Buck's Club is a
gentlemen's club in London, located at
18 Clifford Street, established in June 1919.
P. G. Wodehouse mentions it in some stories and modelled his
Drones Club
The Drones Club is a recurring fictional location in the stories of British humorist P. G. Wodehouse. It is a gentlemen's club in London. Many of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories feature the club or its members.
Various members ...
mostly after Buck's. It is probably best known for the
Buck's Fizz cocktail, created there in 1921 by its bartender McGarry.
Anthony Lejeune in his book ''The Gentlemen's Clubs of London'' (1979) comments that "Buck's Club is the only London Club to have been founded since the First World War which ranks, in social prestige and elegance, with the best of St James's Street clubs: and like them, it is named after its founder." In 2019, the club received media attention for its dinners in which young women are invited to entertain the elderly male members.
History
During the
First World War, Captain Herbert John Buckmaster (1881-1966) of the
RHG and some of his colleagues agreed that after the war it would be good to establish a gentlemen's club that was somewhat less stuffy than those that currently existed. Indeed, they particularly wanted a club with an American Cocktail Bar, something then beyond the pale for most traditional gentlemen's clubs.
The club was established in June 1919
[
]
and its American Bar was a focal point. American members were welcome although treated separately from a constitutional standpoint. The club for many years kept its tradition of sourcing members from the
Household Cavalry regiments although its membership is now drawn from many walks of life and is renowned for its exuberance and the youth of its membership.
The Club is probably best known for seeing the creation of the
Buck's Fizz cocktail in 1921 by its first bartender, Mr McGarry (Barman from 1919 to 1941,
sometimes "Malachy McGarry" or "Pat McGarry", or spelled "MacGarry", he is also usually credited with creating the
Sidecar cocktail).
It receives three mentions in the stories of
P. G. Wodehouse;
[The Buck's Club is visited by Bertie Wooster in 1923's '']The Inimitable Jeeves
''The Inimitable Jeeves'' by P.G. Wodehouse was the first of the Jeeves novels, although not originally conceived as a single narrative, being assembled from a number of short stories featuring the same characters. The book was first published ...
'' and is mentioned in 1931's '' Big Money'' and '' If I Were You''. Wodehouse modelled his fictional
Drones Club
The Drones Club is a recurring fictional location in the stories of British humorist P. G. Wodehouse. It is a gentlemen's club in London. Many of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories feature the club or its members.
Various members ...
after Buck's Club and the Bachelors' Club, even naming his club's barman "McGarry" too.
Bond Street Horticultural Society
The "Bond Street Horticultural Society", also known as "Nieces' Night", is a dinner held several times a year at Buck's. On this occasion, the members are encouraged to invite young women to come along, who are then rotated between tables with each course.
While some women told the ''
Financial Times'' that they enjoyed the attention by the all-male, mostly elderly members, others described the experience as unpleasant or "vile".
The club discussed discontinuing the tradition after the
Presidents Club
The Presidents Club Charitable Trust was a British charity known for an annual charity dinner held from 1985 to 2018. The dinner, held usually at The Dorchester hotel in London, was for male guests only and was considered a "mainstay of London's ...
scandal in 2018 exposed sexual misconduct at another all-male high-society dinner, but decided against it.
See also
*
List of London's gentlemen's clubs
Notes and references
External links
Buck's Club.co.uk– official website
Gentlemen's clubs in London
1919 establishments in England
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