CLUBS AND CLUB ETIQUETTE
A club, as every one knows, is merely an organization of people--men or
women or both--who establish club rooms, in which they meet at specified
times for specified purposes, or which they use casually and individually.
A club's membership may be limited to a dozen or may include several
thousands, and the procedure in joining a club may be easy or difficult,
according to the type of club and the standing of the would-be member.
Membership in many athletic associations may be had by walking in and
paying dues; also many country golf-clubs are as free to the public as
country inns; but joining a purely social club of rank and exclusiveness
is a very different matter. A man to be eligible for membership in such a
club must not only be completely a gentleman, but he must have friends
among the members who like him enough to be willing to propose him and
second him and write letters for him; and furthermore he must be disliked
by no one--at least not sufficiently for any member to object seriously to
his company.
There are two ways of joining a club; by invitation and by making
application or having it made for you. To join by invitation means that
you are invited when the club is started to be one of the founders or
charter members, or if you are a distinguished citizen you may at the
invitation of the governors become an honorary member, or in a small or
informal club you may become an ordinary member by invitation or
suggestion of the governors that you would be welcome. A charter member
pays dues, but not always an initiation fee; an honorary member pays
neither dues nor initiation, he is really a permanent guest of the club. A
life member is one who pays his dues for twenty years or so in a lump sum,
and is exempted from dues even if he lives to be a hundred. Few clubs
have honorary members and none have more than half a dozen, so that this
type of membership may as well be disregarded.
The ordinary members of a club are either resident, meaning that they live
within fifty miles of the club; or non-resident, living beyond that
distance and paying less dues but having the same privileges.
In certain of the London clubs, one or two New York ones, and the leading
club in several other cities, it is not unusual for a boy's name to be put
up for membership as soon as he is born. If his name comes up while he is
a minor, it is laid aside until after his twenty-first birthday and then
put at the head of the list of applicants and voted upon at the next
meeting of the governors.
In all clubs in which membership is limited and much sought after, the
waiting list is sure to be long and a name takes anywhere from five to
more than ten years to come up.
=HOW A NAME IS "PUT UP"=
Since a gentleman is scarcely likely to want to join a club in which the
members are not his friends, he tells a member of his family, or an
intimate friend, that he would like to join the Nearby Club, and adds, "Do
you mind putting me up? I will ask Dick to second me." The friend says,
"I'll be very glad to," and Dick says the same. It is still more likely
that the suggestion to join comes from a friend, who says one day, "Why
don't you join the Nearby Club? It would be very convenient for you." The
other says, "I think I should like to," and the first replies, "Let me put
you up, and Dick will be only too glad to second you."
It must be remembered that a gentleman has no right to ask any one who is
not really one of his best friends to propose or second him. It is an
awkward thing to refuse in the first place, and in the second it involves
considerable effort, and on occasion a great deal of annoyance and
trouble.
For example let us suppose that Jim Smartlington asks Donald Lovejoy to
propose him and Clubwin Doe to second him. His name is written in the book
kept for the purpose and signed by both proposer and seconder:
Smartlington, James
Proposer: Donald Lovejoy
Seconder: Clubwin Doe
Nothing more is done until the name is posted--meaning that it appears
among a list of names put up on the bulletin-board in the club house. It
is then the duty of Lovejoy and Doe each to write a letter of endorsement
to the governors of the club, to be read by them when they hold the
meeting at which his name comes up for election.
Example:
Board of Governors,
The Nearby Club.
Dear sirs:
It affords me much pleasure to propose for membership in the
Nearby Club Mr. James Smartlington. I have known Mr. Smartlington
for many years and consider him qualified in every way for
membership.
He is a graduate of Yalvard, class 1916, rowed on the Varsity
crew, and served in the 180th, as 1st Lieut., overseas during the
war. He is now in his father's firm (Jones, Smartlington & Co.).
Yours very truly,
Donald Lovejoy.
Lovejoy must also at once tell Smartlington to ask about six friends who
are club-members (but not governors) to write letters endorsing him.
Furthermore, the candidate can not come up for election unless he knows
several of the governors personally, who can vouch for him at the
meeting. Therefore Lovejoy and Doe must one or the other take Smartlington
to several governors (at their offices generally) and personally present
him, or very likely they invite two or three of the governors and
Smartlington to lunch.
Even under the best of circumstances it is a nuisance for a busy man to
have to make appointments at the offices of other busy men. And since it
is uncertain which of the governors will be present at any particular
meeting, it is necessary to introduce the candidate to a sufficient number
so that at least two among those at the meeting will be able to speak for
him.
