Brothers Goncourt

[mikeymonkey]

'If two Englishmen were cast up on a desert island the first thing they would do is to form a club'. Anyone know the source, attributed to these 19th century diarists?

[factor-fiction]

A quick Google search of part of the quote leads to the answer as 'The brothers Goncourt'

Extract here:
The Need for Buddies
Roy Porter
British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800: The Origins of an Associational World by Peter Clark
Oxford, 516 pp, £60.00, January 2000, ISBN 0 19 820376 4
If two Englishmen were cast away on a desert island, what’s the first thing they would do? They’d set up a club. The brothers Goncourt’s celebrated quip chimes precisely with a much cherished image of the bewhiskered Victorian gent digesting the Times at the Reform or Athenaeum, before sorting out the world’s evils. But as Peter Clark, Britain’s leading urban historian, notes in a characteristically fact-packed but thoughtful study, that most English of institutions was going strong long before then.

[factor-fiction]

Sorry, I've just realised that you know it was the Brothers Goncourt.
So I'm not sure exactly what it is that you want to know.

[mikeymonkey]

Sorry, not expained well! I wonder if there is any specific place where the brothers made their 'celebrated quip'. Was it in their diaries or correspondence? Presumably not in English?!