Category: Archive material

Artemas Aglen Dowty was born in Bridgwater in 1846. He was a son of Flixton Dowty (1812–75), printer and bookseller, and educated at Wesley’s College, Taunton (now Queen’s College).

When he was aged fifteen, he had a severe accident while ice-skating, and was so badly injured he abandoned all hope of matriculation for university entrance. During his convalescence, he occupied himself writing verse, which was published in the local newspaper. He submitted more verses to Tom Hood (1835–74), then editor of the comic journal Fun – and one of the founders of the Whitefriars Club – who published them. As the critic theatre Clement Scott later wrote,

Tom Hood had an influence among the younger writers and artists of his day that cannot be overrated. He was the most unselfish and least jealous of men. He loved to get his friends about him to talk shop, and to encourage one another in their various callings. Every Friday night of his life, though not particularly blessed with this world’s riches, he gave a cheery bohemian supper-party, to which the best fellows in the world were invited. Who that was privileged to attend them can have forgotten Tom Hood’s “Friday nights” in South Street, Brompton, where, after a pipe and music, conversation and poetry readings, we sat down to a homely meal of cold joint and roast potatoes, and discussed all the wonderful things that we youngsters intended to do in the future?¹ 

Is it possible that Hood’s “Friday Nights” point to the origin of the Whitefriars’ dinners?

Dowty published more verse, but perhaps, realizing the need of a secure income, in 1867 he successfully passed the Civil Service exam. He was offered a post as a clerk in the Paymaster General’s office, and moved to London. In view of his early link with Tom Hood, it is most likely he joined the Whitefriars soon after his arrival there.

A newspaper account of a dinner held in early 1879 noted he was there:

Mr F.W. Haddon was the chief guest at a nice little dinner of the White Friars Club a few days ago, where he met Mr Charles Gibbon, the novelist; Mr Toole, the comedian; Mr William Sawyer, Mr Aglen Dowty (reputed author of The Coming K—), better known “O.P.Q. Philander Smiff”; Mr Baden Pritchard, Mr J. Crawford Wilson, Mr Wharton Simpson, Dr Robert Brown, the geographer, and many others.²

A very extensive newspaper account of November 1887³ describes a Whitefriars Smoking Concert, where Friar Richard Gowing was in the chair. It describes the portraits on the walls of deceased or living members. Tom Hood and William Sawyer are mentioned, as well as Philander Smiff. This most likely relates to the portrait of a bust of Philander Smiff as the London Figaro artists envisaged him. Others whose portraits were mentioned were the novelist William Black and the actors “Mr Creswick”, Barry Sullivan and Wilson Barrett.

The article also mentions, among the attendees, several well-known authors and journalists: Harrison Weir, William Senior, Edward Marston, George Henty [G.A. Henty], Dr Robert Brown and Byron Webber.

It is hard to categorize Dowty’s humorous writing. His tone was usually of studied irony, and his work is devoid of literary quality. Much was written when he was a young man, of course, but to the present-day reader his verse seems very laboured and somewhat juvenile. His short stories, however, are amusing. It is clear he was a very prolific writer, and it would require extensive research to identify all of his writings today.

The Civil Service in the last half of the nineteenth century was a home for a number of successful writers, such as Anthony Trollope. Dowty remained until at least 1891,⁴ although some sources suggest that he resigned later.

From 1870 Dowty published much in the comic journal The London Figaro, including a famous series with the pseudonym O.P.Q. Philander Smiff. Many of the articles were later reprinted in book form.

Also in the 1870s he assisted Samuel Beeton (1831–77) in editing his parody of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (the parts published in 1859 and 1872), which was merciless in its treatment of the Prince of Wales’s moral behaviour, and his fitness to be King. This caused a hostile response in the press, due to the anonymity of the authors. 

The book was entitled The Coming K––, and published in 1872. It was one of Beeton’s Christmas Annuals that were published between 1860 and 1895. The earlier numbers covered seasonal topics and were safe to be read round the family hearth, but from 1872 the annuals were much more radical in tone. Dowty helped edit three more titles. One parodied Homer’s Iliad, the second Byron’s Don Juan and the third Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V. After Beeton’s death in 1877, the annuals reverted to the usual Christmas style.

Dowty was also a prolific writer of short stories. A number of them have a flavour of the Grossmiths’ Diary of a Nobody – which, of course, began as a Punch serial.

