Sources

The Minute Book.

Copyright University Library Liverpool.

This transcription is for the purpose of research and private study only.

It is likely that this is a copy prepared by Eustace Carey at the request of Sir John Brunner. Carey had met Sir John at the opening of the Muspratt Laboratories when they must have talked about those long-gone days. It is surmised that Carey had a copy made and sent from the headquarters of The United Alkali Company on James Street, Liverpool to Sir John's London home, in late November 1906.

We believe this is a copy of the original minutes, in that it is in a fair-hand of one person, has no crossing-out or alterations, contains pages which can only have been made after the "Qu'est-ce que c'est"? Club wound-up in 1871, and has pencil annotations in the hand of Eustace Carey explaining the mottoes adopted by the members.

It is not known if the original Minute book exists.

A History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes.

D.W.F. Hardie, Ph.D.
Published by
Imperial Chemical Industries Limited,
General Chemicals Division, 1950

The canonical book, essential and enjoyable reading.

On the "Qu'est-ce que c'est"? Club, Hardie writes:  

On the evening of 26th January, 1870, a most peculiar and interesting body held its first meeting. Those present were Eustace Carey, then the junior partner in Gaskell, Deacon and Company; James Liebig Muspratt, the son of Richard Muspratt of Flint and grandson of James Muspratt; Henry Brunner and his brother John; Ludwig Mond; James Raven, headmaster of Farnworth Grammar School; and Walter Angus Watts, a chemist at the Hutchinson Works. Later Watts left the chemical industry and succeeded Raven as headmaster of the Grammar School.

The originating spirit of the club appears to have been Watts, who was voted into the chair at its first meeting. The object of the club was to hold meetings for the the discussion of the meanings of words of an abstract nature, such as "morality," "virtue," "art," "poetry," "justice," "vulgarity," "science," "natural law," "nonsense," "slang," "faith," "liberty," "originality," "love," "charity," and "wit." Meetings were held at the houses of the club members in rotation, and the host of the evening had the privilege of being chairman. Several words were dealt with at each meeting, and it was the obligation of each member to submit a written definition of the words up for discussion. After debate on the various semantic essays, a vote was taken on the definitions submitted.

By Rule 1 the name of this elevating little discussion group was appropriately decreed to be the "Qu'est-ce-que-c'est? Club" (i.e. the "What-is-it? Club"); by Rule 10 it was ordered that "meetings shall commence punctually at 8 p.m., and all discussion of the definitions shall cease at 10.30. The meeting to close not later than 11 p.m."

By its rules the club permitted the host of an evening to invite suitable persons to be present and to take part in the discussion. Amongst such "non-resident" definers of abstractions were James Liebig Muspratt's brother Sydney, W.R Jekyll,* a chemist in Gaskell, Deacon's laboratory, and Holbrook Gaskell II, the son of Henry Deacon's partner.

The club's rules required that each member, and also visitors, should adopt a motto, this motto to designate all his definitions. In the club's minute book the lists of definitions are followed by the mottoes of the members who proposed them, not by names. No doubt the mottoes throw some light on the characters of those who chose them. Mond, after hisr years of trial with sulphur recovery, was "Unversagt" ("Undaunted"); John Brunner, ambitiously prophetically, took the motto "Onward and Upward!"; Henry Brunner was modestly "Nemo" ("Nobody"); Eustace Carey had "Paulatim" ("Little by Little") as his cautious maxim; Watts' motto was, befitting a future headmaster, "Palmam qui meruit ferat" ("Let him who deserves it bear the palm"); Raven's was "Gradatim" ("Gradually"); J.L.Muspratt, obviously not forgetting his Irish affiliation, chose the slogan "Erin go bragh!" The mottoes of the visiting members are recorded as "Sans changer" ("Unchanging"), "Nescio quid" ("I know not what") and "Spes" ("Hope"), taken by Sydney Muspratt, Jekyll, and Holbrook Gaskell II respectively.

Meetings of the "Qu'est-ce-que-c'est? Club" took place at approximately fortnightly intervals from its founding in January 1870 till its last meeting in the house of Henry Brunner on 27th March, 1871; that is, the club was in existence for about one year and two months. No reason for its abrupt dissolution appears in its minute book. With the exception of James Raven, who had also been absent from the previous meeting, there was full attendance of members to partake of Brunner's hospitality and to define "philanthropy", "charity" and "sympathy." Its word list still contained undefined such terms as "spite", "prejudice" and heterodoxy." All that is known is that after that evening in March those young men--most of then were about thirty--ceased from the pursuit which brought the hemlock to Socrates. Maybe they had found other and more practical issues with which to employ their minds. The Franco-Prussian War was at an end and there had been a big increase in the Continental demand for soda. Mond wrote to his mother-in-law on 12th March: "With the end of the general stagnation, an epoch of bigger and more profitable activity will begin."

Before leaving the pleasing episode of these Farnworth symposia, whose Appolodoruses and Agathons have joined their forerunners, it will be of interest to record the definitions given by some of the members of the three terms "science," "vulgarity" and "civilisation." According to Mond, science was "systematised experience"; vulgarity was "that which is abhorrent to the taste of educated men"; civilisation "the development of the intellectual and moral qualities of nations." Henry Brunner's definitions were: "Science is a term applied to those branches of human knowledge which are, or are supposed to be, conformable to law"; "Vulgarity is that in manners and language which offends good taste"; "Civilisation is that state of society in which men to some extent recognise the rights of others." Eustace Carey described science as "the study of the sequence of phenomena," vulgarity as "the striving to seem rather than to be." Of the sixty-four terms on its list for definition the Qu'est-ce-que-c'est? Club dealt with thirty-eight.

From pp. 98-100

Imperial Chemical Industries A History 

Volume One
The Forerunners 1870.1926
W.J. Reader
OUP 1970

A huge effort of scholarship in two hefty volumes, yet immensely readable and difficult to put down once started. Highly recommended.

On our dramatis personae forming the "Qu'est-ce-que-c'est? Club", Reader writes:

Brunner seems immediately to have found Mond congenial. Most people did, for he was lively, fond of company and talk, and he sang with 'an exceedingly powerful bass voice'. Brunner found him two pleasant rooms with the postmaster of Appleton near Widnes, where he would entertain the bachelors of the locality for 'serious discussion or for whist', feeding them (though brought up as an orthodox Jew) on bacon and eggs. His circle included the two Brunners, two or three managers from alkali works at Widnes, a chemist from Hutchinsons, an engineer working for Widnes local authority, and the headmaster of Farnworth Grammar School. One of their diversions was to formulate and discuss, 'sometimes humorously and sometimes sarcastically', definitions of abstract terms, preferably in the form of epigrams. Sir John Brunner, many years later, said Mond's friends were 'on the whole, a well educated lot of men', and if they were a fair sample of their class in the society of industrial England of the 1860s--so often derided for all sorts of cultural and educational failings--then it would appear that industrial England had less to be ashamed of than its critics, from Matthew Arnold downwards, supposed.  

A History of Farnworth Church Its Village and Parish

Alan Foster