s time, and the rage for coffee-house life became general
throughout the country.

In these places the company was of course of all classes and colours;
but, as the conversation was general, there was naturally at first a
good deal of squabbling, till, for the sake of peace and comfort, a man
chose his place of resort according to his political principles; and a
little later there were regular Whig and Tory coffee-houses. Thus, in
Anne's day, 'The Cocoa-nut,' in St. James's Street, was reserved for
Jacobites, while none but Whigs frequented 'The St James's.' Still there
was not sufficient exclusiveness; and as early as in Charles II.'s reign
men of peculiar opinions began to appropriate certain coffee-houses at
certain hours, and to exclude from them all but approved members. Hence
the origin of clubs.

The October Club was one of the earliest, being composed of some hundred
and fifty rank Tories, chiefly country members of Parliament. They met
at the 'Bell,' in King Street, Westminster, that street in which Spenser
starved, and Dryden's brother kept a grocer's shop. A portrait of Queen
Anne, by Dahl, hung in the club-room. This and the Kit-kat, the great
Whig club, were chiefly reserved for politics; but the fashion of
clubbing having once come in, it was soon followed by people of all
fancies. No reader of the 'Spectator' can fail to remember the ridicule
to which this was turned by descriptions of imaginary clubs for which
the qualifications were absurd, and of which the business, on meeting,
was preposterous nonsense of some kind. The idea of such fraternities,
as the Club of Fat Men, the Ugly Club, the Sheromp Club, the Everlasting
Club, the Sighing Club, the Amorous Club, and others, could only have
been suggested by real clubs almost as ridiculous. The names, too, were
almost as fantastical as those of the taverns in the previous century,
which counted 'The Devil,' and 'The Heaven and Hell,' among their
numbers. Many derived their titles from the standing dishes preferred at
supper, the Beef-steak and the Kit-kat (a sort of mutton-pie), for
instance.

The Beef-steak Club, still in existence, was one of the most famous
established in Anne's reign. It had at that time less of a political
than a jovial character. Nothing but that excellent British fare, from
which it took its name, was, at first, served at the supper-table. It
was an assemblage of wits of every station, and very jovial were they
supposed to be wh