Reform Club

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This article is about the English club. For the organization in Hong Kong, see Reform Club of Hong Kong.
Reform Club
300px
The Reform Club viewed from Pall Mall,
adjacent to the Travellers Club
General information
Architectural style Italian Renaissance
Address 104 Pall Mall
London, SW1
Coordinates Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Groundbreaking 1837
Completed 1841; 184 years ago (1841)
Landlord Crown Estate Commissioners
Design and construction
Architect Sir Charles Barry
Civil engineer Thomas Grissell & Morton Peto
Main contractor Grissell & Peto
Website
www.reformclub.com

The Reform Club is a private members' club on the south side of Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it comprised an all-male membership for decades, but it was one of the first all-male clubs to change its rules to include the admission of women on equal terms in 1981. Since its founding in 1836, the Reform Club has been the traditional home for those committed to progressive political ideas, with its membership initially consisting of Radicals and Whigs. However, it is no longer associated with any particular political party, and it now serves a purely social function.

The Reform Club currently enjoys extensive reciprocity with similar clubs around the world. It attracts a significant number of foreign members, such as diplomats accredited to the Court of St James's. Of the current membership of around 2,700, some 500 are "overseas members", and over 400 are women.[1]

History

19th century

The club was founded by Edward Ellice, Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry and Whig Whip, whose riches came from the Hudson's Bay Company but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the Reform Act 1832; it held its first meeting at No. 104 Pall Mall on 5 May 1836.[2]

This new club, for members of both Houses of Parliament, was intended to be a forum for the radical ideas which the First Reform Bill represented: it purpose was to promote "the social intercourse of the reformer of the United Kingdom.[3]

The Reform Club's building was designed by renowned architect Sir Charles Barry[4] and contracted to builders Grissell & Peto. The new club was built on palatial lines, the design being based on the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, and its Saloon in particular is regarded as the finest of all London's clubs. It was officially opened on 1 March 1841.[5] Facilities provided included a library which, following extensive donations from members, grew to contain over 85,000 books.[6]

20th century

This 1840s drawing depicts the Gallery above the club's Saloon at first floor level.
File:ReformClubLobby.jpg
The Reform Club's italianate Saloon (stairs leading to the Gallery)

After the Second World War and with the old Liberal Party's further decline, the club increasingly drew its membership from civil servants.[7] The club continued to attract a comprehensive list of guest speakers including Government Ministers Nick Clegg and Theresa May (2011), Archbishop John Sentamu (2012), and Ambassador Liu Xiaoming (2013).[8]

Literary associations

Besides having had many distinguished members from the literary world, including William Makepeace Thackeray and Arnold Bennett, the Reform played a role in some significant events, such as the feud between Oscar Wilde's friend and literary executor Robbie Ross and Wilde's ex-lover Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1913, after discovering that Lord Alfred had taken lodgings in the same house as himself with a view to stealing his papers, Ross sought refuge at the club, from where he wrote to Edmund Gosse, saying that he felt obliged to return to his rooms "with firearms".[9]

Harold Owen, the brother of Wilfred Owen, called on Siegfried Sassoon at the Reform after Wilfred's death,[10] and Sassoon himself wrote a poem entitled "Lines Written at the Reform Club", which was printed for members at Christmas 1920.[11]

Appearances in popular culture and literature

Books

The Reform Club appears in Anthony Trollope's novel Phineas Finn (1867). This eponymous main character becomes a member of the club and there acquaints Liberal members of the House of Commons, who arrange to get him elected to an Irish parliamentary borough. The book is one of the political novels in the Palliser series, and the political events it describes are a fictionalized account of the build-up to the Second Reform Act (passed in 1867) which effectively extended the franchise to the working classes.[12]

The club also appears in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days (published in 1872, as a novel in 1873); the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, is a member of the Reform Club who sets out to circumnavigate the world on a bet from his fellow members, beginning and ending at the club.[13]

The Reform Club was used as a meeting place for MI6 operatives in Part 3, Chapter 1, p. 83ff of Graham Greene's spy novel The Human Factor (1978, Avon Books, ISBN 0-380-41491-0).[14]

The Reform Club and its Victorian era celebrity chef Alexis Soyer play pivotal roles in MJ Carter's mystery novel The Devil's Feast (2016, Fig Tree, ISBN 978-0-241-14636-1).[15]

Films and television

Michael Palin, following his fictional predecessor, also began and ended his televised journey around the world in 80 days at the Reform Club in 1989. Palin was not permitted to enter the building to complete his journey as had been his intention, so his trip ended on the steps outside.[16]

Victorian publisher Norman Warne is depicted visiting the Reform Club in the 2006 film Miss Potter.[17] The club has been used as a location in a number of other films, including the fencing scene in the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day, The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), The Avengers (1998), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Quantum of Solace (2008), Sherlock Holmes (2009), Paddington (2014) and Christopher Nolan's Tenet (2020).[18]

The club was also used in Chris Van Dusen's televised series Bridgerton as a film location in 2020.[19]

Photoshoot

The Reform Club was the location of a photo shoot featuring Paula Yates for the 1979 summer issue of Penthouse.[20]

Notable members

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See also

References

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Further reading

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  • Van Leeuwen, Thomas A P (2020) [2017]. The Magic Stove: Barry, Soyer and The Reform Club or How a Great Chef Helped to Create a Great Building. Amsterdam/Paris: Les Editions du Malentendu/ Jap Sam Books. ISBN 978-90-826690-0-8.
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External links

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  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  9. ↑ Maureen Borland, Wilde's Devoted Friend: a Life of Robert Ross (1990), p. 201.
  10. ↑ Christian Major, "Sassoon's London: the Reform Club", Siegfried's Journal, no 12 (July 2007), pp. 5–13.
  11. ↑ Russell Burlingham & Roger Billis, Reformed Characters: The Reform Club in History and Literature (2005), p. 34.
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  20. ↑ The Milwaukee Journal – 23 July 1979.
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