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.
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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.
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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.