For twenty-nine years, until his death in 1906, Dowty wrote a regular series of satirical verses for Truth under the title “The Barrel Organ”, which ranged over politics and the social scene. He was also the author of a lengthy year-end verse review which became a staple in Truth’s Christmas numbers.

We don’t know if Dowty was ever a White Friar or only attended as a guest, although it is likely that he joined the club at some point. New archive material could help answer this question. If he ever joined the club, he was definitely no longer a White Friar by 1900, since his name does not appear in that year’s members’ list published in The Whitefriars’ Chronicles.

Although he is regarded today as a lesser-known figure, Dowty was well known in his own time, and right at the centre of the cultural and literary world of his day. He certainly deserves to be rediscovered.

– Tony Woolrich

NOTES:
1. Clement Scott, Thirty Years at the Play, 1891, pp. 20–21.
2. Sheffield Independent, 12th April 1879.
3. Nottinghamshire Guardian, 26th November 1887.
4. Census record.

Tony Woolrich has worked as a publisher’s editor, and has specialized in industrial history and biography, as well as local history. He has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers and Wikipedia. He spotted A.A. Dowty in a bibliography of Somerset books, where his book of dialect rhymes was listed as being by O.P.Q. Philander Smiff. So the urge to learn more was not to be resisted.

Patronymics are not always appropriate. The White Friars have outgrown their early patronymic. They were christened “Whitefriars” for the simple and prosaic reason that they first saw the light as a corporate body in Whitefriars Street; but long before they reached the age of maturity they had left the home of their birth, and their name had ceased to apply; they had developed from “Whitefriars” to “Fleets”, but they had wedded name to fame, and the title they had adopted for its “local colour” they retained for “auld lang syne”.

The traditions of the early Friars who christened the street that christened the club still survive in the designs of the menu cards and dinner tickets of their modern representatives, and the present White Friars look back with sympathy upon the day when their patronymic ancestors sang ‘Tomorrow will be Friday’ as they angled for the lusty trout from the Thames Embankment of their time; and yet these fancies owe their origin rather to the name than to the nature of the club.

The peculiar feature of the Whitefriars Club is that it had no peculiar feature, unless, indeed, the fact that it is not a log-rolling fraternity be held to constitute a peculiarity. It was not conceived in idio­syncrasy, nor born of whimsicality, neither has it been developed on eccentricity. Nor is it a club with a mission devoted to the perpetuation of amiable weaknesses or the destruction of dead superstitions. It was born, as other worlds are said to come into existence, “by the fortuitous concourse of atoms” – which atoms, if less brilliant than the nebulae of the heavens, were drawn together by an affinity no less real; and it exists today by reason of the natural warmth incident to the aggregation of sympathetic elements, which a common interest in the common pursuit of letters has magnetised, and the spirit of brotherhood has welded, into a world of light and leading which time, as yet, has not had time to cool.

A glance at the list of those present at the opening dinner, held in 1868, will give some idea of the calibre and standing of its earlier members and of the auspices of its inauguration. Henry N. Barnett, editor of the Sunday Times, presided, and Tom Hood, the editor of Fun, occupied the vice-chair; George Cruikshank, whose name bears the prefix Lieutenant Colonel, responded for “The Army, the Navy and the Volunteers”; W.M. Torrens proposed “The Legislature”, of which he became a member, and George Augustus Sala responded for “The Visitors”; Hepworth Dixon represented “Literature”, and Benjamin Ward Richardson (he was not be[k]nighted then, and could even look “upon the wine when it was red”) held the brief for “Science”; F. Sandys was sponsor for “Art”, Westland Marston for “The Drama” and Barry Sullivan for “The Stage”, to do no more than mention such men as Joseph Knight, one of the best-known of London journalists; Thomas Archer, author of The Highway of Letters; Dillon Croker, the walking dictionary of the stage, and the universal impersonator of actors past and present; William Sawyer, author of ‘Ten Miles from Town’ and many other poems; Ashby Sterry, the lyrist of Hambleton Lock and Bolney Ferry; Crawford Wilson, poet and dramatist, author of Jonathan Oldacre and Pastorals and Poems, as well as author of the club itself; and many others distinguished in science, art and letters.

