Yorick Club

The Yorick Club was an early expression of the bohemian strand of the 1860s literary world. Gatherings of literary men, meeting first in F.W. Haddon's and Marcus Clarke's rooms, and later at Nissen's Caf, led to a more formal assembly (in 1868). The founders, mainly contributors to the Argus and the Australasian, modeled their club upon the Savage Club, London. Candidates had to demonstrate a professional interest in literature, visual arts or science. Marcus Clarke wanted to call the Club the Golgotha but the more acceptable Yorick was preferred. Operating on a small budget, the Club was twice wound up and reconstructed during the 1890s. Its membership remained for many years the most varied and mixed of any Melbourne club. By the 1960s the literary-artistic requirements had been relaxed but the struggle to survive continued, until the Yorick amalgamated with the Savage Club in 1966.i Melbourne, The Atlass Press (E. Newlands), 359 Little Collins St. 1911. In 1868 Marcus Clarke helped to establish the Yorick Club, of which he become the first secretary. Other members of it were Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall and George Gordon McCrae, men who made Melbourne the literary centre of Australia. F. W. Hadden editor or "The Australasian" was the founder of the Yorick where the original informal gatherings were held in his rooms in Spring Street. Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke (24 April 1846 2 August 1881) was an Australian novelist and poet, best known for his novel For the Term of his Natural Life.ii He was a member of the Yorick Club where members met and discussed literature.iii He founded in 1868 the Yorick Club, which soon numbered among its members the chief Australian men of letters. Adam Lindsay Gordon (19 October 1833 24 June 1870) was an Australian poet, jockey and politician. He made a little money out of his racing and became a member of the Yorick Club, where he was friendly with Marcus Clarke, George Gordon McCrae, and a little later Henry Kendall. The Yorick Club of Collins St East Melbourne was founded by Marcus Clarke in 1868. It was frequented by people such as J.J. Shillinglaw, Adam Lindsay Gordon, George Gordon McCrae and Carrington. Which included most of the prominent Victorian writers of the 1860s, was founded by Frederick William Haddon in 1868 and grew from the informal meetings he held during 1867-68 at his rooms in Spring Street, Melbourne. Established 'for the purpose of bringing together literary men and those connected with literature, art or science', it included among its earliest members Adam Lindsay Gordon, Hamilton Mackinnon, J.J. Shillinglaw, Marcus Clarke, James E. Neild and George Arthur

Walstab. Clarke was the Club's first secretary, although he left it soon afterwards to form a more bohemian group, the Cave of Adullam. Henry Kendall became a member during his stay in Melbourne and later literary members included George Gordon McCrae and Patrick Moloney. At first a lively and informal gathering of writers, committed to practical jokes and all-night suppers, the Yorick soon dwindled into a respectable institution. By 1871 its entry rule had been altered to include 'professional men' and the financial pressures of the 1890s caused further enlargements. The original Yorick Club was wound up in 1894. The Yorick Club: Its Origin and Development, May 1868 to December 1910 (1911) by Thomas Carrington is an account of its history and membership, and Hugh McCrae describes some of its activities in My Father, and My Father's Friends (1935). Mr E. La T. Armstrong was the oldest member of the Wallaby Club, and was also a member of the Yorick Club, the Metropolitan, Golf Club, and the Royal Empire Society. By this time two other new clubs were operating, the Yorick and the Athenaeum, both formed in 1868. Though they had different functions, they shared certain features, especially an interest in cultural affairs. Often the same men became members of both clubs. The creation of the Yorick was not planned in the way that setting up the Athenaeum was. It was, in its initial stages, mainly a club for journalists and writers. Writers and artists met informally in places like Nissens Caf and Dwights Bookshop, but the Yorick grew out of stimulating and convivial evenings held on Saturday nights at the spacious Spring Street apartment of Argus editor F. W. Haddon. When Haddon moved from SpringCollins Street Clubs 16 Street into Dr Aubrey Bowens rooms with Marcus Clarke, the evenings could not continue. The group continued to meet at Nissens, but the proprietor was not happy about the amount of noise they made, so at Clarkes suggestion they decided to form a club and hire a room. The room was right next door to the Melbourne Punch office and the Argus office. It was also next to Muellers Hotel, an establishment noted for its beefsteak suppers, and which could be reached via a passage from the club room. The beefsteak suppers became a monthly event which, accompanied by a great deal of punch, would last well into the night and lead to practical joking which was not always appreciated by those at the receiving end of the joke. The Yorick was not the first artistic club to be established in Melbourne. George Coppin, who would later become a Yorick Club member, opened his Olympic Theatre in 1855. There was much dispute about the name of the club, Bohemians, Savages, Nomads, Flatheads and Night Owls were suggested. Clarke and his friend, Adam Lindsay Gordon, wanted to call it the Golgotha, and Clarke was so upset when it was not called Golgotha that he disappeared in a huff for a few days. To begin with letters were sent to prospective members which advised them that the club was to bring together literary men, and those immediately connected or sympathising with Literature, Art or Science. The one room of the club was so far

