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Reform Club, London

 

The Reform Club is one of a number of clubs in Pall Mall, London. It stands in a row with two other of the most famous clubs, the Travellers and the Athenaeum. Due to their long standing position at the heart of Britain's establishment many historical figures have passed through them.

The Reform Club was founded in 1836, when Sir William Molesworth commissioned the architect Charles Barry to build the club house. It opened in 1841. Membership was restricted to those who had pledged their support for the Reform Act of 1832. In practice this meant that the Reform Club was the headquarters of the Liberal Party. By the 1920s the club had lost its political function and had become a social club, as it is today. Famous Reformers have included Henry James, H.G.Wells, E.M. Forster and Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Reform Club was the great centre of order and stability in Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Phileas Fogg lives his ordered life here, before he takes up the challenge of going around the world in eighty days. Visiting the club is not straightforward, and photography is not allowed, so here is Verne's portrait from the book. Bear in mind that Verne never visited the Reform Club, and based his account on an article by Francis Wey. The American writer, and Reformer, S.J. Perelmen claimed soon after Around The World In Eighty Days was published that the description was not accurate. Certainly the breakfast that Fogg eats at the Reform is more French than English. However, I'll still include Verne's passage as it describes the vision that people had of such places:

"When he chose to walk it was with a regular step in the entrance hall with its mosaic flooring, or in the circular gallery with its dome supported by twenty red porphyry Ionic columns, and illumined by blue painted windows. When he breakfasted or dined, all the resources of the club - its kitchens and pantries, its buttery and dairy - aided to crowd his table with the most succulent of stores; he was served by the gravest waiters in dress coats, and shoes with swan skin soles, who proffered the viands in special porcelain, and on the finest linen; club decanters of a lost mould, contained his sherry, his port, and his cinnamon-spiced claret; while his beverages were refreshingly cooled with ice brought at great expense from the American lakes." (Around the World in Eighty Days Chapter 1)

Around the World in Eighty Days was first published in 1873. The Suez Canal had opened in 1869, and the first transcontinental railroad across the United States was also completed in that year. The world, as one of Fogg's fellow Reformers comments is becoming smaller. And yet the same forces making it smaller also seem to make it bigger. After reading of a robbery at the Bank of England, there is the following exchange amongst the Reformers:

" 'The world has grown smaller, since a man can go round it ten times more quickly than a hundred years ago, and that's why the search for this thief will be more likely to succeed.'

'And also why the thief can get away more easily.' " (Chapter 3)

Reform Club from the garden

The scale of the world seems to fluctuate in this conversation. The world gets smaller and bigger again. Sometimes in reading these early chapters it is as if Verne felt that in some ways the whole of the world was held in the delightful confines of the Reform Club, the place where Fogg begins and ends his journey. The Reform Club is a place of order and tradition, and change swirls outside its doors. But the club itself came about because of one of the greatest changes in recent British political history, the Reform Act of 1832 on which modern democracy in Britain is based. As we know members were required to support the Act.

If you do wish to visit the Reform Club then it might be possible to do so if you ring and make an appointment first. Remember there is a strict dress code.

Directions: The Reform Club is at 104 Pall Mall. Look for the number on the door. The Club does not announce its presence. If you haven't been able to make an appointment to go inside, there is a nice view of the Reform, the Travellers and the Athenaeum Club from across the garden behind them. Walk down Waterloo Place to get this view. Click here for an interactive map centred on the Reform Club.

Contact:

web site: http://www.reformclub.com/

telephone:020 7930 9374