Clubroom

“ After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional's deaf sister—and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the gallery.
The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and ballroom. ”

“ Now I hope you’re satisfied,” Fred retorted. “I don’t see any [86] reason for standing here talking all day; if we’re going to move, why not move?”
Acting on this gentle hint, they went to work again, and before dark the new clubroom was in apple-pie order. Very trim and clean and neat it looked, too, and very warm and cozy it was. Fond as they all were of the little loft room in the barn, they could not deny that it was a bleak place in winter.
Mrs. Marley had given the key to Polly, and had assured her that not an outsider would be allowed over the threshold. ”

“ We’ve all brought our money, and it’s up to you to collect it.”
And Jess walked over and put a shining new dime in the slit in the bank. Artie followed her.
Never had Fred, in his experience as treasurer, found it so easy to collect dues from the entire membership. Even Ward did not argue, but insisted on paying his dime. And none of them would hear of Fred giving the bank to any one else to take care of, or leaving it in the clubroom.
“You’re the treasurer, and you take care of it,” said Polly. “You suit us, and if we don’t fuss about the money that’s lost I don’t see why you should. ”

“ Mrs. Marley laughed and said she was thankful she didn’t have to tramp through a snowstorm to reach the meeting.
“Isn’t it lovely to have this room?” said Polly to Artie, when, a little later, they went upstairs to the warm, well-lighted, pretty clubroom. Artie had borrowed the key from Ward, because they wanted to make sure the heat was turned on before the guests arrived.
[181] “Think how it would be out in the barn on a night like this,” remarked Artie, breathing on the window panes so that he could see out. “Gee, Polly, it’s snowing yet.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ An hour’s journey on the trolley brings me to the court-house. After one such visit the stranger needn’t trouble to enroll himself at the inn; some one is bound to offer to put him up. There is a dramatic club in that town that produces good plays with remarkable skill and effectiveness. The club is an old one as such things go, and it fixes the social standard for the community. The auditorium of the Masonic Temple serves well as a theatre, and our admiration for the club is enhanced by the disclosure that the members design the scenery and also include in their membership capable directors. ”

“ 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 licence given there that is unknown in the drawing-room of the private mansion. I met the gentleman at the Club, at the appointed hour, and after his writing my name in the visitors' book, we proceeded to the dining-room, where we partook of a good dinner. ”

“ CRAVEN. My child, I have my own club.
CHARTERIS (contemptuously) . Yes, the Junior Army and Navy! Do you call that a club? Why, they daren't let a woman cross the doorstep!
CRAVEN (a little ruffled) . Clubs are a matter of taste, Charteris. You like a cock and hen club: I don't. It's bad enough to have Julia and her sister—a girl under twenty—spending half their time at such a place. Besides, now really, such a name for a club! The Ibsen club! I should be laughed out of London. The Ibsen club! Come, Cuthbertson, back me up. ”

“ Very different is the bran-new modern club whose interior my faithful artist has depicted, and whose appearance at five o’clock in the afternoon I am now called upon to describe. Gentlemen members of clubs, these gorgeous palaces are but the growth of one generation. Your fathers had, it is true, their Wattier’s, the Cocoa-Tree, White’s, and Boodle’s, but those were considerably more like gambling-houses than clubs. To obtain admission was exceedingly difficult, and to remain a member was, save to men of immense fortune, absolutely ruinous. ”

“ Louis is struck by the very small, exclusive clubs. One is the Florissant Valley Country Club, with a pleasant, simple club-house and a very charming membership. But the most famous little club of the city, and one of the most famous in the United States, is the Log Cabin Club. I do not believe that in the entire country there is another like it. The club is on the outskirts of the city, and has its own golf course. Its house is an utterly unostentatious frame building with a dining room containing a single table at which all the members sit at meals together, like one large family. ”

“ Treading almost noiselessly on his rubber soles the steward led me along the deck to the back of the bridge where a door hooked back revealed a glimpse of a long low-ceilinged saloon set about with comfortable settees and club chairs in soft green Morocco leather, the portholes screened against the blinding light from without.
Even below the awning the light outside was so much stronger than the comparative obscurity within the smoke-room that at first I could not distinguish much. Parsons left me at the door and I was about to sit down when I discovered to my surprise that I was not alone. ”

“ Tick is the exception, not the rule, at a club; though there have been Irish members who have run goodly scores in their time with the cook and the waiter.
A man may, if he be so minded, make his club his home; living and lounging luxuriously, and grazing to his heart’s content on the abundant club-house literature, and enjoying the conversation of club friends. Soap and towels, combs and hair-brushes, are provided in the lavatories; and there are even some clubs that have bed-rooms in their upper storeys, for the use of members. ”

“ But at gayer times, when there are gala receptions at the club, its steps are all buried under expensive carpet, soft as moss and covered over with a long pavilion of red and white awning to catch the snowflakes; and beautiful ladies are poured into the club by the motorful. ”

“ The Club House overhung the rolling green of the golf links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was not on the veranda; at one end a group of young men were drinking—teal Beyond his father and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above a hill. His father grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club described a short arc, the ball flashed whitely through the air, and the group trotted eagerly forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and prediction with heated and simple sums in arithmetic. ”