The first home of the Whitefriars Club was Radley’s Hotel, in Bridge Street, Blackfriars, a hostelry since demolished to make way for newer buildings. On leaving Radley’s, the Friars found a home at the Mitre Tavern, in Fleet Street, among associations of Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, until, outgrowing this accommodation, they migrated to a new building at the corner of Ludgate Circus, and, later, to share the premises of the Temple Club in Arundel Street, Strand. Their next move was to what appears to have become their permanent home, Anderton’s Hotel in Fleet Street, and here, for a number of years, in a spacious room facing the “Highway of Letters”, upon the first floor, its walls covered with portraits of past and present members, the White Friars have done penance in broadcloth and tobacco ashes.

A glance at the portraits upon the walls of the club-room revives a host of fascinating recollections. There, in the full vigour of his prime, is William Creswick, whose Shakespearian recitals formed a noteworthy feature in the after-dinner programmes of the past. There, also, to the life as many people knew him, is E.L. Blanchard, who knew, perhaps, more of the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of journalism and the drama from the Forties to the Eighties than any other man of his time; and Jonas Levy, whose autobiography, could he have been induced to write it, would have included, besides that of his own life, more than half a century of the romance of three worlds – the Stage, the Press and the bar. 

But the glory of the White Friars is not, by any means, a thing of the past. The club was never more healthy in condition or representative in character than it is at the present time. Limited in its numbers, and jealous of its honour, it has been counted exclusive in its policy; but, while requiring, as a matter of course, certain technical qualifications in those admitted to membership, it is by a social and moral standard that election is ultimately determined. The club has thus become an association of working men of letters, who, while cherishing the true bohemian spirit, practise also the sound philosophy which places work first and play afterwards. 

The club fixtures are few and simple. The Friars dine together once a week during the winter months, in a room contiguous to the club-room; and the feast-day is Friday, which was the fast-day of the Friars of old time; and they make a summer pilgrimage to the shrine of some literary saint, the scene of some historic or antiquarian interest, or the precincts of some celebrated seat of learning.

At the weekly dinners representatives of all departments of journalism meet to chew the cud and mingle the cup of consolation. The Standard lion sits down quietly beside the Daily News lamb, and the Sun beams benignly across the table at the Globe; the war correspondent and the historian of the playing-fields hobnob together, the Army takes wine with the Church, and the Navy interchanges like courtesies with the Bar. William Black, Hall Caine, B.L. Farjeon, George A. Henty, Manville Fenn, Bloundelle Burton and Henry Frith are but a few of the Friars who tell stories to large listening crowds and enjoy the largess of wide popularity; Harrison Weir, John Proctor and Irving Montague but representatives of those who draw pictures for the people and earn the name of fame. Of travellers the revealer of “Darkest Africa” may well be made the sponsor, though, behind the name of H.M. Stanley there are others who have stemmed the storms of either zone and explored the fastnesses of East and West. 

Of the summer outings, that made to Gad’s Hill and the Dickens’ country is full of pleasant memories: the journey to Rochester, the lunch at The Bull Inn, the visit to the cathedral, where, under the guidance of poor old Tope himself, we tried to unravel the mystery of Edwin Drood; the stroll through Cobham Park to The Leathern Bottle, where we “passed the rosy” in memory of the immortal Swiveller; the drive to Gad’s Hill, where we saw little Nell and her grandfather resting in a cornfield and Quilp asleep in his ugliness beneath a wayside hedge; and, stranger still, heard echoing from the long, long distance the clash of arms in “war’s magnificently stern array” as countless knaves in buckram bore down upon the lusty father of all “rowdy dowdy boys”. The excursion of 1893, to Canterbury, will not soon be forgotten, nor will that of 1894 to Oxford. On these occasions, the Friars visit scenes of interest under the direction of local authority, and entertain their guides, philosophers and friends to dinner in the evening at the best-found hostelry available.

It is, however, the weekly gatherings of the winter months that constitute the chief attraction of the club. At these, politics and religion are barred as matters of discussion, and “speeches” are forbidden by the rules. The lost art of conversation is to some extent revived, the members gathering, not in coteries of twos and threes, but, as far as possible, in one group of the whole company, round a genial fire, when the chairman of the day takes the part of “Mr Johnson”, and the “corner-men” push the buttons in the wall – when spirits flag; nay, that were all too seldom – when glasses are looking thirsty.

