Palaces of Power: The Birth and Evolution of London's Clubland by Stephen Hoare

Author:Stephen Hoare
Format: epub

Wellington’s Clubland

A vast amount has been written about Arthur Wellesley’s successful campaigns in the Peninsular War and his defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo. But there was another side to Britain’s military hero. In peacetime, the Duke of Wellington switched his very considerable energies to seeking and wielding political power and he saw clubs as the ideal power base from which to build his support. Few other individuals were more active in promoting the concept of Clubland. In all, he was a member of no fewer than nine clubs.

Wellington helped launch the Union Club in 1805 for his fellow Anglo-Irish peers and members of Parliament following the dissolution of the Irish Parliament. Like Pitt before him, Wellington was a member of White’s which threw a banquet for him in 1814 after his initial defeat of Napoleon, doubtless to deliver a firm riposte to Brooks’s whose members had supported Napoleon. Wellington was a strong and pragmatic Tory, and he saw in the old aristocracy of Brooks’s a dangerous libertarianism which if unchecked could result in revolution along the lines of France.

The focus of Wellington’s campaigning zeal for gentlemen’s clubs was the new generation of clubs springing up on Pall Mall. The Iron Duke’s support and advice was crucial for club formation and helped legitimise institutions which might otherwise have struggled to establish themselves on a firm footing. The clubs in turn provided him with a ready-made political platform and a loyal following. In 1816, Wellington helped secure the backing of the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool for the establishment of the United Service Club in Pall Mall for senior officers of the British Army and the Royal Navy who had served in the Napoleonic Wars. Subsequently, Wellington’s involvement in re-inventing Clubland took him in some interesting and unusual directions. As a general and administrator for the East India Company, Wellington developed a close working relationship with his clerk, Benjamin Dean Wyatt, architect son of the celebrated James Wyatt who had supervised the building of White’s.

When the nation showed its gratitude to the victor of Waterloo, Wellington asked Benjamin Wyatt to find him a suitable site and having settled on Stratfield Saye in Hampshire, commissioned him as its architect. Having proved his credentials beyond any doubt, Wellington then gave Wyatt the job of altering and adapting his London home Apsley House for entertaining on a grand scale. Wellington’s patronage helped Benjamin Wyatt secure the commission to design the new Crockford’s Club in St James’s Street.

Wellington was a founder member of the Travellers Club the Athenaeum, which had been launched by his political protégé J.W. Croker, and Crockford’s gambling club. The Duke ‘seldom played at all and never played deep’6 but he enjoyed meeting his officers and doubtless appreciated his protégé’s architecture and resident chef Charles Francatelli’s French cuisine. Together with General Sir John Malcolm, Wellington was a founder member of the Oriental Club. When approached to support a group of high-ranking officers from the East India Company’s army in 1824, the Duke’s advice was clear: ‘Have a club of your own,’ and ‘Buy the freehold.

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