It has been suggested that the Three Hours for Lunch Club is an
immoral institution; that it is founded upon an insufficient respect
for the devotions of industry; that it runs counter to the form and
pressure of the age; that it encourages a greedy and rambling humour
in the young of both sexes; that it even punctures, in the bosoms of
settled merchants and rotarians, that capsule of efficiency and
determination by which Great Matters are Put Over. It has been said,
in short, that the Three Hours for Lunch Club should be more
clandestine and reticent about its truancies.
Accordingly, it seems good to us to testify concerning Lunches and
the philosophy of Lunching.
There are Lunches of many kinds. The Club has been privileged to
attend gatherings of considerable lustre; occasions when dishes of
richness and curiosity were dissected; when the surroundings were
not devoid of glamour and surreptitious pomp. The Club has been
convened in many different places: in resorts of pride and in
low-ceiled reeky taphouses; in hotels where those clear cubes of
unprofitable ice knock tinklingly in the goblets; in the brightly
tinted cellars of Greenwich Village; in the saloons of ships. But
the Club would give a false impression of its mind and heart if it
allowed any one to suppose that Food is the chief object of its
quest. It is true that Man, bitterly examined, is merely a vehicle
for units of nourishing combustion; but on those occasions when the
Club feels most truly Itself it rises above such considerations.
The form and pressure of the time (to repeat Hamlet's phrase) is
such that thoughtful men--and of such the Club is exclusively
composed: men of great heart, men of nice susceptibility--are
continually oppressed by the fumbling, hasty, and insignificant
manner in which human contacts are accomplished. Let us even say,
_masculine_ contacts: for the first task of any philosopher being to
simplify his problem so that he can examine it clearly and with less
distraction, the Club makes a great and drastic purge by sweeping
away altogether the enigmatic and frivolous sex and disregarding it,
at any rate during the hours of convivial session. The Club is
troubled to note that in the intolerable rabies and confusion of
this business life men meet merely in a kind of convulsion or horrid
passion of haste and perplexity. We see, ever and often, those in
whose faces we discern delightful and considerable secrets, messages
of just import, grotesque mirth, or improving sadness. In their
bearing and gesture, even in hours of haste and irritation, the Club
(with its trained and observant eye) notes the secret and rare sign
of Thought. Such men are marked by an inexorable follow-up system.
Sooner or later their telephones ring; secretaries and go-betweens
are brushed aside; they are bidden to appear at such and such a time
and place; no excuses are accepted. Then follow the Consolations of
Intercourse. Conducted with "shattering candour" (as one has said
who is in spirit a member of this Club, though not yet, alas,
inducted), the meetings may sometimes resolve themselves into a
ribaldry, sometimes into a truthful pursuit of Beauty, sometimes
into a mere logomachy. But in these symposiums, unmarred by the
crude claim of duty, the Club does with single-minded resolve pursue
the only lasting satisfaction allowed to humanity, to wit, the
sympathetic study of other men's minds.
This is clumsily said: but we have seen moments when eager and
honourable faces round the board explained to us what we mean. There
is but one indefeasible duty of man, to say out the truth that is in
his heart. The way of life engendered by a great city and a modern
civilization makes it hard to do so. It is the function of the Club
to say to the City and to Life Itself: "Stand back! Fair play! We
see a goodly matter inditing in our friend's spirit. We will take
our ease and find out what it is."
For this life of ours (asserts the Club) is curiously compounded of
Beauty and Dross. You ascend the Woolworth Building, let us say--one
of man's noblest and most poetic achievements. And at the top, what
do you find, just before going out upon that gallery to spread your
eye upon man's reticulated concerns? Do you find a little temple or
cloister for meditation, or any way of marking in your mind the
beauty and significance of the place? No, a man in uniform will
thrust into your hand a booklet of well-intentioned description (but
of unapproachable typographic ugliness) and you will find before you
a stall for the sale of cheap souvenirs, ash trays, and hideous
postcards. In such ways do things of Beauty pass into the custody of
those unequipped to understand them.
The Club thinks that the life of this city, brutally intense and
bewildering, has yet a beauty and glamour and a secret word to the
mind, so subtle that it cannot be closely phrased, but so important
that to miss it is to miss life itself. And to forfeit an attempt to
see, understand, and mutually communicate this loveliness is to
forfeit that burning spark that makes men's spirits worth while. To
such halting meditations the Club devotes its aspirations
undistressed by humorous protest. If this be treason...!
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