Literary club

“ But for persons whose literary pursuits are carried on in isolation, and who aim at expressing by authorship no thoughts or no sentiments but their own, it seems to me that a club for authors or writers as such represents a conception as wrong as would that of a club for speakers as such or for politicians as such. What bond of union would there be between a Tory and a ferocious Democrat if they neither of them put pen to paper—if they were not authors at all? ”

“ In a Progressive Little City claiming about twice the Population that the Census Enumerators could uncover, there was a Literary Club. It was one of these Clubs guaranteed to fix you out with Culture while you wait. Two or three Matrons, who were too Heavy for Light Amusements, but not old enough to remain at Home and Knit, organized the Club. Nearly every Woman in town rushed to get in, for fear somebody would say she hadn't been Asked. ”

“ The Playgoers’ Club was almost the only one which admitted ladies; and at that time it confined them mostly to lectures. The ladies’ Clubs certainly welcomed men, but the serious element was more conspicuous there. The idea of having a literary club at which ladies and gentlemen constantly dined together for pleasure had not been born.
The actors and actresses and well-known speakers of our 62acquaintance we met mostly at the old Playgoers’ Club, or at Phil May’s Sunday nights in the stable which had become his studio. ”

“ Among the thousands of members of the women's clubs, that to-day are spread broadcast over the country, we find very few working women; yet to working women belongs the credit of having organized the first woman's literary club in America. This first literary club, the Improvement Circle of the Lowell mill girls, gave its members an opportunity for intellectual development and expression that was entirely new to all of them, and some girls who in later life became famous women owed much of their early inspiration and encouragement to that working girls' club. ”

“ So the girls all talked at once, or at least, two at a time, and explained that they wanted a literary club, and while they all liked the boys and would be glad of their assistance in plays and tableaux, yet they knew that if boys came to the meetings, there'd be little or no serious reading done. ”

“ His, of course, was the day of literary clubs, more suited to the spirit of the eighteenth century than to that of to-day. In modern times most of the literary clubs founded for conversation have been complete failures. ”

“ Seldom does a week pass without a crowd of children coming to us petitioning for the use of one of the club rooms. Often these clubs are of short duration, but some of them have been in existence for years. Sometimes they are literary, sometimes purely social—but more often dramatic. In the dramatic club the children, starved for the brighter things of life—can pretend to their hearts' content, and their keen imagination can make it all vividly realistic for them. They choose their own plays, draw the parts, make their costumes and carry out their own conception of the different roles. ”

“ But Mr. Rabbit, who is quite literary, and a good poet, said it would be better to make it a kind of a club, and each have a poem, or a story, or [Pg 125] a song; or if anybody couldn't do any of those he must dance a jig.
GOT AROUND THE TABLE AND BEGAN TO WORK
Then they all remembered a poetry club that Mr. Rabbit had got up once and how nice it was, and they all said that was just the thing, and they got around the table and began to work away at whatever they were going to do for the "Snowed-In" Literary Club. ”

“ A well written article in a local paper on the work done, shows how thoroughly its influence is appreciated: “When one has passed an evening with such a club, that has been faithfully kept up year by year, not for social delight but for hard study of history, philosophy, belles lettres and the evidences of the Christian religion, he realizes the worth of it and since music, good music too, is ever added to the mental labor as joint refiner of mind and heart, he approves the ‘club’ as one of the finest social and literary organizations that has ever blessed this city.” ”

“ The United encourages the formation of local literary or press clubs in cities or towns containing several members. These clubs generally publish papers, and hold meetings wherein the pleasures of literature are enlivened by those of the society. The most desirable form of club activity is that in which a high-school instructor forms a literary society of the more enthusiastic members of his class. ”

“ The Authors’ Club differed from the original Vagabonds Club because only the Speaker or Speakers of the evening spoke, and the dinner was a more luxurious one. Most of the literary Vagabonds went to the Authors’ Club too, but at the Authors’ you met a fair sprinkling of the older authors like Sir Walter Besant, and, occasionally, Thomas Hardy. The gatherings were much larger. The Club contained many more members, and the bringing of guests was much more usual. Besant and Oswald Crawfurd brought a great many, generally distinguished men. ”

“ But is there not in every college adequate machinery for such expression of tastes? With the students’ associations, the women’s leagues, the Young Women’s Christian Association, literary associations, tennis clubs, golf clubs, garden clubs, walking clubs, journal clubs,—the multifarious club activities of almost any college, to which ability, or at least interest, is the test for admission, there should be no lack of opportunity for any student to encourage to the utmost any taste whatsoever. ”

“ The most usual form that the club activities assume is that of literary work of some kind, either as a gathering of literary women, or simply a gathering of women for some particular form of literary study. ”

“ Taylor, "the Club still acknowledges literature as its foundation, and love of literature as the tie which binds together its members, whatever their rank and callings. Few Clubs can show such a distinguished brotherhood of members as 'the Literary.' Of authors proper, from 1764 to this date (1857) , may be enumerated, besides its original members, Johnson and Goldsmith, Dyer and Percy, Gibbon and Sir William Jones, Colman, the two Wartons, Farmer, Steevens, Burney, and Malone, Frere and George Ellis, Hallam, Milman, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Lord Stanhope. ”

“ We all know something is wrong with the flood of cheap work we are always getting. The literary clubs and the various kinds of culture clubs that spring up everywhere are perhaps rather silly in some of their gropings but they mean something. ”

“ There exists here a club of twenty-four philosophers, who give every Saturday evening very agreeable male parties;3 consisting of the club, twenty invited citizens and any strangers who may happen to be in town. These parties are not confined to any particular circle; but all men who are distinguished in the arts, whether fine or mechanical ”