furnished only with bundles of newspapers for the members to sit on as best as they could. None-the-less, sixty-four men paid the entrance fee of 2 2s and the 2 2s annual subscription. Yorick founders included some of the brightest people living in Melbourne: Eugene C Amsinck, Butler Cole Aspinall, James Blackburn, Rev. Dr J Bleasdale, Charles Bright, Alexander Britton, Curtis Chandler, Thomas Carrington, Marcus Clarke, Thomas Couchman, Frank Stanley Dobson, William Doyne, Robert L J Ellery , William Elsdon, Gowen Evans, James Eville, Joseph Geary, William B. Gilbert, A. L. Gordon, Frederick William Haddon, George B. Halford, James Harrison, William Edward Hearn, Edward Howitt, Henry R. M. Humphreys, Martin Howy Irving, Benjamin F. Kane, John George Knight, George Collins Levey, Charles Whybrow Ligar, Hamilton Mackinnon, George Gordon McCrae, George Watton Moore, Henry Byron Moore, Andrew Murray, James Edward Neild, J. Cosmo Newberry, Charles Frederic Nichols, William OHea, John C. H. Ogier, John Curle Paterson, Gilbert Roberts, George William Rusden, A. R. C. Selwyn, Andrew Semple, John Joseph Shillinglaw, William P. Simons, James Smith, Henry Smith, R. Jardine Smith, James Stiffe, Gerard H. Supple, Alfred Telo, George O. Thomas Rutter, John Towers, George H. F. Ulrich, Karl Van Damme, Henry P. Venables, George Arthur Walstab, W. W. Wardell, Edmond Wright Westby, D. Dickenson Wheeler, Howard Willoughby, Alfred Whyatt. Half the foundation members were journalists including James Smith and Marcus Clarke who were natural enemiesSmith could not forgive Clarke his breeding and talent, Clarke found Smith an irredeemable petit bourgeois. James Harrison was editor and later proprietor of the Geelong Advertiser and an inventor of various kinds of refrigeration. Perhaps the most dramatic of the Collins Street Clubs 19 foundation members was Gerard Supple who shot G. P. Smith, his editor at the Age on the street in Melbourne because of his views on Irish matters. Supple only wounded Smith but he killed a passer-by and was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Among the others were civil servants, including scientists like Robert Ellery the government astronomer and future President of the Melbourne Royal Society. Ellery also helped James Smith found the Athenaeum Club. Another member, James Blackburn, was the City Surveyor and driving force in setting up the Yan Yean water supply scheme which ameliorated Melbournes annual scourge of diseases spread by drinking polluted water. Among the lawyers, the best known was Butler Cole Apsinal who had defended the Eureka Stockade men without fee. Two famous members were J. G. Knight who codesigned Parliament House and was the foundation president of the Victorian Institute of Architects, and William Wardell who was the leading exponent of Gothic revival architecture in Melbourne. Wardells ES&A bank (now the ANZ) on the corner

of Collins and Queen Streets is still regarded as a pinnacle of the style in international circles. He designed many Catholic cathedrals including St Patricks in East Melbourne. The Yorickers were a little like the early Melbourne Club members in their liking for creating havoc. In the first month there was no president or secretary and no books were kept. Mueller caf staff were paid to clean the room a little every day Collins Street Clubs 20 (except Sunday) and a few bits of furniture were bought. These included a table, a fender and fire irons and some oilcloth. Alfred Telo presented some spears and shields to the club that he had collected in the South Sea Islands. These spears were used one night to lift from their hooks all the gilded hats that hatters hung over their shops as signs. Adam Lindsay Gordon was a ringleader in these escapades. On another late night escapade, some of the members started out to change all the brass plates available in Collins-street. Next day doctors were found keeping young ladies seminaries, and visa-versa. As a result of the raids, Alfred Telos collection now included door-knockers amongst which was Yorick Club member Doctor Neilds? The doctors anger was so great at its being annexed that he wrote to The Argus, denouncing the idiots who could find nothing better to do than wrench off citizens knockers. On the following night the doctors house was ornamented with a fishing-rod and gilt fish, a pawnbrokers sign and an undertakers board. Telo limped and some people believed this was the result of duelling. He did not deny it. But not all the Yorickers were a tearaways. The journalist Jardine Smith owned and edited the Melbourne Punch for years and played the organ as an amateur at Christ Church, South Yarra. He later became a leader writer on the Argus and he could quote Tennysons In Memoriam from beginning to end. Jardine Smith was so fine looking that Clarke proposed to tour Victoria with a miracle play, Smith to be Christ, and Telo Judas Iscariot. Of the rest of the founders Shillinglaw, Rusden and Britton wrote works which contributed to the study of Australian history. One of the first commodities provided at the club were daily Collins Street Clubs 21 newspapers, weeklies and periodicals from Australia, England, the United States and France. Rules Of Yorick Club http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/vicpamphlets/0/9/8/doc/vp0989005-0000.shtml "MARK TWAIN AT THE YORICK" Melbourne Australasian October 5, 1895

