a great advantage to a man who writes."[22]