“ An Authors’ Club, where none but authors are admitted, is a good thing. The members learn there that there are other authors than themselves. Poets’ Clubs are a good thing; they bring poets into contact with each other, and they learn what a bore it is to have to listen to a poet reading his own poem. ”

“ We'll have a poetry club."
And of course that made Mr. Rabbit wake up right away.
"What's that?" he said. "What kind of a thing is a poetry club?"
"Why," said Mr. Crow, "it's a place where the members each write a poem and read it at the next meeting. You're the only real, sure enough poet, of course, and will be president, and write the best poem, but the rest of us can try, and you can tell us our mistakes. I've heard that Mr. Man has clubs, and they're ever so much fun." ”

“ On this, our annual ladies' night, it seemed right to this club, composed of men who work in or who love literature and art, to make a public testament of our respect for those who have won eminence in these branches,—our gifted writers and sweet singers whom all men honor, because they "can make the thing that is not, as the thing that is." ”

“ Every one is a part of many clubs, the object of which is knowledge and the broadening of the intellectual horizon. Science, languages, literature, are their daily food. They can speak in tongues; they can talk about the solar spectrum; they can interpret Chaucer, criticise Shakespeare, understand Browning. There is no literature, ancient or modern, that they do not dig up by the roots and turn over, no history that they do not drag before the club for final judgment. In every little village there is this intellectual stir and excitement ”

“ We do not dine, as strolling players did, in the servant’s kitchen. We are, for the moment, almost respectable. We belong to clubs. We wear no distinctive dress. It is indeed the fashion for the artist of the day to look perfectly ordinary, to be, in fact, like everyone else, with short hair and servant problems. To-day Congreve would be content to style himself a dramatist and be a member of the Garrick Club. It is a phase. It is only the surface of life that alters. Another turn of the wheel and the artist will return to his own people. ”

“ Under the influence of music antagonisms soften, moroseness disappears, and sociability and good cheer take their place. The old-fashioned singing-school was one of the most popular of local social institutions; something is needed to fill its place. A club or band for the serious study of instrumental music not only gives culture to individuals, but is also an asset of increasing value to a church or community.
[134] 141. Woman's Clubs.—These have become so common that they need no special description, but as a social phenomenon they have their significance. ”

“ This is the first reason for the rapid growth of these library reading clubs, the magic contained in merely the sight or sound of the word "club"—the spur it gives to the imagination of even the apparently unimaginative child, and the stigma it removes from the mind of the adolescent boy or girl of being considered a child. By conferring upon him the dignity of membership in a club we can make it possible for him to enjoy to the extent of his capacity the pleasure the majority of children so delight in—the listening to a good story well told or well read. ”

“ PRIVATE theatricals and dramatic or Shakspeare reading clubs are among the fashionable amusements of the present day. Many, I know, disapprove of them; but I think they do far more good than harm. They certainly strengthen the lungs, memory, and improve the intellectual tastes. But I will not discuss the subject, as far abler pens than mine have already argued on both sides of the question. Private theatricals amuse a large circle of friends, and any club willing to undertake the presentation of plays deserves the thanks of the audience. ”

“ A girls' club on the lower East side have been reading the old English comedies—"She stoops to conquer," "The rivals," "Lady Teazle"; then there is a flourishing Shakespeare club, which to honor the Dickens centenary this year, voted to make the study of the great writer a part of this year's program. This club meets once a week, and at one meeting the outline of one of the great tales was told by the librarian. This was followed by the girls reading one or more of the most famous chapters or dialogues. ”

“ Club life—with its too studious indulgence of man's native selfishness and love of ease—fashionable life, with its insatiable craving for that latter-day form of display which calls itself Culture, Art, or Beauty—had afforded him no vision so enchanting as the wide hearth and high chimney of this sober, book-lined room, with the fair and girlish form kneeling in front of the old dogstove, framed in the glaring light of the fire. ”

“ The spark must strike in your own imagination. You yourself must feel the current of this magnetism which reaches from the earth to the stars and makes all things akin. A good book should be a provocation to the reader. A club for “culture” is a collection of human beings each hoping for vicarious salvation through the other.
Women’s clubs not only waste energy in their pursuit of knowledge, but they debilitate the intellectual strength of the individual woman. ”

“ But—to go back a little—in 1842 the most characteristic feature of all in connection with the society had its beginning, namely, the Sketching Club. This is, in reality, quite distinct from the society, although members may belong to it; but its membership is recruited chiefly from outside, and is practically unlimited. The club meets every Friday evening, a subject—or, perhaps, two—is given, and each artist realizes it as best he can. ”

“ The Arts Club, the newly founded Authors’ Club, the Hogarth, the Savage, the Vagabonds, and the Playgoers, to all of which I had been elected, were free and fearless in their hospitalities, and here, and through friends I met in these clubs, I acquired the friendship of many of the world’s workers.
The Arts Club in those days was a jolly place; charming and distinguished men could be found dining there almost 147every night, and after dinner you played pool with the Royal Academicians, or talked scandal about the way that artists were elected, and pictures selected, to the Royal Academy. ”

“ The Authors' Club, being merely an association of authors, is therefore somewhat outside of public view. Its peculiar distinction is that it brings together various men whom the world honors, and a few more whom the world may or may not learn to honor. ”

“ At the Arts, I believe, some of the members sometimes hang up pictures of their own for exhibition and criticism, but at no other club is there any recognition of Art. There are good libraries at two or three clubs, but many have none. In fact, the clubs which belong to gentlemen are organized as if there was no other occupation possible for civilized people in polite society, except dining, smoking, reading papers, or playing whist and billiards. ”