Reading some Sherlock Holmes stories, I was struck by how important men’s clubs were in Edwardian England-it seemed that a lot of men spent most of their spare time at clubs.
Are there any such places left? I mean, places with tall velvet chairs, where you can nod off after a few pink gins? With sonookes tables and butlers? Or are these clubs a tning of the past?
How do you join up?
Srry! (With sonookes tables )-I emant “snookers tables”!
Yeah totally, I would love to be a member of Bertie Wooster’s Drones Club.
Cricket with bread rolls and all that.
A lot of the ones from Victorian times (and earlier - White’s was opened in 1693) are still around: The Aetheneum, Garrick, Boodle’s, Brooks etc. I’ve no idea how you would join most of them. Some are military related eg The Special Forces Club where you have to be SF or secret services.
Start your own club! With blackjack! And snookers!
I don’t know of any you can apply to as opposed to receiving an invitation to join. Some are simply by invitation of member, others by a more general invitation to people of a particular category. I get periodic invitations from the Oxford & Cambridge Club and the East India Club, but had no interest in joining either.
Some of them tend towards a certain sector of the population (other than rich males) such as the theatrical profession or journalism, but this isn’t necessary by rule, more an unspoken thing that these are the people who should be invited.
Many of those clubs will have reciprocal arrangements with similar clubs in other parts of the world. So one way in would be to join an appropriate gentlemen’s club in your home town, then use those reciprocal arrangements while visiting London.
I used to belong to the QI Club (yes, that QI) in Oxford, which was mixed gender, not exclusively for gentlemen. Big fireplace, leather armchairs, lots of books and games around. It was great. I accidentally joined once when drunk in charge of a new credit card. It had reciprocal arrangements with a club in London. Sadly it got bought, turned into the Corner Club, then went bust.
How much does a club membership cost? Is it out of reach for the average Joe?
I assume that it would have to be expensive, otherwise they’d have a hard time maintaining their air of exclusivity.
I see what you did there.
I dunno… any club with a Snookie table, I don’t want anything to do with…
The one I joined was £250 for the year. That was a discounted price though - it should have been £500. But I’m sure the really ancient ones are way way more expensive.
Depending on where you went to college, you can possibly slide in the backdoor of one of those places. My university does not have its own club BUT has a deal worked out with another university who does so that I could join that club and THEN get reciprocity benefits with a number of clubs (not just university affiliated) worldwide. The list includes a number of stuffy old London clubs (think St. James, the military affiliated clubs, the Oxford and Cambridge Club). My impression is that a lot of those clubs have become not un-open to sort of pimping themselves out as quasi-hotels to the commoners as they tend to have a lot of valuable/centrally located real estate and the days of proper members living at their clubs or staying there while in town may have declined a bit. So as long as they can quasi-restrict it by requiring you to have some ostensibly-selective membership somewhere, they’ll take your trade.
I’ve thought about doing it. The annual dues aren’t ridiculous and some of the room rates, while not super-cheap, are decent for central London. And, it’d be cool to be shooting billiards at the RAF Club. On the other hand, you might get former military guys (or barons, or whatever) staring daggers at the foreign civilian interloper.
My FIL is a member of The Athenaeum Club. My understanding is that to join you would need a member to nominate you and another member to second it (the second member doesn’t need to know you - people will automatically second the people their friends nominate). I think I remember my FIL saying there was a veto system but I can’t remember what it was. Only very controversial nominations would have people voting against them though.
There are several clubs that offer discounted annual fees to younger members because they’re having trouble attracting young men, and will obviously have problems once the current lot die out. I don’t know how much annual membership fees are, but my FIL mentioned that it’s not much more than a gym membership (a lot of gyms run about $1200 a year here), though “not much more” could mean anywhere from $1201 to $5000, who knows.
The club doesn’t admit female members, but I’ve been a few times as a guest of my FIL. It’s not really my thing, but it’s definitely an interesting experience; staff who know all the members by name, really excellent and unobtrusive service, lots of mahogany and leather and fancy artwork, and a dress code for all members. They actually have pretty cool events too - a LOT of wine appreciation nights, regular black tie functions, and cooking classes held by chefs from some of Melbourne’s best restaurants. But most of it seems to be eating, drinking, and socializing with other upper middle class old men.
Ah, but one of those Stuffy Olde Clubs in literature sounded ideal simply because socializing was frowned on. It wasn’t Bertie’s Drones Club, or Jeeves’s* Junior Ganymedes*… maybe Lord Peter Wimsey’s?
At any rate, that’s what I want. A hidey-hole wherein members are assured of a snifter of brandy and a current copy of The Times in front of a fire. Without any glad-handing jackanape startling you with some of that “Well, well, well. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
To which I would raise the old eyebrow: “Well, well, well, I’ve been keeping myself right here, where I have been assured of a total lack of jackanapes glad-handing anyone.” And I shall rustle my Times and return to my perusal of the funnies therein…
Mycroft Holmes’s Diogenes Club restricted members from speaking aloud within its walls. In Lord Peter’s Bellona Club (a club for soldiers), conversation was not forbidden, but elderly members harrumph’d when young persons like WWI vet George Fentiman spoke too loudly and intemperately.
Actually, the Athenaeum has admitted women since 2002.
This reflects a general trend among the older clubs towards less exclusivity. Which is being forced on them as the type of person who used to join them as a matter of course becomes increasingly rare. After all, who now would want to be a member of the Athenaeum or the Reform, if they can instead join the Groucho or Soho House?
I read too much Sherlock Holmes as a child and have always wanted to join a proper club.
In my area, The Army and Navy Club in DC is quite nice, but also very expensive as I live close enough to the clubhouse to pay the full membership fee. The Engineers’ Club in Baltimore is cheaper and eager for members. Somehow that turns me off to joining there.
I suspect Groucho had it right, I would not want to join any club that would actually have me as a member.
There’s some interesting historical background in the Wikipedia article on Gentlemen’s club.
And here’s a List of London’s gentlemen’s clubs.
In the U.S., of course, “gentlemen’s club” usually means a strip club.