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Almack's Assembly Rooms was a social club in London from 1765 to 1871 and one of the first to admit both men and women. It was one of a limited number of upper class mixed-sex public social venues in the British capital in an era when the most important venues for the hectic social season were the grand houses of the aristocracy. From 1871 it was renamed "Willis's Rooms" (see below). ==History== Almack's opened on King Street, St. James, in London, on 20 February 1765. Traditionally, it is said to have been established by William Almack, born William Macall who, to avoid the onus of a Scottish name, then considered foreign and uncouth, reversed the syllables. However, Chancellor points out that Almack is as legitimate and common a name as Macall, and may easily have been the man's actual family name.〔Chancellor, p.235: "It is generally believed that his original name was Macall and that he changed it, by a process of inversion, to Almack, when he first started as club proprietor, on account of the odium into which anything Scottish had fallen at this period (about the middle) of the eighteenth century. But this is based a good deal on conjecture, and in ''Notes and Queries'' a number of letters and other communications on the subject leave the matter not much clearer than it was before. ... Personally I am inclined to think that no such change was ever attempted. Almack is as common a name as Macall, although neither is frequently met with; and surely if a man had wanted to hide his origin he could have done so more skilfully and more successfully than by merely playing a conjuring trick with the letters of his name."〕 His Almack's Coffee House, opened at the same time, was bought in 1774 and became the gentlemen's club, Brooks's. The Assembly Rooms first opened in purposeful rivalry to Mrs. Cornelys' entertainments at Carlisle House; her masquerade balls were becoming notorious. At first it was described as a "female Brook's"—a gambling club to which women were admitted, as well as men. Male members proposed and elected the female members, and women proposed and elected the male members. At this time, like Almack's other establishments, it was meant to make money as what would now be called a casino. It was, like a male club, open any night, and gambling was all that went on, besides a little supper served by Mr. and Mrs. Almack, the latter of whom poured tea while wearing a fashionable sack gown. In 1770, Horace Walpole wrote of "The Female Coterie", "There is a new Institution that begins to make, and if it proceeds will make, considerable noise. It is a club of both sexes to be erected at Almack's, on the model of that of the men at White's. Mrs Fitzroy, Lady Pembroke, Mrs Meynell, Lady Molyneux, Miss Pelham and Miss Lloyd are the foundresses. I am ashamed to say I am of so young and fashionable society; but as they are people I live with, I choose to be idle rather than morose. I can go to a young supper without forgetting how much sand is run out of the hour-glass."〔Chancellor, p. 205-6〕 This first phase of Almack's suffered from competition from The Pantheon or "Winter Ranelagh Gardens" from 1772 until it burned down twenty years later.〔Chancellor, p. 206-7〕 Play seems to have fallen off, as Almack's entered its second phase some time after 1800. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Almack's」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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