Clubmoss

“ Citizens of the more fortunate states may not know of the mysteries of the clubs. In Vincent’s the only bars are beer bars, and only in the clubs can a person get a drink, and only members are admitted. It is true that even such a small club as the Coq Bleu had thirty thousand members, and at a dollar a year that is a nice sideline. The little numbered membership cards cost a penny each for the printing, and the member wrote in his own name. ”

“ I myself chose a club from those in the bag.
"That's a niblick. You can hardly drive with a niblick."
"Why not? Is it an essential condition of the game that you should play a certain stroke with a particular club?"
"Not that I'm aware of. Still, I cannot but think that you will hardly do yourself justice if you drive with a niblick. If you are in search of a little variety why not drive with a putter? These are the clubs with which one generally drives." ”

“ We earn our dimes like the horse or ox, we toil like the fabled steer, and then we journey a dozen blocks to blow in the dimes for beer. While the women work at the washing tub to add to our scanty hoard, we happily meet at the poor man's club, where never a soul is bored. We recklessly squander our minted brawn, and the clubhouse owner thrives; and we'll homeward go at the break of dawn and joyously beat our wives. ”

“ Indeed, a member of a certain military club is said once to have brought his wife to dine, and defied the authorities by asking for the book of the rules, in which he triumphantly pointed out that there was no stipulation as to sex.
Not a few clubs in old days were anything but sociable places for young men, who, when elected, were often shy at frequenting them, on account of the stern looks which certain of the older members, who had their particular corners and chairs, were wont to cast at them. ”

“ His son may be very undesirable, or his son may sell the house to some one whom the club is not willing to admit to membership. But Tuxedo society, instead of becoming, as might have been expected, a very narrow clique, seems to be singularly broad minded and tolerant. The difficulty of preserving the character of the place and keeping a large society together as, in all its essentials, a club, is very much less than might be expected. The place is extremely interesting to any observer of American social life. The club regulates everything. ”

“ A social club (even though it be a club with a definite social character) is a collection of heterogeneous creatures, and its aim is perfect harmony and good-fellowship. Thus any definite expression of opinion by any member is regarded as dangerous. The ideal clubman is he who looks genial and says nothing at all. Most Englishmen find little difficulty in conforming with this ideal. They belong to a silent race. Social clubs flourish, therefore, in England. Intelligent foreigners, seeing them, recognise their charm, and envy us them, and try to reproduce them at home. ”

“ A room at the inn was set apart for them, into which no one not belonging to the club ever presumed to enter, unless it was the landlord, who would be called every now and then to [7] replenish the bowl, and whom sometimes the guests of the club would "draw out," as it was whispered in the village that the landlord of the "Headless Lady" knew a rare lot of stories, he did; also how to tell 'em, too, my word! but these he generally reserved for his more intimate customers. One strict law of the club that we have not yet mentioned was that no guest invited was to be a "business man." ”

“ Of late years, however, a less severe tone has prevailed amongst its members, many of whom are distinguished men.
144Sixty years ago the fact of club membership implied some social position or distinction on the part of the individual. White’s, Brooks’s, Boodle’s, Arthur’s, and a few other establishments, constituted really exclusive clubland, and to be elected to them was a matter of no little difficulty. A man of obscure birth, or one unknown to the committee, would have been sure of being blackballed. ”

“ The King of Clubs sat on Saturday of each month, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in the Strand, which, at that time, was a nest of boxes, each containing its Club, and affording excellent cheer, though latterly desecrated by indifferent dinners and very questionable wine. The Club was a grand talk, the prevalent topics being books and authors; politics quite excluded. Bobus Smith was a convivial member in every respect but that of wine; he was but a frigid worshipper of Bacchus, but he had great humour and a species of wit, that revelled amidst the strangest and most grotesque combinations. ”

“ And that is always something. In an age when clubs are really almost universal, most men have had occasion to wish that their society would sit occasionally on some of the members. The member who bullies the servants is a not uncommon specimen of the p. 115club-bore. He may be called the bore truculent. He has been excellently caricatured by Thackeray in the “Book of Snobs.”
There we have the club-bore who makes such a fuss about his chop, and scolds the waiter so terribly. “Look at it, sir; is it a chop for a gentleman? Smell it, sir; is it fit to put on a club table?” ”

“ When modern improvements were first suggested in clubs, most of the old-fashioned members fought strenuously against them. The introduction of the electric light, for instance, was bitterly opposed; whilst the telephone seemed to not a few of the older generation an attempt to introduce mercantile outposts into the very heart of clubland. The old club-men at first hated, and afterwards feared, the encroachments of business methods into their kingdom. ”

“ The modern generation had forborne to desecrate the fine old room with electric light, and massive silver candlesticks shed a soft light on the table set at the far end of the hall, where dinner, apparently, was just at an end.
Three people were sitting at the table, a woman at the head, who, even before I had taken in the details I have just set down, I knew to be Monica, though her back was towards me. On one side of the table was a big, heavy man whom I recognized as Clubfoot, on the other side a pale slip of a lad in officer's uniform with only one arm ... Schmalz, no doubt. ”

“ Dear Clarence has such a horror of intellectual women, that I—”
“But, Dorothy, you know when you founded the club, you said the membership would be for life, and—”
“Emily Marshmallow, I never said anything of the kind! And, if I did, only a person of your colossal selfishness would expect me to waste my time on a mere club when I want to devote eighteen hours a day to the selection of my trousseau, and the other six to Clarence! And, if you want to know my real opinion of the club, I consider it the greatest bore among my social duties!” ”