Much, indeed, the members owe for their comfort and enjoyment at all club gatherings to the honorary officers of the club, T. Heath-Joyce, for many years the club secretary; J.F. Wilson, for a long time its long-suffering treasurer; Richard Gowing, his official successor; and Henry Frith, the present secretary.

As I have said, the peculiar feature of the Whitefriars Club is that it has no peculiar feature; and I will only add that its title to enumeration among the “Literary Cranks of London” is that it has no literary crank.

Alfred Henry Miles (1848–1929) was a prolific English author – writing in the capacity of anthologist, children’s writer, editor, journalist and poet at various points in his life – as well as a composer and lecturer. Miles was a White Friar, joining the Whitefriars Club in 1883. He published The Diners-Out Vade-Mecum: A Pocket Handbook (1900), in which he details “the manners and customs of society functions […] with hints on etiquette, deportment, dress (etc. etc.)” so as to “help the young and inexperienced to the reasonable enjoyment of the social pleasures of society”. This work, coupled with his glowing review of the Whitefriars Club, offers an insight into Miles’s reverence and passion for club life.

The Whitefriars Club, in association with the Society of Authors, is delighted to announce the launch of the John Calder Translation Prize, an annual award for translations into English of full-length ambitious, groundbreaking works of literary merit and general interest.

Our Club has not always been the haven of goodwill and equality that it now is. This became evident during our Pilgrimage (September 2023) to Reading to visit the Club’s extensive archives. A number of papers were available to peruse and, amongst them, we found these exchanges from the 1990s relating to the vexed question of whether or not to admit women to the Club. 

Until 1981 the Club was an exclusively male affair, except for the annual Ladies’ Dinner. It was for Sir Robert Mayer’s 100th birthday in 1979 that members of the fair sex began to be invited to Dinners. An item on the Agenda for the Club’s 1990 AGM, held in April at the Bottlescrue, Holborn Viaduct, gave notice of a discussion of the proposal by Gerald O’Brien to ‘modify our membership rules to permit women to become members of the Whitefriars Club’. 

There was clearly a large rump of members against the proposition, because in a letter to all members of the Club prior to this vote the following paragraphs can be found: 

Why should not men still be entitled to men-only clubs of this nature? The desire for equality of the sexes has never prevented women from having clubs with women-only membership, and in North America, the Mecca of the liberated female, there is a far higher proportion of women-only clubs than in Britain. What about the Women’s Institute? 

And:

Friars, being libidinous creatures, were not above bringing women into the friaries and monasteries for their delectation whenever they got a chance, but there was never any thought that they would become members of their gracious and noble brotherhoods. If we allow lady members, the Club will lose its unique character. Do you want to see that sort of change? What do you want the Club to be?

The result of the vote? No women yet. 

A postal vote was held in 1993 when Ivan Elliott became Chairman; again the proposal was defeated. But three years later, in September 1996, when the matter was again considered, a majority of the members of the Club voted in favour. There was only one proviso: members could not propose their wives. Friar Dr Colin Smythe tells me that there was a fear that members might feel they had to propose their wives; and the Committee did not want to burden Friars with that fear. 

There was, of course, an unintended consequence: members appeared to be too scared to propose any ladies who were not their wives; so, for the first five months after the historic vote, not one member proposed a single lady! All that blood on the floor, and not yet a single lady member! 

Colin, who had initially been against admitting women, says he realised this had to change, and so proposed in February 1997 the first two lady members: our erstwhile Chairman David Whitaker’s sister, Mary Baum, and Maggie van Reenen, David’s wife. Mary then proposed her sister Sally Whitaker, and thus the logjam was broken. 

The benefits to the Club have been enormous. In 2002 Mary became our Honorary Secretary, and within a few years she also was elected Chairman, while at the same time continuing in her role as Hon. Sec. for a year – thus our first lady member was also our first lady Committee member, and uniquely the only member who has been simultaneously Chairman and Honorary Secretary, roles which she carried out for a year (2004–05) with distinction, signal charm and efficiency, before retiring as Chairman in 2007.

Another example is the ongoing, successful reign of our current Chairman, Judy Douglas-Boyd. We now have 31 women members out of a total membership of 118.

It does not seem credible, looking back from 2023, that the question of women’s membership should ever have been such a bone of contention!

