TENDENCIES OF CLUB LIFE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 143, 18 June 1936, Page 10

TENDENCIES OF CLUB LIFE

CONVERSATION LOST ARI

Cloister and Open House

“pCCENTRItTI’Y,” said Mr T. W. Hill, recently retired secretary of the Athenaeum Club, London, in an interview with a special correspondent of the ‘Observer.” “Ex-centricity—-out of the centre. I’bat is the modern mark Everybody nowadays is thoroughly eccentric. Why don’t you wear a hat?” I pointed io in\ hat I'iug on a chair. “Yes, I know, but you carry it about in your hand. Why do people lose the right-hand glove and go about wearing the Jeit Why do women go stockingv less? They want to b e different—out of a the centre. We all have a line of ect centricity. I util the War man brought e himself more into line with the vogue s of the day. Now he allows bis eccenr tricity to get the beter of him. He o doesn’t conform to the pattern.” “But surely there was eccentricity t before the War?” ‘‘Not in the general sense. Extravak gance, vanity, if you like, among individuals. Why did J- M. W. Turner alc ways drink his port in the dark after !r blowing the candles out? Why did o Charles Dickens come into the Athenaeum in the middle of the morning.

•''iiatch a sandwich, and walk rapidly I up and down the coffee room ? The ex- < travagance of genius. “Of course there will be anothei change. No doubt in tbe next twenty ’ years sunbathing will disappear. And ; - 1 can see signs in the latest arcbitec ture of less eccentricity. More attention is being paid to design. The • I novel, too, will either change or dist appear. The modern novel has lost its 2 old raison d’etre—to tell a story. I’n- . less the story-teller returns, the novel 3 as a literary form will vanish. “And what, you ask, has all that to i do with the Athenaeum? Why, everything. All change affects club life. - The old cloistral atmosphere of the _ West End club, the club with a hall- _ porter who combined the qualities oi r a bear, a bull, and a tiger, has disap--1 peared. There is a tendency nowa- - days to make a club a house of enter- . tainment. That, too, will disappear. 1.

believe that a form of club lile will evolve which will keep the best ot both tendencies—the cloistral and the open house.” “What oi conversation? Yv’ill that are revive?” “Conversation died thirty-live oi forty years ago. There were the um •conversational breuki'asls given I.; Lord Avebury, ami before him bj Sai>; Rogers, both members ol the A th enaeuin. They disappeared as conversational centres, and were succeeded by private dinner parties such us those given by two other members ol the Athenaeum, Sir Henry Thompson and Sir Mountstuart Grand Duff Sii Henry Thompson’s dinner parties were called ‘octaves,’ because they were given eight times a year on the eighth of the month for eight people and consisted of eight courses. “They also ended not long after the . beginning of the century. Sir Henry

I hompson died in lUOI, Sir Mount *tuart Grand Duff in FJO6. From then until alter the Wat. conversation was succeeded by gossip chaff, and anecdote. Now ii is being restored by the occasional dinneis followed by symposia which art- held in various club*

Certain modern clubs are almost pure dining clubs. Ihe Athenaeum has its winter season ol dinners with symposia. That is all helping to revive conversation as a cult “there’s the Athenaeum for you then Life and change. Docs it matter how many hat pegs we Rave, oi what the members like for dinner, oi how they dress? Ihe ordinary, edu cated man knows what is going on in the Athenaeum by instinct.” I looked at Mr Hill, *ccretary, tin oldest man among the secretaries ol the great West End clubs, talking with the brisk assurance of a vigorous sixty Mr Hill looked at the future. “I hope,” I said, as we shook hands, “that you will enjoy your retirement more than you have enjoyed your work in the Athenaeum.” “That,” said Mi Hill, gravely, “would be impossible.”