Nightclub

“ The women call champagne "fizz," and ale "swill." All around the room cushioned seats or benches are placed so that those who have done dancing may rest themselves and drink. There are liquor counters in every corner of the room, and a good business is done, the bar-maids being kept actively employed all the time while the music is playing. Upstairs there is another gallery and a fine bar, and here the really fast women congregate, to look over the balconies, but never condescending to mix among the vulgar dancers, excepting when their reason is gone through intoxication. ”

“ From the ball-room, after the ladies are disposed of, the gentlemen usually repair to the club-rooms of the hotel, where they generally make a night of it—and where, by some strange process or other, many of them find themselves, at the dawn of the next day, divested of means for remaining any longer in this fashionable atmosphere—the consequence of which is that the wives and daughters who shone the most brilliantly upon the promenade and in the drawing-room the day before, are to-day hustled off for home, very mysteriously, in the first train of cars. ”

“ He walked there on the crisp November nights, arrived regularly at the evening’s end; it was as easy to do this after dining out as to take his way to a club or to his hotel. When he left his club, if he hadn’t been dining out, it was ostensibly to go to his hotel; and when he left his hotel, if he had spent a part of the evening there, it was ostensibly to go to his club. Everything was easy in fine; everything conspired and promoted: there was truly even in the strain of his experience something that glossed over, something that salved and simplified, all the rest of consciousness. ”

“ It is not the public drinking-saloon that is taking you down, nor theatrical amusements, nor the houses of sin that have cost thousands of other men their eternity: but it is simply and undeniably your club-room. You do not make yourself as agreeable in your family as once. You go home at twelve o'clock with an unnatural flush upon your cheek and a strange color in your eye that you got at the club. You merely acknowledge that you feel queer. You say that champagne never intoxicates ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then came the afternoon when I decided that Satan must have his way.
There is a hotel in New York of which I had many recollections because I had frequented its barroom in the days before I went altogether down. It is a somewhat expensive-looking barroom, with heavy mahogany, gilded cornices, and frescoes of hunting-scenes on the wall. Hanging over the bar at any time during the day or night can be seen all the types that are commonly known as sporting, from the dashing to the cheap. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In returning to our inn about midnight we were attracted by the free cool sound of a guitar duet issuing from a dark street that rambled off somewhere like a worm track in old wood, and, pursuing the sound, we discovered by the aid of a match lighted for a cigarette two men standing in the obscure alley, and serenading a couple of ladies in a balcony, who positively laughed with pride at the attention. The men, it proved, had been hired by some admirer, and so our friend engaged them to perform for us at the hotel the following night. ”

“ I have never been much of a club man and nothing at all of a social butterfly. I am sure that the sight of me, pushed into evening clothes by a stern wife and perspiring copiously in an effort to conceal my rage and 67rebellion, is enough to cast a pall over any social gathering. Even in Hollywood, where dinner guests may be more readily hired than anywhere else on earth, I, if I should lose my credit at my hotel, would undoubtedly starve to death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A Supper Club is usually downstairs, decorated in the cheap imitation of a grape arbour, furnished with small tables, comfortable wicker chairs, suave and sophisticated waiters, an orchestra of from six to ten pieces and a small polished floor for purposes of dancing. Supper Clubs are run to meet every size of pocketbook. There are those whose patrons do not know the titillating effects of champagne ”

“ Often an old-fashioned beau, he was as a rule rather a hard, selfish man, provided by his club 140with all that he required. Not a few men of this type declined to dine out, because they said they got a better dinner at the club for some ten or twelve shillings than at the best houses in town. “Why,” inquired one of them, “should I bore myself with dull society when I can have the comfortable ease of the smoking-room? If I want to be amused, I go to the theatre; if I want to read, I go to the library. ”

“ After supper I set out on the steep hillside up which the town is built and down which run red mud streets, and at length found at his club—the club, in fact—the manager of the local theater, a tar-brushed youth of aristocratic manners, or at least gestures, who naturally accepted and signed without argument the contract I handed him. Upon my return to the hotel I found the dingy-looking room I had left an hour before gay with speckless white bedclothes and fancy mosquito canopy, evidently in honor of the large theatrical troupe which rumor already had it would soon be following in my wake. ”

