Some thirty years ago, a _Quarterly_ reviewer wrote: "The improvement and multiplication of Clubs is the grand feature of metropolitan progress. There are between twenty and thirty of these admirable establishments, at which a man of moderate habits can dine more comfortably for three or four shillings (including half a pint of wine), than he could have dined for four or five times that amount at the coffee-houses and hotels, which were the habitual resort of the bachelor class in the corresponding rank of life during the first quarter of the century. At some of the Clubs--the Travellers', the Coventry, and the Carlton, for example--the most finished luxury may be enjoyed at a very moderate cost. The best judges are agreed that it is utterly impossible to dine better than at the Carlton, when the cook has fair notice, and is not hurried, or confused by a multitude of orders. But great allowances must be made when a simultaneous rush occurs from both Houses of Parliament; and the caprices of individual members of such institutions are sometimes extremely trying to the temper and reputation of a _chef_."
This handsome Club-house, which occupies a portion of the site of the old Thatched House Tavern, 74, St. James's-street, was designed by Sydney Smirke and George Basevi, 1845. The upper portion is Corinthian, with columns and pilasters, and a frieze sculptured with the imperial crown and oak-wreaths; the lower order is Roman-Doric; and the wings are slightly advanced, with an enriched entrance-porch north, and a bay-window south. The interior was superbly decorated in colour by Sang: the coved hall, with a gallery round it, and the domed vestibule above it, is a fine specimen of German encaustic embellishment, in the arches, soffites, spandrels, and ceilings; and the hall-floor is tessellated, around a noble star of marqueterie. The evening room, on the first floor, has an enriched coved ceiling, and a beautiful frieze of the rose, shamrock, and thistle, supported by scagliola Corinthian columns: the morning room, beneath, is of the same dimensions, with Ionic pillars. The library, in the upper story north, has columns and pilasters with bronzed capitals. Beneath is the coffee-room. The kitchen is far more spacious than that of the Reform Club. In the right wing is a large bay-window, which was introduced as an essential to the morning room, affording the lounger a view of Pall Mall and St. James's-street, and the Palace gateway; this introduction reminding us, by the way, of Theodore Hook's oddly comparing the bay-window of a coffee-house nearly on the same spot, to an obese old gentleman in a white waistcoat. Hook lived for some time in Cleveland-row: he used to describe the _real London_ as the space between Pall Mall on the south, Piccadilly north, St. James's west, and the Opera-house east.