“ Large, with dark panels, and heavy beams which spring up and lose themselves in warm shadows overhead, it is a room combining dignity with gracious informality. And let me add that, to my mind, such a combination is at once rare and desirable in a club building—or, for the matter of that, in a home or a human being. A club which is too informal is likely to seem trivial; a club too dignified, austere. A club should neither seem to be a joke, nor yet a mausoleum. If it be magnificent, it should not, at least, overwhelm one with its magnificence ”

“ In the larger cities there is usually another club, somewhat less formal in architecture, decoration, and spirit, and given over, broadly speaking, to the younger men—though there is often a good deal of duplication of membership between the first mentioned type of club and the second. The Tavern of Cleveland is of the second category; so is the Saturn Club of Buffalo, of which I spoke in a former chapter. Almost every good-sized city has, likewise, its university club, its athletic club, and [ 50] its country club. ”

“ Let us try to give our readers a glimpse of the club room and its guests on this memorable evening.
Imagine, then, a large room with low ceiling and walls of dark oak panel, a large old-fashioned fireplace with dogs, and a Yule log blazing on the hearth. The curtains are old and embroidered, and closely drawn. The room is well lighted, and in the middle is a long table, at which, through a cloud of tobacco smoke, a party of nine—all lords of the creation—may be discovered. A bowl of punch is in the centre of the table, at which every now and then each guest replenishes his glass. ”

“ The Country Club is most charming, and in it a big room so appealing in color and furnishing that you feel irresistibly like settling yourself in the corner of one of the chintz-covered sofas and staying indefinitely. Yet the same people whose own houses are so attractive will seriously take you to admire a horticultural achievement that, in its magentas and scarlets, purples and heliotrope, orange, Indian red and Paris green, lacks no element of discord except an out-of-tune German band to play among its glass globes. ”

“ 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? ”

“ On the night after the great fog of 1897 there were five members in the Club, four of them busy with supper and one reading in front of the fireplace. There is only one room to the Club, and one long table. At the far end of the room the fire of the grill glows red, and, when the fat falls, blazes into flame, and at the other there is a broad bow-window of diamond panes, which looks down upon the street. ”

“ Dining in a club means you’re surrounded by people who're pretty much alike. Their membership in the club means they’re there because they are all interested in golf, or because they’re university graduates, or belong to the same political party or write, or paint, or have incomes of over fifty thousand a year, or something. ”

“ I want a club to take an occasional stranger into, for a drink, and to read the papers in, and sometimes to have a quiet meal in. Where do you think I should go? I want somewhere I needn't always be spick and span in, and somewhere I don't have to pay a vast sum. Alas, why are there no decent clubs? What do the jolly people all do? ”

“ There is the dinner of the village benefit club, year after year. The object of the club is of the best, but its appearance upon club-day is a woeful spectacle to eyes that naturally look for a little taste upon an occasion of supposed festivity. What can be more melancholy than a procession of men clad in ill-fitting black clothes, in which they are evidently uncomfortable, with blue scarves over the shoulder, headed with a blatant brass band, and going first to church, and then all round the place for beer? ”

“ I know no clubs in any town so spacious, so reposeful, so dignified and so pleasant. I imagine, the human spirit tired of endless competition and the unceasing striving of the individual to assert himself, instinctively makes a refuge where communism in the arts of living reaches its highest point. Some of the best Clubs are in Fifth Avenue or just off it. When one has had an overdose of the street they are the only restoratives. ”

“ Within the last ten years clubs have become as plentiful as hotels nearly. And the enterprising City gentleman who fits up a big house with a dining and reading and smoking and morning and billiard room, and advertises the inauguration of the Pantheon Club, 'for the benefit of those gentlemen who are unable to enter the older clubs owing to their overcrowded condition,' requires names for his committee. ”

“ Almost every large city in the country has one solid, dignified old club, occupying a solid, dignified old building on a corner near the busy part of town. The building is always recognizable, even to a stranger. It suggests a fine cuisine, an excellent wine cellar, and a great variety of good cigars in prime condition. In the front of such a club there are large windows of plate glass, back of which the passer-by may catch a glimpse of a trim white mustache and a silk hat. ”

“ The history of
“The dear old street of clubs and cribs,
As north and south it stretches,”
is one which, if its record were fully written, would be found to have no little connection with the annals of the country. Its position, its proximity to the Palace, its past inhabitants, its famous club houses (where so much of the history of the country was, and is, evolved,) all make for its claim in this respect.
WHITE’S CLUB.
On our left is the famous bow window of “White’s,” where the dandies used to assemble to quiz the ladies on their way to the drawing-rooms. What a history has that club! ”

“ It is now so firmly established, and it is so popular that there is not a village or even a settlement in the United States which has not at least its casino, or its little coterie organized for golf, tennis, athletic, or merely social enjoyment. All of these, from the great metropolitan clubs of the cities down to the very humblest in the "wilds," are governed by club laws and are regulated by club etiquette. In New York, now a city of clubs, this etiquette differs much from that observed in London, Paris, or any of the large continental centers. In London, a man is identified with his club. ”

“ Even its workaday aspect,—the office, his high desk by the window, the thunder of the cotton-laden wagons in the streets and the clamor of voices impinging so slightly on his absorption in his work as to be ignored,—even this wrung a pang from him now. How much more the thought of the club, with its brilliant lights, and its luxury of furnishing, and its delectable cuisine, and the pretensions of its elder members, and the countenance they were pleased to show him ”