organizers of the Great Exhibition had not meant it to be this way. The origins of the event could be found in many converging trends, but the one that was the most distinctive, the most British, was the club. The Goncourt brothers, those nineteenth-century Parisian novelists and diarists, mocked the national fondness for this institution: if two Englishmen were washed up on a desert island, they said, the first thing they would do would be to form a club.2 Certainly, by the eighteenth century, clubs were seen as an integral part of the civilizing process in Britain. Joseph Addison, laying down the rules of urbane as well as urban living in the Spectator, wrote, ‘Man is said to be a Sociable Animal, and, as an Instance of it, we may observe, that we take all Occasions and Pretences of forming our selves into those little Nocturnal Assemblies, which are commonly known by the Name of Clubs.’*3
Initially informal, sociable outings (the noun probably developed from the verb, from the custom of clubbing together to pay for dinners
After the closure of the Tatler, Addison and Steele founded the Spectator, which has been called ‘one of the most triumphant literary projects of the age’.4 It was published daily for the next twenty-two months, and transformed periodical writing in England. Addison wrote the first number, introducing the ‘Spectator’ himself—a wry observer of the foibles of polite life—who together with his friends formed a club whose members included the Whig merchant Sir Andrew Freeport, the elderly ladies’ man Will Honeycomb, and, ultimately the most famous, the country squire Sir Roger de Coverley.
and drinks), clubs gradually through the eighteenth century developed into a fairly constant form: they were on the whole private groups of men (almost always men), who met on a regular if not necessarily frequent basis, mostly in public places such as coffee houses, taverns, inns or pubs, where their meetings were given point by a focus on one specific aim, whether it was recreation, sociability, education, politics, or a shared profession.*
Soon these clubs expanded further into daily life. Addison wrote approvingly once more: ‘When [men] are thus combined for their own Improvement, or for the Good of others, or at least to relax themselves from the Business of the Day…there may be something very useful in these little Institutions and Establishments.’6 By the mid eighteenth century there were possibly as many as 20,000 men meeting every night in London alone in some form of organized group. And it was not just London that had convivial meeting groups: by the early eighteenth century most provincial towns had a range of clubs, whether county societies, military groups, antiquarian or philosophical societies, or simple social clubs. Bristol, with a population of 50,000 in the 1750s, had bell-ringing, clergy, county, floral, political, musical, ‘Ancient Britons’, Masonic and charitable groups. Norwich, with 36,000 people, had bell-ringing, floral and clergy groups, as well as nine Masonic lodges, a natural-history society, a music society, uncounted sociable clubs, and nearly fifty benefit societies. Oxford had a ‘catch’ club—for ‘all true lovers of good fun, good humour and good music’—Irish clubs, Welsh clubs, a poetry and philosophical club, a bell-ringing club, an antiquarian society, and a number of Masonic lodges, dining clubs and social clubs—including the Eternal Club, the Jelly Bag Society, and the Town Smarts, whose members appeared in ‘white stockings, silver buckles, [with] chitterlings [shirt frills] flying, and hair in kidney’†—as well as the more common benefit, political, social, sporting, naturalhistory and college clubs. Even Northampton, with a population of only 5,000, managed a floral club, a Masonic lodge and a philosophical society.7 Though most of Scotland had barely any clubs, Glasgow and Aberdeen had a few, while Edinburgh had more than twenty with an occupational or other aim—religious, social, political, musical, antiquarian—and several that were purely social, like the Easy Club (founded in 1712) for ‘mutual improvement in conversation that [members] may be more adapted for fellowship with the politer part of mankind’.8 It was this thirst for self-improvement that motivated many club-goers.
By the end of the eighteenth century a change had taken place in some clubs. They became more tightly organized, with more rules, more organizers; they began to link themselves to other clubs with similar interests, for a less localized, more national sense of themselves; and many began to look at questions of social cohesion and discipline. Now it was not simply members whose behaviour was to be regulated by the rules of the organization: those members wanted in turn to regulate the behaviour of others. Charitable bodies, religious and civilreform societies all were set up in the coming years. A number of causes can be attributed to this shift: a series of bad harvests that led to hunger in the country, an influx of jobless immigrants into the cities, and fears of civil unrest; the beginning of the French wars after the fall of the Bastille in 1789; the continued rapid urbanization of society, which brought like-minded men into close proximity with each other, and also with those who were less blessed by worldly goods; the rise of Methodism and Dissenting faiths—all these forces joined together to produce a group of men who thought reform was desirable, and possible.
This may appear to be a long way from the Great Exhibition, but it was in Rawthmell’s Coffee House, in Covent Garden, that the first meeting of what ultimately became the Royal Society of Arts, the Exhibition’s spiritual parent, took place nearly a hundred years before, in 1754. The minutes of the ‘Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’ preserve the reforming zeal of its founders.9 The driving force was William Shipley, a drawing master and brother of the Bishop of St Asaph, who had published his intentions in a pamphlet entitled Proposals for raising by subscription a fund to be distributed in Premiums for the promoting of improvements in the liberal arts and sciences, manufactures, &c. At the first meeting of ‘noblemen, clergy, gentlemen and merchants’, the members considered
whether a reward should not be given for the finding of Cobalt in this Kingdom…It was also proposed to consider whether a Reward should not be given for the Cultivation of Madder in this Kingdom…It is likewise proposed, to consider of giving Rewards for the Encouragement of Boys and Girls in the Art of Drawing; And it being the Opinion of all present that ye Art of Drawing is absolutely Necessary in many Employments Trades, & Manufactures, and that the Encouragemt thereof may prove of great Utility to the public…
Their brief for prizes for ‘improvement’—that is, innovation—included industrial design and technological and scientific discoveries, as well as those things we now consider to fall more naturally into the domain of ‘art’. The cash premiums suggested for early prizes were considerable: £30 for the discovery of deposits of ore that contained cobalt (which produced a blue pigment that, before the creation of synthetic dyes in the nineteenth century, was impossible to reproduce), and for the successful cultivation of the Rubia tinctorum plant for the production of madder (again for use in dyeing). There were to be two winners of the drawing prize—one for those under fourteen, one for fourteen-to-seventeen-year-olds.* Each was to receive £15. At this time journeymen workers in the arts received weekly wages ranging from 3 to 6 guineas for a drapery-painter, to £1 10s. for an engraver, down to 15s. a week for a gilder, or 10 to 12s. for a colour grinder10. By 1758 the RSA was funding further prizes, for designs for weavers, calico printers, cabinet- and coach-makers, as well as workers in iron, brass, china, earthenware or ‘any other Mechanic Trade that requires Taste’.
The Society’s committee used the burgeoning daily press to promote its premiums, placing an advertisement in the Daily Advertiser. The prizes were eagerly competed for, and by 1785 nearly twenty entries had been received for premiums for