OPENING OF THE LYRIC CLUB

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7265, 26 January 1889, Page 6

OPENING OF THE LYRIC CLUB

Arqvs Social Gossip.

LONDON, November 23.

Last Friday night the New Lyric Club was opened with great pomp and circumstance. The interior of the house isun surpassed in beauty by anything of the kind in London. There is a white and gold theatrev filled with bronze arm-chairs, each having a lyre for its back. Then, on the first floor, there are a series of dainty dining and supper rooms for ladies—one all white, with red hangings and redupholstered Chippendale chairs; another of bamboo, surmounted by a frieze of Persian embroidery. Above the ladies' floor is a Louis Seize dining-room, and a quadruple Moorish smoking-room, all panelied in carved American walnut, unstained and unvarnished. The ceiling is covered with an elaborate matting, and the endless lounges are covered with stamped leather, made in Paris for the purpose. Higher still there is a Baronial black-oak billiard-room, and a Louis Quinze music-room for private parties, and endless writing-rooms, card-rooms, and strangers'~roems, each different, and each a gem in itself. The whole place is lit by electricity—soo lights, supplied to it by its jealous rival, theGrosvenor Gallery.

The altering, decorating, and furnishing of the building-, which was originally intended for an hotel, must have made a large hole in a round £50,000, ana men speculate a good deal as to where the money came from. The Earl of Londesborough is the chairman of the committee, and he has put something into the concern, in addition to handing it over his winecellar at cost price, which, however, is no great, sacrifice on his part, as he and his family almost live at the club. Then, too, Sir Morell Mackenzie has risked a few o* the weekly thousands which he received during the late Emperor's illness, and the reet has been supplied by a venturesome young physician, of good birth and budding eminence, who has abandoned medicine for the managing directorship of what Lord Charles Beresford (one of his own committeemen) irreverently calls a " Cock and Hen Club." The club building is situated in what used to be called Coventry-street, out is now known as Piccadilly East—for, desiring to improv c its moral tone, it has decided to abandon its old and malodorous name. The club forms part of the same block of buildings as the Prince of Wales's Theatre, in which ''Dorothy" has been running for many years past. The neighbourhood is, it is to be hoped, on the point of regeneration. John Wesley, speaking of church music, said that he never could understand why the devil should have all the best tunes. In the. same way it is difficult to see why his Satanic majesty should hold some of the best and most convenient sites in London. There is no reason why the Haymarket and Leicester-square should not be as fashionable and as proper as their immediate neighbours, St. James's square and Pall Mall. The supremacy of vice and blackguardism in the former places and their purlieus is probably doomed. They will be gradually invaded and captured by busy and well-to-do people, and then the vice and the blackguardism will migrate elsewhere. The Prince of Wales was to have opened the club last Friday, but he was prevented by an odd contretemps. The builder and original owner of the theatre was an unsophisticated Scot, who sank his capital and skill in it without having any very definite prospect of what he should do with it when completed. He was, moreover, a stranger to London,- and became deeply indebted to a German Jew named Strussberg, who made some kind of provisional contract with him by which he promised to find a "syndicate" who would take the block off the builder's hands. But he failed to do so, and the Commercial Bank of Scotland took over the building as mortgages, and ultimately sold it to the Lyric Club.. The German Jew, Strussberg, was by no means contented with this ending of the matter, and commenced a lawsuit with the dob, in which he was beaten, but has appealed; When the day of the opening came he determined he would have his revenge, so he wrote to the Prince of Wales, telling his story, mentioning the pending 1 appeal, and adding that if His Royal Highness put his foot inside the building it would be his (Strussberg's) duty to serve him' with a subpoena to give evidence at the next trial. The threat was an empty and ridiculous one, and would have been withdrawn for the trifling consideration of £1,000 ; but it annoyed the Prince, and he told the committee that, although he would come to their dinner and reception as he had promised, he should "hold them responsible" if anything unpleasant occurred. The committee were not minded to " square " their