But after all, the only clubs where any thing like fellowship exists are the dandy ones of Crockford’s, White’s, and the Travellers; the glittering arid particles of those useless sandbanks, being indurated into something resembling substance only by their want of sympathy with any other existing body.
These clubs of London, however, afford a useful safety-valve to society. The idle, the frivolous, and the undomestic, mutually attract each other ; opinions are exchanged, prejudices rubbed off; and since, positively resolved against socialising at home, it is better that the male part of a family should keep up that intercourse with each other by fraternising at clubs, which the female portion endeavour to maintain by the gossiping of morning visiting.
In Paris, there are only three clubs; two of them of unquestioned and the third of probably English origin. The first in importance is the “Club Anglais,” a handsome establishment, at the corner of the Boulevarts and Rue de Grammont, conducted in the style of the best London clubs. To this the ambassadors and leading men of the fashionable and diplomatic circles habitually resort. It has its permanent and honorary members; the latter consisting of the eminent foreigners temporarily visiting Paris: the former, chiefly of Carlists, between whom and the rising men of the day a constant warfare of blackballing is kept up. As in the London clubs, games of chance are prohibited; but whist suffices as a pretext for tremendously high play. This club maintains, meanwhile, a high reputation; and it is worthy of remark that, on occasion of the disgraceful London exposure last year, not only was the name of Lord De Roos struck off the list of members, but one of the witnesses on the trial, who admitted that he had seen his lordship cheat, but considered the exposure no affair of his, was requested to withdraw his name, which had been previously proposed for ballot.
The second in importance is the ” Jockey Club,” founded by Englishmen and French Anglo-maniacs, the name of the club explaining their common bond of union. The house, also on the Boulevarts, is splendid, and the cellar and establishment important. But French sportsmen overdo their sportsmanship, and are apt to degenerate into slang. The tone of the Parisian Jockey-Club is rather of brass than Corinthian bronze. It is an excellent gathering-place for that very flash generation the dandies of the Boulevarts and Bois de Boulogne, to toast Dejazet and sigh for Duvernay; but will never attract the well-bred Englishman of fashion from the select set in the Rue de Grammont.
The third club is the ” Cercle,” a heterogeneous assemblage: house, household, eating, and drinking excellent: the rest, as it may be.
The establishment of these clubs has been advantageous in thinning the fashionable crowd at the Salon, the privileged gambling-house; which, per aid of costly gratuitous dinners twice a week and nightly suppers, contrives to attract flocks of unhappy muttons to be fleeced and roasted. At the Salon, infamy assumes its most orderly and respectable form : a hell is legally organised under the superintendence of commissaries, wearing ribbons at their button-holes, and titles on their visiting cards; and croupiers who, in the intervals of rouge et noir and hazard, are received at court and in ambassadorial circles ! This social nuisance, however,, this gilded pandemonium,, this courtly “Finish,”, this chartered temple of sensuality and vice,, is to be demolished by the hammer of modern reform, the iconoclasts of the utilitarian faith being about to break to atoms the molten calf of its abominations.
From: “Paris in Light and Shade. No. IV.” The Metropolitan magazine. Oct 1837, Vol. 20, Nr. 78.