"With Rundell, Dr. K., or Glasse, And such Domestic books, They once put up, but now, alas! It's hey! for foreign cooks. 'When _will_ you dine at home, my dove?' I say to Mr. Stubbs. 'When Cook can make an omelette, love-- An omelette like the Clubs!'
"Time was, their hearts were only placed On snug domestic schemes, The book for two--united taste,-- And such connubial dreams,-- Friends, dropping in at close of day, To singles, doubles, rubs,-- A little music,--then the tray,-- And not a word of Clubs!
"But former comforts they condemn; French kickshaws they discuss, And take their wine, the wine takes them, And then they favour us;-- From some offence they can't digest, As cross as bears with cubs, Or sleepy, dull, and queer, at best-- That's how they come from Clubs!
"It's very fine to say, 'Subscribe To Andrews'--can't you read? When Wives, the poor neglected tribe, Complain how they proceed! They'd better recommend at once Philosophy and tubs,-- A woman need not be a dunce, To feel the wrong of Clubs.
"A set of savage Goths and Picts Would seek us now and then,-- They're pretty pattern-Benedicts To guide our single men! Indeed, my daughters both declare 'Their Beaux shall not be subs To White's, or Black's, or anywhere,-- They've seen enough of Clubs!'
"They say, without the marriage ties, They can devote their hours To catechize, or botanize-- Shells, Sunday Schools, and flow'rs-- Or teach a Pretty Poll new words, Tend Covent Garden shrubs, Nurse dogs and chirp to little birds-- As Wives do since the Clubs.
"Alas! for those departed days Of social wedded life, When married folks had married ways, And liv'd like Man and Wife! Oh! Wedlock then was pick'd by none-- As safe a lock as Chubb's! But couples, that should be as one, Are now the Two of Clubs!
"Of all the modern schemes of Man That time has brought to bear, A plague upon the wicked plan, That parts the wedded pair! My wedded friends they all allow They meet with slights and snubs, And say, 'They have no husbands now,-- They're married to the Clubs!'"
The satire soon reached the stage. About five-and-twenty years since there was produced at the old wooden Olympic Theatre, Mr. Mark Lemon's farce, _The Ladies' Club_, which proved one of the most striking pieces of the time. "Though in 1840 Clubs, in the modern sense of the word, had been for some years established, they were not quite recognized as social necessities, and the complaints of married ladies and of dowagers with marriageable daughters, to the effect that these institutions caused husbands to desert the domestic hearth and encouraged bachelors to remain single, expressed something of a general feeling. Public opinion was ostentatiously on the side of the ladies and against the Clubs, and to this opinion Mr. Mark Lemon responded when he wrote his most successful farce."[23]