CHAPTER XIII. The King of Clubs ''The Bachelor '-Rogers building-Paris in 1802-Letters to Henry Rogers, Maria Sharpe, Mrs. Greg-Fox and Rogers in Paris -Fox and Mackintosh-Rogers's new house-His final settlement in St. James's Place. THE King of Clubs' referred to in the letter to Richard Sharp was not actually established till the first year of the nineteenth century. It was founded by a group of friends who were in the habit of meeting at Mackintosh's house: Rogers, Richard Sharp, Scarlett, Robert Smith, and John Allen. Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger, tells us that the chief figures in its social intercourse were, in addition to those already mentioned, Romilly, Dumont, Tennant, and the Rev. Sydney Smith. To these were added Lord Lansdowne, Lord Holland, Brougham, Lord Cowper, Lord King, Porson, Payne Knight, Horner, Bryan Edwards, Jeffrey, Smithson, Whishaw, Alexander Baring, Luttrell, Blake, Hallam, Ricardo, and Hoppner. Francis Horner speaking of visits made to the club in the spring of 1802 mentions that he met there Abercromby, Tom Wedgwood, and Maltby, and that the conversation consisted of literary reminiscences, anecdotes of authors, and criticisms of books. The Club met monthly at dinner at the old Crown and Anchor' in the Strand, where the Whig Club met for some years on 'THE KING OF CLUBS' 423 Tuesday evenings. The King of Clubs was one of those conversation clubs which had superseded the coffeehouses and the taverns in which Addison and Johnson had spent so much of every day in pleasant talk. In those times men prepared their observations beforehand, and so led the talk as to bring them in. There is a story of Richard Sharp having one day seen on the desk the notes of the conversation in which his partner Boddington was to join in the evening. Sharp was to be of the party, and he committed to memory the prepared impromptus of his friend, assisted him to lead the conversation in the right direction, and then forestalled him with his stories and clever things. There was nothing unusual in Boddington's preparations. Men read books, recorded good stories, and reserved criticisms on men and things for the evening talk. The two most brilliant talkers in the King of Clubs were Mackintosh and Sydney Smith. Sydney Smith said of Mackintosh that his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being he ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with. But Rogers, a still more intimate friend of Mackintosh, said that he sacrificed himself to conversation, read for it, thought for it, and gave up future fame for it; and Mackintosh is not the only man in this brilliant group of whom the observation may be made. 1 There was at one time a prospect that much of the wit and learning poured into these conversations would take permanent form. Rogers and his friends proposed to establish a literary paper, to be called The Bachelor, 1 Moore's Diary, vol. vi. p. 292. and published twice a week. Mackintosh tells us that this paper would probably have imitated the aim, even if it had not equalled the execution of the essayists of the reign of Queen Anne. The men to be associated in the enterprise were: Rogers, Mackintosh, Robert Smith, Scarlett, and Richard Sharp. The execution of the project was frustrated at the moment, and never resumed. Rogers has left in his Commonplace Book' an outline of the kind of contributions the paper was intended to contain. This sketch is amusing. It is clearly Rogers's own, particularly the motto from Gray, and the outline of the History of a Voice.' Periodical Paper-The Bachelor. Poor Moralist, and what art thou?-Gray. First-His history: his attachments and adventures. I. On War. 2. On Courtship. 3. History of an old house. 4. History of a voice, a musical cry in his cradle, cries wild lavender and matches, frightens the birds from the corn; a ballad-singer, sings with the miners in Castleton Cave, with the singers at the parish church, catches cold, a deputy crier, a chorister in a cathedral, sings at concerts, marries a rich deaf dowager, and sells his voice in Parliament. 5. Letters. Cairo flea. An antiquarian's conjecture in the next century, 1895, on a board lately dug up inscribed 'Man Traps.' Lord Stanhope's Reasoning Machine. A Christmas in the country. A husband's threat to a wife: I'll wear a wig.' History of a Talker and Listener. Eloge upon Snuff. Rogers, however, had at this period another occupation for his leisure. He was designing the dwelling DESIGNING HIS HOUSE 425 which, for more than half a century, was to be the admiration and the envy of his contemporaries. We may take it for granted that he had by this time given up all thought of marrying, and settled down to the life of a bachelor. His house, if not actually planned as a bachelor dwelling, scarcely contemplated family uses. He and Sir John Lubbock bought a house of the Duke of St. Albans, in St. James's Place, and made two houses of it. The reconstruction thus rendered needful gave Rogers an opportunity of making for himself a home in accordance with his tastes, and he devoted himself to the agreeable task with the most striking success. The summer and autumn of 1802 offered him an unusual opportunity for the study of art, and he went into it as systematically as he had gone into classical reading during his Devonshire exile. The Peace of Amiens opened Paris to Englishmen, and there was an immense outflow of visitors from this country to the republican capital. It had been practically sealed from about the time of Rogers's visit in 1791: for the horrors of the Terror had closed it as much as war. In 1802, therefore, there was the greatest curiosity to see the city over which the revolutionary storm had swept, and which had since been enriched with the spoils of Europe. The Louvre contained at that time the most splendid collection of pictures and statues that had ever been brought together, and artists and men of taste took occasion of the brief gleam of peace to rush over and feast their eyes on the unexampled sight. Rogers's brother-in-law, Sutton Sharpe, had gone over early in September, and found himself in a crowd of artist friends: Flaxman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Opie, Fuseli, then at the height of his fame; and Farrington, R.A., who was his companion in the journey; Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, and his son Raphael West, then expected to attain an eminence he never reached; Shee, afterwards Sir Martin Shee, and President of the Royal Academy; Hoppner and his wife, and others less known to fame. Erskine and his son, and Travers the surgeon, also occupy a prominent place in Sutton Sharpe's letters. In a visit which Boddington, the two Erskines, Rogers, and Sutton Sharpe made together to Versailles, Sutton Sharpe says: Erskine was in the most prodigious spirits. Half-mad with joy he walked about the gardens, exclaiming: "What a delightful place-but it won't keep people's heads on their shoulders!" Erskine was introduced to the First Consul as an "avocat," but Bonaparte did not understand his rank and eminence, and took no notice of him.' Millingen the antiquary, Townley, and Champernowne, the well-known collectors of objects of art, with Dr. Carrick Moore, brother of Sir John Moore, were also in Paris at this period, and formed part of the wide circle of friends and acquaintances in which Rogers found himself as soon as he joined his brother-in-law. His old friend Gilpin, in a characteristic letter, which, like all Gilpin's letters, is worth reproducing for its own sake, gave him a commission based on doubts which were widely prevalent at the time. Rev. Wm. Gilpin to S. Rogers. 'My dear Sir, I write immediately, not to answer your letter, but, as you are going to France, to give you |