In the example we have chosen, Clubwin Doe, having himself been a governor
and knowing most of the present ones very well, has less difficulty in
presenting his candidate to them than many other members might have, who,
though they have for years belonged to the club, have used it so seldom
that they know few, if any, of the governors even by sight.
At the leading woman's club of New York, the governors appoint an hour on
several afternoons before elections when they are in the visitors' rooms
at the club house on purpose to meet the candidates whom their proposers
must present. This would certainly seem a more practicable method, to say
nothing of its being easier for everyone concerned, than the masculine
etiquette which requires that the governors be stalked one by one, to the
extreme inconvenience and loss of time and occasionally the embarrassment
of every one.
As already said, Jim Smartlington, having unusually popular and well-known
sponsors and being also very well liked himself, is elected with little
difficulty.
But take the case of young Breezy: He was put up by two not well-known
members, who wrote half-hearted endorsements themselves and did nothing
about getting letters from others; they knew none of the governors, and
trusted that two who knew Breezy slightly "would do." His casual proposer
forgot that enemies write letters as well as friends--and that moreover
enmity is active where friendship is often passive. Two men who disliked
his "manner" wrote that they considered him "unsuitable," and as he had
no friends strong enough to stand up for him, he was turned down. A
gentleman is rarely "black-balled," as such an action could not fail to
injure him in the eyes of the world. (The expression "black ball" comes
from the custom of voting for a member by putting a white ball in a ballot
box, or against him by putting in a black one.) If a candidate is likely
to receive a black ball, the governors do not vote on him at all, but
inform the proposer that the name of his candidate would better be
withdrawn. Later on, if the objection to him is disproved or overcome, his
name can again be put up.
The more popular the candidate, the less work there is for his proposer
and seconder. A stranger--if he is not a member of the representative club
in his own city--would have need of strong friends to elect him to an
exclusive one in another, and an unpopular man has no chance at all.
However, in all except very rare instances events run smoothly; the
candidate is voted on at a meeting of the board of governors and is
elected.
A notice is mailed to him next morning, telling him that he has been
elected and that his initiation fee and his dues make a total of so much.
The candidate thereupon at once draws his check for the amount and mails
it. As soon as the secretary has had ample time to receive the check, the
new member is free to use the club as much or as little as he cares to.
=THE NEW MEMBER=
The new member usually, but not necessarily, goes for the first time to a
club with his proposer or his seconder, or at least an old member; for
since in exclusive clubs visitors living in the same city are never given
the privilege of the club, none but members can know their way about. Let
us say he goes for lunch or dinner, at which he is host, and his friend
imparts such unwritten information as: "That chair in the window is where
old Gotrox always sits; don't occupy it when you see him coming in or he
will be disagreeable to everybody for a week." Or "They always play double
stakes at this table, so don't sit at it, unless you _mean_ to." Or
"That's Double coming in now, avoid him at bridge as you would the
plague." "The roasts are always good and that waiter is the best in the
room," etc.
A new member is given--or should ask for--a copy of the Club Book, which
contains besides the list of the members, the constitution and the by-laws
or "house rules," which he must study carefully and be sure to obey.
=COUNTRY CLUBS=
Country clubs are as a rule less exclusive and less expensive than the
representative city clubs, but those like the Myopia Hunt, the Tuxedo, the
Saddle and Cycle, the Burlingame, and countless others in between, are
many of them more expensive to belong to than any clubs in London or New
York, and are precisely the same in matters of membership and management.
They are also quite as difficult to be elected to as any of the exclusive
clubs in the cities--more so if anything, because they are open to the
family and friends of every member, whereas in a man's club in a city his
membership gives the privilege of the club to no one but himself
personally. The test question always put by the governors at elections is:
"Are the candidate's friends as well as his family likely to be agreeable
to the present members of the Club?" If not, he is not admitted.
Nearly all country clubs have, however, one open door--unknown to city
ones. People taking houses in the neighborhood are often granted "season
privileges"; meaning that on being proposed by a member and upon paying a
season subscription, new householders are accepted as transient guests. In
some clubs this season subscription may be indefinitely renewed; in others
a man must come up for regular election at the end of three months or six
or a year.
Apart from what may be called the few representative and exclusive country
clubs, there are hundreds--more likely thousands--which have very simple
requirements for membership. The mere form of having one or two members
vouch for a candidate's integrity and good behavior is sufficient.
Golf clubs, hunting clubs, political or sports clubs have special
membership qualifications; all good golf players are as a rule welcomed at
all golf clubs; all huntsmen at hunting clubs, and yet the Myopia would
not think of admitting the best rider ever known if he was not
unquestionably a gentleman. But this is unusual. As a rule, the great
player is welcomed in any club specially devoted to the sport in which he
excels.
