The Anteroom
A descriptive register of the commemorative objects, portraits, and documents on display in the Society’s anteroom at Bedford Square. The room is the principal point of contact between the Society’s institutional history and the visiting Fellow; new Fellows are, on admission, traditionally walked through the room before their first meeting. The objects are listed in the order in which they are encountered on a clockwise tour, beginning at the door from the staircase.
1. The Founder’s Portrait
A three-quarter-length oil of Miss Emily Clatterbuck (#00001), painted in 1859 by William Holman Hunt’s pupil Edmund Tarrant — no relation to the modern Major Crispin Tarrant, MC (#00224a) — and donated to the Society by the artist’s widow on his death in 1882. Miss Clatterbuck is depicted seated, with a copy of The Times of 14th March 1846 open on the table beside her. The painting is the largest in the room and hangs above the fireplace, where it cannot be missed. Miss Clatterbuck’s expression has been variously described, in subsequent decades, as “patient”, “considering”, and “of unmistakable purpose”. The Society holds, on the present consensus, that all three are accurate.
2. The Bracegirdle Plaque
A small bronze plaque, mounted to the left of the fireplace, reading simply:
BRACEGIRDLE — 1908 He spoke as he was bound to speak.
The plaque commemorates Sir Mortimer Bracegirdle (#00153a), who died at Pentonville on 14th August 1908, having been arrested at Buckingham Palace the previous June for correcting His Majesty King Edward VII to his face on a split infinitive uttered at a state dinner. The plaque was installed in 1910 by subscription among Fellows. The Society stands, by long custom, in silence before the plaque on the 11th of June each year, the date of his arrest.
3. The Three Portraits of Sir Edmund Carshalton
Three oil portraits, hung in chronological sequence. They depict, in succession: the elder Sir Edmund (1855–1932), Society Chair, the Briber, whose plaque reads “Imprisoned in the Society’s interest, 1926”; the middle Sir Edmund (1882–1957), Vice-President, painted by Augustus John in late career and widely held to bear a striking resemblance to the elder; and the younger Sir Edmund (1903–1968), the voice of the Audibility Resolution, painted by Stanley Spencer in profile, on the sitter’s own instruction, “to assist the Society’s records”.
The three identifying plaques were installed simultaneously, in 1968, on the conclusion of the Carshalton Question of 1957–1963, during which every reference to “Sir Edmund Carshalton” in the Society’s minutes required a footnote indicating which of the three was meant. The portraits’ painters represent, in cumulative effect, the Society’s quiet preference for representational painting of the second rank. The Curator notes that the Society has, in this respect, been served by exactly the painters it deserved.
4. Pemmington’s Framed Letter
A glazed frame containing a single sheet of foolscap: a letter of 12th April 1908 from Mr Alaric Pemmington (#00089a) to the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, MP, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, setting out, in two paragraphs of meticulous prose, an objection to Mr Asquith’s use of “fewer” where “less” was indicated in a budget speech of the previous month. The letter received no reply. The card beneath the frame reads:
“Mr Pemmington’s correspondence with the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, MP. The matter is unresolved.”
5. The Brass Plaque of the Fallen
A small brass plaque, installed in 1922 and extended in 1947, listing the fifteen Fellows killed in action in the two World Wars. The eighth name in the First War column is Captain H. Pinch-Bracewell, reduced to Lieutenant by court-martial in 1917, in a matter detailed in the Society’s History. The rank inscribed on the plaque is the rank under which he was admitted to the Society. The Society’s records reflect the Society’s view, not the Crown’s.
The plaque is the focus of the Society’s two minutes’ silence at every Annual General Meeting. The silence is observed even in years when no business of the meeting has been concluded by the time it is taken, the silence being, in such years, the only matter on which the meeting has unanimously agreed.
6. The Royal Mail Commendation
A framed certificate in oak, hung on the wall opposite the Founder’s portrait — the position chosen, in 2008, to ensure that the visiting Fellow, on entering, is presented with the Society’s beginning at one end of the room and its principal external recognition at the other. It is the first item of positive correspondence the Society received from any external authority in 161 years, and has, since its installation, become the Society’s most regularly photographed object. The Curator has, on three occasions, declined requests from journalists to remove it temporarily for higher-quality reproduction, on the grounds that “the certificate is, in its precise location, part of the Society’s institutional record; to move it for reproduction would be to misrepresent its place in the room.”
7. The Tarrant Inscription
A wooden lintel, installed in 1929 above the door to the meeting room, bearing in incised letters:
“A misplaced apostrophe in a despatch is a worse enemy than the German. The German will, in time, withdraw. The apostrophe will not.” — Maj. Crispin Tarrant, MC (#00224a)
The Society holds the remark to be the finest articulation of its purpose in the modern era. The decision to install it was carried by acclamation; only one Fellow objected, on the procedural grounds that “the Society does not, on principle, install permanent inscriptions of remarks on the proper application of which the Society has not itself ruled”. The objection was minuted and overruled.