enemy with the £1,000, and still less inclined were they to risk the consequences of the Prince's mysterious threat; therefore, they begged him to spare himself the risk of annoyance, and, His Royal Highness consenting, spent the evening in watching Arthur Roberts and Vanoni kicking their legs in "Nadgy" Happpily for the bulk of the company, they.never discovered the Prince's absence until they read of it in the papers.next day. The deception was heightened by the presence, in strong battalions, of " The Prince's friends," including Mr Christopher Sykes, who walked about with a beautiful impression of a white and gold pillar on the back of his coat and trousers, for the decorators had only quitted the building at 8 o'clock, and the paint and gilding were in many places still wet. The. company within was happily unaware that the indignant Hebrew, Strussberg, was outside, " spoiling for a fight" as the Irish say. Once or twice he tried to rush into the building, alleging that as it had once been licensed as an hotel, which was the truth, he was entitled in law to walk in and pay for a drink. The police, who were in force, kept him at bay, and a creature of theirs kept jostling him, in hopes he would petent it, and thus give an opening for his arrest; but he was too knowing for his enemies, and, on the whole, carried off the honours of the night. It was a curious thing to watch this poor parlahof civilisation being buffeted on the pavement, while the great ones of the land were trooping into the building all unconscious of his existence, and to think that fifteen years ago the pariah's brother was one of the magnates of the London : world—the very people who are now crowding into the Lyric, eager for their supper and their song, being among the atgect toadies of that same brother. The other Strussberg was an importation into London of the Lof feus family. He had made a' vast fortune, chiefly in Russian railways, and afterwards at Berlin he had become the intimate of Lord Augustus Loftus, who gave him urgent letters of introduction to his sister, the late Lady Egerton, of Tatton. This lady, by the aid of her friends, Lady Combermere, Lady Molesworth, and J others, procured Strussberg an enormous I acquaintance, Strussberg taking and furnishing for the purposes of hospitality one of the largest houses or rather palaces in Grosvenor-place, where the drawingroom carpets alone cost £4,000, Unhappily, there was a fly in Strussberg's ointment, Npbody in London cared to inquire who he was OP how he made his money; but nnfori tunately the German and Austrian austograders were more particular. They made it a rule for themselves and the members of their embassy to walk out of every drawing-room in which they found , Strussberg; and then London felt reluctantly that it must give Scrussberg up, and be retired to Germany, where he became bankrupt and was prosecuted, dragging down with him in his ruin the younger brother who played " Marplot" on Friday night. The question with all such clubs as the Lyric is, Will it hist I Many of them have come and gone, and none of the surviving ones are in their pristine glory. The Gallery Club is intensely sweiL and intensely dulL The Had Club was started as a special home of the j Prince's set; bat the Prince's set did not use it often enongh to pay for lighting and the servants, and the Prince and his friends decided to sacrifice their pride by letting in a crowd of nobodies. It is now a shabby place, and is run chiefly as a means of advertising the histrionic abilities of Miss Kate v aughan, who is married to the secretary, Colonel Fred Wellesley. There is another club of the same kind at - Hyde-park corner, called the Wellington, occupying a companion house to that taken by the elder Strussberg in 1873; the Bachelors' is another; and there is also the small " Town Orleans "—the country " Orleans," at Twickenham, went the way of all flesh years ago. Another club of the same kind, called the Salisbury, in St. James's Square, was nearly wrecked by Colonel Hughes Haiktt, years before he got into the scrape with M|ss Selwyn, He took a ladytohmeheon there wbosnfebe committee considered an Improper person to, he admitted, When called on fo* anexplana-I

tion, the gallant colonel wrote be«k, with characteristic aplomb, that so far from considering her an improper character, tie had asked two of his own female cousins to meet her. The reply of £c mirauteee was crushing. They said that they were aware that he had asked two of his own female cousins to meet her, and what was more to the point, that the two female cousi-.s had refused to meet her, and that it was on the information of the two female cousins that the committee were acting in calling on the colonel for his explanation or resignation.