“ A cold, thick drizzle, blown by a biting wind that sent chills to the marrow, marred the early spring night, and kept indoors the few hardy members who had haunted the clubhouse since the season's opening a week before. Not more than a dozen loyal devotees to the sports of the open air lounged about the big clubhouse. Three or four rangy young women in sweaters and jackets strove bravely to dispel the gloom of the night as it settled down upon the growling masculine majority. ”

“ Now, all the cards have had assigned to them arbitrary, but plausible, characteristics. Thus, the ace of clubs (that suit representing originally the 'fortunate husbandmen') promises great wealth, much prosperity in life, and tranquillity of mind—if it turns up within your circle, as before mentioned. King of clubs announces a man of dark complexion who is humane, upright, &c., in fact, just the man for a husband. Queen of clubs is equally propitious as the emblem of a dark lady who would prove a paragon wife. Knave of clubs, a jolly good friend in every way. ”

“ The Tory patrician belonged to White’s; the Whig politician of old family was a member of Brooks’s; the country gentleman put his name down at Boodle’s or Arthur’s; the distinguished lawyer, divine, or man of letters, became a member of the Athenæum; and the soldier, who was a field officer, of the United Service. The membership of such clubs constituted an exclusive circle.
A club was a place in which men wrote letters and met their friends. ”

“ I approached the table and found two flashily dressed bullies and a bedraggled drab from the streets talking in admiration of my exploit.
"Clubfoot met his match that time," the woman cried. "The dirty dog! But why didn't this English spy make a job of it and kill the scum? Pah!"
And she spat elegantly into the sawdust on the floor.
"I wouldn't be in that fellow's shoes for something," muttered one of the men. "No one ever had the better of Clubfoot yet. Do you remember Meinhardt, Franz? He tried to cheat Clubfoot, and we know what happened to him!" ”

“ When we allow ourselves to be drawn into the whirling vortex made up of club classes, too many clubs with the varying interests, too great a multiplicity of club committees, receptions and club teas by the score, until the very name of them nauseates us, the scramble for office (either for ourselves or our friends) and the numerous petty trials and tribulations that follow in the wake of all these things; then we are not getting the best results from club work ourselves, nor giving them to others, either. ”

“ Some retained a supply of prostitutes. Many taverns had a rentable private room for the better-off to drink wine, have meals, meet friends, gamble, do business, and hold meetings of societies and clubs, especially political clubs. From this beginning sprang private clubs such as the Blue Stocking Club in 1750 and the Literary Club in 1764, Lloyd's for sale and insurance of ships in 1771, and the stock exchange in 1773. The Blue stocking Club was established by women who organized conversational parties with guests of intellect and wit. ”

“ Allison's plan, as she outlined it to Betty, Lloyd, and Kitty at recess, in one of the swings, was to form a club that should be not only fun for themselves, but of some real benefit to the girls of the mountain districts. ”

“ There was, to be sure, in every Southern city an old mausoleum of a club—sometimes two—each more desolate than the other—haunted by gouty old parties and bonvivants; but the young men never passed through their doors except on some call of urgency. When a man was old enough to be admitted to the club there was no young damosel on Malachi's steps, or any other steps, who would care a rap about him. ”

“ You seem to imagine that I want to be flattered, like a man, by being asked to explain things. I told you, didn’t I? that Jack and I quarreled about his membership in a new club. Very well, I too, have decided to join a club!”
“Humph, that isn’t a bad idea. But what kind of a club? An Ibsen or a Browning one, I suppose. I notice that men dislike particularly to have us members of really intellectual clubs.” ”

“ We were having supper at one of the tables in the front room—there were only a couple of customers, as it was so early—when a man, a regular visitor of ours, came down the stairs hurriedly. He went straight over to Haase and spoke into his ear.
"Mind yourself, Haase," I heard him say. "Do you know who had Kore arrested and shot? It was Clubfoot. There is more in this than we know. Mind yourself and get out! In an hour or so it may be too late." ”

“ In fact the club is a great protection to married as well as single men. Many a husband, who likes a quiet time apart from domestic influences, has had his shortcomings covered by the club. This sort of thing is not for the poor man. He takes his drink in the groggery, and woe betide him if he should stagger on the public highway.
Doane, the editor, and Salmon, the lawyer, both sharp witted, were seated in one of the private rooms of the Union League. ”

“ The welfare of the Club is at stake, and its fitness for carrying on its work, imperiled. Decent parents won't want their boys to belong. It is abroad in the parish that rowdyism is rampant here. I want to nail the nasty rumor, and place it where it belongs. There is an explanation, and I want you to help me get it. Frank Mulvy, did you have a hand in the wreckage wrought in the Club the other night? ”

“ It is said that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, and it is surprising how disagreeable one cantankerous man who uses his club can make it to those around him. He is always coming upon the scene when not wanted. If you go up to the library, you find him snoring on the sofa, with the very book you have come in search of in his useless grasp. If you dine accidentally at the club, your table is sure to be placed next to his. ”

“ One who is unacquainted with the club system as carried on in London can scarcely imagine the conveniences they present. Every member appears to be at home, and all seem to own a share in the club. There is a free-and-easy way with those who frequent clubs, and a license given there, that is unknown in the drawing-room of the private mansion. ”

“ I hate clubs where they have lectures and debates and other beastly things that they never have in men’s clubs. Now there’s the Kaiserin, that would suit you very well: handsome clubhouse, excellent cooking arrangements, spacious entertaining-room which you can hire and have all to yourself, every necessity and comfort to make a club thoroughly comfy—in fact, a second home without any bother.”
“But how do you know?” said Regina in a curiously small voice.
[Pg 231]
“Oh, I know several women who belong to the Kaiserin,” Julia answered carelessly. “What are you going to do to-day, dearest? ”