Women breaching London clubs

Press, 29 November 1977, Page 15

Women breaching London clubs

London i The London gentlemen’s club is a unique British invention, based on the twin segregations of sex. and class. It’s cachet supposedly depends more on whom it keeps out rather than whom it lets in. But clubs are now more ! like successful flirts, givI ing off an aura of exI elusiveness while welcomi ing almost any new memj ber, although the myth of i exclusivity still works its ! attractions. i Most have compromised | and admitted women as I associate members. But they have either relegated them to separate ladies’ annexes or, if they are allowed into the main body of the club, they are not allowed into certain rooms, notably the bar, the library and the smoking room. The Army and Navy Club for serving or retired ; officers, the average age , of whose members cannot i be much under 50, oper- ‘ ates such a compromise. ! “Women are allowed to ! stay in the club which has i over 100 bedrooms, all i almost full,” explained the ; secretary, hastening to add ’ “Lt’s all right because all ■ the rooms have their own i bathroom so you don’t get | boys and girls meeting in ! the corridor or anything j like that.” 1 Part of the original I mystique of the clubs was I that it was in them that I the great figures of art i and letters gathered to govern the country. The House of Commons was described by a character in one of Dickens’s novels as. “The best club in London.” At one time they undoubtedly were centres of influence. There is the story of an incident at the Beefsteak before World War I when the police, on seeing a number of elderly men coming regularly out of a certain building looking happy and convivial decided that it must be a brothel and therefore raided it. “Who are you?” demanded the officer in charge of the first man they encountered. “The Lord Chancellor,” he replied, so they laughed and arrested him. The next claimed that he was the I Archbishop of Canterbury

and he too was disbeiievingly led away. “I suppose that you’re the Prime Minister,” said the officer sarcastically to the third man. “I am,” replied the then Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour. Now, however, the aura of power and influence has vanished. While Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, was a member of six clubs, Sir Harold Wilson was only an honorary member of the Athenaeum; the present Prime Minister, James Callaghan, belongs to none. The way things have changed is well illustrated by the case of Margaret Thatcher, the Leader of the opposition. Traditionally the leader of the Conservative Party is a member of the Carlton Club, which also traditionally does not admit women. After a certain amount of soul-searching the Tory virtue of pragmatism triumphed and she was elected. The sites many of the clubs occupy are among the most expensive in London and their elegance and history cannot help but reflect on the members. Most of the clubs have intimate connections with the great names of the past. The Athenaeum, Boodle’s, Brook’s and the Travellers’, for example, are all Grade I on the Government’s list of historic buildings. The clubs originated as an endless distillation of that hour after dinner in polite society when the women withdrew from the table leaving the men to smoke and drink and talk about manly things. Rooted in what one observer has called “the unresolved homosociality of British society,” the clubs have reacted in a variety of ways to current sexual equality. At one end is the Arts Club, founded in 1861, which has recently come under new management and has complete equality between male and female members. At the other end is the venerable institution of White’s, one of the most tonev clubs, founded in 1693. Like every other institution the clubs have suffered from inflation and have had to do some

radical rethinking. Staff salaries and heating and maintenance costs have soared in recent years and the general economic tightening has produced a corresponding drop in membership; when reviewing personal finances what is more natural for a person than to drop a club that is only used occasionally? The clubs have met the challenge in a variety of ways. The Reform Club for instance is currently asking $45 a year from each of its members while the Royal Automobile Club has just announced that if it cannot raise 52.5 M in the next four years then it will have to close. Traditionally the subscriptions paid for the overheads and the other services paid for themselves. Now that this is no longer true and raising subscriptions any further merely drives away members; the clubs are dependent on encouraging members to use the facilities more. As a result catering has become more important and more professional. A few are known to provide excellent food while most of the others provide lunch and dinner at very reasonable prices. Some, like Brook’s, have redecorated and so are in great demand for private parties since few restaurants can match the splendour of their nineteenth century interiors or their old-world charm. Not many, though, had gone so far in changing with the times as has the Arts Club which now boasts of a family breakfast and a gourmet dinner complete with entertainment and a disco. But it seems to work and the membership has more than doubled in the past five years. The continuation of the clubs can be seen as a charming survival of a vanished age or as a pathetic relic of all that was wrong with the Empire. But the clubs have always been the special haven of older men and it seems likely that some of the bejeaned young men of today will welcome the unbroken tranquillity of the smoking room in their declining years, even if the wife is sharing the neighbouring armchair, — O.F.N.S. Copyright.