Friar Alan Williams

(Below: From the Agenda for the Whitefriars Club’s Annual General Meeting 1990, held on Thursday 19th April 1990 at the Bottlescrue, Holborn Viaduct; letter to all members of the Whitefriars Club)

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

(From Friar Sir John Hammerton’s Other Things than War, London: Macdonald, 1943, pp. 17–22), extracted by Friar Colin Smythe

On the north side of Fleet Street just now there is a gaping space that was not made by German bombs. It is the site of the Anderton’s Hotel, long famous as a resort of journalists. As a newspaper reader in my teens, a year or two before I had the delight of setting foot in London, it was the only hotel there known to me by name, and I had come to picture it with a dapper little white-bearded man standing at the door looking nervously through his monocle at the summons presented to him by officers of the law commanding him to appear at Old Bailey on a charge of forgery.

He was what I was then planning to become – a journalist – and his name was Richard Piggott, usually known as Doctor Piggott. As a witness before the Parnell Commission he had been forced into admissions concerning certain letters that had appeared in The Times on “Parnellism and Crime” that left no doubt he had forged these with a view to damaging Parnell and improving his own finances, which were in constant need of improvement, for he was rather a dandy, and straight journalism did not pay too well in those days.

Piggott made a swift getaway to Madrid, where, substituting a pistol for his pen, he wrote “finis” to an adventurous career. It is the way of youth that such events outstay in memory many of greater importance, and although I was to know Anderton’s Hotel and one particular room therein for many a year afterwards, I am sure that in the thousand times I passed through its front door as a member of the Whitefriars Club during the first twenty years of the century, I seldom did so without this picture of the little white-bearded rascal flashing momentarily into my mind’s eye. The very name of Piggott is enough to light it up.

A history of the Whitefriars Club and its guests would include the names of nearly all the foremost men in journalism and public life of the past seventy years, and it would be well worth writing – a task that I might essay some day should I ever feel like emulating old Tegetmeier in his yearage. The club still exists, but in a state of suspended animation. It stood up no too badly to the shock of World War One, but World War Two was a reeling blow. Wars are highly inimical to the social amenities of clubland. Who knows but it may be revived (there’s still funds in its treasury) when we have disposed for ever of the disturbers of world peace, and what a night for the revived Whitefriars if the new brother of 1900, who was my junior in age by a matter of three years, could be induced to breathe new life into it by presiding over its first post-War reunion.

His name is Winston Spencer Churchill.

R.D. Blumenfeld, Coulson Kernahan, Max Pemberton, Robertson Nicoll were among the eleven admitted with Churchill to the brotherhood at the close on 1900, when “eighteen candidates were awaiting election”. I was one of the eighteen, but a month or so later the company of Anthony Hope and A.E.W. Mason shed some lustre on those of us who were allowed in.

The future leader of the British Commonwealth and Empire (as he prefers to call it) in the Second World War was then at the very outset of his amazing career as a man of affairs. Elected for Oldham on his second offering only a few months before, he was a newcomer to Parliament – a newcomer, however, bearing a name well honoured in British politics. All that was to make his life world-historic, that will engage many a biographer in future years, and may well produce an international Churchill literature rivalling that of Napoleon, was still to be.

Though only in his twenty-sixth year, he had already attained by his own energy of mind and character a great and rising reputation in the dual roles of soldier and man of letters – and had he not enjoyed the dramatic luck of being captured by the Boers and escaping from Pretoria in the best Romantic manner while serving as a lieutenant with the South African Light Horse and also acting as war correspondent of the Morning Post? No fewer than five noteworthy books already stood to his name. The first was The Story of the Malakand Field Force (he served with the 31st Punjab Infantry), which, for a young man of twenty-three, shows bright promise in its literary style as well as being informed with a fine sense of the deeper issues involved: no more “war reporter’s” record of a small frontier expedition this.

But a year later he was busy again combining the professions of arms and letters with Kitchener’s expedition to Khartoum, when the Daily Telegraph had the satisfaction of printing his messages from the field, and in The River War (1899) he gave us a book which for maturity of writing and observation is astonishing.

It is more likely to endure on its literary merits than G.W. Steevens’s With Kitchener to Khartoum, its only real competitor in the literature of that picturesque campaign, and Steevens was five years his senior: a biggish margin in the twenties. […] 1900 was the busiest year of his pen for many a year to come.