During his lecture tour around the world in 1895, Clemens spoke to the Yorick Club of Melbourne, Australia--a group of professional businessmen. The topic of his speech was his Mississippi River tour of 1882. It is not worth while to try to put into language the delight that you give me when you receive me in this hearty way. Language is for another office. Language is simply to portray the milder emotions of the human heart, but a welcome like this-a welcome that comes out of the heart--deep down--and expressed in a way that one cannot mistake--that is a thing which moves a man all the way through and through. It does seem to me that in order to get such a welcome you've got to come all the way from America to Australia. You Australians seem to deserve the title of "the cordial nation." I have seen so much of your kindness, and have been so moved by it, and so charmed with it, that in thinking things over--I sit and think sometimes, and try to make out the characteristics of this nation and the characteristics of that nation--try to fasten a trademark on them, putting down one as frivolous, another as ox-like and stupid, a third as vivacious, and so on--it seems to me that you should be branded and trademarked as "the cordial nation"-certainly, when you meet me. And that is most pleasant, that is most delightful. Now, I have been to a great many places where there were things to eat, where there was a supper, and where there was a chairman, and the distinctive quality of that chairman was always to make a speech that had nothing in it which you could use as a text afterwards. That was the way with all the chairmen I ever saw--except this one. But he has really so loaded me up with texts that it is an embarrassment of riches. I don't know where to begin. If I used all the texts he has furnished me with there would be nothing left of us when I got through. There is one fact he brought out happily which stupid people who speak the English language all over this world are prone to overlook or to ignore, and that is--let us chaff and jaw and criticize one another as we please, when all is said and done, the Americans, and the English, and their great outflow in Canada and Australia are all one. You have not stayed at home all your lives, and you know that sentiment which I have felt so many times. I have been around a good deal here and there in the world, and there is one thing that I have always noticed, and which you must have noticed under similar circumstances. Let one of us be far away from his own country--be it Australia, or England, or America, or Canada--and let him see either the English flag or the American flag, and I defy him not to be stirred by it. Oh yes! blood is thicker than water, and we are all related. If we do jaw and bawl at each other now and again, that is no matter at all. We do belong together, and we are parts of a great whole--the greatest whole this world has ever seen--a whole that, some day, will spread over this world, and, I hope, annihilate and abolish all other communities. It will be "the survival of the fittest." The English is the greatest race that ever was, and will prove itself so before it gets done--and I would like to be there to see it. I am getting old. I am getting pretty old--but I don't find it out when I'm around this way. It is when one sits at home, melancholy, perhaps, when

nothing is going on. But when I'm around this way with my own kind I don't know that I'm not quite young again--say, fifteen or sixteen--and I feel perfectly comfortable. My friend on the right and I were talking just now about that very thing. I said I thought that if I had created the human race--oh! I could have done it. I was asked nothing about it, and I didn't suggest anything. But I thought that if I had created the human race, and had discovered that they were a kind of a failure--and had drowned them out--well, I would recognize that that was a good thing. And then, fortified by experience, I would start the thing on a different plan. I would have no more of that 969 years' business. I wouldn't let people grow that old. I would cut them off at thirty. Because a man's youth is the thing he loves to think about, and it is the thing that he regrets. It is the one part of his life that he most thoroughly enjoys. My friend on the right suggests that we should go as far as forty years, as he doesn't want any of his forty years rubbed out. Well, perhaps you really might go up to forty, because then you get a perspective upon youth, and that has its value. That has its charm. But, oh, dear me! I never would have created age. Age has its own value--but that is to other people, not to those who have it.