In many clubs a stranger may be given a three (sometimes it is six)
months' transient membership, available in some instances to foreigners
only; in others to strangers living beyond a certain distance. A name is
proposed and seconded by two members and then voted on by the governors,
or the house committee.
The best known and most distinguished club of New England has an "Annex"
in which there are dining-rooms to which ladies as well as gentlemen who
are not members are admitted, and this annex plan has since been followed
by others elsewhere.
All men's clubs have private dining-rooms in which members can give stag
dinners, but the representative men's clubs exclude ladies absolutely from
ever crossing their thresholds.
=WOMEN'S CLUBS=
Excepting that the luxurious women's club has an atmosphere that a man
rarely knows how to give to the interior of a house, no matter how
architecturally perfect it may be, there is no difference between women's
and men's clubs.
In every State of the Union there are women's clubs of every kind and
grade; social, political, sports, professional; some housed in enormous
and perfect buildings constructed for them, and some perhaps in only a
room or two.
When the pioneer women's club of New York was started, a club that aspired
to be in the same class as the most important men's club, various
governors of the latter were unflatteringly outspoken; women could not
possibly run a club as it should be run--it was unthinkable that they
should be foolish enough to attempt it! And the husbands and fathers of
the founders expected to have to dig down in their pockets to make up the
deficit; forgetting entirely that the running of a club is merely the
running of a house on a large scale, and that women, not men, are the
perfect housekeepers. To-day, no clubs anywhere are more perfect in
appointment or better run than the representative women's clubs. In fact,
some of the men's clubs have been forced to follow the lead of the
foremost of them and to realize that a club in which members merely sit
about and look out of the window is a pretty dull place to the type of
younger members they most want to attract, and that the combination of the
comfort and smartness of a perfectly run private house with every
equipment for athletics, is becoming the ideal in club-life and
club-building to-day.
=GOOD MANNERS IN CLUBS=
Good manners in clubs are the same as good manners elsewhere--only a
little more so. A club is for the pleasure and convenience of many; it is
never intended as a stage-setting for a "star" or "clown" or "monologist."
There is no place where a person has greater need of restraint and
consideration for the reserves of others than in a club. In every club
there is a reading-room or library where conversation is not allowed;
there are books and easy chairs and good light for reading both by day and
night; and it is one of the unbreakable rules not to speak to anybody who
is reading--or writing.
When two people are sitting by themselves and talking, another should on
no account join them unless he is an intimate friend of both. To be a mere
acquaintance, or, still less, to have been introduced to one of them,
gives no privilege whatever.
The fact of being a club member does not (except in a certain few
especially informal clubs) grant any one the right to speak to strangers.
If a new member happens to find no one in the club whom he knows, he goes
about his own affairs. He either sits down and reads or writes, or "looks
out of the window," or plays solitaire, or occupies himself as he would if
he were alone in a hotel.
It is courteous of a governor or habitual member, on noticing a new member
or a visitor, especially one who seems to be rather at a loss--to go up
and speak to him, but the latter must on no account be the one to speak
first. Certain New York and Boston clubs, as well as those of London, have
earned a reputation for snobbishness because the members never speak to
those they do not know. Through no intent to be disagreeable, but just
because it is not customary, New York people do not speak to those they do
not know, and it does not occur to them that strangers feel slighted until
they themselves are given the same medicine in London; or going elsewhere
in America, they appreciate the courtesy and kindness of the South and
West.
The fundamental rule for behavior in a club is the same as in the
drawing-room of a private house. In other words, heels have no place on
furniture, ashes belong in ash-receivers, books should not be abused, and
all evidence of exercising should be confined to the courts or courses and
the locker room. Many people who wouldn't think of lolling around the
house in unfit attire, come trooping into country clubs with their
steaming faces, clammy shirts, and rumpled hair, giving too awful evidence
of recent exertion, and present fitness for the bathtub.
=THE PERFECT CLUBMAN=
The perfect clubman is another word for the perfect gentleman. He never
allows himself to show irritability to any one, he makes it a point to be
courteous to a new member or an old member's guest. He scrupulously
observes the rules of the club, he discharges his card debts at the
table, he pays his share always, with an instinctive horror of sponging,
and lastly, he treats everyone with the same consideration which he
expects--and demands--from them.
=THE INFORMAL CLUB=
The informal club is often more suggestive of a fraternity than a club, in
that every member speaks to every other--always. In one of the best known
of this type, the members are artists, authors, scientists, sportsmen and
other thinkers and doers. There is a long table set every day for lunch at
which the members gather and talk, every one to every one else. There is
another dining-room where solitary members may sit by themselves or bring
in outsiders if they care to. None but members sit at the "round" table
which isn't "round" in the least!