“ We pay for admission, and, entering through a narrow passage, find ourselves in a large saloon, with a balcony all round. On the ground-floor of course there is dancing, and at the end is a bar where drink is being rapidly supplied. Up in the balcony are young fellows sitting with gaily-dressed women, drinking sherry-cobblers and smoking cigars. In time the room gets crowded, and the people in it grow a little the worse for drink. ”

“ Down a couple of blocks in the Victoria Hotel, a tawdry assignation joint, is a dive called Bettye Mills Night Club. It was once known as the Stork Club, but Sherman Billingsley brought suit. It has a couple of long bars where soiled strippers work on platforms, above the bartenders. While you sit on the stools, dames come over and ask you to buy them drinks. This doesn’t surprise anyone, because they do it in every low joint in town. Such places have female bartenders, and many lean over and kiss customers. If not too busy, they come out and sit with the trade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You can't have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver salver in his hand; then you can't bring a lady to a club, and you have to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull.
As the hearth and home grew all-powerful it became impossible for the husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable. ”

“ In that Club House there is a smoking-room. Co-clubbists—above all, best beloved co-smokers—be calm! The world without shall never hear from me anything of our sacred mysteries. Let it be sufficient for work-o'-day mortals to know that there are ruptures beyond their reach, and joys far above their apprehension. ”

“ Half-way to Stinson’s—I was on foot—I came to a sudden halt. It was as if the sense of responsibility toward Lovey wouldn’t allow me to go any farther. I said to myself that I must think the matter out—that I must find and would find additional justification for my course before going on.
To do that I turned into a chance hotel.
I like the wide hospitality of American hotels, where any tired or lonesome wayfarer can enter and sit down. I have never been a clubman. Clubs are too elective and selective for my affinities; they are too threshed and winnowed and refined. ”

“ Inside this everybody's club is a café, with hurrying waiters and a solid brass band, and opening from its smoke and absinthe laden interior blazes a small theatre, with stage footlights and scenery, where the several world-renowned artists redeem at a very considerable discount the promissory notes of the bill-boards outside. ”

“ Beyond being a comfortable lounge, it was of little service to its members.
Many tacitly recognized conventions prevailed in connection with club-life. For instance, it was not then at all the thing to raise one’s hat to a lady whom one knew, should she pass the club window. A great many members lunched in the coffee-room with their hats on, whilst in certain clubs evening dress at dinner was obligatory. Some clubs, including Boodle’s, even to-day set aside a small apartment, separate from the regular dining-room, for members who prefer to dine in day clothes. ”

“ The bar is one of the most—if not the most—important departments in the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get "a drink." The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I believe, perfectly fabulous. ”

“ After this loyal toast has been drunk and the cigars lighted, all formality vanishes, every man moves from his place and goes to talk to those of his old friends who have been out of earshot during dinner; the subalterns make inquiries as to whether the Cabaret Club or the Four Hundred Club is the most amusing place in which to keep awake after all the restaurants are shut, and as eleven o'clock comes some of the guests go off to the Service clubs, some have to catch last trains, and the commissionaire downstairs has a busy time whistling for taxis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then, unless you belong to a regular club or carry a card of admission to one of the chartered all-night clubs that have sprung up so abundantly in London, and which are uniformly stuffy, stupid places where the members take their roistering seriously—or as a last resort, unless you care to sit for a tiresome hour or two in the grill of your hotel—you might as well be toddling away to bed ”

“ 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? ”

“ Again the loud voices of men in angry strife arose in the bar-room. I did not return there to learn the cause, or to witness the fiend-like conduct of the men, all whose worst passions were stimulated by drink into the wildest fervor. As I was entering my room, the thought flashed through my mind that, as Green was found there, it needed only the bare suggestion that I had aided in his concealment, to direct toward me the insane fury of the drunken mob.
"It is not safe to remain here." ”