The chairman, among other things, touched upon my experience as a Mississippi pilot. That is connected with what I am now talking about. That is one of those things that you engage in when you are young and careless--and a man ought always to be young and careless. Then everything that comes is satisfactory. You don't suppose that I should enjoy being a pilot on a Mississippi steamboat now, and be scared to death every time it came a fog. But at that time fogs and dark nights had a charm for me. I didn't own any stock in that steamboat. And that is one of the very advantages of youth. You don't own any stock in anything. You have a good time, and all the grief and trouble is with the other fellows. Youth is a lovely thing, and certainly never was there a diviner time to me in this world. All the rest of my life is one thing--but my life as a pilot on the Mississippi River when I was young-Oh! that was the darling existence. There has been nothing comparable to it in my life since. And, speaking of that, I may tell you a little story. I had that sort of instinct which anybody would have who had been separated by long years from a life of that kind. He would look back and remember this thing and that thing, and everything that happened to him when he was young; it was all so dear, and so beautiful and so fine--so much finer than anything he had experienced since. Well, I carried out that instinct, and I went out to the Mississippi River about 1880. I had not seen that river for I don't know how long--perhaps for a quarter of a century--and I went there with a sort of longing. One sometimes has a yearning to see again the scenes that were dear to him in his youth, in his prime, in the time when he had the heart to feel, and I thought I would like to see that river and what was left of that steamboat life exactly as I saw it long, long, long ago. And so I went

under a fictitious name. I didn't want to be found out. I wanted to be able to go up into the pilot house, and talk to that pilot just as I used to see passengers talk to him, and I wanted to ask him the same idiotic questions. And I wanted to get myself loaded up with the same misinformation just as they used to do. So I went under a fictitious name, and the thing went along very well until, after I had signed my name "John W. Fletcher" on the register of the Southern Hotel in St. Louis, the man behind the counter bowed and said pleasantly--"Show Mr. Clemens to Number 165." Now you can imagine the interest I felt when I really was launched on the steamboat. She was a vile, rusty old steamboat, but she was the only one that was going down the river that day, and I wanted to go. I got on board that boat two hours before she was advertised to sail. I was so anxious to see again that old steamboat life I had been so familiar with. I knew she wouldn't sail at the time she was advertised, but I knew she would go sometime that week. I was loafing about the decks just as happy as a man could be, noticing details in the construction of that boat, which I hadn't seen in any other boat or ship for ever so long. After a while there came a curious-looking sort of creature slouching up on the hurricane deck. He accosted me and asked where I was from. I said from the state of Connecticut--from the city of Hartford in Connecticut. He said--"You're a good long way from home." I said I recognized that--I felt it. Then he said--"Now I reckon you've no such boat as this there. You never seen a boat like this before?" Well, I intimated that I never had. I wouldn't lie to a man like that. He said--"I was born and raised away in the interior of Wisconsin. I never saw a river or a steamboat till a week ago. Then I came all the way down in a boat like this. If you like, I'll show you round and tell you the names of the different things and what they're for." Well, he seemed kindly disposed, and I went round with him. He showed me this and that, and I soon saw that lots of information had been furnished to him by an expert. He hadn't got a thing right. Some of those people on steamboats can't be depended upon. And they had just loaded him up, giving him false names for things, or, when they gave him the right names, telling him extraordinary uses to which the things were said to be put. So the poor devil didn't know anything about a steamboat at all. Well, he left me, and I didn't see any more of him for some time. When the boat had sailed I was so impatient that I got up in the morning with the first dawn, to see what I could of that majestic river, which used to be as familiar to me as the joints of my own fingers--a river that I knew foot by foot, detail by detail, night or day, for 1,300 miles. I was impatient to find if that old river was still familiar to me. I did hope that I would recognize some parts of it, but when I came up on that hurricane deck and looked round, I saw that that hope was blighted. I didn't seem to recognize any part of it at all. At length I saw a place on the right-hand side where there were some willows growing that I thought I did recognize, but no, I knew those willows were, so to speak, creatures of a day, and that there must have been hundreds of them since I was there twenty years before. It was a deep disappointment to me. But then I thought--"Never mind, I can cheer up the occasion

