It was founded for an ideal. Its scope is national, and its object
to regenerate the race, to remedy injustice, and to proclaim the
brotherhood of mankind. It is for the poor against the plutocrat, and
for the slave against the tyrant, and for democracy against feudalism.
It is, in a word, of the kingdom of heaven. It was born amid immense
collisions, and in the holy war it is the official headquarters of those
who are on the side of the angels. In its gigantic shadow the weak and
the oppressed sell newspapers and touch their hats to the warriors as
they pass in and pass out.
The place is as superb as its ideal. No half measures were taken when it
was conceived and constructed. Its situation is among the most expensive
and beautiful in the world of cities. Its architecture is grandiose, its
square columned hall and its vast staircase (hewn from Carrara) are two
of the sights of London. It is like a town, but a town of Paradise.
When the warrior enters its portals he is confronted by instruments
and documents which inform him with silent precision of the time,
the temperature, the barometric pressure, the catalogue of nocturnal
amusements, and the colour of the government that happens to be in
power. The last word spoken in Parliament, the last quotation on the
Stock Exchange, the last wager at Newmarket, the last run scored
at cricket, the result of the last race, the last scandal, the last
disaster--all these things are specially printed for him hour by hour,
and pinned up unavoidably before his eyes. If he wants to bet, he has
only to put his name on a card entitled “Derby Sweepstake.” Valets take
his hat and stick; others (working seventy hours a week) shave him;
others polish his hoots.
*****
The staircase being not for use, but merely to immortalise the memory of
the architect, he is wafted upwards by a lift into a Titanic apartment
studded with a thousand easy-chairs, and furnished with newspapers,
cigars, cigarettes, implements of play, and all the possibilities of
light refection. He lapses into a chair, and lo! a hell is under his
hand. Ting! And a uniformed and initialled being stands at attention
in front of him, not speaking till he speaks, and receiving his command
with the formalities of deference. He wishes to write a letter--a table
is at his side, with all imaginable stationery; a machine offers him
a stamp, another licks the stamp, and an Imperial letter-box is within
reach of his arm,--it is not considered sufficient that there should
be a post-office, with young girls who have passed examinations, in the
building itself. He then chats, while sipping and smoking, or nibbling a
cake, with other reclining warriors; and the hum of their clatter
rises steadily from the groups of chairs, inspiring the uniformed
and initialled beings who must not speak till spoken to with hopes
of triumphant democracy and the millennium. For when they are not
discussing more pacific and less heavenly matters, the warriors really
do discuss the war, and how they fought yesterday, and how they will
fight to-morrow. If at one moment the warrior is talking about “a
perfectly pure Chianti that I have brought from Italy in a cask,” at the
next he is planning to close public-houses on election days.
[Illustration: 0157]
When he has had enough of such amiable gossip he quits the easy chair,
in order to occupy another one in another room where he is surrounded
by all the periodical literature of the entire world, and by the hushed
murmur of intellectual conversation and the discreet stirring of spoons
in tea-cups. Here he acquaints himself with the progress of the war and
the fluctuations of his investments and the price of slaves. And when
even the solemnity of this chamber begins to offend his earnestness,
he glides into the speechless glamour of an enormous library, where
the tidings of the day are repeated a third time, and, amid the
companionship of a hundred thousand volumes and all the complex
apparatus of research, he slumbers, utterly alone.
Late at night, when he has eaten and drunk, and played cards and
billiards and dominoes and draughts and chess, he finds himself once
more in the smoking-room--somehow more intimate now--with a few cronies,
including one or two who out in the world are disguised as the enemy.
The atmosphere of the place has put him and them into a sort of
exquisite coma. Their physical desires are assuaged, and they know by
proof that they are in control of the most perfectly organised mechanism
of comfort that was ever devised. Naught is forgotten, from the famous
wines cooling a long age in the sub-basement, to the inanimate chauffeur
in the dark, windy street, waiting and waiting till a curt whistle shall
start him into assiduous life. They know that never an Oriental despot
was better served than they. Here alone, and in the mansions of the
enemy, has the true tradition of service been conserved. In comparison,
the most select hotels and restaurants are a hurly-burly of crude
socialism. The bell is under the hand, and the labelled menial stands
with everlasting patience near; and home and women are far away. And the
world is not.
Forgetting the platitudes of the war, they talk of things as they are.
All the goodness of them comes to the surface, and all the weakness.
They state their real ambitions and their real preferences. They narrate
without reserve their secret grievances and disappointments. They
are naked and unashamed. They demand sympathy, and they render it,
in generous quantities. And while thus dissipating their energy,
they honestly imagine that they are renewing it. The sense of reality
gradually goes, and illusion reigns--the illusion that, after all, God
is geometrically just, and that strength will be vouchsafed to them
according to their need, and that they will receive the reward of
perfect virtue.
And their illusive satisfaction is chastened and beautified by the
consciousness that the sublime institution of the club is scarcely what
it was,--is in fact decadent; and that if it were not vitalised by
a splendid ideal, even _their_ club might wilt under the sirocco of
modernity. And then the echoing voice of an attendant warns them, with
deep respect, that the clock moves. But they will not listen, cannot
listen. And the voice of the attendant echoes again, and half the lights
shockingly expire. But still they do not listen; they cannot credit.
And then, suddenly, they are in utter darkness, and by the glimmer of a
match are stumbling against easy-chairs and tables, real easy-chairs and
real tables. The spell of illusion is broken. And in a moment they are
thrust out, by the wisdom of their own orders, into Pall Mall, into
actuality, into the world of two sexes once more.
*****
And yet the sublime institution of the club is not a bit anæmic. Within
a quarter of a mile is the monumental proof that the institution has
been rejuvenated and ensanguined and empowered. Colossal, victorious,
expensive, counting its adherents in thousands upon thousands, this
monument scorns even the pretence of any ancient ideal, and adopts no
new one. The aim of the club used ostensibly to be peace, idealism, a
retreat, a refuge. The new aim is pandemonium, and it is achieved.
The new aim is to let in the world, and it is achieved. The new aim
is muscular, and it is achieved. Arms, natation, racquets--anything to
subdue the soul and stifle thought! And in the reading-room, dummy hooks
and dummy book-cases! And a dining-room full of bright women; and such a
mad competition for meals that glasses and carafes will scarce go round,
and strangers must sit together at the same small table without protest!
And, to crown the hullaballoo, an orchestra of red-coated Tziganes
swaying and yearning and ogling in order to soothe your digestion and to
prevent you from meditating.
[Illustration: 0161]
This club marks the point to which the evolution of the sublime
institution has attained. It has come from the shore of Lake Michigan;
it is the club of the future, and the forerunner of its kind. Stand on
its pavement, and watch ‘its entering heterogeneous crowds, and then
throw the glance no more than the length of a cricket-pitch, and watch
the brilliantly surviving representatives of feudalism itself ascending
and descending the steps of the most exclusive club in England; and you
will comprehend that even when the House of Lords goes, something will
go--something unconsciously cocksure, and perfectly creased, and urbane,
and dazzlingly stupid--that was valuable and beautiful. And you will
comprehend politics better, and the profound truth that it takes all
sorts to make a world.