The two university clubs of Pall Mall came a little, but not much, before the Reform Club. They were like it in looking to a limited and defined catchment area (members of the two ancient universities) for members, although supplying general social club facilities. They none the less managed to achieve a subtle but considerable difference of spirit between themselves, and existed independently and within about six hundred yards of each other for nearly 150 years. They stood like two gatehouses, the one the most easterly and the other the most westerly of the Pall Mall clubs.
The United University Club was the easterly one and was also the earliest of the Pall Mall clubhouses. It was designed by William Wilkins and completed in 1823. Wilkins was a prolific and distinguished early-nineteenth-century architect. He had already designed Haileybury School and Downing College, Cambridge, as well as substantially embellishing King’s College, and in particular adding the screen which fronts on to King’s Parade, in that university. Subsequently he was to do the National Gallery and the central building of University College, London.
Next in Pall Mall came Nash’s United Services Club (now the Institute of Directors) in 1827, then Decimus Burton’s Athenaeum in 1830, then Barry’s relatively modest and tentative Travellers Club in 1832, and Smirke’s now demolished Carlton completed in 1833, and then the westerly gatehouse of the Oxford and Cambridge Club in 1838. This was also by Smirke, whose other London works were the Royal Opera House, the old General Post Office in St Martin’s-le-Grand, and the British Museum. No one could say that the new clubs did not employ the most notable and fashionable of architects. The group was crowned with the completion in 1843 of the Reform clubhouse, Barry having gained greatly in confidence and flamboyance over the eleven years since the Travellers. The Junior Carlton, by Brandon, since gone, was added on the north side of the street, in the 1860s. And in 1911 came the last great clubhouse to be built in London. Mewès and Davis gave the Royal Automobile Club the external appearance of a Beaux-Arts American railroad station and the internal feel of a Cunard liner.
Long before amalgamation there were two other developments in the university club field. In 1864, waiting lists being long at both the others, the New University Club was set up, and in 1867-8 Alfred Waterhouse built it a gothic clubhouse on the upper west side of St James’s Street. Betjeman described Waterhouse as the greatest English architect since Wren, but, whether or not this was true, photographs do not suggest that his New University Club was his greatest success. It was more comparable with the Broad Street front of Balliol College, Oxford, than with his Manchester Town Hall, or the Natural History Museum in South Kensington or St Paul’s School in Hammersmith (also, alas, demolished) or his second and unforgettable London club building, the National Liberal Club, completed in 1886.
Even if inferior to those pinnacled Liberal glories in Whitehall Gardens, the New University Club did not suffer from F. E. Smith’s pretence that he had mistaken it for a public lavatory, perhaps only because it was less conveniently placed for his walk from the Temple to the House of Commons. It did, however, suffer from declining fortunes, demolition, and amalgamation with the United University Club in 1938. In the meantime, that club had decided it needed a more opulent and modern, even if less distinguished, façade than that with which Wilkins had provided it. Accordingly, in 1906-7 it commissioned Reginald Blomfield to re-model the clubhouse in what Pevsner disparagingly described as his Champs Elysées style. At the Oxford and Cambridge Club Blomfield was also set loose to design the entrance and the staircase as well as, after an interval, adding the bedroom floor. But Smirke’s framework, unlike that of Wilkins, was allowed to survive. It was therefore desirable that, when the amalgamation of 1972 took place, the Oxford and Cambridge Club was allowed to provide the clubhouse even though the United University Club provided most of the officers.
The combined club has since prospered. But, unlike the Reform, which had no particular obligation to do so, it has not accepted women as full members. This is an anomaly for a club called the United Oxford and Cambridge University Club, for both those universities are now 40 per cent female.
Ten Pieces of Wine Nonsense
This is based on a not very serious talk delivered to the Wine Guild in March 1988.
My Reputation both as a wine drinker and as a wine expert has long been exaggerated. While this has I think done me some harm politically, it carries with it the partly compensating advantage that some (but not all) hosts tend to give me better wine than they might otherwise do. Occasionally indeed they are misled by my alleged partiality for claret by providing such sustenance at all times and in all circumstances, as for example before or after a speech, when I would much rather have a stimulating or reviving whisky. However, they are right to the extent that, in so far as I know anything about wine, my knowledge is confined to the red wines of Bordeaux. It is not that I do not like Burgundy. It is simply that I do not know how to choose it.