London Calling. London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
And in case you’re wondering, we’re in for a pleasantly warm day – an agreeably warm day – here in London. Might get up into the high 70s. That’s Fahrenheit. If you’re a Celsius man or woman figure 26. And, yes, you’ll also be gratified to know it happened. The hat trick. Yesterday it hit 26 in Twenty Six in 26. Yes, the triple: This year. The temperature. The place: Twenty Six, Kentucky. Aside here: What a great name for a small American burgh. What I wouldn’t give to be able to say, I grew up in Twenty Six. That’s Twenty Six, Kentucky not 1926. I’m not 100. Not quite yet.
But I’ve been thinking about these dog days and the blistering heat – especially in the American south – thinking about all that because our great Mississippi pal, the film maker Jim Albritton, says opening the door in Jackson, Mississipi and going outside is like stepping into a furnace. Says it feels like 120 degrees. 49 Celsius. Whoa. That’s enough of that. Hasta la vista the blistering hot American south. Back to pleasantly warm London. Back to 1773.
Ok, adjust focus.
Picture London on a hot July day.
The fashionable world has fled to the country.
The streets are quiet.
The great houses are shuttered.
And then Horace Walpole looks up at one building in Pall Mall…
…and bursts out laughing.
Writing on this very day, July 27th, 1773, he says London is almost deserted except for…
“…macaronis lolling out of windows at Almack’s like carpets waiting to be dusted.”
Now that’s a line.
“Like carpets waiting to be dusted.”
You don’t forget an image like that.
But here’s the really surprising thing.
Those lounging peacocks were sitting in one of the most important clubs in London history.
And almost nobody remembers it.
In fact, here’s something I only discovered today.
Like most people, I’d always assumed White’s was London’s oldest gentlemen’s club.
Turns out…
not quite.
The ancestry of Boodle’s actually reaches back even further.
Its story begins with one remarkable man.
William Almack.
Not an aristocrat.
Not even a gentleman.
A Yorkshire lad who came to London as a valet.
He had an eye for opportunity.
He left domestic service, became a wine merchant, took over the Thatched House Tavern, bought a couple of newly built houses in Pall Mall…
…and in one of them created a gentlemen’s club.
That first club eventually became Boodle’s.
In the other he opened Almack’s in 1764.
It was instantly the place to be.
Its members included the famous macaronis.
Now, if you’re imagining pasta, stop right there.
These macaronis were eighteenth century fashion victims.
They’d been on the Grand Tour.
They’d come back besotted with Italy.
Towering wigs.
Extravagant clothes.
Silks.
Velvets.
Buckles.
Powder.
Enough lace to outfit a small navy.
They were so flamboyant they became a national joke.
And Almack’s was their headquarters.
Mind you, they weren’t just dressing up.
They were gambling.
Seriously gambling.
The great card tables at Almack’s became legendary.
Men thought nothing of losing five…
ten…
even fifteen thousand pounds in a single evening.
Walpole looked on in horror.
He said the gaming there was worthy of “the decline of an empire.”
There’s a wonderful detail about those gamblers.
For luck they’d turn their coats inside out.
Some wore broad brimmed straw hats while they played so their enormous wigs wouldn’t flop into their faces.
You can almost see them.
And yet…
for all the fortunes won and lost…
for all the powdered wigs…
for all the absurd fashion…
it’s Walpole’s throwaway line that survives.
Those macaronis…
lolling from the upstairs windows…
like rugs hung out for a good beating.
It’s perfect.
Incidentally, William Almack didn’t stop with clubs.
He also built the famous Assembly Rooms in King Street, Westminster.
Those rooms became the social epicentre of Georgian London.
If you wanted to dance, flirt, marry well, or simply be seen by exactly the right people…
that’s where you went.
They later became Willis’s Rooms.
Their influence lasted almost a century.
And here’s why all this matters for us.
Because one of the distinguished societies that met in those Assembly Rooms was the Society of Dilettanti.
Which, in turn, leads us neatly to another great Westminster institution.
The Society of Antiquaries.
And, as luck would have it, there’s a very special Society of Antiquaries event coming up this Friday.
We’ll take a look at that in the next day or two.
Watch this space.
Until then…
next time you stroll along Pall Mall, spare a thought for those exquisitely dressed macaronis.
Still lounging in the imagination.
Still waiting…
like carpets…
to be dusted.
See you tomorrow.