by getting up into that pilot house, and letting that man load me up with a lot of lies, as they did the historical passenger." I glanced up three or four times to make sure I had never seen that pilot before. No; he was too young for me to know at all. He must have come into the pilot house after I left the river twenty years before. I crept up in there, and to my joy I was received exactly like the passenger of the old times. The pilot, when he heard the latch of the door, turned round and gave me that sort of indifferent look--a look that was, oh, so indifferent that if you could just get capital enough, and collect enough of it, you wouldn't need any of those refrigerating processes--it would freeze all the sheep in Australia. The old thing exactly. I didn't expect any more notice, and I didn't want any. I sunk down on the bench in the pilot house. There was a little boy about seven years old playing round. I got into conversation with him for a few minutes, and then he went away and we were left alone--I, and that pilot who had no hospitality, no welcome, for me. And then I began to ask my questions, just as the old-time passenger did. I said, just in the same timid way--"Would you be kind enough to tell me what that thing there is for--that speaking tube?" "Oh," he said, "that speakin' tube; that's to call the chambermaid." Well, I felt so happy. The thing was going beautifully. I asked him another question--about another speaking tube. He said that was to call the boy that scrubbed the deck. "What was that bell for?"--you know, the bell that signals "Go ahead," and so on. That was to call somebody else. Everything was to call somebody. That man could not apparently tell the truth, even by accident. And so I felt perfectly happy. I was getting loaded up just as I wanted, and I would put it in a book. It was jolly good stuff, and I was feeling very comfortable. All of a sudden he says--"Look here, just hold her a minute, I have to go downstairs and get some coffee." And away he went. Well, instinct made me take the wheel-you mustn't leave a steamer to pilot herself. Then I looked round to see if I could make out where we were; and now I recognized the place at once. I knew it perfectly. It was the only place between St. Louis and a point 200 miles below where there were any dangerous rocks. I recognized it as the very worst place in the whole Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to the ocean--a place called the Grand Chain. Even an apprentice pilot, who had been through it a few times, would never forget it in all his life, because the marks have to be so exactly followed. There is one place where there is a crossing two miles long, and in the very midst of it there are two rocks. Neither of them shows above water, but they make a little break which you can hardly notice. These deadly rocks are only seventy feet apart, and a Mississippi steamboat is twenty-five feet wide, so you must not diverge at all. If you hit one of those rocks you would be in heaven in two minutes. I recognized that I was in the Grand Chain, but didn't know exactly what part of it. I suspected, though, that I was in the part that passes between those two rocks. However, I knew one thing--that that pilot would never have put that wheel into my hands until he had satisfied himself that the boat lay exactly in the right course. He knew that if I had

any sense at all I had sense enough to keep between the marks--which I did most diligently. We passed between the rocks, and I saw those breaks, and I didn't do any harm. But I was very glad when he came back. Then he said--"You go and play fictitious names on people and try to get your fun out of them, but I knew your damned drawl the minute you spoke to that boy." Well, of course, we got to be friendly, then. It turned out that just as I was leaving the river he had finished his apprenticeship, but he had struck a pretty bad snag, and he could only get one pilot to sign his application. He was required to have two. He was looking round and he found me, and I signed his papers and saved him--made a pilot of him. So we had a jolly good time. I was always on his watch--and the other fellow's watch too. I stood all the watches there were. All the day long, no matter which pilot's turn it was, I took the wheel. I couldn't get enough of it. The river was bank full, and from where the Ohio comes in all the way down to New Orleans there was nothing to do but to keep round in this bend and cross into that bend. You could never make any mistake. A jackass could pilot a steamboat in that part of the river if he had just wit enough to follow the shape of the river. So the pilots would leave me there the whole watch, and there in that sunny country I would stand at the wheel, and pilot along down, and ponder, and think, and dream, and dream over all that old vanished time on the river. It was delightful--full of pathos, full of poetry, full of the charm of unconsciousness of anything else in the world but that old past. I heard the latch of the pilot house door raised, but I didn't hear anybody come in. I turned round, and who should be standing there but that Wisconsin hayseed fellow I hadn't seen since he showed me the things on the steamboat at St. Louis. He stood there sort o' petrified, gazing at me, and he said--well, I won't repeat what he said. It was profane, but it was eloquent. But I mustn't stand here and talk all night of old reminiscences. I was going through all the texts of the chairman, but now I come to think of it--I had forgotten it for the minute--I am entertaining a carbuncle unawares. I have got it on my port hind leg, and it reminds me of its company occasionally. I have greater respect for it than for any other possession I have in the world. I take more care of it than I do of the family. But before I sit down I just want to thank you once again for your kind and cordial reception of me tonight, and to assure you that I do most sincerely appreciate it and value it.

1 http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01671b.htm 2 http://www.vialibri.net/item_pg/6745830-1868-the-yorick-club.htm
ii

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Clarke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Horne

iii4

5 http://www.glenrowan1880.com/reporters.htm 6 http://www.answers.com/topic/yorick-club 7 http://www.judithbuckrich.com/pdfs/Collins.pdf 8 http://www.twainquotes.com/Steamboats/YorickSpeech.html