The Club’s Glass Goblet

The club’s glass goblet, cracked and rather fragile, lies safely within the club ’s archive, held at Reading University. 

The goblet itself is engraved as follows: “Presented by Tom Barry to his old friend and master W. Batty”. An inscription on the wooden base on which the goblet stands describes it as a ‘punch bowl’ and says it was presented to the Whitefriars Club by Friar Richard Gowing. Why and when is not clear from the goblet or base, but hidden in the correspondence or minutes of the time – well, who knows what may be found? 

Could this “W Batty”’ in fact be William Betty, once called “the Wonder of the Age”, who, in the early nineteenth century, took British theatre by storm? I ask because I have just read a review of The Young Pretender by Michael Arditti, published by Arcadia. Betty, says Michael Arditti, was a child prodigy who was just eleven when he made his debut and was hailed as a second David Garrick. Further research is required. 

The goblet is one of the many fascinating objects held in the archive. 

Others include the early signed attendance books, which (as now) contain signatures of members and guests, indicate that dinners were often small in number of those attending, and often speaker-free. But then it seems they dined more regularly and often simply dined at a table reserved by the club for Whitefriars’ members to dine there. We have recently learnt that one of the old attendance books has deteriorated, and the committee has authorised work on stabilising its condition.

Friar Colin Smythe