Reputation
A number of episodes over many decades have become anecdotal evidence of the Club's behaviour. Famously, on 12 May 1894 and again on 20 February 1927, after dinner, Bullingdon members smashed almost all the glass of the lights and 468 windows in Peckwater Quad of Christ Church, along with the blinds and doors of the building. As a result, the Club was banned from meeting within 15 miles of Oxford.
While still Prince of Wales, Edward VIII had a certain amount of difficulty in getting his parents' permission to join the Bullingdon on account of the Club's reputation. He eventually obtained it only on the understanding that he never join in what was then known as a "Bullingdon blind", a euphemistic phrase for an evening of drink and song. On hearing of his eventual attendance at one such evening, Queen Mary sent him a telegram requesting that he remove his name from the Club.
Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."
Dinners in recent years, being relatively low key, have not attracted press attention, though in 2005, following damage to a 15th century pub in Oxfordshire during a dinner, four members of the party were arrested; the incident was widely reported. A further dinner was reported in 2010 after damage to a country house.
In the last few years the Bullingdon has been mentioned in the debates of the House of Commons in order to draw attention to excessive behaviour across the British class spectrum, and to embarrass those increasingly prominent MPs who are former members of the Bullingdon. These most notably include David Cameron (UK Prime Minister), George Osborne (UK Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Boris Johnson (Mayor of London). Hansard records eight references to the Bullingdon between 2001 and 2008.
Read more about this topic: Bullingdon Club
Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)