8. The Underwood Lintel
A second lintel, installed in 2002 above the door to the basement library, bearing the inscription:
Errare humanum est, corrigere divinum.
The Latin is a deliberate variation on the proverbial errare humanum est, ignoscere divinum — “to err is human, to forgive divine”. The Society’s version replaces ignoscere (to forgive) with corrigere (to correct). The substitution is doctrinally important: the Society does not regard forgiveness as a divine attribute in the matter of language; correction is. The line is the dying utterance of Mr Tobias Underwood (#00386a), who collapsed in the British Library Reading Room on 2nd June 2001 and instructed the librarian on duty to convey it to the Society. The Society did so.
9. The Memorial Glass
A stained-glass window, installed in 1922 by Christopher Whall, depicting the arrest of Sir Mortimer Bracegirdle at Buckingham Palace in 1908. Sir Mortimer is shown in profile, his right hand raised in the manner of one delivering an admonition; two figures in court dress stand behind him, in attitudes of consternation. The glass is, in the Curator’s view, “an object of considerable artistic merit, of which the Society is properly proud, and the only piece of stained glass anywhere in England depicting a man being arrested for objecting to a split infinitive”.
The window’s £840 cost is recorded in the Treasurer’s reports under “Memorial Works”. It is not recorded under “Follies”, which the Society maintains as a separate ledger. The distinction has been the subject of internal commentary; the Society’s settled view is that the distinction stands.
10. The IBM 6 (under glass)
A small glass case containing the Society’s first computer — an IBM Memory Typewriter, model 6, purchased in 1979 at a cost of £3,800 and used, in the period 1979–1985, to produce two letters and an abandoned draft of meeting minutes. A small typed card beneath the case reads:
“The Society’s first computer, 1979–1985. The device performed its functions; the difficulty was chiefly in our requiring those functions of it.” — Mrs Henrietta Foulkes, Society Secretary, 1985.
The case is dusted weekly. The machine has not been switched on since 1985. The Curator reports that, on his last test in 2009, it was nevertheless in working order, and that the Society regards this as a satisfactory state of preservation.
11. The Sir Marmaduke Catesby Portrait
A small full-length portrait of Sir Marmaduke Catesby (#00050a), whose 1881 bequest has funded the Society for 145 years. Sir Marmaduke is depicted in his country tweeds, with a black retriever at his feet. The portrait is widely regarded, within the Society, as the least flattering of the major portraits in the room — a circumstance Sir Marmaduke anticipated and accepted, observing in 1879 that “a portrait that flatters its subject is a portrait one’s friends will laugh at; a portrait that does not flatter is a portrait one’s friends will admire as truthful. I shall, on principle, prefer the second.”
The portrait was moved approximately eight inches to the left of its proper position in 1940, by a typist of the Ministry of Information of unusually decided opinions, and returned in 1941. The Curator regards the episode as the only known case of unauthorised curation in the room’s history.
12. The Cleaverhouse-Brougham Plaque
A small marble plaque, installed in 1946, in gratitude to Mrs Olivia Cleaverhouse-Brougham (1879–1957), of Kingsmoor Hall, Buckinghamshire, who provided the Society’s archive with sanctuary from 1940 to 1945, and to whom the Society is, in this respect, perpetually obliged. It is the only object in the room commemorating a Fellow who was not also Society Chair, Vice-President, or Secretary. The Society holds that the wartime bequest of accommodation merited the exception.
13. The Founder’s Letter (in a glass case)
A glass case containing a copy of The Times of 14th March 1846, opened to the page on which Miss Clatterbuck’s letter of that date does not appear. The letter was sent; it was not published. The Society holds the absence to be the founding moment. The typed card explains:
“The Society’s foundation rests on a letter dispatched, but not received in its intended sense, by The Times of 14th March 1846. The original of Miss Clatterbuck’s letter was destroyed in the Fire of 1881; this case displays the Times of the day, in which the letter does not, on examination, appear. The absence required a Society to assert what The Times had declined to print.”
The case is, by long custom, the final station on the new Fellow’s tour. The Membership Secretary concludes the tour here, with the words: “You have seen, in this room, what the Society has been and what it has done. You see now, in this case, why the Society was necessary. You may, on this evidence, decide whether you wish, in your own time, to add to its work.”
The Membership Secretary’s words are, by tradition, met with no response. The Society does not regard this as a defect of the ceremony.
A note on the room’s preservation
The anteroom is, by the Society’s settled custom, never reorganised. Objects are added; objects are not removed. The room has been redecorated three times since the Founder’s portrait was installed in 1859 — in 1898, 1947, and 2003 — and on each occasion the wallpaper was replaced with a wallpaper of identical pattern. The Society does not regard this as conservatism. The Society regards it as continuity.
Those wishing, on this evidence, to add to the Society's work may apply for Fellowship. Admission is recorded in the Register; the anteroom is, regrettably, in London.