The informal club is always a comparatively small one, but the method of
electing members varies. In some, it is customary to take the vote of the
whole club, in others members are elected by the governors first, and then
asked to join. In this case no man may ask to have his name put up. In
others the conventional methods are followed.
=THE VISITORS IN A CLUB=
In every club in the United States a member is allowed to "introduce" a
stranger (living at least fifty miles away) for a length of time varying
with the by-laws of the club. In some clubs guests may be put up for a day
only, in others the privilege extends for two weeks or more.
Many clubs allow each member a certain number of visitors a year; in
others visitors are unlimited. But in all city clubs the same guest can
not be introduced twice within the year. In country clubs visitors may
always be brought in by members in unlimited numbers.
As a rule when a member introduces a stranger, he takes him to the club
personally, writes his name in the visitors' book, and introduces him to
those who may be in the room at the time--very possibly asking another
member whom he knows particularly well to "look out" for his guest. If for
some reason it is not possible for the stranger's host to take him to the
club, he writes to the secretary of the club for a card of introduction.
Example:
Secretary,
The Town Club.
Dear Sir:
Kindly send Mr. A.M. Strangleigh a card extending the privileges
of the Club for one week.
Mr. Strangleigh is a resident of London.
Yours very truly,
Clubwin Doe.
The secretary then sends a card to Mr. Strangleigh:
The Town Club
Extends its privileges to
Mr. [HW: Strangleigh]
from [HW: Jan. 7.] to [HW: Jan. 14.]
Through the courtesy of
Mr. [HW: Clubwin Doe]
Mr. Strangleigh goes to the club by himself. A visitor who has been given
the privileges of the club has, during the time of his visit, all the
rights of a member excepting that he is not allowed to introduce others to
the club, and he can not give a dinner in the private dining-room. Strict
etiquette also demands, if he wishes to ask several members to dine with
him, that he take them to a restaurant rather than into the club
dining-room, since the club is their home and he is a stranger in it. He
may ask a member whom he knows well to lunch with him in the club rooms,
but he must not ask one whom he knows only slightly. As accounts are sent
to the member who put him up--unless the guest arranges at the club's
office to have his charges rendered to himself, he must be punctilious to
ask for his bill upon leaving, and pay it _without question_.
Putting a man up at a club never means that the member is "host." The
visitor's status throughout his stay is founded on the courtesy of the
member who introduced him, and he should try to show an equal courtesy to
every one about him. He should remember not to obtrude on the privacy of
the members he does not know. He has no right to criticise the management,
the rules or the organization of the club. He has, in short, no actual
rights at all, and he must not forget that he hasn't!
=CLUB ETIQUETTE IN LONDON, PARIS AND NEW YORK=
"In a very smart London club" (the words quoted are Clubwin Doe's) "you
keep your hat on and glare about! In Paris you take your hat off and
behave with such courtesy and politeness as seems to you an affectation.
In New York you take your hat off and behave as though the rooms were
empty; but as though you were being observed through loop-holes in the
walls."
In New York you are introduced occasionally, but you may never ask to be
introduced, and you speak only to those you have been introduced to. In
London, you are never introduced to any one, but if the member who has
taken you with him joins a group and you all sit down together, you talk
as you would after dinner in a gentleman's house. But if you are made a
temporary member and meet those you have been talking to when you are
alone the next day, you do not speak unless spoken to. In Paris, your host
punctiliously introduces you to various members and you must just as
punctiliously go the next day to their houses and leave your card upon
each one! This is customary in the strictly French clubs only. In any one
which has members of other nationalities--especially with Americans
predominating, or seeming to, American customs obtain. In French clubs a
visitor can not go to the club unless he is with a member, but there are
no restrictions on the number of times he may be taken by the same member
or another one.
=UNBREAKABLE RULES=
Failure to pay one's debts, or behavior unbefitting a gentleman, is cause
for expulsion from every club; which is looked upon in much the same light
as expulsion from the Army. In certain cases expulsion for debt may seem
unfair, since one may find himself in unexpectedly straitened
circumstances, and the greatest fault or crime could not be more severely
dealt with than being expelled from his club; but "club honor"--except
under very temporary and mitigating conditions--takes no account of any
reason for being "unable" to meet his obligations. He _must_--or he is not
considered honorable.
If a man can not afford to belong to a club he must resign while he is
still "in good standing." If later on he is able to rejoin, his name is
put at the head of the waiting list, and if he was considered a desirable
member, he is re-elected at the next meeting of the governors. But a man
who has been expelled (unless he can show cause why his expulsion was
unjust and be re-instated) can never again belong to that, or be elected
to any other, club.